Science Pogrom Week

Rob-NY

As an American in London during Hurricane Katrina I listened to a constant stream of blather about American racsim. How about a national conversation about the Jew hate in the UK?

robin lloyd

this blog gets more hysterical and more irrational with every post. hysteria and plain falsehood are no ways to defend the jewish state; on the contrary, when you assert, for example, that the vast majority of those killed in the gaza massacre were terrorists, when the world knows that at least a third of the dead were children and infants, when you are so contemptuous of fact and sound reasoning, you do, as a leading zionist in britain, inestimable damage to the zionist cause. this is by far the most difficult time in israel's history, the future of the jewish state is firmly in the balance, this is not the time for bombast and comfort-thought - we need sound reasoning and serious thought, and i find very little of these in this blog.

Dan

Britain hates Israel more then every disease, genocide, thief, and aparthied put together. The hate might change well it won't, a very mild film depicting how Islam is taught in the middle east and in european mosques is a banable offense.

Enjoy your bloody marriage to the Palestinians, the daily mail, with a couple of right wing authors who are always accused of being extremist or of dual loyalty in order to stifle their responces? Sound about right?

You see in America we have free debate from both sides, where both sides speak, and Israel wins with most people because it has the facts on it's side.

We call two sided debates FREEDOM!

Don't lecture the United States on Human Rights when you don't value free speach, don't lecture the United States about even handedness when your right to be taken seriously on Israel Palestine is dependent on your being uncritically supportive of the Palestinian side, and don't lecture us on race anything while British Jews literally have to hire veterans from the military to gaurd themselves.

Sometimes pro-Israel-Daily Mail, some right wing authors (like the one here)

Always anti-Israel-everybody else

So lets see the entire media is anti-Israel, and it's the ANTI Israel side that you Britons feel is being stifled?

stanley Jerusalem

Now what was that German doctor's name? Oh yes, Josef Mengele.
No, not the one who lived in Egypt and died in 1992. That was another one. Oh and what happened to those guys who tried to drive their 4x4 loaded with gas and inflammables into Glasgow Airport.Doctors weren't they?
Nice people usually, doctors are. Usually.

stanley Jerusalem

robin lloyd - So you think Melanie should tone it down a bit, do you? Don't make waves, eh? You are obviously a past master at reading between the lines. It's a pity you didn't read the actual lines themselves.
Viz. "Gaza massacre" and "third of the dead were children." The future of Anglo-Jewry is what's in the balance, sunshine, not Israel. We can and will look after ourselves and if we receive outside assistance well and good.But if not, well we've managed on our own for 60 years.

Francis

Robin Lloyd: Then why read it?

George Laird

Dear Melanie

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4274400.stm

This is a story of pregant Palestinian women who have been denied proper medical aid by the Israelis at check points.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8936-2004Sep9.html

Story about a 12 year old child shot in the head.

Maybe the 400 people have a point!

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Stanislav Koblinski

The original article "The Wounds of Gaza" is still available here:
http://www.thelancetstudent.com/2009/02/03/the-wounds-of-gaza/

Woody

There seems to be a disturbing and growing conspiracy here against the Jewish people (I'm not a Jew). And I note that the story of the Christian aid units being ejected from Darfur by Sudanese Muslims was squeezed in at the end of TV news bulletins.

herb glatter

a little history for those not familiar with it:
since the reestablishment of the State of Israel in 1947: Egypt waged war against Yemen, Algerian Islamists brutally slaughtered 200,000 Algerians, in Lebanon 150,000 dead in civil war, Saddam slaughters hundreds of thousands Kurds, Syria flattens Hama in 1982 and its 20,000 Syrian citizens, Black September 1970 King Hussein of Jordan calls out his troops and kills 10,000 of Arafat's thugs, Iran/Iraq war ONE MILLION MUSLIMS DEAD. Notice who is missing here? NOT ONE JEW INVOLVED.

keith

Hey Robin, your math is bad! If a third were children then two thirds were not. Two thirds is 66% - a majority as Melanie says.

robion lloyd

francis - melanie philips is a person of significant influence in britain, she has the nation's ear: what a pity she cannot use her position to advance the cause of rational, generous-spirited zionism.
keith - i think your comment is in extremely bad taste. you should be ashamed of yourself.

Jenny

Ha, ha, Dan! Would that it were so. I read the Daily Mail from cover to cover and off the top of my head, the only two people in the weekly issue ever prepared to take on the blood libels hurled at Israel are Melanie Phillips and Richard Littlejohn.

There is a very nasty undertone to the writing of at least three individuals in that paper: Peter McKay, Andrew Alexander and Peter Oborne.

Some of the others seem to reiterate cant without displaying almost open hostility about Israel but it's only Ms Phillips and Mr Littlejohn that refuse to be bullied on the issue.

There is Peter Hitchens in the Sunday issue and he is an Israel supporter, although he has seem cowed recently.

Do not under any circumstances underestimate the level of hostility towards Israel in this country. It really is terrible (as you can see from some of the posters here).

The font of all this, in my opinion, is the BBC. When you have a publicly funded broadcaster pumping out the propaganda it does, Israel will always be on a losing streak. I was watching last night again just furious knowing that if many of its 'star' reporters had to work on newspapers, they just wouldn't get the readers. No-one would willingly pay for this trash.

Straydingo

robin lloyd, a third of those killed in Gaza were children were they? By who's authority? Are you saying that the word of Hamas can be trusted? Did you verify the count?
Robin, it is you that is hysterical...except I can’t laugh as the topic in questions is so serious.
Clearly you live in a nice little bubble....the fact is I know that there is nothing I or for that matter anyone else here can say that would change your mind.
Sadly, I have now come to this conclusion and know that we will have to wait until something truly terrible happens before you and your moonbat friends wake up...I just pray its does not have to be as bad as what happened in the last century.

John from Toronto

Hey Robin. Come clean and tell us what you really mean. Your argument is totally incoherent.

New Brunswick Barry

So, the nazification of the Sceptred Isle proceeds apace, eh? It makes one shudder at what is waiting down the road, not just for Jews but for all Britons of good conscience. Get out; come to Canada or the US and be safe, while you still have the chance.

Frank Howard

And the cognoscenti easily ignore Tibet - the largest area colonized and occupied by a foreign power since WWII. China's policy in Tibet is the systemic and purposeful suppression of an entire people fraught with other human rights violations yet the world brays about Abu Graive and Guantanamo Bay!

louis

On child deaths.

Anybody have an idea of the age distribution of "child" casualties? I think children are defined as under 19. I would not think it unlikely that many 16,17 and 18 year old casualties were combatants in civilian clothing.

D.Smith

Today the Iranian supreme leader called Israel "a cancerous tumour" and the holocaust a myth.
Israel will one day have to fight just so that it's people can continue to live let alone thrive.
From this country Israel can expect nothing but complicity in it's destruction. It will be a quiet polite complicity in a typically British way but complicity it will be.
The British intellingentsia is worthy only of the contempt of honorable men and women and I hope that the people of Israel will treat us with the contempt we merit by allowing this intelligentsia to dare to speak for us.

TW

It just goes to show how left-wing these academics are. And they continually pretend they are unbiased and open minded. We need to wake up to the other snake-oil they are dishing out, especially the idea that everything evolved by itself and that the Creator God does not exist. (see creation.com)

Mark

It is truly shameful that we are back here to attempts to deny, obfuscate and brush off the death of children in the recent action in Gaza.

John Edwards

"Nazification of the Sceptred Isle" What a load of nonsense this post and thread is. Anything to divert attention from the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the other Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Owen Morgan

The concocted claim that Israel murdered Egyptian POWs in 1967 reminds me of a similar (equally concocted) story about American mistreatment of German POWs after VE-Day. This one was created by somebody called James Bacque and was the subject of a documentary on British television in the early Nineties. I did not see it, but I understand that it was split into two programmes, a week apart, with Bacque being allowed to use the first programme to expound his case, which was then comprehensively demolished in the second programme. The obvious flaw in that approach was that many people saw the first part and not the second and will have been left with a completely misleading impression of the truth (to be fair, that outcome was the opposite of the makers' intentions).

The thing that makes me wonder if there is a connection with the new 1967 "massacre" myth is that Bacque was also a Holocaust denier.

Owen Morgan

Dan says, "Britain hates Israel more then every disease, genocide, thief, and aparthied put together."

No, Dan, Britain doesn't. You couldn't find Britain on a map of Britain and you have no idea how most Britons think. Four hundred dodgy academics, no doubt hailing from the University of North-West Watford and such like, don't speak for Britain. The "Independent", Britain's least read "national" newspaper, doesn't speak for Britain. The "Guardian" newspaper (guess where that one shows up in the readership statistics), doesn't speak for Britain, either. The BBC "speaks for Britain" only in the sense that those of us who live here are obliged to pay for the dratted thing. As for the current British government, well, that would dismiss the entire concept of "speaking for Britain" as "populism" (which is politician-speak for an idea that resonates with the demos and alienates the oligoi in power).

The British government doesn't pretend to speak for us, on Israel, or on any other subject, and makes not the slightest attempt to tailor its position to what we, the British People, think, so its pronouncements don't represent us, the British People, at all. In reciprocity, I am fully confident that, as soon as we get the opportunity to vote this rabble out of office, the British people will dismiss this government.

And a year from now, Desperate Dan, you'll be dying for a chance to vote against Obama. In the meantime, "four more years!"

Owen Morgan

John Edwards, can you tell me what "the other Occupied Palestinian Territories" are, please? Gaza isn't "occupied", nor is the West Bank, so where is this "humanitarian catastrophe", to which you refer?

Dixon

robin lloyd
March 4th, 2009 6:16pm
...you assert, for example, that the vast majority of those killed in the gaza massacre were terrorists, when the world knows that at least a third of the dead were children and infants,...

Not very good with numbers is he this Robin lloyd...two thirds is nearly seventy per-cent in my estimation, which is an overwhelnming majority by any definition.

jose garcia

hey GEORGE

why does israel have the DUTY to care for non israelis?

why didnt the pregant woman went to egipt a few miles down the other way?

WHY ARENT YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT THE PERMANENT CLOSURE OF THE EGIPT BORDERS WITH GAZA?

what is your campaign for human rights in glasgow done about the 1 million dead in sudan?.

WHERE ARE THE THOUSANDS OF ACADEMICS BOYCOTING AID AND POLITICAL RELATIONS TO THE MURDEROUS SUDANES ISLAMIC TERRORISTS?

you know the answer
cant blame the jews for that.

i cant hide my disgust at your double standards and smugness

CAMPAIGN FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN GLASGOW........

how pedantic !!

jose garcia

hey mark

How about the death of israeli children in the last few years by the thousands of rocket missiles launched from gaza at schools and hospitals in israel?

the hipocrisy is breathtaking.

israel

While i agree that it's wrong to try to stop the Science Museum from promoting the work of Israeli scentists l am bemused, if not a little wary of a pro-zionist media group using Orwellian language to call itself (with absolutly no irony) "Honest Reporting" without the decency of quotation marks "correcting" what it sees at anti-zionist news articles. Kind of reminds me of that group run by mary whitehouse on what they viewed as tv smut or that muggins with the beard in the US brent bozzell and his group of flying monkeys.

James Hodson

TW: "It just goes to show how left-wing these academics are. And they continually pretend they are unbiased and open minded."

Along those lines, Peter Hitchens has suggested that the liberal left are so convinced of their goodness (I'd say self-righteousness) they believe the ends justify the means.

I suppose it must be wonderful to be so convinced of one's perfection.

Jerry

The "humanitarian catastrophe" of Gaza is so clearly due to the penchant of Hamas to believe that they can try to kill Jews with impunity and immunity.

Edward in the USA

The death of children is horrific. So too is the brainwashing of Palestinian children as seen on Palestinian TV Kiddie Shows where a little Palestinian girl is prompted by an off-screen woman to recite the dehumanized description of Jews as the "sons of pigs and monkeys" and other programs that feature Palestinian children who tell the audience that they hope to die a martyr for Palestine.

Clearly one function of supporters of Hamas is to claim that the majority of casualties were civilian, without noting that Hamas fighters do not wear uniforms to distinguish themselves from TRUE civilian non-combatants or that Hamas fighters routinely fire weapons while civilians were nearby.

To Hamas, if a rocket lands in Israel and kills, it is a victory. If Israel retaliates and Palestinians are killed, it is a pyrrhic victory for Hamas, whose leadership are safe in bunkers while civilians must fend for themselves.

tommy

Humanitarian catastrophy-- my rear end
QUOTE...
There was a bit of head-scratching going on recently in the hallowed halls of the UN.

After weeks of rebuking Israel for preventing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, UN officials were forced to cancel deliveries of aid into the Hamas-controlled territory after terrorists broke into a UN Relief and Works Agency warehouse and made off with 800 tons of blankets, food and other basic commodities to sell them to the highest bidders.

