David M. Weinberg
Jews from around the world will celebrate their ancient heritage in Hebron this weekend, when the Torah portion known as "Chaye Sarah" is read in synagogues. The portion recounts Abraham's purchase of the Cave of Machpela (Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron as a family burial ground. According to the Bible, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives were buried in the cave. But now that the Palestinian Authority has been admitted to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a “member state,” the Palestinian Authority plans to ask the organization to declare several sites in Jerusalem and the West Bank, including the Cave of Machpela, as international heritage sites belonging to Palestine, not Israel.
Furthermore, the authority plans to sue Israel for “stealing Palestinian antiquities.”
“We will take Israel to court for systematically destroying and forging Arab and Islamic culture in Jerusalem,” said Hatem Abdel Qader, former Palestinian Authority Jerusalem affairs minister, after the UNESCO vote.
Palestinian Authority Tourism Minister Khuloud Daibes alleges that Israel’s renovations of Jerusalem’s Old City walls and its intention to replace the crumbling Mughrabi Bridge at the southern entrance to the Temple Mount are hostile attempts to “change the Islamic and Arabic character of the city.”
If this weren’t so funny, it would be outrageous. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
Israel minted the international gold standard for unimpeded religious worship in Jerusalem, and for painstaking preservation of Muslim and Christian holy sites and archaeological sites across Israel. In civilized and professional circles, Israel is recognized as having contributed enormously to the excavation, study and preservation of Holy Land historical sites and relics.
By contrast, there is no Arab or Islamic country in the Middle East where Christians or Jews can truly freely operate religious institutions. Under Palestinian Authority and Hamas rule, Christians in the West Bank and Gaza have been hounded, terrorized and driven out. Christian Bethlehem is, effectively, no more. The Church of the Nativity was defiled by Palestinian Muslim terrorists, who turned it into an armed refuge in 2002. Churches in Gaza have been bombed and burned. Can you imagine how the churches of Jerusalem might fare under Palestinian rule?
Meanwhile, Jewish synagogues and holy sites in Jericho, Nablus and Gush Katif were torched to the ground while Palestinian police looked on.
In 1996, Palestinian mobs assaulted Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, and Palestinian policemen on the scene shot and wounded the Israeli soldiers guarding the tomb. Ever since, the site has been sheathed in high concrete barriers, turning it into a Fort Knox-like encampment. Then a Palestinian mob led by Palestinian policemen assaulted Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, torched the synagogue inside, and opened fire on Israeli troops at the site, killing six Israeli soldiers.
In 2000, Palestinian mobs once again attacked. They killed one Israeli soldier and destroyed the building. Palestinian forces again took part. The Shalom Al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho with its unique Byzantine-era mosaic floor was also torched. Today, Israelis have only sporadic access to the site.
As for Gush Katif, the wild Palestinian mob destruction of all the synagogues there is just too fresh and painful a wound to talk about ...
Under Palestinian rule, Tulul Abu el Alayiq, near Wadi Qelt and Jericho, has been left to decay. This is an important archaeological site where Hasmonian kings and Herod built their winter palaces. The nearby Naaran synagogue -- perhaps the earliest synagogue in Israel -- is threatened by Palestinian real estate developers who are building practically atop the site. Israeli archaeologists who have managed to visit there say that the Palestinian Authority has let the place rot.
The authority has also allowed villagers to encroach upon the important synagogue remains in Eshtemoa in the southern Mount Hebron area. Neither Israeli archaeologists nor Israeli worshippers and tourists have access to the site (which is located in Area B), despite the fact that the Oslo Accords supposedly guaranteed this.
It is important to note that these three sites are specified by name in the appendices to the Oslo Accords, and defined as historical and religious sites which the Palestinian Authority is supposed to preserve, and to which they are supposed to provide access for Israelis.
Unfortunately, the Palestinians learned from the Jordanians. Before 1967 Jews were not allowed to visit their holy places in Jerusalem at all; thousands of Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives were desecrated and the tombstones used to pave streets and latrines; and the synagogues of Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter were dynamited.
The greatest crime of all -- an antiquities crime of historic proportions -- has been committed over recent years by the Palestinian Wakf on the Temple Mount. In 1999, the Wakf dug out hundreds of truckloads of dirt from caverns known as Solomon’s Stables beneath the upper plaza (more than 1,600 square meters in area and 15 meters deep) without any archaeological supervision or records. Thousands of tons of earth rich in archaeological remains, from all periods of the Temple Mount, were haphazardly dumped into the Kidron Valley and the city garbage dump at El-Azaria. The Wakf also destroyed stonework done by Jewish artisans 2,000 years ago in the underground “double passageway.”
Thousands of years of layered history -- Jewish history, of course -- were gouged out the ground with heavy machinery and shoveled out of sight. UNESCO didn’t even burp.
Israeli archaeological students are still sifting through this precious rubble, and have found numerous antiquities from the First and Second Temple periods, including stone weights for weighing silver, and a First Temple period bulla (seal impression) containing ancient Hebrew writing which may have belonged to a well-known family of priests mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah. Other findings are from the late period of the Kings of Judea (7th and 8th centuries BCE), including about 1,000 ancient coins, jewelry made of various materials, stone and glass squares from floor and wall mosaics, and many other items.
The Wakf has also allowed the destruction of Christian relics on the Temple Mount, including the Crusader pillars of the 13th-century Grammar Dome in the southwestern corner of the Mount, and the Crusader-era Chain Gate. According to the 1978 Law of Antiquities, it is forbidden to perform any "alteration, repair or addition to an antiquity located on the site," but that hasn’t stopped the Wakf from sanctioning the haphazard addition of concrete and stone to these architectural relics, drilling holes into them, spray-painting them, chopping through them for electricity cables, and more.
There is little doubt that Palestinian authorities are conducting this assault on the Temple Mount so as to erase any vestige of archeological evidence for Jewish (and Christian) history. "In Arabic, this practice is known as ‘tams al-ma'alem,’ which means ‘erasing the signs’ in the sense of destroying the relics of all cultures that preceded Islam,” asserts Dr. Mordechai Kedar of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
And now the Palestinian Authority is going to sue Israel for antiquities theft? Inconceivable! Such chutzpah.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Study says Iran textbooks urge martyrdom
Thomas Wagner, AP Writer
From AP. By THOMAS WAGNER. AP Writer. LONDON (AP) - Textbooks used in Iran's schools are instilling students with hatred toward the West, especially the ...
February 8, 2007
Note: I posted this old story to demonstrate we knew this a long time ago-yet, sanctions and actions were never taken to stop this kind of teaching-is it any wonder why Iran can control its peoples' support?
LONDON --Textbooks used in Iran's schools are instilling students with hatred toward the West, especially the United States, and urging them to become "martyrs" in a global holy war against countries perceived to be enemies of Islam, a new study says.
An Iranian human rights activist, Ghazal Omid, praised the findings, saying they prove hard-liners in Iran are using the books to turn children into "ticking bombs."
However, a U.S. academic who specializes in Iran and Islam, and a former Iranian teacher said they believe the textbooks are a reflection of Iran's history and its deep suspicions of the West, not an effort to turn students into terrorists. The books emphasize the teachings of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and repeatedly refer to the United States as the "Great Satan" and to Israel as "the regime that occupies Jerusalem," said the study by the Israel-based Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace.
Omid, who fled Iran and wrote "Living in Hell," an autobiography about her experiences there, urged changes to textbooks in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.
"I am an Iranian, a practicing Muslim woman, who sees it as her responsibility to stand up to hard-line Muslims who use Islam to brainwash children of that faith, in particular Iranian children, who the Iranian government is turning into ticking bombs," she said.
Omid, who lives in Canada, spoke at a news conference in London on Wednesday with study author Aron Groiss, director of research at the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace.
Calls to Iranian officials for comment were not immediately answered.
The study analyzed 95 textbooks and 20 teacher's guides used at Iran's state-run schools. Groiss said the curriculum "reflects Iran's belligerent intentions which should sound the alarm to anyone who is committed to peace and stability in the world."
The study noted, however, that Western culture "is not rejected in principle" in the books and that the attitude to other religions is generally "not hostile." The books include discussion sections on respecting other religions and don't say people should be forced to convert to Islam.
Shireen T. Hunter, a specialist on Islam and Iran at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, said it was a mistake to portray Iranian textbooks as manuals for creating terrorists.
"In some ways, they simply reflect the deep distrust of Third World countries about the policies and motivations of the great powers, which they see as neocolonialist," she said.
"When such textbooks promote martyrdom they are referring to the sacrifices needed to defend Iran against foreign enemies as Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war."
In Tehran, Mostafa Mirzaian, an Iranian freelance political researcher who worked as a high school teacher in Iran in the 1980s, agreed.
"It is natural that a government, formed after an anti-West revolution and an eight-year war with Iraq, inserts such items in school textbooks," he said.
"But it has no remarkable effect. You saw when American wrestlers came to Iran for a competition in January; Iranian teenagers warmly welcomed them. Also, you don't see any attacks on the 25,000-member Jewish community in Iran."
Textbooks used in Iranian elementary schools included stories and poems that hailed martyrs such as those who died in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Groiss said. Another picture book for 10-year-olds provides a basic acquaintance with weaponry, explosives and military tactics, he said.
The study quotes one passage from a book for 10th graders as saying: "During the eight years of Holy Defense (the Iran-Iraq war), more than 500,000 school students were sent to the fronts. 36,000 martyrs, thousands of missing-in-action, invalids and liberated (prisoners of war) of this sacrificing section were offered to the Islamic Revolution."
A passage from a book for eighth graders says God gives "eternal Paradise to anyone who becomes a martyr in the cause of God. He considers martyrdom a great victory."
The United States is referred to as the "Great Satan," the "World Devourer" and the "Arrogant One" in the books, and Israel is shown on maps as "Occupied Palestine."
The study is the latest to call for textbook reform in the Islamic world. Such efforts are under way or planned in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait to remove slurs against non-Muslims or promotions of extremism and terrorism. Israeli textbooks have undergone revisions since the 1990s to remove anti-Arab bias and present a more balanced account of Palestinian views and aspirations.
------
AP writer Nasser Karimi contributed to this story from Tehran, Iran.
From AP. By THOMAS WAGNER. AP Writer. LONDON (AP) - Textbooks used in Iran's schools are instilling students with hatred toward the West, especially the ...
February 8, 2007
Note: I posted this old story to demonstrate we knew this a long time ago-yet, sanctions and actions were never taken to stop this kind of teaching-is it any wonder why Iran can control its peoples' support?
LONDON --Textbooks used in Iran's schools are instilling students with hatred toward the West, especially the United States, and urging them to become "martyrs" in a global holy war against countries perceived to be enemies of Islam, a new study says.
An Iranian human rights activist, Ghazal Omid, praised the findings, saying they prove hard-liners in Iran are using the books to turn children into "ticking bombs."
However, a U.S. academic who specializes in Iran and Islam, and a former Iranian teacher said they believe the textbooks are a reflection of Iran's history and its deep suspicions of the West, not an effort to turn students into terrorists. The books emphasize the teachings of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and repeatedly refer to the United States as the "Great Satan" and to Israel as "the regime that occupies Jerusalem," said the study by the Israel-based Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace.
Omid, who fled Iran and wrote "Living in Hell," an autobiography about her experiences there, urged changes to textbooks in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.
"I am an Iranian, a practicing Muslim woman, who sees it as her responsibility to stand up to hard-line Muslims who use Islam to brainwash children of that faith, in particular Iranian children, who the Iranian government is turning into ticking bombs," she said.
Omid, who lives in Canada, spoke at a news conference in London on Wednesday with study author Aron Groiss, director of research at the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace.
Calls to Iranian officials for comment were not immediately answered.
The study analyzed 95 textbooks and 20 teacher's guides used at Iran's state-run schools. Groiss said the curriculum "reflects Iran's belligerent intentions which should sound the alarm to anyone who is committed to peace and stability in the world."
The study noted, however, that Western culture "is not rejected in principle" in the books and that the attitude to other religions is generally "not hostile." The books include discussion sections on respecting other religions and don't say people should be forced to convert to Islam.
Shireen T. Hunter, a specialist on Islam and Iran at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, said it was a mistake to portray Iranian textbooks as manuals for creating terrorists.
"In some ways, they simply reflect the deep distrust of Third World countries about the policies and motivations of the great powers, which they see as neocolonialist," she said.
"When such textbooks promote martyrdom they are referring to the sacrifices needed to defend Iran against foreign enemies as Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war."
In Tehran, Mostafa Mirzaian, an Iranian freelance political researcher who worked as a high school teacher in Iran in the 1980s, agreed.
"It is natural that a government, formed after an anti-West revolution and an eight-year war with Iraq, inserts such items in school textbooks," he said.
"But it has no remarkable effect. You saw when American wrestlers came to Iran for a competition in January; Iranian teenagers warmly welcomed them. Also, you don't see any attacks on the 25,000-member Jewish community in Iran."
Textbooks used in Iranian elementary schools included stories and poems that hailed martyrs such as those who died in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Groiss said. Another picture book for 10-year-olds provides a basic acquaintance with weaponry, explosives and military tactics, he said.
The study quotes one passage from a book for 10th graders as saying: "During the eight years of Holy Defense (the Iran-Iraq war), more than 500,000 school students were sent to the fronts. 36,000 martyrs, thousands of missing-in-action, invalids and liberated (prisoners of war) of this sacrificing section were offered to the Islamic Revolution."
A passage from a book for eighth graders says God gives "eternal Paradise to anyone who becomes a martyr in the cause of God. He considers martyrdom a great victory."
The United States is referred to as the "Great Satan," the "World Devourer" and the "Arrogant One" in the books, and Israel is shown on maps as "Occupied Palestine."
The study is the latest to call for textbook reform in the Islamic world. Such efforts are under way or planned in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait to remove slurs against non-Muslims or promotions of extremism and terrorism. Israeli textbooks have undergone revisions since the 1990s to remove anti-Arab bias and present a more balanced account of Palestinian views and aspirations.
------
AP writer Nasser Karimi contributed to this story from Tehran, Iran.
Friday, November 18, 2011
The Suicidal Passion
Ruth R. Wisse
November 21, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 10
It now seems that one Jew is worth more than 1,000 Arabs—the rate of exchange established not by Israel, but by Hamas, and celebrated on the Arab street. The “prisoner swap” of more than a thousand Arab prisoners for the single Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped five years ago and held in captivity for just this purpose, represents a gap between two civilizations that has been widening for over six decades with no signs of contraction in sight.
Arab leaders do not yet acknowledge that they sealed the doom of their societies in 1948 when they organized their politics against the Jewish state rather than toward the improvement of their countries. Like a great many autocrats, dictators, tyrants, and antiliberal rulers before them, the founders of the Arab League in 1945 found it convenient to mobilize against the Jews and against the competitive way of life they represent. Whereas Europeans were jolted by revelations of what came to be known as the Holocaust into awareness of the ruin anti-Semitism had wrought, Arab leaders saw in the Jews the same political opportunities that had enticed Germany. Anti-Semitism was the European ideology most eagerly imported and adapted to the Middle East. Victims of this process have been slow to realize its debilitating effects. “What if Arabs had recognized the State of Israel in 1948?” asks Abdulateef Al-Mulhim in a recent column in Arab News: “Would the Arab world have been more stable, more democratic, and more advanced?” His affirmative answer emphasizes how much better off the Palestinians and their fellow Arabs, as well as non-Arab Muslims, would have been had some Arab leaders not used the Palestinians “for their own agenda to suppress their own people and to stay in power.” The Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh censures Fatah and Hamas for depriving thousands of Palestinians “in the two Palestinian states in the West Bank and Gaza Strip” of the individual liberties that flourish across the border in Israel. The Israel News channel YNet quotes a Syrian publicist as saying, “Our government shoots at us; Israel works to return even rotted bones. Maybe the problem is with us.” (He is referring to earlier prisoner exchanges where hundreds of Arab prisoners were traded for the corpses of Israeli soldiers.) Not until these sentiments prevail will Arab citizens begin to enjoy the opportunities Israelis take for granted.
Anti-Semitism, or the organization of politics against the Jews, is at once the most protean and the most misunderstood force in modern politics. Because it works through misdirection, most people associate it with Jews who are its target, rather than with anti-Semites who are its perpetrators. But whether aimed at the Jews in their dispersion or in their homeland, anti-Semitism and its offshoot anti-Zionism are about the Jews only in the way that fox hunting is about foxes. Those who organize their hunt around the fox consider it the best animal to hunt. Important as it may be to identify those features in the swift little animal that make it the chosen target of those giving chase, any analysis of fox hunting must concentrate on the hunters—their motivations, strategies, implements, goals, and perceived gains. Fox hunting stops when there is a change in hunters, not in foxes. So, too, with anti-Semitism. Only changes in the implicated countries can arrest the political process their leadership promotes.
What is anti-Semitism?
There are many versions of the joke that originated in the First World War about the police chief who tells his deputy to round up all Jews and bicyclists. His deputy asks, “Why the bicyclists?” How quickly you get the joke depends on how comfortable you are with the idea of rounding up Jews. Aggression against Jews has become so commonplace it seems to require no explanation. This is how Anthony Julius sums it up in Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England:
[Perhaps] a repertoire of attitudes, myths, and defamations in circulation at any given time. It is a kind of discursive swamp, a resource on which religious and political movements, writers and artists, demagogues, and the variously disaffected, all draw, without ever draining. It is not a political philosophy, or anything close to one. It is not a conception of the world; it is merely an idée fixe—a hatred, dressed up as a conviction . . . a protean, unstable combination of received ideas, compounded by malice.
Because he is tracking a historical process from 12th-century blood libels to today’s anti-Zionist rallies, Julius tries to account for all the varieties of prejudice and discrimination in what historian Robert Wistrich calls the “lethal obsession.” The great historian Salo Baron called it “the dislike of the unlike.”
But I prefer to distinguish anti-Semitism from mere intolerance. Many other groups are subject to prejudice and discrimination. American clubs and schools that formerly excluded Jews also excluded blacks and Asians. Other “middleman minorities,” like Koreans or overseas Chinese, have been attacked as intruders once their welcome ran out. Other peoples have been singled out for “bullying”—a current preoccupation of the Anti-Defamation League. The function of the Jews in international politics is quite different in scale and kind. Anti-Semitism is a political instrument—a strategy, an ideology, sometimes a movement that organizes politics against the Jews.
The ideology of anti-Semitism arose in Germany in the last third of the 19th century among competing schemes for organizing modern societies. It grew in tandem with democracy—that is, with the need to win rather than assume the allegiance of subjects or citizens. Wilhelm Marr, who founded the League of Anti-Semites in 1879, distinguished his political movement from the religiously based anti-Jewish animosities that had preceded it. We should take him at his word, since his explanation defied Christian and Muslim teachings, which touted their superiority to Judaism. Marr preached the opposite. “The Jews are unstoppable!” They had fought against the Western world for almost two millennia and were now poised to conquer the continent. France was already Judaized. Germany was about to be skinned alive. As Marr wrote,
We have among us a flexible, tenacious, intelligent, foreign tribe that knows how to bring abstract reality into play in many ways. Not individual Jews, but the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness have overpowered the world.
Marr’s ingenious idea was to cast liberal democracy as an imperialist Jewish plot. While others welcomed liberal democracy’s promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity, he opposed it by attributing its attendant evils to “Jewry,” which “corrupted all society with its views.” He accused the Jews of driving out any kind of idealism, of gaining the upper hand in commerce, infiltrating government, ruling the theater, etc., and leaving other Germans only the hard manual labor that Jews had always despised. These same arguments were soon advanced in Russia in more paranoid style through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabrication that pretended to record the machinations of Jews plotting to take over the world. Europeans had the Protocols only in printed form, which confined it to a literate citizenry. Arab television democratized it for a viewing public. In 2002 Egyptian television produced the series Horseman Without a Horse, which not only recapitulates the thesis of the Protocols, but adds a subplot about malevolent Jews trying to suppress its spread.
The kernel of truth that allowed for Marr’s paranoid analysis was that Jews were highly competitive in all areas—except national politics. Their civilization was founded on a contractual agreement with God that required their obedience to divinely inspired law in return for divine protection. The Jewish way of life that was based on this premise encouraged individual and collective responsibility and promised eventual return to their promised land. Meanwhile Jews turned the disadvantages of “exile” into strategies of adaptation. Wherever they were offered enough freedom to compete on more or less equal terms, Jews did well enough to lend credibility to inflated images of their “power.” But since collective Jewry lacked and never sought precisely the kind of political reach with which they were credited, the disparity between image and reality made them an ideal target for those who really did want to flex their power.
Thus, at a pivotal stage in the process we call modernization, anti-Semitism became the catchall for a politics of grievance and blame. Democracy, which was just then spreading eastward from England and France toward Romania and Russia, put politics in the hands of the people, and people needed explanations for things that were going wrong and assurances of how they could be improved. Autocratic rulers no less than politicians seeking election now felt obliged to account for hardships, offer remedies for crises, discourage rebellion, and encourage the confidence of populations facing all the anxieties of modernity. Anti-Semitism had such advantages over other political movements that some of those movements, like fascism, nationalism, and communism, incorporated elements of anti-Jewish politics as part of their programs.
What anti-Semitism offers
Anti-Semitism releases aggression against a familiar target and offers a simple explanation for complex and occasionally intractable problems (Unemployed? Jews have your jobs. Destitute? Rothschilds have your money. Losing confidence in your country? Jews control your press, the arts, the courts, education, medicine . . . ). It uses negative campaigning that provokes no response in kind. Since Jews seek acceptance from those who agitate against them, they have no incentive to wage the kind of countercampaign that we see between rival political parties.
Anti-Semitism drew its demonic images from religious sources, further magnifying suspicion of an already suspect people. And it united otherwise antagonistic or even warring constituencies. Marx singled out the Jews as the evil embodiment of capitalism. Internationalists identified Jewish separatism as the chief impediment to their universal ideals. Nationalists targeted Jews as corrupting aliens. Conservative Christians and, later, Muslims continued to see them as challengers of their faith. Atheists and secularists condemned their retrograde religion. Racial theorists called them agents of impurity. An equal-opportunity instrument of blame, anti-Semitism had as one of its chief advantages the ability to unite political forces that had nothing else in common.
Last but hardly least, folks could anticipate the acquisition of Jewish property, goods, or positions as a tangible by-product of Jewish expulsion or annihilation. The prospect of acquiring Jewish property and possessions was something Nazism offered to all the countries it conquered. Similarly, when Arabs draw their map of “Palestine” to include all of Israel, they especially have their eye on the bounty that Israelis have created as a result of their open, democratic ways. Rather than compete with the Jews, anti-Semitism tries to have it both ways—organizing political resistance to the liberal democracy that profits the Jews, and doing so confident that it can exploit the weakness of those who value individual life too highly to squander it on defensive war. The Jews of Europe, who had never developed independent means of self-defense, never had a chance against their destroyers. Modern Israel is the current test case.
The term “scapegoat” does not begin to do justice to the uses of anti-Semitism in domestic, regional, and international affairs. We do well to note its short-term advantages before identifying the liabilities alluded to above.
How anti-Semitism succeeds
"How did we get to pick up the tab for a bunch of tyrants and terrorists to come to our city to curse us out?” asked the New York taxi driver dropping me off at the United Nations plaza on the opening day of the 66th annual U.N. General Assembly. The police were treating the plaza as the war zone it had become.
According to its charter, the United Nations was created in the wake of the Second World War
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind; to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small; to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained; to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.
In commitment to these ideals, in 1947 the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab zones that midwifed the birth of Israel half a year later. The Jews were already poised to reclaim their sovereignty after two millennia, but this vote granted them the international sanction to do so within the same decade that had witnessed their greatest national defeat.
Many Arab countries were just then similarly emerging from the loosening grip of European powers. The Arab League was founded in 1945, the same year as the United Nations, its six original members—Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan, Syria—soon joined by Yemen, and then by 15 others. The league’s stated goal was to create pan-Arab unity by promoting closer relations between member states. But rather than emulate Israel by settling Palestinian Arabs in their allotted land (possibly in federation with Jordan, which was already largely Palestinian Arab), the Arab League dedicated itself to preventing the existence of a Jewish state. Its first major action was the war against Israel in 1948, and opposition to Israel has remained its indispensable unifier ever since.
It was Arab, not Jewish, leadership that urged all Arabs to flee from Haifa and Jaffa, warning that those who remained in a Jewish state would be treated as renegades. The exploitation of the Palestinians by their fellow Arabs has been noted repeatedly, including in 1976 by Mahmoud Abbas, currently head of the Palestinian Authority: “The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe.” In sum, Arab leaders did not oppose Israel because it displaced the Palestinians; they displaced Palestinian Arabs in order to sustain opposition to Israel.
