Hamas in Therapy

Hardly a week goes by without someone telling me about this or that 'outrageous' article appearing in some newspaper full of lies and totally unfair criticism of Israel. Here in Britain, it's mostly from the usual suspects like The Independent and The Guardian.

But "Therapy Today" ???
Take a look at this most despicable article they published as a front page feature this month.

I hope you will agree with the sentiments expressed in my letter to its editor which appears below.

But agreeing is not good enough.

I'm calling on all Jewish and pro-Israel members of the British Association for Counselling & Psycotherapy [BACP] to consider whether they wish to remain members of an organisation that publishes this kind of drivel, and then reinstates the article without apology or independent verification of the facts. Perhaps to also cancel their membership and subscription.

I'm calling on everyone on this blog list - especially those in the therapy and counselling profession - to send their own message to the editor:

sarah.browne@bacp.co.uk

And to copy its current president, Professor Cary Cooper CBE, at:
c.cooper1@lancaster.ac.uk

My own letter appears below:

To Sarah Brown

Editor, Therapy Today

sarah.browne@bacp.co.uk

My sister Susan has been a member of the BACP for more than 15 years. She was outraged by the front page article you published under the title: ‘Palestine - to resist is to exist’ and its emotive cover photo.

As children of Holocaust survivors, my sister and I are very sensitive to articles and statements which demonise the Jewish state, especially when comparisons are drawn to the Nazi extermination of half of our people in Europe. They were not killed because they were firing rockets at German schools, or blowing up families and kids in Berlin discotheques and pizzerias. They were exterminated simply for being Jewish.

Therefore, as someone who has read hundreds of articles and blogs on the Gaza situation, I can honestly say that your feature was one of the most egregious I have seen. It is replete with hearsay and pure Islamist propaganda. I spend a great deal of my time in Israel and the territories, and I know that the vast majority of accusations would simply not stand up to any kind of close scrutiny. Quotes attributed to self-appointed leaders of extreme left-wing NGOs are no substitute for truth and fact, except when there is no interest in presenting any kind of balanced assessment.

The purpose of this note to you is not to argue Israel’s case. People are entitled to their private opinions, even if they are based on ignorance or rooted in bigotry. My complaint is that you used my sister’s membership and subscription - and those of thousands of her fellow readers and therapists – as a means of peddling cheap political propaganda and as a mouthpiece for two people with extreme political views.

This clearly has no place in “Therapy Today”. Neither does the thinnest smattering of technical jargon like PTSD etc. justify its being there. Yours is the house journal of a professional association whose first principles are Ethics and Good Practice. What a travesty this is!

When I visited your site today, there was a notice saying that – due to complaints – the article had been temporarily removed from your website to enable you ‘to reflect and consult more wisely’. But the article has now been restored, along with a hastily prepared editorial which sadly offers no apology for betraying BACP principles and the trust and loyalty of your subscribers.

If you are genuinely interested in a child-therapy dimension of the Middle East conflict, I will take you to S’derot where Israeli children have been huddling in shelters under daily rocket barrages. So far, there have been more than 6,000 launched indiscriminately from Gaza farms evacuated by Israel 3½ years ago.

Gaza’s current plight is neither the fault of Israelis nor the Palestinian Arabs. It is entirely the fault of Hamas and their Iranian sponsors who have never stopped fanning the flames of this conflict to serve their own agenda: a “one-state solution” by the nuclear erasure of Israel.

That agenda and the turmoil it causes will never cease as long as Arab children are so radically indoctrinated in Islamic schools and madrassas and brainwashed into a culture of pure evil and hatred.

Now there’s a mental health dimension you could really chew on.

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When time is no healer

Last night I watched the History Channel’s latest documentary on 9/11: “102 Minutes That Changed America”

It’s a collection of private videos shot by news cameramen and ordinary citizens on that fateful morning.

It was a timely reminder of the emotions of horror which quickly turned to outrage that Islamists would commit such a cowardly and heinous act of mass murder on ordinary citizens in one of the most densely-packed cities of the world.

They say: time is the great healer.
And after 8 years America seems indeed to have gotten over the outrage and the anger of 9/11.

The Palestinians who danced in the streets that night, giving out sweets, have been showered with billions in US aid and promises of their own state despite the 9/11-type attacks they’ve continued to range against Israel for every one of those 8 years.

The Islamist’s penitentiary at Guantanamo Bay is to be closed by Obama on the grounds that it is a violation of their human rights.

The non-injurious but highly effective interrogation method of waterboarding, which could prevent the next 9/11 catastrophe, has been banned, again on an issue of human rights.

The self-confessed planner of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is not being allowed to plead guilty.

And the Taliban who hosted Bin Laden whilst he planned and gloated over the 9/11 atrocity are now being ‘engaged’ by the Obama administration as are the Iranians who fund every terror venture in the world and Hamas and Hezbullah who act as their proxies of plausible deniability.

This is healing?
Far from it !
This is nothing more than inviting more of the same.

Last week Obama further cheapened the office of president by appearing on the Jay Leno chat show. As surely as ‘pride goeth before a fall’ he made a well-deserved gaffe in poking fun against paraplegics in reference to his poor score in the White House bowling alley.

Obama would serve the free world a lot better by spending his free nights in the White House movie theatre rather than the bowling alley.

They should play him 9/11movies AGAIN AND AGAIN until reality finally gets through.

These people are unlike any enemy the world has ever faced.
And they are probably the last enemy we will ever face.
Unless we start taking them seriously.
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The Special Relationship

This week a 100kg bomb was prepared to be set off outside a Haifa shopping mall. By all accounts its power would have been sufficient to bring down a substantial part of the structure killing an injuring many shoppers and moviegoers. But the explosives misfired and drew the attention of security staff who were able to evacuate the area and save countless lives.

"There is no doubt that a good deal of planning went into this," Northern Police chief Cmdr. Shimon Koren told Israel Radio on Sunday. He acknowledged that the element of luck was decisive in averting tragedy.

So much for this week…..

Last week a Swiss newspaper revealed chilling details of last year’s Israeli bombing of a North Korean nuclear facility being built in Syria with Iranian funds. Following the daring and highly successful sortie, the US and Israel refused to make any comment.

But last week, Hans Ruehle, former chief of the planning staff of the German Defense Ministry revealed that neither the US nor Israel had known about the nuclear installation until a top-ranked Iranian defector told the CIA that Iran was financing North Korean moves to make Syria into a nuclear power.

It is truly chilling to think that Israel – with its Ofek satellite and reconnaissance drones – might not have known what was going on its very doorstep.

But both stories bear witness to the ‘special relationship’ our people have with the Almighty; “the keeper of Israel who neither slumbers nor sleeps to protect us from evil” [Tehillim/Psalms 121]

Power for Shalit

Remarkable that even Olmert has come to the end of the road in offering concessions to free Gilad Shalit from captivity in Gaza.

Of course, no-one offers the enemy more than Olmert.

Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights, Jerusalem … anything you like.

So it’s back to basics.

We either take Gilad back Entebbe –style or do what we should have done 1,000 days ago:

Cut off the power lines to Gaza until Shalit walks free back across the border.

Just like Sharansky walked across the Glienicke Bridge in 1986 as a result of the massive pressure applied on the USSR by Ronald Reagan; America's 40th president and the last one with balls.

Once the plugs are pulled out, the Free World will cry FOUL! and protest this inhuman collective punishment.

Well, the Free World is in no position to make judgments until its own citizens have been held hostage incommunicado for 1,000 days during which all patience has been exhausted.

The Free World is not totally surrounded by enemies. It’s not under daily rocket fire. It’s not under a madman’s explicit threat of annihilation by a nuclear bomb which the free world helped him build.

Hillel said: Judge not thy friend
until thou standest in his place.

When the Free World starts treating Israel like a Free Nation – they’ll find us more than willing to live by their lofty standards.

~

Go South Mr Solana !

Without yet having formed a viable coalition for his new government of Israel, Netanyahu is already being threatened by the EU that they will no longer be ‘Mr Nice Guy’ if he fails to make a commitment to a Palestinian state within Israel’s borders.

"Let me say very clearly that the way the European Union will relate to a government that is not committed to a two-state solution will be very, very different," says its foreign affairs secretary Javier Solana.

With its reckless funding of Gaza terrorists, ‘engagement’ with Hamas and Hezbolla, tolerance of anti-Israel boycotts and hypocritical censure of the security fence and any other measures take to protect Jewish citizens, it’s hard to imagine what the EU could be doing do make things much worse.

Solana has been the EU’s foreign policy chief for 10 years and is the main architect of the stalled ‘Road Map’ peace plan. One would have thought after all this time and exposure to the cut and thrust of the conflict, Solana would have understood exactly why Jewish citizens of Israel have fears about committing to a Palestinian State sandwiching a quarter of its population to within 9 miles of the Mediterranean Sea.

It’s not that Jews are reluctant to sign a peace agreement and cede territory. By far the most maddening thing for me has been the endless prattle by leaders like Olmert about how much land and ‘painful concessions’ they are prepared to offer just for that illusion of peace.

And it is truly nothing more than an illusion. We have seen what our unilateral withdrawal and the voluntary uprooting of 8,000 residents of Gush Katif have brought us: no less than 4,000 rockets launched from Gaza since we left. An average of 3 rocket attacks per day over a period of three and a half years!

These rockets continue to be launched by the same Hamas that Mr Solana and his EU comrades seek to ‘engage’ with. The same Hamas that continues to enrich and arm itself with the billions in EU funds sent in open checks to Gaza . The same Hamas that wants only a one-state solution and insists that it will never ever recognise the Jewish State.

Most significantly, it’s the Hamas that drove out Mahmoud Abbas and his ‘moderate’ Fatah from Gaza in a fest of violence and butchery.

Does not Mr Solana realise, that by empowering Hamas with recognition, funds and ‘engagement’, he works only to ensure that the Quartet’s only legitimate ‘peace partners’ Abbas and Fatah are doomed to be gunned out of the West Bank as well?

So, wow can he possibly expect Israelis to cede yet more territory so perilously close to its vital arteries, when the terrorists his EU emboldens and enriches are so certain and utterly committed to repeat the Gaza operation and fill the vacuum with another Iranian rocket base?

So Mr Solana: you wanna make things ‘very very different’ for Israel?

Go talk to some Israelis in Sderot and other Negev towns.
Or, better still; spend the night in one of their bomb shelters.

You’ll probably learn more in that one night than in the 10 years you’ve wasted conducting a no-string Quartet from Brussels.
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