Thick as a brick in the wall

Rupert Murdoch, as we know, has had to once again swallow a large piece of humble following the outcry over Gerald Scarfe's  Holocaust Memorial Day cartoon in the Sunday Times. Scarfe himself, in what I think must be for him an unprecedented step, said he was sorry. But it was a qualified apology. He did not know, he said, that the cartoon was to appear on Holocaust Memorial Day. From this we may assume that on any other day it would have been appropriate to caricature the Israeli Prime Minister as a bloodthirsty, genocidal monster using Palestinian citizens as bricks in the bloody wall of his political career. It is worth remembering that the cartoon as such was not a protest against the wall erected by the Israelis to keep suicide bombers out of Israel. Entitled, 'Israeli Elections... Will Cementing Peace Continue,' it was a claim that the the Israel Prime Minister is not serious about peace and that he is murdering Palestinians in pursuit of political power. In other words: a vote for Netanyahu is vote for fascism. If that really is the case, bring it on. Let's have more of the same, especially on Holocaust Memorial Days.

Why did the Sunday Times publish the cartoon when they did? The way the thinking goes is something like this: We all sympathise with the Jews. They have suffered so much and we sympathise with them to the point that we've now set aside a day each year on which we share in their grief and sorrow. But look at how they behave. The people who have suffered so much are now inflicting pain on their powerless neighbours. Those who endured the Holocaust over a six-year period have been perpetrating a holocaust on the Palestinians for almost 65 years. Those who were oppressed by the Nazis have themselves become Nazis.

If all that is true, Murdoch and Scarfe owe Israel no apology. If the state of Israel is an apartheid, genocidal regime run by Nazis, it deserves no sympathy. The sooner the current regime is replaced the better. And if they can't elect a government that respects basic human rights then the state deserves to be dismantled.

I loved Gerald Scarfe's anti-American, anti-South Africa, anti-Rhodesia cartoons in the sixties and seventies. Some white Americans, white South Africans and white Rhodesians were incandescent with rage over Scarfe's hyper-exaggerated depictions of Richard Nixon's nose (see above) and Ian Smith's glass eye. But whatever one's opinions about US troops in Vietnam and white minority rule in Rhodesia and South Africa back then, American bombs really were  dropping on the villages of South East Asia, and black South Africans and Rhodesians really were suffering under the apartheid regimes in those countries.

And that's the entire point. Though Scarfe's portrait of Binyamin Netanyahu is positively photographic compared to the excoriating caricatures of politicians he produced in the 1960s, the idea that the Prime Minister of Israel is massacring Palestinian civilians for his own political ends (or for any ends for that matter) is a palpable lie. And for Murdoch's newspaper to feature it on Holocaust Memorial Day compounds the injury.

I wonder what Gerald Scarfe's reaction would be if a fellow satirical cartoonist portrayed him at his drawing board, pen dripping with blood surrounded by blood-stained cheques being watched at work by the tear-stained, traumatised eyes of women and children from the bombed Israeli city of Sderot.

Gerald Scarfe cements hate on Holocaust Memorial Day

Let me say first of all that I have always admired Gerald Scarfe's cartoons. When I was a teenager I wanted to draw like him. He is the Hogarth of the 20th and 21st centuries. Of course, his drawings are often crude and scatalogical but, then, he feels passionately about his themes. And he obviously feels passionately about the plight of the Palestinians. But Scarfe's misplaced rage in the cartoon above bears the clear hallmark of 'zeal without knowledge'. 

I know the point he is making: A people who have suffered so much are causing suffering to others. And who could object - if Scarfe was right. But he is wrong. Dead wrong.

The following was put out today by Honest Reporting and it is worth reading Rashim Kassam's response to the drawing. 

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. Traditionally, and in line with common decency, it is a day to remember the atrocities of the Second World War, particularly the six million Jewish people slaughtered at the hands of Hitler.

For some, however, Holocaust Memorial Day is transfiguring into a day that ‘the Jews’ or ‘Israel’ (for they will use these terms interchangeably), are to be attacked or set up, completely leaving behind the idea that the country came into existence in the wake of the greatest single crime in history.

Last week, it was Member of Parliament David Ward MP, the case of whom highlights an ever growing contingent of anti-Israel sentiment within the British government. These are the fools who would have you believe that Israel’s security barrier is 100 percent concrete, 100 feet tall, and built from the blood of Palestinians.

