How Hamas Talks out of Three Sides of Their Mouth

Hamas sends a different message to each of three different groups, to three bodies of public opinion or audiences that it wants to influence. It tells the Arabs and the Muslim world that it won the war, that it was victorious and triumphant, that it caused great losses to Israel, great losses among both Israeli soldiers and civilians, that it is a movement of mighty heroes.
It tells the West, the self-styled "Left", the Liberals and the would-be humanitarians that the victims on its side in the war were nearly all civilians, that its martyrs were women and children, that Israel targeted civilians, woman and children, as well as UN facilities. It pretended to be weak and helpless and innocuous and innocent. This was of course in direct contradiction and contrast to its messages to the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Lastly, in youtube messages to Israelis it  threatened that it would slaughter them. It was trying to terrorize them with pix of death and destruction in Israel and threats in Hebrew, usually poor Hebrew, that they were going to be killed, slaughtered, massacred. When Israelis were aware of this terror propaganda they usually laughed at it.

It's a three-way media/propaganda strategy. Aaron Magid spells it out on Tablet:

. . . .  on Aug. 26, hours before the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire in Gaza began, Hamas’ military wing—Al-Qassam Brigades—launched its final attacks on Israel. In addition to the dozens of rockets shot by Al-Qassam Brigades, @qassam_Arabic1, Al-Qassam’s official Arabic Twitter account, defiantly posted dozens of tweets declaring unconditional triumph. Sprinkling religious messaging on their Arabic Twitter page, Al-Qassam frequently utilized Quranic language to inspire its followers.

At the same time, in English, Al-Qassam was posting online messages employing terms such as “human rights” to attract a Western audience while emphasizing Palestinian suffering . . . . [emphasis added]

But the message sent to Israelis was altogether different from the other two:

 . . . . . While Al-Qassam’s English messaging was designed to show Hamas as the moral underdogs, the organization’s Hebrew social media team focused primarily on intimidating the Israeli public. One Tweet included an Al-Qassam fighter inside a tunnel aiming a rifle at the viewer with “see you later!” written in Hebrew. [emphasis added]

Intimidating is too mild a term for the Hamas message to Israelis. They were trying to terrorize  us with pictures of death and destruction inside Israeli cities. However, one of the videos was taken over by Israelis who used it to ridicule the Hamas. It featured mighty Hamas warriors --at least in their own eyes-- in battle on land, sea and air, and featured headlines coming out of the screen such as Mavet l'Yisrael [death to Israel]. It also featured films and still pix from Hamas mass murder terrorist attacks on Israelis from the past 15 years, like the neon sign outside Café Moment in Jerusalem where a dozen Israelis were murdered about 13 years ago and ambulances at scenes of terrorist attacks. Nevertheless, the Hebrew language  facet of Hamas propaganda did not work as well as the distinct  messages aimed at the Arab & Muslim worlds and at the West/the Liberals/would-be humanitarians, etc.

Speaking to a Western audience, Khalid Mesh`al was at his oily, hypocritical best:

When Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal was interviewed by Western media outlets, as happened repeatedly throughout and after the war, he shifted Hamas’ messaging away from Hamas’ more combative Arabic tweets toward the kind of language that Western audiences would receive as more moderate and reasonable. On BBC, Meshal twice mentioned that “our Palestinian people have a right to their own state in the West Bank and Gaza”—as though Hamas was fighting for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Yet, Hamas TV consistently called all Israelis, including those who lived in pre-1967 Israel, “settlers,” in consonance with the organization’s charter and repeated public declarations laying claim to “all of Palestine.” In a separate interview with PBS’ Charlie Rose, Meshal stated that “we do not fight the Jews because they are Jews per se. We fight the occupiers. I’m ready to coexist with the Jews”—again suggesting, to Western listeners who were willing or eager to hear him talk that way, a potential willingness to recognize an Israeli state within the 1967 lines. At the same time in Arabic, Al-Qassam was celebrating the death of a 4-year-old Israeli “settler” from Nahal Oz, who lived far away from any West Bank settlement.

. The Hamas whining about its own Gaza civilians being killed was especially hypocritical since it was trying to get its own civilians killed by firing from civilian areas, including UN compounds, including even areas where the foreign press was staying, In this vein, it built underground bunkers to protect its leadership and its rockets but not bomb shelters to protect its civilians. Under international law, Israel would be in its rights to shoot at a military target, such as a rocket launcher, located in a civilian area and surrounded by civilians.

[Geneva Convention, adopted 12 August 1949,
Article 28 The presence of a protected person {= civilian} may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations]

However, Hamas would use the civilian deaths from such an Israeli counterattack as an illustration of its claim that Israel commits war crimes, whereas one of Hamas' purposes stated purposes in its charter is the genocide of Jews [see especially Article 7 of the Hamas charter]. Furthermore, Hamas has made clear that it does not believe that Israeli civilians can be truly civilians. In fact it described a  four-year old Israeli boy killed by a Hamas mortar as a violator [see Magid's article http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/186373/hamas-twitter-messaging]. Hamas and other Arab terrorist factions and parties argue that there are no Israeli civilians, only settlers and soldiers and occupiers and what Hamas calls violators, even if they are only four-years old.

What is important to bear in mind is that skillful propaganda aims different messages at different groups. Thus the message has to be tailored to fit the preexisting beliefs and attitudes of the target audience. Hamas failed to intimidate Israelis, however its propaganda focused on Western/liberal/would-be humanitarian/ audiences was a tremendous hit, highly effective, although obviously deceitful and fraudulent.

See Magid's article here.

The Moral Depravity of the "Free Gaza" Flotilla movement

Somehow the aura of "humanitarianism" has attached itself to the so-called "free gaza flotilla." However, let's examine what their actions are designed to accomplish and who their allies and beneficiaries are in this effort.
The "free gaza" movement openly demands removal of the blockade on Gaza. That would mean that the Hamas Islamofanatic/Islamofascist govt of Gaza would be free --free to bring in any sort of heavy weapon that can be loaded on a ship. And shipping by sea is a more convenient way of transporting heavy weapons than by land. So they want Hamas in Gaza to have heavy weapons. In the past, Hamas has used the lighter, simpler weapons available to it to attack the Jewish civilian population in southern Israel, not only in Sderot but in Ashqelon, Ashdod, Beersheva and other towns and villages. The children of Sderot have been living under rocket attack, first by the rather simple Qassam rockets "home made" in Gaza which were not very accurate. The children often developed serious traumas from rocket attacks, even if they were not physically touched by the rockets or the shrapnel or pieces of broken houses. Now the Hamas has longer-range heavier rockets, like the Grad or Katyusha, which are somewhat more accurate and bear more explosives. In the last Israel-Hamas war 12-2008/1-2009 the Hamas shot rockets from Gaza that hit schools and kindergartens in Beersheba, a city previously out of range. The "free gaza" flotillas want to improve Hamas' chances in the next war. So much for the purposes of the flotilla.

Now about the beneficiaries and allies of the "free gaza" movement. Christopher Hitchens has drawn up a powerful indictment of flotillamania, also explaining what Hamas stands for. By the way, I don't always agree with Hitchens:

Boat People

Some questions for the "activists" aboard the Gaza flotilla.

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, July 4, 2011, at 11:03 AM ET

Palestinian boats and the Freedom Flotilla in the port of Gaza City

The tale of the Gaza "flotilla" seems set to become a regular summer feature, bobbing along happily on the inside pages with an occasional update. A nice sidebar for reporters covering the Greek debt crisis: a built-in mild tension of "will they, won't they?"; a cast of not very colorful characters but one we almost begin to feel we know personally. Such cheery and breezy slogans—"the audacity of hope" and "free Gaza"—and such an easy storyline that it practically writes itself. Since Israel adopts a posture that almost guarantees a reaction of some sort in the not-too-distant future, and since there was such a frisson of violence the last time the little fleet set sail, there's no reason for it not to become a regular seasonal favorite.

However, given the luxury of time, might it not be possible to ask the "activists" onboard just a few questions? (Activist is a good neutral word, isn't it, with largely positive connotations? Even flotilla, with its reassuring diminuendo, has a "small is beautiful" sound to it.) Most of the speculation so far has been to do with methods and intentions, allowing for many avowals about peaceful tactics and so forth, but this is soft-centered coverage. I would like to know a little more about the political ambitions and implications of the enterprise.

It seems safe and fair to say that the flotilla and its leadership work in reasonably close harmony with Hamas, which constitutes the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. The political leadership of this organization is headquartered mainly in Gaza itself. But its military coordination is run out of Damascus, where the regime of Bashar Assad is currently at war with increasingly large sections of the long-oppressed Syrian population. Refugee camps, some with urgent humanitarian requirements, are making their appearance on the border between Syria and Turkey (the government of the latter being somewhat sympathetic to the purposes of the flotilla). In these circumstances, isn't it legitimate to strike up a conversation with the "activists" and ask them where they come out on the uprising against hereditary Baathism in Syria?

Then again, Syria's other proxy party in the region is Hezbollah, which operates a state-within-a-state and maintains a private army on the territory of Lebanon. Senior associates of this group have recently been named in a U.N. indictment concerning the broad-daylight murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. Hezbollah's leadership and propaganda organs, while refusing all cooperation with the United Nations, are currently expressing undying solidarity with the Assad regime, which relies additionally on heavy support from the dictatorship in Iran. Again, the Hamas leadership seems compromised at best by its association with this local Tehran-Damascus axis. Surely there must be some spokesman for the blockade-runners who is able to give us his thinking on this question, too? At a time of widespread democratic and pluralist revolution in the region, Hamas imposes its own version of theocracy on Gaza and seems otherwise aligned with the forces that stand athwart the hope of continued and deeper change. Who wants to volunteer time to make this outfit look more presentable? Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-air prison (and when I last saw it under Israeli occupation, it certainly did deserve this metaphor). The problem is that, given its ideology and its allies, Hamas qualifies rather too well in the capacity of guard.

Only a few weeks ago, the Hamas regime in Gaza became the only governing authority in the world—by my count—to express outrage and sympathy at the death of Osama Bin Laden. As the wavelets lap in the Greek harbors, and the sunshine beats down, doesn't any journalist want to know whether the "activists" have discussed this element in their partners' world outlook? Does Alice Walker seriously have no comment?

Hamas is listed by various governments and international organizations as a terrorist group. I don't mind conceding that that particular word has been used in arbitrary ways in the past. But what concerns me much more is the official programmatic adoption, by Hamas, of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This disgusting fabrication is a key foundational document of 20^th-century racism and totalitarianism, indelibly linked to the Hitler regime in theory and practice. It seems extraordinary to me that any "activist" claiming allegiance to human rights could cooperate at any level with the propagation of such evil material. But I have never seen any of them invited to comment on this matter, either.

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians. The same group also manages to maintain warm relations with, or at the very least to make cordial remarks about, both Hezbollah and al-Qaida. Meanwhile, a document that was once accurately described as a "warrant for genocide" forms part of the declared political platform of the aforesaid group. There is something about this that fails to pass a smell test. I wonder whether any reporter on the scene will now take me up on this.

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To conclude, the whole notion of a "palestinian people" was invented for the sake of a psychological warfare/cognitive warfare struggle against Israel. The flotillas and fly-ins serve that purpose with professional expertise.
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Hamas organizer behind flotilla [here]
Israel officials explain the threat represented by the flotilla [here]
NGO Monitor: Flotilla won't bring peace [here]
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on Hamas organizers behind the fooltilla [here]

British Minister Suggested a Boycott of "Settlement" Products to the "Palestinian Authority"

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

We have said before that the United Kingdom is a great enemy of Israel. Of course, I realize that many British people in all four components of the kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, are sympathetic to Israel, even very sympathetic. But the British government has been hostile to Jews and Israel for many years, although this hostility is usually covered by a mist of slick hypocrisy, sanctimonious posing and the like. Yet the hostility goes back to the beginning of British mandatory rule in Israel, designated as the Jewish National Home by the San Remo Conference and the League of Nations. Since then the UK govt has perpetrated several velvet-gloved assaults on the Jews and Israel. Among the highlights are the 1939 "White Paper on Palestine," the refusal to bomb the railroad tracks leading to the death camps like Treblinka, etc., the use of the British armed forces to keep Jews out of the Jewish National Home during the Holocaust, when the Jews most needed a home, the pressure by British diplomats on southern European countries not to let Jewish refugees embark from their ports to escape Nazi genocide, the acquiescence by Britain's Foreign Office in the 1941 Farhud massacre of Jews in Baghdad, the post-WW2 refusal to let Jewish Holocaust survivors into the Jewish National Home, the encouragement to Arab states and the palestinian Arab leadership to fight against the rise of a Jewish state [as envisioned in the Jewish National Home principle]. The last item entailed supplying weapons to Arab armies and actual intervention in combat against the Jewish forces by British tanks, artillery, fighter aircraft, and ground forces.

The rise of Israel and its survival and demonstrated ability to defend itself caused great disappointment among highly placed persons in London and throughout the Empire. The failure of conventional warfare by the Arab armies in 1948-1949 led to an intensified psychological and cognitive warfare effort against the Jews and the Jewish national state. This effort culminated in production of the "palestinian people" notion, a people invented for political/diplomatic purposes, a people that had never existed in history as a people or nation. The harm done to Israel and the Jews by this invented notion is incalculable. Of course, it cannot be easily proven that British psywar experts invented the "palestinian people," but there is much evidence for this assertion.

Now British diplomacy shows once again that the UK is as hostile and dangerous for the Jews as are the Arab states as a group. The Palestinian Authority deputy minister of the economy, Abdel Hafez Nofal, revealed that the British minister of trade had suggested to him that the PA institute a boycott of products of Israeli settlements, that is, products of any Israeli community or factory or plant across the 1949 armistice line from the pre-1967 Little Israel, the rump of the Jewish National Home territory left to the Jews after the War of Independence. So a British minister recently prodded the PA into ordering a boycott by its population of Jewish products made in the wrong place, that is, on the wrong side of the armistice line. To be sure, since Arab workers too work in many of the Jewish-owned plants, we could say that the products are also Arab in part. Here is the quote:

. . . Abdel Hafez Nofal, 56 years old, Palestinian deputy minister of the Economy. He is "Mr Boycott": "Everything started when the English minister of Trade said to me, 'We have decided to boycott the products of the settlements. And you?'"
[Il Sole- 24 Ore, 22 October 2010; p12]

. . . Abdel Hafez Nofal, 56 anni, vice ministro palestinese dell'Economia. "Mister Boycott" è lui. «Tutto è incominciato quando il ministro del Commercio inglese mi disse: "Noi abbiamo deciso di boicottare i prodotti delle colonie. E voi?"
[qui]

It is not fully clear whether, when the British minister said "We have decided. . .", that the "we" referred to the British or to the EU. In any case, it is likely that the UK took the lead in the EU in pushing for a boycott.

