why is Israel given such defferential treatment by the UK government?

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This and this both indicate that Israel and its citizens are considered to be above international law by elements within the UK administration.

Addition - 8th Jan, 2008:

This article has been deleted form the Independent's website so I am reproducing it here in full. I'm not advancing any conspiracy theories but I haven't had this problem with any other of the old Indy articles I link to here.

Keeping the peace? The El Al flight and the Israeli army officer
Heathrow airport, September 2005. An Israeli general accused of war crimes flies in. Waiting for him is a team of Met police officers. Would they dare to arrest him and risk provoking an international incident?

By Andy McSmith
Wednesday, 20 February 2008

We now know that the story could have turned out very differently. Inside the plane was a senior Israeli army officer, Doron Almog, veteran of some of the most celebrated military operations in the troubled history of the Middle East. There were also armed Israeli sharpshooters.

Outside were officers of the Metropolitan Police, acting reluctantly on an arrest warrant served by a judge at the request of lawyers who wanted to launch a private prosecution against the general.

The question that can never be answered is what would have happened if the police had marched on to the plane to seize the general and haul him before the courts. Possibly, he would have come quietly, and a lot of lawyers would have been kept very busy as the courts weighed what to do next.

A much more sinister possibility is that the Israeli agents on board would have refused to let the general be arrested without putting up resistance. At best, that would have meant an ugly stand off followed by a major diplomatic row. At worst, it could have led to dead bodies aboard the plane.

But now, the police and the Government face some awkward questions, of which the most interesting is who warned the Israelis that there was trouble brewing at Heathrow?

Maj-Gen Almog had planned to visit the UK in September 2005 to pay various social and charitable calls on Jewish communities in Solihull, the West Midlands, and Manchester. As his plane touched down at Heathrow, a call from the Israeli embassy in London warned him that police were waiting to arrest him. The general and his wife refused to leave the plane. Two tense hours elapsed, while Det-Supt John MacBrayne, a senior counter-terrorism officer in charge of the operation, agonised over what to do.

One of his problems, according to documents that have come to light, which were passed to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, was that he was unsure of the legal position. He contacted Scotland Yard for advice on whether he had the authority to order his men aboard the El Al aircraft, when it was clear the airline was not going to give consent. According to the official log: "He was informed that police did indeed board aircraft routinely but it was not clear if this could be done without the consent of the carrier. It was confirmed that El Al were refusing voluntary access to the plane and Det-Supt MacBrayne could not get confirmation that he had a legal right to do so."

But the log also shows that Supt MacBrayne had a problem. As an experienced anti-terrorist officer he knew that El Al aircraft are the most heavily guarded vehicles in the world. The seats on its aircraft are never filled only by ordinary fare-paying passengers. There are always at least a couple of men who are highly trained, heavily armed "air marshals". With a famous major-general on board, there might have been four or five air marshals. These are not people that any police officer would want to mess with.

"DSU MacBrayne took the considered opinion that, as access to the plane would not be consensual, there existed a real threat of an armed confrontation," the log recorded.

Having consulted Commander John McDowall, deputy national co-ordinator of terrorist investigations, the Superintendent decided to allow the plane to go on its way with his quarry still aboard.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has vindicated the police who conducted the operation. But that leaves two big questions unanswered – who tipped off the Israelis, and why did the Met seem to think they did not have the power to board an aircraft on British soil?

The legal position, which seemed to have the Met stumped, was actually straightforward, according to several legal experts who were asked their opinion yesterday. A foreign aircraft is not sovereign territory, and while it is on British soil it is subject to British laws. Even the threat of a shoot-out should not have prevented the police from enforcing the law, Kate Maynard, of the solicitors' firm, Hickman Rose insisted. "Who knows what might have happened?" she said. "It need not have been an armed stand off. They could have stopped the plane from taking off, and brought in negotiators from the Foreign Office. Can you allow people from other countries to put the police in a situation where they can't enforce British law?"

