OK. So I understand that you are ticked off at Israel, and in love with the Palestinians. That's fine with me, as long as you have truly weighed all the facts.
So, you want to boycott Israel ????? I'll be sorry to miss you, but if you are doing it - do it properly. Let me help you.
Check all your medications. Make sure that you do not have tablets, drops lotions, etc., made by Abic or Teva. It may mean that you will suffer from colds and flu this winter but, hey, that's a small price for you to pay in your campaign against Israel, isn't it?
While we are on the subject of your Israeli boycott, and the medical contributions to the world made by Israeli doctors and scientists, how about telling your pals to boycott the following...
An Israeli company has developed a simple blood test that distinguishes between mild and more severe cases of Multiple Sclerosis. So, if you know anyone suffering from MS, tell them to ignore the Israeli patent that may, more accurately, diagnose their symptoms.
An Israeli-made device helps restore the use of paralyzed hands. This device electrically stimulates the hand muscles, providing hope to millions of stroke sufferers and victims of spinal injuries. If you wish to remove this hope of a better quality of life to these people, go ahead and boycott Israel.
Young children with breathing problems will soon be sleeping more soundly, thanks to a new Israeli device called the Child Hood. This innovation replaces the inhalation mask with an improved drug delivery system that provides relief for child and parent. Please tell anxious mothers that they shouldn't use this device because of your passionate cause.
These are just a few examples of how people have benefited medically from the Israeli know-how you wish to block. Boycotts often affect research. A new research center in Israel hopes to throw light on brain disorders such as depression and Alzheimer's disease.
The Joseph Sangol Neuroscience Center in the Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer Hospital, aims to bring thousands of scientists and doctors to focus on brain research.
A researcher at Israel's Ben Gurion University has succeeded in creating human monoclonal antibodies which can neutralize the highly contagious smallpox virus without inducing the dangerous side effects of the existing vaccine.
Two Israelis received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Doctors Ciechanover and Hershko's research and discovery of one of the human cells most important cyclical processes will lead the way to DNA repair, control of newly produced proteins, and immune defense systems.
The Movement Disorder Surgery program at Israel's Hadassah Medical Center has successfully eliminated the physical manifestations of Parkinson's disease in a select group of patients with a deep brain stimulation technique.
For women who undergo hysterectomies each year for the treatment of uterine fibroids, the development in Israel of the Ex Ablate 2000 System is a welcome breakthrough, offering a noninvasive alternative to surgery.
Israel is developing a nose drop that will provide a five year flu vaccine.
These are just a few of the projects that you can help stop with your Israeli boycott. But let's not get too obsessed with medical research, there are other ways you can make a personal sacrifice with your anti-Israel boycott.
Most of Windows operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel. So, set a personal example. Throw away your computer! Computers should have a sign attached saying Israel Inside. The Pentium NMX Chip technology was designed at Intel in Israel . Both the Pentium 4 microprocessor for desktop computers and the Centrino processor for laptop computers were entirely designed, developed, and produced in Israel.
Disk on Key - a portable, virtual hard disk - was developed by the Israeli company M-Systems.
Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.
The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 in Israel by four young Israeli whiz kids.
Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R. & D. facilities outside the US in Israel.
So, due to your complete boycott of anything Israeli, you can now have poor health and no computer.
But your bad news does not end there. Get rid of your cellular phone. Cell phone technology was also developed in Israel by MOTOROLA which has its biggest development center in Israel. Most of the latest technology in your mobile phone was developed by Israeli scientists.
Feeling unsettled? You should be. Part of your personal security rests with Israeli inventiveness, borne out of our urgent necessity to protect and defend our lives from the terrorists you support.
A phone can remotely activate a bomb, or be used for tactical communications by terrorists, bank robbers, or hostage-takers. It is vital that official security and law enforcement authorities have access to cellular jamming and detection solutions. Enter Israel's Net line Communications Technologies with their security expertise to help the fight against terror.
I also want you to know that Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.
Israel produces more scientific papers per capita - 109 per 10,000 - than any other nation.
Israel has the highest number of startup companies per capita. In absolute terms, the highest number, except the US. Israel has a ratio of patents filed.
Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies outside of Silicon Valley. Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds, behind the USA.
Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.
Israel has the second highest publication of new books per capita.
Relative to population, Israel is the largest immigrant absorbing nation on earth. These immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom or expression, economic opportunity, and quality of life.
Believe it or not, Israel is the only country in the world which had a net gain in the number of trees last year.
Even Warren Buffet of Berkshire-Hathaway fame has just invested millions with Israeli Companies.
So, you can vilify and demonize the State of Israel. You can continue your silly boycott, if you wish. But I wish you would consider the consequences, and the truth.
Think of the massive contribution that Israel is giving to the world, including the Palestinians - and to you - in science, medicine, communications, security. Pro rata for population, Israel is making a greater contribution than any other nation on earth.
PASS THIS ON WHETHER PRO-ISRAEL OR NOT.................. that little country needs us to remember all the wonderful things the Israeli's bring to our world. Thanks. (From The Daily Sport, (c) 2007, United Kingdom)
UPDATES:
The first innovative drug to be developed in Israel (Weizmann Institute) and to receive FDA approval, Copaxone® is a unique immunomodulator therapy for the treatment of Relapsing- Remitting Multiple Sclerosis. Copaxone® is the only non-interferon agent available for MS.
Modern technology for drip irrigation was invented in Israel by Simcha Blass and his son Yeshayahu, in 1959. This method was very successful and subsequently spread to Australia, North America, and South America by the late 1960s.
Professor Rafael Beyar, former dean of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine of the Technion in Haifa, developed novel cardiac devices, including coronary and vascular stents, as well as a robotic catheterization system.
The Bio-computer, which is able to operate a billion programs, was developed at the Technion - Israeli Institute of Technology in Haifa. Current computers, which consist of metal, plastic, wires and transistors, process information one computation at a time. It has made the Guiness Book of Records in 2004.
Epilady, an electric hair removal system, was developed by Yair Dar and Shimon Yahav from the Goshrim Kibbutz.
Israel's Given Imaging developed the PillCam - the first ingestible video camera, which is so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, the camera helps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders.
Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.
An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment. Every year in U. S. hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes.
Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood. The new device is synchronized with the heart's mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.
A new brain implant has been developed in Israel that can lower the risk of stroke by diverting blood clots away from sensitive areas of the brain.
Cherry tomatoes were originally supposed to be a snack when they were designed by a group of scientists led by professor Nahum Keidar from the agriculture faculty at the Weizmann Institute of Science, with the cooperation of the Israeli company Zera.
The Quicktionary, a pen size scanner that scans a word or a sentence and translates it to a different language, was developed by the Wizcom Company, based in Jerusalem.
Researchers at the Technion have developed an antibiotic that destroys anthrax bacteria as well as the toxins it secretes into the bloodstream of the infected body.
The NESS L300 developed by Ra'anana-based NESS (Neuromuscular Electric Stimulation Systems) was designed to restore/improve gait in people suffering from drop foot. The wireless, computer-controlled device is non-invasive and is worn around the ankle and below the knee.
Last but not least, the drone or UAV as we know it, was developed after the Yom Kippur war by a couple of Israeli soldiers with a passion for toy remote control planes. Drones became operational in the first Lebanon War.
We are the world's 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population. A little over 60 years ago we were earmarked for extermination and lost millions in the Holocaust. The State of Israel is barely 60 years old.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Out of Our Minds
During my daily rounds of the blogosphere, I found this story that really got my pulse going:
New Book May Further the Rift Between Israeli Arabs And Jews
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - An Israeli Arab organization distributed at Arab schools throughout northern Israel on Wednesday 20,000 copies of a booklet aimed at promoting Arab unity around the popular idea that the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948 was a catastrophe, or what is widely referred to in Arabic as the "nakba."
The booklet contains stories written by 150 Arab children in Israel, the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories, Syria and Lebanon that are harshly critical of and even hostile toward Israel.
It was produced by the Ibn Khaldun Association in northern Israel, whose director Asad Ghanem told Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper that he hoped the booklet would "reaffirm Palestinian consciousness, and maintain and reinforce it among future generations" of Israeli Arabs. Ghanem is also head of the political science department at Israel's Haifa University.
In remarks to Cybercast News Service, Israeli Arab affairs expert Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a research associate with the Begin-Sadat Center, stressed his view that Ghanem and other Israeli Arabs like him do not view the booklet as a threat to Israel.
"They see this book as designed to strengthen national awareness and to promote a connection between Palestinians who are Israeli and those living in other Arab countries in order to consolidate the Palestinian spirit," said Kedar.
That national awareness and struggle is more commonly known as the "Palestinian cause," which today is largely taken to mean the effort to establish a sovereign Palestinian Arab state in the Gaza Strip and the areas known collectively around the world as the "West Bank," but which many Israelis refer to by their biblical names of Judea and Samaria.
The problem for most Israelis is that the Palestinian cause as formulated by late PLO founder Yasser Arafat does not stop with Judea and Samaria. Even after signing the so-called "Oslo Accords" with Israel, Arafat repeatedly told Arab media that the PLO's "phased plan" remained in effect, and that the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria would be only the first step toward the destruction of Israel.
Despite the threat inherent in the Palestinian cause and the "nakba" narrative that fuels it, Kedar said he remains convinced most Israeli Arabs and Jews want to "live together instead of fight each other." Unfortunately, Ghanem's booklet is poised to widen the rift between the two communities by further antagonizing the more hardened elements in Israeli society, whose reaction will be used by Islamists to further radicalize Israeli Arab youth.
This book "will definitely pour more oil on the fire against the Arabs within certain Israeli circles, which will in turn pour even more oil on the fire created by extremist elements on the Arab side," said Kedar.The publication of Ghanem's booklet comes at a time of already markedly increased tension between Israeli Arabs and Jews, a phenomenon that was highlighted last month as Israeli Jews and a slew of visiting foreign dignitaries celebrated Israel's 60th Independence Day while most of the nation's Arabs spoke out against the state or were cowed into silence by extremists.
Israeli media commentators have asserted that national ethnic divisions can be at least partially blamed on an Israeli government establishment that has beholden itself to the principles of political correctness and now refuses to be seen as interfering with its Arab minority by countering negative trends in that community.
Jerusalem Post columnist Carolyn Glick wrote earlier this year that "the natural pull of Israeli Arabs is toward the Palestinians," and that Israel has to make a concerted effort to win the hearts and minds of its Arab citizens, or risk facing an internal explosion in addition to numerous regional threats.
So the Israeli establishment wants to stick to politically correctness and allow free circulation of this piece of inflammatory propaganda (150 stories) rather than interfere (provoke riots) with our ever so hostile and treacherous Arab minority. But the same Israeli establishment does allow the Arab minority to interfere with the Israeli majority in a blatant attempt to shut us up. Said Israeli establishment has just given in to the extortion of a Yaffo-based terrorist sympathiser going by the name of Ibrahim Abu-Shindi, who regularly appears on Israeli TV in order to bash the State of Israel while pretending to work for peace. The man is even the director of an Arab-Jewish Community Center. Well, if it's peace he wants, I'll accept nothing less than the publication of the "bone of contention" poem written by one ten-year-old Israeli boy from Ness Ziona. Please also note that the State of Israel can only afford to publish 500 copies of the poetry contest booklet, while an Israeli Arab organization has the funds to come up with 20,000 copies of their revised "Arabian Nights". Good grief! Fortunately, I am not bound by any multi-crappy-culti PC nonsense. So here's the offending poem:
Ahmed's bunker has surprises galore: Grenades, rifles
are hung on the wall. Ahmed is planning another bomb!
What a bunker Ahmed has, who causes daily harm.
Ahmed knows how to make a bomb. Ahmed is Ahmed, that's
who he is, so don't forget to be careful of him.
We get blasted while they have a blast!
Ahmed and his friends could be wealthy and sunny, if only
they wouldn't buy rockets with all their money.
Anyway, in an extraordinary instance of poetic justice, a mishap seems to have befallen one of Ahmed's bunkers and it is no longer operational. Nor are the houses around it habitable.
I am pleased to see that the saga of Ahmad's bunker, the innocent little poem, has made it to several blogs:
B'nai Elim
Double Tapper
Esser Agaroth
Freerepublic
Infidel Blogger's Alliance
Muqata
New Book May Further the Rift Between Israeli Arabs And Jews
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - An Israeli Arab organization distributed at Arab schools throughout northern Israel on Wednesday 20,000 copies of a booklet aimed at promoting Arab unity around the popular idea that the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948 was a catastrophe, or what is widely referred to in Arabic as the "nakba."
The booklet contains stories written by 150 Arab children in Israel, the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories, Syria and Lebanon that are harshly critical of and even hostile toward Israel.
It was produced by the Ibn Khaldun Association in northern Israel, whose director Asad Ghanem told Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper that he hoped the booklet would "reaffirm Palestinian consciousness, and maintain and reinforce it among future generations" of Israeli Arabs. Ghanem is also head of the political science department at Israel's Haifa University.
In remarks to Cybercast News Service, Israeli Arab affairs expert Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a research associate with the Begin-Sadat Center, stressed his view that Ghanem and other Israeli Arabs like him do not view the booklet as a threat to Israel.
"They see this book as designed to strengthen national awareness and to promote a connection between Palestinians who are Israeli and those living in other Arab countries in order to consolidate the Palestinian spirit," said Kedar.
That national awareness and struggle is more commonly known as the "Palestinian cause," which today is largely taken to mean the effort to establish a sovereign Palestinian Arab state in the Gaza Strip and the areas known collectively around the world as the "West Bank," but which many Israelis refer to by their biblical names of Judea and Samaria.
The problem for most Israelis is that the Palestinian cause as formulated by late PLO founder Yasser Arafat does not stop with Judea and Samaria. Even after signing the so-called "Oslo Accords" with Israel, Arafat repeatedly told Arab media that the PLO's "phased plan" remained in effect, and that the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria would be only the first step toward the destruction of Israel.
Despite the threat inherent in the Palestinian cause and the "nakba" narrative that fuels it, Kedar said he remains convinced most Israeli Arabs and Jews want to "live together instead of fight each other." Unfortunately, Ghanem's booklet is poised to widen the rift between the two communities by further antagonizing the more hardened elements in Israeli society, whose reaction will be used by Islamists to further radicalize Israeli Arab youth.
This book "will definitely pour more oil on the fire against the Arabs within certain Israeli circles, which will in turn pour even more oil on the fire created by extremist elements on the Arab side," said Kedar.The publication of Ghanem's booklet comes at a time of already markedly increased tension between Israeli Arabs and Jews, a phenomenon that was highlighted last month as Israeli Jews and a slew of visiting foreign dignitaries celebrated Israel's 60th Independence Day while most of the nation's Arabs spoke out against the state or were cowed into silence by extremists.
Israeli media commentators have asserted that national ethnic divisions can be at least partially blamed on an Israeli government establishment that has beholden itself to the principles of political correctness and now refuses to be seen as interfering with its Arab minority by countering negative trends in that community.
Jerusalem Post columnist Carolyn Glick wrote earlier this year that "the natural pull of Israeli Arabs is toward the Palestinians," and that Israel has to make a concerted effort to win the hearts and minds of its Arab citizens, or risk facing an internal explosion in addition to numerous regional threats.
So the Israeli establishment wants to stick to politically correctness and allow free circulation of this piece of inflammatory propaganda (150 stories) rather than interfere (provoke riots) with our ever so hostile and treacherous Arab minority. But the same Israeli establishment does allow the Arab minority to interfere with the Israeli majority in a blatant attempt to shut us up. Said Israeli establishment has just given in to the extortion of a Yaffo-based terrorist sympathiser going by the name of Ibrahim Abu-Shindi, who regularly appears on Israeli TV in order to bash the State of Israel while pretending to work for peace. The man is even the director of an Arab-Jewish Community Center. Well, if it's peace he wants, I'll accept nothing less than the publication of the "bone of contention" poem written by one ten-year-old Israeli boy from Ness Ziona. Please also note that the State of Israel can only afford to publish 500 copies of the poetry contest booklet, while an Israeli Arab organization has the funds to come up with 20,000 copies of their revised "Arabian Nights". Good grief! Fortunately, I am not bound by any multi-crappy-culti PC nonsense. So here's the offending poem:
Ahmed's bunker has surprises galore: Grenades, rifles
are hung on the wall. Ahmed is planning another bomb!
What a bunker Ahmed has, who causes daily harm.
Ahmed knows how to make a bomb. Ahmed is Ahmed, that's
who he is, so don't forget to be careful of him.
We get blasted while they have a blast!
Ahmed and his friends could be wealthy and sunny, if only
they wouldn't buy rockets with all their money.
Anyway, in an extraordinary instance of poetic justice, a mishap seems to have befallen one of Ahmed's bunkers and it is no longer operational. Nor are the houses around it habitable.I am pleased to see that the saga of Ahmad's bunker, the innocent little poem, has made it to several blogs:
B'nai Elim
Double Tapper
Esser Agaroth
Freerepublic
Infidel Blogger's Alliance
Muqata
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Enrico had us dancing in our seats in Jerusalem!
Just like wine (and Sean Connery), Enrico gets better with age!
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Boycott Us Already!
I apologize to those members of the British academia who oppose the boycott, but the rhetoric of your trade union is becoming ever so vicious, virulent and vexing. Unfortunately, it is not the UCU, I think it is the general trend in your country. Anyway, this boycott thingy is looking more and more like the proverbial stone thrown into a well by a fool: a hundred wise men cannot pull it out.
The never resting anti-Semitic anti-Zionist British cacademic agency, aka the UCU - before you hit the link, let me assure you that this is not the Uganda Christian University or the University Credit Union. No, sir, it "is the largest trade union and professional association, for academics, lecturers, trainers, researchers and academic-related staff working in further and higher education throughout the UK." My jaw nearly dropped to the floor and my pulse hit the ceiling with awe and admiration: the largest professional association ... further and higher education. What can I say, once you've met the Palestinians there's nowhere further and higher that you can reach. That's it. Y'all's on the top of the world, baby. End of the line. Welcome and enjoy your stay. And what are they working on, these academics, trainers, researchers and assorted academic-related staff? Drum roll, please ... A boycott, that's what, including the singling out of Ariel college for investigation under the formal Greylisting procedure. I have no idea what that means, but coming from the Isles of baked beans, bacon and eggs for breakfast it don't sound too good. Not to mention the olfactory results of it! The distinguished stiff upper-lip trade union (I wonder what trade stands for, perhaps "we have traded off the best of our judgement for the worst kind of racism in the book"?) has come up with this brilliant idea, redolent of Soviet-type Workers Committees complete with colleagues spying on and denouncing one another to boot:
7. colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating; (good, the way I see it, the UCU can also renew the mandatory yellow Star of David: Schweinehund or Dreckjude for Jewish only; dirty Zionist pig for those still inclined to stand or simply colalborate with Israel. I also suggest close monitoring of their phones, electronic and printed mail, socializing patterns, leisure activities, in order to be prepared to proceed to article 8 of the motion)
8. UCU widely disseminate the personal testimonies of UCU and PFUUPE delegations to Palestine and the UK, respectively; (see what I mean? Provide PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, the Al-Aqsa martyr brigades, Islamic Jihad and all their associates with full names, addresses, phone numbers, home, office and electronic addresses of academics you suspect of links with Israel (alright, you can throw in a rival or enemy as well) et cetera, in case your Palestinian pets might wish to eliminate the offenders. Oh, and while you are at it, please remind them that you gave them a state in 1921 and ratified it in 1946, Jordan that is!). Be thorough about it! Good grief, you are British academics!
9. the testimonies will be used to promote a wide discussion by colleagues of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions; (Once article 8 is promptly and thoroughly implemented, article 9 will be rendered irrelevant. Save yourselves the trouble!).
Also, you can fully achieve point 8, after you're done spying on your peers, by widely disseminating the info concerning collaborators with Israel to those whom you should keep an eye on, but wouldn't:
Lecturers have voted unanimously to oppose government plans urging them to fight against extremism on campuses.
They had been asked to monitor and report suspicious behaviour amongst Muslim students.
But at the University and Colleges Union annual conference in Bournemouth, delegates rejected the demands, saying they amounted to spying on students.
Great! Are the lunatics already running the asylum?
The way I see it, any Israeli academic with a shred of self respect and dignity wouldn't wish to be seen collaborating with any of your institutions. Those who would have anything to do with you are those you probably deserve, such as Ilan - We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers," interview with the French newspaper Le Soir, Nov. 29, 1999 - Pappe. I mean if those are your academic standards, so be it. Take, e.g., a British researcher working with an Israeli one to find a cure for breast cancer. Just as they are about to break through, your British scientist with a conscience stops to ask his Israeli colleague about the occupation. Dissatisfied with the reply, he spews: "Sorry, Moishe, but I can spot your apparent complicity with the occupation, so we'll have to forget about the cure for breast cancer for a while, until you can remedy the situation in occupied Palestine. The cure for breast cancer can wait until you work out a solution for those you ethnically cleansed. Sorry, mate, not only is our joint project cancelled, but I'll have to disseminate widely your opinion and personal info concerning you and your family. Sorry, old chap, this is not personal. It's UCU business. Cheerio!"
