(By Felix Quigley)
Most weeks I take a few moments to scan over to the Blanket website based in West Belfast to see what new slanders they have put down on Israel (http://lark.phoblacht.net/index.html). They rarely disappoint. They are obsessed with the place. They are obsessed with these horrific Israelis. They are obsessed with those “poor” Palestinians. This week the organizers of The Blanket called on a regular contributor down through the years, one Mary La Rosa, a lady out of the New York stable of anti-Semitism, with an inordinate hatred for Israel.
La Rosa starts her Blanket offering by talking about the New York May Day rally (a bit late but never mind, she writes on the 28th of May)
This is an interesting start anyway.
‘On May Day 2005 in New York City, a stranger approached me with a hand painted postcard of a beautiful flower that carried this message of peace in English and in Japanese,
"Let's leave our children a better world".
The name on the card read "Yoko Nishimura from the Tokyo Prefecture Umeda Han Adachi branch of Shinfujin." ‘
But alas it does not last and in no time at all La Rosa gets into her stride and switches to her stock trade, slander against Israel, and of course those “Palestinians” are pure saints in her eyes.
So La Rosa who is against Nuclear Weapons, but has a very friendly attitude to N Korea, Iran and Muslim states having them, weighs in heavily against Israel. She starts the attack with this paragraph:
‘Meanwhile, as North Korea's ambiguous capacity for nuclear holocaust and Iran's desires to quickly reach such a goal, remain in the spotlight as villainous rogue nations who would press the world into flames .....another country and our greatest ally in the Middle East, Israel remains covertly and ambiguously in possession of many nuclear weapons. Much of the news media does not focus on either Israel's nuclear ambiguity or any of the ongoing reports of spying and false information received and passed back and forth, between the United States government and the "special interest" group, AIPAC which led to the firing of two senior AIPAC members and the arrest of former defense intelligence agency officer Larry Franklin. with emphasis and detail pertaining to Iran. It is still ambiguous how much vital information was passed back and forth between the Pentagon and this supposedly non governmental Israeli Lobby group. One can only speculate about the difference in a scenario of a Pentagon analyst meeting and passing secrets to a Muslim special interest group.’
If the US is such a great friend of Israel as is La Rosa’s central plank then why arrest Franklin and why spread rumours about Jewish AIPEC members? If Israel and the US are so close why are there secrets? La Rosa does not even allude to this contradiction?
With the Road Map, with their backing of Abbas (see our reports of the Bush-Abbas Rose Garden meeting), many Jews are now seeing the US as the enemy of Israel, not its friend.
The centre of La Rosa’s attack on Israel is in the next two paragraphs:
‘Israel's policy of ambiguity about its nuclear weapons, without doubt, gives greatest pause and halts any forward moves towards peace in the Middle East. As long as Israel does not feel the moral obligation to come forward and join in at least in discussion of the concept of non proliferation with its neighbors and the rest of the world, there is little to motivate other neighboring countries who feel so threatened by nuclear weapons that they wish to possess their own. After years of denial, Israeli citizens are finally considering the dangers involved in such dubious old reactors as Dimona and the pressing necessity to shut it down before it melts down. However, there is still no such clear and outstanding leadership capable of accepting the challenge to bring Israel this one step forward as a democratic nation making example of its desire to seriously talk about non proliferation and peace in the Middle East.’
La Rosa has got it all mixed up. She wants Israel to take this one step forward ‘as a democratic nation’ and talk peace in the Middle East. As the Blanket publishes this the foolish (and traitorous to Israel) Ariel Sharon withdraws from Gaza and the PLO sends two suicide bombers into Jerusalem. La Rosa would see herself as a feminist but she never contrasts the lack of womens rights in all the Arab countries compared to Israel. Why does she never do that? (There are many other contrasts as well – see the accompanying e-mail from Jock L. Haston published adjacent to this article on this site)
But it is two different worlds. So consumed by hatred for Israel is the Blanket that they will use anybody and print anything.
La Rosa is getting into her stride. I suspect that the following is pure made-up lies. Where on earth can anybody dump anything, never mind nuclear waste, anywhere in Israel or in Yesha (Judea and Samaria) wrongly called by La Rosa as “occupied territories”. The place is so tiny. The whole area is so over-populated. How could you poison a Palestinian and not a Jew. It sounds preposterous! Anyway common sense does not hold her back:
‘Not only the environmental and health concerns of Israelis are at stake but it appears that Israel has offensively and without conscience been making use of the land it occupies in order to dump tons of nuclear waste. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently condemned Israel for its ongoing dumping of nuclear waste in the Occupied Territories. Israel was defined as an occupying power and the Palestinian Minister of Health, Dr. Thohni Al Wuheidi accused Israeli authorities of recently burying nuclear waste and polluting valuable water resources in Nablus, Hebron and Gaza . Electronic Intifada did an in depth report by Issa Samandar in which he sites specific levels of harmful and lethal levels of radioactivity. He also cites the devastating effects of such lethal dumping, dumping that continues to go on at risk to present and future generations but also as one more further outrage for the Palestinian people to endureThe uranium level in El-Khalil valley reaches 237 becquerel (bcq) per kilogram3, which equals about 10 times the permitted concentration, which is 25 bcq. The Thorium 232 (Th) level reaches 152 bcq where the permitted concentration level is also 25 bcq. The readings on Cesium 137 (Cs), another radio-active isotope that only emerges from nuclear explosions or nuclear activities is equivalently high.’
I suspect that all of the above is pure lies. The “World Health Organization” - La Rosa does not give the author(s) or date of that report. And is this a United Nations organisation? If so it explains the bias!
The “Palestinian Minister of Health” - a fictional state, a fictional Ministry, and hardly a reliable source. Arabs have lied non-stop for ages about the Jews.
And the Electronic Intifada, well the name says everything, doesn’t it!
So what have we got here? Just another pack of lies about the only Jewish state in the world, a tiny place called Israel, in the pages of The Blanket. Just another case of this particular website broadcasting more lies about Israel and doing this by using somebody called Mary de la Rosa.
Not the first time and unfortunately it won’t be the last!
No comments:
Post a Comment