The Anti-Terrorist Branch had been reluctant all along to take any action against the general. They acted only under pressure from Hickman Rose, who represents Palestinian clients, including the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The lawyers themselves are not Palestinian. Several are Jews, and of those, Daniel Machover is an Israeli citizen – facts that have played big in the Israeli media. Mr Machover has been accused by Israel's most popular newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, of committing "a travesty masquerading as righteousness, exonerating terror-masters from blame but painting those who fight mass murderers as villains".

One of the firm's clients is Abdul Matar, the former inhabitant of one of 59 homes in a Palestinian camp that were bulldozed by the Israelis in 2002 in retaliation for attacks on Israeli soldiers. Another is Ra-ed Mattar, whose wife and daughter were killed when the Israelis dropped a powerful bomb in a crowded part of Gaza in July 2002, killing Sheikh Saleh Shehadeh, a leading Palestinian militant. The bomb killed 14 others including nine children.

Under pressure from the lawyers, the Anti-Terrorist Squad agreed that they would detain the general if he set foot on British soil, and would consider serving him with a warrant, but it would be up to the solicitors to bring a private prosecution. They intended to rely on a 50-year-old act of Parliament, the Geneva Conventions Act, which enshrined the Geneva Convention in British law. No one has ever been prosecuted under that Act.

The Anti-Terrorist Squad was also feeling discreet pressure from the Government to leave the general alone. Supt MacBrayne had had a note from a minister at the Foreign Office – whose name is not revealed in the log – who claimed that there was "little or no evidence" on which to launch a prosecution. Mr MacBrayne felt obliged to contact the Foreign Office and point out this was not true. Hickman Rose had in fact produced evidence that satisfied a magistrate that there was a case for the general to answer at least in relation to the bulldozing of those 59 homes. It also believed it could substantiate three other criminal charges against him.

He is not the only senior Israeli in its sights. Just over a year ago, the Israeli army's former chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, was arrested in New Zealand, after Hickman Rose took out a private case against him over the assassination of Sheikh Shehadeh. The case was ruled out by New Zealand's attorney general.

When Tony Blair met Israel's Internal Security Minister, Avi Dichter, last August, in his new role as Middle East peace envoy, he was dumbfounded to learn that Mr Dichter dare not visit the UK, where he too would risk being arrested over the Shehadeh killing. Two others, the Chief of Staff Dan Halutz and a former commander of the Gaza division, Aviv Kochavi, are also keeping away from the UK, for the same reason.

Doron Almog has been a well-known public figure in Israel since 1993, when he was appointed commander of the occupation forces in the Gaza Strip. By then, he had already had a colourful military career. When he was 22, he led a paratrooper unit into action in the Yom Kippur War.

Three years later, in July 1976, he was one of the Israeli commandos who descended suddenly on Entebbe airport, in Uganda, where over 100 crew and passengers of an airbus were being held hostage by Palestinian hijackers. When the shooting stopped, all six hijackers, one commando, three hostages and 45 Ugandan soldiers were dead.

In December 1993, Mr Almog stunned Israel by sensationally announcing that he had met members of Hamas, the militant organisation that is now the elected government of Gaza. Even now, most governments in the world, including the UK, refuse to recognise the Hamas administration, because Hamas will not recognise the state of Israel.

Mr Almog made two seemingly contradictory claims: first that he knew Hamas was preparing to send suicide bombers against Israel, secondly that there was a moderate faction within Hamas with whom Israel could do business. He claimed its hostility to the PLO exceeded its hostility to Israel. Hamas claimed the meeting had never taken place.

Mr Almog has attracted international attention for his role as head of Israel's Southern Command from 2000 to mid 2003, when he was in charge of operations in Gaza, and presided over the demolition of an estimated 1,100 Palestinian homes.

Before his planned UK visit, in September 2005, the police had also been warned that arresting a prominent Israeli might trigger a reaction among British Jews. Their original plan had been to detain General Almog in Solihull, where he was scheduled to speak in the synagogue, but they were warned that that would be inflammatory.

