Showing posts with label Petra MB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Petra MB. Show all posts
Monday, January 15, 2018
In a
post entitled “The Tamimi masterclass on media manipulation,” I documented
some two years ago in considerable detail that Bassem and Nariman Tamimi (i.e.
the parents of Ahed Tamimi) feel completely free to tell credulous reporters
invented stories that depict them and their children as innocent victims of
Israeli brutality. The specific incident I investigated also showed that – even
when it comes to her own children – Nariman Tamimi’s grim philosophy is “Either
victory or martyrdom.”
A recent example shows Bassem Tamimi displaying a similarly
cold-hearted fanaticism – but only for Arab audiences. Thanks to an admirer of
the Tamimis, we can watch clips with English subtitles (h/t @kweansmom)
from an interview that Bassem Tamimi recently gave to the Lebanese media
network Al Mayadeen. According
to Wikipedia, the network’s “editorial policy emphasizes that Palestine and
resistance movements wherever they are found are its point of reference” and “that
the Palestinian cause is the channel’s centerpiece;” there have also been
claims that “the channel is a propaganda platform for Iran and Hezbollah.”
The Al Mayadeen interviewer is obviously eager to let
Ahed’s father Bassem Tamimi tell their audience what an awesome “resistance”
icon he has brought up. In the first clip,
Ahed’s proud dad explains that after publishing the video of Ahed punching,
kicking and slapping two Israeli soldiers, the family anticipated her arrest. Bassem
Tamimi doesn’t mention the fact that it was Ahed’s mother who posted
the video on her Facebook page – thus apparently trying to ensure her
daughter’s arrest – and he doesn’t mention the fact that the video also
includes a segment where Ahed, prompted by her loving mom to give a “message to
the world,” is calling
for stabbings and suicide bombings.
As Bassem Tamimi explains to Al Mayadeen, even though
the family anticipated Ahed’s arrest, it would have been wrong “to break (stop)
a possible exemplar (of resistance) because “our people need to see a specific
moment even if there is a price to pay.”
After outlining his views on futile Israeli attempts to intimidate
Palestinians, Bassem Tamimi is asked by his interviewer what sentence he
expects for Ahed. He calmly responds that he expects his daughter to be
sentenced to a year and a half in prison, and he vows to reject any possible
“agreement”: “We will not break her challenge so that she pleads guilty in
front of this judge. This will be offered to us for the sake of extortion,
[but] we will reject it [and] she will completely reject it.” Bassem Tamimi
also claims that Ahed “said to her siblings ‘you are not allowed to have an
agreement’” and supposedly, Ahed said the same to him in previous instances when
he was arrested.
Emphasizing again that Ahed “rejects making an agreement,”
Bassem Tamimi declares: “so we have two choices: completely rejecting the
legitimacy of the [Israeli] court, or asking to put the court on trial by way
of a global opinion (pressure).”
Of course, this is not really an either-or choice: the
strategy Bassem Tamimi outlines obviously involves rejecting any compromise
with the Israeli authorities AND mobilizing public opinion
against Israel. This has been the Tamimis’ strategy for years, and according to
this interview, the Tamimis intend to follow it through also now – even if it
means a considerable prison sentence for their teenage daughter. The global
publicity activists and sycophantic media outlets provide to the Tamimis makes
it very worthwhile for them to have Ahed locked up for a year or two.
A fourth clip from the interview is summarized by the
translator as follows: “Ahed’s father tells @AlMayadeenNews of how his little
resistor is driving the Zionist establishment insane, discovering there [their]
spying devices and leaving them baffled.”
Yet, the clip starts with Bassem Tamimi presenting a dire
picture of the hardships and dangers his daughter is facing in Israeli
detention – a “child” taken to “a jail cell” and facing endless interrogations;
“the main court brings people to yell, threaten with rape & all these
things” – but then Bassem Tamimi gloats that Ahed discovered “spying devices.”
He also confesses: “I was extremely happy when she told me
‘a police officer started yelling out of frustration, that’s when I knew I won,
and he was defeated.’” Then Bassem Tamimi returns to the story about the
“spying devices”, which his daughter supposedly discovered when her mother
Nariman and her cousin were brought to her cell. Ahed gestured to them not to
talk until she found the “spying device” and started “talking to (toying with)
them [i.e. presumably the Israeli ‘spies’], mocking them.” And Bassem Tamimi proudly concludes: “I saw
that she was like a stone, all this pressure on a child hasn’t affected her one
bit.”
So this is the version for Arab audiences – you can watch
the strikingly different version for English-speaking western audiences here: a sad
Bassem Tamimi who worries terribly about his daughter and wants her to be just
a normal teenager…
Last but not least, here’s a revealing Al Mayadeen clip about how Ahed
Tamimi is presented to her fans in the Arab world – and you don’t have to know
Arabic, because the pictures glorifying Ahed speak for themselves, showing
clearly that her Arab fans know very well that the Tamimis are not fighting
Israeli settlements or the occupation of the West Bank, but Israel’s existence
as a Jewish state in any borders.
