Netenyahu, OBM and Bergkamp

Yesterday evening i saw an interview with ex-Israeli PM Benjamin Netenyahu. I was slightly surprised that the Sky News interviewer put him on the spot and asked him why he was going to be attending the 60th anniversary of the Israeli terrorist attack on the King David Hotel. How could he accuse one group of people of being terrorists who attack civilians (i.e. Hizbullah) while glorifying & commemmorating another terrorist attack?

Netenyahu was slightly thrown by the question and his eventual reply was that the hotel was a military base and that the Jewish terrorists who attacked it had called ahead and told the British to vacate the building. And that was his "justification".

Well, lets go back and establish one or two facts so that we can weigh up the strength of Netenyahu's justification.

The King David Hotel in 1946 housed the military and civilian headquarters of British power in Palestine. Its defences included soldiers patrolling around it; some manning machine-gun nests on the roof. Its front was covered by wire netting to prevent throwing of explosives at it and you approached it through a barbed-wire alley flanked by armed guards. It had steel shutters which could only be opened from the inside and which could only be accessed by first going through another set of steel doors.

Now ask yourself, do you think that the British were just going to up and leave from such a fortress because a gang of Jewish terrorists threatened to blow them up if they didn't (and that is if we assume that Netenyahu is telling the truth about a warning being given)? I don't think they would leave the King David Hotel anymore than they'll leave Sandhurst if some nutter calls up telling them to abandon it.

So now Netenyahu commented that he'd like to see Hizbullah give a warning so that Israeli civilians could be evacuated before Hizbullah lunched an attack, as if the Jewish warning to the British gave them some sort of moral high ground. But the fact is that it doesn't give them any more moral high ground than the IRA who used to do exactly the same a few decades ago - they used to call up the police beforehand to tell them of an impending explosion.

This atrocity at the hands of Jewish terrorists ended with the death of 88 British & Arabs.

Not so brave now

Since the time when i was in college my general feeling is that whichever group has been led by Omar Bakri Mohamed (whether HT, al-Muhajiroon, or al-Ghurabaa) has been characterised by bad adab, and stupid statements & behaviour in the media which give a very bad impression of the Muslim community.

Now OBM and his followers have always been at the forefront of calls for Jihad and fighting the Zionist enemy etc, etc. but it now emerges that OBM who is in Lebanon was trying to get on the first boat back to Britain after the escalation of the crisis there. So where is all the zeal and enthusiasm to "fight the oppressors" gone?

Farewell to the old Master

Tomorrow will see the curtain come down for the last time on one of football's most talented players: Dennis Bergkamp. The BBC Sport's site has a 15 page collation of photos and facts which is worth looking at. Bergkamp is so beloved to Arsenal fans that in later years when chiefly starting as a sub you'd hear the crowd burst int cheers when they'd see him get off the bench to warm up. I'm hoping that Arsenal will release a DVD of all his goals, because that would be a real collector's item. Do you remember the hat-trick against Leicester? Do you remember that absolutely stunning goal against Argentina in 1998 - probably the best goal i've ever seen!