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Life With Nanny Norway What it’s really like to live in a social-democratic “paradise.” Bruce Bawer

Posted By on September 27th, 2017

For thirteen years in a row, Business Insider – citing its standard of living, health-care system, and high life expectancy – has put Norway at the top of its annual list of “best countries to live in.” The high life expectancy is an objective fact; the other items are a matter of debate. Norwegian health care? It works admirably, unless you require an operation or treatment that the government considers too expensive or for which there’s a waiting list. Standard of living? Incomes are high, but so are taxes.

But I’m not here to argue with Business Insider’s rankings. I’m here to point out an aspect of Norwegian life that never figures on any of these “best country” lists, whether put out by Business Insider or the United Nations or whomever. I’m talking about statism – the degree to which the state is a palpable part of everyday life.

Briefly put, Norway is pretty much statism central. I’m more accustomed to it now, but when I was first living here I was acutely aware every single day of the presence of the government in my life. I’m not talking about some abstract, theoretical phenomenon. It’s a real, palpable feeling. A feeling of being a bit less of an individual and a bit more part of a collective. An awareness that your eleven-digit “person number” (which includes your birth date) comes up a lot more often than your social-security number ever did back in the U.S. A sense of being covered by an umbrella, but also surrounded by a wall.

For the last four years, to be sure, Norway has had a supposedly non-socialist coalition government, led by the Conservative Party, with Labor heading up the socialist opposition. In the September 11 elections, the governing coalition was returned to power. But the non-socialist label is deceptive: whichever party or parties happen to be running the country at any given time, the public sector is overwhelmingly dominated by Labor and other leftist parties. While in power, the so-called conservatives may pass legislation signaling a bit more support for business interests or the military, but they never do anything that significantly reverses Norwegian statism.

Now, to live under a statist system is, as it were, to live in someone else’s house, and thus to live by their rules. Nanny Norway doesn’t think it’s good for you to drink. So she doesn’t allow anyone other than herself to sell liquor, and makes buying it as costly and troublesome as possible. In my town of 12,000 people, there’s one state-owned liquor outlet. Hours are limited. The tax on (for example) a bottle of vodka is 300%. Beer is more than twice as expensive as anywhere else on earth.

Nanny Norway thinks it’s best for you to eat at home, so going out to dinner is also a pricey proposition. Lunch? Almost nobody goes out to lunch. Years ago, in a New York Times article about Norway’s high prices, I made casual reference to the matpakke, the modest packed lunch – usually a sandwich or two wrapped in wax paper or aluminum foil – that Norwegians of all socioeconomic levels take to work. After VG, Norway’s largest daily, ran an article about my article, I received hundreds of emails and text messages – including death threats – savaging me for insulting a beloved national tradition.

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Brandeis University: Backing Hamas on Campus SJP defended student who called for an American intifada. Sara Dogan

Posted By on September 27th, 2017

As revealed in recent congressional testimony, Students for Justice in Palestine is a campus front for Hamas terrorists. SJP’s propaganda activities are orchestrated and funded by a Hamas front group, American Muslims for Palestine, whose chairman is Hatem Bazian and whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas. The report and posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop University Support for Terrorists. Images of the posters that appeared at Brandeis and other campuses may be viewed at www.stopuniversitysupportforterrorists.org.

Brandeis University

Brandeis University was named for the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court, Louis D. Brandeis, and is one of only a few prominent American universities to be founded primarily by Jews. In spite of these strong ties to the American Jewish community, Brandeis has stood apart in recent years for its hostility to Israel and its strong support of Israel’s terrorist enemies. In the past year, swastikas have appeared in multiple locations on campus and the campus SJP chapter has held an event supporting Hamas’s policy of refusing to normalize relations with Israel or its allies. Brandeis rescinded an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of radical Islam and advocate of Muslim women’s rights, while granting one to notoriously anti-Semitic playwright Tony Kushner. Brandeis also hosted a secret listserve where prominent professors exchanged emails attacking Israel—even comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany— and supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that is supported and funded by Hamas. When a Brandeis student used her personal twitter account to call for an Intifada, she was vigorously defended by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Two additional Brandeis students sought to restore relations between the university and Al Quds University in Palestine, which is a recruiting ground for the terror group Hamas.

