Good news for Jews - we're taking over Britain

According to UK Channel 4, the "Israel Lobby" (AKA World Jewish conspiracy) is poised to take over Britain when and if the Conservative party comes to power, since an all powerful Jew conspiracy has permeated the corridors of British power. The next British monarch will be Ikey I, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain, and the Menorah will be printed on British bank notes. The Channel 4 documentary evidently has compiled a list of the Jew lovers in the Conservative party, preparing to subvert the innocent British people, about to pass legislation that forces pubs to serve Manischewitz wine and kosher snacks. It must be the influential Jewish conspiracy that is responsible for tacit recognition of Sharia law and other pro-Zionist moves of the Zionist Occupied British government. The same Jew lobby was no doubt responsible for the spate of British Boycott Israel initiatives. Them Jews will get you every time, right?

Or is the documentary evidence of a quite different trend in Britain? What do you think?

Ami Isseroff

Israel lobby 'big influence in UK'
The programme links Hague, left, and Cameron to the Conservative Friends of Israel [EPA]

A British documentary has alleged that any future Conservative government will be disproportionately influenced by a powerful pro-Israeli lobby in the country.

Channel 4's Dispatches programme on Monday said that at least half of the Conservative shadow cabinet are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), one of a number of pro-Israel lobby organisations.

The prorgramme, entitled 'Inside Britain's Israel Lobby', said that such organisations make up "one of the most powerful and influential political lobbies in Britain", but that "little is known" about these groups and their associated individuals.

CFI members and their businesses are alleged to have donated more than $16.8m to the Conservative Party over the past eight years.

The alleged donations include tens of thousands of pounds to William Hague, after he was appointed shadow foreign secretary in 2005.

The documentary alleged that Lord Kalm, a CFI member and significant donor to the Conservatives, threatened to remove Hague's funding after he said that Israel had used "disproportionate" force during its war in Lebanon in 2006.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, is alleged to have promised not to repeat the conjecture.

'Transparent'

Stuart Polak, CFI's director, disputed the figures in the UK's Guardian newspaper.

"CFI as an organisation has donated only £30,000 [$50,000] since 2005. Each of these donations has been made transparently and publicly registered," he said.

"In addition to this £30,000, it is undoubtedly the case that some of our supporters have also chosen, separately, to donate to the party as individuals."

The Dispatches documentary also claims that Poju Zabludowicz, a Finnish billionaire and chairman of Bicom (the British Israel Communications and Research Centre), gave $25,000 and $84,000 donations to Cameron and the Conservative Central Office respectively.

Zabludowicz has a business interest in a shopping centre in Ma'aleh Adumim, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank deemed illegal under international law.

Bicom organises briefings on and trips to Israel for journalists. The CFI and the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) group, which is described in the documentary as "less unquestioning in its support of the Israeli government than CFI", plays a similar role, accounting for 13 per cent of the total number of paid-for foreign trips for MPs and candidates.

'Openness needed'

Zabludowicz told The Jerusalem Post newspaper that the Dispatches programme "seems to have a predetermined agenda".

"Some people have suggested that the production team felt compelled to 'balance out' their two recent programs exposing the footprint of radical Islamism in the UK," he said.

"I come to this conclusion with a heavy heart, having been led [through] a not-so-merry dance over the past 10 days by the programme-makers.

"Bicom is an advocacy organisation. We work with journalists every day. It is in our DNA to put our side of the story forward and to be transparent."

While the programme said that the donations are legal, one of its makers, David Oborne, a political columnist for the British Daily Mail newspaper, said that more needs to be known about the Israeli lobby's workings and power.

"There is nothing resembling a conspiracy," he wrote in the Guardian.

"The pro-Israel lobby, in common with other lobbies, has every right to operate and indeed to flourish in Britain.

"But it needs to be far more open about how it is funded and what it does ... mainly because politics in a democracy ... should be out in the open for all to see."

In 2006, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, two American academics, released a paper stating that Washington's support for Israel was predicated by a hugely powerful Israeli lobby in the US.

Continued (Permanent Link)

TIA -CREF Pension Divests from Africa Israel over West Bank Ventures

Remember the vote notice you got in the mail? The one you didn't bother with? ...

Someone else did bother with it, of course...Time to divest from TIA-CREF, if you can.

Last update - 20:02 12/09/2009

U.S. pension fund divests from Israel firm 'over West Bank ventures'

The U.S. pension fund giant, TIAA-CREF, confirmed in statements to the media on Friday that it divested from Africa Israel Investments, owned by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev, earlier this year.

A pro-Palestinian group reported Friday that the move was in protest against the firm's business ventures in the West Bank.

The statements came in response to a letter initiated by Adalah-NY (the New York office of the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel) and signed by TIAA-CREF clients.

The fund's investment in Africa Israel amounted to only $257,000, so the financial effect of the divestment is minimal. The news of the divestment came as the Israeli firm was suffering a deep financial crisis, having recently announced that is unable to meet its liabilities to its bondholders.

Officials at Adalah-NY claim that TIAA-CREF made the decision after the organization presented data on Africa Israel's activities in the West Bank.

Adalah NY noted in its press release that "Despite the recent divestment from Africa-Israel, the new June 30th TIAA-CREF report indicates that the fund continues to invest clients' money in a number of companies supporting Israeli settlement activity including Israel Discount Bank, Cellcom Israel, Bezeq Israeli Telecommunications Corp, Bank Leumi, and Motorola, among others."

Earlier this month the Norwegian government announced it was pulling all of its investments from Elbit Systems, which manufactures the monitoring system installed on several parts of the West Bank separation fence.

Norwegian Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said that the decision was based on the recommendation of her ministry's council. "We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international
humanitarian law," Halvorsen was quoted as saying, explaining that the separation barrier impinged on the freedom of movement of West Bank residents.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Will Tel-Aviv become an "illegal settlement"?

They are after Tel Aviv now. It was inevitable.

First they went after Jerusalem. UN resolutions "internationalized" Jerusalem. The "international" status of the city was ignored as long as Jordan illegally occupied the old city and east Jerusalem, but vigorous protests were issued when Israel conquered Jerusalem in the Six day war. Even the United States does not recognize any Jewish claims to Jerusalem, does not recognize any part of Jerusalem as part of Israel in violation of United States law, the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act. The US Consulate in Jerusalem insists that it is a mission to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians have long insisted that Jews had no historical connection with Jerusalem. The most recent statement to that effect was issued by the Muslim Chief Justice, Taysir Tamimi, denying Jewish historical rights in Jerusalem. He claimed it was never inhabited by Jews. The first temple is erased from history as well as the second temple, as well as the long habitation of Jews in Jerusalem prior to 1948, when Jerusalem was ethnically cleansed by the Jordan Legion.

The Arab and Muslim "narrative," given academic credentials by such people as Nadia Abu el-Hajj of Barnard University, is that Jerusalem was always an Arab city. Never mind the Menorah in the Arch of Titus. Never mind the description of the siege of Jerusalem by Josephus Flavius. Never mind the inscription from the time of Hezekiah, which describes the tunnel built to divert water from Shiloach during the siege - precisely as recorded in the Old Testament. The Palestinians have a different "narrative." The Beit al Maqdes (temple) was built by Suleiman the Muslim. Muhammad secured Jerusalem for the Muslims by flying to Jerusalem in one night on his horse (pretty good horse!) al-buraq, and tying it up at the Wailing wall, which ensures that the wailing wall is Muslim too. So much for "Zionist Myths. Jerusalem is Arab and "Arab East Jerusalem" now belongs to the Muslims.

But now they are going after Tel Aviv as well. According to the old "Zionist narrative," apparently incorrect, Tel Aviv was founded in 1909, originally to be called "Achuzt Bayit." It was built on empty land purchased from Arabs. But a film festival in Toronto celebrating Tel-Aviv's Centennial is being boycotted, on the grounds that Tel-Aviv was stolen from the Arabs! No doubt, soon it will be discovered that Muhammad visited Tel Aviv too, and tied his horse up in Dizengoff Center. Such luminaries as Jane Fonda are boycotting the film festival:

Jane Fonda, Danny Glover and Eve Ensler have joined the growing list of artists who are boycotting the Toronto film festival over a program honoring Tel Aviv's 100th anniversary, gossip blogger Perez Hilton reported on Friday.

The three have added their names to a letter aimed at festival officials claiming that Tel Aviv was built on violence, ignoring the "suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants," Hilton reported.

Well yes, there was a war here. We didn't start it. Remember? There were also a few wars between Germany and France. Alsace is also "built on violence, ignoring the 'suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants.'" What about "former residents" of Washington DC or for that matter Toronto? Or former Jewish residents of Cairo and Baghdad? Is that a reason to boycott these cities? Will Jane Fonda and her friends leave any corner of Israel that may be claimed by Jews as our birthright?

If Tel Aviv does not belong to the Jewish people by right, then surely Beersheba, an Arab town from 640 C.E. until 1948 is Arab by right, and Neve Gordon, the boycott advocate, should not be living and teaching there. Even the most obtuse boycotters can now understand that the boycott movement is not aimed at ending the occupation, but at ending Israel.

Ami Isseroff

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Continued (Permanent Link)

Anti-Israel chorus reaches a crescendo

Reflections on the New Antisemitism

by David Solway

The Hebrew Scripture is replete with passages of unforgettable beauty, and many of the most beautiful are to be found in the Book of Psalms. Psalm 119, the longest in the book, is studded with such pearls, in particular verses 103-05, which read (in the King James translation):

How sweet are thy words unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through thy precepts I get

understanding: therefore I hate every false way. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

These words resonate ironically today, when the words one hears and reads everywhere around us about Jews, about Zionists, and about the state of Israel are not "sweet" but sharp and bitter. The "precepts" we receive in the various media, print and electronic, do not promote "understanding" but seem instead to justify "every false way." The biblical "lamp" seems to have been extinguished and the "path" is shrouded in darkness.

The most recent case in point comes from the left-leaning Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, which reported in a double-truck spread on August 18, 2009, that Israeli soldiers regularly abduct Palestinians to harvest their innards for the international organ trade. (This is the same daily that, on Easter 2003, referred to "the crucifixion of Arafat.") The source for this ludicrous fable consists of a number of Palestinians whose depositions are accepted as gospel. How Swede are their words! The story now comes full circle back to its Palestinian source to be confirmed by the Palestinian news agency Ma'an (which is, incidentally, financed by Denmark and Holland). The feature cites a certain "expert" whose evidence for the claim consists of a rather peculiar factoid, namely, that Israel returns the bodies of Hezbollah fighters minus their organs! The obvious question remains unasked: why would Israel send back these scavenged bodies if it wished to avoid detection and avert a scandal? The absurdity is palpable, but logic and common sense are clearly beyond the cognitive abilities of anti-Semites. And then, as we know, there is the inconvenient medical fact that the organs of people who do not expire under clinical conditions, when organs can be removed immediately, are not viable for transplant.

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the Palestinian propaganda machine and the robust Antisemitism of the Swedish media and officialdom (not to mention Norway, Spain, the UK, and several other European countries) might consult another verse from Psalm 119: "The wicked have laid a snare for me." And indeed they have. The most popular Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, cleared the way for its Swedish counterpart to launch its newest calumny, publishing an article on August 8, 2009, accusing Jews of creating swine flu as part of a pharmaceutical conspiracy to profit from the sale of antidotes.

The despicable lies perpetrated by Aftonbladet and De Telegraaf are only the latest in what seems like an endless chain of defamatory utterances and slanderous fictions about the Jewish people and the Jewish state. We recall the notorious Mohammed al-Durah hoax , in which the Palestinian 12-year-old was ostensibly shot by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) at the Netzarim junction in Gaza on September 30, 2000, propagated by the France TV 2 network and picked up by every major news outlet on the planet. We now know that the episode was rehearsed, directed, and staged with the collusion of Palestinian stringers and cameramen. It constitutes perhaps the most conspicuous contemporary chapter in the never-ending and constantly mutating hate-campaign against the Jewish people.

Then we had the so-called Jenin massacre , which turned out to be anything but, except for the 22 young Israeli soldiers who died trying to avoid civilian casualties when an American-style air strike would have done the job of scrubbing out the terrorist nest. Next, the blame for the 2006 Lebanon war was laid at Israel's doorstep although the conflict was triggered by the Hezbollah incursion into Israeli territory, resulting in the kidnapping and killing of several Israeli soldiers. Britain's Independent went so far as to accuse Israel of using uranium-tipped weapons, a claim so manifestly outrageous it defies both reason and belief — and should rightly have defied publication.

An investigation is now proceeding under the auspices of the United Nations Human Rights Council into Israel's conduct during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. There is not so much as a mention in its mandate of Hamas' seven-year rocket barrage against civilian communities in southern Israel which provoked the long-deferred Israeli response. Note well. It is not Hamas - a terrorist organization whose charter promises the annihilation of the Jewish state, which has deliberately violated international law by using its own civilians as human shields, firing missiles from its own population centers, storing ammunition in hospitals and mosques, and commandeering ambulances as troop carriers, and that continues to hold a kidnapped Israeli soldier in illegal detention - which is being investigated. It is Israel that is being singled out for condemnation, the country of which British military expert Richard Kemp, in a BBC interview in January 2009, said: "I don't think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza."

The world is once again thirsting for Jewish blood, an ironic reversal of the old blood libel canard. We see this vampiric appetite expressed in a multitude of different ways: in the international media, as we have observed; in the theater ( My Name Is Rachel Corrie , Seven Jewish Children ; in film (Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ ); in opera (the antiphrastic staging of Camille Saint-Saen's Samson et Dalila in Antwerp in May 2008, with the Philistines cast in the role of the Israelites and the Israelites as the oppressors of the Philistines); in the tarnished and largely one-sided reports of NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (the latter soliciting funds from Saudi Arabia ); in international conferences on racism ( Durban I and II , which turn into flagrant anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatefests); in the General Assembly of the United Nations (whose current president, Miguel d'Escoto Brockman , is an outspoken opponent of the Jewish state); on university campuses where Israel Apartheid Week i s one of the hottest shows around; in Barack Obama's defaulting on the commitment of the previous American administration regarding the natural growth of Israeli settlements and construction in East Jerusalem; and so on, ad vomitatum.

And there seems no way at present of evading the growing pandemic of anti-Jewish feeling and anti-Israeli denunciation that is infecting the contemporary world. "What is new about the new Antisemitism," writes Phyllis Chesler in The New Antisemitism , is "that it is worldwide. … Jews are being verbally and visually attacked everywhere." The Jew is someone for whom there is no elsewhere. This is my definition, but there have, of course, been many definitions of the Jew over the millennia, most of them pejorative. I need not rehearse them once again, for the Dictionary of Received Opinion is open to all and readily available. It is, in effect, the one dictionary that need not be purchased, lodged in the inner life of the West like a demonic version of the Gideon Bible in hotel room drawers.

There is no disputing this. What the great English Renaissance author Sir Thomas Browne called the Pseudodoxia Epidemica (or Dictionary of Received Opinion) is especially rich and hospitable when it comes to the vilification of the Jew. In his master work of that title, Browne set out to dispel common prejudices of every kind, a Herculean effort which, fraught with "discouragment of contradiction, unbelief, and difficulty," he described as the "disswasion from radicated beliefs." Concerning the Jews, he is in no doubt about the ubiquitous and diabolical error of such "radicated beliefs." "In the conceit of the evil order of the Jews," he writes, "Christians without a farther research into the verity of the thing, or enquiry into the cause, draw up a judgment upon them." It is only the "more ocular discerners" who know otherwise.

Today, it is not only Christians (or Muslims) who "draw up a judgment upon them" but, as Chesler indicates, a vast, secular, politically correct, mainly liberal-left constituency busily adding a sheaf of extra pages to the common Pseudodoxia, comprising a thick appendix of stigmatic designations. Obviously, this has mainly to do with Israel, conceived as the new Jew on the block and the national incarnation of the "longest hatred" as it manifests among us. Anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli sentiment has become so pervasive that it reminds me of the philosopher Nicholas of Cusa 's definition of God as a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. But in our demented age the definition applies not to love but to hatred, not to the worship of the Lord but to the derogation of the "satanic" Jew.

The fact must be faced. Although there are writers of integrity, talent, and impressive scholarship, truly "ocular discerners," who have taken up the defense of Jews and of Israel, it seems increasingly like a fruitless struggle. The words of Israel's defenders in the infosphere are simply unable to fill the ever-expanding circle of hostility, deprecation, and vengefulness in which Jews and the Jewish state now find themselves. It is, rather, the words of their adversaries that proliferate and block out the horizon of discourse — the invidious message of those who should never be taken at their word.

Thankfully, there is a countervailing fact as well, which has to do with the long history of courage against all the odds and the unprecedented resilience of the Jewish people — and, of course, with those honorable and gracious advocates for truth and decency who come to the defense of Israel. As hapless as the battle may seem at times, there can be no reneging. "Nor have we let fall our penne," wrote Browne, even though we "are oft-times fain to wander in the America and untravelled parts of truth." Browne was a devout man who would have based his practice on a passage like that of verse 130 of the above-quoted psalm: "The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding to the simple." I would add only the hopeful rider: and to the sophisticates as well.

But for those of us who are not religiously observant, the imperative to speak, write, and act remains in force. In the interests of the survival of Israel and the integrity of the West, and despite all the impediments raised against the simple truth, we need to get the word out.

David Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist. He is the author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity , and is currently working on a sequel, Living in the Valley of Shmoon. His new book on Jewish and Israeli themes, Hear, O Israel!, will be released by CanadianValuesPress, an imprint of Mantua Books, in the fall.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Boycotting Israel

Benjamin Pogrund no doubt makes cogent points in his defense against Israel boycotts below, but there are some other very important points to be made. The first question to ask is "why boycott Israel?" Why not boycott regimes like Iran, Libya and Sudan that really do practise racism, repression of women, state supported terror and even genocide? Why not boycott China for occupying Tibet and suppressing human rights there, or for its excesses against its own Muslim population? Why not boycott Russia for its inhuman suppression of the Chechens?

The reason is that the Israel boycott show was invented as a means of delegitimizing Israel by anti-Israel activists. It is not part of a grass roots campaign that is concerned to improve human rights practices, but rather part of a campaign to destroy a member state of the UN, for racist reasons. It is not a rights campaign, but a wrongs campaign. Pogrund asks why Israel is compared to apartheid South Africa. The answer is simple - it was a conscious and cynical decision by anti-Israel activists looking for the worst slogan they could find to delegitimize Israel. The strategy is to artificially turn the struggle of Palestinian extremists to destroy Israel into a "legitimate" human rights issue, and to destroy Zionism in the same way that the South Africa apartheid regime was destroyed. Of course, any country could be vulnerable to the same tactics. Spain does not recognize the legitimate right of the ETA to resistance and to Basque self-determination. France "discriminates" against the Hijab. Australia and New Zealand are countries "stolen" from their original inhabitants. Every country can look upon the Israel boycott campaign and say "there but for the grace of God goeth I." Nobody is immune. This sort of campaign is, at a national level, equivalent to libel and slander campaigns carried on against individuals. Everyone may have something in their past, that, cast in the wrong light, might destroy them if not hidden.

Neve Gordon, whose polemic is mentioned in Pogrund's article, disingenuously gave the impression that he has come to the conclusion that Israel must be boycotted only now. But he has held essentially the same views for many years - at least ten as far as I know. The reason "boycotts only harden Israeli opinion" is that like the "ZIonism is Racism" resolution, it is clear that boycotts are not directed at making peace with Israe, but rather at making peace without Israel - at destroying Israel.

Ami Isseroff

Boycotts only harden Israeli opinion
Far from saving this traumatised nation, boycotts are a gift to the fearmongers – we must educate and persuade Israelis instead

Benjamin Pogrund
guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 August 2009 11.35 BST

The most inaccurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. That's the exact opposite of what Neve Gordon said on Cif last week. Level whatever criticisms you want against Israel – start with West Bank occupation and oppression of Palestinians, and go on to the domestic discrimination suffered by the Arab minority – but the simple fact is that none of it is the apartheid of the old South Africa. Abundant evidence of this is readily available, in the Guardian and elsewhere.

Why then is the comparison so often made? One reason, in a different context, is in the words of American comedian Stephen Colbert: "Remember kids! In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."

For some, the apartheid accusation is the way to destroy Israel. If Israel can be linked with apartheid then it can be denounced as illegitimate as was white-ruled South Africa and hence be wide open to international sanctions.

Those who pursue this couldn't care less about facts. They have an agenda and are unscrupulous about distortion, lying and exaggeration. Their ultimate purpose is exposed by how they answer a basic question: whether or not they accept the fact of Israel's existence.

Others use the apartheid label because they are genuinely affronted and angered by Israeli behaviour – from the occupation to the attack on Gaza – and it seems an easy way to reduce to digestible size the complexities of the national-religious struggle between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians over a small piece of land. It's wrong and it's lazy but that's how many people behave.

It is surprising, and disappointing, to find Gordon in these ranks. He is a professor of politics at a good Israeli university and one expects a more informed approach. I have never met him but see from his writing that he is a man of conscience. He condemns Israeli misdeeds and has long worked for peace, although to be sure he seems to be at the outer fringe of Israel's peace camp. So active is he that rightwing extremists rant at him and try to pressure his university to get rid of him.

Now, however, not only does he take over the apartheid line but he supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement aimed at Israel. That presumably includes the academic boycott that he has previously opposed; he thus becomes both the arrow and the target. He still has to explain how he will resolve this personal contradiction.

Equally the "double standard" which he rightly describes as a problem. Why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights, he asks. To which he could add the US because of its many human rights sins, Greece and Romania for mistreating their Roma people, India for Dalits, Turkey for Kurds, Lebanon's denial of rights to Palestinians, Cuba, Libya etc etc. He puts a good question, but does not give an answer.

The explanation for his new outlook is: "The Israeli peace camp has gradually dwindled so that today it is almost non-existent, and Israeli politics are moving more and more to the extreme right."

He is venting the left's despair. The left's influence has probably never been lower. Its efforts to foster peace with Palestinians are ignored. It has been ineffective in halting the rise of the right wing. It is powerless against an aggressively rightwing government whose leaders abusively blame it for Palestinian terrorism. Its warnings of settlement growth on the West Bank are trashed.

In dealing with this situation we are entitled to look to a professor of politics for insights and understanding of why it has happened, if only because therein lies possible solutions. It has not come about in a vacuum. But again, nothing.

However, the factors at work are obvious, such as the absence of a brave and visionary leadership (both Israeli and Palestinian). There is also, at bottom, the Jewish psyche shaped by history: the centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust, the triumph of the creation of Israel in 1948 and the immediate invasions by Arab neighbours to eradicate it and the unceasing rejectionism, wars and attacks since then.

The terrorism that Palestinians have resorted to has deeply traumatised Israelis. Suicide bombings have driven many or most Israelis to the right. Thousands of rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip and missiles by Hezbollah from Lebanon, add to the national anxiety. There is more than buffoonery in Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wanting to wipe Israel off the map: his nuclear ambitions are scary.

There is certainly Jewish over-sensitivity and over-reaction; some Jews misuse and manipulate antisemitism and the Holocaust to stoke up fears for their own purposes. But allowing for all this, the fact of antisemitism is still a potent and dangerous reality, whether in Arab bloodthirsty threats or the UN Human Rights Council singling out Israel for attack, or a stupid Swedish newspaper article alleging the stealing of human organs.

Day after day, Jewish paranoia is buttressed and justified: Jews see themselves in a world of menace in which their existence is always under threat. In this situation, boycotts, sanctions and divestment are not the way to persuade individual Israelis to change. To believe that it will do the trick is to fail to understand use of boycott as a tactic to achieve defined aims. Applied in this case it will harden Israeli opinion, and make people more determined to tell the world to go to hell. Far from saving Israel from itself, as Gordon wants, it will be a gift to the right wing who will trade on it to foster fear.

That doesn't mean all pressure is useless: it's of a different order when applied, for instance, by the US government through threat of withdrawal of loan guarantees or arms supplies, as has occurred in the past. Such action forces the leaders in government to justify themselves and explain to the public why they have landed the country in such trouble with its most powerful friend.

South Africa offers some lessons. Boycotts were but one of the measures that brought down apartheid and they had variable effects. Sports boycotts sapped the morale of whites; cultural boycotts mainly hurt elites who mostly opposed apartheid; disinvestment, causing loss of jobs, hit the black people whom it was intended to help; industry was not laid low – when Kodak left, Fuji came in; when Ford left, other car makers took over. The most effective action was probably the refusal by US banks in 1985 to roll over loans; that struck the foundations of the economy and was the beginning of the end. Then came the effects of the end of the cold war.

In the case of Israel, resorting to mass boycotts is an admission of failure. It's a cathartic response to despair and floundering. Israelis have turned their backs on Gordon so he blindly lashes out.

Yet there is an alternative. It's old-fashioned: educate and persuade. There is already a head start: opinion polls consistently show a majority of Israelis – and Palestinians too – accept a two-state solution as the means to peace. That must be built on: convince Israelis that they are not going to be murdered and thrown into the sea, and that their children – not only Gordon's two sons – can look forward to a secure future. Convince them that the world – or at least much of it – does not view them as more evil than any other people but wishes them well. Encourage and help maximum contact and co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians.

It's often boring, tedious work, with results that are not always immediately apparent. But it's an affirmation of hope about what can be achieved.

Continued (Permanent Link)

All about Israel boycotts and the anti-Israelism of the left

The problem of Israel boycotts is not new. This piece by Amos Kenan originally appeared in the Israel daily newspaper Yediot Achronot shortly after the Six-Day Way and was widely circulated among American Jewish students in North America looking for an answer to the anti-Israel New Left. Please keep in mind the context of the late-Sixties as you read these words.

Seek Peace and Pursue It

08/10/2009

A Letter to all Good People

By Amos Kenan

I am for Cuba. I love Cuba. I am opposed to the genocide perpetrated by the Americans in Vietnam. But I am an Israeli, therefore I am forbidden to take all these stands. Cuba does not want me to love her. Someone has decided that I am permitted to love only the Americans. I don't mind so much that someone, especially the good people everywhere, have decided to outlaw me. I shall be able to get along without their help. But I do mind that I am not permitted any longer to love and hate according to my feelings, and according to my political and moral inclinations, and that I am refused invitation or even admittance to parties held by the good people. I am not permitted any longer to toast justice with a glass of champagne. I am not permitted to eat caviar and denounce the Americans. I am not permitted to stroll in the sun-drenched streets of Havana, arm-in-arm with my erstwhile good friends from St. Germain, Via Veneto and Chelsea, and celebrate the memory of Che Guevara, casting a threatening look at imperialism. I am also finally and absolutely forbidden to sign petitions of all sorts for human rights.

This situation drives me slightly out of my mind. Therefore I wish to relate a few confused, disconnected stories. Perhaps some good man will find the connection. One day an Israeli submarine sank in the Mediterranean with its 69 crew members. Its SOS was answered, among others, by the British, Turkish and Greek fleets. The Russian navy, which cruised very close to the location, did not join in the search. Moscow radio, in its Arab broadcasts, took the trouble to denounce the countries whose ships rushed to help the lost submarine. It is a sacred principle of seamen of all nations to hasten to the aid of distressed vessels. The Israeli submarine was not on a war mission, and Israel is not in a state of war with the Soviet Union.

I am not so naive as to believe that this is anti-Semitism, Soviet style. I have never believed that the Russians are guided, in their calculations, by such powerful and sincere emotions as anti-Semitism, which is common to both progressive and reactionary camps. I know that the Russians conduct a cool and considered pragmatic policy, and are guided by clear political considerations. This was a political move, carried out as a part of a political game. The meaning of this move can only be: Israel must be isolated from the civilised human community. The rules that apply to the civilised community, rules of honour, consideration and mutual aid, do not apply to me. I am out. There is only one more step to the conclusion: the shedding of my blood is no crime.