I was intrigued by one image in particular: it seemed to be
cut at the bottom corners, which are also obstructed by the line of text
displayed in the Al Mayadeen clip. So I took a screenshot and did a
reverse image search – which was worth it: the full image shows Ahed wearing a
Palestinian keffiyeh and a shirt adorned with a map that presents Israel, the
West Bank and Gaza as one country; two rats wearing caps with a Star of David
viciously chew at her flowing hair.
The image was apparently very popular on Facebook
and Twitter;
interestingly – and depressingly – it was also retweeted by Samya Ayish, who describes herself as a Palestinian “Journalist/
Producer in @CNNArabic.” Perhaps Ayish didn’t notice the antisemitic imagery of
the two rats with the Star of David, but she surely didn’t have a problem
reading the Arabic text of the tweet
which praised Ahed for wearing (or representing) “the amulet of Palestine ... all
of Palestine.” So it seems that at least at CNN Arabic, they know what
the Tamimis stand for.
Monday, January 01, 2018
- Monday, January 01, 2018
- Elder of Ziyon
- 1982, Ahed Tamimi, Georges Abdallah, Israel is occupied Palestine, Leila Khaled, media bias, occupied territory, Opinion, Petra MB, Samidoun, Tel Aviv
There is a refreshingly honest Twitter account devoted to promoting
the otherwise appallingly deceptive
campaign to #FreeAhedTamimi. Among the recently posted
tweets is one declaring: “Israel is dreading that Ahed is the next Leila
Khaled, they will try to break her in anyway or shape. But what they forgot is
to see the fierce and fearless & determine look through her blue eyes.
#FreeAhedTamimi #FreeGeorgesAbdallah.”
It isn’t all that important if this Twitter account is
really an “official” account sanctioned by the Tamimi family, because the images
attached to the tweet are clearly real – and truly worth a thousand words.
So let’s recall who Leila Khaled and Georges Abdallah are.
Leila Khaled, with whom Ahed posed for a photo, is a member
of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is notorious
for having “pioneered such terror tactics as airline hijackings” and
perpetrated “hundreds of terrorist attacks.” As Wikipedia puts it without a
trace of irony, Leila
Khaled “is credited as the first woman to hijack an airplane.”
If Ahed Tamimi wants to be “the next Leila Khaled,” we can
only wonder and worry what pioneering acts of terror she will once be
“credited” with.
Now let’s turn to Georges Abdallah,
for whom Ahed campaigned alongside her father Bassem Tamimi: Abdallah is “a
Lebanese militant” who “was arrested in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison in
1987 for the 1982 murder of Lieutenant Colonel Charles R. Ray, who was an
assistant US military attaché and murder of Israeli diplomat Yaakov
Bar-Simantov outside his home in Paris on 3 April 1982, as well as involvement
in the attempted assassination of former American consul in Strasbourg Robert
O. Homme.”
As explained in a subsequent
tweet, the photos showing Ahed and her father Bassem Tamimi campaigning
alongside a terrorist for another terrorist are “from the conference on the
role of women in the Palestinian popular struggle Sep 2017 and international
days of resistance to Free Georges Ibrahim Abdallah Oct 2017.”
So let this sink in: just some three months before much of
the mainstream media dutifully promoted fact-free propaganda about the
wonderful Tamimis and their noble “non-violent” struggle, daddy Bassem and his
famous daughter were all too happy to show that their idea of “non-violence”
includes murder and airplane hijackings.
What’s beyond satire is that the “conference” promoting
terrorism was hosted by two far-left Spanish members of the European
Parliament. According to a report
in the European Jewish Press, pioneering airplane hijacker Leila Khaled
used the prestigious platform at the European Parliament “to praise extremist
violence and demonize Jews. She
glorified terrorism and trivialized the Holocaust. ‘Don’t you see a similarity
between Nazi actions and Zionist actions in Gaza? … While the Nazis were tried
in Nuremberg, no one has ever tried the Zionists,’ she said.”
The outcry resulting from this travesty eventually prompted
the European parliament to endorse a proposal “to systematically deny access to
all persons, groups, or entities involved in terrorist acts.”
Better late than never, I guess – though it remains amazing
to see that terrorists like Leila Khaled and outspoken terror
supporters like the Tamimis can apparently travel freely to Europe.
Now let’s look at one other gem from the #FreeAhedTamimi
Twitter account: this tweet
manages to summarize the Tamimis’ agenda in just one word when it describes a
photo of Hebrew graffiti praising Ahed as a “hero” as having been taken in “occupied
Tel Aviv.”
So next time the Tamimis tell credulous reporters that
they’re fighting “the occupation,” know that they’re surely mightily amused and
pleased that everyone prefers to ignore that as far as they are concerned, Tel
Aviv is just one more occupied Zionist settlement.
And if everything goes well for the Tamimis, Ahed – “the
next Leila Khaled” – will once be credited for her pioneering terror strategies
to liberate occupied Tel Aviv.
Friday, December 29, 2017
- Friday, December 29, 2017
- Elder of Ziyon
- Petra MB
Al Jazeera – or at least Al Jazeera
contributor Shenila Khoja-Moolji – is desperately clueless, stumped by the question:
“Why is the West praising Malala, but ignoring Ahed?” So let’s help them out a
bit.
Malala
Yousafzai gained prominence as a teen blogger for BBC Urdu, where
she described her life under the harsh rule of the fundamentalist Islamist
Taliban. The Taliban eventually decided to target Malala. On October 9,
2012, “[a] masked gunman boards Malala’s school bus and asks for her by name. He
shoots Malala in the head, neck and shoulder.”
As far as Ahed Tamimi is concerned, masked gunmen are great.
In September, Ahed Tamimi posted a
picture of gunmen masked with Palestinian keffiyeh scarves on her Facebook page
and repeated the message written on the image in Arabic: “Tell the fighters all
over the world that they are my friends.”
So the masked gunman who shot Malala was someone Ahed would
consider a friend.
Sadly, Ahed was brought up to consider masked gunmen as her
“friends.”
Her father Bassem Tamimi has shared a propaganda video for the Lebanese
terror group Hezbollah, and his wife, i.e. Ahed’s mother Nariman, “liked” this
video glorifying Hezbollah. Ahed’s father also “likes” the Hamas-affiliated
jihadist Al-Qassam Brigades: as I documented
some two years ago, Bassem Tamimi responded with a “Like” when someone praised
a photo Ahed had posted on her Facebook page, showing her throwing rocks, with
the short comment “Good ahed” accompanied by an image glorifying the Al-Qassam
Brigades.
Then there’s the sad fact that Ahed has several relatives
who are convicted terrorist murderers – and who are greatly admired by her
family for the ruthless murders they perpetrated.
Here’s little Ahed back in 2012 when her uncle Nizar Tamimi
– the murderer
of Chaim Mizrahi – married
her aunt Ahlam Tamimi – the proud mastermind and facilitator of the 2001 Sbarro
massacre that claimed the lives of fifteen people, including seven children
and a pregnant woman; some 130 people suffered injuries; one young mother was
left in a permanent vegetative state.
Ahed’s mother Nariman Tamimi has surely taught her daughter
that ruthless terrorist murderers like her aunt Ahlam are admirable rebels.
When Malala was shot by the Taliban gunman in October 2012,
she was 15. She survived. Here you can read the
story of Malka Chana Roth, a 15 year-old girl who didn’t survive the terrorist
bombing Ahed’s aunt Ahlam Tamimi remains so proud of.
This is how the Facebook page of Ahed’s aunt Ahlam looked
before it was made private – it is adorned with images of the suicide bomber
who carried out the terrorist bombing of the Sbarro restaurant exactly as Ahlam
Tamimi had planned. Needless to say, Ahed and her parents and many other Tamimi
family members are Facebook friends with their murderous terrorist relative.
Ahed’s mother Nariman Tamimi has presumably also taught her
daughter that the murder of teen girls brings honor to the cause the Tamimis
are devoted to. In June 2016, Nariman Tamimi shared a Facebook post from another Tamimi family
member to honor the teenaged
Palestinian terrorist who had just killed the 13-year-old sleeping Hallel
Yaffa Ariel after breaking into her home. As far as the Tamimis are concerned,
the murder of Hallel Yaffa helped “to return to the homeland its
awe/reverence.”
If Malala was an Israeli Jewish girl and the gunman who shot
her was Palestinian, Ahed’s family would have cheered and considered him a hero
who brought honor to their cause.
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
By Petra Marquardt-Bigman
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Daniel Seidemann is the founder and director of the NGO Terrestrial Jerusalem (TJ), and TJ’s website describes him as a “world-renowned Jerusalem expert.” Seidemann’s NGO “works to identify and track the full spectrum of developments in Jerusalem that could impact either the political process or permanent status options, destabilize the city or spark violence, or create humanitarian crises.” TJ also claims to represent “a proud Jewish/Israeli voice.”
Yesterday, Seidemann announced on Twitter that he has “endless admiration for Ahed Tamimi;” he explained that she is “16 yrs old and under arrest for her courage in resisting occupation. A slap is not a war crime - we Israelis have ‘earned’ the right to be humiliated.”
How’s that for “a proud Jewish/Israeli voice”…
(Note: Ahed is 18, not 16 - EoZ)
You can watch Ahed Tamimi helping IDF soldiers get their Seidemann-declared “right to be humiliated” here.
Here's another more violent cut of the obstruction of the officer's execution of his duty. He had 2 options - field arrest, or arrest at a later date. He avoided the immediate viral provocation and chose to follow up later on. pic.twitter.com/TcmLdWsbId— LTC (R) Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) December 19, 2017
For some reason, the tweet showed up in my feed, and since I wasn’t aware of Seidemann’s awesome status as a “world-renowned Jerusalem expert,” I thought he might perhaps not know much about the background of the teenager for whom he professed “endless admiration.” So I responded by posting some of the facts about the Tamimis’ ardent Jew-hatred and support for terrorism that I’ve documented in great detail.
Unfortunately, I now can’t ask him anymore if this is also the modus operandi of his NGO: when you encounter facts you don’t like, you just block them and pretend they don’t exist.
I have no doubt that as a “world-renowned Jerusalem expert,” Seidemann knows very well that the Tamimis have been rooting for years for a “third intifada,” and that as far as they are concerned, the ultimate goal of this intifada is the end of Israel. As Ahed’s father Bassem Tamimi put it two years ago during a speaking tour in the US: “Israel is a big settlement” and “the problem is the ‘colonial project’ of Zionism.”
Moreover, as I’ve noted previously, if the “third intifada” the Tamimis have tried to incite for years “was brought about by knife-wielding Palestinian teenagers stabbing Jews on the streets of Israel’s cities, the Tamimis could see nothing wrong with that. They had always advocated the use of children in violent confrontations with the IDF, and now they were ready to hail teenaged terrorists as ‘heroes’ if they were arrested, and as ‘martyrs’ if they were killed while killing or trying to kill” — and often enough the Tamimis claimed at the same time that the “martyrs” they celebrated were innocent victims executed in cold blood by the evil Zionists.
Of course, Ahed Tamimi cannot be blamed for the way she was brought up, but by expressing “endless admiration for Ahed Tamimi” and applauding her attack on Israeli soldiers, Seidemann implicitly endorsed the vile views and the despicable conduct of her parents.
So let’s not forget that for Ahed’s mother Nariman Tamimi, her daughter’s aunt Ahlam Tamimi – who planned and facilitated the Sbarro bombing and was deliriously happy about the carnage it wrought – is not a terrorist, but an admirable rebel.
One thing is for sure: “world-renowned Jerusalem expert” Daniel Seidemann would be (rightly) horrified if a Jewish teenager was brought up with this kind of “values,” but the bigotry of lower expectations requires that he feels “endless admiration” for a Palestinian teenager who has been ruthlessly indoctrinated by her Jew-hating terror-loving parents.
(For more EoZ articles on Seidemann, see here and here.)
(For more EoZ articles on Seidemann, see here and here.)
Monday, December 11, 2017
By Petra Marquardt-Bigman
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
A few weeks ago, the NYT published a widely
criticized article
by Thomas L. Friedman, who excitedly reported that the “most significant reform
process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia.”
I think it would be really wonderful if things turned out as
glowingly rosy as Friedman presented them. But as countless critics have
pointed out, that’s not very likely.
One of the most widely noted critiques came from Abdullah
Al-Arian, who
is not only an assistant professor of History at Georgetown University’s
School of Foreign Service in Qatar, but also a regular Al Jazeera contributor
– which is to say that he’s not exactly unbiased.
Take for example a column
from last June, where Al-Arian complained bitterly: “For its perceived role in
promoting the Muslim Brotherhood, hosting members of Hamas' political bureau,
and taking a softer line on Iran, Qatar became a central target of the
Saudi-Emirati-Israeli joint lobbying efforts.”
Another truly sickening example is a column
Al-Arian penned just a few days after the murderous terrorist attack on Charlie
Hebdo’s staff in January 2015, where he blames the West for “Islamophobia” and
a long list of other evils that all but explain Islamist terrorism.
And unsurprisingly, when it comes to Israel, it can’t be
biased enough for Al-Arian: veteran Israel-haters and Hamas fans like Ali
Abunimah and Max Blumenthal deliver the kind of news the Georgetown professor
and Al Jazeera columnist wants everyone to read.
So while there’s no reason to trust Al-Arian, his response
to Friedman’s NYT column is still worthwhile noting because he provided
screenshots to support his claim
that for almost 70 years, the NYT has been “describing #Saudi royals in
the language of #reform.” Or, to put it differently: for about seven decades,
the NYT has been getting the Saudis wrong.
The thread is
long and a bit difficult to read because it also includes some responses to
Al-Arian. He starts out quoting an article from 1953 that “describes King Saud
as ‘more progressive and international-minded than his autocratic father.’” An
article in 1960 asserted that “King Saud has increasingly assumed the role of
liberal champion of constitutional reform.” In December 1963, the NYT
reported on “Crown Prince Faisal’s ‘burst of social reform and economic
development.’” A year later, the NYT described Faisal as “a man who has gained
nearly absolute power without really wanting it.” Another article from the same
year is entitled “Saudi Arabia: Major Changes Due;” Faisal was “described as ‘ascetic,
with only one wife, who lives on grilled meat and boiled vegetables and makes a
fetish of moderation.’” An obituary from 1975 presented Faisal as having “Led
Saudis Into 20th Century,“ and a subsequent article described Faisal’s
successor, King Khalid, as a “moderating force.”
After all this reform and moderation, NYT readers learned in
1982 that the new Saudi King Fahd “has been depicted as the leading figure in a
progressive, modernizing faction within the tradition-minded monarchy.” A
decade later, NYT readers were told that “King Fahd is following previous
generations of Saudi rulers who had also moved toward modernization since King
Abdelaziz united a vast territory populated by feuding tribal leaders into the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 60 years ago.”
In 2000, the NYT described Crown Prince Abdullah as
“an advocate of domestic reform;” five years later, the NYT wrote: “For Abdullah, who has fashioned
himself as a reformer in a land where conforming to tradition is a virtue, the
challenge now is to make good on longstanding promises for change.” In 2007,
there was a piece entitled “Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert;”
two years later, a NYT editorial saw “A Promise of Reform in Saudi
Arabia.” Maureen Dowd opined in 2010 that “by the Saudi’s premodern standards,
the 85 year-old King Abdullah, with a harem of wives, is a social
revolutionary.”
In November 2013 – i.e. exactly four years before his recent
column on Saudi reforms – Thomas Friedman asserted that Saudi King Abdullah was
“in Gulf Arab terms … a real progressive;” Abdullah’s 2015 obituary describes
him as “a cautious reformer amid great changes in the Middle East,” and by
April 2016 the NYT editorial board saw “A Promising New Path for Saudi
Arabia.”
At the end of his thread, Al-Arian denounced Friedman’s
recent column as “a hagiographic ode to royal reform that represents seven
decades of strategic policy objectives barely concealed beneath recycled
cultural tropes.”
That’s of course rich coming from a regular contributor to a
media company funded
by the government of Qatar, but perhaps Al-Arian has never heard the proverbial
warning that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Yet, while his quotes are obviously cherry-picked from
articles that, in their entirety, may give a more nuanced picture, it is still
unsettling to see that the NYT has felt for some seven decades that
reform, moderation and modernization were somehow in the hot Saudi air.
It is interesting to note in this context that Friedman
acknowledges in his column that “this virus of an antipluralistic, misogynistic
Islam … came out of Saudi Arabia in 1979,” prompted by “the three big events of
that year: the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Saudi puritanical
extremists — who denounced the Saudi ruling family as corrupt, impious sellouts
to Western values; the Iranian Islamic revolution; and the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan.” The result was according to Friedman “a worldwide competition”
between the Saudis and Iran’s ayatollahs “over who could export more
fundamentalist Islam.”
You’ll note that none of these events has anything to do
with Israel, which has been blamed so often for Muslim extremism and
fanaticism.
Tuesday, December 05, 2017
By Petra Marquardt-Bigman
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Since I first began researching and writing
about Linda Sarsour in the summer of 2016 – after she complained about the lack
of support for the “Palestinian cause” at the Democratic National Convention –
I have been a bit astonished that, whenever I come across some new information
about her, it fits in amazingly well with what I’ve learnt about her previously.
The perhaps most striking example is one that goes back
exactly 14 years. On December 15, 2003, the New York area paper Newsday
ran a report
about reactions from local residents to the capture of the Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein. The article begins with the view of an imam:
“Asked what should be done with the
captured Saddam Hussein, an Iraqi-born leader of a mosque in Queens said the
kindest thing would be a public hanging. ‘If you put him in the streets [of
Baghdad] now, in a little while you would find him in pieces,’ said Fadhel
Al-Sahlani, the imam, or spiritual leader, of the Al-Khoei Benevolent
Foundation mosque.”
Then we get a short summary:
“Opinions in the local Muslim
community varied yesterday on what should be done with Hussein. The judgment
depended largely on the national origin of the person interviewed. For
instance, one woman of Palestinian descent said that Hussein, despite his many
faults, was a hero to many people in her community. But those who lived in or
around Iraq - and knew his brutality firsthand - were harsh in the judgment of
the deposed dictator.”
Sorry, no prize for guessing who the “woman of Palestinian
descent” was who spoke up for the widely loathed Iraqi dictator…
“Linda Sarsour, who is
American-born and of Palestinian descent, said many Palestinians viewed Hussein
as a hero because he steadfastly supported Palestinians in their struggle
against Israel. She and other Palestinian New Yorkers felt humiliated by the
way Hussein was caught and shown, disheveled and pathetic-looking, on
international television, Sarsour said. ‘I think he’s done a lot of things he
shouldn’t have done, but I was hurt. My Arab pride was hurt,’ said Sarsour, 23,
of Bensonhurst. ‘Palestinians are under so much oppression and no other Arab
country ever helped them.’”
Well, what can one say about Linda Sarsour’s “Arab pride”…
But it’s worthwhile recalling the context of 2003, when
Linda Sarsour rightly described Saddam Hussein as a Palestinian “hero” who “steadfastly
supported Palestinians in their struggle against Israel.” The support
was primarily “financial support for Palestinian terror groups, including
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Front, and the Arab Liberation
Front, and … money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. In April
2002, Iraq increased the amount of such payments from $10,000 to $25,000.”
This increase of payments to Palestinian terrorists was of
course Saddam Hussein’s way to contribute to the murderous Al-Aqsa Intifada
that was going on at the time, and it is very telling that Linda Sarsour was so
willing to show her appreciation for Hussein’s efforts to encourage Palestinian
terror attacks, which included many suicide bombings targeting buses,
restaurants and shopping areas.
Let’s now turn to a very recent story: you’ve probably heard
that longtime Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian, who co-founded “Students for
Justice in Palestine,” was recently caught sharing what has rightly been described
as “insanely anti-Semitic memes.” When Berkeley condemned the tweets, Bazian
came up with “[the] world’s least convincing apology;” one reason that his
apology was so unconvincing is that he has a long history “of presenting
anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-Zionism.”
So it’s of course entirely expected that Linda Sarsour is a
fan…
As far as Sarsour is concerned, Bazian is one of those Muslims “who speak truth w/
courage & w/o apology;” she has also praised
Bazian “for speaking truth to power & standing for Palestinians w/ the
utmost integrity.” Last year, Sarsour described
Bazian as “a revered leader in the Muslim community;” and just two weeks ago,
Sarsour declared she was “proud” of
Bazian’s relentless BDS activism.
