freedmanslife

Rebooting the Start-Up Nation

2011-08-28T16:12:00.000+01:00

The now-legendary tent protestors of Rothschild and other boulevards of Tel Aviv purport to represent a broad sweep of Israeli middle-class society.

But although they count among them many economists, strategic consultants and philosophers, they have yet to coalesce around many coherent and practical solutions.

Not only that, but many are questioning how much this protest has led to true introspection on what society has become, and what it could be, as a result of our individual behaviour, whether as ordinary citizens on a daily basis, tycoons, small business owners, state employees or politicians.

Odd as it may seem, perhaps there is a direct link between the cause of the problems being protested, the lack of solutions, and the way people treat each other on a day-to-day basis. It also leads to a radical socio-economic solution involving those same groups; the state, large and small business, and we the public.

Israelis use the Yiddish word “freier” to define society’s sucker, the guy who spends a few shekels more than he absolutely needs to on shopping, the girl who didn’t negotiate on her rent, the fool who lets someone else into the traffic instead of shaving four more seconds off his own journey.

More pertinent to the many professionals among the protestors, who find themselves qualified as accountants and lawyers but still unable to do better than just cover their living expenses each month, nobody wants to be the “freier” who retained the best available legal advice when he could have just googled the answer, got some free help from his brother-in-law, or hired a cheap suit for the odd hour of really necessary work (and still haggled on the price).

Meanwhile, there is a well-reported concentration of wealth, with a handful of families unwilling to let go of their oligopolies, lest they too become “freierim”. And yet they may find that an efficient, streamlined business holding 40% of a competitive and growing marketplace, makes them more money than the unwieldy conglomerates they currently have controlling 80% of a marketplace half the size.

These factors are shown in economic statistics; whilst Israel is known as the “Start-Up Nation”, only 10% of its workforce are actually engaged in high-tech, and only 62% are employed in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the driving force of a high-value, sustainable middle-class economy. In the other OECD countries, the proportion is between 2/3 and over 3/4.

As SMEs are generally more efficient and therefore potentially more rewarding than public sector or conglomerate employers, this 5%-15% gap may well account for the almost total exclusion from the modern Israeli economy of Orthodox and Arab Israelis, and the poor ratio of earnings to outgoings of those middle class protestors.

However, even those who currently run SMEs are not immune to the “freier” syndrome. It is common for example to see restaurant staff whose minimum wage is paid out of the tip jar. This leads to bad staff retention, poor customer service, higher levels of dishonesty, and overall a negative effect on profits. But the restaurateur does not want to be the “freier” who pays wages up-front when his competitors are not, and when he can see the extra few thousand shekels in his pocket now. The idea of speculating to accumulate is reserved for one’s investment portfolio after exiting the business, not while running it.

The short-term mentality of Israel’s entrepreneurs and venture capital investors presents a vicious circle; funding is targeted at those seeking a quick exit, by those seeking a quick return. At the other end of the spectrum, the handful of powerful families who own the major institutions as well as the largest companies, protect their asset base judiciously and invest in only conservative assets outside their own empires.

Furthermore, when most Israeli funds do invest, they usually do not choose to do so collaboratively – they hope to exclude so-called competitors from the best deals, rather than risk-sharing for the common good, and often take an adversarial approach to the investee.

This leads to a shortage of genuine long-term growth capital, entrenching further the exit-orientated atmosphere, and failing to create stable Israeli-domiciled businesses with the solid employment that they bring.

So the “freier” mentality, cumulatively, clearly has a huge effect on our whole economy, not to mention our values. In a nutshell, we have no real sense of “paying it forward”, but instead retain a defensive, survivalistic approach to most daily interactions with each other.

The funny thing is that as soon as anyone is really in trouble here, and crosses that threshold of not wanting to appear the “freier” by asking for help, everyone gathers round and supports them unconditionally – the cliché of Israelis as “sabras” – hard and prickly on the outside, soft and sweet in the middle.

This is the legacy we have hard-wired into us from the pioneers, kibbutzniks and fighters that built and defended our state. They are our parents, grandparents, teachers and guides, and they still live among us.

Ponder how Israel will change the day Shimon Peres finally passes on. He embodies this link to the founding fathers, and transcends the political sphere. In fact he is the moral and constitutional link between the protestors and the government, and he holds enormous sway with the tycoons who are perceived to be part of the problem. His role in what happens next will be critical.

Somehow then, we have to translate the spirit of the protest, which are ultimately triggered by understandably inward-looking concerns such as paying the rent or affording child-care, into the New Society that Herzl envisaged for us.

How do we, in modern, built-up Tel Aviv, take the wave of unity and passion back from Rothschild to our apartments when this protest finally ends, and use it to become the urban pioneers and kibbutzniks?

How will those fortunate dozen families who have such wealth and power, be persuaded to step up and become the new Rothschilds and Montefiores that modern Zion needs, to make this transformation and be a part of the solution and not the problem?

This idea that the “oligarchs” are just (a large) part of the problem and not part of the solution, that economic growth is somehow bad, and that a redistribution of wealth is required, smacks much more of socialism than of social justice, the banner which is used by the protestors.

Social justice is about ensuring that growth is inclusive, that all levels of society are moving up, and that if gaps between them are growing, that somehow social cohesion is maintained. In economic terms, the measure is that we have a market where the playing field is transparently level for all participants.

Here are but a few suggestions on what can be done.

- As the protestors are calling for social justice and inclusion, the manpower to implement change has to be found, and the idea of “paying it forward” should be inculcated across all parts of society at a formative age. The single biggest expense in civic projects tends to be human capital rather than buildings or machinery. To address these issues, the state should make some form of National Service compulsory for all, be it the IDF, Magen David Adom, as a lifeguard or helper at a care centre. This has a huge effect on social cohesion, slows the rate of entry into the housing and job markets, and its cost is spread across the government and private sectors.

- Alongside this, introduce “social reserve duty” for those who did National Service, just as “miluim” already exists for the army, to maintain and reinforce the new connection between the state and its citizens. Using these two to four weeks of paid time away from work goes a long way to resolve some of the pinch-points highlighted by the protestors, and again spread the burden across the private sector who pay the salaries, the state who must organise the structure, and the people, who one would hope might actually commit time over and above the minimum, without considering themselves the “freier” for doing so.

Direct involvement in one’s own causes should be encouraged where possible. For example the pushchair protestors complain at the high cost of day care. The single biggest line item is staffing; but if the parents of twenty children in the class each had a fortnight a year acting as a classroom auxiliary, only one teacher per classroom would be needed alongside two different parents. This also might tackle a known issue of the lack of decorum and respect in Israeli classrooms, enhanced by parental behaviour in regard to their children and the teachers.

- Liberalise the banking system to encourage more credit for SMEs, and also open up the professional services markets to competition, so SMEs have some real choice on the support they need, and money to exercise it with.

SMEs lie at the heart of the economic revolution that is needed to make growth inclusive, provide jobs to the fringes of society, and increase disposable income for the middle classes. Tax legislation should also be amended to incentivise Israelis to grow their businesses beyond start-ups and into businesses which remain local at heart, even as they expand abroad. At the moment, the short-term mentality leads to early exits and no long-term value creation except for the handful at the top.

- Introduce legislation that includes carrots and sticks for the tycoons to streamline their conglomerates. There are genuine reasons for how they came to own so many disparate companies; in a developing country, especially one with low access to external capital and supplies due to the Arab boycott, it is common to see vertically and horizontally integrated businesses in this way. But those days are over and a whole string of SMEs could be spun off, to the benefit of the original owners in terms of gained capital and efficiency.

- Involve internationally-orientated, outward-looking Israeli investors and Diaspora Jewish donors who could be investors in the economy, by creating funds that give them appropriate tax benefits and protections and can be domiciled in Israel. The current situation actively encourages new immigrants and the wealthiest Israelis to keep their investments and earnings passive and offshore, instead of active and onshore where the best effect can be felt on the whole economy.

- We should finish the master-plan for Tel Aviv that Geddes started a hundred years ago, by beautifying the buildings and creating air passages to circulate the sea and mountain breezes better, whilst tackling the protestors’ single biggest issue of the cost of housing.

By allowing all buildings on the main east-west thoroughfares to extend to five floors, then the row behind to six, and behind that seven, then descending again, we would recreate the effect of mountains and valleys on air circulation, remove the hastily built concrete monstrosities of the 50s and 60s, refurbish the Bauhaus buildings, and add perhaps 30% to the housing stock, without affecting the street view or needing to add great infrastructure.

- Complete an overhaul of the municipalities of central Israel to allow much greater cohesion and efficiency on issues such as transport policy, town planning and service provision. It is farcical to have ten city councils for one metropolis. If Kiryat Ono, just 5km from Tel Aviv, was a more desirable place to live and was accessible from downtown in 10 minutes, 7 days a week (like the Shabbat lift, we would need unmanned trams and a free ride on Shabbat to make this work without offending the Orthodox, but it can be done), this alone would reduce pressure on housing costs.

- Finally, there should be a campaign to reclaim the word “freier”. As it stands, nobody wants to be one, because they know everyone else will take advantage of them. Such is the nature of a society where for so long it was enough to survive. Now we live in one where people can see the possibility to thrive, and the frustration we see on the streets is that some of us clearly are thriving whilst others are left behind.

If we all decided to be the “freier” at once, let people out at junctions, started sentences with “please may I have” instead of “bring me”, cleaned up dog mess, stopped littering on the beach, painted the outside of our apartments and boxed in the wires and aircon tubing, paid our staff a wage that motivated them, hired professional advisors as an insurance policy instead of a breakdown service, then we would have a society that started paying things forward, investing in its future, and moving from the mentality of survival to that of thriving.

Asking the government to hand us the solutions on a plate, by forcing a change from on high, so we can go back to our ordinary lives as before, is the language of survival; if we are to thrive, we have to change our own behaviour and be a part of the solution ourselves.

And of course this brings us full-circle. The protestors sit on Rothschild Boulevard, named after the most famous family of Zionist philanthropic tycoons, opposite Independence Hall, where the State was declared, and in the city that is named after an ancient mound (“tel”) and the season of renewal (“aviv”), the poetic translation by Nachum Sokolov of Herzl’s “Old-New Land”.

What better place could there be for the beginning of a new social compact between the public, the private sector and the state? In Herzl’s words, if we will it, it is no dream.

I will be in the UK, USA and Canada on our Asquith Israel Merchant Bank roadshow from this weekend onwards, and would be delighted to give talks on the subjects of "Beyond the Start-Up Nation", looking at the general economic structure in Israel, and "Rebooting the Start-Up Nation", looking at the specifics of the current protests and some potential solutions. Please contact me by email for a full itinerary and to schedule a talk if of interest to any community or business groups.

You are also capitalist pigs

2011-07-31T22:27:00.000+01:00

This is a translation of an op-ed by Ziv Tidhar, from Ynet today - the original in Hebrew can be found here, along with hundreds of comments. My own views will probably follow this week...

Talking down to your children's teacher because you earn more than her, not tipping the delivery boy, not saying hello to the guard at the mall. You're right, it's just the state that's at fault.

Everyone is talking these days of beastly capitalism, but what is this concept? It's throwing the trash bag out of the door, for the Arab who comes tomorrow to clean the stairwell to have to take. It's talking to your children's teacher like dirt, just because you earn more than her. Beastly capitalism is getting hundreds of thousands of shekels from your wedding, with cold calculation that the cheques of your friends, who can barely get through to the end of the month, will cover it and leave a surplus for a luxurious honeymoon.

It's clearing the furniture from your rented apartment right into the middle of the pavement and entrance to the building, because with such municipal taxes, they deserve it. It's throwing the old newspapers at the bin rather than into it, so the Arab (from before) can practice clearing them up. Beastly capitalism is agreeing a price with the electrician, plumber or air-conditioning technician and then reneging, denying, and chipping away at the cost. It's not visiting your grandmother for six months, just because you work hard and you do not have time to breathe, only to find the time to visit her just when you need some money.

It's dodging the va'ad bayit because you're not a sucker, and anyway in a few years you'll sell the apartment to go up another rung. Beastly capitalism is to tell everyone at work about your amazing last holiday in Berlin - and anyone who hasn't been just doesn't know what they are missing. It's parking the car in the disabled space, on a crossing, a pavement, double-parked, or plain and simple, merely because you are in a hurry, in the bus lane.

It's beeping at the world with elegance and also smoking where it is forbidden, because for the money you paid for the beer, no one has the right to tell you how and what to do. It's not giving a tip to the delivery guy who brought your shopping, because the prices are high. It's loudly and visibly humiliating the public service clerk and saying she should be fired, because she's just the random clerk who came to work yesterday and doesn't understand much in life. It's insisting on employing a foreign worker to clean the house just because she takes a few bucks less than the market price, and not paying her Social Security. Why? She'd never sue.

It's not me

It's not bothering to write the occasional thank-you note when the service was good or ex-gratia, but on the other hand hastening to send vicious letters from your lawyers. Beastly capitalism is agreeing to buy two or three or four books for 100 shekels without even blinking; so what if the writer gets screwed and crushed.

It's asking to transfer your child to a school across town, where there are fewer Ethiopian kids. It's failing to tell your child what conditions his grandparents lived in when they came to Israel, and to tell the truth: they were happier than both of you put together.

It's the way you enclose the mirpeset however you like, even if it's an eyesore for the neighbours - there is no law against it, and anyhow everybody is doing it. It's not explaining to your 4 year old child not to load up the plate, but to take a few small portions. It's not saying hello or good morning to the guards at the mall. It's begining a sentence directed to the supermarket cashier or the shop assistant in the booming "BRING ME". It's dreaming all the time about living in a better place. It's burning or downloading music files without paying royalties. Insisting on using all efforts and every trick in the book, to pay less than the asking price for a show or a concert. Anything but pay the normal price.

It's running around the shops on erev yom tov like a maniac in search of a gift, rather than sitting down to write a greeting. It's finishing reading this list and asking, so what does he really want? Of course everyone is corrupted. Then I'm alright, it's all the state's fault.

The challenge of public diplomacy vis-a-vis the delegitimisation of Israel

2011-01-06T10:36:00.000Z

Melanie Phillips's address to Ariel Conference on Law and Mass Media, 30 December 2010

As we all know by now, Israel has lost the battle for public opinion in the west. Even the Israel government is now acknowledging this fact. Israel and its defenders have been outclassed and outmanoeuvred in a war of the mind being waged on a battleground it never even acknowledged it was on.

Calls for more and better hasbara, however, are meaningless if the message or narrative promoted by Israel and its defenders misses the point of the attack being waged upon it. And it does miss that point, by a mile.

You cannot resist or overcome a threat unless you first understand its nature.

The first thing to say is that this phenomenon is characteristic not just of the media animosity or economic or academic boycotts. It goes across the intelligentsia and political class, spreading well beyond the normal suspects on the left into the mainstream middle-classes.

In Britain, the universities, the established church, the theatrical and publishing worlds, the voluntary sector, significant elements within the Foreign Office, members of Parliament across the political spectrum, as well as the media have overwhelmingly signed up to the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel.

The scale of this phenomenon is nothing short of a multi-layered civilisational crisis.

The west is experiencing a total inversion of truth evidence and reason. A society’s thinking class has overwhelmingly subscribed to an immoral, patently false and in many cases demonstrably absurd account of the Middle East, past and present, which it has uncritically absorbed and assumes to be true.

In routine, everyday discourse history is turned on its head; logic is suspended; and an entirely false narrative of the conflict is now widely accepted as unchallengeable fact, from which fundamental error has been spun a global web of potentially catastrophic false conclusions.

This has led to a kind of dialogue of the demented in which rational discussion is simply not possible because there is no shared understanding of the meaning of language. So victim and victimiser, truth and lies, justice and injustice turn into their precise opposite.

This madness is being promulgated through a global alliance between state and non-state actors – diplomats and journalists, politicians and NGOs and websites. Many of these are waging war not just against Israel but against the west.

There are two preconditions for an effective fightback. First is to form effective structures of resistance. Those structures, however, depend in turn on a correct understanding of the nature and scale of what we are up against.

So far, the structures are not in place, and more important still, what Israel is up against is grossly — and fatally — underestimated and misunderstood.

The problem is that we are dealing with a pathology — to which we nevertheless respond as if it were rational behaviour.

What’s happened is a pattern of thinking in the west which turns reality upside down. Remarkably, this in turn echoes a very similar inversion of reality within the Islamic world, where such inversion has a theological base.

Because Islam is considered perfect, its adherents can never do wrong. All their aggression is therefore represented as self-defence, while western/Israeli self-defence is said to be aggression.

So in this Orwellian universe the enslavement of Muslim women is said to represent their liberation; democracy is a means of enslavement from which the west must be freed; and the murder of Israelis is the purest form of justice.

Furthermore, this is overlaid by the phenomenon of ‘psychological projection’ in which the Islamic world not only denies its own misdeeds but ascribes them instead to its victims.

