A composite view of the Middle East

Take a look at the state of play from the vantage points as far apart as Scandinavia, the USA, and inside the Middle East itself.
A Finnish blogger, KGS of Tundra Tabloids, brings this story of how Church organizations in Finland and Sweden routinely engage in spine-chillingly anti-Semitic trips that are funded partly by the Church and partly by the State. It is a synthesis of religion and state apparatus pursuing an overtly anti-Israel agenda that gives considerable pause for thought.
 
In the USA, New York Post columnist Ralph Peters writes about how the US under Barack Hussein Obama is openly undermining the Jewish state in favour of radical Islamist regimes spanning the entire Middle East. Obama’s chronic inability to recognise Israeli anxieties is matched only by his overwhelming desire to anticipate whatever the Arab states want – and to pressure the Jewish state into feeding Arab rejectionist intransigence. Obama’s approach marks a social disparity with a worrying religious echo and unpleasant racist undertones.
 
On the subject of racism, in Egypt, an Israeli reporter was arrested by the military as he tried to cross the border into Israel together with Muslim African refugees who often make the hazardous journey across several Muslim countries to seek asylum in the world’s only Jewish nation. The reporter, Yotam Feldman, wanted to record the plight of the African asylum-seekers from their on-the-spot perspective. He recounts that he was treated reasonably well by the Egyptian authorities but testified to the far worse fate of the black Africans who he says are routinely mistreated in the Muslim state of Egypt, noting that the Egyptians make a distinction in their treatment of white people and their treatment of Africans.
 
It is remarkable that in a world characterised by economic tailspin, major environmental concerns, massive social inequalities, substantial political corruption and other crises of enormous weight, there is such corrosive preoccupation with the Jewish state in countries as far apart as the US and Finland, at the same time as these very same countries turn a blind eye to the vicious injustices perpetrated by Muslims on other Muslims, as testified by a journalist in Egypt.
 
How does one explain this imbalance without using the words “anti” and “Semitism”?

But it’s not all gloom, doom and anti-Semitism. For light comic relief, there’s always that stalwart of manic humour, the United Nations. As Barry Rubin reports with regard to the UN-Habitat organisation, “granting an award to the close friend of those who murdered the man it's named after, a backer of those who he fought against, and who is aiding those seeking to take over his country definitely qualifies for being granted our own award for ironic and disgraceful behavior”.

Read it and weep.
 

Strange priorities

You’re at work.

A murderer from the next town breaks into your home, slaughters your entire family and while he is in the process of breaking into your neighbour’s home to continue on his rampage, the police arrive. The murderer resists arrest, starts shooting at the officers and is himself killed in the exchange of fire.

The murderer’s home town marks this event by naming the main town square fronting Town Hall in honour of the murderer. Schoolchildren are taught about the murderer’s heroic deed and encouraged to aspire to the same heights of achievement. The international community remains silent.

It doesn’t take long before more lethal attacks are carried out.

To stem the carnage, a fence is built between the two towns to prevent repeat offences. There is an immediate international uproar. Any protective fence should only be built around the houses of the intended victims, not in locations which would prevent the perpetrators from getting to their victims in the first place.

A few years later, some new houses are built in and near the homes of the increasing numbers of murder victims. Once again there is an immediate international uproar. The fallout is far-reaching.

The construction of the new apartments comes under scrutiny. Not by Town Hall where the buildings are to be constructed – we’re not talking zoning laws, infrastructure construction and utility installation – but by the UN Security Council.

There is still no discussion on the suitability or otherwise of naming town squares and educational establishments in honour of mass-murderers.

This scenario is not a figment of Kafkaesque imagination. It is unfortunately hard reality.

The West Bank town of El Bireh recently named its town square in honour of a Muslim Palestinian terrorist who slaughtered 38 Jewish civilians in Israel, including 13 children. The ceremony was scheduled to coincide with the arrival in the region of Joe Biden, the US Vice-President. Neither he nor US Foreign Secretary Hillary Clinton had any comment on the suitability of this event. This silence is scarcely surprising since many public facilities such as streets, schools and sports tournaments in the West Bank are named in honour of Muslim Palestinian mass-murderers – accompanied by thunderous silence on the part of the US and the rest of the international community that bankrolls the West Bank regime of Mahmud Abbas.

The event thus passed without comment by the visiting US dignitaries.

However, both Joe Biden (read the Telegraph and Guardian on the subject) and Hillary Clinton have been scathing in their condemnation of Israel’s decision to build a number of apartments for Jews, sparking a diplomatic crisis between Israel and the US.

Some analysts regard this imbalance in responses as both revealing and cathartic – finally Israel understands what it is dealing with in the latest US administration. There is no longer any need for Israel to pretend that it has an honest and impartial broker in Washington.

Barry Rubin offers a refreshingly straightforward insight into what the US administration actually wants and believes in when it comes to Middle East policy.

So too does Daniel Pipes.

Half a world away, meantime, Sweden’s third-largest city, Malmö, continues to witness the exodus of Jews as extremist mayor Ilmar Reepalu continues to encourage Islamist aggression against the city’s Jewish residents. Mayor Reepalu maintains that if Jews “choose” to flee Malmö that is their business, and goes on to note that it is quite understandable that Swedish Muslims hate Swedish Jews owing to events in the Middle East.

At least Reepalu is not alone in his views. Yesterday Egypt announced that it would ban the public rededication of a refurbished Cairo synagogue. Egypt’s few remaining Jews are to be penalised for allegations of "aggression by Israeli authorities against Muslim sanctuaries" in Israel. Reepalu must be feeling that he is being vindicated where it really matters.

Public facilities dedicated in honour of Muslim mass-murderers by what the US and the EU insist are Israel’s “partner for peace”. Jews penalised for protecting their lives with fences where the fences do most good. Jews banned from celebrating the rededication of a synagogue in Egypt. Jews chased out of Swedish cities by Islamist extremists. And Jews excoriated by the US for building apartments.

The politics of topsy-turvy priorities is getting very confusing. Yet at the same time increasingly clear.

There IS justice in this world.

Well, at least there is in the UK.

In Britain, Baroness Jenny Tonge, a Liberal Democrat lawmaker, hopped on the Swedish blood-libel bandwagon set in motion by Donald Boström (read also here, here, here, here and here).

Of course, they were far from alone. Al Jazeera, Iran, Syria, Egypt and countless others in the Arab and Islamic worlds all subscribed to the Boström/Tonge conspiracy theory whereby any allegation, however vile and unsubstantiated, may be leveled at the Jewish state of Israel with the demand that Israel should then spend its time and resources proving the allegations wrong. It is a deliberate strategy designed to slowly bleed the Jewish state to death through litigation, slander and diverted resources while inexorably stripping the nation of its legitimacy in the public consciousness.

From the viewpoint of morality it is the absolute opposite of that most fundamental tenet of western democracy – the presumption of innocence. It is a belief system that is applied universally in enlightened Western societies – except when it comes to the Jewish state.

Liberal Democrat party leader Nick Clegg has now sacked Jenny Tonge for her outrageous and unsubstantiated allegations that the Israel Defense Forces went to Haiti not to provide desperately needed aid in the aftermath of the catastrophe that tore the country apart, but merely to harvest human organs. Tonge's allegations were all the more bizarre bearing in mind her position in the Liberal Democrats as party health spokesman – a position designed to add weight to the slander.

Before she was removed from office, Baroness Tonge never saw fit in her official capacity as spokesperson on health issues to comment on the numerous documented cases of organ harvesting involving Palestinian Arabs. Of course, these cases of organ harvesting took place in the Muslim and Arab state of Jordan, rendering them automatically of no interest to her agenda. She also never either managed to issue a statement on the documented illegal traffic in human organs in the Muslim and Arab state of Egypt.

Commenting on what some might call the racist nature of Tonge's selectivity, party leader Nick Clegg said that Tonge’s remarks were “wrong, distasteful and provocative”. Baroness Tonge is hopefully now at her local Job Centre looking for work that does not involve verbal skills.

Hats off to Nick Clegg.

Justice of a totally different sort was dispensed this past week by Palestinian President-unelect Mahmoud Abbas.

According to the Palestinian constitution, his time at the helm passed its sell-by date some time ago but Abbas still keeps a firm grasp of the reins. Determined to put on a good show for the West, which via unfathomable – and often largely non-transparent – EU and UN funding bankrolls a Palestinian society not required to work, study, construct permanent housing, produce goods, stop systematic racist indoctrination or in any way contribute to the betterment of that society, Abbas recently appointed former Fatah intelligence official Mr Fahmi Shabaneh to investigate and stamp out corruption in official Palestinian society (i.e.Fatah).

Mr Shabaneh, who used to head the anti-corruption unit of the Palestinian GIS (General Intelligence Service), was however coerced into quitting his job after he uncovered several cases of financial, administrative and sexual corruption among PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s closest allies.

Thanks to his diligence in doing the job President Abbas asked him to do, Mr Shabaneh has now been accused of “collaboration with Israel” and a warrant has been issued for his arrest. The accusations against Shabaneh come from none other than PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party, and the warrant for Shabaneh’s arrest for uncovering the corruption has been issued by the same Fatah – which runs the PA government led by Mahmoud Abbas.

Out with the old, in with the ... well, same-old-same-old, really.

Transparency and justice usually go hand in hand.

In the UK as in any other civilized society that’s the way it works.

On the other hand we have the Palestinian Authority. Paid for by us.


For additional references on the disproved organ harvesting slander:
National Post
Seattle Times
Bellingham Herald
Israel National News
Huffington Post
Pro Kerala
Florida Chamber of Commerce
Solomonia
Astute Blogger
New English Review
Free Republic
Ynet
United Jerusalem

 
For additional references on the case of disgraced Liberal Democrat Jenny Tonge:
Telegraph
Telegraph
Ynet
Congoo
Solomonia
Discarded Lies
Gazette Live
Ealing Gazette
Mirror
Daily Mail
Daily Express
Liverpool Echo
Newsbag
Israel Matzav
World BB News
India Times

Boycott the Jews. In Sweden.

When blood-libels about organ-harvesting don’t work, it’s time to dust off that other weapon that has served racists so well for centuries: the boycott.

Not just any boycott.

A boycott solely against people of one single faith.

People who refuse to betray their own country.

And not just any people either. Academics. The leading thinkers of any democratic society, the progressives who embrace free thought as part and parcel of their pursuit of expertise.

No, we’re not talking about Egypt, whose Muslim majority routinely violate the human rights of the country’s 3 million Coptic Christians.

Neither are we talking about the Shia Muslims of Iraq who slaughter the Sunni Muslims of Iraq in the name of Islam. And vice versa.

Nor are we talking about the Muslim Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (the Jewish provinces of Judea and Samaria where the Palestinian Arabs want to create a second Palestinian state alongside Jordan). In the West Bank, Christian Arabs living in the cradle of Christianity are so relentlessly pursued by their Muslim neighbours that their population in Bethlehem has dwindled to one-third its size in just one generation.

And of course we are not talking about the Gaza Strip, where ethnic cleansing got a head start with the removal of every single Jew, dead and alive, before the territory was handed over to the Gazans as a first step in the establishment of peace and a new nation. What the Muslim-majority Gazans did instead was to turn on the Christian minority, which has since been decimated.

When it comes to use of the boycott as a weapon against people of a single faith, we are, in fact, talking not about any of the above, but about Sweden.

KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, is organizing a “seminar to discuss the case for boycotting Israel”. Presenting the case for a boycott will be such leading lights of democracy and fidelity as Dror Feiler, a communist who renounced his Israeli citizenship and now campaigns in Sweden on behalf of terrorist organizations such as Hamas. He is regarded in many circles as a traitor. He is also President of European Jews for a Just Peace, an organization numbering almost a hundred people. He does not represent more than a handful of Jews in Sweden but is given widespread coverage by a media enchanted with the Palestinian narrative and deaf to any other.

At the KTH event, Associate Prof Jan-Erik Gustafsson will “report about the Birzeit group for international academic boycott”.

So it’s going to be a balanced, fair and above all representative exchange of views, then.

Interestingly, not a word is mentioned by these champions of human rights on the subject of China, which has occupied and annexed Tibet these past fifty years. Or Turkey, which committed unspeakable atrocities against the Armenians and still occupies Armenia. Neither is Russia mentioned, despite its continued occupation of Chechnya. The Kurds still do not have a country of their own and have been hounded over the centuries – yet another subject that KTH chooses not to highlight.

