Haaretz: Always hitting us when we’re down

I was shopping in Tel Aviv’s Shuk HaCarmel, late on Thursday afternoon, as news of 40 deaths in a fire in the Carmel Forest started to filter through. And, as is their wont, stallholders were loudly and crudely relaying the first details to shoppers and fellow traders.

But whatever you say about stallholders in the Shuk (and I wasn’t particularly kind about them, last week), their hearts are in the right place . . . something that can’t necessarily be said for much of this country’s (so-called) liberal elite (close relations of its “cultural elite”).

“Israel is a stupid, lawbreaking state. It voraciously devours its own people, and this time devoured them with fire.”

Sarid: Arrogant slaphead

So ranted Yossi Sarid, left-wing political commentator and former Meretz leader, in the following morning’s Haaretz under a headline – Where trees burn… (amended, it would seem, for the online edition) – playing on Heinrich Heine’s prediction pertaining to the burning of books.

“I told you so,” repeats the arrogant bald tosser ad infinitum, delighting in his would-be prescience, while admitting that he knows nothing about the cause of the fire (he couldn’t have, seeing as the deadline for submissions would have been around midnight on Thursday).

You see, Israeli journalists of the far left love nothing more than the knee-jerk response. And while the cause of the fire, together with the obvious lack of preparedness for it, will result in yet another state commission of inquiry, Haaretz’s hyperbole and overkill – Friday’s edition featured two other, similar front page comment pieces (see below) – typifies the kind of gratuitous, tasteless Israel-bashing in which it appears to so delight whenever controversy, hardship or tragedy strikes the country (see, for example, Washing, folding . . . and binning Haaretz?)

While two arrests have now been made, Amir Oren penned Call it murder before any evidence of foul play had come to light. “If [the fire] turns out to be man-made . . . ,” he starts one sentence, before then seeming to forget to amend his stupidly irresponsible title (the online edition adds this qualification as its by-line).

And in The firefighters’ Yom Kippur War – you couldn’t make it up! (title again changed online) – Aluf Benn somehow contrives to use the tragedy to warn “Israel not to embark on war against Iran.”

Can Haaretz really be surprised when, as it has admitted, so many people phone up to cancel their subscriptions? If Israel’s other English language newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, wasn’t quite so lame, I would probably do so too.

Fire raging at Kibbutz Beit Oren

(But moving away from these shameless, self-loathing, journalistic assholes to the people who really count . . . ) There are just so many awful ironies in this continuing tragedy, commencing as it did on the very first day of Chanukah. On Friday evening, for example, Israeli TV broadcast the candle-lighting of members of Kibbutz Beit Oren, one of the places worst hit by the fire. And as a kibbutznikit read aloud the blessing ending “she’asa nisim la’avoteinu ba’yamim ha’hem ba’zman ha’zeh” – Who has wrought miracles for our forefathers in those days at this season – the news anchor commented wryly, “In those days, maybe . . . but I am not so sure about these.”

I save till last (and most definitely least) my favourite (if you can have such a thing!) bête noire: Turkey. Following the contemptible way in which this nation of nauseating hypocrites has turned on Israel – its erstwhile ally and even saviour (during the 1999 Izmit earthquake) – over the last couple of years, I would tell Prime Minister Erdogan to shove the two firefighting planes offered to us right up an ‘alley’ (the Turk’s favourite) where the fires don’t burn (except, perhaps, after a spicy kebab).

We will get through this latest test just like we get through all of them . . . and without help from Turkey, or our own dickheads at Haaretz.

Making us sick: An open letter to a Turkish MP

Dear Mr. Kiniklioğlu,

I write in response to your op-ed article, This Israeli Government Has Gone Too Far, in last Wednesday’s International Herald Tribune.

“It makes yer sick . . .” So a dear, late uncle of mine would commence his not infrequent tirades against the hypocrisy and double standards of the international community and media in its treatment of Israel. And, after reading your ill-thought-out piece, I have not been able to get Uncle Stanley’s words out of my head.

As Deputy Chairman of External Affairs in Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Spokesman of your parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, I would have expected you to know at least a little of your own country’s human rights record, however uncomfortable the facts.

From the opening, however, of your article’s second paragraph – “I have many friends in Israel . . .” (the equivalent of the anti-Semite’s familiar “Some of my best friends are Jews . . .”) – I feared the worst. And your description of the raid on the Gaza flotilla and of its “peace activists” – they of the delightful “Go back to Auschwitz” call – flies in the face of all the evidence, which clearly shows an attempted lynch of IDF soldiers.