So here we have another British effort for greater peace and greater international understanding. And treating Jews like the British govt thinks that they ought to be treated. Of course, Britain, like the Arabs, does not want to admit any wrongdoing against Jews. But if the UK admitted its ugly Holocaust record of refusing refuge to Jewish refugees from the Nazis, that might be a contribution to Middle East peace. And if not to peace, then to a greater understanding of history.

CLARIFICATION:
The statement by the PA economics minister may not be totally accurate. This is because neither the EU nor the UK has an explicit, formal policy to boycott goods produced in Jewish communities across the Green Line [the 1949-1967 armistice line]. However, it's obvious that both EU and UK are tending in that direction.The EU requires products from Judea/Samaria to be labelled as such but does not require a distinction between goods made by Jews and goods made by Arabs. On the other hand, the UK government has a "voluntary" agreement whereby foodstuffs made/grown by Jews in Judea-Samaria are labelled differently from foodstuffs made/grown by Arabs in the same area.

Further, the constant vilification of Israel in UK media --not all to be sure, but significantly on the BBC which is a state body with its policy on foreign affairs dictated by the Foreign Office-- indicates the direction of UK state policy. The Guardian, Independent [sic!] and several other UK papers specialize in vilifying Israel, often using traditional Judeophobic themes. Then several ostensibly non-governmental bodies in the UK, such as the university teachers union, advocate a boycott of Israeli universities, whereas the Trades Union Congress [TUC], I am informed, advocates a boycott of settlement products. I have no doubt that these non-governmental bodies are not only influenced by hostile UK media but by govt officials as well as govt operatives within their ranks.

Both the previous Labour govt and the present "Conservative" govt are capable of favoring a boycott of settlements as well as a total boycott of Israel, as some loud-voiced academics already advocate. These "civil society" groups provide a moral cover for any anti-Israel move by the govt itself now or in the future. The British govt may have already taken a decision to implement a boycott of settlement products at some opportune moment in the future. In such an eventuality, it would be helpful if the Palestinian Authority were already implementing such a policy so that the UK govt would not seem to be "more Arab" or "more palestinian" than the Arabs/palestinians. If such a decision has already been taken and conveyed to the PA, as Minister Nofal asserts, then his statement would be both accurate and instructive.
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The palestinian Authority's boycott policy in action [here].
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The notion of a "palestinian people," previously unknown to history, including to Arab historians, has its parallels in other states/peoples/nations without a history created for political convenience by Great Powers. Consider "Panama" which was simply part of Colombia, created in order to facilitate building of the Panama Canal by the USA, and Pakistan, formed by Britain out of mainly Muslim regions of India, to fulfill the demand of the Indian Muslims for a separate state so as not to be ruled by Hindus who were the majority in India.

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Other links on British hostility to Israel and Jews.
here1&here2&here3&here4&here5&here6&here7&here8
&here9&here10

Ahmadinejad's Visit to Lebanon -- Trumpeting War Hysteria against Israel

UPDATING 10-7&8-2010

The "peace" in the "peace process"
refers to peace of mind for antisemites

"Southern Lebanon is Iran's border with Israel," quoth the bloodthirsty Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the loudest of the Iranian warmongers. Like the academic big liar, Edward Said, A-jad is not only coming to Lebanon [on 13 October] but will come to the Israeli border at the Fatima Gate and will throw a stone or stones at Israel. Could his intentions toward Israel be made clearer than through this symbolic gesture?? Of course, stoning Jews is a customary practice in Arab-Muslim lands, usually left, however, to schoolboys and urchins. A-jad well knows that stoning Israeli territory from Lebanon is a symbolic act of war. Carlo Panella has already explained that for most purposes Lebanon is now dominated by Hizbullah, backed by Syria and Iran. Hizbullah head Nasrollah proclaims that he is the delegate in Lebanon of the Guide of the [Islamic] Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It is this pro-Iranian hegemony in Lebanon that makes possible the A-jad visit.

JEDyer reports that A-jad will be greeted by Iranian flags and other happy news -- for him.

Hezbollah has flown Iranian flags in southern Lebanon for some time. The terrorists operate an Iran-sponsored fiefdom there; UNIFIL has been unable for months to conduct patrols in towns denied to it by Hezbollah, a pattern repeated this past weekend when the UN force sought to investigate a Hezbollah weapons cache in its patrol zone.

Carlo Panella points out that, thanks to the Hizb, southern Lebanon has become a Mediterranean province of Iran, like Gaza thanks to Hamas, another hungry and ill-treated band of misunderstood progressives. He says that Western fantasies of "detaching" Syria from Iran have proven illusory, which does not mean that Europe or the US will give them up. France, Italy & other Western states sent troops to UNIFIL in southern Lebanon ostensibly in order, among other things, to enforce UN Security Council res. 1701, which --also ostensibly-- calls for the disarmament of the Hizbullah militia. But Lebanon's govt and army want to build up the army, rather than disarm the Hizbullah militia, which happens to be the strongest armed force in the country. So if the Euros and the US wanted to disarm the Hizb, they have failed, their resolution 1701 has failed, and they can go back to blaming Israel for all problems in the Middle East, in the larger Muslim world, and worldwide, as Bill Clinton did in so many words the other day.

On Assad's recent visit to Teheran, he was awarded a "medal of honor" for aiding the "resistance" against "the threats of the Zionist regime" [here Khamenei was projecting. He is more liberal with threats than Israel is]. He also asserted:

"The United States has failed in its attempts to break the Iran-Syria axis of resistance in the Middle East." [Il Foglio, 5 October 2010]

“Gli Stati Uniti falliranno nei loro tentativi di rompere l’asse della resistenza in medio oriente tra Iran e Siria”. [Il Foglio, 5 Ottobre 2010]

So Khamenei and his govt spit in Obama's face and Obama's says that it's rain. "We are going to keep on working to have a dialogue with Teheran," Obama says in so many words over and over, whenever the Iranians rebuff him and make him out to be a fool.

In the ever so chummy relationship between the two tyrannies, Iran & Syria, and with the permissive signals from Washington, Assad took advantage of the warm climate to issue arrest warrants for 33 persons for allegedly giving "false" testimony as to the major Syrian role in the assassination of Rafiq Hariri [February 2005]. He also attacked the first chief investigator of the International Tribunal to investigate the Hariri murder, Detlev Mehlis. Assad can get away with those sorts of provocations but Israel cannot.

