Double Standards in Middle East

I came across the video "Hamas in their own voices", via a link to another blog on the Burnt Toast website .... This American voiced video on You Tube shows various HAMAS supporters and MP's on their local or Arabic TV.

All the broadcasts were from before the current Gaza crisis, and its a real pity that our politicians and liberal broadcasters aren't forced to watch this, then ask the Muslims marching down our Streets, why they march to support this regime, and why they don't march to protest Hamas rockets?

As I have remarked before, the double standards of the Arab world and their Western apologists are breathtaking.

They feel that they can

• Launch missiles at civilian targets from their 'sovereign territories' (No UN comment or anything less than full support from the Muslim world, even though its a 'war crime'), and then expect no one to fight back.
• Use human shields while attacking Israel, then complain about civilian casualties when fire is returned.
• Preach for the 'death of all *Jews', but complain about a cartoon "offending" Islam.
• Call for the Conquest of Rome (like Constantinople) whilst banning non Muslims from Mecca or Medina.
• Call for the the conquest and forced conversion of Western Europe, but complain about any restriction in Muslim emigration to these same "crusader" lands.
• Threaten both Americas and Eastern Europe, with the same fate that they plan for Western Europe, but complain about "Crusaders" being in Muslim lands.
• Request the right to use a Spanish Cathedral to pray whilst refusing Catholics use of a church in "European" Turkey - Similarly Turkey denies the Sophia Hague to the Greeks.
• Demand respect for their cult, but refuse to give the same to anyone else.
• And kill more fellow Muslims each day than any 'crusaders' would ever dare (or want), but cry crocodile tears if a non Muslim even looks harshly at them.

Ironically if they followed the tenets of the 'peaceful and tolerant religion' they claim to be, they would have their own state, would not have barriers raised against them around the world, and not be feared or despised.

The fact that they deliberately use schools such as the UN school hit by Israel last week to launch rockets and store weapons, is graphically shown on this Israeli Defence Force video, again from You Tube.

Its hard to see how this video, recorded from outside the very UN school that made the news, can be denied, so no doubt it will just be ignored by the UK and EU governments calling for an end to "Israeli aggression".

*"Israel should be wiped from the face of the Earth. It is an animal state that recognises no human worth. It is a cancer that should be eradicated," said Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas-led government. This was in 2006, following another Israeli retaliation to a Hamas rocket attack which resulted in a large number of civilian casualties.

And What Rough Beast?

With Gaza still afire and dominating another weeks news, one can't help having a poem by W.B Yeats "THE SECOND COMING" cross ones mind.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Its amazing how much mythology and symbology centres on "The Holy Land" as being where the final days will start.

The last two lines of the poem "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" seems particularly pertinent at the moment.

To Have And To Hold On To

"To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part" etc etc Amen .... these are the hopeful vows that many couples make at weddings.

A Bad Divorce Can Be Ruinous

Sadly we are all too aware that this state of bliss often lasts only a small period of time .........

Something Righteous And Hopeful For A Change?

In keeping with my righteous and hopeful New Year blogging stories, this story made me smile.

Two (very) young German children plus their 'mature witness' attempted to elope to South Africa "where it is warm" to get married because they were "very much in love".

Anna-Lena aged 5, and Mika aged 6 packed bathing costumes, sunglasses and a lilo, and with Anna-Lena's older sister Anna-Bell aged 7 in tow as the 'official witness', headed for Hamburg airport.

The tiny trio walked 1km (approx half a mile) to the local tram station at Langenhagen, where they hopped on a tram for Hanover central station, but alas the path of true love never runs smoothly, and as they waited for a train to the airport, the police were called in by an alert railway guard (who should be commended).

Police Officers persuaded the children that they would need some tickets and money to get any further, but offered them the alternative of a free tour of the police station instead, until they were later picked up by their parents.

Although their immediate marriage plans have been put on ice for now (well at least until they have saved up their euros for the tickets), the police did not altogether rule out the possibility of an African wedding. "They can still put their plan into action at a much later date," AFP quoted the spokesman as saying.

A Surprising Landmark

The news so far this year is sadly dominated by the war in Gaza, and in fact killings around the world. Well like my favourite character from "Kelly's Heroes", Oddball says, "Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?"

So I will. Mars exploration has been profoundly boosted by the surprise survival of NASA's very own little WAL-E's, Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Rovers. They were predicted to last about three months in the extreme conditions on Mars, when they landed in January 2004.