Anti-Semitics and the Gaza, are they correct?

In every city, large or small, there are areas of poverty.  Some have much more poverty than others. I am sure this is true in the Gaza, but what is not usually headlined is the afflence that also exists there.  It is apparently beginning to leak out, a lot of people there are doing very well. Via Lucianne this is from the American Thinker Blog.

Gaza Opulence
Benyamin Korn
It began with an innocent trailer on YouTube -- a plug for a club called "Roots." The scene showed well-fed women wearing traditional Muslim head coverings but otherwise garbed in chic clothing enjoying themselves at the club's "fine dining restaurant, banquet hall and terrace cafe." What was startling was the club's location: in the heart of Gaza City.

Gaza, the territory which, to judge from international news media reports, is the most impoverished place on the planet earth. Gaza, which is supposedly suffering from such terrible shortages that "activists" from around the world have no choice but to ram blockades to bring in desperately needed goods. Gaza, which has managed to capture the sympathies of the United Nations, Europe - and even the White House.

The YouTube image of plump, fashionably garbed Gaza women enjoying a night out on May 10, made many people wonder if perhaps all those news media accounts of Gaza poverty were not quite accurate.

And then people started asking: if the Arabs of Gaza are starving, as the news media have suggested, how is it that not a single resident of the territory has died from malnutrition. Not one! How do we know? Because you can be sure that if even one Gaza Arab died of starvation, it would be front page news around the world, for starters.

But leave it to the New York Times to (inadvertently) blow the lid off the entire myth of Gaza's poverty. In its June 13 "Week in Review" section, the Times featured six "slice of life" photographs from Gaza - and in its online version, a full twelve. The contrast between these photos and what the UN and the news media have been claiming for years is startling.

We see a traffic snarl. Several of the cars appear to be late-model BMWs. In the background one can see modern, colorful stores.

A family at the beach. Nobody starving here. Smiling women, children in clean, modern clothing, a table with a platter of food.

Gaza fishermen at work. In rowboats? Homemade rafts? Hardly. They clearly have relatively modern fishing trawlers.

A couple emerging from a mall in what the caption calls "a wealthy neighborhood of Gaza." There are wealthy neighborhoods in Gaza? Noboy at the White House seems to know that.

The caption to photo number nine announces: "The opening of a new shop in Gaza City selling wedding and engagement dresses." In the windows, one can see some very fancy wedding gowns. In Israel, brides often cannot afford to buy a wedding dress and have to borrow from what is known as a "gemach," a community charitable society.
Maybe it's time for a flotilla of aid for poor Israeli brides.

And on and on it goes, with each photo providing more evidence that the dramatic claims about impoverished Gaza, which are routinely used to bash Israel and justify billions in Western aid to Gaza are, at the least, vastly overstated. See for yourself

That Rabbi is rethinking his Liberal positions

I wonder how he could have not realized many liberals are anti semitic.  They may think they are just anti Zionist but actions speak, and they speak almost as loud as Helen Thomas' words.  Here is what the Rabbi is saying in Aritz Seva, Israeli Nationa News:

Liberal Rabbi who Exposed Helen Thomas: I Have to Re-Evaluate
by Maayana Miskin

Rabbi David Nesenoff made headlines recently when he inadvertently exposed veteran American journalist Helen Thomas' virulently anti-Israel views. In an impromptu video interview, Thomas told Nesenoff that Jews living in Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine" and “go home” to Poland and Germany. Under strong attack for her remarks, she announced her retirement just days later.

Nesenoff said Sunday that his background and motives had been misunderstood. Far from attempting to expose Thomas, he told CNN, he was a supporter of hers who had been unaware of her anti-Semitic views.

When he approached Thomas and asked her for her thoughts on Israel, he was not expecting her response, he said. “Of course, there might be anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian [opinion]. That's very different than anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish and wanting to cleanse a piece of land,” he explained.

Nesenoff described himself as “a New York Democrat Jewish liberal supporter of Obama” who is now reconsidering his political views in light of what has happened.

"Now I have to reevaluate totally," he said, "...because if I was part of a team where their agenda was that Israel and the Jewish people don't have a connection... I have to really reevaluate liberal and conservative [views] and really find out where I stand, because I think I've been a little blind.”

Nesenoff has received 25,000 hate messages since the incident, many of which he has posted online. Worse than the hate mail, he said, “is the hate media I'm beginning to learn about.” When asked to clarify, he explained that he was referring to those who blindly attack him without asking questions. “They have to attack me and find, maybe we'll say he did something on purpose or he filmed it a certain way... why don't they actually ask me and find out maybe I liked Helen Thomas?” he asked.

I have Jewish friends who are still not reevaluating.  I don't understand it.

American Thinker on the Media and Anti-Semitism

Thomas is a symptom

Ethel C. Fenig

Writing at Big Journalism, Jeff Dunetz hits upon an aspect of the Helen Thomas rant and its continuing fallout by touching upon other ignored misbehavior that has bothered me for a long time. Stating that Thomas was a symptom of malpractice in journalism rather than the disease, considered to be a joke, an aging pet if you will, of the politically correct press corps and the MSM, he lays out the cold damning facts of miscreant journalists and others whose bigotry is glossed over.

Go to the American Thinker blog and read it all. A very important call out of some of the anti-Semtism in the press and how we tolerate it.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

The title of a book by Ray Bradbury, and a quote from Shakespeare.  And a truly scary scenario for the World. There is a rise of anti-Semitism going on and it is being enhanced now by the United States Government.

The recent Israeli/Gaza boat incident seems to have a been a contrived setup and Israel stepped right into the trap. The Gaza sympathizers had their press releases ready to go immediately and Israel played catch-up with videos showing the trap.

Last week Helen Thomas famously let slip her deep anti-Semitic feelings. She has since "apologized" but the horse is already out of the gate on that one. I have a feeling many in the news media share her liberal (ultra liberal) views.

Today I read this from yesterday's Powerline blog:

Earlier today, Attorney General Eric Holder reassured Muslims that the dark days of oppression are behind us: 

Attorney General Eric Holder promised the Arab-American community on Friday that the Justice Department will vigorously prosecute hate crimes and he said an ongoing dialogue between law enforcement agencies and Arab-Americans is one of the Obama administration's top priorities.

"The era of 'us versus them' that some of you have experienced must end. At long last, it is ending," Holder told the 30th anniversary conference of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. 

Yes, I remember that "era of 'us versus them.'" Apparently that was when President Bush was touring every mosque in the U.S., talking about how Islam is the religion of peace. What the hell is Holder talking about? Maybe the end of the era of "us versus them" was when we started allowing homicidal "psychiatrists" to care for our wounded soldiers, when we had every reason to know they were plotting violence. Maybe the era of "us versus them" ended when our government became "them."

If you read the blogs and internet news, you will have seen much more of this. Even the regular news shows (MSM) have quoted such things as if they are normal operating procedures, falling right into the line of the anti-semitic sources. Like I said, something wicked this way comes, it has already overtaken the European nations, was always in the middle -east and is apparently well established here.

 
There is was one bright light and you won't believe who it is. From Politico "On Tuesday in New York, Vice President Joe Biden was feeling Israel’s pain.

“I think Israel has an absolute right to deal with its security interest,” he told Charlie Rose on his interview show. “I mean again, look, you can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not and the — but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know — they're at war with Hamas — has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in.”
“So what's the big deal here? What's the big deal of insisting [aid] go straight to Gaza?” Biden asked.

Read the rest of this to see how the administration rushed to backtrack on his views.

UPDATE: More here.  Mark Steyn on the forgotten Rachels.