Mick Hartley

David Rose at the JC on the increasingly strident anti-Israel output from the media:

As hostility to Israel has grown, things are being said on “respectable” outlets that would once have been inconceivable. On Thursday, the former Tory MP Sir Alan Duncan went full ‘Jewish conspiracy’ Monty as a guest on Nick Ferrari’s LBC show, accusing Lord Polak and Lord Pickles of Conservative Friends of Israel of “doing the bidding of Netanyahu, bypassing all proper processes to exercise undue influence at the top of government” and demanding they be “flushed out” of the House of Lords for “exercising the interests of another country”.

It was a busy day for Ferrari, who also interviewed the Russian Ambassador, Andrei Kelin. With apparent respect, he asked him what was his “message to Israel” after the deaths of the aid workers. “Israel should stop doing these things,” replied Kelin, “everybody is calling for that. It is a Security Council resolution… Israel should immediately stop doing and continuing this war in Gaza.”

Given that he was interviewing a man whose government’s continuing war against Ukraine has already led to more than half a million casualties, Russian massacres of civilians, the well-documented torture of thousands of prisoners and threats to unleash nuclear weapons if the West should intervene, Ferrari’s next question – which can be watched on YouTube – beggared belief: “So they [Israel] have gone beyond the right to defend themselves?”

Supplied with this interrogatory underarm lob, Kelin replied: “They’ve gone far beyond the right to defend themselves. Everybody, including the UK and the others are calling them to immediate cessation of fire and also proceeding to the peace plan.”…

Meanwhile, Guardian columnist Owen Jones said on Sky TV – also on Thursday – that Germany was supporting Israel because this enabled it to overcome its Holocaust guilt, and it had “decided to force the Palestinian people to pay for its own heinous crimes”. (Jones was strongly criticised for this, but insisted there “nothing offensive” about it.)

Before October 7, the kind of discourse outlined above wasn’t much in evidence, at least not on mainstream outlets, but was confined to the online chatrooms of the extreme right and left. It is now becoming normalised, and in so doing it  reflects and fosters the deepening chill towards Israel in the chancelleries of the democratic West.

The past week has arguably been Israel’s worst since this conflict started. My fear is that the outlook is still more bleak.

As we heard last week, the official term for South Korea now, as recently decreed by Kim Jong-un, is "the South Korean puppet state". This new line also requires that earlier calls for the reunification of Korea were not only ideologically unsound and misguided, but, in fact, never happened:

North Korean authorities have ordered that the word “reunification” be removed from students’ textbooks, Daily NK has learned.

“The education authorities were ordered to review all textbooks from the beginning of March to the end of the month. The plan is to prepare a new batch of textbooks,” a source in North Korea told Daily NK on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In the wake of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s policy speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly in January, in which he ordered the complete elimination of “such terms as ‘reunification,’ ‘reconciliation,’ and ‘fellow countrymen’ from the national history of our republic,” North Korean education officials are now updating the country’s textbooks.

“For this year, schools have been ordered to use pens or pencils to cross out words banned by the state in textbooks. The orders were sent from the Ministry of Education to the provincial education offices and from there to the administration of each school, where they were carried out by the teaching staff,” the source said.

Since there is not enough time to produce and distribute revised textbooks this school year, as a stopgap measure, teachers at each school are expected to go through each textbook with their students to cross out the banned words so that they are no longer visible.

“Teachers have explained to their students that the orders must be followed because they are in line with the party’s efforts to establish a correct view of history,” the source said….

“Teachers attended emergency lectures – one in February and one in March – organized by provincial, city, and county education authorities. In these lectures, teachers were told to revise their lesson plans and to avoid using unnecessary words [such as “reunification”] with their students. The same lectures stressed that teachers are revolutionaries charged with preparing the next generation to lead the future of the fatherland and that they should be ideologically equipped as only such revolutionaries should be,” the source said.

An enlightening report at Spiked from Rob Killick, visiting Israel:

‘Hamas must be eradicated.’

You can rely on taxi drivers the world over to deliver blunt opinions. Unusually for Israel today, my taxi driver is a Netanyahu supporter. He has lost family in the war with Hamas. ‘Our minds were broken’, he says of the 7 October atrocities, ‘but now we are fighting back’. This, I soon discovered, is a common sentiment in Israel. Netanyahu remains deeply unpopular, but the war on Hamas is the one policy of his that the vast majority of Israelis back.

