Thursday 31 July 2014

WHEN THE NIGHT COMES FALLING FROM THE SKY


Good evening, and this is the SixaClock News from the Friends of Israel, or the PBC, as some of you may know it.  I'm Huw Welshman and tonight's top story  is that plucky little Israel is still managing to hold out against the onslaught being ruthlessly mounted against it by the schoolchildren of the Gaza Strip, where  Arab children are relentlessly hurling stones and firing drainpipe rockets at Israel, who  has only the entire arsenal of the United States with which to defend herself against these frankly feral little hooligans.

Our correspondent in Tel Aviv is the stupid man's Kelvin McKenzie, Mr Paul Staines of the Sun, Mr Good-Oh Fawkes of the Pizza House of Blood.  Good-Oh, what can you tell us?

Whoosaprettyboy, then?
One fat Irishman.

Well, Huw, it's like I always said, these ayrab kids, good for nothing they are and if you ask me and my readers the world's better off wiv 'em dead. Wossat? Yeah, course I got kids, two girls 'as it happens, apple of their Daddy, Good-Oh's bloodshot eye, they are, wossatgorradowivthepriceafish? Nah, never 'appen, my little darlins, getting blown-up, tits out fer the lads, more like, page free, like, my own little Tory totties. Whoar.

Thanks, Good-Oh, for that but what can you tell us about that jolly, well, I suppose, avuncular, jolly avuncular chap, Benjamin Netanyahoo, how's he bearing up, under the strain of it all, can't be easy, I shouldn't think.

That's right, Huw, 
 

and I think he's an inspiration to us, rather like Mr Rupert Murdoch is.  Now your viewers will know, Huw, that I am one of the country's foremost political historians, I can tell you, for instance, the names of all the UK prime ministers back to John Major, and there's not too many can do that, well, not among my circle, anyway,  and what I would say is that Benjy is far and away the greatest of them all.  Let's take you over now to the Israeli Parliament and hear what the great man has to say....


Mr Benjamin Netanyahoo, Israeli Fuhrer.

Ein volk, ein Middle East, ein Holy Land.
Ze land vot God gave to Cain und Abraham und Isaac.
Ve Jews, ve are God's chosen ones
Und fuck all ze uzzervuns.

Israeli citizens gather at the Knesset to read the Talmud.

And as if that wasn't inspiring enough let's check out the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations.


Mr Ron Himmler,
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations

, "we have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who wanted to kill us. But we do not have the right to enrich ourselves with even one fur, with one Mark, with one cigarette, with one watch, with anything. That we do not have. Because at the end of this, we don't want, because we exterminated the bacillus, to become sick and die from the same bacillus. We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have taken on no defect within us, in our soul, or in our character."

That was Good-Oh Fawkes for us, there, he'll be off now, I expect for a lie-down in a bath of lard and to knock back a few litres of Vodka. Best hope the fat fuck's not driving again, like he does.



 



ISRAELI NUTTERS DANCE THE HYPOCRISY HORAH.


Funny how, even without anything inconvenient, like proof, we are happy to condemn Russia for supplying to Ukraine separatists an unknown number of surface-to-air weapons and yet we are silent about our supply to plucky little Israel  of the means of endless Armageddon upon the children of Gaza.  

Not funny, really,  breathtakingly, grotesquely hypocritical, made possible only by Ruin's stranglehold on all organs of mass communication, nearly all.

We have no means of knowing the cause of the destruction of the over-Ukraine aircraft but it is hard to see it being a deliberate action by those pesky rebels or their fiendish Russian puppetteers;  why would they do that, purposefully down a civilian aircraft filled with complete strangers? If it is not a black op, which it may be, it is likely to be a mistake, one for which the responsibility should be equally shared between  those who sent the fucking thing over a warzone in the first place and those who fired the SAM.  Hasn't been a good summer for Malaysian Airlines, what with one thing and another.

No rebuke, though, has been issued by those who marshal our thoughts, to this most careless of state airlines.  None urge that Malaya  return to her core skills of pineapple and rubber cultivation, re-draft  her mission statement vis a vis the mass transit of human cargoes.  No, you'll be fine, maties, just because there's a fucking war going on doesn't mean there's any danger; no, you're alright, we'll just bring a few of those search teams back from the Southern Ocrean, scrape-up the corpses, sort the black orange boxes that mr ishmael was on about and find some buncha beardy cunts to blame;   actually, do you know what, it all works out quite nicely, we all get to blame the Russians and we're all quids-in. The passengers? Well, airtravel remains the safest way to fly, statistics bear it out.  And anyway, who wants to live in a risk averse world?  

Fuck me, one aircraft disappeared off the face of the Earth and another one shot-down over a warzone;  this is competence of an Ian Duncan Smith order;  we should invite the board of Malaysian Airways to join Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband and Mr Fruitcake in the dismantling of British civilisation, get the job done twice as quickly. 

