I will admit to having mocked some of the pro-Palestinian protesters as not being willing to pick up a rifle and go fight for that in which they believe, but I realize that most of them have to finish up their papers for their Diversity, equity, and inclusion classes, or cover their shifts at Starbucks. Those lattĆ©s don’t make themselves, you know. But Russell Rickford seems to have plenty of free time on his hands now! Continue reading
Tag Archives: #Palestinians
There are none so blind as those who will not see Even when bitchslapped by reality, Professor Maurice Isserman couldn't bring himself to say the right word
The Nation is a 158-year-old ‘progressive’ left-wing political magazine, in which Maurice Isserman just told us why he has, after many, many years, resigned from the Democratic Socialists of America. The thing is, after several recent years, he should not have been surprised. Continue reading
World War III Watch: Slouching toward the big one?
There are perhaps some who have thought that my concerns have been overblown in my World War III watch articles, especially when so much of the advocacy comes from those who never wore our country’s uniform, but the hits keep coming and coming.
Everybody Ready for Armageddon?
by Robert Stacy McCain | October 27, 2023
Perhaps ānations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog,ā shall soon be gathered for this battle:
U.S. fighter jets launched airstrikes early Friday on two locations in eastern Syria linked to Iranās Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pentagon said, in retaliation for a slew of drone and missile attacks against U.S. bases and personnel in the region that began early last week.
The U.S. strikes reflect the Biden administrationās determination to maintain a delicate balance. The U.S. wants to hit Iranian-backed groups suspected of targeting the U.S. as strongly as possible to deter future aggression, possibly fueled by Israelās war against Hamas, while also working to avoid inflaming the region and provoking a wider conflict. Continue reading
The Israeli-Hamas War and the frustration of the Usual Suspects
As my good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter William Teach has noted, the Editorial Board of The New York Times has unambiguously supported Israel following the sneak attacks by Hamas guerrilla fighters.
The brutal terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas is a tragedy, one that may change the course of the nation and the entire region.
The Editorial Board minced no words in calling the attacks “terrorist,” which they certainly were:
To the worldās horror, they attacked civilians āĀ including older people, women and childrenĀ ā and took them hostage.Ā More than 150Ā people remainĀ captive in Gaza, in a further atrocity.
As we previously reported, the Times covered the attacks extensively. The 24-hour cable news networks? They are doing the same thing. But, as we also reported, the very #woke[1]From Wikipedia: WokeĀ (/ĖwoŹk/) as a political term ofĀ African-AmericanĀ origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerningĀ social justiceĀ andĀ racial justice.Ā It is derived from … Continue reading Philadelphia Inquirer has been strangely quiet on the whole thing. Columnist Trudy Rubin, who does appear to support the Israelis at least somewhat, criticized Israel’s security policies, which is at least realistic given that the nation was caught completely by surprise.
Far-left columnist Will Bunch? He gave the obligatory statement that yes, Hamas attack was “butcherous,” “immoral and unconscionable”, right before blaming Israel and it’s “long-running, brutal occupation regime”:
When I was 11, I naively hoped the song lyric, āWar! What is it good for?ā would be a transistor-radio memory and not a question Iād be asking myself again and again for the rest of my life. The butcherous attacks by Hamas on civilians in southern Israel are immoral and unconscionable ā as are Israelās policies that turned the Gaza Strip into an open-air prison for 2 million people. There were plenty of chances for the world to fight for peace in this troubled land, instead of waiting until the bombs are bursting in air, when it is always too late. On that same plastic radio, I heard John Lennon sing, āWar is over … if you want it.ā He would have turned 83 on Monday. .Ā .Ā .Ā .
This weekās question: Most U.S. politicians have rightly condemned the barbarous attacks on civilians by Hamas, but with little mention of Israelās long-running, brutal occupation regime. Is that fair under these circumstances? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me your answer.
American leftists supporting a people who would throw them in jail — or off a tall building — if they were actually queer in ‘Palestine.’