Forgive my brutal way of putting things. I cannot conceive of it otherwise. If this was a move in a game, the game must have an object. The object is the penetration of the Middle East, and let us assume, for the sake of arguments, that this is for the purpose of advancing world revolution and the overthrow of imperialism. The Middle East contains 100m. Arabs and 2.5m. Israelis. But it is not so easy, in our enlightened world, to wipe out 2.5m. people. A reason, and a justification, are needed. You cannot wipe out just like that. First of all you must outlaw. Therefore you must not invite an Israeli communist party to a convention of communist parties. Therefore you must not invite a leftist Israeli author to a conference of leftist authors in Havana. There are no more class distinctions. There are only national distinctions. Even an Israeli leftist is an imperialist. And an oil sheikh is a socialist. Therefore it is permissible to compare me to the Nazis. It is permissible to call me a Gauleiter. It is permissible to mobilize all of the world's conscientious people against me—and without them you cannot do it—and all this because there is an object looming beyond the horizon, an object for the sake of which this tactic is justifiable and useful.

Until quite recently, I also belonged to the Good People. Meaning that not only did I sit in cafes and sign petitions for the release of political prisoners in countries not my own, not only did I join proclamations, after sipping my aperitif, for the release of the downtrodden from the yoke of imperialism in places I shall never reach; I also did something against what seemed to me to be oppression and injustice in my own country. During the 20 years of the existence of the State of Israel I helped with my pen, in my regular newspaper column, the fight against the injustices committed against the Arab minority. And not by the pen only, but also in demonstrations, and also when arraigned before a military tribunal. I am used to being called a traitor by local patriots. During the Six Day War, in June 1967, the battalion I served in was ordered to supervise the demolition of four Arab villages: I considered it my duty to desert from my unit, to write a report of this action, and to send the copies to the General Staff of the army, to members of the government and to Knesset members. This report has been translated and circulated in the world as a proof of Israel's crimes.

But permit me to conclude the story. The action I undertook was in flagrant violation of any military law. I have no idea what would have happened to a Red Army soldier were he to violate national and military discipline in such a manner. After returning to my unit, I was ordered to present myself—I, in rank a private—before the general commanding all the divisions on that front. He told me that he had read my report, and considered it his duty to inform me that what had occurred was a regrettable error, which will not recur. Deep in my heart I disbelieved his statement that this was only a mistake. I was convinced that whoever ordered such an action did not expect such resistance from within—the men of my battalion refused to carry out the order—and was alarmed at the impression such an action might create abroad. But I was glad that he found it necessary to announce that this was only an error. I asked him how he intended to ensure that the 'error' will never recur. On the spot he signed an order permitting me free movement in all occupied territories, so that I could see with my own eyes that such an action had not recurred.

But since then, in all the peace-papers in the world, my report about the destruction of villages has been reprinted over and over again, as if it happened only yesterday, as if it is happening all the time. And this is a lie. It is like writing that witches have been burnt at the stake in England—omitting the date. I hereby request all those who believed me when I reported a criminal act, to believe me now too. And those who do not believe me now, I hereby request to disbelieve my former report too, and not to believe me selectively, according to their convenience. I should also add that the town of Kalkiliya, which began to be demolished during the writing of my report, is now in the process of being rebuilt, after the expelled inhabitants have been brought back.

This does not mean that other injustices are not perpetrated now. The less you fight me, the more you would help me fight them. Even the most leftist of men will not consent to be slaughtered when a sword is pointed at his throat. Even when the sword is a progressive one, it does not make it any the pleasanter. The trouble is that not a single serious person in the world believes today that Israel was really in danger of being annihilated. This is the optical illusion of 1968. The gigantic Goliath is threatening little David. The fact that Goliath is a giant, and that David is small, is only an optical illusion. If Goliath triumphs and tramples David under his feet, it is a sign that he really is a giant. But if little David beats the giant, people say: the giant David has trampled poor little Goliath in the dust. I claim that Israel played the role of David. And I claim that even now, after the stunning victory, it still is little David who has indeed beaten the stunned Goliath, but Goliath still is a menacing giant. Today, no less than in June 1967, Israel is in danger of annihilation. Unless the enlightened world mobilises now, immediately, perhaps it will be too late. But I am afraid that there are not many people in the world today who will be sorry if victorious David is destroyed. A bitter suspicion rises in me that even the most enlightened among the most progressive people still adhere to the Christian tradition that they imbibed with their mothers' milk: Jew, stay on the cross. Never get off it. The day you get off the cross and hurl it at the heads of your crucifiers, we shall cease to love you. Today the Arabs boast of waging a revolutionary guerrilla warfare. They claim to have copied the Viet Cong method of warfare and to apply it in the Middle East. They march with Che Guevara's picture. This makes me laugh. Just as Che Guevara's picture hanging in the luxurious salons of Montparnasse made me laugh. I have always wondered whether Che Guevara had a picture of Che Guevara hanging in his salon. What is a Viet Cong? The Viet Cong is not white flags on buildings. The Viet Cong means fighting to the last man. The Viet Cong of the Middle East, whether those who demonstrate with Che Guevara's picture like it or not, are we. We are prepared, at any moment to wage the battle to the death. After the death camps, we are left with only one supreme value: existence.

Our existence today, is inconvenient for those who work at the global balance of power. It is more convenient that there should be two camps, one white, the other black. We number, as I said before, only 2.5m. people. On the global map, what is the value of a few hundred thousand leftists, opposing the Eshkol government policy and striving for a genuine peace with the Arabs, who strive to liberate themselves from the one-way dependence on American power? Somebody has already decided to sacrifice us. The history of revolution is full of such sacrifices since the days of the Spanish War. At one time world revolution had been sacrificed on the altar of the revolution in one country. Today the calculation is somewhat subtler. Today they try to explain to us that there is an Arab socialism. That there is an Egyptian socialism, and an Algerian socialism. There is a socialism of slave-traders, and a socialism of oil magnates. There are all kinds of socialism, all aiming really at one and the same thing—the overthrow of imperialism, which happens to be one and indivisible. Once there was only a single kind of socialsm, which fed on principles, some of them moral. On the day that morality died there was born the
particular, conventional socialism, changing from place to place and from time to time, for which I have no other name but National Socialism.

I want to live. What can I do if Russia, China, Vietnam, India, Yugoslavia, Sartre, Russell, Castro, have all decided that I am made all of a piece? It is inconvenient for them to admit that there is an opposition in Israel too. Why should there be an opposition in Israel if in the Popular Democracies in Cuba or Algeria, there is only one party? And perhaps they do have pangs of conscience, but they have made their calculation, and found out that I am only one, only 10, only 100,000; and on the other side there are tens of millions, all led like a single man, in a single party, towards the light, towards the sun. And if so, who am I? I will tell you who I am: I am the man who will confuse and confound your progressive calculations. I have too much love for this vain world, a world of caviar, television, sunny beaches, sex and good wine. You go ahead and toast the revolution with champagne. I shall toast myself, my own life, bottle in one hand, rifle in the other. You send Soviet arms to Egypt. You isolate me. And in order to make it easier to isolate me, you change my name. My flesh, which you eat, you call fish. You don't want to protect me— neither against the Arabs, nor against the Russians, nor against Dayan or Johnson.

Moreover, when I try to call on you and tell you that I am against Dayan, against Eshkol, against Ben-Gurion, and ask for your help, you laugh at me and demand that I should return to the 4 June borders, unconditionally. Hold it! I refuse to play this game. If you give me back the pistol with which I tried to kill you, I won't kill you. Because I am a nice fellow. But if you don't give it back to me, I shall kill you, because you are a bad fellow. Why were the 4 June borders not peace borders on 4 June but will become peace borders now? Why were not the U.N. partition plan borders of 1947 peace borders then but will become so now? Why should I return the bandit his gun as a reward for having failed to kill me? I want peace peace peace peace peace peace peace. I am ready to give everything back in exchange for peace. And I shall give nothing back without peace. I am ready to solve the refugee problem. I am ready to accept an independent Palestinian state. I am ready to sit and talk. About everything, all at the same time. Direct talks, indirect talks, all this is immaterial. But peace. Until you agree to have peace, I shall give back nothing. And if you force me to become a conqueror, I shall become a conqueror. And if you force me to become an oppressor, I shall become an oppressor. And if you force me into the same camp with all the forces of darkness in the world, there I shall be.

There is no lack in Israel of rabid militarists. Their number is steadily increasing, the more our isolation becomes apparent. Nasser helps Dayan, Kosygin helps Eshkol. Fidel Castro helps the Jewish chauvinists. Who of the world's giants cares how many more Jews, how many more Arabs, bleed to death in the Sinai sands? There is no lack here of mad hysterical militarists. All those quiet citizens who went out to war with K.L.M. handgrips and in laundry trucks, who scribbled on their tanks: 'We want Home' . All those who fought without anger, without hatred, only for their lives, are becoming militaristic, convinced that only Israeli power, and nothing else in the world, will ever help us.

The only ones who are prepared to defend me, for reasons I don' t like at all, are the Americans. It is convenient for them, for the time being. You are flinging me towards America, the bastion of democracy and the murderer of Vietnam, who tramples the downtrodden peoples and spares my life, who oppresses the Negroes and supplies me with arms to save myself. You leave me no other alternative. You don' t even offer me humiliating terms, to be admitted through the rear door into the progressive orgy. You don' t even want me to overthrow my government. You only want me to surrender, unconditionally, and to believe the spokesmen of the revolution that henceforth no Jewish doctors will be murdered, and that they will limit themselves to the declaration that Zionism is responsible for the riots in Warsaw.

Very funny. The truth is that I and Sartre, two people with the same vision, more or less, with the same ideal, more or less, and if I may be permitted to impertinence, with the same moral level, more or less, are now at the two sides of the barricade. We have been pushed to both sides by the cold calculations of the people who sent us, or abandoned us. But the fact remains—these are not Americans shooting Russians, or capitalists shooting socialists, or freedom-fighters shooting the oppressors. It is I, shooting Sartre. I see him in my gun sights; he sees me in his gun sights. I still don' t know which of us is faster, more skilled, or more determined to kill or be killed. Neither do I know who shall be more lucky—the one who has no other alternative, or the one who acts out of choice. One thing is clear to me; if I survive, I shall mourn Sartre's death more than he would mourn mine. And if that happens, I shall never be consoled until I wipe from under the heavens both the capitalists and the communists. Or they me. Or each the other. Or all destroy all. And if I survive even that, without a god but without prophets either, my life will have no sense whatsoever. I shall have nothing else to do but walk on the banks of streams, or on the top of the rocks, watch the wonders of nature, and console myself with words of Ecclesiastes, the wisest of men: "For the light is sweet, and it is good for the eyes to see the sun

Continued (Permanent Link)

Swedes stand by blood libel, insist on investigation, condemn envoy apology

The Swedish government retracted its ambassadors condemnation of an an anti-Semitic canard published in AftonBladet, Sweden's largest newspaper, that claimed that the IDF kills Palestinians in order to harvest their organs for transplants. After Sweden's ambassador to Israel, Borsiin Bonnier, apologized for the article, opposition Green Party spokesman Per Gahrton said Bonnier should be recalled and taught the basics of Swedish freedom of speech. YNET reported:

Sweden's Foreign Ministry on Thursday said a response by the Swedish Embassy in Israel to a report by the Aftonbladet news saying IDF soldiers killed Palestinians in order to harvest their organs does not represent the government's stance.


The embassy had stated that the report was "appalling". But the Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman said, "The embassy in Tel Aviv responded in accordance to Israeli public opinion, however the Swedish government is committed to freedom of the press."

She added that Israel had not issued an official complaint on the report.

Another Swedish government spokesperson, Anders Jorle said, "The Foreign Ministry would not have acted in the same way" as the ambassador.

The editor of Aftonbladet, Jan Helin, said, "It's deeply unpleasant and sad to see such a strong propaganda machine using centuries-old anti-Semitic images in an apparent attempt to get an obviously topical issue off the table." Helin called it an opinion piece raising questions of Israel in the context of a suspected link to Israel in that U.S. case. He denied any suggestion of anti-Semitism from his paper.

There was nothing in the presentation of the article to indicate that it was supposed to be an opinion piece rather than a factual article. The dodge of disseminating lies as facts and then claiming it is "opinion" is a common one, though some journalistic standards officially forbid such behavior. Helin now has the best of both worlds, since he can defend the libel as just "opinion" while at the same time insisting that it is a "topical issue" that should be discussed, implying that it is true or has some basis in fact. It seems the blood libel is always "topical."

If a person publishes an opinion piece stating that a Martian is impersonating the President of the United States, is it just nonsense or a topical issue that should be discussed? If I write that Holocaust survivors remember Jan Helin's father as a volunteer SS Einsatzgruppenfuhrer who participated in the Babi Yar massacre, I am after all just quoting a source, right? It doesn't have to be true. Is it an opinion piece or a topical issue? How about if I quote witnesses who insist they saw a homosexual orgy with the participation of Donald Bostrom, author of the article, and editor Helin, both dressed as Gestapo officers? How can the public be protected from random inventions of racists and sensationalists if every such claim can hide behind the defense of "opinion piece" and get the protection of "freedom of the press?"

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Sweden revives blood libel against Israel

"Legitimate criticism" of Israel reached new lows of depravity in Sweden when Sweden's leading daily newspaper revived the medieval blood libel accusation against the IDF. in a sensational article titled ""Our sons plundered for their organs"(Swedish article is here: aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab). Based on this accusation, "Anti-Zionist" Web sites and e-mail lists are hurrying to circulate the "news" that the IDF kills Palestinian Arabs in order to extract their organs for transplants.

The reporter, one Donald Bostrom, assembled a farrago of unrelated stories about illegal organ trafficking from Israel, including a story about the arrest of a New York Jew engaged in selling kidneys contrary to Israeli law. He used hearsay and rumor from Palestinians about the fate of relatives killed during the Intifada:

I was in the area and worked on a book when I several times was contacted by UN staff who were concerned about the development. Those who contacted me felt that body theft actually took place, but that they were unable to act. On behalf of a television company, I then went around and spoke to a large number of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza....

"'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied. - Why did they keep the bodies up to five days before we can bury them? What happened to the bodies in the meantime? And why is the autopsy when the cause of death is obvious, and in all cases against our will? And why are the bodies returned at night?".

Evidently, the rumors spread due to ignorance of forensic autopsy procedures and Jew hate, encouraged by UN personnel. Bostrom described in detail the case of one Bilal Achmed Ghanian, 19, whose body was returned after autopsy after he was killed in 1992. It is probable, but unclear, that the victims were dead when they were evacuated. Of course, organs cannot be harvested from cadavers. Bostrom quoted an IDF denial and explanation that the autopsies were routine, but Bostrom implied that the denial is false:

The routine autopsy of killed Palestinians, as told by the army spokesman is not true in reality in the Occupied Territories. .

The use of rumor and hearsay, and more especially the unrelated material about illegal organ traffic, make it clear that Bostrom set out to intentionally libel Israel and the Jewish people. The Israeli ambassador lodged a strong protest, but this can hardly be a deterrent to people like Bostrom. If a similar report about Muslims had been published in a Scandinavian journal, wouldn't there be violent world wide demonstrations as there were after the Danish Muhammad cartoons?

Swedish Jews claim Bostrom is a known anti-Semite and AftonBladet has published similar articles. The Swedish Embassy in Israel has apologized, but a culture editor of Aftonbladet told Haaretz that the publication stands by the story and insists on an "international investigation" of the alleged nefarious Jewish activities.

The libel of organ stealing is not new and may have originated with Yasser Arafat himself. According to a 2002 Honest Reporting article:

the Islamic Association for Palestine reported that Yasser Arafat "has accused the Israeli apartheid regime of murdering Palestinian children and youths and extricating their vital organs for organ transplants."

It is one thing when racist Palestinian leaders make accusations of Jewish blood libel, but quite another phenomenon and much more ominous when they appear in a respected northern European "Nordic" country journal. It seems that there are no longer any real limits to what may be published under the guise of supposedly "legitimate criticism of Israel." A competing Swedish newspaper has published a horrified editorial.The liberal Sydsvenskan - southern Sweden's major daily ran an opinion piece of Mats Skogkär called "Antisemitbladet" (a play on the name Aftonbladet):

"We have heard the story before, in one form or the other. It follows the traditional pattern of conspiracy theory: a great number of loose threads that the theorist tempts the reader to tie into a neat knot without having been provided with any proven connection whatsoever..."

"Whispers in the dark. Anonymous sources. Rumors. That is all it takes. After all we all know what they [the Jews] are like, don't we: inhuman, hardened. Capable of anything," the opinion piece says. "Now all that remains is the defense, equally predictable: 'Anti-Semitism' No, no, just criticism of Israel."

The tale is not told in a cultural vacuum of course. The stories of Bilal Achmed Ghanian and the others are backed by a rich European tradition of "legitimate criticism" of Jews. They have joined the European pantheon of fraudulent blood libel martys, which includes numerous "saints" revered by the Catholic church for many years, such as Saint Andreas of Rinn , Saint Simon of Trent, and Saint Hugh of Lincoln. Aftonbladet has carried on in a more modern tradition of Nordic journalism, illustrated by the following twentieth century cartoon from the Westdeutchen Beobachter, also considered "legitimate criticism" by its defenders:

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Naim Ateek: An Anglican priest disgraces authentic Christianity

Naim Ateek and his Sabeel group are leaders in Christian Israel bashing efforts of mainline Protestant churches in the USA. Ateek and Sabell do not believe in a two state solution and is therefore sabotaging the peace process. If they were Jews with the same ideas, they would be called "ultranationalist" and obstacles to peace. But their one state solution is an Arab state in which the Jews will have no right to self determination. For what reason are they given a platform to legitimize their noxious views at countless churches in the USA?

In his article e Anglican priest disgraces authentic Christianity, Dexter Van Zile asks what type of god inheres in the so-called peacemaking ministry of Anglican Priest Naim Ateek, founder of Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, notes that Naim Ateek is drumming up support for his latest book, A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation (Orbis, 2008), in which he falsely accuses Israel of perpetrating a "slow and creeping genocide" against Palestinians — who have one of the fastest growing populations in the world.

Ateek has long been a fixture at "Christian" events of a certain kind. The book gives him an excuse to peddle a vile that repeats Christian anti-Semitic accusations and repackages them as "theology." As Van Zile points out:

Apparently, leveling false accusations at the Jewish people and their homeland is not enough to get one barred from polite society in 21st century America.

He concludes:

The story Naim Ateek tells about the Arab-Israeli conflict, cloaked as it is in the language of Christian peacemaking, attests to the existence of a deaf, dumb and blind god who would use Muslim and Arab violence against Israel as a scourge against the Jewish people.

Such a god is not worthy of worship.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

So-called "Arab Jews"

So-called "Arab Jews"

The term "Arab Jews" (eg see "The Mizrahi('Arab') Jews: The Forgotten Refugees" where the word "Arab" is used ironically) is used in many advocacy articles, such as those of David Shasha, Ella Habiba Shohat and others, referring to Jews who lived in Arab countries, and often extended to Jews who lived in Muslim countries. The term was also used by Prince Turki al Feisal of Saudi Arabia, provoking a debate.

Usually "Arab Jews" is employed by anti-Zionists, who are trying to create a mythical Jewish-Arab society where Jews and Arabs lived in peace and harmony, enjoying the benefits of Islamic tolerance and Arab culture that was destroyed by Zionism, as if the Golden age of Harun al Rashid and Muslim Spain had extended throughout Arabdom and Islamdom in space and time. Some pro-Zionist sources have used this term as well, (eg. "Hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews fled Arab states").

Though my ancestors were born in Turkish Palestine, their ancestors had come from Europe. I am not personally affected by this term, but it seems jarring and out of place to me, just as it does to Bataween (see Reject the Expression "Arab Jew" ) , and to Philologos (see Reject the 'Arab Jew'). As I do not have any personal experience or history to rely upon, I can only reason by analogy from the experience of Jews in Europe, which is understood far more clearly.

Ella Habiba Shohat asserted:

"I am an Arab Jew. Or, more specifically, an Iraqi Israeli woman living, writing and teaching in the U.S…. To be a European or American Jew has hardly been perceived as a contradiction, but to be an Arab Jew has been seen as a kind of logical paradox, even an ontological subversion [leading to] a profound and visceral schizophrenia, since for the first time in our history Arabness and Jewishness have been imposed as antonyms…"

Shohat does seem to have a point at first glance. Of course, if Ella Habiba Shohat wants to call herself an "Arab Jew" it is her privilege, but it seems to to me that most Jews from Arab countries object to this term. As an outsider, I have been trying to explore why the term "Arab Jew" turns my stomach, and why it is objectionable to so many Jews whose ancestors came from Arab countries. After all, we do not object to "European Jew" or "American Jew" or "Egyptian Jew." What is the difference? Why is Ella Habiba Shohat wrong?

The question can perhaps be answered in Jewish fashion, by asking two or three other questions. "What do we mean by 'Jew?'" "What do we mean by 'Arab'"? But first let us ask, "Why aren't Arabs who live in Israel called 'Jewish Arabs'"?

Ella Shohat, David Shasha, Prince Turki al Feisal and others may immediately object that "Jew" refers to a religion and not to a people. Therein lies the first part of the problem. Many of the Arabs of Israel, or as many prefer to call themselves, Palestinians, refuse to accept the validity of our nationhood, and would not like to be associated with the Jewish "religion." But I define my own identity. I do not try to define that of Prince Feisal or that of Mahmoud Abbas, but I don't want them to tell me that I am a member of a religion, or perhaps an "Arab Jew," just because I live in the Middle East.

My ancestors came to the land from Europe, over 100 years ago. Some of my cousin's ancestors came to the land from a different part of Europe, Spain to be exact, several hundred years ago. Even if I spoke fluent Arabic and wore a kaffiyeh, I would not be mistaken for an "Arab Jew," and neither should my cousin's ancestors be called "Arab Jews." If there are "Arab Jews" then the statement, "I am an Arab and you are a Jew" would not make much sense. Nor would it make any sense to say that the Arab Arabs attacked the "Arab Jews" of Hebron and Jerusalem in 1929, yelling "Idbah al Yahoud" - "Murder the Jews." Perhaps they should have yelled, "Murder the Arabs." If there were were really Arab Jews, it would make no sense for Arabs to say "Kulu al ard Arabi" (All the land is Arab) or "Filastin Arduna wa'al yahud kilabuna" (Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs) in order to assert that Israel does not belong to the Jews.. If we are all different types of Arabs, there would be no quarrel here and no problem. There would not be an Israel-Arab conflict. At most there would be a conflict between the Muslim Arabs of Palestine and the Jewish Arabs of the Land of Israel. We can see immediately that the whole line of reasoning is utterly absurd.

In the anti-Zionist narrative, the "Old Yishuv" Jews of Palestine were "Arabs," while the Zionists were all Europeans. The "Arab Jewsm" so the fiction goes, lived in wonderful harmony with their Muslim neighbors, save for a few pogroms here and there that can be excused on the grounds of Arab exuberance. But the new Zionist European Jews did not fit in. In reality of course, Zionism was "invented" by Sephardi as well as European Jews, and was heralded by the writings of Rabbi Yehudah Alkalai before Theodor Herzl was born, but "narratives" reinvent their own historic reality for their own political purposes.

If all that were required to end the Israeli-Arab conflict would be that the Jews of Israel integrate into Arab culture, we could learn Arabic, eat even more humus, tehina, olives, ful and barud, and learn to play the oud and the ney and dance the debka. The early Shomrim did precisely that. They dressed as Bedu and spoke Arabic and did horse tricks better than the natives. They played the ney and sang Arabic songs and danced Arabic dances. Nonetheless, no Arab would call them Arabs or Arab Jews. We would also have to ask why, If Jews living in the Arab countries were "Arab Jews," these particular "Arabs" were summarily expelled from Iraq, Egypt, Libya and other "Arab" countries.

In times past in the Middle East, there were ethnic groups, but for a long time there were no real nation states or national movements. Therefore, there perhaps was not much occasion for opposing Arabness and Jewishness as antonyms in the past. Jew can refer to a person of a particular religion, or a person belonging to an ethnic group, people or nation. It has only in more recent times consciously assumed the full political and social implications of "nation," because the modern consciousness of nationhood is only a few hundred years old at most. Arab originally referred to the people of the Arabian peninsula, an ethnic and tribal grouping, as well as a language and culture group. They included Jews undeniably, who could in some cases quite properly be called "Arab Jews."

However, after the rise of Muhammad, the Arabs forcibly converted or spewed out all the Jews from among them, beginning infamously at Khaybar. From then on, the existence of "Arab Jews" within Arab society was tenuous at best, just as the existence of "German Jews" in German society was a contradiction that had to resolve itself. "Arab Jews" could never fully participate in Arab society. They could not go to war with Arabs, or take part in all aspects of Arab culture, which were built for the most part on Islam. The Arab empire spread over the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and the term "Arab countries" was applied indiscriminately to Egypt and to Morocco and Tunisia and Algeria, because the conquered inhabitants of these countries adopted the Arabic language. The so-called "Arab Jews" might occasionally be ministers in these countries or advisers, but they could not, by law, be knights or rulers, and their political successes very often ended in disaster and Pogroms.

These "Arab Jews" moreover, were very unlike the German Jews or the French Jews in a significant way. European Jews came to a host country with a majority culture. The Jews of Persia, later called Iran and Iraq, were there before these countries were Arab countries. In Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey there are also Kurds and in North Africa there are native Amazigh peoples. None of these call themselves "Arabs" and nobody calls them "Arabs" except perhaps in propaganda. Only Jews are given this "honor."

If the term "Arab Jews" was based on reality, and expressed the great identification of the Jewish people or religion with surrounding Arabic society and of the Arabs with their Jewish brethren, then we have to ask why the Jews of Sana in Yemen were expelled in the 17th century for example. Why did one group of Arabs take it upon themselves, for no reason, to persecute a different group of "Arabs?"

In modern times, the division became more acute. Arab nationalism arose and became a political force. The Ba'ath party was created as an expression of Arab nationalism. In theory, all 'Arabs' could join this party, but it seems that while it was created by a Christian and a Muslis and had a Christian and Muslim membership, the Ba'ath party did not include many Jews, if any. How was it that the "Arab" Jews were excluded from such a central and defining "Arab" undertaking? Following the Ba'ath party, Gamal Abdel Nasser developed Pan-Arabism. Isn't it peculiar that the Jews, so active in other progressive movements in Europe and even in the Middle East, were not prominent players in the most important Arab nationalist movements? The Baath party had an unfortunate habit of hanging certain "Arabs," just because those "Arabs" were Jews. Why did they distinguish between one sort of Arab and another? The term "Arab Jew" cannot explain this very well.

The obvious truth is that unlike the term "European," which is descriptive of a culture and geographic location, "Arab" today refers to a political and national movement that excludes the legitimacy of Jewish nationality. This is especially the case when the term is used by anti-Zionists. So a part of the answer to Ella Shohat's innocent quesion is, "It's the politics, stupid." But of course, she is not stupid and knows very well that the "Arab Jew" canard is trying to make a political point, and to create a political reality where none existed and none ever did exist. In the original countries of their Diaspora, Ella Shohat's ancestors, and David Shasha's ancestors were not "Arabs" when it came to assigning national allegiances, and they weren't included in real Arab national movements. They might have been prominent journalists and even politicians, but they remained on the periphery and found themselves advocating causes that were really alien to their own reality. They might be mistaken for "Arabs" by USA immigration officers, not by Arabs.

Ella Shohat's family in Iraq were Iraqi Jews, just as Theodor Herzl's family were Austrian Jews. But just as Hitler did not include these "Austrians" in his vision of the greater German Reich, so the Arab nationalists who started the Farhud pogrom in Baghdad did not include Ella's family in the Arabic Ouma. Ella's problem with identity is really the same as that of many European Jews, who tried so hard to be good Germans or good Poles or good Ukrainians or Russians or Communists and to advocate the national and political aspirations of their host country or society. In some rare cases this adopted Jewish nationalism succeeded, but very often in ended in tragedy, rejection and murder. With the rise of nationalism, almost every Diaspora community experienced the same problem. They found that despite adopting the language and some of the culture of their host countries, they could not really be "part of the action" in most cases. Sooner or later, many were vomited forth from their adopted societies whether they liked it or not. This produced the deeply conflicted feelings of many Jews toward their "old countries" - whether the "old country" was Germany or Iraq or Egypt. Jews were well off in Iraq, but they had also been well off in Germany and Austria. The rise of nationalism threatened Jewish existence everywhere in the Diaspora. There is nothing new in that statement and no big discovery.

