It’s fascinating, really, to see how many editors across the world change news stories to make Palestinian terrorists look better than they are. Take this AP story, for instance, sent out hours ago with the following headline:

Hamas Militiamen Beat Protesters in Gaza

This is where I could use Lexis-Nexis, because a Google News search shows exactly seven stories with those words (or slight variations) in the headline. It’s in the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian (surprisingly), the San Diego Source, the WaPo, ABC News (see above), the San Jose Mercury News, and two other small papers.

When you search Google News using the words “Hamas beat,” you still find very few instances of Hamas beating the crap out of protesters in Gaza.

Security men for Gaza’s Hamas rulers clubbed and slammed rifle butts into opponents staging a rare protest Monday, seizing the cameras of journalists covering the event and raiding media offices to prevent news footage from getting out.

The Islamic militant group claims it is willing to tolerate dissent, but the crackdown was the latest in a series of moves to squash opposing voices, including breaking up private parties Friday and Monday where people were singing songs of the rival Fatah movement.

What was it the people were protesting, exactly?

Buses carrying protesters were halted by Hamas guards who beat passengers, driving them away and confiscating Fatah flags. However, about 300 people got past the militia cordon and demonstrated for 20 minutes, shouting “We want freedom. We want to raise our voice!”

Security officers arrested several demonstrators and then confiscated equipment from news photographers and cameramen trying to cover the arrests, including an Associated Press still camera.

Hamas squads also raided the Gaza offices of media organizations, looking for material from the rally. Staffers at satellite broadcaster Al-Arabiyya said the militiamen seized a camera and videotape at their office.

Once again, may I point out that no journalists’ unions are sending out urgent press releases regarding the Hamas treatment of their fellow journalists. In fact, there isn’t even a breaking news on Reporters Without Borders’ website. But you can find this three-day-old story about a Palestinian journalist wounded—ostensibly by Israel, though the IDF said they could not confirm that—while covering a gunbattle between Hamas and the IDF.

I anxiously await their report on this incident. Or these two:

On Friday, rifle-toting militiamen roared up to a bachelor party where revelers were dancing to Fatah songs. Video showed the Hamas men firing in the air to break up the celebration, clubbing guests, hurling chairs around and leaving one man lying unconscious.

The images were repeatedly broadcast on Fatah-affiliated Palestine TV. The cameraman who took the footage, from the local Gaza Ramattan news agency, was detained and questioned by Hamas for several hours.

On Monday, the Executive Force was in action again, breaking up the wedding of a Fatah activist and holing five guests for several hours.

One of those detained, Zaid Salem, said wedding participants were singing Fatah songs but did not break a Hamas ban on celebratory gunfire and were not charged with any wrongdoing.

Not that I expect anything to happen. Hamastan has been established, though there are reports that Fatah fighters are slipping into Gaza and preparing to take it back. It would be nice to believe they can do it, but Fatah has proven its incompetence many times over.

Some of Windsor, Canada’s Lebanese community has decided that they speak for all Canadian Lebanese immigrants and have put up a billboard of Hizbollah featuring Hassan Nasrallah, and claiming that Hezbollah wants peace.

Members of the Jewish and Lebanese Christian communities in Windsor are outraged by the appearance of a billboard that appears to promote Hezbollah — an organization the Canadian government considers terrorist.

“That organization is banned in Canada,” said Harvey Kessler, executive director of the Windsor Jewish Community Centre. “How can that billboard be up in Windsor when it represents a terrorist organization which is banned under the laws of Canada?”

Located at the southwest corner of Marion Avenue and Wyandotte Street East, the billboard does not mention Hezbollah by name, but features a central image of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the controversial political and military group that represents Lebanese Shia Muslims and has clashed with Israeli troops for more than 20 years.

Kessler said he feels Nasrallah represents “the opposite of peace.”

“It should be offensive to all people living in Windsor. It should be offensive not only to the Jewish community, but to any Canadian.”

Emile Nabbout, president of the Windsor branch of the Lebanese Christian political group Kataeb, said he also thinks Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, and he feels the billboard creates a misconception of the views of Windsor’s Lebanese community.

“We really are not in support or in favour of that billboard and it should be removed ASAP,” Nabbout said.

The billboard’s sponsors defended their actions.

One of the people responsible for a controversial billboard depicting Hezbollah’s leader said he did it to honour freedom fighting families back home — and it’s their Canadian right to do so.

