Today I link to something that I did not enjoy reading, just to illustrate a point. It is a truly poor article by one Niles Gardiner in the Telegraph.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100041748/the-world-demonises-israel-once-again/
I point out merely in passing that the first few hundred overwhelmingly negative comments were deleted by the Telegraph. But the real reason I link is the significance of the strapline:
He appears frequently on American and British television and radio, including Fox News Channel, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and NPR.
I bet he does. He has no international diplomatic experience, no knowledge of international law and very little experience of the hotspots of the world. But he is fully armed with the set of opinions those news outlets want their readers to hear.
Absolutely anybody can write this rubbish. Just string these elements together:
Poor little Israel. Threatened from all sides. Nazi Germany. Islamic terrorism. Hamas. Anti-semitism. Brutal Jihadists. Self defence. The right to return. Only democracy in the Middle East. Self defence. Iranian President threat to wipe off map. 8,000 Hamas rockets. Alliance of liberals, commies and islamists. 9/11. Chopping off hands. Subjugation of women. Taliban. Clash of civilisations. Existential threat. Self defence.
I could churn this stuff out easily and be on Fox, Sky and BBC as often as I like. I could pick up a fat salary like Nick Cohen for a weekly column of this stuff, and pocket the Rupert Murdoch TV fees as an extra. I could sit in a think tank. I would certainly be a great deal more qualified, and a great deal more convincing, than Niles pisspoor Gardiner. I write a lot better too.
But then I am handicapped by morality.
Which reminds me. Having followed the media coverage of the Israeli action very carefully, have you noticed what seems a complete absence on TV of bona fide experts in maritime law?
Normally live news brings in “experts” at the drop of a hat to fill in the 24/7 broadcasting, but despite the fact that professors of international law specialising in the law of the sea are not exactly hard to find, no TV station has asked one about the legality of the Israeli action.
That is because the martime law community is unanimous that the Israeli action is illegal.
Yoni, what on earth is is “ROFLMAOWMP”. Is that the same as, ‘Heffalump”?
Is Ilan Pappe also Joseph Goebbels, then? Is everyone with whom you disagree, ‘Josephs Goebbels’? You know, Old Bean, that makes you sound a little like… Joseph Goebbels.
Yoni, you’ve completely lost it. You need to calm down, I would recommend going to the Arab quarter for some mint tea.
“Saw an Israeli representative on Yvonne Ridley’s show the other day saying that UN Resolutions were mere “recommendations”. ”
They are. Try to read up on a subject before posting – that way you might not expose your ignorance.
The Big Lie is the lie about Israel being the victim, even when its forces are shooting people b/w the eyes and on the crowns of their heads. It’s got nothing to do with Holocaust denial. Your tactics are so transparent, they’re pitiable.
Israel is not occupying Gaza, halfwit. It has a ‘democratically elected government’, the genocidal Hamas.
Sheesh, this blog is full of the stupidest, most ignorant people I have come across in months.
SOME BASTARD’S IMPERSONATING ME ON THIS BLOG.
I DIDN’T POST AT 7:49 PM
Suhayl, my dear little idiot, there is a post above talking about the ‘Holohoax’.
Yoni, before you go to bed at night, check under your bed for Arabs.
They are invading the blog, one after the next. It is the invasion of the body-snatchers! I predicted this! Call Borat, quick! Oh, and Stan Laurel.
Pappe and Fisk are two of the most astute commentators on the Middle East in the world. You are unable to confront their arguments so you try to assassinate their characters. I know you, inside-out and outside-in, my Old Goriot.
NOW SOME F***ER’S IMPERSONATED ME AT 7:51 PM
IF IT’S YOU, ARSLAN, REMEMBER IF YOU KEEP MISBEHAVING LIKE THIS THE JEWS MIGHT COME AND GET YOU AND EAT YOUR CHILDREN.
Oh thank you, Yoni, you are the model of politeness. I am very grateful for your civil manner. Please keep it up. It does me a lot of good. Engage with the argument. Facts, my old bean, my old bean. Facts. Answer Pappe and Fisk’s points, please. Or admit that cannot.
“Pappe and Fisk are two of the most astute commentators on the Middle East in the world.”
About as ignorant and stupid as it gets. Fisk has been caught bending the truth many times. He is devoured by hatred for Israel. And Morris has outed Pappe’s lies, so all you need to do is find Morris’ writing on this topic.
I am really encouraged to see so many stupid antisemites in one place. I’d get worried if I detected much intelligence or basic knowledge among them.
Old Beans, Old Beans, please, guys be calm, mellow, groove. The thread is about mass murder in international waters, not about personal insults. Come on, give us some facts, Sock it to me, Yoni.
I did 7:49!
But some Bastard is impersonating me, because I didn’t write 8:23 PM.
Some bastard who doesn’t know how to switch off caps lock.
Hay bastard, do you see that botton with the light. Press it.
Yes, everyone lies about Israel, except for Benyamin Netan Yahoo.
