Rockets in, missiles out: More kassams in Israel, so the IDF bombed a tunnel and a weapons lab. Watch for the screams from the Israel-haters. Oh, and the AP managed to put this in the last paragraph of its latest article about the 1600 new units in east Jerusalem:

In Gaza, ruled by the Islamic militants of Hamas, Israeli aircraft struck twice early Friday, retaliating for rocket fire into Israel on Thursday. No one was hurt in any of the incidents.

I will reiterate that the last graf of an article is the first to go when a newspaper needs the space.

A store opens in Israel, a protest opens in Europe: Filthy capitalists! Opening a store that was so much desired that Israelis nearly trampled two babies (!) to get in. Of course there will be protests throughout Europe and Canada. Listen to this brilliant protestor’s explanation:

“The Goldstone Report was published recently, and we think that one cannot open a store in Israel until it starts obeying international law.”

That’s what I like about Israel’s foes. They’re so smart, you have to wonder how they manage to dress themselves in the morning. Really, Israel-haters lead pretty pathetic lives. Imagine obsessing about something that really has nothing to do with living your life, to the point of gettting enraged by a store opening thousands of miles away in another country. Or a pro-Israel blog. To paraphrase, the vast majority of Israel haters have lives of pathetic desperation.

While I say nothing because I know nothing about the motives of particular people, it’s impossible to understand the popularity of ILS or Israel Lobby Syndrome (the belief that the organized, insistent power of American Jews as deployed through organizations like AIPAC is primarily responsible for American support of the Jewish state) without assigning a role to a lingering whiff of anti-Semitism in the American air.

At a time when most of America’s Jewish leadership was strongly anti-Zionist, American gentiles overwhelmingly supported the Zionist cause. And today American gentiles are generally more hawkish on Israel than American Jews who on this issue, like so many others, tend to skew toward the center-left band of the American political spectrum.

Some ILS victims have a ‘clever’ explanation for this disturbing fact: Jewish media power. The insidious, overwhelming power of those sneaky Jews in the mainstream media feeds a steady stream of pro-Israel propaganda disguised as news to the idiot gentiles out in the boondocks and the dumb hicks and yokels swallow the propaganda hook, line and sinker.

Again, I say nothing about the motives of individuals, but only entrenched, unconscious anti-Semitism could make an opinion this dumb seem so credible to so many otherwise intelligent people.

Let us take, for example, Sarah Palin, who formerly kept an Israeli flag in her office while serving as governor of Alaska. How much influence does the mainstream media have on her thinking about abortion? About global warming? About US relations with Cuba?

The answer, of course, is that whatever the sources of Ms Palin’s opinions on a very wide range of subjects, the mainstream media has not played a major role in her intellectual formation. And what is true for her is true for a great many other Americans who disagree with the mainstream media virtually across the board. They are more likely to disagree with the mainstream media than to mindlessly parrot its views — so why does it seem even remotely credible to assert that Palin and so much of the rest of the country is pro-Israel because of Jewish media power?

Again, a deep and unreasoned belief that powerful Jews control things and that the powerful Jewish media shapes public opinion could lend broad social credibility to ideas with so little support or coherence.

The whole idea of a powerful Israel lobby, then, is a construct designed by people who can’t understand why Israel is so popular in America. Mead demonstrates why this is belief is nonsense.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

What can be said about others who apply the term to Israel in general? No apology has come from them — and the way things are going, none will be forthcoming. The use of the word has become commonplace — Google “Israel and apartheid” and you will see that the two are linked in cyberspace, as love and marriage are in at least one song. The meaning is clear: Israel is a state where political and civil rights are withheld on the basis of race and race alone. This is not the case.

The Israel of today and the South Africa of yesterday have almost nothing in common. In South Africa, the minority white population harshly ruled the majority black population. Nonwhites were denied civil rights, and in 1958, they were even deprived of citizenship. In contrast, Israeli Arabs, about one-fifth of the country, have the same civil and political rights as do Israeli Jews. Arabs sit in the Knesset and serve in the military, although most are exempt from the draft. Whatever this is — and it looks suspiciously like a liberal democracy — it cannot be apartheid.

