Greetings from the French Hill: Are Jews The Disproportionate People???

-Yashiko Sagamori has written an excellent article, which contradicts the term, "disproportionate response", that was constantly used throughout the West to describe Israel's actions in Lebanon with the fact that the Jews are a disproportionate people.

During the first stage of Israel's war against Hezbollah, when everybody agreed that the Israeli response to the new, deadly round of unprovoked Arab aggression was “disproportionate”, I suddenly realized that Jews, in every respect, are an extremely disproportionate nation. Although only one in 400 people on earth is Jewish, we exert so much influence on everything that's happening on this planet that most people sincerely believe that we control the world through some imaginary, evil Zionist conspiracy.

We have been disproportionately overrepresented in practically every human endeavor, from the list of Nobel laureates, to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Our contribution to the wellbeing of this planet has been grotesquely disproportionate, and even more disproportionate has been the hatred the planet pays us back with.

In recent days, months, and weeks, there have been a slew of cases when Jews were accused of murdering Arabs, who were in fact murdered by other Arabs. For example, does anyone still remember the Arab family that was killed in an explosion on a beach somewhere in Gaza? It happened just before the last round of war began in earnest. During the few days it took to prove beyond any doubt that the explosion was not caused by an Israeli artillery shell, mankind was enthusiastically mourning yet another batch of innocent civilian victims at the hands of those bloodthirsty Jews. As soon as it became clear that the explosion was caused by a mine left on a public beach by Arabs and, therefore, Israel was innocent of that particular murder, the planet promptly forgot both the incident and the victims.
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-Maybe the British aren't doomed after all. This next article might just show that there is a bright light, albeit a small one, still shining hope in the old Empire.

Anti-Zionism is anti-semitism
Behind much criticism of Israel is a thinly veiled hatred of Jews

Is there a link between the way Israel's case is presented and anti-semitism? Israel's advocates protest that behind criticisms of Israel there sometimes lurks a more sinister agenda, dangerously bordering on anti-semitism. Critics vehemently disagree. In their view, public attacks on Israel are neither misplaced nor the source of anti-Jewish sentiment: Israel's behaviour is reprehensible and so are those Jews who defend it.

Jewish defenders of Israel are then depicted by their critics as seeking an excuse to justify Israel, projecting Jewish paranoia and displaying a "typical" Jewish trait of "sticking together", even in defending the morally indefensible. Israel's advocates deserve the hostility they get, the argument goes; it is they who should engage in soul-searching.

There is no doubt that recent anti-semitism is linked to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And it is equally without doubt that Israeli policies sometimes deserve criticism. There is nothing wrong, or even remotely anti-semitic, in disapproving of Israeli policies. Nevertheless, this debate - with its insistence that there is a distinction between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism - misses the crucial point of contention. Israel's advocates do not want to gag critics by brandishing the bogeyman of anti-semitism: rather, they are concerned about the form the criticism takes.

If Israel's critics are truly opposed to anti-semitism, they should not repeat traditional anti-semitic themes under the anti-Israel banner. When such themes - the Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, linking Jews with money and media, the hooked-nose stingy Jew, the blood libel, disparaging use of Jewish symbols, or traditional Christian anti-Jewish imagery - are used to describe Israel's actions, concern should be voiced. Labour MP Tam Dalyell decried the influence of "a Jewish cabal" on British foreign policy-making; an Italian cartoonist last year depicted the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as an attempt to kill Jesus "again". Is it necessary to evoke the Jewish conspiracy or depict Israelis as Christ-killers to denounce Israeli policies?

The fact that accusations of anti-semitism are dismissed as paranoia, even when anti-semitic imagery is at work, is a subterfuge. Israel deserves to be judged by the same standards adopted for others, not by the standards of utopia. Singling out Israel for an impossibly high standard not applied to any other country begs the question: why such different treatment?
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-However, related to Great Britain's destiny, Melanie Phillips points out that the anti-semitism and Islamic appeasement has grown so far and has gotten so bad that Britain's huge Jewish community is now afraid and has been intimiditated into silence.

Throughout last month, what was that deafening sound emanating from Britain’s Jewish community as the world convulsed over the Lebanon war? Silence.

Six weeks ago, I wrote on this page about the failure of British Jews to rebut the wholly unwarranted charge of Israel’s ‘disproportionate’ response to the attack by Hezbollah on its northern towns.

I didn’t know the half of it. Since then, Israel has been the target of a verbal and psychological pogrom of vilification, distortion and outright lies. Calumnies were hurled at it almost daily by the media, politicians and intellectuals.

It was accused of aggression when it was the victim of aggression. It was accused of bombing most of Lebanon when only a tiny part of it was bombed. It was accused of destroying the fragile Lebanese nation when that same nation had in fact been hijacked by Iran, through its proxy Hezbollah which had set up a state within a state.

These libels were underpinned by outright fabrications such as the bald claim that Israel had started the war, the publication of doctored photographs and the solemn reporting of staged and implausible ‘atrocities’ as facts.

Such hysteria has resulted not only in an inevitable rise in physical attacks upon Jews. It has also caused a significant section of the Labour party to descend into madness. There is now the surreal possibility that the Prime Minister might be driven from office because he failed to call for an early cease-fire— and thus force the one democracy in the Middle East to surrender to genocidal Islamic fascists.

Yet during this hate-fest against the Jewish state, there was not a peep of protest from the UK’s Jewish leadership. In private, they were wringing their hands; in public, not a ripple disturbed the glassy surface of communal complacency.

With such a torrent of lies and distortions crying out for rebuttal, such behaviour is simply astounding. In Israel, people were amazed and distressed by the silence of British Jews. In America, they simply could not believe it.

American Jews expected Britain to respond as they would have responded to such an assault upon the Jewish people: full page ads rebutting the lies, mailshots to MPs, questions in Parliament about the blatant manipulation of journalists by Hezbollah, protests by prominent community leaders, public rallies, articles placed in the press.

There was none of that. It was left instead to a few non-Jews, such as Freddie Forsyth, Julie Burchill or other voices of gentile conscience, to ask why the country had taken such comprehensive leave of its senses.

It’s shocking — but not surprising. It’s minhag anglia, the historic custom of the leaders of British Jewry, to be craven and servile, to be terrified of rocking the boat and drawing attention to the fact that they are different, that they are Jews.
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-Ali Kazemi investigates what's really going in Iran and asks whether Ahmadinejad has become the 21st century Ribbentrop.

Since taking over from his predecessor Mohammad Katami and becoming the president of Iran's Islamic republic a year ago, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has put on quiet a show.

* Denies that the Holocaust ever happened and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.
* Claims he was enveloped in a protective shield of light during a speech at the UN and an invisible hand kept the audience frozen in their seats.
* Declares: "And God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism."
* Writes a series of bizarre and rambling letters to the world leaders inviting them to convert to Islam.

Why is Ahmadinejad acting this way? Is he insane or does have his reasons? As important as those questions are we should first decide if his words and actions actually matter.

It may seem a superfluous question. Western media often call him the popularly elected President of Iran. That should vest him with the highest authority in Iran. But all this doesn't get it quite right.
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After knowing that the Iranian President has little actual authority or power, we might be tempted to dismiss him as irrelevant. That would be a mistake. His position is somewhat like the White House Spokesman. While he has no actual power, we should listen to him because he represents Iranian power. Again, Ahmadinejad was selected to represent and communicate the wishes of the Supreme Leader.

The moment Ahmadinejad stops following his orders, he would be dismissed. This is not just theory. By 1981 President Banisadre had become too much of a nuisance for the Supreme Leader and he was impeached. He barely escaped the country with his life. It is a clever system, which lets the Supreme Leader have all the power and at same time lay all the blame and responsibility on the President.

Before Ahmadinejad, when the Supreme Leader and his Guardian Council wanted to appear more moderate, they picked Mohammad Khatami and allowed him to become the President. But they never gave him any actual authority and kept him on a short leash regarding his actions.

Khatami projected the image of a reformer and a moderate who believed in dialogue. He performed his role admirably by speaking in platitudes and generalities such as the "Dialogue among the Civilizations". The reality of the Islamic republic during the 8 years of his presidency was very different.
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During Khatami's presidency, the Islamic Republic was also an international menace. Year after year the Iran was singled out as a leading state-sponsor of terrorism. Khatami publicly supported terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as helped fund, arm and train them throughout his presidency. Building of illegal clandestine sites for uranium enrichment continued during Khatami's Presidency.
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In February 1938 Hitler replaced his urbane and sophisticated foreign minister Konstantin Neurath with the bellicose and blunt Joachim von Ribbentrop. Neurath had bought Hitler time. But there was no longer a need for the respectability that Neurath brought to his government. Soon the Nazis annexed Austria to be followed by the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland and the start of WWII. Hitler had had his plans of world invasion for many years. Ribbentrop's appointment did not reflect any deviation in the nature of Nazism. It rather made it plainer for everyone to see.

Ahmadinejad does not represent any actual changes in the Islamic Republic's major policies. It was just that after eight years in office, the tension between the image of Khatami and the reality of the Islamic Republic became untenable. The charade had come to an end. That is why Ahmadinejad was selected. He is a more consistent and honest face for the Islamic Republic.

This is why Ahmadinejad really matters. In him, unlike his predecessor, we see the true nature of those in power. In his words, we clearly hear what they want. Without his predecessor's embellishment and polish we can no longer pretend that we are dealing with people who care about dialogues. They have plans and they are executing them. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE...

-Finally, World Jewish Congress discovered that a Muslim cleric,from the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization, is still accusing the Jews of having killed Jesus.

A controversial Muslim scholar claims that today's Jews are still responsible for the death of Jesus, the London "Jewish Chronicle" (JC) reports. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood – an extremist fundamentalist group barred in Egypt – told a Qatari television station: “Do the Jews… bear responsibility for the crimes committed by the Jews of the past? The principle is that they indeed bear responsibility for these crimes, as long as they do not renounce them. If they glorify and take pride in what their forefathers did, if they write about it, quote it, record it, and teach it to their children, and if they consider it to be part of their religion, they bear the responsibility. Therefore I say that the Jews of the 21st century adopt what the Jews of the first century did. They adopt what [their forefathers] did to Jesus, and so they bear responsibility for it, unless they renounce it, saying: ‘This was a crime, and we ask God to absolve us of it.’ But they have not said this, and therefore, the Jews of today bear responsibility for the deeds of the Jews of yesterday.” Qaradawi, regarded by London's mayor Ken Livingstone as the world’s most progressive Islamic theologian, was also quoted by the JC as saying: “In [the movie The Passion of the Christ], there is an important positive aspect. The positive aspect lies in its exposing the Jews’ crime of bringing Jesus to the crucifixion.”