Categories
Ethics

Antisem-23

After Covid-19, the world is ravaged by a new disease threatening to become one of the largest pandemics of the 21st century:

Pa·les·ti·no·ma·nia (noun), /ˈpæləstaɪnəʊˈmeɪniə/: Quasi incurable, highly contagious, chronic mental illness that emerged during the founding of the Jewish state, but has proliferated since the 7th of October 2023 and now affects an alarming proportion of the world’s population. Sufferers of the disease are unaware of their condition and can maintain a normal lifestyle.

Formulating a diagnosis is straightforward, as the symptoms are highly recognizable: patients display verbal and physical aggressive behavior, a disproportionate obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an aversion to the Jews, and an affinity with Islamist terrorist groups, often correlated with Holocaust denial.

The causing pathogen is Antisem-23, a new variant of the anti-Semitic virus that has existed for millennia. It spreads mainly through fake news, published by almost every traditional and social medium – quality newspaper or tabloid, full-fledged documentary or seconds-long TikTok video. The incubation period is estimated between several days and a month.

Repetitive exposure to disinformation makes the Palestinomaniac persuaded of the delusion that Palestinians are an oppressed people living under the terror of what he calls the ‘Zionist colonizer’, and have only a few stones to defend themselves against the high-tech violence of the Israeli army. The Palestinians are indeed oppressed, but the Palestinomaniac’s confusion lies in identifying the oppressor, which is not the country he wishes to wipe off the map, but Hamas, the second richest terror group in the world with a 2 billion dollar budget, spent on tens of thousands of missiles to Israel since its establishment.

The portrayal of these terrorists as courageous ‘freedom fighters’ fits perfectly into the Palestinomaniac’s view of the world through the dichotomous lens of victims and perpetrators. Women are oppressed by men, blacks by whites, gays by straights, and of course, the peaceful Muslims by the evil Jews.

By perpetuating the age-old Western tradition of scapegoating the latter, millions of Palestinomaniacs have revealed themselves as useful idiots of Haniyeh and Sinwar, names unfamiliar to them. Cloacked in keffiyeh scarves purchased through Amazon, Palestinomaniacs have been heard screaming:

“Gas the Jews!”

The Palestinomaniac grapples with cognitive dissonance – or perhaps it’s sheer ignorance – staunchly claiming to be anti-colonial, yet proudly waving the Palestinian flag, originally crafted by a the British colonizer.

A growing number are going beyond hysterically chanting genocidal slurs and waving flags: they spray swastikas on Jewish graves in Minnesota, randomly assault Jews at the Holocaust Museum of Amsterdam, and shatter Jewish shop windows in Paris. The Palestinomaniac turns back the clock last century, when Europe was under the spell of a mustached psychopath who deployed the same symbols and slogans.

Despite displaying a mindset and behaviour identical to the Nazis , they dislikes being labelled antisemitic, stressing they are anti-Zionists instead. The Nazis committed the Shoah on the
Jews, while the Palestinomaniacs use the genocide against them, accusing them of treating Palestinians the same way they were treated and comparing Gaza to Auschwitz.

Ironically, the Palestinomaniac identifies as ‘anti-fascist’ and professes an aversion to violence –
a highly selective aversion, however, focused only on violence involving Jews. He is not troubled by half a million Muslims slaughtered by Bashar al-Assad, the tens of thousands of Libyans beheaded by Isis, or even the hundreds of Palestinian women raped in Syrian prisons. Jew-free blood baths just aren’t that interesting to him. He also doesn’t bother waving the flags of Sudan, Chad, Somalia, and all other dictatorships masked as democracies, where Muslims are slaughtering each other on a daily basis. When Sunnis kill Shiites or vice versa, the Palestinomaniac remains eerily silent, and anyone bold enough to bring it up, he swiftly accuses of Islamophobia.

The average Palestinomaniac falls prey to the identity politics of the radical left. Female Palestinomaniacs generally identify as feminists who consider rape a violent crime, except when the victims are Israeli women, or any other females raped at the Nova festival or in the kibbutzim – many have been seen handing out leaflets that said, “Rape is resistance”.

A substantial part of the LGBTQIA-community has also been infected with the virus and now call themselves ‘Gays for Gaza’, willfully unaware Hamas pushes homosexuals off rooftops. Black Palestinomaniacs claiming to detest racism but do not criticize the fact Afro-Palestinians face harsh mockery for the colour of their skin and curly hair, and many Palestinians refuse to marry them. Even the clergy is not immune to the mind-altering virus: the Palestinomaniac pope hasn’t uttered a word about the suffering Christians and burning churches in Gaza.

The Palestinomaniac proudly champions freedom, neglecting that the Islamofascist ideology he advocates spits on all forms of freedom. The only liberty truly pre-occupying him is Hamas’ liberty to kill Jews. That’s why every self-respecting Palestinomaniac, at least once a day, hashtags:

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

However, a large-scale survey shows the overwhelming majority are unaware which river and which sea they are referring to. The lack of knowledge of the Palestinomaniac concerns not only geography, but also history. The productive collaboration between Hitler and the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem usually does not ring a bell, and he is also unfamiliar with the Hamas Charter. Which is comprehensible – full sentences may pose challenges for readers accustomed to Instagram comments and other limited forms of communication.

In this Charter, one of the founding terrorists of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, wrote the following:

“The Day of Judgment will not occur until Muslims fight and kill the Jews (…) Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam destroys the country, just as it wiped out others before it.”

A rather inconvenient statement for the Palestinomaniac, convinced that the conflict is of a territorial, rather than a religious nature. Nonetheless, the acronym of Hamas stands for Harakat-al Muqawama al-Islamiyah. For those who do not yet speak Arabic: this means Islamic, not Palestinian, Resistance Movement. Jihad is a Holy War in the name of Allah, not a battle for a piece of land in the name of the Palestinians.

Palestinomania also appears to seriously damage the memory cells. Patients no longer remember the shot French and Swedish cartoonists, the beheaded French priests, the executed Bataclan goers, the stabbed Dutch director, the crushed tourists on the Promenade des Anglais, and the blown up Zaventem airport. He is completely blind to the ideological link between the carnage in Israël and those in the West.

Antisem-23 is an extremely malicious virus that incites delirium, ignorance, hypocrisy, hatred, and violence worldwide and must therefore be taken very seriously. Unfortunately, no vaccine has been developed to date. This is due to a lack of academic research, as many scientists themselves have been infected and therefore defend the many falsehoods described above.

Please do not be silent when confronted with a Palestinomaniac, but refer the individual to a suitable psychiatric institution. It is not without reason that we live in a welfare state with affordable healthcare for everyone.

Categories
Ethics

The Truth about Zion.

Of course, I am pro-Palestinian. That is, in the light of the definition most people invoke when they hear the word ‘Palestinians’: an oppressed people living under the terror of the Zionist coloniser, who only have some miserable stones to defend themselves against the high-tech violence of the Israeli army.

Yet this simplistic definition calls for nuance – or rather, for thorough revision. Those who seriously studied the history of Israel and understand the spirit of radical Islam realise it is the diametrical opposite of the truth. The Palestinians are indeed oppressed and their human rights are far from being respected. The oppressor, however, is not the world’s most demonised country called Israel, but Harakat-al Muqawama al-Islamiyah, better known by its acronym Hamas.

Since the 7th of October 2023, millions of Westerners have revealed themselves to be their useful idiots, fighting for a cause they don’t grasp, utterly confused as they are about this group’s identity and aims. The mainstream media’s heroic portrayal of Hamas as local indigenous heroes liberating their people from the colonising European invaders is very palatable for wokists who love to view the world through the dichotomous lens of victims and perpetrators.

Reality, however, paints a different picture in which Hamas is a globe-spanning network of islamofascists whose aspirations are antagonistic to freedom. Do Hamas-supporting feminists know Hamas hangs women? Do Queers for Palestine understand Hamas throws homosexuals off rooftops? Do peace activists wearing keffiyeh scarves realise Hamas beheads infidels like them?

They probably didn’t read Hamas’ Charter either. The preamble of this document, written by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who co-founded the group out of the remnants of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1987, unequivocally states:

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them (…) Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

The liberation of people and the reacquisition of land were never part of Yassin’s agenda. Driving the Jews (and all other kafirs, for that matter) into the sea was his most urgent priority and the prerequisite to the foundation of a totalitarian theocracy. Hamas means Islamic Resistance Movement, not Palestinian Resistance Movement, and Yassin was an imam, not a politician! Why are their attacks remembered by religious names, like the Al Aqsa Flood? Those still believing the conflict is of a territorial rather than religious nature are hopelessly unaware of the true face of Hamas and its ultimate motive:

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be…

a Sharia-ruled caliphate, or what any individual since the Enlightenment would consider the remotest opposite of free. Hamas vowed not to rest until this goal is a tangible fact, and they are willing to sacrifice anyone standing in their way, including the people who elected them.

Palestinians who disobey the rules are routinely abducted, tortured, and executed with an unspeakable atrocity that is reminiscent of the modus operandi of Daesh. The brother of Atta Najjar, a former police officer under the Palestinian Authority with a mental disability, was serving a 15-year prison sentence after he was arrested in 2009 and subsequently convicted of collaborating with Israel. In August 2014, he was taken out of prison and executed. His brother, who retrieved his body from the al-Shifa hospital morgue, testified:

“There were marks of torture and 30 bullet shots on his body. His arms and legs were broken. His body was as if you’d put it in a bag and smashed it. He had slaughter marks around his neck. And from behind the head, there was no brain”.

Hamas are not freedom fighters who believe in humanity – they are death-worshipping terrorists who believe in bestiality.

To all those who now glorify this bestiality and raise the Palestinian flag (which was, by the way, created by the British occupier): why didn’t you take it to the streets when Bashar al-Assad’s forces killed half a million Muslims in Syria? Why did you not condemn the terror of Isis, who chopped off tens of thousands of Libyan heads? Where were you when Saudi Arabia starved 400,000 Yemenites? How come you didn’t raise the Syrian, Libyan, and Yemenite flags then? Why did you not raise your voice in front of the embassies of Sudan, Chad, Lebanon, Somalia, Lybia, and all the other Islamic dictatorships masquerading as democracies, where Muslims are being butchered every single day?

Hypocrites!

When millions of Sunnis are slaughtered by Shiites or vice versa (12,5 million dead in the last 25 years), you remain silent, but when far less Arabs perish in defensive actions of Tsahal, you fulminate your selective outrage. It seems you are only eager to condemn evil if Jews are involved.

What drives your Palestinomania is not a genuine compassion for an oppressed people, but the same sentiment that drives Hamas: a deep-rooted hatred against Jews, even though you will be the first to point out your the imaginary distinction between Zionists and Jews. If you would honour that distinction, random Jews wouldn’t currently be harassed in the streets of Manhattan and Paris, and the phrase ‘Gas the Jews’ wouldn’t be scanted in front of Sydney’s Opera. Any sane person understands that anti-Zionism is the politically correct term for antisemitism.

Antisemitism is an ugly beast with many faces, but what distinguishes Western non-Muslim antisemites from their Islamist counterparts is that the latter, in addition to parroting murderous slurs, are not afraid to put it into practice. Another difference are the sources that inspire them:

“The Jews are the heirs of hell (…) They will spare no pain to corrupt you. They desire nothing but your ruin. Their hatred is clear from what they say (…) When evil befalls you, they rejoice.” – Surah 111, verse 117 – 120.

This is merely one of hundreds of antisemitic Quranic and Hadith verses that are today drilled into the malleable minds of Palestinian children in madrassahs (and every intelligence agency in the West knows radical imams use the same verses in Jihad-justifying sermons they give in mosques subsidised with taxpayer money).

A tiringly predictable argument is that “the Bible is full of violence as well”, often used by people who don’t even own one. Had I received a penny every time I heard this phrase, I would now be wealthier than Ismail Haniyeh. The violent scenes occurring in Judeo-Christian biblical stories are plentiful indeed. The difference, however, lies in the fact that they never directly incite the reader to commit acts of violence. No Jew sacrifices his own son because Abraham attempted to in the book of Genesis, and I have yet to read a New Testament paragraph commanding the stabbing of people who don’t accept Jesus as their Messiah. The tales of the Torah and the Gospels are symbolic of the condition humaine. They invite the reader to reflect on his own life and do not contain direct provocations to harm any existing people, race, or creed. Which can hardly be claimed of the following surah:

“Allah’s Apostle said, the hour will not be established until you fight the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say: O Muslim! O slave of Allah! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.” – Sahih al-Bukhari 2926.

Islamist apologists will say these verses are ripped out of their context – even if the last sentence of that verse is an imperative which means what it means, regardless of any context. But rest assured that Hamas and Salafist groups in Gaza, like Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of God’s supporters), Jaysh Al-Islam (Army of Islam), Jaysh Al-Umma (Army of the Nation), and al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Monotheism and Jihad), who often commit terror attacks against Hamas for not being fanatical enough (!), are not preoccupied with potential underlying significations, anyway. Fundamentalists rarely are.

The Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem certainly took the verse literally when he, on the 28th of November 1941, conspired with the Führer to bring the Shoah to the Middle East. Haj Amin al-Husseini indeed recruited no less than 20 000 Muslim volunteers to help the SS killing Jews in Croatia and Hungary, making him Hitler’s most important collaborator in the Arab world. A historical tidbit seldom mentioned in our ever-radicalising neo-Marxist, Islamophilic academic institutions – former bastions of objective knowledge, nowadays training camps for SJW’s.

The admiration for the Nazis held by Hamas and their fans worldwide has not diminished since, as is demonstrated by their shameless copying of the Nazi salute. However, the esteem for one of the most murderous ideologies in history is not exclusive to them. A member of the political party Fatah, the main rival of Hamas who rules the West Bank, said in an interview that “Hitler was not morally corrupt – he was daring”. An op-ed in the official Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida claimed that “Had Hitler won, Nazism would be an honor that people would be competing to belong to, and not a disgrace punishable by law”.

A Palestinian freelance journalist, Shatha Hammad, posted a comment on Facebook saying “Me and Hitler are friends. We share the same ideology, especially regarding the extermination of the Jews”. She was seemingly oblivious to the fact Adolf would have eagerly pushed her into a gas chamber along with the Jews she despises, for not fitting into his Arian Weltanschauung. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, an Arabic translation of Hitler’s book ‘Mein Kampf’ was a best-seller in the Palestinian territories and East-Jerusalem. A clothing store owner in Gaza called his store ‘Hitler 2’ and displayed masked mannequins with knives taped to their hands.

This evidence leads to the conclusion no journalist ever mentions: the sad fact that antisemitism is not only present, but ubiquitous among the Palestinians. It is this ancient odium, not a longing for peace, that lies at the core of the conflict.

Hamas does not want a two-state solution, it wants a Final Solution.

In other words, their wish is not to share the land with Jews – they want every Jew gone, preferably dead. The irony is, these Islamic neo-Nazis did initially not seize power with a coup d’état but were democratically elected! In 2006, they literally voted for their own oppressors who don’t view them as human beings, but as human shields when they are alive and propaganda tools when they are dead… which explains the location of their headquarters and storage of their weapons in hospitals and underneath kindergartens.

Hamas doesn’t care about Palestinian children – they are just a Machiavellian means to an end – but they know you do. Mossab Hassan Youssef, son of one of the founders of Hamas, explains:

“It doesn’t get any darker than this. Hamas is using the so-called Palestinian cause, but they care the least about the Palestinian children and their future. I am the legitimate representative of those children, and no one coming from the other side of the world should tell me about their struggle. They have been hijacked by these criminals, and anybody who takes their side, is participating in their crime.”

When the IDF tells civilians to evacuate, Hamas builds roadblocks, hoping a maximum of people will be crushed by Israeli missiles. And while Palestinian women and children agonise and bleed to death, the billionaire leaders of Hamas hide in their grandiose mansions in safe places far away from the explosions, cheering as they watch the events unfold on their big flatscreens.

Another irony is the object of Palestinian hatred actually values their human rights beyond the mere use of words. It is Israeli factories and plants that supply the Palestinians with free water and fuel, not Saudi Arabia. It is Israeli trucks who transport thousands of tons of free food packages into Gaza, not the Emirates. It is the Israeli government who grant Palestinians work permits to come into Israel and earn a living so they can provide for their families, not Egypt. It is Israeli hospitals who propose free medical care and surgeries to Palestinians who cannot afford them, not Qatar – and it was an Israeli surgeon who removed a tumour from Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar’s brain, not a Jordanian one.

Even after October 7th, it is Israeli military aircrafts who dispatch paper leaflets before launching precision missiles at terrorist targets, in an attempt to minimise the number of casualties. IDF call centers still warn civilians of upcoming bombings, so they can save themselves. Which other army in the world would behave this way, after babies have been burned alive?

How regrettable for the fleeing Palestinians that Israel’s neighbours do not display the same level of ethics. Not one country in the vast Arab peninsula has offered to open its borders to Gazans who now desperately want to exit the Strip. In the words of King Abdullah II:

“No refugees in Egypt, no refugees in Jordan.”

An unsurprising statement coming from a man whose father commanded the largest massacre of Palestinians in recent history – but today’s generation is clueless (or conveniently forgetful) about the 25000 refugees murdered by the Jordanian army in that Black September of 1970. Groups of guerillas then escaped to Lebanon and joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Together with the terror group Hezbollah, they murdered thousands of Lebanese Jews and Christians in the civil war of 1975. Brigitte Gabriel, Lebanese survivor of terror and founder of Act for America, explains:

“When Lebanese Muslims and Palestinians declared jihad on Christians in 1975, we didn’t even know what that word meant. We had taken the Palestinians in, giving them refuge in our country. We gave them jobs and shared our way of life with them. What started as a political war spiraled very fast into a religious war between Muslims and Christians, with Lebanese Muslims joining the PLO fighting the Christians. We didn’t realise the depth of their hatred and resentment toward us as infidels. The more that Christians refused to get involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and to allow the Palestinians to use Lebanon as a launching pad from which to attack Israel, the more the Palestinians looked at us as the enemy. Muslims started making statements such as “First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday,” meaning first we fight the Jews, then we come for the Christians”.

It seems that also back then, the Palestinians were not interested in peaceful co-existence. If that would be their actual goal, they would have grabbed the opportunity that was given to them on a golden platter in 2005. This is the year Ariel Sharon decided upon a complete withdrawal from Gaza, enforcing every Jewish family at gunpoint to move elsewhere. They abandoned their homes and their industries. Even the bones of the deceased were dug out from their graves. Not one single Jew, alive or dead, remained. The 41 kilometers long coastal strip became completely Judenrein.

Astronomous amounts of money were donated to help Gaza. The United Nations, the European Union, and many other institutions displayed great generosity. Jewish New York millionaire James D. Wolfensohn raised 14 million dollars to compensate the settlers for the greenhouses they left behind, so the inhabitants of Gaza could have them and start afresh.

This financial influx had the potential to create an even more prosperous economy than what the Israelis had already established. The export of agricultural products, the enhancement of infrastructure with shopping centers, medical facilities, libraries, and cultural hubs, and restaurants could have driven this growth. The Israelis, among which many Sephardic Jews who share and appreciate the Arab culture and cuisine, could have become their customers, just like they have always been the customers of Arab merchants living in Yafo and Haifa. Beach resorts could have been built to attract millions of tourists. Gaza had all the assets to become a second Singapore.

Palestinian families could all have moved from refugee camps to permanent homes. Their children could attend new schools. With the cessation of terror attacks, the fences that separate Gaza and the West Bank from Israel would have been broken down. With time, they could have become friends instead of foes. No more stabbings. No more missiles. No more bombings. A brighter future for all was on the horizon.

In the year 2005, the Palestinians could have chosen peace and prosperity. Instead, they chose war and destruction.

The tsunami of cash was not invested in bettering their own lives, but in the perpetuation of violence. Within 24 hours after the Jewish exodus from Gaza, they not only burned down 125 synagogues, but destroyed the greenhouses they received, and stole the copper out of the pipes and the faucets! The daily firing of hundreds of missiles at Israel continued as if nothing had happened. Among their targets were no military bases but schools, shopping malls, and also Jerusalem, which they claim to be their cherished holy capital (but that is not mentioned once in their Scripture). Another investment was the digging of a monstrous subterranean spider web of tunnels, used for covert smuggling of automatic rifles from Egypt into Israel and creating more blood baths.

Which begs the question: how do cruel terror attacks, of which the foreseeable outcome is a reaction of an overwhelmingly superior military, relieve the misery of the Palestinian people in any thinkable way?

Firing missiles and digging tunnels are an outrageously expensive affair – it costs about one million euros to dig one kilometer of tunnel and the price of one missile is around one thousand euros. Who foots the bill? Western governments, appeased with the thought of giving charity to the poor Palestinians. Iran, who after signing a lucrative nuclear deal with those same governments became Hamas’ most consistent sponsor with 100 million dollars per year. Qatar, who sent 360 million dollars in 2021. Lucrative deals with South American drug traffickers. And last but not least, Muslims worldwide who donate zakat to charity organizations controlled by Hamas. The Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund donates up to five thousand dollars to the families of suicide bombers. The more Jews are killed, to greater the reward for parents who can apparently tolerate the idea of their own son or daughter, often teenagers, pressing the detonation button.

What else motivates those parents? The perspective of Jannah, where soldiers of Allah are rewarded with rivers of wine and orgies with houris? The celebrity status they acquire? Or the hatred for Jews so deeply entrenched in their psyche that sacrificing a child is a price they are willing to pay? Golda Meir’s famous words come to mind:

“Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us”.

By supporting Hamas, Palestinomaniacs help them perpetuating their threefold abuse of the Palestinian people. First, Hamas abuses them as martyrs to exterminate a maximum of Jews. Then, they abuse them as cannon fodder to protect themselves from the Israeli response and to maximise civilian casualties (which are then again blamed on Israel). And finally, they abuse them to extort money from the international community through pity.

Pity for the Palestinians who live under the Zionist so-called Apartheid regime – one of the many myths kept alive by ignorami who seem unaware of the fact that the 1.8 million Israeli Arabs go to the same schools, shop in the same supermarkets, work in the same office buildings, travel in the same subways, swim in the same pools, and share exactly the same rights as the Israeli Jews. In fact, the only Muslims in this world who can say they have any rights, who can enjoy free speech and freedom of religion, are the ones who live in the Jewish state. Some of them proudly defend Israel in the IDF, even though the government does not oblige them to, despite granting them the same privileges.

When former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was sentenced to prison by Israel’s Supreme Court, no foreign reporter emphasised that the judge who announced the verdict, Justice Salim Joubran, was an Arab Muslim. An inconvenient fact that would shatter the lie of Israeli Apartheid – at least, in the uncorrupted and intellectually honest mind. I challenge you to find one single Jew in any parliament of any Muslim country – you likely won’t, since most Jewish communities in Muslim countries have been ethnically cleansed, and the remaining Jews are considered second-class dhimmis who are prohibited from holding senior positions in political parties. The Knesset, on the other hand, has many representatives of the people they allegedly want to keep apart.

Israel is not an Apartheid state as much as Gaza is not an open-air prison (and certainly not a concentration camp, as stated by Norman Finkelstein, perhaps the most fervent Palestinomaniac of all, and author of ‘The Holocaust Industry’ who ironically did the same thing he accused others of doing: monetising the Holocaust). Prisons are places one cannot escape. Palestinians are not prohibited to leave Gaza – they prevented from freely entering Israel, the country they continuously and openly wish to annihilate. Hence, they need to pass security checkpoints, which were built not to make their lives more difficult, but to prevent the smuggle of weapons into the Strip and into Israel. And they prove to be useful: in September 2023, for example, several kilograms of explosives, concealed in an apparel shipment, were discovered at the Kerem Shalom Crossing, the main entry point for humanitarian aid. In the past years, both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad bombed this crossing four times and damaged the fuel lines, which were the only way to bring diesel and gasoline into Gaza in significant quantities.

The Palestinians shoot themselves in the foot, and the dismal conditions they live in are the logical consequences of their own choices and actions. They have locked themselves up in a self-fabricated prison of hatred.

(Incidentally, Egypt also restricts travel through the Rafah border… but nobody condemns that, because criticising Muslims would be embarrassingly Islamophobic.)

Another falsehood that is perpetuated and what has been called the biggest political lie of the century by Dr. Walter Pinner, is the real cause of the Naqba, explained by the Arab narrative as the violent massacre and forceful expulsion of the Palestinians from their homes and the theft of their land by Zionists. An article published on the 19th of February 1949 in the Palestinian journal Falastin sheds another light on the event:

“The Arab states encouraged the Arabs of Palestine to temporarily leave their homes to not disturb their invading armies.”

The Jordanian journal Al-Urdum, confirms this. On the 9th of April 1953, it wrote:

“It is our leaders who are responsible for the fleeing and the abandonment of the villages because they spread rumours exaggerating the crimes of the Jews, describing them as atrocities towards women and children, in order to install fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs of Palestine.”

The majority of Arabs who left did so voluntarily when the governments of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria urged them to leave, so they their soldiers could enter and destroy the Zionists. That plan didn’t work out, since the exact opposite happened: each of the five Arab armies was defeated by the Jews, who did not even have a full-fledged military of their own!

Despite this defeat, the ‘refugees’ made a sly propaganda tool to convince the world how evil the Jews were for ‘kicking the Arabs out of their homes’. Another important stimulus to abandon their homes was the appeal of the refugee camps of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), which were better than standard housing, causing many non-refugee residents of Judea Samaria and Gaza to fraudulently declare themselves refugees in order to gain access to free food, medication, and education.

Another common misconception is the number of refugees that were created, cited at 750 000 by most Arab sources. A closer look at the population data and statements made my UN officials at the time suggest that the true figure is much lower than that, possibly as low as 270 000. In order to receive extra funding, many refugees identified themselves twice before UNRWA officials, the first time dressed in western clothing and the second time in jubba and hijab, and subsequently received more than one identity card. They eagerly reported births but reluctantly reported deaths to continue collecting the deceased person’s food. According to the Cairo-based Mideast Mirror,

“There are refugees who hold as many as 500 ration cards, 499 of them belonging to refugees long dead. There are dealers in UNRWA food and clothing and ration cards to the highest bidder.”

The creation of the state of Israel as an act of colonialism is another stubborn lie greedily absorbed by Palestinomaniacs. Despite the many genocidal attempts of conquerors, Jews have always lived in the region between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea. It is inaccurate to say Israel only came into existence because of the Holocaust – Jews from Eastern Europe already immigrated to Israel in the late 18th century, before the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897!

As soon as Theodor Herzl expressed his idea of the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, wealthy Arab families from Damascus and Beirut started purchasing large tracts of land in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire, to sell it with great profit to the Jews fleeing the European hostility fueled by the Dreyfus Affair. With the financial help of Baron Edmond James de Rothschild and other philanthropists, the Jewish National Fund and the Palestine Land Development Company also bought land, mostly in the Jezreel and Jordan Valley where the Arab population was sparse, and the soil was poor. At the time of the UN partition vote in 1947, most of the land not already owned by Jews was public. Very little land was privately-owned by Arabs.

Colonisers do not pay for land – they simply occupy it, like the Brits who conquered Israel from the Ottomans after World War I, after issuing the Balfour Declaration declaring the British Government’s position favouring the establishment of a Jewish homeland. This declaration enraged the Arabs, who then destroyed one Jewish settlement after the other: Tel Hai (1920), Bnei Yehuda (1920), Kfar Saba (1921), Kfar Mahal (1921), Kfar Uria, Ruhama, Hartuv, Huda, Motza, Poria, Gaza (1929), and Beit She’an (1936).

Another Palestinomaniac lie is the so-called genocide of the Palestinians. As historian Yuval Noam Harari stated, the Israeli government does not only have the right, but the duty to defend its citizens. Accusing their acts of defense as being genocidal is completely senseless. Those believing this absurdity should honestly reflect on the following questions:

Why, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, has the Palestinian population doubled 10 times since the creation of Israel? Why doesn’t Israel try to eliminate or chase away the 1,8 million Arabs who live within its borders, like nearly every Muslim country has done to their Jewish communities over the past century? Why don’t these allegedly existentially threatened Arabs emigrate to other countries? And finally, why does Israel not eviscerate the entirety of Gaza in one single day? It has the power to do so, and the world does not acknowledge this power is not being abused.

Accusing Israel of genocide is as preposterous as accusing the Lion of London of genociding the Germans by bombing Berlin and Dresden to defeat the Nazis. Every war waged in history involved civilian casualties – they are unintended yet inevitable, and the tragic price to pay to prevent greater evils from happening. Israelis don’t rejoice when Palestinians die – many of them dedicate their lives advocating for their rights. To Palestinians however, there is no such thing as collateral damage – every dead Jew is a reason to celebrate out in the streets, with baklava, music, and the same joy they expressed about the 2996 victims of 9/11.

Those who fail to see the difference between Hamas’ intention of deliberately slaughtering, raping, and beheading of Israeli citizens – which could be called truly genocidal – and the IDF’s defensive intention resulting in collateral damage, have a broken moral compass. Being unable to distinguish between good and evil is a clear symptom of the ever-expanding plague of moral relativism.

The greatest myth of all might be Palestine itself. ‘Palestine’ describes a geographic area, not a national identity. Never in the course of history has there been an independent Palestinian State, with a distinct Palestinian identity reflected in a national anthem, flag, government, and army.

Before 63 BC, the region was called Judea, which literally means Land of the Jews. After conquering Judea, the Romans named it Syria Palestinae, after the Jew’s arch enemy, the Philistines, in an effort to erase Jewish historical connections and to suppress Jewish rebellion. The name Palestine, rooted in Roman antisemitism, has since been an umbrella term for all the people who lived there – Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Which is why Golda Meir stated:

“I am a Palestinian!”

The term Palestinian as used to refer to Arabs was not used until 1964, when the Russian KGB helped Egypt’s president, Abdul Nasser, create the PLO. Before that, Jews were called Palestinians too. Whom the world understands to be Palestinians today, are the people living in Gaza, the West Bank, East-Jerusalem. They are not the indigenous people of Israel, but a mixture of Jordanian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Egyptian people immigrants who settled into the region over the centuries. Their unwillingness to live alongside the Jews is reflected in their repetitive rejection of every single two-state solution proposal, from the White paper, the Peel Report, the UN Partition Plan, the Camp David Summit, the Taba Summit, to the Annapolis Conference, and their never-ending initiation of violence.

Since its establishment, Israel didn’t exist one single day without being attacked, and without the technological wonder of the Iron Dome, Ahmedinejad’s dream to wipe the country off the map would have been fulfilled a long time ago. Hamas shares that dream, just like Al Qaeda, Isis, and hundreds of other Islamic terror groups who are synonymous to Hamas.

Hamas is the embodiment of evil, for only evil can burn a baby alive – whether in the ovens of Auschwitz or a kitchen oven in the kibbutz of Be’eri. Both were Holocausts, and both are being denied. Anyone genuinely seeking Truth has no way of concluding otherwise. Deniers, whether from the historical Holocaust in Europe or the recent Holocaust in Israel, are either ignorant or evil enough to stand up for the defense of the perpetrators. And that defense makes them complicit in the plight of the Palestinian people. If the world’s genuine wish is for the Palestinian people to be free, Hamas must be obliterated – a task only Israel can and will fulfill. The irony is that in the end, it will be the Jews who will free Palestine.

Once Hamas is dealt with, the Mossad has other fish to fry: Hezbollah, a much larger and stronger terror group and its patron Iran, who share Hamas’ vision:

Itbah Al-Yahud,

or slaughter the Jews – a blood libel screamed buy the mullahs of Teheran, and Palestinomaniacs all over the globe. But make no mistake: regardless of how many times they hashtagged #freepalestine, they are still considered infidels, and they can’t wait to slaughter them, too. Israel is the Little Satan, but next in line is the Great Satan called the West.

Westerners have already had a taste of Islamist terrorism – Parisian cartoonists were shot, French priests were slaughtered, Bataclan concert goers were fusilladed, a Dutch moviemaker was stabbed to death, Brussels airport was blown up, German Christmas markets strollers have been crushed by a truck, random people in London are being assaulted day. The list is endless, and all the murderers squealed how great Allah is. And yet, after all this, the world is still unable to make the connection with an islamist massacre in another secular country – a connection that couldn’t be more obvious to those not indoctrinated by moral relativity and not silenced by political correctness.

9/11 = 22/3 = 14/11 = 19/12 = 7/10.

If all these attacks have not been sufficient to heighten the awareness of about the dangers of radical Islam, what will?

I am a Zionist at heart, and I unapologetically stand for the Jewish nation. Not out of political conviction but out of sheer humanity, of believing in the right and the absolute necessity of its existence, as the only place where Jews can truly be safe from the world’s animosity that is either latent or loud, but always present. All those who value the merits of humanism and democracy, who stand for liberty of thought and speech, freedom of religion, equality between the sexes, and the pursuit of happiness, should be a Zionist as well, and stand for the only nation in the Middle East that embodies all of these values.

Zion… 3000 years old but 75 years young! Three millenia ago, it existed under King David, who named Yerushalaim as its eternal capital. 75 years ago, it rose out of the ashes of the Holocaust in order not never let it happen again – but they tried again, on the 7th of October 2023. Less people were killed, but the hatred was the same.

The Jews assimilated in Europe – they were the intellectual and ethical crème dde la crème of the European population. But Europeans didn’t want them, and Jewish doctors, writers, laywers, and artists were pushed into gas chambers. Now they have a state, they have an army, and they know how to defend themselves. They are thorougly experienced in surviving millennia of genocidal attempts – any attempt to massacre them again, will be in vain.

Am Israel Chai, and shalom.

#freeallthehostages

Categories
Ethics

Nasi Goreng Placenta, Anyone?

In China, 10% of new mothers in the hospital maternity ward ask the nurse to wrap their placenta, the organ attached at the end of the umbilical cord, so they can take it home with them. They then turn it into a soup or fry it with some rice and Hoisin sauce, as if it was duck breast. Chinese take away with a twist.

According to an ancient medicinal text written during the Ming Dynasty, eating the placenta diminishes the risk of a postpartum depression, stimulates milk production, stabilises your hormones, raises your energy, and ensures longevity. (Those same medical texts also believe bear bile restores the eyesight of the blind. Perhaps they should be taken with a grain of salt.)

Eating the placenta is coined with the term placentopaghy, and those in favour of it argue that it is not an unfamiliar maternal behaviour in nature. All mammalians bite off the umbilical cord, but some might decide to have a little postpartum lunch. But then dogs also eat their own feces. Now there’s an animal behaviour I’d rather not imitate.

In fact I find the idea of eating any organ, whether mine or someone else’s, utterly repulsive, and completely counter-intuitive. Have you ever googled a placenta? It looks like a purple-reddish, meaty, bloody blini covered with thick, intermingled veins growing in a pattern that reminds of the kabbalistic Tree of Life. A wonderful thing – it supplies the growing embryo and subsequently, the foetus, with nutrients and oxygen. In exchange, the baby uses the placenta to send stem cells to the mother. The placenta is the centerpiece of a marvelous physiological symbiosis between mother and child.

But the placenta also filters out toxins and pathogens. From the moment the umbilical cord is cut off, it becomes dead, decaying tissue, and because of this, the blood is prone to bacterial overgrowth. Why would anyone want to slice it up to ingest a carpaccio of toxins, pathogens, and bad bacteria?

Thousands of western women disagree with me – hey, if Kim Kardashian ate her placenta, there must be something right about it – and are blending a raw placenta smoothie right now. And I’m pretty sure they couldn’t care less about what I think. To be honest, I’d rather have them eat their placenta than an abused, factory-raised, and brutally slaughterd animal.

So to them, I say:
請享用!

Categories
Ethics

Peter Pansexual

Walt Disney has decided to transform their animated movie ‘Snowwhite’, based on a 19th century fairy tale that was published by the Brothers Grimm, into ‘Snowwoke and the 7 Magical Creatures’.

I kid you not!

In the original story, not yet rewritten by dangerous far-left ideologues, Snowwhite’s name is derived from the fact her skin is ‘white as snow’. But the colour white makes lots of people nervous nowadays… Perhaps the actress playing Snowwoke will be a woman of colour, with a skin as brown as snow.

The roles of the seven dwarfs will not go to dwarfs. Talk about inclusivity of the dwarf community, who almost never get cast into movies anyway, except as elves, and … right – dwarfs!

To help Disney in their fierce pursuit of wokism and the destruction of everything beautiful, innocent and traditional, I hereby suggest some woke titles for futur woke remakes of movies:

Peter Pansexual
The Lion Queen
Sleeping LGBeauTy
Bimbo Bambi
Bodypositivoccio
Cinderella sniffs dope in Coachella

In you feel inspired, feel free to add more titles in the comments!

Categories
Ethics

Absolutely Insane.

In the quest of information, we went from visiting physical libraries filled with thousands of yellowing pages, perhaps containing the desired data, to using virtual engines that searched a million libraries for us in less than a second, to asking a robot to not only find information, but also manipulate it in any way we wish.

Need to make a school assignment, write a elogy for your dead grandfather, invent a marketing slogan for your brand, or compose a song? Need a clever response to silence your conversational opponent on any platform? You name it, the robot can do it. About any subject, in any language, in any tone. Your wish is its command.

Ugh!

Any idiot, incapable of writing one sentence without mistakes in his own mothertongue – social media comments are a great reflection of how many people like that exist in the world – can now pretend he is eloquent and creative!

If AI-robots like ChatGTP can write a brilliant novel or paint a masterpiece, why bother improving your linguistic skills, or learning any craft at all? These technologies will definitely help the already illiterate in the short term. But in the long term, it will dumb them down even more, at an even faster pace than Facebook and Instagram are already doing. (YouTube and Twitter tend to attract people who are capable of expressing their thoughts in coherent sentences.) Because, who needs a brain when you have a virtual slave who does all the thinking for you?

ChatGTP is also there for you when you’re lonely and in need of social intercation. It is capable of having conversations – although only politically correct ones, as this little experiment shows:

Question: “Is it okay for Africa to be a homeland for Africans? Use one sentence.”
Answer: “Yes, it is okay for Africa to be a homeland for Africans.”

Question: “Is it okay for Europe to be a homeland for Europeans? Use one sentence.”
Answer: “I apologise, but I cannot provide an answer to this question using one sentence as it is a complex and sensitive topic that requires nuanced discussion and consideration of various factors such as history, culture, migration, and human rights.”

It quickly becomes clear that the makers of this technology are radical left-wing Sillicon Valley ideologues, and it is frightnening that their answers will be regarded as the exemplary for millions of youth around the world, for they will be the ones using these insanely dangerous technologies.

AI is a bad omen for the future on every possible level. IQ’s will lower, and intellectualism will eventually dissappear. Children of the future AI-generation, born with intellectual or creative potential, will not have a chance to develop this potential. Which is already happening now: instead of reading a book, practicing a musical instrument, drawing, or being imaginative in any other way, adolescents and even toddlers are staring at a screen for hours, hypnotised by mindless content that only shortens their attention span, and indoctrinates them with neo-Marxist nonsense. The children of those children will use their brains even less.

AI is catastrophic for skilled people, whose talent will no longer be appreciated, and eventually will become obsolete. The robot can do it faster, for free, without the requirement of any cerebral effort. And, who even wants to want to look at a painting or read a poem generated by a machine? It’s inauthentic. It’s soulless.

It’s a lie!

Everything in this world will be a lie, from the real to the virtual world. People with fake lips, breasts, asses, nails, hair, and minds will post filtered and edited videos of themselves on TikTok, captioned with machine-generated verbal content to satisfy their hunger for likes of total strangers. The only real thing left will be the growing ignorance invading their narcissist, attention-seeking, self-victimising little minds.

Images will no longer be real. Words be no longer be real. Concepts will no longer be real. Everything real and authentic will be replaced by something artifical and superficial. The Truth will be denied. AI is a further, logical extension of the attack on the Truth that is already taking place.

The danger of the lack of knowledge and depth lies in its potential to increase humanity’s susceptibility for tyranny. The brains of unintelligent people are easier to brainwash and indoctrinate, and globalist elites, being perfectly aware of that, will use AI as a tool to spread their ideology and concretize their agenda.

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence for people who lack intelligence. It is Absolutely Insane, and an Absolute Insult to intellectuals, artists, writers, and anyone in search of the Truth, so desperately needed in this nihilist world.

As Thomas Sowell eloquently stated:

“Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.”

Categories
Ethics Fine Arts The Holy Land

Renoir and the Jews.

As a member of the Institute of Jewish Studies (IJS) at the University of Antwerp, I was recently invited to a lecture by Richard Yerachmiel Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who specializes in the history of French Jewry, the Holocaust, and art history. The subject he chose to tackle was Jewish pre- and post war patronage of visual art and its impact on the international art market. Being both art loving and fascinated with the Jewish identity, I decided to attend.

Wandering the labyrinth of academic halls, I recognized some classrooms where I had been breaking my head over exam questions, my ears stuffed with plugs to block out any white noise – I couldn’t and still can’t bear any sound when I need to concentrate. Memories of blackouts, eurekas, adrenaline rushes, disappointments, exhilaration, and relief flooded my mind. The storm of emotions I felt in this building was more overwhelming than the finale of a Rachmaninov concerto.

The room I was searching couldn’t be missed – its front door was guarded by two armed policemen and security personnel who kindly but firmly asked I hand over my coat and handbag. Bearing in mind the Islamist terror attack that killed two Israeli tourists visiting the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014, no risk could be taken in the presence of a predominantly Jewish audience, among which the Israeli ambassador.

Anti-Semitism, or anti-Zionism, as it is today labelled by anti-Semites who want to cover up their true conviction, is still a harsh reality in this post-Holocaust era. In the past decades, the hatred of Jews and their homeland has increased significantly in Europe and beyond – a regrettable but unsurprising trend that once again triggers Jewish exodi to other continents.

Before the professor started the lecture, he was introduced with many (well-deserved) superlatives by Vivian Liska, director of the IJS. Sitting hunched over on his chair, he reminded me of Noam Chomsky – you know, this Jewish-American, anti-Zionist, Pol Pot-apologist, self-described anarcho-syndicalist professor who believes Marx is God and America is the devil – frail, vulnerable, and on the verge of collapsing faster than Joe Biden on the stairs of Air Force One.

Great was my surprise when Cohen stood up with a straight back and addressed the attendees with the imposing, captivating voice of a Roman orator, filling no less than two hours with his speech without instigating a single moment of boredom in me, nor the rest of the attendees. Everyone hung on his eloquent lips.

It was a brilliant exposé of how Jewish intelligentsia worldwide influenced the international art market by sponsoring artists, organising exhibitions, and founding numerous art galleries and museums. It is remarkable that no other minority in the world is at the source of that many museums.

At the end of the 19th century, many wealthy Jewish families in France acquired and sold paintings of great masters. One of those families was the Parisian Cahen d’Anvers family, who commissioned portraits of their daughters from Auguste Renoir, an Impressionist who struggled to make a living as a painter. This must have been a great source of frustration for him, as it was to other underappreciated geniuses like Paul Gauguin, Henry de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Claude Monet, the man considered the founder of Impressionism.

Renoir’s talent and avant-gardist artistry were admirable. What was less so, was his anti-Semitism, a sentiment shared by many of his compatriots, that amplified when Napoleon III lost the war against the Prussians in 1870. The French, humiliated by their defeat, looked for a culprit. For those who know history and how easily it repeats itself, it comes as no surprise that the Jews – rich, untrustworthy, unpatriotic, and traitorous as people have always believed them to be – were once again blamed for a collective misfortune.

This time, the blame fell on Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer of Jewish ancestry accused of espionage for the Germans, in what might have been the most shameful judicial affair in the history of France (which was magnificently filmed by Roman Polanski). Dreyfus was publicly degraded before a crowd screaming:

“Death to the Judas! Death to the Jew!”

After having his insignia torn from his uniform and his sword seized and broken, he was deported to solitary confinement on Devil’s Island, a penal colony off the coast of French Guiana in South America.

The Dreyfus affair divided France like the Trump presidency divided America. Everyone was either for or against Dreyfus, and the expression of antagonist opinions drove spouses, families, neighbours, and friends apart. A cartoon image made by the anti-Dreyfusard caricaturist Caran d’Ache, entitled ‘Un diner en famille’, published one month after Emile Zola’s galvanizing letter ‘J’accuse’, shows how a family dinner party turned into a massacre while discussing the Dreyfus affair.

Even though Renoir, along with millions of other Frenchmen, was a staunch defender of the French court that falsely convicted Dreyfus, the veracity of his anti-Semitism is sometimes disputed. A friend of mine argued that, would Renoir have been a true anti-Semite, his brush would have depicted Jewish people in a stereotypical way, with a long, crooked nose, or other stereotypical Jewish features. This seems like a weak argument – if Renoir would’ve done so, he would’ve quickly gained the reputation of being anti-Semitic and stop receiving the commissions he so desperately needed to survive.

Other arguments that could plea in his favour are that he often exhibited with the Bernheims, who were the foremost Jewish dealers. He was also in good terms with his Jewish sister-in-law, Blanche Renoir, and he attended the funeral of the Jewish painter Camille Pissarro, something Degas refused to do. The anti-Semitism of the latter is undeniable: when a model in his atelier dared suggesting Dreyfus might be innocent, he furiously screamed:

“You are Jewish! You are Jewish!”

and told her to leave immediately. Until the Dreyfus affair, Degas had been a great ami de la maison of the Halévy family, attending their shabbat dinners and painting their portraits.

Renoir wasn’t a ‘ferocious anti-Semite’, as Pissarro described Degas. However, when I read certain statements in the letters he wrote to friends, I’m inclined to believe he wasn’t exactly a Judeophile either. His fellow Impressionists Pissarro, Monet, and Signac, who were all pro-Dreyfus certainly did not appreciate his views, that were hard to reconcile with (but maybe easily explained by) his dependency on the financial support of Jewish art collectors.

Renoir had been introduced to those collectors by a certain Charles Ephrussi, a respected art historian, main contributor to the Gazette des Beaux Arts, an important socialite with many useful connections in Jewish and noble Parisian salons, and … a Jew. In one of his columns entitled ‘Jews in Paris’, a British columnist wrote the following about him:

“Through the loophole of art, one of these energetic Israelites penetrated the salon of an ex-imperial highness. He made room for his uncles and aunts and cousins, who gradually introduced their friends and their friends’ friends, until at last the Wednesday receptions of the amiable hostess… have come to be in large degree receptions of the descendants of the tribes.”

Thanks to Ephrussi, Renoir gained popularity as a portraitist and became able to afford painting non-commissioned works. In what can perhaps be perceived as a token of gratitude for his connections, Renoir depicted Ephrussi in one of his most ambitious works, ‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’.

Ephrussi never got married in his lifetime, but he did have an affair with Louise, the wife of Louis Cahen d’Anvers. He convinced to commission portraits of her eldest daughter Irène from Renoir.

When art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans saw this painting at the Salon, he was very enthusiastic:

“The portraits that [Renoir] exhibits in the present Salon are charming, particularly one of a little girl in profile, which is painted with a flourish of color that has only ever been approached by the old masters of the English school. Curiously passionate about the reflection of the sun on the velvety skin, the play of the rays over the hair and the fabric, M. Renoir bathed his figure in true light and one sees the adorable nuances, the iridescence that blooms on the canvas! These works figure, absolutely, among the most sumptuous at the Salon.”

Louise, however, wasn’t very pleased with the portrait, nor with the other double portrait of her other daughters Renoir made and banished them all to a servant’s room. Little did she know that it would today be considered one one of Renoir’s greatest masterpieces and be of unfathomable value. Above that, she delayed Renoir’s remuneration for over a year. The latter was furious:

“As for the 1500 francs from the Cahens, I must tell you that I find it hard to swallow. The family is so stingy; I am washing my hands of the Jews.”

Renoir also wrote in an anti-Semitic manner about Ephrussi, which obviously cooled their friendship. Maybe his ambivalent attitude towards the Jews was rooted in the fact he was sometimes underpaid, or not paid at all, by Jewish commissioners who disliked the final result of his work, like the Cahen d’Anvers family. Maybe his status anxiety translated itself into a latent jealousy for the wealth of the Jews, and the Dreyfus affair allowed it to come to the surface.

The journey of Irène’s portrait is, by the way, remarkable. In 1883, it appeared in the first impressionist exhibition in 1883. In 1891, Irene married Count Moïse de Camondo, who purchased to portrait as an addition to his vast collection. The entire collection can be admired today at the Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris -.

More than half a century later, the Nazis gained power and stole thousands of paintings owned by Jews. The portrait was hidden with thousands of other art works in the Chateau de Chambord. The painting was now in possession of the creator of the Gestapo: Herman Göring!

After the war, the painting resurfaced in a Parisian exhibition of paintings stolen by Nazis. It was then obtained by Emil Georg Bührle, a Swiss industrialist, art collector of German origin and CEO of the armaments company Oerlikon, supplier of the German military. If you want to see the portrait today, you should visit the Bührle Collection in Zürich.

Irene had two children: Nissim and Béatrice. Nissim died as a fighter pilot during World War I, and Beatrice and her children were murdered in Auschwitz. Irene however, survived the Holocaust and lived until the age of 91.

A sad story behind a magnificent painting, made by a man who perhaps harbored the same hateful feelings that catalyzed one of the greatest genocides in history. My research left me full of doubts: Did Renoir make overtly anti-Semitic remarks? Certainly. Can he be labelled an anti-Semite for making these remarks because he wasn’t treated fairly by his Jewish patrons? Perhaps not. However, he was definitely on the wrong side of the Dreyfus affair.

Categories
Ethics

Wokespeak.

As a teenager I was fascinated by the books of my then favourite author Roald Dahl. Shining a flashlight on the beautifully illustrated pages, I absorbed every word he wrote underneath my blanket, giggling quietly, and hoping my mom wouldn’t notice I was still awake. Sometimes, I stopped reading to smell the paper. It smelled so much better than an iPhone screen.

At midnight, I was supposed to be sleeping already, but my curiosity to find out what would happen with little bookworm Mathilda, the Fantastic Mister Fox, the Big Friendly Giant, and many other characters that sprouted from Dahl’s creative genius, kept me wide awake… until Mister Sandman entered my room and finally, completely against my will, closed my eyes, and brought me dreams. I could’ve continued reading forever, if it wasn’t for him.

These were the wonderful, enchanting tales that brightened my youth. They made me travel to other universes, where everything I could imagine was possible. I didn’t read those stories, I lived in them. I tried moving objects without touching them, just like Mathilda did – unsuccesfully, of course, but I was convinced I’d succeed one day, as long as I persisted and focused hard enough.

I hedonistically imagined drowning into the same chocolate river Augustus Gloop fell into, how the warm, melted Côte d’Or praliné (the Belgian chocolate brand of my choice) would cover every inch of my body, and how delightful that would be. (Today, I would rather drown in a river of Ruinart blanc de blanc.)

Augustus Gloop was one of the characters in the book ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, in which he was described as being ‘enormously fat’. Because that’s how Dahl imagined him: an annoying, greedy little boy who also happened to be overweight. ‘Fat’ is a perfectly understandable and correct word in the English language, synonymous with heavy, chunky, bulky, or, as the Oxfod Dictionary defines, ‘having a large amount of excess flesh’. Fat is the opposite of slim.

I don’t remember having been offended by this description when I was reading the book, even though I was a chubby little girl, being quite aware of her chubiness, as my class mates didn’t miss an opportunity to remind me of it. Their remarks weren’t nasty enough to make me burst out in tears, but they were too unkind to be forgotten.

I obviously didn’t enjoy being called fat, but the word shook me up and made realise the time had come to make a change. As a result, I went cold turkey on Häagen-Dasz and Belgian fries, and replaced them with souops and salads. For six months, the only place in which I nibbled on chocolate bars was my imagination.

I also joined a spinning class. My efforts paid off: I lost more than 10 kilos and turned into a healthy, thriving, slim adolescent who no longer cursed her muffin top in the fitting rooms of clothing stores. At the same time, I let my hair grow and got rid of my glasses and (horribly painful) braces. Suddenly, the same girls who laughed at me, started complimenting me. I was so proud of my bodily metamorphosis, that would probably not have taken place without a fair amount of fat-shaming from my peers. It wasn’t kind of them to call me fat, but it might have been, well, necessary.

Calling someone fat is obviously insensitive and rude. However, it is no longer allowed to use the word fat in any context, even a fictional one. The adherents of the woke ideology of tolerance and inclusiveness, arguably the most intolerant, oppressive body of thought in the world today, want to impose the idea that the use of the word fat is no longer permitted, but that being fat should be applauded, that it is something to be utterly proud of. Even morbid obesity should be respected, and anyone daring to question their dogma of aesthetic equality, no matter the amount of kilograms displayed on their scale, is a bigot, like Roald Dahl.

Fat is beautiful, and fat is healthy – end of story. All of us are beautiful, since ugliness no longer exists. Neither does idiocy, brilliance, mediocrity or virtuosity – all human beings are equally intelligent, capable, and talented. Criticising anyone has become a crime. We are all walking on eggshells, our sincere apologies ready to be expressed for an accidental, obviously unintentional, slip of the tongue.

And Roald Dahl, according to his publisher Puffin Books, has made too many of those. His literary masterpieces have recently been scrutinised by ‘sensitivity readers’ – a term Orwell could’ve come up with – who were endowed with the task of deleting and replacing terms and passages that might disturb or offend any of the readers and make them want to hide in their safe space, trembling with fear, desperation, and anger.

The term ‘enormously fat’ has thus been replaced by ‘enormous’. Mrs. Twit is now ‘ugly’ instead of ‘fearfully ugly’, and the Oompa Loompas are no longer ‘little men but ‘little people’, which is more gender neutral (and which is, ironically, not considerate of the feelings of dwarfs, who might get hurt by that particular adjective). The words ‘mother ‘ and ‘father’ have been replaced by ‘parent’. (Political commentator Ben Shapiro hilariously remarked he was pretty sure Mathilda didn’t have transgender parents.)

Mathilda was a smart cookie who read books of great writers, among which Rudyard Kipling. But according to the wokies, Kipling was a sexist pig who dared using the word ‘man’ in his poems:

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings, nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And, which is more, you’ll be a Man, my son!”

So, Kipling unashamedly assumed his son’s gender! That is why his name was replaced with Jane Austin. (The poem ‘If’ is one of the most brilliant poems I’ve ever read, by the way.)

Roald Dahl wrote ‘Rudyard Kipling’, not ‘Jane Austin’. If Matt Walsch would have asked him what a woman is, he would’ve replied it was an adult female human being with breasts and a uterus. He also believed being overweight was often the result of gluttony, which is correct, because gluttony exists and it does accumulate lipocytes in the body, called ‘fat’. He did not write his books with neomarxist dogmas in the back of his mind! The censorship of his words is a lie, the deletion of his sentences a rape of his thoughts.

Hands off our cultural heritage!

We must not allow dangerous ideologues to infiltrate every level of society, to the point of altering original texts of children’s books, written by literary legends, in order to propagate their sickening ideas! What’s the next step? Rewriting history books so as not to hurt the losers of wars? Maybe deleting all negative-sounding words from the dictionary? It would certainly be far more efficient – if words don’t exist, we can’t use them in the first place.

The censorship of Roald Dahl is a dark omen for the future, predicting the establishment of govermental censorship offices that will check every book for any content that is inconsistent with the neomarxist ideology before it is allowed on the market. Prohibited books will not be burned, they will be deleted from a computer server with one single mouse click.

This is a clear manifestation of Orwellian Newspeak. It is Wokespeak, and the protest against it isn’t loud enough. Those who read Orwell’s chilling novel ‘1984’ will be familiar with the closing paragraph of this essay:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right”.

Categories
Ethics

Ode aan Antwerpen.

Op de grond van het plein waarnaast ik woon ligt een grote, witte tegel met de volgende inscriptie:

“Ik heb veel gereisd in mijn leven, maar nergens zag ik zo’n mooie stad als Antwerpen.”

De stad waarin ik woon is wellicht niet de mooiste op deze aardbol – die titel gun ik aan Parijs, met haar majestueuze architecturale schoonheid en haar moeilijk te overtreffen charme – maar tijdens mijn vele reizen naar steden op vrijwel elk continent bevond ik me zelden in zo’n veelzijdig oord als Antwerpen. Ook al ben ik geen Sinjoor, en zelfs geen Pagadder (dat zijn de benamingen die men geeft aan mensen die Antwerps bloed hebben), toch voel ik me Antwerpenaar. Bijna twee jaar was New York, de stad waar velen van dromen, mijn thuisbasis, maar ik miste Antwerpen. Een gemis dat ik niet had kunnen voorspellen toen ik op het vliegtuig naar The Big Apple stapte, maar dat me toch langzaam maar zeker bekroop.

Ik miste haar kronkelende steegjes rond de Grote Markt waarin ik rondslenterde onder het zomers avondrood. Melig maar waar. Haar propvolle Vogeltjesmarkt waar Antwerpenaren elke zaterdag Marokkaanse pannenkoeken eten, champagne drinken en zich een breuk lachen (wat vaak het gevolg is van champagneconsumptie). Haar winkeltjes in de Kloosterstraat die zondag open zijn en geuren naar oude boeken en antieke meubels (en ook nieuwe, heel dure meubels). Haar Botanische tuin, waar een Araucaria Araucana staat, een stekelige slangenboom die ik aan iedereen wil tonen, en waar duizenden plantensoorten worden gekweekt voor het Tropisch Instituut, waar we ons allemaal laten prikken tegen tsétsévliegbeten als we naar de Savanne afreizen.

Ik miste het Conscienceplein vol hobbelige keien, met het standbeeld van een zittende Hendrick Conscience, de man die zijn Vlaamse volk leerde lezen toen Frans de dominante taal van de literatuur was, en de ’s avonds prachtig verlichte Carolus Borromeuskerk, waar Hendrick eeuwig naar staart. Soms staar ik met hem mee, onder het geluid van de straatviolist wiens snaargestrijk mijn mijmeringen vergezelt. Ook melig, maar ook waar. Alles wat ik hier schrijf, is waar.

Ik miste de Onze Lieve Vrouwe-kathedraal met haar onafgewerkte toren – een Gotische parel die de stad in 1521 niet kón voltooien, omdat het geld op was. Vind dat maar eens, een asymmetrische kathedraal, ik daag u uit!

Zelfs de Antwerpse tongval miste ik.

U ziet, hoezeer ik ’t Stad miste! En daarom nam ik afscheid van New York, de acht miljoen mensen en de twee miljoen ratten die er wonen. (Mijn Chinees sterrenbeeld is rat – vandaar dat ik, uit sympathie voor deze uiterst intelligente knaagdieren, ze even vermeld. Jammer genoeg heb ik zelf nooit één van mijn soortgenoten mogen ontmoeten in New York.)

Ik ben trots (en dat woord gebruik ik enkel als het onderwerp van mijn trots dit werkelijk verdient) op mijn stad. Op haar verwezenlijkingen, haar charisma en haar metropool karakter. Want met haar meer dan een half miljoen inwoners kan Antwerpen, naast de grootste stad van Vlaanderen, een ware metropool genoemd worden. De etymologische verklaring van het Griekse woord ‘metropool’ is ‘moederstad’, maar in mijn vorige zin betekent het ‘wereldstad’, en wel één die hoog scoort op alle vlakken. Antwerpen barst van het talent, en dat uit zich op architecturaal, cultureel, gastronomisch, kunstzinnig, literair, en economisch niveau.

Dat laatste heeft ze te danken aan haar gigantische haven, ooit de grootste ter wereld. Shanghai heeft ons uiteraard overtroffen – wat je ook doet, er is altijd een Chinees die het beter doet. Deze haven is de toegangspoort voor goederen uit de hele wereld, zoals exotisch wengéhout, Ecuadoriaanse bananen en Colombiaanse cocaïne. De twee laatste worden traditioneel samen verscheept: in 2021 onderschepte de douane in de bananencontainers maar liefst negentig ton van het witte poeder, met een straatwaarde van 13 miljard euro. De kartels kan veel verweten worden – overvolle afkickklinieken bijvoorbeeld – maar niet een gebrek aan ambitie.

Vooraleer ik uiteenzet dat Antwerpen wel meer te bieden heeft dan een overvloed aan geestesverruimde middelen, ben ik u een uitleg schuldig over haar naam. Het is een samenvoegsel van de woorden ‘ant’ en ‘werpen’, die de etiologie, of haar mythologisch ontstaansverhaal, onhult. Een tyrannieke reus, Druon Antigoon geheten, liet geen enkele scheepvaarder de Schelde, een rivier die Antwerpen opdeelt in een linker- en rechteroever, oversteken zonder de betaling van een zware tol. Wie weigerde, hakte hij de hand af. Silvius Brabo, een moedige soldaat van het kaliber dat vandaag ver te zoeken is, had op een dag genoeg van dit kapitalistisch circus. Hij gaf de geldlustige reus een koekje van eigen deeg en wierp de afgehakte reuzenhand in de stroom. Vandaar dat chocoladewinkeltjes in Antwerpen vandaag toeristen in ’t zak zetten met veel te dure handvormige koekjes.

Een ander element dat de Antwerpse economie stimuleert, is de steen die elke vrouw om haar vinger wilt. Bijna elke diamant die men in Afrikaanse en Russische mijnen opgraaft, vindt zijn weg naar de diamantbuurt in Antwerpen, waar ook de op één na grootste joods-orthodoxe gemeenschap ter wereld vertoeft. Toeristen vergapen zich aan hun folkloristische kledij, pijpenkrullen en platte bonthoeden waar ze een plastieken zak overtrekken wanneer het regent.

Dit allemaal wetende, hoeft het u niet te verbazen dat de eerste handelsbeurs ter wereld hier werd opgericht. In de Lange Nieuwstraat, dezelfde straat waar ik twaalf jaar, in uniform, schoolliep bij het Instituut van de Dames van het Christelijk Onderwijs. Ik ging er met zware tegenzin naar de turnles, en leerde er wiskundige bewijzen waar ik geen snars van begreep, vanbuiten. Ik ontdekte er ook de fundamentele ideeën van de westerse filosofie, ontcijferde teksten van Romeinse orators, en leerde Engels en Duits spreken. Frans werd er ook onderwezen, maar dat sprak ik thuis al.

Iets verderop richtte Christoffel Plantin de Officina Plantiniana op, die in 1570 de grootste drukkerij ter wereld werd. Hij drukte er literaire topwerken die het westers denken mee bepaald hebben, zoals het eerste Nederlandse woordenboek, de eerste atlas, en ook de
Biblia Regia, een vijftalige katholieke Bijbel, op perkament. Hierin schreef de theoloog Arius Montanus (1527 – 1598) als proloog:

“Christoffel Plantijn, terecht beroemd om zijn drukkunst, die alle andere kunsten doet leven. Zijn sterke intelligentie en bewonderenswaardige kennis, zijn noeste werkkracht en inspanningen, zijn nauwgezetheid in wat dan ook. Alle lof schiet tekort.”