How would Turkey respond to another country daring to interfere with its treatment of the Kurds? And how would your soldiers respond to beatings with iron bars, to having their weapons grabbed and turned on them, and to being thrown off the deck of a ship? Would Turkey provide the “independent investigation”, “apology”, “compensation” and “punish[ment]” which you now demand of Israel?

Your reference to the war which Israel “unleashed” in Gaza totally ignores its cause: eight long years of Hamas rocket attacks (still continuing). Turkey has hardly been a model of restraint when it comes to its Hamas, the Kurdish PKK. Moreover, conditions in Gaza make it seem like The Ritz compared to Turkey’s savagely neglected Kurdish hinterlands.

Turkey is not one-tenth of the democracy that Israel is (and after only 62 years of existence). Seeing as your Masters in International Relations would appear to have excluded them from its syllabus, here are just a few of the uncomfortable details:

• In 2008, Turkey ranked second (after Russia) in the list of countries with the largest number of open human rights violation cases at the European Court of Human Rights (source, and see this table).
• In addition to thousands of “disappearances”, by the close of 2008, a total of 2,949 people had been killed by unknown perpetrators and 2,308 by extrajudicial executions in the, primarily Kurdish, southeast and eastern regions of Turkey (source).
• Turkish politicians, trade unionists, journalists and human rights activists (genuine ones!) have been convicted merely for having used the word “Kurdistan” (source), while Turkey has a long history of deaths at demonstrations due to excessive police force, with 13 killed during a PKK funeral as recently as March 2006 (source).

For details of Turkey’s “cultural genocide” of the Kurds, its invasion, occupation and ethnic cleansing of northern Cyprus, and – most heinous of all – its extermination of up to one a half million Armenians, see here, here and here.

Where do you find the gall, Mr. Kiniklioğlu, to lecture Israel (or any country for that matter) about “blatant disregard for international norms and law”, to quote Amnesty International – whose website dedicates one hundred webpages solely to Turkey (and, then, only going back to 1994!) – or to moralise about what “the conscience of the Turks” can or cannot “carry the burden of”? What contemptible hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness!

The feebleness of your argument (if indeed there is one) is reflected in your desperate, shameful references to how the Turks “welcomed the Jews escaping from the Inquisition in Spain in 1492” and to how your “diplomats have risked their lives to save European Jews from the Nazis” (according to my research, a total of three Turks have been honoured by Yad Vashem).

You conveniently (cunningly?) omit to mention, however, the self-interest inherent in the Sultan’s and Atatürk’s aforementioned actions, and the subsequent huge contribution – especially commercial – of Turkish Jewry to your country. You also overlook, inter alia, Turkey’s racist 1942 Wealth Tax, its role in the Struma disaster of the same year, and the no less than three terrorist attacks on Istanbul’s Neve Shalom Synagogue.

Have you forgotten, too, the hundreds of Israeli search and rescue workers who risked their own lives in order to save Turks in the aftermath of the 1999 Izmit earthquake?

You seem to consider that Turkey has been doing Israel a huge favour, all these years, by accepting arms supplies and upgrades, together with military intelligence and know-how, from our vastly superior army and air force.

No, it was not “the Israeli raid”, as you mischievously (duplicitously?) suggest, that “was a turning point for Turkish attitudes towards Israel” or which “crossed a critical threshold” . . . but rather your prime minister’s and party’s decision to realign Turkey with the terrorist states of Syria and Iran (you disingenuously also throw into your article mention of “the tension surrounding Iran’s nuclear program”, in which Turkey is now an accomplice). In such circumstances, writing that “Turks regard the current Israeli government as unfriendly” would be akin to Hitler having said that about the Russians, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union!

It is worrying that the International Herald Tribune sees fit to publish such dangerous, ill-thought-out drivel, merely by virtue of its author being a member of his country’s parliament. Had you submitted the same as part of an undergraduate degree in Politics at a British university (or even at a former polytechnic), it would have received a straight “F”.

To give you some idea of the strength of feeling here about your country’s double standards, an Israeli artist friend of mine – by no means a right-winger – related to me over coffee yesterday morning how he had walked 45 minutes to the Turkish Embassy in Tel Aviv merely to “give it the finger” (literally). And I, too, give you the finger, Mr. Kiniklioğlu, together with your vile, knuckle-dragging nation of hypocrites.