The West Bank, more or less under Israeli military rule, is a different matter. But it is not part of Israel proper, and under every conceivable peace plan — including those proposed by Israeli governments — almost all of it will revert to the Palestinian Authority and become the heartland of a Palestinian state.

The problem is that though anti-Zionism (and with it, its attendant antisemitism) is that it has been made respectable by Palestinian nationalism. After all, who can object to “national aspirations” or “self-determination?” So the Nazi inspired hatred and rejection of Israel has a fig leaf. And as the reality of Zionism has appeared more reasonable and sympathetic harsher and harsher terms are needed to condemn it.

If anyone had told you twenty years ago that Israel would cede Gaza and withdraw from southern Lebanon and that would strengthen Hamas and Hezbollah, no one – except for “right-wingers” – would believe you. And that’s exactly what happened. Israel not only talked to but negotiated with the PLO and got an “Aqsa intifada” in return. The point is that Israel has indeed liberalized with regards to the Palestinians over the past sixteen years – at great cost – and is still treated as a pariah by much of the world. The Arabs haven’t changed but hide behind the pretext of “Palestinian rights” to justify their continued rejection of the Jewish state.

The now annual Israel Apartheid Week on college campuses is no noble enterprise. It is a continuation of the demonization of Israel by its implacable enemies; it is not advocating for anyone’s freedom.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The truth is that Mr. Mabhouh’s assassination was conducted according to the book—a military operation in which the environment is completely controlled by the assassins. At least 25 people are needed to carry off something like this. You need “eyes on” the target 24 hours a day to ensure that when the time comes he is alone. You need coverage of the police—assassinations go very wrong when the police stumble into the middle of one. You need coverage of the hotel security staff, the maids, the outside of the hotel. You even need people in back-up accommodations in the event the team needs a place to hide.

I can only speculate about where exactly the hit went wrong. But I would guess the assassins failed to account for the marked advance in technology. Not only were there closed-circuit TV cameras in the hotel where Mr. Mabhouh was assassinated and at the airport, but Dubai has at its fingertips the best security consultants in the world. The consultants merely had to run advanced software through all of Dubai’s digital data before, during and after the assassination to connect the assassins in time and place. For instance, a search of all cellular phone calls made in and around the hotel where Mr. Mabhouh was assassinated would show who had called the same number—reportedly a command post in Vienna. It would only be a matter then of tracking when and where calls were made from these phones, tying them to hotels where the team was operating or staying.

Not completely understanding advances in technology may be one explanation for the assassins nonchalantly exposing their faces to the closed-circuit TV cameras, one female assassin even smiling at one. They mistook Dubai 2010 for Paris 1992, and never thought it would all be tied together in a neat bow. But there is no good explanation why Israel, if indeed it was behind the assassination, underestimated the technology. The other explanation—the assassins didn’t care whether their faces were identified—doesn’t seem plausible at all.

Baer, for his part, thinks that the hit was a bad idea. But did Dubai really prove Israeli involvement. A number of claims from Dubai haven’t panned out or make no sense (like fleeing to Iran). Sense of events points to another implausibilty.

Well, they’re all European, Ashenazie, in face and name. There are no Mizrachi faces or names. Several of these “usual (Jewish) suspects” are using names of people from the UK who are living in Israel. Gasp! Identity theft! Something only the Israeli (and Chinese computer sales hackers who regularly seize my machine peppering my friends with the latest laptop prices in Shanghai) are capable of doing. Clearly the view of someone who believes that all Israelis are European Crusaders–clueless about what the “average” Jew looks like. [They really don't all have Brooklyn accents.]

Now in a country like Israel, a significant percentage of the population who are refugees from places like Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libyia, Syria, UAE, and Dubai, AND who speak a range of Middle Eastern languages and dialects in their home with their grandparents. WHY would the Mossad send lily white European faces to blend in with the crowd? The mission was, after all, supposed to be clandestine.

This isn’t to say that the Mossad didn’t kill Mabhouh or that Dubia doesn’t have better proofs than what’s been offered so far. But the media and a number of governments have been absolutely credulous in accepting the Dubai account at face value, regardless of the implausibilities.

Fortunately, there appears to be some cooler head prevailing.