Well counter each of their assertions, then. Read the articles and demolish them. Be my guest, Yoni. Benny Morris is the de facto official historian of Israel. Shades of grey – he’s astute, too, but I disagree with some aspects of his work. Do you have shades of grey in your thinking, Yoni? But anyway, give me – and everyone – some facts. Don’t just call them liars. No-one will believe you otherwise. Come on, man, imagine I’m a Martian.
The videos are there, Suhayl. They show the ‘peaceful humanitarians’ boasting, before leaving port, that they’ll get through or die martyrs, preferably the latter. They show them screeching ‘Itbakh al Yahud’ and about the massacre of Jews by Mohamed at that oasis whose name I’ve forgotten. They show the arsenal of shabariyehs. They show the ‘peaceful humanitarians’ attacking the commandos.
Try explaining those away, or answering ANY of my points above.
Put up or fuck off.
That is unless Benyamin Netanyahoo says something good about Arabs, in which case he will become another antisemitic Jew hater just like the rest of them!!!!
“The thread is about mass murder in international waters”
Only antisemites conclude – as a starting point! – that there was “mass murder” when there is NIL evidence for this, and masses of evidence against.
Come on, man. Not silence. I can’t bear silence. In the Beginning, and all that. No, I need light and sound. Give me some song, man! Give me some rhythm! Answer Fisk and Pappe’s points. Forget who they are, forget that you’ve been taught to hate them as you hate Goebbels. Come on, man, give me some facts! You know what facts are, don’t you? Like blocking sat signals is a fact. Like shooting a 19 year-old bewteen the eyes and in the back of the head are two facts. Yes?
Michael Petek at June 6, 2010 6:07 PM
“‘Throw the Jew Down the Well’. If there were any charts in Gaza, it would be at the top of them.”
—the song that continues: ‘so my country can be free’ ??
top of charts in Gaza? yes. and with good reason don’t you think?
Your ‘points’ are just a lot of half-baked assertions, and hysterical shouting. Same as Petek. Loons. you have no interest in debate, just the childish urge to shout and scream abuse. all of your ‘points’ are straight from the hasbara handbook, although most of those useful idiots can string a coherent sentence together. Wild exaggerations and accusations are not an argument.
“Arsalan I think that’s you impersonating Michael. Please desist. He’s daft enough already.”
Michael has more nous in his pinky than the absurd Craig has displayed in his entire life.
Who’s an anti-Semite? Not me, man. I am probably a Semite! I am the Semite’s Semite. Give me facts. man. Bullets, between the eyes, bullets in the back of the skull, letting people piss on themselves, tightening their wrists so their hands go blue. Nine dead in the Eastern Med! Ah, there’s a chant: ‘Nine dead in the Eastern Med!’. Like Neil Young’s ‘Four Dead in Ohio’? Remember that, Yoni? What, too young? You mean, you weren’t at Woodtsock? Bah, I thought you were a hippy! Nine Dead in the Eastern Med.: Explain. There will be no negative marking.
Yes sahail Saudi, those people on that ship dared to fight back. Why couldn’t they just die peacefully?
Without fighting back.
They behaved like Palestinians. These Palestinians dared to fight back when we come to take their homes and farms, even though it belongs to us, because we are choosen and they are not.
The same goes for the ship and the aid inside it, it is ours because we are chosen. God gave those ships to us, and the aid. And those turks tried to stop us from taking what is ours.
Suhal Saudi, I am coming to scotland to take your house, and your underpants.
And if you try to stop me, you will face the might of the Israeli army.
And if you try to fight back when we try to take your underpants, we will film you like we did with the turks when we tried to take their ship and call you an antisemite terrorist.
Your underpants belong to me, God gave it to me because I am chosen and you are not!!!
In other words, idiot, when presented with an argument, you run a mile and whine ‘Mummy, mummy, it’s hasbara, which means I can dismiss it as those Joos lying again, can’t I?’.
No surprise, then, that none of my factual arguments in the posts above has even been addressed by the sick antisemites on this board.
“I am probably a Semite”
Another ignorant prat who doesn’t even now what the term ‘antisemite’ means.
Suhail Saudi you are an antisemite, because you do not recognise that I am your superior!!!! That God has chosen me to be your master due to my Nobel birth that I can not prove.
Antisemite means what I say it means. And I say it means you. If you disagree with me, you are an antisemite for disgreeing.
It is only up to me to decide what antisemite means because I am chosen and you are not.
Thanks, Yoni (8:38), it’s about time someone told me what I already knew.
By the way, it really is me this time.
Just a thought.
Within the three years preceding the establishment of the State of Israel, 15 million ethnic Germans – including my mother, her sister and two brothers – fled, or were displaced or expelled from lands they had lived in for 700 years in Eastern Europe.
The number who died as a result of the conditions they suffered during displacement was larger than the number of Palestinian Arabs then alive.
If we’d bellyached and moaned and bombed and shot everything in sight for decades afterwards, we’d have had World War 3, World War 4 and World War 5 by now.
There’s some perspective for you.