I invite you to watch her resignation statement in all its rambling strangeness.

Call me a liberal elitist looking down my nose at Bible-believing, gun-owning Americans (which I don’t believe I am), but leaving aside the content of what she says, I find something disturbing about her– which has nothing to do with her as a woman or a conservative or “down to earth”– and I’m more relieved than ever that she is not a heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world.

What was McCain thinking?

The Shas Housing Minister Ariel Atlas is an opponent of Israeli democracy:

“I see [it] as a national duty to prevent the spread of a population that, to say the least, does not love the State of Israel,”

Atlas told a conference of the Israel Bar Association, which focused on reforming Israel’s Land Administration.

This is profoundly anti-democratic. All Israeli citizens should have the right to live wherever they want in the country. If they act against the state, they should be prosecuted.

He continued,

“if we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee [i.e. to Jews]. Populations that should not mix are spreading there. I don’t think that it’s appropriate [for them] to live together.”

Always beware those who would tell you who it’s appropriate and not appropriate for you to live with. It is none of their business. And lest you think he merely doesn’t want Jews living with Arabs:

“There is a severe housing crisis among the young ultra-Orthodox couples, and in the general population. I, as an Ultra-Orthodox Jew, don’t think that religious Jews should have to live in the same neighbourhood as secular couples, so as to avoid unnecessary friction. And since some 5,000 to 6,000 religious couples get married each year, a problem arises because they require a certain kind of community life that goes along with their lifestyle.”

Tough. In a democratic country people must learn to live alongside those with different lifestyles. I live in a neighbourhood which is about 30% religious and there are no problems. Here’s an example: Now it’s summer, I go to the laundrette late on Saturday-afternoon. I carry my clothes in a suitcase, the rumbling of the wheels creating an echo in the alleys of the Vineyard. If I do my washing while there are services in synagogue, I take a detour so as not to disturb prayers. But nobody forces me to do so. If I walked past with my suitcase, or talking on my mobile, there would not be a riot. Religious and secular people are quite capable of living side-by-side, and we do not need Mr Atlas to set the bar for integration so low.

It’s ok though. There is a solution:

“I plan to market large amounts of land to the Arab population in the Galilee in order to solve their problems, as well as land for secular and religious Jews.”

I did not come to Zion to live in a box; I came here to be an Israeli. The key to saving Israeli democracy is to promote a shared sense of Israeliness among all the different populations in this country. This is no wild fantasy, and is the only way to save the state from the racism and intolerance of our Housing Minister.

My conclusion was that Quakers were not sincere in their beliefs, and were hypocrites whose commitment to peace was little more than a passive-aggressive stance. I found it hard to accept that the Quakers could repeatedly rent their rooms to speakers whose politics surpassed the vicious hatred of British fascist groups, without batting an eyelid.

I am now forced to eat my words.

It is very clear from the message below, in response to a query by Mitnaged, that the Quakers do indeed have a consistent principled position on non violence.

I’m sorry for having doubted you.

Dear ….

Thank you for your comments about an event provisionally booked for 9 July. This will not now take place in Friends House. The International Union of Parliamentarians for Palestine have cancelled their booking.

As Friends House Hospitality lettings policy makes clear, the freedom to gather and express diverse opinions is an important principle for Quakers. However, our terms and conditions set out the standards we expect from our lettings customers. Non-violence is central to the Quaker way and we cannot accept speakers whose aims are in serious conflict with Quaker beliefs.

Friends House staff met with representatives of the International Union of Parliamentarians for Palestine. IUPFP were invited to agree a number of points, in particular, that IUPFP does not embrace violence of any kind and that when IUPFP use the words resistance and retaliation, IUPFP are referring only to non violent means of opposing the Occupation.

IUPFP did not feel able to accept the conditions for the meeting and cancelled the booking.

Yours sincerely,

An official announcement is here.

A shorter version of this article previously appeared in the July 2, 2009, Jewish Tribune, a community paper published weekly by B’nai Brith Canada.

Gary Goodyear, Minister for Science and Technology, recently called for the reconsideration of a $20,000 grant for a conference about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at York University. In response, James Turk, president of the Canadian University Teachers Association, called for Goodyear’s resignation.

