If Neda had died in Bil'in

The death of Neda Soltan in Tehran, Iran, during the repression of a protest rally is a shocker:



So is the death of Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahmah in Bil'in, the West Bank, in similar circumstances:



So why have you heard so much about Neda and nothing at all about Bassem? I'll make an attempt at explanation towards the end of this post, but drawing a parallelism between the murders of these two young people seems to be in order first.

Of course, I'm by no means the first blogger to note the symmetry between both incidents, and their asymmetrical treatment by the media (see here, here). But I'd like to focus here on what the reactions would be if Neda had been killed by Israeli soldiers in Bil'in, comparing them, when appropriate, with the reactions to Neda's death in Teheran.

1) Initially, it would be claimed that the video of her death is fake (the "Pallywood" argument). The claim would only be dropped when enough Jews showed up confirming her death.

2) She would be described as having been throwing rocks, and it would be stated that those rocks in fact endangered the Israeli soldiers' lives. This defense was put up by Zionists on the few specialized blogs that reported on Bassem's death:

If as reported, they were throwing stones and trying to destroy the fence (collective responsibility works both ways), I can’t get upset that the guy died.

This is striking because the video of Bassem's death, which clearly shows no rock being thrown by the demonstrators, had been pasted on the very same blog where the response above was posted, and because there had been no mention of rock-throwing, other than by Zionist commenters on blogs.

3) It would be asserted that her death in Bil'in was intentionally caused by other Palestinians (Alan Dershowitz's theory that the Palestinians want to maximize civilian casualties on both sides). No one would dare suggest, however, that the Teheran demonstrators killed Neda to produce a martyr for their cause (even if they were as Muslim as [most, anyway] Palestinians, and you know, taqqiya, taqqiya).

4) In the case of Neda's fictional death in Bil'in, it would be stressed that the demonstration in which she died was unauthorized. In the case of her real death in Teheran, on the other hand, it would be considered outrageous to even make an issue of the legal status of the protest she joined.

5) In her Bil'in death, her motives for joining the demonstration would be scrutinized in depth and questioned. Why was she there? Her house was not about to be demolished, she had no relative in jail, she even was overweight. In discussing her Teheran death, however, her belonging to a well-to-do family that owns a travel agency, and the fact that her main problem just before joining the rally was that her car's air conditioning didn't work properly, were not brought up to disingenuously wonder what obscure reasons she might have to oppose a regime that treated her so well.

6) After all of that failed, Israel's announcement that her death in Bil'in will be investigated would be taken very seriously. By contrast, Iran's announcement that her Teheran death would be investigated was quickly dismissed. (And rightly so, some will claim, because democracies produce reliable investigations, and tyrannies don't. But Israel is democratic to Jews and Jewish to Arabs, and it has been exposed as a notorious liar as regards the killing of unarmed Arabs.)

7) Finally, Israel's "finding" that the bullet that killed her in Bil'in had bounced against a traffic-light pole before hitting her would be taken at its word. While Iran's "finding" that the bullet that killed her in Teheran was from a type of weapon not used by Iran's security forces was met with the derision both "findings" deserve.

This is the point where a psychologist would come in handy to explain where these different treatments of information stem from. In the absence of one, I'll put forward a theory both shrinks and ordinary people are welcome to comment on.

Israel enjoys a "credibility capital" that is due not to its record as regards truth-telling and respect for innocent lives, but to the behavior of Diaspora Jews. Few violent criminals are found among the latter (or among French Armenians, Korean Americans, Japanese Argentinians and other financially secure and educated minorities). Therefore, the reasoning goes, Israeli Jews are unlikely, too, to kill defenseless prisoners and such. Little thought is given to the existence of an Israeli Jewish underclass that is simply not there in the Diaspora, and that may lack the restraints that are supposed to come with education.

So when a damning video arises, this presents CNN with a problem: Jews are seen doing what we know they don't do. The solution to this logical dilemma? Not airing it in prime time, or at all just in case. And getting an Israeli to deny it all if a talking head does get around to mentioning the incident.

Explosive meat

Did you know that beef can be used to make bombs and rockets? Neither did I. How else to explain, however, the ban on live cattle imports into Gaza enforced by the Israeli government over the better part of the year to date.

A recent Haaretz story reports the Israeli government's decision to allow 350 heads of cattle into the strip for the first time in nine months. (The Israeli military's "Coordinator of (Israeli) Government Activities in the Territories" (COGAT) has reportedly determined that 300 cows per week are the minimum needed in Gaza in order to avoid malnutrition, and a "humanitarian crisis.") But why was shipment of cattle forbidden in the first place?

This is a case of an idiotic decision by the Israeli government. Unlike in the case of the shooting of children, which is customarily described as a regrettable consequence of the rocks they throw (or is it "hand-propelled mineral devices"?), there's no way the ban on livestock can be rationalized, and it has been met with fierce resistance from within Israel itself. Not because of any humanitarian concern, mind you, but because it hurts the cattle raising industry:

The director of the Livestock Growers Association, Haim Dayan, said that the problem of his colleagues is that even though they now have permission to raise livestock for export to the Gaza Strip, long-term bans prevent them from doing so. As a result, they complain that they are often stuck with large stocks of cattle, something that lowers local prices and can result in enormous losses to the growers.

"If they tell us that the Strip is closed entirely, we will plan accordingly. But the current situation cannot go on," Dayan said.

Another concern that has been raised is that the smuggling of cattle from Egypt through tunnels to make up for the animals that aren't coming in from Israel might result in unhealthy animals being imported that could eventually result in disease spreading to Israel:

Israel's ban on the importation of livestock into Gaza, which has included cattle, sheep and goats, did not succeed in preventing them from being smuggled in. According to Gaza-based sources, hundreds if not thousands of head of livestock were smuggled in from Sinai in recent months, via tunnels.

The veterinary services of the Ministry of Agriculture warned the Defense Minister that the smuggling of livestock originating in countries like Somalia, where inadequate veterinary care is available, may contribute to the outbreak of illnesses, including mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease, and Brucellosis, that can also be dangerous for humans.

In summary, Israel has taken an irrational measure that might hurt its own economy and health system, as well as its already tarnished international image. The logic behind such irresponsible behavior is that if Gazans, including young children, are prevented from eating animal protein they will understand how bad Hamas is and eventually topple the regime. In other words, forced infant malnutrition is being used to try and achieve a political result.

What do you call it? I call it terrorism.

Letters to a Zionist friend (1): Natural growth

You, my friend, become somewhat enraged when I say that Israel should stop its policy of unabated settlement enlargement. It is a fact that there are settlers living in the West Bank, you argue. Granted, some of them will have to go when a final settlement (in the other meaning of the word, in this case) is reached. But in the meantime, those people are having children, and those children need day-care centers, playgrounds, schools, universities and, in fact, apartment blocks once they themselves get married and have kids. Why am I against those sons and daughters of settlers -- only because they're Jewish? Do I want to ethnically cleanse them? Or am I perhaps suggesting that Jewish women in the West Bank should be sterilized so that they won't have any more babies?

Rest assured, my dear friend, that I don't want to harm those people who, maybe duped by the Israeli government, have chosen to settle on another people's land. In fact, they would stay put under the solution I envisage for the I/P conflict: a binational state, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, with equal rights for Jews, Arabs, Druze, Samaritans, Armenians, Circassians and none of the above. But since there's little talk of this solution nowadays, and people on both sides insist on a two-state solution, I also maintain that, if the latter were implemented, the Jews in the West Bank, except for those who have repeatedly engaged in unlawful activities, should be allowed to remain there, either as foreign residents or, ideally, as dual Israeli-Palestinian citizens.

That said, I don't find it advisable that new Jewish migrants be settled in the West Bank. If the area is the subject of ongoing negotiations, it is an act of bad faith to bring more and more Jews so as to create Jewish majorities in places traditionally populated by Arabs and lay claim to those areas.

To this, you have answered with your Prime Minister's recent words. Mr. Binyamin Netanyahu has been straightforward and clear, you claim:

"The question of not expanding the territory is different from freezing life. You know, you have children, you have babies born, what are you going to do with them? You have to give them kindergartens, you have to give them schools."

"I don't want to grab new land," the prime minister continued. "But we really want people to have normal lives until that final agreement is reached."

Essentially, Netanyahu tells us it's all about not freezing things, about normal life being allowed to flow.

I seldom use hard words against people or institutions who may be dear to my friends. But in this case you leave me with no option: your PM is a liar. It's not true that construction in the West Bank is intended to meet the needs of the already existing population. In fact, a recent Jerusalem Post story reported that:

In 2007, the Jewish population of Judea and Samaria grew by 14,500, or 5.6% - from 261,600 to 276,100 - close to three times the growth rate of Israel's general population, which rose by only 1.8% during that same year.

The "natural growth" was 9,200, or 63.5%, with the remaining 5,300, or 36.5%, constituting migrants.

Now just think for a minute. While the 9,200 "natural growth" new residents are all babies, born to parents who already own a home, the 5,300 migrants must be provided with new apartments -- housing that was formerly not there. So it is safe to assume, my friend, that most of the new construction in the settlements is not intended to accommodate natural growth, but to house the forced growth brought in by migrants who mostly settle there allured by low taxes and inexpensive services, all subsidized by the State of Israel and by rich fanatical Jews from the Diaspora.

Now put your hand on your heart and answer me: isn't the life of a community that has grown by 9,000 babies vibrant enough? Why bring more life from outside? And after investing large amounts of money and effort to help those migrants settle where they don't belong, can Israel be said to do "everything within its reach to secure peace with the Palestinians," as you so often claim?

Israel, Daniella Weiss and the good cop-bad cop game

We all know Israel honors its obligations under the Road Map. Therefore, it doesn't build new settlements in the West Bank, only extensions of existing ones, and then only to accommodate natural growth. What do we antisemites want, to sterilize Jewish women?

In line with that good behavior, Israel cracks down on anyone who tries to illegally build homes outside the legal (under Israeli law) settlements.

Or does it.

No, it doesn't. The Jerusalem Post reports that:

The Land of Israel Faithful group said Monday it has a plan to construct 30 new outposts in the West Bank over the summer, in response to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech a day earlier in which he said that no new settlements would be built and no additional land would be expropriated for settlement development.

Former Kedumim mayor Daniella Weiss, one of the leaders of the Land of Israel Faithful, told The Jerusalem Post her group was recruiting activists for this summer's outpost building.

I.e., this woman is announcing that she'll do something that is illegal under both Israeli and international law. The whole point of the operation is actually not so much to erect new land-grabbing units, but to reinforce the existing ones. Can you imagine? Thirty new outposts are set up; one day the Israeli army comes and destroys them; and the following day the Hasbara brigade appears in the media to announce that, in a painful concession, Israel has dismantled tens of outposts. That way the public will forget about the 100 or so equally illegal outposts that had been previously established, which will then become part of the "facts on the ground." Ms. Weiss explained it much more succinctly than me:

Weiss said she was not concerned that by pushing to build at more sites, the Land of Israel Faithful would weaken those eight outposts it has been trying to establish for two years.

"I have learned from experience that if you create new things, it strengthens the old ones," she said.

In the face of this cynical statement, one would expect the State of Israel to arrest her to show its commitment to the Road Map. Instead, she's allowed to roam the West Bank unmolested "creating things" at will. She doesn't loose sleep over the possibility of ending up in jail. She has "learned from experience" that, in the unlikely event that she's detained, she'll be released within a few hours.

It would be so easy for the Israeli government to shut us all up! Just by cracking down on the few rotten apples in the West Bank it would deprive the Pally-supporting crowd of a talking point. Why doesn't it, if it has repeatedly denounced the illegal outposts?

I won't give a direct answer to that; only remind the reader that in police stations all over the world there exists a game called good cop-bad cop. The bad cop mistreats the detainee; the good cop pretends to care for him. But two rules are inflexible: the good cop, for all his feigned concern, will never do anything concrete to stop the bad cop. And the detainee always ends up beaten to a pulp.

An unreasonable recognition demand

Said Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu in his Bar Ilan University speech on Sunday:

I turn to you, our Palestinian neighbors, led by the Palestinian Authority, and I say: Let's begin negotiations immediately without preconditions.

Wow, this is encouraging. Or it would be, if one were not aware that Israeli landmark statements always come with a caveat that in fact nullifies the supposed watershed. Torture is banned -- except in cases of national security danger (i.e., torture is as allowed as before). Illegal outposts will be removed -- but first an agreement will be sought with the settlers (i.e., the outposts will remain in place).

So that, in this case, one immediately begins a search for the caveat. Not a daunting task; a few paragraphs on, Netanyahu adds:

Therefore, a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

So that the negotiations without preconditions do have a precondition after all: the Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

This requirement has no precedent. Never in the history of diplomacy has a country been asked to recognize the official religion of another nation. (Although some fool will try to make you believe that it's not a religion, that it's more complicated than that, let's be clear: the ONLY way you can enter the Jewish people is through religion.) For instance, when Argentina and Britain resumed diplomatic ties after the Falklands war, the former did not recognize the latter as an Anglican country; nor did the latter recognize the former as a Catholic nation. A country's official faith is a strictly internal matter, and it's none of another country's business to act as a guarantor of that state religion.

The very reasonable Palestinian position has been that Israel has the right to define what it wants or doesn't want to be, but Palestine (or any other country, for that matter) should not be asked to participate in the formulation of that definition. Senior negotiator Saeb Erekat put it crystal-clear in a 16 Nov 2007 interview with the Jerusalem Post:

Erekat told the Post it was up to Israel to decide what to call itself, and that the Palestinians would recognize it accordingly. "Like the Islamic Republic of Iran," he said, "if you change your name to 'the Jewish state of Israel,' we'll call you that."

The road map and previous agreements had required the Palestinian leadership to unequivocally recognize Israel, Erekat said in a telephone interview. "We did it.... At the United Nations, you are called 'the state of Israel.' We recognize that."

What part of this recognition does Netanyahu not understand?

All Israel would have to do to satisfy its own ego is to adopt the name "Jewish State of Israel." The PA would immediately recognize it under that name. Why don't they adopt it?

The answer, of course, is that Israel does not want peace. All it wants is a status quo in which it can build ever more settlements (pardon!!!, "settlement extensions to accommodate natural growth"). If it wanted peace, it would not ask of the Palestinians what has never, ever, been asked of any other party to a diplomatic negotiation.

Will the next Holocaust come from Norway?

You may never have heard of Manfred Gerstenfeld, but to the extent that he enjoys any name recognition, this stems from his continually crying antisemitic wolf. So what does he do if no antisemite shows up? He manufactures a countryful of them.

Gerstenfeld has been active in the demonization of Norway as a hotbed of antisemitism. In August 2008 he edited Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews, a book dedicated to scare the world about the wave of Judeophobia prevalent in Scandinavia. Last November he presided over a symposium, sort of, devoted to the same region-bashing. Now he has penned Another Year of Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israelism in Norway, an article that summarizes the most recent events reflecting Oslo's genocidal designs.

Jewish paranoia, whether genuine or feigned to get funding for a think-tank, is always fun to debunk. Let's see some of Manfred's points, together with the refutations:

1) Gerstenfeld claims: "One cannot criticize Israel for things other countries also do while refraining from criticizing those countries."

One cannot? Why? Is there any law forbidding it? (Hush, hush; I may be giving some European government or Monitoring Commission an idea.) Oh, I see: what he means is that one cannot do it without exposing oneself as a Jew-hater. Because you know, single-issue human rights advocates are bigots, since all people have the duty to show a similar concern for all abuses in the world.

The only problem with this reasoning is that in 1996 the United States Congress passed a Cuban Democracy Act, which imposed harsh sanctions on the island. It didn't pass a Chinese Democracy Act, or a Saudi Democracy Act, or a Tadjik Democracy Act, or in fact any democracy act targetting any other dictatorship than Cuba. Therefore, Americans, as represented by their lawmakers, are anti-Cuban racists, since one cannot punish Cuba for things other countries also do while refraining from punishing those countries.

Therefore, by denouncing Norway's criticism of Israel and not of other countries, but not the US's punishment of Cuba and not of other countries, Gerstenfeld exposes himself as an anti-Norwegian bigot, because you can't denounce Norwegians for things other people also do without denouncing those other people.

