Do not be deceived. The murdered innocents of Gaza are not those who are really suffering. It is the liberal Jews like Hadley Freeman, victims of the new anti-Semitism.
Israel is a state openly founded on racist and theocratic grounds, in which Jews have an absolute right to live in Israel, wherever in the world they were born and their families have been for centuries, and nobody else does. The unfortunate pre-1946 occupants of the land have been mostly driven out into refugee camps, including in Gaza, while religiously motivated settlers continue apace to grab the best Palestinian land and water. The state does this for them precisely and explicity because they are Jewish. Those non-Jews who remained in Israel proper are subject to a whole raft of apartheid style legislation, even governing whom they may marry, and the quantity of this legislation is increasing. 140 Israeli laws specify treatment by race.
Israel is as a state entirely based and run on a racist premise. Its very foundation is racist. But while the Israeli state may steal land specifically for Jews, make provision for Jews, and make life difficult for non-Jews, anybody else who mentions Jews in the context of Israeli behaviour is a vicious racist and anti-Semite. This warped and ludicrous logic is enforced by political orthodoxy and the mainstream media.
It is as though, in opposing apartheid, it was taboo to mention it had been invented for the benefit of white people.
Reading Freeman’s long self-pitying self-centred whinge I was waiting to find out what had actually happened to her to occasion some distress. Had she had a brick through her window? Had she been assaulted in the street? Has somebody hurled racial abuse at her?
Apparently none of the above. It appears that she feels under unfair pressure to denounce the actions of Israel. And- horror of horrors – the Tricycle Theatre has cancelled a Jewish Film Festival in Kilburn because it was financed by the Israeli Embassy. Oh no, the agony! How can a poor girl survive in a North London which is so rife with anti-Semitism! It reminded me forcefully of the very first diplomatic social engagement of my professional career, in 1985 when our Afrikaaner hostess held forth on how she thought people looked down on her in Harrods.
I deplore racism with every part of my being, all racism. Freeman makes what is intended to be a smart observation that the Tricycle’s act “reminds me how very far I am from the States”. It is very plain that she regrets that and believes that the US attitude to Israel is better than the British one.
This then morphs into the meme that the reaction to the Gaza massacre is part of a wave of the “new anti-Semitism”. There have indeed been several deplorable anti-Semitic incidents in Europe in the last few months. But they have killed absolutely nobody in the last two years, while Israel has killed 1,500 people. There have been three terrible examples of racial murders of Jews in the past eight years, and there needs to be continued and unremitting vigilance against all hate crime. The disruption of Hadley’s cinema treats and the daubing of paint on a synagogue are in themselves bad things. But do they really compare to the massive disproportionate force being used to destroy over 1,000 women and children in a month in Gaza, and the context of the entire seventy year programme of ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people?
You are right, Hadley. Just because you are Jewish does not mean you should be under special pressure to condemn Israel’s actions. But if you take it upon yourself to write a long article on the subject, we are entitled to expect you – as a human being – to condemn the massacre. And as in the article you write about nothing but your own angst and the evils of anti-Semitism, and manage not a single word of sympathy or regret for the victims of the terrible massacre in Gaza, we are entitled to form our own opinion.
And my opinion is that you are a wholly self-centred and self-regarding little person with an abject lack of moral perspective, who seems to think the murder of 1500 people is about the impact on your feelings.
Hadley, you are not disgusting because you are Jewish: you are just a disgusting human being.
Letter to the Guardian ref the Wiesel ad.
http://julianafarha.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/collusion-in-genocide-a-letter-to-the-guardian-readers-editor/
Has anyone got a print copy to see whether it appeared today?
As the Guardian sinks to a new low, so does Murdoch’s Australian.
Barbaric image of Khaled Sharrouf’s son a warning to the world: Tony Abbott
The Australian |
August 11, 2014 4:41PM
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/barbaric-image-of-khaled-sharroufs-son-a-warning-to-the-world-tony-abbott/story-fn59niix-1227020303828?nk=fb673576f9b1118e9aabd31dde2d459c
The BBC too for linking to it.
11 August 2014
Australia boy ‘displays severed head in Syria’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-28736345
All taste and decency has gone as we descend into our man made hell.
UPDATE: 225 Jewish Survivors and Descendents of Survivors of Nazi Genocide Condemn the Massacre of Palestinians
http://ijsn.net/gaza/survivors_and_descendents-letter/
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
Hedy Epstein is among the signatories. In her eighties now, she is a member of Free Gaza, who send in boats to Gaza with aid and relief.
HELLOOOO!
Welcome return of an old favourite. Blair’s usual transport left LA International early yesterday. Must have been in for servicing. Safe home now. Wonder if he’ll still be using it?
