Walls and antisemitism

When you're slandered, it sometimes takes a time before you get vindicated. This is so because astute slanderers usually make claims that can't be checked, and not many people have enough logical training to understand that the burden of proof falls on the one making an assertion.

A few years ago, those of us who opposed the Israeli Apartheid wall, or, if you want to be Orwellian, security fence were slandered as antisemites. The centerpiece of the argument was that many countries were building or had completed border fences, so why single out Israel? The fact that Israel's wall, and only Israel's, was slammed and denounced, had obviously everything to do with antisemites being unable to stomach assertive Jews who defended themselves rather than submissively accepting to be killed. For instance, an article in the Jewish Magazine analyzing the Presbyterian Church's divestement from Israel (which included a disgusting image of a cross partially hiding a swastika) claimed:

The Presbyterians say they have a problem with the Israelis building a security fence to protect themselves from attack. There is a long list of countries that built a security barrier between their own country and an enemy. [Long list follows.] The church is notably quiet about the construction of barriers in these countries. Is it because there is a double standard when an issue concerns Jews?

The smoking gun was the fact that rights organizations took the case to the UN, which referred it to the International Court of Justice, which in turn found the wall to be illegal. This had never been done before and meant that not only pundits and NGO's, but the whole world was antisemitic, further proving the need for Israel to exist and, en passant, grab ever more Palestinian land. When the UN acted on the ICJ's advisory opinion, a neocon site declared:

ANTI-SEMITIC UN MOVES AGAINST ISRAEL SECURITY FENCE

Hat-tip to the inimitable MARK LEVIN:
The UN is setting up a bureaucracy to assist Arabs in the occupied territories of Israel to make claims against the Government of Israel for losses they assert were caused by the anti-terror security fence . (See other news stories HERE and HERE.)

Levin - tonight, on his syndicated radioshow - made the point that there are DOZENS of other security fences on disputed territories which have NEVER EVER been the subject of ANY UN attack.

We anti-Zio... sorry, antisemites, were quick to point out a small, a minimal, an insignificant difference between those "dozens of other fences" and Israel's: in the Israeli case, the wall/fence was built outside of its internationally recognized borders, so that it cut off populations inside the West Bank from each other and from the agricultural lands they tended to. One town, Qalqiliya, was completely surrounded by the fence, in an ironical reversal of the mediaeval practice of surrounding a city with a wall to defend it.

The Zionists ignored this difference and kept claiming that we were incurable antisemites. They said that we singled out Israel and we pointed out that Israel singled itself out by building a wall different from everyone else's: who was right? Of course, we were proving our claim, but Zionists didn't even when they had the obligation to. But as noted about, the public is not usually aware of the "burden of proof" rule.

So it would be great if we could convince the logically challenged. And how could we do it? Well, easy: if Israel changed its behavior and built a separatory barrier along its recognized borders (rather than beyond them), and we refrained from taking the case to the UN, it would mean we're not antisemites at all. We would be holding Israel to the same standards we use for other countries with similar barriers. If this were the case, the allegation of antisemitism (on this issue, at least) would be dead and buried.

Wait a minute, it's already happening. Israel is building a barrier along its Sinai border with Egypt. This fence's primary objective is to stop illegal migrants from getting into Israel. We antisemites masquerading as anti-Zionists should be up in arms against this fence, which foils one of our favorite plans: to flood Israel with non-Jews so that it will lose its Jewish identity, in a silent Holocaust. We should be asking for the ICJ to declare the fence illegal.

But since the fence is being built on Israel's side of the border, as it should, we're doing nothing of the like. Not that we like it, mind you; I, personally, hate all such barriers and am pleased that my country has erected none. But I won't take the case of this particular wall to the ICJ--because I'm not antisemitic; and if anyone did, the ICJ would not find it illegal, because it's also not antisemitic.

On keeping a blog like this

Over the last few months I've been discouraged to continue to keep this blog. The reason is simple. This is a blog devoted to expose bad-faith defenses of Israel. The problem is that such defenses have a sort of lack of genetic variety, or, to put it in a simpler way, they are always the same. The argument, for instance, that Gaza doesn't suffer from the Israeli blockade just because candy bars are allowed in or a roller coaster exists in the strip can be easily defeated, as I have, by pointing out that even in the Warsaw ghetto the Nazis allowed Jews such luxuries as a symphony orchestra, or paper to print posters. This doesn't deter the hasbarists, however, and they keep citing the same argument over and over.

The same goes for the endless denunciations of Iranian president Mahmood Ahmadinejad's nonexistent threat to wipe out Israel. Even as the regime has repeatedly declared that Israel will collapse on its own, and that there's no need for Iran to intervene, the canard is tenaciously repeated.

Similar to all propaganda efforts, hasbara is not about making convincing cases based on sound logic, but about using any means available to defend Israel. This includes lies and false analogy, and if such devices are exposed it doesn't matter, because a lie becomes a perceived truth if it is repeated often enough.

I recently discovered, however, that one of my posts had forced a correction by CAMERA, the rabidly Zionist propaganda organization (more about this in an upcoming post). So that maybe keeping the blog does make a difference after all, and I've decided to start posting again.

Polls that matter and polls that don't matter

OK, so the United States has killed Osama Bin Laden and thrown his body into the sea. A highly symbolic development that gives Barack Obama some much-needed oxygen. For the record, I fully reject the killing of civilians and am totally against Osama's methods and activities. However, I believe he wasn't nearly as important now as he used to be; killing him wasn't my top priority. I also believe that disposing of his body the way the US did was childish and unwarranted; and that the cause of anti-terrorism would have been better served if he had sat before a tribunal to face charges of crimes against humanity. That being said, having him convicted by a court of law wasn't my top priority either.

But the Zionists are taking advantage of his death to remind us that Palestinian Muslims were the most ardent supporters of Osama. This is the inculpatory evidence:

These figures would indeed be worrying if they had any relevance at all. When Palestinians are asked about Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden, words are, to a large extent, being put in their mouths. It's not like they are spontaneously demonstrating in favor of Al Qaeda. Osama is, was, a reality far removed from theirs, almost a construct. Saying that they had confidence in him is irrelevant insofar as most Palestinians, an overwhelming majority, had no chance of translating that declared confidence into a concrete support for Bin Laden. Even more importantly, those who did have that possibility --the Palestinians who managed to travel and settle abroad-- did not enroll in Al Qaeda. Indeed, Stanford's Martha Crenshaw, one of the foremost scholars in terrorism studies, has noted that there are "almost no Palestinians in al Qaeda and no proven links with Hamas or the other Palestinian groups that use terrorism against Israel." So when the Palestinians are asked if they have confidence in Bin Laden, their answer must be seen as a manifesto against the West that has so often betrayed them. Essentially they are telling the Western pollster "I'll say what I know that will irk you." If they meant it, they would have joined Al Qaeda in large numbers.

Now this must be compared with other polls about concrete matters and events the respondents can take an active part in. Case in point, the one published by Ynet on 15 Dec 2010, after more than 50 top Jewish religious figures signed on to an anti-Arab racist letter:

Poll: 55% back rabbis' anti-Arab ruling

Survey shows 41% of secular Israelis support municipal religious leaders' call not to rent apartments to non-Jews, as do 64% and 88% of Israel's traditional and haredi Jews, respectively.

This kind of support is not speculative or theoretical or pure blah-blah. Many of the respondents are Jews who do own apartments and who, in 55% of the cases, would not rent them out to Arab tenants. And they don't stop there; they're also taking positive steps to oust Arabs from apartments owned by other Jews. But it gets worse. Shortly after the ruling, racist Jews threatened a Holocaust survivor --a Holocaust survivor!-- with the burning of his house if he didn't stop renting rooms to Arab students. For all the Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Day) commemorations, with the sirens sounding, the cars stopping in the roads and the deeply moving 2-minute silence, the crude fact is that Jews in Israel hate Arabs more than they love Holocaust survivors.

In short, the polls showing an apparently outrageous Palestinian support for Osama are basically meaningless and reflect an exercise in épater le bourgeois, since Palestinians are not rushing to join Al Qaeda. The polls showing a deep Jewish racism against Arabs, on the other hand, reflect a hate that is translated into very real actions of arson, threats and attacks against both Arabs and non-prejudiced Jews. And that matters much more than mere words.

Jewish racist of the day

Although there is no shortage of nominees, today's award goes to Rabbi Dov Lior, head of the Kiryat Arba yeshiva. Sorry, Daniel Pipes; your efforts are commendable, but the Rav is trying harder and has clearly outdone you.

The distinguished sage chose to use the platform of the fourth Ramla conference to state that the State of Israel "must encourage Bedouins to return to their native land." In case you believe, correctly, that the native land of Israeli Bedouins is, well, Israel, be advised that Lior has a different theory which posits that they were born in Libya and Saudi Arabia. Where he gets that from is unclear, but a good bet is that someone recently presented him with a copy of Joan Peter's From time immemorial. It would be interesting to know Lior's theory of how these non-Jews managed to immigrate to Israel, where, individual cases aside, only Jews are allowed to become citizens. I guess it must have something to do with Arab deceptiveness.

In support of his proposal, Lior stressed that "If they are left here, there won't be any solution as they work against the people of Israel and the State of Israel."  It is a particularly well known fact that Bedouins, together with the Druze, serve in the IDF, which is not the case with yeshiva students such as, ehm, Lior's. Facts? What's that? It's narratives that count, dude.

Lior is a chemically pure hater. His résumé includes a variety of jewels, among which:

• In 2008 he pioneered the restrictions-on-Arabs wave by calling on Jews not to employ them.
• In 2010 he endorsed and foreworded Yitzchak Shapira's The complete guide to killing gentiles. (Well, the tract's title is actually The King's Torah, but it does remove most restrictions on killing non-Jews, including newborns: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”)
• Also in 2010, he signed on to the rabbinical letter forbidding Jews from renting houses to Arabs.
• In 2011, he ruled that Jewish Law prohibits sterile couples from conceiving using non-Jew's sperm, as it causes adverse traits. With a logic that would dwarf Aristotle, this Jewish genius wondered: "If the father in not Jewish, what character traits could he have? Traits of cruelty, of barbarism! These are not traits that characterize the people of Israel."

When US journalist Helen Thomas claimed that Israeli Jews should return to where they came from, all hell broke lose and she was fired. When a relevant Israeli rabbi who is (literally speaking) right at the center of Jewish-Arab land disputes says the same about Bedouins the story is met with deafening silence from the world press. I'm not outraged at this unequal treatment. It signals that in one case the hateful statement is extraordinary, abnormal, anomalous, while in the other case it's an everyday occurrence that hardly raises eyebrows anymore.

In any event, Rabbi Lior is a valuable asset for those of us who spend time exposing officially-supported (Lior is a State employee) hate of Arabs in Israel. That's why I'm giving him the Jewish Racist of The Day Award.

Israel tastes own medicine, cries antisemitism

On Sunday, several crazed Jewish settlers invaded Palestinian Area A territory (where, in theory at least, Palestinian Authority exercises full control) to pray at the so-called Joseph's tomb in Nablus, without previously getting the required authorization. It appears that PA policemen tried to stop them. The Jews refused to give themselves up and apparently broke through a checkpoint. Warning shots were fired, and they still refused to stop. In an unclear turn of the events, the settlers were then shot at, with the result that Ben Yosef Livnat (the nephew of Minister of Culture and Sport Limor Livnat) was killed and the four others were injured.

For what it's worth, I'm against the police shooting trespassers unless it's patently clear that they intend to hurt the officers; I believe this was an avoidable tragedy. That said, one would expect the Israeli authorities to be very happy with this outcome, since it perfectly fits into Israeli engagement rules. They should have noted that:

• The settlers were criminals seeking for trouble and they got it.
• This is war, and war is messy.
• The Palestinian policemen have the right to prioritize their own lives over those of the civilians they regrettably kill.
• The settlers made suspicious movements.
• The policemen had to make difficult decisions in a short instant of time, decisions you and I don't face.

Instead, the Israeli government displayed the crudest Jewish victimhood. Minister Livnat said:

I woke up this morning and received a phone call from Ben-Yosef's mother, who told me that he was murdered by a terrorist masked as a Palestinian police officer.

It was cold-blooded murder. Ben-Yosef went to pray with other Jews, and he was murdered simply for being a Jew.

Prime Minister Netanyahu concurred:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned on Sunday evening the shooting incident at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus that killed 24-year-old Ben-Yosef Livnat and injured two other Hasidim, calling it a "terrorist attack."

In his statement, Netanyahu urged the Palestinian Authority "to take harsh steps against the perpetrators who committed this heinous act against Jewish worshipers who were on their way to prayer."

Defense Minister Barak was also furious:

Barak's office said: "No coordination mishap justifies this kind of outcome or the shooting of innocent people." Barak ordered the IDF to investigate, as well as demanded "the PA take swift and full measures against the shooters."

I for one am unimpressed by these gentlemen's (and lady's) outrage. Of course, if Livnat hadn't been a fanatical Jew he wouldn't have been there in the first place, so that his death is, in a way, related to his Jewishness. But the reason he was shot is not that he was a Jew; it's that he broke the law, and while you can get away with it most of the time if you're a West Bank settler, there are times when your luck runs out and you get shot.

It's interesting to compare the killing of this Jew with that of an elderly Palestinian citizen earlier this year:

A Palestinian resident of the southern West Bank city of Hebron was killed early Friday during an Israel Defense Forces raid on the city to arrest Hamas members, security and medical sources said.

The IDF raided Hebron to re-arrest six Hamas members that the Palestinian Authority had released only the day before following an intervention from the emir of Qatar.

Medical sources said a 65-year-old Palestinian, who was reported to be an unarmed civilian, was brought dead to hospital with several bullet wounds to the upper part of his body. They said the man had been shot in a building the soldiers had raided to arrest one of the Hamas members.

The man who was killed, Amr Qawasme, was asleep when soldiers broke into his home before dawn. His wife, Sobheye, said IDF troops brushed past her into the bedroom, where she heard several shots fired. When she went in, she found her husband in a pool of blood.

There are several differences between both killings:

• The settlers were engaging in illegal activities. The Palestinian old man was asleep.
• The PA responded to a conflict initiated by the settlers. The IDF started a conflict by invading the Palestinian's house.
• The PA policemen were taken by surprise. The IDF action had been carefully planned.

Despite this, PM Netanyahu didn't find the "misshap" that ended in Qawasme's death outrageous at all. It was just a product of the messiness of war.

The fact that Israeli authorities are not even mentioning the illegality of the shot settler's actions is very telling, considering that even the victim's relatives blame him for his lunacy:

The 17-year-old brother of one of the wounded men arrived at Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva, where they have been hospitalized.

"They knew what they were getting into, and the level of risk involved. But they considered it as action," the brother told Ynet.

"They only wanted to pray; sometimes fate can be pretty bad and unpleasant," he said, adding "they have a rabbi that coordinates these entries. This time they came without a permit or authorization of the rabbi.

"When the visits are coordinated nothing happens – the rabbi looks after us. However this time the rabbi wasn’t there with them; it was a crime for them to enter the tomb without the rabbi or a permit," noted the brother.

But it's always easier to cry antisemitism than to reflect on how your crazy policies are encouraging young people to consider themselves above the law -- and meet their death as a consequence.

Yes, but what about Tibet!

This week saw the resolution of the Itamar murders case, in which five members of a family, including three children, were apparently killed in cold blood by two Palestinians from the village of Awarta. It must be noted that, according to the IDF account, the two acted on their own. The organization they belonged to, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, didn't authorize the attack, and, although it doesn't seem to have done anything to stop it (much like the Israelis at the time of the Sabra and Shattila massacre), they didn't provide the murderers with the weapons they had asked for. It is true that several PFLP members seem to have given shelter and cover to both murderers after the attack, but they seem to have done so as their relatives, not as members of the organization.

In any event, Israeli Jews were quick to blame the whole Palestinian people. Reflected the father of the illegal settler slain:

This is a heinous murder of bottomless hate that is simply impossible to understand. Going into a family home and murdering people is something that only those who have it instilled in them from babyhood can do.

A Ynet reader noted in a comment:

84. What kind of society spawns teens who slit a baby's throat?

There is a very deep problem here. Palestinians had better stop wallowing in the blame game, and start addressing it.
Serge, Montreal, Canada (04.18.11)

Zionist like to make Tibet analogies. You know, Israel may occupy Palestinian land, although Israel disputes this, but what about the Chinese occupation of Tibet? So that it occurred to me to compare the Palestinians' reaction to Israeli occupation to the Tibetans' reaction to Chinese annexation.

First a little context. Tibetans are full Chinese citizens and enjoy exactly the same rights (or lack thereof) as their ethnic Han fellow citizens. They face no checkpoints. They can drive on the same roads as the Han. China has built extensive infrastructure for them, including the highest railroad in the world, against zero investment in infrastructure for the occupied Palestinians on the Israelis' part. The Tibetans' "suffering" is nowhere like the Palestinian subjugation at Israeli hands.

