Belgium's new poet laureate not happy I called him an antisemite. Too bad.

Last week, I reported that the new designated poet laureate of Belgium, whose pen name is Charles Ducal, is an antisemite, and I posted a couple of his poems to prove it. I introduced it with a story from the Antisemitism blog which saw the story in the Philosemitisme blog.

He wrote an email to the Philosemitisme blog, the Anti-Semitism blog and me but for some reason he didn't bother to find out our email addresses; he sent them to an independent investigative reporter who wanted to find out their reactions on the articles and their contents and he forwarded it to me.

Here is the (auto-)translation of his (lawyer's?) vaguely threatening email:

We demand the immediate cessation of the following accusations of anti-Semitism in relation to Charles Ducal and require immediate rectification of the coverage of Charles Ducal in:
- http://antisemitism-europe.blogspot.be/2014/01/belgium-new-national-poet-is-rabid.html
- http://elderofziyon.blogspot.be/2014/01/new-poet-laureate-of-belgium-is.html .

Please find your claims about his alleged anti-Semitism below refuted by Charles Ducal (pseudonym of French Dumortier ) :

There is an article on the blog of "Elders of Zion" accusing me of anti-Semitism. It is further alleged that my moral outrage it exclusively on the Jews and for example I have never written anything about the atrocities of the Belgians in the Congo.

As you, consciously or unconsciously, create confusion between the concept of "criticism of Israeli policy (anti- Zionism)" and " hatred of Jews ( anti-Semitism )" , for clarity , the following :

* I, like any reasonable person , make a distinction between Jew , Israeli and Zionist. I first of all have respect for the Jewish religion and great respect for what Jewish people in all times have performed in the fields of science, art and philosophy around the world. Since I come from a Flemish family who risked their lives to hide Jewish children from the Nazis, I have a deep sense of compassion for the Jews during the Holocaust. The Poetry Gazette No. 6 of 2012 has two poems of mine , entitled " Somewhere in Poland ," which unequivocally express this compassion. These poems will also be found in my collection to appear in March. Second, I cherish no hostile feelings towards the people of Israel and have never so much as a word has given rise to suspicion in that direction . Third, I'm an opponent of the Zionist policy of the Israeli government towards the Palestinian population , as described in dozens of well-documented books , such as " A cry for justice ' Dries van Agt , former Prime Minister of the Netherlands and former ambassador to the European Union, Japan and the U.S.. On this basis, one may call me " anti- Zionist" . I do not deny this point for those who strongly disagree with me, but the label "anti-Semite " is an expression of bad faith, defamation and slander .

• The poetry cycle "After Auschwitz " was written based on "The ethnic cleansing of Palestine" , a book written by an Israeli historian Ilan Pappe based on Israeli military archives. It is your right to disagree, as it is also my right in that study contributes to see in the uncovering of the historical reality .

• In 2010, appeared in Knack a series by my hand on the occasion of 50 years of Congolese independence, a series of the colonization and plundering of the Congo and the state of war today. These poems are included in my new collection to appear in March . I furthermore have poems written in response to the Iraq war and injustice in the world (poverty , war , etc. ) in general , as can be verified in my anthology published in 2012 . The argument that I let my moral outrage only for 'hatred of the Jews ' is this adequately refuted, I suppose.

• Finally, I would like to ask you whether you fully realize the severity of your accusation directed at me and the moral damage caused by the dissemination through social media. To turn the tragedy of the Jews under the Nazis into an instrument of cheap invective is hopefully for you due to a flurry of levity and not the result of a vulgar opportunism , which every righteous man ( Jew and non - Jew ) would be ashamed of.

I do not speak Flemish, so I will take him at his word that he has written against colonization of the Congo. This was in the part that I quoted from the Philosemitisme blog.

However, I stand behind the parts that I wrote.

Ducal says that he took his information about Israel from Ilan Pappe, the notoriously fraudulent "historian," Be that as it may, that does not excuse the form and words of his poems, which are by any sane definition antisemitic.

It is Ducal, not me, who takes the Holocaust and cheapens it in his attempt to tarnish today's Jews of Israel.

The poems I quoted were not obviously equating today's Israeli Jews with Nazis (except for the first "After Auschwitz" poem which is a Biblical quote, implying that Israel's justification for ethnic cleansing is Biblical, and the title is meant to be an ironic counterpoint to the Holocaust.)

Here are two of the other "After Auschwitz" poems:

AFTER AUSCHWITZ 1
When I heard that the house I called mine
was stolen, I asked the authorities who
the owner was. They said: “Your head is full of ash,
you’re still weak, you know nothing of the fight.”

When I heard that the owner was alive
and carried the key in his pocket, I sent
the locksmith away. He went to the authorities.
Then the locks were changed.

On memorial days, called to remembrance
my fellow downtrodden roamed in my head.
Beneath the ash, the issue smoldered, unsaid.
But the owner never came. It slowly went dead.