So while Muslims deny the Holocaust, they claim that Israel is carrying out a holocaust in Gaza. Antisemitism is central to Jewish experience in Europe; Muslims claim that ‘Islamophobia’ is rife throughout Europe.

Israel gives all Jews the ‘right of return’ to Israel on account of the unique reality of global Jewish persecution; the Muslims claim a ‘right of return’ – not to their own putative state of Palestine, but to Israel. They even claim that the Palestinians are the world’s ‘new Jews’.

These and many other examples are used within the Islamic world to negate Jewish experience and appropriate it for itself to obtain what Muslims want in terms of status, power and conquest.

What is remarkable is that instead of treating this as a pathological deformity of thinking, the western progressive intelligentsia has largely embraced it as rational and true. And to a large extent this is because that same western intelligentsia has itself supplanted rationality by ideology – or the dogma of a particular idea.

Objectivity, evidence and truth have been ditched for ideologies such as moral and cultural relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, transnationalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism.

Across a wide range of such issues, it’s no longer possible to have a rational discussion with the progressive intelligentsia, as on each issue there’s only one story for them which brooks no dissent.

This is because, rather than arriving at a conclusion from the evidence, ideology inescapably wrenches the evidence to fit a prior idea. So ideology of any kind is fundamentally anti-reason and truth. And if there’s no truth, there can be no lies either; truth and lies become merely ‘alternative narratives’.

Moral and cultural relativism – the belief that subjective experience trumps moral authority and any notion of objectivity or truth – has turned right and wrong on their heads.

Because of the dominant belief in multiculturalism, victim culture and minority rights, self-designated victim groups — those without power — can never do wrong while majority groups can never do right. And Jews are not considered a minority because – in the hateful discourse of today – Jews are held to be all-powerful as they ‘control’ the media, Wall Street and America.

So the Muslim world cannot be held responsible for blowing people up as they are the third world victims of the west; so any atrocities they commit must be the fault of their victims; and so the US had it coming to it on 9/11. And in similar fashion, Israel can never be the victim of the Arab world; the murder of Israelis by the Arab world must be Israel’s own fault.

So the way has been opened for mass credulity towards propaganda and fabrication. The custodians of reason have thus turned into destroyers of reason – centred in the crucible of reason, the university.

All these different ideologies are utopian; in their different ways, they all posit the creation of the perfect society. That is why they are considered ‘progressive’, and people on the progressive wing of politics sign up to them. That helps explain the distressing fact that so many Jews on the left also sign up to Israel-hatred, since they too sign up to such utopian ideologies.

But when utopias fail, as they always do, their adherents invariably select scapegoats on whom they turn to express their rage over the thwarting of the establishment of that perfect society. And since utopia is all about realising the perfect society, these scapegoats become enemies of humanity.

For Greens, such enemies of humanity are capitalists; for anti imperialists, America; for militant atheists, religious believers. Anti-Zionists turn on Israel for thwarting the end to the ‘Jewish question’: the redemption of western guilt for the persecution of the Jews — a guilt which can never be redeemed as long as the wretched Jews continue to make themselves the targets of attack.

In short, therefore, the west cannot defend itself against the Islamic jihad because it can’t itself even think straight any more.

But this lethal muddle in the minds of the intelligentsia must be viewed in turn in the context of a global diplomatic process which itself embodies upside-down thinking, which fans the flames of bigotry and defeatism – and in which Israel itself has been tragically, and suicidally, complicit.

It cannot be stressed enough that the reason why those promoting genocidal bigotry are winning is that the western world has not sought to defeat them but instead has appeased them from the very start.

In Palestine under the British Mandate, when the Arabs used terrorist violence to frustrate the will of the League of Nations in restoring the Jewish home, Britain rewarded them by offering them part of the Jews’ legal and moral entitlement. When the Arabs started hijacking planes, the west’s response was to invite them to the UN to plead their cause.

And despite the Arabs’ repeated refused to accept the two state solution, offered in the 1930s, in 2000 and under Ehud Olmert and their current refusal to negotiate at all, America punishes Israel for not making enough concessions to them — while giving a free pass to those who still refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist.

It is astonishing that the west expects Israel to make any concessions to such attackers at all. After all, forcing a country which has endured more than six decades of existential siege to give any ground to its attackers amounts to forcing such a victim to surrender. This is expected by the civilised world of no other country.

Yet we are repeatedly told even by certain supporters of Israel that the Palestinians have a right to a state. Why? In any other conflict, such aggression forfeits any rights at all.

I am not saying that Israel should retain all the disputed territories; it may well be in its own interests to give some of them up. But the point is that Israel has made all the concessions over the years while the Arabs have made none – yet it is Israel, not the Arabs, that is under pressure from the west.

This is diplomacy as scripted by Franz Kafka.

The single greatest reason for the endless continuation of the Middle East impasse is that Britain, Europe and America have continuously rewarded the aggressor and either attacked the victim or left it twisting in the wind.

That’s what needs to be said by Israel and its defenders. But Israel and its defenders themselves have been crippled or cowed by the false analysis of the enemy’s narrative.

Even many of Israel’s friends spout the demonstrably absurd proposition that a Palestine state would solve the problem, that the impediment to a Palestine state is the ‘settlers’, but that Israel is not taking action to remove the ‘settlers’ — and so therefore they too inescapably agree that Israel is the problem.

Israel and its defenders have been fighting on the wrong battleground: the one that has been chosen by its enemies. The Arabs brilliantly reconfigured the Arab war of extermination against Israel as the oppression by Israel of the Palestinians.

That has transformed Israel from victim to aggressor — the reversal of reality which lies at the very heart of the western obsession with the ‘settlements’ and the territories.

Yet since Oslo, Israel has meekly gone along with this mad pressure. It has never said it is totally unconscionable. It has never put the all-important argument from justice on its own account. So it has allowed its enemies to appropriate this argument mendaciously as their own. But if Israel doesn’t make the case properly on its own behalf, how can anyone else do so?

To which Israel says realpolitik dictates it has to go along with the diplomatic game being played. But diplomatic realpolitik is what brought us all to this position — the brink of a terrible war with Iran which is treated by America with kid gloves while Israel is put under the cosh.

For the west to suck up to its enemies while bashing its friends like this is the diplomatic version of auto-immune disease. And eventually this disease will kill it.

What Israel has failed to recognise is that the battleground on which it is being forced to fight is not just military. It is also a battleground of the mind, and the strategy being used against it – and to which it needs to respond in kind — is psychological warfare.

The Arab and Muslim world long ago realised if it set the narrative in its own image, it would recruit millions of fanatics to its cause and also confuse and demoralise its victims. In this it has wildly succeeded.

There is therefore an overwhelming need for Israel to alter its strategy. Indeed, it needs to have a strategy.

And this brings us to perhaps the most difficult challenge in all of this – the fact that the role played by the Israel government is of critical importance. Unless it adopts the correct strategy, its defenders will remain crippled.

Yet any promising initiatives seem to fall victim to Israel’s chaotic political structure, which appears to prevent the Prime Minister from being master in his own house. Good ideas are habitually destroyed by rampaging egos and turf wars between Israeli Cabinet ministers.

This is no way to run a chip shop, let alone a country under existential siege.

The fact remains that both Israel and diaspora Jews have to rethink. They have to realise they must start fighting on the battleground where the attack is actually being mounted against them. And the goal has to be to seize and retake the moral high ground.

This strategy requires two different tactics: one for those who are capable of rational thought, and another for those who are not.

The first group comprises those who are not irrational but merely desperately ignorant. Much of the obsession with Israel’s behaviour is due to the widespread belief that its very existence is an aberration which, although understandable at the time it came into being, was a historic mistake.

People believe that Israel was created as a way of redeeming Holocaust guilt. Accordingly, they believe that European Jews with no previous connection to Palestine — which they believe was the historic homeland of Palestinian Muslims who had lived there since time immemorial — were transplanted there as foreign invaders, from where they drove out the indigenous Arabs into the West Bank and Gaza. These are territories which Israel is now occupying illegally oppressing the Palestinians and frustrating the creation of a state of Palestine which would end the conflict.

Of course every one of those assumptions is false. But from those false assumptions proceeds the understandable belief not just that Israel’s behaviour is unjust, illegal and oppressive but that it is unjust and oppressive by virtue of its very existence.

For these people there is an urgent need for a proactive educational approach. No-one has ever told them that these beliefs are false – and when they are told, the effect is often transformative.

There is a desperate and urgent need to educate such people in Jewish and Middle East history; to enlighten them about the shameful role played by Britain in Palestine in tearing up its treaty obligations; to tell them that under international law Israel is entitled to the disputed territories – land within which Britain undertook to settle the Jews ‘from the river to the sea’ because of their historic and unique rights to that land.

That’s all necessary for those who are still rational. For bigots, however, there is no point arguing with them. They are, by definition, beyond all reason. Their influence simply has to be destroyed. They have to be held to account for their lies and bigotry which should be forensically exposed.

So Israel and its defenders should be demanding of the world why it expects Israel alone to make compromises with people who have tried for nine decades to wipe out the Jewish presence in the land and are still firing rockets at it.

They should expose the pretence of Britain or European countries which claim to have Israel’s security needs at heart but forbid it from using military means to defend itself; and which – as did the British Government recently — turn Israeli self-defence against the jihadi lynch-mob on board the Turkish terror ship Mavi Marmara into an attack to be condemned, or demand the opening of the border with Gaza which would allow in arms to kill more Israelis.

Israel and its defenders should be asking why so-called friends in the west want a Palestine state, since once the IDF depart the disputed territories they will become in short order yet another Iranian-backed Islamic terrorist entity which will pose a further threat not just to Israel but to the west.

They should be asking why the EU is continuing to fund the genocidal incitement against Jews promoted by the Palestine Authority.

They should be asking so-called ‘progressives’ – including Jewish ‘progressives’ — why they support the racist ethnic cleansing of every Jew from a future state of Palestine.

They should be asking them why they are not marching against Hamas on account of its tyrannical oppression of Palestinians in Gaza. Why they are ignoring Arab and Muslim persecution of women and homosexuals.

Why they are not mounting a boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Mahmoud Abbas’s PA and Hamas, on account of Abbas’s Holocaust denial and the clear evidence of continuation of Nazi Jew-hatred in a direct line of descent from predecessors who were Hitler’s supporters in Palestine.

As for western Israel-bashers, Israel and its defenders should accuse them not of Jew-hating motives that cannot be proved but of absurdities and contradictions and untruths they cannot deny. They should ridicule them, humiliate them, destroy their reputations; boycott them, not invite them to social gatherings, show them disapproval and contempt. Treat them as pariahs. Turn their own weapons against them.

They should be telling the Jews ‘own story of refugees and ethnic cleansing – the 800,000 Jews driven out of Arab lands after 1948, and who now make up more than half of Israel’s population. It’s good to see that at last Israel is beginning to bring this to the world’s attention. In Britain virtually no-one knows about it. At a stroke it takes the ground from under the feet of those demanding the ‘right of return’ for Arabs.

They should be holding Arab and Islamic democracy weeks on campus, to expose the oppression and persecution within that world against women, homosexuals and others.

They should be singling out the Anglican church and the revival of ancient theological Jew-hatred being spread within the Anglican world by the Palestinian Christians of the Sabeel centre.

At the same time, they should be focusing on their true friends within the Christian world, not just in America but also in Africa and Asia where there is an enormous reservoir of goodwill towards Israel which could be mobilised into a global fighting force.

They should be campaigning against the UN and the hijacking of international law and human rights by anti-western, anti-Jewish and anti-Christian ideologues.

They should be confronting head-on the false claim that bigotry is confined to the right. They should be pointing the finger at the ‘progressive’ left to show how it is actually supporting the mortal enemies not just of Israel but the west.

And they should be making this case to Israelis themselves, to counter the delegitimisation and ignorance in Israeli universities and to educate the Israeli young in their own national history.

In other words, both Israel and diaspora Jews have to stop playing defence and go onto the offence. Israel has nothing to be defensive about or for which it needs to apologise. It is the enemies of Israel who are promoting injustice and the denial of international law and human rights. Playing defence intrinsically cedes ground to the enemy.

It is time for Israel and its defenders to stop conniving with that smokescreen for the war of annihilation being waged against Israel – the claim that the Middle East impasse would be solved by establishing a state of Palestine to which the settlements, and thus by extension Israel, are the obstacle. It is time for them to stop agreeing that the Jews are to blame for their own predicament.

Israel and its defenders need to make the argument from justice and reclaim that moral high ground from the enemies of Israel and the west, both at home — including within Israel — and abroad. It is those enemies who deny truth, justice and human rights. It is those enemies who should be in the dock. It is time to take the gloves off and put them there.

In short, Israel and its defenders must understand that the tsunami of bigotry against Israel sweeping the west is intimately related to Israel’s seriously flawed diplomatic strategy.

For years, Israel has been playing a defensive diplomatic game, which suggests inescapably that it has a case to answer. Such diplomatic cringing has badly undermined it and hugely strengthened its enemies, who are taking advantage of such weakness over and over again.

It’s time for Israel to realise that military campaigns against its enemies are not enough. It has to call time on its false friends too, and start fighting both these and its more obvious enemies on the battleground of the mind.

Taking the Mick

2010-12-04T20:07:00.000Z

As the fires burn in the Carmel, as the debate rages in the pages of the JC, as the British cold makes me feel ever more ill and homesick, I realised it has been many weeks since my last posting.

Let's first try to understand something about what Mick Davis said. A transcript of his remarks can be found here. I think it is quite incredible that the interviewer and all the subsequent participants in the public debate on his comments (pro and con) have totally overlooked the most startling sin of his remarks.

This is that he has used his controversial opinion on Israel as a smokescreen for having no real answers about Anglo-Jewry.

He was asked a question about characterising the leadership of Anglo-Jewry (he sits on the Jewish Leadership Council so he ought to know a thing or two about this) and chose instead to answer it through the prism of where he thinks they sit on the spectrum of opinion about Israel.

Actually I think this sidesteps the key issue - how are they doing at leading British Jewry? The answer is - disastrously. I do not believe that the British Jewish community has at all come to terms with the fact that its communal structure has totally failed to adapt to the realities of Generation Y.

Our generation lives in an increasingly busy marketplace of ideas. The Jewish community, spearheaded by the UJIA as its biggest funder of communal activity, the Board of Deputies as its official mouthpiece, and the United Synagogue as its largest body of shuls and being under the auspices of the Chief Rabbi, has failed to tackle assimilation, build a strong and positive identity that has Jewish spirit at its core, create a safe and respected place for the Jewish community in the wider UK, or find a way to weave real support for Israel into its activities.

Instead it trumpets Jewish primary schools as the single biggest success that will provide a panacea for the community, even though most parents, if honest with themselves, will tell you they send their kids to Jewish schools because they think they are better than non-Jewish schools, not because of their belief in faith schools. In fact, I would venture that for too many parents, sending kids to a Jewish primary allows them to absolve themselves of much of the responsiblity of inculcating a positive Jewish identity in their children.

Where are Mick Davis's thoughtful comments on how new British Jewish leadership is developing? Why are there so few voices questioning why, after being here for over 350 years and apparently being so well-respected by our "hosts", we still have elected leaders whose idea of speaking out loud and proud on our behalf is "why shout when a whisper would suffice?" When some of our figureheads dare to challenge this way of thinking, they are ignored - who has even heard of Samuel Hayek? Yet I would hazard that Mick Davis gets the column inches because editors are happier promoting his position.

Why is it that the only exciting things going on in our community are apparently happening outside the big organisations mentioned above? Much as I don't agree with their politics on Israel and general lack of quality shampoo, the likes of Moishe House and Wandering Jews are at least providing some alternative, fun and imaginative activities, such as the Jewltide Party. And when it comes to laying on the style and quality, the CJL are a mile ahead of any US-affiliated NW London shul trying to compete in the same space. Limmud is still streets ahead in its presentation of a wide spectrum of opinion on all things Jewish and Israeli, and it continues to be a mark of shame on the United Synagogue that they cannot find any formal way to participate.

Let's look at some of Mick Davis's concerns (my comments in italics):

1. Minority rights in Israel, Arabs as second class citizens, lack of UK Jewish leaders who speak up for them

Whilst there are organisations such as the New Israel Fund who spend increasing time and resources trying to bridge the undoubted quality gap between Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens, ultimately I think it is a case of identity. If Arab citizens of Israel continue to consider themselves victims of a historical injustice and that they live in a terribly discriminatory society in which nothing they can do will ever let them improve their position, and if they are Israeli when it suits them and then suddenly Palestinian when it suits them (and apparently incapable of reconciling the two identities and being Israeli Palestinians or Palestinian Israelis), this gap will remain.

