Israeli concessions vs. Palestinian concessions

Finally, but unsurprisingly to anyone endowed with rational thinking, Obama has backpedaled on his demand that Israel stop building settlements in the West Bank. The Israelis are, naturally, exultant:

Israeli officials, for their part, expressed satisfaction that Mr. Obama was letting up the pressure on settlements. “The administration recognizes that Israel has made major concessions in the absence of any substantive concessions on the part of the Arabs,” said Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

I take exception to Mr. Oren's explanation. I think the Israel lobby has been a little more instrumental in the decision than any analysis by Obama's administration on the relative merits of both parties' cases.

But his contention does merit some inspection. Are Israel's concessions major? Do Palestinian ones lack any substance? While Hasbara peddlers have made of such claims a cornerstone of their apologizing, the reality is exactly the opposite: the Palestinian concessions have been extensive, while Israel has hardly conceded anything.

But what about the Lebanon withdrawal? What about the Gaza disengagement? What about authority in area A of the West Bank?

See, those were not concessions. Concessions are when you do things that are not in your interest to please the party you're negotiating with. But:

• Israel withdrew from Lebanon because it was losing too many soldiers;
• Israel evacuated Gaza (not disengaged from it; more on this momentarily) because it imposed a heavy burden on its budget, while not being a piece of land it wanted to retain;
• Israel gave the Palestinians full control over less than 18% of the West Bank (the large cities and towns) so that it wouldn't have to pay for the education, health and other services provided to the Arab population concentrated there.

Note that any true concession would have required a relinquishing of the power Israel exerts over those territories, as well as of the advantages of its domination. In the notable case of Gaza, Israel did not "disengage" from its role as collector of customs duties, a major source of revenue for the Strip's government. In fact, Israel has used such role as a major punishing weapon, by withholding for months on end the transfer of customs duties in the order of the hundreds of millions of dollars. Israel's apologists have the chutzpah to claim that Gazans didn't take the opportunity to build their nation, when they were denied the most basic power a government needs to function: the power to collect its taxes. (In a telling example of how reality can be twisted by propaganda, Zionists sometimes even claim, in some cases actually believing it, that those transfers are money Israel is donating to Gaza; a recent Ynet story was titled "Israel's financial aid to Gaza unnecessary?").

But what have the Palestinian concessions been?

Our previous example also applies here. By accepting that its customs duties be collected by Israel, the Palestinians surrendered a major freedom and even gave Israel the power to meddle in Palestinian internal affairs through the inequitable distribution of the funds. See:

Israel transferred millions of dollars worth of tax funds to the new Palestinian government, allowing it to pay its workers in full for the first time in a year _ while skipping the ones who work for the Islamic Hamas in Gaza.

Also, the Palestinians acknowledged, under interim agreements, Israel's sovereignty over the West Bank while it is not transferred back to the Palestinian Authority. Thus, Israel enjoys not only the practical but also the juridical right to do as it pleases in the West Bank, with the sole restrictions imposed by the Road Map and other documents that are not as definitive and binding as a bilateral agreement.

With regard to violence, while Gaza continues to cause trouble, the Palestinian authority in the West Bank has cracked down on militants, largely through its American-trained police body. Next to no terror attacks have been inflicted on Israel from the West Bank lately. This, at a time when fundamentalist Jews have been stealing land like crazy to build outposts, when building in existing settlements has been stepped up dramatically, and when a new settlement is even being constructed from scratch in Maskiot, far removed from the Green Line.

But the Palestinians' most important concession is in, potentially, the most critical point of dispute between both sides: water rights. Water is the single most valuable natural resource Israel extracts from the West Bank. And the Palestinians signed with Israel what is probably the most generous agreement between water-thirsty parties in the world -- so much so that the World Bank has called for a renegotiation that will be less unfair to the Palestinians:

The water-supply regime used by Israel and the Palestinians must be changed, according to a World Bank report that is to be published today.

The report notes that an average Israeli gets four times as much water as the average Palestinian, and warns that the Palestinian Authority water system is "nearing catastrophe."

It concludes by recommending that the current water-distribution arrangement, mandated as part of the Oslo II accords, be changed to improve the Palestinian system.

So that contrary to Ambassador Oren's unsupported assertions, the Palestinians have made really big concessions in exchange for, in essence, nothing. They are already delivering peace in the West Bank before the "land" part of the "land for peace" equation is even begun to be negotiated. Israel enjoys the right to disproportionately use the West Bank aquifers without a single illegal settler having been removed from an outpost.

If and when an Israeli government truly committed to peace arises (admittedly, an unlikely development for the time being) it will acknowledge these Palestinian goodwill gestures and try and build on them, instead of denying them.

A price for not making peace

By now you have heard quite a few times a Zionist argument along the lines that "if the Palestinians don't want to make peace, they are the ones to lose out. Israel will continue to get along as it has done in the last 60 years." By making peace they mean accepting a Bantustan landlocked by Israel with no contiguity, no control over its borders and airspace and no army -- a.k.a. "the generous offer."

There is a lot of bad faith in this argument as these are the same Zionists who justified the Gaza carnage on the grounds that the residents of Sderot and, indeed, all the Southwest of Israel had suffered irreversible psychological damage due to the Qassam rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza. Well, a country whose southwestern citizens are mentally scarred for life can hardly be said not to be losing out, right?

But I have always thought that Israel is paying an additional price for not having peace. Its society is open to forms of violence that are not usual in other countries, and which stem from the impunity with which its soldiers abuse the Palestinians.

Roi Ben-Yehuda, writing in Haaretz, concurs. After listing a few striking examples of violence that took place in Israel this summer, he reflects:

Israelis get conditioned for violence through a highly militarized and patriarchal social order; an exclusive form of nationalism that privileges the interests of a particular group of citizens; a media obsessed with narratives of war; and a religious establishment that often lends spiritual credence to the institutional violence of the state.

In Internet forum language, +1. Israel is a brutalized society with a high rate of domestic violence, an underworld that engages in gang warfare complete with drive-by shootings and innocent people killed, attacks on ethnic and sexual minorities, and the state within a state of religious extremists, who perpetrate violence unhindered by the police.

Yes, Palestinians may be paying a price for not accepting a Bantustan, but Israelis are also paying theirs for sticking to the theory that everything can be solved through violence.

Denying the Jews the right to a racist state

Israel is a developed country, and in developed countries virtually 100 percent of the population enjoy access to basic services such as running water and electricity. Israel is no exception.

That is, if you're a Jew. If you're an Arab, however, the State may not be very interested in making sure that you live under first-world standards. Take, for instance, the Arab village of Darijat, in the Negev. This used to be one of the infamous "unrecognized villages," i.e. small population centers, mostly Bedouin, whose existence the state of Israel refuses to acknowledge. Since the villages are not on the map, they're not provided with services.

In 2004, Darijat was finally recognized by the State -- but it was not connected to either the water system or the electricity grid. The big news this week has been that after 5 years as a recognized village, Darijat is being hooked to the national water pipelines. Reports Haaretz:

Most of us do not rejoice at finding bills in our mailbox. But for the 900residents of the Bedouin village of Darijat in the Negev, the arrival of their first-ever water bills were indeed grounds for rejoicing: After 60 years without running water, the village was finally connected to the national water system two months ago.

Though residents say the village has existed for 100 years, it was recognized by the state only in 2004. And it took another five years before the village finally received running water.

Until two months ago, residents had to pump all their water from wells.

