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Tabatha

Breaking News! Barack Obama To Receive Psychiatric Help

 

 

White House sources have this morning confirmed that Barack Obama is receiving psychiatric care. The problems apparently started a week ago, after the President’s closest aides observed his behaviour becoming increasingly erratic. 

 

But it was after Obama became delusional that alarm grew among his staff. Specifically, one aide has confirmed: ‘It’s all rather embarrassing, actually. The President clearly believed himself to be in charge of, well, planning permission –  in Jerusalem.’

 

It was then that White House staff had to face the fact that Obama was seriously ill.

 

‘At first I thought he was just stressed,’ states one source who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, ’But then he got on to the phone to the Israeli Ambassador to America and began issuing bizarre instructions’.

Specifically, confirms the aide, Obama ordered the Israeli government to halt work on an apartment building near Sheikh Jarrah.

 

‘It was embarrassing, to say the least’, confides another aide, ‘There we are with people being killed on the streets of Iran, and there’s Obama marching around the Oval office, screaming down the phone to Tel Aviv about this new block of flats and demanding that it not go ahead!

 

And the aide continues: ‘It was apparent to everyone there that Obama was delusional. We had no choice but to organise the appropriate help for him.’

 

Rumours suggest that Obama has been assessed by a consultant psychiatrist, at the White House, and that a medication regime is being set up. Although details of the diagnosis remain under wraps, it’s rumoured that Obama is experiencing some form of  obsessive-compulsive disorder.

 

Specifically, his staff are hoping that the treatment will help to reduce the American President’s apparent fixation on Israel. 

 

 ‘His behaviour is troubling, no doubt about it, ‘ stated a member of the secret service, ‘Sometimes,  in the early hours of the morning, our boys will come across the President wandering around, muttering and mumbling about ‘that bloody Bibi’. We sure hope he gets better soon.’

 

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has conveyed his ‘heartfelt wishes for Obama’s speedy recovery’ during a phone call with the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.

He is reported to have said: ‘I am truly sorry to hear of Obama’s difficulties. We will of course disregard his irrational demands over what Israelis can and can’t do in the Israeli capital, Jerusalem. As far as I am concerned, it never happened and I won’t mention it ever again.  Our thoughts are with Obama and his family at this time.’

 

We will update this news story as soon as we get more details – watch this space!

 

 ***********************************************************************************************************************

 Jeff Jacoby, writing in the Boston Globe, offers some historical context:

 

Late last week, the Obama Administration demanded that the Israeli government pull the plug on a planned housing development near the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem.

 

The project, a 20-unit apartment complex, is indisputably legal. The property to be developed – a defunct hotel – was purchased in 1985 and the developer has obtained all the necessary municipal permits.

 

Why, then, does the administration want the development killed? Because Sheikh Jarrah is in a largely Arab section of Jerusalem and the developers of the planned apartments are Jews. Think about that for a moment. Six months after Barack Obama became the first Black man to move into the previously all-White residential facility at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, he is fighting to prevent integration in Jerusalem.

 

It is impossible to imagine the opposite scenario. The administration would never demand that Israel prevent Arabs from moving into a Jewish neighborhood. And the Obama Justice Department would unleash seven kinds of hell on anyone who tried to impose racial, ethnic or religious redlining in an American city. In the 21st century, segregation is unthinkable – except, it seems, when it comes to housing Jews in Jerusalem.

 

It is not easy for Israel’s government to refuse any demand from the United States, which is the Jewish State’s foremost ally. To their credit, Israeli leaders spoke truth to power, and said “no”.

 

“Jerusalem residents can purchase apartments anywhere in the city,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday. “This has been the policy of all Israeli governments. There is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the west of the city, and there is no ban on Jews building or buying in the city’s east. This is the policy of an open city.”

 

There was a time not so long ago when Jerusalem was anything but an open city. During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, the Jordanian Arab Legion invaded eastern Jerusalem, occupied the Old City, and expelled all its Jews – many from families that had lived in the city for centuries.

 

“As they left,” the acclaimed historian Sir Martin Gilbert later wrote in his 1998 book, Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century, “they could see columns of smoke rising from the quarter behind them. The Hadassah welfare station had been set on fire and… the looting and burning of Jewish property was in full swing.”

 

For the next 19 years, eastern Jerusalem was barred to Jews, brutally divided from the western part of the city with barbed wire and military fortifications. Dozens of Jewish holy places, including synagogues hundreds of years old, were desecrated or destroyed. Gravestones from the ancient Mount of Olives cemetery were uprooted by the Jordanian army and used to pave latrines. Jerusalem’s most sacred Jewish shrine, the Western Wall, became a slum.

 

It wasn’t until 1967, after Jordan was routed in the Six-Day War, that Jerusalem was reunited under Israeli sovereignty and religious freedom restored to all. Israelis have vowed ever since that Jerusalem would never again be divided.

 

And not only Israelis. US policy, laid out in the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, recognizes Jerusalem as “a united city administered by Israel” and formally declares that “Jerusalem must remain an undivided city.” 
 
US presidents, Republican and Democratic alike, have agreed. In former President Bill Clinton’s words, “Jerusalem should be an open and undivided city, with assured freedom of access and worship for all.”

 

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said much the same thing. To a 2008 candidate questionnaire that asked about “the likely final status Jerusalem,” Obama replied: “The United States cannot dictate the terms of a final status agreement…. Jerusalem will remain Israel’s capital, and no one should want or expect it to be re-divided.”

 

In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Council, he repeated the point: “Let me be clear… Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

 

Palestinian irredentists claim that eastern Jerusalem is historically Arab territory and should be the capital of a future Palestinian state. In reality, Jews have always lived in eastern Jerusalem – it is the location of the Old City and its famous Jewish Quarter, after all, not to mention Hebrew University, which was founded in 1918.

 

The apartment complex that Obama opposes is going up in what was once Shimon Hatzadik, a Jewish neighborhood established in 1891. Only from 1948 to 1967 – during the Jordanian occupation – was the eastern part of Israel’s capital “Arab territory”. Palestinians have no more claim to sovereignty there than Russia does in formerly occupied eastern Berlin.

 

The great obstacle to Middle East peace is not that Jews insist on living among Arabs. It is that Arabs insist that Jews not live among them. If Obama doesn’t yet grasp that, then he has a lot to learn.

This article first appeared in the Boston Globe on July 22, 2009.

Fatah: We Will Never Recognise Israel

Fatah leaders have declared that the group will never agree to recognise Israel’s right to exist – and that it will continue to wage war against the Jewish homeland.

 “Fatah does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, nor have we ever asked others to do so,” said senior Fatah member Rafik Natsheh, a close associate of Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

In an interview with the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Natsheh scorned reports that Fatah had called on Hamas to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist:  “It’s all media nonsense. We don’t ask other factions to recognize Israel; we ourselves do not recognize Israel.”

Fatah runs the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria. The Palestinian Authority does recognise Israel; if it didn’t it would be ‘unable to serve the Palestinian people,” Natsheh explained. However, Fatah does not have such constraints.

Fatah will never stop attacking Israel. Natsheh stated:  “Let those who are deluding themselves hear: this will never happen.”

A second senior Fatah member, Azzam el-Ahmed, agreed that Fatah would not drop its call to wage war on Israel.

Natsheh and Ahmed gave interviews in advance of the Fatah general assembly in early August, in which the organization will meet to discuss its goals and to hold elections. The meeting will be the first in approximately 20 years.

BBC BIAS ROW

I’m not sure this is even news – given that most of us are painfully aware of the BBC bias towards leftist lunacy.

A senior BBC executive is being accused of political bias after calling for the corporation to promote ‘left of centre’ thinking. Ben Stephenson, controller of drama commissioning, made the comment on a blog for a left-wing newspaper.

The Conservatives have called for him to apologise and to retract the remarks.  Trying desperately to neutralise his remarks, Stephenson has claimed he was just calling for more diverse opinions and out-of-the-box ideas: ‘We need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking.’

Sure.  Oh my G-d – what was that big pink creature that just went diving past my window??? It was a kosher pig.

And Stephenson’s pitiful wriggling is fooling nobody. Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has stated that the comments were a ‘clear breach’ of the BBC’s impartiality obligations.

The BBC being impartial?  Can anyone remember when this last happened…?

The Cost Of Criminals’ Human Rights

Fed up with reading about the ‘human rights’ of criminals who have denied their victims’ basic rights?

Well, here’s a news story guaranteed to make you see red.  Here in the UK, the Parole Board has announced that human rights compensation claims by murderers, paedophiles and other serious criminals demanding their freedom has now reached ‘new heights’.

 

Specifically, this litigation is costing £100,000 – a month. The Parole Board’s annual report states:  ‘This is extremely expensive for the public purse.’

And this news comes despite promises by politicians to deal with the compensation culture within British prisons.

 

I suspect that many decent Brits who saw this story in their newspapers will have shared the same sentiment. Namely, that if you violate someone else’s rights to safety and life, then you can damn well do your stint in prison and quit complaining.  We’re not interested.

Bangladeshi Journalist Charged With ‘Insulting’ Islam – Because He Suggested Peace With Israel

A Bangladeshi journalist and peace activist is being punished for refusing to condemn Israel. Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury was charged with sedition, treason and insulting Islam in 2003.

Choudhury, 44, has worked hard to oppose Islamic extremism through his articles, in particular those for the Weekly Blitz which he started in 2003. He has also called for interfaith dialogue and for normalizing relations between Muslim countries and Israel.

