The Garbanzo Annex

Continuing with the theme of debunking accusations that Israel imposes institutional racism and apartheid on the Arabs of the region is a story by the AFP on a senior Bedouin tracker in the Israeli army.

Lt.-Col. Magdi Mazarib, the highest ranking Israeli Bedouin army tracker, is featured in the story. He tells the news agency that compared with neighboring countries, the status and position of Arabs in Israel “is better…It’s a different league.”

When asked if, as a Muslim, he is bothered serving an overtly Jewish state, Mazarib responds, “The flag of England also has a cross on it, and the Jews there are fine with it.”

The article highlights the fact that, despite their Arab Muslim background, Mazarib and other Bedouin trackers are the “gatekeepers” of the Jewish state. It is they who guard against infiltration and who guide every Jewish-dominated military patrol defending the borders.

There are currently thousands of Israeli Bedouin serving in the IDF, and like Mazarib, they proudly lend their expertise and risk their lives to protect the Jewish state.

Interestingly, the AFP article was carried by the typically anti-Israel Saudi-owned news agency Al Arabiya, demonstrating that many Arabs around the region are fully aware that the claims of apartheid are nothing but a propaganda ploy.

Apr 25

Apr 24

Mahmud Hams/AFP/File

Egyptian Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi addresses Muslims at Al-Azhar mosque during the weekly Friday prayer in Cairo on December 28, 2012. Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi boycotted an inter-faith dialogue conference that opened in Doha on Tuesday, rejecting to sit in the meeting also attended by Jewish representatives, a local daily reported.

Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi boycotted an inter-faith dialogue conference that opened in Doha on Tuesday, rejecting to sit in the meeting also attended by Jewish representatives, a local daily reported.

“I decided not to participate so I wouldn’t sit at the same platform alongside Jews who still violate Palestine and destroy mosques and as long as the Palestinian issue has not been resolved,” Qaradawi told the Al-Arab daily of Qatar.

“There is no more injustice than what the Jews have caused to our people in Palestine.”

The International Union of Muslim Scholars which he heads is, however, represented at the conference which brings together 500 personalities from 75 countries representing the three monotheistic religions.

Egypt-born Qaradawi is a controversial religious figure in the West and has millions of supporters — mainly from the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

He hosts a popular show on Al-Jazeera satellite television and has backed the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria.

The Tsarnaev’s were showered with a huge amount of things. And did they like it? No they hated it. Hated the whole idea of the dirty, degenerate, corrupt West. They hated the idea and took the goodies without a thought. Despite this the mainstream culture is set to respond to their attack with more things. More drones, detectors, armored vehicles, barriers, restrictions, weapons, armor …. more items the list of which goes on and on. But omitted from the catalog of responses will be any campaign to mentally engage radical Islam — to debate against it, denounce it or render it uncool — because that would be bigoted.

It is often forgotten that Freedom of Speech means debate. It means patches on software, not paint on the equipment box. It means fixing the insubstantial. It means mental action. This is important because in the case of radical Islam Freedom of Speech has been redefined as the obligation to remain silent. That obligation has even been given a special term: it is called Tolerance. And no one seems to have noticed that Tolerance is essentially the opposite of Freedom of Speech. It means don’t program. Don’t unhack the hack. Do nothing. Pretend it’s all a joke. Watch the whole system melt down. Tolerance is a rejection of the manifest truth that information matters because it can cure or it can kill.

Apr 23

The willful failure of progressive Christians to see the Muslim world and the Palestinian leadership as motivated by a triumphalist Islamic ethos, which is intolerant towards the religious and political rights of Christians and Jews (dhimmis, or subjected people as seen by conquering Islam), and parenthetically ignores Palestinian terrorism and unwillingness to recognize or make peace with the Jewish State, reveals their deep seated prejudice, if not their latent anti-Semitism.

The Christians for Israel message of love and their biblical quest for peace in Jerusalem are uplifting. It constitutes an antithesis to the hostility displayed by the so-called progressive Christians and authors of the Kairos USA towards the Jewish State. This enmity is not accidental. Rather, it is borne out of the progressive Christians’ contempt for Jewish particularism, which is manifested in the State of Israel.

Apr 21

“I believe the window for a two-state solution is shutting. I think we have some period of time, a year, a year-and-a-half, or two years or it’s over.” US Secretary of State John Kerry to the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee 17 April 2013

Hope he is right that the window for a two-state solution is shutting. And the sooner the better.

Because having a sovereign Palestinian State in our living room is anything but the best option of a collection of bad options.

It would be incredibly dangerous for Israel and a source of tremendous instability for the entire neighborhood.

And when one considers just how challenging and unstable the region is these days, the very last thing we can afford is to do is implement a program based on declarations rather than solid arguments.

Mr. Kerry and his fellow travelers can proclaim a million times that the creation of a sovereign Palestinian State would best serve Israel’s security. But a silly remark made once or a billion times remains just that. A silly remark.

We can most certainly speculate about worse case outcomes if there isn’t a sovereign Palestinian State.

But when one compares an option with close to 100% of having disastrous results for the Jewish State to an array of possibilities — which include bad outcomes having relatively low probabilities of ever taking place — the choice is clear.

Mr. Kerry no doubt thought his remark would spur efforts to create a sovereign Palestinian State.

Instead there is great relief in the idea that Secretary of State Kerry suggests that if we can make it half way through President Obama’s second term that this two state solution nonsense will finally be behind us.

Apr 19

We have to wise up. Why have we not until now? Because we have forgotten common sense; unlearned the idea that to win means waging mental strife so that the sword can sleep in your hand. That we can’t fight the enemy by “law enforcement”. Why did we miss something so plain? Because it required the recovery of old idea: if you are trying to kill me then you are my enemy. And if you are my enemy I will fight you.

