Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

Category: Other (Page 16 of 17)

Child axe murder was a “natural reaction”

02/04/2009 / / 0 Comments

Hamas believe that splitting the skulls of teenage boys is understandable.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

This attack was committed in the framework of the resistance,” Ayman Taha, a spokesperson for the group said. “This is a reaction to the continuing occupation and the continued building of settlements.”

“This is a natural reaction,” he said, “especially against the backdrop of Israeli attacks. We are a people occupied, and it is our right to defend ourselves and to act in every way and with every means at our disposal in order to defend ourselves.”

Thus any act, however depraved, is justifiable. This is the rhetoric of an organisation supported by millions across the world. An organisation as murderous as it is immoral.

Let’s not forget they also attacked a seven year old. And let us not forget that this boy’s father is serving a prison sentence as a terrorist for plotting to blow up a Palestinian school. A plot that was thwarted by the Israeli police.

Now just reverse the roles. Do you see any Palestinian terrorists in prison in Palestine? Did the Palestinian police ever thwart a terrorist attack on Israel, or do they just aid and abet?

Headline at the BBC website: “Israeli boy killed on West Bank”. Note “killed” not “murdered”. And try to find that story today – it suddenly disappeared and has been replaced by “Livni condemns new Israeli leaders” and the Lieberman arrest.

Palestinian Youth Orchestra shut down by bigots

01/04/2009 / / 0 Comments

I recently reported here how youth orchestra leader Wafa Younis took her music to Holon where the orchestra sang and played to Holocaust survivors. The orchestra comes from Jenin. Ms Younis did take the opportunity to sing for peace, the release of Gilad Shalit and also berate her audience about injustices against her people in the West Bank.

But Arutz Sheva reports:

Fatah-linked community leaders in the PA-controlled city of Jenin slammed the participation of 13 young local musicians aged 11 to 18 in a “Good Deeds Day,” held at the Holocaust Survivor’s Center in Holon.

The PA politicians made a point of using the issue of the young musicians’ performance as a platform upon which to launch a diatribe against participation in any integrative activity with Jewish Israelis.

Observers noted that Palestinian Authority leaders speak to United States officials about the “vision of two states for two peoples, living side by side in peace and security” but when it comes down to actually allowing their children to participate — let alone encouraging such activity with Israelis — they sing a different tune.

Ms Younis has had her apartment “sealed” and she is banned from entering Jenin. Once again, as with Fatah’s policy of not allowing their citizens to receive treatment in Israeli hospitals (see my article here) they are not only further immiserating the lives of their own people but deterring any moves toward any sort of rapprochement or mutual understanding, the very sort of policy and initiative it is vital to pursue to prevent generation after generation being brought up on hate and alienation from their neighbours.

It is clear that Fatah are not interested in anything which compromises their true agenda; to destroy Israel by stealth in parallel to the agenda of Hamas and Hezbullah who want to destroy Israel by military means.

Fatah complain they have no true peace partners. It’s a shame that the peace negotiations don’t take place between the real peace-loving people of Palestine and Israel rather than their leaders, entrenched as they are in their own ideologies and political posturing. OK. Too simplistic. But if youth are shown such awful examples of bigotry what hope is there.

Soldiers Speak Out

30/03/2009 / / 0 Comments

A new website has been launched by IDF soldiers to redress the balance and speak out about the moral actions of Israeli soldiers.

See an interview on Jerusalem Post here

Visit the website here.

Listen to their stories. 

Make up your own mind.

Also, read this article in the Jerusalem Post.

Now tell me who is moral and who is immoral?

Sudan, the convoy and who the real terrorist states are in the Middle East

27/03/2009 / / 0 Comments

Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has dropped a very big hint that earlier this year, probably January, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) bombed a convoy of illegal arms on its way to Gaza from Tehran via Sudan and Egypt.

As with the alleged bombing of a Syrian nuclear plant the countries involved are reluctant to admit anything happened because it shows them up for what they are – terrorist states.

It seems there as a cosy little alliance of murderers and genocides (both actual and aspirational) consisting of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Sudan.

A Sudanese minister, Mabrook Mubarak Saleem told an Arabic news channel that many had been killed in the air strike. Arutz Sheva reports:

a Sudanese spokesman claimed that “more than 100 people” had been killed in the air raid, which he termed “a genocide, committed by U.S. forces.”

