True

Just read this one and had to share it:

When my father came to Israel in 1935, graffiti was all over the walls in Europe saying: "Jews, go to Palestine."

Today, when I travel through Europe I hear people say: "Jews, get out of Palestine".

What kind of short memory those Europeans have.

Could be a solution

As you might know, viral marketing is all around the internet. Here are two rather funny commercials that inofficially were spread by the brands marketing departments - I suppose.

Yet another one: Arab agression in Europe

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Pro-Israel demonstration in Sweden attacked by pro-Palestinian residents.

On Hamas and its strategy

Seldomly enough: BBC with a good one!

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Interview with Former British Army Colonel Richard Kemp

Japanese view on Palestine and the Palestinians

Though I personally favour a two-state-solution as the a practical way to resolve the conflict, there is a good point here in regards of rights to land. After all, shouldn´t rights be the leading motivation for politics?

By Yashiko Sagamori

If you are so sure that Palestine , the country, goes back through most of recorded history, I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine:

1. When was it founded and by whom?

2. What were its borders?

3. What was its capital?

4. What were its major cities?

5. What constituted the basis of its economy?

6. What was its form of government?

7. Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?

8. Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?

9. What was the language of the country of Palestine?

10. What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine?

11. What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar,
German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.

12. And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?


You are lamenting the 'low sinking' of a 'once proud' nation. Please tell me when exactly was that 'nation' proud and what was it so proud of?


And here is the least sarcastic question of all:

If the people you mistakenly call 'Palestinians' are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over -- or thrown out of -- the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?

I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day 'Palestinians' to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here.

The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it 'the Palestinian people' and installed it in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the West Bank and Gaza, respectively?

The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so-called 'Palestinians' have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel, and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a 'nation' -- or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.

In fact, there is only one way to achieve peace in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel 's ancient sovereignty over Gaza , Judea and Samaria .

That will mark the end of the Palestinian people.

What are you saying again was its beginning?

A real example: 100 MPs present at pro-Israel demonstration in Rome, Italy

Dear friends,

We didn’t expect what you see now in the picture. This is the square of the Italian Parliament in Rome, Piazza Montecitorio: you can see the Palace on top of the square, and in front a lot of Israeli flags.That was yesterday night from 6:30 to 9:30 P.M. What you cannot see here, is the extraordinary number and variety of members of the Parliament, about 100 from all political sides, that took the stage during our marathon: for about three hours we have been speaking about the role of Israel, its right to self defense, its moral height, its fight in name of all of us, of our civilization and values, against the wild hate of the Islamic jihad represented by Hamas. It seems to me that for the first time in the too-long history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, apart from a minority of crazy leftists and fascists that took the street on anti-Semitic slogans, we have obtained a huge consensus about one critical point: this is not an episode of a local conflict, there is nothing in it that reminds the land for peace theme that has characterized the Palestinian issue. This is an episode of the attack against the Western world, and Iran has a lot to do with it.

The change of attitude is great: the dictatorial religious nature of Hamas and the democratic, civilized nature of Israel are seen face to face for what they are at least by the European elite at large, dead and wounded notwithstanding, and there rises an identification with Israel against a regime that uses human shields and promises slaughters of Jews in its charter.

What happens today, at least in Italy, is the defeat and fall of the leftist ideologies: ideology has been the fig leaf that has allowed to justify all the most violent crimes and most disgusting verbal attacks. If Arafat launched the terrorist Intifada, if he promoted the martyrdom of children in public speeches, the ideologists were ready to justify him with the issues of occupation, the Palestinian misery and loss of any hope. Not the same with Hamas. History, in Italy, has brought to a profound crisis the ideology of revolution and the justification of any cruel attack against a pretended unjust imperialist order. That time is in good part over, nobody will see Hamas as the resolution of the problem and not as the problem itself. I also think that the word “peace” has lost that healing meaning that it had until yesterday. The new non-ideological point of view sees that there is no peace when one of the contenders doesn’t want it, and that even if the world in the short run asks for a truce, in the long run requests a defeat of Hamas.