JEDyer helpfully adds that the international media neglect of southern Lebanon [to be sure, a military zone controlled by Hizbullah aided by the Lebanese army] allows the Hizb to build up its forces quietly without interference, although the A-jad visit to the zone may indicate that the work is basically finished and may herald many more provocations against Israel from the Hizb from now on. Dyer also points out that a British diplomat in UN garb, one "Michael Williams, met with an Iranian envoy last week to discuss the visit by Ahmadinejad and approved it as a 'significant event.' He went on to hail 'Tehran’s balanced approach and inclusive relations with all political and religious parties in' "[Lebanon]. The British do have a flair for warmongering by means of all sorts of ooey-gooey, sticky sweet words.

Lee Smith describes Hizbullah as an Iranian propaganda tool [here]
J E Dyer basically concurs with Panella [here]. See Panella [qui] and our summary of Panella's previous article on Lebanon [here]
UPDATING 10-7-2010 Max Boot supplies some data on Hizbullah weaponry [quoted from the NYTimes]. Boot wonders why the Obambi adminstration is more concerned about Jews building houses where Obama & Co. don't want them to be built than about the threat of war from Hizbullah [here].
UPDATING 10-8-2010 Caroline Glick lists US Govt actions or failures to act that delivered Lebanon into Hizbullah-Syrian-Iranian hands [here]

More on Arabs Refuting the Big Lie of "Israeli apartheid"

We have already shown [here] photos of Arabs rubbing shoulders with Jews in a Jerusalem shopping mall, enjoying the amenities of the mall and the joy of shopping, a favorite activity of mankind in the 21st century. Shopping is a joy for Arabs as much as for any other people, if not more so. The shopping mall in Dubai is reputed to be the biggest, the grandest, the most splendid in the world. Here are a few more photo shots of Arabs enjoying shopping in Jerusalem. While doing so, unconsciously or not, they are disproving the Big Lie of "Israeli apartheid," a favorite of the fanatic Judeophobes in the West and of those whose minds have been "bent," so to speak. These Arabs are refuting the Big Lie, arguing with their feet, as it were. The lie itself is most likely an invention of Western psychological warfare agencies and experts, probably British.

Here are two Arab-Muslim women in the full headgear and robes sitting in a restaurant in the mall and eating. One is caring for a baby. A Jewish waitress is seen at left.

Arab women are seen happily shopping, going through piles of clothes in a shop. Look at the back of the store and to the left. Arab-Muslim women are most easily identified by their distinctive garments.

Two happy shoppers leaving a store. Actually, the younger woman on the left seems quite happy and satisfied, the older woman not so much. Note the Hebrew writing on an advertising poster to the left of the younger woman.

Here is empirical evidence that these Arab women are not suffering "apartheid" in Israel. Nevertheless, the fanatic true believers in the West in inherent Israeli evil, the heirs of 17 centuries of Judeophobic indoctrination, of the demonization and dehumanization of Jews, will probably not be swayed by mere empirical facts. We bear in mind that most of those groups and individuals called "Left" or "leftist" in the world today share that destructive Western mental heritage. Most of the "Left" today in countries like Britain, the USA, Sweden and Norway, as well as some other Western countries and some Eastern and African countries under Western cultural-intellectual influence (especially British), is a manipulated body of public opinion. Despite Marx and Engels' claim that they were devising a "scientific socialism," they could not or would not shake the rigid influence of Kant and Hegel, particularly the Judeophobia of these two philosophers. Many of Marx and Engels' self-described followers today are incapable of logical reasoning, of empirical induction, or of rational thought. They believe more in comfortable slogans that they have indoctrinated [or inoculated?] with than in the evidence of their own eyes.
Psychological warfare techniques and mass psychological manipulation are dominant tools in shaping contemporary public opinion.

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For more on this topic, see here.

Rebranding Judeophobia, Israelophobia from Right to Left & the Absurdity of the Left-Right Spectrum

UPDATING 10-29-2009

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

One bizarre sign of "leftist" convergence with "rightists" is the Obama administration. Obama's national insecurity advisor, Jim Jones, is supposed to give the major address to a konclave of the George Soros-funded pro-Arab, pro-Muslim jihadist, pro-PLO lobbying group called J Street. This group was not created by the grass roots of Jews in America, although it does have a following. It was created by Soros' money [collaborating with the Fenton PR firm] in order to supply public opinion support to Obama's anti-Israel, pro-Arab, pro-Muslim policies, necessarily undermining AIPAC in the process. This is because AIPAC is seen as an obstacle to Obama's racist policies against Israel, such as preventing Jews from living in Judea-Samaria.

Jones was a big general, and advocates using American military power throughout the world.

Marine Gen. James L. Jones (Ret.), the former head of NATO and U.S. forces in Europe and former commandant of the Marine Corps.

He was born into a Marine family [here].
Jones has called for sending more troops to Afghanistan to avert defeat there. [see Washington Post at this link biographical information]. Jones exemplifies the outlook of the national security/national defense establishment in the United States.

He is now promoting an anti-Israel policy that was earlier promoted by Republicans, by Prez George Bush I in the early 1990s and by John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles in the 1950s.

Since the Dulles brothers' time, Israelophobia has successfully rebranded itself as it were, making it a "leftist" cause and a mystique of support for an allegedly ancient people, the "palestinians" previously unknown to history. Most of today's "left" serves the foreign policy establishment as a cheerleader for what were long ago Republican policies. I could go on and on about the fakery of what today's Left claims to be.

Those informed about psychological warfare techniques, which much overlap with advertising, may be aware [see Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders] of how successful such rebranding and reimaging campaigns can be. I remember one of my girl cousins back in the late 1940s, early 1950s, smoking Marlboro cigarettes. The Marlboro package had the name Marlboro written esthetically in a red line of handwriting on a white background, apparently meant to appeal to women who considered themselves elegant if not glamorous, as my cousin saw herself. Then a few years later --Vance Packard describes the process-- Marlboro had a new package with the name in straight bold, angular printed capital letters, not the elegant feminine curves in red of a few years before. The smoker of Marlboro was now a real man, a he man, a cowboy riding a horse with cowboy boots on, etc. Marlboro was now a man's cigarette. That's probably how most people today think of Marlboro. And they remember that cowboy riding his horse. I'm sure that few remember, as I do, that it was once meant to be an elegant woman's cigarette.

So if a consumer product can change not just its image but its very sex, then the mindbenders must think that they can do anything. Israelophobia and a pro-Arab policy are no longer the province of hardboiled Republican friends of Big Oil --as were the Dulles brothers-- today it is softboiled and kindhearted. It is "leftist" and is Good for the "Third World." Even members of the foreign policy establishment and the national security establishment, like walt, mearsheimer, and General jim jones, can be considered friends of the Third World, enemies of Israeli aggression, etc. My feelings aren't hurt. Nowadays, higher oil prices too are depicted as Good for the Third World, Good for the world's poor, etc.

It should also be borne in mind that the invention of the "palestinian people" too, by British psychological warfare experts, was a necessary ingredient in this process of transformation of image.

The lion may not yet lie down with the lamb but the uncouth mob of "leftist" Israelophobes can break bread with the old school exponents of Realist, frankly immoral or amoral foreign policy, which the "leftists" too support de facto, and maybe de jure too. And all this is demonstrated by the upcoming J Street konclave and the identity of its invited and disinvited guests, entertainers, "poets", and speakers.
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UPDATING 10-29-09 "After he retired from the Marine Corps, Gen. Jones served as president and CEO of the Institute for 21st Century Energy — an industry-funded lobby and PR organization; and in 2008 he joined the Board of Directors of the Chevron Corporation, which has large operations in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. He was appointed “security coordinator” for the Bush Administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts [sic!], and in 2008 issued a report which was not released, but which purportedly made “Israel look very bad”. He also proposed that security should be guaranteed by NATO troops after an Israeli pullout from Judea and Samaria"-- from Fresno Zionism [here]. Where do oil industry and Arab influences on Jones end & where does his concern for the American people's security begin, if at all??

