Double Standards And Double Standards

A few stories to catch up on from the last month or so...

- First there’s the Silwan incident where Palestinian youths threw rocks at an Israeli in his car, forcing him to swerve to try and escape, in the process accidentally hitting two of the kids with his car. The MSM angle was of course something along the lines of “Jew Runs Over Innocent Palestinian Babies”. But Honest Reporting explain why the whole thing was almost certainly a set-up, with photographers from at least five different news agencies ready and waiting for an incident that they would then twist to fit their own agenda of Israelis = oppressors, Palestinians = victims.

- Another big October story was Israel’s new bill requiring candidates for citizenship to pledge allegiance to “the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”, and the proposition to the Palestinians that they recognise Israel as a Jewish state (gasp!) in return for a settlement freeze. Abbas refused, of course, claiming that “the issue of the Jewishness of the state has nothing to do with the matter [of negotiations]”. Which is a very strange comment to make. Who does he think he’s negotiating with, if not the Jewish state of Israel? How can there be negotiations if we don’t exist?

Just Journalism highlight the media’s hypocrisy in dismissing the loyalty oath as discriminatory, whilst at the same time supporting a state exclusively for Palestinian Arabs. In Israel’s declaration of independence, it is “abundantly clear that Israel viewed itself as the homeland for the Jewish people from its inception. The international community recognised the country on that basis. Should Israel’s desire in 2010 to retain its Jewish character be portrayed as so controversial?” After all, if we can’t be Jewish in Israel then where can we?

Just Journalism give the example of the Independent’s Adrian Hamilton, who claimed that the oath is an indication of Israel’s “fundamentalism”, identifying the problem as that “the more closely you define Israel as a uniquely ‘Jewish’ state, the less room there is for it to act as a co-operative member of a Muslim majority Middle East.” If that statement wasn’t outrageously contradictory and hypocritical enough in itself, then just a week after that he wrote about how “Multiculturalism needs defenders”, criticising that “as societies have turned inwards so they have also turned against the outsiders”, and that the debate about immigration in Europe is inherently racist. JJ observe that according to Hamilton’s typical leftist viewpoint, “while Europeans should be more tolerant of non-white Christians in their midst, the Muslim Middle East must be supported in its rejection of a Jewish entity in theirs.”

- Islamic Jihad have published photos on their website of when they were visited in Gaza by Turks. These were “peace activists” though, who had journeyed on board the recent “Viva Palestina” flotilla. “Peace acitivists”, remember. Who visited terrorists and then posed with them for pictures whilst holding machine guns and rocket launchers. EoZ publishes assurances from Islamic Jihad, wondering what all the fuss is about, that the activists were in no danger during the photo shoot, and that they were simply “photos of solidarity” with the Palestinians and their right to “resistance”.