Time Immortal

In addition to making you an advocate for censorship, that is.

The York University Federation of Students — yes, the same York University group that denied pro-life students at York the right of freedom of expression — recently condemned McMaster University for censoring an anti-Israel poster which contained violent imagery and the phrase “Israel Apartheid.”

Just so we’re clear, here’s the apparent policy on freedom of speech at York University:

• pro-life students showing pictures depicting graphic, bloody images of aborted babies = not allowed
• anti-Israel students showing pictures depicting graphic, bloody images of Palestinians killed by Israeli weapons = must be allowed
• pro-life students comparing abortion to other notable historical injustices such as the Holocaust = not allowed
• anti-Israel students comparing the current situation in Gaza to other notable historical injustices such as South African apartheid = must be allowed

Or, to put it more succinctly:

• forbidding pro-life students from holding events or displaying materials = not Censorship
• forbidding anti-Israel students from holding events or displaying materials = censorship

Look, there’s a lot of evidence coming out now that details the drastic, devastating effects of birth control and other drugs on aquatic ecosystems (when you pee it out, ladies and gents, it has to go somewhere!). We know it affects animal life, and we know that current water treatment schemes don’t filter all of it out. We know that these drugs are getting into our Food chains and water supplies.

I swear…that has to be the explanation for why the York Federation of Students has absolutely no ability to understand why its banning of a widely publicized, multi-student-group event would be seen as an act of censorship, and for why the same student federation (apparently without a trace of irony) then has the temerity to criticize a different educational institution for an act of censorship. It’s got to be something in the water. I hope it’s something in the water.

The alternative? My God but progressives are dense!

Update: Welcome, Steynians! BCF also has some information pertaining to YFS hypocrisy.

Arab terrorists kill ten at a Jewish seminary. At least one terrorist is shot in the head by a student who happened to bring a handgun to the seminary that day. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Palestinians flowed into the street cheering for joy at the news of yet more dead Jews.

Just another day in Israel, unfortunately.

This was a barbaric act, these shootings, and equally barbaric is the public celebration of the deaths of Jewish seminarians in the streets of Gaza City. Hamas even offered their blessings upon “the operation,” although they apparently did not claim responsibility.

I read something interesting on another blog that was a remark about genocide: against the threat of genocide, there can be no disproportionate response. That’s a sentiment with which I’d mostly agree, although I might tighten it a bit: against the threat of genocide, there can be no response — short of genocide in reverse — which can be considered disproportionate.

I think that, on the whole, Israel has shown a commendable restraint in how it has dealt with the past few decades worth of terrorism and attempts by various Muslim nations to effect genocidal plans against her. For having done so, Israel’s every action is condemned even more harshly by the rest of the world, while attacks against her are excused as being “the most one can expect” from an “oppressed people” such as the Palestinians.

I do not pretend that Israel is blameless, nor that she has always been in the right. But by the same token, the Palestinians have received billions — has it been trillions yet? — in foreign aid monies, most of which has then been forwarded to Israel in the form of Qassam rockets. Does anyone out there think that there could not be peace in the region of Israel almost overnight if the residents of Palestine gave up Jew-killing as their national sport, purged the religious fanatics from their government, and turned those aid monies over to urban renewal projects and the development of a comprehensive education system? Of course, the problem with the Palestinians building themselves a viable nation-state is that, if they give up the conflict with Israel, then they will have no other issue with which to stoke up global sympathy for their (mostly self-inflicted) “plight,” which might dry up the flow of UN payments somewhat.

And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?

…in one chart:

Israel’s predominantly Muslim neighbours do not want peace, no matter what lie they are telling in any given week. They want nothing more, nor anything less, than to wipe out the Jews. There will be no peace in the region of Israel until such time as that goal becomes a reality.

Another thing of which I was not aware:

There has been, recently, no “Israeli blockade,” such as has been mentioned ad nauseam in the media. Israel and Egypt conduct more or less the same policies in managing the border, and both are happy to let goods and services — other than weapons — into Gaza. Neither is eager to let anyone or anything out, for obvious reasons.

