Anti-Semitism has been rising the world over, and now it seems to be going mainstream. Witness this ad campaign in New Zealand:

Billboards pitching a new programme for Prime Television have been removed after complaints from the Jewish community.

One billboard in Wakefield St, Wellington, and two in Auckland were removed yesterday after going up on Tuesday.

The billboards were for Madmen: The Glory Years of Advertising, due out at the end of the month, and bore the slogan: “Advertising Agency Seeks: Clients. All business considered, even from Jews.”

The billboards were removed after a complaint from New Zealand Jewish Council chairman Geoff Levy, who was also angry about a two-page advertisement using the same wording in the latest Time magazine.

So let me get this straight. In an ad for a TV series about a time when there was a fair amount of anti-Semitism (as well as probably anti-black and anti-woman prejudice), the marketers thought that it would be a great idea to use the sentence “All business considered, even from Jews.” Time Magazine saw no problem at all running a two-page ad with that sentence. Imagine the controversy if the word “Muslims” had been substituted for “Jews.”

However, the damage had already been done and 26,000 copies of Time would remain on waiting-room tables and in houses for months to come, he said.

We’re actually used to anti-Semitism from Time, right down to letting us know more than 30 years ago that Menachem Begin rhymes with Fagin. But stories like this make me think that anti-Semitism is, indeed, being mainstreamed.

Prime spokesman Tony O’Brien said approval for the campaign, which was to mirror “archaic” 1960s’ attitudes prevalent in the show, had been given by the marketing department, which had made an error of judgment.

All the billboards were immediately removed and an apology would run in the next edition of Time, he said.

“We take full responsibility for this and we have totally apologised to the Jewish community. The campaign crossed the line from being provocative to being offensive.”

Yes, it did, and the most shocking thing is that no one in the Prime marketing department blinked an eye at letting this campaign go through. Because after all, who gives a damn if a few Jews are offended? It’s not like they’re going to go around blowing up embassies or anything. And anyway, why should they take offense? All we’re doing is reproducing an attitude from the sixties.

Riiiight.

There is a double standard involved, but then, there always has been. The Exception Clause reigns supreme.

Soccer Dad points to a few bloggers who think the AP media bias against Israel may be easing. I’m not nearly as optimistic as they are, and here’s why. Watch the change in versions as the day progressed.

The first version I saw, out about 7:30 a.m.:

Blast flattens house of Hamas commander in Gaza, killing 3
A powerful blast flattened the two-story house of a militant commander in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing three people, including a baby girl and a boy, injuring 40 and burying an unknown number of others under the rubble, Gaza’s Hamas rulers and a Palestinian health official said.

Israel, which routinely accepts responsibility for attacks on military targets, denied involvement. But Hamas said the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike and responded with a heavy barrage of rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel, wounding an Israeli woman.

The spiraling violence threatened to undermine last-ditch efforts to wrest a truce between Israel and Hamas and stave off an Israeli invasion of Gaza.

Note how the AP plays down the Israeli denial and mentions the “spiraling violence” as if Israel did have a hand in destroying the house. Notice also how the AP emphasizes that children were killed (even though in later articles they retracted the baby boy victim and changed it to a teenaged boy). The overall narrative: Big, bad Israel is killing babies in Gaza by targeting Hamas leadership.

Next version, timestamped 9:07:

Blast flattens house of Hamas commander, killing 4
A blast flattened the house of a militant commander in the Gaza Strip Thursday, killing four people, wounding 40 and burying an unknown number of others, Palestinian officials said.

Israel, which routinely accepts responsibility for attacks on military targets, denied involvement. But Hamas said the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike and responded with a heavy barrage of rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel, wounding an Israeli woman.

The spiraling violence threatened to undermine last-ditch efforts to secure a truce between Israel and Hamas and stave off an Israeli invasion of Gaza.

Israel’s denial raised the possibility that the blast was caused by explosives meant for use against Israel that went off prematurely.

Now the AP raises the thought that maybe Hamas is lying. Absent is the sensationalism of the dead babies in the lead, remaining is the “spiraling violence” meme, even though the AP is now suggesting that maybe Israel didn’t blow up the house, after all.

Now, the 12:54 p.m. update:

A blast flattened the house of a militant commander in the Gaza Strip Thursday, killing seven people and wounding 40, Palestinian officials said.

Israel, which routinely accepts responsibility for attacks on military targets, denied involvement, and Hamas opened an investigation, an indication the militant Islamic rulers of Gaza believe the explosion might have been caused by accidental detonation of explosives in the house.

Earlier, Hamas blamed Israel and unleashed a barrage of rockets and mortars at Israel’s south.

The spiraling violence threatened to undermine last-ditch efforts to secure a truce between Israel and Hamas and stave off an Israeli invasion of Gaza.

Finally, we have the AP blaming Hamas for the “work accident,” but we still have the “spiraling violence” meme. Seems like the AP is heading down the right path, right?

Wrong. Three hours later:

Gaza house blast kills 7; Hamas hints at accident
An explosion flattened a house in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing seven people. After blaming Israel and unleashing a barrage of rockets and mortar shells, Hamas suggested the blast was accidental, not an Israeli attack.

By then Israel had carried out an airstrike aimed at a Gaza rocket squad, killing a Palestinian. Two other Israeli military operations in Gaza killed five more militants.

The violence threatened to scuttle Egyptian cease-fire efforts as they approached the finish line. A key Israeli envoy, Amos Gilad, was in Egypt trying to wrap up a deal, but there was no announcement of results.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said the military was not operating in the area of the house at the time of the blast.

Now the AP uses the cause-and-effect (or as they like to put it, “tit-for-tat”) violence meme. Because Hamas launched rockets at Israel, Israel fired against terrorists launching rockets. The AP treats terrorism and defense against terrorism as the same actions—all part of the “spiral of violence”—which is ruining the peace talks. Not Hamas terrorism. “Violence” by Hamas and Israel.

Those were all yesterday’s stories. Now let’s take a look at today’s article, time-stamped 8:52 a.m.

Israel OKs 1,300 east Jerusalem homes

Huh? What? Where’s the Hamas explosion story?

Oh. Five paragraphs down. You know, in the grafs that are most likely not to make it into the World News section of your local paper. Take careful note of what is omitted from these next four paragraphs.

Hamas, meanwhile, claimed responsibility for a house explosion in northern Gaza that killed seven Palestinians, one of them an infant girl.

An announcement Friday on the official Web site of Hamas’ military wing said the group’s “martyrs” died “while putting the final touches on a plan to carry out a special holy war mission.”

Five militants were among those who died in the explosion that flattened the house Thursday.

Immediately after the blast, Hamas blamed Israel. But Israel denied involvement.

What’s missing? The rocket barrage that Hamas launched immediately following the explosion. It’s gone down the AP memory hole, obviously yesterday’s news.

Funny, the BBC managed to put this news into a separate story. Reuters thought it was worth a mention of its own (though they buried the Hamas rocket barrage deep below the cutoff point). Even Monsters and Critics, a vehemently anti-Israel site, managed to run an article that focuses on Hamas’ responsibility for the blast. But not the AP.

I see no reason for hoping the anti-Israel media bias, or the narrative, is changing. I see only the reluctant admission of an anti-Israel writing and editing staff that yesterday’s explosion wasn’t Israel’s fault, and the continuance of the anti-Israel narrative and the whitewashing of Palestinian crimes against Israel. And keep in mind that I am a glass-half-full kind of person.

Update: And now (2:23 p.m. timestamp), all mention of the explosion is gone from AP updates. Move along, nothing to see here.

A few weeks ago Moshe Arens observed:

But once the Israel Defense Forces and the security services began to seriously tackle Palestinian terror, following the massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya in the spring of 2002, it quickly became clear that terror could be defeated by force.

Ari Shavit Nadav Shragai (thanks for the correction Mr Cosmic X) makes a similar observation:

The left has to be reminded of the year 1994 - a black hole in their memories: Israel left Gaza. That event took place 11 years before the disengagement. The left contends that mortars and Qassams were fired even before the disengagement, but they do not mention that the firing started only after 1994 - first at Gush Katif, and then at Sderot and after the disengagement, at Ashkelon.They fire at us from Gaza because we are not there. No one fires at Kfar Sava, which is 700 meters from Qalqilyah, or at the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, which is 500 meters from Bethlehem, because the IDF comes and goes whenever it wants, and thus has corrected the mistake of withdrawing from there during the Oslo Accord years.

Shavit’s observation is in the service of a larger point though:

The right must take care not to fall automatically into the trap of patriotism and must not “stand at attention” if the Israel Defense Forces enters the Strip. The right must make it clear that a short-term stay in Gaza would add insult to injury, and that another hasty withdrawal not only would not help us to regain our deterrent power but would smash it. The situation in the south is complicated, but there is no point in making it more complicated for a mere short-term gain that would precede another painful fall. It is necessary to rebuild permanent Israeli security control in Gaza both in the field and via intelligence, and also to consider once again setting up settlements in the northern Gaza Strip along our southern border. It is from the ruins of these settlements that the Grads and the Qassams are being fired in the direction of Ashkelon.

Defending Israel from Hamas in Gaza will entail a costly operation (or war). Half measures won’t do. The problem is that short term political considerations can’t come into play as Caroline Glick observed (h/t Seraphic Secret):

Tuesday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will meet ahead of Wednesday’s security cabinet meeting to determine their preferred course of action in Gaza. As media reports and statements by the three’s surrogates over the past several days make clear, Israel’s political leaders oppose launching a military campaign aimed at defeating Hamas’s Iranian directed, financed, trained and armed army and dislodging Hamas’s jihadist regime from power.Indeed, as their actions and statements over the past several months make clear, what Israel’s political leaders really aspire to is a cease-fire agreement with Iran’s Palestinian proxy regime. Under the proposed cease-fire, Hamas will suspend or scale back its illegal missile war against Israeli civilians in the South. In return, Israel will effectively accept Hamas rule of Gaza. Israel will allow Hamas to continue to build up its military forces in Gaza and have open access to the Sinai.

If Hamas is afraid why not make those fears come true?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Count on the UN to get its priorities straight:

UN to discuss resolution demanding that Israel halt West Bank settlement construction

Here’s the short reason - via Meryl - that this settlements are irrelevant:

In other words, give us everything we want and then some, and maybe we’ll talk peace after that. The Arab position hasn’t changed. They said no in 1948, again in 1967, and have been saying no to peace with Israel for over 60 years.

Let’s remember that next time some moron insists that it’s “settlements” that are stopping the peace process. No, it’s Arab irredentism and rejectionism of Israel.

Here’s a slightly longer reason - via Barry Rubin:

That’s a pretty horrendous scenario, right? But that is basically the situation we face regarding the absurd belief that the Arab-Israeli, or more immediately, the Israeli-Palestinian, conflict can be resolved at this time.

So let me say it again: despite the mountains of speeches, conferences, articles, committees, foundation grants, projects, currencies of every description, and policies expended on it, there is no solution in sight for the conflict. It will continue for decades, Hamas is not about to become moderate, even Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which few reporters can even mention without inserting the word moderate before their names, isn’t anywhere near moderate enough to make peace.

If you examine in detail the composition of the PA or Fatah, the nature of its leadership, the articles in its newspapers or the talking heads in its television shows, the slogans at its rallies, the contents of its textbooks, the themes of its officially appointed clerics sermons, and so on, the combined inability and unwillingness to make peace could not possibly be more obvious.

Lest you think that the UN is singularly obsessed with Israel, you’ll be happy to know (thanks to Daled Amos) that the UN has found another horrid violator of human rights.

Somehow though the oppression in Zimbabwe hasn’t warranted their attention.(via memeorandum)

In the meantime the UN will just continue to pass irrelevant resolutions condemning Israel when, in fact, the Palestinians are a greater threat to themselves than Israel is and much greater oppression is going on elsewhere.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Those famous words were spoken by British climber George Mallory in 1924 when he was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. I believe that this is as good an answer as any other - to an unanswerable question.

For some reason I recalled this while reading the CNN article about the book Human Smoke by one Nicholson Baker.

Even the staunchest opponents of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq are loath to take issue with World War II, the quintessential conflict between good and evil that became the model of a morally just war.

This opening sentence of the article is faulty in my opinion: I wouldn’t characterize the WW II as good vs. evil. It was rather less evil vs. more evil, but both Mr. Baker and the author of the article are confined to the Western-centric view of the war - more about it later. Meanwhile, I have realized the reason for recalling Sir Mallory’s words. Baker, as many other revisionists of history, is most probably driven by the same motive - because the history is there. Of course, a strong political belief (pacifism in his case) and unerring 20-20 hindsight, selective to the point of almost total blindness, don’t cause any harm to this endeavor.

In fact, as many of history revisionists have discovered, the business definitely has its perks. Such as the 15 minutes of glory, lucrative publishing contracts and a shoal of supporters, no matter how small a fringe they belong to. Of the seven billions world population even a fringe is enough to create a considerable source of pride, glory and income. But this is less important - after all, the roads to stardom are not paved by model behavior - in most cases.

So what is the main point of the book, according to the CNN article?

Baker said he was surprised and shocked at the way Churchill responded to Hitler’s attacks on Poland and other neighboring states by launching a relentless bombing campaign against German cities as well as a blockade that was designed to starve the enemy into submission.

“He was acting like a bloodthirsty maniac during that period. That has to go back on the record in all of its unpleasantness. We can’t learn from a hero like that. It’s a mistake to say that because Hitler was bad, we have to clean up the image of Churchill. Churchill was also bad,” Baker said.

Baker maintains that Churchill’s bellicose actions and Roosevelt’s eagerness to supply Britain with ships and planes served only to prop up Hitler’s standing with Germans and strengthen his hold on the country.