“In Canada we want peace,” said Hussein Dabaja, a Lebanese-born Hezbollah supporter. “We’re not trying offend anybody. We have freedom of speech. It’s a free country. We can do anything. Every Lebanese in Canada has somebody that died in Lebanon, the freedom fighters. Who is Hezbollah? Our brothers, our family, our parents, our friends. We came to Canada and they stayed there to fight.”

[...] Dabaja said the billboard was not meant to be an anti-Jewish statement.

“People who have something against the billboard don’t like Hezbollah and they don’t want peace,” he said.

Yeah, they’re lying about what the sign means.

“By just analyzing the picture, there is no doubt in my mind this is a Hezbollah activity,” he added.

Printed in English on the left side of the billboard are the words: “Lebanese and Arab communities in Windsor city congratulate the Lebanese people for their steadfastness and endeavor to establish peace in Lebanon.”

But Nabbout said that Arabic writing which appears on the right side of the billboard does not match the English translation. According to Nabbout, the Arabic writing makes a reference to fighting.

“What they mean by ‘fight’ is basically ‘guerrilla’ — using arms and weapons,” Nabbout said. “Basically, there is a very specific word… That is a definite difference between the Arabic and the English.”

And today, the sign has been removed.

The billboard depicting Hezbollah’s controversial leader, which caused an uproar across Windsor, was quietly replaced Monday morning with an advertisement for a car dealership.

So, about that peace thing… You mean like this?

Hizbollah is buying up large tracts of land owned by Christians and other non-Shias in southern Lebanon as the militant group rebuilds its defences in preparation for a new war with Israel, The Sunday Telegraph has been told.

The land grab is thought to be driven by the Iranian-backed guerrillas’ efforts to rearm themselves and fortify the strategically important ravines north of the Litani River, just north of the front line in last year’s 34-day conflict with its Jewish neighbour.

Here, Hizbollah has been free to press forward without harassment from the 13,000 United Nations peacekeepers and 20,000 Lebanese army troops who were deployed south of the Litani as part of the ceasefire agreement that ended the conflict.

Just south of the Litani, the UN is conducting hundreds of patrols each day in a bid to keep Hizbollah weapons out of the area, but the peacekeepers’ mandate ends at the river.

The Lebanese army, meanwhile, is about 50 per cent Shia and seems to be turning a blind eye to Hizbollah activities north of the river.

Yeah, that’s “peace,” all right. It’s known as the peace of the grave.

Snoopy isn’t the only one who was upset by Professor Hillel Weiss. But the professor has apologized for his outburst.

A week after sparking a row after he was caught on video by a Ynet cameraman cursing Hebron Brigade commander and IDF soldiers during the evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Hebron wholesale market, Professor Hillel Weiss of Bar-Ilan University took back his harsh remarks Monday morning.

“From the remarks and the curses quoted in the media it may seem that I have bad feelings toward the soldiers who sacrifice their lives for the resurrection of the nation and the land,” Weiss wrote in a letter to IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen.

“Without going into the events and the many details of what happened, including before I even spoke, I am sorry for stooping to such a level of curses in the remarks I made, and I regret these remarks.

But wait. There’s more.

Weiss later explained in a radio interview that he apologized due to “terrorist Mapainic pressure exerted on the university.”

Talking to Ynet, he clarified, “Since the remarks were published, Bar-Ilan University President Prof Moshe Kaveh was forced to get down on his knees against his will. After Rabin’s murder they looked for the national religious Jews at the university, even though Bar-Ilan did not support the act and was not guilty of the murder.”

Here is my problem with the entire incident, in a nutshell:

“I am trying to wake the people up to face the real danger: The expulsion of Jews is a distraction from the real danger, which is the eradication of the Jews by our enemies.”

Israel had to give up Gaza. Sharon and Olmert didn’t do it right, but Gaza had eventually to go. But Israel should not have to give up Hebron, the city where Jews were massacred and expelled in 1929. It’s not an Arab city. It’s not a Palestinian city. It’s the city mentioned in the Torah, which describes how Abraham bought the land for the Caves of the Patriarchs, and where, as soon as we leave, the Arabs will do to them what they did to Joseph’s Tomb. This is our holy site, yet another site the Muslims are expropriating, and yet another example of the Exception Clause: The world will not allow Jews to worship at or keep their holy sites, not when the Muslims have managed to put their mosques atop them.

No, I don’t support Professor Weiss when he curses Jews. But he has a point about the expulsion of Jews from Hebron. We are doing our enemies’ work for them when we allow ourselves to be divided like this.

