How sickening that anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head once more. Regardless of political affiliations or beliefs, blaming a whole race or religion for the actions of a few is reprehensible.

And yet, under the heinous pretence of supporting the Palestinian cause and those dying in Gaza, anti-Semitism appears to be crawling out from the under the rock where it belongs.

The fighting has even led to anti-Semitism being vocalised within Israel, with chants of 'Death to the Arabs' and 'I hate all the Arabs' heard across the country. Yes - Arabs, like dozens of other Middle Eastern peoples who speak languages that share their roots with Hebrew, are Semites too.

...

The piece de resistance is the nonsensical accusation that those who criticise Israel are automatically guilty of anti-Judaism. The idea that to support Judaism is to support all aspects of the Israeli government has gone so far that Jewish people who break this rule are described by some as self-hating Jews.

If Israel is determined to keep on going along the path it has begun, then it should at least admit that it does not represent all Jews. One can condemn Israel’s actions and not be anti-Judaism or anti-Semitic.

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/middle-east/gaza/59746/anti-semitism-on-the-rise-not-just-sickening-but-misguided#ixzz39PI9jmJg

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Try to be a school kid in Gaza... And Israel declared itself a "Jewish State"...

Israeli Defence Force propaganda is being used in Australia to win the war on public opinion. Max Chamlers reports.

The Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) has adapted a propaganda campaign created by the Israeli Defence Force to depict Australian universities being bombarded by missiles, in an effort to win public support for Israel’s shelling and invasion of Gaza.

The ‘What Would You Do’ campaign includes a series of images of major universities around the county with green and red missiles cascading down on notable campus landmarks.

In one image, students lounge carefree on sunny lawns in front of the University of Sydney’s iconic quadrangle, apparently unaware that death is about to fain down upon them, courtesy of their cross-town rivals.

A headline asks students what they would do if such an attack took place. “Imagine: UNSW terrorists fired thousand of rockets at USyd,” the caption reads.

The images mimic a series recently distributed by the Israeli Defence Force which showed major foreign cities including London, Paris and Sydney coming under fire.

They also used the “What Would You Do” slogan.

According to AUJS’ website, the graphics are part of a campaign that will include the dissemination of posters and pamphlets on campuses, stalls, talks, and promotion via social media.

Palestinian Australian Fahad Ali, President of the University of Sydney branch of Students for Justice in Palestine, said he was amused when he saw the images.

“It’s just such an unintellectual attempt at manipulating public opinion… it’s kind of an insult to the intelligence of students,” he said.

Ali said the images were insensitive to those who had families living in Gaza, where over 1,400  have been killed and access to water and electricity has been cut off to most of the population.

It is estimated by the UN that around 80 per cent of the deaths have been civilian. Of the 59 Israelis killed so far, 56 of them were soldiers.

https://newmatilda.com/2014/08/02/oz-jewish-students-adapt-idf-propaganda-sway-home-opinion

see also:  blaming the brotherly conflict...

Israel has declared a seven-hour “humanitarian window” in Gaza to start at 10am local time (7amGMT) amid international outrage at the third deadly attack on a UN school sheltering displaced Palestinians and mounting pressure for the bloodshed to end.

The unilateral ceasefire is the eighth temporary pause in fighting, nearly all of which have broken down amid mutual accusations of violations.

The Israeli army has exempted the area around the southern town of Rafah, where the UN school was struck on Sunday and fighting was continuing. Troops were working on destroying a cross-border tunnel in the area.

Israeli army spokesman Peter Lerner said the Israel Defence Forces was close to completing its mission to destroy the network of tunnels leading into Israel. “We’ve caused substantial damage to this network to an extent where we’ve basically taken this huge threat and made it minimal,” he said.

Hamas said it did not trust Israel’s motives for declaring a unilateral ceasefire. “The calm Israel declared is unilateral and aims to divert attention away from the Israeli massacres. We do not trust such a calm and we urge our people to exercise caution,” said spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/04/israel-declares-truce-fighting-in-rafah

Author complains Gaza conflict is making her fat a week after paper described genocide as 'permissible'

In a blog post for the Times of Israel entitled "Does this war make me look fat?" author Rachel Weinstein describes how "war is bad for the waistline".

The American-Israeli author says she has gained weight during the conflict, which has killed almost 1,800 Palestinians, because the "war is stressful".

Weinstein, who lives in Beit Shemesh, an area largely unaffected by the current fighting, says she has been eating more during the conflict in order to "satiate the worry, the fear, and the reality that we are in".

She admits that her argument "sounds ridiculous" but says it is one affecting many of her friends in Israel. She also claimed that she was "unabashedly jealous" of people who could not eat during times of stress and were able to lose weight.

"I look forward to the day when this war is over, when missiles are no longer aimed at us", she writes, when she can look back and say "They tried to kill us, we won, LET'S EAT!"

The blog has caused outrage across social media, with users calling the article "insensitive", "shameful" and "disgusting".

In the face of troublingly muted international criticism of Israel's relentless recent assaults on the corralled civilian populace of Gaza, the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) managed to pass a resolution to launch a probe into possible Israeli human rights violations.

The move flags up growing disquiet even in quarters which otherwise loath to challenge Israel on its increasingly flagrant violations of international law and protocols of civilian protection in war zones. Hundreds of Palestinian children have died in recent days as schools and hospitals have been bombed. 

To the relief of many, India, which has maintained a so-called "neutral" stance in relation to the Gaza crisis, voted along with other non-European countries in favour of due enquiry. This minimal gesture created instant outrage in India's ruling Hindu nationalist circles, generally in favour of following the lead of the United States, the only nation to vote, predictably, against an UNHRC probe.

There is no doubt that the Indian vote alongside other BRICS countries appears anomalous in the light of India's markedly pro-Israel leanings of the last two decades. Yet it is unlikely to signal any change in an increasingly intimate bilateral relationship which includes trade worth over $6bn, with India constituting Israel's single largest arms buyer. 

On Twitter recently, the hashtag #IndiaWithIsrael opened up the floodgates for vast quantities of anti-Muslim invective urging patriotic Hindus to back the Jewish state, as it wiped out "the green menace'"(Islam) from its territory as India ought to as well. Influential right-wing pundits shouted that India's "pro-Palestine" vote was "disgraceful" since the nation's strategic interests lay in supporting Israel unconditionally.

Meanwhile, the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government was successful both in blocking a Rajya Sabha (upper house) motion censuring Israel's killing of civilians and in preventing the Lok Sabha (lower house) from voting on Gaza - after first attempting to suppress discussion altogether.

read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/08/india-forgotten-solidarity-with-p-2014848848765551.html

Tonight Media Watch was all about cartooning, commentariat and the Jewish question, especially related to the Mike Carlton kerfuffle after he wrote a scathing attack about Israeli action upon Gaza... Even the UN was scathing about the way Israel went boots and all in that conflict.... Media Watch's Paul Barry was carefully choosing his words (not offend the Jewish lobby) to say that Carlton had gone overboard when using some keywords (genocide et al) in his column illustrated by THAT cartoon by LeLievre in which an obvious hook nose and the star of David were found offensive.

The amazing thing is that the cartoonists (and writers) employed at News Limited are ultra-right wing and they get away with crap. I knew this for Warren, though I hoped Bill leak was still a cartoonist with a centre-left leaning... But he has sold out to Uncle Rupe. His cartoon of a Hamas fighter sending his kid to death fighting the Jews was beyond the pale. I personally would say far worse than the LeLievre cartoon based on ACTUAL photograph of a person of Jewish appearance watching the war from an armchair.

The Palestinians in Australia showed some mighty restraint in their condemnation of the Leak cartoon, while the Jewish lobby and their minion, the merde-och press hacks, attacked the Sydney Morning Herald for publishing what was a mild reality illustration. The SMH got weak at the knees and recanted...

If a cartoon does not offend someone, it misses its relevancy... But I find cartoons produced on behalf of the neo-right-wing fascists always puzzle me for their insincerity — and more often than not, their ignorance of the facts...

Please see also: blaming the brotherly conflict...

See also: a liar, an assassin and a dummy...

A 91-year-old Dutch man who was declared a Righteous Among the Nations for saving a Jew during the German occupation on Thursday returned his medal and certificate because six of his relatives were killed by an Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip last month.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/.premium-1.610682