"Leftist" speaker at semi-official JStreet bloggers conference supports Obama on Israel, supports Obama's racist policy against Jews living in Judea-Samaria [here], also says walt-mearsheimer provided necessary cover for J Street to exist, "I personally think they provided cover for J Street to be able to exist."
Former official of Pres. George Bush II's national insecurity council & State Dept tells J Street that Iranian regime has real "security concerns" & that calling A-jad a liar is "racist" [here].
Jennifer Rubin says that Obama's "administration seems awfully fond of it [= J Street]. Is it the Iranian excuse-mongering or the unhelpful platitudes. . ."? She asks. [see here]
Pro-Obama, pro-fascist "leftist" Nation magazine journalist wants to strip Israel of ancestral Jewish territory also needed for defense: "a final deal between Israel and Palestine will indeed require US security guarantees for Israel. Nearly everyone agrees on that" [here]

The Scandalous Sanctimonious Sinister Swedish Socialist Blood Libel

UPDATINGS 8-25-2009 & 2-1-2010 at bottom

The big scandal behind the agitprop blood libel article in the Swedish pro-government rag, the tabloid yellow journal Aftonbladet, is that the government of Sweden, a country so often seen as "progressive," "enlightened," tolerant, caring blah blah blah, is promoting primitive Judeophobia based on medieval Judeophobic themes. What else but a blood libel can we call a mish mash of claims that Israeli soldiers took the body parts of Arab young men whom they had killed because there was a shortage of organ donors coming forward about 1992, when Olmert was health minister by the way? The author of the recent article in Aftonbladet, Bostrom, heard claims from an Arab family back then without any proof. Simply a lurid tale based on supposition and what Bostrom and other Swedish progressives, apparently, wanted to believe. The claim did not even come from the PLO's spokespersons, who are not shy about making up atrocity stories to smear Israel with. The way in which Aftonbladet published the article also raises questions about the Swedes' intent. The offending article was illustrated with photos of very religious Jews in their characteristic black garb, although no connection was demonstrated to Israeli soldiers allegedly killing Arabs for their body parts back in 1992.

Now Bostrom first wrote up these body parts claims in a "book" that he wrote in 2001. That book necessarily missed the recent arrest of a Jew from New York supposedly on charges of trading in body parts, although murder was not mentioned and the man has not been indicted. Bostrom "updated" his tale so to speak in his recent article by adding this recent arrest to the story of Israeli soldiers back in 1992, although no link between the man and murderers for the sake of body parts in Israel was mentioned by the American press coverage. Needless to say, the man from New York has not been convicted for any crime connected with body parts. What is scandalous in the Bostrom/body parts affair is that the Swedish foreign ministry subsidized publication of Bostrom's book. Hence, the Kingdom of Sweden pays to promote Judeophobic blood libels medieval in nature.

Yesterday, the foreign ministry [of Sweden] refused to respond to the publication in Ma`ariv that the ministry helped to finance Bostrom's book, Inshallah. The author himself said yesterday that he "don't really know why the name of the Swedish foreign ministry appears" [in the book] [Ma`ariv, 24 August 2009; in Hebrew see here]

אתמול סירב משרד החוץ השבדי להגיב על הפרסום במעריב, שלפיו המשרד סייע במימון ספרו של בוסטרום "אינשאללה". הסופר עצמו אמר אתמול כי הוא "לא ממש יודע למה מופיע שמו של משרד החוץ השבדי [בספר] [מעריב 24 אוגוסט 2009

Since the Swedish govt paid to promote these libels, it is not surprising that Carl Bildt, Swedish foreign minister, not only refused to condemn the blood libel published in Aftonbladet but his ministry scolded the Swedish ambassador to Israel who had indeed criticized the article strongly and removed her statement from the embassy's website. It seems that Bildt did not and does not want to condemn notions, such as the blood libel, that his own ministry helped to promote.

Instead Bildt and other prominent Swedes have raised claims about "freedom of speech." This claim is hypocritical on Bildt's part and that of his ministry. For instance, Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman pointed out that the Swedish foreign minister a few years ago, a woman, had strongly condemned the Muhammad cartoons which were not published in Sweden but in Denmark. So if a condemnation would violate the free speech/free press rights of the Swedish paper, then didn't the condemnation of the Muhammad cartoons violate the free speech/free press rights of the Danish newspaper and the Danish cartoonists?? Furthermore, Bildt himself coordinated a campaign to shut down Swedish web sites that featured the Muhammad cartoons [mentioned in an article on Ma`ariv].

On the other hand, much more substantial allegations of killing people for organ snatching were made by Carla del Ponte, the prosecutor of the Hague Court for war crimes in former Yugoslavia. Carla del Ponte, a respected Italian-Swiss jurist, can be taken more seriously than a journalist who is a feverish political partisan. However, del Ponte's allegations were made against Muslims, against Kossovo Albanians. They are much better grounded than Bostrom's hate effusions. His writings on the matter show the frenzied imagination of a bigot working overtime. But Aftonbladet and Carl Bildt have not shown much interest, if any, in the well grounded accounts of organ trafficking and murders for body parts in Kossovo by Muslims. Moreover, I am not aware that the Swedish foreign ministry has been excessively disturbed by the refusal by the Sudan to extradite for prosecution the Sudanese Arab Muslim tyrant, Omar Bashir, who is subject to an international arrest warrant for genocide issued by the International Criminal Court. After all, Sweden has a pro-Muslim policy, not a pro-human rights policy, although the Swedish social democrats put on a show that what motivates them is human rights, civil liberties, and the like.

Of course, we should quote from the original article, albeit in the HaArets translation, to get the flavor of its devotion to facts and real evidence:

"'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied," writes author Donald Boström in his report.
. . . .
Boström also cites an incident of alleged organ snatching from 1992, during the time of the first Palestinian intifada. He says that the IDF seized a young man known for throwing stones at Israeli troops in the Nablus area, who was shot in the chest, both legs, and the stomach before being taken to a military helicopter which transported him to "a place unknown to his loved ones".

Five nights later, Boström says, the young man's body was returned, wrapped in green hospital sheets.

"The sharp sounds from the shovels were mixed with the occasional laughter from the soldiers who were joking with each other, waiting to go home. When Bilal was put into his grave, his chest was revealed and suddenly it became clear to the present what abuse he had been put through. Bilal was far from the only one who was buried cut-up from his stomach to his chin and the speculations about the reason why had already started," he writes. [HaArets, originally published 8-19-2009]

This is quite dramatic, indeed lurid. So Bostrom has a talent for something. Eyewitness testimonies from interested parties who were not exactly eyewitnesses and provide unlikely details. Why was the body returned at all if such a crime had been committed?? Wouldn't the perpetrators have wanted to conceal the crime? Why "green hospital sheets"? Wouldn't the hospital sheets indicate that the something might have been done to the body in a hospital, whereas criminals usually want to conceal the evidence?

Another Swedish newspaper explains why the article is suspect:

...the liberal Sydsvenskan - southern Sweden's major daily - had harsh criticism for the rival paper, running an opinion piece under the headline "Antisemitbladet" (a play on the name Aftonbladet).

"We have heard the story before, in one form or the other. It follows the traditional pattern of conspiracy theory: a great number of loose threads that the theorist tempts the reader to tie into a neat knot without having been provided with any proven connection whatsoever," writes leading columnist Mats Skogkär of Sydsvenskan.

"Whispers in the dark. Anonymous sources. Rumors. That is all it takes. After all we all know what they [the Jews] are like, don't we: inhuman, hardened. Capable of anything," the opinion piece says. "Now all that remains is the defense, equally predictable: 'Anti-Semitism' No, no, just criticism of Israel." [HaArets, ibid.]

Indeed.
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UPDATING 8-25-2009 Family of man killed in 1992 denies telling Swedish reporter that the body parts were taken [here].
Comments on a Kultur blood libel by Petra Marquardt-Bigman. She refers to Iranian and Turkish films with similar themes [here].
Corriere della Sera's summary [qui] with quotes from an Israeli petition to boycott the Swedish firm Ikea and from HaArets criticizing Foreign Minister Lieberman for supposedly making too much of the incident [as if subsidies by the Swedish foreign ministry for publishing such blood libels were a trivial matter]
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It should be noted that there never were many Jews in Sweden and Jews were not allowed to live there permanently and legally until the reign of King Gustav III [1771-92]. A more liberal law, a royal decree, allowed Jews to live in several cities in Sweden and become Swedish nationals [1838] but this decree was modified by popular Judeophobic demand. So even today, most Swedes have never met more than a few Jews if any. The basis of Swedish Judeophobia [we know that there are exceptions] lies in the heritage of the Lutheran church which from its beginnings in Germany held views of Jews more hostile than those of the Roman Catholic church.

Something is rotten in the state of Sweden. Such lies as propagated by Donald Bostrom, by Aftonbladet, and by the Swedish foreign ministry are an obstacle to peace.
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UPDATING February 1, 2010 A comprehensive account of the Aftonbladet scandal by a Swedish historian [here], published by the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

PR Hack Bill Moyers moves over to Goebbels Land

Three months ago, Bill Moyers, press secretary to Pres Lyndon B Johnson during the war in Vietnam, made an explicitly racist anti-Jewish claim. He said that the Jews were "genetically" inclined to violence. Note, not Muslim peoples especially and generally [the Arabs, the Turks, the Pakistanis, etc] but the Jews. He does mention the Arabs but gets in his racial point by mentioning the Jews' and Arabs' common link to the Patriarch Abraham. Thus the Arabs are "genetically coded" to be violent through their link to the Jews.

Now, this claim is especially sinister coming from Moyers who is a professional propagandist, a long-time commentator on PBS, a US-govt supported TV network in the US supposedly aiming at a high-brow audience. Since leaving Johnson's employ in the Sixties, Moyers has spent his time in promoting various political programs through PBS and other avenues. He has always been subtly anti-Israel. Now, he is clearly racist against Jews. After all, "genetically" means racially.

Here's a video of his broadcast. One of his false claims is that Israel was "waging war on an entire population." In fact, the Israel army made immense efforts to avoid killing non-combatants. The large majority of those killed were in fact Hamas terrorist militiamen. Ostensibly civilian targets, like the Islamic University of Gaza, were hit because they used by Hamas to store rockets, explosives and other weapons. In the case of the "University", its laboratories were used to "improve" their deadly rockets. Don't forget that Moyers was a spokesman in favor of the Vietnam war and American military actions there, which often killed civilians. Bizarrely, he admits that civilians were often killed in Vietnam, claiming that Israel did in Gaza what the United States did in Vietnam. What he does not admit on this broadcast is that he was one of the chief US propagandists defending the war and the mass killing of civilians that it involved.

What got most people upset was his absurd and outrageous claim that "God-soaked violence became genetically coded." Here he referred to both Jews and Arabs. I don't think that Jews were ever "genetically coded" to be violent anymore than that violence is a common, near universal human phenomenon. I think that Jews are patient, maybe too patient with the violence of others committed against themselves, although this patience and forebearance may be due to the political weakness of Jews in most places throughout the world. Nor do I think that Arabs are genetically coded to be violent any more than humans in general. However, in practice Arabs do seem to more violent and blood-thirsty than others, but this is due to their Muslim religion which encourages violence and killing [call it murder if you like] on the grounds of various religious principles. But this does not mean genetically determined. Moyers claim is nasty and has racist implications.

By the way, Moyers makes several other factual errors and/or lies. For one, he mistranslates the Biblical commandment in the Ten Commandments, Do Not Murder לא תרצח as Thou shalt not kill, making the unfounded insinuation that Moses was a hypocrite since he called for war, which obviously involves killing. However, neither Moses nor the Israelites/Jews nor any nation that I know of, ever renounced war, if only as a last resort. The mistranslation "Thou shalt not kill" may be due to the translators of the King James Version. However, it does not fit the original Hebrew. If Moyers is ignorant of this translation error, than maybe we can't blame him. But I think that he is rather too sophisticated not to know that the Hebrew original differs from the translation. Note that insinuation is one of propagandist tricks.

I commented on Moyers' lie at the Augean Stables blog, starting with a quote from a reader who tried to defend Moyers. On 18 Jan 2009 [I think], Bill Stewart remarked to RL, the chief blogger at Augean Stables:

Why did you choose to end your transcript where you did? Perhaps because it doesn’t fit your narrative and your zeal to smear an honest man. When you go back to the original statement (it’s at about the 5:12 mark for those of you who would rather skip over other sober and interesting thoughts on the Gaza violence), Moyers’ next words are: “A radical stream of Islam now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth.” It’s clear with anyone of even middling intelligence that Moyers is not singling out Jews but in fact the rooting out a biblical source of violence encoded in the human race in general. I’m thrilled at Conservatives’ new found zeal to root out anti-Semitism (because we all know where traditionally anti-semitism has resided in this country), but I don’t think it’s too much to ask you to exercise a little of dignity and rigour in your readings and analysis. Moyers could have been more precise, you can question his theological acumen, but I think it’s pretty clear that Moyers is not being anti-Semitic.

I trust that Stewart correctly quoted Moyers and I think that he has unwittingly pointed to an important aspect of Moyers’ modus operandi. What Moyers did was to embed or implant like a stinkweed his very offensive, indeed Nazi-like, remark within a rosegarden of reasonable, even truthful statements, such as Stewart quoted above. It’s an old trick of psywar. It’s like mixing bitter medicine into a sweet syrup to disguise its taste from children. Here the sweet syrup are rather innocuous remarks. And the offensive remark embedded into it does not reflect its context. So it’s appropriate to take it out of its context. Vance Packard called this technique a “hidden persuader.” The innocuous context might mislead people into overlooking how sinister the statement is.