Yet this week will see Choudhary back in court, charged with ‘insulting Islam’.  It is possible he will be sentenced to death for this ’sedition’.

In a letter which was made public at the weekend, Choudhary says:

“According to my lawyers in Bangladesh, the government is determined to conclude the trial as soon as possible.No one knows what will be the verdict. But, of course, seeing the past track record, we cannot hold any hope for a good result because the court is not applying its judicial mind, but trying to appease the Islamists.”

Choudhary has already suffered violence for his views. In 2006, his newspaper offices were bombed, after he publicly expressed sympathy for the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam.

And in October of that year, he was attacked in his office by a mob that included prominent members of the then-ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which historically has aligned itself with Islamist parties in the country.

In March 2007,  US House Resolution 64 referred to Choudhury and protested his ongoing  “harassment and intimidation” as well as his incarceration in 2004 for 17 months without legal recourse, during which he was placed in solitary confinement and “suffered harsh interrogation techniques and received no treatment for a debilitating case of glaucoma.”

The House resolution called for the Bangladeshi government to “immediately drop all pending charges against Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury… and take steps to protect Mr. Choudhury.”

A Message For ‘Reader X’ aka It’s My Blog And I’ll Ban Who I Want To!

.

 

Is freedom of speech absolute?

Here’s a candid answer: not for readers of my blog.

I make no apologies for this stance. Only one person has total free speech in this particular arena – and that’s me!

 

I’ve been pondering  ‘freedom of speech’ because I stand accused of ‘blocking opinions differing from your own’. My accuser? A regular poster on Jew With A View that I’ve now had to, reluctantly, bar from posting full stop.

 

Of course, most bloggers ban those who submit abusive or racist comments. 

 

 

It’s just common sense. But what about banning someone who is usually polite..?

  

 

Is it ‘wrong’?  Does it ‘prove’ that I ban dissent, especially when it comes to the topic of Israel…?   I can’t respond privately to this person, hence this post.

 

  

Truth is, I welcome dissenting opinions. Genuinely. Blogging would be mighty dull if everyone who posted here was just echoing my views!

Nor do I claim to be ‘right’ in all I say. Indeed, if I make factual errors, I hope someone will correct me and I am most grateful when they do! Hell, I’m appreciative when anyone takes the time to post a comment, and I hope regulars especially, know this

Let’s call the person I’ve banned Reader X. He knows who he is. He’s posted many long comments on this blog and that was fine, though I passionately disagree with him. But as he seems a reasonably decent soul, and as he’s taken the trouble to express his views, I’ve welcomed his thoughts.

 

But here’s the thing. Everyone has the right to their own opinions.  But nobody has the right to their own facts. That’s where a line exists, and it can’t be crossed if one still wants any form of rational discourse.

The discrepancy between these two was illustrated vividly back in 2007 when Oxford University decided to allow known Holocaust Denier David Irving, and his fellow weasel BNP head Nick Griffin, to speak at the Union debate.

 

The move was publicly condemned by Jewish and Muslim students alike, along with anti facism activists and numerous politicians – several of whom cancelled membership of the Oxford Union as a result.

 

But Oxford Union was unrepentant. These two racist twits had, it declared, the right to ‘freedom of speech’.

 

Wrong.

 

  

What they had was  freedom of opinion. But that doesn’t mean any institution, let alone Oxford, should offer them a platform to spread their malice.

 

If Irving and Griffin wish to go around peddling their mad and subjective belief that six million Jews did not perish, that is their right to do so – within the confines of their homes and in hushed conversations with their fellow neo Nazis.

 

But once they start publicly twisting and misrepresenting objective facts in their bid to deny history, then no. A thousand times, no.  They don’t have any unconditional, inalienable ‘right’ to do that.  Nor did Oxford Union have any ‘duty’ to help them.

 

I have the right to declare a disbelief in gravity. Does Oxford Union have any obligation to provide a platform for me to unveil my copious notes and ideas in ’support’ of this idea…?

 

No, of course not – and nor would  Oxford dream of doing so!  Yet when it suits, countless individuals and institutions play the ‘freedom of speech’ card in order to promote all manner of absurd, irrational and sometimes dangerous beliefs.

Which brings us to Reader X. He has repeatedly stated: ‘I insist that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation’.

 

Well, dear Reader X, you may continue to insist this, and deny reality, as much as you like. Go on – knock yourself out!

  

But not on my blog.

  

 

Any group which attacks and kills unarmed, innocent civilians, is a terrorist group. Yep – it’s as black and white as that. Thus when Hamas sent suicide bombers onto two Israeli buses, killing sixteen people, including a 3 year old child,  that was terrorism. End of.

 

I’m not remotely interested in Reader X’s apologetics for Hamas. Nor will I feel bad for denying his ‘right’ to publicly condone them. He can seek to justify and rationalise and apologise for Hamas terrorism all he likes.

  

But not on my blog.

 

Nor do I accept that Reader X has any ‘right’ to use my blog to condone bigotry.

Last week I posted a story about how a top Obama aide cheerfully shared a platform with a man who then claimed that Hurricane Katrina was G-d’s ‘punishment’ towards Gay people, and that Jews are seeking to ‘control the world’.

 

Most sane people recognise this bigotry towards Gays and Jews for what it is: appalling. Likewise, they understand that it is not OK for a top Obama aide to share a platform with and thus legitimise someone expressing such spite.

But what did Reader X think? ‘It’s good that Obama is prepared to talk to lots of people.’

Er, right…

 Again, if Reader X wants to support anti Gay and Anti Jewish bigotry, he’s free to do so.

  

 But not on my blog.

 

In particular, Reader X has condemned my apparent unwillingness to allow dissenting opinions on Israel. So let’s clarify.

 

If someone wants to criticise Israeli policies, they are free to do so. If someone wants to post condemnation of specific decisions made by Israel or particular Israeli politicians, they are free to do this too.  If their posts are based on facts and – this is key – an accurate understanding of the situation.

 

But when someone makes it clear that they don’t even know the term ‘palestinian’ always referred to Palestinian Jews, and when they then try and ‘prove’ their case by anecdotal evidence, and when all they do is regurgitate weary old Arab propaganda that has been disproven time and again – then no, I don’t have any obligation to publish this person’s misconceptions.

  

There are countless sites out there where Reader X can share his inaccurate ideas on Israel.

My blog is not one of them.

 

And finally, Reader X,  I reserve the right to reject your blatant hypocrisy. For example, you have often stated that you trust the UN. Thus if the UN condemns Israel for something, it is  ‘good enough‘ for you – note, I’m using your own words here.

Yet at the same time, you ignore that the UN also stated in a resolution that Hezbollah should have disarmed.   But you don’t care what the UN says about this. Indeed,  only recently you tried to submit a post claiming that Hezbollah has nothing to do with terrorism!

This is rank  hypocrisy. When the UN condemns Israel, it’s acceptable. But when the UN condemns Palestinian and Islamic terrorism, it gets ignored. Again Reader X, you’re free to practise this hypocrisy.

  

But not on my blog.

 

Finally, and most egregiously, Reader X, you showed how little value you attache to Jewish life, any Jewish life, by your response to the recent update on murdered and tortured French Jew Ilan Halimi.

Responding to this post, what did you say?  You spoke of Palestinians in prison in Israel – and did not say a single word about the way that this young French man was abducted, tortured, set alight and killed by French Muslims. Muslims who admitted to being obsessed with killing Jews and who actually phoned the victim’s parents and quoted to them from the Quran.

Now of course, you’re not obliged to respond to the Ilan Halimi post at all. But to submit a response to it  that totally ignores his death? That is in poor taste and again, just reveals your hypocrisy. You care so much for Palestinian Arabs – yet don’t give a damn when Jewish blood is spilled.

 

And so, Reader X, if you are indeed looking at this post: don’t tell me that you’re ‘objective‘ and ‘fair‘ when it comes to any topic connected to either Israel or anti Jewish sentiment. You’re not. At least have the integrity to acknowledge your own bias and blatant double standards.

 

And if at any time you decide to adopt a fairer approach, then you are most welcome to post here again.

But, until and unless that time arrives, you’ll have to take your right to condone terrorism and bigotry and exercise it on other blogs -  ’cause you ‘aint doing it on this one!

My Kind Of Rabbi

I’ve always been against faith schools. At age 11,  I opted to go to a multi faith school rather than the popular Jewish school that many of my friends from junior high were heading for. Even back then, I didn’t get it: if you’re going to live in a multi-faith country, what on earth is the point of segregating children according to religion?

This morning on ‘The Big Questions’ this was the very point being debated. Rabbi Jonathan Romain put it exceptionally well. Explaining that even as a Rabbi, he’d sent his own children to a mixed faith school, he remarked:

“I want my children to sit next to a Christian in class, to do their homework with a Hindu, to play football with Muslims, and to walk home with an Atheist. How can we love our neighbours, if we don’t know our neighbours?”

 

Precisely. Now that’s my kind of Rabbi.

Want An Example Of Media Bias…?

.(hat tip  Elder Of Ziyon)

 

 

When Reuters decided it needed a picture of Palestinian children behind prison bars, what did it do? It used this photograph:

 

And the caption reads: Palestinian children stand at a gate to the Rafah border crossing in the southern Gaza Strip during a protest against the Israeli blockade July 13, 2009.

 

So what’s the problem with it…?

