tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50344244759683803282024-03-05T07:22:29.360-08:00The Bilateralist. Please go to: https://msolovitz.wixsite.com/mysiteTolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.comBlogger241125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-44300797032329713362017-12-08T05:06:00.000-08:002017-12-13T09:15:46.698-08:00If I forget thee O Jerusalem<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span lang="EN-US">So <st1:city w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:city> is now formally the Capital of Israel, at least
according to <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region> and the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">United States of America</st1:country-region></st1:place>.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">It could have
happened on so many different occasions in the past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the Muslim threats of violence,
buttressed, even encouraged by <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>’s
fawning – obsequious and sycophantic rejection of President Trump’s
announcement can help us to understand why this declaration is long overdue.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Manuel
Hassassian, chief Palestinian representative to <st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region>,
declared Trumps’ announcement to be “a war against hundreds of millions of
Christians that are not going to accept the holy shrines to be totally under
the hegemony of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>.”
(Metro, page 5, December 7, 2017).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
wait a minute. Christians have been tortured, murdered, and ethnically cleansed
throughout the Near-East at the hands of Muslims, not Jews!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Muslim extremists have committed genocide against the
most ancient of the Christian communities of the <st1:place w:st="on">Middle
East</st1:place>. Muslims have destroyed churches and killed hundreds of
Christians inside of churches in terror attacks. They have chased away most of
the regions Christians just as they did the regions Jews. Only in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region> are they safe and only in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> have
their numbers increased. So I find this number “hundreds of millions” both
comical and inflammatory. He may be trying to foster a heightened anti-Semitic
reaction by the progressive churches in the non-Muslim world. But even his
numbers do not add up. The big lie coupled with incendiary statements that
cannot ever be possibly proven is consistent with Palestinian historical
creativity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is this creativity that
by and large dismisses any Jewish connection to the <st1:place w:st="on">Holy
land</st1:place> and ignores any crimes that are committed in the name of
Allah or his prophet.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">We need to go
back some considerable time to understand how we have arrived at this day.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The ending of
the <st1:place w:st="on">Ottoman Empire</st1:place> happened in parallel with
the ongoing collapse of far more powerful European empires. The failure of the Russian
and Austro-Hungarian Empire occurred along with the ongoing disintegration of
the British, German, French, Italian and Belgian empires. All this created the
global impetus for minorities to seek independence from their colonial overlords.
</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The Arabs were
eager to supplant the Ottoman’s who were not so affectionately referred to as
the Sick Man of Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sharif Hussein
ibn-Ali was keen to become the new dictator of the Muslim world. But he needed
the British to achieve his aim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:country-region w:st="on">Armenia</st1:country-region> and <st1:place w:st="on">Eastern Thrace</st1:place>
were both Christian nations intended to be freed from Ottoman domination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kurdistan and <st1:place w:st="on">Anatolia</st1:place>
should also have been freed. The problem was never that Sykes-Picot gave
self-determination to Muslim nations. The real problem was always that the
successor Arab nations (and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Turkey</st1:place></st1:country-region>)
were incapable of respecting the minorities within their borders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And though initially both <st1:country-region w:st="on">Turkey</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Saudi
Arabia</st1:country-region>’s leaders viewed with favor the establishment of a
national Jewish entity in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:city>,
it was their greed that inevitably overcame their rational judgment that a
Jewish state would be a stabilizing influence in the region.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">And it was a
British desire to retain its influence in the region that undermined its
credibility – and led to its betrayal of the British Mandate in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:city>. That mandate
was supposed to lead to a national homeland for the Jews even as it was clear
that it would protect non-Jewish rights in the allotted Jewish state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><span lang="EN-US">Britain</span></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-US"> betrayed that
mandate by choosing to appoint to its most important Arab liaison post in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:city>, Hajj Amin Husseini.
This man was well suited to the elitist inclinations of the British ruling
classes –he was from an old, wealthy Arab family that traced its roots back to
Mohammed’s grandson Ali, he was a businessman and he was virulently anti-Semitic.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region> sentenced him to ten years
imprisonment for inciting a murderous anti-Jewish pogrom in 1920 that kicked
off the Palestinian National movement as an exercise in race riots and
religiously inspired violence.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">By handing over
the top religious and administrative post in <st1:city w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:city>
(and hence <st1:city w:st="on">Palestine</st1:city>) to Husseini, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region> fatally
undermined its own position in the area. While the Mufti of Jerusalem (as he
was known) was very happy to make his fortune from selling land to Jews
throughout modern day <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
he also had aspirations to become feudal dictator of a pan-Arab empire.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Why did <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>
undermine its own position in the region? Perhaps one can only explain the
inexplicable, by reference to a paragraph in Chaim Weizmann’s
autobiography:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he narrates how he met up
with General (Sir Wyndham) Deedes (Chief Secretary to the British High
Commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine) who handed Weizmann “a few
sheets of typewritten script...I read the first sheet<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>asking what could be the meaning of all this
rubbish...(he replied) ‘you had better read all of it with care; it is going to
cause you a great deal of trouble in the future.’ This was my first meeting
with extracts from the Protocols of the Elders<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>of Zion” he then said, “You will find it in the haversack of a great
many British officers here-and they believe it! It was brought over by the
British Mission which has been serving in the <st1:place w:st="on">Caucasus</st1:place>
on the staff of the Grand Duke Nicholas” (Trial and Error P273).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And later (P279) “Jews were not trusted, and
had to be turned out; Arabs, who were known to cross the enemy lines
repeatedly, were left unmolested.”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Demographically,
even as it went against the best interests of all Jews and Arabs in the area, this
unregulated Arab traffic shifted the balance massively against Jewish immigration
into <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:city>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hostility that Jews experienced was
understood correctly, to provide a green light to violent confrontation against
the Jewish presence in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:city>.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">What was not
understood was that the Arab world would take what it could from the British
but rather than assist in furthering the Anglo-Arab relationship it was always
viewed as no more than demonstrating the weakness of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Appeasement, particularly when it relates to
violence, never works. What it does encourage, in every case, is a vortex of
bloodshed that spirals out of everyone’s control. It suited the Arab thugs
pouring into <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:city>
because they could only profit from the inevitable chaos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Husseini was at the centre of this web of
violence and death.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Historically,
the Jewish residents of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:city>
were referred to as Palestinians. The Arabs identified themselves either as
South Syrian Arabs or Muslims of the greater <st1:place w:st="on">Ottoman
Empire</st1:place>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was only in 1964
when the original Palestine National Charter was written by the first PLO
Chairman, Ahmed Shukeiry, that the wholesale theft of Jewish identity was
brilliantly achieved – in naming the Arabs ‘Palestinians’ they not only stole
Jewish Palestine’s identity, they stole its history as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>George Orwell would have been proud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His book cynically predicted the ease with
which societies can choose to believe (and disbelieve) anything and will
enthusiastically embrace every lie if it reinforces their existing prejudices.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Books aside, it
is instructive that in reflecting the pan–Arab nationalism that was rampant
throughout the region (though mainly with intellectuals and secular Arabs) the
main objective of the Palestinian National Charter was shown to be the
destruction of the State of Israel. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><span lang="EN-US">Jerusalem</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-US"> had a Jewish majority from the 1820’s or 1860’s depending on how
you count the population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the 1820’s
Judaism was the majority religious faith. By the 1860’s Jews ‘enjoyed’ a
numerical majority presence in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:place></st1:city>.
They did not enjoy the rights of either Muslims or Christians and were
occasionally persecuted but this was par for the course in both the Ottoman
Empire and in <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">It is under
these conditions that a movement for self-determination based on changing
demographics and global opportunities for minority independence should be
understood when reviewing Israeli history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Zionism was tangential but not a primary basis for Jewish sovereignty in
<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:city>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It became the engine for accelerated
self-determination exacerbated by British policies that ran counter to its
mandated responsibilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the horrific
occurrences in World War 2 expedited a positive decision on Jewish independence,
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region>’s “Arabs-only” open-border
policy, with its concomitant revocation of Jewish rights in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:city>, was its parallel set of negative activities
and it is not possible to divorce one from the other without being accused of
historical sectarianism, historical fallacy and unmitigated bigotry and
prejudice. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">In the early
1990’s in the heady days of optimism, when the <st1:city w:st="on">Oslo</st1:city>
accords were still young and reality was momentarily discarded, Yasser Arafat’s
minions in the United Nations ensured that over 90 per cent of all Security
Council resolutions condemned <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
and the General Assembly was only marginally less focused on attacking Jewish
rights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this day, some 25 per cent of
all resolutions at the UN are dedicated to condemning <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Its pinnacle may
not yet have been reached.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>December 2016
saw a resolution that totally ignored the Jewish connection with <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:place></st1:city>. Within the
last month or two a total of 1,300 million dollars has been allocated to the
Palestinians for their legal fight against <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> – to be spent over the next
five years. This is paid for by the USA, Canada, fourteen or so European nations and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Japan. They</st1:place></st1:country-region>
provide almost all of the United Nations’ budgetary needs. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Not the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Vatican</st1:country-region> nor <st1:country-region w:st="on">France</st1:country-region>
nor <st1:country-region w:st="on">Germany</st1:country-region> nor <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, nor
any other country seems willing to stop this obscenity, the United Nations, as
it continues its war against the Jewish nation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If conflict has created some 500 million refugees since the end of the
Second World War in 1945, and some 100 million deaths from war in the same
period of time, the Israel-Arab wars are but an infinitesimal percentage of the
total. Unfortunate and immoral to deal in numbers but also a beacon of
injustice in this world.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">For the first 19
years of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s
independence and after the Jordanians had committed cultural genocide against
the Jews of Jerusalem the world said nothing; the United Nations did not offer
us a single resolution in protest. There was not a lone diplomat who visited
the region to protest the destruction of Jewish cultural property in <st1:place w:st="on">East Jerusalem</st1:place>. No politician or diplomat demanded to
know why Jews were barred from Judaism’s holiest sites. We forget this past and
the Western public does not care, but they will always tell us that we are
ungrateful for not trusting them to protect us, (as they always have done!)</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Can you imagine
a history of the twentieth century that describes it as peaceful and
uneventful? The spotlight on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
is breathtaking in its failure of international will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The focus on the Jewish State is the reason
that the United Nations Organization does not deserve to exist in any form.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The old-guard of
the Palestinian national movement is incapable of accepting the legitimacy of
Jewish people-hood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Abbas has played out
his professional life in the pursuit of delegitimizing our history, we should appreciate
that this is the real reason there has not ever been a genuine peace process.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The legality of a
states’ right to protect its cultural and religious heritage are not questioned
except when it come to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region></st1:place>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Recognizing the centrality of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:place></st1:city> to Judaism goes
against the current global ‘consensus.’</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">It is time to
fight back against the rewriting of history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region></st1:place>’s
diplomats and all of its knowledgeable supporters must be united in correcting
this conspiracy against history.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">I will leave you
with a quote from the current Palestinian President for Life, Mahmoud
Abbas:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I will never recognize the
Jewish state, not in a thousand years!” </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">This <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i>
the reason there is no peace process.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">President
Trump’s correction of an historic anomaly is a long overdue correction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And only a first step.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-66897144159432058212017-10-21T05:25:00.001-07:002017-10-21T05:33:01.243-07:00Stuck in the same old political rut - weakness, prejudice and the no where game<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Egypt</st1:place></st1:country-region> gave the world the Muslim
Brotherhood, the institution that has spread across the globe as a cross
between the Institution of the Inquisition and the Knights Templar. Its most
recent activist successor is Islamic State. It is noteworthy that in a country
without Jews to blame, Muslims blame Christianity for the failure of the Arab
Spring.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
The Muslim Brotherhood was the
creation of Hassan al-Banna, in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Egypt</st1:place></st1:country-region>
in 1928.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its fountainhead was devoid of
any connection to Zionism or Jews. It was (and is to this day) socially
regressive. It was created in response to British colonial attempts at reform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It demanded as it continues to demand the
elevation of sharia law to a position of domination over everyone.<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Zionism also had an idealised
foundation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But whereas the Muslim
Brotherhood attempted to establish a solid link between seventh century Islam
and the contemporary world, the philosophy and vision of Zionism was in complete
contrast to Islamism’s latest radical creation in a never ending progression of
extremist Islamist positions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zionism rejected
superstition, it discarded bigotry and it rebuffed any inclination towards a hegemonic
religious, totalitarian vision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zionism
created a Declaration of Independence which forms the inspiration behind <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s Basic
laws.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is worthwhile to repeat part
of that founding Declaration:<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
“The State of Israel will ….be
based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region></st1:place>;
it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its
inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of
religion, conscience, language, education and culture…”<span style="color: #993300;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
It is something that has skewered
Israeli political and moral thinking. In <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>, realistically, equality
exists in law but not in practice. That does not make <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> unusual
or unique. It just makes the State of Israel normal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Democratic institutions strive to create a
consensus towards equality but it is an ongoing dialogue that is continuously
being tested under changing conditions. That is the frailty and the strength of
democracy.<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger (1973-77) lived the American dream but never escaped the nightmare of
anti-Semitism. He admitted to confronting social prejudice at every stage in
his career even as he became one of the most influential people in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>. And as
a Jew, he could always be put in his place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nevertheless, the greatness of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> is that he was able to
dream, and minus the Presidency (he was foreign born), he could reach for the
stars.<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Courage is a pivotal requirement
in achieving any dream, and peace is impossible without it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But peace between <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region>
and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Palestine</st1:city></st1:place>
is becoming more difficult to achieve with every day and it is because of
ongoing incitement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there is no
violence or threat of violence then people can and do live freely
together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Settlements are nascent
villages and towns – they can become the core of inter-communal reconciliation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But incitement, because it creates fear also
demonstrates a negotiation conducted in bad-faith. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is because people who are frightened
forge maximalist positions to protect themselves from their enemy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As gaps grow and positions harden the
possibility of reconciliation decreases.<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Palestinians never cease to
incite hatred of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s
Jewish population while promoting demands reminiscent of their previous periods
of historical prejudice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>President for
Life Mahmoud Abbas tells the world that his country will be Judenrein (Cleansed
of Jews). He rewrites our history to eradicate Jewish history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Western liberals, if they acknowledge this
war-crime, this cultural ethnic cleansing, perhaps see it as no more than a negotiation
tactic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is naïve at best and at
worst it is telling the victim to trust his abuser. The nullification of anything
precludes its negotiation. It is an aggressive strategy created in that same bad-faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fatah honoured its jailed leader Marwan
Barghouti because he had killed “61 Zionists”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When we glorify killers we also send out a message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sticks and stones will break your bones but
with words begin the slaughter. It is argued that Yasser Arafat had more blood
on his hands – he killed Muslims as well as Jews indiscriminately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But grandstanding, telling your supporters
that someone who killed 61 Zionists is to be honoured has a parallel, wholly
negative message to the seven million or so Zionists who live in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region> and to the tens of millions of Zionists
living outside of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region></st1:place>.<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Our enemies understand the
importance of the War of Ideas in winning over the hearts and minds of
world-wide public opinion. We do not. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
2016, Belgian lawmakers across the political spectrum nominated the mass-murderer,
Marwan Barghouti, for the Nobel Peace Prize. They were expressing support for
Palestinian violence; a tactic that Europeans selectively applaud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To many Israeli’s it must seem to be stating
that murdering Jewish civilians, either singly or in mass-killing events, is
legitimate, which given European history, is a position laden with irony; unfortunate
if not historically consistent in its bias.<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
President Mahmoud Abbas received
his doctorate by denying the Shoah and associating Zionism with Nazism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He later justified his position with
reference to the ongoing state of war between the two peoples (Jews and
Muslims) and “in 2013 he reasserted the veracity of the contents of his thesis.”<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Let’s be clear on this issue of
incitement:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone who predicates their
position vis-à-vis the other by engaging in Holocaust Denial and historical
revisionism is ill-placed to demand trust from Israelis of all affiliations, Jews,
or for that matter, from anyone of moral standing.<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Jews also do not always practice peaceful
or even a sensible inter-communal dialogue. The Irgun had a maximalist approach
to Jewish land claims prior to 1948.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
are many people on the radical Right who retain the conviction that the
Palestinians in Judea and <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Samaria</st1:place></st1:city>
can be simply ‘wished away.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ultra-orthodox
Jews who were powerless for so many centuries are now partners in political
power and have ensured that their own maximalist religious demands are met,
even when they violate the democratic and secular principles that govern <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>. The
ultra-left has adopted a Western and frankly anti-Semitic agenda in its
adoption of a post-Zionist position towards the conflict. What is anti-Semitic
is that it nowhere demands the same post-national requirement of any other
nation or group, anywhere; therefore the Jews of Israel are uniquely expected
to renounce their equal human rights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And trust to whom, in the face of which precedent, to protect them?<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
The Left is an elitist amalgam of
old-school egotists unable to relate to the electorate it (the Left) must
attract in order to have any chance of winning back power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is unelectable because it refuses to
discuss the unique circumstances that make <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region></st1:place>’s local political landscape
so challenging. <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s
calamitous political soap-opera lacks a strong, credible opposition that can
provide an alternative to a political Right wing which disrespects any
divergent points of view.<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Since 1977, Labour has governed
between the years of 1984-1986, 1992-1996 and 1999-2001. That is eight years
out of the previous forty years. Realistically, the longer a party controls
political power the less responsive it becomes to human rights and the general
good of the people it was elected to serve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Being positively responsive to democratic principles (i.e.
accountability, transparency and political tolerance) fades as the length of
rule grows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those that hold onto power
for too long close their hearts as well as their minds to all but the
supporters they manipulate in order to retain their control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tyranny begins with there being an incomplete
restraint on an abusive relationship between stake-holders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It inevitably leads to enslavement because it
becomes increasingly more difficult to rein in the unreasonable demands of a
privileged minority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any corrupt
ideological process nurtures a culture of dependency and a sense of exclusive
entitlement is central to any narrowly focused world view.<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<cite><span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial";"><a href="http://www.lawanddemocracy.org/pdffiles/amazing.prin..pdf"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="color: blue;">www.lawanddemocracy.org/pdffiles/amazing.prin..pdf</span></span></a></span></cite><o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
The importance of having a
credible opposition is that the party in power is unlikely to make the hard
decisions that are required to advance peace when it does not feel its hold on
political power is under threat from its political rivals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While our enemies re-write history and
intimidate us into silence it is only as a united society that we can
effectively argue for justice for us too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It becomes increasingly difficult to make peace with our external
enemies when we are disunited and when internal debate is heavily circumscribed
in order to mitigate an ever more acrimonious atmosphere of tribalism and
exclusion.<cite><span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial";"><o:p> </o:p></span></cite></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Zionism does not preclude sharing
the land. Islamism, Arabism and the Boycott movement (BDS) do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>, in becoming a post-Zionist,
me-centric society is unable to put together cogent arguments to combat its
enemies’ segregationist, maximalist and anti-Semitic arguments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-66189793134101836892017-01-21T14:48:00.000-08:002017-01-21T23:02:55.363-08:00Donald Trump, Deplorables, Democrats and Danger to Democracy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">A
failure of democracy occurs when a lawfully elected individual is
denied legitimacy by his or her opponent who then continues to
agitate for that non-recognition. It is not fascism to disagree with
a result, nor is fascism defined by a desire to want to change the
present system of government or the electoral system. But when a
consistent policy of questioning; of undermining a result in order to
repudiate that result, occurs, then eventually violence will become a
logical call to arms in defence of opposition to what will be seen,
to be, an unjust result.</span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The
suppression of free speech is a key component of the fascists bag of
tricks. There are many ways to suppress free speech and I am not
calling for it. I would however, like to provide people with one of
the myriad definitions of fascism, with thanks to Zack Parker: In its
simplicity and categorical consistency, in its visceral emotion and
outrage, and, in its stereotyping, (in this case, by the labelling by
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, of Republican voters as ‘the
Deplorables’) it places into a category of (sub) humanity those
people who voted for Donald Trump - (‘the enemy’). </span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">All
this makes it much easier to establish a narrative of grievance, to
ennoble that narrative and then, to suppress any opposition to the
only ‘correct’ narrative, in the name of fairness. All this is
what makes it fascism. Today, the Democrat Party is the polite face
of fascism.</span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">It
is not to say that the opposition to President Donald Trump are wrong
about the threat his populism poses, but equally, taking every
opportunity to deny the legitimacy of the President of the United
States not only threatens the life of that President but also damages
the institution of the Presidency itself. Because the United States
of America is the world’s leading democratic nation, discrediting
one discredits all and in its place, strengthens the followers of
fascism (and theocratic totalitarianism).</span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Ignoring
the concerns of the everyman and the everywoman is not smart nor
progressive but contemptuous. And that probably cost the Democrats
the election. It isn’t rocket science. Calling 50% of the
electorate “deplorables” was an unforgivable insult to 50% of the
electorate. I am not comfortable with the idea that dismissing the
result of the presidential election because they were uncomfortable
with the persons personality (behaviour) is democratically
acceptable. In fact it is fascism.</span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">It
is ironic that I accused Trumps supporters of inciting violence
during the presidential elections (Donald Trump and the Race for the
White House).</span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a class="western" href="http://thebilateralist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/donald-trump-and-race-for-whitehouse.html"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">http://thebilateralist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/donald-trump-and-race-for-whitehouse.html</span></span></a>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is the Democrats who now pose the greatest threat to American
interests at home and abroad. I feared Trumps supporters but it is
now the Democrats I fear most.</span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It was decided that the
Oxford dictionaries international word of the year for 2016 was
post-truth.” It reflected the ‘highly-charged’
political environment of the previous 12 months. The Oxford
Dictionary defined the word as an adjective ‘relating to
circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in
shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.’ Does it sound
familiar? Post-truth is an integral tool in the spread of the fascist
poison.</span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is </span><span style="font-size: small;">with </span><span style="font-size: small;">some
</span><span style="font-size: small;">embarrassment that I
</span><span style="font-size: small;">find </span><span style="font-size: small;">Jewish
</span><span style="font-size: small;">connections, even here.
