I was trying to come up with a witty and apposite acronym for BBC to describe what I have just seen on TV, but all I could manage was Beyond Belief Cunts.
Watching BBC World News here in Accra, I have just seen forty minutes of intense and non-stop Israeli propaganda. A live press conference by Netanyahu and Ehud Barak followed by a long, long interview with Mark Regev in which the most searching BBC question could fairly be paraphrased as “How can you be certain that those dastardly Palestinians will not break the ceasefire and start firing rockets again?”
No attempt whatsoever to give a Palestinian a chance to put over their viewpoint. Now fifty minutes of solid coverage around the ceasefire without a single Palestinian view or pro-Palestinian or pro-peace view. And in that entire fifty minutes not one mention of Palestinian dead.
Beyond Belief Cunts. Actually, it’s not a bad effort.
Further to that raising of the Palestinian flag on a US consulate in Auckland, NZ, this is a march in Wellington which two gentlemen with kippahs attempted to disrupt. Well done the policewoman. See their evasions further down the piece when the blogger attempted to interview them.
http://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/exclusive-provocateurs-attempt-to-disrupt-march-for-palestine-in-wellington/
{http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10848221} refers to the flag raising.
Brilliant action by the Plymouth branch of the PSC last weekend.
Plymouth in benighted UK (David Berkeley Plymouth PSC)
We had a fantastic turnout for the Batsheva demo. Two nights, both with a strong turnout. A very big thank you to everyone who supported us. For everyone who couldn’t make it, you missed a great event.
There were interruptions on both nights. A special thank you to the brave people who went inside the theatre to disrupt the performance. We’re proud of you all. Also many thanks to the people of Exeter PSC who came down to support us. It made a big difference.
Friday was cold but dry and we had a good evening, everyone in fine voice. Two disruptions took place inside. This prompted one group in the audience to leave the Theatre as they felt unable to support Batsheva. One couple also tore up their tickets. A number of people also donated money to the PSC and MAP. The response from the audience was largely positive.
Saturday saw some appalling weather which got worse as the evening progressed. I was amazed that so many people turned up. Given an excuse to leave when the protests inside were complete, people instead stayed on, and we had a spirited group outside the bar area of the theatre in torrential rain.
Plymouth was the final venue of the UK tour and I know that Batsheva, and their paymasters in the Israeli Government, will be left in no doubt that their attempts to whitewash the crimes of Apartheid and Human Rights abuses, failed utterly. Everywhere they went they were met with protest. I also hope that the Theatre Royal will not be so stupid in the future. We hope to talk to the Council about why a publicly funded venue was used to promote the Apartheid state.
The Theatre Management were positive towards us, actually bringing us hot coffee on Friday and soup on Saturday. They also allowed a few of us onto their private land to distribute leaflets, which they could have refused.
It was important that we followed the protests in other cities and I think that we showed them that Plymouth is as strong as anywhere in this. I was proud to be there with such a great group of people.
Press reports :
The “Don’t Dance with Israeli Apartheid” site’s account :
http://www.no2brandisrael.org/?p=606
More dancing
Israeliscultural ambassadors:http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/israeli-dancing-group-dropped-from.html
“miszionism”, lol. That would be the Livni woman, then.
[Mod/Jon: deleted for anti-Jewish remarks]
Jack Straw and Nicholas Soames disagree. With Billy Increasingly Nomates….
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2012-11-28a.227.0&s=speaker%3A10574#g232.2
Straw (Lab): Will the Foreign Secretary please understand that this complex conditionality of which he speaks is too clever by half and that what it will most achieve is to undermine Britain’s influence, both with the Israelis and in the Arab world, and at the same, and more crucially, to undermine the position of the man he has praised, President Abbas? What has happened in the past three weeks is that Hamas has seen its power and influence enhanced and that the message has gone out, not least from Israel, “If you send enough rockets over the border, you can get to negotiations”, while one condition after another is imposed on the peace-seeking Palestinians. This approach, I am afraid, is not going to help.
A defensible position, anyway.
Soames (Con): May I say to my right hon. Friend that I certainly understand the fiendish difficulties of this matter, but I profoundly disagree with what he says? Whatever this resolution says, these conditions [Palestinians to relinquish recourse to ICC as condition of UK support -K] are unnecessary, one-sided and grossly unfair. What further steps does he plan to take to help and encourage the Palestinians to proceed with these vital peace talks, without which the middle east will continue to sink into an abyss?
Correct, Nicholas. Good man. And it pains me to say that.
God bless America! Land of the free!
And where was this reported on our news? Because I did not see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKy7D0YR0Cw&feature=g-all
….in such rags alongside their usual obsessions with dog dirt and the dullest activities of inbred local toffs dressed in oddly comic regalia acting out their strangest fantasies in public.
Oh, you mean the Oban Times? Think that kind of toilet paper (the OT isn’t a Scotsman subsidiary, though) is more usually dependent on what the local Tory business mafia likes to see than on Central Office. Though there are, admittedly, few conflicts of opinion.
Just for lulz, and bearing in mind that whatreallyhappened is often a bit more reliable than David Duke, here’s some more on That Van: (includes attribution to actual contemporaneous newspaper story and apparently, er, kosher, police accounts)
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/sears.html
But I still don’t think Da Joooos did it…or the Rothschilds. Or the Masons. Could have been green octopodal space aliens, maybe.
I can at least give some personal eye-witness testimony to the Isreaeli art students. A few years ago I was working for a small IT services company (about 100 in the office). We did a rag-bag of stuff, but also had a forensic software section (facial recognition and other police support software). I was continuously worried about their security (they had a database called ‘Omagh Bombing’). Our office was on an ‘incubator’ site and our biggest neighbour was a biosciences company.
I was called to reception to meet some young people claiming to be Israeli art students. They were selling their work and had brought along some samples. There were some original works but mostly what they had was (quite competent) copies of famous works. It was all rather expensive, but I thought my then girlfriend might have liked one of the good copies. I wanted to ask her before spending so I asked the students if they could come back next day. They seemed rather unwilling, but did in fact return, but I wasn’t buying.
I thought there was something odd about it at the time although then or now I couldn’t say what.
@Vronsky – Which country were you in?
Art students:
http://wikispooks.com/wiki/Israeli_art_scam
This concentrates on the US manifestation. Simultaneously (and still?) there was something of a fashion in UK malls for kiosks selling (Chinese-made?) knockoff art, Dead Sea products and sweets, also manned by foreign-looking people. More details on these welcome.
@Mary – thanks for the link to the demo report from NZ. The transcript of the interview with the Zionazis who went to the front of the march and shouted pro-Israeli slogans is interesting. The way one of them says “My sabbath”. Reminds me of the film on Youtube showing Zionazis who’d just stolen some land in Palestine, after the families who lived there had been chucked out, who shouted “This is my land”, in between their abuse towards the long-dead Jesus Christ and the reporters’ mothers.
Not ‘our’, but ‘my’.
These guys have serious mental problems.
Dead Sea products in the UK:
http://londonbds.org/2012/04/15/dead-sea-kiosks-2/
Worth mentioning as Christmas approaches: I have seen some very attractive women on these stalls. Might be hard to boycott, but do remember, you don’t stand a suspicion of a chance with them, lads. All you’ll get is some very expensive mud.
@ Komodo – those kiosks! For those who want to be ahead of the loop, have a think about Marks & Spencer premises in the British transport system – at motorway service stations (it takes a lot of influence to muscle into those) and at major railway stations in London and elsewhere.
That Wikispooks page underplays one major point, when it says that “The DEA report also claims that Israeli companies that had provided telephony services for U.S. businesses and U.S. federal organizations were connected to the “art students” and advised that Israeli telephony companies should be investigated.”
It’s as if the authors haven’t heard of Amdocs, the Israeli company that supplies telephone business software to most of the big telephone companies in the western world.
To continue the theme:
– Israeli DACS boxes, which split telephone lines, are on posts in most residential streets in Britain (anyone who’s sceptical, please check it out)
– voicemail – Israeli technology
It’s a two-way trade:
http://www.vfi-usa.org/NewsEvents/Index.php#59
You get Dead Sea mud, we get useful idiots. Result.
Anyone noticed the size of those enormous aerials on Marks & Spencer roofs at motorway service stations?
Things have moved on a long way since Victor Ostrovsky talked about 100-200 Zionazi safe houses in London.
In today’s Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2012/nov/28/hague-un-palestine-statehood-cartoon
“Which country were you in?”
Scotland.
Meanwhile, in the courts:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/andy-coulson-and-rebekah-brooks-in-court-over-charges-linked-to-alleged-corrupt-payments-to-public-officials-8367700.html
Great timing, Beckah. The Leveson Report comes out at 1330 today. Hope you miss it.
Mary – shall I save them the trouble?:
To the Editor of the Guardian:
Sir
Portraying an army boot resting on the Palestinian flag, with FoI Hague depicted as a two-dimensional cutout in a blue (like some of the Israeli flag) suit, is blatantly antisemitic: Israel has a perfect right to defend itself by bombing civilian areas and shooting children, if no-one else does (and they don’t). Many of us remember the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto, and enjoy emulating them on someone else. And don’t forget the Holocaust.
We demand that all copies of today’s Guardian be confiscated, if necessary by force, from their owners, and Steve Bell burnt on a pyre built of these.
Sincerely yours, and don’t forget who owns you,
Mick Davis – Chair of the Board of Trustees, The Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) & Chairman, UJIA
Vivian Wineman – President, Board of Deputies of British Jews & Chairman, JLC
Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks – Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth
Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner – Movement Rabbi, Movement for Reform Judaism
Rabbi Danny Rich – CEO, Liberal Judaism also on behalf of Liberal Judaism Rabbinic Conference
Jon Benjamin – CEO, The Board of Deputies of British Jews
Jeremy Newmark – Chief Executive, The Jewish Leadership Council
Frank Baigel – President of Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region
Kate Bearman – JLC Political Oversight Group & Former Director of Labour Friends of Israel
Bill Benjamin – Member, JLC
Linda Boxer – Chief Executive, WIZO UK
Alex Brummer – Vice-President of Board of Deputies (Chair International Division)
Paul Charney – Chair, Zionist Federation
David Chinn – Member, JLC Political Oversight Group
Sir Trevor Chinn CVO – Vice President, JLC & Chair of JLC Political Oversight Group
Adrian Cohen – Chair, London Jewish Forum & Member of JLC
David Cohen – Vice President, JLC
David Dangoor – President, Board of the Spanish & Portuguese Jews’ Congregation
Alan Finley – President, Federation of Synagogues
Lord Stanley Fink – Vice-President, JLC
Judith Flacks – Campaigns Director, UJS
Nick Gendler – Co-chair, Masorti Judaism
Jonathan Goldstein – Chair, PaJeS
Lord Young of Graffam – Chairman, Jewish Museum & Member, JLC
Alex Green – Chair, Union of Jewish Students and Member, JLC
Henry Grunwald OBE QC – Vice President, JLC & Past President, Board of Deputies
Robert Halfon MP
Andrew Heller – Chairman, Executive Board of Conservative Friends of Israel
Lucian J Hudson – Chairman, Liberal Judaism
Jeremy Jacobs – CEO, United Synagogue
Lord Janner of Braunstone – Vice-President, JLC
Isaac Kaye – BICOM & JLC Political Oversight Group
Dermot Kehoe – CEO, BICOM
Brian Kerner – Co-chair, Fair Play Campaign Group & Member of JLC
Dr Eli Kienwald – CEO, Federation of Synagogues
Debbie Klein – Chairman, JCC for London
Douglas Krikler – Political Oversight Group, JLC
Nigel Layton – Chairman, LEAD
Howard Leigh – Vice President, JLC
James Libson – Trustee, JLC
Howard Miller – CEO, Spanish & Portuguese Jews’ Congregation
Edward Misrahi – Vice Chair, BICOM & Chairman, ‘We Believe in Israel’
Leo Noé – Vice President, JLC
Stephen Pack – President, United Synagogue
Jenny Pizer – Chair, Movement for Reform Judaism
