BDS over Israel
This is really quite funny in a sad way:
Bush has lost his mind and his moral compass. This statement is an outrage. A lie and a blood libel. Israel has never committed any acts of terrorism. What a tool of Islamic jihad. Based on that, Bush is a terrorist, anyone that defends himself, his family, his country is a terrorist.
How short, and how selective, the memories of the pro-Israel crowd are:
Four extremist Jewish settlers have been charged by an Israeli court for allegedly plotting to blow up an Arab girls' school in Jerusalem a month ago.
Or,
A Jewish settler absent without leave from the Israeli army opened fire Thursday on a public bus traveling to an Arab town in northern Israel, killing at least four people and wounding 10. In the immediate aftermath, passengers swarmed the gunman, killing him before he could leave the bus.
In a statement, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the shooting "a reprehensible act by a bloodthirsty Jewish terrorist who sought to attack innocent Israeli citizens." Israeli police officials suggested that the attack was an attempt to derail the government's planned evacuation of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank scheduled to begin later this month.
As I recall, a fair number of right-wing blogs actually applauded Sharon for calling the act for what it was, contrasting him with the Palestinian leaders who refuse to use the "T" word.
Of course, the old saw about one man's terrorist being another's freedom fighter still holds, and Israel is no exception.
The rightwingers, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine.
They have erected a plaque outside the restored building, and are holding a two-day seminar with speeches and a tour of the hotel by one of the Jewish resistance fighters involved in the attack.
Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, have written to the municipality, stating: “We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.”
And it isn't just the old terror attacks that get commemorated:
Militant Jews have gathered at the grave of Baruch Goldstein to celebrate the sixth anniversary of his massacre of Muslim worshippers in Hebron.
The celebrants dressed up as the gunman, wearing army uniforms, doctor's coats and fake beards.
. . .
In 1994 on Purim, Goldstein stormed a mosque and fired on praying Muslims in the West Bank city's Tomb of the Patriarchs - a shrine sacred to both Muslims and Jews.
Twenty-nine people died in the attack, and the angry crowd lynched Goldstein in retaliation.
Israeli extremists continue to pay homage at his grave in the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, where a marble plaque reads: "To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of Israel."
Ignoring the crimes of those you support is too often the reason those crimes continue. There are militant extremists on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and until they are all called to account, as the statement read by Bush at least promises to do, peace is unlikely.