The newspaper’s Editorial Board? Pretty much the same thing, telling readers how horrible Hamas surprise attack was, but then turning right around to blame congressional Republicans, and, for good measure, Donald Trump:
Over the weekend, rather than uniting around a plan for peace, Republican leaders, including Trump, tried to sow division by blaming Biden for releasing $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets in August as part of a prisoner swap.
Never mind that Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the money was earmarked for humanitarian support and had not been spent yet. Or that Trump may share some blame in provoking the Palestinians ā and encouraging Netanyahuās right-wing supporters ā when he moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
It would take someone completely uneducated in economics to fail to understand that even if the freed dollars were entirely spent on “humanitarian support,” the fact that they exist frees up other money which can be then used for other things, including weapons. And President Trump was simply obeying a long ago passed law which mandated the embassy move to Israel’s capital. Continue reading
References
| ↑1 | From Wikipedia:
I shall confess to sometimes āironic usageā of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the āwokeā are just boneheadedly stupid. |
|---|
Khader Adnan has gone to his eternal reward
Khader Adnan was a long-time Palestinian Arab activist, and at one point a spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Arrested many times, Mr Adnan’s weapon of choice in detention was the hunger strike. His first hunger strike, ten days long, occurred in 2000, when he was locked up not by the Israelis, but the Palestinian National Authority. In 2011, he began another hunger strike, one which lasted 66 days. In 2015, he undertook a 56-day hunger strike, which resulted in Israel releasing him.
In spite of the agreement to end his first hunger strike (see above), Adnan was arrested again on 8 July 2014, at the beginning of the 2014 IsraelāGaza conflict, and has been held in detention ever since, beginning his second hunger strike on 5 May 2015. The government of Israel was seemingly determined to break Adnan’s hunger strike using force-feeding techniques similar to those used by the USA in its Guantanamo Bay prison camp. Israeli Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan was quoted as saying “Security prisoners are interested in turning hunger strikes into a new kind of suicide attack that would threaten the State of Israel. We cannot allow anyone to threaten us and we will not allow prisoners to die in our prisons.” However, the Israeli Medical Society and various human rights groups were deploring this planned course of action by Israel, with the Medical Society issuing orders to Israeli doctors to not participate in any planned forced feedings except under certain limited circumstances not applicable to Adnan at this point in time.
Adnan was again detained without charge in 2015 and again started a hunger strike on 4 May that lasted 56 days until Israel agreed to release him in July. He was arrested again in 2017 and again immediately began a hunger strike that lasted 58 days. Arrested once more in 2021 after being detained at an Israeli checkpoint, and he again went on hunger strike in protest, this strike lasting 25 days.Palestinian Khader Adnan, center, is greeted by Palestinians after his release from an Israeli prison in the West Bank village of Arrabeh near Jenin on July 12, 2015. Photo by Majdi Mohammed/AP, via CNN. Click to enlarge.
You can see how Mr Adnan was greeted by the Palestinians after his release. He was never going to be anything other that a pain in the ass for Israel.
Well, he was arrested again on February 5, 2023, and began another hunger strike, which would be his last: he died on May 2nd, after 87 days. Some in the Israeli media are upset about that:
Khader Adnan’s death in prison: A preventable crisis – opinion
A number of democratic countries permit force-feeding to rescue the life of a fasting prisoner. Israel could have saved Khader Adnan’s life.
By Shimon Glick | Thursday, May 11, 2023 | 1:01 AM Jerusalem Time
Following a series of security events which we recently faced, it is incumbent upon us to do some serious examination, without the involvement of political considerations. The events began with the death of a hunger-striking prisoner, Khader Adnan, and then deteriorated in an almost predictable manner. But with some different behavior on our part, much of the crisis could have been avoided.
Why was the death of Adnan not prevented by force-feeding him when his health deteriorated seriously? The answer is that the Israel Medical Association accepts the position of the World Medical Association that it is forbidden to force-feed a hunger-striking protesting prisoner.
Such a step is regarded as a violation of the autonomy of the prisoner. But it is important to be aware that this view is far from a unanimous international consensus and from Israeli court decisions.
