Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, April 07, 2016

04/07 Links Pt1: Oren: Sanders should apologize for Gaza ‘blood libel’; Israel Has The Right To Defend Itself, But…

From Ian:

Michael Oren: Sanders should apologize for Gaza ‘blood libel’

Bernie Sanders should retract and apologize for his “libelous” suggestion that Israel killed more than 10,000 innocent Palestinians during the last Gaza war, MK Michael Oren said Thursday, asserting that the Democratic candidate’s misrepresentation ultimately serves the interests of Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Oren, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States between 2009 and 2013, argued that the presidential candidate’s comments delegitimize the Jewish state and endanger its security.
“First of all, he should get his facts right. Secondly, he owes Israel an apology,” the freshman lawmaker (Kulanu) told The Times of Israel in an interview.
“He accused us of a blood libel. He accused us of bombing hospitals. He accused us of killing 10,000 Palestinian civilians. Don’t you think that merits an apology?” Oren went on.
“He doesn’t mention the many thousands of Hamas rockets fired at us. He doesn’t mention the fact that Hamas hides behind civilians. He doesn’t mention the fact that we pulled out of Gaza in order to give the Palestinians a chance to experiment with statehood, and they turned it into an experiment with terror. He doesn’t mention any of that. That, to me, is libelous.”

Sanders yet to correct claim Israel killed ‘over 10,000’ Palestinian innocents

Two days after the New York Daily News published the transcript of its editorial board’s interview with Bernie Sanders, in which the Democratic presidential candidate twice inaccurately said he believed that Israel killed “over 10,000” innocent Palestinian civilians during the 2014 Gaza War, he had yet to correct his misstatement or issue an apology as of Wednesday evening.
Earlier Wednesday, the Anti-Defamation League, a major Jewish organization that monitors civil and human rights issues, urged Sanders to correct his misstatement. “Even the highest number of casualties claimed by Palestinian sources that include Hamas members engaged in attacking Israel is five times less than the number cited by Bernie Sanders,” noted ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt. “We urge Senator Sanders to correct his misstatements.” The ADL, a tax-exempt nonprofit, generally avoids inserting itself into the fray of political elections and declines to take positions on candidates running for public office.
Following the transcript’s publication, The Times of Israel reached out repeatedly to Sanders campaign communications director Michael Briggs and national press secretary Symone Sanders to ask whether the Vermont senator would acknowledge and correct his mistake in massively inflating even Hamas’s own estimation of how many civilian lives were lost during Operation Protective Edge. There was no response from either official.

Petition: Tell Bernie Sanders to Retract His Statement That "10,000" died in Gaza

Even Hamas, the existing government in Gaza, predicted a total death toll of 1,462 civilians killed in the conflict not 10,000.
Regardless of who we support in the upcoming election, we the undersigned call on Bernie Sanders to immediately retract and disavow his inaccurate and dangerous assertion about the death toll in the conflict in Gaza.
(Full disclosure, I am a supporter of Bernie Sanders but believe he needs to be called out when he gets it wrong)

Israeli minister says US candidate Sanders' Gaza death figures "loony"

An Israeli cabinet minister described as "loony" on Thursday an account by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of the number of Palestinian civilians killed in the 2014 Gaza war that went well beyond any official assessments.
The minister, Zeev Elkin, commenting on an interview by the Vermont senator in the New York Daily News on Monday, took a forgiving tack, saying politicians "sometimes make mistakes" in the heat of a campaign.
"I don't remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?" Sanders told the newspaper. "I do believe and I don't think I'm alone in believing that Israel's force was more indiscriminate than it should have been."
Sanders, who trails Hillary Clinton in the pledged delegates needed to win the nomination ahead of the Democratic party's July convention in Philadelphia, also criticised Gaza militants for launching rockets at Israel from civilian areas.
The war killed around 2,100 Palestinians, according to Gaza officials, Israel and foreign observers. The Palestinians say most of the dead were civilians. Israel says more than half were fighters. Israel lost 67 soldiers and six civilians in the war.
Asked about Sanders' toll, Elkin, using the Israeli military's term for the Gaza war, said in a radio interview: "Anyone who knows a little about what happened in Operation Protective Edge understands that this was a weird and loony statement."

The story has already been well covered. Bernie Sanders, campaigning for President, said to the New York Daily News:

Daily News: And I'm going to look at 2014, which was the latest conflict. What should Israel have done instead?

Sanders: You're asking me now to make not only decisions for the Israeli government but for the Israeli military, and I don't quite think I'm qualified to make decisions. But I think it is fair to say that the level of attacks against civilian areas...and I do know that the Palestinians, some of them, were using civilian areas to launch missiles. Makes it very difficult. But I think most international observers would say that the attacks against Gaza were indiscriminate and that a lot of innocent people were killed who should not have been killed. Look, we are living, for better or worse, in a world of high technology, whether it's drones out there that could, you know, take your nose off, and Israel has that technology. And I think there is a general belief that, with that technology, they could have been more discriminate in terms of taking out weapons that were threatening them.

...I'm just telling you that I happen to believe...anybody help me out here, because I don't remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?

Daily News: I think it's probably high, but we can look at that.

Sanders: I don't have it in my number...but I think it's over 10,000. My understanding is that a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled. Hospitals, I think, were bombed. So yeah, I do believe and I don't think I'm alone in believing that Israel's force was more indiscriminate than it should have been.

The problem isn't only that Sanders overstated the number of civilians killed in Gaza by about a factor of ten.

Because if and when a reporter calls him on it, he'll just say that he said he wasn't sure but a thousand civilians killed and hundreds of buildings leveled is still something that indicates indiscriminate attacks.

And that is the problem.

Israel didn't engage in indiscriminate attacks in Gaza. Anyone who has the least familiarity with the IDF's code of conduct, the checks and balances involved in every bombing campaign, international law and the law of armed conflict know that there was very little wrong with how Israel conducted the campaign.

Last Summer, Amnesty international tweeted almost daily specific events of civilians being killed in Gaza a year earlier. In the vast majority of those cases cited, I was able to find a legitimate target in the immediate area. And the laws of war does not say that a legitimate target must be spared just because it is surrounded by civilians, although the doctrine of proportionality must be adhered to - something Israel does. Without knowing the value of the target, or indeed what the target is, no "researchers" can conclude that Israeli attacks were indiscriminate or disproportionate.

