Rael Jean Isaac

BOYCOTTERS DON'T GIVE UP

Confronted with a legal opinion that an academic boycott of Israel was illegal in Britain, the British Association of University Teachers announced it was halting the boycott. That hasn’t stopped the boycott’s sponsors who met in London with 150 hard core supporters, mostly senior lecturers from across the country (with a sprinkling of the usual hard core Israelis, including Ilan Pappe, recently of Haifa University, now spewing poison at Exeter). Boycott leader Sue Blackwell announced the third Intifada would involve an academic boycott. As for the legal opinion, Blackwell said it doesn’t include restrictions about talking about a boycott and in any case they would fight the ruling.

COUNT ON THE NCC

The National Council of Churches, which has been passing anti-American (and, of course, anti-Israel) resolutions regularly for fifty years does not disappoint. The NCC’s Associate General Secretary for Interfaith Relations sent a letter to President Bush urging him to meet with Ahmadinejad. Perhaps he had in mind the findings of the NCC delegation to the Middle East which had found Ahmadinejad “a very religious man” and “witty” to boot. The NCC’s cozying up to yet another dangerous tyrant has not gone wholly unremarked. Jan Markell, founder of Olive Tree Ministries, has complained forcefully of the NCC’s behavior.

IN "FREE" BASRA

Journalists Jay Price and Ali Omar Al Basri, writing for McClatchy newspapers, report that police officers in Basra say more than 15 female bodies are found scattered around the city each month, victims of religious extremists, and a great many more are threatened and beaten. Often, according to Major General Abdel Jalil Khalaf, the commander of Basra’s police, their “crime” is no more than wearing Western clothing or not wearing a headscarf. According to Gen. Khalaf “This is a new type of terror that Basra is not familiar with. These gangs represent only themselves, and they are far outside the religious, forgiving instructions of Islam.”

In the January 2006 Outpost we wrote of the murder of American journalist Stephen Vincent and the near-murder of his female translator in Basra. Vincent reported the once free-wheeling port city (60% Shia, 35% Sunni) was like Florence under Savonarola, with religious gangs roaming the streets forcing women to cover their hair and ankles. Vincent also wrote that off duty police officers in the pay of religious militias went through the city in a white Toyota, assassinating hundreds of former Baath party members each month. It would be such a “death car” according to witnesses, that kidnapped Vincent and his translator.

In short these “gangs” have been terrorizing Basra for years with no effective intervention by British occupiers or local police, not surprising given that a goodly number of police themselves belong to the gangs.

MORE PERES BABBLE

We mentioned last month that in a Yom Kippur eve message Israel’s buffoon-in-chief had identified “Global Warming” as one of the two great “Terrors” facing Israel. Seems that Shimon is so enamored of this notion that it’s replacing his former favorite profundity, namely that there is nothing to learn from history. In his Presidential speech on the opening of the Knesset on October 8, Peres describes, in his usual fuddled rhetoric, the glorious technological future that beckons, but ah, “two heavy shadows” loom “threatening all the inhabitants of the globe”—global terror and global warming.

The speech is too rich in idiocies for this small space. One delicious sample: he praises the demographic migration from countries with “a surfeit of workers to countries which have a surfeit of work,” because “this migration lessens, perhaps even abolishes, prejudices.” Tell that to Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And what does Peres think are the real feelings of the inhabitants of Paris toward the inhabitants of the banlieus who demonstrated the warm feelings migration has produced in them by rioting and burning some 5,000 cars?

NO DEFAMERS OF ISRAEL?

The New York Sun (Oct. 19-21) reported on a CAMERA conference in Manhattan entitled “Israel’s Jewish Defamers.” The article quotes CAMERA Associate Director Alex Safian who mentions former American Jewish Congress director Henry Siegman and former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis as among the growing number of Jewish journalists, writers and intellectuals who use their faith to “give cover to what would otherwise be called anti-Semitism—and may be anti-Semitism.” Asked to comment, Anthony (continued on page 12)
Lewis responded: “This is a conference about a nonexistent phenomenon. I don’t know any Jewish defamers of Israel.”

It is true that Lewis, with his obsessive attacks on Israel, was small beer compared to such giants in the field as Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky and Illan Pappe. Given the performance of these three, one can only assume Lewis considers Israel as libel-proof: so evil that it is impossible to defame her.

FROM LONDONISTAN

In The Washington Post (September 4) Denis MacShane describes the report issued by his blue-ribbon committee of British parliamentarians on anti-Semitism in Britain. None of those on the committee were Jewish. MacShane says what they found most worrisome was “what we described as anti-Jewish discourse, a mood and tone whenever Jews are discussed, whether in the media, at universities, among the liberal media elite or at dinner parties of modish London. To express any support for Israel or any feeling for the right of a Jewish state to exist produced denunciation, even contempt.”

The report further found a pattern of fear among Britain’s 300,000 Jews, to the point that they felt compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their wedding and community events.

Case in point: a Jewish blogger described a demonstration in London in early October by the Orwellian titled Islamic Human Rights Commission (an Iranian government front) which marched through central London waving Hezbollah flags and calling for “death to Israel.” When he and a friend held up an Israeli flag the police told him to put it away “for fear of inciting them.”

The two lone Israeli flag holders were allowed to join the counter-demonstration, but the blogger notes that while the Iranian-government backed demonstration’s sole message was anti-Israel, the counter demonstration was merely anti-Iranian government. Except for these two courageous young men, there were no Jews present although the blogger notes that “if ever there was a cause for the entire Jewish community to be out in force it was this one.” He concludes: “The fact that a march like this (focusing uniquely on the destruction of Israel) can take place with a total absence of any organized Jewish opposition [is disturbing]. Nothing from the Zionist Federation; nothing from any of the youth groups or students; not even a mention in The Jewish Chronicle that it was happening. At the end of it all I was very pleased we went. We actually made a difference because we made sure that our Israeli flags were seen.”

PASTOR HAGEE HONORS ISRAEL

As the international harpies relentlessly torment Israel, it is especially heartwarming that 6,000 evangelical Christians gathered in October for Pastor John Hagee’s 26th annual Night to Honor Israel. Hagee initiated these “nights” in 1981, convinced he had to speak out for Israel after her attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor met almost universal condemnation.
On this occasion there were songs, prayers for Israel, skits, speeches, dance, all broadcast live throughout the world. And John Hagee Ministries gave more than $8.5 million to Israeli causes from the Israel National Autism Foundation to the city of Ariel’s Development Fund.