Tuesday, March 2, 2010
[The following, by Israelinurse, is crossposted from CiF Watch.]
Male, late twenties, mother tongue: English, fairly recently arrived in Israel and based in Yaffo, self-declared 'expert' on the I/P conflict and a CiF 'tame' Israeli. If you're thinking 'Seth Freedman' that is understandable, but you would be wrong because we have a new kid on the block who goes by the name of Jesse Rosenfeld. So who is he? Well, here are his own words:
"My Jewish last name and identity became a weapon I used against the Zionist justification of Israeli legitimacy and the actions of the state of Israel. If Zionists could spin Jewish history, I could use my socially assumed Jewish identity to strike back.
I became an active anti-Zionist and Palestinian solidarity activist, going to weekly demonstrations in front of the Israeli consulate and arguing in my high school classes about the daily violent Israeli repression of Palestinian demands for self-determination.
As the Israeli repression of the Second Intifada intensified, with the Army routinely using live ammunition against Palestinian youths throwing stones, I got involved with a Toronto group called Jewish Youth Against the Occupation. I was determined to stop Zionism from speaking in the name of Jewish liberation, and the only form of Jewish identity I could associate with was one in opposition to Zionism."
Like several others in the CiF stable, Rosenfeld has written for such outfits as Electronic Intifada and the Palestine Monitor and seems to be a bit of a one-trick pony in that all his articles have the same simplistic and stereotypical message of 'Zionists behaving badly', whilst the Palestinians are always poetically noble harvesters of ancient olive trees. Predictably, he's already had a star turn in Ha'aretz and runs a rather curiously named blog.
With this kind of CV and pedigree he's clearly a prime candidate for any CiF commissioning editor, and in an article on February 23rd did not disappoint.
"Meanwhile, Israeli military assassination missions against resistance in Nablus resumed on 26 December, with three men linked to the Fatah movement being killed in cold blood while PA security forces connived with the Israeli military and were nowhere to be seen."
Naturally, Rosenfeld does not bother to burden his readers with the real details of the incident he describes such as the fact that the three armed terrorists were killed whilst resisting arrest for the brutal murder of Rabbi Meir Avshalom Chai during which they had shot the father of seven in the head ten times in a drive-by attack a couple of days previously.
Rosenfeld goes on to quote the advocacy officer of Al-Haq in his article as though the latter were some sort of objective assessor of the situation, but far from being a human rights organization, Al-Haq is actually one of the prime instigators of lawfare against Israel, including an ongoing case in the British courts. Al-Haq was also one of the major players in the infamous 2001 anti-Israel UN sponsored hate-fest in Durban. It is funded in part by the Ford Foundation and Christian Aid and its General Director Shawan Jabarin has alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Rosenfeld does not even shy away from quoting the prisoners' affairs representative of the PFLP in his article and indeed her words form the essence of the message he is trying to put across.
The significance of this is that the Guardian - supposedly part of the mainstream media - is once more disseminating the propaganda of an active terrorist organisation proscribed by the EU, Canada and the USA. Whilst there is nothing new in that - Kahlid Mish'al has of course been hosted above the line on CiF - it is high time that the UK government engaged in a serious review of the fact that it pours public money into advertising government sector jobs in a newspaper which enthusiastically provides a platform for terrorists and their supporters, at the same time as British soldiers are bravely fighting terrorism abroad and the British security services are trying to combat Islamist terrorism from within. As a British voter and tax payer, I find this government ambivalence incomprehensible and this is but one of the points I will be putting to any Labour party canvasser who knocks on my door in the next few weeks as the elections approach.
I urge other British readers to do the same: there is no logical reason why the Guardian should be profiting from the public purse as long as it provides a platform for those actively engaged in the terror which is designed to destroy the Western democratic and libertarian values cherished by those of us who provide those funds.
Well this public funding issue is serious. BBC is also publicly funded and they are biased too though not as obviously as CiF.
I hadn't realized the Guardian receives public funds.
However, it isn't just newspapers pimping extremism but active British politicians including peers, universities and even churchmen hang with some of the worst bigots in Great Britain, and entertain people who openly preach violence.
Need we add, they're incredibly antisemitic.
When the panties bomber got caught and they said he'd studied in Britain I wasn't even surprised.
There's something weird going on over there. Part of it unfortunately reflects Britain's democratic system: people need votes in order to get elected. The most nakedly obvious example of a demagogue exploiting the Muslim vote - particularly certain factions of it, the poor, disaffected and potentially radical vote - was George Galloway and his "Respect" party. Of course Galloway has gone on to visit Hamas, in what would seem to be an open flaunting of the law against supporting terrorists.
But we also see the Lib Dems defending Jenny Tonge, The Vile; and Mayor Livingstone was no prize either.
On the other side you see the obvious reaction - neofascist parties like BNP are rising and the moderate, liberal voices - including moderated, educated Muslim voices - seem to be getting drowned in the ruckus.
What to do?
"including moderated, educated Muslim voices"?
Where are they? Aside from a handful like Wafa Sultan, Hirsi Ali, where are the non-Islamofascist voices?
Sol quicklinked earlier today to a JPpost piece about a Paki-born Muslim scholar's fatwa announced in London. Sheikh Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri is a serious Sharia scholar and judge, so this caries a lot more weight than comments by women (Iyaan Hirsi Ali), by secularists or apostates (Wafa Sultan), devout laymen (M. Zuhdi Jasser), fringy Muslims (Irshad Manji) or heretical splinter groups (Ahmadiyya Muslims).
Let's hope it's the beginning of self-critical reflection by Muslims leading to much-needed and long overdue modernizing reform.
UK Muslim leader to issue fatwa against Jihad
Nappy had what to say about it.
There are plenty in Britain but they're frequently attacked by the radicals.
Harry's has articles all the time about this. Wierdly the radicals are supported, as I mentioned, by newspapers and politicians.
Here's an example of a Muslim cleric who's issued a fatwa against terrorism:
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2010/03/02/tahir-ul-qadri-and-his-fatwa-on-terrorism-and-islamist-extremism/
On the other hand, there's plenty of support for extremists who preach violence, even AI having associated themselves with "cageprisoners" who are linked to Taliban. This isn't just in Britain either but in Europe as a whole.
Rats, I wanted to link another piece from Harry's but the site is slow again. I'll post it later.
Nappy and Sophia linked the same piece simultaneously:)
D'oh! — Sol quicklinked yesterday, not today.
Double D'oh! — Nappy meant to link to the piece with comments on Solomonia.
Triple D'oh! — Nappy remains cautiously optimistic but may have got hopes up too soon.
UK Muslim leader to issue fatwa against Jihad
OK, here's (some of) the bad news:
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2010/03/02/jihadis-for-the-ife-youth/
Sophia said "There are plenty in Britain but they're frequently attacked by the radicals."
If there are plenty, and the radicals are the minority, there should be lots of examples, videos of marches, blogs, moderates counter-demonstrating against radical islamists.
Where are these visible, real world (not imaginary) examples of moderate Muslims OPPOSING "radical" Muslims?
It should be easy to find. I haven't seen them at the top of a Google search.
Sophia, where are "the plenty", in Britain? I've see the pictures of "radical" Muslims in Britain threatening the UK with it's own 9/11.
Where are the MAJORITY moderate Muslims posting in CiF?
Eddie, I think the problem is kind of simple actually - I'm guessing obviously but I think it's the same with people in the US who post on radical blogs here.
The majority of people are trying to get on with their lives. They don't want to "make a fuss," and this is also true of UK Jews who are trying to "fit in," you don't see a lot of fuss-making in Britain. It isn't their style. So you see the young people, the ideologues, people with an ax to grind and also the time to grind it.
Consider this: if you were an "Asian" family person, holding down a challenging job, trying to blend into your community, how likely would you be to go marching down the street?
The other side of this is, the moderates might actually be attacked by the radicals. The radicals attacked British troops even.
There is nothing worse than a self hating Western Leftist. They are scum of the Earth.