Take for example the endless media reports of poor Gaza Palestinians suffering from power shortages. Most of the electricity for the territory is supplied from Israel, from a single generating plant in Ashkelon. This has continued to flow, under contractual arrangements, while alas demand has been outstripping supply on the Gaza side. Israel herself has power-supply problems, and one of them is that Hamas continues to fire Kassams daily towards Ashkelon.

Let me parse that out. Israelis working in the Ashkelon power plant routinely risk their lives, to supply electricity to Gaza.

There will be no peace in the region while thepeople — they are people, even if their conduct in biting the hand that feeds them seems more deserving of the term “savages” — who are called, erroneously, Palestinians can abandon their fanatical death-cult ideology. Before too long, it may become necessary for Israel to simply conquer Gaza and the West Bank and wipe out the Hamas and Fatah leaderships and political structures.

Kateland at The Last Amazon has a couple of good articles up about the ways in which Hamas, in Gaza, is manufacturing humanitarian and refugee crises in a bid to turn world public opinion against Israel. By and large, their efforts in this regard have already succeeded — Israel is widely demonized. But isn’t it interesting how the group that is supposedly the legitimately elected government of Gaza uses various tactics (threat of force, looting) against providers of food and fuel in order to create preconditions for a starving, desperate populace…and isn’t it interesting how it is Israel that the world blames for their genocidal oppression of the Palestinians? Isn’t it interesting how the group that is supposedly the legitimately elected government of Gaza blows holes in a wall between Egypt and Palestine, and then encourages thousands of refugees to cross the Sinai…and isn’t it interesting how it is Israel that the world blames for their persecution of the Palestinians?

Hatred of Jews is an old, old passtime that has been adopted, at various times, by different groups for different reasons. But I don’t think there’s ever been an era where it has become so mainstream to direct ill will toward the people of Israel.

TheSpaceAdmiral, whom I haven’t heard from in a while, writes in with a few corrections to a previous article.

I think the premise of your “Egypt had a wall between it and Gaza” post is wrong. You say twice that the wall was built by Egypt, but Reuters seems pretty confident that the portion of wall blown up yesterday was built by Israel in 2004:

Residents of Rafah, a divided town straddling the Egypt-Gaza border, said militants set off explosions that demolished a 200-metre (200-yard) length of the rusting, six-meter-high (20-foot-high) metal border wall put up by Israel in 2004, a year before it pulled troops and settlers from the territory.

Egypt certainly does a lot to keep Palestinians out (and have made considerable efforts to seal the border), so you can argue that your broader point remains valid, but I still think jumping from “there is a wall on the Egypt-Gaza border” to “the Egyptians built a wall on the Egypt-Gaza.border” is a weird leap of logic.

Please note that I’m disputing the historical facts related to construction of the wall. I’m not trying to make some broader political point.

One works with the details one has on hand at the moment, and I didn’t take the time to look for more information about the Rafah wall. If it was built by Israel back in 2004, then it was built by Israel back in 2004 (I’m not usually willing to grant Reuters my complete trust, especially in regard to their objectivity where Israel is concerned, but the historical picture they present seems accurate upon further review).

So it appears that I goofed on a technical detail. My apologies, and I am grateful for the added details.

TheSpaceAdmiral is right, though, that this doesn’t really do any damage to the point of my previous article, which was to point out that there seems to be an awful lot of noise being made about the injustice of the Israel/Gaza wall, but no noise at all about how the Egypt/Gaza wall. There seems to be an awful lot of noise being made about Israel’s use of the wall as a security barrier, and no noise at all about how, until yesterday, Egypt was using the Rafah wall for essentially the same purpose.

That the Rafah wall was built by Israel is interesting, but also irrelevant in the grand scheme; they gave up control of the site when they withdrew their troops and civilians from the area. In effect, if not by act of construction, it was the Egyptians’ wall. Was, that is, until Hamas had a go at it.

Why is it that human rights’ groups (and Islamic lobby groups) criticize the wall that Israel built between itself and Gaza as “inhumane”, “invasive”, and “genocidal”…and yet fail to mention that Egypt had built a similar wall? Of course, Hamas blew that wall up last night, and thousands of Palestinian refugees have since swarmed over the border, leaving Gaza for Egypt.

But still. Did the Reader know that the Egyptians had built an analog to the Israeli wall? Your blogger here did not.