Tag Archives: BDS

Sep 1 2015

Why to say Israel is an apartheid state is completely and utterly false, here’s a different method to prove it

Ok, photos can easily be manipulated, so for Muslims, liberals, lefties and political hipsters who seem attracted to the Pro-Palestine movement, instead of showing you photos and links why this is not at all true, let me try a different approach;

I like Google street map view.   In fact I’m a huge fan of most of Google’s services.   Using Street map view is a great way to look at where you went on holiday or where you are planning to go.   You can see such things as what is next to a hotel, a building site or a nice view of a beach.  There all kinds of uses for this fantastic web based app.   It great for bloggers as it a doddle to put a window into the world in an average typical WordPress blog like mine.

So I also think its a good weapon against political propaganda.

Please click and wiggle your mouse on any of these links

So Israel an apartheid state?

Well, would a country hateful against Arab people bother putting all the street signs in English, Hebrew and Arabic?

Is this sign discriminatory?  actually it is!!   An unusual idea in Israel’s highways, is they have a special fast lane.   Pay more money and dodge the traffic by travelling in a special premium lane.   This is ‘unfair’ to normal tax paying motorists but useful if you want to pay to get somewhere quicker.   The Sherut vans tend to use those.   Oh, Sheruts are yellow minibuses which are cheap and go to your door.   They have drivers who are Arabs or Jews and have passengers who are Jews or Arabs or foreigners.

Ok, recognise this place?  its a religious monument to the Bahai faith.   I don’t agree with the Bahais as they are sort of Universalists.  They believe in a little bit of everything, I don’t know much about this faith, apart from their pretty garden which stands out in Haifa.   But this group is allow to have their own freedom of religion here.  Can you image this happening in any other middle east nation?

What about other ethnic groups in Israel?

The Armenian Christians live in own community in Jerusalem

When a Turkish Pro-Palestinian ship went to dock with Gaza, on a ‘peace’ mission.   The Armenian Christian community put up a lot of posters reminding people of the 1 million or so Armenian Christians murdered by the Turkish in 1915.   An event largely forgotten and not willing to be reconcilled or any forgiveness by Turkey since then till now.  😦

Jews and Arabs work in the Shuk, the open air market for fruit and vegetables, and Jews and Arabs shop together. Jews and Arabs also go to modern supermarkets and malls too.

I like the fact that actually Jewish and Arab people tend to eat a lot of the same food too.

Aug 14 2013

Support Jews and Arabs in Israel, buy Coca cola!!

One of the common announcements by the BDS Crowd (thats Boycott, Divestment and Sanction)   is to rally around to get people to cease doing business with Israel to ‘stop the occupation’

Its funny that the word ‘occupation’ seeing as Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria for thousands of years, places like Bethlehem, Jericho, Hebron, Shiloh, etc have Hebrew names and and well known in the bible and real history books.

One of the favourite targets for the BDS movement is Coca Cola being ‘Zionist company’  Some more interesting hoaxes against the Coca Cola company http://www.coca-colacompany.com/contact-us/coca-cola-rumors-facts

This is an interesting idea, and actually not buying Coca Cola actually hurts Arab people and Palestinian people, here’s why:

P1060640I went to the Arab convenience store near my house here in the southern most tip of Jerusalem.   Here is what I bought:-

This Can of Coke is in Hebrew, and its made in Benei Barak, a Jewish city outside of Tel Aviv that has a mostly Ultra Orthodox community.  Its certified Kosher too.  Coca Cola also make soda in the Palestinian city of Ramallah.   However I couldn’t buy this from this shop, but there are other Arabic labeled products from other Palestinian cities.    A company called United Beverage company in Ramallah are licenced to make Coke for Arabic speaking people in this region.

Here’s their official web site of the National Beverage Company who are licenced to sell Coca Cola for Arabic speaking customers:- http://www.nbc-pal.com/

Here below is the Hebrew canning operation of the Coca Cola factory which is on the side of a big motorway, rather use my own photos, I nicked this off of google.

P1060642-001

This can of Pepsi is in Arabic and marked as for sale to the West Bank and Gaza market, – but – its made in Greece!!

Coke and Pepsi seem to often alternate between using 330ml cans in the tall skinny type or fatter traditional ones.  I’m not quite sure why.

These boycott lists of so called ways to help Palestinian people are always unfair and inaccurate, and often use any kind layoff from the financial changes in the last year as a so call ‘win’ for the BDS movement.   The BDS movement’s goals are based on malice towards Israel and not towards positive ways to help Arab people anywhere.  A better way to help Palestinian people would be to maybe manufacture and market the popular Arabic drink Sahalab to UK and western nations, particularly maybe sell it in Arab and Asian restaurants in Europe.

 

Apr 7 2011

Seperation barrier and threats to peace

One thing the critics of Israel like to point out is the concrete separation barrier in between the main part of Israel and the West Bank.

A tour leader I spoke to told us that the concrete wall only accounts for less than 5% of the fence in between.

Not so easy to see in this picture perhaps but there is just a chain link fence in between the Jewish orchards and Palestinian towns in the background, the silver things is some rows of fruit trees with plastic sheeting over them.

Here we are passing in a quite narrow strip of land in Israel parallel with Tel Aviv.

I have done some more experimenting with Google Maps.

Note – please press the [ – ] button to zoom out on each of these maps to get a better understanding of where you are looking at.

This line drawn across is only 8.8 miles this show how narrow this section of Israel would be in parallel to a possible Palestinian state, further down a bit is Tel Aviv Ben Gurion airport, this especially needs to be carefully guarded with the flights arriving and departing each day.

This map here shows the Israeli cities of Ashdod and Beer Sheva, both of these cities have been hit in recent months by GRAD missiles, these have a radius of 25 miles /40 kilometres. The diagrams show these cities are just in proximity of attacks from Gaza, now I don’t know where these are launched from in the Gaza strip exactly, so this is approximate but you should be able to get the idea, these cities are just about reachable by GRADs, and there is fear that other weapons could reach further in.

For those of you who think the middle east crisis can be fixed with a two state solution, I would advise you to check out this site, it shows how Israel’s borders are defended, and how a new Palestinian state is impractical as well as wrong I believe from a Christian biblical point of view.

http://shomroncentral.blogspot.com/

I personally want to see safety and security of all people here, but I think its important know exactly the threats and practicalities involved here.

Mar 26 2011

Jerusalem marathon and dealing with security threats

Whats the best way of getting over a terrorist attack?   Wearing cute rubber wrist bands, twee looking ribbons to put on your jacket, being a Twitter drama queen?   No, none of this nonsense!

As friday was Jerusalem Marathon day, it is a case of just get on with life, no need to cancel anything needlessly.   This meant it was a bit difficult to get to work as the bus services were going to be hugely different with roads blocked off.The day before I saw barriers being put up and large palette loads of bottles of water.

I went to my church for a worship event, the main hall is in the basement of Clal centre in between Agrippas Street and Jaffa Street, but the meeting is on the 14th floor right at the very top, known as the prayer tower, I could open this huge sliding window and get some air and see an amazing view that you can see a large portion of the city, including the new King David harp bridge.   Here I can see right over Jaffa Street in the distance where the bombing was.

Bad luck to anti-Zionist losers 🙂 the event was sponsored by Adidas and the boycotters of Israel who complained the sporting  brand didn’t succeed in ruining the event for anyone! 🙂

As per every event like this, there are police and security to keep the event safe, although it did rain a little (which is a good thing, its is still really needed!)  this was a nice day.   I was at work as normal but I got some things done in our food bank again.   Actually I thank the Lord I was in this place that day due a power cut due to a fault in our building, which I meant I had to manually shut some servers down, there was some equiment damaged by this but is all under control.

This race shows the determination and character of the Jewish people well I think.

Nov 24 2010

Portsmouth and Jerusalem

The antisemitism watching blog ‘Seismic Shock’ (front page here) has come up with good stuff again.  http://seismicshock.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/the-small-print/
I was particularly interested about the boycott Israel meeting that happened in my home city of Portsmouth.
I was hugely relieved that there are no names of churches from my city involved, but usual attacks from various characters mentioned by Seismic and general political blogs like Harry’s place (not specifically pro-Israel, but have very good expose of unpleasant extremism stuff regularly)
The focus on the blog talked about the get together from various Methodist churches, it is sad when antisemitism comes from not just from stereotypical skin heads but from within churches, and this creates division and gives a poor impression to non Christians in my community.
For me this is not a representation of Jesus, but slander aimed at a nation that is not perfect but we are biblically obliged to pray for.  Its important we reject the common error of replacement theology (that is that Israel of the bible was permanently rejected by the new covenant of the church which Paul says is false in Romans)

In addition to this, modern day BNP-style political thugs the EDL, were on the news for protesting and intimidating Muslims also in Portsmouth outside the Jami Mosque.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-11752757

Some people maybe scared to visit Israel because of fears of terrorism, but in reality, I feel safer on the streets at night in Jerusalem than Portsmouth.  As the recent above story and immense dislike of the neighbouring city of Southampton, there is a fair amount of political craziness from Pompey.

Someone else I know did this kind of comparison of two cities they have lived in and showing the nicest parts of each.

There is some similarities here, both cities once had the same football club owner at the same time.   Both have a lot of history, although Portsmouth is 800+ years old, Jerusalem is about 4 times older and has about 700,000 people compared to Portsmouth’s 200,000 odd.

Both places you walk somewhere and bump into someone you know in the street.

Some of these comparisons are often more to do with the relative (Israel = 7 million, UK = 65 million) size of the country, thus the logistics of supplying things into this place as opposed to any political reasons.  Some things come out in the shops much later here in Israel (like the iPhone that wasn’t officially on sale until Autumn 2009)  also because of reasons like the unique nature of the Hebrew language which I guess was only probably implemented recently.

I have not mentioned things like terrorism threats as actual attacks are these days a rarity and certainly less deaths than an average robbery or domestic murder in a western city.

There is a wide range of different ethnic groups here, people are free to practice their own religion without much interference.

Of course both places share some bad things like lack of parking too.

Better things in Jerusalem

Excellent family life, most children have two parents, divorce/separation rate seems low

Not much crime or drugs

Not much issue with drunks/alcoholism

Vast range of places to eat out

Vast range of coffee shops and easy to get wireless internet

Fruit and vegetables are plentiful locally and cheap

Old city markets are great to get beautiful carpets, ornaments, spices, ceramics

People like to socialise a lot, but not always around alcohol, so going out is safe and fun for everyone in almost all cases.

Warm Mediterranean climate, its been often over 30 degrees in November.

Attractive design of buildings with consistent white stone facade on the outside gives this city a unique character

Most houses have their hot water heated using solar panels on the roof

Police and soldiers in the street all around give a sense of security and safety

Mobile phone usage seems quite cheap and there’s no problem with signal (despite this city is on several mountains)  120% (ie: lots of people have two) of Israelis have mobile phones.

Bus service is cheap and quite easy to get anywhere – just remember to hold on tight once you get on as they don’t wait for you sit down…

Immigration unlike many other countries is actively encouraged (if you are Jewish) A blessing to Jews who have previously lived in nations that were hostile or dangerous to them.

Better things in Portsmouth

Food (tinned/packaged) is much cheaper

You are never more than 1/2 a mile from a curry restaurant

You are never more than 100 yards from a pub

Road safety is above average, and most people’s cars have to be in safe and good order

Electrical fittings, switches, etc in shops and houses are not often wobbly or fall off in your hand

Health & Safety is strict, so you won’t walk past building sites where workman work around the public without fencing etc.

Bus drivers are mostly polite and don’t drive off until you have sat down

Relatively good amount of political stability

Going to bordering countries (France, Spain, Channel Islands) requires simple security clearance without being asked lots of questions

Its easy to buy spare parts for your car, IT hardware, other specialised things without having to have them imported from somewhere else

Very little risk of drought, and water infrastructure works well

Note: I don’t really like political debates and so I am quite fussy about whats allowed in comments below.  Sensitive subjects are welcome in a private message.