Blood libel as standard MSM narrative

This evening I decided to bite the bullet and see how the CBC - supported by Canada's taxpayers with a billion dollars annually - is reporting on the Gaza flotilla story. I knew it would be anti-Israel, but I was not expecting such utter and complete hatred of the Jew/Israel, depicted in officious tones as a fundamentally violent blood-sucker. The radio report began by saying that, unprovoked, Israel attacked with deadly force (who could believe such incredible fantasy, as if Israel just goes about randomly murdering people; and yet it was stated with absolute certainty and "authority"?). We were also told that Israel faces massive international critcism, with no mention of what Israel's friends are saying. We were told that this violence is troubling to friends and foes alike because it is not just a one-off but a pattern of repeated use of disproportionate force. And that was it. They picked up the report of a smarmy BBC p.o.s., Jeremy Bowen, and not a word from the pro-Israel side. Not a mention that this - the one ship that violently resisted the Israeli boarding party - was clearly a Turkish state provocation in the battle to lead the Umma by taking up the cause of Hamas. No mention that maybe some of the dead were killed by their own side in a hurry to have "martyrs" to flaunt before a credulous world.

It was a viscerally shocking experience that left me with a feeling no amount of intellectual study and understanding leaves, an experience of what it must have been like to be a Jew living under the most oppressively Jew-hating of modern states.

When opinion leaders in a country like Canada can fall so deeply into a bizarre narrative of unprovoked violence from evil Jews, we are all in serious trouble, whether we like Jews or not. Nothing good can come from such hatred but only the further erosion of a once free society.

But we must remember that no historical trend lasts forever (even if some evils, like Judeophobia, have always existed as long as there have been Jews). We must remain hopeful that narratives with some grasp on reality will one day gain ascendance and the horrible anachronism that is the CBC and the BBC will be put to their fitting ends by indignant tax payers. To this end, let us keep trying to promote writers and narratives that are not completely delusional. And let us even demand more and better from the state of Israel when it comes to defending itself. Israel should be on the offensive, making demands of Turkey for supporting (and apparently there are another two ships on the way) this attempt to crash a blockade of an armed enemy committed to the elimination of Israel (an act which should be seen as tantamount to war) and to get people killed in the attempt, as was surely desired.

To this end, I recommend another great piece from Barry Rubin.

See also Melanie Phillips.

Death Cult?

Up to 16 killed in Israeli attack on Gaza aid flotilla - The Globe and Mail

“This is a historic day … a day of freedom … a turning point in the battle to end the siege of Gaza,” said Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya on Gaza television. He sent his sympathies to the families of the dead and assured them the people would be viewed as “martyrs” in the campaign to liberate the Palestinian people.

For a Jewish perspective.

At least 10 activists dead, dozens hurt in flotilla clashes

Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.

Belmont Club » Where the Old Flotilla Lay

Together those three developments — the shadow of the Iranian nukes, the missiles of Hezbollah and the loss of American support — may have fostered a regional perception that Israel is vulnerable. Certainly the flotilla organizers could not have been insensible to the rising pressure on Israel and were determined to exploit it, nor was it lost on the IDF that if they showed weakness in the face of the flotilla there would be more to follow. In one sense the flotilla put to sea on the perceived political tides and were met by IDF elements sailing on the contrary currents. The result was a clash inconsequential in itself, but not in the sparks that it may generate.
[...]
It’s about 3 am in Chicago and near enough that on the East Coast. Here’s the proverbial 3am call for good old Hillary and Barack Obama to field. Let’s hope they are up to it.

UPDATE: Pajamas has some good coverage; Findalis reminds us that those who support Hamas are complicit in a desire to kill all Jews everywhere.

B'nai Brith waking up to the nature of their fellow "stakeholders" in the Canadian Human Rights Commission

B'nai Brith may be discovering another point of disagreement with the Canadian Human Rights Commission: the latter's labeling of the Canadian Arab Federation as a "stakeholder" (see Blazing Cat Fur and Covenant Zone: Canadian Human Rights Commission and Greg Felton: how many degrees of separation?).

Not only has the CAF been publishing the likes of Greg Felton and been involved in distributing antisemitic fliers at the 2006 Liberal party leadership convention, but its leader has lately taken to calling our politicians "professional whores".

And this is the organization that receives government funding to help "settle" immigrants and "fight" hate crime.

B'nai Brith has now sent out the following press release (received via email):

'Canadian Arab Federation on notice for dissemination
of pro-terrorist propaganda from abroad,' says B'nai Brith Canada

TORONTO, February 5, 2009 – B'nai Brith Canada has called for a full investigation of Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) activities, following the discovery that the organization disseminated pro-terrorist propaganda in a January 16th email sent to subscribers to its Gaza Daily Bulletin. Bloc Quebecois MP Maria Mourani had apparently unwittingly shared the CAF newsletter's video links that promoted terrorism in an email to her parliamentary colleagues, for which she was rebuked by her Party leader Gilles Duceppe and by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"This is a clear case of a Canadian-based organization actively involved in the promotion of pro-terrorist propaganda that should be of concern to everyone," said Frank Dimant, B'nai Brith Canada's Executive Vice President

"Links to video clips distributed by CAF featured prominently disturbing images of Hamas operatives undergoing terrorist training, photos of young children being indoctrinated into violence, and the image of Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, in exile in Syria, rallying his followers. The recurring images of the flags of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two terrorist groups outlawed in Canada and many other countries around the world, smacks of the promotion of terrorist objectives, ideologies and methods.

"It is unconscionable that CAF, which bills itself as a mainstream Arab organization actively involved in the settlement of new immigrants to this country, has engaged in this type of activity.

"We call on CAF to accept full responsibility for its actions and to voluntarily come forward with the firm guarantee that the organization will refrain in future from the dissemination of hate propaganda that glorifies terrorism. Should it fail to do so, the Government must then step in and take appropriate steps to safeguard the Canadian public from the impact that such dangerous propaganda can have and its direct contribution to the ever-growing problem of radicalization and extremism, both at home and abroad."

While B'nai Brith does not raise the issue, those of us interested in the postmodern "human rights" world view must wonder if this latest incident is just another piece of evidence that either the Canadian Human Rights Commission (or BB for that matter) doesn't fully know what it is doing, doesn't know the logical end point of the left-liberal "human rights" world view, founded in reaction to the Holocaust: postmodern Political Correctness, when fully revealed, reveals itself as a new form of antisemitism, of rivalry over Jewish historical priority, in this case over the symbol of the unquestionable victim of the "Nazi/Jew" dynamic, the genocidal event that is remembered more than any other for revealing the unquestionably evil capacity of a modern Western society, implicating all its professions and most of its members. This postmodern competition over the most horrific revelation of Jewish historical centrality is why we now see the many incredibly hateful and insane comparisons of Israel with the Nazi state.

Or, does the Canadian Human Rights Commission and other PC elements in Canadian government know and accept its own latent antisemitism in pandering to this hate's Arab-"Canadian" avatars?

Howard Rotberg on the cult of "proportionality" in the use of violence

Howard has an excellent post up, one of the smartest rebuttals of the inherently antisemitic idea that the economically and militarily accomplished, free-thinking, modern (and yet nationalist, self-ruling) "chosen people" are just too successful and must be hobbled in their nation's defense (after more than sixty years of failed Arab attacks). The idea that Israel must only use "proportional" and duly-sanctioned violence (sanctioned by some post-national, neo-feudal mandarin class of "international" academic "experts" and "lawyers") that the Jews' original vision of a covenantal nation, their great contribution to human liberty, must give way to some Gnostic dream of overcoming all that nation stuff in some post-national Utopia, amounts to little more than Judeophobic resentment.

