More of the same old, same old

Andre

Obama is fast becoming a busted flush. I think the West will wise up to the intolerance of the Palestinian leadership just as it is, albeit belatedly, to the tragedy of Iran. Dare we hope?

Alan Stoddart

2007

"Shooting at your brother is forbidden. Raising rifles against the occupation is our legitimate right, but raising guns against each other is forbidden. We should put our internal fighting aside and raise our rifles only against the Israeli occupation," said Abbas in a speech in Ramallah in 2007.

and in case you are not sure what moderate Muslims think here is a representative Fatwa from Qaradawi, friend of Livingstone & Co:

'First of all, due to the colonialist, occupational, racist, and [plundering] nature of Israeli society, it is, in fact, a military society. Anyone past childhood, man or woman, is drafted into the Israeli army. Every Israeli is a solider in the army, either in practical terms or because he is a reservist soldier who can be summoned at any time for war. This fact needs no proof. Those they call 'civilians' are in effect 'soldiers' in the army of the sons of Zion.
... Israeli society has a unique trait that makes it different from the other human societies, and that is that as far as the people of Palestine are concerned, it is a 'society of invaders' who came from outside the region - from Russia or America, from Europe or from the lands of the Orient - to occupy Palestine and settle in it..."
"Those who are invaded have the right to fight the invaders with all means at their disposal in order to remove [the invaders] from their homes and send them back to the homes from whence they came ... This is a Jihad of necessity, as the clerics call it, and not Jihad of choice... Even if an innocent child is killed as a result of this Jihad - it was not intended, but rather due to the necessities of the war... Even with the passage of time, these [Israeli] so-called 'civilians' do not stop being invaders, evil, tyrants, and oppressors... It has been determined by Islamic law that the blood and property of people of Dar Al-Harb [the Domain of Disbelief where the battle for the domination of Islam should be waged] is not protected. Because they fight against and are hostile towards the Muslims, they annulled the protection of his blood and his property... in modern war, all of society, with all its classes and ethnic groups, is mobilized to participate in the war, to aid its continuation, and to provide it with the material and human fuel required for it to assure the victory of the state fighting its enemies. Every citizen in society must take upon himself a role in the effort to provide for the battle. The entire domestic front, including professionals, laborers, and industrialists, stands behind the fighting army, even if it does not bear arms. Therefore the experts say that the Zionist entity, in truth, is one army.

Linda Smith

The Fatah Charter calling for Israel's destruction is still valid and still appears on the Fatah web site: Charter, Article 8: "The Israeli existence in Palestine is a Zionist invasion with a colonial expansive base, and it is a natural ally to colonialism and international imperialism." Charter, Article 19: "Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab People's armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated."

1 July 2009 Palestinian Media Watch
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=640

Yehuda

The "moderate" label was attached to Fatah by three groups: the wishful thinkers, like Yitzhak Rabin, who hoped to make it a self-fulfilling slogan; the anti-Zionist Westerners, who saw it as a potential Trojan horse against Israel, and the people who never bothered to learn that the PLO has never rescinded its charter, which, like the Hamas charter, wants Israel destroyed.
The PLO went through some motions to mislead the world that it was "moderate", but has not, to this day, taken the final procedural step which would be necessary, according to its rules, to rescind the genocidal clause.

In the Wilderness in America

The more Obama appeases the terrorists, the more they whine and demand and kill. We are living in the Orwellian world of 1984 where appeasement is considered "diplomacy" and concessions are called "peace initiatives." But remember what Orwell warned us about, that "totalitarianism is a boot on a human face--forever."

If Obama continues to lick the boots of these totalitarian dictators and terrorists, they will hate him even more than they hate him now, and they will press the boot harded on his face and the face of the civilization.

dmgold

Any Israeli leader that attempts to play the game with smoke amd mirrors will quickly find themselves out of office.
Israeli Jews read and listen to what the Arabs are really saying and not the sanitised crap pushed by the western media and televsion. When Fatah praises terrorists as heroes when fatah reaffirms its charter calling for the absolute elimination of the zionist entity in all of the holyland, we listen and we see no difference between this lot of Arabs and Arafat.
The Israelis answer will be no to Obamas narrative driven and anti Jew BS

Mackay

Describing Fatah as moderates might be labelled the Poggi Gambit after the Jesuit priest, V Poggi, who argued that it is better to praise Islam's tolerance,etc., rather than to highlight realtime events and statements which would risk aggravating fanatical tendencies.

flabslab

Islamo-fascist politics as usual then.

Hey I've got a good idea. Let's give them yet another state to turn into yet another disfunctional terror-breeding hell on earth.

