The Global Left's Anti-Israel Forum

See Anne Bayefsky, at Weekly Standard, "Durban III: An Anti-Israel Forum Takes Shape" (via Memeorandum).

Israel — An Apartheid State?

From Dennis Prager, at Frontpage Magazine:

Next month, the UN-sponsored hate-Israel festival known as Durban III takes place. Under the heading “anti-racism,” the great bulk of the conference, like Durban I and Durban II, consists of condemning Israel for racism and equating it to an apartheid state.



Of the world’s many great lies, this is among the greatest.



How do we know it is a lie? Because when South Africa was an apartheid state, no one accused Israel of being one. Even the UN would have regarded the accusation as absurd.



Israel has nothing in common with an apartheid state, but few people know enough about Israel — or about apartheid South Africa — to refute the slander. So let’s respond.



First, what is an apartheid state? And does Israel fit that definition?



From 1948 to 1994, South Africa, the country that came up with this term, had an official policy that declared blacks second-class citizens in every aspect of that nation’s life. Among many other prohibitions on the country’s blacks, they could not vote; could not hold political office; were forced to reside in certain locations; could not marry whites; and couldn’t even use the same public restrooms as whites.



Not one of those restrictions applies to Arabs living in Israel.



One and a half million Arabs live in Israel, constituting about 20 percent of that country’s population. They have the same rights as all other Israeli citizens. They can vote, and they do. They can serve in the Israeli parliament, and they do. They can own property and businesses and work in professions alongside other Israelis, and they do. They can be judges, and they are. Here’s one telling example: it was an Arab judge on Israel’s Supreme Court who sentenced the former president of Israel — a Jew — to jail on a rape charge.



Some other examples of Arabs in Israeli life: Reda Mansour was the youngest ambassador in Israel’s history, and is now Consul General at Israel’s Atlanta Consulate; Walid Badir is an international soccer star on Israel’s national team and captain of one of Tel Aviv’s major teams; Rana Raslan is a former Miss Israel; Ishmael Khaldi was until recently the deputy consul of Israel in San Francisco; Khaled Abu Toameh is a major journalist with the Jerusalem Post; Ghaleb Majadele was until recently a Minister in the Israeli Government. They are all Israeli Arabs. Not one is a Jew.



Arabs in Israel live freer lives than Arabs living anywhere in the Arab world.



No Arab in any Arab country has the civil rights and personal liberty that Arabs in Israel enjoy.

Keep reading at that top link.



The "apartheid state" lie is just one more lie in a long train of progressive evils. What's especially sad is that the left gets away with this stuff. Kinda like the Nazis hiding the camps. It's all just one big lie.

More on Larry Derfner

See the reaction from readers at Jerusalem Post, "Firing a ‘Post’ columnist – the pros and cons." The responses are compelling and surprisingly compassionate. No doubt folks crave a full airing of opinions, although I think the one line of criticism worthy of even deeper consideration is the idea that Derfner had stopped making reasoned arguments and had become basically an attack dog against everything he hated. If so, perhaps Jerusalem Post might have waited until the controversy died down and then quietly given Derfner notice that his brand of invective commentary was no longer in tune with the expectations of quality writing at the publication. As I noted on Monday, what's bothersome is not so much Derfner's views, but that they were so well accepted on the anti-Israel left. That is, progressive widely endorse the idea that Israeli civilians deserve to die. That thought seems alone to be beyond rational discourse, and perhaps to the realm of simply terrorist agitation. Even the New York Times offers a super sympathetic report on Derfner, "Israeli Columnist Is Fired for Writing That Palestinian Terrorism Is ‘Justified’." Checking the essay one finds a link to Dimi Reider despicable essay (cited at my entry on Monday) offering massive historical lies to justify Derfner's commentary. I know it's the Times, but some reporters are still doing a good job, and I normally enjoy Robert Mackey's blogging at The Lede. He fell short on this one though, omitting some of the more heated criticism of Derfner's perfidy.



And see Barry Rubin's comments, "Larry Derfner Should Be Debated, Not Fired." Rubin says it's not left or right but truth versus lies (to which I disagree, with reference, for example, to the comments at New York Times, where again we see how entrenched is leftist progressive anti-Semitic bloodlust). That said, Rubin's right: Derfner shouldn't have been fired over this.



BONUS: Check Camera's post, and follow the links for additional commentary, "Larry Derfner Will Not Be Rattling The Cage Anymore at the Jerusalem Post."

Larry Derfner Fired by Jerusalem Post

Well, let's go straight to the source: "I got fired by the Jerusalem Post today."

I got fired by The Jerusalem Post today. The paper got hundreds of notices of cancellations of subscription after my blog post (“The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror”) of Sunday last week; the reason being given for my firing, though, is the substance of the essay, despite the apology I published later. A page-one notice to this effect will be published in the Post tomorrow.

The pro-terror Mondoweiss has the full essay, "Read the post for which Derfner was fired: "‘The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror’."



Jawa Report applauds: "Jerusalem Post Writer Larry Derfner Fired for Justifying Palestinian Terror."



And here's this, from Isi Leibler, "Justifying Murder – An Abomination" (at Memeorandum):

Derfner is an Israeli Jew professionally employed by the only English-language newspaper in Israel. For him to justify the barbaric murder of his own brothers and sisters on a public website represents the ultimate abomination. It is unforgiveable.



Presumably in response to massive protests directed against him, Derfner “apologized” a week after his article appeared and deleted it from his website. However, he had the chutzpah to reiterate the justification for terrorism, merely stating that he does not endorse the murder of fellow Israelis. This is neither a retraction nor an apology.



His obscene and callously insensitive remarks are likely to haunt him for the rest of his life.

Some may question Derfner's dismissal (I'm not bothered by it, but I wouldn't have called for his firing). What bothers me is that Derfner's ideas are frankly mainstream among the Israel-hating left. That is, Derfner was only stating publically the exact thoughts of the progressive Israel-delegitimation industry. See, for example, Dimi Reider's obscene endorsement of Derfner, and his claim that it's Caroline Glick who should be fired: "Jerusalem Post fires Larry Derfner over blog post." And there's more than 50 comments at Mondoweiss as this post goes live, almost all in support of Derfner. I mean seriously, it's like bloodlust:

For wannabe international lawyers, I can’t overemphasize that at times, attacks on civilians are perfectly legal and legitimate. The proper language is “protected non-combatants.” Jewish Zionist settler-colonists in the Occupied Territories cannot be considered protected non-combatants by any stretch of the imagination.

And Phillip Weiss enters the comments to add:

Larry, are you out there, do you want to post any response to the many comments at this site? Let me emphasize, you have my great sympathy on this occasion, and I like to think that your best work will flow from this very painful and upsetting incident...

So, again, while I wouldn't have called for Derfner's termination, it's clear that his words were not only incitement to terrorism, but that his views are perfectly representative of the progressive, neo-communist left's eliminationist ideological agenda. And once again, this is what I point out repeatedly at this blog. It's not leftist opposition to Israeli policies. It's leftist opposition to Israel and the Jews. It's the dawn of the new Shoah. And I will stand up against these satanic progressive fuckers as long as I live.

Norway's Anti-Semitism

From Caroline Glick, at Jerusalem Post, "Norway’s Jewish Problem" (via Israel Matzav):

In the wake of Anders Breivik’s massacre of his fellow Norwegians, I was amazed at the speed with which the leftist media throughout the US and Europe used his crime as a means of criminalizing their ideological opponents on the Right. Just hours after Breivik’s identity was reported, leftist media outlets and blogs were filled with attempts to blame Breivik’s crime on conservative public intellectuals whose ideas he cited in a 1,500 page online manifesto.



My revulsion at this bald attempt to use Breivik’s crime to attack freedom of speech propelled me to write my July 29 column, “Breivik and totalitarian democrats.”



While the focus of my column was the Left’s attempt to silence their conservative opponents, I also noted that widespread popular support for Palestinian terrorists in Norway indicates that for many Norwegians, opposition to terrorism is less than comprehensive.



To support this position, I quoted an interview in Maariv with Norway’s Ambassador to Israel Svein Sevje.



Sevje explained that most Norwegians think that the Palestinians’ opposition to the supposed Israeli “occupation” is justified and so their lack of sympathy for Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism was unlikely to change in the wake of Breivik’s attack on Norwegians.



Since my column was a defense of free speech and a general explanation of why terrorism is antithetical to the foundations of liberal democracy – regardless of its ideological motivations – I did not focus my attention on Norwegian society. I did not discuss Norwegian anti- Semitism or anti-Zionism. Indeed, I purposely ignored these issues.



But when on Friday, Norway’s Deputy Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide published an unjustified attack on me on these pages, he forced me to take the time to study the intellectual and political climate of hatred towards Israel and Jews that pervades Norwegian society.



That climate is not a contemporary development.



Rather it has been a mainstay of Norwegian society ...

Continue reading. It's a devastating indictment of Norway.



The Espen Barth Eide commentary is here.



I've said it once or twice, but I refrained from blogging on Norway's Labor Party, and the youth camp activists gunned down by Breivik. The agitprop on display on Utoeya that day was pro-Palestinian and pro-terror. Caroline Glick gets down to the bottom of it, and anti-Jewish tendencies there have a long pedigree, sadly.