Howard writes:

...I experienced hatred from recent Arab immigrants shouting out that I had no right to give a lecture at Chapters (despite my invitation by Chapters) and when the audience asked them to allow me to speak, one shouted out with hatred, "he is a fucking Jew".

The Tolerists with their moral equivalency (typified by the Judge who equated the rights of a lecturer with the rights of thugs to break up the lecture) hold that in any dispute the truth must be in the middle, and that all violence equates with all other violence.

Accordingly in Gaza, Hamas indoctrinates its young in Hate, and lobs rockets at Israeli civilians, and enlists women and children as human shields, and it knows that any disaster it brings upon its own people will be viewed by Westerners as at least 50% the fault of the Jews.

And, if Hamas is fortunate enough to lose the war it started and cause the death of hundreds of its own fighters (and the civilians who encourage them and are used as human shields) then it can rely on the puerile doctrine of "Proportionality" to rob a liberal democracy of victory against Islamofascist thugs.

The idea that a democracy, when faced with fascist attacks on civilians, must be limited to a "proportionate" response is so stupid that it would not bear commentary, if it was not so frequently used, especially by Europeans. You see, the Americans when they and the Brits and the Canadians and others defeated Nazi Germany were not handicapped by criticisms of "proportionality". Not even when they droppped atomic bombs. That is because our forefathers were smarter than we are, and understood that in the face of such Evil as the Nazi and Japanese regimes, a disproportionate response, leading to quick and total victory and defeat of Evil, is needed to stop future deaths caused by the Evil regimes. The nuclear bombs were morally justified because the number of people that would have been killed by Japan in the time that it would take to defeat Japan by conventional weapons would surely have exceeded the number killed by the Atomic bombs. A justifiable decision was made that the Japanese who supported the Evil would bear a disproportionate burden rather than the people who would be continued to be slaughtered by the Japanese.

Likewise with Hitler. Those who criticize the Allies for carpet bombing Dresden lack a moral compass.

In fact, "proportionality", being a concept most attractive to Europeans (who have never quite gotten over their anti-Semitism and their realization that Europe produced the most evil people of the 20th century) now delight in accusing the Jews of "disproportionate" responses. That is because the idea of "proportionality" is in fact a standard so bizarre in the realm of war, that it discloses that its proponents have something else in mind than justice or morality.

In fact, the critics of "disproportionate" response are classic anti-Semites. Who can blame them for thinking they can get away with this approach, when the best American Jewish director, Steven Spielberg, used proportionality as an immoral standard - when viewing Israeli actions after the moral travesty at the Munich Olympics (including the preposterous responses to the murders by both the Germans and the IOC, as I have written previously).

As I have previously written, the great William Shakespeare understood the foundations of anti-Semitism, and wrote his brilliant The Merchant of Venice, which unfortunately is not properly understood even today. Shakespeare shows that the vile Shylock is driven to his disproportionate response of insisting on the contractual pound of flesh, because he is facing a society which has completely marginalized him, and then he cannot receive a fair trial, as the Judge in the trial allows an adverse party to pretend to be the Judge; Shylock is trapped by the anti-Semitism of his time.

And so, the Europeans and the university students and the journalists who criticize Israel for disproportionate response ignore how Israel is trapped by hostile and hateful Arabs all around it, now armed by Iran, and now mostly making clear what has been true all along - that no two-state solution is acceptable and the Arabs want to drive all the Jews into the Sea, and end the Jewish state, and do who knows what to the Jewish civilians.

Now I return to the situation in Canada.

I have written about the blatant anti-Semitism of the anti-Israel rallies, the spitting, the shouts that more "ovens" are needed for the Jews and Israelis, the trotting out of a few token Jews willing to criticize Israel, the intimidation and the violence, which, since my problem in 2003, has ony gotten worse.

I have written how the Canadian Jewish organizations were still worrying about Nazi skinheads and stopping Ernst Zundel by organizing Human Rights Commissions, at the same time as Canada was allowing tens of thousands of terrorist-supporting, anti-Semitic Arab immigrants into the country, without so much as a small attempt at screening out those who had cultural values inimicable to the freedom and safety of Jews who have contributed to Canadian society for generations.

In the guise of cultural relativism and Tolerism, not even an elementary attempt has been made to stop the immigration of people who hate, who are violent, who seek to impose their religion on others, who abuse women and children, and who wish to form a dual society and Justice system where Sharia Law if their present and our future.

Go ahead, call me a "racist", but I care more for Muslims than their own leaders do. I suggest you look at the backlash caused by Mohammed Elmasry's bizarre statements and then ask the Muslims that I have dealt with in my years of law practice, how much respect I have given them and how much help.

It is not racist to insist that the Muslims we accept to Canada have a chance to live just as we have always done - in peace, dignity, courtesy between ethnic groups and religions, and with a chance for our children to particpate fully in our civic culture and have the protections of our Justice system.

As I end my blogging, I am prepared to state unequivocably that our leaders are making a fatal mistake that will cost our children dearly - we are importing hate. It is not racist to state the obvious - let Muslims immigrate, but only those who are in fact moderate, who in fact are prepared to stand up and support a Jew's rights to live in peace in Canada, and not just scream about Islamaphobia, every time someone objects to some extremist action or words.

Read the whole thing...

Truce in Gaza, a little of the truth trickles out

We all know that when it comes to war, the MSM will leech onto any horrific propaganda and repeat it often if it fits their pre-conceived narrative. But this does not make it any easier to accept that we are being lied to - whether or not those uncritically feeding lies to us know what they are doing - especially when it comes from the likes of our tax-payer funded CBC where I have heard many claims that Israel is using white phosphorous on civilians.

Anyway, the New York Times is now covering itself for past misreporting, in the final paragraphs of a recent story on Gaza:

Mr. Kellenberger of the Red Cross said that Israel had facilitated his trip to Gaza and added that he had seen no evidence of the use of white phosphorus, an obscurant used in military conflicts that can be dangerous for civilians under certain circumstances. Palestinians say Israel is using it in Gaza.

Last week, the Red Cross issued an unusually harsh condemnation of Israel for refusing to allow its personnel into Gaza to rescue people trapped in battle. On Wednesday, Mr. Kellenberger said that although the situation remained critical, rescue missions had not been entirely shut down. The organization rescued 100 people trapped in Jabaliya, north of Gaza City, on Tuesday.

This news was discussd by Marty Peretz in his blog (ht:contentious centrist), one of whose anonymous commenters writes:

As a Navy Seabee veteran with experience on 60mm and 81mm mortars, I have fired my share of white phosphorus ("willy peter") shells. WP was used during vietnam for illumination for night fighting and for brush clearing, and rounds were fired directly at the enemy as well. WP burns at 5000 degrees F. and will not extinguish until it completely burns up--it will even burn under water. If it gets on you it will burn right through you. Hence the danger to civilians "under certain circumstances."

Having seen the footage in question I can say that in my estimation, having seen WP up close and personal many times over, Israel is NOT using WP based on that footage.