 

The superb Elder Of Ziyon blog explains:

 

But which bars to choose? Well, obviously, the most photogenic ones. I know – the Egyptians have some nice blue ones! Let’s go there, to the big gate that stops us from going to Egypt and stops Egyptian goods from being imported to Gaza – and tell the world that we are protesting the Israeli blockade!

 

This is not an isolated example. Rather, it is typical of the inaccuracy and yes, downright deception which characterises reporting on Israel.  If pressed, no doubt Reuters will feign surprise and claim ignorance over the fact that their report blames Israel for something Egypt is doing. Who do they think they are kidding?

 

This is not just bad journalism.

This is immoral.

 

 

 

 

The Terrible Case Of Ilan Halimi: Update

.Some of you will recall my earlier posts on the terrible murder of French Jew Ilan Halimi.  Back in 2006, he was lured to an empty basement in Paris and then tortured for several weeks. His killers were members of a Muslim mob who have recently stood trial in France.

The latest news on this tragic case is that fourteen of the twenty-five gang members will be retried. This is because of  protests about their having received absurdly lenient sentences.  The French Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie intervened just three days after the gang members – or evil, racist bastards as I prefer to call them – were sentenced for the 2006 killing of Halimi.

The gang leader and chief bastard, one Youssouf Fofana,  was sentenced to life in prison. He was the only gang member convicted of murder. The other mob members were given prison terms shorter than recommended by the prosecuting attorney. This sparked a massive protest by French Jewish groups and Halimi’s family.

Among the fourteen who will be re-tried, are  two of Fofana’s main accomplices, as well as the woman who acted as the ‘honeytrap’ and lured Ilan Halimi to that isolated basement in the first place.

One key thing to remember about the murder of Ilan Halimi is that he was not a random victim. Fofana and his mob had been, by their own admission, fixated on finding and killing Jewish men for a considerable length of time. Anti semitism was not incidental to this murder – it was a fundamental cause.

Ilan Halimi was 23 and had everything in the world to look forward to. Yet he ended up being tortured and beaten for three weeks nonstop, before finally being set alight by his abusers and then left, naked, by a railway line. By the time someone found him, it was too late.

 

Britain, Israel, And A Case Of Rank Hypocrisy

 

 

David Miliband must have enjoyed himself today. For finally, Britain’s Foreign Secretary got to announce an arms embargo on Israel.  Never mind that Britain itself sent soldiers thundering into two foreign countries.  The embargo might only have been declared today, but ever since Israel retaliated against Hamas at the end of last year, Britain has been waiting eagerly for this day to arrive.

 

Indeed, during Operation Cast Lead, nowhere was condemnation of Israel louder than in Britain. It’s a matter of public record that Muslims across the country bombarded their MPs with demands for Britain to sever all ties with the Jewish nation. Three British politicians, including Louise Ellman, received death threats purely because they had the guts to remind both parliament and the media that Israel had endured eight years of terrorism before finally responding.

 

The British media, led by the Guardian, threw out journalistic ethics entirely, dispensed with context, and swapped fact for fiction as they repeatedly ignored Hamas terrorism against Israeli civilians.

 

Forget the obscene suicide bombings that Hamas had routinely unleashed on Israel. Forget the roll call of women, children and babies who had died at the hands of Hamas operatives.  Forget the fact that when Israel left Gaza, it did so because this departure was deemed – by the international community – to be a necessary condition for DEcreased terrorism.

 

Forget all that. Nobody gave a damn. Israel had gone into Gaza to get rid of Hamas terrorists and that was all the media and the government cared about. What – Jews, defending themselves? How dare they. 

 

During this period I attended a meeting at the House of Commons, organised in fact by a Christian group whose members were distraught at the way Israel was being demonised. There, we were told by a small number of politicians, that the atmosphere in parliament was ‘poisonous’.  An out and out hate-fest was going on, and the few souls who spoke up for Israel were being shouted down and ‘bullied’ on a daily basis.

 

And so, here we are some months later, and finally the British government has done what it was longing to. In other words, punished Israel, publicly, for fighting its own War On Terror. Britain has revoked five export licenses, in what it calls in Brit-speak, a ‘gesture’.

 

I’m making a gesture right now, as it happens. It involves the middle finger of my right hand and I’m sure you can imagine to whom I’m directing it.

 

Because let’s face it, Britain’s hypocrisy here is staggering. How many civilians have died because of British troops, in Afghanistan and Iraq? Only yesterday, reports surfaced of British soldiers’ sadism in these countries. And yet here sits the holier-than-thou British government, judging Israel for trying to protect her own citizens?

 

Writing about the British government’s arms embargo against Israel, because of Gaza, Melanie Phillips  notes:

It says Israel’s actions were “disproportionate.” What is it talking about? The actual evidence showed that the proportion of civilians killed in Gaza was very small – far smaller than might have been expected given the tactics Hamas was using of embedding itself within the population.

