Abbas crushes BDS

Well it seems that Abbas has "officially" crushed the BDS.  In his official statement on 11th December, he recognises Israel and promotes Trade, excluding those manufactured in the West Bank.

Massive BDS Fail in Parramatta

Well the Facebook page was being hammered, they were posting everywhere, had a massive list of speakers.  It was going to be a big fest against Max Brenners in Parramatta yesterday.  They even organised it to be on the Jewish Sabbath to keep opposition numbers.

The Parramatta council warned there would be fines for not obeying the rules.  "Freedom of Speech"  they shouted.  "You can't stop us!!"

They got 20 people.  Yep, that's it. 20. 
 
The main organiser is a very angry young man.  Devout Muslim. 

He must have been a bit miffed at the clientele, enjoying their nice hot chocolate:

#FAIL

This campaign is doing wonders for Max Brenners publicity, and they are laughing all the way to the bank.  I went to the Melbourne Central shop today.  The queues to order were out the door.  And yes, as always, there were many hijabs prominent. 

Thanks to Shirlee Finn for the write up and the photos.

More examples of Antisemitism at Left Wing rallies

Not afraid of ruins has blogged about Antisemitism that was encountered at a rally against Asset Sales in Wellington.  (Also covered by Kiwiblog here).

Last Saturday I went to the protest against asset sales organized by Aotearoa Not For Sale. I was marching with my friend Maia, discussing the latest episode of The Good Wife in between chants of ‘hey hey ho ho/John Key has got to go’.

Halfway up Willis St we overheard a guy behind us talking: ‘This is all because John Key is a money-hungry Jew.’ Maia immediately turned around and told him that he was being anti-Semitic and that it wasn’t ok (she’s great like that). The guy explained that she didn’t understand the historical context, that ‘they took over this country with their money’, before finally giving up and telling her ‘you must be Jewish’ (incidentally, she isn’t. Not that it’s relevant’).

By that point I’d already walked away. I was in no mood to hear about how I control the world’s money and am personally responsible for the economic recession.

This wasn’t the first time that anti-Jewish racism has cropped up at Aotearoa Not For Sale events. Last year a guy named Nathan Symington joined an anti-asset sales march in Auckland holding a skateboard with swastikas chalked on it. The same man was later charged with the racist vandalism of the Symonds St Jewish cemetery.

When an Auckland activist noticed that Symington had clicked ‘attending’ on a facebook page for an Aotearoa Not For Sale street party, she commented and asked the organisers to make a clear statement that racism and fascism weren’t welcome at this event. She was ignored and her comment was deleted. (I’m told that at the party itself one of the organisers did make a statement condemning racism. I don’t want to imply that everyone involved in ANFS ignores racism.)

There were similar instances of anti-Jewish racism at Occupy spaces in 2011, and on the facebook pages of several of the Occupy groups as well.

Unfortunately it is becoming more prevalent and open, and the organisers of these rallies are doing less and less about it.  If John Key was not of Jewish ancestry, this same malevolent behaviour would  still exist, except it would probably only be displayed at anti-Israel rallies.  There is a clear commonality between the two, and it is usually just rent-a-crowd attending.

Now what is interesting is that the author of this blog is "Nausea Nissenbaum".  I don't know this person, but his/her twitter bio describes themselves as:

"Born on occupied Palestinian land, living on occupied Māori land."

They are also heavily active in trying to get BDS to New Zealand (a facebook page of 60 or so likes).

I would ask this person - If you are so proudly "Jewish" that you want to stand up against racism, then what are you doing to identify as such?  Can you really just say "I was born a Jew, but I can hate Israel"? 

Where is your empathy with Jews living in Israel?  Where is the empathy with the constant threat of attack?  If it is all "stolen" land, then what about the actual money paid by your ancestors.  Or do you think like BDS and you want a Palestine next to a Palestine.  Two Islamic states side by side.

Really I am not surprised at all that there is antisemitism at these rallies.  What I am surprised about is your naivety about it, and naivety towards the other groups you are involve in.


 

Antisemitism on campus in NSW - "Sue me Jew"

AIJAC has two compelling posts regarding online hate speech on campus at UNSW.

They highlight some atrocious examplesof hate speech towards Jews on facebook.

I really appreciate AIJAC taking this stand, and highlighting this - my only question is why are New Zealanders so quiet over the same issue here. 

How about this one:

Or this:

Both taken from the Israel In New Zealand facebook page.  Just the tip of the iceberg, unfortunately.

Roger Waters gig scrapped over Israel comments

Interesting news that a Roger Waters gig in New York has been scrapped because of his repeated lies comments regarding Israel

Roger Waters' upcoming appearance at a Jewish cultural mecca in New York City has been cancelled following outrage from officials at a leading religious group.

The Pink Floyd star was scheduled to sit for an interview at the Theresa L Kaufmann Concert Hall at the end of the month. The show was rescheduled to June and now it has been scrapped altogether, according to an online ticket link to the event.

I actually quite like Pink Floyd's music, but I refused to attend RW's "The Wall" concert in Melbourne last year just because of his offensive stand.  Cop that!

What the BDS organisers should have told us

Good post on JPost Blogs - What the BDS Organisers should have told us

.But did you know that BDS leaders oppose the Palestinian Authority?

Well-intentioned supporters of BDS will be shocked to learn the real attitude of BDS organizers to the Palestinian Authority. Omar Barghouti is a founder and leader of BDS and this is how he described the PA in a 2004 article in The Electronic Intifada 

 “In the West Bank you have a largely quisling [traitor] government that is completely supporting Israel in anything it wants to do. They get immediate support from the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah, which is an unelected authority imposed by an American general”

 On October 2009 he wrote in Electronic intifada 

"The PA government there has illegally appropriated the PLO’s authority to conduct Palestinian diplomacy and set foreign policy, conceding Palestinian rights and acting against Palestinian national interests, without worrying about accountability to any elected representatives of the Palestinian people".   

And did you know that BDS opposes the two-state solution 

Many well-intentioned people believe the BDS movement is worthy of support because they mistakenly believe that BDS advocates the common goal to which the UN, the US, the EU and Russia as well as Israel all subscribe, namely two states, Israel and Palestine, existing side by side within agreed borders. But these supporters will be shocked to learn that in reality the BDS organizers actually oppose the two state solution.

 

Omar Barghouti disclosed in an article in The Electronic Intifada in 2004, that the true aim of BDS in his words is “euthanasia” for Israel. The objective of BDS, he said, is one state to which all Palestinian refugees and their descendants will “return”.
 

Barghouti is not referring to the original number of approximately 700,000 to whom the word “return” may apply but to the estimated 4.7 million presently defined by UNRWA as Palestinian refugees so as to kill the two-state solution. In his words 

 “The two-state solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is really dead. Good riddance”

While most well-intentioned BDS supporters consider calls to end the occupation as meaning adjustment of the 1967 lines in terms of resolution 242, Barghouti rejects this concept outright. He doesn’t recognize Israel’s right even to the pre-‘67 borders.

It is evident that well-meaning members of the public deserve to know a lot more about organizations and popular movements before giving them full support.

 

BDS use of the apartheid weapon

 The word “apartheid” is widely used as a pejorative propaganda epithet in the full knowledge that the description is unjustified.  As with every country in the world, there is much about Israel that justifies criticism, but apartheid is not among its warts.

 

Even Omar Barghouti, the most vocal critic of Israel admits that the apartheid description is inaccurate. In an interview with Electronic Intifada on May 31, 2009, he said, 

 ” We don’t have to prove that Israel is identical to apartheid South Africa in order to justify the label “apartheid.” 

Labeling Israel as an apartheid state comparable with the old South Africa is the most potent weapon in the armory of BDS promoters.  The argument goes like this. Sanctions were justified against South Africa because of apartheid. Therefore if we merely associate Israel with apartheid, no matter that the appellation is unjustified, the world will simplistically support sanctions against apartheid Israel.

 

In fact, real apartheid enforced by legislation is currently practiced in many countries including Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, but not in Israel.

See http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/id289.html

 

Even the new South Africa has been criticized for apartheid by none other than Al Jazeera.  In a TV program titled   "South Africa's new apartheid" Riz Khan asked

 “Is class-based discrimination South Africa's new apartheid?” http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/rizkhan/2010/11/2010112362142630788.html 

In the Guardian of June 24, 2010, American Palestinian writer Ahmed Moor wrote that the vast majority of the 400,000 Palestinian refugees born and raised in Lebanon don’t have anything approaching the privilege that he enjoys in the US. He said Lebanon is the most hostile country to Palestinian refugees after Israel. 

 “They are second-class citizens here. Racism is so widespread that African and Asian guest workers are openly barred from attending the beaches where Lebanese people frolic. And that's saying nothing of the often inhumane working conditions they are subjected to on a daily basis”.

See  http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/id289.html 

Former US Ambassador to the UN, Daniel Patrick Moynihan declared categorically that the situation in Israel is not apartheid. He added that racism under apartheid was skin color. “Applied to Israel that's a joke: for proof just look at a crowd of Israeli Jews and their gradations in skin-color from the blackest to the whitest”.

 

In “The apartheid analogy: Lessons for Israel” (Jerusalem Post Feb. 20, 2011), Professor Gideon Shimoni, an acknowledged expert on the subject, wrote 

 “While Israel's democratic constitution is certainly flawed, only hostile prejudice explains the ever-growing trend of comparing it with apartheid South Africa  ..in the propaganda war against Israel an equation is fabricated insidiously between the present State of Israel and the former apartheid state of South Africa. This must be exposed as a malicious slander, and utterly refuted”.

 

Indeed!

Scottish Professor responds to "Boycott Israel" on Campus

A great article on "Israel Frontline": Denis MacEoin, a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly, addresses The Committee  Edinburgh University Student Association

The Edinburgh Student's Association made a motion to boycott all things Israeli since they claim Israel is under an apartheid regime.  Dr. Denis MacEoin (a non-Jew) is an expert in Middle Eastern affairs.  

..

 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.

New Zealand Super Fund "Divests" from Israel

The New Zealand Super Fund (the government fund, also known as the "Cullen" fund) have announced that they have 'divested' from 3 companies linked with the Settlement Activity in the West Bank.

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund today announced that it had excluded three companies from its $20 billion investment portfolio on responsible investment grounds.

.. 

Findings by the United Nations that the Separation Barrier and settlement activities were illegal under international law were central to the Fund’s decision to exclude the companies, said Manager, Responsible Investment Anne-Maree O’Connor.

The Fund also factored in votes by New Zealand for UN Security Council resolutions demanding the cessation and dismantling of the Separation Barrier, and the cessation of Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The Fund also viewed the companies’ activities to be inconsistent with the UN Global Compact, the key benchmark against which the Fund measures corporate behaviour.

The companies in question are Elbit Systems Ltd, Shikun & Binui and Africa Israel Investments and subsidiary Danya Cebus.

They have quoted a few things from the UN, but there is no mention exactly as to what these companies are doing, or how they were contacted for response.

This is quite concerning, as they seem to have done this purely to get rid of some nuisance noises being made.  This smells of Lois Griffiths' crew - who are continual agitators in New Zealand.  This was announced in September - does it sound similar?

Petition 2008/143 of Lois Griffiths

and 382 others

Report of the Commerce Committee

The Commerce Committee has considered Petition 2008/143 of Lois Griffiths and 382

others, requesting “that the New Zealand Parliament ask the Guardians of the NZ

Superfund to disinvest the Fund from Elbit Systems, Caterpillar, G4S and three major

Israeli banks: Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi and Israel Discount Bank”, and has no matters

to bring to the attention of the House.

Jonathan Young

Chairperson

So you see, they were actually trying for a period of 18 months to get the Cullen fund to divest from all Israeli companies.

This got very little attention in New Zealand.  The amounts were very small (and it Elbit's case, no money at all).  But I think it sets a bad precedent.

The only recognition I saw was from the Green Party, and from Russell Norman, not the usual spokesperson - Kennedy Graham. While they "welcomed" it, it appears they were not involved in the action.

Academics boycott Peace

Andrew Bolt uncovers the hyposcrisy of Boycotting Israel

THE head of the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies has been slapped down by his faculty head for refusing to help a Jerusalem-based civics teacher to study in Australia.

The dean of the university’s arts and social science faculty, Duncan Ivison, yesterday wrote to Jake Lynch spelling out that “he does not speak for the faculty on visiting scholars and cannot make decisions about who comes here”.

Associate Professor Lynch caused outrage after he rejected a bid for assistance by Hebrew University of Jerusalem academic Dan Avnon, credited with developing Israel’s only state program in civics written for Jewish and Arab students, on the basis of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

Isn't it disgusting when the anti-Israel brigade boycott those that act for peace and unity?  It shows that being Academic (supposedly 'intelligent') doesn't mean you can reason logically without being bent by bias or hate.

JWire Joins BDS Protest

A good article in JWire by Michelle Coleman, who joined a BDS Protest "Undercover".

Quite short and an amusing read.  It is quite funny to hear about a South African being lectured about "Apartheid Israel" by people who don't even know what Apartheid means!

In South Africa, Blacks and Whites had separate buses and seats.  In Israel you'll end up mixing with Muslims, Jews, Christians, Africans and Thai.

Racists inside BDS ranks - Why are they only being noticed now?

There's been some talk for a while about BDS campaigner Greta Berlin, and some of the strange accusations she has made against Zionists.

Here's a long article by Bekah Wolf, herself an anti-zionist activist who is disgusted with the accusations of Berlin.

Some of the more wacky things include that "Zionists engineered the Holocaust", and "Nazi is an appropriation of National and Zionist"

As an anti-Zionist Jew who has been active in Palestine for 10 years, Greta Berlin's statements and the content of “Our Land” not only offend me, but they have damaged my ability to combat Zionist rhetoric by claiming that I cannot be both religiously Jewish and anti-Zionist.

I probably disagree with Wolf on nearly everything, but what she says here is very relevant to her own argument.  My question to Wolf on this matter is why have you had your eyes closed to the many other Greta Berlins.
 

What the BDS demands as "Justice"

Israelis just want to live in peace.  Peace is a pretty simple concept - you live in tolerance of your neighbours without fighting or violence (my paraphrasing).

BDS groups, such as John Minto, are always demanding Justice.  The concept of Justice has other synonyms such as revenge and retribution.

It's also almost impossible to define.  What level of "Justice" would be acceptable?  Here was one summary from one of the facebook "peace" groups:

OK, let me get this: we recognize 5 Million Palestinians as citizens, send most of our leaders and military commanders to the Hague to stand trial, pay billions in compensation to the refugees, never complain about statements attacking Jews or attacks on Jewish civilians because we are the opressors [sic], and accept the role of a tolerated guest in the new Citizen's country, even thoug [sic] the second largest Palestinian party still refuses to accept our presence, insults our religion, and attacks our civilians? Sure, I'm in! What could go wrong? And thanks for being so reasonable with us Khazars...if it doesn't work out, we're glad to pack uo [sic] and go to the Crimea or wherever we're supposed to have come from. And all along I thought you guys weren't moderate...

  Yes, Peace with Justice to the BDS team is really just a metaphor for the destruction of your neighbour. 

Kron on Victorian BDS Protesters

Kron has a very good cartoon on the Victorian BDS Protesters

Very simple and to the point.  Why can't you just demand peace rather than supporting violent retribution?

The answer is because your protest is fuelled by hate.

Nazi snapped at last night's nakba rally

Ross "The Skull" May

Well-known Australian Nazi, Ross “The Skull” May, joined with fellow demonstrators last night in chanting “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians”.

In the photo below taken last night, May is the bald man wearing the checked green shirt. He is marching next to and behind yellow Hezbollah flags. Hezbollah’s External Security Organisation is a prescribed terrorist organisation under Australia’s Criminal Code (Cth).

Protest against Israel .. at a Jewish Synagogue!

News broke yesterday that the local Anti-Israel crackpots were planning a protest outside a synagogue in Melbourne, on a Saturday afternoon

These morons usually stick to protesting Chocolate shops on Friday nights when any opposition will be sharing time with their families.  This time, they stupidly announced that they are clearly attacking Jewish Religion, not just the state of Israel.

Of course its not the first time.  In other centers, the protests are regularly outside the Shules.  Just look at the racist protests of John Minto in Auckland, or the Workers party in Wellington.  Strange also to protest ultra orthodox Adass, who don't officially believe the state of Israel can be created until Moshiach arrives.  To be fair, many non-ultra regular shule goers also attend this shule.

They changed their mind, and decided to move the protest to an office building.  I think this is more out of fear, that the 20 or so people that might show up will probably face thousands that reject their racist BS.

What a useless protest it will be, outside an empty office block in St Kilda Rd, with nobody listening from level 8.  Idiots.  Main protagonist is some whacko who has changed her name to "Vashti Jane".

Israel trades with Asia

No issues with BDS, or Asian clients recognising Israel

Israeli Media Tour in China

Israeli Aerospace deal in Asia

NSW Greens abandon BDS

After a year of lies, the NSW Greens have finally abandoned BDS

This is after being exposed as liars, losing the unloseable elections, and some embarrassing costings released.

They are still a bunch of anti semites, but now its no longer official policy.  Good news, I think.

Israeli Dancing banned from multicultural festival

Andrew Bolt has a story about a secular group being banned from a multicultural festival.

Very much looking forward to hearing more!