Recent Piece for Vocal International

Michael L.

Vocal International, out of Brussels, Belgium, has brought me in as a writer and adviser.

They focus on news as it is related to European lives and have mainly been assigning me pieces concerning the Middle East and its relationships to Europe, the West, and Israel.

My most recent article, entitled, Saudi Arabia to Go Nuclear,  is a mere 700 words and is concerned with the recent Russian-Saudi nuclear agreement wherein Russia will build, and help maintain, up to sixteen nuclear reactors in the Saudi Peninsula.

Here is a tid-bit:

My suspicion – and it is only a suspicion – is that the Russian-Saudi deal is, at least in part, a reaction to the nuclear deal that United States President Barack Obama hopes to shortly conclude with Iran. Analysts are predicting that Obama’s Iran nuke deal will fuel a nuclear arms race throughout the Middle East and, in all likelihood, this is what we are looking at.  It could be that the primary motivation of the Saudis is simple economics.  By building nuclear facilities for domestic energy consumption they can sell more oil on the international market.  What is also quite likely, however, is that Saudi Arabia, like Iran, has cast its eye on the potential for a nuclear weapon. It seems highly unlikely that Sunni-controlled Saudi Arabia, not to mention Sunni-controlled Egypt, is going to look kindly upon a Shia bomb in the neighborhood.

You can read the piece in its entirety here.

Flushing Out Racists Hiding As Progressives

geofffff

My blog sometimes plunges into the open sewers of the Australian racist antizionist left to confront the ignorant and gutless head on. Man to man so to speak. 

Or in the case of the  low rent crowd who constitute New Matilda, man to sissy.

It's filthy work but really some one needs to do it. Otherwise some could get the idea that this crazy jarring antisemitic narrative has gone unnoticed and unchallenged.  

The leading site of the genre is probably New Matilda where this blog has been dropping comments for years. You can see for yourself how much they hate me. Naturally I wear this as a badge of honour. 

Take a look at this. 

 NEWS

27 Jun 2015

We Lost Another Reader, But At Least He 

Threatened To Sue Us First

By Chris Graham

New Matilda recently tightened up its commenting policy. Not everyone appreciates it, Chris Graham explains.

There’s a well-worn theory in the media that if both sides of a debate hate you, then you’re probably doing something right.

Last month, we banned reader ‘Kevin Charles Herbert’ from our site after he posted comments on a story which promoted Holocaust denial (NM has very strict rules on this… you can read them here).

Mr Herbert subsequently threatened to sue us for defamation… and you can read that romping tale, including the correspondence, here.

But that was way back in ‘May’. Now it’s ‘June’. And what month in independent media would be complete without another legal threat from another angry reader.

Introducing ‘Geofffff’, also known as ...., a regular and enthusiastic New Matilda commenter. Or at least he was.

‘Geoffff’ is well known on our site for taking on Holocaust deniers. That’s the part about him we like. In particular, he was an occasional sword crosser with Mr Herbert, and was particularly pleased when Mr Herbert’s account was deleted.

Which is why this next bit is so ridiculously ironic.

Last week, Geoffff accomplished the same feat after posting an abusive comment at the bottom of a Michael Brull article, in which he called our beloved columnist an “ignorant creep”, a “dickhead” and a “brain dead coward” (and yes, more irony, it was a Brull piece which provoked the response from Kevin Charles Herbert as well).

Yep. That's a pretty transparent parody of the front page of our dear and much loved blog. The rude bastards.

Do read it all.  I'm having fun.

Head Wanker

.  

They deleted my account which means that every comment that I have ever made has also been deleted. Expunged from the pages of history, as it were, exactly what they keep on saying they want to do to Israel and the Jews. 

Ordinarily I would be annoyed by such rudeness and contempt for other people's property but this is New Matilda, we should not forget. 

Who cares if they delete your comments from the start.? All they are doing is proving your point.   Besides their readership is tiny and slipping. You can see how much advertising they attract. They depend on donations and subscriptions, probably stoked up by the Greens party, Australia's first populist fascist party since the New Guard of the thirties.