Adam wrote that Hadley Freeman’s article was “about the overspill of criticism of Israel into anti-Semitism as evidenced by the decision of the Tricycle Theatre. It is not for anyone, let alone them to tell Jews how they should behave towards Israel.”
Cancelling a film festival no more amounts to telling Jews how they should behave towards Israel than promoting a Schubertiad amounts to telling people what they should think about German culture. In both cases implicit opinions are being expressed, which others are free to accept or reject as they choose.
Hasn’t Israel banned Wagner on more than one occasion?
Er, yes. Continuously, in fact.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/20/what-s-behind-israel-s-unofficial-ban-on-wagner.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_controversies
Jonangus Mackay
There is so much forgery and malicious false history around anything associated with both the Nazis and Zionism that I am innately suspicious of artefacts like that medal. I have no idea of the veracity or integrity of the historian you mention.
That there was to some extent a potential common interest between Nazis who wanted the jews out of Europe, and the Zionists who wanted them in Palestine, is self-evident. That this might have led to some discussion between some Zionists and some nazis is not improbable. How fringe the Zionists involved were I do not know. Obviously the vast majority of European jews were unlikely to favour compulsory deportation.
Many people fraternised with the Nazis in the 1930’s including the Catholic Church and much more than is admitted of the British establishment. What is indubitable is that however much deporting the jews to Palestine may have been considered as an option for the Nazis, they ultimately opted ofr their extermination instead.
I had a quick squint at the Guardian. They are carrying a full page ad for Wiesel. P 20
The DEC appeal for Gaza has a full page ad too. I don’t suppose it was printed FOC by Mr Rusbridger.
Q Who pays £1.60 for it? A shadow of its former self.
UK Jewish Film is a registered charity (No 1072914).
UK Jewish Film is dedicated to developing an environment in which Jewish film entertains, educates and enlightens diverse audiences in the UK and internationally. Throughout the year we bring the best of world cinema, provide support and training to new and emerging filmmakers, and produce education events including exploring holocaust, genocide, racism and interfaith themes with a variety of audiences including students and young people.
Contact
Mr Michael Etherton
UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL LTD
38 BERKELEY SQUARE
LONDON
W1J 5AE
Tel:
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.ukjewishfilm.org
Trustees
MR JONATHAN LEWIS
MS LINDA BERKOWITZ
LINDSAY S WITTENBERG
LUKE HOLLAND
ERROL STEPHEN RUDNICK
STELLA JOORY
MR STEPHEN MARGOLIS
‘THROUGH THE MEDIUM (OF) FILM, BUILD UNDERSTANDING ACROSS COMMUNITIES, COMBAT ANTISEMITISM AND EDUCATE AUDIENCES ACROSS THE UK ABOUT JEWISH CULTURE AND HERITAGE. PROMOTION AND SCREENING OF AN ANNUAL FILM FESTIVAL OF JEWISH THEMED FILMS, AN ANNUAL SHOWCASE OF ISRAELI FILMS AND A THREE MONTH TOURING PROGRAMME OF SPECIALLY SELECTED FILMS TO NUMEROUS TOWNS AND CITIES ACROSS THE UK. OFFER HOLOCAUST EDUCATION.’
Both income and expenditure approx. £500,000. In 2012 income was +£900,000 and spending +£1m.
http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/find-charities/
Is this the same Hadley Freeman who’s articles include:
“Kim Kardashian’s bottom is not up for grabs.”
http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/jul/28/kim-kardashian-bottom-not-up-for-grabs
or
“Should women shave their legs and under-arms?”
http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/aug/04/women-shave-legs-under-arms-waxing-shaving-plucking-threading
Because if it is, we are surely in the presence of a major thinker.
Excellent speech outside the BBC from Jewish student Bradley Raine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owQNoLiBdEQ
11.8.2014
Radio 4 Today Kevin Connolly from Gaza
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04d1bjm 1hr 30mins in
MAP Tony Lawrence
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04d1bjm 1hr 39mins 30secs in
The moon looked down on all the mayhem on this planet. Magical.
Giant Supermoon Lights Up Sky Across Globe
Spectacular images are captured of the lunar spectacle from around the world, after a cosmonaut photographs a “moonset” in space.
http://news.sky.com/story/1316586/giant-supermoon-lights-up-sky-across-globe
Mary @ 9.24 –
Yes I bought the Guardian this morning and felt physically sick when I read the advert headed ‘ Jews rejected child sacrifice 3500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn’.