Despite their vast expanses of land, natural resources, financial capacities, and so forth, Arab League members created a refugee time bomb to justify their “resistance” to what the U.N. had wrought.
Had the U.N. lived up to its charter, it would have expelled the belligerents from membership or placed them on probation for contravening its terms. But here is the logic of aggression against Jews: The secretariat and supporting nations would not risk the U.N.’s coherence to protect one of its smallest members against antagonists with huge demographic, market, resource, and political advantages on their side. Ignored as a parochial issue, the Arab war against Israel safely violated the liberal ideals of the United Nations by appearing to oppose only Jews. Arab leaders gained traction domestically by flexing their power against an enemy they knew had no incentive for war and every incentive for accommodation. And opposition to Israel shored up pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism by flaunting contempt for the liberal democratic culture of the West that Israel embodied.
The perpetual Arab war against Israel worked like a charm. In 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established as a temporary measure to help resettle a relatively small group of displaced persons in a century notorious for its many millions of refugees. Only in this single case was a refugee agency made permanent. At Arab insistence, the U.N. cultivated, not an infrastructure for self-government, but a network of refugee institutions and an industry of welfare workers with a stake in maintaining refugee dependency, feeding the grievance of generations by insisting on their “right” of return—as if the Displaced Persons at the end of World War II had been continually maintained as such in the heart of Europe. Scholars Asaf Romirowsky and Nicole Brackman have rightly called UNRWA an “anomaly within the world of refugee relief” for the way it prolonged suffering and anger to become “a weapon to encourage [generations] toward terrorism and intransigence.” The Arab League used the U.N. agency to evade its responsibilities for fellow Arabs, and to foster an Arab protostate that would replace the Jewish one in time.
Arab leaders scored another substantial victory on November 10, 1975, when they won passage of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379, which called Zionism a “form of racism and racial discrimination.” The Arab bloc that championed the resolution with Soviet bloc support had waged two unsuccessful wars against Israel in 1967 and 1973. Now the same countries laid the political groundwork for a much larger antidemocratic coalition that would use the U.N. for its own ends.
The anti-Zionist umbrella included countries that functioned in opposition to the human rights principles of the United Nations. Arab rulers who denied the Jews their land accused Jews of denying Arabs theirs. Shifting political language from right to left, they no longer threatened to drive the Jews of Israel into the sea but accused them of the imperialism and racism they actually practiced. Resolution 3379 adopted the anti-Zionist terminology that had been developed by the Soviets in the 1930s (and not incidentally had informed the education of many Arab leaders, like Mahmoud Abbas, who received his Ph.D. in Moscow for a dissertation on connections between Zionism and the Nazis). Since anti-Zionism was the last ideological component of communism left standing when the Soviet Union collapsed, it provided a common terminology for self-defined “progressives” in rallies from Berkeley to Cairo. Anti-Zionism became a permanent feature of the left, including, currently, Occupy Wall Street.
The infamy of the anti-Israel resolution hardly went unnoticed. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said, “A great evil has been loosed upon the world.” But nothing was done to stop this evil. Countries that incorporated forms of racism and discrimination in their political and legal systems enjoyed their symbolic political victory over the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. Racism, once known as the denial to Jews of their right to exist, was turned against the Jews for claiming the right. Around this banner there formed the coalition against liberal democracies that began taking over one after another of the U.N. committees and programs, culminating in Durban, South Africa, at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism. Those who commandeered the Durban conference focused exclusively on Israel, to deflect attention from their own practices of slavery, abuse of women, suppression of minorities, torture of prisoners, autocratic rule, systemic corruption, and various forms of state criminality.
Coalition against liberal democracies
The organization of politics against Israel had moved from the Middle East into the world arena. Outrages became bolder year by year: Cuba, which jails people for circulating the Human Rights Declaration, became vice chair of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Saudi Arabia, which forbids women to drive, was elected to the board of the agency charged with ending discrimination against women. Iran, which sentences adulteresses to death, was elected to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. Nuclear-armed North Korea was appointed head of the U.N. Council on Disarmament. Meanwhile, no resolutions were taken against the ongoing Arab slave trade in Sudan or for the rights of women and minorities in places where these were denied.
Could there have been any political means other than the organization of politics against the Jewish state for thus hijacking the United Nations and inverting its mandate while ensuring that Western nations continued to foot the bill? I can think of none. In 1991, after 16 years, the United States won repeal of U.N. Resolution 3379—the only General Assembly resolution ever to be revoked. But unlike the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which inspired massive cleanup efforts to contain the damage it had done, the repeal inspired no attempt to alleviate or even moderate the effects of this systematic diffusion of political poison. Demonization of the Jewish state had spread to areas that had never known or known of a Jew. The Arab boycott against the Jews, which began even before the establishment of Israel, was fanned into the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign that lately garnered supporters as diverse as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and 218 members of the faculty and students of Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, under the preposterous excuse of gaining rights for the abused Palestinians. Using the U.N. for their podium, Arab and Muslim leaders and their political allies make the Jews internationally suspect.
In this political climate, it hardly matters whether one is among the prosecutors or defenders of Israel, as long as Israel is in the dock. Many well-meaning people, Jews included, fail to appreciate that the prosecution prevails once it makes Israel the defendant. Some ask naïvely, “But aren’t we allowed to criticize Israel?” or even boast that Israel is being held to a “higher standard,” ignoring that the war against the Jews is won by charging them with the crimes being committed against them. The point of the “trial” is to keep Jews at its center. The United Nations provides an unprecedented stage for accusing Jews in full view of the world, thereby obscuring or reducing scrutiny of the worst actors on the planet. This year, hundreds of delegates and guests enjoyed U.N. hospitality and displayed their hatred of liberal democracy—aka Israel—with the assurance that they would suffer no political cost.
The cabby’s question—why should he be paying for the vilification of his way of life—has now been raised in Congress by the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is urging the United States to spearhead significant reform of what she calls “an anti-Semitic organization.” “What are we paying for?” she asks, citing the bid by Palestinian leadership to gain U.N. recognition for a Palestinian state, in violation of all previous agreements. “So how could we allow even one cent of our dollars to go to this organization that will have in its midst terrorists who want to destroy Israel, and in turn destroy the United States?” More important than this belated attempt to limit the damage is realizing that Ros-Lehtinen is not “standing up for Israel” but making the logical connection between the organization of politics against Israel and the much larger intended targets that “Zionism” represents—the United States foremost among them. Anti-Semitism penetrated the United Nations as it did several democracies of Europe, enjoying the access to the platform that democracy provides, in order to subvert the democratic commitment to human rights. Its perpetrators work by prosecuting “only” the Jews, and when they get away with it, they corrupt the charter beyond repair.
But the point should also be made that shutting down UNWRA is the only way to begin repairing the lives of Palestinian Arabs, and that shutting down the U.N. as it presently functions is America’s best hope for helping to repair the world.
How anti-Semitism fails
The ability of Arab and Muslim leaders to dominate the United Nations while celebrating their contempt for everything it stands for seems to confirm anti-Semitism’s success. Yet caveat emptor—early benefits of organizing politics against the Jews are inevitably outweighed by the ruin that overtakes its practitioners. Why inevitably? Because anti-Semitism attributes real problems to a phony cause. Putting off problems tends to compound them, and aggression fomented against a convenient target cannot be permanently controlled or contained. Strategies of blame may temporarily help justify repression, quell rebellion, camouflage corruption, channel dissatisfaction, and redirect aggression, but societies that resort to them collapse under the weight of their negativity. Palestinians—once considered the ablest Arabs, and perhaps sacrificed by their fellow Arabs for that reason—are now in strong competition with Germans of the last century in the sweepstakes of self-destruction. Jonathan Tobin makes the obvious point: “Rather than ask why Israel is willing to trade so many terrorists for one soldier, the world should be asking why the Palestinians are cheering the release of sociopaths.” What does the trade of one for a thousand say about the relative value Jews and Arabs place on human life, and the effect of those values on building or destroying?
Anti-Semitism’s strategy of inversion—holding Jews responsible for the aggression against them—obscures the domestic repression that is always practiced in its name. Jews are the ostensible but not ultimate casualties of the organization of politics against them. Yasser Arafat used opposition to Israel as the vehicle for a corrupt and vicious dictatorship that could otherwise not have garnered billions of dollars of support. Saudi Arabia expended billions of dollars in mobilizing war against Israel to shore up its image of protecting Islam while sustaining a bigoted and sexist sheikhdom. Recent uprisings against dictatorships in Arab countries demonstrate their woeful unpreparedness for creative self-government, the direct consequence of diverting political energies to keep those dictatorships in power.
Paradoxically, commemoration of the Holocaust, which was presumably intended to help prevent another genocide of the Jews, exacerbated the problem it was meant to alleviate. Holocaust studies equate anti-Semitism with Nazism and see in the defeat of one the demise of the other. The actuality is otherwise. The political features that made anti-Semitism attractive in the past remain replicable and applicable in the present and future. It is they, the replicable features of anti-Semitism, not the Holocaust, that should be at the center of investigation into that mass murder. Without an attempt to identify the critical variables, there is no redemptive lesson in the destruction of European Jewry or in the collapse of Germany or in the failure of the League of Nations to arrest the process. Only by isolating its copycat features, as science does in researching disease, can Holocaust study prevent the same descent into depravity.
No one can know what is unfolding in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and other countries of the Arab League. There is one critical variable that holds the key to their political future: Will their leaders resort to the political instrument that brought about their decline? Will Egypt abrogate or weaken its treaty with Israel, or develop a culture of human rights? Will Turkey join the competition over who stands strongest against Israel and suffer the fate of its rivals? Arab leaders sealed the doom of their societies when they organized politics against the Jewish state. Only new and would-be leaders have the power to undo the failure they reaped.
Ruth R. Wisse, the author most recently of Jews and Power, is Martin Peretz professor of Yiddish literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard.
November 21, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 10
It now seems that one Jew is worth more than 1,000 Arabs—the rate of exchange established not by Israel, but by Hamas, and celebrated on the Arab street. The “prisoner swap” of more than a thousand Arab prisoners for the single Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped five years ago and held in captivity for just this purpose, represents a gap between two civilizations that has been widening for over six decades with no signs of contraction in sight.
Arab leaders do not yet acknowledge that they sealed the doom of their societies in 1948 when they organized their politics against the Jewish state rather than toward the improvement of their countries. Like a great many autocrats, dictators, tyrants, and antiliberal rulers before them, the founders of the Arab League in 1945 found it convenient to mobilize against the Jews and against the competitive way of life they represent. Whereas Europeans were jolted by revelations of what came to be known as the Holocaust into awareness of the ruin anti-Semitism had wrought, Arab leaders saw in the Jews the same political opportunities that had enticed Germany. Anti-Semitism was the European ideology most eagerly imported and adapted to the Middle East. Victims of this process have been slow to realize its debilitating effects. “What if Arabs had recognized the State of Israel in 1948?” asks Abdulateef Al-Mulhim in a recent column in Arab News: “Would the Arab world have been more stable, more democratic, and more advanced?” His affirmative answer emphasizes how much better off the Palestinians and their fellow Arabs, as well as non-Arab Muslims, would have been had some Arab leaders not used the Palestinians “for their own agenda to suppress their own people and to stay in power.” The Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh censures Fatah and Hamas for depriving thousands of Palestinians “in the two Palestinian states in the West Bank and Gaza Strip” of the individual liberties that flourish across the border in Israel. The Israel News channel YNet quotes a Syrian publicist as saying, “Our government shoots at us; Israel works to return even rotted bones. Maybe the problem is with us.” (He is referring to earlier prisoner exchanges where hundreds of Arab prisoners were traded for the corpses of Israeli soldiers.) Not until these sentiments prevail will Arab citizens begin to enjoy the opportunities Israelis take for granted.
Anti-Semitism, or the organization of politics against the Jews, is at once the most protean and the most misunderstood force in modern politics. Because it works through misdirection, most people associate it with Jews who are its target, rather than with anti-Semites who are its perpetrators. But whether aimed at the Jews in their dispersion or in their homeland, anti-Semitism and its offshoot anti-Zionism are about the Jews only in the way that fox hunting is about foxes. Those who organize their hunt around the fox consider it the best animal to hunt. Important as it may be to identify those features in the swift little animal that make it the chosen target of those giving chase, any analysis of fox hunting must concentrate on the hunters—their motivations, strategies, implements, goals, and perceived gains. Fox hunting stops when there is a change in hunters, not in foxes. So, too, with anti-Semitism. Only changes in the implicated countries can arrest the political process their leadership promotes.
What is anti-Semitism?
There are many versions of the joke that originated in the First World War about the police chief who tells his deputy to round up all Jews and bicyclists. His deputy asks, “Why the bicyclists?” How quickly you get the joke depends on how comfortable you are with the idea of rounding up Jews. Aggression against Jews has become so commonplace it seems to require no explanation. This is how Anthony Julius sums it up in Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England:
[Perhaps] a repertoire of attitudes, myths, and defamations in circulation at any given time. It is a kind of discursive swamp, a resource on which religious and political movements, writers and artists, demagogues, and the variously disaffected, all draw, without ever draining. It is not a political philosophy, or anything close to one. It is not a conception of the world; it is merely an idée fixe—a hatred, dressed up as a conviction . . . a protean, unstable combination of received ideas, compounded by malice.
Because he is tracking a historical process from 12th-century blood libels to today’s anti-Zionist rallies, Julius tries to account for all the varieties of prejudice and discrimination in what historian Robert Wistrich calls the “lethal obsession.” The great historian Salo Baron called it “the dislike of the unlike.”
But I prefer to distinguish anti-Semitism from mere intolerance. Many other groups are subject to prejudice and discrimination. American clubs and schools that formerly excluded Jews also excluded blacks and Asians. Other “middleman minorities,” like Koreans or overseas Chinese, have been attacked as intruders once their welcome ran out. Other peoples have been singled out for “bullying”—a current preoccupation of the Anti-Defamation League. The function of the Jews in international politics is quite different in scale and kind. Anti-Semitism is a political instrument—a strategy, an ideology, sometimes a movement that organizes politics against the Jews.
The ideology of anti-Semitism arose in Germany in the last third of the 19th century among competing schemes for organizing modern societies. It grew in tandem with democracy—that is, with the need to win rather than assume the allegiance of subjects or citizens. Wilhelm Marr, who founded the League of Anti-Semites in 1879, distinguished his political movement from the religiously based anti-Jewish animosities that had preceded it. We should take him at his word, since his explanation defied Christian and Muslim teachings, which touted their superiority to Judaism. Marr preached the opposite. “The Jews are unstoppable!” They had fought against the Western world for almost two millennia and were now poised to conquer the continent. France was already Judaized. Germany was about to be skinned alive. As Marr wrote,
We have among us a flexible, tenacious, intelligent, foreign tribe that knows how to bring abstract reality into play in many ways. Not individual Jews, but the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness have overpowered the world.
Marr’s ingenious idea was to cast liberal democracy as an imperialist Jewish plot. While others welcomed liberal democracy’s promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity, he opposed it by attributing its attendant evils to “Jewry,” which “corrupted all society with its views.” He accused the Jews of driving out any kind of idealism, of gaining the upper hand in commerce, infiltrating government, ruling the theater, etc., and leaving other Germans only the hard manual labor that Jews had always despised. These same arguments were soon advanced in Russia in more paranoid style through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabrication that pretended to record the machinations of Jews plotting to take over the world. Europeans had the Protocols only in printed form, which confined it to a literate citizenry. Arab television democratized it for a viewing public. In 2002 Egyptian television produced the series Horseman Without a Horse, which not only recapitulates the thesis of the Protocols, but adds a subplot about malevolent Jews trying to suppress its spread.
The kernel of truth that allowed for Marr’s paranoid analysis was that Jews were highly competitive in all areas—except national politics. Their civilization was founded on a contractual agreement with God that required their obedience to divinely inspired law in return for divine protection. The Jewish way of life that was based on this premise encouraged individual and collective responsibility and promised eventual return to their promised land. Meanwhile Jews turned the disadvantages of “exile” into strategies of adaptation. Wherever they were offered enough freedom to compete on more or less equal terms, Jews did well enough to lend credibility to inflated images of their “power.” But since collective Jewry lacked and never sought precisely the kind of political reach with which they were credited, the disparity between image and reality made them an ideal target for those who really did want to flex their power.
Thus, at a pivotal stage in the process we call modernization, anti-Semitism became the catchall for a politics of grievance and blame. Democracy, which was just then spreading eastward from England and France toward Romania and Russia, put politics in the hands of the people, and people needed explanations for things that were going wrong and assurances of how they could be improved. Autocratic rulers no less than politicians seeking election now felt obliged to account for hardships, offer remedies for crises, discourage rebellion, and encourage the confidence of populations facing all the anxieties of modernity. Anti-Semitism had such advantages over other political movements that some of those movements, like fascism, nationalism, and communism, incorporated elements of anti-Jewish politics as part of their programs.
What anti-Semitism offers
Anti-Semitism releases aggression against a familiar target and offers a simple explanation for complex and occasionally intractable problems (Unemployed? Jews have your jobs. Destitute? Rothschilds have your money. Losing confidence in your country? Jews control your press, the arts, the courts, education, medicine . . . ). It uses negative campaigning that provokes no response in kind. Since Jews seek acceptance from those who agitate against them, they have no incentive to wage the kind of countercampaign that we see between rival political parties.
Anti-Semitism drew its demonic images from religious sources, further magnifying suspicion of an already suspect people. And it united otherwise antagonistic or even warring constituencies. Marx singled out the Jews as the evil embodiment of capitalism. Internationalists identified Jewish separatism as the chief impediment to their universal ideals. Nationalists targeted Jews as corrupting aliens. Conservative Christians and, later, Muslims continued to see them as challengers of their faith. Atheists and secularists condemned their retrograde religion. Racial theorists called them agents of impurity. An equal-opportunity instrument of blame, anti-Semitism had as one of its chief advantages the ability to unite political forces that had nothing else in common.
Last but hardly least, folks could anticipate the acquisition of Jewish property, goods, or positions as a tangible by-product of Jewish expulsion or annihilation. The prospect of acquiring Jewish property and possessions was something Nazism offered to all the countries it conquered. Similarly, when Arabs draw their map of “Palestine” to include all of Israel, they especially have their eye on the bounty that Israelis have created as a result of their open, democratic ways. Rather than compete with the Jews, anti-Semitism tries to have it both ways—organizing political resistance to the liberal democracy that profits the Jews, and doing so confident that it can exploit the weakness of those who value individual life too highly to squander it on defensive war. The Jews of Europe, who had never developed independent means of self-defense, never had a chance against their destroyers. Modern Israel is the current test case.
The term “scapegoat” does not begin to do justice to the uses of anti-Semitism in domestic, regional, and international affairs. We do well to note its short-term advantages before identifying the liabilities alluded to above.
How anti-Semitism succeeds
"How did we get to pick up the tab for a bunch of tyrants and terrorists to come to our city to curse us out?” asked the New York taxi driver dropping me off at the United Nations plaza on the opening day of the 66th annual U.N. General Assembly. The police were treating the plaza as the war zone it had become.
According to its charter, the United Nations was created in the wake of the Second World War
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind; to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small; to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained; to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.
In commitment to these ideals, in 1947 the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab zones that midwifed the birth of Israel half a year later. The Jews were already poised to reclaim their sovereignty after two millennia, but this vote granted them the international sanction to do so within the same decade that had witnessed their greatest national defeat.
Many Arab countries were just then similarly emerging from the loosening grip of European powers. The Arab League was founded in 1945, the same year as the United Nations, its six original members—Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan, Syria—soon joined by Yemen, and then by 15 others. The league’s stated goal was to create pan-Arab unity by promoting closer relations between member states. But rather than emulate Israel by settling Palestinian Arabs in their allotted land (possibly in federation with Jordan, which was already largely Palestinian Arab), the Arab League dedicated itself to preventing the existence of a Jewish state. Its first major action was the war against Israel in 1948, and opposition to Israel has remained its indispensable unifier ever since.
It was Arab, not Jewish, leadership that urged all Arabs to flee from Haifa and Jaffa, warning that those who remained in a Jewish state would be treated as renegades. The exploitation of the Palestinians by their fellow Arabs has been noted repeatedly, including in 1976 by Mahmoud Abbas, currently head of the Palestinian Authority: “The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe.” In sum, Arab leaders did not oppose Israel because it displaced the Palestinians; they displaced Palestinian Arabs in order to sustain opposition to Israel.
Despite their vast expanses of land, natural resources, financial capacities, and so forth, Arab League members created a refugee time bomb to justify their “resistance” to what the U.N. had wrought.
Had the U.N. lived up to its charter, it would have expelled the belligerents from membership or placed them on probation for contravening its terms. But here is the logic of aggression against Jews: The secretariat and supporting nations would not risk the U.N.’s coherence to protect one of its smallest members against antagonists with huge demographic, market, resource, and political advantages on their side. Ignored as a parochial issue, the Arab war against Israel safely violated the liberal ideals of the United Nations by appearing to oppose only Jews. Arab leaders gained traction domestically by flexing their power against an enemy they knew had no incentive for war and every incentive for accommodation. And opposition to Israel shored up pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism by flaunting contempt for the liberal democratic culture of the West that Israel embodied.
The perpetual Arab war against Israel worked like a charm. In 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established as a temporary measure to help resettle a relatively small group of displaced persons in a century notorious for its many millions of refugees. Only in this single case was a refugee agency made permanent. At Arab insistence, the U.N. cultivated, not an infrastructure for self-government, but a network of refugee institutions and an industry of welfare workers with a stake in maintaining refugee dependency, feeding the grievance of generations by insisting on their “right” of return—as if the Displaced Persons at the end of World War II had been continually maintained as such in the heart of Europe. Scholars Asaf Romirowsky and Nicole Brackman have rightly called UNRWA an “anomaly within the world of refugee relief” for the way it prolonged suffering and anger to become “a weapon to encourage [generations] toward terrorism and intransigence.” The Arab League used the U.N. agency to evade its responsibilities for fellow Arabs, and to foster an Arab protostate that would replace the Jewish one in time.
Arab leaders scored another substantial victory on November 10, 1975, when they won passage of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379, which called Zionism a “form of racism and racial discrimination.” The Arab bloc that championed the resolution with Soviet bloc support had waged two unsuccessful wars against Israel in 1967 and 1973. Now the same countries laid the political groundwork for a much larger antidemocratic coalition that would use the U.N. for its own ends.
The anti-Zionist umbrella included countries that functioned in opposition to the human rights principles of the United Nations. Arab rulers who denied the Jews their land accused Jews of denying Arabs theirs. Shifting political language from right to left, they no longer threatened to drive the Jews of Israel into the sea but accused them of the imperialism and racism they actually practiced. Resolution 3379 adopted the anti-Zionist terminology that had been developed by the Soviets in the 1930s (and not incidentally had informed the education of many Arab leaders, like Mahmoud Abbas, who received his Ph.D. in Moscow for a dissertation on connections between Zionism and the Nazis). Since anti-Zionism was the last ideological component of communism left standing when the Soviet Union collapsed, it provided a common terminology for self-defined “progressives” in rallies from Berkeley to Cairo. Anti-Zionism became a permanent feature of the left, including, currently, Occupy Wall Street.
The infamy of the anti-Israel resolution hardly went unnoticed. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said, “A great evil has been loosed upon the world.” But nothing was done to stop this evil. Countries that incorporated forms of racism and discrimination in their political and legal systems enjoyed their symbolic political victory over the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. Racism, once known as the denial to Jews of their right to exist, was turned against the Jews for claiming the right. Around this banner there formed the coalition against liberal democracies that began taking over one after another of the U.N. committees and programs, culminating in Durban, South Africa, at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism. Those who commandeered the Durban conference focused exclusively on Israel, to deflect attention from their own practices of slavery, abuse of women, suppression of minorities, torture of prisoners, autocratic rule, systemic corruption, and various forms of state criminality.
Coalition against liberal democracies
The organization of politics against Israel had moved from the Middle East into the world arena. Outrages became bolder year by year: Cuba, which jails people for circulating the Human Rights Declaration, became vice chair of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Saudi Arabia, which forbids women to drive, was elected to the board of the agency charged with ending discrimination against women. Iran, which sentences adulteresses to death, was elected to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. Nuclear-armed North Korea was appointed head of the U.N. Council on Disarmament. Meanwhile, no resolutions were taken against the ongoing Arab slave trade in Sudan or for the rights of women and minorities in places where these were denied.
