It is a bit like Orwell’s “Coming Up for Air!”

Hasbara Buster – have you ever seen a “relatively light terror attack”?

The word “relative” always implies a term of comparison. The 8 deaths in Jerusalem are “light” as compared to the 21 deaths in Sri Lanka.

My observation is that incidents in which the victims are Jewish are much more widely reported on than those in which the victims are from other ethnic groups. I don’t see any Zionist complaining about this, though.

It was Hitler, contemplating the possible consequences of exterminating world Jewry.

You’re so right.

Recently French authorities convened a meeting between France’s Jewish and Muslim leaders, and in doing so gave the impression that both communities were equally likely to engage in acts of violence.

Synagogues have been firebombed in several cities, and Jews have been at the recieving end of attacks by muslims, and this, long before the curent Israeli operations.

I’m absolutely sick and tired of these lame gestures that aim for ‘balance’ and even handedness, and which do so, not as a means to avoid conflict, but rather as a way of avoiding certain realities.

You know, what are the chances Jews in France would attack mosques and Muslims in the same way that Muslims are attacking synagogues and committing physical attacks on Jews?

We’re at the point where cowardly gestures of denial, on the part of the authorities, are portrayed as courageous actions designed to resolve conflicts.

Last fall a friend of mine sent me a clip of a french news report about the opening of a new Mosque and islamic centre in Lille ( I believe).

The reporter was standing on the street gushing on about how the construction of the mosque and community centre was a triumph of muliculturalism.

I didn’t believer her, though.

I couldn’t believer her.

You see, just above the roof of that mosque one could clearly see the flag of Hezbollah waving in the wind, and the reporter obviously didn’t have a clue what the flag represented.

Celebrate diversity.

BEN: Liberty if it means anything is the right for you not to have to pay taxes, most particularly to pay taxes towards the upkeep of a foreign state who is not your friend

NEARLY OXFORDIAN: The second part of your statement shows just what sort of special pleading the first part is. Either you genuinely believe that no taxes should be paid at all – in which case you are in favour of total anarchy and dissolution of society and going back to the Stone Age (and then you would have no reason to single out ‘taxes towards the upkeep of a foreign state’) – or you simply want to pick and choose which taxes you want to pay, and the first part is hypocrisy.

BEN

Pfft. Not at all.

The more taxation taken from you the less free you are. Taxation directly and indirectly is an ever increasing feature of our modern world. It is bad enough when that taxation is misused in your own country as governments are ill-suited to spending others wealth and all around we can see the welfare detritus created by government decisions. It is much worse though when that same taxation is spent abroad in pursuit of foreign policy goals which given the chance the populace wouldn’t care to contribute to.

Are you really saying an individual has no right to question the level or the distribution of the taxes that they provide?

That sounds a bit like “Who remembers the Armenians now” now who was it who said that? Someone remind me please.

I beg to differ. The UK, of which I am a citizen, has NEVER taken part in or orchestrated genocide. I assume you must be referring to Nazi Germany and Vichy France. Furthermore, and I’m sure Misha/Hasan Pristina would disagree, anti-Semitism is not part of Anglican Christianity and anti-Semitic sentiment is confined to major conurbations such as London, home to large numbers of Muslims.

“… I’m not saying that anti-Semitic publications aren’t readily available …”

As a confirmed booklover, I later made my way to the city’s main bookstore and found there massive piles of the very same Mein Kampf. In addition there were many copies of the biography of Bose, the anti-British Indian nationalist who sided with Japan during WW2.

Fair enough. I haven’t spent long enough in Turkey to gauge the presence of anti-Semitic tracts. My reflex reaction here was because I had heard someone make the claim before on HP and I queried it then.

You can find the Protocols and Mein Kampf on Cairo streets and in Damascus, but they’re not nearly so prevalent as some people, elsewhere admittedly, have made out.

I stand corrected on Turkey, Ben. Sorry.

The Epistle to the Jews of Yemen was written in about 1172 in reply to inquiries by Jacob ben Netan’el al-Fayyūmi, who headed the Jewish community in Yemen.

Andrew Bostom’s work is normally meticulously researched and I can find no fault with his excellent publications. However, that fellow was Egyptian not Yemeni, so his involvement was either interpolated or at the very least exaggerated.