If I had a dollar (no, make it shekel) for every article that starts with these words, I would be able… wait, let me make a quick estimate… to replace our old TV set by a new-fangled LCD flat screen with myriad of new features.

So you can understand my reluctance to post anything about the predictably dreary and rambling article by another connoisseur of high moral ground. But an Hasbara grunt must do what an Hasbara grunt must do…

So, it is Andrew Benjamin now, Professor of Critical Theory in the Centre and at the University of Technology, Sydney. And a philosopher to boot - go argue with a guy like this. Fortunately (or not) the article looks like a cheese that was depleted by mice in a major way. To start with - the famous straw man, as usual built by the author for the author’s enjoyment:

However what endures for many as an outrage is Israel hijacking the Holocaust for its political ends: the Holocaust is used to sustain a specific geo-political situation.

In general, this is eerily similar to the logical pirouette so beloved by modern anti-Semites: state of Israel defends its barbaric actions by accusing the critics in antisemitism, ergo we are not anti-Semites when we rightfully criticize Israel. This circular logic is used these days so frequently that the whole business of identifying an anti-Semite has become a new branch of science.

In particular, let us see how our professor illustrated his claim above - it is fantastic for a person with so impressive scientific credentials:

The other night in Sydney at the Great Synagogue a speaker defended the incursion into Lebanon on the grounds that it would prevent a further Holocaust.

You see: the state of Israel hijacks whatever it hijacks, because a speaker in a synagogue happens to be an idiot… sheesh. It truly looks like there are some nincompoops attending the Great Synagogue in Sydney, although it hurts me to say so. But it’s not all, look at this:

Until Jews are prepared to argue that the Holocaust and its legacy is not the province of a nation state, let alone a justification for Zionism, our responsibility in relation to the dead will continue to be betrayed.

Who is it exactly that argues thusly, our learned professor does not say. Nor does he know, apparently, that Zionism predates the Holocaust by a few years, but this could be helped by some easy-reading leaflets.

I could explain to Mr Benjamin that the Israeli officials and the whole officialdom, while mentioning Holocaust frequently*, normally do not make it a habit to justify their usual misdeeds by Holocaust. And if he hears one doing so, it is most probably an idiot (see above). I, personally, do not invoke Holocaust more than two or three times a day, and this mostly when trying to jump a queue abroad, because here it does not work for some reason.

But this was only for appetizers, let’s continue:

The consequence of this is that a critique of Zionism or a disagreement over the policies of Israel are taken at best as a criticism of Jews and, at worst, as anti-Semitic. The evidence is clear. Attacks on synagogues in Seattle and Parramatta underscore the results of this. These attacks are the result of the politics of a nation state.

Israel, in its present manifestation, sustains anti-Semitism.

You see, how easy it is? Another one of the “I do not support, but I understand” crowd. So, the attacks on the synagogues all over the world are not the deed of some Muslim folks, incensed by anti-Israeli (and frequently anti-Jewish) rhetoric of their leaders, but a sole result of the Israeli existence “in its present manifestation”, whatever is the (quite sinister) meaning of this utterance. An elegant attempt of back-assward logic (see “philosopher”, will you). But convenient to Israeli-haters and Jew-haters all over the world, just check the links to this article.

I could continue, but Mr Bagel here has already done a good enough mincemeat of the article, so I shall quote his reference to the article’s “main” point:

Mr Benjamin quite early in his opinion piece states: “The source of the feeling is simple: Israel claims that it continues to act in my name.” I’m sorry to burst your own self inflated bubble Mr Benjamin but I seriously doubt if the State of Israel has even any knowledge of you. Pray tell me where you find the evidence that Israel as a country acts on behalf of all Jews and especially of you?

The last worthy point is that “bulldozing houses” in Gaza. The last houses to be bulldozed were these of the leaving settlers (for some inexplicable reason this point has escaped many a bleeding heart). And we all know what is going on in Gaza and around it. Or do we? Probably the news have not reached yet some esoteric faculties in Sydney…

So, rest assured, dear professor: not in your name.

(*) Due to unhappy circumstances beyond my control, I have become a frequent visitor of a local cemetery lately. My (admittedly anecdotal) observation is that almost every other tombstone bears a text of the following contents: “In memory of … and … who perished in the Holocaust”. Since this is an internal Israeli affair, hardly meant for Hasbara purposes, I do not think the text is a work of some sinister power. So I suspect that many of these officials do have a justification for mentioning Holocaust, even if the learned professor cringes at it.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.