AFTER AUSCHWITZ 2

Even Auschwitz was nothing special, of course.
Many survivors came to this place,
a little despised but usable, and
received a monument to retrieve

from history the transportation to the camps
and to form the grindstone of a nation.
It was the horror of all ages, of course,
but as such became exclusive, ownership

of pain transformed into ownership of land.
Who lived in this street, in this house?
Who drew water from this well?
Who sold his goods at this market?

Who, about Auschwitz, could have any doubt?

To compare Jews in Israel to Nazis is antisemitic, period.

To misrepresent the idea of "Chosen People" as if Jews torment others using that as an excuse, is antisemitic.

To misrepresent Jewish scriptures as if it is used as justification for a fictional ethnic cleansing today is antisemitic.

This is exactly what Ducal does, in the most disgusting and sickening way.

Ducal is worse than Ilan Pappe. Pappe only lies; Ducal turns slander against Jews into art.

I am quite sensitive to the differences between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. This poetry isn't a dispassionate criticism of Israel - it is criticism of Israel whose entire power rests on attacking Jews, attacking Jewish symbols and making obscene comparisons to Jewish suffering.  Ducal is claiming that Jews are using both the Holocaust and the Torah to justify the crimes that he reads in Pappe's novels and he sneeringly mentions "chosenness" and "Auschwitz" and Jewish suffering throughout the ages in order to evoke the exact same trite and perverted moral equation that other Jew-haters use: "Jews are doing to Arabs what Nazis did to Jews."

That is antisemitism.

I think that it is reasonable to call someone who writes such nauseating anti-Jewish propaganda an antisemite, despite his statements of sympathy for dead and suffering Jews of the Holocaust. It is easy to feel sorry for the dead and the survivors - Ducal seems to want credit for that. He claims that his writing of a poem (that I have not read) sympathetic to  Holocaust victims should inoculate him from accusations of antisemitism. What he doesn't get - or he is purposefully ignoring - is that his poems that equate the Holocaust with the events of 1948 means he doesn't know the first thing about the Holocaust and he is equally ignorant about the "Nakba."

Denying the Jewish people the right of self determination is also antisemitic. And so is misrepresenting Israel's history by claiming that Jews used the Holocaust to become "exclusive owners" of Israel. The number of lies and misrepresentations in these poems is huge, and all of them - by sheer coincidence, I suppose - make Jews look like hypocrites and monsters. Imagine that.

These poems of his should be exposed. If he is fine with what they say, well, all I'm doing is giving people the opportunity to read them for themselves and make their own decisions.

I believe that the antisemitism is clear and I have no problem saying so.

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New poet laureate of Belgium is an antisemite (update)

From Philosémitisme Blog, translated by Antisemitism in Europe:

Charles Ducal is Belgium's new 'national poet'. In this position, he will be expected to write poems which concern Belgium. Which might be new to him. Ducal has not written one poem on the atrocities committed by Belgians in their former colonies. However, he had time to dwell on the crimes of the Jews.*

Together with Lucas Catherine, Ducal co-authored "Gaza - The History of the Palestinian tragedy". The book includes his poetry titled "After Auschwitz", a group of poems with names like "Tel Aviv 1948–2008", "Nakba" and "A Poet in Sderot". Lest you think he might actually be sympathizing with the Jews who are constantly being bombed by their Gazan neighbors, rest assured: the song has a little note that Sderot was "formerly Najd", and is all about how 'we' kicked out the rightful owners.

The poems do not mention Jews, Israel, Nazis or Holocaust, and yet they're full of accusations against the Jewish people.

His poems are reprehensible, and (like the antisemitic play Seven Jewish Children) they are written from a grotesque caricature of a "Jewish" point of view - how a twisted Jew-hater imagines that Jews think. So while the themes are the same lies that we are used to hearing from antisemites (Jews are bloodthirsty killers who use the Holocaust as an excuse to act as monsters, Jews are quite happy making Arabs suffer, Jews use the Torah to justify massacres and ethnic cleansing) - the faux first person perspective makes the poems that much more powerful, and that much more disgusting.

Here are some of them.

AFTER AUSCHWITZ
for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand;
and thou shalt drive them out before thee.
(Exodus 23:31)

THE WALL

One does not scrawl fate in the wind.
We seek sanctuary behind
the wall, full of words on our side,
stamped with the holy number, this

stubborn plurality of a faith, in search of a voice
that can unite us in a common song,
a hymn and history to which we belong,
from the ashes of a tongue we rejoice.

The other side of the wall is ours too,
though scarred by signs of enmity.
We simply wipe it clean, unread.
Those who find a hole are blown back

into the void.

LET US TALK
First, we will bury you in the sand,
with your head free to speak
about mutual understanding, about peace;

first, we will make your field our own,
station soldiers between mine and thine,
direct the camera from our side;

first, we will count our dead
from the past two thousand years
and justify the beating,

and wipe the spit from our hands
and declare – it's clear as day;
you want no peace in this land.

Most readers of poetry don't have the same filters they might have when reading or watching the news. Poems need to be interpreted and understood, and that extra effort makes it easier for the reader to trust that the poet - whom he learns to respect during the interpretation process - is being truthful.

Very few casual poetry readers would be able to distance themselves from these works enough to realize how bigoted it is for a man to put himself in the minds of people he hates and relay their supposedly disgusting thoughts. Ducal is an antisemite, and these works prove that beyond a doubt. Saying that Jews are religious fundamentalists who enjoy acting like Nazis is no less offensive and no less a lie when it is written as poetry.

 Like fiction and film, poetry can be a powerful tool for brainwashing, and that is Ducal's goal in these examples. Belgium should withdraw this honor; Ducal should be shamed, not feted.


UPDATE:

Ducal, or his lawyer, wrote me a letter. A followup post on January 27. Link when it is available.

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Why HRW is racist: it condemns Sharon in death, ignores Phalangists, supports Dieudonné

Human Rights Watch remains as disgusting as ever.

As Ariel Sharon died after his long illness, HRW is very sad. Not about his death, of course:

Ariel Sharon died without facing justice for his role in the massacres of hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians by Lebanese militias in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. The killings constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Sharon also escaped accountability for other alleged abuses, such as his role expanding settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, prosecutable as a war crime. Sharon ordered the removal of all Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and from four West Bank settlements in 2005, but the overall number of settlers in occupied territory increased significantly during his term as prime minister.

“It’s a shame that Sharon has gone to his grave without facing justice for his role in Sabra and Shatilla and other abuses,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “His passing is another grim reminder that years of virtual impunity for rights abuses have done nothing to bring Israeli-Palestinian peace any closer.”

As far as I can tell, HRW has never written an article like this about the death of any other person. Not Osama bin Laden, not Moammar Qaddafi, not Saddam Hussein. Only Ariel Sharon gets treated this way.

Now, if you do a search through HRW's archives of the word "Phalangist" (or "Keta'eb," which is the current name of that group in Lebanon, still an active political party) you will not find a single condemnation of their massacres in Sabra and Shalita. Every single time they are mentioned it is in context of - Ariel Sharon.

To HRW, the people who actually slaughter human beings and mutilate pregnant women are blameless. They are not worthy of any calls to investigation, there is no reason to seek justice from them.

How can this be? How can Human Rights Watch ignore the perpetrators of the crime and give the lion's share of responsibility to someone who, while he should have anticipated and stopped the crime, was not either its planner nor executor?

The answer is very simple, and it betrays the racism of Human Rights Watch and many other such groups, media and politicians:

Middle Easterners are expected to be savages. Arabs and Maronite Christians, in HRW's world, are animals. They have no free will - their actions are disgusting but inevitable, a consequence of their subhuman natures.

Jews, on the other hand, must act like human beings. They must prevent two sets of animals under their control from killing each other.  Indeed, this is how human beings should act, and Sharon was correctly slammed by Israeli commissions for his not being proactive in stopping what was almost inevitable.

Human Rights Watch, however, only blames Sharon. The esteemed organization cannot be bothered to condemn Maronites or Arabs for acting like this - that is their nature. This is pure racism.

Sabra and Shatila would not exist on the website of Human Rights Watch if it wasn't for Ariel Sharon. In fact, Lebanon saw much worse massacres in recent decades- even against Palestinian civilians - and HRW has not a word to say about those massacres. Only if a Jew can be blamed is it worth being brought up.

Another angle: Sharon forcibly expelled thousands of people from their homes in Gaza and the West Bank. This would seem to be against the Geneva Conventions. The ICRC interprets international law this way: "Individual or mass forcible transfers...are prohibited, regardless of their motive." But they were Jews, so HRW has nothing bad to say about that. Jews in the territories are the only group of people in the world that HRW insists should be forcibly removed from their homes. There is a double standard clear to all: international law must be twisted to ensure that Jews, the indigenous people of ancient Israel and Judah, are always violators of law while Arabs who invaded or moved in millenia later are nearly blameless in their actions.

To put the icing on the HRW anti-semitism cake, they also wrote this about antisemitic French "comedian" Dieudonné:

France made the wrong decision when it banned controversial comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, known for appallingly and insultingly mocking the Holocaust, from performing a number of his stand-up shows.

The government’s representative in Nantes banned a show scheduled for Thursday, on grounds of threats to public order. On the day of the show, one of the city’s courts overturned the ban. But Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls, who has spoken out openly and strongly against Dieudonné, appealed to France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’Etat, which later in the day upheld the ban.