Wouldn't it be nice if our media could fill their stories on war with a few sober military experts and not the sentimentalization of (and hence encouragment to produce more) victims that we get from the NGOs?

Vote for Israel

Because no one can yet vote freely in "Palestine".

Ari writes me about this web poll:

Apparently CNN is pushing a poll showing that 66% vs. 33% of Americans favor "Palestine" over Israel in the war in Gaza. We must respond with numbers and be heard. We must stand together. Thousands of these emails are going out across the world right now. Be a part of supporting Israel. See also the hateful messages being left if you need motivation to become involved. Please pass this to all concerned.


If you have not already done so, please click on the link and then
simply click on the Israeli flag.

http://www.israel-vs-palestine.com/gz/

PLEASE contact everyone you know to vote...

It will take only an instant of your time

Of course opinion polls can be easily manipulated. If CNN is only doing a web poll for its audience to respond to, one would expect they take to heart and reflect the false sentimentalization of the victims of war that CNN pumps out. Most people can respond to a picture of a dead person with basic human revulsion; most people cannot understand why war is sometimes an evil necessity.

In fact, what I think is going on now is a further polarization in world opinion between those who now more certainly see what kind of a threat the ideology promoted by Hamas is to to the world and to the Palestinian people themselves, and those who want to live all the more in a fantasy where war is outlawed and the UN exists to keep the peace, rather than what it presently exists in large part to do: scapegoat realistic and modern nations like Israel for reminding us that there is something wrong with our fantasy about one day transcending war. And then, of course, there are the many who support Jihad for a similar fantasy about a world at peace once Islam conquers all.

See, for example, this report from the Christian Science Monitor on how many in Europe are turning to support for Israel because they see all-too-close-to-home the real nature of the Global Intifada. When the street violence becomes a daily nightmare for Europeans, clearly directed at them as "Infidels", many can no longer believe the global media when it scapegoats Israel as the cause of Islamic rage.

Pro-Hamas Demos Turn Ugly Throughout Belgium; Pro-Israel Rallies Don't

One side burns flags, the other waves them. In Belgium, however, the flag-burning side are escalating the flames of rage beyond mere symbolic acts... What follows are a series of translated articles from the Belgian media over the last week on the bad fruit falling from the pro-Hamas tree.

Things are getting so bad that it has resulted in the government having to raise the threat level scale normally used for measuring terrorism:

The [Foreign Affairs Crisis Center] decided to raise the level of alert due to the impact that Israel's actions in Gaza are having in Belgium. "The participation in the organized protests increases with each day. We recognize that the situation is becoming more explosive", notes Peter Mertens. He therefore decided to increase attention and keep a closer eye on Israeli and palestinian interests in Belgium.

Concretely, this means that "the police presence would be redirected and added to, as necessary." A meeting will be held [last Tuesday] with the Anvers and Brussels police to determine which groups might require additional security precautions.

Mr. Mertens specifies that the threat level has nothing to do with risks from terrorism, and is more the case of a threat against public order.

No doubt incidents like the one taking place on Friday, January 2nd, led to this decision to ratchet up security precautions throughout the nation. At an anti-Israel demonstration of a thousand people on the steps of the Brussels Stock Exchange Friday afternoon, young protestors launched a volley of stones that damaged six cars. A store window was also smashed after the protest. No arrests were made.

The Belgian city of Charleroi, previously given its 15 minutes of infamy through the shocking 2004 suicide bombing of Charleroi resident Muriel Degauque in Iraq, saw the results of this increase in security in action, as the forces of law and order succesfully prevented several dozen masked youths from engaging in vandalism at the tail-end of an anti-Israel protest:

A pro-palestinian protest gave way to several outbursts Saturday afternoon, in the neighborhood of Ville-Haute, in Charleroi ...
Several hundred protestors first gathered together while displaying banners at la place Charles II. A delegation submitted a statement of protest to burgomeister Jean-Jacques Viseur.
This part of the protest went without incident.
However, as the protest dispersed, several dozen youths, several with their faces masked, hurtled down the nearby rue de la Montagne, threatening to smash windows, but were prevented from doing so.
The police had taken the precaution to equip themselves with water pumps but these ended up not being necessary.... Local police made several arrests likely to lead to a hearing by the deputy public prosecutor in court.

Last Monday, January 5th, unknown persons started a fire in front of a Brussels synagogue, blackening the front door. Investigators were not certain about how the fire started, but discounted the possibility of it being a molotov cocktail. The spokesperson for the police suggested, through a tactless analogy, that it might simply be a case of practical jokers taking advantage of the situation in Gaza to throw a little "oil on the fire"...

2 molotov coctails were, however, found among the 93 protestors arrested at a spontaneous, unauthorized "peace" protest in Antwerp two days before, on Saturday January 3rd. They had text-messaged each other about the protest, but made no provisions with authorities to seek the proper permits for their public demonstration; the police, in consultation with Anvers mayor Patrick Janssens, told the gathered crowd to leave, arresting those who would not disperse as directed.

This protest ended better than the one which took place in Antwerp on Wednesday December 31st. Anti-Israeli protestors descended upon Antwerp's Jewish community, which had been heavily defended by a strong police presence. (Watch the following (Flemish-language?) tv news account of the incident, as of the 1:00 mark...)

A protest undertaken on January 9th with the participation of a left-wing Belgian political party turned into a bit of a mess thanks to the undisciplined exuberance of the "anti-violence" protestors in attendance. Almost a thousand people had assembled on that late Friday afternoon at the place du Marché in Liège, where the crowd's spontaneous pro-jihad chants drowned out the official speakers' standard anti-war rhetoric:

The protest went on through a certain confusion, as the organizers' speeches were rendered inaudible by the more virulent cries coming from a core group of young protestors. In-between the "Israel assassin", "Zionist terrorist", "Bush, Olmert, assassins", one could also hear praising the glory of hamas, hezbollah and jihad. ...

The Ecolo party had announced its participation in the protest... the green party announced that they had proposed a resolution demanding that Europe put pressure on Israel for an immediate cease-fire, a proposition that will be tabled in the Chamber's foreign relations commission this coming January 13th.

Police in Brussels are very concerned about a scheduled protest this coming Sunday, January 11th. Over 100 organizations, including Belgian political parties such as the environmentalist Ecolo party, the center-left cdH (Humanist Democratic Centre) and the Socialist Party, are participating in an event expected to draw several thousand protestors. Expectations from the organizers are that the numbers will in fact top those of their previous protest in Brussels on Wednesday December 31st. Because of the bad publicity resulting from their previous efforts, thoughtful guidelines are being established by the organizers:

The League of Belgian Muslims (LMB) has asked the participants to not burn flags during the protest, and to not shout "certain slogans".
...
Policing measures will be very important. Sensitive areas such as synagogues and certain embassies will be secured...

In the middle of all this flag-burning, stone-throwing, and pro-jihad chanting, Belgium's Jewish community organized a demonstration in support of Israel. The CCOJB ("Comité de Coordination des Organisations Juives de Belgique", the "Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium") held a pro-Israel rally in front of Iran's embassy in Brussels. From the CCOJB's official site:

1,000 people were in attendance to denounce the responsability of Iran in supporting the terrorist organization Hamas. CCOJB President Joel Rubinfeld and federal deputy Denis Ducarme delivered speeches offering their support for the populations [Israeli and Palestinian] in the region who are taken hostage by Hamas and its backers in Iran.

Need we even ask, if police found any molotov cocktails among these protestors..? Was there even a remote chance that they would burn flags, riot, and storm the embassy in a fit of violent rage..?

"By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs from thistles?
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit..."
__Matthew 7:16-18

Clever lines

Irwin N. Graulich:

Europe learned absolutely nothing from WWII. Instead of learning that decent, moral nations must "fight evil," the Europeans learned that "fighting is evil."
[...]
Next, we have the UN--that infamous massage parlor located on First Avenue in New York City. Several NYC politicians have suggested turning it into a homeless shelter, which would certainly do a great deal more good for society. Evil does not disturb the UN. Israel disturbs the UN!
[...]
21st century technology has given rise to visual terrorism where one shows dead families in a UNRWA school without the context of Hamas terrorists shooting grenade launchers from windows. CNN leads this new propaganda group with names like Christian Amanpour, Ben Wedeman, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Rick Sanchez and Don Lemon---all of whom have shown a particular bias against Israel for defending itself from terrorism.

Had these so called reporters been covering Dresden during WWII, the Allies would have been forced to stop their attacks and Americans today would be speaking German or would be lampshades. Of course, we would hear the American point of view and the Nazi point of view, a sign of media fairness. And good ol' Larry King would be interviewing Herr Hitler with all of the necessary respect he deserved.
[...]
Has there ever been a war where the opposing army actually called civilians on the telephone, dropped leaflets, sent emails or text messages in order to warn them to get out of harms way? It sounds like something out of The Twilight Zone--yet no one focuses on this incredible moral action by Israel. I mean rubber bullets--the Israeli army invented them out of a deep sense of compassion and morality.

Sorry, Americans and moral people everywhere are much smarter than that--after all, have you seen the deformed, incinerated and horrific baby pictures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet, any decent human being knows it was the Atom Bomb that ended WWII, saving many more lives in the long run. That is the sad reality of war. Who told you there is no military solution to some things?

And why the uproar in the Arab and Muslim world today? Because "honor" is the most important value in their lives--and those pathetic weak Jews just keep wiping the floor with them at every turn. Israel continuously shames every Arab and Muslim country by defeating them in battle or defeating them in progress.
[...]
The lives of average citizens in most Arab and Muslim countries are horrendous. Dictators from Syria to Lebanon to Iran to Gaza need to blame their horrible living conditions on someone--and naturally it cannot be the dictators they worship and fear.

The eliminationist agenda

15 000 expected to march tomorrow in Toronto under the banner of "Israel Must Not Exist Any Longer" (and we don't care how many martyrs we have to have to promote and realize our fantasy: we can imagine no other world). (SDA)

How many Muslim-Canadians will sign off on what is for many a matter of divinely-ordained hate mongering? How many of the marchers will be left dhimmi fascist non-Muslims? One of the positives of actions such as Israel's attack on Hamas is that it allows us to gather such necessary intelligence, that we might build up our defences in the fight for modernity in Canada. There will be a lot of Muslims, one expects. And if this observation of Rene Girard's is right, there will be a lot of ldf nincompoops out to prove their multiculti embrace of the Other/other in order to validate themselves as the righteous not clouded in ethnocentrism. We might see them differently however:

We are so ethnocentric, says Girard, that we think that only others can be in the right when claiming the superiority of their own religion:

"Islam maintains a relationship with death that convinces me that this religion absolutely fails to engage with ancient myths. Islam's mystic relationship with death makes death even more mysterious. Islam is a religion of sacrifice. The Christian, however, doesn't die to be imitated. We have to remember the words of Christ to Paul: 'Why are you persecuting me?' In Christianity, which destroys every mythology, there is a constant dialectic between the victim and the persecutor; in Islam, this does not exist. Islam eliminates the problematic victim. In this sense, there has always been a conflict between Christianity and Islam. In Islam, the most important thing is missing: a Cross. As in Christianity, Islam rehabilitates the innocent victim, but it does so in a militant way. The Cross, on the contrary, puts an end to the ancient and violent myths. The Cross is the symbol of the inversion of violence, of the resistance to lynching. Today the Cross opposes the Dionysian sacrifice of the new myths. Christianity, differing from Islam, prohibits sacrifice."

Surprise, surprise, evidence of more "Pallywood" photoshopping being gobbled up by the Western blood-loving press

Trouble is, there isn't even any blood on this "live ammo"-struck demonstrator/victim. Hell, I guess, a "victim" is a victim; if that's what you worship you put the "photo" up. It's a week old but I haven't had lot of time to surf lately: Breath of the Beast nails NPR: Can Public Broadcasting Really be THIS Contemptible?

UPDATE: Via SDA who have the video in question:

The segment with Gilbert shows him and another doctor badly faking chest compressions and other life-saving measures on a live boy faking death in what can only be described as political theater. The video claims to be filmed by the brother of a Palestinian teen that claims the boy was one of two purposefully killed by a missile fired at them by an Israeli drone as they played.

[...] CNN editors who swallowed the story of the poorly-acted video unquestioningly—no doubt because it fit the anti-Israeli narrative familiar to CNN viewers and critics—have now pulled the video without explanation, correction, or retraction.

It has also been determined that the videographer who filmed his brother's "death" is the general manager of a company that hosts web sites for Hamas.


Fake but accurate! While the video is gone, the story remains up at CNN.

What is the battle in Gaza about?

There are a couple of good (if not complete) answers in today's Canada Free Press. First, Ari Bussel writes:

The fight has transferred to new fronts, the world over. Demonstrations throughout the USA and Europe are showing the true face of anti-Semitism, the real hatred for Israel and the Jews. Here is a report by a law enforcement officer in Los Angeles who visited Israel for the first time less than a month ago:

Thanks for the updates on what has been gong on. I think a lot of us have a much better understanding of the situation since our trip. Over here (in LA) we have been dealing with about three protests a week at the Israeli Consulate. It’s pretty heated on both sides of the debate (Israel supporters on one side of the street and Palestinian supporters on the other).

I was amazed to see the women and children from the Palestinian side run across the street and curse and give the finger to the Israeli side.....and most of these kids were under 10 years old. We also saw someone flying the hezbollah flag and place it on a traffic light among other flags.

The outright support of a terrorist organization (one that had killed numerous Americans) in the US like that sickened me. It makes me wonder what people are truly thinking and supporting behind closed doors. Anyway, stay safe.

You are all soldiers on the front line. You are all fighting for the world, for all the freedoms we have grown so accustomed to enjoy. The front line in Gaza and the 26- mile radius around it – current reach of rockets - has extended. You are now involved – in Los Angeles and New York and Miami, in London and Paris and Antwerp, in South Africa and New Zealand and Australia, in Hong Kong and Japan and Taiwan--and there is no backing out. With clarity of thought and moral conviction, we march together forward. We must be victorious.

Second, Beryl Wajsman gives a good account of the enemy and the essential point: this is a war against the West and modernity and freedom, not simply or ultimately about Israel, the country that is doing our fighting for us:

Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Brigades and all the other proxies of Iranian murder have but one common aim. The destruction of Israel and the killing of all “infidels”, Christian and Jew. It is written in their charters and they should be taken at their word. They care not a whit for their own people because their power derives from the culture of death that they perpetrate against their own citizens using state faith as a weapon of submission. Their challenge is not only to Israel, but to the west at large. The Islamists that are marching in western cities are directed by shrewd and murderous operatives of regimes spawned in the dark ages of history. Israel is but the frontline of civilization. And Israel is once again fighting the west’s war first.

