Games Zionists Play

Look at this paragraph by Daniel Finklelstein, described as "an editor and columnist with The Times".

(He's reviewing Deborah Lipstadt's Antisemitism: Here & Now, presumably for The Times, but it's just been recycled in The Weekend Australian Review under the capitalised headline NO DENYING IT, above a half-page photo of Arab demonstrators in Sydney carrying a large banner bearing an image of Netanyahu with a superimposed Hitler mustache and the word 'fascist' in English and Hebrew. And this in protest at Israel's serial Guernicas in Gaza. But I digress from the paragraph below.)

"[S]he stops short of calling either Trump or Corbyn anti-Semites. 'I don't know if either of these men is an antisemite, which is to say he harbours personal contempt for Jews'. This makes it all the more effective when she adds: 'While neither of them may be, both of them have facilitated the spread of antisemitism - they are directly responsible for the legitimisation of explicit hostility towards Jews'." (9/2/19)

If Finkelstein's review is anything to go by, Lipstadt's book seems merely part and parcel of the current Zionist campaign to cruel UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's election prospects by smearing his support for Palestinian rights as anti-Semitism.

As for the paragraph...

First, there's the obscene bracketing of Corbyn with Trump, the former a decent man of high principle, who has fought against racism all his life, the latter an unalloyed, narcissistic thug. And both in the same dock as far as their self-appointed judge and jury is concerned.

Then there's the statement, "I don't know if either... is an antisemite." This is along the lines of the classic loaded question, 'When did you last stop beating your wife?'

Following that comes the only ray of light in Lipstadt's utterance, the admission that anti-Semitism is "harbouring a personal contempt for Jews." I couldn't agree more. Ipso facto then, any forthright questioning, condemnation, or rejection of Israel, its Zionist ideology, or its practice, is clearly not anti-Semitic. Let me reiterate: anti-Semitism is hatred for Jews simply because they are Jews. Nothing more. Nothing less.

But no, Lipstadt cannot leave it there. "[B]oth of them" - the obscene juxtaposition continues - "have facilitated the spread of antisemitism..."

In what way?

Finkelstein cites a 2007 meeting with Palestinian-Israeli Islamist Raed Salah and quotes Lipstadt as saying of Corbyn "it seems that when he encounters [people like Salah], their Jew-hatred is irrelevant..." Presumably, and ludicrously, Corbyn is supposed to subject every one he meets to a McCarthy-style third degree: 'Are you now, or have you ever been, anti-Semitic?'

Meanwhile, Lipstadt's dark insinuations serve to distract many from the Zionist entity's ongoing crimes in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. Could that be their ancillary purpose?

The Jury's in on Morrison's Jerusalem Surprise

No wonder the Morrison government's got it in for the ABC:

"Australian embassies were put on notice to upgrade travel warnings and boost security BEFORE the Government's shock Israel embassy [16/10] announcement during the Wentworth by-election, sensitive documents reveal." (Australian embassies warned over security before Scott Morrison's Israel announcement, Dan Conifer & Michael McKinnon, abc.net.au, 9/2/19)

Note that was "JUST ONE DAY BEFORE"! (ibid)

So there you go. Damn the travelling public - as long as Dave Sharma gets in!

Speaking of the guy who once gushed that "Israel will always be in our hearts, blood, souls, veins":

"The documents... emphasised Mr Sharma's role in the decision. 'The Prime Minister will announce he has found the arguments put forward by Australia's former Ambassador to Israel [Dave Sharma]... persuasive,' it said." (ibid)

And yet, at the time the announcement was made:

"The Coalition denied the policy was aimed at wooing Jewish voters in the inner-Sydney electorate, which is home to the largest proportion of Jewish voters in Australia." (ibid)

The jury's in then: Scott Morrison's Jerusalem surprise - for the buck stops with the prime minister - was nothing more than a shameless grab for the Jewish vote, initiated by an Israel-besotted, wannabe politician and undertaken without regard for potential security, diplomatic or commercial consequences.

This commendable ABC sleuthing should be front-page news, but I won't be holding my breath for too long.

The Good Old Days

Times journalist Charles Bremner profiles 80-year-old Farah Pahlavi, widow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, whose inglorious reign ended in 1979 with the birth of the Islamic Republic (A queen's treasure, The Australian, 9/2/19). Some gems from the former empress:

"In those days, Iranians were respected everywhere in the world, says the woman who was called the Jackie Kennedy of the East. 'Now you say you're from Iran and people look at you as if you'd said you come from god knows where. For 90 countries in the world, Iranians didn't need a visa. Now, even with a foreign passport they stop you at the frontier with 10,000 questions'."

"Devoting her life at a distance to the cause of the shah's orphaned people has enabled her to survive terrible knocks, she says."

"She is fueled by bitterness for the mullahs who, in her view, fomented revolution in 1978 with the connivance of communists, drove out a beloved monarch and crushed his people under Islamic dictatorship."

"Pahlavi... finds no fault in her late husband's reign. 'His Majesty', as she still calls him, was for her the wise and beloved father of a grateful nation."