On Friday, another court upheld the ban on another show by Dieudonné that was to take place in Tours in the evening. Welcoming the ruling by the Conseil d’Etat, Valls said that “The Republic has won”.

Yet a country’s dedication to human rights and democratic values is measured in the way it treats those with whom it disagrees, and in this instance, France has failed that test. France should respect freedom of expression, including those opinions that shock, offend, or disturb – unless they amount to inciting violence. Any restrictions to this freedom must be necessary and proportionate, and banning Dieudonné shows is neither. If there are indeed threats to public order, authorities should deploy enough police officers to deter violence, not ban the show altogether.

Please, HRW, explain how making fun of the Holocaust and Jews is anything less than incitement. How does creating an environment where Jews being gassed and burned is a subject of mockery make it a safer country for Jews to live in? There is a reason that record numbers of French Jews moved to Israel this year, but, hey, HRW probably considers that a war crime as well.

And, of course, Arab media regularly has much more open incitement against Jews, as I have documented countless times. Yet to this day, HRW has never said a word against Arab antisemiticm and incitement to kill Jews.

HRW has a halo effect as being one of the most prestigious human rights organizations. And in some parts of the world, perhaps it does some good work. But its standards are twisted into a mockery of human rights when the subject or object of the reports happen to be Jews. The standard for Jews to tolerate hate against themselves is lower than that for anyone else; while the standard for Jews to act in a humane manner is much, much higher than that of their neighbors.

 It is hard to find this to be a coincidence.

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Bursting liberal assumptions about the peace process (updated)

In Monday's Washington Post, Richard Cohen argues that Binyamin Netanyahu has to make peace, now, with the Palestinian Arabs:

A moderate and pragmatic Palestinian leadership has actually emerged in the West Bank (but not, for sure, in Gaza), terrorism has been denounced, rejected and, in the West Bank, all but disappeared. A Palestinian state in some sort of pupa form is taking shape, even able to police itself. The trumpeted unification of Fatah and Hamas is indeed a problem — the latter being a virulently anti-Semitic terrorist organization — but even here, where there’s a will there’s a way.

I can understand Netanyahu’s reluctance to move off the dime. The Arab world is in flux. Zealots, radicals and anti-Semites are vying for influence. The region’s so-called revolutions are actually counterrevolutions — reversing the policies of the military men who secularized their governments and tempered their hot hate of Israel with cold pragmatism. The region may not be getting ahead of history but returning to it. It could be a swell time to do nothing.

...Time has not only moved on but, as Obama pointed out, it is no longer on Israel’s side. The occupied West Bank is a looming demographic disaster, and the world has embraced the Palestinian cause. Today’s moderate Palestinian leadership may disappear tomorrow, and the 1967 borders are no less defensible than the current ones — missiles and rockets do not pause for barbed wire.

In my talk on Monday night I spent a little time discussing how important it is to dissect anti-Israel arguments to expose their fallacies. Here is a wonderful example that shows the fallacies not only of this specific article but from many liberals who push Israel to make one-sided concessions for "peace."

Cohen builds a case. He states, accurately, that the current PA leadership appears more moderate than any other. His conclusion is that this is therefore the time for Israel to be more pro-active - which means to make more concessions - to break the deadlock. If Israel waits too long, Cohen says, then the current leadership could disappear and be replaced by something worse.

What are Cohen's unstated assumptions and implications?

The major fallacy is the same one that many, many people make. It is that a peace treaty that results in a Palestinian Arab state would represent a real, permanent peace, one where neither side will have any claims against the other, where terrorist groups disappear or change their ways. Since that is a laudable goal, it is important to do whatever is needed to get there.

But what if that endgame is impossible? What if Palestinian Arab groups never agree to forgo the "right of return" or parts of Jerusalem or settlement blocs? In fact, is there any indication whatsoever that such demands would disappear?

Cohen's assumption has no basis in reality, no proof and is pure wishful thinking.

The next fallacy is that a relatively moderate Palestinian Arab leadership is equivalent to a truly moderate Palestinian Arab leadership. This fallacy is that since Abbas is not actively supporting terror, he is therefore someone who can be counted on to bring real peace.

This is false. Abbas has shown no flexibility on "return" or on the 1967 lines, nor on prisoners or Jerusalem. He has publicly bragged that he has not compromised at al on any of these issues. He still praises genocidal Jew-haters.. He has not stopped incitement in the PA media. For heaven's sake, he went out of his way to have a special meeting with child-murderer Samir Kuntar when he visited Lebanon! By any objective measure, he is not moderate. Comparing him favorably to Haniyeh or Arafat does not make him a Gandhi.

If the PA leadership was truly moderate and showed interest in compromising for peace, then Cohen might have a point that the ball is in Netanyahu's court. But by ignoring their coddling of terrorism, he is rewarding it by insisting that it is Israel, and Israel alone - the one party that has already given compromise after compromise - to move yet again.