If you have anything to say in your defence – as to why you believe that your sickening hypocrisy and double standards should not earn you June’s Mook of the Month (with your reputation, from Web searches of your name, being forever associated with mookness) – I invite you to post it to https://melchettmike.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/making-us-sick-an-open-letter-to-a-turkish-mp/.

Yours sincerely,

melchett mike

[I have e-mailed this post to Mr. Kiniklioğlu via the contact page of his website.]

Raid on Terrorist Flotilla: Footie Songs Say It Best

“No one likes us, no one likes us, no one likes us, we don’t care.
We are Millwall, super Millwall, we are Millwall from the Den.”

Strangely enough, this ostensibly inane football song (full rendition) was reverberating in my head throughout yesterday, as I watched and heard the world reaction to the IDF’s storming of the terrorist flotilla.    

Even if the execution of the raid was ill-conceived (and I fear it was), it was justified (see my previous post, Dirty seamen stain Dunkirk weekend). But, for sustained, exaggerated and unfair criticism and singling-out by the media, one can easily substitute “Millwall” with “Israel”. And like the demonization of white, working class, Cockney football fans – an easy target for the press – that of the Jewish state has also created a siege mentality amongst its citizens and supporters. 

The fans of my football team, Leeds United, also have much of this mentality (incidentally, we have also had – and I was there – our own bitter experience of the Turks [see photos below]). But, when it comes to international Islamofascism, working class football fans appear to have a far better, more intuitive sense of right and wrong than the so-called “liberal”, Guardian-reading elite who so patronise them. Indeed, many of the friends and acquaintances I have made through my years of following Leeds United have remarked to me how much they respect and admire Israel for dealing with Fundamentalists in a way that they wish their own government would. 

Christopher Loftus (top) and Kevin Speight, RIP, hacked to death in the centre of Istanbul in April 2000. Their killers still roam free.

My inner voice was also chanting, yesterday, the words that we Leeds fans direct at our team when, as so often, it underperforms. “What the f*ck is going on?!” was not, however, aimed at the Israeli government or our brave young soldiers, but at the horrible media bias assailing my senses. Anyone who knows anything about Turkey can well imagine (if he/she can bear to) its reaction to another country daring to send aid to the Kurds – who are forbidden even to give their offspring Kurdish names – or supporting Kurdish claims for an independent state. But I won’t regurgitate my contempt for these sickeningly hypocritical knuckle draggers – it is all here, here, and here – only to say that Israel’s (former?) strategic cooperation with Turkey, a marriage of convenience, is no less a cause for shame than that with apartheid South Africa.  

The scenes from the deck of the boarded vessel were a horrible reminder for Israelis of the October 2000 Ramallah lynching (this Israeli Channel 2 footage requires no translation). And, by yesterday evening, as I became even more incensed by the double standards of the international reaction – and, especially, that of the Arab tyrannies and the two-faced Turks – I found succour in the soldier’s song, also appropriated by football fans: “F*ck ‘em all! F*ck ‘em all! The long and the short and the tall . . .” 

I ended a pretty horrible day with an adapted rendition of “If you hate Leeds United, have a go” (to the tune of She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain). 

The terrorists had “ha[d] a go”. Nine (do we have a minyan yet?) are on their way to their 72 (I prefer them younger myself) Virgins. And I, for one, am not going to mourn them or apologise. 

Yes, f*ck ‘em all!

Dirty seamen stain Dunkirk weekend

“It does exactly what it says on the tin.”              

So proclaims an advertising slogan for woodstain, which has entered UK popular culture to describe anything that is exactly as it appears or claims to be.              

The slogan could not apply less to the two major nautical events of this weekend: on the one hand, the ceremony marking the anniversary of a sea “evacuation”; and, on the other, the anticipated arrival of the variously named “aid”, “freedom”, “peace”, even “blockade-busting”, flotilla.               

No, don’t be fooled by “what it says on the tin”.              

It is 70 years since the Dunkirk evacuation, when 340,000 Allied soldiers were rescued from the French beaches and advancing German armies in the early stages of World War Two. While unquestionably a retreat, the bravery of the seafaring rescuers in their convoy of “little ships” – enabling Good to fight, and to triumph over Evil, another day – established the term “Dunkirk spirit” in the British lexicon.               

The Miracle of Dunkirk

A considerably less heroic convoy of seamen – a stain on this special weekend – are due to arrive in Israeli waters today, under the guise of helping the poor, besieged Gazans . . .              