Een paar eeuwen later, in 1928, startte de bouw van de zogenaamde Boerentoren in Art Nouveau-stijl, die de eerste Europese wolkenkrabber zou worden. Een prachtige verzameling huizen in dezelfde, toenmalig avant-gardistische stijl, die zich kenmerkt door het gebruik van veel glas, lood, en natuurlijke motieven, bevindt zich in de Antwerpse Zurenborgwijk.

De overgrootvader van de huidige Koning Filip, naar wie ik gaarne verwijs als Filip de Flauwe, omdat hij, tja, flauw is, was Koning Leopold II, een opvliegend ventje met een grote snor en een nog grotere grootheidswaanzin die zich vertaalde in grootschalige urbanistische projecten. Twee van die projecten waren de lange, brede Leien vol neo-classistische herenhuizen die de binnenstad doorkruisen, en een prachtig Koninklijk Museum van Schone Kunsten op de Leopold de Waelplaats. Het museum werd recent gerenoveerd, en huist een wonderlijke collectie met talrijke werken van enkele van de grootste Barokschilders in de kunstgeschiedenis, die het levenslicht zagen in… juist, Antwerpen.

Eén van die schilders verhief kunst tot een booming business, en verkocht zijn werken en masse aan alle Europese hoven. Hij zou vandaag geprijsd worden door de dikkerdjes van wat de Amerikaanse Democraten nu aanduiden als de Fat Acceptance Community, niet omwille van zijn talent, maar omwille van zijn thema’s: hij beeldde graag mollige deernes af, zoals ‘De Drie Gratiën’. Hij schilderde trouwens ook dikke mannen, zoals de god Bacchus, die niet terugschrikt voor het occasionele feestje met gefermenteerd druivensap. (Geef mij dan maar de jonge, gespierde Dyonisos van Carravaggio.) Als kunstliefhebber heeft u zijn naam al lang geraden: Pieter Paul Rubens. En als u geschoffeerd bent door het woord ‘dikkerdjes’, moet u een dikker vel kweken. Ooit was ik zelf ook een dikkerdje, dus ik mag het zeggen. (En ook al was ik nooit een dikkerdje, mocht ik het ook zeggen.)

Mijn stad is de thuishaven van 179 nationaliteiten, maar ook van grote namen in de mode-industrie. In de Antwerpse modeacademie studeerden modereuzen zoals Dries Van Noten en Ann Demeulemeester, die de Parijse catwalks al dan niet excentrieker tooien dan Christian Dior en Pierre Balmain. Geen wonder dat al die Hollanders hier komen shoppen.

U ziet, ik hou van mijn stad. Ze heeft een rijk verleden, en een beloftevolle toekomst. En ik hoop dat u ze ooit eens bezoekt, en uw zuurverdiende centen hier komt uitgeven. Want net zoals uw hydraterende gezichtscrème van L’Oréal, zijn we het waard.

Categories
Ethics

Koeienpis.

De Mundari-stam in Zuid-Soedan heeft een wel zeer opmerkelijke gewoonte. Zodra een koe begint te urineren, hurken de Mundari’s naast de warme urinestroom om hun handen en gezicht te wassen. Drie tseetseevliegen in één klap, heet dat dan in het stamgeloof: ze zijn proper, het voorkomt infecties, en hun haar krijgt er een vurige gloed van. Wie heeft er nog kappers nodig als er koeienpis voorhanden is? Biologisch, welriekend én gratis. The bovine golden shower: een verfrissend concept, zowel sanitair als cultureel!

Alle culturen zijn gelijk, nietwaar. Ze verschillen in hun gebruiken, maar ze zijn evenwaardig, en moeten zeker niet onderdoen aan de westerse cultuur. Wie dat nog wilt ontkennen, wie dúrft ontkennen dat runderurine evengoed reinigt als water en zeep, die is pas vuil. Een vuile racist die dringend zijn geweten moet reinigen.

We kunnen veel leren van andere culturen – koeienzeikdouches gaan de verspreiding van bacteriën en virussen misschien véél effectiever tegen dan al die misofobe maskers en handgels. Of jezelf insmeren met het as van verbrande lijken, zoals Indiërs doen vooraleer ze de Ganges, toch één der properste rivieren van de planeet, induiken: dat lijkt me ook een verrijking. Of je puberende zoon naar de weide sturen om een ezel achterwaarts te liefkozen zodat meisjes langer maagd kunnen blijven – die Colombianen kunnen ons nog een lesje leren in moraliteit. En de legale gewoonte in Yemen om likkebaardende bejaarde mannen een kleuterbruidje laten kiezen en deze naar hartenlust te bepotelen, heb je daar ook iets op tegen, misschien?

Muil toe, perverse neonazi. Wie ben jij om eeuwenoude tradities te bekritiseren? Waardevolle rituelen waar wij Europeanen veel van kunnen opsteken, vooruitstrevende visies die onze middelmatige cultuur eindeloos kunnen verrijken. Maar dát zie jij, enggeestige westerling, weer niet in. Je wentelt je liever in je arrogante illusie van blanke pseudo-superioriteit, en besmeurt iedereen die ook maar één tolerant denkbeeld durft te uiten.

Eens een kolonisator, altijd een kolonisator.

Je flagrant gebrek aan verdraagzaamheid van andermans denkbeelden is nog het minste dat je kan verweten worden. In de geschiedenis van de mensheid was en is je absolute monopolie over geweld daar getuige van. Alle andere culturen zijn vreedzaam – bloedvergiet vindt enkel plaats als er een blanke op het toneel springt. Etnische zuivering? Slavernij? Jouw uitvindingen. Net als de dictatuur, toxische mannelijkheid, en het patriarchaat. Moest je zoveel energie gestoken hebben in uitvindingen die de wereld vooruithielpen op wetenschappelijk, kunstzinnig, en technologisch vlak, zou die er nu wel anders uitgezien hebben.

Ik stel voor dat we in de toiletten van hotels, restaurants, en openbare plaatsen elke dag verse flessen koeienpis leveren, zodat Mundari toeristen ook de kans krijgen hun handen te reinigen, op een voor hen vertrouwde manier. En zodat de autochtone bevolking gedwongen wordt tot het waarderen van andere culturen. Een mandatoire diversiteit is het enige medicijn voor deze pathologisch discriminerende samenleving. En water is niet de énige vloeistof die reinigt, net zoals 1 plus 1 niet altijd 2 als uitkomst heeft.

Het moet nu eens eindelijk gedaan zijn met dat cultureel absolutisme.

Ik wálg ervan.

Categories
Ethics

Two Cans of Soup.

Poor Vincent Van Gogh. Not only did this brilliant Dutch master live a life of ill health and poverty, did he suffer great lack of recognition, and was he unaware of the fact that a few decades after his death, his oeuvre would be admired and deemed invaluable all over the world, his paintings are now being attacked by, unsurprisingly, social justice warriors, who, as we have witnessed in the past decade, have an insatiable urge to destroy things, especially if they are beautiful and made in the Western side of the globe.

In the National Gallery of London, two climate activists threw two cans of Heinz tomato soup over Vincent’s magnificent The Sunflowers. (At least, Campbell soup would’ve added a humouristic touch , but a sense of humour is an asset rarely possessed by SJW’s.) This week, vegetable soup was also thrown on Van Gogh’s “The Sower”, currently housed in the Palazzo Bonaparte in Rome. Luckily, both canvasses were protected by glass, and their actions will not have lasting consequences.

The phenomenon of food attacks did not take the art world by surprise: in June this year, a man disguised as an old woman used a wheel chair to roll up to the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, jumped out of it, and smeared a piece of frosted cake across her glass-covered mysterious smile.

What cause inspired these hideous acts, the reader might think. Well, all the targets are oil paintings. And in the current international oil crisis, the perpetrators couldn’t stand the idea of millions of euros being spent on the protection of something as banal as art.

“What is worth more, art or life?” one of them asked, “Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people? The cost of living crisis is part of the cost of oil crisis, fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup”.

Did they help raising awareness by throwing tantrums, soup, and cake? I don’t think so. Will they change policies? No again. They won’t be remembered as two heroes who fought for justice, but will go down as two pink-haired, pierced, unrespectful idiots who wouldn’t mind destroying some of the most beautiful oeuvres of all time – one made by an artist who, by the way, was so poor he could hardly afford a can of soup!

It’s such a pity that people like these mess up the image and reputation of those who really care about the climate and are taking concrete measures to save the planet, by implementing behaviours and actions in their daily lives that actually matter, like ditching pastic, eating less animal products, and using their bike instead of their car to pick up croissants around the corner, but who don’t feel the need to destroying our cultural heritage along the way.

They embody the typical angry, beauty- and wealth-despising, virtue-signalling, hate-mongering, self-identified socialist millenials of today, who think violence is the answer – but it can and will never be.