Bless the Academic Boycott
by dr. Gabi Avital
(lecturer at the Israeli Air Force Academy)
Today, Ma'ariv supplement 2008 (lost the date)
At long last, a bit of a respite from the gentiles. We were taught to look at the image in the mirror as it is, without trying to alter it when it doesn't suit us. We thought (or to be more precise others thought for us) that if only we behaved, lowered our heads and got down on our knees, we'd be able to stand tall and be like the rest of the nations, well-loved and appreciated. Obviously, the exact opposite is true. Despite our lovely image, we were scolded for being warmongers, the embodiment of evil, et cetera. Whatever we do, the truth remains that Esau and Ishmael will always hate Israel.
The academic boycott advocates are placing a distorted mirror before us and what we should do is smash it to pieces and regain our composure. Before enjoying foreign pastures, we should take hold of ourselves and our Jewish spirit, which is more precious than gold.
A short time before the Six Day War, when there was no "occupation" no "ruling over another people", France imposed an arms embargo. Our entire air force and parts of the ground forces were "made in France". Luckily, the reserves held out for eight days. The blessed result of the embargo, or what is known today as military and economic boycott, was that Israel evolved from a defensive consumer into a position where we had to develop a smart, heavy system, one that would put to the best possible use the Jew power it could muster. The secrets of the "Mirage 5" planes had been passed on to Israel. The "Nesher", "Kfir" and later on the "Lavie", the air-to-air missiles are only a small part of Israel's arms industry, which emerged as a winner in the wake of the French embargo.
Britain, in its best tradition, could not lag far behind. Due to Arab pressure, Britain halted the development and improvement of the Chieftain tank for the IDF, without even extending us the courtesy of an explanation. Germany and the US also refused to sell Israel tanks. The result was that we designed and built our own "Merkava" tank. Five missile warships out of the 12 ordered and paid for in full by Israel had to be smuggled into Israel in an operation worthy of an action movie script (The Cherbourg Boats). Better and more advanced missile ships were designed and built in Israel. And this is just part of it. Almost every kind of weapon or ammunition that we were denied was designed and built in Israel, and even sold throughout the world.
Therefore, let us be thankful to those who wish to initiate and implement any kind of boycott against us - be it economic, military, and now academic. It is high time our darling researchers employed by the limping Israeli academia reconsider. Our academia isn't producing a modest one percent of its potential and does not justify whatever is being invested in it. That is why our scientists should go back to their drawing boards and start digging into their creativity.
The decline of the different departments is not the result of budget cuts, quite the contrary. The political and social sciences department have not produced a single publication of international standard. Israeli researchers are rarely quoted in international publications or books. The discourse of Israeli academics is barren and stripped of any kind of Judaism. Even foreign literary criticism of Israeli literature is several notches above the domestic one.
What kind of Jews are we when institutions where Jewish brain, not brawn, abounds, are yielding such a meagre crop? Why are we pursuing futile projects instead of trying to spread learning from Zion? Well, maybe now that the mirror has been placed in front of the Israeli academics (who refuse to call themselves Jewish), they will succeed in removing their false colors and return to their Jewish sources. Because there is no third way.
The never resting anti-Semitic anti-Zionist British cacademic agency, aka the UCU - before you hit the link, let me assure you that this is not the Uganda Christian University or the University Credit Union. No, sir, it "is the largest trade union and professional association, for academics, lecturers, trainers, researchers and academic-related staff working in further and higher education throughout the UK." My jaw nearly dropped to the floor and my pulse hit the ceiling with awe and admiration: the largest professional association ... further and higher education. What can I say, once you've met the Palestinians there's nowhere further and higher that you can reach. That's it. Y'all's on the top of the world, baby. End of the line. Welcome and enjoy your stay. And what are they working on, these academics, trainers, researchers and assorted academic-related staff? Drum roll, please ... A boycott, that's what, including the singling out of Ariel college for investigation under the formal Greylisting procedure. I have no idea what that means, but coming from the Isles of baked beans, bacon and eggs for breakfast it don't sound too good. Not to mention the olfactory results of it! The distinguished stiff upper-lip trade union (I wonder what trade stands for, perhaps "we have traded off the best of our judgement for the worst kind of racism in the book"?) has come up with this brilliant idea, redolent of Soviet-type Workers Committees complete with colleagues spying on and denouncing one another to boot:
7. colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating; (good, the way I see it, the UCU can also renew the mandatory yellow Star of David: Schweinehund or Dreckjude for Jewish only; dirty Zionist pig for those still inclined to stand or simply colalborate with Israel. I also suggest close monitoring of their phones, electronic and printed mail, socializing patterns, leisure activities, in order to be prepared to proceed to article 8 of the motion)
8. UCU widely disseminate the personal testimonies of UCU and PFUUPE delegations to Palestine and the UK, respectively; (see what I mean? Provide PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, the Al-Aqsa martyr brigades, Islamic Jihad and all their associates with full names, addresses, phone numbers, home, office and electronic addresses of academics you suspect of links with Israel (alright, you can throw in a rival or enemy as well) et cetera, in case your Palestinian pets might wish to eliminate the offenders. Oh, and while you are at it, please remind them that you gave them a state in 1921 and ratified it in 1946, Jordan that is!). Be thorough about it! Good grief, you are British academics!
9. the testimonies will be used to promote a wide discussion by colleagues of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions; (Once article 8 is promptly and thoroughly implemented, article 9 will be rendered irrelevant. Save yourselves the trouble!).
Also, you can fully achieve point 8, after you're done spying on your peers, by widely disseminating the info concerning collaborators with Israel to those whom you should keep an eye on, but wouldn't:
Lecturers have voted unanimously to oppose government plans urging them to fight against extremism on campuses.
They had been asked to monitor and report suspicious behaviour amongst Muslim students.
But at the University and Colleges Union annual conference in Bournemouth, delegates rejected the demands, saying they amounted to spying on students.
Great! Are the lunatics already running the asylum?
The way I see it, any Israeli academic with a shred of self respect and dignity wouldn't wish to be seen collaborating with any of your institutions. Those who would have anything to do with you are those you probably deserve, such as Ilan - We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers," interview with the French newspaper Le Soir, Nov. 29, 1999 - Pappe. I mean if those are your academic standards, so be it. Take, e.g., a British researcher working with an Israeli one to find a cure for breast cancer. Just as they are about to break through, your British scientist with a conscience stops to ask his Israeli colleague about the occupation. Dissatisfied with the reply, he spews: "Sorry, Moishe, but I can spot your apparent complicity with the occupation, so we'll have to forget about the cure for breast cancer for a while, until you can remedy the situation in occupied Palestine. The cure for breast cancer can wait until you work out a solution for those you ethnically cleansed. Sorry, mate, not only is our joint project cancelled, but I'll have to disseminate widely your opinion and personal info concerning you and your family. Sorry, old chap, this is not personal. It's UCU business. Cheerio!"
Bless the Academic Boycott
by dr. Gabi Avital
(lecturer at the Israeli Air Force Academy)
Today, Ma'ariv supplement 2008 (lost the date)
At long last, a bit of a respite from the gentiles. We were taught to look at the image in the mirror as it is, without trying to alter it when it doesn't suit us. We thought (or to be more precise others thought for us) that if only we behaved, lowered our heads and got down on our knees, we'd be able to stand tall and be like the rest of the nations, well-loved and appreciated. Obviously, the exact opposite is true. Despite our lovely image, we were scolded for being warmongers, the embodiment of evil, et cetera. Whatever we do, the truth remains that Esau and Ishmael will always hate Israel.
The academic boycott advocates are placing a distorted mirror before us and what we should do is smash it to pieces and regain our composure. Before enjoying foreign pastures, we should take hold of ourselves and our Jewish spirit, which is more precious than gold.
A short time before the Six Day War, when there was no "occupation" no "ruling over another people", France imposed an arms embargo. Our entire air force and parts of the ground forces were "made in France". Luckily, the reserves held out for eight days. The blessed result of the embargo, or what is known today as military and economic boycott, was that Israel evolved from a defensive consumer into a position where we had to develop a smart, heavy system, one that would put to the best possible use the Jew power it could muster. The secrets of the "Mirage 5" planes had been passed on to Israel. The "Nesher", "Kfir" and later on the "Lavie", the air-to-air missiles are only a small part of Israel's arms industry, which emerged as a winner in the wake of the French embargo.
Britain, in its best tradition, could not lag far behind. Due to Arab pressure, Britain halted the development and improvement of the Chieftain tank for the IDF, without even extending us the courtesy of an explanation. Germany and the US also refused to sell Israel tanks. The result was that we designed and built our own "Merkava" tank. Five missile warships out of the 12 ordered and paid for in full by Israel had to be smuggled into Israel in an operation worthy of an action movie script (The Cherbourg Boats). Better and more advanced missile ships were designed and built in Israel. And this is just part of it. Almost every kind of weapon or ammunition that we were denied was designed and built in Israel, and even sold throughout the world.
Therefore, let us be thankful to those who wish to initiate and implement any kind of boycott against us - be it economic, military, and now academic. It is high time our darling researchers employed by the limping Israeli academia reconsider. Our academia isn't producing a modest one percent of its potential and does not justify whatever is being invested in it. That is why our scientists should go back to their drawing boards and start digging into their creativity.
The decline of the different departments is not the result of budget cuts, quite the contrary. The political and social sciences department have not produced a single publication of international standard. Israeli researchers are rarely quoted in international publications or books. The discourse of Israeli academics is barren and stripped of any kind of Judaism. Even foreign literary criticism of Israeli literature is several notches above the domestic one.
What kind of Jews are we when institutions where Jewish brain, not brawn, abounds, are yielding such a meagre crop? Why are we pursuing futile projects instead of trying to spread learning from Zion? Well, maybe now that the mirror has been placed in front of the Israeli academics (who refuse to call themselves Jewish), they will succeed in removing their false colors and return to their Jewish sources. Because there is no third way.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
More Busy Little Bees
Barely three months ago I was writing about the activity of a little busy bee in East Jerusalem. Now there's more of them and their activity is of a much sinister nature. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard the news on the radio a few days ago, and finding this bit of printed news doesn't add much happiness or peace of mind. But there we go, nonetheless.
Fiery Youths
by Yossi Elli
Kol Hazman, May 30, 2008
(All the Time, Jerusalem weekend supplement)
The District Police Department working closely with special units of the Border Police have been investigating 25 youths residing in East Jerusalem neighborhoods aged 11-18, all suspected of throwing incendiary bottles in Abu-Tor (a mixed Jerusalem neighborhood) and on the Ma'aleh Addoumim highway. Among them (and according to Israel Radio the leader of the gang) a 12 year-old boy who admitted to the offence and told the investigators that he had learned how to prepare Molotov cocktails from his uncles while visiting his family in Jordan.
The police reveals that the bottles contained acid, mercury and pieces of metal. The gang experimented with the bottles in the Peace Forest (!!!), then they placed one bottle in a house in the Abu-Tor neighborhood and then they threw a bottle at another house in the neighborhood. Three gang members will soon be indicted, while the rest are too young to be tried (how about their parents, do they bear no responsibility? Will they be free to try and arson more Jewish homes?)
Following and intelligence tip, investigators aided by Border Police officers detained a 33-year-old Issawiye resident. The police searched his car and found a handgun complete with two bullet magazines, silencer, two fake identity cards and posters calling for the killing of collaborators and Zionists. During the enquiry the man claimed to be a contractor and that he planned to "plant" the incriminating objects in the home of a disgruntled and to report him later to the police. He also told the investigators that he had purchased the gun and the silencer from a Palestinian residing in the territories. He admitted to having written the posters himself.
Fiery Youths
by Yossi Elli
Kol Hazman, May 30, 2008
(All the Time, Jerusalem weekend supplement)
The District Police Department working closely with special units of the Border Police have been investigating 25 youths residing in East Jerusalem neighborhoods aged 11-18, all suspected of throwing incendiary bottles in Abu-Tor (a mixed Jerusalem neighborhood) and on the Ma'aleh Addoumim highway. Among them (and according to Israel Radio the leader of the gang) a 12 year-old boy who admitted to the offence and told the investigators that he had learned how to prepare Molotov cocktails from his uncles while visiting his family in Jordan.
The police reveals that the bottles contained acid, mercury and pieces of metal. The gang experimented with the bottles in the Peace Forest (!!!), then they placed one bottle in a house in the Abu-Tor neighborhood and then they threw a bottle at another house in the neighborhood. Three gang members will soon be indicted, while the rest are too young to be tried (how about their parents, do they bear no responsibility? Will they be free to try and arson more Jewish homes?)
Following and intelligence tip, investigators aided by Border Police officers detained a 33-year-old Issawiye resident. The police searched his car and found a handgun complete with two bullet magazines, silencer, two fake identity cards and posters calling for the killing of collaborators and Zionists. During the enquiry the man claimed to be a contractor and that he planned to "plant" the incriminating objects in the home of a disgruntled and to report him later to the police. He also told the investigators that he had purchased the gun and the silencer from a Palestinian residing in the territories. He admitted to having written the posters himself.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Arab labour
If you hear Israelis talking about the quality of "Arab labour' please don't think that they're racist or hate Arabs. It's just that they have known for a long time what the honorable Dr. Yousuf al-Qaradhawi admitted to in 2005:
- the average Arab does not work: a state employee in an Arab country puts in an average of 27 minutes a day; not even half an hour, for crying out loud!
- the Zionist gang has risen above the Arabs because of their superior knowledge, technology, strength and work. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are not blood sucking vampires, ticks or fleas, we are not rats and snakes and we are not usurers; we work for a living! There you have it from a high authority (I hope that for some of the readers, those who might stumble upon me and keep watching me just as I watch what the enemy in the blogosphere is doing, this is your highest authority!). Please watch, listen and memorize: the Zionist gang came to a desert and made into an oasis because the Arabs were unable (or too lazy, or too stupid) to do anything with it. You don't believe me? Watch!
Or travel to Granada, take a tour of the Alhambra and look up to the lavishly decorated ceilings. Why they were so lavishly decorated? Because the Muslim rulers of Andalusia believed that nights were for sleeping and days were for resting. So they reclined on their cushions all day long cooling off, writing poetry and admiring the ceilings. Who worked? Someone else apparently, I guess the Christians and the Jews.
- the average Arab does not work: a state employee in an Arab country puts in an average of 27 minutes a day; not even half an hour, for crying out loud!
- the Zionist gang has risen above the Arabs because of their superior knowledge, technology, strength and work. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are not blood sucking vampires, ticks or fleas, we are not rats and snakes and we are not usurers; we work for a living! There you have it from a high authority (I hope that for some of the readers, those who might stumble upon me and keep watching me just as I watch what the enemy in the blogosphere is doing, this is your highest authority!). Please watch, listen and memorize: the Zionist gang came to a desert and made into an oasis because the Arabs were unable (or too lazy, or too stupid) to do anything with it. You don't believe me? Watch!
Or travel to Granada, take a tour of the Alhambra and look up to the lavishly decorated ceilings. Why they were so lavishly decorated? Because the Muslim rulers of Andalusia believed that nights were for sleeping and days were for resting. So they reclined on their cushions all day long cooling off, writing poetry and admiring the ceilings. Who worked? Someone else apparently, I guess the Christians and the Jews.
Muhamad Al-Dura was not killed.
But thousands of innocent people were murdered and maimed thanks to Charles Enderlin and his cameraman Talal-abu-Rahma.
When watching the video, please bear in mind that Talal abu-al-propaganda-Rahma studied business administration in the US. Or so he claims. So why the messenger isn't he capable of putting two words in the right order? In English that is.
This just in from France
The original contents of this post have been removed as it has come to my attention that this is one of those unstoppable "pass it on to all your friends" chain letters. Not that the contents were untrue or inaccurate. The problem was that the events described therein were not so recent, rather an account of anti-Semitic violence perpetrated in Europe in 2002, at the height of the second intifada (which by the way gained momentum in the wake of al-Dura mother of all hoaxes, but was carefully planned in advance). Six years is not such a long time, and the death toll exacted by the dead or not dead? boy, who, after being pronounced dead several times by director/cameraman Talal-abu-Rahma, still manages to raise his head from father's crotch, probably overwhelmed by the consequences of daily servings of hummus with fava beans coupled with faulty bodily hygiene, surely warrants a reminder of what we went through as far away in time as six years ago. I mean, if Arabs commemorate things that DID NOT happen 60 years ago (Merry Nakba and Many Many Returns of the Day once again!), why can we not commiserate with what our fellow Jews were subjected to in this decade?
So, without further ado, for all those not sharing in the opinion that the e-mail was a hoax and the contents no longer relevant, here's the link to the original post (to certify authenticity) and why not? the entire text for the convenience of all those who stumbled onto this page (my comments in brackets):
The canary in Europe's mine
By Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe, April 28, 2002
The rocks have been lifted all over Europe, and the snakes of Jew-hatred are slithering free.
In Belgium, thugs beat up the chief rabbi, kicking him in the face and calling him "a dirty Jew." Two synagogues in Brussels were firebombed; a third, in Charleroi, was sprayed with automatic weapons fire.
In Britain, the cover of the New Statesman, a left-wing magazine, depicted a large Star of David stabbing the Union Jack. Oxford professor Tom Paulin, a noted poet, told an Egyptian interviewer that American Jews who move to the West Bank and Gaza "should be shot dead." A Jewish yeshiva student reading the Psalms was stabbed 27 times on a London bus. Antisemitism, wrote a columnist in The Spectator, "has become respectable . . at London dinner tables." She quoted one member of the House of Lords: "The Jews have been asking for it and now, thank God, we can say what we think at last." (When the Queen will have to wear her hijab or else, and the muezzin will call the "fidels" to prayer from the top of Big Ben will it be politically correct to say that "the Brits have been asking for it and so forth?")
In Italy, the daily paper La Stampa published a Page 1 cartoon: A tank emblazoned with a Jewish star points its gun at the baby Jesus, who pleads, "Surely they don't want to kill me again?" In Corriere Della Sera, another cartoon showed Jesus trapped in his tomb, unable to rise, because Ariel Sharon, with rifle in hand, is sitting on the sepulchre. The caption: "Non resurrexit."
In Germany, a rabbinical student was beaten up in downtown Berlin and a grenade was thrown into a Jewish cemetery. Thousands of neo-Nazis held a rally, marching near a synagogue on the Jewish sabbath. Graffiti appeared on a synagogue in the western town of Herford: "Six million were not enough."
In Ukraine, skinheads attacked Jewish worshippers and smashed the windows of Kiev's main synagogue. Ukrainian police denied that the attack was anti-Jewish.
In Greece, Jewish graves were desecrated in Ioannina and vandals hurled paint at the Holocaust memorial in Salonica.
In Holland, an anti-Israel demonstration featured swastikas, photos of Hitler, and chants of "Sieg Heil" and "Jews into the sea."
In Slovakia, the Jewish cemetery of Kosice was invaded and 135 tombstones destroyed.
But nowhere have the flames of antisemitism burned more furiously than in France.
In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseille; so was a Jewish school in Creteil. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails, and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, the words "Dirty Jew" were painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months. According to the police, metropolitan Paris has seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day since Easter.
Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming "Jews to the gas chambers" and "Death to the Jews." The weekly journal Le Nouvel Observateur published an appalling libel: It said Israeli soldiers rape Palestinian women, so that their relatives will kill them to preserve "family honor." The French ambassador to Great Britain was not sacked - and did not apologize - when it was learned that he had told guests at a London dinner that the world's troubles were the fault of "that shitty little country, Israel." (In fact, it has been proven subsequently that Israeli soldiers do not rape Arab women out of sheer racism - if you're a Jew, damned if you do, damned if you don't do, you know, why you do the things you do when you do what you do the way you do when you're a Jew; or if you are an Israeli soldier you might as well be Druze or Bedouin, if you don't rape you'll be counted as a Jew).
"At the start of the 21st century," writes Pierre-Andre Taguieff, a well-known social scientist, in a new book, "we are discovering that Jews are once again select targets of violence. . . . Hatred of the Jews has returned to France."
But of course, it never left. Not France; not Europe. Antisemitism, the oldest bigotry known to man, has been a part of European society since time immemorial. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, open Jew-hatred became unfashionable; but fashions change, and Europe is reverting to type. (If memory serves, did Europe not witness its own destruction along with the annihilation of European Jewry?)
To be sure, some Europeans are shocked by the re-emergence of Jew-hatred all over their continent. But the more common reaction has been complacency. "Stop saying that there is antisemitism in France," President Jacques Chirac scolded a Jewish editor in January. "There is no antisemitism in France." The European media have been vicious in condemning Israel's self-defense against Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank (it all starts when Israel strikes back); they have been far less agitated about anti-Jewish terror in their own backyard.
They are making a grievous mistake. For if today the violence and vitriol are aimed at the Jews, tomorrow they will be aimed at the Christians.
A timeless lesson of history is that it rarely ends with the Jews. Militant Islamist extremists were attacking and killing Jews long before they attacked and killed Americans on Sept. 11. The Nazis first set out to incinerate the Jews; in the end, all of Europe was ablaze (nice to see memory still serving).
Jews, it is often said, are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. When they become the objects of savagery and hate, it means the air has been poisoned and an explosion is soon to come. If Europeans don't rise up and turn against the Jew-haters, it is only a matter of time until the Jew-haters rise up and turn against them (I sincerely hope not).
There, I put the quote (which referred only to the violence in France and was calling for a boycott of things French) in its original context. Hope the people at the hoax-watch are satisfied.
So, without further ado, for all those not sharing in the opinion that the e-mail was a hoax and the contents no longer relevant, here's the link to the original post (to certify authenticity) and why not? the entire text for the convenience of all those who stumbled onto this page (my comments in brackets):
The canary in Europe's mine
By Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe, April 28, 2002
The rocks have been lifted all over Europe, and the snakes of Jew-hatred are slithering free.
In Belgium, thugs beat up the chief rabbi, kicking him in the face and calling him "a dirty Jew." Two synagogues in Brussels were firebombed; a third, in Charleroi, was sprayed with automatic weapons fire.
In Britain, the cover of the New Statesman, a left-wing magazine, depicted a large Star of David stabbing the Union Jack. Oxford professor Tom Paulin, a noted poet, told an Egyptian interviewer that American Jews who move to the West Bank and Gaza "should be shot dead." A Jewish yeshiva student reading the Psalms was stabbed 27 times on a London bus. Antisemitism, wrote a columnist in The Spectator, "has become respectable . . at London dinner tables." She quoted one member of the House of Lords: "The Jews have been asking for it and now, thank God, we can say what we think at last." (When the Queen will have to wear her hijab or else, and the muezzin will call the "fidels" to prayer from the top of Big Ben will it be politically correct to say that "the Brits have been asking for it and so forth?")
In Italy, the daily paper La Stampa published a Page 1 cartoon: A tank emblazoned with a Jewish star points its gun at the baby Jesus, who pleads, "Surely they don't want to kill me again?" In Corriere Della Sera, another cartoon showed Jesus trapped in his tomb, unable to rise, because Ariel Sharon, with rifle in hand, is sitting on the sepulchre. The caption: "Non resurrexit."
In Germany, a rabbinical student was beaten up in downtown Berlin and a grenade was thrown into a Jewish cemetery. Thousands of neo-Nazis held a rally, marching near a synagogue on the Jewish sabbath. Graffiti appeared on a synagogue in the western town of Herford: "Six million were not enough."
In Ukraine, skinheads attacked Jewish worshippers and smashed the windows of Kiev's main synagogue. Ukrainian police denied that the attack was anti-Jewish.
In Greece, Jewish graves were desecrated in Ioannina and vandals hurled paint at the Holocaust memorial in Salonica.
In Holland, an anti-Israel demonstration featured swastikas, photos of Hitler, and chants of "Sieg Heil" and "Jews into the sea."
In Slovakia, the Jewish cemetery of Kosice was invaded and 135 tombstones destroyed.
But nowhere have the flames of antisemitism burned more furiously than in France.
In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseille; so was a Jewish school in Creteil. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails, and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, the words "Dirty Jew" were painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months. According to the police, metropolitan Paris has seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day since Easter.
Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming "Jews to the gas chambers" and "Death to the Jews." The weekly journal Le Nouvel Observateur published an appalling libel: It said Israeli soldiers rape Palestinian women, so that their relatives will kill them to preserve "family honor." The French ambassador to Great Britain was not sacked - and did not apologize - when it was learned that he had told guests at a London dinner that the world's troubles were the fault of "that shitty little country, Israel." (In fact, it has been proven subsequently that Israeli soldiers do not rape Arab women out of sheer racism - if you're a Jew, damned if you do, damned if you don't do, you know, why you do the things you do when you do what you do the way you do when you're a Jew; or if you are an Israeli soldier you might as well be Druze or Bedouin, if you don't rape you'll be counted as a Jew).
"At the start of the 21st century," writes Pierre-Andre Taguieff, a well-known social scientist, in a new book, "we are discovering that Jews are once again select targets of violence. . . . Hatred of the Jews has returned to France."
But of course, it never left. Not France; not Europe. Antisemitism, the oldest bigotry known to man, has been a part of European society since time immemorial. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, open Jew-hatred became unfashionable; but fashions change, and Europe is reverting to type. (If memory serves, did Europe not witness its own destruction along with the annihilation of European Jewry?)
To be sure, some Europeans are shocked by the re-emergence of Jew-hatred all over their continent. But the more common reaction has been complacency. "Stop saying that there is antisemitism in France," President Jacques Chirac scolded a Jewish editor in January. "There is no antisemitism in France." The European media have been vicious in condemning Israel's self-defense against Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank (it all starts when Israel strikes back); they have been far less agitated about anti-Jewish terror in their own backyard.
They are making a grievous mistake. For if today the violence and vitriol are aimed at the Jews, tomorrow they will be aimed at the Christians.
A timeless lesson of history is that it rarely ends with the Jews. Militant Islamist extremists were attacking and killing Jews long before they attacked and killed Americans on Sept. 11. The Nazis first set out to incinerate the Jews; in the end, all of Europe was ablaze (nice to see memory still serving).
Jews, it is often said, are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. When they become the objects of savagery and hate, it means the air has been poisoned and an explosion is soon to come. If Europeans don't rise up and turn against the Jew-haters, it is only a matter of time until the Jew-haters rise up and turn against them (I sincerely hope not).
There, I put the quote (which referred only to the violence in France and was calling for a boycott of things French) in its original context. Hope the people at the hoax-watch are satisfied.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Separated at Birth?
Find the differences (if you can)! And while you are at it, what do you make of the (perfect mis)match between the speaker on the right and the logo on the stand? Ah, God does work in mysterious ways!
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Let Me Rephrase That: Can You Sleep at Night, Mr. Enderlin?
I am not sure whether I wasn't quite aware or simply clean forgot the role of the Pallywood-France2 co-production aka the al-bullshit-in-your-face-dura killing, factually based on the sworn deposition of Talal-abu-I-perjured-myself-but-what-the-heck-the-JOOOOOZ-will-get-blame-anyway-Rahma in the 9/11 massacres (yes, ladies and gentlemen, the intended killing of unsuspecting and defenseless civilians, especially in such large numbers does a massacre define) and in the vicious slaying of my fellow Jew Daniel Pearl of blessed memory, but somehow I ommitted these heinous crimes from my previous post. So if I had any doubts about your feelings for your fellow Israelis, I am pretty sure now that you harbor no feelings at all for Americans and members of other nations massacred in the wake of your tasteless farce. What you have is unfaltering trust in your handler, said T-a-B. Which makes me think of a distinguished compatriot of yours (French, not Israeli) of yesteryear, you know the one of the "Dubito ergo cogito" renown. You never had a doubt in your mind, you never thought. Distinguished, realiable and professional journalist ( or not!)...
Therefore, to make good on my bad, I am crossposting this brilliant but painful piece genius from Breath of the Beast:
Friday, November 16, 2007
Enderlin's Ocean of Blood- Why the Second Draft is Important
Charles Enderlin is adrift in a rising ocean of blood. He is either so arrogant or so blinded by his fear that he is helpless to do what needs to be done to stem the tide. It is a tragedy of Biblical scale. When it all started, he was riding an exhilarating wave. (Backgound: here, here and here)
In October of 2000 he had what must have been a dream job. He was the Jerusalem Bureau Chief for France2. He got to live in one of the great, cosmopolitan, civilized cities of the world and report daily on a simmering, dangerous, richly symbolic conflict at the cutting edge between civilization and chaos. There was always a story. Because he lived and worked in Jerusalem there was never any censorship or physical threat or even any physical discomfort. He had Palestinian stringers who fed him footage and information from the unsafe and difficult areas so he could sit in Jerusalem, edit film in his fuzzy robe and slippers and be a war correspondent.
I am guessing that he just got too sloppy and arrogant to see how he was being used by his trusted Palestinian sidekick Talal Abu Rahma. Rahma knew the boss wasn’t disposed to check up on his work as long as he delivered serviceable goods and he gave him a juicy scoop once in a while. One day, Rahma overplayed the deal and Enderlin was setup for a fall. The rest of the story boils down to what Enderlin knew, when he knew it and whether or not he would take responsibility for it.
His now controversial report on the alleged shooting of a twelve year old boy named Muhammed al Durah at Netzarim Junction in Gaza vaulted him to the top of the jounalistic world. He had “scooped” everyone and had presented a perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict that had been hinted at by the media and longed for by the liberal and leftists in the dank guilt-ridden recesses of the west- especially Europe. It quickly became apparent that although it had never actually been seen or proven, there was a large and willing potion of the audience that readily took to the image of the Israelis as oppressors and thugs. The film and Enderlin’s presentation of it would, if true, have been proof of murderous brutality by the Israeli army. Enderlin reported that they killed the boy in cold blood. Looking at the report footage now, with the knowledge and background that has come to light it is hard to believe that such ambiguous and poorly staged stuff could have caught the imagination of the world the way it did. But, then, you had the voice of Charles Enderlin telling you what to believe about it in your ear and it is always dangerous to underestimate the size and explosivity of the subterranean lake of anti-Semitic blood-libel that seems to bubble and churn beneath the entire world’s population.
Enderlin’s report and the image it presented roiled that stygian lake from its dormancy. The news media picked it up and propagated it. He suddenly found himself riding a tidal wave of notoriety and recognition. Behaving more like a propagandist than a journalist, he arraigned for his scoop footage to be distributed to any other media outlet that would carry it- free of charge. Usually other media are made to pay dearly for hot items like this, but Charles “Scoopy” Enderlin was in full self-promotion mode.
Still, when questions came up about the sad but oddly bloodless video footage Charles the Delicate, demurred. he refused to back up his report with more proof. Oh, he had more proof, he said, he just didn’t want to bruise our sensitivities. He did it for our own good.
A little more than three weeks after the incident, when some ungrateful defenders of Israel began asking questions and casting doubt on your story and you let it out- (not the actual proof mind you, that might have been too much for us) you told Telerama magazine:
“I cut the images of the child's agony (death throes), they were unbearable. The story was told, the news delivered. It would not have added anything more...”
What a hero he wanted to seem. Not only did he have the goods on the Israelis, he was so very cultivated and civilized about it. Even the Israelis were afraid to call his bluff. What if he did have heart-rending footage of the child’s death throes? They recoiled in horror. Rather than risk even more heart breaking images coming to light, the Israelis pulled back and left it alone.
But a nagging doubt still tormented some of us. Landes, Karsenty, Poller, Gross and others- those with enough faith in what their eyes could see, and enough experience with the Leftist media and its toadying up to the Palestinian propaganda machine to see that it was a bluff and, just as in a poker game, if a bluff is not called, the bluffer wins all.
