| Amnesty-UK: "Let's brainwash people into hating Israel while teaching them how to cook"noreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 02 Jun 04:45 AM Amnesty's apar | | Amnesty's apartheid slur is absolutely antisemitic. The arguments that Amnesty uses for the accusation are literally filled with lies and depends on a brand new definition of apartheid they made up just for Israel. If they would apply the same standards to other states, there would be scores of others that are guilty of the same definition - but Amnesty is creating an entire ecosystem to ensure that Israel and only Israel is accused of one of the worst human rights crimes possible. The word "apartheid" is deliberately used to provoke a visceral reaction of disgust. It has nothing to do with reality - it is meant to incite hatred of the Jewish state. No sane person would think that Israel is at the bottom of the list of human rights violators, or even that they treat non-citizen Palestinians worse than many other countries treat their (citizen) minorities. Yet Amnesty spends far more time and money slandering Israel than any other country - and spreading that incitement to hate Israel across all mediums. Yes, that is antisemitism. A new, insanely egregious example can be found in a new campaign that Amnesty-UK launched, called "Palestine at Home," It is meant to show sympathetic Palestinians acting like normal Westerners having fun, spreading information about Palestinian cuisine - and interspersing this with incitement...Read More |
From Ian: Do Jews Get to Define Antisemitism? Yes and No The prejudice plus power definition of racism would mean that Jews, a group deemed powerful, cannot be victims of racism, and groups deemed powerless cannot be guilty of racism. In this conception, Jews are a powerful group with no legitimate gripes. Acceding to such a definition of racism effectively marginalizes Jewish claims of antisemitism. Moreover, why should anyone be expected to outsource their thinking to anyone else? We live in a free society where people are allowed to hold and articulate their own views and no one gets to define anything for others. We should not want to be bound by a discourse in which we must defer to others and others must defer to us. While such thinking comes from the left, it's frequently Jews on the political right who draw from the progressive playbook and weaponize IHRA to silence alternative views. Indeed, Jews who accuse IHRA's opponents of antisemitism are engaging in a form of cancel culture, based precisely on the same suppositions that radical leftist voices use to silence opposition to their dogmas. Ironically, there's nothing in IHRA itself that would justify calling anyone who disagrees with the definition an antisemite. Proponents of an alternative definition of antisemitism have every right to advocate for their position and should not be demonized for doing...Read More |
Ma'an reports: Prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh called on Germany to put pressure on Israel to abide by its agreements, to fulfill our right to hold elections in all Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem, and to stop all measures and violations by the occupation and its settlers. This came during his meeting with the President of the German Federal Council (Bundesrat) Peter Tschentscher, today, Thursday, in Ramallah, in the presence of the Head of the Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the State of Palestine, Ambassador Oliver Ovcha. The "elections" demand is interesting, because there are no elections scheduled nor is there any prospect for elections in the future. The last scheduled elections were "postponed" indefinitely because polls showed that Fatah would lose, so Abbas blamed Israel - for not allowing voting in Jerusalem. The only reason that the Palestinian Authority officials talk to the EU about elections is because they want to use that issue to gain control over "east Jerusalem." Up until now, Israel allowed Jerusalem Arabs to use ballot boxes in Jerusalem post offices. The boxes then get transported to PA-controlled areas where they are unsealed and votes counted. This way, from Israel's perspective, they are absentee ballots being "mailed" in, and from the PA perspective the ballots are being cast in Jerusalem. It is a convenient fiction for both sides. But the PA then started insisting that Israel allow campaigning in Jerusalem, which they...Read More |
Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory. Check out their Facebook page. Violence Against Us Only Steels Our Resolve, But We Expect Israel To Be Cowed By Violence by Soubhi Al-Amad, Palestinian fighter Jenin, June 1 - From Deir Yassin to Gaza, every time the Zionists wield their weapons against us, we use that as motivation to fight harder! On the other hand, the purpose of our attacks is to weaken Zionist morale, and that represents the only possible reaction to our operations. It has ever been thus. Each time the enemy kills or injures one of us, we sublimate our rage into further resolve, never to be moved from our land, and never to cease our efforts to remove the usurper from all parts of it. The enemy, we expect to run from our violence, and the fact that they most often do not only means we must use more violence. Soon, inshallah, it will work and the foreign interloper will leave Palestine forever. Of course violence will never force us to leave our homeland! It is our homeland! Not so for the Jews, whose homeland is... well, who cares! Not here, because we said so! Obviously they will leave if we fight them hard enough. If you want to defeat your enemy, you must understand the way he thinks. Our enemy fails to understand that the harder he hits us, the stronger we stand against him. Whereas the harder we hit our enemy, the more it demoralizes him...Read More |
From Ian: 'They Are Paying for Terrorists to Murder': State Department Confirms Palestinians Continue 'Pay-to-Slay' Terrorist Payments US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf on Wednesday confirmed that the Palestinian Authority continues to make so-called 'pay-to-slay' stipend payments to terrorists and the families of terrorists who have killed Americans and Israelis. Speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Biden Administration's budget requests for the Middle East, Leaf was asked by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) about a report sent to Congress on Friday about Palestinian non-compliance with the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits US funding to the Palestinian Authority so long as it maintains its pay-to-slay program. "We are working to bring pay-to-slay to an end. Period," Leaf said. Asked if the administration had succeeded, Leaf replied, "not yet." The Palestinian Authority makes official payments to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of 'martyrs' killed in attacks on Israelis, and to injured Palestinian militants. The exact size of the program is disputed, but is estimated to be around $300 million annually, or nearly 10% of the entire Palestinian Authority budget, according to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, an Israeli...Read More |
Cairo Conspiracy, also known as Boy from Heaven, is a film synopsized as "Adam, the son of a fisherman, is offered the privilege to study at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the center of power of Sunni Islam. Adam becomes a pawn in the conflict between Egypt's religious and political elites."
It was released a year ago. It has received a number of awards and positive reviews.
It was finally released in Israel last week.
Suddenly, Egyptian officials are denouncing the film - and blaming Israel for it. Islamic writer and researcher, and former Egyptian Undersecretary of the Ministry of Religious Endowments, Saad El-Fiqi, said that showing the movie "A Boy from Heaven" in Israel to tarnish the image of Al-Azhar Al-Sharif failed miserably. He continued in statements to RT: "The Zionist is known for lying, fraud and promoting everything that is false, and Israel is a bastard state that has no origin and its history is known and established for all wise people in the world...Read More |
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The United States has left a leadership vacuum in the Middle east - and the Saudis filling it.
For decades, there has been jockeying on who would be the leader of the Muslim world. Egypt filled the role under Nasser but since then it has been a free for all.
Iran tried to position itself as that leader in the 2000s, but it could not overcome the antipathy from the Sunni majority. Turkey has been making its bid. The UAE, while tiny, has been trying to set a new direction for the Gulf states in a post-oil world.
But over the past couple of years, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the clear leader. The Saudis always wanted a leadership role as well, but until recently their main asset was Mecca, and the religious component was a necessary but not adequate prerequisite for true leadership.
Now, the Saudis are setting the agenda not just as the leaders of the Muslim world but of the entire region.
Up until now, the Saudis have been the passive recipients of US security guarantees. The Obama administration's reckless pursuit of an Iran deal and discarding Saudi concerns taught the Saudis that relying on the US for security and leadership is foolhardy and they need to create their own solutions. The ignominious US abandonment of Afghanistan showed that the days of Pax Americana are long gone.
There has been much media attention to China filling the leadership vacuum, and indeed China has...Read More |
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