</span><span style="font-size: small;">The Jewish people </span><span style="font-size: small;">have
been called ‘the canary in the </span><span style="font-size: small;">coal
</span><span style="font-size: small;">mine’ for </span><span style="font-size: small;">a
very long time and it is because </span><span style="font-size: small;">fa</span><span style="font-size: small;">scism
targets</span><span style="font-size: small;"> their </span><span style="font-size: small;">liberties
</span><span style="font-size: small;">first that </span><span style="font-size: small;">it
is always Jews and Judaism that </span><span style="font-size: small;">initially,
</span><span style="font-size: small;">suffer </span><span style="font-size: small;">most</span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-size: small;">(because of their acute
awareness of its corrosive impact on their human rights)</span><span style="font-size: small;">.
</span><span style="font-size: small;">The BDS movement </span><span style="font-size: small;">has
been </span><span style="font-size: small;">enthusiastic</span><span style="font-size: small;">al</span><span style="font-size: small;">ly</span><span style="font-size: small;">
embrace</span><span style="font-size: small;">d</span><span style="font-size: small;">
by Western universities. </span><span style="font-size: small;">BDS
</span><span style="font-size: small;">is the ideal example of
a fascist conspiracy to ‘own’ the truth and suppress at any cost,
any and all contrary narratives. </span><span style="font-size: small;">And
i</span><span style="font-size: small;">t is o</span><span style="font-size: small;">nly
</span><span style="font-size: small;">because of the success
of the anti-Zionist narrative, which is in its essence, a
‘post-truth’ antisemitic movement, that </span><span style="font-size: small;">the
concept of </span><span style="font-size: small;">p</span><span style="font-size: small;">o</span><span style="font-size: small;">st</span><span style="font-size: small;">-</span><span style="font-size: small;">truth
</span><span style="font-size: small;">has infiltrated and
taken hold </span><span style="font-size: small;">throughout
the Western</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">world</span><span style="font-size: small;">.
When the lie can so easily become the truth and the truth so easily
become</span><span style="font-size: small;">s</span><span style="font-size: small;">
the lie then we are living </span><span style="font-size: small;">G</span><span style="font-size: small;">eorge
Orwell's dystopian </span><span style="font-size: small;">future</span><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For
decades </span><span style="font-size: small;">journalists
</span><span style="font-size: small;">have been manufacturing
the news. But </span><span style="font-size: small;">while
</span><span style="font-size: small;">their target </span><span style="font-size: small;">was
only the Jewish State of </span><span style="font-size: small;">Israel
and its supporter</span><span style="font-size: small;">s</span><span style="font-size: small;">,
</span><span style="font-size: small;">no one seemed to care.
</span><span style="font-size: small;">Wh</span><span style="font-size: small;">en
</span><span style="font-size: small;">Jews and Zionists</span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-size: small;">have often </span><span style="font-size: small;">been
</span><span style="font-size: small;">marginalised through
violence </span><span style="font-size: small;">and
propaganda; through controlling the dissemination of </span><span style="font-size: small;">largely
false or inaccurate </span><span style="font-size: small;">information
via universities and international organisations, </span><span style="font-size: small;">the
response </span><span style="font-size: small;">has been a</span><span style="font-size: small;">t
</span><span style="font-size: small;">best </span><span style="font-size: small;">indiffere</span><span style="font-size: small;">n</span><span style="font-size: small;">ce
and at worst, encouragement</span><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">O</span><span style="font-size: small;">ne
of CNN’s reporters openly boasts that she has the right </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">to
choose </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">how
to interpret the news </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">–
she omits </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">the
detail that she and her </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">fellow
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">journalists
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">reserve
the right to </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">manufactur</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">e
the news based on </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">their</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
unequal interpretation of an ethical standard that </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">w</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">ould
never be acceptable under a Western legal system. </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">That
legal system is </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">theoretically
anchored in </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">the
concept of </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">equal
justice for all. But if by laying claim to a progressive agenda,
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">journalists
can dismiss what is termed ‘an inconvenient truth’ and only
report what they care about, then they </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">also
exercise the right to </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">betra</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">y
any person, </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">group
or nation they ‘decide’ are at fault.</span></span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
quote Christiane Amanpour: “There are some situations one simply
cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an
accomplice. Objectivity doesn’t mean treating all sides equally. It
means giving each side a hearing,” so she argued in response to
criticism. The issue here is that historically, journalism has rarely
suffered honest reportage. As Christiane indicates by the above,
that dishonesty is no different today.</span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
started this blog by discussing my fears about the failure of
democracy. Many on the Left are crying that the Russian Federation
has undermined American democracy though a putative, an alleged
connection between Vladimir Putin (former director of the FSB) and
Donald Trump. They fear a kleptocratic conspiracy between the
Presidents of the Russian Federation and the United States of
America! In a nation that is obsessed by conspiracies it is an
unparalleled classic of deception. We can take issue with the
President of the Russian Federation. It is always possible that the
FSB (the main successor agency of the KGB) interfered in the US
presidential elections. It is also possible that the FSB did nothing
but leak disinformation implying that it interfered in those
elections. The British Intelligence officer could also be part of a
false flag operation meant to help to undermine American stability.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"></span><br />
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">After
all, in both the cases I refer to above, a destabilized America is a
win for its rivals.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is obvious that between prominent Democrats refusing to acknowledge
the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential result and the media campaign
against Donald Trump, American democracy is being undermined.</span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is time to move on from the elections and stop denying the legitimacy
of the result.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-31165838749020443542017-01-11T08:25:00.000-08:002017-01-11T08:25:58.741-08:00The Refugee Crisis and the Abomination that is UNRWA<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; margin-top: 0.4cm;">
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB">David
Milliband (President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee,
former British Foreign Secretary and former head of the British
Labour Party) boasted that Britain “led the drive to codify the
rights of refugees after the Second World War.” </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB">If
that includes taking responsibility for the UN abomination that is
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in
the Near East </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB">(UNRWA)
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB">then
we have nothing of which to be proud. But more about that later.</span></span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There
were tens of millions of refugees after the war. Germany accepted
twelve million ethnically German refugees from European countries.
“Between 13.5 and 16.5 million Germans were expelled, evacuated or
fled from Central and Eastern Europe, making this the largest single
instance of ethnic cleansing in recorded history.” (Deaths are
estimated at between half and three million people).</span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: blue;"><u><a class="western" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_evacuation_and_expulsion"><span style="color: #003366;"><span lang="en-GB">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_evacuation_and_expulsion</span></span></a></u></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The
UN Refugee Agency claims however that the largest single mass
migration (expulsion) in history occurred after the partition of
India in 1947. Some 14.5 million refugees fled or were exchanged
between India and the newly created state of Pakistan.</span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Korea
expelled millions of Japanese after the war.</span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">In
terms of scale the Jewish – Arab population exchange is relatively
small. </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">It
involved up</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">
to two million people in roughly equal numbers </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">(</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">over
a period of 26 years,</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">
between 1947 and 1973</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">)</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">.
Over 600,000 Mizrahi Jews came to Palestine-Israel. At least
300,000 more went, predominantly, to France but also to Britain and
the USA. Jews integrated into their host societies. </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">It
has to be a conscious choice to do so. </span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The
conspiracy, if one exists, is that at no time was there ever any
intent to integrate Arabs from Israel into the host countries that
absorbed them. It was fundamental hostility to the non-Arab, and
Arab anti-Jewish racial prejudice, that created a desire to flee an
independent Jewish polity. Arab refugees remain uninterested in
integration; unless it helps them create a virtue out of their
self-inflicted victimhood. And the United Nations, instead of
solving global conflicts, perpetuates them. The Palestinian Arab’s
greatest collaborator in undermining resolution of the Israel-Arab
conflict is UNRWA.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The
Arab and greater Muslim world is afflicted by ages old prejudice and
this prejudice is fed by its successes throughout the history of the
last 1,400 years during which they conquered vast tracts of land and
enslaved tens of millions of human beings. We rarely publicly speak
of it and we do not ever teach this silent history.</span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">UNRWA
(The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in
the Near East) </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">uniquely
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">defines
a Palestinian refugee as “persons whose normal place of residence
was Palestine during the period </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB"><u>1</u></span></span><sup><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB"><u>st</u></span></span></sup><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB"><u>
June 1946 to 15</u></span></span><sup><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB"><u>th</u></span></span></sup><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB"><u>
May 1948</u></span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">,
and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the
1948 conflict.”...“The descendants of Palestine refugee males,
including legally adopted children, are also eligible for
registration.”</span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">It
means that any temporary worker who resided in Israel (or can “prove”
that they did) during a two year period that ended on the 15</span></span><sup><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">th</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">
May 1948, became a refugee even when they had a home to return to;
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">e</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">ven
better, in terms of eligibility for money transfers from Western
nations to Arab nations. </span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">It
also means that they have no incentive whatsoever to ever forgo their
refugee status.</span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">If
I were David Milliband I would not boast about </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">UK
complicity in the </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">creati</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">o</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">n
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">of
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">UNRWA.
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">We could
so easily speculate that setting up UNRWA was </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">a
Western European conspiracy to undermine regional stability in the
Near East </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">(</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">with
a secondary antisemitic aim to overthrow Jewish self-determination</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">)</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">
by creating an organi</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">z</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">ation
that could only ever be a force for lasting regional conflict. </span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">The
inheritance of refugee status, in perpetuity, is an ongoing act of
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">regional
destabili</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">z</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">ation</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">!
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">There
can be no other explanation for the United Nation’s a</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">ctive
collaborati</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">o</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">n
in the creation of a unique, perpetual Palestinian victim</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">-</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">hood.
UNRWA created an Arab (Palestinian) underclass, infected by hate and
viewing re-conquest of Israel as a pan-Arab racial obligation; </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">as
an </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">Arab
political and Muslim theological imperative. UNRWA has inculcated
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">three</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">
generations of refugees with </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">a
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">desire
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">and an
undiluted, blind, passion </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">for
revenge against a Jewish enemy it has always held in religious
ridicule; colonial domination and </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">pure
ethno-religious </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">contempt.</span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">Jews
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">have no
reason to want to return to the ugly conditions of </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">permanent,
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">inferior
status and intermittent persecution </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">under
Arab rule</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">.
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">F</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">or
too many centuries </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">the</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">y
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">lived
and died at the caprice of others.</span></span></span>
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #003366;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">UNRWA
has only ever been a vehicle for Arab grievance and a message to any
minority in the Arab colonial enterprise that minority aspirations
for freedom from Arab persecution is a non starter. UNRWA </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">i</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">s
nothing less than a </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">European</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">
– Arab </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">cabal
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">t</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">hat
</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">stimulate</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">s</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">
chaos and pre</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">cludes
reconciliation between Jew and Arab. It exists to prevent the
modernization of the Arab world, which in turn would end Islamism in
the Arab world.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-35878706808098714882017-01-04T23:56:00.002-08:002017-01-05T00:01:34.928-08:00Turkey – Serial Killer or Warrior for God<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
order to understand modern day Turkey and the instability it is
helping to promote throughout Europe, it would be useful to
understand its ‘recent’ history.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Osman
Bey (1291-1326) – founded the Ottoman Empire. He took a peripheral
fiefdom in the far west of the Islamic empire, on the border between
the Islamic and Byzantine (Christian) empires, and made much of it
his dominion. Constantinople was the Capital of the Byzantine Empire
and the Centre of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. When Mehmet 2</span><sup><span style="font-size: small;">nd</span></sup><span style="font-size: small;">
captured Constantinople in 1453 he is reported to have let loose his
troops on the </span><span style="font-size: small;">city’s
</span><span style="font-size: small;">Christian residents </span><span style="font-size: small;">and
</span><span style="font-size: small;">over 3 days </span><span style="font-size: small;">they
</span><span style="font-size: small;">rape</span><span style="font-size: small;">d</span><span style="font-size: small;">,
loot</span><span style="font-size: small;">ed</span><span style="font-size: small;">
and murder</span><span style="font-size: small;">ed the city’s
inhabitants.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> Paintings
celebrating this ‘great lesson’ </span><span style="font-size: small;">(of
how defiance to conquest would be rewarded) </span><span style="font-size: small;">show
rivers of blood.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
</span><span style="font-size: small;">Ottoman empire
(1299-1923) incorporated </span><span style="font-size: small;">c</span><span style="font-size: small;">olonial</span><span style="font-size: small;">ism</span><span style="font-size: small;">
with Jihad; justifying conquest and slavery, centuries before White
Europe did the same.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
Battle of Vienna, in late 1683, saw the end of Muslim-Ottoman
expansion in</span><span style="font-size: small;">to</span><span style="font-size: small;">
Europe. </span><span style="font-size: small;">18</span><sup><span style="font-size: small;">th</span></sup><span style="font-size: small;">
Century Turkey </span><span style="font-size: small;">maintained</span><span style="font-size: small;">
its territorial integrity </span><span style="font-size: small;">but</span><span style="font-size: small;">
mainly because of divisions within </span><span style="font-size: small;">a
</span><span style="font-size: small;">Europe </span><span style="font-size: small;">which
was </span><span style="font-size: small;">obsessed by</span><span style="font-size: small;">
ethnocentric </span><span style="font-size: small;">nationalism.
</span><span style="font-size: small;">Perversely, t</span><span style="font-size: small;">his
</span><span style="font-size: small;">nationalism</span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-size: small;">drove </span><span style="font-size: small;">the
19</span><sup><span style="font-size: small;">th</span></sup><span style="font-size: small;">
Centur</span><span style="font-size: small;">ies</span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-size: small;">European </span><span style="font-size: small;">colonial
enterprise in</span><span style="font-size: small;">to</span><span style="font-size: small;">
Africa and the Far East. </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">On
February 3, 1830 an international conference in London led to a
guarantee of territorial integrity for an independent Greece.
Britain, France and Russia were its guarantors. The Greek revolt
against Muslim rule was the Colonial eras first war waged against
foreign rule. The two bookends of colonial independence (Greece in
1830 and Israel in 1948), suffered terribly under Turkish misrule.
<b>Yet when we rage against colonialism </b><b>we </b><b>see only
</b><b>Western c</b><b>rimes</b><b> and not </b><b>their </b><b>equivalent
</b><b>enterprise,</b><b> </b><b>of which the </b><b>Islamic </b><b>slave
</b><b>trade was a key enabler</b><b>. </b> <b>It is a bizarre and
inexplicable omission that gives the Muslim world an aura of
respectability and revolutionary virtue as an “oppressed people”
th</b><b>ough i</b><b>t </b><b>is </b><b>simply not </b><b>justified</b><b>.</b></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Europe
made several attempts to prop up the corrupt Ottoman Empire.
Turkey’s predecessor was a Muslim empire 5.2 million square
kilometres in land area (2 million square miles) compared with
Turkeys’ current territorial base of 0.8 million square kilometres
(0.3 million square miles.) Turkey’s collapse simply whet the
appetite of Arab dictators across the Near East.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
dissatisfaction and enmity that suffuses the Arab world today is a
direct result of the disintegration of the Ottoman empire. It left
local Arab leaders baying for blood and empire, fed by Muslim myths
and tales of violent slaughter. That slaughter of infidel peoples is
a guide to modern behaviour modelled on the brutality of Islam’s
founders and their subsequent conquering aspirants. It helps to
explain the fanaticism that drives the killers of Islamic State.
That we fail to connect the dots between their willing executioners
and the Western World’s Muslim Fundamentalists is therefore
incomprehensibly naïve.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
1878 the Treaty of Berlin was signed, in order to protect minorities
throughout the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire from persecution. It was
needed. It was also ignored. An indirect result was that in 1895-96
Abdul Humid, the 34<sup>th</sup> Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, (also
known as the Red Sultan or Abdul the Damned) murdered up to 200,000
Armenians in a campaign that was intended to ensure submission for
the survivors. </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Many
Armenians fled to Europe and the USA. Dispersal and exile is common
enough for survivors. But perhaps, the Ottoman empires Armenians
(those who remained behind) thought they would be protected by
Britain, France and even their enemy, Russia.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Turkey
systematically discriminated against the church and to this day they
refuse to recognize the 1890’s organized murder of the Armenians.
Nor do they recognise the next stage in Armenia’s tragedy.
Disarmament, elimination of anyone who might be in a position to
fight back, and resettlement, were all weapons intended to facilitate
the final Armenian solution.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
a frightening rehearsal for Hitlers organized and multiple genocides,
towns were systematically cleansed of Armenians. Death came quickly
but disease also took many of those waiting to die. There is
general agreement that between one million and one and a half million
Armenians died. Atrocities were documented by numerous diplomatic
missions and interested parties. Foreign records of the events are
undeniable. Extermination had one added advantage for the Turkish
government. Muslims could be housed in the homes of the dead; houses
left fully furnished, unless pillaged by former friends and
neighbours.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">T</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">heological
justification could be made at every stage of the process. Slavery,
</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">d</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">ispossession,
</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">t</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">heft
</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">and
e</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">xtermination;
all these things were meant and are still meant to demonstrate, in an
unambiguous and tangible way, the superiority of Muslim civilization.
Th</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">eologically
</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">all
property is the material right of </span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">ownership</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
of the global Islamic nation. </span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">R</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">etribution
reinforce</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">d</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
a message th</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">at</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
resistance </span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">is
</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">futil</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">e</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
R</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">esistance
will </span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">provoke</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
a terrible price, </span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">one
which will be </span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">seared
into ethnic memory.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">M</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">ore
important than that message is the lesson</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
Hitler, </span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Stalin</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
and </span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">today’s
</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Islamic
State learnt </span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">from
the inaction and the indifference of other nations.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
Armenian genocide took place between 1915 and 1917. Greek and
Assyrian Christians were also targeted as part of a policy of ethnic
cleansing.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And
then we have the Kurds. The Kurds of the Near East have been denied
any justice by the global community. Kurdish persecution has been
ignored partly because their ethnic geographical boundaries transect
the borders of four competing bully empires (Iran, Iraq, Syria and
Turkey). Fear of the effects of destabilising the three remaining
political entities can be better appreciated when we look at Syria
after almost six years of civil war. Syria had a population of 22
million people and today 11 ½ million of them are either internally
displaced or refugees now residing in other countries. The remaining
three nations have a combined population of almost 200 million
people. </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Arab,
Turkish and Iranian political ambitions are never questioned unless
they threaten to impede the flow of oil to Europe. If no-one will
stand against them then it is also clear that no one is safe. </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Turkey
</span><span style="font-size: small;">has </span><span style="font-size: small;">destroyed
</span><span style="font-size: small;">at least three</span><span style="font-size: small;">
thousand Kurdish villages </span><span style="font-size: small;">since
the 1980’s </span><span style="font-size: small;">and
evicted millions of Kurdish people from their ancestral homes. </span><span style="font-size: small;">There
are over three million Kurdish refugees. </span><span style="font-size: small;">Turkey
tortured tens if not hundreds of thousands of Kurdish people and </span><span style="font-size: small;">has
</span><span style="font-size: small;">murdered </span><span style="font-size: small;">over
37,000 of them (since the PKK’s armed uprising began in 1984).
T</span><span style="font-size: small;">urkey denie</span><span style="font-size: small;">s
the Kurds</span><span style="font-size: small;"> any right to
self determination.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And
then we have the Turkish conquest of Northern Cyprus. All but
ignored by European nations that usually grovel before an
expansionist Turkey, they ensure nothing offensive is ever passed at
the United Nations; nothing that might offend Turkey’s neo-Ottoman
rulers. <span style="background: none;">Turkey has invaded
Christian Cyprus and replaced the population it killed or expelled by
the forcible transfer onto the land it conquered with Kurds it
</span><span style="background: none;">displaced</span><span style="background: none;">
from elsewhere in Turkey. This is in direct violation of Article 49
of the Fourth Geneva Convention but the U</span><span style="background: none;">nited
</span><span style="background: none;">N</span><span style="background: none;">ations</span><span style="background: none;">
will never invoke Article 49 because it </span><span style="background: none;">has
</span><span style="background: none;">only ever do</span><span style="background: none;">ne
so</span><span style="background: none;"> w</span><span style="background: none;">ith
the Jewish state, with </span><span style="background: none;">Israel.</span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none;">The
Fourth Geneva Convention on the Rules of War was adopted in 1949.