Afterall, they seem to like it that way. So, what could go wrong?

Paul Freeman

Congratulations to Fatah. By showing their true face they've given Bibi just what he needed with the Americans.

Augustus

These Arab internal power struggles are not about who will control a designated Palestinian area, or who will manage any form of long-term peace. They are all about who will lead their determined struggle and a further intifada against Israel.

John Thomas

Respondent "In the Wilderness in America" suggests Omama is an appeaser - no doubt this explains why on taking office he removed the bust of Winston Churchill from his White house office - after all, when you're busy planning appeasement, you don't want the greatest opponent of appeasement in history staring down at you.

Alex Bensky

Linda Smith: You have missed the point. The Palestinians said a few years ago that they were going to declare those clauses non-operative. Having done so, they have since been lauded by western diplomats and media for abandoning their policy of wiping out Israel.

Churlish people like me point out that not only have they never actually made that declaration, but Palestinian leaders assure their followers in Arabic that they are never going to do so. Meanwhile, when you bring up those clauses you're told that it's old hat, that the Palestinians are ready for peace.

And Melanie, you are forgetting that Barack Hussein Obama (that's how he refers to himself when he's overseas but using the full name here in the US is racist) is uniquely endowed by his charisma to overcome ancient prejudices, active hatreds, and differences of all kinds.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

If the muslims went to go back the 7th century, let us all go back the 1st century because it is the best way to fight against terrorism!

Worried

@Alex Bensky: If using his full name in the US is racist, why is Hillary Rodham Clinton acceptable that side of the Atlantic? (I am of course being somewhat sarcastic here and your point is well taken!)

HarleyDavidson

Here are the harsh facts. Until and unless Israel stands up for itself it deserves everything coming its way.

Iran isn't afraid of the US or the EU - its the other way actually - its the US and the EU who is afraid of upsetting them. There's a lesson to be learned here.

Until Israel kicks out the BBC and all the scum sucking NGOs out of its territory exactly as does Muslims states when displeased, the very folks who attack them on a daily basis, then Israel deserves everything coming their way.

Until Israel tell the US and the EU to buzz off in no uncertain terms exactly as does the Muslim states when their own interests are their priority Israel better learn to shut their mouths and do exactly what their US and EU masters tell them to do.

The harsh reality - Israel don't have the courage to stand up for themselves and by God it shows. Anyone see or hear of Bibi lately?

Fatah understands exactly what I write - why doesn't the Israelis? Or Bibi?

Wm. Hazlitt

Margaret Muller-Johansson, I'm glad I've caught you. There's something I wanted to ask you. First, however, could you explain "let us all go back the 1st century because it is the best way to fight against terrorism!" I'm afraid I don't get it.

The other thing was how atheism turns people into walls. I just couldn't get that one either.

Carlos Perera

Many responders to this and other recent posts on the same theme by Ms. Phillips refer to President Obama as an appeaser (or some variant thereof), the implication being that, while he truly seeks what is best for the U. S. and its allies, he is doing so in a misguided, pusillanimous, and counterproductive way, rather like Chamberlain in 1938. Yet, whatever his faults--he was weak and mistaken, certainly--no sane student of history would call Chamberlain a Nazi sympathizer.

I fear that Obama's behavior in international affairs might not have so benign an explanation. Even a superficial reading of his first (pre-Presidential campaign) autobiography, _Dreams from My Father_, leaves the reader with the impression that here is a man who feels strongly that his country in particular and Western civilization in general are the root of all evil. His pre-Presidential campaign associations, with the likes of unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and anti-white bigot the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, tend to confirm that impression.

If we accept that a corollary of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is "The friend of my enemy is my enemy," then Obama's treatment not just of Israel but of other countries that have sided with U. S. interests in the recent past--e. g., Colombia, Honduras, the nations of post-Soviet Eastern Europe--becomes explicable. Israel, of course, has the double liability of being not just an ally of the U. S., but also a potent symbol of the vigor of Western civilization, in contrast to the backwardness of Islamic civilization.

If Obama were simply an appeaser, he might prove educable. After all, even Chamberlain saw the light in September 1939; he, not Churchill, took Britain to war against the Nazis at that point, and one cannot begin to conceive that he might have secretly rooted for Hitler to win. Obama, however, seems to me to be someone who instinctively would side against Israel, or any other traditional friend of the U. S., in a struggle against a non-Western enemy, especially if the struggle could be framed as one between "whites" and "people of color." And, somewhat irrationally, this is just the way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is framed by many on the extreme political left (to which Obama definitely belongs, albeit with a well-tailored, Dale Carnegie style).

Unless the Democrats' hold on Congress can be at least attenuated in next year's elections, thus providing a check to Obama's drive to remake U. S. foreign policy according to the precepts of the radical left, Israel's prospects of survival are bleak indeed.

shim

We must kill or be killed.

Fatah leaders, like Hamas leaders, must be targeted and assassinated now, while we still have time, before the jew hating obama makes even more trouble for us.

Melanie we are thankful that you are able so strongly to champion our cause.

Linda Smith

Alex Bensky (7 Aug 1:22pm) No, I have not missed the point. You have. The PA talk with forked tongue.

The PA's maps, with the PA flag and the word "Palestine" in English at the top of their Maps, do not acknowledge Israel's existence. Such a map also appears as an official Fatah symbol under guns and under the PLO flag.

When this symbol was created it had only one meaning - that Fatah would destroy Israel through violence. This map is not merely a historical symbol. Today Fatah promotes this symbol and it appears no fewer than 11 times on the official Fatah website home page.

Fatah's charter, calling for Israel's destruction, is still valid and still appears on Fatah's website. Palestinian Media Watch monitors and reports on the PA's media output. This is an excerpt from the bulletin dated 7 August 2009:

'Last week Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus made a presentation in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, stressing the continued rejection of the basic principles of peace by the Palestinian Authority in its Arabic media. Mr. Marcus focused on the Palestinian Authority's continued support for violence, terror and terror glorification, as expressed by numerous Fatah leaders and the PA media in anticipation of the Fatah Sixth General Conference.

Following the presentation lIleana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ranking Republican on the committee, released a statement calling on the US to make demands of the Fatah Party at the current Fatah Sixth General Conference, and that US aid to the PA should be conditional upon fulfillment of these meaningful steps towards peace:

"The U.S. should demand that Abu Mazen and Fatah reform their charter, renounce and combat violent extremism, stop using Israel-free maps, and recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
"If they do not, the U.S. should condition assistance to the PA on such meaningful steps to embrace a real and lasting peace with Israel." .'
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1236

Augustus

The lack of peace between Israel and the Arabs does not stem directly from the existence
of specific conflicts between the sides, but from the Arab states refusal to recognize the legal regime that international law had established; since it runs counter to Muslim law. Hence their war against Israel has always been viewed normative
action, even if it contradicted
their UN Charter obligations. That is also why they never ascribed any importance to the series of agreements which they signed with Israel since its establishment.

The ongoing threat to Israel's existence by the Arabs was manifestly illegal from an international legal perspective.
The state of Israel was a legally established entity on the basis of General Assembly and League of Nations resolutions, and of all the norms of international law. It has a perfect right to exist irrespective of any Arab unwillingness to recognize it.
Israel has been forced to struggle for its existence because, since its establishment the UN lacked the capacity to enforce international law mainly as a result of the parallel emergence of the Cold War. The Arab states use of force in their efforts to destroy Israel was a gross violation of international law, and showed just how impotent it was throughout the period. There could be no greater disparity between the Arabs attitude to international law and that of Israel - and before its establishment, that of political
Zionism. Zionisim was the only political movement of the 20th century that tried to base its existence not on the use of force, but on international law principles. For thousands of years Jewish people lived outside political history and cultivated the recognition of the supremacy of spiritual and moral values over force. Even the institutionalized mass murder of six million Jews did not succeed in uprooting this glorious heritage. From this perspective, the Jewish people are a paragon and a model of the
end of history's peaceful coming, while the world surrounding them is still living the history of force in all its fierceness.

By creating the state of Israel,
the Zionist purpose was to build a dam against the murderous modern-day 20th century violence, and for which they exacted an enormous price.
It transformed the Jews, reluctantly and against their nature, into something akin to
particpants in the international power game. The Jewish national revival confronted them with an almost
irresolvable dilemma: How to preserve their lives by all means without losing their souls. Resorting to force in order to secure Israel's establishment, was nothing but a legitimate act of defence in the face of the impotence of international law.

Only the Israeli side comes to the discussions about the future of relations between it and its neighbours with integrity and clean hands, whereas the Palestinians not only have blood-stained hands, but even an unclean heart. The Palestinian side only sets forth its claims after the frustration of its hope of drowning Israel in blood. Time and again it has risen up to destroy Israel, and only after it became clear that it could not do so by force did it begin seeking to shrink Israel down by quoting international law. But right cannot grow from injustice. He who has sinned must not be rewarded. The return to Zion was effectively part of a process of recreating all of human civilization in the spirit of the prophets of Israel: "That Torah shall go forth from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem." An independent nation in its independent land, destined to redeem history by means of justice - justice in society and
justice in political life.

logdon

The inestimable Phyllis Chesler tells it today. The anguish is clear and palpable.