Could there have been any political means other than the organization of politics against the Jewish state for thus hijacking the United Nations and inverting its mandate while ensuring that Western nations continued to foot the bill? I can think of none. In 1991, after 16 years, the United States won repeal of U.N. Resolution 3379—the only General Assembly resolution ever to be revoked. But unlike the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which inspired massive cleanup efforts to contain the damage it had done, the repeal inspired no attempt to alleviate or even moderate the effects of this systematic diffusion of political poison. Demonization of the Jewish state had spread to areas that had never known or known of a Jew. The Arab boycott against the Jews, which began even before the establishment of Israel, was fanned into the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign that lately garnered supporters as diverse as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and 218 members of the faculty and students of Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, under the preposterous excuse of gaining rights for the abused Palestinians. Using the U.N. for their podium, Arab and Muslim leaders and their political allies make the Jews internationally suspect.
In this political climate, it hardly matters whether one is among the prosecutors or defenders of Israel, as long as Israel is in the dock. Many well-meaning people, Jews included, fail to appreciate that the prosecution prevails once it makes Israel the defendant. Some ask naïvely, “But aren’t we allowed to criticize Israel?” or even boast that Israel is being held to a “higher standard,” ignoring that the war against the Jews is won by charging them with the crimes being committed against them. The point of the “trial” is to keep Jews at its center. The United Nations provides an unprecedented stage for accusing Jews in full view of the world, thereby obscuring or reducing scrutiny of the worst actors on the planet. This year, hundreds of delegates and guests enjoyed U.N. hospitality and displayed their hatred of liberal democracy—aka Israel—with the assurance that they would suffer no political cost.
The cabby’s question—why should he be paying for the vilification of his way of life—has now been raised in Congress by the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is urging the United States to spearhead significant reform of what she calls “an anti-Semitic organization.” “What are we paying for?” she asks, citing the bid by Palestinian leadership to gain U.N. recognition for a Palestinian state, in violation of all previous agreements. “So how could we allow even one cent of our dollars to go to this organization that will have in its midst terrorists who want to destroy Israel, and in turn destroy the United States?” More important than this belated attempt to limit the damage is realizing that Ros-Lehtinen is not “standing up for Israel” but making the logical connection between the organization of politics against Israel and the much larger intended targets that “Zionism” represents—the United States foremost among them. Anti-Semitism penetrated the United Nations as it did several democracies of Europe, enjoying the access to the platform that democracy provides, in order to subvert the democratic commitment to human rights. Its perpetrators work by prosecuting “only” the Jews, and when they get away with it, they corrupt the charter beyond repair.
But the point should also be made that shutting down UNWRA is the only way to begin repairing the lives of Palestinian Arabs, and that shutting down the U.N. as it presently functions is America’s best hope for helping to repair the world.
How anti-Semitism fails
The ability of Arab and Muslim leaders to dominate the United Nations while celebrating their contempt for everything it stands for seems to confirm anti-Semitism’s success. Yet caveat emptor—early benefits of organizing politics against the Jews are inevitably outweighed by the ruin that overtakes its practitioners. Why inevitably? Because anti-Semitism attributes real problems to a phony cause. Putting off problems tends to compound them, and aggression fomented against a convenient target cannot be permanently controlled or contained. Strategies of blame may temporarily help justify repression, quell rebellion, camouflage corruption, channel dissatisfaction, and redirect aggression, but societies that resort to them collapse under the weight of their negativity. Palestinians—once considered the ablest Arabs, and perhaps sacrificed by their fellow Arabs for that reason—are now in strong competition with Germans of the last century in the sweepstakes of self-destruction. Jonathan Tobin makes the obvious point: “Rather than ask why Israel is willing to trade so many terrorists for one soldier, the world should be asking why the Palestinians are cheering the release of sociopaths.” What does the trade of one for a thousand say about the relative value Jews and Arabs place on human life, and the effect of those values on building or destroying?
Anti-Semitism’s strategy of inversion—holding Jews responsible for the aggression against them—obscures the domestic repression that is always practiced in its name. Jews are the ostensible but not ultimate casualties of the organization of politics against them. Yasser Arafat used opposition to Israel as the vehicle for a corrupt and vicious dictatorship that could otherwise not have garnered billions of dollars of support. Saudi Arabia expended billions of dollars in mobilizing war against Israel to shore up its image of protecting Islam while sustaining a bigoted and sexist sheikhdom. Recent uprisings against dictatorships in Arab countries demonstrate their woeful unpreparedness for creative self-government, the direct consequence of diverting political energies to keep those dictatorships in power.
Paradoxically, commemoration of the Holocaust, which was presumably intended to help prevent another genocide of the Jews, exacerbated the problem it was meant to alleviate. Holocaust studies equate anti-Semitism with Nazism and see in the defeat of one the demise of the other. The actuality is otherwise. The political features that made anti-Semitism attractive in the past remain replicable and applicable in the present and future. It is they, the replicable features of anti-Semitism, not the Holocaust, that should be at the center of investigation into that mass murder. Without an attempt to identify the critical variables, there is no redemptive lesson in the destruction of European Jewry or in the collapse of Germany or in the failure of the League of Nations to arrest the process. Only by isolating its copycat features, as science does in researching disease, can Holocaust study prevent the same descent into depravity.
No one can know what is unfolding in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and other countries of the Arab League. There is one critical variable that holds the key to their political future: Will their leaders resort to the political instrument that brought about their decline? Will Egypt abrogate or weaken its treaty with Israel, or develop a culture of human rights? Will Turkey join the competition over who stands strongest against Israel and suffer the fate of its rivals? Arab leaders sealed the doom of their societies when they organized politics against the Jewish state. Only new and would-be leaders have the power to undo the failure they reaped.
Ruth R. Wisse, the author most recently of Jews and Power, is Martin Peretz professor of Yiddish literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard.
Netanyahu – the pros and cons
Isi Leibler
November 17, 2011
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=3742
Two months ago at the UN General Assembly, we proudly observed as our Prime Minister employed his golden tongue to promote the case for Israel. It was reminiscent of his previous address to Congress, which evoked repeated bi-partisan standing ovations.
In addition, today, irrespective of the merits of the deal with Hamas, he is applauded by most Israelis for having achieved the release of Gilad Schalit.
Yet ironically, probably no Israeli Prime Minister has ever encountered so much hatred and resentment from both his constituents and much of the media who unrelentingly defame him and his family, failing to even distinguish between his personal and public life. Netanyahu’s critics allege that he has major character deficiencies. He is frequently depicted as a cold hearted person incapable of forming lasting relationships. Some of his former associates accuse him of lacking loyalty and flippantly abandoning his friends and allies whenever it suited him.
They claim that under pressure Netanyahu is indecisive and tends to wilt. That, in lieu of displaying leadership he has a penchant to send trial balloons, only implementing policies when confident he will achieve public acclaim.
In contrast to former ascetic leaders like David Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin, he is frequently accused of being hedonistic and leading an extravagant lifestyle. The hostile media continuously allege that he frivolously wastes taxpayer’s funds at luxury hotels, despite the fact that it would have been degrading for Israel were its Prime Minister to behave otherwise.
Needless to say, his principal opposition emanates from the far left which depicts him as a cold hearted capitalist and fanatical nationalist, insensitive of others. To this day he is still accused of having created the climate of hatred which led to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Yet in reality he correctly predicted that the Oslo Accords were a prescription for disaster.
His government coalition is problematic as exemplified by frequent contradictory statements and public spats between him and his Foreign Minister and the inexcusable delays in important appointments such as the endless deferrals until a permanent ambassador to the UN was selected.
Netanyahu’s former Likud associate, Tzipi Livni the head of Kadima and leader of the opposition, spares no effort in demonizing him.
She condemned him for conceding to the 10 month settlement freeze. Yet subsequently when he refused to renew a further settlement freeze, she accused him of undermining the Israel-US relationship. She blames him, rather than Abbas, for the breakdown in negotiations with the Palestinians. Instead of supporting him against Obama's one-sided pressures, she placed all the blame on him. Despite the severity of the threats currently confronting us, she refused to consider a unity government or even adopt a constructive opposition role.
Needless to say, Netanyahu is far from perfect and some of the weaknesses and criticisms leveled against him may have merit.
But one must balance these deficiencies by taking into account his achievements. Netanyahu’s greatest success is that despite presiding over a solidly right-wing coalition, he has effectively moved the nation towards a centrist position, achieving the broadest consensus amongst the people since the rupture over the Oslo accords.
Whilst continuously accused by his critics of intransigency and taking advantage of every opportunity to prevent Israel from establishing an accommodation with its neighbors, he has in fact displayed even greater flexibility than Yitzhak Rabin. He steered Likud and Israel Beiteinu towards adopting the principle of a two state solution - subject to having a genuine Palestinian peace partner - which, through no fault of his, is currently nowhere on the horizon. This alienated him from the hawkish elements of the coalition who accuse him of capitulating to American pressure.
Netanyahu assumed office as the nation faced one of the most difficult periods in its relationship with its vital ally, the United States. He was confronted with an American president who from the outset was overtly personally offensive towards him, making it clear that he had no confidence in him or in his “right wing” government.
Nevertheless, he succeeded in balancing an extraordinary diplomatic tightrope, refusing to yield on issues crucial to Israel’s security whilst persuading his right-wing coalition partners to accept unprecedented concessions like the 10 month freeze on settlements in order to assuage Obama and avoid further polarizing the relationship between the two countries.
Although he was bitterly criticized for "embarrassing” the US president on his visit to Washington, his refusal to submit to Obama's unexpected bullying, combined with his eloquent presentation to Congress will be regarded in history as having effectively intensified the tide of public opinion in the United States in favor of Israel. It undoubtedly paved the way for the dramatic turnabout by Obama in his pro-Israeli speech at the UN General Assembly and at least, for the time being, the more balanced approach adopted towards Israel.
Whatever Netanyahu does, he will be criticized. To this day, most media commentators continue to castigate him for failing to forestall the Palestinians by launching his own initiative and blame him for Israel’s current isolation. But what could he be expected to do with a nonexistent peace partner who has no intention of compromising one iota and is merely seeking to rack up further concessions without reciprocity?
Initially encouraged by Obama, Abbas developed this tactic of ‘we take you give’, trying to force Israel to extend further concessions without even a hint of reciprocity and then demanding that these become the opening benchmark for subsequent negotiations. It is essentially a strategy designed to dismantle the Jewish state in stages. It is thus ridiculous to blame Netanyahu for not rewarding Palestinian intransigency by making further concessions. He made repeated unconditional offers to negotiate but was rebuffed even after introducing an unprecedented 10 month settlement freeze.
Many Israelis may yearn nostalgically for the days of the warm and dynamic Menachem Begin or the straightforward no-nonsense Yitzhak Rabin. But it was Netanyahu who reunited the nation divided since Oslo, marginalizing extremists on both the left and the right.
He achieved the best possible outcome during the course of one of the most difficult periods in the history of Israel when Islamic radicalism in all our neighboring countries grew exponentially. He did so whilst confronted by a highly problematic US president who until very recently appeased our enemies and put a distance between us and the United States, further compounded by his uncomplimentary remarks in conversation with Sarkozy reflect an ongoing personal animus.
Despite the need for internal economic reforms which are underway, Netanyahu can also take credit for having laid the foundations for an economy which enabled Israel to bypass the recent global economic meltdown.
It is much too early to be conclusive but, notwithstanding the weaknesses and human frailties of our Prime Minister, today most Israelis - including many who have reservations about some of his qualities or consider him either too weak or too extreme - would find it difficult to deny that he stands head and shoulders above any other contender for leadership of the nation during these troubled times.
ileibler@netvision.net.il
The writer’s new website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com
This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post
Thursday, November 17, 2011
A Palestinian hero in the media - The woman who aided suicide terrorist who attacked the Sbarro restaurant and killed 15
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Since the release of 1027 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit last month, Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Palestinian Authority leaders, including Abbas, as well as the official PA media have chosen to glorify some of those terrorists who have committed the most lethal attacks against Israel as well as the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit.
Among the recently released prisoners was Ahlam Tamimi. She is the terrorist who chose the place and led a suicide bomber to the Sbarro pizza shop in Jerusalem in August 2001, who murdered 15 people in his attack, 7 of them children. Tamimi has repeatedly stated that she does not regret her involvement in the terror attack. Since her release, Tamimi has appeared in several interviews, in which she has repeated this. A Jordanian website broadcast an interview with her in which, when she was asked if she would participate in or carry out another terror attack, she responded:
"Of course. I don't regret what happened, absolutely not. That is the path; I give myself for the sake of Allah, to Jihad for Allah. I carried out [my mission] and Allah made me successful: You know the number of victims who were killed. All that was thanks to the success from Allah. Do you expect me to abandon what I did, saying [I regret it]? Regret is something that is out of the question. If time could go backwards, I would carry out what I did, in the same manner."
Click to view
Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV also did a lengthy interview with Tamimi in which she described the suicide bomber admiringly:
"It's important to say that I was walking with a spiritual person. Next to him, I sensed a sort of divine aura surrounding us."
Hamas' TV also interviewed the parents of the Sbarro suicide bomber. They both expressed their pride and appreciation of Tamimi and how she helped their son become a Martyr:
"We are proud of Ahlam Tamimi even before our son, by Allah. She fulfilled her obligation and made me proud. We thank Allah and Ahlam Tamimi, who brought him [my son] to this high level."
Click to view
Prior to the prisoners' release, the PA official daily printed a long article describing Tamimi's life as a journalist and her becoming a "fighter" in Hamas' military wing Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades. Among other things, the article described how Tamimi,
"the dreamy student and conscientious journalist turned into a different sort of woman - she began a race against time to participate in carrying out operations (i.e., terror attacks) in West Jerusalem."
This is not the first time that Ahlam Tamimi has been glorified by PA media.
In a response to Israeli TV's rebroadcast of an interview with Tamimi in which she said that she did not regret planning the bombing even though children were killed and that she had chosen the Sbarro pizza shop as a target because it had a large number of customers, PA TV accused Israeli TV of "inciting against the prisoners."
Click to view
Palestinian Media Watch has documented the policy of the PA to glorify terrorists.
The following is the text from the video interview on the Jordanian website ammonnews with Ahlam Tamimi from her parents' home in Jordan following her release:
Interviewer: How did you take the sentence? [15 life sentences]
Tamimi: I'm a Jihad fighter for Allah and a Jihad fighter for Allah is ready for any outcome: either he will die as a Shahid (Martyr), or he will be assassinated, or he will be taken captive; [or] Allah can decree some unknown fate for him - [for instance,] that he will live as a wanted [fugitive].
Interviewer: If you could set the clock back, Ahlam, would you carry out, or take part in, a major operation (i.e., terror attack)?
Tamimi: Of course. I don't regret what happened, absolutely not. That is the path; I give myself for the sake of Allah, to Jihad for Allah. I carried out [my mission] and Allah made me successful: You know the number of victims who were killed. All that was thanks to the success from Allah. Do you expect me to abandon what I did, saying [I regret it]? Regret is something that is out of the question. If time could go backwards, I would carry out what I did, in the same manner.
Interviewer: How would you describe the Israelis?
Tamimi: The Israelis are a nation upon which it was decreed that it would be dispersed over the earth. Allah decreed this upon them, but international conspiracies, the Balfour Declaration, gave them the right to something to which they have no right.
[ammonnews.net accessed Nov. 12, 2011]
Click to view
Excerpt of interview with Ahlam Tamimi on Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas):
Tamimi: You make a big deal about the Sbarro restaurant (bombing) in which 15 Israelis were killed, but my first operation (i.e., terror attack) was at the King George supermarket (in central Jerusalem). I chose the Sbarro restaurant, but I didn't go in with him (i.e., the terrorist). A few days beforehand, I counted the number of people entering the restaurant, a large number of people would enter this restaurant.
Host: What did you talk about with the Martyrdom-seeker on the way (to the suicide attack)?
Tamimi: It's impossible to describe him with words. We met only on the day of the operation. The [Hamas] brothers changed his entire appearance. He wasn't bearded. He wore jeans and a hat. It's important to say that I was walking with a spiritual person. Next to him, I sensed a sort of divine aura surrounding us. We looked into each other's eyes. I said to him, "There is no God but Allah," and he said, "and Muhammad is Allah's messenger," and he smiled.
Host: We interviewed the parents of the heroic Martyrdom-seeker (i.e., the suicide bomber), Izz A-Din Al-Masri, who blew himself up in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem.
Father of suicide bomber: We are proud of Ahlam Tamimi even before our son, by Allah. She fulfilled her obligation and made me proud. We thank Allah and Ahlam Tamimi, who brought him [my son] to this high level.
Mother of suicide bomber: My son chose his path and his fate, and we do not regret that. Praise Allah, that is an honor for him. What [higher] level could he have asked for? That is the best level in the eyes of his Lord.
Tamimi: I always had an inner conflict whether they were happy with me or not.
Host: How did you conduct yourself [in the interrogation]?
Tamimi: By Allah, you won't believe it, but I was always smiling. I don't know why my smile always angered them.
Host: The judge who sentenced you ordered that you should not be included in any exchange deal.
Tamimi: I say to him - you will die in your anger. I was released, and you remain in your defeat.
I hope that you will be defeated, and may Allah add more defeat to you.
[Al-Aqsa (Hamas) TV, Oct. 24, 2011]
Click to view
The following is the official PA daily's article on terrorist Ahlam Tamimi the day before her release:
Headline: "Ahlam Tamimi will not wait 1584 years to be released...!"
"No one at Bir Zeit University would have believed that Ahlam Tamimi could be a member of a radical, top secret military organization such as the Shahid (Martyr) Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas movement's military wing. Likewise, no one knows what caused Ahlam, a spirited young woman... studying journalism at the university in order to realize her aspirations, to become a fighter, even if she herself has said that it was the occupation which drove the Palestinians to resist it in every way... Ahlam was born on Oct. 20, 1980, in the city of Zarka, in Jordan, to a Palestinian family... She returned to Palestine in order to study journalism and communications at Bir Zeit University. She had only one semester left [to complete] when the Al-Aqsa Intifada (i.e., the Palestinian terror campaign, 2000-2005) broke out, with unprecedented violence in the Palestinian territories, as evidenced in the terrible murder policy of the Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon government. Ahlam tried to 'fight' the occupation in her way, focusing on a program which she presented on local television broadcast in Ramallah, which covered the occupation's actions. In her journalistic work, Ahlam encountered the harsh reality and the tragic stories brought about by the occupation, and decided to take another big step. At the same time, her friend from the faculty of journalism and communications, Wael Daghlas of the Al-Qassam Brigades, thought that she was suited to join the Brigades... The dreamy student and conscientious journalist turned into a different sort of woman - she began a race against time to participate in carrying out operations (i.e., terror attacks) in West Jerusalem.
The article goes on to describe her role in the Sbarro attack, and then her arrest and trial:
After a period of training, she carried out her first activity on July 27, 2001, when she carried out surveillance on the streets of western Jerusalem without attracting attention, aided by her modern clothing and pleasant appearance. Her mission was to choose places to carry out bombing operations planned by Abdallah Barghouti, as revenge for every [Israeli] assassination operation. Her most prominent operation was her assistance in carrying out the bombing attack which shocked western Jerusalem on Aug. 9, 2001 (i.e., the Sbarro restaurant attack), whose ramifications affected regional and world leaders. Ahlam patrolled Jerusalem in her car and set the route which the one who would carry out [the operation], Izz A-Din Al-Masri, would take from Ramallah to Jerusalem. The next day she took the guitar which Abdallah Barghouti had booby-trapped, and joined Izz A-Din Al-Masri. She asked him to carry the guitar over his shoulder. These were moments laden with emotion between them, as she pointed out the place to him and left him to take his final walk while she returned to Ramallah. When she was arrested afterwards, she was tortured and the Israeli court gave her 16 life sentences, meaning 1584 years... Ahlam dealt with the trial with a smile and her words to the judges: 'I don't recognize the legitimacy of this court; I do not wish to present my name or age to you... I present myself to you through my actions, with which you are very familiar... My name is Ahlam, and I shall remain thus until I attain the dream of my Palestinian people to rid this land of you.' She became engaged in prison to another prisoner, her cousin Nizar, who belongs to Fatah; his father is Dr. Samir Shehadeh, a member of the Fatah leadership."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 16, 2011]
PA TV accused Israeli TV of "incitement" for airing old interview with Tamimi:
PA TV News reader: Israeli TV Channel 1, during the first part of the prisoners' exchange, deliberately rebroadcast an interview held in the past in prison with the [now] released female prisoner Ahlam Tamimi to incite against the prisoners.
PA TV shows Israeli Channel 1 TV re-broadcast of interview:
Israeli interviewer: "Who chose Sbarro [restaurant, as the target of the attack]?"
Tamimi: "I did. Over nine days I examined the place very carefully and chose it after seeing the large number of visits to this restaurant, the Sbarro restaurant. I didn't want to blow [myself] up, I didn't want to carry out a Martyrdom-seeking operation (i.e., a suicide attack). My mission was just to choose the place and to bring the Martyrdom-seeker (i.e., the suicide bomber). [I made] the general plan of the operation, but carrying it out was entrusted to the Martyrdom-seeker. ... I told him to enter the restaurant, eat a meal, and then after 15 minutes carry out the Martyrdom-seeking operation. During the quarter of an hour I would return the same way that I had arrived. Then I bade him farewell. He went inside, he crossed the road and went to the restaurant, and I went back the way I had come... You have to know something: a Martyrdom-seeker has a very special character, and I was amazed at his great wish to carry out the operation, his great wish to pass over to a different life. How beautiful it is when you make a person - [starts the sentence again] [Suppose] there's a poor person and you give him a lot of money. He will be happy and you yourself will be happy that you realized for him the happy life that he wanted. My job was to realize, for this Martyrdom-seeker, the happy life that he wanted.
Interviewer: Didn't you think about the people who were in the restaurant? The children? The families?
Tamimi: "No."
Tamimi: "I have no regrets, and no Palestinian prisoner regrets what he or she has done. We were defending ourselves. What are we supposed to regret? Should we regret defending ourselves? Should we regret that the Israelis killed one of us so we killed a different one of them? We have no regrets."
Interviewer: Do you know how many children were killed in the restaurant?
Tamimi: Three children were killed in the operation, I think. [Smiles.]
Interviewer: Eight.
Tamimi: Eight?! [Smiles.] Eight.
[PA TV (Fatah), Oct. 23, 2011]
Click to view
Since the release of 1027 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit last month, Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Palestinian Authority leaders, including Abbas, as well as the official PA media have chosen to glorify some of those terrorists who have committed the most lethal attacks against Israel as well as the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit.
Among the recently released prisoners was Ahlam Tamimi. She is the terrorist who chose the place and led a suicide bomber to the Sbarro pizza shop in Jerusalem in August 2001, who murdered 15 people in his attack, 7 of them children. Tamimi has repeatedly stated that she does not regret her involvement in the terror attack. Since her release, Tamimi has appeared in several interviews, in which she has repeated this. A Jordanian website broadcast an interview with her in which, when she was asked if she would participate in or carry out another terror attack, she responded:
"Of course. I don't regret what happened, absolutely not. That is the path; I give myself for the sake of Allah, to Jihad for Allah. I carried out [my mission] and Allah made me successful: You know the number of victims who were killed. All that was thanks to the success from Allah. Do you expect me to abandon what I did, saying [I regret it]? Regret is something that is out of the question. If time could go backwards, I would carry out what I did, in the same manner."
Click to view
Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV also did a lengthy interview with Tamimi in which she described the suicide bomber admiringly:
"It's important to say that I was walking with a spiritual person. Next to him, I sensed a sort of divine aura surrounding us."
Hamas' TV also interviewed the parents of the Sbarro suicide bomber. They both expressed their pride and appreciation of Tamimi and how she helped their son become a Martyr:
"We are proud of Ahlam Tamimi even before our son, by Allah. She fulfilled her obligation and made me proud. We thank Allah and Ahlam Tamimi, who brought him [my son] to this high level."
Click to view
Prior to the prisoners' release, the PA official daily printed a long article describing Tamimi's life as a journalist and her becoming a "fighter" in Hamas' military wing Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades. Among other things, the article described how Tamimi,
"the dreamy student and conscientious journalist turned into a different sort of woman - she began a race against time to participate in carrying out operations (i.e., terror attacks) in West Jerusalem."
This is not the first time that Ahlam Tamimi has been glorified by PA media.
In a response to Israeli TV's rebroadcast of an interview with Tamimi in which she said that she did not regret planning the bombing even though children were killed and that she had chosen the Sbarro pizza shop as a target because it had a large number of customers, PA TV accused Israeli TV of "inciting against the prisoners."
Click to view
Palestinian Media Watch has documented the policy of the PA to glorify terrorists.