The same poor, besieged Gazans who gave a party of Islamofascist terrorists – whose raison d’être is the destruction of Israel no less than Hitler’s was that of the Jews – the majority of seats in their parliament.            

The same poor, besieged Gazans whose government has been holding a kidnapped Israeli soldier for four years, in complete contravention of international law, and bombarding Israeli civilians with rockets for over double that time.            

And, yes, the same poor, besieged Gazans who fill their children’s heads with vile anti-Semitic propaganda that would make Goebbels blush.          

Gaza flotilla, bearing Turkish and Palestinian flags

Even if you are troubled by these poor, besieged Gazans not being able to get their hands on a Kit Kat (couldn’t give a f*ck myself), make no mistake: this is neither a “humanitarian” mission, nor any of the other things written “on the tin” . . . but a dirty propaganda war – at least partially sponsored by the sickeningly hypocritical Turks, among the worst human rights abusers the world over – aimed purely at delegitimising Israel.         

As for the participants, they are an ignoble collection of agitators who – unlike the heroic Dunkirk veterans – have absolutely no concept of Good and Evil, being motivated purely by hatred of Jews. How else can one explain their obsession with Israel to the exclusion of all else?

And, be in no doubt, if the boot was on the other foot, Hamas would drown every last one of them.              

Kus ima shelahem ! כוס אמא שלהם

 

Hitting Turkey where it hurts

Israeli tourism to Turkey hit an all-time high in 2008, with over half a million Israelis (me included) visiting between January and October alone. Israelis rank tenth amongst all nationalities entering the Third World country, which boasts Istanbul and some cheap resorts. (Ynetnews article)

But enough is enough.

Following Prime Minister Erdogan’s grossly hypocritical tirades against Israel’s war on terror (see my earlier Mr. Erdogan . . . you’re the Christmas turkey! post), and the Bnei Hasharon basketball team’s ordeal in Ankara last week (Jerusalem Post article), the time has come for Israelis to hit the hypocritical Turks where it hurts most . . . and I don’t mean in their asses (that would be counter-productive), but in their pockets, by choosing a different vacation destination.

Turkey’s arch enemy, Greece, would be a fitting choice. Its islands have better beaches, entertainment and, most definitely, culture (if not Russian totty) than Antalya, Bodrum, and all those other tawdry resorts put together. One is also less likely to be accosted by some fat, greasy, moustachioed male looking for some unsuspecting kosher ‘meat’ to stick on his unwashed ‘skewer’.

I, for one, won’t be visting Turkey again (and can now dispose of all those corks). But the next time there is a terrible natural disaster there, let’s tell them how shit they’ve been to the Armenians and the Kurds before automatically proffering our support.

Wankers.

(Apologies for melchett mike having become rather less refined over the past fortnight . . . frustration at all the hypocrisy has brought out the cruder side of me!)

F*ck you, too

[melchett mike, talking to his reflection in his laptop screen, after suffering a fortnight of “F*ck Israel” and “F*ck Jews” . . . ]

Well, f*ck you, too. F*ck you and this whole Jew-hating world. F*ck all the  protesters who, it seems, don’t believe Jews have a right to defend themselves. Where have you been these past eight years, while missiles have been landing on our women and children every day? And what would you have done if they were landing on yours, you self-righteous hypocrites? F*ck Bianca Jagger and Annie Lennox, and all the other has-beens, who have been trying to revive their flagging careers aboard the human rights bus (the one which doesn’t stop in Israel). F*ck Roseanne Barr and Alexei Sayle, and all the other “rent a Jews”. You are a f*cking disgrace. F*ck George “Hezbollah has never been a terrorist organisation” Galloway, the nauseating Scottish prick, who spends his entire wretched existence kissing-up to Muslims. For someone who claims he didn’t admire Saddam (but who “salute[d his] courage, strength and indefatigability”), you might as well have been blowing the genocidal maniac. F*ck Ken Livingstone, the “concentration camp guard”-comparing, Hugo Chávez-supporting, hypocrite. If you and Galloway spent less time offending Jews, you wouldn’t need to spend so much claiming you are not anti-Semites. F*ck Robert Fisk, Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, those Arab-loving affronts to objective journalism. F*ck the pompous, self-righteous BBC. We might as well try to get the truth off Al Jazeera. F*ck the Turks, the Armenian-murdering, Kurdish-persecuting, women-subjecting, wrong hole-f*cking hypocrites. F*ck Ahmedinejad, the poisonous Persian dwarf in his M&S summer jackets. Did no one ever tell you M&S was Jewish?! F*ck the terrorist-protecting “human shields”. What were you expecting when you stood in front of Caterpillars, you dumb assholes?! F*ck the UN and its double standards. How come you can always find Gaza on your maps, but never Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, . . . ? F*ck the Palestinians, the miserable f*cking low-lives, spurning every opportunity for peace that has come their way. F*ck all the Arabs, who despise the Palestinians more than anyone, and have only ever used them for their own Evil, self-serving ends. F*ck Abu “Hook Hands” Hamza, who should be left to rot and die in his stinking Belmarsh sty. Every time you try to wipe, and scratch your ass to f*ck, repent for being the bomb-making terrorist that you are. F*ck the memories of the treasonous filth who blew themselves up on London Transport. May every one of your 72 virgins be hung like a horse. F*ck Mashal, Nasrallah and Bin Laden, sending their sons to their deaths while hiding like rats in their bunkers. And f*ck Hamas, for using mosques, women and children to protect their own yellow asses. Get the Vaseline ready . . . your virgins are on their way! Believe me, neither Allah nor Mohammed gives a flying f*ck about any of you Evil bastards. From the protests in Edinburgh to the demos in Auckland. From the slums of Bradford to the rat-infested tunnels of Gaza. From Finsbury Park Mosque to every other one preaching lies, hatred and murder. Let the bombs land, let the fires rage, let Evil burn to f*cking ash, and then let the waters rise and submerge it.

