And as for outrage about the situation in Gaza, she should read Comment is Free on Guardian Online where every variation on that theme is regularly played out, including by Hamas activist and suicide terror supporter Azzam (”I would if I could”) Tamimi, and various useful idiots.

Judging by what I read today on ENGAGE, Gaza is doomed anyway, regardless of what Israel may or may not do, since the population is stuck with “democratically elected” Hamas, which has outlawed Fatah.

It is actually Yasmin Alibhai-Brown who is warning “non Jews” like Lorna Fitzsimons not to side with Israel or they will be attacked by people like her.

I wonder if Lorna Fitzsimons replied somewhere to this vicious attack.

“Did Britain Just Sell Tibet?”
By ROBERT BARNETT

“THE financial crisis is going to do more than increase unemployment, bankruptcy and homelessness. It is also likely to reshape international alignments, sometimes in ways that we would not expect.

As Western powers struggle with the huge scale of the measures needed to revive their economies, they have turned increasingly to China. Last month, for example, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, asked China to give money to the International Monetary Fund, in return for which Beijing would expect an increase in its voting share.

Now there is speculation that a trade-off for this arrangement involved a major shift in the British position on Tibet, whose leading representatives in exile this weekend called on their leader, the Dalai Lama, to stop sending envoys to Beijing — bringing the faltering talks between China and the exiles to a standstill.

The exiles’ decision followed an announcement on Oct. 29 by David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, that after almost a century of recognizing Tibet as an autonomous entity, Britain had changed its mind. Mr. Miliband said that Britain had decided to recognize Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China. He even apologized that Britain had not done so earlier…”

Read the whole article here

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/opinion/25barnett.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

Anyone for boycotting British Universities?

Will the British UCU boycott itself?

If this were the case, does it also mean that any supporter of the Palestinian cause must be in some way an “Arab, a Muslim” or in the pay of people who are?

Again, it is interesting that antisemite make claims of “underhanded Jewish influence” being the cause of support for Israel but never make the claim that underhanded Arab or Muslim influence is the cause of support for the Arab cause?

It’s hard to decide if antisemitism makes people stupid or if stupid people gravitate towards antisemitism. In any case there is certainly a correlation if not a cause between these two states of mind.

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2008/07/barack-obama-and-the-jewish-tailors.html

Saul says: “Apparently for many of those who dislike Israel, the fact that one can support Israel publically and yet not be Jewish is beyond their comprehension.”

Norm Geras pointed to such a twisted view of Israel’s case in his July 24 blogpost, commenting on a Guardian’s leading editorial which claimed:

“When a presumptive US presidential candidate arrives in Jerusalem, he willingly dons a jacket designed by Israeli tailors. He is compelled to call the country a miracle, to visit the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem and to link the memory of the 6 million Jews who died in Europe to Israeli victims of Palestinian violence today.”

He called it “foul stuff”:

“Is there anything wrong with a visitor to Israel paying his respects at Yad Vashem to the memory of several million dead?”

Moreover:

” But notice something else in the general presentation here: though Obama dons the jacket ‘willingly’, it seems that he is ‘compelled’ to do the things he does - to say miracle, visit Yad Vashem, make the lamented link. Really? We are to believe, for example, that he would not have gone to Yad Vashem just on his own steam? How does the Guardian know this? We are to believe that the Israelis have a way of getting visiting politicians to do what they otherwise mightn’t? Being Jews, they’ll have the knack for that, I suppose.”

It’s as if there is something counter-intuitive about a person’s position when it does not quite align itself with the sentiments of Alibhai-Brown. It seems unnatural to her that anybody would choose, upon reflection and free will, to speak up for Israel. The most disturbing feature in her rhetoric is the complete absence of critical self-awareness when it comes to putting forth these astonishing suspicions.

Apparently for many of those who dislike Israel, the fact that one can support Israel publically and yet not be Jewish is beyond their comprehension. After all, for them, the questions of Israel and Palestine are reducible to “identity”, “race”, Jewish psyches” etc. and never about politics.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is by no means the first one.

My favorite example thus far is GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT writing for the NY Times said this:

“Not only does Judt lament that the United States has suffered a catastrophic loss of international influence in recent years, thanks to “self-defeating and even irrational” conduct, in the Middle East above all; he says that the reflexive charge of anti-Semitism against critics of Israel, and of the American alliance with Israel, must ultimately be “bad for Jews — since it means that genuine anti-Semitism may also in time cease to be taken seriously, thanks to the Israel lobby’s abuse of the term.” Anyone who writes on this subject is asking for trouble (à qui …), and Judt’s notably brave and forthright essays have brought him much obloquy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/books/review/Wheatcroft-t.html?ref=books&pagewanted=print

The “obloquy” he mentions is a couple of critiques by some writers in The New Republic”

Israel haters claim the right to attack Israel but when someone criticizes them they claim that they are being censored.

Wheatcroft’s “(à qui …)” is classic. I’d like him to point out one attack of Israel by him had been rejected by a major newspaper.

Same with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown!