It was refreshing to read that the Israeli Foreign Ministry has responded to critical mouthings from EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton with a good serving of their own.

Under the heading Government slams Ashton’s meddling 

It was first noted that Ashton issued a statement saying she was “concerned by the conviction of 39-year-old Abdallah Abu Rahma in an Israeli military court on charges of incitement and organizing and attending demonstrations.

The Israeli response included:

1. “in Israel, where even those who openly support Hamas and Hizbullah enjoy freedom of speech, such accusations sound particularly hollow. Moreover, interfering with a transparent legal procedure of a democratic country is not just highly improper, but is hardly consistent with promoting European values.”

2. If Ashton wanted to replace Abu Rahama’s lawyers, she should say so. “Otherwise she should respect the ruling of the Israeli justice system, and refrain from casting aspersions on a legal system that is lauded world wide by its peers.”

3. Ashton’s statement “probably reflects that internalization of the anti-Israeli discourse that denies any merits or any legitimacy to Israeli democracy and its institutions.”

and

4. what made Ashton’s comments even more “open to ridicule” was that she found time to criticize Israeli justice, while ignoring troubles at home, such as the “curious release” by a Scottish court of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a year ago and the highly controversial ongoing expulsion of scores of Roma from France to Romania.

The defence/offence aphorism is variably attributed to Machiavelli, Mao, Carl von Clausewitz and Jack Dempsey. 

I found myself associating Ashton with clowns from a circus of the same name

A TV documentary on the Gaza Flotilla was recently shown on BBC Panorama Series.  The documentary which was made by Jane Corbin and entitled “Death in the Med” is shown here Part 1 and Part 2

The anti-Israel crowd, who are used to being stroked by the BBC, are agitated by the even-handedness displayed - as reported by the Jerusalem Post. and commented on here by Ray Cook.  Maybe, just maybe, the BBC is getting a clearer sense of what is happening - or else this is just an aberration.

President Obama has certainly ratcheted up emotion regarding the proposed Islamic centre and Mosque close to the New York Twin Towers site. 

By initially coming down on the side of the argument opposite to the opinion of 70% of polled Americans (that there is a right for the Mosque to be built there, but that it is not wise or respectful) , Obama has not done his fellow Democrat congressmen any favours.   By packpedalling on his initial comments,  he risks alienating part of the 30% who agreed with his initial comments.

Comments are noted in the Australian , a video of a discussion and from a  seattle paper

Bradley Blakeman said “President Obama needs to decide between being a “community organizer” or a president. The president has involved himself in local issues and controversy that does not rise to the level of presidential action or attention. When he does so, he puts his administration off-message, forces division within his own party and weakens his ability to lead and be respected. The president’s missteps are self-inflicted and thus inexcusable.”

The Presidents decision to wade in on this topic may go down as an own goal that rivals others here, here

After hearing about the Doctors without borders debacle, its interesting to read the latest about doctors who supposedly agreed that the convicted Libyan bomber had only 3 months to live.

According to the article from the Sunday Times, and reported in the Australian one of the treating doctors denied that he had been contacted by the Scottish authorites. 

As stated “Speaking publicly for the first time, Zak Latif, Megrahi’s urologist in Scotland, said: “I was surprised when I heard he was being released because I wasn’t really asked for my opinion . . . it’s a bit odd.”

And the doctor who actually certified the poor outlook, was actually paid by the Libyans!! 

“It has also emerged that the Scottish government consulted Ibrahim Sherif, a doctor paid by Libya to assess Megrahi. Dr Sherif concluded that Megrahi had only three months to live.”

And the British planned to make much money from Libyan contracts as a result of this deal.  Would you buy a used car from this government? 

Should Israel put any credence in statements or any assurances from Britain or “any other princes?”

Earlier this week came the news that yet another flotilla was preparing to set to sail seeking to break Israel’s “blockade” of Gaza. This flotilla is set to sail from Lebanon with a unique passenger manifest of doctors, lawyers, journalists, Christians and Muslims The all-women flotilla would also carry a group of nuns and a pregnant woman (see more). There is no mention as to whether the passenger list will include any jihadist cutthroat terrorists from Turkey or whether it will carry out-of-date stock as did the ill-fated Mavi Marmara in May of this year.

The obvious hypocrisy of this venture is nevertheless omnipresent. Here we have a group of women who claim to be concerned with human rights protesting against Israel while ignoring the numerous human rights’ violations by ruling Hamas in Gaza and other despots throughout the Middle East. Women protesting against Israel when studies have shown that since the brutal Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, 77% of women in Gaza face “at least one of several forms of violence at the hands of men” (see more).

And what of violations against women in other parts of the world? In this very week when I have read about 18 year old Bibi, an Afghani woman who had her ears and nose cut off by the Taliban because she attempted to run away from an abusive husband, and of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentence to death by stoning for adultery, I find a group of women protesting against the only true democracy in the Middle East. This is truly bizarre.

But beyond the blatant duplicity is something even more sinister. The spotlight has been on Lebanon for a few weeks now in between the UN tribunal that is investigating the murder of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri (which Hezbollah is trying to now pin on Israel) and the border clash with Israeli soldiers last week. Despite this, there has been a constant question in regard to Lebanon which nobody except for Israeli commentators seem to be asking, what about Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees?

For over thirty years now, more than 300,000 Palestinians in Lebanon have been living under filthy conditions in unsanitary refugee camps. They are restricted from professions such as medicine, law and engineering. They are denied access to health-care, are unable to own property and need a special permit to leave their towns. In a 2007 report Amnesty International stated that various restrictions placed Palestinians in Lebanon puts them “in a situation akin to that of second class citizens and denies them access to their full range of human rights” (see more). To read more analysis of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees see here and here.

It makes one wonder why the Palestinians in Lebanon are not cared for in the same way as the Palestinians in Gaza. Why is there no movement such as the Free Gaza movement supporting Palestinians in Lebanon? Why is it that the world media, student bodies, academics and others are so obsessed with the Israelis that they continue to ignore what is happening to Palestinians in the rest of the Arab world? (see more).

And how can the world simply accept a flotilla full of women travelling from Lebanon without asking any questions?

While Israel wonders how many investigations to have into the Flotilla,  the father of a groom got more than he bargained for in Turkey  CNN reports that three family members at a wedding in Turkey were accidentally shot dead by the groom firing an AK-47 rifle in celebration.

A correspondent writes “I’m convinced this was an accident. A truly homicidal groom would have targeted the florist, the photographer, the wedding planner, the caterer, the kids stealing the booze to drink out back…”

Noam Chomsky has caused a great deal of angst among the “progressive leftists”,  through his lukewarm support of the BDS movement.

Indeed, it has thrown the anti-Israel brigade into a real tizz.

Jeffrey Blankfort, described as growing up in a “non-Zionist Jewish home”  is most put out by Chomsky’s insufficiently anti-Israel fulminations.   Khalil Bendib conducted an interview with Chomsky, (which doesnt seem to be archived) which led to much angst.  Some of his remarks and a longer opportunity for critique by Ali Abunimah and Blankfort are here.

Chomsky even goes to the extent of calling (shock horror)  some of the BDS ’s hypocrites .. and bemoans BDS actions that are “feel good” and not “do good”.  He particularly is critical of Americans who favour boycotts of Israel but not of the U.S. .. and calls them hypocritical.

There’s got to be something funny about aging leftist Jews (plus the occasaional Palestinian) arguing as to who is the most Pro-Palestinian - “yes I am, no you’re not”.   I particularly liked Jeffrey Hammond’s article here   where he demolishes Blankfort’s efforts to demolish Chomsky.  The letter writing that follows the article is fast and furious,  and if you are strong enough you’ll find that after the first few hundred posts, Blankfort can’t resist and gets into a bit of mudslinging.

One of the letter writers provides an example  - “Your critics of Chomsky on the boycott issue are so hypocritical and misleading. Especially since the Professor agrees on some of these sanctions as long as they don’t hurt Palestinians (eg: boycott of an Israeli university that is fighting Israeli tactics, hence trying to help Palestinians). Sanctions would be useless if hypocritical, it’s pretty simple if you listen to the argument he makes. Don’t give ammunition to the opposition by supporting the wrong sanctions. He even gave you an example of a University to boycott, but it would be very sensitive that some people of this University are good people.   To the ethnic loyalty question, it seems your bias opinion did not allow you to listen to Chomsky’s answer. “It is a factor insofar as i does not conflict with dominant US interests”. When Israel goes against US interest like they did in 2005 while trying to reach a deal with China for arm exports, US stopped them and got them to apologise.”

Is there honour among thieves or is it a Train Wreck?

Tony Judt’s illness and recent death has reopened discussion of his anti-Zionist viewpoint.  The Jerusalem Post had an editorial overview here.

As the article states: “The London-born Judt – who passed away on Friday at the age of 62 at his home in Manhattan, after being diagnosed two years ago with Lou Gehrig’s disease – produced remarkably lucid and readable studies of 19th and 20th century social history. However, it was the New York University lecturer’s polemical essays and public statements against Zionism, and his rejection of the legitimacy of the Jewishness of the State of Israel, that thrust him onto the public stage.

In a much-cited October 2003 essay in The New York Review of Books, here Judt called to dismantle the state and to replace it with “a single, integrated, bi-national state” between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – a recipe for national suicide for the sovereign Jewish entity.

This categorical rejection of Zionism put him in a class with other contemporary Jewish intellectuals of the Diaspora such as Jacqueline Rose, Michael Neumann and Joel Kovel, who have chosen to single out Israel for opprobrium that is rarely, if ever, directed at other countries that choose to adopt unique religious or cultural-based nationalities.

At the center of Judt’s attacks on Israel was a stubborn refusal to accept the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in a distinctly Jewish state. In the above-mentioned article, entitled “Israel: The Alternative,” Judt posited that Israel artificially imported “a characteristically late-19th-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers and international law.”

For Judt, an “ethno-religious” state that provides special privileges to its Jewish citizens – such as the Law of Return – and seeks to preserve its Jewish character through Jewish symbols, is an anachronism “in an age when that sort of state has no place.”

Yet Judt applied totally different rules when he scrutinized nationalism outside of the Israeli context. In A Grand Illusion? An Essay on Europe, Judt acknowledged that the nation-state was “the only remaining, as well as the best-adapted, source of collective and communal identification.”

With all the desire for a supranational framework that provides universal equality, and eradicates the bigotry and discriminations of cultural and religious distinctions that cause war and strife, argued Judt, there is no substitute for the social cohesion and communal identification provided by a unique national identity.

Therefore, a “truly united Europe” is so unlikely that it would be “unwise and self-defeating to insist upon it.” As a result, Judt was extremely pessimistic about attempts to create a politically homogeneous Europe devoid of borders and cultural distinctions.  For Israel, by contrast, the time has come to “move on,” “to think the unthinkable,” to replace the Jewish state with “a single, integrated, bi-national state of Jews and Arabs,” in his vision. For Judt, European particularism was an undeniable fact, but the Jewish variety was outdated.

WHY THE double standard? Irrational prejudices are difficult, if not impossible, to fathom, belonging as they do to the murky realm of the psyche.

.. what really seemed to have bothered Judt was his subjective feeling that, as an identifiable Jew, he was somehow being represented by Israel.  “The behavior of a self-described Jewish state affects the way everyone else looks at Jews,” wrote Judt. His solution? Do away with the Jewishness of the state.”

Other critiques and articles about Judt are here, here, here, here, here and here.
 

Turning to Israelis, a detailed article entitled “The Sad Status of Israeli Radicalism”was recently published by Assaf Sagiv, the Editor in Chief of Azure here  It provides a good perspective - and emphasising that the pre 1967 boundaries are not regarded by the radicals as the legimitate ones.  Instead they call into question the entire validity of Israel. 

Sagiv critiques the views of the radicals in a clear and compelling way.

The Blank Pages of the Age blog has a disturbing piece medicins sans SHAME  about the depths of anti-Israel bias and hypocrisy stooped to by Medicins sans frontiers. 

An explanatory article from Haaretz is here.

As the Blank Pages of the Age blog states:

I received a copy of the following via email:-

The Chief Operational Officer,
Medcins Sans Frontiers
-Australian Office
-New York Office

Dear Sir/Madam

When my daughter wed in July 2006, in lieu of gifts she asked for donations to be made to Doctors without Borders / Medcins Sans Fontiers as our family had always supported the Group.

Well, I have a regret. 

 I’ve just read  a presentation by Alan Dershowitz - http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/dershowitz/entry/moonbats_against_israel_posted_by  which you too should read and think about. 

Doctors Without Borders erected borders when it comes to Israeli doctors who flew to the Congo to treat 50 local villagers who had been severely burned.   The Israeli volunteers worked around the clock, treated the burn victims and trained local doctors to perform skin grafts, and donated tons of medical equipment.   But  Doctors Without Borders refused to work with the Israeli medics and para medics and treated them “as though we were occupiers.” - quoted one Israeli medic.

 Dr. Marie Pierre Allie, President of the French branch of the organization, said that Israel’s self defense actions in Gaza were actually worse than the Darfur genocide in the Sudan.   Only a blind moonbat could even make such a comparison!  

MSF has an apparent  problem with one democratic Jewish State  but  is quite at ease with the existence  and actions of 56 dysfunctional & corrupt Islamic states.

As one critic has put it well, “These are Doctors With Borders - but without scruples.”

Perhaps you may wish to check out  http://theredhunter.com/2009/04/doctors_without_borders_running_cover_for_terrorists.php . - or just Google <”Doctors without Borders” Israel> and you will get more confirmation of the reactions around the world. 

My family will no longer donate to Doctors without Borders ( Medcins sans Frontiers) until this cynical, hateful and bitter culture towards Israel  - which obviously emanates from the top, ceases. 

I shall disseminate this email as widely as I can and shall ask recipients to forward it on also.

……………………….

Doctors with Hypocrisy,  Doctors without scruples, Doctors without shame!  What a disgrace when supposed healers (heelers?) behave like this -  and they have the CHEEK to call themselves Doctors without borders!! 

However you like to address them - next time you receive a letter requesting a donation from Medicins sans frontiers,  send it back enclosing a copy of the Haaretz article and a “Please explain”.   The Red Cross ended up pulling their heads in regarding anti-Israel bias,  maybe this doctors outfit will also have a rethink.

A brilliantly successful inaugural meeting of the Friends of Israel - Western Australia was held earlier today (Sunday) in Perth - see here. for their website and a summary of the organisation.

Mission statements included:

Support Israel as the State of the Jewish people; Defend Israel’s right to live in peace and security; Ensure accurate and fair reporting on the Middle East.

According to an initial article:  1500 West Australians, including over 100 Federal and State Parliamentarians and community leaders converged on the Victory Life Centre in Osborne Park to stand up and support Israel.

“The Friends of Israel (WA) Inc (“FOIWA”) enables Western Australians to take a stand for democratic values and freedoms  by supporting Israel, a champion of those values in the Middle East; and a nation on the front lines of the global battle between those who love life and those who glorify death…   Join us and identify with the many Western Australians who aren’t fooled by the relentless propaganda campaign by Israel’s enemies to vilify her, undermine her legitimacy, and ultimately destroy the only homeland of the Jewish people.  We don’t need to agree on everything, but we respect diversity, and we do believe in democracy, freedom, respect for life and that Israel deserves our support.”

Congratulations to Western Australia for this step that emphasises the bipartisan support of Israel, and the common values and historical ties that link Australian and Israel, particularly important during these times of threat to Israel and Western values,  and bias and efforts at delegitimisation of Israel.