Last night, 25 Jan, Hen Mazzig returned to University College London (UCL) for a talk. Hen has uploaded his discussion with the UCL Provost on Facebook. Hen had been invited there following the disgraceful scenes that faced him upon his first visit in 2016. For those that do not remember, anti-Israel protestors attempted to no-platform Hen. The event went ahead in a different room, with Jewish students penned inside and surrounded by screaming haters. The protest was intimidating and aggressive, and the Jewish students needed to be escorted off campus by police. The University brought some students up on disciplinary charges (the demonstrators yesterday, kept referencing ‘five Muslim students’ – I am assuming this is accurate).
The ‘Return of Hen’, to UCL has not been without controversy. Worried about another demonstration, either through a deliberate disruption inside, or mass protest outside, the University clamped down on both attendance and advertising. Even Jewish students from another campus were not permitted to register.
Protest at UCL
As was predicted, the anti-Israel crowd organised a protest. ‘UCL Friends of Palestine Society’ uploaded a call to their Facebook page. And followed up with some hard-hitting adverts, trying to drum up support:
In truth, it didn’t seem to have as much of an impact within anti-Israel groups as last time. Many of the ‘shares’ were from Zionists, who were discussing this activity on their own pages. Many of the comments were from Hen and his supporters. Pro-Israeli students, arranged a counter protest at UCL, wavering between a simple counter demonstration or a more positive ‘Tel Aviv takes the Quad‘ event, that would see them hold a small party and share food and drink with other students.
In the end, about 50-60 anti-Israel activists showed up at the UCL Quad, which is a central area just inside the main gates onto the UCL campus. A group of about 20 Jewish students were there to meet them.
Flags waved, songs were sung, and the anti-Israel activists soon tired of the confrontation. After about just ten minutes, they headed off in the direction of the building Hen was giving a talk inside.
At this point it became obvious that police, university security, and some plain clothed security officers were accompanying the two groups as they headed off campus, and towards another UCL building near Goodge Street Station. Upon arrival, the two groups stood face to face, with the anti-Israel crowd also taking the area directly in front of the building access.
The student on the left playing with his phone, is Yahya Abu Seido, who was the ringleader of the event in 2016. The one with the megaphone is was also at the 2016 event, and was one of the central figures involved in the scuffle that night, whilst trying to deny Jewish students access into the second venue.
As a matter of interest, I have seen him at several non-campus events, and most recently, at the MEND event at Parliament.
Songs will be sung at UCL
The demonstrators began with their usual chants. ‘From the river to the sea’ and ‘Israel is a terror state’ are easy enough lines to remember. They tried one that rhymed with ‘Boycott, Divestment, Sanction’, but the lyrics proved a little hard for the university students to handle, and the ‘choirmaster’ soon gave up. An interesting turn when counting their own support. The chant ‘in our thousands, in our millions’, no longer satisfies them, and yesterday, we heard the new refrain ‘in our millions, in our billions’. Billions? Every one a Palestinian refugees no doubt.
As the anti-Israel activists cried out their desire for Israel to be wiped off the map, the Jewish students responded by dancing. The London Zionist campus scene has come a long way in the last 15 months. They are a good group, and their enthusiasm is infectious. I stood there watching the two sides, one calling for the destruction of the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, the other, singing, dancing and offering biscuits and chocolate to everyone that walked past.
The anti-Israel demonstrators had a megaphone, but the crowd itself didn’t seem to have that much motivation. And the more the Jewish students danced, the worse it got. Two of those who controlled the megaphone (they alternated between about four separate demonstrators), criticised the jovial nature of the pro-Israeli group. ‘Why are they smiling’, ‘how can they laugh’, they asked. The attitude of the Jewish students was visibly having an effect. With no answer to Jewish songs of peace, they resorted to frustrated criticism.
There was little trouble. One Jewish student had a pack of biscuits snatched from his hand. Beyond that, the confrontation remained peaceful. Where the two groups met, the Jewish students tried to engage in dialogue.
That sinking feeling
It is almost four years since those dark days in the summer of 2014. Almost all of the students today, were nowhere near a university during that conflict. The numbers have gone and the feeling of growing momentum has dissipated, taking much of the motivation with it. In addition, there is a growing awareness amongst many on the left, of the clear correlation between anti-Israel activity and antisemitism. New recruits are proving difficult to find. The recent protests over Jerusalem, required Mosques to drag up the ‘Al Aqsa’ libel, to bring numbers on the street. Beyond the Muslim call to holy war, both Trump’s Jerusalem announcement, and dressing up Ahed Tamimi as Rosa Parks have failed to bring more than a handful of protestors onto the streets.
So as Jewish students sought dialogue, a few ‘organisers’ in the anti-Israel demonstration, tried to keep the two sides apart. This is not in their script and they do not know how to respond to it. Dancing, singing, trying to engage, it all cuts through their narrative like a knife through butter.
The moment of the evening for me, was when some of the Jewish students broke the news to the demonstrators, that Hen ‘had left the UCL building’ already. And he was ‘back in his hotel’. I think that glimmer of hope had held them together for the final half-hour. When it was taken away from them, you could see the look of dejection on their faces.
Always learning
But my role is not to be a cheerleader, I am there to research, and learn from those who oppose us. The UCL crowd was visibly deflated, and the more the Jewish students sang, the more deflated the other side became. As I moved within both sides of the crowd, it was the exchanges between them that was the most enlightening.
This was the image of the night. Harry Markham and Yahya Abu Seido, sitting on the floor, in the middle of the demonstration, talking to each other.
What separates them is understanding, perception, knowledge and respect, and it is dialogue that breaks down those walls. It is why dialogue is toxic to BDS, and on more than one occasion someone came to try to take Yahya away. We seek dialogue because we know it is the only way to bring peace. BDS opposes it because it isn’t peace BDS is after. They are explicitly TOLD not to engage.
I believe Yahya when he says he doesn’t want to hurt Jews, and he may be genuine in his desire for a utopian ‘one-state’ humanitarian paradise. His failure isn’t just in his inability to grasp the naive nature of his political desires. He doesn’t understand Jews and he doesn’t get the concept of Zionism. He cannot see that in reality, he is asking the Jews to be Dhimmi, with their safety totally dependent on an Ummah that is split into countless factions and currently engaged in mass slaughter. When he speaks of equality, he doesn’t seem to grasp that our refusal to even entertain his offer, is because it isn’t real. When we say ‘no thanks, we want to look after ourselves’, he sees our rejection as unreasonable. From here, the idea we are ‘supremacists’ is just a step away.
And it is important to understand this crowd. This may be blind hatred, but they are not all beyond reach. The majority would fail a test on the basic history of the conflict or of Zionism. All of them have conceptual errors in the crucial areas needed to gain understanding.
A few of them are two-staters, standing in the crowd because they sympathise with the Palestinians and BDS is the only game in town. As you engage them one on one, you soon realise that the only unifying feature is ignorance. These are students, not warriors. It is easier, but self-defeating to believe that every one is an immovable antisemite. There are some people in this crowd who could be swayed.
There were a few, with their faces fully hidden behind the Keffiyeh. They looked very ‘extremist’. Except not all of them were. One spoke, demanding that the Jewish student she was in dialogue with accept that Palestinians deserve a state too. She explicitly accepted Israel’s right to exist. That isn’t the face of BDS, fully dressed in a BDS uniform.
The smiling policemen at UCL
At times the air filled with surreal statements. It was suggested that the police would have arrested them if the situation was reversed and those dancing students were Muslims. Claims that the police were allowing intimidation and harassment, as the demonstration was being stifled. I was standing next to two policeman, they looked around at the calm atmosphere, the dancing Jewish students, the people who were engaged in dialogue, and then they laughed. As professional as they were, as much as they did not want to, the sheer absurdity of the ‘harassment claims’ produced smiles and a few shakes of the head. In response to this, the Jewish students belted out the British National Anthem.
There was some sinister undertones to some of the talk too. Mainly from
I was listening to one anti-Israel activist suggest that it is the Jewish side that doesn’t want dialogue. An absurd claim for a group that no-platforms, and stands alongside a ‘no to normalisation’ banner. He is totally oblivious to reality. The entire concept of BDS is to avoid and openly reject dialogue. There is no ‘T’ (talk) in BDS.
The BDS cult
Theirs is empty rhetoric. When you get up close, they just chant the same boring songs. They do not offer change or hope, and present only a picture of despair. Their demands cannot possibly be met. When you talk to them, there is no substance to their discussion. So false is their narrative, so extreme their united position, that they may as well be calling for the creation of Narnia. These people need to be saved from themselves.
Which is exactly why BDS doesn’t want dialogue. They are scared of truth, scared of facts, scared of the ‘followers’ seeing that the emperor has no clothes. To survive, BDS had to become a cult.
Because BDS, via the directions of the ‘Central Committee’ is a cult, acts like a cult, and directs BDS activists exactly like a cult. These from a checklist of cult behaviour from the website of the International Cultic Studies Association (ICCA):
- Excessive zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader, philosophy. In this case the concept of ‘The historic Greater Palestine’
- Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished
- Mind-altering practices, such as meditation, chanting (‘FREE,FREE PALESTINE’)
- The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel
- The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members
- The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society
- The movement is not accountable to (and openly rejects) any authorities
- The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary
- The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members
- Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends
- The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members
- Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities
- Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members
This was almost written as if BDS was the subject. It is a movement of intellectual darkness and of war, using the university campus as its primary hunting ground. Which is why the authorities must do everything in their power to disable the cult. The entire university education apparatus is there to teach students to think for themselves, to apply critical reasoning to issues they face, to debate, research, learn and grow. If they cannot even do that, then what is the point of them at all?
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Terrific write up and good takes on the dynamic. I am no longer on facebook because of the out of control antisemitism there. But I subscribe to your letters and love them! Thank you! Dani
Your points on a ‘cult’ map perfectly to Israel’s Judaism.
“Israel’s Judaism” eh Mikey? As opposed to England’s Judaism, Australia’s Judaism, Sweden’s Judaism, Costa Rica’s Judaism, Turkey’s Judaism? Clear this one up for us would you?
