Over at No Right Turn Idiot/Savant is calling the police “blue-uniformed thugs who decide for themselves what is and isn’t acceptable” in response to the arrest of  an individual for protesting against tennis player Shahar Peer just because of her nationality.

This is nonsense on two counts. Lets first deal with the issue of the arrest of the protestor. The individual in question was using a loudhailer to voice his opinion. That message that he was being broadcast so loudly that it was being heard right across into the tennis game while the match was in question. The protestor was allowed to continue for 45 minutes before he was made to stop. That is more than enough time to make your point and if you want to continue do so – but without breaching the peace of others through the use of a loudhailer. I believe that the police did the right thing in arresting the individual for breaching the peace and did not violate his human rights unlike what NRT would want us to believe.

The second point is since when was it ever acceptable to make racist comments about an individual as a means of protest? The herald reports that the protestors were chanting: “blood, blood on your hands”, “freedom for Palestine”, “go home, Shahar”. Lets look at these slogans a little more closely because it appears that the protestors need a history lesson:

• “blood, blood on your hands” now I have no idea if Peer has completed her compulsory time in the IDF as required under Israeli law, however, what is the relevance of this to a tennis match? Let alone something that you have no control over. If the protestors wanted to make this point go and protest outside the Israeli embassy or something. Don’t target an individual just because of their nationality. Not online is it naive it is also just plain stupid.
• “freedom for Palestine” firstly how is protesting at a tennis match going to achieve this? The person is a tennis player not a politician! Second there is freedom in Palestine there are two countries that make up the traditional land of Palestine the Jewish state of Israel and the Islamic state of Jordan. Furthermore there are many more Islamic states throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world. There is only one Jewish state.
• “go home, Shahar” this is the most dumb line of them all. The protestors do not believe that the state of Israel should exist so therefore where is home? By telling Peer to go home the protestors are stuffing their message so well that they are in fact expressing their desire for Israel to actually exist. Brilliant.

And what bugs me most about this? I blogged on exactly the same incident twice last year.

For the second week in a row Michael Laws has written a piece in the Sunday Star Times about Gaza, this time looking at the Kebab Shop owner who threw out two Israelis just because they were Jewish.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4822100a22678.html

Michael Laws: There’s no place for old hatreds in NZ

IF THERE IS one great virtue that our founding fathers gifted New Zealand it was the rejection of a state religion. And the eschewing of all the doctrinal disputes that plagued their old homeland.

This is not to suggest that there was not sectarian conflict in this new land because there was. Nor that God necessarily took a backseat in Godzone.

But they were minor influences compared to the Old Country. As a rule, the distance loosened their old religious prejudices. Faith gradually became a private affair, and was not allowed to intrude upon the daily business of policy-making.

The embodiment of this brilliance was the Education Act of 1877 delivering schooling that was compulsory, free and secular. The latter was crucial.

Sure, there were the extremists. Catholic Bishop Moran who established the separatist Catholic school system was one. So too, the Protestant Political Association of the 1920s with their anti-Papist activity. Even into the 1960s, the idea of a Catholic-Protestant marriage had its societal impediments.

So maybe we could be patient with the outflow of Muslim support for the moronic decision of Turkish cafe owner Mustafa Tekinkaya to refuse service to two Israeli sisters in Invercargill ostensibly because their country is at war with the fundamentalist Hamas organisation. Except that, in this case, tolerance would be weakness.

Because the nature of this culinary discrimination signalled that the immigration doors have admitted more than just different peoples from different lands these past two decades. They have also admitted age-old loathings and ancient animosities which have no place in this new land.

One might also think that Tekinkaya’s refusal was about the conflict in Gaza. It is not. This Turkish Muslim and his fellow kebab shop supporters must have disliked Israelis for a long, long time. You don’t suddenly expel Israelis from your shop because their government has done something you don’t like. Confronted with this country’s human rights legislation, Tekinkaya said that he did not care. Neither did his supporters, who phoned into my radio show last week. All were migrants, all self-identified as Muslims and all loathed Israel. They saw no problem with his actions whatsoever. The dreaded Jews were massacring their Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza; ipso facto, all Israelis are bad and must be refused even the most menial of service.

And this is the guts of this issue.

