The Oldest and Longest COLB

So, after more than 18 months of brazenly ignoring public requests, President Obama has finally produced his official 'long-form Certificate of Live Birth' in the United States.

One wonders why he didn’t simply produce this right away.

After all, it can’t have been very pleasant for this first black American president to be constantly baited about his right to the office and that his occupation of the White House was totally fraudulent.

Perhaps now he knows how Israelis feel, having the right to live in their homeland ridiculed as some kind of monumental fraud built on lies and false historic claims.

Our ‘long form certificate’ of birth has been out there for 3,000 years.

And still they question our legitimacy.




 
 

Vive la Difference!

After the ouster of despots from Tunisia and Yemen, Mubarak is under house arrest in Egypt, Gadaffi is under siege in Libya, Assad is under attack in Syria, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal no longer feels safe in riot-torn Damascus, King Hussain frets about the riots in Jordan and the House of Saud trembles.

Not a happy time for Middle Eastern leaders.

Except for one.

That's Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, enjoying the traditional feast of Mimouna in Jerusalem with his wife Sarah.

Mimouna is celebrated the day after Passover, when Jews from North Africa open their homes with tables bedecked with all kinds of sweet cakes and pastries for guests to enjoy.

In contrast, those less fortunate leaders I have mentioned above are more accustomed to their people giving out such sweetmeats to celebrate the death of Americans, Jews and the mass murder of other infidels.

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A Visit to Itamar

Today I visited Itamar and the house where Udi and Ruth Fogel were slain together with their 3 month-old baby and two other children, aged 11 and 4.

The children's bikes were still in the yard.

I also went to visit the yeshiva building where Udi Fogel learned and prayed.

Former IDF Chief Rabbi, Brig. General Avishai Ronsky showed me to Udi Fogel's seat, where his siddur and other books and notebooks still remain.

I opened the siddur to a random page in oder to say a verse of Tehillim in his memory.

It opened to Psalm 94 .....

A Psalm of Vengeance.

Here is the page, opened:

It reads:

Oh God to whom vengeance belongs ...

How long shall the wicked triumph..?

They break in pieces Your people, O Lord...

And afflict Your heritage.

They slay the widow and the stranger,

And murder the fatherless.

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Mr Abbas's dirty little secret

I was speaking today to an Israeli government researcher, who had been asked by one of the party leaders to find out how many Christian Arabs were still living in Bethlehem and other areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, as compared with the time the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.

Turns out that the Christian population of PA-controlled areas has reduced by a staggering 75 percent in less than 20 years.

Clearly this is ethnic cleansing on a truly grand scale.

And, in terms of Bethlehem, Christians are effectively being cast out from the very cradle of their own faith.

This iniquity is being funded by billions in EU and US grants to the Palestinian Authority and is abetted by the UN and mainstream news media for whom anything Palestinian is always above reproach and immune to any serious challenge or enquiry.

And not a word of protest from the Vatican.

And Mr Abbas has the chutzpah to claim Palestinians are 'ready for statehood'?
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Britain's Barmy FO

I hear that the royal wedding couple plans to spend their honeymoon in - of all places - Jordan.  Apparently the bride spent time there as a child.

I'm sure the Queen was properly advised by her Foreign Secretary William Hague that, at this particular time, of all other places in the world - including Helmand province, Benghazi and the Fukushima beachfront - Jordan was really the safest bet right now.

Only 136 protestors were arrested in Jordan today.

Well, at least they're not being shot like in Syria.

But, then again, the wedding is still a week away.

Truly the British foreign office is barking mad.

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Human rights for inhuman terrorists

The moonbats of the liberal left would be a laughingstock if it weren't for the serious damage they are doing by championing the human rights of inhuman terrorists.  Such moonbats can even become presidents, as this recent email I received tells so chillingly .... 

As President George W. Bush's top speechwriter, Marc Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM). Now, his riveting new book, "Courting Disaster", How the CIA Kept America Safe (Regnery), has been published.

Here is an excerpt from "Courting Disaster": Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi. A few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside the house. It read: "I am with KSM."

Bursting in, they find the disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in his bedroom. He is taken into custody. In the safe house, they find a treasure trove of computers, documents, cell phones and other valuable "pocket litter."

Once in custody, KSM is defiant. He refuses to answer questions, informing his captors that he will tell them everything when he gets to America and sees his lawyer. But KSM is not taken to America to see a lawyer Instead he is taken to a secret CIA "black site" in an undisclosed location. Upon arrival, KSM finds himself in the complete control of Americans. He does not know where he is, how long he will be there, or what his fate will be.

Despite his circumstances, KSM still refuses to talk. He spews contempt at his interrogators, telling them Americans are weak, lack resilience, and are unable to do what is necessary to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals. He has trained to resist interrogation. When he is asked for information about future attacks, he tells his questioners scornfully: "Soon, you will know."

It becomes clear he will not reveal the information using traditional interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved for use only on the most high-value detainees. The techniques include waterboarding. His resistance is described by one senior American official as "superhuman." Eventually, however, the techniques work, and KSM becomes cooperative-for reasons that will be described later in this book.

He begins telling his CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets. He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda's operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics. He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids. He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists, KSM's questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.

In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the "Bojinka plot" to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean.

Years later, an observant CIA officer notices the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM's description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack.

In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot. On the night of Aug.9, 2006 they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects. They find a USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven trans-Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each other:

* United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco departing at 2:15 p.m.;

* Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto departing at 3:00 p.m.;

* Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal departing at 3:15 p.m.;

* United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago departing at 3:40 p.m.;

* United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington departing at 4:20 p.m.;

* American Airlines Flight 131 to New York departing at 4:35 p.m;

* American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago departing at 4:50 p.m.

They seize bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make liquid explosives. And they find the chilling martyrdom videos the suicide bombers had prepared.

Today, if you asked an average person on the street what they know about the 2006 airlines plot, most would not be able to tell you much. Few Americans are aware of the fact al Qaeda had planned to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and magnitude. And still fewer realize the terrorists' true intentions in this plot were uncovered thanks to critical information obtained through the interrogation of the man who conceived it: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

This is only one of the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA interrogation program established by the Bush Administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

(For other foiled terrorist plots, see page 9 of "Courting Disaster.")

In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots, CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information about al Qaeda Until the program was temporarily suspended in 2006, intelligence officials say, well over half of the information our government had about al Qaeda-how it operates, how it moves money, how it communicates, how it recruits operatives, how it picks targets, how it plans and carries out attacks-came from the interrogation of terrorists in CIA custody.

Former CIA Director George Tenet has declared: "I know this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than what the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."

Former CIA Director Mike Hayden has said: "The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work."

Even Barack Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, has acknowledged: "High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."

Leon Panetta, Obama's CIA Director, has said: "Important information was gathered from these detainees. It provided information that was acted upon."

And John Brennan, Obama's Homeland Security Advisor, when asked in an interview if enhanced-interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America safe, replied : "Would the U.S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes."

On Jan. 22, 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13491, closing the CIA program and directing that, henceforth, all interrogations by U.S personnel must follow the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.

The morning of the announcement, Mike Hayden was still in his post as CIA Director, He called White House Counsel Greg Craig and told him bluntly: "You didn't ask, but this is the CIA officially nonconcurring". The president went ahead anyway, over ruling the objections of the agency.

A few months later, on April 16, 2009, President Obama ordered the release of four Justice Department memos that described in detail the techniques used to interrogate KSM and other high-value terrorists. This time, not just Hayden (who was now retired) but five CIA directors -including Obama's own director, Leon Panetta -- objected. George Tenet called to urge against the memos' release. So did Porter Goss. So did John Deutch. Hayden says: "You had CIA directors in a continuous unbroken stream to 1995 calling saying, 'Don't do this.'"

In addition to objections from the men who led the agency for a collective 14 years, the President also heard objections from the agency's covert field operatives. A few weeks earlier, Panetta had arranged for the eight top officials of the Clandestine Service to meet with the President. It was highly unusual for these clandestine officers to visit the Oval Office, and they used the opportunity to warn the President that releasing the memos would put agency operatives at risk. The President reportedly listened respectfully-and then ignored their advice. With these actions, Barack Obama arguably did more damage to America's national security in his first 100 days of office than any President in American history.

But how many people know this?

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Israel's Leftist Sickos

Here is the mother of one of the Itamar killers being comforted over the arrest of her son.

The lady comforting her is Raiya Yaron, an Israeli woman ... or a poor excuse for one.

She is one of the leaders of Machsom Watch, a group of bleeding heart leftists who spend their time harrassing Israeli soldiers manning  security checkpoints across the country. 

So they campaign for the removal of security checkpoints and then comfort those who exploit those openings to carry out the most unspeakable butchery.

It has been reported that one of the killers knew his way around Itamar after another leftist organisation campaigned to allow him and other Arabs to enter Itamar for olive picking

I say Yaron and her ilk are accessories to the murder of Jews.

So why does the New Israel Fund send them money?
Are they any different to Saddam Hussein who used to pay terrorists for every attack on Jews?

Why doesn't NIF come clean - put these killers on their direct payroll, and cut out these crazy women?
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No Peace in Our Time

The arrest of two Arab youths, age 18 and 19 for the slaughter of the Fogel family in Itamar, proves the folly of the ‘peace process’ and why there can never be true peace in this region for another generation.

It recalls a piece I blogged 10 years ago, during the 2001 election campaign between Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. I compared our predicament at that time with Daniel in the Lions’ den.

 

The lion is untamed and unpredictable. At circus-time it can appear docile and domesticated and, like the Palestinian leadership, it can do all sorts of cute tricks for the world’s media.

But, faced with a piece of raw meat or the smell of blood the lion turns frighteningly into the savage beast it really is and it will tear a man apart just like that Ramallah lynch mob.

The lion tamer may keep a lion at bay with nothing more than a chair, providing there is a man with a rifle outside the cage in case of emergency. Similarly Israel may indeed share a home with the Palestinians so long as she has military supremacy at all times.

Unfortunately, Barak has forgotten the golden rule of the lion tamer: ‘never turn your back on him!’

Barak has shown himself too ready to turn his back on territory and principles. The appearance of being hounded out of Lebanon and compromises on the previously untouchable Jerusalem are signs of weakness that have turned the lion into a beast.

The only way to really tame a lion is to bring him up in captivity. Only when an entire generation of Palestinians is brought up on decent values instead of blood lust and propaganda will there be any chance of living in safety with them.

Over the last 10 years Ehud Barak has gotten worse and the ‘blood lust and propaganda’ have been exposed as systematic brainwashing of Muslim children from kindergarten age. This clip is just one sick example.


So long as Arab infants are suckled on this kind of hate and dehumanization of Jews and other infidels, no amount of territorial concessions, paper treaties or superpower guarantees will mean anything in terms of true peace and security for our people.


On Seder night we recall the exodus of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. After the sin of the Golden Calf, God made them wander in the wilderness for 40 years, until the whole generation of that sin had died off.


So, peace in our time?
Sadly not.
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How !

Spotted on a Jerusalem mailbox...

From Darkness to Great Light

I've been to countless barmitzvah dinners in my time, but tonight's was very special. 

It was held at the old Jerusalem Central Prison, in the city's Russian compound. It has recently been restored as the Museum of the Underground Prisoners where heroes of the Jewish resistance had been incarcerated during British rule.

The barmitzvah boy, Ike Bodner, opened his speech by telling the story of two former Irgun prisoners, Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barzani who were sentenced to death here in 1947 at the ages of 19 and 21.

Rather than die by the hand of a British executioner, they smuggled in a grenade disguised in an orange peel, which they planned to explode when taken to the gallows - thus taking their executioners with them. 

The night before the hanging, the prison chaplain Rabbi Goldman sat with them and promised he would stand with them up to the last moment.  Rather than harm the Rabbi the next day, they waited until he left that evening and exploded the grenade between them in the cell.

There is something wonderful about the sounds of Jewish merriment and celebration booming through the corridors of such a place. It's about deliverance and defiance.  It's about that part of the Pesach Seder in which we say:

Thus it is our duty to thank, to laud, to praise, to glorify, toexalt, to adore, to bless, to elevate and to honor the One who did all these miracles for our fathers and for us. He took us from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, and from mourning to festivity, and from deep darkness to great light and from bondage to redemption. Let us therefore recite before Him, Halleluyah.

During the dancing I wandered around the place. Long corridors with rooms marked ' guard post', 'clinic' and 'solitary'. 

And then there was one marked 'gallows'.
 
I stepped inside. Here was the barred anteroom in which Meir and Moshe ended their lives. Reconstructed with blankets on the floor and orange prison suits on wall pegs and a siddur on one of the pillows.
 
And around the corner, the gallows.
The photo says it all.

 

In a glass case is Feinstein's final statement before the death sentence was handed down on March 25th 1947. It reads as follows:

"A regime of gallows - that is the regime you want to establish in this country, whose destiny is to serve as a lighthouse for humanity. In your stupid wickedness you assume that by this means you will succeed in breaking the spirit of our people; the people to whom the whole county has become a gallows. You are mistaken. You will learn that what you have come up against is steel; steel tempered by the fire of love and hatred - love of the Homeland and freedom, hatred for the oppressor and invader. It’s burning steel. You will not break it. You will destroy your hands. How blind you are, British tyrants: Have you not learnt yet whom you are fighting in this struggle, unexampled in human history? Do you think you can frighten us with death? We, who over the years have listened to the click-clack of the wheels of those carriages that carried our brothers, our parents, the best of our nation, to the slaughter which, too, had no precedent in history? We who asked and ask ourselves every day: how are we better than they, than millions of our brothers? In what lies our virtue? For we could have been among and with them in the days of fear and in the moments that came before death. To these recurring questions our conscience offers but one answer: we remained alive not to survive in conditions of slavery, repression and (to go to) a new Treblinka. We remained alive to ensure (the attainment) of freedom and dignity for us, our nation and children and grandchildren for all generations... for there is life worse than death and death greater than life."

