Troubling Pro Israel Propaganda

Not different from the hate propaganda disseminated by Bin Laden.

Seen on Richard's Blog

On Israel, racism, and when to consider armed resistance acceptable

Peter Beaumont, The Guardian

What has made the issue even more murky - as Conor Gearty, professor of human rights law at the LSE has noted - is the way in which terrorism is less and less regarded as a "technique", albeit a horrible one, in pursuit of a political agenda. Instead, it has been deliberately redefined, largely by states, to mean a "category of person" - making it easy to ignore the underlying causes while concentrating on the acts.

None of the above should be read as a defence of terror, or even as an argument for armed resistance. The tragedy of Gaza is the acceptance on both sides that killing and oppression have more value than negotiation. And while many in the international community - and in Israel - remain stuck on the idea that the Jewish state has a monopoly on the deployment of the language of "supreme emergency", more violence is inevitable.

I think resistance to opression and occupation by a powerful state should be rethinked and redefined in the era of state monopoly of violence. I would make a difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. I think Hezbollah's armed resistance has worked against Israel. Hamas's technique is not working. They are occupied and their society is exhausted. They should first rebuild the social fabric of Gaza and Palestinians in general before taking up armed resistance again. They have done it in the past and Israel, the US, and the international community, have worked hard to destroy the Palestinian society in the name of the fight against terrorism.
Now it is time to rebuild Palestinian society from the inside, even if it means renouncing armed resistance for a while. I have a suggestion, Israel should be attacked at its weakest point, the definition of Israeli society and democracy. As the two state solution has faded to a point of no return, the only way and option left for Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank to gain the same civil rights as Jews is to convert to Judaism, all of them. The racist rabbis will go nut and Israel will have to refuse them this right. And so Israel will appear to the world as it is, a racist state based on race and not religion. There are of course purely Muslim states in the ME as we are always reminded by zionists who refuse the fact that a state based on religion is not a democratic state. But anybody can convert to Islam. Can anybody convert to Judaism ? If I was to take the road of pacifist resistance to the state of Israel in order to rebuild Palestinian society, I would do it by confronting the central racist tenants of the zionist entity, the state of Israel.

The Obama presidency is starting to stink

Obviously, he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House."

This is a quote from Barack Obama chief of staff's father talking to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv on his son's (Emmanuel Rahm) new role in the coming Obama administration.
In a letter sent to Rahm and copied to Obama, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee asked for an apology. And an apology came from Rahm son.
I think that Obama would have to prove to the Israel lobby that he is even more committed than the most committed of US politcians to Israel's cause, and he will prove what it is expected from him in that regard, and even more. Don't expect a black president who is just tolerated to be where he is to break the shameful lobbying that Israel and the zionists enjoy in Washington.

Important update 1 (november 19th): Reading the words that came out from the mouth of Rahm's father one may sense also that they contain an implicit contempt directed at Obama. My impression, and it can be wrong and overinterpreted, is that Rham's father had to convey to Ma'ariv the message that his son is even superior to Obama, first he is going to influence him - he didn't say for example that Obama is already all for Israel - and because of this his role will be even superior to Obama. However, not being able to say exactly this Rahm's father resorted to this 'Arab' smear, which became, as you remember one partisan of John McCain, an equivalent to 'negro', to replace something that could not be said in today's America: 'negro'. I bet that Rahm's father might even be jealous of Obama, why him and not his son ?
Obama will be surrounded by people who secretly think they are superior to him, starting with Rahm, at least the father, and continuing with Hillary who will be probably secretary of state. He will need them to lead. The black man will be surrounded by people from the establishment who, in my opinion, are even more racists than the average US citizen because they are defending a higher standard of privileges not open to African Americans before. I am not expecting any real change. And I will be watching Obama only to see how he will navigate through all this; racism at the higher levels of the state.

UPDATE 2 : These people are even more bigots. So if it won't be the 'Arab' who will mop the floor at the white house, 'negroes' may, according to Al-Qaida's number 2, Al-Zawahiri.

'Is there something wrong being a Muslim in this country ?'

Barack Obama is labeled by his detractors as a Muslim. But he is a Christian. However, many in the US consider the Muslim religious label as an indicator of something bad, passively spreading and perpetuating racist préjugés against a religion.
Finally, what has become a racist pervasiveness in the mind of many US citizen was condemned today by Colin Powell during his endorsement of Barack Obama at 'Meet the press'. And believe me, Powell must have had some courage to question this pervasive racism as nobody else did it so clearly since 9-11. Watch it around minute 4 and 45 seconds.