The reality is that whilst there is a gulf between them and us, it is exacerbated by cultural differences, for example in the way that Arab municipal councils choose to spend their allocations, compared to Jewish or Druze ones. By most metrics, "our" Arabs have among the highest quality of life in the Arab world. Netanyahu has recognised that they represent one of our largest untapped resources, and more should be done to integrate them into the economy and the cultural fabric of Israeli society. But I strongly believe they have to want to be a part of this, and I remain unconvinced that they have made this choice yet.

How about Mick Davis using his influence to get the British Arab community to do something positive and co-invest alongside the UJIA in Arab Israeli projects? That would be Jewish leadership of the highest calibre.

2. Settlements and bulldozing

There are compelling arguments that the "settlement enterprise" and the tactic of bulldozing houses are tactically bad, especially when one takes into account the international PR effects. However, we are swallowing our detractors' own line if we really believe the "settlements" are the core issue.

As I have said many times before, there are "settlements" and there are settlements. Places like Gush Etzion, where we bought and built perfectly legally pre-1948, and reclaimed and restarted post-1967, have a different moral value to me than some of the strategic hilltop settlements that were built on land that was appropriated from the locals, even if it may be that there was no legal title. In between are border "settlements" built on land that geographically should naturally form part of Israel and were built on unused or no-man's land, those like Ma'ale Shomron which were built on ruins of ancient Jewish sites and displaced no more than the odd shepherd. To lump them into one category and label them all "illegal" is a gross simplification.

The Palestinian leadership uses the "settlements" as a lever against Israel and excuse not to come back to the talks, because it knows it is not ready to run its own state without first consolidating its power vis-a-vis Hamas, and letting its middle class interact with Israel (including the dastardly settlements!) to build a viable economy in the West Bank. Of course, if Israel has to stop its building because it prejudices a final outcome of the peace talks, surely the Palestinians should not build either - and in fact, those Israeli Arabs who would rather call themselves Palestinians should probably down tools as well, in case they decide to "go back". But then it's ORFTORFU.

A reading of opinion surveys in the West Bank, among both Palestinians and the "settlers", shows that there is a consensus on the ground that neither the Palestinian or Israeli leadership is really listening to. About 70% of both groups would be willing to accept a middle ground scenario in which most or all the so-called settlements became part of the West Bank by sovereignty, inhabited by Israeli citizens with Palestinian residency rights. A similar option could be given to Israeli Arabs who might prefer to be Palestinian citizens with Israeli residency.

The advantage of this outcome is that nobody has to leave their home, and both sides get the demographic majority they desire, in a democratic framework. I also think this presents the best way for the two peoples to find common ground to collaborate and to integrate their economies to the benefit of both. Israel's single biggest protection against another intifada is the success of the Palestinian economy.

Perhaps Mick can use his access to British and Israeli politicians and diplomats to present a radical and innovative solution to one of the key stumbling blocks in the peace process. That would be Jewish leadership of the highest calibre.

3. Jewish loyalty oath

The big issue with this loyalty oath is that it's ORFTORFU of the wrong kind. We should expect ALL new citizens of the state to take this oath. I can think of plenty of Jews who have moved to Israel and delighted in taking their aliyah benefit, before going on to write rabid pieces for the Guardian or work for NGOs which hardly seem to have Israel's best interests at heart.

Many countries require some kind of citizenship test and oath of loyalty. I imagine a lot of British Jews would be willing to take one to dispel any notion that our twin loyalties to Britain and Israel are in fact contrasting and contradictory ones. Whereas there may be other sectors of society who cannot.

This is Mick's chance to speak in a forthright manner on how ALL citizens of a given state should be willing to show their loyalty to it, not in every policy of the government of the day, but in the principles under which that state exists and functions, and should be showing how Anglo-Jewry's largely successful integration into British mainstream society lets us take a front-running position on this debate. That would be Jewish leadership of the highest calibre.

4. Netanyahu's strategy

Mick may be a very successful CEO of a very successful business, but Netanyahu is the twice-elected PM of the OECD's most resilient and recession-proof country. It would be pretty naive to think that Netanyahu is doing all this with no plan. His Bar Ilan speech showed the confidence he has in pulling Likud away from the right hand fringe and towards the centre, and his understanding that Israeli society is increasingly of the pragmatic centre-right.

There is a growing national consensus on most issues - not least the need to reach accommodation with the Palestinians and create a viable state for them, the need to put economics first and eliminate the extremism and the poverty gap between our society and theirs, and within our own society. Netanyahu is at the forefront of this new way, like him or loathe him.

Surely Mick could be bringing the lessons of how to unify a far more complex society with radically more challenging problems than those of the UK, and how to steer an economy through the turbid waters of the global meltdown, to the British political scene? That would be Jewish leadership of the highest calibre.

5. Dangers of de facto "apartheid state"

We all know that Israel is not and will never be an apartheid state. We do however know that Israel and Palestine need a divorce (in the words of that famous fascist Amos Oz). It is true, and Mick alludes to it, that if we fail to reach agreement soon, we may have fewer and less palatable options in terms of how we live with or separate from them. What Mick lacks the nuance to understand and articulate is that the Arab side, not just the Palestinians, have grasped that they win either way. If they do not get the state they want, they can wait us out, then force an end-game that gives them what they want or forces us to make unpalatable choices.

Meanwhile non-Muslims continue to live in apartheid dhimmitude across the Arab world while Mick stays silent. Perhaps Mick could speak out against this as well as the horrific slur of associating Israel, in ANY circumstances past, present or future, with being an apartheid state. That would be Jewish leadership of the highest calibre.

6. How the Diaspora is affected by Israel

The second intifada and continued correlation of heightened violence in the Middle East to increased anti-Semitic incidents in the UK show that the Diaspora is affected by Israel.

As was put very succinctly in their letter to the JC, Jonathan Hoffman et al:

"...the crassest comment was to suggest that Netanyahu’s policies have as much impact on Davis - sitting in London - as on Jews in Israel. We were not aware that Hampstead is within target of Iranian or Hamas missiles, nor that its residents have to send their children to defend the Jewish State for three years."

This is of course not to say that Israel, or we, should kowtow to violence and surrender what we have gained through legitimate means such as a UN Partition Plan and successive wars of defence, and built on with a society that has absorbed waves of immigrants and stands proud among the nations as a member of the OECD with PhDs, patents and Nobel Prizes per capita that are the envy of every nation.

If only the Diaspora could be similarly affected by innovation and brilliance, and the acceptance of new points of view. If only our Chief Rabbi could find a way to allow children who feel they are Jewish enough to go to JFS, just as the Israeli rabbinate finds a way to accept those who feel they are Jewish enough to serve in the IDF. That would be Jewish leadership of the highest calibre.

7. Debating the above within Anglo-Jewry

I think the single biggest failure of Anglo-Jewish leadership is on the side that opposed Mick Davis's opinions and decision to express them in such a public forum. Of course I do not agree with some of Davis's views, or his willingness to air them in this way. But the failure is that of the community to be a genuinely "big tent" where the merits of Israel and different ways to defend it should have been thoroughly debated before now, and a single communal strategy should have emerged, with some consensus on the issues he raises, in terms of the public line we should take.

Instead, we are left looking divided and indecisive, and for some reason are bewildered when someone like Davis shoots his mouth off in this way, allowing our enemies to predictably jump on his comments and use them to damage us even further.

Either that, or just accept that every individual and organisation is going to speak with its own voice, and deal with the resultant selective quotation to undermine Israel, rather than admiration for our diversity and openness.

The main reason why I think Mick Davis is a disgrace is because he has shown a complete lack of Jewish leadership, on this or any other issue. He has not earned the right to be a the voice of the Anglo-Jewish community or a publicly dissenting voice from it. If he is the best Anglo-Jewry can do for leadership, the community is doomed.

I think Mick Davis and the entire JLC should fall on their swords because they have clearly failed in their mission. They should allow a new generation to rise up in their place that actually represents the next generation. That would be Jewish leadership of the highest calibre.

Ahmedinejad's idea

2010-10-24T11:34:00.000+01:00

During his visit to Lebanon last week, Iranian President Ahmedinejad demanded: "Zionists, go back where you came from."

He presumably believes that those nations from which Jews came (or in many cases were thrown out from), from the First Aliyah to the present day, are willing to take them and their descendants back if it allows the establishment of a Palestine from the Jordan to the Med.

Okay, I think it is a fair idea. Let Ahmedinejad start by allowing in the Jews of Persian descent who are living in Israel. In fact, let him take in all the Persian Jewish Zionists everywhere, such was his choice of words.

There are nearly 50,000 Iranian-born Jews in Israel and about 200,000 in total who have one or both Iranian parents. There are about another 100,000 similarly defined Persian Jews in the Diaspora, and if one adds grandchildren who retain a distinctively Persian identity, we are talking about half a million.

I think it is important that we respond to Ahmedinejad's rantings by taking them as literally when he makes statements such as the above, as we should when he openly calls for our nation's destruction and tells us how he is going to achieve it.

Thus, I would like to start a worldwide campaign of the 500,000 Jews of Persian descent to apply to their nearest Iranian consulate to be granted Iranian citizenship and residency, on the grounds that Iran's President will welcome them with open arms.

Who is with me?!

Shongololo's African Adventure: Part 5 (Jozi-Home)

2010-09-16T17:35:00.001+01:00

Emaweni webaba
Silale maweni
Webaba silale maweni x9
Homeless, homeless
Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
Homeless, homeless
Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
We are homeless, we are homeless
The moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
And we are homeless, homeless, homeless
The moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
Zio yami, zio yami, nhliziyo yami
Nhliziyo yami amakhaza asengi bulele
Nhliziyo yami, nhliziyo yami
Nhliziyo yami, angibulele amakhaza
Nhliziyo yami, nhliziyo yami
Nhliziyo yami somandla angibulele mama
Zio yami, nhliziyo yami
Nhliziyo yami, nhliziyo yami
Too loo loo, too loo loo etc

I landed back in Joburg in the middle of the night, crawled to the Avis, picked up another little runabout, and headed back to Victory Park. England had managed to come second in their group courtesy of the Americans scoring a last-minute winner against Algeria and their own inability to manage more than two goals against three pretty crap teams in 270 minutes of footy.

With my plans to have an easy trip to Rustenburg for England's last-16 match and a Soccer City quarter final match involving England on my final night now in disarray, some reshuffling of the ticket pack was in order.

A call to Bisonsbrother to offload the spare tickets and get some travel companions, a favour from the talented AJ on parking in Bloem, and a classic Jewish/Israeli coincidental encounter with a friend's brother who needed to offload his Soccer City QF tickets later, and I was back on track. We set off for Bloem and made the journey in pretty good time, other than where we hit a bit of a traffic jam due to light aircraft on the road. Seriously.

Although the result was predictably crap, and was tempered by the sense of injustice over Lampard's goal-that-wasn't, and the greater sense that England had been so shite that for them to beat the Krauts would have been a fluke and unfair on a German team that had played with huge flair (and went on to thump the Argies even more convincingly), we had a great day out, culminating in one of the funniest car journeys of all time on the return leg - magma-hot mayo in the chicken pasties, trying to stop for a pee and petrol in a dodgy pitch-dark township, general ripping conversation including a session on "if I had to go gay for one player at the World Cup", and so on. Benjy, Mark and Adam - I salute you.

So, back to Joburg with nearly a week to kill before my final game and a flight home. AJ very kindly let me tag along on a few expeditions in return for me acting as his chauffeur and assistant. This included a trip to the quite incredible Saxon Hotel, where he was supposed to be meeting Bill Clinton and heading off for a shoot with Nelson Mandela. It turned out Clinton had already gone on ahead, so AJ was chauffeured off, I finished my 4 tiny goujons for £10, picked up his spare camera equipment so I looked nice and official and had a poke around.

Seeing the sign to the Nelson Mandela Platinum Suite, and figuring that Billdog was probably staying there, I trotted up some back stairs, smiled nicely at the burly guys with dark glasses and obvious earpieces, waved my camera bits and trotted right on in.

After checking out the his-and-intern's bathrooms, sweet drawing-room, lounge etc, I was feeling a slight after-effect of those pesky up-market goujons. Unable to attack the Presidential Porcelain, I sat on the edge of Bill's boudoir bed and gave him a little air biscuit to enjoy later with his post-coital cigar.

Then I settled down to watch Italy vs. Slovakia, a real classic game as it turned out, until it was time to collect AJ, at which point I was driven in a limo from the porch of the hotel all of 50 yards to the garage where my little hire car was waiting. Elitism rocks.

During the week, AJ also took me along to see the media centres and empty stadia at Ellis Park (where I met and chatted to my new best friend and possibly in the top 5 coolest living Israelis, Modi Bar-On), and Soccer City:

I also fitted in a nice little day trip to Maropeng, the Cradle of Humankind, where I got to go on a bizarre underground boat ride, learn about evolution, clamber through some excellent stalactite caves, and potter around some decent parks. AJ also accompanied for a visit to the superb Apartheid Museum, which was moving and informative, and served to reinforce my utter indignation at anyone who dares to call Israel an "apartheid state".

I also found a titchy little baby lizard in the house and rescued him from being eaten by the cats:

My final 24 hours in Joburg took in a cracking game at Soccer City (Uruguay vs. Ghana), which I very nearly missed because I could not find the tickets anywhere. After systematically searching the house for 2 hours, calling FIFA to see if they would re-issue them (not interested) and my insurer to see if they would refund them (not happening), texting my hosts to see if they were lying around anywhere and had been moved, I had only one more option. Rubber gloves on, wheelie bin inverted... and there they were. Bless Violet the maid, she thought the kitchen table was too cluttered with all those pieces of paper, so there were my $400 of tickets mouldering gently under the weight of lemon peel and cat litter.

I sped out and made it to my seat literally as the game kicked off, and was glad to have got there - a blinding match complete with two great goals, a missed penalty in the last minute of injury time, a tense shoot-out, and a generally great atmosphere, with my new friend Eddie, who also accompanied the next morning for a visit to SoWeTo, which was absolutely fascinating.

Now knackered beyond belief, we headed to the airport. A quick flit between the BA 1st lounge and SAA's own offering to get the best balance of food, drink and the Argentina vs. Germany game, and I was homeward bound.

(Pic from Cape Point)

Settling into my flat-bed seat in row 1, I polished off some decent SA wines and port, watched a film, and conked out, waking 8 hours later as we dropped into Munich. I crawled to the Senator Lounge, took a long hot shower and had a spot of Krug with a light breakfast, before taking the Lufty flight back to TLV. Another film and some more grub, touchdown in the Holy Land, brief hover and wait for Debbie to come pick me up, and I was HOME.

Strong wind destroy our home
Many dead, tonight it could be you
Strong wind, strong wind
Many dead, tonight it could be you
And we are homeless, homeless
Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
Homeless, homeless
Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
Homeless, homeless
Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih
Somebody sing hello, hello, hello
Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih
Somebody cry why, why, why?
Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih
Somebody sing hello, hello, hello
Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih
Somebody cry why, why, why?
Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih
Yitho omanqoba (ih hih ih hih ih) yitho omanqoba
Esanqoba lonke ilizwe
(ih hih ih hih ih) Yitho omanqoba (ih hih ih hih ih)
Esanqoba phakathi e England
Yitho omanqoba
Esanqoba phakathi e London
Yitho omanqoba
Esanqoba phakathi e England
Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih
Somebody sing hello, hello, hello
Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih
Somebody cry why, why, why?
Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih
Somebody sing hello, hello, hello
Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih
Somebody cry why, why, why?
Kuluman
Kulumani, Kulumani sizwe
Singenze njani
Baya jabula abasi thanda yo
Ho

ORFTORFU: white phosphorus

2010-09-16T10:39:00.000+01:00

BBC News report from Orla Bowen, 15th September

"Today in the Gaza Strip, occupying forces fired a barrage of mortars, over 20% of which were white phosphorus shells, at civilian targets in total contravention of the Geneva Convention and basic moral behaviour. Human Rights Watch, the UN, B'Tselem, Hizbullah, Turkey, the International Solidarity Movement and other moderate NGOs and peace activists moved to condemn in the harshest possible terms this terrible crime against innocent women and children."

Only you will never actually see this story, because the occupying force is Hamas, which has perpetuated the misery of the inhabitants of Gaza for 5 years through exactly this kind of madness, and their target was Ashkelon and the surrounding villages.

Fortunately most of them landed in fields and nobody was injured. But once again the intent is the thing to focus on - they aimed callously at civilians, as opposed to the IDF's policy of aiming at the bad guys (which sometimes results in unfortunate collateral damage and mistakes in the heat of battle, for example shooting three apparently innocent Palestinians who found an RPG launcher in a field, picked it up and pointed it in the direction of the border - tragic but what exactly did they expect the reaction to be?).

The full article on the mortar barrage can be found here. ORFTORFU!

My Rosh Hashanah message

2010-09-06T12:13:00.000+01:00

Dear Freedmanslifers

This is my first Rosh Hashanah in Israel as an Israeli citizen, so although I have trodden an increasingly secular path, I am acutely aware that Israel is the Jewish nation, and whilst I am struggling with what I believe in spiritually, I want to share with you thirteen articles of faith in my homeland:

I believe that Israel was founded on principles of being a force for good in the world.