The following is the text from the video interview on the Jordanian website ammonnews with Ahlam Tamimi from her parents' home in Jordan following her release:
Interviewer: How did you take the sentence? [15 life sentences]
Tamimi: I'm a Jihad fighter for Allah and a Jihad fighter for Allah is ready for any outcome: either he will die as a Shahid (Martyr), or he will be assassinated, or he will be taken captive; [or] Allah can decree some unknown fate for him - [for instance,] that he will live as a wanted [fugitive].
Interviewer: If you could set the clock back, Ahlam, would you carry out, or take part in, a major operation (i.e., terror attack)?
Tamimi: Of course. I don't regret what happened, absolutely not. That is the path; I give myself for the sake of Allah, to Jihad for Allah. I carried out [my mission] and Allah made me successful: You know the number of victims who were killed. All that was thanks to the success from Allah. Do you expect me to abandon what I did, saying [I regret it]? Regret is something that is out of the question. If time could go backwards, I would carry out what I did, in the same manner.
Interviewer: How would you describe the Israelis?
Tamimi: The Israelis are a nation upon which it was decreed that it would be dispersed over the earth. Allah decreed this upon them, but international conspiracies, the Balfour Declaration, gave them the right to something to which they have no right.
[ammonnews.net accessed Nov. 12, 2011]
Click to view
Excerpt of interview with Ahlam Tamimi on Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas):
Tamimi: You make a big deal about the Sbarro restaurant (bombing) in which 15 Israelis were killed, but my first operation (i.e., terror attack) was at the King George supermarket (in central Jerusalem). I chose the Sbarro restaurant, but I didn't go in with him (i.e., the terrorist). A few days beforehand, I counted the number of people entering the restaurant, a large number of people would enter this restaurant.
Host: What did you talk about with the Martyrdom-seeker on the way (to the suicide attack)?
Tamimi: It's impossible to describe him with words. We met only on the day of the operation. The [Hamas] brothers changed his entire appearance. He wasn't bearded. He wore jeans and a hat. It's important to say that I was walking with a spiritual person. Next to him, I sensed a sort of divine aura surrounding us. We looked into each other's eyes. I said to him, "There is no God but Allah," and he said, "and Muhammad is Allah's messenger," and he smiled.
Host: We interviewed the parents of the heroic Martyrdom-seeker (i.e., the suicide bomber), Izz A-Din Al-Masri, who blew himself up in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem.
Father of suicide bomber: We are proud of Ahlam Tamimi even before our son, by Allah. She fulfilled her obligation and made me proud. We thank Allah and Ahlam Tamimi, who brought him [my son] to this high level.
Mother of suicide bomber: My son chose his path and his fate, and we do not regret that. Praise Allah, that is an honor for him. What [higher] level could he have asked for? That is the best level in the eyes of his Lord.
Tamimi: I always had an inner conflict whether they were happy with me or not.
Host: How did you conduct yourself [in the interrogation]?
Tamimi: By Allah, you won't believe it, but I was always smiling. I don't know why my smile always angered them.
Host: The judge who sentenced you ordered that you should not be included in any exchange deal.
Tamimi: I say to him - you will die in your anger. I was released, and you remain in your defeat.
I hope that you will be defeated, and may Allah add more defeat to you.
[Al-Aqsa (Hamas) TV, Oct. 24, 2011]
Click to view
The following is the official PA daily's article on terrorist Ahlam Tamimi the day before her release:
Headline: "Ahlam Tamimi will not wait 1584 years to be released...!"
"No one at Bir Zeit University would have believed that Ahlam Tamimi could be a member of a radical, top secret military organization such as the Shahid (Martyr) Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas movement's military wing. Likewise, no one knows what caused Ahlam, a spirited young woman... studying journalism at the university in order to realize her aspirations, to become a fighter, even if she herself has said that it was the occupation which drove the Palestinians to resist it in every way... Ahlam was born on Oct. 20, 1980, in the city of Zarka, in Jordan, to a Palestinian family... She returned to Palestine in order to study journalism and communications at Bir Zeit University. She had only one semester left [to complete] when the Al-Aqsa Intifada (i.e., the Palestinian terror campaign, 2000-2005) broke out, with unprecedented violence in the Palestinian territories, as evidenced in the terrible murder policy of the Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon government. Ahlam tried to 'fight' the occupation in her way, focusing on a program which she presented on local television broadcast in Ramallah, which covered the occupation's actions. In her journalistic work, Ahlam encountered the harsh reality and the tragic stories brought about by the occupation, and decided to take another big step. At the same time, her friend from the faculty of journalism and communications, Wael Daghlas of the Al-Qassam Brigades, thought that she was suited to join the Brigades... The dreamy student and conscientious journalist turned into a different sort of woman - she began a race against time to participate in carrying out operations (i.e., terror attacks) in West Jerusalem.
The article goes on to describe her role in the Sbarro attack, and then her arrest and trial:
After a period of training, she carried out her first activity on July 27, 2001, when she carried out surveillance on the streets of western Jerusalem without attracting attention, aided by her modern clothing and pleasant appearance. Her mission was to choose places to carry out bombing operations planned by Abdallah Barghouti, as revenge for every [Israeli] assassination operation. Her most prominent operation was her assistance in carrying out the bombing attack which shocked western Jerusalem on Aug. 9, 2001 (i.e., the Sbarro restaurant attack), whose ramifications affected regional and world leaders. Ahlam patrolled Jerusalem in her car and set the route which the one who would carry out [the operation], Izz A-Din Al-Masri, would take from Ramallah to Jerusalem. The next day she took the guitar which Abdallah Barghouti had booby-trapped, and joined Izz A-Din Al-Masri. She asked him to carry the guitar over his shoulder. These were moments laden with emotion between them, as she pointed out the place to him and left him to take his final walk while she returned to Ramallah. When she was arrested afterwards, she was tortured and the Israeli court gave her 16 life sentences, meaning 1584 years... Ahlam dealt with the trial with a smile and her words to the judges: 'I don't recognize the legitimacy of this court; I do not wish to present my name or age to you... I present myself to you through my actions, with which you are very familiar... My name is Ahlam, and I shall remain thus until I attain the dream of my Palestinian people to rid this land of you.' She became engaged in prison to another prisoner, her cousin Nizar, who belongs to Fatah; his father is Dr. Samir Shehadeh, a member of the Fatah leadership."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 16, 2011]
PA TV accused Israeli TV of "incitement" for airing old interview with Tamimi:
PA TV News reader: Israeli TV Channel 1, during the first part of the prisoners' exchange, deliberately rebroadcast an interview held in the past in prison with the [now] released female prisoner Ahlam Tamimi to incite against the prisoners.
PA TV shows Israeli Channel 1 TV re-broadcast of interview:
Israeli interviewer: "Who chose Sbarro [restaurant, as the target of the attack]?"
Tamimi: "I did. Over nine days I examined the place very carefully and chose it after seeing the large number of visits to this restaurant, the Sbarro restaurant. I didn't want to blow [myself] up, I didn't want to carry out a Martyrdom-seeking operation (i.e., a suicide attack). My mission was just to choose the place and to bring the Martyrdom-seeker (i.e., the suicide bomber). [I made] the general plan of the operation, but carrying it out was entrusted to the Martyrdom-seeker. ... I told him to enter the restaurant, eat a meal, and then after 15 minutes carry out the Martyrdom-seeking operation. During the quarter of an hour I would return the same way that I had arrived. Then I bade him farewell. He went inside, he crossed the road and went to the restaurant, and I went back the way I had come... You have to know something: a Martyrdom-seeker has a very special character, and I was amazed at his great wish to carry out the operation, his great wish to pass over to a different life. How beautiful it is when you make a person - [starts the sentence again] [Suppose] there's a poor person and you give him a lot of money. He will be happy and you yourself will be happy that you realized for him the happy life that he wanted. My job was to realize, for this Martyrdom-seeker, the happy life that he wanted.
Interviewer: Didn't you think about the people who were in the restaurant? The children? The families?
Tamimi: "No."
Tamimi: "I have no regrets, and no Palestinian prisoner regrets what he or she has done. We were defending ourselves. What are we supposed to regret? Should we regret defending ourselves? Should we regret that the Israelis killed one of us so we killed a different one of them? We have no regrets."
Interviewer: Do you know how many children were killed in the restaurant?
Tamimi: Three children were killed in the operation, I think. [Smiles.]
Interviewer: Eight.
Tamimi: Eight?! [Smiles.] Eight.
[PA TV (Fatah), Oct. 23, 2011]
Click to view
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
‘Death Sentence’ Reversed on Israeli Village
David Meir-Levi
On August 2, 2011, the Israeli Supreme Court issued a “death sentence” for the Israeli village of Migron. It must be dismantled, its houses demolished, and its families evicted. On Monday, September 5, demolition began and three houses were destroyed. Due to legal petitions, the demolition was postponed pending review of the Court’s procedures. On November 7 the Court reversed its decision and withdrew its “death sentence.”
What happened?
Migron is a small Israeli community situated in the hill country about five miles north-east of Jerusalem. It was established in 2002 as a bedroom community within easy commuting distance from Jerusalem. Today it is home to about 500 people Shortly after Migron’s construction, the Israeli self-styled human rights group, Peace Now, began working with several West Bank Arabs who claimed that their families had for generations owned the land upon which Migron sits. They claimed that this land had been given to them by King Hussein of Jordan. Under King Hussein and his father, King Abdullah, Jordan illegally occupied the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, but had no legal basis for Jordanian sovereignty. Therefore Hussein had no legal right to gift West Bank land to anyone since neither he nor the State of Jordan held legal ownership. The Supreme Court chose to ignore this inconvenient bit of legal reality and political history.
Peace Now submitted a petition on behalf of the Arab claimants in October, 2006. Court deliberations and interaction with the State went on for several years. The Migron residents claimed that they purchased the land legally and had bona fide proof of ownership. The Court chose to disregard the whole issue of proof of ownership and handed down a decided in favor of the Arab claimants. The Court ordered the army to remove the Israeli inhabitants and destroy all structures.
In early 2008 Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Baraq accepted the Court’s judgment, but demanded more time so that housing for the inhabitants of Migron could be built elsewhere. Finally, on August 2, 2011, the Court ruled that the State must evacuate Migron by March 31, 2012.
Within a few weeks of that order, the Arab claimants, under the advice of Peace Now, filed a new civil lawsuit in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, demanding that the State compensate them for the years during which Migron existed on what they insisted was their land. The Magistrate’s Court then bethought itself to demand of the Arab claimants their proof of ownership, a simple legal evidentiary procedure. At once the Arabs, who had just successfully claimed in the Supreme Court that the land was theirs, suddenly and without explanation, withdrew their lawsuit from the Magistrate’s court.
In light of the Arab claimants’ refusal to prove ownership, and their sudden and unexplained withdrawal of their claim, the Magistrate’s Court has stopped the demolition of Migron houses, their consensus being that the Arab plaintiffs have no proof of ownership. Needless to say, this is a source of considerable embarrassment for the Supreme Court. The only explanation given is that “The High Court does not debate evidence.” Apparently neither does Peace Now.
This is not the first of such embarrassments for Peace Now. In 2010 Peace Now alleged that the Israeli village of Kiryat Netafim, in the northern West Bank, was built on land privately owned by Arabs, was therefore an illegal settlement, and should be demolished. After examining building plans and ownership documents, the court ruled that Peace Now’s allegations were baseless and the village was legally built on land that the villagers legally owned.
In November, 2006, Peace Now claimed that 86% of the Jerusalem suburb of Ma’aleh Adumim, home to 30,000 Israelis, was built on land seized illegally from local Arabs. Maps and land-use data from the Israeli military, released to the Israeli court in mid-March, 2007, demonstrated to the satisfaction of the court that only 0.5% (one half of one percent) of Ma’aleh Adumim’s land was privately owned by Arabs.
When faced with this rather galactic anomaly, Peace Now refigured its numbers and reduced its estimate to 32.4%, and blamed the army for the error.
So Peace Now erred by a factor of 173 (O.5% vs. 86.4%)!
Peace Now’s willingness to accept Arab complaints at face value even as, time after time, those complaints are proven false, makes Peace Now look inept and unreliable; but it also raises the suspicion that Peace Now is intentionally misrepresenting reality in order to support specious Arab claims, harass Israelis living in communities in the West Bank, and flood Israeli courts with meritless law suits. Such behavior looks very much like lawfare conducted against Israel by an Israeli not-for-profit putative civil rights organization. Such behavior suggests that Peace Now is driven by a powerful and uncompromising anti-Israel ideology, an ideology which trumps fact and logic.
The latter suspicion is supported by the egregious and numerous errors and outright lies of some of its spokespersons.
click here to read more
Red Magen David, PA, Red Cross Agree: Israel is an "Occupier"
MDA signed a Red Cross document saying it "will ensure that it has no chapters outside the internationaly recognized borders of..Israel."
By Arutz Sheva Staff
There has not been much “understanding” lately between the Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas continues to launch missiles at Israeli cities, towns and kindergartens. The PA continues to refuse international blandishments to get it to the negotiation table and its request for recognition at the UN put paid to whatever remained of the disastrous Oslo Accords. Israel’s Red Magen David Emergency Services (MDA), however, seems in 2005 to have succeeded in reaching an “understanding” with the PA’s Red Crescent Society (PRCS) on how to run emergency rescue services in Judea and Samaria.
But there's a catch - or maybe several.
The “Memorandum of Understanding between Magen David Adom in Israel and Palestine Red Crescent Society,” a copy of which reached Arutz Sheva, includes having Israel called an “occupier” and agrees that “internationally recognized borders” are the line of demarcation for Red Crescent chapters rather than those of Red Magen David. In addition, Israel’s famed Red Star of David is scrapped and exchanged for a Red Crystal.
The memorandum was signed in Geneva on November 28, 2005 by Dr. Noam Yifrach, the Israeli Organization’s chairman and Younis Al-Khatib, President of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, in the presence of official representatives of the ICRC, IFRC and a special representative on the emblem.
As a reward, the Israeli rescue organization was to obtain its long-coveted membership in the International Red Cross. The agreement, on how to operate rescue services, states that its goal is "to pave the way for the membership of both societies in the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, committed to operating in accordance with international humanitarian law."
The existence of the joint International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies enables Moslem countries to avoid having a cross on their rescue vehicles. Israel, wanting neither cross nor crescent, chose the emotion-evoking Red Star of David and functioned independently. It was never accepted into the organization anyway, despite repeated requests, due to Arab opposition.
The year 2005 was cited in Israel as a breakthrough, but at what cost that change in attitude was achieved was not publicized.
Arutz Sheva spoke to Yoni Yisraeli, head of rescue operations for the Shomron Regional Authority, who explained that motivation for joining the IFRC, aside from Israel's natural and often hopeless desire to be part of world bodies, also has a financial aspect.
A $100,000 award for signing the document was part of the deal for each of the local societies, perhaps to be followed by more, and given Magen David Adom's ongoing financial crisis, this must have been tempting, he said.
Except, he added, that the heads of the societies seem to have received that sum for themselves.
And the Red Cross did not give that money for nothing. Below are some direct quotes from the document signed by Israel’s representative - no Oslo-created Areas A,B,C here [Area A is only PA, B is shared, C is only Israeli], just "Palestinian territory". The context makes the definition of those two words clear enough:
“MDA and PRCS will operate in conformity with the legal framework applicable to the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in 1967.”
“MDA and PRCS recognize that PRCS is the authorized national society in the Palestinian territory and that this territory is within the geographical scope of the operational activities and of the competences of PRCS”.
“After the Third Protocol Additional is adopted and by the time MDA is admitted to the …International Red Cross and Red Cresecent societies, MDA will ensure that it has no chapters outside the internationally recognized border of the state of Israel.”
Efrat, Gilo, Maaleh Adumim, Ariel and Kedumim and other Yesha communities, take note.
“Operational activities of one society within the jurisdiction of the other society will be conducted in accordance with the consent provision of resolution 11…”
That seems to say, Israeli ambulances over pre 1967 borders – yes; chapters, no.
"MDA and PRCS will use a distinctive emblem in conformity with the requirements of the Geneva conventions and its Third Additional Protocol.”
The Third Additional Protocol introduces a third symbol, the red crystal, which, to quote the Protocol itself “will make it easier for national societies who do not wish to use the red cross or the red crescent emblems to be recognized and admitted to the Movement. This consolidates the Movement's universality”.
Cross and crescent, yes. Jewish star, no. Sublimely universal.
Oddly, for six years after the agreement, nothing changed visibly. Suddenly, in recent weeks, Israelis were up in arms to see that the Red Star of David symbol had disappeared from Israeli ambulances in Judea and Samaria, to be replaced by an odd symbol that meant nothing to anyone.
Questioners were told that the Star of David is not recognized by the international organization and that the rest of the country’s ambulances would soon follow suit.
A grassroots rebellion saw red Jewish star stickers being pasted on ambulances and volunteers from Judea and Samaria refusing to go to their stations.
That may or may not work, said Yisraeli, but since local authorities are not allowed to own ambulances but must rent them from Red Magen David, the society’s agreements affect everyone.
But what is to become of the requirements of the Memorandum of Understanding? And did the Foreign Ministry know and agree to MDA's relinquishing jurisdiction in Judea and Samaria as well as replacing the Star of David symbol for some pieces of silver? It depends on who is asked and whose interpretation of the document is accepted.
Arutz Sheva did not get any clear answers and the head of MDA was not available for comments. The Knesset is supposed to debate the issue in the near future, said a Shomron Regional Authority source.
By Arutz Sheva Staff
There has not been much “understanding” lately between the Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas continues to launch missiles at Israeli cities, towns and kindergartens. The PA continues to refuse international blandishments to get it to the negotiation table and its request for recognition at the UN put paid to whatever remained of the disastrous Oslo Accords. Israel’s Red Magen David Emergency Services (MDA), however, seems in 2005 to have succeeded in reaching an “understanding” with the PA’s Red Crescent Society (PRCS) on how to run emergency rescue services in Judea and Samaria.
But there's a catch - or maybe several.
The “Memorandum of Understanding between Magen David Adom in Israel and Palestine Red Crescent Society,” a copy of which reached Arutz Sheva, includes having Israel called an “occupier” and agrees that “internationally recognized borders” are the line of demarcation for Red Crescent chapters rather than those of Red Magen David. In addition, Israel’s famed Red Star of David is scrapped and exchanged for a Red Crystal.
The memorandum was signed in Geneva on November 28, 2005 by Dr. Noam Yifrach, the Israeli Organization’s chairman and Younis Al-Khatib, President of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, in the presence of official representatives of the ICRC, IFRC and a special representative on the emblem.
As a reward, the Israeli rescue organization was to obtain its long-coveted membership in the International Red Cross. The agreement, on how to operate rescue services, states that its goal is "to pave the way for the membership of both societies in the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, committed to operating in accordance with international humanitarian law."
The existence of the joint International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies enables Moslem countries to avoid having a cross on their rescue vehicles. Israel, wanting neither cross nor crescent, chose the emotion-evoking Red Star of David and functioned independently. It was never accepted into the organization anyway, despite repeated requests, due to Arab opposition.
The year 2005 was cited in Israel as a breakthrough, but at what cost that change in attitude was achieved was not publicized.
Arutz Sheva spoke to Yoni Yisraeli, head of rescue operations for the Shomron Regional Authority, who explained that motivation for joining the IFRC, aside from Israel's natural and often hopeless desire to be part of world bodies, also has a financial aspect.
A $100,000 award for signing the document was part of the deal for each of the local societies, perhaps to be followed by more, and given Magen David Adom's ongoing financial crisis, this must have been tempting, he said.
Except, he added, that the heads of the societies seem to have received that sum for themselves.
And the Red Cross did not give that money for nothing. Below are some direct quotes from the document signed by Israel’s representative - no Oslo-created Areas A,B,C here [Area A is only PA, B is shared, C is only Israeli], just "Palestinian territory". The context makes the definition of those two words clear enough:
“MDA and PRCS will operate in conformity with the legal framework applicable to the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in 1967.”
“MDA and PRCS recognize that PRCS is the authorized national society in the Palestinian territory and that this territory is within the geographical scope of the operational activities and of the competences of PRCS”.
“After the Third Protocol Additional is adopted and by the time MDA is admitted to the …International Red Cross and Red Cresecent societies, MDA will ensure that it has no chapters outside the internationally recognized border of the state of Israel.”
Efrat, Gilo, Maaleh Adumim, Ariel and Kedumim and other Yesha communities, take note.
“Operational activities of one society within the jurisdiction of the other society will be conducted in accordance with the consent provision of resolution 11…”
That seems to say, Israeli ambulances over pre 1967 borders – yes; chapters, no.
"MDA and PRCS will use a distinctive emblem in conformity with the requirements of the Geneva conventions and its Third Additional Protocol.”
The Third Additional Protocol introduces a third symbol, the red crystal, which, to quote the Protocol itself “will make it easier for national societies who do not wish to use the red cross or the red crescent emblems to be recognized and admitted to the Movement. This consolidates the Movement's universality”.
Cross and crescent, yes. Jewish star, no. Sublimely universal.
Oddly, for six years after the agreement, nothing changed visibly. Suddenly, in recent weeks, Israelis were up in arms to see that the Red Star of David symbol had disappeared from Israeli ambulances in Judea and Samaria, to be replaced by an odd symbol that meant nothing to anyone.
Questioners were told that the Star of David is not recognized by the international organization and that the rest of the country’s ambulances would soon follow suit.
A grassroots rebellion saw red Jewish star stickers being pasted on ambulances and volunteers from Judea and Samaria refusing to go to their stations.
That may or may not work, said Yisraeli, but since local authorities are not allowed to own ambulances but must rent them from Red Magen David, the society’s agreements affect everyone.
But what is to become of the requirements of the Memorandum of Understanding? And did the Foreign Ministry know and agree to MDA's relinquishing jurisdiction in Judea and Samaria as well as replacing the Star of David symbol for some pieces of silver? It depends on who is asked and whose interpretation of the document is accepted.
Arutz Sheva did not get any clear answers and the head of MDA was not available for comments. The Knesset is supposed to debate the issue in the near future, said a Shomron Regional Authority source.
RECORDS OF ANTI-ISRAEL PRO-ARABIST ISRAEL UNIVERSITIES
IsraCampus.org.il
Ben Gurion U , Hebrew U , Tel Aviv U, U of Haifa
THE ABOVE FOUR UNIVERSITIES HAVE AN UNPARALLELED
RECORD OF ANTI-ISRAEL PROFESSORIAL SENTIMENT. TO VIEW EACH SEPARATELY, CLICK ON THEIR NAMES ON THE LEFT.
SCAN VIGNETTES OF ATTROCIOUS COMMENTS BELOW
FROM PROFESSORS AT OTHER THAN THE 'BIG' FOUR ISRAELI UNIVERSITIES.
Other Schools
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Galia Golan (School of Government) - The "New History" Revisionism of Galia Golan
Once the PLO, in 1988, accepted the two-state solution, agreeing to a state only in the West Bank (including east Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, along with recognition and peace with Israel, the end of the conflict became possible....
Rabin exacted just one clarification and binding assurance for the future, the PLO's explicit recognition of Israel's right to exist.
We know what has happened since then - opponents, on both sides, by means of terrorism, settlement expansion, assassination, did what they could to prevent peace, leading to the collapse of Oslo. No wonder that Israel's rejection of the PLO's "historic compromise" led to the growth of rejectionist Hamas and its violence against Israel. Tel Aviv-Jaffa College - Ofer Cassif (Dept of Political Science), the publication-less "Academic" wonder
We tried to track down the academic publications of Ofer Cassif to see just what it was about him that inspired the Tel Aviv - Jaffa College to hire him to teach students in political science. Alas, we could not find any. All we could find were a handful of anti-Israel Op-Eds in the internet, mostly in Hebrew. Cassif claims to be some sort of expert on "Social Justice," whatever that is. But we could not find anything academic he has published about that either, anywhere.
... Cassif's main "academic contribution" seems to consist of an Op-Ed that claims that Israel's citizenship law, which requires an oath of allegiance to non-Israelis who apply for Israeli citizenship, is at least as bad as German Nazism. The fact that most other countries have similar oaths of allegiance does not convince Cassif that THEY are Nazi regimes. Only Israel is so honored in his writing.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Technion - Open Calls for Bloodshed and Violence coming from the Israeli Far Left
First, a few days ago, the leftist anti-Israel extremist, Professor "Judd" Ne'eman, who teaches film at Tel Aviv University, outdid himself and called for a civil war against the Israeli "Right." Ne'eman made it clear that he wants this civil war to break out as a tactic to aid the Palestinian campaign against Israel. He has a long, long track record of issuing violently anti-Israel pronouncements.