I can add not one jot more.

August 7th, 2009 1:12 pm
Stories That Matter Since Israel Is Still Being Demonized

A Jew Remembers Her Escape From Nazi Germany.

I have not been writing about Israel and the Jews as often as I’ve done in the past. Why? For starters: The information is in, it keeps coming in, it’s not good, it keeps getting worse, it is simply too painful to keep pointing it out, again and again, without being able to make much of a difference.

No, I am not talking about Israel’s capacity to defend itself militarily or about the likelihood that Iran’s nuclear and imperialist ambitions might lead to a new kind of alliance between Israel and the Arab Middle Eastern states. I am certainly not referring to Israel’s capacity to achieve miracles in terms of medicine, science, and business.

Here’s what I’m talking about. Israel’s demonization is just about complete. It is a done deal. No matter where one turns, no matter what else the subject might be, the real subject is always Evil Israel, the nation that allegedly killed the arch-fiend Palestinian terrorist, Yasir Arafat, (this comical accusation was just made yesterday) the iconic Mohammed al-Dura, the pro-Palestinian unwitting shahida, Rachel Corrie, and, for that matter, the entire Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank. After all, that’s what genocide does and Israel has constantly been accused of commiting
a Nazi-like genocide, “ethnic cleansing,” etc. And yes, Israel is also evicting Arabs who pay their rent in East Jerusalem.

These are all Big Lies—but they are devoutly believed by western poets, playwrights, academics, UN officials, European officials, American state department and cabinet appointees, human rights activists, so-called progressives, including feminists, including Israeli feminist leftists. All say that Israel (not Sudan, not Iran) must be boycotted, further cut down to size, forced, at best, to live with low-level war victories from now until eternity.

For God’s sake: President Obama is giving the infamous Mary “Durban” Robinson the Medal of Freedom.

And just yesterday, Code Pink persuaded Oxfam to drop an actress from their commercials because she also stars in commercials for an Israeli beauty product company.

I’ve been writing about all this since early 2001. Maybe I’m suffering from battle fatigue. In any event, maybe I just can’t bear to write about Israel today…. but allow me to share a conversation I had with a Jewish woman who escaped Hitler. Somehow, such stories seem important, somehow the individual matters, the individual details matter: We can grasp them, relate to them. The complex political analyses do not always touch our hearts in the same way.

Last night, I had dinner with my dear friend, Ruth Jody, someone I’ve
known for more than forty years. Ruth is a “tough” woman: Fiercely independent, always on the go, formerly a champion gymnast who, to this day, although she is in her mid- eighties, swims and exercises daily. She never complains about her life, no matter what. She keeps making new friends, studying new languages, attending concerts and dance recitals, insisting that she has already seen every opera “ten times ” and there are so few movies “worthy of us” today. She is so German-Jewish.

Ruth rarely talks about how she got out of Hitler’s Germany.

Over the years, she has shared information with me only in little bits and pieces. Once, when she celebrated the Sabbath at my home, she suddenly told me that her grandparents had been Orthodox Jews who had written “the most heartbreaking letters” to her mother before they were carted off to be murdered. “Such dignified people, starving, shivering, selling off one piece of furniture after the other for the price of a meal.”

Ruth’s stepfather was a well-known violinist and concertmaster who landed a position at the Metropolitan Opera House. Ruth has often regaled me with gossipy tales about her teenage life backstage at the Met, where the leading tenors of the day routinely “hit on” her when she was a delicious, delightful, flirtatious teenager.

Last night, Ruth was different. This20time, almost as soon as she sat down, she began talking about how noisy and rude, how ungovernable, the German Jewish girls were when they first came to America and became students at Julia Richman High School in the 1940s.

“We kept talking to each in other and laughing in class. No matter what the teacher said, we didn’t listen to her. We were terrible brats. Actually, we were uncivilized. How else could we behave after what we’d been through?”

Then, Ruth switched tone. “I remember the night we left. It was a cold pre-dawn morning in February. But we’d been frozen for a long time. They’d fired the Jewish teachers, then they closed the Jewish schools, then they demolished the schools. We were walking around in a complete state of shock. We did not know what was coming next, when the next blow would fall.”

“Then, after my stepfather arranged for passage on a boat to England, I remember we crept down the stairs. We felt the eyes that were watching us through their peepholes, the eyes of all our neighbors, just waiting for us to leave so that they could come in and ransack our apartment. Of course, we had to leave everything behind. I had a self-portrait that Chaliapin had done for me and signed. I don’t understand why I didn’t take it. As I said, we were in shock, not thinking.”