The third fallacy is that real problems aren't real. Cohen says, "The trumpeted unification of Fatah and Hamas is indeed a problem" but dismisses it out of hand: "even here, where there’s a will there’s a way." The supposedly moderate PA has just agreed that an anti-semitic terror organization belongs in its government, yet to Cohen this is merely a small problem that can be swatted away with meaningless platitudes. To him, the necessity for peace (which would never be a true peace to begin with) is so important that Israel must ignore real risks and paper over real issues.

The fourth fallacy is that Israel is the intransigent party. Yet it is Abbas who broke off the talks, not Netanyahu. It is Abbas who has refused to return to the table despite pleas from the US president. It is Abbas that added new conditions for talks that had never been there before. Israel has always said it wants to talk without preconditions. Why is Cohen's column not aimed at Mahmoud Abbas?

The fifth fallacy, not explicit here but one that underlies many of the arguments, is that Netanyahu is the problem. If he could be forced out of office, the thinking goes, a more flexible Israeli leader would be able to break the deadlock.

This is also false. Netanyahu's recent US speeches are well within the mainstream Israeli consensus, Kadima and Likud alike. Negotiations with the previous government foundered on these very issues, these very same red lines, with only minor differences - differences that would not make the Palestinian Arab leadership any more flexible.

A sixth fallacy is implicit here, the idea that the PLO's uncompromising negotiating position is inherently just and Israel's is not because of the "occupation." Even though UNSC resolution 242 calls for compromise in setting borders, the mantra of "illegal occupation" has made people reflexively blame Israel when it tries to compromise instead of caving to all demands - something everyone knows must happen anyway. This gives the PLO effective veto power over any Israeli concessions.

The Palestinian Arab position that Jerusalem and "right of return" are prerequisites for peace has been swallowed whole by many liberals. In fact, why is an independent Palestinian Arab state dependent on that? Israel accepted the partition plan without Jerusalem, because it wanted to build an independent state above all to be a refuge for the Jewish nation worldwide. If Palestinian Arabs want a state so badly, why is Jerusalem a prerequisite for it to be viable? Their insistence of these issues do not, in themselves, make them critical. In fact, they call into question whether the end game for the Palestinian Arabs is to build a state - or to destroy one. When even the Likud leader publicly calls for a Palestinian Arab state in front of millions of TV viewers, it is hard to argue that Israel is against it. So what do the Palestinian Arabs really want, and if things are so desperate, why aren't they feeling pressure to come back to the table?

By embracing the Palestinian Arab narrative of preconditions, peace becomes less likely, not more.

Cohen knows deep down that Palestinian Arabs have not embraced peace, and are not likely to. There is one assumption he makes that is accurate: that the next PA leadership is not likely to be as moderate as today's. Hamas will have a big influence in the next PA government, no matter what.  He knows - or should know - that Palestinian Arabs do not have any moral qualms against suicide bombings, but their respite is tactical. What does this mean for the future of the peace process? Doesn't it mean that Abbas and Fayyad, for all their vaunted moderation, are out of touch with how Palestinian Arabs really think? Doesn't it mean that there is serious tension within the PA as to whether Abbas is too peaceful and too cooperative with the US and Israel? Why does it make sense to force a peace agreement onto a people who do not want to live with its provisions?

For people like Cohen, the goal is a signed peace agreement - but that is not anything close to real peace. He assumes that the two are identical, but this is the most fatal assumption of all. Israel's insistence on its red lines is to ensure both a real peace and the ability to defend itself if that peace should go south - a very reasonable concern given what is happening in the Arab world today.

There is no shortage of people who say they have Israel's best interests at heart by forcing it to make concessions that would compromise its own security, both short term and long term. Those people need to take a long hard look at their underlying assumptions. Too often, they allow their desire for an agreement overwhelm their ability to soberly look at both the pros and cons of that very agreement. They don't even consider what might happen the day after an agreement is signed.

The goal is a real peace. Israelis have yearned for that moment since the state was born. Israel has made concession after concession - giving up real, tangible assets like land and oil fields and entire beautiful towns - to reach that goal. It is insulting to say that it is the Israeli side that needs to do yet more to make peace with an entity that has walked away from peace talks, that praises terror, and that is now aligned with Hamas.

Real peace cannot be built on lies and fallacies and wishful thinking.

(h/t DG for #6)

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Omar Barghouti's lies in HuffPo

In the Huffington Post, Omar Barghouti argues against an earlier article by Bernard-Henri Levy in order to justify the anti-Israel BDS movement.

It doesn't take very long before one sees that the truth is not exactly Barghouti's strong suit.

The fact is the BDS Call was launched by a great majority in Palestinian civil society on July 9, 2005, as a qualitatively new phase in the global struggle for Palestinian freedom, justice, and self-determination. More than 170 leading Palestinian political parties, trade union federations, women's unions, refugee rights groups, NGOs, and grassroots organizations called for a boycott against Israel until it fully complies with its obligations under international law.