No nation can sit idly by while 7000 rockets over six years are hurled at it. Even Egypt closed its borders to the murderous Gazan regime. Journalists speak of Hamas as the duly elected government of Gaza. Yet they conveniently forget to mention that Hamas only got elected because they killed or drove out most of their Fatah opponents prior to the vote. It was a putsch as brutal as any the world has seen in the post war era.

To those who argue for cease-fire and negotiations, let them explain how to negotiate with an enemy that swore peace if Israel withdrew from Gaza, yet attacked with greater vehemence once Israel did. To those who advocate a truce, let them answer what to do with an enemy that broke the truce brokered not by the west but by their Arab cousins in Egypt. To those who advance claims for compromise and common ground, let them respond how to find common ground with an enemy that interprets every peaceful gesture as weakness and an invitation for attack.

It has been said that Hamas seeks to rebuild Gaza. Then why did it destroy all the infrastructure, waterworks, greenhouses and industrial plant left by Israel? It has been suggested that Hamas merely needs funding and it will be peaceful. Then why is it that even the Arab League, flush with petrodollars, has given nothing. The answers are simple. Hamas willingly lives in destruction and desolation because it abides by the creed of division, discord and death. And with this creed it happily terrorizes its own people and the world. This is the mirror of the “caliphate” that these theocratic tyrants and their allies would impose on the free world.

President Kennedy pronounced in his inaugaural address that “civility is not a sign of weakness and sincerity is always subject to proof.” Hamas has always taken civility for weakness and its sincerity has never been proven. It is time to eradicate this evil from the earth.

On this, see also the blog of our reader Findalis:

...the confrontation is not between Hamas with its rockets and Israel. The confrontation is between Hamas, as one of the entities that compose radical Islam, and the free world. Its declared goal is to establish a world Islamic caliphate as part of an anti Semitic ideology that also calls for the annihilation of the Jews. Explanations will follow. And since political Islam has already annihilated millions without any announcement, we should take it seriously when there is an announcement about annihilation.

Is Hamas part of the global Jihad? Section 7 of the organization’s manifesto explains that it is not a local movement, nor even a national movement. The heading is “The global nature of the Islamic resistance movement.” And later, “Because the Muslims are spread throughout the entire world, the movement is global.”

Is this a movement that calls for the annihilation of the Jews? That is what is written in a continuation of the same section. “The messenger (Mohammed) said, “The Muslims will fight the Jews and the Muslims will kill them, until the Jew hides behind the stones and the trees, and then the stones and the trees will say, ‘Oh, Muslim, Abd Allah, there is a Jew who is hiding, come and kill him.” And this is in addition to blaming the Jews for all the wars in the world, for world domination, etc.

Sheikh Muhsin Abu Ita stated on the Al Aktza channel that “The annihilation of the Jews is a wonderful blessing.” Dr. Ahmed Bahar, acting chairman of the Palestinian parliament stated that “the Jews are cancer, and they and the Americans should be destroyed to the last person.”

According to the Palestinian constitution, this man, Bahar, will become the head of the Palestinian Authority if Abu Mazen ceases to function. Dr. Yunis Al Astal, a member of the Palestinian parliament, one of the senior Hamas officials, who served as dean of the faculty are of Shariyah and chairman of the Islamic Law Department at Islamic University, stated that the annihilation order is a matter for our time and not for the future.

The book by Dr. Matthias Kuntzel, “Jihad and Jew-Hatred,” elaborates on the annihilation ideology of radical Islam, including among Hamas. We have not yet succeeded in imparting this awareness to the world. It is still not too late.

This is already starting with Muslims all over the world calling for a second Holocaust against the Jews in every nation of the world.

Israel, the mythic state of Palestine, and gambling

This post is much indebted to an unpublished essay written by a friend a few years ago. Should he pass by, my thanks as usual.
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Two things jumped out at me reading the Globe and Mail Wednesday morning. 1) There are at least some Palestinians (loyal to Fatah), facing down some cold and bloody reality, who can speak what seems to be a good degree of truth:

"Hamas works for Iran. They brought us back to the Stone Age," says Mohammed Abu Zakari, 48, who lost one of his legs after a Hamas shooting in the civil conflict. He has left his wife and 12 of his 13 children behind in Gaza. His 13th child, 19-year-old Ahmed, is with him, another Hamas victim whose ankle has been reconstructed.

"I'm happy to see them eradicated," he said, blaming Hamas for the carnage and destruction now taking place in Gaza.

Mahmoud as-Shatat, 23, a former student leader for Fatah, agrees. "Hamas consider us infidels," he said. "They brutalized us, their own people. I have no sympathy for them."

And what of the pictures on TV showing the ordinary people of Gaza being shelled?

"Hamas shoots from between houses," Mr. as-Shatat said. "They hope Israel will fire at them and kill some civilians."

An uneasy quiet then settled over the room.

Mr. Abu Nahel broke the silence: "I want those who shot me to die," he said. "But those are our families being shelled," including the fiancée he left behind in Gaza City."

2) I was wondering whether the Globe picked, for its letters to the editor page, an example of the more pathetic attempts at reasoning that it has received in support of CUPE Ontario (the union, led by terrorist sympathizer Sid Ryan, that represents, among others, teaching assistants and sessional instructors in the province's universities) and its call to ban Israeli academics from teaching in Canada:

AJAMU NANGWAYA

January 7, 2009

Toronto -- As a doctoral student, academic worker and a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, I stand in solidarity with the call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions. As Canadian academics, the minimum that we can do to help force Israel to comply with United Nations resolutions on the national self-determination of the Palestinians is to boycott academic and cultural institutions.

The call for a boycott is not about academic freedom, but the freedom of the Palestinians and their right to not be the recipients of collective punishment.

-------------

National self-determination? How is it possible for Sid's legions to be so trapped in a fantasy of their own self-righteousness not to see that invoking "national autonomy" in the context of Hamas-controlled Gaza is to make an utter sham of the concept of national self-rule? Islamist and tribal war lords, ruling over you with deadly force in the best of times, and hiding in your basement, firing and drawing fire on innocent victims in the worst, are not compatible with any plausible account of national self-determination. And it is not just because Hamas brutally murder or maim anyone they suspect of opposing their rule (see story above), but because they refuse on principle to act like any kind of responsible national government would. They refuse to negotiate the existence, or anything much else, of a much more powerful neighbor, in the hope that one day they can "negotiate" from strength. And they don't have to come to terms now with the hard reality, for them, of the existence of Israel as a demographic and military force, because they are protected from being wiped out by unlimited warfare by a Utopian ideology - the shrieks that come from the world when Israel does anything that can count as "disproportionate response" - promoted at the UN and by much of the Western left-liberal elite.

Endless people can make their careers championing some non-existent "peace process" only to give the likes of Hamas the ability to pretend as if it is the UN's or someone else's responsibility to "negotiate" their grievances vis a vis Israel, to act like a judge according winner status and hefty remuneration to an obviously aggieved party in a lawwuit. It is a useful stalling opportunity because at heart Hamas has nothing to say to Israel, beyond short-term truces and pragmatic deals, about living together in the long term.

