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.
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.
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:
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.
I don't know who Fiamma Nirenstein is, but her latest blog entry deserves to be publicised. The translation follows:
We didn't expect what you see now in the picture. This is the square of the Italian Parliament in Rome , Piazza Montecitorio: you can see the Palace on top of the square, and in front a lot of Israeli flags. That was yesterday night from 6,30 to 9,30 pm. What you cannot see here, is the extraordinary number and variety of members of the Parliament, about 100 from all political sides, that took the stage during our marathon: for about three hours we have been speaking about the role of Israel, its right to self defense, its moral height, its fight in name of all of us, of our civilization and values, against the wild hate of the Islamic jihad represented by Hamas.
It seems to me that for the first time in the too long history of the Arab Israeli conflict, apart from a minority of crazy leftists and fascists that took the street on anti-Semitic slogans, we have obtained a huge consensus about one critical point: this is not an episode of a local conflict, there is nothing in it that reminds the land for peace theme that has characterized the Palestinian issue. This is an episode of the attack against the western world, and Iran has a lot to do with it.
The change of attitude is great: the dictatorial religious nature of Hamas and the democratic, civilized nature of Israel are seen face to face for what they are al least by the European elite at large, dead and wounded notwithstanding, and there rises an identification with Israel against a regime that uses human shields and promises slaughter of Jews in its charter.
What happens today, at least in Italy , is the defeat and fall of the leftist ideologies: ideology has been the fig leaf that has allowed to justify all the most violent crimes and most disgusting verbal attacks. If Arafat launched the terrorist Intifada, if he promoted the martyrdom of children in public speeches, the ideologists were ready to justify him with the issues of occupation, the Palestinian misery and loss of any hope. Not the same with Hamas.
History, in Italy , has brought to a profound crisis the ideology of revolution and the justification of any cruel attack against a pretended unjust imperialist order. That time is in good part over, nobody will see Hamas as the resolution of the problem and not as the problem itself.
I also think that the word "peace" has lost that healing meaning that it had until yesterday. The new non-ideological point of view sees that there is no peace when one of the contenders doesn't want it, and that even if the world in the short run asks for a truce, in the long run requests a defeat of Hamas.
Well, yesterday night many people, Ministers and Members of Parliament, composed a very new, interesting puzzle of opinions. I think that when you are not overwhelmed by exotic thirdworldism, the images of children educated as hate machines, the speeches of jihad leaders, from Ahmadinejad to Nasrallah, to Hanje, that deny the holocaust and promise death to Jewish and Christians too, have on us a result of great disgust.
Westerners, thanks God, can still be disgusted by an uncivilized level of political speech. But most of all, in the Parliament square, many of the Parliament Members said: "I love Israel ".
Unless you visit such obscure websites as ABC of Australia, you might well have missed this story:
Hospital hit by two shells in Tamil Tiger stronghold 2 January 2009 The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross say a hospital in Sri Lanka's northeast has been hit by two shells, killing two people and wounding five. It's unclear who fired the shells but the government blames the Tamil Tigers. Part of the hospital has in the past received Australian funding, including aid money to build a blood bank. [ABC – Australia Broadcasting Corporation]
Compare this to the banner headlines and worldwide condemnation of Israel's shelling of a UN school in Gaza.
Which, it turns out, never ever happened ! See this report in The Toronto Globe
Sad that the truth is hidden in obscure media pockets of the British Commonwealth, but never to be found in the UK.
I have to admit, I had no idea who Annie Lennox was before hearing of her appearance as some sort of celebrity at the anti-Israel demonstration she led with George Galloway in London yesterday.
She's since made a statement to fans on her Facebook site that she's not anti-Israel, blah, blah...
Here's the response I've posted on her site:
I wonder where people like you were when my grandparents were murdered with 6 million of their brothers, sisters and children by the Nazis????
That wasn't a two week "outrage", but one that lasted 6 years.
And where were you for Darfur?
Or Szebrenica?
Or Tibet?
The only explanation is that you're just a plain and simple anti-Semite.
And, in bashing Israel, you and your rabid 'rent-a-crowd' of useful idiots have simply found a politically-acceptable way to vent your plain and simple racism.
He Who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - may He bless the fighters of the Israel Defense Force, who stand guard over our land and the cities of our God from the border of the Lebanon to the desert of Egypt, and from the Great Sea unto the approach of the Aravah, on the land, in the air, and on the sea.
May HASHEM cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them. May the Holy One, Blessed is He, preserve and rescue our fighting men from every trouble and distress and from every plague and illness, and may He send blessing and success in their every endeavor.
May He lead our enemies under their sway and may He grant them salvation and crown them with victory. And may there be fulfilled for them the verse: For it is Hashem, your God, Who goes with you to battle your enemies for you to save you.
I wonder how the judge's backtracking will affect the Gaza merchandizing business.