Actually, Ne'eman is not the only lefty tossing about the term "civil war" these days, when referring to something they would like to see happen because too many Israelis refuse to endorse the extremist Left. A.B. Yehoshua uses the term also. They do not mean a civil war in which people challenge one another to spelling bees or soap box debates. They mean a civil war in which lots of people get killed.
. But the calls for bloodshed coming from Comrade Ne'eman and his friends are tame compared to what just came out of the mouth of one Oded Regev, a faculty member in physics at the Technion (http://physics.technion.ac.il/~regev/). . Regev published an internet article in response to Ne'eman's call for civil war entitled, "If you will have me, I am in." He adds there that if he would be permitted to lead a company of artillery he would gladly open fire at the evil side, meaning the Right and the religious Jews. He adds, "I also believe that there is only one way to overcome the religious extremists and that is through organized violence, through launching warfare in the full meaning of that term. Anyone who does not surrender in that war will be incarcerated." Regev went on to describe those rabbis arrested by Shai Nitzan and his friends as "those who continue in the tradition of Goebbels."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Open University - Yigal Levy (Dept of Sociology) helps to spread lies about "Jewish jihad" and "war crimes" during Operation Cast Lead
"We have reached the point where a critical mass of religious soldiers is trying to negotiate with the army about how and for what purpose military force is employed on the battlefield," said Yigal Levy, a political sociologist at the Open University who has written several books on the Israeli army.
The new atmosphere was evident in the "excessive force" used in the recent Gaza operation, Dr Levy said. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, a majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured as whole neighbourhoods of Gaza were levelled.
"When soldiers, including secular ones, are imbued with theological ideas, it makes them less sensitive to human rights or the suffering of the other side."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
University of Haifa and Beit Berl College - Working from Within for a New Holocaust: Dalit Baum (Jihad Feminist)
Apparently, neither Haifa U nor Beit Berl mind having their names linked to the annihilationist efforts of Dalit Baum against Jews. Baum routinely breaks Israeli law by organizing money and supplies to the Hamas in Gaza and in general by calling for the end of the Jewish state. Her self-described "career" is devoted to working in support of "existing divestment campaigns" in the US, as well as helping to build new ones through "education." "Global Exchange" has been part of the "Viva Palestina Tours and Flotilla" campaign to aid Hamas since their inception.
. Dalit Baum admits she does not want Israel to exist at all, at least not as any Jewish state. "Palestine," all of Palestine including Haifa and Tel Aviv, is "occupied" by the Jews. In a lecture she gave in San Francisco for the benefit of the pro-terror "Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)," an ISM group, she explained that while some might think her campaign pertains only to the West Bank and Gaza, she really does not distinguish at all between "occupation" within the state of Israel itself and that in the West Bank when she calls for the end to "occupation." What she really wants is the end to Israel.
. "Global Exchange" supports Hamas in its quest to destroy Israel and world Jewry. When Dalit Baum lectured the Berkeley SJP last year she boasted she had cost the Israeli economy billions of dollars through disrupting its ties with Europe. She also boasted about how she interfered with security checkpoints in Israel designed to keep out terrorists who kill Israeli civilians. Her new campaign in the United States seeks to promote the same agenda in America, particularly in US colleges. The officers of Haifa and Beit Berl should remove Dalit Baum from her teaching positions immediately.
Why not Contact them?
Rector of the University of Haifa
Prof. David Faraggi
University of Haifa
Mt Carmel, 31905 Haifa Israel
Tel: 972-4-8288094
Fax: 972-4-8342101
Email: faraggi@stat.haifa.ac.il
Director General of Beit Berl College:
Ruthie Gavri
Phone 972-9-7476302
ruth@beitberl.ac.il
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Anti-Israel Film Lecturer Eyal Sivan Promotes Israel's Extermination on Al Jazeera
Later, in 2004, Sivan filed a libel suit in Paris courts against philosopher Alain Finkelkraut (Sivan vs Finkelkraut) for the latter's claim that Route 181 was a "call to murder Jews" and that Sivan himself was representative of a "particularly painful, particularly frightening reality - Jewish anti-Semitism". Finkelkraut also claimed that Sivan's film was a constant plagiarism of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, a ten-hour innovative documentary about memory and the Holocaust, and called on Lanzmann, a former Israeli ambassador to France, to testify on Finkelkraut's behalf.
The presiding judge at the trial rejected Finkielkraut's conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, and, according to court documents, dismissed Sivan's petition based on the argument that Finkielkraut's attack was part of a legitimate political disagreement. Following the trial, Sivan lost his teaching position at CLEMI (the French Ministry of Education's centre for information media) and the French television network, ARTE, decided to cease commissioning his films. ...
The veil of democracy is being ripped from Israeli faces. This for me is a sign of weakness. When a state needs laws it does not mean it is strong, it means it is weak and afraid because it has no vision for the future. Still, there is great work being done by dissidents, and this is a new position. For many years there were just Israelis living outside, but there is a position of dissidence that they have voiced. People like Illan, they have a voice to contribute to the historical debate. In Israel, maybe there is not a political organised left, but there are so many open questions. Just today I received a magazine from Tel Aviv University that covers philosophy and politics, and the university is organising a seminar about the one-state solution.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Dingbette Galore! Julia Chaitin (Dept of Social Work) has a New Song for Passover:
We occupy Palestine
(Let their people go)
With checkpoints, sieges and arrests
(Let their people go)
Chorus:
Go up Bibi
Up north to Ramallah
Tell old Abbas
We'll let their people go
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Julia Chaitin (Dept of Social Work) Responds to Rocket Attacks by Cheerleading for the Hamas
Julia Chaitin may be the leading pro-Hamas voice coming out of the Negev and the embattled town of Sderot, the regular target of Hamas rockets and bombs. She exploits her residence in the Negev to legitimize her anti-Israel activism. She recently organized a "Solidarity with Hamas" conference at Sapir College.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Menachem Klein (Dept of Political Science) invents a new political theory: The fact that a handful of unelected Israeli leftists signed an "Accord" for Israeli capitulation with unelected Palestinians means Israel must abide by that "Accord"
"As opposed to earlier documents, the Geneva Accord is a signed agreement. The very fact of the signatures creates a personal commitment that differs from a document published by a host institution. Furthermore, the accord was not signed by a few individuals but by more than 20 persons on each side.... On the Israeli side, the signatories include Knesset members from the opposition parties, peace activists, writers, security personnel serving in the reserves, economists, and academics."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Julia Chaitin (Dept of Social Work) promotes "the nachba" and awareness for Arab refugee right of return
In Writing the Shared History, there are six Palestinian teachers, geography and history teachers, and six Jewish-Israeli history teachers. They met together a number of times. They meet every three or four months in East Jerusalem. . They chose a number of historical events to write about. For instance, they chose the Belfour Declaration of 1917, of course they chose the War of 1948, I think they chose the first Intifada. They've decided that the Palestinians will write a textbook. It's not really a text book, it's a booklet for 10th and 11th grade students. There, for instance the Palestinians will write their narrative of the 1948 War. We Israelis call it the "War of Independence" and the Palestinians call it nachba, "the Catastrophe." So, the Israeli teachers will write the Jewish-Israeli narrative of the '48 War, and the Palestinians write their narrative. These are translated into Hebrew and Arabic so each side can read it, and they have discussions about it. They're short narratives.
. Who settled Moshav or Kibbutz places that were once Arab villages or lands. They know the project is a joint Palestinian-Israeli project. They know how I've gotten to them. I tell them exactly what I'm going to ask them. . Then I ask them three questions: Do you know what was on this land before 1948? If a Palestinian was to come and say, I'm from here originally, would you like to meet him or her and what would you like to say to him or her? And, how do you see the solution or how do you see the Palestinian-Iraeli conflict and a possible solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.
. Sometimes I have to ask all three. Somebody will say, there was a village here, it was called Jesir, and once a family came and said this is my house. They just told the story without me having to ask the question. Many of them have had actual experience. Then they show photographs or documents that are important to them. We videograph them also. I ask each person to take me to a place in their community that has special significance for them and we go outside. Usually it can be sometimes just their farm. One man showed me all around his farm, and he also took me to the older village that they destroyed. The Arabs had gone, the Palestinians had left, but when they settled they left in '48, they settled in '53. But they took down all the buildings and he told me where everything was, because he had been in charge of taking down all the buildings.
. The Palestinians lived there for hundreds of years, some of them, that these villages existed, and they were there, and then they fled and then they were no longer there. Some 400, approximately 420 villages were destroyed, emptied, razed, whatever. The Palestinians do have a legitimate claim to the land, it wasn't that they showed up in 1940 and said this is ours. Some Israelis may not know that the Palestinians had lived there, their parents had lived there, their grandparents, their great grandparents, and the fact that they just hadn't lived there for 5 years, and we just kind of moved them to somewhere else. It is also important for Israeli-Jews to understand why they left and how they left, and what's happened to them since.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College is Turned into a Hamas Lobby for 4 Days
Among the organizations raising the ire of the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel are Zochrot ("Remembering"), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. Zochrot is described on its website as "a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948."
In a letter to Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar, Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee Chairman Zevulun Orlev, local government heads and Sapir College itself, the forum opposed a state-funded college holding "one-sided political conferences at the leftist edge of the Israeli ideological spectrum" without permitting the participation of "balancing figures."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
The IDI's Academic Swat Team - Carmon, Kremnitzer (Hebrew University) & Stern (Bar-Ilan University) - Stoops to McCarthyism in its Assault against the Freedom of Speech of Non-Leftists
This decision joins a series of proposed bills designed to inflame the volatile relationship between Jewish and Arab citizens. Similarly provocative bills include the so-called "loyalty oath," the "nakba" bill and the initiative to allow small communities to reject candidates for residency based on "incompatibility" with the community's social fabric. Although clearly targeted against one particular group, such bills inevitably create an opening for discrimination against others.
...
This talk of "loyalty" and "treason" invites violence. It is difficult not to recall the days prior to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The populist exploitation of fear, suspicion and animosity toward Arab Israelis, asylum-seekers and others, all under the banner of patriotism, is eroding support for the principle of equality - a basic tenet of the Declaration of Independence.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Weizmann Institute of Science - Nir Gov (Dept of Physics) Organizes 155 Members of the Tenured Left to call for Boycott of Ariel University
The signatories state that Ariel was an illegal settlement whose existence contravened international law and the Geneva Convention. "It was established for the sole purpose of preventing the Palestinians from creating an independent state and thus preventing us, citizens of Israel, from having the chance to ever live in peace in this region."
The petition was initiated and organized by Nir Gov of the Weizmann Institute's Department of Chemical Physics. Unlike other such initiatives, over a third of the list's signatories are from the natural and exact sciences.
[Could they be after the budgets granted to Ariel? Looking for 155 Ideas of people who should be Boycotted?]
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Tel Chai College - Anti-Israel Student Appointment Calendars Distributed at Tel Chai College
Students at the Tel Hai Academic College discovered Wednesday that Nakba Day, Land Day and a day commemorating the Arab-Israelis killed during the October 2000 events are marked on the Student Union's calendar. . The outraged students returned their student cards as an act of protest and said, "It cannot be that in a community which symbolizes Zionism the symbols of Israel's enemies are sanctified."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - IDI Honchos come out against a Pledge of Loyalty in Israel
Bar-Ilan University professor and Israel Democracy Institute deputy president Yedidya Stern said he had no problem with the pledge of allegiance proposed by the government, but added that it was not necessary and was being introduced for the wrong reasons.
"The pledge raises no legal problems," he said. "In other words, a state may decide that whoever wants to become a citizen should be able to make a statement of loyalty. Moreover, the state can define itself according to the constitution...
"We should be proud that this is the definition we chose for ourselves. We have placed it in the top hierarchy of Israeli legislation. We shouldn't attack it. It is not against anybody."
Nonetheless, he continued, precisely because of its importance, it should not be exploited for political purposes.
"I think it's too serious for that," he continued. "It's too important to let people like Lieberman use it. It belongs to us. It's everyone's."
Stern warned that overusing the concept might harm Israel.
"We have to show ourselves and the world our self-confidence by not pushing it," he said. "[The fact that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state] is known. We don't hide it and we have nothing to hide."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - The Ultra Left rallies to Bemoan the Canning of Ariella Azoulay, whose entire academic record consists of collecting anti-Israel photographs and films
Among the books Azoulay has written is "Constituent Violence 1947-1950," an analysis of some 200 rare photographs whose purpose, the book says, was to recreate the formation of the Jewish regime while destroying Palestinian society.
She is coauthor with Prof. Adi Ophir, who is her partner, of "This Regime Which Is Not One: Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and The River - (1967 - )."
Among the films she directed is "I Also Dwell Among Your Own People: Conversations with Azmi Bishara."
"Few people dispute the fact that Ariella Azoulay is one of the most important researchers in cultural studies in Israel today," (Marxist anti-Israel) Prof. Yehouda Shenhav of Tel Aviv University, said. Shenhav also noted several recent cases of "persecution of lecturers in a political context" at universities, saying that "this is one of the crudest instances of preferring sectorial considerations over academic excellence."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Galia Golan (School of Government) pulls the following Orwellian Inversions:
Those who Challenge the Leftist Hegemony over Israeli Academia are like Marxists in the Old Soviet Union
Those who Maintain Leftist anti-Zionist Hegemony over Large Swaths of Israeli Universities have no Resemblance to Soviet Marxists at all
Challenging Leftist Uniformity of Thought amounts to demanding Zionist uniformity of thought
"One wonders, then, why has this witch-hunt begun against academia and civil society? One explanation may be that it is a reaction to the increasing criticism and delegitimization of Israel from outside, causing a drawing in of ourselves, xenophobia and fundamentalism that demand, as in McCarthyism, clear signs of loyalty lest the enemy gain from our weakness. It could, however, be something else, as in the Soviet Union perhaps, and that is a confidence and mania that comes from power."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Leftist Incitement at Beit Berl College
The exhibit is on display at the Beit Berl Art College's Tel Aviv gallery, and is named 'Evet' - which is Lieberman's Russian first name. All of the works on display relate to Lieberman.
. Attorney Adrian Aggasy, representing the Legal Forum [for the Land of Israel], wrote that the exhibition constitutes harsh incitement against the foreign minister and oversteps the bounds of good taste. "Despite the importance of freedom of expression and its protection," he said in the letter to the A-G, "it cannot be a refuge and an excuse for inciters, for those who hurt civil servants and for those who call for violence through the tools of their art."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
A Review of the Bash-Israel Pre-Conference organized by Far-Leftist Academics prior to the Prestigious International Geographical Union's regional conference held in Tel Aviv
As happens so often, the ideological opinion offered by Israeli scholars, under the banner of free speech and pluralism, at these conferences was primarily monolithic, anti-Israel, and leftist. If scholars were somehow still able to leave these conferences with a neutral or positive view about Israel, it was in spite of the best efforts of Israel's academics who organized the pre-conferences, not because of them.
... For Newman, only one voice should be heard in a democratic society, the voice of critique and anti-state hatred. The only 'beacon of light' in Israel are the organizations and individuals who compare the country to a fascist state and the only "value" of democracy is the voice of extremism. On the other side democracy is having a "black day" when other organizations use free speech to critique those who critique.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Bernard Avishai (Dept. of Business and Government) questions Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem; has already given away Jerusalem to any future Arab State.
Just to be clear, there is about as much evidence that King David's palace would be excavated by this project as evidence that Queen Helena actually found the grove from which the true cross had been cut in the Valley of the Cross. But like Helena's sites - she was said to be the greatest archeologist in history, because she never looked for something she didn't find - Barkat's City of David is actually meant to excite pilgrims - you know, guests of a bar mitzva who are looking for something to do on Sunday afternoon.
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SILWAN IS the heart of the most heavily populated, impoverished and angry parts of the city, certain to be in any future Palestinian capital.
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Sapir College - Julia Chaitin (Dept of Social Work) shills for the Gaza Flotilla Terrorists
The attack on the flotilla, and all that ensued (whether or not the citizens on board attacked first, second, or later is of no importance) has shown us, once again, how the blind perspective that force can solve the problem has made the problem uglier, deeper, more senseless. With all this darkness, the attack on the flotilla has had one good effect: It brought the blockade of the forgotten Gaza Strip, from the land, the sea and the air, into the homes of billions/millions of people around the world. More importantly, it brought this immoral and inhumane blockade into the homes of millions of Israelis, who, for the last three years, have chosen to ignore this destructive act that our government has inflicted on an innocent population. This may be the light at the end of the tunnel(s). This might be the beginning of the end of a government and military policy that was borne in vengeance, and has been carried out with a vengeance.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
The President of the Technion attacks Tel Aviv University professors Anat Matar and Rachel Giora for organizing defamation of the Technion in Boston
It was only the next day, as I continued on my way, did I start receiving telephone messages about a letter that had been sent to the Boston Science Museum prior to the event, at the initiative of Prof. Noam Chomsky from MIT, faculty members from two Israeli universities and other individuals. In this letter, Chomsky and his colleagues expressed a sharply worded protest against the fact that the museum was allowing the president of the Technion - "the university that prepares weapons of murder" - to deliver a lecture there. The letter went on to say that the event, which had paid tribute to Israel's tremendous contribution to world technology and science, was actually serving as a cover and camouflage for Israel's crimes against humanity.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Galia Golan (School of Government), Far leftist founder of Peace Now, denounces those who criticize the Israeli academic fifth column. Accuses us of being RICH!! (If only.) Calls for denying freedom of speech to critics of the anti-Israel Left!
The Knesset committee called upon the Council for Higher Education to take the report of Im Tirzu and investigate what Committee Chair Zvulun Orlev called "subversive and anti-Zionist." These (and more) are not isolated items. They add up to a policy, a campaign designed to cripple civil society, stifle criticism and eliminate opposition. They endanger the very essence of liberal democracy and of a free society, namely pluralism - of thought, deed, and expression.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
The Defaming Duo - Adi Ophir (Tel Aviv University) and Ariella Azoulay (Bar Ilan University) - Two Israel Bashers for the Price of One
Pick one of the duo and you will always find the other hopping aboard. Start with support for the Palestinian "right of return." Then calls for Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in the "territories." Then branding Israel 'an Apartheid state.' Then calls for an academic boycott of Israel. Then denouncing all acts of retaliation by Israel. Then dismiss warnings about the intentions of Iran.
Anti-Zionist petitions and articles always bear their two signatures. The duo of Adi Ophir and Ariella Azoulay seem to share everything, from a household to "books" churned out for the anti-Israel Far Left. They offer you.
IsraCampus Nepotism Update:
No sooner was Ariella Azoulay (one of the two members of the Defaming Duo described here) turned down for tenure at Bar-Ilan University when she was hired as an adjunct lecturer in the Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University, the school where the other member of the Duo, her husband Adi Ophir, happens to be employed. Since universities in Israel generally do not employ married spouses in the same institution, IsraCampus invites the official heads of Tel Aviv University to explain this curious arrangement.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Weizmann Institute - Math and Computer Science Professor Oded Goldreich demonizing Israel and Zionism for the Ivy League
To Goldreich, Jews are not indigenous to Israel, only Arabs are. Even more amazing, Goldreich joined his fellow Stalinists and issued a call to grant terrorist Tali Fahima a Nobel Peace Prize. Fahima, an Israeli citizen, was found guilty of helping her Palestinian Arab boyfriend smuggle weapons to kill Jews in terrorist attacks. Fahima has since criticized even her ex-terrorist boyfriend (for being a sell-out to Israeli intelligence.)
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Nathan Cherny (MD, other institutions, Shaarei Tsedek Hospital) insists that critics of the New Israel Fund are evil rightwing extremists undeserving of freedom of speech
'That the New Israel Fund has come under attack from all sorts of extremist, rightwing, anti-democratic, and anti-pluralist persons and interest groups is not new. Among its most severe critics are the sorts of people who attack Israel's judiciary, who defend a rigid Orthodox hegemony over Jewish life, promote Israeli annexation of the West Bank and the expulsion of the Palestinian community; elements that represent the "dark side" of the national discourse. The recent attacks by the rightwing organisation "Im-Tirtzu" (which prompted Danny Lamm's commentary on the NIF) is only the latest attempt to silence the voice of civil society in Israel.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Ze'ev Tzahor (College President) claims Israel massacres children
'And were hundreds of Palestinian children killed? This time, Israel did not deny. How could it? However, "we found no evidence that would justify a criminal investigation." The same was true in respect to cases where the IDF fired at medical teams. According to Israel's response, the judge advocate general launched dozens of thorough investigation, but somehow everything and everyone turned out to be fine.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo - Roy Wagner (Dept of Computer Science) Joins the Celebrations of the founding of the PFLP Terrorist Group
'He leads several "Queers against Israel" groups (their terminology), and is a leading advocate of worldwide boycotts of Israel. He was one of those Israelis who signed a petition declaring that Israel was about to commit Nazi-like atrocities the moment the allied troops invaded Iraq. That statement is still carried on Holocaust Denial web sites like Stormfront. Saddam was long ago toppled, but no apology from Wagner.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Kiryat Ono College of Law - Amir Paz-Fuchs believes that "army service resisters" are "the bravest Israelis"
Israel has a long track record of law school academics ganging up to demonize and discredit the country. Among these are leftist attorneys who have played the game of citing "international law" and "social justice" in defending the indefensible, the quest to destroy Israel by any means necessary. . Israeli law lecturer Amir Paz-Fuchs is an example of someone who uses the courts in a similar manner. He also uses his Kiryat Ono classroom as an arena to smear and demonize Israel and Zionism. . Paz-Fuchs and his colleague argue that refusing to serve in the military for political reasons in a democratic country should be regarded as completely legal and valid, and mutineers even be paid veterans' benefits. The authors regard such people as the bravest Israelis.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Technion - Kobi Snitz (Dept of Mathematics) and Roee Harush (Seminar Hakibutzim), residents of "occupied Haifa," also support and actively participate in a "BDS campaign by the citizens of Israel"
Many of Haifa's Palestinians and some Jews participate in anti-Zionist activity on different occasions . as well as various forms of direct action against the occupation and the Zionist regime. . Through the various discussions, it was found that there is broad agreement that support by Israeli citizens, particularly Jewish-Israelis could be very useful to the international BDS campaign. . An important unresolved issue is the legitimate reluctance of many anti-Zionists in Palestine to identify as Israelis. . This is a long-standing question for the Jewish anti-Zionist movement in Palestine, and while it is an unresolved issue, it should not be allowed to become an obstacle to mounting an effective struggle against the apartheid regime. . The group is now at a stage of planning activities in Israel and abroad. At first, efforts will be focused on educating potential supporters. . For instance, one way in which Hebrew speakers can clearly be of use to the campaign is research into the corporations and institutions supporting and legitimizing Israel's apartheid system. Such research should not be done in an arbitrary fashion, but would be much more useful if done in coordination with the needs of the global campaign and the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the main reference point of the global campaign.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Technion - Kobi Snitz (Dept of Mathematics) does jail time due to Anti-Israel activity
His statement (from yesterday) is below:
Tomorrow I will start a 20 day prison term. It is a result of an attempt to prevent a house demolition in kharbatha. As you probably know 20 days is nothing compared to the time many Palestinian teenagers have to do.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Technion - Yosef Rafiq Jabareen (Dept of Architecture) slams the new Israel Land Administration (ILA) legislation as an attempt to "Judaize" the Galilee and Negev; calls it a "clearance sale" that would complete the "Nakba"
The JNF thus seeks to expand the lands it holds by relinquishing lands in the existing cities and receiving lands in the Galilee and Negev (Naqab) as compensation. The implementation of the law would ultimately enable the JNF to enjoy new lands that would be transferred to it at the expense of state lands that are supposed to be for the benefit of the entire public and not only for one ethnic group. That is, it is prohibited for Arabs to touch the lands of the JNF and they are not allowed to enjoy them like the Jews. The legislation would eventually lead to the transfer of ownership, even without payment, to Jewish leaseholders and to a "clearance" sale of what remains of Palestinian property in many cities in Israel, such as Jaffa, Ramla, Lod, Be'er Sheva, Tiberias, Beit Shean, Haifa and Acre, as well as the Palestinian property in West Jerusalem. Thus, the Palestinian Nakba would be completed in these cities in the future when the Palestinian space that has existed for many generations would be finally eliminated and it would become a case of privatized real estate for the enjoyment of Jewish developers . Thus, the government would be able to carry out its plans to sell land and to Judaize the Galilee and the Negev in a more efficient way
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
The College of Management Academic Studies - Law Professor Orna Bar-Naftali uses "Law" to Bludgeon Israel
Orna Bar-Naftali has been working assiduously with leftist lawyers in Israel and abroad to suggest that Israel routinely violates "international law" and "human rights." An examination of the woman's background and legal discourse becomes quite revealing of an agenda to smear Israel and drown the Jewish state in a malaise of her legal "interpretations," as well as to provide propaganda against the Jewish state by certain NGO's that have an anti-Zionist and even anti-Israel agenda.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Orna Sasson-Levy participates in a conference "Befitting Bir Zeit"
MK Aryeh Eldad blasted the conference in a letter to Bar Ilan University and Education Minister Gideon Saar. "The Council for Higher Education funds Bar Ilan University and not Bir Zeit because it believes that the university's syllabus is in accordance with the aims of the State of Israel," Eldad wrote. "From the look of this conference's program, it seems that it seeks to undermine the State of Israel. This is an out-and-out anti-Israeli conference and if a similar one were held in a university outside Israel, the Foreign Ministry would protest and organize counter-demonstrations."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Holon Institute of Technology - Dr. Diana Dolev of New Profile strives to be the Israeli "Tokyo Rose" against the IDF
Of course, Diana Dolev is another example how the Israeli taxpayer unwittingly doles out sinecures for whacko subversives and traitors who, once they get tenure and an office, can then spend most of their time working diligently to bring down the Jewish state by organizing groups like New Profile. It could be said that as New Profile's spokesperson, Dolev's main themes, are "peace" and "feminism", but Dolev uses these words only to mask her attacking the Zionist state. ... Today, she tours abroad, not as an architect, but most notably as a mouthpiece for the International Solidarity Movement talking anywhere she can to attack Israel and present a false image of the state as another apartheid South Africa. ... Back home Dolev works with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and strives to accuse Israel of atrocities against innocent Arabs. ... The ACRI holds fundraisers along with the New Israel Fund in the US where they invite Jews to think they are promoting democracy in Israel, when they are in fact enabling the Arabs to undermine Israeli self-defense and morale back home.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Galia Golan (School of Government) tries to stifle dissident voices; doesn't believe that Israel has the right to defend its citizens
The "steering committee" to discuss the Gaza events included as members Prof. Galia Golan, a founder of Peace Now, a radical leftist, and a faculty member at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in "government" . Most of the Israeli contingent willingly signed the conference's proclamation asserting that Israel had just carried out massacres in Gaza and calling for the international community to crack down on Israeli sovereignty and its exercise of its right of defense. . Golan and Chazan tried to nag the Israeli dissidents into abandoning their position that any IWC statement should denounce ALL acts of violence, even those directed against Jews. .The rest of the Israeli delegation supported the one-sided denunciation of Israel and the endorsement of the "right" of the Palestinians to murder Jews.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar-Ilan University Sociologist Orna Sasson-Levy smears the IDF on Pro-Terror Al Jazeera
So amidst the attempt by the Palestinians to obliterate southern Israel in a rocket blitz, triggering Operation Cast Lead to stop the Qassams falling on Sderot and Ashkelon, Sasson-Levy and the other "leftists against tee-shirts" decided to paint the IDF as a bunch of bloodthirsty warmongers and cutthroats. The Al Jazeera report about the "tee shirt atrocity" was produced in English so that it has the look of a CNN report. Al Jazeera expressed no shock or remorse when the Arabs were firing thousands of Qassams at children in Sderot and Ashkelon. But a tasteless cartoon on tee-shirts trumps that as a human rights abuse! Or at least it does so according to Orna Sasson-Levy.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Holon Institute of Technology - Diana Dolev's colleagues at "New Profile" get arrested for incitement to "evade military service" and to "obtain an exemption by deceit"; complain about treatment usually reserved for "settlers"
The investigation of New Profile began on September 15, 2008, a week after an expose on "New Profile" appeared in the Jerusalem Post (which was also brought to the attention of Isracampus.Org.il readers). . the investigation did not focus on actions perpetrated by the suspects but on the opinions they had expressed on the site, allegedly including in the organization's charter. This was a violation of the fundamental right of freedom of expression.