From the isolation and security of his Jerusalem studio, which he never actually left to investigate this story himself, he had pronounced the boy dead, even as we can see him peeking out from under his arm looking for all the world like a kid who might just be tired of play-acting. It was as if he were saying, “Is it ok to get up? I’m tired of this. I’d like to go home now.”
Meanwhile, if Enderlin had looked down, he would have noticed that the wave he was riding was actually a tsunami of blood. It crashed over the Middle East, inundating it in rage and violence. It has continued to continuously circle the globe, splashing gore wherever it touches.
The wave washed over those two off duty Israeli reservists who took a wrong turn, got lost in the west bank and were murdered in Ramallah two weeks after the initial broadcast report aired. More accurately, they were torn limb from bloody limb by an enraged crowd in Ramallah as they chanted the name al Durah over and over. Enderlin might might want us to believe that the savagery in Ramallah might have been worse that day had those “death throes” he used as emotional blackmail been shown. I don’t know how.
In an insensate, vengeful rage they stormed the police station (the police stood by and watched). They beat, stabbed and mutilated the men. They threw them out of a second story window. They pummeled them and mangled them. Finally, they took their internal organs out of their bodies, held them aloft and paraded around with them. I watched that video.
All the while, Monsieur Enderlin was posing as the moderate and even slightly charitable correspondent. He seemed to expect us to thank him for holding back the footage that he claimed to be “really” inflammatory. He had the advantage and no one was able to mount a formidable enough challenge to force his deception into the open. His bosses at France2 backed him completely. So he was able to masquerade as good man who was simply too honest to not tell his compelling story- even if it meant he “had to make the sacrifice” of becoming world renowned in the process. Poor Monsieur Enderlin, thank you for taking the trouble to spare a forlorn world the horror of the truth about Muhammad al Durah’s death- this was so much better.
The wave of blood made it to the US a year later. On September 11, 2001 we here in America watched thousands of our fellow citizens incinerated in airplanes, leaping to their deaths to escape flames in their offices and crushed to a fine powdery dust by collapsing concrete. Afterward we heard Osama bin Laden cite the name of al Durah in righteous indignation in his demonic screed of justification.
Two years later Daniel Pearl was lost under the wave when the name and image of al Durah was used (as incitement and justification) in the video that gruesomely depicted the death by beheading of the Wall Street Journal reporter after he was forced to kneel and “confess” to being Jewish. Ask yourself why this blatantly anti-Semitic atrocity inspired some much less horror in the west than the faked death of Muhammad al Durah and you are forced to confront the fact that the people who were harmed the most by this whole sordid affair are the ones who see themselves as the victors of its aftermath.
The greatest harm caused by the wave was done where it first came ashore among the Palestinian people and the larger Islamic world beyond them. Now this one is overlooked very easily because, as he himself has implied, the Arabs and Islamists are held to a very low standard of behavior and comportment- especially by him and most of the rest of the mainstream media. In a stunning example of the pernicious effects of multiculturalism he and others in the employ of France2 have dismissed the staging and fraud exposed bye ven the most superficial analysis of the outtake footage that we have seen that day as just an aspect of “their (the Palestinian) culture”. The Arabs’ atrocious behavior has been excused as “cultural” and been consistently rewarded and reinforced by people like Enderlin that they have become “The People of the Tantrum”.
There was never any doubt that the story about al Durah served as an accelerant to the flames of Islamic inferiority and rage, Enderlin played a leading role in keeping them locked in the dungeon of resentment, intolerance and xenophobia. He gave them a tangible reason to stay enraged and aggressive and he allowed them to let their imaginations run riot on the idea that was even more distressing footage that they had not seen..
From Enderlin’s point of view, what was the downside, really? Even if his report had been truthful, even if he were dealing with us honestly about his reasons for hiding the footage, even if he had fully come forward with all of the rushes, it could hardly have made things worse than they have turned out. It made for a nice steady news cycle; the rage and violence produced as many incidents as he cared to cover, and his part in the fraud (whether as a willing tool or an unwitting useful idiot) gave him a nice cozy access relationship to the newsmakers.
But Last week, when Charles Enderlin showed up in court with nine minutes less video than he had been ordered to appear with, it was clear that he now had dropped the pretense that he had additional and more damning footage. He is now officially not riding the wave any longer; he is in danger of being pulled under by it. His arrogance when he informed the court that the footage that he did not bring either “didn’t concern that day” or “were irrelevant” actually drew laughs from the courtroom. His equally laughable narrations that went along with the actual screening were just as ridiculous.
Perhaps it is just “his culture” (as he would say of the Arabs) as a high priest of media that makes him believe that he can tell the rest of the world what is of concern and what is not relevant but I suspect (and hope) that the judge will want to be the one making that call in her courtroom.
But that is a legal question and subject to the arcane French laws that allowed Enderlin to win the first case against Karsenty without proving that he (Enderlin) had not known that the report he aired on the incident at Netzarim was based on inaccurate information. The way the law is written made it possible for Enderlin to take Karsenty to court and accuse him of libel without having to prove that Karsenty was wrong in what he had said. Thus the French court was at its own discretion on how hard to look at Enderlin. In this second trial, the court has decided that the plausibility of Karsenty’s original assessment of Enderlin’s work should be considered and that is why Enderlin was finally ordered to produce the video.
As of this past Wednesday, the question is now no longer whether Charles Enderlin is a liar or not, the question is only when, if ever, does he tell the truth and how much of the truth does he tell? Was he lying before he was forced to the courtroom or is he lying now? Really, it makes little difference. What matters is that he must lose his license to misinform the public and he must lose it now!
The management at France2 that gave him a platform to misrepresent and then helped him lie and cover-up should be sacked also. Given that France2 is a government agency, the involvement and motives of the French government (at least pre-Sarkosy) must be questioned.
Beyond the tragedy and the necessary punishment of Enderlin and France2 there are still greater and more perplexing unanswered questions. Why did the world so eagerly embrace the al Durah affair as a new reason to fear and hate “The Jews” (as embodied by Israel). Why were so many people and governments so easily sucked in by this transparent jape of a “news” story while the great and stinking atrocities of our times, the slaughter of innocents in suicide attacks, are shrugged and clucked at? Why, even now, though it is has been on shaky ground since 2004 when Enderlin publicly retrenched to the position that the boy was “killed in a crossfire” instead of intentionally by Israelis will the stain not go away? Why has none of the courtroom drama of last week gained any attention from the Western media? Here is a now proven lie, told in arrogance and perpetuated without conscience that has cause a tidal wave of blood. Who will answer for it?
The sad truth is that no one can stop a Tsunami. Once the propagation of the Icon began, there was no holding it back. Only honesty, fact checking and, most important, safeguards against allowing the power of the media to be manipulated by the likes of Talal Abu Rahma who has publicly stated that his professional mission has more to do with his tribal loyalties than with ethical journalism. Accepting an award in Morocco in 2001 for his work, he told a reporter: "I went into journalism to carry on the fight for my people." In other words, Enderlin made himself a dupe to a propagandist from a culture that views journalism as an extension of war- by other means.
It is not enough for us to respond to these media induced tragedies. Once they have the force of a tidal wave, terrible harm is done before we can even open our mouths to speak. We have to identify and contain the irresponsible, undisciplined and dishonest practices (e.g. unholy alliances between hostile government propaganda agents and our all-too-willing media) before they can create devastating images that get a life of their own. That is why Second Draft is important. We are dedicated to identifying and documenting past cases, and speeding up the process whereby we identify and challenge new cases.
Richard Landes is on his way home from Paris as I post this. Landes has played a key role in the unraveling of Enderlin’s defenses and now that Chirac is not in power to give him the influential testimony of a serving president and if Judge Trébucq believes her eyes instead of Enderlin’s narration, the case should be decided against him. Richard’s dedication to not just correct the lie of al Durah but to learn from it and plan for the prevention of the next variation that may arise is a critical development in the battle for truly free, honest and responsible media.
In the coming months we at Second Draft will be announcing a number of key initiatives to further Richard’s work but for now I’d like to congratulate my friend and to express the hope that all of the hard work that has brought us to the point of at least a symbolic victory on al Durah, and all of the blood spilled in the name of the phony martyr might never have to happen again (or, at least be decreased) if we do our job well.
Posted by Yaacov Ben Moshe at 9:00 AM
Therefore, to make good on my bad, I am crossposting this brilliant but painful piece genius from Breath of the Beast:
Friday, November 16, 2007
Enderlin's Ocean of Blood- Why the Second Draft is Important
Charles Enderlin is adrift in a rising ocean of blood. He is either so arrogant or so blinded by his fear that he is helpless to do what needs to be done to stem the tide. It is a tragedy of Biblical scale. When it all started, he was riding an exhilarating wave. (Backgound: here, here and here)
In October of 2000 he had what must have been a dream job. He was the Jerusalem Bureau Chief for France2. He got to live in one of the great, cosmopolitan, civilized cities of the world and report daily on a simmering, dangerous, richly symbolic conflict at the cutting edge between civilization and chaos. There was always a story. Because he lived and worked in Jerusalem there was never any censorship or physical threat or even any physical discomfort. He had Palestinian stringers who fed him footage and information from the unsafe and difficult areas so he could sit in Jerusalem, edit film in his fuzzy robe and slippers and be a war correspondent.
I am guessing that he just got too sloppy and arrogant to see how he was being used by his trusted Palestinian sidekick Talal Abu Rahma. Rahma knew the boss wasn’t disposed to check up on his work as long as he delivered serviceable goods and he gave him a juicy scoop once in a while. One day, Rahma overplayed the deal and Enderlin was setup for a fall. The rest of the story boils down to what Enderlin knew, when he knew it and whether or not he would take responsibility for it.
His now controversial report on the alleged shooting of a twelve year old boy named Muhammed al Durah at Netzarim Junction in Gaza vaulted him to the top of the jounalistic world. He had “scooped” everyone and had presented a perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict that had been hinted at by the media and longed for by the liberal and leftists in the dank guilt-ridden recesses of the west- especially Europe. It quickly became apparent that although it had never actually been seen or proven, there was a large and willing potion of the audience that readily took to the image of the Israelis as oppressors and thugs. The film and Enderlin’s presentation of it would, if true, have been proof of murderous brutality by the Israeli army. Enderlin reported that they killed the boy in cold blood. Looking at the report footage now, with the knowledge and background that has come to light it is hard to believe that such ambiguous and poorly staged stuff could have caught the imagination of the world the way it did. But, then, you had the voice of Charles Enderlin telling you what to believe about it in your ear and it is always dangerous to underestimate the size and explosivity of the subterranean lake of anti-Semitic blood-libel that seems to bubble and churn beneath the entire world’s population.
