I wish..

Oh, how I’d like to see this (thanks tresi for the insert)

Over? We haven’t even started

Only 30 hours after British intellectuals issue their ultimatum, Israel’s unilateral cease fire comes into effect. See David? We told you – these Israelis, they only understand one language.

So what now? Nothing. Gaza is still in ruins, its hospitals full of wounded. Israeli kids are still afraid to sleep. But the European left can sleep well tonight, and tomorrow return to contemplate the state of its holiday homes.

The last three weeks have been soaked in pain, anger and sadness. I am horrified by the pictures from Gaza and the cold facts of the carnage. I share the distress of families in southern Israel who live in constant fear. I make no comparison. Both are unacceptable. I am angry at the Israeli government for choosing a path of violence, and angry at the Hamas for leading the way to this path. This was a was on two peoples, conducted by two armies. The military actions of the Israeli government provided its citizens no more security than the absurd provocations of the Hamas provided its people dignity. I am sad for my friends, family and countrymen, who are blinded by fear and anger, to a point that then become numb to the pain of others.

But when it comes to the reactions I see around me, I am bemused and frustrated. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, in smaller portions, I’ve seen it all before. Some call it anti-semitism. I won’t even grant them this halo. No, here wearing a Kaffiah is a fashion statement, and so is boycotting Israeli goods. You know what? I’m just bloody sick of it. Sick of hearing about pro-Israeli vs. pro-Palestinian, sick of hearing “like we did with South Africa”, sick of hearing the rape of language, the intolerable ease with which frightful words are casually scattered like guji berries on your morning yoghurt. Words which should be reserved for the worst events in history. Rwanda was a genocide. Srebrenica was a massacre, as was Sabra and Shatilla.

Let me spell it out. There is no “us” and “them”, there are those who want to live, and those who want to kill. If you really care, help the people doing good on the ground. All your chanting and picketing doesn’t twitch a single donkey’s hair in the middle east. It hasn’t saved the life of a single child. Hamas will still do what it thinks it should, and so will the Israeli government. I’ll let you in on a secret: you didn’t topple Apartheid either: De Klerk and Mandella did it. All your fancy petitions and demonstrations serve one purpose: to make you feel better about yourself, allow you to feel morally superior. Fuck that. Save the money you spend on your post-demo cappuccino, and donate it to one of these. Or pay for them to publish a half-page ad in the guardian in place of your righteous hate banter.

http://www.yeshgvul.org/

http://phr.org.il/

http://www.taayush.org/

http://www.combatantsforpeace.org/

http://www.abrahamfund.org.uk

http://www.awalls.org/

Harry’s place shut down for ousting an antisemite

Update (sept. 05): now its in the papers, so it must be true.

Eric Lee reports that Harry’s place, a popular British left-wing blog, had the wire cut by its ISP after posting the details of Jenna Delich, a Sheffield based academic who in the course of discussing the academic boycott of Israel on a trade union mailing list linked to the website of American KKK leader, neo-Nazi and Holocaust-denier David Duke.

So here’s me making the same accusations, posting the same picture. Sue me too.

read more | digg story

is your face here?

Mine is.

Zimbabwean trade unionists Lovemore Matombo and Wellington Chibebe are being tried on Monday 23 June for ‘spreading falsehoods prejudicial to the state’ (ie talking openly about the state-sponsored violence). To let them appear in public around the world, 2,000 trade unionists combined their photos online to make this giant mosaic portrait.

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Gordon Brown plays ask me on YouTube

Inspired by Mic Jager and Keith Richards, Gordon Brown embarks on yet another heroic effort to prove that he’s not a communication hazard. The Downing st. YouTube channel “has launched a regular initiative, ‘Ask the PM’, where he will be responding to the most popular questions submitted by the YouTube community.”

Its worth a visit just to hear him say I’m delighted to launch this new initiative.

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Go Harry, go!

Osama called the Taliban, he said,
Let’s kill the Brits,
They like a beer, they like a laugh,
They like girls with big tits,
Let’s kill them all, those infidels,
Let’s kill their wives and kids,
But Queen Liz overheard them both,
And this is what she did

She shouted out “Oi Harry,
Get in your fucking van,
Put on your best shit-kicking boots,
Drive to Afghanistan,
Those Taliban are fucking cunts,
Their shit has got to stop,
Get over there and shoot those fucking bastards in the cock

Shoot them in the cock, yes shoot them in the cock,
Osama and the Taliban, shoot them in the cock,
Shoot them in the cock, yes shoot them in the cock,
Osama and the Taliban, shoot them in the cock,

Prince Harry swapped a helmet for his diamond-studded crown,
He took his ermine robes off, donned fatigues of desert brown,
He pulled on his shit-kicking boots and gave those cunts a shock,
When he fucked off to Afghanistan to shoot them in the cock,

Shoot them in the cock, yes shoot them in the cock,
Osama and the Taliban, shoot them in the cock,
Shoot them in the cock, yes shoot them in the cock,
Osama and the Taliban, shoot them in the cock

Now Harry is our hero,
He’s as hard as fucking rock,
He got those fucking Taliban,
And shot them in the cock,
He charged into their fire shouting,
“For England and St George!”
And when he’d shot them in the cock,
He shot them in the balls

For England and St George!
For England and St George!
He shot them in the cock and then he shot them in the balls
For England and St George!
For England and St George!
He shot them in the cock and then he shot them in the balls
For England and St George!
For England and St George!
He shot them in the cock and then he shot them in the balls
For England and St George!
For England and St George!
He shot them in the cock and then he shot them in the balls

The things you find on the internets when you have a solid deadline. (ht http://www.rathergood.com/)

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breaking my oath

As a rule, I bluntly turn down sponsorship requests. If you can show me the logical link between you bungee jumping of Victoria falls and the welfare of blind cats, I’ll pay you a tenner. Otherwise, I’m happy to pay for you not to go. If you really want to help those cats, get a job, make some money, and do what you please with it.

But rules are made to be broken:

My dear friends,

As most of you know, Barnet Refugee Service is “my” organization. I was involved with it since its conception, was pregnant with it (as a team member and as an acting-coordinator of one of its parents organizations, which I had joined first as a volunteer in January 1999), and has been active in it in different capacities from the day it was born.

In the last 2 years I have been one of the trustees of this wonderful organization, and saw it going from strength to strength, recruiting more staff for more projects, assisting more and more clients, who – due to tightening of immigration legislation and withdrawing of support from asylum seekers – are becoming more and more destitute and desperate.

One of the things we offer our clients is legal advice – an invaluable stuff in times when most of the good immigration solicitors had withdrew their services, yet again because of bad government policy. A newish piece of legislation limits Legal Aid funding to such a few hours per asylum case, that the good law firms declared that under these conditions they cannot possibly prepare a strong asylum claim or represent clients in Home Office interviews and further legal proceedings. The disastrous result of this is that many asylum seekers are being refused asylum and returned to their countries to face persecution and possible death.

Another frustrating fact which we need to address now is huge funding cuts that we recently suffered, and that is despite our commended services and successful outcomes year by year. We are not the only charity who suffered these cuts of public funding from the Lottery Fund and I guess we can thank the Olympic games for that…

SO, we need your help. I won´t go on about our great aims and ethos and won´t go into further details of the services we offer – you can read all that on our website at http://www.barnetrefugeeservice.org.uk/.

I would just ask you to sponsor me (and/or Rony…) in a 10 km walk we will join ON 19th May as detailed below,
TO RAISE MONEY FOR BARNET REFUGEE SERVICE LEGAL ADVICE SERVICES.

PLEASE SPONSOR ME GENEROUSLY.

Yours,
tirza

***

The 4th London Legal Support Trust  sponsored walk is a 10 km circle round London’s legal landmarks which starts at the Royal Courts of Justice at 5.30 and ends at the Law Society.
Last year 1,800 walkers raised over £200,000.
Your donation will go directly to BRS and will help us to provide advice and support to  asylum seekers who have fled persecution.

To sponsor me please go to www.justgiving.com/BarnetRefugeeService

If you prefer to send a cheque, please make it payable to “Barnet Refugee Service” and send it with a completed GiftAid form (attached) to:
BRS, c/o Peter Salomon, 30 Gurney Drive, London, N2 0DG

To join the walk and find your own sponsors please contact Peter Salomon at p@kandps.co.uk .

***

PS. as it happens, we are also looking for new trustees to join us in our AGM in July. If I got you interested in BRS – why not volunteer a few hours per month and offer your skills and experience to better the lives of those fleeing persecution?

about a boycott

Mira Vogel interviewed me for engage.

The first thing I came to realise was that the boycott was promoting exactly the kind of thing it claimed to oppose. It’s a collective discrimininative action, a form of collective punishment if you like which is exactly the kind of action which should be stopped. I’ve been working in the peace movement to stop Israel taking collective action against Palestinians. I’ve been campaigning against that, and here is a group applying collective punishment to Israel. So, idealistically and pragmatically it’s wrong.

Something that happened quite recently I was visiting York and walking down the street and there was a Palestinian stand with, among other things, leaflets promoting boycott. And I got into an argument with people standing there and I found myself getting emotional. And I reflected on this and thought “Hang on, why am I getting so emotional? There’s a lot of good rational reactions against boycott but my reaction was emotional. And I realised that I feel personally hurt by boycott because it puts me in the same lump as Lieberman, Elyakim Haetzni and all those evil Israelis I’ve been fighting all my life because the boycott doesn’t discriminate between me and them. Suddenly I’ve become one of them, in the same bag with all their lot.

read it all

“Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to support Israel and pursue peace, democracy and human rights at the same time.”

Rabbi Tony Bayfield comments on OneVoice, The Abraham Fund Initiatives, and others. Join the discussion!

I am a moderate when it comes to Israel but not, I hope, vacuous. It is an uncomfortable position with traffic coming at me from both sides. I am a Zionist and define Zionism as a non-negotiable commitment to the right of the state of Israel to exist and an equal commitment to the pursuit of peace as the highest value, to democracy and human rights. That exposes me to the rage of Israel’s critics on the one side and to the Jewish “realists” and cynics on the other.

(digg story)

Mega-spider at Mile’s end park

Yesterday we thought we’ll see what’s on offer from the London Architecture Week. We ended up making land drawings in Mile’s End park: