Writings on the wall. Reflexionen zum Terroranschlag in Wien

Die Welt ohne uns

“You can’t depend on the goodly hearted
The goodly hearted are made lamp-shades and soap…”

Lou Reed, Busload of Faith

In seinem auf MEMRI veröffentlichten Bekennervideo fuchtelt der junge Mann mit seiner Handfeuerwaffe in der rechten Hand ein wenig herum, während er mit der Linken eine Machete und den Lauf der AK-47 eng an sich drückt. Er murmelt in schlechtem Arabisch die traditionellen Formeln des islamischen Glaubensbekenntnisses herunter und schwört dem derzeitigen Anführer der Terrorbande „Islamischer Staat“ (Daesh) seine Gefolgschaft. Wenig später wird er in der Wiener Innenstadt fünf Menschen mit Schüssen aus seiner AK-47 ermorden, um wenig später selbst durch die Waffe eines Polizisten tödlich getroffen zu werden.

Der Täter, ein 20-jähriger Mann und österreichischer Staatsbürger, der ursprünglich aus dem albanisch sprechenden Teil Nordmazedoniens stammt, ist behördlich bekannt gewesen, hat bereits eine Haftstrafe verbüßt, weil er versucht hat, sich in Syrien dem IS anzuschließen und wurde sogar von slowakischen…

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Telegraph claim: ‚With few exceptions, no one’s been allowed in or out of Gaza since 2007‘

Die Häufigkeit, mit der Israel in und von den Medien falsch dargestellt wird, ist kein Versehen, nicht zufällige Inkompetenz so vieler Journalistinnen, sondern gewollte Propaganda, ideologiegeleiteter oder von Hass getriebener Fanatismus.

A May 13th article at The Telegraph, „Meet the Palestinian family who have tended the graves of our war dead for 60 years“, by correspondent Tom Rowley, focuses on a Gazan who works as a gardener for Commonwealth Graves Commission tending to a First and Second World War cemetery in the strip.  

Ten paragraphs down, the Telegraph provides the following context on the location of the cemetery.

In the middle of the cramped concrete prison that is Gaza (with few exceptions, no one has been allowed in or out since Hamas came to power in 2007)…

This is extraordinarily misleading. In addition to the false suggestion that there’s a „concrete“ wall surrounding Gaza, the claim that „with few exceptions, no one has been allowed in or out since…2007“ is absurd, as data from UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory…

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Guardian defends publication of letter deemed antisemitic

On August 20th, the Guardian published several letters in response to an article published in the paper which noted questions raised about Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism (Corbyn faces questions over meeting with alleged extremist, Aug. 19th).

One of the letters was signed by Lydia, Joel and Andrew Samuels of London:

We write as members of a Jewish family, current and former constituents of Jeremy Corbyn. The accusations of antisemitism are, of course, political manipulations (Corbyn faces questions over meeting with alleged extremist, 20 August). Influential sections of the Jewish community, maybe guided by their Israeli contacts, are frightened that a notable critic of Israel’s policies and actions might attain a position of prominence in British politics. There are two background issues to which we would like to draw attention, aside from joining in the increasing number of Jews who say, of Israel’s behaviour, “not in our…

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The Independent apologises for Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s „mortifying blunder“.

Ken Loach (far right) attacking Israel, Israelis and Ben Gurion at Amnesty International in 2010

Posted by Richard Millett

The Independent has apologised for mistakes in Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s articleFling mud if you must, but don’t call Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite in last week’s Independent (read our piece about it here). Lizzie Kirkwood, the Independent’s Readers’ Liaison Assistant, wrote in response to my email to the Indy:

„I am sorry you felt that Yasmin Alibhai Brown’s piece was inaccurate. In regard to your first point that Ms Brown ‘intimates that the Jewish Chronicle called Jeremy Corbyn „anti-Semitic“’ – to clarify, she doesn’t actually state in the piece that the Chronicle has called him ‘anti-Semitic’. It is clearly her analysis that the sum of their repeated criticisms and warnings about Mr Corbyn should he become Labour leader amounts to the fact that she believes they regard him as possessing anti-Semitic…

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It’s Good Jews Day on the Guardian’s letters page.

Signatory Tony Greenstein was amongst dispruptors of Habima’s Merchant of Venice at The Globe in 2012.

Posted by Richard Millett

Today’s Guardian has published seven lettersabout Jeremy Corbyn’s connections to Holocaust deniers and terrorists most of which are signed by Jews and which jump to Corbyn’sdefence.

Six of the seven letters are fromthe usual suspects who seem to express their Judaism through their contempt forIsrael. The Independent’sYasmin Alibhai-Brown describes these as „conscientious and ethical British Jews“.

The Samuels „write as members of a Jewish family“ and Ruth Tenne as someone „whose grandparents perished in the Holocaust“.

That they write „as Jews“ is of course totally irrelevant. It adds nothing to what they are trying to explain and only emphasises the overall weakness of the point they are trying to make.

Incidentally, beingJewish is nota defence to being an antisemite. Antisemitism is a state of mind; it isn’t dependent…

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Now „Jews For Jeremy“ enter the fray to defend Corbyn.

Posted by Richard Millett

On Monday Channel 4’s Cathy Newman interviewed Jeremy Corbyn about his connections to the group Deir Yassin Remembered (DYR) which is run by self-confessed Holocaust denier Paul Eisen.

In the interview Labour Party leadership candidate Corbyn said he met Eisen 15 years ago before he was a known Holocaust denier butthat he doesn’t have any contact with either Eisen or DYR now. He did admit, however, to having attended „a number of events concerning DYR some years ago“.

The Jewish Chronicle hasdiscovereda photo of Corbyn purportedly attending a DYR event at St John’s Wood Church in 2013 (see above). And according to the Jewish Chronicle four months earlier Eisen wrotea blog titled“How I became a Holocaust denier”.

Make of that what you will.

Now a group of Jews for whom Israel can do no right have set up a Facebook page to jump toCorbyn’s…

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Have the Guardian and Corbyn finally fallen out over anti-Semitism?

A guest post by AKUS

In the run-up to the election of a new head of the British Labour party the Guardian appeared to back Jeremy Corbyn, a 66 year-old Marxist Seamus Milne clone still fighting the CND wars. Typically, far from coming from the working class, he is a graduate of Adams‘ Grammar School (“a selective boys‘ grammar school in Newport, Shropshire, England”).

It appears to have dawned on the Guardian’s editorial staff that there is a large proportion of the British electorate who may not accept “The Guardian View” on how to dispose of their hard-earned wealth in a new Marxist paradise. In that case Labour, the working-man’s party backed by the horrendously over-paid Oxbridge pseudo-left pen-pushers at the Guardian, will not be in a position to grasp the reins of power.

In the true tradition of the ultra-left, the knives have now come out to rid the…

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Financial Times perpetuates the myth of „sealed off“ Gaza

An article at the Financial Times written by their Jerusalem correspondent John Reed (Extreme remote working at Gaza’s ‚weird news‘ bureau‘, July 29th) focuses on a Gazan named Rawa Othman.  Othman’s job, according to Reed, involves „scanning the shallows of the internet in search of what he calls ‚the weirdest news'“, working remotely for the Saudi owned Abu Nawaf Network.

However, the story isn’t about one unusual job. Reed uses this example of a Gazan employed by a client based in another country – and the broader problem of high unemployment in the Palestinian-controlled territory – to highlight Gaza’s ‚isolation‘ from the rest of the world.

This is no ordinary workplace: Mr Othman translates weird news in a high-rise in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian enclave ruled by the militant Islamist group Hamas. Gaza is sealed off from the world by an Israeli naval and aerial blockade, and…

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Guardian highlights doctor who supported 9/11 attacks

The Guardian’s former Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood profiled doctor and Palestinian propagandist Mads Gilbert in a June 23rd article.

Here’s a glimpse of Sherwood’s take on Gilbert.

Gilbert – who describes himself as a “political doctor” and a practitioner of “solidarity medicine” – has written a book, Night in Gaza, which describes his time at the Shifa last summer. “It’s a place of human greatness, suffering and endurance – and an almost incomprehensible mastering of a situation that seems overwhelming, impossible to deal with. Yet they [the medical staff] stand tall, don’t reject a single patient, do phenomenal, very complicated surgery with a high level of professionalism,” he said.

When mass casualties were brought in, the first job of the medics was to take difficult decisions. “Triage is extremely efficient, but it’s brutal,” he said. “You have to let the dying die.” It was a marked contrast to hospitals in…

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Labour’s Hamas connection

This op-ed was written by Jake Wallis Simons and originally published at Politico

LONDON — The idea that an admirer of Hezbollah and Hamas should be a serious contender to lead the British Labour Party might seem fanciful. But amid the climate of confusion and self-doubt that plagues the freshly defeated opposition, this is exactly what is coming to pass.

Jeremy Corbyn, the 66-year-old hard-left activist who has made a career out of opposing “American and British imperialism,” is one of four candidates to succeed Ed Miliband as Labour leader. One poll, by the influential LabourList website, finds him the favorite, with his left-wing credentials and anti-austerity stance attracting unexpected numbers of Labour supporters eager to break with the legacy of Tony Blair.

But Corbyn has a dark side. Over the years, this old-fashioned Trotskyite — known for his ragged beard, shabby jackets and Leninist worker’s cap — has been…

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