When Tibetans rioted in Lhasa in 2008, however, they behaved with "bottomless hate." They caused extensive damage to property:



Five girls were burnt alive in a store:



All in all, 10 people were burnt alive during the protests. The rioters made it a policy to target Han people and businesses, so that ethnic Tibetans had to attach white prayer shawls to their houses and stores for them not to be set on fire.

So what kind of people can stab a baby to death? I guess the same kind of people who can burn a shop assistant alive. It's called human beings. The Palestinian reaction is very much like that of any other people under similar conditions of oppression and humiliation.

To summarize, if Israel's behavior must be compared to China's, the Palestinians' response must be compared to the Tibetans' -- which Zionists never do, in a clear example of double standards.

The Jews do do these things

On 11 March 2011, an adult couple and three of their children were stabbed to death at the Israeli settlement of Itamar. It is yet unclear who murdered them, and I was waiting for the investigation to reach a conclusion before commenting on the case. Almost one month has passed, though, and a gag order remains in place forbidding Israeli officials from releasing information on the investigation's progress. However, today, April 9, is a good day to reflect a little on this tragedy and how it has been handled.

One of the most striking aspects about the coverage of the massacre was how the Zionist media were quick to ascribe it to terrorists, despite the alternative explanations available (revenge killing by a Thai worker, retribution for the killing of 2 Palestinian children near the settlement two years ago...). Not only that, but the whole Palestinian people were dehumanized in op-ed after op-ed, despite the Palestinian Authority's condemnation of the murders. In some cases the demonization reached cosmic levels. I was particularly shocked by a Hanoch Daum article at Ynet under the title These are not humans:

Are they members of the family of nations at all? Would a human being stab a three-month-old baby girl in her sleep and kill a tender four-year-old child sleeping peacefully in his bed next to his parents’ bedroom? (...)

We can keep talking at length about painful concessions, but as long as on the other side we have blood-thirsty psychopaths capable of knifing an 11-year-old child, a four-year-old boy, and a baby who was just born, such talk would mostly be futile.

We have to recognize the following fact: Inhumane elements exist in the other camp. These are terrorists that Israel must eliminate, before they kill our children.

The desired reader reaction took nothing to arise:

15. Kill of 5 family members
The pain that is coused here is too unbearable. something must be done about it. my heart bleeds for this family- wich will have a heavy future. May god protect us from those Unhuman Living things wich act worse then animals.
Katy, Vienna (03.14.11)

30. Time to kill Palestinians (End)
Eyal, USA ISRAEL (03.14.11)

43. The Murderers are not Psychopaths
Hanoch Daum is wrong. The murderer who perpetrated this horror is not a psychopath. He is not a sick individual. He is the natural product of his upbringing, an upbringing that glorifies the spilling of Jewish blood. A society that names public squares and schools after murderers is going to produce more of the same. When are we going to wake up this reality. Bibi and all the rest talk of bringing the perpetrator to justice. The entire society is to blame. The perpetrator is simply the agent who actually carried out the horror. The society applauds him and in a few years will name a school or a hospital after him.
Moshe Tokayer, Petach Tikvah (03.14.11)

Now Ynet talkbacks are moderated. One wonders what the reaction would be if, say, The Guardian published a comment along the lines of "Time to kill Jews."

But what I take issue with most is Hanoch Daum's assertion that "the other" side is capable of horrific actions that, presumably, his side would never engage in. Yes, the old, tired argument "They hate, we don't; the Jews don't do these things."

Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that the settler family was murdered by a Palestinian, it is utterly wrong to compare what that presumed terrorist did with what the State of Israel does and conclude that only one side, the Palestinians, intentionally kills civilians. Three thoughts arise:

1) The Palestinians can’t disguise their crimes as military actions. The Israelis can. We can’t say “the Israelis don’t kill civilians;” at most, we can say that the extent of IDF operations makes it impossible to ascertain if the civilians that they kill are intended murders or not. The recent case of an old man killed in his sleep by IDF forces provides an excellent example of a totally unnecessary and highly suspicious death in which the soldier who pulled the trigger is acquitted based on his own testimony.

2) The Israelis have at their disposal –and use– a variety of methods to punish the Palestinians, from bombing their power plants to targetedly killing their leaders (and a few bystanders in the process) to impeding the import of food and clothing. The only way the Palestinians have of exacting a price for the Israelis’ crimes is to randomly kill civilians. Again, this is not to excuse those killings; it’s simply to compare the many retaliatory options the Israelis enjoy with the only one the Palestinians have. Give them planes, choppers and the most powerful army in the Middle East and they will probably do other, less disgusting things, such as blacking out Tel Aviv, killing 120 policemen at a graduation ceremony or using Israeli minors as human shields.

3) If any valid comparison is to be established, it must be with what the Jews did when they didn’t have a State. And here's where it is worth remembering that in such a day as today, April 9, but 63 years ago, Jewish terrorists under the command of later Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin carried out the Deir Yassin massacre, in which at least 93 Arabs were murdered in cold blood -- before Israel became independent, the seven Arab armies invaded, etc.

And it doesn't end there. When the Jews didn’t have a State, they randomly killed civilians — 42 machine-gun attacks on buses, trucks and carts in January-March, 1948, alone; Arab women, children and elderly people blown to smithereens in markets; high-ranking UN officials mowed down in the street… And remember, the most ferocious Jewish terrorist of all, David Raziel, has hundreds of streets and even a town named after him.

Indeed there may exist a peaceful people that fully rejects the killing of civilians, but it’s not the Jews.

Cum libel

When you think of an Arab you picture a dark-skinned man with a piece of cloth around his head, shining black eyes and a knife hidden somewhere he might stab you with if you get too close. This man is unredeemably machoist, irrational, Jew-hating and gay-bashing. That's anyway the image created by decades and decades of Hollywood films such as Exodus, or of journalistic ranting by the likes of Daniel Pipes, Ann Coulter or Melanie Phillips.

This Arab man is also, by the account of these specialists, a child rapist who specializes in sodomizing young boys. That's why when recently an Israeli Jewish boy aged 11 accused four Arabs of repeatedly raping him, there could be no doubt that the four were guilty. They  were immediately arrested, as the charges looked impressive:

Four Palestinians residing in Israel illegally have been arrested for allegedly raping and severely abusing an 11-year-old boy from central Israel several times. The four, aged 23-27, are also suspected of indecent acts.

The Tel Aviv Magistrates Court extended their remand by four days on Tuesday.

Police launched an investigation after the boy told his older brother he had been abused. The brother first became suspicious after the boy complained of stomach aches.

He eventually revealed his terrible secret: "They paid me NIS 400 to sleep with them, bought me presents I asked, and threatened me not to say anything, I was ashamed to talk about it."

The suspects were swiftly apprehended for fear they would flee to the territories.

Police suspect that the four, who were working at an event hall, promised the boy candy, presents and money and lured him into accompanying them to the building where they lived.

The four are also suspected of urinating on the victim, hitting him, putting out cigarettes on him, cutting him, and coercing him to use drugs.

Commenters on Ynet were quick to call the incident proof of the overall inhumanity of the Arab people:

6. Using sex for terror.
There are no bounds to their savagery. This is sexual terrorism. They are doing the same to young women through out Israel. At what point do we say enough?
Josh, US (03.29.11)

10. They have no respect for their own
They do this to their own women. So this brutality is not surprising.
Rachel, US (03.29.11)

24. Death Sentence for All Rapists!
The sick perverts also kidnapped the little boy and G-D gave the death sentence for kidnapping. The child has been scarred for life by these inhuman filthy predators. These demonic monsters must never be released to perpetrate more evil. Please, G-D, help this little boy and his family.
Linda Rivera, New York, USA (03.29.11)

To make a short story shorter, as it turned out the boy was lying. On a second round of questioning, he changed his story, supplied a different description of his alleged rapists and finally admitted that the apparent signs of abuse on his rear were the result of an enema he had undergone.

But just in case, the police had already beaten the four Arabs, spat on them, shouted "death to the Arabs" and stolen their cell phones. Nothing new there; it's the usual prescription for a Palestinian prisoner in Israel.

An interesting detail from this story is that these Arabs were Palestinians from the territories who were illegally working at an event venue inside Israel. How come the Apart... er, security fence did not stop these aliens from entering the country? And once they were inside, why did they look for a job, instead of committing a terror act to kill Jews, the ultimate objective of all Arabs? Maybe because they wanted to support their families rather than deny the Jews the right to self-determination? That can't be, they aren't that human.

In any event, it is still true that they bestialize their camels and goats, isn't it? They haven't been able to prove that they don't, have they?

Israel's opportunistic goodness

Which is the country that, in the wake of earthquakes, tsunamis and other catastrophees, has made the biggest donations to the affected populations on a per capita basis? Yes, it's that particular and unique Middle Eastern country you're thinking of -- Saudi Arabia. To give but one example, after Pakistan was hit by devastating floods in 2010, Saudi committed public and private donations to the tune of $350 M; it also donated two 100-bed hospitals. This compares favorably with, for instance, the US's donation of $216.5 M (most of which loan guarantees, not an actual gift) or Britain's donation of $115 M.

I bet that many readers of this post have never heard about this. The foreign aid given by Saudi Arabia is usually not reported by the media. On the other hand, the kingdom is harshly criticized over its treatment of women, non-Muslims and foreigners. Is there a double standard in place? Is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia subject to a policy of demonization, whereby its good actions go unreported, while its bad actions are widely discussed? Obviously this is not the case. Bad actions make for better headlines than good actions, and that's why the stealing of an old lady's $100 purse by two guys on a motorbike is news, while my neighbor's monthly cash donation of $100 to a soup kitchen is persistently ignored by the newscasts. That's also why the stoning of an adulterer gets more coverage than Saudi Arabia's gift of the King Faisal Hospital to Kigali, Rwanda. Anyone can understand this.

Giulio Meotti also understands it -- in the case of Saudi Arabia. But he doesn't seem to understand it in the case of Israel. In a recent piece on Ynet under the title Ignoring Israel's goodness, Meotti lists a few of Israel's responses to natural disasters, such as the earthquake in Haiti in early 2010, and complains that:

Israel’s amazing altruism never had its legitimate space in the global media, because this radical goodness doesn’t fit in with the Zionist stereotype of the colonialist, fascist and apartheid occupier.

A reader picks up the Haitian example and claims:

The only reason the Israeli hospital in Haiti was covered was because it was the only one there - an oasis of salvation in a wasteland.

This is a good time to dispel this myth, and to put the claim of unfair reporting in perspective.

The Israeli field hospital was not the only one in Haiti. An Argentinian field hospital was already operative before the Israelis arrived. Yet I don't see Argentinians moaning that the country's goodness is not reported.

In fact, the Argentinian hospital was part of a permanent program for helping Haitians, which was in place before the earthquake and continues to be in place many months after. There's a huge difference between this genuine goodness and the bogus, opportunistic Israeli goodness, which only shows during the short time that TV cameras focus on a catastrophee site. 

If Israel's rescue actions are not seen as the definitive proof of Israeli generosity it's perhaps because the media can distinguish a PR operation, however sophisticated, from true charity, which is manifested over months and years of quietly helping those in need, rather than in spectacular, but short-lived, rescue efforts whose foremost aim is to improve a country's image.

Great comments, #1

Sometimes you read comments on blogs and online papers that you wish you had authored. I've decided to periodically report the most juicy ones, if only so that their authors will know that they haven't gone unnoticed.

Let's start with a comment the other day on Haaretz. But first a little context. A few weeks ago the Palestinian Authority freed five Hamas terrorists, or suspected terrorists, that had been imprisoned several months before. Right after their release, Israeli soldiers invaded the Hebron building where they were staying, went into the wrong apartment and killed a 65-year-old man, Amr Qawasme, apparently in his sleep. After the regrettable mistake, they proceeded to go down to the floor below, where the men they sought were in fact staying, and captured them.

The IDF published a report:

According to the IDF, one of the soldiers in the mission fired on Qawasme "following a suspicious movement that caused the soldier to feel that his life was threatened."

An investigation into the incident found that while this soldier fired "in accordance with IDF rules of engagement," a second soldier who followed the first one's lead and also began firing at Qawasme had acted "unprofessionally", and was thus discharged from his IDF service.

At least it can be said that the incident embarrassed a few Zionists before they could put their acts together. In the comments, the expectable knee-jerk reactions were immediately displayed:

65. What was the supposed "civilian" doing hosting a houseful of Hamas?

* Jasper - Milwaukee
* 20.01.11
* 17:26

Common sense would say there could be trouble.

This gentleman and others who subscribed to the same thesis apparently have some trouble making out the difference between a building and an apartment. The notion that the senior citizen was housing terrorists, however, immediately became a staple of the Zionist commentariat all over the blogosphere.

Another, more reflexive type of comment was:

57. IDF discharges soldier involved in Hamas raid which left Palestinian civilian dead

* Avi
* 20.01.11
* 12:42

Why don't you all give it a rest. When the US kills 40+ civilians in Afghanistan I don't see you complaining

Now there's a problematic aspect to this argument in that it makes an analogy between two situations that can't be compared. Israel controls virtually all movement within the West Bank and has an extensive network of informers that allow it to gather intelligence as to where any person is located at any given time, which is hardly the case with the coalition forces in Afghanistan. Moreover, the situation in the WB is not one of war in the same sense that the situation in Afghanistan is. In 2010, more than 700 coalition troops, including 500 US ones, were killed in Afghanistan. By comparison, Israeli soldiers are only killed in accidents and friendly fire. The Hamas terrorists were not an imminent threat and the operation in which they were captured was not the "messy war" situation in which collateral damage arises. War, as conducted by Israel in the West Bank, is anything but messy. The Israelis had all the elements to perform a pinpoint, if entirely illegal, operation. If they didn't, it was not because of messiness, but because of carelessness and utter disrespect for any life not Jewish.

Oh, yes, but I was going to quote a great comment. Here it is:

55. Hamas Just Completed Their Investigation of Suicide Bombers

* Doug
* 20.01.11
* 11:36

from 10 years ago. They have concluded that they only activated the bombs after there was suspicious movement by an Israeli, and that the bomber followed Hamas rules of engagement. However, one of the bombers acted unprofessionally and would have been dismissed had he not died in the bombing.

Cute, eh?

Close encounters of a nasty kind

Israel provides free medical care to Palestinians. Every year, [fill in with number] Palestinians are treated in Israeli hospitals, getting world-class attention, which proves Israel is no cruel occupier.You will have heard this Zionist claim a fairly large number of times.

For some reason, certain people seem to believe that you can't be bad unless you're absolutely bad. Unfortunately, they don't apply the same reasoning to the Palestinians, who are incurable Jew-haters even though they sent firefighters to help control a recent fire in Israel, or to the Cuban leaders, who are irrationally evil even after they offered to send some 1,600 medics, field hospitals and 83 tons of medical supplies to ease the humanitarian disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in the US.

But a recent JPost story provides a new angle to analyze Israel's kindness towards its occupied people (an obligation under international law, by the way) at its hospitals. Reports the daily:

Specialist helps Palestinian talk after 8 month silence

The ability to speak – lost eight months ago by a 21- year-old Palestinian allegedly from the emotional trauma of an encounter with security forces – has been restored by a clinical communications specialist at Rehovot’s Kaplan Medical Center.

The humanitarian gesture was that of Pnina Erenthal, who has much experience in treating psychogenic aphonia.(...)

She finally found him and volunteered to treat his condition at Kaplan; approval for his entrance was granted by the authorities.(...)

Erenthal said she “took the weak voice and helped him build it into sentences and texts. The first thing he said was about the trauma he had suffered,” but she did not provide details.(...)

[The patient] said he was very excited by Erenthal’s initiative to restore his voice.

“I want to study industrial engineering and management in university, and now I hope I will be accepted. Thanks so much to Pnina – she is a dear woman – and to Kaplan Medical Center which arranged all the authorizations.”

So here we've got a caring Israeli doctor who helps restore a Palestinian's lost speech. OK. But notice how matter-of-factly the article mentions the reason the young man suffered from that condition in the first place. He was traumatized by an "encounter" with Israel's security forces (elsewhere we learn he was beaten by police after he was caught in Ashkelon, where he works, without a permit to be in Israel).

In the talkbacks, a reader moans:

3. This won't appear in Ha'aretz

* Author: Michael
* Country: Israel
* 01/11/2011 08:16

And you won't hear from Israel bashers like Ron in Fairfax, the Labrador Retriever, etc.

Leaving aside that it did appear in Haaretz, notice how oblivious the reader is to the fact that it was a (commendable) private citizen who took it upon herself to help out the young man, while it was the public forces of the State of Israel that traumatized him in an "encounter."

At most we can say that Israel still has individual persons who have the will and the scientific knowledge to correct the wrongs caused by the State with its security bodies.

