Britain's Goebbels moment

5:04pm

What is the explanation for the deepening funding scandal that is currently engulfing the Labour party? Why, it’s obvious! With a man named Abrahams at its heart it must be the World Jewish Zionist Conspiracy, of course! This was revealed to us this morning on the front page of the Daily Telegraph. It published a picture of Abrahams shaking hands with Israel’s former ambassador to London, Zvi Heifetz, last year. This, we are given to understand, is supposed to be incriminating — so much so it merits front page splash treatment. A Jew shaking hands with an Israeli, eh! Hmnn, must be dirty work afoot! And for good measure the Telegraph story tells us that Heifetz

was questioned then cleared over money-laundering allegations. Mr Heifetz was recently appointed as an adviser to Mr Blair in his role as Middle East peace envoy.

Woah -- a multiple smear. There was no reason to mention the fact that Heifetz was cleared except to suggest that a shadow still hangs over him — which it does not. There was no reason to bring in Heifetz’s role as an adviser to Blair, except to imply a further connection between Abrahams and some kind of Israel lobby. Above all, there was no more reason to link Abrahams to Heifetz than to his local darts club. After all, as the same story also notes:

Mr Abrahams is described by friends as a ‘secretive’ person who spends little money on himself but likes to rub shoulders with the great and the good at political and charity events.

Indeed, the more we read the more it appears that Abrahams likes to mingle with prominent people. Of course, we don’t yet know the half of it as far as this scandal is concerned. But ever since Labour’s fundraiser Jon Mendelsohn was revealed yesterday morning to have played an as yet unresolved part in it, 'Jewish conspiracy' theory started to swirl with a vengeance. This is because Mendelsohn is not only himself a Jew, not only a protégé of Lord Levy, but is also a former chairman of Labour Friends of Israel! Where he met Abrahams!! (Even though Mendelsohn only started as Labour's fundraiser last September while the suspect payments date back to 2003). At this, various people started wetting themselves. Here’s a selection of remarks posted on Guido Fawkes’s blogsite:

Mendelsohn is a friend and protege of Sleazy Lord Levy. After he cashed in his LLM stock his days at the office were spent on the phone on behalf of Labour Friends of Israel, plotting with Levy, using all the same hustling tricks as Levy.

sniffer said...

This and the previous post are getting very close to the mother lode. Keep digging Guido. But expect Dennis MacShane and his ilk to get very noisy, very soon.

10:19 AM, November 28, 2007

 

Suraci said...

Have Labour Friends of Israel got involved yet. No? Give 'em time.

11:42 AM, November 28, 2007

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (55)

Croz dressers?

5:51pm

In Australia, Andrew Bolt is aghast that, in the wake of the rout of John Howard’s Liberals at the hands of Kevin Rudd’s Labour party, the Liberals seem to be about to elect a new leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who is to the left of Rudd. Expostulates Bolt:

Memo Liberals: What on earth makes you think the result was an endorsement of the cultural Left? Why do you think Rudd felt it necessary to badge himself as a Christian, a conservative and a me-too Howard?

This provokes an overwhelming sense of déjâ-vu here in the old country. Australian politics seems to be tripping down precisely the same path as Britain into triangulated turmoil.

 

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (10)

Draft Vince now!

5:06pm

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (4)

Mr President, what has happened to you?

4:48pm

You are the President of the United States. You are committed to a doctrine, shaped by 9/11, which says that never again will terror or illegitimate force be appeased. So what happens when you arrive at a formula to end the Middle East conflict called a ‘Road Map’ whose first requirement, that the Palestinians must dismantle their infrastructure of terror, is ignored by the Palestinians who continue to carry out rocket barrages and terrorist attacks and who make no attempt whatever to dismantle the said terror infrastructure? Why, you convene another conference where you announce a glorious new prospect for peace in which the parties solemnly pledge to respect their obligations under the Road Map! Oh, and also to

immediately launch good-faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty, resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues, without exception

So even though step one on the Road Map has been and is still being comprehensively ignored, that can be shelved under ‘meaningless platitudes’ along with the evidence of the continuing attacks; and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah which is continuing to mount such attacks — indeed, has mounted even more of them than Hamas — will be engaged in ‘good faith’ negotiations with its victims about how many of its demands its victims will now be expected graciously to accommodate. You then congratulate both sides for their

strong leadership

and go on to say things which are either ridiculous or obnoxious. For example, that you are

determined to confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis

So you think that annihilatory terror is the equivalent to the attempt by its victims to defend themselves against it, do you? You have simply lost your moral compass, along with your grip on reality. No wonder you are now happy to throw Israel to the wolves; no wonder you go on in that speech to get everything else so terribly wrong. You say:

President Abbas understands that a Palestinian state will not be born of terror, and that terrorism is the enemy standing in the way of a state.

Well actually it’s not just the terrorism which is sponsored in part by the Fatah offshoot the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, but the strategic aim of that terror which is openly espoused by Abbas’s Fatah, namely the destruction of Israel as demonstrated by the demand for mass Arab immigration into Israel, and the bald statement by chief negotiator Saeb Erekat earlier this month that the Palestinians would not recognise Israel as a Jewish state. Nevertheless, you go on to laud Abbas as a ‘responsible leader’ because

He and Prime Minister Fayyad have both declared, without hesitation, that they are opposed to terrorism and committed to peace. They're committed to turning these declarations into actions on the ground to combat terror.

They don’t say? A few days before Annapolis, Israeli Ido Zoldan was gunned down and murdered by Fatah terrorists. Fatah, not Hamas. Moreover, the reason they were able to murder him was almost certainly because, at America’s insistence, Israel had dismantled 24 security roadblocks — as one of those gestures of compromise and goodwill you insist must be made . But it’s ok, because you tell us that President Abbas and his government are

Standing against this dark vision.

Actually, through this lamentable episode it is you who have darkened an already bleak landscape. True, at least you didn’t throw Syria any further bones and instead wagged a finger at it over its interference in Lebanon. And all Condi's lethally fatuous 'final status' blatherings have bitten the dust. But the fact that you put that kind of pressure on Israel to commit national suicide remains a permanent stain on your record. Moreover, by resting the whole charade upon what is essentially untrue — treating Fatah as responsible interlocutors for peace, characterising ‘others’ as extremists and refusing to hold the belligerents of more than six decades to account for their refusal to this day to stop trying to eradicate the Jewish homeland — what you have re-started is not a peace process but a route to further bloodshed, misery and deep injustice.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (46)

Peace in our tomb

5:27pm

The British media is reporting the Annapolis meeting with an absolutely stupefying degree of ignorance and blindness. The story pretty well agreed by one and all is that this meeting has the ingredients for a major breakthrough, because never before have the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships been so ripe for compromise and agreement; and yet it is likely to be yet another tragically missed opportunity, because both Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas are weak leaders who are unable to take their people with them.

As the League of Nations mandate made clear, Britain was supposed to preside over the territory of the Mandatory Palestine and to foster the establishment of a Jewish state which would eventually replace the British mandatory government. Yet almost from the get-go the British did just the opposite. They established the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan on the majority of the land slated for the Jewish state. Moreover, they took all possible steps to prevent the Jews from establishing a state on the remainder of the land. They blocked Jewish immigration and limited the right of Jews to purchase and settle the land to a tiny portion of the territory - which they believed would be too small to sustain a sovereign state.

It was due to the British failure to destroy Zionism and block the Jewish people from establishing their state that the UN partition plan was brought into being. That is, far from establishing a Jewish state, 181 simply accepted an already existing national entity. Despite the best efforts of Britain, the Jews had already established their state in 1947. It would have existed even if the resolution had not passed.

The interests of the free world in general and the United States in particular will suffer from what the Saudis and most of the other attendees have in mind for the Jewish State — namely, its dismemberment and ultimate destruction…

The gang assembled at the Naval Academy — Europeans, Russians, non-governmental organizations as well as Arabs — will largely insist that the Israelis allow the capital of a new Palestinian state to be established in the section of Jerusalem most holy to Jews (and Christians). Never mind that from East Jerusalem, the Israeli-controlled remainder of the city can be shelled at will with Kassam rockets or even mortars.

At Annapolis, virtually everyone will also agree that Israel must accept some arrangement affording rights to millions of Arabs who have been, as the esteemed historian Bernard Lewis pointed out in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, deliberately condemned to refugee status (in some cases, for as many as five generations) by their regional ‘brothers’ and U.N. enablers. Everyone understands this demand will translate demographically into the end of the Jewish State…

Today, Palestinians can remain in the terror business — can even officially and explicitly refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish homeland — and still enjoy the administration's political support and access to U.S. military equipment, training and vast amounts of taxpayers' funds.

What most of Washington simply fails to understand is that any real demand for Palestinian or Arab concessions will be fodder for radical groups and frighten Arab regimes, pushing the latter away from support for America rather than toward it. And any Israeli concessions obtained by this process will not satisfy their demands either…

Iraq? Syria is the main sponsor of the terrorist insurgency. It has a deep interest in ensuring that no moderate, stable, pro-Western regime takes root in Syria.

The radical alliance? Syria is a leading factor in the problem, a partner with Iran for twenty years. Anyone who believes that Damascus can be split from Tehran understands nothing about the mutual benefits Syria gets from the alliance, far greater than anything the West could possibly give to its dictator President Bashar al-Asad.

Iranian nuclear? When Iran gets atomic weapons it will be a great day for Syria, ensuring its strategic protection, damaging Western influence, and helping the radical Islamist cause that Syria backs.

American credibility? It undermines years of U.S. efforts to pressure Bashar away from radical adventurism. Syria can now show that it can kill Americans soldiers in Iraq, murder democratic Lebanese politicians, foment Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip, and sponsor Hizballah’s effort to seize power in Lebanon without incurring any serious risk or cost.

On the contrary, Syria is now making demands on the United States for concessions in order to entice it to show up. This is happening at the very moment when plans for an international trial of Syrian leaders for political assassinations in Lebanon is gathering momentum, as Syria’s campaign to install a puppet government in Beirut has just been foiled.

Is the conference’s purpose, however ill-conceived, to make progress on Arab-Israeli peace and strengthen the Palestinian Authority? Having Syria present lets in the main Arab sponsor of Hamas, a state working tirelessly to throw out the current Palestinian leadership and raise the level of Arab-Israeli violence.

This mendacious narrative is stalwartly bolstered by a growing host of pseudo-academics in Western universities, and by a cadre of Western journalists, who churn out books and articles that effectively rewrite history and archaeology in order to erase Israel’s connection to the Holy Land and thus deny both the Christian and Jewish historic and religious roots in the Land of Israel.

This propaganda campaign to legitimize the 60-year-old Arab war against Israel and to create the fiction of the ‘Palestinian people’ as the poor oppressed victims of imperialist colonialist Israel, illegally occupying ‘Historic Palestine,’ is a veritable war against History. It deals in lies, just the kind of lies Goebbels had in mind. And the biggest lie of all is the existence of a ‘Palestinian People.’…

This ploy was, perhaps inadvertently, revealed to the West in a public interview with Zahir Muhse’in, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, in a March 31, 1977, interview with the Amsterdam-based newspaper Trouw.

‘The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.’ (Emphasis added.)

Arafat himself said the same thing, on many occasions, and asserts often in his authorized biography (Alan Hart, Arafat: Terrorist or Peace Maker): ‘[T]he Palestinian people have no national identity. I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel.’ But such admissions could not stem the enthusiasm with which these fictions were greeted by Western leaders. Within a few years, the USSR's invention of the fictitious narrative of Palestinian national aspirations and rights of self-determination created the facade of morality and legitimacy that the terrorists needed to curry favor with the EU, the UK, and the U.S. This same facade facilitated the Soviet implementation of its takeover, with the Arab bloc, of the UN General Assembly, and UN committees and functions outside of the Security Council.

Palestinian officials have not explained how Fatah might regain Gaza. The accepted wisdom is that Abbas cannot be seen to retake Gaza by relying on Israeli military support. But many Fatah supporters say they cannot overcome Hamas without Israeli intervention and are coming to see it as a lesser evil.

One of the Al Himaya Wal Isnad [PA] officers said there is endless speculation among his colleagues that they might be sent to secure control of the territory. ‘We talk about an Israeli invasion of Gaza all the time,’ said the officer. ‘Of course we are training for the day after Israel cuts Hamas in half and then we can go in and clean up.’

The Annapolis farce is at best a sideshow to history; at worst, it will unleash yet darker horrors still.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (35)

The new Bush doctrine

9:02pm

 

What do you get from America and Israel if you are a rogue state supporting terror against America and Israel; you are in league with Iran in prosecuting a war against the west and the elimination of Israel; you have been helping fuel the terror war against democracy in Iraq; you have been developing in secret a prohibited nuclear weapon with the help of another rogue state from the axis of evil, north Korea; and you have been instrumental in sabotaging democracy in Lebanon where you murdered the Prime Minister? Why, you are invited by America to a ‘peace’ conference, your presence is welcomed by Israel as a diplomatic ‘success’, and you are promised that the return of your territory that remains confiscated because you have never resiled from the intention of using it as you did before to try to eliminate Israel will nevertheless be an item to be discussed.

What do we all learn from this? That murderous extremism will be rewarded by America while moderate states and democracies are betrayed; that terrorism is a passport to the counsels of the so-called civilised world and thus has every incentive to redouble its infernal efforts; and that Israel is now a nation led by lemmings, with the rest of us only a little way behind heading for the edge of the same wretched cliff.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (13)

The question of a freed slave

11:23am

 

Simon Deng, a former jihad slave and now a human rights activist, has written a remarkable protest to Bishop Desmond Tutu over the bishop’s rabid prejudice against Israel which he accuses of ‘apartheid’:

The State of Israel is not an apartheid state. I know because I write this from Jerusalem where I have seen Arab mothers peacefully strolling with their families – even though I also drove on Israeli roads protected by walls and fences from Arab bullets and stones. I know Arabs go to Israeli schools, and get the best medical care in the world. I know they vote and have elected representatives to the Israeli Parliament. I see street signs in Arabic, an official language here. None of this was true for blacks under Apartheid in Tutu’s South Africa.

I also know countries that do deserve the apartheid label: My country, Sudan, is on the top of the list, but so are Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What has happened to my people in Sudan is a thousand times worse than Apartheid in South Africa. And no matter how the Palestinians suffer, they suffer nothing compared to my people. Nothing. And most of the suffering is the fault of their leaders. Bishop Tutu, I see black Jews walking down the street here in Jerusalem. Black like us, free and proud.

Tutu said Israeli checkpoints are a nightmare. But checkpoints are there because Palestinians are sent into Israel to blow up and kill innocent women and children. Tutu wants checkpoints removed. Do you not have doors in your home, Bishop? Does that make your house an apartheid house? If someone, Heaven forbid, tried to enter with a bomb, we would want you to have security people ‘humiliating’your guests with searches, and we would not call you racist for doing so. We all go through checkpoints at every airport. Are the airlines being racist? No.

Yes, the Palestinians are inconvenienced at checkpoints. But why, Bishop Tutu, do you care more about that inconvenience than about Jewish lives? …Slaughter and genocide and slavery are lashing Africans right now. Where are you for Sudan, Bishop Tutu? You are busy attacking the Jewish state. Why ?

The other week, I was at the Bar’s human rights conference which opened its proceedings with a video of Desmond Tutu speaking about the importance of human rights. He was presented as a moral authority on the subject on account of his leadership against South African apartheid, and the video was warmly applauded. His moral authority on this subject is however quite vitiated by his appalling prejudice against Israel, which frankly is an incitement to hatred. Tutu is currently gravely ill; but the question posed so bitterly by Simon Deng demands an answer.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (17)

The Archbishop of Cant

11:19am

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has managed to distinguish himself with yet another set of mind-blowingly silly remarks which effectively offer himself up to the enemies of civilisation as a one-man own-goal weapon of mass self-destruction. In an interview with the Muslim magazine Emel he once again cast America as the enemy and attacked the west while sanitising the Muslim world. According to the Archbishop, the ‘crisis in Iraq’ has been caused by America's misguided sense of its mission in the world, that it had

lost the moral high ground since the September 11 attacks

and that it should provide aid to Iraq, stop exploiting its territory and demilitarise it.

We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That's not working. It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources in to administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that's what the British Empire did in India, for example. It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together - Iraq, for example.

It is hard to envisage a more ignorant set of comments. For sure, many grievous mistakes were made after the fall of Saddam. But the comparison with the British Empire misses the point. America is not an imperialist nation — quite the opposite. It did not go into Iraq to accumulate territory or colonial power but because it believed that America and the free world were threatened by Saddam and by the terror-exporting states that surrounded it. Its whole democracy-promoting doctrine is based on the idea that this is the best way of defending the free world from further attack. Yes, America failed to think through the situation on the ground and made a series of grave strategic errors. But you would never think from Dr Williams’s remarks that the terrible war that has raged has been for the freedom of the Iraqi people and that significant progress is now being made — that the Iraqi people have voted in free elections, that Iraq’s tribal leaders have now turned their faces against al Qaeda, that the violence is decreasing, that thousands of Iraqis are returning to their homes in a free Iraq, and that the Iraqi people themselves are behind the transformation of their society — and that none of this would have happened without the American action in Iraq.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (43)

Dirty tricks in the detention cell

12:26am

The campaign against extending the 28-day pre-charge detention limit for terrorism suspects has now entered the territory of black propaganda. The Sunday Times carries a piece about Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, the head of anti-terrorism in the Metropolitan Police. This tells us that:

With Scotland Yard already in turmoil, Andy Hayman, the Metropolitan police anti-terrorism chief, has been questioned over thousands of pounds spent on hotel expenses and drinks for his staff. The inquiry will put renewed pressure on Sir Ian Blair, the Met commissioner, after he survived a no-confidence vote last week over the killing of an innocent Brazilian in a bungled anti-terror operation.

So this obviously carefully planted demolition job on Hayman is a story that will add to the pressure on Sir Ian Blair, is it? I don’t think that's quite the point here. For Hayman is the officer who reportedly wrote the original paper arguing for an extension of the then 14-day pre-charge detention limit for a period of up to three months. The impressive arguments in that paper are very hard to refute. So what a remarkable stroke of luck for opponents of this proposal that the officer whose reputation has now been so badly undermined by accusations of financial impropriety just happens to be the author of that report!

 

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (6)

Israel as Czechoslovakia

11:41pm

Whatever actually happens at Annapolis, what is blindingly obvious right now is the extent of America’s betrayal of the Jewish people and, in the process, of its own supposed core doctrine post 9/11. President Bush, through his proxy Condoleezza Rice, is pushing Israel to accept suicidally indefensible borders. By contrast, there is no pressure on Mahmoud Abbas to adhere to the first commitment of the Road Map, which is for him to dismantle the Palestinian infrastructure of terror. Only the victim of this terror is to make the most ‘painful sacrifice’ of all — its own existence.

On April 14, 2004, Prime Minister Sharon presented his Gaza Disengagement plan to President Bush and received as a quid pro quo a presidential letter with a set of U.S. guarantees about the shape of a future Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. Sharon appeared before the Knesset on April 22, 2004, and explained the significance of the Bush Letter:

There is American recognition that in any permanent status arrangement, there will be no return to the ‘67 borders. This recognition is to be expressed in two ways: understanding that the facts that have been established in the large settlement blocs are such that they do not permit a withdrawal to the ‘67 borders and implementation of the term ‘defensible borders.’

…The Bush Letter did not intend to impose the outlines of a peace settlement in lieu of future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. However, it laid out an updated vision of the U.S. position on a final peace settlement if the U.S. were actually asked to provide these details by the parties, especially if negotiations stalemated. The Bush Letter, moreover, did not represent a sharp break with past U.S. policy; it was fully consistent with UN Security Council Resolution 242. Former President Ronald Reagan used the language of ‘defensible borders’ in September 1982 and it was adopted by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher in January 1997 in his letter of assurances to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There is a serious question about the exact standing of the Bush Letter on the eve of Annapolis. Buried in the address by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Nashville on November 13, 2007, was a surprising sentence: ‘I believe that most Israelis are ready to leave most of the — nearly all of the West Bank, just as they were ready to leave Gaza for the sake of peace.’2 It is doubtful that Rice was reflecting on the results of any serious Israeli public opinion poll, which actually show strong Israeli support for retaining strategic areas of the West Bank, like the Jordan Valley. And given Israel's bitter experience from unilaterally leaving the Gaza Strip, it is difficult to draw analogies from Israeli positions on Gaza prior to the August 2005 disengagement and Israeli positions, at present, toward withdrawal from the West Bank. It is likely that she carefully chose her language as a trial balloon, couching a new possible U.S. position on borders as a general statement about Israeli public opinion.

Having decided to convene the Annapolis meeting, the Bush administration is under enormous pressure to make sure it succeeds. The situation that has been created provides the Arab states with enormous leverage over Washington to revise its positions on the core issues in order to obtain their attendance at a high enough level. Even if the U.S. does not issue its own statement in lieu of the Joint Statement, a revised U.S. position could come in the form of a presidential address or even private communications from Washington to Arab capitals that erode the Bush Letter and empty it of much of its original content.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (16)