Supporting Evidence:

In November 2016, a swastika was found on the door of the men’s restroom in the campus library at Brandeis.

On November 3, 2016, Brandeis SJP held an event titled “Apartheid is Not ‘Green’: Greenwashing and Palestine.” The purpose of the event was to demonize Israel and to claim that the Jewish state uses its record of positive environmental activism to hide its alleged “apartheid” and mistreatment of the Palestinians. The event description stated: “Israel inaccurately portrays itself as environmentally conscious in order to justify and distract from its violence against Palestine.” Of course all the violence in the Middle East conflict is the result of a 70-year unprovoked aggression by the Arab states and terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas against the Jewish state.

On March 8, 2016, Brandeis SJP held an event called “Presentation & Discussion on Pinkwashing.” The term “pinkwashing” is used by Israel’s enemies to claim that the Jewish state uses its overwhelmingly positive record on gay rights to hide its mistreatment of the Palestinians.

In May 2015, Former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, known for his extreme anti-Israel views, gave the Commencement address at Brandeis. In an op-ed recently co-written for Politico.com, Pickering repeated Hamas tropes such as “Israel’s half-century-long occupation” and stated that “the marginal improvement in Israel’s security provided by these expansive Israeli demands can hardly justify the permanent subjugation and disenfranchisement of a people to which Israel refuses to grant citizenship in the Jewish state.”

On April 23, 2015, Professor Noam Chomsky, known for his extreme anti-Israel views, spoke at Brandeis. During his speech, he described Israel’s actions towards Palestine as “vicious, brutal and criminal” and claimed that Israel “is alone in denying” its “illegal occupation of territories.”

During March 21-27, 2015, Brandeis SJP held Israel Apartheid Week on campus. Israel Apartheid Week is a weeklong series of anti-Israel events designed to demonize and destroy Israel. Events included a talk on “Facing the Ongoing Nakba.” (Nakba, an Arabic term meaning “catastrophe,” is used by Hamas and its supporters to describe the creation of Israel). The “Nakba” event included a display of the false Hamas maps which purport to show the infiltration and colonization by Jews of Arab “Palestine.” The Week also included a talk by Professor Sa’ed Atshan, an anti-Israel activist who currently serves as a professor in “Peace and Conflict Studies” at Swarthmore College, who has called Gaza an “open-aired prison” and has referred to Israeli military strategy as “scorched-Earth policy.”

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ELECTIONS ARE COMING- Two Fighters Come Together in Alabama A tough fights ends in the emergence of a GOP fighter. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 27th, 2017

Early this century, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued to remove the Ten Commandments from an Alabama courthouse. The case ended with Judge Roy Moore, the democratically elected Alabama Chief Justice, being removed from the bench for refusing to take down the Ten Commandments.

“Justice was served today,” the president of the leftist hate group cheered. “A public official who defied the law was removed from office.”

But the Southern Poverty Law Center couldn’t keep Roy Moore down no matter how hard it tried.

Last September, the SPLC was still fighting to remove Moore from the bench after his return. Now it will have to fight to remove him from the Senate because Roy Moore does not give up.

Roy Moore didn’t give up when a Federal judge and the Alabama Supreme Court ordered him to take down the Ten Commandments. He didn’t give up when he was removed from the bench. He didn’t give up in the face of a ruling by the United States Supreme Court and another suspension. He didn’t give up when he was massively outspent in every election. Including this one. Because he doesn’t give up.

There’s something to be said for a man who fights for what he believes in. And who won’t give up.

Agree or disagree with Roy Moore, no one can deny that he’s a fighter who overcomes long odds. He won his first election as a longshot candidate despite being outspent ten to one. He won his second election after being outspent six to one. He won the GOP Senate runoff last night after, once again, being outspent six to one. Including five to one on television advertising. And he won it by a landslide.

And by fighting for it, Judge Roy Moore earned his shot at the Senate.

It’s no secret that Republicans have lost winnable Senate seats when candidates with impeccable convictions, but poor electability, went to the front of the line. There’s nothing wrong with making electability a priority. A candidate who can’t win is just opening the door for a Democrat.