Maureen Dowd: 'Moved by a crescent'

Michael Tomasky commenting Powell's endorsement in The Guardian:

"...What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?"
He then described a picture he'd seen in a magazine of a grieving mother at the tombstone of her son, a soldier who had died in Iraq. The tombstone listed his age and awards, Powell said, but across the top "it didn't have a Christian cross. It didn't have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith."
It was incredibly moving - the words and the anecdote were extremely well chosen, and they're worth dwelling on for two reasons. First, it's needed saying for months now that there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim in this country. And second, it's not too much to say that, of all the political leaders in America, only Colin Powell could have said these things and made them stick. A Democrat making that case would be seen as just another politically correct harpy. It's pretty different coming from a Republican and a soldier.

More bigotry: For McCain, an Arab is not a decent family man.

Dead Arab Bodies and the western press

Here Angry Arab does what he does best; uncovering anti-Arab biases in the western press:

These are 197 dead bodies delivered by Israel to Lebanon in the prisoner exchange. The two dead Israeli soldiers have received more coverage those those 197 dead Arab bodies. Hell, dead Israeli soldiers receive more coverage than all the Arab living. Such are the racist standards of the White Man. This explains why MEMRI sent out a bulletin today protesting that Fath's PLC members (from Fath movement, for potato's sake) honored Dalal Al-Mughrabi (the "professional" propaganda outfit, MEMRI, labeled dead Dalal as a "terrorist"). According to Zionism, even dead Arabs (women, children and the rest) are terrorists. If Dalal was a terrorist, does not that make Ehud Barak a Super-terrorist? Those dead Arab bodies are not all Hizbullah: only 9 belong to Hizbullah fighters. 17 belong to the Lebanese Communist Party, 22 to SSNP, and 30 to the Amal Movement. The rest belong to various Arab countries: they died fighting in Lebanon for Lebanon and for Palestine. They all (148 of them) belonged to various Palestinian organizations. Some were from Tunisia. But make no mistake about it: the supply of Arabs willing to fight Israeli occupation will never deplete. Never.
PS I posted this before I read the New York Times. Sure enough, there was not a single picture of a funeral for the dead Arab bodies. Instead, the New York Times have been publishing pictures of Israeli tears for THREE DAYS IN A ROW, including today when the news is the arrival of the 197 bodies.

The Red Phone in Black and White

A powerful analysis of Clinton's 3 a.m. ad.

Mike Marqusee on becoming an anti-zionist 'self-hating' Jew

Remarkably honest and well written...

So what was the creed we were taught in Sunday school? It was not about God. It was about the Jews. A singular people who had given wonderful gifts to the world and whom the world had treated cruelly. A people who were persecuted. A people who survived. A people who triumphed. Despite the Holocaust, we were not a nation of losers, of victims. There was a redemptive denouement. There was Israel, a modern Jewish homeland, a beacon to the world. A shiny new state with up-to-date, Coke-drinking people like us. Liberals, like us. Bearers of democracy and civilisation, making the desert bloom. A little America in the Middle East.

Israel was both our own cause, a Jewish cause, and a moral cause, a universal cause. Like America. A land without people for a people without land. Like America. That was the gift we received in Sunday school - an extra country. For us there were two nations and, best of all, we didn't have to choose between them. As Jews and Americans, we enjoyed a double birthright and a double privilege. The coming home of the Jews to the land of our forefathers completed the epic saga stretching back to Genesis and ensured it ended with a huge upswing in mood. From near-annihilation in the Holocaust to the pride of statehood in a few short years. We took this less as a sign of the divine inspiration of the ancient prophets than as another manifestation of the order and justice that generally prevailed in our world. A testament to progress and the Jewish mastery of progress.

Thanks to America and Israel, the Jews were safe at last. We could visit Israel and work on a kibbutz, like a grown-up summer camp. We were taught to revere Ben Gurion and his heir, the Jewish-American farm girl Golda Meir. In our Sunday school textbooks the Israelis looked like us. And the country they were building looked familiar, with modern buildings and girls in jeans. These were Jews who read books but also drove tractors and tanks.

As always, the Jews had enemies. Israel was menaced by Arabs (not Palestinians, a word never uttered in our synagogue). They were exotically attired bedouin - people who did not have or want a home. In our Sunday school texts, they appeared swarthy, coarse, ignorant, duplicitous. These descendants of Pharaoh and the Philistines seemed curiously ungrateful and irrational. For no reason at all, they hated us.

...In Sunday school, Israel's victory in the 1967 six-day war was a great moment of Jewish pride. I don't remember much thanking of God, and no mourning for the victims on either side, just a sustained note of elated triumph. To cap all our other Jewish achievements, to confirm our eminence, we had proved ourselves masters in war. Six days to defeat Arab armies attacking from all sides, to sweep across the Sinai, unite Jerusalem, drive the enemy back across the Jordan. No one spoke then, not in my hearing, of the beginning of an occupation. We had redrawn the lines on the map. That was our prerogative. That was justice. We were unbeatable and we were righteous. Israel married moral virtue and military strength - another sign that we lived in an age of order and progress. When a friend who liked to tease me about my anti-Vietnam war views suggested I might not support Israel against the Arabs, I was outraged and offended.

I'm not sure exactly when or how I began to doubt. But I remember what happened the first time I expressed that doubt. It was a few months after the '67 war. A special visitor came to our Sunday school class. He was in his early 20s, with thick fair hair falling over his forehead, a snappy sports jacket and polished loafers. Some of the girls whispered that he was cute. He had an accent but it was nothing like our grandparents' accents. He looked and dressed like us but he had been a soldier in a war and that made him an alien being. Smiling, he perched himself casually on the front of the teacher's desk and told us about the remarkable achievements of the Israeli army. He told us that the Arabs had planned a sneak attack but had met with more than they bargained for. They were bad fighters, undisciplined soldiers. And they were better off now, under Israeli rule. "You have to understand these are ignorant people. They go to the toilet in the street."

Now something akin to this I had heard before. I had heard it from the white southerners I'd been taught to look down upon. I had heard it from people my parents and my teachers described as prejudiced and bigoted. So I raised my hand and when called upon I expressed my opinion, as I'd been taught to do. It seemed to me that what our visitor had said was, well, racist.

And on the difference between Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism.

Israel will boycott the UN Durban conference on Racism

Israel will boycott the United Nations "Durban II" conference on human rights, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced yesterday in Jerusalem at the annual meeting of the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism.

The decision followed an assessment by the Foreign Ministry, and other Western governments, that it will be impossible to prevent the conference from turning into a festival of anti-Israeli attacks.

Well, in the eighties, even when Israel's actions weren't as much in total disregard of Human rights and the rule of law as today, the parallells between israel and the south African Apartheid state were already on everybody's mind.
Watch this satirical video (found on Jews Sans Frontières) from a British TV program and tell me if one can still watch such a video today without accusations of anti-semitism.


How could Israel accuse a conference on racism to be potentially a festival of anti-Israel criticism when the Israeli state itself is built on racism and exclusions ?
Haaretz tries hard to present Israel's position as mainstream by giving this title to the article 'Israel toes Western line, will boycott 'Durban II'. But there is not one name of a western country mentioned in the article. Haaretz is known and was debunked in this blog for its subtle tactics in misinformation.

UPDATE: February 27th, 2008. The attack on Durban II has already started, led by notorious zionists and Muslim bashers. Read the article below (in French).

L'ONU contre les droits de l'homme
LE MONDE | 27.02.08

©

A note to my readers

I have a severe pain in the right arm and the neck preventing me from spending enough time on my blog and in front of the computer in general. The situation is so critical that a simple click on the mouse is directly correlated to an immediate increase of the pain in my neck and my right arm.

I am going through agressive physical therapy right now and will do my best to keep this blog active. My next long posting and commentary will be on Quebec's immigration talk, from the commission on reasonable accommodations for immigrants , to the recent law drafted by the Parti Québécois restricting individual rights for some immigrants, to the province's talk on racism and how the Canadian charter of human rights is seen by many French speaking Quebecers as a threat to their Christian Catholic heritage in the context of a multicultural society. Clearly, Quebecers who agree with Hérouxville's city council are uncomfortable recognising the cultural diversity in their province and uncomfortabkle with the idea of giving cultural minorities some rights pertaining to their culture and beliefs.

This talk on racism and reasonable accomodations for cultural minorities, started with the Hérouxville story, a small municipality in rural Québec whose council drafted a code of life which was seen by many as racist and anti-Muslim. This small municipality which doesn't have one Muslim resident, opened a Pandora's box in the province. Many Quebecers started confessing their racism. Many other Quebecers were schocked by this racist talk.

Listening to the consultations of the Commission on reasonable accomodations was torture for me. My personal story comparing two immigrations persuaded me that total integration, the one I had to go through in France, is possible, but it has its downside, the estrangement of one's own culture. What I loved and still love in Quebec and Canada is the fact that, absent the pressure on complete integration, I was able to retrieve my native cultural roots, while assimilating slowly the local culture. Forced integration has something that one could relate to psychological violence, a violence consented by those who receive it and those who exert it. Living in Quebec and Canada made me reevaluate multiculturalism from my previous French experience of total integration. I thought that, although it had its flaws, Multiculturalism is the only way a globalised world and globalised society can achieve understanding and a good living together amidst diversity.

I am surprised to realise that, although the moment is dark now for multiculturalism, there are Quebecers who think like me. I am most comforted by the intervention of the young mayor of Huntingdon, Quebec, political commentator and radio host,Stéphane Gendron, at the commission for reasonable accommodations. He forcefully argued that multiculturalism is well and alive in Quebec. Drawing on Huntingdon's history, he loathed the province's government for launching a consultation on reasonable accommodations as a way to escape its responsibilities and assume the multiculturalism of the province. I asked him to forward me the text of his memo and he did so instantly and kindly.

I am going through the text now. I would like to expose and compare some interesting views on multiculturalism including Gendron's, Quebec human rights lawyer's, Julius Grey, and philosopher Charles Taylor's position on the subject as glanced at from his book on the self (The sources of the Self, the building of the modern identity). These different but mostly pro-multiculturalist views and positions can help us give a dimension to a phenomenon I hold dear in my heart, from my personal history and experience, and which is under attack from both the right and the liberal left in many parts of the world creating social tensions and feeding the whole flawed concept of the 'clash of civilisations' and 'the war on terror'.

Amis, Pipes, and Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week

You cannot make a satire of something that is already a satire !

The Bad satire, with memorable quotes from famous people

-"The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children..." (Martin Amis, English writer)

- "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene." (Daniel Pipes)

- "Individuals may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers... This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims." (Daniel Pipes)

The quotes from Daniel Pipes, who is among the organisers of the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (IFAW) with a special theme this first year on Muslim women, have now vanished from the web. At the time I published them they were still available. By the way, Lebanon's highest shiite authority has condemned recently honor killings but you will not see this anywhere during this IFAW.

Now the satire that, because of the bad satire, isn't a satire anymore.

And I will leave the conclusion to Ali Eteraz.

- "An ex-senator that opposes individual rights of women; a pundit that calls people "faggots" and considers Islam a "cult"; a Christian scholar who is considered a "polemicist" and an "Islamophobe" by conservative Christians themselves; and an intellectual who has received millions from "far right" organizations since 2001, are rising up for the rights of women, gays, and religious minorities in the Muslim world. This laughable spectacle is called the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. It will be coming to a university near you on October 22 - 26."

Also: Stef's Shiny Happy People and Rory's European Race Hate.

UPDATE: Amis wrote on October 12th to the Guardian denying that what he said were measures he condoned for Muslims. In his defence, he wrote:
"And my remarks were preceded by the following: "What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There's a definite urge - don't you have it? - to say that the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children......"
Well I am glad Amis does not advocate such measures, but as a writer knowing the weight of words and his own status in the UK, he must know that his words mean something. This correction doesn't make him any better. It makes him appear as a man unable to control his racist 'urge' and who spits hate at other human beings.

Zionism, Land Theft, and Racism, are Blatant Violations of Democracy and Human Rights by Israel

Last week the Knesset passed in preliminary reading a law that would require the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to allocate land that it owns only to Jews. Presumably this means that Jews who are not citizens of Israel would qualify, but Israel's Arab citizens would be barred from access to land owned by the JNF. A blatant violation of the norms of democracy.

And I am not going to cheer, like some bloggers, the courage of the few Israelis who voted against the law. They must have known before what Zionism means. These people have voted for the July war on Lebanon last year, they voted for all the other racial laws of their country, otherwise, they would not be sitting where they are retaining their right to vote on their country's laws. Their vote is only late posturing, and an attempt at clearing their conscience, against a very dangerous ideology.

Watch the video: Land theft continues in Palestine


Thanks Elizabeth

Debunking Zionism as a Racist Colonialist Ideology

There are some great debunkers now on the blogosphere. I want to highlight the latest contributions of Behemoth (KampfeBlog) on the subject.

The sinister roots of Zionism, failed ideological construct part two - A

The sinister roots of Zionism, failed ideological construct part two - B

More confirmation on "modern" Zionism's colonial origins