It is too bad that the Shashas and the Ella Shohats of the world didn't yet come to terms with that frustrating and depressing aspect of Jewish existence -- rejection from a host group with which you may want to identify -- but there is no reason for them to invent a false narrative that portrays a perfect Diaspora extence that never was. German Jews could invent a similar tale, if they left out a few unpleasant details. Wasn't the Lorelei written by a Jew? After all, didn't they have their Heine and their Walther Rathenau and their Fritz Haber? Of course, Rathenau was assassinated by the Nazis and Haber died broken hearted after being disgraced and expelled. But they were very very German, these Jews, with all their heart and soul. Only the Germans didn't think so.

Nonetheless, the terms "German Jews" "French Jews," "Egyptian Jews," "Iraqi Jews" or "Yemeni Jews" all have a reasonable meaning, either because they denote the culture of the group of people in question, or their place of residence or their nationalities. "European Jews" makes sense in several contexts. "Europe" is not a nationality opposed to Judaism, and the northern European Jews had in common their own jargon language (Yiddish). set of customs and social network. "Arab Jews" does not make sense in the same way, since Yemenite Jews do not have the same customs as Iraqi Jews and neither are similar to the Jews or Turkey (descendants of Spanish Jews) or those of North Africa. There is only one country called Arabia, and there are no Jews living in it. There is only one national movement called "Arab" and Jews are excluded from this movement as a national group. Exceptions might be made for "token Jew" individuals to "prove" a perverse political point. Turki al Feisal may talk about "Arab Jews" but he will not let any of them become citizens of Saudi Arabia in the foreseeable future. Why would it be desirable or necessary for Israeli Jews, all of us, to become "Arab Jews" in order for there to be peace in the Middle East? Are there Arab Turks and Arab Persians? If someone suggested that all the Arabs must become Jewish Arabs or Zionist Arabs in order for there to be peace, Turki al Feisal would be very angry indeed.

"Arab Jews" might have been a logical possibility 200 years ago, when "Arab" referred only to culture and language, just as "German Jews" were German speaking Jews who lived in the various principalities where German was spoken, but that is no longer a reality."Arab Jews" as a term today seems to have a logic similar to "mice of the feline persuasion." The mice are not invited to the cat party except as dinner, and the Jews are not invited to the Arab party except in a capacity analogous to that of the mice.

Whatever the connotation of "Arab Jews" might have been two or three centuries ago, today the term must represent something between a fiction and an oxymoron. Through my admittedly non-Mizrachi Jewish eyes, it seems to be an absurd attempt at make believe, no less absurd and dangerous than the term "Germans of the Mosaic faith" coined by Reform Jews in 19th century Germany. Just as there are Jews who insist that they are "Arab Jews," so there are Jews who insist, even after all the horrible history of the last century, that they want to be Germans or Poles who are incidentally "of Jewish origin." It is their right to call themselves whatever they like. At best, it will mean giving up and forgetting their Jewish origin. At worst, it will end in tragedy. The tuition for understanding the depth of that folly was prohibitively high, and should not be paid again.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Mennonite "Peace" group hypocrisy on Iran

A letter from Dexter Van Zile. He has asked us to blog about it - everyone, so we have. It is truly pitiful that Mennonites are carrying on a shameful relation with the worst Ayatollahs in Iran while they are murdering their own people.

Hello Everyone:

As you know, the Mennonite Central Committee has been one of the more vociferous and unfair critics of Israel.

This pacifist group has allowed its prophetic voice to be used as a weapon of war against Israel.

Its activists have also worked to legitimize Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the eyes of the American people.

When I've spoken with the people from the MCC about their dialogue with Ahmadinejad, they respond by saying that it is a good thing to keep the lines of communications open even with people we regard as "enemies." They also state that they have expressed their concern to Ahmadinejad about his comments regarding Israel.

Now that the Iranian regime has revealed itself to be quite willing to use violence to suppress its opposition, the MCC, whose activists have met with Ahmadinejad, have fallen silent.

They are not using the lines of communication that they said were so necessary to maintain.

On June 15, I wrote a post on CAMERA's website about this silence.

I have recently updated this post with some new information that frankly caused my jaw to drop. In short, the MCC has engaged in dialogue with with scholars from the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute (IKERI) located on Qom, Iran. This institute is directed by Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, described by The Star (Toronto) as "spiritual adviser to Iran's hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

One dissident described Mesbah-Yazdi as "the most dangerous Mullah in Iran." The Toronto Star reported that Mesbah-Yazdi is "is a strong advocate of the death penalty, public flogging and the use of suicide bombers against "enemies of Islam."

It's obvious enough to state that if Israel were behaving the way the regime in Iran is behaving, the MCC would not hesitate to issue a ringing condemnation.

I don't know how any of you want to use this information, but please, read the post [article is below ]. If you've got a blog, please blog on it. Feel free to quote my message in its entirety. [That's what we did!]

http://camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=24&x_article=1686 [article is below]

Sincerely,

Dexter Van Zile
Christian Media Analyst
CAMERA
PO Box 35040
Boston, MA 02135-0001
617-789-3672 Voice
617-851-0912
http://www.camera.org
email: dexter@camera.org

UPDATED: Mennonite Central Committee Silent on Iran

When it comes to rehabilitating his image in the United States, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can count on the Mennonite Central Committee for assistance.

The organization has sponsored two dinners and an interfaith pilgrimage to Tehran during which Christian leaders have met with the Iranian President and offered kind words about the man afterwards.

Now that events demonstrate that Ahmadinejad is the public face of a brutal regime willing to suppress the people it governs, the organization has fallen silent.

After more than two days of protests and violence in Iran, the MCC has not published any statement about the regime on its website, nor does it have any plans to.

On the morning of June 15, 2009, CAMERA sent an email to Ed Nyce, the MCC's Media and Education Coordinator asking whether or not the organization was going to issue any statement about Iran.

Nyce's response, which came on the afternoon of June 15, was succinct and direct:

"We have no plans to issue a statement."

When asked in subsequent communications (email and a voice message) why the MCC had nothing to say, Nyce reiterated in an email that the MCC has "no plans to issue a statement."

The MCC's silence about the events in Iran is remarkable given its highly visible campaign to legitimize Ahmadinejad in the U.S. This campaign began in February 2007 when the MCC organized a meeting of Christian leaders with the Iranian President in Teheran. The delegation held a press conference in Washington, D.C. upon its return to the U.S. Christian leaders reportedly challenged Ahmadinejad about his anti-Semitic statements, but their complaints had little apparent effect. Four days after the delegation's meeting Ahmadinejad appeared in Sudan, where according to Islamic Republic News Agency (Iran's official news service), he said "Zionists are the true manifestation of Satan."

In September 2007, the MCC organized an ecumenical dinner attended by Ahmadinejad and numerous Christian leaders in New York City.

The leaders met with the Iranian president after he addressed the United Nations on September 26, 2007. According to The New York Times, Albert Lobe, executive director of the Mennonite Central committee told Ahmadinejad "We meant to extend to you the hospitality which a head of state deserves."

Lobe's obsequiousness was apparently a response to the treatment Ahmadinejad received at Columbia University on Sept. 24, when the school's president Lee Bollinger called him "a petty and cruel dictator."

The MCC organized a similar dinner with Ahmadinejad in September 2008. After this meeting, MCC officials reassured the American people that the Iranian President had no desire to destroy Israel militarily, but merely supported a "one-state solution" to the conflict in which "Israelis and Palestinians elect a single government to represent both peoples."

When it comes to portraying Ahmadinejad in a sympathetic light, or condemning Israeli policies, such as the construction of the security barrier, the Mennonite Central Committee has been quite vocal. But when it comes time to assess the behavior of the Iranian regime in light of the Christian gospel (which it uses so often to judge Israel), the group falls silent.

UPDATE - June 24, 2009

In addition to sponsoring the two dinners and interfaith pilgrimage mentioned above, the Mennonite Central Committee has had multiple face-to-face contacts with scholars from the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute (IKERI) located on Qom, Iran. This institute is directed by Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, described by The Star (Toronto) as "spiritual adviser to Iran's hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

According to a report in the The Star, a May 2007 meeting between scholars from the institute and Mennonite scholars at the University of Waterloo sponsored by the MCC provoked a protest from Iranians in Canada. The Star reported:

"We're not against dialogue but the Mennonites are naïve if they think they can open one with these people," said Haideh Moghissi, a York University sociologists who with 17 others signed a protest letter sent to the university.

She says Mesbah-Yazdi and his followers are "at the forefront of oppression in Iran," responsible for silencing all intellectuals who disagree with the regime.

"It hurts to know that while people are losing their lives over there, some people are opening the door to 'dialogue' over here. Why doesn't the institute open it back there?"

The Star also reports that Mesbah-Yazdi "is a strong advocate of the death penalty, public flogging and the use of suicide bombers against "enemies of Islam."

"He is the most dangerous mullah in Iran," says Saeed Rahnema, director of York University School of Public Policy and Administration, who spearheaded the protest.

Despite complaints from Iranian dissidents about the meeting in 2007, the MCC sponsored another dialogue with scholars from IKERI in Qom on May 24-27, 2009.

According to an article about the most recent meeting published on the website of Conrad Grebel University College (which sent scholars to the dialogue), the participants witnessed "active campaigning on behalf of presidential candidates."

The article also states that at the conference's end, "the Mennonite delegation expressed its gratitude to IKERI for unsurpassed hospitality, delicious meals, comfortable accommodations, and excellent conference meeting space."

IKERI apparently treated its Mennonite guests with more respect and deference than the Iranian government has shown to its own citizens. According to CNN, witnesses report that government security forces are beating people like "animals."

Cross posted: Israel News Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Violent confrontations in Iran - Why is everyone silent?

Where, oh where, are the crowds of rights demonstrators, where is Oxfam? Amnesty? Human Rights Watch? They issued minor press releases, but nobody gave them much coverage. If Israel or the US were murdering people in this way, there would be an outcry all over the world. Streets would be flooded with protestors. Where is Tikkun? Doesn't Michael Lerner's sense of justice extend to Iranians? Don't they have rights?

Violent confrontations in Iran - Why is everyone silent?

Ma'ariv (Monday, June 22, 09)

by Ben Caspit and Ben-Dror Yemini (opinion)

(Hebrew original)

Tell us, where is everyone? Where did all the people who demonstrated against Israel's brutality in Operation Cast Lead, in the Second Lebanon War, in Operation Defensive Shield, or even in The Hague, when we were dragged there unwillingly after daring to build a separation barrier between us and the suicide bombers, disappear to? We see demonstrations here and there, but these are mainly Iranian exiles. Europe, in principle, is peaceful and calm. So is the United States. Here and there a few dozens, here and there a few hundreds. Have they evaporated because it is Tehran and not here?

All the peace-loving and justice-loving Europeans, British professors in search of freedom and equality, the friends filling the newspapers, magazines and various academic journals with various demands for boycotting Israel, defaming Zionism and blaming us and it for all the ills and woes of the world?could it be that they have taken a long summer=2 0vacation? Now of all times, when the Basij hooligans have begun to slaughter innocent civilians in the city squares of Tehran? Aren't they connected to the Internet? Don't they have YouTube? Has a terrible virus struck down their computer? Have their justice glands been removed in a complicated surgical procedure (to be re-implanted successfully for the next confrontation in Gaza)? How can it be that when a Jew kills a Muslim, the entire world boils, and when extremist Islam slaughters its citizens, whose sole sin is the aspiration to freedom, the world is silent?

Imagine that this were not happening now in Tehran, but rather here. Let's say in Nablus. Spontaneous demonstrations of Palestinians turning into an ongoing bloodbath. Border Policemen armed with knives, on motorcycles, butchering demonstrators. A young woman downed by a sniper in midday, dying before the cameras. Actually, why imagine? We can just recall what happened with the child Mohammed a-Dura. How the affair (which was very harsh, admittedly) swept the world from one end to another. The fact that a later independent investigative report raised tough questions as to the identity of the weapon from which a-Dura was shot, did not make a difference to anyone. The Zionists were to blame, and that was that.

And where are the world's leaders? Where is the wondrous rhetorical ability of Barack Obama? Where has his sublime vocabulary gone? Where is the desire, that is supposed to be built into all American presidents, to defend and act on behalf of freedom seekers around the globe? What is this stammering?

A source who is connected to the Iranian and security situation, said yesterday that if Obama had shown on the Iranian matter a quarter of the determination with which he assaulted the settlements in the territories, everything would have looked different. "The demonstrators in Iran are desperate for help," said the man, who served in very senior positions for many years, "they need to know that they have backing, that there is an entire world that supports them, but instead they see indifference. And this is happening at such a critical stage of this battle for the soul of Iran and the freedom of the Iranian people. It's sad."

Or the European Union, for example. The organization that speaks of justice and peace all year round. Why should its leaders not declare clearly that the world wants to see a democratic and free Iran, and support it unreservedly? Could it be20that the tongue of too many Europeans is still connected to dark places? The pathetic excuse that such support would give Khamenei and Ahmadinejad an excuse to call the demonstrators "Western agents," does not hold water. They call them "Western agents" in any case, so what difference does it make?

To think that just six months ago, when Europe was flooded with demonstrations against Israel, leftists and Islamists raised pictures of Nasrallah, the prot?g? of the ayatollah regime. The fact that this was a benighted regime did not trouble them. This is madness, but it is sinking in and influencing the weary West. If there is a truly free world here, let it appear immediately! And impose sanctions, for example, on those who slaughter the members of their own people. Just as it imposed them on North Korea, or on the military regime in Burma. It is only a question of will, not of ability.

Apparently, something happens to the global adherence to justice and equality, when it comes to Iran. The oppression is overt and known. The Internet era broadcasts everything live, and it is all for the better. Hooligans acting on behalf of the regime shoot and stab masses of demonstrators, who cry out for freedom.

Is anything more needed? Apparently it is. Because it is to no avail. The West remains indifferent. Obama is polite. Why shouldn't he be, after all, he aspires to a dialogue with the ayatollahs. And that is very fine and good, the problem is that at this stage there is no dialogue, but there is death and murder on the streets. At this stage, one must forget the rules of etiquette for a moment. The voices being heard from Obama elicit concern that we are actually dealing with a new version of Chamberlain. Being conciliatory is a positive trait, particularly when it follows the clumsy bellicosity of George Bush, but when conciliation becomes blindness, we have a problem.

The courageous voice of Angela Merkel, who issued yesterday a firm statement of support for the Iranian people and its right to freedom, is in the meantime a lone voice in the Western wilderness. It is only a shame that she has not announced an economic boycott, in light of the fact that this is the European country that is most invested in building infrastructure in Iran. She was joined by British Foreign Secretary Miliband. It is little, it is late, it is not enough. Millions of freedom seekers have taken to the streets in Iran, and the West is straddling the fence, one leg here, the other leg there.

There is a different Islam. This is already clear today. Even in Iran. There are millions of Muslims who support freedom, human rights, equality for women. These millions loathe Khamenei, Chavez and Nasrallah too. But part of the global left wing prefers the ayatollah regime over them. The main thing is for them to raise flags against Israel and America. The question is why the democrats, the liberals, and Obama, Blair and Sarkozy, are continuing to sit on the fence. This is not a fence of separation, it is a fence of shame.

Cross posted: Israel News Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Conspiracy theory Gem: Iranian opposition leader Mousavi is a Jew

It was inevitable that someone would claim that Mousavi is a Jew. That explains everything. Now we know who is responsible for all the problems in Iran. International Zionism.

Update: This was a hoax. The origin of it is here. I've been had. But there are evidently people arguing that the Iran unrest is the work of the CIA.

MOUSAVI (of Moses) is a Jew

Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Giti from India sends me this conspiracy gem;

It is well known Mousavi (of Moses) is a Jew and the demonstrations in Iran are the work of Mossad agent provocateurs. The ordinary people of Iran are peace loving and would not wish to threaten the Islamic revolution. The agitators are funded by international zionism and the Jew owned international media, in thrall to the zionist oppressors, are running alongside.

Cross posted: Israel News Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Taking down fake Zionists and "pro-Israel" groups

I am glad that someone has had the courage to speak out about fake "pro-Israel" groups. I too got the e-mails that urged Jews to "stand up for Obama" and bombard congress to vote down the initiative to give President Obama the legal power to impose energy sanctions on Iran, as noted in the article. It was amusing to try to puzzle out how voting down a bill that would give a president power could be "support" for that president. I thought supporting a president was done by giving him more power, not less. It was even more amusing to read In Time magazine that the order for this initiative came directly from the White House and that it is part of Obama's strategy. These groups are more "pro-Obama" than Obama. They are so "pro-Obama' that they are against Obama's policies.

I think that their support of negotiations with Hamas. and M.J. Rosenberg's support, which ran to an obsession, for Charles Freeman, are far worse than their "support" of Obama, and much harder to justify. Obama is the President and Americans are going to tend to agree with his policies. But Freeman is the head of a large Arab lobby group and is outspokenly anti-Israel, pretty much to the point of anti-Semtism. As for Jews who support the genocidal Hamas, that is totally beyond comprehension.

Ami Isseroff

Candidly Speaking: Bogus 'Zionist' Israel-bashers

Jun. 9, 2009
Isi Leibler , THE JERUSALEM POST

It is ironic that many of the disconcerting themes relating to Israel in US President Barack Obama's Cairo speech replicated those widely promoted for months by a noisy minority of radical American Jews. These "Israel bashers" now proudly proclaim that the new language being employed by Obama "echoes the vocabulary we use."

On the eve of Binyamin Netanyahu's arrival in Washington, a full page advertisement inserted by the Israel Policy Forum (IPF) appeared in The New York Times. Instead of the customary welcome message to a visiting prime minister or expressions of solidarity, it urged Obama to press Israel to make further unilateral concessions to the Palestinians, assuring him that in the event of a confrontation, he would enjoy the backing of most American Jews because "they are not Israelis living in exile." IPF's Washington director, M.J Rosenberg, issued a call to neutralize "the minority of Jews falsely" purporting to present the Jewish community as "blind supporters" of the Israeli government.

ISRAEL POLICY FORUM is only one of a cluster of radical left-wing organizations that have the chutzpa to describe themselves as lovers of Israel and even "Zionists," while actively lobbying the Obama administration to pressure Israel. They deviously sugarcoat their anti-Israeli campaigns by comparing themselves to parents whose children are drug addicts requiring "tough love" to force them to change their dangerous habits.These sentiments were effectively replicated in Obama's Cairo speech.

They were joined in April last year by J Street, a new group initially funded by the Jewish tycoon George Soros who had achieved notoriety for demonizing successive Israeli governments irrespective of their political leanings.

J Street and another radical group, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, proudly announced that they had succeeded in persuading 11,000 of their members to bombard the White House with e-mails urging Obama to stand firm against Netanyahu.

During the Gaza offensive, J Street condemned the action against Hamas as "disproportionate." Refusing to "pick a side" and identify "who was right and who was wrong," it applied moral equivalency to both parties proclaiming that "we recognize that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right and wrong... While there is nothing 'right' in raining rockets on Israeli families or dispatching suicide bombers, there is nothing 'right' in punishing a million and a half already suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists amongst them."

J Street also opposes Israel's efforts to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Despite the fact that Israelis of all political opinions are united on this issue, J Street members were e-mailed and urged to actively lobby against a bipartisan congressional resolution calling for tougher sanctions to be applied against Iran.

The radical groups also resurrected the bogus anti-Semitic charge of "dual loyalties," warning Jews that by continued "blind" support of Israel, they risked alienating the American public and would be condemned for displaying greater loyalty toward Israel than the US. They were almost hysterical in their condemnation of Jews who exercised their rights to protest against the proposed appointment of the fiercely anti-Israel Charles Freeman to head the National Security Agency. IPF spokesmen went so far as to explicitly state that being an anti-Israeli fanatic was insufficient grounds for barring a person from assuming a senior administration role.

If there was any doubt about J Street, its endorsement of the British anti-Semitic play Seven Jewish Children, effectively a contemporary blood libel, placed it squarely in the camp of those seeking to demonize the Jewish state. It justified its support on the grounds that the play would promote "rigorous intellectual engagement and civil debate on which our community prides itself."

J Street and IPF also seek to slander and undermine AIPAC, the highly effective pro-Israel lobby group, depicting it as an extreme right-wing and hawkish body although it has consistently promoted the policies of all Israeli governments, including the dovish administrations preceding Netanyahu.

IN AN ENVIRONMENT in which global anti-Semitism and demonization of Israel are beginning to make inroads into the United States, the potential of such radical groups to destabilize the standing of Israel should not be underestimated.

Never before has the Jewish community faced a situation in which organizations presenting themselves as Zionists shamelessly lobby their president to pressure the democratically elected government of the Jewish state to make concessions which could have life and death implications for its citizens.

Not that anti-Jewish Jews are a new phenomenon. Jewish communists were bitterly opposed to the campaign to liberate Soviet Jewry and defended state-sponsored anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. But they were marginalized and regarded as pariahs by the Jewish community.

The problem in the US is that the established Jewish leaders decided to ignore these organizations, mistakenly believing that confrontations would be construed as attempts to restrict freedom of expression and would transform the radicals into martyrs.

But the issue of freedom of expression is a red herring. Any Jew is entitled to express his beliefs, no matter how nauseating or deviant such views may appear to the majority. That certainly applies to those arguing in favor or in opposition to settlements. Surely the red lines are being crossed when, as distinct from expressing views, American based organizations claiming to "love" Israel aggressively lobby the US government to pressure it to make concessions that could place lives at risk. To tolerate such groups within the framework of the Jewish community provides them with an aura of respectability to which they are not entitled. Alas, today some of these groups already attend administration briefings on a par with the recognized mainstream organizations.

Furthermore, failure to confront these Israel bashers has already provided the general media with grounds to suggest that American Jewish support of Israel is collapsing. That has certainly encouraged the Obama administration to intensify its pressure on the Netanyahu government. It may also cause some weak-kneed Jews to distance themselves from Israel to avoid confronting a popular American president.

There are even ominous mutterings predicting a possible replay of what transpired during World War II, when fearing a confrontation and bedazzled by president Franklin Roosevelt, Jewish leaders lacked the courage to protest against the indifference of the US government to the Nazi extermination of the Jews.

Now, as never before, when the beleaguered State of Israel confronts Iran, potentially one of the greatest existential threats since its creation, the support of American Jews is crucial.

A united Jewish community should marginalize the anti-Israeli radicals and urge Obama (who received 80 percent of its votes) to stand by commitments made to Israel by previous US administrations in the same manner as the Netanyahu government is obliged to adhere to undertakings made by previous Israeli governments. A strong Jewish stand in this direction could effectively tip the balance in averting a catastrophic major rift between the US and Israel.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Portrait of an anti-Zionist presentation

"Israel is an abomination", say 'activists'

This afternoon I attended the "Free Gaza" presentation at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Fresno, the presentation that I wrote about last week ("Pro-Hamas activists to speak in Fresno"). About 50 people, mostly church members, attended.

I stood at the door before the event and handed out flyers, which read in part:

The speakers today will tell you that they are fighting for the Palestinian people. But their actual goal is to assist the genocidal Hamas organization.

The Gaza Strip is currently ruled by Hamas (The Islamic Resistance Movement) which took control of the area from the Palestinian Authority in a violent coup in 2007.

Hamas' reason for being is to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state. Its methods are the most violent possible. Since 2000, Hamas has murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians by bombings, shootings and rocket and mortar attacks.

The 'occupation' they talk about is the 'occupation' that began with Israel's creation in 1948, not the 1967 war.

The so-called Free Gaza Movement is part of a propaganda apparatus which tries to portray the Iranian-financed proxy war being fought against Israel by Hamas and other extremist groups as a human rights issue. It is not – it is an asymmetric war in which the concept of human rights is cynically used by some of the world's most intolerant, hateful extremists to try to prevent Israel from defending herself.

What you will hear and see today will be a combination of exaggerations, lies, and – most importantly – partial facts presented without context.

I followed this with some excerpts from the Hamas Covenant, so everyone would know who Hamas is.

The presentation was strange, sort of a throwback to a 1950s anti-communist B-movie. The room was festooned with Palestinian flags, the lectern draped with a keffiya. Donna and Darlene were, if anything, more robotic and humorless than their picture suggests.

It began with two music videos, one sort of lyrical, praising the courage of the Palestinian people and predicting their ultimate triumph (in nonspecific terms), the other a hip-hop rant:

Israel is a terrorist state!

Free Palestine!

Free Palestine!

More: "Israel is an abomination", say 'activists'

Continued (Permanent Link)

Big choice at York University Israel debate

One state or one state, take your pick at the York University debate on "paths to peace." This is a wide and fair choice, really. You can have a secular Palestinian democracy like Syria or an Islamic Republic like Iran. Yes, "peace" can be achieved by destroying your enemy. It would not be the first time that peace was achieved through genocide.

Good thing Jeff Halper is invited. No hate-Israel gathering could be complete without Jeff Halper, who has done a monumental job of discrediting the cause of peace and Palestinian rights and turning it into an insane mockery. Halper is a veteran of the hatemongering fake "peace" movement.

The worst aspect of these activities is that the bad, fake peace makers inevitably drive out the good ones and make it impossible for them to work by delegitimizing the cause of peace. If the Palestinians do not want self-determination, it is their business, but they needn't try to foist this idea on the Jews.

It is really sad that York university has succumbed to this sort of cheap racism and Stalinist debating style. The terror groupies already tried to hold an "Israel Apartheid Week" at York University. You'll be glad to know that one of their speakers was scheduled to be "Sahabphan Jesuthasan. York Student, President, Tamil Students Association." The problem of the Tamil Tigers terrorists, one of the most notorious suicide terror groups, was since settled in a most satisfactory manner, by eliminating the group and killing their head, proving that it is possible to win an assymmetric war. Terrorists are not invincible. Nobody counted the civilian casualties. Sri Lanka declared a national holiday. If you will, it is no legend. Yes, peace can be achieved by wiping out your enemy. However, those who wish for that kind of "peace" should take into account that it is probably their side that will get wiped out.

YORK UNIVERSITY VS. ISRAEL:

"ACADEMIC FREEDOM" OR ACADEMIC FARCE?

Gerald M. Steinberg

Chair, Political Science, Bar Ilan University

and Executive Director, NGO Monitor

The President of York University in Toronto has issued a statement attempting to defend his university's sponsorship of an event headlined "Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace", scheduled for June 22 to 24. This response to intense criticism of the program attempts to portray serious criticism as an attack on academic freedom. However, in examining the details and the debate over this event, and in the context of vulgar anti-Israel activities and physical intimidation of Jewish students at York, these bland words are a diversion -- a straw man aimed at deflecting criticism, and blocking the important public debate over the role of university campuses as battlefields in the Arab-Israeli narrative wars that perpetuate the violent conflict.

York's defense seeks to answer the public statement issued by Hershell Ezrin, head of the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA). This analysis was based on a careful examination of the speakers and their topics, which reveals that this conference "aims to explore a one-state, bi-national solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the imposition of which would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state. The conference will include a number of speakers who are recognizable for their roles as organizers and outspoken proponents of 'apartheid week' and the Israel boycott movement."

Far from an attack on academic freedom, such criticism highlights the very absence of the free exchange in a marketplace of ideas which is the indispensible foundation for academic freedom. The extremely complex history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and multiple dimensions of peace efforts contrast starkly with the narrowly constricted ideologies reflected in the list of 44 speakers. This information is readily available using the internet, and had the eleven sponsors -- six from York, four from Queen's university and a government funded research framework -- exercised "due diligence", they would have found that many of the speakers are virulent anti-Israeli activists, and are far removed from academic work to understand complex issues through research and debate. In other words, it is the conference that constitutes a brutal attack on academic freedom, rather than the analysts and critics.

