Posts Tagged ‘Israel’
Readers may have noticed that the UK’s Methodist Church last week launched a boycott of Israel. I have an op-ed on the matter in today’s Jerusalem Post. Click here to read it.
The irrepressible Melanie Phillips highlights today yet another searing indictment of the Islamist extremists who run Gaza, and their UN apologists who with mindblowing intransigence refuse to recognise the real root cause of what is going on there. It transpires that Hamas has yet again torched a UN run children’s summer camp to prevent the heinous crime against Islam of little boys and girls playing together and having fun.
To all sane and reasoned individuals — ie. not the British foreign office, not the Obama administration and most certainly not the United Nations — this would come as yet another piece of evidence of the vile, extremist nature of the people who run Gaza and remain intent on holding it in a state of backwardness and religious-ideological conformism.
So here is John Ging, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, on the BBC:
“”This is another example of the growing levels of extremism in Gaza and further evidence, if that were needed, of the urgency to change the circumstances on the ground.” In other words, it’s Israel’s fault.
If there’s one thing that you should never forget when writing a review of someone’s book it is this: what you write will reflect just as much on you as on the book you are reviewing. Go over the top in praise of something that’s actually pretty run of the mill and it will make you look shallow. Start slamming something that’s a work of art and you’ll look like a philistine who couldn’t get the measure of a much greater mind. Start ranting and you’ll make an ass of yourself. Get personal and you look like a weirdo.
Enter John Crace, feature writer for the Guardian, who earlier this week reviewed
Melanie Phillips’ new book, The World Turned Upside Down. If you read the review you’ll learn nothing about Melanie’s book. But you will learn a lot about John Crace.
Here’s how he starts out, mockingly using the first person singular as if it were Melanie Phillips talking about her own reasons for writing her book:
So, the Muslim country whose rulers perpetrated the first genocide of the 20th century (against the Christian Armenians) is now reverting to old form in its ideological leanings and its hegemonic ambitions. As with all forms of political Islam, the variety espoused by Turkey’s current leadership has inevitably matured into a self-consciously anti-Western and anti-Israeli (anti-Semitic — see quotes below) movement.
In a brilliant deconstruction of where Turkey is now headed, Joshua Teitelbaum — a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and, inter alia, principal research associate in the Lauder School at the IDC — paints a depressing picture in today’s Guardian.
Noting that support for Turkey is at an all time high in the Arab world after it championed the terror flotilla to Gaza last week, Teitelbaum says:
“Israel’s relations with Ankara – military, economic, and tourist (Israelis once flocked to Turkey) – have been sacrificed on the altar of Turkey’s retrograde aspiration to lead the Islamic world and establish itself along with Iran as an alternative to American power. Turkey is once again turning eastwards.”
He also outlines the hysterical tones in which Israel is now being talked about by the Turkish leadership in the wake of the flotilla incident:
An excellent piece by William Shawcrowssin the Jerusalem Post today. This, a standback piece looking at the hypocrisy and moral inversion of Israel’s critics in the West, is one to send around to everyone you know.
Anyone who appreciates this piece will (I hope) also find my recent book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel interesting.
While I’m at it, there’s also an interesting piecein the Times today about Muslim conversion in British prisons. Certainly a sign of the times in more respects than one…