Tennis player Shahar Peer victim of Israel's Gaza war

Shahar Peer is an Israeli; she also is a promising tennis player with dreams of attaining international star status as one of the world's best 10 players. She had hoped to play in Barclays Dubai Tennis Championship but won't. Dubai considers her 'persona non grata' as a citizen of Israel. A flurry of stories hit papers around the world which made the Dubai emirate appear not only anti Israeli but anti Semitic. The eye had to mine deep into say the 'New York Times' account to learn through suggestion that Peer was denied a visa as the emirate's protest against Israel's aggression against the helpless civilian population of the Gaza strip. In story after story, the reader would be hard pressed to learn that Dubai has mainted cordial and commercial ties with the Zionist state. Jerusalem's lightning and brutal attacks against Gaza, resulting in a high number of civilian deaths, moved Dubai to break off relations with Israel. And for that reason alone Peer was denied a chance to play in Barclays' tournament. So Shahar Peer is a victim of her own country's senseless 21 day war in Gaza.
Peer has confronted protests in other tournaments that she has played in. However she was never denied entry to a country where they were being held. She was hooted and jeered because of her country's military adventure in Gaza, but not as Peer the tennis player. Jeers and cat calls never stopped her game. However the denial of a visa did. How naive did she and Barclays think that she could slip into Dubai unnoticed. Do they think no one reads newspapers or follows the ways of the world?
This attitude is the height of arrogance. Will the lesson sink in? Probably not.
If Peer thinks that she is being singled out, let her fight it out with Jerusalem. For she is but another victim of her government's eternal war against Hammas.

Decadence of Israeli politics--the rise of Avigdor Lieberman

Tomorrow Israeli go to the polls [10Feb2009]. It is a no brainer to predict that the right wing will win. However the kingmaker, it seems, has become Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisroel Beitanu party [Israel, our country]. Fractious has been the fate of Israel's political life. It is the sorry tale of smaller parties, usually on the right and extreme right, who get a pound of flesh for their support. This time around it Lieberman who's going to call the shots. Lieberman it is bruited belong to Kach the outlawed racist party founded by the late Meir Kahane of Brooklyn's Borough Park. He hates Arabs, and were he king, he would expel Israeli Arabs whom he considers as fifth columnists and Jew haters. Lieberman believes in the purity of the Jewish race, although he makes exceptions for Jews from the old Soviet Union whose mothers weren't Jews. Avigdor wants an Arabrein Israel...or if Arabs do remain as servants and second class citizens, he wants them to swear allegience to all and everything Jewish. Why not call for a mass conversion? What we are witnessing in Israel's 60 year as a state is the decadence of a state which has fallen back on support of Fascist like parties. Likud, Kadmina, and Labour the 3 larger parties are bankrupt. On an eternal warfooting, Israelis see no solution but eternal war, and the gods of war are pushing Israel to the edge of the abyss and the death of the Zionist ideal which 'au fond' has its roots in 19 century Sturm und Drang and inspired by the philosophy among others of Georg Herder.

Cheers for South Africa's dock workers!

South Africa's dock workers have taken industrial action against Israeli ships. In solidarity with the people of Gaza, they are refusing to unload ships carrying Israeli goods. South Africa's dock workers did the same thing when they refused to unload ships carrying arms to the Zimbabwe Mugabe's regime. They are acting out of human deceny and solidarity with a people who have just suffered a 21 day agression, and whose civilian population took the brunt of a mad Israeli policy against Hamas, which even the Israeli leadership--military and political--thought it could destroy. In brief, Israel broke international law through the use of collective punishment. Yesterday [05Feb2009], Israel's navy stopped on high seas a Lebanese ship from bringing supplies to the beleaguered Gazans. If Israel thinks that it can escape the world's sanction, it is wrong. It should be salt poured on the open sore of Israel's arrogance that it is workers at South African ports who are thumbing their noses at Jerusalem. South Africans recognise a racist regime having emerged from the dark years of apartheid, and they are not fooled by Israel's honeyed words trying to put a sweet taste to its own apartheid policy towards the Palestinians. Oh would other countries and other workers be as brave as the South African dock works, and boycott Israel till it changes its colonial policies towards the people of Palestine.

