The Self-Contradictory Liberals

by Guest Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:44 pm

Many liberals -- not least the large numbers of students involved in campus demonizations of Israel, Jews, white people and other supposed public enemies -- are morally and politically confused, not to say profoundly selective and bigoted, often in direct contradiction to their own expressed principles of peace, tolerance, diversity, and multiculturalism.
These liberals repeatedly contradict their own ideals, not least when it comes to free speech, Israel, the Middle East, Islam, and the rights of Muslim women. Many self-declared liberals behave much as did the Nazis of the early years of the Third Reich.
It would appear that, whatever Israelis and their government do may be dismissed as mere "whitewashing" to cover Israel's original "sin" of being Jewish.
Using an abusive form of political correctness and insisting on an absolutist version of multiculturalism, many devotees of liberalism often betray the ideals for which earlier human rights activists, feminists, anti-racists, and freedom fighters fought and even gave their lives.
Amnesty International, a left-wing non-governmental organization (NGO) put its pro-Muslim politics above women's rights -- a remarkable step for the world's best-known human rights agency.

It is no secret that politicians on both the "right" and "left" lie, dissemble, equivocate, misrepresent, misinform, falsify, whitewash and cover up. Not even the noble and honest Cicero was immune to fudging and shifting sides. It is the nature of politics. For much of the time we put up with it until it grows so far-fetched, we can no longer shut our eyes and let ourselves be lulled into further acquiescence. We all put up with this, do our best to spot the lies, or rely on investigative journalists to dig beneath the surface of what governments claim or their opponents hide. But something strange has been happening to people calling themselves liberals. (Note: The term "liberal" differs enormously between the U.S. and the UK. Americans use it to describe anyone from the Democratic Party through to those even farther to the left. But the British use it for people from the political centre towards the right, and it has no connotations of far left extremism. It is used here in the American sense.) The far left -- the Marxists, Trotskyites etc. -- the campus extremists, even the new leadership of Britain's Labour Party have started to contradicting their own ideals, not least when it comes to free speech, Israel, the Middle East, Islam, and the rights of Muslim women.

All sides of the political spectrum share many ideals in their original form: advocacy of human rights, equal justice under the law; the rights of racial and religious minorities, homosexuals, workers, women. They also share an opposition to racism, anti-Semitism, fascism, and religious fundamentalism. These are ideals in any democratic nation -- views demonstrated by modern legislation across a host of democratic parliaments. But many liberals appear to distort all this. They take extreme positions, guided by three linked but often confused issues: political correctness, cultural relativism and moral relativism. There seems to be a deep-seated belief, not only that all cultures possess and practice different values (the original premise of neutral cultural relativism in anthropology); or that, God forbid!, Western values are better than non-Western ones. Many liberals appear, instead, to think, that non-Western values are better or certainly no worse, than Western ones. The idea that Western states, heirs to imperialism and still practitioners of indirect colonialism, have imposed their values on the rest of the world, makes the values of the "victim" -- the "oppressed" and the "occupied" -- superior to those of the West. But it is precisely Western values and laws that have been responsible for the very concept of human rights, for efforts to free former colonies, to bring aid to Third World countries, to grant rights to minorities, to introduce high-quality education, to advocate for women's rights, and more.

No other former imperialists, not least those of the many Muslim empires throughout history, have acted in this way towards the subjects of their former colonies. Unfortunately, many self-proclaimed liberals have responded to this commitment to human rights by charging the West with some form of original sin requiring Europeans and Americans to carry a heavy weight of guilt (as documented so well by the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner in books such as The Tyranny of Guilt). One of the greatest examples of the excessive focus on the West is universal condemnation of the transatlantic slave trade, supposedly divorced from the Muslim/Arab slave trades, which continues without protest from these liberals in some places to this day. This, even though the Islamic trade was larger and longer-lasting than the Western one. Mauritania today holds anti-slavery protestors in prison, despite slavery there having been outlawed since 1981.
It is not hard to see why so many liberals– not least the large numbers of students involved in campus demonizations of Israel, Jews, whites and other supposed public enemies -- are morally and politically confused, not to say profoundly selective and bigoted, in direct contradiction to their own expressed principles of peace, toleration, diversity, and multiculturalism.

If this sounds a little abstract, here are some examples to show this confusion at its worst.
As a telling example of hypocritical behaviour, for many years now, a range of LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgenders) organizations have campaigned against the state of Israel. They have marched, carrying rainbow banners, alongside far-left extremists and far-right Muslims, shouting abuse against Israel and calling for an end to the "occupation" of the West Bank.
The annual National Conference on LGBT Equality, Creating Change, is an event held by the US National LGBTQ Task Force, based in Washington D.C., one of the most important bodies in the struggle for gay rights. The 2016 Creating Change conference was held in the Hilton Chicago between 20 and 24 of January. Writing about this event, leading human rights and pro-LGBT activist and lawyer Melanie Nathan declared that, "This week will go down in history as one of the saddest and most destructive, ever, in the lives of LGBTQ Jews. We became the target of antisemitism disguised as protesting alleged 'Israeli oppression.' Anyone who truly understands the history, the context and milieu will clearly access the bottom line and that came in the form of the chant that served to helm the onslaught by LGBTQ protesters at the Creating Change 2016 Conference, who yelled: 'Palestine will be free from the river to the sea'." As is well known, the river is the Jordan and the sea is the Mediterranean, meaning that Israel will be replaced by a large Palestinian state from which Jews will have been ethnically cleansed.

A pro-Israel LGBT organization, A Wider Bridge, had planned to host an all-inclusive Shabbat reception on Friday 22^nd, with the aim of introducing delegates to visiting Israeli LGBT guests. On the 18^th, however, conference organizers caved in to anti-Israel demands and banned the reception. Many people strongly objected to this divisive move; on the following day the banning decision was reversed. Clearly, trouble lay ahead, and, true to form, an enormous band of Anti-Israel demonstrators from the LGBT community disrupted the reception, chanting the rhyming slogan above while carrying printed and home-made posters saying "Zionism sucks," "No Pride in Apartheid". That Palestinians sometimes beat and kill gay men is irrelevant to their way of thinking, as is the moral inconvenience that homosexuality is illegal in all Muslim states, and punished there by imprisonment, execution, or mob violence. These facts are of no apparent interest to those determined to slander Israel at all costs. Israel is the only country in the Middle East -- and most of Africa and Asia -- where gay rights are guaranteed by law, where Gay Pride parades are held, and where gay tourism is encouraged. Yet, surprisingly, LGBT groups in the West never march or demonstrate to condemn countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and others where gay men are hanged from cranes, beheaded, stoned or thrown from high buildings.

LGBT attacks on Israel and the distortion of gay rights as "pinkwashing" -- claiming that the state of Israel uses its freedoms for all its gay inhabitants in order to whitewash its supposedly evil persecution of the Palestinian people -- represent something psychologically troubling. Israel should be a major source of pride and admiration for LGBT people. Yet the very idea of rights for the LGBT community is simply cast aside in favour of deeply distasteful, profoundly misguided, and frequently anti-Semitic agitation that calls for the destruction of the world's only Jewish state. Liberal politics, post-colonialism, and a staggering inverted moral relativism work together to cancel out all the good that Israel does and all the safety it offers to all its citizens. The charge of "pinkwashing" carries an even broader message. It would appear that, whateverIsraelis and their government do may be dismissed as mere "whitewashing" to cover Israel's original "sin" of being Jewish -- whether it be the remarkable international aid it provides in disaster-stricken regions or even the work of Israeli volunteers rescuing and feeding refugees in the enemy state of Syria, the 17 field hospitals and surgical centres Israel runs to help Syrians, its many advances in life-saving medical treatment, or the protection it affords to many persecuted minority religious communities from Christians to Baha'is. This blanket condemnation of Israel also carries another message: that whatever crimes other nations commit -- from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Sudan, or whatever acts of terror Muslim groups or Palestinians carry out -- these may be passed over in silence or even supported. And they are. There is even another clear message: that even the most positive side of the people we hate is really just a cover for sinister conspiracies. This view falls in line with the conspiracy theories familiar from Tsarist Russia, the Third Reich, Soviet Russia, the Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq. Those are never healthy models to follow, above all for those who think of themselves as moral or enlightened.

Supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the Palestinians, members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, member states of the UN, and hundreds of other anti-Israel and anti-Zionist campaigners, supposed intellectuals, and politicians repeatedly argue that Israel is an illegal colonial entity, and that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal under international law. In fact, Israel's presence in the West Bank is perfectly legal.[1] If there are allegations that Israel has taken land by force and claimed sovereignty contrary to international law, it has not. All Israel's wars have so far been defensive. Either Israel was attacked first or has responded to a legitimate casus belli (legal cause for war) such as the closure by Egypt of the Strait of Tiran in 1967). There are allegations that Israel carries out "ethnic cleansing;" it does not -- and much more.[2] But when Israel's supporters point out that its opponents are referring to lies that have no relevance to Israel -- and when these supporters list UN resolutions (notably resolutions 181, 242, and 338), League of Nations rulings establishing the Palestine Mandate, and a host of other documents designed to enforce international law -- Israel's opponents shout and declare all these legal instruments to be invalid -- for no apparent legal reason, but presumably that they demonstrate the falsity of their own claims. In other words, they show themselves to be not in the least respectful of international law. International law seems respected by them only if it can be distorted to be used as a weapon against Israel.
On the face of it, liberals often claim to share values that the rest of us hold, too. They declare themselves to be anti-racist, they call for rights for women, for sexually anomalous people, for the restoration of rights for people living in former colonies, for the rights of formerly oppressed people to self-determination, and much else that is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But they seem never satisfied by the straightforward promotion of these rights through democratic processes. They appear to prefer angry demonstrations, occasional rioting, and even sometimes terrorism.[3] Using an abusive form of political correctness and insisting on an absolutist version of multiculturalism, many devotees of liberalism often betray the ideals for which earlier human rights activists, feminists, anti-racists, and freedom fighters fought.

Take racism: Liberals rightly work against discriminating against people of colour. But when it comes to the Jewish people, history's most abused and persecuted ethnic and religious community, the pretence of being anti-racist is dropped and hardline liberals explode into racist fury, adopting all the techniques of far-right anti-Semites. In Europe, large numbers of liberal activists have joined forces with ultra-conservative Muslims to march through the streets of Britain, the Netherlands and elsewhere chanting "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas," or listeningas their terror-supporting Muslim allies sing "Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud: Jaysh Muhammad sa ya-ud" (which loosely translates as "Remember the Battle of Khaybar, O you Jews: the army of Muhammad is coming back." Khaybar refers to the 629 A.D. assault led by Muhammad against the last Jewish tribe in Arabia.

July 2014: Demonstrators in The Hague, Netherlands chant "Death to the Jews", while flying the black flag of jihad. (Image source: Twitter/@SamRaalte)

Were these left-wing demonstrators to chant and march and threaten to exterminate any other race, they would be known for the racist thugs they really are. But Jews are apparently fair game. Many self-declared liberals behave much as did the Nazis of the early years of the Third Reich. This clear anti-Semitism by the liberal-Islamist alliance is given another ironic twist that seeks to cover its racism by placing the argument on what appears to be a purely political footing. Although the UN Charter and other mainstream instruments call for the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination, as in Ireland, Turkey, South Africa, India, Pakistan and elsewhere liberal support for self-determination is betrayed by an almost total refusal to recognize the rights of one ethnic (and ultimately indigenous) people: the Jews. Of the post-imperialist states, one alone is singled out for opprobrium: Israel. Rhetoric about Israelis being imperialists, colonizers or fascists, leads one to think that Israel's enemies know nothing about the vast Ottoman empire that was the last legitimate regime to control the territories from which Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the disputed territories all spring. The "Palestine will be free" marchers evidently know nothing much about history. Israelis -- just like citizens in their neighbouring states -- are a people freed from the tyranny of the Muslim Ottomans and awarded a new destiny precisely because Europe's imperial powers, the League of Nations, and the United Nations, relinquished their right to rule in favour of Jewish sovereignty.

Today's new anti-Semites ignore or are wholly ignorant of the long and unprecedented history of the Jewish diaspora.[4] No other people has longed for self-determination for so long or with such sustained intensity.To leave Israel for a moment, we can find an important anomaly among liberal feminists who actively support the wearing of the Muslim veil and even choose to turn a blind eye to the misogyny of Islamic law, forced marriages, child marriages, female genital mutilation, honour killings and the stoning of women accused of adultery. This is, perhaps, the most hideous example of hypocrisy and double standards -- finding fault with even the most trivial of Western attitudes to women while doing nothing to protect Muslim women simply because it supposedly is "racist" to condemn Muslims. It appears that the fear of being called racist is more important to many than a genuine concern for the human rights of a group that is clearly oppressed. A Western man calling women "chicks" may expect the full force of feminist wrath, but a Muslim man who beats his wife because the Qur'an advises him to, is exonerated because wife-beating is part of his different and purportedly inviolable culture.

Writing in Tablet magazine last year, Heather Rogers relates how she at first dismissed criticism of misogyny within Muslims communities because "Westerners have no right to tell Muslims how to live" and downplayed arguments about the rate of Islamic honour killings. It was only on later reflection, she said, that she began to pose questions such as, "Why aren't more non-Muslim feminists speaking up about violence against women in Muslim-majority countries?" She then gives an example of how liberal feminists distort matters. "In searching the Internet," she writes, "I begin to find the vestiges of a discussion of the subject among Leftists, which suggests some reasons why many non-Muslim feminists choose to stay silent. One controversy is to do with an essay Adele Wilde-Blavatsky wrote in 2012 for The Feminist Wire, an online women's studies journal. Her piece says the hijab is a symbol of male oppression. A stormensued. One response, signed by 77 academics, writers, and activists, said the essay was an assertion of Wilde-Blavatsky's "white feminist privilege and power." Instead of facilitating a discussion, however, The Feminist Wire editorial collective took down the comments, pulling the essay along with them."
Rogers then cites the 2010 case when Amnesty International fired the head of its Gender Unit,Gita Sahgal, who had protested the charity's alliance with a former Taliban fighter and misogynist, Moazzem Begg, an extremist who still refuses to condemn the stoning to death of women. Sahgal's credentials as a secular Asian woman defending the rights of Muslim women in general were and are undeniable. But Amnesty International, a left-wing non-governmental organization (NGO) put its pro-Muslim politics above women's rights -- a remarkable step for the world's best-known human rights agency.

It is surprising, yet all too predictable, to find pro-peace organizations and political leaders supporting violent and intolerant opinions and groups. The simplest example is the current leader of Britain's Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn regards war as a last resort and has been active in a number of anti-war movements, such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the hyper-pacifist Stop the War Coalition, which informs his current position in parliament. He continues to oppose renewing Trident, Britain's nuclear missile capacity. We have to assume that Corbyn is, in principle, opposed to the use of violence except in extreme circumstances. How, then, is it that he has described the brutal terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah -- the latter declared on 11 March to be a terrorist state by the Arab League -- both of which have an open agenda of committing genocide against Jews, as "my friends"? He explains this as "diplomatic language in the context of dialogue." Dialogue? This answer confirms that Corbyn has read neither the Hamas Covenant nor Hezbollah'sRisala maftuha (Open Letter). How does a man of peace enter into dialogue with Hamas? Here are two sentences from its Covenant/Charter:

"Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors." [Author's emphasis]

I have an Arabic copy of the Covenant in front of me: the translation is perfectly correct.
Here, from the Hizbullah Open Letter, is much the same thing:

Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.
We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Therefore we oppose and reject the Camp David Agreements, the proposals of King Fahd, the Fez and Reagan plan, Brezhnev's and the French-Egyptian proposals, and all other programs that include the recognition (even the implied recognition) of the Zionist entity. [Author's emphases]

Dialogue, anyone? In his obsession with dialogue, Corbyn has gone further. In a notorious interview with Stephen Nolan on Radio Ulster last year, Corbyn was asked six times, "Are you prepared to condemn what the IRA did?" -- referring to their use of terrorist violence. Each time he refused to give a straight answer. As Nolan himself put it at the beginning of the interview, quoting from a Daily Telegraph article in June: "This is a man who sympathised with violent Irish republicanism in the 80s, invited IRA representatives to the Commons a fortnight after the Brighton bombing in 1984 and at a Troops Out meeting in 1987 he stood for a moment's silence for eight IRA terrorists killed in an SAS ambush." He is also a man who invited Hamas and Hezbollah representatives into the UK parliament. Even The Guardian, regarded by many as anti-Israeli, has castigated Corbyn for this and his other associations with terrorists and anti-Semites. It does not stop there. During an interview with one of Britain's most eminent political journalists, Andrew Marr, Corbyn called for dialogue with Islamic State. A week later, in The Spectator, Toby Young wrote an article entitled, "Jeremy Corbyn and the hard left are wilfully blind to the evils of Islamist Nazis." Of course, Corbyn himself did not volunteer to fly out to Raqqa to have a cosy chat with Islamic State's self-proclaimed leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a spirit of dialogue.
What is the reason for this staggering naïveté? You can find some of the answer by looking at again at the Hamas Covenant and Hizbullah's Open Letter. Here are some sentences from the former:

The Islamic Resistance Movement [i.e. Hamas] found itself at a time when Islam has disappeared from life. Thus rules shook, concepts were upset, values changed and evil people took control, oppression and darkness prevailed, cowards became like tigers: homelands were usurped, people were scattered and were caused to wander all over the world, the state of justice disappeared and the state of falsehood replaced it. Nothing remained in its right place.

Here is a single statement from the latter:

As for our friends, they are all the world's oppressed peoples.

In other words, both Hamas and Hizbullah supposedly exist to fight for the rights of the oppressed, Franz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth," the victims of Western imperialism and colonialism, of American arrogance, of a worldwide Jewish/Zionist/Masonic conspiracy. What socialist would not reach out to condemn his own people and his own culture, would not repudiate his own history, merely to reach out to these victims? If Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic State, al-Qa'ida, the Iranian regime, and all the other promoters of violence proclaim themselves to be the champions of the downtrodden masses, are they then to be applauded, rewarded and financed? It is not just the "hard left" that does this. The broad liberal press, newspapers -- such as theNew York Times, the Guardian, the Independent, Haaretz -- together with a broad consensus of politicians and church leaders, are always happy to tell us that when terrorist groups maim and kill innocent civilians it is not their fault, for the conditions of oppression under which they live have purportedly given them no choice other than to fight back; that the Palestinians have given up hope, that they and their children have no other choice but to shoot and stab their way to yet more years of failure, despair and security measures.
Most of us in the West have much to thank many real liberals for: the abolition of slavery, the cause of civil rights and anti-racism, recognition of the rights of homosexuals, empathy for the disabled, free education, the campaign against religious intolerance, and much more. Liberals share these achievements with many others from the "right" and centre, with Jewish and Christian ethical standards, with a growing sense of a shared humanity as set out in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But many pseudo-liberals have betrayed these same values and proven themselves unworthy of the work of their own ancestors -- men and women who would never have sat side by side with terrorists, lied about Israel, fostered anti-Semitism or tolerated the abuse of women and children.[5] In all likelihood they would never have denounced the values of Western civilization, or valued the monstrous over the humane.

Dr. Denis MacEoin is an academic and journalist specializing in Islam and the Middle East.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7755/liberals-hypocrisy

by Ben Reilly Tue Apr 26, 2016 7:46 pm

Wow, there seems to be a whole cottage industry springing up over the false notion that liberal criticism of Israel's policies is tantamount to bigotry against Jews.

by Guest Tue Apr 26, 2016 7:50 pm

Ben_Reilly wrote:Wow, there seems to be a whole cottage industry springing up over the false notion that liberal criticism of Israel's policies is tantamount to bigotry against Jews.

Wow, that shows you failed to understand every single point and just made an unsubstantiated reply

The Self-Contradictory Liberals Tumblr_inline_nr8b7sBd5B1rv8yh7_500

The Self-Contradictory Liberals Tumblr_inline_nr8b7sBd5B1rv8yh7_500

by Ben Reilly Tue Apr 26, 2016 7:57 pm

Clearly, trouble lay ahead, and, true to form, an enormous band of Anti-Israel demonstrators from the LGBT community disrupted the reception, chanting the rhyming slogan above while carrying printed and home-made posters saying "Zionism sucks," "No Pride in Apartheid". That Palestinians sometimes beat and kill gay men is irrelevant to their way of thinking

Protesting apartheid and Zionism is no more bigoted against Jews than protesting drone strikes and surveillance is bigoted against Americans.

Some Palestinians beat and kill gay men? Some Israelis do, too! What's that supposed to prove?

by Guest Tue Apr 26, 2016 8:00 pm

Ben_Reilly wrote:
Clearly, trouble lay ahead, and, true to form, an enormous band of Anti-Israel demonstrators from the LGBT community disrupted the reception, chanting the rhyming slogan above while carrying printed and home-made posters saying "Zionism sucks," "No Pride in Apartheid". That Palestinians sometimes beat and kill gay men is irrelevant to their way of thinking

Protesting apartheid and Zionism is no more bigoted against Jews than protesting drone strikes and surveillance is bigoted against Americans.

Some Palestinians beat and kill gay men? Some Israelis do, too! What's that supposed to prove?

1) Its not an apartheid country or system, where Israel has more equal rights for Israeli Arabs, than other Arabs have in any single other Arab country in the Middle East. So basing false claims, when places like Saudi does have religious apartheid is hypocritical

2) Zionism is just wanting a Jewish home, where Muslims have countless countries of their own, you have your own as an American, there is already been one Palestinian home created in Jordan, and I back the right for a second in the west bank and Gaza under better leadership. So why are you not protesting against yourself to having a nation.

3) The Israeli law protects homosexuals, the law in Gaza, throws them off roof tops.

4) hence some liberals, are hypocrites

by Ben Reilly Tue Apr 26, 2016 9:48 pm

didge wrote:
Ben_Reilly wrote:
Clearly, trouble lay ahead, and, true to form, an enormous band of Anti-Israel demonstrators from the LGBT community disrupted the reception, chanting the rhyming slogan above while carrying printed and home-made posters saying "Zionism sucks," "No Pride in Apartheid". That Palestinians sometimes beat and kill gay men is irrelevant to their way of thinking

Protesting apartheid and Zionism is no more bigoted against Jews than protesting drone strikes and surveillance is bigoted against Americans.

Some Palestinians beat and kill gay men? Some Israelis do, too! What's that supposed to prove?

1) Its not an apartheid country or system, where Israel has more equal rights for Israeli Arabs, than other Arabs have in any single other Arab country in the Middle East. So basing false claims, when places like Saudi does have religious apartheid is hypocritical

2) Zionism is just wanting a Jewish home, where Muslims have countless countries of their own, you have your own as an American, there is already been one Palestinian home created in Jordan, and I back the right for a second in the west bank and Gaza under better leadership. So why are you not protesting against yourself to having a nation.

3) The Israeli law protects homosexuals, the law in Gaza, throws them off roof tops.

4) hence some liberals, are hypocrites

1) People a lot smarter than you and a lot closer to the scene -- from the UN, for example -- say it is apartheid. (source) At any rate, it does have many elements of an apartheid state, and the argument is really just semantics.

2) There are many forms of Zionism, why would you assume the protesters meant only "having a Jewish home" rather than the expansionist versions?

3)

In a story June 30 about Palestinian protesters whitewashing a gay pride rainbow flag, The Associated Press reported erroneously that homosexual acts are banned by law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While homosexuality is largely taboo in Palestinian society, there are no laws specifically banning homosexual acts.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e303cdebde114089a2f9555651550e08/angry-protesters-whitewash-rainbow-flag-west-bank-barrier

4) Hence you're being voluntarily brainwashed

by Guest Tue Apr 26, 2016 10:12 pm

Didge keeps saying that and it is a complete fabrication that the IDF blog uses all the time:

Yesterday, several days after I contacted AP to inform them of this, they issued the following correction:
In a story June 30 about Palestinian protesters whitewashing a gay pride rainbow flag, The Associated Press reported erroneously that homosexual acts are banned by law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While homosexuality is largely taboo in Palestinian society, there are no laws specifically banning homosexual acts.

This may surprise people, since the notion that homosexual activity is criminal – and even punishable by death – is a staple of a form of anti-Palestinian propaganda called pinkwashing.

Pinkwashing is a rhetorical strategy that deploys Israel’s supposed enlightenment toward LGBTQ issues to deflect criticism from Israel’s human rights abuses and war crimes and to seek to build up support for Israel among Western liberals and progressives.

In a 2 July email, I pointed AP editors to the annual publication State-Sponsored Homophobia, from international LGBTQ advocacy group ILGA. Its 2014 edition states (emphasis added):

The British Mandate Criminal Code Ordinance, No. 74 of 1936 is in force in Gaza.
Section 152(2) of the Code criminalizes sexual acts between men with a penalty of up to 10 years.
This Code was in force also in Jordan until 1951 and in Israel until 1977, before they adopted their own Penal Codes. Note that in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), however, the Jordanian Penal Code of 1951, largely modified in 1960, is in force, having no prohibition on sexual acts between persons of the same sex.

AP editors were initially skeptical and pushed back, insisting that various clauses in the Jordanian Penal Code that applies in the occupied West Bank indirectly outlawed homosexual activity.

I’m glad that after they delved deeper into the matter, they have done the right thing and made a correction.

Expert views

The AP’s mistake also led me to look deeper into the issue.

I asked two experts for some background on the law in Jordan as well as the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and the kinds of claims made about it.

Anis F. Kassim is one of the foremost experts on international, Jordanian and Palestinian law and long-time editor-in-chief of the Palestinian Yearbook of International Law. He was also an adviser to the Palestinian legal team in the successful 2004 case against Israel’s wall in the West Bank at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Kassim confirmed that the Jordanian Penal Code “is silent on acts committed by adults of the same sex with their own respective free will.”

But I also wanted to know if any other clauses, not explicitly mentioning homosexual activity, had been used to target people who engage in such activity.

“Having checked the reported cases – as published – and with the old and young practitioners, I have not found any court case involving homosexuality,” Kassim told me.

As regards the 1936 law still in force in Gaza, Kassim said that it “could be interpreted as allowing homosexuality.” But he noted that such acts in Gaza would potentially be “punishable if the act was committed by force against the victim. By implication, if it is committed with free will of the victim it may not be a criminal act.”

“Chain of fabrications”

I also spoke with Joseph Massad, the foremost academic authority on Jordan who has written the classic book on the country Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan. Massad is also author of Desiring Arabs and Islam in Liberalism.

Massad says that the original, incorrect AP report “is part of the more generalized racist campaign by Western pro-Israel news organizations that want to insist on pinkwashing Israeli crimes with the added benefit of propagandizing against neighboring Arab countries.”

He observes that ILGA itself “used to be part of such propaganda efforts, claiming without evidence” in the 1993 edition of its annual Pink Book that Jordan criminalized homosexuality.

