There are 70 conflicts worldwide, so why do we focus on just one?

Original article by Stephen King appeared on May 13 in the Irish Examiner

Yes, there is public feeling about the Palestinians and their rotten deal. I’ve never heard Chechnya being discussed on the DART, whereas I have heard Israel being trashed on buses as well as at smart dinner parties. Besides, who’s ever heard of a "Sri Lanka out of Tamil Eelam" march through Cork or calls for a boycott of Russia? I owe Micheál Martin an apology of sorts. I admit that when I read media reports of his discussions with Ban Ki-moon in New York at the weekend my eyes rolled up to the heavens.

The country’s most senior representative to the rest of the world has a rare opportunity to raise Ireland’s issues with the UN secretary-general and what’s his top priority? Yes, you guessed it – Gaza.

It’s not that Gaza isn’t an important issue facing the world. It is. What Gaza is not, though, is an issue where Europe, let alone Ireland, can wield much positive influence. Gaza will only be sorted when the Arab states, the US and Israel – probably in that order – decide it should be sorted.

But I was wrong. I had swallowed the media line. Yes, Micheál Martin and Ban Ki-moon did talk about Gaza, but it was just one subject among others.

In fact, when you look at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) press release, the first item of discussion listed was one where Ireland has a very direct interest, namely Chad.

So what caused my blood pressure to rise? Was Gaza the topic the DFA’s spindoctors were pushing? Possibly. Was the position on Gaza the most objectively newsworthy? Again, possibly: the Pope is in the region and Ireland tends to be at one end of the European spectrum of opinion on anything to do with Israel.

The third possibility, and the one that seems to me most likely, is that the media has a fixation on Israel (and its supposed crimes) which is, for want of a better word, disproportionate. That’s why the line about Gaza led several media reports of Minister Martin’s meeting.

If I were Jewish, I would be told I’m paranoid for thinking the world and its media are out to get me. After all, the fact that Israel is the world’s one and only Jewish state – amidst a vast ocean of Muslim states – inevitably makes many Jewish people think it’s them, and not Israel as such, which is in the media’s sights. But I’m not Jewish. Besides, just because people are paranoid doesn’t mean others aren’t out to get them.

A quick scan of the world’s trouble spots makes my point. The well-respected International Crisis Group is currently tracking 70 conflicts around the world, from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zimbabwe. Yes, 70: we live in a dangerous world.

Some of these are very familiar to us: Northern Ireland, Iraq, the Basque country, North Korea and, of course, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Others are not nightly news: Kashmir, Burma, Eritrea and so on. And then there are the conflicts we have forgotten about, or never really heard about too much because they are far away or poor, or both: Armenia versus Azerbaijan, Mindanao in the Philippines, Morocco/western Sahara and Aceh.

Some of the 70 hotspots are especially deadly. Millions of black Africans have died in Congo in the past decade, well below most people’s radar.

Sri Lanka has had a bit of a focus in recent weeks – though hardly the minute-by-minute wraparound coverage Gaza had in January. How many of us were really aware of the fact that more than 80,000 people have died in a quarter of a century of civil war?

Try this. Google "Tamil Tigers" and you will receive 2.3 million results. Google "Hamas" and you get 10 times as many – and Hamas hasn’t been around nearly as long. It’s the same if you Google "Tamils" and "Palestinians". Is the difference that the Tigers might have killed Rajiv Gandhi but, unlike the Palestinians, have rarely brought their murderous tactics to Europe directly? The Sri Lankan conflict, at least in its military phase, looks as though it is coming to an end. The work of peace-building will last for years to come.

The same could be said about Chechnya. The Russians have just announced the end of their "counter-terrorism" operation. There are no solid figures for the number of civilians killed since the second war began there in late 1999, but estimates range anywhere between 25,000 and 200,000.

Put that in context. Israel might be geographically small – smaller than Munster – but in population terms Chechnya is absolutely tiny. A region with a little more than one million inhabitants has seen anything up to one-fifth of its civilian population killed in two decades of war. And one school siege aside, we have largely looked the other way.

By comparison, 6,000 Palestinians – armed and civilian together – out of a Palestinian population in the territories three to four times that of Chechnya have died since the second intifada of 2001.

It goes without saying that any civilian death is a tragedy – and, very often, an outrage – but search for Chechnya on the DFA website and you only receive one-tenth of the number of hits that you do for Israel. No-one believes the DFA is somehow in league with the Russians and supports their quasi-colonial war against Chechnya, but it does go to show some perspective has been lost somewhere along the line.

Yes, there is public feeling about the Palestinians and their rotten deal. I’ve never heard Chechnya being discussed on the DART, whereas I have heard Israel being trashed on buses as well as at smart dinner parties. Besides, who’s ever heard of a "Sri Lanka out of Tamil Eelam" march through Cork or calls for a boycott of Russia?

But whose fault is that? Dare I suggest, the media? As a result, Israel has learned a lesson from the Russians and the Sri Lankans: impose a media ban and the world leaves you pretty much alone. No one could condone the ban during the Gaza offensive – and being host to the world’s second largest press corps, after Washington, means you pay a high price in terms of stroppy hacks – but it does seem to work.

SO WHY why the obsession with Israel? It’s the only country in the world whose existence is queried is one reason. It’s the Holy Land to the world’s two largest faiths is another. That al-Qaeda sometimes backs the Palestinian cause makes Israel/Palestine strategically important – but that’s true of Chechnya, too.

Maybe it’s the oil in the Middle East region that makes Arab countries important in western capitals (while distracting from their own despotism)?

Could it be some wrongheaded notion of guilt for having set up Israel after the Holocaust, when actually Israel fought British imperialism for its independence? Could it be, as many Israelis believe, that we see Israelis as Jews and, therefore, as bloodthirsty sub-humans in the latest manifestation of centuries-old anti-semitism?

Or is it just anti-Americanism? Perhaps it’s a little to do with each of these factors. But could it actually be that we see Israelis as very much like ourselves – sophisticated, prosperous, well-educated, fairly pale-skinned democrats? Do we hate ourselves that much? It’s either that or Israel simply isn’t deadly enough to deter the journalists too afraid to work in fly-ridden Congo.

Gaza for breakfast, back to the pool at the American Colony Hotel in time for tea, and pick up an attractive girl or strapping lad at a bar after dinner. Same again tomorrow, please. Just try doing that in Darfur.

Bluebirds grounded

A quick footy-related posting. Cardiff City have managed their usual success at snatching defeat from the jaws of glorious victory by spending the last 3 matches getting one solitary point, by scraping a 2-2 draw with a couple of late goals against rock-bottom Charlton. Their other two fixtures saw a 6-0 drubbing at Preston, the only team who could realistically catch them for the last play-off place, and an ignominious 3-0 home reverse to Ipswich, a team with nothing to play for except avoiding the wrath of famously hot-headed new gaffer Roy Keane, in Ninian Park's final ever league game before their move to the new place across the road.

