RubinReports
Barry Rubin
After more than 30 years working professionally on Middle East history and politics, I can still be astonished by things that happen in the region. Yet, precisely as William Shakespeare wrote in his play about Cleopatra:
"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale/Her infinite variety:"
Well, not exactly "infinite variety." It's just more of the same, to an infinite extreme. Who would have thought, say 20 year ago, that the Arabic-speaking world's obsession with demonizing Jews might go even further than where it was at that time? For one thing, in the 1990s, history seemed to be moving toward moderation; for another thing, who could believe it could become even more intense.
But just at the moment when for the first time in all of history Americans are told that (some) Jews object to the use of the term "blood libel" by someone falsely accused of murder, the same people are ignoring thousands of blood libels generated daily in the Middle East, many with fatal consequences.
And now this, as reported by MEMRI:
Wael Ramadhan: "The [Roman] war against Cleopatra was Jewish in essence, and history repeats itself. The Romans had no territorial aspirations in Egypt in those days, and this is ignored by history and by many historians. The Romans were at war with the Parthians and the remnants of the Persian Empire, but they had no intention of waging war against Egypt."
Ramadhan has just made a television series on the Romans and Cleopatra.
There is a humorous side to all of this, but hatred and demonization of Jews is also a mania poisoning the Arab world (not to mention Iran and some other Muslim-majority) and blocking progress in dealing with all of its problems.
This plague has reached epidemic proportions, it shapes policy, prevents peace, paralyzes research and education, and unhinges religion. While an absurd debate rages in America about whether a non-Jew is allowed to use the phrase "blood libel" (something that no Jew has ever hitherto objected to in world history), they are ignoring huge numbers of actual, serious, deadly blood libels.
A sea of blood libels....And they will produce a sea of blood..
Monday, January 17, 2011
Ministers clash over event at pilgrim site
Vice PM Shalom wishes to reopen holy site of Qasr al-Yahud in historical ceremony. Tourism Minister Misezhnikov: It will stir up international protest
Ronen Medzini
Israel News
A historical ceremony is planned next week to officially reopen the Qasr al-Yahud ritual baptism site on the Jordan River, east of Jericho, 43 years after it was closed.
But following converns raised by Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov, the ceremony is now in danger. Misezhnikov fears that holding the ceremony in such a sensitive place, located within the area conquered in 1967, will stir up international opposition and affect relations with Jordan in the area. Minister for Regional Development Silvan Shalom, however, is still determined to go through with it. Misezhnikov said in harsh letter to Minister Shalom, "I urge you to call off the opening ceremony immediately and hold a discussion with all the relevant people about opening the site de-facto and taking down tourist obstructions."
He explained that "according to the Tourism Ministry, conducting a public ceremony might lead to protest and international objection, including damaging the relations between the State of Israel and the heads of churches, turning the site into a bone of contention."
Qasr al-Yahud (Photo: Doron Nissim, Israel Nature and Parks Authority)
Misezhnikov warned that holding a public ceremony is not necessary because this is a sensitive issue which might "harm the interests of the State of Israel and of the Tourism Ministry."
The two ministries tried to reach an understanding over the past few days, but after they failed to do so the Tourism Ministry sent the letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office and the cabinet secretary.
Qasr al-Yahud is considered a holy site for the Jewish people. According to tradition, it is the site where the people of Israel crossed the Jordan River on their way to the country. The site is also very sacred to the Christian community, because it is considered to be the place where Jesus was christened by John the Baptist.
Each year over 100,000 tourists visit the Israeli side, arriving at the site even though it has yet to be officially opened to tourists, and about a million tourists on the Jordan side. The holy site was opened for a few days in 2009 during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI in Israel.
Many visitors expected
Minister Shalom, who visited the site last week, said that "when the site opens we're expecting over 20,000 pilgrims for the epiphany celebrations."
The deputy prime minister added that Israel was working with Jordan to build a dam in order to maintain the water level equable. "We're also planning to renovate Saint John monastery nearby and continue to remove landmines in the area," he said.
The Ministry for Regional Development said in response, "We're sorry that the letter found its way to the media before the minister had a chance to look it over. Qasr al-Yahud is a tourism site which will bring thousands of tourists here. Minister Shalom has worked to renovate and rehabilitate the site so it will become an attractive tourist spot."
The Tourism Ministry said, "It's a sensitive subject with obvious political repercussions, so it demands a long deliberation process with all involved."