Kudos to Dr. Pnina Erenthal for restoring a young Palestinian's speech. Shame on the Israeli police for beating him until they rendered him voiceless in the first place. Shame also on those who turn reality upside down by suggesting that it is a beautiful person's kindness what is representative of the State of Israel, and not the brutality daily exercised by its men in uniform.

An awful lot of few bad apples

David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Congress, recently wrote a piece for the Huffington Post in which he concluded that, with all its shortcomings, Israel is a liberal cause and, all in all, a good country. This should come as no surprise to anyone as Mr. Harris gets paid to find that Israel is a good country, but the most interesting part was the lively debate that ensued in the talkback. Some of us explained why Israel is not so good a country, giving numerous counterexamples. Basically, we argued that a country with the level of racism tolerated in Israel does not belong in the liberal democratic family. We were met with a lot of denial from the Zionist commentariat.

One problem with brainwashed Zionists is that they are programmed to deny everything, when a smarter approach would be to concede a few points before challenging their adversaries' theses. So that when you confront them with incontestable evidence, they always display the same kneejerk, instinctive reactions. Over the time it becomes tiresome. So here I'm presenting a few preemptive rebuttals to their also prepackaged talking points. (My blogging consists mostly of preparing materials ready for copy-pasting so that I won't have to spend so much time writing responses when confronting the Zios on the web.)

1) It's a few bad apples.

This argument sometimes works for two reasons. First, people have short memories. After all, who among us could name the ethnic groups involved in the Rwandan genocide, and who killed who? (It was the Hutus killing the Tutsis.) When someone commits an act of racism in Israel, the reader of the story usually has already forgotten that last month, last week or the day before yesterday a similar act was carried out by other Israeli Jews. Second, there's a racist idea lingering in Western educated circles that the Jews are particularly moral or good, and if some behave bad they must necessarily be exceptions.

Looks like not, however. In the last few weeks, a stunning number of anti-Arab racist incidents took place in Israel, such as:

• On 17 Oct 2010, rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a senior Sephardic religious figure and leader of the Shas party, declared that “Goyim (i.e. Gentiles) were born only to serve us (i.e. Jews). Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.”
• On 31 Oct 2010, a Jewish mob gathered outside of an Arab students' residence in Safed, chanted "death to the Arabs," hurled rocks and bottles at the building, shattering glass, and fired a shot at the building before dissassembling. If Jewish students had been thus treated elsewhere in the world, we would be talking of a Kristallnacht.
• On 7 Dec 2010, a group of 50 state-paid rabbis signed a letter instructing Orthodox Jews not to rent or sell houses to non-Jews. The letter was later endorsed by some 250 other Jewish religious figures. In a move reminiscent of darker places and times, a hotline was opened for denouncing those Jews who did intend to rent out to Arabs.
• On 12 Dec 2010, the rabbis of the Israeli Jewish city of Rosh Ha-Ayin, including the chief rabbi, declared a ban on hiring Arabs at stores which employ Jewish girls.
• On 19 Dec 2010, a demonstration was held in Bat Yam, close to Tel Aviv, against the "assimilation of young Jewish women with Arabs living in the city or in nearby Jaffa." One of the organizers, Bentzi Gufstein, declared that "the public is tired of so many Arabs going out with Jewish girls." One of the protestors called out, "Any Jewish woman who goes with an Arab should be killed; any Jew who sells his home to an Arab should be killed."
• On 20 Dec 2010, a group of five Arabs, including a Druze IDF veteran, were driven from an apartment in Tel Aviv after their landlady was threatened with the torching of her house if she continued to rent out to Arabs.
• On 21 Dec 2010, a gang of Jewish youths was arrested in Jerusalem after carrying out a large number of attacks on Arabs. A girl aged 14 would lure Arab men to the Independence Park, where they were savagely attacked with stones and bottles and severely beaten. The teens confessed to nationalistic motives.
• On 27 Dec 2010, the wives of 27 top rabbis signed another letter calling on Jewish girls to stay away from Arab men. Echoing the "they want to take our girls" theme so common in supremacist societies, the document went: "there are quite a few Arab workers who use Hebrew names. (...) Don't date them, don't work where they work and don't perform National Service with them."

So that if indeed the perpetrators of such acts of hate can be described as a few bad apples, it's certainly an awful lot of few bad apples.

2)  Like any other democracy, Israel has its problems.

It is true that Israel has its problems and other democracies also have their problems, but it is wrong to convey the idea that both sets of problems are remotely comparable. As I commented on The Huffington Post:

Harris makes two comparison­s. First, he compares Israel with other surroundin­g countries, and concludes that Israel is far better. No problem with that.


But then he compares Israel to "every democratic­, liberal and peace-seek­ing country" that he knows, and says that Israel is imperfect to the same extent that those other countries are. That is nonsense.


Take, for instance, Britain. In Britain you don't see 36 State-paid Anglican bishops signing a letter calling on Anglicans not to rent out apartments to Jews. You don't see an MP stating that intermarri­age between Anglican women and Jewish men is dangerous for the women. You don't see the Housing Minister stating that the Jewish and Anglican population­s should not mix. You don't see Anglicans hurling bottles and bricks at a building where Jewish students live while chanting "death to the Jews."


If anything remotely close to that were allowed in Britain, the country would be expelled from the EU and NATO and the US would sever ties with it. In Israel, on the other hand, such racism is allowed and encouraged by the government (please note that it's a Likud MK who's proposing a Knesset meeting to prevent intermarri­age).

Israel has a problem of totalitarian supremacism entrenched in political parties that form part of the governing coalition. Nowhere else in the developed democratic world can anything similar be found.

3) It's not racism -- Judaism isn't a race.

This argument takes advantage of the public's insufficient awareness of what the word "race" means, as we have explained elsewhere. But Israeli politicians are not afraid of calling it racism. As the Jerusalem Post reported:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday spoke out strongly against a letter signed by 27 rabbis' wives, which called on Jewish women not to date Arab men. He also had harsh words for a petition signed by municipal rabbis calling on Jews not to rent property to non-Jews.


Both letters, Barak said, are "part of a wave of racism, which threatens to carry Israeli society away to dark and dangerous places."

Anyone describing the latest events in Israel as anything less than racism is, thus, just one more instance of being more Catholic than the Israeli pope.

4) The haters have been roundly condemned by the society, and they're already being sought by the police.

If only.

No one is saying Israeli Jews are not aware of the image problem created by the racism that pervades their society, and of the need to do something about it. It's called damage control. Thus we have the lame condemnations made by politicians and journalists, but which never end up in those who incite to hate being arrested. Actions speak louder than words, especially when it's state-paid rabbis who promote hate. At the very least, they could be dropped from the payroll. Yet, according to the Jerusalem Post, "No legal or disciplinary action has been taken against the nearly 50 municipal rabbis who recently issued an edict against renting or selling real-estate to non-Jews in Israel." As The Guardian's Mya Guarnieri aptly put it when kicking ass on a rabidly Zionist site:

Again, as I said in the comments section of CIF, you seem to be confused between words and action. Everyone can condemn all they want but that doesn’t mean anything if the state doesn’t lift a finger.

This, of course, may have to do with a large proportion of the constituency (a staggering 44% of Israeli Jews) supporting the rabbis' ban on rentals to Arabs.

5) It's just freedom of expression being exercised.

When everything else has failed, Israeli Jewish racism will be explained away as an instance, or many instances in this case, of free speech being exercised.

Of course, there's an asymmetry in the freedom accorded by Zionists to people who want to speak. If it's a rabbi saying that Gentiles were born to serve the Jews -- yes; if it's a British Foreign Office employee saying "fucking Jews, fucking Israelis" -- no.

It would be good for them to remember that Israel does not grant unlimited freedom of speech to its population, and that there are laws against incitement to hate that could very well be applied to the rabbis who sign weird letters if the country were the democratic paragon it's purported to be.

"But those Arabs who do serve in the IDF are respected and honored" -- Not

With regard to the Arab population of Israel, there do exist issues. Nobody's denying that, but they're the result of the conflict and of the Arab unwillingness to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. Those who do serve, however, get the same privileges as the Jews do in all walks of Israeli life.

This is the kind of nonsense Zionists can peddle with impunity because, logically, we can't trace every last Israeli Arab who served in the army to see if they're granted the same rights as the Jews. We'll have to make do, then, with those who make it to the headlines. A few days ago, Ynet reported:

Arabs flee home due to racist threats

Five residents of the north, four Muslims and a Druze, were forced to leave their apartment in southern Tel Aviv due to threats and persecution by their Jewish neighbors, Ynet learned Thursday.