Enderlin’s report and the image it presented roiled that stygian lake from its dormancy. The news media picked it up and propagated it. He suddenly found himself riding a tidal wave of notoriety and recognition. Behaving more like a propagandist than a journalist, he arraigned for his scoop footage to be distributed to any other media outlet that would carry it- free of charge. Usually other media are made to pay dearly for hot items like this, but Charles “Scoopy” Enderlin was in full self-promotion mode.
Still, when questions came up about the sad but oddly bloodless video footage Charles the Delicate, demurred. he refused to back up his report with more proof. Oh, he had more proof, he said, he just didn’t want to bruise our sensitivities. He did it for our own good.
A little more than three weeks after the incident, when some ungrateful defenders of Israel began asking questions and casting doubt on your story and you let it out- (not the actual proof mind you, that might have been too much for us) you told Telerama magazine:
“I cut the images of the child's agony (death throes), they were unbearable. The story was told, the news delivered. It would not have added anything more...”
What a hero he wanted to seem. Not only did he have the goods on the Israelis, he was so very cultivated and civilized about it. Even the Israelis were afraid to call his bluff. What if he did have heart-rending footage of the child’s death throes? They recoiled in horror. Rather than risk even more heart breaking images coming to light, the Israelis pulled back and left it alone.
But a nagging doubt still tormented some of us. Landes, Karsenty, Poller, Gross and others- those with enough faith in what their eyes could see, and enough experience with the Leftist media and its toadying up to the Palestinian propaganda machine to see that it was a bluff and, just as in a poker game, if a bluff is not called, the bluffer wins all.
From the isolation and security of his Jerusalem studio, which he never actually left to investigate this story himself, he had pronounced the boy dead, even as we can see him peeking out from under his arm looking for all the world like a kid who might just be tired of play-acting. It was as if he were saying, “Is it ok to get up? I’m tired of this. I’d like to go home now.”
Meanwhile, if Enderlin had looked down, he would have noticed that the wave he was riding was actually a tsunami of blood. It crashed over the Middle East, inundating it in rage and violence. It has continued to continuously circle the globe, splashing gore wherever it touches.
The wave washed over those two off duty Israeli reservists who took a wrong turn, got lost in the west bank and were murdered in Ramallah two weeks after the initial broadcast report aired. More accurately, they were torn limb from bloody limb by an enraged crowd in Ramallah as they chanted the name al Durah over and over. Enderlin might might want us to believe that the savagery in Ramallah might have been worse that day had those “death throes” he used as emotional blackmail been shown. I don’t know how.
In an insensate, vengeful rage they stormed the police station (the police stood by and watched). They beat, stabbed and mutilated the men. They threw them out of a second story window. They pummeled them and mangled them. Finally, they took their internal organs out of their bodies, held them aloft and paraded around with them. I watched that video.
All the while, Monsieur Enderlin was posing as the moderate and even slightly charitable correspondent. He seemed to expect us to thank him for holding back the footage that he claimed to be “really” inflammatory. He had the advantage and no one was able to mount a formidable enough challenge to force his deception into the open. His bosses at France2 backed him completely. So he was able to masquerade as good man who was simply too honest to not tell his compelling story- even if it meant he “had to make the sacrifice” of becoming world renowned in the process. Poor Monsieur Enderlin, thank you for taking the trouble to spare a forlorn world the horror of the truth about Muhammad al Durah’s death- this was so much better.
The wave of blood made it to the US a year later. On September 11, 2001 we here in America watched thousands of our fellow citizens incinerated in airplanes, leaping to their deaths to escape flames in their offices and crushed to a fine powdery dust by collapsing concrete. Afterward we heard Osama bin Laden cite the name of al Durah in righteous indignation in his demonic screed of justification.
Two years later Daniel Pearl was lost under the wave when the name and image of al Durah was used (as incitement and justification) in the video that gruesomely depicted the death by beheading of the Wall Street Journal reporter after he was forced to kneel and “confess” to being Jewish. Ask yourself why this blatantly anti-Semitic atrocity inspired some much less horror in the west than the faked death of Muhammad al Durah and you are forced to confront the fact that the people who were harmed the most by this whole sordid affair are the ones who see themselves as the victors of its aftermath.
The greatest harm caused by the wave was done where it first came ashore among the Palestinian people and the larger Islamic world beyond them. Now this one is overlooked very easily because, as he himself has implied, the Arabs and Islamists are held to a very low standard of behavior and comportment- especially by him and most of the rest of the mainstream media. In a stunning example of the pernicious effects of multiculturalism he and others in the employ of France2 have dismissed the staging and fraud exposed bye ven the most superficial analysis of the outtake footage that we have seen that day as just an aspect of “their (the Palestinian) culture”. The Arabs’ atrocious behavior has been excused as “cultural” and been consistently rewarded and reinforced by people like Enderlin that they have become “The People of the Tantrum”.
There was never any doubt that the story about al Durah served as an accelerant to the flames of Islamic inferiority and rage, Enderlin played a leading role in keeping them locked in the dungeon of resentment, intolerance and xenophobia. He gave them a tangible reason to stay enraged and aggressive and he allowed them to let their imaginations run riot on the idea that was even more distressing footage that they had not seen..
From Enderlin’s point of view, what was the downside, really? Even if his report had been truthful, even if he were dealing with us honestly about his reasons for hiding the footage, even if he had fully come forward with all of the rushes, it could hardly have made things worse than they have turned out. It made for a nice steady news cycle; the rage and violence produced as many incidents as he cared to cover, and his part in the fraud (whether as a willing tool or an unwitting useful idiot) gave him a nice cozy access relationship to the newsmakers.
But Last week, when Charles Enderlin showed up in court with nine minutes less video than he had been ordered to appear with, it was clear that he now had dropped the pretense that he had additional and more damning footage. He is now officially not riding the wave any longer; he is in danger of being pulled under by it. His arrogance when he informed the court that the footage that he did not bring either “didn’t concern that day” or “were irrelevant” actually drew laughs from the courtroom. His equally laughable narrations that went along with the actual screening were just as ridiculous.
Perhaps it is just “his culture” (as he would say of the Arabs) as a high priest of media that makes him believe that he can tell the rest of the world what is of concern and what is not relevant but I suspect (and hope) that the judge will want to be the one making that call in her courtroom.
But that is a legal question and subject to the arcane French laws that allowed Enderlin to win the first case against Karsenty without proving that he (Enderlin) had not known that the report he aired on the incident at Netzarim was based on inaccurate information. The way the law is written made it possible for Enderlin to take Karsenty to court and accuse him of libel without having to prove that Karsenty was wrong in what he had said. Thus the French court was at its own discretion on how hard to look at Enderlin. In this second trial, the court has decided that the plausibility of Karsenty’s original assessment of Enderlin’s work should be considered and that is why Enderlin was finally ordered to produce the video.
As of this past Wednesday, the question is now no longer whether Charles Enderlin is a liar or not, the question is only when, if ever, does he tell the truth and how much of the truth does he tell? Was he lying before he was forced to the courtroom or is he lying now? Really, it makes little difference. What matters is that he must lose his license to misinform the public and he must lose it now!
The management at France2 that gave him a platform to misrepresent and then helped him lie and cover-up should be sacked also. Given that France2 is a government agency, the involvement and motives of the French government (at least pre-Sarkosy) must be questioned.
Beyond the tragedy and the necessary punishment of Enderlin and France2 there are still greater and more perplexing unanswered questions. Why did the world so eagerly embrace the al Durah affair as a new reason to fear and hate “The Jews” (as embodied by Israel). Why were so many people and governments so easily sucked in by this transparent jape of a “news” story while the great and stinking atrocities of our times, the slaughter of innocents in suicide attacks, are shrugged and clucked at? Why, even now, though it is has been on shaky ground since 2004 when Enderlin publicly retrenched to the position that the boy was “killed in a crossfire” instead of intentionally by Israelis will the stain not go away? Why has none of the courtroom drama of last week gained any attention from the Western media? Here is a now proven lie, told in arrogance and perpetuated without conscience that has cause a tidal wave of blood. Who will answer for it?
The sad truth is that no one can stop a Tsunami. Once the propagation of the Icon began, there was no holding it back. Only honesty, fact checking and, most important, safeguards against allowing the power of the media to be manipulated by the likes of Talal Abu Rahma who has publicly stated that his professional mission has more to do with his tribal loyalties than with ethical journalism. Accepting an award in Morocco in 2001 for his work, he told a reporter: "I went into journalism to carry on the fight for my people." In other words, Enderlin made himself a dupe to a propagandist from a culture that views journalism as an extension of war- by other means.
It is not enough for us to respond to these media induced tragedies. Once they have the force of a tidal wave, terrible harm is done before we can even open our mouths to speak. We have to identify and contain the irresponsible, undisciplined and dishonest practices (e.g. unholy alliances between hostile government propaganda agents and our all-too-willing media) before they can create devastating images that get a life of their own. That is why Second Draft is important. We are dedicated to identifying and documenting past cases, and speeding up the process whereby we identify and challenge new cases.
Richard Landes is on his way home from Paris as I post this. Landes has played a key role in the unraveling of Enderlin’s defenses and now that Chirac is not in power to give him the influential testimony of a serving president and if Judge Trébucq believes her eyes instead of Enderlin’s narration, the case should be decided against him. Richard’s dedication to not just correct the lie of al Durah but to learn from it and plan for the prevention of the next variation that may arise is a critical development in the battle for truly free, honest and responsible media.
In the coming months we at Second Draft will be announcing a number of key initiatives to further Richard’s work but for now I’d like to congratulate my friend and to express the hope that all of the hard work that has brought us to the point of at least a symbolic victory on al Durah, and all of the blood spilled in the name of the phony martyr might never have to happen again (or, at least be decreased) if we do our job well.
Posted by Yaacov Ben Moshe at 9:00 AM
Monday, May 26, 2008
How Do You Sleep at Night, Mr. Enderlin?
I'm asking, because it must have dawned on you by now that the blind faith you placed in Talal abu-Rahma, your cameraman, has exacted a much bloodier price from the Palestinians than from the Israelis . And their, the Arabs', blood, must weigh heavily on your conscience, since I don't quite suspect that you feel for your fellow Israelis.
Friday, May 23, 2008
An Open Thank You Letter to Charles Enderlin and France2
Thank You Charles Enderlin and France2-
We have to admit we were angry with you for libeling Israel that we wanted to get you to take it back. It wasn’t just anger. We wanted to make it impossible for you to ever release such a tidal wave of violence and blood on us again. After the disastrous aftermath of your al Durah report, so many people suffered and died, we have come to think of you more as a war criminal than just an unethical journalist. Really, we do not feel that you deserve to be thought of as an honorable journalist. Fortunately for us your character flaws have relieved us of the responsibility to attack you. If you had ignored our criticism, let the whole thing drop and not sued anyone you would still be on top of the world today and Israel and the Jewish people would still be blackened by your libel.
Your restless guilt and vanity would not let you do the smart thing, though, and you sued Philipe Karsenty. Only those blinded by self-importance and its underlying insecurity, on the one hand, and driven by a need to deny fault on the other, would have felt the need.
So you showed your weakness and hubris just by filing the suit. Even more important though, from your law suit flowed the healing drama in the French courtroom in March. First, you demeaned yourself by bringing obviously altered tape into evidence into the courtroom. Then you further revealed your self delusion by pretending not to notice the derisive laughter of the gallery or that even the judge who was questioning you was treating you and your evasive explanations with amused disdain.
Now that the judgment is published, Charles, we are very pleased to see that you are going to do your best to help us to help you to complete your self-destruction by taking it to a higher court. We never had the stomach for the dirty fight you are waging we do not like to destroy other people- no matter how richly deserved. We, therefore are especially grateful to you that you have not had the moral fiber to resist you darker instincts and have thereby undertaken to do the job yourself.
We are not character assassins- but we are enjoying immensely watching your character commit a spectacularly public suicide.
Sincerely,
Yaacov Ben Moshe,
Second Draft
Friday, May 23, 2008
An Open Thank You Letter to Charles Enderlin and France2
Thank You Charles Enderlin and France2-
We have to admit we were angry with you for libeling Israel that we wanted to get you to take it back. It wasn’t just anger. We wanted to make it impossible for you to ever release such a tidal wave of violence and blood on us again. After the disastrous aftermath of your al Durah report, so many people suffered and died, we have come to think of you more as a war criminal than just an unethical journalist. Really, we do not feel that you deserve to be thought of as an honorable journalist. Fortunately for us your character flaws have relieved us of the responsibility to attack you. If you had ignored our criticism, let the whole thing drop and not sued anyone you would still be on top of the world today and Israel and the Jewish people would still be blackened by your libel.
Your restless guilt and vanity would not let you do the smart thing, though, and you sued Philipe Karsenty. Only those blinded by self-importance and its underlying insecurity, on the one hand, and driven by a need to deny fault on the other, would have felt the need.
So you showed your weakness and hubris just by filing the suit. Even more important though, from your law suit flowed the healing drama in the French courtroom in March. First, you demeaned yourself by bringing obviously altered tape into evidence into the courtroom. Then you further revealed your self delusion by pretending not to notice the derisive laughter of the gallery or that even the judge who was questioning you was treating you and your evasive explanations with amused disdain.
Now that the judgment is published, Charles, we are very pleased to see that you are going to do your best to help us to help you to complete your self-destruction by taking it to a higher court. We never had the stomach for the dirty fight you are waging we do not like to destroy other people- no matter how richly deserved. We, therefore are especially grateful to you that you have not had the moral fiber to resist you darker instincts and have thereby undertaken to do the job yourself.
We are not character assassins- but we are enjoying immensely watching your character commit a spectacularly public suicide.
Sincerely,
Yaacov Ben Moshe,
Second Draft
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ISRAEL!
This is us on our 60th birthday, after all the wars, intifadahs, terrorist attacks, after all the attempts of driving us into the sea. And this is pretty much how things look like in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, despite their sobbing and whining. And this is what our neighbors would look like if they put their hatred aside and aspired to something other than annihilating our tiny but resilient and resourceful nation.Happy Birthday, Israel, and Many Many Happy Returns of the Day!
(drawing: Dovi Keich)Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Gaza Impoverished? West Bank Kinky and Wet!
This is the fashion that is turning the Palestinians into "baby making machines", as Khaled Mashal boasted during his daughter's wedding, certain that soon she would become an egg-laying queen bee.
Women's lingerie hangs from a balcony as a veiled woman watches a Palestinian Prisoners' Day demonstration in the West Bank city of Nablus, Thursday, April 17, 2008. (AP Photo/Nasser Ishtayeh)
Secondly, I keep hearing that we've been stealing the Palestinians' water. Not according to the picture below. In any case, it seems that this year's rainfall hasn't been so good so far, so Israel is getting ready for water-saving mood. Good to see West Bankers enjoying the pool complete with what appears to be water chutes. Yet we are treating them worse than the Nazis treated us. By the way, are any Jews allowed the use of the pool, or are they Judenrein in PA territory? Or is Apartheid a more appropriate term? Anyway, it appears that we didn't manage to steal all of the water (although I heard that we siphoned off Gaza water reserves). And in case you didn't know, we have the ability to vacuum the air above Gaza and the West Bank, just like in the movies.
A Palestinian jumps into a swimming pool to cool off during hot weather in the West Bank town of Jericho April 15, 2008. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK)
Thirdly, about impoverished Gaza. Does this look like poverty? Because this is an impoverished olympic athlete hoping to win gold for Gaza on the track. By the way, they just compared their "plight" to that of the Warsaw Ghetto. Which reminds me of the Jewish athletic team at the Berlin Olympic Games. 
Nader al-Masri displays his trophies in his house in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip April 6, 2008. One of a four-member Palestinian team who hope to compete in China and the only representative from the impoverished Gaza Strip, Palestinian athlete Nader al-Masri is determined to make Gaza proud at the Beijing Olympics in August. Picture taken on April 6, 2008. To match feature OLYMPICS/PALESTINIAN REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)
Nader al-Masri prepares to go for a run as his daughter watches in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip April 6, 2008. One of a four-member Palestinian team who hope to compete in China and the only representative from the impoverished Gaza Strip, Palestinian athlete Nader al-Masri is determined to make Gaza proud at the Beijing Olympics in August. Picture taken on April 6, 2008. To match feature OLYMPICS/PALESTINIAN REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)
Yeees, so hungry and impoverished...
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Martyrdom Better than Peace with Israel
From the Palestinian Media Watch a spine-chilling dialogue, proof of criminal brainwashing of innocent children. How can there be any hope of peace between Israel and the Arabs when they so twist their young ones' minds? Notice how obscenely pleased the anchor is when these little girls express their wish to blow themselves up just to kill a few Jews. Where is UNICEF?
Q: You spoke highly of martyrdom. Do you still think that becoming a martyr is good?
Walaa (11 years old): Martyrdom is very, very beautiful. Everybody wishes to become a martyr. What can be better than going to heaven?
Q: What would you prefer: peace with full recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people, or martyrdom?
W:: Martyrdom. (Anchor nods with obvious satisfaction). I will enjoy all my rights after martyrdom. We will not be children for ever.
Q: Good, Yousra, do you agree?
Yousra (11 years old): Martyrdom is clearly good (sweet), because we want the next world, not this one, and because we will benefit from the next world, not this one. This is why Palestinian youngsters are different from other youngsters. Palestinian youngsters are hot-blooded and they choose martyrdom, because they are Palestinians. The children of Palestine have adopted the idea of martyrdom because it is very good to die a martyr's death. Every, say, 12-year-old Palestinian child prays: "Please, Allah, grant me martyrdom."
Q: You spoke highly of martyrdom. Do you still think that becoming a martyr is good?
Walaa (11 years old): Martyrdom is very, very beautiful. Everybody wishes to become a martyr. What can be better than going to heaven?
Q: What would you prefer: peace with full recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people, or martyrdom?
W:: Martyrdom. (Anchor nods with obvious satisfaction). I will enjoy all my rights after martyrdom. We will not be children for ever.
Q: Good, Yousra, do you agree?
Yousra (11 years old): Martyrdom is clearly good (sweet), because we want the next world, not this one, and because we will benefit from the next world, not this one. This is why Palestinian youngsters are different from other youngsters. Palestinian youngsters are hot-blooded and they choose martyrdom, because they are Palestinians. The children of Palestine have adopted the idea of martyrdom because it is very good to die a martyr's death. Every, say, 12-year-old Palestinian child prays: "Please, Allah, grant me martyrdom."
Busy Little East Jerusalem Bee
This Arab youngster should be busy attending classes. Instead, he's busy burning tires:
A Palestinian youth holds a tyre set ablaze during clashes with Israeli border police in Shuafat refugee camp on the edge of Jerusalem March 3, 2008. REUTERS/Mahfouz Abu Turk (JERUSALEM) Reuters via Yahoo! News - Mar 03 3:40 AM
A Palestinian youth stands by burning tires during a protest against Israel's military assault on the Gaza Strip in the Shoafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem. Israel vowed on Monday to keep hitting Gaza even as troops pulled out of the Hamas-run territory after clashes that killed at least 120 Palestinians and dealt a major blow to Middle East peace talks. (AFP/Menahem Kahana) AFP via Yahoo! News - Mar 03 9:40 AM
A Palestinian youth with his face covered walks past burning tires after clashes between Palestinians and Israeli border police erupted in the West Bank refugee camp of Shuafat, on the edge of Jerusalem, Monday, March 3, 2008. Clashes broke out across the West Bank on Monday between Israeli troops and Palestinian youths protesting Israel's Gaza operations. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty) AP via Yahoo! News - Mar 03 8:07 AM
or collecting stones (the size that can crack a skull)
A Palestinian youth holds stones during clashes with Israeli border police in Shuafat refugee camp on the edge of Jerusalem, March 3, 2008. (Ammar Awad/Reuters) Reuters via Yahoo! News - Mar 03 11:17 AM
then throwing stones ("shoot to kill")
A Palestinian youth throws stones at Israeli troops, after clashes between Palestinians and Israeli border police erupted in the West Bank refugee camp of Shuafat, on the edge of Jerusalem, Monday March 3, 2008. Clashes broke out across the West Bank on Monday between Israeli troops and Palestinian youths protesting Israel's Gaza operations. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty) AP via Yahoo! News - Mar 03 4:56 AM
In a few years he will be pursuing his studies at a university near you, most likely in the UK, but not unlikely in the US as well. But not before blaming discriminatory funding of Arab schools for their inability to read their own language. Silly me, thinking that the prerequisite to a solid education was good class attendance.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Some Arabs Are Begining to Get It
Hard as it may be to believe, some Arab cartoonists are beginning to denounce the use of children and women as live bombs. Some Arab newspapers even have to courage to publish.
Cartoon In Bahrain Paper: "Terrorism". Source: Al-Ayyam, Bahrain, February 4, 2008
Cartoon In UAE Paper:"In Iraq" – Exploiting Women For Terror Purposes. Source: Akhbar Al-Arab, UAE, February 5, 2008
Thanks to Bennauro and his awesome blog, a source of inspiration and support. It is reassuring to see such great stuff coming from Italy.
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