For example, the first speaker on the list is Ali Abunimah, who runs a propaganda internet site known as the "Electronic Intifada", specializing in demonization of Israel through articles such as "Why Israel won't survive".. Abunimah is also affiliated with a political organization (PCHR) based in Gaza that systematically distorts and exploits the language of human rights – also to attack Israel. Abunimah's groups frequently condone Palestinian terrorism using the euphemism of "resistance" and terms like "apartheid" and "racist" in reference to Israel – the exact opposite of promoting compromise and a two state solution. Attempts to feature speakers like Abunimah under the banner of peace research is dishonest, and rather than attempting to prevent this criticism by pretending that academic freedom is at stake, York university officials should welcome the analysis

While the ideological bios and activist records of all 44 speakers would fill dozens of pages (a task that the sponsors at York University should undertake as a public service), a few more illustrations are useful. Jeff Halper is another veteran pro-Palestinian campaigner, far removed from any academic pursuits. He runs a small organization that claims to oppose the demolition of Palestinian houses, but most of his activities are aimed at generating support for the Palestinian narrative. He recently participated in sailing a few small boats from Cyprus to Hamas-controlled Gaza, hoping to engage in publicity-generating confrontations with the Israeli Navy. Halper often appears in support of Naim Ateek, whose speeches include classical antisemitic references, such as accusing Israel of "crucifying Palestinians". The context of Palestinian mass terror attacks, the mangled bodies, and the hatred against Israelis that promotes this inhuman behavior, is entirely erased.

An Israeli columnist recently witnessed Halper urging "his Muslim listeners in an American university to reject the Arab Peace Initiative, because it serves the Muslim tyrants. He told his listeners that Israel is actually a force that serves world capitalism, in the framework of the attempt to make enormous populations in the world disappear. The antisemites could not have said it better." To label such activities as promoting peace or remotely connected to university discourse is an insult to intelligent people. Recently, Halper's main benefactor, the European Union, rejected his application for renewed funding, but YorkUniversity – for reasons yet to be explained – is giving him the façade of academic legitimacy.

Amidst the long list of speakers, there are also few genuine academics – whom critics might dismiss as fig leaves for the hard-core propagandists -- but even here, the ideological range runs from strongly critical of Israel (but accepting the legitimacy of Jewish sovereign equality) to extremely critical (one-state promoters, tantamount to "wiping Israel off the map".) Although there are many academics whose research goes beyond one-dimensional Israel bashing, and examines the failures of Arab, Palestinian, and Moslem leaders to contribute to peace making, these dimensions are conspicuously absent from the program. In this Orwellian twist, the use of "academic freedom" is a mask for the crude censorship at York.

With so many obvious distortions, the defense offered by the President of York University is a farce. Without a free market of ideas, academic freedom, and even the concept of a university, is meaningless. Given a conference which fails to even hint at the complexity of the issues, the result is not censorship, but the transformation of the university into a macabre circus that sells hatred, martyrdom and murder.

In a free society, the circus, like the university, is open to all – as P.T. Barnum observed, "There's a sucker born every minute". But in the Middle East, such farces will only serve to fuel the vicious warfare and mass terror which has taken the lives of tens of thousands of Israelis, Palestinians, and others, and is escalating into nuclear confrontation. And York University has become an accomplice in this crime.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Illegal racist Zionist colonialist settler - Ehav Ever

Here is the sort of Zionist that right thinking (or left thinking) progressive people everywhere will love to exhibit as a racist colonialist western Zionist settler from America intruding on the rights of the oppressed Palestinian people -- the kind of Settler who in media canards is supposed to put on his Kippah and say a blessing before killing an Arab.

As a good right - thinking progressive would see it, Ehav Ever lives in the illegal colonialist Zionist settlement of Maaleh Edumim in the illegally occupied West Bank, next to the illegally occupied Arab city of Arab Jerusalem, which is where Suleiman the Arab Muslim built his temple, right? He is a rich and elitist Electrical Engineering graduate who works for an Israeli hi-tech firm, and he came on Aliya from the United States. The typical Christian Peace Teams stereotype of a male Jew settler. This is clearly the sort of racist colonialist Zionist guy Ken Loach and his friends would love to boycott, especially as Ehav Ever is opposed to a two state solution, which he thinks is besides the point. Go for it!

You can see Ehav Ever's Web log here: Hochma Umusar and you can see his video on Real Zionism too. In the video he explains why Israel belongs to Jewish people.

But in case you are too lazy to check it out (your loss), here's a hint about one fact about Ehav Ever that should be totally irrelevant, but that you might want to know. Here's his picture. When you write your articles and Web logs about the racist Zionist colonialist illegal settlers, be sure to include the picture, so everyone understands your point about racism.

"Zionism is racism" - right?

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Who Hates Who?

Who Hates Who?

http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2009/05/who-hates-who.html

I've posted on the blog stories about the crazed slanders regarding Israel that are circulated in the Middle East and in countries like the UK (that play, remember?) often focussing on how Israelis allegedly teach their children to kill Arabs, hate Muslims, etc.

So a little reality. My nine-year-old son comes home today from school and remarks that it is Jerusalem Day. So, ask I, what did you learn? He begins as follows: "Jerusalem is holy to three religions, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity...."

More - Who Hates Who?

Continued (Permanent Link)

Guardian's Gaza war crimes goof

When ludicrousness stops being funny, the Guardian Gaza report

I thought there is little more to add on the Guardian videos accusing the IDF of war crimes during the Gaza operation, given what has already been written in ZioNation, in the Jerusalem Post by the indispensable Melanie Philips and more, and more. And more as these lines are been written, but apparently, there is more to add.

In the first video I was struck by the Guardian reporter's decision to go to the Israeli website 'Shavuz' for technical information about Israel's unmanned drones capabilities. Shavuz is Hebrew slang for 'worn-out' or over worked. The site serves primarily as a service for soldiers before enlisting and before rejoining civilian lives. It gives advices on jobs, and academic courses along with social interactions in forums, exchange of war stories, and other army life experiences. IT IS NOT a supplier of professional information on Israel's technological capabilities; there are plenty of other sites and publication for that, many of them in English. Using 'Shavuz' for information on technology is the equivalent of using the 'London Employment Help Center' for information on the electronics of the London Tube. It is simply ludicrous; unfortunately there is nothing here to laugh at.

This link from 'Shavuz' would have given the Guardian part of the answer to their repeated question as to why so many civilians were hurt. In it Israeli pilots recall how Hamas operatives were dressed as women so the Israeli forces won't fire on them. More: When ludicrousness stops being funny, the Guardian Gaza report

Continued (Permanent Link)

'Durban II' draft resolution drops Israel criticism

If this is factual, it is good news. The question remains, whether the meeting itself will be turned into a circus.

Draft for 'Durban II' meeting drops Israel criticism
Mar. 17, 2009
Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST

Muslim-backed references to 'defamation of religion' and Israel have been dropped from a draft being prepared for next month's world racism meeting, United Nations officials said on Tuesday.

The draft now speaks only of concern about the "negative stereotyping of religions" and does not single out Israel for criticism.

Muslim countries had demanded free speech be limited to prevent criticism of Islam and other faiths. They also wanted to take Israel to task for its treatment of Palestinians.

Israel and Canada have said that they will boycott the April 20-25 meeting in Geneva. The United States and Italy said that they would not attend unless countries committed to a balanced declaration. The European Union warned it may stay away unless Muslim countries back down.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Progressive anti-Zionist protests against Zionists and the Zionist war

The Elders of Zion (yes the ones mentioned in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, us) have received the emails below. As critics of Israel have complained that not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, and that we are unfair in failing to publish their incisive comments, which are not racist at all and only directed at the crimes of the Zionists. These virtuous folks all support the progressive Hamas movement in its just struggle to wipe the JewsZionists off the face of the earth. I am publishing a sample herewith, so that the world will not be deprived of their wisdom. By all means contact these humanitarian paragons. Such deep thinking should not go unrewarded and unnoticed.

This first fellow has read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, so he knows all about us, you see.

---

From: David Briggs gonendunit@sbcglobal.net

To:

Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 8:55 PM

Subject: Terrorists!!

You people are FAR bigger terrorists than the Palestinians!! Because of our blind support, no matter what atrocities you commit, America is as hated worldwide as Israel. Your outrageous air strikes are killing hundreds of civilians. It's no wonder that, over the centuries, you've been expelled from every country in Europe. I"ve read the "Protocols"... I know how devious you are. Without our support Israel wouldn't even exist. Because of that support, Israel is the bully of the Middle East. You pick fights knowing your "big brother" (the US) will bail you out regardless of what atrocities you commit. You call the Palestinians terrorists. Well, I'm old enough to know that Israel coined the term.

I am a patriotic American. I deplore terrorism everywhere. We suffered through 9/11 because, and ONLY because, of our support of Israel. I hope and pray that the new administration (a Muslim) will turn our backs to Israel and force you to reap what you sow. On your own. There are worldwide protests about your slaughtering on innocent women and children. I truly hope that your days are numbered.

David Briggs

---

----- Original Message -----

From: stefan60 stefan60@pt.lu

Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 10:27 PM

Subject: blood and justice

Zionism is a racist murderous ideology.

The times of judgement will come!

There are in occupied Palastine ca.6 mio zionist elements,

the arab world contains a folk of 850 Mio. muslims.

Laugh and eat the few days which are left for you,the slaughter will invade the shores of the country of "Israel". Who will stop the flood of judgement?

Manuel Turmes Luxembourg

---

The following letter is abridged, but you can gather that the author has discovered a great Jewish plot that existed to grant equality to black people, to which we plead guilty as charged. Yep, you can blame Barack Obama on us Jew-Zionists. He got us fair and square on that one. And Brown vs Board of Education too. All the folks opposed to racial equality gotta be anti-Zionists too, and all the rest of you commies better join us Zionists.

You can also gather that the author thinks the Bush family and the Rockefellers are Jewish,.which is not true. He alludes to the anti-Semitic accusation that the Kol Nidre prayer was meant to absolve Jews from promises to gentiles. He has a fake Ariel Sharon quote there and probably some of the others are fake too. He then asserts that his criticism of "ZIonism" is not antisemitic. A Jew in the Rockefeller is worth two Bushes, right? It is not known if Rockeller was a Zionist

From: tommy.overkill overkill@yahoo.com

"Don't worry about congress. We can take care of that"

David Rothschild

"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order. "

David Rockefeller

"Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs."

Henry Kissinger

We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent."

Jewish Banker Paul Warburg

February 17, 1950, as he testified before the U.S. Senate

"If the American people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us"

George H.W. Bush

Let me issue and control a Nation's currency and I care not who makes its Laws

Amselm Meyer Rothschild

The difference between the Jewish soul ... and the soul of all the Gentiles ... is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal.

Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook (1865-1935)

"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, October 8th. [This quote is certainly a fabrication A.I.]

For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American Political and economic institutions.
Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as `internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty and I am proud of it.
David Rockefeller, from his autobiography "Memoirs"

"All vows, obligations, oaths or anthems, pledges of all names, which we
have vowed, sworn, devoted, or bound ourselves to, from this day of
atonement, until the next day of atonement (whose arrival we hope for in
happiness) we repent, aforehand, of them all, they shall all be deemed
absolved, forgiven, annulled, void and made of no effect; they shall not be
binding, nor have any power; the vows shall not be reckoned as vows, the
obligations shall not be obligatory, nor the oaths considered as oaths."
Yom Kippur - The Talmud

"We must realize that our party's most powerful weapon is racial tensions. By propounding into the consciousness of the dark races that for centuries they have been oppressed by whites, we can mold them to the program of the Communist Party. In America we will aim for subtle victory. While inflaming the Negro minority against the whites, we will endeavor to instill in the whites a guilt complex for their exploitation of the Negroes. We will aid the Negroes to rise in prominence in every walk of life, in the professions and in the world of sports and entertainment. With this prestige, the Negro will be able to intermarry with the whitesand begin a process which will deliver America to our cause. Israel Cohen, A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century, 1912

....

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

Normal human: What's anti-semitism? Zionist: Well, since Israel is a Jewish state, any criticism of Israel is anti-semitism. NH: Israel is a Jewish state and has acted despicably toward the Palestinians. It deserves criticism! Zio: Ooh! You anti-semite! How could you say such a thing! Are you a Nazi? Oh!oh!oh! Anti-semite! NH: Actually, Israel's despicable actions have made anti-semitism almost respectable. Zio: Oooohh!! [Faints rather than acknowledge facts evident to everyone else.]

Zionists are experts at propaganda, disinformation, denying facts and outright lying. Any criticism of Zionism or of Israel is labelled as "anti-semitism", where this is interpreted to mean "anti-Jewish". This is a slanderous falsehood. Criticism of Zionism is criticism of a particularly ugly political movement, not criticism of a religion or of the adherents of a religion. One may be critical of Zionism and of Zionists while at the same time being quite tolerant of, or well-disposed toward, or even an adherent of, the Jewish religion (as we see from the websites cited above).

Here's a clear case of criticism of the state of Israel being classified as "anti-Semitism". It's a cheap trick and should never be allowed to pass without refutation. Israel has as much right to exist as you have to give your neighbor's house to your relatives and force your neighbour to live in the street, but to assert this is not to cast aspersion upon Jews. Israel is an apartheid state because of the way the Israeli government (with the support of most Israelis) treats Arabs within its borders as second-class citizens and because of its attempts to destroy Palestinian society in the occupied territories so as to rid the land of Arabs and make it suitable for Israeli annexation, but to suggest this is not to make any criticism of Jews, but rather, of Israelis — and they richly deserve it.

Ken Livingstone: This is about Israel, not Anti-semitism

For 20 years Israeli governments have attempted to portray anyone who forcefully criticises the policies of Israel as anti-semitic. The truth is the opposite: the same universal human values that recognise the Holocaust as the greatest racist crime of the 20th century require condemnation of the policies of successive Israeli governments — not on the absurd grounds that they are Nazi or equivalent to the Holocaust, but because ethnic cleansing, discrimination and terror are immoral.

---

There is a lot more to this letter, which has quotes from anti-Zionists like Israel Shamir, Jimmy Carter and Professor Mearsheimer. The above should certainly convince everyone that Anti-Zionism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, right? The Talmud, which was written about 1600 years before Zionism existed was a Zionist document, correct? And George H.W. Bush is a famous Zionist, right? And the civil rights movement, that is certainly a disgraceful Zionist plot too,

These gentleman are all waiting to get your emails in praise of their courageous and progressive humanitarian stance against the Zionist menace, George H.W. Bush and racial miscegnation.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

The image of Zionism in Iranian cinema

Here is an interesting article about Iranian cinema and Iranian critique of Hollywood cinema. Hollywood cinema is very popular in Iran. Here is a sample of the Iranian rant:

An additional innovation in the Iranian attack on Zionism can be found in documentary series that focus on Jews and their control over the global film industry. A twenty-six episode documentary, "Footprints of Zionism in World Cinema," which aired during May-June 2008 on IRINN, seeks to expose the "true colors" of the global film industry. The series promotes the perception that the Western film industry - primarily Hollywood - is controlled by Zionists who strive to inculcate the viewers with Zionist subliminal messages. The creators of the series, with the aid of Iranian specialists who were interviewed, explained that these messages are meant to provide a basis for the State of Israel's legitimacy and to justify its "criminal" policies. They warn that these messages operate on the sub-conscious of the viewer, and that consequently the viewer is convinced of the veracity of the messages. To substantiate this thesis, the series' producers in Iran analyze a sequence of Western films of different genres and periods, including Ben-Hur (1959), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), La vita è bella (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Meet the Parents (2000), Chicken Run (2000) and The Pianist (2002).

Against the backdrop of pictures from the successful British animation movie, Chicken Run (2000), the narrator explains that the images of the fenced farm along with other visual elements are meant to conjure associations of concentration camps, and that the longings of the caged chickens for a utopian place is a metaphor for the Zionist nationalist longings (MEMRI-TV, clip 1787). While discussing Fiddler on the Roof the Iranian experts in the series determined that the positive and sympathetic portrayal of the Jewish character in the film is meant to present to the viewers with a distorted picture of the reasons and the historical background surrounding Jewish migration to the land of Israel (MEMRI-TV, clip 1807).

We already know from other sources, that Iranian professors have decided that Mickey Mouse and Tom and Jerry as well as Pirates of the Carribean are part of a Jew-Zionist international conspiracy, gnawing away at the roots of Islam and endangering all right-thinking servants of the prophet (see Iran reveals Zionist plot behind Zionist Hollywood Happy Endings: Zionism is Mouse-ism ). This fetish is not confined to Iran. There was also a Saudi Fatwa calling upon the faithful to kill Mickey Mouse. Why is the Iranian regime going to such absurd lengths to discredit Hollywood? Is it because people are not interested in Iranian "official" documentaries about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the like? Is it because Hollywood represents "decadent" Western culture? Is it because they are cuckoo? Probably all of the above.

Ami Isseroff

Cross posted: Israel News Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Christopher Hitchens reviews Denis MacShane on Anti-Semitism

Perhaps this is the highlight:

 

And meanwhile I would never expect to read the sort of criticism of Pakistan that I read every day about Israel. Yet of these two states, born at almost the same moment at the close of Britain's imperium, can it really be said that Israel is so much the greater offender in terms of democratic rights for citizens, invasions of neighbours like Afghanistan, oppressions of non-Punjabi minority inhabitants, massacres of co-religionists as in Bangladesh, and illegal acquisition of nuclear weapons? One can just about picture a worldwide campaign to redress the injustices of Pakistan, in which unions of British teachers and journalists would join with their own courageous boycotts, but I confess to a slight difficulty in picturing the same level of enthusiasm and commitment. There is some sense in which any challenge to what can be viewed as specifically Jewish power is more exciting and possibly more "transgressive", and we might be more honest if we admitted as much. Here's a thought experiment: you get an email telling you that all the Anglo-Saxons left the World Trade Center just an hour before the planes hit (not having merely stayed away with all the benefit of their advance warning, but having actually gone to all the trouble of turning up at 8 a.m. and trustingly assuming that the terror-strike would take place just on schedule and thus give them time to check their Rolexes for an orderly and early departure). See what I mean? It's just not such a thrilling hypothesis. When directed at the Jews, however, it at least adds insult to injury, and the true bigot knows that every little helps.

However, both MacShane and Hitchens operate from the naive and optimistic viewpoint that if only we can get a logically correct description of anti-Semitism, the anti-Semites will be convinced of the error of their ways, and the problem will disappear.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

 

 

November 19, 2008
The new anti-Semitism?
How ancient prejudice and outright hostility have re-emerged since the Nuremberg Trials
Christopher Hitchens

I was once introduced, in the Cosmos Club in Washington, to Willis Carto of the Liberty Lobby, a group frequently accused of being insufficiently philo-Semitic. Mr Carto unburdened himself of quite a long burst about the power of finance capital, whereupon our host, to lighten the atmosphere, said, "Come on Willis, you're sounding like Ezra Pound". "Ezra Pound!" exclaimed Mr Carto. "Why, I love that man's work. Except for all that goddam poetry!" I thought then that if one ever needed a working definition of an anti-Semite, it might perhaps be an individual who esteemed everything about Ezra Pound except his Cantos.

 

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith has a different definition. For him, anti-Semitism is revealed not when someone criticizes the state of Israel, but when someone denies the right of Israel to exist. This, however, will not do, since many Orthodox Jews and Marxist Jews were opposed ab initio to the founding of a Jewish state, and indeed, for the first few years of the Zionist movement's existence, almost all its enemies were Jewish. (By the same token, the idea of a Levantine state into which European Jewry could be decanted often found favour with those who were not all fond of Jewry per se.)

 

The overt expression of anti-Semitic views has been extremely muted since the Nuremberg Trials, and the somewhat later decision of the Roman Catholic Church to withdraw its historic charge of "deicide" against the Jewish people as a whole. But the Labour MP Denis MacShane, who chaired an all-party commission of inquiry into the subject, argues that this most ancient and fierce of hatreds is undergoing a worldwide recrudescence. Rather dauntingly, he begins his book Globalising Hatred with a taxonomy of six distinct kinds of anti-Semitism, as compiled by the no less dauntingly named Professor Armin Pfahl-Traughber. The disease, it seems, can present as religious, social, political, racist, secondary or anti-Zionist, and of course these symptoms are not mutually exclusive and may often be found in clusters.

 

I would propose to begin more economically, by separating anti-Semitism from other forms of prejudice. One might certainly begin by distinguishing it from any too obvious stratification: MacShane likes to put the word "upper-class" in front of his main noun, but it was the great German socialist August Bebel who characterized anti-Jewish ranting as "the socialism of fools" and identified it as a perverted form of class resentment. This may have been slightly reductionist, as if to place a creepy and occult belief on all fours with more ordinary styles of xenophobia. British people who dislike Pakistanis, say, or Sinhalese who dislike Tamils, or Ulstermen who look down on Gaels, will tend to express themselves in fairly vulgar terms. The disliked ones are dirty and lazy, and have over-large families and a generally low cultural level. Anti-Semitism, by contrast, has something almost vicariously admiring about it. The targeted and hated tribe is believed to have awesome secret power and a positive genius for finance, as well as an ability to infiltrate and annex large swathes of professional life, such as the law and medicine. Not only this, but the Jew is seen as so protean as to have been – in the course of the past century alone – the covert engineer of both capitalism and Bolshevism. Examples of this combination of envy with paranoia are not difficult to locate: a recent New York Times report from Egypt described a settled conviction at all levels of society that, while nineteen Arabs could not have brought down the World Trade Center, the Israeli Mossad had the means, the method, the motive and the opportunity to do so. (One might pause to note the element of Arab self-hatred that is latent in this view.) When asked for proof, the believers point to the fact, which "everybody knows", that all the Jews employed in the Twin Towers left work shortly before the planes arrived. I have myself heard this alleged at elite dinner parties in Islamabad, and MacShane has heard it from educated Muslims in his own constituency of Rotherham.

 

Perhaps over-anxious not to single out these as if they were the only offenders, MacShane is careful to spread his net wide. Neo-fascists in Argentina and Germany, the British National Party, the anti-Israeli American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the demagogues of Radio Maria in Poland, the sneers of Alan Clark in his Diaries, the gibes of David Irving, and a few of the anti-Zionist positions taken by Noam Chomsky and Perry Anderson are all included in the trawl. Surely this is too indiscriminate, especially in the case of the last two named? More important, does it not run the risk of treating Islamist anti-Semitism as if it were merely one form of the malady among many?
In point of fact, there is only one area of the world where pure, old-fashioned undiluted Jew-hatred is preached from the pulpit, broadcast on the official airwaves, given high-level state sanction and taught in the schools. All across the Muslim Middle East and well into Muslim Asia, the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion are freely available, often disseminated by ruling circles as well as by insurgent and now quasi-government movements such as Hamas and Hizbollah. (Incidentally, it is wrong to call this toxic document a "forgery", since a forgery is a copy of something authentic. The Protocols are a mere fabrication, put together by Eastern Orthodox Christian fanatics in the pay of the tsarist secret police. Despite their suggestive name, they contain no mention of Israel or Zionism, as MacShane appears to think.)

 

When he does turn his attention to this region, however, MacShane's treatment of the lucubrations of Tariq Ramadan and Sayyid Qtub is fairly comprehensive. Not everybody will agree with his generally lenient approach to the state of Israel, but he does argue convincingly, with some telling quotations, that resentment at Israel's occupation of the West Bank simply cannot explain some of the more lurid formulations of Arab and Muslim propaganda. The fairly temperate Ghada Karmi, for example, speaks of Israel "encircling the Arab world" (my italics), while regional self-pity – a natural sibling of self-hatred by the way, as is self-righteousness – often blames all the ills of a backward and benighted region on arcane Jewish manipulations. The relatively recent history of Europe shows how fantastically dangerous such delusions can be, and MacShane is right to stress the comparison as well as the implications.

 

When all this is taken into account, though, I am not sure that he is correct in so often using the prefix "neo" to describe the resurgent phenomenon. The pseudo-intellectual and superstitious tropes of Judaeophobia are very much the same as they ever were. They involve the hatred of the countryside for the urban (and the urbane), the hatred of the provinces for the capital (and for capital), the disdain of the settled establishment for the subversive, and the visceral loathing of the tradition-minded "organic" community for the rootless and the cosmopolitan. In this, one can understand both the nastier moments that one may encounter in the study of T. S. Eliot and also the mentality of those Argentine fascists who tortured the Jewish editor and journalist, Jacobo Timerman. As Timerman recalled the obsessions of the death-squad Right in his imperishable book Prisoner without a Name: Cell without a number, his interrogators believed that "Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space". I went to look this up after I had read MacShane citing Argentine military men who to this day believe that there is a Jewish conspiracy to annex and Zionize the remoter areas of Patagonia, the better, presumably, to extend Protocol power to the Jew-free wastes of Antarctica.

 

"You catch it on the edge of a remark", as Harold Isaacs phrases it in Chariots of Fire. I have felt myself "catching" it quite a few times of late, as when chaps from the BBC insisted despite repeated correction on saying Paul "Vulfovitz" with a special emphasis, instead of pronouncing the name correctly the first time round, as the BBC used to train people to do. Writing about the same person, the American isolationist and Charles Lindbergh admirer Patrick J. Buchanan referred to him as playing Fagin to George Bush's Oliver Twist which, an arresting image as it certainly is, makes rather the same point in an only somewhat different way. And meanwhile I would never expect to read the sort of criticism of Pakistan that I read every day about Israel. Yet of these two states, born at almost the same moment at the close of Britain's imperium, can it really be said that Israel is so much the greater offender in terms of democratic rights for citizens, invasions of neighbours like Afghanistan, oppressions of non-Punjabi minority inhabitants, massacres of co-religionists as in Bangladesh, and illegal acquisition of nuclear weapons? One can just about picture a worldwide campaign to redress the injustices of Pakistan, in which unions of British teachers and journalists would join with their own courageous boycotts, but I confess to a slight difficulty in picturing the same level of enthusiasm and commitment. There is some sense in which any challenge to what can be viewed as specifically Jewish power is more exciting and possibly more "transgressive", and we might be more honest if we admitted as much. Here's a thought experiment: you get an email telling you that all the Anglo-Saxons left the World Trade Center just an hour before the planes hit (not having merely stayed away with all the benefit of their advance warning, but having actually gone to all the trouble of turning up at 8 a.m. and trustingly assuming that the terror-strike would take place just on schedule and thus give them time to check their Rolexes for an orderly and early departure). See what I mean? It's just not such a thrilling hypothesis. When directed at the Jews, however, it at least adds insult to injury, and the true bigot knows that every little helps.

 

"The bitch that bore him is on heat again", as Brecht has his closing speaker say about Hitler at the curtain of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. The next nightmare will not take the same shape or form, but it will be sure to emit the same plain and unmistakable warnings. MacShane has done a service by giving us a handbook of the signs.

 

 

 

Denis MacShane
GLOBALISING HATRED
The new antisemitism
188pp. Orion. £12.99.
978 0 297 84473 0

 

 

 

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book, God Is Not Great: The case against religion, appeared earlier this year.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Anti-Semitic candidate sacked in Canada for citing ZIM 9-11 hoax, Anti-Zionist cries foul

Canadian politician Lesley Hughes was justly removed as a Liberal Party candidate after it was discovered that she had written an anti-Semitic article (see Canada's Liberals sack candidate over anti-Semitic remarks) . What Leslie Hughes alleged in her article was an Anti-Semitic libel. She repeated the false claim that the ZIM corporation broke its lease a few days before the 9-11 attacks and quickly moved out of the World Trade Center. ZIM did not break its lease. The ZIM decision to move to Virginia had been made months before, and there were still ZIM personnel working in the World Trade Center in September 11, 2001.

 

The dismissal of Hughes brought howls about the "Israel Lobby" from "anti-Zionist" Henry Makow who howled at henrymakow.com/jewish_lobby_vetoes_canadian_c.html, "Jewish Lobby Vetoes Candidate for 9-11 Views."