The two men are just doing their jobs. Goodyear represents the people of Canada. He had reason to believe that “Israel/Palestine Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace” might be more a propaganda exercise than an academic conference, and so he questioned whether Canadians should pay for the event.

For his part, Turk represents university teachers. His job is to get as much money as he can for the country’s universities and professors, preferably with no questions asked and no strings attached.

Speakers at the supposedly academic conference represented a rogue’s gallery of anti-Israel activists. For example, no one would mistake Ali Abunimah for an academic. He’s a professional propagandist and the co-founder of Electronic Intifada, a website that glamorizes terrorism as “resistance” and considers all of Israel occupied Palestinian territory.

Abunimah didn’t merely give a talk at the York conference. He was a member of the advisory committee, responsible for recommending the conference speakers. I’m not as familiar with the other organizers, but I’m confident that if David Duke (former Grand Wizard of the Klan) were on a committee recommending speakers for a conference about the future of the American South and what to do about tensions between Blacks and Whites, nobody would be saying, “But he’s only one of the organizers – the rest aren’t as bad.”

Of course, when he called for Goodyear’s resignation, Turk didn’t go into details about what Abunimah and other anti-Israel activists were doing at a supposedly academic conference. He simply wrapped himself in the banner of academic freedom. This isn’t a convincing stance.

First, there’s bad blood between the CAUT and Goodyear. When the government budgeted an extra $2 billion for university infrastructure, the CAUT chose to complain about a $148 million cut to research funding. The CAUT met with Goodyear to press their case, but according to a CAUT official, Goodyear eventually: “stormed out of the room warning that we’ve burned all our bridges with them.”

With this fight over money already poisoning the relationship, it’s not surprising Turk found an excuse to call for Goodyear’s resignation.

Second, CAUT stands up for academic freedom only if it fits their self-interest or political bias. When the University and Colleges Union in Britain called for the blacklisting of Israeli scholars, most university presidents across Canada and hundreds of Canadian professors decried the move as an outrage against academic freedom (not to mention a clear cut case of bigotry). But the CAUT kept quiet.

I could understand if the CAUT felt they had no business meddling in Middle Eastern politics, but in fact, the CAUT issued a statement just this past January condemning Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

Strangely, in the year preceding the offensive, as thousands of Palestinian rockets and mortars rained down on Israeli towns, the CAUT issued no statements condemning this terrorism, nor even a friendly warning that sooner or later the Israelis were sure to respond.

The CAUT statement singled out Israel’s bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza, but didn’t object to Hamas having turned the school into a bomb-making factory. Nor did the CAUT ever condemn the Palestinian rocket attack on Sapir College in the Negev – an attack that killed a student there.

The CAUT also condemns Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank. These checkpoints have proven effective at stopping suicide attacks. But while preventing mass murder, checkpoints also make students late for school, and so the CAUT calls for Israel to take them down.

Third, politicizing the campus doesn’t enhance academic freedom; it restricts it. For Jews, York University is already hostile territory. The Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario’s infamous motion to boycott Israel originated with the CUPE local at York, with people who consider all of Israel occupied Palestinian territory.

Two of the prime movers of CUPE’s boycott resolution were Rafeef Zadiah and Adam Hanieh, both of whom spoke at the Israel/Palestine conference.

York also hosts an annual anti-Israel hate-fest, known as Israel Apartheid Week. Jewish students have been threatened by fellow students and harassed by instructors. And in February, a mob chased a group of mostly Jewish students, shouting: “Israelis off campus,” “Racist Zionists,” “Die, bitch, go back to Israel,” “Die, Jew, get the hell off campus,” “Fucking Jew” and so forth.

The mob then besieged the Jewish students in the local Hillel office until the police arrived and freed them.

If the CAUT were really interested in academic freedom, James Turk would be battling to preserve the campus as place for open inquiry, free of intimidation. He’d be condemning professors who use their podium to indoctrinate students. And he would have been the first in line to ask whether this conference at York really met the standards of academic inquiry.

The conference turned out pretty much as everyone expected; that is, it was largely given over to demonizing Israel. According to reports (here and here for starters), speakers presented Israel as a racist, apartheid state, as a military machine intent on dominating the Palestinians, as an illegitimate entity that ought to be replaced.

At the conference, the Palestinians were presented purely as victims. The possibility that they might share some responsibility for the conflict simply wasn’t entertained. And although the conference was subtitled “Paths to Peace,” there was no discussion about re-invigorating the peace process.