And who could possibly blame them for having this ill-informed idea, when their fellow MPs invite them to one-sided trips to the West Bank while at the same time referring to Hamas and Hezbollah as ‘friends’ (more on this tomorrow).

But more to the point, who can blame them when some of the country’s smartest media outlets present Israel and its leaders in this particular light: the large-nosed Jew, hunched over a wall, building with the blood of Palestinians as they writhe in pain within it.

For this is exactly what the Sunday Times has today done; not simply treading the fine line between criticism and blood libel, but indeed spitting all over it, leaving it for dust, and careering head first into anti-Semitismsville.

“Will cementing peace continue?” reads the caption beneath the image of a Quasimodo-like Netanyahu. As if this half-hearted attempt at a pun would help masquerade the overt racism within the image. No.

In conversation with a friend of mine recently, I was asked, “Do you think in 200 years time, people will have forgotten the Holocaust, or believe that it was a myth?” I naively responded, “No. I believe there are enough good people in the world to ensure that doesn’t happen.” At the time, I would never have thought the editors of the Sunday Times were in amongst those who would seek, in true Der Sturmer fashion, to use Holocaust Memorial Day to publish a blood libel, and knowingly undermine the memory of one of the worst genocides ever.

I guess I was wrong on that count. I sure hope I’m not wrong on the other.

Après moi, le déluge

 

Why is everyone surprised that Egypt has a new Pharaoh? And why are news interviewers shocked that President Mursi’s supporters can claim with straight faces that a greater, more stringent dictatorship will lead to a greater, freer, liberal and democratic Egypt.

Not only do we not learn from history; we don’t even learn from recent history.

Every revolution and coup in the Middle East in the last forty years has produced greater dictators than the ones ousted. One devil is cast out and seven more, even more evil, take his place. The Shah of Persian was replaced by the mullahs of Iran, paving the way for a beady-eyed, Holocaust-denying, Hitler wannabe who wants to finish what his German counterpart started. And no leftist liberal in the West thinks he means it when he says he will destroy the Zionist entity.

Hamas is the democratically elected government in Gaza, as we are reminded by Israel’s critics. But the last election in Gaza was seven years ago; when will the next election take place? Hamas has no political opponents to be afraid of; they killed them all off after their rise to absolute power. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt supports Mursi’s measures to safeguard the revolution, which means there will be no more elections in that country for the foreseeable future. In both Gaza and Egypt the persecution of Christians has increased since the two Islamic parties came to power.

After Sadam Hussein was ousted from power, the situation in Iraq went from bad to worse. And what will happen there will be the same that is happening in the Israel/’Palestine’; the Islamists will continue to terrorise until they achieve their totalitarian objective.

These countries were ruled by devils but were replaced by far worse devils.

It looks set to be the same in Syria. But Syria has stockpiles of chemical weapons and, according to some, Sadam’s weapons of mass destruction. At least the current regime in Syria made no attempt to deploy the barbaric instruments of warfare at their disposal against Israel but there is no guarantee that a rebel regime won’t.

What will it take to wake western leaders up to the fact that Muslim countries don’t think like we do? What will it take to make our leaders realise that these radical governments cannot be trusted. When will we remember that they are the heirs of the leaders of Arab nations who met in Khartoum in 1967 after the Six Day War to declare there would be no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel and no peace with Israel.

Hence, last week we witnessed the farce of Egypt, whose government has said it will unilaterally tear up the peace agreement with Israel it signed over thirty years ago, brokering a cease fire between Israel and Hamas. It should have come as no surprise, then, that Gaza continued to fire missiles at Israel after the cease-fire came into place.

What hope of peace is there? There can be no possible political solution but at least let’s remember what the situation really is and stop bullying Israel to ‘be serious about peace’. Israel is the only party in this conflict situation that can’t afford not to be serious about peace.

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem 2

A caller on today’s Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 thought Israel was over-reacting to the ‘rockets’ fired from Gaza; he thought Hamas was making the area like England on November 5!

I’ve just spoken to my friend and colleague David Zadok in Israel. Today he was at a meeting in Jerusalem that was interrupted when missiles were fired from Gaza. The meeting hastily adjourned to a bomb shelter. David also made pastoral calls to Ashkelon, where elderly church members are living in terror.

The Embassy of Israel in the UK released this update today, Tuesday, 20th November.
MISSILES

More than 1,100 unguided missiles have been fired at Israel since Saturday 10th November of which 900+ were fired since the start of Operation Pillar of Defence (14 Nov.) The Iron Dome anti-missile defence system has intercepted over 300 missiles, preventing them from striking populated areas in Israel. 45 per cent of Israelis are within rocket range. In the last decade, over 12,800 missiles were fired from Gaza.



Forty-five per cent of Israelis are within rocket range - the equivalent of 28 million British civilians under the constant threat of missile launching.

CASUALTIES

Three Israeli civilians killed: Mirah Scharf, 25, Aharon Smadja, 49, and Itzik Amsalem, 24, four in critical condition, six in a moderate condition and 141 lightly injured. On Sunday 18th November, at least seven people were seriously injured in direct hits on a home in Ashkelon and a car in Ofakim. Yesterday, Monday 19th November, a Grad rocket exploded outside an elementary school in Ashkelon. No one was hurt as all schools within a 4o km radius of Gaza are currently closed. Ben Gurion University of the Negev, with 15,000 students, also remains closed.


Three Israeli civilians were killed on Thursday morning: Mirah Scharf, 25, Aharon Smadja, 49, and Itzik Amsalem, 24

MILITARY ACTIONS

Operation Pillar of Defence has obtained significant achievements, and the terrorist organisations of Gaza have been hit hard.

The Israel Air Force has significantly deteriorated the long-range Iran-made Fajr missile stores.

Over the course of the morning (Tuesday 20th November), the IDF targeted eleven terrorist squads who were involved in promoting terrorist activity including the planting of explosive devices and the firing of rockets towards southern Israel. In addition, the IDF targeted 30 underground rocket launchers, as well as a senior terror operative’s hiding place which was used to store weapons and ammunition. As a result, severe damage was inflicted upon the rocket launching capabilities and weapon storage facilities owned by terror organisations operating in the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, tank shells and artillery fire were used.

Israel has no interest and no ambition in conquering land, but we have to stop Hamas firing at our citizens.

It must be noted that Israel disengaged unilaterally and completely from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The result of Israel’s disengagement is that Gaza has become a giant ammunition depot. In addition, it provides a breeding ground for terrorist groups to organize and to operate. All this is done under the rule, responsibility and sponsorship of Hamas.

Israel, as any other state, has the right under international law, and a moral obligation, to act in self-defence, to defend its population and to protect its territory when under attack, as well as to take military action against the terrorist attacks from the Gaza Strip.

Hamas’ actions are in clear violation of the most fundamental principles of international law, including the principle of distinction, which requires Hamas and other terrorist organizations not only to refrain from directing its attacks at Israeli civilians, but also to clearly distinguish itself from its own civilian population.

These terrorist organisations consciously and deliberately violate these principles in a repeated manner, by deploying weapons and command centres in densely populated areas, operating from residential areas, and exploiting the civilian population by exposing them to serious harm. They also deliberately direct their fire at the civilian population of Israel. These acts constitute a double war crime.

Israel directs its actions against the military targets of Hamas and other terrorist organisations. It goes to great lengths to minimise harm to civilians. Israel regrets any injury to civilians and places responsibility squarely on Hamas, which uses the residents of Gaza as human shields. Israel does everything possible to prevent harm to Palestinian civilians. Hamas does everything possible to put Palestinian civilians in harm’s way.

It should be noted that the IDF made tens of thousands of phone calls to Gaza residents to warn them about the military operation.

The IAF dropped flyers throughout the Gaza Strip calling for people to distance themselves from known terrorists, weapons stores and launching sites




In addition, the IDF has called off airstrikes when pilots spotted civilians – even when missiles launched by terrorists were speeding toward their target


HUMANITARIAN AID

Israel is making a major effort to maintain the fabric of civilian life in Gaza, despite the situation of current hostilities.

Sunday 18 November

Kerem Shalom crossing was open for movement of food, medicine and other goods from Israel despite the ongoing missile attacks on the Israeli population and previous attacks on the crossing.

The Erez crossing was open, as on every other day of Operation Pillar of Defence. Seventy foreign journalists entered Gaza today by way of Erez, 26 Gazans entered Israel for medical treatment, and 23 foreign nationals, representing NGOs who until now had been prevented by Hamas from leaving the Gaza Strip, departed.

Tuesday 20 November

The Kerem Shalom crossing opened on Tuesday morning (20 Nov) to allow the transfer of 120 trucks of humanitarian aid. However, when it was targeted by missile fire from Gaza, the IDF was forced to close the crossing to ensure the safety of all those working at the crossing and passing through it. Only 24 trucks of humanitarian aid managed to make it through the crossings prior to the missile strikes.

Click here to watch the video

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem

Latest news from Israel.

Fourteen rockets were fired from Gaza at the Bnei Shimon Regional Council area, Beersheba, the Eshkol Regional Council area and the Merhavim Regional Council area in one hour. No injuries or damage were reported.

Magen David Adom treated 20 Israelis on Friday, bringing the total number of people treated by MDA to 74 since the beginning of 'Operation Pillar of Defence' on Wednesday. Of the 20 people tended up to last night Friday, five were lightly injured and 15 were suffering from shock.

Yesterday, the third day of 'Operation Pillar of Defence,' the Israel Air Force struck 238 targets in the Gaza Strip. A total of 105 rockets struck Israel yesterday, while the 'Iron Dome' missile defense system shot down an additional 99 rockets and also destroyed a bomb-laden smuggling tunnel.

The Israeli cabinet has approved Defence Minister Ehud Barak's request for 75,000 reserve troops in preparation for a possible ground operation in Gaza. On Thursday, the cabinet approved 30,000 reserve troops, 16,000 of whom the IDF mobilized on Friday.

Terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula launched rockets into Israel last night. The missiles fell near an Israeli village on the southern border, causing some damage but no injuries.

Two rockets were fired at Jerusalem from Gaza at the start of the Sabbath yesterday. Police reported there was 'no indication' that rockets landed in the city, stating that 'most likely, the rockets landed in an open area outside of Jerusalem.' Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming to have shot 'an improved Kassam,' which it called an M-75 towards Jerusalem. The launch represents the first Hamas rocket attack aimed at Jerusalem.

A friend in Israel mailed me to say: 'Your prayers are greatly appreciated. Last night, for the first time, a siren was sounded in Jerusalem. Our girls were so frightened (after some of their older friends told them that someone was trying to bomb them) that they could not sleep properly last night. Even today all they can talk about is the 'bad people' trying to kill us. Pray for wisdom in knowing how to quieten them and give them the Peace of the Lord.'

Genuine imitation wife

Last night as I listened to a news report about the wife of Jesus while I was driving from the airport, I wondered whether I’d passed through a time warp to a future April 1st.

The BBC’s Robin Lustig was asking a Vatican spokesman what effect a 4th century fragment of a papyrus scroll would have on the Roman Catholic Church if it proved to be ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’. What did Lustig (and the Vatican ‘expert’ for that matter) mean by ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’?

A genuine 4th century fragment, perhaps? An authentic piece of papyrus with Jesus making a cryptic reference to his ‘wife’ maybe?

Let’s have a sense of proportion about this shall we? A fragment of a papyrus manuscript that resembles a passage in the Gospel of Thomas and written some three centuries after the New Testament was completed is discovered. It seems to suggest that Jesus was married. So what? So what?

What would the scholar say if in some old house a scrap from a nineteenth century book was discovered in which Queen Elizabeth1 referred to her husband. Not a lot, I expect. It would be ignored. There would be no discussion. There would be no mention on the TV news and the Net would not be awash with reports.

Imagine some archaeologist digging up a mouldy copy of The Da Vinci Code in a couple of thousand years and announcing he had found conclusive proof that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene!

All this ‘discovery’ goes to show is that within the scholarly community there is a great desire to find some evidence – however flimsy – that the New Testament in general and the Gospels in particular are unreliable.

Now why would they want to do that?

Read Simon Gathercole's take on the discovery here.

A Walk for Life

An hour ago, my brother Kevin who is 50 set out on a 50 mile walk from Hull City’s KC Stadium to Eland Road Stadium in Leeds to raise money for Brain Tumour Research and Support (BTRS) across Yorkshire.

Six years ago, my wife and I lost our daughter (Kev's niece) Samantha to a brain tumour. Doctors know little more about brain tumours today than they knew in the 1960s, and BTRS was set up to provide a network of resources to patients and their families across Yorkshire. Formerly known as Andrea's Gift, BTRS also funds pioneering brain tumour research at the Leeds Institute for Molecular Medicine.

Kev is a great Hull City fan and he decided to make the walk from the KC Stadium to Eland Road in Leeds, where BTRS is based. It would be a great encouragement to my brother, who deserves to be given the ‘Nicest Bloke on the Planet’ award, if you would make a donation to BTRS. 

You can donate online or by sending a cheque made out to BTRS to Kevin Moore, 50 East Grove, Hull, East Yorkshire, HU4 6NS.