I'm  not going to waste too much breath on this but it will come as no surprise that everything Graham says is a lie. I did not edit a comment after it had been deleted. I did not threaten this sad little man with litigation after I was defamed and I certainly did not applaud the taking down of another commenter's account after this wanker accused him of being a Holocaust denier. (As if Graham would know one when he saw one. A startling feature of the modern left is how profoundly ignorant they are).

I do not regard calling out the racism of the left for what it is, abuse. This thing is far too serious for abuse. They call that abuse? That 's not abuse.

I've been called a Nazi, a Zionazi (numerous times) racist, again and again, and other things too choice to mention in Graham's discussion boards without any demur from Graham (or for that matter me).

That's abuse.

That's the language of this debate. This is after all a cold war.

That's one thing. Nasty, malice driven defamation is something else.
  

Like a sez you howling kid, Graham accuses me of defaming his resident antisemitic Jew. 

This is because he know nothing at all about antisemitism and the law of defamation. Nor do any of his comrades, it goes without saying. How could they be expected to? They are of the left and sucked in antisemitism with their mothers' milk.

This is  from the resident self hater complete with applause from the stoker in charge.

Michael Brull is the guy who once wrote that those who seek to defend the human rights of women in Muslim lands, and who condemned the abuse of women and girls; everything from mutilation, beatings, executions, slavery and honour murders in an enforced second class somewhere between livestock and human beings, are guilty of "cultural imperialism" .

That one even made Elder of Zion.

 OPINION

13 Jun 2015

Michael Brull's Media Recommendations For

 Everything You Need To Know About The 

Middle East

By Michael Brull

Keywords: 

michael brull

israel

palestine

middle east

One of the nation’s most informed commentators on the Middle East, Michael Brull offers his insights into the ‘must reads’.

A lot of Australians don’t know much about the Middle East and don’t know how to learn more. I think there’s something to be said for deeper reading on the subject, to make sense of what’s happening today. But there are also media outlets and analysts worth reading, which offer news and insight, and below I review some I’d recommend to readers.

As a general source on the Middle East, I have long been a fan of the UK’s Independent. I think its reporters show an unusual level of independence and intelligence. It’s home to Robert Fisk, who won international acclaim for his reporting on the Middle East, particularly his work on the Lebanon Civil War, Pity the Nation. Sadly, Fisk seems to have declined as a reporter in recent years.

However, the Independent does have another singularly brilliant journalist on the Middle East: Patrick Cockburn. Cockburn has been reporting on Iraq with distinction since before the invasion began in 2003, and has also done excellent – in my view, the best – reporting on Syria since the uprising broke out there.

Rather than reciting the propaganda interests of this side or that, Cockburn consistently offers his own shrewd and insightful analysis. He began writing a book on the rise of ISIS before the West noticed its victories, and wound up publishing the first study on them in August 2014. For those who want to understand the rise of ISIS, it is essential reading.

For more general news reporting on the Middle East, Al Monitor has reporters from a range of countries and backgrounds. The reporting quality can vary, but is a good resource, and has had some outstanding reporting and analysis.

For commentary and analysis on the Middle East for lay readers, Informed Comment is a great resource. Run by Middle East academic specialist Juan Cole, it often features guest commentary. It’s designed to be accessible to American readers who are not assumed to have a lot of background knowledge. Cole is a very intelligent and well informed analyst, with wide-ranging knowledge. He also speaks several languages, including Arabic and Persian. Politically, he is not a radical – he identifies as a liberal Democrat.

Look at Brulls reading list.

"Everything you need to know". 

Can you believe this? 

Literally thousands of books, histories, academic studies, personal eye witness  accounts and enough analysis  to sink  the Arc but as far as  Graham and Brull  are concerned, the fraction of one percent of this output put out by antizionist "scholars"  with a well trodden market is "everything you need to know". 

Everything. 

Nothing defines the antisemitic Stalinist  left better that one phrase.

Let's hear it again. Let it ring.

Everything you need to know. Brought  to you by the Australian left.

Did I mention they are a pack of wankers?

I'm pleased to report  they don't like that. Do go here if you want to tell them something .Then consider posting what you said here. 

You can be certain it will not be deleted.

Cross posted Geoffff's Joint

Say What???????????

 Doodad

 Obesity has become prevalent in the Gaza Strip, as confirmed by the increasing demand on dietitians.....Qaisi told Al-Monitor that there is a large demand in Gaza for weight-loss programs.....In the Gaza Strip, a high proportion of people suffer from obesity. “Only 18% to 25% of the Strip’s residents have a normal weight," he said. "The rest are suffering from obesity because of the nature of our life pattern, in addition to the unbalanced social lifestyle, bad eating habits, food traditions and dessert consumption.”

He added, “Such a large proportion is the result of common diseases such as diabetes, stress, cancer and rheumatism. If, for example, the proportion of patients with high blood pressure is 30% of the population, know that 97% of them are due to obesity and the rest are due to accidental causes.”

Hat tip Elder of Ziyon

But I thought Israel was STARVING the Gazans.  Man, can you believe anything the anti-Zionists/Israel haters say? I know I know....silly question.

Ernesto Londoño defends media from criticism, hails Streicher as first victim of media critics (satire)

New York Times editorial board member Ernesto Londoño expanded on his June 16 criticism of Israel's lashing out at the media with a piece lamenting the rise of media criticism since the end of World War II. Londoño wasted no time in attack the International Military Tribunal-Europe for its crusade against the German media for its activities during the war. He introduced his attack with the statement

If you don’t have a good story to tell, a tried and tested tactic is to lampoon the press.

From there, Londoño admitted that Streicher did indeed publish many noxious things about the Jews. However, Londoño emphasized that the publishers of Charlie Hebdo also published many noxious things about Muhammad and explained that we cannot proscribe one form of noxious expression without proscribing the other. Londoño lamented that the IMT-E did not take this principle into account as it persecuted, and ultimately "murdered," Streicher for nothing more than publishing noxious cartoons and essays, setting a precedent for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to lay the blame for everything at the feet of the press.

What to look for from the Presidential candidates

Sar Shalom

With the presidential election cycle gearing up, it is time to ask the question of what we as the pro-Israel community would want from the next president. The most common items would probably revolve around providing materiel support to Israel during conflicts, reliably voting against one-sided resolutions at the UN particularly at the Security Council, and validating some subset of the settlements or at least not making a major todo about them. However, I would like to suggest that if we do not see presidential action until one of those items is relevant, we should not be satisfied. What we really need is someone who will combat the lethal narratives promoted by the Palestinian national movement and parroted by the global media which induce people to believe being on the side of justice requires calling on the president to allow the Security Council to take meaningful action against Israel and all the rest. While the aforementioned items can only be done once elected, the candidates will have as much capacity as the president to combat the lethal during the campaign with the winner of the election only gaining the ability to hold on to the microphone past the election.

Combating the lethal narratives would not mean simply repeating the our narrative. Rather, it would mean discussing inconvenient truths that complicate the Palestinian narrative. Some points I would like to see someone in the presidential field raise, in no particular order:

Define terrorism. Terrorism is violence which targets those who are unconnected to whatever the grievance is. By the same token, causing harm, or even killing, innocents while targeting those responsible to the grievance is not terrorism. If insufficient effort was taken to prevent the harm to those innocents in the course of attacking a legitimate, such an action may be a war crime, but it is not terrorism. Thus, even if resisting occupation is a legitimate activity, families enjoying a meal at a restaurant are not connected to the grievance meaning that targeting them is terrorism. Similarly, any casualties resulting from bombing a rocket launcher are not terrorism because the target, the rocket launcher, is part of the grievance of rockets coming in to one's territory. These rules apply whether one is Muslim, Christian or Jew, or if one's target is Muslim, Christian or Jew. This is particularly important because if you poll the Middle East, you'll find that no one supports "terrorism." Instead what you'll find is that wide sections of the public will define terrorism as based on the cause, in other words, if the cause is just, no action constitutes terrorism.

Abbas' perfidy. In almost every venue, it is taken as a given that Mahmoud Abbas is a partner for peace, if only Israel would yield what is the Palestinian people's due. However, no attention has been paid to Abbas' refusal to yield on demographically destroying Israel through immigration, his denial of any Jewish connection to the Jewish homeland, or of any senior member of his administration declaring that their objective remains to reclaim all of Palestine only that they cannot say so openly to western audiences.