On this last point, I actually agree with her: Bazian is
clearly an exemplary BDS activist, and it’s easy to see why Sarsour would be so
enthusiastic about him…
Monday, November 27, 2017
I just came across a tweet
by Andrew Bennett about the notorious
“historian” and ardent Israel-hater Ilan Pappé, who claims that “a shadowy
Jewish elite deceives the world with a false ‘peace process’ to mask its true
intent: the imprisonment of Palestinians.” Indicating his disdain for Pappé’s
views, Bennett added a quote from the Nazi publication Der Stürmer: “This is
the freedom they promise us/The freedom we see where Judah rules/Behind prison
walls and bars/Within a dark prison sits/A humanity that longs for true freedom/And
longs for rescue and release.”
I found the quote striking because of the line “where Judah
rules.” Of course, the Nazis imagined the oppressive rule of “Judah”
everywhere; but all too obviously, today’s anti-Israel activists remain
indebted to the Nazi idea that Jewish rule is intolerable, even if it extends
only over a tiny sliver of the Middle East.
When I looked up the quote, I found
that it had appeared in the issue of 17 June 1943 of Der Stürmer, together with
an image of a (white/”Aryan”) prisoner behind bars; the image and the original
German text can best be seen here.
It is arguably a particularly chilling image, given that at
the time it was published, hundreds of thousands of Jews languished as
prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.
In our time, it’s of course Palestine that is imprisoned by
“Judah”/Israel – here are two examples from Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff;
the image on the right won
him second prize at Iran’s 2006 “International Holocaust Cartoon Contest,”
and tellingly, he shared this prize with far-right French cartoonist Françoise
Pichard.
However, while the Nazis vividly imagined the viciousness
and cruelty of Jewish rule, even they might have shuddered to learn from
Rutgers professor Jasbir
Puar that these days, “Judah”/Israel doesn’t just claim the “right to kill”
its hapless prisoners, but also insists on “the right to maim” in order to “enable
the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies.”
Another motif from Der Stürmer that remains very popular is
the idea that the Jew is behind – and benefits from – violence and bloodshed
anywhere the world, as Der Stürmer reminded
its readers in the 18 May 1944 issue.
Pretty much the same idea is behind the “Deadly Exchange”
campaign of the Orwellian-named Jewish Voice for Peace, which – as Andrew
Bennett has shown in a detailed
analysis – “alleges a moneyed Jewish conspiracy to kill innocent Americans.”
But of course, people who always find a way to blame the
Jews are a dime a dozen: a reporter interviewing an Egyptian who had lost
several relatives in the recent terror attack on a mosque found that
“he blames Israel for the massacre, saying that Israel created and controls
#ISIS.” Palestinian religious leaders in Gaza also quickly concluded
that the “Zionists” were somehow involved, while ardent Israel-hater Miko Peled
offered a slightly different version, insisting
that the terrorist atrocity was “a direct result of the regional instability
caused by #Sisi and his criminal collaboration w #Israel.” Veteran anti-Israel
propagandist Ali Abunimah liked Peled’s take and promptly re-tweeted
it.
However, no worries: as you can
learn later this week at The New School, it’s not antisemitism if you
change the old Der Stürmer slogan “The Jews are our misfortune” to “The Jewish
state is our misfortune.”
Monday, November 20, 2017
- Monday, November 20, 2017
- Elder of Ziyon
- Linda Sarsour, Opinion, Petra MB
It’s terrible. Every morning Linda Sarsour wakes up – and
because she has apparently set Google alerts for her name, she wakes up to “a
new headline, a new google alert.” She finds
it “exhausting,” “so damn exhausting.” Maybe cancel the Google alerts? Or maybe
grow up and accept that newspapers have op-eds and that not every op-ed writer
falls for your hypocrisy and bigotry???
But here’s the good news, dear Linda Sarsour: in the past
few days, three sort of well-known guys came to your defense. Among those
heroes was your fellow-Israel-hater – and award-winning
antisemite – Max Blumenthal, who happily joined
so many of your wonderful fans in denigrating the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt,
who had the temerity to doubt your absolutely FABULOUS credentials as an antisemitism
expert. After all, the expertise you get from learning by doing is unbeatable,
isn’t it…
And of course you love
it when your fans strike back and tell Greenblatt that compared to you, he
and his organization are just utterly clueless about antisemitism. I mean, the
ADL has been fighting antisemitism, racism and bigotry for a century, but
really, that means absolutely nothing, nothing at all if they can’t see that
there’s no antisemitism expert as brilliant as you are, right?
Indeed, we should all remember that you never really liked
the ADL. For example, you had a big problem
with the ADL’s campaign against Hamas back in the summer of 2014; indeed, you condemned the ADL for “inciting hate here in
the US” with this campaign. Absolutely right – why oh why should anyone hate
Hamas???
And naturally, dear Linda Sarsour, you were appalled [archived version doesn’t have link] when the
ADL’s Abraham Foxman condemned
the kidnapping and murder of three teenaged Israeli students by Hamas
terrorists: “The ADL should be the PDL (Pro Defamation League) - defaming
Palestinians. Shame. Shame.”
Well, dear Linda Sarsour, there’s no doubt that Hamas
fan Max Blumenthal fully agrees with you on all these issues.
But let’s have a quick look at the other two heroes who came
to your defense. Admittedly, David Duke was a bit lukewarm, comparing
you to a broken clock that is right twice a day…
But hey, I think David Duke and you could find a lot of
common ground when it comes to the ADL – he would surely LOVE your witticism about
the “Pro Defamation League” given that the ADL has described
him as “perhaps America’s most well-known racist and anti-Semite”…
And let’s not forget that alt-rightist Richard Spencer also
came to your defense – indeed, given your complaints about how exhausting you
find it to get criticism, you’ll surely appreciate his thoughts
about why you are so terribly unfairly criticized.
Mea culpa, mea culpa is all I can say: I’m afraid I was the
first one to highlight
this tweet of yours, along with a whole lot of similar ones…
But in any case, there can be little doubt that also Richard
Spencer would just LOVE your “Pro Defamation League” quip – can you imagine
that the evil ADL has accused him of trying “to mainstream racism and
anti-Semitism”???
You see, the ADL isn’t just defaming Palestinians – they’re
also defaming the likes of David Duke and Richard Spencer, and of course, worst
of all, they’re defaming you, dear Linda Sarsour!!! But isn’t it a consolation
that you are in such great company???
Monday, November 13, 2017
- Monday, November 13, 2017
- Elder of Ziyon
- Joseph Massad, Opinion, Petra MB
By Petra Marquardt-Bigman
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
A few days ago, EoZ highlighted
the latest screed of Joseph Massad, who is a professor at Columbia University
and an occasional contributor
to Ali Abunimah’s “The Jewish state is our misfortune/Hail Hamas”-website. Elder
wondered in his post what Massad’s sources or evidence might be, and I pondered
the same question a few years ago, when I researched Massad’s writings on the
evil Zionist entity for several articles. I found at least a partial answer:
for some of his main “arguments,” Massad clearly relies on the kind of
“evidence” that is popular at the neo-Nazi site Stormfront
and that David
Duke promoted in his “minor
league Mein Kampf.”
You can read the post where I demonstrated this in
considerable detail here
(warning: it’s longish!); but if you
don’t have the time, you can just take the quiz I posted back then to
illustrate how hard it is to distinguish between Massad’s stuff and what’s
popular on Stormfront (correct answers at the end of this post; some of
the quotes have originally British spelling, I Americanized it to avoid giving
the game away).
1) “Nazism was a boon to Zionism throughout the 1930s.”2) “For all intents and purposes, the National Socialist government was the best thing to happen to Zionism in its history.”3) “In Germany, the average Jews were victims of the Zionist elite who worked hand in hand with the Nazis.”4) “Hitler could have just confiscated all the Jewish wealth. Instead he used the ‘Haavara Program’ to help establish the State of Israel.”5) “Between 1933 and 1939, 60 percent of all capital invested in Jewish Palestine came from German Jewish money through the Transfer Agreement.”6) “In fact, contra all other German Jews (and everyone else inside and outside Germany) who recognized Nazism as the Jews’ bitterest enemy, Zionism saw an opportunity to strengthen its colonization of Palestine.”7) “Zionists welcomed the Nazis’ anti-Semitic policies. Like the Nazis, they believed in race-based national character and destiny. Like the Nazis, they believed Jews had no future in Germany.8) “the Zionist Federation of Germany […] supported the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, as they agreed with the Nazis that Jews and Aryans were separate and separable races. This was not a tactical support but one based on ideological similitude.”9) “Zionism […] developed the idea of the first racially separatist planned community for the exclusive use of Ashkenazi Jews, namely the Kibbutz.”10) “The Zionists were afraid that the ‘Jewish race’ was disappearing through assimilation.”
Before I let you find out how you did, I should perhaps note
what I just found out: my articles on Massad got me an honorary mention on Stormfront!
As I noted in my post back then, Stormfront members shared and debated Massad’s
notorious Al Jazeera column
“The last of the Semites,” which Jeffrey Goldberg immediately denounced as “one
of the most anti-Jewish screeds in recent memory.”
A few weeks later, one Stormfront member came across
my post and linked to it with some heartfelt compliments, including “not-so-hidden
Hasbara shill” who writes a “stinking blog, brimful with Israeli propaganda,
lies and deceit;” “a manic proponent of the Zionist doctrine and propaganda.”
But the Stormfront member noted that reading my post wasn’t entirely a waste of
time, because it lead to “another two very interesting Massad’s articles” –
which s/he liked so much that s/he promptly shared them…
Oh well, I do think I deserve their disdain – and Columbia
professor Joseph Massad deserves their admiration.
* * *
1) Massad 2) Stormfront
3) Stormfront 4) Stormfront
5) Massad 6) Massad 7) Stormfront
8) Massad 9) Massad 10) Stormfront
Monday, November 06, 2017
By Petra Marquardt-Bigman
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
For an ardent Zionist like me, it is utterly disappointing
to learn from the United Arab Emirates’ news site The National that
“Supporters of Mr Ramadan are describing the accusations against him [as] part
of a Zionist plot to destroy his name.” Obviously, there can be no doubt
whatsoever that the eminent Oxford professor has the most awesome supporters
who know what they’re talking about. So now the depressing question is: what
took the infamous Elders of Zion so long??? Are they getting real old??? I
mean, why didn’t they act well before 2009, when Ramadan was appointed “H.H.
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies and
Senior Research Fellow” at Oxford’s St Antony’s College???
On the other hand, I have to admit that the Zionist plot
starts to look really formidable. The first to accuse
Ramadan was French ex-Salafi Henda Ayari, who – encouraged by the #MeToo
campaign – went to the police to file a complaint against Ramadan for “rape,
sexual assault, willful violence, harassment and intimidation.” Soon
afterwards, another French woman (who remained unnamed) came
forward and “gave an account of an extremely violent [sexual] assault to
two French newspapers.” A third woman reportedly
“told Le Parisien in an interview … that Mr Ramadan sexually harassed her in
2014 and blackmailed her for sexual favours.”
And then there
was a rather stunning confession by a French official “who was considered
the ‘Monsieur Islam’ of the French Ministry of the Interior between 1997 and
2014, [and who] was well acquainted with Mr Ramadan.” Reportedly, “Monsieur
Islam” was really really shocked by the allegations against Ramadan: he “insisted
he had ‘never heard of rapes’” – all he sort of knew was that Tariq Ramadan “had
many mistresses, that he consulted sites, that girls were brought to the hotel
at the end of his lectures, that he invited them to undress, that some resisted
and that he could become violent and aggressive.”
Shocking, utterly shocking, isn’t it – who could ever
suspect that a man known for sometimes becoming “violent and aggressive” with “girls
… brought to the hotel at the end of his lectures” would rape some of those
girls???
The plot (the Zionist plot, naturally!!!) thickened further when
Swiss media reported
that four Swiss women testified about being sexually exploited by Ramadan while
they were his teenage students. And once again, “a Swiss specialist in Islam
who spent years accompanying Mr Ramadan on his trips across Europe,” admitted “that
he had heard various rumours and suspicions about his former close associate’s
behaviour over the years.”
Of course it should go without saying that the people who
kept quiet about all those allegations against Ramadan did the right thing – as
the Director of Oxford’s Middle East Centre just put
it so delicately: “It’s not just about sexual violence. For some students
it’s just another way for Europeans to gang up against a prominent Muslim
intellectual. We must protect Muslim students who believe and trust in him, and
protect that trust.”
Absolutely and obviously right: it would be plain old
“Islamophobia” to focus on the fact that there have been accusations of sexual
misconduct and even potentially criminal conduct against Ramadan for years and
that some women finally have found the courage to come forward to testify!!!
So all we can do now is helplessly watch the monstrously
evil Zionist plot against Tariq Ramadan take its course. But in the meantime, let
me just highlight a bit of the record of the “prominent Muslim intellectual”
whom Oxford apparently deems so worthy of the continued “trust” of students –
particularly Muslim students.
If you check out Ramadan’s own website, you will see that it
has several pages worth of links to his Press TV show “Islam and Life.”
According to the Facebook page
of the program, it is a “weekly show with Prof. Tariq Ramadan on the world’s
fastest growing religion and the daily challenges faced by its followers
especially in the West.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has described
Press TV as “Iran’s official English-language propaganda arm” and “one of the
world’s leading dispensers of conspiratorial anti-Semitism in English.”
Maybe Oxford’s H.H. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani
Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies and Senior Research Fellow Tariq
Ramadan could devote one of his shows to the “Zionist plot” against him???
Now let’s have a quick look at some of the views the
oh-so-trustworthy Oxford professor shares with his social media followers (634K
on Twitter, more than 2 million
on Facebook).
Some two years ago – on the same day when The Atlantic
published Jeffrey Goldberg’s excellent piece
on “The Paranoid, Supremacist Roots of the Stabbing Intifada” – Ramadan posted a rant entitled “ISRAELI SOCIETY IS
SICK.” Naturally, no word about the ongoing wave of murderous stabbing and
car-ramming attacks by Palestinian terrorists, but plenty of blood-libel style
poison about how utterly evil and murderous Israeli society is, concluding with
the professor’s view: “It is Israel that is the first danger of Israel, and its
main disease.” One of Ramadan’s fans responded with a succinct summary: “Israel
has become its worst nightmare; zionism is naziism.”
Already a few weeks earlier, Ramadan bitterly denounced “the great democrats of the world”
who “talk about self-defense of Israel” which really means giving “Israel carte
blanche to spread inhumanity, repression and horror.” The eminent professor
concluded “Disgusting, really.”
If you’re not too disgusted by now, here are a few more
similar outpourings of Oxford’s H.H. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani
Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies and Senior Research Fellow Tariq
Ramadan: “#Israel They kill in #Palestine;”
“#Israel CONDEMN ! CONDEMN ! FOR GOD SAKE
CONDEMN !!!;” and “ISRAEL AND STATE
TERRORISM.”
Finally, it will come as no surprise that Carlos Latuff –
the proud second-prize-winner of Iran’s 2006 “International
Holocaust Cartoon Competition” – is the kind of “artist” who can express in
a picture that is worth a thousand antisemitic words how Tariq Ramadan feels.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)