To lessen the tension, they decided a uniformed officer would be the one to make the arrest at Heathrow. Even so, the advice from the Met's National Community Tensions Team was that "this matter was of national significance to the Jewish community... any police action could significantly impact on community confidence in the police."

After the botched arrest, Mr MacBrayne checked with the West Midlands police and the Jewish community and reported that "there had been no local Jewish community issues."

But the Israeli government was enraged that one of its military heroes should be made so unwelcome in the UK, though it was mollified by an apology from the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. That apology has attracted derision from lawyers.

"He apologised for a judicial process," Mr Maynard said. "This case was not a stunt; it was an effort to bring Almog to justice in a place where he would have a fair trial, because he has complete immunity in Israel. To have it thwarted, and then to have an apology, is incredible."

That being the British Government's attitude, perhaps it is not surprising that somebody, somewhere, took it upon themselves to warn the Israelis that it would save both countries a serious embarrassment if Maj-Gen Almog did not alight from that plane.

More News, Less Views

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Written by Greg Philo, Glasgow Media Group, via the boys at Media Lens:

News is a procession of the powerful. Watch it on TV, listen to the Today programme and marvel at the orthodoxy of views and the lack of critical voices. When the credit crunch hit, we were given a succession of bankers, stockbrokers and even hedge-fund managers to explain and say what should be done. But these were the people who had caused the problem, thinking nothing of taking £20 billion a year in city bonuses. The solution these free market wizards agreed to, was that tax payers should stump up £50 billion (and rising) to fill up the black holes in the banking system. Where were the critical voices to say it would be a better idea to take the bonuses back? Mainstream news has sometimes a social-democratic edge. There are complaints aired about fuel poverty and the state of inner cities. But there are precious few voices making the point that the reason why there are so many poor people is because the rich have taken the bulk of the disposable wealth. The notion that the people should own the nation’s resources is close to derided on orthodox news.

When Northern Rock was nationalised, TV news showed us pictures of British Leyland and the old problem ridden car industry. Never mind that it was actually privately owned when most of the problems occurred and that company policy had been to distribute 95% of profits as dividends to shareholders, rather than to invest in new plant and machinery. This is all lost in the mists of history and what is conveyed is the vague sense that nationalisation is a “bad thing”.

We showed how this affects public understanding by asking a sample of 244 young people in higher education (aged 18 –23) about the great spate of privatizations which had taken place in the 1980s. We asked whether the industries involved had in general been profitable or unprofitable. Actually, the major ones of gas, electricity, oil and telecommunications were both profitable and major sources of revenue to the state, but nearly 60% of the sample thought that the industries had been losing money.

This is especially poignant now that energy prices are being jacked up and the foreign owners of many of these companies are not interested in passing on their windfall profits to the British people. Countries such as China, Venezuala and even Russia keep key industries very firmly in state hands, but where are the critical voices in broadcasting here, who are given space to raise these arguments? They can be heard in the outer reaches, occasionally on Question Time, Channel 4 News or Newsnight.

But is this what the population want? At the start of the Iraq war we had the normal parade of generals and military experts, but in fact, a consistent body of opinion then and since has been completely opposed to it. We asked our sample whether people such as Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Naomi Klein and Michael Moore should be featured routinely on the news as part of a normal range of opinion. Seventy three per cent opted for this rather than wanting them on just occasionally, as at present.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is another area of great imbalance in the views that are heard. Our study of the main TV news output showed that pro-Israeli speakers were featured about twice as much as Palestinians. This year BBC News covered Israel’s ‘birthday’ of 60 years since the setting up of the state. This was of course also the anniversary of what, from the Palestinian perspective, was the great disaster when they were forced from their homes and land. Israel’s superior public relations machine meant that they set the agenda on broadcast news. The Palestinians were featured, but rather less and as a sort of afterthought. As a presenter on BBC’s Today programme put it, “Today Israel is 60 years old, and all this week we have been hearing from Israelis about what it means to them”. Quite so.

We commissioned YouGov to ask a sample of 2086 UK adults whether they thought that more coverage should be given to the Israeli point of view, or more to the Palestinians, or equal for both. Nearly twice as many people thought that the Palestinians should have the most as compared with the Israelis, but the bulk of the replies (72%) were that both should have the same. Only 5% of the population supported what the broadcasters have actually been doing in the main news output.

Politicians and broadcasters say they are worried about a growing lack of interest in politics especially amongst the young. Our work shows there is no lack of interest in lively critical debate. The problem is that a news which largely features the views of two political parties with very similar free market policies at home, and an international agenda which follows America, does not provide this.

The utter paranoia and neurosis of the American Right

For those of you who either find it too painful to trawl through the propaganda of the American Right or who might not feel it warrants investigation I came across a link to a blogger who has posted an analysis of the Israeli strikes on the two Lebanese ambulances that happened on the night of the 23rd July.

http://www.zombietime.com/fraud/ambulance/

This pituary retard seems to think that the shrapnel-riddled shell of the ambulance and the injuries to six ambulance workers and three civilians - an 11-year-old boy, an elderly woman and a man, one of whom lost a leg in the incident . . . . . was a hoax.

Yes, you have read that correctly. A HOAX.

And not only has this appallingly twisted piece of propaganda been propagated freely across the internet by similarly fascistic websites and bloggers but it is obviously an absurdly flawed piece of analysis. But these people don't seem (or want) to care. Amongst the vitriol and messages of hatred and death directed at the Islamic religion, the UN, Europe and anyone elese who might possibly have ever hinted at not being quite in total agreement with everything America has ever done ever I find smug, congratulatory messages about how clever they all are not to have been duped by this piece of liberal, leftie, tree-hugging communist propaganda. (Sorry for the long sentences but I am "on one").

In response to this I drafted an email to the author of the analysis, one Zombie, which was bounced back to me several times and which I eventually despaired of ever dispatching successfully. Therefore I have chosen to post it here inthe hope that someone will read it, understand the position and possibly spread a message of resistance to this absurd and polemic piece of internet reporting.

"Sir,

I started reading you're analysis of the Ambulance strike as a matter of perverse curiosity to see exactly how any educated, rational individual could go about criticising an organisation as well respected as the ICRC and I was not disappointed.

My objections to your analysis are:

1: You're insistence that the damage to the ambulance is not consistent with a "missile" strike.
- The damage to the ambulance is relatively minor and is a long way from the total destruction that you have showed in your shots of other vehicles destroyed by Israeli missiles. This is because the ambulance was probably not hit by a hellfire or other, similar anti-armour missile. Instead the damage indicates that the ambulance was struck by either a small, unguided rocket, such as the M261 2.75" rocket launcher or a cannon shell fired from the M230 30mm cannon- both of which are common to US Apache gunships and, I presume, Israeli ones. Such weapons are preferred against "soft" targets such as civilian vehicles and there is no reason for a helicopter pilot to 'waste' a hellfire missile on an ambulance.

2: You're statement that the hole in the roof of the ambulance was the result of removal of an air vent and not an explosion.
- I do not deny that there was likely an air vent fitted in the roof, however as you point out, there are numerous other holes, tears and patches of paint that have been stripped off (your "white patches" are, in fact, areas of bare metal that have been stripped of paint). So why the multiple shrapnel holes, the buckling of the roof and the internal destruction? It is clear that an explosion has caused this damage and probably blown away the air vent- you can see that the screws that used to hold it in place have been torn away with considerable force and the pitting and tearing of the roof is consistent with a single explosion.

3: You're allegation that the "rust" on the roof is not compatible with a recent event causing the damage.
- Rust can occur within a matter of days and, indeed, in close proximity to the sea (you can clearly see the beach less than a couple of hundred metres away in the background of one picture) salt spray carried by the wind will aid this process and allow it to occur almost overnight.

4: You allege that the damage is inconsistent with an internal explosion.
- This is because, as an amateur such a s myself can clearly see, the explosion occurred outside the ambulance. The pitting on the roof and the way that metal edges are folded in indicates this to be the case. M261 2.75" rockets can be equipped with airburst fuses allowing them to explode prior to contact with a target. The man who lost his leg was most likely hit by a piece of shrapnel and not the rocket itself, which disintegrates upon detonation.

5: Your state that there is no evidence of fire in the ambulance but the injured ambulance man reported seeing fire.
- You try and accurately recall details after being hit by a high explosive device, muppet! Things get lost in translation too, there may have been a bloody great flash and a bang but no actual flames, however this may not translate accurately.

Honestly, I could go on poking enormous holes in your aburd analysis but I doubt I will achieve anything by it. I can't believe you have the gall to criticise not only people who venture into combat zones inorder to provide aid to the wounded but also the International Committee for the Red Cross- the guardians of the Geneva Convention and an organisation of outstanding moral stature. Your criticisms amount to the most disgraceful conspiracy theorism. Your allegations that the press were duped is no more respectable as you conveniently ignore the realities of wartime reporting and the lack of motivation for any humanitarian worker to exaggerate their position.

You should be ashamed.

I also posted some comments on the Right-Wing blog neo-neocon which may amuse anyone with a passion for humanism and a desire to live life on a platform of logic, rationality and equality.

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/neoneocon/115686392303436193/

IDF solider who shot dead 4 Israeli Arabs in a shooting spree "is not a terrorist"

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"The authorities want Zada to be seen as a lone madman but the research we've conducted suggests he was part of a larger Jewish terror organisation that operates freely even though it's outside the law. It appears the attack was organised and planned."

Eden Natan Zada's shooting spree on a bus full of Israeli Arabs, in which 22 Arabs were also wounded, was apparently conducted with the support of a banned extremist group called Kach. Kach espouses the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories. Despite this the group apparently operates within Israel with impunity. Zada was beaten to death by a mob of Arabs who surrounded the bus after a female passenger managed to snatch his IDF-issue M16 from him whilst he was reloading. His victims have been denied state compensation because a military tribunal decided that a serving soldier could not be classified as a "terrorist". Twelve Arabs are being prosecuted for the lynching, seven are charged with attempted murder.

Israel is a racist state that conducts torture, murder and ethnic cleansing.

Also see this article:

"This proposal coming from a party in Israel's governing coalition should set off alarm bells that fascism is emerging."

why Israel's genocidal conduct is illegal- and also not genocide

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Yes, its obvious to you that killing nearly 1,400 people is not in any way moral, legal or justified. Beneath the multiple layers of international law little is clear. Some guy has managed to navigate the murky waters of that discipline and pulled from them a nice, well argued explanation of why the Israeli case for "self defence" is a sack of horse shit.

"Israel's recent actions constitute, under Article 147 of the Fourth [Geneva] Convention, as well as Article 85 of Protocol I and Article 8 of the Rome Statute, grave breaches of international law which entail individual criminal responsibility."

Reza Nasri: Weapons-grade badass.


Addition:

I added the last four words of the title after reading this article, which explains why Israel's conduct is not technically genocide. It is still monstrous and the architects and main perpetrators of the many atrocities committed in Gaza over the years should still be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Noam Chomsky has a lot more to say on the issue and I strongly recommend listening to this talk and the following Q&A to anyone who wishes to see through the mountains and mountains of propaganda, misdirection and media blathering. The transcript is available here.

Noam rules.


Addition:

Thanks to Merrick for this link to John Pilger's take on the latest Israeli atrocities.

John rules too.

just to piss any militant zionists off

Despite my antitheism and sceptical regard for the paradoxical trinity of Jewish religion, culture and ethnicity, I am an advocate of a secular 2 state solution as I find it both acceptable and not utterly implausible. However reports like this make me not alittle angry. Still, in the interests of peace and an end to the apartheid, I think the 2 state solution is the only plausible one. Not only that but it would be a kick in the teeth to all the Jewish exceptionists as it would endow Arab citizens equal rights to Israeli ones, therefore legitimising immigration of families and allowing true democratic representation into Israeli politics. Cultural integration would be inevitable.

anonymous Israeli government "voices" consider Gaza to be part of Israel

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From the Jerusalem Post:

"Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said unequivocally on Sunday that Israel had no intention of apologizing, and one diplomatic source said Thursday there were voices inside the government saying that not only should Israel not apologize, but it should demand a Turkish apology for facilitating the dispatch of a ship with terrorist supporters who beat Israeli soldiers trying to protect its territorial sovereignty."