You couldn’t be more wrong. In essence the true ‘tell’ of a cult is how it deals with opposing arguments. Have you read Ha’aretz? See Mike, there is either a lack of intelligence or a lack of honesty going on in your posts, because clearly that list doesn’t sit well at all when mapped to Israel. The fact we read, absorb and argue against the other side tells you in a single point, that we are not the ones stricken. We want to challenge the lies, not run from them. Can’t you see it? Really? Every single element of that list, describes BDS to a tee. Like all cults they wrap up their excuses in self serving methods (don’t read the other side, it is all paid for propaganda written by 1000’s of Israeli agents working out of a factory in Ramat Gan) – (don’t debate with the other side, we don’t want to normalise the occupation) – (if you are against us, you do not believe in human rights, don’t listen to those who don’t believe in human rights) – (governments are all zionist controlled – we are above governments, above rules, we adhere only to the concept of universal justice)…. but a cult it clearly is.
Just a few slights in your posts there, David. With your nastiness you’d be quite dangerous in charge of an Israeli tank … or sent forth in an F16. Best that you’re behind a desk in Britain.
Still think it’s a cult, David.
Excessive zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader,
philosophy. …..In this case the concept of ‘Greater Israel’
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished Mind-altering practices, such as meditation, chanting (‘FREE,FREE, PALESTINE’)…. Mind numbing chanting and body rocking at the wall in Jerusalem.
The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members
should think, act, and feel
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members…… we are the chosen ones, God’s own people.
The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society ….. nobody loves us, everybody hates us, the world is against Israel.
The movement is not accountable to (and openly rejects) any authorities. …….Totally ignores UN resolutions and rides roughshod over the Geneva Convents, to which Israel is a signatory.
The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary ….. It’s all God’s will and therefore we can do no wrong.
The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members…… accusations of self-hating etc.
Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members ….. constant encouragement of Aliya and chants of come ‘home’.
Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities ….. hours and hours of Torah by rote.
Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members …… Jewish only settlements.
Oh Mike, I don’t think you understand what Israel, Zionism, Judaism or even a ‘cult is’. That vile post actually highlights how far off the mark you are and it isn’t even worth responding to in detail. You are actually conflating ultra-orthodox Jewry with Zionism, which given the reality is simply absurd.
So, YOU understand what a cult is but I don’t? That arrogance is surfacing again. Tut tut.
Perhaps inform me , in YOUR words, of what Zionism is. Indulge me.
Schmuck is still running away like the snivelling coward he is from addressing my question.
“Your points on a ‘cult’ map perfectly to Israel’s Judaism” – literally the stupidest, most ignorant statement I have ever read on the Internet.
If you can’t understand it, Leah, it’s prob. the truth!
Ah, Schmuck deludes himself that he is being ‘profund’.
David you perfectly well know that the only evidence of violence at Mazzig’s last visit was on the part of grizzly Zio outsiders. Why did you not post the video clip of the most notorious incident but just a still?
You can lie by commission and ommission. You can also lie by obfuscation.
This post reminds of Simon Cobbs in his ” they bring hate we bring cake ” days
Arrgh…so close Bellers. Almost a whole post without mentioning one of your personal grudgees.
Stephen- and you know perfectly well, that I was there. So I do not need to rely on edited footage to know exactly how it played out. I know who stood in front of the door, I know what happened next, and there is neither omission nor obfuscation in my comments about the event.
David and we don’t have to rely on carefully selected stills from ” edited footage “. Where is your footage that contradicts the footage.
Contradicts what? The university released the findings of their investigation. I was there. There is no contradiction here. There is what happened, and there is what people can suggest happened, with nothing more than decontextualised snippets from a video.
If you are asking me whether the pro-Israeli attendees acted 100% for every second, in the face of deliberate and aggressive provocations, I have no interest in playing that game. We went to watch an event, they came to stop it happening. We wanted to enter a room, they tried to stop us. We wanted to listen to an event. They were determined not to let us.
It is difficult to turn that around because in a scuffle by the doorway pro-Israelis were blocked from entering, you saw what looked like one pro-Israeli pushing someone. It is a strategy without integrity.
The only evidence of violence is on the part of outside zio provocateurs. You can’t turn that around. I can’t post it, but publish a still that is meaningless, and what it is meant to portray is beyond me.
Nor do you publish someone looking surprisingly similar to Harvey Garfields identical twin telling a brown skinned man to ” get out of my country”.
Stephen, I have edited out the word ‘violent’ and replaced it with ‘aggressive’. I don’t do rabbit holes.
Well thats all right then. The truth matters however belatedly arrived at.
What I love about your posts, David, are the complex, humane insights far removed from facile polemics. Bellamy scrabbles in vain in the gutter, out of sight.
always important. We have to understand they do not think they are bad people, they think we are. Sometimes they have arrived that way through antisemitism. Sometimes it is through naivety or ignorance. I think it vital to stop and look and differentiate. There is little more damaging to our own cause, than throwing blanket accusations of antisemitism at naive lefties. We need to try to unravel the argument in their heads, because it will help us understand how we can address it.
BDS isn’t about confronting Jews, it’s confronting Israel’s vile actions.
What’s it’s ultimate goal Mikey?
Mike – I know it’s difficult in not being open-minded, but may I make a suggestion. Since 1948, it has been evident that the Arabs/Palestinians have lived in a mind-set of denial. There was no reason for the Arabs in 1948 to make themselves refugees. In fact many Arabs returned to Israel after 1948. You need to address the brainwashing techniques of Fatah and Hamas in suggesting that ‘one day, there will be a great jihad’. It’s not going to happen after 70 years.
Great article. When they chant “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” you must ask yourself, where the concept of ‘judenfrei’ originated, why the pro-Palestine movement has resurrected it and how many Israeli Jews would be murdered in the process???? One can only conclude that BDS is a murderous jew hating death cult.
That the earth is flat is also something that people may conclude.
Mike, So when YOU chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” what do you imagine should happen to the Jews in ‘Jewish Occupied Palestine’???
Not a chant of mine. Perhaps they mean free of Israeli military jackbooting around and oppressing the Palestinians living there …. which would be nice.
….”Jackbooting”…. Interesting choice of words – not heard that for a while!!
Bet you’ve heard related words; Nazis, Holocaust, Islamofascists, antisemitism etc. …. all constantly used to continue the industry, James.
So it is, James. One whose tools are lies.
To have Israel cease its grabbing of Palestinian land and to begin conforming to laws and conventions, Ian. But you know that already.
Of course, Ian.
Israel’s Judaism is violent, grasping Zionism.
…and there it is.
David this my Shabbat gift to you. I will yield the floor to you.
Stuck for words, thoughts, Ian?
History repeating itself? In the 1930s, after Hitler came to power, one of the first things Goebbels focused on were the universities. The aim being to install pro-Nazi philosophy lecturers, remove the Jewish philosophy lecturers and basically create a new history of why Germans are superior.. These poor pro-Palestine supporters are clearly following, not thinking. Sadly, this is a feature of human nature which is why only 20% of the people of this world can become leaders and 80% will always be followers. Otherwise, this is another brilliant report by David.
As for Stephen Bellamy, I see his comments splattered all over this blog. I frankly cannot see why anyone bothers with this man. All he wants to do is intimidate.
It’s nice to be in a free-speech country Mr Bellamy, isn’t it.
“It’s nice to be in a free-speech country Mr Bellamy, isn’t it.”
Yes, in Britain you can support BDS without being barred from entering. That’d be a free-speech country then.
my word, are you really this clueless? Go be an Iraqi. Align with terror groups that seek to hurt the UK. Then start working on the local campus, pushing the ideology of those terror groups and asking everyone to boycott the UK. Then get on a plane to Heathrow and see how well you are treated before deportation.
‘Align with’. My, the imagination could run riot as to exactly what that encompasses.
how close do you have to get to a terror group to be excluded from the UK. Distribute their material? Would that do it? As for your imagination, it seems to run riot every time you think about Jews, Zionism or Israel.
Jews? fine. It’s Zionism and Israel that repel.
Depends who thinks which groups are terror-groups.
Can you even define Zionism, sad loser?
Is that an offer for you define to me, Leah? …. off you go.
Deflect, duck and run away – perfect example of BDS cowardice when called out.
What, you can’t explain nor justify it, Leah?
The snivelling infantile schmuck Mike is still too cowardly to address the original point and is still hiding behind the sofa.
So now the BDSers on this page want the freedom to visit Israel, while denying that freedom to artists and performers who want to go there! You could not make it up, could you!
Oh, I’m sure that David could attempt to weave a reason why such thoughts are a form of ‘antisemitism’, James.
The BDSers aren’t denying them the freedom …. they are lobbying them not to. Does Israel say , you can enter but we aren’t happy with you. Of course not.
This creature wants Jews to do his bidding and allow their mortal enemies to enter their country. Sickening little schmuck.
No need to trouble David with tanks and planes Mikey. We have brilliant pilots and soldiers in the Jewish State to take care of that type of thing and as you know we have have a terrific success rate. This leaves David free to continue his excellent work, however irksome this is to you. As a very proud Zionist, an Israeli and a Jew I support this. Pip pip .
I have no doubt that with the latest US aircraft Isareli pilots can indeed destroy anything they wish, be it families , infrastructure and targets in many places external to Israel and with no losses or capable opposition. Not sure about the soldiers though, a bit trigger happy and nervous resulting in ‘manslaughter.’ charges. It’s David’s weaving of fantasies that deserves the replies.
I see that you distinguish between Zionist, Israeli and Jew. That’s progress.
One can be a non-Jewish Israeli, or a non-Israeli Jew, or a non-Jewish Zionist, yes. Nothing surprising about that, you thick ignorant schmuck.
Love it. Second posrar today to admit that Israel doesn’t equate to Jews. Thankyou, ma-am.
“Posrar”! Perhaps you mean prostate Mikey. You mentioned you were in your seventh decade. Are you having problems downstairs? We have developed a new cutting edge treatment that has had amazing results but I expect it’s on your boycott list. Quite right too.