I believe that Israel can be proud of the way it has created a stable, modern, thriving, democratic state.

I believe in Herzl's Altneuland; Zionism is not a dirty word and we are not in a post-Zionist era - Zionism should articulate our continued efforts to bridge the gap between Israel's current realities and that utopia - if we will it, it is no dream.

I believe that Israelis (for all they like a good kvetch) care deeply for each other on a level that goes way beyond shared citizenship; that is why we all think of Gilad constantly, as if he was our own brother.

I believe that Israel is ready for genuine peace if they have genuine partners, willing to make creative solutions that are applied equally at last (ie recognising Jewish refugees from Arab lands, allowing settlers to take PA residency).

I believe that Israeli society can and will absorb the aftershock if these talks fail, and will never resile on its dream of a just peace merely because there is no-one to take its outstretched hand.

I believe that Israel is held up to a standard to which no other nation is held.

I believe that Israel achieves or gets close to this often- (intentionally-) impossible standard more than any other nation would, given its circumstances.

I believe that there is a name for picking on the only Jewish state in such a way, and ignoring the 200-odd others.

I believe that Israelis need to take much more individual responsibility for their actions domestically, for example not littering their beaches and national parks, and ensuring a high quality education for their kids.

I believe that parts of Israeli society need to achieve a better balance of their rights and responsibilities; everyone should serve the country in some capacity at 18, even if it's as park rangers, beach inspectors or classroom assistants.

I believe that Israel will be around a lot longer than Ahmedinejad, so it's worth planning on that basis instead of the usual short-termism that prevails in too much of society.

I believe that Israel is my home.

Please, those of you who are already here, help us to fix the parts that don't work; making aliyah is not the same as being an expat, and it comes with its own set of responsibilities.

Please, Diaspora Jews who are thinking of a holiday or a long stint somewhere, choose Israel and help us; it is not your duty to complete the work, but neither should you desist from participating.

Please, non-Jewish friends, I ask that you just judge us as you would any other country in the same circumstances; if you see mistakes on our part, work with us to resolve them, and if you see that others judge us unfairly, work with us to defend ourselves.

Please, Israeli government, let this be the year that you finally understand that BDS - the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (or Blacklist, Demonise and Slander, or Bias, Discrimination and Selectivism) - and the wider campaign against Israel that involves just about everyone on the left worldwide, has subverted most of Europe's trade unions, media and academia, most Muslims (at least passively), and the tut-tutting pacifist European middle classes who support the perceived underdog, who jump on bandwaggons, convoys and flotillas at the drop of a hat - represent a major strategic threat to our country, in the long run just as important as Iran or Hamas, and require us to make a large and ongoing investment in apparatus to respond to and defeat it, just as the IDF handles military defense.

It is a privilege to celebrate the first anniversary of my arrival in Israel today, just before Rosh Hashanah. It has been on the whole an incredible and fulfilling year - everyone keeps saying it's a honeymoon period but things feel like they are getting better and better, even though (or perhaps because?) there is so much to do personally, professionally and, um, societally...

Shana tovah umetuka - a good and sweet new year to all.

Guest spot: Tony Blair

2010-09-02T16:28:00.006+01:00

I actually miss him, now it turns out Cameron has funny ideas about penal reform (if Gaza is a "prison camp", the UKPA had better start opening malls and allowing luxury cars into British jails).

Support full compensation for the nakba!

2010-08-20T00:03:00.000+01:00

Superb article over at CiFWatch, about The Tragedy of Iraq’s Jews. As always, ORFTORFU is applied when it comes to talk of compensation and a "right of return" for Palestinian "refugees" (the definition of what constitutes a refugee is different for Palestinians compared to any other group of refugees).

The Israeli government should be insisting that our own nakba is resolved alongside theirs. It might just highlight the issue that any meaningful peace accord will need to encompass a viable agreement with the rest of the Arab and Muslim world. The Arab League and Saudi grand plans so far consist of carefully ensuring Israel takes full responsibility, past, present and future, for the Palestinian issue. The settlement of the devastating wrongs wrought by these countries (in some cases led then by the fathers and grandfathers of the current rulers) must surely be part of the deal. But it won't be.

Anyway, here is the article:

We hear much from the Palestinian spokesmen and their Arab and other supporters about their right to return to what is now Israel, and their demands for compensation for Israel’s alleged displacement of them, but woefully little by comparison about the atrocities perpetrated against Jews from Arab countries, who lived (and in some cases still live) as second-class citizens or dhimmis, at the mercy of the Arab/Muslim governments throughout the Middle East (see also here in respect of the Jews of the Yemen). Lynn Julius, using the ready overidentification of CiF with its Palestinian focus, wrote about the plight of Jews from Arab lands on CiF and called their treatment in Arab/Muslim countries the Jewish Nakba.

She tells us that ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab countries began when the Arab League, then comprised of Egypt, Iraq, Trans Jordan (or Jordan), Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen, contemplated passing a law in November 1947 which would brand all their Jews, some of whom had been resident in their respective countries for many generations, as “enemy aliens.” Their governments’ treatment attitude to and treatment of them was not therefore a reaction to the declaration of independence of the Jewish state and although the “enemy aliens” law was contemplated, it was enacted in their behaviour towards their Jews.

Lynn Julius tells us that

“The Jewish “Nakba” – Arabic for “catastrophe” – not only emptied cities like Baghdad (a third Jewish); it tore apart the cultural, social and economic fabric in Arab lands. Jews lost homes, synagogues, hospitals, schools, shrines and deeded land five times the size of Israel. Their ancient heritage – predating Islam by 1,000 years – was destroyed.”

It suits the anti-Zionists to ignore this ethnic cleansing in their gadarene rush to accuse Israel of the ethnic cleansing of its Arab population, often without foundation. I shall focus on the circumstances of Iraqi Jews, for reasons which I will explain later, but their circumstances may be said to be typical of all Jews who found themselves in Muslim countries:

Iraq arose out of ancient Babylonia and Assyria and has the oldest Jewish community in the world. There has been a continuous Jewish presence there from 721 BCE to 1949 CE, which is two thousand six hundred and seventy years. The status of Iraqi Jews fluctuated, some even held high positions in government, but at the same time they had to pay the jizya tax levied on non-Muslims. They fared reasonably well until Iraq became independent in 1932.

In June 1941, a pro-Nazi coup, inspired by Hajj Amin Al-Husseini and led by Rashid Ali, led to riots and pogroms in Baghdad. 180 Jews were murdered and over 1,000 wounded. More anti-Jewish rioting took place between 1946 and 1949. When Israel was established in 1948 it became a capital offence for an Iraqi Jew to be a Zionist.

The following sets out the Nakba of the Iraqi Jews from 1948 until the early 1970′s when, in response to international pressure, the then government in Baghdad allowed many of the remaining Jews to leave quietly. Those Jews who remained, only 61 in number as at 28 March 1998 according to the Associated Press, are too old to leave:

1950 – Iraqi Jews permitted to leave the country within a year provided they forfeited their citizenship.

1951 – Jews who emigrated had their property frozen and economic restrictions were placed on Jews who chose to remain in the country.

1949 to 1951 - 104,000 Jews evacuated from Iraq (Operations Ezra and Nehemiah); another 20,000 smuggled out through Iran. The Jewish population of 150,000 in 1947 dwindled to a mere 6,000 after 1951.

1952 – Jews prevented from emigrating.

1963 – The rise of the Ba’ath factions resulted in additional restrictions being placed on those Jews who remained in Iraq. Jews forced to carry yellow identity cards and sale of property was forbidden.

1967 (After the Six Days War) – many of 3,000 Jews who remained were arrested and dismissed from their jobs. More repressive measures were introduced, including the expropriation of Jewish property, freezing of Jews’ bank accounts, shutting of Jewish businesses, trading permits were cancelled, telephones were disconnected. Jews were placed under house arrest for long periods of time or restricted to cities.

1968 – Persecution at its worst. Scores of Jews were jailed allegedly for spying and eleven Jews sentenced to death in staged trials.

27^th January 1969 – Fourteen men – eleven of them the Jews mentioned previously – publicly hanged in Baghdad and others died of torture. (Source: Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, “Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf”, p. 34)

(A sample list of Discriminatory Decrees and Violations of Human Rights of Iraqi Jews, which is not exhaustive, may be found at http://www.justiceforjews.com/iraq.html )

Why then, have I singled out the plight of Iraqi Jews when the life and human rights of any Jew who may remain in an Arab country or state is equally dire?

During the Gulf war I was forwarded a copy of a letter from Rabbi Carlos C Huerta, Jewish chaplain of the 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery 101st Airborne Division (Screaming Eagles), immortalised by Stephen Spielberg in “Band of Brothers.” He was writing from Mosul in Iraq, sited in the ancient city of Nineveh, birthplace of the prophet Jonah, and shared his feelings about being in that ancient and holy place. The letter is very movingly written. I can identify with his feeling that the ghosts of the past were all around him, and with his urgency to bring back to the light and into consciousness again the life of those past times. However, I would ask you to note the following in particular when this Rabbi happens upon the ancient synagogue:

“.. My heart broke as I climbed over the garbage piles that filled the room where, for hundreds of years, the prayers of Jews had reached the heavens. I realised I was probably the first Jew to enter this holy place in over 50 years. Over three-and-a half meters of garbage filled the main sanctuary and what appeared to be the women’s section. I could barely make it out because of the filth, but there was Hebrew writing on the walls…..

” Tears came to my eyes, but I had to hold them back lest I put myself and the soldier with me in a dangerous situation. I had to pretend that I was only mildly interested in what they were showing me.* (emphasis mine). How does one absorb this kind of experience? How do I convey the feeling of hearing all those voices reaching out in prayer at the synagogue as I stood on top of all that garbage? How do I recover our history, how do I bring honour to a holy place that has been so desecrated? I have no answers. I only have great sadness, pain, and loneliness…”

*(This in itself should give rise for concern. Why should this Rabbi have to hide his feelings about the Jews of Mosul-Nineveh who had been so cruelly treated? Why should it have been “dangerous” for him to show them openly?)

The final impetus was provided by an article dated 16^th January 2010, in the archives of Ha’aretz, in which Iraq urges the USA to give back the archive of Hebrew books and Jewish texts found in Iraq in 2003. The books and texts were found soaking in sewage in the basement of a secret police building, presumably in Baghdad, although the article does not say. Iraq’s reasons for wanting back the treasured relics of the oldest Diaspora community in the world are a mixture of the mind-boggling insults and out-and-out lies and the usual utter lack of sensitivity towards the extent of the pain Iraq has caused its Jews.

To quote from the Ha’aretz article:

“….But to Saad Eskander, the director of the Iraq National Library and Archives, it is part of a larger effort to rescue the cultural history Iraq lost during the invasion, and to put Iraqis on a tentative path to coming to grips with their past.

“Iraqis must know that we are a diverse people, with different traditions, different religions, and we need to accept this diversity… To show it to our people that Baghdad was always multiethnic,” said Eskander. ..”

The Iraqi government could demonstrate to the world that it is acting in good faith if it made reparations towards the survivors for the hundreds of thousands of Jews it has killed or caused to flee their homes, for the billions of dollars of assets it has expropriated from them, for the fear and terror it has caused to them since well before the birth of the state of Israel. Until it does this the first paragraph quoted above represents bad faith reasoning.

That being the case, I hope that the archive remains where it is in the United States so that the remaining Jews in Iraq can know that it will be safe and be accorded the respect it deserves.

Shongololo's African Adventure: Part 4 (Cape Town-PE-Jozi)

2010-08-11T16:44:00.077+01:00

People say she's crazy
She got diamonds on the soles of her shoes
Well that's one way to lose these walking blues
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes

She was physically forgotten
Then she slipped into my pocket with my car keys
She said you've taken me for granted because I please you
Wearing these diamonds

And I could say oo oo oo
As if everybody knows what I'm talking about
As if everybody would know exactly what I was talking about
Talking about diamonds on the soles of her shoes

After an excellent breakfast in Swellendam, I took the recommendation of the local tourist office and headed off through the magnificent Tradouw Pass...

... and down the Scenic Route (R62), rather than the official Garden Route (N2). This mainly allowed me to avoid most of the tourists, grab a little picnic lunch at a nice country park, and take in some serious port-tasting at Boplaas in Calitzdorp.

Following that, and needing to soak up a bit of alcohol before continuing, I forced down a couple of mugs of decent coffee with a huge icing-rich slab of cake at a very nice little cafe nearby. Oddly, there was a full-size snooker table in this cafe, so I moseyed in to see if anyone fancied a frame. Now I haven't played snooker for about 2 years, since beloved Wifey #1 buggered off to Melbourne. And it didn't help that the one guy who was there happened to be an ex-pro! I kept the score down to a respectable 40 point loss, though I suspect he was going easy on me.

Now fully sober, I got back on the road and headed to the Robinson Pass. Now this is one spectacular piece of road:

I got the timing right, and made it through the pass as the sun was starting to set, meaning a panoply of fabulous colours and glorious views (snapped with my phone camera on the move)...

I pulled into Mossel Bay in the early evening, and chuntered up the ludicrously steep hill to the Bar-T-Nique Guest House, where I had a vast room with great bay views. I pottered down into town for a bite to eat at a local pub, watched some sport, played some pool with the local talent, and conked out. Next morning, a vast spread for breakfast, set in an atrium overlooking the bay, then off on the main stretch of the Garden Route.

Some pesky work issues arose, so I drove into the rather dull town of George and found a very nice cafe with wifi, where I got a couple of hours of emails in, whilst wolfing down a decent spinach and feta crepe, before finding the lovely little "old road" from George to Knysna, which winds its way out of the back of the town, around some hairy little bends and over minuscule Brio bridges, before dropping back down through the Wilderness National Park lagoons to rejoin the N2.

I had timed my run so I could get to Knysna in time for a little stroll around and to watch the South Africa vs. France match, which SA needed to win by 3 or so clear goals to have any chance of going through. The French had managed to have a massive sulk the day before, and were in total disarray, but the Saffers showed about as much competence in front of goal as Emile Heskey. So they went out, but at least it was with a win.

From there, it was a simple drive up to Plettenberg Bay, where I was staying at the quite incredible Aquavit. Again I had a cavernous sea view room, and the hosts were utterly charming and urbane, greeting me at the door with a goblet of decent wine and recommending a phenomenal place for dinner, Emily's, which was off a small path off tan unbeaten track off the beaten track.

After a great night's sleep in their super-king-sized bed, and a heck of a breakfast on the terrace, I was back in the car and zooming towards Port Elizabeth in time for the 4pm kick-off of England vs. Slovenia. I had time to take in the lovely Storms River, the world's highest bungee jump, and this bizarre bridge to nowhere:

Arriving in PE, I had time for a quick drive around the town centre, which is quite attractive for the most part, then headed out to King's Beach where I met AJ and we took a spot of lunch before jumping on a shuttle bus to the game. Suffice to say there were no real highlights to speak of - England were better than they had been against Algeria but still not setting the world on fire, and the thing that cheered me up the most in the stadium was this flag belonging to the "Gants Hill Hammers":

About as close as Israel got to this World Cup...

After the match, we enjoyed a couple of swift Windhoek Lights before AJ headed back out to the Grahamstown Festival and I got on a plane from PE to Joburg. Needless to say, use of the lounge was a necessity, not least because the entire airport was littered with the paralytic bloated human detritus that accompanies the England football team (or do I mean IS the England football team?) wherever they travel. I literally had to step over one such corpse to get into the lounge.

Several rounds of buffet and port later, and I settled into my front row seat (low-cost was the only option here, it was as good as I could do to slip the check-in girl 50 rand for that and keeping an empty seat next to me). Then a cacophany of "it's coming home, it's coming home, it's cooooooming!" as David Baddiel himself sheepishly boarded the plane. And indeed it would all come home only too soon, but that is for the final chapter of Shongololo's African Adventure. Stay tuned.

She makes the sign of a teaspoon
He makes the sign of a wave
The poor boy changes clothes
And puts on after-shave
To compensate for his ordinary shoes

And she said honey take me dancing
But they ended up by sleeping in a doorway
By the bodegas and the lights on Upper Broadway
Wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes

And I could say oo oo oo
As if everybody here would know what I was talking about
I mean everybody here would know exactly what I was talking about
Talking about diamonds

Disabled Israeli children provoke rocket attack

2010-08-02T08:03:00.005+01:00

Isn't that how it happened, British Ambassador Tom Philips, for whose charm and diplomatic rhetoric I actually fell on more than one occasion? Did the special needs children of Sderot help to, in your words, "breed radicalism" in Gaza, thus bringing this on themselves? Perhaps they were using their motorized wheelchairs to tow rockets onto the centre's roof to launch at innocent civilians, then hoping for a deadly and accurate response so they could reap the media reward of the collateral damage.