"Sometimes, the water would run out in the middle of a shower, or the children would have to brush their teeth in the morning and there would be no water," said Nasser, a Darijat resident. "It was very unpleasant. I paid NIS 35,000 to get a well dug and for the pumps, so that I'd have water in the house. Now I get that for free."

The next paragraph in the report makes clear the extent of the suffering caused by lack of running water:

Running water has also eased another serious problem: the huge quantities of dust produced by the nearby quarry.

While technology exists to greatly reduce the amount of dust generated, it requires a regular water supply.

Hence only now that running water is available has the quarry been able to control the dust and let residents breathe easier.

Why would the State let some of its citizens' health be harmed so grievously? A partial explanation was given in 2003 by Shai Hermesh, then treasurer of the Jewish Agency and head of its effort to create a "Zionist majority" in the desert.

The trouble with the bedouin is they're still on the edge between tradition and civilisation. A big part of the bedouin don't want to live in cities. They say their mothers and grandmothers want to live with the sheep around them. It is not in Israel's interest to have more Palestinians in the Negev.

Where in the world, please tell me, can a high-ranking and respected official get away with crude stereotyping followed by a downright racist corollary? Only in Israel.

Back on topic, water is just one of the basic services. What about power? Darijat will have to wait a little longer, maybe five more years:

Now, they are hoping for the next big step: a hook-up to the electricity grid.

"Currently, we spend thousands of shekels a month on the generators in the village," said Abu Hamad. "We hope that soon we will have electricity in every house."

This is in sharp contrast to what happens with illegal Jewish outposts in the West Bank, which are systematically connected to the electricity grid, as was documented by the Sasson report in 2006.

And if and when Darijat gets hooked to the power system, there will still be anywhere from 45 to 60 Bedouin villages waiting not only to be provided these basic services, but also to be recognized in the first place.

When we say that Israel can't be a Jewish state, we mean things like these. We assert that only in a binational state will all citizens be treated as equally human. We are not denying the Jews the right to a state. We are denying them the right to a state where some have plenty of water to tend to their lush gardens, while others have to breathe dust from a quarry.

Israel will be binational or it will be racist. We're fighting for it not to be racist.

Thought-policing Human Rights Watch

To be sincere, I don't care much for disputed reports about IDF behavior. I think the portion of their behavior that is undisputed (like, say, their assisting Jewish settlers in their takeover of private Palestinian land) is already damning enough.

That said, disputed reports do exist, and Human Rights Watch is a major contributor to producing them, thereby arousing Zionist ire.

Against that backdrop, several wingnut and Zionist blogs, as well as Israeli newspapers, are busy trashing HRW's military analyst Marc Garlasco over what they consider to be a revolutionary revelation: that Garlasco collects weapons, medals and other objects from the Third Reich.

Do you need to be a Nazi to collect Nazi memorabilia? I don't think so. I myself have a collection of over 200 books and 70 CD's about Judaism and Israel and I can hardly be described as a Jew or an admirer of Israel.

Items from Ibrahim's collection of books and CD's on Judaism and Israel

Zionists and wingnuts agree that Garlasco's collection doesn't turn him into a Nazi, but insist this hobby represents a problem, although they don't explain exactly why. HRW, for its part, has issued a statement (unnecessary, in my opinion) explaining that because Garlasco's grandfather fought for the Nazis he developed an interest in subjects pertaining to the Third Reich.

The very idea that what someone chooses to collect can be used against him infringes on the most basic freedom -- freedom of thought. The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv wrote:

It is not clear yet whether Garlasco himself is a Nazi. Those claims deserve close scrutiny, but it seems possible to make do with what we already know. We're talking about a Nazi memorabilia collector. This is not an innocent collection.

Maybe a scientific paper should be written, with a title along the lines of "Evaluating a collection's guilt." Until then, however, all collections should be given the benefit of the doubt and considered innocent -- as should their owners.

All other indictments of Garlasco are similarly vague and undefined. After being falsely warned in an e-mail that Garlasco posts at the Nazi site Stormfront.org, wingnut Omri Ceren at Mere Rethoric writes:

For all his faults real or imagined, the HRW Marc Garlasco is neither crude nor stupid. I would guess that he clings very, very tightly to the belief that he's a history buff who happens, for purely familial reasons, to be utterly fascinated by the Nazis.

I think that's one convenient bridge too far, and that his obsession colors the rest of what he does. I think he has very strong but tangled beliefs about Jews and the Jewish state that spring from a place that has nothing to do with level-headed analysis. But nothing I've read and no one I've spoken to leads me to believe he's an unsophisticated racist like Stormfront Flak88.

"I would guess...," "I think...," and pseudo-shrink-talk don't substitute for an explanation of what's the big deal with someone collecting Third Reich medals. Notice that Garlasco is neither crude nor stupid. Nor is he unsophisticated like other racists. In fact, Ceren tells us, he's unfortunately so sophisticated we can't make a case against him based on anything other than our guesses and hunches.

Elder of Ziyon, for his part, muses:

Writing a monograph on German medals does not make one a "historian" in any real sense; it makes him a rabid collector. I am fairly sure that his purchase of many of these items would be illegal in many European countries. To deflect those disturbing facts by saying that he also owns a few American air force memorabilia is to dodge the real issue.

It is extraordinarily bad taste and truly offensive that the same person who habitually castigates the Jewish state to a worldwide audience has a creepy obsession with the symbols of those who tried to destroy all Jews.

Again, no explanation of why collecting those objects is offensive. But truly revealing is the bit about the illegality of his purchases in European countries. Anyone not having an issue with such an alleged law can't be described in any other way than as a wholehearted Stalinist.

And that's what we're talking about. The ever growing control of people based on what they think or, worse still, on what we think they think. The laws against Holocaust denial; the working definitions that would make an antisemite of king Solomon himself; the Enquiry commissions that find antisemitism in switching off a lightbulb or turning on a faucet; and now the delving into strictly private affairs of an HRW analyst, are all instruments toward the muzzling of all and any criticism of Israel.

Ground-breaking news

Literally.

Bulldozers have begun work on Maskiot, a new Jewish settlement in the Jordan Valley, far removed from Israel's 1967 borders.

Actually, this is not so bad news for us anti-zionists. Next time you're told that:

• Israel wants peace and the only obstacle is Palestinian rejectionism;
• Israel only wants to keep the large settlement blocs around Jerusalem;
• Israel acts aggressively when the Palestinians attack, but generously when they behave well (as is now the case in the West Bank),

just bring up Maskiot and you'll rebut all three claims with a single sweep of the hand.

What Hasbara can do to you: Zios taken in by anti-Iran blood libel

You see: years after years after years of repeating anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Iranian clichés do make you lose some of your critical faculties and you begin to talk nonsense, or, even more frequently, to parrot the nonsense talked by others.

A few days ago Israel's Arutz Sheva (Channel 7), which runs an English Language site called Israel National News, published a report according to which a top Iranian cleric not only sanctioned the rape of prisoners, but also gave guidelines as to how to carry out the atrocity:

"Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession?" was [one] question posed to the Islamic cleric.

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it's acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed."

This reply, and reports of the rape of teen male prisoners in Iranian jails, may have prompted the following question: "Is the rape of men and young boys considered sodomy?"

Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi: "No, because it is not consensual. Of course, if the prisoner is aroused and enjoys the rape, then caution must be taken not to repeat the rape."