But the passengers, a lot of them, were white folks, not ragheads, so, I dunno what the equivalence of loss is, these days, but probably at least a hundred to one, coupla hundred decent white folks that needs to be, what, at least twenty thousand dead Gazans   before we reach a level playing field,  maybe if twenty thousand Gazans get roasted then the Powers-that-Be will lift up their eyes unto the hills. Maybe even  apply some sanctions to Benny and his murderous boys.

The main thing is that we keep a sense of moral perspective, here, a couple of hundred people mistakenly killed, or even deliberately killed in a warzone near Russia is a far greater outrage than the creation of a two-million person concentration camp and its regular  bulldozing and firebombing by a bunch of crazy, racist, religious maniacs.

 
Plucky Israelis watch the show from the Holocaust Odeon.
 



I was a kid during the 1967  Six Day War and like many I believed in the Leon Uris, fictionalised version of the story of plucky little Israel.  I didn't know I was being fed concentrated rabbi-shit;  the Israelis, after all, were good-looking, like the Nazis;  had smart uniforms, like the Nazis and better tanks and trucks, like the Nazis;  and at the head of the tanks was Moshe Dayan, a general from central casting, he even had a black patch where his eye used to be. Nobody told me that all this hardware came free from Uncle Sam's Department of Terror.

Later, I learned that Menachim Begin, eventually Israeli prime minister, was a filthy piece of shit, orchestrating the brutal,  terrorist murders of countless, including British soldiers, in his drive to uproot and make homeless Palestinians.  Later, still, I learned that the Israeli constitution insists that any Jew, from anywhere, is entitled to settle in Israel.  There is only one way, of course, for all the world's unhappy Jews to slobber all over the Holy Land - their Holy Land, stupid obnoxious bastards -  and that's for them to ethnically cleanse those who have been living there for centuries, but first, necessarily,  to demonise them, as is now happening.

It is or should be widely understood that those to whom evil is done do evil in return but to the best of my knowledge it was the Germans who wrought the Holocaust, not these kids in the Gaza concentration camp.  Why didn't the Jewish freedom fighters sail the Exodus up the Rhine, colonise Bavaria or some other part of Nazi Germany?  It is because regardless of their disproportionate share of History's artists and scientists they are hideously superstitious, stupid and malevolent, that's why;  they worship a bloody and frightful Iron Age God whose contract with them is cruelly, brutally punitive as well as patriarchal, racist, sexist and bigoted, bit of a Nazi, actually, Himself.  These mad, mad fuckers, today presenting as  misunderstood good guys, would see us all up in smoke in order to curry favour with the diseased imagining that is Jehovah. Doesn't matter to them, does it? They're all going to the Promised Land. 
Imagine that, Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Simon Schama and Michael Howard,  Christ, you'd drown in an ocean of smug.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



Google this for further reading. It's proper journalism.

The pro-Israel lobby in Britain: full text

50 comments:

Anonymous said...

Blimey Mr I I have just posted my own perspective on the very same matter over at Raedwald's place when yours popped up. Fuck - I was beginning to think you were out for the count but good to see you back in force! I'll paste my more modest submission here pending any observations on your own more cogent piece:
"Maybe the Israelis would be better off sheltering behind the Iron Dome and mining and / or covering all the exit tunnels with snipers? Search every vessel bound for Gaza and, with the Generals back in power in Egypt, wait for Hamas to run out of rockets leaving them impotent. I can't help but think that the current Israeli action only serves to strengthen rather than weaken Hamas. They are like a tumour feeding off the anger of the Palestinian people. They need to be starved of the oxygen of western publicity and sympathy which is the real source of their strength. I suspect that Israel has already lost more sons as a result of the present action than it would from sitting tight, in the manner described above, for several years. For now containment would seem to be the best tactic (as it would have been with Saddam) but the strategy must surely be to drain the swamp. Also what of the plight of the Palestinians? Nearly two million of them crammed into an area slightly less than that of the Isle of Wight (population c. 140,000 last I looked) and living under conditions of an economic blockade. A breeding ground for jobless, angry young men if there ever was one. This can only get worse". Israel and Hammas - that old Einstein definition (now cliche) about insanity springs to mind! SG

call me ishmael said...

The whole so-called Middle East is unravelling, perhaps into skeins of former ethnic and religious groupings. Blair and Bush triggered it but it would have happened anyway, you can't just go and draw lines around bits of desert and say In the name of the King, this is Iraq, this is some other place, the whole rancid broth cooked up by dumb-as-shit Etonians and Sandhurstians, as though they owned the fucking place; no more than you can say this is now Israel, so you can all fuck off and die. The so-called Israelis have as much right to Israel as the Nazis had to Poland, which is fuck all, mr sg, no matter what it says in the Old Testament.

There was a chance that they could have achieved a working relationship with the natives but they pissed that up the wall long ago. They have nukes, as well as having God on their side so this is going to end in smokey tears. I hope the blaze is confined to the Holy Land but I wouldn't bet an anchovy sandwich on it.

Anonymous said...