Full story here.

I think Dry Bones has got it just about right:

Shongololo's African Adventure: Part 3 (Jozi-Cape Town)

2010-08-01T22:01:00.001+01:00

In early memory
Mission music
Was ringing 'round my nursery door
I said take this child, Lord
From Tucson, Arizona
Give her the wings to fly through harmony
And she won't bother you no more

After a hefty breakfast at Hippo Hollow, I made the long drive back down the N4 to Johannesburg, arriving just in time for the end of the opening ceremony and a massive braai at M&J's place. We watched the first game together while scoffing chops, chicken and boerewors. SA didn't completely embarrass themselves, and Tshabalala's goal was a masterpiece, but Mokoena's shambolic decision not to move up with the rest of his defenders cost them a cheap equaliser. It was clear (other than to the myriad people who had clearly never actually watched a footy match before) that they were going to struggle to get out of the group, let alone win the tournament as some people on crack had been suggesting.

Thus began a glorious few weeks of up to 4 matches a day to enjoy. I say "enjoy", as at that point I had not had to sit through 360 minutes of England playing. The first instalment of this utter misery was the following day, when we headed 90 mins north-west to Rustenburg, which is about as unattractive as it sounds. Before we went into the ground, there was a buzz of anticipation, mostly among people who are drunk at most England games and people who had never been to an England game.

I swiftly set about crushing the hopes of any young England fans in the vicinity by pronouncing that they would play great footy for 15 mins, score a nice goal too early, and spend the rest of the game on the back foot before conceding a comical equaliser. Now why on earth did I not put money on that?

The Royal Bafokeng Stadium is pretty horrible - reminiscent of a dodgy UK council athletics track with broken signboards, catering that consisted totally of watery hot dogs, and some concrete stands that are too shallow to allow any decent perspective. This was in fact so bad that the advertising hoardings blocked our view of the goal line, so when Dempsey hit a tame shot, it looked like Rob Green had got down comfortably and saved it, until suddenly people started cheering. Lame.

Oh and the sodding vuvuzelas. Like having bees actually build their hive in your skull.

On the Sunday I headed to OR Tambo and ensconced myself in the BA lounge, which is surprisingly delightful, and looks after the funny little mini-BA operation that runs in South Africa. Top marks for the cheese cake and some excellent triple-distilled local brandy which I supped whilst lounging on a nice sofa watching Ghana continue the trend of Africans who promise much but never seem to finish anything off. At football. Not making a general slur here.

One courtesy upgrade (classic BA trick of moving the curtain back one row and leaving the middle seat empty) later, 2 hours of light snacking, and I landed in Cape Town where Dr Blond awaited. But what is this? Pissing rain? I did not sign up for that.

Luckily it did clear up for a scenic drive up Table Mountain:

A week in Cape Town passes pretty quickly, especially in the esteemed company of one of the great Jewish theologian-philosophers of our generation:

Or at least that's what Dr Blond said to me when I left.

I fitted in all the standard stuff - Robben Island, Waterfront, drive along the bays down to Cape Point with the delicious Vanessa, via some serious prawnage at Hout Bay, and back via some rather odd fish and chips at Kalk Bay, mooch around Long Street on game night, and hang out in Italian bars with Knuffelgirl:

Cape Town has that same blessing as Sydney - topographical porn. It just never gets boring when from almost any vantage point, there is a delightful combination of rugged coastline and jagged mountain to look at. Much the same as Joburg, I felt pretty unthreatened most of the time, with the most tense moment being at the end of the dreary England-Algeria game, when some England "fans" near us set upon a guy wearing a clown wig that they didn't find very amusing.

Particular culinary mentions need to go out to Dr Blond's amazing soup, the kilo of prawns at Hout Bay, and a sweet restaurant, wine bar and boutique hotel complex, the Cape Heritage Hotel. After a week of such delights, I waddled into the car and headed out for what is known as the Scenic Route via a late afternoon potter through Stellenbosch (wine heaven) and Franschhoek (food heaven).

I wound up at about 10pm in Swellendam, staying at a quaint and rather lovely B&B called The Hideaway. I stayed in the Queen Elizabeth Suite, complete with four-poster bed (pre-warmed by my lovely hostess), Cadbury's hot chocolate, and a jar of the most spectacular home-made shortbreads. In the morning I stumbled out of bed to a sumptuous mountain view, and took breakfast overlooking the lawn with a nice couple who were FCO bods based in Cairo but pretty much wishing they were in Tel Aviv.

The Garden Route officially begins just east of Swellendam at Heidelberg, and there begins Part 4 of Shongololo's African Adventure...

(a-wa) o kodwa u zo-nge li-sa namhlange
(a-wa a-wa) si-bona kwenze ka kanjani
(a-wa a-wa) amanto mbazane ayeza
She's a rich girl
She don't try to hide it
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes

He's a poor boy
Empty as a pocket
Empty as a pocket with nothing to lose
Sing ta na na
Ta na na na
She got diamonds on the soles of her shoes
She got diamonds on the soles of her shoes
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes

Shongololo's African Adventure: Part 2 (Kruger)

2010-07-28T14:28:00.000+01:00

Joseph's face was as black as the night, and the pale yellow moon shone in his eyes. His path was marked by the stars of the southern hemisphere, and he walked the length of his days under African skies.

I arrived at the Paul Kruger Gate just as the sun was setting behind the Drakensburg range that girds the western boundary of the Kruger National Park. Travel in the park is prohibited after dark, for reasons that became increasingly obvious as I made my way to Skukuza. Although the distance was only about 12km, the speed limit of 50km/h on tarred roads and 40km/h on gravel roads is rigorously enforced for the safety of animals and drivers alike.

In the dimming light, I rounded the first bend in the road, just as a herd of buffalo came marauding across it. I put on the brakes and waited patiently as they plodded across, in no apparent hurry, and really rather inconsiderate of the fine that might await me if I got into camp after hours.

Eventually I pulled into Skukuza Camp and made my way to my own little round chalet. The first thing you notice in the bush at night is the sky. No picture can really do it justice, it takes a while to grasp the sheer expanse of it, with shooting stars, a gigantic yellow moon, swirling galaxies and no noise but the sound of elephants trampling the undergrowth and the occasional vervet swinging in to try and work the monkey-proof bins.

The next morning I woke up at 5am (AllanS, Freedmans, Corhamites, I do not lie), and hopped on an organised "morning ride" out into the bush with guides from the camp. Firstly may I point out just how damn cold it was. I had 2 jumpers, a coat, hat, scarf and gloves, and they provided a blanket on the truck, and I was still shivering. We pottered around for a couple of hours, seeing giraffes, an eagle, some glimpses of hyena, zebra and buffalo, but nothing particularly up-close and personal. I was beginning to wonder what on earth I was going to do to entertain myself for 4 days of this.

Then after a brief nip back to camp to collect my own car, have a warm cuppa, take some stuff for lunch, and check the noticeboard which shows where fellow guests have spotted anything good, I drove out. First port of call, Skukuza Golf Club, just to see if it was really possible that there could be pristine greens and men in silly trousers moseying around in the middle of a park stuffed with the most ferocious animals on the planet (the Big Five are chosen because they are the deadliest if you don't nail them stone dead with your first shot).

Turned out to be a good idea. As I drove up the track to the club, I came over a small hill and down below, trotting across the road, was a freaking leopard! I slowed right down and had a little look in the surrounding shrubs, but could only see what it was probably about to snack on - some ruddy impala. After a quick stop at a very nice wetland walk alongside the golf course (replete with said men in silly trousers looking unperturbed by the leopard in their car park), I decided to take my first real off-road drive, down a little track west of Skukuza.

It proved to be a super decision, as I came across a small watering hole and was able to get within a few yards of my first elephant:

He was all on his own having a merry old slurp from the waterhole and also giving himself a bit of a spraydown. He didn't seem at all perturbed that I was sitting there watching him. Also in the vicinity I saw my first warthogs, which are totally hilarious. They are like really gay pigs, with their prancing ballet feet somehow supporting some very portly midriff.

Later on that day, I decided to take a little pre-dusk circuit not too far from camp. As I headed down the dusty track, a big daddy rhino came storming out of the bush into the road, turned to look at me, did some major head-lowering and dust-kicking, and generally made me wish I'd have upgraded to a car that was at least somewhat similar in size to him.

I sat very, very still for what seemed like an eternity, while he sized up the threat. Eventually he decided my nippy little Hyundai wasn't the ripping through his hide with bare teeth kind, and he gave a little nod to mummy and baby rhino to come trotting out into the road:

While they stood around having a natter, I started to think about the setting sun and the need to get back to camp, or certainly off the smaller track and onto a proper road, before dark. The rhinos were blocking the way ahead, which led within 1km to a tarmac road, whilst behind me was over 10km of slow going through some woods that would not be fun in the pitch black. So I waited.

Just as they looked ready to shuffle off into the grass though, another car came skidding to a halt pretty close to them from the other direction. We must have been the only two vehicles on that track all day, and now the rhinos were blocking both of us. After being startled and holding their ground at first, they eventually got bored and harrumphed off into the undergrowth. I waved at the other car and we gave each other the Kruger hand signals for "that was cool" and "bit of a close shave" before heading our separate ways.

Not long later, and I was speeding along the tarmac road back to camp, though it was now very dark... when I heard a loud crashing sound just ahead of me and stood on the brakes, just as a very angry pair of elephants in "musth" wrenched a whole tree off the side of the road and swished it from side to side. I stopped about 20 yards short of them and backed up veeeery sloooowly. They eyed me and carried on shredding the shrubbery, completely blocking the road. As I sat in the car wondering if I would ever get home, I called the camp and told them I was delayed due to elephants and rhino on the route. I await TfL trying that excuse for cancellations on the Met Line.

Then behind me I saw a pair of headlights on full beam, bearing down towards us at a pretty breakneck speed. I whacked on my hazards and even waggled the gearstick in reverse, but to no avail. I thought wow, this guy drives like an Israeli! The speeding car was almost next to me when it saw the beasts and jammed on the brakes. It neatly passed the first ellie but was blocked by the second. As the two turned around and threatened to converge on the car, the driver very gingerly backed up and stopped alongside me.

Winding down the window, he said "eeehhh, dat was a close one! End deed you see the two lions fAcking back there?" I said "ain lanu matsav midai im hapilim ha'ele?" He said "eeehhh, how deed you know I was Israeli?" Dunno, could it be the attempt to run two elephants off the road?!

I got back to the lodge at least an hour after sunset and set about making some decent bush bolognaise for dinner. Now my little chalet kitchen was actually built into the terrace outside, and I was perplexed to find a loaf of bread had migrated out of the fridge and onto the table, and appeared to be half-eaten. I was more taken aback to find the chair propped against the fridge door. Then I found the monkey-prints in the butter, and it all began to make sense... it turns out the vervets are clever enough to raid the camp, undo the fridge door, grab a quick sarnie and scarper, so the maids had to close the fridge door after the monkeys had bolted.

The next morning I was again up bright and early at about 6am, and took a ranger's advice to retrace my steps and find those mating lions. Lo and behold, they were by the side of the road, and unperturbed by the cars building up next to them, proceeded to put on a show which I can best describe as a very adult-rated version of the Lion King. Here is my arty and less X-rated shot of the couple post-third-coitus-in-a-row:

Well, that was certainly a buzz, especially the bit where I was sitting with the window open and a chicken sandwich on the front seat when they decided to come up and sniff the car...

After that excitement came a repertoire of buffalo, giraffe, impala, steenbok, eland, duiker, impala, hippo, kudu, impala, wildebeeste, caracal, impala, mongoose, vervet, impala, impala, damned fucking impala that make you stand on the brakes because they jump right in front of the car, sodding impala that you get a glimpse of in the bush and think they might be something exciting, impala that later I had as a rather nice marinated minute steak, you little bastard.

Best of all, on a road in the middle of the Kruger, a zebra crossing:

I pottered my way down one side of the Sabie River to Lower Sabie, where I was planning to enjoy my by now standard can of Appletise, Peartise or Grapetise (available everywhere in SA, lush). After a slight delay due to a bright green baby lizard on the road, which I just managed to avoid and then backed up to escort over the road so it wouldn't get splattered by speeding Israelis (it took 10 mins to cover 3 yards, and then a funny old Saffer lady stopped her car, hopped out, picked the critter up, and just carried him over!), before heading back up towards Skukuza in the afternoon sun.

Along the banks of the river, a whole herd of elephants was sunbathing and playing. As I stopped to take a good look, a family decided they had had enough for the day, and crossed one by one right in front of me in perfect size order:

That last one is sooooo cute! I thought Julien might make a lovely wallet out of him.

Just after the ellies, I attempted a turn across the bridge that crosses the river, but found it had been shut down for a military operation. Baboon Platoon had landed. They systematically lined the sides of the bridge with young males, then the older males took front and rear in the middle of the road, stopping the cars, and marched the ladies, whi carried the kids on their backs, straight down the bridge to the other side:

After returning to base camp, I joined a night drive that was heading out, hoping to get a better sighting of a leopard we had been told was up a tree a few miles out. Not only did we find it, but it had a friend, and they were guzzling an impala together. On our way back, we also attracted some other interest:

Next day, again I was up bright and early for a scenic drive on my way out of the Kruger. Firstly I thought to myself "shit I'll have", and make a commemorative pile at a nice high point on one of the peaks in the park. Turns out someone beat me to it:

An hour later, and I was cruising down the road to the Phabeni Gate:

After dropping off my bags at the lovely Hippo Hollow Hotel, I drove up into the Drakensbergs and visited God's Window (too misty to see much, sadly) and had a little hike around Blyde River Canyon, which is pretty spectacular. I made it back to the hotel shortly before nightfall to take drinks on the terrace and watch a couple of hippos wallow in the river that runs past the hotel, before waddling onto the lawn to bask in the last rays of the day. Bliss.

Having enjoyed a superb kudu carpaccio and springbok stew for dinner at the hotel, I was looking forward to a decent breakfast on the terrace before beginning the long drive back to Joburg, and it did not disappoint:

The white thing on my plate is indeed hippo willy sausage.

Next up in Part 3: Jozi-Cape Town.

This is the story of how we begin to remember
This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein
After the dream of falling and calling your name out
These are the roots of rhythm
And the roots of rhythm remain

Shongololo's African Adventure: Part 1 (TLV-Jozi-Kruger)

2010-07-14T22:39:00.000+01:00

This is the first episode of the story of my month in South Africa for the World Cup.

First, some necessary preamble that Israelis and Jews particularly want to know - how did I do this entire trip for under £2,000 for the month? The whole plan started to come together way back in February when ex-Roomeus introduced me to a mate of his at the FA, who was able to procure a couple of "friends and family" tickets to each of the England games. Then a swift call to BMI Diamond Club Gold Line, and time to take advantage of a mispricing in their mileage awards structure - their assumption is that Middle East to Africa flights are direct from Dubai on Gulf Air or whatever, not from Tel Aviv via Europe on something more Yid-friendly (or Lufthansa). 28,000 miles (of which 20,000 were for signing up to the BMI AmEx card) and £400 later, and I was going out Swiss First Class and back South African/Lufty Biz Class. A quick call to Avis Preferred for 23 days of car hire for £530 (complimentary unlimited mileage and class upgrade), and some free accommodation at Freedmansdadsbestmate in Joburg and Dr Blond's in Cape Town, with some negotiated super deals for B&B's along the Garden Route and a lodge right in the middle of the Kruger, and I was sorted.

But enough of that. Well okay, one quick photo. Of the limo that drove me across the tarmac from the Swiss First Lounge to the plane at Zurich.

For the record, superb PJs that look like the Viet Cong in All Blacks gear, 16 year old Lagavulin in the Zurich lounge trumped by 18 year old Macallan in-flight, and this special Taste of Switzerland dinner menu:

Langoustine and melon sushi

Scallop quenelles with abalone topping

Norwegian wild smoked salmon

Accompanied by copious Laurent Perrier Grand Siècle

-----

Fillet of snapper

Bed of herbed rosti and fresh salad

Accompanied by a super glass of Swiss-origin pinot blanc

-----

Rack of lamb cooked to taste (medium-rare please)

Bed of wild rice, roasted veg

Accompanied by most of a bottle of a spectacular red, I think it was Donatsch

-----

Selection of 6 different Swiss regional cheeses

Accompanied by Swiss muscat AND a tumbler of very nice colheita port

-----

Passion fruit cheese cake

Lindt & Sprungli truffles

Accompanied by proper Nespresso decaf

-----

Deep stupor-like sleep on my 6'4'' bed in my black PJs

Accompanied by snoring

So after a total of 20 hours of travel, which was in fact entirely blissful, I arrived at OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg. The whole place was festooned with flags of the various participating nations in the World Cup, and there were already groups of fans doing the same thing as me, and getting in a week or so of sightseeing before the opening game.