According to a statement issued by the Justice Ministry spokesman at that time, the Web sites of New Profile and Target 21 were suspected of preaching evasion of military service, thereby violating Article 109 of the Penal Law. They were also suspected of helping those slated for military service to obtain an exemption by deceit or by knowingly submitting false information, the ministry said.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
The College of Management Academic Studies - Orna Ben-Naftali (Dept. of Law) performs the anti-Israel legal work
Focusing on the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory conquered in 1967, the article argues that this occupation has become illegal both intrinsically (that is, in terms of the normative regime of occupation) and extrinsically (that is, in terms of the international legal order which generates the normative regime of occupation as an exception to the normal order of sovereign equality between states: the situation is exceptional due to the severance of the link between sovereignty and effective control).
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
College of Management Academic Studies - Orna Ben-Naftali (Dept. of Law) gives legitimacy to the International Community to interfere in internal Israeli judicial affairs
. the implication of such policy is twofold: first, it might transform 'conduct unbecoming' - which as a matter of law is a war crime - into a crime against humanity; second, it may well be construed as an invitation to the international community to intervene through the exercise of universal jurisdiction.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Other Schools - Yeela Raanan - Promotes the legitimatization of Land-Grabbing by Negev Beduin
The Government of Israel does not view the Arab-Bedouin citizens of Israel as deserving the right to utilize the Negev lands. The government will take extreme measures to prohibit this right. The reasoning: *Making the Negev Bloom - only with Jewish crops.*
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Galilee College - Hannah Safran - the Hamas' Hannah Montana
A few days ago Safran had a column in the leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch, published by Alexander Cockburn and his band of jihad cheerleaders. The title of her rant is, and I am not making this up: "Ready to be Traitors: The Israeli Resistance." ... In it she calls for Israeli "resistance" against Israel, the code word used by leftists for terrorism. In it she also hails the violent "anarchists" who attack police and soldiers in their efforts to sabotage Israel's security wall and so allow the Palestinian mass murderers to enter Israel.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
When it Does not Add Up: Anti-Israel Mathematicians at Israeli Universities
Israeli far-leftist anti-Israel academics in the mathematics field may have their own abstract ways of looking at things, but they are paid by the Israeli taxpayers, and then promote an anti-Israel agenda that sometimes involves terrorist attacks against those same taxpayers.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Galilee College - Hannah Safran calls for Israeli "resistance" against the existence of Israel on the anti-Semitic Counterpunch web Site
'We, the resistance movement in Israel, will continue our struggle against the war in Gaza and the racism that prevails within Israeli society. We will continue to grow, we will connect to other social and environmental protest groups, and we will hopefully help change our society for the better.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Ultra-Moonbette Ariella Azoulay denied tenure at Bar Ilan
Let us be clear - she was not evicted because of her extremist politics but because she is a laughingstock of a "scholar." But that is what makes this newsworthy. AT any other university, including my own, someone like her would have sailed through to tenure, all on the BASIS of her "sensitive progressive political ideology." She has essentially an empty academic publishing record (I found one paper in a French journal). It is only at Bar Ilan that being a leftist is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition to getting tenure!
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Professor Yafa Zilbershatz - Even at Bar Ilan there are anti-Israel extremists working for the enemy
Professor Yafa Zilbershatz of Bar Ilan University said in an interview with Israel's Channel 7, that in view of the legal situation in Europe, Israel's acts in Gaza can be considered war crimes in that continent, and even "rank-and-file soldiers" may be prosecuted. The actions of the IDF in Gaza are likely to be considered war crimes in the USA as well. Currently, a private suit is now being conducted in a US federal court against Avi Dichter, the former head of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet - Shabak) for bombing innocent civilians in Gaza.
Prof. Zilbershatz' cynical solution to the problem is to propose that the State of Israel apply pressure on European countries to change their laws. It is shocking that Professor Zilbershatz blames other countries for having laws that apply the doctrine of universal jurisdiction. Attorney Leibowitz and Journalist Elam propose a solution to this problem that is the only lawful, realistic and ethical solution: refuse to commit war crimes.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Dr. Dalit Baum and the Academic Lesbians for Jihad
Back in Israel these days, Baum is teaching (if that is the right word) at the "Community School for Women," a lesbian feminist "school" she helped found. Baum, a loudly self-proclaimed lesbian, has managed to connect her anti-Israel animus to support for the greatest homophobes and persecutors of homosexuals in the world, the Arab Islamofascists and the Muslim states. There homosexuality is often a capital offense. She is a leading member of a group calling itself "QUIT," which stands for "Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism," a homosexual anti-Israel anarchist/Marxist group set up to demonize Jews and Israelis while excusing Arab homophobia and persecution of homosexuals. Dalit Baum embraces and supports the very same people who would kill her for being gay!! Perhaps that explains why she has never ventured into any Muslim country to preach her ideas.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Other - Sapir Academic College - Sapir President Zeev Tzahor Lobbying for "Talks" with the Hamas:
Zeev Tzahor is the President of Sapir College, supposedly a historian of Israeli history. Sapir College is located in Sderot and his been hit repeatedly by Hamas shells. At least one Sapir student has been murdered (see here). Zeev Tzahor is also an academic for capitulation and appeasement. He was on the TV this evening (January 03, 2009) urging Israel to desist from attacking Gaza and to enter negotiations with the Hamas. Just what does he think Israel can obtain from such negotiations? At most, a meaningless, empty piece of paper that the Hamas will violate before the ink is dry. Not to worry, Tzahor is convinced. If that happens Israel can call a policeman to complain or file a protest!
Sapir College has been in the news in recent years in part because of its employing an Arab faculty member who refused to allow an Israeli reserve soldier in uniform and a woman wearing a Jewish star into his class. Tzahor back then came out against the Arab, but we suspect it was to gather some credibility so that he can promote his Peace Now agenda.
Other - Sapir Academic College - Julia Chaitin (Dept of Social Work), senior lecturer, lobbies for capitulation to Hamas demands
'This war is wrong. It is wrong because it cannot achieve its manifest goals -- long-term "normal" life for the residents of the Negev region.... Since the Israeli air force began bombing Gaza, it has been almost impossible to speak openly against the war.... We will know peace only when we accept the fact that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have every right to lives of dignity. We will know peace only when we recognize that we must negotiate with Hamas, our enemy, even if we are devastated that the Palestinians did not elect a more moderate party to lead them.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Other - Beit Berl College - Yehiam Sorek, who teaches history at Beit Berl College, finds a murdering war criminal and enemy of mankind - Bar Kochva!
'Not all these facts were known to those that sanctified the Jewish national concept when they turned Bar Kochva into the idol of the Zionist renaissance, and even if they had their doubts about his personality, they closed their eyes, because the ancient, heroic rebel sells Zionism very well. They sought to fan the flames of the tribal bonfire with ethnocentrism, and to draw from Jewish mythology a fighter of the kind that challenged the greatest superpower of ancient times, and by his power-driven, crude, insolent and selfish light to educate the children of Israel to emulate him. They seemed to be advocating: Fight the bad guys (the nations of the world, the Turks, the British, the Arabs) to win what you seek, and damn the price. That is how Bar Kochva, among the other myths and symbols, was turned into yet another quasi-militaristic element that elevates any physical action to attain "sacred" goals. Sadly, Bar Kochva became a brand name, a national legend, which served national-Zionist goals. He was internalized and absorbed into the national bloodstream, took on the same sanctity as the other myths - and anyone that tries to pose questions about the commander of the revolt, his character and path, is perceived as a saboteur, a vandal.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Other - Tel Hashomer - Raphael Walden participates in a-Dura fraud, produces "expert opinion" without examining patient and is based on medical report from October 2000
But there is one aspect of the case that has NOT been widely exposed. That is the collaboration by Prof. Raphael Walden with the French television station's fraud and cover-up. Walden is a far-leftist anti-Zionist medical doctor with specialty in surgery, at Tel Hashomer hospital. He is active in the pro-terror anti-Israel propaganda group "Doctors for Human Rights," a group once run by anti-Semite Neve Gordon and which does not believe that Jews should be entitled to any human rights. He is also the son-in-law of Shimon Peres and often described in the press as Shimon Peres' personal physician. He signs all the usual leftist proclamations . His email is Raphael.Walden@sheba.health.gov.il .
Ben-Dror Yemini this week described the role of Walden in the French forgery in his weekly column. Walden prepared a professional medical report that backed the lies and fabrications of the French TV station and the attempt to "prove" the Arab propaganda version of the a-Dura shooting, based on the injuries to a-Dura's father. Only problem is that the good doctor never examined the a-Dura father and based his expert conclusions on some paperwork he got from a Jordanian office. A different Israeli doctor who DID examine the poppa, Dr. Yehuda David, discovered that all the injuries the father was claiming to have suffered when his son was pretending to be shot were in fact injuries from at least 8 years earlier.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - History Professor Ariel Toaff goes from Medieval Blood Libels to Collaborating with a Jihadi Web Site
Toaff should be ashamed at his collaboration with a jihadi web site, being used to spread his "research." Bar Ilan University should be ashamed to have employed such a person, because academic freedom should not be a cover for deception and lies against the Jewish people to hasten the destruction of their national homeland.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
College of Management - Yossi Nehushtan (School of Law) Expresses Neofascist Ideas about Freedom of Speech and Restricts it to Those Whose Views He Likes:
In an article published in Hebrew, Yossi Nehushtan objects that the State of Israel wants to refuse to grant permission to a flag-waving parade in Um el-Fahm based on the possible civil disorder that might ensue. In his opinion, the State of Israel should refuse to grant permission based solely on the ideology of the petitioners.
Nehushtan invalidates the ideology of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzal and thus they should not receive the protection of the law. The State should reject their claims due to illegitimate values.
Nehushtan goes further and states that if the Supreme Court does allow the demonstration to take place in Um el-Fahm proper then there will no longer be any "logical" reason not to allow demonstrations for alleged Tzahal war crimes next to Memorial services or for Holocaust-deniers to protest in front of old age homes populated by Holocaust-survivors.
For more details and to see the full original article (in Hebrew), go here
Other Schools - Another (ex-) Israeli Academic Hater of Israel: Daniel Boyarin of UC Berkeley
His resume is quite impressive, because he is a Talmudic scholar and has written works about Judaism, its history and scripture, generally demolished as pseudo-scholarship by serious academic reviewers. A US-born citizen of Israel, he once taught at Ben Gurion University and Bar Ilan University and is currently a professor of Near East Studies at UC Berkeley. Since UC Berkeley is a campus that, although it has a large Jewish population, is home to many an anti-Israel Arab and leftist, one might not be surprised that Daniel Boyarin has as negative opinion of Israel's self-defense as is found among so many of Israel's intelligentsia working in Arab dominated US Middle East Studies programs. In fact, Boyarin pretty clearly does not think Israel should exist at all. Daniel Boyarin is notorious for how he displays a virulent hatred for the Jewish people of Israel whose Talmud he studied for so many years, particularly towards Israelis who practice self-defense against Arab irredentism. In addition, Boyarin's overlooking of anti-Semitism and his embracing of anti-Semites at UC Berkeley and elsewhere make him particularly difficult to comprehend for most rational people.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Elitist Bar Ilan University Poli Sci Lecturer Menachem Klein never says die to a "peace process" while rubber stamping the views of avowed anti-Semites
The pondering question is "Is Klein being just an opportunist here or a quisling for anti-Semites, or is he really so naïve?" View the CNI video yourself in its entirety and see the answer is most likely the former. Klein's appearance with the CNI is like a Jew speaking out in support of the goals of Nazis during World War II. Israelis who appear at similar symposiums worldwide claiming to talk peace, but secretly booked for pushing the Palestinian agenda are plentiful, but Menachem Klein seems to be among the most skilled of them all. That the CNI is revered in America by neo-Nazis and funded by the Saudis, something that isn't revealed in the video, but something Klein must know forces us to ask what more would Menachem Klein need to divorce himself from such an organization, even if he really was just a starry-eyed peace activist? And to think former PM Ehud Barak used this guy as an adviser!!!
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Other - Holon Institute of Technology - Diana Dolev Degrades the Image of the Israeli Soldier to Further Her Political Goals
Our soldiers aren't tidy soldiers. They're very schlumperich [unkempt], which creates this image of a soldier that is half civilian. One of the hevre. Not a "soldierly" soldier. But I think this is a sort of cover. I think that actually, in a more concealed way, this image contributes to militaristic ideas filtering into civil society without our noticing it.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Open University - Mustafa Kabha (Dept. of History) quotes the imaginary "massacre" fabricated at the University of Haifa by Ilan Pappe and Teddy Katz: "Tantur .. The worst Zionist massacres in Palestine"
He (Historian Mustafa Kabha) said: "The massacre left in the Al-Tantur great impact on the Palestinians in the neighboring villages and paved the displacements."
In return the Israeli historian Teddy Katz - who suffered a defamation lawsuit by the unit after Alexander detect the circumstances of the massacre in Al-Tantur Masters study at the University of Haifa in 1998 - that the testimonies received by recalling the fall of 230 Palestinians in the massacre.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bezalel Academy artist and lecturer David Tartakover uses art to attack his fellow Israelis
As mentioned, Tartakover has enormous contempt for religious Jews, something that also colors his hatred for Jews who reside in Yesha. He expressed this artistically when he defaced the memorial of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with the words, Killed by a Kippa wearing Jew! thus lumping all religious Jews (no doubt to him, all those in Yesha are religious too, when many are not) into the same group.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Menachem Klein (Dept of Political Studies) Participated in Conference that promotes "ending the Occupation"
The following Israeli academics participated in FFIPP-International Conference that promotes "ending the Occupation":
Menachem Klein, Bar Ilan University - Dept of Political Studies
Kenneth Mann, Tel Aviv University - Dept of Law
Eyal Wiezman, University of London - Dept of Visual Cultures
It has been almost two years since the last FFIPP conference in Ramallah.
Since then, the situation in the Occupied Territories has deteriorated with the
rapidly worsening conditions in Gaza, the continued construction of the Wall
and the settlements, continued violence- mainly against the Palestinians- and
the lack of any progress in the 'negotiations'. The tensions between Hamas and
Fatah continued as well and the isolation of Hamas contributed to the general
deterioration. The Annapolis conference has failed to produce any positive
change in the region and the occupation of Iraq is now threatening to escalate
into, potentially, a major confrontation with Iran.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Open University - Yossi Dahan (Dept. of Philosophy) Uses the Term "Social Justice" Selectively
Thus for Yossi Dahan, "social justice" apparently means anything that Israel does is socially unjust, at least in terms of dealing with surrounding violent Arab entities that have an undying mantra to kill Jews, and ultimately to destroy Israel. He helps Arabs claim Israeli land that may not belong to them; he also defends the "proletariat" (communists in Israel want the state replaced with a new dictatorship of the proletariat and for good measure, the Arabs dominating) that includes foreign workers inside Israel illegally.
Nearly 30% of Israel's children and elderly are forced to eat in soup kitchens because of poverty. 13,000 Israeli children have been added to the ranks of those who must eat in soup kitchens. But in my research about Yossi Dahan, I could not find an equal dedication to "social justice" for these people. He seeks to help Arabs who want to take what little land Israel has while 22 surrounding Arab countries call for her destruction with a land ratio of 650 to 1. Where's the social justice in that for Jews?
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Bernard Avishai (Dept. of Business and Government) denounces Israel once again
'In his ire at Israel's religious Jews, Avishai makes all manner of unsubstantiated claims about them. Their commitment to democracy is, he asserts, opportunistic; they engage in voter fraud, shirk taxes, justify male brutality against women, admire 'obscure' rabbis, engage in 'bizarre' rituals, are raised on hatred of the goy. Their eyes 'burn through you.' Several times he entertains the notion that Judaism is a racist and even a blood religion.'
Bernard Avishai is Dean of the Raphael Recanati International School and a professor of business and government at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Technion, University of Haifa, and Hebrew University - For Professors Jacob and Tamar Katriel and their children, bashing Israel is a family affair - by Lee Kaplan
"Jacob Katriel is in fact a Stalinist communist ideologue who has been a central figure in Israel's communist party that is mostly dominated by Arab-Israeli members who are irredentists against Israel's Jews. If it has anything to do with smearing the Jewish state, Katriel will do it while reaping the rewards of his tenured retirement sinecure paid for by the Israeli taxpayer and donors to Israeli universities. His wife and children are equally close allies in damning Israel any way they can. Among Katriel's major efforts, supported equally by all members of his family, are attempts to compare Israel with apartheid South Africa in order to promote worldwide divestment making a false comparison with what was a genuinely racist South African regime back in the 1980's."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Kobi Snitz (Dept. of Mathematics) calls for another "nonviolent" demonstration
Bethlehem - Palestine - Friday January 18, 2008 - The Popular Committee against the Wall and the Settlement in Al-Khader is organizing a nonviolent demonstration to protest the construction of the annexation wall in the town of Al-Khader south of Bethlehem.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Kobi Snitz (Dept. of Mathematics) representing violent "Anarchists Against the Wall"
Anarchists Against The Wall (AATW) is a pro-violence Israeli group that supports the popular Palestinian struggle. The proximity of the struggle on the ground to Israeli cities presents an opportunity for intense involvement by many Israelis. At the same time, the physical risk in such activity is quite high. It goes without saying that the risks for our Palestinian partners are much higher. As a small group with an aversion to... Kobi Snitz is a member of Anarchists against the Wall. His political involvement started when he joined CUPE local 3902 as a teaching assistant in Toronto. He continued being active as a graduate student in the United States, working on teaching assistant union drives, and to oppose U.S. aggression. His work with AATW started when he returned to his native Israel in 2003.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Kobi Snitz (Dept. of Mathematics) in Amherst claims Israel has no right to build a defensive wall to keep out terrorists
Several weeks ago, Rateb Abu Rahma and Kobi Snitz, members of the group "Faculty for Israeli - Palestinian Peace," visited the University of Massachusetts and the surrounding area. Their talk was titled "Bil'in, Village of Resistance," and referred to a town where non-violent resistance led to an Israeli court ruling to redirect a portion of the wall that goes through the area. The event was poorly attended at UMass but nevertheless proved to be very informative and was greatly appreciated. It was a privilege to have people who have experienced Israeli crimes firsthand come speak for the sake of spreading knowledge and nurturing concern for innocent people on both sides of the conflict. The speakers' message was clear: the separation that Israel has built along the West Bank is a hindrance to people's lives in the region and must be torn down if peace is desired.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Naama Shefi (Head of the School of Communications) endorses the anti-Israel Arab lecturer at her school who refused to allow a reserve soldier to enter the classroom
'It should not be overlooked that Hassan used one of the few platforms available to him as an Arab-Israeli intellectual. He did so as a director who is training young directors, and as usual he challenged them with his harsh statement. But Hassan did not perceive that he violated the trust placed in him as someone who is supposed to fight for the freedom of ideas and a high standard of ethics.'
To complain: The President of Sapir College is Prof. Zev Tzahor, whose fax is 972-8-6899412. His email is sonia@sapir.ac.il
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Forty Israeli Academics back the Arab lecturer who barred Jewish soldier in uniform from his class
Nizar Hassan, the filmmaker who instructed a student at Sapir College in Sderot not to come to class wearing his army uniform and carrying a gun, "is a talented and courageous artist whose only sin was his attempt to maintain universal civic values" and whose action "pointed to the serious phenomenon of the great involvement of the army in campus life."
These statements are in a petition of support for Hassan signed by dozens of Jewish and Arab university teachers. Hassan was suspended by the college until the disciplinary committee reaches a decision in his case. After a hearing last Thursday, the committee could recommend a punishment ranging from an official reprimand to dismissal.
Ben Gurion U , Hebrew U , Tel Aviv U, U of Haifa
THE ABOVE FOUR UNIVERSITIES HAVE AN UNPARALLELED
RECORD OF ANTI-ISRAEL PROFESSORIAL SENTIMENT. TO VIEW EACH SEPARATELY, CLICK ON THEIR NAMES ON THE LEFT.
SCAN VIGNETTES OF ATTROCIOUS COMMENTS BELOW
FROM PROFESSORS AT OTHER THAN THE 'BIG' FOUR ISRAELI UNIVERSITIES.
Other Schools
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Galia Golan (School of Government) - The "New History" Revisionism of Galia Golan
Once the PLO, in 1988, accepted the two-state solution, agreeing to a state only in the West Bank (including east Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, along with recognition and peace with Israel, the end of the conflict became possible....
Rabin exacted just one clarification and binding assurance for the future, the PLO's explicit recognition of Israel's right to exist.
We know what has happened since then - opponents, on both sides, by means of terrorism, settlement expansion, assassination, did what they could to prevent peace, leading to the collapse of Oslo. No wonder that Israel's rejection of the PLO's "historic compromise" led to the growth of rejectionist Hamas and its violence against Israel. Tel Aviv-Jaffa College - Ofer Cassif (Dept of Political Science), the publication-less "Academic" wonder
We tried to track down the academic publications of Ofer Cassif to see just what it was about him that inspired the Tel Aviv - Jaffa College to hire him to teach students in political science. Alas, we could not find any. All we could find were a handful of anti-Israel Op-Eds in the internet, mostly in Hebrew. Cassif claims to be some sort of expert on "Social Justice," whatever that is. But we could not find anything academic he has published about that either, anywhere.