Do the organizations behind the boycott really represent the majority of Palestinian society?

I found the list of organizations that signed on to BDS on the website he cited, and a good number of them are not based in "Palestine" but rather in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Europe and North America. As far as I can see, there is not a single political party on that list. And if all the 170 organizations signed on in 2005, as the website says, then that means that not too many have signed on since then!

The Palestinian Arab organizations that signed onto BDS are a motley crew of trade unions, highly anti-Israel organizations like "Al-Awda" which agitates to destroy Israel completely, and some pseudo-"human rights" organizations like Addameer which inflates the number of Arabs arrested by Israel by at least a factor of a hundred.

Apparently, lying comes naturally to all BDS supporters!

However, the Palestinian Authority does not support BDS. Most Palestinian Arabs consume Israeli goods. I daresay that one will be able to find plenty of Israeli products in the offices of most of the West Bank and Gaza organizations listed.

Not only that, but most Palestinian Arab trade unions don't support BDS! In fact, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) is explicitly against BDS. (h/t Zach N)

The BDS movement tries to represent itself as being far larger than it is, but if you want a laugh, look at the "Achievements Calendar" on the BDS Movement website.

It is, as far as I can tell, completely empty!

He goes on:

"Rooted in a century-old history of civil, nonviolent resistance ..."

I always laugh when I see this claim made. The liars who say that the Palestinian Arab "resistance" movement was nonviolent usually point to the beginning of the 1936-9 riots, which started with a strike. Of course, that didn't last long, and by the time it was over there were thousands of casualties - most of them Arab, and many of them injured and killed by other Arabs - for not adhering to the strike!

Palestinian Arab terrorism has evolved since then, to airplane hijackings, suicide bombings and shooting rockets at women and children. All of which are supported, implicitly or explicitly, by many of these same "civil society" organizations listed.

Even today, when Palestinian Arabs talk about "non-violent resistance," they include throwing large rocks through the windshields of cars belonging to civilians who happen to pass by the wrong neighborhood.

[T]he BDS National Committee (BNC) [is] anchored in deep respect for international law and universal human rights...

The entire point of the BDS initiative is to deny and destroy the right of the Jewish nation to self-determination. That is its entire raison d'être. To say that is based on human rights is a very bad joke - yet this lie is one that is used repeatedly.

The BDS movement, being strictly rights-based, has consistently avoided taking any position regarding the one-state/two-states debate, emphasizing instead the three basic rights that need to be realized in any political solution. Ending the Israeli occupation that started in 1967 of all Arab territories, ending Israel's system of legalized and institutionalized discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens, and recognizing the UN-sanctioned rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin are the three basic principles of the movement.

There is no UN-sanctioned right for the Palestinian Arabs to "return.' The 1949 UNGA Resolution 194 that they love to use has phraseology that limits this "right," it does not extend to the descendants, it was a General Assembly resolution with no legal weight, and it was roundly rejected by the Arab world anyway. It is simply a BDS and Palestinian Arab lie to take portions of one of its fifteen paragraphs as the holiest of holies while utterly disregarding the rest of the resolution.

Mr. Levy completely misrepresents my position on the matter. Citing a 2003 article of mine, he outlandishly claims that I endorse a "two-Palestines" solution....For more than 27 years, I've consistently and openly advocated a secular, democratic state in the entire area of historic Palestine.

Either way, the point of the BDS movement is to destroy the Jewish state. No two ways about that.

And when Barghouti says "historic Palestine" he is ignoring history and betraying the fact that the BDS movement is only interested in the portions of "historic Palestine" that happens to be controlled by Jews.After all, portions of Jordan were once considered "eastern Palestine" yet not one BDSer will ever insist that Jordan give up its portion of historic Palestine!

The BDS movement against Israel could not care less whether it is a Jewish, Muslim, Catholic or Hindu state; all that matters is that it is a colonial oppressor that persistently denies the Palestinian people their basic rights. Is this too difficult to understand?

If that was remotely the case, then the BDS movement would boycott every single Arab country - because every one of them has discriminatory laws to disallow Palestinian Arabs from becoming fully naturalized citizens of their states. Where are the boycotts of Lebanon? Saudi Arabia? Even Jordan has been systematically taking away Jordanian citizenship from their citizens of Palestinian origin.

Yet the BDS movement is silent on the matter.

The fact that they only call for sanctions against Israel indicates - actually, it proves - that anti-semitism is the root of the entire movement. Not that all of its members consciously realize it or not, but there can be no other explanation.

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Jeffrey Goldberg's mistake

Here is the crux of a column by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic:

Peace will not come without the birth of a Palestinian state on the West Bank which has its capital in East Jerusalem. I'm as sure of that as I am of anything in the Middle East. Of course, peace may not come even with the birth of this state -- I'm no longer quite so sure in the possiblity, or at least in the availability, of peace -- but it will surely never happen without it.