My first African experience was driving across town with Doron, my hosts' preferred cabbie, a nice guy with the most clapped-out Astra imaginable, as he swung it around every conceivable back route to try and avoid the worst of the rush hour traffic. Hiktik (hectic), as the locals say.

M&A's place in Victory Park was a 5-bed, 2-bath monstrosity with 3 big receptions (including a full-sized bar), an outdoor diner, pool, tennis court, two garages and staff block, which was sadly unoccupied, meaning I had to occasionally do some tidying up after myself. All for less than the price of a 2-bedder in Borehamwood. Unusually for that part of town, no huge fences or gates, and minimal alarms due to three of the housemates, Jack, Dot and Bumper the cats.

After a weekend acclimatising to the altitude and weather (winter there of course), mostly by eating a load of food, organic and largely veggie in the house due to my host, and balancing load of carcass elsewhere, I was ready to head to the Kruger. So I started out down the N4 with the sounds of John Denver playing (Wiiiiiild Montana Skies), and in a very spirited mood. After about three hours of driving through pretty bland plains interspersed with power stations and coal mines (best of all, a sign saying "caution, explosions will be taking place here on Tuesdays between 11am and 2pm") the countryside starts getting spectacular, rather like parts of Scotland.

Arriving in Nelspruit, I passed the new stadium and drove up for a peek. In homage to the nearby national parks, the roof is held up by pillars shaped like giraffes, and the seats are a huge zebra pattern. An hour later, and I pulled up at the Paul Kruger Gate, had my car checked for hunting rifles, and drove into the park just before sunset.

Rounding the very first corner I encountered a herd of buffalo marauding across the road. Sensational. Except that buffalo really just look like cows will silly viking hats on.

Thus ends Part I, under an incredible starlit African sky.

Dah wumba wumba wumba oh oh oh. And he walked the length of his days under African skies.

Back!

2010-07-13T09:43:00.000+01:00

After a prolonged absence due to Blogger deciding to screw their users and change their system to something almost completely impenetrable, lots of travel on my part, and general writer's block, I have returned. To follow - some overdue flotilla treatment (I did tweet and Facebook my way through it), a proper report on my South Africa trip, and the next chapter of my Tel Aviv love story.

While you wait for that, check this clip - another example of the brilliance of my home town.

ORFTORFU: the deafening silence of Israel's "friends"

2010-03-18T15:02:00.000Z

As part of the USA's shrill and undiplomatic response to Israel's decision to keep building in "East" Jerusalem (take a look at the map, the area of contention is actually North Jerusalem, contiguous to Jewish neighbourhoods, and not in any area of significance to Palestinians), Middle East envoy George Mitchell found a convenient excuse not to attend a planned conference in Israel, giving a public and humiliating slap on the wrist to Netanyahu. As Lieberman pointed out in his usual direct style, imagine the reaction if Israel banned Arabs from buying or building in West Jerusalem (go on lefties, try and claim they do - yawn).

Meanwhile today, the world's reaction to Hamas launching a deadly rocket attack was to allow the EU's senior foreign minister to still make a visit to Gaza the very next day.

Israel builds houses in an uncontentious area, under a policy that had previously received PRAISE from the US government, and is hauled over the coals in the most embarrassing way possible. Hamas murders civilians and is rewarded with a senior diplomatic mission.

ORFTORFU!

I worry for the future of Europe and America with this kind of moral judgment.

In the US, where I am currently on a flying visit, it is clear from the discussions I have with random non-Jews everywhere from Oklahoma to Minnesota to New York that the Obama regime is hopelessly out of step with the American public on his views and treatment of Israel. I am thankful that grassroots support remains in place, and will try and post something more detailed on the conversations I have had with folks over here in the last few days on this subject, and why I believe this bond will outlast the current President.

ORFTORFU: Not In My Name

2010-03-03T19:06:00.000Z

As the originator of the acronym "ORFTORFU", I am proud to post this fantastic extract from Not In My Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy. It sums up most of the ORFTORFUs in one elegant piece, and I will be adding a permanent link to it. This chapter was written by Chas Newkey-Burden.

‘When my father was a little boy in Poland, the streets of Europe were covered with graffiti, “Jews, go back to Palestine,” or sometimes worse: “Dirty Yids, piss off to Palestine.” When my father revisited Europe fifty years later, the walls were covered with new graffiti, “Jews, get out of Palestine.”’

- Israeli author Amos Oz

Everyone knows the proverb of the three wise monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. As shown throughout this book, the modern hypocrite can be very skilled indeed at seeing and hearing no evil. When women are stoned to death in Arab states, when gay men are brutalised in Caribbean countries, the hypocrites’ ability to cover their ears and look the other way is remarkable.

However, the triumvirate cannot be completed for when it comes to the state of Israel the modern hypocrite just cannot stop speaking evil. They will fail to condemn – and sometimes actually support – terrorists who blow up school buses and pizza parlours. They will march hand in hand with people who – quite literally – fundamentally disagree with every basic political principle they claim to hold dear. They will openly question whether Israel even has the right to exist.

And all along the way, they will show themselves to be devastating hypocrites.

The anti-Israel brigade would have us believe that the motivation for this vitriolic hatred of Israel is a genuine, compassionate concern for the fate of the Palestinian people. But do they really care about the Palestinians, or is their compassion somewhat selective, to put it politely? In reality, are they only interested in Palestinian suffering for as long as it gives them an opportunity to bash Israel?

This hypocrisy is not entirely modern. When the West Bank and the Gaza strip were occupied by Jordan and Egypt, those occupations of ‘Palestinian land’ drew not a whimper of protest from the people who spat blood at the ‘occupation’ of those territories by Israel. When Jordan killed thousands of Palestinians and drove just as many of them from their refugee camps into Lebanon, Israel-bashers saw nothing wrong with that at all.

Neither did they take issue with Kuwait when it deported Palestinians in the aftermath of the 1991 Iraq war. Why were they silent in all these cases? Because none of them gave them a chance to bash Israel, of course.

Well established as this hypocrisy is, in the 21st century it has well and truly taken root as ‘supporting’ the Palestinians had become achingly fashionable. So when Hamas-sparked violence led to Palestinian students at a West Bank university being brutally beaten and shot by their own people, the Westerners who claim to support the Palestinians raised not a single word of protest or concern. Likewise, when Palestinian women are stabbed to death in “honour killings” across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, no anti-Israel Westerners lose a single moment’s sleep on their behalf.

Likewise, when Palestinian children are hospitalised after being caught in the crossfire of fighting between rival Palestinian factions, there is not a word of condemnation from the West. When Palestinian children are deliberately forced into the line of fire by their own people, where is the concern from those in the West who claim to be their biggest supporters? When terrorists are found to be hiding hand grenades in the cradles where Palestinian babies sleep, where is the outrage?

If Israel is accused of torturing Palestinian terror suspects, the hypocrite is indignantly up-in-arms in protest without establishing a single fact but when Palestinians suspected of collaborating are proven to be brutally tortured – sometimes to death – by members of Islamic Jihad, again the silence is deafening.

Similarly, if these people are truly concerned about the Palestinians, then where are their words of praise for Israel when it flings open its hospital doors to them? Just one example: in May 2007 an eight-day-old baby from the Gaza Strip that was suffering with congenital heart complications was treated in a hospital in Israel. An Israeli Magen David Adom ambulance drove into the Gaza Strip, dodging Qassam rockets that were headed for Israel and collected the child for treatment at the Sheba Medical Center in Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. Such cases are far from rare. But I’ve never heard a word of praise for these treatments from any of those in the West who claim to be concerned over the fate of the Palestinians.

It’s the same with the refugee question. The heartbreak that the hypocrite feels for Palestinian refugees is only expressed in the context of slamming Israel. When it’s pointed out to them that the Arab world has done precious little to help the refugees, their interest dwindles. And what of the hundreds and thousands of Jewish refugees who were deported from Arab states? They’ve never received any compensation – as Palestinian refugees have from Israel – and no Westerner has ever cried them self to sleep on their behalf.

Any action taken by Israel to deal with Palestinian terrorists is met with abuse and distortion. The case of Jenin was typical. Following scores of suicide bombings organised from within the Jenin refugee camp, Israel entered the camp in search of the terrorists. As the fighting ended the media leapt into action to demonise Israel’s action. The Guardian described Israel’s actions as “every bit as repellent” as the 9/11 attacks. The Evening Standard cried: “We are talking here of massacre, and a cover-up, of genocide.” The Independent spoke of a “war crime” and The Times claimed there were “mass graves”.

The head of the United Nations Refugee Agency was quickly out of the traps to describe the affair as a “human rights catastrophe that has few parallels in recent history”. The EU was nor far behind in its condemnation.

Let’s examine the facts of this massacre, this genocide. In total 75 people died at Jenin. 23 of these were Israeli soldiers and 52 were Palestinians, almost all of them combatants. By even the most hysterical, loaded standards of language this does not constitute genocide, nor anything of the sort. Indeed, the Palestinian death toll would have been much higher – and the Israeli death toll non-existent – had Israel simply bombed the camp from the air. Instead, to avoid civilian casualties, Israel put their own soldiers at risk, sending them in on foot to search through booby-trapped homes.

When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon next visited Israeli troops, one of them asked him: “Why didn’t we bomb the terrorists from the air? That operation cost the lives of more than 20 of our comrades!” Sharon replied: “That is the painful and inevitable price that those who refuse to abandon their humanity have to pay.” In return for paying the painful price of eschewing air attacks, Sharon and the brave Israeli soldiers who entered a terrorist camp on foot were accused of genocide and massacre and spoken of in the same terms as the 9/11 terrorists.

However, the hypocrisy doesn’t end there. In 2007, another Palestinian camp, which had become swamped with suicide bombers, was attacked. This time, the gloves came off. The camp was surrounded by tanks and artillery that fired indiscriminately at the inhabitants. Snipers backed up this fire. The camp’s water and electricity supplies were cut off. Thousands of innocent Palestinians were forced to flee but not before at least 18 had been killed and dozens injured. The camp itself was reduced to rubble. Ultimately, the fighting killed more than 300 people and forced nearly 40,000 Palestinian refugees to flee.

This time, there was next to no coverage in the British media. There was no talk of genocide or massacre. Rather than condemning the attack, the EU and UN were quick to express their support to the army. Even the Arab League came out in support. So what had changed? You guessed it, this time the army dealing with the camp was not the Israeli army but the Lebanese army. How terrifyingly revealing this is of the hypocrisy of those who claim to care about fate of the Palestinians.

During the fighting, tanks and artillery had also fired at residential areas of Lebanon and civilians were inevitably caught in the crossfire. Just months earlier, the anti-war brigade has been marching through the streets of London to express their concern for the people of Lebanon who were caught in the crossfire of Israel’s fighting with Hezbollah. Strangely, the marchers couldn’t get off their self-righteous backsides when Lebanese civilians were being shot at by Islamic groups: this time, the people of Lebanon could go to hell as far as they were concerned.

How different it had been in the summer of 2006. “We are all Hezbollah now,” the modern hypocrites had chanted as they marched in fury against Israel’s latest battle for survival, as the rockets of that terror group were raining down on its cities and kibbutzim. If “Not In My Name” was an embarrassing slogan, then “We are all Hezbollah now” was little short of insane. How could these marchers, who say they oppose misogyny, tyranny, homophobia and genocide, march in support of an organisation which fanatically and brutally promotes all those things? Because they’re hypocrites, of course, and because their frenzied hatred of Israel has utterly stupefied them. It was embarrassing for them, therefore, when Hezbollah’s leader Hasan Nasrallah told them: “We don’t want anything from you. We just want to eliminate you.” As Martin Amis neatly put it, these demonstrators were “up the arse of the people that want them dead”.

But what were they doing up there? Many no doubt believed that during the war they were backing the little guy of Hezbollah against the big guy of Israel. The truth was somewhat different, though. Hezbollah was no little guy, it was backed by millions of pounds of Iranian and Syrian money. Neither were the two sides of the conflict as clear-cut as they believed. The Israeli Arabs of Haifa spent much of the summer sitting in bunkers to avoid being killed by Hezbollah rockets. Many of these Arabs cheered on the Israeli army throughout the campaign.

Similarly, Ethiopian Jews who Israel had previously bravely airlifted from oppression and starvation were particularly badly hit in Tiberias. How incredible that back in England, many of the groups whose members wear white Make Poverty History wristbands and campaign on Third World debt were willing to cheer as Ethiopians were bombed by Hezbollah.

So no, Israel was not necessarily the Goliath of the conflict. How could a nation the size of Wales, surrounded by millions who want it wiped off the map be a Goliath? However, the courage shown by its soldiers was immense. Lt Colonel Roe Klein was marching at the head of a unit of troops when a Hezbollah man threw a hand grenade at them. Lt Klein jumped on top of the grenade to save his troops, losing his life in the process. Meanwhile, Hezbollah were employing the standard cowardly tactic of hiding among women and children, with wheelchair-bound people a particular favourite.

Throughout Israel, the population showed itself to be as brave and humanitarian as ever. Newspapers were full of classified advertisements in which families offered to house those from the north of the country who were under Hezbollah fire. Ultra-Orthodox Jews took in secular Jews, people living in small flats flung open their doors to large families with pets. The blitz spirit also saw youngsters from the big cities like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv organise treats for Arab children from Galilee. The government arranged for celebrities to visit the bunker-ridden population of the north and even flew in a gay porn star to cheer up gay Israeli troops. As Hezbollah’s rockets rained down over northern Israel, weddings in the region had to be cancelled. So cinema producer Eliman Bardugo organised for those affected to have the chance to be married en masse on the beach in Tel Aviv. Some 50 couples took him up on the offer.

Meanwhile, in London, left-wing people took to the streets to cheer on Hezbollah as it butchered Israeli people. As, for instance, a Hezbollah rocket hit a kibbutz and killed 12 people including an ultra-orthodox Jew who was sitting next to a hippy with pierced ears. The more of these incidents happened, the further the marchers climbed up the arses of the people who wanted them dead.

It would have been familiar territory for many of them. When I went to see the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie in London’s West End, I had sat in an audience littered with white English men and women wearing keffiyeh scarves and some wearing Hamas badges. I see these people – and the marching Hezbollah-wannabes – as terror groupies, a sort of left-wing equivalent of the little boys who play army in playgrounds across England. But these are adults so they really should know better.

I’m not sure the terror groupies look the other way on the topic of Palestinian terrorism. They seem – sorry to say – almost turned-on by it. You surely can’t, after all, overlook something as big as the blowing up of buses or pizza parlours. There is no ‘bigger picture’ regarding people who do that. And why would you appropriate the uniform of the man who backed all that terrorism unless you actively had, well, a bit of a thing for him? For much of the audience, the play about Rachel Corrie must have been a gleefully pornographic experience. They say a picture is worth a thousand words but sometimes a picture can be worth far more than that. There are more than a thousand words in the play, about Corrie, the young US activist who accidentally died during an anti-Israel protest in Gaza in 2003. But none of them shed light on the now-canonised Corrie as much as a photograph taken of her by the Associated Press a month before her death. She was snapped burning an American flag and whipping up the crowd at a pro-Hamas rally.

Naturally, there is no mention of this photograph in the play. Neither is it mentioned that thanks in part to demonstrations of the International Solidarity Movement with who Corrie travelled to the Middle East, the Israel Defence Force was prevented from blocking the passage of weapons which were later shown to have been used to kill Israeli children in southern Israel.

Instead, the play is full of naïve anti-Israel propaganda from the mouth of Corrie. “The vast majority of Palestinians right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhian non-violent resistance,” she wrote in 2003 as Palestinian suicide bombs were slaughtering Israelis. Lest we forget who the real star of the story is, towards the end of the play Corrie writes: “When I come back from Palestine I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work.” We’re back in self-indulgence territory, aren’t we? Not in my name. My name is Rachel Corrie. We’re all Hezbollah now. Thousands are dying but it’s all about me. The hypocrisy of the audience was depressing. I wonder if any of were even aware that Hamas had danced over Corrie’s grave when she died? To the Palestinians, a dead young American girl was a wonderful publicity coup. Had any of the audience travelled to the Middle East in a Corriesque trip of self-indulgence, the Palestinians would have crossed their fingers in the hope they too died.

As I say, the modern hypocrite is delighted to overlook misogyny, homophobia and brutal clampdowns on all manner of person freedoms in Arab states and the other side of this coin of hypocritical currency is the way they simultaneously overlook the extraordinarily positive record Israel has on such issues. Take the case of Golda Meir, Israel’s first female Prime Minister who took the top job in 1969, just 21 years into the country’s existence and a full decade before England had our first female Prime Minister. In some Arab states, women are not allowed to go to school. In Israel they can become the most powerful person in the country.

