Labels: hasbara, Melanie Phillips
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:48 AM
3 comments
Labels: British media bias, Melanie Phillips
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:13 PM
4 comments
What is it exactly that drives her opponents so crazy? Many of her views are politically incorrect, but she is not the only one to hold them. Perhaps it is her blunt style; she is routinely accused of hyperbole, hysteria and anger.
Phillips thinks she is hated because she is an “apostate.”
“I was considered to be a signed-up member of the liberal left. I departed and they won’t forgive me,” she says.
Her journey makes the left feel insecure about its own positions, she adds.
“The left is obsessed by me because it knows this right-wing label they’ve pinned on me isn’t true,” she says, settled into a large armchair in her central London apartment. “Where I stand is the true left. I remain where I was originally – standing for a better society, standing up for the vulnerable, fighting oppression and tyranny, standing up for truth against lies. The change was that I came to believe that the people who I thought were on my side in that great battle were on the other side, keeping the poor mired in disadvantage.”
She wrote “Guardian Angel” to show that she wasn’t the creature of caricature.
“It was important to set the record straight,” she says. “I was being so misunderstood and misrepresented, it was getting in the way of my ability to convey what I was trying to say.”
Labels: al-Guardian, British anti-Semitism, Londonistan, Melanie Phillips
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:33 PM
1 comments
Jews have demonized other Jews for ages. The prophet Isaiah warned about that some 2,500 years ago. In the modern age, Israel's biggest and most damaging critics tend to be Jews and Israelis. Why do they do it? Melanie Phillips takes a look. Why do they do this? Why, especially since they themselves are Jews and Israelis? Many reasons suggest themselves, ranging from the craven desire for access to a fashionable society itself riddled with this prejudice, through naivety, ignorance of Judaism and history not to mention sheer benighted stupidity, by way of a bitterly warped psychopathology all the way to the closed ideological thought system of the left for which Israel is doubly damned – as a western nation and a Jewish western nation.Read the whole thing. And if you don't recognize the grandmotherly looking lady at the top of this post, go here to find out about her.
The part played by these Jews in the global bullying of Israel, and the tacit or explicit support they are thus lending to those whose aim is the extermination of the Jewish state, cannot be overstated. For those in the wider world who want Israel destroyed not only use the bogus arguments of these Jewish Israel-bashers but also use their Jewishness as a human shield, to insulate themselves against the charge of Jew-hatred.
How can there be anything bigoted about these arguments, they say, if Jews and Israelis are themselves using them? Very easily, actually; throughout the long centuries of Jewish persecution, the terrible fact is that Jews themselves have always been prominent in such murderous campaigns. The Judeophobic malice of today’s left, indeed, which can be traced back to the French Revolution, was supplied with rocket fuel by Karl Marx whose own Jewish ancestry managed to morph into virulent hatred of Judaism and the Jewish people.
Within Israel itself, the demonisation of their own country by Israeli academics has to be seen to be believed – not least for the free rein they are usually given to debauch the role of a university and substitute lies and propaganda for facts and knowledge. If anyone challenges them, they start screaming that they are being demonised. Not surprisingly, a steady stream of them find their way onto the campuses of Britain, where the already Judeophobic atmosphere supplies them with an unlimited supply of the oxygen of hatred. The IsraCampus website is doing sterling work recording this systematic corruption of the academy by Jewish academics both within Israel and abroad. It is a deeply tragic and unique phenomenon.
Labels: Hedy Epstein, Melanie Phillips, self-hating Jews
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:24 PM
0 comments
Labels: Islam, Melanie Phillips, terrorism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:32 PM
0 comments
Here's a must read Melanie Phillips piece on why the European Union has failed:It was a noble vision; but it was fundamentally flawed, I would suggest, for three main reasons. First, the erosion of national self-government inescapably involved in the EU project does not enshrine democracy but results instead in rather less of it. Second, as the euro implosion has so graphically demonstrated, trying to fashion one supranational entity out of disparate nations is intrinsically incoherent and ultimately self-destructive. And third, the EU has done nothing to diminish the Judeophobia which led to the Holocaust in Europe. Indeed, the obsessional malice towards Israel has provided cover for a resurgence of the oldest hatred within the graveyard of European Jewry. As Giulio Meotti reports, Jews are being expelled from academia across Europe.Read it all.
Labels: European Union, Giulio Meotti, Melanie Phillips
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:56 PM
0 comments
Melanie Phillips hits another home run, describing her two recent visits to Hebron. The first time was with a private, non-political group to visit Hebron's Jewish area and the Cave of Machpelah, where Abraham and the patriarchs and matriarchs are said to be buried.Read it all.
It was a shock. If ever there was a illustration of the attempt by Islam to supersede Judaism, this was surely it.
This holy Jewish shrine was to all intents a mosque. Islamic prayer mats were piled high, and there seemed to be not one Jewish artefact in the place. Even the catafalques sporting labels claiming them as the tombs of the founders of Judaism were topped by Islamic crescents.
Those labels are hung only on the handful of days per year the Jews are allowed to visit. Hebron has become a synonym in the west for oppression of the Palestinians by 'crazed settlers', but it is in fact those Jewish residents who are hanging on by their fingernails to a minimal right of access to one of Judaism's holiest sites.
Their presence requires the IDF to ensure that access. Without the soldiers, does anyone seriously imagine Machpelah would not suffer the same fate as Joseph's Tomb in Nablus which, after the Israelis were forced to abandon it, was burned to the ground?
It is also grotesque to call them 'settlers' as if they are colonising land with which they have no connection. Jews have lived in Hebron for thousands of years but have been repeatedly driven out, as in the 1929 pogrom when Arabs slaughtered 67 adults and children.
...
Friendly relations have been established between local rabbis and the remarkable Sheikh Jabari, leader of Hebron's largest clan, who some years ago prevented the planned torching of a nearby synagogue.
Sheikh Jabari has publicly acknowledged the right of Jews to live in Hebron. Recently, he welcomed and blessed a group of Jewish visitors and declared that Machpelah should unite Jews and Arabs. Alas, Sheikh Jabari does not speak for the Palestinian Authority, which is intent on using its new membership of UNESCO to stop what it calls the 'Judaisation of the city'.
UNESCO has recognised Hebron as a 'Palestinian heritage site', demanding it be removed from Israel's own list of national heritage sites. Hebron's mayor has said that if the PA controlled the whole town, Jews would again be barred from Machpelah. UNESCO is merely the latest weapon the PA is deploying to erase the Jews from their own history.
Labels: Hebron, Machpeila cave, Melanie Phillips
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:34 PM
0 comments
Sometimes I'm glad this blog doesn't (yet) get tens and hundreds of thousands of hits per day, and that I don't have the fame that goes with that traffic volume. One of the unfortunate pieces of fallout from Anders Behring Breivik's murderous spree in Norway ten days ago has been been a 'take no prisoners' rush on the Left to use the murders to silence critics of the growing Islamization of Europe, which is being carried out under the guise of 'multiculturalism.' Former Norwegian prime minister and current chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee Thorbjorn Jagland has said that, in response to the violent attacks, David Cameron and other European leaders should use a more ‘cautious’ approach when talking about multiculturalism.Those words were written by Melanie Phillips, the well-known (and charming - we've met in person at least twice) British columnist, who goes on to describe the hate mail she has received since being quoted in Breivik's manifesto. And she had but a small role to play there.
Cameron has said multiculturalism (the doctrine that gives the values of minorities equal status to those of the majority) has failed, and has also talked about ‘Islamist extremism’ as a cause of terrorism.
Jagland, however, said leaders would be ‘playing with fire’ if they continued to use rhetoric that could be exploited by extremists such as Breivik.
This is because Breivik’s so-called manifesto shows that he is violently against mass immigration, multiculturalism and Islamisation — and that he wants the forced repatriation of Muslims from Europe and the murder of all who have promoted multiculturalism.
But in Breivik’s 1,500-page diatribe, I was mentioned precisely twice. The first time was a quote from an article in this newspaper about family breakdown.And even if he had, it would not have been cause to blame Melanie for this man's actions.
The second was another article about the revelation by a former civil servant that the previous Labour government had kept the public in the dark about a covert policy of mass immigration.
Breivik made no mention of anything I had written about Muslims, Islamic terrorism or Islamisation.
Labels: Anders Behring Brievik, Eurabia, Melanie Phillips, multiculturalism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:46 AM
4 comments
The Norwegian terror attacks have turned into an excuse to beat up on conservative, anti-Islamist bloggers. In a disgraceful piece written this morning, the New York Times all but blames Robert Spencer, Baron Bodissey and Pam Geller for the Oslo attacks. In the document he posted online, Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.I understand that Melanie Phillips, Richard Landes and Phyllis Chesler are also mentioned in Breivik's manifesto. I can't link to the post that confirms that right now because Melanie Phillips' website has been attacked and is down right now.
His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch Web site, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.
...
In the United States, critics have asserted that the intense spotlight on the threat from Islamic militants has unfairly vilified Muslim Americans while dangerously playing down the threat of attacks from other domestic radicals. The author of a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism withdrawn by the department after criticism from conservatives repeated on Sunday his claim that the department had tilted too heavily toward the threat from Islamic militants.
The revelations about Mr. Breivik’s American influences exploded on the blogs over the weekend, putting Mr. Spencer and other self-described “counterjihad” activists on the defensive, as their critics suggested that their portrayal of Islam as a threat to the West indirectly fostered the crimes in Norway.
Mr. Spencer wrote on his Web site, jihadwatch.org, that “the blame game” had begun, “as if killing a lot of children aids the defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, or has anything remotely to do with anything we have ever advocated.” He did not mention Mr. Breivik’s voluminous quotations from his writings.
The Gates of Vienna, a blog that ordinarily keeps up a drumbeat of anti-Islamist news and commentary, closed its pages to comments Sunday “due to the unusual situation in which it has recently found itself.”
Its operator, who describes himself as a Virginia consultant and uses the pseudonym “Baron Bodissey,” wrote on the site Sunday that “at no time has any part of the Counterjihad advocated violence.”
The name of that Web site — a reference to the siege of Vienna in 1683 by Muslim fighters who, the blog says in its headnote, “seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe” — was echoed in the title Mr. Breivik chose for his manifesto: “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” He chose that year, the 400th anniversary of the siege, as the target for the triumph of Christian forces in the European civil war he called for to drive out Islamic influence.
Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”
“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”
...
Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among Web sites. Pamela Geller, an outspoken critic of Islam who runs Atlas Shrugs, wrote on her blog Sunday that any assertion that she or other antijihad writers bore any responsibility for Mr. Breivik’s actions was “ridiculous.”
“If anyone incited him to violence, it was Islamic supremacists,” she wrote.
Mr. Breivik also quoted European blogs and writers with similar themes, notably a Norwegian blogger who writes under the name “Fjordman.” Immigration from Muslim countries to Scandinavia and the rest of Europe has set off a deep political debate across the continent and strengthened a number of right-wing anti-immigrant parties.
Labels: Anders Behring Brievik, Baron Bodissey, Islamophobia, Melanie Phillips, multiculturalism, Norway, Oslo bombing, Pamela Geller, Phyllis Chesler, Richard Landes, Robert Spencer, Utoya massacre
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:33 PM
8 comments
Labels: Eurabia, Islam, Islamist, Londonistan, Melanie Phillips
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:28 PM
3 comments
Melanie Phillips, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting here in Israel, has moved her blog off the Spectator site to her own site. You can check out the reasons why here.Yup, Michele Bachmann gets it -- and how. Bachmann is a Christian. Christianity owes its existence to Judaism. An unbreakable thread links Judaism, Christianity and America. Israel embodies American and western values. Abandon Israel and you abandon America and destroy the west. That is what Obama is doing. That is what Bachmann – a candidate for the US presidency -- has said in this video. She got to the heart of it -- why the west is going down, why Israel is the key issue of our time, why the drum now being beaten by Obama and the western left against Israel is the very same drum that is being beaten against America and the west itself.Read the whole thing.
The implications for American politics are crystal clear. Israel should become the driving issue for Republicans.
Labels: Campaign 2012, Melanie Phillips, Michele Bachmann
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:34 AM
8 comments
On Monday, I reported that British Prime Minister David Cameron has resigned as a patron of the Jewish National Fund. Melanie Phillips rips him for his decision. The JNF thing (despite Downing Street's unconvincing claim that Cameron has stepped down from a number of charities through lack of time) is the latest act of aggression against Israel by HMG, and is particularly offensive. For the JNF is identified closely with the foundational Zionist dream of making the desert bloom, by buying up and developing the land for decades before the State of Israel was established. And so now– of course – it stands accused of the ‘theft of Palestinian land’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and even ‘war crimes’. Ah yes – that terrible weapon of mass destruction, the sapling.Read it all.
Without getting into the imbecilic interstices of precisely what and where, one key, crucial, overarching, all-important, nothing-else-matters-as-much-as-this point needs to be made (and yes, I have made it before many times, but it needs to be taped to Cameron’s eyeballs and rammed down the throats of the malevolent mandarins of the Foreign Office and delivered by diplomatic cable to Israeli spokesman as their line–to-take in answer to any statement-disguised-as -a-question about their intrinsic belligerency routinely lobbed at them by the Guardian-of-the Airwaves, aka the BBC).
This is quite simply that the territory beyond the ceasefire lines (formed when Israel fought off the attempt by five Arab armies to destroy it at birth in 1948-9, and now falsely deemed to be Israel’s ‘border’) is not Palestinian land. It is not land that is owned by the Palestinians in general, or to which they have any general right or title. On the contrary, it is land to which the Jews in general are legally entitled. All of it. This is not some crazed, ultra-nationalist dogma. It is a matter of historical fact. international law and basic justice.
Labels: 1949 armistice lines, David Cameron, Jewish National Fund, Melanie Phillips
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:47 AM
2 comments
Melanie Phillips lauds the clarifying moment during the joint press availability between Netanyahu and Obama on Friday.Here’s the thing. Obama spoke correctly when he referred to the ‘1967 lines’ rather than ‘borders’. There are no 1967 borders. Israel actually has no borders. All it has are the 1949 ceasefire lines, which is where Israel was left when it fought off the attempt by five Arab armies to exterminate it at birth. These lines were referred to as the ‘Auschwitz borders’ because within them no country could possibly defend itself against its enemies. They left Israel at its narrowest point a mere nine miles wide -- as Netanyahu said, less than the Washington Beltway. A return to the 1967 lines would mean exposing Israel once more to the likelihood of destruction, and such a proposal runs counter to the spirit and the letter of UN Resolution 242. True Obama added ‘with land swaps’. But no realistic land swaps could make up for this fatal vulnerability.But will he continue to roar? History on that question is not promising.
When Obama was interviewed by a star-struck Andrew Marr on BBC TV this morning, he said the ‘1967 lines’ formula had always been accepted as the basis for a solution. Not true, as Dore Gold and Robert Satloff explain here. Not true, as Glenn Kessler explains in the Washington Post. Successive administrations carefully stepped round this minefield in accordance with Resolution 242. It is the Palestinians who talk about returning to the ‘1967 borders’. The sting in what Obama did was to adopt the Palestinian position as US policy. Wrote Kessler:He did not articulate the 1967 boundaries as a ‘Palestinian goal’ but as U.S. policy... for a U.S. president, the explicit reference to the 1967 lines represented crossing the Rubicon.What’s more, he appears to have ambushed Netanyahu with it. So the Bibimouse finally roared.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Melanie Phillips, Mouse that Roared
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:33 PM
1 comments
Melanie Phillips writes an awesome open letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron, who claimed on Thursday to be a friend of Israel. The letter deserves to go viral (and to be translated into French for French President Nikolai Sarcozy, who has issued similar threats to Cameron's). I wonder, therefore, if you make a habit of threatening your friends? For you also said that unless Israel ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ with the Palestinian Authority, the more likely it is that Britain will endorse the ‘State of Palestine’ for which the PA is expected to seek recognition at the UN in September.Read the whole thing.
This is not the behaviour of a friend so much as the kind of intimidation that is more reminiscent of a Mafia protection racket.
First of all, you have incomprehensibly decided to pressurise the victim in this conflict to make peace with her aggressor, even though the victim is the one party that constantly tries to make peace while the aggressor does not. It is the PA which has refused to negotiate with Israel, not the other way round, on the spurious grounds that Israeli expansion of Jewish homes beyond the ‘Green Line’ is a bar to negotiations.
I wonder whether you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you do not insist that Mr Abbas ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ by unambiguously renouncing – in both English and Arabic – his repeated assertions that his people will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, the casus belli of the entire conflict?
I wonder also if you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you implicitly endorse the racist ethnic cleansing inherent in the putative ‘State of Palestine’ which the PA says it will declare – a state in which Mr Abbas has repeatedly declared that not one Jew will be allowed to live -- but which you have now threatened to support? I’m sure the British people in particular would be interested to know when you decided that racism and ethnic cleansing were part of your modernising programme for the Conservative Party.
Next, I wonder if you might clarify for us exactly why the British government has welcomed the alliance entered into between Hamas and Mr Abbas’s Fatah, and why you believe that this will advance the cause of peace. As you know, your government still regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation. More than that, Hamas is explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jews, a platform from which is has explicitly stated this week that it will not resile. And as you know, following the killing of Osama bin Laden the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, condemned the ‘assassination of a Muslim holy warrior’ -- while for their part the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the terrorist department of the Fatah organisation that you do not appear to think is an obstacle to peace, called bin Laden’s death ‘a catastrophe’ and vowed to step up the jihad to establish the dominance of Islam in the world.
I’m sure we are all agog to learn why you, a Conservative Prime Minister and the supposed ally of America in the defence of the free world, have chosen not only to applaud and promote a coalition which includes genocidal fanatics who are in bed with both al Qaeda and Iran, but why you are also threatening their victim, Israel, that Britain will endorse a state run by this genocidal coalition unless Israel itself enters into negotiations with it. To carry on with the Mafia analogy, this is akin to threatening someone that if they do not put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger you will set the Mob on them to achieve the same result.
...
To arrive at a solution, it is imperative first of all correctly to identify the problem. The problem in the Middle East is not the absence of a state of Palestine. Were that the case, the problem would have been resolved when such a state was first mooted long before World War Two. The problem is instead that the Arabs wish to destroy the State of Israel. The solution, therefore, is to stop them from continuing to try to do so. And to achieve that, it is essential that the west stop rewarding them for their attempts.
For the single most important reason for the never-ending nature of the Middle East impasse is that, uniquely, for more than nine decades the west has rewarded the Arab aggressors and punished their Jewish victims. And from the start, the western leader of this infernal process, I’m afraid to say, was Britain.
Labels: David Cameron, Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, Melanie Phillips, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, unilateral declaration of statehood
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:21 PM
1 comments
It's a good thing that the New York Daily News is published in a country where there is a free press and not in Britain. After all, Melanie Phillips is currently under investigation for referring to the 'Palestinian' terrorists who murdered five members of the Fogel family of Itamar as savages. The Daily News goes even further, calling the terrorists who shot an anti-tank missile at a school bus last week savages and subhuman. And you know what? The Daily News is right. This was a war crime by any definition: Hamas deliberately and in cold blood targeted an Israeli school bus for a rocket attack.How about it indeed.
This bears repeating so the words ring loudly against the silence of the hypocrites of the United Nations Human Rights Council: Hamas fired a laser-aimed anti-tank missile at a yellow school bus with the intent of killing children.
Hamas blew up the bus in retaliation for Israel's killing of three of the terror group's commanders, men responsible for the rain of missiles coming out of Gaza into southern Israel.
Declared Hamas: "This is an initial response to the occupation's crime, the latest of which was the assassination of the three holy fighters."
Thus, Hamas has openly stated its philosophy: You kill my soldier; I kill your child.
...
Israel has responded militarily to the attempted murder, as it must. Watch for cries that its use of force is criminal. Watch for hand-wringing and lamentations about the "cycle of violence," as if everyone is to blame. And watch as some shirk from applying the term "terrorist" to Hamas, insisting on using an antiseptic term like "militants."
These men, these murderers, are proud of what they do. "Terrorist" isn't strong enough for them. How about "savages"?
Labels: Hamas, Melanie Phillips, savages, subhuman
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:56 PM
1 comments
Labels: British media bias, Fogel family massacre, Itamar, Melanie Phillips, Palestinian terrorism, Yaakov Ahimeier
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:33 AM
4 comments
I have met Melanie Phillips in person (more than once) and I can tell you that she's charming, witty, sharp, bright, brilliant and a whole bunch of other adjectives. But since she's on our side, that doesn't exactly endear her to some of the powers-that-be in Britain. It’s a funny old world. I have now been contacted by two journalists informing me that Bedfordshire Police are investigating The Spectator. Why? Because of the Melanie Philips blog where she referred to the “moral depravity” of “the Arabs” who killed the Fogel family in Israel. CoffeeHousers can judge for themselves if they agree or disagree with her language and views – but should this be illegal? The Guardian has written this story up, claiming The Spectator is being investigated by the Press Complaints Commission. This is untrue. The PCC tell me that a complaint has been lodged, but that’s as far as it has gone. They investigate only if they believe there is a serious prospect that their code has been breached, and it hasn't. Our blogs, as well as the magazine, adhere to the PCC code.I look forward to reading Melanie's writings in the Spectator for many years to come. Isn't it amazing how people try to silence opinions they don't like?
...
PPS: CoffeeHousers should go easy on the Bedfordshire Police, they have probably filed this complaint in the same drawer as UFO sightings. But it's interesting to see how easily the media is manipulated. Here's how it goes:
1) Inayat Bunglawala, chair of Muslims4UK, gets angry about what he reads on Melanie's blog.
2) Complains to the PCC.
3) Complains to the police.
4) Phones up The Guardian and says "The PCC are investigating The Spectator!! Story!! Police too!!
5) The Guardian duly writes it all up, on its website.
6) The Independent follows up The Guardian.
7) An inverted pyramid of piffle is thus constructed.
Labels: Melanie Phillips, Muslims4UK, Press Complaints Commission, Spectator
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:26 PM
2 comments
Tongue firmly implanted in cheek, Melanie Phillips takes on the London School of Economics, which is now in a panic over its ties to Libya. The university has already been urged by its own dons to give up the £300,000 it received from a foundation headed by the son of Colonel Gaddafi. Howard Davies, the LSE director, is said to have told academics this week that he was ashamed of the institution’s links to the dictatorship.Gee, which 'American alumni' might those be?
Questions have been emerging about the LSE’s wider reliance on finance from authoritarian regimes. One of its lecture halls has been named in honour of a sheikh reputed to have promoted anti-Semitic material.
An academic source said the university has become nervous about being seen as anti-Israel because of a threat to donations from American alumni.
Labels: British anti-Semitism, London School of Economics, Melanie Phillips
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:29 AM
0 comments
There's more anti-Semitism from Britain. Melanie Phillips reports. [T]he Guardian publishes this letter from the philosopher Ted Honderich, a professor at University College, London:Don't hold your breaths.The revelations in detail (Report, 25 January) of the intransigent greed, the escape from decency, of Israeli governments in negotiation with our selected leaders of the Palestinians, serve one purpose among others. They provide a further part of what is now an overwhelming argument for a certain proposition. It is that the Palestinians have a moral right to their terrorism within historic Palestine against neo-Zionism. The latter, neither Zionism nor of course Jewishness, is the taking from the Palestinians of at least their autonomy in the last one-fifth of their historic homeland. Terrorism, as in this case, can as exactly be self-defence, a freedom struggle, martyrdom, the conclusion of an argument based on true humanity, etc (my emphasis).The UK has a law criminalising incitement to terrorism. Now that Professor Honderich has endorsed the murder of Israelis, will the Director of Public Prosecutions apply the law to him?
Ted Honderich
London
Labels: al-Guardian, anti-Semitism, Londonistan, Melanie Phillips, Politics, World Politics
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:24 PM
5 comments
Melanie Phillips finds something strange about the Palileaks documents.Now, reversing reality so that the attribution of actual attitudes or behaviour is switched from one side to the other is a standard Islamic variation on the religiously sanctioned practice of taqiyya – mandated lying or distortion in the cause of Islam. The Islamic world constantly uses it against Israel and the Jews; for example, denying the Holocaust while claiming Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza, or claiming a ‘right of return’ (to someone else’s country) in mimicry of the right of return to Israel for Jews. It is an uncanny coincidence, is it not, that the offered concessions claimed in these papers mirror almost exactly the concessions offered by Ehud Olmert?Hmmm.Someone doesn’t find it an uncanny coincidence at all. That someone is the Palestinian Authority ‘President’, Mahmoud Abbas. As the BBC News website reports:
Mr Abbas, who is due to hold talks on the peace process on Monday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, said negotiations had been carried out openly, and his fellow Arab leaders were aware of their contents. ‘What is intended is a mix-up. I have seen them yesterday present things as Palestinian but they were Israeli... this is therefore intentional,’ he said in Cairo, in remarks quoted by the Reuters news agency (my emphasis).It figures. And as the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, who is quoted in these documents as saying they were ‘offering the biggest Yerushalayim [Jerusalem in Hebrew] in Jewish history’, later told al-Jazeera:‘On several occasions I have said on al-Jazeera that we, the Palestinian Authority, would never give up any of our rights. If we did indeed offer Israel the Jewish and Armenian quarters of Jerusalem, and the biggest Yerushalayim as they claim, then why did Israel not sign a final status agreement?" he asked. ‘Is it not strange that we would offer all these concessions which Israel demands, yet there is still no peace deal?’Quite so! Could it be that, for once, Abbas and Erekat are actually telling the truth?
Labels: al-Guardian, Mahmoud Abbas, Melanie Phillips, Palileaks, Saeb Erekat
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:28 PM
1 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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