A related issue, in the eyes of the questioners, was the rape of virgin female prisoners. In this instance, Mesbah-Yazdi went beyond the permissibility issue and described the Allah-sanctioned rewards accorded the rapist-in-the-name-of-Islam:

"If the judgment for the [female] prisoner is execution, then rape before execution brings the interrogator a spiritual reward equivalent to making the mandated Haj pilgrimage [to Mecca], but if there is no execution decreed, then the reward would be equivalent to making a pilgrimage to [the Shi'ite holy city of] Karbala."

One aspect of these permitted rapes troubled certain questioners: "What if the female prisoner gets pregnant? Is the child considered illegitimate?"

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The child borne to any weakling [a denigrating term for women - ed.] who is against the Supreme Leader is considered illegitimate, be it a result of rape by her interrogator or through intercourse with her husband, according to the written word in the Koran. However, if the child is raised by the jailer, then the child is considered a legitimate Shi'a Muslim."

The story went immediately viral over the web. Zionist bloggers, like Elder of Ziyon, transcribed it verbatim, some of them giving sanctimonious warnings that its contents might affect sensitive people. So did the widely read conservative site The Free Republic, which has exactly the same respectability as, say, Aftonbladet (see our previous post); and many other rightwing sites like this one.

The general comment was, this is how Islam is radically different from the West, what kind of animals could approve of this (expected answer: the 1.3 bn Muslims), it's a sick society, the Ayatollahs have sunk to new depths. Ultimately, it was agreed by most commenters that Israel should nuke Iran.

But the story is false. It was first published as a satirical piece in the Farsi-language site Balatarin, then picked up by Arutz Sheva as true fact, then disseminated by Hasbara peddlers (just in the first day there were over 300 blog posts reporting the, to them, excellent news).

Since Israel National News is a media conglomerate that publishes Israel's fourth most widely read newspaper, it would be logical for the Israeli government to slam it, in agreement with its stated policy that governments should condemn blood libels published by their countries' press. Also, Barack Obama should condemn The Free Republic, and, if possible, apologize to Iran.

Should I be holding my breath?

When immaturity meets double standards: the Aftonbladet "scandal"

A few days ago the Swedish evening paper Aftonbladet published a story suggesting that Israeli soldiers harvested organs from Palestinian prisoners who died in captivity to sell them on the international transplant market. The fact that a country takes prisoners alive and returns dead bodies (this part of the story is not being denied) is itself a major human rights issue, but to Israelis and Zionists worldwide the apparent outrage was the suggestion that their organs were severed for money, which was called, you know, a blood libel.

From a journalistic viewpoint, the story is, to use a euphemism, a piece of crap. But does it warrant the torrent of invectives hurled at it by all and sundry on the Zionist camp? Logic dictates that nonsensical stories should be dismissed. But feigning scandal and claiming Jewish victimhood is very convenient to some (in fact, in some cases it's also a profitable business), so that these professional sufferers have been busy blowing the incident out of all proportion. Foremost among them, the government of Israel, which has asked its Swedish counterpart to condemn Aftonbladet -- which it apparently won't do.

The best way to see the hypocrisy and double standards involved in the scandalization of this irrelevant instance of faulty journalism is to make a couple of comparisons:

Comparison #1: Foreign stories about Israel vs. Israeli stories about foreign countries

It's not like the Israeli press is free from unwarranted demonization of other peoples and countries. For instance, Israeli newspapers are rife with incitement against the Nordic countries, which have been widely described as bastions of antisemitism.

On 30 March 2009, for instance, The Jerusalem Post published an online article under the title "Norway: Increased anti-Semitism has local Jews anxious", which, among other things, reported on an anti-Israel demonstration that took place in Oslo the day before, making the egregious claim that Norway's Finance Minister, Kristin Halvorsen, had marched with the protesters shouting antisemitic slogans. In their words (preserved here):

During the [January 2009 Gaza] war, Olso [Sic!] was fraught with violent anti-Israel demonstrations. Numerous government officials decried Israel’s actions in Gaza – including Minister of Finance Kristin Halvorsen, who led a march shouting, “Death to the Jews!”

In other words, the JPost accused Halvorsen not only of being an antisemite, but also of being unredeemably stupid, to the point of freely expressing her hate at a demonstration that she knew was being filmed. In the Post's defense it must be said that in Israel it is normal for politicians to exhibit precisely that kind of stupidity.

The reaction of the Norwegian government was the only admissible one from a self-respecting authority.

None.

Not a single step was taken by Norway's PM to infringe on the JPost's freedom of speech.

Halvorsen's Socialist Left party, however, did react. But what did they do? Ask the Israeli government to condemn The Jerusalem Post? Call for a boycott of Israeli journalists? No; they simply issued a press release:

Kristin Halvorsen participated in a demonstration for peace in Gaza on January 8th this year. There were no anti-Jewish slogans during the event what so ever, as The Jerusalem Post alleges.

There were appeals for inter-religious coexistence and peace, calling on Israel to stop the war on Gaza. The demonstration lasted for about an hour, and was a dignified and peaceful event.

A splinter-group continued a march towards the Israeli embassy afterwards. This was not a part of the official demonstration, and Kristin Halvorsen did not join this rally. She publicly denounced the violent outbreak that occurred in the aftermath of the peace demonstration.

In the face of which... The JPost retracted the story.

Well, not quite. They took it down from the web. A very bad journalistic practice, if you ask me: if you fucked it up, you must own up to your mistake.

When the Norwegian press did a search for the JPost's sources, it turned out that it was simply an attention-seeking Norwegian Jew who told a story of a nonexistent antisemitism to satisfy his ego. The JPost was left with no other option than to acknowledge the blunder, which it did in a convoluted way, putting the full blame on the deceitful Norwegian who had taken them in.

None of the Israeli politicians or Zionist bloggers now decrying Aftonbladet's bad standards said anything about the Jerusalem Post in the wake of this gaffe. Much less did the Israeli PM apologize to Norway or condemn the canard-telling paper, as he's now requesting from the Swedes.

Comparison #2: Blood libels against Israel vs. Israeli blood libels against others

Since Israelis seem so sensitive to what they call blood libels, they should also be outraged when these are used by other Israelis against certain groups.

Not so. On 19 February 2008, Shlomo Benizri, a Member of Knesset, stated that homosexual behavior caused earthquakes:

Mr Benizri made his comments while addressing a committee of the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, about the country's readiness for earthquakes.

He called on lawmakers to stop "passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the state of Israel, which anyway brings about earthquakes".

Trust me; while a few Zionist bloggers did make token protest statements, not a single one stated that Israel was a gay-unfriendly country because a gay-hater was allowed to serve in the Knesset. (Benizri was eventually jailed -- on swindling charges.)

Another example. On 11 April 2008, Haaretz published a story about a strange Jewish sect, led by one Elior Cher, that had abused small children, among other things by pushing them against burning-hot heaters, in an apparent attempt at exorcism. Haaretz's journalist had no better idea than to consult rabbi David Batzri, a well-known anti-Arab racist, on the issue. Batzri:

To me it sounds like complete paganism, like sacrificing children to Moloch. This is a religious rite that does not exist in Judaism. There isn't any religious rite because there aren't any such things in the Jewish kabbala, not even in applied kabbala, which is forbidden. This is exactly how children are sacrificed to Moloch. Only in Christianity and in pagan religions is there a concept like that - to pass a child over a fiery oven so he will burn.

See, this is plain blood libel against the Christians. Not, however, to Israeli politicians or Zionist bloggers, who said nothing despite this story being as prominent as, well, Aftonbladet's organ-harvesting article.

Comparison #3: Zionist blogger reactions vs. Nordic blogger reactions

A Zionist blogger after the alleged Aftonbladet blood libel:

Have a look at this face:That's Jan Helin [Aftonbladet's editor in chief], and he's an antisemite. He's not even a particularly interesting antisemite, with some novel angle that gives you pause or forces you grudgingly to recognize his intellectual innovation. This fellow, he just regurgitates stale old canards and lots of very worn clischees. (...) [Sweden is] a society that is saturated with hatred of Jews.

Don't know what clischees are (maybe clichés in Swedish)?

A Norwegian blogger after the Jerusalem Post canard:

The Norwegian media and public see the Jerusalem Post’s articles as an attempt at waging some sort of propaganda war on Norway, but I suspect it’s all to do with something far more simple, less dramatic: An editor’s urge to boost reader/traffic figures. We see it happen up here, too, on a daily basis. Which is not to say that the Israeli’s disappointment is hard to understand.

It could easily be explained by Norway’s pro Israel traditions. Sudden criticism from a long-time friend may be hard to take. It certainly explains most Norwegians’ disappointment in, and reactions to, Israel’s warfare methods.

What I see here is a mature Norwegian blogger who finds clearly rational explanations pointing to sensationalist journalism instead of putting forward obtuse conspiracy theories.

And an immature Israeli blogger who believes that an utterly irrelevant piece of yellow-press journalism is an example of the indelible Nordic antisemitism.

Or pretends to believe so, anyway.

Say "no" to the boycott

Of the Swedish furniture retailer IKEA.

According to Haaretz, on Sunday alone over 4,600 Israelis signed an online petition to boycott IKEA in the wake of a controversial article published in the Swedish daily Aftonbladet that suggested that Israeli soldiers "harvested" the organs of Palestinians (more on which in an upcoming post).

Let's see: in a number of countries, certain people (myself not included, for the record) are refusing to buy Israeli goods on the grounds that Israel's army killed 1,300 people, including 3oo children, in Gaza. The idea being that hitting the country's economy might pressure the Israeli citizenry into telling their government not to kill Palestinians so liberally.

Zionists have called this boycott antisemitic.

The logic behind the boycott of IKEA is somewhat more difficult to grasp. Newspapers, as different from armies, don't represent whole countries. And there's no business link between the furniture chain and the evening daily. Hitting one will have no effect on the other. The only reason IKEA is targetted is because it's a Swedish company and they're doing business in Israel. I.e., a logic that all Swedes are responsible for all other Swedes' individual behavior is being applied.

Of course, Zionists will now furiously publish posts on their blogs to slam this boycott calling it what it is: anti-Sweditic.

Of course.

Jordan and the Jews: Another lie Dershowitz told you

There will always be a market for books that explain complicated things, be it astronomy or Middle East politics, to laypeople who don't have much time to read. Some of the authors of those books, like Carl Sagan or Isaac Asimov, are serious writers. Some others, like Alan Dershowitz, are charlatans.

The problem is that because of Dershowitz's high profile, his bogus scholarship tends to go viral. Once he tells a lie, you can bet your monthly wage that web searches for that lie will yield a million hits in a matter of days.

Case in point, the Jordanian citizenship fable. As you have read time and again from a myriad commenters on the blogs and even from experienced journalists, "Jews are not allowed to be citizens of Jordan." The origin of this picturesque, but utterly wrong, notion can be traced back to Dershowitz's 2003 article The case against Jordan, a compendium of invectives against the Hashemite kingdom that sought (for a change) to apologize for Israel by comparison. In it, Dershowitz made the following astonishing claim:

Jordan has a law on its books explicitly prohibiting any Jew from becoming a citizen, or any Jordanian from selling land to a Jew.

Before we analyze the origin of this myth, let's hear the opinion of people just marginally more qualified than Alan Dershowitz to talk about human rights in Jordan (or elsewhere) -- the US's Department of State. In their 2006 International Religious Freedom Report, they had this to say:

The Government recognizes Judaism as a religion; however there are reportedly no Jordanian citizens who are Jewish. The Government does not impose restrictions on Jews, and they are permitted to own property and conduct business in the country.

So that the claim is a plain and simple lie.

However, and like most Dershowitz lies, this is one that is fabricated from an originally true fact, which was then twisted, distorted and magnified until it became a falsity. Jordan's Nationality Law includes the following clauses (Article 3):

The following shall be deemed to be Jordanian nationals:

(1)Any person who has acquired Jordanian nationality or a Jordanian passport under the Jordanian Nationality Law, 1928, as amended, Law No. 6 of 1954 or this Law;

(2)Any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948 and was a regular resident in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between 20 December 1949 and 16 February 1954;

(3)Any person whose father holds Jordanian nationality; (...)

As can be seen, there exists a restriction on SOME Jews (not on ANY Jew), namely the Jewish population that was involved in the Jewish-Arab conflict of 1948. These Jews (who, let's not forget, had a foreign nationality) were treated as members of an enemy belligerent faction and were thus denied citizenship by origin.

Unfair? Sure. Unique? By no means. Countries involved in conflicts usually go hysterical and tend to single out populations for discriminatory treatment. The US interned American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Perhaps more relevantly, Israel has laws that allow the foreign husband of an Israeli woman to become a resident of Israel except if he is a Palestinian from the occupied territories.

More to the point, however, the Jordanian law does not exclude Jews (even pre-1948 Palestinian citizens) from applying for naturalization. For instance, article 12 of the above-cited law says:

Any person other than a Jordanian who is not incapable by law may apply to the Council of Ministers for grant of a certificate of Jordanian naturalization if:

(1)He has been regularly resident in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan for a period of four years preceding the date of his application;

(2)He intends to reside in the Hashemite Kingdom of the Jordan.

Article 4, for its part, states:

Any Arab who has resided continuously in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan for not less than 15 years may acquire Jordanian nationality (...).

Where an Arab is a citizen of an Arab country -- for instance, a Moroccan Jew. No restrictions based on religion are made in either article.

In other words, a restriction on certain Jews who had been involved in an Arab-Jewish conflict, which is very similar to other comparable restrictions put into effect by advanced countries, was extrapolated by Dershowitz's dialectical magic wand to become a hateful ban on all Jews, which, presumably, would justify, for example, the Israeli settlers' brutal clubbing of elderly Palestinians. And once the lie was let loose, Zionists cut-and-pasted it with abandon.

So that, for the record: Jews can be citizens of Jordan. And they can own property there. The Department of State sez. It's official.

With Nazis like these, who needs Jew-lovers?

I recall when extremist Israeli rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe said that Ehud Olmert had to be hanged because he collaborated with the Nazis in the Palestinian Authority (by giving them weapons for their policemen). Members of Knesset were indignant -- because he had called for the murder of a Prime Minister, not because he had called the Palestinians Nazis.

Actually, one doesn't see too many Zionists protesting the outrageous misuse of Nazi analogies to describe the people downtrodden by Israel. Quite on the contrary, an army of pundits and pseudo-scholars (yes, I mean Alan Dershowitz among others) have been busy all these years waving the photo of the unelected Mufti of Jerusalem with Adolph Hitler, and claiming that the whole Palestinian nationalist movement stems from a sick desire to kill Jews.

So what do you make of the following story?

Jerusalem-born Jew elected to Fatah Revolutionary Council

The official list published Saturday of winners in elections to the Revolutionary Council of the Palestinian Fatah movement included 67-year-old Dr. Uri Davis, a Jerusalem-born Jew.

He was the first Jew to become a member of the Revolutionary Council since it was established in 1958.

Davis, who in the 1980s abandoned his Israeli citizenship in protest over Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and later received Palestinian citizenship, was the only non-Arab to run for a seat in the Revolutionary Council, Fatah's legislative body.

(...)

Speaking perfect Arabic, he teaches Jewish studies at the Palestinian al-Quds University in Abu Dis, located just outside an eight-meter high concrete wall Israel has built around occupied East Jerusalem to separate it from its West Bank environs.

The problem with using loaded words for accusing people is that the more loaded the word, the easier it is to find counterexamples. If you call a guy a Nazi, you must prove he's never been friends with a Jew, because Nazism is a visceral hatred of Jews which allows for no exceptions. And the Palestinians have proved not only that they can accept a Jew living among them and teaching in their universities, but also that they can elect him to a position in the Revolutionary Council of their main party.

Of course, many will say now that Davis is a sell-out Jew, a self-hating Jew. That may be so, I never asked him about his self-attitude -- but he's still a Jew. And how many Jews, even self-hating ones, were ever there in the Nazi Party leadership?

Or, for that matter, how many Israeli Muslims, even self-hating Muslims, are there in the Likud Central Committee?

When the defense of Israel isn't anti-Gentilism

Of course, not all staunch supporters of Israel are anti-Gentiles. That said, there exists an extreme kind of defense of Israel that has no other explanation than the deep hatred of Gentiles habrored by certain Zionists (including Gentile Zionists, who are thus self-hating Gentiles). So how can we tell when the defense of Israel is legitimate and when it is simply the product of anti-Gentilism? The following criteria may help the reader.

The defense of Israel is anti-Gentile:

1. When it's based on conspiracy theories or fantastic tales of boundless Arab power. Examples: The press and the left are strongholds of antisemitism; Prince Bandar did as he pleased with Pres. Bush; the Muslims are slowly taking over Europe and tilting it against Israel; Israeli Arabs want to marry Palestinians from the territories to quietly become a majority; Bedouin men seek to corrupt young Jewish girls. All the world is against the Jews and that's why Israel must be defended.

2. When it plays down any indication that Jews exercise any kind of power. Examples: Jewish American millionaires' contributions to the construction of settlements are "symbolic" amounts; there's no Jewish lobby in the United States, and if there's one it's completely toothless; Jewish screenwriters played no role in the production of anti-Arab racist films; AIPAC is just another lobby, like the garbanzo-bean producers' lobby, and all those Congresspeople, Secretaries of State and presidential candidates who go to AIPAC meetings do so because they like kasher food.

3. When the defense is total and unconditional. If the Israel Defense Forces don't beat Palestinian prisoners, they're the most moral army in the world. If they are filmed beating Palestinian prisoners, on the other hand, they're also the most moral army in the world because the incident will be investigated. No matter what wrong Israel does, anti-Gentile defenders of the country will turn it into further proof of the Jewish State's righteousness.

4. When barely humanitarian behavior is presented as extraordinary. When Israel drops leaflets announcing it will bomb civilian places (just like those human-rights paragons, the Russians, did in Grozny), its soldiers are said to be risking their lives because they're telling their enemies when they will strike (no mention that they'll do so from the safety of their tanks, planes and choppers). When Israel allows rice to be imported into Gaza (but not livestock or vegetables), it's shown as proof of its great concern for Gazan children, who are not allowed to die from starvation (no mention that they'll suffer malnourishment). When taxes paid by the Palestinians, but collected by Israel, are transferred to the Gaza government it's considered to be a display of generosity rather than the belated fulfillment of a signed obligation.

5. When different standards are applied to Israel and to its adversaries. The Hamas Charter, which calls for the elimination of the State of Israel, is considered to be binding for all Palestinians (even if the overwhelming majority of them don't live under Hamas) and must be changed before negotiations can even start. The Likud Charter, which forbids the creation of a Palestinian state, is, on the other hand, considered "mere sabre rattling," and there's no need to change it. When an unknown Palestinian journalist says that Israel handed out aphrodisiac gum to Gazans in order to weaken them, it's the hate of a sick society vented; when a Jewish Member of Knesset asserts that gays cause earthquakes, it's freedom of speech exercised.

6. When Israel is judged by its best representatives, and the Palestinians by their worst elements. Israel is Tzipi Livni, not Moshe Feiglin or the rabbi who called for the murder of 1 million Gazans; the Palestinians are the imam who called Jews apes and pigs, not Sari Nusseibi or Salim Fayyad.

A defender of Israel is anti-Gentile when he or she combines most or all of these features in their discourse.

Defenses of Israel that don't exhibit these symptoms, on the other hand, are legitimate.

Jewish terrorism: debunking yet another claim

I was appalled to read this post over at the otherwise excellent Mondoweiss. In it Phil Weiss describes an exchange he had with a PR expert:

Susie Kneedler tells me that an ad on National Public Radio for today’s "All Things Considered" teases a story by saying that "Jewish terrorists of 1947 were the first terrorists of the modern era." Or words to that effect. Huh. I brought this up with pr pro Marion Dreyfus the other night at a party. "But they warned the people," she said of the Irgun blowing up the King David Hotel in ‘46 (...).The Arabs never do that, said she.

What's Phil's response to that?

Does a flimsy warning excuse killing 91 people? Was Arlosoroff warned before Revisionists murdered him on the beach in Tel Aviv in ‘33 after he’d made the mistake of speaking about living with the Palestinians? Was Rabin warned before a rightwing nut shot him?

And I was appalled because I see that Zionists continue to succeed in restricting discussion of Jewish terrorism to the King David Hotel incident (plus a few isolated instances of Jew-on-Jew terror that can be easily dismissed as political violence). They use the warnings given (although there's no evidence whatsoever that they reached the British officers at the hotel) to draw a line between Jewish terrorism, which announced its strikes in advance so that civilians wouldn't die, and Arab terrorism, which only seeks to kill innocents.

So this is the Jewish terrorists gave warnings claim; how to debunk it? Once again, the Palestine Post (today's Jerusalem Post) archives come in handy. Here's the cover from 30 Dec 1947 (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE):



Notice the following story:



It reads:

Bomb at Damascus Gate kills 15 Arabs
A bomb attack at Damascus gate at 12.40 yesterday morning resulted in the deaths of 15 Arabs and injuries to about 50 more. (...) Riding in a green taxi, three Jews --two of them reportedly wearing tarbushes-- dashed past the Arab National Guard at the New Gate, continued down Suleiman's Way and tossed out a bomb near the bus station. The streets, crowded with Arabs waiting for buses to all parts of the country, were turned into a shambles.

Further, here's the cover from 20 Jun 1939 (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE):


The most prominent story reads:

49 Arab casualties in Haifa explosion
18 killed outright
(...)
Haifa, Monday.- A terrific explosion, the second this year and occuring within a few feet of the spot of the earlier one, claimed nearly 50 killed and wounded here this morning. Shortly after 6 o'clock a huge bomb, apparently time-set, exploded near the Paris Café, facing the Central Police Station, in the Arab market quarter.

So do Jews tossing a bomb from a taxi at a bus station at rush hour so that civilian victims will be maximized look like a "warnings were given" situation? And is there any evidence that the bombing of the Haifa market quarter was previously announced by the terrorists?

Education, education, education. The world needs to learn more about when Jews committed atrocities very similar to the Palestinians' (now they commit atrocities that are different from the Palis'). But how do we expect to expose the Zionists when not even the antis are aware of the scope and bestiality of Jewish terrorism?

ETA —and anti-Euskarism— strike again

We have already talked about anti-Euskarism, the irrational hatred of Basques. Last week's events prove that, at least in my country, anti-Euskarism is alive and well. Look at the cover of La Nación, one of Buenos Aires' leading dailies, from July 31:


As you can see, the most prominent headline on the cover reads, "Horror in Spain over new ETA strike." From the space devoted to the incident, you would think that hundreds of innocent civilians died in the Basque guerrilla's attack.

Actually, two armed Spanish policemen were killed in the bombing. Now while one condemns all forms of violence, it must also be said that this ETA attack pales beside other far more horrific violent actions that take place every day around the world.

Consider, for instance, the case of Egypt. On the same day in which La Nación found it fitting to report Basque, and only Basque, violence, around 4,000 Egyptian girls were victims of Female Genital Mutilation. Not only were these girls deprived of sexual pleasure forever, but some 1% of them will die due to infection caught during the procedure. Yet despite this slow holocaust inflicted on women for the sole crime of having the wrong gender, La Nación chose not to say anything about it on July 31.

Or, for example, Algeria. On July 30, 20 soldiers were killed and 7 wounded in a terror attack in the northeast of the country. That's ten times as many victims as in ETA's strike on the same day. La Nación's coverage? None at all. It looks like there's no need to report terrorism when Basques can't be blamed for it.

Lest anyone argue that we are only concerned with Islamic violence, let's turn to Christian terror. On Christmas of 2008, the Lord's Resistance Army, a Christian terrorist group in Africa, killed 45 people in a Congo church. You would search La Nación in vain for a single mention of the massacre.

In its inner pages, the daily devotes two lengthy articles to discussing ETA's irrationality. And it's not alone in its anti-Euskarism: today's Clarín (the other leading Buenos Aires newspaper) runs an editorial urging the Basques to drop the use of violence to achieve their national aspirations. Of course, the daily doesn't offer any alternative or explain how else the Basques could fight Spanish oppression of their country if a referendum on independence is constitutionally prohibited. And it definitely does not run an editorial scolding the Algerian terrorists.

In case someone hasn't gotten my point (and I know many a conceited Zionist who's too busy defending the indefensible to understand irony and grasp double sense):

It's not about Israel.

It's not about the Jews.

It's about Countries & Conflicts That People Know About.

Get over it.

What kind of monsters would use their own babies as human shields?

Ultra-Orthodox Jews:

Police arrested 15 ultra-Orthodox Jews on Saturday during clashes that erupted after Haredim broke into a parking lot in Jerusalem, in the latest protest against the opening of the site on Shabbat. (...)

About 150 protestors managed to force their way into the site, despite efforts by police to prevent their entry.

Police subsequently threatened to forcibly remove the Haredi and bring a vehicle with a water cannon to the scene. At this point, a woman holding a baby joined the men demonstrating, in order to prevent police from making good on their threat.

What I don't understand is why the police didn't water-cannon the demonstrators all the same. Of course, the baby could have been hurt or even killed. But he would only have had his mother to blame, right? What is good for the Gaza is good for ... or how was it?

Jewish terrorism: debunking three claims

Once upon a time, Jewish groups committed terror acts very similar to the ones perpetrated until recently by the Palestinians, complete with charred vehicles, body parts scatterd all over the sidewalk, etc. This creates a problem for the Zionists, since "nothing, but nothing, can justify terrorism." In order to rationalize the acts of those Jewish murderers, three basic claims are made. As far as I know, they have never been debunked simultaneously in one and the same article. Here we go, thus:

Claim #1: Only the Irgun and the Stern Gang resorted to terror. The Haganah, which was the mainstream Jewish resistance group, didn't.

This is a departure from established fact, or, euphemisms aside, a lie. The Haganah committed numerous terror attacks, sometimes in reprisal for Arab bombings, but always killing innocent civilians. Here you can access the archives of the Palestine Post (today's Jerusalem Post); in the January 6, 1948, issue you'll find the following article (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE):



If you browse the following day's issue of the newspaper, you'll find out that at least 10 people were killed in that Haganah terror bombing, including a boy aged 15, the hotel owner's son and two Sudanese waiters (talk about Darfur). (You will also find the British authorities' denial that the hotel had been given any military use by the Arabs.) You can find many more examples of Haganah terrorism in this book.

Claim #2: Jewish terror was mostly directed against British and Arab military objectives, and did not intend to kill civilians.

This claim exploits the fact that the best-known Jewish terror attack is the one on the King David Hotel, where the Headquarters of the British Forces in Palestine and Transjordan were located. First of all it must be noted that of the 91 victims, only 22 were Britons, so that the overwhelming majority were innocent civilians, including 17 Jews. But even if the intention of this particular attack was to harm the British military, most attacks carried out by the Irgun and other Jewish terror groups targeted Arab civilians. Here's one example:



Here's another:



Here's yet another:



See here a list of 42 Jewish attacks on Arab buses, automobiles and carts in just three months.

Yes, Jewish terrorists WANTED to randomly kill civilians. These were not collateral damage.

Claim #3: After Israel's independence, Israelis who had engaged in terrorism paid a heavy price for their acts and were marginalized from the country's political scene for several decades.

I don't need to present any evidence to debunk this claim, because it's an assertion, and the burden of proof falls on the one who affirms something, not on the one who denies it.

Yes, Menachem Begin, one of the most famous Jewish murderers, wasn't elected Prime Minister until 1977. But what evidence is there that he wasn't elected because of his terrorism against the Arabs? Peoples don't decide their vote out of empathy for other peoples, much less their enemies. There is a much simpler explanation: Israel was established by European Jews who were politically left-leaning. They created an all-powerful labor federation, the Histadrut, through which jobs could be obtained, since it controlled most industries. And handing out jobs is a great way of getting votes. Israel became thus a hegemonic-party state, like Italy under the Christian Democrats, or Japan under the Liberal Democrats.

Only when the impoverished Sephardi population, who didn't benefit from the Histadrut pork barrel, grew to outnumber the educated, well-to-do Ashkenazi sector did Begin's rightist, populist discourse take hold among the electorate.

The reality of Jewish terrorism will continue to haunt the Zionist camp. No matter how hard they try to spin it, it was terrorism, it did target civilians, and while it in no way justifies Hamas terror, it proves that Palestinians are no more evil than other peoples who believe themselves morally superior.

Dershowitz: Nazis OK; too bad the Mufti corrupted them

Calling Alan Dershowitz a liar wouldn't be nice. It would be more polite to call him a purveyor of untruths.

But in fact he's a liar. The reason some will find his arguments "compelling" is because once Dershowitz has established the point he wants to make, he proceeds to manufacture a source to support it. That way he can never lose a debate, especially when he's not debating flesh and blood adversaries but a misrepresentation of their ideas, plus one or two straw men.

To be fair, Dershowitz doesn't make up his sources from scratch. He'll take a portion of an actual quote, leaving out crucial but inconvenient information, and will append to it an unrelated bit of argumentation, maybe from another quote that also exists, to obtain something which, while vaguely based on the truth, is a downright falsity.

One example is found in his recent article in The Jerusalem Post, which focuses on the figure of Amin El Hussayni, Mufti of Jerusalem during the British Mandate. The Mufti spent the WWII years in Berlin, where he collaborated with the Nazis to an unclear extent. This is used by Zionists to establish that the Palestinians bear some responsibility for the Holocaust, although there's no conclusive evidence that Hussayni's collaboration enjoyed support from the Palestinian public, and, on the other hand, Palestinian Arabs fought, alongside with Palestinian Jews, against the Nazis in the British-enlisted Palestine Regiment.