Meir herself was well aware of this spectacular contrast. In 1948, when she was a negotiator with the Jewish Agency, she set off on a secret mission to meet King Abdullah of Transjordan. The meeting was secret so she travelled with the Agency’s Arab expert Ezra Danin and posed as his wife. She recalled: “I would travel in the traditional dark and voluminous robes of an Arab woman. I spoke no Arabic at all but as a Moslem wife accompanying her husband it was most unlikely that I would be called upon to say anything to anyone.” How hypocritical it is of those left-wingers in the West that they can hate a country with tales such as these throughout its history.

It’s just the same with gay issues. Left-wingers who say they passionately believe in gay rights manage to put that passion aside when it comes to their view of the only country in the Middle East with a positive record on the issue. A wonderfully positive record, in fact. In 2006, within days of the country’s fighting with Hezbollah ending, I flew to Israel to research a feature on gay life in the Holy Land. Before leaving, I’d been warned by anti-Israel Westerners to expect to find a very homophobic country. Had any of them bothered to visit Israel, they’d have discovered it’s nothing of the sort. Workplace discrimination against gay people is outlawed; the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) has openly gay members; in schools, teenagers learn about the difficulties of being gay and the importance of treating all sexualities equally. The Israel Defence Force has dozens of openly gay officers who, like all gay soldiers in its ranks, are treated equally by order of the government.

The Supreme Court has ruled that gay couples are eligible for spousal and widower benefits. The country has gay football teams. Most mainstream television dramas in Israel regularly feature gay storylines. When transsexual Dana International won the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest as Israel’s representative, 80 per cent of polled Israelis called her “an appropriate representative of Israel”.

These facts are there for all to see but it is only on visiting Israel that you discover how happily the different sections of the society coexist. I interviewed a gay Israeli man on Tel Aviv’s “Hilton beach” – it is opposite the Hilton hotel – which is also known as the “gay beach”, where men openly check each other out and pick each other up. It is neighboured by the city’s religious beach which has separate bathing days for men and women. And all this is just yards from Tel Aviv’s Independence Park, which is the main gay cruising area in Tel Aviv. The cruising park in Jerusalem has the same name.

Elsewhere in Tel Aviv is the House of Freedom. Opened in the late 1990s, this is a shelter for gay, lesbian and transgender youngsters between the ages of 12 and 18 who have been thrown out of home after coming out to their parents. At the House they are counselled by social workers who then visit the parents and attempt to bring about reconciliation. Those attempts are often successful, each year hundreds of gay youngsters return to a better home thanks to this remarkable institution.

And everywhere you go in the city, gay men walk hand in hand more openly that they even would in London’s Soho. It is staggering that Western left-wingers who claim to believe in gay rights can be so furiously opposed to tolerant Israel. The tolerance is not confined to Tel Aviv, either. When some in Jerusalem opposed the staging of the gay pride parade in the capital in 2007, the media presented a city on the brink of civil war. I happened to be in Jerusalem that week – though I didn’t attend the parade – and I witnessed no unrest. Perhaps the strongest opposition I witnessed to the parade came from a taxi driver. I asked him what he thought about the parade and he sighed deeply before saying: “Oh it was terrible for the traffic.” He was right, too!

By hating Israel, the pro-gay-rights left are not just proving to be hypocritical, they are also endangering the one hope that gay Palestinians have. The leading gay rights organisation in Israel organises Arabic gay evenings where gay Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza strip are invited to come and party with Israelis – and many take up the invitation. “We are their only hope,” says one of the organisers. “If they came out where they live, they would be killed but they can come and party with us in Israel.” As has been documented by human rights groups, gay Palestinians are routinely tortured and murdered by their own people. They often flee to the safety of Israel.

The attraction that Israel should hold for believers in the rainbow alliance doesn’t end with its record on women and gay men. I remember on a road trip from the Dead Sea to Tel Aviv marvelling at a quartet of an ultra-orthodox Jew, an Arab, a uniformed Israeli soldier and a mini-skirt wearing girl in her late teens all engaging in friendly chit-chat as they waited for some traffic lights to change. Such sights are far from uncommon as Israel is home to one of the planet’s most diverse people: dreadlocked Ethiopians, and their fellow Africans from Yemen, Egypt and Morocco exist alongside people from Iraq, Iran, Russian and Latin America. Then there are Asians from the Far East and Israeli Arabs, the latter group enjoying more personal freedoms in Israel than they would in any Arab state.

My experiences in Israel might seem surprising to the reader who hasn’t been there – particularly given the predominance of reports casting the country as a villainous, apartheid state. There exists a peculiar unwillingness to accept good news from Israel, which contrasts with the way that paradigm-shifting reports on ‘The hidden modernity of Tehran’ are welcomed with open arms. When I attempted to include the scene that I had witnessed at the traffic lights in a magazine feature I wrote about the research trip to Israel, I had to go through an exasperating discussion with the commissioning editor. He didn’t seem to know that Israeli Arabs exist and insisted that the scene I described couldn’t have occurred. He’d never been to Israel but was quite sure that he was right and I was wrong.

He was in good company in his blissful ignorance. Within hours of my return from the trip, I received a call from a journalist acquaintance who asked me with genuine shock: “What’s all this about you going to Israel?” He said that a mutual journalist acquaintance of ours was “absolutely disgusted” with me for going there and that he hoped I was “going to put the boot in” when I wrote my articles. These were not close acquaintances, I hadn’t even spoken to one of them for nearly nine years and it must have taken them some digging around to find my new telephone number. They obviously thought it was worth the trouble to have a dig at a writer who was friendly to Israel. Apparently the “absolutely disgusted” man – a weekly columnist on a high-profile magazine – has since tried to get an article published that claims that Tony Blair murdered Yasser Arafat.

The editor of another magazine once told me I was not allowed to write that Yasser Arafat turned down Ehud Barak’s offer at Camp David in 2000. I asked why and he replied “because of a need for balance.” I pointed out that nobody, including Arafat, has ever disputed that he rejected Barak’s offer and the editor replied: “Well, I don’t know about that but you still can’t write it.” The article in question was an “opinion” piece and taking sides was the order of the day each week in that column. Not if the article was about Israel, it seemed. Get this for hypocrisy, though: the same magazine had happily published articles accusing Israel of “war crimes” and carried advertising accusing Israel of apartheid policies. Clearly, the need for balance is relative.

Not that there was much balance in the motion the National Union Of Journalists passed in 2007 to boycott Israel. As a writer I felt shame and despair at this motion. Those emotions of shame and despair were not joined by shock, though, because much of the British media has long been absorbed by a blind hatred of Israel.

Broadsheet newspapers print editorials that are so biased and distorted that Osama Bin Laden would probably blush at them and say: “Steady on! We can’t print that!” The BBC refuses to describe suicide bombers who blow up buses full of Israeli schoolchildren as “terrorists” even though it has used that term to describe bombers in London, Iraq and Indonesia. One of its correspondents told a Hamas rally that he and his colleagues were “waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder with the Palestinian people”.

Why did the NUJ choose Israel for a boycott? The country has an entirely free press. If the NUJ wanted to boycott a country, then Russia, China, Zimbabwe and Pakistan would have been more sensible options, given their record on press freedom. The timing, too, was ridiculous. Shortly before the motion was passed, BBC journalist Alan Johnston was kidnapped by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. So why did the NUJ respond to this by boycotting Israel?

The coverage of the Alan Johnston case was riddled with hypocrisy. Every day, the BBC devoted acres of space to the story. Yet the BBC largely ignored the plight of young Israeli soldiers who were kidnapped by Palestinians. Indeed, the BBC refuses to even use the term “kidnap” in relation to the snatching of teenager Corporal Gilad Shalit, preferring to say he was “captured”. I was in Israel during Johnston’s captivity and had a conversation about his case with an Arab from the West Bank. He said: “I’m surprised that they took someone from the BBC. Everyone knows the BBC is totally biased for the Palestinians. I bet they’re not so for the Palestinians now, though!” When I told him that the BBC was just as pro-Palestinian as ever, he raised his eyes to the heavens. “That’s strange,” he said.

True. But then Auntie Beeb has long shown its true colours on the conflict. A 2007 leaked internal BBC memo written by Bowen blamed Israel for all the woes of the Gaza Strip, despite the fact that Israel had withdrawn two years earlier from Gaza!

Hmm, what we need is a man who can effortlessly show these BBC buffoons just how hypocritical they are. Step forward and take a bow Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister of Israel and all-round hero of both myself and my co-author. He was interviewed on the BBC during the 2006 Hezbollah conflict and made mince meat of his quizzer:

Interviewer: “How come so many more Lebanese have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?”

Netanyahu: “Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?”

Interviewer: “Why not?”

Netanyahu: “Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the war was caused by Germany’s aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima.

“Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the RAF tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children’s hospital, killing 83 little children.

“Perhaps you have another question?”

Perhaps indeed! Perhaps the academics who chose to boycott Israel at the same time as the NUJ might have asked themselves some questions too. In 2007, they voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions in a protest supposedly on behalf of the Palestinians. Meanwhile, back in the real world a young Jordanian-Palestinian woman, was graduating with a Masters degree from Ben Gurion University in Israel. Dana Rassas was trained by the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura in the Negev, and then went on to study the Israeli water desalination program at the Albert Katz International School for Desert Studies at Ben Gurion University. As a result of her studies in Israel, Rassas is now helping to solve Jordan’s water problems. If they boycotters had their way, she’d never have had any of these chances.

To take a wider view, why is it that so many people who cling to the notion of human rights when considering the plight of the Palestinians couldn’t give a hoot about other groups around the world like the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Armenians and the Chechens? Is it because these groups didn’t have the fortune of being in dispute with Jewish people? Either way, it is indisputable that the incessant focus of the human rights movement on the actions of Israel has allowed genuinely horrific human rights abuses in other parts of the world to go unnoticed.

As we keep seeing, whatever it does Israel cannot win and so we end up returning to the graffiti seen by Amos Oz’s father in Poland. First: go back to Palestine, then: get out of Palestine. Anti-semitism has always been dominated by contradictions. The Jews have been attacked for being both communist schemers and capitalists plotting to take over the world. They can’t stop sticking their noses into others’ business yet they also must be attacked for keeping themselves to themselves. They were taunted for being too weak when the Germans tried to eliminate them from the face of the earth and are now slammed for being too strong when the Arabs try the same trick.

Ironically, for all the attention and criticism that Western hypocrites throw at Israel, the biggest questioners of the state and its actions are Israelis themselves. Israel’s Supreme Court is a thorn in the side of the government and army and frequently overrules both. It regularly examines petitions brought by Palestinian people and rules in their favour. Many of its judgements have restricted the options open to the army and in passing them, the Court has acknowledged that its rulings will cause Israeli loss of life but insisted that such steps are needed in the interests of humanity.

When terrorist leaders who have arranged the slaughter of Israeli people are killed by the Israel Defence Force, there is no cheering in the street as is seen among Palestinians when another school bus is blown up by a suicide bomber, a favourite tactic of theirs as seen in November 2000. Instead, commissions of inquiry are set up to examine whether the elimination of these men who wanted to blow murder their children was ethical and correct. On and on it goes, this relentless self-examination by a country that has faced abuse, distortion and calls for its destruction since the very minute it was established in 1948.

But then that’s the thing about Israel: strong, plucky, moral, deeply self-critical yet determinedly happy and upbeat, it is everything the modern hypocrite is not. I love it.

Not In My Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, written by Chas Newkey-Burden and Julie Burchill, is published by Virgin Books.

Pavlov's sheep

2010-03-02T22:01:00.002Z

This is an excerpt from an article in the Jerusalem Post today. I have highlighted certain passages for the morally impaired (these people are identified by the grating sound of repetitive bleating, usually a noise like "paaaaaaasport, paaaaaaasport"), as certain media and individuals still don't seem to have their priorities straight on what are the important things to take away from this story...

Arab countries may be complicit in the January 19 assassination of Hamas terror chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Hamas sources said on Tuesday, according to various reports.

Citing a report by Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Reuters quoted Hamas official Mahmoud Nasser as saying that Jordanian and Egyptian intelligence agencies had probably tracked Mabhouh prior to his assassination.

Nasser told the newspaper that there was evidence showing that Mabhouh had been targeted by moderate Arab countries because he had handled sensitive information concerning the activities of Hamas and other Islamist elements. He added that that assassination may have been carried out earlier than planned.

According to the newspaper, Nasser is in charge of Iran's ties with Hamas and had worked closely with Mabhouh prior to the latter's death.

Additionally, in an interview with Hamas's Al Aksa radio station from Damascus, Nasser confirmed Israeli claims that his boss had supplied weapons to Palestinian terrorists.

Nassar said Mabhouh "never stopped thinking about how to fight the [Israeli] occupation by supplying quality weapons to the Palestinian fighters. "

The aide also described how al-Mabhouh celebrated killing two Israeli soldiers in the mid-1980s by standing on one of the corpses.

Nonetheless, you bleaters will no doubt carry on with your Pavlovian reaction to the mention of the dirty word Is***l. Paaaaaaasport! Paaaaaaasport!

UN consistency - more holes than a Swiss cheese

2010-02-27T00:27:00.000Z

In one of the biggest and most glaring cases of ORFTORFU ever, a senior spokesman of the UN has immediately and in the strongest terms, quite rightly condemned the outrageous statements of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, which included such morsels as "Let us wage jihad against Switzerland, Zionism and foreign aggression"and "Any Muslim in any part of the world who works with Switzerland is an apostate, is against Muhammad, God and the Koran."

What makes this a nailed-on ORFTORFU is that it took a split second for the UN to come to the defence of Switzerland, which didn't even bother to be a member of the UN until 2002, whilst at the same time:

- continuing to exhibit frightening institutional bias against Israel, which the UN actually CREATED through its vote in 1947

- keeping silent about the outrageous statements made by Muslim and Arab leaders as well as numerous other people of influence

- failing to rebut Gaddafi's simultaneous mention of Zionism and its obvious implication to mean Israel (and perhaps Jews everywhere), despite the revocation by the UN, under duress, of their Zionism = Racism policy in 1990

- electing Libya to chair the ruddy UN Human Rights Commission!

- actively promoting the same agenda as Gaddafi via UNRWA, an organisation that inculcates Palestinian children to wage a similar jihad against the "Zionist Entity" (we don't sully our tongues by saying the word Israel)

Absolute, rank hypocrisy. As usual. And people wonder why Israel couldn't give a shit what the UN thinks.

The Fatah fairy tale

2010-02-21T15:22:00.000Z

A fascinating article by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post:

Israel's is the only government that can force the rest of the world to recognize that Abbas is not an ally.

Fahmi Shabaneh is an odd candidate for dissident status. Shabaneh is a Jerusalemite who joined the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Service in 1994.

Working for PA head Mahmoud Abbas and GIS commander Tawfik Tirawi, Shabaneh was tasked with investigating Arab Jerusalemites suspected of selling land to Jews. Such sales are a capital offense in the PA. Since 1994 scores of Arabs have been the victims of extrajudicial executions after having been fingered by the likes of Shabaneh.

A few years ago, Abbas and Tirawi gave Shabaneh a new assignment. They put him in charge of a unit responsible for investigating corrupt activities carried out by PA officials. They probably assumed a team player like Shabaneh understood what he was supposed to do.

Just as Abbas’s predecessor, Yasser Arafat, reportedly had full dossiers on all of his underlings and used damning information to keep them loyal to him, so Abbas probably believed that Shabaneh’s information was his to use or ignore as he saw fit.

For a while, Abbas’s faith was well-placed. Shabaneh collected massive amounts of information on senior PA officials detailing their illegal activities. These activities included the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid; illegal seizure of land and homes; and monetary and sexual extortion of their fellow Palestinians.

Over time, Shabaneh became disillusioned with his boss. Abbas appointed him to his job around the time he was elected PA head in 2005. Abbas ran on an anti-corruption platform. Shabaneh’s information demonstrated that Abbas presided over a criminal syndicate posing as a government. And yet rather than arrest his corrupt, criminal associates, Abbas promoted them.

Abbas continued promoting his corrupt colleagues even after Hamas’s 2006 electoral victory. That win owed to a significant degree to the widespread public revulsion with Fatah’s rampant corruption.

With Israel and the US lining up to support him after the Hamas victory, Abbas sat on his hands. Enjoying his new status as the irreplaceable “moderate,” he allowed his advisers and colleagues to continue enriching themselves with the international donor funds that skyrocketed after Hamas’s victory.

Since 2006, despite the billions of dollars in international aid showered on Fatah, Hamas has consistently led Fatah in opinion polls. Rather than clean up their act, Abbas and his Fatah colleagues have sought to ingratiate themselves with their public by ratcheting up their incitement against Israel. And since Abbas has been deemed irreplaceable, the same West that turns a blind eye to his corruption, refuses to criticize his encouragement of terrorism. And this makes sense. How can the West question the only thing standing in the way of a Hamas takeover of Judea and Samaria?

Recently, Shabaneh decided he had had enough. The time had come to expose what he knows. But he ran into an unanticipated difficulty. No one wanted to know. As he put it, Arab and Western journalists wouldn’t touch his story for fear of being “punished” by the PA.