... Cassif's main "academic contribution" seems to consist of an Op-Ed that claims that Israel's citizenship law, which requires an oath of allegiance to non-Israelis who apply for Israeli citizenship, is at least as bad as German Nazism. The fact that most other countries have similar oaths of allegiance does not convince Cassif that THEY are Nazi regimes. Only Israel is so honored in his writing.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Technion - Open Calls for Bloodshed and Violence coming from the Israeli Far Left
First, a few days ago, the leftist anti-Israel extremist, Professor "Judd" Ne'eman, who teaches film at Tel Aviv University, outdid himself and called for a civil war against the Israeli "Right." Ne'eman made it clear that he wants this civil war to break out as a tactic to aid the Palestinian campaign against Israel. He has a long, long track record of issuing violently anti-Israel pronouncements.
Actually, Ne'eman is not the only lefty tossing about the term "civil war" these days, when referring to something they would like to see happen because too many Israelis refuse to endorse the extremist Left. A.B. Yehoshua uses the term also. They do not mean a civil war in which people challenge one another to spelling bees or soap box debates. They mean a civil war in which lots of people get killed.
. But the calls for bloodshed coming from Comrade Ne'eman and his friends are tame compared to what just came out of the mouth of one Oded Regev, a faculty member in physics at the Technion (http://physics.technion.ac.il/~regev/). . Regev published an internet article in response to Ne'eman's call for civil war entitled, "If you will have me, I am in." He adds there that if he would be permitted to lead a company of artillery he would gladly open fire at the evil side, meaning the Right and the religious Jews. He adds, "I also believe that there is only one way to overcome the religious extremists and that is through organized violence, through launching warfare in the full meaning of that term. Anyone who does not surrender in that war will be incarcerated." Regev went on to describe those rabbis arrested by Shai Nitzan and his friends as "those who continue in the tradition of Goebbels."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Open University - Yigal Levy (Dept of Sociology) helps to spread lies about "Jewish jihad" and "war crimes" during Operation Cast Lead
"We have reached the point where a critical mass of religious soldiers is trying to negotiate with the army about how and for what purpose military force is employed on the battlefield," said Yigal Levy, a political sociologist at the Open University who has written several books on the Israeli army.
The new atmosphere was evident in the "excessive force" used in the recent Gaza operation, Dr Levy said. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, a majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured as whole neighbourhoods of Gaza were levelled.
"When soldiers, including secular ones, are imbued with theological ideas, it makes them less sensitive to human rights or the suffering of the other side."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
University of Haifa and Beit Berl College - Working from Within for a New Holocaust: Dalit Baum (Jihad Feminist)
Apparently, neither Haifa U nor Beit Berl mind having their names linked to the annihilationist efforts of Dalit Baum against Jews. Baum routinely breaks Israeli law by organizing money and supplies to the Hamas in Gaza and in general by calling for the end of the Jewish state. Her self-described "career" is devoted to working in support of "existing divestment campaigns" in the US, as well as helping to build new ones through "education." "Global Exchange" has been part of the "Viva Palestina Tours and Flotilla" campaign to aid Hamas since their inception.
. Dalit Baum admits she does not want Israel to exist at all, at least not as any Jewish state. "Palestine," all of Palestine including Haifa and Tel Aviv, is "occupied" by the Jews. In a lecture she gave in San Francisco for the benefit of the pro-terror "Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)," an ISM group, she explained that while some might think her campaign pertains only to the West Bank and Gaza, she really does not distinguish at all between "occupation" within the state of Israel itself and that in the West Bank when she calls for the end to "occupation." What she really wants is the end to Israel.
. "Global Exchange" supports Hamas in its quest to destroy Israel and world Jewry. When Dalit Baum lectured the Berkeley SJP last year she boasted she had cost the Israeli economy billions of dollars through disrupting its ties with Europe. She also boasted about how she interfered with security checkpoints in Israel designed to keep out terrorists who kill Israeli civilians. Her new campaign in the United States seeks to promote the same agenda in America, particularly in US colleges. The officers of Haifa and Beit Berl should remove Dalit Baum from her teaching positions immediately.
Why not Contact them?
Rector of the University of Haifa
Prof. David Faraggi
University of Haifa
Mt Carmel, 31905 Haifa Israel
Tel: 972-4-8288094
Fax: 972-4-8342101
Email: faraggi@stat.haifa.ac.il
Director General of Beit Berl College:
Ruthie Gavri
Phone 972-9-7476302
ruth@beitberl.ac.il
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Anti-Israel Film Lecturer Eyal Sivan Promotes Israel's Extermination on Al Jazeera
Later, in 2004, Sivan filed a libel suit in Paris courts against philosopher Alain Finkelkraut (Sivan vs Finkelkraut) for the latter's claim that Route 181 was a "call to murder Jews" and that Sivan himself was representative of a "particularly painful, particularly frightening reality - Jewish anti-Semitism". Finkelkraut also claimed that Sivan's film was a constant plagiarism of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, a ten-hour innovative documentary about memory and the Holocaust, and called on Lanzmann, a former Israeli ambassador to France, to testify on Finkelkraut's behalf.
The presiding judge at the trial rejected Finkielkraut's conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, and, according to court documents, dismissed Sivan's petition based on the argument that Finkielkraut's attack was part of a legitimate political disagreement. Following the trial, Sivan lost his teaching position at CLEMI (the French Ministry of Education's centre for information media) and the French television network, ARTE, decided to cease commissioning his films. ...
The veil of democracy is being ripped from Israeli faces. This for me is a sign of weakness. When a state needs laws it does not mean it is strong, it means it is weak and afraid because it has no vision for the future. Still, there is great work being done by dissidents, and this is a new position. For many years there were just Israelis living outside, but there is a position of dissidence that they have voiced. People like Illan, they have a voice to contribute to the historical debate. In Israel, maybe there is not a political organised left, but there are so many open questions. Just today I received a magazine from Tel Aviv University that covers philosophy and politics, and the university is organising a seminar about the one-state solution.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Dingbette Galore! Julia Chaitin (Dept of Social Work) has a New Song for Passover:
We occupy Palestine
(Let their people go)
With checkpoints, sieges and arrests
(Let their people go)
Chorus:
Go up Bibi
Up north to Ramallah
Tell old Abbas
We'll let their people go
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Julia Chaitin (Dept of Social Work) Responds to Rocket Attacks by Cheerleading for the Hamas
Julia Chaitin may be the leading pro-Hamas voice coming out of the Negev and the embattled town of Sderot, the regular target of Hamas rockets and bombs. She exploits her residence in the Negev to legitimize her anti-Israel activism. She recently organized a "Solidarity with Hamas" conference at Sapir College.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Menachem Klein (Dept of Political Science) invents a new political theory: The fact that a handful of unelected Israeli leftists signed an "Accord" for Israeli capitulation with unelected Palestinians means Israel must abide by that "Accord"
"As opposed to earlier documents, the Geneva Accord is a signed agreement. The very fact of the signatures creates a personal commitment that differs from a document published by a host institution. Furthermore, the accord was not signed by a few individuals but by more than 20 persons on each side.... On the Israeli side, the signatories include Knesset members from the opposition parties, peace activists, writers, security personnel serving in the reserves, economists, and academics."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Julia Chaitin (Dept of Social Work) promotes "the nachba" and awareness for Arab refugee right of return
In Writing the Shared History, there are six Palestinian teachers, geography and history teachers, and six Jewish-Israeli history teachers. They met together a number of times. They meet every three or four months in East Jerusalem. . They chose a number of historical events to write about. For instance, they chose the Belfour Declaration of 1917, of course they chose the War of 1948, I think they chose the first Intifada. They've decided that the Palestinians will write a textbook. It's not really a text book, it's a booklet for 10th and 11th grade students. There, for instance the Palestinians will write their narrative of the 1948 War. We Israelis call it the "War of Independence" and the Palestinians call it nachba, "the Catastrophe." So, the Israeli teachers will write the Jewish-Israeli narrative of the '48 War, and the Palestinians write their narrative. These are translated into Hebrew and Arabic so each side can read it, and they have discussions about it. They're short narratives.
. Who settled Moshav or Kibbutz places that were once Arab villages or lands. They know the project is a joint Palestinian-Israeli project. They know how I've gotten to them. I tell them exactly what I'm going to ask them. . Then I ask them three questions: Do you know what was on this land before 1948? If a Palestinian was to come and say, I'm from here originally, would you like to meet him or her and what would you like to say to him or her? And, how do you see the solution or how do you see the Palestinian-Iraeli conflict and a possible solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.
. Sometimes I have to ask all three. Somebody will say, there was a village here, it was called Jesir, and once a family came and said this is my house. They just told the story without me having to ask the question. Many of them have had actual experience. Then they show photographs or documents that are important to them. We videograph them also. I ask each person to take me to a place in their community that has special significance for them and we go outside. Usually it can be sometimes just their farm. One man showed me all around his farm, and he also took me to the older village that they destroyed. The Arabs had gone, the Palestinians had left, but when they settled they left in '48, they settled in '53. But they took down all the buildings and he told me where everything was, because he had been in charge of taking down all the buildings.
. The Palestinians lived there for hundreds of years, some of them, that these villages existed, and they were there, and then they fled and then they were no longer there. Some 400, approximately 420 villages were destroyed, emptied, razed, whatever. The Palestinians do have a legitimate claim to the land, it wasn't that they showed up in 1940 and said this is ours. Some Israelis may not know that the Palestinians had lived there, their parents had lived there, their grandparents, their great grandparents, and the fact that they just hadn't lived there for 5 years, and we just kind of moved them to somewhere else. It is also important for Israeli-Jews to understand why they left and how they left, and what's happened to them since.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College is Turned into a Hamas Lobby for 4 Days
Among the organizations raising the ire of the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel are Zochrot ("Remembering"), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. Zochrot is described on its website as "a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948."
In a letter to Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar, Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee Chairman Zevulun Orlev, local government heads and Sapir College itself, the forum opposed a state-funded college holding "one-sided political conferences at the leftist edge of the Israeli ideological spectrum" without permitting the participation of "balancing figures."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
The IDI's Academic Swat Team - Carmon, Kremnitzer (Hebrew University) & Stern (Bar-Ilan University) - Stoops to McCarthyism in its Assault against the Freedom of Speech of Non-Leftists
This decision joins a series of proposed bills designed to inflame the volatile relationship between Jewish and Arab citizens. Similarly provocative bills include the so-called "loyalty oath," the "nakba" bill and the initiative to allow small communities to reject candidates for residency based on "incompatibility" with the community's social fabric. Although clearly targeted against one particular group, such bills inevitably create an opening for discrimination against others.
...
This talk of "loyalty" and "treason" invites violence. It is difficult not to recall the days prior to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The populist exploitation of fear, suspicion and animosity toward Arab Israelis, asylum-seekers and others, all under the banner of patriotism, is eroding support for the principle of equality - a basic tenet of the Declaration of Independence.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Weizmann Institute of Science - Nir Gov (Dept of Physics) Organizes 155 Members of the Tenured Left to call for Boycott of Ariel University
The signatories state that Ariel was an illegal settlement whose existence contravened international law and the Geneva Convention. "It was established for the sole purpose of preventing the Palestinians from creating an independent state and thus preventing us, citizens of Israel, from having the chance to ever live in peace in this region."
The petition was initiated and organized by Nir Gov of the Weizmann Institute's Department of Chemical Physics. Unlike other such initiatives, over a third of the list's signatories are from the natural and exact sciences.
[Could they be after the budgets granted to Ariel? Looking for 155 Ideas of people who should be Boycotted?]
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Tel Chai College - Anti-Israel Student Appointment Calendars Distributed at Tel Chai College
Students at the Tel Hai Academic College discovered Wednesday that Nakba Day, Land Day and a day commemorating the Arab-Israelis killed during the October 2000 events are marked on the Student Union's calendar. . The outraged students returned their student cards as an act of protest and said, "It cannot be that in a community which symbolizes Zionism the symbols of Israel's enemies are sanctified."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - IDI Honchos come out against a Pledge of Loyalty in Israel
Bar-Ilan University professor and Israel Democracy Institute deputy president Yedidya Stern said he had no problem with the pledge of allegiance proposed by the government, but added that it was not necessary and was being introduced for the wrong reasons.
"The pledge raises no legal problems," he said. "In other words, a state may decide that whoever wants to become a citizen should be able to make a statement of loyalty. Moreover, the state can define itself according to the constitution...
"We should be proud that this is the definition we chose for ourselves. We have placed it in the top hierarchy of Israeli legislation. We shouldn't attack it. It is not against anybody."
Nonetheless, he continued, precisely because of its importance, it should not be exploited for political purposes.
"I think it's too serious for that," he continued. "It's too important to let people like Lieberman use it. It belongs to us. It's everyone's."
Stern warned that overusing the concept might harm Israel.
"We have to show ourselves and the world our self-confidence by not pushing it," he said. "[The fact that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state] is known. We don't hide it and we have nothing to hide."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - The Ultra Left rallies to Bemoan the Canning of Ariella Azoulay, whose entire academic record consists of collecting anti-Israel photographs and films
Among the books Azoulay has written is "Constituent Violence 1947-1950," an analysis of some 200 rare photographs whose purpose, the book says, was to recreate the formation of the Jewish regime while destroying Palestinian society.
She is coauthor with Prof. Adi Ophir, who is her partner, of "This Regime Which Is Not One: Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and The River - (1967 - )."
Among the films she directed is "I Also Dwell Among Your Own People: Conversations with Azmi Bishara."
"Few people dispute the fact that Ariella Azoulay is one of the most important researchers in cultural studies in Israel today," (Marxist anti-Israel) Prof. Yehouda Shenhav of Tel Aviv University, said. Shenhav also noted several recent cases of "persecution of lecturers in a political context" at universities, saying that "this is one of the crudest instances of preferring sectorial considerations over academic excellence."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Galia Golan (School of Government) pulls the following Orwellian Inversions:
Those who Challenge the Leftist Hegemony over Israeli Academia are like Marxists in the Old Soviet Union
Those who Maintain Leftist anti-Zionist Hegemony over Large Swaths of Israeli Universities have no Resemblance to Soviet Marxists at all
Challenging Leftist Uniformity of Thought amounts to demanding Zionist uniformity of thought
"One wonders, then, why has this witch-hunt begun against academia and civil society? One explanation may be that it is a reaction to the increasing criticism and delegitimization of Israel from outside, causing a drawing in of ourselves, xenophobia and fundamentalism that demand, as in McCarthyism, clear signs of loyalty lest the enemy gain from our weakness. It could, however, be something else, as in the Soviet Union perhaps, and that is a confidence and mania that comes from power."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Leftist Incitement at Beit Berl College
The exhibit is on display at the Beit Berl Art College's Tel Aviv gallery, and is named 'Evet' - which is Lieberman's Russian first name. All of the works on display relate to Lieberman.
. Attorney Adrian Aggasy, representing the Legal Forum [for the Land of Israel], wrote that the exhibition constitutes harsh incitement against the foreign minister and oversteps the bounds of good taste. "Despite the importance of freedom of expression and its protection," he said in the letter to the A-G, "it cannot be a refuge and an excuse for inciters, for those who hurt civil servants and for those who call for violence through the tools of their art."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
A Review of the Bash-Israel Pre-Conference organized by Far-Leftist Academics prior to the Prestigious International Geographical Union's regional conference held in Tel Aviv
As happens so often, the ideological opinion offered by Israeli scholars, under the banner of free speech and pluralism, at these conferences was primarily monolithic, anti-Israel, and leftist. If scholars were somehow still able to leave these conferences with a neutral or positive view about Israel, it was in spite of the best efforts of Israel's academics who organized the pre-conferences, not because of them.
... For Newman, only one voice should be heard in a democratic society, the voice of critique and anti-state hatred. The only 'beacon of light' in Israel are the organizations and individuals who compare the country to a fascist state and the only "value" of democracy is the voice of extremism. On the other side democracy is having a "black day" when other organizations use free speech to critique those who critique.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Bernard Avishai (Dept. of Business and Government) questions Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem; has already given away Jerusalem to any future Arab State.
Just to be clear, there is about as much evidence that King David's palace would be excavated by this project as evidence that Queen Helena actually found the grove from which the true cross had been cut in the Valley of the Cross. But like Helena's sites - she was said to be the greatest archeologist in history, because she never looked for something she didn't find - Barkat's City of David is actually meant to excite pilgrims - you know, guests of a bar mitzva who are looking for something to do on Sunday afternoon.
.
SILWAN IS the heart of the most heavily populated, impoverished and angry parts of the city, certain to be in any future Palestinian capital.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Julia Chaitin (Dept of Social Work) shills for the Gaza Flotilla Terrorists
The attack on the flotilla, and all that ensued (whether or not the citizens on board attacked first, second, or later is of no importance) has shown us, once again, how the blind perspective that force can solve the problem has made the problem uglier, deeper, more senseless. With all this darkness, the attack on the flotilla has had one good effect: It brought the blockade of the forgotten Gaza Strip, from the land, the sea and the air, into the homes of billions/millions of people around the world. More importantly, it brought this immoral and inhumane blockade into the homes of millions of Israelis, who, for the last three years, have chosen to ignore this destructive act that our government has inflicted on an innocent population. This may be the light at the end of the tunnel(s). This might be the beginning of the end of a government and military policy that was borne in vengeance, and has been carried out with a vengeance.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
The President of the Technion attacks Tel Aviv University professors Anat Matar and Rachel Giora for organizing defamation of the Technion in Boston
It was only the next day, as I continued on my way, did I start receiving telephone messages about a letter that had been sent to the Boston Science Museum prior to the event, at the initiative of Prof. Noam Chomsky from MIT, faculty members from two Israeli universities and other individuals. In this letter, Chomsky and his colleagues expressed a sharply worded protest against the fact that the museum was allowing the president of the Technion - "the university that prepares weapons of murder" - to deliver a lecture there. The letter went on to say that the event, which had paid tribute to Israel's tremendous contribution to world technology and science, was actually serving as a cover and camouflage for Israel's crimes against humanity.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Galia Golan (School of Government), Far leftist founder of Peace Now, denounces those who criticize the Israeli academic fifth column. Accuses us of being RICH!! (If only.) Calls for denying freedom of speech to critics of the anti-Israel Left!
The Knesset committee called upon the Council for Higher Education to take the report of Im Tirzu and investigate what Committee Chair Zvulun Orlev called "subversive and anti-Zionist." These (and more) are not isolated items. They add up to a policy, a campaign designed to cripple civil society, stifle criticism and eliminate opposition. They endanger the very essence of liberal democracy and of a free society, namely pluralism - of thought, deed, and expression.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
The Defaming Duo - Adi Ophir (Tel Aviv University) and Ariella Azoulay (Bar Ilan University) - Two Israel Bashers for the Price of One
Pick one of the duo and you will always find the other hopping aboard. Start with support for the Palestinian "right of return." Then calls for Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in the "territories." Then branding Israel 'an Apartheid state.' Then calls for an academic boycott of Israel. Then denouncing all acts of retaliation by Israel. Then dismiss warnings about the intentions of Iran.
Anti-Zionist petitions and articles always bear their two signatures. The duo of Adi Ophir and Ariella Azoulay seem to share everything, from a household to "books" churned out for the anti-Israel Far Left. They offer you.
IsraCampus Nepotism Update:
No sooner was Ariella Azoulay (one of the two members of the Defaming Duo described here) turned down for tenure at Bar-Ilan University when she was hired as an adjunct lecturer in the Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University, the school where the other member of the Duo, her husband Adi Ophir, happens to be employed. Since universities in Israel generally do not employ married spouses in the same institution, IsraCampus invites the official heads of Tel Aviv University to explain this curious arrangement.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Weizmann Institute - Math and Computer Science Professor Oded Goldreich demonizing Israel and Zionism for the Ivy League
To Goldreich, Jews are not indigenous to Israel, only Arabs are. Even more amazing, Goldreich joined his fellow Stalinists and issued a call to grant terrorist Tali Fahima a Nobel Peace Prize. Fahima, an Israeli citizen, was found guilty of helping her Palestinian Arab boyfriend smuggle weapons to kill Jews in terrorist attacks. Fahima has since criticized even her ex-terrorist boyfriend (for being a sell-out to Israeli intelligence.)
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Nathan Cherny (MD, other institutions, Shaarei Tsedek Hospital) insists that critics of the New Israel Fund are evil rightwing extremists undeserving of freedom of speech
'That the New Israel Fund has come under attack from all sorts of extremist, rightwing, anti-democratic, and anti-pluralist persons and interest groups is not new. Among its most severe critics are the sorts of people who attack Israel's judiciary, who defend a rigid Orthodox hegemony over Jewish life, promote Israeli annexation of the West Bank and the expulsion of the Palestinian community; elements that represent the "dark side" of the national discourse. The recent attacks by the rightwing organisation "Im-Tirtzu" (which prompted Danny Lamm's commentary on the NIF) is only the latest attempt to silence the voice of civil society in Israel.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Sapir College - Ze'ev Tzahor (College President) claims Israel massacres children
'And were hundreds of Palestinian children killed? This time, Israel did not deny. How could it? However, "we found no evidence that would justify a criminal investigation." The same was true in respect to cases where the IDF fired at medical teams. According to Israel's response, the judge advocate general launched dozens of thorough investigation, but somehow everything and everyone turned out to be fine.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo - Roy Wagner (Dept of Computer Science) Joins the Celebrations of the founding of the PFLP Terrorist Group
'He leads several "Queers against Israel" groups (their terminology), and is a leading advocate of worldwide boycotts of Israel. He was one of those Israelis who signed a petition declaring that Israel was about to commit Nazi-like atrocities the moment the allied troops invaded Iraq. That statement is still carried on Holocaust Denial web sites like Stormfront. Saddam was long ago toppled, but no apology from Wagner.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Kiryat Ono College of Law - Amir Paz-Fuchs believes that "army service resisters" are "the bravest Israelis"
Israel has a long track record of law school academics ganging up to demonize and discredit the country. Among these are leftist attorneys who have played the game of citing "international law" and "social justice" in defending the indefensible, the quest to destroy Israel by any means necessary. . Israeli law lecturer Amir Paz-Fuchs is an example of someone who uses the courts in a similar manner. He also uses his Kiryat Ono classroom as an arena to smear and demonize Israel and Zionism. . Paz-Fuchs and his colleague argue that refusing to serve in the military for political reasons in a democratic country should be regarded as completely legal and valid, and mutineers even be paid veterans' benefits. The authors regard such people as the bravest Israelis.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Technion - Kobi Snitz (Dept of Mathematics) and Roee Harush (Seminar Hakibutzim), residents of "occupied Haifa," also support and actively participate in a "BDS campaign by the citizens of Israel"
Many of Haifa's Palestinians and some Jews participate in anti-Zionist activity on different occasions . as well as various forms of direct action against the occupation and the Zionist regime. . Through the various discussions, it was found that there is broad agreement that support by Israeli citizens, particularly Jewish-Israelis could be very useful to the international BDS campaign. . An important unresolved issue is the legitimate reluctance of many anti-Zionists in Palestine to identify as Israelis. . This is a long-standing question for the Jewish anti-Zionist movement in Palestine, and while it is an unresolved issue, it should not be allowed to become an obstacle to mounting an effective struggle against the apartheid regime. . The group is now at a stage of planning activities in Israel and abroad. At first, efforts will be focused on educating potential supporters. . For instance, one way in which Hebrew speakers can clearly be of use to the campaign is research into the corporations and institutions supporting and legitimizing Israel's apartheid system. Such research should not be done in an arbitrary fashion, but would be much more useful if done in coordination with the needs of the global campaign and the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the main reference point of the global campaign.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Technion - Kobi Snitz (Dept of Mathematics) does jail time due to Anti-Israel activity
His statement (from yesterday) is below:
Tomorrow I will start a 20 day prison term. It is a result of an attempt to prevent a house demolition in kharbatha. As you probably know 20 days is nothing compared to the time many Palestinian teenagers have to do.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Technion - Yosef Rafiq Jabareen (Dept of Architecture) slams the new Israel Land Administration (ILA) legislation as an attempt to "Judaize" the Galilee and Negev; calls it a "clearance sale" that would complete the "Nakba"
The JNF thus seeks to expand the lands it holds by relinquishing lands in the existing cities and receiving lands in the Galilee and Negev (Naqab) as compensation. The implementation of the law would ultimately enable the JNF to enjoy new lands that would be transferred to it at the expense of state lands that are supposed to be for the benefit of the entire public and not only for one ethnic group. That is, it is prohibited for Arabs to touch the lands of the JNF and they are not allowed to enjoy them like the Jews. The legislation would eventually lead to the transfer of ownership, even without payment, to Jewish leaseholders and to a "clearance" sale of what remains of Palestinian property in many cities in Israel, such as Jaffa, Ramla, Lod, Be'er Sheva, Tiberias, Beit Shean, Haifa and Acre, as well as the Palestinian property in West Jerusalem. Thus, the Palestinian Nakba would be completed in these cities in the future when the Palestinian space that has existed for many generations would be finally eliminated and it would become a case of privatized real estate for the enjoyment of Jewish developers . Thus, the government would be able to carry out its plans to sell land and to Judaize the Galilee and the Negev in a more efficient way
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
The College of Management Academic Studies - Law Professor Orna Bar-Naftali uses "Law" to Bludgeon Israel
Orna Bar-Naftali has been working assiduously with leftist lawyers in Israel and abroad to suggest that Israel routinely violates "international law" and "human rights." An examination of the woman's background and legal discourse becomes quite revealing of an agenda to smear Israel and drown the Jewish state in a malaise of her legal "interpretations," as well as to provide propaganda against the Jewish state by certain NGO's that have an anti-Zionist and even anti-Israel agenda.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Orna Sasson-Levy participates in a conference "Befitting Bir Zeit"
MK Aryeh Eldad blasted the conference in a letter to Bar Ilan University and Education Minister Gideon Saar. "The Council for Higher Education funds Bar Ilan University and not Bir Zeit because it believes that the university's syllabus is in accordance with the aims of the State of Israel," Eldad wrote. "From the look of this conference's program, it seems that it seeks to undermine the State of Israel. This is an out-and-out anti-Israeli conference and if a similar one were held in a university outside Israel, the Foreign Ministry would protest and organize counter-demonstrations."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Holon Institute of Technology - Dr. Diana Dolev of New Profile strives to be the Israeli "Tokyo Rose" against the IDF
Of course, Diana Dolev is another example how the Israeli taxpayer unwittingly doles out sinecures for whacko subversives and traitors who, once they get tenure and an office, can then spend most of their time working diligently to bring down the Jewish state by organizing groups like New Profile. It could be said that as New Profile's spokesperson, Dolev's main themes, are "peace" and "feminism", but Dolev uses these words only to mask her attacking the Zionist state. ... Today, she tours abroad, not as an architect, but most notably as a mouthpiece for the International Solidarity Movement talking anywhere she can to attack Israel and present a false image of the state as another apartheid South Africa. ... Back home Dolev works with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and strives to accuse Israel of atrocities against innocent Arabs. ... The ACRI holds fundraisers along with the New Israel Fund in the US where they invite Jews to think they are promoting democracy in Israel, when they are in fact enabling the Arabs to undermine Israeli self-defense and morale back home.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Galia Golan (School of Government) tries to stifle dissident voices; doesn't believe that Israel has the right to defend its citizens
The "steering committee" to discuss the Gaza events included as members Prof. Galia Golan, a founder of Peace Now, a radical leftist, and a faculty member at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in "government" . Most of the Israeli contingent willingly signed the conference's proclamation asserting that Israel had just carried out massacres in Gaza and calling for the international community to crack down on Israeli sovereignty and its exercise of its right of defense. . Golan and Chazan tried to nag the Israeli dissidents into abandoning their position that any IWC statement should denounce ALL acts of violence, even those directed against Jews. .The rest of the Israeli delegation supported the one-sided denunciation of Israel and the endorsement of the "right" of the Palestinians to murder Jews.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar-Ilan University Sociologist Orna Sasson-Levy smears the IDF on Pro-Terror Al Jazeera
So amidst the attempt by the Palestinians to obliterate southern Israel in a rocket blitz, triggering Operation Cast Lead to stop the Qassams falling on Sderot and Ashkelon, Sasson-Levy and the other "leftists against tee-shirts" decided to paint the IDF as a bunch of bloodthirsty warmongers and cutthroats. The Al Jazeera report about the "tee shirt atrocity" was produced in English so that it has the look of a CNN report. Al Jazeera expressed no shock or remorse when the Arabs were firing thousands of Qassams at children in Sderot and Ashkelon. But a tasteless cartoon on tee-shirts trumps that as a human rights abuse! Or at least it does so according to Orna Sasson-Levy.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Holon Institute of Technology - Diana Dolev's colleagues at "New Profile" get arrested for incitement to "evade military service" and to "obtain an exemption by deceit"; complain about treatment usually reserved for "settlers"
The investigation of New Profile began on September 15, 2008, a week after an expose on "New Profile" appeared in the Jerusalem Post (which was also brought to the attention of Isracampus.Org.il readers). . the investigation did not focus on actions perpetrated by the suspects but on the opinions they had expressed on the site, allegedly including in the organization's charter. This was a violation of the fundamental right of freedom of expression.
According to a statement issued by the Justice Ministry spokesman at that time, the Web sites of New Profile and Target 21 were suspected of preaching evasion of military service, thereby violating Article 109 of the Penal Law. They were also suspected of helping those slated for military service to obtain an exemption by deceit or by knowingly submitting false information, the ministry said.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
The College of Management Academic Studies - Orna Ben-Naftali (Dept. of Law) performs the anti-Israel legal work
Focusing on the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory conquered in 1967, the article argues that this occupation has become illegal both intrinsically (that is, in terms of the normative regime of occupation) and extrinsically (that is, in terms of the international legal order which generates the normative regime of occupation as an exception to the normal order of sovereign equality between states: the situation is exceptional due to the severance of the link between sovereignty and effective control).
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
College of Management Academic Studies - Orna Ben-Naftali (Dept. of Law) gives legitimacy to the International Community to interfere in internal Israeli judicial affairs
. the implication of such policy is twofold: first, it might transform 'conduct unbecoming' - which as a matter of law is a war crime - into a crime against humanity; second, it may well be construed as an invitation to the international community to intervene through the exercise of universal jurisdiction.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Other Schools - Yeela Raanan - Promotes the legitimatization of Land-Grabbing by Negev Beduin
The Government of Israel does not view the Arab-Bedouin citizens of Israel as deserving the right to utilize the Negev lands. The government will take extreme measures to prohibit this right. The reasoning: *Making the Negev Bloom - only with Jewish crops.*
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Galilee College - Hannah Safran - the Hamas' Hannah Montana
A few days ago Safran had a column in the leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch, published by Alexander Cockburn and his band of jihad cheerleaders. The title of her rant is, and I am not making this up: "Ready to be Traitors: The Israeli Resistance." ... In it she calls for Israeli "resistance" against Israel, the code word used by leftists for terrorism. In it she also hails the violent "anarchists" who attack police and soldiers in their efforts to sabotage Israel's security wall and so allow the Palestinian mass murderers to enter Israel.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
When it Does not Add Up: Anti-Israel Mathematicians at Israeli Universities
Israeli far-leftist anti-Israel academics in the mathematics field may have their own abstract ways of looking at things, but they are paid by the Israeli taxpayers, and then promote an anti-Israel agenda that sometimes involves terrorist attacks against those same taxpayers.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Galilee College - Hannah Safran calls for Israeli "resistance" against the existence of Israel on the anti-Semitic Counterpunch web Site
'We, the resistance movement in Israel, will continue our struggle against the war in Gaza and the racism that prevails within Israeli society. We will continue to grow, we will connect to other social and environmental protest groups, and we will hopefully help change our society for the better.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Ultra-Moonbette Ariella Azoulay denied tenure at Bar Ilan
Let us be clear - she was not evicted because of her extremist politics but because she is a laughingstock of a "scholar." But that is what makes this newsworthy. AT any other university, including my own, someone like her would have sailed through to tenure, all on the BASIS of her "sensitive progressive political ideology." She has essentially an empty academic publishing record (I found one paper in a French journal). It is only at Bar Ilan that being a leftist is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition to getting tenure!
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Professor Yafa Zilbershatz - Even at Bar Ilan there are anti-Israel extremists working for the enemy
Professor Yafa Zilbershatz of Bar Ilan University said in an interview with Israel's Channel 7, that in view of the legal situation in Europe, Israel's acts in Gaza can be considered war crimes in that continent, and even "rank-and-file soldiers" may be prosecuted. The actions of the IDF in Gaza are likely to be considered war crimes in the USA as well. Currently, a private suit is now being conducted in a US federal court against Avi Dichter, the former head of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet - Shabak) for bombing innocent civilians in Gaza.
Prof. Zilbershatz' cynical solution to the problem is to propose that the State of Israel apply pressure on European countries to change their laws. It is shocking that Professor Zilbershatz blames other countries for having laws that apply the doctrine of universal jurisdiction. Attorney Leibowitz and Journalist Elam propose a solution to this problem that is the only lawful, realistic and ethical solution: refuse to commit war crimes.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Dr. Dalit Baum and the Academic Lesbians for Jihad
Back in Israel these days, Baum is teaching (if that is the right word) at the "Community School for Women," a lesbian feminist "school" she helped found. Baum, a loudly self-proclaimed lesbian, has managed to connect her anti-Israel animus to support for the greatest homophobes and persecutors of homosexuals in the world, the Arab Islamofascists and the Muslim states. There homosexuality is often a capital offense. She is a leading member of a group calling itself "QUIT," which stands for "Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism," a homosexual anti-Israel anarchist/Marxist group set up to demonize Jews and Israelis while excusing Arab homophobia and persecution of homosexuals. Dalit Baum embraces and supports the very same people who would kill her for being gay!! Perhaps that explains why she has never ventured into any Muslim country to preach her ideas.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Other - Sapir Academic College - Sapir President Zeev Tzahor Lobbying for "Talks" with the Hamas:
Zeev Tzahor is the President of Sapir College, supposedly a historian of Israeli history. Sapir College is located in Sderot and his been hit repeatedly by Hamas shells. At least one Sapir student has been murdered (see here). Zeev Tzahor is also an academic for capitulation and appeasement. He was on the TV this evening (January 03, 2009) urging Israel to desist from attacking Gaza and to enter negotiations with the Hamas. Just what does he think Israel can obtain from such negotiations? At most, a meaningless, empty piece of paper that the Hamas will violate before the ink is dry. Not to worry, Tzahor is convinced. If that happens Israel can call a policeman to complain or file a protest!
Sapir College has been in the news in recent years in part because of its employing an Arab faculty member who refused to allow an Israeli reserve soldier in uniform and a woman wearing a Jewish star into his class. Tzahor back then came out against the Arab, but we suspect it was to gather some credibility so that he can promote his Peace Now agenda.
Other - Sapir Academic College - Julia Chaitin (Dept of Social Work), senior lecturer, lobbies for capitulation to Hamas demands
'This war is wrong. It is wrong because it cannot achieve its manifest goals -- long-term "normal" life for the residents of the Negev region.... Since the Israeli air force began bombing Gaza, it has been almost impossible to speak openly against the war.... We will know peace only when we accept the fact that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have every right to lives of dignity. We will know peace only when we recognize that we must negotiate with Hamas, our enemy, even if we are devastated that the Palestinians did not elect a more moderate party to lead them.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Other - Beit Berl College - Yehiam Sorek, who teaches history at Beit Berl College, finds a murdering war criminal and enemy of mankind - Bar Kochva!
'Not all these facts were known to those that sanctified the Jewish national concept when they turned Bar Kochva into the idol of the Zionist renaissance, and even if they had their doubts about his personality, they closed their eyes, because the ancient, heroic rebel sells Zionism very well. They sought to fan the flames of the tribal bonfire with ethnocentrism, and to draw from Jewish mythology a fighter of the kind that challenged the greatest superpower of ancient times, and by his power-driven, crude, insolent and selfish light to educate the children of Israel to emulate him. They seemed to be advocating: Fight the bad guys (the nations of the world, the Turks, the British, the Arabs) to win what you seek, and damn the price. That is how Bar Kochva, among the other myths and symbols, was turned into yet another quasi-militaristic element that elevates any physical action to attain "sacred" goals. Sadly, Bar Kochva became a brand name, a national legend, which served national-Zionist goals. He was internalized and absorbed into the national bloodstream, took on the same sanctity as the other myths - and anyone that tries to pose questions about the commander of the revolt, his character and path, is perceived as a saboteur, a vandal.'
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Other - Tel Hashomer - Raphael Walden participates in a-Dura fraud, produces "expert opinion" without examining patient and is based on medical report from October 2000
But there is one aspect of the case that has NOT been widely exposed. That is the collaboration by Prof. Raphael Walden with the French television station's fraud and cover-up. Walden is a far-leftist anti-Zionist medical doctor with specialty in surgery, at Tel Hashomer hospital. He is active in the pro-terror anti-Israel propaganda group "Doctors for Human Rights," a group once run by anti-Semite Neve Gordon and which does not believe that Jews should be entitled to any human rights. He is also the son-in-law of Shimon Peres and often described in the press as Shimon Peres' personal physician. He signs all the usual leftist proclamations . His email is Raphael.Walden@sheba.health.gov.il .
Ben-Dror Yemini this week described the role of Walden in the French forgery in his weekly column. Walden prepared a professional medical report that backed the lies and fabrications of the French TV station and the attempt to "prove" the Arab propaganda version of the a-Dura shooting, based on the injuries to a-Dura's father. Only problem is that the good doctor never examined the a-Dura father and based his expert conclusions on some paperwork he got from a Jordanian office. A different Israeli doctor who DID examine the poppa, Dr. Yehuda David, discovered that all the injuries the father was claiming to have suffered when his son was pretending to be shot were in fact injuries from at least 8 years earlier.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - History Professor Ariel Toaff goes from Medieval Blood Libels to Collaborating with a Jihadi Web Site
Toaff should be ashamed at his collaboration with a jihadi web site, being used to spread his "research." Bar Ilan University should be ashamed to have employed such a person, because academic freedom should not be a cover for deception and lies against the Jewish people to hasten the destruction of their national homeland.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
College of Management - Yossi Nehushtan (School of Law) Expresses Neofascist Ideas about Freedom of Speech and Restricts it to Those Whose Views He Likes:
In an article published in Hebrew, Yossi Nehushtan objects that the State of Israel wants to refuse to grant permission to a flag-waving parade in Um el-Fahm based on the possible civil disorder that might ensue. In his opinion, the State of Israel should refuse to grant permission based solely on the ideology of the petitioners.
Nehushtan invalidates the ideology of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzal and thus they should not receive the protection of the law. The State should reject their claims due to illegitimate values.
Nehushtan goes further and states that if the Supreme Court does allow the demonstration to take place in Um el-Fahm proper then there will no longer be any "logical" reason not to allow demonstrations for alleged Tzahal war crimes next to Memorial services or for Holocaust-deniers to protest in front of old age homes populated by Holocaust-survivors.
For more details and to see the full original article (in Hebrew), go here
Other Schools - Another (ex-) Israeli Academic Hater of Israel: Daniel Boyarin of UC Berkeley
His resume is quite impressive, because he is a Talmudic scholar and has written works about Judaism, its history and scripture, generally demolished as pseudo-scholarship by serious academic reviewers. A US-born citizen of Israel, he once taught at Ben Gurion University and Bar Ilan University and is currently a professor of Near East Studies at UC Berkeley. Since UC Berkeley is a campus that, although it has a large Jewish population, is home to many an anti-Israel Arab and leftist, one might not be surprised that Daniel Boyarin has as negative opinion of Israel's self-defense as is found among so many of Israel's intelligentsia working in Arab dominated US Middle East Studies programs. In fact, Boyarin pretty clearly does not think Israel should exist at all. Daniel Boyarin is notorious for how he displays a virulent hatred for the Jewish people of Israel whose Talmud he studied for so many years, particularly towards Israelis who practice self-defense against Arab irredentism. In addition, Boyarin's overlooking of anti-Semitism and his embracing of anti-Semites at UC Berkeley and elsewhere make him particularly difficult to comprehend for most rational people.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Elitist Bar Ilan University Poli Sci Lecturer Menachem Klein never says die to a "peace process" while rubber stamping the views of avowed anti-Semites
The pondering question is "Is Klein being just an opportunist here or a quisling for anti-Semites, or is he really so naïve?" View the CNI video yourself in its entirety and see the answer is most likely the former. Klein's appearance with the CNI is like a Jew speaking out in support of the goals of Nazis during World War II. Israelis who appear at similar symposiums worldwide claiming to talk peace, but secretly booked for pushing the Palestinian agenda are plentiful, but Menachem Klein seems to be among the most skilled of them all. That the CNI is revered in America by neo-Nazis and funded by the Saudis, something that isn't revealed in the video, but something Klein must know forces us to ask what more would Menachem Klein need to divorce himself from such an organization, even if he really was just a starry-eyed peace activist? And to think former PM Ehud Barak used this guy as an adviser!!!
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Other - Holon Institute of Technology - Diana Dolev Degrades the Image of the Israeli Soldier to Further Her Political Goals
Our soldiers aren't tidy soldiers. They're very schlumperich [unkempt], which creates this image of a soldier that is half civilian. One of the hevre. Not a "soldierly" soldier. But I think this is a sort of cover. I think that actually, in a more concealed way, this image contributes to militaristic ideas filtering into civil society without our noticing it.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Open University - Mustafa Kabha (Dept. of History) quotes the imaginary "massacre" fabricated at the University of Haifa by Ilan Pappe and Teddy Katz: "Tantur .. The worst Zionist massacres in Palestine"
He (Historian Mustafa Kabha) said: "The massacre left in the Al-Tantur great impact on the Palestinians in the neighboring villages and paved the displacements."
In return the Israeli historian Teddy Katz - who suffered a defamation lawsuit by the unit after Alexander detect the circumstances of the massacre in Al-Tantur Masters study at the University of Haifa in 1998 - that the testimonies received by recalling the fall of 230 Palestinians in the massacre.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bezalel Academy artist and lecturer David Tartakover uses art to attack his fellow Israelis
As mentioned, Tartakover has enormous contempt for religious Jews, something that also colors his hatred for Jews who reside in Yesha. He expressed this artistically when he defaced the memorial of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with the words, Killed by a Kippa wearing Jew! thus lumping all religious Jews (no doubt to him, all those in Yesha are religious too, when many are not) into the same group.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Menachem Klein (Dept of Political Studies) Participated in Conference that promotes "ending the Occupation"
The following Israeli academics participated in FFIPP-International Conference that promotes "ending the Occupation":
Menachem Klein, Bar Ilan University - Dept of Political Studies
Kenneth Mann, Tel Aviv University - Dept of Law
Eyal Wiezman, University of London - Dept of Visual Cultures
It has been almost two years since the last FFIPP conference in Ramallah.
Since then, the situation in the Occupied Territories has deteriorated with the
rapidly worsening conditions in Gaza, the continued construction of the Wall
and the settlements, continued violence- mainly against the Palestinians- and
the lack of any progress in the 'negotiations'. The tensions between Hamas and
Fatah continued as well and the isolation of Hamas contributed to the general
deterioration. The Annapolis conference has failed to produce any positive
change in the region and the occupation of Iraq is now threatening to escalate
into, potentially, a major confrontation with Iran.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Open University - Yossi Dahan (Dept. of Philosophy) Uses the Term "Social Justice" Selectively
Thus for Yossi Dahan, "social justice" apparently means anything that Israel does is socially unjust, at least in terms of dealing with surrounding violent Arab entities that have an undying mantra to kill Jews, and ultimately to destroy Israel. He helps Arabs claim Israeli land that may not belong to them; he also defends the "proletariat" (communists in Israel want the state replaced with a new dictatorship of the proletariat and for good measure, the Arabs dominating) that includes foreign workers inside Israel illegally.
Nearly 30% of Israel's children and elderly are forced to eat in soup kitchens because of poverty. 13,000 Israeli children have been added to the ranks of those who must eat in soup kitchens. But in my research about Yossi Dahan, I could not find an equal dedication to "social justice" for these people. He seeks to help Arabs who want to take what little land Israel has while 22 surrounding Arab countries call for her destruction with a land ratio of 650 to 1. Where's the social justice in that for Jews?
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya) - Bernard Avishai (Dept. of Business and Government) denounces Israel once again
'In his ire at Israel's religious Jews, Avishai makes all manner of unsubstantiated claims about them. Their commitment to democracy is, he asserts, opportunistic; they engage in voter fraud, shirk taxes, justify male brutality against women, admire 'obscure' rabbis, engage in 'bizarre' rituals, are raised on hatred of the goy. Their eyes 'burn through you.' Several times he entertains the notion that Judaism is a racist and even a blood religion.'
Bernard Avishai is Dean of the Raphael Recanati International School and a professor of business and government at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Technion, University of Haifa, and Hebrew University - For Professors Jacob and Tamar Katriel and their children, bashing Israel is a family affair - by Lee Kaplan
"Jacob Katriel is in fact a Stalinist communist ideologue who has been a central figure in Israel's communist party that is mostly dominated by Arab-Israeli members who are irredentists against Israel's Jews. If it has anything to do with smearing the Jewish state, Katriel will do it while reaping the rewards of his tenured retirement sinecure paid for by the Israeli taxpayer and donors to Israeli universities. His wife and children are equally close allies in damning Israel any way they can. Among Katriel's major efforts, supported equally by all members of his family, are attempts to compare Israel with apartheid South Africa in order to promote worldwide divestment making a false comparison with what was a genuinely racist South African regime back in the 1980's."
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Kobi Snitz (Dept. of Mathematics) calls for another "nonviolent" demonstration
Bethlehem - Palestine - Friday January 18, 2008 - The Popular Committee against the Wall and the Settlement in Al-Khader is organizing a nonviolent demonstration to protest the construction of the annexation wall in the town of Al-Khader south of Bethlehem.
For more details and to see the full original article, go here
Bar Ilan University - Kobi Snitz (Dept. of Mathematics) representing violent "Anarchists Against the Wall"
Anarchists Against The Wall (AATW) is a pro-violence Israeli group that supports the popular Palestinian struggle. The proximity of the struggle on the ground to Israeli cities presents an opportunity for intense involvement by many Israelis. At the same time, the physical risk in such activity is quite high. It goes without saying that the risks for our Palestinian partners are much higher. As a small group with an aversion to... Kobi Snitz is a member of Anarchists against the Wall. His political involvement started when he joined CUPE local 3902 as a teaching assistant in Toronto. He continued being active as a graduate student in the United States, working on teaching assistant union drives, and to oppose U.S. aggression. His work with AATW started when he returned to his native Israel in 2003.
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Bar Ilan University - Kobi Snitz (Dept. of Mathematics) in Amherst claims Israel has no right to build a defensive wall to keep out terrorists
Several weeks ago, Rateb Abu Rahma and Kobi Snitz, members of the group "Faculty for Israeli - Palestinian Peace," visited the University of Massachusetts and the surrounding area. Their talk was titled "Bil'in, Village of Resistance," and referred to a town where non-violent resistance led to an Israeli court ruling to redirect a portion of the wall that goes through the area. The event was poorly attended at UMass but nevertheless proved to be very informative and was greatly appreciated. It was a privilege to have people who have experienced Israeli crimes firsthand come speak for the sake of spreading knowledge and nurturing concern for innocent people on both sides of the conflict. The speakers' message was clear: the separation that Israel has built along the West Bank is a hindrance to people's lives in the region and must be torn down if peace is desired.
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Sapir College - Naama Shefi (Head of the School of Communications) endorses the anti-Israel Arab lecturer at her school who refused to allow a reserve soldier to enter the classroom
'It should not be overlooked that Hassan used one of the few platforms available to him as an Arab-Israeli intellectual. He did so as a director who is training young directors, and as usual he challenged them with his harsh statement. But Hassan did not perceive that he violated the trust placed in him as someone who is supposed to fight for the freedom of ideas and a high standard of ethics.'
To complain: The President of Sapir College is Prof. Zev Tzahor, whose fax is 972-8-6899412. His email is sonia@sapir.ac.il
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Forty Israeli Academics back the Arab lecturer who barred Jewish soldier in uniform from his class
Nizar Hassan, the filmmaker who instructed a student at Sapir College in Sderot not to come to class wearing his army uniform and carrying a gun, "is a talented and courageous artist whose only sin was his attempt to maintain universal civic values" and whose action "pointed to the serious phenomenon of the great involvement of the army in campus life."
These statements are in a petition of support for Hassan signed by dozens of Jewish and Arab university teachers. Hassan was suspended by the college until the disciplinary committee reaches a decision in his case. After a hearing last Thursday, the committee could recommend a punishment ranging from an official reprimand to dismissal.