Ruth does not look “Jewish.
” She still has red-blonde hair and blue eyes as did her stepfather, who was not a Jew. He was once the concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic and on his way to America he was given the task of carrying a Stradivarius out for money; it was meant for a violinist who had already made it to the New World.

“We got to Hamburg where the boat was docked. We were very hungry. But we were afraid to go into any restaurant. They all had signs that Jews were forbidden to eat there. But finally, hunger won out. We took our chances and walked into a hotel restaurant. Well, we looked Aryan enough for them and they fed us.”

They risked death for a meal.

“In Hamburg, we were also told to strip naked by a female Nazi official who herself went through every seam in all our clothing. She wanted to make sure that we had no jewels or money sewed into our clothes. If we did, she might get to keep it and we’d be killed.”

Imagine standing there naked in front of a fully clothed Nazi bureaucrat, in front of your own family.

Ruth went to England for a year, her parents went to the United States. “The Brits were very kind to me. They even helped me rescue an aunt. Their neighbors physically went and got my aunt’s children and brought them back to England.”

Okay, let’s hear if for these brave and compassionate Brits.

Ruth
continued. “Every Jew who came here had a job the day after we got off the boat. None of us wanted to accept charity or welfare. We took whatever kind of work we could find. Cleaning. Working as waiters. Sewing. My mother started an exercise class the day after she came. God knows how she found her first pupils.”

Ruth got out and never looked back. Only now, in her eighties, is she beginning to recall the details. We live at a time when other Jews are also “getting out” of Europe. This makes me very sad, a bit frightened too.

For example, last week, I unexpectedly bumped into some very sweet French Jews with whom I’ve had the pleasure of dining; actually, they are now ex-French Jews. They left France forever after the “troubles” became far too troubling for them. Now, they live in New York City: A grandfather, two adult sons, a daughter-in-law, grandchildren. They are making a new life here. And, of course, I’ve written before about my friend and comrade-in-arms, Pierre Rehov, who has also left France for good.

Are the Jews on the move again? How many will go to Israel, how many to North America? I hope that it is not too late for Europe to take a stand, to turn around, to remain “European.”

What am I saying? Just like the Islamic world, “Europe,” has had a long history of Jew-hatred and Jew-persecutio
n. It still remains a continent that matters to me.

May God watch over us and protect us. I am not sure that Israel can count on the American Marines right now, not with Samantha (”Let’s invade Israel”) Power in office.

John Birch

So if Obama is an "appeaser" how do you explain his administration's escalation of drone attacks in Pakistan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban and the deployment of more U.S. troops and resources into Afghanistan?

Derek BLADES

Augustus, 8 August, ends an exceptionally long-winded piece with the chilling words "The return to Zion was effectively part of a process of recreating all of human civilization in the spirit of the prophets of Israel”

As a paid-up member of "human civilisation” let me assure Augustus that I have no desire whatsoever to be recreated in the spirit of the prophets of Israel.

Several of the prophets seem to have been mentally deranged and almost all have been mistranslated over the years so that no-one really knows what the poor fellows were getting at. Let’s focus on the world as it is today and more specifically on the injustices committed on a daily basis by the government of Israel on the Palestinians living in the occupied territories. That is the real issue. Waffle about Zion and ancient prophets leads nowhere.

George

No, Derek Blades, that is not the real issue. The real issue is when the Palestinians (both the "moderates" of Fatah and the "extremists" of Hamas) are going to realise that Israel is here to stay and change their charters/constitutions (or however else you would describe their defining documents) to cease to call for the total destruction of Israel. Until that day occurs, there is absolutely no point whatsoever in any Israeli government siting down to negotiate anything with anybody. The sooner the rest of the world wakes up to this and starts to put pressure on the real obstacle to peace, the sooner the Palestinian people will have the peace and economic progress that they deserve.

Noah Aaron Bashi

Hamas+Palestine=no peace
Fatah+palestine=peace? not really
It is shame some people and some countries don't believe peace because it is not their culture or their nature

Augustus

@ Derek BLADES

In 1977 Zoher Mossein, head of the PLO Bureau of Military Operations declared: "There is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians and Lebanese; we are all members of a single nation. Solely for political reasons are we careful to stress our identity as Palestinians, since a seperate state of Palestine would be an extra weapon in Arab hands to fight Zionism with. Yes, we do call for a Palestinian state for tactical reasons. Such a state would be a new means to continuing the battle against Zionism."

So, even after evidence like this that Palestinians are not simply resisting an occupation,
but have always been masking their true goal of eliminating any place for Jews in the Middle East, you Henry, harp on about daily Israeli injustices, and choose the Palestinian Arabs
amongst all the stateless people of the world with which to share solidarity, no matter what methods they use to achieve their strategy. Do you honestly really want to see Jews in the Middle East reduced to a persecuted minority within a vast Arab world?

Augustus

Sorry, not Henry, I meant Derek.

George

Derek Blades,

I am personally insulted that you choose to refer to the prophets of my religion as "mentally deranged". I would appreciate a full retraction and apology.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

Yeah, Derek Blades, how come you talk bad about the Ruah or the spirits of the prophets of Israel? you should try to apologize

Drakken

It is amazing that the Trans-Jordainans speak to the West in english and say peace, when speaking to their Arab brethren they say war, so who are you going to believe? Them? or your lying eyes! Believe not what they say, but what they do.

Derek BLADES

Thank you Augustus (9 July) for putting me straight on the PLO’s true motivation in asking for a Palestinian state. I am sure that what Zoher Mossein, head of the PLO Bureau of Military Operations, said about the Palestinian state as first step towards the destruction of Israel remains official PLO policy. You have convinced of the wicked duplicity of the Palestinians. Of course some limp-wristed lefties may object that what Zoher Mossein had to say in 1977 no longer represents the PLO position thirty years later. But Augustus and I know better. The leopard cannot change its spots. Others of the limp-wristed persuasion may argue that Zoher Mossein was a military man and never represented the thinking of the political wing of the PLO. Let them! We know there is no distinction between the military and political sides. Both are united in their determination to rid Palestine of Jews.

George

Derek Blades,

Unfortunately for you, the leopard has indeed not changed its spots. Read the reports of this past weeks Fatah General Assembly that took place in Bethlehem.
Oh and by the way, I'm still waiting for your apology.

Derek BLADES

George, August 11th, reminds me that he is still waiting for an apology because I said that some biblical prophets were mentally deranged. Margaret Muller-Johansson made a similar request. Here goes folks.

Exhibit 1) Ezekiel claimed God told him to lie on his left side for 390 days and then on his right side for another 40 days.

Exhibit 2) The same prophet said that God told him to bake cakes using human waste as fuel and that he should do it in the sight of the people.

Exhibit 3) Isaiah claimed that God told him to walk around naked for three years.

Exhibit 4) Hosea claimed God told him to marry a prostitute.

An apology? None is called for.

Adam B.

Derek Blades

Would you make the same charges against Mohammed? If so, let's hear it.

Or are you selective with your insults?

Derek BLADES

Adam B, August 11th,accused me of being selective in my insults because I noted that several of the biblical prophets appear to have been mentally deranged. I did so because Augustus was threatening "all human civilisation" with being recreated "in the spirit of the prophets of Israel”. A chilling prospect indeed. Please try to follow the correspondence instead of wheeling out your own prejudices on every possible occasion.

That said I must tell you that I regard all religions as sham and I have nothing but pity for the poor fools who believe in them.

George

Derek Blades,

Thank you kindly, but I have no need for your pity.

yours,
One of the poor fools

Adam B.

I find that strange Derek, seeing as you never write a single criticism of Hamas and its paymeasters in Iran, both motivated by religious fervour.

Personally, I pity you in your belief in the futility of your own existence.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

Mr BLADES is one of those people who is left wing liberal and secret muslim inside, Derek BlADES do you write for the Guardian by any chance?

Derek BLADES

Margaret Muller-Johansson
August 12th, 2009 8:43pm

Margaret Muller-Johansson, 12 July wrote "Mr BLADES is one of those people who is left wing liberal and secret muslim inside, Derek BlADES do you write for the Guardian by any chance?"

No Madam, I do not write for that respected Newspaper. But you could certainly apply for a post there as you managed to mis-spell my name.

Wm. Hazlitt

Margaret Muller-Johansson, If "left-wing liberals" turn out to be "secret Muslims" will they stop being walls?

Tomi Lewis

I don't understand why people can't wake up and smell the coffee, in Europe the growing of lefty ideology is pushing up some people to became religious and violence, I hope some people wake up now then regret later

Anna Repopvka

I am Margaret's friend, Margaret is on holiday but she wants to tell the lefties who post in Melanies blog to wait for reply in September when she is back, and she said it is not the end of the world to wait for reply....Shalom!

Wm. Hazlitt

Anna Repopvka, Oh, dear. What about those of us who would never think of themselves as "lefties"? Would she not consider answering our questions? Mine were fairly simple: 1. Would she really prefer to believe any religion rather than none? 2. How does atheism turn a person into a wall? 3. How would a return to the 1st century combat terrorism and 4. If "lefties" turn out to be secret Muslims, do they cease to be walls, or do we just stop perceiving them as walls?

