The Last Exile

This is a bit of an old report from CAMERA about a very real and current phenomenon in Israel. It concerns activity being staged, filmed and then promoted by the Israeli (but mostly foreign funded) human rights (for everyone but Jews) organizations – such as B’Tselem.

What makes this particularly relevant now, is the nature of the staging concerned a Palestinian youth who was taken into custody. The video was widely promoted by B’Tselem and published by Ynet News, one of the large Israeli dailies, in both the English and Hebrew version. This underscores just how far B’Tselem is willing to go distribute any manufactured propaganda as long as it makes the Israeli state look disreputable. CAMERA:March 1 —

Once upon a time, journalists would report the news. Today, some prefer manufactured news. When journalists collaborate with organizations driven by a one-sided agenda aimed at influencing public opinion, the distinction between a newspaper and a propaganda mouthpiece is dangerously blurred.

Take, for example, B’Tselem, which noticed that some lazy journalists prefer to receive pre-packaged video clips over actually doing their jobs. These edited and ready-to-view clips then appear next to bombastic headlines, and the journalist congratulates himself for getting a scoop.

Such was the case early this week (Feb. 27) at the Israeli site Ynet, which appears in English and in Hebrew. Sunday’s Hebrew article by Elior Levi and the corresponding English version (”Video: 11-year-old Palestinian stone-thrower arrested”) are based on a video that B’Tselem apparently supplied to Levi.

One wonders if the intrepid Ynet journalists, including both Levi, his editors, and English translators, even bothered to view the pre-packaged B’Tselem video before passing it off as journalism. The article states:
In the video the officers can be seen putting the boy, Karim al-Tamimi, in a police vehicle after chasing him down. The boy’s mother pleaded with the officers to allow her to accompany him to the Sha’ar Binyamin police station, but her request was denied. . . .

The boy’s father, Salah al-Tamimit [sic] told Ynet, “They took him without a chaperone, and by the time we arrived at the police station he was already being interrogated.”

Yet, a careful viewing of the clip (with Hebrew and Arabic dialogue) reveals that the exact opposite was the case; the policemen invited the mother to accompany her child. At 2:07 minutes into the video, one of the policemen says to the mother, “Come, come, get in.” The cop then asks one of the people standing nearby, “Is that his mother?” When the bystander answers in the affirmative, the policeman repeats, “Get in with him” (the boy). The door is opened for her and she is about to get into the vehicle, as the policemen are saying “get into the car,” but then (2:27) the mother is pulled away from the car by the Palestinian man wearing a black jacket. After the policemen closes the van’s door, a woman wearing a pink shirt pushes the mother towards the vehicle, and then the mother bangs on the door, a heartrending scene.

The original video can be viewed at the original English publication of the incident at Ynet News. All of which is my long way of saying bewary of trusting any alleged Israeli human rights organization…all are suspect.

I am going to quote the entire Arutz Sheva article which appeared to given the relevance to a recent blog posting.

There are so many international organizations set-up to protect the rights of children and youth, rescue and rehabilitate ‘child soldiers’, and yet, not one of these organization appears to be operating on any appreciable level to stop the Palestinians from militarizing their children and youth.

Update: Ynet News is carrying the video surveillance tape of these two Palestinian ‘children’ going on a shooting rampage against Israeli civilians…

And B’Tselem wants us all to worry more about these children being interrogated without their parents being present rather than worry about the lives these children appear committed to murder.

Dr. Dawg has his gotchies all in a twist over this Guardian article alleging mistreatment of Palestinian teenagers by Israeli prison authorities. Oh my bad, The Guardian makes a point of calling all teenagers in the article ‘children’.
Now I will say this, if Israeli authorities are routinely abusing Palestinians who have been incarcerated in Israeli prisons…it is wrong, and those responsible should face the full penalty for breaking the law – Israeli law. The Guardian ends with this dire warning:

On the other hand, it is truly hard for me to feel a great deal of empathy for those Palestinian ‘children’ who deliberately choose to throw Molotov cocktails…

and/or stones at people’s children just because they are Jewish.

In the universe of Dawg’s Guardian, these little moral monsters are the result of the ‘alleged abuse’ which they have suffered at the hands of Israelis authorities – long after they have been arrested for throwing Molotov cocktails and stones at Jews.

As a mother of many, I have actively discouraged any of my children from throwing anything at anybody – without exception.

So my question becomes, at what point does the Palestinian family unit/culture take responsibility for the fact that throwing Molotov cocktails and stones at Jews is a true coming of age ritual for Palestinian teenagers?

Dawg ends his two bits by asking how many violent settlers are jailed and tortured by the Israeli Defense Forces. Now I could quibble with Dawg because he refuses to note the difference between Israeli prison authorities, the Shin Bet and the IDF – three separate organizations, but I am not going to.

Instead, I will just point out that he needs a long talk with Noam Federman, and refresh his memory over who arrested the Jewish Bomb Plot terrorists…or we could just start the discussion at ‘Amona’. Of course, that might not be filled with as much bloggie goodness for Dawg as writing the ‘bad, bad Jew’ narratives which we all know the good Dawg loves to do.

From Palestinian Media Watch comes this Palestinian Authority TV documentary which recently aired on August 10th.

“They [Israelis] know for certain that our [Palestinian] roots are deeper than their false history. We, from the balcony of our home, look out over [Islamic] holiness and on sin and filth (Jews’ praying at Western Wall) in an area that used to have [Arab] people and homes. We are drawing our new maps. When they [Israelis] disappear from the picture, like a forgotten chapter in the pages of our city’s history, we will build it anew (residential area). The Mughrabi Quarter will be built here (on the Western Wall Plaza).

The television network of the so-called ‘moderate’ Palestinians. Now according to a certain blogger of my acquaintance, accusing the Palestinians of “anti-Semitism or racism, is a stretch. To put it mildly.” For some strange reason ’stretch’ isn’t the word which comes to mind when I think Palestinian anti-Semitism. As rampant as Jewish anti-Semitism has been for centuries within the Arab world; what I find far more disturbing is those who enable Palestinian racism and prejudice by giving it a complete pass.

Update: Since Dr. Dawg just can’t seem to get it. Maybe a picture of the handiwork of the people he works so hard to provide moral cover will help him get it.

Jerusalem Post:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met Thursday with a US Democratic Congressional delegation currently visiting the region, telling them that he is seeking a Palestinian state without settlements, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

The sound you will not hear is any progressive wavering in the cause of Palestinian statehood. When Leiberman talks transfer of Israel’s Arab minority to a potential future Palestinian state the progressive left works itself into a frenzy of denunciations of Lieberman’s racism, but have chairman Abbas call for a ‘Jew-free’ Palestinian state, and not even a dawg barks in protest. I have to hand it to the progressives who are unstinting in their calls of condemnation of the Israeli state for racism and so-called ‘apartheid’ policies but who do not have the slightest qualms in helping the Palestinians establish their own little corner of apartheid.

Two peoples, two different standards.

I really do believe I could build an entire blog around the stupidity and foolishness which is routinely published on a daily basis within just the two large Canadian daily papers. Take today and the Toronto Star’s “National Affairs Columnist, Thomas Wolkam’s column on the Gaza Flotilla foolishness. I suppose I have to start at the beginning.

Last year’s deadly Gaza flotilla was a clear win for the Palestinians in their long conflict with Israel. This year’s version is shaping up as another. Ostensibly, the flotillas are about breaking Israel’s blockade of Gaza and bringing needed aid to the 1.5 million people there. In reality they are about political pressure and public opinion.

As such, they are David and Goliath contests that Israel cannot easily win. For in the flotilla sagas, Israel is by definition Goliath. If it forcibly stops ships bearing aid, as it did last year at a cost of nine dead protesters, it risks being painted a bully.

The problem with Wolkam’s worldview is that it is not rooted in the reality. Last year’s flotilla was not a resounding political success for the Palestinians.

The images of Israeli marines boarding the ships armed with paintball guns and being senseless bludgeoned by armed thugs peace activists was not a win-win for the Palestinians or their public relation efforts. In fact, I am still humming Latma’s break out You Tube hit, ‘We Con the World’ by the Flotilla Choir.

The Israelis, for all their alleged ruthlessness, could not have staged a better photo-op than the reality – which was of armed peace activists running amuck with weapons. Of course, it does tend to tarnish your peace ‘creds’ when you harbour a convicted terrorist hijacker among your ranks. This is probably why this year’s flotilla stuck to a bona fide Hamas member instead.

And I wouldn’t risk throwing around the term ‘bully’ around so freely or someone might want to question the contingent of Dutch reporters who abandoned the opportunity of being embedded with the middle aged pacifists on board the flotilla and ask – ‘why?’. Of course, this also raises the sticky issue of what restrictions did the Toronto Star’s embedded journalist agree to for the ‘privilege’ of reporting live amongst the so-called Canadian contingent present on the Tahrir.

The danger of asking questions is how easily one question can easily spawn other equally uncomfortable questions. For example, someone might just resurrect this relatively current Jerusalem Post’s article and point out; if the Red Cross preventatives in the Gaza Strip do not believe there is a humanitarian crisis why does The Toronto Star and the flotilla organizers insist there is a need for humanitarian supplies….

Of course, Walkom – not being one to get bogged down by reality continues thus,

Israel says its Gaza blockade is meant to forestall rocket attacks. Palestinians call it collective punishment.

Now there are two possibilities why Walkom writes that the Israel blockade is ‘meant to forestall rocket attacks’. Either he doesn’t really know why the Israelis began the blockage or he is deliberately attempting to mislead the readership of the Toronto Star.

Simply put, the Israelis instituted the blockage of the Gaza Strip not because of rocket attacks launched by the Hamas government exclusively against Israeli civilians or even for the raid across the Israeli border by PRC members to abduct an Israeli solider in order to extort and blackmail the Israeli government into releasing duly convicted Palestinian terrorists. These acts alone are considered enough of a ‘casus belli’ for war among any normal nations; although, neither of these reasons are the cause of the Israeli blockage against the Gaza Strip.

The Israelis instituted the blockade against the Gaza Strip once Hamas successfully staged a violent bloody coup and overthrew the democratically elected leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has no legal democratically elected authority to legislate or govern the Gaza Strip and the blockade was instituted by the Israeli government because Hamas, as a political entity remains committed to the use of terrorism to achieve its political aim and the destruction of the Israeli state.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s economy has been virtually destroyed. The blockade has stifled exports, effectively killing what had been a flourishing fruit and vegetable sector. It has decimated the fishing industry.

I would suggest if anyone killed the flourishing fruit and vegetable sector of the Gaza Strip; the Palestinians should shoulder far more blame than the Israeli blockade.

When the Israeli blockade was instituted in June 2007; the agricultural industry of the Gaza Strip was already decimated. The Israelis had disengaged from the Gaza Strip in August 2005 and handed over to the Palestinian Authority a multi-million dollar agricultural industry with complete functioning infrastructure.

Instead of practicing good husbandry skills, the Palestinian Authority allowed the greenhouses of the Gaza Strip to be destroyed and looted. The Israelis had literally made the desert bloom but you cannot do so without the green houses and a complex irrigation system. I can’t speak with any authority on the fishing industry but I wouldn’t be surprised that to learn the Palestinians have mishandled their fishing industry much like they have mishandled and abused their own agricultural industry.
And finally,

As the Star’s Jim Rankin has reported, those aboard the Canadian ship, Tahrir, are by and large middle-aged pacifists. One may disagree with their politics. But they hardly seem dangerous.

The flotilla activist may present the visual optics of middle-aged pacifists but make no mistake – this group is most certainly dangerous since the flotilla is actively providing cover and offering political safe refuge to one of the more vicious and ruthless military dictatorships within the Mid-East neighborhood.

If the flotilla membership was seriously concerned with the welfare of ordinary Palestinians of the Gaza Strip; they should be protesting and demanding Hamas give up military control of the Gaza Strip. Of course, no fun would be had – since there would be no Jews Israelis to bully, malign or demonize.

What is more disturbing to me, is the fact that the editors of the Toronto Star should know all these same facts, and yet, they still published Wolkam’s dribble anyway.

One of the first truisms one encounters when studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that truth is fluid. What was true yesterday or even today is not what will be truth tomorrow. Of course, truth could depend entirely on what language is spoken.

There is no better example of this principle in action than Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ New York Times opinion piece. Why the NY Times gave this man their paper as his soap box to preach on is beyond me. I will not re-hash the points others have covered but instead I just want to point out Abbas’ personal narrative is a little ‘fluid’ depending on time, place and language. Abbas’ starts his op-ed piece with a personal walk down memory lane.

SIXTY-THREE years ago, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was forced to leave his home in the Galilean city of Safed and flee with his family to Syria. He took up shelter in a canvas tent provided to all the arriving refugees. Though he and his family wished for decades to return to their home and homeland, they were denied that most basic of human rights. That child’s story, like that of so many other Palestinians, is mine. This month, however, as we commemorate another year of our expulsion — which we call the nakba, or catastrophe

In July 2009, Abbas speaking on Palestinian television stated quite plainly in Arabic that his family was not driven out by the Jewish militias but fled out of fear that the Jewish milita would potentially take revenge for the ill-treatment the Arabs had metered out historically to the Jews. Arutz Sheva:

Speaking with Al-Palestinia TV on Monday, Abbas admitted that his family was not expelled or driven out, but rather left for fear that the Jews might take revenge for the slaughter of 20 Jews in the city during the Arab pogroms of 19 years earlier.

“I am among those who were born in the city of Tzfat (Safed). We were a family of means. I studied in elementary school, and then came the naqba [calamity, namely, the founding of the State of Israel – ed.]. At night, we left by foot from Tzfat, to the Jordan River, where we remained for a month. Then we went to Damascus, and then to our relatives in Jordan, and then we settled in Damascus.

“My father had money, and he spent his money systematically, and after a year, the money ran out and we began to work. “The people’s basic motives brought them to run away for their lives and with their property. These [motives] were very important, for they feared the violence of the Zionist terrorist organizations – and especially those of us from Tzfat felt that there was an old desire for revenge from the rebellion of 1929, and this was in the memory of our families and parents.”

Yadda, yadda. And so goes the long lie.

xposted to The Last Amazon, Exiled

I have had my share of death threats and I have been called some ugly names but Dr. Dawg’s comment – even for me – has hit a new all time low.

When a young vulnerable young woman can be left battered, bloodied, and raped in a stairway and the perpetrator of this heinous crime, in a plea bargain arrangement to a lesser charge (only to spare the victim further emotional trauma), receives a jail sentence of only 18 months should be used as evidence of the racist nature of the Israeli court systems against Arabs…what can one say to that kind of warped pathology? I am going to quote and paraphrase Benjamin Kerstein, The New Ledger –

These revelations prove that, put simply, the Israeli left, and Dr. Dawg Gideon Levy foremost among them, rushed to defend a rapist in a case about which they knew nothing and about which they cared to know nothing. It played to their prejudices about Israeli society and reinforced their hatred of Israeli their fellow citizens. They felt they knew all they needed to know. As a result, they compounded a young woman’s trauma, exonerated a monstrous criminal in the court of public opinion, and debased themselves as human beings.