Barak Splits Labor Party, Will Remain Defense Minister
Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
A7 News
Ehud Barak and four supporters are splitting the Labor party, forming a new faction and leaving Labor in shambles. He will remain Defense Minister.
Knesset Members Matan Vilnai, Shalom Simchon, Einat Wilf and Orit Noked are joining Barak in the move to a new party, which may be called ”Independence.” Barak’s departure represents the second time that Labor has been severely weakened under his leadership. As Prime Minister in 2000, his 18-month-old government fell apart amid unprecedented concessions to then-Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat and his order for a sudden departure of Israeli troops from the ‘security zone” in southern Lebanon.
Knesset Member Eitan Cabel, one of Barak’s chief critics, said that Barak and his supporters “have decided to destroy the party.”
Barak reportedly informed the office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu before leaking news of his dramatic move, which came amid growing in-fighting in the party.
Former Haaretz journalist and freshman MK Daniel Ben-Simon said last week he would quit Labor and form a new faction outside of the government coalition.
A7 News
Ehud Barak and four supporters are splitting the Labor party, forming a new faction and leaving Labor in shambles. He will remain Defense Minister.
Knesset Members Matan Vilnai, Shalom Simchon, Einat Wilf and Orit Noked are joining Barak in the move to a new party, which may be called ”Independence.” Barak’s departure represents the second time that Labor has been severely weakened under his leadership. As Prime Minister in 2000, his 18-month-old government fell apart amid unprecedented concessions to then-Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat and his order for a sudden departure of Israeli troops from the ‘security zone” in southern Lebanon.
Knesset Member Eitan Cabel, one of Barak’s chief critics, said that Barak and his supporters “have decided to destroy the party.”
Barak reportedly informed the office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu before leaking news of his dramatic move, which came amid growing in-fighting in the party.
Former Haaretz journalist and freshman MK Daniel Ben-Simon said last week he would quit Labor and form a new faction outside of the government coalition.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
After Lebanon, Tunisia: Ben Ali Flees to Saudi Arabia
Dr. Amiel Ungar and Rachel Sylvetsky
A7 News
Tunisia's President Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on Friday, leaving Prime Minister Muhammad Ghannouchi temporarily in charge, but a new president, Fouad Mebazaa, former head of the lower house of pariliament, was sworn in yesterday closing the option of Ben Ali's return. Mebazaa promised to form a unity government, as looting, killing and prison riots swept the nation.
Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the dicator who had ruled Tunisia since 1987, tried a carrot-and-stick approach in an attempt to quell the rioting that went on for three weeks before his ouste On the carrot side, the Tunisian leader promised to create 300,000 new jobs for college graduates. The Ben Ali regime had invested a great deal in education but could not cope with the vocational expectations of the students and their desire for political participation. It was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old student a month ago in protest over high unemployment and inflation that triggered the current unrest.
A gesture to the demonstrators was the sacking of the minister of interior, Rafik Belhaj Kacem and the appointment of an investigation committee to study both the recent violence and official corruption. Another unsuccessful conciliatory gesture was the release of some of the protesters who were arrested.
The Tunisian government blamed both Islamic and leftist groups for inflaming the protests and took stern measures such as shutting down schools and universities across the country. The government also brought in military reinforcements including tanks deployed around the ruling party headquarters and the radio station.
While the opposition was disorganized and leaderless, it gathered support from various sectors of the Tunisian population as well as from the geographic breadth of the protests – from the capital Tunis to towns in the periphery.
As the situation deteriorated last week, cautious comment on the situation came from the outside. The most outspoken person was the European Union's head diplomat Catherine Ashton. Her spokesperson denounced "the disproportionate use of force by police against peaceful demonstrations".
France, the former colonial power, while refusing to play the role of the preceptor, had said it hoped that the authorities in Tunis could meet the "expectations of their people". European Mediterranean countries close to Tunisia such as France, Italy and Spain wanted to see the situation resolved as the last possible thing they wanted was a collapse that could swell the number of Tunisian migrants in their countries.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also cautious in calling for a peaceful resolution last week. The State Department voiced its concern over "the use of excessive force", but balanced that by praising the very positive aspects of our relationship with Tunisia." Ben Ali may have been a dictator, but what succeeds him could conceivably be much worse, despite talk of a unity government..
Ben Ali seems to have overstayed his welcome. He had in effect offered Tunisians a promise of stability and prosperity in exchange for political quiescence to an autocrat. He is not the first authoritarian leader to go down that road. Even Franco tried it in Spain before WWII. But this strategy is hostage to economic performance. When the economy falters, the population feels shortchanged. It is also a treadmill because the creation of a larger middle class triggers both economic and political aspirations that the regime can satisfy with increasing difficulty. Other Middle Eastern dictators may be pondering that equation today.
A7 News
Tunisia's President Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on Friday, leaving Prime Minister Muhammad Ghannouchi temporarily in charge, but a new president, Fouad Mebazaa, former head of the lower house of pariliament, was sworn in yesterday closing the option of Ben Ali's return. Mebazaa promised to form a unity government, as looting, killing and prison riots swept the nation.
Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the dicator who had ruled Tunisia since 1987, tried a carrot-and-stick approach in an attempt to quell the rioting that went on for three weeks before his ouste On the carrot side, the Tunisian leader promised to create 300,000 new jobs for college graduates. The Ben Ali regime had invested a great deal in education but could not cope with the vocational expectations of the students and their desire for political participation. It was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old student a month ago in protest over high unemployment and inflation that triggered the current unrest.
A gesture to the demonstrators was the sacking of the minister of interior, Rafik Belhaj Kacem and the appointment of an investigation committee to study both the recent violence and official corruption. Another unsuccessful conciliatory gesture was the release of some of the protesters who were arrested.
The Tunisian government blamed both Islamic and leftist groups for inflaming the protests and took stern measures such as shutting down schools and universities across the country. The government also brought in military reinforcements including tanks deployed around the ruling party headquarters and the radio station.
While the opposition was disorganized and leaderless, it gathered support from various sectors of the Tunisian population as well as from the geographic breadth of the protests – from the capital Tunis to towns in the periphery.
As the situation deteriorated last week, cautious comment on the situation came from the outside. The most outspoken person was the European Union's head diplomat Catherine Ashton. Her spokesperson denounced "the disproportionate use of force by police against peaceful demonstrations".
France, the former colonial power, while refusing to play the role of the preceptor, had said it hoped that the authorities in Tunis could meet the "expectations of their people". European Mediterranean countries close to Tunisia such as France, Italy and Spain wanted to see the situation resolved as the last possible thing they wanted was a collapse that could swell the number of Tunisian migrants in their countries.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also cautious in calling for a peaceful resolution last week. The State Department voiced its concern over "the use of excessive force", but balanced that by praising the very positive aspects of our relationship with Tunisia." Ben Ali may have been a dictator, but what succeeds him could conceivably be much worse, despite talk of a unity government..
Ben Ali seems to have overstayed his welcome. He had in effect offered Tunisians a promise of stability and prosperity in exchange for political quiescence to an autocrat. He is not the first authoritarian leader to go down that road. Even Franco tried it in Spain before WWII. But this strategy is hostage to economic performance. When the economy falters, the population feels shortchanged. It is also a treadmill because the creation of a larger middle class triggers both economic and political aspirations that the regime can satisfy with increasing difficulty. Other Middle Eastern dictators may be pondering that equation today.
"Shepherd Hotel Perspective Part 2"
Arlene Kushner
The entire subject -- not just of the Shepherd Hotel -- but of all of eastern Jerusalem is of great importance because of the issue being made, both by Palestinian Arabs and by their left-wing sympathizers, with regard to Jews living there.
There is, of course, the attempt to represent eastern Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state. (Although, actually, if you watch the words of the Palestinian Arabs carefully, you will notice that frequently they refer to their right to "Jerusalem." Make no mistake about it, in the end they want it all.)
And there is apparently even more going on beyond this: an attempt by the PA to gain control of a swath of land that runs from Ramallah, through eastern Jerusalem, to Beit Lehem (Bethlehem) and even beyond to Hevron. Jewish residence in eastern Jerusalem generates a stumbling block to this goal. Let us begin, then, at the beginning, with a definition of eastern Jerusalem. (While it is commonly alluded to as "East Jerusalem," I decline to utilize this term, as it implies a separate entity that in reality does not exist.)
What eastern Jerusalem refers to is everything within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem that is beyond the Green Line: By the conclusion of Israel's War of Independence (fought in 1948-49 when the Arab League attacked the new Jewish state), the city of Jerusalem had been divided for the first time in 3,000 years. Israel had gained control of the western, more modern, part of the city, while the eastern part of the city, including the Old City, fell into Jordanian hands, and for 19 years was rendered Judenrein. The temporary armistice line that separated the two parts of the city was the Green Line.