 

The claims of large numbers of civilians and children killed were fabricated by Hamas and recycled by the Israel-bashers of the UN and media. Far from being “disproportionate,” Cast Lead was a carefully targeted operation which, given the circumstances, was astonishingly successful in its aim of confining its attack to terrorist operatives.

 

  The false flag of “disproportionality” is hoisted only by those who find it “disproportionate” that Israel should ever defend itself against the Palestinians by military means at all. Israelis are expected instead passively to die under rocket and bomb attack – or perhaps live in shelters for ever. That’s proportionate.

 

 

 

 

Britain showed its true colours today.  Several months back, David Miliband called for new coalition of consent’ between the West and the Islamic world. And if he has to hand Israel over on a platter to achieve this, then that’s just what he and the rest of the dhimmi Labour government will do.

 

Warning:

I’ve just received an urgent email from a reliable source, advising me:

 
Anyone-using Internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on.
 
 This information arrived this morning, direct from both Microsoft  and Norton.
 
 Please send it to everybody you know who has access to the Internet.
 
 You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail titled “Mail  Server Report”
 
 If you open either file, a message will appear on your screen  saying: “It is too late now, your life is no longer  beautiful…”
 
 Subsequently, you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC,
 And the person who sent it to you will gain access to your Name, e-mail and password.
 
 This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday  afternoon. AOLhas already confirmed the severity, and the anti  virus softwares are not capable of destroying it.
 
 The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself
 ’life owner’.
 
 PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS E-MAIL TO  ALL YOUR FRIENDS, And ask them to PASS  IT ON IMMEDIATELY!
 
 THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES.
 
http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/mailserver.asp

 

So I’m posting it for others to see. You have been warned…!

“Islamophobia”

Islamophobia’ – Well, isn’t this word a wonderful little weapon for Islamists the world over?

 

Whoever thought of it must be laughing all the way to the Mosque. Go on. Try it. Next time you’re in any social situation, with any group of people, try challenging the violent ideology at the heart of Islam.

 

 Chances are, faster than you can say ‘fatwah’ someone will give you a reproachful look and state: ‘You’re the one with the problem. You’re Islamophobic‘.

 

It shuts down all debate and leaves many decent folk feeling like racists – even when they’re not. So let’s just deconstruct the word ‘Islamophobia’ shall we?

 

Phobia = an extreme, irrational fear that interferes with everyday life. It is a psychological, clinical term, and this is the correct definition. We all know what a phobia looks like; most of us have seen grown adults collapse into quivering wrecks at the mere sight of a spider/wasp/snake. Above all, a phobia sufferer will go to great lengths to avoid the object of fear.

 

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not aware of a single soul who is huddled at home, frozen with fear, refusing to leave their house because of the existence of Islam… Nor have I seen a single person jerking to a halt in the middle of a street, shrieking in terror ‘There’s a Muslim! There’s a Muslim! Save me! Save me! Aaaaghhhh!’ before sprinting across the road and into oncoming traffic, just to avoid said member of Islam.

 

Indeed, often the very people accused of ‘Islamophobia’ are those who are extremely interested in Islam! They talk about it, read about it, blog about it, and study it – in a bid to better understand it. Hardly ‘phobic’ behaviour, is it…?

 

So let’s be blunt. The term ‘Islamophobia’ is meaningless. It’s foolish. In short – it’s nothing more than a linguistic sham. Because nobody has an ‘irrational fear’ of Islam.

 

What many of us do have is a rational fear of what Muslim terrorists do in the name of Islam. We also fear the hatred that Islam inculcates in many of its followers. And who the hell can blame us?

 

If people with red hair continually sauntered onto buses and trains, into restaurants and schools the world over, with bombs strapped around their waists, before cheerfully blowing both themselves and any living soul around them into tiny bits, then I submit that many of us would develop a rational fear of red heads!

 

But ‘islamophobia’? Oh, purleease. It’s just a device used by *some* Muslims – and the PC-at-all-costs, liberal brigade – to shut down vital debate. And if we let them get away with it? Then shame on US.

 

While we’re on the topic, let’s just clarify what does and does not constitute ‘racism’: I could, if I wanted, criticise and challenge and yes, condemn Islam all day long – and it would not be ‘racism’. Islam is a faith and an ideology. And no ideology is exempt from scrutiny. Nor does anyone have the right to stop me from assessing an ideology – not as long as I live in a democratic society.

 

But, if I then begin making unfair, negative, nasty generalisations about ‘all muslims’ then this would be racism. See the difference?

 Critiquing and challenging and condemning an ideology = not ‘racism’!

Condemning any group of people purely on the basis OF their religion = racism

 

Or to state it even more simply:  ‘All Muslims are terrorists’ = racism

Clearly there are millions of peaceful Muslims.