Why is this surprising, special, worthy of comment? SOmething that has seemingly gone totally unnoticed by footy fans is the real possibility of a bizarre play-off for the play-offs scenario. Under Football League rules, if two teams finish the season with identical points, goal difference and goals scored, and there is something to play for (ie a place in the play-offs for promotion), then the two teams must play a special play-off to determine who finishes highest.

Here is a part of the latest league table:

	Played	Pts	Goals Diff	Goal Scored
Wolverhampton	45	87	27	79
Birmingham	45	80	16	52
Sheff Utd	45	79	25	64
Reading	45	77	33	71
Cardiff	45	74	13	65
Burnley	45	73	8	68
Preston	45	71	11	64
Swansea	45	68	14	63

I have included Swansea just to rub it in that they cannot get into the play-offs. Small comforts...

Now look at Cardiff and Preston's records. If Cardiff were to lose by a single goal, be it any given scoreline, and Preston were to win by that same scoreline, they would be exactly tied, and for the first time ever (I think!), the top seven would all make it into the play-offs, with Cardiff and Preston facing each other in a preliminary round.

Wonder what odds you'd have got at the beginning of the season that a team effectively finishing seventh could make it into the Premiership?!

None of this is of any comfort; I am pretty sure Preston will romp home with a fantastic end-of-season performance, while Cardiff will cave in miserably to a Sheffield Wednesday side who have absolutely nothing to play for and are mentally already halfway to the Costa del Bling for their summer break.

Ahmedinejihad

So some of the spineless diplomats who didn't manage to boycott the Geneva charade did at least manage to wriggle out on their shameful serpent bellies during Ahmedinejihad's speech. Even by his standards, it was totally nuts - just the kind of finger one wants on the nuclear trigger. He started with the classic "Palestine was expropriated by the Jooz" tirade, which prompted a first wave of walkouts, then ranted on through Israel being "a most cruel and racist regime" and "genocide of the innocent Palestinians while the world stood by", before explicitly blaming "the Zionists" for the war on Iraq.

Still, all credit to him for his oratory skills, he kept steadily spitting bile as a solid hundred delegates got up and huffed out, not to mention a couple of protestors running in wearing very funky wigs.

Needless to say, the BBC managed its usual spin, with a preview report saying how the whole thing had been made a farce by all the nasty boycotters, then managing not to translate his speech. Prior to that, an interview with an expert about North Korea's nuclear arsenal was quickly turned by the Beeb anchor into a discussion about Israel's nuclear ambiguity, and suggesting that Israel could just declare then give up its weapons in return for Iran ceasing their nuclear programme. Nice one.

A little affirmation is needed; may I first recommend readers to Calev's wonderful blog, In The Land Of Milk And Honey, and secondly I am cribbing a passage from Amos Oz that he just used, by way of sticking two fingers up to Ahmedinejad, the people who stayed on the conference floor, and the continued insidious bias of the BBC.

Then he [my father] told me in a whisper, without once calling me Your Highness or Your Honour, what some hooligans did to him and his brother David in Odessa and what some gentile boys did to him at his Polish school in Vilna, and the girls joined in too, and the next day, when his father, Grandpa Alexander, came to the school to register a complaint, the bullies refused to return the torn trousers but attacked his father, Grandpa, in front of his eyes, forced him down on the paving stones and removed his trousers too in the middle of the playground, and the girls laughed and made dirty jokes, saying that Jews were all so-and-sos, while the teachers watched and said nothing, or maybe they were laughing too.

And still in a voice of darkness with his hand still losing its way in my hair (because he was not used to stroking my hair) my father told me under my blanket in the early hours of the thirtieth of November 1947, ‘Bullies may well bother you in the street or at school some day. They may do it precisely because you are a bit like me. But from now on, from the moment we have our own state, you will never be bullied just because you are a Jew and because Jews are so-and-sos. Not that. Never again. From tonight that’s finished here. For ever.’

Dur-brain

Good heavens. Are my eyes deceiving me? Here is someone very senior from the UN commenting on the "Durban 2" extravaganza of Israel-bashing taking place in Geneva:

"A handful of states have permitted one or two issues to dominate their approach to this issue, allowing them to outweigh the concerns of numerous groups of people that suffer racism and similar forms of intolerance to a pernicious and life-damaging degree on a daily basis all across the world."

Indeed, it is horrific that the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, along with their fellow human-rights-abusing, oil-weapon-wielding, Jew-bashing friends Venezuela, Russia et al, should use this as a tool for anti-Semitism and tedious attacks on Israel, when there are so many other things going on in the...

...hold on...some interference on the line...what's this...ah...I see...so...got it...orftorfu, you say...yes...yes...uh huh...business as usual then...thanks!

Sorry about that dear reader, it seems I made a mistake. That quotation from the beeyatch UN head honcho of this conference is actually aimed at AUSTRALIA, ISRAEL, THE USA, HOLLAND ETC for walking out in protest at the appropriation of the conference agenda to solely attack Israel and the Jooz.

Hopefully she will bury her head so far in the sand she'll strike some choice Arab crude and choke to death on it.

Back in TLV

After a 10-week hiatus, I am finally getting back on the horse and blogging again. I was just thinking about what to write, as I sit at Ruppin Villas, with the BBC news on in the background. Lo and behold, Lize Ducet is hosting a debate on - get this - "Do the Palestinians have a partner for peace in Netanyahu?"

The delightful Abdul Bari Atwan is peddling the standard Palestinian line. I always think he looks like a sleepy hound dog. He speaks in that totally stereotypical Arabic-English voice, throwing in plenty of quavering emotional crap. Hilariously he makes a slip and says Israel could have dealt with "moderates like Arafat... I mean Abbas"!

Most of the debate is a yawn-fest in which the British and American folks on the panel try to stick to blandishments, whilst Bari Fatwa peddles his nonsense and the Israeli guy, Saul Zadka of some unheard-of agency, and formerly of Ha'aretz, plods along with his heavily accented English and blunt, boring counter-arguments. He fails to question very much of the others' statements, for example he leaves unchallenged such phrases as "Netanyahu is opposed to a two-state solution" and "Israel's government coalition is extreme right-wing."

Then the debate switches to a discussion on the worldwide recession and even Bari Fatwa has something reasonable to say, whilst the dumb Israeli sits twiddling his thumbs and looking like a one-trick pony. This is the time to point out that Israel's banks largely avoided sub-prime, that Israel is slowing down but is going to have a much milder recession, and this shows that Netanyahu's policies in the past as Finance Minister, and his suggestion that the best way to cut a deal with the Palestinians is through "economic peace" is a realistic option. Instead he gets a laugh from the panel by meekly agreeing with Bari Fatwa that Gordon Brown is a pillock.

Useless bloody Zionists.