“It seems the Associated Press was simply repeating such propaganda and might very likely have relied directly on it, not having updated its sources,” Massad states.

Massad says that ILGA’s website later corrected the mistake, “by referring to a mostly ignorant Orientalist book written by a German and an Israeli collaborator – even if in this one case the authors got the story right – rather than by referring to the actual text of the law.”

The bigger point, he says, is that since “Western propaganda is based on a chain of propagandistic fabrications, you end up getting [organizations like] AP quoting ILGA quoting other German and Israeli sources. What is always absent is an actual Arab documentary source.”

Massad notes that, as in the AP story, “the law itself is never quoted nor is a history of its case application even explored, but rather what is presented is anti-Arab propaganda buttressed by any opinion that would help the AP Jerusalem bureau prove Israel’s superiority over the Arabs.”
The 1936 British Mandate criminal code for Palestine makes it illegal for men to have sex with women or men in a way that “contravenes natural laws.” That law remained in effect in Israel until 1977, in contrast with Jordanian law that did not criminalize such acts at all.

Yet, Massad observes, “we never read stories by AP and other Western news organizations between 1951 and 1977 about how retrograde and repressive Israel was toward homosexuals compared to its Arab neighbors, including the West Bank before and after Israel occupied it. This could very well be because the US and Western Europe also repressed their homosexuals during this period.”

“Who knows?” Massad observes dryly, “Maybe Israeli homosexuals fled to the West Bank between 1967 and 1977 to avoid prosecution in Israel.”
“But after Israel replaced the law in 1977, not only does AP not contrast it negatively with its Jordanian and Palestinian neighbors who had not criminalized such acts for decades before Israel,” he says, “but AP fabricates a story to make Israel look superior to both of them.”

No asylum

Even the corrected story still asserts that “Gay Palestinians tend to be secretive about their social lives and some have crossed into Israel to live safely.” This claim, often based on unverifiable anecdotes, is also a staple of Israeli pinkwashing.

But a 2008 Tel Aviv University study of the handful of known cases – “Nowhere to Run: Gay Palestinian Asylum-Seekers in Israel” – found that Israel subjects Palestinians to particularly atrocious treatment, expelling them precisely because they are Palestinian. There is no legal framework that allows any Palestinian to seek asylum in present-day Israel.

Israel’s foundational laws and policies are designed precisely to keep Palestinians out, as they are considered a “demographic threat.”

Massad says it is worth asking how the “error” was committed in the first place, “and how the news organization initially came to decide that there was an anti-homosexual law in Jordan and the West Bank where none existed.”

“Indeed, AP, the largest and perhaps the richest news organization in the world, has consultants and fact checkers that often check claims made by those who oppose US and Israeli policies,” he states, “but it seems little is made of their expertise when it comes to endorsing US and Israeli propaganda, and it had to be left to The Electronic Intifada to alert them.”

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/ap-corrects-story-falsely-claiming-homosexuality-illegal-palestinians

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 2:28 am

Ben_Reilly wrote:
didge wrote:

1) Its not an apartheid country or system, where Israel has more equal rights for Israeli Arabs, than other Arabs have in any single other Arab country in the Middle East. So basing false claims, when places like Saudi does have religious apartheid is hypocritical

2) Zionism is just wanting a Jewish home, where Muslims have countless countries of their own, you have your own as an American, there is already been one Palestinian home created in Jordan, and I back the right for a second in the west bank and Gaza under better leadership. So why are you not protesting against yourself to having a nation.

3) The Israeli law protects homosexuals, the law in Gaza, throws them off roof tops.

4) hence some liberals, are hypocrites

1) People a lot smarter than you and a lot closer to the scene -- from the UN, for example -- say it is apartheid. (source) At any rate, it does have many elements of an apartheid state, and the argument is really just semantics.

2) There are many forms of Zionism, why would you assume the protesters meant only "having a Jewish home" rather than the expansionist versions?

3)

In a story June 30 about Palestinian protesters whitewashing a gay pride rainbow flag, The Associated Press reported erroneously that homosexual acts are banned by law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While homosexuality is largely taboo in Palestinian society, there are no laws specifically banning homosexual acts.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e303cdebde114089a2f9555651550e08/angry-protesters-whitewash-rainbow-flag-west-bank-barrier

4) Hence you're being voluntarily brainwashed

1) The UN?

The Self-Contradictory Liberals 3489511464

http://www.thetower.org/3276-closing-the-un-palestinian-propaganda-committee/

So you cannot reason that Israel is an apartheid state you just falsely claim it is

I should know: during 26 years as a journalist in South Africa I investigated and reported the evil that was apartheid. I sawNelson Mandela secretly when he was underground, then popularly known as the Black Pimpernel, and I was the first non-family member to visit him in prison. I have now lived in Israel for 17 years, doing what I can to promote dialogue across lines of division. To an extent that I believe is rare, I straddle both societies. I know Israel today – and I knew apartheid up close. And put simply, there is no comparison between Israel and apartheid. The Arabs of Israel are full citizens. Crucially, they have the vote and Israeli Arab MPs sit in parliament. An Arab judge sits on the country’s highest court; an Arab is chief surgeon at a leading hospital; an Arab commands a brigade of the Israeli army; others head university departments. Arab and Jewish babies are born in the same delivery rooms, attended by the same doctors and nurses, and mothers recover in adjoining beds. Jews and Arabs travel on the same trains, taxis and – yes – buses. Universities, theatres, cinemas, beaches and restaurants are open to all.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/22/israel-injustices-not-apartheid-state

At a facility in Judea of UNRWA, the UN body tasked with caring for "Palestinian refugees," a festive ceremony was held on Monday honoring Abd al-Hamid Abu Srour, the 19-year-old Hamas terrorist who exactly a week ago bombed a bus in southeastern Jerusalem.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/211415#.VyAcxdQrKM8

Okay lets go over its laws, you show me the laws, that match Apartheid?

2) OMG, Zionism again just wants a home for the Jews and you failed to answer my questions
Try again

3)Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) rights in the Palestinian territories are often spoken of in the geopolitical and cultural context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It remains one of the most taboo human rights issues in the region. Homosexuality is illegal in the Gaza Strip but not in the West Bank, although LGBT rights are not protected in either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_Palestinian_territorie
https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Persecution_of_Homosexuals_(Palestinian_Authority_area)
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2014/09/peter-tatchell-should-pay-closer-attention-to-palestines-attitude-to-homosexuality/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_State_of_Palestine

No lo link from you either
Defending people who hate homosexuals now, how worse can the regressive get

4) Hence you you failed to address a single point and its you that has not got a clue what you are talking about mainly as you are the worst liberal hypocrite going, in fact you do not deserve the terminology of being classed liberals, as a real liberal would not back bad beliefs
You have had your classification to no a permanent regressive, that is neither left liberal or right wing, just retarded

So lets start with your ignorance on Apartheid and Israel rights for Arabs in Israel.
The West Bank and Gaza are governed by Fatah and Gaza respectively, lets look at each areas laws shall we

Or do you want to bow out before I make you look even more silly?

by Ben Reilly Wed Apr 27, 2016 4:01 am

I think I'd better acknowledge that you, sir, are the Bill O'Reilly of NewsFix -- even when you're wrong, you're not.

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 6:09 am

Ben_Reilly wrote:I think I'd better acknowledge that you, sir, are the Bill O'Reilly of NewsFix -- even when you're wrong, you're not.

So in other words that translates as you are bowing out because you simple are not educated enough on the subject.

Which is no surprise,

Thanks for your posts that prove you once again argued and backed bad beliefs and even tried to downplay the discrimination against homosexuals in Gaza
That proves beyond doubt your hypocrisy

by Original Quill Wed Apr 27, 2016 4:50 pm

didge wrote:
Ben_Reilly wrote:I think I'd better acknowledge that you, sir, are the Bill O'Reilly of NewsFix -- even when you're wrong, you're not.

So in other words that translates as you are bowing out because you simple are not educated enough on the subject.

Which is no surprise,

Thanks for your posts that prove you once again argued and backed bad beliefs and even tried to downplay the discrimination against homosexuals in Gaza
That proves beyond doubt your hypocrisy

Education? That’s what you are going to hang your hat on? Didge, you are the one with the truncated education.

Unfortunately, you are of the school that thinks education is rote memorization, with quantity, not quality, the measure. It’s no secret that you fancy posts that are protracted c&p jobs of other peoples’ foregone words. And they are ever so long and boring. You seem to feel that long and boring are the essence of intellectual achievement…of, as you say, education.

The alternative school is theoretical, or original thought. This league thinks that reason is a living, moving thing. It’s called ‘original’ because it involves dynamic cognitive processes instead of the static, frozen thoughts of others. Some loosely call it ‘thinking on your feet’, which gives one the sense of motion. It depends upon the ability to assess a new situation, liken it to other situations, understanding the entailments and deviations, and thus build a new thought through a system of analogy…and to do so in an instant. Theoretical thinking is not completely detached from experience, but uses it in a malleable, creative way.

The theoretical method of mind is to the rote memorization, as the animal is to the tree. It is able to move, live and adjust, while the tree is unmoving, subject to the elements of the next shock or storm.

Unfortunately, didge, wherever you got your education, you were taught to pocket your facts, not to use them.

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 4:56 pm

Original Quill wrote:
didge wrote:

So in other words that translates as you are bowing out because you simple are not educated enough on the subject.

Which is no surprise,

Thanks for your posts that prove you once again argued and backed bad beliefs and even tried to downplay the discrimination against homosexuals in Gaza
That proves beyond doubt your hypocrisy

Education? That’s what you are going to hang your hat on? Didge, you are the one with the truncated education.
didge wrote:No relevance, just whinging

Unfortunately, you are of the school that thinks education is rote memorization, with quantity, not quality, the measure. It’s no secret that you fancy posts that are protracted c&p jobs of other peoples’ foregone words. And they are ever so long and boring. You seem to feel that long and boring are the essence of intellectual achievement…of, as you say, education.
didge wrote:No relevance, just whinging
The alternative school is theoretical, or original thought. This league thinks that reason is a living, moving thing. It’s called ‘original’ because it involves dynamic cognitive processes instead of the static, frozen thoughts of others. Some loosely call it ‘thinking on your feet’, which gives one the sense of motion. It depends upon the ability to assess a new situation, liken it to other situations, understanding the entailments and deviations, and thus build a new thought through a system of analogy…and to do so in an instant. Theoretical thinking is not completely detached from experience, but uses it in a malleable, creative way.
didge wrote:No relevance, just whinging
The theoretical method of mind is to the rote memorization, as the animal is to the tree. It is able to move, live and adjust, while the tree is unmoving, subject to the elements of the next shock or storm.
didge wrote:No relevance, just whinging
Unfortunately, didge, wherever you got your education, you were taught to pocket your facts, not to use them.

No relevance, just whinging

Next

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 4:57 pm

My previous points to Ben still stand, am happy for you to attempt to also answer them or simply prove you are also a liberal hypocrite Quill

by Original Quill Wed Apr 27, 2016 5:12 pm

My point is that you don't understand the cerebral process. You don't understand or use thought in motion. You have one or two stock responses, such as "address my points" or "not relevant, just whinging" or "you are deflecting."

And note, these are not discussion, but walls you build as defenses. Why do you need defenses? Simple...because you are defenseless in the world of dynamic ideas and arguments.

You are afraid to confront and exchange ideas. Instead, you create the appearance of intellectual activity by c&p jobs that deal in ideas. But if you understand them at all, it is in only the most cursory way. If a fair comment is made on one of your c&p posts, you immediately go on the offensive, attacking the poster and not the comment. It's really a defense...they say the best defense is a good offense. Doesn't that give you a clue: you can't handle the action of thought.

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 5:14 pm

Original Quill wrote:My point is that you don't understand the cerebral process. You don't understand or use thought in motion. You have one or two stock responses, such as "address my points" or "not relevant, just whinging."
didge wrote:No relevance to the debate just further bitching

And note, these are not discussion, but walls you build as defenses. Why do you need defenses? Simple...because you are defenseless in the world of ideas and arguments.
didge wrote:No relevance to the debate just further bitching

You are afraid to confront and exchange ideas. Instead, you create the appearance of intellectual activity by c&p jobs that deal in ideas. But if you understand them at all, is is in only the most cursory way. If a fair comment is made on one of your c&p posts, you immediately go on the offensive, attacking the poster and not the comment. It's really a defense...they say the best defense is a good offense. Doesn't that give you a clue: you can't handle the action of thought.

didge wrote:No relevance to the debate just further bitching

Next

by Original Quill Wed Apr 27, 2016 5:16 pm

didge wrote:
Original Quill wrote:My point is that you don't understand the cerebral process. You don't understand or use thought in motion. You have one or two stock responses, such as "address my points" or "not relevant, just whinging."

And note, these are not discussion, but walls you build as defenses. Why do you need defenses? Simple...because you are defenseless in the world of ideas and arguments.

You are afraid to confront and exchange ideas. Instead, you create the appearance of intellectual activity by c&p jobs that deal in ideas. But if you understand them at all, is is in only the most cursory way. If a fair comment is made on one of your c&p posts, you immediately go on the offensive, attacking the poster and not the comment. It's really a defense...they say the best defense is a good offense. Doesn't that give you a clue: you can't handle the action of thought.
didge wrote:No relevance to the debate just further bitching

Next

Walls, didge. Static defenses. There is no "next" with a wall. A wall can't move.

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 5:16 pm

Original Quill wrote:
didge wrote:

Walls, didge. Static defenses. There is no "next" with a wall. A wall can't move.

Still nothing on the debate and further whining

Next

by Original Quill Wed Apr 27, 2016 6:09 pm

didge wrote:
Original Quill wrote:

Walls, didge. Static defenses. There is no "next" with a wall. A wall can't move.

Still nothing on the debate and further whining
Next

The Self-Contradictory Liberals 05167c37607b17378903decb433665b948be34-wm

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 6:31 pm

Still nothing on the debate and further whining
Next

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 6:54 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vU5qyHkq3A

The Self-Contradictory Liberals Apart16%2Bhebrew%2Bu

The Self-Contradictory Liberals Apart16%2Btire

by eddie Wed Apr 27, 2016 6:58 pm

Original Quill wrote:
didge wrote:
Ben_Reilly wrote:I think I'd better acknowledge that you, sir, are the Bill O'Reilly of NewsFix -- even when you're wrong, you're not.

So in other words that translates as you are bowing out because you simple are not educated enough on the subject.

Which is no surprise,

Thanks for your posts that prove you once again argued and backed bad beliefs and even tried to downplay the discrimination against homosexuals in Gaza
That proves beyond doubt your hypocrisy

Education? That’s what you are going to hang your hat on? Didge, you are the one with the truncated education.

Unfortunately, you are of the school that thinks education is rote memorization, with quantity, not quality, the measure. It’s no secret that you fancy posts that are protracted c&p jobs of other peoples’ foregone words. And they are ever so long and boring. You seem to feel that long and boring are the essence of intellectual achievement…of, as you say, education.

The alternative school is theoretical, or original thought. This league thinks that reason is a living, moving thing. It’s called ‘original’ because it involves dynamic cognitive processes instead of the static, frozen thoughts of others. Some loosely call it ‘thinking on your feet’, which gives one the sense of motion. It depends upon the ability to assess a new situation, liken it to other situations, understanding the entailments and deviations, and thus build a new thought through a system of analogy…and to do so in an instant. Theoretical thinking is not completely detached from experience, but uses it in a malleable, creative way.

The theoretical method of mind is to the rote memorization, as the animal is to the tree. It is able to move, live and adjust, while the tree is unmoving, subject to the elements of the next shock or storm.

Unfortunately, didge, wherever you got your education, you were taught to pocket your facts, not to use them.

A very good post quill and exactly how I feel about posting on forums.

I may come across as "unedcuated" by the standards of others who post up pages of knowledge, but I do post from the heart and they are my opinions based on what I've seen/read/experienced (I lend more weight to experience tbh quill)

I think you put this very eloquently and it is also bang on the money for me.

by Ben Reilly Wed Apr 27, 2016 6:59 pm

Original Quill wrote:My point is that you don't understand the cerebral process. You don't understand or use thought in motion. You have one or two stock responses, such as "address my points" or "not relevant, just whinging" or "you are deflecting."

And note, these are not discussion, but walls you build as defenses. Why do you need defenses? Simple...because you are defenseless in the world of dynamic ideas and arguments.

You are afraid to confront and exchange ideas. Instead, you create the appearance of intellectual activity by c&p jobs that deal in ideas. But if you understand them at all, it is in only the most cursory way. If a fair comment is made on one of your c&p posts, you immediately go on the offensive, attacking the poster and not the comment. It's really a defense...they say the best defense is a good offense. Doesn't that give you a clue: you can't handle the action of thought.

I'd green that a million times if I could.

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:01 pm

Ben_Reilly wrote:
Original Quill wrote:My point is that you don't understand the cerebral process. You don't understand or use thought in motion. You have one or two stock responses, such as "address my points" or "not relevant, just whinging" or "you are deflecting."

And note, these are not discussion, but walls you build as defenses. Why do you need defenses? Simple...because you are defenseless in the world of dynamic ideas and arguments.

You are afraid to confront and exchange ideas. Instead, you create the appearance of intellectual activity by c&p jobs that deal in ideas. But if you understand them at all, it is in only the most cursory way. If a fair comment is made on one of your c&p posts, you immediately go on the offensive, attacking the poster and not the comment. It's really a defense...they say the best defense is a good offense. Doesn't that give you a clue: you can't handle the action of thought.

I'd green that a million times if I could.

Of course you would Ben, you sadly think its gets you out of Jail

It does not

Points still stand

by eddie Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:01 pm

So would I.
He's had two off me on this thread.

It's very spot on. One of the best posts Quill has ever made IMO, in its accuracy.

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:06 pm

eddie wrote:
Original Quill wrote:

Education? That’s what you are going to hang your hat on? Didge, you are the one with the truncated education.

Unfortunately, you are of the school that thinks education is rote memorization, with quantity, not quality, the measure. It’s no secret that you fancy posts that are protracted c&p jobs of other peoples’ foregone words. And they are ever so long and boring. You seem to feel that long and boring are the essence of intellectual achievement…of, as you say, education.

The alternative school is theoretical, or original thought. This league thinks that reason is a living, moving thing. It’s called ‘original’ because it involves dynamic cognitive processes instead of the static, frozen thoughts of others. Some loosely call it ‘thinking on your feet’, which gives one the sense of motion. It depends upon the ability to assess a new situation, liken it to other situations, understanding the entailments and deviations, and thus build a new thought through a system of analogy…and to do so in an instant. Theoretical thinking is not completely detached from experience, but uses it in a malleable, creative way.

The theoretical method of mind is to the rote memorization, as the animal is to the tree. It is able to move, live and adjust, while the tree is unmoving, subject to the elements of the next shock or storm.

Unfortunately, didge, wherever you got your education, you were taught to pocket your facts, not to use them.

A very good post quill and exactly how I feel about posting on forums.

I may come across as "unedcuated" by the standards of others who post up pages of knowledge, but I do post from the heart and they are my opinions based on what I've seen/read/experienced (I lend more weight to experience tbh quill)

I think you put this very eloquently and it is also bang on the money for me.

You can post from the heart all you like

If you post up things that are untrue as Ben did, then they will be rubbished, no matter how much Quill talked about me and not anything from the article.

I am happy all 3 of you think that, what does it prove?

Zero, you still are all deflecting and failing to address the points

by Ben Reilly Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:16 pm

didge wrote:
Ben_Reilly wrote:
Original Quill wrote:My point is that you don't understand the cerebral process. You don't understand or use thought in motion. You have one or two stock responses, such as "address my points" or "not relevant, just whinging" or "you are deflecting."

And note, these are not discussion, but walls you build as defenses. Why do you need defenses? Simple...because you are defenseless in the world of dynamic ideas and arguments.

You are afraid to confront and exchange ideas. Instead, you create the appearance of intellectual activity by c&p jobs that deal in ideas. But if you understand them at all, it is in only the most cursory way. If a fair comment is made on one of your c&p posts, you immediately go on the offensive, attacking the poster and not the comment. It's really a defense...they say the best defense is a good offense. Doesn't that give you a clue: you can't handle the action of thought.

I'd green that a million times if I could.

Of course you would Ben, you sadly think its gets you out of Jail

It does not

Points still stand

No, he makes a very good point. You take those stock phrases he mentioned, play them like cards in a game and call that "debate." It doesn't seem to be about exploring and understanding the issues at hand for you; it seems to be only about winning.

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:20 pm

Ben_Reilly wrote:
didge wrote:

Of course you would Ben, you sadly think its gets you out of Jail

It does not

Points still stand

No, he makes a very good point. You take those stock phrases he mentioned, play them like cards in a game and call that "debate." It doesn't seem to be about exploring and understanding the issues at hand for you; it seems to be only about winning.

Its nothing to do with winning, as that is just sheer nonsense and yet again a pure deflection

Its about showing why some Liberals are in fact hypocrites over Israel and you did exactly that earlier, ignoring that homosexuals have no rights in Gaza.

So if the best that Quill can do is make absurd accusations to deflect from the points, then it shows that none of you care about social injustices like I do.

I care about the effects of hate and racism, and have been fighting against it for a greater part of my life, how dare you again question my reasons.

That has now made me have zero respect for you.

by Ben Reilly Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:23 pm

didge wrote:
Ben_Reilly wrote:
didge wrote:

Of course you would Ben, you sadly think its gets you out of Jail

It does not

Points still stand

No, he makes a very good point. You take those stock phrases he mentioned, play them like cards in a game and call that "debate." It doesn't seem to be about exploring and understanding the issues at hand for you; it seems to be only about winning.

just sheer nonsense and yet again a pure deflection

are in fact hypocrites you did exactly that

make absurd accusations to deflect from the points

how dare you again question my reasons.

have zero respect for you.

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:25 pm

Ben_Reilly wrote:
didge wrote:

just sheer nonsense and yet again a pure deflection

are in fact hypocrites you did exactly that

make absurd accusations to deflect from the points

how dare you again question my reasons.

have zero respect for you.

The Self-Contradictory Liberals 12966031755108

by Ben Reilly Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:27 pm

didge wrote:
Ben_Reilly wrote:
didge wrote:

just sheer nonsense and yet again a pure deflection

are in fact hypocrites you did exactly that

make absurd accusations to deflect from the points

how dare you again question my reasons.

have zero respect for you.

Yeah, that's another of your favorite playing cards. Now call something "poor"!

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:29 pm

Ben_Reilly wrote:
didge wrote:

Yeah, that's another of your favorite playing cards. Now call something "poor"!

Do grow a backbone and stop being a child

Again the fact you think this is about being a winner is so childish its beyond belief.

I suppose you have never ever argued you are right then Ben and countless times admit you are wrong.

Sorry I never see that, I though can admit I am wrong

Your sob story though yesterday was really from the realms of patheticness

by eddie Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:31 pm

Didge I think we are offering you some friendly advice, we cant all be wrong.

You do only copy and paste what other's say.
You don't debate from what YOU think - you take someone else's opnion and point a big arrow at it and say "I'm with him"
You think only the links you find hold any merit.
You think only what you think, holds any merit.
You get abusive and repetitive when you get challenged.

So many people have said it to you.
Perhaps it's time to take note.

by eddie Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:33 pm

You're calling someone opening up about their life a fucking sob story??

That's another thing Didge. You take something sacred that someone says and you throw shit all over it.

What the fuck is wrong with you??

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:34 pm

eddie wrote:Didge I think we are offering you some friendly advice, we cant all be wrong.

You do only copy and paste what other's say.
You don't debate from what YOU think - you take someone else's opnion and point a big arrow at it and say "I'm with him"
You think only the links you find hold any merit.
You think only what you think, holds any merit.
You get abusive and repetitive when you get challenged.

So many people have said it to you.
Perhaps it's time to take note.

Sorry but I just laughed at the accusations above

So you are telling me I never argue from my own views

Do you want me to pull up countless posts and then you can show me how they have been plagiarized.

Shall we deal with that first lying accusation?

I do use sometimes links and parts of hose links to further my points, but to claim that is all I use is beyond a joke

Second, are you saying I do not admit when wrong

Or shall I pull up posts where you have stated emphatically that I do?

That will do to start with

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:35 pm

eddie wrote:You're calling someone opening up about their life a fucking sob story??

That's another thing Didge. You take something sacred that someone says and you throw shit all over it.

What the fuck is wrong with you??

What the fuck is wrong with you?

because the way he made out that he had only suffered growing up when he has no idea what others go through is insulting, and he did play off this with me and Tommy

So maybe you should think of that first before you open your big fat gob

by eddie Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:52 pm

You do it all the time; take something personal that someone says, and use it against them as a weapon.
It's quite low.

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:55 pm

eddie wrote:You do it all the time; take something personal that someone says, and use it against them as a weapon.
It's quite low.

So in other words you cannot back up your claim

Quelle surpise Eddie, you ben have set out to deflect this thread and succeeded, because you are like children, its that pathetic

You made unfounded accusations against me Eddie two posts back

That is out of order claiming I only ever C&P

You are just being spiteful and again ever since I said we were never friends

It shows you are a very bitter person and I am very glad I saw through you in the end

So continue all you like I am done with your fake bullshit eddie

You are a vile nasty person at heart

by Guest Wed Apr 27, 2016 8:15 pm

didge wrote:

Many liberals -- not least the large numbers of students involved in campus demonizations of Israel, Jews, white people and other supposed public enemies -- are morally and politically confused, not to say profoundly selective and bigoted, often in direct contradiction to their own expressed principles of peace, tolerance, diversity, and multiculturalism.
These liberals repeatedly contradict their own ideals, not least when it comes to free speech, Israel, the Middle East, Islam, and the rights of Muslim women. Many self-declared liberals behave much as did the Nazis of the early years of the Third Reich.
It would appear that, whatever Israelis and their government do may be dismissed as mere "whitewashing" to cover Israel's original "sin" of being Jewish.
Using an abusive form of political correctness and insisting on an absolutist version of multiculturalism, many devotees of liberalism often betray the ideals for which earlier human rights activists, feminists, anti-racists, and freedom fighters fought and even gave their lives.
Amnesty International, a left-wing non-governmental organization (NGO) put its pro-Muslim politics above women's rights -- a remarkable step for the world's best-known human rights agency.