Israeli officials have been saying all along that Hamas routinely diverts humanitarian aid. In April, fuel trucks destined for UNRWA warehouses were overtaken. It was reported in August that Hamas gunmen had hijacked more than 10 trucks destined for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society full of food and medical supplies.

All that is only more ironic given the worldwide castigation of Israel for allegedly preventing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza during the military operation.

And the criticism wasn't limited to the issue of aid. The UN (and the international community) was quick to condemn Israel for allegedly targeting an UNRWA-run school, despite widespread acknowledgement that Hamas routinely employs such facilities as "civilian shields" in an attempt to draw Israeli fire.

The incident where IDF fire hit an UNRWA school in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza is indeed tragic. At the time, UNRWA insisted there were no terrorists in the school compound and the Israelis were "careless," with UNRWA Operations Director John Ging claiming that mortars had hit the school, killing dozens and wounding more.

Just days ago, though, UN officials admitted that Israel had not hit the school at all, but an area outside it. Ging admitted that his original claims were wrong.

It may have taken the embarrassment over such a glaring error to get the UN to acknowledge what the Israelis have been saying all along: that Hamas' callous use of civilians as shields is itself a humanitarian crisis.

Despite the new information, it's worth taking a close look at the historical ties between UNRWA and Hamas. UNRWA has long been a major employer for Hamas members, and has lent its facilities to Hamas and other terror organizations for weapons-related purposes.

For example, in May, we learned that Awad al-Qiq, who was targeted by the Israeli military, was a U.N. employee and headmaster of a top prep school in Gaza. Al-Qiq, a science teacher, was also in the rocket business while at the same time educating Palestinian youth.

Since Hamas' takeover of Gaza in 2006 after Israel's unilateral withdrawal in August 2005, UNRWA hasn't raised explicit objections to the brutal Hamas violence that enabled the terrorist group to take the Gaza Strip by force.

UNRWA appears to be chiefly concerned with its own survival and continued funding. As Karen AbuZayd, the commissioner general of UNRWA, said after the Hamas takeover, "We are not scared. Donor countries have not in any way said they will stop their aid to UNRWA.

"On the contrary, we were approached by many of these countries, even Israel, asking us to continue our services to Palestinian refugees and perhaps even extend these services to do things we haven't done before."

To be perfectly blunt, the theft of humanitarian aid by Hamas (not to mention its ruthless use of its own people as targets as well as shields) only proves the point: Dead civilians are not Israel's goal but Hamas'.

According to Hamas' thinking, the more Palestinian victims there are, the more the international community will try to pressure Israel to avoid any further military operations.

Now that the shooting has stopped, the Obama administration has pledged to provide some $900 million to help rebuild Gaza. Governments and NGOs serious about assisting Palestinian Gazan society must insist on accountability whereby that reconstruction funding is allocated independently and transparently.

When it comes to doling out the money, UNRWA and Hamas - both of whom seem to be more focused on empty rhetoric rather than working towards a peaceful Palestinian civil society - should be bypassed.
UNQUOTE

http://www.meforum.org/2097/aid-for-sale-in-hamas-gaza

There is no doubt,many in this country are strangers to the truth-probably due to labours failed Education policy

Derek BLADES

In her latest blog Ms Phillips writes "The weaponry used in Gaza was used to try to stop the murder of innocents; it was legal and proportionate; the Israelis went to huge lengths to avoid hitting civilians. All this is demonstrably so."

Let's nail the proportionality nonsense once and for all. I will do it in terms that even Ms Phillips may understand.

An eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth are proportional responses. Two or more eyes for one eye or two or more teeth for one tooth are disproportionate. If Ms Phillips has any further doubts on this point she want to address them to her local school mathematics teacher.

Derek BLADES

Louis, 4 March writes: "On child deaths [in Gaza]. Anybody have an idea of the age distribution of "child" casualties? I think children are defined as under 19. I would not think it unlikely that many 16,17 and 18 year old casualties were combatants in civilian clothing."
Unfortunately Louis that is something we will never know. The IDF excluded press and TV journalists from Gaza when they made their murderous attacks on the desperate population of that poor country. Did you ever ask yourself why? Was it – just a wild surmise on my part – to hide the evidence of their war crimes?

P.S. The standard international practice is to regard 15 as the end of childhood.

steve

I think these efforts at blocking the science day and at boycotting Israeli universities are counter-productive and wrongly single out Israel while ignoring countries with far worse human rights records. Having said that, to see Ms. Phillips use the word "pogrom" with respect to these campaigns is so over the top that it trivalizes real violence done to Jewish people in the past.

Louise H

Derek BLADES, yes, let's nail proportionality for you. Proportionality means doing what is necessary to get the job done. The Israelis needed to defend their people and they have done so.

Since you're so interested in proportionality, you will tell us what the Israelis have done to deserve this in Article 7 of the Hamas Charter, which reads: "O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!"
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP109206

And, moreover, you'll tell us where the equivalent statement is to be found in Israeli government literature.

Dimitry

Derek, not really.
The "children" are under age of 18. The IDF compiled a list of casualties by name. Out of 1200 identified, 300 were children under 15, people over 65 (I think, not sure here0 and women (although there were women combatants that tried to blow themselves up beside IDF soldiers). About 600 were identified by their group affiliation (Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad etc.) The remaining 300 are all men at the ages of the majority of the combatants (15-37 or something like that). It is estimated that 2/3 at least are combatants. So, yeah, Melanie is correct -- the vast majority killed were combatants.

Ida Symons

Thank you Melanie for speaking up for us. Whilst I am passionate about Israel and sooooo frustrated at all this unnecessary hatred towards Israel and the Jews, I am not eloquent enough to write in or phone in, as the presenters will just run rings around me. So THANK YOU for doing it on my behalf.

phil

Derek the blade ,one can only assume that journalists were not allowed in so as to exclude the likes of you from acting as a fifth column and also perpetrating untruths ,a skill that you demonstrate here regularly. I think they may also have miscalculated as some truthful ones could have negated the lies that have been told both then and since .The ethical news channels have reported the lies as lies ,a practice that is of course never used by you ,and so the many will place the views of the blade in an outhouse reserved especially for you .

MV

"Pogrom". Oh for goodness sake.
For someone who is regularly appalled by those who make Nazi comparisons to current events it seems particularly tasteless to compare this event to a "pogrom". Still, double-standards are nothing new here.

Yehuda

Melanie, it's been clear for years that the Jewish People in the dispersion of the exile finds itself in a predicament that is proceeding towards the proportions of 1930's European insanity-driven barbarism.
It's certainly vital constantly to raise awareness of this development,as you admirably do, but where are the brilliant Jewish minds who will propose strategies and tactics to combat this Judeophobic lynch-mob cum witch hunt hysteria and malice? It's obvious that evidence, facts, logic, reason and even self-interest will never move the Jew-haters, especially the ostensibly highly educated ones(Europeans have for centuries demonstrated that higher education and morality do not always go hand in hand.)
One obvious remedy is mass ascent to The Land of Israel, but what about those who, for one reason or another, are unable to achieve this?
Incidentally, to the legions of posters who will want to argue that it's all Israel's fault: don't waste your time. I've given up on you. You're the enemy whether or not your mother was Jewish.

Derek BLADES

Louise. You replied to me "Derek BLADES, yes, let's nail proportionality for you. Proportionality means doing what is necessary to get the job done. The Israelis needed to defend their people and they have done so."

But they have not done so. The rocket fire continues unabated. Violence just begets more violence.

Louise

I don't know what the Moderator has against me this morning (and last night). Twice I have made the point that that the 400 Guardian signatories (who, as good Guardianistas, probably oppose censorship in every other area) are practising a very ignoble form of censorship in seeking to prevent the public from viewing the achievements of Israeli scientists.
And twice I've made the point that I hope the academics among them do not, whether subconsciously or otherwise, penalise students who are known to be strong supporters of Israel- whether by marking down their grades or giving them lukewarm references. (I see nothing defamatory about this; I have made no accusations and named no names!).
And twice my comments (more fully and elegantly written than this!)have been discarded.

phil

Linda Smith--off thread but just a ref for you on the subject of the Gandhi remark by Richard Pearce -here you will find what he really said -hope it helps. regards phil

http://www.kamat.com/mmgandhi/mideast.htm

Original Tony

Mark 12:06 am...oh pleeeeze stop whining about the dead children in Gaza! Most of them died because your buddies used them as human shields and incase you have not noticed hundreds of thousands of kids died in Rwanda, Darfur and other recent wars! I have not heard a peep out of you with regard to those deaths.

Civilians die as collaterol damage in any war so get over it will you? I naturally say this with a heavy heart for the loss of innocents.

Dale Mills

I too, blinked when I read the statistic that "most" of those killed in the recent actions were terrorists. I think this is over-egging the pudding and a source would have helped.

George

Derek BLADES, there are two answers to your problem with proportionality. I'll give them both to you; please be so kind as to let us know which answer you prefer.
Answer No. 1: A proportionate response is a legal question, not a mathematical equation. A legal proportionate response to an attack is that which is needed to ensure that the attack does not recur. For example, if to stop rockets being fired from within a cluster of buildings, it is necessary to bomb those buildings and totally demolish them, then that is a porportionate response, regardless of whoever gets killed. By firing rockets from these buildings, they became a legitimate military target. Israel though does tend to give a warning that the building will be targeted, so as to reduce civilian casualties.
Answer No. 2: For every missile that Hamas randomly fires into Israel, Israel will randomly fire one back into Gaza. Perfect proportionality. However, please remember that while Israel has built bomb shelters and has a 15 second warning of incoming missiles, Hamas has chosen to use its money to buy more weapons and to build palatial government buildings. So the casualty rate on the Gazan side could be quite high.

George

Derek BLADES: Your reply to Louise:
"Louise. You replied to me "Derek BLADES, yes, let's nail proportionality for you. Proportionality means doing what is necessary to get the job done. The Israelis needed to defend their people and they have done so."

But they have not done so. The rocket fire continues unabated. Violence just begets more violence."

Hoisted by your own petard! If the rocket fire continues, the Israeli response obviously fell short of being proportionate and should be increased.

Original Tony

Phil 10:02 am...journalists were not allowed into gaza because A) They gave away Israeli military positions in the 2006 war, which cost lives.

B)Most western news channels hate Israel and twist the truth.

Israel knows that the 'palestinians' greatest weapon is the media with its distortion of facts and that's why they were kept out, not because they had anything to hide.

Louise H

"Violence just begets more violence."

No, Derek. Violent ideas beget violence. You know the sort of violent ideas I'm talking about. The ones that make you lose your tongue:

"O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!"

"Make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate."

eurabitopian

There is a very good reason why there is no boycott of scientists from islamic countries that, with monotonous regularity, slaughter their own people by the hundreds of thousands.

These countries don't have any scientists to boycott. Oh, except for A Q Khan and his Iranian nuclear colleagues.

Linda Smith

Phil, Just read the Gandhi article you posted for me. Seems Gandhi was as foolishly idealistic as Richard Pearce. Fascism cannot be fought with talk and prayers.

phil

Original Tony I had hoped I had made it plain -of course I agree with you ,but i do not spell everything out to the blade as he does not want to understand anyway -at least he has stopped the pretence of being a caring English gent .

robin lloyd

my understanding of the numbers killed in the gaza massacre are these : 1300 killed in total; 400 children and infants; fewer than 300 hamas combatants ( in fact, timothy butcher in the telegraph quoted an idf general who put the hamas dead at 150!) - so about 1000 of the 1300 gazan dead civilians. these numbers can be disputed, and are not, as far as the survival of israel is concerned, the principal difficulty - i think it is the images of dead children and infants on the mortuary floor of gaza hospital that have proved so very catastrophic for israel - world opinion as a direct response to just these images has moved decisively against israel, as it moved against apartheid south africa after sharpville - and i fear will have the same result.

Si, N

Staining Jerusalem: 'well we've managed on our own for 60 years'.

Er not quite - were it not for the massive political and financial support form America - and the turning of blind eyes in Europe, Israel would have been stuffed long ago - just remember that - idiot.

Jenny

"i think it is the images of dead children and infants on the mortuary floor of gaza hospital that have proved so very catastrophic for israel"

You don't say, Robin. We all know that, as do Hamas, which is why they committed the war crime of using children as human shields.

What kind of low-life deliberately uses children as a human shield?

One you can't trust.

Janet

Derek Blades..you must be a friend of George Laird..why don't you ask Hamas why the Red Cross isn't allowed into Gaza to see what condition the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is in after having spent nearly 3 years with that scum...do you know that the treatment accorded to arab terrorists in Israeli prisons is entirely different, their families are allowed to visit them..the worst of the worst are allowed to learn and eventually gain a Degree through the Open University, unfortunately even when released they go back to their old tricks..I doubt very much that Gilad Shalit has, at the moment, the good fortune to be studying..The Red Cross nor the United Nations couldn't give a damn..but then again we all know how many Israel haters there are amongst that lot...If anyone cares to discuss exactly what disproportionate is, the best experts would be the Israeli's..after all they exchange hundreds of terrorists for one soldier even if he is dead or alive..Derek Blades you are so out of touch with reality and truth..hamas use children of any age, they dress them up as terrorists with guns in their hands they have no value whatsoever for anyones life even their own people if their rules are not abided by..Save your sympathies for the civilian population of Gaza, they are living very well..once again let me remind you propaganda thrives in Gaza stop being so naive they are neither poor nor desperate..neither are they a country as you put it...

J. Galt

All these death statistics leave out a key detail. These deaths are often fake. It is well documented that the Palestinians stage these deaths. They re-use bodies for photographers and place civilians in harms way intentionally to create casualties. The truth is ugly. Islam has no regard for life that is not a Muslim, and only little regard for actual Muslims. It is acceptable to kill your own people if it furthers the cause of the dominance of Islam.

George Laird

Dear Phil.

Im sorry for being a windbag, I cant help it.

Yours Sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Louise

J. Galt, early in Operation Cast Lead, around the time when Mads Gilbert, the Marxist Norwegian doctor with an inveterate bias against Israel, was the media's favourite interviewee in Gaza, there was TV footage of tiny dead (or seemingly dead) Palestinian toddlers laid out prior to burial. There was a doll among them, also swaddled. Whether it was a toy belonging to one of the dead children, or whether it was meant to look like a baby's corpse and thus deceive the viewer, I do not know, but I have my suspicions. If the latter, the deception became apparent when the camera slowly panned over the bodies (i.e. instead of recording the scene from in front of them) - the fact that it was a plastic doll becoming all too apparent as the camera passed overhead.
In a similar piece of footage, a young man was seen with dead bodies of children; he seemed to be sobbing, and I assumed he was their father. But all at once another young man stepped into the picture, and positioned himself similarly. I therefore assumed that he was another grieving father - or perhaps an uncle of the children. I was not at all suspicious until I noticed that he looked up at the camera, and only when he was satisfied that it was trained on him did he make convulsive movements and simulate sobbing. I don't know whether the first young man was genuinely bereaved, but I believe at least part of that scene of mourning was faked for a gullible western public in order to further hatred of Israel.

phil

George Laird you could try-if we were boxers we would have been retired by the referee to save us from further punishment.I DO SUSPECT THIS IS FROM ONE OF YOUR IMPOSTERS THOUGH ,YOU HAVE NEVER SAID SORRY BEFORE

George

Trust sin to raise the level of debate...

stanley Jerusalem

Silicon Nitride - Your grasp of facts is equalled only by the quality of your orthography. Do you have anything constructive to add or are you simply masturbating at the sight of your name in lights?
Reality certainly plays no part in your contributions; just uncouth invective.Your ancestors may well have been Crusading Knights back in the 11th and 12th Centuries. Big on bluster but poor on intellect.

stanley Jerusalem

George - "Trust sin to raise the level of debate"

Is this a note of admiration? Good people everywhere will want to inveigh against perceived wrongdoing. Why do you appear surprised?
Perhaps you want to comment but fear to take sides for fear of ridicule?

George Laird

Dear Jose Garica

I am writing to complain and be pedantic about your shocking post.

The over use of Capital letters was a out and out disgrace as was the bad spelling of a foreign country and general bad spelling throughout.

As to your points; I will try to address them but please understand I am working through a bad written piece of dross.

“why does israel have the DUTY to care for non israelis?”

It is the duty of any government to have a duty of care for innocent people caught up in military actions that country has ongoing.

“why didnt the pregant woman went to egipt a few miles down the other way?”

When people have a medical problem do they bypass the nearest medical hospital?

No; they don’t, so talk sense.

“WHY ARENT YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT THE PERMANENT CLOSURE OF THE EGIPT BORDERS WITH GAZA?”

The reason the Egyptian border is closure is because the Egyptians are looking after their own self interest. I would imagine if they open the border the Israelis would possibly launch strikes at Egyptian soil.

“what is your campaign for human rights in glasgow done about the 1 million dead in sudan?”

What have you done?

“WHERE ARE THE THOUSANDS OF ACADEMICS BOYCOTING AID AND POLITICAL RELATIONS TO THE MURDEROUS SUDANES ISLAMIC TERRORISTS?”

What over people decide to do is their choice; they have that right.

“you know the answer”.

Do I? People make individual choices, no one forces them.

“cant blame the jews for that”.

Didn’t you mean to write Israelis?

“i cant hide my disgust at your double standards and smugness”.

I can’t hide my disgust at how badly written your piece is.

“CAMPAIGN FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN GLASGOW”.

Actually the title is The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University, not “in”.

“how pedantic !!”

Perhaps your piece would make more sense if you had more sense and a spell checker wouldn’t go a miss either.

Finally, sorry for being so pedantic but could you lose this Caps lock fetish you have acquired as it makes your feeble attempt at fake outrage rather crude.

Thank you in advance.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Original Tony

Louise 2:58 pm....I am sure a fair bit of the footage from Gaza was faked. For example, one scene showed how brave ambulance operators tried to recover a dead body in the street but could not do so because Israelis were supposedly firing at anyone who approached the corpse. One ambulance-man was "wounded" in the attempt but his acting was so poor it was laughable; there was none of the usual wailing that comes from their genuine, emotionally-charged injured.

In addition to this, the firing was purported to have come from beyond the corpse; ie. the corpse was between them and the Israelis, putting the Israelis at least 150 metres away. Loud gunfire issued forth to "prove" that the brave ambulance people were under attack.

What they forgot to take into account, however, is that you do not hear the primary charge of a rifle being fired if you are more than 100 metres from it, you only hear the "thwack" or "crack" of the bullet passing overhead, followed by a MUTED primary charge thump (weapon firing). Any military man will tell you this, as indeed I once was.

Therefore, WITHOUT a shadow of doubt, the gunmen doing the firing were standing behind the camera letting off dozens of rounds.

The Israelis are very good shots and I am sure more than one, fake wound (no blood visible between the man's fingers) would have occurred if it had been a real ambush. It was so pathetic that even my wife commented on it.

Paul Freeman

Derek BLADES

"Let's nail the proportionality nonsense once and for all."

Derek, I'm afraid your idea of proportionality, the idea shared apparently by most of the media, has nothing to do with the legal concept of proportionality as understood by the laws of war.

Under the laws of war, the term proportionality has a precise and strictly defined meaning. In any military engagement, it relates specifically to the relation between anticipated (enemy) civilian casualties and intended military gain. Before committing to action, battlefield commanders are required to make the judgment that any resulting civilian casualties are not DISPROPORTIONATE to the anticipated military benefit of the action. That is the only meaning the term has from a legal point of view. Any other view, such as yours, would not be recognized in a court of law.

In other words, proportionality in war has nothing to do with relative numbers of casualties, and certainly nothing to do with relative numbers of dead combatants. Like it or not, killing as many enemy combatants as possible has always been accepted as one of the legitimate aims of warfare.

But if you think for a moment, you will realise your view is not merely unworkable and absurd; from a moral standpoint its implications are obscene.

In practice your view would mean that, after inflicting losses on the enemy, the other side would be obliged to wait till its own casualties mounted to the same level before taking further military action.

This would clearly be ridiculous. It would also raise a number of problems.

How, for example, would you know the latest enemy casualty figures? You would have to rely on them giving you a truthful account on a matter where clearly they had everything to gain by deceiving you.

But even if you knew the number of enemy casualties, how would you go about ensuring your own matched them -- which you would need to do before you could continue? Should you perhaps send your soldiers into battle unarmed, deliberately, so they would get killed? Should you perhaps prevent your civilians from using bomb shelters so their casualty figures would rise?

Needless to say, your view of proportionality has never followed in the history of warfare. During WW2, Germany lost twenty times the civilians that Britain did. Do you or do historians castigate Britain for that? While there are certainly issues about specific military actions (eg the bombing of Dresden) precisely on the grounds of the legal concept of proportionality outlined above, does anyone say, for Britain's war overall to be legal or moral, it should have lost more civilians?

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that, however they may persuade themselves they are merely being humanitarian, those who advocate such a view of proportionality as yours to the Middle East conflict are really only seeking to delegitimize Israel's efforts to defend itself. No state could conduct, or has conducted, a war of self-defence abiding by such a notion of proportionality.

Since your view is customarily imposed only on Israel and on no other state, whether you intend it or not, whether you realise it or not, it's clearly a form of antisemitism.

George Laird

Dear phil

I am sure the cretin posting as me is just someone upset that they will never be a force, will never have something meaningful to say and knows that their "career" will be based on their tongue being permanently stuck on another person's hind parts.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

stanley Jerusalem

Dear phil -
Do I detect the faecal whiff of sycophancy?

George

Stanley,

I was attempting to be sarcastic. Obviously the sarcasm got stuck somewhere between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Not surprising considering the traffic at this time of day :-)

stanley Jerusalem

George OR George Laird -
Stick to the usual guano. It's more easily recognisable and less strain.

robion lloyd

the numbers for the gazan dead were issued by the reuters news agency using properly authorised death certificates as their single source. they are NOT hamas totals. all this idiotic talk of fake grief scenes, fake dead babies, babies used as human shields, all this general massacre-denial, is really so much deck-chair shifting as the ship goes down, in my opinion. it's barely believable, but just a few months ago those calling for the disestablishment of the jewish state could be dismissed as fringe loonies; the gaza massacre has shifted anti-zionism firmly into the mainstream of foreign policy debate: a perfectly respectable view, with the disestablishment of the south african apartheid state its obvious and quite persuasive precedent. i simply don't see from many of the comments on this page an appreciation of just how deep a pit israel is in.

Dixon

On Newsnight Ted turner was shown handing a BILLION Dollars of his own cash to the UN!

The accompanying interview confirmed the suspicions this engendered: yes, he IS an idiot.

Well, he married that Hanoi woman, so what can one expect?

Leslie

George Laird:
"The reason the Egyptian border is closure is because the Egyptians are looking after their own self interest. I would imagine if they open the border the Israelis would possibly launch strikes at Egyptian soil."

What a funny man you are,George.

J L Thomas

I saw something about The Jihadi Watch blog, it says the Fatah leader made a statement and said Iran should leave Palestinians along, he means the palestinian problem is theirs not anyone else and the Iranians should not interfere, i think this is good and it is about a time someone said something about Iran and other muslim countries who are creating extra problem for that part of the world, i am also glad it was said by a muslim Arab man

Just Louise (Louise that was)

Original Tony, yes, alot of fakery, included doctored images, has been exposed on Little Green Footballs and Honest Reporting over the years.

(Ladies and Gents, now that Louise H. has come aboard (I knew another Louise would join sooner or later) I'll call myself Just Louise from now on!

Groovy Times

The intellectual and moral powerhouse called SiN strikes again! But what he doesn't know is that in geopolitical terms the USA was ambivilant to Israel throughout the 1950's and into the 60's. Israel also tried to foster ties with the USSR and China at this time in an attempt to remain neutral during this early period of the cold war. So the first 3 wars Israel fought were without any significant US military backing. For example, the Israelis in the war of Independence bought hardware from communist Czechoslovakia, flying Messerschmits against British spitfires given by the Brits to the Egyptians. It is also basic historical knowledge that the USSR and her satellite states voted for the creation of Israel.
As for Europe, the geo-political realities of European dependence on Arab oil meant that by the 1973 war most governments were nervous about displaying any pro-Israel sympathies, and in 1967 European governments, far from coming to Israel's aid, only made plans to take in Jewish orphans should Nasser's plan to obliterate Israel have been successful. And of course, Israel remains technologically and militarily self-sufficient after being double-crossed over military hardware by both the French and British the 1970's
As tedious as it is to mention these basic facts, it seems necessary to draw attention to SiN's classic stupidity and expose his moral indignation and humanitarian concern for what it really is; a fig leaf to cover his blatant discrimination against the Jewish state. With or without American help, they'd kick your ass SiN, and there's nothing that winds you up more than the Jewish emergence from powerlessness is there SiN? Not even real genocide in any number of world-wide troublespots.
PS, I hope the moderator approves this, it's the last chance saloon for me otherwise!

phil

no I think they are trying to tell you that
George Laird

jose garcia

To George Laid

You cant argue any of the issues back so you have to talk about capitals and spelling.

How sad.

The fact that you have to point out about one single Palestinian woman rejected treatment in a world with millions dying at the hands of islamists, is biased, anti-Semitic and pathetic.

you and your pathetic organisation should concentrate on the real dramas and human rights issues in the world, instead of attacking the jews for refusing to be killed.

maybe you know if you started complaining about hamas , hizbollah and iran terrorism

the world would be a better place

but you cant do that cant you?

there is no money or status to be gained by attacking islamists

never mind you offend them and they might give you a fatwa or burn your university paper

so keep choosing the soft targets , the ones who actually have a democracy and free elections.

because you and your kind only see injustice in one direction

west

Mark

Original Tony
March 5th, 2009 11:23am:

1. 'Whining' about dead children - choice and revealing use of of language.

2. Hamas - not my buddies - couldn't be further from the truth as it happens - why make an assertion for which you have no evidence?

3. Ditto on Rwanda and Darfur - you don't know my views, feelings or on those subjects actions, so are in no position to comment.

4. You point about children as war collateral - well at least that's honest I suppose. My original point was that these deaths are denied, evaded, not faced up to on these threads. Anything to avoid facing up to them - Hamas used them all as human shields, we don't have to believe the numbers, the photos were faked, all aid agencies are antisemitic liars, some of the children were over 16 and probably Hamas fighters, children have also suffered terribly in Darfur and Rwanda so Gaza doesn't count ... this is the moral dishonesty which is so objectionable. But then - it was -oh, a couple of weeks ago. Well, that's ages, they're all dead and buried now so let's all 'get over it' eh?

andy gill

The left have to have someone or something to hate. Their poltical philosphy doesn't work unless they have a hate figure. The advantage of hating Israel is that you can do so, and still pretend not to be a racist.

Original Tony

Robion LLoyd...Israel will be around a long time after most other nations on Earth. Israel is not in a pit, the rest of humanity that stands against her is.

Be careful that you do not become an enemy of Israel, not because of her military might but because of the spiritual support offered her, I believe by God himself. It says clearly in the Bible that friends of Israel will be blessed and enemies will be cursed. You only have to look at a map of the world to see who is prosperous and who isn't and what their official attitude to Israel is. And dont tell me the Arabs/muslims are rich, outside of oil revenue they live in dust bowls.

phil

Jose Garcia- georgie does not have an organisation -it is his own indulgent appointment -I wrote to him in Spanish which no doubt he would not understand to show him how ignorant it was to criticise your English (which in fact is rather better than his)-maybe this thread does not print Spanish as it has got lost -you are dealing with a loco Jose ,AND I WILL APOLOGISE ON THE BRITS BEHALF FOR HIS IGNORANCE-well at least those that are true Brits -bueno suerte amigo y lo siento .

phil

stanley Jerusalem
March 5th, 2009 4:33pm

Dear phil -
Do I detect the faecal whiff of sycophancy.-----------

Stanley I admitted on another column to partaking of pork -george demonstrates how to turn it into chazerai-he does have his skills you know.

Marcella.

The 400 hysterical academics who started this peculiar denouncement ought to be the first lot to boycott Israeli products already in their possession. Start with their cell 'phone, work their way up to destroying the parts within their computers developed in Israel, and when they are in need of serious medical attention, by all means decline any life saving meds that could prolong their lives. That would be a good start.

Si, N

Groovy Times, '[t]he intellectual and moral powerhouse' says, '[w]ith or without American help, they'd kick your ass SiN'. Hilarious - I'd suggest that the pathetic wretch ought to grow up - but clearly his purpose in life is to chat shit on behalf of Israel.

At any rate, the point I directed at the Stain stands - Israel would be stuffed without American support.

FACT - Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.

FACT - America has provided Israel with $101 billion in aid since 1949.

FACT - Israel has spent $53 billion of American tax-payers cash on military aid.

FACT - the Memorandum of Understanding (Aug 2007) committed America to hand over $30 billion in military aid over the next decade to Israel.

FACT - there's one stipulation; Israel must spend 74 per cent on purchases of American military goods/services.

FACT - the stipulation is not a problem for a state that so excels in killing innocent people by the thousand.

FACT - any withdrawal of American military support would necessarily be preceded by a kicking-away of the political crutch. That would be a total disaster for Israel - and you know it - Idiot.

Derek BLADES

Paul Freeman (March 5th, 2009 4:15pm). Thank you for your courteous response to my earlier comment about proportionality. I found your explanation of proportionality according to the "laws of war” very helpful. I assume that the laws you are referring to come from a Geneva Convention and I also assume that you have interpreted them correctly. The problem, however, is that no-one in their right mind would accept that killing over a thousand Gazans, mostly non-combatants, and the deliberate destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Gaza is a proportionate response to the relatively small loss of life and limited damage to buildings from Hamas rocket fire. The "laws of war" definition you have given us may be useful as a defence ploy for IDF war criminals if they appear before an international court, but most us do not base our morality on legal niceties.
Tell me honestly Paul. Do you think the Israeli response was "proportional" in any meaningful sense of that word?

Jenny

Derek BLADES: 'Do you think the Israeli response was "proportional" in any meaningful sense of that word?'

Yes, because if someone is hell-bent on killing you (as the Hamas charter is on killing Jews - "O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!") then you have a right to defend yourself.

Karl Sabbagh

My cup runneth over with pleasure. At last I have been attacked by Meanie [sic] Phillips in a hate-fest of hysteria about a piece I wrote in the British Medical Journal. ‘Hate-fest’ is her word for my article, by the way, although it’s difficult to see how it can be applied to my sober assessment of the validity and intention of Zionist pressure, based on statistical analysis of a 1000 emails.
I suppose I did write hate-infested sentences like the following:
It seems likely that most of the hostile emails resulted from a request from HonestReporting…
The level of argument with the issues raised in Summerfield’s article was low…
These campaigns, and similar campaigns launched against publications that print material critical of Israel, seem fundamentally different from the normal discourse between readers and the publications they read…
These are clearly far more hate infested than the following quotes from Phillips own article (asterisks highlight words which can under no circumstances be considered hate-festy):
the Independent *cranked up* a front-page splash
the 400 or so individuals who signed a letter to the Guardian last month *screeching* about …
Such *venom* is particularly egregious
These are actually scientists for *extermination*. They want Israel *obliterated*…
orchestrated campaign of *lies* about Israel designed to soften up the high-minded for *genocide*…
Dear Meanie, why don’t you give up and admit that you’re actually putting informed Zionists to shame by the twaddle you write and the way you write it. At least Jonathan Freedland’s piece in the BMJ was written in clear, occasionally eloquent, English rather than the witch-cackle in your articles.

Jenny

Karl Sickbag, many of the words that you put asterisks around were written because of this "the indiscriminate slaughter and attempted annihilation of all the infrastructure of organised society in Gaza".

That is indeed pure venom. There was no indiscriminate slaughter or an attempt to destroy the infrastructure of Gaza. The Israelis went out of their way to try not to hit the human shields forced into that role by Hamas. That made the military action very difficult but it never once ammounted to "indiscriminate slaughter".

Such a suggestion is nothing less than wicked, spiteful venom.

