Israeli news and conflicts

I was beginning to think I would never see this happen but here it is and in Sweden of all places: Muslims being attacked by another (non-Jewish) minority group, in this case Assyrians.
.
This situation is taking place in Södertälje. The town in question is about 30% Christian Assyrian who have been living there for decades and in recent years, Iraqi Muslims have moved to the area. These Muslims are now being hounded, insulted and even attacked on the streets.
.
Some of the reported insults included ‘Muslim bastards,’ ‘fucking Muhammed and bin Laden’ and ‘You cause problems everywhere.’ Attacks have included being egged, a tear gas cannister thrown at a home and having a laser pointed at people in an act of intimidation.
.
Some of the Muslims interviewed said they tried to reason with their tormentors by saying that most Muslims are not fundamentalists, but to no avail.
.
Do these same Mulsims know that Jews in Malmö can’t walk the streets in any clothing that gives away who they are for fear of attack from local Muslims? And guess what? Explaining that all Jews are not members of the Israeli Army or even citizens of Israel has no effect. They get attacked anyway. Why is that? Because very many Muslims believe ALL Jews are the enemy no matter where they live or what they have or have not done.
.
In some ways, I feel sorry for these persecuted Muslims in Södertälje because the pressure is so great that several families have already moved out of the area and more will almost certainly follow. However, the Muslim community at large has to realize that they have brought this problem on themselves. THEY are intolerant. THEY attack Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists all over the world. Minorities in virtually every Muslim country on the planet have to live in fear.
.
Now that fear has been turned against the Muslims in this one small place. If they don’t like it, then perhaps they should look at ways to improve Islam’s image. Maybe they should do things like protest all the Muslim outrages in the world instead of cheering them on or remaining silent (which is another, less obvious, form of approval). Only then can they expect some respect in return. Until they take such measures, the Muslims of Södertälje can expect more of the same.

My oh my, how people change. The Mail Online has published an article, complete with pictures, of hate preacher Anjem Choudary’s interesting past. Today he sports a beard and spouts off troubling nonsense such as Britain coming totally under Sharia law, punishing people who get drunk with 40 lashes, death for adultry, etc.
.
However, that was not the Anjem of past days. It seems like strict Islam was too much for poor ‘Andy’ as he did all the things he now condemns other Brits for today. In fact, according to the article, some of Choudary’s former friends laugh because good old self-righteous Andy would have been whipped and executed many times over for his past behavior. It seems Mr. Uber-Muslim was partial to beer, cider, pot, LSD and lots and lots of girls. But now that he is all grown up, he wants no one else to enjoy the same things he did in his youth (I can’t fault him regarding pot and LSD, though).
.
Hey, Andy. Do you know what the word hypocrite is?
.
See the before and after pictures below and judge this hate-filled, holier-than-thou ‘preacher’ for yourself.
.

.

.

.

The Sun reports that one of the 15 Muslim fanatical assholes who were out in Luton yelling abuse at the 200 fine young soldiers of the Royal Anglians during their homecoming parade.
.
The unit of Royal Anglians was stationed in and around Basra, in Iraq. 6000 people turned out to welcome them home, but among such a large crowd was a very vocal, though tiny group of Muslims who screamed out such things as ‘baby killers, butchers and cowards’ among other things.
.
Some of these jerks have been identified and one, Jalal Ahmed, was suspended from his job. It turns out that Jalal is a baggage handler at the local airport and has access to the security-sensitive parts of the airport. He does not have a full-time contract, but a zero-hour agreement instead. Yesterday, Senior Asshole was told not to come to work for a few days ‘for his own safety.’
.
I can only applaud this decision. This guy is not only an ungrateful fool, he is the very coward he accuses the British soldiers of being. Why is he in the UK enjoying a good, peaceful life instead of in Afghanistan or Iraq on jihad? Doesn’t Jalal want to please Allah and get his 72 virgins at the same time?
.
Another piece of refuse that somehow washed up on Britain’s shore is Abu Abdullah, an IT consultant who claims to head a group called Muslims Against British Atrocities and wants the UK to one day be ruled by Sharia law. He has links to firebrand Islamic leader Anjem Choudary, who himself is the right hand man of banned hate preacher Omar Bakri.
.
Yesterday, Abu said, ‘I’ve been living in Britain most of my life but I don’t consider myself British. I don’t want to be associated with Britain. One day Britain will be liberated from capitalism and democracy and will be living under Sharia.’
.
Since Abu does not consider himself British and doesn’t want to be associated with Britain, then why doesn’t he do himself and the British people a big favour and buy a one-way ticket to some Muslim country where he will feel more at home? Pakistan sounds about right for this jerk.
.
Better yet, why don’t the Brits deport this guy along with his buddies, or at least put them in jail? I am sure a little investigating will turn up some information that can be used to get rid of this cell before they get too dangerous.
.
I would love to be able to say: Sayonara assholes and good riddance.

.
A Coptic Christian in Egypt was murdered in public by a Muslim man over a rumor. Copt Shihata Sabri was said to be having a relationship with the sister of a Muslim named Yasser Ahmed Qasim. In more normal parts of the world, Yasser would have a word with Shihata or even a fistfight, but not on the Muslim side of the planet. No, Yasser decided to do things the Islamic way and settled the supposed issue with gasoline and a match, killing Shihata in one of the most horrific ways possible.
.
As bad as that action was, the situation got worse. When Shihata’s father arrived on the scene, a Muslim mob attacked with knives and daggers, stabbing him to death. Shitata’s brother was then found and beaten but he is still alive. The violence ended when security forces arrived and arrested the criminals, charging them with deliberate homicide.
.
This terrible crime took place in the village of Dmas, which has 1000 Copts and roughly 59,000 Muslims. A local Muslim villager was quoted as saying that this was an ‘honor killing’ based on the victim’s supposed teasing of the murderer over the alleged relationship with his sister. He claimed the crimes will have no effect on the relations between the Copt and Muslim communities in the village.
.
I don’t know how this Muslim Einstein figures that. This wasn’t just about a guy avenging the so-called honor of his sister; the Muslim community participated in the killing of the father and the beating of the brother. I am willing to bet that life will never be the same now that these crimes have taken place. The Copt community is horrified and outraged, the Muslims are in justification mode and they will soon get pissed off when Yasser and his other soon-to-be fresh meat are sent to prison to suffer the tender mercies of much bigger and tougher buys than themselves.
.
Since Muslims like honor killing so much, I would like to see some of it going the other way. Maybe some Copts will avenge poor Shihata and his father. Gasoline would be a good choice of weapon, if just to make a point, but in the end anything will do. The Muslims should understand that vengeance is a two-way street, but somehow, I believe such realization is beyond them.

.
Here is an article from The International Herald Tribune. It states that definitive proof has been unearthed that proves what everyone else in the world except nationalistic, xenophobic Turks know is true: that the Ottoman Turks committed genocide against its native Armenian minority (in addition to the genocides against the Pontic Greeks and Assyrians).
.
How did they ‘lose’ almost a million people? The Turkish explanation for what happened to the Armenians is not only insults the intelligence of any normally-thinking person, but is idiotic on the face of it. Perhaps a million Turks should be lost the same way (hint, hint Germany) and see what they think about it.
.
This is almost as good as the Turks calling on Israel to stop occupying Palestinian territory while they are simultaneously illegally occupying northern Cyprus. But then again, hypocrisy is something Turks don’t seem to be afraid of.
.
Are there any Turks out there who want to try to refute this?
.
.
For Turkey, the number should have been a bombshell.
.
According to a long-hidden document that belonged to the interior minister of the Ottoman Empire, 972,000 Ottoman Armenians disappeared from official population records from 1915 through 1916.
.
In Turkey, any discussion of what happened to the Ottoman Armenians can bring a storm of public outrage. But since its publication in a book in January, the number - and its Ottoman source - has gone virtually unmentioned. Newspapers hardly wrote about it. Television shows have not discussed it.
.
“Nothing,” said Murat Bardakci, the Turkish author and columnist who compiled the book.
.
The silence can mean only one thing, he said: “My numbers are too high for ordinary people. Maybe people aren’t ready to talk about it yet.”
.
Today in Europe
A ‘new’ Shakespeare comes to lightIn killing of policeman, memories of the TroublesThe factory’s closed, but the workers keep showing upFor generations, most Turks knew nothing of the details of the Armenian genocide from 1915 to 1918, when more than a million Armenians were killed as the Ottoman Turk government purged the population.
.
Turkey locked the ugliest parts of its past out of sight, Soviet-style, keeping any mention of the events out of schoolbooks and official narratives in an aggressive campaign of forgetting.
.
But in the past 10 years, as civil society has flourished here, some parts of Turkish society are now openly questioning the state’s version of events. In December, a group of intellectuals circulated a petition that apologized for the denial of the massacres. Some 29,000 people have signed it.
.
With his book, “The Remaining Documents of Talat Pasha,” Bardakci (pronounced bard-AK-chuh) has become, rather unwillingly, part of this ferment. The book is a collection of documents and records that once belonged to Mehmed Talat, known as Talat Pasha, the primary architect of the Armenian deportations.
.
The documents, given to Bardakci by Talat’s widow, Hayriye, before she died in 1983, include lists of population figures. Before 1915, 1,256,000 Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire, according to the documents. The number plunged to 284,157 two years later, Bardakci said.
.
To the untrained ear, it is simply a sad statistic. But anyone familiar with the issue knows the numbers are in fierce dispute.
.
Turkey has never acknowledged a specific number of deportees or deaths. On Sunday, the Turkish foreign minister, Ali Babacan, warned that President Barack Obama might set back relations if he recognized the massacre of Armenians as genocide ahead of his visit to Turkey next month.
.
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire was bloody, the Turkish argument goes, and those who died were victims of that chaos.
.
Bardakci subscribes to that view. The figures, he said, do not indicate the number of dead, only the result of the decline in the Armenian population after deportation. He strongly disagrees that the massacres amounted to a genocide, and says that Turkey was obliged to take action against Armenians because they were openly supporting Russia in its war against the Ottoman Empire.
.
“It was not a Nazi policy or a Holocaust,” he said. “These were very dark times. It was a very difficult decision. But deportation was the outcome of some very bloody events. It was necessary for the government to deport the Armenian population.”
.
This argument is rejected by most scholars, who believe that the small number of Armenian rebels were not a serious threat to the Ottoman Empire, and that the policy was more the product of the perception that the Armenians, non-Muslims and therefore considered untrustworthy, were a problem population.
.
Hilmar Kaiser, a historian and expert on the Armenian genocide, said the records published in the book were conclusive proof from the Ottoman authority itself that it had pursued a calculated policy to eliminate the Armenians. “You have suddenly on one page confirmation of the numbers,” he said. “It was like someone hit you over the head with a club.”
.
Kaiser said the before-and-after figures amounted to “a death record.”
.
“There is no other way of viewing this document,” he said. “You can’t just hide a million people.”
.
Other scholars said that the number is a useful addition to the historical record but that it does not introduce a new version of events.
.
“This corroborates what we already knew,” said Donald Bloxham, the author of “The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians.”
.
Bardakci is a history buff who learned to read and write Ottoman script from his grandmother, allowing him to navigate Turkey’s written past, something that most Turks are unable to do. He plays the tanbur, a traditional string instrument. His grandfather was a member of the same political party as Talat, and his family knew many of the important political figures in Turkey’s founding.
.
“We had a huge library at home,” he said. “They were always talking about history and the past.” Though Bardacki clearly wanted the numbers to be known, he stubbornly refuses to interpret them. He offers no analysis in the book, and aside from an interview with Talat’s widow, there is virtually no text beside the original documents.
.
“I didn’t want to interpret,” he said. “I want the reader to decide.”
.
The best way to do that, he argues, is by using cold, hard facts, which can cut through the layers of emotional rhetoric that have clouded the issue for years.
.
“I believe we need documents in Turkey,” he said. “This is the most important.”
.
But some of the keenest observers of Turkish society said the silence was a sign of just how taboo the topic still is. “The importance of the book is obvious from the fact that no paper except Milliyet has written a single line about it,” wrote Murat Belge, a Turkish academic, in a January column in the liberal daily newspaper Taraf.
.
Still, it is a measure of Turkey’s democratic maturity that the book was published here at all. Bardakci said he had held the documents for so long - 27 years - because he was waiting for Turkey to reach the point when their publication would not cause a frenzy.
.
Even now, the state feels the need to defend itself. Last summer, a propaganda film about the Armenians made by the Turkish military was distributed to primary schools. After a public outcry, it was stopped.
.
“I could never have published this book 10 years ago,” Bardakci said. “I would have been called a traitor.”
.
He added, “The mentality has changed.”

.

.

.
I am happy that an event like this has finally taken place in London. Do you know what makes this very different from the recent pro-Palestinian demonstrations? No one was attacking the police, trashing Starbuck’s premises or molesting other members of the public. It is refreshing.

.
Watch and judge for yourself. What do you think?

.
6000 pro-Palestinian protestors turned up for the Israeli-Swedish Davis Cup match in Malmö to protest Israel’s recent overwhelming victory in Gaza. This group was largely peaceful. However, a group of 200-300 masked individuals decided to spark things up. They attacked police with eggs, stones, fireworks and paint bombs. The 1000 police present beat them back with truncheons and arrested at least 10 (as of the time of writing). These people were part of the ‘Stop the Match’ movement and they were trying to break through the barriers the police had set up around the stadium to disrupt the event.
.
So far, the Swedish police have taken these threats quite seriously and seem to have carried out their responsibilities effectively. In the days leading up to the match, they removed stones and other objects from the area around the stadium in an attempt to take away ammunition from potential trouble makers and they kept a helicopter escort on hand in case of real trouble.
.
Good job, Sweden, with keeping these hooligans under control. Now they have to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law to discourage further similar attempts. Sweden’s international reputation is at stake here. If the protesters had managed to break into the stadium and disrupted the match on world-wide TV, Sweden would need years to get over the black eye they would have been caused in front of the entire planet.
.
The only negative thing I see in this whole story is how again some people are trying to politicize international sporting events. This is tennis and it has nothing to do with the Gaza War or any other political issue. Do Palestinians agree that all Muslim athletes should be similarly harassed because of all the Muslim terrorist incidents that are happening around the world on a literally daily basis? I think not. Be careful what you wish for, Muslims. You may actually get it in spades.

On 29 August 2008, the Jerusalem String Quartet gave a performance in Edinburgh’s Queen Hall. During the show, four members of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) - a radical offshoot of the London-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign fringe group - interrupted the concert by shouting abuse at the musicians and audience.
.
The fearsome foursome was originally charged with disturbing the peace but that charge has been upgraded to the more serious ‘racially motivated conduct.’ This seems totally fair because they were not just disturbing any performance: They specifically targeted a Jewish one to make a political point.
.
Speaking to the Edinburgh Evening News, Sofia Macleod, secretary of the SPSC and one of those charged, said: ‘We think it’s totally ridiculous. Our actions and campaigning are based on international human right. We take the allegations seriously, but there is no question whatsoever that any of our actions are racist in any way.’
.
Oh, really? Then why did you target a group of Jewish musicians who have no ties to the military, who did not participate in any way in the recent Gaza campaign, and who are merely artists performing their art? Answer that. If you still think that what you did is correct, then you will surely agree with any pro-Israel group can harass any other Palestinian group no matter how peaceful and non-political they are. This sword cuts both ways.
.
I am very pleased that the Scottish authorities are taking this incident with the seriousness it deserves. The Palestinians and their apologist supporters (They never seem to have an answer for why the Palestinians have fired over 6000 missiles at Israel in the past few years and why they refuse to recognize the State of Israel.) have to be made to understand that politics is politics and art, sport and other non-political fields are outside of the political realm. If they are not stopped now, soon we will see them trying to interfere with the various World Cups and the Olympics.
.
I don’t know what the penalty for racially motivated conduct in Scotland is, but I hope the judges throw the book at the defendants. They need to be taught a serious lesson that will also deter other future ‘activists’ from similar actions. Let them all rot in jail for a while.