The Herald’s cartoon yesterday had a reversal of this situation, where by a Muslim was refused service because other Muslims are suicide bombers, and the next frame of the cartoon showed how nasty the reaction would be.

This is the same issue as John Minto’s protest the other day, targeting individuals is racism, it is not political protest.

Then let’s consider the women involved. Not Israeli tourists on some grave scouting expedition but one sister married to a Kiwi, with two children aged four and two, and her visiting sister from the home country.

Similarly, the discriminators: Kiwis. Turkish-Kiwis, but Kiwis. Resident in this country, and trying to raise both a business and a family in deepest, darkest Southland.

Meanwhile, Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres made all the right noises in declaiming the cafe owners’ actions but his next actions will be the more important. Formal complaints have been laid and a prima facie case established. Given his public utterances, there will be no possibility of a rapprochement between Mustafa and his Israeli clientele. So where next?

Dear lord, the racist cafe owner assembled every Turk and kebab seller within hailing distance in Southland all three of them to be photographed in support. These are not the actions of a contrite man. Unless the law falls on Mustafa from a great height and repeatedly nothing will permeate his thick Turkish skull.

Which is a shame. Because I rather like the Turks. Thoroughly decent at Gallipoli, and founder Ataturk’s words about our war dead was poetry and compassion combined. They’re desperate to be part of Europe rather than part of the Arab world, and equally desperate to resist the deadly embrace of Islamic fundamentalism. And they make lovely desserts.

And this is an important point to note, like Israel’s actions do not represent the views of every Israeli nor do they actions of one Turk represent the views of all Turkey.

But then I suspect Mustafa Tekinkaya and his kebab-mates, including the Friends of Palestine, are not big on compassion. They care not that Hamas loosed no fewer than 6000 (yes, six thousand) rockets on Israel after that country withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Or that Hamas deliberately hide behind innocents to carry out their outrages. Or that Hamas are Muslim madmen.

The truth is that Islamic fundamentalism exists in this country. It has arrived with the migrants and refugees and it is as evil and myopic here as it was over there.

And this should be of concern to all of NZ. We are an open, free, liberal and democratic country, for the most part we don’t take sides, we remain neutral, and we tolerate a lot. But one thing we will not tolerate is racism, because racism is not tolerating others in the extremist of forms.

And coming away from racism for a few seconds, I found the irony very laughable with yesterdays Global Peace and Justice march against Rakon. If global peace involves hurling paint bombs at Police and Buildings then that is not a peace that I want. I am surprised that only one person was arrested, if I was a cop there I would have taken out every single person throwing things, but good on the police for showing some restraint.

From: http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4814924a22678.html

The Middle East is a tragedy wrapped in a catastrophe. This recent outbreak of hostility is small beer compared to its blood-soaked past but it has served to launch a new wave of liberal handwringing.

Almost without exception, liberals accept that the Israelis are the baddies. They are the ones with the fighter planes, helicopter gunships and tanks tearing through the ghettoes of Gaza.

…

The truth is considerably different. The Gaza Strip is a territory controlled by an Islamic fundamentalist faction that has sworn to wipe Israel from the planet. It has been doing its best by launching rockets at Jewish settlements, arming and directing suicide bombers, and ending the uneasy ceasefire.

It knows it cannot beat Israel militarily but that is not its aim. Its aim is to provoke a reaction and for any Israeli incursion to kill innocent Palestinian children. This is intended to incite other Arab nations to collaborate in the cleansing force required to be rid of these dreadful Jews.

The only problem is that Hamas are not freedom fighters. In fact, they are not even sane. They are religious fanatics. Fundamentalist nutters armed with guns, rocket-propelled grenades and rockets. Their idea of a Palestinian state is one that eradicates Israel. They emerged victors after a bloody civil war with the Fatah party in 2006 killing plenty of innocent civilians themselves and now consider that Hamas is the frontline in the fight against the infidel.

Yet these are the people that Minto, the Greens, the Catholic fringe and Kiwi liberals seek to embrace.

The history of the Middle East is labyrinthine but modern Israel was legally established by the United Nations in 1947. In fact, the UN plan was to establish two separate countries a Jewish Israel and an Arab Palestine. It was not a perfect answer but then none were available. It was the best of a bad situation.