Linda Smith

Derek Blades (7 March 4:29am) Re proportionality. Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon are Iran's proxies. Soon-to-be-nuclear Islamic fundamental Iran has signalled its intention to wipe Israel off the map. Israel will not tolerate a nuclear Iran. Nor does Israel trust the US to protect it. Jews have learned from history that they stand alone, There is a limited window of opportunity for Israel to act, probably before the end of this year. Israel's action in Gaza put a warning shot across Iran's bows.

Gavin

Derek BLADES: 'Do you think the Israeli response was "proportional" in any meaningful sense of that word?'
Of course it was, you're well out of your depth there. It may not have been proportional in your newly invented sense, but by real definitions it certainly was. As a sovereign state Israel has the right to defend itself in a manner proportionate to the threat. The threat is the ruling power in Gaza launching armed attacks on Israeli territory and citizens. Any proportionality in this context is about the level of force required to stop the attacks. Prior damage by Hamas has nothing to do with 'proportional', the use of the word there is vacuous babble with no connection to reality, morality or laws. This absurd notion that Israels 'response' is only permitted to match the deaths & damage caused by Hamas is material for a new Monthy Python movie. The corollary to that argument is that Israel cannot defend itself if their actions will result in more than an equivalence of harm. Never in recorded history has any state been bound by such a distorted interpetation of 'proportionate', and one has to ask why it is only the Jews who are expected to tolerate armed attacks on their sovereign territory while also losing the right to take whatever action is necessary to put a halt to them. No country has EVER been so restricted, not in the entire history of the world. So why are people inventing new rules just for the Jews?

phil

Karl Sabbagh
March 7th, 2009 10:41am

"My cup runneth over with pleasure. At last I have been attacked by Meanie [sic] Phillips in a hate-fest of hysteria about a piece I wrote in the British Medical Journal. "

Maybe I could turn you delirious with delight by telling you how disgusting it is to hear the BMJ being used for your warped political interpretations ,rather than in the pursuit of medical advancement ,for which Israel is rightly famous .Will it feel like having your tummy tickled if I were allowed to say you are a perfect twit -I do like to be kind .

Thayne

For those so obsessed with their mathematical proportionality, where were they when the 6 million were murdered by the nazis? By this reckoning, Israel still has a long way to go. (FOr the dim-witted, this parenthetical is to let you know that I am trying to show how ridiculous the proportionality argument is. Wars were never intended to be "fair", silly.)

robion lloyd

thayne ..a swift glance into any war-history text-book will be sufficient to convince you the GERMANS were responsible for the genocide of jews; the palestenian arabs were utterly blameless. indeed, the arab peoples had no history of anti-jewish sentiment prior to the Dispossession.

Groovy Times

SiN, you bore us yet again with facts that we already know, like a deranged evangelical preaching to a bunch of Zionists beyond redemption, we are well aware of Israel's political and economic reality but our - or at least my obstinate idiocy - is really a reflection of your incomprehension that I won't subscribe to your warped obsession that the Jewish state of Israel is the embodiment of evil and iniquity. We get the crass point that you are again making SiN - that Israel is an artificial and illegitimate entity created by diobolical forces that could never survive on a level playing field.
It is such a one-dimensional, and second-rate perspective of modern Jewish history that you merely expose your bigotry in every diatribe that you write on this site, but don't get me wrong SiN, I enjoy the insults you hurl around in that self-righteous but impotent rage of yours, and the funniest thing of all is that you do it without any sense of irony.

phil

robin lloyd -would this help you ---

An early manifestation of the National revolt was the Palestinian general strike which lasted from April to October 1936.

The dissent was influenced by the Qassamite rebellion following the killing of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam in 1935 as well as the declaration by Hajj Mohammad Amin al-Husayni of 16 May 1930 as 'Palestine Day' and calling for a General Strike on this day, following the 1929 Buraq (Western Wall) Uprising.

The strike began in Nablus and soon other committees in Haifa, Jenin, Tulkarm and Jerusalem were formed to join the protest. The demands of the strike were threefold: an end to Jewish immigration, a prohibition of land sales to Jews, and national independence.

While the strike was initially organised by workers and local committees, soon religious leaders and families were involved to help co-ordination although their motivation was not fuelled by religious reasons. This led to the formation on 25 April 1936 of the Arab Higher Committee or HAC.

robin lloyd

phil - but i think you confirm my point. palestinians had at this time understandable anxieties about jewish immigration but the utterly irrational, visceral, murderous hatred of jews is very much a european phenomenon; i'm sure this very distinctive anti-semitism is unknown in the arab world - or among our own asian-muslim population.

phil

robin lloyd did you forget the grand mufti went to Berlin to spend the war with hitler -he didnt go for ther cakes !

phil

Karl Sabbagh seems you have disappeared into your own s-ck bag .can,t deal with logic ? you are just a despicable part of a wonderful world that I grew up in ,and why the BMJ tolerates you is truly astounding -You are a bumptious piece, so I know you will read this -enjoy your tea !

Linda Smith

robin lloyd: "i'm sure this very distinctive anti-semitism is unknown in the arab world - or among our own asian-muslim population."

Have you not read the large number of factual comments on these threads which detail the antisemitism in the Koran?

Many of these informative comments detail the virulently antisemitic outpourings by Muslim clerics which are available to view on Youtube.

Linda Smith

robin lloyd: you posted "..palestinians had at this time understandable anxieties about jewish immigration.."

Why do you privilege the rights of Palestinian Arabs above the rights of Palestinian Jews? Why should Palestinian Jews not have had "understandable anxieties" about Arab immigration? The British allowed more Arabs to immigrate into the Mandate than Jews.

Are you not aware that Jews had ALWAYS lived in the part of the Ottoman empire that subsequently became the British Mandate of Palestine. These Jews were know as Palestinian Jews. The Palestinian Arabs objected to being called "Palestinians".

Linda Smith

robin llloyd: you posted "..the arab peoples had no history of anti-jewish sentiment prior to the Dispossession."

I suggest you read the details of the Partition Plan under UN Resolution 181 of 29 November 1948 available on line. There was no "Dispossession". The Partition Plan provided for an Arab State and a Jewish State (Jerusalem international). 20% of the population of Israel is Arab. Were they dispossessed? The others left of their own free will, some out of fear and many because their Arab brethren had warned them to get out of the way while they massacred the Jews. It is on record that the Mayor of Jaffa begged the Arab residents to stay in 1948.

Linda Smith

Just noticed typo in my post 5:24pm - should read "29 November 1947" not "1948"