Dwell in a bungalow in Britain, better healthcare here, Ian.
Good to know Mikey. Just be sure to check the country of origin of your prescription though. I’m sure at least one of us would sleep less easy if it was Israeli meds that made you better.
Not likely, Ian.
Better keep a check on the bloods too Mikey. Loads of my Zio mates are card carrying donors. Wouldn’t want you inadvertently recovering as a result of an Israeli transfusion.
We do do have standards here, Ian.
Nothing to admit, pathetic schmuck, because nobody was denying it.
So much for ‘The Jewish State’.
There you go Mikey. I knew you’d get there eventually. The Jewish State welcomes enlightenment.
Yup we take a dim view of the aggression of our enemies Mikey and will always use our military superiority to crush them and ensure victory for the Jewish State. Very proud to be part of the Zionist dream.
Aggression is usually when someone attacks you from elsewhere. Israel seems to attack others and justify it as ‘defense’. One of the few notable inventions from Israel.
Sure, those rockets from Gaza never happened, schmuck.
Nor the IDF incursions into Gaza to kill, Leah?
That definitely happened Mikey, loads of times. I could tell you some of the names of the arab terrorists that were killed and how but that would just be gloating.
(a) Were any of the creatures expelled?
(b) What’s a legal war crime? Are these people even literate enough to serve burgers?
(c) According to the UN??? ROFLMAOWMP
That’s us Mikey. Zero tolerance for those that would do us harm. We’re good like that.
“One of the few notable inventions from Israel.” – the schmuck’s impotent rage, jealousy and frustration are palpable. Such infantile bile …
Jealousy? Ho ho ho ho.
Yep. Sadly for Mikey and the rest of his gang of cut throats, the Israelis are NOT the unarmed Jews of WW2 or Khaybar or 1936 Jerusalem.
There you go then. Aggression. Not limited to others.
No our wrath towards the Arab terrorists is limitless. We always hit our targets.
Yup, Toto, we are not in 1942 any more. Jews no longer bend their backs.
Just their laws, Leah.
More thick nonsense from the schmuck Mike.
Do you want to reconsider that Ian.
That Judaism isn’t a cult?
The oxymoron that calls itself “The Religion of Peace” isn’t a cult?
Leah
If you are new to this blog you might not know that Mike is one of David’s trolls who takes pleasure in blending anti-zionism into anti-Semitism. He does not need feeding.
David seems to be happy to entertain such trolls. Better that they spend time here where they are relatively benign than lurking about elsewhere.
Have a peaceful shabbat.
Peach
Indeed. I only take issue with the word ‘happy’. I don’t want to remove him, but am convinced he brings nothing at all to the blog. My hesitation is only because they know I am an ardent free speech merchant, and they will chalk up a banning (even of a senseless troll) as a victory. Mike likes to abuse the freedom. He can do here, what he can do almost nowhere else. Fancy being allowed onto a site that deals with antisemitism, and being allowed to freely poke Jews. Which is exactly what he likes to do. Mike is hard-core, and unlike others he doesn’t have the intelligence to hide it or make a half decent argument. At times it is like I am dealing with a 12 year old, where you know what he will write before he writes it. What we are left with is a worthless troll, who is seeing how far I can be pushed. If I press the delete button on him, and I may, it will only be a result of quality, rather than content. If you are going to be a Jew hater Mike, at least try to turn it into an argument.
To everyone else – Shabbat Shalom
Israel, Zionism critic, David. But you can spin it as something more to your liking. It’s your more practised method.
Nah, definitely a Jew hater Mikey but you’re an older man with prostate problems so I guess your god hasn’t dealt you the best hand. Never to late to convert to Judaism though and take advantage of all that the Jewish State has to offer. We are the chosen people after all.
Oh yes, obvs a Jew-hater, and too thick to camouflage it.
Mike. Go and have a look at the post you did earlier about the ‘cult’. Then look at your examples. Many have absolutely nothing to do about Zionism or Israel. In fact, they work better on the ultra-orthodox of Stamford Hill, than they do the Zionist Jews of Tel Aviv. Why? Because it is a Jewish thing. It isn’t me that has it all confused Mike, it is you. Thing is, if you really feel this way, why not be honest about it.
Perhaps you can explain what this
has to do with Zionism or Israel?
or this
or this
or this
or this
That was an antisemitic rant Mike. Nothing to do with Zionism or Israel, but a twisted view of Jews. The vast majority of Israelis don’t buy into any of this at all.
The ‘Cult’ argument doesn’t work in a nation with a functioning multi party democracy, where everything is placed before the electorate, from the one democratic state to the Greater Israel project. The reason you think it works is because you have a core of antisemitic hate, and view Jews, Israel and Zionism in a way that simply isn’t reflected by reality. The thought of the people in Shienkin body rocking to anything but the sound of the local night club is quite frankly pathetic antisemitism written by someone who has not got the first clue about Israeli society.
So blatant was your attack, I am honestly surprised you are pretending otherwise. You cannot talk about hours and hours of Torah by rote, or body rocking at the Western Wall, and then pretend you are not actually referencing Judaism. Well you can – but nobody would believe you. Please don’t waste any more time on it, because I wont.
But your list of requirements for a cult fit Judaism in most instances and a few fit Israel yet you seem to class them as failings.
Of course it doesn’t Mikey. You can be a Jew sitting in a Yeshiva reading Torah, or one praying at the Western Wall, or one who is a ‘shomer shabat lite’ or one at White Hart lane on a Saturday afternoon. Or one that eats pork roast on Yom Kippur. As a Jew, you have a whole spectrum of available opinions and arguments – all publicly and readily available. All by the way accepted in the diaspora, within non Zionist Jewry and all also legitimate and accepted in Israeli society. There you also have a school system that is openly critical, a free press, and a democratic system that allows for the entire spectrum.
You responded to a perfectly suitable description of BDS as a cult, with an antisemitic attack against Jews. Not Israel, not Zionism, but Jews. And even then you got it wildly wrong. Live with it.
All I did was show where your supposed negative ‘traits’ mapped to Judaism. It was yourself that criticised those ‘traits’.
Nope. You are being a bit dense here Mikey. I am sure there are some sects within Judaism that have some cultish traits, just as other religions also have elements of extreme orthodoxy. But that isn’t what you did or said. You labelled ‘Israel’s Judaism’ as a thing, and then went off on an antisemitic rant that conflated Zionism with Judaism and suggested that ‘Israel’s Judaism’ acts like a cult, going on to give examples far more suited to strange sects in Stamford Hill, than a Jewish Synagogue in Hadera. As Judaism contains the entire spectrum of Jewish thought, the rant was senseless antisemitic poppycock. It highlighted quite clearly you have absolute no understanding of any of the subject matter that you clearly have a twisted fetish for. It’s late Mike, and you’ve dug a deep enough hole. Go to bed.
Dave, you set out to ridicule BDS. You tell me that Judaism is many things to many people.
BDS is also many things to many people. Some supporters of ‘BDS’ may wish for Israel to be removed. Some supporters would like Israel to refrain from its abuses and its grabbing of land that should be the basis of a Palestinian state.
We differ on what is antisemitic. I have no ‘hatred’ of Jews. All your energy is given to describing the actions of others as such. I asked some weeks ago why you insist on using the word ‘hate’ for a dislike of the actions of those that see Israel’s actions as wrong.
Why would anybody hate a Jew? Why would anybody hate an Arab, or a Swede. When a state that identifies itself as representing Jews acts in such a dishonest, selfish, heartless way it will tend to cast a negative light on the word ‘Jewish’.
You’ve mentioned several times how you try various arguments in your quest to have everything you’re not happy with as ‘antisemitism’ just to see if they work. I think that shows how shallow your arguments are.
Your posts also show what arrogance you wallow in. Quite the smug soldier.
“land that should be the basis of a Palestinian state” – just because schmucks like you have decided that it ‘should’ be?
Sad little man.
You put lots of words together, but there is no cohesion to them. I don’t think you hate Jews in the abstract, just in the reality. A bit like someone who thinks that there is nothing wrong with having a pet in theory, but dumped the rabbits he bought one day in the forest because they turned out to be rather annoying creatures. Nothing like they looked in the pet shop at all.
Your description of the ‘Israel – Judaism’ cult was explicitly antisemitic and drawn by someone who not only clearly has an issue with Jews, he also exposed that the concepts of Israel, Zionism and Judaism are one big convoluted mess in his head. It was drawn up by you, and no amount of ‘but you did this’, will erase it. I called BDS a cult because it clearly behaves like one. That is what BDS is.
You even ask why anybody would hate a Jew. You answer yourself by implying Israel’s actions are responsible for it. Which in itself is a racist (antisemitic) way of looking at things. Jews become responsible for their own persecution. The logic follows that if there was hatred of Jews before Israel, then they must have done something to deserve that too. There is little to say to someone who suggests that Israel, a nation of refugees and survivors, that came into being just 3 years after a genocide against them, is the CAUSE of the hatred. I don’t know why some people hate Jews Mike. But clearly they do.
As for the arrogance nonsense, and your attack on my honesty. You just show yourself up when you do stuff like this. EVERYBODY does it Mikey, it is the way we all learn and grow. We create positions, we hold views, we argue, read, develop and discard all the time. When you argue against me, you put a case, or try an analogy. Some work, some don’t. You discard those that don’t, and sharpen those that do. Internally you become stronger and wiser. Oh my word, David said he does this in public and Mike thinks it somehow is a ‘bad thing’ he has found. Get real. As for you sensing I don’t like you (which you regard as arrogance), you are right, I don’t. I don’t care about your views but I respect honesty and intelligence, and I am finding it difficult to find either in your writing.
Well said, David. And if I may add: these 2 trolls just love Jews as long as they know their proper place, i.e. when they accept that they are merely Jews and don’t have the arrogance to imagine that they are worth as much as regular people and can demand the rights that are granted to regular people (you know – national self-determination, defending themselves against genocidal mass-murderers, that sort of thing). Proud Jews who fight back simply don’t compute in the trolls’ universe. When they see this, what little there is of their brains goes into complete meltdown. That is why they think that posting complete lies all over this blog is just peachy, because the Jews need to be taught a lesson and put back in their place.