Switzerland, the Depository of the Fourth Geneva Convention profited
more than any other nation from the hell that was the Second World
War. Switzerland must agree to call a special meeting of the High
Contracting Parties (representatives of states who have signed or
ratified the treaty). It has met only three times since the
Convention was enacted. That is three times in sixty-seven years. On
each occasion it was convened to condemn Israel. There have been
hundreds of wars since WW2 ended and over 50,000,000 deaths
attributed to those wars. The total number of deaths in
Israel-Palestine represent less than 1:1,000 of the total and yet as
indicated by the Swiss example the relevance of the UN to solving or
preventing human conflict is non-existent.</span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none;">None
of the wars that took place since the second half of the Twentieth
Century took place because of poverty. The wars have been
politically or religiously inspired. Many secular causes display
religious devotion based on either a single catechism or a series of
devotional texts that must be accepted without question and that are
overseen by a secular ecclesiastic body of political purists. </span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Amos
Alon in “A Blood Dimmed Tide” describes a theology of conflict
made worse by the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is because the
conflicting racial and colonial ambitions of Islam’s warrior clergy
has seen Turkey and Iran clamour for control of their geopolitical
neighbourhood. And to those I would add Iraq, Saudi Arabia and
Jordan. All have exercised their expansionist colonial ambitions at
a cost of hundreds of thousands of human lives. </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none;">The
following is from an article by the Henry Jackson Society: <span style="font-weight: normal;">“Turkey
is to the Syrian jihad what Pakistan was to the Afghan jihad or
Azerbaijan was to the Chechen jihad—or indeed Syria was to the
Iraqi jihad. A rear-base from which fighters can enter the battle,
but to which they can take shelter to hide, recuperate, fundraise,
and organise.” </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Turkey will
probably never be called to account by any international community.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">n</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">e</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">o</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">-Ottoman</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">
expansionis</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">m</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">i</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">s</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">driven by a </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">theologically
fundamentalist </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">doctrine
</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">which </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">makes
</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Turkey a threat to world
peace precisely because it instructs and therefore infects the nation
</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">and as the previous
paragraph indicated, </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">it
contaminates</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> not just its
hinterlands but the nations it comes into contact with.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Pinhas
Inbari, writing in the journal of the Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs (Can Israel and Turkey Reconcile?) said “Turkey is in the
midst of defining its identity – as Turkish first or Muslim first
with a “neo-Ottoman underpinning. If Turkey chooses its “Turkish”
identity, a true Israeli-Turkish reconciliation may be possible, but
if Erdogan chooses his neo-Ottoman Muslim path, obstacles may block
the reconciliation.”</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
would disagree with Pinhas on the simplicity of his statement.
Before the Islamic political revolution began to take hold in Turkey,
it was a secular society governed along strict lines of separation
between Mosque and State. But still it was awash with racism,
ethnic-religious belligerence and chauvinism. Tolerance of
intolerance creates the atmosphere that eventually leads to fascism,
and fascism is the handmaiden of dictatorship.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
politics, to negotiate from weakness is a sign of capitulation. The
Muslim world understands this far better than we do. <span style="background: none;">Terrorism
is a political act, never a moral choice even when people use
simplistic arguments in their attempt to create justification for it.
</span>The Western world is economically vulnerable and exposed to
every means of blackmail that the Muslim world can throw our way.
Threats of violence, terror and fear of economic and terminal decline
are powerful enablers for acquiescence to positive discriminatory
treatment towards the faithful, especially when they also tap into
ancient prejudices that have never been eliminated.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
assassination of the Russian ambassador in Ankara just over two weeks ago is a symptom of
</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Turk</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">ish</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">jingois</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">m</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
</span></span></span><span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is a lesson that Israel and the rest of Western Society must learn
from. And Israel must never drop its guard in its awareness of the
threat posed by fundamentalism, either from Turkey or, from within
its own society.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-52382783461374646542016-12-26T13:27:00.000-08:002016-12-26T13:27:29.405-08:00The Rule of Law and Assassination in Turkey (Part 1)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">On
Monday the 19<sup>th</sup> of December a Turkish police officer,
smartly dressed in civilian clothes, walked up to Andrei Karlov, the
Russian ambassador to Turkey. As the ambassador spoke at the opening
of an art exhibition in Ankara the off-duty policemen calmly murdered
him. The killer said in his native Turkish “<span style="background: none;">Don’t
forget Aleppo. Don’t forget Syria. Unless our towns are secure, you
won’t enjoy security. Only death can take me from here. Everyone
who is involved in this suffering will pay a price.”</span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none;">He
also shouted in Arabic: “We are the one who pledged allegiance to
Muhammad, to wage jihad.”</span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(Ynet
news 19-20/12/2016)</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is a sad but timely reminder that Islamist Turkey can as much be
trusted as theocratic, traditionalist Iran or Saudi Arabia.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Is
that fair? Political murders have taken place in Britain, Sweden,
Norway, the USA and Israel to name just a few of the Western
countries afflicted by acts of political violence against the state
and its civilian population. Italy had the Red Brigade, Germany had
Baader-Meinhoff and Japan had the Red Army.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Assassinations
and atrocities against civilians have always been part of
revolutionary politics. The difference today is that radicals,
progressives and others on the fringe of Western society try to
justify the immorality of their cause (s) through their control of
the electronic media. They are able to then embrace the war crimes
committed by those terrorists they choose to call “friend,” to
move peripheral political ideology into the centre. </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">They
share a contempt for the rule of law which must be bent to
accommodate their political vision and ignored when it fails to
conform to their ignorance and their prejudice.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What
makes the new fascist Left no different to the Inquisitors and
Jihad-is of previous generations is their blind obedience to the
Cause. They daily demonstrate this latter fealty by controlling the
narrative. And they control it by their suppression of freedom of
speech and association, occasionally by violent means but with
increased frequency as their successes grow.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What
makes this generation empowered in ways that previous generations
were not is that the internet has enabled the every-man and
every-woman with any talent for exploiting the electronic media to
spread so much poison that no-one is safe. Because there is no
regulation there is no difference between the lie and the truth and
because the fascist (left) has no respect for the inconvenient truth
they will use every means to suppress it. Unfortunately, our
inability to internalise this lesson is our great failure.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mevlut
Mert Altin said “<span style="background: none;">Don’t
forget Aleppo. Don’t forget Syria. Unless our towns are secure, you
won’t enjoy security.” </span><span style="background: none;">The
Russians have been bombing rebels </span><span style="background: none;">which
will include </span><span style="background: none;">supporters
of Islamic State. </span><span style="background: none;">The
issue for the Turkish Islamist is that many of them support the aims
of Islamic State</span><span style="background: none;">. </span><span style="background: none;">
</span><span style="background: none;">When </span><span style="background: none;">Altin</span><span style="background: none;">
</span><span style="background: none;">shouted in Arabic: “We
are the one who pledged allegiance to Muhammad, to wage jihad” </span><span style="background: none;">he
was declaring that “WE” (Turkey) </span><span style="background: none;">will
judge you</span><span style="background: none;">. It is one of
those truly frightening </span><span style="background: none;">declarations
of fanaticism that mark out radical, fascist movements. Altin may or
may not have been acting alone but Turkey is the ideal incubator for
the creation of regional, if not global instability. Its size,
population and theological i</span><span style="background: none;">ndifference
to genocide</span><span style="background: none;"> </span><span style="background: none;">ensure
that there are far more people like Altin, many of them sitting
within the Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.</span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none;">W</span><span style="background: none;">e
have a dishonourable expression in the English world: “One man’s
terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” to that I would add
that “One man’s </span><span style="background: none;">Serial
Killer</span><span style="background: none;"> is another man’s
</span><span style="background: none;">Warrior for God (or the
Prophet).</span><span style="background: none;">” Th</span><span style="background: none;">e
latter is the Turkish view of their “glorious” history. </span>But
the history of modern Turkey is an execrable one (and I will explain
why in my next blog).</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
US-Turkey partnership was a product of the Cold War. The two nations
never shared a special affinity but both feared the communist enemy.
Turkey has changed in terms of strategic orientation and national
purpose since that partnership was formalised in 1947 with the
passage of the Truman Doctrine. It has gone from being a secular but
racist and jingoistic society to one that is dedicated to an Islamic
neo-Ottoman revival. America has failed to recognise the threat
Islamist Turkey poses to world peace. It has tried to pacify the
Muslim threat through policies of appeasement while doing everything
possible to antagonise Russia. Instead of focussing its energies on
bringing Russia into a European-Western alliance that would isolate
the Islamists it has managed to re-invigorate the Cold War and give
them a European champion.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Turkey
is not Europe. It will not accept the view that the original sin of
its creation myths are not just soaked but also nourished in rivers
of blood. It is violently opposed to granting human rights to its
minorities. It persecutes its Kurds. Christians and Jews fear for
their lives and are occasionally murdered because they are hostages
to Islamic mood swings of intolerance and conditional benevolence.
Turkey will once again reassert it’s hegemonic geopolitical
ambitions.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
strategic partnership between Israel and Turkey was inspired by
pragmatism. And this is where the problem lies. An Islamic nation
with its historic legacy </span><span style="font-size: small;">of
ridicule</span><span style="font-size: small;"> for its
minorities</span><span style="font-size: small;">, conquest,
</span><span style="font-size: small;">domination</span><span style="font-size: small;">
and human slavery is continuously reinforcing an internalized image
of G</span><span style="font-size: small;">od-given
</span><span style="font-size: small;">superiority over its
non-Muslim neighbours. It </span><span style="font-size: small;">is
a w</span><span style="font-size: small;">orld view </span><span style="font-size: small;">that
is </span><span style="font-size: small;">not congruent with
any relationship of equality.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I</span><span style="font-size: small;">srael
and not just Israel must not trust Turkey. </span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
issue that defines the problem separating western political violence
from Turkey’s problem is that the outlier (the radical,
‘progressive’ or the extremist) does not define the relationship
within Western orientated nations (even if they are trying to make it
so). With Turkey it does. Turkey’s past is one of genocide, ethnic
cleansing and fascism. Any crime is justified through the prism of
Islamic triumphalism and an irredentist philosophy. Islamic
fundamentalists do not desire peace, what they do desire is glory and
at any cost to those that oppose them.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none;">Unless
Turkey is willing to banish fundamentalism forever (and not as an
expedient to maintain full access to Europe and America) it cannot be
trusted, not as an economic partner or, as a strategic military ally.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #330099;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none;">Andrei
Karlov’s assassin represents the activist for the new Turkey. We’ve
been warned.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<br />
<br /></div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-22757564249365364552016-10-02T08:31:00.000-07:002016-10-03T08:36:51.161-07:00Shimon Peres and the Arab Apartheid Issue<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Shimon Peres, Israel’s ninth president, was laid to rest at Mt. Herzl in
Jerusalem on
Friday 30th September 2016. Writing in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Achranot,
David Grossman said: “Peres’s entire being stood facing the future. In a
country that is being sucked ever deeper into a mythological, religious and
tribal narrative, he turned towards the universal, towards science, rationality
and the democracy of open information. He cast himself as an anchor on the seabed
of the future, the distant, invisible, imagined, utopian and optimistic future,
and began tugging himself towards it.” (The article was also featured in the UK’s major anti-Zionist
media outlet, The Guardian).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Shimon Peres was a
contradiction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Secular but respectful of
religious faith he was humble to the detriment of his political ambitions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was a private individual in a job that
celebrated public participation. His staff made sure that his every move was
posted to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. He relentlessly pursued the
fulfillment of his ideas on economics, science and defense, along the way helping
to build Israel
into a stable and strong country. But he was viewed in Israel as
secretive, and therefore untrustworthy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ridiculed
at home he was admired abroad; described as an international statesman in the
same class as Nelson Mandela and Queen Elizabeth II.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Domestically, he was a serial loser whose
first electoral victory, at the age of 84, occurred when he was elected President
of Israel.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">If Shimon Peres was
contentious, what has emerged from his death and funeral is the work that
Israel must urgently undertake to marginalize and exclude the Arab apartheid activists,
their Israeli fellow travelers on the far left and those foreign critics for
whom, we can do no good.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">There are those people who
live to remember his failures (and ours) and their hatred is not just our
problem but the world’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In their
eternal denigration of “our kind” this type of person will forgive every abomination
the anti-Zionist or antisemite commits while rarely, if ever, acknowledging our
shared humanity.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">According to the headline in a
Times of Israel article published the day of Shimon Peres’s funeral, Ayman
Odeh, head of the 13-MK (member of the Knesset) anti-Zionist political bloc the
“Joint (Arab) List” extended condolences to the late president’s family but
also made it emphatically clear that his group had ‘no place’ in this ‘day of
national mourning’</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Like every nation, the Arab
world has its problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first is a
racial ideology that places “the Arab” above all other human beings. Most Arab
countries reflect this prejudice within their national legal system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not just the Arab nations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many Muslim countries are in competition with
the Arab world in providing proof of their religious purity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are disadvantaged in terms of
theological credibility because of their Jonny-come-lately status vis-à-vis
their “post-Arab” adoption of Muslim faith.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The second issue is a
theological conquest narrative ordained by the Prophet that gives each Muslim
the task of not simply defeating the infidel but also humiliating them along
the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the victor refashions
their conquered foes history to claim ownership of any good done by their
dishonored enemy.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">For much of the last two and a
half centuries and especially in the 21st Century the Islamist message has been
incongruent with a Western (and now) a secular, pluralistic and
internationalist outlook that continues to spread its gospel across the globe. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A modern, Western, democratic and secular orientated
model for human society stands in contradistinction to an Islamist theology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet, the multiculturalists choose
inexplicably, to ignore any misbehavior, to excuse every atrocity carried out
in the name of Islam, or worse, to explain away such behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Islamism has given the world Wahhabism (18th
Century), Salafism (19th Century), the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda (20th
Century) and now in the 21sth Century, Islamic State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Human misery and death is their shared and
unbroken legacy.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Modern Israel was
founded along Zionist lines of secular, universal, utopian principles meant to
benefit all people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being secular, Israel’s Jewish
pioneers failed to see and they then failed to acknowledge the religious and
racial dimensions of Arab opposition to Jewish self-determination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They did not appreciate the historical
baggage that the Arab conquest narrative endowed them with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It blinded most Arabs to ever considering an
accommodation with the inferior Jew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
same Arab blindness rules opposition to the state of Israel more so now than before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This lack of understanding was and remains
Zionism’s failure because it prevents us from confronting it. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Post 1948, some of the early
Arab Israeli leaders not only accommodated but also embraced the nascent state
of Israel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their children, people such
as Basel Ghattas (Christian) and Haneen Zoabi (Sunni Muslim) went in the
opposite direction.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">It was no-one’s fault. Israel was a
wasteland that had been abused and desolated by over a thousand years of willful
neglect. Arab and Bedouin marauders destroyed any possibility for material or
physical progress; the Ottoman Empire in its last few hundred years was
relentlessly corrupt and just let the gangs get on with extorting whatever they
could from whoever they could.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“To a
very large extent Palestinian Arab middle and professional classes ‘emigrated’
with most of their property as soon as it was proposed that a Jewish state
should be established in the country.” (“Whose Land” by James Parkes). The
issue here is that a group of people without leadership soon descends into anarchy.
Leaderless, the people will listen with eagerness to any demagogue who will
offer them a way, any way. If they were told to flee by their Arab brethren,
they would do so. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Israel</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";"> in 1948
had a nation to build, with few resources and always under threat of violence
from its Arab enemies. Israel
had to find a way to feed and protect its people against a bellicose enemy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That enemy talked itself out of any peaceful
debate through its perceived hostility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Arab world used triumphal and irredentist rhetoric and religious bigotry to preclude
debate with their Jewish enemy (as Palestinians continue to do today) and it ethnically
cleansed all its Jewish citizens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
people who, just a few years earlier, had suffered the slaughter of a third of
their number was threatened by the Arab world with “finishing the job.” Consolidation
and protection took precedence over creating an integrated society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Israel’s mutually antagonistic
ethnic groups incrementally grew more distant with each passing decade. The
dominant Ashkenazi Jews dictated government policy while doing nothing to
discourage separate non-inclusive identification. A melting pot takes multiple
generations, a collective will to integrate and it requires a national dialogue
which with one exception (Mizrachi-Sephardi society) did not exist.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Religious groups remained
wholly uninterested in integration and therefore accommodated each other only to
the degree that self-interest dictated their engagement with the state.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">It is therefore hardly surprising
that the Joint (Arab) List as referred to earlier is primarily interested in
sowing discord between Israeli Arab and Israeli Jew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A person born in Israel is an Israeli by
nationality, whether they are ethnically Arab, Circassian, Jewish, or anything
else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The politics of division is meant
to create a fractured society that will become unstable and inevitably
ungovernable.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Arab MKs like Ghattas and
Zoabi and religious leaders such as Raed Salah of the Islamic Movement’s
Northern Chapter preach division. They want separate education, cultural
autonomy and administrative independence from the Jewish state. Arabs live
throughout the state. A Jew could only ever aspire to live among the Arabs if
he or she first converts to Islam. Violence is the Arab response to physical
co-existence with Jews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The apartheid
that exists in Israel
is Muslim, it is Arab and it is essentially unchanged from its pre-1948
prejudiced origins. It is the same bigotry that greeted The First Aliyah
(between 1882 and 1903).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the same
religious hatred that has greeted successive waves of Jewish immigration to the
Holy land for over one thousand years.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">In 1948 and beyond, the State
of Israel had neither financial resources nor the concentrated intellectual
focus to address the integration issues of all its citizens. Many of them were
waiting for the state to fail and the victorious Arab armies to destroy the
Jewish Republic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suspicion, fear and the
politics of sectarian advantage dominated the first phase of development.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">While Ashkenazi and Mizrachi
Jews now intermarry at a rate that is greater than 50% there will always be
those people who will want to point out that the cup is almost half empty
rather than greater than half full. Dissatisfaction and discord encourages the
bureaucracy of state to buy off the professional malcontent.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Israel</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";"> may not be
able to solve the intractable conflict between the Jewish state and Arab
Palestine but it must address the Jews as well as Arabs who sow discord in
society by emphasizing our differences. The MKs who refused to participate in Israel’s day of
national mourning did so but their excuses are mendacious at best. They could
not forgive a Jewish state its existence if it was located on the dwarf-planet
Pluto.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The next phase in the
development of the state must address prejudice and inequality from every
quarter of society and that includes the ultra-orthodox bigots who deny
Mizrachi children places in their schools, as well as the people who fear the
Arab moving in next door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It includes
the racist who chants abuse in football matches and MKs who rejoice at our
enemies’ successes against us.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The MK who urges separation from
Israel
and subsumation into the greater Arab world does not desire peace or justice
but the next phase in an Arab conquest story that should shame them but only
inspires them to greater degrees of prejudice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Jew who wants to keep the faithful loyal to a narrowly interpreted
sectarian image of circumscribed piety does not care for the survival of the
state but only for his own narrowly tribalistic and dysfunctional world view
that can only, counter-intuitively inhibit Jewish spiritual growth in the reborn
Jewish state.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The next phase in Israel’s
development must see every effort made to integrate all sections of society
into a Zionist state for all its citizens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That is what the dreamers saw, on both Left and Right, in the original
Zionist vision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shimon Peres would smile
at that.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Shanah Tovah to everyone. </span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-51542353960169329282016-08-25T08:49:00.000-07:002016-08-28T04:17:51.874-07:00Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu and the War of Words<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">A key indicator that Israel
has lost the current (and probably the next) generation of public opinion was
brought home to me when I was recently asked, rhetorically, if I sympathized
with the Palestinians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My questioner
then added “after all, they are treated unfairly by Israel.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">I had no pithy one line
response because the way the question was raised meant that anything I said was
going to be irrelevant. In our mass communication age, pictures and instantly
recalled memes are all the average attention span can tolerate.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">So here are a few ideas for
when and if we finally do begin to respond in a meaningful way to our
aggressors and the press hounds that disseminate their global propaganda:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Palestinians are in the first
instance Arabs and the Arabs have been ethnically cleansing Jews (among every
other minority) for 1,400 years.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Palestinian Arabs desire a
return to Arab apartheid against Jews and you blame us for rejecting the offer?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The German people admired the
British nation so much so that after they offered Briton “Peace in our Time” they
opted for conquest instead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Palestinians
are the modern era’s Aryan (German) nation.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The British were not heartless
nor in World War 2 did it stop Briton from leveling their German mortal enemy’s
cities.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Look at the genocide of
non-Arabs in Iraq, Syria and the Sudan. This is what Palestinian
Arabs have openly preached against Jews since the struggle for Jewish
independence began.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The United Nations (UN) has
done nothing to prevent even a single case of ethnic cleansing or genocide in
its 71 years of existence. And yet uniquely, it is the Jewish nation that you
demand gives its trust to Palestinians who in their entire history have only
ever preached ethno-religious hatred as an ethnic Arab right!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">A constant of
Palestinians aspirations has been cultural genocide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have always preached it against Jews and
where possible practiced it.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">I could continue as I am sure
you all can. We are constantly placed onto the defensive by our opponents, even
by those people who are not yet our enemy.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">If they have any tolerance at
all for us, it is wearing thin as time progresses and it is doing so because we
are not fighting back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is not
sufficient to assert our rights when on university campuses across the globe it
is with unchallenged aggression that our pleas for civilized debate are not
unsurprisingly met with derision and even violence.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The chauvinist is incapable of
accepting essential equality because it will always collide with his or her narrow
world view.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The Arab and Islamist world
uses its maximalist, colonialist and exclusive political-religious theology to
justify its crimes against humanity and through its manipulation of the UN it
stifles, even prevents any debate about its own guilt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is an axiom of racial politics that any
truth which collides with the accepted narrative must be suppressed.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">It is this hegemonic behavior
that is at the heart of modern political division.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Identity politics, intersectionality,
hierarchical victimhood are all symptoms of a damaged and fascistic
mindset.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See the apartheid Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as the perfect example.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The racists in the Western
World will gravitate towards anyone whose twisted narrative validates their bigotry
against Jewish independence in Israel
or even, (and the British Labour Party is the perfect example of this) against Jewish
equality in the Diaspora. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">A strong nation requires a
focused, competent and well funded Department of State that will direct foreign
policy irrespective of the fitness of the political party in power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It must have a dedicated political master.
