"Snarky humor, funny photo comparisons, and frustrations with the geopolitical neighborhood all clash for a lovely symphony of madness." - Laurence Simon
"He can turn a very serious and possibly depressing piece of news and make it entertainment. That is talent, and that is why I love to read his blog." - Culture For All
"..the notorious Israellycool.com, which gently skips between right-wing rants against Islam, posts about science fiction and - what else? - blogs about the Eurovision song contest." - Tim Jonze, The Guardian
"..the liar & moral pygmy who writes Israellycool & makes feeble attempts to ridicule my views" - Dick Silverstein
Today is Tisha Be’Av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. How sad? Well, here’s a sample of the tragedies that occurred on this day in history.
1312 BCE – When the Jews were in the desert, they accepted the slanderous report of the ten spies, resulting in the decree that they could not enter the Land of Israel, and would instead die off in the desert.
586 BCE – the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians, with 100,000 Jews being killed and millions more exiled.
70 CE – The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans, with 2,000,000 Jews being killed and another million exiled.
135 CE – The City of Betar was captured and liquidated by the Romans, with over 100,000 Jews being killed.
136CE – The Temple area and its surroundings were plowed under, with Jerusalem being rebuilt as a pagan city inaccessible to Jews.
1492 – The Jews were expelled from Spain.
1914 – World War I broke out.
1942 – The mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka began.
On a day such as this, it seems somehow appropriate to post about anti-Semitism.
A few weeks ago, Britain’s Channel 4 showed Richard Littlejohn’s documentary The War On Britain’s Jews, about the rise ofanti-Semitism in Britain. In it, Richard showed how anti-Semitism in Britain is not just the province of the Far Right and Islamists, but also the Far Left.
Here’s the documentary in 6 parts. I highly recommend you watch it if you haven’t already (hat tip: Big Country).