Bernie Sanders chooses to believe the lies of Amnesty and Human Rights Watch over word of the US' own chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

To put it bluntly, someone whose knowledge of the laws of armed conflict is exactly the opposite of the truth wants to be the Commander in Chief of the US armed forces.

That is a lot worse than just being very wrong on the numbers of civilians killed.

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Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote an excellent essay for Newsweek where he stated that "Anti-Zionism is the new Anti-Semitism:"

What then is anti-Semitism? It is not a coherent set of beliefs but a set of contradictions. Before the Holocaust, Jews were hated because they were poor and because they were rich; because they were communists and because they were capitalists; because they kept to themselves and because they infiltrated everywhere; because they clung tenaciously to ancient religious beliefs and because they were rootless cosmopolitans who believed nothing.

Anti-semitism is a virus that survives by mutating. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, Israel. Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism.

The legitimization has also changed. Throughout history, when people have sought to justify anti-Semitism, they have done so by recourse to the highest source of authority available within the culture. In the Middle Ages, it was religion. In post-Enlightenment Europe it was science. Today it is human rights. It is why Israel—the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East with a free press and independent judiciary—is regularly accused of the five crimes against human rights: racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide. This is the blood libel of our time.

Anti-Semitism is a classic example of what anthropologist René Girard sees as the primal form of human violence: scapegoating. When bad things happen to a group, its members can ask two different questions: “What did we do wrong?” or “Who did this to us?” The entire fate of the group will depend on which it chooses.

If it asks, “What did we do wrong?” it has begun the self-criticism essential to a free society. If it asks, “Who did this to us?” it has defined itself as a victim. It will then seek a scapegoat to blame for all its problems. Classically this has been the Jews.

Today the argument goes like this. After the Holocaust, every right-thinking human being must be opposed to Nazism. Palestinians are the new Jews. The Jews are the new Nazis. Israel is the new crime against humanity. Therefore every right thinking person must be opposed to the state of Israel, and since every Jew is a Zionist, we must oppose the Jews. This argument is wholly wrong. It was Jews not Israelis who were murdered in terrorist attacks in Toulouse, Paris, Brussels and Copenhagen.

Peter Beinart in Haaretz feels he must defend anti-Zionists, especially Palestinian anti-Zionists, as being wholly separate from classical antisemitism.

It’s an elegant formulation. But there’s a problem. The claim that medieval Jews deserved blame for the murder of Christ, or that nineteenth century Jews were genetically inferior, had no rational basis. To believe it, you had to be an anti-Semite. It’s not irrational, however, to believe that Israel is seriously abusing Palestinian human rights. Anti-Semites may exploit those abuses to vilify Jews. But you don’t have to be anti-Semite to find them profoundly troubling.

In Beinart's twisted mind, the difference between classical antisemitism and today's anti-Zionism is that the old antisemitism had no "rational basis," giving as examples accusations of deicide and racism. But that implies that Beinart would not consider other accusations against Jews that had a germ of truth in them to be antisemitic. Therefore, Beinart's logic would imply, saying that Jews should be hated because they control the banks and Hollywood and the media is not antisemitism, because there is a rational basis for believing it - at least as much of a rational basis for hating Israel because that country is supposedly guilty of genocide and apartheid.

Sacks is saying that antisemites choose to blame Jews because they need a scapegoat. Is there really any difference between that way of thinking and demonizing Israel?

Sacks dismisses Israeli human rights abuses in one phrase: Israel is “the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East with a free press and independent judiciary.” But in the West Bank, Israel is none of those things. The vast majority of people in the West Bank are Palestinians who cannot vote for the state that controls their lives. They are not citizens of the country in which they live. Their Jewish neighbors enjoy a free press and an independent judiciary. But West Bank Palestinians live under military law, which, among other things, forbids ten or more of them from gathering for a political purpose without prior approval from the Israeli military, even if they gather in someone’s home.

No one is saying that life is wonderful in the West Bank for Palestinians (although it compares quite well to life in most of the Arab world.) But the point is that the hysterical accusations of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing is just as irrational as accusing Jews of drinking Christian children's blood.

Beinart cannot admit that quite obvious fact.

In his essay, Sacks only mentions the word “Palestinians” once. But it’s impossible to understand contemporary anti-Zionism without them. Palestinians didn’t become anti-Zionists because they needed a rationale for hating Jews and found the old ones outdated. They become anti-Zionists because their experience with Zionism was extremely rough.

Time for Beinart to twist history for his own purposes:

In the early twentieth century, Palestinians constituted the vast majority of people in British mandatory Palestine. Like colonized peoples around the world, they began developing a national consciousness and a national movement aimed at securing their independence. As Jews began migrating to Palestine in large numbers, the Zionist movement—which sought a Jewish state—became an obstacle to their national desires.

That is exactly backwards. Zionism predates Palestinian nationalism by any measure. Most Palestinians became "nationalists" as a means to destroy Jewish self-determination, not as a positive movement. I've proven that in this blog numerous times, but you only have to look at how the Arab nationalists in Palestine wanted to be part of Syria until Sykes-Picot ruined that plan - only then did the idea of Palestinian Arab nationalism gain any currency, and it was wholly meant as a means to frustrate Jewish nationalism.

Beinart is purposefully reversing history.

Yes, Palestinian nationalists made mistakes (for instance, their rejection of the 1947 partition plan) and committed crimes (for instance, the 1929 Hebron massacre). But you don’t have to consider Palestinians blameless to understand why they might view Zionism in a negative light.

The people who massacred Jews in 1929 (and 1921 and 1936-9) were nationalists? Oh, please. They were purely antisemites, and their actions prove Rabbi Sacks' point perfectly. Their "anti-Zionism" was a thin smokescreen for their hate of Jews, and if you look at any contemporaneous newspapers and books from the era, the antisemitism was explicit and pervasive.

Yes, some anti-Zionists are anti-Semites. And yes, of course, some Palestinian anti-Zionists are anti-Semites. But equating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism means claiming that virtually all Palestinians are anti-Semites, even Palestinians like Knesset Member Ayman Oudeh, whose political party, Hadash, includes Jews, or intellectuals like Ahmad Khalidi and commentators like Rula Jebreal, who have Jewish spouses.

Beinart stoops so low as to use the "some of my best friends are Jewish" line to defend rabid anti-Zionists.