So, a ship carrying aid to Gaza had to be stopped to protect Israel's territorial sovereignty. No further analysis required.

Israeli Defence Force tortures children

I'm not a fan of the Israeli military, for various reasons. This is one of them. There are several others.

The Spectator: A mouthpiece for US and Israeli propaganda

Compare and contrast these two reports of the Israeli air strike on September 6th upon a target inside Syria.

One of them presents balanced perspectives and attributes its sources. The other is hysterical and makes extensive use of unattributable, unnamed sources.

Which do we think is the most accurate? Hmmmmmmm?

Israel uses nerve gas against its enemies

No, I didn't believe it when I read it either but then I found this. If any of you haven't heard of James Longley he's the guy who directed the film Gaza Strip. He's lived in Gaza for years, documenting attrocities committed by the IDF and generally being a humanitarian legend. Anyway, I couldn't sleep (its 01:18 and the kittens keep waking me up just as I'm about to drop off) so I came down and started checking for more stuff on the "mystery weapons" and I happened to read through the page I linked to below about the dodgy fundamentalist website with the interview with the doctor and I realised that below it was the text of a report from a site called Wayne Madsen Report that alleged that Israel fired nerve gas shells into Lebanon during the genocide. Now, I've already said that this site rang a few bells in my objectivity centres- the language it used, the english was bad and reports were pasted in from other sites (the text referred to a picture but there wasn't one). However, the gas allegation seemed well written so I tracked down the original report and, lo and behold, there it was- a picture of an IDF soldier carrying a dirty great finned projectile. The text stated that "a former U.S. weapons expert who served in Iraq" had identified it as "a chemical weapon delivery device".

Now, I know that Israel probably has chemical weapon delivery systems (American ones, methinks) and I have no doubt that it would be relatively straight forward to find a picture, like the one in the report, regardless of where it was actually taken (on exercise, at a military base, wherever) and start shouting "look the Israelis are using nerve gas!" But the picture is not the convincing evidence at all and neither is the unsubstantiated statement regarding "gas dropped by the Israelis in villages in southern Lebanon" which " has resulted in severe vomiting among the civilian population". The convincing evidence is the document that I first linked to in this post from James Longley which contains his own eye witness report of the IDF firing gas shells into the Khan Younis refugee camp in 2001 and the subsequent trauma of the civilians, including children, who were exposed to it. I quote:

"As I made my way through the wards of Amal and Nasser Hospitals that day and for many days afterward, I observed many patients that had been brought to the hospitals suffering from these symptoms. Room after room, women, children, men. Some were vomiting. Some alternated between a coma-like state and violent convulsions, their entire bodies twisting and arching, members of their families struggling to hold them down on the beds. On and on, for days. One boy, who had inhaled a large amount of the gas in question, suffered in the hospital for an entire month with recurrent convulsions. It is difficult to describe the sensation of sitting in a room for hours and days with people suffering so terribly, and knowing that this was done by human beings."


So there it is people. And it wasn't even the only reference I found, from Longleyor from other websites.

"How," I hear you cry, "can these animals get away with such abuses?"

"How can they elude the justice that they so clearly deserve?"

Longley offers a convincing explanation that, when heard in conjunction with the knowledged imparted in the document by the Harvard professors, that I linked to in my last post, regarding the power of the Israeli Lobby to silence or bury dissent, makes convincing reading:

"The incident went largely unreported. No articles were written in major US newspapers. Fox News and 60 Minutes did not produce special reports. The story gradually grew old and fell through the cracks. Out of sight and out of mind – and who would believe that the Israeli military would do such a thing to civilians in a refugee camp?"


I don't know about you guys but I'm putting together a letter to my MP regarding Israel's multitude of war crimes that go uncondemned in this country. Now it is time for bed, sweet dreams children. Sweeter, for sure, than the average Palestinian.

Brown appears to be moving towards a stronger position on Israel

He's not got a place for Lord Levy in his government and he's made clear that he's going to engage with Iran. He's also got other plans involving a bold, new stance on the Middle East. I don't trust him but I'll wait to see if his words turn into action before I brand him the new Cockweasel In Chief I suspect he'll turn out to be. Fucking politicians, two faced wankers the lot of them.

The Israeli government must be fuming! Ha!

incredible interview with "the most hated man in Israel"

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This comes across as the most honest description of Israel I've read yet. There are so many painful insights into Israeli society.

"The facts are clear. Israel has no real intention of quitting the territories or allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their rights. No change will come to pass in the complacent, belligerent, and condescending Israel of today. This is the time to come up with a rehabilitation program for Israel."

Jews and Judaism

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I was thinking the other day about how I got burned in a few places for suggesting that zionism is implicitly racist (which is not the subject of this post).

So: If being Jewish is not just a religion, but a cultural orientation (i.e. you can convert to Judaism and become a Jew), or a nationality (i.e. you can- exclusively- become an Israeli by being a Jew), or an ethnic minority (you can be born one and reject all other aspects of Jewishness but still be considered, by some, to be Jewish). Then, if no other nation-state or ethnicity, or religion in the world promotes this trinity of human phenomena; why should the Jews?

In my eyes Judaism is a religion, to be scorned as I scorn all god-botherers, irrelevant of the details of their superstition. From Mohammed to Thor to Isis they are all denying reason. So why is there such a thing as 'atheist' Jews? This is, to me, an oxymoron. I would like someone to explain it to me. I might go to Little Green Soccer Balls and ask them.

the war for the holy land

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From the Los Angeles Times (via Media Lens):

“The winter assault on the Gaza Strip was officially portrayed in Israel as an attempt to quell rocket fire by militants of Hamas. But some soldiers say they also were lectured about a more ambitious aim: to banish non-Jews from the biblical land of Israel.

"‘This rabbi comes to us and says the fight is between the children of light and the children of darkness,’ a reserve sergeant said, recalling a training camp encounter. ‘His message was clear: “This is a war against an entire people, not against specific terrorists.” The whole thing was turned into something very religious and messianic.’"

“In testimony reported by Israeli news media and in interviews with The [Los Angeles] Times, Gaza veterans said rabbis advised army units to show the enemy no mercy and called for resettlement of the Palestinian enclave by Jews.

"‘The rabbis were all over, in every unit,’ said Yehuda Shaul, a retired army officer whose human rights group, Breaking the Silence, has taken testimony from dozens of Gaza veterans. ‘It was quite well organized.’"

Word.

Shin Bet - the Israeli Army's torture service

This is harrowing.

Something to note is that the handcuffs that were fastened so tightly around Luwaii Ashqar's wrists that they had to be cut off might well have been manufactured in the UK.


There is plenty more evidence that Luwaii's case is far from exceptional.

kofi Annan jeered and chased from South Beirut

I think this is appalling. Although UNSC resolution 1701 is far from perfect as far as the Lebanese are concerned, and however much the people of South Beirut have suffered at the hands of the Israeli genocide, there is no excuse for booing Kofi. The guy is a legend and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, for fuck's sake!

This quote tells a terrible story about how the US's ability to wield a veto in the UNSC has damaged the credibility of the only global forum:

"He is biased towards Israel and America," said 22-year-old Abdel-Sater Selim, a psychology student at the state-run Lebanese University. "There is no justice."

Your godsdamn right there is no justice. But you have to play the UN game if you want some. The Lebanese should take a leaf out of the Iranian book if they want to keep the yanks out of their business.

Oh, the savage irony

Johann gives us the bitter truth about the Israeli offensive.