Universal Jurisdiction
See, boycotting can have an effect!
1 year ago
September 24, 2010
reblogged via 
The second victims of the Holocaust
1 year ago
September 6, 2010
Eden Aberjil: full technicolour glory.
באדיבות הקורא ר.ס
Breaking The Silence published other photos on facebook to show that this is not an isolated incident.
1 year ago
August 17, 2010
reblogged via 
Feeling the hate in New York
‘1500 Jewish extremists rally on 25 April 2010 in Midtown Manhattan against President Barack Obama’s call for an Israeli construction freeze in East Jerusalem and demand unlimited rights to colonize the occupied Palestinian territories.’
Thanks to Max Blumenthal
1 year ago
August 17, 2010
Internet Killed Israeli PR
Excellent mashup and homage to Buggles - yet with an undeniable ring of truth to it. Thank you Minor Demographic Threat.
Want the Lyrics?
You had them on your wireless saying, ‘Death to Jews’
You sliced & diced & circumcised & claimed Fair Use
600 Turks were singing ‘Girl U Know It’s True’
YouTube & Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, bit.ly
You spammed them all & then you even posted 3
Casual Encounters on CraigsList NYC
IDF spokesmen
Who freakin’ trained them?
Bloggers came & broke your heart
Now you tweet your new surveillance video
Cyborg Al-Qaida from the future snorting blow
set to the theme music from Hawaii Five-O
He had a knife and
Wait a second: that’s Barbra Streisand
You couldn’t find my SD card
You’re in a bind says Michael Sfard
The Shin Bet mined my SD card
& played it back on NPR
Born & raised in Arkansas
I brought 6 nukes for the Hamas
We are the Mavi Marmara
You are the sloppy hasbara
1 year ago
August 16, 2010
Conservative Plagerists for Israel: Exposed
The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFoI) has a fearsome reputation in UK politics. Those of us who make a habit of being informed about this group are constantly being given the impression that this is a well funded and organised group not to be taken lightly.
Imagine our surprise, then, when something in particular struck us as odd with the current ‘Weekly Briefing’ of Conservative Friends of Israel, and upon further investigation (thanks Google!) we found that far from being a heavyweight analysis of current events, it is in fact a hotch-potch of (badly) copied-and-pasted stories from other high-profile news outlets.
We understand that trawling through a wide range of sources to get as much information as possible is difficult and takes time and effort but we think it results in quality analysis. We make an absolute point of citing original sources both out of academic and professional courtesy. Conservative Friends of Israel appear not to follow this basic premise. Instead, they offer a facade of professionalism which does not live up to expectations.
To the evidence, then. Click here for a screenshot of the CFoI Weekly Briefing page in question - this screenshot was taken on 9 August 2010. (Hint - if it looks small in your browser, click the image, it should get bigger).
The pattern of the Weekly Briefing appears to be that whoever within the Conservative Friends of Israel copied and paste the text from elsewhere broke each paragraph of the original text into a bullet point for their own briefing. There is some editing of the original text, but clearly not enough if other people can find the original stories on the web within a few minutes of searching.
The current Weekly Briefing has a number of story headings and the list below breaks down where the text for each story under these headings was stolen from.
- New EU Sanctions > Haaretz
- US Blacklists 21 state owned Iranian companies > The Wall Street Journal
- Further sanctions in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp > The Wall Street Journal
- Sanctions begin to take effect > Business Week
- Obama open to Iran engagement > The Washington Post
- Rocket attacks on Israel and Jordan > The Christian Science Monitor (page 1 of 2 page article)
- How Hamas could use the Sinai to attack Israel? [sic] > The Christian Science Monitor (page 2 of 2 page article)
- Violence at the Israel /Lebanon border > Honest Reporting / The Jerusalem Post (1) / The Jerusalem Post (2) / The Jerusalam Post (3)
- Israel to Participate in UN Flotilla Enquiry > Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
We would hazard a guess that the person pulling together all this briefing material on behalf of Conservative Friends of Israel is either not a native speaker of English (the few giveaway clues that there are on this made us look into the provenance of the material that CFoI is claiming as its own), or else they lack the basic skills required to compile and edit a Weekly Briefing.
Admittedly, it is a tall order to condense a whole week of news about Israel into a number of bullet points, but what an organisation like CFoI should not be doing is stealing the work of others in order to compensate for their own shortcomings.
Apart from the delicious irony of discovering that Conservative Friends of Israel plagiarised an article from an organisation called ‘Honest Reporting’, we noticed with disappointment that whilst plagiarising a Haaretz article the Conservative Friends of Israel deliberately and mendaciously missed out the start of that article which details a letter that shows “Iran’s complete readiness to hold negotiations over the fuel for the Tehran reactor without any conditions.”
Why are Conservative Friends of Israel actively seeking to suppress the willingness of Iran to negotiate? Israel, according to the original article, welcomes the attempt at diplomacy, why was this fact, one of the main points of the article which Conservative Friends of Israel plagiarised, ignored and not passed on in the Conservative Friends of Israel briefing?
Why does this even matter?
Well, we think it demonstrates that Conservative Friends of Israel, far from being an all-powerful organisation with deep pockets and members prone to and thoughtful and insightful analysis, appear to be a shallow unimaginative lot who resort to using the work of others in order to puff up the reputation of their organisation.
Not only stealing from others, but wilfully misrepresenting the intentions of Iran in terms of negotiation is a most sinister manifestation of Israeli state propaganda and misdirection. Do members of Conservative Friends of Israel know that the people running that organisation are deliberately misinforming them or simply regurgitating press releases from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
We were going to monitor the Conservative Friends of Israel ‘Weekly Briefings’ for a few more weeks, but the evidence for this week alone is irrefutable. Wonder what would happen if we went back through past ‘briefings’? It is not necessarily wrong to condense other people’s work, but it is wrong to present it as if it were your own with no recognition for the original authors.
Will the next Weekly Briefing from Conservative Friends of Israel contain wholesale stolen material from other organisations, or will they be able to muster up some original content? Perhaps it might be an idea issue an explanation and an apology to all the organisations content was stolen from?
1 year ago
August 9, 2010
Netanyahu - How I stopped the Oslo Peace Process
Last week Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz published an Op Ed about a video shown on Israeli TV programme “This Week with Miki Rosenthal”.
The secretly filmed video, above, shows Netanyahu reveal in excruciating detail how he managed to single-handedly halt the ratification of the Oslo Accords until he extracted the concessions he wanted.
The Op Ed author rightfully opines:
What is there to discuss with a huckster whose sole purpose is “to give 2 percent in order to prevent 100 percent,” as his father told him, quoting his grandfather…
Israel has had many rightist leaders since Menachem Begin promised “many Elon Morehs,” but there has never been one like Netanyahu, who wants to do it by deceit, to mock America, trick the Palestinians and lead us all astray. The man in the video betrays himself in his own words as a con artist, and now he is again prime minister of Israel. Don’t try to claim that he has changed since then. Such a crooked way of thinking does not change over the years.
Forget the Bar-Ilan University speech, forget the virtual achievements in his last visit to the United States; this is the real Netanyahu. No more claims that the Palestinians are to blame for the failure of the Oslo Accords. Netanyahu exposed the naked truth to his hosts at Ofra: he destroyed the Oslo accords with his own hands and deeds, and he’s even proud of it. After years in which we were told that the Palestinians are to blame, the truth has emerged from the horse’s mouth.
This video appears to have caused literally no controversy despite revealing the underhanded duplicitousness of Netanyahu. It is literally the equivalent of Tony Blair admitting to a member of his constituency that he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction all along.
A video of this nature would be a nuclear warhead if it were dropped onto the career of any normal politician in a typical Western Democracy.
But Netanyahu is not a normal politician.
And he does not run a typical Western Democracy.
And so the silence from the international community is deafening.
Perhaps this video reflects something of the nature of all the politicians who appear desperately and incessantly to work towards peace in the Middle East.
Politicians of Israel. Of Gaza. Of West Bank. Of the US. of Britain, et al. All promising different things to different people as long as it furthers their own agenda. They all cast an illusion of progression towards that Holy Grail of ‘Peace’ whilst ensuring that there are get-out clauses hidden behind smoke-and-mirror trickery presented in impenetrable politician-speak.
And are we really surprised?
All the while as the so-called peace talks progress - though nobody can ever be quite sure in what direction they are progressing or at what speed or who is driving or who has the ‘roadmap’ - Israel continues to brutally oppress Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Not merely allowing more illegal settlers onto Palestinian land but actually supporting them by confiscating the land and property of a people who have lived in Palestine for generations and who have a rightful claim to their own property and land.
This video will not damage the career or international standing of Netanyahu. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if clutches of other Israeli politicians were rushing to the houses of their supporters in order to tell similar stories of deceit.
Hey. If it worked for Bibi. It can work for anyone, right?
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