Thursday Links Part 2

From Ian:

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Pro-Gay and Anti-Israel? ‘Pinkwashing’ to the Rescue

Given the reaction that a Jewish state has elicited in the region, one can only imagine how a “queer state” would be received. Yet Elia and her fellow travelers prefer a fictional “queer state” to an actual country where gays are welcomed—a sure sign that, for them, bigotry trumps reality.

Flotilla 3.0: International 'activists' work with Hamas affiliates to sail OUT of Gaza

A new propaganda initiative designed to test the resolve of the Israeli blockade on Hamas in Gaza is seeking to highlight how trade from Gaza has been affected by Israel.
The focus of the 'Gaza Ark' is the fact that while goods do indeed enter the Hamas-run, Palestinian enclave, goods are said to rarely ever leave. The premise of the trip is that Gaza wants to trade with the world, rather than receive aid. Critics have called the trip "intentionally misleading", pointing to the fact that on a weekly basis, dozens of trucks export products from Gaza.

Scottish Government Funds Pro-Terror Group

The Daily Express revealed last week that Islamic Relief Worldwide, a British charity accused of links to terrorism, was presented with £398,000 of the taxpayers' money by the Scottish Government last year, as part of its £9 million International Development Fund.

British-Palestinian town twinning plans collapse

The twinning of a norther English borough and a West Bank town has fallen through, with public support for the motion considered too low

Daphne Anson: Anti-Israel Fanatics Petition Morgan Freeman

Celebrated African-American screen actor Morgan Freeman is due to be honoured by the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University at a ceremony in Toronto on 6 May.
Predictably, Israel-haters including the usual BDSers are up in arms, and a furious campaign on social media has been launched in order to bring pressure on Mr Freeman to refuse the honour.

"This is Islamic Apartheid": New AFDI ad campaign to launch in NYC to counter blood libel by American Muslims

Troubling Times for Once Mighty Hezbollah

Writing on February 6 for the Washington Institute, Matt Levitt, taking into account the EU position and Hizballah’s support of the Syrian regime, came to the following conclusion:
“The ‘Party of God’ has turned its ‘weapons of resistance’ not on Israel, but on fellow Muslims. This, more so than the UN indictment of four of its members for the murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, and more so than the exposure of Hizballah operations in places like Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Thailand, and Turkey, is what now threatens Hizballah’s standing as a Lebanese political party and social movement.”

Bulgaria to present new evidence in Burgas bombing

Move may increase pressure on European Union to label Hezbollah a terrorist group

The Shining Is About What?
Room 237 uses Talmudic exegesis to uncover whether Kubrick’s film is about Indians, the Holocaust, or bears

Even people who haven’t seen it know that The Shining, Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel, is the scarific tale of a stir-crazy caretaker—Jack Nicholson, no less—driven mad by the ghosts haunting an isolated, off-season hotel to murder his wife, played by Shelley Duvall, and their small son, who happens to be psychic. But, was this contribution to the horror cycle of the late Carter era also Kubrick’s meditation on the Holocaust?

Kubrick’s Lost Holocaust Film
America’s greatest Jewish director was haunted by the Nazi horror—too much to address it directly in film

Nearly all of Kubrick’s films are told from the perpetrator’s point of view, and references to Nazi Germany populate his work, most often as signifiers for characters who are growing mad with power: Dr. Strangelove’s proposal for a “final solution” and his exclamation, “Mein Führer, I can walk!”; the Leni Riefenstahl imagery shown to Alex during his Ludovico treatment in A Clockwork Orange; Jack’s German Adler typewriter on which he chronicles his descent into insanity in The Shining.

Israel Daily Picture: More on the Jewish Legion in Palestine, 1917 - 1919,

In our last posting on the Jewish Legion we published this photo of the "Jewish Legion entering a Jewish village in the Land of Israel." We have subsequently discovered more information about the photograph.
The picture shows Colonel Eliezer "Lazar" Margolin riding into Ben Shemen. Margolin, a Russian-Palestinian-Australian, was a decorated officer who succeeded John H. Patterson as the commander of the Jewish Legion.
Margolin was born in Russia in 1874 and moved to a small farm in Rechovot Palestine with his parents when he was 17. He was proficient in Hebrew, Arabic, marksmanship and riding. Years later he was known as a figure who "rides his horse like a Bedouin, and shoots like an Englishman."