P.S. Mr I, I don't know if you got round to reading, were able, or could be arsed to read that Barry Humphries piece from the pink-organ that I posted back up the road: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/fb4f8ae2-2003-11e1-8662-00144feabdc0.html#axzz37ZX37Ciw ... In light of this, and your own observations, a contrivance of my own springs to mind :- "You know zoes Israelis, ze Fuhrer would have adored them". SG

Anonymous said...

Netanyahu was correct when he said 'If Gazans will lay down their weapons, there will be no war. If we lay down our weapons, there will be no Israel'.

There is no such thing as a palestinian. No such country, no such people, no such language. No now, not ever in history. They are refugees though, no doubt about that. From Jordan.

Hamas are the Nazis, Mr Ishmael. They brutally control their 'people', under a terrorist dictatorship. They killed and injured about the same amount of their own as have died under the current Israeli offensive, when they staged a coup against the other, very slightly less aggressive terrorist organisation, Fatah. If they spent less time kidnapping, torturing and killing Israeli children, as they did to provoke this current attack, and more time spending their tens of billions of annual free cash on the needs of their people instead of on IEDs, they might be in a more advantageous position than they currently find themselves.

Vincent

call me ishmael said...

Yes,he would, Adolf.

Bangs like a shithouse door in a gale, that was one of Barry McKenzie's lines from Private Eye which I always liked; Edna, though, like Lily Savage, like wotsisface, Jervaise, made me cringe; read the FT piece; the writer has a future as Michael Parkinson.

Anonymous said...

Yes Mr I, I see a future for Mr Hunter-Tilney selling over 50s life assurance ("you get a free Parker Pen just for enquiring..."). Re: the Humphries phenomenon,I take your point about Edna, but to my mind Barry is infinately more tolerable than John (of the Today programme). I just love zat Australian cultural attache character!... SG

call me ishmael said...

How about this, mr vincent? I call up President Obama and say Yo, 'Rack, look, just a small matter of a thousand years or so back, nothing in religious time, a thousand years back, my family was French nobility; howsabout you lend me the Sixth Fleet or some shit like that and I go and claim my homeland back again. Y'know, 'Rack, I bin wandering all over the place, like a wandering fucking Jew, only a Norman, weeping and fucking wailing and getting ripped off and fucked off like you wouldn't fucking belive, bro'. And I bet I could find some beat-up old scary fairy story that says, well, whatever I want it to say about destiny and shit like that. Why don't we just go and throw them fuckers out, squatting on my land like that for a thousand years? Do you thinbk it'd work for me, like it worked for the Zionists. Zion, I ask you, Zion. By the waters of Babylon, eh, mr vincent; is that how we do geo-politics, by the psalms?

I don't know that Hamas, whatever that is, did actually kill those kids, do you, mr vincent? But mainly i don't know why there just has to be a state of Israel which must be preserved at any cost to the rest of humanity, do you? Nations come and go, empires come and go. Are we all to be at risk just because a bunch of deluded Abrahamist headbangers says so? Muslims, Christians, Jews, Rastafarians, fuck 'em all, nothing but fucking trouble.

But if we do allow that there are places of special religious significance then where the fuck do the Jews get off saying that they own Jerusalem?

The only good thing I ever saw or heard David Mellor do was, on a ministerial visit to Israel, uprbraid a IDF soldier for painfully mistreating an arab kid; still, no doubt he was provoked into Nazism by the little brat.

Anonymous said...

I tend to agree with your perspective on Mr Vincent's observations Mr I, albeit with some caveats which I shall endeavour to articulate later (way past my bedtime already). In the meantime, if we were all to attempt to claim our original homeland I suspect that all seven billion of us would end up converging on the same fucking tree stump in Africa (with the possible exception of the Chinese whom I seem to recall think they are from somewhere else). SG

Mike said...

My Persian best mate tells me they have a saying out in the middle east: one day the Arabs will all piss together and wash Israel into the sea.

The geo-political game of the US and its proxies is to stop that happening - hence the policy towards Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya etc, being to destabilise and generally fuck it up.

call me ishmael said...

Your mate's maxim is right, mr mike, it just needs a concerted effort but oddly - I know nothing about Judaic theology - maybe annihilation, too, is part of the Jews' deal with Jehovah; those priests, rabbis, imams, the scriptures mean whatever they want them to mean. As long as some of them get to play at being Noah and escaping the flood maybe it'll all be alright.

Anonymous said...

My understanding of what Hamas did/continue to do concerning their internecine rampages is gleaned from the usual sources, Mr Ishmael; BBC, SKY, etc. You seem to imply that is not possible for me to know about these matters without experiencing them myself, some kind of solipsism. If so, the same point is also true for your position on this matter. Please don't try to tell me that above sources are pro-Israeli. Please.

That phone call?

'Mr President, there is a call from the democratically elected Prime Minister of the only democracy in the Middle East on line one'

'France?'

'No Sir, that's in Spain, this is Netanyahu. He's the ex-soldier, a real one, not like Kennedy or Bush or anything. A rescuer of hijack hostages, shot for his trouble, by Black September. Fought in wars, real wars, wars of national preservation and continued existence, the three-time PM of Israel. You know, that tiny country, smaller than Wales? Consists of less than 0.6 % of the land masses of Arab countries, the countries which surround it, the countries which have tried to eliminate it, totally, and every time they try, and fail, they bleat about Israeli bullying?'