2) States Gerstenfeld: "[T]he Finnish blog Tundra Tabloids published a picture of [Norwegian finance minister Kristin] Halvorsen at the 'manifestation for a ceasing of hostilities.' It showed that someone standing very close to her was holding a sign that said 'The greatest axis of evil-USA and Israel.' (...) By not leaving such a gathering, Halvorsen must be considered as identifying with it."

Again the US comes to our help. On January 11, 2009, a pro-Israel rally was held in New York City:



Be sure to notice how at 0:33 a banner that says ISLAM = CULT OF HATE is unfolded and waved. Then, at 0:43, we see NY Senator Charles Schumer and NY Governor David Peterson speaking at the rally. By not leaving the gathering, they subscribed to the Islamophobic sentiment of the crowd. Yet Gerstenfeld remains silent at this display of hate by two leading American politicians.

3) Gerstenfeld makes reference to Norway's commemoration of writer Knut Hamsun, who welcomed the brutal German occupation of Norway during World War II and gave his Nobel Prize in Literature as a gift to the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. His comment:

In February 2009, Norway's Queen Sonja opened the "year-long, publicly financed commemoration of Hamsun's 150th birthday called Hamsun 2009...the queen spent a highly specific half-hour with Hamsun family members at the National Library. Together they viewed the author's handwritten manuscripts.

(...)

The festivities in honor of Hamsun are one more example of a dubious morality, abundantly present, in Norway's public discourse. For a few years there has been a Holocaust Center in Oslo (...) On the other hand, in 2009 a prominent Norwegian Nazi supporter is being lavishly honored and a museum is being established in his memory.

Once again an American counterexample comes in handy. Much, much more important than a Norwegian museum is the 50-dollar bill, which is well-known to the globe's 7 billion inhabitants. And guess whose face is on it? Ulysses S. Grant's. And guess what Grant did during the Civil war? The Jewish Virtual Library illuminates us:

In 1862, in the heat of the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant initiated one of the most blatant official episodes of anti-Semitism in 19th-century American history. In December of that year, Grant issued his infamous General Order No. 11, which expelled all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi:

The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.

Post commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters. No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.

In other words, the United States are celebrating every single second of every day of every year a brutal antisemite who ethnically cleansed Jews from a territory. Why doesn't Gerstenfeld publish article after article after article telling us how antisemitic Americans are until the 50-dollar bill is changed or withdrawn from circulation? Maybe because he understands that the world is not black and white, and that what is celebrated in those bills is Grant's contribution to winning the Civil War against the forces of slavery? If so, why doesn't he understand that the Norwegians celebrate Hamsun's literary work, not his inconsequential adherence to Nazism?

It's a shame that fabricators of antisemitism like Gerstenfeld are getting an increasing attention from otherwise intelligent people who become embarrassingly uncritical when the cheapest Hasbara points are made.

Letters to a Zionist friend

We all know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a Letter to an anti-Zionist friend in which he stated "When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews." Well, actually he didn't. But he did, according to Arno Lustiger in The Jerusalem Post.

That a leading historian, born in 1924 and a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, should take this hoax seriously, and that a leading Israeli paper should publish the whole building of nonsensical reflections he erects on it, is indicative of the need Zionists have to believe in the crap they peddle; a need that has made them lose any critical faculty.

However, the fake piece of correspondence has given me an idea that might help me increase the rate of my blogging activity. The idea is to write letters to a Zionist friend, a device that will allow me to respond to Zionist claims even if I don't have examples of them being made at hand. The letters will mimick the style ascribed to King in the bogus missive, with lots of "my friend"'s scattered here and there. In some cases, I will respond to a real pundit, blogger or commenter, whose claims I'll quote. This will be particularly helpful in the case of people who don't have enough entity or are totally unknown: presenting them as friends of mine will formally give some logic to my quoting them. In other cases, however, my Zionist counterpart will be totally imaginary, although the reader will recognize the myths, tropes, memes and canards I will attribute to them. In either case, the whole exercise won't be based on any actual correspondence between me and a Zionist.

But, unlike in the King hoax, a key ingredient of the letters will be real: the author.

Manufacturing antisemitism: the "loyalty" issue

We have already talked about American filmmaker Max Blumenthal, an expert in exposing Zionist gut feelings through his acid camera lens. In his most recent production, Max records Jews in Jerusalem making the most crudely racist remarks against American president Barack Obama, who has garnered the wrath of the Zionist world for simply placing the words "settlement" and "freeze" next to each other in a couple of speeches. (Man, one wonders what the reaction will be the day he really takes any concrete action against the settlements; targetted assassination comes to mind.)

The video got over 100,000 views in its first two days on the web, sending a chill up the Zionist spine. The Hasbara brigade swiftly took to the virtual street to explain that when a few Jews are filmed spewing hate it means nothing (unlike when, say, a few Palestinians are filmed celebrating 9/11), and that in any event they were drunk and, thus, their remarks meant nothing (unlike when, say, a drunk Mel Gibson made antisemitic remarks to a Jewish cop). Over at Harry's Place, that British marketplace for ideas (where, however, your trading license may be revoked any time), a commenter named Joshua went further:

OK, instead of observing the ramblings of a group of young people who are really quite drunk, let’s look at some real racism and on a continent where the vast majority of people (including the British) either directly collaborated in the Holocaust or deliberately turned a blind eye to it:

From an opinion survey conducted for the ADL which was published in February of 2009...

Joshua goes on to transcribe some of the survey's blood-curdling findings, among them:

In responding “probably true” to the statement, “Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country,” the 2009 survey found:

Austria – 47%, down from 54% in 2007
France – 38%, down from 39% in 2007
Germany – 53%, up from 51% in 2007
Hungary – 40%, down from 50% in 2007
Poland – 63%, up from 59% in 2007
Spain – 64%, up from 60% in 2007
The United Kingdom – 37%, down from 50% in 2007

The poll is available on the web under the title "ADL Survey in Seven European Countries Finds Anti-Semitic Attitudes Steady; 31 Percent Blame Jews for Financial Crisis."

Some of the attitudes described in the report are indeed antisemitic, although it's not a hatred of the same kind as, for instance, the one expressed by the 68% of Israeli Jews who don't want to live next to an Arab neighbor.

However, I'm still puzzled by the continued appearance of the "loyalty" question in these polls. Is believing that someone is more loyal to one country than to another in itself a form of hate? It might be if the belief were completely baseless. Is it in the case of, say, British Jews?

To analyze this we must first take into account that democratically-organized groups are usually judged by their elected leaders' actions. If the leaders say or do something nasty and their constituencies don't vote them out, then it is assumed that the rank-and-file members of the group basically agree with the leadership. This belief may be right or wrong, but it's clearly not racist.

Next, we must consider that loyalty is tested in conflict situations. When peace and harmony reign, the issue of loyalty is irrelevant. It's when some sort of friction arises that one can determine where loyalties lie.

In the case of Britain and Israel, there does exist a conflict of historical narratives that remains unresolved to this day. The Israelis claim that when the King David hotel was blown up in Jerusalem by Jewish terrorists in 1946 (killing 22 Britons, 47 Arabs and 15 Jews), the British were warned and they failed to evacuate the building. The British claim they never got any warning. There's no conclusive proof for either claim, but the burden of proof falls on the side making an assertion.

One would expect the Board of Deputies of British Jews (i.e., the organization that purports to represent the whole community) to take the stance that, since the claim is disputed, Britain must be given the benefit of the doubt. They're British, and they can't accept their country to be gratuitously blamed for over 90 deaths.

But the BoD has never issued such a declaration, even when clear provocations were staged by the Israelis. Thus, in 2006 the Menachem Begin Center organized a celebration of the King David bombing in Jerusalem, with the presence of current Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. A plaque to be dedicated at the restored building was prepared for the occasion, with a text that included the inflammatory remark, “For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated.” The BoD's reaction? A deafening silence. Their country was outrageously insulted by a think tank from another country with the endorsement a top politician and they said nothing! Mind-boggling. Unless, of course, you are more loyal to that other country.

Only after the British embassy in Israel protested was the text ammended and the incendiary wording removed.

True, the Sri Lankan community in the UK didn't protest, either. But they don't charge against British institutions each time they take some action deemed prejudicial of Israel. The BoD does. In that imbalance (denouncing Britons when they perceivedly harm Israel, but not Israelis when they insult Britain) lies the strong case for labeling the British Jewish leadership as more loyal to the State of Israel than to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That anyone should find that logical conclusion antisemitic is further proof that the word antisemitism has been devoided of any credible meaning.

The day I found myself defending Israel

It happened on a cold fall evening a few weeks ago. A composition of mine had been premiered at the Tango House in my city, and I treated my arranger and three of the musicians to dinner at a riverside restaurant.

My arranger is also my teacher and we have worked together for a few years now. Apart from setting my piano pieces for bandoneón and strings, he has turned me from a writer of bare melodies into a decent harmonizer. Give him a few decades and he'll make me master the intricacies of counterpoint and orchestration.

He's also a far-left Jew and an extreme critic of Zionism. While aware of each other's views, we don't usually talk about it.

The Tango House in Rosario

The subject of Israel wouldn't have popped up in the conversation if the double-bass player had not been what I term a "Jewish community Jew" -- a Jew who (unlike those whose life takes place mainly outside the community) blindly supports Israel and takes quite seriously weird theories about intermarriage.

The two began to argue, raising their voices and the eyebrows of other diners. Then, at a given moment, my arranger mumbled something about the genocide in Gaza.

"Genocide" is the second-most abused word in I/P debating. Some people talk of cultural genocide, or geographic genocide or whatnot, but the word shouldn't be devalued. Genocide is when people come searching for you and you have to hide. Then they find you and shoot you on the spot. Or ship you to a concentration camp to kill you with Zyklon-B. Or take you to a desert and leave you there to die of thirst. Or cut your head off with a machete. Not what Israel does.

Of course there are other ways of committing genocide. You can create conditions in which many people belonging to a specific group will die without your having to fire a shot. Like in the Ukrainian Famine. But it's not what Israel does either. Israel has prevented essentials from coming into Gaza and has caused malnourishment among the Strip's children and that certainly is a crime, even a crime against humanity -- but not the crime of genocide.

I told my arranger as much.

"I can't believe you're defending Israel," he said.
"Am I defending Israel? Or am I sticking to intellectual honesty," I replied.

After that, I thought of an analogy I should have made. If a person beats a kid, do you charge him with murder? I don't need to call Israel what it isn't, because what it is is already enough to expose its fraudulent nature -- an ethnically supremacist country masquerading as a Western democracy; a State hijacked by fringe religious fanatics purporting to be an outpost of enlightment; an entity that claims to seek peace just as it builds ever more land-grabbing settlements on another people's property.

So that no, Javier (not your real name), you shouldn't irresponsibly use that second-most abused word in I/P debating when you fight the Zionists. Because if you do, you're giving them the perfect excuse to hurl at us the most-abused one.

Antisemitism.

No oppression to speak of

As some in Israel are trying to ban Nakba rallies (which mark the expulsion of some .75 M Arabs from Israel in 1948), I searched the Israeli press for information about what the commemorations look like. Eventually I found this article on Ynet.

In the comments section, I found an often-repeated argument:

Interestingly enough, today it was published that 94% of Israeli Arabs wish to continue living in Israel, the "racist", "oppressive", "Apartheid" state. How can you explain that? Maybe things aren't all bad over here?

Let's apply the logic to other situations:

1. Blacks were not oppressed in the Jim Crow era: they didn't leave Alabama for Liberia or Sierra Leone.
2. Algerians were not oppressed under French rule: they didn't evacuate Algiers and go into exile in Lybia, Morocco or Tunisia.
3. Gypsies are not oppressed in Hungary: they don't flee the country when their homes are burned down.
4. Kurds are not oppressed in Turkey, Syria or Iran. They're not flocking to the Kurdish section of democratic Iraq.

There are few if any racist or Apartheid regimes in the world, because only if people emigrate in mass from the land where they were born and where their families have been living for centuries can one speak of oppression.

The exception, of course, are the British Jews. Although 94% of them have no intention of leaving the UK, the country is a hotbed of antisemitism, as demonstrated by the existence of Seven Jewish Children, The Guardian, Ken Livingstone and George Galloway.

On the allegedly antisemitic failure to report nonevents

Zionist bloggers in Spanish come from two major sources: Argentinian Jews and Spanish non-Jews.

The first group is understandable, even forgivable. They are brainwashed from the crib, and few people can survive relentless indoctrination unscarred. The second group, however, is a bit more complex to analyze, not least because it can, in turn, be broken down into two subcategories: righties and lefties. Rightwing Spanish Zionists believe the Muslims, whom they call the Moors, are out to destroy European culture, and any ally, even if it's the kikes, is welcome. In this they're no different from other European fascists, who only the day before yesterday were preaching antisemitism, but now have become ardent supporters of the State of Israel.

Somewhat more puzzling are Spanish Zionists who come from the left. They normally belong to parties that have not made it into government coalitions; and they take special pleasure in chastising other leftists, particularly those who do enjoy the exercise of power, as antisemites. Oversized egos also seem to play a role. After all, it must be gratifying to know you're the only enlightened one in a group of very wrong people, especially when you can tour Spanish-speaking Jewries delivering speech after Israeli-flattering speech before adoring crowds (and earning handsome sums in the process).

On the advice of an Argentinian Zionist I recently visited the blog of one such Spanish Zionist, Jorge Marirrodriga. The former had described the latter in glowing terms, claiming, among other things, that "I truly don't know how he manages to keep such high standards with such a high [publishing] rate [about one post a day]. (...) Jorge (...) keeps delighting us with original, creative, up to date and interesing contents." I must admit that I'm somewhat foolish and tend to have my curiosity awakened by these raving reviews.

As a less naive person would have forseen, however, the blog turned out to be a sophomoric exercise in whataboutery. But it did contain a piece of information that had apparently evaded my radar. The latest post presented the earth shattering new concept that Israel is unfairly treated by the press. After fixing a few grammar problems from the original (but probably introducing fresh mistakes of my own), here's my translation of the relevant paragraphs:

This has happened in less than 72 hours this week.

1-) A Sderot home was hit by a rocket fired from Gaza;
2-) Iran tested a missile able to deliver any kind of bomb Ahmadinejad wishes to any location in Israel, be it conventional, biological or nuclear when he gets one;
3-) Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah has declared that his organization is prepared for "a new war with Israel."

But, apparently, the true problem is the Prime Minister of Israel's stubborn refusal to make big concessions without anyone else lifting a finger. Journalists assert that:

1-) he is encouraging new settlements in the West Bank. This week we have rushed to report that construction has started on a new one: Maskiot. But yesterday (Thursday), the security forces dismantled one and not a word has been said about it.

So that the unraveling of the settlements had begun and I hadn't noticed! That's what happens when you're so busy bashing Israel that you don't notice its peace overtures.

Since Marirrodriga did not provide a link, I did some AllTheWebbing to learn more about it. Just like when my soccer team wins, I wanted to know and revel in all the wee details. I finally found this story from the Jerusalem Post:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has ordered the IDF to complete a contingency plan for the forced evacuation of illegal West Bank outposts, officials told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Barak intends to begin removing the outposts in the coming weeks but has instructed his settlement adviser Eitan Broshi to first try to reach an agreement with the settlers under which they will leave of their own accord, the officials said.

The IDF's surprise destruction of the fledgling Maoz Esther outpost near the Kochav Hashahar settlement on Thursday morning was an isolated incident and was not part of the contingency plan.

When you read about Israel evacuating things in the West Bank, there's always a caveat. In this case, Barak swears, promises and vows that he'll begin removing outposts... but first he'll try to reach an agreement with the settlers. Of course, years will pass trying to agree with them, a new legislature will come and the outposts will not have been removed.

However, an outpost was destroyed -- but the operative word is fledgling.

You see, there are three kinds of land-grabbing units in the West Bank. One is the settlements, which are legal under Israeli (but not international) law. Another one is the established outposts, which are illegal but have been provided with services (water, gas, phone lines) by the State. The third type of unit is the encampment -- small gatherings of makeshift homes, in some cases tents. It's an encampment, and a very tiny one at that, that was destroyed, as the JPost later clarifies:

Five families lived in the encampment's seven wooden huts.

But even so, and like my mother used to say, something is something, and is better than nothing. An encampment was removed, and that's news, right?