Instead, Israel has Benjamin
Netanyahu for head of state and he has undermined Israel’s most important ministry of
government because he is incapable of delegating power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That makes him a bad Prime Minister.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the government that was sworn in May 2015
he retained control over 4 separate ministries, all crucial to the health of
the nation. It is inconceivable that the prime minister of a minority or
coalition government would hang onto such an important department, as State is,
while also trying to run the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Under Netanyahu’s’ tutelage
foreign policy has lurched from one crisis to another and the bureaucracy of
State has been incrementally undermined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When the state’s enemies openly boast of their intent to keep Israel in an
existentially precarious state (as Hassan Nasrallah did only a few weeks ago) a
full-time Foreign Minister with a well funded department is the minimum that is
needed.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">We are fighting BDS (which
always focuses on the message no matter how many lies it contains) without
support from the primary target of that boycott and I blame this situation on
the prime minister of Israel.</span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-76257637631134506602016-08-09T04:04:00.001-07:002016-08-09T04:15:04.623-07:00Zionism and the Jewish State<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Except
for two periods when Palestine was its correct
political title it has usually been called the Land
of Israel, the Promised Land, the Holy Land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was
called Palestine
from the second Jewish War with Rome
to the conquest, when it formed the province
of Palestina,
and the second time during the British Mandate Arab for Palestine.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine
by James Parkes)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span>To
the first generation of fair minded people who came after the Second World War
the Shoah proved the wisdom, not just the need for a Jewish safe haven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is
therefore all<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the more ironic that it
was the United Nations with its 1975 General Assembly Resolution equating
Zionism with racism that signaled the first volley in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a relentless assault on Jewish legitimacy
(and a stepped return<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to organized
anti-Semitic bigotry).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, Jews and
their Christian supporters may not have missed the message but by dropping
their guard they certainly neglected the long-term threat which eased the
infiltration of Islamists and their neo-McCarthyist collaborators on the
political Left into every aspect of public life.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">McCarthyism
was anti-internationalist in tone which naturally led it into antisemitic
territory by virtue of accusations often leveled at Jews for dual-loyalty and
their ‘cosmopolitan outlook’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soviet
antisemitic vitriol usually came with a reference to cosmopolitanism, a meme
everyone understood to be synonymous with Judaism. Again this is ironic, given
communism’s claim to an egalitarian communalism and its international efforts
for cross border legitimacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today,
Islamic and neo-McCarthyist radicals use classic antisemitic tropes to silence
any criticism of their own history and their contemporary use of past
antisemitic tactics.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">For
example no-one questions from where Arab-Muslim and radical left-wing funds
originate, particularly when they are used to assault ‘Zionists’ and Jews who
may be suspected of having Zionist sympathies. But Rothschild conspiracies and
the ‘undue influence’ of any Jewish donors are oft-repeated accusations leveled
against the Jewish community here in the UK.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The press will often publish articles that
skirt and even cross the border between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, very
rarely publishing a retraction when found to have erred. Debate around the
influence of Islam and its obvious literary impact on antizionism as
antisemitism is banished as Islamaphobic.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
extreme left’s antisemitism has been debated within the right-wing British
press since Jeremy Corbyn notoriously became leader of the Labour opposition in
the British parliament but even then that debate is very much circumscribed
within parameters set by examining the Corbyn phenomena in British
politics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Little, if any examination is
provided to the Left’s antisemitic origins or its contemporary racist
bedfellows.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">If Zionism and Judaism are forces
for good they must be able to explain themselves in a world that is simultaneously
inundated with and at war with a world of competing ideas. Zionism, as a
Universalist and utopian Jewish idea is attacked by Muslims for denying Arab
Particularism and its conquest narrative yet another victory but also Zionism
is attacked because the State represents living proof of Islam’s failure to dominate
all geographical areas with its exclusive Universalism.</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Persistent
attacks by Muslim and fascist proponents of an end to the Jewish National
Homeland have rendered the gains made by advocates of Jewish autonomy subject
to doubt and questioning which is unprecedented with respect to any other
community. Moreover, the negative reinforcement of anti-Zionist and antisemitic
Western propaganda has assailed Jewish self-confidence as perhaps never before
in history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a way out, it has never
been easier to cease to be Jewish.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Zionism
has been a support for Jewish faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
has also been a weapon that antisemites use to bludgeon the ignorant and to
assault Jewish faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The current crisis
in Jewish identity has much to do with the bad press that Israel and the established Jewish
communities failed to fight against with adequate vigor.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Identity,
nationalism and religion are all weighty and conflicted subjects that so many
of us do not want to discuss or even to define.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet a state of all its citizens must retain characteristics that
give it an identity which differentiates it from its neighbors; unless of
course we are all to be subsumed by a singular, neutralized identity, devoid of
personality and character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ze’ev Maghen
pointed out in an essay in “New Essays on Zionism (2006)” that “We all love
preferentially.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Preferential love is
equal to sociocultural diversity; universal love is the death of intimacy
without which all the great questions are without relevance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An identity is crucial for self-expression;
you cannot reach for the stars if you possess no passion for engagement. Our
identity drives us to search for, to demand answers to the questions we have
seen the urgency to ask.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Nora
Sternfeld has written that Universalism is generally attributed to the majority
society – both within its own paternalistic discourses and amongst a large
proportion of its critics. She continues that it is possible to offer another
perspective on this: the appropriation of a strategically universal perspective
from the marginalized side, a perspective that steps out of the position of the
victim and the object, and that takes pride in its capacity to act in
solidarity with others.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">However, choosing one minority
position of oppression over another creates its own oppressive dialogue.</span></b></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just because we view a
minority as disadvantaged it does not have to follow that their cultural
tradition is worth supporting. Not all cultural narratives are equal in validity.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There
is a reason that the Muslim world has a history of despotism and malevolent
dictatorship. To question is to engage with the divine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the practice of a religion of submission
one can only acquiesce. In the fourteen hundred years that is the lifespan of
Islamic history there has only ever been exploitation by rulers who profited
from those to whom submission as an article of faith meant unquestioning
acceptance of a ruler’s fiat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at
least according to Islamic theology, it also follows that even the most impoverished
Muslim is superior to the Christian, Jew, or ‘other’ in their midst.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that creates painfully dissonant
questioning as to why the superior race is not in charge.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Therein
is the origin of many conspiracy theories and hate filled diatribes against ‘a
smart but perfidious enemy’ whether that enemy is Zionism, Capitalism, America,
Israel,
Western civilization, Crusader (Christianity) or Judaism!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">If
fear has meant that minorities failed to stand up to their persecutors, the
last five years have signaled an end to any accommodation that non-Muslim
minorities thought would keep their tormentors from oppressing them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Islamic State (or Daesh) has nothing to do
with either an Israel-Palestine conflict or Zionism, unless we now explain away
the Arab Spring as inspired, not by Arab despotism, but by the success of
Jewish self-determination (as expressed in the political independence of the
nation-state of Israel).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
Christian Middle East is in full flight. There are no safe-havens for any
non-Muslim (non-Arab) minority, excepting in Israel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Jewish state is of greater importance in
the Middle and greater Near-Eastern region than at any time in history.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Democracy
and human rights are not universally cherished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Israel’s
status as the Jewish nation is continuously questioned by ‘liberal’ exponents
of secular republicanism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They argue for
separation of synagogue and state as a means of providing focus for a more
inclusive (de-Judaised) national identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But that is something they would never dream of demanding from any other
religious faith.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">If
modern Israel arose out of
the moral disintegration of the Ottoman Empire,
the catalyst to its integration into global society was not the Shoah but what
preceded it, at the end of the nineteenth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Large scale Jewish immigration encouraged a
similar wave of Arab immigration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Legitimacy for one means legitimacy for both. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this right is one the fascist left is
unwilling to grant to Jews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If as Ruth
Gavison claims, changing circumstances affected the balance of legitimacy in
favor of Jewish self-determination, a history of Arab persecution of Jews and
denial of Jewish rights in the land
of Israel were and
remains the principle impediment to the realization of universal autonomy.</span></span> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I
began this blog with a quote from James Parkes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A Jewish right to live in peace in the Land of Israel
is what Ruth Gavison calls “an elemental point of religious belief”. She argues
for a justification outside of religious belief in order to avoid “a pointless
clash of dogmas that leaves no room for dialogue or compromise.” The most
important of the universal values of any society is the right to live one’s
life without fear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On this one factor in
human existence everything else pivots. Israel stands in contradistinction
to every Arab, to every Muslim state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This and this alone is the justified Zionist product that is Jewish
secular nationhood. (New Essays on Zionism - 2006)</span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-50158515464473694452016-07-21T05:14:00.000-07:002016-07-21T05:14:31.035-07:00British Antisemitism and my Friendship Failure<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I had a heated discussion with
an acquaintance, a former ‘friend’, after the Brexit poll that recently took
place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is a life-long Labour Party
supporter who acknowledged the futility of electing Jeremy Corbyn (JC) to the
post of party leader while at the same time being exhilarated by the
result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have not been comfortable
together since he told me (just prior to one of my many family trips to Israel) that
one mans history is another mans mythology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>From there it was clear I was dealing with someone of ‘easy’ personal
ethics, someone who chooses sides based not on historical relevance but on
ideological preference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
justification is never swayed by either reality or counter-factual evidence. In
retrospect, he was a perfect JC disciple.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">We are all products of our
identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We learn from our parents, our
peers, from the education system and from society – social media, television,
community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We absorb many lies and half
truths. What we have learnt from our growing up years helps us to turn away
from that which is not congruent with our own belief system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A well oiled propaganda machine can change
hearts and minds; it can reroute our emotional response to input data simply by
repeating its message and intimidating those people who refuse to listen,
thereby silencing any counter argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It can work slowly or quickly depending on the strength of the message,
its frequency of transmission and the opposing response (or lack thereof).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The Muslim and fascist Left’s “Boycott
Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) campaign is an excellent example of this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you have ever tried to have a rational
discussion with a proponent of BDS you will be shouted down, intimidated,
threatened with violence, accused of war-crimes or simply ignored.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">And thus are today’s wars eventually
won.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I have always valued education
and appreciated the truism that you never stop learning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are always at least two sides to every
narrative no matter how unequal they may initially appear to be. And this is
the problem that the Left has with any conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will explain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The political Right developed from entrenched
ruling elites. They evolved, they adapted over centuries to changing
circumstances. If the Shoah taught the political Right wing anything it was
that defeat was painful and maybe, just maybe, that using people as pawns had
terrible consequences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They may not have
cared, but technology had developed to the point of making conflict uneconomical
for every one, including the winners.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Except that the unfortunate truth
about people is this: time, given the opportunity, forgives and even more
important, forgets everything.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">In contrast, the political
Left was born of ideology and of original sin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Its ideas were grafted onto a social backbone imbued with poisonous
hatred of the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order to
facilitate acceptance Karl Marx as well as many who came after him on the political
Left plagiarized the most heinous prejudices of the society they
inhabited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The British Labour Party has
never fully explored, repudiated or banished its antisemitism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Followers could choose to disregard party
rhetoric at their peril.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, a
winning meme will help to elect candidates to office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Acceptance in a monolithic movement means
unquestioning obedience. The Left has rarely had a need to justify its
behavior. It has usually practiced cognitive relativism which places morals in
the area of human invention; do not reflect universal truths and are subject to
social and cultural considerations that override the laws of society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Put another way (according to Marcel
Stoetzler “Antisemitism and the British Labour Party”) the meta-politics of
antisemitism is in its simplistic but transcendent appeal.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The Left’s universalism and
its opposition to ethnic discrimination is tempered by its need to attract
converts in a world that is increasingly unstable while also being more
prosperous and therefore less likely to listen to its message about the
underdog. Devoid of “us and them” rhetoric the Left has difficulty attracting
voters to its message of class struggle and has an even greater issue
justifying its “Other” particularism. The latter, empowers a perceived
underclass even when that underclass is racist, homophobic, misogynistic,
antisemitic and imperialistic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are
crimes of which the Arab and greater Muslim world is guilty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when Jews are viewed as part of the
greater Western or American (capitalist) project they become a conduit for all
that is wrong with the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How else
to justify choosing a racist Arab Particularism over a flawed Zionist
Utopianism?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">There is another issue that
afflicts society today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If in the past,
we were taught that to win was not the most important thing but how we “played
the game,” today we are told that there is no respect, there is no honor,
there is just winning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the short
term that may be a useful yardstick for success but it is a corrosive attitude
that kills innovation and destroys relationships at every level of society. It
means that long term planning is unnecessary and even uneconomical. We live in
a society where if results are not rapidly achievable then either other options
should be explored or the journey itself cancelled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has made us for the most part ungracious
winners and poor losers.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Think of the British campaign
to exit from the European Union. The campaign was intemperate. It was unlike
any I had previously encountered because usually both sides attempt to woo
their opponents’ voters. This time they oozed contempt for those voters. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That disdain followed through when the losers
demanded a rerun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was often expressed that the democratic
will of the people was of no consequence because the winners were clearly too
stupid to appreciate the gravity of their error or because of their advanced
age, either too infirm or too greedy to understand the important issues (such
as cheaper British holidays to Europe).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That contempt is an impulse towards fascism
but equally, it is an intolerance that is spreading even as we pray at a
multicultural altar.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">To return to my acquaintance,
his logic cannot be faulted for the following reasons:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #1f497d; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">If
only he is ever right then his opponent is only ever deluded, misguided,
uncaring and wrong.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">If only his vision is clear,
then anyone who fails to share that vision is blind (or in theological terms
his soul is corrupted).</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">If his narrative is the only
history of consequence then everything else must be invalid, invalidated and
expunged from the historical record.</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> </span></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It is a very dangerous mindset
and one that explains our inaction when confronted with the wrong kind of
genocide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Genocide is political and
therefore unexceptional, even irrelevant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is why the world did (does) nothing about the Syrian civil-war and
its’ almost half a million dead until its instability and fragmentation
negatively impacts homeland Europe.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It is why George Orwell’s concept
of brainwashing, a central theme in ‘1984’, has always been with us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It just takes longer to impact society than
the book portrays.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">We have been too gentle with
our fascist friends. Their life is filled with the absolute certainty of their
cause and it is only by rudely exposing their collaborationist philosophy that
we can prevent a dystopian future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
will not be thanked for exposing the bedrock of their beliefs to ridicule.
Their indifference to you will remain unchanged and their hatred will help them
to overcome any doubts that may linger on the margins of their minds-eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Jeremy Corbyn’s of this world are the
perfect example of a grotesque political phenomenon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">They
possess an unwavering certainty in the justice of their cause alongside of an
inability to comprehend their opponents’ humanity. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their incapacity to change direction and a
lopsided intellect that can explain and justify anything is buttressed by a
lack of emotional facility to intuit any countervailing possibilities. </b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">As a politician there are some
things you should not do. One of those things is to be caught out with a
contemptuous / idiotic response to an obvious question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Jeremy Corbyn had only recently been
elected leader and given his controversial associations he was asked if he was
antisemitic (see “Jeremy Corbyn and a Case Study for Fascism”).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><a href="http://thebilateralist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/jeremy-corbyn-and-case-study-for-fascism.html">http://thebilateralist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/jeremy-corbyn-and-case-study-for-fascism.html</a></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">His answer was to ask the
following question: How could I be? My father fought at the Battle of Cable
Street (a legendary anti-racist fight against black-shirted fascists, fought in
1936, thirteen years before Jeremy Corbyn was born).<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It makes a thief of the leader
of the nation’s main opposition party – to steal someone else’s virtue as a
means of disproving ones own iniquities is however, worse than theft because it
sullies the memory of an honorable past with the duplicitous and detestable present.</b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">That is what makes for a conflict between good and evil.</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I feel sad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On a personal level I now realize that
someone I once called a friend, perhaps because of his life-long ideological
commitment to ‘liberation theology’ (just not Jewish) or an Arab fascist agenda
(Pan-Arabism), he would have as easily stabbed me in the back, as betray me to
the KGB or the SS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For my kind, is there
a difference?</span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-69109791064327085272016-07-07T05:40:00.000-07:002016-07-07T06:48:42.562-07:00Institutionally Racist?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">This is a guest article by Alan Melkman whose own blog can be
found at the following site:</span></span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blocked::http:/alanspolicyblog.wordpress.com/" target="_blank" title="blocked::blocked::http://alanspolicyblog.wordpress.com/
blocked::http://alanspolicyblog.wordpress.com/">http://alanspolicyblog.wordpress.com/</a><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">While it is now dated by
publication of the Shami Chakrabati report, subsequent behavior by Jeremy
Corbyn’s (JC) fellow travelers in Momentum (a grassroots but influential
movement of JC acolytes), his ongoing nonfeasance and dishonorable behavior at
the launch of Shamis’ report simply reinforces the impression that the report into
widespread allegations of antisemitism within the British Labor Party was no
more than a face-saving whitewash.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The tragedy is that it distances
the Labour Party even further from future electoral success because in
dismissing any need to examine its own toxic antecedent history as well as
contemporary antisemitic behavior it only encourages recidivist antisemitism
within the Left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As such, it can only promote
further public extremism which decent people will reject along with the party
that practices it.</span></span></div>
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></span><br />
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<![endif]--><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Institutionally
Racist?</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Let’s be clear – crystal clear.</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Anti-Semitism is the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">hatred
</b>of Jews. It is the hatred of a people, of a race, not for their beliefs,
but for who they are. It is the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">hatred</b>
of Jews because they are Jews. It is holding them responsible for evil without
any substantive evidence. It is to make them the centre of conspiracies of
enslavement of the rest of the world and the instigators of unspeakable collusions.
It is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">race </b>hatred in its <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">purest</b> form.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn7FlCl53EYnVBfIAYG1ngPfFHRVDmIoRQ_oTqBxgNh4rsVdck3F-b8Szoo4QAzlLANMZ1SmPzWu-IX7e0-_FiI8p4efr0Qdf30_jwCZnsUu-nIcxx2X6vKTCHhqVbuw-ULq5s2Tffimw/s1600/antisemitic+picture.bmp" imageanchor="1"></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Islamaphobia is, as its name would suggest, the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">fear </b>of Islam, the religion. Adherents
to the Muslim faith come in all varieties and from all races. It is a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">fear </b>of the teachings of Islam which
inspire a small minority to commit despicable atrocities such as: acts of
indiscriminate slaughter, violations of young and not infrequently older women,
intimidation of those who resist their pernicious ideology, homophobic
insanities and much, much more. It is not, as antisemitism is of Jews, a hatred
of Muslims because they are Muslims. It is a fear of a small minority for their
outrageous religious beliefs. It is not <u>racist.</u></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So, if these two phenomena are <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">entirely different</b>, why are they so often conflated?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">For example,
the British Labour party is undertaking an investigation into itself, led by a
member of its own party, into allegations that it, through its members, has
exhibited anti-Semitic behaviors in recent years. It has created what is
politely referred to as an impartial enquiry, headed by Labour party member
Shami Chakrabarti who has, amongst other things, broadened the enquiry way
beyond focusing solely on anti-Semitism to include an equal consideration of Islamaphobia.
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">These two phenomena, as explained, are completely different. It
is like insisting any enquiry into bribery within World Football must include
an equally hard look at endemic political corruption in Venezuela.