I ask the taxi driver if the pressure from the US and the rest of the outside world to hold back is having any effect. ‘No’, he says, ‘nobody likes us now, but they will respect us when we win’.  […]

They are embarrassingly grateful that I, as a non-Jew, am here and helping in Israel. They think the entire world is against them. Ronen tells me that part of the reason there is a lull in the fighting is that the Israeli arms industry is ramping up. The aim is for Israel to be less dependent on the US for military support.

His wife says that since 7 October large sections of previously left-wing kids have rallied behind the IDF’s invasion of Gaza. Unlike Western youths, these kids have seen their friends slaughtered. Sympathy for the ‘Palestinian cause’ is a luxury belief they cannot afford.  […]

I meet Carlo. He is a gay Italian catholic, the first other non-Jew I have met since I arrived. He says that he has experienced no hostility in Israel on account of his sexuality, and thinks Queers for Palestine activists are utterly insane. This is something I hear time and again during my stay.

The manager of my hotel has a brother who helped collect the bodies along the Gazan border after 7 October. He then spent three months on active service in Gaza. She is now worried about her brother’s state of mind. Her daughter lost two friends at the Nova festival. One was found days later, decapitated. It is hard to find an Israeli who has not lost family or friends in this war. […]

There is also widespread distrust and fear about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the West. Many Israelis cannot understand why we do not understand that Israel is in the frontline of a wider struggle for democracy and civilisation. I do my best to explain that there are many in the UK and elsewhere who recognise the right and duty of Israelis to fight for their country. But when Israelis look at Western media, all they see and hear are ‘pro-Palestine’ protests and ‘pro-Palestine’ voices.

It is difficult for foreigners, especially non-Jews, to fully grasp the existential character of this conflict for Jews. This is a people who were murdered in their millions before and during the Second World War. Afterwards, they were unwanted and so they came to this patch of desert and mountains to build a fortress.

A patch of desert and mountains, it should be stressed, that is their ancestral home.

Today, Israel, a country the size of Wales, is surrounded by hostile nations and facing an almost constant insurgency. Israelis cannot afford the luxury of believing that they can survive without a fight.

From the Telegraph:

Russian troops are carrying out a systematic campaign of illegal chemical attacks against Ukrainian soldiers, according to a Telegraph investigation.

The Telegraph spoke to a number of Ukrainian soldiers deployed in positions across the front line who detailed how their positions have been coming under near daily attacks from small drones, mainly dropping tear gas but also other chemicals.

The use of such gas, which is known as CS and commonly used by riot police, is banned during wartime under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Ihor, the commander of a Ukrainian reconnaissance team who is deployed near the front line city of Chasiv Yar, in Donetsk Oblast, told The Telegraph: “Nearly every position in our area of the front was getting one or two gas grenades dropped on them a day.”…

Other types of chemical gas have also been reported, although the reports could not be independently verified by The Telegraph.

Ms Maciorowski said that she attended one incident last year caused by what she suspected was hydrogen cyanide, a deadly, colourless gas used as a chemical weapon by the West in the First World War.

A Russian drone dropped two munitions containing an unknown gas that had a “crushed almond aroma” on soldiers in Donetsk Oblast, she said.

Two people were killed and 12 required hospital treatment. In an interview with Le Monde in JanuaryYuriy Belousov, the head of investigations for Ukraine’s prosecutor general, referred to one of the deaths as being caused by an “unknown gas”.

There have also been reports of the use of chlorine and chloropicrin – a substance typically used as a pesticide that was deployed by the Germans as a chemical weapon in the First World War.

Officially the Ukrainian military has claimed that 626 gas attacks have been carried out by Russian forces since the start of the full-scale invasion.

But Ms Maciorowski believes this is almost certainly a gross underestimate, saying: “Sadly, as it stands right now, the causes of deaths of many Ukrainian soldiers are not properly investigated. There are just so many of them.”…

The Russians have made little effort to conceal their use of chemical attacks. The Black Sea Fleet’s 810th Naval Infantry Brigade boasted about the deployment of chemical weapons in a post on Telegram in December, posting a video of what it claimed were K-51 gas grenades being dropped on Ukrainian positions.

“Thanks to the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defence troops… for the weapons provided and their timely delivery,” the caption read.

Similarly, a news report aired on the Russian state television station Channel One in May 2023 contained explicit discussion of the issue. One Russian soldier said: “The enemy decided that using gas masks would help. The gas masks don’t help.”

Once upon a time this might have been something that the UN would have had issues with, but, with Putin and his friends in China ready to use their vetoes, that's not going to happen. Anyway…Israel. That's all that matters.