Meanwhile, a bit earlier on in the trip, I read an excellent piece by the wonderful David Horovitz of the Jerusalem Post. Note the references to Saeb Erekat's recent interview on Al-Jazeera. Want to know if we have a partner for peace with the "moderates" of Fatah? Really think there is a workable solution? Wake up and smell the white phosphorus. Here is a choice morsel of Erekat's interview:

"Yasser Arafat said to Clinton defiantly: 'I will not be a traitor. Someone will come to liberate it after 10, 50, or 100 years. Jerusalem will be nothing but the capital of the Palestinian state, and there is nothing underneath or above the Haram Al-Sharif except for Allah.' That is why Yasser Arafat was besieged, and that is why he was killed unjustly."

Let that sink in a bit. Arafat denied that the Temple Mount had any Jewish connotations, therefore was unwilling to concede even the idea of Palestinian sovereignty on the ground with theoretical Jewish sovereignty of what was underneath. Erekat and Abbas concur with this, and Erekat even suggests Arafat was KILLED by Israel for this. The full interview is translated here at MEMRI.

We will never have peace with the Palestinians, unless we want a civil war of our own when the frummers turn on an Israeli government for allowing the destruction of what is left of the Temple.

So I find myself in this bizarre position where the more time I spend here in TLV, the more I think about aliyah, love the lifestyle, and wonder what I am doing in London, but then I see things like that and think I would be a better Zionist by being back in Blighty defending Israel properly. In either event, do I really want to spend the next few years wheeler-dealing, or should I be doing something more meaningful? Some big questions...

Editor's Notes: Home truths about Gaza

Superb piece by David Horovitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post:

Are we losing the capacity to distinguish between what we know from our own experiences to be true or credible and what others would have the world believe about us?

In a Jerusalem Post supplement that will appear next week to mark the end of Pessah, Esther Wachsman, whose son Nachshon was kidnapped by Hamas in 1994 and killed in a Palestinian village not far from Jerusalem as the IDF tried to come to his rescue, describes poignantly how the family came to choose his name.

The family's third son, he was born at Pessah time in 1975, and they decided to name him in honor of Nachshon the son of Aminadav, the man who had the guts to trust God and test the waters, the man who leapt into the Red Sea confident that his people would be able to cross, the man who showed the children of Israel the path to their destiny.

Israel cries out for such a figure today... or such a mindset: the confidence to set a path of national destiny, to unify behind it, and to pursue it for our own benefit and that of like-minded nations, leaving our enemies helpless in our wake.

Israel has faced, and faced down, more daunting hostile challenges in its brief modern history than those posed today by the toxic mix of demonization and violence championed by Iran and offshoots such as Hamas and Hizbullah. Surviving the first moments of statehood in 1948, when a few hundred thousand pioneering Israelis prevailed against armies drawn from surrounding populations in the tens of millions, was only the first of many improbable victories.

It was a series maintained through the decades, notably including the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, all the way through to the second intifada, when the Palestinians dispatched suicide bombers in a calculated, strategic onslaught that was designed to terrorize our nation and encourage us to take the only sensible course of action - to flee. Yet even with buses and cafes and shopping malls blown up week after week, and much of a watching world branding us the architect of our own misery because we had resisted suicidal terms for Palestinian independence, the people of modern Israel did not flee; we stayed, we rethought, and we learned to protect ourselves more effectively.

But in the years since then, those who seek our demise have rethought as well. We sought to construct hermetic physical barriers to the suicide bomber onslaught. From south Lebanon and Gaza, Hizbullah and then Hamas simply cleared those obstacles by firing missiles over them, and every effort is being made to do likewise from the West Bank.

Protecting Israel cannot now be achieved by walls and fences and defensive measures; the rockets have to be stopped at source - and the source of the rockets, as ruthlessly determined by the Palestinians who manufacture and launch them, lies in the heart of the civilian populace. By cynical design, those who would kill our citizens thus ensure that their people are killed when we try to thwart the attacks - so that we are forced to fight not only to protect ourselves, but to protect our good name and our legitimacy as we do so.

This creates a somewhat complex reality - in which war footage and death tolls emphatically do not tell the full story of our conflicts, and yet that story is told, and is misunderstood, largely in a mix of misleading images and statistics. Still, internalizing the true picture - of an Israeli nation seeking to defend itself against a cynical, dishonest Palestinian terror leadership whose religiously inspired loathing for us far outweighs its concerns for the well-being of its own people - is not impossibly challenging, not for those with the earnest will to look a little more carefully.

Operation Cast Lead, Israel's turn-of-the-year military effort to halt the rocket fire from Gaza, however, seems to have marked something of a turning point as regards the willingness to look a little more carefully, to probe beyond the daily images of war and the casualty tolls.

Indeed, the furor surrounding purported testimonies from a small group of soldiers back from the war - the soldiers whose stories were compiled by the Rabin pre-army program's Danny Zamir - would suggest that a growing proportion even of our own people, we Israelis, are losing the capacity to distinguish between what we know from our own experiences to be true or credible and what others would have the world believe about us.

THE IDF is a people's army which directly touches us almost all of us. We all serve in it ourselves, and/or have relatives and friends and colleagues who do.

Almost all of us knew soldiers who directly experienced the Second Lebanon War, and came home with sorry tales of inadequate training, equipment and supplies. Almost all of us know soldiers who served in Operation Cast Lead. And what we didn't hear directly was supplemented by what we saw and heard and read about in the media.

We knew that the IDF was drawn into a civilian theater of war by an enemy that had placed rockets inside mosques, booby-trapped schools and deployed snipers in apartment buildings. We knew, too, because IDF commanders were permitted to say so publicly, that the army had changed tactics in the wake of events such as the ambush in Jenin refugee camp in 2002, in which 13 soldiers lost their lives, and that there was a readier resort to fire power in areas of military operation.

We knew, for instance, that the IDF leafleted areas where it was tackling Hamas, and urged Palestinian civilians by radio and in countless phone calls to leave. If it then came under fire from a particular building in such an area, we heard commanders detail, rather than send in soldiers to their possible deaths, it called for air support and, if necessary, took the building down.

We knew that mistakes were made - how could they not be in so densely populated an area at a time of war? Somewhere amid the self-flagellation of the Zamir soldiers' stories, we seemed to forget that the IDF killed several of its own soldiers in the bloody chaos of conflict. Inevitably, there were Palestinian noncombatants, many Palestinian noncombatants, killed in error in a conflict in which teenagers and the elderly were known to be potential suicide bombers, in which Hamas gunmen fought out of uniform and sometimes fired from within civilian crowds, in which any notion of Palestinian fighters following rules of war was nonsensical.

Credible sources, furthermore, suggest that, post-war, there has been considerable debate within the IDF about the difficulties of reconciling traditional IDF military ethics with the problematics posed by the nature of the civilian-theater conflict Hizbullah and Hamas have concocted: Where is the correct path between safeguarding troops and minimizing harm to civilians, and was it followed this time?

This newspaper, when news broke of the Rabin academy graduates' "testimonies," sought to measure their credibility by traditional journalistic standards. How dependable was the source? Were the testifying soldiers named? Could they be contacted to verify their accounts?

By definition, such assessments have to be made rapidly, decisions taken against the pressures of deadlines, and all newspapers inevitably get some of them wrong. But since the soldiers themselves were not named and not contactable, and since doubts about the accuracy of their accounts surfaced almost immediately, it was rapidly decided to carry those initial stories on the inside pages of the paper.

Danny Zamir's unexpected declaration to this newspaper on Tuesday that he had been horrified by the worldwide controversy sparked by his soldiers' accounts was, to put it mildly, hard to reconcile with his earlier stance and expressions. Now, Zamir says that the IDF "tried to protect civilians in the most crowded place in the world. There were no orders to kill civilians or any summary executions or things like that. There were problems, but problems the army can deal with."

The narrow focus in his own op-ed article (reprinted on Tuesday in the Post) on The New York Times in particular and the international media in general is disingenuous, too; it was parts of the Hebrew media, notably Haaretz and Ma'ariv, that first splashed the damning accusations he had compiled of permissive rules of engagement producing specific incidents in which civilians were deliberately shot dead. It was a Haaretz reporter who flatly stated that "the soldiers are not lying, for the simple reason that they have no reason to... This is what the soldiers, from their point of view, saw in Gaza."

Except, it turns out, they didn't. Their "testimony" was hearsay, and untrue.

FROM ISRAEL'S front-pages, in the sadly predictable rat-pack world of what passes for global journalism these days, Zamir's compilation became the most prominent story on earth for a few days - headlining major newspapers, leading global newscasts, demolishing yet more of Israel's legitimacy, turning Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi's insistence that the IDF is a "moral army" into an international bad joke.

With newspapers closing down, resources evaporating and reporters' buckling under ever-heavier pressures of work, it should be understood, there is no profound process of evaluation that determines whether a story like this will dominate the global agenda. What happens, rather, is that a hostile-to-Israel story in the Hebrew press is deemed credible simply by virtue of its having appeared in the Hebrew press: The Israelis are saying nasty stuff about themselves. Networks such as Al-Jazeera have an ideological interest in pumping up any such stories. Rival networks don't want to be left behind. Once the story is running on TV, in turn, the print news agencies feel obligated to cover it, because otherwise their clients will complain that it's on TV but not on the wires. Hey presto. World headlines.

The highly dubious nature of this and certain other items that made world headlines relating to the Gaza conflict, I have been told, prompted considerable unrest in the newsrooms of several international news organizations, with some staffers loudly protesting the apparent suspension of more rigorous journalistic standards - to no avail and, I suspect, to no lasting effect.

Entirely unsurprisingly, infinitely less global media attention has attended Zamir's contention to the Post this week that "the international media turned the IDF into war criminals," that he had no way of knowing whether the alleged shooting incidents ever took place, and that "Operation Cast Lead was justified; the IDF worked in a surgical manner. Unfortunately, in these types of operations, civilians will be killed."

FROM THE Israeli perspective, among the more troubling aspects of this dismal affair was emblemized by a letter we received, and published in Wednesday's paper, from a reader in Tel Aviv who took the Post to task for believing that "the IDF 'investigation' [of the purported killings] is gospel truth" and for ostensibly ignoring what he called "the flood of testimonies coming from Gaza - almost on a daily basis - about IDF soldiers shooting innocent men, women and children fleeing their homes, about killing medical personnel, about a civilian death toll much higher than Israel claims, all backed with strong evidence.

"No, the Palestinian side of things will always remain a lie for you," the letter writer concluded, "and evidence [of] grave wrongdoing is not for a once-honorable paper that is rapidly becoming a mouthpiece for the propaganda of the most moral army in the world."

Far more worrying than the criticism of this newspaper was the assertion of a "flood of testimonies" backed by "strong evidence" that IDF soldiers shot the innocent, and the cynical description of the IDF as "the most moral army in the world."

Skepticism is an essential tool in the armory of any journalist, and indeed of any member of the public in assessing what is presented as fact. Again, the IDF is itself agonizing about the ethical parameters within which to wage war in Gaza.

What was so sad about this reader's letter was the mix of elevated skepticism regarding what the army has to say about its own practices, and the suspension of such skepticism as regards the worst allegations being leveled against it. And what is so dismaying is the degree to which that skewed mix was widely manifest not only in this episode, but in much of the way that Israel is generally viewed from afar and, increasingly I fear, in the way we are coming to view ourselves.

WE ISRAELIS need to constantly ensure that our actions are moral and just. In that context, Zamir's allegations emphatically should have been - and indeed were - carefully investigated and handled as he told the Post this week he'd hoped they would be: His soldiers had "talked about what was difficult and painful in the war," and he took their accounts "to the army because I expected them to deal with the issues raised."

More broadly, with the dilemmas posed by Gaza as with all challenges to our capacity to live here securely, we need to shape military and diplomatic tactics and strategy to best ensure that we can both hold true to our core values and survive.

We live in a region where hostility and hatred are not easily redirected toward conciliation. We are battling in a largely unsympathetic international climate and must defend ourselves, physically and intellectually, against those who seek our demise. Critically, we cannot afford to become the prisoners of others' distorted sense of our reality, our behavior and our challenges.

These are national imperatives and they require a cohesion of purpose that Israel has yet to achieve. Internally riven and all-too intolerant, we remain as far as ever from a consensus over what our goals should be and the means we should employ to realize them.

We have left Egypt and reached the promised land, but not yet fulfilled our destiny. We await our Nachshon.

Freedman Down Under: Sydney to South Hampstead

This is the final instalment of Freedman Down Under... we pick up as Wifey and I cruise across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, in glorious sunshine and blue skies, with the words of John Farnham ringing in our ears. The combination of the song, the view and the air conditioning made the hair stand on end.

We swung by the hostel first, to drop off our things, and were delighted to see that they had prepared a simple method of burning off the excess pounds we had piled on in the previous month. 40 degrees in the shade, and no aircon in the room - not even a decent ceiling fan, just some ancient plastic thing that may as well have been a fly taped to a stick for all the air it was pushing. Still, at least we didn't have squeaky prison bunks.

With a few hours left on the clock before returning the car, we headed out for a little orientation drive around the city. Not much to say really; the place is like London and New York combined with some serious tropics and a dash of old-fashioned English seaside sans scum and crap weather. We took in the cheapest pub lunch ever (under £3 for a mahoosive and actually very excellent steak and chips), dropped the car back, then had a leisurely stroll back to the hostel in said 40 degree heat. Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that...

That evening, we contemplated a big meal out but decided it might be nice to actually cook something for ourselves for once. The hostel had a pretty decent kitchen, and a Coles was handily at the top of the road, so we rustled up a spot of spag roo, much to the amusement of some funny Taiwanese kids who had never cooked anything before, and stood nearby gawking, and pointing at onions or garlic, asking "rot is dis?" etc etc. Not that we believe in stereotypes or nuffink.