'The illegal settlement?'

'No, the scrap of desert that was given back, legally, by the international community, via the UN, to the Jews, what was left of them, to try and solve the problem of what to do with them, as the previous solutions, including the final one, didn't work. The Jews Sir?, you know, the ones evicted from their ancestral homeland, Jew-day-ah, capital Jew-rew-salem, by the colonist imperialists in the early form of the EU, eyeties I believe, Sir. Before them it was one of Assad's grand-daddies doing the burning, before that it was one of Saddam's grand-daddies, before that it was one of Mubarraks grand-daddies, before that...'

'Hold on, hold on, wait a cotton-pic... No, not that kind, just a normal minute. These Joooos, trouble-causers are they?'

'Yes Sir, always have been. When they're not being shovelled into furnaces, they have a tendency to make great advances in science, maths, medicine and business.'

'Mmmm, sounds tricky. What's he want?'

'Peace, Sir. A cessation of violence. To be left alone to live in safety and security.'

'Ahhh, a nutter, put him on. He got any oil?'


Vincent.

robbo said...

I believe the Byzantium empire lasted 1,000 years, would it by chance be because they forbade jews from practising medicine, usury, law etc

Woman on a Raft said...

The war could more accurately be called the Gazan war since it is a proxy for

a) who will lead the Palestinians (Hamas never got over Fatah holding the West Bank)
and
b) who will lead the Arab world. In this, Hamas it the proxy for Iran and the people being Shown A Lesson are not just Israelis but everybody else, especially Saudi Arabia, which can, of course, argue that it has historical supremacy.

These figures are from 2011.

http://www.pcbs.gov.ps/site/881/default.aspx

(There might be some later ones).

If you compare the West Bank with the Gazan numbers, it appears that Gazans live shorter lives, have more children, are poorer.

The West Bank is quietly building an economy based on tourism, manufacturing and better education. All that has happened since about 1985 is that Hamas has attempted to hamper the efforts of people - especially its own - to have any part of the prosperity which might have followed from applications of technology and the end of the Cold War.

Is it right that 1.7m Gazans determine the future of the other 2.7m West Bank inhabitants?

Anonymous said...

Robbo,

If preventing Jews from prospering within the Byzantine empire was such a success, how come the Jews as a people still exist and the Byzantine empire failed, as all empires must surely do?

It was the Ottoman Turks that finished Byzantine. Mehmed the Conqueror, and his noted love of Sharia its final executioner.

Similar narrative though - it was the Jews, it was the Jews - when in reality it was, surprise surprise, the muslims.

Vincent

robbo said...

A rather good video on you tube for you too watch Vincent,wars are all bankers wars, anyway ive enjoyed your comments on ishmael, I wish I was as literate

Anonymous said...

It is so difficult in the fog of war to discern the reality, but one of the key principles always applies, 'Cui bono'- the downing of the plane served two distinct purposes, one to demonise Russia who had just days before signed with the other BRICS members an agreement to launch an alternative world bank to the Psycho-stitch up IMF. Second so that the Israelis could launch all out genocide on the Palestinians whilst the world was looking the other way. Classic false flag!

BTW no one shot that plane down!

H

callmeishmael said...

Always a pleasure to be corrected, mr vincent but I believe we are talking about selective and partisan emphases rooted in, perhaps, sentiment, I can't see any amount of historical territorial hair-splitting excusing, in your eyes, the slaughter of British soldiers by the PIRA, under Adams and Kneecaps, yet the Irgun and the Stern gang were so bold and noble as to excuse appropriate censure, surely, if it was OK for Begin, it was OK for Kneecaps; or am I missing something? Why are we so selective, when it comes to calling a spade a spade. These are acts if terror, being committednand no amount of sophistry will disguise that, bombing schools and hospitals is wicked, pure and simple, doesn't matter a fuck about the military pedigree of Benjy and his gangstersl. The Wehrmact had some fine soldiers, too, didn't it? And who among us does not shudder in revulsion at Israeli yoof, munching popcorn, swigging beer and cheering the massacre of the innocents? Horrible fucking bastards.

As for the UN legitimising the creation of Israel isn't if just a little bit ironic that whilst you pray that event in aid, for all of my adult life Israel has been contemptuosly in violation of one UN resolution after another, apart from the one which established their state, by any yardstick they are a bunch of shits.

Ah but mr ishmael, they have made the deserts bloom, unlike those niggers did. No they haven't; billions of siphoned-off US tax dollars have done that, some of them kicked-back to bighair whore senators and congressmen. The entire Israel scam is orchestrated by some of the best writers and entertainers in the world in order to fool the unwary, such as yourself, mr vincent; the PBC? Anti-Israeli? anti-Jew? Don't make me laugh at this time of the day.

And I am sure not finally but for now, how would you feel about the IRA having its own secret, illegal stash of nuclear weapons? Thought so. Have negilah day.

call me ishmael said...

Does any of that back story or any other back story legitimise the current conduct of Israel, mrs woar? Are we saying that if you don't engen der economic growth then you should expect to have your schools bombed? And are the quality of life differences between Gaza and the West Bank due simply to Hamas or to the attention paid to Gaza by Israel? Are you saying that acquiesence to bullyboy Uncle Benjy is the prerequisite to a good life, chicken soup for all? Surely not.

It's one thing for walled-up prisoners to act badly, quite another for sophisticated, creative, skilled European religious migrants to the Middle East to do so; far worse, actually. I came to talk about our fellow Europeans, in a blaze of indignant sophistry slaughtering frightened children, hiding in schools and hospitals; cudgel me all you will, I do not see what that has to do with Hamas. It has everythuing to do with an angry fucking God.

"and the Byzantine empire failed, as all empires must surely do?" Apart, mr vincent, from the empire of Jehovah.

For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God; the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto Himself, above all people that are upon the face of the Earth. Deuteronomy 7:6

Anonymous said...

Ish, evidence from a German air combat bod suggest that MH17 was taken down by 2 Ukrainian fighters.

Just after, 2 Ukrainian fighters went down..the dead cannot speak, convenient?

call me ishmael said...

I have been too distracted, mr rwg, to look closely at MH17 but it seemed, like the death of Dopey Di, to be altogether too convenient. I will go and have a mooch but I am sure that, as with the Chilcott enquiry, the truth will never emerge.

If I was Cameron, though, I'd step warily around Vladimir Putin.

Anonymous said...

Much of the Old Testament reads like a snuff-movie storyboard. Moses in Numbers saying kill em all, but keep the little girls, they might come in handy. And Joshua, who "smote all of the country of the hills, and of the south and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded."

And the other lot of Bibliomaniacs are calling dogs unclean? Horrible fucking bastards.

verge//

Anonymous said...

All nuclear weapon stashes are secret Mr Ishmael. Israel is no exception there. Nor is she a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaties, any of them, so they are not illegal, either. Be nice if no-one had nuclear weapons, sure, but we are big-boys, Mr Ishmael, we know the world just doesn't like that. BTW, another astonishing scientific leap forwards, that, thanks to Einstein and Oppenheimer, both 4x2's themselves.

Apples and oranges, the PIRA situation and this one. I'd have Kneecaps and his sorry band of thugs shot as soon as look them, you're right. Just like the dross from Hamas. And yes, there is a reason that Israel is not bombing the West Bank just now. No rocket fire from there. It is a piss poor excuse not to do something about kidnappings and rocket fire, that the rockets don't kill half as many as Hamas would like. Don't start wars and then bitch because your enemy is better at it than you.

We can argue all day long. You will not change my mind on this situation, nor I yours. For every Israeli, munching popcorn and cheering their military, there were a dozen in Gaza, whoop-whooping on September 11th, 2001. For every dollar to Israel from the US, there is a Euro to Hamas from the EU.

Arafat is the kind of leader that these morons produce. Were it not for him, and him alone, things would be very, very different. There is an emnity between these peoples, it matters not why, it matters only that this emnity is recognised. The muslim arabs do not want peace with Israel, they want NO Israel, her very existence an affront to their core beliefs.

Just one fact, not opinion, fact, for us to consider; the muslim population of Israel is almost 20 per cent. The Jewish population of Gaza is zero.

BTW Netanyahu is a self-declared atheist. He just doesn't like being bombed.

Robbo, I'll take a look. Thanks.

Vincent.

mrs narcolept said...

I would leave the Islamic world to sort itself out without interference from us, on condition that anyone of that faith living in Europe accept that our rules, not theirs, will be applied in both the public and the private domain. As for Israel: it was a massive imposition from the start, unsustainable without a completely disproportionate amount of support, political, financial and military, from Britain, France and the US. And why should one religion or ethnicity alone be able to claim a homeland to which it has an automatic right to return? Making sure people could live in peace and security in the country of their own birth, not the imaginary one of their remote ancestors, would have been a better response to WW2.

As for the other religion of the Book. despite all my mixed Catholic and Protestant ancestry I sincerely wish Christianity had died out in the third or fourth century. Such good as it has done would have been matched sooner or later by gradual rational enlightenment, and we might have been spared a lot of horrors. Something tells me we would still have had the music, one way or another, and that's the only part of its legacy that I really care about.

callmeishmael said...