Carl McDow, summer 1950. "Heart of downtown Cleveland, Ohio, and Union Terminal Group (Terminal Tower and Hotel Cleveland)."

[Photo: Shorpy/Carl McDow]

At the Let Women Speak event, where the usual disruptive masked men shouted and paraded their contempt for women, and especially for lesbians:

As homophobic trans activists in Edinburgh wave placards saying lesbians should entertain cock – Mr @HumzaYousaf was very keen recently to say @PoliceScotland should monitor any “rise in homophobia”.

So where the hell are you?#LetWomenSpeakEdinburgh #LetWomenSpeak pic.twitter.com/CLNTfsa097

— John James (@JohnJamesNI) April 6, 2024

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Well who could have predicted this?

As the furore around Scotland’s Hate Crime Act extends into its sixth day, there are now fears about police spending as the force looks set to struggle with the sheer volume of complaints. It is understood that, since the Act was implemented on Monday, 40 officers a day have been required to work overtime to help tackle reports. With officers being paid time and a third for working extra hours, there are concerns about overstretching the Police Scotland budget….

A major issue with the new law is that while Police Scotland said last month that it would not investigate certain minor crimes any longer, the force is having to look at every single report made under Humza Yousaf’s Hate Crime Act. Police training has been rather disorganised, prompting fears that an already overstretched and under-resourced force will reach ‘breaking point’, in the words of Scotish Police Federation general secretary David Kennedy, who warned that the new law ‘has just piled on the pressure’.

 

From Oxfordshire:

A teenage boy has been handed a youth rehabilitation order after raping a 12-year-old girl who has since died in Kidlington.

The 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found guilty earlier this year of raping a girl at Exeter Park in June 2021, when he was 13 years of age.

The teenager denied the offence but was found guilty by a jury on February 26 after a week-long trial.

During the trial, the jury heard the girl, whom the Oxford Mail has decided not to name, has since died.

The reason and cause for her passing has not been explicitly disclosed in court.

A victim impact statement written by the girl’s father was read out before sentencing.

He wrote: “She was a bubbly girl and the heart of the household.

“She was selfless and was always doing things for other people. She would always put others before herself.

“What [he] did to her changed her life. I tried to speak to her about what happened but she struggled to open up.

“She wanted to put it all behind her…but I knew what happened to her was eating her up inside.

“She started to push very close friends away. I can’t begin to imagine what she was going through.

“She started listening to emotional music and watching shows about suicide. She began to self-harm three months after the incident.

“No amount of words could quantify the amount of pain we’ve felt from her death."…

Defending the boy, defence barrister Peter du Feu said he has stayed out of trouble since and understands and he wants to become a better member of the community.

He said: “He wasn’t kind that day. He’s trying to do what he can to be better, to be a better member of the community, and withdraw into a family that surrounds him with love and support.

“It’s so tragic that [the girl] is no longer with us. It makes this case exponentially worse.

“But he’s tried to stay out of trouble and be better.”

Addressing the boy, Judge Lamb said: “I’m not sure it’s right to say that you were selfish but you were not kind and you need to understand that women and girls need to be treated with respect…respect and care.”

I realise the age is some kind of mitigating factor, but…what??? Even if a non-custodial sentence can be justified given that he was only 13 at the time…that language: “I’m not sure it’s right to say that you were selfish but you were not kind and you need to understand that women and girls need to be treated with respect…respect and care.” You've been a naughty boy, but no real harm done, eh?

A grim analysis from David Patrikarakos at UnHerd: 

Israel had not just a right but a duty to respond to the October 7 atrocities. No state could stand by and do nothing. No nation could suffer such a loss and not respond. But the events set in motion by October 7 were always going to be about more than just Israel and Gaza. A localised war has now become perhaps the primary front in a much broader conflict between the American-led order on the one hand and, on the other, a loose axis of states with little in common except a common desire to oppose that order. In the Middle East, the primary player is Iran — and it is exploiting events with sadistic ruthlessness and efficacy.

The West led by the US, Israel's prime backers, are hedging their bets, urging Israel to back off – in effect allowing Hamas to regroup and reassert its control over Gaza – as its cultural elites explode in anti-Israel and frankly antisemitic agitation. The current cultural moment, and leftist idiocy, has allowed the butchery of Hamas to be seen as some kind of anti-colonial struggle, rather than what it really is: a brutal Islamist and Iran-inspired power-play. Any chances of reconciliation with the Sunni states, traditionally Iran's enemies, are on hold as the Abraham Accords disappear into seemingly irrelevant history. The "Global South", led by South Africa, is stridently anti-Israel. It's looking increasingly desperate.

And it just keeps getting worse.

Iran is matching this rhetoric with moves on the ground. On Monday, Hussein Moanes, a spokesman for the Iranian-aligned militia group, Kata’ib Hezbollah, announced that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq is preparing to “equip” 12,000 “Islamic Resistance in Jordan” fighters with a significant supply of weapons so that Iraq and Jordan can jointly attack Israel to defend the Palestinian cause. It is instructive that the Iranians feel that they can openly announce the presence of a proxy in a Sunni Arab state. The Sunni Arabs have far more ideological and historical enmity with Iran than Israel does (under the Shah of Iran, Tehran and Jerusalem were allies). But these are not normal times, and Iran is exploiting this fact relentlessly. Jordan, which is in essence a Palestinian state, has witnessed tremendous unrest over the war. Since 24 March there have been near-constant protests outside the Israeli embassy in Amann. Protestors routinely chant pro-Hamas slogans and call for Jordan’s withdrawal from its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Once more, the Iranians step gratefully in.

A presence in Jordan is of serious strategic value to Iran. It affords greater opportunity for direct strikes into Israel, which it now also surrounds with its proxies. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has already used Jordanian airspace for drone strikes into Israel — one shot down over Irbid in northern Jordan on 12 March was believed to be targeting Ben Gurion Airport. But more than this, it will allow Iran to stir political and social unrest in the West Bank, and to move equipment and materiel more easily over the border. Compared to Hamas, terrorists in the West Bank have limited resources or capacity to attack Israel. If Iran can make a success of its Jordanian proxy, that will change.

In the meantime, new threats emerge each day. On Friday, the CIA reportedly warned Israel that Iran is planning to launch an attack with a “rain” of drones, in revenge for its strike on Zahedi. If that happens, Israel will have to respond to an attack on its territory. Iran knows this, and likely calculates that any response, no matter how justified, will be seen as yet another example of belligerence from Jerusalem.

Yet much of this has been lost beneath the noise created by the focal point of the Gaza war. This week, Britain has been in understandable uproar over the death of seven aid workers, three of whom were British nationals. Condemnation piles upon Israel at the UN. Talk of sanctions grows. Washington, once the guarantor of international security, appears unable to stop the violence on both sides. And all the while, Tehran, the Middle East’s most murderous regime, continues to exploit events to its own advantage, and our cost.

Last week:

Britain’s largest teaching union has voted to condemn “Israeli apartheid” and blame the Jewish state’s “hard-right, racist government” for being the main force behind violence in Gaza.

After an occasionally fractious debate held at their annual conference on Thursday, National Education Union (NEU) delegates overwhelmingly backed a motion that Education Secretary Gillian Keegan had claimed would cause hurt to Jewish children and parents.

The text adopted began by noting, “the eruption of deadly violence between the Israeli state and Hamas in October 2023” and efforts by the UK government to, “criminalise peaceful tactics of boycott, divestment and sanctions… and to stigmatise solidarity with Palestinians.”

Conference believes, it continued, “the siege of Gaza, and the collective punishment of its people, must end immediately” adding: “Israel’s hard-right, racist government is the main driver of conflict, violence and war”

And now:

A teaching union will campaign against government plans to force schools to tell parents if their child changes gender.

Members of the National Education Union (NEU) agreed on Friday to oppose what teachers described as the “compulsory ‘outing’” of pupils to parents.

Teachers at the union’s annual conference in Bournemouth also said they would campaign against a ban on any aspect of “social transitioning” in schools, which could include allowing children to change their pronouns or use lavatories or changing facilities of the opposite sex….

Midge Lowe, a teacher from Doncaster, said the Government’s draft guidance was “regressive trash” and said teachers must campaign for it to be withdrawn.

She said: “This guidance, refusing to acknowledge the existence of trans children, is a risk, is harmful. Refusing to allow a cautious but early social transition is harmful and encourages risk-taking behaviour in later stages of life where it presents much greater harm.”

No delegates at the conference spoke against the motion, which also stated that “schools, colleges and external providers should not change or remove LGBT+ inclusive policies or curriculum content as ‘knee-jerk’ response to political rhetoric”.

It comes after The Telegraph revealed that primary school teachers are being told to allow children to change gender without informing their parents.

How the hard left take over unions: part 73 in a continuing saga.