The following day, our prayers for ANY change in the weather were answered with some grey clouds and light intermittent drizzle. We headed out to Bondi Beach for a nice long jaunt down to Coogee along the fab coastal path. Bondi is nice, but does have the same faded charm as a Brighton or a Scarborough. Obviously the birds and weather are a bit hotter though.

Highlight of the trip, other than a conversation with Wifey which was just a tad Sixth Sense, was the part where we passed some interesting curved rock formations, and I immediately switched into my best Aboriginal voice and told a beautiful made-up story about how back in Dreamtime, Plonka the Whale had chased Fukuit the Shark into the bay, where they threshed about until Fukuit fled and Plonka was beached against these rocks, making the smooth curved indentation. Then we walked around the next corner and found a plaque explaining a bit about the area, and, um, telling pretty much that exact story. I think I might get a spearing on my next trip to Oz...

Stopped off for a fress at Bronte, probably my fave of the beaches, and wound up back at the hostel to freshen up and head out for the evening (after devouring a serious load of fajitas first). Although it was a Sunday, the following day was Australia Day, ie public holiday, so people were out in force. It's hard to describe just how many stunning girls were just parading around the streets of King's Cross, but think Playboy Mansion with clothes on, and you wouldn't be too far off. Wound up at the funky Goldfish bar, where we worked through a few cocktails, including one with marmalade in it, and chatted to a bevy of cuties of course, as well as checking out the cool unisex toilets. Now I know why women always go in pairs, but I am sworn to secrecy.

The following day was characterised by a steady wet mist descending, with the effect that we didn't feel like doing a whole lot. That evening we headed out for a harbour boat trip (for which read piss up and pick up) with a large group of "fellow backpackers". Obviously I am not one, but best to keep up the pretense and slum it from time to time. Keeps one grounded. A dozen cans of Tooheys later, and with a cute strawberry blonde Canadian snuggled under my bright orange umbrella, we dashed through the rain to a crazy grafitti-covered bus, on to a mad club, where pitchers of cocktail were a fiver each. Got through half a dozen jugs of that, threw myself massively into the ambience of Australia Day, especially a spot of the ol' Flo Rida, where I did a full Les Grossman (Tropic Thunder reference!).

Next day a nice early start as we had a 10am checkout to contend with. Wifey was a little woolly-headed but I dragged myself downtown for a little mooch about nonetheless, including visits to the NSW Parliament, some other random historical buildings, and a drop of coffee on the top floor of the NSW Supreme Court, which is actually a skyscraper right next to Hyde Park (kinda mini-Central park), with cracking views across the city despite the weather.

Then off to the airport, with Wifey accidentally-on-purpose losing his Huckleberry Finn hat en route - it had reacted as straw usually does to damp, and smelled like a horse had slept on it. Usual visit to airport lounge, disappointing Qantas red wine selection masked by a G&T and the ubiquitous glass of sparkling, as well as a stack of very good cheese. Back to Melbourne, temperatures down to just high 30s, trek back to collect the car then wind up at Cool Aunt and Uncle's designer pad for leftover roo (we schlepped it from NSW, smashing all the rules about bringing food interstate), which we washed down with some excellent red brought by the Rippa, who stayed for dinner.

After a couple of days in Melbourne, and with another heatwave of 40+ approaching, we hopped in the car down the Great Ocean Road. Very pleasant, and all the more impressive for learning that large chunks of it were built by hand by a private company looking to attract tourists to the region, but as Wifey pointed out, compared to say Route 1 in the USA, this is a Good Ocean Road with occasional Greats. Highlights included the Round The Twist lighthouse and some really excellent quiche at Cape Otway, as well as the obvious lovely scenery. We got to Warrnambool at the end of the road, kipped overnight in a motel, and swung back to Melbourne the next day.

We had some really nice stops along the way - Wifey is learning the Freedman Road Trip methodology, where we potter, meander and mooch our way across various landscapes. One of them was particularly nice - a little cove hidden right down under the cliffs, complete with its own fairytale story about Tom and Eva, the only survivors of a shipwreck. Except there was no happily ever after; Tom, some lowly shiphand, didn't get to snog Eva, some rich kid, after rescuing her. In fact, they never saw each other again once they had recuperated. But then again, from the engravings of the incident, she looked like a minger anyway.

After getting back to Melbourne and having a leisurely weekend of mooching around town, not doing too much, little walks and dips at the beach, bit of fressing here and there, we took in a nice birthday dinner at Chocolate Buddha on Fed Square with Yankanaussie, whilst enjoying the atmosphere of tens of thousands of people packed onto the plaza in the balmy evening sun, enjoying the final of the Australian Open. Then some swift beers down by the riverside, and back home thoroughly contented.

Next day, final full day in Oz, mostly chilling out, then off to Neighbours Night with Wifey, Rippa and The Ringer, who actually works for Neighbours. Met the very sexy but just a tad ditzy Sky Mangel, Eastenders-a-like Steve, and the wonderful Dr Karl Kennedy, who played a set with his band, Waiting Room. Pics to follow.

Sadly that brings us to the end of Freedman Down Under. Suffice to say I cheered myself up over the next 24 hours of travel by downing obscene amounts of excellent food and drink on first Qantas to HK and then BA back to Heathrow, and making use of the lovely Arrivals Lounge for snobs like me back at T5. Then Wifey #3 and his Wifey came to collect, complete with my bright orange BP coat to wear, as it was the same tempreature in fahrenheit in London as it had been in celsius in Melbourne.

Anyway, I am now back in Blighty, and looking forward to catching up with y'all soon...

A quick news round-up

No point reinventing the wheel re what's still going on in Gaza, the debate re the Beeb etc. Suffice to say that Auntie is showing its usual orftorfu re the Palestinians: they had an unelected, corrupt leadership that stole all its aid money, then they elected the same mob, then replaced them with another bunch who turn out to also be appropriating cash, as well as attacking their own aid vehicles, and who prefer to provoke a war using the resources they do have, to trying to improve their own society.

Oh, did I mention that Hamas seem to have enough cash to splash that they are going around damaged properties handing out wads of banknotes? Also the irony that these are usually evil Zionist shekels and dollars... Meanwhile normal service has resumed re rockets and border attacks. So the Gazans are on the whole definitely good candidates for a humanitarian appeal.

So here are a few choice stories and links for you (thanks for this first bit to Honest Reporting):

Despite widespread charges leveled against Israel in the international media, some journalists have, to their credit, made the effort to dig deeper amidst the rubble to find out what really went on in Gaza and the crimes committed by Hamas against its own people. Here are a couple of stories that you may not have seen in your local media.

Hamas hijacking ambulances:

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

Palestinian civilians living in Gaza during the three-week war with Israel have spoken of the challenge of being caught between Hamas and Israeli soldiers as the radical Islamic movement that controls the Gaza strip attempted to hijack ambulances.

