Do not be deceived. The murdered innocents of Gaza are not those who are really suffering. It is the liberal Jews like Hadley Freeman, victims of the new anti-Semitism.
Israel is a state openly founded on racist and theocratic grounds, in which Jews have an absolute right to live in Israel, wherever in the world they were born and their families have been for centuries, and nobody else does. The unfortunate pre-1946 occupants of the land have been mostly driven out into refugee camps, including in Gaza, while religiously motivated settlers continue apace to grab the best Palestinian land and water. The state does this for them precisely and explicity because they are Jewish. Those non-Jews who remained in Israel proper are subject to a whole raft of apartheid style legislation, even governing whom they may marry, and the quantity of this legislation is increasing. 140 Israeli laws specify treatment by race.
Israel is as a state entirely based and run on a racist premise. Its very foundation is racist. But while the Israeli state may steal land specifically for Jews, make provision for Jews, and make life difficult for non-Jews, anybody else who mentions Jews in the context of Israeli behaviour is a vicious racist and anti-Semite. This warped and ludicrous logic is enforced by political orthodoxy and the mainstream media.
It is as though, in opposing apartheid, it was taboo to mention it had been invented for the benefit of white people.
Reading Freeman’s long self-pitying self-centred whinge I was waiting to find out what had actually happened to her to occasion some distress. Had she had a brick through her window? Had she been assaulted in the street? Has somebody hurled racial abuse at her?
Apparently none of the above. It appears that she feels under unfair pressure to denounce the actions of Israel. And- horror of horrors – the Tricycle Theatre has cancelled a Jewish Film Festival in Kilburn because it was financed by the Israeli Embassy. Oh no, the agony! How can a poor girl survive in a North London which is so rife with anti-Semitism! It reminded me forcefully of the very first diplomatic social engagement of my professional career, in 1985 when our Afrikaaner hostess held forth on how she thought people looked down on her in Harrods.
I deplore racism with every part of my being, all racism. Freeman makes what is intended to be a smart observation that the Tricycle’s act “reminds me how very far I am from the States”. It is very plain that she regrets that and believes that the US attitude to Israel is better than the British one.
This then morphs into the meme that the reaction to the Gaza massacre is part of a wave of the “new anti-Semitism”. There have indeed been several deplorable anti-Semitic incidents in Europe in the last few months. But they have killed absolutely nobody in the last two years, while Israel has killed 1,500 people. There have been three terrible examples of racial murders of Jews in the past eight years, and there needs to be continued and unremitting vigilance against all hate crime. The disruption of Hadley’s cinema treats and the daubing of paint on a synagogue are in themselves bad things. But do they really compare to the massive disproportionate force being used to destroy over 1,000 women and children in a month in Gaza, and the context of the entire seventy year programme of ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people?
You are right, Hadley. Just because you are Jewish does not mean you should be under special pressure to condemn Israel’s actions. But if you take it upon yourself to write a long article on the subject, we are entitled to expect you – as a human being – to condemn the massacre. And as in the article you write about nothing but your own angst and the evils of anti-Semitism, and manage not a single word of sympathy or regret for the victims of the terrible massacre in Gaza, we are entitled to form our own opinion.
And my opinion is that you are a wholly self-centred and self-regarding little person with an abject lack of moral perspective, who seems to think the murder of 1500 people is about the impact on your feelings.
Hadley, you are not disgusting because you are Jewish: you are just a disgusting human being.
Jives
“Habbabkuk,
As you well know i was pointing out your sockpuppet hypocrisy.”
_______________
I know nothing of the sort, dear Jives.
As a matter of fact, I often have the greatest difficulty knowing (well or otherwise) what your ravings are really about. Must be the way you write ’em! 🙂
Thanks, Craig. Much needed voice of reason. Sent the following to be published in their letters section. Doubt they will so will post here.
Hadley Freeman’s piece on 8th August 2014 was utterly objectionable. She made what was a very lazy and intellectually dishonest attempt to brand the boycott movement, which is rapidly gaining in momentum, with the much feared charge of anti-semitism.