As I said, mr vincent, vis a vis nine-eleven celebrations and the Holocaust Odeon, we are told endlessly that Israel is more compassionate, more civilised than its foes, yet it behaves barbarously, bouyed up by the same specious exceptionalism which sustains Uncle Sam's internal and external savagery, cheering the bombing of civilians profits humanity in what way exactly? As for arab Israelis, I would guess that they were there before the Herrenvolk arrived and have just clung on, just about, to their place in their own land and do not represent Israeli liberal multiculturalism, you imply that it is good of Israel to welcome arabs in their own lands when as any fule know, they do no such thing. How can it, when Israel is by definition a sectarian entity. And what sort of reason-choking hypocrisy is it which applauds Israel's nuclear secrets whilst demanding to count Iran's every thermo-nut and bolt and denies her the production of a defence against the Old Testament kamikazes close to her borders? Normally dry-as-dust pragmatism, your arguments are such that I can agree to differ with you, mr vincent; on this occasion I simply differ. It is usually I who argues for the romantic and the sentimental, in this case I fear you fallen, gaily tripping down the yellow brick road, your strings bowed not by reason but by the gargantuan Hollywood confection that is plucky, vicious, brutal and unsustainable little Israel; no business like showbusiness.

callmeishmael said...

Thanks, mrs n, I wish I was so succinct and so correct.

The built heritage moves me, too, intricate and gigantic, as in the cathedrals or tiny and rough hewn, as in seventh century Celtic chapels, here, in the far lands; sites grand or humble invested somehow with an invisible but discernible ancient, sacred purpose. But yes, the music it has inspired redeems God's Great Big Dirty Book, as mr verge rightly has it.

Anonymous said...

There are sunni and shi'ites, druze, bedouin and Christians, as well as Jews, currently serving on the Knesset, Mr Ishmael. There have been scores of others, previously.

How many Jews are on the ruling council of the Palestinian Authority, Mr Ishmael?

I would like to live in world at peace, but that is not going to happen. The best I can hope for is that the front line of war the Israelis are currently fighting does not get too close to my front door, but I am afraid it will, and soon, helped in part by the idea that the Jewish State has no right to exist, that the poor little Palestinians just want to grow olives and keep lemon groves.

PS The reason Iran must never be allowed to possess nuclear weapons is that they will, without a shadow of a doubt, use them on Israel the day after they perfect them. They admit that this is their intention, to 'push Israel into the sea', to eliminate her.

PPS You appear to have dismissed the possibility, however faint, that God really is involved in these matters.

Enough from me. I finish on the pointless hope that man will cease his wars, wherever they are.

In the meantime, let the best man win.

Vincent.

Mike said...

I was in Cordoba in Southern Spain last year. Once the capital of the Islamic world, the centre of world learning (mathematics, medicine, astronomy etc). In the old town is an area known as the Juderia. Its seems Jews and Muslims lived together quite happily in the past. Ditto all across southern Spain.

I wonder if religion is just really an excuse for war; the moors were finally driven out in what was deemed a religious war (so those actually doing the fighting were told), but in reality it was a land grab.

When I worked in the City, a banker friend told me the worst thing is stability; the more volatile things are (up or down, doen't matter) the more money can be made. Nothing like a good war for making money.

Anonymous said...

Mike,

You are right there, whatever reason is given, war is always, ALWAYS, ultimately about land.

Religion does not help, excusing or accusing one side or the other, but land is everything. Every General whose name you've ever heard understands this.

I believe that this is because it is the ultimate asset; without it, we're finished, and God is not making any more of it for the time being.


Vincent

tdg said...

All the same, there is something uncomfortable about the ease with which we turn against the Jews: many more innocents were killed by European nations in a war on terror far less real and present than that posed by Hamas yet the reaction from the left has never had quite the same quality. They are, by some margin, the most gifted race on Earth, and the primordial envy tacit recognition of this must induce is I suspect all too close to the surface.

I am not saying, Ishmael, that that is the source of your position. But does it not worry you that if I were a Hamas operative, I could go a long way towards securing your support by putting a few hundred children in harms way? For if we were to remove that aspect, if the dead were all grown men, the cries of protest would fall a long way short of heaven.

callmeishmael said...

Sunjis and shiites, Gosh, next we'll be believing that a govament with LibDems in it is somehow not a govament of thieving, murdering, child molesting criminals.Doesn't matter who's sitting around the table, does it, stooging and troughing?

And for no other reasons than the intractabilities which you mention, the creation of the mock state of Israel was never going to be anything other than an invitation to the blues.

Anonymous said...

Zer is something a bit Daliesque about zat picture of ze Fuhrer Mr I.... SG

Bungalow Bill said...

Of course we cannot absolve ourselves , Sykes-Picot, Balfour and so on. The disposal of people and their lands on a fictional imperialist map and now we reap the black harvest. As you say, the Jewish contribution to human civilisation is magnificent and tribute to that race's superb gifts. How must the true interpreters of Jewish grief like Steiner weep to see it all; what, if we still had him, would the wondrous Primo Levi be writing down.

Anonymous said...

OK, push me long enough, I'll push back.

Answer the question. How many Jews in the Palestinian Authority?

In fact, how many Jews in Gaza?

In fact, what, in your informed opinion, would happen to a Jew, were he ever so unfortunate to be discovered in Gaza?

Oh, look. The Gazans have violated the latest ceasefire within minutes, kidnapping a hostage. Perhaps I'll get to answer my own question, when they find what is left of his body, hmm?. Still, mustn't grumble, they're only Jews.

Fuck 'em, eh? Fucking untermensch.

They're nazis you know, those bastard Jews?

Vincent.

Bungalow Bill said...

I should have referred to Jewish people rather than race since that term is undecided but the point remains that there is something startlingly distinguished about their excellence in so many fields. It is possible to be a philosemite and anti zionist though that point ought yo be a stale one by now.

call me ishmael said...

If the cap fits, mr vincent. Bombing schools is just so, what, so 1940s European. I don't care who put the kids in harm's way, what kind of sicK argument is that, I had no option but to kill them? Heydrichism, I'd call it, the logic of massive reprisal against unarmed civilians, what's not to like? You support it all you want, mr vincent, it's a free country.

call me ishmael said...

I was thinking of you earlier, mr tdg, as I read Aristotle on Usury, Politics, book one, part ten: "There are two sorts of wealth-getting, one is part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honourable, whilst that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of any modes of gaining wealth this is the most unnatural."

And Deuteronomy 15.6.

"15:6 For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee. [***] 23:20 Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it. [***] 28:12 The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. 28:13 And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them:"

Now, if we were to believe, as do the Jews, that they are not only chosen but that they must play against a cardsharping deity with a stacked deck, what should we make of this? God telling us, commanding us to go out and do the very thing which is not only wrong but will make us hated throughout time and space?

You mention the race/faith genius which both blesses and curses the Jew - a bit overvalued, I must say, if you took out all the Jews there are still plenty of artists and scientists left - and I would suggest, I am sure with little originality, that it is the hostility and persecution which has nurtured the genius you mention - F Scott FitzGerald said it well, Take me out of my turbulent waters and you extinguish my flame. It must be something like that, unless we are talking conspiratorially with the tribe itself of a super race.

I don't know that I am quick to turn against the Jews but I am certainly angered by Israel's sanctimonious brutality, are those two one and the same?

As to Hamas playing me, mr tdg, I can only iterate and reiterate that it is an Israeli decision to attack the schools and hospitals and perhaps mention that if they actually are all that clever they would find some way of sidestepping that, but then if they really wanted to live in peace, these weary, talented, compassionate and progressive wanderers they'd have done it years ago. South Africa was an artificial, apartheid state, Northern Ireland was an artificial apartheid state; East Germany was an artificial police state and I don't think that, until Davy Trimble and John Hume, those places had one Nobel laureate between them.

I enjoyed, by the way, thanks, the first half of The Man Who Hated Islands before hospital intervened and shorted, anew, my reading circuits. I will finish it, the noo.

call me ishmael said...

Not reticent, mr vincent, just answering others, at the moment.

call me ishmael said...

I know Steiner has his detractors, mr bungalow bill but I guess a lot of it is ivory tower squabbling, rivalry and opinion, ambition sated and denied, but as for me, in what I have read, he can do little wrong. That one may not criticise Israeli foreign policy without being daubed anti-Semite is, I feel, just another expression of us - or in this case, them - becoming the thing we hate, in this case fascistic in outlook and behaviour. I do commend the Peter Obourne article which I cite at the end of the commentary; it is a thoroughgoing investigation of the bullying tentacles of the Friends of Israel, of their purchasing, via bribes of one sort or another a very large portion of MediaMinster and of their quite sinister attempts to blackmail - as anti-semitic - any journalist who does not toe the God's Chosen People line. All party leaders are members, as were Gordon Snot and Tony'n'Imelda Blair; all have taken bungs, cash, holidays, directorhips. The extent of it is actually quite shocking.

Now, I don't know if the Jewish artistic and scientific communities condone this corruption but I have never heard anyone speak out about it, either.

In any event, it is an unacceptable situation whereby our legislators and media are in hock to another state, at least as bad as that which obtains with so many of them working, via knowing whispers and secret handshakes, for an unelected European project.

Do have a look. I think that's only the second time I have ever posted a link to anything.

Bungalow Bill said...

It's the disproportion of the Jewish intellectual achievement which is so interesting Mr I, though it may be due simply to adversity or cultural effects as you say. I doubt it though, especially in philosophy and mathematics where Jews have been extraordinarily influential. Of course Arabia has its own beautiful history of art and science. Yet we are stuck with the vile torturers and murderers on high sides. Atheist though I am, there are dome wild moments when I fear that the priests and prophets have it right and that this pitiful arena will be the end of us all. It does not seem entirely fanciful.

Bungalow Bill said...

Sorry that should be "both" not "high" sides. Just downed a nice Valpolicella which may explain the typos. I rate Oborne who comes from the honourable Ingrams, Booker Tory anarchist tradition. I'll look at the link.

Anonymous said...

Ahh well, Mr Ishmael, I'm afraid this must be the point we part.

i am astonished that you would mod me.

All good things must come to an end, I suppose.

Fare thee well.

Vincent.

call me ishmael said...

Being a bit contrarian, here, but nothing wrong with that. I don't know if there are that many distinguished Jews, against what size of population are we measuring the contribution and is the contribution actually a contribution or is it just fame. Is, for instance, one Leonard Nimoy the equvalent of one Leonard Bernstein, both are on any self-respecting list of Jewish achivers.

Is one Jack Benny the equivalent of one Jacques Offenbach?

I like Citroens. In my big book of cool cars there are four Citroens to two BMWs, Alfred Citroen was a Jew; as far as I know he was the only Jewish major car manufacturer but much as I like them the Citroens are just cars. And he just happened to be a Jew. The temptation, to which I am as vulnerable as any, is to say, Wow, a Jew launched the 2CV and the DS21, they must be brilliant, those Jews.

Simon Wiesenthal, the lonely instrument of Holocaust justice was a Jew but so is Stephen Fry, the stupid man's idea of an intelligent man.

I honestly don't know. How many Jews are there and what proportion of them are famous and what proportion of that proportion are worthily famous? Does Bette Midler count, Peter Falk, Billy Crystal, these are just showbiz tramps, no genius, here.

Brian Epstein was a Jew but the Beatles weren't.

I do know that there are many Jewish classical musicians but there are also many such who are not Jewish; same with writers, composers and so on. How do we calculate that Jews are, as, I agree, they appear to be, statistically over-represented in the arts and sciences?

Bungalow Bill said...

I am enthralled by the nature/nurture/ culture debate but I am inclined to think, as with so much else, that there is no easily traceable explanation. It appears that orientals have an especially strong maths tradition which may owe something to their language structures but of course this is a dangerous intelligence measuring path which we are not allowed to go down and probably for good reason. Better that it remain a mystery.

mongoose said...

Did I write something here earlier, Mr I, or forget to press the send button? Anyway it seems to have gone.

call me ishmael said...

The Chinese write in pictograms, don't they, their "word" - one of their words - for evening is a picture of a bird settling in its nest. Is that more abstract or less abstract than a series of sound-shape letters, meaningless in themselves? But I gather they must learn English before they can do proper maths and science. Rule Britannia.

call me ishmael said...

No, mr mongoose, sorry to say I haven't seen any mongoosery for a coupla weeks, now. I was wondering.

You up all night or just watching the river flow?

mongoose said...

I am afraid that I may be about to pass away as a Brontesque consumptive. Blasted children are unhealthy beggars. Anyway, you at least is looking like a proverbial.

I think that the Israel thing is a simple expression of how power and hurt pervert goodwill. Israel is allowed a single pink pass ticket which is that their grandparents were gassed and burned in ovens in the lifetime of my parents, and almost of me. This horror begets horror. They are fighting back against an injury they carry for their forefathers, and they are carrying too many generations of hurt to see that they are now part of the problem. It is easy to count and discount tit-for-tat until you no longer see that the tat was a baby blown to bits in a playground by a so-called smart-bomb.

Martin Kneecaps bleating about Bloody Sunday and 800 years of English tyranny is like Hitler bleating about Dresden from the grave. Yes, all of it is wrong but the guilty bastards should remain silent while any speaks who wasn't a murderous monster. Israel is eating its own tail and excusing itself as being not quite as monstrous as its perscutors of the past.

As I didn't write in the earlier lost post, kids in Ireland are decried for knowing no history. And thank god for that! Gaza is a similarly politically benighted place. Much of the people there - the poor ones anyway - are screwed until it is just an expanse of desert over by the east end of the Med, on the way to India, inhabited by whomever, sons and daughters of, gods and goddeses of their own that interest us nought... Me grandaddy carried a rifle so he did at the Post Office... Until that is all done, nothing can be done with any of them.

Pity the anger of the grandchildren of a whole generation exterminated but hold them to account in Gaza. Hold also Hamas to account because they are the new Nazis of that part of the world. Hamas are the wannabe exterminators; the Israelis are though getting near to the end of their exeat. It is time to man up. By all means make war on the fuckers of Hamas - who care not a spit in a puddle for any Palestinian - but do not make clumsy war on the the innocent poor people of the land who themselves are the playthings of your enemies. This should not be too difficult even for the walking wounded.

call me ishmael said...

Amen and Bravo, mr mongoosd. Funny how, even though everytime you turn around there's another hardluck story that you're gonna hear, there is also just that personal slant, that tweaking, re-tuning by another of one's own position, which illuminates and affirms. 'Swhy I come here.

I always told you, those children, be the death of a poor man, getcha down on that killing floor and give you the blues so bad you wanna die. Or the 'flu.

tdg said...

I am pleased you liked the Lawrence short story; most of his "tales" as his shorter works are known are worth reading, as is his literary criticism. That TS Eliot was thought his creative superior tells us much about the origins of Ruin.

call me ishmael said...

Tried The Rainbow at Warwick but it did nothing for me, crass and stupid as I was but I did like a couple of plays - A Nottinghamshire Miner's Saturday Night, seemed like the original kitchen sink drama.

I was taken aback in Islands by his knowledge of flora and fauna and wondered if his was a more rustic time, when everybody knew the names of every bird and weed and shrub and so I asked an octogenarian neighbour if there had been a time when he knew all that stuff; nary a one, Ishmael, nary a one.