Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Freedom of the press, PalArab style (XII)

Today it is Fatah's turn to threaten and beat journalists.

From Ma'an (autotranslated):

has seen the area around Hebron University today, Sunday, clashes between the Palestinian security services and students belong to the Islamic bloc Hamas, intervened when settling devices student conference held in front of the university students bloc.

Al "Ma'an" that the university administration refused Conference held inside the university campus, owing to the suspension of the study today, which made a request to Hamas held in the street in front of the university, and then intervened by security agencies rushed Badd using big sticks and batons to disperse them, which led to a number casualties among students and arresting others.

Security agencies and assaulted a number of journalists and newspaper photographers, and prevented them from covering the event.

Our correspondent reported that the security forces detained correspondents and photographers working with local media and global levels, and prevented them from using cellular phones or cameras, and after the intervention of the Hebron area commander Brigadier corner Samih summer, allowed for workers in the media to exercise their work, but that security agencies took assaulting them again and to prevent them from performing their work.

The devices physically assaulted a photographer Reuters applies Jamal, and his colleague, safe and Zooz, photographer USAID "AP" Nasser Alchioukhi, photographer and the French news agency Hazem Bader, and television cameraman hope in Hebron Imad reply, where he was transferred to Al Ahli Hospital in Hebron for treatment.

The medical sources at Al-Ahli hospital, the reporters were some bruises after being assaulted with batons and their health reassuring.

Condemned applies Jamal photographer Reuters by security agencies stroke beaten his colleagues, after giving him permission for photography in the region.

Ma'an names the journalists who were beaten, including those from AP and Reuters. So how do the wire services cover the story?

AP mentions it incidentally:

The security also forbade journalists from taking pictures, confiscating the camera of one photographer, witnesses said. Some journalists were also beaten.

As of this moment, Reuters and AFP have not covered this story at all - neither the demonstration with Fatah beating students nor Fatah beating journalists. It looks like the combination of supporting the Fatah thugs as "moderates" and being intimidated by them allows Arab terrorists, once again, to minimize negative coverage of their violence.

The Irish conspiracy

Hilarious.

In fact, the biggest hidden influence in American politics is no doubt the Irish Conspiracy. Largely staying in the background of American life, the Irish have penetrated all our institutions, even the Presidency itself. No less than twelve American presidents are believed to have had Irish ancestry. (See Kennedy, Reagan). Irish politicians have been rife at all levels of American government (Tip O'Neill, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, Ed Rendell).

In many cities entire police and fire departments are stacked with the Irish. The iron fist of paramilitary dominance is exercised every year for all the world to see, as Fifth Avenue in New York City has its center line painted green and the Chicago River flows into Lake Michigan dyed green on St. Patrick's Day, a demonstration of raw power that chills to the bone knowledgeable initiates into the secrets of this cabal. None will ever reveal to the rest of us the dark truths they hide......Clever conspirators always divert attention to sidewhows, lest their true powers become visible. The very lack of active public discussion of the Irish Conspiracy is the most convincing proof of all of the real power exercised by it, and the cunning intelligence of the puppet masters behind it.

(h/t Sophia via Prosemiteundercover)

AP canonizes Finkelstein

This is an almost unreal cheerleading article by AP on Norman Finkelstein, the self-hating Jew and Israel-basher who was denied tenure from DePaul University:

In the home of Norman Finkelstein's youth, talk about a watchful God was not welcome. His parents survived concentration camps during the Holocaust, but all their relatives died. Their belief in God died with them.

As a scholar, when Finkelstein saw what he considered to be some Jewish groups' exploitation of the Holocaust for political and financial gain, he thought about his parents and began to call those groups to task.

On Wednesday, Finkelstein resigned from his job as a political scientist at DePaul University, months after he was denied tenure at the school where his views and scholarship have come under fire.

“I felt that the memory of my late parents' suffering was being cheapened by this industry that was reducing their suffering to the moral stature of a Monte Carlo casino,” said the Brooklyn-born Finkelstein.

...Finkelstein's regard for the students was clear Wednesday when he heaped praise on them while reading a statement announcing his resignation. On the way to tell students he was leaving – knowing his views make it an almost certainty he will never teach college students again – Finkestein was asked what he would do now.

He paused for a few seconds, before he said, almost in a whisper, “I like to teach.”

Dozens of students showed up Wednesday to support Finkelstein and stage a protest outside the college president's office. “You are a great teacher,” one student tearfully told Finkelstein.

“He was consistently ranked high in student reviews, (and he) received some of the highest marks in the political science department,” said student Thomas Bellino, 22. Bellino said Finkelstein was one of his best teachers at DePaul.

Still, Finkelstein knew his views were putting his job and prospects of tenure at risk. He recalled that a few years ago he was called into the office of the university president after his writings caused a furor.

“He said 'We'll keep him but we will take a hit,'” Finkelstein said.

Tenure, Finkelstein said, was another matter entirely: “I recognize if they had me on campus as a tenured faculty I would be an albatross for them for 20 years,” he said.

Still, Finkelstein kept it up, something he practically promised to do as far back as 1995, six years before he came to DePaul, in the dedication he wrote to his parents for his first book: “May I never forget or forgive what was done to you.”

AP seems to be saying that Finkelstein is honoring his parents and the Holocaust by writing inconsistent, historically inaccurate books blaming Jews for various perceived crimes. The article doesn't quote a single specific criticism of Finkelstein - he is made into a martyr for his views, which AP clearly sympathizes with.

The New York Times review of Finkelstein's Holocaust book states:

There is something sad in this warping of intelligence, and in this perversion of moral indignation. There is also something indecent about it, something juvenile, self-righteous, arrogant and stupid.

Benny Morris, who Finkelstein claims to admire, stated about him, "Norman Finkelstein is a notorious distorter of facts and of my work, not a serious or honest historian."

This article's praising of a man who has consistently sacrificed honesty and accuracy on the altar of his own biases is beyond disgusting.

Strong correlation between PalArab monetary aid and murders

CAMERA just came out with a report that has an astounding graph, showing a very strong correlation between the amount of aid given to Palestinian Arabs and the number of murders that they perform the following year (both Israeli and PalArab victims):

CAMERA makes the point that aid does not tend to moderate Palestinian Arabs, as is its intent, but on the contrary to radicalize them and allow them to purchase more weapons and ammunition.

In short, it means that giving Palestinian Arabs more money is one of the surest ways, historically, to ensure more dead people the following year.

Freedom of the press, PalArab style (XI)

More details on this morning's festivities specifically concerning journalists who tried to cover the Fatah protest rallies:

Across Gaza, seven journalists covering the clashes were beaten and two of them were later detained, witnesses and reporters said. Two Associated Press staffers and another news photographer were also briefly detained by Hamas men.
In Jebaliya, the Hamas security men ordered journalists to stop filming and move away.
One security officer told reporters, "If a single shot is on TV, you know what will happen." He then drew his finger across his throat. At one point a Hamas security man tried to take a photographer's camera.
"I identified myself as a journalist and showed him my card, my journalist card, I told him, 'If you want the tape take the tape, I don't care,' but they kept on beating me and took the camera," Muhammad Abu Sido, a cameraman for a Palestinian news service, told AP Television News.
Similar incidents of harassment against journalists took place during previous weeks' Fatah protests.
Taher Nunu, a Hamas government spokesman in charge of coordinating media coverage, said the reports of harassment of journalists "were individual cases and won't be repeated," and that he was working to free the detained reporters.

AFP massively spins poll of Israelis to make them look insecure

From AFP:

JERUSALEM (AFP) - A quarter of Jewish Israelis doubt that Israel will exist long-term and more than 70 percent have a bad assessment of the country's security situation, an opinion poll revealed on Friday.

When asked if they "felt certain that Israel will exist in the distant future", 25 percent of respondents said no and 74 percent of the respondents said yes, according to the results published in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

Without going into what exactly the "distant future" means, if a poll shows a 3-1 margin on a question, the minority is usually not the newsworthy part, let alone a story lead.

But once AFP is on a roll, it really gets going...

Only 57 percent of respondents said it was safer for Jewish people to live in Israel than in the West, compared to 39 percent who said it was safer in the West or amounted to the same thing.

Let's examine this one: Israelis are the ones who are under attack, and they still say by a large margin that it is safer to live in Israel than outside - and AFP tries to make it look like exactly the opposite!

Although 86 percent felt Israel was a good place to live and 86 percent described their mood as "good" as opposed to "bad", 72 percent of respondents said they were dissatisfied with the security situation in the country.

Some 26 percent described the security situation as "good".

The poll was carried out by an independent institute. It was based on a sample of about 500 Jewish Israelis and had a margin of error of 4.5 percent.

Using the word "although," AFP minimizes the astounding statistics saying that 86% are very happy living in Israel in order to highlight the fact that the security situation is not satisfactory - which is hardly contradictory.

In other words, a poll shows Israelis are by a huge majority happy with their lives and optimistic about the future, and AFP does literally everything possible short of lying to make Israelis look miserable and insecure.

Just to emphasize ther point, here's how AFP summarizes this article in the picture caption accompanying the story:

An opinion poll revealed that a quarter of Jewish Israelis doubt that Israel will exist long-term and more than 70 percent have a bad assessment of the country's security situation.

No Gaza prayer deaths, but...

According to Palestine Press Agency (Arabic), 65 Fatah supporters were injured during Hamas/Fatah clashes this morning, two seriously. Six journalists were arrested by Hamas as well and their film confiscated. Many Fatah members were arrested.

Some pictures managed to get through. In this one, Reuters charmingly says:

Security forces from the Hamas Islamist movement arrest a member of the Fatah movement during clashes in the southern Gaza strip September 7, 2007

Doesn't this look like a policeman arresting someone?

Another pic:

Palestinian members of the Hamas Executive Force use their batons as they detain a Fatah supporter during clashes at a protest following Muslim prayers in Gaza City, Friday, Sept. 7, 2007.

UPDATE: A 14 year old student was stabbed by another in Qalqiya. 521.

UPDATE 2: The body of a person whose name is translated as "Talaat Mohamed Abdel Karim Beekeeper" was found in Netzarim in Gaza, four days after he was abducted by Hamas, his hands and feet bound. 522.

Moral relativism's ugly progeny

Many years ago, before blogs and even before the Web, we had Usenet. It was effectively a world-wide bulletin board in which it could take days for a message to propagate through the system, and when almost everyone used their real names.

In the early 1990s a group of Holocaust revisionists started spamming dozens of newsgroups with their heavily footnoted "proofs" that the Holocaust never happened. This upset a lot of people, and many people spent countless hours documenting proofs that the Holocaust did happen.

I remember seeing one post from someone saying that, after reading both sides of the issue, he was convinced that the truth was somewhere in the middle.

Here we see the effectiveness of lies. As long as they are dressed up with large words and references to source material that sound legitimate, and as long as the audience is uneducated on the matter, they are just as effective as the truth. The truth does not always win out - the winners are the ones with the best presentation who can appeal to the existing worldviews of people.

In this case, it is not only a situation of truth versus lies - it is also a case of right versus wrong, of morality against immorality. In a society where everything is relative, where everybody has an equal claim to the truth, where concepts of morality are considered naive - such a society is in deep trouble.

Two news stories that reflect this complete lack of both a moral compass and the ability to distinguish truth from lies came out yesterday.

In one, 42% of Democrats think either that President Bush caused 9/11 or knew about it ahead of time and let it happen. This is a direct result of the so-called "9/11 Truthers" who have come out with insane conspiracy theories and publicizing them to people who just don't have a clue. When the theories happen to coincide with existing prejudices, in this case against Republicans, they are much easier to swallow. It is a modern manifestation of the logic of Holocaust denial.

The other troubling story was that many younger, non-religious Jews have no attachment to Israel and most would not find it tragic if Israel would be destroyed. Again, this is a result of a combination of ignorance and relentless "even-handedness" where they have grown up seeing Israel demonized in the media and put on an equivalent moral plateau with the Arab world, although their own disenchantment with being brought up with an empty form of Judaism certainly plays a part as well.