Mike he prefers to be called David. It won’t cost you much to respect that.
Thanks, Peach, same to you.
The little schmuck is new to me. I have, however, come across Bellend elsewhere.
I do love showing up these idiots for the thick losers they are.
” Leah ” if you are going to show anyone up for anything you are going to have to expand your vocabulary
It’s interesting that some posters realise the trollishness of Schmuck, but not that of Bellend – who keeps trolling me because I have a Jewish name,
No, troll, I don’t ‘have’ to do anything just because a loser like you tells me to.
Yep, we’re agreed it’s a misnomer, haven’t we.
Many wild imaginings in your post, Leah. You tell such a story.
You post “Jews who fight back … “. When Arabs ‘fight back’ they are accused of terrorism and violence. Tuy tut.
Mikey when your Arab/Islamists ‘fight back’, passenger planes are hijacked and flown into buildings, London transport is bombed, passenger planes are bombed and crash onto Lockerbie, people are run over with cars on London bridges, people in French magazine offices and music halls are slaughtered, Boston marathons are bombed, gay nightclubs in Orlando Florida are shot to death, British servicemen are run over and their throat cut, 500,000 Arabs are slaughtered by fellow Arabs in Syria, theaters in Manchester are bombed, elementary schools in Beslan are bombed, writers of fiction have death fatwas issued against them, Olympics are invaded and hijacked and athletes are murdered, gay teens are hung to death from construction cranes, girls are stoned to death over slights against ‘family honour’, US Presidential candidate hopefuls are shot to death, USS Cole is bombed, Danish cartoonists are threatened with death, Dutch filmmakers are stabbed to death…
More screeching unhinged spittle-flecked drivel from the thick ignorant bigoted Schmuck.
When “Jews fight back” over 500 children are blown to pieces, Edward.
“Islamists”? Never mentioned them.
Which brings us back to the swivel-eyed schmuck’s demand that Joos should not defend themselves from thousands of rockets.
Bombing civilians is defending themselves? At least Hamas attacks soldiers.
Your Hamass considers all Jews/Israeli’s as soldiers and fires missiles into Israel. Tough shiite when Israel fires back. Mohammed doens’t like it when Infidels fight back – but that’s too bad.
What do you call people who get bombed and killed leaving concerts in Manchester or walking across Westminster bridge? Combatants???
Your palestinan ‘fighter’ terrorists hide behind children. A dead child is a victory for your ilk. Your friends parade them around like trophy’s.
So, Edward, you condemn the bombing of civilians?
Mikey, I condemn the bombing, hijacking, stabbing, shooting, poison gassing, beheading, immolating, ramming of civilians.
Do you?
Do you condemn Hamass, Hezbullah, Al Qada, ISIS, Taliban, Boko Haram, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Nusra, Fascist Iran?
When they attack civiilians, of course. You’ll feel the same when the IDF do no doubt.
When your friends in Al Qada, ISIS, Taliban, Boko Haram, Hamass, Hezbullah, Syria, Fascist Iran, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Shaba bomb, stab, shoot, ram, rape civilians, you feel pride, no doubt.
Read the latest news? Your friends in the Taliban just killed 95 people in Kabul, Afghanistan.
It’s “The Religion of Peace”. Anyone who disagrees will be dealt with harshly.
Mikey, please FOAD. 🙂
How are the Taliban my friends? Now you’re just rambling.
You have yet to post a cross word against the Taliban, Al Qada, ISIS, Boko Haram, Muslim Brotherhood – so they must be your kind of guys.
Mikey, please FOAD 🙂
that is absolute tosh.
1. The entire argument over Gaza is tosh. If the people of Portsmouth and Southampton were kept in the bunkers because of rocket fire from a terror enclave on the Isle of Wight, there would be NO CONSIDERATION other than stopping the rocket fire. The UK would rightly take EVERY ACTION NECCESSARY, and the people would be on the streets demanding harder and faster action if the government balked. They’d sink the entire Island if that was the only way to stop the rocket fire. The primary duty of the state is to protect its citizens.
2. Not only is that statement true, but here is another one. In one of the most heavily populated areas on earth, Israel MUST HAVE TAKEN SERIOUS PRECAUTIONS, for the body count to be as low as it was, given the intensity of the bombing campaign. Every innocent life lost is tragic (to a lesser degree, so is every terrorist missed) but you cannot honestly suggest, one of the strongest military forces on the planet did the damage to the infrastructure that it did, over a 51 day period, using so many strikes, and killed as few civilians as they did, unless they were working damned hard at it. The entire conflict didn’t raise the casualty count of a regular morning in Syria. The accusations against Israel on this score are pure propaganda poppycock.
3. As hard as Israel works to avoid innocent civilian casualties, we also know Hamas wants them. This too is a factor in assessing the damage. As the UK bombed the crap out of the Isle of Wight, those people caught in the raids on the rocket sites placed deliberately next to their homes, die because of the terrorists.
4. That someone suggests Hamas ‘attacks soldiers’ is sickening. Let them come out and play for one day with the IDF. One day. Like all groups of their type, Hamas try to avoid open military confrontation. Hamas are responsible for some of the bloodiest attacks on Israeli civilians, and where it temporarily calls a halt to civilian attacks, it does so for strategic rather than ethical reasons. Like most radical Islamic extremists, Hamas do not care about human life, not the Jewish civilians and not the Muslim civilians. For them, the more civilians dead – on both sides – the better. Just because the truth damages your propaganda, doesn’t mean you get to change the realities of radical Islam.
You have almost as many mistakes in your post as you have words.
But David Israel ALWAYS hits its target. So whats the prob ? Ian ?
When fighting the IRA did the British Army destroy buildings suspected of housing terrorists, irrespective of other residents? Don’t accuse them of having the same disregard for life that Israel has.
Shall ignore your Isle of Wight ramblings.
You seem to be arguing that although Israel bombed the sh*t out of the civilian areas people still survived so Israel should be praised.
Perverse.
In only 7% of powerful munitions use were any warnings given by Israel, don’t bother to wear your halo.
I love the IRA argument, I have seen it rolled out many times to the same zero effect.
1. Did the IRA want to destroy England?
2. How many IRA attacks were there on the Mainland?
3. Over what time period?
4. What was the total casualty count of these attacks?
The IRA defence is useless.
Let’s put it this way, seeing as you seem to be suggesting the UK army operates in a better way than Israel’s. How many Iraqi civilians did they kill? How many British people were in their bomb shelters, when the British Army helped to completely destroy Iraq?
Mikey, More Germans than Brits died in WW2. Does that make the Brits the aggressors in WW2?
The Germans sought to conquer, occupy then annex. I’d call that aggression. Doesn’t Israel do that, Edward?
Conquer, Occupy, Annex, Islamicize, rape, kill Infidels.
That’s the result of Arabs/Muslims flooding into Eurabia (UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, …)
Yup that’s us Mikey. You’re well clued up as usual. I know you know what’s really going on but a quick exchange on social media won’t change your behaviour or even give you the honesty to note that Hamas kidnapped and then murdered 3 teenage boys who were not soldiers before launching over 9000 rockets at our civilian population. This prompts us to respond as is our right and as you we’ll know. Suffice to say that the Jewish State will continue to strike its enemies and will always be better at it than them. As you are someone old enough to remember the fire bombing of Dresden by your air force you may wish to direct your bile at targets closer to your own home.
I recognise that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime, as were the two US atomic attacks on the citizens of Japan.
The vile murder of the three young Israelis was in direct retaliation for the murder by shooting dead of two Palestinian youths by an Israeli border policeman dufing a Nakba day demonstration. You’ll remember the tit-for-tat burning to death of a young Palestinian by one Ben David who was convicted some 20 months later. Israel didn’t rush to justice there, unlike when they shot go death the suspect for the murder of the 3 boys. Tell a complete tale please.
Mikey, I’d rather that the US nuke Imperial Japan than Fascist Germany or Imperial Japan nuke the USA.
Neither Fascist Germany or Imperial Japan or Fascist Iran or Al Qada, Hamass, Hezbullah, Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood, Boko Haram, Al Nusra care a whit about civilians. See 9/11, Pan Am 103, Boston, London, New York City, Orlando, Brussels, Mumbai for examples of Islamofascist concern for the safety of civilians.
See Hot Winter, Cast Lead, Summer Rains, Autumn Clouds, Protective Edge etc.
When Islamofascists attack Israel, payback is a bitch.
Just like when National Socialists declared War on the US, four days after Pearl Harbor was attacked, payback was a bitch.
Islamofascists? You really must stop using nonsense words that people have written down for you.
Perhaps you prefer the nonsense claim that “Islam is the Religion of Peace”?
“At least Hamas attacks soldiers” – you are insane.
Fuck off.
Hamas using a tunnel some years ago attacked a group of IDF soldiers killing two or three of them. Now they are described as ‘terror tunnels’. That wasn’t a terror attack. It was an attack on enemy troops. Just as IDF attacks on Hamas militants aren’t. But on Israeli or Palestinian civilians they are.
Mikey, Tell your boys in Hamass to stop hiding behind civilians, stop dressing as civilians.
Tell Hamass that when they die in jihad, they aren’t going to “paradise” to join 72 virgin boys, but to Hell.
Where they’ll be facd to face again with IDF child killers. Wow.
IDF sends your friends to Hell. That’s the way I like it.
And when there are no Israelis/Zionists/Jews around, Arabs/Muslims kill Arabs/Muslims. See Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, Gaza.
Seems Leah has the same misplaced arrogance that afflicts David.
I know, I know, I am a chutzpadik Joo who imagines she is as good as regular people.
Schmuck.
You speak a strange tongue, Leah.
Mikey, You speak in a forked tongue.
Well we have some interesting refugees here ” happy naqba” Edward, ” Leah” , Amie. David your blogspot seems destined to get funera and funera. Eat your heart out Harrys Place.
