Writing about Israel/Palestine is a challenging experience. I'm dealing with censorship-baiting parliamentarians, abusive calls from a Jewish "comedian" and now pathetic hate-speak from "Jews Must Die". Check out their website. The following are just some of the comments I've received in the last 24 hours:
- "you have been a naughty boy anthony i am watching"
- "i bet you would drop your pants and bend over for fisk wouldnt you anthony. jew fag. if everything is so bad in australia why dont you fuck off and go live in palestine you cockhead."
- "you're the nazi anthony you fucking mental midget. who's side are you on anyway? THINK about it toolhead"
- "i bet you would drop your pants and bend over for fisk wouldnt you anthony. jew fag. if everything is so bad in australia why dont you fuck off and go live in palestine you cockhead."
- "you're the nazi anthony you fucking mental midget. who's side are you on anyway? THINK about it toolhead"
I've decided to leave the comments on my blog. I believe readers should see the kind of person behind the statements (and discover their inability to use punctuation.)
I'm now hated by neo-Nazis thugs and pro-Israel advocates. It's an unenviable and taxing position, to be honest, but I have no intention of backing down from speaking truth to power (thank you Edward Said). The number of supportive calls and emails I'm receiving underscore the large amount of people in the community who are desperate for an honest debate on Israel/Palestine.
We are getting closer.
I'm now hated by neo-Nazis thugs and pro-Israel advocates. It's an unenviable and taxing position, to be honest, but I have no intention of backing down from speaking truth to power (thank you Edward Said). The number of supportive calls and emails I'm receiving underscore the large amount of people in the community who are desperate for an honest debate on Israel/Palestine.
We are getting closer.
18 Comments:
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You sometimes forget it's not polite to swear your head off on other blogs.
So, JMD - wanna play?
www.fightdemback.com
We'll have ya.
Breakfast
Lunch
AND
Dinner.
Join our forum and get stuck in, Nazi.
Boy, the natives are getting restless aren't they.
You're right about allowing us to see them Ant. Sunshine is the best disinfectant for anonymous bacterial pests.
You bigots are frittering away the capital in Western sentiment that has allowed Israel to exist. This sort of stuff coming from Muslims would be seized upon and paraded around as typical; lucky for you this kind of scrutiny and opprobrium (for some strange reason!) never seems to attend your intolerance. Not yet anyway.
And Darp, don't hold your breath. Sniper fire is all they're capable of, their 'arguments' not having the intellectual or ethical grunt for real engagement.
Thanks Glenn. It was a tough decision because the comments were so pathetic, but if that's the best these fools can do, then best let the sun shine on them.
We Westerners are the civilised ones, of course...
The logic above even astounds me....
Perhaps I should be tried for treason? That'll fit the 'crime.'
Goodness, people do get hot under the collar don't they. And I always thought the Jewish tradition was meant to be about scholarship and reasoned debate, not about mindless name-calling and refusing to question doctrine.
Sheesh, heaven forbid you should question the existence of a Jewish state. Even though the whole idea is racist and antithetical to democracy. Really, I don't see why you should be tried as a traitor - I think these people want to burn you as a heretic.
Keep up the good work, Antony.
Thanks to all the ongoing support, greatly appreciated.
We're all starting to realise the limits of so-called free speech in Australia..
'Ant as a Westerner and a Jew is ultimately fearful that the other side is going to win, and has been doing his best to suck up with his anti-Zionist routine'
You are the fearful one. You can't even tell us who you are, you sadpacker. 'the other side' indeed.
'so the Islamic-Nazi connection is well established'
In your dreams, or to be fair, nightmares.
I know, readers can almost feel my fear....
As for these 'Jewish holy sites' on occupied land, Bionic Octopus has a jaundiced evaluation.
BO, Jewish and female, is not for the faint-hearted, putting AL into the milksop brigade of the prose department.
http://bionicoctopus.blogspot.com/2005/09/docket-of-aesthetic-crimes-against.html
E.g. ... 'Twentieth-century synagogue architecture is widely acknowledged to be the most heinous artistic perpetration ever devised by the fevered mind of man. I mean, look at that shit.'
And why were the ephemeral synagogues left there? Ah yes, the magnificent propaganda value. Now we can demolish the sacred sites of Islam in Jerusalem. No worries.
Don't worry Ant, lots of nazis and their ilk still support you. Keep up the good work!
Much could be said about the pathological condition of uncomical Ali and his friends.
But lets cut to the chase.
The 'very core of Judaism' has been thoroughly vanquished by the Zionist project and the creation of the state of Israel as a Jewish state.
What can be sustained only by a criminal enterprise has shat on the 'very core of Judaism'.
This proposition is now new of course. It is what the spiritual Zionists were saying in the old days, only to be pushed aside by the colonisers.
Let's confront the synagogues in Gaza for what they were - transparent symbols of occupation and domination on racial grounds.
The only sacredness regarding the settlement sites was the materiality of the coastal real estate.
If there was any worshippingn going on it was to pagan gods.
All underpinned by AMerican capital and Palestinian labour.
Nice view if you can get it.
I would recommend that uncomical and his friends participate in an exchange program. A Palestinian family comes and stays in his comfortable suburban home, while he removes himself and his family to any West Bank Palestinian town/village of his choosing.
For a year (or perhaps 38 plus?).
If he survives the snipers, the bulldozers, the helicopter gunships, and the daily endless indignities of being treated as sub-human by his Storm Trooper overlords, then he might acquire some qualifications to offer an opinion on the mentality of the Palestinian population.
Mmm, rather different interpretation of the occupied territories than many find...including me.
Hebron is truly like apartheid. If the wider world saw what happened there - a handful of Jews living amongst tens of thousands of Palestinians and treating them like dirt - world opinion would strongly turn against Israel. And rightly so.
Blind pro-Israel supporters fear this information getting out because they know the likely response.
The reality on the ground? Let Gideon Levy, from Haaretz, tell you a few things about Hebron:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/623227.html
Various commentaries on the bounteous life of Palestinians under a beneficient Israeli state.
1. the Guardian's Urquhart.
The soldiers say that in some situations they were ordered to shoot anyone who appeared on a roof or a balcony, anyone who appeared to be kneeling to the ground or anyone who appeared on the street at a designated time. Among those killed by soldiers acting on the orders were young children.
While the background to the soldiers' experience is the armed conflict that has been going on in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since October 2000, many of the shootings occurred in periods of calm when there was no immediate risk to the soldiers involved.
2. Derek Summerfield in the BMJ
Last October I published a review in the BMJ on the appalling human rights situation in the Israeli- occupied Palestinian Territories, providing detailed figures on civilian deaths which pointed unambiguously to a culture of impunity for Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers. I also pointed to the rapid rise in poverty and destitution as a direct and foreseen consequence of Israeli policies, with documented rises in child malnutrition, the blocking of food aid distribution, denial of access to medical facilities (including for those critically ill), the killing, wounding and harrassment of Palestinian health professionals on duty, and the destruction to the coherence of the Palestinian health system as a result of the apartheid Wall- all violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention. I was not recording a personal view: I was quoting documentation from the United Nations; Amnesty International; international aid agencies like Medecins Sans Frontieres; Johns Hopkins (USA) and Al Quds (Jerusalem) Universities; the Israeli human rights organisations B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights; Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute (Ramallah), and the Palestinian Environmental NGOs.
3. a US Congressional delegation in May 2004.
It was an extremely chilling, deeply disturbing visit. It was a shock to see the extent of land seizures, tight travel restrictions and endless humiliation which Palestinians are forced to endure. … One of the most sobering lessons of our visit was the awareness that words, and even photographs, cannot convey the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Palestine today.
Without touching Israel's wall, it's hard to grasp its size and horror. Words cannot describe the humiliation and fear you feel at a checkpoint as you stumble in the dark past rifle-toting soldiers and try to avoid razor wire and the broken pavement. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Bin Laden "misguided"?
That's putting it mildly...
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