Border status. The armistice line delineating Israel prior to 1967 was a result of Jordan's conquest in 1949. That means that if acquisition of territory through conquest is what makes Israel's possession of Judea and Samaria illegitimate, then it also makes Israel's non-possession illegitimate. Further, today's Very Serious People invoke Resolution 242 to justify calls for complete withdrawal from the territories. The problem is that language for Resolution 242 calling for complete withdraw was rejected. In addition, Resolution calls on the Arabs to end all claims against Israel and for Israel to have secure and recognized borders. Somehow, the international community does not seem to be bothered by Abbas' unwillingness to delineate any conditions under which he would end all claims and giving the Palestinians the ability to import munitions at will while putting them within mortar range of the bulk of Israel's population is not secure.

Jewish history. Several things need to be pointed out. One, Jews had not abandoned and forgotten the Land of Israel between the Roman exile and the First Aliyah. This means that the justification for the state of Israel does not start with the Holocaust. Two, the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs in the Levant did not start with Zionism. Three, the blood libel is a hoax and the Protocols of Zion are a forgery (could someone ask if Obama believes otherwise?).

There are other facts that would be worth adding to the list, feel free to add.

The Islamic State Threatens

Michael L.

The Times of Israel reports:

The New ISIS Map

The Islamic State terror group has threatened to “uproot the state of the Jews” and pursue “Hamas dictators” in Gaza.

In a video published Tuesday, IS accused the Islamist Hamas of being soft in enforcing religious law in the Palestinian enclave it controls.

 “We will uproot the state of the Jews [Israel] and you [Hamas] and Fatah [in the West Bank], and all of the secularists are nothing and you will be overrun by our creeping multitudes,” a masked Islamic State member said in the recorded message addressed to the “tyrants of Hamas.” 

The rule of Sharia [Islamic law] will be implemented in Gaza, in spite of you. We swear that what is happening in the Levant today, and in particular the Yarmouk camp [in Syria], will happen in Gaza,” he said, in reference to the besieged Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus.

Overrun by their "creeping multitudes"?

Well, that does, indeed, sound creepy.

However:

Israeli Intelligence minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) told a security conference Tuesday that despite the tensions between the two, Hamas and IS were cooperating in the Sinai Peninsula, which has seen an uptick in violence since the overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013.

Meanwhile there are also reports that ISIS has clashed with the Egyptian military in the worst fighting in the Sinai since 1973.

Why the western powers, not to mention the eastern powers and all other powers, allow this group to operate is astonishing to me.  The West does not want war, but all these people do is war.  That is their entire reason to be.  They honestly believe that Allah wants them to wage war against the infidel and so they are waging war against the infidel.  Of course, to ISIS everyone who is not a member of ISIS is, essentially, an apostate, which is why they can even consider their brothers-in-hatred, Hamas, to be filled with non-believers who must be hunted down and destroyed.

The Islamic State, therefore, is going to continue beheading people, burying children alive, raping prepubescent girls, and destroying humanities heritage of classical antiquities until such a time as they are stopped.

Either that or we simply have to live with these murderous scum, and their Hamasnik semi-enemies / semi-allies, threatening everything and anything that is decent on this planet.

Political Islam, as a whole, is the enemy of humanity and obviously a direct enemy to the western liberal tradition.  It is also at the root of ongoing Koranically-based Muslim hatred toward Jews.

Among all the big mistakes that Barack Obama has made as president of the United States, perhaps the biggest was in accepting political Islam as a legitimate actor on the world stage that could be partnered with.  Obama tried to partner with the Muslim Brotherhood, but that deal went kaput due to the fact that the Egyptian people have enough common sense and general human decency that they did not wish to be ruled over by theocratic fascists.  Failing that, Obama is hoping to partner with the ayatollahs in Iran in the ridiculously naive belief - one assumes - that a stable nuclear Iran will represent a moderating force in the region.

What former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, suggests in Ally - and my view on the book will be published by the Jewish Press this Sunday along with my regular Sunday column for the Elder - is that Obama was influenced by post-colonial theorists, such as Edward Said, who unjustly present the tensions as one between a violent and racist western imperial machine versus pastoral-Arab indigenous people who want nothing so much in this world as to tend their ancient and sacred olive groves in peace.

I am exaggerating a tad, but you get the point.