And that’s before we even mention that other paragon of democracy and enlightenment, Iran, which continues to trumpet its determination to erase Israel from the map and is pursuing the development of nuclear technology for that purpose.

The boycott supporters at KTH prefer not to delve into the legion human rights abuses occurring every day in the Palestinian territories – honour killings, systematized rapes of Christian women, the illegal incarceration of the one sole Jew still (hopefully) alive in Gaza – Gilad Schalit who was kidnapped from sovereign Israel three years ago and still held without access to the Red Cross, his family, legal representation (not that he is accused of anything apart from Judaism, a crime in Gaza), the summary executions of political opponents. None of this matters.

There is a considerable risk to constantly crying “anti-Semitism” every time something of a tacit anti-Semitic nature takes place. The term and its meaning risk being diluted.

There is however an even greater risk to ignoring anti-Semitic attacks when they occur in countries that are ostensibly democracies. Because it sets society on the slippery path to indifference. And we know where that leads. Ask the people of Cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia, Tibet, Armenia, Kurdistan. And the decimated Jews of Europe.

Interestingly enough, one of the participants at the KTH seminar is the Egyptian propaganda ministry. That may of course explain the utter silence on the plight of Egypt’s Coptic Christians.

It also raises interesting questions about how one of Sweden’s foremost educational establishments has been infiltrated by a foreign governmental agency with a murky agenda.

For an insight into how Egypt is perceived today, read this article by former Israeli ambassador to Egypt Mr Zvi Mazel.

And for an insight into how Sweden is perceived today, read this interview by Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld.

With Egyptian state infiltration into Swedish academia, Swedish state funding of various anti-Israel NGOs, and the total infiltration of UNRWA by various Palestinian Arab terrorist and criminal gangs, it is time to step back and ponder where we are headed in the Middle East.

Because constellations such as the Sweden/Egypt/Hamas/media/academia axis seem to be working cohesively outside the established policy structures.

The lack of transparency is worrying. Like now at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, which demands that Jewish Israeli academics betray their country if they wish to be treated as equals.

It’s an echo of what Ilmar Reepalu, the mayor of Malmö in southern Sweden said recently: that only Swedish Jews who renounced all affiliations with Israel could reasonably be expected to live in peace and security in Sweden.

He made no corresponding demand on Swedish Muslims.
 
Malmö mayor Ilmar Reepalu may well be an honorary member of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

They certainly speak and act in sync.


Interesting link:
CAMERA reports that government-funded anti-Israel NGOs have been operating for many years.

A missed opportunity in Gaza

What a shame.

Egypt, Israel and Britain all stood to gain when renegade British MP George Galloway forced his way into the Gaza Strip in a violent spectacle that left one Egyptian policeman dead and several security officers and civilians injured.

If only Mubarak and Netanyahu had played their cards right, both could have been knighted for services to Britain by simply refusing to let him exit Gaza into either Egypt or Israel.

She would have been two knighthoods down, but the biggest winner would nonetheless have been Britain – Galloway has been an impediment to democracy, is a committed anti-democrat (like Ahmadinejad, he believes last year's elections in Iran were free and fair), he's an insult to decency, has shown questionable judgement regarding elementary charity accounting practice and has been displaying an appalling lack of simple good manners and taste for a decade or more.

The Palestinians sure know how to pick their friends.


Links:
Guardian
Reuters
CBC
AOL

The Aftonbladet non-story

Question:
When is organ trafficking involving Palestinian victims not a headline-grabbing story?

Answer 1:
When Swedish extreme-Left tabloid Aftonbladet realizes that the despicable practice cannot be blamed on Jews, Israelis, Zionists or democrats.

Answer 2:
When Swedish extreme-Left tabloid Aftonbladet realizes that the despicable practice is in fact taking place among Muslims in Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza and Egypt.

The Aftonbladet Effect:
Total clampdown. The story does not exist.

Not in the totalitarian media empire run by Aftonbladet, Sweden’s biggest-circulation daily and largest stakeholder in TT, the Swedish news agency that dedicates itself to demonisation of the Jewish state while maintaining absolute silence on human rights abuses in such beacons of democracy and respectful coexistence as Sudan, Syria, Iran, the Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the Fatah-ruled West Bank, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan.

Is there a pattern in the above shortlist?

Scarcely surprisingly, Aftonbladet declined to publish a story about a massive organ-trafficking industry that continues to this day.

That’s because it discovered no Jews were involved. All the alleged perpetrators are Muslims. The victims are all Palestinian Arabs, exactly as in the original story published by Aftonbladet alleging systematic Israeli abuse (later retracted). All the other parameters are similar. It’s only the religion and ethnicity of the alleged perpetrators that are different.

Is a pattern beginning to emerge?

Immaterial really, since the story never made it into Aftonbladet.

CAMERA has published its exchange of correspondence with Aftonbladet on the issue of organised Muslim organ trafficking. “Exchange” is perhaps not the best word to use – Aftonbladet never replied. It’s a non-issue for the newspaper since no Jews were alleged to have been involved.

Is the pattern any clearer now?

No honest, principled or loyal Swedes were hurt in the publication of this article, but a whole lot of rabid publicly funded anti-Semites, virulent anti-Israeli fanatics and blatant pro-Islamists have undoubtedly been significantly aggrieved by its tone and content.

NGO Monitor - Dishonest Reporter Award
The Israel Project (TIP) - background to the organ trafficking allegations
Barry Rubin - The Blood Libel that Won't Die
Tundra Tabloids - Swedish Tabloid Aftonbladet Rejects Story of Organ Harvesting from Amman, Jordan
Mere Rhetoric - The Chinese Organ Harvesting Story that Also Doesn't Exist
Ilya Meyer on Swedish funding of anti-Israel radicalism: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
Ilya Meyer on Swedish news agency TT and its anti-Israel project: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,

Swedish reporter's change of heart

Swedish photographer Donald Boström made waves in August this year when he abandoned his career as a photographer and instead tried his hand at journalism.

It was a mistake. He does not write coherently, he fails in the elementary ABC of checking on sources, he is subjective and unable to be objective, and his pro-Palestinian agenda shines through the few two-syllable words he succeeds in spelling correctly with the help of his trusty dictionary.

He wrote an article accusing the IDF of a systematic policy of killing Palestinian Arabs to supply a purported Israeli organ-trafficking industry, weaving his allegations together with a number of unrelated, overtly racist anti-Semitic accusations against Jews worldwide.

In early November, Boström travelled to Israel to defend his allegations. So certain was he of the treatment he would receive in the only democratic state in the Middle East that he hired a bodyguard to protect him 24 hours a day during his visit.

He needn't have bothered. This was, after all, Israel, not an Arab dictatorship. As is customary in any democracy, there were demonstrations against his racist views, but he was allowed to defend his views on TV and he left the country without incident. His bodyguard had the easiest assignment of his entire professional life.

Boström's civilised reception in Israel surprised him. Brought up on a decades-old Swedish diet of vilification of the Jewish state and of Jews in general, Boström today announced that he is reassessing his account of alleged official Israeli involvement in organ trafficking.

About time too, bearing in mind there is no story to pursue. He might, however, wish to pursue his enquiries on organ trafficking in Jordan, in Iran, among Palestinian Arabs, and in Egypt, where the practice is rife. In these Arab societies, the illegal trade in organs is a lively one indeed - pardon the pun.

Of course, Donald Boström may not survive any journalistic investigation into organ trafficking in the Arab and Muslim worlds, bodyguard or not. People asking awkward questions tend to be blown up, with some rather terminal side-effects. The unlucky ones tend to have their throats slit and the procedure televised and put on YouTube for other would-be surgeons in the Islamist world to emulate. So don't expect to see any articles on the subject bearing Donald Boström's signature any time soon.

It's good that Donald Boström has had a change of heart. Perhaps there has been some organ trafficking, after all.

Related articles from this site:
Swedish daily Aftonbladet: an ideology in search of a newspaper
Aftonbladet's defence begins to crumble
Swedish silence
Swedish Greens in fashionable brown shirts
Sweden: Open season on Jews
Freedom of the press in Sweden
Tensions in Swedish society
The view from Sweden