Rationally, including Islamaphobia and anti-Semitism is totally absurd, almost
laughable. So why has Shami chosen to include <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">fear</b> of Islam in the same brief as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">hatred </b>of the Jewish race? Why has she chosen to ‘muddy the
waters’?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps there are a number of reasons why Shami has decided that
Islamaphobia</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">and
Jew hatred are essentially the same. Perhaps it is because their investigations
will show that Islamaphobia is more widely spread than anti-Semitism,
particularly among members of the Conservative party, thereby diminishing the
perceived size of problem whilst putting the Conservatives ‘on the back foot’.
It might be that they discover that attacks on UK Muslims and their properties,
in absolute numbers, are greater than on Jews which again diminishes the
perceived extent of anti-Semitism. Most importantly it conflates racism with
the fear of an ideology and thereby exonerates the Labour party from the accusation
that it is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">institutionally racist</b>.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I suspect that most impartial observers have already had some
reservations on the likely conclusion of this Labour navel gazing exercise. The
veracity of their report might, and I suggest should, be judged against the
following criteria for which I am indebted to Stephen Spencer Ryde </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "arial"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><a href="mailto:stephensryde@googlemail.com" title="blocked::mailto:stephensryde@googlemail.com"><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12.0pt;">stephensryde@googlemail.com</span></a></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> who has been carrying on what
appears to be </span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">an almost single handed campaign
against the perversions of natural justice that the Labour party, under Jeremy
Corbyn, is masterminding.</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div class="msolistparagraph" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The inquiry’s scope only covers the rules in future cases of
antisemitism. It will not examine existing cases that remain unaddressed,
such as the case of Sir Gerald Kaufman. It may point out that there has been a
balance of Islamaphobic inferences and this historical issue is beyond the
remit of the enquiry</span></span></div>
<div class="msolistparagraph" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The Labour Party’s antisemitism problem is not so acute because
the rules were too lax. The enquiry might conclude the Party’s leadership and
structures have failed to identify antisemitism and condemn it. But then the
same comments will be made about Islamaphobia. The inquiry should then
logically examine the conduct of the Party’s leadership, but it will not. </span></span></div>
<div class="msolistparagraph" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The Vice Chair of the inquiry is Professor David Feldman, who
has already dismissed claims of antisemitism in the Party as “baseless” and
“politically motivated” in an open letter. It is ludicrous to appoint as judge
and jury someone who has already made up his mind in opposition to the vast
majority of British Jews. However, he will show his impartiality by putting
equal weight on the Islamic scale to balance the anti-Semitic evidence.</span></span></div>
<div class="msolistparagraph" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The inquiry seeks to concoct its own <a href="https://antisemitism.uk/information/definition-of-antisemitism/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1f497d; text-decoration: none;">definition of antisemitism</span></a>. There is already a
definition that is used by the Government, the College of Policing,
and even foreign institutions like the EU Parliament and the US Department of
State. The definition is called the EUMC definition (presumably also used
by All Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism), and it covers precisely
the kind of antisemitism that has invaded Labour’s immune system: antisemitism
disguised as political discourse. The EUMC definition is not up for
debate, but we know that the inquiry will not adopt it because Professor
Feldman has argued for its abolition every time he has been given the
opportunity. It is likely therefore that the Shami definition of anti-Semitism
will be vague enough to include a completely different animal, Islamaphobia.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The report will almost certainly conclude that that mere
criticism of Israel
is not anti-Semitic and that this label is thrown about to stop legitimate
disapproval and the stifling of free speech. What it will almost certainly not
conclude is that the Labour party is both <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">institutionally
racist</b> and in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">deep denial</b> of
this fact.</span></span></div>
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The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-1185522761696396512016-06-27T02:09:00.000-07:002016-06-27T02:09:36.661-07:00Meander through a shared American and Israeli Exceptionalism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">When Americans looked at World
War 2 Europe, what they saw was a continent addicted to war where protection
from tyranny took a barely material second place to what was clearly a wholly
discredited nationalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Americans
tried to understand why war was second nature to Europeans they concluded that Europe was fatally flawed by its inability to move past
its narrowly regimented ethnocentric national interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so the Marshall Plan (before it became
overtaken by the Cold War) was the first volley fired in the war on the
bellicosity of European chauvinism and towards the creation of a supranational
union that would bind all the old enemies into one united super-state.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">It has been observed that
Europeans and those people of the ‘old world’ viewed strategic decision making
based on their history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was backward
facing and unsuited to resolving its own issues without recourse to violence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The USA had a mere few hundreds of
years of history to proclaim, so it made its own future, based on imagination
and idealism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is here that its
entrepreneurial spirit was nurtured.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">This forward looking approach is
the reason that Israelis and Americans are usually vilified in the same breath.
Both nations are representatives of the ‘new world’ - implicit in the name is a
rejection of the old ways and its tainted history.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Both nations have been forced
into defensive or offensive positions by their ideological enemies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both are yet to come to terms with the ‘old
world’ reality which is an intellectual incapacity to learn from history. The
question is not whether a clash of civilizations can be appeased (because it
cannot) but how and whether, mutually exclusive ambitions are capable of
reconciliation?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">If the over-arching principle
that drives the USA
is safeguarding its national political institutions, the subsequent failure to
protect human rights is a fundamental failure of strategic understanding. It
should be noted that Britain
is similarly deluded in its approach to tyranny. Without a philosophical
commitment to freedom for all, political liberty may be used as the means by
which tyranny spreads and infects the body of the nation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like a microbial infestation, fascism, which
is the application of tyranny, honors no borders. Universal human rights can
only be possible if they are equally understood and crucially, applied equally.
Without certain fundamental rules of engagement (see next paragraph), political
liberty is little more than a vehicle used to expedite fascism which in this
case signifies both a pretense to equal human rights and a particular bias
against equal protection before the law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That final conditional inequality undermines society.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The fundamental rules of
engagement are the most simple to apply.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All people are welcome to take shelter under the cultural umbrella that
defines the society into which they have sought refuge, as long as they do not
cherry pick what they are willing to accept. Democratic nations are united by
the consensus they live out and not by the selective tolerance they provide to
people who reject any accommodation with them. Similarly, the so called ‘nanny
state’ is created, not by being too caring but by failing to inculcate in
everyone a narrative of personal responsibility both towards each other and
towards the society they share.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">According to Michael B. Oren
the refusal to accept responsibility is the largest single obstacle to
fostering democracy and forging peaceful co-existence between peoples of different
backgrounds. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>(‘New Essays on Zionism’ 2006)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Zionism is the Jewish right to
self-determination. Its failure was that in its wider utopian Universalist naivety it did not
appreciate the opposing Muslim theological narrative of religious triumphalism
and an Arab conquest narrative that was (and remains to this day) inextricably
intertwined with Islamic identity, revanchism and a need to sow
discord among its competitors and ideological enemies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, Michael Oren expresses
this well when he says: “Islam developed during a period when Muslims ruled
most of the civilized world” therefore “Islam harbors no misgivings regarding
power – the attainment of power is incumbent on every individual Muslim. Arab
Muslims thus have a problem with a palpably powerful Jewish State.” – ibid</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Zionism’s failure to understand
the hegemonic nature of Islamic society should have served as a lesson for Europe’s enthusiastic proponents of integration and unity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Britain, the head of the Equality
and Human Rights Commission (Trevor Phillips OBE) publicly decried
multiculturalism claiming it was out of date and legitimized what divided communities
rather than encouraging what united them. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Israel</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";"> <i><b>does</b></i> need
to fight harder against the coercive, voluntary segregation of culturally
disparate (Arab and ultra-orthodox) communities. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Michael Oren proposes that we flag-waivers for
Zionism bear a weighty responsibility “to prove to ourselves, and the world
that the phrase ‘Jewish State’ is not in fact a contradiction in terms……(to
shoulder) the responsibilities of reconciling our heritage with our
sovereignty, our strength with our compassion, and our will to survive with our
desire to inspire others.” – ibid</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Put another way, Zionism must
show its equal benefits to all its communities so that the compulsion to
embrace it becomes not just 9 till 5 but 24-7.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">For the USA it is free markets and open
borders, where liberal values are a means to an end (social and economic
comfort).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People who are comfortable do
not go out of their way to kill each other (unless they are political or theological
sociopaths). Prosperity should be the end result of a free market economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, like all absolutes, theory and
reality are dependent on the strength of human laws to hold back the darker
ambitions of human nature: greed, peoples’ blind passion for being right all of
the time (which inevitably means that they are wrong most of the time) and peoples
hunger for exercising power over others.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Neither restraint nor
intellectual pluralism is the modus operandi of a missionary faith or of a
zealous political ideology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Communism is
a political ideology with many of the attributes of an embryonic religious
faith. ‘Progressives’ and others on the extreme left of the political spectrum
inevitably share aspects of fascism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They include intolerance (they will mask it as ‘zeal’) for any
world-view that has not been sanctioned by their political bible, vigorous attempts to ostracize those people who disagree with them and their
tactics, and, proscription for any counter-narrative. The gauleiter of the secular
Inquisition thus ensures the right to free speech is no more than a
delusion, a basic right that is
only enjoyed by his or her followers.</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">American and Israeli Exceptionalism have at their (separate but
connected) heart and soul a Universalism that has the potential to benefit all
of humankind. It is only through intelligent engagement and careful language
that their shared idealism can be demonstrably proven correct, serving as a
light unto the nations of the world.</span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-66549920177722874302016-06-19T03:31:00.000-07:002016-06-19T03:31:59.383-07:00The BREXIT Campaign – The Facts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
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</xml><![endif]--><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">We will soon be voting on
whether to remain members of the grand European project or to leave it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I present below some observations.</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Britain</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> is
currently the world's fifth largest economy based on total Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) – Britain’s
GDP currently stands at $2.8 trillion. The list below (at least in terms of
relative position) agrees with the World Bank, UN and CIA world Factbook
position on global GDP trends.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
IMF World GDP Ranking 2015</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="mso-cellspacing: 1.5pt;">
<thead>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt; width: 29.55pt;" width="39">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b>Rank</b></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b>Country/Region</b></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b>GDP (Millions
of US$)</b></div>
</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="background: #F0F0F0; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="background: #F0F0F0; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="flagicon"><b> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b></span><b><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product" title="Gross world product">World</a></i></b></div>
</td>
<td style="background: #F0F0F0; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b>73,170,986</b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
1</div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" title="United States">United
States</a></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
17,947,000</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3;">
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span class="flagicon"><i> </i></span><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union" title="European Union">European
Union</a></i><sup><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29#cite_note-clarification_that_the_EU_is_not_a_country_and_should_not_be_given_a_rank_number-23">[n
1]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29#cite_note-IMF_Groups-19">[19]</a></sup></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
16,220,370</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 4;">
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
2</div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span class="flagicon"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China" title="China">China</a></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
10,982,829</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 5;">
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
3</div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan" title="Japan">Japan</a></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
4,123,258</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 6;">
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
4</div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span class="flagicon"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany" title="Germany">Germany</a></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
3,357,614</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 7; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
5</div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span class="flagicon"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom" title="United Kingdom">United
Kingdom</a></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
2,849,345</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">World trade declined 1.7% in
the first three months of 2016.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
this trend that is the main threat to British prosperity and not the hysterical
projection of BREXIT proposed by champions of the Remain campaign.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The reverse projection, bumper
growth, would put Britain on
course to become the world's fourth largest economic powerhouse ahead of an
ageing Japan and Germany in the
2030s, according to the Centre for Economic & Business Research’s latest
world economic league table. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The total
cash value of the UK economy
will grow to around $4.7 trillion by 2031, but is expected to be quickly
overtaken by Brazil
in fourth spot by the 2040s.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #993300; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/uk-tipped-become-worlds-fourth-largest-economy-2030s-1534942">http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/uk-tipped-become-worlds-fourth-largest-economy-2030s-1534942</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">That is if we place our trust
in economic star-gazing.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The UK is the fifth biggest economy in
the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>44% of our exports go to the
EU. However, the EU benefits from maintaining a healthy economic relationship
with us to a far greater degree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Britain in the
year ending 2015 had a £68 billion trade deficit with the EU.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So no, the European Union is not going to
threaten us with dire consequences when the potential material damage would be
far worse for them than for us.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Europe is declining in financial
importance while Asia and South America are
ascendant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The EU currently represents
about 20% of Global trade but that percentage is declining. It is estimated
that in the future the EU will be no more than 10% of the global economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The EU has no trade deals with the worlds’
largest economy (the USA).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nor does the EU have trade deals with Brazil, India,
Australia, or China.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we left the EU we would remain its biggest
single export market.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">We are a net contributor to
the EU budget (we give Europe £10.1 billion per year more than we receive from Europe).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Remain campaign focuses on the £350 million that the exit campaigners remind us,
is sent to Brussels
bureaucrats </span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">every week, </span></span>to be spent by unelected European politicians.</span></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">They aren’t entirely straight
with us. We receive in terms of university, research and agricultural grants
(amongst other items) £156 million per week from the European Union. That still
leaves Britain
with a net figure of £194 million per week haemorrhaging from British coffers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>This is where the excess payment figure of £10.1
billion originates.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I do not have a principled
objection to paying money into an integrated Europe except that Europe is neither integrated nor is it unified towards
one purpose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will explain.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">A friend of mine is a keen
cyclist who likes to follows the route of the Tour de France on his bicycle. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He does cycling trips around Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On his trips to Spain he has observed that there
are entire stretches of A-class road that he and his friends would cycle along
where they would not see a single car, often for many kilometers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hundreds of millions of Euros those roads
cost to build across Spain
were simply the visual manifestation ‘proving’ the power and influence of
corrupt local Spanish politicians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
was no local benefit to their construction, there was certainly no regional or
national purpose served by their planning and implementation.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">What those empty, meandering
roads epitomized were the corruption as well as the greed at the heart of the
current European project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That attitude
we know from history is core to any project or grand historical scheme
benefiting entrenched tribes or factions usually at the expense of some other
tribe or faction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The issue the EU faces
today is that there is no accountability and no public recognition that
anything is wrong.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The reluctance to forego any
diminution of its own financial benefit is the big problem killing the EU –
corruption facilitates decline, it does not engender democracy, human rights or
world peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Corruption creates national
bottlenecks that embitter the losing faction (the ones missing out on all those
truckloads of cash). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Priorities’ may be
significant for one nation but completely insignificant for another.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The EU, if it is to
successfully pool its resources and focus on integration of all of its citizens
has lots of questions it is not even beginning to discuss. For instance: If
countries have entirely different pension or taxation policies then their
individual cost and revenue streams are going to be always out of
synchronization with each other. Inequality breeds exploitation and
resentment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the people in each
country in the union do not enjoy the same opportunities then the basis for a
stable relationship does not exist. Good governance is measured by equality of
risk. That also means however that in order for the EU to succeed it must have fiscal
integration as an end target and that requires uniformity of fiscal
policy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without it, the perception of
institutionalized corruption will continue to drag down the EU project.
Shouldn’t we be addressing those issues?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">In the United States of America
there are 50 states and the District of Colombia. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only the federal government is permitted to
run a deficit while individual states are forbidden to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then, the EU is not a federated system
but a confederation. The difference is crucial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A confederation is a union of States individually maintaining primary
sovereignty over their affairs while devolving some authority to the central
bureaucracy. In a federation, primary sovereignty is given to the central
government which exercises control over every member state in areas defined by
but not exclusively including the military, diplomatic relations and the economy.
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The predicament of the EU is
that political unity means having a single army, a single currency and unified
border controls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The contradictions that
define a confederation make it inherently too weak to maintain the union and
too conflicted to bring about the equality that is needed to unify its separate
units. In order to work the European Union has
to be an integrated i.e. a federated entity.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">If the European Union is
working towards a federated, possibly even a two tier unity then it explains
the Incrementalism which is fundamental to current EU policy. But because of
the inherent dishonesty within this approach the EU must be reformed and this
reform is not liable to happen under current conditions where the debate over
intentions has not even started.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">In one lecture I attended
(with thanks to Professor Brendan Simms) it was proposed that Europe
was not a club that many were clambering to join but a shared destiny. “Europe
is Greece, Rome and the Enlightenment” (apologies but I
don’t know who said this).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rejection
of enlightenment principles (some Eastern European nations as well as Turkey have
little experience of the Enlightenment) means that common interests are not
always the reason for joining. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turkey
understands the union as a confederation rather than as a union so it can never
agree to fulfill all of the conditions of full membership. It is on record as
having repeatedly reminded Turkish expatriates that their primary loyalty is to
Turkey and that they must not integrate into their host society (going so far
as to threaten those people who stand aside from the Turkish nation).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">People are selected for a
European political sinecure as a means of rewarding them for past service to
their party or as a means of ridding the party of an individual who has become
a political liability or embarrassment. Direct elections to the European
parliament and for top jobs in the European Commission would enhance the
prestige of the European Parliament; it would also herald in an era of
political transparency and accountability. Both are necessary for a healthy
democracy to remain so and entirely missing from the current European
project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Brendan Simms pointed out that
Poland in 1717 and the Holy Roman Empire (in 1806) disappeared because they
could not reform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Contrast this with The
1707 Act of Union which consolidated power in the United
Kingdom and similarly the USA in the 1780’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both created frameworks for unity and a
common identity guaranteed by the power wielded by centralized authority.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">“There was a pharaoh and he
knew not Joseph” (Exodus 1.8) this refers to the arrival of a new Egyptian king
who did not know Joseph or his generation of immigrant workers. The textual
reference to forgetting Joseph raises questions about the extent to which oppression
is linked to a minority group's involvement in, and commitment to the larger
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it also raises questions
about the historical tensions between host societies and their guest
workers/immigrants and the fears, whether rational or not that makes the debate
so difficult to present.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Simms said that the World War 2
generation are dead and even their children are in the 70’s (at the very least).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What happens when they forget the war? The
German people are still very embarrassed by it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But is it not relevant that Poland, Germany,
Greece and France have all
got significant voting populations that have embraced the National Front?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will just point out some of the other
countries with recent electoral results below.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The Swiss People’s party is a right
wing, populist, political party and the largest party in the Swiss Federal
Assembly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is also Eurosceptic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Denmark’s general election in 2015 the
Danish People’s Party (described by the media as right and far-right wing)
secured 21% of the vote; in Hungary, the far-right Jobbik Party (described as radical
nationalist) won over 20% of the parliamentary vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Austria the Freedom Party polled
49.7% of the vote on 22nd May 2016. Norbert Hofer came within 0.6% of being
elected President of Austria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His party,
founded after WW2 by “former” Nazis is nationalist and anti-immigration, its
credentials are toxic.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Throughout Europe,
nations are not rejecting greater union; they are fighting an identity crisis
they do not see being adequately addressed by their political elite. The issue
of immigration and refugee absorption are part of the debate over European
identity that again, is being ignored because the issues they raise are
apparently too complex for our simple brains to comprehend.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It is this disrespect that
politicians and bureaucrats have for us all that is at the heart of the rise of
fascism in Britain and
throughout Europe.</span></span></div>
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The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-41829007335352756472016-06-16T03:10:00.001-07:002016-06-16T03:46:11.475-07:00The BREXIT Campaign and why they think we are Stupid<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
How to examine the issue of our European
identity and Britain’s
current campaign to decide on whether we stay in Europe
or Leave it?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The EU has held up identity
politics as a means of empowering minorities at the expense of the majority.
The EU in its current form has marginalized the working classes, impoverishing
successive generations of the poor. Given the extremely high unemployment
position of European youth (the EU average is 19.4% as at February 2016) it is
not surprising that traditional fascism is once more on the march.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Britain has betrayed the working
classes, effectively reneging on its commitment to narrowing the gap between the
classes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Britain, since 1976 there has been
a continuous deterioration in the position of the lower classes vis-à-vis the
middle to upper classes. Since 1976 every British parliament has recorded progressively
fewer MPs who were not educated within the private school system. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have been told that only the ‘lower
classes’ vote to leave - so now it is a simple class issue and we can assume
the implication that ‘they’ should stay ‘down’ in their ‘rightful place’.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
So are immigration and economics the
only vital issues in the debate? Must our vote on the 23<sup>rd</sup> of June
be based on these two issues?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are
many issues causing unease within society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unless we are able to discuss them all without fear of being labeled
something we are not then all we are going to receive are insults and
platitudes, and that is the summation of the debating tactics of both sides.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The half-truths thrown about by
both sides of the Brexit campaign have helped to discredit the campaign. We are
told that leaving will destroy much of the nations’ wealth and bring to an end
our comfortable way of life. We have even been told a Brexit could precipitate
a World War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The one constant of this
campaign has been the contempt demonstrated by all parties to the debate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Former Prime Minister, Sir John Major
described Boris Johnson as a likeable man and a court jester. Lord Stuart Rose
who is fronting efforts to keep Britain
in the EU dropped a bombshell when he admitted to a group of MPs’, big business
favors membership of the EU because it is depressing British wages. (Daily
Express Mar 3, 2016).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The corollary is
that a Brexit would boost British workers' wages. The truth is that a Brexit
would cut off employer access to an unimpeded and excessive flow of cheap
labor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It sounds bizarre that no-one has
criticized the low level of debate. Our politicians and business leaders, panels
of experts and the unions, across the board they have all been guilty of
engaging in a campaign of mendacity, half–truths sold as gospel and derision universally
waged against opponents.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">This has not just been a dirty campaign, it has been a campaign that
has assumed we are all either too stupid or too greedy to listen to any
intelligent debate.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Binary prejudice is the idea that
we are blind to anything that does not fit into neat dualistic categories defined
by the most vocal or forceful group within society. It sounds like something
that could explain why our politicians and business leaders treat us so badly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Something is or is not and there
is no room for shades of colour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
the simplistic argument of an uncomplicated, more brutal era. It is not that
old hatreds are returning; in many people they never went away but simmered
with malevolent patience just below the surface; a veneer of civility and calm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then we are made to feel guilty that
arguments over immigration are just about prejudice, when they are not. Society
has lost its post World War 2 inhibitions which prevented the bigot from expressing
their prejudices or acting out their fantasies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Partly as a consequence of this renewed nihilism we are witnessing a
return to the expression of many of our old fears. Our security is conditioned
on practicing a McCarthyistic mantra (in the UK
it is mostly left of centre but in much of Europe,
fascism is also emphatically right-wing).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>An unintended consequence of our appeasement of Islamism has been that
it has encouraged both bloodshed and prejudice. Of greater threat to the
stability of society, it has led to a lack of credibility in government’s willingness
to protect the people. And that is a fundamental break in the social contract that
is at the centre of modern government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
government does not acknowledge or address people’s fears over the personal
threat that extremism creates, a direct consequence is the counter-radicalism
response.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Economic and physical insecurity
has returned and we have also lost our moral compass. But are we that different
to the Europeans many of us want separation from or are we all assumed to be equally
stupid?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We have lost our way and a simple
example proves it:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
On the 5<sup>th</sup> of June
2016 the Swiss government ran a referendum which proposed providing every person
with a basic income as a constitutional right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Put another way, it proposed paying all its unemployable citizens a wage
for life. Switzerland
argued that recognizing some jobs as having ‘disappeared’ meant that society
was responsible for not financially penalizing the ‘unemployable.’ The
resolution was defeated by a margin of over 3:1 (76.9% against to 23.1% for).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
23% of people voted in favor and
many who voted against it would have done so from personal greed only!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Maimonides was a Sephardi philosopher,
astronomer, Rabbi and physician who lived from 1135-8 to 1204. He proposed ten
levels of charity, of which the highest level (and therefore the greatest act
of charity) was that a man (or woman) gave a fellow human being the means by
which they could support themselves and their family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If in the name of globalization we have lost
that Maimonidean understanding of human dignity as the Swiss surely have, then
truly, our society has lost its way. It is the obligation of society to care
for its people. It is not a national right for a nation to right-off its vulnerable members
of society, either by ignoring them or by paying them off.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
If Europe
is not just a club but part of our shared destiny then it is an integrationist
enterprise which will one day come about through full fiscal union, creeping
legal annexation and the final act of creation - a federal European
super-state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Policy will then be imposed:
with federal diktat from the top and local negotiation on implementation passed
down to national parliaments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Am I
exaggerating this scenario?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In the three year period 2011-2014 66% of laws
and 67% of new offences enacted in the UK parliament came from the Council
of Ministers (European Commission). This Incrementalism is fundamental to EU
integration on a policy level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The issue
not being debated is that without political transparency and accountability the
EU is travelling at speed down a path to becoming no better than one more
corrupt dictatorship.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The EU is incapable of reforming itself without
a serious scare (which a Brexit would provide).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That is something we should have been discussing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The EU has a vision – that shared destiny I
referred to earlier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are not
discussing any of the issues that arise out of that vision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are not dealing with any of the issues
that have always confronted human society because they are both philosophical
and political construction (and politics is by its nature, prejudiced).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To discuss anything in practice would mean
getting our metaphorical hands dirty. Far easier to speak in generalities and
leave the detail to future generations.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
This is the real reason everyone
in the debate is being so coy about the question of our relationship to the European
Union.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
If no nation can stand alone then
what are the real differences between remaining in Europe and leaving the Union (given that even then we will be enormously
impacted by our relationship with the EU)? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The issues are of huge importance
and yet all anyone has done so far is to insult us and to attempt to scare us without
attempting to provide any serious discussion of the pertinent issues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The one thing we know with certainty is that all
predictions are forecasts and therefore not factual but based on personal bias.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></div>
<br />
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-5895093861658412052016-05-23T02:03:00.001-07:002016-05-23T02:16:24.073-07:00The EU Referendum On Brexit. The British Housing and Rental Crisis.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Am I the only person in Britain who notices
the sophistry and lies of our politicians? Throughout the period of debate that
precedes the vote on our continued membership of the European Union the nature
of that debate is truly indicative of the casual contempt our politicians hold
us in. An example follows:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
On Friday, the 21<sup>st</sup> of
May I read two negative articles on the same page in the British press, on the
consequences of Brexit (Britain
leaving the European Union). The first, by the Chancellor of the Exchequer
(George Osborne) said “A UK vote to leave would cause an ‘immediate economic
shock’ that could hold back growth in house prices…by 2018 houses could be
worth up to 18% less than if the UK voted to remain (in the European Union)”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what this means is not what it initially
sounds like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At current rates of growth,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if</i> we stay in the European Union then
house prices (in London) will go up by an annualized rate of 30% or more by
2018 but only by 12% in that same period, if we leave the EU.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Any rate of growth approaching
either magnitude of increase is unsustainable and potentially catastrophic for
the British economy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The second article by the Labour
Party's shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer reported that “Councils could be
given the power to limit ‘skyrocketing’ rent increases under new Labor
proposals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shadow Chancellor John
McDonnell will pledge to help people who are ‘at the mercy of an unforgiving,
unrestrained housing market.’”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
HELLO.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Skyrocketing rents are a direct consequence
of failed government policy on housing construction. Both of them are also, a direct
consequence of immigration strategy (whether ‘do nothing’ or otherwise) by
governments and parties of all political persuasion.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The British housing market is
highly subsidized by the state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prices
are kept artificially sky-high by huge government subsidies cleverly packaged
as humanitarian aid to immigrants and the poor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>By giving almost cart-blanche to local councils to pay out enormous sums
of money to housing associations, in rents (actually an improvement over the
limitless amounts that were paid out in the recent past) there is no market
incentive for rents to ever reduce. And the rental market is driving the
construction market, not as it should be, the other way round.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
If a ‘correction’ is coming it
will be catastrophic and it will be 100% the fault of the government and her
loyal opposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have refused to
offer an alternative model to the current housing finance model (which
encourages buy-to-let) and its’ associated, artificially inhibited construction
market.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
If you refuse to alienate your environmental
lobby, upper middle-class and rural voters - and make mass housing construction
on green-belt land almost impossible to get through the planning application stage
(which in any case, takes years to complete) then you have to build thousands of
twenty story skyscrapers to house the estimated 323,000 net migration to
Britain which is the latest figure we have for the year ending September 2015.
Note, this figure may only include those people who according to the United
Nations definition of a migrant; have been resident in the UK for at least
12 months. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note also that this net
figure does not include illegal immigrants.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
If you only build, nationally,
forty thousand housing units every year, you have a growing deficit, a gawping,
massive, unassailable abyss that has opened up between the available stock of
housing and the requirement for affordable housing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The result is that prices will ‘skyrocket.’ It
is called ‘supply and demand’ and that is something most high school student
can tell you about – we do not need to be mislead by leading economists or
politicians as to the reasons for the housing crisis.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
If the government obligates all British
local councils to pay the rental accommodation costs of all people living in its
area (assuming they are unable to afford local accommodation) - irrespective of
their legality or status, then you force local councils to encourage a speculative
housing market.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone with excess funds
and a sympathetic bank manager is able to buy up almost all the existing
housing stock as soon as it becomes available. They then offer it for rent at
ever-escalating and exorbitant prices because they KNOW the local councils must
house everyone and will pay almost anything they are asked to pay in order to
comply with central government’s diktat.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Now why do both the government and
her Majesties ever loyal opposition then try to scare us all with the two
aforementioned articles in the Press?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Is it because they think we are
all both greedy and stupid?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
They want us to vote affirmatively,
to stay in the European Union on June 23, 2016 even though government policy
(and that includes, but not exclusively, our membership of the EU) is responsible
for our housing shortfall, for the ridiculous price of housing and for our insane
rental costs. And they (the Labor Party, the Conservatives and the Liberal
Democrats) have no intention of ever rocking that electorally popular housing
boat.</div>
<br />
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The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-86147879403152917022016-04-29T03:47:00.000-07:002016-04-29T03:47:34.398-07:00Free speech and Symbols of Oppression<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">If speech is free, then our
generation has lost the sense of responsibility that comes with the endeavor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The use of speech is a forgotten privilege
because speech has consequences. There is accountable speech, there is
inflammatory speech and there is irresponsible speech.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ability to make sounds does not imply an
obligation to do so. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Talmud warns
against lashon hara which translates from the Hebrew as ‘evil tongue’ but which
means derogatory speech. To quote Wikipedia “Speech is considered to be lashon
hara if it says something negative about a person or party, is not previously
known to the public, is not seriously intended to correct or improve a negative
situation, and is true.” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Our society has become intoxicated
with this nihilistic joy of verbal expression, as if self-restraint is a dirty
word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But perhaps the worst thing about
it is that it has encouraged those who lie for a living; racists and bigots all,
to emerge in full rancid flower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has
encouraged sloppy and altogether malicious scholarship because without a
distance being drawn between academia and its student charges there can be no
respect for any truth save those ‘truths’ most hysterically enunciated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The antisemitic BDS movement employs this
tactic.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">If the greatest gift that
modern society has given us is our freedom to choose then our greatest failure
has been our inability to recognize the danger to our society that a nihilistic
approach to those choices entails.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
good example is the election in the UK of Malia Bouattia as President of the National
Union of Students (an organization that claims to represent some 7 million
students). Malia opposed an NUS resolution condemning and boycotting
theocratic, fascist, slave trading and genocidal Islamic State; she expressed
public concern about the presence of a “large Jewish Society” in a UK
university.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course “the Jews” don’t
preach hate; they are intellectually passive about their own rights, in fact
they are generally, intellectually passive about their fate. For those reasons
they have always made an easy target for the rabble-rouser. I suspect that Malia
Bouattia did not express similar concern when one of Britain’s
most prestigious </span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">university's </span></span>London based Islamic society consistently churned out wannabe mass killers and terrorists.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can only conclude, therefore, that
her motivation was racially biased in its conception.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Just because we can, it does
not mean that we should. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a
fundamental principle of civil society. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
have largely lost that basic understanding of what makes for a healthy society.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Sense of proportionality and
restraint is the essence of being a responsible adult. And as children as young
as sixteen demand and receive adult rights and privileges such as (in Scotland,
Great Britain) the right to vote, the concomitant responsibilities associated
with those rights are being ignored with a contempt that augurs badly for
society. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The issue that most concerns
me about free speech and the radicalization of debate by students (and many of their
‘progressive,’ intolerant professors) is that history is neither pretty nor
linear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I want to pick and choose the
objects or narratives of our history, whether I shared parts of them or not,
then I am engaged in censorship and that also worries me.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Campaigners in Oxford University,
for instance, staged a “Mass March for Decolonization” where they called for
the removal of “imperialist iconography.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this particular case they were referring to
the statue of Cecil Rhodes, British businessman and an enthusiastic proponent
of “settler colonialism” for whom the former Rhodesia was named.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">But here is the problem.
Political Correctness is a disease. It is one step away from the latest fascist
political philosophy, intersectionality. An unholy hierarchy of causes are
permitted to be defined as worthy of inclusion in a saintly martyrs temple while
everything else is rewritten to reflect the “correct” interpretation of
history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the next level, there are people
and narratives, simply erased from history.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">This is already an ancient
practice. The Egyptians would scrape away all references to the non-person or
event that celebrated the life and achievements of said non-person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All monuments referring to the non-person
were obliterated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The non-person was
literally, erased from history. German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, writing in
1820-21 with painful prescience posited that "Where they burn books, they
will also ultimately burn people.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The Nazis, in our own era
burnt books and then, they burnt people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It isn’t just that these
people want to shut down debate; they want to rewrite history, sanitize it so
that it fits into their own set of intellectual parameters, irrespective of any
non-linear, messy but divergent realities that may clash with theirs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is fascism. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may no longer be appropriate for Cecil Rhodes
to stand outside Oriel
College (even with the
£100m in gifts that the college may lose if his statue is removed).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then perhaps a better way to commemorate
his life would be to move him to Rhodes House, which has been awarding
scholarships to train future world leaders since 1902.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or maybe, a set of statues that commemorate Rhodes’s less salubrious attributes could be sculptured
to surround him. That would be of educational value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An unprejudiced education is after all, something
that even those people both fortunate and privileged enough to make it into the
hallowed halls of Oxford
University, might one day
learn to appreciate?</span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-58887451426026391612016-04-19T05:43:00.000-07:002016-04-19T06:23:55.810-07:00Donald Trump and the Race for the White House<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Donald Trump is a populist leader and that makes him dangerous.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">His grandstanding and verbal violence are not the way a mature democracy
is supposed to operate. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 55% of his
supporters who are allegedly white and 'working class' plus the undefined
others showing their support for him do not appear to be too concerned with his
incitement.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It would be interesting to know how he will fare with some of those other
constituencies - specifically the 56 million people of Latino/Hispanic descent
living in the USA who
represent 18% of the total US
population, or the 41 million African-American people (13%) or the 29 million
people who are of some other racial profile (9%). The American electorate that
Trump has potentially alienated is equal to some 126 million people or 39% of
the total United States
population!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But let us say that many of those people who are not white and working
class but did support him are the following:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">
1) Fearful for their jobs,</span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">
2) Fearful for an uptick in immigration,</span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">
3) Fearful of Muslim influence over America,</span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">
4) Antisemitic,</span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 108.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -37.1pt;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">5) Scared of Bernie Sanders because he is: a) A socialist or</span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">b) Jewish (See 4 above!)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 108.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -37.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then that still
leaves us with the big question: Can Trump win when he has alienated so large a
percentage of the North American electorate?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Americans may not
be so politically engaged, but with the uptick in violence that Trump and his
supporters started, I would be worried about any likely escalation creating the
environment for political assassination. And that is something that has
not been seen for many years. I would be more worried about the genie he
has potentially let out of the campaigning bottle than the likelihood of him
being selected as the Republican candidate for the 2016 elections and then
going on to win the election.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Since the end of
the Second World War and with the exception of the Reagan-Bush era (12 years), there
have been no periods of rule by one party, for longer than 8 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be unhealthy for the American
political scene for one party to rule for three consecutive four year
periods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if people are really
scared for their future, one party-rule ethically atrophies its most passionate
supporters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The longer a party holds
onto the reigns of power, the less sensitive it becomes to reason and a healthy
civil administration; the longer a party rules, the less it represents its
electorate. Longevity breeds megalomania and becomes a threat to the stability
of the system – any system.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">We have already
seen the violent response to Trump’s campaign rally in Chicago. It has the potential to
trigger a cycle of violence. It may convince the Republican Party to take
a stand against him if it believes that his selection would lead to:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> a) Defeat in November 2016 and</span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> b) The Republican Party consigned</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> to the political
wilderness.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There is a view
that as the date for selection approaches, Donald Trump will come up with a
series of grand gestures meant to placate his opponents and derail Hillary
Clinton’s own presidential bid.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Donald Trump has demonstrated his
misogyny. It would be creepy for him to now change direction and be
“nice” to women although that is one constituency he should have tried not to
alienate. In a race between Hillary and Donald even a women who is
critical of the Clintons
may find a vote for Trump politically unpalatable. The African-American
population also needs a grand gesture from Donald Trump. They too have
personally felt the downside to immigration. If he can play to their
insecurity, if he made Dr Carson his vice-presidential running mate and announced
measures that placated the Latino populace, it may convince a sufficiently
significant sector of both groups, if not to vote for him, then at least to
stay away from Hillary. And that too would work in his favor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">People have brought up the “soft bigotry of
low expectations” to which George W. Bush referred, in his speech to the NAACP
in the year 2000. The liberal agenda has not been entirely helpful to the
American poor of any race, religion or ethnicity. A focused attack on the
privileged liberal agenda which can be seen in its extremity as anti-American,
anti-Christian, antisemitic and even, anti-female could also create
opportunities for Donald Trump, not simply to put his democrat opponents on the
defensive but also to bring out voters to stand with him. Bernie Sanders anti-Zionist propaganda and some of Hillary Clinton's unsavory bed-fellows cannot be ignored if they are thrust forward into the credibility debate.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Trump has
opportunities to create a realignment of forces in America. The issue is not
just about party politics. A changed direction is needed because the
malaise providing the impetus for Trumps ascendancy has its genesis in popular
dissatisfaction with much that is happening both in America and across the globe and
crucially, the failure of a credible political response to it. Hollywood cannot mask a
perception of American decline.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Saying that
populist policies are the bread and butter of fascism does not detract from the
popular concerns driving them. If anything, the accusation is elitist
condescension. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Put another way, pulling
our hair out because the candidacy choices are unsavory to some of us misses
the reason for Donald Trump’s popularity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Demagogue, clown, or plodder that he may be,
Trump vocalizes the disquiet felt by large parts of American public opinion on a
wide variety of issues.</span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-81376817111115813242016-04-12T02:07:00.001-07:002016-04-12T02:12:08.059-07:00Jeremy Corbyn and a Case Study for Fascism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">You can tell what a person
truly thinks, even when they do not publicly express all that they believe in,
when you look at their friends and advisers, the events they attend and the
organizations they belong to.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Jeremy Corby is an example of
an influential ‘would be’ fascist leader who took center stage after a long
period during which time he maintained a relatively low profile. Until
his time came to step forward and take advantage of popular but noxious beliefs
that for decades were discussed in quiet corners but were too inappropriate for
public discussion. But note how even today he is never unambiguous in his
condemnation of antisemitism within the ranks of his own party.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">In fact, he makes an excellent
case study for fascism.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">As leader of the British
Labour Party, his cohorts include</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">:<span style="color: #1f497d;"></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #1f497d; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Press
TV - the mouthpiece of the Shia Muslim, theologically antisemitic Islamic
Republic of Iran</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";"> </span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #1f497d; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Hamas
- the theologically antisemitic, anti-Christian and homophobic, Islamic-fascist
ruler of Gaza
which makes a habit of throwing gays off tall buildings</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";"> </span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #1f497d; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Hezbollah
– the radical Shia Muslim group that like Islamic State has as its main
goal the establishment of an Islamic government across the Arab
world. It has murdered Lebanese liberals and continues today to
destabilize Lebanon</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";"> </span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #1f497d; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Holocaust
deniers (Paul Eisen)</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";"> </span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #1f497d; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Antisemites
(Paul Eisen, Carlos Latuff, the Reverend (CofE) Stephen Sizer, Raed Salah)</span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";"> </span></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Jeremy Corbyn could have
refused their advances, their money, listened to what they said and read what
they wrote; and walked away from them, fast. But “he is remarkably good
at proffering apologetics for dictatorship and tyranny”. (James Bloodworth.
editor of Left Foot Forward)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">By embracing them he becomes them.</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">His excuse that dialogue is
the only way to resolve conflict is predicated on the idea that our
interlocutors desire a change in their own situation that does not result in
our physical destruction. Jeremy Corbyn will support dictatorial, racist,
anti-Western, misogynistic, homophobic, radical, theologically fundamentalist
regimes that despise everything we stand for and then justify his support for
them by asking us to believe that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">somehow
we have something in common with them?</b> Perhaps he means us to believe
that even after all that has been mentioned previously, there is still
something to talk about? </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The problem is that the Jeremy
Corbyn's of this world actively provide a fig leaf for fascism.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Jeremy Corbyn’s protestations
of virtue are hollow, a sham, and at best he is no more than a political
dilettante; at worse, a liar who serves to salve the conscience of his
supporters.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">During World War Two the Nazis
realized that they could commit any atrocity, on any scale, if the public did
not have to witness it. Early in their rule they internalized the
lesson that the German people would accept the euthanasia program that took
away their ‘defective’ children and their infirm elderly – as long as the
narrative was in place that afforded them the means to deny any knowledge of
their loved ones’ fate.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">A principle cannot be altered
to suit an inconvenient truth. Those that choose to elect the Jeremy Corbyn’s
of this world can argue for an unbroken history of dedication to social
democracy with its concern for people, somehow balancing their selective
concerns against a predilection for providing support to fascist causes
and associating with hate soaked bigots.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">In the light of day it is
difficult to tell the difference between what many on today’s progressive left
believe, how they act, and how they differ from the good folk of 1930’s Germany
who turned a blind eye to Nazism.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">We arrived at this point
because of our ignorance of global history.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Our knowledge of history’s
villains is so poor that we recognize only a small part of the evil that has
been committed in the name of the gods. Conquest and slavery are not only a
Western malaise but at least we recognize the errors of our past. We have
ignored other colonial enterprises because they were not ours; we have dismissed
superstitions and disregarded the prejudices of many nations that are
erroneously labeled as third world or developing because it complicated our
guilt and our self-flagellation. Global history is a rich tapestry of good as
well as bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The terrible atrocities
Islamic State have committed were already an acceptable part of a rich Muslim
cultural tradition that throughout their history viewed the non-believer as
worthy only of subjugation and conquest.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">By excluding that tradition,
by choosing to side with regimes that reject our way<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of life, we give them a green light to
oppress their own people and to attack us until we submit to them.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">This is not a multicultural
paradise to which we should all aspire; it is a dystopian vision of hell.</span></span><br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Note: since I published this
item (on Algemeiner.com) Mr Corbyn has said 'Anyone that commits any act of
antisemitism is auto-excluded from the party and an inquiry follows
immediately.' Talk is cheap Mr Corbyn, even when it is mouthed on
prime-time television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have had no personal
action taken by you either with respect to Israel or the Jews to demonstrate
your fidelity to either equality or the truth.</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-11929536275726800992016-04-03T14:39:00.000-07:002016-04-07T03:07:00.519-07:00Censorship and BDS, the anti-Zionist War against Jewish Independence.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">If Jews are to foster social
cohesion as an important and indeed necessary instrument of nation building in Israel, then
the required group identity, however much based on the ideology or utopian
vision of Zionism, has to include everyone, even those people with whom we are
in serious ideological competition or conflict.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">A criticism often directed at
Zionist or pro-Jewish groups by their opponents is that free speech means the
freedom to criticize, and in turn this means that even when the anti-Zionists’
(or antisemites’) one-sided debates are governed by intimidation and cant, the
attempt to deny them their right to speak is to silence “critical voices”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a false argument, it is the cant
deployed by fascists to stifle meaningful debate if only because it is
one-sided and based on deceit. Therefore, it can only work if the other side to
the conflict is silenced. In this censorship is the essence of the
tactics employed by those who oppose Israel's existence.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Where Israel and its supporters have
failed is that they do not replicate the tactics of their enemies. When
faced with intimidation and violence you use all legal means available to you
in order to punish your persecutors. You do not “play nice” with fascists
as most of Israel’s
enemies are. Intimidation and violence are the fascists preferred method to
stifle debate. It is the antithesis of academic or intellectual freedom. The Nuremberg rallies were
also examples of ‘free’ speech. The Nazis rose to power using intellectual fig
leafs provided by the presence of eminent lawyers, and the scholarly erudition
of the professors in their ranks. Its tactics were little different to those
employed by the Boycott Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement which is ubiquitous
in Western colleges and universities.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">In the UK and USA today Jewish academics are
being intimidated into silence or driven from their campuses; thus fascism
censors us as it takes control. If we do not fight it we are driven into
effectively renouncing our equal right to free speech by a vociferous,
passionately believing, hateful minority of intellectual thugs. Fascism
has little to do with universal truths and everything to do with positioning a
narrative to the absolute exclusion of all else. In this way, history,
for the Palestinians and their supporters begins with defeat in a war they will
forever deny they were responsible for starting; thereafter they are always
victims and never anything other than passive players in this tragic drama.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Being passive players in a
global drama, they have no responsibility for anything that befalls them and no
responsibility for the deaths they cause. If they slaughter Jewish children at
a school it is the Jews or the Zionists who are at fault for being the foot
soldiers of an illegitimate regime. It is the signature tactic of the tyrant
and the terrorist. Whatever occurs is always someone else's fault. But we
are left clearly understanding the consequences of our failure to submit to
terror.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">It is the main reason Western
journalists are so obsequious in their toadying to an Islamist, anti-Zionist
agenda when they report the news. It theoretically inoculates the journalist
against “Islamic anger” (fatal retribution). It is an excellent way to deflect
criticism and crush debate. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The first stage in any conflict
is to win the propaganda war. The Palestinians and their fascist
supporters in the BDS campaign have already won the first stage. The
second stage is to stifle any contrary debate. Controlling academia and
the press are the crucial battlegrounds. The Jewish people and their
supporters are rapidly losing that second stage.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">If we want to influence a
person of power so that our own message may reach more people, we must display
similar concerns and prejudices. Instead of ‘justifying’ or ‘explaining’ we
must respond with our own accusations, non-stop, relentlessly and mercilessly.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">We have suffered far too many
centuries of Islamic discrimination and persecution to allow the past 68 years
of independence to be all that the world is educated to recognizing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A wealth of historically terrible misdeeds
mirrored in contemporary events in Iraq,
Syria, Nigeria and
elsewhere are all we need, to remind the world of why Jews sought
self-determination in the first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And why people that omit that history from the current debate are not
just Israel’s
enemies but the enemies of human civilization.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-5929319207914361612016-03-18T10:06:00.000-07:002016-03-18T10:06:48.847-07:00Censorship and University Life under threat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Censorship worries many of us
but in a world of prejudice it would be easy to simply ban uncomfortable speech.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a recent report it was revealed that
there has been a 61% rise in antisemitism in the British capital city and that
a majority of French Jews are now considering emigrating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>France is no longer a safe place to
live if you are Jewish. According to that same report over 40 percent of EU
citizens hold antisemitic views.</span></span> <span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the United States, 75% of Jewish
students have experienced antisemitism </span></span><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">in their college</span></span>.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It would be so easy to flee
from faith. It is not nearly as easy to fight prejudice and the antisemites who
in the interest of free speech celebrate their passionate engagement by
renouncing their opponent’s freedoms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Jewish Uncle Toms are particularly enthusiastic about proscribing their coreligionists constitutional rights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association is being curtailed
across the Western World so that fascism may impose its views on us all.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The Soviet
Union collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions and
lies. Communist China had to adopt a market economy to forestall collapse and
even then in order to catch up economically with the West it has had to impose
hard labor on large numbers of its own people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>North Korea
is an abomination that can only survive through infusions of Chinese
cash and the liberal use of concentration camps to keep its terrorized
citizenry from rebelling against its military tyranny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Venezuela, once viewed as the model
for South American leadership and enlightened rule could only survive under its radical
left wing charismatic leadership through its suppression of the opposition. Massive food bribes at election time were with-held from anyone suspected
of wanting to vote the wrong way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the
Progressive left (and the term is interchangeable with ‘radical’) understands
that it has to control the narrative and suppress any opposition in order to
have a realistic chance of maintaining power.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The radical left is bereft of
honesty because its own survival always takes precedence over the truth. In its
desperation for self-validation it resembles a religion, and like any faith in
the early stages of its’ mythological creation it is bought at the expense of a
blood sacrifice. In this new religion, the radical left continues to demand and
is incapable of letting go of that blood sacrifice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its antisemitic origins have blinded it to
its bigotry. The original sin of the ‘progressive’ left’s intellectual, antisemitic
birth has been espoused by far too many guardians of its ideological purity. It
is an easy narrative, familiar to the general population and therefore, an easy
key to opening the minds of its more receptive potential converts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Its political theology makes
its easier to understand just how little distance separates Islamic State and
other fundamentalist fascist organizations from the so called progressive left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those who gravitate towards these racist
demagogues are only comfortable with a non-nuanced approach to life. They need
simplicity as validation of their own identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As a consequence of this approach they are able to renounce human rights
to any, save a selective few, as a vehicle for defining who is a friend and
who, an enemy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this way they can
ignore the stench of their cohort’s often genocidal ideology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I read an interesting article
in Ynet news about Hillel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
primarily, an American and Jewish university club.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Its aim is to “engage Jewish students in religious, cultural, artistic,
and community-service activities” (Wikipedia). As the survey referred to in the
first paragraph proves, clearly antisemitism on campus exists. Hillel,
crucially, exists to provide a safe-haven and a familiar home for people who
need it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there is a new fascist
conspiracy to undermine and ultimately, to obliterate free speech and it is
called “Open Hillel.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Open Hillel is an initiative
that claims to allow for more open criticism of Israel and Zionism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In reality it is one more fascist instrument
of control through which any criticism of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist
organizations is first rebuked and then by denying Jews the rights that their
opponents demand, prohibited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By undermining
Jewish rights and creating a hostile environment for Jewish association the
Muslim and anti-Semitic Left are trying to muzzle Jews on campus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By working to censor the visual Jewish
presence on campus, fascism defines truth and controls narrative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">As Ben-Dror Yemini said in the
following article:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4756577,00.html"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4756577,00.html</span></a></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.4pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">“On many campuses in the US, there are many groups like Students for
Justice in Palestine
(SJP), Islamic associations, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and many others.
They have a lot of power. They act, sometimes with violence, against Israelis
coming onto campuses. Sometimes it's just because they're Israeli, regardless
of their opinions. This phenomenon is called a boycott. The members of these
groups, most of whom support the BDS Movement, are the ones behind a campaign
to silence other opinions. So an interesting thing is happening here - in order
to strengthen "openness" and "inclusion," we seek to open
the door to those who use violence against openness.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.4pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.4pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Facing all of these groups, on some of the
campuses, there is one group - only one - Hillel, which is trying to give
Jewish students one space - just one - that would be clean of anti-Semitic,
anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli propaganda. The three are not always the same
thing. In recent years, differences between them have eroded. And now, there
are those who seek to take away even this small space, so the exact same
anti-Israeli opinions are voiced again - those already voiced over and over
again everywhere else.”</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yemini also points out that activists
and lecturers refuse to sanction opposition opinions, they silence any
pro-Jewish or pro-Israel voices that even try to attend their events and they
intimidate anyone who attempts to stand up to them.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">For ‘boycott’ we should
understand that this means physical censorship, intimidation and denial of a (pro-Jewish)
right to free speech and association.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Visualize
wife-beaters and proponents of choice demanding as their familial, cultural or
democratic right, the right to abuse women; as well as unfettered access to the
Women’s refuge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Picture the pedophile who
asserts the right to be given a role in looking after children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Imagine radical right wingers seeking control
of Democrat facilities at election time (USA)
or permanent control of Labor Party and Trade Union’s communications media (UK).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No amount of dissimulation can conceal the
rhetoric and sophistry that is meant to shut down debate in a secure
environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That right to a secure
environment is the purpose our universities serve. It is under threat if you are the wrong kind of Jew.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">These organizations represent
the modern face of fascism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are
against free speech; they are completely closed to any opinion that is at
variance with their own opinion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Intimidation and violence are what they use if the legal stuff
fails.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are truly, worthy successors
to 1930’s, 1940’s (and 1950’s) bigotry and if they are not defeated outright they
will return us to a similar age of darkness and despair. </span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-28156843387440359302016-03-10T04:58:00.000-08:002016-03-10T04:58:20.215-08:00Censorship and the Control of Ideas in Society<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">We live in a world that is
divided as never before by competition for the supremacy of ideas, such
as Islamism, Islam, Democracy and freedom of speech, socialism and capitalism,
fundamentalism and individualism.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Many people in modern society
are alienated from that world of ideas and even more of them, are alienated
from politics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Increasingly, the more
educated we become, the more we become alienated from religion in favor of
consumerism and its comforting convenience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be engaged with something takes effort. In a world of ideas
that are constantly clashing it is far easier to either ignore or suppress whatever creates unease.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">At the turn of the Common Era,
the competition for whichever god or group of deities we chose to worship, was
fierce. Aspects of worship were the fashionably contested marketplace of ideas that
engaged slaves and aristocrats, workers and bureaucrat alike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then life was simple, ideas uncomplicated
and existence precarious so a bit of extra help from the divine was at the very
least, a psychological tonic!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">As a species we began as pure
instinct – how else could we have survived in an unremittingly hostile
environment where weather, the search for food and shelter, predators and
disease hunted us remorselessly? And then we discovered the usefulness of
relationships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We discovered the utility
in trusting associates, first families and then tribes. We discovered that mutual
interest was a powerful force for survival. Trust grew out of physical and
psychological familiarity – even if we did not, as yet, understand this. As we
moved away from being instinctual human beings we needed the community to back
us up, to protect us from other competitor communities. As communities became
settlements then tribes, city states, regions then nations, laws became a means
by which we regulated and therefore controlled behavior.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">It has taken us thousands of
years to reach the point where the individual is once more at the center of
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Primitive man (woman) lived at
the caprice of the elements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The modern
individual no longer needs to labor to survive and he or she may choose to live
a life with a minimum of human interaction. That also means that our
responsibility towards each other is no longer a necessity for our mutual survival
and the danger is that our species’ responsibility for each other is being
reversed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are at a different stage of
growth (or decay) - depending on how we interpret society and whether we look
forward or backwards for our inspiration.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Technology has enabled us to
have partial control over disease and our physical environment. Our laws force
us to exercise restraint and Western society encourages its’ citizens to be
tolerant of that with which it is unfamiliar, and uncomfortable. And yet, we
still have this competition for ideas which brings us into conflict across the
globe with people who owe no allegiance to those ideals that have made us so
theoretically tolerant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those people are
using our tolerance against us.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Individualists demand
self-expression as the highest ideal within society but it is conditional. What
conditions that self-expression is an absence of censorship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That means, when we disagree on a fundamental
level with our neighbor we must ignore those differences in the name of tolerance.
The problem is that a community can be equally committed to an ideal that is
the antithesis of the freedom that gives us our right to individuality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unless we are willing to fight for our own
rights of self-expression we will be censored and our articles of freedom will
be used against us to undermine those very freedoms we so passionately defend.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">In the 1920’s and throughout
the 1930’s the Nazis used our ideals of freedom to undermine and overthrow
democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They used censorship to shut down
any valid criticism and they used discrimination to appeal to the ignorant
middle classes whose ballot they needed to be legally voted into power. The
individual was always the greatest threat to the Party’s power because they
were less likely to accept whatever they were told as absolute truth, and they
could infect others with their criticisms and their doubts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Al Qaeda and Islamic State
(Daesh) have their model for their ideal community and it negates what enabled
our society to achieve our individual-centric society with its laissez-faire
morality, its hedonism and its idolization of consumerism.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">This is where the current cult
of the individual fails every one of us.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">And a simple example exists of
this breathtaking naivety with which we have embraced our enemies while they
openly treat us with contempt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Huffington Post launched an Arabic language edition in July 2015 called
Huffington Post Arabi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is in
competition with al Jazeera which is owned by Qatar and therefore reflects its
anti-Western, pro-Islamist agenda. Because it is in competition with a
successful Arab model which is reactionary, biased and sectarian, in order to
compete it is satisfied to mimic it in its illiberal prejudices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In an article I read as recently as January
25, 2016 there were references to World War 3, the term used to describe the
conflict between Islam and the rest of mankind.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">So let us be clear on what is
being offered to the Arab world. We have a popular, commercially successful, Western,
liberal, internet newspaper applying Western values as justification for
funding the production of a prejudiced Arab-Muslim tabloid that in turn
provides a veil of respectability to Arab prejudice. It censors debate and
encourages the idea that ethnic conflict is legitimate; it is contemptuous of
free speech and despises the freedoms that encapsulate our Western Society.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Arianne Huffington appears to
be motivated by contempt and self-loathing. Perhaps our captains of industry have
always been self-serving and contemptuous of the society that nourished them. It
is society’s embrace of individualism that has enabled us to make stunning
advances in every field of science and technology while simultaneously it is
helping our enemies to undermine our civilization.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">A second example is that of
the recent case of an American university professor, Joy Karega, who spreads
her antisemitic ideology and conspiracy theories on American campuses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> An</span> academic institution permits Karega to spread her malignant views without consideration of any action being taken to
contain the influence of this repulsive individual. If this person represents our free speech
legacy then colleges must permit all intellectual rabble rousers a campus forum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If hate is a permitted commodity then there
should be no bars to who may preach it.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">To extrapolate what such a
toxic equilibrium promotes is not difficult: at best, assassination, at worst,
civil war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If society understands this
fundamental threat to its survival then how can it justify the continued
employment of such a venomous creature?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">We have been here at many
other times in history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most recent
outbreak of this intellectual contagion was during the first half of the
twentieth century when fascism was violently expressed by both left and
right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their most enthusiastic
proponents were ultimately responsible for the murders of tens of millions of
human beings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was only seriously
acknowledged that the extreme right wing committed crimes against
humanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was our greatest error
because it inoculated Left wing fascists against any criticism of their beliefs
and tactics for as long as they did not wear an armband adorned with a
swastika.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "trebuchet ms";">In our world of ideas, fascisms
antisemitic cheer-leaders are ascendant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Meanwhile, we show far more concern for their right to abuse us than we do, our
right, to live without the concomitant negative consequences their abuse
entails.</span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-5710180203302183632016-03-01T08:42:00.000-08:002016-03-01T08:42:27.122-08:00Censorship: BDS and Fascisms’ Flag Waivers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The problem with any discussion of
censorship is that it is not only what offends or is harmful to society that
defines the need but also political will, social currency and degree of
cultural acceptability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Western
world has made it even more difficult for itself by having no unambiguous
vision of its own identity and therefore it possesses no clear guide to illuminate
the preferred direction that that discussion should take.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Additionally, censorship criteria changes
with each generation; they can change each decade thus redefining the truths
that make up our comfortable sense of self (based on our understanding of
morality).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there is another kind of
censorship and the easiest way to describe it is by saying that it is the
opposite of freedom of speech. We choose to censor that which is uncomfortable
for us.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Fascism is quite simply the need for others
to censor anything with which they disagree.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">And following on from this characterization
of fascism what makes for propaganda is repetition, reinforcement and denial. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without propaganda the fascist will have
difficulty gaining a significant audience and without a significant audience it
is unlikely to gain mainstream acceptability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A picture, a word in a certain setting, or an oft repeated phrase
creates familiarity and familiarity is not easily distinguished from
truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To quote Nobel prize winner, Daniel
Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow) “anything that makes it easier for the
associative machine to run smoothly will also bias beliefs.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our entire understanding of ourselves and
our surroundings is based on predictability and that predictability is based on
associations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Inevitably, it is what drives our rejection of
change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That rejection of change creates
the self-censorship society usually willingly imposes on itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The outlier creates a dissonant reality that
is subjectively uncomfortable by rejecting the norm (Kahneman’s “associative
coherence”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Put another way, it is the
outlier's rejection of the norm that creates the intellectual and emotional
discord (disharmony) that is at the heart of conflict.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">BDS (the Boycott Divestment
and Sanctions movement) is the perfect example of a classic fascist conspiracy
that in order to succeed must censor the truth, if only because its version of
truth is unable to compete with the alternate reality advocated by its enemy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, it must control the narrative and
deny its opponents the possibility of intellectual exchange or debate. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fascism must censor the truth to
flourish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not all change is positive nor
is it necessarily desirable, but it is this interplay between people and
society that defines the limits of acceptability in everything we do and in
everything we are permitted to believe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is what creates both growth and decay.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Incidents of hate speech and violent
confrontation dismissed with contempt as being no more than examples of academic
freedom are proof of the incremental take over of Western universities by the advocates
of fascism.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The problem is that contemporary ethical
thinking is framed in terms of carefully chosen absolutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In today’s inquisitorial society, consensus
is defined by the exclusion of anyone who does not think exactly as set out by
fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How different does this make
us, in reality, from yesteryear's bigots?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The clamor to ban that with which we
disagree is selective and it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">within</i>
this selectivity that we isolate the threats to a ‘consensus’ (whatever that
may mean) that is no more than a preferential narrative. When we selectively proscribe
debate the main question that we should be asking is: who decides? Is it a movement
like BDS or a committee? Where we have government mandated
committees defining the limits on anything, at least in theory, those they
appoint represent society and therefore what they limit represents what society
is happy for them to limit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In practice
it is the most passionate and therefore usually, not the most ethical of
advocates that place themselves in the position of being able to exercise control
over decisions that impact on us all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And so it is with BDS and its easy delegitimization of anything that
threatens its assault on Israel,
on Zionism and on Jewish equality.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The issue becomes more critical when we
realize that it is not possible to prevent a movement from escalating its
demands once it begins to achieve any of its objectives because success creates
an escalation of momentum which in turn facilitates violence as an enabler of
that success.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">People who appoint themselves arbiters of morality
can change society but not necessarily in a good way. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most people cannot draw a line under their
activities once a goal has been reached.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is probable that the only movement in history that was able to stop
once it achieved its objectives were the suffragettes. But then they reluctantly
responded to state sponsored intimidation and their few acts of terrorism were
against property, not people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
militancy of the Suffragette movement ceased with the start of World War 1. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Every person must wrestle with their own
personal limits on what they view as permissible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Society is defined by its limits. It is when
individuals or a group within a society refuse to accept the rules by which
society is governed that violence or terrorism becomes just another tactic in
their war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It does not explain why some
people agitate for change through violence but clearly, some personalities are
more open to violent expression than others and some ideologies and faiths are
similarly disposed towards violence as a means of achieving an end.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">In Islamic societies there are numerous
restrictions demarcated by religion, by tribal tradition and by mythology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Violence is not usually one of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, within a Western legal environment
its use as a means of furthering an Islamic agenda is easily justified through
its cultural familiarity.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">War, the execution of criminals, boxing and
hunting are our last legally mandated acts of violence in Western Civilization.