Dr. Dawg Gideon Levy fancies himself a prophet, a teller of uncomfortable truths to an uncaring society. Where this has led him is frankly horrifying. Did he know the details of the case? No, but he made no attempt whatsoever to find out about them. Did he shrink from slandering a rape victim as a racist? Apparently, not for a moment. Did he shrink from condemning this entire society on the basis of almost no evidence at all? Absolutely not. Did he disgrace himself and his profession? Unquestionably. He was the leading voice of a group of Canadian leftists who, in ironically sexist fashion, defamed a victim of rape out of demented sympathy for the man who violated her. After all, these things happen.

Now Kerstein was originally talking about Ha’aretz columnist Gideon Levy and in my eyes, Dr. Dawg’s horrendous moral position is far worse than Levy’s – as Dawg cannot claim ignorance of the case details as Levy did when he penned his article. In fact, Dawg commented on my post recounting the details which were not widely reported outside of Israel on this matter. In my non-medical opinion, I would suggest that Israeli Derangement Syndrome has taken complete control of Dawg’s neuro-pathways. In the old days we had a name for this kind of individual….

I read Dr. Sherman’s response to an Irish colleague and I couldn’t resist posting an excerpt as it almost mimics my own experiences.

You admit that, “I am oft times condemned to being anti-Semitic…” Indeed, on reading your diatribes this is not difficult to understand.

For while it is undoubtedly true that criticism of Israel is not in itself evidence of anti-Semitism, the pervasive and enduring application of double standards against the nation-state of the Jewish people makes anti-Semitism an increasingly plausible explanation which cannot be perfunctorily dismissed.

This observation is highly pertinent to the attitude you adopt and the animosity you express – despite your protestations to the contrary.

You claim that you are, “passionately sympathetic to the plight of the people of Palestine”. Sadly however, your evident empathy for the Palestinians to seems to reflect your enduring enmity for the Jews; your compassion for them matched only by your callousness for us.

Thus, you portray the plight of the Palestinians as the incomprehensible consequence of mindless malice on the part of Israel, and all security measures undertaken by Israel as acts of arbitrary aggression against a peaceful, passive population.

Conspicuous by its absence is any reference to the brutality of Palestinian terror against Israeli civilians. You make no mention of the Arab assault on the Jewish state which began long before Israel held a square inch of territory now presented as “Palestinian”.

The worst kind of anti Semitism and can such omissions be anything but deliberate distortions?

Indeed, perhaps the worst kind of anti-Semitism is the expectation – as appears to be the case on your part – that Jews consent to die meekly.

The worst kind of anti-Semitism is to portray – which you appear to do – every coercive measure undertaken by the IDF to protect the lives of Jews against those striving to kill them, just because they are Jews, as “disproportionate war crimes”.

The worst kind of anti Semitism is to consider – as you appear to do – that preventing Palestinian inconvenience far more important than preventing the loss of Jewish lives (or limbs).

The worst kind of anti-Semitism is to decry, dismiss and delegitimize – which you appear to do – as callous cruelty or mindless malevolence, any action taken by Israel to defend itself and its civilians against manifestly Judeocidal assaults – whether these actions be defensive responses or offensive initiatives; whether preventative strikes or punitive retaliation.

The worst kind of anti-Semitism is to demand – as you seem to be suggesting – that the Jews should allow their attackers to assault them with absolute immunity from any reprisal, with total impunity from all retribution, and unhindered by any fear of unpleasant consequences at all.

Indeed. Read the rest here.

Israel has met over and above all its obligations for supplying the Palestinians with water as per the Oslo agreements which were duly negotiated between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government.

Is Israel to blame for the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to invest in water infrastructure, recycling of water, developing an adequate water delivery network to meet their needs or even the failure to connect Palestinian farmers to their own water grid? Apparently, if you live in Dr. Dawg’s world the answer is always a resounding yes.

Arutz Sheva carries the most recent report from the Israeli National Water Authority on refuting the new/old ‘big lie’.

And speaking of water theft..why pay the Palestinian Authority for water used when you can just steal it from one of those evil settler types that the Dr. Dawg’s of the world live to demonize and malign with immunity?