Five times they used the term ‘human shields’ to describe Hamas’s actions along with ‘death cult’ and ‘child sacrifice’ as though it was they and not the IDF who had destroyed schools and hospitals in Gaza.
The Guardian on Saturday 9 Aug. carried a long comment piece by Steven Poole on ‘Gaza and the misleading language of war’, including Israel’s use of the term ‘human shields’ as a way of blaming Hamas.
I quote ” Evidently no one thinks that a human body of flesh and bone can actually stop bullets or explosives. So a ‘human shield’ is only a shield if it deters the attacker. Israel was not deterred.”
There is much more in this vein by Steven Poole. The Guardian can be strange – carrying Hadley Freeman’s ‘hurt feelings’ piece in the same edition as Poole’s, presumably in the interests of balance.
I sometimes disagree strongly with the Guardian but this is the first time it has made me want to puke over my muesli.
“Excellent speech outside the BBC from Jewish student Bradley Raine:”
What is it with Hi Viz vests? I grew up in a world without Hi Viz vests and it was a better world by far.
I know they have their uses, are life savers. I concede that someone likely to be walking around on a motorway in the middle of the night should really be wearing one. But why does somebody giving a speech, on a stage, in broad daylight have to be looking like a frigging canary.
It isn’t a safety device any more, it’s a badge of authority, put on a Hi Viz vest and suddenly it makes you better than everybody else. Tells people you are in charge. Even if the speaker was a car park attendant or something it doesn’t take two seconds to slip off that vest as you walk to the microphone.
Tony M
What is incomprehensible about laying the blame for the rise of ISIS on neo-con fundamentalist christian crusading? I would have thought it was stating the obvious and I’m sorry to have to explain it. Put simply USUKIS are to blame.
What did you think of the speech, Fred…
He was dressed like that because he was a steward. Up to him. Makes absolutely no difference what people are wearing… [within reason] it is what they say (and do…) that matters.
It’s the same Hadley Freeman, Pete. Social commentator par excellence, and who can forget her deathless “The Meaning of Sunglasses: And a Guide to Almost All Things Fashionable” ?
Don’t buy it here –
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Hadley-Freeman/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3AHadley%20Freeman
Truly the Mrs. Gaskell de nos jours.
“I am innately suspicious of artefacts like that medal. I have no idea of the veracity or integrity of the historian you mention”
Lenni Brenner is an American Marxist historian and a non-Zionist jew. You can read about him here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenni_Brenner
The medallion is authentic and tells its own little story. As you surmise the Nazis and the Zionists had a common interest: they both wanted to get the jews out of Germany. This led to a joint fact-finding trip to Palestine, which the medallion commemorates. Quite humdrum really and not shocking at all.
Ben
Repeat. ISIS was launched into attacking Mosul in a meeting between Kurdish leader Barzani’s nephew, the head of Kurdish intelligence, plus the head of Jordan Intelligence, US intelligence, and the leaders of three Kurdish Islamic groups including Mulla Krekar. (William Hague ratified it in a visit to Kurdistan).
They have more reason to fear their own leaders, and the Western leaders who have released Abu Qatada as a mediator with ISIS like Kurdish Mulla Krekar for a Jordanian Arab Spring, than events in Syria.
Example; I have been using a mechanical digger in the road outside my house to mend my garden fence and I have hit a gas main and an electricity main. Am I am going to complain to Centrico and Western Distribution for leaving these utilities so close to my house?
USUKIS are playing a highly explosive game in the Middle East using the mechanical digger of Political Islam. They know the risks. They know they shouldn’t be doing it. And yet they use the media to put the blame for the damage done by their own war machine, Hamas, ISIS, Al Qaida, onto the Muslims, which in this metaphor are the essential services.
If you saw a private digger working on the road near the mains electricity and gas you would either phone the police, run for cover or drag the driver away from the controls with your bare hands.
Are we able to do nothing about our politicians who have embarked on this total madness?
Guano, it is the suggestion that it is indigenous to the region, spontaneous or whatever, rather than a group which might well have been imagined by a tiny few, fighting talk amongst friends, existing in some larval form, but was co-opted, expanded, taken over by your “christian crusaders”, a definition which seems just like a mould into which you unyieldingly squash western attacks on Arab world. Also I could not see many of the Iraqis who sought refuge in Syria from the US attack on Iraq and by all accounts were welcomed there, at least taken in, then turning round and attacking the Syrian state and people in thanks, that’s not Islam it is the antithesis of it. You know it’s fraudulent too, yet you’re I think trying to give it legitimacy, authenticity which it simply does not have. http://journal-neo.org/2014/06/13/nato-s-terror-hordes-in-iraq-a-pretext-for-syria-invasion/ . The important thing is that young men here and elsewhere are not taken in and head off looking on it as some rotten cause to believe in, to die for, however helpless and hopeless their lives might feel as opportunity, meaning and purpose in their lives is drained out of them by the capitalist, consumerist, ‘celebrity’ obsessed nothingness of life here in the west. It gets to us all, the vaccuousness, the lies, the hypocrisy, the constant horrors repeating, the same perpetrators who are getting away with monstrous crimes and nothing, no setback, exposure, falsehood exposed, sustained accusation seems to stop them continuing unabashed in the exact same vein.