The incidents mentioned by Ms Freeman, where various groups have been boycotted and have faced numerous protests by activists, are not about racism and singling out Jews for abuse. They are about the despicable and inhumane acts perpetrated by the Israeli government, which in turn are supported by the society it represents. The Tricycle Theatre should be applauded for refusing to be associated with Israeli government funding, especially when the Deputy Speaker of that same government just a few days ago called for the population of Gaza to be put into concentration camps and exterminated. As for the boycotting of Israeli artists, they are representative of a society that is overwhelmingly in favour of the carnage that has taken place: a massive 95% was recently polled as believing that the attacks are justified. And Israeli residents are brazen enough to openly rejoice in the death of Gazan school kids and chant “Death to Arabs” in the streets. Indeed, the journalist Max Blumenthal recently quoted his own friends saying that “Fascism was always here, it was brewing and now it’s in the open”. So when our own governments refuse to to impose sanctions or even condemn the Israeli government’s atrocities, and when Israel’s own citizens support these crimes, it’s up to international civil society to act and make our voices heard. The most effective way to do this legally and peacefully is to boycott. Now.
So, Hadley Freeman wants to be afforded the courtesy of being able to think freely on Israel? That’s fine and a perfectly reasonable request too, but by the same token she should then extend to us the the opportunity to do the same without unfairly branding us as racists. As a former fellow columnist of hers, Glenn Greenwald, pointed out, “that pathetic tactic doesn’t work anymore, except to trivialise actual anti-semitism and make it harder to fight”.
It’s good for morale at the time, Habby. You may remember the Russian flag that went up at various cities round Eastern and Southern Ukraine, and the terrible vengeance that was wreaked on such treachery, starting with Odessa. If you unfurl a symbolic flag like Palestine you need to be able to defend it. I hope the citizens of Glasgow are prepared to, otherwise it’ll have to come down again after the referendum as the ptb re-establish control of the principality…
The real enemy are those who unleashed the forces of hell at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The people of Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and I think even London didn’t want to continue to be nuclear targets, but as with the anti-war movement in 2003 I think the mouthy ones disappeared without trace when the going got tough; I remember poor old Michael Foot looking totally abandoned and Neil Kinnock making a passionate speech that was probably more about a future leadership bid than passion for a nuclear-free world. In Sheffield there was also Arthur Scargill, all passion but not too much else… the thought of that episode upsets me even more!
“The People of Glasgow” may be made of sterner stuff…
@Fedup
I don’t think it’s just right for a man to be pretending to be something he isn’t in order to be having sex with a young lady as what the circumstances. Whether he is pretending to be rich, a pop star, not married or a Jew it really isn’t a very nice thing to do.
That is one way of doing it Fred.
Then there is the natural way of doing it (Pretending could be a part of the game too, but that is another story). But in any case it does not mean an eighteen moth jail term for the offender ought to do the trick? or do you want to agree with that too?
The fact remains that the racist zionist scum are no longer content with pretences and are now openly promoting segregation and further marginalisation of the Palestinians in their own lands, the lands which are now under occupation of the invading hoards of zionist scum.
The niceties of coital protocol ought not get in the way of losing the sight of the problems; the brutal invasion of Palestine and even a more brutal regime of occupation of Palestine, under an administration of draconian oppression of Palestinians.
Halibaba (adesso in culo alla balena)
like the good old Jonas. I appreciate that in these difficult times you work overtime, which is not good for your health. Can you please give me your adresse so that I will have a grand pizza delivered to your charming home as a compensation for your war-time efforts. I take no for an answer.
Israeli war on Lebanese ‘Sheep and Goats’
http://rehmat1.com/2014/08/10/israeli-war-on-lebanese-sheep-and-goats/
On a question of historical accuracy…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6ei5zV2VD4
Karel
“Can you please give me your adresse so that I will have a grand pizza delivered to your charming home”
________________
Good to see you back on here, Karel!
Thanks for the kind offer of a pizza (no bacon, please!) but, as you feared, I must decline on the grounds that you might not be able to afford it in these straitened times. 🙂
Fedup
“But in any case it does not mean an eighteen moth jail term..”
________________
I’ve heard of prisoners being flung into a pit full of poisonous snakes, but a jail cell with eighteen moths flying around is a new one on me, I must admit!
Will you be sending him a tube of Boots’s best moth repellent as a gesture of solidarity?
@Karel
I’m as sceptical of the Koestler claims as I am of the story about all Jews being descended from a single blood line through the tribes of Israel spread at the same time through something called a diaspora. Genetics can neither prove nor disprove either theory.
This however has no bearing on whether of not the modern Jew had no connection with a historical ethnic group known as Semites. The evidence suggests they did and a significant one, as probably did the people known as Khazars, people have migrated a lot over history, especially nomadic peoples.
Was it important to you for some reason?
New post please Craig!
~~~~
Ref Boots. Yet another company from good old England passes from Swiss registered from KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts private equity) and Mr Pessina’s hands to Walgreens.
No doubt some asset stripping and tax evasion has taken place over the last seven years and now Jesse Boot’s old company passes into Yankee hands. Walgreen’s 2013 revenue amounted to $72billion.
Have a read on their probity:
7 Consumer record 7.1 Prescriptions
7.2 Allegations of discrimination
7.3 Medicaid
7.4 Personal data
7.5 Use of proprietary drugs
7.6 Distribution of oxycodone
7.7 Sale of tobacco
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walgreens
~~~
PS I have never heard of ‘moth repellent’. Do they sell ‘troll repellent’?
karel, 9 Aug, 11:58 pm: do you edit Wikipedia? I do; my username is Clark42:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Clark42
Mary
“PS I have never heard of ‘moth repellent’.”
__________________
Really? Do you not buy anything to put among your woollens when you store them over the summer?
I’m sure that…..BOOTS sell it.
Not expensive and guaranteed to prevent holier than thou situations!
P Harry only saw children horribly injured by ‘roadside bombs’ in Afghanistan. He saw none of those horribly injured or even vapourized by the coalition’s missiles sent down from helicopter gunships or by drone via RAF Waddington.
What hypocrisy. Someone tell him that there’s no longer a need for War! War! propaganda at the moment but of course there’s always somewhere in the world where the UK can do some more killing.
Harry Recalls ‘Missing Limbs’ Horror Of War
The Prince describes encountering children blown up by roadside bombs and young soldiers “wrapped in plastic and missing limbs”.
http://news.sky.com/story/1316141/harry-recalls-missing-limbs-horror-of-war
Taliban bad. USUKIsNATO good.
‘We do bad things to bad people’.
http://persophile.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/prince-harry-does-bad-things-to-bad.html
An alternative to habbabreak here, may just shut him/her up for a couple of days at least – a picture that speaks a thousand words against Freeman and sayanim ilk.
Do the devils realise being an accessory after the fact eg trying to hide/shield criminality, invites divine punishment in equal measure too.
” But in any case it does not mean an eighteen moth jail term for the offender ought to do the trick? or do you want to agree with that too?”
I don’t know. If the woman was a vulnerable person who agreed to go into a building with a man because she was looking for a lasting relationship and he had told her he was Jewish and a bachelor when if fact he was an Arab with a wife and two children.
If the woman had been taken away from the building in an ambulance half naked and bleeding and the jury had been shown photographs of her bruises.
If the person had pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of rape by deception in a plea bargain to avoid being charged with rape.
Then I may consider a prison sentence of 18 months not excessive. Wouldn’t you?
Baroness Warsi backing up reasoning for her resignation, and getting plenty of support from “comments”:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28730274
Thanks for those maps Just Saying. Similar idea to the French Archipelago version.
http://ihearthamas.com/tag/julien-bousac/
Strange to think what effect lines drawn on paper have on people’s lives.
This is the map that Sky show all the time. This is a truncated version but you get the idea. It suggests that Palestine occupies all of the area shown in grey.
http://media.skynews.com/media/images/generated/2014/7/26/325581/default/v1/map-1-522×293.jpg
“now Jesse Boot’s old company passes into Yankee hands.”
I doubt it would worry him too much – since he sold it to Americans himself
http://www.me.boots.com/detailed-history/american-ownership.aspx
Suffer the little children…
A touching video report about the effect of war on the children of Gaza here. The reporter has obvious empathy for the little ones. She was recently reporting from Eastern Ukraine.
http://news.sky.com/story/1315777/israeli-shells-pound-gaza-as-fighting-resumes
The starting position on the maps is of course incorrect – there were Jews who owned land in Palestine prior to 1917 but they would all appear to have been driven into the sea in this version.
Wrong R2D2
Boots merged with Alliance. Then along came KKR, the asset strippers, the leveraged buyers out.
On 3 October 2005, it was formally announced that Alliance UniChem would enter into a friendly merger with Boots Group, the UK’s largest retail pharmacy chain.[3] The merger was completed on 31 July 2006, forming Alliance Boots. Alliance UniChem was renamed Alliance Healthcare in 2009.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_Healthcare
One more young Palestinian life is ended.
Palestinian Boy Killed As Peace Talks On Brink
The Israeli military is investigating reports the 11-year-old boy was shot dead by one of its soldiers in the West Bank.
10:27am UK, Sunday 10 August 2014
http://news.sky.com/story/1316145/palestinian-boy-killed-as-peace-talks-on-brink
‘Repellent’ indeed when so many innocent lives r snuffed out in a stockade called Gaza…
“The starting position on the maps is of course incorrect – there were Jews who owned land in Palestine prior to 1917 but they would all appear to have been driven into the sea in this version.”
_______________
Lies, damned lies and …maps?
BTW, the Sky News map referred to by Mary at 10h31 is accurate unasfar as it reflects the international legal consensus that the West Bank is not part of Israel. But it is true that to reflect the international law position 100% the map could have carried the mention “under Israeli occupation” for the West Bank.
A letter out of Gaza from a lady doctor.
3rd E-mail from Gaza. Day 6. The last day before returning to Occupied Jerusalem. (7 August 2014 00:24)
***
Today is day six in Gaza, the day it all starts getting to you. Yesterday we went out to look around and started saw the devastation. Homes destroyed, pharmacies, doctors’ surgeries…all blatant violations of the Geneva Conventions. I was still detached, I went around with my colleague Dr. ……., accompanied by old friends from Gaza. Dr. ….. drove us around; we started in the Shejaieh neighborhood and Hay al Tuffah. The destruction, the putrid smells – I could see his pain as he showed us where was born and where his children were born. They destroyed my memories, he said. I could see him taking in a deep breath as he said this was enough for today…we were both seeing this destruction for the first time.
Today I knew why he was so reluctant to go through this. I realized what was around the corner. We drove by the site of where the Wafa hospital was. Total destruction – unrecognisable. The site included the old hospital building, the new hospital building, the old people’s nursing home and a centre for disabled children. Also near them was a school that was shelled…..WHAT THE HELL! Next to it was a huge home with the family sitting outside, looking, hoping, talking. Yet the smell of rot and flies all around were nagging on everyone’s mind. Could it be someone was still under all this rubble? They were trying to justify it. Perhaps it’s a cat or some crushed animal. Will it work, I wonder – the smell lingers in the air.
Then we reached Shejayieh. It looked like Hiroshima. Like the bomb had struck again. Again, no words could describe the scale of the devastation. I could not focus anymore, which heroic stand this was and which borders? One thing was for sure, it was total annihilation. HOW COULD THE WORLD have sat back silently?! How. As we approached, the people there ran up to our bus thinking we were the ambulance coming to the rescue as they had identified some body parts…
We got out and faced the public. We did not dare take out our cameras. There was a lot of tension and anger. People started telling us their stories, the children, the women, the men. We then came to the destroyed home of a great grandmother who had lost her son and his family and now they were digging up her daughter who herself was a grandmother…and most probably the body of her daughter next to her. It was pieces of a body. Hearing that great grandmother relate her story really moved me and made me realize how much I was part of this reality. In the operating room it was easy to shut out the emotions and let the adrenalin work its way into action.
We waited until the ambulances arrived. We did not want to leave before. The situation was very tense and delicate. What a stench, what a sight. I remembered the man sleeping in the hospital who had told me the first day and the third day, where do I go? Have you seen Shujaieh? We do not know where the house was or where the road was….
The children there were very proud. One did not have shoes on his feet. They related heroic stories of the resistance and of the Israeli army running away and fleeing, leaving their stretchers behind them. If fact the borders were very close, just there. The camera in the sky was watching us. We were taken later to a hill in the liberated part of Gaza where the colony of Gush Katif stood. We were thanked for our efforts and invited to lunch. We met up with our colleagues from the south who had done a similar tour visiting Khuzaa, where resistance fighters were assassinated on their way to fight.