Caroline Glick observed (h/t Roger L. Simon)

It reportedly took the intervention of the highest echelons of Europe’s intelligence agencies to get their hysterical politicians and diplomats to stop blaming and threatening Israel. After being dressed down, on Monday, the chastened EU foreign ministers abstained from mentioning Israel by name in their joint condemnation of the alleged use of European passports by the alleged operatives who allegedly killed the terrorist Mabhouh.

One thing’s for sure:

You’ve got to give Dubai credit. They harbored an international terrorist and have managed to exploit his murder for media attention.

(h/t Omri via Twitter.)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

And so, based on the thousands of comments and emails I’ve read over the years, both here and on other blogs and media sites, I present The Blogger’s Guide to Anti-Semitic Comments Trolls. Below are the some of the types of anti-Israel commenters I’ve identified over the years, but the list is by no means complete.

The garden-variety neo-Nazi Jew-hater: Yadda yadda Jews die, yadda yadda Jews suck, yadda yadda Jews control the world, yadda yadda bankers, kikes, money, world media, ZOG, yadda yadda, yadda yadda. These are the Stormfront community Jew-haters who have never been able to figure out why their life sucks so bad, so they blame the Jews. (Here’s a tip: Look in the mirror. It’s all your fault, bubelahs. There is no vast Jewish conspiracy that made you stupid and talentless; you did that all by yourself. Oh, and God doesn’t love you, either. He told me so himself at the last ZOG meeting.)

The Faux Jew: This one is usually fairly easy to spot. The Faux Jew is often a neo-Nazi fresh from a stint at Stormfront, where he and his buddies have just discussed what they think Jews really think. He comes to my blog to pretend to be a Jew so he can trap me with his wily Faux Jew comment. He adds “stein” to a last name that generally doesn’t sound Jewish at all. He will use “Moshe” or “Hesh” or “Abe” or another name that he thinks is typically Jewish. (For some reason, these creeps never use Murray or Harry or Josh. Oh, wait. The reason is they’re effing morons and don’t really know anything about Jews.)

The Faux Jew likes to pretend to be a bloodthirsty, bigoted asshat who puts up gleeful comments about the death of Palestinians. He uses the word “goyim” a lot (because he thinks that all Jews, when talking among ourselves, use the word “goyim” a lot, always in a derogatory fashion). Over the years, I’ve come to realize that what they want me to do is publish their comment and then say, “Right on, Fellow Jew!” Because, you know, that’s what we do. A quick test to see if your Faux Jew is Stormfront material: If you substitute the word “Jew” for “goyim” in his comment, the true (and ugly) face of the Faux Jew will appear.

Sometimes, the Faux Jew uses faux quotes by real Jews. A quick check on Google will show you that the quote is fabricated, taken completely out of context, or originates on a neo-Nazi website, and is referenced only by neo-Nazi websites. That’s your clue that the commenter is probably a regular at the Stormfront Annual Picnic in East Podunk, Idaho. (I hear the fifty spots for next year’s picnic are filling up fast; reserve now.) The Faux Jew will also use Yiddish words, misspelled and misused. If your commenter sounds like he picked up Yiddish by watching Mike Myers on Saturday Night Live, he’s a Faux Jew. Ban him.

The last strain of Faux Jew is a little harder to detect. I had one that took me a while figure out, but something about the troll kept sitting wrong with me from the get-go. The Faux Jews that work really hard at it will use Hebrew words and throw in Torah quotes. The dead giveaway there is that Christians will almost always apply the principles of the religion that they learned growing up—Christianity. Believe me when I tell you that to a Jew who is even semi-observant, it’s really noticeable. This type of Faux Jew uses Christian dogma without realizing it. Also, it’s really hard to fake being an observant Jew. The dead giveaway: Posting on Shabbat. That happens more often than you’d think, because most anti-Semitic comments trolls are not all that bright.

The Mikey Rivero Wannabes: Mikey Rivero runs the execrable and anti-Semitic “What Really Happened” website. The man is positively obsessed with bashing Jews and Israel, and he writes (and runs) long-winded, boring articles that purport to prove just how evil, vicious, and inhuman Jews and Israelis really are. The Mikey Rivero Wannabe will post long-winded, boring articles that s/he finds on various anti-Semitic websites. S/he is especially fond of reposting articles by Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky. The Wannabes have never yet gotten past my moderation policy; their comments are deleted as soon as I see the comment page scrolling off the screen.

The Intolerant Atheist: This comments troll likes to pretend that s/he hates all religions equally, but after the opening salvo, s/he goes on and on about the evil Jews who think that Israel should be a Jews-only country. That’s the tic that gives them away: They never seem to notice that there are large populations of Israeli Arabs and Christians right there in that Jews-only state. Nor do they seem overly upset about the Islamic-only nations in the world. No, the only religion that bothers them seems to be Judaism. I wonder why that is? (Not really. See title.)

The “I’m an Anti-Zionist, Not An Anti-Semite” Troll: This one insists, over and over again, that s/he has nothing against Jews, it’s just Israel that s/he can’t stand. While defending this stand, however, the anti-Jewish remarks always seem to just slip out. These are also the trolls who make it a point to preface all of their remarks with “Of course you’re going to call me an anti-Semite for criticizing Israel.” This sort of troll spreads out into the mainstream (cf: Walt, Mearsheimer, Carter).

The David Duke/Pat Buchanan/Ron Paul Defenders: It is absolutely astonishing how fast the defenders of these three stooges come out of the woodwork. It’s zero to Jew-hate in no time at all. The mere fact that I posted their names here will bring out their supporters in droves, and as soon as they get a quick look at this post, they will leave their vile remarks for me to moderate (and add to my troll file for future use; I never approve these idiots’ comments).

The “Just The Facts, Ma’am” Irritant: This troll thinks that civilian vs. soldier casualty counts are more important than, say, the number of Israelis killed and wounded by kassam rockets. The word “genocide” gets thrown around a lot in relation to the Palestinians, even though if Israel is conducting genocide against them, it’s the worst genocide ever, what with there being only a few thousand deaths since 1948 (even including the War of Independence) and the growth of the Palestinian population since then. Comparisons with actual genocides, such as the destruction of two-thirds of Europe’s Jewry, fall upon deaf ears with this troll.

The Really Annoying Moron Who Think This Blog Is A Democracy Troll: They’re not really anti-Semitic, they’re just effing annoying. They blather on and on about how the author refuses to allow dissenting opinions, when what they really mean is that I don’t write what they want me to write. And when directed to my No Israel-Bashing Zone post, they melt down into fits of incoherent rage. I suspect they all have control issues. I suspect that I really don’t care.

That’s about all I can think of for now. I know I’ve missed a few troll types, but I can revisit this theme at a later date. In closing, I would like to direct all the anti-Semitic trolls reading this post to the Yourish.com mantra: Anti-Semites of the world, just die already. Preferably soon.

They then go on to expand on the truce, the people involved, the leaders, international promises of $1 billion to help rebuild. And finally, in the ninth paragraph, solidly in the middle of the article, the AP happens to mention the casualty count of the seven-year war:

The U.N. estimates that some 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have been displaced since ethnic African tribesman in the vast arid western Darfur region took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government complaining of discrimination, lack of political representation and neglect.

The Goldstone Report is based on the deaths of 1,300 Palestinians.

Amazing, isn’t it, the lack of world outrage over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Darfur, and yet, the entire world rose up to condemn Israel’s Gaza offensive. Which killed—let me reiterate—about 1,300 Palestinians, and no, contrary to the AP boilerplate claims, most of them weren’t civilians. Most of them were terrorists. But even if they were—we’re still several orders of magnitude under the Darfur casualty count.

Still waiting for the UN Commission to head into Darfur and write a scathing report about civilian deaths. (No, I’m not really waiting. I know better.)

In an interview to Emirati paper al-Bayan published on Monday, Tamim said that “despite Israel’s attempts at denial, claiming there is no evidence that a Mossad cell carried out the assassination, the Dubai police are in possession of dozens of items of incriminating evidence against the cell which attest to the Mossad’s involvement.”

So what is the evidence?

Tamim stressed that the passports in question were not stolen or forged – but were real. “We do not rule out the possibility that Israel has a printer that prints passports of countries around the world, and this confirms that Israel is country that violates international law,” he said.

Um…what? Israel might have printers that can print passports? Holy crap! Alert the media! We’ve found the smoking gun!

Here’s my favorite quote:

The police chief added with satisfaction that this is the first time the Arab spectator has been able to witness the “crime of assassination.”

Yes, because it’s not like Arabs have assassinated other Arabs, like, say, Anwar Sadat, Rafik Hariri, King Abdullah of Jordan—you get the picture.

But we do have a clear picture of what the world thinks of Israel having the ability to kill terrorists both in and out of her borders. If Israel captures them and jails them, the world insists that Israel is jailing people for political purposes. If Israel kills them while trying to capture and jail them, the world says that Israel should not have used deadly force to capture the accused terrorists, who may not have been all that bad anyway. If Israel kills them in Gaza or the West Bank, the world says that Israel has no right to use extrajudicial killings even if the terrorists were “ticking bombs” on their way to a suicide attack. If they were just the planners of the attacks? Well, then Israel has no right to kill them because they didn’t technically kill anyone (cf: Sheik Yassin and the news reports that emphasized that Israel killed a paraplegic instead of one of the founders of Hamas). And if Israel acts outside of her own borders, well, then the wire services put out new stories every day, major world newspapers publish big exposes in their Sunday papers (professional liar Uzi Mahnaimi was once again published in the Sunday Times, using his unnamed sources to spin his own fantasy story of what happened in Dubai), various nations around the world publish “Shame on Israel” statements, and the crowd, in effect, goes wild.

Meantime, Pakistani intelligence and the CIA have captured or killed some major Taliban leaders in the last week or two, and after the initial flurry of stories, there’s been—nothing. Civilians are dying in Afghanistan, but that’s not interesting to the world media. Because a terrorist may have been assassinated by the Mossad.

Once again, we see the world’s reaction to Jews who defend themselves vigorously. It’s the only explanation as to why there are currently more than 8,000 articles on Google News about Mahmoud al-Mabhouh and less than half of that number on the NATO airstrike that killed 27 civilians.

Gee. I wonder why.

We can date the third mutation to 1879 when the German journalist Wilhelm Marr coined a new word: anti-Semitism. The fact that he needed to do so tells us that this was a new phenomenon. It emerged in an age of Enlightenment, the secular nation state, liberalism and emancipation. Religious prejudice was deemed to be a thing of the past. The new hatred had therefore to justify itself on quite different grounds, namely race. This was a fateful development, because you can change your religion. You cannot change your race.

After Marr, antisemitism was no longer the province of the unenlightened and the superstitious, it could be, in the right circumstances, a sign of sophistication.

Perhaps that is why Andrew Sullivan seemingly wears the badge wtih honor. Eric Fingerhut explains (via David Bernstein):

In fact, the whole Wieseltier-Sullivan episode has served to illustrate an emerging trend among critics of Israel: Their eagerness to allege that they’ve been accused of being an anti-Semite. I do agree that some of Israel’s defenders are too quick to throw out charges of anti-Semitism or “self-hating Jew,” and that’s lamentable and a problem. But it seems that among many of Israel’s critics, claiming that you’ve been accused of being an anti-Semite has become some sort of bizarre badge of honor. And quite a few of those that have allegedly been accused of being an anti-Semite, according to Wieseltier’s critics, either were never smeared with such a term or were only accused of making a specific problematic remark and not tarred with some broad brush of disliking Jews, as they claim.

(Israel Matzav has another example.)

The one point I’d quibble with is that Israel’s defenders “are too quick” with the label. The problem isn’t that Israel’s has critics. The problem is that a lot of those critics aren’t simply criticizing Israel, but condemning Israel, questioning its right to exist while, hypocritically, remaining silent towards regimes that are much, much worse. It isn’t simply holding Israel to a higher standard, but holding Israel to an impossible standard and then damning it when it fails to make the grade. (I mean do any of these critics find it troubling that even Salam Fayyad the “moderate” Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority can’t bring himself to say that Israel is a Jewish state, while they insisted that Netanyahu declare his support for a Palestinian state?)

The modern day antisemitism also stems from a desire to appear sophisticated. No longer is Israel the democratic “light unto the nations,” but the flawed oppressor of Palestinians. That oppression marks Israel as illegitimate until it exorcises the demons of occupation. Does it make a difference that Israel has changed politically from 20 years ago and that now the “right wing” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is closer in outlook to Peace Now of 20 years ago than to his predecessors Yitzchak Shamir or Menachem Begin? Well, no, as long as the Palestinians aren’t satisfied Israel hasn’t done enough. So peace and with it, Israel’s legitimacy, is given a veto by the very people who still haven’t amended their charter to say that Israel has a right to exist.

Worse the exorcism required an extreme form of denial. To quote Judea Pearl again.

As an analyst, I would not need to find out that things did not exactly change through those negotiations in the 1990s — the PLO, to this very day, has not amended the annihilationist clauses in its charter, as openly admitted by Farouq Kadoumi in an interview with a Jordanian newspaper (Al-Arab, April 22, 2004; see Benny Morris’ book “One State, Two States” for a detailed chronology).

On the contrary, an intractable Gordian knot has been created: Every Westerner now believes the charter is amended; every Palestinian says it is amended but believes it is not, and every Israeli knows what Palestinians believe. Not a healthy mindset for peace negotiations.

Most importantly, as a scientist, I would be obliged to acknowledge competing theories. For example, that the blood-soaked Second Intifada erupted precisely because Clinton and Rabin did not insist on seeing an Arabic text of an amended PLO charter on the White House lawn. Their naiveté, so the theory goes, gave Arafat the illusion that as long as the West buys into his double-talk, Palestinians are exempt from doing any homework toward peace. It subsequently made Israelis doubly suspicious of Palestinian proclamations and reinforced Palestinians’ delusion that they can achieve sovereignty without internalizing Israel’s permanency. Cohen now hands them another reinforcement and, once again, all in the name of peace.

That denial had deadly consequences as Charles Krauthammer observed at the time.

This is peace? “Israelis Unnerved by Peace That Kills,” says a Washington Post headline, March 5. Peace that kills? This is an absurd oxymoron. If peace means anything, it means at its very minimum an absence of violence. After all, “armistice” and “truce” — lesser forms of peace — mean cease-fire. Peace must mean at least that.
This Orwellian conjunction of peace and violence demonstrates the state of hypnosis that Americans and Israelis have placed themselves under since the September 1993 Handshake on the White House lawn. What followed has been called a peace process. It has been nothing of the kind. The Palestinian war on Israel has been unrelenting. More Israeli civilians have been massacred since the handshake than at any time in the entire history of the country.
The “peace process” is in fact nothing more than a unilateral Israeli withdrawal. The Palestinians have gotten Gaza, West Bank autonomy, huge influxes of foreign aid, international recognition, their own police force, their first free elections ever (something their Turkish, British, Egyptian and Jordanian rulers never granted them).
In return Israel has gotten what? Pats on the head from the United States. The occasional trade mission from Tunisia. And, from the Palestinians, death. This is peace?

It is sophistication that led Israel’s critics – whether benign or malevolent – to look past the terror enabling aspects of the Oslo Accords and hold Israel to its commitments and demand nothing of the Palestinians.

But increasingly it becomes harder and harder to blame Israel for the lack of peace with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 only to see Hezbollah use the opportunity to build up its arsenal and threaten hundreds of thousands living in Israel’s north. This led to a war in 2006. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 only to see Hamas use the opportunity to build up its arsenal and threaten hundreds of thousands living in Israel’s north. This led to a war in 2008-9. Barak made a generous offer to Arafat at Camp David in July, 2000, which was rejected. Two months later Arafat launched the “Aqsa intifada against Israel. As his term wound down Ehud Olmert made an even more generous offer to Mahmoud Abbas, only to have Abbas reject it.

It’s harder and harder to say that Israel’s at fault. One need not know ancient history. One could just look through 15 years of news and see this. If one wanted to. But Israel’s critics deny the fundamental justice of Israel’s cause. Not only do they damage the cause of peace in the Middle East, but they’re demonization of the Jewish state, leads to antisemitism worldwide.

The sophisticates’ blaming Israel lead to what William Jacobson calls the Malmo Syndrome.

Malmö is the third largest Swedish city, and now the poster child for what I call Malmö Syndrome, the anti-Semitic violence which results from the shared anti-Israeli agenda of Islamists and leftists.