Wrong. The Post goes on to recall:

Since its establishment in December 2007, the IDF has demolished it a number of times.

But even if it has been repeatedly demolished, this at least disrupts the settlers' plans, right?

Wrong. The JPost, once more:

By nightfall on Thursday, settlers had already replaced five of the wooden structures.

So that, with all due respect for Mr. Marirrodriga, I have a theory, alternative to antisemitism, for why the removal of this settlement wasn't reported by the press: 1) it wasn't a settlement; 2) it was a repeat of several similar ineffectual actions that seem to have been taking place every few months; 3) the encampment had been set up again by the time Marirrodriga wrote his post.

In other words, the media sticked to the good journalistic practice of not reporting on trivial nonevents. And meeting the standards of good journalism is not (at least until a new Working Definition decrees otherwise) antisemitism.

In case you entertained any doubts

As Bibi Netanyahu visits Barack Obama in Washington, it's interesting to see how the Zionists are misrepresenting the immediate demands that the world is making (and, reportedly, Obama will also make) from Israel. Unfairly, both the world and Obama expect Israel to withdraw from the settlements, the Zionist littany goes, but that would lead nowhere: Israel has already withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza, and what did it get in return? Kidnappings & rockets! No way the country will stumble upon the same rock again.

But, of course, the world isn't asking Israel to withdraw from existing settlements; such withdrawal is precisely the subject of the never-ending, or rather never-starting, negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. All the world is asking is for Israel to stop building new settlements, and to crack down on those fundamentalist Jews who set up illegal outposts. Only if Israel refrained from further expanding in the West Bank would it convince the international community that it's truly committed to a two-state solution. No peace negotiation was ever furthered by one of the sides creating ever more obstacles to the process under the vague promise that they will be removed all of a sudden when a final agreement is reached.

The usual response from Zionists is that settlement expansion is restricted to the large blocs around or near Jerusalem "that will have to remain inside Israel in a final status agreement" and is needed to accommodate natural population growth. Since the West Bank Jewish population grows by more than 7% a year, settlers seem to be procreating at a rate that would make a rodent blush. The other possible explanation is that settlers are being brought from abroad (for instance, Brooklyn or France) to grab more land from the Palestinians. But truth does not trouble Zionists so long as they can don a fig leaf and plausibly deny everything.

However, now and then a smoking gun reveals their true colors. Undetected by the Western MSM's radar, a Ynet story from Sunday tells us about plans for new housing for civilian settlers to be built in Maskiot, in the Jordan Valley -- i.e., far removed from the settlement blocs that have made it into the Guinness' Book for their ability to naturally grow. Reports the Israeli paper:

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plane landed in Washington Sunday, contractors were being given a tour of the northern Jordan Valley settlement Maskiot in the framework of a tender that was issued to build a new neighborhood there.

"The tender is part of the process to populate the community," Jordan Valley Regional Council Chairman David Elhayani told Ynet.

Ynet goes on to trace the history of the settlement.

Established in 1982, Maskiot formerly housed a Nahal Brigade base and several years ago included a pre-conscription military academy for national-religious youth. In December 2006, then-Defense Minister Amir Peretz approved the decision to build 30 new homes in the religious community, where the evacuees from the settlement of Shirat Hayam in Gush Katif could be housed. Peretz later revoked his decision amid US pressure.

In July 2008 Defense Minister Ehud Barak authorized the settlement's repopulation with 50 families, some of them from the evacuated Jewish settlements in Gaza. Currently about 10 families reside in Maskiot, but many others are waiting for their lots to be released.

I.e., former military facilities (legal under occupation) are being turned into a civilian settlement (completely illegal as it transfers civilians from Israel proper to an occupied territory).

By Monday afternoon, the Israeli government was doing the understandable damage control, "cautioning" that final approvals would be needed before any construction could take place, and that none had been given. However, the Jordan Valley Regional Council Chairman didn't join in the fig-leaf donning:

The contractors' tour, he said, was scheduled in advance of Netanyahu's visit to DC. The fact that two events happened almost back-to-back, he said, "was an amazing coincidence." He said he was confident that the project would move forward.

It was an optimism shared by Yossi Hazut, formerly of Shirat Hayam, who lives at the site already with his family.

He said he expected that by the end of the year six more caravans will have been placed there and that the community would continue to grow.

Mr. Elhayani's candor went even further:

"This process takes a few months to complete. The timing is coincidental, and anyone who says otherwise is jeopardizing Israel's security-related interests. There is a consensus among the Zionist parties that the Jordan Valley must remain under Israel's control in any future (peace) agreement."

My emphasis.

That's it, in case you entertained any doubts that Israel's territorial ambitions in the West Bank go far beyond the few large settlement blocs that the Zionists would like us to believe they are restricted to.

"From 1948 to 1967 they didn't ask for a state"

Doing some research on a book I'll be quoting in an upcoming post, I stumbled upon this review page. One of the reviewers says:

The author makes us aware of a similar problem today. While antizionists may imply that there is a huge Arab population that can live only on Jewish land, that's simply not the case. Katz explains that when Arabs controlled the entire West Bank from 1948 through 1967, not even allowing Jews to live there at all, there were no demands for a separate Arab state there.

I must confess the continued currency of this argument beats me. The Arabs in the West Bank (its proponents claim) did not ask for an independent state when they were ruled by the Jordanians, so why would they demand one now? The answer, of course, is that they're part of the World Conspiracy Against Israel And The Jewish People. They don't want to be free; only to kill Jews, or, at the very least, ethnically cleanse them from Israel.

Of course, this reasoning may catch off guard Western audiences to whom the only possible reason a people may ask for a state is the realization of their national aspirations. A Westerner thinks, for instance, of the Basques, who enjoy a high standard of living, freedom of movement and the right to receive schooling in Euskara, but are very frustrated to have to see the Spanish flag flying over their public buildings. Or the Scots people, who don't even have a separate language but long for a separate state all the same. If the Palestinians are like those people, they should be frustrated by any foreign flag being hoisted in the West Bank; therefore, if they reject the Israeli flag but accepted the Jordanian one, it must mean they're antisemitic.

A more sophisticated and enquiring audience, however, might ask if the flags are the only difference between Israeli and Jordanian occupation. And here's where the argument begins to crumble.

For one thing, the Jordanian occupiers were Arab. They had the same language, the same religion, the same customs as the occupied people. Foreign rule is likely to be far less tolerated if the rulers' way of life and values are perceived as widely different from the occupied people's.

But, fundamentally, the Jordanian occupation did not disrupt West Bank life to the same extent that the Israeli occupation has. Let us just ask:

• Did the Jordanians steal privately-owned Palestinian land to build illegal settlements, outposts and roads?
• Did the Jordanians burn down fields, poison wells, savagely beat up shepherds or uproot trees?
• Did the Jordanians write "Death to the Palestinians" on the walls and tombstones of the West Bank?
• Did the Jordanians stone schoolgirls on their way to school?
• Did the Jordanian soldiers shoot holes in the Palestinians' water towers?
• Did the Jordanians make Palestinian drivers wait for hours on end at checkpoints, far beyond what would be justified by security concerns?

If your answer to all these questions is no, you'll understand why the Palestinians want independence now but didn't yearn for it in 1966. It's not a question of sovereignty or peoplehood; it's just an understandable craving for normalcy. That is easy to grasp, and I'm puzzled that the Zionists have been able to peddle their argument for so long without these elementary questions being raised.

Which is connected, by the way, to why a Bantustan solution can never be accepted by the Palestinians. If they have to cross Israeli territory, or make an impossibly long detour, to go from Hebron to Jericho, any sense of a normal life will be lost. The belief that a Palestinian state with long wedges of Jewish settlements cutting deep into it is sustainable in the long term is purely dellusional, but unfortunately it's the underlying assumption behind all Israeli versions of the highly questionable concept of a two-state solution.

Can one say "the Jews"? (part 2 of many)

The Association of Argentinian Residents in the United Kingdom (AARUK) plans to sue the Imperial War Museum (IWM) for libel. At the center of the conflict is the portion of the IWM's website devoted to the Falkland Islands War, which contains the following paragraph:

The Argentinians invaded the Falklands on 2 April 1982. Britain responded by sending a Task Force 8,000 miles to the South Atlantic to recapture them. A seven week naval, air and land campaign resulted in a British victory.