It is no secret that politicians on both the "right" and "left" lie, dissemble, equivocate, misrepresent, misinform, falsify, whitewash and cover up. Not even the noble and honest Cicero was immune to fudging and shifting sides. It is the nature of politics. For much of the time we put up with it until it grows so far-fetched, we can no longer shut our eyes and let ourselves be lulled into further acquiescence. We all put up with this, do our best to spot the lies, or rely on investigative journalists to dig beneath the surface of what governments claim or their opponents hide. But something strange has been happening to people calling themselves liberals. (Note: The term "liberal" differs enormously between the U.S. and the UK. Americans use it to describe anyone from the Democratic Party through to those even farther to the left. But the British use it for people from the political centre towards the right, and it has no connotations of far left extremism. It is used here in the American sense.) The far left -- the Marxists, Trotskyites etc. -- the campus extremists, even the new leadership of Britain's Labour Party have started to contradicting their own ideals, not least when it comes to free speech, Israel, the Middle East, Islam, and the rights of Muslim women.

All sides of the political spectrum share many ideals in their original form: advocacy of human rights, equal justice under the law; the rights of racial and religious minorities, homosexuals, workers, women. They also share an opposition to racism, anti-Semitism, fascism, and religious fundamentalism. These are ideals in any democratic nation -- views demonstrated by modern legislation across a host of democratic parliaments. But many liberals appear to distort all this. They take extreme positions, guided by three linked but often confused issues: political correctness, cultural relativism and moral relativism. There seems to be a deep-seated belief, not only that all cultures possess and practice different values (the original premise of neutral cultural relativism in anthropology); or that, God forbid!, Western values are better than non-Western ones. Many liberals appear, instead, to think, that non-Western values are better or certainly no worse, than Western ones. The idea that Western states, heirs to imperialism and still practitioners of indirect colonialism, have imposed their values on the rest of the world, makes the values of the "victim" -- the "oppressed" and the "occupied" -- superior to those of the West. But it is precisely Western values and laws that have been responsible for the very concept of human rights, for efforts to free former colonies, to bring aid to Third World countries, to grant rights to minorities, to introduce high-quality education, to advocate for women's rights, and more.

No other former imperialists, not least those of the many Muslim empires throughout history, have acted in this way towards the subjects of their former colonies. Unfortunately, many self-proclaimed liberals have responded to this commitment to human rights by charging the West with some form of original sin requiring Europeans and Americans to carry a heavy weight of guilt (as documented so well by the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner in books such as The Tyranny of Guilt). One of the greatest examples of the excessive focus on the West is universal condemnation of the transatlantic slave trade, supposedly divorced from the Muslim/Arab slave trades, which continues without protest from these liberals in some places to this day. This, even though the Islamic trade was larger and longer-lasting than the Western one. Mauritania today holds anti-slavery protestors in prison, despite slavery there having been outlawed since 1981.
It is not hard to see why so many liberals– not least the large numbers of students involved in campus demonizations of Israel, Jews, whites and other supposed public enemies -- are morally and politically confused, not to say profoundly selective and bigoted, in direct contradiction to their own expressed principles of peace, toleration, diversity, and multiculturalism.

If this sounds a little abstract, here are some examples to show this confusion at its worst.
As a telling example of hypocritical behaviour, for many years now, a range of LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgenders) organizations have campaigned against the state of Israel. They have marched, carrying rainbow banners, alongside far-left extremists and far-right Muslims, shouting abuse against Israel and calling for an end to the "occupation" of the West Bank.
The annual National Conference on LGBT Equality, Creating Change, is an event held by the US National LGBTQ Task Force, based in Washington D.C., one of the most important bodies in the struggle for gay rights. The 2016 Creating Change conference was held in the Hilton Chicago between 20 and 24 of January. Writing about this event, leading human rights and pro-LGBT activist and lawyer Melanie Nathan declared that, "This week will go down in history as one of the saddest and most destructive, ever, in the lives of LGBTQ Jews. We became the target of antisemitism disguised as protesting alleged 'Israeli oppression.' Anyone who truly understands the history, the context and milieu will clearly access the bottom line and that came in the form of the chant that served to helm the onslaught by LGBTQ protesters at the Creating Change 2016 Conference, who yelled: 'Palestine will be free from the river to the sea'." As is well known, the river is the Jordan and the sea is the Mediterranean, meaning that Israel will be replaced by a large Palestinian state from which Jews will have been ethnically cleansed.

A pro-Israel LGBT organization, A Wider Bridge, had planned to host an all-inclusive Shabbat reception on Friday 22^nd, with the aim of introducing delegates to visiting Israeli LGBT guests. On the 18^th, however, conference organizers caved in to anti-Israel demands and banned the reception. Many people strongly objected to this divisive move; on the following day the banning decision was reversed. Clearly, trouble lay ahead, and, true to form, an enormous band of Anti-Israel demonstrators from the LGBT community disrupted the reception, chanting the rhyming slogan above while carrying printed and home-made posters saying "Zionism sucks," "No Pride in Apartheid". That Palestinians sometimes beat and kill gay men is irrelevant to their way of thinking, as is the moral inconvenience that homosexuality is illegal in all Muslim states, and punished there by imprisonment, execution, or mob violence. These facts are of no apparent interest to those determined to slander Israel at all costs. Israel is the only country in the Middle East -- and most of Africa and Asia -- where gay rights are guaranteed by law, where Gay Pride parades are held, and where gay tourism is encouraged. Yet, surprisingly, LGBT groups in the West never march or demonstrate to condemn countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and others where gay men are hanged from cranes, beheaded, stoned or thrown from high buildings.

LGBT attacks on Israel and the distortion of gay rights as "pinkwashing" -- claiming that the state of Israel uses its freedoms for all its gay inhabitants in order to whitewash its supposedly evil persecution of the Palestinian people -- represent something psychologically troubling. Israel should be a major source of pride and admiration for LGBT people. Yet the very idea of rights for the LGBT community is simply cast aside in favour of deeply distasteful, profoundly misguided, and frequently anti-Semitic agitation that calls for the destruction of the world's only Jewish state. Liberal politics, post-colonialism, and a staggering inverted moral relativism work together to cancel out all the good that Israel does and all the safety it offers to all its citizens. The charge of "pinkwashing" carries an even broader message. It would appear that, whateverIsraelis and their government do may be dismissed as mere "whitewashing" to cover Israel's original "sin" of being Jewish -- whether it be the remarkable international aid it provides in disaster-stricken regions or even the work of Israeli volunteers rescuing and feeding refugees in the enemy state of Syria, the 17 field hospitals and surgical centres Israel runs to help Syrians, its many advances in life-saving medical treatment, or the protection it affords to many persecuted minority religious communities from Christians to Baha'is. This blanket condemnation of Israel also carries another message: that whatever crimes other nations commit -- from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Sudan, or whatever acts of terror Muslim groups or Palestinians carry out -- these may be passed over in silence or even supported. And they are. There is even another clear message: that even the most positive side of the people we hate is really just a cover for sinister conspiracies. This view falls in line with the conspiracy theories familiar from Tsarist Russia, the Third Reich, Soviet Russia, the Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq. Those are never healthy models to follow, above all for those who think of themselves as moral or enlightened.

Supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the Palestinians, members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, member states of the UN, and hundreds of other anti-Israel and anti-Zionist campaigners, supposed intellectuals, and politicians repeatedly argue that Israel is an illegal colonial entity, and that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal under international law. In fact, Israel's presence in the West Bank is perfectly legal.[1] If there are allegations that Israel has taken land by force and claimed sovereignty contrary to international law, it has not. All Israel's wars have so far been defensive. Either Israel was attacked first or has responded to a legitimate casus belli (legal cause for war) such as the closure by Egypt of the Strait of Tiran in 1967). There are allegations that Israel carries out "ethnic cleansing;" it does not -- and much more.[2] But when Israel's supporters point out that its opponents are referring to lies that have no relevance to Israel -- and when these supporters list UN resolutions (notably resolutions 181, 242, and 338), League of Nations rulings establishing the Palestine Mandate, and a host of other documents designed to enforce international law -- Israel's opponents shout and declare all these legal instruments to be invalid -- for no apparent legal reason, but presumably that they demonstrate the falsity of their own claims. In other words, they show themselves to be not in the least respectful of international law. International law seems respected by them only if it can be distorted to be used as a weapon against Israel.
On the face of it, liberals often claim to share values that the rest of us hold, too. They declare themselves to be anti-racist, they call for rights for women, for sexually anomalous people, for the restoration of rights for people living in former colonies, for the rights of formerly oppressed people to self-determination, and much else that is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But they seem never satisfied by the straightforward promotion of these rights through democratic processes. They appear to prefer angry demonstrations, occasional rioting, and even sometimes terrorism.[3] Using an abusive form of political correctness and insisting on an absolutist version of multiculturalism, many devotees of liberalism often betray the ideals for which earlier human rights activists, feminists, anti-racists, and freedom fighters fought.

Take racism: Liberals rightly work against discriminating against people of colour. But when it comes to the Jewish people, history's most abused and persecuted ethnic and religious community, the pretence of being anti-racist is dropped and hardline liberals explode into racist fury, adopting all the techniques of far-right anti-Semites. In Europe, large numbers of liberal activists have joined forces with ultra-conservative Muslims to march through the streets of Britain, the Netherlands and elsewhere chanting "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas," or listeningas their terror-supporting Muslim allies sing "Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud: Jaysh Muhammad sa ya-ud" (which loosely translates as "Remember the Battle of Khaybar, O you Jews: the army of Muhammad is coming back." Khaybar refers to the 629 A.D. assault led by Muhammad against the last Jewish tribe in Arabia.