Like Wilhelm Marr today’s critics of Israel pretend to be sophisticated. I’m not sure that Marr intended for his ideology to metastasize as it did. But the writing is on the wall. The unfair and unrelenting criticism of Israel has excused terror and now encourages open displays of antisemitism in Europe. Do Israel’s critics understand the damage they’re causing? Or will they continue to wrap themselves in a mantle of sophistication and ignore the consequences?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Actually, film director Jonathan Demme is preparing a full length feature docudrama on Goldstone Facts in time for the Cannes Film Festival. In addition, Nelson Mandela and Anthony Hopkins will (along with Vachon who voices many Hollywood movie trailers) provide some of the narration. Let’s see…you’ve got that matinee idol Alan Dershowitz on your side, and God knows what other bozos. Israel’s moral stature is crumbling by the day, Meryl. Even former hasbara diehards like Jeffrey Goldberg and Tom Friedman are leaving the rat infested sinking ship (The Jewish Homeland). Do you really want to stay on board with moonbats like Pamela Geller and Leon “anti-Semite!” Wieseltier?

The comment simply demands to be dissected. Let’s start with the most obvious: There is no such documentary planned. The whole basis of Alan’s argument starts and ends with a lie. Note that there are no links to the supposed docudrama project. A quick Google search tells you why. You won’t find a thing about Jonathan Demme planning a docudrama on the Goldstone report, or anything remotely related to Israel. I’m going to take a wild guess that “Alan Fox” came here as a result of Snoopy linking that pathetic “Goldstone Facts” site. He’s one of their authors, possibly, and not one of their smarter ones. Alan couldn’t read the byline before directing his comments at me. Hey, genius: Snoopy wrote the post. (But of course, I hold with everything he said about that pathetic site.)

Now let’s head to the rest of his anti-Israel arguments:

Even former hasbara diehards like Jeffrey Goldberg and Tom Friedman are leaving

Really? Jeffrey Goldberg has deserted Israel? I think not.

I’ve been writing since 2004 that Israel will one day be considered an apartheid state if it continues to rule over a population of Arabs that doesn’t want to be ruled by Israelis. That is why it is vital for Israel to establish permanent, internationally-recognized borders that more-or-less adhere to the 1967 border. Unlike Andrew, I believe that Israel has tried to free itself from ruling these Palestinians (the pull-out from Gaza is an example, as is Ehud Olmert’s recent, unanswered offer to the Palestinians to pull out from virtually 100 percent of the West Bank). But the reality remains: It will be very dangerous for Israel to engineer this pull-back, but it will be, over time, fatal for it to stay in the West Bank.

Those are not the words of a man who is deserting Israel. These are the words of a man who is gravely concerned about Israel’s existence. Again, we find nothing but lies in Alan’s comment. I could probably find you a fair amount of recent Friedman quotes as well, but I’ve got better things to do with my time. The onus is on the accuser to bring the proof. But you won’t see Alan back here for several reasons. First, he is a liar, so he has no concrete facts to back up his arguments. And second, I decided that I don’t want him hanging around and adding more anti-Israel bile to my site, so his comment is now unapproved and soon to be deleted. My No Israel-Bashing Zone rule is still in effect.

Now, as to the last part of his comment:

Do you really want to stay on board with moonbats like Pamela Geller and Leon “anti-Semite!” Wieseltier?

You know, I don’t agree with much of what Pamela writes on her blog. In fact, I’d have to say that I disagree with nearly all of it. But she’s not wrong on Israel. Leon Weiseltier? I’ve had my disagreements with him as well. But he’s not wrong on Israel. There are many, many pro-Israel bloggers with whom I disagree about nearly everything. But they’re not wrong about Israel.

You know who is wrong on Israel? Assholes like Alan, whose hatred of Jews simply drips venom into every word and lie he writes. Desert Israel, because people whose opinions I don’t like are Zionists? What a stupid question. Am I a Jew? Is this not in the Torah?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.

A “rat-infested sinking ship”? No, the most moral army in the world.

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

The rat, here, would be “Alan Fox.” And I’m quite content for him to slip away and bring his plague-infested fleas somewhere else. I think Stormfront is holding the door open for him.

At this time, I would like to call out a chorus of the Yourish.com mantra: Anti-Semites of the world, just die already.

The sooner the better.

They say that it’s impolite and generally politically incorrect to attack the messenger – one should concentrate on the message itself, proving or disproving its contents. The case at hand, however, is too glaringly absurd to follow that maxim. I am confident that this is a case where the messengers themselves are a message, loud and clear at that.

I offer you a snapshot of the front page of the report, with a video clip as its centerpiece, played and stopped at a point where I have ended up laughing my head off. Click on the picture below to see the details.

So who are the messengers? Lets’ start with the “sideboard”. Amira Hass and Gideon Levy – two Haaretz scribes that lost their last shreds of respect and credibility so long ago that no one (aside of the worst Israel bashers) would use their articles for anything having to do with facts. Norman Finkelstein – a pathetic individual that carries out some deep psychological trauma, expunged by academic community and living of the Holocaust memories in his own perverted way. Uri Avnery – a truly comical figure that passed into obscurity years ago, after his career in a yellow tabloid, friendship with late Yasser A. and other shenanigans. And these are the token Jews chosen to laud the Goldstone report? Pathetic.

Now to the principals:

Factual Findings narrated by Ross Vachon

Cannot say that I have been familiar with the name, but these two links: one to Vachon’s opus SEMITISM GONE WILD The Psychopathology Of Neo-Conservatism: A Clinical History and one to a person being harassed by Vachon: My Nasty Mailers, should suffice for everyone. And now: the crown jewel:

Factual and Legal findings narrated by Noam Chomsky

Mastermind of the Century, no less and no more… Well, Noam C. with his well known strict adherence to facts… no, it sounds sarcastic, and sarcasm doesn’t play well with this case of an unsmiling, pompous, self-important luminary. If you need someone to play loose with facts and to manipulate history to customize the results to your own ends, you can’t do better than recruiting Noam. Let’s say it shorter: the man is a liar. But now, I see, he is also credited with being a legal expert – will the wonders ever cease?

So this is the pair chosen to present the “factual and legal findings” of Goldstone report. Were these findings presented by Baron Munchausen and Hodja Nasreddin, we would have been at least entertained by the presentation, but no such luck.

And now to the centerpiece: the clip. As you can see, the hapless creators of the clip have used the famous crudely photoshopped Joozilla the Super Dozer, without any, no matter how feeble, attempt to check the veracity of the story. Here comes a better picture:

Of course, the picture of the whole sordid affair wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the three members of Mr Goldstone mission: Ms Hina Jilani – a Pakistani (sic!) judge who signed an open letter, published 16 March 2009, condemning Israel before the Goldstone committee was convened; a law professor Ms Christine Chinkin, who is “categorically rejecting” Israel’s right to self-defence against Hamas rocket attacks; and the last but not the least, quite an odious character, Desmond Travers, a retired Irish army colonel, who rejected out of hand any evidence presented by IDF, is concerned with the devious Jewish lobby and claims that Israeli soldiers had “taken out and deliberately shot” Irish peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon. Mr. Travers should become famous (but probably wouldn’t) for the following quote alone:

“Gaza is the only gulag in the Western hemisphere; maintained by democracies; closed-off from food, water, air” says Colonel Desmond Travers, co-author of the Goldstone report, in an exclusive MEMO interview.

I guess that Mr Goldstone didn’t check with Mr. Travers in advance in what hemisphere (or, indeed, on what planet) the good colonel thinks he (and Gaza) is located. Obviously, checking the mental state of his fellows committee members wasn’t in Goldstone’s brief. Too bad.

And this is how the history is made these days, ladies and gentlemen.

Afterword: about my own opinion on the Goldstone report and its aftermath. I still belong to the minority (I haven’t any statistical data, though) that considers it necessary to set up our own commission of inquiry. I think that it was a mistake to disregard the Goldstone mission to start with and that now we are paying the price. I am sure that the civilian casualties were inevitable in an urban combat situation when the enemy has done their considerable best to increase the number of such casualties. But if the commission of inquiry would have found cases where the casualties were a result of willful action by IDF, the guilty should have been punished. And no, I’ve no hope that the results of an Israeli commission of inquiry, had such commission been set up, would have been accepted by UN – I am not that naive about the automatically anti-Israeli setup of this august outfit. Still, there is some hope yet.

Hat tip: Laurence.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews