NOW we know that the meddling ideological extremism of the Greens cost them the inner-city seat of Marrickville in the NSW election last month.Another BDS epic FAIL.
What should have been a shoo-in in one of the most barmy left electorates in the country resulted in more than one-in-three voters rejecting the Greens because of Marrickville Council's Israel boycott, according to a poll by a Jewish group.
This is a boycott that, by the Green-controlled council's own figures, will cost it as much as $4 million to stop using Israeli-linked products such as Hewlett-Packard computers (apparently used at Israeli checkpoints) and Motorola telephones.
The voters were first to show some backbone, after abiding years of Green dabbling in Middle East politics. But last week Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd slammed the boycott as "nuts" and NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell threatened to sack the council if it doesn't reverse its stance.
Sensing the end of his dream run, even the Greens' supreme leader, Bob Brown, rejected the boycott and distanced himself from his failed state candidate, Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne, although he can't help offloading blame onto what he calls the "hate media" for costing his party the seat.
But he should look a little closer to home for the culprit.
Jake, a 55-year-old Jewish health professional with friends in Marrickville, was so incensed by the council's Israel boycott that he took three weeks off work to wage a guerrilla campaign against the Greens, plastering the suburb with posters late at night, accusing them of homophobia for boycotting gay-friendly Israel.
"I felt so angry," says Jake, who wants to remain anonymous. "I couldn't sleep at night, so I organised the posters, hired some utes and ladders" and enlisted the help of his son and his friends. Greens supporters harassed them, ripped down the posters, called police, and tried to intimidate Jake's young helpers, posting footage of them on YouTube.
On election day, Jake and his son organised 10 friends wearing T-shirts with "Boycott the Greens" logos to visit polling booths, prompting "Zionist pigs" abuse from greenies.
The Greens lost to Labor by fewer than 700 votes, in a seat they were favourites to snare.
The backlash was quite a shock to the Greens, whose extremist ideological baggage is at last costing them votes.
...
The Middle East conflict is not a game. Yet it has somehow become a vehicle for moral preening half a world way and a badge of belonging for lazy leftists whose talents are best suited to fixing potholes, which, by the way, abound in Marrickville.
Brighton police are calling it a young person's prank in poor taste.Callie (h/t) tells me that this was in a mostly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood and across from a synagogue.
Officers say two young men soaked toilet paper in gasoline and lit it on fire in the middle of the street--in the shape of a swastika.
It happened just after 11 o’clock Saturday night in front of 30 Edgemere Drive. That's in between Southern Parkway and Eastland Avenue.
Police are not calling this a hate crime, but say two 17-year-old boys were apprehended last night and charged with aggravated harassment and arson. Their names are not being released at this time, as police believe they will be charged as youthful offenders. We do know that one young man is from Rochester, the other from Rush.
Investigators do not think the crime was directly targeting any person in the area.
Brighton residents we spoke to today commented on the timing of the crime occurring on the day of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Brighton Police say that based on their investigation, they have no information that makes them believe the crime was committed because of today's commemoration.
Operation Protective Edge - Khirbat Ikhza'a(h/t K., Yoel)
In the early morning hours we identify two kids walking near a house we were staying in. Four combatants quickly accompany Company Commander Benaya Sarel as they go out to "pick" them, and bring them to us so we can interrogate and ask them what are they doing in an area that has been clear of civilians for the last week and a half, an area where fighting is taking place. After a quick interrogation by the Prisoner Interrogator and Benaya Sarel it becomes clear the kids came here looking for food and have no ties to Hamas. Benaya decides to give them some of our food and release them to their homes.
Operation Protective Edge - Khirbat Ikhza'a, the same house as the incident mentioned above.
We're in it for quite a long time and discover that due to a miscalculation of the amount of food we took, our team of 13 combatants is now left with just one Tuna [can]. In the kitchen of the house there's pasta that can feed the whole team. We explain this to the Company Commander and ask for permission to make the pasta. The reply we got was: "You made a mistake, you didn't take enough food, be strong and survive with what you've got. Eating from the the family's food is looting and we're not an army of looters".
And no, we didn't destroy the house after we left it.
Operation Protective Edge - the outskirts of Rafah.
1.8.14, 08:00, the humanitarian cease fire comes into effect.
Minutes after the the cease fire a biker emerges, we try to stop him, but because of the cease fire we can't - he manages to escape. Afterwards we realize the said biker is a Hamas operative sent to check our force's location and pass intelligence to Hamas.
A short while afterwards Benaya Sarel spots an unarmed "civilian" on the second floor of a nearby building. Again, just like in the first incident, Benaya decides to go "pick" the civilian and find out what's he doing in a combat zone, where for some two weeks and a half there are no civilians in sight.
The Command Squad, comprising of six combatants, goes out to bring the civilian to us for interrogation. When they reach the said civilian a strong explosion is heard and heavy fire is opened up on them. All this of course during the "humanitarian cease fire". From this incident Major Benaya Sarel, Lieutenant Hadar Goldin and First Sergeant Liel Gidoni did not return. Again, I emphasize, this was during a cease fire.
Who ever says our army is immoral and criminal is blind, and if the soldiers of such an army are criminals I'm a proud criminal.
The Goldstone commission adamantly refused to accept testimony that would have shown that the Israeli army took greater care to reduce civilian deaths than any other armed forces fighting comparable wars. For example, they refused to hear the proffered testimony Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and a recognized expert on asymmetric warfare, who would have testified that:"[F]rom my knowledge of the IDF and from the extent to which I have been following the current operation, I don't think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.
The recently published book about Wiki Leaks strongly confirms Colonel Kemp's assessment.
The Guardian summarized one Wiki Leaks disclosure about Afghanistan as follows:"We today learn of nearly 150 incidents in which coalition forces, including British troops, have killed or injured civilians, most of which have never been reported…."And another:"The logs disclosed a detailed incident-by-incident record of at least 66,081 violent deaths of civilians in Iraq since the invasion. This figure, dismaying in itself, was nevertheless only a statistical starting point. It is far too low. The database begins a year late in 2004, omitting the high casualties of the direct 2003 invasion period itself, and ends on 31 December 2009. Furthermore, the US figures are plainly unreliable in respect of the most sensitive issue—civilian deaths directly caused by their own military activities.
For example, the town of Falluja was the site of two major urban battles in 2004, which reduced the place to near-rubble. Yet no civilian deaths whatever are recorded by the army loggers, apparently on the grounds that they had previously ordered all the inhabitants to leave. Monitors from the unofficial Iraq Body Count group, on the other hand, managed to identify more than 1,200 civilians who died during the Falluja fighting."
...No "Goldstone Commissions" have ever been appointed to investigate the far greater number and proportion of civilian deaths caused by British, German and U.S. military actions—and the frequent lack of credible investigators.
Whenever efforts are made to put Israel's actions in a comparative context with other democracies, demonizers of Israel, who always impose a double standard on the Jewish state, respond by arguing "we're talking about Israel now; don't change the subject by talking about other democracies." That reminds me of a famous story about Harvard's notoriously anti-Semitic president, A. Lawrence Lowell, near the beginning of the 20th Century. In an effort to defend his decision to impose an anti-Jewish quota, he said, "Jews cheat." A distinguished Harvard alumnus, Judge Learned Hand, wrote President Lowell a letter saying that "Protestants also cheat," to which Lowell responded, "you're changing the subject; we're talking about Jews now."
You can't just talk about Jews, or about the Jewish state when making accusations of war crimes or violation of international law. Comparison is everything, especially since international humanitarian law is expressly based on how democratic nations customarily behave in comparable situations.
According to the materials disclosed by Wikileaks, Israel shines in comparison to other democracies. It has a significantly better ratio of combatant to civilian deaths; it takes greater steps to avoid such casualties, and it does a better job investigating negligent and criminal behavior on the part of its soldiers. Moreover, it is seeking to protect its own civilians directly from ongoing cross-border rocket attacks and other terrorist acts, whereas the other democracies are fighting wars of choice many miles from its civilian areas.
This is not to suggest the need for "Goldstone Reports" against Great Britain and Germany and the United States. It is to demand that a single standard be applied to all democracies.
There were a few times where it was just too much and I had to say something. Because in two months of fighting, people make mistakes, mistakes happen. It’s our good fortune, and I mean both as a nation and as the IDF, that there are some people who know how to stand up and say, “Hang on, something bad is happening here.” I remember one incident in which there was permissiveness of sort on the part of the upper levels with regard to wanting to open fire, and it was fortunate that somebody stepped up and said something.So someone walking next to a militant was almost accidentally killed and in the end he wasn't because someone spoke up.
What was the story?
Some militant was being monitored, he had been incriminated, and he was on his way to a meeting with other militants, and on his way there he was joined by another person who started walked alongside him, and the moment their paths linked up – despite the fact that it was totally against regulations – the second guy got incriminated too, and nobody knew from where he had popped up. So you couldn’t incriminate him ‘dry.’ And in that case, there were people there who said, “Hang on, this is no good.” And in the end the strike wasn’t carried out, it wasn’t executed. What I’m trying to say is, that sometimes even the commanders up top make mistakes, and I was present during an incident where it was stopped. I can’t know if there were incidents in which it wasn’t stopped, but in my estimation there were cases in which incriminations were made against the regulations.
OCCUPIED RAMALLAH: A leading Palestinian advocacy group says human rights for people living in the Palestinian territories are at their "worst" in years.Kudos to AP for reporting what is generally unreported.
The annual report by the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights said hundreds of people were tortured by authorities in Gaza, ruled by the Islamic militant group Hamas, and in the West Bank, governed by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.
It says several people died in Hamas detention and one died while incarcerated in the West Bank. It also says Hamas took 16 prisoners from their jail cells and killed them during the war with Israel last year.
Commission chief Ahmad Harb said other violations include bans on peaceful gatherings. He said rights violations "increased in volume" over the past four years.
This is indeed our call to Christians and Jews. As people who believe in God and follow His revelations, let us rally to a common formula - faith. History proves that when we all return to the true altruistic teaching of our religions, harmony and a successful civilization will follow.
The Mohammedans have acquired a very bitter feeling toward the Christians and the Jews, and are ever ready to join in any demonstration or insurrection against them, if they have any reason to suppose such a movement agreeable to the rulers of the city. Given a chief of police like the one in office in 1882, and another scene like that of June llth of that year, with all its barbaric horrors and cruelty, would be enacted, for the elements suitable for such an act are ever ready.Here's what happened then:
On 11 June 1882 a row over a fare between an Egyptian donkey boy and a Maltese man triggered a riot in the city in which several hundred people were killed, including about 50 foreigners.