What is peace?

If peace means the settlement of all conflict with everyone living happily side by side and the lion lying down with the lamb, then perhaps Goldberg has a point - Palestinian Arabs will not be happy or satisfied without Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian Arab state, and, by definition, there will never be peace.

From a purely logical perspective, there is no reason Jerusalem must be the capital of "Palestine." Ramallah is fulfilling the role nicely. The only reason it supposedly must be their capital is because they assert it, repeatedly. Together with that demand is their implicit threat that peace will never happen without dividing Jerusalem. Goldberg, for good reason, believes them.

There is a major flaw with this thought process, though.

There are a number of other demands that the Palestinian Arabs have that are equally critical if you believe their statements. First and foremost is the "right to return" - to destroy Israel demographically by forcing Israel to accept millions of so-called "refugees" within its borders. They have been just as adamant and intransigent concerning that demand as they have been towards Jerusalem. If you take their statements at face value, the two are equally important.

And if you are taking their demands at face value, there will never be peace without the "right to return" just as there will never be peace without their control over what Goldberg mistakenly capitalizes as "East Jerusalem."

So why is the demand for Israel to capitulate on Jerusalem considered by Goldberg a pre-requisite for peace, while their demand for the right to return is not?

The reason is obvious. Goldberg doesn't believe that Israel would ever accept the right to return, and therefore it is, to his mind, off the table. He is making an assumption that in any final peace agreement, the Palestinian Arabs will drop their demand for "return."

(The correlary to this is that if Israel had been adamant about a united Jerusalem, and if Barak had never put it on the table, Goldberg would not be writing this column today. It is Israel's lack of fortitude on the Jerusalem issue that makes Goldberg believe that Jerusalem is negotiable while "return" is not.)

So we have seen that the only reason to believe that Jerusalem is a non-negotiable demand is because Palestinian Arabs say it is. But they say that the "right to return" is just as non-negotiable. Goldberg's assumption that the latter demand will somehow not be an impediment to peace while the former would be is based on nothing more than wishful thinking and a belief system wedded to the idea of "everyone knows what a final agreement will look like."

But has Goldberg heard a single word from any Palestinian Arab leader, ever, that they would be more flexible on "return" than on Jerusalem? If they are equally important to the Palestinian Arab mind - and they are, undoubtedly - then Goldberg must admit that his vision of "peace" is impossible. While he uneasily admits that peace may not be possible even with splitting Jerusalem, the fact is that his own logic shows that it is impossible without "return" - which means that a real permanent peace is, literally, impossible.

This is not the only unstated assumption that Goldberg makes about what Palestinian Arabs will compromise on. It was only a couple of months ago that the Palestinian Ministry of Information posted a paper on their website asserting that there was no Jewish connection to the Western Wall. Even though that paper was removed under pressure from the US, it has been repeated in the official Palestinian Arabic media since then. This was Arafat's position and it is, today, the position of the "moderate" PA. Goldberg assumes what "everyone knows" - that the PLO would allow Jewish holy places would remain under Israeli rule. But that assumption is also belied by the facts, facts that Goldberg is unwilling to consider.

It is very distasteful for most people to contemplate that "peace is impossible." Americans especially are brought up to believe that all problems are solvable, and we have a blind spot to accepting that some problems cannot be solved. It is this blind spot that Goldberg is falling victim to. He believes, passionately, that peace is required, and that the only way to peace is with Israel compromising on the spiritual soul of its nation. And while he admits that it may not be enough, the very chance for peace is worth the sacrifice in his mind.

What is that sacrifice? At the very least, it means the forcible removal of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. As Yaacov Lozowick points out (follow the links as well,) it also means some very bizarre choices must be made in dividing Jerusalem. We are in a strange world where dividing a city that has always been unified with the exception of 19 anomalous years is considered a sine qua non for peace.

But what if peace, in the sense that Goldberg uses the term, is impossible? What if the "right to return" is non-negotiable as well? What if significant swaths of Palestinian Arab society do not accept any negotiated agreement? What if the Kotel once again becomes a battleground as it was in 1929?

Now, let's consider what kind of peace Jerusalemites would have under a divided city. It would be dangerous for Jews to visit their holy places. It is easily conceivable that instead of rocks, the Arabs who are a bit more extreme would be able to bring in RPGs and small rockets into their areas. (Only last week was the plot to shoot a missile to an Israeli sports stadium foiled - what would stop that from having been successful if Jerusalem was divided?) Today's sense of security would be instantly replaced with fear and uncertainty for all of Jerusalem's residents, and the city would suffer greatly as people are forced to leave.

The new "peace" would be worse than what we have today.

If we change our definition of "peace" from the fantasy idea of everyone in the Middle East living happily together to a more pragmatic "absence of conflict"," then we are suddenly given far more options than what "everyone knows."

Even with the tensions in the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood now referred to as Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem today is largely peaceful. It is certainly far more peaceful than it was seven years ago during the height of the intifada - a war that was the result of a "peace process" failing, it will be recalled. It is certainly more peaceful than it was in 1948 or 1936 or 1929. Only since Israel reunified the city has it been possible for Jews to walk to their holiest places without fear of being beaten or killed.

If this sort of peace is the goal - if we accept that the comprehensive peace that would make everyone happy is literally impossible, and we decide we want to manage conflict rather than eliminate it - then Jerusalem must remain undivided. It must remain under Jewish control. Only under Jewish rule has there been truly free access to the holy places (with the ironic exception of Jews being able to visit their own holiest spot on the Temple Mount.) Only under Jewish rule has Jerusalem grown and thrived.

It is not a huge surprise to find that under Jewish rule there is a museum of Islamic art in a unified Jerusalem. Can one imagine a similar museum of Jewish art under an Arab-controlled portion of Jerusalem?

Only under Jewish rule can there be a reasonable peace for the residents of Jerusalem, Arab and Jew alike.

Too many people are ready to sacrifice the lives and safety of thousands of people for the tiny chance for a "peace" that will never be. Set your sights a little lower and try for a realistic alternative, and peace is not only possible - it is here, today.

It would be the height of folly to create a city that would inevitably be at war with itself in the name of  "peace."

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Facts and logic do not work on the ideologues

Ha'aretz this morning has another article that twists the facts of the Abu Rahma case. This one, by Gideon Levy, blames the IDF for what he thinks is clear evidence that Jawaher Abu Rahma's death, and he calls the IDF spokespeople liars.

Now there is no doubt that the IDF has not handled this as well as they should have. But what is even more clear is that there is no way that a healthy person with no other medical condition will be killed by a weak concentration of tear gas that hovered for a few seconds from between 150 and 500 meters away, depending on the version of the story.

So I commented on the story:

Never in history has anyone been documented of dying from CS tear gas inhalation outdoors - let alone from 150 meters away from the gas source. Never. It is essentially impossible to breathe in a lethal concentration of CS gas for the amount of time necessary for a healthy person to die in a ventilated area. Levy and Haaretz, by insisting otherwise, are the liars.

I received two responses. The first one was from Darwish:

Thank you for clearing that up. Now can you please list your credentials to lend support to your stated "facts."

So Ha'aretz has scientific credentials that I lack. I didn't know that.

The second one was:

How do you know all this? Researched intensively on tear gas use over the past 50 years have you? Doctorate in the subject? Even if this poor girl did have an underlying condition, it was evidently the gas which led to her death. Whether 99.9% of the population would not have died under the same circumstances is really not the issue. THe IDF should step up and take responsibility. Their constant evasion of responsibility is totally counterproductive.

So I answered:

Sources? Sure!
Physicians for Human Rights 1989 paper on tear gas
Archives of Toxicology vol 77 number 10 (misquoted by Haaretz on Friday)
BMJ June 2009
And, finally, Prof. Dr. Uwe Heinrich in his paper on CS at Waco said "There are no reports on human death related to CS exposure" in 2000.

Haaretz apparently doesn't let me put in URLs, but the reports are out there - IF you care about the truth and not simply finding fault with Israel.

(I had first tried putting in URLs to the blog, which Ha'aretz rejected.)

The funny thing is that my fact-based response, which anyone could Google, got seven "thumbs up" and five "thumbs down." (My original post also received a healthy number of "thumbs down.")

Now, why would anyone disapprove a post that gives the real research and unbiased information?

The only conclusion you can draw is that a lot of people are emotionally invested in the idea that the IDF is filed with murderers and liars, and any fact - no matter how tangential - that disturbs that meme is viewed somehow as a threat to their cherished viewpoint. Instead of shaking them up, it strengthens their resolve to fight.

In other words, logic and facts are useless. These people are following a religion, the religion of IDF-hatred, and convincing them otherwise is as useless as using logic against a Christian fundamentalist or an Apple Macintosh fan. One someone is emotionally invested, then - game over. This is why it is so difficult to find people who who publicly give out their opinions who are willing to admit to or correct their mistakes.

From a hasbara perspective, it is useless to try to convince the ideologues that they are wrong. Practically none of them can listen to facts that contradict their worldview without getting offended, and that very offense shuts down whatever little ability they may have had to listen to logic. It is a form of primitive flight or fight.

I am convinced, however, that most people do not have any strong opinions, and sort of go with the flow - whatever they glean from the headlines. These are the people that need to be targeted with facts - and with soundbites, posters, videos, and so on. When going into battle against the frothing haters like Levy and his fans, the important thing is to remember who the audience is.

It isn't the other side. It's the lurkers.

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