Dr Glick, a professor emeritus of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, continues to note the history and precedence of force-feeding a hunger-striking prisoner in Israel.
Let us think how much of whatās been occurring recently we would have been spared if we would have saved the life of Adnan, in the spirit of Jewish culture and without violating ethical norms.
While I hesitate to go all-out “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?“, none of the references I have found have stated that Israel ever broke one of Mr Adnan’s hunger strikes via force-feeding, but he did win some concessions in his various attempts. I have to ask: did the Israelis finally say to themselves, “if he wishes to kill himself, let him”? Israel is a liberal democracy, the only one in the Middle East, and Dr Glick expresses that.
But Mr Adnan found a weapon he could apparently tolerate, better than most, and used it to his political advantage. By not force-feeding him, by letting him starve himself to death, Israel rid itself of a turbulent problem.
Dr Glick is wrong: force-feeding Mr Adnan, if they had “saved the life of Adnan,” the Palestinians would still hate the Israelis, and Hamas and their ilk would have continued to occasionally shoot rockets into Israel proper, and launch the occasional terror attack. The Arabs were given to violence and terror against Jews migrating to the Levant even when they were few in number, well before the re-establishment of Israel, well before World War II and the shoah, really for the entire 20th century.
Mr Adnan has gone to his eternal reward, and Israelis will not miss him.
America’s disastrous Middle Eastern policies under Joe Biden.
Remember when the Democrats were telling us that the election of Joe Biden would usher in a new-found respect for the United States around the world? Remember when we were told by the credentialed media assured us that the end of Donald Trump’s wicked regime and ‘America First’ policies would bring foreign relations back to normalcy?
Yet, as we have previously reported, things have not quite gone as well as we might like. Now, from The Wall Street Journal:
Saudi Officials, Hamas Leaders Set to Meet in Jeddah to Discuss Re-Establishing Ties
A reset would mark a setback for U.S. and Israeli efforts to counter Iranian influence in the Middle East
By Summer Said, Dov Lieber, and Aaron Boxerman | Updated Sundy, April 16, 2023 | 12:55 PM EDT
Senior Saudi officials were planning to meet with leaders of the Palestinian militant and political group Hamas on Sunday to discuss renewing diplomatic ties which have been cool since 2007, part of a diplomacy spree led by Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman that has seen Riyadh move closer to Iran.
In other words, diplomacy at least partly aided by the younger President Bush helped to push the terrorist organization Hamas away from Saudi Arabia, while American diplomacy under President Biden has undone that, and a lot more. Mr Biden took a politically risky trip to visit the Crown Prince in October of 2022, and through either planning or simple ineptitude, managed to insult the Prime Minister in private, and later call him a liar, in public. As the de facto authoritarian ruler of Saudi Arabia, perhaps that wasn’t the wisest idea. A brief description from Wikipedia:
Mohammed rules anĀ authoritarian government. There are no democratic institutions in Saudi Arabia, and elements of repression are evident.Ā Islamic scholars, human rights activists, women’s rights activists, journalists, former insiders,Ā Islamists, and other political dissidents are systematically repressed through tactics including torture and jailing, and some reports have alleged that Mohammed uses a group known as theĀ Tiger SquadĀ to carry outĀ extrajudicial killings. He was personally linked to theĀ assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi ArabianĀ Washington PostĀ columnist who had criticised the Saudi government, but he has denied involvement in the killing. Mohammed was the architect ofĀ Saudi Arabian-led intervention in YemenĀ which has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis andĀ famineĀ there. His government was also involved in the escalation of theĀ Qatar diplomatic crisis, theĀ 2017 detention of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, aĀ 2018 diplomatic spat with Canada, theĀ arrest of Saudi princes and billionairesĀ in 2017, theĀ 2018ā2019 Saudi crackdown on feminists, anĀ alleged phone hackĀ againstĀ AmazonĀ chairmanĀ Jeff BezosĀ in 2019, and treason charges against his cousin and rival Muhammad bin Nayef in 2020. Saudi Arabia’s relations with theĀ Biden administrationĀ have been strained, especially after Mohammed’s refusal toĀ increase oil productionĀ in the wake of theĀ 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman on arriving at Al Yamamah Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on December 8. Photo: Saudi Press Agency via AP
Re-establishing ties between Iran-backed Hamas, which is a U.S. designated terrorist group, and the Saudi kingdom would mark a setback for efforts by the U.S. and Israel to establish a military alliance between Israel and other Sunni-majority countries against Iran and its allies. They also complicate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuās goal of normalizing relations with Riyadh, with opposition to Iran as their primary shared interest.
Hamas exists, of course, solely to destroy Israel. While Hamas are also the de facto government in the Gaza Strip area of the Palestinians, an area that Israel completely evacuated under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, their policies have been nothing but resistance and war. When Israel pulled out, in 2005, the Palestinians were given control of the area and the ability to make it into whatever they could. With fabulous beaches, the Palestinians could have turned the area into a warm-water beach resort which would have drawn Europeans, and euros, by the hundreds of thousands.
Instead, they turned it into just another Palestinian base from which to attack Israel, and Israel retains some external control over the 141 miĀ² territory.
Hamas was invited to the kingdom by Saudi leaders, Hamas officials said. Senior officials are expected to land in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, late Sunday, the officials said. The effort to re-establish ties is being pushed by Iran and Syria, said Saudi officials.
As part of the talks, Hamas officials hope to free scores of Palestinian prisoners held in Saudi Arabia who were imprisoned when the two sides were at odds, according to Saudi officials and a diplomat familiar with the matter.
āWe seek relations with all forces in the region and the world, and we have no enmity toward anyone, except for the Zionist enemy,ā tweeted Mousa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas official who will be attending the meeting on Sunday.
Jewish voters in the United States normally give around three-quarters of their votes to Democrats; this is what they’ve achieved with that.
Also see: William Teach: Yet Another Ally, Israel, Turns To China
With Joe Biden as President, you can count on it: things will only get worse.
_______________________________
Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.
The Arabs are all butthurt because an Israeli government minister went to the Temple Mount
The Temple Mount. Photo by D R Pico, which may be freely used, with proper attribution. Click to enlarge.
Formerly under Jordanian control, Israel captured the eastern half of previously divided Jerusalem in the Six Day War, including the Old City, the Western Wall, and the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount has been under the control of the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf in one form or another since the Islamic reconquest of Jerusalem by Yusuf ibn Ayyub ibn Shadi, commonly referred to as Saladin, from the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187. Israel returned control of the site to the Waqf shortly after its capture in 1967, and the Waqf is under the custodianship of the Hashemite Kings of Jordan.
The Muslims appear to have no problem with non-Muslims visiting the Temple Mount — they certainly did not stop two American Catholics, Catholics who went to Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulcre — but when it comes to Jews, well they wax apoplectic over that! Naturally, President Joe Biden, perhaps taking a clue from former President Barack Hussein Obama’s attempts to restrict American policy toward Israel just a few weeks before he left office, didn’t like it.
Israel’s new far-right government draws an early rebuke from the U.S.
Story by Haley Ott | Wednesday, January 4, 2023
The U.S. spoke out Tuesday against “any unilateral actions that undercut the historic status quo” in the heart of the Middle East after a member of Israel’s new ultranationalist cabinet visited a sensitive Jerusalem holy site sacred to both Muslims and Jews.
Note how the CBS News report used the inflammatory “ultranationalist cabinet” to describe the Israeli government. That’s what the left have been doing ever since Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and its conservative coalition members won the recent elections.
Such moves “are unacceptable,” said State Department spokesperson Ned Price.
Israel’s new far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has previously been convicted of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist group, visited the site known by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as Al-Aqsa Mosque. He was surrounded by security guards.
It should be noted that Mr Ben-Gvir made his visit to the Temple Mount after sunrise but nevertheless in the early morning, when the sahn was, if not deserted, fairly empty.
Tension has mounted in the Israel-occupied West Bank for months, with 2022 being the deadliest year for Palestinians in the territory in nearly two decades, according to the United Nations.