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Violence-Promoting Antifa Academic Condemned by Police Union, Dartmouth President By Debra Heine

Posted By on September 27th, 2017

Another university academic has come under fire from the police for expressing support for the far-left, anti-cop anarchist group antifa.

Dartmouth College lecturer Mark Bray is described in his bio as a “historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe.” He was also a spokesman for the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011.

The Alliance for Global Justice, a progressive charity that is funded by George Soros, was/is a sponsor of both OWS and Refuse Fascism, the left-wing, antifa-linked group that helped organize the violent shutdown of the Milo Yiannopoulos event at the University of California, Berkeley last February.

Bray wrote a book on OWS that was published in 2013.

Bray recently signed a copy of his antifa book for his cop-hating “comrade” professor Michael Isaacson, who shared a photo of the inscription on Twitter.

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” wrote Bray.

In the wake of the largely media-driven “white supremacy” hysteria, Bray has become somewhat of a media personality, with dozens of national news outlets turning to him for information about antifa. According to the Washington Post, all of the media attention is making administration officials at Dartmouth a bit nervous. “Dartmouth officials are unsettled,” according to the report. “Bray has made no secret about his belief that violence is, in some circumstances, justified. In turn, the university has sought to distance itself from him.”

In a recent appearance on CSPAN, Bray defended antifa’s violence against fellow Americans by calling it “preemptive self-defense.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Lampoon Times By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on September 27th, 2017

When did the New York Times get taken over by the National Lampoon? It happened so slowly I didn’t even notice.

As has been widely noticed, the Times has been running a series of articles related to the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, and it is obvious that the Times is still sad that the whole show came to an ignominious end in the early 1990s. (After all, there was one wall that the Times actually liked—at least their Pulitzer prize winning “reporter” Walter Duranty.) The series has produced gems such as this:

Hubba, hubba, comrade.

Monday the Times outdid itself:

Memo to the Times: I suspect the “big dreams” of Chinese women was an end to Communist tyranny, which wasn’t just a “flaw,” but its essence.

Imagine a headline that started, “For all of its flaws, slavery. . .”

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The Red-Green Axis Goes Ballistic: Iran, North Korea, and Proliferation By Andrew E. Harrod

Posted By on September 27th, 2017

“It’s a match made in hell,” writes journalist Benny Avni of the nuclear weapon and ballistic missile proliferation nexus between Iran and North Korea. This international, potentially apocalyptic version of what is known as a “red-green alliance” between radical Islamic and leftist elements makes America’s often neglected missile defense efforts all the more urgent.

Various commentators have noted a “stark contrast” between the ideological natures of the Iranian and North Korean regimes. As Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies observes, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocracy, while North Korea is a hereditary tyranny with an anti-religious, Marxist ideology. Nonetheless, these two rogue state international outcasts, once included in President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil,” both “feel a serious threat from the United States and the West,” notes Harvard University’s Matthew Bunn.

Accordingly, Israeli analysts have observed that the “nuclear and ballistic interfaces between the two countries are long-lasting” since the carnage of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. During the conflict, Iran internationally “was a pariah, desperate for military equipment and ammunition,” notes North Korean military analyst Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr. “If Iran has sometimes been desperate to buy arms and military technology, North Korea has always been desperate to sell arms and military technology,” given the country’s economic isolation, writes Cordesman. Thus, North Korea “needed money more than it needed anything else. Iran, which needed missiles more than anything else, was the ideal partner,” concludes the think-tank Geopolitical Futures.

The Iran-Iraq War began a relationship in which, one Israeli academic notes, “several analysts believe that Iran was the primary financial supporter of North Korea’s missile development program.” In exchange for Iranian oil wealth, North Korea provided Iran with Scud-B missiles that North Korea began producing in 1987 after having reverse-engineered them from missiles procured from Egypt in the late 1970s. By the end of the 1980s, Iran had received hundreds of Scud-B and Scud-C missiles.

Subsequently, Iran agreed in 1992 to provide North Korea with $500 million for joint nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development. As a result, North Korea fielded the Nodong missile in the 1990s while Iran deployed its clone, the Shahab-3, in 2003 after several years of testing. While North Korea’s Nodong missiles can hit parts of Japan, Representative Ted Poe (R-Texas) notes that from Iran, the Shahab-3 can strike Israel and Central Europe. North Korea’s Musudan missile, 19 of which Iran obtained sometime before 2007, has theoretically an even longer range, capable of striking from Iran targets like Berlin and Moscow.

While some analysts deny the existence of Iran-North Korea missile design collaboration or joint development, Iranian-North Korean ballistic cooperation extends beyond missiles themselves to fields such as test data exchanges. “It’s doubtful there has been a single Iranian missile test where North Korean scientists weren’t present, nor a North Korean test where Iranian scientists didn’t have a front row seat,” notes the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin. Missile test sites in Iran and North Korea also exhibit strong similarities.

Evidence concerning Iran-North Korea nuclear cooperation remains more indefinite, although both countries have used similar nuclear supply chains like that of Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Despite numerous reports through the years of technical personnel exchanges and visits, sometimes involving hundreds of individuals, Cordesman notes that American intelligence has never confirmed such cooperation. Yet British officials on September 10 argued that the rapid progress of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development indicated foreign help from a country like Iran or Russia.

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Saudi Arabia Lifts Ban on Women Driving King Salman issues decree allowing women to obtain licenses By Margherita Stancati and Summer Said

Posted By on September 27th, 2017

RIYADH—Saudi Arabia on Tuesday lifted the world’s only ban on women driving, removing a restriction in the deeply conservative kingdom that had become a symbol of women’s oppression.

In a royal decree, King Salman announced that women will be allowed to obtain driving licenses starting next June, after a government committee studies how to allow women onto the roads driving their own vehicles.

The decision, immediately condemned by many Saudi conservatives on social media, comes at a time of profound change championed by the Saudi monarch and his son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who are leading efforts to relax the country’s strict social rules as they move to open up and modernize the country’s oil-dependent economy.

It also comes as the monarchy clamps down on perceived opposition: Saudi authorities have arrested dozens of people this month, from clerics to academics, in what the authorities described as a nascent antigovernment plot ahead of the king’s widely expected abdication in his son’s favor, the timing of which remains unclear.

“We refer to the negative consequences of not allowing women to drive, and the positive aspects of allowing them to do so, taking into consideration the necessary Shari’ah regulations and compliance with them,” King Salman said in the decree, referring to Islamic law.

The announcement caps a decadeslong campaign led by Saudi women to abolish a rule that drew widespread condemnation from both friends and foes of the kingdom, tarnishing its reputation internationally.

“We are very excited. We are over the moon,” said Hatoon al Fassi, a Saudi historian and one of the leaders of the campaign to let women drive. “Our struggle, the years of work have at last yielded a result, our right has been realized. It’s a historical moment. King Salman made a historical decision.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Stronger – A Review By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on September 27th, 2017

Talk about synchronicity – there are two pivotal scenes in Stronger in which the national anthem and the flag are integral to the importance of patriotism and heroism in the healing of wounded bodies and souls. One takes place at the baseball game at Fenway Park and I wondered what effect this movie would have on the healthy athletes of the NFL who have treated both these symbols of our nation’s freedom as convenient photo-ops for publicizing their own cause. Seeing this movie about Jeff Bauman who lost both legs in the terrorist bombing of the Boston Marathon, highlights the world of difference between our country after 9/11 and after Boston and our country since the surprise upset of our last election. We have lost the sincere appreciation for the bravery of men in uniform and have exaggerated the numbers of miscreants who pop up in police forces in our country. We have just learned that current homicide rates have gone up significantly, possibly due to police hesitancy to take forceful action now that they have been singled out as marks by disgruntled loners and activist groups.

Stronger is a searing and heartbreaking look at the random nature of terrorist acts and the long, painful process of recovery. It deals with one victim and his family but the implications for all other victims are obvious. It’s a movie that doesn’t shy away from the complications of damaged personalities who drink till they are blotto, manipulate each other in direct and subtle ways and yet, try falteringly to help and relate to each other. It’s a movie that shows you the stumps resulting from amputation as well as the blind self-indulgence of caregivers and the paralyzing self-pity and aftershock of PTSD The characters are believable because of these honest imperfections and their courage to persevere is more uplifting precisely because it comes after repeated failures. Jake Gyllenhaal and Miranda Richardson are exceptional as the double amputee and his mother and so is Tatiana Maslany who gives a quiet and intuitive performance as his ex and current girlfriend. The director, David Gordon Green juggles the various elements of plot and character in a straightforward manner, relying on the drama inherent to this story to do its job. It’s a movie that succeeds in keeping you in your seat for some time after it ends, waiting to recover from a powerful and emotional experience.

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Exposing Differences on the “Deep State” by: Diana West

Posted By on September 27th, 2017

On September 15, I participated in a panel on “Exposing the Deep State,” hosted by Judicial Watch. Former Trump White House official Sebastian Gorka, the Washington Examiner’s Todd Shepherd, JW’s James Peterson, and I all delivered approximately 7-minute statements after which JW’s lead investigator, Chris Farrell, moderated a discussion. My written statement is here.

Not sure how much “Deep State” we were able to expose in one hour, although one thing that opened up was a bright shaft of daylight between my own and Sebastian Gorka’s approaches to the whole concept. To wit, Sebastian began his discussion seemingly negating the effort, “Exposing the Deep State,” by warning against “belief” in “conspiracy theories,” which “undermines clear-sighted analysis” — something he might like to pass along, for example, to those who prosecute organized crime on RICO conspiracy charges.

Here’s how he began:

Let me start with a caveat, if I may.

I love conspiracy theories, but I love them as entertainment.

I have a bookshelf of conspiracy theories at home. But there’s a very important part to that phrase, and it’s the second word, which is “theories.” They’re not facts. So, conspiracy theories and the belief in them, undermines clear-sighted analysis. So I’m not here to talk about the outre accusations that have been made against those who are not in favor of the cirrent administration. I want to talk about what actually happened so far … the first seven months of how the bureacracy responded to the administration of Donald J. Trump.

Let me start by saying I actually prefer the phrase “permanent state” to “deep state.” Because it’s not necessarily a function of something that’s hidden or deep. It was in our faces. It was arrogant. It was right there in the suraface of out policy discussion at the highest level of the White House. So it’s not hidden, it can be. But in many cases it’s overt. And it’s been there for a long time … this has been brewing for decades, truly decades.

His markers of this “permanent state” included:

(1) national security leaks — by his count, 125 in the first 126 days

(2) bureaucratic infighting to a point of intransigence. He used the example of his own experience with “unnamed sister agency” of the White House (sic) that refused his request “as a Deputy Assistant to the President, that [three] people be detailed over to me at the White House to work on key projects of import to Steve [Bannon] and the President … because the seventh floor of that agency, to quote a senior individual, looks at the White House as the enemy.”

Why would that be? Sebastian went on to talk about a lack of discipline when it comes to federal employees working for the new CEO/POTUS in town. He talked about NSA officials and others who ignore the president’s agenda and speeches, again identifying the main problems as something akin to insubordination, as well as the safety net of federal job security. His concluding words: “Today, we have a very large number of people in the US Government, not just SES but GS individuals, who think, `I’ve been here for 15 years, I’ll be here when the president leaves, I know better.’ That’s not democracy, and that’s not the American Way.”

My talk, linked here, proceeded quite differently, and not only because Chris Farrell cued it up by invoking my lengthy explication of mid-century Communist-“occupied” Washington in American Betrayal.

Nevertheless, I, too, wrestle with the term, “Deep State.” Having described what I think of when I hear it as “unconstitutional powers exercised by strange illegitimate branchlets of the government that are in no way restrained by the `balance of powers,’ ” I went on to note ideological links between the “Deep State” (also American culture more generally), and communist/Marxist objectives for America laid out over 80 years ago in Toward Soviet America, a 1932 tract by Communist Party USA Chairman William Z. Foster.

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THE LABOUR PARTY – A SAFE SPACE FOR HATE: MELANIE PHILLIPS

Posted By on September 27th, 2017

What has been revealed about the Labour party at its annual conference in Brighton should make all decent people shudder.

A fringe meeting hosted a call for Labour to debate whether the Holocaust actually happened, the libelling of Israel as a racist, Nazi, apartheid and colonialist state and a demand that Jews who supported Israel should be kicked out of the Labour party.

What was so chilling was not just that the meeting, called Free Speech on Israel (aka Safe Space for Hate) provided bigots with the opportunity to spew their bile. It cheered and applauded them.

Israeli-American author Miko Peled told it Labour members should support the freedom to “discuss every issue, whether it’s the Holocaust, yes or no, whether it’s Palestine liberation – the entire spectrum. There should be no limits on the discussion.”

Michael Kalmanovitz, a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, called for two pro-Israeli groups to be expelled from the party. He said: “The thing is, if you support Israel, you support apartheid. So what is the JLM (Jewish Labour Movement) and Labour Friends of Israel doing in our party? Kick them out.” The Mirror reported: “Loud cheers, applause and calls of ‘throw them out’ erupted in the room of around a hundred activists in response.”

Fringe meetings are not run by the party and Labour says it isn’t responsible for their content. Nevertheless, the event was advertised in official conference literature. It was chaired by an individual called Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi. Watch this clip of her addressing the conference plenary session to see just what a piece of work she is.

She was opposing the proposed rule change to make it easier to expel antisemites. In addition to ranting and raving about Israel with a breathtaking stream of defamatory falsehoods, distortions and smears – including a swipe at the Balfour Declaration – she was actually booed by journalists when she claimed that Jewish groups behind the rule change had been briefing certain newspapers. She then received a ecstatic standing ovation when she stated: “I am not an antisemite. This party does not have a problem with Jews”.

Ah, how the conference loved that. Look at their faces on the clip. They are beside themselves with joy that they are being given permission by a Jew to hate the collective Jew in the State of Israel.

The situation could not have been clearer or more disquieting. It is Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi who is the problem with the Labour party – the problem she denies exists. And in not only giving her a platform but ecstatically applauding her bigotry, the Labour party was showing that Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is not in fact the issue. The real problem is the Labour party itself.

Like the venomously anti-Israel Israeli professor Avi Shlaim, who was speaking at the launch of yet another groupuscule Jewish Voices for Labour, Kalmanovitz said the claims of antisemitism in the party were part of a right-wing effort to undermine Jeremy Corbyn and the left. But people like him ensured we could all see for ourselves this could not be the case. For antisemitism was on rank display at those Corbynista meetings.

Those behind “Free Speech on Israel” showed their true colours on free speech by reportedly ordering those attending not to tweet or take photographs for fear of “hostile coverage”. Meanwhile leaflets were passed around claiming that concerns about rising antisemitism were a “manufactured moral panic”.

Yet elsewhere, one Jewish Labour activist reported that leaflets were being passed around the conference floor demanding the expulsion of the Jewish Labour Movement from the Party; and Izzy Lenga, the Vice-President of the National Union of Students tweeted: “I didn’t think it was possible, but I feel a whole lot more unsafe, uncomfortable and upset as a Jew on [the Labour Party Conference] floor right now than I do at NUS”.

Today, the party passed the rule change making antisemitic abuse and harassment by Labour members a punishable offence. The Guardian reported:

“The rule change proposed by the Jewish Labour Movement, which has been backed by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn and the party’s national executive committee, will tighten explicitly the party’s stance towards members who are antisemitic or use other forms of hate speech, including racism, Islamophobia, sexism and homophobia.”

Yet this change is worse than meaningless. Yes, it enables the party to expel antisemites. But crucially, it leaves unresolved the definition of what antisemitism actually is. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Labour will never, ever accept that demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel is the contemporary form of the oldest hatred.

How could it accept that? Its members overwhelmingly subscribe to it – even though many of them haven’t the faintest clue that what they believe to be the truth about the Arab-Israel conflict is in fact a pack of lies from start to finish.

In maintaining this fictitious distinction, Labour wields what it believes to be the ultimate weapon: the anti-Zionist Jews who offer themselves as human shields to protect those who they hope will destroy the State of Israel through demonisation and delegitimisation.

The assumption is that no Jew can be an antisemite; so if Jews say Israel is a Nazi apartheid racist murderous colonialist state committing unspeakabke atrocities, that cannot be antisemitism.

But that’s rubbish. Antisemitism has unique characteristics, including double standards applied to no-one else but the Jews, systemic lies and falsehoods, imputation of a global conspiracy to harm the world in their own interests, blame for crimes of which they are not only innocent but are the victims, and so on. All these characteristics that make antisemitism a unique collective derangement apply to the demonisation of Israel.