Stuart Polak – Director, Conservative Friends of Israel
Ben Rich – CEO, Movement for Reform Judaism
Jo Rosenfelder – Board Member & Trustee, Tzedek & Member of JLC Political Oversight Group
Jill Shaw – Chair, WIZO UK
Clive Sheldon – Co-chair, Masorti Judaism
Rebecca Simon – Board Member, Labour Friends of Israel
Gavin Stollar – Chairman, Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel
Nick Viner – CEO, JCC for London
Michael Weiger – Chief Executive, UJIA
Joy Wolfe MBE – Chairman, StandWithUs UK & President, Manchester Zionist Central Council
Poju Zabludowicz – Chairman, BICOM
Re the Dancing Israelis – when the actual Police reports were finally released, only 2 or 3 years ago I think, they were heavily censored via many blacked-out sections; I remember reading through them & being struck by a) the anti-US sentiments quoted and/or expressed by some of the Israelis mentioned in the reports, and b) the many bizarre aspects of the case, that if each one happened only in isolation, it could theoretically be explained by the seems-incriminatingly-odd-but-actually-innocent circumstance, but when all of these multiple bizarre incriminating aspects are considered together, they would definitely meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” Court qualification, that has convicted countless people.
Incidentally, I don’t recall any mention of the vans having the alleged painted artwork in these Police Reports, or did I miss it ?
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2012/11/29/exclusive-interview-with-maya-wind-an-israeli-peace-activist/
Ofir Gendelman (spokesman for Netanyahu) has been tweeting:
“PM Netanyahu: The Palestinians must recognize the Jewish State and they must be prepared to end the conflict with Israel once and for all.
“PM Netanyahu: No decision by the UN can break the 4000 year old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel.
“PM: Only way to achieve peace is thru agreements that are reached by the parties directly not thru UN resolutions that ignore our interests”
He’s making me physically sick.
How many UN resolutions critical of Israel have they ignored so far? Someone posted a list here one day, I think it might have been Mark.
4000 year old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel?
“4000 year old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel?”
Real history is not a Zionist strong point.
Here’s a apt article re irredentism;
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/on-border.html
(H/T to Rhisiart via Medialens)
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=293900
Israel wouldn’t have to worry about Palestinian threats to take it to the International Criminal Court if it respected international law…
And there we have it in a nutshell.
It comes as no surprise to learn that Germany, now Merkel has Cameron stuck up her chuff*, will be abstaining in the UN vote too.
*
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/07/angela-merkel-cameron-ally-visit
Dare you to put that on the comments below the Steve Bell cartoon Komodo!
In the Hansard link you sent, I thought that it was surprising to see pro Palestinian comments coming out of the HoC mouths, Ellman and Halfon excepted. Dear old Halfon to give him his due, always refers to his register of interests (ConFoI etc) unlike all the other assorted types.
There is good double spread in the Guardian today called Offshore Secrets.
Offshore company directors’ links to military and intelligence revealed
Companies making use of offshore secrecy include firm that supplied surveillance software used by repressive regimes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/nov/28/offshore-company-directors-military-intelligence
Separate links to other offshore deceits at the side of the link.
Leveson ‘inquiry’. Cost so far – £5.6m Result – probably not a lot
Did Lord Leveson stop socializing with Elisabeth Murdoch and Matthew Freud for the duration?
http://www.judiciaryreport.com/murdoch_family_ties_to_phone_hacking_judge_leveson_presents_conflict_of_interest.htm
Well! Well! Petitions do work.
Stevie Wonder Pulls Out of Israel Gala
Change.org Petition Called on R&B Star To Shun IDF Event
http://forward.com/articles/166877/stevie-wonder-pulls-out-of-israel-gala/#ixzz2DcOYfaA7