[pause]

But, also, f*ck you, melchett mike . . . for ever expecting anything else.

(And f*ck you, Monty Brogan, for giving me the idea.)

Mr. Erdogan . . . you’re the Christmas turkey!

Turkey is known more for its kebabs (and the dubious sexual preferences and practices of its menfolk) than its national sense of humour. The recent utterances of Turkey’s Prime Minister, however, bear all the hallmarks of a comic genius.

In January, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of Turkey’s Islamic ruling party, suggested that Qassam rockets fired from Gaza don’t kill.

His latest one-liner is that Israel’s war against Hamas and its rockets constitutes “a serious crime against humanity”.

Mr. Erdogan is clearly trying to prove, single-handedly, that the origins of the North American slang turkey – “a stupid or inept person” (Concise Oxford Dictionary) – do not derive from the bird eaten on Christmas; because both Erdogan and his country, stuck in the Middle Eastern Middle Ages, know all too well about “serious crime[s] against humanity”.

Not even mentioning (as Turks themselves don’t) the Armenian genocide and ongoing persecution of the Kurds, Turkey is a serial violator of human rights (the reason for its delayed accession to the EU). Blacklisting, on political, religious and sexuality grounds, is commonplace, as is torture, even murder, at the hands of the police. “Denigrating Turkishness” is prohibited, and many journalists and intellectuals have been victims of violent attacks and even assassinations. Forced virginity-testing for females was only outlawed as recently as 2002.

I had shocking first-hand experience of the primitive, barbaric side (there is another) of Turkey in 2000, on my first ever visit to the country, for the UEFA Cup semi-final between Galatasaray and Leeds United. On the evening before the game (a matter of minutes after I had started walking back to my hotel), Leeds fans Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight were viciously stabbed to death (Loftus was stabbed 17 times) in Taksim Square, in the heart of Istanbul, by a knife-wielding mob, following allegations that the Turkish flag had been “disrespected”. Even if true, a nation that values a piece of cloth over human life needs to undertake some serious self-analysis. (Some of the Turkish press even glorified the killings, one headlining “We made their heads kiss the ground of our motherland.” Nice.)

Istanbul is a fascinating city (I have been four times now, and even had my heart broken there). But the Ottoman Empire has long since faded, and venturing outside of the major cities is, by all accounts, like finding oneself on the set of some Middle Eastern Deliverance.

Despite being only sixty years’ old, and rising out of the ashes of the Holocaust rather than a vast Empire, Israel is light years ahead of Turkey in the democratic stakes, and in virtually every other way. She provides Turkey with major assistance, including humanitarian (IDF search and rescue teams were to the fore in the aftermath of the 1999 earthquake), military, and intelligence (the Mossad helps Turkey track down Al Qaeda operatives in the region).

Mr. Erdogan, friendship works both ways. And friends support each other at times of need. Perhaps it is hard for you to comprehend (not being written in your holy Koran), but a genuine Jewish friend is better than a criminal Muslim one. You wouldn’t want to share an Efes Pilsen (alcohol-free, of course) with a Hamas terrorist any more than a PKK one.