"It is natural, she says, that Iranians yearn for a return of the shah. Reza [her 58-year-old son] is working from his Washington DC base to offer himself, should they want one day to restore him at the head of a constitutional monarchy."

What better example of the old adage 'They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing' than this?

Brace Yourselves

Marie Colvin, the Sunday Times journalist who died in 2012 in the Syrian city of Homs, has lately been the subject of media attention, focusing on a US court case in which her sister was awarded over $300m on the grounds that Colvin was "specifically targeted because of her profession, for the purpose of silencing those reporting on the growing opposition movement in the country." Presumably, this enormous sum is to be paid out of frozen Syrian government funds.

The verdict can legitimately be viewed as a case of lawfare, waged in the context of the US regime change war on Syria. The official narrative, of course, is that Syria is essentially an Arab Spring affair, in which an evil dictator wages brutal war against a people struggling for freedom and democracy, and indications are that we are about to be exposed to an overdose of the official narrative, either wittingly or unwittingly, in the form of a veritable flood of Colvin-related material. These include a biography by Lindsey Hilsum, In Extremis: the Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin, a documentary (Under the Wire) and a feature film (A Private War).

Hilsum, for example, has written (in the Guardian of course) that the verdict "should be celebrated by all who care about freedom of speech. At a time when journalists are frequently vilified and threatened, it acknowledges the significant role we play in exposing war crimes and injustice." (Marie Colvin verdict gives meaning to her death, 3/2/19) 

But what of the greatest war crime of all, the plotting and execution of wars of imperial regime change?

In light of the above, US journalist Rick Sterling's expose, Marie Colvin, Homs & media falsehoods (off-guardian.org, 29/1/19), which accuses Colvin of distorting the truth in her Syrian coverage, should be required reading for anyone concerned with separating fact from fiction in the matter of Syria.

But to return to the theme of lawfare, check out this most interesting comment on the Colvin court case from the comment thread which follows Sterling's piece:

"If you have your sights set on becoming a multi-millionaire in America, then suing a country that engages in 'an extra-judicial killing' seems the way to go (though I'm guessing if the country you decide to sue is a member of NATO and/or isn't targeted for US-style regime change then you may have a harder time getting the verdict of your choice rubber-stamped.)

"What makes this brand new, US-created law even easier to rule in your favour is the fact that no actual evidence is required, or to put it another way, it's the quantity of so-called 'evidence' and not the quality. At least that's the case according to the presiding judge, Amy Berman-Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia who ruled that because the defence had gathered nearly a thousand pages of attached exhibits, declarations and 'expert reports', then an actual evidentiary hearing was unnecessary. That's right, the sheer volume of so-called 'evidence' literally outweighed any of its veracity, validity and objectivity.

"To make matters worse (if that is at all possible in a realm beyond satire and farce) it seems the bulk of this 'evidence' wasn't gathered and presented by any state and/or UN agency but by a dubious quasi-legal NGO with the grand-sounding (is there any other kind?) title of the 'Commission for International Justice & Accountability'.

"I should add that, in addition to the CIJA, the court relied on a Syrian defector, codenamed 'Ulysses' (it seems the entire official narrative is a made-for-Hollywood script and it seems no coincidence that this $300m plus court ruling is announced along with a supporting documentary and big screen Hollywood movie) who tells us that 'senior regime officials' celebrated after confirmation of her death, with one officer declaring (no doubt in a low growl): 'Marie Colvin was a dog and now she's dead. Let the Americans help her now.' Oh, and he helpfully tells us the Syrian intelligence officer responsible for targeting Marie 'Matrix' Colvin through the non-existent satellite phone and non-existent informer on the ground was rewarded with a brand new Hyundai car (no doubt painted sinister black or deep blood-red).

"Finally, how judge Jackson, who tells us Marie Colvin 'was specifically targeted because of her profession, for the purpose of silencing those reporting on the growing opposition movement in the country,' came up with the figure of $300m plus to be stolen from any Syrian state assets or accounts that happen to be in unfriendly foreign hands and given to her surviving family is a total mystery. Surely it cannot be for her projected earnings as a Sunday Times hack? (and let's face it, judging from her Homs reportage which is part 'colour revolution lite' and part Mills and Boon, she was hardly going to go on and win any literary Pulitzer prizes." (Paul Harvey, 3/2/19)

She Has a Dream

"[I]f we are to honor [Martin Luther] King's message* and not merely the man, we must condemn Israel's actions: unrelenting violations of international law, continued occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, home demolitions and land confiscations. We must cry out at the treatment at checkpoints, the routine searches of their homes and restrictions on their movements, and the severely limited access to decent housing, schools, food, hospitals and water that many of them face.

"We must not tolerate Israel's refusal even to discuss the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, as prescribed by United Nations resolutions, and we ought to question the US government funds that have supported multiple hostilities and thousands of civilian casualties in Gaza, as well as the $38 billion the US government has pledged in military support to Israel.

"And finally, we must, with as much courage and conviction as we can muster, speak out against the system of legal discrimination that exists inside Israel, a system complete with... more than 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinians - such as the new nation-state law that says explicitly that only Jewish Israelis have the right of self-determination in Israel, ignoring the rights of the Arab minority that makes up 21% of the population." (From Time to break the silence on Palestine, Michelle Alexander**, nytimes.com, 19/1/19)

[*"I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight [4/4/67] because my conscience leaves me no other choice... A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam";**Michelle Alexander became a New York Times columnist in 2018. She is a civil rights lawyer and advocate, legal scholar and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.]

Portrait of a Zionist Diva

In his book How I Stopped Being a Jew (2014), that formidable debunker of Zionist narratives and mythology, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, writes that:

"We must recognize that the key axis of a secular Jewish identity lies nowadays in perpetuating the individual's relationship to the State of Israel and in securing the individual's total support for it. If, until the 1967 war, Israel occupied a relatively secondary place in the sensibility of Jewish descendants in the West, from that point onward, this little state - which had just given a display of its great strength, even appearing as quite a power - became a source of pride for a goodly number of Jewish descendants. As is well known, any power attracts a mass of followers and comes to constitute, to a lesser or greater degree, a locus of adulation and worship. The image of soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, svelte and spirited, perched on powerful armoured cars or leaning proudly against jet fighters, serves as an identity card for many new Jews throughout the world. The prestige that this gives has been used to the maximum by the Israeli state." (pp 93-4)

Sand could have been writing about Australian singer/songwriter Deborah Conway, just featured in the Sydney Morning Herald's GoodWeekend magazine:

"Carl Conway's family fled Russia to England after the pogroms around 1900. Deborah Conway's upbringing was not particularly religious - she doesn't believe in God - but the family had Shabbat dinner on Friday night and synagogue visits a few times a year. Over time, though, she has become increasingly passionate about her heritage. Conway and [husband Willy] Zygier ran the Shir Madness Melbourne Jewish musical Festival in 2015 and 2017 and both are avowed Zionists, believing in the development and protection of Israel as a Jewish state. Asked why her passion for Zionism has increased, she says 'I hate bullies and I feel like the world is bullying Israel.' The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement - which aims to end international support for Israel - is, says Conway, 'nothing short of horrendous anti-Semitism.' 'Look, there's no question there are contentious aspects of the Jewish state, but it's the only place in the world where Jews have a state'." (Love of a lifetime, Melissa Fyfe, 2/2/19)

To deconstruct this particularly egregious example of delusional identity politics: here we have a 'secular Jew', with no discernible connection to Palestine/Israel, who swears blind that the Israeli bully is really a victim - of "the world" no less - and maliciously smears as anti-Semites those who demand justice for the bully's Palestinian victims.

Reality couldn't be more twisted. But, to make matters worse, the feature's author, journalist Melissa Fyfe, apparently saw no need to raise an editorial eyebrow, or in any way challenge, Conway's appalling diatribe.

Franklin Graham Channels his Inner Frank

So, according to Australian journalism's number one Israel fanboy Greg Sheridan, he & Tony did Billy Graham in 1979:

"With Tony Abbott and an evangelical friend, I went to see Billy Graham at Sydney's Randwick racecourse in 1979. He was compelling and brilliant, with his dramatic gestures, magnificent voice, Hollywood good looks. Neither Abbott nor I felt impelled to join the throngs coming forward to commit their lives, simply because we were already Catholics... So we watched the performance with some admiration from the bleachers." (God and Graham, The Australian, 2/2/19)

That little confession comes in what is essentially a promo for Billy's son Franklin, who'll be touring Australia next week.

As does this telling prognosis from Franklin Graham himself:

"I think, as a nation, our culture will descend eventually into chaos. In parts of the world where the Christian faith has not had much of an influence, such as the modern Middle East, it's scary what people have to endure."

Now in light of that, it's worth remembering what actually happened the last time the medieval forbears of Tony, Greg, and the Grahams 'toured' the Middle East - at various times between the 11th and 13th centuries centuries

Take, for example, the conquest of Jerusalem by those soldiers of Christ, aka Crusaders, aka Franks in the late 11th century. Forget "influence," 'impact' is the word here, and "scary" doesn't even begin to do justice to what Jerusalem's inhabitants had to "endure" in July 1099:

"With the fall of Jerusalem and its towers one could see marvellous works. Some of the pagans were mercifully beheaded, others pierced by arrows plunged from towers, and yet others, tortured for a long time, were burned to death in searing flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet lay in the houses and streets, and men and knights were running to and fro over corpses." (Raymond of Aguilers, quoted in Thomas Asbridge, The First Crusade: A New History, 2004, p 316)

"After a very great and cruel slaughter of Saracens, of whom 10,000 fell in that same place, they put to the sword great numbers of gentiles who were running about the quarters of the city, fleeing in all directions on account of their fear of death: they were stabbing women who had fled into palaces and dwellings; seizing infants by the soles of their feet from their mothers' laps or their cradles and dashing them against the walls and breaking their necks; they were slaughtering some with weapons, or striking them down with stones; they were sparing absolutely no gentile of any place or kind." Gesta Francorum, ibid, p 317)