July 2014: Demonstrators in The Hague, Netherlands chant "Death to the Jews", while flying the black flag of jihad. (Image source: Twitter/@SamRaalte)

Were these left-wing demonstrators to chant and march and threaten to exterminate any other race, they would be known for the racist thugs they really are. But Jews are apparently fair game. Many self-declared liberals behave much as did the Nazis of the early years of the Third Reich. This clear anti-Semitism by the liberal-Islamist alliance is given another ironic twist that seeks to cover its racism by placing the argument on what appears to be a purely political footing. Although the UN Charter and other mainstream instruments call for the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination, as in Ireland, Turkey, South Africa, India, Pakistan and elsewhere liberal support for self-determination is betrayed by an almost total refusal to recognize the rights of one ethnic (and ultimately indigenous) people: the Jews. Of the post-imperialist states, one alone is singled out for opprobrium: Israel. Rhetoric about Israelis being imperialists, colonizers or fascists, leads one to think that Israel's enemies know nothing about the vast Ottoman empire that was the last legitimate regime to control the territories from which Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the disputed territories all spring. The "Palestine will be free" marchers evidently know nothing much about history. Israelis -- just like citizens in their neighbouring states -- are a people freed from the tyranny of the Muslim Ottomans and awarded a new destiny precisely because Europe's imperial powers, the League of Nations, and the United Nations, relinquished their right to rule in favour of Jewish sovereignty.

Today's new anti-Semites ignore or are wholly ignorant of the long and unprecedented history of the Jewish diaspora.[4] No other people has longed for self-determination for so long or with such sustained intensity.To leave Israel for a moment, we can find an important anomaly among liberal feminists who actively support the wearing of the Muslim veil and even choose to turn a blind eye to the misogyny of Islamic law, forced marriages, child marriages, female genital mutilation, honour killings and the stoning of women accused of adultery. This is, perhaps, the most hideous example of hypocrisy and double standards -- finding fault with even the most trivial of Western attitudes to women while doing nothing to protect Muslim women simply because it supposedly is "racist" to condemn Muslims. It appears that the fear of being called racist is more important to many than a genuine concern for the human rights of a group that is clearly oppressed. A Western man calling women "chicks" may expect the full force of feminist wrath, but a Muslim man who beats his wife because the Qur'an advises him to, is exonerated because wife-beating is part of his different and purportedly inviolable culture.

Writing in Tablet magazine last year, Heather Rogers relates how she at first dismissed criticism of misogyny within Muslims communities because "Westerners have no right to tell Muslims how to live" and downplayed arguments about the rate of Islamic honour killings. It was only on later reflection, she said, that she began to pose questions such as, "Why aren't more non-Muslim feminists speaking up about violence against women in Muslim-majority countries?" She then gives an example of how liberal feminists distort matters. "In searching the Internet," she writes, "I begin to find the vestiges of a discussion of the subject among Leftists, which suggests some reasons why many non-Muslim feminists choose to stay silent. One controversy is to do with an essay Adele Wilde-Blavatsky wrote in 2012 for The Feminist Wire, an online women's studies journal. Her piece says the hijab is a symbol of male oppression. A stormensued. One response, signed by 77 academics, writers, and activists, said the essay was an assertion of Wilde-Blavatsky's "white feminist privilege and power." Instead of facilitating a discussion, however, The Feminist Wire editorial collective took down the comments, pulling the essay along with them."
Rogers then cites the 2010 case when Amnesty International fired the head of its Gender Unit,Gita Sahgal, who had protested the charity's alliance with a former Taliban fighter and misogynist, Moazzem Begg, an extremist who still refuses to condemn the stoning to death of women. Sahgal's credentials as a secular Asian woman defending the rights of Muslim women in general were and are undeniable. But Amnesty International, a left-wing non-governmental organization (NGO) put its pro-Muslim politics above women's rights -- a remarkable step for the world's best-known human rights agency.

It is surprising, yet all too predictable, to find pro-peace organizations and political leaders supporting violent and intolerant opinions and groups. The simplest example is the current leader of Britain's Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn regards war as a last resort and has been active in a number of anti-war movements, such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the hyper-pacifist Stop the War Coalition, which informs his current position in parliament. He continues to oppose renewing Trident, Britain's nuclear missile capacity. We have to assume that Corbyn is, in principle, opposed to the use of violence except in extreme circumstances. How, then, is it that he has described the brutal terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah -- the latter declared on 11 March to be a terrorist state by the Arab League -- both of which have an open agenda of committing genocide against Jews, as "my friends"? He explains this as "diplomatic language in the context of dialogue." Dialogue? This answer confirms that Corbyn has read neither the Hamas Covenant nor Hezbollah'sRisala maftuha (Open Letter). How does a man of peace enter into dialogue with Hamas? Here are two sentences from its Covenant/Charter:

"Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors." [Author's emphasis]

I have an Arabic copy of the Covenant in front of me: the translation is perfectly correct.
Here, from the Hizbullah Open Letter, is much the same thing:

Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.
We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Therefore we oppose and reject the Camp David Agreements, the proposals of King Fahd, the Fez and Reagan plan, Brezhnev's and the French-Egyptian proposals, and all other programs that include the recognition (even the implied recognition) of the Zionist entity. [Author's emphases]

Dialogue, anyone? In his obsession with dialogue, Corbyn has gone further. In a notorious interview with Stephen Nolan on Radio Ulster last year, Corbyn was asked six times, "Are you prepared to condemn what the IRA did?" -- referring to their use of terrorist violence. Each time he refused to give a straight answer. As Nolan himself put it at the beginning of the interview, quoting from a Daily Telegraph article in June: "This is a man who sympathised with violent Irish republicanism in the 80s, invited IRA representatives to the Commons a fortnight after the Brighton bombing in 1984 and at a Troops Out meeting in 1987 he stood for a moment's silence for eight IRA terrorists killed in an SAS ambush." He is also a man who invited Hamas and Hezbollah representatives into the UK parliament. Even The Guardian, regarded by many as anti-Israeli, has castigated Corbyn for this and his other associations with terrorists and anti-Semites. It does not stop there. During an interview with one of Britain's most eminent political journalists, Andrew Marr, Corbyn called for dialogue with Islamic State. A week later, in The Spectator, Toby Young wrote an article entitled, "Jeremy Corbyn and the hard left are wilfully blind to the evils of Islamist Nazis." Of course, Corbyn himself did not volunteer to fly out to Raqqa to have a cosy chat with Islamic State's self-proclaimed leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a spirit of dialogue.
What is the reason for this staggering naïveté? You can find some of the answer by looking at again at the Hamas Covenant and Hizbullah's Open Letter. Here are some sentences from the former:

The Islamic Resistance Movement [i.e. Hamas] found itself at a time when Islam has disappeared from life. Thus rules shook, concepts were upset, values changed and evil people took control, oppression and darkness prevailed, cowards became like tigers: homelands were usurped, people were scattered and were caused to wander all over the world, the state of justice disappeared and the state of falsehood replaced it. Nothing remained in its right place.

Here is a single statement from the latter:

As for our friends, they are all the world's oppressed peoples.

In other words, both Hamas and Hizbullah supposedly exist to fight for the rights of the oppressed, Franz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth," the victims of Western imperialism and colonialism, of American arrogance, of a worldwide Jewish/Zionist/Masonic conspiracy. What socialist would not reach out to condemn his own people and his own culture, would not repudiate his own history, merely to reach out to these victims? If Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic State, al-Qa'ida, the Iranian regime, and all the other promoters of violence proclaim themselves to be the champions of the downtrodden masses, are they then to be applauded, rewarded and financed? It is not just the "hard left" that does this. The broad liberal press, newspapers -- such as theNew York Times, the Guardian, the Independent, Haaretz -- together with a broad consensus of politicians and church leaders, are always happy to tell us that when terrorist groups maim and kill innocent civilians it is not their fault, for the conditions of oppression under which they live have purportedly given them no choice other than to fight back; that the Palestinians have given up hope, that they and their children have no other choice but to shoot and stab their way to yet more years of failure, despair and security measures.
Most of us in the West have much to thank many real liberals for: the abolition of slavery, the cause of civil rights and anti-racism, recognition of the rights of homosexuals, empathy for the disabled, free education, the campaign against religious intolerance, and much more. Liberals share these achievements with many others from the "right" and centre, with Jewish and Christian ethical standards, with a growing sense of a shared humanity as set out in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But many pseudo-liberals have betrayed these same values and proven themselves unworthy of the work of their own ancestors -- men and women who would never have sat side by side with terrorists, lied about Israel, fostered anti-Semitism or tolerated the abuse of women and children.[5] In all likelihood they would never have denounced the values of Western civilization, or valued the monstrous over the humane.

Dr. Denis MacEoin is an academic and journalist specializing in Islam and the Middle East.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7755/liberals-hypocrisy

OP bumped after the constant attempts to derail, the thread by attacking a poster and not the points

Floor is open

by Ben Reilly Wed Apr 27, 2016 9:37 pm

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