"I felt humiliated by the hatred," said Ganem Abbas, the young Druze man, who has served in the IDF.(...)

[T]hree days ago the friends returned home in the evening to see that their main water pipe had been broken. Gas bottles had been stolen.

"The landlady told me that people from the neighborhood had threatened to torch the house and attack her if we don't get out, because we're Arabs," Abbas said.

He also described a particularly humiliating moment. "The neighbors came out and started to yell that they don't want to see Arabs in the neighborhood, and that it is for Jews only," he recounted.(...)

"This act destroys coexistence. I feel humiliated from this intolerable cruelty. Despite serving in the army and telling the neighbors this, but [sic] they didn't care and only gave us the evil eye. I have heard stories about Arabs who were fired for speaking their mother tongue – even that disturbs the racists."

Please note that the young Arab was kicked out of the apartment not because the attackers didn't know that he was an IDF veteran, but in spite of such awareness.

One can only pity the Druze community, who made many years ago the decision to allow the IDF to recruit their children, maybe in the hope that one day the Jews would accept them as part of the mainstream Israeli society. Bad news for them: Israeli Jews are not interested in any Arab, IDF service or not.

The bright side, though, is that the Tel Aviv municipality, in a face-saving effort, apologized to the young Druze and offered to find accomodation for him in a less hostile neighborhood.

Just kidding!

Israel heeds Goldstone

The Goldstone report was a pack of lies. Everything in it is hearsay unsupported by any hard evidence. That has been the standard Zionist line since the document saw the light of day. But do they themselves believe it?

Looks like not, according to a recent Jerusalem Post story. Reports the rightwing newspaper:

IDF officers finish course on reducing civilian casualties

In what some in the IDF are banking on as the key to preventing another Goldstone Report, the IDF this week wrapped up its first-ever training course for a new military post aimed at helping Israel minimize harm to civilians during future operations in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

How cute, they had previously almost convinced me that they did everything within their reach to minimize civilian suffering, and it turns out they are only now offering courses on the subject.

The officer in charge explains:

According to the commander of the school, Lt.- Col. Hatib Mansour, if such officers had been deployed inside IDF battalions during Operation Cast Lead two years ago, the criticism against Israel might not have been as severe.(...)

During the course, the officers were taught how to assist battalion and brigade commanders in planning operations while taking into consideration the effect these operations will have on the civilian population.

So you see: after 43 years of occupation they're considering the effects on civilians. Who knows, maybe in another 50 years they'll stop using human shields.

The most interesting part, though, was...

“If a field commander needs to conquer a city or a neighborhood, our officer will be there to explain what the sensitive targets are in the area of operations and what to look out for,” Mansour explained.

“We are adding the humanitarian side, like which road needs to be kept open so civilians can evacuate if needed.”

Wow, not only is the IDF the most moral army in the world; they're now adding the humanitarian side as well.

The rationale for the course proves what many NGO's had stated over the years, namely that Israel drops warning leaflets but doesn't allow the civilians any exit route. At last they seem to be realizing that.

And they owe it to Goldstone. The report can't be fallacious inasmuch as Israel is taking measures to minimize harm to civilians based on what the document says. Goldstone may be a self-hating Jew and the Goldstone report may be antisemitic. But thanks to it, a few select Israeli soldiers are being taught how to kill fewer civilians.

Tiny minorities and even tinier ones

By now no one denies the existence of a deeply racist segment within the Israeli Jewish society, which operates with a freedom unseen in any other advanced democracy. Belgian priests signing a document against intermarriage with Muslims, for instance, or American politicians suggesting that Mexicans should not be allowed in certain neighborhoods, would be met not only with oprobium, but also with legal actions. Not so in Israel, where the housing minister can claim that the Arab and Jewish populations should not mix with hardly an eyebrow being raised.

The standard Zionist line of defense is that such elements are a tiny minority in Israel, and that the vast majority of Israeli Jews repudiate their discourse.

The events last Monday in Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv, would, however, suggest otherwise. As the Jerusalem Post reported:

Hundreds gathered at a demonstration in Bat Yam on Monday evening to protest the presence of Arab residents in the suburb south of Tel Aviv, and to warn against what they said was a worrying trend of Arabs “defiling” Jewish girls there and across Israel.

Posters advertising the protest said “The Arabs are taking over Bat Yam, buying and renting apartments from Jews and taking Jewish girls, whom they defile.” They also stated that “15,000 Jewish girls have been taken to [Arab] villages!” and “What would you do if an Arab man hit on your sister? We’ll put an end to this!”

The demo got the support of extremist politicians:

Far-right MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) attended the rally with his aide and fellow activist Itamar Ben-Gvir in tow. Ben-Ari said he had come “to see the Jews who are standing up for themselves. We are standing before a disaster, and our politicians are more concerned with ideas like democracy, ideas that our enemies exploit in order to attack the State of Israel.”

Moshe Ben-Zikri, a community administrator from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev, who recently waged a campaign against the quarter’s Arab residents, told The Jerusalem Post, “Today, the Arab enemy is taking over all over Israel. They act innocent, they say we’re only here to rent an apartment, and then they take over house by house. Our girls fall victim to their temptation. Not only that, but crime and drugs, all of it comes with the Arabs; none of that stuff takes place in a Jewish area until the Arabs come.”

Like so many political loonies, these gentlemen had a conspiracy theory to explain it all: the Arabs are undermining Jewish society by taking their unwitting women.

Ben-Zikri said Arabs posed a special threat to innocent Jewish girls, who were easy prey.

“These Arabs, they speak Hebrew, they look just like us and they tempt our women,” he said. “Some guy named Arafat says his name is Ofer, and so on. Our girls don’t know these guys are Arab and they fall victim to them and families are destroyed. They [the Arabs] don’t have to kill people to destroy families.”

But according to their own probably inflated figures, just 15,000 Jewish women, of a total of some 3,000,000 in the country, are married to Arabs -- i.e., one-half of one percent. Irrational fears of minorities have always been a specialty of racists.

It's not that the Jews have any obligation to be more moral than other peoples, but if anything remotely close to this gathering had taken place in Western Europe or North America it would have been instant news worldwide; and if the target of the speeches had been the Jews the outrage would have been universal. Double standards anyone?

Ah, but what about the Jewish reaction against this atrocious demonstration? It did take place -- but see:

A counter-protest was held a few hundred meters away, where several dozen demonstrators chanted such slogans as “Bat Yam: A city for everyone” and “Down with racism.” One protester there held a sign reading, “I love Arabs, ask me how,” while another placard showed a picture of a smiling couple under the words “I married an Arab!”

Barak Sella, a 25-year-old organizer for the southern branch of left-wing youth group Hano’ar Ha’oved Vehalomed, said he had come with several other group members “in order to show our opposition to the other protest, but also to get across our message of unity, which is that we will keep Bat Yam Jewish and democratic.”

As can be seen, opponents to the racist gathering could be counted in the dozens, while the racists themselves could be counted in the hundreds. There's an order of magnitude of difference between the hateful camp and the tolerant one, which would suggest that if the former is a tiny minority, the latter is downright marginal. Furthermore, the tolerant gathering was made up of those people no one would think of as representative of Israel, and who are often described as self-hating Jews.

However they try to spin it, the phenomenon of unabashedly racist (and highly vocal) Jews in Israel is there to stay, to the shameful inaction of the rest of the society.

Anti-Arab hate festival continues; AP sanitizes

Israel President Shimon Peres is agonizing over the recent racist document produced by several dozen State-paid rabbis. He understands it's terrible publicity. But he also understands that the rabbis can't be fired, because what they propose is basically what Israel was built on: denying Palestinian Arabs a place on earth.

The affair broke out on Dec. 7 when some 36 rabbis signed a letter calling on their flocks not to sell or rent apartments to non-Jews -- meaning, in an Israeli context, basically Arabs. By Dec. 9, two separate developments had taken place: on the one hand, secular Israeli Jewish politicians were quick to denounce the rabbis; on the other hand, some 240 other religious figures expressed their support for the racist ruling. Now for all the disclaimers the secular politicians may make, the sad fact is that they have failed to take concrete action against the rabbis. They understand the rabbis may be crazy, but their craziness is quite mainstream: up to 46% of Israeli Jews don't want to live next to an Arab.

The curious thing is how news agencies try to present a "balanced account." Associated Press, in first reporting the racist ruling, claimed:

Israeli Jews have increasingly been questioning the loyalty of Arab citizens, who legally enjoy the same rights but tend to be poorer and discriminated against in state funding and job opportunities.

Arabs do not enjoy the same rights as Jews. Jews are entitled to the benefits of the Law of Return; Arabs are not. How can this influence someone's life? By affecting their ability to remain a citizen. Israel's Nationality Law provides that:

# 11. (a) Where an Israel national -

* (1) became an Israel national on the basis of false particulars; or
* (2) has been abroad for seven consecutive years and has no effective connection with Israel, and has not proved that his effective connection with Israel was severed otherwise than by his own volition; or
* (3) has committed an act constituting a breach of allegiance to the State of Israel,

the District Court may, on the application of the Minister, annul his nationality.

As can be seen, an Arab Israeli who pursues a career abroad may have his nationality revoked and loses any further right to it, while a Jewish Israeli in a similar situation can reapply for it under the Law of Return. Hardly the same rights for both groups of people.

AP goes on to report:

Meanwhile, some members of the Arab minority have become radicalized by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and are openly speaking about turning the Jewish state into part of a binational state that would be home to Israelis and Palestinians both.

You see, one outrage cancels the other. The rabbis may want to deny housing to the Arabs, but the Arabs want a country for all. Both equally worrying forms of hate.

Still more from the venerable Associated Press:

Rabbi David Rosen, the interfaith adviser to Israel’s chief rabbinate, described the rabbis’ action as “disturbing” but said he did not think that the majority of the country’s rabbis would agree and called it a product of the lingering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

“The rabbinate as a whole isn’t xenophobic or hostile to Arabs,” Rosen said. “As long as the conflict goes on here, it’s logical to assume that the attitudes of all sides will harden, which is deeply regrettable.”

That this kind of logic can be presented without objections is striking. Of course, the Catholic clergy as a whole is not paedophilic, but child-molesting priests taint the whole Church so long as action isn't taken against them. At the very least, that "majority of the country’s rabbis" could produce a counter-document and shun their hateful colleagues. It hasn't happened. It won't happen.

Also, the "hardening" of positions is of a very diferent nature and significance when one group can hurt the other with its hard positions but not the other way round.

On Sunday, the hate festival seemed to continue as the rabbis of the Israeli Jewish city of Rosh Ha-Ayin, including the chief rabbi, declared a ban on hiring Arabs at stores which employ Jewish girls. "They want to steal our daughters" -- sound familiar?

Since the story was published in Hebrew and not picked up by main news agencies, Peres felt in no hurry to repudiate the incident.

Different boycotts, different standards

Kauft nicht bei Juden – “Don’t buy from Jews” – was the Nazi call to boycott Jewish businesses. It is also the phrase used by former British MP Denis MacShane to describe the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel for its crimes against the Palestinians. Claims MacShane:

Once again, as the tsunami of hate against Israel rolls out from the Right and the Left, from Islamist ideologues to Europe’s cultural elites, the demand is to punish the Jews.

This gentleman is bluntly stating that it is antisemitism, and no other factor, that is driving people to support BDS. He then goes on to indulge in unadulterated whataboutery, describing the many countries that behave worse than Israel does. Since Israel is the self-described Jewish state, this would mean that BDS proponents are antisemites.

MacShane's only problem is Apartheid South Africa. The Apartheid regime was subjected to international sanctions like no other country was at that time. Of course, there existed far worse human-rights offenders, like Mozambique. I'd like to ask Mr. MacShane: would he have supported sanctions against Mozambique, not South Africa, even if they weren't likely to improve a single bit the human-rights situation there? Would he be contented with a situation in which South Africa is still under Apartheid and Mozambique is still undemocratic, but subjected to sanctions -- for the sake of a "worse offenders first" approach to sanction-imposing? On another note, does he believe that the sanctions against South Africa, and only South Africa, reflected a visceral hate against Afrikaners?

MacShane seems to believe that calls for sanctions must be based first and foremost on moral considerations. This politician (does the phrase "the art of the possible" ring a bell?) rules out any possibility of a reality-based approach, in which only those boycotts that are likely to have an effect are advocated for. If a country is irrational and doesn't care for its economy, or for the well-being of at least part of its citizens, sanctions and boycotts are useless. But Israel is rational, and cares for the well-being of its Jewish citizens, so that BDS has a chance, however slim at present, of pressuring the country into becoming a democracy for all people under its control.

But while we're at it -- what about other boycotts that, unlike BDS, have involved physical violence against certain people? Case in point, the many boycotts decreed by -- ehm, uhm -- how to say this -- Jews. Very prominent Israeli rabbis --i.e., State-paid servants-- have called on their flocks to boycott Arab stores or deny lodging to Arab students. In the latest instance, chief Safed Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu and other prominent rabbis called not to rent or sell apartments to non-Jews. Spurred by the ruling, local Jews gathered in front of a building where a number of Arab students dwelt. Reports Haaretz:

The mass group of Jewish youths began shouting "death to Arabs", "stinking Muslims" and "a Jew has a soul and an Arab is a son-of-a-bitch" at the house. They began throwing bottles and stones at the student housing.

One of the bottles soared through an open window, shattering glass in an apartment where a number of students were sitting at the time.

This is a certainly frightening episode, yet Denis MacShane, in a glaring case of double standards, does not deem it fit to denounce these boycotts decreed by Israeli state employees that involve violence and calls for genocide. Instead, he describes the rise of several marginal neo-Nazi parties in Europe and, making a completely unwarranted association, gravely warns:

And now Europeans, of all people, once again cry Kauft nicht bei Juden. (...) As Europeans we must reject the old language of boycott and economic campaigns against Jews.

Nazi analogies should never be made unless a genocide is involved, like in Rwanda. But since MacShane himself brings up the subject, allow me to ask: between a peaceful call for BDS that hurts no one and a residential boycott that results in mobs calling for the death of Arabs and glasses in their buildings being shattered, which is more reminiscent of Kristallnacht?

The Darfur refugees fable

Why, please tell me, oh why do they insist on arguing for Israel's holiness? It would be so much easier to defend the country under a realism-based approach! But no -- they need to claim that Israel is uniquely good. A light unto the nations -- sound familiar?

The latest such defense was put up by Gabriel Latner, a 19-year-old Cambridge student, at a recent debate of the prestigious university’s debating society centered on the motion that “Israel is a rogue state.” His speech was called by The Irish Independent “the most brilliantly audacious defence of Israel since Moses parted the Red Sea.”

This is why blogs like this are needed. Latner's speech is brilliant only in how skilfully it exploits the public's ignorance and the general perception among the educated elite that Jews are particularly moral. Latner contends that Israel is, in fact, rogue, but in the definition of the word as “aberrant, anomalous; misplaced, occurring (esp. in isolation) at an unexpected place or time.” And how is Israel anomalous? Well -- by being exceptionally good.

Latner:

The second argument concerns Israel’s humanitarianism, in particular, Israel’s response to a refugee crisis. Not the Palestinian refugee crisis -- for I am sure that the other speakers will cover that -- but the issue of Darfurian refugees. Everyone knows that what happened and is still happening in Darfur is genocide, whether or not the UN and the Arab League will call it such. (I actually hoped that Mr. Massih would be able to speak about -- he's actually somewhat of an expert on the crisis in Darfur, in fact, it's his expertise that has called him away to represent the former dictator of Sudan while he is being investigated by the ICC.)

There has been a mass exodus from Darfur as the oppressed seek safety. They have not had much luck. Many have gone north to Egypt -- where they are treated despicably. The brave make a run through the desert in a bid to make it to Israel. Not only do they face the natural threats of the Sinai, they are also used for target practice by the Egyptian soldiers patrolling the border. Why would they take the risk?

Because in Israel they are treated with compassion -- they are treated as the refugees that they are – and perhaps Israel's cultural memory of genocide is to blame. The Israeli government has even gone so far as to grant several hundred Darfurian refugees citizenship. This alone sets Israel apart from the rest of the world.

This is a load of lies. Since the Darfur crisis started, Egypt has taken 2 million Sudanese refugees. The comparable figure for Israel would be 200,000. Instead, Israel has a meager 17,000 illegal residents from all of Africa. Indeed, Israel, one of the richest countries in the world, is set apart from Egypt, one of the poorest, in that the latter has been immensely more generous in absorbing Darfur refugees. It is also set apart from other advanced economies: it has the lowest percent of temporary refugee status requests granted compared to western states - 1% in 2005, under 0.5% in 2006, and in 2007, 350 refugees got temporary protection, 805 others were denied, and 863 were under review, after which most were rejected.

It's true that Israel granted citizenship to a few hundred Darfurians -- but only after it announced that all further refugees would be blocked from entering the country. As the Washington Post reported:

CAIRO, Aug. 19 -- Israel closed the door Sunday on a surge of asylum-seekers from Sudan's Darfur region and from other African countries, the largest influx of non-Jewish refugees in the modern history of the Jewish state.

Authorities announced that they had expelled 48 of more than 2,000 African refugees who have entered illegally from Egypt in recent weeks. Officials said they would allow 500 Darfurians among them to remain, but would deport everyone else back to Egypt and accept no more illegal migrants from Darfur or other places.

In accordance with this policy, Haaretz reported one year later:

Israel to expel 2,000 African refugees who fled to Eilat

The Interior Ministry has decided to expel from Eilat some 2,000 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea, and prohibit them from working if they do not hold work permits.

They are among some 11,000 asylum seekers in Israel who will continue to live in the country since they are exempt from deportation while the United Nations decides whether to recognize them as refugees, though they will not be able to earn money legally.

Human rights groups condemned the "Interior Ministry's unrestrained conduct" Tuesday. "This draconian decision contravenes international and Israeli law on impairing basic human rights[."]

Not content with that, the government instituted a policy called "Gedera-Hadera," whereby refugees were blocked from living in Tel Aviv and the center of the country (i.e., where they were most likely to find jobs) -- hardly a "compassionate" move. The policy (illegal under international standards) was later rolled back -- not because of humanitarian concerns, but because the North and the South complained.

Also, no "cultural memory of genocide" prevented the Israeli government from attempting to enact an Infiltration Prevention Bill which called for the jailing for up to five years of all people illegally entering the country, including asylum-seekers. The bill was pulled after it was pointed out by human rights organizations that it constituted a blatant violation of Israel's commitments as a signatory of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

What do the refugees themselves have to say? Nothing very complimentary of Israel. Writing in the Jerusalem Post, one of them noted:

The [Israeli] authorities treat us not like refugees escaping danger and death, but like criminals and infiltrators or like people who came here for work. It seems that they could not care less about our welfare.

The local community, on the other hand, seems to understand that we are, indeed, refugees and accepts our situation. But, by labeling all foreigners as immigrant workers, I sense that the authorities are trying to set Israelis against us, as a threat to their work places and homes, and I deeply regret that.

In sum, Israel has done next to nothing to absorb asylum seekers, and has even attempted a few illegal steps to keep them outside of its borders. Please, tell me that Israel's situation is difficult; that reality trumps ideals; that it faces challenges unknown to other democracies; whatever you want along those lines. But don't present it to me as a compassionate refugee heaven with a better record than any other country in the world because that is utter bullshit.

Israeli violence: ongoing, systemic and apologized for

I respect blogger Norman Geras because of this post. That said, most of his blog consists of more or less crude Hasbara, but the fact that he seems to enjoy a certain degree of prestige justifies taking an occasional look at, and duly criticizing, the contributions he publishes.

One of Geras' guest writers is British professor Eve Garrard, who in her latest post takes on writers Fintan O'Toole, from Ireland, and Iain Banks, from the UK. OK, none of these people is particularly famous as a Middle East commenter, but I'm concerned about arguments, especially when they're often repeated in essentially the same form. Garrard:

Fintan O'Toole thinks that Israel regards itself as 'exempt from the demands of common humanity' (via Z Word Blog). Iain Banks thinks that 'simple human decency' means nothing to Israel (see this normblog post).

Not what either author said, and here we've got one basic Zionist tactic: slight misrepresentations that change a lot the "outrageousness" of a statement. As can be checked by following the links, O'Toole says:

Once you decide that your group is especially exempt from the demands of common humanity, there is virtually no limit to what you will do to others. Lanzmann shows, through a slow accumulation of banal detail, the ways in which the attempted extermination of an entire people became normal.

His assertion is about the Nazis, not about Israel. He goes on to reflect, accurately, that because of the Jews' genocide, Israel prioritizes security over a fair treatment of the Palestinians, and adds:

In Israel itself, the tension between the two imperatives (safety and common humanity) has gradually weakened.

Which is a far cry from stating that Israel has declared itself beyond common humanity concerns.

Banks, for his part, states:

[A]ppeals to reason, international law, UN resolutions and simple human decency mean – it is now obvious – nothing to Israel[.]

It is the appeals, not the decency, that mean nothing to the self-called Jewish state.

Having slightly, but importantly, misrepresented both authors, Garrard proceeds with her criticism:

Two well-known writers, very anxious to tell the world that Israel lacks humanity. Israel's not like the rest of us, the rest of the human family. Compared to other nations, it's inhuman.

This is not a misrepresentation; it's a lie. Neither author compared Israel to other nations. This is Zionism's big straw man: the claim that because we antis (anti-Zionists or antisemites; I don't care what they call us) criticize Israel and only Israel we're implying that the country is the only human rights violator in the world. It's like claiming that physicians who only treat AIDS patients are in denial of the existence of malaria.

Garrard goes on with an all-too-familiar littany:

Sri Lanka, at the same time that Israel was fighting in Gaza (around 1300 dead) killed about 25,000 of its own civilians in the course of repressing an insurgency. But Israel thinks it's exempt from the demands of common humanity.

Sudan has killed something in the order of 200,000 people in Darfur, with countless rapes and tortures alongside. But Israel lacks simple human decency.

(...)

Congo: what can one say about Congo? More than that 5 million - 5 million - people have been killed in its wars, alongside innumerable rapes and hideous tortures? But Israel lacks simple human decency.

These counterexamples are fallacious. Zionists complaining that Israel is more slammed than Congo is like Tiger Woods complaining that his extramarital affairs are more exposed than his next-door neighbor's. Israel is famous and Congo is not, and if Garrard doesn't like fame to be a fundamental attractor of attention she should criticize human nature, not anti-Zionism. (By the way: so concerned as she is with the Congo genocide, has she ever penned any reflection on how all those Holocaust museums haven't helped prevent other mass killings?).

Her other examples are more relevant:

Now, here's one especially for Iain Banks: the USA and the UK initiate a war in Iraq in which more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians are killed. But Israel thinks it's exempt from the demands of common humanity.

France trained and armed the Hutu genocidaires who killed around 800,000 civilians in the Rwanda genocide, and continued to protect them even as they lost power to the incoming Tutsis. But Israel lacks simple human decency.

But they're also fallacious. In the first place, Israel can consider itself exempt from humanitarian concerns and lack simple human decency even as other famous countries are worse offenders in either area. Even if Bank's and O'Toole's argument had been what Garrard claims it to be, there would be no contradiction.

But in the second place, Garrard speaks as if there was nothing distinguishing the case of Israel from that of other advanced economies that also violate or help violate human rights. Which, of course, is not true. Israel's oppression of the Palestinians is unique as it displays three simultaneous features:

• It's ongoing.
• It's systemic.
• It's apologized for.

OK, whenever you use bullets you've got to explain each bullet (exception: the Israeli Defense Forces). So here we go. Israeli oppression is ongoing. It is, thus, different from France's support of the Hutus, which is horrible and regrettable but, in the end, past history.

Israeli oppression is systemic. Israel needs to devour ever more Palestinian land and resources to keep its system going. It also needs to deny the Palestinian refugees any measure of justice. It futher needs to control West Bank Palestinians while denying them the vote. It even needs to deny its own Arab citizens, described as present absentees, the right to recover the property that was confiscated from them by the State. In all this Israel is different from, say, the United States. Granted, the US killed far more people with Napalm in Vietnam (or in the current Iraq war) than Israel has in all its wars. But the Vietnam war ended in defeat and the American system didn't fall apart. Zionist Israel, by contrast, would collapse if West Bank Palestinians were given the vote, or if the lands on which the highway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was built (for instance) were restored to their Palestinian owners.

But finally, and very importantly for an intellectual, Israel is apologized for. It's not just that the system has created a racist country; it's also that such racism is defended by an army of writers, pundits, lecturers and bloggers. And it's an unconditional defense based on outrageous falsities, like the claim that Israeli soldiers put their lives at stake to prevent civilians from being harmed. Other countries' wars are occasionally defended too, but not with such insistence or with such egregious lies. You don't see commentators supporting Russia's onslaught of the Chechens with the argument that Russians never targeted civilians.

But as Garrard would have it, intellectuals should focus on the human rights violations that are undisputed, rather than on the unique case in which a horde of dishonest authors with polished arguments are trying to convince the world that black is white, up is down and Israel is a light unto the nations. She simply doesn't get the basics of intellectual pursuit.