Really? Guess who was not Prime Minister of Israel for all but the last three days of 2022. Benjamin Netanyahu was not Prime Minister, but Neftali Bennett to begin the year, followed by Yair Lapid on July 1st. Elections on November 1st gave Likud the plurality, and the ability for Mr Netanyahu to negotiate a coalition. It was the Israeli voters who chose the conservative coalition. Apparently, what then-Prime Minister Lapid was doing wasn’t seen as all that good by those voters.
Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Muhammad Shtayyeh called Ben-Gvir’s visit to the Jerusalem holy site “a violation of all norms, values, international agreements and laws, and Israel’s pledges to the American president,” BBC News reported.
The Mount of Olives, as viewed from the Temple Mount. Photo by D R Pico, which may be used freely with proper attribution. Click to enlarge.
I am a bit surprised that President Biden didn’t call this off:
Signal to Iran? Israel, US air forces conduct joint drills
Israel’s F-35 fighter jets and six F-15s from the US Air Forces Central Command took part in multi-day joint drills in souther Israel on Wednesday.
By Yonah Jeremy Bob | Wednesday, January 4, 2023 | 18:58 Jerusalem Time
Israelās F-35 fighter jets and six F-15 fighter jets from the US Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT) took part in multi-day joint drills at the Nevatim air force base in southern Israel on Wednesday in what could be a signal to Iran in the ongoing nuclear standoff.
In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, F-35 Squadron 140 commander Lt. Col. āMā and Capt. āI,ā who ran the drill from the Israeli side, both stayed away from getting too specific about the F-35s capabilities regarding any specific country but made it clear that they were ready and capable to strike anywhere that the IDF high command ordered them to go.
Further, the goal of the joint flights and simulated attacks was to train for hitting targets in ādeepā enemy territory, often a euphemism for Iran and other countries who do not have immediate borders with Israel.
At a recent graduation ceremony of air force personnel, then-defense minister Benny Gantz said that the graduates would need to be ready to potentially attack Iran in “two to three years.”
There’s more at the original, and The Jerusalem Post does not appear to be behind a paywall.
So, there’s an adult at least somewhere in the Biden Administration, albeit possibly deeply hidden. He’ll probably be gone soon.
There can be no negotiated peace with the ‘Palestinians’
For a devout Catholic, it’s the (too short) trip of a lifetime. My older daughter, an Army Reservist currently deployed to the Middle East, has a four-day out-of-country pass, and I’m meeting her in Jerusalem. I told a couple of my fellow parishioners that I’d miss Mass next Sunday, but that actually means I’ll miss Mass at my home parish; my plan is to attend Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre!
That only brought my attention more to this article which appeared on my feed this morning, in which the activists said the quiet part out loud.
‘Defeating Israel means defeating the US,’ Canada, EU -Brussels activists
by Michael Starr | Monday, November 7, 2022 | 9:09 AM
Defeating Israel is part of a process to defeating the United States of America, the European Union and Canada, the leader of a Palestinian protest in Brussels declared in new footage released on Thursday by the NGO Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.
“Defeating Israel means defeating the US. Defeating Israel means defeating Canada, these settlements who [sic] exist on the backs of the indigenous and the black people. Defeating Israel means defeating this colonial institution [European Parliament], means payback for all Africans, Algerians, Moroccans, Sahraoui,” said Samidoun Europe coordinator and Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement (Masar Badil) member Mohammed Khatib at the March for Return and Liberation for Palestine last Saturday.
Translation: the “Palestinians” don’t just hate Israel and the Jews, they hate all of Western civilization.
Khatib ā who previously lead the organization of protests against the 125th anniversary of the first Zionist Congress event in Basel, Switzerland in late August ā has also been described by Palestinian and Arab media as a spokesman and activist for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.
“Second and third generations are in Brussels,” Khatib said in front of the EU parliament. “We’ve built this city and we still face fascism and racism. So we will say no to this not only in Palestine but here in Europe, there in the United States and in all Arab countries. Together, as comradeĀ Georges AbdallahĀ said, ‘we must gather together and we will win only together.'”
Abdallah is an imprisoned PFLP member and Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions, co-founder. Protestors called for the release of several terrorist organization members and raised posters of dead terrorist figureheads.
I have said it before: Israel faced two logical choices at the end of the Six Day War in 1967:
- Israel could return the land it captured to Jordan, Syria and Egypt quickly; or
- Israel could expel the entire Arab population of those lands, and annex the territory.
Instead, the Israelis chose a third alternative: keeping the lands under military occupation, hoping that the unpleasant conditions would ‘encourage’ the Arabs to emigrate. The Israelis should have learned from their own history in Europe: regardless of how tough the Nazis made staying put in their homes in Germany, and then occupied France and Poland, few chose to emigrate, choosing instead to just tough it out, as most Jews had done before them in the many pogrami that they had borne in the past, because things would get better eventually. What the Nazis did them was so far out of human experience that no one in Europe, Jew or Gentile, could conceive of it.
The Israelis of 1967-68 should have realized it: if Jews for generations had decided to stay in their homes and tough out the bad times, the Arabs in Judea and Samaria could do that as well.
The result? Fifty-five years of occupation have created three generation of angry Arabs, and sympathy among the liberal dolts in the West for their poor, poor plight.
Terrorist paraphernalia was readily apparent in previously released footage. Some marchers wore headbands showing allegiance to Lions’ Den, a terrorist group that has been responsible for several recent terrorist attacks and battles with IDF soldiers. One prominently displayed banner depicted the launch of rockets, and another poster depicted a gunman with a Carlo submachine pistol, a firearm favored by Palestinian terrorists.
“Participants saluted the Palestinian resistance, including Mohammed Deif, leader of the Palestinian armed resistance in Gaza,” Samidoun declared last Sunday. Deif is a leader of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
Khatib urged protest participants to join Masar Badil, Samidoun or similarly-minded organizations. The two groups organized the march.
“We will not accept any more, as Palestinians, this rhetoric of a two-state solution as a way to support Palestine,” said Khatib. “Only one free Palestine from the river to the sea.”
Let’s tell the truth here: many “Palestinians” have never accepted the “rhetoric of a two-state solution”, as evidenced by Yassir Arafat’s angry rejection of the supposed compromise he negotiated with then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Bill Clinton. Mr Clinton later said that it was the biggest mistake Mr Arafat could make, a “colossal historical blunder,” because he’d never be able to negotiate a treaty more favorable to the “Palestinians” than the one he had before him.
Of course, Yassir Arafat knew that if he had signed a peace agreement with Israel, the irredentists would kill him.
And nothing has changed. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came up with a plan to simply evacuate all Israeli forces and settlers from the Gaza Strip, which was done in August and September of 2005. Israel said to the “Palestinians”, in effect, ‘Here it is; do with it what you will.’
Gaza is resource-poor, and it depends upon Israel for public utilities, but it also has the best beachfront property in the entire region, and the “Palestinians” could have turned it into the greatest beach resort for well-to-do Europeans, bringing in tons of money. Instead, they chose Hamas to lead them, to create just more poverty, and a base from which to occasionally lob rockets into Israel. The Israel Defence Force responds, with bombing and artillery strikes against the suspected terrorist hideouts, which are blended in with the civilian population, and Western leftists then blame Israel, because leftists are just plain stupid.
Well, in honor of my upcoming visit, the Israelis wisely voted the center-right Likud Party, along with its conservative allies, into a Knesset majority, meaning the return of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister. Mr Netanyahu knows the “Palestinians” for what they are: a population which hates Israel and the Jews and, if most of the people aren’t the guerrilla fighters, are still willing to be led by Hamas and the other hardline factions which are still pushing for military victory over Israel, and simply are not interested in any peace agreement. The demonstrators in Brussels, a wealthy city in a peaceful and prosperous country in which many of the Arabs live, simply proves the point once again. That Israeli voters gave Likud and its allies a 65-55 majority in the Knesset — and remember: Israel has two million Arab citizens, and approximately 54% of the adults voted, very few of whom would have voted for conservatives — meaning that Israeli Jews must have given the Likud bloc a tremendous majority of their votes. The Israeli Jews are showing now that they very much understand that there can be no negotiated peace with the Arabs, at least not with the “Palestinians” as they are now.
Is it possible to support the Palestinians and not be anti-Semitic? Perhaps, but I've yet to see it done
I have said it before: it is philosophically possible to be opposed to Israeli foreign policy and not be anti-Semitic, but it is a trick I have never seen accomplished. But, let’s be honest: most of the pro-Palestinian agitators don’t even try anymore. Mia Khalifa, a Lebanese-born former porn actress tweeted:
You can see the actual tweet if you follow the link; what is presented here is a screen capture of it, because it’s very possible that the lovely Miss Khalifa will delete it.
Why? As the New York Post noted:
one of the bottles with Khalifa bore the date 1943 and contained champagne produced in Nazi-occupied France.
āOwning the Jewish state by proudly drinking wine from Vichy France,ā one user wrote. āAbout right, yes.ā
The Post noted that drinking that wine in Gaza is illegal.
Why do the left support the Palestinians, and the Arabs in general? The Advocate is a very leftist homosexual rights publication, but even they can’t stomach the idea of “Queers for Palestine”:
Queers for Palestine?
By James Kirchick | January 28, 2009 | 12:00 AM EST
Of all the slogans chanted and displayed at anti-Israel rallies over the past month, surely āQueers for Palestineā ranks as the most oxymoronic. It is the motto of the San Franciscoābased Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT), a group advocating financial divestment from the Jewish State. QUIT contends that Zionism is racism, regularly demonstrates at gay pride marches, organizes with far-right Muslim organizations, and successfully lobbied the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission to boycott the 2006 World Pride Conference due to its location that year in Jerusalem.
Mr Kirchick, the author, used the wrong word: it isn’t “oxymoronic” but just plain moronic. Any liberal who supports the Palestinians is just plain stupid.
What makes QUIT oxymoronic is that their affinity for Palestine isnāt reciprocated. There may be queers for Palestine, but Palestine certainly isnāt for queers, either in the livable or empathetic sense. Like all Islamic polities, the Palestinian Authority systematically harasses gay people. Under the cloak of rooting out Israeli ācollaborators,ā P.A. officials extort, imprison, and torture gays. But Palestinian oppression of homosexuality isnāt merely a matter of state policy, itās one firmly rooted in Palestinian society, where hatred of gays surpasses even that of Jews. Last October, a gay Palestinian man with an Israeli lover petitioned Israelās high court of justice for asylum, claiming that his family threatened to kill him if he did not āreform.ā Heās one of the few lucky Palestinians to be able to challenge his plight.
And thatās only in the relatively benign West Bank. The Gaza Strip, which has stagnated under the heel of Hamasās Islamofascist rule since 2007, is an even more dangerous place for gays, āa minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick,ā in the words of a senior Hamas leader. As in Iran, Hamasās patron and the chief sponsor of international terrorism, even the mere suspicion of homosexuality will get one killed in Gaza, being hurled from the roof of a tall building the method of choice.
Virtually none of the current political left’s opinions fare very well in the Muslim Middle East. Women’s rights? While the laws differ in the specifics, in no country in the Muslim Middle East do women have equal rights with men. Racial equality? Among the Arabs, blacks are considered inferior, and have far fewer rights. Freedom of religion? To varying degrees Islam is the official religion in these areas, and not only are adherents of other faiths, or of atheism, subject to discrimination, apostasy laws exist throughout the Muslim Middle East, and Muslims renouncing Islam, or anyone criticizing Islam, can be subject to criminal penalties, up to and including capital punishment.
Miss Khalifa? She’s an idiot. In a video, she complains about the difficulty of getting into a non-pornography workforce, but she’s wearing a suit jacket without a blouse, to show off deep cleavage. Now, she’s drinking wine from Vichy France, which was controlled by the Nazis, and proudly saying that her wine is older than the state of Israel. But if she is a particularly clueless advocate, she isn’t qualitatively different from the American and European left in their support of the Palestinians.