Now, Moyers is an expert at psychological warfare. That’s what he’s been doing at PBS for years. When he worked for Lyndon Baines Johnson, he was a relative beginner in the field, just a White House press secretary. Now, he influences the supposedly educated, refined, cultured crowd that watches PBS and listens to NPR, which by the way, are financed in part by your taxpayers’ dollars. They are semi-official agencies
of the US govt. Anyhow, how dare LBJ’s press secretary pontificate to us and preach morality to us about violent mass death? Does he recall that anti-LBJ chant?
LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? Does Moyers think that that chant was fair to his boss?

I think that the kindest thing to say about Moyers is that he is a demopath, somebody who uses humanitarian and democratic rhetoric for the opposite purpose. RL made an important contribution in discerning the demopath phenomenon.

Now, the fact that such a prominent member of the Establishment has seen fit to utter this scandalous claim of Jews’ being genetically coded for violence is a very sinister omen. The remark is worthy of Nazi propaganda. It is not as crude as Der Ewige Jude, the Nazi propaganda film against Jews. However, we ought to bear in mind that the Nazis too were capable of saying things that were very reasonable or might seem to be, like Chomsky and A-jad. Indeed, Genevieve Tabouis reported that at the fall 1933 session of the League of Nations, German delegates stressed their attachment to democracy, liberalism, peace, and other Good Things. The outrage over Moyers’ sinister remark should not become silent.

Just recall that Moyers has been working for the US govt since the 1960s. And your tax dollars finance PBS.

Swedes Call Brits Liars -- Somebody finally challenges BBC

Swedish state TV has shown up the BBC as falsifying a story of starvation in the land of Niger in West Africa. The Swedes with cooperation from Norwegians, of all people, documented the fraud in a 2005 BBC "report" on starvation in Niger, with star BBC journalist Hilary Andersson. Hilary is proficient in a favorite BBC technique of pulling at your heartstrings, eliciting tears from the coldest hearts, winning sympathy for the deserving and the undeserving. Andersson once illustrated a story about alleged contemporary events in Bethlehem by going on melodramatically about the New Testament story of King Herod's Slaughter of the Innocents that supposedly took place in Bethlehem more than 2000 years ago.

. . . Herod is going to search for the child [Jesus] to kill him. . .

Because of his supposed descent from David through his father, Joseph [Matt 1:1-17]. In Jewish tradition, those of Davidic descent are the most legitimate to be kings of Israel. Herod was Jewish by religion but his forefathers were not Jews, let alone of the House of David. Thus he plausibly feared challenge to his kingship by descendants of David. In the NT story, in order to keep Jesus safe from Herod, his parents took him to Egypt. Then,

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted. . . he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and younger. . .

The NT then goes on with Mother Rachel's lament copied from the Book of Jeremiah [31:15]:

A voice is heard in Ramah,
Weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted because they are no more.
[Matt 2:13-18; NIV version]

Hilary Andersson's obvious intent was to have Herod's cruelty as depicted in the NT --a book hallowed in the West-- rub off on Israel. Herod was king of Judea as a Roman client king. If stretching Herod's ancient guilt to enshroud modern Israel was not her purpose, then why did she go on at length --this is TV news where every second is precious-- about an ancient story when supposedly reporting contemporary events??? She wanted Israel's allegedly cruel nature to be established in a hallowed narrative, fundamentally unchallengeable by rational discourse. And that is the basic BBC purpose too, as approved by the dominant British psychological warfare experts.

The Swedes and Norwegians are --as governments-- hostile to Israel themselves. So their refutation of another lachrymose BBC tale comes as a welcome surprise.

A documentary broadcast on Swedish public television on Tuesday called into question the reputation of Britain’s public broadcaster, the BBC, for filing misleading and inaccurate reports about the severity of a food shortage in Niger in 2005
. . .
In interviews with experts from the international development community, other journalists, Niger’s prime minister at the time, as well as local farmers from the village of Zinder in Niger where the first BBC reports originated, Ektvedt uncovered evidence to suggest that BBC had misrepresented the facts.

“I’ve never heard of anyone starving to death here,” said one woman from Zinder in the Norwegian documentary "Sultbløffen" (‘The Hunger Bluff’).

“It was tough, but I never saw anyone die of hunger.”

Yet the BBC stories from the time report that thousands of people were dying from starvation in Zinder.

This is revolutionary. If even Swedes and Norwegians cast doubt on the BBC's veracity, albeit not in regard to Israel, what might happen next in the media world?? The BBC of course defended their star tearjerker:

"BBC News refuted the TV2 allegations unequivocally and we absolutely stand by the validity and professionalism of Hilary Andersson's reports," reads the BBC's statement to SVT, which was also supplied to The Local.

What can we expect next from the BBC? An admission of guilt in falsifying??
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Thanks to Martin Kramer & Camera as well as Swedish TV.
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Curiously, another British anti-Israel propagandist, self-styled historian Stewart Perowne, insisted that Herod was an Arab [His mother was an Arab, his father an Edomite/Idumaean, which Perowne overlooks, unless he falsely claims that the Edomites were Arabs!]. If Herod was an Arab, then (according to Hilary Andersson's logic) shouldn't his cruelty in the Bethlehem Slaughter be attributed to -- Arabs?? Can't these British propagandists get their stories straight?? [Stewart Perowne, The Pilgrim's Companion in Jerusalem and Bethlehem (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1964), p32].

Perowne has only words of praise for Herod, nothing negative: ". . . a brilliant and energetic ruler. . . a great builder" [p32]. The NT story of the Slaughter of the Innocents is not mentioned, which is curious in a guidebook for the Christian pilgrim. Here is a sampling of the flavor of the book, pro-British Empire, pro-Arab allies of Britain, anti-Israel by insinuation:

"The British mandatory regime imposed here [in Bethlehem] as in Jerusalem, respect for order and dignity, a tradition which the present Government of Jordan has most happily perpetuated." [p 131]

And the book's dedication:

TO THE KING GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE OF THE HASHEMITE KINGDOM OF JORDAN AS AN AFFECTIONATE TRIBUTE TO THEIR COURTESY DIGNITY AND FORTITUDE THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR

Their "fortitude" probably refers to their fortitude in struggle against Israel.
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Coming: More on Zbig's schemes, Obama's dishonesty, the "Left's" lies, Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, archeology, propaganda analysis, peace follies, etc.

Obama Campaign's Deceit Exploits Israelis in order to Obtain Jewish Votes

Politicians in general like to pretend, invent, and falsify. But Obama's fakery is superlative, which I don't mean as a compliment. I've already pointed out the extreme fakery of his claims to be untainted by Washington corruption and to represent the poor and disenfranchised. Before getting to the latest deceitful outrage by the Obama campaign, it needs to be said that he is sinister. Precisely the pretense of fighting for the poor and helpless and downtrodden, etc., has been the stock in trade of demagogues, including fascists, Communists of various breeds, Christian socialists [like the notorious Father Coughlin of the 1930s], etc. William Randolph Hearst, the multi-millionaire American newspaper publisher, put on the guise of a "crusader" for the poor and the working class at various stages of his career.