Is the truth in between? Yes, if you define "in between" as being anywhere between 0.000% and 100%. The liars will hammer away at the 0.1% that supports their thesis and the ignorant will think that proof of of the 0.1% means that the truth is at 50%.

We are raising a generation of people who have no ability to think and check facts independently, who are not given the tools to distinguish fact from fiction, and who believe that there is no such thing as being "right." This is a truly frightening prospect.

UPDATE: Soccer Dad in the comments here mentions another factor for the Jewish apathy towards Israel - the unremitting left wing bias that Jewish weekly papers have towards Israel.

How much do Arab countries contribute to UNRWA?

Close to zero:

Things improved slightly by 2006:

COUNTRY	REGULAR BUDGET	NON-REGULAR BUDGET	GRAND TOTAL
AUSTRALIA	3,307,087	2,768,625	6,075,712
AUSTRIA	940,000	1,450,284	2,390,284
BAHRAIN	30,000	0	30,000
BELGIUM	2,434,918	1,317,511	3,752,429
BULGARIA	10,000	0	10,000
CANADA	8,620,690	19,106,433	27,727,123
CHINA	80,000	0	80,000
COLOMBIA	4,143	0	4,143
CYPRUS	66,300	0	66,300
CZECH REPUBLIC	70,735	0	70,735
DENMARK	10,012,378	3,713,010	13,725,388
EGYPT	10,000	0	10,000
FINLAND	3,105,590	2,040,816	5,146,406
FRANCE	8,529,015	3,444,638	11,973,653
GERMANY	2,967,819	5,334,108	8,301,927
GREECE	400,000	0	400,000
HOLY SEE	20,000	0	20,000
ICELAND	100,000	0	100,000
INDIA	20,000	0	20,000
IRELAND	3,129,574	637,755	3,767,329
ITALY	0	2,962,923	2,962,923
JAPAN	7,031,687	6,832,703	13,864,390
JORDAN	656,133	0	656,133
KOREA, REPUBLIC OF	100,000	0	100,000
KUWAIT	1,500,000	999,958	2,499,958
LEBANON	17,700	0	17,700
LIECHTENSTEIN	22,599	0	22,599
LUXEMBOURG	2,073,460	241,838	2,315,298
MALAYSIA	25,000	0	25,000
MEXICO	5,000	0	5,000
MONACO	5,000	0	5,000
MOROCCO	23,000	0	23,000
NETHERLANDS	15,766,924	2,418,716	18,185,640
NEW ZEALAND	204,900	497,400	702,300
NORWAY	14,749,263	10,565,995	25,315,258
PAKISTAN	17,468	0	17,468
PALESTINE	853,772	0	853,772
POLAND	50,000	0	50,000
PORTUGAL	100,000	0	100,000
SAUDI ARABIA	1,200,000	0	1,200,000
SOUTH AFRICA	159,212	0	159,212
SPAIN	8,161,709	5,157,602	13,319,311
SPAIN (CATALONIA)	0	665,554	665,554
SPAIN (VALENCIA) 1/	0	228,823	228,823
SPAIN (BASQUE) 1/	0	194,291	194,291
SPAIN (ZARAGOZA) 1/	0	52,701	52,701
SPAIN (TEULADA) 1/	0	1,318	1,318
SWEDEN	29,635,488	11,552,665	41,188,153
SWITZERLAND	6,963,359	5,842,001	12,805,360
SYRIA	85,293	0	85,293
THAILAND	30,000	0	30,000
TUNISIA	9,302	0	9,302
TURKEY	500,000	1,251,880	1,751,880
U.A.E.	500,000	0	500,000
UNITED KINGDOM	26,191,696	897,088	27,088,784
USA	79,650,000	57,350,000	137,000,000
TOTAL GOVERNMENTS	240,146,214	147,526,636	387,672,850

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

96,470,176

46,783,440

143,253,616

The total Arab nation percentage of the UNRWA budget is about 1.1% .

Fourteen individual nations give more money to Palestinian Arabs through UNRWA than the combined amount given by Arab nations, not counting the aggregate EU contribution. Apparently, Finland cares more about Palestinian Arabs more than all the Arab nations combined.

A UAE "charitable foundation" gave $6 million to UNRWA, more than the combined Arab governments did.

Update on tomorrow's Fatah/Hamas prayer showdown

Today, Hamas staged their own anti-Fatah rallies to blunt tomorrow's prayer protests planned by Fatah.

Tonight, Hamas is filling all public areas in Gaza with garbage, presumably to make those areas unsuitable for prayer or difficult to access (I haven't been able to determine exactly what kind of garbage makes a place unsuitable, certainly urine and feces do but I do not know if Hamas has gone that far.)

Meanwhile, Hamas is arresting all the Fatah members they can to stave off the protests.

PCHR has documented numerous cases of torture by Hamas in recent weeks.

Another pseudo-intellectual whiny article blaming Israel for everything wrong in the Arab world

I can't get enough of these exercises in self-delusion that the Arab intelligentsia come out with so often:

The damage done to the Arabs by Israel’s creation is an untold story in the West. To understand it, you have to set aside the Israeli narrative and the idea of Arabs as fanatical, backward warmongers irrationally bent on destroying a modern, democratic and peaceable state.

Fair enough. Let's see:

For the Arabs, Israel’s presence in their midst has been disastrous. It has led to six major wars, forced them to militarise when they could not afford it, distorted their development, split their ranks and encouraged their fragmentation into ethnic and religious minorities, provoked the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and reared generations of young Arabs on conflict, hatred and hostility. It has forced them to host a state that dominated them and ensured continued western hegemony in their region. A disproportionate amount of damage was borne by the frontline states of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. But now Iraq and the rest of the Arab world are affected, as is Arab society in general.

Hmmm....the only way I can understand the Arab world wanting so badly to destroy Israel since 1948, ramping up its military, threatening Israel at every turn, moving its vast resources from development into war and terror - is to say that they are "fanatical, backward warmongers irrationally bent on destroying a modern, democratic and peaceable state." But that might just be me.

On each visit to the Arab world I am struck by its immense resources and its varied geography, history and customs, from Yemen to the Levant, sweeping through Egypt and Sudan to its westernmost point in Morocco. Such diversity could have made this the wonder of the world, physically beautiful, self-sufficient and wealthy. Instead, it is backward, poor and divided. This is not all Israel’s fault, but its existence has contributed significantly to the Arabs’ decline, and ignoring Israel’s role in the story would be misleading.

Yup, the existence of a few million Jews in a tiny sliver of land amongst a billion Arabs encompassing a large part of two continents obviously would contribute significantly to the Arab world's decline. Makes perfect sense!

The devastating and continuing effects of Israel’s establishment on the Palestinians are well documented, but they were not alone in paying the price for Israel’s creation. The Arab world was transformed by its imposition. No other event there since world war one has been so cataclysmic. There has not been a decade since 1948 when Israel has not been in combat with its neighbours. This has damaged the political process in the Arab world, which has come to depend on its army generals for leadership and to admire military strength and violence.

So it is Israel that forced the Arab world to admire military strength and violence! Ah, so!
The UN’s Arab Human Development Report in 2002, which revealed the extent of the Arabs’ retardation, was clear that Israel’s occupation had affected the region’s political and economic life, and that the Arab-Israeli conflict was “a major impediment to human development in the region”.
I took the liberty to download the actual report, and, believe it or not, that phrase does not appear at all! While the UN is harsh on Israeli "occupation" as always, the bulk of the report deals with Arabs' self-inflicted problems, not any perceived problems from without.

This is hardly surprising. The Arab states, struggling with post-independence when Israel was established, should have focused on their own political and social development. Instead, the frontline states were dragged into wars that diverted their resources into armaments and surveillance. After each defeat, they were forced to re-arm ever more extravagantly.

Oh, how they were forced to arm! Who can forget the Israeli threats to throw the Arabs into the Euphrates and Tigris? This borders being farcical.

Arab military spending in the late 1990s accounted for 7.4% of GNP (three times the world average of 2.4%). Since then it has grown by an annual 5%. As Israel acquired sophisticated arms from the United States, Arab states were pushed into trying to keep up at increasing expense, although the arms the Arabs bought from the US and Britain needed the sellers’ technical assistance for operation. These sales were thus designed to benefit western arms industries rather than help the Arab states protect themselves against aggression.

The continuing conflict has discouraged foreign and domestic investment in Arab states and led to a migration of skilled labour, further impoverishing local economies; in particular, it has exhausted and weakened the frontline states. Their economies have been grossly distorted towards militarisation at the expense of social and economic development. In 2002 average Arab expenditure on health and education combined was only 3.7% of GNP. Yet the Arabs had no choice but to militarise against what they saw as an expansionist Israel bent on taking their land. Israel did not set its borders with Egypt until the 1979 peace treaty and has still not done so with Syria or Lebanon.

The projection here is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

But beyond the idiotic reversal of facts, the author doesn't seem to recognize that Israel was forced to militarize itself on a per-capita basis far beyond that the Arabs were "forced" to do, and still Israel enjoyed a booming economy, outside investment, an influx of skilled laborers and thinkers, and it didn't abandon social services and internal development.

In other words, Israelis have no reason to write whiny articles like this blaming every problem on everybody else.

The rest of the article is more of the same, but it is another great indication of how little Arabs have the capability to self-criticize when they have an easy Jewish scapegoat next door.

And the author?

Ghada Karmi is Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, and author, most recently, of Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine (Pluto Press, London and Ann Arbor, 2007).

She is of course one of those Arabs who willingly left the Middle East - no doubt because of Israeli pressure!

PalArabs looking at everything through a lens of violence

The IDF foiled a major attack in Gaza today by Fatah and Islamic Jihad:

IDF forces killed five Palestinian gunmen en route to carry out an attack near Israel's border with central Gaza on Thursday afternoon.

Military sources said that the gunmen were advancing towards the Kissufim crossing in two cars when the IAF targeted their vehicles, thwarting the attack. Ground forces also fired on the gunmen.

The army said it was investigating the possibility that one of the vehicles had been rigged with explosives to serve as a car bomb.

The army said no soldiers were wounded and no damage was reported.

The Islamic Jihad and Fatah-allied Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

A spokesman for Islamic Jihad, Abu Ahmed, said a pickup truck crashed through the fence in central Gaza first, allowing an armored jeep to drive through.

The truck blew up inside the Israeli base (according to PIJ - EoZ) and militants inside the jeep began attacking soldiers with light arms and hand grenades, and an Israeli watchtower was blown up.

As usual, take the Islamic Jihad claims with a large grain of salt. But they do indicate that the intent of the operation was fairly sophisticated and large-scale. Thank God they were unsuccessful.

Because of this failure, it is unlikely that Western wire services will mention this story except in the context of "Israel kills 5 Palestinians."

It is notable that Islamic Jihad and Fatah consider this operation a success, because they claim that they managed to enter an IDF base. The fact that this is considered a success to them shows how much they have redefined "success" in order to assuage their extraordinarily low self-esteem.

It is also notable how the Palestinian Arab press is reporting on the Israeli Supreme Court ruling modifying the security barrier route around Bil'in. They are regarding this as a great victory, but not as a victory for non-violence or of the rule of law - they are regarding it as a victory for the "resistance." In other words, everything that PalArabs do is filtered through the prism of violence and even when something happens that is clearly not because of violence - on the contrary, if there was more violence in Bil'in chances are that the court would have ruled otherwise - even then, they celebrate it as a military victory.

The Arab psyche requires that their victories are seen as military, not diplomatic. Israeli concessions for peace are framed as being a result of successful military (i.e., terrorist) operations. In short, they define themselves as warriors, not as peacemakers.

Any peace agreement, from the Arab perspective, must be seen as being forcefully imposed by the Arab victors upon the hapless, weak Jewish victims. Anything less than that - any concessions on issues that they have held fast to for six decades - would be considered weakness and at odds with their own pretense of being proud warriors.

Which is yet another reason why a true peace is highly unlikely.

Shops on London's Edgware Road now "off-limits" to women

From Jewish Comment, by Carol Gould:

Recently I went into a well-known coffee chain in Edgware Road near Marble Arch. As I waited to be served I noticed the café was crowded but that I was the only female customer. Men in various permutations of Middle Eastern garb, including several in full head-to-toe keffiyah and robe, stared at me.

When I sat down and opened my bottle of apple juice I noticed it was fizzing. I called the server over and told her that the juice had fermented. ‘No -- English’ she said, throwing her arms up in despair. Another server came over and asked me what the problem seemed to be. I told her the juice had fermented and that they needed to check their fridge. She looked at the other woman and they shrugged.

I have to confess I have a short fuse about non-English people populating what seems to be 99% of every job in London and the Home Counties. I am spoilt because in recent years I have been to the USA several times and marvel at the stupendous service provided by young college students and other Americans who possess perfect English and are obliging beyond anyone’s expectations.

So, I became exasperated and said ‘Is there no-one working here who speaks English? This is Paddington - this is still a London neighbourhood.’

A well-dressed man came over and said ‘I speak English.’ I thought he was going to intervene on my behalf but instead came out with this astonishing observation:

‘You are a racist! You are a racist ape! Look at you-- you are an ape!’

I was dumbfounded. I came to London thirty-two years ago to soak up the culture of Dr Johnson and Chaucer and Milton, and in the autumn of my life am called an ape by a man from, well, perhaps Egypt, perhaps Palestine, perhaps Saudi Arabia..

Shocked, I glared at him, but he had to finish things off : ‘You want them to speak Hebrew, don’t you?’

I got up from my seat and went over to him and at the top of my voice said I would be proud to speak Hebrew if I could, it being the language of the Torah and of an ancient culture going back six-thousand years.

He then embarked on a tirade at me about the ‘five million Indians’ slaughtered in genocide in America. Meanwhile, the men in the café were in various states of laughter at me, and exhibiting great admiration for him.

Believe it or not, the server had in the meantime brought me a fresh juice which I calmly drank with my very un-Hebrew ham and cheese sandwich, and then I left. I wandered over to the flower shop and found myself commiserating with what seemed to be two Englishwomen who lived in a permanent state of fear in a neighbourhood they had called their own for generations. They told me I must have been mad going into that shop, as ‘all the establishments in Edgware Road are off-limits to us now.’

Read the whole thing.

Israel saving the world - again

From MSNBC:

SDE BOKER, Israel - Reflective dishes may be the answer to make solar energy competitive with conventional sources of power, Israeli scientists say.

A global race is on to find energy alternatives as subsidies tip the balance in favor of renewable sources of power, which answer security and climate change concerns about fossil fuels.

New-found demand for one such renewable source, solar energy, has hoovered up supply of the silicon raw material, prompting a search for alternatives.

A team at Israel’s Ben Gurion University believe they have found just that, in a far less known material that is more expensive than silicon but also more efficient when used with a reflective dish.

“The dish could be put in a sunny backyard and generate most of the home’s utility needs,” said David Faiman, a professor of physics at Ben Gurion University who has studied solar energy for 31 years in Israel’s Negev desert.

“The costs per watt are comparable to that of a conventional power plant, but without fuel,” Faiman added.

No pollution and no money to terror-supporting states. It doesn't get any better than that.

Who's demolishing Arab houses?

Why, it's Egypt! (H/T Solomonia via Backspin)

ISMAILIA, Egypt, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Sinai Bedouin blocked the road north from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh with burning tyres on Tuesday in protest at the demolition of 20 houses, police and Bedouin sources said.

Police earlier fired about 20 teargas canisters at Bedouin families who refused to evacuate their houses, which the authorities say were built without licences, they added....

They said a total of 1,500 unlicensed buildings were scheduled for demolition in the Sharm el-Sheikh area and not all of them belonged to Bedouin.

As Backspin points out, it has taken nearly seven years for Israel to demolish 1900 homes, and NGOs have been fixated on this issue. Where's the outrage when Arabs plan to demolish a roughly equivalent number of Arab homes in a much shorter timeframe?

One must conclude yet again that the "human rights" organizations are not nearly as interested in Arab human rights as they are in demonizing Israel. Which means that they are more bigoted (or, to use their term, "racist") than they accuse Israel of being.