Letters to a Zionist friend (3): It's them, not me

Yitzchak Goodman is easily the most civil blogger on the web. He is calm and mild-mannered and always finds a polite way to say even the most outrageous things. When you get angry at him, you know you can't tell him to do something to himself, because he'll never reciprocate.

Now Goodman has a strange obsession. A huge amount of his blogging is devoted to exposing North Korea's autocratic regime -- for instance, here, here and here, just from this last week. This fixation defies explanation. North Korea is not very much newsworthy, and while its human-rights record is dismal, it pales next to that of Congo, where 5.5 million were killed in the last war, and Pygmies were eaten.

Granted, he's not the only one with difficult-to-explain obsessions. My countryman Andrés Oppenheimer, for instance, specializes in trashing Cuba. He appears on TV, writes for newspapers in Spanish and English and has even authored a few books whose sole purpose is to highlight Cuba's failures and belittle its achievements. This, at a time when Cuba has become utterly irrelevant on the international scene.

So that I suppose you were right, my dear Zionist friend, to call Goodman an anti-North-Korean bigot, and Oppenheimer an anti-Cuban bigot.

What?? You didn't call them bigots?

Wait a minute. Your star argument all these years has been that I slam Israel and not Sudan, so I must have a special prejudice against Israel and, in fact, the Jewish people, which turns me into, well, an antisemite. But look at Goodman and Oppenheimer: they also talk too little about Sudan, and too much about North Korea and Cuba. They must also harbor hateful feelings, mustn't they?

Oh, I can see what your response to that is. It's not only that I devote a disproportionate fraction of my time to bashing Israel. It's also that there's a huge wealth of other bloggers, pundits, journalists and commenters who do the same: by contrast, Goodman and Oppenheimer are relatively isolated in their North Korean and Cuban obsessions. Such collective fury directed against a small country can only be dictated by deeply-ingrained hatred, probably the result of milennia of Jewish blood-libeling.

And know what? I'll agree that many, many critics of Israel are vicious antisemites. A majority, a minority? I don't know, but there are many. But what does this say about individual anti-Zionists? Nothing. Nothing at all.

See, Goodman's and Oppenheimer's cases illustrate the fact that, statistically, there will always be people who develop an interest, a negative interest, in a certain country for no reason at all. So how do you know that I'm not the guy that statistically must arise with a specialized interest in finding Israel's defects, just like others criticize Poland, Sri Lanka or Argentina? You don't know, and if you don't know you must give me the benefit of the doubt. Trust me: I am that guy. And I'm not an antisemite, and the proof is that -- I don't have a single Jewish friend! (i.e. I didn't befriend one only to deflect criticism. I do have a left-handed wife, however. Not the same, I know.)

The rest of anti-Zionists? I don't know. Some will hate Jews, some others won't. But here's a piece of advice for you: if you believe you can charge individual Israel critics with antisemitism, don't look at me, look at them.

Israel as a wife beater

It sometimes seems to me that in defending itself Israel uses some of the arguments depoloyed by wife abusers to excuse their behavior.

"She provoked me." That is a standard defense. She cursed me, she slapped me in the face, she even kicked me in the knee with her sharp-pointed shoes, and it did hurt. Can you expect me not to react? By the way, since I punched both her eyes black, she has stopped attacking me, either verbally or physically.

But no court, be it in the US, Argentina or Israel, would accept that defense. The judge would tell the defendant that while his wife has the power to cause him a modest amount of pain, he has the power to kill her with his fists. The overwhelmingly stronger side in a conflict has a greater obligation to show restraint than the side that is basically unable to cause any actual harm. If the husband doesn't want to be kicked or scratched, he must seek an arrangement, for instance by leaving the house (leaving the house altogether, not just one room) and paying support money to his spouse and children.

