Dubai Hamas killing pledge by UK foreign secretary

[FIREWALL]

Originally Posted by OneToughHerring

Big words (and I don't just mean font) coming from "Mr Brig".

I'd say something funny but the joke has already spoken.

Originally Posted by FIREWALL

I'd say something funny but the joke has already spoken.

And the bottle has been opened from the looks of it.

[Castout]

This doesn't make Dr Kelly's case any more right.

One was a military target that promoted violence the other was a peaceful civilian.

I'm not saying it was right but at least the target was not an innocent civilian

Just saying. . .

[FIREWALL]

Originally Posted by OneToughHerring

And the bottle has been opened from the looks of it.

Cheap shots are all you got.

[Skybird]

A piece on which side Europe already has chosen to line up with, which also means which side it stands up against - Israel's.

http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.p...ed_once_again/

While Europe commemorated International Holocaust Day last month, the
European Union is experiencing an explosion of modern anti-Semitism. Have
the lessons of murderous Nazi racial anti-Semitism been inculcated into
mainstream European opinion and action?
The results of the Jewish Agency’s report released in January showing global
anti-Semitism spiraling out of control – and of a German Bielefeld
University study in December documenting mushrooming hatred of Israel –
recall the memorable line in the film “Casablanca,” in which police Captain
Renault announces that Rick’s Cafe must be closed because of illegal
activity. “I’m shocked, shocked to discover that gambling is going on
here!’” says Renault, while being handed the proceeds of his gambling wins.
While some observers of Jew-hatred in Western Europe are not shocked by the
largest wave of anti-Semitism since the Hitler movement, many European
governments, policy makers and academics tend to feign shock like Renault or
simply cannot fathom that hatred of Israel is the most ubiquitous form of
contemporary anti-Semitism.
The Bielefeld study found that 41 percent of Europeans agreed with the
statement that Jews are exploiting the Holocaust to advance their own
interests, and 46 percent supported the contention that Israel in general
“is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.”
The shift from the largely obsolete version of Nazi-based biological
anti-Semitism to the prevailing form of contemporary anti-Semitism was best
captured by the Swedish Social Democratic mayor of Malmo, Ilmar Reepalu. “We
accept neither Zionism nor anti-Semitism,” Reepalu said on International
Holocaust Remembrance Day, blasting the city’s small Jewish community for
not “distancing” itself from Israel during the country’s efforts to repel
Hamas rocket attacks during last year’s Operation Cast Lead war. Meanwhile,
the mayor has solidified an alliance with radical Islamic strands among the
Muslim population, which makes up 15 percent of Malmo’s 250,000 people.
The Jewish Agency report revealed that more acts of anti-Semitism took place
during the first three months of 2009 than in the entire year of 2008; in
France, 631 incidents were recorded during the first six months of 2009,
compared to 474 in all of 2008.
The report appears to reflect what many commentators in Europe have observed
over the years: a marriage between leftists and Islamic organizations that
aims to turn the Jewish state into an international punching bag.
European leftists frequently declare the empty slogan of “never again
fascism,” while championing anti-Semitic despotic groups and regimes such
as Hamas, Hezbullah and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Witness the example of
the vice president of the German Left Party, Sahra Wagenknecht, and her
fellow party members of the parliament.
When Israeli President Shimon Peres indirectly referenced the Iranian threat
and the need to stop the Islamic Republic’s drive to go nuclear during his
speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day to the German Parliament, Wagenknecht
and fellow German Left Party members Christine Buchholz, Heike Hänsel and
Sevim Dagdelen refused to participate in a standing ovation. They justified
their protest because Peres warned about the dangers of the Iranian regime
and because he participated in Israel’s self-defense wars.
Buchholz lead a hardcore faction within the Left Party that supported
Palestinian suicide attacks against Israel as a legitimate form of
“resistance.” Wagenknecht is an admirer of the ex-German Democratic
Republic’s Stalinist system, which refused – as part of its foreign policy
doctrine – to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
All of the Left Party members, of course, cynically cherish the notion of
memorializing murdered Jews. Wagenknecht issued a statement in early
February defending her snub of Peres: “My behavior does not mean in any way
that I withhold respect for the occasion of the speech, the commemoration of
the crimes of the Holocaust committed by the Germans. I bow in deep humility
to the victims of the Shoah.”
Yet what disturbs the Left Party – and it is not merely limited to members
of the German Left who participated in pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbullah rallies
–is the notion of Jews flexing their muscles to defend their national
security. With bitter irony, Eike Geisel, an undogmatic leftist author
(1945-1997), neatly summed up the problem: “The Jews, if they’re not dead,
should please suffer, admonish and warn, but not fight back.”
The lesson that many Germans fail to grasp within the context of the endless
series of Shoah remembrance events is “Pray for the dead, and fight like
hell for the living,” to invoke the American trade unionist Mother Jones.
Where are the Mother Joneses of Europe when it comes to stopping Iranian
anti-Semitism, the regime’s violence toward its civilian population and its
nuclear weapons threat?
All of this helps to explain why Germany’s only institute devoted to
researching anti-Semitism is slavishly devoted to dead Jews instead of
fighting to prevent harm to living Jews in Europe. Wolfgang Benz, the
scandal-plagued director of the Berlin Center for Research on Anti-Semitism,
spends his time documenting desecrated Jewish cemeteries in East Germany and
dangerously lumping murderous anti-Semitism together with bias against
Muslims. Benz argues, “The fury of the new enemies of Islam parallels the
older rage of anti-Semites against the Jews.”
Harvard-trained political scientist Daniel J. Goldhagen previously told me,
“Anti-Semites the world over have tried to stir further hatred of Jews by
equating Israelis and Jews with Nazis. Now the Berlin center, supposedly
devoted to the study of anti-Semitism, has abetted them by delegitimizing
telling the truth about the people with the most Nazi-like views of Jews:
the political Islamists.” One of the key manifestations of modern
anti-Semitism is equating the Jewish state with Nazi Germany. Just as the
Nazi regime was defeated and dissolved, the Nazi Germany-equals-Israel
parallel encourages the abolition of Israel.
The Berlin Center advises the German government on combating anti-Semitism.
Its decision to ignore the deadly cocktail of Islamic anti-Semitism and
left-wing anti-Semitism (read: modern anti-Semitism) does not bode well for
the security of Germany’s Jews or the so-called German-Israeli special
relationship. Benz’s reputation took a beating last month when he was
unrepentant about revelations that he had repeatedly honored his doctoral
supervisor Karl Bosl, who early in his career had been a hard-core Nazi
ideologue.
Absent an assertive, confrontational posture toward turning Israel and
Diaspora Jewry into a whipping boy, Europe will experience a flight of Jews
seeking refuge in Israel and the United States. But, unlike Captain Renault
in Casablanca, Europeans cannot claim they are “shocked, shocked” because
the anti-Semitic writing is clearly on the wall.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by VipertheSniper