 

Well yes, and if a politician had claimed that Africans are all thieves, they would be dismissed as well.

 

The ZIM hoax about 9-11 is featured on thousands of "anti-Zionist" Web sites.

 

As we say in Israel, "go try and prove that you don't have a sister." (Said in response to allegations about your sister's immoral occupation).

 

Ami Isseroff 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Christians & Jews eat dinner with Ahmadinejad

Well meaning Christians and Jews decided to have Iftar dinner (part of the Ramadan holiday) with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Or maybe they were not so well meaning, since nobody can ignore who Ahmadinejad is and what he stands for.

Dinner with Ahmadinejad reminds me of an old joke about poor Pedro the Mexican peasant. One day little weak old Pedro was going along the road with his oxcart. A famous Mexican bandit, the Sonora Hombre, and his men came down the road at a gallop. They could not pass the laden oxcart.

"You," shouted the Hombre waving his gun and firing in the air, "get down off your cart."

Pedro got off the cart.

The Hombre pointed his gun at Pedro's temple and said, "You see the horse crap there? Eat it!"

Pedro reluctantly ate.

The Hombre and his men pushed the cart off the cliff, mounted their horses and went on their way.

A few weeks later, Pedro was in saloon in a small town.

Someone came in and yelled, "Vamenos Muchachos - the Sonora Hombre is coming! Vamenos!"

Pedro sat still.

The bartender said, "Aren't you afraid of the Sonora Hombre?"

"No, I know the Sonora Hombre. I am not afraid."

"You, Pedro, you know the Sonora Hombre?"

"Si, I know him. We had lunch together."

All this by way of introduction...

Ami Isseroff

Breaking Fast With a Hate-Monger
Opinion

By Bruce Chilton
Thu. Oct 02, 2008

Iftar is a beautiful custom within the liturgical practice of Islam. During Ramadan, the month of fasting, sunset marks the time when food may be taken again. Families and communities offer meals for friends and neighbors, often inviting those who are not practicing Muslims to join with them in sharing special dishes. This can be a relaxed and congenial setting for interfaith dialogue, especially among those who have inherited the biblical tradition, those whom the Quran calls "the people of the book." The same chapter of the Quran that deals with how and when the fast should be broken also speaks of "the people of the book," and hospitality is deeply rooted in Islamic theology.

Iran's mission to the United Nations recently co-sponsored an Iftar at New York's Grand Hyatt hotel, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the featured guest. The meeting was co-hosted by Christian groups, most notably by the Mennonites, the Quakers and the World Council of Churches. The event had an ennobling theme, "Has not one God created us? The significance of religious contributions to peace."

The result, however, was anything but ennobling.

Many organizations — both Christian and non-Christian — had criticized the September 25 event in advance. Documented policies of religious oppression within Iran and the Islamic Republic's nuclear program provoked deep concern about the Iftar and engendered anger at its Christian co-sponsors.

The Mennonites and the Quakers survived the persecution of their leaders during the 16th and 17th centuries. Their response was to articulate clear theologies of pacifism, which remain influential to this day among all those who ponder the relationship between violence and morality. So what purpose did they believe they served in co-sponsoring Ahmadinejad's evening breakfast?

The event's Christian co-sponsors made it plain that they by no means wished to signal agreement with all of Ahmadinejad's policies and statements. Their intent was to treat him, not as a pariah, but rather as a leader with whom dialogue is necessary. Part of their agenda, as explained by the American Friends Service Committee, a prominent Quaker organization that co-hosted the Iftar, was to rebuke the Bush administration for what they regard as its confrontational posture toward Iran. And yet, Ahmadinejad, in his speech to the General Assembly two days earlier, was himself nothing if not confrontational toward the United States. "American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road," he said. The Christian co-hosts of the Iftar dinner may or may not agree with this sort of rhetoric, but that was far from the only inflammatory passage in his speech.

Ahmadinejad has long been embroiled in controversy over his statements regarding the State of Israel. Some have argued that he has not exactly called for Israel to be wiped off the map, but merely wished for it to collapse, as the Soviet Union did. Either way, his feelings toward the Jewish state are undeniably ugly, and he made his hostility unmistakably clear in his General Assembly speech. "In Palestine, 60 years of carnage and invasion is still ongoing at the hands of some criminal and occupying Zionists," he said. His proposed solution was for a "free referendum" to set up a new state in order to replace the regime that, in his words, has "no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters."

This is what Ahmadinejad had to say the day before his Iftar for peace. His remarks are consistent with his previous statements, but the juxtaposition of his speech and the Iftar only highlighted the irresponsibility of the event's Christian co-sponsors.

Christians can and do differ over the degree of support that Israel should be accorded, over how to respond to Iran's nuclear ambitions and over how the Islamic Republic of Iran should be treated. But in his speech to the United Nations the day before the Iftar, Ahmadinejad staked out a position that no theologically aware Christian can condone.

In terms reminiscent of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the antisemitic tract that poisoned Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, Ahmadinejad spoke out against what he called a "Zionist network," complaining that "they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the U.S. in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner." This incitement to hatred complements Ahmadinejad's well-known proclivity to deny the reality of the Holocaust.

Moments come to Christians, as to other people of conscience, when they need to recognize that a person or a movement has set itself in direct opposition to their principles. Ahmadinejad has deliberately resorted to a tradition of hate speech whose intended consequence — proven repeatedly by hard experience — is violence against Jews. The pogroms of the Middle Ages, abetted by corrupt church leaders and a theology that endorsed murder, formed the background of Hitler's genocide.

No one can claim ignorance in regard to the consequences of the kind of antisemitism that Ahmadinejad has expressed. Christians of conscience need unequivocally to reject his position, and to cease supporting events that are little more than photo opportunities for an erratic politician who faces waning legitimacy abroad and dwindling support at home.

The Rev. Bruce Chilton is director of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College and chairs the Episcopal-Jewish Relations Committee for the Episcopal Diocese of New York. He is the author, most recently, of "Abraham's Curse: The Roots of Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam" (Doubleday).

Continued (Permanent Link)

Amnesty International: Unfair to Israel

>Sad but true.

Amnesty's obsession with Israel

Amnesty persistently condemns Israel while ignoring suffering elsewhere
Yael Beck, Merav Fima

Even in a month when war raged in Georgia, Amnesty International continued to focus on the Gaza Strip, persistently blaming Israel for ongoing Palestinian hardship.

Amnesty, in fact, issued harsher condemnations of Israel than of any party to the Georgian conflict. With a ceasefire holding between Israel and Hamas, resulting in a period of calm, Amnesty stubbornly continued to spew hollow publications repeating outdated allegations.

Moreover, Amnesty took pride in its relentless criticism of Israel, while the rest of the world rightly concerned itself with the unfolding crisis in Georgia. In a press release, the organization boasted: "With the ceasefire holding, the suffering in Gaza has fallen off the international news agenda. However, Amnesty International members continue to campaign." This "explanation" merely highlights Amnesty's obsession with Israel, regardless of the reality on the ground.

Regular readers of Amnesty's material are not fooled by their non-stop publications condemning Israel and can easily discern that they seldom reveal anything new. Many of its press releases are identical, except for minor alterations. Amnesty's ulterior motive appears to be to maintain a constant production rate of material denouncing Israel, regardless of actual developments.

For example, Amnesty's distasteful decision to continue issuing condemnations of Israel during a period of intense intra-Palestinian fighting clearly illustrates the point. Unsurprisingly, Amnesty failed to mention, let alone praise, Israel's commendable acceptance of Fatah members fleeing from Hamas.

While devoting so many of its resources to Gaza, at a time of acute suffering and human rights abuses in Georgia, Amnesty International failed to provide effective coverage of the Georgian conflict. Although one would reasonably expect Amnesty to immediately respond with urgency to such a crisis, raising awareness for its victims, Amnesty preferred to focus on its usual target: Israel.

For instance, on August 12, 2008, the organization released a statement headlined "Trapped – collective punishment in Gaza." An expanded version was re-issued on August 27, 2008. As NGO Monitor analysis has demonstrated, the report lacks evidence and credibility, largely ignores the context of terrorism, exploits international legal terminology, and presents data in a highly selective and distorted manner.

Concurrently, Amnesty released a series of vague and neutral statements calling on all sides of the conflict in the Caucuses to avoid harming civilians, without assuming a clear stance, nor providing comprehensive reporting on the events.

Lame response to Georgian conflict

Amnesty's scarce coverage of the war in Georgia is not the result of inaccessibility. Human Rights Watch managed to provide ongoing and insightful coverage, based on its delegation's observations. Such limp statements on Amnesty's part betray its commitment to the defense of every individual's human rights.

Disappointingly, Amnesty expressed less concern regarding the events in Georgia, despite the fact that a greater number of civilians were killed during that conflict than over the course of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. On that occasion, Amnesty rushed to condemn Israel in almost-daily publications. It did not hesitate to portray Israel as an aggressor and largely ignored the fact that civilians in northern Israel suffered a constant barrage of rockets launched by the Hizbullah terrorist organization.

Amnesty's lame response to the recent Georgian conflict, overshadowed by its focus on Israel, indicates that the Second Lebanon War simply served as an incentive for Amnesty to pursue its shameless Israel-bashing. Had its aversion to war been genuine, Amnesty would have responded as forcefully or even more vocally to the Georgian conflict.

Were it truly concerned with the universality of human rights, Amnesty would apply the same standards to all countries. Hence, Amnesty's aim appears clear: to persistently condemn Israel, even if it means neglecting those suffering in other, more pressing conflicts across the world.

The authors are researchers at NGO Monitor, www.ngo-monitor.org

Continued (Permanent Link)

Lethal Politics: Anti-Semitism as Human Rights -- Anne BAYEFSKY (July 2008)

Lethal Politics: Anti-Semitism as Human Rights

By Anne BAYEFSKY
ADC Gandel Oration -- Melbourne and Sydney, Australia
July 6 and 8, 2008

Introduction

Human rights have become a weapon. A potent force for denunciation and defeat – not in the hands of the abused, but in the hands of the abusers. Those powerful few who know little - and want even less - of freedom or equality.

In little over half a century since the horrors that nearly vanquished an entire people, humankind has come almost full circle. The victims of the Nazis – and the Jewish homeland which is their refuge and their strength – are cast as the neo-Nazis of the 21st century. Human rights are now human wrongs.



The saga of the hijacking and corruption of universal rights and freedoms is one of profound betrayal. It is a betrayal of the victims of the Holocaust, the United Nations – the promised international beacon that rose from their ashes, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights envisioned by Eleanor Roosevelt and René Cassin as the gold standard for never again.



This plight is not a result of a sole cataclysmic event but the consequence of individual abominations, gone unnoticed or unchallenged. Ironically, the setting for this treachery has been the UN itself. An individual resolution of the UN General Assembly, a report of a UN special investigator, a decision of the UN Human Rights Commission – year after year after year. International norms are said to be nurtured through a constructive process in which the accumulation of state practice crystallizes beliefs that mirror the collective wisdom of nations. What has emerged instead – powered by a global, 20 billion-a-year megaphone – is the collective depravity of an immoral majority.



Discrimination



This story begins with discrimination against the Jewish state. Discrimination is the building block of hate and the UN has already erected a fortress.



Since the late 1940's until it was abolished in 2006, the lead UN human rights body was the Human Rights Commission. Over its lifetime it passed more resolutions condemning Israel than any other country on earth. It adopted nothing, ever, on serial abusers such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe.



In 2006 the Commission was replaced by the Human Rights Council. In its short life the Council has directed almost 60% of its decisions condemning specific states at Israel alone. And nothing at all on 187 of the UN's other 191 members.



The Council has had eight regular sessions which cover human rights in all countries – and four special sessions devoted only to human rights violations by Israel.



The Council – as the Commission before it – has a limited agenda of less than a dozen subjects. One is reserved only for condemning Israel. And one is called "human rights issues of concern" for all other countries.



The Commission and the Council have created only one UN human rights investigator with a job description which has no term limit – the investigator on Israel. The few other country investigators must be renewed frequently – or not. In the past 15 months, the Council has refused to renew or continue investigations on four states with some of the worst records on the planet – Belarus, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran and Uzbekistan.



The mandate of the Council investigator on Israel denies any possibility of finding human rights violations by any actor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but Israel. Its only purpose is "to investigate Israel's violations of the principles and bases of international law."



The UN has only one standing human rights committee which has no generic theme, like civil and political rights or children's rights. The UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting Human Rights is now in its 40th year of operation.



In 1975 the UN created a committee to implement its notorious Zionism is racism resolution. The resolution was rescinded in 1991. But the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People continues to sponsor events worldwide and year round.



There is only one whole UN secretariat Division devoted to a single group of people – the UN Division for Palestinian Rights. Created in 1977 it has a full-time staff of 16, while the number of UN staff for the entire Asia and Pacific Division is 22.



There is one refugee agency for Palestinian refugees. And one refugee agency assisting 26 million in the rest of the world.



The UN General Assembly has six subsidiary bodies which focus only on Palestinians. And none focusing on any other people anywhere.



There is only one UN online service dedicated to the claims of a single people – the enormous United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine. It transmits reports, resolutions, speeches, publications and press releases on a daily basis around the world.



Member states of the UN are divided into five regional groups – key vehicles for negotiating resolutions, obtaining important positions, and sharing information. Only one UN member is not permitted to become a full member of any regional group – Israel.



There have been ten emergency sessions of the UN General Assembly in its history – six have been about Israel – and the last and tenth one is effectively in permanent session having been "reconvened" fifteen times since 1987. A million dead in Rwanda and two million dead over two decades in Sudan never prompted one emergency session.



In 2007 the UN General Assembly – as is routine – adopted 20 resolutions condemning Israel for human rights violations, while adopting just a single resolution each on only six other countries. And nothing, for instance, on the egregious violation of the most basic civil and political rights of more than a billion Chinese.



The only condemnation of a country-specific violation of women's rights anywhere made by the Commission on the Status of Women is its annual resolution on Palestinian women. Nothing, for example, directed at Iran despite its practice of burying women naked to the waist and stoning them to death for alleged adultery.



Taken together, the country subject to more human rights criticism across the UN system every year is Israel. Last year, it was condemned twice as often as Sudan – where millions are displaced, hundreds of thousands are dead in Darfur, and unfettered genocide and rape are the daily norm.



The meetings are webcast – the documents are translated into six languages – and the reports are accessible globally via the internet for free.



In UN circles, it is called protecting human rights. In reality, it is discrimination – antisemitism – in which the Jewish state is subjected to different treatment and held to different standards than all other nations. Given its reach and impact, the UN is therefore the largest global purveyor of antisemitism in the world today.



Demonization



Israel emerges from this so-called human rights campaign demonized – a country engaged in heinous acts with the worst of intentions.



June 20th, 2008 at UN Headquarters in New York. The occasion is a day-long event entitled "Special meeting to mark sixty years of dispossession of Palestine refugees." A film – shown also at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris a few weeks earlier – is screened before a public audience in the main Economic and Social Council Chamber.



Produced by a Palestinian, the film was designed to draw parallels between the Nazis final solution and the Zionists design for Palestinians. It is commonly billed with these words: "…the late-19th century Zionists…drew up plans, put them into practice, then…used… force, often brutal."



Here is some of the script:



"Christians and Muslims alike…unite in their hatred of Zionism…I preferred to die as a martyr rather than be governed by the Jews …We were against the Jews…The number of Jews increased constantly…The children cried …The Hagana had no mercy, no pity. Zionists! They were Zionists!… The Jews were shooting at us, they were facing us…The Jews yelled "turn around you bastards, you dogs." They machine gunned us…They started killing people who were asleep…[We]…found a poor woman…pregnant. They had killed her and the baby came out of the womb. They started slaughtering them until morning."



This is how the UN marked the 60th anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel. This is antisemitism as human rights.



Perhaps the most virulent "human rights" theme which emerges repeatedly is the allegation of Jewish racism. In a February 2007 report UN special investigator on Israel John Dugard wrote:



"The IDF inflicts serious bodily and mental harm on Palestinians…Palestinians throughout the OPT are denied freedom of movement. Can it seriously be denied that the purpose of such action is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and systematically oppressing them?"



UN reports analogize Israel to apartheid South Africa. The UN's 2001 Durban Racism Conference produced a Declaration claiming Palestinians are victims of Israeli racism. Durban II – the next so-called "anti-racism" conference scheduled for 2009 is devoted to implementing that Declaration, and is therefore certain to include Israeli racism on its agenda.



Nobody cares that one-fifth of Israel's population is Arab with more democratic rights than in any Arab state. No one wants to hear that Arab states have essentially been rendered Judenrein following the creation of Israel, 850,000 Jews having been forced to flee. Though UN resolutions denounce Jews living in Arab-claimed territory as "Judaization," nowhere do people denounce "apartheid Palestine."



The Legitimization of Violence



What follows discrimination and demonization is all too familiar. A demonized adversary is a much easier target. In the name of resistance and struggle, Israeli civilians have become fair game.



On June 16, 2008 the UN Human Rights Council discussed the latest human rights report from Dugard on Israeli practices. He said: "a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror…and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation." The acts perpetrated upon Israeli civilians by Palestinians acting "against occupation" is the second kind of terror, the "inevitable consequence of occupation" and analogous to "the German occupation resisted by European countries in the Second World War." According to this major UN human rights authority figure, therefore, terrorizing Israelis is understandable and inevitable and their murderers are comparable to the liberators of Nazi Germany.



The European Union has a word for "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" – antisemitism.



Antisemitism as human rights



This is not academic exegesis. During the Human Rights Council discussions, Pakistan responded to Dugard's hate-mongering on behalf of the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference or OIC: "We must note the wise counsel of the special [investigator] to make distinction between mindless terror and acts committed in the course of war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation." As recently as four years ago, resolutions of the Human Rights Commission declared "the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples against foreign occupation and for self-determination" – (and incorporated by reference to an earlier General Assembly resolution) "by all available means, including armed struggle."



Denial of the Right of Self-Defense



The human right universe denies the Jewish state the existential entitlement to self-preservation. After all, why should the abuser have a right of self-defense against his victim?



Denying Israel an effective right of self-defense has become a centerpiece of international human rights and humanitarian law. Almost nothing that Israel does against its enemies is legitimate in the eyes of the human rights world. In UN and human rights NGO circles, the carefully targeted killing of combatants is extrajudicial execution. The building of a security fence on disputed territory, with a significant numbers of lives saved, violates international law. Checkpoints and barriers limiting movement among a population infiltrated by enemy combatants in a war zone are humiliating racist insults.



Targeting civilian infrastructure in response to thousands of rockets (which forced one million Israelis into bomb shelters for over three weeks and displaced 300,000) was not a legitimate action with a military objective in the middle of a war, but collective punishment. Incidental civilian casualties caused by Israel, of any number, in any context, whatever the target, are always disproportionate. Incidentally destroying crops in southern Lebanon in the course of responding to Hezbollah rockets violated international humanitarian law. In effect, despite a continuing state of war and the genocidal intent of the enemy combatants, Israel can't hit people, can't hit inanimate objects, can't even hit the ground.



Consider the case of Hamas leaders Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantissi. The governing instrument of the elected representatives of the Palestinian people – the 1988 Hamas Covenant – states: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad." With genocide as a frame of reference, Yassin and Rantissi exhorted their followers to violence, instigated suicide bombings, and in Rantissi's words "freed the hand of the brigades to do whatever they want against the brothers of monkeys and pigs." By the time Israel killed each of them with a missile attack upon their vehicles, there had been at least 425 Hamas attacks killing 377 Israelis and wounding 2,076 in less than three and a half years. Four civilians were killed with Yassin, none with Rantissi.



The UN response? UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned Israel's actions as "assassinations" and illegal "extrajudicial killings" – a charge which is potent – and totally false. Yassin and Rantissi were combatants in a war and not entitled to judicial process before being targeted. They were also unlawful combatants, seeking to make themselves indistinguishable from the civilian population. International Committee of the Red Cross manuals state that civilians who take a direct part in hostilities forfeit their immunity from attack. In addition to the fact that Yassin and Rantisi were not entitled to judicial process, such a process was not an option for Israel without risking many more Israeli and Palestinian lives. The real legal limit in targeting combatants, according to the Geneva Conventions, is the rule of proportionality – the "incidental loss of civilian life" must not be "excessive." This test was satisfied in the case of Israel's actions, civilian casualties having been kept to a minimum. And yet in today's world of human rights, killing antisemitic leaders at the apex of their genocidal campaign, which had successfully terrorized 5.5 million people, was a violation of the human rights of the homicidal antisemites.



There is another sense in which the Geneva Conventions are misread only when applied to Israel. The freedom of movement and associated rights of Palestinians are limited, but the question is: by whom? If an armed robber takes a hostage and in the course of the crime the hostage is killed by police, the law states that the death of the hostage has been caused by the robber, not the police. For if there had been no armed robbery, the hostage would not have been harmed. If there were no terrorism, there would be no need for barriers and checkpoints. The Palestinian civilian population is hostage to the terrorists and killers among them. Israel's actions, like those of the police officer, are taken in fulfillment of its legal responsibilities to protect its citizens from violent and illegal behavior. And the Geneva Conventions specifically refuses to grant immunity to terrorists or military targets using civilians as human shields.



This is the law of self-defense – except in the case of Israel. In 2004 the UN's International Court of Justice decided that Israel's security fence violated international law by a series of contortions written for a party of one. They held that there is no right of self-defense under the U.N. Charter when terrorists are not state actors, when they operate across disputed borders, and when the measures are not forcible such as the building of a wall. The Egyptian judge even affirmed a "right of resistance" on the grounds that "violence breeds violence." In short, the Court emasculated Israel's right of self-defense, notwithstanding that the U.N. Charter was not intended to be a suicide pact.



The Absence of Human Rights



The bottom line is that for all practical purposes Israelis don't have human rights.

On June 16, 2008 the Human Rights Council discussed whether the mandate of the special investigator on Israel should be expanded to permit him to consider violations of the human rights of Israelis. The Jordanian Ambassador objected. He explained:



"there is a false impression here of a kind of symmetry that we are dealing with human rights….but we …[ought] not to fall into this symmetry… of… equating the victim and the victimizer or the oppressed and the oppressors…[or] the root causes and … the symptoms. The violation of human rights by Palestinian groups…is used as a pretext… or to confuse the issue…"



The newly appointed UN investigator Richard Falk is a man who has accused Israel of "genocidal tendencies," "associate[s] the treatment of Palestinians with th[e]…criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity" and is unconvinced that the events of 9/11 were not a Bush Administration plot. Falk therefore reassured the Jordanian Ambassador:



"…we are dealing with the suffering of the Palestinian people and secondarily of the victimizing of…Israelis..."



The absence of symmetry (the notion that Israelis have human rights too) is found across the human rights world.



Through suicide-bombing, kidnapping, rocket attacks, murder, and butchery of all kinds, Palestinian and other terrorists touch the lives of Israelis while praying, studying, working, shopping, eating, driving, sleeping – living. If the human rights of Israeli Jews were part of the equation, the list of rights violated by terrorism and war would be a long one:

* the right to life,
* the right not to be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment,
* the right to equality and freedom from persecution, ??security of the person,
* the right to health and well-being,
* the right to safe working conditions,
* the right to work,
* freedom from incitement to violence or war,
* freedom of religion,
* the right to the protection of the family,
* the right to the protection of the child,
* the right to education,
* freedom of movement,
* freedom of association,
* the right to an adequate standard of living, and
* the right to self-determination.



Add to this list: genocide – the commission of "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group," ethnic cleansing – the effort to "render…an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area" and the suicide-bomber's crime against humanity.



And yet, in judging the legality of Israel's security fence the World Court never attempted to balance these individual rights of Israelis against the list produced of Palestinian rights. Their trick – no doubt a common one – was to place a lengthy list of Palestinian rights on one side and Israeli "military exigencies," "national security" and "public order" – all faceless beneficiaries – on the other. Having weighted one half of the scale, the human rights weapon of the 21st century becomes a monstrous swindle.



Over and over again, the human rights of Israeli Jews seem to vanish. UN headquarters hosted an exhibit last November with a contribution depicting Israel's security barrier adorned with flowers and accompanied by the words "the flowers climb and hide its ugliness." The aesthetics of Jewish men, women and children blown apart in the absence of a barrier was nowhere to be found.



The Human Rights Council recently commissioned a report on the limitations placed on Palestinian access to religious sites in the territories, but refused to permit consideration of Israeli access to Jewish holy sites in the same places.



On every November 29th, the anniversary of the day on which the General Assembly voted to adopt the partition of the British Palestine Mandate and celebrated in 1947 by Holocaust survivors everywhere, the UN holds an Annual Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Secretary-General Annan called it "a day of mourning and a day of grief." Just two flags are flown inside UN headquarters in commemoration – the flag of the United Nations and the Palestinian flag.



Denying Antisemitism



Rights which do not exist cannot be violated. So it is, that in its entire history the United Nations General Assembly has never adopted a resolution dedicated to condemning antisemitism or called for the production of a report dedicated to antisemitism in contrast to special reports on discrimination against "Muslim and Arab peoples" and "Islamophobia." On the contrary, in human rights circles the definition of antisemitism is hotly disputed.



The reasons are not subtle. Jew-haters have a vested interest in denying Jewhatred.



On April 22, 2008 the Algerian ambassador told the Durban II preparatory committee: "antisemitism…targets…Arabs who are also Semites, and by extension, the whole Muslim community." Pakistan said "Islamophobia is also a crude form of antisemitism."



After all, if the phenomenon can be appropriated, Jewish victimhood will disappear.



But Muslim states are not the only ones feigning confusion about antisemitism. Human rights authorities are nervous about addressing antisemitism primarily because they want to avoid any connection with Zionism and those troublesome human rights of Israelis.



Driving a wedge between Jews and Israel is now a prime activity for antisemites and their human rights cohorts. 'Some of my best friends are Jews. It's just Jewish self-determination I have a problem with.'



Ironically, the current method of avoiding a connection between demonizing Israelis and antisemitism, is to focus on the Holocaust. The general idea is to manifest concern – half a century too late – for Jews that died 60 years ago and then to deny the antisemitism of murdering Jews in a Jewish state today.

When the European Union refused to support a General Assembly resolution on antisemitism (on the alleged grounds that it wouldn't garner consensus), Israel pushed for a Holocaust resolution. It was adopted in November 2005, minus the word "antisemitism," though it did mention the Jewish people along with "countless members of other minorities."



Since January 2006 there has been a Holocaust Remembrance Day at the UN on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Setting aside the constant struggle to ensure that the Day and related activities commemorate the uniqueness of the war against the Jews – the real battleground is over disassociating Israel from the lessons of the Holocaust.



Today, there is a permanent display on the Holocaust at UN Headquarters which contains a timeline from 1933, and Hitler's ascendancy to power, to May 2007 and the appointment of a UN Special Representative for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities. Nowhere is the creation of the state of Israel mentioned in either the timeline or the exhibit – as if the birth and well-being of Israel is not the central remedial lesson of the Holocaust.



The Destruction of the Jewish State



Rendering asunder Jews and Israel brings this human rights playbook to its inexorable conclusion – the call for the destruction of the Jewish state in the name of human rights.



The argument for demolition is twofold. First, the Jewish state is corrupt. In the words of an invited expert to a public meeting at the UN in New York just two weeks ago:



"Israel demands that the international community recognize Israel as a Jewish state…The implications are…that Palestinian citizens of Israel will never enjoy equal rights because they're not Jews…The imperative of Zionism…is to create a land without a people and replace it with the Jewish people…[We must] recognize the untenable nature of the system of dispossession and discrimination that Zionism has introduced…The days of a Zionist Israel are numbered."



This wasn't just the "expert's" view. The Chairman of the UN Committee hosting the event, the Ambassador of Senegal, thanked the speaker for her "captivating statement" and "valuable knowledge." The end of Israel is allegedly a corrective necessity of the state's inherently corrupt raison d'être.

Second, Israel has a corrupting influence on others. The 2008 annual report of Amnesty International, states:



"The international human rights system has been slow to develop in the Middle East and North Africa…[where] the Universal Declaration of Human Rights' references to non-discrimination…jar…with legal and customary systems…Such concerns, however, might have been overcome were it not for…the creation of the state of Israel and the resulting dispossession of the Palestinian population. The building of a Jewish state in the midst of the Arab Muslim world had a cataclysmic effect, setting off effectively a continuing state of war between Israel and its Arab neighbours."



In other words, the presence of a comparatively tiny number of Jews with control over their own destiny is responsible for the failure of the vast Middle East and North African nations to end their egregious treatments of their own peoples.



This game is obviously impossible for Israelis to win. The mere existence of a Jewish state is the real problem. This is antisemitism masquerading as human rights.



What follows this alleged corruption is a cacophony of players who are provided a UN platform to clamor for the political and economic strangulation of Israel through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions.

Never mind that the real corruption is that of the UN Charter itself – whose very essence is defiled by mounting the destruction of a member state under UN auspices.



Changing the Status Quo



At every step in this story, from discrimination to the clamor for the destruction of the state of Israel, it would have been possible for decent people, non-governmental organizations and democratic states to refuse to turn the page. Instead, a series of fallacies have stood in the way of the necessary confrontation with the human rights gamers.



Fallacy #1: Israel deserves the attention and the criticism, even if other states are wrongly ignored. The discrimination and double-standards are unfortunate but not fatal.



The Response: At the end of March 2007 British soldier and kidnap victim Faye Turney was in Iran - stripped to her underwear, caged in a tiny, freezing cell and led to believe her death was imminent. At exactly the same time, the UN's lead human rights agency – the Human Rights Council – made two moves. It adopted yet another resolution calling for "the dispatching of…urgent fact-finding missions" to Israel. And its President made the following statement: "the Human Rights Council has in closed meetings examined the human rights situation in…Iran…[and] decided to discontinue the consideration of the human rights situation in…Iran…Members of the…Council should make no reference in the public debate to the confidential decisions and material concerning" Iran.



The inequality of Jews cannot be quarantined. It perverts priorities and purposes.


Fairness, equality and human dignity cannot be built on the inequality of the few.



According to the UN Charter, international peace and security are premised on the equality of all nations large and small, while human dignity is inseparable from the equality of all men and women. Equality is an end in itself. The discrimination and demonization of the Jewish state and the Jewish people is not just an extraneous flaw. It subverts the very foundation of the human rights movement.



Fallacy #2: Israel does not deserve the discrimination and the nature and extent of the condemnation, but poor treatment of Israel is a price worth paying for progress on other fronts.



The Response: The Global Advocacy Director for the NGO Human Rights Watch, Peggy Hicks, and I had an online debate sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations after the first two sessions of the Human Rights Council. Hicks wrote (in July 2006 and the middle of the Lebanon war): "There are legitimate concerns at the Council's handling of the situation in Gaza, and its decision to focus on that crisis to the exclusion of other pressing situations. It would be a mistake, however, to judge the Council on the basis of its actions on the occupied Palestinian territories…" In other words, treating the Jewish state differently than all other countries is a problem only for a small proportion of the world's population. For Jews to denounce the whole just because they are given the short end of the stick would be narrow-minded, callous and parochial.



Human Rights Watch's behavior at the Durban I racism conference took this argument to its logical conclusion. As the representative of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists at Durban, I personally beseeched the representative of Human Rights Watch – to support a vote against the NGO Zionism is Racism declaration. They refused – for the alleged greater good then too.

The same approach was never suggested by human rights organizations to South African blacks and the anti-apartheid movement – for good reason. The road to hell is paved with the cries of the insignificant, the marginal and irrelevant.



Fallacy #3: Jewish complaints are an attempt to protect Israel from any criticism. Jews shout antisemitism to avoid legitimate scrutiny.



The Response: Ken Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch told the Jerusalem Post: "there is a cottage industry of people out there who try to accuse of bias those who criticize Israel's human-rights record not because the criticisms are unwarranted but as a way of simply defending Israel from any criticism." Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has said: "…some regard any criticism of Israel as anti-semitic." But "Israel's supporters" should not "use the charge of antisemitism to stifle legitimate discussion." And the Deputy Director of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber recently wrote about my criticism of his racist Israel allegations: "I assume that the picque…comes from her ideological conviction that any discussion of Israel's human rights record is simply unacceptable."



Such gibberish is the proverbial straw man. That Israel can do no wrong and deserves no criticism is a fiction never uttered by anyone, anywhere. There is a difference between legitimate criticism and the application of standards applied nowhere else.



Fallacy #4: Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. There is a constant effort to urge the Jewish diaspora to forsake their brethren in favor of the global brotherhood of man.



The Response: The anti-Zionism in human rights circles is not enigmatic. As we have heard: Judaization is a crime; the Jewishness of a Jewish state is wrong; Zionists stole the land by gratuitously slaughtering pregnant women; murderous Israeli soldiers seek to oppress; Jews want racial domination over Palestinians; Israel is engaged in apartheid; and the ultimate slander, Israelis are analogous to Nazis. Martin Luther King recognized hate when he heard it, and stated in a now famous 1968 appearance at Harvard: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism."



Zionism, or Jewish statehood, is the realization of the self-determination of the Jewish people. In their historical homeland. Continually inhabited, in fewer and greater numbers due to circumstances beyond their control. For thousands of years. In today's human rights universe, however, Jewish statehood and self-determination is an inherent evil destined to oppress and harm the well-being of those amongst them, and debilitating to the advancement of the people of other nations. That Jews are a people incapable of self-government compatible with democratic rights and freedoms – the only people on earth suffering from this inescapable affliction – is a lie. It is also antisemitism.



Fallacy #5: The outcomes of UN human rights mechanisms may not be to our liking, but that is international democracy at work. It is not for the West to dictate right answers to the rest of the globe.



The Response: In the course of his failed reform efforts, Secretary-General Kofi Annan complained: "we all have to admit that the [security] council can be more democratic and more representative…There is a democracy deficit in the UN governance that has to be corrected." What he didn't advocate by way of reform was that Council members actually be democratic. On the contrary, what democracy means at the UN is idealizing the General Assembly, where less than half of the 192 members are fully free democracies. The Chinese explained such bogus global democracy in a 2005 paper this way: "the General Assembly is an important body of democratic decision-making" and the "UN [must] observe the following principles…non-interference in internal affairs." In other words, tyranny is as likely to emerge from the UN majority as right answers.



What has in fact surfaced, from the majority of countries who have in common a desire to avoid external scrutiny, is an aversion to universal rights. Self-styled global "democrats" flaunt instead, moral, cultural and religious particularities. The practical implications of such priorities are exemplified by Saudi Arabia, a current member of the UN Human Rights Council. The Saudi Vice-Minister for Human Rights told the Council in March "…human rights principles ensured the respect for peoples identities, peoples who refused to be dictated and who held on to their special cultures." Saudi human rights reports therefore say: "Lawmaking in an Islamic state proceeds from the Islamic Shariah...Islam holds that full likeness between men and women is contrary to the reality of their being..." Accordingly, last year a Saudi court sentenced a 19-year old woman to prison and 200 lashes after she had been gang-raped, for the crime of having been found by the rapists in a car with a male friend who was not her relative. This is "cultural particularities" at work.



On June 16th at the Human Rights Council an NGO pointed to practices in Islamic states, such as honor killings, marriage of very young girls, and the stoning of women, and urged Islamic religious authorities to play a leadership role in ending these practices.



Representatives of Islamic states – Egypt, Iran, Pakistan – immediately objected to the statement as an "attempt to link bad practices" to Islam. The President then ruled that henceforth any "evaluation of a religious creed, law or document" would never be permitted at the Council.



Global democracy in action is the tyranny of non-democracies.



Fallacy #6: Western democracies – including Israel – are the real enemies of human rights.



The Response: The foes of human rights know that the best defense is a good offence – so rather than addressing those who violate human rights in the name of Islam, they allege the real problem is the bigotry of non-Muslims. They are not talking about isolated and certainly wrong incidents of xenophobia – they speak of a deliberate global Western-inspired plot against the whole of Islam. They call it Islamophobia. As Egypt told the Human Rights Council last September, with regards to the Danish cartoons affair:



"…the offensive publication of portraits of the Prophet Mohamed…lead to, not only hurting the religious feelings of more than a billion people, but also their freedom of religion and their right to respect of their religion."



The freedom of religion of a billion people has been gravely harmed by a few cartoons in a remote newspaper? These kinds of remarks – now daily fodder in the human rights world – are nothing short of lethal demagoguery.



The human rights offensive reaches a high-water mark when it comes to Israel. Pakistan articulated the mindset before the Human Rights Council on June 16th:



"Israel's forcible occupation is the root cause of all human rights issues in the Palestinian territories."



Not the terrorists who deliberately operate in the midst of a civilian population, using their family and friends as human shields. Not the bigots who feed their children – in schools, on television, in textbooks – the daily bread of intolerance and hate for their neighbors. Not the Arab nations that have cynically kept Palestinians as refugees for three generations instead of offering them citizenship and its benefits. Not the war launched by Arab states that rejected the UN partition plan and the creation of Israel in 1948. And not all the wars and attempts at annihilation that rejectionist forces have launched ever since.



But then one might expect the killers to blame their victims for their own demise.



Fallacy #7: The glass is half full and not half empty. There is progress in the human rights world. Look how far we've come since the Nuremberg Tribunals and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was first adopted.



The Response: How far indeed. Genocide in Rwanda and Sudan without intervention. Millions of women suffering genital mutilation. Billions without elementary democratic freedoms. And Jews without human rights.



The Nuremberg Tribunals taught us crimes are not committed by abstract entities, but today just naming and shaming abusers is widely criticized as uncooperative and counter-productive.



The stranglehold of cultural relativism ensures that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could never be adopted today.



Fallacy #8: The UN is a harmless talking shop. At worst it is a place to blow off steam. Dialogue is always good.



The Response: Iranian President Ahmadinejad would agree. In the late 1990's Iran initiated the idea of a "Dialogue among Civilizations." Naturally, Iranian authorities consider their own regime – in which stoning, public hanging, and cross-amputation of feet and hands are legally-sanctioned punishments – as one of those civilizations.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour experienced the idea of a cost-free dialogue with Iran first-hand. Last September she visited Tehran to attend a "Human Rights and Cultural Diversity" conference. She sat in the front row for Ahmadinejad's speech, during which he said:



"…it is a right for the most righteous to be considered as the best humans….[S]ome powers…think of nothing but destroying the traditions and customs of different nations in the world in order to keep them under their illegal sway…The…story of Palestinians has been going on for the last 60 years. The usurper Zionist regime has continued to exist through murder…[B]y the grace of God Almighty…the nuclear issue is closed…[T]he Non-Aligned Movement's struggle against…racism, Zionism…has to be praised and lauded."



The day after she listened attentively and held dialogues with his officials, the regime executed 21 people, stringing up the bodies on cranes in public places. Arbour had lent an enemy of human rights credibility and thereby encouraged his pathological behavior, rather than inhibited it. In other words, talk isn't cheap at all.



Moreover, many international actors evidently cannot talk and walk at the same time. It has been over five years since the International Atomic Energy Agency first reported that Tehran had failed to comply with its obligations under the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty. Since that time there have been a few baby steps by the Security Council, while the jawing continues between European Union representatives and Iran.



In the meantime, the genocidal plans of Ahmadinejad loom ever larger. A civilized dialogue with an anti-civilization regime has brought us closer to a military confrontation, not farther away – as the military option fast becomes the only means to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.



Fallacy #9: And last, but not least: The corruption of the human rights world may leave Israel the worse off, but the rest of us have been spared.



The Response: The lessons of the Holocaust have in fact never been learnt. The fate of Israel does, and will, affect all freedom-loving people.

When the World Court found the UN Charter's self-defense provisions did not apply to non-state actors, the ability of every democratic society to combat terrorism was diminished.



In 2007 the UN human rights regime put Israel at the top of its list of offenders, but the United States was fourth – tied with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Australia was 20th, criticized more frequently for human rights violations than Syria at 21 and Libya and Zimbabwe at 22.



Because the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference believe blowing up Israelis and Americans in the name of self-determination is not terrorism, they have successfully blocked the adoption of a comprehensive convention against terrorism and prevented the UN's lead counter terrorism agency – the Counter-Terrorism Committee – to this day from naming a single terrorist, terrorist organization, or state sponsor of terrorism.



When the centerpiece of the UN's anti-racism agenda – the Durban conference – was hijacked to promote a Zionism-is-racism campaign, the credibility of all anti-racism efforts at the UN suffered. Durban II will not only be bad for Jews; it will be an attack on freedom of expression, period.



Pakistan declared this past April at the Durban preparatory conference: "the most serious manifestation of racism is the democratic legitimization of racism and xenophobia." The inversion of human rights has come full circle, having manufactured not only the Israeli Nazi but also the democratic fascist.



UN investigator Dugard made the Orwellian nature of the human rights world particularly plain when he said in a 2007 report:



"For years the occupation of Palestine and apartheid in South Africa vied for attention…In 1994 apartheid came to an end…the OPT has become a test for the West, a test by which its commitment to human rights is to be judged. If the West fails this test, it can hardly expect the developing world to address human rights violations seriously in its own countries…"



In other words, why should Sudan stop genocide? Why should Zimbabwe stop murdering its own people? Why should China grant anybody freedom of speech? According to the human rights intelligensia, unless and until the Jewish state is rendered defenseless or defeated, the protection of the human rights of the 6 billion people in the developing world is on hold.



Israel – as Jewish scapegoats have been over the centuries – is the ultimate diversionary tactic.



Conclusion



Antisemitism has become the bread and butter of the human rights movement – as much to the detriment of the movement as to Jews. The enemies of human rights have taken control of the global mechanisms created to oppose them. The global institution intended to lead and inspire has been morally neutered. And solutions for vast numbers of victims of human rights abuse are in abeyance until a Jewish state disappears.



Jews, however, cannot change the ending of this saga alone. Democracies must be convinced to reject moral relativism; name, shame, and sanction the real villains; deny global platforms to the opponents of equality and dignity; use the label antisemitism every time it fits; and stand with Israel against the antisemitism that masquerades as human rights.



Human rights are the most powerful ideological currency of our time. Unless the free people of this earth take back the nomenclature, the institutions and the implementation tools of human rights, I fear we will witness the destruction of Israel, if not by lethal force, then by lethal politics.

Notes:

* Ann BAYEFSKY is Director, Touro Center for Human; Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute; Professor, York University. Rights and the Holocaust.
* ADC is the Anti-Defamation Commission of B'nai B'rith in Australia.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Ahmadinjad: Zionists control world, prevent peace [Full text of Speech]

In his UN speech, the Iranian dictator Ahmadinejad blamed "Zionism" for the world monetary crisis and the Georgia crisis, as well as "Palestine." He predicted the demise of the United States and of Israel. "Zionists," he claims, are "acquisitive and invasive." Excerpts:

In Palestine, 60 years of carnage and invasion is still ongoing at the hands of some criminal and occupying Zionists. They have forged a regime through collecting people from various parts of the world and bringing them to other people's land by displacing, detaining, and killing the true owners of that land. With advance notice, they invade, assassinate, and maintain food and medicine blockades, while some hegemonic and bullying powers support them. The Security Council cannot do anything and sometimes, under pressure from a few bullying powers, even paves the way for supporting these Zionist murderers. It is natural that some UN resolutions that have addressed the plight of the Palestinian people have been relegated to the archives unnoticed.


The lives, properties and rights of the people of Georgia and Ossetia and Abkhazia are victims of the tendencies and provocations of NATO and certain western powers, and the underhanded actions of the Zionists.

The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner. It is deeply disastrous to witness that some presidential or premiere nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear their allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support.


This means that the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will.

Today, the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse, and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters. The Islamic Republic of Iran, while fully respecting the resistance of the oppressed people of Palestine and expressing its all-out support for it, submits its humane solution based on a free referendum in Palestine for determining and establishing the type of state in the entire Palestinian lands to the distinguished Secretary General of the UN.

American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road, and its next rulers must limit their interference to their own borders. Today, the thought of hegemony quickly becomes a demerit.

President Ahmadinejad`s Speech Addressing the U.N. General Assembly (Full Text)
Posted: 2008/09/24
From: Mathaba

The full text of Iran`s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad`s speech to the U.N. General Assembly on September 23, 2008.

mathaba.net/news/?x=607091

In the Name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful


"All praise be to Allah, the Lord of the universe, and peace and blessing be upon our Master and Prophet, Mohammad, and his pure household, and his noble companions."

"Oh God, hasten the arrival of Imam Al-Mahdi and grant him good health and victory and make us his followers
and those who attest to his rightfulness."


Mr. President,
Excellencies,

I am grateful to the Almighty for granting me another opportunity to be present in this world Assembly.

In the last three years, I have talked to you about great hopes in the bright future of human society, and some solutions for achieving sustainable peace and expanding love, compassion, and cooperation. I have also talked about unjust systems governing the world; pressures exerted by some powers seeking to trample the rights of other nations, oppression imposed on the majority of the global community, especially on the people of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Africa, Latin America, and Asia; about challenges we are faced with, such as efforts to shatter the sanctity of families, destroy cultures, humiliate lofty values, neglect commitments, expand the shadow of threats, as well as about the arms race and the unfairness and inability of the systems governing world affairs in reforming the status quo.

With the occurrence of various new developments, the debility of existing mechanisms has been revealed even more. However, at the same time, an encouraging trend, which has originated in the thoughts and beliefs of peoples, has blossomed and become stronger. Posed against the despairs caused by the new developments, this trend has ignited the ray of hope for a brilliant, desirable and beautiful future in the hearts of men.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Colleagues,
Today I would like to talk to you about the main reasons behind the conditions ruling the world and the means to tackle them. Of course, you are already aware of what I am talking about, but I think it is necessary to remind ourselves.

It seems that the roots of problems lie in the way one views and perceives the world and humankind, as well as in the important issues of freedom, obeisance to God, and justice. The world, humankind, freedom and obeisance to God, and justice, have been of utmost importance to humans throughout history.

1. The World:
God Almighty purposefully created the world. This world is the bedrock for the evolution and growth of a creature called man, and the laws governing the world and all other creatures are at the service of man's quest for loftiness. The world should provide the needed opportunities for the fulfillment of the purpose behind man's creation. No phenomenon, creature, or indeed anything has been created in vain. Together they all pave the ground for the flourishing of mankind in a complex and purposeful system, and they are, each, one of the signs of God Almighty. All are His creations and He is the sole creator and ruler of the world. All existence including power, knowledge and wealth come from Him.

2. Humankind:
God created the world for humans and humans for Himself. He created humans from mud and in the soil, but He did not want them to remain in the soil and with animal instincts. He kindled the light of guidance in their souls and asked them to rise from the soil to the heavens and to Him with the help of wisdom, prophets and perfect men.

The world will ultimately disappear, but God has created man for eternity and has made them a manifestation of Himself. Creativity, mercifulness, kindness, knowledge, wisdom, zeal, concealment of sins, splendor, justice, bounteousness, generosity, greatness, love, glory, dignity, forgiveness, insight, kingship and all other goodness and beauty are attributes of God.

God has not created humans for aggression, bloodshed, rancor, selfishness and destruction. He made humans His vicegerents on earth and has asked them to, on the one hand, make earth prosper by using their God-given potentials and to prepare the ground for the growth of divine attributes in all humans, and to provide all with a life full of beauty, amity, freedom, justice and goodness; and on the other hand in pursuance of this path, to prepare for a prosperous, everlasting life endowed by God's mercy.

God has obligated humans to live divinely and socially, for it is only through social life and interactions with others that divine attributes may emerge.

3. Obeisance to God:
God Almighty has tied their perfection and true freedom of humans to their devotion and obedience to Himself. True freedom and obedience to God are in balance and in fact are two sides of the same coin.

Obeisance to God means confessing to monotheism and obeying His commands, and to be free from ungodly worship.

Obeisance to God means the acceptance of the absolute truth, the absolute light, and the absolute beauty.

Obeisance to God means abandoning selfishness and animal instincts, power-seeking and aggression, surrendering to righteousness, justice, love, and perfection.

And in this way, humans can achieve their true freedom and flourish, they can grow and manifest divine attributes, have affection for others, stand up for justice, and fear no power or threat, and defend the oppressed. In such an environment, one's freedom will not impinge on any others'. Contention and conflict are characteristic of materialistic freedom and animal instinct. The essence of all divine religions and obeisance to God and true freedom is disassociating from oppressors and instead obeying and worshiping God, for:

- God is omniscient and knows all that is revealed or kept secret, and He is kind and merciful.
- All creatures are humble before Him and resign to His will.
- God is alive and is the Creator of the universe and all life.
- God loves His creatures and desires nothing but goodness, blessings, and perfection for them, and is against bullying, injustice, selfishness and domination.

4. Justice:
Justice is the foundation of the creation of humankind and the whole universe. Justice is tantamount to placing every phenomenon in its own place, and providing humans with opportunities to actualize all their divine capabilities. Without it, the order of the universe will collapse and the opportunity for perfection will fade away. Without justice, it would be impossible for human society to taste real peace, beauty, joy and happiness. Justice is the main pillar of social life and without it, social life cannot continue or grow.

Humans need to know God in order to realize a prosperous society in this world as well as to strive for a beautiful eternal life, and to this end they first have to know themselves and strive for loftiness in themselves and their societies. However:

- as long as the world is construed as closed, limited and aimless,
- as long as eternal life is considered imaginary and illusory and afterlife and the Judgment Day as well as reward and punishment are thought of as fictional and unreal,
- as long as morals and commitment to them are called backwardness, and immorality, lies, deceit and selfishness are considered desirable, and humans are limited to a materialistic life in this world,
- as long as attempts are made to replace obedience to God and following His prophets and true freedom with servitude to materialistic tendencies and animal instincts and servitude to oppressing human beings, and contention reaches its pinnacle,
- as long as the aggressors, because of their financial, political and propaganda powers, not only escape punishment but even claim righteousness,
- and as long wars are started and nations are enslaved in order to win votes in elections,
not only will the problems of the global community remain unsolved, but they will be increasingly exacerbated.

Friends and Colleagues,
Let's look at the situation of the world today:

Iraq was attacked under the false pretext of uncovering weapons of mass destruction and overthrowing a dictator. The dictator is toppled and WMDs are not uncovered. A democratic government is established by the votes of the people but, after 6 years, the occupiers are still there. They insist on imposing colonial agreements on the people of Iraq by keeping them under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Millions of people have been killed or displaced, and the occupiers, without a sense of shame, are still seeking to solidify their position in the political geography of the region and to dominate oil resources.

They have no respect for the people of Iraq and disregard any dignity, rights or status for them. The UN is not capable enough to solve the problems and to remove aggression, occupation and imposition.

In Palestine, 60 years of carnage and invasion is still ongoing at the hands of some criminal and occupying Zionists. They have forged a regime through collecting people from various parts of the world and bringing them to other people's land by displacing, detaining, and killing the true owners of that land. With advance notice, they invade, assassinate, and maintain food and medicine blockades, while some hegemonic and bullying powers support them. The Security Council cannot do anything and sometimes, under pressure from a few bullying powers, even paves the way for supporting these Zionist murderers. It is natural that some UN resolutions that have addressed the plight of the Palestinian people have been relegated to the archives unnoticed.

In Afghanistan, production of narcotics has multiplied since the presence of NATO forces. Domestic conflicts continue. Terrorism is spreading. And innocent people are bombarded on a daily basis in streets, markets, schools and wedding ceremonies. The people of Afghanistan are the victims of the willingness of NATO member states to dominate the regions surrounding India, China, and South Asia. The Security Council cannot do anything about it because some of these NATO members also happen to be the major decision makers in the Security Council.

In Africa, efforts are made to reestablish the relationships of the colonial era. By starting civil wars in large countries including Sudan, disintegration of those countries is planned in order to serve the interests of some corrupt powers. In case there is a national resistance, the leaders of the resistance are put under pressure by legal mechanisms created by the very same powers.

In Latin America, people find their security, national interests and cultures to be seriously endangered by the menacing shadow of alien domineering governments, and even by the embassies of some empires.

The lives, properties and rights of the people of Georgia and Ossetia and Abkhazia are victims of the tendencies and provocations of NATO and certain western powers, and the underhanded actions of the Zionists.

The never-ending arms race and the proliferation and stockpiling of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and the threats to use them, and the establishment of missile defense systems, have made the situation unstable.

With regard to Iran's peaceful nuclear program, despite the inalienable right of all nations including the Iranian nation, in producing nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes, and despite such facts as the transparency of all Iranian activities and our country's full cooperation with the inspectors of the IAEA and the Agency's repeated confirmation of the fact that Iran's activities are peaceful, a few bullying powers have sought to put hurdles in the way of the peaceful nuclear activities of the Iranian nation by exerting political and economic pressures against Iran, and also through threatening and pressuring the IAEA. These are the same powers that produce new generations of lethal nuclear arms and possess stockpiles of nuclear weapons that no international organization is monitoring; and, the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were perpetrated by one of them.

Indeed, they are not against weapons, but they oppose other nations' progress, and tend to monopolize technologies and to use those monopolies in order to impose their will on other nations. But it is very natural that the great Iranian people, with their trust in God, and with determination and steadfastness and with the support of its friends, will resist the bullying and has defended and will continue to defend its rights. The Iranian nation is for dialogue. But it has not accepted and will not accept illegal demands. The time has come for the IAEA to present a clear report to the international community on its monitoring of the disarmament of these nuclear powers and their nuclear activities, and for a disarmament committee to be established by independent states to monitor the disarmament of these nuclear powers.

The theories of development that are in line with the hegemonic system and not in accordance with the true needs of humankind and human societies, have turned into repetitive and bland tools for assimilation of economies, expanding hegemonic domination, destroying the environment and destroying the social solidarity of nations. There is no end in sight to this. Poverty, hunger and deprivation are hurting more than one billion of the world's population and have dashed their hopes for a decent life.

The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner. It is deeply disastrous to witness that some presidential or premiere nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear their allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support.

This means that the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will.

Friends and Colleagues,
All these are due to the manner in which the immoral and the powerful view the world, humankind, freedom, obeisance to God, and justice.

The thoughts and deeds of those who think they are superior to others and consider others as second-class and inferior; who intend to remain out of the divine circle, to be the absolute slaves of their materialistic and selfish desires, who intend to expand their aggressive and domineering natures, constitute the roots of today's problems in human societies. They are the great hindrances to the actualization of material and spiritual prosperity and to security, peace and brotherhood among nations. I explicitly state that the Iranian people and the overwhelming majority of peoples and governments are against those deeds and perspectives of the world- domineering powers. Establishment of justice requires people who have achieved moderation and justice inside themselves, and have restrained their domineering attitudes and actualized their attributes of self-sacrifice and are at the service of humanity. The complete and full-scale manifestation of such characteristics can happen only under the rule of the righteous and perfect human being who is obedient to God and who is promised by the divine Prophets.

Dear Colleagues,
Of course with the grace of God Almighty a hopeful trend is flourishing in the heart and soul of human societies. The universal eagerness for justice, purity, and love for others, monotheism and the quest for perfection is clearly and increasingly on the rise. A universal resistance against the acquisitiveness, aggression and selfishness of the bullying powers is being formed. Today, the bullying powers' thoughts, practices and strategies are rejected by nations and governments, and all are seeking to establish new human relations based on justice with a view to attain prosperity, perfection, security, and sustainable welfare. This is the very auspicious phenomenon that all the traditions of creation and the ruling laws of the universe emphasize and support.

Today, the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse, and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters. The Islamic Republic of Iran, while fully respecting the resistance of the oppressed people of Palestine and expressing its all-out support for it, submits its humane solution based on a free referendum in Palestine for determining and establishing the type of state in the entire Palestinian lands to the distinguished Secretary General of the UN.

American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road, and its next rulers must limit their interference to their own borders. Today, the thought of hegemony quickly becomes a demerit.

And now a few words with the expansionist governments ruling global relations:

Be aware that living with obedience to God and carrying out His orders, compassion for people and striving for the fulfillment of justice is to your advantage too. I invite you to return to the path of God, the Prophets and to the path of the people of the world and to the truth and justice.

The only route to salvation is a divine straight path. Otherwise, God's hand of power will emerge from the sleeve of oppressed nations and will make your life difficult, and will put an end to your hegemony.
Let's love the people of the world and respect their rights. Rectify past behavior. This will benefit you and the human community. The Iranian people are prepared, along with other nations, to help you be rescued from your current situation and to establish peace and prosperity.

My Friends,
Fortuitously, opportunities are accessible. With the grace of God Almighty, the existing pillars of the oppressive system are crumbling. Great developments in favor of humankind as well as its true and real rights are on the way. A golden and brilliant future is awaiting mankind.

A global community filled with justice, friendship, brotherhood and welfare is at hand, as I have elaborated. A community which will tread the path of beauty and love under the rule of the righteous and perfect human being, the One promised by all divine prophets and the One who is the true lover of humanity. A community that will be devoid of any fear, despair and privation. Such a community will soon be ours. The community promised by the great divine Prophets Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ and Mohammad (PBUH) is about to materialize.

Let us, hand in hand, expand the thought of resistance against evil and the minority of those who are ill-wishers. Let's support goodness and the majority of people who are good and the embodiment of absolute good that is the Imam of Time, The Promised One who will come accompanied by Jesus Christ, and accordingly design and implement the just and humanistic mechanisms for regulating the constructive relationships between nations and governments.

Oh great Almighty, deliver the savior of nations and put an end to the sufferings of mankind and bring forth justice, beauty, and love.

Friends;
Let's have a proper share in the establishment of that illuminated and promised divine age.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Are there limits to Stupidity?

Snoopy T. Goon at Simply Jews has a friendly dispute with Norman Geras of Normblog. The question at issue is whether there are limits to stupidity. Geras asserted that there are limits to stupidity. His own contribution however, was not encouraging for his theory. He found a stupid quote by George Bush, but promptly found an even stupider distortion of the quote by a Guardian writer.  Presumably one could find a stupider (according to that definition of "stupid") discussion of the stupid distortion of the stupid Bush quote, and then someone would misunderstand the discussion and write up their misunderstanding and so on in infinite progression.   

Indeed, in Beg pardon, Norm 2, Snoopy insists there are no limits to stupidity,  He gives the example of Richard Silverstein equating all of the following: Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish, Israeli dovish leftist poet Yehuda Amichai, Robert Frost and Ezra Pound. Amichai and Pound??? Darwish or Amichai as great as Robert Frost?  Give us a break.

 

But I have the temerity to differ with both learned gentleman. The examples they give are not examples of stupidity, but of arrogance, perversity, hypocrisy, bad taste or intentional and malicious distortion. All of these are unlimited. Stupidity must be limited, at least in Web logs.  If a person is sufficiently stupid they would be unable to write a Web log, so we are generally spared the worst examples of stupidity. Of course, one can alway argue about whether stupidiy exists independent of an observer, like the question of the tree that may nor may not exist if nobody is looking. If a stupid Web log is not written, is it still stupid?  But that is a question for metaphysicians.

 

Likewise ignorance, an element whose natural abundance should never be underestimated, must be limited. A theoretically totally ignorant person would know nothing at all - there is a finite bound to this quality. 

 

These are each different qualities. I will illustrate some of the differences. 

 

1. Arrogance - In a private e-group, someone, an American,  insisted that knew all about the The Balfour Declaration and proceeded to "explain" it to me. That was arrogance. I often get lectured by such persons on the history of my country and my people.  I don't presume to lecture Chinese people on the history of the long march or the Ming Dynasty, but everyone seems to think they know more about Israeli history than I do, and they are always willing to impart their "knowledge." I have 'learned" some very strange things from such people.

 

2. Perversity - The first point made by our would-be instructor was that contrary to Zionist propaganda, the purpose of the Balfour declaration was equally to protect the rights of the Palestinian Arabs as well as to grant a state to the Jews in Palestine. Since the declaration was quite soon rejected by the Arabs and immediately hailed by the Jews, and since everyone including Balfour himself as well as the League of Nations understood it as granting a national home to the Jews, it is perverse to claim that the declaration had, as a major purpose, equal to the promise to grant the Jews a state, the defense of Palestinian Arab rights. If it was so wonderful for the Arabs, why did they oppose it?

 

3. Ignorance - At this point I asked our would-be mentor what he thought the Balfour declaration was. He averred that it was a letter from Lord Balfour to a British colonial officials in Palestine. When the Balfour declaration was issued as a letter to Lord Rothschild, head of the Zionist organization, there were no British colonial officials in Palestine. There wasn't even a Palestine. The Turks did not call it that. General Allenby would not reach Jerusalem until over a month later. Of course, had our lecturer known that the declaration was a letter granted as a favor to Lord Rothschild and the Zionists, he could hardly have believed that it was about protecting the rights of Arabs in Palestine.

 

4. Stupidity - After admitting that he had no idea what the Balfour declaration was, the man nonetheless continued to insist that he knew more about the Balfour declaration than the rest of us, me included, and that his interpretation had to be correct! This also illustrates the quality of Chutzpa, which is not lacking either.

 

5. Hypocrisy - This element is probably present is super-abundance, and in limitless quality as well. Consider that many of the very same people who insisted that Israel's reaction to the Hezbollah was "disproportionate" in the Second Lebanon War, now insist that Russia was perfectly justified in invading Georgia, inflicting massive casualities and commting war crimes because Georgia invaded South Ossetia. Where are all the shocking photos of dead Georgian civilians? Where are the protests and condemnations of rights groups? The silence is defining.

 

There is also a lot of bullshit of course. Intellectual bullshit has always been available in limitless quantities and in any desired quality.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

  

Continued (Permanent Link)

Left and Zionist

Reflections of a Sometime Israel Lobbyist speaks for many Jews, perhaps the silent majority, in expressing our attitudes toward Israel, anti-Zionism and the peace process. But in some ways Fein "doesn't get it." The big problem with Mearsheimer and Walt is not that they don't understand the "Jewish Massada Complex," but that much of their thesis is based on lies. Israel did not push the US into a war with Iraq, and Israel is a strategic asset to the U.S. Jimmy Carter, not a friend of Israel, did not ensure there would be a $3 billion annual aid package to Israel because of the "Israel Lobby." He did it to help ensure US presence and leverage in the Middle East. The "Israel Lobby" is not shutting up Walt and Mearsheimer or Jimmy Carter. Most Jews will not support groups that threaten the existence of Israel because they recognize that Israel is the best thing that happened to Jews in 2000 years, our single greatest achievement.

Still, it nice that at least some few of us still hope that the rightful place of Zionism is with progressivism, and that the rightful stance of the left is support for Israel. Not uncritical support, but certainly support for the right of the Jews to have a state of our own.

If right wing extremists have coopted Zionism, that is in large part the fault of the Zionist left, who largely deserted the arena of defense of Israel, and handed the leadership of the Zionist movement to the right on a silver platter. Fein's article, with all its faults, is therefore a welcome step in the right direction.

Ami Isseroff

---

Reflections of a Sometime Israel Lobbyist

By Leonard Fein

HERE'S A SECRET, the kind we hardly acknowledge to ourselves.

But first, you may be wondering who this "we" is, on whose behalf I am writing. In truth, I am not sure. Maybe it is the Jews. But the problem with "Jews" is—well, not all Jews are in on the secret. Or maybe it is the Zionists. But the problem with "Zionists" is that the word has come to seem musty, at best, and in these last several decades it has been appropriated by exclusivist fanatics. So let me spell it out: the "we" here means old-fashioned liberal Zionists, people who intuitively endorse the idea of a Jewish state, people who acknowledge that to secure the safety of that state and to ennoble its character are the compelling Jewish projects of our time, hence people who these days suffer considerable anxiety and are not strangers to disappointment. Things are not going very well, or even just average well.

And what is the secret we hardly acknowledge? We are all for a two-state solution, we are eager to call a halt to Israel's expansion, to put an end to the settlement movement, to restore Israel's good name, to make almost any compromise consistent with the preservation of Israel's character as a Jewish state and its commitment to democracy. We are, in a word, "doves." But we don't trust the Palestinians; we worry about Iran; we haven't a clue about how you get from here to peace; we don't take America's support for granted; and even if we did, we are not exactly proud to have to depend on that support. We worry that Israel has taken multiple wrong turns, not only on the big question, its peace policy, but on a range of domestic issues as well—most notably, its increasingly inegalitarian economy (where it now ranks with the United States on disparities in income distribution); its corrupting entanglement of religion and state; the decline in the quality of its educational system; its manner of dealing with the 20 percent of its citizens who are Palestinian. We are dismayed by the extent of public corruption. In short, we fear that Israel is at risk both domestically and internationally.

Now, none of that is secret. Psychic dissonance is hardly an unknown phenomenon. The secret is that because we are apprehensive, we are not entirely upset that "out there," in the public square, those who speak authoritatively on Israel's behalf—meaning, principally, AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations—are considerably more rigid, more hawkish, if you will, than we are.

Which brings me, of course, to the curious case of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who make a repeated point in their controversial book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, of the discrepancy between "official" Jewish pronouncements regarding American policy toward Israel and the consistent finding of public opinion surveys, which show that American Jews are considerably more dovish than those who speak in their name.

Mearsheimer and Walt don't know the secret, meaning they don't know the Jews. They look at Israel and see the strongest military power in the region, a prosperous, high-tech economy, and they conclude that all the talk of Israel's vulnerability is merely hokum, clever propaganda intended to keep American aid at its (allegedly) wildly disproportionate level. The source of the propaganda, the explanation for the level of American aid? The Lobby. "The Lobby," in their view, is a social scientist's dream; it explains not only America's unconditional support for Israel, it explains everything. Two words, three syllables, and you have the key to the whole of the special relationship: you know why America invaded Iraq, you know why Camp David II failed, you know why both Congress and the administration are without spine in dealing with the chronic conflict between Israel and its neighbors. It's the lies the leaders of the Lobby have told and continue to tell us.

What Mearsheimer and Walt miss (among many other things) is any understanding of the depths of apprehension currently experienced by the Zionist left. On any given day, in connection with any given episode, Israeli officials and much (but not all) of the pro-Israel activist community in the United States may, indeed, repeat the tired slogans, the inflated claims, the whole of the familiar litany of rationalization and justification: Israel is the only democratic state in the region, it faces implacable enemies, it is America's ally in the war on terrorism, its values and America's are the same, its response to threats to its security is measured—all dismissed by Mearsheimer and Walt as false pleadings. That may be true, but it is essentially irrelevant. Whether true or false (and it is at least partly true), the dismissal doesn't speak to Jewish apprehensions, shared fully by liberal Zionists. Our leaders may inflate, exaggerate, even lie; the lies of Israel's enemies are vastly larger. But neither lies nor truths are assessed by a dispassionate lie-detecting machine. They are assessed by people riddled with apprehension, and if there is any one word that captures the substance of the apprehension that word is "abandonment."

For Jews, abandonment is an old, old story. The world may abandon Israel; Israel may abandon the Zionist dream. The project may fail. Look around, the portents are everywhere. There's a rush to disinvestment, a palpable abandonment. There are mainstream claims that Israel's own policies are the necessary and sufficient explanation of the conflict, that Israel is therefore the villain of the piece. And, for liberal Zionists especially, there's the growing fashion of Left alienation from Israel, sometimes (though not always) combined with romanticization of the Palestinians. Nathaniel Popper, a young journalist who works for the Forward, writes that when he reported to his friends on his recent visit to Israel, "they seized on my skepticism—of both the Palestinians and the Israelis—to rail against Zionism. Something snapped; I whipped to Israel's defense, summoning arguments I had heard at the pro-Israel conferences I attend for work." He does not add, but might well, that part of what snapped was his comfort with those friends, his ability to take for granted a roughly similar weltanschauung. Whiplash, and suddenly we are Israel's embattled defenders, perceived as imposters on the left, insufficiently dismissive of the parochial claims of the Jews. Where, then, do we belong?

As if empathy for the Israelis precludes sympathy for the Palestinians. As if this is all a zero-sum game, as if Mr. Bush's gross "You are either with us or against us" were a sober appraisal not only of the battle with terrorism but also of the war between Israel and its neighbors—as if there's no place for qualification, for ambiguity, for nuance. As if there's no appreciation for tragedy.

NADAV SAFRAN was a distinguished professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard.

Born in Egypt, he'd lived in Israel (and fought in its War of Independence) before coming to the United States. His first major book, published in 1963, was The United States and Israel. In his preface to that book, Safran wrote, "I believe that fundamentally both Arabs and Jews have an unassailable moral argument. A person who cannot see how this is possible does not understand the essence of tragedy; much less does he realize that his position serves only to assure that the Palestine tragedy should have another sequel, and yet another."

Safran was prescient. Exclusivists on both sides of the conflict have indeed brought on sequel after sequel, by now an ongoing calamity. It matters not at all which set of exclusivists is the more to blame, which less. What matters is that together they've come to own the crowded stage.

There's Hamas, of course, in a class by itself. There are the settlers and their avid defenders. There are a handful of hard-line American Jewish organizations like the ZOA (Zionist Organization of America). And there are Nathaniel Popper's friends—presumably (I don't know Popper) people of the left—who have neither use for nor patience with the Jewish state. It's racist, it's militaristic, and it's an anachronism. Nationalism was never a good thing, and the Jews were supposed to know that.

AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents are at most unwitting support personnel for the tedious drama. Nominally, they support a two-state solution, which—by definition—the exclusivists do not, and which by now has become the litmus test of a pro-peace (which means pro-Israel and pro-Palestine) stance. True, there are times when they and some right-leaning others set the bar so high that their endorsement of a two-state solution seems little more than lip service. But it is not helpful or accurate to lump them together as part of the exclusivist camp.

THERE'S A dynamic here, worth attending to: where the left has closed the door to Israel, gone beyond tough criticism all the way to demonization, we are left out in the cold; we will have no truck with exclusivists, whether of the right or the left. But while we cannot, do not, will not dance with those who believe that pro-Zionist passion requires the suspension of critical judgment, we prefer the company of those who wish Israel well to the company of those who wish it ill, even though the course endorsed by those who wish it well seems to us too often mistaken.

The left has a hard time with nationalism and is particularly irritated by Jewish nationalism. "Tribalism," they call it, and tribalism it sometimes is. Somehow, it is supposed that the Jews should know better, whether because we have so often in the past been victims of nationalism or because there's something awkward about people who have been comfortable living at the margins suddenly insisting that they have a fixed address and a fire in the fireplace or because nouveau powerful is no more attractive than nouveau riche or because statecraft is not a particular strength of a people of artists, scholars, merchants, a people with so pacific a history as ours. And look, they say, at what a mess the Zionists have made of things. Pacific? Only so long as they were not allowed to carry guns. Now, with guns, they become hunters.

Well, look: though pocked with imperfections, some no cosmetics can mask, the record's hardly one of unrelieved bungling. There are grace notes galore and much to admire: freedom of speech, the rule of law, distinguished science, and an ongoing effort to balance the twin imperatives of the Jewish understanding—on the one hand, the claims of the tribe; on the other the claims of the whole world; on the one hand, the particular; on the other, the universal.

And yet we know there's an urgency to boundaries; Esperanto doesn't work. Again and again, Hillel's questions are heard simultaneously, not sequentially, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" and "If I am only for myself, what am I?" Others may find contradiction here; we find enduring and productive tension.

Some of us get it wrong all the time, opting either for radical universalism or for stultifying particularism. And all of us get it wrong some of the time. But we are held together (when we are) by memories of the dreams we have dreamed, of what it is supposed to be like: the swords into plowshares, the spears into pruning hooks, all under their own fig tree and none shall make them afraid.

Is it necessarily the case that the moment you tie a rag to a branch and call it a flag, you become obsessed with your own narrowly defined interests and to hell with the others? There is that risk, as ample precedent makes clear. And Israel's destiny, in the end, may be to be a nation like all the other nations rather than the light unto the nations that the utopians imagined. In the Jewish tradition, there are two Jerusalems. In the heavenly Jerusalem, Moses teaches, David sings, Solomon dispenses wisdom; in the earthly Jerusalem, there are curses alongside the blessings, people shove in line and cheat on their income taxes, they laugh and hug and hate, grandeur and pettiness cohabit. The haunting question is how the two Jerusalems can be brought closer together.

And maybe they cannot be, neither here nor anywhere. Or maybe they can be, but we are still off course somewhere in the desert. All we have learned so far is that being Jewish does not immunize against the baser appetites and the evil inclinations. And that hurts; we were taught to expect more and better. We had it figured out, what Max Weber called "the theodicy of disprivilege." How does an oppressed people explain its persecuted status? By imagining that it is morally advantaged. That is what we were taught, quite often explicitly: the oppression, the advantage. Now both seem remote. And though we still proclaim our unbending commitment to justice, we also whine a lot.

Some of us have given up, dream dreams derived from other stories; others of us feel betrayed, thereby embittered; and there are those who take their cue from Anthony Burgess in his retelling of the Exodus story (Moses: A Narrative), when the people complained to Aaron: "And one said: 'I don't like this sort of talk at all. It's all blown up, like a sheep's stomach full of wind. Life is . . . life is what we see, smell, feel—the taste of a bit of bread, a mouthful of water, sitting at the door, watching the evening come on with the circling of the bats. The things you talk of are only in the mind. We are too old, I tell you, for this talk of common goals and purposes and journeys.'" Today life is no longer just the taste of a bit of bread or a mouthful of water; these days we have pastries and fine wines. These days, busy meeting with senior officials of the Defense Department to talk about Israel's pressing needs for this new weapons system or that, meeting over at State to make sure that Israel is not pressed too hard, meeting with Members of Congress to trade support for support—who has time or disposition for talk of purposes and journeys?

THE ISRAEL LOBBY includes all those who, because they take neither Israel nor America's support for Israel for granted, because they remain haunted, prowl the corridors of American power to press the case for "the special relationship." And yes, they are powerful, albeit not nearly so powerful as their critics contend. And yes, power, as Acton taught, corrupts. But we know that impotence is even more corrupting. And the strange truth is that we feel both powerful and powerless at the same time. That is how we see ourselves and that is how we see the Jewish state, and that is also how the Israelis see themselves and their nation. We were slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt and we have known pharaohs ever since; underneath our designer costumes we wear a shroud.

FOR SOME OF US, that means that even with the Land, we still remain in Exile, Exile as an existential condition rather than a geographic space. All the pastries and the fine wines cannot erase our tortured wisdom; though rich, we are not comfortable. We are imprisoned both by our memories and by the world's disorder. Our only remedy is to remain prisoners of hope as well, to remember not only yesterday but also tomorrow, the promised tomorrow.

The world of the lobbyists, by and large, is less fragmented. They have learned to work the system; in some ways, they have become the system. If that were a crime, they would be guilty. But it is not a crime. The argument cannot be whether there should be a lobby or whether, once there is a lobby, it is entitled to be powerful. Those are the givens of the system.

So the argument is really about the means by which the lobby maintains its power and the ends to which it devotes that power. The broadest statement of the lobby's purpose is that it seeks to preserve and enhance the special relationship between Israel and the United States. That relationship has deep and diverse cultural and historical roots; it is not an artifact of which the lobby is the author. AIPAC (and the others) work within a hospitable context; the engine of its power is a vast and devoted grassroots constituency.

And what of the liberal Zionists? Chiefly Americans for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom—we also lobby, and just as energetically, albeit with considerably more limited resources. Pound for pound, we may even be as effective, as powerful one might say, as the others, but we are welterweights. We do what we can to promote a genuine two-state solution and to reverse those policies of the Israeli government—settlements especially though not exclusively—that stand in its way, thereby evoking rebuke and sometimes condemnation from the mainstream. We insist that "pro-Israel" has many shades of meaning and cannot be a term reserved for the most hawkish of Israel's supporters. We persist in our love of Zion, thereby evoking rebuke and sometimes contempt from erstwhile and natural allies on the left. We believe that classical Jewish values and current Israeli interests are of a piece and, with Seamus Heaney, that one day "hope and history will rhyme."

Leonard Fein is a Boston-based writer and teacher, a regular columnist for the Forward, founding editor of Moment magazine, and a member of the board of Americans for Peace Now.

Continued (Permanent Link)

British media bias: Israel at 60

British media bias: Israel at 60


Following is a summary of the main points of this important analysis (Israel at 60 in the UK media – an analysis). Not surprisingly, it shows that BBC and journals such as the Guardian and Independent were consistently biased against Israel, and included gratuitous conclusions that indicate an active anti- Israel slant rather than opinions based on fact: Israel doesn't want peace, Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians... This is a good study, but we always want more. We would like to see (wouldn't we?):

1. An analysis of television broadcasts. Television and radio are more difficult to analyze for many reasons - images and tone are hard to quantify.

2. A comparison of the coverage of Israel at 60 to the coverage of Israel at 50. Is anti-Israel bias getting worse or is it receding?

3. A tabulation of specific factual errors and omissions in op-ed articles. Opinion pieces are "allowed" to get the facts wrong. When they are always wrong in a specific direction they point to bias.

4. Did accounts of 1948 mention that it was the Arabs that attacked Israel?

5. How much of this British coverage included criticism of Britain's own role in creating the conflict, in reneging on its role as the British mandatory, and in attempting itself to ignore or violate
UN Resolution 181, which called for partition? A mass of evidence indicates that the British wanted to ensure that the Negev would be part of Jordan. British failed to cooperate with UN officials and allowed Arab infiltrators to enter Palestine. It would be interesting to find out if any of this was mentioned in British commentary.

Ami Isseroff

Israel at 60 in the UK media – an analysis

http://www.justjournalism.com/plugins/p1999_media_special_articles/pdf/1504_Israel60Booklet_05.pdf


Just Journalism

contact@justjournalism.com

INTRODUCTION

In May 2008, Israel celebrated 60 years of independence since its inception in 1948. Just Journalism carried out a thematic and statistical analysis of coverage of this event in the UK media, during April and May 2008.

Scope of coverage

Our monitoring covered nine national daily newspapers, eight Sunday newspapers, one London daily and three weekly current affairs magazines. We also monitored the BBC News Website and six BBC Radio 4 programmes as well as a BBC2 documentary. (See Appendix A for a complete list of outlets and programmes monitored.)

Methodology

Our report has three objectives:

1 To summarise and evaluate the volume and depth of the coverage devoted to this event.

2 To identify the key messages that came through from the coverage as a whole.

3 To conclude at a macro level whether the coverage was broadly favourable, unfavourable or neutral.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Scope:

Israel's 60th anniversary was an event which received wide coverage in the UK media.

Seventy articles appeared in the print media, BBC Radio 4 aired 12 segments in the programmes we monitored, while the BBC News website featured over 40 articles related to this event. The Guardian carried the most coverage, followed by The Independent.

Themes:

A number of themes emerged from the coverage:

A key theme to emerge from the UK media coverage was that Israel does not seek peace. Eighty-three per cent of all press coverage which took a position on the issue contained the message that Israel does not seek peace.

Seventeen per cent of all press coverage which took a position on Israel's stance on peace contained the message that Israel seeks peace.

Only 16% of articles conveyed that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.

Just Journalism found that across all the coverage as a whole, the strongest theme to emerge was that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians. While Israel's anniversary celebrations received extensive coverage, this was generally offset by reporting on what the Palestinians call the "Nakba" or catastrophe.

A snapshot of the overall newspaper coverage indicates that 44 % of articles contained the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians, and this rises to 54% when looking at the broadsheets.

This message is particularly prominent in The Guardian and The Independent. Sixty-seven per cent of articles in The Guardian contained this message.

There was a noticeable lack of coverage of domestic issues in Israel, of concessions Israel has made for peace and of the existential threat to Israel posed by Iran.

Nevertheless, there were divergences in messages across media outlets:

Eighty per cent of the coverage in the Daily Telegraph, for instance, contained the message that Israel faces existential threats.

On BBC Radio 4, the strongest message was that Israel is a homeland for the Jews – a message appearing in 42% of items.

By contrast, the strongest message on the BBC News website was that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians – a message appearing in 45% of web articles

....

The purpose of extracting the key messages from each item of coverage was specifically to focus on the main

impression that was being conveyed to the reader or listener. We extracted the key messages from each individual

news item or article and then aggregated all the individual messages into common categories.

The messages we identified fall into eleven main categories, described below. Each article may contain one or more

of the following messages:

1. Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians

This message came through from pieces that implied that Israel's 60th anniversary should necessarily be seen alongside Palestinian displacement and dispossession in 1948. These pieces usually refer to what is often described as the "Nakba" or "catastrophe".

2. Israel does not seek peace

Coverage in this category conveyed the sense that Israel is not seeking peace.

3. Israel is an entirely negative phenomenon

Coverage in this message category portrayed Israel in a fundamentally negative way, occasionally questioning the legitimacy of the Jewish State.

4. The Palestinian refugee problem is the fault of Israel

Coverage in this category referred exclusively to the events of 1948, but suggested that Israel is chiefly to blame for the Palestinian problem.

5. Israel has lost its ideals

This message was derived from coverage relating to an erosion of Israel's founding ideals and values.

6. Israel's future is uncertain

This message came through from pieces raising questions over Israel's future existence as a result of demographic trends, regional conditions or its policies.

7. Israel faces existential threats

Coverage in this message category highlighted the existential threats facing Israel, most commonly the threat from Iran.

8. Israel is a homeland for the Jews

This included pieces conveying the sense that Israel is a focal point for Jewish identity or that Israel is a haven for Jews around the world.

9. Israel is a successful country

Coverage containing this message conveyed admiration for Israel's accomplishments or recognised that Israel has excelled in key areas such as democracy, economy, social diversity and the high-tech industry.

10. Israel seeks peace

Coverage in this category conveyed the sense that Israel is seeking peace.

11. The Palestinian refugee problem is the fault of the Arab world

This covered pieces that referred exclusively to the events of 1948, and suggested that the Arab world is chiefly to blame for the Palestinian problem.

MESSAGING IN NEWSPAPERS

The section below summarises the key messages within the printed publications. A full discussion of the messaging in individual newspapers and magazines can be found in Part 5 – Analysis of Individual Media Outlets.

The broadsheets and tabloids are addressed separately.

Key messages across all newspapers

Eighty-three per cent of articles which took a position on Israel's stance on peace contained the message that

Israel did not seek peace.

Sixty-two per cent of articles which blamed one party for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem

blamed Israel.

Forty-four per cent of articles contained the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians.

Twenty-seven per cent of articles contained the message that Israel is a successful country.

Twenty-four per cent of articles contained the message that Israel faces existential threats.

Sixteen per cent of articles contained the message that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.

Sixteen per cent of articles contained the message that Israel has lost its ideals.

Fourteen per cent of articles carried the message that Israel's future is uncertain.

Ten per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel is an entirely negative phenomenon.

...

Key messages in broadsheets

Fifty-four per cent of articles contained the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians.

Eighty-eight per cent of articles which took a position on Israel's stance on peace contained the message that

Israel does not seek peace.

Ninety per cent of articles which blamed one party for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem

blamed Israel.

Twelve per cent of articles contained the message that Israel is an entirely negative phenomenon.

Twenty-two per cent of articles contained the message that Israel faces existential threats.

Twenty-six per cent of articles contained the message that Israel is a successful country.

Sixteen per cent of articles contained the message that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.

ISRAEL WAS CREATED AT THE EXPENSE OF THE PALESTINIANS

[Figure omitted]

.... For instance, out of 15 articles on Israel's 60th anniversary published in The Guardian, 10 (67%) contained the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians, whereas neither of the two articles in The Independent on Sunday contained that message.

Overall, 54% of articles in the broadsheets carried the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians.

All the daily broadsheets published at least one article containing the message.

Two out of four Sunday broadsheets published articles with the same message.

An example of this message:

"That is why today – the anniversary of the end of the British mandate in Palestine and the declaration of Israeli statehood – is also a day of mourning for 10 million Palestinians and their supporters: the commemoration of the nakba, or catastrophe, that led to the destruction of their society and expulsion from their homeland."

(Seamus Milne, Expulsion and dispossession can't be cause for celebration, The Guardian, May 15, 2008)

ISRAEL IS AN ENTIRELY NEGATIVE PHENOMENON

[Figure omitted - only the Guardian and the Independent carried this message]

Overall, 12% of articles in the broadsheets carried the message that Israel is an entirely negative phenomenon.

This message was only carried in The Guardian and The Independent.

An example of this message:

"Sixty years after the creation of Israel, there could not be a wider gap between the cruel reality of Israel today and Herzl's dream." (Jacqueline Rose, Israeli fiction – the nation's conscience, The Guardian, May 10, 2008)

ISRAEL DOES NOT SEEK PEACE

[Figure omitted]

Forty per cent of articles carried the message that Israel does not seek peace. All the daily broadsheets published articles containing the message.

Of the Sunday broadsheets, only The Observer published an article with this message.

An example of this message is the following:

"there has always been a strain of Israeli society that preferred violently setting its own borders, on its own terms, to talk and compromise. This weekend, the elected Hamas government offered a six-month truce that could have led to talks. The Israeli government responded within hours by blowing up a senior Hamas leader and killing a 14-year-old girl." (Johann Hari, Israel is suppressing a secret it must face, The Independent, April 28, 2008).

ISRAEL HAS LOST ITS IDEALS

[Figure omitted]

Overall, 14% of articles in the broadsheets carried the message that Israel has lost its ideals. Of the daily broadsheets, The Guardian, Financial Times and The Times carried the message. Of the Sunday broadsheets, only The Observer published an article with this message.

An example of this message is the following: "Today, with the 60th anniversary of independence fast approaching, there are a significant number of Israelis on both left and right asking whether in the intervening period the Israel declared by its founding fathers as a largely secular, communitarian project has not somehow lost the plot.." (Sam Kiley, Israel: 60 years of hope and despair,

The Observer, April 20, 2008)

ISRAEL IS A SUCCESSFUL COUNTRY

[Figure omitted]

Overall, only 26% of articles in the broadsheets carried the message that Israel is a successful country. All the daily broadsheets published at least one article containing the message.

Three out of four of the Sunday broadsheets published articles with the same message.

An example of this message:

"…60 years after its creation the very existence of the state of Israel remains nothing short of a miracle: a miracle of human will, determination and ultimately of hope. In less than three generations and in spite of extremely difficult conditions, Israelis have managed not only to survive but also to create a rich and original culture; to achieve spectacular results in science and medicine; and to create a technological hub in the region." (Dominique Moisi,

Israel's Pride and Prejudice at 60, Financial Times, April 30, 2008)

ISRAEL IS A HOMELAND FOR THE JEWS

Overall, 16% of articles in the broadsheets carried the message that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.All the daily broadsheets except The Times published at least one article containing this message. Three out of four of the Sunday broadsheets published articles with the same message.

An example of this message:

" …This Zionist anthem articulates something very deep in Israelis' sense of themselves: they are a nation formed by those who had no other place to live. The Holocaust, inevitably, looms large in this: the establishment of a Jewish state just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz was no coincidence. After 2,000 years, the world was finally persuaded that the Jews deserved what every other people regarded as a basic right: a place of their own." (Jonathan Freedland, As it turns 60, the fear is Israel has decided it can get by without peace,

The Guardian, May 7, 2008)

ISRAEL SEEKS PEACE

[Figure omitted]

Overall, only 6% of articles carried the message that Israel seeks peace. This message was only contained in three articles in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and The Sunday Telegraph. An example of this message:

"Mr Rabin, who won the Nobel peace prize for negotiating the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian leader Yasser

Arafat in 1993, showed that the Jewish state could also make painful concessions in the interests of peaceful

coexistence with its Arab neighbours". (Con Coughlin, As Israel remembers horrors of the past, the future

looms dark, The Daily Telegraph, May 2, 2008)

ISRAEL'S FUTURE IS UNCERTAIN

[Figure omitted]

Overall, 18% of articles carried the message that Israel's future is uncertain.

The Guardian, The Independent, Financial Times and The Observer published articles carrying this message.

An example of this message:

"..Hopefully I will not live to see the day when it becomes possible that the State of Israel might no longer exist" (Daniel Barenboim, Israel and me, The Guardian, May 14, 2008)

ISRAEL FACES EXISTENTIAL THREATS

[Figure omitted]

Overall, 22% of articles carried the message that Israel faces existential threats. This message featured particularly strongly in The Daily Telegraph. The message was not carried in The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, and The Sunday Times.

An example of this message:

"For a long time Israel has been accused of crying wolf over surrounding countries that want to "drive it into the sea". Now it has a neighbour whose president has not only made that threat explicit, but who intends to develop the capacity to do it." (Martin Bright, New Statesman, The Great Betrayal, May 19, 2008)

21

BBC Radio

Key messages in BBC Radio coverage

Forty-two per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.

Thirty-three per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians.

Twenty-five per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel faces existential threats.

Twenty-five per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel's future is uncertain.

BBC News Website

Key messages on BBC News website

Forty-five per cent of web coverage contained the message that Israel was created at the expense ofthe Palestinians.

Thirty-one per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.

Twenty-six per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel is not seeking peace.

Twenty-one per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel is a successful country.

PART 3: POSITIONING ANALYSIS

In addition to categorising key messages, we also observed how Israel was presented in broad terms, by noting whether each piece of coverage was positive, negative, or neutral, as defined below:

Positive

Israel was cast in a largely favourable light.

Negative

Israel was cast in a largely unfavourable light.

Neutral

Israel was cast neither in a favourable nor unfavourable light.

Overall Statistics For All Newspapers

Just Journalism found 70 articles across all the newspapers with relevant coverage.

Thirty-six per cent of coverage was negative.

Forty-three per cent of coverage was neutral.

Twenty-one per cent was positive.

[Figure omitted]

23

Broadsheets

Just Journalism found 50 articles across the broadsheets with relevant coverage.

Thirty-eight per cent of coverage was negative.

Forty-two per cent of coverage was neutral.

Twenty per cent of coverage was positive.

Therefore nearly twice as many broadsheet articles were negative than positive.

[Figure omitted]

... The Guardian and The Independent contained the most negative coverage while the

Telegraph titles carried the most positive coverage. None of the Sunday broadsheets carried negative articles.

BBC Radio

Just Journalism monitored 42 broadcasts on BBC Radio 4, including Sunday, Today and The World Tonight, finding 12 pieces of relevant coverage.

Seventeen per cent of the coverage was negative.

Sixty-six per cent of the coverage was neutral.

Seventeen per cent of the coverage was positive.

BBC News Website

Just Journalism found 42 web items on the BBC News website.

Forty-three per cent of the coverage was negative.

Fifty-two per cent of the coverage was neutral.

Five per cent of the coverage was positive.

Therefore negative coverage outweighed positive coverage by almost nine to one.

Of the 42 items published, 20 were authored pieces. Interestingly, a separate study of the authored pieces

revealed the following:

Sixty per cent of the coverage was negative.

Forty per cent of the coverage was neutral.

[The detailed analysis of journals is omitted]

CONCLUSION

The 60th anniversary of Israel's creation was an event that received extensive coverage in the UK media. This coverage varied across the media outlets, but the strongest theme overall was that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians. The focus on this theme suggests a shift in the British media towards the Palestinian narrative on 1948.

A second theme that emerged from the UK media was that Israel does not seek peace, characterised by the focus on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its policy towards Gaza. In contrast, there were few references to the concessions that Israeli governments have made over recent years in order to advance peace with the Palestinians– from Oslo in 1993 through to the Camp David talks in 2000 and the Disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

Arguably, the most noticeable omission in the coverage was the lack of focus on Israel's domestic issues, such as the hi-tech industry, the impact of immigration on Israeli society or relations between the religious and secular populations. Israel's 60th anniversary provided a rare opportunity for the UK media to explore and scrutinize the diverse challenges facing the Jewish State and its society. Yet, with a few exceptions, such as the Economist, the Financial Times and BBC Radio 4, the British media missed this opportunity.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Ahmadinejad predicts: Israel will disappear again - but Ha'aretz got it wrong

Ha'aretz's story Ahmadinejad predicts Israel will be 'swept away' by Palestinians is wrong. It states:

 

It is the second time within less than three years that the Iranian president predicted the eradication of Israel.

The first time was in 2005 when Ahmadinejad hoped that Israel would be eradicated from the Middle East map.

 In the first place, Ahmadinejad didn't say in 2005 that he hoped Israel would be eradicated from the Middle East map (or "wiped off"). What he said was that Imam Khomeini said there would be a world without Zionism and America, and Ahmadinejad believes this goal is feasible. This can be checked easily, though there is not really much difference between what he did say, and what he was widely reported as saying.

 

Secondly, Ahmadinejad has predicted the demise of Israel several times since then:

 

Jerusalem Post, Dec 2, 2006:

 

 

Ahmadinejad went on to say that, "Today scores of Western politicians are in doubt as to the future of this illegitimate regime and its existence has come under question.

 

"There is no doubt the Palestinian nation and Muslims as a whole will emerge victorious," the Iranian president told Haniyeh.

"The continued commission of crimes by the Zionist regime will speed up the collapse of this fictitious regime," said Ahmadinejad.

And Ynet, November 13, 2006:

 

 

Ahmadinejad: Israel's destruction near

Published:  11.13.06, 08:53 / Israel News

According to the Iranian media Monday, Iranian President Mahoud Ahmadinejad declared that Israel was destined to 'disappearance and destruction' at a council meeting with Iranian ministers.

"The western powers created the Zionist regime in order to expand their control of the area. This regime massacres Palestinians everyday, but since this regime is against nature, we will soon witness its disappearance and destruction," Ahmadinejad said. (AFP)

 

On June 3, 2007, Foxnews reported:

 

"God willing, in the near future we will witness the destruction of the corrupt occupier regime," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying during a speech to foreign guests who attended ceremonies marking the 18th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who is known as the father of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.

 

 

Compare the above with the current story:  

 

"This terrorist and criminal state is backed by foreign powers, but this regime would soon be swept away by the Palestinians," Ahmadinejad said in a press conference in Tehran.

 

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Being pro-Israel on Campus

Ilana Diamond's complaint about Israel advocacy on campus is common to many of us. Progressive and Middle of the Road Zionist groups are conspicuous by their absence. Surely a large group like Arza should have some campus presence in the fight for Israeli legitimacy? Ilana writes:

It is extremely hard to fight fire with fire and remain respectable. The images the pro-Palestinian groups put onto posters are deplorable. Texans for Israel will try to avoid the pity ploy, but on today's college campuses it seems that that's what it takes to gain support for a cause. A group has to be loud, crude, over the top, and gut wrenching for their message to be heard. Simply showing the positive side to a cause no longer captures attention.

Pro-Israel activists can talk up the positives of Israel until we are blue in the face, but until someone sees Israelis as victims, they will just ignore our message.

Indeed, it is sad that what "works" among these "budding intellectuals" is blood, gore and sensation, "personal messages" and the like, rather than facts and rational argument. The cult of Rachel Corrie and Yasser Arafat is a much more effective advocacy tool than a dozen boring tracts about international law.

Ami Isseroff

---

It's lonely being pro-Israel on campus

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ilana Diamond , THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 15, 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many people put much faith into average college students, assuming that they are curious enough to explore every facet of information given them. But people who think this of college students are severely misguided.

The majority of college students are looking for something to believe in. So when pro-Palestinian on-campus groups wave around posters with pictures of "mutilated" Palestinian children, it's easy for students to fall into the "Israel is the aggressor" trap.

This is a widespread problem on numerous college campuses - not only in the United States, but Canada and European countries as well.

On the University of Texas at Austin campus, where I am a student, it's a daily problem. There are some five pro-Palestinian student groups currently active on campus. Guess how many pro-Israel student-run groups there are. One.

Well, maybe two. There is also the Union of Progressive Zionism, but I am not yet convinced that their main battle won't be fighting the "occupation."

Meanwhile, one could say there are about seven institutionalized forces working against Israel on the UT campus.

This year alone, these groups have brought in speakers such as John Mearsheimer, author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a book denouncing AIPAC; Alison Weir, journalist and the founder of If Americans Knew, a group that argues the US is sending too much money to Israel and that the Palestinian plight is underrepresented in American media; Neturei Karta Rabbi Dovid Weiss, who attended Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial conference and is a member of Jews United Against Zionism; and Anna Baltzer, a pro-Palestinian American Jew.

Needless to say, the Palestinian sympathizers at UT know how to make their events look credible, and the events are usually well attended. This is the part where putting too much faith in college students starts to go wrong.

STUDENTS ATTEND these lectures and hear how AIPAC is supposedly wasting taxpayer's money, how Israel is supposedly brutalizing and killing innocent Palestinian children, and so on. The organizers of these events know these issues are compelling, and that any Joe-shmoe is going to sympathize with their cause.

The average college student attending is likely to be hearing about the Arab-Israel conflict for the first time, and can end up believing that what they've just learned is the whole story, thus creating a large problem for pro-Israel activists.

It is especially undermining when some of these anti-Israel speakers are of Jewish heritage. Students interpret that to mean that if a Jew doesn't like Israel, then Israel must be really bad - so it's ok if I don't like Israel either.

In fact it is not uncommon to see scattered clueless middle-class kids schlepping to class with a keffiyeh around their neck because they sympathize with Palestine and believe they are wearing a "freedom scarf," as is called by the clothing store Urban Outfitters.

To combat anti-Zionism on campus, TFI (Texans for Israel) has brought in speakers such as Middle East expert and former Jerusalem Post editor David Makovsky, Nonie Darwish, the Muslim-born Christian who founded Arabs for Israel, and David Brog, the founder of Christians United for Israel.

However when speakers like these appear, Palestinian sympathizers come and make accusations against them. A member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee got up to ask Nonie Darwish a "question" which began: "You can't be serious. You are not a serious speaker. What are you trying to accomplish by speaking to a bunch of white American Jews?"

Nor can these relatively few speakers compete with the onslaught of weekly posters put up around campus with pictures of bloodied Palestinian children, body bags, and misquoted statements from Israeli officials seeming to suggest that Palestinians are asking for it. For some reason - perhaps the way the media covers the conflict - many college students seem to be more skeptical of pro-Israel speakers than anti-Israel ones.

SO FAR TFI has taken a non-confrontational stance when addressing the gory posters and signs claiming "Zionism equals racism." The Palestine Solidarity Committee even protested at an Israeli cultural event that had nothing to do with politics - proving that it is not aiming for peace or even dialogue.

However in response to the recent "Apartheid Week" (that actually went on for two weeks) and the Campus Anti-War Movement to End the Occupation which displays posters with cartoons comparing Gaza to Auschwitz, TFI is stepping up our game, and preparing exhibits on the current situation in Sderot, minus the overwhelming gore.

It is extremely hard to fight fire with fire and remain respectable. The images the pro-Palestinian groups put onto posters are deplorable. Texans for Israel will try to avoid the pity ploy, but on today's college campuses it seems that that's what it takes to gain support for a cause. A group has to be loud, crude, over the top, and gut wrenching for their message to be heard. Simply showing the positive side to a cause no longer captures attention.

Pro-Israel activists can talk up the positives of Israel until we are blue in the face, but until someone sees Israelis as victims, they will just ignore our message.

But is it right for pro-Israel groups to capture attention by exhibiting photos of suicide bombing victims? Or life under continuous rocket attack?

Israel prides itself on being able to quickly pick up the pieces and move on. By stooping to the level of showing bombed-out homes, are pro-Israel groups helping or hurting the country? I am not sure.

Luckily the semester is almost over, and we will have a whole summer to gear up for another 10-month-long war of words and rethink the tactics we are using.

The writer is a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin studying journalism and Middle Eastern studies. She was a Jerusalem Post intern last year.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Israel is not an apartheid state: Disappearance of Bishop Tutu

Quote:

"..where is Desmond Tutu when my people call out for freedom? Slaughter and genocide and slavery are lashing Africans right now. Where are you for Sudan, Bishop Tutu? You are busy attacking the Jewish state. Why?"

 

Disappearance of Bishop Tutu

 

By Simon Deng
Friday November 16, 2007
Late last month, I went to hear Bishop Desmond Tutu speak at Boston's Old South Church at a conference on "Israel Apartheid." Tutu is a well respected man of God. He brought reconciliation between blacks and whites in South Africa. That he would lead a conference that damns the Jewish state is very disturbing to me.

 

The State of Israel is not an apartheid state. I know because I write this from Jerusalem where I have seen Arab mothers peacefully strolling with their families even though I also drove on Israeli roads protected by walls and fences from Arab bullets and stones. I know Arabs go to Israeli schools, and get the best medical care in the world. I know they vote and have elected representatives to the Israeli Parliament. I see street signs in Arabic, an official language here. None of this was true for blacks under Apartheid in Tutu's South Africa.

 

I also know countries that do deserve the apartheid label: My country, Sudan, is on the top of the list, but so are Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What has happened to my people in Sudan is a thousand times worse than Apartheid in South Africa. And no matter how the Palestinians suffer, they suffer nothing compared to my people. Nothing. And most of the suffering is the fault of their leaders. Bishop Tutu, I see black Jews walking down the street here in Jerusalem. Black like us, free and proud.

 

Tutu said Israeli checkpoints are a nightmare. But checkpoints are there because Palestinians are sent into Israel to blow up and kill innocent women and children. Tutu wants checkpoints removed. Do you not have doors in your home, Bishop? Does that make your house an apartheid house? If someone, Heaven forbid, tried to enter with a bomb, we would want you to have security people "humiliating" your guests with searches, and we would not call you racist for doing so. We all go through checkpoints at every airport. Are the airlines being racist? No.

 

Yes, the Palestinians are inconvenienced at checkpoints. But why, Bishop Tutu, do you care more about that inconvenience than about Jewish lives?

 

Bishop, when you used to dance for Mandela's freedom, we Africans all over Africa joined in. Our support was key in your freedom. But when children in Burundi and Kinshasa, all the way to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and in particular in Sudan, cried and called for rescue, you heard but chose to be silent.

 

Today, black children are enslaved in Sudan, the last place in the continent of Africa where humans are owned by other humans. I was part of the movement to stop slavery in Mauritania, which just now abolished the practice. But you were not with us, Bishop Tutu.

 

So where is Desmond Tutu when my people call out for freedom? Slaughter and genocide and slavery are lashing Africans right now. Where are you for Sudan, Bishop Tutu? You are busy attacking the Jewish state. Why?
 
Simon Deng, a native of the Shiluk Kingdom in southern Sudan, is an escaped jihad slave and a leading human rights activist.
 

Originally at Jewish Advocate

Source

Continued (Permanent Link)

Nadia abu al Haj - Academic martyr to McCarthyism or bad scientist?

In The Nation, Larry Cohler-Esses attacks what he calls "The New McCarthyism," which he describes as attempts by pro-Israel groups to discredit faculty with unfavorable opinions of Israel. As examples, he cites the case of Norman Finkelstein, who did not get tenure at DePaul university. It is a fact that Finkelstein has very shaky ideas about the Holocaust, and attacked Alan Dershowitz's "The Case for Israel" on specious grounds. Be that as it may, there is a sufficient stock of anti-Israel academic figures in every university, whose bids for tenure do not seem to have been hurt by their political views, whether they are factual or not.

The centerpiece of Cohler-Esses' attack is the movement to deny tenure to Nadia abu al - Haj. Paula Stern, who initiated the petition against Nadia abu al-Haj, replies below to an article by Cohler-Esses in Jewish Week, that made identical charges, and was apparently recycled for The Nation.

Ami Isseroff

Editor with a Hatchet: Larry Cohler-Esses

By: Paula R. Stern
October, 2007

Larry Cohler-Esses is a man on a mission. He's an editor with a hatchet, ready to wield it in the noble cause of "gotcha" journalism. Of course, he refuses to focus on the little details, like the voices of experts on the very subject on which he writes nothing about his inability to focus on the forest when the tree beckons. During a recent interview, so fascinated with one petition, Cohler-Esses managed to miss the forest: that Barnard College is about to give tenure to a professor who has written a wholly inferior and highly political book which fails completely when measured against the scales of truth, integrity, academic honesty and simple facts.

Like many newspapers, the Jewish Week was interested in a story about the tenure decision of Barnard professor Nadia Abu El Haj. I became aware of the ongoing controversy more than a year ago and read her book to see if it could possibly be as inaccurate and filled with anti-Israel propaganda as the experts claimed. A quick read suggests this is true; a more in-depth study confirms it. At the time (a year ago), I made notes, highlighted sections, and decided to do what I could to make certain that Barnard and Columbia did not give tenure to a professor who is more of a propagandist than a qualified scholar.

I wrote to the Barnard administration and contacted other Barnard graduates. Barnard doesn't want their alumnae to mess with the process; we are there for giving donations only, it seems. When the administration was unresponsive, I started an online petition. I was in a hurry, after all, the decision was to be soon and Barnard was refusing to give any details of the time schedule (plus I have a business to run, a daughter was getting married, a son was going into the army, three other children needed my attention, etc.). I did a quick review of my notes, wrote up a petition, and posted it.

I asked dozens of people to sign it. I later noticed a couple of minor errors in my text. Little things like – El Haj is virtually ignorant of the Hebrew language instead of completely ignorant. That her reference to one specific dig was wrong, but named a different dig instead. These minor corrections should have been made, but once a petition is posted at petitiononline.com, no corrections to the text are possible.

Historians James Davila and Ralph Harrington concur that the petition was correct in its criticism of El Haj, except that : "I doubt that it is accurate to say that Abu El-Haj did not know Hebrew when she wrote the book. But in it she does make elementary errors that someone with a decent knowledge of the language would not have made, which raises the question whether she knew it well enough to pull off the ambitious project she undertakes in the book."

Several journalists have contacted me and interviewed me. Each focused on the forest - the Barnard tenure decision. Cohler-Esses called me moments before the Jewish Sabbat was to begin and we agreed he would call me back after the Sabbath ended in New York - that meant having a discussion at 12:30 a.m. in Israel. I asked that he speak to the experts on the subject for a detailed analysis of her work, but welcomed him to speak to me about my efforts. Little did I know that Cohler-Esses is a tree-man and likely wouldn't see a forest, even from way up high in the sky. The real question one must ask, is not why the petition is 100% accurate or not, but why Abu El Haj's book isn't accurate. And, of course, why attack-journalist Cohler-Esses devoted his time to seeking tiny criticisms in my petition instead of noting that Barnard is considering giving tenure to Abu El Haj on the basis of a single book that is riddled with serious errors of fact and of methodology.

The petition continued to grow, gaining more than 2,500 supporters, many of whom are Barnard and Columbia graduates. It's a fine showing, a clear message to Columbia University that its graduates are against this latest attempt to add yet another documented Israel hater to its ranks.

During this whole process, I've acted as an archive, posting many articles written by experts on the subject of El Haj's past and current research. It was on the basis of these articles, and not my opinion, that I asked concerned Barnard and Columbia graduates to make a decision. I asked the same of many reporters who contacted me. Most understood that the petition was an expression of concern and condemnation. Only Larry Cohler-Esses gave it the holiness one would normally equate with the Bible. Each word, he studied – more than he probably has ever bothered to study the Torah.

Cohler-Esses' mission can best be summed up in his own pre-determined prejudice, "This is the modus operandi of the New McCarthyism. It targets a new enemy for our era: Muslims, Arabs and others in the Middle East field who are identified as stepping over an unstated line in criticizing Israel, as radical Islamists, as just plain radical or as in some way sympathetic to terrorists."

In other words, Cohler-Esses was the most dangerous of hatchet editors – a man with a preconceived conclusion and the power to wield it. Sadly, he wasn't honest enough to make his opinions known, but hid behind innocuous questions and then minimized El Haj's 281-page manifesto as merely "criticizing Israel."

Rather than attack Cohler-Esses (as a response to his attack on me), this reporter will focus on the "facts" he raised and the answers he should have provided:

The four statements about her book that Cohler-Esses claims are false are that Abu El Haj:

• claims the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication,"
  
• denies the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and instead blames its destruction on the Jews,
  
• does not speak or read Hebrew yet had the temerity to publish a book on Israeli archaeology that demanded such expertise,
  
• is so ignorant of her topic that she quotes one archaeologist on how a dig might have damaged the ancient palaces of Solomon--oblivious to the fact that those palaces, if they existed, were far from the site in question.

Let's take these statements point-by-point and demonstrate how wrong Cohler-Esses is:

Nadia Abu El Haj claims the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication."

I stand by this statement. El Haj does indeed claim that the story of ancient Israel is a "pure political fabrication." Here is a link to an essay that shows Cohler-Hess was incorrect, despite his almost desperate attempt to find some other meaning in El Haj's words. http://blog.greycat.org/2007/10/23/nadia-abu-el-haj-and-pure-political-fabrication/

Another, by a leading historian, comes to the same conclusion: http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/2007_10_21_archive.html#9219122517838600497

Both these scholars agree that El Haj's characteristically convoluted language does not mask her true intent – to say that the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication."

Nadia Abu El Haj denies the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and instead blames its destruction on the Jews.

What Abu El Haj actually says is that that Jerusalem in the times of Jesus was not Jewish. "...for most of its history, including the Herodian period, Jerusalem was not a Jewish city, but rather one integrated into larger empires and inhabited, primarily, by 'other' communities." pp 175-6. El Haj is simply wrong, and pretty much everyone except El Haj (and maybe Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) knows it. To claim Jerusalem, whose very name is an Anglicized version of its Hebrew name, as anything but the Jewish city it has always been recognized to be, is a mockery of history, revisionism most insidious.

El Haj then makes herself ridiculous by asserting, with regard to the fires that destroyed a particular site in ancient Jerusalem, that there are "several alternative but equally plausible accounts." Some two thousand years after the destruction of Jerusalem, Nadia Abu El Haj has set herself as the defender of Rome. It is her goal to acquit the ancient Roman Empire and to do so, she must find a culprit. Since there were but Jews and Romans present at the time, she is limited in her choices. Limited but not defeated, she makes her wild and undocumented suggestion, nonetheless, by suggesting that "some of the evidence… could just as convincingly be read as evidence of a class or sectarian conflict within Jewish Society…" pp 145

Here is yet another essay showing how El Haj got this wrong. http://phdiva.blogspot.com/2007/05/nadia-aby-el-haj-and-use-of-evidence.html. Cohler-Esses continues his attack on the petition by focusing on the exact wording while missing the main point that El Haj did, in fact, attempt to shift blame for the burning of Jerusalem to the Jews. That she did this for only a section of Jerusalem and not the entire city, as one might interpret from the petition, means nothing to Cohler-Esses. He can take the petition word for word, but cannot manage to do the same with El Haj's book - again, because that might disagree with his own intention.

Two points down, and one can begin to see a pattern to Cohler-Esses writing, but let's continue.

Nadia Abu El Haj does not speak or read Hebrew yet had the temerity to publish a book on Israeli archaeology that demanded such expertise.

Here one must concede, again, that the petition is correct in its conclusion, but with the added explanation that it seems that El Haj knows some Hebrew, just not enough to read and write intelligently on her chosen topic.

As I wrote on my site, "Any Israeli reading the book will quickly see that the numerous mistakes she makes are a clear indication...this woman is as uncertain and unskilled in her Hebrew skills as she is in her research, her documentation, her ability to draw logical and intelligent conclusions based on real facts on the ground." See http://www.paulasays.com/articles/nadia_el_haj/does_nadia_abu_el_haj_know_hebrew.html

When I tried to admit that the petition was correct in its essense, if not phrased as best as could be expected, one can almost hear the glee in Cohler-Esses pathetic attempt to misplace this "admission" to devalue the entire petition. But luckily, the only thing devalued in this process is the integrity of Cohler-Esses and any newspaper that would print hi