But we are so beyond that. We want to feel other people’s pain. We want to demonstrate how enlightened, tolerant and progressive we are. We want to do everything except face the facts. And that’s why we won’t ever stop having to drone people all over the map and hunt them down house to house.

The process of opposition stops when then enemy gives up trying to harm you. Then you have have what is called peace. And the world turns again. In the coming weeks the Internet will be deluged with long and involved tracts purporting to explain things. It will offer new perspectives, new insights, new … but perhaps that is not half so important as the need to remember the old things; and to unlumber the attics of our mind.

Apr 18

The University of Manitoba Students Union (UMSU) has become the first in North America to vote to ban Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) on campus and strip the group Students Against Israel Apartheid (SAIA) of official student group status.

The motion bars SAIA from receiving student union funding or using activity space in student-union controlled buildings and is a stunning setback for proponents of Israel Apartheid Week. The motion passed by secret ballot 19 to 15.

The motion is the brain child of Josh Morry, a student with savvy debating skills who is graduating this year form the Asper School of Business. The motion relies on UMSU Policy 2009 which states that “UMSU does not condone behaviour that is likely to undermine the dignity [or] self-esteem … of any of its members.” It further states that “UMSU is committed to an inclusive and respectful work and learning environment free from discrimination or harassment as prohibited in the Manitoba Human Rights Code (the “Code).”

Morry argued that by referring to Israel as an apartheid and racist state, SAIA essentially labels Jews, (the vast majority of whom identify with the state as Zionists), as well as students who are Israeli on campus as “racists,” which is likely to undermine their dignity.

“It’s like saying that Jews and Zionists are “Nazis,” Morry said in an interview, such that it is likely to make the average student on campus want to hate Jews, and make them objects of contempt. He says IAW discriminates against Zionists by brandishing them as automatically being “racists,” which is a form of discrimination and harassment.

Apr 17

I share the outrage of every American citizen with regard to the terrorism in Boston. We don’t know who did it…what group or lunatic or sleeper cell….let the FBI and CIA do the work and investigation.

I think of Israel whose towns and citizens have been subject to this type of carnage every single year of its 65 year history. Rockets from Gaza, bombs in buses, cafeterias, markets, hotels, celebrations…..endless terrorism.

Now, when the murderers who are responsible for the deadly explosions in Boston are apprehended, will anyone dare suggest that they get an independent state in the heartland of Massachusetts?

If taxes only concealed hidden costs of what we buy, we’d be lucky, but taxes are destructive in another hidden way. Suppose I want to hire you to repair my computer. Having the work done is worth $200 to me, and performing the work is worth $200 to you. The transaction occurs because we have a meeting of the minds. Suppose Congress imposes a 30 percent income tax on you. That means that if you repaired my computer, you would receive not $200, what it was worth to you to do the job, but instead $140 after taxes. You might say the heck with repairing my computer; spending time with your family is worth more than $140.

You might then offer that you’d do the job if I paid you $283. That way, your after-tax earnings would be $200 — what doing the job is worth to you. There’s a problem. The repair job was worth $200 to me, not $283. So it’s my turn to say the heck with it.

Apr 15

Blacks have known about Carson for years. I gave his book, “Gifted Hands,” to my daughters to read when they were little girls. A highly acclaimed made-for-TV movie about his life aired in 2009, with Carson played by Oscar-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr.

But this story of personal responsibility, hard work and traditional values is becoming a political story. It is becoming political because Ben Carson’s American dream story, according to the liberal script, is not supposed to work for blacks.

Carson is the biggest threat to liberals since Bill Cosby got out of line at an NAACP banquet in 2004 in Washington, D.C.

Cosby had the temerity to deliver tough, critical talk about what too many blacks are doing with the freedom that civil rights activists of the 1960’s fought to achieve.

He contrasted the Sixties generation with the new generation of black youths sitting in jail: “These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake.”

Cosby attributed the chaos to a breakdown in values, family and personal responsibility. It’s the last thing the NAACP crowd wanted to hear that night and Cosby paid a price. He was vilified and marginalized until he backed off.

Liberals never take on what black conservatives actually say because they can’t. So the attacks become personal.

Trillions of tax dollars have been poured into black communities over the last half-century, producing virtually no change in the incidence of black poverty.

Yet, Carson, through diligence and traditional values, achieved on his own what those trillions of dollars of government programs were supposed to deliver.

Apr 14

The travesty that is the anti-Israel ‘Human Rights Industry’ encompasses varied entities, ranging from full-fledged terror-apologist (or terror-supporting?) organisations like the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and the Free Gaza Movement to individual career-propagandists in the guise of “Peace-Activists.”

There is now a complete overlap in the motives and the means of this industry which is a sister-concern of the well-oiled Pallywood propaganda machine. Rightfully so, I refer to anyone subscribing to extremist anti-Israel propaganda as a “Pallywooder.”

These Pallywooders are dedicated to anti-normalization with Israel; support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement; and claim to be dedicated to the cause of ‘seeking justice’ for Arabs living under Israeli rule. They say that International Law is on their side.

They are bold, audacious, energetic (often thuggish) and not time-constrained, however, decibel levels and a perennial Facebook/Twitter presence shouldn’t be misinterpreted for achievement or potential by Israel’s defenders.

Devoid of logic, their selectivite renderings of legalities and purposeful obfuscation of facts are packed to the brim with the silliest of contradictions. Their purposeful misrepresentations are brutally self-defeating and can be easily dismissed. This leaves a lot for us, in the pro-Israel community, to be ecstatic about.

On here, I intend to demystify precisely the ludicrous contradictions and logical fallacies employed by Pallywooders, and create a ready-reckoner for their cleverly encrypted propaganda.