 

‘Most terrorists are Muslim’ =  not racism

Most terrorism is Islamic terrorism.

 

So just as I am free to condemn the beliefs of, say, the vile British National Party(BNP), or Scientologists, or the KKK, without anyone branding me a ‘racist’, so too am I free to condemn Islam.

 

Words have objective meanings. It’s time we remembered that, and worked to wipe out this lunacy which even now, is pushing for Islam to be legally ‘protected’ from criticism. So next time anyone tries to insist you are an ‘islamophobe’, shut them down. Fast.

Harry Potter: The Closet Jew

 As the star of the Harry Potter films, Daniel Radcliffe plays a boy who above all else, has integrity. A boy who loathes the bigotry of his enemies and  is proud of his ‘mudblood’ friends.

 

What a pity that in real life, Radcliffe doesn’t embody those traits. For this week, in an interview with the Guardian  Radcliffe shocked many by producing the type of anti semitic ‘joke’ that anyone with a functioning brain recognises as  vile. He claimed, absurdly, that because his own mother is Jewish, he ‘is allowed’ to make ‘jewish jokes’.

 

His remarks are disingenuous  in the extreme.   Firstly, the ‘joke’ that Radcliffe offered does nothing but repeat the weary old stereotype of Jews being mean and caring only about money. Did it never occur to Radcliffe that the millions of youngsters who hang on his every word would be taking this, too, as gospel…? 

 

Can he really be so naive as to think that what he says in a national newspaper won’t be read, remembered, and absorbed by his legions of young fans…?

 

Secondly, Radcliffe then tried to convince us, in this same article, that he is ‘proud’ of his Jewish heritage. Er, no, Daniel. You’re not, actually. If you were,  you would be incapable of maligning Jews in this manner. Those of us who are truly proud of our heritage do everything we possibly can to counter the spiteful lies historically told about Jews – not promote them to the masses.

 

Radcliffe’s ‘jewish identity’ is interesting, in fact. He clearly feels it is something he can switch on and off when it suits him. Thus, for the most part, his heritage doesn’t get a mention – and that’s just fine.  But when he does suddenly decide that ‘being jewish’ might make him more interesting, how does he reference his religion? With an anti semitic jibe. At the same time, another British newspaper has revealed that Radcliffe secretly writes poetry which he submits to an ‘underground’ publication under the name of – wait for it – Jacob Gershon.

 

Thus in private, Radcliffe cheerfully uses a Jewish name for his poetic scribblings yet in public, where it counts, the only thing he offers is bigotry.

 

There’s a word for behaviour like that. It’s hypocrisy.

 

So here’s the thing, Daniel. Please feel free not to identify as Jewish, either in public or private. I promise – the rest of us  don’t mind and won’t miss you.

 

Because frankly, with ‘jews’ like you, who needs enemies…?

Has Dershowitz Lost The Plot?

 

Alan Dershowitz is apparently either unable, or unwilling, to talk straight when it comes to Obama’s hypocrisy re Israel.  And it is truly a terrible thing to read Dershowitz’s pathetic rationalisations of the suicidal ‘compromises’ Israel is being pressured to make at the behest of the Obama administration.

 

Melanie Phillips says it best:

 

The American lawyer Alan Dershowitz is one of the most prolific, high-profile and indefatiguable defenders of Israel and the Jewish people against the tidal wave of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish feeling currently coursing through the west. So a piece by him in the Wall Street Journal giving expression to the rising anxiety being felt about Obama by American Jews naturally arouses great interest.

 

But just like the majority of American Jews, getting on for 80 per cent of whom voted for Obama, he is a Democrat supporter who is incapable of acknowledging the truth about this President. For most American Jews, the horror of even entertaining the hypothetical possibility that they might ever in a million years have to vote for a Republican is so great they simply cannot see what is staring them in the face — that this Democratic President is lethal for both Israel and the free world.

 

And in this article Dershowitz shows that he too is just as blind. Acknowledging the anxiety among some American Jews about Obama’s attitude to Israel, Dershowitz concludes uneasily that there isn’t really a problem here because all Obama is doing is putting pressure on Israel over the settlements, which most American Jews don’t support anyway.

 

But this is totally to miss the point. The pressure over the settlements per se is not the reason for the intense concern. It is instead, first and foremost, the fact that Obama is treating Israel as if it is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Obama thus inverts aggressor and victim, denying Israel’s six-decade long victimisation and airbrushing out Arab aggression.

 

The question remains: why has Obama chosen to pick a fight with Israel while soft-soaping Iran which is threatening it with genocide? The answer is obvious: Israel is to be used to buy off Iran just as Czechoslovakia was used at Munich.

 

Indeed, I would say this is worse even than that, since I suspect that Obama – coming as he does from a radical leftist milieu, with vicious Israel-haters amongst his closest friends — would be doing this to Israel even if Iran was not the problem that it is.

 

In any event, the double standard is egregious. Obama has torn up his previous understandings with Israel over the settlements while putting no pressure at all on the Palestinians, even though since they are the regional aggressor there can be no peace unless they end their aggression and certainly not until they accept Israel as a Jewish state, which they have said explicitly they will never do.

 

On this, Obama is totally silent. So too is Dershowitz. That’s some omission.

 

Next, Obama is pressuring Israel to set up a Palestine state – within two years this will exist, swaggers Rahm Emanuel. But everyone knows that as soon as Israel leaves the West Bank, Hamas – or even worse – will take over. The only reason the (also appalling) Abbas is still in Ramallah, enabling Obama to pretend there is a Palestinian interlocutor for peace, is because the Israelis are keeping Hamas at bay.

 

Yet Dershowitz writes: “There is no evidence of any weakening of American support for Israel`s right to defend its children from the kind of rocket attacks candidate Obama commented on during his visit to Sderot.”

 

 So what exactly does he think would happen if Israel came out of the West Bank and the Hamas rockets were down the road from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (literally: many in the west have absolutely no idea how tiny Israel is). It’s not a question of Israel’s ‘right to defend its children’.

 

If Obama has his way, Israel would not be able to defend its children or anyone else, because Obama would have removed its defences by putting its enemies in charge of them.

 

It is astounding that Dershowitz can’t see this. Then there was Obama’s appalling Cairo speech — which I wrote about here – in which he conspicuously refrained from committing himself to defending Zionism and the Jewish people from the attacks and incitement to genocide against them, but committed himself instead to defending their attackers against ‘negative stereotyping’.

 

On this, Dershowitz has nothing to say. Worse still, by falsely asserting that the Jewish aspiration for Israel derived from the Holocaust, Obama effectively denied that the Jewish people were in Israel as of right and thus endorsed the core element of the Arab and Muslim propaganda of war and extermination.

 

On this, Dershowitz has nothing to say. Obama drew a vile – and telling – equivalence between the Nazi extermination camps and the Palestinian ‘refugee’ camps. On this, Dershowitz has nothing to say. Obama`s statement that the Palestinians ‘have suffered in pursuit of a homeland’ was grossly and historically untrue, and again denied Arab aggression. On this, Dershowitz has nothing to say.

 

Equally vilely, Obama equated genocidal terrorism by the Palestinians with the civil rights movement in America and the resistance against apartheid in South Africa. On all of this, Dershowitz has nothing to say. Dershowitz also grossly underplays the terrible harm Obama is doing to the security not just of Israel but the world through his reckless appeasement of Iran.

 

In the last few weeks, this has actively undercut the Iranian democrats trying to oust their tyrannical regime, and has actually strengthened that regime. All the evidence suggests ever more strongly that Obama has decided America will ‘live with’ a nuclear Iran, whatever it does to its own people. Which leaves Israel hung out to dry.

 

 But even here, where he is clearly most concerned, Dershowitz scuttles under his comfort blanket – Dennis Ross, who was originally supposed to have been the US special envoy to Iran but was recently announced senior director of the National Security Council and special assistant to the President for the region. It is not at all clear whether this ambiguous development represents a promotion or demotion for Ross.

 

Either way, for Dershowitz to rest his optimism that Obama’s Iran policy will be all right on the night entirely upon the figure of Dennis Ross is pathetic. Ross, a Jew who played Mr. Nice to Robert Malley’s Mr. Nasty towards Israel in the Camp David debacle under President Clinton, is clearly being used by Obama as a human shield behind which he can bully Israel with impunity.

 

American Jews assume that his proximity to Obama means the President’s intentions towards Israel are benign. Dazzled by this vision of Ross as the guarantor of Obama’s good faith, they thus ignore altogether the terrible import of the actual words coming out of the President’s mouth.

 

The fact is that many American Jews are so ignorant of the history of the Jewish people, the centrality of Israel in its history and the legality and justice of its position that they probably saw nothing wrong in Obama saying that the Jewish aspiration for Israel came out of the Holocaust because they think this too.

 

Nor do they see the appalling double standard in the bullying of Israel over the settlements and what that tells us about Obama’s attitude towards Israel, because – as Dershowitz himself makes all too plain — they too think in much the same way, that the settlements are the principal obstacle to peace. Many if not most American Jews have a highly sentimentalised view of Israel. They never go there, are deeply ignorant of its history and current realities, and are infinitely more concerned with their own view of themselves as social liberals, a view reflected back at themselves through voting for a Democrat President.

 

 Whatever else he is, however, Dershowitz is certainly not ignorant. Which makes this lamentable article all the more revealing, and depressing.