Israel is going crazy

It has been obvious that Jerusalem is suffering from serious mental instability. It is obsessed by Hamas. Benjamin Nethanyahu boasts that if elected, he is going to smash Hamas into fine particules of dust. Now, today, the Israeli navy has sequested on open seas a Lebanese ship, Al Ikhwa [Brotherhood], carrying 60 tonnes of humanitarian supplies to the beleaguered civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Israel has long violated the terms of a truce accord brokered by its ally Egypt to allow much needed supplies for daily survival to Palestinians in Gaza. It never has. It is a law unto itself. It has blockaded tightly the Gaza strip, and has kept the people there on the edge of starvation. Israel is practising at one and the same time a pogram against Hamas and the people of Gaza who voted for it as the legitimate government of the Strip and a Warsaw like ghetto. Israel has learnt lessons well from two former oppressors of the Jews--Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany.
It is clear that when it comes to Hamas, Israel is waging a war which echos the mad Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'--'exterminate the beasts!'
The recent spat at Davos between the Turkish prime minister Erdogan and the Israeli president Peres has deep strategic repercussions for Israel. Erdogan spoke up for the helpless and hapless civilians of Gaza who have borne the brunt of Israeli's 21 day Blitzkrieg against Hamas. Peres went ballistic, and only later apologised to Erdogan for he realised the damage that he has caused the steadfast Muslim ally of 60year friendship. Now the single minded Israeli political and military establishment are rethinking its ties to Turkey. A friend's criticism of Israel's mad military pursuit of Hamas, now has turned Ankara into a less trustworthy ally, and Jerusalem is going to disengage slowly but surely.
Here's another indication of Israel's madness. It is isolating itself from the only true friend it has in the Middle East; it displays the maniacal pursuit of a military policy which itself admits that it can never eradicate Hamas. It can but the price is too high...it's called genocide...but one is beginning to wonder if the extremists like Netanyahu and the secret Kach Liebermann get into government if the mad flies of insanity won't push them to the ultimate tragedy and destruction of the Jewish state?

More shoes for Wen Jibao or Hu Jintao

Wen Jibao is on the last legs of his kiss 'n make up tour of Europe. China with its bags of reminbi yuan is making the rounds to soften the hard knocks it took last year thanks to tthe uprising in Tibet and the mud on its face for its steel gloves approach to the Summer Beijing Olympics and its handling of dissent. Not only that prime minister Wen and president Hu have had to face the winds of internal unrest, corruption, and the spill over of get rich quick friends of theirs who built bad schools and poisoned baby formulas. Well, the last thing Wen Jibao wants is a loss of face, and that he got as he addressed a gathering at the prestigeous Cambridge University. An angry student threw a shoe at him. Wen hasn't the presence of mind to laugh it off like George Bush did in Baghdad's Green Zone. On the other hand, we know that the protester won't be the victim of police violence. Wen uttered a menace saying this incident won't derail good economic ties with 10 Downing Street. Nonetheless these words surely should send a shiver down the already failing British economy. What Wen is not saying is that as the 50 anniversary of the takeover of Tibet and the flight of the Dalai Lama, who enjoys respect and international prestige and honours, has cleared the field for a warlike crackdown on Tibet and neighbouring provinces with a strong Tibetan minority. In other words, he's softening his critics with promises of buying them off with Chinese money. Wen & Hu & the whole corrupt Communist Party deserve our contempt, and an international programme should begin by sending them our old, smelly shoes. Internally with its road to capitalism gone wrong, these old men are forever fearful of their own people. And they should be...for time is no longer on their side.

David Ignoramus

David Ignatius is a well known and respected journalist, writer, and television commentator. At Davos, he moderated a panel on which sat Israel's Peres and Turkey Erdogan, but also a member of the Arab League among others. Erdogan expressed his dismay at the extent of Israeli's shock and awe 21 day agression in the Gaza strip. His chagrin was more than a Muslim's cri de coeur against the disproportionate loss of life and limb and destruction of property, the overwhelming victims being women, children, and young men and the elderly who were not in the ranks of Hamas. Erdogan's distress simply was a reflexion of the general, worldwide revulsion and an expression of human decency against Israel's never ending warfare against the Palestinian people. Ignatius allowed Peres an extended time of 25 minutes to answer. The Israeli president became highly emotional and losing his cool began shouting at Erdogan with existential hysteria, and the usual Israeli rationalisations painting itself as a helpless but fully armed giant against Hamas. After Peres' outburst, Ignatius rose the gavel to end the session. Erdogan asked to answer Peres, but Ignatius turned a deaf ear to his appeal. So Erdogan walked out, and thus turned an angry exchange of words into major headlines. Peres immediately telephoned to Erdogan to apologise for his intemperate behaviour. Realising that he had angered the only steady ally that Jerusalem has had in the Middle East since its founding 60 years ago. Erdogan graciously told Peres, he was displeased with Ignatius lack of manners and his disregard for fairness. This is all straightforward; yet, Ignatius a man with feelers into the highest instances of the US power elite, is an example of his tone deafness to anything or anyone who dares critise Israel. The US elite and general population have swallowed whole Israeli version of things, despite the images on the television, accounts of the facts on the ground in print, and eye witness account. Anything which does accord with Ignatius' standpoint is suspect if not valid. And thanks to his doltishness, he turned an exchange of words into something greater than its parts, and stripped any pretense of impartiality that this man has cultivated over the years. Next time, he says something, better verify his facts, and question his judgment.