Could someone please pass the popcorn?

It's a pity this thread is turning into a series of personal attacks....the original topic is current and of interest to so many of us regardless of our country of origin.

@Viper.....get your own popcorn, mine is already spoken for

[CaptainHaplo]

I have to differ with Skybird on this one. While one country may be making an issue of this, the UK and Ireland both have been clear on they are just looking for information from israel, and as such this is no major issue for them.

Of course a Jewish group is going to say there is more Anti-Semitism out there. And yes - some Jews do use the holocaust to forward their own interests. The NAACP often does the same thing with slavery. NCLR uses the reality of the poor in Mexico to advance its own agenda on immigration. Caucasion advocacy groups (Caucasian club, College Republicans, etc) use unfair instances of affirmative action to show the double standard embraced by the politically correct. To act suprised that a group - regardless of who they are, would not use a major historical event to further their own agenda is to ignore human nature.

The only suprising part was the "46%" that see suicide bombings as legit "resistance". Makes me wonder how many of that 46% have a religious or cultural heritage that says so. Of course, without demographic info we don't know, but Sky is always talking about the influx of Muslims, so perhaps the 2 are linked?

While one country may be making an issue of this, the UK and Ireland both have been clear on they are just looking for information from israel, and as such this is no major issue for them.

Where did you get that from?
Just looking for information?
The people looking for "information" happen to belong to the police branch that deals with serious organised crime, its serious organised crime because its organised fraud and murder.
The UK and Ireland governments are also seeing it as a major issue because these are British and Irish government documents that are being forged..plus of course Israel has previously given assurances that it wouldn't forge these documents anymore.

The only suprising part was the "46%" that see suicide bombings as legit "resistance".

You will have to ask Sky about that as he must support such actions, in fact as far as he is concerned when it comes to waging war absolutely anything is acceptable.

Still look on the bright side, at least this time they managed to murder the person they wanted to murder and didn't murder the wrong people by mistake.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

I have to differ with Skybird on this one. While one country may be making an issue of this, the UK and Ireland both have been clear on they are just looking for information from israel, and as such this is no major issue for them.

The essay I linked and quoted is not a specific reply by the author to the Mossad disaster. It is hinting at a general trend in european policies in general. you see it every time you realise the massive disbalance in EU reactions to terror comitted by Hamas or Hezbollah (the Israelis are expected to take it without reacting while the EU makes some lame statements calling Palestinians to order), and the military reaction by Israel that always triggers outbursts of most angry reactions and tirades. You canot escape the impression that to many saloon-communists in the West, to the Eurocrats, the lefts and those who are traditionally anti-American anyway due to their notorious revolutionary '68 mindset Palestinian lives are so much more valuable than lives of just some damn Jews. The ME policy of the EU consists of just this_demanding Israelis to do nothign when they get bombed in busses or by rockets that both are inentionally aimed at their civilian population. But when the Israeli army strikes back, but does so with an almost hilarious ammount of effort being oput into warning the targetted persns and avoidjng civilians getting killed and aiming only the intended targets - then all diplomatic hell brakes lose, even more so if nevertheless civilisans accidentally get killed. what do these amok-running Jews think who they are...? Can't they just suffer and die in silence like it is to be expected from them since long? you see, this form of extreme double standards is one of the faces of this new anti-semitism. Another form is when some smart-headed supermind thinks the adequate way to minimise the Palestinian terror and wickedness is to point out that one person'S terrorist is another persons "freedom fighter". Here the victim becomes declared the perpetrator, and "up" becomes relabelled as "down". The Nazis did that, too.

The only suprising part was the "46%" that see suicide bombings as legit "resistance". Makes me wonder how many of that 46% have a religious or cultural heritage that says so. Of course, without demographic info we don't know, but Sky is always talking about the influx of Muslims, so perhaps the 2 are linked?

Not really. The Bielefeld study, one of two major studies with potentially immensly explosive content being released in Germany in the past 4 months - that'S why both get systemtaicvally hidden from the public, was done with a representative sample of the populations, which should mean that migrants and colonists are neither over- nor under-represented but should be represented in the sample in roughly matching proportions regarding their share in the total population. The bielefeld study is oignored as best as they can. the other study that I mentioned and is massively ignored, shows that migrants in Germany are massively overrepresented in the official federal stantistcs describing who depends on sopcial wellfare and who not. Of all native Germans, only around 4.1% live by so-called "Hartz-IV", as it is called here (4th stage of a wellfare reform invented by a manager named Hartz). but more than 8% of migrants. There are far less igrants than there are native germans, so these total numbers means that by several factors a bigger share of migrants live by wellfare, than Germans.

Ignoring unwanted federal statistics has tradition in the discussion in Germany. when federal crime statistics showed that migrants are massively overrepresented in crime, copared to Germans, criterions and procedures for these yearly startistics have been chnaged in following years, now there hardly is any discrimination anymore between migrants and native Germans, excusing this by avoiding "discirmination". but the wanted effect is that you cannot prove by statistics anymore that a several times as high share of migrants is criminal, than native Germans.

Isn't anti-discrimination a great thing? And who could argue against "anti-discrimination!" (please raise and cheer and applaude for us being so very much against discrimination here) without showing that he is racist himself and discriminates all those poor handicapped potential citizens with migration background...?

If I ever should develope a cancer in my life, then it will be because of my anger about this underhanded wickedness of our politically oh so correct self-declared morale-apostles and Islam-friends. This cursed breed will drive me into my grave one day.

Only Sky could introduce a conspiracy theory on top of one of his conspiracy theories
Studies are being systematicly hidden away which is why a small local zionist paper from thousands of miles away cannot write a report on them because they are too hard to find.

[Schroeder]

@Skybird

Well, but declaring the Israelis to be victims only isn't correct either. I'm pretty sure that France would be pretty pi$$ed too if Germany would start building settlements on their soil. How long do you think would they condone that before a few Le clercs and Rafales would "help" the settlers to de construct their houses again? I think both sides are constantly pouring gas into the fire down there.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Schroeder

@Skybird

Well, but declaring the Israelis to be victims only isn't correct either. I'm pretty sure that France would be pretty pi$$ed too if Germany would start building settlements on their soil. How long do you think would they condone that before a few Le clercs and Rafales would "help" the settlers to de construct their houses again? I think both sides are constantly pouring gas into the fire down there.

On parts of the settlements issue you are right. However, the palestinians already could have had an agreement and treaty with Israel - SINCE MANY YEARS. they screwed up, because they wanted all, and thought that all Arab states' support would be theirs.

I never hid that I hold no special feelings for Israel, I do not defend it'S right for self-existence due to sympathy or because I think as a german I should do so, or any other of this sentimental stuff. I pragmatically do it because the foundign of Israel is more than two generations ago. you can't reverse the time without doing a comparable ammount of injustice AGAIN, but this time to the Israelis. Israeli state shouldn't not be there, but it is, and since long, and now we have to deal with it. Cancelling it's founding is no option.

Maybe that is no the kind of sympathetic lip confession diplomacy is so fond of, but it is a solid reason why I support Israel in real, not just by lip confession. You can reverse a state founding when it is 2 or 3 years ago - not 60 years.

Whether I think that Israel can strategically survive in the long term, is another thing. Nor do I tzhinbk foundign the state iof Israel in that place should have been done. Strategically, it was foolish. But for the time being I see no moral alternative to supporting it. And despite it's obvious flaws and problems with Jewish extremists, it still is a hundred times a more sane and reasonable place than any of it's neighbours in the region.

Originally Posted by Skybird

On parts of the settlements issue you are right. However, the palestinians already could have had an agreement and treaty with Israel - SINCE MANY YEARS. they screwed up, because they wanted all, and thought that all Arab states' support would be theirs.

Do you mean the proposal for a Palestinian state offered to Arafat in Camp David summit? I've had this discussion before with someone else, it seems that the pro-Israel camp will forever claim that the deal in question was a really good deal from the POV of the Palestinians and all problems are due to them not signing that deal. The Palestinians claim that it was infact a bad deal they did not want to sign.

I guess Palestinians don't have the luxury to not sign papers offered to them by the US and Israel. Kind of takes away the whole point of signing things, doesn't it?

Whether I think that Israel can strategically survive in the long term, is another thing. Nor do I tzhinbk foundign the state iof Israel in that place should have been done. Strategically, it was foolish. But for the time being I see no moral alternative to supporting it. And despite it's obvious flaws and problems with Jewish extremists, it still is a hundred times a more sane and reasonable place than any of it's neighbours in the region.

Egyptians and Jordanians would be happy to hear that, after all the concessions they've made and crap they've had to take from Israel.

[Oberon]

Israel, I perceive, militarily wise, as being somewhat akin to Finland in that it has been attacked on several occasions by forces outnumbering its own and then not only beaten off the attack but then gone on the offensive itself.
One should not underestimate them, and should definitely respect them.

I do not agree with all their movements, some of their tactics towards Palestine I find distasteful, as well as their assistance to Apartheid South Africa in acquiring nuclear devices however Israel is a nation which really shouldn't exist. It's been surrounded by mortal enemies since day one and yet some sixty-two years later, it's still going and still going strong.

Originally Posted by Oberon

Israel, I perceive, militarily wise, as being somewhat akin to Finland in that it has been attacked on several occasions by forces outnumbering its own and then not only beaten off the attack but then gone on the offensive itself.
One should not underestimate them, and should definitely respect them.

I do not agree with all their movements, some of their tactics towards Palestine I find distasteful, as well as their assistance to Apartheid South Africa in acquiring nuclear devices however Israel is a nation which really shouldn't exist. It's been surrounded by mortal enemies since day one and yet some sixty-two years later, it's still going and still going strong.

The relations between the UK and Israel have never really been particularily warm. This is partly due to the times when Palestine was governed by the British and the Jewish terrorists started killing off the British servicemen. They did snuff off quite a few, actually.

The idea of Israel being a kind of plucky, heroic nation that has 'earned' it's right to exist through military power is in some ways worrying. I don't think political problems should be solved in the battle field but rather through negotiations. The wars that Israel have won should be looked as parts of the cold war and it's proxy wars, not really as something that serves to give any kind of just agreement and settlement into the area.

But I am aware of this idea of Israel as the 'underdog' country, although I don't think it is an accurate description of the situation in the area, but I do have to say that I do resent the comparison of Finland and Israel.