Dumb Bellamy, May your 2018 be filled with Nakba as it was in 2017!
Bellamy
From further up. Your assertion that I said those words. In fact I was told that my demographic was not wanted on campus. What do you think was meant by that ?
Er I dunno Harv
How about ugly elderly git as the demographic? Still no excuse for what you shouted
I’m a refugee too Bellers from when the Arabs kicked my family out three generations ago and won’t let us back. But you try telling that to the bat shit basket cases at UNWRA and they won’t believe you. But like you may have said “naqba is as naqba does”…or some complete shoite to that effect.
He won’t recognise me, Stephen …. I’m Mikey to him 🙂
Mikey, this has been a much longer thread than usual and has served quite successfully to highlight some of the more obvious confusions in your thinking. David has suggested that you may simply be a dishonest contributor who has a burning antipathy to Jews and masks it with all the BDS nonsense. Certainly the manner in which you conduct yourself here seems to support this. It was also suggested that your mind is simply muddled with several conflicting ideas and probably decades old prejudices formed in secondary school RE lessons that cause you to present as a vile antisemite when, in fact there may be other latent factors to consider here.
Noting that open-mindedness is an alien concept to most of the contributors here and certainly not something that I have any right to expect from you I will try a different tack.
You will recall at the turn of the year that I was anxious to be a more civil and respectful contributor here to all comers and I maintain this position. With this said and in view of the above comments I will eschew attempts at reasonable discourse with you and instead offer a well-intentioned piece of advice. I note that you are a older man and perhaps at a point in your life where you may be starting to suffer the ravages of age both physically and mentally. In the unhappy event that the specialist diagnosticians write you up as a candidate for opiates you may see words like Ladostigil and Exelon appearing on your scripts. These are both highly reputable drugs with a remarkable and demonstrable track record in the treatment of early onset dementia and Alzheimer disease. Out of respect for your personal proclivities I would advise caution. Both were developed and are manufactured in Israel and despite their obviously beneficial outcomes you may want to think twice before taking them. Hope this helps.
Ian – Bellend needs the same advice as Schmuck “Hamas doesn’t murder civilans” Mike. Putting my name in quotation marks is a clear symptom of a mental disorder.
I repeat my earlier remarks about the currency of open-mindedness in an activist led social media space. Once it is accepted that contributors do not come here to engage in any sort of civil discourse all that is left is agenda driven propaganda and name calling. Ian Kay is my real name and I am not so fearful as to hide in the anonymous virtual murk. I am not an activist and I don’t get any of the references to any of the people that Bellers has his little personal grudges against and mostly find his views and those of many others on both sides of the divide quite bizarre. I am also an Israeli living in the present, not 3000 BC, or 1922, or 1948 or 1967 or yesterday. Nor do I live in some abstract fantasist’s dream. I’ve seen how real battles unfold and the consequences for families on both sides so I have no interest at all in the bigoted bollocks tapped out by idiots on social media from the relative safety of Western living rooms who think they know what’s what. They mostly don’t but that rarely stops them telling me all about my own country. I’ll carry on coming here because I admire the work that David does and the very dignified and respectful way that he manages his site. This deserves great credit given the positions he places himself in and his professional and civilised responses to some of the cretinous comments that appear in this section. In many ways his conduct is as much a weapon against his opponents as his words.
I don’t do personal grudges Ian. To everything there is a practical purpose.
My, you did spend a long time tucked away at your machine putting that post together. Wew.
Have the in-laws called round?
p.s. Sorry. Never heard of the drugs you mentioned, you obviously have. Hope you don’t claim that to be antisemitic. No doubt David will.
No I’m still quite good at composing original thoughts and organizing them into reasonably coherent sentences Mikey. Naturally, given my remarks about open-mindedness and sincerity I have no expectations that you will try this. That’s not really the part you play here is it?
Were you an RE teacher at a boys grammar school in Northern England in the late 70s and sometime Methodist minister? I ask because I like to imagine the strangers that appear here who, in all likelihood will always remain so. Bellers is Stephen Rea circa The Crying Game. In terms of your tone and your sentiments I see you as someone very specific but prefer to be a little more circumspect if the above applies.
Exactly Ian if you can’t squeeze something or someone into some little box or other you can’t cope.
Does language have a subject/predicate structure because the world consists of objects and their properties or does language having a subject/predicate structure force the the organising of reality into objects and their properties ?
Of course you like to imagine the people here as someone you recognise. This imagining is just that. Your imagination, an extremely limited one at that.
Stephen; still no reason or reasonable explenation on why you called Israel a basket case
If you have come to realise the sheer stupidity of the statement, then good.
If you still maintain your claim that Israel is a basket case, then please explain.
Incidently, Israel has just overtaken both France and Japan with a higher per capita income than both
Israel has also been rated as at the forefront of technological inovation and resesrch.
Some basket case .
Israel puts most nations to shame in every progresive sphere
An intelligent reply ,please.
https://tradingeconomics.com/forecast/gdp-per-capita
Shame? Something that Israel should think about.
Shame? Something that the self proclaimed “Religion of Peace” should think about.
9/11, various attacks on NYC, 7/7 2005 attack on London transport, Pan Am 103, Mumbai attack, Nairobi attack, Boston marathon attack, Orlando attack, Paris attacks, Manchester attack, Beslan attack, Bamiyan attack, Halabja attack, San Bernardino attack, Bali attack, Garland attack, Fort Hood attack, Ottawa attack, Sydney attack, DC Beltway attacks, 1972 Olympics attack, Moscow attacks, Kabul attacks, Syria attacks, attacks on Coptic Christians, Amsterdam attack, Nice truck attack, rape gangs, execution of gays, stoning to death of girls, murder of filmakers, death threats against cartoonists and writers, …
Get thee to an ophthalmologist or neurologist to treat your massive blind spots.
You’re referencing radical islamists. I’m mentioning Israel.
p.s. Did you notice where ‘powerhouse’ Israel was on the list?
Mikey, What is a “radical islamist”?
How many “radical islamists” are there?
How many innocent people have “radical islamists” murdered?
How can the authorities filter out “radical islamists” from the rest?
What should be done to neutralize “radical islamists”?
What is the difference between a “radical islamist” and an orthodox Islamist?
Was the Muslim prophet Mohammed a “radial Islamist”?
“Were you an RE teacher at a boys’ grammar school in Northern England in the late 70s and sometime Methodist minister?”??!?
No, Ian, I wan’t the beast that may have abused you for years. You won’t be benefitting financially from any claim against me. Sorry.
Hang on Mikey. Are you suggesting that there is any likelihood that a clergyman from the 70s would ever have abused young boys in his charge in a single sex education environment? I’m pleased I chose the more circumspect route on this occasion and will leave the salaciousness stuff to you. This is probably what happens when you move from the Guardian to the Mail on Sunday.
Ian, is there really any point in engaging with these two lunatics?
None. But there’s no footie on until late today so I’m at a loose end. Thought about a bit of colonial oppression but the weather is terrible at the moment.
That’s what my escapology teacher told me; I’d never amount to anything if I couldn’t think outside the box.
As for imagining just being imagination I would definitely agree with you there.
(Couldn’t comment on the middle bit. I didn’t understand any of it.)
Like I said this blog spot is going to get funera and funera
Anyway always a learning experience. Best lesson of last week H/T Ian, was that ISrael always hits its target
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/16/funeral-of-palestinian-amputee-killed-by-israeli-fire-takes-place-in-gaza
You have to admire the commitment of any Arab terrorist that pushes his legless mate over heavy terrain up to one of the world’s most sensitive border fences, tips him out, watches him crawl on a bit and then when he’s shot, lumps him back in and wheels him back again without even the basic humanity to take the bullet for his disabled mate. As this is an old article i’d have to check whether we got the other guy in the end. Cheers for pointing this out Bellers.
o:)
The Guardian lies on principle. This story is pure Pallywood. No wonder the little dreck buys it.
” Leah” that killed the man is not Pallywood. Nor is the fact that Israel always hits its target. Ian does not do Pallywood
OOPS
” Leah” that the IOF killed the man is not Pallywood. Nor is the fact that Israel always hits its target. Ian does not do Pallywood
Dead right Bellers. We’re in the precision business. Let’s see their Paralympic basketball team challenge us for gold now !!
There you are ” Leah”
I am asking quite seriously – are you insane or just a thick fuckwit?
Either way, a total and utter shitstain.
Cripples and kids are meejah gold. That’s why they’re there. Pumped with drugs from here to next Tuesday with a mate just behind as you can see lobbing rocks from his catty to draw fire. When ‘Bob’ takes one for the team the headlines write themselves, the snapper gets an award and Polly Toynbee gets a little moist in the gusset region. Same story with old Ma Tamimi ” Go on little Ahed. Go and twat that soldier. You’ll get a new Stone Island parka from Uncle Abu.” They’re getting 3G next week. That’ll make YouTube funera eh Bellers?
“That’s why they’re there.” THey’re that way due to the amount of munitions showered on the Gazan population. But there’s plenty more where that came from, gratis from the US that entity that just can’t understand why the Palestinians don’t want them as an unbiased peace partner in talks.
Re. Polly Tombee. You’re quite the lowlife, Ian. New Year Resolutions don’t last long with you , do they.
Any jokes about the gas chambers? you must know hundreds at your level.
The sick bile-dripping schmuck Mike, who is as much of a disgusting shitstain on humanity as the equally vile hate-driven hag Toynbee (who is also the 3rd thickest hag in the UK), calls Ian ‘lowlife’??? LMAO.
Miaow miaow.
I thought you were a pussy.
Mikey, I feel for your Paleswinians as I would for 1945 Berlin.
Please get thee to Gaza. Hamass needs some good ol’ Eurotrash like yourself to be Humans Shields for their terrorist enclave.
Ian the Tamimis hate uncle Abu. As do the overwhelming number of Palestinians on the West Bank., that I have met. Ian you need to get out and about a bit more.
Interesting Ian that we are both paying close attention today. I am on the second leg of reading through all of David’s posts since he started and skimming down the comments. What are you doind ?
Tried the re-skim Bellers when you posted some bollocks but couldn’t find it in the thread so filed it under Not Arsed. Just killing time, instead of small Arab kids until the footie.
Interesting o)
you could just call me, and I’ll tell you my view of things. I am quite open about it all. No need to sift through 3 years of continually evolving thought. Although as someone who likes to build conspiracies, perhaps you’ll be able construct a few by doing it your way. I can tell you I am not sure I like the sudden uplift in the quantity of comments. You may think it is funera and funera, and I always appreciate decent arguments, but I hate the gutter exchanges
or in other words – I believe that the Zionist case is the one supported by historicity and underpinned by a stronger ethical and factual case. When we reduce it to hurling insults, we play into the hands of the other side. It is EXACTLY what they want it to be, an empty slanging match between two sides that become indistinguishable from each other.
Nonsense, David. Jews no longer take insults meekly.
There is a simple solution: just block the scum who come here for Jew-baiting.
Problem is that there are sections of society that see everything as an insult, there are even those seeking to gain from it, aren’t there David?
Leah
Why would I block someone just because I disagree with him? I am I believe completely justified in holding the opinions I do. I think those opinions are grounded enough to withstand the most aggressive of assaults. I am a firm believer in providing a platform to opposing views. This blog was set up to report on a deteriorating environment whilst arguing Israel’s case. I don’t need to persuade you that Israel is (for the most part) right, nor of course Ian. Ian has the added luxury of living under the protection of state that knows how to defend Jewish lives.
If there is an argument to be had, then it is the ill-informed, the ignorant, and the misled that need to be reached. If we are to convince them that our history is supported, and what the other side refer to as their ‘narrative’, is mostly fantasy land poppycock, then I would prefer the dialogue in the comments to reflect the nature of the blog itself.
Are we not strong enough to hold our nerve in the face of a few Jew baiting trolls? Can’t we just fight with the facts and let them resort to empty insults? Nowt wrong with a bit of humour and name calling at times but I really do not want that to be all that there is.
David,
1. Antisemitic propaganda, lies and hate are not a question of ‘disagreeing with someone’.
2. Antisemitic propaganda, lies and hate are not ‘opposing views’. That’s the BBC’s eternal position: historical facts and antisemitic lies are both merely differing ‘narratives’, and have equal value. Very disappointing that you are falling into this trap.
3. The liars and haters will never be persuaded by historical facts and rational argument, because their hatred is irrational.
1. Agreed
2. Also agreed. I don’t buy into the idea of two narratives Leah, I really don’t. I am a stickler for historicity and also a stickler for allowing people to express their views. There is one narrative and within that narrative people can have a different perspective. The idea of the ‘Nakba’ narrative (the expulsion of a passive population at the hands of a dominant and brutal Yishuv) is absolute poppycock. I never stop saying this. If people want to push the poppycock here, I am more than willing to explain to them and in doing so show others, factually why they are pushing lies.
3. That as may be, but how good for any neutral bystanders to actually see the arguments presented and then destroyed. I will never ever ever ever ever change Mike’s mind and he is not here to do anything but bait. But it is not really him I am writing the responses for.
4. If he is lying, if he is wrong, if he is baiting Jews. Far more value in exposing it, that just deleting him.
5. I am not asking you to be nice to him or for him. Racists don’t deserve that kind of consideration. I am simply saying that to push Israel’s case, sometimes there is no better way of exposing the hate, than letting the haters talk. Keep the abuse down so bystanders see what is going on – that’s all.
Fair enough. However, if you are writing for others, I feel it is necessary to counter the lies more robustly than sometimes happens here. Otherwise, those bystanders – if they are naive and ignorant – may see what THEY wrongly perceive as two opposing but ‘equally valid narratives’. I did say ‘sometimes’, because it seems to me that you have become more willing in recent days to use the description ‘lie’ for what are, indeed, blatant lies.
You scoff at the ‘Nakba narrative’, David. Are you attempting to tell the watching crowd that the Arabs, a sizeable majority at that time, chose to leave their homes and villages voluntarily which surprise, surprise ensured a Jewish voting majority?
What is YOUR Nakba narrative?
Of course I scoff at the Nakba ‘narrative’. It’s a poppycock fairytale.
1. The Arabs didn’t constitute any majority at all in the Jewish area set aside for partition. You are lying again. I think it was about 498,000 Jews to 325,000 Arabs.
2. The Jewish majority was going to be further enhanced because hundreds of thousands of Jews were on their way. There were 10,000’s stuck in concentration camps on Cyprus alone. Before we even look at the masses in the European DPC’s.
3. Within the partition plan was the assumption that some people would also relocate naturally to the territory with the majority of their people (Arabs to Arab side, Jews to Jewish side).
= the story that the Jews had to ethnically cleanse the population to prevent an Arab majority is a myth.
I don’t have a ‘narrative’ Mike. I have history. Doesn’t it even phase you that every single time you say something, it turns out not to be true? How can someone continue to hate something they are clearly deeply mistaken about on everything. So odd.
David, does your History tell you WHY so many Arabs left their homes and possessions behind to become refugees?
sorry Mike, it isn’t going to work this way. Yesterday you suggested most targets of Hamas had been soldiers, and that was quite a ridiculous statement. Now today you pushed the idea that the Zionist leadership had to ethnically cleanse the Arabs because if they hadn’t they wouldn’t have had a majority. Yet that too was a factually incorrect statement. You are more than welcome to dispute the historicity by producing figures that counter mine. I took mine from the partition statement, and the relevant research documents of the time. If you can find equally reputable sources, we can have a discussion over it, and find out why there is a discrepancy. As I doubt you will produce them, because you are spinning the myth, and counter figures don’t exist, I need to ask why you seem to effortlessly move from one error to another? This about the 20th consecutive question I have directed towards you that remains unanswered.
I don’t have a history, I have history, a virtual mountain of sources, documents, research that combine together to form a pretty cohesive image of the conflict. Within that, there is room for discussion, conjecture, perspective and so on. There is no room, to create a second ‘history’, that simply isn’t supported by anything more than an ideological desire to be right. I suggest you read the historians account of the conflict, and by historians I do not mean activists. Morris is quite good, but there are others with more recent and valuable contributions. I have almost all of the activist accounts on my bookshelf, and to be frank, they are a mix and match of partial stories, selected quotes and are supported more by conspiratorial foolishness and ‘oral history’ than they are by the full volume of available written documentation.
There was no ‘block of Arabs’ that left their homes. There was, certainly until May 1948, hundreds of localised conflicts, each town, each village, each hill, with its very own dynamic. Within the very complex nature of a civil conflict, there were friendly towns, hostile towns, strategically important roads, unimportant villages. There were even friendly towns taken over by hostile forces. Around every one of these, there were more than two forces, as Arab irregular armies, the Jordanian legion and local clan leaders clashed amongst themselves and also faced whichever local Jewish commander was in control of that particular unit. Each local Jewish person commanding his unit, would have brought his own dynamic with him too. After all, the Jewish people in this conflict were fighting for their right not just to a state, but to live. Amidst all this was an Arab power struggle, as the local Arab nations, that did not view Palestine as an independent entity, each played for partnerships and supremacy for the time the British departed. Lots of people died. The casualty count roughly even on both sides. And as May approached, the Jewish forces had to have been looking ahead to the upcoming invasion. Whilst Arab irregular forces and local Arab fighters would have operated more on a strategy of disruption and weakening the Jews to soften them up for the Arab armies, the Jewish forces would have needed to ensure a clear supply line to the several fronts they knew were about to open. The two sides were not fighting the same war. All this is called context.
There is no single reason why the villages were vacated Mike. Only a fool or propagandist would think so. Do you think that every civil war that causes refugees (I’d be interested to hear one that didn’t) has a single cause beyond ‘the conflict’. We can discuss this if you want, because I would love to run this argument through with an Israel hater. Trouble is, every time I try to engage, at some point they run away. They are scared of the discussion. I wonder why that is – any ideas? There you go, another question for you to answer.
Nearly half of Jewish Israelis want to expel Arabs, survey shows Pew study finds 79% believe Jews should get preferential treatment over Arab citizens
https://www.timesofisrael.com/plurality-of-jewish-israelis-want-to-expel-arabs-study-shows/
Nice to know how ‘Israeli’ hearts beat.
Mike, either show me you are here to engage, or leave. If you do neither I will remove you. I wouldn’t permit someone to simply come and spoil discussion against a sincere anti-Israel activist argument by simply deflecting and placing propaganda statements, and I won’t let you play the game the other way. Either you have value and something to contribute or not, if you don’t – go away.
My Nakba narrative is that some people are upset that the Israelis did not permit themselves to be slaughtered by 5 attacking Arab armies, none of which was an army of an existing palestine.
Your pathological blindspot prevented you from acknowledging that 800,000 Jews were kicked out, fled for the lives from various Arab countries.
Anyhow, Happy Nakba Mikey. May your frustration and thwarted plans continue to gnaw at you forever.
And they had nowhere to go too.
Wait a minute, how about the land and homes of the Arabs driven out by the Jewish militia?
MIkey, 800,000 Jews were stripped o theiir possessions and fled for their lives from Iraq, Syria, Yeman, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon.
It’s a wash.
“When we reduce it to hurling insults, we play into the hands of the other side.”
You’re beginning to realise, David?
The comment was to them not you. Both your last posts referenced ‘money’ about people ‘paying’ and ‘gaining’. We know you have a fixation with the ‘money’ side of this site. WE ALL KNOW WHAT YOU ARE. The thing is Mike is that I would rather have them not fall into the trap you set up for them. Your arguments are empty. You run on rhetoric and deflection, and when they fail you, you start a new thread on a separate subject or bait with tropes. You want the discussion to deteriorate. Because everyone knows what you are, the impulse is to hurl the abuse in your direction – which in my opinion is both understandable and justified.
Thing is Mike I see through the tactic. And this blog is not about you, nor will you be allowed to take it down to your level. It provides a source of information, an account of a deteriorating situation as I see it, and a place for people to learn about the fallacies of the fantasy anti-Israel activists call their ‘narrative’.
I can do with some assistance in that, and I would be delighted if others like Ian, Richard and co stay around, and new people join in to assist. The fight is a big one. What we musn’t do is fall into the trap of taking people’s attention away from the clear message – TRUTH V LIE – that the blog contains. Having people throwing insults at you – however justified they may be – detracts from the fight. Far too often we lose sight of the bigger picture, and reduce these exchanges into a place we can just release our frustrations. I am simply asking them not to lose focus here. That’s all.
I don’t mind your insults, David, nor the ones from your supporters. Only those from people you respect should prompt reflection.
TRUTH VS LIE should really be expanded to TRUTH AS I PERCEIVE IT vs LIES AS I PERCEIVE THEM.
Sad that you see challenging as baiting. Also sad that you declare targets as Jews and not Israel supporters.
Mike, yesterday you said that Hamas don’t attack civilians they attack soldiers. That isn’t perception, it is a lie. One so obvious and simple, it is designed to lead to a barrage of insults against you. The comment itself will never be seen within a long exchange of insults and all that is left is the image of two sides hurling abuse at each other. That’s how the tactic is meant to work, how it is meant to bait. It won’t work here. Hamas have a long history of targetting civilians and are responsible for some of the bloodiest attacks on civilians. This before we even begin to look at the way they deliberately place their own civilians in danger. So no, we are not talking about perception, we are talking about lies. Including yours.
Over the past years Israeli soldiers have been the target of attacks. I should have qualified my comments as Hamas tends to attack soldiers, Can YOU say with clear conscience that Israel does not kill civilians that pose no threat to it? I do not deliberately make staements that I know to be untrue.
When you have imaginings you describe as ‘clearly’ when they are not. Yes, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Is not bulldozing homes of ‘suspected’ terrorists not breaching the Geneva Conventions? If you tell me no, I take that as a lie.
You describe abhorrence at Israeli actions as ‘Jew hate’, a deliberately incriminating phrase. I take that as dishonesty on your part.
Your hysterical obsession with Israel, and your brazen lies about Hamas, tels us exactly what you are, schmuck.
The vast majority of victims of Hamas have been Israeli civilians and Palestinian political opposition or civilians who are ‘religiously deviant’. Not Israeli soldiers. Is it possibly Mike, that recently Israeli soldiers have become the central target of attacks (not exclusively), because since Israel built the wall and disengaged from Gaza, Israeli civilians are mainly beyond reach? Which is why to get at them, Hamas are left throwing indiscriminate rockets at civilian houses? Or is all this just a coincidence?
I can say with a clear conscience that Israeli policy is not to seek civilian casualties. So ‘Israel’ does not deliberately find civilians to kill. In for example a targeted strike against a ticking bomb, Israel’s duty, like any nation’s duty, is to calculate possible harm v possible harm to work out the permitted proportionate response. In that scenario, whilst not deliberately targeted it is logical that at times, Israel accepts there may be ‘collateral damage’. Over the last 10 years, this calculation has become even tighter. Conflict is a terrible thing and innocent people do get killed. I can also argue that suggesting Israel does kill deliberately is illogical, seeing as these events play directly into the hands of the enemy. The only type of civilian death strategy that can possibly work, is the historical massive, indiscriminate Dresden or Hiroshima style attack, which however horrific, can arguably bring strategic gain (not condoning, just pointing out) but would simply not be acceptable today in almost any type of imaginable conflict. As Israel does not do this, but the opposite, with knocks on the door, phone messages, and so on, it breeds a confidence the other way. We see this daily on the streets with Arabs opposing fully armed soldiers, pretty confident that they will not be shot. All the evidence points in my favour not yours. What you do have, are either errors, rare carelessness, or rogues, all not policy issues and things which will exist in any conflict regardless of how tightly the army may want to avoid it. Which means you are left with a choice. Do you look at all the evidence and try to make real sense of it all, or do you just pick the bits that suit your narrative, twist it, and run with that.
Not going to do the ‘Geneva Convention’ stuff, because I avoid the rabbit holes of ‘law’. It is why I stopped using the terms West Bank, Occupied, Disputed, Judea and so on. I just call them the 1967 lands. Whatever you say, others will disagree, and if it isn’t central to the point you are making, why bother. There is a perfectly good legal argument to suggest every inch of Israel, the 1967 lands and Jordan is ‘Jewish’. I don’t personally buy into it, and think it would lose in any proper hearing, but it is still a valid legal argument. Law is a funny thing, and until 50 years ago, the law that gave equal rights to everyone in the United States, also denied black people a vote. Most activists pretend to be experts in international law one way or another. Just as you just did. It is not my style. I Will say that I am *not* personally a fan of the bulldozing stuff and I am not going to defend specific policies. Mine isn’t a battle to prove Israel is a virgin state, yours is one to prove it is the devil. It is therefore my aim not just to prove you wrong, but to show that your bias is completely devoid of all factual or logical support. I think all nations in conflict, and many nations not in conflict do things that aren’t great, both to their own citizens and to non-citizens or citizens in other nations. Israel needs to be judged within the context of its own environment. It is a tragic and difficult environment, and I am sure within that struggle, Israel gets some stuff wrong. Many of the decisions it must make are difficult ones and mistakes are sure to be in the mix somewhere. The question however is what lens we look through at those mistakes. Yours is clearly tainted, the follow up question is why is it tainted?
I don’t describe ‘abhorrence at Israeli actions’ as Jew hate Mike. That’s another lie. Show me someone just attacking Israeli policy, and I’d be very surprised if I had ever described them as antisemitic. It is possible some draw on Nazi analogies, which I think is a problem that crosses lines, but just for having a go at Bibi, or Israel’s specific policies, I rarely even touch on those subjects at all. As usual you are just throwing empty slurs.
David you misunderstand. The reason I come here because it is all here in one place. My revisiting the old stuff is not to try to catch you out. It is to see what themes were there at the beginning but not now. What themes are here now but not then. What themes have endured. Very interesting it is too. This blog is and will remain a valuable historical record. Absolutely no sarcasm whatsoever. Serious.
The evolution of the blog and the evolution of the landscape. Didn’t realise how far things have travelled in so short a time.
For example it confirms my gut instinct of how and when the antisemitism in the LP thing came to be.
Actually Stephen, that is quite a good idea, and something I hadn’t considered doing. Given this blog started just before Southampton, and I was still on a wild learning curve about the set-up and situation in the UK, it might be an interesting exercise for me too.
I am afraid you are stuck with them David. I for one will try not to fuel that.
“you could just call me, and I’ll tell you my view of things” ?
What good would that be, David? It could be a view that you’re test-driving for that week,perhaps developing it later should it get lots of support from your paying guests.
Noted David and I must admit I’m guilty of some remarks here that are less than admirable. The motivations of many of the contributors here became evident some time ago but this will hardly be news to a more seasoned campaigner like you. Sites like this will always be magnets for self serving propogandists who assume a free platform to a perceived audience. These people do not come here to have their minds changed. I doubt they do anywhere on social media. Against them the best that can be achieved is the outing of vile bigots and racists that have managed to hide their prejudices until now behind other more sanitised constructs. I’m sure these people need no introduction to you.
indeed, and I wasn’t really referencing your method of response. I think your humour at times is an added bonus here. I just haven’t got time to moderate the comment section, and I really don’t fancy it being used against me. I just wanted to make it clear to new posters here, that I like and respect arguments, not empty insults. If you cannot tell the difference between the two sides – we are doing it wrong.
Good summation of the state of the nation David. I am sure that there are current and prospective contributors that would welcome a more serious exchange of views and your analysis of the inhibitors is spot on. I wonder how many of those at the polls of the readership spectrum would allow the mask of roll play to slip for a moment to make their points or challenge those of others more bravely and maturely. I think that if this site is about anything it is about conviction; whether it be to take a position that supports your endeavours or to challenge them vigorously. In either case it’s the sincerity of the conviction that we should stand by not the fear of the challenge. Contributors like Bellers ought to be acknowledged for this reason whereas others, and I mean others on both sides of the argument are altogether less honest in their approach. You take a very deliberate view of censorship and it is commendable. The block of a phoney is too easy a win for them as you have often indicated. However I wonder the extent to which this sword has a double edge. If threads were freer of petulance and transparent mischief making might this encourage a wider, more informed and robust debate from all sides. Just my tu’penneth whilst I’m waiting for the porridge to heat.
“The block of a phoney is too easy a win for them” – sorry, Ian, I don’t buy this absurd gambit. It is a non-argument. That is no ‘win for them’ at all.
Luckily it isn’t a decision that I have to make. David is the master of his domain and will take a view based on his aims for the site. Personally I would encourage sincere discussion with anyone from any point of the spectrum if positions were honest and there was ever a modicum of open-mindedness on offer by the participants. Not much to be gained from 126 posts all saying “ooh you’re so right”.
(Ultra right wing Israeli grabs coat and exits stage left)
indeed.
Richard, good luck waiting for the schmucks to explain to you why Israel is a ‘basket case’. As I have said many times, these idiots cannot comprehend a nasty world in which mere Joos run a successful country, with a strong army and a world-beating technology sector. Their response is “Not fair! Not fair! These are JOOS, ffs. Something isn’t right here!”. And then they resort to lies and antisemitic propaganda. That’s what we get from BBC, C4, Guardian, NYT, WP, CNN etc etc. They are disconnected from reality. I believe it’s called ‘cognitive dissonance’ by psychologists. And boy, they do provide material for several conferences.
That’d be Jews, Muslims, Christians etc. not ‘Joos’, Leah.
Israel’s strength is in its patronage from the US.
World-beating technology sector? Please, less hype.
Israel is acknowledged by the people who matter to be the world’s 3rd most technologically innovative country, you pathetic envy-devoured fuckwit.
Israel believed by Israelis to be ………, Leah.
Like all good schmucks, you refuse to read the international news where it carries positive news about Israel, fuckwit.
It’s hype, Leah. Who needs solar powered toothbrushes etc.?
You really are quite remarkably stupid and ignorant. We are talking here about cutting edge biotechnology, telecomms etc.
How did we ever survive before Israel? No phones, no trains, no planes, no television, no computers, no DNA testing, no cars, no lights …..
You really are quite remarkably stupid and ignorant, and incapable of rational argument. Your level is that of a rather stupid 3-year old.
” Leah ” that is the longest speech I have ever seen you make by at least by a factor of ten. And your ” Richard” is not an uninteresting Freudian slip. ” Leah” this is not Millets God forsaken blog spot.
David is concerned that any ” banning” might be used against him. Not by me. I have been banned by the best or the worst depending on where you are coming from. And I have spent more time awaiting moderation than I have spent waiting for Godot. I have never whined. To do so would be to misunderstand freedom of expression and assembly. It does not encompass the right to be listened to or to a particular platform. My neighbour can say what the fuck he wants but I don’t have to let him into my house to say it.
So far as the State of Israel is concerned I an perfectly content for it to descend into its inevitable hell under the weight of of its racist contradictions in its own time. If the State of Israel let me be I would let the State of Israel be.
And the real value of thids blogspot is in the reading not the saying
To put it bluntly ” Leah” I don’t give a flying fuck
I wasn’t talking to you, pathetic creature.
Bellers I am instructed by the Ministry of Overseas Activist Relations (not a real Ministry) to extend an apology to you on behalf of the Jewish State for any inconvenience that may have been caused as a result of not letting you be. Minister Pil Shameni (not a real Minister) wants to make it up to you as a valued and loyal customer and asks how he can let you be. I am happy to pass on your suggestions.
Back to my Fat Freddies Cat magazines
Bellers it was nearly a serious question. Honestly. You said if we let you be, you’d let us be. How?
I was drawing your attention, and the attention of those who see attacks on Israel as false propaganda to a survey in what I would consider a voice for Israel. I note that you label it propaganda. Did it make you feel uncomfortable. Would you rather the others weren’t made aware of it?
how did it respond to the lengthy post that I took the time to write in direct answer to your question yesterday? Why are you avoiding debate?
In addressing the link dated March 2016 it was probably a fair reflection of the feelings of the subject group asked the question at the time. Of course that is the cut and paste quote for the selective opponent looking to reinforce an intractable position using single phrase soundbites so please feel free. Anyone with anymore interest in exploring the subject matter beyond the soundbite may chose to consider the wider context of the point.
We had just come out of a period when rocket salvos totaling over 9000 had been launched at our cities, emotions were still raw from the kidnapping and deaths of the student boys and the incidents of street violence had spiked with daily stabbing attempts, car ramming and drive by shootings of parents and children. It is not hard to imagine how a poorly phrased open question in a survey about the expulsion of Arabs may have delivered this outcome. I’m not so sure that the response to a similar question from a comparable study group would necessarily be so much different today.
Put simply, as much as many ordinary Israelis may want peace with our neighbours and possibly many non Israelis feel the same, there is simply no trust here on either side. Neither sets of current leadership do much to change this as it really doesn’t suit them so to do. On our side mistrust links to security links to electability. On their side the potential for ongoing embezzlement of great chunks of the £39m weekly aid fund from the EU is just too tempting to write off if the problems were solved.
The result is a perpetuation of fear from the politicians that fuels the emotions of the electorate on our side. Simultaneously the promotion of terror on their side through the hysterical and wholly fictitious treats to their holy places fuels the violence. It is a depressing cycle and one that ensures that the currency of trust is always at rock bottom on the curve on either side.
There is no way that anyone that does not live with this every day can completely understand this and some have no interest whatever. So believe me when I say that when your local rabbi has been stabbed whilst praying in his shul, your friend’s 13 year old daughter has been murdered in her bed or your neighbour was run down whilst pushing her baby’s buggy to the bus stop your natural instinct to be decent and humane and considerate can be shaded by experience.
Perhaps the words of Bellers are the most appropriate. If they let us be, we’d let them be.
“Neither sets of current leadership do much to change this as it really doesn’t suit them so to do” – what utter nonsense.
Please expand….
It’s the absurd Al Jabeeba ‘equivalence’. One side remunerates murderers and encourages the population day after day (incl. in school books) to murder more Jews; the other side is tired of offering peace time after time after time, with never-ending concessions, only to be met with more genocidal intentions.
No attempt to create or infer equivalence in any way. This is the ‘who’s fault’ game from which I’m steering well clear. My entire point focuses on ‘who’s interest’ which is not the same thing. What interest can the Arab leadership have in peace when conflict has proven so lucrative to them. What interest can our leaders have in peace when the risks are so high in a time of so little trust. The risk is not only to the safety and security of our state but also to the egos, reputations and legacies of our narcissistic, political classes. They are no more or less self serving than Blair, Cameron, Clegg and Corbyn and understand that you do not secure book deals and lecture tours of the back of failed concessions. So why take the risk.
Sorry, you are confusing the end-game with pragmatic deciisions. Abbas has zero interest in peace. The Israeli leadership has 100% interest in it, but not at the cost of suicidal concessions to a Nazi enemy.
No I’m not. I see no evidence that the government has a policy of anything other than inertia. Why would they need to do anything else? If we are not at war why do we need to seek peace?
LOL. Pure kool-aid.
Israel is doing fine with the ‘peace’ it has at the moment. Its realm is expanding or rather being allowed to expand while others sit on their hands and turn their eyes from it’s transgressions.
Blah blah blah.
There are no ‘transgressions’.
Piss off.
Ever the lady.
You see my point about inertia then? Similarly you may also agree that the Arab leadership is wrapped in inertia, finding the status quo very lucrative. It is a pity that those that claim to want a better lot for its people are not challenging them more often, pointing out that they receive nearly £40m a week in EU aid funding and asking “where has all the money gone?” That would at least demonstrate some sincerity and honest activism.
Suppose lobbing tube rockets and building settlements on militarily occupied land outside of Israel isn’t really letting thd other side be, Ian.
Your post is helpful. It highlights to the readers the risks to trustworthiness and reliability when selective quoting is used in such close proximity to the original point. Had you been less tactically selective you may have shown that even your most trenchant opponents are prepared to consider the counterpoint. Something of an own goal for you here.
Considering that Arabs/Muslims can not even get along with fellow Arabs/Muslims, how can Arabs/Muslims ever get along with Infidels?
“….how can Arabs/Muslims ever get along with Infidels?”
…and Jews have always been welcomed wherever they’ve pitched tent? People in glass houses etc.
You really are one nasty schmuck.
Wasn’t Edward being a ‘schmuck’??!? when he badmouthed Arabs/Muslims, Leah? Does one deserve more respect than another?
Mikey, Arabs/Muslims are the ones on the jihad, committing terrorist atrocities all over the world.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
See Al Qada, ISIS, Taliban, Boko Haram, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Nusra, Al Shabab, assassination of US Senator Robert F. Kennedy, 9/11, attack on tourists in Luxor Egypt, Pakistani rape gangs operating in Rotherham, UK, open threats of 9/11 scale atrocities in Europe, spitting on British soldiers parading in Luton, UK, Taliban shooting a girl in her head for wanting an education, dress codes for females, osama bin laden hiding in plain sight in Pakistan…
“Correct me if I’m wrong.”
You’re wrong!
Some Arabs/Muslims are on jihad.
Some Arabs/Jews in the IDF regularly kill innocent non-Israelis. over 500 immocent children in little more thana month. Crimes that also happen on a regular basis.
Dont try giving folk the ‘holier than thou’ rubbish.
Jewish terrorist killed many in the ’40s.
Seriously pathetic nonsense.
What’s up, Leah? Have i told you something that doesn’t match the script you have?
Truth and honesty not an own goal for me, Ian.
Except, of course that it isn’t either as anyone who scrolls up just a couple of posts will see for themselves. It’s a pity really because my post sought assist you a little by demonstrating that there is imperfection on both sides of the discussion. This ought to have been your cue, as someone that alleges sympathy and concern for the Arab position to challenge me on this and possibly build a credible argument, maybe even score a cheap point or two. That you have chosen to ignore or avoid this opportunity says that you don’t even see yourself playing to a gallery anymore but are just posting for immediate self gratification. Not a glorious retreat is it?
“someone that alleges sympathy and concern for the Arab position” – you don’t actually believe that’s where he is coming from, do you?
Of course not hence the inclusion of the word ‘alleges’. I was trying something a little more stimulating than simply name calling in a brief lull before making a brew. I am a vicious right wing cut throat but am prepared to accept the imperfections of the world around me and try to take the best bits from the arguments of my opponents if there is a chance that they will make things better. With our contrary contributor, I may have a long wait.
Thankyou for sharing your assessment.
Thankyou for your assessment.
Ah, Dick Mullet – a new thick troll.
Sorry about this but there has been some effort to try to stimulate a more reasonable thread of discussion in which reasonable can be characterised by sincerity and honesty and the discussion raises itself beyond name calling. These were David’s sentiments not mine. With this said please could the contributor that is currently identifying as leah27z but in a previous thread identified as George (12/1/18) just clear up which of you is currently pissing me off with their boorish insults and abusive remarks. It’s not advocacy, it’s not activism. It’s just a bit crap. Many thanks.
Oh dear, another idiot who goes stratospheric when someone dares to argue with him.
I thought that it was a legitimate question. On the 12th Jan 2018, in the piece entitled “BDS blacklist, naive Jews and rabid Nazis” you posted under the user ID “leah27z” but identified as “George”. You are now posting again using the same user ID but identifying as “leah27z”. I was simply asking which one you were. I don’t think that this represents anyone going stratospheric and I wasn’t aware that we were arguing about anything. Certainly we exchanged some thoughts on the sincerity of the respective leaderships in their desires to seek peace and there was clearly some mutual misconstruction of our relative positions. Not really much of an argument.
My objection was with a something different; namely your reversion to abuse of contributors as a response tactic which is often sustained and repetitive and fundamentally ineffective. If you believe that by pointing this out it characterises me as an idiot then there is not much I can do about that and I offer you my apologies if i have upset you.
I am still curious to know whether you are Leah or George?