Those who cry about the necessary evil that Israel does - and it is evil - in trying to enforce a rule of deterrence and punishment for those who use civilians as human shields, or even those who allow themselves to be used as shields, to provide victims/"martyrs" to feed the narrative of the anti-Israel forces in the global media and in our universities, are really the ones who are actively promoting the conditions, not for peace, but for an endless toll of just such casualties, all in the name of a "process", so that the likes of Hamas can continue to exist and never have to engage with the realities of living like a responsible state or nation in a world of other nations, dealing with the reality of human conflict and pursuing self-interests in a more or less rational and transparent manner. Hamas, with its Muslim Brotherhood ideology, opposes our Western-led, now global, modernity. It is not interested in playing a part in the kind of international order that is compatible with modernity and the now single global economy.

The fantasy of the CUPE crowd - the fantasy that they are working in the cause of peace and, in the long term, some new Utopia, can only survive as long as anyone takes their silly little threats, a pathetic version of the Hamas terrorist rockets, seriously. It should be all too apparent to people that what the potential Israeli academic teaching in Canada threatens, to CUPE union masters, is not any serious moral position. Rather what is threatened is the validity of a certain kind of magical thinking that is common to both CUPE and Hamas thugs. This is the kind of magic that is commonly found among postmodern academics sure in their ideologies that reality is little but a construction of one or another human's will to power.

Consider first, Hamas, who say: I'll shoot rockets at you, Israel, but if you respond and cross the line into my territory, well, you don't know what's going to hit you. This kind of threat is magical because it works, for no obvious reason, as long as the threatened take the threat seriously, not knowing what one side or another is really capable of doing when push comes to shove.

As for CUPE's share in the Global Intifada's magic act, the union chiefs (in what may be for them a typical bargaining tactic) threaten: yo, Israeli academics, openly and publicly fight against your government, support the present (anti) reality of Gaza, i.e. support our fantasy of there being a responsible movement for national government in Palestine, that Israel somehow refuses to recognize, or we'll ban you from teaching here. We must protect the Gazans (and our students), from ever having to leave a certain fantasy bubble and deal honestly, openly, transparently with Israeli reality, its demographic and military presence in the "aboriginal" Palestinian "homeland". Real negotiations are risky - believe us we know - so let's pretend it's Israel that has always historically refused to deal in good faith. It's better to threaten and see what kind of reality we can create without negotiation, without free intellectual inquiry in our universities.

As we will suggest below, this is not just about Israel, but a larger reality about the nature of nation-states that CUPE academic ideologues really wish to keep at bay, lest it destroy their magical fantasies about constructing a world without war.

For both parties, Israel is to be approached, "negotiated", not by any responsible goverment coming to terms with the reality of Israel as the only truly modern economy and military in the middle east, but by threats that hope to work magic: cross our line in the sand and we'll go hysterical!!

So, since I'm short on time, let me try to make the point in hysterical guise (imagine late night in the grad student housing):

"We'll ban Israeli books next, and internet sites, and oppressive Jewish symbols: that'll teach our students and the world about national self-determination. How dare they determine to go war, to kill; no nation has the right to do that, if not in perfect UN-sanctioned, proportionate, tit for tat..."

Dreaming now:

We'll be cheering at our rallies: "UN UN UN, big mama with cool jobs in New York, Geneva, Gaza, and other cool towns: give every child her share of the pie... hell on those who grow powerful and create social differences by actually succeeding in the oppressive global economy."

"Oh look at the victims, what's the latest death count?"

"Imagine, a world without smug Jew-y, Yankee nations: ban ban ban!"

"Israel, you don't know how mad a CUPE girl with the hots for Sid Ryan can get! (Heteronormative guilt aside, err on top...)"

Threats, like those from a union of teaching assistants calling to ban all Israeli academics, that rely on a certain magic to work really appeal to our fantastic imagination. Consider, for example, "Know your limit, play within it": that's that avertising slogan the British Columbia government uses to appear responsible, to assuage its guilt over encouraging our (former?) citizens to become fantasizing gamblers in our now ubiquitous lotteries and casinos. Of course, while appearing to assert responsibility, it is really also a legitimization and call to gamble, within limits, to gamble but without real risk.

A little fantasy of striking the big one may be fine if you're an occasional gambler, spending your entertainment allowance where you like. Time and money spent at the opera is not for everyone. But it's not really the occasional entertainment that the guilty government's slogan targets, for the most part. And, seriously now, what's the good of telling a gambling addict "know your limit, play within it"?

Alternatively, one might tell the addict, you might one day just stop the madness, cold turkey. Or, if you can't do that and things become really unbearable, as one day they will, maybe you have to embrace a lesser evil, break right through your limit, sell everything, lose the kids, wife, and job, and enter a new domain where you might, amidst loss and unimaginable trial, find that you can/must now (facing hard reality fully at last, beginning to distinguish and live a new necessity, getting the upperhand on your fantasies) break free of your addiction and become a new, responsible, person by negotiating a new personality in sync with a hard reality you never dared admit could exist as such, as long as you obeyed the divine law: know your limit, play within it.

Of course, you might also ruin yourself trying to break out of an addiction held and sustained within limits. Freedom is a risk, so you might, if you're a Palestinian gambler, or a CUPE/Sid's Angels Associate, want to consider signing on to the UN terrrorist-to-post-national Utopia (slogan: One Umma, One Caliphate!) "national self-determination" insurance policy. CUPE Ontario has a bunch of whizz kids crunching the actuarials for their dissertations... ("government-backed mortgages for the disenfranchised in the new America", oops, wrong table... "life expectancy for those in UN-brokered peace processes where one or another "responsible" government encourages the martyrdom of its people to the righteous cause of anti-nationalism, i mean anti-Zionism [per dollar-year of "foreign aid" payments to warlords]").

Alternatively, you might grow a new respect for normal reality which would include the possibility of a self-ruling nation courageously breaking a stand-off involving its inevitable slow death (waiting for the bombs to grow bigger) and doing now the evil necessary to leave addicted people speechless, but eventually forcing them to rethink their ability to deny a hard reality and thus maybe, just maybe, start a new page in hopes of developing a new narrative.

But, oh, the allure of just another throw of the dice, to play the fantasy state projected by "international actors", the sovereignty that does not have to recognize its neighbor's legitimacy, or mere reality, it's hard cold presence, and yet not fear military defeat, in a glorious refusal to join the modern world where nation-states are responsible to the banal needs of real people in real places and not to an idealized past projected onto the future, like the Palestinian refugees of 1948's right of return by UN-sponsored time machine to quiet and pleasant olive groves.

Know your limit, play within it, or else we'll ban you from teaching here until your admit guilt and sign on to our risk-free doctrine of international self-determination: welcome to the mind of the Ph.D./union thug, fighting for the post-national empire in 2009. And this is what their kids are saying:

As Jewish youth, we are diverse, but we are unified in our solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza.

Some of us are students. We are outraged by the bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza city, as well as other civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and mosques.

Some of us are Arab-Jews and people of colour. We stand against Israel's racism, which has been enshrined in Israeli law, and privileges its Jewish citizens over its non-Jewish ones. This apartheid state views Palestinians as an expendable people, no more than collateral damage.

Some of us are queer. We reject Israel's branding of itself as the only safe place for queer people in the Middle-East while it targets gay and lesbian Palestinians and renders life unsafe for millions of others.

Oh to be gay in Gaza! I can see it now. But the fantasy continues:

Some of us are Israelis living in Canada. [Some of us want CUPE jobs!] We are calling for a solidarity that stretches beyond borders and nationalities. Israel's violent actions will only serve to further isolate the state and its citizens from the rest of the world. By calling itself a Jewish state and committing war crimes in the name of Jews everywhere, Israel makes the world even less safe for Jews, leading to an increase in animus towards Jewish people around the world.

Even though there have been approximately 100 Palestinian deaths for every Israeli killed by rocket fire, we recognize that Israeli Apartheid also leads to Israeli casualties. The blame for these deaths lies with Israel – if there were no occupation and no apartheid policies, there would be no rocket fire.

The only thing that stands between us and a Utopia where we could be truly gay Jews, is Israel.

But why is it always about Israel? Why are Canadian unionists only now marching the streets in hate rallies? There could be more deaths in any number of supposed border and land conflicts around the world tomorrow, and no Canadian pseudo-teachers in CUPE Ontario will call for a ban on, say, Indian or Pakikstani academics over Kashmir, or on one or another African tribe over the mass killings in and around the Congo. I doubt one could even get heard at CUPE calling for a ban on academics associated with the Mugabe regime, let alone the oppressive governments in places like Cuba or China. Ban on Sudanese teachers? The victims of the Israelis are always more special. The (Palestinian, Jewish, and international) victims of the Palestinians mostly unheard of.

We often argue that anti-Zionism is but a form of antisemitism. And it most usually is a new form of antisemitism. But we might also consider that Israel is hated not merely or perhaps even primarily because it is Jewish (in all but one respect) but because in order to survive it has to stand up to the drug-dealer's friendly mode for ruling compliant people. It has to question our addictions. When Israel hears a cheery, "get your daily dime bag, know your limit, play within it", it is not quite the same as for those of us who never have the unique local medical problem that gets one close to a deadly overdose. Israel's existence is always balanced on the knife's edge where it has to say to the cheery slogan: well maybe today but maybe also we have to say no longer tomorrow. No more yes to magical incantations that demand reality perform according to wish. Instead of knowing our limit, and playing by your rules, maybe we have to act against an intolerable evil so as to bring into being a new, open-ended scene with all kinds of uncertain possibilities, full of risk and likely some amount of tragic death. We may have to go first, to act on our own initiative, on our account of ethics and human decency, without permission from New York or the scholars of CUPE Ontario. We may have to start something meaningful, of world historical import, that you will be merely left to respond to. Jews going first; second, gentiles calling Sid Ryan, right after than Ban ki-Moon fellow! Sorry, but we have no choice.

Israel (and similarly America) is hated more than any other party to a bloody conflict because it represents, better than anyone else can, the possibilities that flow from firstness in the context of a modern nation-state, from a responsible exercise of national freedom with all the capabilities of a military staffed by educated people with initiative. It represents the antithesis to all the Gnostic energies that went into building the UN, the EU, the casinos of British Columbia, and all the other institutions of the Western left-liberal state since World War II in a vain attempt to deny that potentially deadly human conflict, with an uncertain meaning and future, will always be with us.

People hate Israel to deny, in their own minds, some such hard reality, to forego participation in a humbled humanity that requires not Utopian thought but realistic thinking to mediate the inevitable quantum of evil in this world. And realistic thinking requires realistic agents capable of responsible, transparent, and accountable actions. And to this end, we can imagine no institutions more effective, however less than perfect they are, than those of the modern, democratic, self-ruling nation-state. This is because only such states can truly be representative of ordinary people.

This is why the children of CUPE Ontario propose to demand Canadians hear their cries about who can and cannot teach in "their" universities. Because if we turn a blind ear to their incessant whine about Israeli evil, we condemn their religious and careerist fantasy (working in post-national institutions). (I recently chatted with a professor of Canadian history, teaching in a leading Canadian university, and he told me of his deep hatred for all "myths" of national identity. So, I wondered, what narratives or morals of Canadian history was he possibly teaching: non-belief or fantasy belief, the belief that humanity can be organized by the eternal deconstruction of the victimizing myth, so that nothing ever happens that is not somehow sanctioned from on high as proportionate...?)

Orthodox Islam has a similar problem with any kind of responsible Jewish political life in the lands it claims as its own. Its problem with Israel is not simply a dispute about land or colonization, or any of the other figures of blame we frequently hear about: we know this because even if all presently Jewish-owned land were given to members of the Umma, it will never be imaginable for today's Orthodox Muslims, in organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, that Jews wield any kind of distinctively Jewish power or rights alongside Muslims in an Arab "nation" (an impossibility for which even today's "secular" Palestinians show implicit respect). Islam's problem with Israel, at root, is that it contains Jews who don't want to be dhimmis. Islamic law, and by extension most of Arab culture, cannot conceive of a Muslim nation of Palestine living, in some open-ended history, regularly negotiating power with co-citizen (or neighbor) Jews (in control, say, of Jerusalem). To imagine or live any such thing would be to change the God-given law, and to deny the narrative of Palestinian victimization. For once you admit some non-dhimmi role for Jews, you begin to allow little thoughts regarding the possibility that what they have been doing up to now is at least in some ways a legitimate anticipation of that role.

Until this impossibility in the Arab and Islamic imagination changes, all the pretense at participating in a "peace process", in a one or two state solution, is a sham, a stalling tactic that waits for the day Israel can be wiped off the map, or "negotiated" into dhimmitude.

And this kind of dogmatism can only change when people refuse, responsibly, to know their limit and play within it. Sometimes the evil must be faced, the irresponsible "law" of the UN or some Koranic school must be broken, and new things be allowed to emerge on new scenes with new possibilities. There are times when a certain violence is the lesser evil - and the killing it may involve is indeed evil - and as such something in which we should all seek our part, though maybe it is up to those whose survival is most on the line - those for whom evil is right at hand - to take the lead in smashing pre-ordained limits.

Hamas Supporters Burn Cars In France; Israel Supporters Don't

Paris was a witness to two distinct demonstrations this weekend, in the same general neighborhood, with radically opposite behavior and comportment on display.

On Saturday, a mob of thugs expressed their support for HAMAS and "peace" in the Middle East by burning cars and looting stores, as well as mounting an assault on the Israeli Embassy.

From Tiberge's translated account at GalliaWatch:

According to Le Parisien, 21,000 persons demonstrated in Paris against the Israeli offensive in Gaza. A few hundred attempted to get into the Israeli Embassy but were stopped by police barricades around Place Saint-Augustin and Boulevard Haussmann.

Some vandals threw chairs taken from cafés at the riot police, who, in turn, used tear gas. Some climbed on top of cars; public property was destroyed; two Israeli flags were burned; on Boulevard Haussmann three cars burned, about 15 others were turned upside down, then pillaged; storefronts were broken...

Le Figaro reports that 20 rioters were arrested; they also specify that the targeted stores included a telecommunication shop, a jeweler, and a glass store. Of the dozen or more vandalized cars, one vehicle belonged to police, and of the three torched automobiles one was a police car. Ten police were wounded during the rioting.

On Sunday, a noticeably different standard of behavior was exhibited at the pro-Israel rally held on the streets of Paris.

Translated from the French paper La Provence:

Several thousand people rallied [early Sunday afternoon] on Matignon Avenue in Paris to support “the self-defensive actions of Israel” and to recognize “the memory of the Israeli victims of Hamas.” 12,000 people participated in the demonstration, according to CRIF [Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France]. The police estimate 4,000 people.
...
The supporters, wrapped in large Israeli flags or brandishing small flags of the Jewish state, listened to speeches in the cold, and sung chants in Hebrew, as well as La Marseillaise.
…

No cars set on fire, no vandalism, no pelting police with projectiles, no pillaging of stores, as happened with the previous "anti-violence" demonstration.

What irony that the Israeli Embassy in France finds itself on a street named for author Francois Rabelais; a writer who defined his philosophy as "...une certaine gaieté d'esprit confite de mépris des choses fortuites" ("a certain gaiety of spirit preserved in contempt of the accidents of life") [Gargantua et Pentagruel]... to savor the promised fruits of peace, to "take all things in good part, and [interpret] every action in the best sense; he neither vexed nor disquieted himself... since all the goods that the earth contains... are not of so much worth as that we should disturb or disorder our emotions, trouble or perplex our senses or spirits..."

palestinian civil war tv cartoons

While we offer our kids the droll adventures of Spongebob Squarepants and the earnest Caillou, the palestinians serve up violent cat and mouse civil war cartoons for their young children to dine on.

Memri, the Middle East Media Research Institute, shares the latest educational efforts unleashed by the minds at al-aqsa tv.

Memri entitles their clip, "Hamas-Style Lion King Vanquishes Fatah Rats on Al-Aqsa TV" ... and the lion does resemble the character from Disney's Lion King cartoon, but I don't recognize any of the scenes as being from that film. I think the lion animation is copied from one of the Lion King sequels, because the draughtsmanship is so clearly superior to anything else throughout the anti-fatah cartoon. It cannot be by the same hands creating the crudely-rendered jihadi rats.

Otherwise the film has a very obvious japanese animation influence, with lots of camera moves to hide the lack of movement on the characters.

Strange choice of animal symbols, I thought; wouldn't the lion be more readily associated with Israel, than with hamas? Especially considering an early scene, where the lion is seen crouching defiantly between gaza and the west bank?

A surprising amount of honesty towards the latter half of the piece, as a rat accidentally kills one of his fatah friends, yet zips around to point an accusing finger at the lion, uttering an all-too familiar cry by now:

By the end, the same sad question comes to mind, as it always does when watching palestinian "culture"...:

How will there ever be peace, with each new generation freshly poisoned by barbaric filth such as this?

Compare and contrast:

1. Sudan Christians "Fleeing Genocide" Reach Israel:

Dozens of Sudanese Christian refugees, most of them children, have entered Israel after fleeing "a genocide campaign" carried out by forces linked to Sudan's "Islamist regime," the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) said Friday, June 15.

The ICEJ, an evangelical organization supporting the Jewish state with aid and advocacy, said authorities are struggling to accommodate 31 Sudanese Christians, including 17 children and 14 adults, who entered the country late Thursday, June 14, via the Israeli resort town of Eilat with assistance from local Bedouins.

They were expected to staying in Bedouin tents for the weekend.

ICEJ Executive Director Malcolm Hedding told BosNewsLife that authorities asked his group "to assume responsibility over their housing and care for two weeks until they can be accommodated" among several Israeli collective communities known as 'kibbutzim'.

SUDANESE INFLUX

"An increasing number of Sudanese refugees fleeing Darfur and other conflict zones have been entering Israel through Egypt in recent weeks. Due to their United Nations refugee status, Israel is obligated to care for them," he explained.

2. Iraq and Gaza: Facing Al Qaeda:

The remnant Christians of Iraq and Gaza have survived war and civil strife but they may not survive al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is not interested in nationalism: its goal is total religious cleansing and complete Islamisation.

IRAQ: AL QAEDA PURGING BAGHDAD

In Dora, the ancient Christian quarter of Baghdad, churches have been ordered to remove their crosses or be burned. Over recent months most churches have done so but St John the Baptist Chaldean Church and the Church of St George were resistant so militants climbed up and ripped off the crosses themselves. A fatwa has been issued forbidding Christians to wear the cross or make any religious gesture. On the weekend of 18 April, militants issued an ultimatum to the Christian residents of the Mualimien neighbourhood, Dora district: after 24 hours they would have to convert to Islam or die. Six Christian families fled and are being cared for in a church elsewhere. Whilst they were allowed to flee they were not permitted to take any of their belongings.

GAZA: AL QAEDA PURGING GAZA

Security specialists warned years ago that al Qaeda had infiltrated Gaza. Though denied by Arafat there is little doubt about it now. In August 2005 al Qaeda exploited the security vacuum created by the Israeli Defence Force’s disengagement and withdrawal from Gaza, increasing its presence with men and arms. In early March 2007 Islamist Hamas entered into a government of national unity with Fatah and agreed to ‘respect’ international agreements. Al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri responded by slamming Hamas, accusing it of falling ‘into the swamp of surrender’ by abandoning its ideology and ’selling out’ to Israel and the US for the sake of securing seats in government. Since then, al Qaeda-linked Wahhabist jihadis have dramatically escalated their effort in purging and Islamising Gaza. They have assassinated three Hamas leaders and are targeting everything they deem ‘un-Islamic’.

On the night of 15 April Gaza’s only Christian bookshop was bombed (see RLP 425). On Saturday night 21 April the American International School was bombed. On Sunday 6 May the UN-administered Omariya School in Rafah was attacked in broad daylight by some 70 white-robed Wahhabi militants from a group calling itself ‘Salafiyeen’. They tried to prevent the school’s sports carnival, deeming it ‘un-Islamic’. When security forces challenged them the militants responded with grenades and machine guns, killing one and wounding six. The group had previously warned the school about its ‘un-Islamic’ activities such as teaching boys and girls together and permitting music and dance, as well as the involvement of UNRWA director John Ging, a ‘Christian’ and ‘anti-Islam infidel’.

3. Dichter: Israel will allow aid into Gaza | Jerusalem Post:

Fearful of a looming humanitarian disaster, Israel will allow food and other basic supplies into the Gaza Strip following Hamas's takeover of the coastal area, a senior government minister said Saturday.

"Our consideration is the humanitarian issue. Allowing merchandise through Karni in order to prevent hunger in Gaza is what will guide Israel to allow merchandise," Public Security Minister Avi Dichter told Channel 2.

4. Palestinians Flee to Israel:

According to the international left and the paleo-right, Israel is a fascist apartheid state, a brutal occupier, universally despised by the oppressed Palestinian people.

So where do the oppressed Palestinians look for sanctuary, when the terrorist government they elected begins the inevitable slaughter?

Palestinians run as they try to cross to the Israel side at the Erez Crossing, in the northern Gaza Strip, Saturday, June 16, 2007. Dozens of Palestinians converged on the Erez crossing with Israel on Saturday, trying to leave the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ takeover. At the same time, hundreds of people looted police positions on the Palestinian side of Erez, and at one point Israeli troops fired in the air to keep the crowd at bay. The looters walked off with furniture and scrap metal. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

Usually we here at Covenant Zone try to avoid cut and paste blogging without adding any commentary of our own. But sometimes patterns in the avalanche of news stories we peruse seem to be evident enough and just need to be highlighted through a simple juxtaposition of stories. (HT: Michael T.)