Inside the bus we were sweating in the heat, outside all we could see was destruction. The Gaza beach did not look as liberating or happy as it usually did. As we drove along, there was the coffee shop that was shelled, killing the youth who were watching the world cup match. A few meters more, another site, another home and so on – how could anyone look at the beach…..
We finally got back to Shifa hospital. I asked my colleague ….. to come and meet us as we went out to get something for ….. to cheer her up. We went to a toyshop and a lady asked if she could buy something for the children in the hospital to cheer them up. After I chose what to get, she bought them and gave them to me, asking me to deliver them to the hospital.
We went to see ……and her aunt was there. Her face looked more swollen and her hands warm, she had a fever. She thanked us for the colourful image poster and I hung it up so she can look at. We also got her a balloon and a teddy bear. Some toys were already there. Again, she asked me about my daughter and wanted to see a picture. I could not pull up one of …, so I promised her to come tomorrow and show her. Her father arrived and she asked him about her mother, hoping she were ok…I later found out that …… still has a third sister in the hospital being treated from shell burns and that she was undergoing surgery tomorrow for a muscle transplant. I really hope she does not lose her arm. I asked her father what was happening, he said they will send her to Scotland for surgery. I asked when, he did not know.
On my way going to say goodbye to my colleagues in the operating room I saw a boy being brought in for a wound debridement. As he was in a lot of pain I looked at his foot and it was gangrenous. He was writhing in bed. I got closed to him and asked what was happening. I am scared, he told me. Of what? I asked. It is painful. Even without being touched? Yes, he said. When I asked him his name, it was …. They were trying to hurry him in I asked them to stop. I am ‘Im ….,’ my eldest son is also called …. I said, so I am allowed a few seconds. I knelt closer to him and assured him that they will give him some medicine in the IV that will put him to sleep so he will not feel the pain of the dressing and we will see what to do when he wakes up. I stepped out of the theatre and called my friend …., hoping he will bring me a balloon and a toy for Omar. As soon as ….. answered the phone I was chocking up with tears. It was too much to bear these children surviving the shelling like this. …. will lose a limb and ….. might too – the pain has just started.
When … came I went to see ….. He was fast asleep. He will be coming to Jerusalem tomorrow. They do not know to which hospital yet. I told his parents to insist as each day he will lose more of his limb.
I asked about Scotland. It will take six months for any transfers. I hurried to my computer to find ….. – my colleague, a surgeon from Scotland. I know she will help………but who will take care of the children??????
Mary
Please read what I said and the link – Jesse Boot sold out to Americans back in the 1920s. The Alliance Unichem merger btw was a private equity takeover in which KKR were involved from the beginning (so you are wrong yet again) – if you knew anything out private equity you would know that an exit by a trade sale or a floatation is how they operate, so the sale to Walgreens is really no surprise.
Mary
“New post please Craig!”
_________________
What was that you said about me giving Craig instructions, Mary? 🙂
We digress but R2D2 is like a dog with a bone.
‘1849 to 2000
Boots was established in 1849, by John Boot. After his father’s death in 1860, Jesse Boot, aged 10, helped his mother run the family’s herbal medicine shop in Nottingham,[2] which became Boot and Co. Ltd in 1883, then Boots Pure Drug Company Ltd. in 1888. In 1920, Jesse Boot sold the company to the American United Drug Company.[3] However, because of deteriorating economic circumstances in North America Boots was sold back into British hands in 1933.[3] The grandson of the founder, John Boot, who inherited the title Baron Trent from his father, headed the company.[4]
Boots diversified into the research and manufacturing of drugs with its development of the Ibuprofen painkiller during the 1960s. The company was awarded the Queen’s Award For Technical Achievement for this in 1987. In 1994, Boots divested production to BASF[5] and in 2006 sold the Nurofen brand to Reckitt Benckiser.[6]’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boots_Company
The vultures in Alliance and Mr Pessina and KKR have made a killing and Boots is now part of Walgreens of dubious practice as linked in my previous post. They intended to relocate their HQ here for tax purposes but thought better of it.
Some good old Anglo Saxon names here. NOT.
http://www.allianceboots.com/about-us/our-directors.aspx
http://www.kkr.com/leadership
End of as far as I am concerned.