Legendary political caricaturist Dosh’s pre-1967 view of the existentially threatening Green Line – into which Abbas insists Israel again compress itself

When it involves Israel, the international community’s hearing is notoriously selective yet never capricious or random. There is method in the apparent arbitrariness of what does and does not compellingly impress the self-appointed adjudicators of all that’s virtuous and/or villainous in our setting.

Israel’s own largely left-dominated media – forever engaged in advocacy journalism and tendentiously promoting hyped humbug – isn’t remarkably better.

The obliging etiquette of de rigueur enlightenment demands that Israel’s culpability be accentuated and amplified in all circumstances. Simultaneously, any Arab belligerence must by the niceties of politically correct protocol be disguised, discounted and ultimately denied. Stonewalling must be ascribed exclusively to the uncool Jewish state.

The hardly unforeseeable upshot is that nowhere was much interest shown in Ramallah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas’s latest song and dance. Deprived of resonance, the story of his two recent meetings in Paris with US Secretary of State John Kerry expired virtually unnoticed.  Continue reading →

A victorious Hitler parades in just-occupied Prague: “painful sacrifices” hardly sated his appetites

Palestinian Authority figurehead Mahmoud Abbas (Abu-Mazen) has this week assured us – at a meeting with a pre-selected group of left-wing Israeli students – that happy days are (almost) here again. That in itself should suffice to allay our anxieties – all, he says, products of that well-oiled Israeli propaganda machine. If we merely take his word for it, we could sleep soundly.

If Israel only improves its act, and conducts its affairs as per Abbas’s directives, peace and bliss will surely be ours. To hear him, there’s no obstructionism whatsoever on his turf. The obstacles to peace are all Israeli-made. Abbas has absolved himself of any responsibility if things go awry.  He’s only seeking justice for an indigenous population oppressed by an artificial entity, a foreign interloper.

Those among us who still possess historical perspectives will recognize the resemblance to contentions made by one Adolf Hitler on the eve of the infamous Munich Agreement, which sold out Czechoslovakia as the alleged cause of all that ailed Europe. Continue reading →

Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, shows signs of mild embarrassment in the wake of reports that it had consigned Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim, to a list of firms deemed too “ethically questionable” for investment by the ostensibly more ethically-minded investors.

Bank Hapoalim indeed featured on the list but Deutsche Bank later averred that this was merely a recommendation by an outside consultant from Denmark.

It needs be stressed that the actual damage to Bank Hapoalim is likely to be minimal at most. If anything, the impact on Deutsche Bank’s image would be more acute. It goes beyond the mere specter of a German financial giant boycotting a Jewish concern. Deutsche bank has a particularly dark past, even as far as veteran German corporations go. Continue reading →

General Evelyn Hugh Barker: “punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes”

It’s a safe bet that John Kerry hasn’t heard of General Evelyn Hugh Barker, GOC (General Officer Commanding) of British forces in Palestine (Eretz Yisrael).  Lack of erudition, however, has hardly prevented anyone from regarding Jews much in the same light as Barker did.

Of course Kerry, unlike Barker, operates in an age of rigorous political correctness, so the US Secretary of State dare not give full vent to prejudice, not even when he cannot fully hide it. A case in point is Kerry’s proposal that Jews from Arab countries be compensated in the framework of the “peace” he strives to impose on Israel.

The subtext of his suggestion is that Jews can be bought, that they’ll ditch all that’s dear and sacred to them for a little lucre.

It’s here that we backtrack to Barker. In 1946 the British GOC set out to make all Jews of pre-state Israel “suffer punishment and be made aware of the contempt and loathing with which we regard their conduct.”  Continue reading →

Direct unfiltered substantiation of bias – Obama and Sarkozy at Cannes in November 2011

Decades ago singer-songwriter Carole King gave voice to her dread:

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
I feel my heart start to trembling…

That was sort of how some of us felt last weekend when US Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a thinly disguised ultimatum to little Israel – sacrifice your most vital interests or be pronounced a pariah among the nations.

His insolence was underscored by the irony that he issued his cynical warning to the Jewish state from German soil  – more specifically from Munich where appeasement-minded democracies once signed a perfidious “peace agreement” that in no time plunged the world into its blackest nightmare.

But, despite keenly orchestrated leftwing panic-mongering, we shouldn’t have been so shocked. We had already been slapped before with Kerry’s every single earth-shaking admonition. Last November 6, for instance, Kerry was interviewed jointly by Israel’s Channel-2 and Palestinian TV. What he said then wasn’t meant as a private off-the-record caution. It was literally broadcast for all to hear and be awed. Continue reading →