Well, yesterday night many people, Ministers and Members of Parliament, composed a very new, interesting puzzle of opinions. I think that when you are not overwhelmed by exotic thirdworldism, the images of children educated as hate machines, the speeches of jihad leaders, from Ahmadinejad to Nasrallah, to Haniyyeh, that deny the Holocaust and promise death to Jewish and Christians too, have on us a result of great disgust. Westerners, thanks God, can still be disgusted by an uncivilized level of political speech.

But most of all, in the Parliament square, many of the Parliament Members said: “I love Israel”. You can’t imagine how many.

Fiamma Nirenstein

Allah Wakbar? Could agree this time!

Strong Piece!

Spare the Pieties on Gaza

07 January 09 11:25

by by Jack Engelhard 

Frankly, given a choice, I prefer the skinheads and other brutes who express their anti-Semitism openly. In such places, we know the enemy. 

But please spare me the pieties and the righteous indignation of those "good people" protesting throughout Europe against Israel's defensive operation in Gaza. True, thousands have taken up banners in support of Israel. At the same time, however, the streets of Europe (and even some in America) are in an uproar. These are the "humanitarians" - the good, the noble, the refined, who chant "peace." 

Now you're up and about? Now you speak? Where were you when, throughout the years, thousands of jihadist bombs fell on Israel? The streets of Europe were empty. There were no pictures in the newspapers of grieving Jewish mothers and fathers. You called it "peace" as long as the Arabs were doing the killing and the Jews were doing the dying. All was well with the world.

Suddenly, as Israel answered back, you found your Cause; and how self-righteous you are in your Cause.

You are the best and the brightest of Europe. You are educated. You attended the finest schools. You care for the birds, the bees, the bears, the trees. You favor free speech and freedom of religion. Strange it is that the one and only place in the Middle East that shares your world-view is Israel, and it is Israel that you slander. 

Israel is a Jewish State. Is that your problem? At the first hint of Jewish self-defense, how quickly you show your true colors.

I've seen the photos of your candlelight vigils along the streets and boulevards of Europe, all of it; all these tears in the service of those terrorists whom you call your brothers. Indeed you are related to Hamas (and Fatah) as once before, a mere generation ago, you were related to Hitler's stormtroopers. Your angelic faces are touching - and disgusting. Your hypocrisy is transparent and nauseating. 

You speak of disproportion. You want proportion? Give Israel a population of 300 million residing in 22 countries, similar to the Arab Muslims who surround and ambush Israel - instead of five and a half million Jews in one single country. There's plenty of "proportion" coming from your BBC, which delights in presenting one side of the story and picks up where Der Sturmer left off. Now, with this type of "news", we know how Europe was conditioned for a Holocaust. 

Already we see Nights of Broken Glass. Thank you, Europe, for reminding us why America was discovered just in time (and why Israel was redeemed many generations too late). You dare judge Israel? In your deportations, your expulsions, your forced conversions, your inquisitions, your pogroms, you have no moral authority over Israel or even within your own borders. You gave all that up from 1492 to 1942.

To those on the Left who sought peace, well, dear peace-lovers, peace brought this on. "Land for Peace" made this happen, as Land for Peace became Land for Jihad. "Painful Concessions" caused this war. "Goodwill Gestures" backfired. Want more "peace"? Give up the Golan Heights. Give up the entire West Bank. Give up Jerusalem. Imagine the "peace." As for those "innocent civilians" in Gaza, they were given a choice and they chose Hamas. They chose this pestilence.

As for those "refugee camps" - why are they "refugee camps" when Israel handed over all that territory for a nation to be built in peace and security alongside Israel? Why are all Palestinians automatically refugees even after they've been given a home? The only true refugees are the thousands of Israelis who were driven from Gaza and still live in trailer parks. No tears for them in this world that still dreams of Auschwitz.

On this day, in response to a column I wrote about Theresienstadt, someone responded that I was incorrect; that Theresienstadt was not a prelude to Auschwitz, but rather "a vacation resort." I wrote back wishing this person a lifetime in such vacation resorts. I wish the same lifetime vacation resorts to all those parading throughout the streets of Europe with banners crying, "Death to Israel."

God bless the IDF! Go Israel!

29 Ignoranten können nicht irren

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Bezugnehmend auf die Anzeige vom 17. Januar 2009 in der SZ, in der sich 29 jüdische Stimmen gegen Israels Selbstverteidigung ausgesprochen haben, hier eine kurze, dafür umso stärkere Gegendarstellung von Daniel Katz.

The beauty of Tel-Aviv

This is a must-get for everybody. Leo Sucharewicz from Comlab (and ILI - I LIKE ISRAEL Movement) has produced a 264 page strong foto album of Israel´s most fascinating city, Tel-Aviv, called "Tel-Aviv Tel-Aviv: The Tel-Avivians and their city". As for now, it is available only in German, other languages are being prepared. But since the pictures speak for themselves, language is not really a matter here. You can order it here - simply click "bestellen". 

Plenty of facts and knowledge

You need to check this site: middle-east-info.org, for years they have been doing a great job. Now they released a link that contains basically everything they have collected and produced during the first 2 weeks of the Gaza operation. Their homepage is very informative as well.

Get pro-Israel posters & stickers

So, you finally reasoned with yourself and are about to organize a pro-Israel demonstration in your hometown? Great! Here is some stuff you can easily download (in bigger format) from Honestly Concerned.

Demonstration against Hamas´ Kassam-Terror

and for Israel´s Right of Self Defense
Jan 11.09
Peaceful, Successful and Just.
Videos from Munich and Berlin (on the same day) can be viewed here here.

What really happened in the Middle East

Here are the most important facts on the Middle East Conflict.

The War is over - by Arab Journalist Youssef M. Ibrahim

The War with Israel Is Over.....and they won. By Youssef M. Ibrahim

To my Arab brothers:


The War with Israel Is Over - and they won.


Now let ' s finally move forward With Israel entering its fourth week of an incursion into the same Gaza Strip it voluntarily evacuated a few months ago, a sense of reality among Arabs is spreading through commentary by Arab pundits, letters to the editor, and political talk shows on Arabic-language TV networks. The new views are stunning both in their maturity and in their
realism. The best way I can think of to convey them is in the form of a letter to the Palestinian Arabs from their Arab friends:

Dear Palestinian Arab brethren: The war with Israel is over. You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children. We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel . Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine , but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years.

Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness. At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan . It isn ' t going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.

You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa , Haifa , Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem . You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you. You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation.

Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins. Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank , while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.

In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day. What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world ' s have-nots? We, your Arab brothers, have moved on. 

Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel , such as Egypt and Jordan , have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq , frankly could not care less about what happens to you.

Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine , even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab. Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours, Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods - more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives - while your children
played in the sewers of Gaza .

The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?

Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former New York Times Middle East Correspondent and
Wall Street Journal Energy Editor for 25 years, is a freelance writer based
in New York City and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates .

Fatah official: Hamas a black and bloody militia

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231424929296&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

In short:

- Hamas is responsible for hundreds of dead Palestinians
- a revolt by the Palestinian people in Gaza is needed to topple Hamas
- Haniyeh and Mashal need to trialed as war criminals

Further demonstrations

First of all, it is great to hear that from the state of Northrhine Westfalia (NRW) busses are being chartered to get people to the demonstration in Frankfurt, which is closest to NRW. You can apply for a seat through the Jewish Community Center in Cologne. Food and drinks will be on the bus, each applicant gets a guaranteed seat and everything is free of charge.

Just got an email about a demonstration in London, which is also taking place on Sunday. I needed to convert the flyer from PDF, the main information can be clearly read.

Why Israel fights

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Media mess-up, French TV does it again

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French Media have never been too polite with Israel. In fact, one of the biggest mess-ups in media history was caused by French TV, when Israel forces allegedly shot Muhammed al-Dura, 11 year old Palestinian boy. Part of the scene were caught on French cameras. But the TV Network did not allow anyone to see the whole footage. Later it became clear, that Israeli soldiers could not have fired the deadly shots, they must have come from Palestinian extremists.

Now French TV Network 2 had to admit that it used footage of a different incident in 2005. The curx: the footage shows an an incident in which civilians were killed by an explosion caused by Palestinian militants themselves.

Pro-Israel Demonstrations around Germany

Next Sunday, Jan. 11, several demonstrations for Israel´s right of self-defense will be held around Germany. Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich are fixed. Others have applied permissions with their local authorities. More details to follow in the next couple of days.

And in the meantime?

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At a mall in Odense, Denmark, a 27 year old Arab shot at Israelis selling products from the Dead Sea. Before the shooting, they had already been insulted by a whole group of Arabs.

Around 300 Arabs aggressively demonstrated on the Streets of Antwerpes, Netherlands, trying to get into the Jewish Quarter and carrying the Hamas flag, which is a violation of European law. Only police forces could prevent them from entering the Jewish Quarter. The pictures from Antwerpes are frightening anyway (s. Video). A Belgian newspaper titled: Jews cannot go on the streets of Antwerpes anymore.



In Amsterdam, Arabs went on the street to demonstrate against Israel by shouting "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas chambers". The video gives proof at around 1:05. A Dutch MP, Van Bommel of the Socialist Party, joined the demonstrators and called for an Intifada. Van Bommel is the guy you see in the video.



In Charleroi, France, Arabs set fire to a Synagogue. In Toulouse, a burning car was rammed into a Synagogue.

Welcome in 21st century Europe.

Israel driving out Palestinians?

Well, just take a look at the numbers and you will see that the truth is exactly the other way around. Point of no Return is a blog "dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what they once were."

Don´t tell me, Israel does the same

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So much is known on how Palestinians, and iespeciallyHamas, abuses its children, teaching them to hate, gun training them and using them as human shields (what they actually do with the whole Gazan population). And too often do I hear people using pure relativism and saying: both sides do wrong. In fact, nothing is more wrong for a state like Israel to be compared to a terrorist organization like Hamas.

Now I came across this video through a commentator from Jerusalem (his outstanding article is short but in German, I should take the time to translate it). No, this is definitely not the future Israel is envisioning for her children. Let´s be clear about it: no one is permitted to join the Israeli Defense Forces before the age of 18, not even as a volunteer.

War crimes?

A friends from Jerusalem wrote this 2 years ago, and it still is of current interest, as so many things in the Middle-East

War Crimes?

Innocent civilians die in wars. This is a tragic but inevitable truth. An army uses the same bridges and the same power plants as the civilian population. Bases are commonly placed in densely populated areas and government buildings are located at the centers of nations' capitals. All these are legitimate targets in war and when civilians are killed in military actions against those targets it is, for the lack of better words, an unfortunate consequence.

Germany alone suffered 2 million civilian deaths during World War II, most of them presumably completely innocent. This is the price of war, a war started – in the aforementioned case – by Germany. Accordingly, you would be hard pressed to find someone willing to call the deaths of 2 million German civilians (barring isolated exceptions) a war crime.

Why is it then that war crime allegations are routinely raised against Israel every time a military action causes the death of civilians? The figures on civilian deaths during the current Israeli operation in Gaza vary, depending on the source, between 10%-30% of the total deaths. Similar figures exist for many wars and conflicts fought over the last decades across the globe.

Although it can be reasonably argued that, because of the continued use of civilian shields by Hamas, we should expect above average civilian casualties it is not necessary for the general argument of this article. It remains that civilian casualties are within the average (and accepted) range of such numbers.

It is this that makes it clear that the problem is not, and never was, civilian deaths. The actual question that proponents of the 'excessive force' and 'war crimes' arguments raise concerns nothing else than the legitimacy of military action in the first place, civilian deaths or not. The misuse of civilian deaths is, just like 'Zionism is racism', an attempt to drag the argument over Israel's right to defend itself into a more politically correct light. A place where the PR battle can be fought realistically.

Israel should strive to drag the argument back to its natural place, and win it by default. The state of Israel, like any other state, has the right to defend itself against attack, and thousands of rockets landing on Israeli soil over the last years are most certainly an attack. Furthermore it should be stressed that what is a war crime, not to mention highly immoral, is the intentional targeting of civilians. This war crime is sadly practiced routinely by Israel’s enemies.

Die Welt fällt nicht mehr rein

Die Welt fällt nicht mehr rein (29. Dezember 2008)

Selbst unter Beschuss nimmt sich die Hamas noch Zeit für taktische Spiele, allerdings ohne Erfolg

Die Welt ist sich einig. Schuld an der Eskalation der vergangenen Tage trägt die Hamas. Dementsprechend war keine ernsthafte Kritik am Vorgehen Israels zu vernehmen. Deutlich dagegen war das Verständnis für Israels Militäraktionen. Merkel und Steinmeier sprechen im internationalem Tenor von "uneingeschränkter Solidarität", "Recht auf Selbstverteidigung" und "alleiniger Schuld der Hamas". Wie kann man auch anders denken, nachdem Israel seit dem einseitigen Rückzug aus dem Gaza-Streifen 2005 fast täglich mit Raketen beschossen wird und bis diesen Samstagmorgen größte Zurückhaltung bewiesen hat?

Dass die arabischen Staaten nicht anders können als Israel für schuldig zu erklären, kann über den Wandel im internationalen Klima nicht hinweg täuschen.

Fast schon absurd wirkte dann am heutigen Montag die Nachricht, Hamas sei zu einer Waffenruhe bereit. Aber nur unter zwei Bedingungen:

1. müsse Israel alle Angriffe auf palästinensisches Gebiet unterlassen

2. müsse die Gaza-Blockade aufgegeben werden

Alleine die Tatsache, dass die Hamas Forderungen stellt, scheint angesichts der Entwicklungen der derzeitigen Auseinandersetzung aberwitzig. Ernsthafte Reaktionen auf diesen Vorschlag blieben folglich und richtig aus.

Noch nie hat eine unterlegene Partei nach einem Krieg besser da gestanden als vor dem Krieg. Schon gar nicht, wenn es sich dabei um den Verursacher der Kampfhandlungen selbst handelt. Die Aufhebung der Blockade würde aber genau dies bedeuten. Als würde ein Boxer nach 30 Sekunden Pause frischer aus seiner Ecke aufstehen als zu Beginn des Kampfes, nachdem er in der letzten Runde kräftig auf die Nase bekommen hat.

Aber die Hamas ist keine Ausnahme. Sie wird geschwächt, hoffentlich diesmal K.O., aus dem Kampf gehen. Auch wenn eine völlige Beseitigung unwahrscheinlich ist. Das Handtuch wird sie nicht schmeißen, dafür ist sie zu ideologisch aufgeladen, mit zu viel Hass versehen und wird zu stark von iranischen Petrodollar finanziert.

Beim "Angebot" der Hamas handelt es sich nur um ein taktisches Manöver, neue Argumente den Israel-Gegnern zu zuspielen. Nach dem Motto "Schaut, die Hamas ist zu einer Waffenruhe bereit - Israel aber nicht", werden bald schon die ersten Stimmen zu hören sein. Dass sie dabei internationales Recht, Moral und Verstand völlig über den Haufen werfen, und die ständigen Verletzungen der letzten Waffenruhe von Seiten der Hamas einfach aus der Geschichte streichen, wird sie nicht daran hindern, auch dieses Mal auf die Hamas reinzufallen.

Gut, dass der Rest der Welt diesmal nicht reinfällt.

OriWanKenobi

Here´s your moderate extremist dumb ass

Germany´s biggest magazin starts to realize

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"Der Spiegel" is Germany´s most read weekly political magazin. Agenda-setter, opinion-leader and gate-keeper, it has too often criticised Israel for her actions. Now, as can be observed with nearly all media outlets and with politicians as well, they have started to critically think over their old anti-Israel bias. Here is an online report by "Spiegel online" - its in german.

The whole essence becomes clear in the video´s last sentence:

"For sure, this time judgements will be as usual: when two parties are fighting, Israel is guilty. Sadly and unjustly so."

For your orientation

An "E" in front of a post shows you, that there is a link, a video or audio file in English within that post. Other languages maybe "G" (German), "I" (Italian), "ESP" (Spanish) or "H" (Hebrew). As we go along, other languages may come up.

Still, the posts themselves are all in English and give you an idea of what the link´s content. If there is a whole post in German, which can happen since I sometimes write articles in German, such posts will also be labelled "G".