It must have taken a lot of beer to compose and record this song.
Filed under: Greatest hits
Birthright Israel? But Only If You’re A Jew
There’s a problem in Israel right now. It’s been getting worse for some time. The Israeli government is desperate to do something about it.
The problem: not enough Jews and too many Gentiles.
The influx of Jewish immigrants into Israel has been declining year on year. Non-Jewish foreign workers have increased, particularly since the last Intifada, following which Palestinians were less welcome on Israeli streets, and in their factories.
Compounding the decline of Jewish immigration, has been an upsurge in the practice of non-Israeli Jews marrying Gentiles – upwards of 50%, according to some sources. ‘Mixed’ marriages are not welcomed in Israel.
Last year, the Israeli government launched an ad campaign to coerce Israelis with Jewish friends and relatives overseas to inform on them, if they were in danger of marrying outside their religion.
According to one Israeli journalist:
The advertising campaign is directed particularly at Jews in the United States and Canada, whose combined 5.7 million Jews constitute the world’s largest Jewish population. Most belong to the liberal Reform stream of Judaism that, unlike Orthodoxy, does not oppose intermarriage.
One-third of Jews in the diaspora are believed to have relatives in Israel.
According to the campaign’s organisers, more than 200 Israelis rang a hotline to report names of Jews living abroad after the first TV advertisement was run on Wednesday. Callers left details of email addresses and Facebook and Twitter accounts.
The 30-second clip featured a series of missing-person posters on street corners, in subways and on telephone boxes showing images of Jewish youths above the word “Lost” in different languages. A voiceover asks anyone who “knows a young Jew living abroad” to call the hotline. “Together, we will strengthen their connection to Israel, so that we don’t lose them.”[1]
So keen is the Israeli government to persuade new Jewish blood into the country, it funds a Jewish charity, ‘Birthright Israel’, to promote free, ten-day, visits for young Jews – principally from North America – in the hope some will settle permanently.
No expense is spared to persuade these kids. Birthright Israel has flooded YouTube with videos designed to attract young Jews to the country.[2]
And, you may ask, what’s wrong with that? Let the kids have a good time, and if some decide to make Israel their home in the future, so what?
The reason Israel is so keen to attract more Jews to the country is because the government is scared stiff the Arab populace will increase faster than the Jewish population.
It already is; in 2008, Arabs accounted for 20% of the Israeli population. It’s estimated that by 2030 that figure will have risen to 24%. The median age of the Jewish population is 31; that of Arabs, 20.[3]
But there’s another, more sinister, aspect of this impending population crisis.
These are four little Israeli girls. They are all about eight years old and they were all born in Israel. They think, speak, and dream in Hebrew. After the intifada, foreign workers poured into Israel from Thailand, the Philippines, and north-east Africa. No-one tried to stop them; Israel needed foreign workers desperately.
Now, the government of Netanyahu intends to deport all illegal immigrants by 2013, and drastically cut the number of legal, non-Jewish, foreign workers in the country. It’s another way of ensuring Israel remains Jewish.
These four little girls and their parents face deportation at the end of the 2010 school year, along with over 1,000 other children, all born in Israel.[4]
According to Israel’s Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Eli Yishai, these foreign workers………
…..threaten the Zionist project of the State of Israel.”
Isn’t it all mildly reminiscent of Germany in the 1930’s? Only there, it was the glorious Aryan race that was promoted.
There were no gas chambers, then, either.
[1] “Israeli Ads Warn Against Marrying Non-Jews” Countercurrents.org, September 8th 2009
[2] “The Arab Population in Israel 2008”
[4] “Israel’s immigrant children fight deportation” BBC, February 22nd 2010
Filed under: The face of tyranny
Who Makes The Justice?
A nation state can assassinate a human being with impunity, and on a whim, yet when a man chooses to end the unbearable suffering of one he loves, he is arrested for murder.
The brutal killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas leader, in Dubai last month was undoubtedly carried out by Mossad, the Israeli ‘secret service’. No recriminations will result. Britain, and a few other nations whose passports were forged by the Israelis, will mumble and moan and demand inquiries that get nowhere, but Israel will shrug its shoulders, commend its agents for a job well done, while raising an index finger to the rest of the world.[1]
I remember Ray Gosling as a young, regional TV reporter for our local British news service. I was only a lad at the time and he was beginning a career that never made him an international star, or even a great national personality, but he did present hundreds of documentaries on UK television and radio, many championing the causes of common people.
Ray was homosexual and much of his life was spent campaigning for gay rights. When his partner was diagnosed with AIDs, he made Ray swear a pact that he would not allow him to suffer. Later, in the hospital and in terrible pain, and when the doctors could do no more for him, Ray took a pillow and smothered his partner. It was his last act of love for the person who, in his own words, ‘he loved to bits’.
Ray Gosling is now seventy years old. Following his admission on the BBC’s Inside Out program on Monday, of his act of euthanasia, he was today arrested and charged with murder.[2]
We are, at best, a strange species.
[1] “Israel says no proof it carried out Hamas Dubai killing” BBC, February 17th 2010
[2] “Murder arrest over Ray Gosling’s BBC confession” BBC, February 17th 2010
Filed under: Thou shalt not kill?