In a recent press release, the AARUK explained its decision:

In making explicit and unqualified reference to "the Argentinians," the IWM seems to forget that only a handful of soldiers invaded the Falklands/Malvinas; that not all Argentinians supported the invasion back then, or approve of it now in hindsight; and that the decision to invade was made by a military regime unrepresentative of the Argentinian people.

We can see no other reason behind the IWM's blanket generalization than a desire to create mistrust and hostility towards Argentinians and, in particular, towards those of us legally residing in the UK. The Association of Argentinian Residents in the United Kingdom will not tolerate this display of Argentinophobia, and will file suit for libel unless the Imperial War Museum corrects its webpage before Monday, 11 May.

NOT!!!

There's no such entity as the AARUK, and even if it existed, the average Argentinian is not as paranoid as to find second, third and fiftieth meanings behind any printing of the word "Argentinian." More to the point, even if they suffered from that kind of persecution complex, they would be discouraged by their PR advisors from displaying it, lest they irreversibly ridicule themselves.

Not all people, however, show a comparable degree of sanity. Enter the Zionist critics of Caryl Churchill's play Seven Jewish Children, which, as we already discussed in our previous post, describes indoctrination as inflicted by Zionist parents on their children. According to such critics, SJC is antisemitic not only because it's a blood libel, a concentrate of Jew-hating tropes, a vicious assault on Israel's right to exist, etc., but also because it alludes to Jewish children. This, according to Zionist zealots, is the smoking gun. As the Irish Times reported:

The spokesman of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Mark Frazier, told the Jewish Chronicle: “We knew the play was going to be horrifically anti-Israel because Caryl Churchill is a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.”

He added that the title – Seven Jewish Children, rather than Seven Israeli Children – “pushes it beyond the boundaries of reasonable political discourse”.

My emphasis.

I would say "bullshit," if it were not that I'm lately liking better the British term "bollocks." Mr. Frazier tries to convince us that SJC is wrong, but he would be fine with SIC. That is not true, of course, and it's evident he would trash the play all the same if "Israeli" were substituted for "Jewish" in the title.

But does he have any kind of a point? Would the former be a better or more logical title than the latter, given the play's contents?

Hardly so. In the first place, the play does not depict all Israelis, but Israeli supporters of Israel's wars, which are Jewish, not Arab, Israelis.

In the second place, the brainwashing depicted in the play is not confined to Israel, but it's also vastly prevalent in the Diaspora. While it's true that a lot of very coherent and articulate Diaspora Jews oppose Zionism, they speak as individuals, not in the name of their communities. All representatives of Jewish communities around the world, by contrast, stand solidly behind Israel. It's not like the forces of anti-Zionism will take over the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the American Jewish Congress, the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France or the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas anytime soon.

Of course, even if all representatives of a group agree on something, it can be argued that one can't generalize because it's unfair to the contrarians within that group. But with all the generalizing on in the world, why are only generalizations about the Jews singled out as hateful? Why can one say "the Chinese invaded Tibet," or "the Americans tortured Abu Zubaydah," or "Kielce's murderers were Poles. Their language was Polish. Their hatred was Polish," but one can't say "the Jews uproot olive trees in the West Bank"? As if it were Israeli Druze or Samaritans who do the uprooting.

Are we antisemitic in making such a generalization? No, because we're not criticizing the Jewish representatives' Jewishness; we're criticizing their Zionism, and the crimes, felonies and misdemeanors that are part and parcel of it.

Dead-enders will insist that, in that case, the title of the play should have been "Seven Zionist Children." But it would be inaccurate, because the children are not born Zionist. That's precisely the reason why, in the play (as well as in real life), they're indoctrinated; only with time will they become Zionists. Or hopefully, if reason prevails, they will not.

(See here the first installment of this series.)

The blood libel that never was

We are all familiar with the moronic catchphrases Zionists have been using for the better part of the last half-century to justify what essentially boils down to the Israeli theft of Palestinian land, water and other natural resources. ”They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” “we’ll have peace when they love their children more than they hate us,” “we can forgive their killing our children, but not their forcing us to kill theirs”... It's amazing to see how many intelligent people, with PhD's and all, resort to these clichés for the mentally retarded when discussing Israel.

It is perhaps with those people in mind that British playwright Caryl Churchill has written a play called Seven Jewish Children, in which Jewish parents are depicted discussing what they'll tell their daughters as they bring them up, in seven different historical periods of the State of Israel. Here's an excerpt:

Don’t tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her, tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her to be careful
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her we need the wall to keep us safe
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea
Tell her they don’t
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea.
Tell her we kill far more of them
Don’t tell her that
Tell her that
Tell her we’re stronger
Tell her we’re entitled
Tell her they don’t understand anything except violence
Tell her we want peace
Tell her we’re going swimming.

Needless to say, the Ziosphere is up in arms against Churchill. She's been called an antisemite with a "pornographic interest in Jewish immorality" (here, endorsed here) and the "anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian Prosecution" (here), and her play has been described as an "insidious little play [that is] around to spread its poison" (here) or as a "hate-fuelled little chamber-piece" (here), among other vituperations. There's clearly a lot of frustration on display over the publicity the play has achieved.

It’s very amusing to see how many of Caryl’s negative reviewers have written critiques imitating the “Tell her that–” model (see here, here or here). The play has hit home, not because of its literary merit, which it absolutely lacks, but because of how effectively it ridicules Zionist brainwashing. The crude, childish indoctrination depicted in the play is in fact what young –and adult– Jews are fed by their political and religious leadership.

In a recent exchange over at the British political blog Harry's Place, I had to confront several commenters plus David T, the main contributor to the blog, who insisted that the play was a blood libel. The "proof" for the assertion was the following passage in the piece:

Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her the names, why not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldn’t she know? tell her there’s dead babies, did she see babies? tell her she’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell her (...) I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her.

David T's comment was:

This play claims that Jewish parents encourage Jewish children to revel in the dead of a civil war. That is, quite frankly, untrue. It is also essentially a rehashing of the Blood Libel.

But that is not what the play says. There’s a world of difference between saying “I’m happy she’s covered in blood” and “I’m happy she’s not my daughter.” The play describes, correctly, how Zionists are totally indifferent to the suffering of their perceived enemies. (In this they're no different from other people. They are different, however, in their pretending that they somehow care for their victims.) The play never says that Zionists enjoy it when they see the civilian deaths caused by their regrettable mistakes.

But even if it said so, would it be a blood libel?

By no means: according to all available evidence, the Zionists did revel in the destruction of Gaza. See in the video below how a group of Jewish tourists came to Sderot (which overlooks Gaza) to watch the carnage live. The video is in Danish, but enough English is spoken to raise the viewer's hair:



Pay attention (at 0:48) to how a lovely young Jewish lady called Keren Levy says she went there to see it with her own eyes; she didn’t want to watch it on TV. She then adds, “They chose Hamas to rule them; it’s their fault. They got it to where it is now, not us” (the “they did it to themselves” in Churchill’s prophetic play). Then, at 0:57, she states: “I think they should just clear off all the city, just take it off the ground. Yes; I’m a little bit fascist.”

It’s no blood libel to denounce loud and clear that these very sick people exist within Zionism, and that they don’t face any form of social shunning.

Durban myths

The Durban II conference on racism is currently on in Geneva. I would like to know what is being said, but unfortunately the only information available is about a venomous anti-Israeli speech by Iranian clown (officially President) Mahmud Ahmadinejad, from which Holocaust-denying passages were removed only at the last minute.

Many Western countries have boycotted the conference, and many more walked out of the conference room while Ahmadinejad was delivering his speech. Were/are they right? A bit of propaganda, combined with the willingness to swallow it on the part of deeply paranoid souls, have helped extend a few myths about Durban I and Durban II, which have convinced quite a few that boycotting the latter was the right thing to do. Time for dispelling:

1. Durban I produced an antisemitic document that only sought to bash Israel

While there's no denying that a lot of antisemitim was on display at Durban I, and strenuous efforts were made to inject it into the document, it was effectively counterbalanced by the non-antisemitic world (i.e. the overwhelming majority of countries), and the final declaration contained not a single, repeat, not a single antisemitic, anti-Zionist or anti-Israel passage. Don't trust my word, go and read it.

2. It's outrageous that of all world leaders, none other than Ahmadinejad was invited to deliver the inaugural speech

All heads of State were invited to speak! But only Ahmadinejad took the opportunity. If Western leaders had wanted to convey a message that they care about racism, they could have coordinated for one of their presidents, prime ministers, kings or queens to be present in Geneva. But the UN can't disinvite a president who has the protocolar right to speak only because he's known to be deranged. That would be the beginning of a very dangerous slippery slope.

3. The UN are a bunch of incurable antisemites anyway, so it's no use attending their conferences because it will change nothing

This myth is based on the view that the UN is OK when it recommends the creation of Israel or orders Iran to suspend its nuclear program, but wrong when it hosts a conference in which Israel may be called what it is, i.e. racist. But the UN is representative of the whole world, and whenever nefarious regimes attend a meeting, it is fundamental that rule-of-law countries also be there just to convey the message that the world, on the whole, ain't that bad.

For instance, Haaretz reports:

Western countries were fiercely opposed to parts of early drafts for a Durban II declaration that suggested Israel was driven by racism in its treatment of Palestinians, and included proposals to bar "defamation of religion".

But the latest version of the draft issued yesterday as negotiations moved to a close showed all references to Israel had been dropped as has the "defamation" bid, also by Islamic states.

"This is the positive outcome of insistence by Western countries that the wording some people wanted was just not acceptable to democracies," said the representative of one rights activist group who asked not to be named.

I don't agree that Israel is not driven by racism, but if it was the only country that would have been so characterized, I'm fine that the reference was removed. And it's a great thing that defamation of religion (another slippery slope) was not included in the document.

This example, together with the non-antisemitic declaration from Durban I, are proof that, when it comes to the UN, involvement is better than boycott. But go tell that to those who publicly feign outrage at Ahmadinejad's tirade, but intimately are very happy that he displayed a degree of lunacy which can be presented to the Western public as characteristic of all Muslims.

Yet another road to hell

It's not true that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Some ill-intention-paved roads also lead there.

Case in point, the one being built in the West Bank between the legal Jewish settlement of Eli and the illegal Jewish outpost of Yuval. The road will run through privately-owned Palestinian land, in a fresh instance of thievery of Arab real estate.

Before we continue we must clarify that the terms "legal" and "illegal" refer to Israel's own description of both population centers. Under international commitments it has signed, Israel can't build any more settlements. At the same time, it wants to. The solution to this dilemma has been to disguise new settlements as extensions of existing ones "to accommodate natural population growth." If anyone wants to build hundreds of new homes (for Jews, that is) in the West Bank, all they must do is propose a project that is contiguous to existing structures.

The fellows now building the road, however, didn't have enough patience to wait until an extension from Eli reached Yuval, and directly went there and established their outpost. Much to its regret, the Israeli government had to tell them, "sorry, guys, we'll have to classify you as illegal; there's nothing we can do about it."

The private Palestinian owners whose land has been stolen to build the road have protested to the Israeli authorities. As Haaretz reports:

In fact, the Civil Administration, a government body that governs civilian aspects of daily life in the West Bank, has itself already issued an order to stop the work

So that the rights of Arabs living under Israeli occupation are respected after all? Wait; notice there's no period at the end of the quoted passage; let's see how the sentence ends:

but it has not been enforced.

Why am I not surprised?

***

Under a Hasbara argument highly popular among Israel's apologists, the country has already withdrawn from Gaza and Lebanon and has been attacked with rockets from both places. That's why it can't consider further withdrawals, for instance from the West Bank. The Israeli population is firmly committed to a 2-state solution and wants to evacuate most of the settlements, and it's only Arab intransigence that prevents an agreement. But the day a Palestinian leader arises who is prepared to talk peace, the Israeli side will be there, prepared to make all sorts of painful concessions.

This is a bad-faith argument for more than one reason. In the first place, the withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza were not part of an agreement; the only retreat carried out by Israel under an agreement was that from the Sinai, and not a single missile has been fired on Israel from there. It's not like the Gazans promised something and then didn't deliver.

In the second place, the argument explains why Israel can't withdraw from its existing settlements, but it doesn't explain why it is tolerating and, in fact, encouraging (through the provision of State services) the construction of ever more new outposts and roads.

In the third place, what does "most" mean? 51% of the settlements is most of the settlements. The argument doesn't clarify that the settlements Israelis are not prepared to painfully concede are the ones currently driving two long wedges into the West Bank and making territorial contiguity of a Palestinian state all but impossible.

Finally, asserting that Israel can evacuate the West Bank because it already evacuated Gaza is like someone claiming that he can quit cocaine anytime because last year he quit smoking. The situations in both territories are radically different. The settler population in Gaza was small and concentrated. They hadn't built roads that criscrossed the territory, nor did they roam it at will harassing the local population.

In the West Bank, on the other hand, the militarized settlers have created a state within the state. They have resources to carry out public works, they issue internal building permits and they have patrols dedicated to the repression of the native population. The State is absolutely powerless to stop them from stealing land, uprooting trees, burning fields or harrassing the Palestinians.

The balance of power between Israel and the settlers is very much like that between the Sicilian government and the Mafia, or between the Brazilian government and the São Paulo narcos. The State can take a few symbolic measures, but never seriously crack down on them. That's why the State can issue orders against the construction of a road, but it can't actually stop the work. To use a rude but fitting popular metaphor, while a majority of Israelis hate the settlers, the settlers have Israel grabbed by the testicles. There's nothing the State can do to them. So we need not speculate that when the time comes the State will deal with them appropriately; the settlers just won't allow that time to come.

The prospect of a binational state, in which they'll have to share their country with the Palestinians, is hell to Israeli Jews. Too bad they didn't stop their fanatics in time, because now, with all the frantic settlement building taking place, and with Jewish outposts scattered all over the West Bank, a situation has been created in which it's impossible to unscramble an egg, and the country is firmly on the road to that perceived hell.

On the true scope of "never again"

Fifteen years ago this week, the Hutu majority in Rwanda started a genocide that killed over 500,000 Tutsis, along with 300,000 fellow Hutus who refused to take part in the massacres. In this truly unique extermination it was the people, rather than an army, that took mass murder literally into their hands -- facing themselves death if they didn't.

As usual, the world did nothing. The UN fled according to its time-honored tradition, and the same countries that in 2003 rushed to save the Iraqis no one knows well from what didn't lift a finger for oil-poor Rwanda.

Regrettably, neither did the Jewish community, or the self-described Jewish state. No condemnation was issued by either Israeli Chief Rabbi. No letters were mass-mailed by members of the Jewish organizations to any lawmaker calling on the US or any other country to intervene and stop the killings. No grass-roots movement arose within organized Jewry, during the three months the genocide lasted, to try and do something to stop it. Was there any reason to expect them to do so? Yes, there was -- or what else is the phrase "never again," ritually chorused by Jewish organizations, supposed to mean? (I know, I know: it means "never again to the Jews." But the people at the Holocaust museums won't acknowledge it.)

Israel didn't send in troops to stop the genocide. Just 5,000 soldiers, at a time when the country didn't face any external threat, would have sufficed to save at least 500,000 lives, but not a single Israeli politician or Jewish leader from the Diaspora suggested that the State should take such a step. Israel didn't even use its advanced technology to jam the radio broadcasts that were a key factor in the incitement to genocide.

Where was the world when the Nazis were killing the Jews? In about the same place the Jews were when the Hutus were murdering the Tutsis.

Give us this day our daily bread -- unleavened

I observe a strict dietary rule. I only eat ATG foodstuffs -- All That Grows. Grilled chinchulines (cow bowels), a key ingredient of Argentina's national dish, is one of my favorites, but I democratically give a chance to all national and non-national cuisines. My philosophy is that everything must be given a try -- snails, snakes, carpinchos, beetles, whatever. I have rarely been let down.

Others, equally respectably, choose to restrict the scope of what they eat.

The problem arises when you decide that what you don't want to eat shouldn't be eaten by others (who may or may not share your rejection) either. In totalitarian countries they do this by law, officially banning the open sale of the forbidden foodstuffs.

In at least one democratic country they do exactly the same. These days Jews celebrate the festival of Pesach, which commemorates the Jewish exodus from Egypt, which was so hasty that they didn't have time to leave their bread to leaven. That's why observant Jews don't eat leavened products (hametz, in Hebrew) on Pesach; instead they consume a kind of unleavened cracker called matzah.

So far, so good. But in 1986 a law was enacted in Israel forbidding the public display of hametz during Pesach for sale purposes in Jewish-majority areas. And as the Jerusalem Post reports,

[S]elf-appointed informers will wander the cities of Israel this holiday searching for wayward restaurateurs, bakers and other food purveyors illegally displaying leavened bread during the seven days of Pessah.

Armed with a cellphone camera and an eye - and a nose - for fresh-baked bread, each informant will relay concrete evidence of the illicit culinary activity to a group of legal activists. Police, municipal officials and the Interior Ministry will be notified of the transgression.

"The Jewish character of the State of Israel is at stake," said Nachi Eyal, chairman of the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, whose organization is spearheading a campaign to encourage Israelis to help enforce the Hametz Law.

The article goes on to clarify that since mostly-secular Israeli Jews are hametz-lovers after all, it's very difficult to enforce this law. This may well be so, but that's not the point. The point is that being fined or not for displaying hametz during Pesach depends on the authorities' goodwill. And if you're not fined, it's not because you have a right; it's because you're tolerated.

One wonders if the State of Israel has a law forbidding the public display of food at daytime during the Islamic month of Ramadan, in which Mulsims are required to fast from dawn to sunset, in attention to the large Muslim minority that lives in the country.

Well, one doesn't actually wonder.

"Exactly the same rights as Jews," my foot.

Please give us the chance to stop being antisemitic

When and how can a formerly antisemitic country become non-antisemitic? Never and no way, according to a recent Jerusalem Post article. The piece deals with Argentina's decision, a few weeks ago, to expel a Holocaust-denying British Catholic bishop who was illegally preaching his hateful message in a parish near Buenos Aires.

This should come as good news to anyone interested in the eradication of Holocaust denial. Not to the JPost, however, as the daily manages to turn this interesting development into a story of how Argentina is a land of endless antisemitism. The very first paragraph sets the bellicose tone:

Argentina's expulsion last month of Bishop Richard Williamson because his Holocaust denial "profoundly insults Argentine society, the Jewish community and all of humanity by denying a historic truth" smacks of a certain cynicism given its long history of denial concerning it own shameful role with regard to the Nazis. For 60 years it conducted a campaign to conceal its enthusiastic pursuit of an anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi policy before, during and after World War II. Only the tenacity of a handful of historical researchers, most notably the journalist Uki Goñi, finally forced Buenos Aires to begin admitting the truth.

Congratulations to Uki Goñi, who has told truths that are very uncomfortable to us Argentinians. The good news is that he can do it and be respected; he's never been called, er, a self-hating Argentinian.

The article goes on to describe Uki's findings:

The story of Directive 11 is a case in point. Secretly issued by the Foreign Ministry in July 1938 as Argentina sat at the Evian Conference table pledging to aid refugees, it instructed Argentine embassies to "refuse visas, even tourist and transit visas, to all persons that could be considered to be abandoning or to have abandoned their country of origin as undesirables or expulsees, whatever the motive for their expulsion" - in other words, Jews.

Good. Argentina refused to admit Jewish refugees while ostensibly committing itself to helping them. This helps the neutral observer to begin to understand why the country is a piece of crap.

But there's more still:

Of course, Argentina was not alone in officially refusing sanctuary to Europe's Jews. But it was the only country that refused to assist even its own Jewish nationals stranded in Nazi-occupied territory. And astonishingly, this refusal was, as Haim Avni documented in his 1991 study, Argentina and the Jews, effected in the face of repeated German requests that they be repatriated.

In January 1943, for example, the Argentine ambassador to Vichy ignored the authorities' request to evacuate 15 Argentine Jews from France, while in Berlin, the first secretary at the Argentine embassy, Luis H. Irigoyen, refused to issue visas despite being informed that Ribbentrop "would consider it an act of special courtesy if the Argentine embassy would cause all Argentine Jews to return to their homeland." Ribbentrop's officials even drew up lists of Argentine Jews living in Poland, Greece and Holland to expedite their repatriation, but Irigoyen still refused to comply. When, under intense Allied pressure, Buenos Aires finally broke with Berlin in January 1944, about 100 of these Jews, now stripped of diplomatic protection, were immediately transported to Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, where most are believed to have perished.

Enough to be tempted to throw one's passport in the trash can. Are there any redeeming factors? Possibly:

Buenos Aires continues to insist that its embassies did all they could to save Jewish lives, arguing that more Jews (about 40,000) entered Argentina during the Nazi period than any other Latin American country.

40,000 Jews admitted looks like an interesting figure; of course it does not offset the 100 Argentinian Jews who were shamefully allowed to be killed in the gas chambers when they could have been saved, but it's something. Only that:

What it carefully omits to mention, however, is that half of these were smuggled in illegally, while the others gained admission only by posing as Catholics or paying hefty bribes.

And, to top it all:

Bishop Williamson's expulsion order stated that "anti-Semitism is an ideological aberration which has cost millions of lives throughout history." But this rings hollow coming from a country that, amid accusations of studied incompetence and cover-ups, has yet to bring to justice any of those responsible for what The New York Times called "the deadliest single act of anti-Semitic terrorism since World War II" - the bombing of Buenos Aires's Jewish cultural center in 1994. Not to mention the fact that as recently as February 19, Argentina's Jewish community demonstrated against what it described as the government's silence and inaction regarding a resurgence in anti-Semitic agitation and attacks.

Which leads to the final indictment:

Indeed Williamson's expulsion, ordered the same day, looks very much like an attempt to counter this charge.

While Buenos Aires continues in its refusal to fully acknowledge it own anti-Semitic sins during the Holocaust and after, it lacks the moral authority to punish Richard Williamson for his. Until it puts its own (glass) house in order, it should stop throwing stones.

***

I like having a piece of shit of a nationality. It pushes you to do various things to give meaning to your life. If I were, say, Jewish, or American, I could brag about the Nobel prizes and the cultural influence, and would have less motivation to seek achievements of my own. I probably would have never wound up writing music for the piano or poetry for kids if I had a more prestigious nationality than Argentinian.

Also, when you have a piece of shit of a nationality and you still love your country, you know it's love, not pride. They're not the same. And I love Argentina.

That said, and precisely becouse I love the country, I'm prepared to take criticism of it, so long as it's reasonable. The JPost piece quoted above, however, goes far beyond the boundaries of reasonability.

Argentina has no moral authority to kick out a Holocaust denier. What the hell are we supposed to do, then? Not to expell him? In that case we would be decried as the country that allows a Holocaust denier to live within its borders. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Also, every step the country has taken, however positive, seems to be part of a conspiracy against the Jews, historical truth, decency or a combination thereof. The entry of 40,000 Jewish refugees only serves to highlight the country's corruption and sloppy policing of its borders. No mention whatsoever that a truly antisemitic regime would have quickly spotted the illegal Jewish immigrants and deported them. The expulsion of a Holocaust denier only shows how deceitful we are; we only kick him in the ass so that people won't realize we ourselves are antisemites with a horrible record back in the forties.

That was then and this is now. We have come a long way since the forties; we have acknowledged the existence of a shameful secret law, something few countries in the world have done (not because they don't have secrets, mind you). We have come a shorter, but no less significant, way from the year of the Jewish Community Center bombing in Buenos Aires; an Iranian ex-president has been indicted, even if it harms our relations with a key importer of our grain; no mention of this is made in the article.

The bottom line is, as always, that no matter what the world does, they're all a bunch of antisemites. If a country is not antisemitic now, the focus is on its antisemitic past. If a country is not antisemitic now and has never been so, then we focus on how it will hate the Jews in the future.

But they're all antisemites: that's the scare tactic Zionism uses to try and draw more Jewish immigration at a moment when no objective antisemitism exists in the major Jewish centers. But fewer and fewer people are buying into it. This includes the very Jewish community of Argentina, which, while toeing the official line that the country is a hotbed of antisemitism, votes with their feet -- or their failure to use them to emigrate to Israel.