Israellycool

I just read about this today, although it happened a year ago. I am shocked to say the least.

Basketball superstar Michael Jordan, who recently announced that he will return for a second season with the Washington Wizards, has decided to display solidarity with a variety of causes by wearing a black armband during games.

After discussing his new season with the Wizards at a press conference, Jordan was asked about the significance of the black armband he had been spotted wearing.

“It’s in the tradition of silent but visible protest,” Jordan said, “like the Tinker kids, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos.” Jordan was referring to the famous Tinker v. Des Moines free-speech case in which two high school students won the right to wear black armbands in school as a protest against the Vietnam war, as well as the two Black U.S. athletes who gave the Black Power salute during the 1968 Olympics.

When pressed by reporters to explain what the armband represented, Jordan continued: “Well, a variety of things, actually. Number one, I’d like to express some solidarity with the people protesting against the IMF and World Bank. I mean, read the stories in the paper-they all talk about what the protesters are doing, and not why they’re protesting. So I thought I could draw some attention to that.”

Jordan went on to say that he supported the Palestinian struggle and was firmly against what he called “U.S. imperialist antics” in the Middle East.” What are we doing there? Come on, y’all. Oil. Oil, and old scores to settle. That’s it!” Jordan said.

Is this news to anyone else? I guess a major reason I was not aware of this is the fact that it doesn’t seem to be a story that was carried by the main news outlets. Type Michael Jordan+Palestinian into Google and see what I am talking about.

In any event, it seems that “His Airness” is more like “Mr Full-Of-Hot-Air.”

Following the devastating Cafe Hillel suicide bombing back in early September, I blogged about my own personal experiences with terror, whether it be knowing someone who had been killed or injured, or my own brushes with terror.

Then I read this article this morning:

Three Jerusalem Arabs with ties to Hamas who planned to carry out a mass poisoning at a prominent Jerusalem cafe were sentenced Tuesday to five to ten years in prison by the Jerusalem District court.

The three men, whose arrests last September foiled their plans to poison Jewish diners at the city’s Cafe Rimon, had confessed to the charges against them, with two of the three previously reaching a plea bargain with the prosecution.

According to the sentencing handed down in court, Othman Kiania, 23, from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, who had worked for the past three years as an assistant chef at the restaurant was sentenced to five years in prison, Moussa Nasser, 23, of Jerusalem’s Old City, was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail, and Sufian Abdo, 24, of the Jerusalem Arab village of Jebl Mukaber, considered the group’s ringleader, was sentenced to ten years in prison.

The three were previously convicted in the same court on reduced charges of supporting and belonging to terror organizations, supporting an enemy during wartime, and conspiracy to commit a crime for planning to lace pitchers of drinks with lethal quantities of a muscle relaxant.

The suspects told police the poison they intended to use on Cafe Rimon patrons has no taste or smell, and takes effect 15 hours after being ingested. It produces symptoms similar to a heart attack, they said.

As they planned the attack, Kiania recommended the group make trial experiments with the poison on cats, to determine its effectiveness.

After buying the drug at a pharmacy but then failing to produce the desired effects, the three conspired to carry out a suicide bombing, but did not receive approval from their Hamas operators. They were then arrested before they were able to carry out the attack.

I used to eat at cafe Rimon all of the time. I especially liked the mushroom blintzes, and would sometimes order coffee there as well. The irony is that I once became violently ill after eating there, and at the time believed it to be food poisoning. Had I been poisoned by one of the Arab chefs? Perhaps not, given that the article makes clear that they never went through with their plans. Not to mention the fact that had I actually been deliberately poisoned, I may not be here to write about it. But the point is that just by living here and going about your daily life, you are at risk. That thought occasionally freaks me out, but I try not to think about it.

Another interesting point raised by the article is the issue of Israeli Arabs. While many of them are loyal, hard-working citizens, there are also cells of terrorists among their population (as was also made abundantly clear by the Hebrew University bombing). And even if they are not involved with terror, how should we react to something like this?

Avraham Feld, a resident of Jerusalem, told Arutz-7 of a disturbing scene he witnessed soon after a bombing near the Cafe: “Last year, after the explosion that tore apart part of Lunz St. and Ben-Yehuda St. [and killed 11 young people], I arrived shortly afterwards at the Rimon Cafe. One of the things that overwhelmed me was the site of the kitchen staff of the Cafe Rimon in a state of joyous celebration - patting each other on the back, jumping up and down, singing songs in Arabic - it was like at the end of a soccer match when your team wins. They were marching and striding back and forth, so full of energy - it was amazing to me.”

Or this.

As was illustrated by yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, Israel is a democracy, a fact that is exploited by some of its citizens in their attempt to undermine her very existence.

US Navy Retiree John Rudolph has a few things to say about the beast known as anti-Semitism from the perspective of a non-Jewish person.

Being a non-Jew, or Gentile, I have been making some observations lately over the past few months, and have observed something terribly odd.

I go into the news groups in Yahoo!, and all I see are Jews being blamed for nearly everything that is wrong on the planet. Jews are being accused of running the media and telling us only what they want to hear. Jews are being blamed of the situation over in the Middle East, even though Israel takes up only 0.01% of the total land mass of the Middle East. Jews are being blamed for just about everything - and it is getting worse.

Charlottesville, Virginia, is the most liberal leftist town in the state. Thanks to the University of Virginia population, with its pious, overbearing professors and staff that feel they are smarter than thou, it’s common to see Birkenstock-wearing, Howard-Dean-for-President-bumber-sticker-toting, Volvo-station-wagon-driving, self-righteous, Berkeley-ite, hippie leftists and their larger-than-normal lesbian population take up the majority of the population of this seedy and extremely snobby liberal town, and more so, it’s common to find them shopping in places like Foods of All Nations or Whole Foods, looking for their tofu, strange looking vegetables that I wouldn’t even allow my cat to eat, bobbles and bangles, and their precious rice cakes.

Welcome to my little part of the world, where nearly all of them are in this form, and nearly all of them have nothing nice to say about Israel or Jews in general. I come out against those who criticize Jewry - some of them even claim the Holocaust never happened - but let the historical facts speak the truth.

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, is quoted as saying, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” This is what is happening, and it’s odd to see that the liberal Left and America’s ignorant are the “sheep” who are falling for this sudden torrent of anti-Semitism that is sweeping the country en masse. Sadly, they, in turn, become anti-Semitic themselves, because they feel that this is the way to go.

Being anti-Semitic is just about as cool as being a lesbian.

If we were to take an analytical study of the US population who are falling for the lies about Jews, we’d come to find that most of them are lacking an important part of their education, which is called geography, basic social studies, and the knowledge of countries and what they provide to the world. It’s sad to see someone posting something anti-Semitic in the Yahoo! news boards when they probably couldn’t even find Israel on a world map - even one that is labeled. It’s sad to realize that a lot of them are college graduates, while the rest of them are sons of redneck farmers, who lack the moral fortitude to even know how to construct a basic sentence, or who have never been on board a plane to go somewhere and learn about that place.

It’s sad to read something written by a certain Stalinist and anti-Semitic Charlotte Kates, the organizer of Rutger University’s pro-terrorist Hate Fest - claiming that Israel is an apartheid state - when she herself has probably never even been to the Middle East to obtain firsthand view of what Israel is really like. It’s shameful and disgusting to know that someone of her caliber could ever write something so inciteful against a people who have never done anything wrong or brought any personal harm to her. It is bitterly sad that Charlotte Kates is probably just as ignorant as one of those who most likely couldn’t even find Israel on the map.

And this is why we have to come together as a nation to begin questioning the authenticity or validity of the education of these anti-Semitic college-degree-toting people who make up the college graduates of America. Their hateful comments are irresponsible, because thousands of people will read what Charlotte Kates wrote about Israel and might automatically deduct that this is the truth, just because it was written by an “educated” pundit.

And that brings me to another point. The gullibility factor of the common American is extremely high, and I blame that on a serious lack of education or the will to learn something new.

In conclusion, it’s the ignorant and uneducated who are spreading inciteful words about Jews and Israel. It angers me to hear a college graduate come out against Jewry, for they know nothing of what they are talking about, let alone most likely haven’t even been abroad.

I therefore question each and every anti-Semitic college graduate in America today: Have you even been to Israel to see what it is like? Why comment on something that you know nothing about? If you’re not in the know about Jews or Israel, then steer clear of making inciteful and hateful comments, for your hateful comments are about as worthless as the college degree that you hang so proudly on your wall.

Just the other day, my Jewish friend asked me why is it that people hate Jews so much? For now, all I can say is that it is the majorly ignorant who are doing this. We need to include the self-proclaimed “educated” in this mass of ignorant and uneducated people who hate Jews and Israel. They so badly need to go back to school. This time, they need to stay awake.

“You would have to note that it was only (lately) that Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership could even find it in themselves to mention the word Palestinian. So I reject the notion that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, overwhelmingly important as it is, would stop the terrorism that has been directed against the United States, Western interests and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

- US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage speaking to reporters after talks in Cairo with Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa.

Jon Faine, a Jewish journalist at The Age, gushes with praise for Al-Crapeeza after being fed the usual lies about “uncensored media”, “freedom of expression” and “an exchange of ideas” by the curiously named Jihad Ballout.

And how about this for a lie:

“Any Jews working here?” I asked, and was told that if I wanted to apply, and spoke Arabic, and was interested in quality journalism, I would be welcome.

If Faine had done his research before this embarassing piece of “journalism”, he may have uncovered the Al-Crapeeza that we know and loathe. The Al-Crapeeza that constantly demonizes the US, Israel and the Jews, while labelling terrorists as “resistance fighters”

Update: Not to mention this (courtesy of LGF):

AL-JAZEERA CORRESPONDENT SATTAR KARIN ADMITTED THAT HIS OFFICE IN THE MAHMOUDIYA, BABIL PROVINCE OF IRAQ HAS BEEN USED TO COORDINATE ATTACKS AGAINST COALITION FORCES. TWO SYRIAN NATIONALS WERE ALSO INVOLVED. (AL-SABAH, IRAQ, 11/9/03)

Padraic McGuinness has written an interesting op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald in which he blasts the Sydney Peace Prize, but claims that Jewish leaders should have just ignored the whole thing.

Peace prizes are getting sillier every day. It used to be there was a fairly simple path to obtaining a Nobel Peace Prize, which involved murdering as many people as possible and then promising to stop. With some awareness of the absurdity of this, the Nobel committee in Norway, which awards the prize, began to share the award between the leaders of two sides involved in a conflict who promised to make peace.

Thus 30 years ago the prize was awarded jointly to Henry Kissinger of the United States and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam for their joint efforts at making peace in Vietnam. While I am unconvinced by the case made by the journalist Christopher Hitchens who claims Kissinger should be tried as a war criminal, he did not have clean hands. Nor did Le, certainly a murderer. At least he was honest enough to decline - he knew perfectly well he would continue to wage war. So should the Nobel committee have known.

There have been worthy recipients, but given the overall record of the committee and of all other bodies which purport to award such prizes, these are but happy accidents. In general, the Nobel Peace Prize is comparable in its recipients to the Stalin Prize, happily no longer awarded. But both tended to go to dictators, enemies of democracy or apologists for both.

The fuss about the award of the so-called Sydney Peace Prize to Hanan Ashrawi, a polished propagandist from Palestine, was a storm in a teacup. It had its nasty aspects, like the pretence that powerful and mysterious Jewish influences were involved, rather than some ill-considered protests from sections of the local Jewish community (who knew something about Ashrawi’s history). This was yet another manifestation of the anti-Semitic strain which lies just below the surface of those who regard themselves as “progressive”.

They prefer to applaud Arab extremists who want to murder Jews, and fail to distinguish between deliberate terrorist attacks on innocent people on the one hand, and retaliatory action against the terrorists who hide among the innocent on their own side, thus using them cynically as innocent victims, on the other.

But it would have been better to ignore the whole thing. The Sydney Peace Foundation (SPF) is a body of no significance which has managed to con a number of businesses and the city council into providing funds with which to pursue its naive leftist agenda. It has involved a number of people who would not normally be considered leftist, but this is always the way of the kind of united-front bodies which talk airily about peace and love while practising neither.

The history of the various peace congresses which were held during the Cold War should be instructive - but, as has been said, the thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.

The nature of the Sydney mob, led by a retired Sydney University professor of social work, was obvious long before it seized upon Ashrawi. Her predecessor was former Irish president Mary Robinson, who was notably unsuccessful in persuading any of the dictatorships in the UN to pay any attention to human rights when she was head of the UN Human Rights Commission. Before her was Sir William Deane, hero of the anti-Howard brigade, who contributed nothing to peace that anyone could name. Enough said.

It is clear what the politics of the SPF are. They are about claiming the moral high ground for the left, while making excuses for terrorists and warmongers so long as they can be said somehow to be fighting for national independence or against the vestiges of colonialism.
The SPF is not alone in providing monetary rewards for propaganda in Australia. There’s also the UN media peace awards, awarded not by the UN but by the UN Association of Australia, with much the same agenda as the SPF. The truth is that all these prizes are a joke, and should be treated as such. And why on earth does any democratic organisation or public company fund them?

Israel is by no means a “perfect” democracy in the sense of equal rights for all citizens. There are a number of reasons for this situation, some stemming from the reality of the situation on the ground (e.g. it is unsafe to make military service mandatory for Israeli Arabs due to their divided loyalties) and some stemming from the fact that Israel is a Jewish state (e.g. immigrant rights for Jews and offspring of Jews to encourage Jewish immigration). I plan to blog on this topic at some later stage. However, right now, I want to point out this news story that highlights the indisputable fact that Israel is a democracy nonetheless.

The Supreme Court ruled this morning, unanimously, that the film “Jenin, Jenin” - which contains “testimony” by Arab residents of Jenin regarding alleged Israeli atrocities - may be screened in Israel. The Court thus overruled a decision by the Censorship Council, and stated that the original decision to restrict the movie’s screening overly limited the right to freedom of expression. The Censor must pay 15,000 shekels in court costs to the film’s director Muhammad Bakri.

Education Minister Limor Livnat said several months ago that the movie, which portrays the Operation Defensive Shield warfare in Jenin of Spring 2002 as if it were an Israeli massacre of innocent Arabs, is a “severe blow to the memory of the fighters who fell.” Investigative bodies that looked into the warfare, including the United Nations, stated conclusively that nothing approaching a massacre took place there.

Justice Dalia Dorner said, “The decision to censor the film simply promoted it, and even if the film deeply offends the public, this does not justify restricting its screening.” The fact that the movie contains lies, ruled the judges, does not mean that the Censor can ban it.

Can you imagine if someone wanted to screen an anti-Muslim movie in any of the Arab states? The only ruling involved may be one involving the issuing of a fatwa.

I don’t know about you, but it struck me as odd that al Qaeda would deliberately target Muslims in its terror campaign. But according to Debka, Muslims were indeed not targeted:

Al Qaeda’s targeting of Muhaya and its Arab population at first puzzled Saudi and foreign counter-terror authorities - until it was realized that many of the casualties were Lebanese Christians and the assailants Lebanese Muslims. The terrorist network had very pointedly opted to sow death inside a focus of Christian habitation in the Muslim kingdom on the Muslim feast of Ramadan.

That makes sense. But why during Ramadan?

..one of the heads of the authoritative Al Azhar university of Cairo issued a new fatwa stating that those fighting the holy war, the jihad, are permitted to break the sacred fast of Ramadan and eat during the day. This edict sanctifies Islamic suicide terrorism and raises it to a degree of holiness above that of Ramadan.

Debka also reveals the orgins of the perpetrators:

Pointers to a Lebanese hit-team accumulated in the hands of Saudi intelligence and American counter-terror agencies in the Middle East 48 hours before the suicide bombers struck the Riyadh compound. The group was reported to be made up of al Qaeda operatives, Lebanese nationals and their Palestinian recruits.

I always find it interesting when the Left claim that the PLO Arabs are merely resisting occupation by Israel. My contention is, and always has been, that the PLO Arabs oppose Israel’s existence or more accurately the existence of a Jewish state. The fact that these PLO Arabs are fighting with al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia (not to mention Iraq and other countries) reinforces my view. How? Well, you have to ask yourselves what connection is there between perpetrating a bombing in Saudi Arabia and resisting occu[ation in “Palestine.” None of course. Now ask yourselves what connection is there between the Saudi bombing and trying to eliminate the Jewish state? Answer: They are both part of a global terror campaign waged against non-Muslims in a bid to impose Islam on the countries of the world. As Debka itself mentions:

The same mind-set is behind the terror alert declared in Sudan Monday, November 10. Here, the Al Qaeda poses a threat not only to US diplomatic missions but to the peace talks between the Muslim government and the Christian rebels of the south. Notices appearing of late on al Qaeda-linked Websites call specifically for all possible action to abort Sudan’s conversion from “an Arab-Muslim state to a country ruled by Christians.”

Israel is extremely disturbed by the effective teaming up of Lebanon-based al Qaeda operatives with local cells in Saudi Arabia for suicide strikes against non-Muslim targets in the Middle East. Bin Laden’s banner declares war “Crusaders (Christians) and Jews.”

George Bush and Tony Blair have tried to distance themselves from the view that what we are currently seeing in the world is a “clash of civilizations.” But in my opinion, that is exactly what we are seeing.

It is interesting to see how Muslim nations and organizations have reacted to the suicide bombing in Saudi Arabia. Here are some examples:

And to think that if the attack had occurred a few countries over, these same countries and organizations would either be endorsing it through their silence, or hailing it as a “resistance operation.”

Update: This quote sums up the Arab position.

“Of course they are terrorists,” said Samer, manager of a Damascus electronics shop. “They were targeting residents, Arabs and Muslims.”

“This US administration is unreliable and unrealistic and does not deal with the Arabs and their aspirations with the minimum level of respect..this requires a unified Arab position to mobilize all energies and capabilities to face the American aggression..The American Administration is a right-wing fascist administration, the Zionist right controls it and it’s maneuvered by a group of right-wing fascists who are repelled by the word ‘Arab’; this revulsion and fright runs from Dick Cheney to Wolfowitz.”

- Jibril Rajoub, showing PLO Arab love for America.

Israeli blog An Unsealed Room has drawn my attention to this story from the aptly named IranMania news.

“Existence of Israel contrary to Iranian interests”

The mere existence of Israel is contrary to Tehrans national interests, press reports said Monday, quoting former Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, now a top advisor to Iran’s supreme leader.

Yep, that little ol’ atomic energy program in Iran is for “civil” purposes….

Update: There is a positive spin to this story. If Iran say that they see Israel’s existence as contrary to their interests, then they are implicitly recognizing Israel’s existence!

Israel21C reports that an Israeli neurologist has been chosen by Michael J. Fox to join ten leading Parkinson’s scientists from around the world to be on the advisory board of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

I am just waiting for groups like the International Solidarity Movement to urge Michael J. Fox to reconsider hiring a doctor of the “occupation forces”. In the meantime, these groups will continue their “important” work, such as disrupting an Israeli ballet performance and ensuring that Israel’s football team loses matches.