Anyway, it means no such thing. While it is true that most Palestinians really are antisemites - there are things called "polls," you know - Rabbi Sacks is speaking about how people who want to hate Jews nowadays use anti-Zionism as their excuse, just as they historically used anti-capitalism or anti-communism or eugenics theories as excuses in the past. Either way, it is hate. But Sacks is not claiming that everyone who has a problem with Israeli policies is an antisemite. That is Beinart's straw man that underlies this essay, and its logical conclusion is disgusting:

Equating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism turns Palestinians into Amalekites. By denying that they might have any reason besides bigotry to dislike Zionism, it denies their historical experience and turns them into mere vessels for Jew-hatred. Thus, it does to Palestinians what anti-Semitism does to Jews. It dehumanizes them.

After purposefully misstating Rabbis Sacks' arguments, Beinart all but calls him a racist. (This is after praising him in the first couple of paragraphs.)

In truth, most Palestinians really are antisemites. Many are not. But that is not what Rabbi Sacks is saying. His point is that the arguments that are used against Zionism - not criticism of Zionism but the desire to destroy Israel - are virtually always prompted by antisemitic tendencies.

Beinart's desire to justify his own criticism of Israel makes him want to defend the indefensible. This essay is Beinart's attempt to conflate legitimate criticism of Israel with blind hate for Israel that is behind BDS and "Zionism is racism" and "From the river to the sea..." And the only way he can succeed is by lying.

One has to wonder why Beinart, who claims to be only against the "occupation," tries so hard to legitimize those who want to see Israel destroyed.

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Al Monitor has an interesting analysis:

A new current has been active within the Fatah movement. Its founders have named it the “Democratic Reformist Current,” which consists of a large number of leaders who were dismissed by the movement’s leader Mahmoud Abbas, because they refused its policies, as well as other active leaders.

The conflict within the movement started to fully surface after former leader Mohammed Dahlan was dismissed from Fatah’s Central Committee on corruption charges and ended all ties with the movement on June 12, 2011. Yet in 2015, the Corruption Crimes Court in Ramallah rejected the accusations directed against him and closed the case. Dahlan has been residing in the United Arab Emirates ever since.

Dahlan’s dismissal was followed by the dismissal of many other leaders and cadres supporting him, which resulted in the movement splitting into two currents: the pro-Abbas current and the opposing reformist current led by Dahlan.

Abdul Hamid al-Masri, a former member of Fatah's Revolutionary Council, who was dismissed from the council two years ago, and who is a founder of the reformist current from the Gaza Strip, told Al-Monitor that the current is a part of the Fatah movement and that they are seeking reforms within Fatah through this current.

He said, “We want to bring about reforms in terms of all of the defects caused to the movement’s internal regulations, the violations and the monopoly of leaders over the movement’s decision-making. These include the dismissal of Dahlan and fellow members of the Revolutionary Council, including myself. We do not perceive the dismissal as legal, because it did not go in line with the movement's internal regulations, such as a two-thirds vote of the Revolutionary Council’s members that is required for the members’ dismissal. For that reason, many Fatah members and leaders have rejected the dismissal.”

He said, “I think that Abbas and those members opposing the return of the reformist current’s members to Fatah — who rejected the policy of marginalization, isolation, persecution and oppression that they have been subjected to — are few. In contrast, those voices calling for the members to return to the movement and assume their roles are the majority. Abbas is not the inevitable fate of Palestine or the Fatah movement. He was preceded by Yasser Arafat, who died, but Fatah survived. Abbas will leave and the movement will survive.”

..Are the founders of the reformist current planning to establish a new independent political body that represents them?

Political analyst Akram Atallah told Al-Monitor, “Although roughly four years have gone by since Dahlan and his supporters were dismissed from the movement, it is still unknown whether or not Dahlan and those supporting him will form a new party or return to the movement, based on reconciliation between him and Abbas."

He added, “A feeling that work is underway toward the formation of a parallel party prevails sometimes. At other times, there is a feeling that work is underway to go back to the movement. This time, the matter is different from the previous defections, or even from the other Palestinian factions, like the defection of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that split up into two parties in 1968. So far, it is still unclear where this issue is heading.”

The acrimony between Abbas and Dahlan reached a peak a couple of years ago when Abbas blamed Dahlan for being responsible for the death of Yasir Arafat. But Dahlan's popularity has been pretty steady, especially in Gaza.

Certainly some Palestinian newspapers openly support the Dahlan faction and criticize Abbas. I haven't seen much call for a separate party, though, and everyone understands that such a move would weaken Fatah's hold on the PLO, which is really the organization that runs things.

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04/06 Links Pt2: The United Nations sanctifies evil; When Does Anti-Israelism Turn Into Anti-Semitism?

From Ian:

Isi Leibler: The United Nations sanctifies evil

The United Nations has progressively become dominated by Islamic nations and tyrannies and increasingly sanctifies evil. Just last week, on March 24 in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) concluded its session by passing five resolutions condemning Israel. This followed a series of blood libels accusing the only democratic country in a region surrounded by barbarism of engaging in a policy of deliberate murder of Palestinian children.
Indeed the UNHRC has passed more resolutions condemning Israel over the past decade than all resolutions criticizing other governments combined.
This, despite the fact that countries leading the charge against Israel are themselves engaged in horrific human rights violations. And despite the fact that in Syria, Israel’s neighbor, hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions are trying to flee the country as President Bashar Assad’s army and Islamic State (ISIS) butcher entire communities.
The reality is that the UN, with its subsidiaries, has morphed into an evil body dominated by Islamic nations, tyrannies and rogue states whose policies it legitimizes.
Freedom House, the independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom and democracy, maintains that 80 percent of UNHRC members are “not free” or only “partly free.” In this degenerate body, Saudi Arabia was elected last year to chair a key human rights panel.
The UNHRC has consistently appointed fiercely biased anti-Israel rapporteurs and commissioned numerous reports to demonize Israel and accuse the Israel Defense Forces of engaging in war crimes.

UN-believable

This week the United Nations outdid itself. HonestReporting takes a careful look at their UNbelievable activities, and their effects on women's rights, human rights, and Israel.

Cruz's father: America was founded on the Torah

In his speech, Pastor Cruz told PJTN supporters that his son is the "strongest supporter of Israel on Capitol Hill," and promised that he "will continue to support Israel unconditionally."
He also countered replacement theology, by which some Christians believe they are the new Jews and that God has abandoned the Jewish people. PJTN has made fighting replacement theology and anti-Semitism one of its key goals.
After calling replacement theology heresy, Cruz said his son "will not fund the United Nations, until they stop supporting BDS and anti-Semitism.”
"Israel is the only country in the world with a title deed from the Almighty!," emphasized Pastor Cruz, noting on the divine promise to the Jewish people.
Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president and founder of PJTN, embraced and thanked Pastor Cruz at the end of his speech.
"Pastor Cruz is a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people within the Evangelical world," she said. "We need more people like him today, when more and more of our brothers and sisters are embracing heretical forms of anti-Semitism like BDS and replacement theology."

From the sex advice column of Dan Savage:

I am a twentysomething, straight, cis-female expat. How long do I have to wait to ask my German lover, who is übersensitive about the Holocaust, to indulge me in my greatest — and, until now, unrealized — fantasy: Nazi role-play? He is very delicate around me because I am a secular Jew and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. (Even though I’ve instructed him to watch The Believer, starring Ryan Gosling as a Jewish neo-Nazi, to get a better grasp on my relationship with Judaism. To be clear, I am not actually a neo-Nazi — just your garden-variety self-hating Jew.) This persists even though we’ve spoken about my anti-Zionist politics. Evidently he was indoctrinated from a young age with a hyper-apologetic history curriculum. I appreciate that he thinks it was wrong for the SS to slaughter my family, but it’s not like he did it himself. I know it sounds really f***ed up, but I promise this isn’t coming from a place of deep-seated self-loathing. Even if it were, it’s not like we’d be hurting anybody. We’re both in good psychological working condition, and neither of us is an actual bigot. I would try to get to know him better, but we are so different (there’s a big age difference) and I don’t really see our relationship being much more than ze sex.

National Socialist Pretend Party

Savage defers the answer to Mark Oppenheimer who writes about Judaism for Tablet. He says that she should broach the subject with her lover, but then adds some good advice that applies far beyond a sex advice column, even if the letter-writer seems far beyond redemption:

In her letter, she assures us that she is ‘secular,’ ‘anti-Zionist,’ and ‘garden-variety self-hating’ — then jokingly compares herself to the Jewish white supremacist (played by Ryan Gosling in that movie) who in real life killed himself after the New York Times outed him as a Jew. Now, all of us (especially homos and Yids) know something about self-loathing, and I think Jews are entitled to any and all views on Israel, and — again — I am not troubled by her kink. That said, I do think she needs to get to a happier place about her own heritage. Just as it’s not good for black people to be uncomfortable with being black, or for queer people to wish they weren’t queer, it’s not healthy, or attractive, for Jews or Jewesses (we are taking back the term) to have such obvious discomfort with their Jewish heritage.

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Bigfoot Meets Rothschilds, Trump, To Plan Next Step In World Domination (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Tel Aviv, April 6 - Secure in the knowledge no one would bat an eye at their presence among the bizarre characters on this city's Shenkin Street, several prominent members of the World Zionist Conspiracy met at a restaurant in that eclectic neighborhood this week to discuss the next phase in their plan to take over the planet.

Sasquatch, the supposedly-deceased King of Rock 'n' Roll Elvis Presley, Donald Trump, and a group of Rothschild family representatives gathered with a number of lower-profile WZC operatives at Bug, a hip restaurant Tuesday morning. The attendees heard briefings from agents on recent developments in the Panama Papers scandal and the US presidential primaries, as well as on efforts to conceal Mossad involvement in last month's terrorist attacks in Belgium.

The presence of Bigfoot and Elvis at the proceedings highlighted the usual nature of the meeting, which normally does not include operatives whose roles call for remaining completely out of sight except for strategic, doubtful sightings. In this case, said an attendee who spoke on condition of anonymity, the pair supplied updates on the decades-old campaign to zero in on the people most likely to suspect a massive conspiracy and coverup, and distract them with all manner of secondary conspiracy theories involving UFOs, cryptozoological creatures, mysterious celebrity disappearances, and the Bermuda Triangle.

Trump, for his part, arranged for a lookalike to take his place in Wisconsin, where the GOP frontrunner faces a tough primary contest. The reality TV star and real estate mogul had already given regrets to his daughter that he would have to miss the circumcision ceremony of her newborn son in New York in order to campaign; however, he traveled not to Wisconsin, but to Tel Aviv. Trump's Mossad handlers insisted he attend in order to hear direct instructions from the Rothschilds on how to proceed with his campaign and what groups to offend in what order, so that the WZC would be best positioned to exploit the ensuing media storms for financial and political gain. Previous problems in coordination of the offensive messages led to massive stock market losses when the candidate called for the punishment of women who had abortions; he was supposed to wait until next week to make that pronouncement.

Also in attendance was Dr. Vlad Drake, who, though retired from formal membership in the WZC, continues to consult the Conspiracy on the use and spread of mosquitoes, which he invented.

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.

04/06 Links Pt1: Bernie Slanders is seven times worse than Hamas; Abbas: All of Israel is an "occupation"

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Seven times worse than Hamas: Bernie Sanders by the numbers

Bernie Sanders exacerbated his shockingly under-informed address on Israel from late last month with an interview to the New York Daily News this week in which he casually traduced Israel.
In his March speech — which he said he would have delivered at AIPAC’s Washington policy conference if only they’d let him read it out over satellite — he demanded that Israel remove its blockade from Gaza while simultaneously professing to support Israelis’ “right to live in peace and security.” Needless to say — or rather, evidently, needful to say to Sanders — backing Israelis’ right to live in peace and security entails working to ensure that terrorist groups committed to Israel’s destruction are not allowed to import the weaponry they need to achieve that goal. Demanding that Israel end the Gaza blockade is tantamount to demanding that Hamas be enabled to freely bring in rockets, missiles and all manner of other military equipment to expedite Israel’s demise. Only a politician who supports Hamas — such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan — or one with a grossly inadequate understanding of Israel and its challenges could possibly endorse such a position.
In his New York Daily News interview, Sanders dismally reconfirmed that he falls into the latter category. The would-be president castigated Israel for an ostensibly “indiscriminate” war on Gaza in the summer of 2014, and, while admitting that he didn’t really know the facts, asserted, twice, that Israel killed over 10,000 innocent civilians in the course of that conflict.
Over 10,000 innocent civilians? That’s seven times the self-serving figure asserted by Hamas, the terror group that runs Gaza, and gleefully adopted by the UN Human Rights Council, the sham body that obsessively loathes Israel. According to Hamas, 1,462 civilians were killed. The Israeli authorities believe the true figure was far lower, both because Hamas inflated the overall numbers of combatants and noncombatants killed, and because Hamas deliberately misrepresents many of its own dead gunmen, who often fought out of uniform, as civilians — to demonize Israel, and to minimize its own losses. Israel also stresses that Hamas deliberately placed Gazans in harm’s way by putting its rocket launchers and terror tunnel openings in and around their homes. Finally, Israeli officials note that no civilians whatsoever would have been killed had Hamas not chosen to maintain its violent hostility to Israel, which since 2005 has had no civilian presence and no military presence whatsoever in the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Israel did what much of the world — including Bernie Sanders — would have it do in the West Bank: It left. And war followed.