Hayim Ramon, one of the most loathesome ministers in olmert's cabinet [in a league with olmert himself] demonstrated the fake populist strategy here in Israel when he pointed to real grievances in order to take over the corrupt Histadrut labor organization by an election and then used the Histadrut for his own purposes. The career of Hayim Ramon is a case study in this sort of sinister demagoguery. Another case is little known outside the Spanish-speaking world. Two Argentine generals or warlords of the 19th century, Juan Manuel de Rosas and Juan Facundo Quiroga, showed themselves superb practitioners of the demagogue's art and the craft of fake populism. Their careers are described in the book Facundo by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a work unfortunately little known in the often benighted English-speaking world. Note that some demagogues point to real grievances which does not mean that they have any intention of redressing those grievances but merely use them in order to obtain popular support at one stage or another. After which they can betray all previous promises. Obama may be worse in that his appeal was to a general longing for Change, while he did not specify which changes he intended to make. Indeed, he was seldom specific about the wrongs to be corrected. Anybody who thinks obama's method brings Hope is a fool. Since obama is so widely supported among American academics, we deduce that there are many persons of low intellectual capacity among these academics and/or many ignoramuses who don't know the history of political demagoguery, persons incapable of reason, bereft of historical knowledge or understanding.

Now let's get back to the sinister Barack Hussein Obama and his sly, deceitful campaign. Here is part of an account from the AP and ynet [the Internet arm of the Yedi`ot Ahronot daily].

Israeli generals duped into supporting Obama

'Pure and simple deceit,' says enraged Uzi Dayan of [the] American Jewish group that told him and other top Israeli figures they were being interviewed for [a] documentary on Mideast challenges and found themselves touted as Obama supporters

The Associated Press
[see the whole article here]

This account demonstrates a great deal of propaganda skill and psywar prowess on the part of Obama's minions. Maybe it's unfair to say "Obama's minions" since I view obama himself as a mere front man. Since the sinister zbigniew brzezinski is one of his advisors, an obama foreign policy [God forbid!!] would in fact be a zbig foreign policy. It would be especially tragic if Jews --intended victims of the obama/zbig foreign policy-- would fall for the demagoguery and help bring their enemy to power.

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Coming: More on Obama the war candidate, More on the anti-Jewish racism of the "Peace Process," Republicans, Democrats & Jews [FDR and Eisenhower and Carter and George Bush Sr]; Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, the Land of Israel, archeological updates, peace follies, propaganda, etc

The Semi-Official Brits Do It Again -- The British Canard Ought to Be Muzzled [enchaine']

UPDATINGS AT BOTTOM

The surreptitious British campaign to smear Israel has struck again. The BBC, an arm of the British Foreign Office, is putting forth a virtually meaningless document to smear Israel and, as some have said, to shatter another Israeli "myth." Just why the British psywar experts and their Western and Arab comrades in arms are so busy "shattering" Israeli "myths" should be no mystery. It's an expression of hatred and a method of psychological warfare against an enemy. The Entebbe Rescue is one of the great stories of heroism in modern history. Israelis and Jews everywhere rightly took pride in it, albeit it was not 100% successful, since the commander, Yoni Netanyahu, as well as some hostages, died in the raid. Here is the BBC website article which clumsily puts forth a comment by an anonymous source as a serious argument against what Israelis and decent people throughout the world have believed about the Entebbe Rescue. See link here.

A UK government file on the crisis, released from the National Archives, contains a claim that Israel itself was behind the hijacking.

An unnamed contact told a British diplomat in Paris that the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Bet, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) collaborated to seize the plane. [BBC website, 1 June 2007]

Does this contain any information other than that British diplomats and their anonymous informants were hostile to Israel? The informant in this case seems to be an Arab, probably from Fatah rather than the PFLP, since Fatah had an incentive to "smear" the rival Popular Front gang as collaborators with Israel. The document, as cited, proves nothing about any Israeli involvement in the hijacking. To even make such a virtually meaningless document the centerpiece of a media smear campaign against Israel shows the depths to which the BBC and its partners in the British print media will go in efforts to smear Israel. At the same time, it may be a sign of desperation that they even use something so cloudy and lacking in substance. They have chosen a weak reed indeed to lean upon.

The BBC web site article is interesting in that it also reports a coy official British approach toward the successful Israeli operation. The article reports that British officials questioned whether the operation was legal under international law and were uncertain whether the Ugandan dictator at the time, Idi Amin, was really collaborating with the hijackers. There is no mention that Amin came to the airport to view the hostages and talk with the hijackers. Nor is there mention that Idi Amin was under the influence at that time of a white British officer named Major Bob Astles. This coy questioning about the international legality of the Israeli operation also demonstrates the depth of hatred for Israel within the Foreign Office at that time, more than thirty years ago.

One needs to read BBC articles like this one while bearing in mind the BBC and Foreign Office attitude toward the Holocaust. At the beginning of the Holocaust, the BBC pretended not to know about it, although Britain no doubt had excellent intelligence about doings within the Nazi-fascist domain. Later, some information was broadcast but such broadcasts were minimized and the role of the Jews as victims of a monstruous crime was obfuscated to an extent. Barbara Rogers, a British historian, gives an overview of British official policy on reporting the Holocaust. Here are some other of our earlier posts on the BBC and the Holocaust based on letters published in Yiddish by Shmul Zigelboym, delegate of socialist Jewish Labor Bund to the Polish government in exile in London, who made largely fruitless efforts to get the British to help the Jews trapped in Poland and to get the BBC to emphasize their plight. Here & here & here & qui & ici & aqui'. The British Foreign Office also ordered British troops not to go into Baghdad during the massacre of Jews in 1941 called the Farhud to stop that massacre, according to a British officer named Somerset de Chair. This can be considered a British contribution to the Holocaust. Moreover, it was British policy, specifically that of Anthony Eden, the foreign minister, to foster Arab nationalism and foundation of the Arab League.

The BBC cannot be considered a neutral party in the Arab-Israel conflict, nor are its reports reliable.

UPDATING
William Goldnadel of the Association France-Israel has pointed out that LeMonde too has also played up the meaningless British embassy report as if it proved that the Israel Shin Beyt security agency were behind the Entebbe hijacking. Le Monde is a newspaper controlled by the French foreign ministry as the BBC is controlled by the British Foreign Office.

COQUECIGRUES [par Gilles William Goldnadel, le six juin 2007]

Dans son édition du 3 juin, Le Monde publie un article qui affirme : « Des documents d’archives du gouvernement britannique rendus publiques vendredi 1er juin, jettent un doute sur la version officielle d’une des plus célèbres prises d’otage de l’histoire contemporaine, le détournement, il y a 31 ans, d’un avion d’Air France vers Entebbe, en Ouganda ».

Selon ces documents, ce détournement serait « l’œuvre du F.P.L.P. avec l’aide du Shin Bet (le service de sécurité intérieure israélien) ».

Lorsqu’on se donne la peine de lire l’article, on s’aperçoit que ce serait un « contact anonyme » membre de « l’Association parlementaire euro arabe » qui aurait transmis cette « information » à un diplomate britannique en poste à Paris…

Et c’est sur cette base dont on peut juger du solide, que notre sérieux quotidien conclut péremptoirement que cette thèse « éclaire d’un jour nouveau le raid sur Entebbe ».
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Here's an analysis of the same fake accusation as made by the French government's semi-official press agency, Agence France Presse [AFP]. This analysis, in French, comes from the Metulla News Agency.

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Coming: More on James Baker and US policy towards Israel, Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron, peace follies, propaganda, etc.