No surprise there, then

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Neil Clark: Zionists for the BBC!
My wife Zsuzsanna and I discussed last night how many comment pieces from Zionists lauding the BBC's decision not to screen the Gaza appeal would be published in Monday's daily newspapers. We both agreed that it was long odds-on that The Times would publish such a piece and both agreed that Janet Daley would use her Monday column in the Daily Telegraph to argue that the BBC was right. And we both thought it was the biggest certainty of all time that Melanie Phillips would do likewise in her Daily Mail column.

And lo and behold, what do we have...
And Lenin reminds us:
'Not many people know this, but Mark (Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC) is actually a deeply religious man. He's a Catholic, but his wife is Jewish, and he has a far greater regard for the Israeli cause than some of his predecessors.'"

Carry on as before?

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Campaign For Liberty — Obama's War
The new president fired missiles into Pakistan, killing at least fifteen people. The locals say three children were killed. Obama's White House, advertised as the most transparent in US history, has no comment. Less than a week into his presidency, and he's already ordering bombings. Thanks to Antiwar.com for the links.

The Democrats and Obama have long emphasized Afghanistan and Pakistan as the central front of the war on terror, appropriating Bush rhetoric and bellicosity with just a change in scenery. But just as none of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi, none were Afghani or Pakistani either.

Mistakes or just plain lies?

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Seton Hall Law: Department of Defense Wrong Again on Guantanamo “Recidivism”
The Seton Hall Center for Policy and Research has issued a report which rebuts and debunks the most recent claim by the Department of Defense (DOD) that “61, in all, former Guantánamo detainees are confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight.”

Professor Denbeaux of the Center for Policy & Research has said that the Center has determined that “DOD has issued 'recidivism' numbers 43 times, and each time they have been wrong—this last time the most egregiously so.”



Denbeaux stated: “Once again, they’ve failed to identify names, numbers, dates, times, places, or acts upon which their report relies. Every time they have been required to identify the parties, the DOD has been forced to retract their false IDs and their numbers. They have included people who have never even set foot in Guantánamo—much less were they released from there.

Shell Israel Update

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Check out my Gaza coverage at Shell Israel!



Mohammad Shaqoura, 9, was killed by Israeli shelling at the UN school in Jabaliya on 6 January. He was playing marbles in the street outside with his friends in the middle of the afternoon. “I went to help the injured. I didn’t realise Mohammad was one of them,” said his father Basim, 40. “I try to talk about him as much as possible with my other children. But it’s hard for them to understand.”


The Iron Wall

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Another War, Another Defeat
The campaign in Gaza is said to have two objectives: 1) to put an end to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians have been firing into southern Israel since it withdrew from Gaza in August 2005; 2) to restore Israel’s deterrent, which was said to be diminished by the Lebanon fiasco, by Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and by its inability to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

But these are not the real goals of Operation Cast Lead. The actual purpose is connected to Israel’s long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a “Greater Israel.” Specifically, Israel’s leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement between them, the air above and the water below them.

The key to achieving this is to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future. This strategy, which was first articulated by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s and has heavily influenced Israeli policy since 1948, is commonly referred to as the “Iron Wall.”

What has been happening in Gaza is fully consistent with this strategy.

"Land of Israel"

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Excellent post at Lenin's Tomb:

Outposts of civilization
Israeli supremacy is taken as proof of its intellectual, cultural and moral superiority. This has always been a mainstay of Zionist colonial ideology: Palestinian Arabs were seen as a negligent, backward race of peasants who had failed to properly develop the land, and therefore must give way to their sophisticated European overlords who, with all the grandiose pretensions of Paul Bert wooing the natives of Annam and Tonkin, entreated locals to see the colonization as a civilizing mission...

According to Abba Eban's contemptible maxim, they "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". Palestinian attempts to resist the usurpation of their land and resources are in this light irrational acts of aggression.
Read the whole thing.

Have I missed something here?

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BBC NEWS: Rockets threaten Gaza ceasefire
A unilateral Israeli ceasefire takes effect in Gaza but a fresh volley of rockets fired by militants triggers an Israeli air strike.

At least four out of seven rockets landed near the town of Sderot, with no reports of injuries. Israel launched an air strike on Gaza in response.

The exchange puts an immediate strain on the ceasefire, which followed three weeks of fighting.


Let's see. Israel invades and bombards Gaza for three weeks then decides, for obvious political reasons to lay off for a bit, calling it a 'ceasefire'. The invaded continue with their puny efforts at retaliation and Israel responds by attacking them with jets once again. Explain to me in what way this can be called a 'ceasefire'.
Israel says it will not set a timetable for withdrawing its troops, but Hamas said it would not accept any Israeli presence in Gaza.

"We can't talk about a timetable for withdrawal until we know the ceasefire is holding," said the Israeli prime minister's spokesman, Mark Regev.

"If there is a danger Hamas is going to deliberately torpedo the ceasefire, and we will have to reinitiate offensive actions against Hamas, for that reason we have to be reticent about withdrawing our forces," he said.

The stopping of rocket-fire had been a chief aim of the military campaign.


The stopping of rocket-fire had been a chief aim of the military campaign. Has it? Once again the BBC peddles the Zionist line without demur, as it has done though most of its disreputable reporting of these events.

Shame on the BBC.