“Zionists” were blamed even for domestic violence perpetrated by Palestinian men against Palestinian women.

As for the few speakers who were sufficiently well-meaning to express sympathy for Israel, they were jeered and heckled.

Before receiving funding, the conference did go through a peer review process. Evidently that process didn’t work. As Professor Martin Lockshin of York University put it: “[The peer review process] failed to distinguish between political activism and academic research” (here).

Why didn’t Andrew Turk concern himself about whether the conference at York might really be a propaganda event? Because for the CAUT, academic freedom is a rhetorical device, not a real concern.

Still, even by the light of the CAUT’s grab the cash and run philosophy, Turk should notice that the shenanigans at York are turning away donors and may end up costing the university millions. Indeed, one professor at York already objects to “Zionists” being involved in fund-raising.

More generally, if it wants Canadians to be enthusiastic about funding university research, the CAUT should be doing its best to insure that money is spent well, not squandered on an anti-Israel circus.

Brian Henry is a Toronto writer and editor and a refugee from the NDP – Canada’s social democratic party. He blogs sporadically here

He has chosen to publish today what may well me the maddest article I have seen to date on swine flu. It postulates a wide ranging international conspiracy theory to spread swine flu as a biological weapon directed by … well… at least it isn’t the Jews to blame, this time!

The official organs of the German State, including the BND and BfV intelligence agencies, are essentially a front, real control being exerted from Dachau by the Deutcshe Verteidigungs Dienst, by assassination if necessary (they made effective use of Bader-Meinhof and have always loved using Marxists and other assorted nutters). The DVD exerts significant influence in other countries, usually through fronts like the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the Skull and Bones society at Yale (they also recruit at Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge).

The article is written by a man who calls himself Michael Shrimpton QC. However, I can find no mention of a Michael Shrimpton QC on either the list of all QCs in 2008, nor the list of QCs appointed this year.

There is a Michael Shrimpton who is a barrister, who used to be at this chambers, but now seems to have left to be clerked by an online service called Barristerweb.  He also appears to have something to do with representing the “Metric Martyrs”.

I would love to tell you what sort of person I think Michael Shrimpton is. Unfortunately, he evidently sues for defamation if he doesn’t like what you say about him.

Therefore, I would invite you to read his self penned encomium on Wikipedia, and form your own opinion of the man.

So it is pretty clear — a civil servant published a political attack on the government he serves, in what seems to be direct contravention of the Civil Service code which forbids “speaking in public on matters of national political controversy; expressing views on such matters in letters to the press, or in books, articles or leaflets”. All civil servants, regardless of rank, are made aware of this code.

I am not going to blame Azad Ali. He thinks his employers helped to build “the terrorist slaughter machine of the Zionist state of Israel”.

So I would guess that he’s unlikely to be a great respecter of Britain’s quaint traditions when it comes to civil service neutrality. And I suppose you can’t blame him for pursuing his political goals, if that is what he believes.

But what about the Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, and the Cabinet Secretary, who is head of the Civil Service?

If they are remotely aware of this case, then what on earth are they thinking in allowing such an outspoken political activist to return to a job in the civil service? Have they any idea how damaging it is to its credibility if it appears that all civil servants must be politically neutral, except for the ones who raise funds for Hamas and remove Israel from the map?

If the mandarins knew, and turned a blind eye for fearing of causing “offence”, it is further proof that there are sections of the British establishment that simply fail to comprehend the true nature and intent of some of the organisations of political Islam.

Read on.

We may seem cold, or
We may even be
The most depressing people you’ve ever known
At heart, what’s left, we sadly know
That we are the last truly British people you’ll ever know
We are the last truly British people you will ever know
You’ll never never want to know

Bob Pitt - in my nomination for the Post of the Year award - has the full story.

Presumably one reason she is independent is that her foray in Belgian electoral politics in 2003 ended in miserable failure.

Her “Workers Party of Belgium” teamed up with fellow radicals, including Djab Abou Jahjah, a racist thug who has been denied entry to the UK.

Belgians decided they didn’t want her or her allies to have power over anything. Collectively the group won just 0.6% of the vote nationwide.

Poor comrade Nadine.

Oh well, never mind. Hamas is very exciting if you are an “independent communist activist”. These days she campaigns not for election, but for the terrorists.

Earlier this year, fired up by a “resistance” jamboree in Beirut (the communiqué is here, thanks John Wight, you big boy), she issued a call for Hamas to be taken off EU terrorist sanctions lists.

That too doesn’t appear to be going all that well:

Does the European Left, which you represent, support you in this endeavor?

I don’t represent the European Left. I’m an independent communist activist. The appeal was launched on the first of February, addressing, especially, all the MEPs in the Green Group, the European United Left, and the Socialist Group. To this day, with the notable exception of Giulietto Chiesa (Italy, Socialist Group, European Parliament), who immediately signed the appeal, we have not received any response from other members. However, very famous communists, such as Henri Alleg and José Saramago, have joined the appeal.

Poor, poor comrade Nadine.

So try again in London. As reported here, she is scheduled to speak at a “Palestine & US Hegemony” event at Friends House on July 9th. Her fellow speakers will include a “Hezbollah representative” and Djab Abou Jahjah via video link from Lebanon, Azzam “Kaboom” Tamimi, and John Rees of the “Stop the War Coalition”.

There’s no stopping her, you know. She has seen the light from Gilad Atzmon:

For Gilad Atzmon it is this context that constitutes the real significance of the barrage of rockets by Hamas and the other Palestinian resistance organizations: “This week we all learned more about the ballistic capability of Hamas. Evidently, Hamas was rather restrained with Israel for a long while. It refrained from escalating the conflict to the whole of southern Israel. It occurred to me that the barrages of Qassams that have been landing sporadically on Sderot and Ashkelon were actually nothing but a message from the imprisoned Palestinians. First it was a message regarding stolen land, homes, fields and orchards: ‘Our beloved soil, we didn’t forget, we are still here fighting for you, sooner rather than later, we will come back, we will start again where we had stopped’. But it was also a clear message to the Israelis. ‘You out there, in Sderot, Beer Sheva, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Tel Aviv and Haifa, whether you realise it or not, you are actually living on our stolen land. You better start to pack because your time is running out, you have exhausted our patience. We, the Palestinian people, have nothing to lose anymore”. (Gilad Atzmon - Living on Borrowed Time in a Stolen Land)

What can be understood by an Israeli Jew, the European Left fails to understood, rather they find ’indefensible’ the necessity to take by force what has been stolen by force.

Got that? Bomb Tel Aviv until they leave!

Now some think it is fair to ask if people who are avid supporters of Hamas and fans of Gilad Atzmon are antisemitic. Well, don’t you try that one with this comrade. She has a pedigree, you see:

Fears of being labelled “anti-Semitic”: Although we are united in support of the Palestinian resistance, the Left fears being labelled ‘anti-Semitic’ if they refuse to recognise the legitimacy of Israel.

As communist I am part of a tradition which fought against fascism and Nazism. Communists protected Jews from the concentration camps, and many communists paid the ultimate sacrifice for this, many more than US soldiers in the war. Therefore nobody has the right to call us anti-Semitic. It is because our forefathers died defending Jews in the war that we now today stand with the Palestinian people and their resistance against Israel.

Rosa-Rosso is quite keen on violence in Europe too. She was encouraged by far left support for rioters in Athens earlier this year. So why don’t more people support the rioting youths in the French banlieues, she wonders?

Hit coppers, smash stuff up, burn things, yeah man.

John Rees is on to another winner here, isn’t he.

He also did a good bit on the US military’s discredited and silly “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy for gay soldiers.

Remember last fall when a McCain campaign official called Palin a “diva”?

Asked directly if he accused [senior McCain adviser] Nicolle Wallace of being the source behind the “diva” leak in his message to Kristol, [McCain foreign policy adviser] Scheunemann said: “My e-mail did not accuse Nicolle Wallace. It said something very disparaging about Nicolle but it did not accuse her of being the leak.”

A source familiar with the contents of the e-mail said that Scheunemann actually accused Nicolle Wallace’s husband, Mark Wallace, of being the source of the leak.

When Kristol questioned the likelihood of a male like Mark Wallace using such a gossipy term as diva, this source said, Scheunemann wrote back that Mark Wallace knows something about divas because he’s married to a diva.

Rrrowr.

Update: Palin quits as governor of Alaska.