Of Silk Purses, Sows Ears, Sportsmanship and Sanctions

“You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” Anon quote of Scottish Origin

Pageantry, Palestine and Sour Grapes

And now for something slightly more light-hearted against the backdrop of livestreamed atrocities that we are still witnessing, amidst a sham, Western mediated “ceasefire”.

I couldn’t resist writing this short piece whilst working on other things, mainly because every time I go onto social media I see the recent Miss Universe pageant clips of Miss “Israel’s” conduct - both in and of itself and towards Miss Palestine, clips that have gone viral in recent days.

We are in fact, now at the classic “denial, distortion, deflection” stage that follows all Zionistic displays of hate, arrogance and virulence, where Miss “Israel” flat out denies that she looked at Miss Palestine in the way that we all saw as clear as day.

And although this is just pageantry, which many of us like to pronounce that we find superficial, the fact remains that we are all susceptible to the halo of beauty.

There are qualities we undoubtedly find attractive and competitions such as Miss Universe seek to showcase and assess these attributes that include “intelligent, well-mannered and cultured” as well as beautiful.

If you don’t like it, you don’t have to watch it, although I suspect we enjoy viewing these things much more than we may acknowledge. Just as with Eurovision, it may be slightly cheesy but it is still nonetheless a platform for contestants to represent their countries on an international stage, and as we have seen subsequently with Miss Palestine foregrounding her heritage with such articulate and elegant rhetoric, an opportunity to educate.

So - first of all came the declaration by each contestant, of their country of origin; to declare your country proudly and with grace is possibly only a challenge if humbleness or a dignified attitude are inimical to your nature.

“Israaaael!” declared Melanie Shiraz, flicking her eyes up and down repeatedly with all the belligerent, moody attitude of Vicki Pollard from Little Britain with a dramatic touch of preening a la Cruella; I guess she mistook hostile arrogance for charm and self-confidence.

Later, this haughty attitude further intensified into glaring antagonism as she looked daggers at the elegant, gracious and dazzling Miss Palestine, Nadeen Ayoub, whose radiant smile eclipsed the sulky bad energy of Shiraz as the former swept on beaming, embodying a truly dignified pride.

It was the sourness of a pretender publicly “outed” by the beautiful representative of a country that she and her people wish to deny the existence of, and have put so much energy into hating. Her mother Estee Shiraz is a very staunch advocate for “Israel”.¹

Palestine isn’t supposed to be competing on the same stage as the people who continue to steal its land and call it “Israel”. It seems Cinderella has been let out of the attic, and dressed up for the ball – and the ease with which she outshines the “ugly sister” has fermented bitterness for some Zionists.

The ugly attitude of supercilious contempt embodied by Miss “Israel” from hostile looks to a demeanour of unnecessary challenge and seething low key aggression is typical of Zionists, who fail to see themselves from the outside, nor to care how they interact with others and how unpleasant they appear.

The beautiful Miss Palestine - because the picture of Miss “Israel’s” look made my computer crash

Embodying National Attitudes

What is so interesting about the respective women, is how deeply their body language, mannerisms, posture and intonations embody deep seated attitudes that are then quite explicitly displayed outwardly.

Shiraz’s “bombastic side-eye” towards Ayoub was so pronounced that it swept social media like wildfire, so fascinating was it to see decades of privilege, entitlement and arrogance leak out in one seconds long disdainful look at a beauty pageant. It was made all the more vivid by Miss Palestine’s lack of acknowledgment, and ignoring of pettiness in a situation where consummate professionalism is required.

There is a particular “arrogance of insecurity” that is simultaneously paradoxical and yet so marked in narcissists. It is the sure confidence of institutionalized or entrenched privilege balanced upon the precariousness of a weak and flimsy ego lacking in any real substance.

The attitudes of Shiraz and Ayoub truly reflected their international identities as we know them: one was arrogant and rude, her ungraciousness reflecting years of easy entitlement, her sulky belligerence demanding acknowledgment and applause just for saying the name of her country with ludicrously exaggerated self-importance along with her extraordinarily ill-mannered and cutting glances at her competitor.

The other was dignified, gracious, embodying an inner confidence that expressed real deep pride and happiness at representing her country internationally, and that radiated pure joy and even gratitude at being able to be participate – an attitude that is evident in all her footage. This is true beauty.

Sportsmanship, Superiority and Sanctions

It is nothing short of extraordinary how unprofessional and lacking in sportsmanship “Israeli” competitors and also fans, are in every arena. In the U20 European Athletics finals, the “Israeli” sprinter Peretz made a throat slitting gesture towards the camera displaying his penchant for genocide.

This is not just unsportsmanlike, it is emblematic of a culture steeped in violence, for whom acts of aggression are par for the course, a way of asserting dominance or even just expressing who they are and what they stand for.

An ”Israeli” basketball official Oded Tira, just a few days ago, called black players “kushim”, a Hebrew term of insult analogous to the N-word. Arab football players have been repeatedly abused by “Israeli” “fans” with racist taunts. It seems they are less there for the sport and more for the opportunity to express their obnoxious racist hate.

Of course, none of this would be complete without “Israeli’s” compulsively playing victim and claiming that they are “snubbed” by other teams and players; this is as it should be for a “country” that is problematic on so many levels, that proudly announces its racism and violence towards Arabs, lies about its blatant apartheid system and swaggers about the world stage as if it owns everybody.

Its people are dreaded the world over for their rude, arrogant and disgraceful attitudes in other people’s countries – with Greece and Thailand currently targeted as prime holiday destinations by hordes of “IDF” seeking temporary respite from raping, maiming and killing, and locals rightfully expressing upset about these badly behaved thugs overrunning their countries.

There is an innate despicable arrogance in people who believe that they are naturally superior and therefore immune from normal conduct, or above normal rules of engagement courtesy of their elevated status.

It is a dynamic apparent in every interaction with a Zionist, albeit accompanied by dizzying alternation between arrogance and victimhood – the latter being the instinctive default position when accountability looms. Then suddenly, the world is being mean and abandoning its responsibility towards making the special dispensations that these people are entitled to.

One such gripe is that they are sometimes “snubbed” by other countries. The only problem with this is that they are not snubbed nearly enough. To resort to such victim playing when every one of their “athletes” are also “IDF” – the “IDF” that has committed unspeakable crimes and morally reprehensible acts from raping Palestinians in custody to campaigning for the right to rape, from sniping and maiming children to shooting people seeking aid – absolutely none of this should go unnoticed or uncommented upon.

So there may be the odd “Israeli” who isn’t fully on board with all this? This is an irrelevance, because the only way to tackle this endemic poison is to boycott, sanction and divest.

In the late 1950s people began steadily to boycott South African goods in co-ordinated campaigns to eradicate apartheid; South Africa was excluded from most international sporting events and there were also cultural and academic as well as economic sanctions and divestments.

These all work, because without this political pressure, the system will continue to thrive when actually “Israel” should be isolated and made the pariah it should be, for its behaviour.

Attack is all it knows, aggression is all it speaks and hostility is all it understands. The fact that “Israel” is allowed to compete at international events – especially when Russia has been banned from so many, for far less – is an abomination in itself.

Miss “Israel’s” sour and spiteful look at Miss Palestine should not even have been given an opportunity to be aired; the malign, envious and ill-intentioned glare from the representative of an illegitimate apartheid state that has inflicted innumerable injustices and heaped atrocity after atrocity on her people is the height of colonial arrogance.

Let us hope that the world does right and that “Israel” is increasingly barred from competing globally, a movement that is gaining traction with growing awareness that action must be taken; and that there is no normality for apartheid nor international competing for a blood soaked state of genocide.

1. On this subject may I remind you to boycott Estée Lauder whose chairman Ronald Lauder is strongly pro-”Israel”