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">However, the targeting of Jews and
Zionism (Israel)
is an example of the application of subversion and violence as a means of
assault on Western values and Western society.</i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Social media is populist and therefore not
necessarily rational. Populism is defined by its successfully feeding off of
people’s fears and prejudices. As such it is a form of low value entertainment,
the risque post-cards of the electronic age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Social media’s greatest crime is that it is largely unaccountable for
its sins.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">If something poses a threat to our way of
life how do we indulge it without providing it with privileges available to
no-one else? Is there a difference between violent and non-violent extremism or
is one simply a way station on the road to the other?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How to make the unacceptable, irrelevant?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Ideas that we oppose must be defeated in
order to relegate them to history’s footnotes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Peddlers of hate, conspiracy theorists and bigots of all stripes whether
on the Internet, on campus or in other public arenas cannot be banned but they
can be shamed, isolated and denied an easy public platform from which to preach
and spread their poison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If ideas are
offensive, it is the society that defines them as such and the interplay
between groups sharing the same interests and those that do not, defines
whether we accept or ignore their ideas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Banning (censorship) simply drives an idea underground and marginalizes
its proponents who then are more likely to be radicalized and left feeling that
the only way forward is through violence. But make them appear ridiculous and maybe,
you force them to confront their ideology, or minimize their influence. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="text14"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The question is not how to recognize the
dividing line between creating offense and inciting violence but how do we indulge
that which is offensive without it becoming a characteristic of our society
which facilitates bullying as an acceptable tactic to achieve any ends?</span></span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-20526263241146697072016-02-22T02:36:00.001-08:002016-02-23T11:44:48.765-08:00Israeli Oligarchs and Zionism’s Failure of Vision<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As
part of our 25th wedding anniversary celebration we looked at Budapest,
Venice and Barcelona.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We settled on Tel Aviv.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be fair, twelve months before that we had spent
two days in Tel Aviv and it wasn’t nearly long enough. Twenty-seven years
earlier I had dragged my then girl-friend (now wife) all over Tel Aviv.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, it was dirty and dusty but parts were
gentrified. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Bauhaus
hadn’t yet gained the international recognition that it enjoys today.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This time we
spent a couple of days walking from Geula
Street which runs perpendicular from the seaside
to Rothschild Boulevard
and beyond.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rothschild and Chen are two
of the streets whose middle has a walkway the entire length, planted with the
most gorgeous trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many of those trees
have roots wrapped around their trunks providing an organic sculptural majesty
- they are a variety of Ficus or rubber tree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One of the smart things the cities founders did was to create those tree
lined boulevards which helps to circulate air and provide shade.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The downside to Tel Aviv is its lack of ambition
for itself and its’ shabby chic. It may look good on a teenager but not on a
building. It </span>spells
out what is wrong with a city that has only recently celebrated its centenary; more
about that later.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">For
the first few decades of renewed independence the refugee camps (Ma’abarot) housing
Jewish refugees from throughout the Arab world were a necessary eye-sore
that challenged successive governments to clear them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Necessities were basics, not luxuries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The possession of a small foreign currency account
in the USA while Yitzhak Rabin was ambassador there (which his wife failed to
close after the ambassador returned to Israel) brought about both the
resignation of the serving prime minister, that same Yitzhak Rabin, and the
fall of his government.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Four decades ago a representative of the state of Israel would recommend that a new
immigrant bring with them a decent kettle when they immigrated!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This occurred at around the same time that an
investigative journalist wrote an expose demonstrating how 70 families owned
most of the wealth of the state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
book had no impact on the uneven distribution of wealth. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Today,
one statistic states that 5% of Israeli families (a few more than the 70 that
once controlled everything) have 80% of the nation’s wealth. The GINI
co-efficient which measures the distance between rich and poor, places Israel
alongside the USA as highest in the developed world in the disparity between
rich and poor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The price of basic
foodstuffs is ridiculously expensive. It isn’t just imports that cost too
much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taxes are only part of the
issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is greed, centralized wealth
and import policies that protect the oligarchs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A book in the English language at Steimatsky’s (Israel’s
largest bookstore chain) costs almost three and a half times the price it would
cost in the West.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Packaged foods are
often double what the same or a similar product would cost in a European
country. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Outside
the country, Israelis are competitive and have great products; internally it
is as if a mafia owns everything and has no loyalty to anyone, at least not
within Israel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From a country of farmers and pioneers to a
modern nation fed up with austerity, but led by politicians that have no
national agenda, no unifying national vision, it makes sense that every
man<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and woman<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is for themselves, and only themselves.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That
explains the greed but not the lack of civic community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An example is Tel Aviv which is called “the White City,”
a designation based on its 4,000 Bauhaus/ International Style buildings, many
of which are in need of serious renovation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(It used to also be called the Big Orange as a nod to the Big
Apple).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enormous infrastructure projects
are being proposed (such as the TA Light rail project and redevelopment of
former military lands for large-scale commercial and residential
construction.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But almost everything in
Tel Aviv appears tired and even decrepit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The cosmetic face of Tel Aviv is usually ignored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Newly constructed hotels and beach-side
apartments are soon in need of maintenance and even the 5 star hotels along the
sea-side appear externally dilapidated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>1970’s entertainment structures are ugly and clearly no longer
maintained.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some-one is making lots of
money but it is not from any attempt at creating civic pride.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Operation
Protective Edge and other previous military conflicts affected Jerusalem – generating fear and damaging
tourism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But TA has rarely been touched
(excepting during the First Iraq War when Iraq fired 39 missiles at it).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An enormous quantity of cash (mostly foreign
donations) has contributed to the ongoing beautification of Jerusalem and to its maintenance. But TA is
overwhelmingly ignored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the question
is, why do its citizens ignore aesthetics? To show its contempt for modern town
planning, the Midrachov, the seaside walkway that stretches the length of Tel
Aviv from the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fashionable area of shops
in the North to Jaffa
in the south was still under reconstruction in the summer time during the peak period
of the tourist season.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Maybe
the main problem is that that 5% who own most of the wealth are funding both
the political left and the political right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So there are few (if any) national politicians with significant
influence who are willing to take on any national issues that impact their own
narrow interests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A simple example
occurred with the 2015 budget.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yair
Lapid planned three modest agricultural reforms for sheep’s milk, egg quotas
and fish. These plans would have lowered prices, but Agriculture Minister Yair
Shamir blocked them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did so because
his party has activists from farming communities and agri-production
organizations who we must assume, opposed the reforms. (Ha’aretz January 2nd,
2015) The Israeli market is not competitive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is controlled by vertical monopolies that prevent competition in
local and national markets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Israel
is too small not to be regulated but control can also be abusive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The danger in any relationship is that those
that seek control rarely know when to stop and the difference between control
and dictatorship is in the degree by which control is exercised.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Japan</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> had a
similar problem in the period that ended with General MacArthur’s rule. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Zaibatsu were enormous conglomerates with
control over every aspect of Japanese life. Breaking up the Zaibatsu helped to
facilitate Japanese competition with the West.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For almost five decades the Japanese economy not only flourished but was
viewed as the model of a centralized economy that other states could emulate,
if they wanted to develop a healthy economy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
need for action against oligarchies and monopolistic practices is obvious. Israel needs effective
legislation targeting the control that the super-rich have over the Israeli economy.
But the only way that will happen is if collusion is permitted by those same
people and organizations in the furtherance of international competition
because Israel
is too small a market to sustain the ambitious entrepreneur.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There
needs to be tax incentives to increase domestic productivity without jobs being
lost. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Competition has meant the transfer
of jobs overseas. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There has to be tax
incentives to ensure jobs remain in Israel. Unemployment damages the
social fabric.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">People
do not invest in property maintenance or in the creation of legacy structures
if they are not committed to the local community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A beautiful building, donations to art
galleries and parks endowed in their names and the names of their loved ones
are demonstrative of public statements of permanence.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Instead,
in Israel
we have foreign donors who endow universities, museums and public spaces while
super-rich Israelis offer 50 shekels to their fellow Israelis and then demand a
rename of the building in their name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Worse, when their inflated egos are insufficiently stroked they emigrate
and take their money and their physical assets with them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Civic
pride and economic maturity entails investment in aesthetic as well as
commercial infrastructure. It includes long term Israel
focused business and social investment; not selling off every technological
innovation that emerges from Israel’s
creative genius and not ignoring the cultural needs of the people.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
first stage of Zionism, building the nation so that it would be sustainable, is
completed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second stage, a renewed
Zionism that builds and beautifies the land has not yet begun but it is urgently
required.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We do not discuss Zionism because
we are intellectually and morally fatigued through the constant attacks of bigots
who have no interest in understanding its noble birth or its ongoing mission
but who have every interest in demonizing Zionism and thereby rewriting the
history books; thus preventing any meaningful understanding of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A vigorous
debate around a renewed Zionist vision will not only raise the quality of
debate but also provide critical focus for Israel’s notoriously partisan political
parties and perhaps even a means for reuniting some of them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-71472363078747990052016-01-13T02:14:00.000-08:002016-01-13T02:49:37.950-08:00A Call for Moderation and Reflection<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“The
highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Ludwig Feuerbach)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In
Cologne, Germany on New Years Eve, some 1,000 men of ‘Arab - North African’
appearance attacked female revelers and to date well over 500 criminal
complaints concerning sexual assault and in some cases, rape, have been
reported.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Similar incidences may not
have been as quantitatively ‘significant’ elsewhere but are known to have
occurred throughout Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are losing the battle for our human rights
because the assumption of universally applied responsibilities does not exist
and therefore the application of equal rights is similarly trivialized.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It
is only correct that we constantly debate the balance between the Big Brother
state and civil rights but protection of the individual as a cultural principle
has not kept up with human rights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks
to the Internet, pornography, crime and terror can now be efficiently
manufactured by anyone. In an age of narcissistic fulfillment personal choice
and our duty to protect are no longer interdependent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am more concerned with peoples’ freedom to
conceal and thus facilitate their personal – group vendettas, misdemeanors and
indiscretions through the electronic media than I am worried about the
potential for government to abuse our personal electronic information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you have something to be ashamed of don’t
put it on record. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The communications
age has been a blessing to the narcissist whether they identify as mass killers
or terrorists. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Society is acclimatizing
to a decremental loss in our security.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
people who are isolated from electronic communication are less likely to succeed
in hurting others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other side of
the information paradigm the proper controls must be maintained to secure the
protection of personal, benign information.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
social media have become a wickedly efficient resource for abusing and inciting
violence across the globe in millions of postings and comments that are created
every day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is as effortless to lie
as it is to tell the truth and because reality and fiction are easily
manipulated the electronic media are no longer, if they were ever, a vehicle for
educating us towards achieving a just society. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Basic
human rights can never be geographically variable, historically justified or
culturally insignificant; not in the name of multiculturalism nor in the name
of political correctness. According to Wikipedia, the latest human rights fad (called
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Intersectionality’</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">)</span> involves “the study of overlapping
or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination
or discrimination”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If words such as
‘integrity’ and ‘ethics’ are to have any meaning at all they have to be applied
in equal measure. In an open ethical system intersectionality is therefore
nonsense because each part of our identity is separate and as such, it cannot
be interpreted hierarchically nor can it become conditioned on someone else’s
interpretation of how we should interact with the different layers of our
identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When human rights become
politicized they are no more than a battle of wills for a newer form of
discrimination, domination and oppression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Communication becomes essentially unilateral and fetishistic.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">China</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> is the
global sweatshop for the Western worlds’ cheap consumer products (as well as
the source of most of our counterfeit products).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of crying crocodile tears for the
poor foreign worker the Western World could solve its unemployment problems but
it would cost each of us thousands of pounds, dollars or Euros extra, every
year, by returning more expensive production to western nations from China (and elsewhere).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be the ethical and equitable thing
to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We keep quiet about Chinese
human rights. We negotiate them away for our material comfort. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We
should be questioning the Arab world about its treatment of women and children,
minorities; its oppression of its workers; its colonial history and its
slave-owning present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We should boycott
all goods made in Pakistan
and not just for its sweatshops but also for its inter-generational support for
terrorism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Saudi Arabia should be an
international pariah. It has provided some 100,000 million dollars in aid to
Islamist institutions over the last quarter of a century and yet without its
oil we would need to find a cleaner, more efficient means of meeting our energy
requirements. But we keep quiet about Arab human rights violations. Left and
Right negotiate away <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their </i>protection
for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">our</i> material comfort.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Warm
feelings of self-righteous anger have to be universal to be principled unless
they are the product of selectively chosen, ethically fascist targeting.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We
are living in an age of fear and irrationality where those who create that fear
hold sway over us – see how easy it is to do nothing about North Korea
even as it enslaves its own citizens and threatens nuclear annihilation against
its American rival.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">According
to the United Nations, between March 2011 and August 2015 250,000 people were
killed in the Syrian Civil War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other
estimates place the number of dead men, women and children at 350,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How many deaths were there in the
Arab-Israeli conflict between 1920 and 2015? Some 115,000 people died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2015 Switzerland called a meeting of the
Geneva Convention for only the third time in its history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The UK,
France, Germany and another 123 signatory states to the
Fourth Geneva Convention assembled in order to condemn Israel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Fourth Geneva Convention concerns itself
with the protection of civilian persons in time of war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Israel stood alone in the dock on
all three occasions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Make sense? Of
course it doesn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sudan, Bangladesh,
Indonesia and Brazil
are just four of the dozens of conflict nations that have produced acts of
genocide since the end of World War 2. Syria is almost a side-show to what
has become a tragic litany of intentionally ignored blood letting. So if Israel
is not there to be periodically pilloried the UN stands for nothing other than
its own corpulent, self-congratulatory but essentially meaningless existence.
Under those conditions, the United Nations Organisation exists only to serve
its delegates with an endless merry go-round of pork barrel political
extravaganzas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The UN is nothing save
political theatre as tragic farce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>UN
activities cost a few Western nations some 40,000 million dollars annually.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How else to justify doing nothing most of the
time against the most heinous crimes committed in plain view unless there is an
Israel
to obsess about to the exclusion of everything else?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Human
Rights are a geographically variable commodity because we live in a political
world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our politicians and academics,
our journalists and our charity workers, our bureaucrats and our social
activists are human beings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are
prejudiced, racist, and guided by ego. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We give them credit for altruism when their endeavors
are inevitably driven by power and greed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What frightens them most are controls that limit their freedom and if limiting
ours helps them to keep theirs, they will embrace populism, incitement and
selective censorship to do so.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
only thing protecting us from them is that we do not keep quiet when we feel
threatened by their excesses. But we are losing that fight too because it is
easy to be selective about what is important to us while ignoring the ever
spreading injustice that results from equalities unequal application.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Cologne</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> was not a
New Years Eve aberration. It was a symptom of our accelerating decline.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034424475968380328.post-80771620453199634052016-01-01T07:53:00.000-08:002016-01-01T07:53:59.805-08:00The Dickensian BBC<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">It began with a
preview of the new BBC television blockbuster drama series starting just after
Christmas. 'Dickensian' is a mashup of Dickens most popular works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the preview, Fagin is a stereotypically
sinister, snarling Jew with a prominently worn Mizrachi Jewish skull cap. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fagin is shown in profile to cinematically
disturbing effect.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">At a time of
heightened fear of terrorism the press does its best to ignore antisemitism
even though in every country that statistics are kept, antisemitism is of
considerably greater prevalence than Islamaphobia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Christmas is a time
that is supposed to represent good-will to all men (and I assume women as
well).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until recently most orthodox Jews
ignored Christmas, even as a secular festival, because of its negative history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That history was one where Jews experienced
fear due to incitement by the Christian clergy and persecution based upon the
accusation of deicide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Modern Israel not
surprisingly, ignores this period of the year except in the distribution of
free pine trees to any Christian families wishing to celebrate the
festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It makes the deception and
incitement by Western news outlets (our modern priesthood) all the more
telling.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">If we set aside the
egos and prejudices of journalism's finest sons and daughters then that is our
first issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a naive belief that
journalism is meant to inform rather than what it really is; a platform for the
expression of biases; a vehicle for conveying editorial prejudice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Jews have a particular interest in the
chimera of honesty that is the practice of journalism because it is the Jews
who are always the first to suffer its deceptions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Our problem is that
Jews are not meant to be normal people with normal fears, desires and
anxieties. We are constantly being enjoined to learn from our history as if
only we are expected to respect those who disrespect us, and exercise restraint
at every provocation. But we have always been told to turn the other cheek (so
that we would make an easier target). The definition that UK society refuses
to acknowledge is this: Antisemitism is the expectation that Jews will respond
to every action against them in a way that demonstrates a unique tolerance, a
tolerance that is expected of no one else. It is the reaction to that failure
of expectation that self justifies the bigot’s antisemitism.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">So my complaint is
that Jews in the Jewish Diaspora and in Israel are held to a standard
expected of no one else and no other nation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The hallmark of the modern antisemite is not his or her naked aggression
or the intimidation that is part of their natural demeanor towards us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the displeasure, the rarely concealed
contempt that is displayed whenever we and only we do not listen to the
“instructions” or “advice” given to us, most often unsolicited, by journalists,
lecturers, professors and politicians alike.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">It is truly an act
of deception or naivete to believe that the visual media either informs or
educates to a neutral agenda. Repetition is the essence of the propagandists’
art and visual stimulation, the most effective means of imprinting an idea,
good or bad into our sub-conscious.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">For example, on
December 26<sup>th </sup>a popular BBC soap opera “Eastenders” had a story line
around a Nativity play. In the play a boy states “</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yes we can stay in this inn because Islam
welcomes all faiths.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Islam emerged a
distance of 1,300 kilometers (as the crow flies) from Israel and did
not begin until 6</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">00 years after the biblical story. The remark, aside
from its fundamental inaccuracy implies that Mary and Joseph were excluded from
the inn on religious grounds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
also not part of the biblical story. Just to round off this antisemitic fantasy
defilement, at this time of the year apologists for Palestinian terror often
endow Jesus, Mary and Joseph with a faux Palestinian identity. The reality is
that Palestinians, as Arabs, would have assaulted and perhaps murdered any Jews
not traveling in convoy, for that lawlessness and thuggery is also the history
of Arab (Palestinian) conduct towards non-Muslims over the centuries of their
habitation in the Holy Land.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">When I was growing
up I had never seen a person who was not white except for those people I
watched on TV and they were mostly gangsters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I did not know how I would react to my first encounter with someone who
was “different”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I was thankfully
brought up to believe in the essential equality of everyone so I passed the
test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do not believe that film makers
are unaware of the impact their film making has on people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When dealing with reality based fiction they
cater to our need for the reassurance of familiarity and not to jar us from the
sense of comforting complacency that most of us prefer to inhabit in our
everyday lives.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">There are some
reinforcing memes best abandoned to the antechambers of history, for the study of
relics of past abomination by scholars and antiquarians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Merchant of Venice and the various
Passion Plays are two of these negatively reinforcing and culturally ugly literary
events. So is Oliver Twist. No matter how the literary crowd try to sugar coat
them, with their antiquity or by their authors’ pedigree the characters
portrayed also deliver a message, of reinforcing and repulsive stereotype.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The damage prejudiced portrayal causes can
not be justified, not in an era when even associating Islam with terrorism is
regarded as secular blasphemy; not when politicians, social commentators and
national media outlets make every effort to disassociate us from fearing the
Muslims in our midst, to protect Muslims from any negative association that the
expression of Muslim extremism may generate.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The BBC more than
most international media behemoths understands this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its’ sensitivity ensures that even Muslim
mass murderers are never portrayed as villains. It does its best to inoculate
Islamists from being forced to confront their inhumanity. The BBC’s discomfort
with terms such as “Islamic State” and any other term that ties the Muslim
faith to crimes of violence or hate crimes proves that the BBC has internalised
at least some historical lessons.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">To rationalise a
narrowly focused bigotry in a world that is experiencing ethnic and religious
conflict on a global scale and to dismiss the criticism of that bigotry because
it is done in homage to art is an unacceptable rationalisation for continued prejudice
and hate.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The latest BBC drama
series about Charles Dickens was previewed on Breakfast BBC’s news program and
from the start it was clear that it was not meant for us to feel sympathy for
anyone of Jewish background.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The BBC is
at war with Israel,
both individual and nation. Its methods are subtle but that does not detract from
its purpose. If you are Jewish but do not heed the “advice” of Britain’s elite
you are the enemy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Jews have always
been Britain’s
enemies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The BBC is at war with most of
us, Jews and Israeli’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is always
happy to implant seeds of hate via a new program or via its latest headline. Isn’t
it time the Board of Deputies of British Jews or the Jewish Leadership Council (for
the British, Jewish community) and the government of the State of Israel took
this threat with all seriousness?</span></div>
</div>
The Bilateralisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01743787341396132140noreply@blogger.com0