In his words, Western journalists “don’t want to hear negative things about Fatah and Abbas.”

Lacking other options, Shabaneh brought his information to The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh.

On January 29, the Post published Abu Toameh’s interview with Shabaneh on our front page. Among other impressive scoops, Shabaneh related that Abbas’s associates purloined $3.2 million in cash that the US gave Abbas ahead of the 2006 elections. He told Abu Toameh how PA officials who were almost penniless in 1994 now have tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars in their private accounts. He related how he watched in horror as Abbas promoted the very officials he reported on. And he showed Abu Toameh a video of Abbas’s chief of staff Rafik Husseini naked in the bedroom of a Christian woman who sought employment with the PA.

If Shabaneh’s stories were about Israeli or Western officials, there is no doubt that they would have been picked up by every self-respecting news organization in the world. If he had been talking about Israelis, officials from Washington to Brussels to the UN would be loudly calling for official investigations. But since he was talking about the Palestinians, no one cared.

The State Department had nothing to say. The EU had nothing to say. The New York Times acted as if his revelations were about nothing more than a sex scandal.

As for Abbas and his cronies, they were quick to blame the Jews. They accused Shabaneh – their trusted henchman when it came to land sales to Jews – of being an Israeli agent. And when Channel 10 announced it was broadcasting Husseini’s romp in the sack, Abbas demanded that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu bar the broadcast, (apparently forgetting that unlike his PA-controlled media, Israel’s media organs are free).

SHABANEH’S ODYSSEY from PA regime loyalist to dissident is an interesting tale. But what is more noteworthy than his personal journey is the world’s indifference to his revelations.

Just as the mountains of evidence that Fatah officials – including Shabaneh’s boss Tirawi – have been actively involved in terrorist attacks against Israel have been systematically ignored by successive US administrations, Israeli governments and EU foreign policy chiefs, so no one wants to think about the fact that Fatah is a criminal syndicate. The implications are too devastating.

Since at least 1994, successive US administrations goaded by the EU have made supporting Fatah and the PA the centerpiece of their Middle East policy. They want to receive proof that Fatah is a terrorist organization that operates like a criminal organization like they want – in the immortal words of former EU Middle East envoy Christopher Patten – “a hole in [their] head.”

As for the Western media, their lack of interest in Shabaneh’s revelation serves as a reminder of just how mendacious much of the reportage about the Palestinians and Israel is. For 16 years, the American and European media have turned blind eyes to Palestinian misbehavior while expansively reporting every allegation against Israel – no matter how flimsy or obviously false. When the history of the media’s coverage of the Middle East is written it will constitute one of the darkest chapters in Western media history.

But while the American and European allegiance to the fable of Fatah as the anchor of the two-state solution accounts for the indifference of both to Shabaneh’s disclosures, what accounts for the Netanyahu government’s behavior in this matter?

Shortly after the Post first published Shabaneh’s story, the PA issued an arrest warrant against him. He was charged among other things with “harming the national interests” of the Palestinians.

But Abbas’s henchmen couldn’t put their hands on him.

Israel had already arrested him.

Shabaneh was booked for among other things, illegally working for the PA. It is illegal for Israeli residents to work for the PA. But oddly, although Israeli authorities have known whom he worked for since 1994, until his disclosures were made public, they never saw any pressing need to arrest or prosecute him.

Official Israel has nothing to say about Shabaneh’s information. Instead, in the wake of his disclosures, everyone from Netanyahu to Defense Minister Ehud Barak has continued to daily proclaim their dedication to reaching a peace accord with Abbas. This even as Abbas and his cronies accuse Israel of using the “traitorous” Shabaneh to pressure Abbas into negotiating with Israel.

There are two explanations for Israel’s behavior. First, there is the fact the presence of Barak and his Labor Party in the government makes it impossible for Netanyahu and his Likud Party to abandon the failed two-state paradigm of dealing the PA. If Netanyahu and his colleagues were to point out that the PA is a kleptocracy and its senior officials enable terror and escalate incitement to deflect their public’s attention away from their criminality, (as well as because they want to destroy Israel), then Labor may bolt the coalition.

Beyond that, there is no doubt that an Israeli denunciation of Abbas and his mafia would enrage the US and EU. Apparently, Netanyahu – who to please President Barack Obama accepted the two-state paradigm in spite of the fact that he opposes it, and suspended Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria despite the fact that knows doing this is wrong – is loath to pick a fight by pointing out the obvious fact that the PA is a corrupt band of oppressive thieves.

Shabaneh argues that due to PA corruption, Hamas remains the preferred alternative for Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. In his view, the only reason Hamas has yet to take over Judea and Samaria is the IDF presence in the areas.

The strategic implications of his statement are clear. Far from being a bulwark against Hamas, Abbas empowers the Iranian-backed jihadist force. The only bulwark against Hamas is Israel.

WHAT THIS means is that Israel must end its support for Abbas. Every day he remains in power, he perpetuates a myth of Palestinian moderation. As a supposed moderate, he claims that Israel should curtail its counterterror operations and let his own “moderate” forces take over.

To strengthen Abbas, the US pressures Israel to curtail its counterterror operations in Judea and Samaria. To please the US, Israel in turn cuts back its operations.

Abbas’s men fight Hamas, but they also terrorize journalists, merchants and plain civilians who fall in their path, and so strengthen Hamas. To ratchet up public support for Fatah, Abbas escalates PA incitement against Israel. This then encourages his own forces to attack Israelis – as happened last week when one of his security officers murdered IDF St.-Sgt. Maj. Ihab Khatib. And so it goes.

It is clear that Barak will threaten to bolt the coalition if Netanyahu decides to cut off Abbas. But if he left, where would he go? Barak has nowhere to go. He will not be reelected to lead his party. And if Labor leaves the coalition, Netanyahu would still be far from losing his majority in Knesset.

As for angering the White House, the fact of the matter is that by pointing out that Abbas is not a credible leader, Israel will make it more difficult for Obama and his advisers to coerce Israel into making further concessions that will only further empower Hamas.

Shabaneh told the Post that he fully expects the PA to try to kill him. But in a way, the yawns that greeted his story are his best life insurance policy. Until the world stops believing that Fatah is indispensable, no one will listen to the Shabanehs of the world and so the PA has no reason to kill him.

Just as the Post was the only media organ that would publish his story, so the Israeli government is the only government that can force the rest of the world to recognize that Abbas is not an ally. But to do that, the government itself must finally break with the fairy tale of Fatah moderation.

Should've gone to Specsavers

2010-02-18T17:47:00.000Z

Genius. Hat tip to Mr Sacerdoti.

The strong horse has bolted

2010-02-17T21:28:00.000Z

Thought this article was interesting in the light of the Dubai incident. It occurs to me that Israel wants to make it quite clear that it still has the odds-on favourites in its stable, and that its opponents are lame. Clichés and puns dispensed with, my point is that many of us have been trying to explain the thesis of Israel toughing it out in a rough neighbourhood for some time, to our well-meaning but naive and wet liberal Western friends. This piece explains it pretty succinctly.

In the Mideast, bet on a strong horse

BY DANIEL PIPES
16/02/2010 22:01

Lee Smith presents pan-Arab nationalism as an effort to transform mini-horses of national states into single super-horse.

The violence and cruelty of Arabs often perplexes Westerners. Not only does the leader of Hizbullah proclaim “We love death,” but so too does, for example, a 24-year-old man who last month yelled “We love death more than you love life” as he crashed his car on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge in New York City. As parents in St. Louis honor-killed their teenage daughter with 13 stabs of a butcher’s knife, the Palestinian father shouted “Die! Die quickly! Die quickly! ... Quiet, little one! Die, my daughter, die!” – and the local Arab community supported them against murder charges.

A prince from Abu Dhabi recently tortured a grain dealer whom he accused of fraud; despite a video of the atrocity appearing on television internationally, the prince was acquitted while his accusers were convicted.

On a larger scale, one accounting finds 15,000 terrorist attacks since 9/11. Governments throughout the Arabic-speaking countries rely more on brutality than on the rule of law. The drive to eliminate Israel still persists even as new insurrections take hold; the latest one has flared up in Yemen.

Several excellent attempts to explain the pathology of Arab politics exist; my personal favorites include studies by David Pryce-Jones and Philip Salzman. Now add to these The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations (Doubleday, $26), an entertaining yet deep and important analysis by Lee Smith, Middle East correspondent for the Weekly Standard.

Smith takes as his proof text Osama bin Laden’s comment in 2001, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” What Smith calls the strong-horse principle contains two banal elements: Seize power and then maintain it. This principle predominates because Arab public life has “no mechanism for peaceful transitions of authority or power sharing, and therefore [it] sees political conflict as a fight to the death between strong horses.” Violence, Smith observes, is “central to the politics, society, and culture of the Arabic-speaking Middle East.” It also, more subtly, implies keeping a wary eye on the next strong horse, triangulating and hedging bets.

Smith argues that the strong-horse principle, not Western imperialism or Zionism, “has determined the fundamental character of the Arabic-speaking Middle East.” The Islamic religion itself both fits into the ancient pattern of strong-horse assertiveness and then promulgates it. Muhammad, the Islamic prophet, was a strongman as well as a religious figure. Sunni Muslims have ruled over the centuries “by violence, repression, and coercion.”

Ibn Khaldun’s famous theory of history amounts to a cycle of violence in which strong horses replace weak ones. The humiliation of dhimmis daily reminds non-Muslims who rules.

Smith’s prism offers insights into modern Middle East history. He presents Pan-Arab nationalism as an effort to transform the mini-horses of the national states into a single super-horse and Islamism as an effort to make Muslims powerful again. Israel serves as “a proxy strong horse” for both the US and for the Saudi-Egyptian bloc in the latter’s cold-war rivalry with Iran’s bloc. In a strong-horse environment, militias appeal more than do elections. Lacking a strong horse, Arab liberals make little headway. The US being the most powerful non-Arab and non-Muslim state makes anti-Americanism both inevitable and endemic.

WHICH BRINGS us to policies by non-Arab actors: unless they are forceful and show true staying power, Smith stresses, they lose. Being nice – say, withdrawing unilaterally from southern Lebanon and Gaza – leads to inevitable failure. The Bush administration rightly initiated a democratization project, raising high hopes, but then betrayed Arab liberals by not carrying through. In Iraq, the administration ignored advice to install a democratically minded strongman.

More broadly, when the US government flinches, others (e.g., the Iranian leadership) have an opportunity to “force their own order on the region.” Walid Jumblatt, a Lebanese leader, has half-seriously suggested that Washington “send car bombs to Damascus” to get its message across and signal its understanding of Arab ways.

Smith’s simple and near-universal principle provides a tool to comprehend the Arabs’ cult of death, honor killings, terrorist attacks, despotism, warfare and much else. He acknowledges that the strong-horse principle may strike Westerners as ineffably crude, but he correctly insists on its being a cold reality that outsiders must recognize, take into account, and respond to.

The writer (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

What I don't buy in Dubai

2010-02-15T20:28:00.000Z

Let's get this straight. A Hamas terrorist is in Dubai to buy weapons and ship them to Gaza. Hamas admit this. Dubai admit this. He has blood on his hands. Hamas admit this. Dubai admit this. The guy winds up dead in strange circumstances, and arrest warrants are issued for 11 foreigners (British, Irish, French and German apparently), while 2 Palestinians are arrested in Dubai.

Immediately, everyone blames Mossad; even the police chief in Dubai has "no doubts that it was 11 people holding these passports, and we regret that they used the travel documents of friendly countries." So what he clearly means by this odd "regret" is that naughty old Mossad have gone and abused the passports of these nice friendly countries as part of their nefarious plot.

Now perhaps I missed something here. The guy was a known Hamas terrorist, in Dubai to buy arms. Hamas is a terrorist organisation proscribed by all those European countries, and selling them arms is completely prohibited. How is it that this police chief has found it so easy to trace the 11 foreigners and arrest the 2 Palestinians, and blame Mossad for the guy's death, but had no idea that a known terrorist was in his country shopping for guns?

This was a man wanted for the deaths of 2 Israelis, in the middle of an act of war against Israel through the purchase of weaponry to use against it from Gaza. This was also a man who had many other enemies (including Palestinian "brothers" willing to help kill him, it seems).

Let's assume for a minute that Mossad did pull this off (kol hakavod boys!).

We can glean from the press reports that the hit squad were in "hot pursuit" from Syria, that the chap was not planning a beach vacation, and that the Dubai security forces were either blissfully unaware of his presence and intentions, or more likely, turning a blind eye. We can also surmise that showing their Israeli passports at the border might have delayed their "hot pursuit" by say, 10 or 20 years.

Perhaps we can also assume that nobody much in British, Irish, French or German circles gives a crap if the Israelis do their dirty work for them, using naughty fake or stolen passports, or even ones supplied by said countries on a nod and a wink. They get to have their cake and eat it; dead Hamas terrorist prevented from buying arms in breach of EU embargo, AND blame the sneaky Israelis to boot!

But for the moment we don't know if it has anything to do with Mossad (pa'am acher, boys!). Notwithstanding this, the world's media are mainly interested in this story because that is the direction it's going in.

What I find just incredible is that the world's media have not picked up on the enormous irony of Hamas continuing to play the victim of Israeli "sieges" and "massacres", whilst having the time and resource to send operatives to Dubai (and apparently he was en route to Iran next) to buy and smuggle weapons. THAT is the real story here - the exposé on Hamas's priorities.

And somehow the world just keeps on buying the Hamas sob-story, even though it is, like Dubai, totally bankrupt and built on sand.

Tonge wronge - a letter to Nick Clegg

2010-02-11T18:56:00.000Z

Dear Mr Clegg

I note with considerable distress that your erstwhile former MP and current Lib Dem life peer in the House of Lords, Baroness Tonge, has once again gone on an excursion far beyond the bounds of UK politics into the contentious area of Middle Eastern affairs. Whilst I do not agree with her general opinion on Israel/Palestine, I do in that most British liberal way tend to support her right to it, however consistently misinformed it is. However, on this occasion, she has crossed even her own incredibly high water mark for civilized, informed debate on this matter, and possibly into the realm of anti-Semitism. I do not use this term lightly.

In her recent statement she made on an article published in the Palestine Telegraph, of which she is a patron, Baroness Tonge has knowingly perpetuated a classic blood libel against Israel, the Jewish state. The article was based on outlandish allegations, that in turn were predicated on an earlier error-strewn story, which dredged up and manipulated a case many years ago in Israel that was similar to the Alder Hey scandal in the UK, with similar enquiries and changes of policy to reduce the chances of a repetition. This earlier story was dressed up as “Israelis harvesting Palestinian organs”, and the article in the Palestine Telegraph relayed a similarly sinister message about the Israeli involvement in Haiti.

Baroness Tonge gives herself a derisory get-out clause by claiming that “To prevent allegations such as these — which have already been posted on YouTube — going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti.”

Your spokesman claims that neither you nor she actually give credence to these claims, but this is totally disingenuous. The mere fact that she makes such a statement shows her underlying views on the subject to be absolutely clear.

As Monroe Palmer, chair of the Lib Dem Friends of Israel, pointed out: “On this basis, there could be calls for an investigation to discover the ‘truth’ in the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Baroness Tonge is not just an independent writer. She was an MP in your party, and has had a title bestowed upon her with your party’s support. Her views carry more weight, as they can be seen to represent the Lib Dems, particularly as she perversely holds the title of Lib Dem Spokeswoman for Health in the House of Lords, and are more widely read, especially as she gave the above statement to the British Jewish Chronicle, surely knowing it would reach a UK audience.

Her despicable attacks against Israel, carefully veiled by her faint praise of the IDF’s field teams in Haiti and her attempt via your spokesman at a belated disclaimer of her personal opinion, cross the boundaries of decency and are on the borderline of anti-Semitism as they echo the classic blood libel against Jews going back millennia. It would be naive to suggest that she is not aware of this connection in the Jewish consciousness, if not most ordinary people’s – and that of the anti-Semites looking for mainstream respectability for their despicable views.

I urge you to finally draw a line under her continued participation in your party by withdrawing the whip from her with immediate effect. She clearly will not apologise on any genuine basis for her libel, and she will be a liability to your party at the forthcoming general elections, once the decent people of Lib Dem constituencies understand that she is far more interested in making underhand attacks on the first and best equipped group of doctors to get to Haiti than she is in UK politics and her own particular portfolio.

This is a case of the public looking to your moral judgement on who speaks for your party in either house.

Incidentally I think the Palestine Telegraph itself is less at fault for publishing an op-ed of this nature, although perhaps a little misguided. It does in fact make a good effort to publish a full range of opinion, including some that I am quite sure outrage its largely Palestinian and international pro-Palestinian readership, such as this article, the core concept of which perhaps the Lib Dems ought to consider working into their own policy on the Middle East:

Meanwhile I look forward to your early response explaining what form of action will be taken against Baroness Tonge by your party.

Kind regards

Michael