A truly inspired idea to make a barmitzvah in such a place.
The boy's father is also called Moshe.

'... from sorrow to joy, and from deep darkness to great light ... '

Chag Sameyach.
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With an outstretched arm

As Iron Dome punches missiles out of the skies, I am reminded of the Pesach message of the deliverance of our people "with an outstreched arm" from the slavery of Egypt.

During the last few days, Israel has shown its outstretched arm ... and the ability of its forces to target and liquidate Hamas terror leaders in Gaza. In their homes or in their cars ... there is no place to hide.  

Hamas are now begging for a ceasefire.

The long arm of the IDF has shown itself in all sorts of places.  Out in the Mediterranean Sea where it impounded an Iranian weapons ship; as far as the port of Sudan where its Apache helicopters took out a car carrying weapons smugglers; in Dubai last year with the assassination of bomb-maker Mahmoud al Mabhouh and January's kidnapping in the Ukraine of Hamas rocket supremo Dirar Abu Sissi.

50 years ago Israel reached as far as Argentina to pull Adolph Eichmann into a hangman's noose as architect of Hitler's genocidal  'final solution' for the Jews.

42 years ago the Israeli navy stole into France to 'take delivery' of 3 missile boats it had bought and paid for, but which French president Charles de Gaulle had embargoed in a weapons ban on the Jewish state.

35 years ago Israeli commandos flew 2,500 miles into Africa to rescue over 100 Jewish hostages in a 55-minute operation at Entebbe, Uganda.

27 years ago, Israel reached out to Ethiopia and rescued 8,000 natives whose Jewish lineage was about to be wiped out forever.

And in humanitarian terms, the Jewish State has crossed continents to assist victims of natural disasters from Turkey to Haiti to Japan.

Plucking missiles out of the skies seems simple by comparison.
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A Kippa for our times

Secularists in Israel have been nervous about Netanyahu's recent appointment of two kippa-wearers to high office. General Yaakov Amidror as National Security Advisor and Yoram Cohen as head of Shin Bet security service.

Occasionally it happens that a kippa-wearer performs better than others.

But secular gripes about religious appointments have been overshadowed by other news in Israel.

Such as the stunning success of the IDF's new anti-missile system: Iron Dome

See it in action here .

Not many people know that the Hebrew name for this amazing kit is Kippat Habarzel ... the Iron Kippa.

Like I said.

Sometimes a kippa-wearer performs better than others.

It's also nice to know that almost half of the officers in the Israel Defense Forces also wear kippas.

Perhaps that makes them more focused on what our people are actually fighting for.

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Our Plucky Pilgrims

While Hamas missiles fly in daily from the south, there are 20,000 more Hizbullah missiles standing ready to be fired from the north.

On the southern border a 40-year Egyptian peace treaty is in shambles. 

On the northern border civil war looms in Syria.

And within this Promised Land, the size of New Jersey, murderers abound. They never cease plotting the bombing of bus stations, the slaughter of Jewish children in their beds and now to rocket Israeli school buses.

In the USA it is a criminal offence to overtake a  school bus with its red lights flashing.

In the Jewish state, a school bus may be rocketed by an anti-tank missile and the world's press and human rights groups will pretend it never happened.

This is the State of Israel in the spring of 2011.

And yet, despite these mortal dangers, tens of thousands of Jews from all corners of the world will this week pack up their families to spend Passover in Israel.

In doing so, most will travel on El Al  which, for more than half a century, has never lost its rank as the Number 1 target for every terrorist group in Arabia and beyond.

Some would call it reckless endangerment. 

Some would call it plain crazy.

Jews call it OUR LAND.

We use it, or lose it.

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Sorry seems to be the hardest word

NATO today refused to apologise for the accidental bombing of a Libyan rebel column which left some 12 people dead and many others wounded.  This is not the first accident in this campaign and is unlikely to be the last.

No-one knows when this ill-concieved campaign will end. But when the civilian bodycount is finally tallied, I bet it will far exceed the 295 Arab non-combatants killed in Gaza during Israel's operation Cast Lead.

To the best of my knowledge, Israel apologised for all its accidents - and even those it turned out they did not commit. Such as the alleged shelling of the UN School which was debunked as a fabrication some time later. 

And when the collateral damage in Libya is found to exceed that of Israel's campaign in Gaza, let our detractors not forget that unlike Libya's vast territory of 700,000 square miles, Israel's defense forces were operating in a confined strip of less than 150 square miles, within which Hamas terrorists were using civilians as human shields and using the main hospital as their base of military operations.

And WE are the ones to apologise?

No army compares to ours in most ways, but least of all in moral code.

And ours is better looking too.

The Jihad's Body Counter

The only external link I have to this blog is the Religion of Peace, whose unique body-counter of Islamist killings appears on the left.

It goes up almost every single day. 

By clicking the counter, you'll be taken to their website where the events are meticulously cataloged. 

Here's today's example:

If you have a blog or Facebook page, I urge you to add this counter to it. (There are simple instructions on how to embed it.)

The free and civilised world needs to know what it's up against - day after day, and with no weekends off.

At the weekend I met with Yuli Edelstein, Israel's minister of public diplomacy, and suggested to him that there should be a similar Qassam Counter for rocket attacks into Israel. Perhaps also a UN Resolution Counter to track the resolutions against Israel as a percentage of those passed against any of the many tyrannies and human rights abusers in the General Assembly.

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Deep Concern

They said today that if Obama can't bridge a $10 billion gap in spending cuts demanded by the newly-empowered Republicans, the US government will shut down at the end of this week.

That's the home story.

Overseas, the US is into its third concurrent conflict and - while printing money to pay the bills - it faces a real threat to the dollar's standing as the world's reserve currency.  If that happens, the already soaring gas prices in America will go orbital. 

America's major trading partner Japan - the world's third largest economy - is in the grip of financial and nuclear crisis following the earthquake and tsunami.

Then there is the Al Qaeda and jihadist exploitation of the unrest in Libya, Egypt and Yemen, Iran's ongoing nuclear weaponisation and serious questions about Saudi Arabia's future after its invasion of Bahrain.

One would expect the Obama administration to be deeply concerned about any one of these crises - let alone all of them happening at once.

But there are still more important priorities.

Yesterday's statement from The White House:

"The United States is deeply concerned by continuing Israeli actions with respect to settlement construction,"  (Tommy Vietor: National Security Spokesman)

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Barmy Boycotters of Humanity

Dr Denis MacEoin is a former lecturer in Islamic Studies, and has written extensively in the field. He recently authored a major report on hate literature in UK mosques, Hijacking British Islam. Writing as Daniel Easterman and Jonathan Aycliffe, he has published 25 novels, translated into over a dozen languages. He is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University.

This is his letter to Edinburgh University Student Association which just voted to join the boycott of Israel: 270 to just 20 against.




To The Committee,
Edinburgh University Student Association



May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain's great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University. Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field.

I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote. I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves.

Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those member of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby. Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I'm not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel. I'm speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a "Nazi" state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for. It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled things in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is. That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world centre; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population). In Iran, the Baha'is (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren't your members boycotting Iran?

Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa. They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews = something no blacks could do in South Africa. Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

In Israel, women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home. It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran, where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief. Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak. I do not object to well documented criticism of Israel. I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it's clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens. Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran. They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Baha'is.... Need I go on? The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott.

I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side. Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument. They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930s (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it? Of course he would, and he would not have stopped the re. Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense. I have given you some of the evidence.

It's up to you to find out more.


Yours sincerely,


Dr. Denis MacEoin
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How Israel needs to respond to de-legitimisation

Another outspoken interview by Melanie Phillips.

The Dustbin Judge

Notwithstanding Judge Goldstone's second thoughts in the Washington Post, Prime Minister Netanyahu is right to say that his whole report belongs in the dustbin of history.

How many non-Jewish media outlets do you think will publicise Goldstone's latest comments?  Probably just as many as published the UN's admission that it made a mistake in accusing Israel of shelling a UN school during the Gaza war.

Mark Twain said it right a hundred and some years ago:
A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on.

All the moreso when such lies are aided and abetted by a rabidly anti-Semitic media and NGOs, and a morally bankrupt club of oil-pumping, freedom-thumping sheikhs and tinpot dictators that presumes to call itself the United Nations and a defender of human rights.

I wonder how the judge's backtracking will affect the Gaza merchandizing business.

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