Sorry if I sounded harsh earlier, but re-reading it I don’t feel any different, it looks just like a religious gloss laid thick over events with no religious factors or meaning (and I’m looking at this from an atheist standpoint) other than that through religion people are manipulable and through religion their capacity for logic, their intelligence is diminished.
Guano: Our posts must have crossed I was composing my 12:54 when your 12:34 was posted, my response at 12:54 was to your 12:10 comment. Your 12:34 is almost as impenetrable but this bit: “And yet they use the media to put the blame for the damage done by their own war machine, Hamas, ISIS, Al Qaida, onto the Muslims” is perfectly clear. We are on the same page really, judging by that accurate summation. Thing is what do we do, they’re busted, bang-to-rights but carry on regardless. The chemical attack at Ghouta is still an outstanding war crime perpetrated if not by, then for and on behalf of NATO and blamed on Syria. A deliberate false flag and these people died horribly and no-one has been held accountable. When will western leaders, NATO functionaries, Turkish politicians and I’m thinking especially of our rats here for whom we bear a particular responsibility and have them in our reach -Hague, Rifkind, Cameron, be put in dock?
O/T Some 1.4 million out of 3 million Turkish immigrants in Germany are eligible to vote in Turkey for the first time. This will reignite the partisanship between the Turkish left and right, in Germany.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/turks-in-germany-allowed-to-vote-for-first-time-a-984624.html
But it will also give young Turks, who never been to Turkey, a say so in its Government.
Should the children opf expats who never had an inkling of UK politics or its inate antiquated voting system be allowed to vote here, and in the country they are living in?
Komodo,
Komodo
I agree that Hababa is just a nasty jester, a “Roger the Dodger” type of the Beano mag with a stunted sense of humour. I “don’t worry too much about Habbabkuk”, something that you may seem to worry about. You have probably noticed that I never engage in a serious discourse with him.
I cannot be certain whether he is a lieutenant of the local hasbara brigade but he behaves like one. What is however remarkable about him, is his streak of insanity, exposed when he starts babbling about the “eminences” Does anyone know what he is means? I guess that his brute stupidity must have easily qualified him for becoming an MP in a constituency neither you nor I have ever heard of. But that was probably a long time ago as he has now enough time to serve his past and present masters.
Clark,
I apologize for my ambiguous reply. I have never edited wikipedia and have no intention of ever doing so.
@Tony re Ghouta
They are still insisting it was “Assad forces”, in spite of a lack of evidence…
Remember the Farage-Clegg debate before the Euro elections? Nigel Farage insinuated that it was the work of the Syrian opposition who tried to blame it on Assad, and praised Putin for exposing that; Clegg got quite animated in his insistence that it was the regime wot dun it. Must be on youtube somewhere…
Karel, my advice was general, not directed at you. Personally, I use Habbabreak all the time, and only comment on the idiot when someone carelessly quotes it. And then rarely.
When he’s not relaxing by trying to disrupt this blog, he has a blog of his own and even makes some good points there, albeit from somewhere Right of Nigel Farrage. He is occasionally capable of giving space to alternative points of view, incredible as it may seem here. I suspect Craig may have accused him of being Norman Tebbitt’s catamite at some point, and it rankled.
‘Eminences’ is his special name for people he disagrees with. Probably been reading John le Carre.
Guano;
“Repeat. ISIS was launched into attacking Mosul in a meeting between Kurdish leader Barzani’s nephew, the head of Kurdish intelligence, plus the head of Jordan Intelligence, US intelligence, and the leaders of three Kurdish Islamic groups including Mulla Krekar. (William Hague ratified it in a visit to Kurdistan).”
Can you tell me what the ultimate objective is? With all the triangulations possible, how is it the ISIS players are in any sense a controllable entity? Unintended consequences must complicate the outcome, unless CHAOS is all they intend and that certainly makes no sense.
I just saw that Huckleberry shat hisself on TV.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/10/lindsey-graham-american-city-in-flames-obama-war-iraq/
Oh, and if it’sd the guy I think it is, he claims to be a professional ‘mediator’. Beat that.