Why Bernie Exaggerates About Gaza

Had Sanders bothered to think more deeply about the issue, he would have understood that without taking the care that it did, casualties in Gaza would have been as high as 10,000 or even more than that because of Hamas embedding its rocket launchers and fighters in and among civilians, including using hospitals as bases and UN schools as ammo dumps. And while he may regard Israel’s need to take out these targets as optional, Israel’s leaders had the responsibility to defend their people against truly indiscriminate attacks in the form of Hamas rockets and terror tunnels.
But the problem here, as with the entire “progressive” critique of Israel, is that Sanders’ beliefs about the Gaza war are rooted in his misconceptions about the continuing cause of the conflict. He seems to think it’s about Israel having to “improve its relationship with the Palestinians.” But not once in his lengthy comments about the Middle East in the Daily News interview does he note that Israel has repeatedly offered the Palestinians far-reaching territorial concessions in exchange for peace and has been turned down every time. Nor does he care to notice that even Palestinian moderates refuse to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders may be drawn. Pushing for more unilateral Israeli withdrawals, as President Obama has done and Sanders seems to indicate he would also advocate, merely encourages the Palestinians to continue to believe that continued intransigence will eventually isolate the Jewish state. It also gives the Palestinian leadership a pass for fomenting hatred against Israel and Jews that has set off a bloody third “stabbing” intifada.
Sanders doesn’t oppose Israel’s existence, and he can claim both to have lived there briefly and to have relations with Israelis. But his policies do not encourage peace, nor do they do Palestinians held hostage by Hamas in their independent state in all but name in Gaza much good either.
More importantly, he reflects a blame Israel first mindset of the left wing of his party that is as divorced from reality as anything that comes out of Trump’s mouth. While he isn’t likely to become president, Sanders’ mindless repetition of canards about Israel probably sounded like the truth to many of his fans. If, as the age demographics would seem to indicate, those young voters are the future of the Democrats, the party’s divorce from the pro-Israel movement seems to be accelerating. (h/t Yenta Press)

The Mottle Wolfe Show: Israel Gets Berned

[gets good about the 13 min mark] Still feeling the Bern? Bernie Sanders radically over estimates the death toll in Gaza. Is it from ignorance or lack of interest in foreign policy? Also Brian of London joins Mottle to talk about Dubai’s winner of the ‘Best Teacher of the the Year’ award in the married to a terrorist category.

In March, I reported on EoZTV that the Palestinian Red Crescent hosted a Fatah celebration of mass murderer Dalal Mughrabi. The next day Palestinian Media Watch also reported the story with more details.

At the time PMW noted that this isn't the first time that the Red Crescent was involced in glorifying terror, and they had previously complained to the ICRC about how their funds are being used. The responses from the ICRC from previous occasions were outrageous:

In the past, the International Red Cross (ICRC) responded that they don't tell the Palestinian Red Crescent how to spend the money given to it by the ICRC. When the Palestinian Red Crescent together with the ICRC glorified terrorists by planting 150 trees bearing the names of "veteran prisoners," the ICRC defended the Palestinian Red Crescent's right to do so, arguing that each branch has the right "to define [its] own priorities and activities and to allocate funds accordingly."

The official position of the ICRC is that, if their branches believe in murdering Jews, then that is perfectly OK with them.

The official purpose of the ICRC is in complete contradiction to this position:

Its purpose is to protect life and health and to ensure respect for the human being. It promotes mutual understanding, friendship, cooperation and lasting peace amongst all peoples.

PMW has written another complaint to the ICRC over this latest repulsive incident:

We'll see if the most prestigious humanitarian organization in the world will again defend funding those who celebrate mass murderers.

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The new Halabi home paid for by supporters of murderers

Mahmoud Abbas said in his interview with Channel 2 in Israel:

When a child goes and takes a knife, he does not consult with anyone. Even with his parents, nor his brother. He doesn't say: "I'm taking a knife and going out". No sensible person would allow his son to come to him and tell him: "I want to take a knife and kill", and he will answer him: "you are wise." It is not possible. It is not possible. He will take away the knife and lock him inside. Parents do not want it....Ask yourself why this boy, 15, takes a knife and knew he was going to die, and still going. Ask yourself why. This is because there is no hope for him.

All of this is contradicted by the case of Muhannad Halabi.

Halabi was the teenager who murdered Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Bennett on October 3, also stabbing Bennett's wife in the neck and shooting and injuring their 2 year old son. As Odel Bennett begged for help, Arabs in the shuk spat at her and laughed.

Halabi didn't say he was going to stab Jews to death because of "no hope." Rather he said that he was angry at supposed attacks on the Al Aqsa Mosque and he posted on Facebook that he wanted to start a revolution.

He showed this post to his parents before his murder spree who agreed with his sentiments. “I will always be proud that my son sacrificed his life for the liberation of his homeland,” said his mother Suhair.

He is universally regarded as a hero in Palestinian society, even though his victims included a rabbi, a woman and a child. Everything that Abbas claims about the murderers and their families is proven wrong by Halabi.

When Israel demolished his family home to deter future murders, Palestinians immediately raised a large amount of money to build or buy the family of the "martyr" a new house and to blunt any deterrent for encouraging children to murder Jews.

Now, the family has purchased a 360 square meter, $175,000 villa near Ramallah with the funds raised from fellow supporters of terrorism.

It doesn't appear that Abbas' alleged policy of discouraging terror attacks is successful. Unfortunately, his policy of making "martyrs" into heroes is working very well.

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Jordan lodges official complaint to Israel over Yehuda Glick's visits to Temple Mount

From the official Jordanian Petra News Agency:

Jordan protests rabbi storming of Jerusalem mosque

Jordan Tuesday strongly protested a raid into Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque compound, led by ultranationalist rabbi Yehuda Glick of the ruling Likud party, and urged Israel, as the occupation power, to stop such provocations.

State Minister for Media Affairs, official government spokesman, Mohammad Momani, said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Affairs, through its close monitoring of the Israeli violations of Al Aqsa Mosque/Haram al Sharif (holy sanctuary), which it considers a red line, today lodged an official protest to the Israeli embassy in Amman.

The memo, he said, held Israel, the power of occupation, fully responsible for the safety of Al Aqsa Mosque, and reiterated Jordan's condemnation and rejection of recurrent raids by Glick, an extremist Israeli rabbi who campaigns for expanding Jewish access to the mosque compound.

Momani said the foreign and Awqaf (religious affairs) ministries were monitoring the situation at Al Aqsa Mosque, adding that Jordan would pursue its efforts through diplomacy and legal means to deter Israel and bring the breaches to a stop. He urged the world community and international organisations to help in this endeavour.

Here is a photo of Rabbi Glick's "storming" of the Temple Mount on Monday, along with 12 other Jews. This is the incident that prompted Jordan's complaint.

Glick said on Facebook that there was very little Muslim protest and shouting at his group, and he expressed hope that the idea of Jews visiting their holiest site is now considered normal among Arabs now that the violent protesters from the Islamic Movement have been banned from the site.

YNet reported last week that Arab media were circulating a photo of Glick seemingly targeted with a red circle.

Glick - who advocates equal access to the Temple Mount for Jews, Muslims and Christians - is often demonized by Arab media

He was shot four times in the chest in 2014 in Jerusalem for his message of equality.

The Government of Jordan apparently agrees with the would-be assassin that Glick is a danger that must be eliminated.

The idea that Jordan is lodging official complaints over the peaceful visit of a Jew to the Temple Mount is one of the absurdities of the Middle East that are considered normal.

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State Department responds to EoZ expose of antisemitism on display at Saudi book fair that US backed

US Cultural Attaché David Edginton at the opening ceremony of Riyadh Book Fair

Matt Lee of AP asked State Department spokesperson Mark Toner about the antisemitic booth at the Riyadh International Book Fair that I reported on Monday.

The State Department was ready with some talking points and materials, meaning that either Matt had told them ahead of time that the question was coming...or they read EoZ.

Here is the video of the exchange. I added some photos illustrating the offensive booth and the US participation at the fair.

Toner downplayed US statements supporting the fair and he made it look like the US merely had a booth, without saying that officials participated in the ceremonies as honored guests.

The real question is whether the US will attend next year's even without assurances that the Saudis would ban all hate materials. Only last December the US was part of the Jeddah Book Fair in Saudi Arabia which also included hate materials. And we've seen similar displays in books fairs in Cairo, the UAE and Casablanca.

Here's the video, followed by the transcript.

Here is the transcript:

QUESTION: My question, which is semi-related to this, has to do – well, doesn’t have to do with the UN. It doesn’t – but it does have to do with the U.S. diplomatic mission in Saudi.
MR TONER: Right.
QUESTION: And this book fair.
MR TONER: Right.
QUESTION: I meant to ask about this yesterday, but we were running short of time.
MR TONER: Yeah.
QUESTION: So were you guys aware of the content of what was in all of the stalls at this book fair? And if so, why was that okay?
MR TONER: So, first of all, this is a – actually, first of all, we condemn anti-Semitism in all of its forms, as well as any other hate speech. Second is representatives of the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh have participated in the International Riyadh Book Fair for multiple years as part of an effort to essentially distribute books to Saudi citizens that include books about democracy, tolerance, diversity, human rights, et cetera. The book fair itself is run by the Saudi Government’s Ministry of Culture and Information. So what I want to clearly state is we were just a participant. We weren’t aware that these books were going to be featured in this book fair. So we’re not a partner, we’re not a funder, we’re not a sponsor. We’re just simply a participant and we obviously, as I said, condemn any kind of anti-Semitic literature.
QUESTION: Well, do you know if there was any complaint made to the organizers – to the Saudis about this?
MR TONER: That I don’t know. You mean on our part? I don't know that. I’ll check. I mean, I just did, but --
QUESTION: Yeah. Or if you even regard this as something that is – well, yeah, but you --
MR TONER: Sure. No, I understand. I’m not trying to be facetious.
QUESTION: You said you condemn it in general, but I mean --
MR TONER: Yeah. No, no, no.
QUESTION: -- this has been – and I remember that --
MR TONER: Well, I get --
QUESTION: -- this has been a problem in the past --
MR TONER: But --
QUESTION: -- or an issue in the past.
MR TONER: But – sorry, I don’t mean to cut you off.
QUESTION: And as you say that you participated in this event for multiple years. I can remember this happening before. I mean, does – do you think that this is something that the U.S. Government, through the State Department, should make an issue of, make – take it to the Saudis?
MR TONER: Well, I do. And I can say that – I can – just to further clarify, we condemn any anti-Semitic literature that may have been present at this event, as I said, just as we would broadly condemn any anti-Semitic literature or anti-Semitism in all its forms around the world. Again, I’m not aware of the history here. My understanding is that we were not aware that these books were going to be featured at the fair. And I can also check on whether we raised this directly, our concerns, with the Saudi Government.
QUESTION: Thanks.
MR TONER: Yep.
QUESTION: Will you return to the fair next year?
MR TONER: I think we would weigh this very heavily, considering this incident.
QUESTION: Well, okay, but I mean, I –
MR TONER: I mean, look, this is – yeah.
QUESTION: I get that answer, but I can remember asking this question in previous years, because it seems to be something that happens like every single --
MR TONER: Was it last year?
QUESTION: Yes.
MR TONER: I’m not – sorry.
QUESTION: I mean, it’s not something that has just popped up out of the blue. It seems to be --
MR TONER: No, I understand. I understand that. I would --
QUESTION: -- a recurrent theme here.
MR TONER: Yeah. No, I understand that. Again, our intention – the embassy’s intention for participating in this was to use it as a venue to --
QUESTION: I -- do you believe, other than these books or this literature that you condemn that, in fact, the fair does bring books about democracy and pluralism and --
MR TONER: Well, sure, because we bring them.
QUESTION: Oh, you bring them.
MR TONER: I can’t speak to the broader --
QUESTION: What are the sales of that, I wonder.
MR TONER: No, I really can’t speak to the broader content. I’d have to check on that as well.
QUESTION: Do people buy them?
MR TONER: I’d have to check on that as well. I mean, I think, yes. I mean, I – look, we wouldn’t do it if we weren’t – if it wasn’t a productive engagement with Saudi society.
QUESTION: So that’s --
MR TONER: There was no return, frankly --
QUESTION: Right.
MR TONER: -- to our investment of time, whatever. We probably wouldn’t do it, so – yeah.
QUESTION: Okay. I don’t want to dwell on this, but when you say, “You bring those kinds of books,” does that mean that the embassy has its own stall that it’s also --
MR TONER: Well, we do have – that’s – again, we have participated in the Riyadh book fair --
QUESTION: Yeah, right.
MR TONER: -- and I believe that includes --
QUESTION: So --
MR TONER: So we do have --
QUESTION: So you bring the books on, say --
MR TONER: We have a booth at the fair, sell a wide assortment of American books, biography, children books, other materials, study in the U.S., and we do pay a fee for just that space.
QUESTION: Right. Guides to women’s rights; that kind of thing?
MR TONER: I can imagine all those things. Matt, I – that’s all I got.
QUESTION: Now, in terms of (inaudible) --
QUESTION: It would be interesting to – it would actually be interesting to see what kind of a sample of what it is that the U.S. --
MR TONER: We can try to get that for you.
QUESTION: -- Embassy promotes --
MR TONER: We can try to get that for you.
QUESTION: -- what kind of books they promote and so on.
MR TONER: We can try to get that for you.
QUESTION: Thank you.

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04/05 Links Pt2: Sanders' slander: "Israel killed ‘over 10,000 innocents’ in Gaza"; The shameful anti-Semitism in the British Left

From Ian:

Massively inflating toll, Sanders suggests Israel killed ‘over 10,000 innocents’ in Gaza

Massively amplifying even Hamas’s own figures, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders suggested Israel had killed “over 10,000 innocent” Palestinian civilians in Gaza during the war there in the summer of 2014, and said the high casualties were the result of an “indiscriminate” military offensive.
In an interview with the New York Daily News editorial board published on Monday, the Vermont senator acknowledged that he did not have the exact figures memorized, but twice said he believed that the Palestinian civilian death count surpassed 10,000, and excoriated Israel for what he deemed its disproportionate use of force.
“Anybody help me out here, because I don’t remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?” he said first. Told that the number was “probably high,” Sanders responded: “I don’t have it in my number.. .but I think it’s over 10,000. My understanding is that a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled,” he went on. “Hospitals, I think, were bombed. So yeah, I do believe and I don’t think I’m alone in believing that Israel’s force was more indiscriminate than it should have been.”

Why Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Talk About Being Jewish

From its inception as a working political doctrine, socialism was bad for the Jews. Indeed, the long arm of the world’s first socialist state killed off its most prominent Jewish founder with an ice pick. Why, then, would Jews like Bernie Sanders be socialists? Well, with Sanders’s now-undeniable popularity on the left, the new spin is that he isn’t really a socialist at all.
Diane Rehm-aged doyenne of public radio and recipient of the Peabody, the National Humanities Medal, and sundry other status markers—had a question for Bernie Sanders. The date was June 10, 2015. The Vermont senator and self-identified socialist had just announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton. Sanders’s loyalties to the party he sought to lead but had only just officially joined had become a subject of some concern to Democrats. But Rehm wanted to talk about a different kind of loyalty.
Rehm: Senator, you have dual citizenship with Israel.
Sanders: No, I do not have dual citizenship with Israel, I’m an American. Don’t know where that question came from. I’m an American citizen. I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions. No, I’m an American citizen, period.
Rehm: I understand from a list we have gotten that you were on that list. Forgive me if that…
Sanders: No, that’s some of the nonsense that goes on in the Internet. But that is absolutely not true.
Rehm: Interesting. Are there members of Congress who do have dual citizenship, or is that part of the fable?
So: A Jewish public figure was simply assumed by NPR’s most celebrated chat-show host to have dual citizenship with Israel. After he corrected the host, the Jew was told that his name was on “a list.” When he denied it a second time, he was asked to fork over some names of those who do have suspect loyalties to America.
As Sanders suggested, the “list” she had cited was gleaned from an anti-Semitic Facebook page. Rehm later apologized. That was the end of that. But it was only the beginning for Sanders when it came to questions about his Jewishness.

Interesting cartoon going around Arab social media

Here is the translation of a cartoon that is going around Arabic Twitter and Google accounts.

It appears to have been modified from an original cartoon, seen on the right, that was more specific, comparing the number of Arabs killed in sixty years of wars with Israel against the number killed in two years of war in Syria.

(h/t Trip Gor, Ibn Boutros)

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A tale, that is, of two ethnic minority citizens, one a nineteenth-century Jew, the other a twenty-first century Muslim. What links these two individuals across the centuries is the fact that each was the first member of their respective creeds elected to metropolitan office in Portsmouth, England, a town in the nineteenth century and a city since the early twentieth century. Their attitudes, it will be seen, are apparently a study in contrasts.

Portsmouth, for anyone unfamiliar with the Hampshire city, is Britain’s premier naval port, and has been for many centuries inextricably associated with the Royal Navy. It was from Portsmouth that Admiral Lord Nelson disembarked to fight at Trafalgar, and his flagship, the Victory, can be visited today in dry dock at Portsmouth’s great historic Dockyard. There are, indeed, numerous sites of historic and nautical interest in the city, including the house where, in 1812, Charles Dickens was born. (Other famous literary men associated with the Portsmouth include Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells.)

Being a naval history buff I know Portsmouth very well indeed, and I say without hesitation that, all in all, Portsmouth, along with the popular seaside resort of Southsea (that lies within the municipal boundaries) can be considered a very pleasant place in which to live. From the Guildhall Square a brisk walker, setting off in any direction, can cover a great deal of the sights in less than an hour; there’s a great deal to see and do; it’s well-supplied with public parks and green spaces, and, with the Isle of Wight on the horizon, and a fascinating harbour vista, it has coastal scenery that makes Brighton and Bognor seem boring in comparison.

And to whom does Portsmouth owe so many of the amenities and civic improvements that make it, along with Southsea, such a pleasant venue today? To one of the most beloved citizens in its history, the first Jew elected to its Council, the London-born son of a Bavarian immigrant, that’s who. His name was Emanuel Emanuel (d. 29 December 1888), and this, briefly told, is his tale.

He arrived in Portsmouth at the age of eleven and was in business with his father before he became, with his brother Ezekiel, a prominent jeweller and goldsmith in town. Among the items the brothers manufactured was the Portsmouth Corporation’s regalia. Emanuel was first elected to the town council in 1841. At that time (and until 1845) English town councillors were required to swear an oath “on the true faith of a Christian” in order to take their seats, but Emanuel sat despite refusing so to swear. He was thus liable for a hefty fine for every vote he cast as a councillor – but there was nobody in Portsmouth mean enough to tell on him. In 1843 he unexpectedly lost his seat, but to popular acclaim was re-elected in 1844, the bells of St Thomas’s Church (now Portsmouth Cathedral) ringing out in joy. In 1862 he became an alderman and in 1867 was elected Mayor. It was owing to his vision and activity that Southsea, then a polluted swampy wasteland, was developed into a residential watering-place with an esplanade and piers. He raised three-quarters of the requisite funds himself, and liaised tirelessly with Whitehall regarding this and other schemes benefitting Portsmouth, and almost always succeeded in those negotiations.

A faithful Jew, known for his “cheery, good nature,” as a fellow alderman paying tribute recalled (Portsmouth Evening News, 1 January 1889), he was involved in both Jewish and general charities, and as a member of the Portsmouth School Board was a doughty champion of non-sectarian education. He was responsible for the acquisition of two parks for Portsmouth, one in east Southsea that consisted of leasehold land and one that exists to this day as a large handsome public space in the city centre, Victoria Park (remember that name: it will be met with later in this post!), originally called the People’s Park. In 1885 he was presented by his fellow magistrates with a portrait of himself, which depicted him seated in an easy chair, holding a copy of The Times in one hand and a cigar in the other, and with his habitual happy expression (Portsmouth Evening News, 8 May 1885). He died rich in years and in reputation, a large crowd of Jews and non-Jews attending his funeral at Portsmouth’s Jewish burial ground in Fawcett Road. A local road is named after him.

Present-day Portsmouth’s a medium-sized city that during the 1960s became twinned with Haifa, a linkage that I’m glad to note continues, despite the growth of an anti-Israel movement composed of the usual suspects that appears to be centred in elements at the local university, an institution of fairly recent foundation that was formerly the local municipal college.

During the 1960s the Sultan of Zanzibar and his family made their home in the city. People in Portsmouth were flattered that the Sultan had chosen to settle amongst them; a friend of mine proudly recalled being served at the Portsmouth General Post Office on a general basis by no less a personage than one of the Sultan’s sons. It must be remembered that many sailors were living in Portsmouth, perhaps more than today, when the Royal Navy is smaller than it was then: these were people who had sailed the seven seas and for whom non-white people were hardly a novelty. Small numbers of Indian and Chinese people opened shops and restaurants in the city, though it remains predominantly white.

Now, it seems, there are some 4000 people of Bangladeshi background in Portsmouth. Shockingly, no less than five Jihadists from that community flew together to Syria in 2013 with the intention of fighting for Islamic State. They were Mashudur Choudhury (who’s now serving a four-year prison term back in Britain), Muhammad Mehdi Hassan, Mamunur Mohammed Roshid, Muhammad Hamidur Rahman, and Assad Uzzaman (all of whom are now dead, as is a sixth Portsmouth man, Uzzaman’s cousin Ifthekar Jaman, one of the earliest British recruits to Islamic State.)

Some weeks ago I read in the Portsmouth paper online something that had me wondering whether April Fool’s Day had come early this year. But, alas, it had not. The item in question concerned complaints voiced by the first Muslim elected to the Portsmouth City Council, Mr Yahiya Chowdhury, Labour councillor for Charles Dickens ward. He’s resided in the city since 1995.

“Muslim Labour councillor Yahiya Chowdhury said people have come to him with concerns over how they don’t feel included. And he blamed the council for not doing enough to help,” the item informed us. [http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/politics/portsmouth-muslims-are-suffering-with-depression-warns-labour-councillor-1-7159752#ixzz44jL0oNSR]

‘Cllr Chowdhury said: “People need support. A lot of the Muslim community do not tend to understand what is going on in the city. They are just suffering. There are a lot of people in the Muslim community suffering with depression. Women feel they have no place to go and socialise and simply have coffee with their friends. They can’t express their feelings. They know they can’t take their hijabs off around non-Muslim people.” Cllr Chowdhury said he has appealed for a weekend Bangladeshi school to be set up, but the council has only committed to include teachings on the culture in the existing school curriculum. Cllr Chowdhury also said negotiations had stalled over plans to put up a memorial to those who died in the Bangladesh Liberation War – though Muslim officials say they are moving forward.’

The report added that ‘Muslim leaders – including the head of the Jami Mosque [the largest mosque in the city] – agree more could be done. But they have played down talk of any major problems … Syed Aminul Haque, chair of Bangladesh Welfare Association Portsmouth, said: “The city council is doing its best, but it can do more for the whole community, as well as the Bangladeshi community. We have had Bangladeshi classes for the past 35 years in Portsmouth, for our youngsters, in a private school, as well as at Mayfield School [a local state school] for the past few years. For whatever reason, that has been taken off now, although we have been fighting with the council over that…We have asked the council, for the past 10 years or so, for a Bangladesh Liberation War monument. The former leader, Gerald Vernon-Jackson, and the former MP, Mike Hancock, verbally agreed to provide us a place in Victoria Park. But because of the change in administration, it has been delayed for whatever reason. But we are still negotiating with the council over how it can help us….”

The brazen, unacceptable, divisive conviction that Portsmouth City Council is obliged to provide local Muslims with their own amenities – let alone a war memorial to Bangladesh’s war with Pakistan (the West Pakistan/East Pakistan conflict of 1971) – has not surprisingly angered many Portsmouth residents, as a number of intemperate comments regarding the report at site attest.

Councillor Chowdhury and anyone supporting his nonsense should heed the tale of the first Jew elected to what was at the time the Portsmouth Town Council. Emanuel Emanuel was a proud and professing Jew. But in common with the usual integrationist Jewish outlook and practice he did not demand any special treatment for Jews in the city. If the Jewish community required facilities for its members it raised the revenue itself – it did not expect the metropolitan authorities to provide it out of civic funds. Neither has any other religious group made such demands. Nor do Jews, Sikhs and the rest attempt to proseytise, as members of the local Muslim community do regularly at public venues.

Is it any wonder that “Islamophobia” flourishes when Councillor Chowdhury, as reported, voices outrageous demands and depicts his community as victims of the Council’s neglect?

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