Michael B

Wm. Hazlitt,

One doesn't need to be a leftist to be self-deluded or to entertain wholesale corruptions, illusions and deceits. E.g., Walt & Mearsheimer are examples of purported "realists" in the academic sense of the term and as conceived by some within foreign offices; they are not at all leftists. They have chosen the "realist" assignation, one might suppose, because "the illusionist school" or "the traducement school" of foreign policy wouldn't sell very well to the polities they seek to target.

Labeling is not an advertising art limited to product marketing per se.

Further, you're one of those who imagines HRW (Human Rights Watch) to be, to quote you directly from another thread, "resolutely non-partisan." This, despite the fact HRW's lead Middle East activists and product managers are dedicated Leftists: Joe Stork and Sarah Leah Whitson. The former is perhaps, in the current environment, as close to an unreconstructed Stalinist as one is likely to find, e.g., having called for Israel's destruction. You're not a leftist, but you support one of the most corrupt and ideologically biased NGOs, as applied to Israel, upon the face of the planet. HRW's bona fides in some areas are responsibly established (their lineage stems from the Cold War era), but since the Soviet's defeat their PR and advertising and marketing efforts have been superb, but their actual performance has been uneven in the extreme. Nowhere does that quality evidence itself more than as appllied to Israel and the M.E.

Wm. Hazlitt

Michael B., Your tirade against HRW would be more interesting if instead of character assasination you were to provide an analysis of where the particular report I cited is in error. Read what HRW says. Read B'Tselem. And then see if you can maintain your wholly partisan position, however you wish to label it.

Michael B

Wm. Hazlitt,

More obfuscations and deflections. It's as if you're a paid hack, paid by a Bashar al-Assad or, in the west, a George Galloway.

It wasn't "character assassination," it was a simple statement of facts as pertains to HRW's Joe Stork's biography and his ideological agenda. E.g., it was Joe Stork who applauded the Munich Olympics massacre as "[providing] an important boost in morale among Palestinians," and he has long been a supporter of Palestinian terrorism in general, in a standard, dogmatic, Stalinist, "anti-imperialist," leftist mode. No traducement was forwarded, to the contrary, those are biographical facts which you prefer to obfuscate and deflect rather than confront more honestly.

Adam B.

Wm Hazlitt, after the revelations of HRW's fundraising spree in Saudi Arabia (that bastion of human rights) in circumstances where HMR specifically highlighted its anti-Israelism in order to raise more cash, it is strange that you still try to desperately cling to the notion that this organization is impartial. Indeed, the recent expose about its leadership, as described by Michael B, leaves one in no doubt about its agenda. Stork's past statements are utterly insane - no, downright evil. HMR's reputation is in the gutter, where it belongs.

Wm. Hazlitt

Michael B., As far as I can see, NGO Watch, famously impartial, accuses Sarah Leah Whitson of nothing more than doing her job. With Joe Stork, you have touched on a much more interesting question. The quotes I have read date from the 70s. I remember the 70s as a time when it was "trendy" on the Left to share the Right's faith in the efficacy of violence (the only difference was who they thought should wield it). The question here is, should those in public life be held to what they said in their youth? Or can they redeem themselves by their subsequent actions? As far as I can see, NGO Watch and Ma'ariv take it as evidence that Stork has not changed that he does not wink at actions taken by Israel that are, at best, prima facie instances of criminality. In his youth he made statements that are indefensible. Now he fails to support Israel. Of course, if he were to decline to disavow the sentiments of his youth, I would share your discomfort and agree that he would not be an appropriate person to record and report violations of human rights. However, I reiterate, look at the specific report I was referring to. Mr. Stork's alleged comments of the early 70s have nothing to do with the content of this report.

I do agree that it is a difficult question: whether to judge people on what they have said and done in the past. For example, Menachem Begin and Yitzak Shamir did not just make futile statements in support of terrorists – they were terrorists, certainly if we accept the US State Dept. definition, and yet they each became Prime Minister of Israel. Ariel Sharon did not simply applaud the results of a massacre, he was in command of at least one outfit that actually committed a massacre, and yet he became Prime Minster of Israel. Should these individual criminals have been brought to justice, or should their subsequent incarnation as politicians have been allowed to obscure their past crimes? There is an argument that it is necessary to talk to such as these for the sake of peace. I don't know the answer.

