# 194 – The Abusive Rake

August 28, 2011

        Common Sense

This cartoon is by Stefan Bremner-Morris, commissioned by me. Stefan is a brilliant cartoonist, among other things.

Me? I feel like a woodpecker, knocking constantly on those heads of wood that just do NOT see what’s going on. Why bother, so many say. You can’t change anything. Well, rather try than do nothing.

It’s Sunday morning here. Sunny, still warm with humidity. So what’s happening right now…

• Ghadaffi is asking for talks to set up a transitional government.

• Mayor Bloomfield now says that the time for evacuation is over. Sit tight at home, and you will survive Hurricane Irene.

• Syria will NOT fall like Libya and Egypt. Assad has the support of Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza. Even Russia and China are reluctant to criticise. Assad is annihilating his helpless foes, and we do nothing. He attacks Palestinian refugee camps (there since 1948. According to Wikipedia, 10 are official and 3 are unofficial! Since 1948, these people have not been given even temporarily a status that would give them decent Syrian rights).

• Yemen is almost ignored by the West. And yet is could become the centre of Islamic extremist terrorism in the very near future.

• And if not Yemen, then Sinai. Under the peace agreement with Israel, Egypt was supposed to ensure that it remains demilitarised. Right now, it is not – and part of that is the result of the opening of the border with Gaza, through which flowed ‘the wrong people’.

Hence the attack on Israel 10 days ago, the retaliations (during which 5    Egyptian police were killed – by whom?), which caused Egyptians to demand the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador (that action was rescinded at the last moment – some Egyptians still have their heads screwed on correctly). But the guy who clambered up 21 floors and removed the Israeli flag from Cairo’s Israeli Embassy has not only been glorified – he’s been given a new home, free education etc. for his kids, and so on.

• The south of Israel, including the city of Beersheba, is cowering under the rockets being fired from Gaza. Almost 1 million Israelis terrorised by Hamas. (I HAVE to compare – I’m sorry – but Norway, having been devastated by Brevik’s attack, is not currently under the shadow of terrorism. Norwegian kids are not studying in shelters. There is a difference. And if there is NOT, either way, Norway and Israel should be on the same side. Yet Norway remains one of Israel’s most adamant critics

• Another ‘almost 1 million Israelis’ still living in tents, protesting peacefully against the economic woes of the country. It’s as if they invented the Abusive Rake.

• Listened to a BBC programme ‘World Football’ which focused on the support for the Palestinian national team (brought into the FIFA fold by Sepp Blatter in 1998, while the Kurds and others still are ignored). They openly said that the time is right for Israel to be brought back into the ‘Asian’ football world.

That there are now prospects for football to be one of the means of bringing the sides together. Imagine, Israel vs Fatah vs Hamas, the first-ever international between 3 teams. I’m sure it would take place in the new Martyr Square stadium in Tripoli.

Just when are we going to wake up? When are the politically correct going to stop seeing me as extremist right-wing. Don’t they see that those like me are actually standing fairly still. We’re just watching elements in this World moving to the extremes.

I never thought that I’d be siding myself with those who are being attacked as right-wing. The danger of course is that some REAL right-wingers (Brevik, fascists, Nazis, skinheads etc.) are trying to side with some of these voices – and that’s bad.

How about Glenn Beck? (How many of you just pressed the delete button!!).

‘Who is Glenn Beck?’ 2 of you ask. Radio/TV host, defender of values, a Mormon – although greatly supported by the general ‘Christian Right’. Normally someone  I personally would ‘delete’ from my incoming mails. Until end of July, he has his own show on Fox News, but now has gone ‘independent’.

He’s really been stirring things up. He’s been running a campaign of ‘Restoring Courage’, primarily to defend Israel. He arranged conferences/events here in Israel. Glenn then went to Johannesburg to show them how blind those are who compare Israel to Apartheid S. Africa. He hoped to have an event in Chavez’s Venezuela today, but not sure he was allowed to land. He’s due to end this launch to his campaign in Texas.

Wanna read Glenn Beck’s opening salvo at the Restoring Courage gathering in Jerusalem last week? Go to…

http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/08/24/read-glenns-full-keynote-address-from-restoring-courage-the-courage-to-stand/

It’s Israel’s turn to be really stupid. I asked someone close about Beck. They answered that ‘Israel finds things wrong with him – cannot completely agree with him’. Well that’s a cop-out answer if ever I heard one. Israel? Since when did Israel have 1 opinion? There are many jokes about the number of Israeli (Jewish) opinions.

Glenn Beck is so ‘in your face’, that unless you are some ‘extreme right-wing evangelist’, you will ALWAYS find something he says with which you disagree. He’s been accused of being anti-Semitic, yet here he is, being more pro-Israel than anyone.

Among his worst critics are in Israel, on both the Left and the Right. I think it’s because they are ashamed that a non-Jew, non-Israeli has the guts to say and do what they should have been saying and doing for years.

I’m going to find out more about this guy. See how far he’s willing to stick his neck out. If I feel that he can not only bring common sense to the many decent people in this world, but prevent them from wasting the opportunity to use it, then I’m with him.

We need voices like his, as we approach Sep 20, the day that the 2 Palestinian peoples declare unilaterally the State of Palestine, while continuing to declare war on its neighbour, who also happens to be a UN member….

Finally, this is a pic I took yesterday on my bike-ride along the beach. In the background, Reading power station. (Used to be north of the city. Now it’s been by-passed by the northern suburbs. This taken from south of the little bridge over the mouth of the Hayarkon river. Cross it, and you’re on the bike/pedestrian way past the complex, then you go past the city airport, Sde Dov and reach our local beach, Tel Baruch. Inland from there, and all the way south, are the northern suburbs.

In the foreground of the photo is a group of cadets, having some ceremony/prize-giving. I can assure you they’re happy and. almost, harmless. They’re our kids…

Stephen