To cut a long story short: the Arabs accepted neither solution nor resolution. Israel was a Zionist abomination and a pan-Arab military force instantly massed to invade. They were badly beaten, the nascent Palestine was scrubbed, and hundreds of thousands of displaced Arabs escaped into non-statehood.

Voila the grievance of these past 60 years.

For decades, any genuine solution foundered against the Arab insistence that Israel had no right to exist. That it was the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time. That impediment is now, mostly, gone.

But not for Hamas or their backers in Iran. Jews are devils end of story. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia may accept that Jewish folk are entitled to their place in the sun but as for Hamas-controlled Palestine that’s a different matter entirely.

Nothing less than the repudiation of the Israeli state and the confiscation of all their land will suffice. And so their continuing attacks upon Israeli civilians. And equally so, the expiration of Jewish patience.

This is not to suggest that Israeli actions over these past 60 years meet any antipodean morality test either. There have been inhumane actions and outrageous abuses. But not this time: not in Gaza in 2009. Israel is responding as any nation would were it under continual military harassment.

If Fiji, for example, were to send suicide bombers and rain down rockets on Auckland and surrounds, in protest at past actions, I wonder how long before New Zealand’s patience similarly snapped? Especially if the governing Fijian regime wanted this country for themselves.

Such a scenario seems surreal. We can’t possibly comprehend a thought process so perverse. It is not within our frame of reference.

…

Veteran liberal correspondent Robert Fisk has condemned the Israeli incursion as disproportionate. He draws an analogy with the IRA bombing Britain: did England carpet bomb Ireland in return, he asks? The difference being that the Irish government actively opposed the IRA’s leadership and tactics. And that the IRA wasn’t the government, using its institutions to wage a terrorist war on the UK with the ultimate aim of tipping England into the sea.

…

The death of innocents in Gaza is regrettable it is sad and it is wrong. But all the more so for being orchestrated by Hamas, in pursuit of their despicable ends.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10550878

Editorial: Desecration does nothing to help Gaza
The actions of an extremist Catholic priest in desecrating the Wellington memorial to Nobel Prize winner Yitzhak Rabin undo any good that a thousand others protesting against Israel might have hoped
to achieve.

Father Gerard Burns daubed a drop of his own blood mixed with red paint across the Rabin memorial, inspired perhaps by an equally misguided Auckland cleric who poured his own blood on the carpet of the US consulate at the beginning of the Iraq war. At least in that repulsive act the first priest was, in the twisted logic of his protest, at the right place.

For Father Burns to desecrate the Rabin memorial is not only in breach of any civilised standard of protest but utterly wrongheaded in terms of his target. Rabin, a former Israeli general-turned-two-time-Prime-Minister, was perhaps the greatest hope for peace between Jews and Palestinians in a generation. He was assassinated by an ultra-conservative Jew because he was too accommodating to the Palestinians in seeking a lasting peace. He died after a rally for peace, with the words of Shir LaShalom, or Song for Peace, found bloodied in his pocket. He had been honoured, with Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres, by the Nobel judges. The memorial in central Wellington marks that commitment to peace.

The sins (as Father Burns might see them) of his successors in the Israeli Government cannot be visited upon Rabin. The Friends of Israel group rightly calls for the Catholic Church to discipline the priest and apologise to Jews in New Zealand, for whom desecration of their monument causes deep offence. The vandalism has received worldwide attention, the kind of attention that shames Catholics of goodwill and undermines their own public stands for justice and peace. The organisers of the Wellington march opposing Israel’s heavy-handed military action in the Gaza strip should also demand an apology from Father Burns. They must know that their message against the killings of civilians, including children, is diverted and made hollow by a calculated insult to Jews everywhere.

Father Burns no doubt views the hurt and harm caused by his desecration as out of proportion with the tragedy in Gaza. In lives lost, that is correct. No one died, as the saying goes, because of his stunt with paint. Yet something dies when whole communities are insulted, deliberately, by an act so heavy with the symbolism and fear of their past. Should Catholic monuments, for example a memorial to the revered Bishop Pompallier who brought the Church to New Zealand, be attacked because of some stance taken by the Vatican, similar outrage would ensue.

…

Extreme responses seldom get things in proportion. And, sadly, Father Burns’ drop of blood mocks the deaths of those for whom he claims to speak.

The Israeli Defense Force is actively posting videos to You Tube showing its actions. These are uneditted and without opinion from the media. Make up your own mind about Israel targeting terrorists and weapons vs civilans, the secondary explosions in many of the videos are huge.

Okay,I have been very reluctant to blog about the ongoings in Israel partly because I have been busy, and partly because Kiwiblog have been doing a good job of keeping the issue balanced, at least in the NZ Blogosphere.

But the reason why I am blogging now is because John Minto and his rent a protest crowd have really got my back up in the last two days.

Now I will come back to Minto and his bunch of loonies in a few minutes but first lets get things in perspective.

Israel is not a large country. I have combined an image of Israel and part of the north island together to show it in comparison to NZ.

The Gaza Strip is highlighted in Red. It is about the same size as the distance from Manukau to Huntly. 100km max. And Gaza city itself is about the same size as Auckland City, as in the city city, not Manukau, Waitakere or the shore.

So as you can see they are fighting over a very small piece of land, but at the same time a very heavily populated land. So as you can expect when you are dropping bombs or firing tank shells civilians are naturally going to be caught in the crossfire.

However that is no excuse for not defending yourself. And that is what Israel are doing.

Israel has spent the past week inside its own land trying to prevent terrorists from firing rockets and random into civilian towns. Rockets that have rained down for the last 8 years, or 400 weeks for those of you who want things in perspective.

Israel is the only jewish state in the world. There are many many christian states, many muslim states, and many states of other religions, but only one jewish state. And more importantly for those who don’t believe in religion, Israel is the only democracy in the Mid East.

And so I find all the protests against Israel quite ironic. But at the same time it doesn’t surprise me when they are vastly outnumbered in terms of supporters (primarily due to religious beliefs).

Okay so lets come back to New Zealand.

Firstly Wellington. There was a lovely “peaceful” protest down there earlier this week. And I say “peaceful” in quotes because I am disgusted by the actions of a priest of the catholic church who thought it was wise to mix blood with paint and smear it on a jewish memorial.

Now two things strike me about this action. The first is that how would NZ’s respond if an environmentalist decided that Sir Ed’s grave was a good place to smear blood on after all he sent polluting tractors to the south pole and therefore help start melting the ice caps by putting out too much heat and carbon. People would think that they are crazy and demand that they be prosecuted to the nth degree of the law. However NZ just turns a blind eye to the actions of a high ranking public individual who vandalises a memorial. Would I be arrested if I were to throw red paint over his church for all the killing the catholic church has done through the ages?

The second thing is this. The accidental symbolism. In jewish custom smearing blooding over a door frame protects you from G-d’s destruction. That is the Exodus story. The passover. This priest appears to have accidentially asked G-d to passover Israel’s sins, so in a way I thank him for doing that.

And now lets come to today in Auckland. John Minto is the hero of the 1980s and the anti Springbok tour protests. At the time they were good things. Because they actually had an impact because they were a nationally sanctioned team.

But today, threatning to throw shoes at an Israeli individual who has no ties to the Government is disgusting. Whatever happened to welcome to New Zealand, what ever happened to respecting everyone? Since when did NZders’s throw shoes at people just because of their nationality?

And for those who have no idea what I am blogging about check this out: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10550934

Can’t kids just be kids. Seriously, you have to wonder what hope/life/chance these kids have when there being taught this sort of thing from birth.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1183053066461&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Hamas TV on Friday broadcast what it said was the last episode of a weekly children’s show featuring “Farfour,” a Mickey Mouse look-alike who had made worldwide headlines for preaching Islamic domination and armed struggle to youngsters.

In the final skit, Farfour was beaten to death by an actor posing as an Israeli official trying to buy Farfour’s land. At one point, Farfour called the Israeli a “terrorist.”

“Farfour was martyred while defending his land,” said Sara, the teen presenter. He was killed “by the killers of children,” she added.

The weekly show, featuring a giant black-and-white rodent with a high-pitched voice, had attracted worldwide attention because the character urged Palestinian children to fight Israel. It was broadcast on Hamas-affiliated Al-Aksa TV.

Station officials said Friday that Farfour was taken off the air to make room for new programs.

Station manager Mohammed Bilal said he didn’t know yet what would be shown instead.

Israeli officials have denounced the program, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” as incendiary and outrageous. The program was also opposed by the state-run Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, which is controlled by Fatah.