Now, the point is not necessarily new. In fact, the “pacifist” movement that protested any attempts to curb the Nazis’ expansionist moves was quite strong in pre-war Britain and fairly sizable in US as well. That some of the “pacifists” were quite overt in their support of Nazi ideology is another point worth remembering. I don’t know whether Mr Baker touches upon it in his book.

So - the main, and not too revolutionary, point of Mr Baker’s book is: why, oh why, haven’t Churchill and Roosevelt talked to Hitler, why haven’t they tried to understand an pacify him?

Yeah. Indeed, why haven’t people tried to talk with Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Pol Pot, why don’t they talk enough to Kim Jong-Il, not to mention Sheik Nasrallah, Mugabe and myriad other tyrants and mass murderers throughout the history? Surely, given some frank and convincing talking-to, all these people could have been persuaded to become no more harmful than lambs. After all, Hitler has done no more than “attacks on Poland and other neighboring states”. That could have been a result of temporary indigestion which is an occasional burden for a vegetarian like Hitler.

Hmm… there must be some snag in the above logic. Somehow Mr Baker forgot that Poland and “other neighboring states” happened to become occupied as a result of these “attacks”. With well-known consequences. Unless, of course, Mr Baker thinks that the consequences could have been avoided as well by talking to Hitler in a right way. Or, as it may happen, Mr Baker just isn’t interested very much in the fate the befell all these Eastern heathens.

And this is the second important point: for some reason, as I have mentioned at the start of the post, Mr Baker focuses on Hitler - Churchill - Roosevelt trio, disregarding the Eastern side of the map. Whether it comes from ignorance or from some intentional oversight I wouldn’t know. The CNN article disregards the issue as well. But I couldn’t.

You see, my problem with Baker’s theory is of a practical nature. Given, for the purpose of the exercise, that by cuddling up to Hitler instead of confronting him, Churchill and Roosevelt could have prevented Nazis’ westward expansion, what about the Operation Barbarossa? Conceived and planned in meticulous detail long before the beginning of WW II, this operation eventually failed and was the ultimate cause of the downfall of the most evil regime in history.

But what if Baker’s villains, Churchill and Roosevelt, have decided to stay away from assistance they have generously provided to the Soviet Union, as Baker’s guidance would have been? What if the Red Army failed in its resistance? For me the answer is quite simple - I wouldn’t have been born and somebody else would have had to respond to Mr Baker’s well-meaning drivel.

On the other hand, both Baker and his readers would have been exemplary citizens of the Third Reich and a post like this one would have hardly be possible in the circumstances.

Oh well. The post is getting too long, the weather outside is getting too attractive. Time to forget Mr Baker and his crapola and deal with more pleasant matters.

Only… maybe later in the day I could raise Kim Jong-Il on Skype and talk him into stopping the starvation of his people and accumulation of all kinds of Dongs - medium or long range as they may happen to be. After all, he is so ronely, and a good talking-to may just be what the doctor recommends.

Peace…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

The NYT reports:Disputed Blast in Gaza Kills 5

Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, initially blamed an Israeli airstrike for the blast, and it fired a hail of rockets and mortar rounds at Israeli towns and villages around the Gaza periphery.

But the Israeli military vehemently denied any involvement in the explosion, saying that it had not been active in the area at the time.

A spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said later that the group would carry out an investigation, a tacit acknowledgment that the blast could have been caused by explosives being handled by militants in the house.

In a speech on Thursday evening for the anniversary of Hamas’s takeover of Gaza, the Hamas leader there, Ismail Haniya, made no mention of the explosion in Beit Lahiya, strengthening the supposition that it was an internal affair.

Snapped Shot also observed some honesty in the AP report on the explosion:

Is it possible that the press is finally showing some good, old-fashioned restraint in its Middle East reporting? Perhaps letting the facts on the ground tell the story, rather than shoe-horning events into some traditionally awful anti-Western viewpoint? Or perhaps that members of our esteemed media establishments have finally noticed that Hamas is a rather brutal, totally corrupt regime?

Media sources a bit farther to the left are leading with the Hamas claims, but they are acknowledging reports that an “internal explosion” could be responsible, too.

And if Israel’s getting fair treatment, he suggests that maybe Israel is doing a better job of hasbara:

Maybe this means, instead, that the Israeli military finally putting some actual effort into getting its official storyline out to the media in a timely manner.

The Muqata illustrates his post with pictures from a Palestinian source and observes wryly:

With over 50 rockets hitting Southern Israel today, I’m rather underwhelmed by the destruction in Gaza.

My suspicion is that internal explosions (work accidents) would have different patterns of destruction from external explosions (missile attacks) and that the pictures (especially this one) would show conclusively the source of the explosion.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.