Of course, Hussayni wasn't any Arab; he was an Arab leader. But Avraham Stern was a Jewish leader, and in 1941 he offered the Nazis to enter the war on Germany's side (see here for a facsimile of the proposal). The Palestinians can't be demonized for doing what the Jews also tried to do (although the Zionist defense for this is that Stern has been repudiated in Israel, this is yet another lie: streets in all major Israeli cities are named after this frustrated Nazi collaborator).

In that context, Dershowitz claims:

[The Mufti] personally stopped 4,000 children, accompanied by 500 adults, from leaving Europe and had them sent to Auschwitz and gassed[.]

There indeed exists a story involving 4,000 children, 500 adults and the Mufti, but it's not as Dershowitz tells it. As Raoul Hilberg recounts in The destruction of the European Jews, all 4,500 people (from Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania) did manage to emigrate to Palestine (obviously, undetected by the Germans), and the Mufti protested to the Nazis, asking them to take active measures to stop further emigration. His objective was clearly to prevent more Jews from arriving in Palestine, not to block them from leaving Europe.

But it is the second part of Dershowitz's claim that is simply ludicrous. According to him, the Mufti "had them sent to Auschwitz"! Do you get it? The Nazis didn't actually mean to gas those Jews, but the Mufti, more Catholic than the Pope, arranged their transfer to a death camp! The sole idea that a guest of the Nazis could decide whom to send to the gas chambers, or that the Nazis would have needed any encouragement to kill the Jewish people they came across, would cause a roar of laughter among any audience even superficially acquainted with the Holocaust.

To summarize: the Mufti stopped 4,500 Jews who weren't in Europe from leaving Europe; and sent them to their death in Auschwitz against the Nazi reluctance to transfer Jews there. The case for expelling the Arabs from Israel is indeed overwhelming.

Purity of arms, absurdity of claims

Zionism is like a multi-headed hydra. There, I'm again at it with my antisemitic imagery. But how else would you describe a community of people who make wildly contradictory claims, making you waste your time and energy addressing them all? It's not like, for instance, the communists, with whom you at least have a clear idea of what you've got to respond to.

I'd like to focus here on one particular claim and its opposite, which are both made by Zionists of different stripes (or of the same stripe at different times). On the one hand it is asserted that Israel adheres to exceptionally high standards, indeed the best in the world, when it fights the Palestinians. On the other hand it is claimed that it's antisemitic to scrutinize Israel's behavior, especially vis-à-vis the occupied territories, since Israel is just another member of the international community and there's no special reason to look into its human-rights abuses. In other words, Israel is said to behave better than all other states, but if you want to verify if it does, then you're charged with being infected with an antisemitic obsession.

One notable example is the Purity of Arms claim, which is closely related to the familiar phrase, "Israel has the most moral army in the world." In what ways is the country exceptionally moral? According to the Judeo-Christian Alliance:

Israeli soldiers risk their own lives to prevent Palestinian civilian deaths.

According to the Zionist Organization of America:

No other nation teaches its soldiers to risk their own lives for the purpose of avoiding deaths and injuries to the civilian population of its enemies.

The point is picked up by Alan Dershowitz, one of the leading Israel apologists:

A lead story in the "Ideas" section of the Boston Globe analyzed the ethical training received by Israeli soldiers and concluded, "The IDF army offers a model for us and other coalition forces." It described the Israeli concept of "purity of arms," which "requires that soldiers put their own lives at stake in order to avoid harming non-combatants."

Why would they make such an unbelievable claim? Soldiers are usually too busy staying alive themselves; it's not reasonable to even suggest that they would place other people's lives above their own. However, Israel defenders play on the gullibility of a large segment of the Gentile community. Because of the immense contribution of Jewish persons to the European and American societies, the public is prepared to believe anything good about Israel, just as it's perpared to believe anything bad about the Palestinians, courtesy of Exodus and numerous other anti-Arab movies.

But, is there even a grain of truth to the claim? Is it at least formally accurate, i.e., are Israeli sodiers taught what they're claimed to be taught, even if they don't practice it?

No, it's a lie. The Purity of Arms concept indeed exists, but it does not involve teaching soldiers self-sacrifice for the sake of others. It's part of the Ethical Code of the Israeli Defense Forces:

Purity of Arms

The IDF serviceman will use force of arms only for the purpose of subduing the enemy to the necessary extent and will limit his use of force so as to prevent unnecessary harm to human life and limb, dignity and property.

The IDF servicemen's purity of arms is their self-control in use of armed force. They will use their arms only for the purpose of achieving their mission, without inflicting unnecessary injury to human life or limb; dignity or property, of both soldiers and civilians, with special consideration for the defenseless, whether in wartime, or during routine security operations, or in the absence of combat, or times of peace.

As can be seen, nothing you won't find in the Ethical Codes of other armies, and of course no hint whatsoever that soldiers should risk their lives to avoid harming non-combatants.

Indeed, "The Ethical Fight Against Terror," a 2003 article written by Israeli philosopher Asa Kasher and Major General Amos Yadlin, now the head of Military Intelligence, argued that it was justifiable to kill civilians so that soldiers won't be lost. The article is considered to have provided the justification for Israel's recent disproportionate war on Gaza. In an interview with Haaretz, Kasher stated:

There is no army in the world that will endanger its soldiers in order to avoid hitting the neighbors of an enemy or terrorist. (...)

Sending a soldier there to fight terrorists is justified, but why should I force him to endanger himself much more than that so that the terrorist's neighbor isn't killed? I don't have an answer for that. From the standpoint of the state of Israel, the neighbor is much less important. I owe the soldier more. If it's between the soldier and the terrorist's neighbor, the priority is the soldier. Any country would do the same.

That comes a lot closer to Israel's observed behavior in Gaza.

So that you see: I've had to do some research to establish, apparently for the first time on the Internet, the Zionists' mendaciousness as regards the Purity of Arms concept. They'll call me an antisemite, because, who would spend so much time on the Ethical Code of the IDF when China is occupying Tibet? But I guess I can live with the antisemitic slur being hurled at me. It's a sacrifice that I'm prepared to make so that truth won't be hurt.

Murderers, freedom-fighters and "complex situations"

Barry Rubin lives in a world of clear-cutness. To this radical Israeli Likudnik and university professor who "sold" the Iraq war to the West (although you may have heard that Israel didn't push for that war, see Rubin's seminal article here), a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist:

A reporter just wrote me a letter that contains a single sentence which I think reflects on why the Western world is in such trouble today (...):

“And when it comes to the Middle East, one man’s [obscenity deleted] is another man’s truth.”

Woe to us that a journalist thinks this way. Of course, this is very similar to the older version that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

Even diplomats obfuscate things, Rubin moans:

Recently, I heard that latter one from the Danish ambassador to the Council of Europe who said that Hamas and Hizballah were like the Danish resistance in World War Two.

(...)

That a European country—and one of the more astute ones, to make matters worse--is represented by someone like that says something pretty sad about the state of the world today.

Rubin would prefer that Denmark be represented by, say, the Muhammad cartoonists; but life is unfair.

In his pursuit of moral clarity, Rubin goes on to state:

People who murder civilians on purpose and organizations which have a strategy of mass murder are terrorists. The fact that these same organizations seek to put into power repressive dictatorships makes them even less like anything that might be called freedom fighters.

People who try their best not to murder civilians or to inflict suffering on them as an end in itself and who seek to create democratic governments with liberty are freedom fighters.

An EITHER/OR dichotomy arises from these paragraphs. There are murderers of civilians who want dictatorships, and protectors of civilians who want democratic governments; mankind is thus neatly divided between bad and good guys. The books were wrong all along and the world is not at all complicated.

Can Rubin be bothered to give examples of the bad guys? Unsurprisingly, he can:

Those responsible for the Terror in the French Revolution, Nazis, Stalinists, Hamas, al-Qaida, etc., can be called terrorists. That list was not meant to be exhaustive.

Individuals can act in a terrorist manner but if the movements in which they participate are freedom fighter movements, they will limit, restrain, and punish such people. In terrorist groups—like say the PLO historically—such acts were glorified and rewarded.

When one is served this [curseword deleted] by an Israeli academic, the first thought that comes to mind is, where to begin.

Palestinian terrorists don't kill Jews "as an end in itself." They kill Jews so that they will get the hell out of Israel. Of course this is immoral; nobody should be expelled from where they were born and raised; but the terrorists' objective is clearly not to murder people, but to fully retake the land that they view as theirs. And even in that context, the PLO was absolutely clear that it would not expell the Jews descended from those who lived in Palestine before the Balfour Declaration.

Also, Rubin fails to take into consideration that, outside of killing civilians, there's nothing the Palestinians can do to punish the Jewish theft of Arab land. It's not like the Palestinians can at any given moment cut off power to Tel Aviv, demolish a Jewish house of their choice or prevent taxes paid by Israelis from reaching their government. What the Palestinians do can't be compared to what a state with an army can do. It must be compared to what other peoples have done when they didn't have a state -- like, for instance, the Jews before 1948.

And here's where an innocent-looking paragraph that Rubin inserts becomes operative:

Now obviously if one wants to try to come up with complex situations regarding the issues discussed briefly above where the answers aren’t so easy, this can be done without difficulty. But this does not prove such distinctions don’t exist, just that they are not always simple ones.

Why does Rubin make this caveat? Isn't terrorism always terrorism? What can be complex about that?

The answer is very simple: Rubin is pre-emptively reserving the right to excuse the Jewish terrorists who targetted civilians in the 30s and 40s and who have been and continue to be glorified by Israel.

Take, for instance, David Raziel. His résumé includes:

Raziel (...) was slowly building his anti-terror machine. It now struck, to the terror of the Arabs (...).

On July 6,1938, time bombs were put in milk cans and placed in the Arab market place in Haifa by an Irgun member dressed as an Arab porter. In the explosion that followed, 21 Arabs were killed and 52 wounded. Terror spread throughout the Arabs of Haifa, among the most vicious of the enemies of Zionism.

The attack was in reaction to the murder of two Jews the previous day in Jerusalem, and the Arabs of Jerusalem were not to be spared. A bomb thrown into a crowd of Arabs on David Street in the Old City killed two and wounded four. Two days later, the Irgun threw a bomb into a crowd of Arabs waiting near the bus terminal near Jaffa Gate. Three were killed and 19 injured. A week later, on a Friday, as Arabs left their mosque at the foot of David Street in the Old City, an electronically detonated mine went off killing ten Arabs and wounding 30.

On July 25, 1938, a 30-kilogram explosive went off in the Arab market place in Haifa. Hidden in a barrel of sour pickles, it killed at least 35 Arabs and wounded 70 more. The Arabs were terrified; (...) Raziel was content.

One month later, the Irgun switched to Jaffa, a nest of the worst gangs of Arab vipers in the country. An Irgun member, once again dressed as an Arab porter, placed a bomb in the Arab Dir-a-Salach marketplace. The official version listed 21 Arabs dead and 35 wounded. In reality many more went to heaven.

February 27, 1939, proved to be yet another "Black Day" for the Arabs as the Irgun, sensing collapse of Arab terror in the face of Jewish vengeance, attacked in three cities. In Haifa, two powerful explosions went off, one at the ticket window of the railroad station in East Haifa and the other at the Arab market place. At least 27 Arabs were killed. Half-an-hour later in Jerusalem, three Arabs were killed and six wounded in an Irgun explosion on David Street while another died after being attacked on an Arab bus passing Machane Yehuda.

One would hope for this beast to be fully repudiated by Israel. One would hope in vain. Today, Israel celebrates this mass-murderer with a village named after him, Ramat Raziel, which is located in the Jerusalem corridor. Streets in all major Israeli cities bear his name as well.

That's right: the Jewish state is proud of a vicious Jewish murderer that killed more innocent civilians at the Haifa marketplace than the Palestinians did at the Dolphinarium.

So was Raziel a freedom fighter or a terrorist? Neither, according to Rubin: when Jews murder civilians, they become a "complex situation" (a category from which, obvioulsy, Arabs are barred) which we need not discuss, lest we expose ourselves as antisemites.

Millionaire Dhimmis

My family (wife, two kids and yours truly) are very fortunate where living space is concerned. We own a 150 sq mt house, plus a 50 sq mt yard. That's 50 sq mt of housing per head. Most other people in my country have to make do with much smaller houses, and many don't own any real estate at all. In Barcelona, where my wife comes from, property ownership averages less than 30 sq mt per capita, and I believe the same is true for Paris, Rome and other crowded European capitals.

You would expect us to also compare very favorably with, for instance, the Jews who emigrated from Arab lands. By now you must be familiar with the Zionist version of their story: they didn't emigrate with the encouragement and support of Israel, but were instead expelled; and they never enjoyed comfortable lives in Arab countries, but had been subjected to dhimmi status all along. Now second-class citizens are never allowed to economically thrive, so that Arab Jews must have lived, on average, in abject poverty.

Well; this is one more issue in which Zionists claim one thing and its exact opposite with a straight face. According to their new narrative re the Jewish "refugees" from Morocco, Iraq and other Arab countries, these emigrants left massive wealth behind:

About 850,000 Jews fled Arab countries after Israel's founding in 1948, leaving behind assets valued today at more than $300 billion, said Heskel M. Haddad.

He added that the New York-based organization has decades-old property deeds of Jews from Arab countries on a total area of 100,000 sq.km. - which is five times the size of the State of Israel.

These figures mean that, on average, Sephardi Jews owned 118,000 sq mt of real estate, and were worth $353,000 each. A typical five-member family, thus, owned property equivalent to over fifty urban blocks measuring 100 meters on each side, and their net worth was more than 1.75 million dollars.

So what gives? Were they despised dhimmis or millionaires? Or is this just one more instance of Zionists wanting to have it both ways?

h/t: andrew r, for helping me correct my calculations.

Elementary, Moisés

I confess I don't actually know who Moisés Naím is, but he wrote an article in the Spanish daily El País comparing the Muslims' reaction to the Danish Muhammad cartoons back in 2005 with their response to China's crackdown on its Muslim Uighur population after they burned cars and stores in recent riots. Eamonn McDonaugh provides a very good translation at Z-Word Blog.

At the beginning of the article Naím machine-guns us with rhetorical questions:

Where are the fatwas? Where are the huge protest marches? Where are the protests in front of the embassies? What happened to the indignation-laden speeches? What does Al Qaeda have to say? In other words, what does China have that Denmark didn’t?

Naím does have an answer in mind, but wants us to get to it on our own. So that I'll try to reach the conclusions he expects us to draw; to that effect, I need to ask a few questions myself:

1) Were the cartoonists who drew the Muhammad caricatures Jewish? No.
2) Was the newspaper where they were published a Jewish journal? No.
3) Were the newspaper's editors Jewish? No.
4) Was it a newspaper published in the Jewish state? No.

Then there can be no doubt:

The Muslims protested the Danish cartoons and not the Chinese repression of the Uighurs because they are antisemitic.