When asked how he knew the attackers were American, the spokesman said: “We don’t differentiate between the U.S. and Israel. They are all one.”

This man’s contempt for the word ‘genocide’ in whatever language he was using is an indication of the mentaliy of these atrocious people in the Sudanese government who make Mugabe look like a benevolent democrat.

Meanwhile his government is committing genocide in Darfur supported by the Iranian axis of evil.

Meanwhile Iran WANTS to commit genocide in Israel.

Meanwhile Hamas WANTS to commit genocide in Israel.

Meanwhile Hezbollah WANTS to commit genocide in Israel.

What an attractive little group of murdering, Jew-hating, fanatical, tyrannical,  warmongers they are.

Hey, maybe we can talk to them and persuade them to talk about peace and reconciliation.

Hey, maybe they are really quite nice people with a grievance.

Hey, maybe if we gave the Palestinians a homeland they’d all settle down and turn to stamp collecting.

Hey, maybe if we gave the Palestinians a homeland they would pursue democracy, peace, education, equality for all their citizens, including women; maybe they wouldn’t teach their children to hate, to glorify murder, to corrupt their own religion.

Hey, maybe if we gave the Palestinians a homeland they wouldn’t continue in their stated objective of destroying Israel.

Hey,  maybe Iran really is just developing a nuclear energy programme.

Hey, maybe they wouldn’t dream of threatening Israel and the West with a nuclear weapon.

Hey, maybe Israel isn’t a terrorist state after all.

Hey, maybe Israel is the front line against these these monsters.

Hey, maybe we can learn from Israel how to defend the free world.

Maybe.

Why were right-wingers allowed to march through Umm al-Fahm?

24/03/2009 / / 0 Comments

My parents used to tell me about the Battle of Cable Street when Oswald Mosley tried to march through the East End of London with his Fascist black-shirts in direct provocation to the Jewish residents.

Jews and Communists and other outraged citizens blocked the way. Many were injured or arrested (including ny father and grandmother). But the blackshirt’s march did not succeed in passing through the Jewish East End.

What difference then in Umm al-Fahm when right-wing Jews want to march through an Arab-Israeli town stirring up hatred and provoking a riot? These Jews demanded Arab loyalty to the State of Israel after many Arabs have voiced support of Hamas and called for the destruction of the state. But is this provocation an answer? Can this do anything other than push loyal Israeli Arabs who want to live in peace into the arms of Hamas, Hizbollah and the rest?

The police did not want the march but it was judged to be a legal protest. Maybe legal, just as the National Front can march through Bradford if they wish. But advisable in the current tense atmosphere in the region? Advisable when Israel’s reputation is on the line around the world? 

This is one of the few occasions when I have some sympathy for Israeli Arabs demonstrating against Jews. This was their East End and the right-wing Jews were their blackshirts. 

But look. No one was killed. The police fired tear gas not bullets. Say this was Jews protesting in Tehran or in Yemen. That’s the difference which makes Israel a free and democratic society. It also means that some of its citizens are free to behave outrageously. Just as Arab Israelis and Jews behaved outrageously in Akko (Acre) recently rioting against each other as a result of polarised views on the Gaza conflict. And this in a town which is still an exemplar of Arab-Jewish co-existence in Israel.

The far right in Israel is literally on the march buoyed up by election successes. It is a worrying trend in Israel.

The Palestinian Authority’s Crimes against (its own) humanity

19/03/2009 / / 0 Comments

Following my previous post here Arutz Sheva today reported the results of the P.A’s decision not to fund hospital treatment in Israel for its citizens.

This decision by P.A. health minister Fathi Abu Moughli was as a result of Operation Cast Lead and is testimony to the perverted mindset which believes that such an action would harm Israel and remove a propaganda opportunity. Anything which reveals Israel to be in any way humanitarian is to be deplored, according to the P.A’s warped logic.

The Arutz Sheva report is very disturbing:

A decision by the Palestinian Authority Health Minister to cut off medical benefits at Israeli hospitals has cost the life of at least one little girl…

Six-year-old Asil Manasra died. The Palestinian Authority child had for eight months been receiving intensive treatment at an Israeli hospital for complications arising from tuberculosis. One week after the PA Health Ministry forced her family to stop the visits, the little girl struggled for breath no more..

It continues:

“I blame everyone. Should children die because of political decisions?” Asil’s father asked the AP reporter in anguish. “How can you stop treatment? When a child is so sick that she is going to die, is there something more important than that?”

Apparently, for the Palestinian Authority, propaganda is more important than life.  This is a sad fact of Palestinian life – it, life itself,  is only valued if taken by Israelis. Otherwise, Palestinian lives are pawns in a political and ideological game.

Read the whole sad story here


The Final Solution to The Israel Problem

18/03/2009 / / 0 Comments

On January 20th 1942 senior Nazis met at a villa on the Wannsee near Berlin to finalise the details of how to murder and dispose of every last European Jew.

In Geneva, Switzerland on April 20th the follow-up to the UN conference on racism held in Durban in 2001, and usually referred to as Durban II, will take place.

The first conference has become infamous for its singling out of Israel in its resolution and the walking out of the Israeli and American delegations after abuse and accusations were hurled at Israel. Zionism was equated with racism and Israel was deemed an Apartheid state.

This time Islamic countries have attempting to focus on the issue of religious defamation in an attempt to protect Islam from any criticism and thus legitimise attempts at free speech in order to uniquely protect Islam and enshrine intolerance as part of the UN charter. At the same time the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) which has a majority at the conference has focused once again on Israel and attempting to denounce it as racist and confirm the anti-Israel declaration of Durban I.

Several countries have already said they will not take part if the declaration against Israel proceeds.
Today it was announced that several of the draft terms have now been dropped after pre-conference negotiations. It remains to be seen whether the US, Canada and the EU will be mollified by the modified draft. It should be noted that the original Durban I declaration is still on the table to be ratified by in Geneva.

The details are tiresome and disturbing. A caucus of Arab and Muslim states dominate the conference. Libya is to chair the conference. Iran is a vice-chair.

For a conference which is designed to fight intolerance and racism many of the representatives and committee members seem to epitomise religious, sexual and gender intolerance. They are countries without free speech, a free press or free and fair elections. These countries have the temerity to accuse, vilify, demonise and deligitimise Israel where there is universal franchise, freedom of religion, freedom of sexual orientation, a free press and free speech, the latter of which enables Arab Israeli citizens to criticise the state and call for its destruction without fear of prosecution or persecution. Many of these countries, including Egypt and Iran, publish literature, broadcast TV programmes and make political speeches of the vilest anti-Semitic nature, yet it is these countries which accuse Israel of the racist crimes of which they are so blatantly guilty.

So why did I mention the Wannsee conference? It seems to me that under the increasingly irrelevant auspices of the UN, an association of African and Islamic states are attempting to formalise the grounds for the destruction of Israel: a necessary first step towards the elimination of the Jews and the perpetration of a second Holocaust. This is to be achieved by demonisation, deligitimisation, media propaganda, boycotts and, if ever they have the power to do so, military threat. 

The world is splitting and polarising, if it hasn’t already done so, into two camps: the liberal democracies of the West with its supporters and the Islamic states and its supporters. In the middle is Israel, and for a football they use the Palestinian people.

And the politicians in the EU and the US still believe it is all about territory: give the Palestinians a state and all will be well with the world. The politicians believe negotiation, carrots and sticks and self-interest will prevail. They are wrong. The lessons of history, that we were told we have learned, were not learned. We may be moving inexorably toward something terrible.

See Jerusalem Post article by Isi Leibler. This follows up the controversy of the American Jewish Committee’s involvement.

Lieberman – is Israel moving too far to the right?

16/03/2009 / / 1 Comment

Much column space has been given to the spectre of Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Yisrael Beitenu, obtaining an important government post and pushing the Israeli government to the far right. 

The issue with a such a government is its perceived negative effect on any future peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and the ultimate goal of a negotiated peace settlement leading to a viable Palestinian state.

Some of Lieberman’s utterances have been pretty chilling. His call for all Israeli citizens to sign loyalty oaths or lose their right to vote has a certain whiff of bigotry. Can you imagine how something similar would go down in the UK. It would be the Tebbitt test taken to the extreme.

Lieberman has also had some ‘interesting’ views on transferring the sovereignity of willing Israeli Arabs and villages to the Palestinian Authority in return for the redrawing of Israel’s borders to contain most, if not all, of its West Bank settlements.

But Lieberman appears to have undergone somewhat of a Damascene conversion of late, He now says that he would agree to a two-sate solution and wold even be willing to see the settlement where he lives, Nokdim, evacuated if it were part of a viable peace settlement.

His most famous slogan, much seen during the recent Gaza offensive, is ‘no loyalty – no citiizenship’. The clear discriminatory threat that the slogan embraces is deplored within and without Israel. But maybe Lieerman’s sloganising also carries the bravado of demagoguery and the need to make an impact, rather than a substantive threat. He explained that this slogan was in response to the calls of Israeli Arab leaders, citizens all, who, during Operation Cast Lead, used their democratic right to free speech in order to call on their fellow Israeli Arabs to support Hamas and suicide bombings and hasten the destruction of  the State of Israel.

You can begin to see where he is coming from but there is always a worrying underlying doubt with Lieberman that he uses the tactics of a politician to gain power which he can then use to push the country into a political and moral morass which would delight Israel’s enemies who would then see their own attempts at deligitimisation as vindicated;  those who are so quick to call Israel racist and an Apartheid state would have an absolute field-day. This is the danger of an extreme right-wing Israel: whatever its political and polemical logic it would completely undermine all attempts to show Israel as a democratic, enlightened, free and legitimate country.  

It is a sad indictment of world opinion that the EU in the form of Xavier Solana feels it has a right to ‘warn’ Israel about the dangers to the Middle East of a right wing government whilst it keeps ‘shtum’ abount the numerous right wing governments that surround Israel.

Lieberman’s views, however, can also be insightful: 

The peace process is based on three false basic assumptions; that Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the main cause of instability in the Middle East, that the conflict is territorial and not ideological, and that the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders will end the conflict.

This is what he said to YnetNews in 2006. No-one who really understand the forces within Palestine and the wider Muslim world could disagree with any of that statement. In fact, it reveals the basic error on which the current Obama administration, the EU and Tony Blair have all based their peace initiatives.  Israel has somehow to pretend that these three false assumptions and their resolution will bring about the desired solution. Lieberman is bold enough to state that this is a lie at worst and misguided at best.

However, any Israeli politician whose supporters call out ‘Death to the Arabs’  is surely representing an unwelcome change in the nature of Israeli politics and the psyche of a large section of its citizens, many of whom are from the former Soviet Union. 

In answer to the question ‘is Israel moving too far to the right?’ there is a clear and present danger that this is he case. Lieberman is the second only to Netanyahu in popularity. The longer the conflict with Hamas and Hizbullah lasts, the greater the threat from Iran grows, the more likely it is that Israeli politics will become polarised between an aggressively nationalist right and an increasingly marginalised left. 

This is not the face of Israel I want to see. It is dangerous and divisive. It is Putin politics in the Knesset and it could fatally weaken Israel.

Israel’s International Rescue

16/03/2009 / / 0 Comments

ZAKA is not a name that is well-know outside Jewish circles. That’s because it is a UN-recognised Israeli humanitarian organisation. Not many people are interested in anything to do with Israel’s humanitarian activities – it doesn’t quite fit with their preconceptions, prejudices or bias.

So for the uninformed here goes: ZAKA is a volunteer rescue and recovery service.  The organisation’s job is often a harrowing one, literally picking up the pieces after terrorist attacks, originally just in Israel.

It’s role expanded over time because it widened its remit to include disasters abroad to recover the bodies of Jews to ensure burial according to Jewish law and practice.

Now Zaka is using its experience to train voluntary groups around the world to help them cope with disasters (natural and man-made) and the aftermath of terrorist atacks.

Volunteers will be act as a first response unit assisting other professional on the scene of the incident.

ZAKA has already assisted after the Tsunami in Thailand, the bombing at Taba in Egypt, in Mumbai and in Namibia, a country with whom Israel does not even have diplomatic relations.

As UN NGO it can go anywhere in the world without invitation.

ZAKA assists with the living and dead of all nations regardless of race or religion. And although it specialises in Jewish victims it makes no distinctions.

Such is its work that it has even been put forward for a Nobel Peace Prize by a member of the UK parliament.

Remember Nahr el-Bared?

09/03/2009 / / 0 Comments

No, I don’t suppose you do unless you are one of the 30,000 Palestinians displaced or a relative of the 400 who died two years ago in fighting between the Lebanese army and Islamist militants.

The Lebanese army went in hard. It destroyed homes and killed many innocent civilians.

Yet there were no delegations from the Arab League, no British MPs making a tour of the devastation, no UN resolutions, no lurid TV pictures, no Iranian outrage, no Hamas demonstrations, no Palestinian Authority claims of war crimes,  no UNRWA officials accusing Lebanon of anything, no Viva Palestina convoys and definitely not a Jeremy Bowen in sight.

Why? Because it’s alright for an Arab country to kill Muslims with impunity. No Jews or Israelis were involved. So the world has little interest. Why did Lebanon take this action? Because an Islamist group was threatening to destabilise the country. They weren’t sending a missile barrage into neighbouring towns and cities, they didn’t threaten to annihilate the Lebanese people, but they were brutally slaughtered.

The Lebanese did not allow in any journalists. Pictures of the devastation have been carefully suppressed.

The camp was not bombed for three weeks but for 3 MONTHS!

This is what Michael Birmingham had to say on 25th October 2007 on the Information Clearing House website:

Between May and September of this year, a ferocious battle took place between the Lebanese Army and a small armed group known as Fatah Al Islam. From the first the day, the Lebanese Army surrounded the camp and fired in artillery, maintaining this course for months. Most of the residents of the camp were forced to leave with the clothes on their backs within the first three days. As the number of young Lebanese soldiers killed and horribly maimed rose through the battle, Lebanon became awash with patriotism and grief, any questioning of the army taboo.

Something terrible has been done to the residents of Nahr al Bared, and the Lebanese people are being spared the details. Over the past two weeks, since the camp was partly reopened to a few of its residents, many of us who have been there have been stunned by a powerful reality. Beyond the massive destruction of the homes from three months of bombing, room after room, house after house have been burned. Burned from the inside. Amongst the ashes on the ground, are the insides of what appear to have been car tyres. The walls have soot dripping down from what seems clearly to have been something flammable sprayed on them. Rooms, houses, shops, garages – all blackened ruins, yet having had no damage from bombing or battle. They were burned deliberately by people entering and torching them.

How many we do not know; it is too large for a few people to comprehensively assess. But finding an un-bombed house or a business that has not been torched is very hard indeed.

(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18618.htm)

Basically THE ENTIRE CAMP was destroyed by the Lebanese army. Was this not a prima facie war crime? Was this not worthy of world-wide condemnation, ICC war crimes investigations and those other instruments being used to attack Israel?

Unfortunately the residents of Nahr el-Bared do not have the propaganda machines working for them, but what is incomprehensible is that they do not even appear to have the interest of their fellow Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

But perhaps it’s not so incomprehensible after all. In fact, it’s blindingly obvious. Hamas and the PA don’t care about Palestinians who are not fighting Israel because there is no political ground to be gained. Accusing the Lebanese does nothing to further their aims of destroying Israel by arms or by political stealth.

Meanwhile the BBC reports today (here):

Palestinians have been here for more than 60 years – since the creation of Israel – but they are still barred from at least 70 professions, have no access to state education or healthcare, and cannot move freely or buy land.

These conditions turn the Palestinian camps into a breeding ground for extremism, a time bomb which will inevitably explode

It sounds to me that these Palestinians have it considerably worse than those in Gaza but are ignored by the world and the Arab world especially. The BBC adds:

The UN’s relief agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has only managed to raise $43m (£31m) to rebuild the camp – a tiny fraction of the $430m needed. Lebanon’s rich neighbours in the Gulf have not delivered the funds they pledged. 

Can the world not see the utter moral bankruptcy of the Arab world with regard to these people. But still it’s Israel and Israel alone which is being demonised and delegitimised around the world by Arab and Muslim hypocrites who allow hundreds of thousands to die in Sudan whilst sending support to the evil regime of al-Bashir and turn a blind eye to their fellows in Lebanon many of whom, despite the BBC’s assertion, were actually expelled from Jordan, another state that has washed its hands of the Palestinians.

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