That is, in a nutshell, what judge Goldstone has told Israel. Hamas' attacks were mostly a nuisance, with people in Israel being more likely to die as bystanders in drive-by shootings from internecine Jewish mafia warfare than from a Qassam or a Grad. Few Israelis took Hamas' toothless rockets seriously; on the contrary, bloodthirsty Israeli Jews flocked to Sderot to watch the carnage live undeterred by the (extremely low) chances of being hit by one of the enemy's imprecise devices. In that context, Goldstone affirms, the amount of death inflicted by Israel is unwarrantedly disproportionate. He's being hated a lot for saying so, and, more to the point, for being a Jew who says so.

Another defense wife-batterers usually put up is, "I don't know how this could come about." The wife is bruised and bleeding and has missing teeth and two or three broken bones, yet the guy doesn't know how it all happened, as if he was seized by supernatural forces he had no control over. This is what the Israeli government says re the continual illegal outpost expansion in the West Bank. It just happens; the IDF can't do anything. As Haaretz reported a few days ago, quoting a defense official:

"The settlers are very much in tune with the ticking political clock," the senior defense source said. "You can sense it on the ground, with the infrastructure work that is being done, but also in more minor things. They are acting without any legal authorization and are ignoring the state.

"The approach at this time is that whoever can, goes ahead and builds," the source continued. "It begins with the official leadership of the Yesha Council [of settlements] and ends with the hilltop youth."

The source is fully aware of the hindrance this means in terms of an eventual evacuation as part of a two-state solution:

He pointed out that the phenomenon of unbridled construction is evident in both the more established settlements and in the illegal outposts.

"Whoever can, lays the floor in preparation for constructing a building; and in factories they add extensions to roofs. In some settlements, they've built factories for rapid construction of caravans on site, so that they can bypass the ban - on transporting caravans - which was issued by the Civil Administration. Everything was done with the intent of creating a critical mass in many different locations at once, which will make evacuation in the future [more] difficult," he said.

Note how this security source speaks of it as if it were fate-ordained. It's all illegal, he has no qualms admitting that, just like a wife abuser admits that battering his wife is also illegal. But then he describes the process as something that just goes on, as if the defense establishment he belongs to had no power whatsoever to stop it.

Mr. Unnamed Official, I believe Israel has a procedure to deal with illegal construction. What was the name for it? Oh, yes -- house demolitions. As for those factories where they make the caravans, here's an idea you may have not thought of -- factory demolitions. Is it too much to ask why you are not using your army's proven capabilities for removing lawbreakers from where they're illegally residing? Can you be seriously describing with a straight face the criminal actions of Israeli citizens without facing up to the fact that it's your duty to stop them -- very much like a violent husband describes the abuse he inflicted on his wife while maintaining that he wasn't actually aware of what he was doing?

Who is going to jail wife-battering Israel? Although Richard Goldstone is a judge, he cannot convict the offending country. There's only one judge who can. A judge who for a while seemed to have gathered the courage to indict Israel over its "unwilling" expansion in the West Bank. But he finally showed his true colors and dropped the case. Shame on you, Judge Obama, for letting shepherd-clubbing, grove-burning, land-grabbing Israel to walk free once again, in spite of the harm it visits on the wife it forcibly took.

A report is not a genocide

Yes, Zionist blogs are, as a rule, boring and predictable and not much fun to follow. But I'm a Hasbara buster, and to bust the Hasbara first I must read it. So the other day I was browsing Ben Cohen's Z-Word when I noticed the following paragraph:

At 5PM EST today, you can watch a live debate between Judge Richard Goldstone - of Goldstone Commission fame - and Dore Gold, now of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, formerly the Israeli Ambassador to the UN. Their debate comes one day after the House of Representatives dismissed the Goldstone report as a sham and as the UN General Assembly deliberates over a non-binding resolution to refer the report to the Security Council (bit of a foregone conclusion, that one.)

It has always stricken me how landslide votings are considered proof of the justness of the vote when done by the US Congress, but of antisemitic prejudice when done by the UN. Cohen thinks (OK, he actually doesn't, but haven't you heard about figures of speech) that the US Congress's resolution, unlike the UN General Assembly's, was not a foregone conclusion. It was a reflection of the American lawmakers' careful and thorough reading of the Goldstone report, and not of their fear of being targetted by a smear campaign if they supported the document. There's a world of difference between them and the countries that automatically voted for the resolution at the General Assembly without having even paid a cursory look at it.

An impartial reader (same observation as before re figures of speech) might, however, wonder if the UN actually has a pattern of knee-jerk anti-Israel voting, like Cohen would have us believe. It turns out not. While the General Assembly did vote to equate (correctly but unnecessarily) Zionism to racism in 1975, it voted to repeal the equation in 1992. Israel has been censured many times, but it has never (yes, that's never) been subjected to sanctions. Meanwhile, Iraq, one of Israel's foes, was met with sanctions by the Security Council. Also, while Israel has been allowed to develop WMDs, Iran, another foe of Israel, has been ordered to stop its nuclear program, despite its having rigorously complied with international regulations in the field. And who can forget that it was the UN General Assembly that voted to partition Palestine in 1947?

The US Congress, by contrast, has solidly thrown its support behind Israel. It has many times repudiated Israel's enemies and even mild critics, but it has never criticized Israel. The most striking fact is how swiftly both houses move to express their unconditional support for the Jewish state when there's no actual need for the vote. We all know that when the Goldstone report gets to the Security Council it will be killed by the US under direct orders from Hillary Clinton with the Congress playing no role whatsoever. However, showing their lapdogness to the Lobby will have favorable repercussions for the genuflected legislators, for instance in terms of campaign donations.

This contrasts with the Congress's foot-dragging over other votes that might have a potentially greater importance. Case in point, the Armenian Genocide Resolution, which would recognize the slaughter of 1.5 M Armenians by the Turkish state. It was passed by a House committee, and then -- put to sleep. And guess what was the most important private American institution that opposed the bill?

So that when pro-Israel forces want a resolution passed, Congress rushes to overwhelmingly vote for it; but when pro-Israel forces don't want a resolution passed, Congress rushes to shelve it. But the only Pavlovian voters, they have the chutzpah to tell us, are those at the UN General Assembly.

Israel, sanctions and the blackness of pots

According to conventional Zionist wisdom, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel is antisemitic. Pots are calling a kettle black; your country is worse than Israel and you say nothing; shouldn't Manhattan be returned to the Cherokee; why Israel and not Sudan, etc., etc., etc.

Do they have a point? They might if there existed some kind of obligation for all countries to focus on the most grievous human rights abuses, and if chastizing Israel were in some way unique.

But that's not the case, and one example is provided by Israel's staunchest ally. For the last 45 years, the United States has been enforcing a trade embargo on Cuba that has crippled the island's economy. US companies are forbidden to do business there, its carriers are not allowed to fly tourists to Havanna, etc. A Cuban Democracy Act was passed during the Clinton era despite the island being much more democratic than other countries the US buys like crazy from (where's the Saudi Democracy Act, or the Chinese Democracy Act?).

The American embargo of Cuba is annually condemned at the UN, as it should be. Only two countries, apart from the US itself, support that very selective punishment of a country over relatively minor human rights violations.

Are you suspecting something by now? Please confirm your hunch:

The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly condemned the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, an annual ritual that highlights global opposition to the policy.

This year's vote was 187-3 in opposition to the embargo, up from 185-3 last year, with only Israel and the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau supporting the United States. It was the 19th year in a row that the General Assembly has taken up the symbolic measure, with Washington steadily losing what little support it once had.

Here's a query for my readers. Please check the option that best describes Israel's behavior re the Cuban embargo:

□ Do as I say but not as I do.
□ You should not do to others what you don't want to be done to you.
□ Of all the human-rights abusers in the world, they nit-pick a tiny country where hardly anyone has been killed. They're downright racists.
□ All of the above.

Former Israeli minister: "I oversaw discrimination of Arabs"

Why are Jewish towns in Israel clean and well-cared-for, while Arab towns are dirty and have open-air sewers? Because Arabs don't pay the municipal tax. If they behaved like the civilized world and accepted that they've got to give away a small fraction of their monthly wages to get services in return, their towns would look as neat as Jewish ones.

Anyway, that's the story Zionists have been telling you all along.

Repentant Israeli politician Ophir Paz-Pines, however, begs to differ -- and seems qualified to. As the interior minister in Ariel Sharon's government in 2005, he oversaw policies that were openly discriminatory of Arabs. Paz-Pines as reported by The Jerusalem Post:

"The Arab minority in Israel is structurally discriminated against and has been since the day the state was founded. I say this with great sorrow, I think it is one of Israel's biggest historical mistakes," he said.

"I think it harms the state as a whole, not only the Arabs. It harms us as Israelis. It harms integration and it harms the ability to work together. I also think it hurts the efforts for peace and harms Israel's image in the eyes of the world. But it is a fact," he said.

"The aspiration is to have a Jewish and democratic state with elements of full equality on the civil and social level. In practice we are far from it," said Paz-Pines.

He gave as an example the equalization grants worth billions of shekels that are given to local authorities according to a complicated equation that determines how much each local authority should receive.

"I quickly learned that if you took an Arab village and a Jewish village with roughly the same amount of people, you'd see that Jewish towns would usually receive more. When I examined why this happened, it turned out that the equation held a number of components that don't apply to Arab villages, for example, points given for immigrant absorption," Paz-Pines said.

Note how this debunks the Zionist discourse that the Law of Return is the sole exception to full equality between Jews and Arabs in Israel. In fact, the law itself is the top of an iceberg with myriad ramifications beneath whereby those "eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return" enjoy far more rights than the untouchables, sorry, ineligibles, often through Kafkaesque mechanisms reminiscent of a Communist dictatorship.

Thus, using names that sound neutral, the State applies the Law of Return to further discriminate against the native population. The State does not favor Jews; it favors immigrants -- which sounds very egalitarian, except that all immigrants are Jewish.

It's good that someone from that establishment is blowing the whistle. Paz-Pines is a politician to follow, although from a distance, lest you get burned by the flaming that will be undoubtedly directed against him.

Goldstone trashing modeled on Holocaust denial

The Zionist blogosphere is an example of an MPS (mutual praise society). One blogger writes a post and up come a zillion others who copy paste it. Multidirectional flattering follows and they all end up marveling at how thoroughly they've convinced each other that Israel is what keeps the world going and that the Palestinians are a piece of crap.

Take, for instance, Yaacov Lozowick's piece of yesterday. It was immediately transcribed verbatim by Elder of Ziyon, with the customary commendation, and from then on it seems to have gone viral. In due time, Lozowick will approvingly reproduce a post by Elder of Ziyon and the masturbatory cycle will be completed.

The post is part of a massive Zionist effort to trash the Goldstone Report, the document produced by an inquiry mission sent to Gaza to investigate Israeli and Hamas war crimes during Israel's invasion of the Strip in early 2009. The strategy of the whole effort is disturbingly reminiscent of Holocaust denial techniques. The Zionists pick on this or that minor detail that may be wrong, just like the deniers point to several inconsistencies in the stories of Holocaust survivors, and they conclude that there were no Israeli war crimes, just like the deniers conclude that there was no Holocaust. Let's quote it in full to see how it works:

On page 200 of the Goldstone Report we find this sentence:

706. The Israeli ground offensive from the east reached al-Samouni neighbourhood around 4 a.m. on 4 January 2009. In addition to the ground forces moving in from the east, there were, in all likelihood, heliborne398 troops that landed on the roofs of several houses in the area.

Should you wonder what that means, heliborne troops (and how would the Commission members have known?), you can follow footnote 398:

One witness told the Mission that on 5 January 2009, walking on Salah ad-Din Street towards Gaza, he saw by the roadside parachutes Israeli troops had used to land in the area.

Israel has not used parachutes in battle since 1956. I've never heard of parachutists in any army jumping from helicopters, because the two methods contradict one another. Parachutists jump from mid-altitude airplanes, and aim at large areas since they cannot be guided to precise points. Helicopters land troops on precise points; the troops jump out from a height of a foot, or three.

I haven't heard of Israeli troops being flown by helicopter into battle in Gaza, but who knows? Maybe it happened. If so, eyewitnesses would be able to tell about it in one, very clear case: if they saw the helicopters coming in, effectively landing, and then leaving troops behind them. It's that simple.

The story told by the witness is straight from some Arabian tall tale. I am totally at loss for an explanation as to why the fact finders would have wished to cast themselves as giving the time of day to such fabulists, but I'm at loss for an explanation about lots of things in their report. Keep in mind, however, that one of the four members was chosen for being a military man, and some of their staff were hired for their military expertize, so it's not that they didn't know better.

Unfortunately for Lozowick, he can't rein his own troops in, and his followers, unable to refrain from boasting their own expertise, comment:

I had a friend who served in the US green berets who told me that during training they used to jump with small parachutes from the heights of around 10 meters. Ussually such jumps are necessary for cases where the surface doesn't allow the helicopter to land or where rapid dislodge is needed.(Anonymous)

I remember reading similar accounts from Soviet Spetsnaz - 50 meter parachute descents - but we're talking special forces jumping out of a ultra-low flying aircraft attempting to evade radar. (Victor)

Although the reader then adds "There is simply no need for this kind of drama in Gaza," it's clear from the start that Lozowick is no expert in what he so authoritatively talks about.

But that's not the main point here. The main point is that from Lozowick's post it would seem that how the troops arrived to the site is essential to the war crime being described, and that if ground vehicles were used instead of helicopters the whole accusation will be debunked.

And that's not the case. The paragraph cited is the introduction to a story called "The killing of Ateya al-Samouni and his son Ahmad," which describes the murder of a man who was shot at point-blank range while he was with his arms raised, and of his 4-year-old son, who was denied medical attention after having sustained critical wounds from shots fired by the soldiers occupying the al-Samounis' house.

Now while the parachutes by the roadside are hearsay, the crime itself is not hearsay. There are names and death certificates, and a forensic examination of the corpses can be demanded. By making an enormous deal of a minor and thoroughly peripheral detail, the Zionists make an attempt, not very successful, at planting a red herring that will divert attention from documented deaths that appear to have taken place outside of a combat situation.

The world, however, knows better than that, and understands that a (possibly) inaccurate claim about troop transportation or a misplaced semicolon do not alter the general picture of lots of unwarranted deaths. That's why some top Israelis are beginning to regret that Israel chose to boycott Goldstone: Israel could have described exactly what happened to the al-Samounis if it had collaborated with the mission. Although, from another perspective, maybe it's precisely because it would have had to that it didn't.

Reflections on the Nobel Prize

No, not Obama's. Israeli scientist Ada E. Yonath's.

In case you're not aware, Yonath got the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry (shared with Thomas Steitz and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, although you wouldn't learn that from The Jerusalem Post's story) for her work on proteins at the Weizmann Institute in Israel.

This has been exploited by Zionists in a twofold way. First, it has been used as evidence of how great the Jewish State is. Resource-poor and embattled Israel, always on the verge of destruction at the hands of the 250 M Arabs, not to mention the 70 M nuke-seeking Iranians, somehow manages to produce world-class science that improves mankind.

I prefer, however, to see the half-empty glass. Yonath's prize proves what a failure Israel is, at least in the context of its aspiration to be the place where Jews realize their full potential. The award given to her is news because she's Israeli, not because she's Jewish. In fact, of the 105 Nobel prizes in sciences awarded to Jews since Israel was founded, just 3 went to Israelis -- even when Israel concentrates about half of all the world's Jews. It can be confidently said that if all Jews had heeded the call of Zion, Judaism would have much, much less to be proud of. The Diaspora, the despised Diaspora, called by leading Israeli writer A. B. Yehoshua "masturbation, not the real thing," is the place where the Jewish people's foremost creative enterprises have been and continue to be undertaken.

The other way Zionists are trying to exploit Yonath's prize is as a tool to fight the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel) movement. They claim that BDS proponents should boycott all Israeli scientific advances (for instance, those produced at Weizmann), or that they should boycott proteins, and that if they don't they're intellectually dishonest or something like that.

This is very telling of the perception Zionists have of anti-Zionists, unsupported by any document or statement from the latter. In fact, Zionists seem to think that the BDS movement is driven by the belief that all things Israeli (or even all things Jewish) are intrinsically evil and that's the reason they should be boycotted. If this were the case, it would indeed be dishonest to use Israeli science or inventions. But of course, that's not what BDS proponents assert. What they posit is that Israel can be coerced through economic sanctions into dropping their oppression of another people, just like South Africa was during the Apartheid era. They propose to boycott enough of Israel's production to cause a significant damage to its economy; they don't propose that the rest of the world should damage itself by not using technologies already developed by Israel, anymore than the nations that boycotted South Africa proposed that the rest of the world should stop performing heart transplants, a technique developed by a white South African doctor at the height of Apartheid.

In short, a boycott of Israel is proposed not on moral grounds, but on practical ones. This is different from, say, Israel's boycott of Wagner, which is moral (he's boycotted because he was an antisemite, not to achieve a desired political result). Zionists should be happy, not angered, that Israeli scientific advances are not boycotted, because this shows that BDS is not irrational. But it's easier to comfort oneself thinking that the people one doesn't like are simply crazy.

On the ambiguity of outsideness

What happens if an Israeli soldier hits or otherwise abuses a Palestinian in the West Bank? The short answer is nothing. A complaint is filed by the affected person, the IDF ostensibly starts an investigation and it is "found" that the soldier didn't act improperly. The exception, of course, is when the incident is caught on tape, in which case someone may end up being given a few weeks' community service, or transferred to a training position in Israel proper.

The problem is that sometimes the Palestinians not only complain, but also sue for physical injuries or property damage. In that case, the lawsuit is also dismissed, but it's a costly process. The Israeli state is trying to diminish that cost by limiting the instances in which a soldier is civilly liable for his actions.

Up to now, Israeli legislation states that the country is not liable for a military operation executed in a situation of war. Such situations are defined as those in which the soldiers' lives are endangered.Thus, for instance, the soldier who killed a protester with a tear gas canister last July is civilly liable, because the protest was peaceful and his life was not at risk.

That is about to change under a proposed new bill, which will dramatically reduce the Palestinians' ability to sue the State. But the grounds for doing so are quite interesting. According to the Jerusalem Post:

Under the current law, any soldier, whether operating in Israel or in the West Bank or a foreign country, must prove that his life was in danger for his actions to be considered a military operation.

According to the state's new proposal, that obligation would not apply to soldiers in the West Bank or foreign countries because the law assumes that the lives of soldiers operating outside Israel are inherently in danger.

The West Bank is, thus, considered outside enough for the lives of soldiers serving there to be deemed in danger --in a danger they would not face inside Israel--, but not enough not to build settlements there. Now this is not a Freudian slip; it's just yet another instance of cyinical Israeli equivocation.

If and when Israel returns any significant portion of the West Bank to the Palestinians (and it's a big "if" and a big "when") , the country will not be making any generous, much less painful, concession. It will just be giving back a territory that is, by its own admission, outside its borders.

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?