A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words

Elder of Ziyon has exposed that Human Rights' Watch 'senior military analyst' Marc Garlasco has an dark obsession - with Nazi memorabilia.

HRW's defence is that Marc is not a Nazi and there's nothing wrong with his hobby. So, according to Human Rights Watch, there's nothing wrong with that picture?! However, the issue is not so much about Marc Garlasco, however disturbing his hobby is. The issue is with Human Rights Watch; as EoZ says, "HRW's poster boy for human rights research nurses a serious obsession with, and fascination for, the worst human rights abusers in history."

NGO Monitor goes into more detail.

On top of that there is the fact that this HRW investigator, who clearly anyway has an agenda against Israel and the Jewish State's right to defend itself against those who aim to destroy it, is obsessed with souvenirs of Nazis, the very people who tried to kill all the Jews, with the Holocaust resulting in the establishment of the State of Israel.

And HRW don't seem to think there's anything wrong with that.

And that's not all. The brilliant EoZ also links to a quote from Garlasco that demonstrates his unsurprising hypocrisy when it comes to Israel, as he says on the US army in Afghanistan:

"I don't think people really appreciate the gymnastics that the US military goes through in order to make sure that they're not killing civilians... the Taliban are violating international law... You have the Taliban shielding in people's homes. And you have this small number of troops on the ground. And sometimes the only thing they can do is drop bombs.”

Daled Amos, the blog linked from EoZ, observes "Odd that the criteria that Garlasco so easily applies to the US, he refuses to use what talking about Israel."

That's still not all. Amos quotes, from an interview with Garlasco, talking about when he worked in the Pentagon for the US army:

"Garlasco says, before the invasion of Iraq, he recommended 50 air strikes aimed at high-value targets - Iraqi officials. But he says none of the targets on the list were actually killed. Instead, he says, 'a couple of hundred civilians at least' were killed."

EoZ puts it perfectly: "Perhaps we should ask HRW to investigate whether Garlasco should be charged with war crimes."

Double Checkpoint Humiliation!

A difficult day for Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank just trying to go about their daily business with dignity and freedom. First, IDF soldiers at a checkpoint near Hebron discovered a Palestinian man was carrying four knives, so he was sent for questioning. If that wasn't bad enough, another Palestinian was humiliated when he tried to stab an IDF soldier at a checkpoint near Nablus; the soldier avoided injury, and the Palestinian was turned over to security forces for interrogation. This checkpoint business really is humiliating for the Palestinians, every time they fail in an attempted terrorist attack they must feel so ashamed at getting caught and letting down their people.

Melanie Phillips Tackles The BBC

In an excellent article by Melanie Phillips, she looks at a BBC report on religious soldiers in the IDF, that seems to equate them with Islamic Jihadists. That, Phillips astutely observes,

"was open bigotry against Judaism itself. One of the most deeply offensive sections was the ‘aha!’ moment where she pointed accusingly at soldiers visiting Masada who were wearing the ritual fringed garment worn by all orthodox Jewish men as if this was a sign of their moral perfidy. To be an orthodox Jew, she was in effect saying, was to be guilty of malevolent intent towards the Palestinians: to be aggressive and warlike and fanatical, characteristics they allegedly got from the Hebrew Bible."

She concludes,

"the BBC blames, smears and demonises them -- and through them, blames, smears and demonises the religion of Judaism itself"

Suddenly the BBC's anti-Israel bias doesn't look so bad.

Guardian Balance?!

The Guardian has actually exposed it's readers to a dark and dangerous pro-Israel article, for once. And they don't like it. Rivka Carmi, president of Ben Gurion University, makes an excellent case against Self-Hating-Neve-Gordon's calls to boycott Israel. Her article was also in the LA Times, and, in an extremely rare case of balance, the Guardian has included it on CiF! As expected, though, the Guardian readers and commenters completely miss the point. (The Guardian obviously knew they would before they uploaded the article, which is why on rare occasions it does publish pro-Israel pieces, with the writer inevitably getting abuse from it's deluded readers). Carmi describes BGU's

"community outreach and scientific innovation", how her "professional career has focused on preventing hereditary genetic diseases in the Bedouin Arab community", that "the laboratory that I founded at Ben-Gurion University is working with Bedouin, Palestinian and Jordanian doctors and researchers to improve the health of Arab children across the region", and about the development of "advanced water technologies to solar energy, environmental conservation and emergency medicine".

And the majority of Guardian-ites still want to boycott Israel, and by extension, Ben Gurion University and all their work and contributions. They hate Israel so much they would even deny Arabs the benefits they get from Israeli research!

Seth Freedman Idolises Ex-Jewish Fatah Member

Freedman first off tries to portray ex-Jewish, Muslim convert and Fatah member Uri Davis as moderate and peaceful -

"the image he gives off is light years away from his detractors' portrayal of him as a Qur'an-bashing, fire-breathing radical."

That is despite the fact that Fatah are radicals, at least when it comes to Israel. Although, Freedman admits, Davis wants to bring about change in Israel through boycott, divestment and sanctions against it - all as part of the "anti-apartheid campaign".

Freedman gives more of an insight into Davis' mindset, telling how Davis criticises the Hagaddah as it "celebrates collective punishment". So Davis rewrote it and "kept the original skin of the text minus the ugly parts and minus God".

Whether the 'ugly parts' of 'collective punishment' he is referring to is the Egyptians' slavery of the Jews or G-d's punishment of the Egyptians, either way his Hagaddah is not going to make much sense.

Freedman ends, almost wistfullly,

"But the task ahead of him [to get more Jews to join Fatah!] is a daunting one, and how many others he can convince to follow in the wake of him and his yellow Beetle down the streets of Ramallah remains to be seen."

I don't even think my (very low) opinion of Freedman would get any lower if he converted to Islam and joined Fatah.