Mohammed Shriteh, 30, is an ambulance driver registered with and trained by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

His first day of work in the al-Quds neighbourhood was January 1, the sixth day of the war. "Mostly the war was not as fast or as chaotic as I expected," Mr Shriteh told the Herald. "We would co-ordinate with the Israelis before we pick up patients, because they have all our names, and our IDs, so they would not shoot at us."

Mr Shriteh said the more immediate threat was from Hamas, who would lure the ambulances into the heart of a battle to transport fighters to safety.

Hamas's human shields:

Der Spiegel reveals the abuse of Palestinian civilian homes by Hamas:

Hail's house is just a few streets away and only suffered light damage. There are a few bullet holes in the living room walls and all of the window panes are broken. Hail also found out after the cease-fire that the militants had used his house as a base for their operations. The door to his house stood open and there were electric cables lying in the hallway. When Hail followed them they led to his neighbor's house which it seems Hamas had mined.

As Hail, in his mid-30s, sat on his porch and thought about what to do a man came by: He was from Hamas and had left something in Hail's home. He let him in and the man then emerged with a bullet proof vest, a rocket launcher and an ammunitions belt. An hour later a fighter with Islamic Jihad called to the door, then disappeared onto the roof and reappeared with a box of ammunition. "The abused civilians' homes for their own purposes. That is not right," Hail says with disgust while trying to remain polite.

IDF INVESTIGATES CASUALTY FIGURES

YNet News reports:

A continuing IDF investigation into the number of civilian Palestinian casualties during the Israeli offensive in Gaza indicated that only 250 of the fatalities were civilians.

The military estimates that between 1,100 and 1,200 people were killed during the offensive. Some 700 of are believed to be militants and most are believed to be Hamas operatives.

The IDF is still trying to ascertain the identity of the remaining fatalities, but security sources said many would probably turn out to be militants as well. "Hamas is familiar with the numbers and is doing everything it can to concealed them," said an IDF source....

Many of the fatalities were considered to be civilians at first, because there were no weapons found with them, said a military source, "But that method of operation is consistent with the way Hamas was hiding in the midst of civilians, moving between their strongholds with no weapons. In many cases someone thought to be a civilian casualty turned out to be a Hamas operative after we ran our checks."

giving
Now a few articles from The Times (hat tips to Reuben, Bodie and Lazarus, I think).

Firstly this piece by the masterful Daniel Finkelstein, where he points out that all we want is for the other lot to say they are okay with us existing and actually mean it, rather than ululating and handing out sweets when some Jews/Yanks get blown up. Also here is his recent gem about giving airtime to whoever wants to buy it, so they can just run with their own bias, and we all know what we're getting.

Next up, also in The Times, this excellent piece by Andrew Roberts, pointing out that the charities who might run a BBC appeal have been as systematically biased against Israel as the Beeb itself.

I also caught this superb Times editorial, which really sums it up and has a feel of cool objectivity (ie hundreds of bleeding hearts wrote in afterwards to "correct" it). The only bit that made me squirm was the quoting of that Norwegian doctor, because yes, it is all so tragic, but then he creeped me out when I saw him on the news. So I did a bit of research...

Gilbert is a radical Marxist and a member of the political Red (Rodt) party, a revolutionary socialist party in Norway. He has been a pro-Palestinian activist since the 1970's and travelled to Lebanon in support of the Palestinians during the first Lebanon war in 1982. He has long been a vocal opponent of Israel and the U.S. Gilbert has acknowledged that he cannot separate politics from medicine, stating, "there is little in medicine that is not politics." He even criticizes the group Doctors Without Borders for providing medical assistance to both sides in a conflict instead of taking a strong stance and supporting only one party. In a 2006 article in Nordlys, journalist Ivan Kristoffersen lamented the fact that Gilbert allows his humanitarian efforts to be politicized by his radical agenda.

Mads Gilbert is described on his Wikipedia page as a “Communist politician as a member of the party Red”. The Red party was previously the Workers Communist Party, which supported Pol Pot:

AKP openly endorsed the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, and when that party’s forces invaded Phnom Penh, Klassekampen had “Long live the free Cambodia” as their front page headline. Support from AKP endured in spite of the killings which were reported during Pol Pot’s rule which AKP at that time considered to be lies, and AKP had delegations visiting the country.

Mads Gibert himself supports terrorism. This is what he told a Norwegian newspaper, the Dagbladet, a couple of weeks after 9/11:

If the U.S. government has a legitimate right to bomb and kill civilians in Iraq, then there is also a moral right to attack the United States with the weapons they had to create. Dead civilians are the same whether they are Americans, Palestinians or Iraqis.
…
Do you supports the terrorist attack on the United States?
Terror is a bad weapon, but the answer is yes, within the context I have mentioned”

Full articles here at CAMERA and Harry's Place.

Let's conclude with a classic piece of BBC emoti-journalism from the incomparable Jeremy Bowen (I think Jim Bowen would be a better reporter). Here is his heart-rending diary entry about Dr Izzeldeen Abuelaish, a Palestinian doctor who has worked in Israel for many years, and lost daughters and nieces in a shell explosion at his house, yet still puts a brave face on it, likes his Israeli colleagues, and is happy for his surviving but injured family to be rushed to Israel where the best treatment is available (not that Norwegian guy then?!).

So we should start with a few things Bowen forgot to mention. For example, the "neutral" "expert" from "Human Rights Watch", Marc Garlasco. Here is a little snippet about him, and a link to Honest Reporting's article on him, HRW, and some of their previous handiwork. Now whilst the killing of this doctor's family was clearly a tragic accident (unless you are Bowen, Garlasco or Gilbert of course), the IDF's initial reaction was that if they did hit the house with a shell, there was a reason it was targetted. Then they started to carry out a fuller investigation and I found this coverage of the actual tank unit commander's comments.

Not only that, but even Garlasco makes a discovery of "anti-tank shell" fragments - not sure why Israel would be firing those at snipers... surely the other way round? Ah yes, some more evidence of this was apparently found embedded in the unfortunate girls' heads. Pieces of Russian-made, Iranian-sponsored Grad anti-tank missile, adapted from the infamous katyusha. Still a tragedy, not least because this particular family seems to have been genuinely interested in peace and co-existence, but once again the truth in this story is somewhere between blurred enough for Bowen to hold back on the emote button just a bit, and being yet another example of Hamas cynically using parts of civilian infrastructure, knowing the response.

I even saw one comment, apparently from an Arab reader, on a blog about this, where he said it was even more likely that Hamas used this guy's house, knowing that either nobody would fire back because he had protectsia from high-ranking Israelis, or that they would, and the PR "gain" of his loss would be spectacular. Wouldn't put it past them, given the track record.

Think that'll do for the moment. Next, some more light news about Australia...

Freedman Down Under: coasting it

After the boozy delights of Margaret River, we jetted into Brisbane, landing at midnight to a humid 32 degrees. We jumped onto the cheapo shuttle bus and asked the driver what he would recommend we do in the 36 hours we had in the city. His reply was "leave". Not promising. Then we got to another damn youth hostel, which looked modern and pleasant enough, but did involve sharing a shoebox of a dorm with a German couple, and on the most ridiculously squeaky, wobbly bunks of all time, complete with piss-proof rubber-coated mattress.

Following a restless night, Wifey woke up a little before me and wanted to get some totally unimportant object from the bottom of my bag (I schlepped a fair amount of his stuff, as he tried unsuccessfully to shoehorn everything for a 3 week trip into hand-luggage to avoid Tiger Airways stiffing him, which they did anyway). The bag being right by the bed, and me still trying to sleep, he then made the deadly mistake of waking me fully to ask where his unimportant objects might be located. After confirming they were really not up his fucking arse, and trying to rummage sleepily with one hand through 20kgs of my stuff to find his unimportant object, there was only one thing to do. Cue Freedmansdad-esque tantrum upending of bag and liberal dumping of all items across floor, before calmly retrieving said unimportant object from the bottom of the bag, handing it to him, rolling over with an enormous rattle and squeak from the bed, and going back to sleep.

Anyway, onward into Brisbane, where we started with a little stroll along the very pleasant Queen Street Mall, dropping off the broken walking boots and Wifey's Stinkenstocks at a shoe repair place. Then a little Aussie breakfast in the glorious outdoors, including my first taster of ubertreif, a nice rasher of chazer. Totally disappointing experience, not repeating that. Just salty, greasy and a bit leathery. Wondered if I'd sent the bacon to the shoe repair place and had the cafe fry up some boot.

Then we did a little self-guided tour of Brizzie, and fell in love with the place. Shuttle driver obviously just a depressive, because it's really lush. Imagine mini-London with tropical weather... awesome river frontage, a South Bank complete with wicked artificial beach and lido area, with backdrop of nice cluster of skyscrapers and historic buildings, botanical gardens with real wildlife competing to be hand-fed some crisps. Okay, the other difference between Brisbane and London - in fact between Oz and Blighty - is the scum. Or general absence of it in Australia. Well, it is probably there, it just knows what it is and how to behave when mingling with everyone else, coupled with some draconian punishments for people who step out of line. Mostly there is a real sense of civic pride, so public spaces remain unvandalised, and roaming gangs of feral youths are replaced with roaming packs of cute marsupials. The city beach would last about a week on our South Bank, and not just because it would be under a foot of snow just now.

We crashed over that evening with Wifey's lovely friend Catriona, in her sweet-ass flat with city views and a top-notch swimming pool. Out in the evening for a slap-up dinner, then back to the flat for drinks on the balcony and an episode or two of Peep Show. Ought to just big that up and say that during my time here, I was supposed to work my way through the delights of Ken Wilber's Theory of Everything and have instead got through every single episode of Mark and Jez re-enacting scenes from my life. I AM MARK CORRIGAN!

Off in the morning to collect the hire car, then a very civilised lunch by the river with Catriona (plate of most excellent marinated salmon and avocado, twice-fried chips, and a very indulgent little dessert, and yes, a bottle of something sparkling), and then the start of our Big Schlepp - a couple of hours' drive up the Sunshine Coast to Mooloolaba. Pretty grim hostel again - just cannot get used to rooming with total strangers who live out of rucksacks smaller than my free bizclass goodybag - but at least it was very near to a proper whack-in-the-wok noodle place, for a kilo of fried carby goodness.

Just up the coast from Moo is lovely Noosa. The plan was to have a night there before heading off for 3 days to Fraser Island, but it turned out we were wrongly advised and all the tours either left on inconvenient days, or were full. So we just hung out in Noosa instead, partly because we had stumbled across a lovely twin room and balcony at Noosa Backpackers, but also because of the total gem of an eaterie next door, Global Cafe, where the quality of the food was matched by the shaggability of the staff. I may have fallen just a little in love with the 18 year old blonde waitress. The food in this place was just superb, down to the wonderful Marco-Pierre-trained Stacey. We ate there every night, and on the last evening she even prepared a Spanish special as we had said it was a fave cuisine - a divine gazpacho and some of the best patatas bravas ever.

We passed our days bodyboarding on the stunning beach, fressing of course, finding a little slice of Zion, taking a walk in the national park, where we saw our first wild koalas and also went skinny-dipping on the nudist beach. On re-emerging Daniel Craig-like (only with even less left to the imagination of course) from the water, a fellow naturist and total raving hom (thanks for that word Jules) came sprinting up, canapés jiggling, and as I sat on a sandy bank, stood right in front of me - you do the maths on this one - and said "would you like me to piss on you?".

I gasped and thought about it for a moment... I've treifed out already, why not give the Other Side a try? He could see my bewilderment and added that my back looked very red (I caught the sun a bit when swimming at Yulara) and he thought it was a jellyfish sting. I declined as politely as one can when a stranger has his cock 2 inches from your mouth, and have since spent several hours perfecting my new gay Aussie accent for recounting this tale.

Moving back down the coast, we stopped off at Alma Park Zoo to meet some domestic furries. Highlight was of course the koala-cuddling. Don't we look like a lovely father and son?! Also we entered into a debate with this kangaroo about zoo funding and the role of the late Steve Irwin in preserving Australian fauna. He was a very deep thinker.

Then back through Brisbane, where we collected our shoes and I caught up with my old boss Grant from BP in Grangemouth, who's from the Gold Coast and has since gone back there to work for a big nasty conglomerate, on their coal-mining side. A man after my own capitalist heart, or what there is of it. After a few pints with him, Wifey and I headed down to Surfer's Paradise, which is an impressive bunch of skyscrapers and big straight beaches, still just tacky and overdeveloped compared to Noosa and other Sunshine Coast beauty spots. Just the one night there. Groan - another youth hostel on the cards. Joy - twin room all to ourselves that turned out to be a very nice self-contained flat, for about fifteen quid each. Groan - no working lightbulbs. Joy - across the road from a dirt-cheap Mexican place. Groan - worst meal so far on the trip, totally not authentic, can make better myself.

And so on down the coast in the car, chipping away the miles, a little stroll here, a little paddle there, a major fress everywhere, nights in motels, hotels, hostels, over the course of 4 days:

- Byron Bay (a little drive around, lighthouse view and picnic, check the box, decide Noosa was more our scene)

- Ballina (I had a swim in the world's biggest pot of tea, Lake Ainsworth, decent dinner by the water, Wifey's most beautiful photo of the trip perhaps)

- Yamba (night in a fairly crazy hotel)

- Coffs Harbour (picnic on the docks, little stroll)

- Port Macquarie (total blank!)

- Forster-Tuncurry (motel, good curry for dinner, nice brekkie overlooking the lagoon)

- Nelson Bay (boom net, dolphins, waterslide off back of boat, excellent tom yum ka soup)

- Newcastle (like our one but with a beach and hot weather, door policy that got shirty about Wifey's thongs - that's the flip-flops, not choice of undies - he was going commando that night anyway)

Then the final 2 hours driving down to Sydney, climaxing joyously in a bombastic rendition of our official tour anthem, John Farnham's You're The Voice, as we crossed the Harbour Bridge.

More on this leg of the journey anon.

The return of ORFTORFU

As Israel's Gaza operation seems to be coming to a conclusion, one final blast of Freedmanslife indignation. Orftorfu is an acronym we use down at Freedman Villas - One Rule For Them, One Rule For Us. A useful shorthand first conceived back in 2000 with the Second Intifada, and particularly handy when describing anything to do with Israel and the Jews in general, who are subjected to the orftorfu treatment by the world's media, NGOs, liberal left, almost the entire Islamic world, antisemites of various guises (including self-hating Jews of many descriptions), and in a totally different and vastly more moral and interesting way, those Jews who contemplate what the burden of being the Chosen People is really about.

Some good articles have been written and largely ignored by the mainstream which cover some of the orftorfu's of this particular conflict. For example how reporting of the Tamil Tigers being ruthlessly wiped out by Sri Lanka, in a way that raises many more issues of human rights, war crimes and proportion than Israel in Gaza, has barely featured in the press, despite happening concurrently.

Tempting as it is to get into the orftorfu of how Palestinian attacks, which intend to maim civilians, are somehow seen as morally equivalent, or in view of the "disproportion" of number, method and impact, even MORE justified than Israeli responses, this is evident to any really objective observer.

Instead, let's look at what's happening in the UK and to the Jews.

I will first waste a bit of air-time on that hoax email to the Board of Deps, for which Jewdas (google them for more, in short a collective of wannabe Anglo-Jewish anarchists who have failed to spot the oxymoron) have claimed responsibility, in a rambling, self-congratulatory email that showed nothing but the classic naivete of the bleeding heart liberal whose knowledge of current affairs is by osmosis from the gentle drone of the BBC to the ear and the stain of Independent and Guardian ink to the hands. Reducing it to one line, they believe that we the Jews of Britain should not support any of Israel's military action, regardless of the cause or how it is carried out, because "only negotiations can bring peace in our time". Okay, I may have embellished that just slightly, but you get the idea.

Funny thing is, for a fleeting moment I put Jewdas in that latter category of orftorfu, the one where we Jews hold ourselves up to a higher standard than others hold themselves. But the tone and absolute dogma of their email mean they fail to recognise what Jewish history has shown - if we are not for ourselves, no-one will be for us.

Because of this war, not in spite of it, the USA, Egypt, and even the PA itself, have finally understood Israel's predicament with Hamas and the need, after 10,000 pieces of ordnance over 8 years, to cut off the latter's supply of explosives through the porous border with Egypt. Failure to have done this, and the world's application of orftorfu with first Fatah and then Hamas, have led us here. Nowhere else would this situation have been tolerated, or EVERY attempt Israel made to resolve it (EU observers at crossings, Disengagement, limited targetted response etc) have been met with anything from lack of support to total contempt.

Jewdas seems to think that Anglo-Jewry's support of Israel is "right or wrong", and that it's inherently a contradiction to back the operation AND want or believe in peace. The fact is that peace follows quiet. To get to quiet, the other side has to accept it cannot win through force alone. Israel accepts this - that's why it left Gaza 4 years ago, why it continues to have dialogue with the PA, why it will accept other parties controlling the Philadelphi Corridor, and why it (and Jews at large) is constantly searching its soul and trying to find a compromise of its own factions that also will find acceptance from the Palestinians, Arabs and wider world.

Hamas specifically does not want peace, used the previous quiet of its ceasefire to rearm and then provoke this current operation, and has no capability of dialogue even with its own brethren in Fatah or the PA. But orftorfu - we are Jews so have to behave and think decently, whilst the world expects (in a way that's actually pretty condescending and borderline racist) much lower standards of the other party. I wonder if there is just a general pattern of supporting the perceived underdog, "right or wrong", among our chattering classes (Ken Wilber and Spiral Dynamics fans will know this as mean green meme syndrome).

Orftorfu prevents anyone discussing the absurd irony that Israel continues to wage a war to protect its civilians AS WELL AS THAT OF ITS ENEMY. Whilst it seems that 20%-40% of the (apparently) 1170 dead Palestinians have been civilians - depending on who you believe - Israel continues to try and leaflet areas it may need to target, has a daily 3-hour ceasefire for people to move out or find food (and for Hamas to rearm), goes house-to-house more often than necessary for its military objectives to avoid collateral damage, and so on. This is despite the fact that for whatever reason the Palestinians elected Hamas, and the latter chooses to hide among its population, thus intentionally creating the asymmetry of 13 dead Jews to all those dead Arabs. Also the irony that we are all saddened by their innocent casualties, even organising appeals where you can send an SMS with the word "life" as the text to 81400, costing £1.50, and donate equal amounts to hospitals in Israel and Gaza to help the real victims (where did Jewdas publicise this worthy cause?! Orftorfu even within Anglo-Jewry...), whilst I would be astounded - and of course delighted - if the Muslim community of Britain had set up anything similar, rather than affiliating more with the 'Arab street' that rejoices in our misery and pain.

Meanwhile, the domestic orftorfu continues with the media busy picking up any hint of Islamophobia, whilst ignoring recent attacks on Starbucks and Tesco, targetted because of current or prior Jewish management. This insidious move from protests about Israel's actions to violence against anything Jewish does not bode well, but the lack of decent coverage, especially that explicitly denounces this as antisemitic, is possibly even more sinister.

Let's compare and contrast coverage.

The "peace march" was un-nuanced pro-Palestinian in its leaning, failing to differentiate between Hamas and everyone else (apparently "we are all Hamas now" reared its ugly head), implicitly grieving for the 500-800 dead terrorists and supporters of terror, whilst not even paying lip service to the million Israelis within rocket range of Gaza, the dozens dead and hundreds injured, as well as thousands carrying other well-documented psychological scars. It turned violent at the end, including attempts by a large mob to attack the Israeli Embassy, vandalising several supposedly Jewish businesses, and even a serious assault on a kippah-wearing protester who was coming back from THEIR march.

The "pro-Israel" march, according to the reports I read, seemed to be much more "pro-peace", and encapsulate the general sentiment in Anglo-Jewry that this is a necessary operation where innocent victims are inevitable and to be mourned. It passed off peacefully, and was attended by 15,000 people - one heck of a slab of the community, given the timing, weather, fear of violence, hoax cancellations, and alleged disharmony of opinion.

But hey, some Jews trying to be equanimous are not newsworthy, nor are hundreds of people enacting a small slice of the kind of violent history that forced the establishment of modern Israel as our protection. Just plenty of coverage of anti-Israel rallies everywhere, keeping to the photogenic bits of hijabbed ladies pushing prams alongside dreadlocked students in kheffiyehs, carrying placards and pics of dead babies, with no mention of the marchers' implicit support of the rocket attacks and a terrorist government.

ORFTORFU.