As for HRW. They have a history of provoking protests about kow-towing to Jewish American donors not Saudi Arabian (that must be a recent diversification). They have a history of provoking protests for going easy on Israel. I refer you to the “independent” analyst Mouin Rabbani (I think “independent” means he is at the very least less aggressively biased than NGO Watch) – he wrote a piece in February this year outlining the history of HRW's reports on Israel. It would appear from this that HRW is not unambiguously anti-Israel. Might it not be that HRW feels that its remit requires it to report at least some of Israel's actions, and that this is too much for supporters of Israel, for whom balance means whole-hearted and unquestioning endorsement of whatever the powers that be in the US and Israel promulgate as the truth?

Wm. Hazlitt

Adam B., You have ducked the question too many times in the past for serious debate with you to be possible.

Michael B

Wm. Hazlitt,

As far as you can see? You're as selectively self-blinkered and self-blinded as they come. Twisting, corrupting, contorting, maligning, and all of it at basic, at fundamental levels. E.g., Joe Stork has not retracted a single thing he's said in the past. If I'm wrong, I am happy to be corrected ... point the way.

Adam B.

Hazlitt, it's you ducking the question of HRW's obvious bias, or are Saudi fundraising sprees not worth examining? What about Stork's praise for murderers?

Wm. Hazlitt

Michael B. "As far as I can see..." Why not continue your quote: "from my reading of Ma'ariv and NGO Watch". If you could show me where they have confronted Mr. Stork to ascertain his current opinions, I would be keen to read them. As I said: "if he were to decline to disavow the sentiments of his youth, I would share your discomfort and agree that he would not be an appropriate person to record and report violations of human rights."

"...selectively self-blinkered and self-blinded as they come. Twisting, corrupting, contorting, maligning, and all of it at basic, at fundamental levels." I know you enjoy orotund grandiloquence and righteous insult. It is certainly easier than argument. It has yet again allowed you to ignore the crucial question, which concerns Israel's behaviour.

Michael B

Wm. Hazlitt,

"His youth" is not tantamount to his childhood (though that's typical of your evasions and your tendentious and twisted approach in general). I'd be keen to read where he volunteers to clarify his position, he certainly has the forums available to do so. He's no wallflower. No one has him tied, bound and gagged. He's free to say what he wants to say - much as he's free to refrain from saying what he doesn't want to say.

It seems Joe Stork has chosen the latter option.

Wm. Hazlitt

Michael B. "...selectively self-blinkered and self-blinded as they come. Twisting, corrupting, contorting, maligning, and all of it at basic, at fundamental levels." "...typical of your evasions and your tendentious and twisted approach in general"...I am, I suppose, mildly curious to hear you justify each of these: "Selectively self-blinkered" "twisting" "corrupting" "distorting" "maligning"... etc. etc. It is all too easy for you (apparently)to come out with such stuff; less easy (apparently) to justify it - make an effort.

To repeat, Ma'ariv et al. have dug up a quote from almost forty years ago attributed to Mr. Stork. It is normal in any but the gutter press to talk to the man. Ma'ariv is not normally to be classed among the gutter press. And yet I see no attempt to talk to Mr. Stork. Of course, now that the statement has been unearthed, it would be better if he volunteered a retraction. And, as I said before, if he still stands by the views attributed to him, he is not an appropriate person to report on human rights violations.

I am struck by the grotesque lack of proportion characteristic of Israeli propaganda. Israel repeatedly kills thousands; yet we are to concentrate our moral indignation on a man who in his youth asserted that the slaughter of innocents at least focused the world's attention on the plight of the Palestinians (an obscene assertion, we are all agreed).

For decade after decade, HRW, B'Tselem, Amnesty, the UN have had to report, quoting their sources, providing chapter and verse, systematic crimes and misdemeanours of the state of Israel, perpetrated for very clear and avowed, but nonetheless illegal, reasons. And yet we are told to believe that anyone who makes such reports must be anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, a fellow traveller of the evil and genocidal Arabs. The constant shrill din of righteous indignation is to put the blame on Israel's victims, to stun its opponents into silence, and to make it easier for Israelis and their supporters to remain ignorant of what is done in their name and to avoid the basic ethical practice of making the effort to see things from the point of view of their victims. Very effective so far, but no less unsavoury for all that. Go read the archives of B'Tselem and educate yourself.

Wm. Hazlitt

Moderator, I am genuinely interested in seeking an explanation from Margaret Muller-Johansson of what she means when she says that atheism turns people into walls. It is surely legitimate to ask also where agnostics, such as Ms. Phillips, stand. They are presumably not walls, but not humans either. Hence my suggestion: trellises, perhaps. There is a serious point: do you treat others as less than human simply because they do not share your beliefs. I would be grateful if you would allow through at least one of my attempts to ask my perfectly legitimate and politely phrased question. Thank you.

Wm. Hazlitt

Michael B. True to form...