(For the record: While eastern Jerusalem is, obviously, more or less east of western Jerusalem, there are areas of Jerusalem beyond the Green Line that are north or south of western Jerusalem. The world still refers to these areas as "East Jerusalem.")
~~~~~~~~~~
In 1967, Israel took the eastern part of the city and reunited Jerusalem. Israeli civil law was extended to eastern Jerusalem, which was now under Israeli administration; full annexation was implemented in 1980, with passage by the Knesset of the Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel. At that time. the municipal borders were extended in anticipation of the development of new Jewish neighborhoods -- and, indeed, neighborhoods such as Neve Yaakov and Pisgat Ze'ev were established.
There are presently 108 sq. kilometers within the city's borders.
~~~~~~~~~~
While eastern Jerusalem is represented as "Arab" Jerusalem -- in good part because it had an exclusively Arab population when under Jordanian control -- the reality is far more complicated.
This is, first, because of Jewish history -- the ancient history of the Old City and more modern, pre-1948 Jewish history in the area.
And then because of the current population. Today eastern Jerusalem has some 450,000 residents, roughly half of whom are Jewish. (The area is larger than Tel Aviv and has a more substantial population.) Neighborhoods are checkerboard and cannot be divided with a line between Jewish and Arab; in some instances, Jews and Arabs live in the same neighborhoods.
~~~~~~~~~~
In the news today, there is frequently reference to two neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem that are considered controversial: Sheikh Jarrah and Shimon HaTzaddik (Simon the Just). Often they are alluded to as if they are two names for the same area. In point of fact they are two adjacent areas. Last week, I visited both of these neighborhoods, when I accompanied a tour.
Beginning with a look at the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood: It is the site of the tomb of Shimon HaTzaddik -- a high priest in the Temple, approximately 350 BCE, he is credited with convincing Alexander the Great not to destroy Jerusalem.
In the mid-1800s, when the Ottoman Empire controlled the region, Jews found it difficult to get permission to visit the tomb of Shimon HaTzaddik. The two chief rabbis of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities of Jerusalem cooperated in raising the necessary funds, and, in 1875, purchased the area that contained the tomb and some dunams surrounding it privately from its Arab owner.
Hundreds of Jews lived on that land until the British expelled them in 1948, saying they couldn't protect the Jews from the Arabs.
~~~~~~~~~~
In the 1960s, Jordan settled poor Arabs in Shimon HaTzaddik.
In the 1970s, the Israeli courts recognized the legality of the Jewish ownership of this neighborhood. Arabs living in the area, however, were awarded the status of "protected tenants." That is, they could not be evicted.
There were, however, certain rules to abide by: The tenants were, for example, required to pay rent, and forbidden from expanding the building they lived in without permission.
The first evictions occurred in the late 1990s, when a group of Arab residents challenged the ownership of the buildings they were living in, and went to court to secure title. The court found that the papers that were presented were forged, and subsequently held that the Jewish community had the right to evict them.
In the years since, after long procedures, there have been other evictions approved by the courts because of failure by the Arab tenant to abide by the rules, so that protected status was forfeited. In each instance in which this occurs, the challenge must be brought to the courts separately.
When an Arab family is evicted, a Jewish family is permitted to move in. To date, there are 18 Jewish families living in Shimon HaTzaddik. The goal over time is to see many more Jews return to this area that had been Jewish.
~~~~~~~~~~
This is an area, my friends, where there are protests because of the "grave injustice" of poor Arabs being summarily driven from their homes to make way for Jews who usurp Arab property.
Or so they say, while playing fast and loose with the facts. Who cares about facts, when it's possible to grab a good deal of media attention making Israel look bad? And rule of law? No need to respect that when it's Israeli law.
But let's look again at this situation, before moving on: Jews were driven off of land that was Jewishly owned, and Arabs moved into their homes when Jordan controlled the area. When Israel gained control, the Arabs were protected legally, given a special tenancy status. Seems to me both eminently humane and decent. Should the tenants fail to abide by the rules -- in some instances not paying rent for years, for example -- petitions to have them removed from the property require a court procedure.
~~~~~~~~~~
An important and little known fact: There are over 40,000 illegally built houses in eastern Jerusalem. Arabs and their defenders will tell you they build illegally because they cannot get permits.
But there's another side to this story. Very often they don't seek permits because they don't want to tacitly recognize Israeli sovereignty -- who is Israel to say where they can build? -- and they don't want to pay taxes.
We're talking about a fight for Jerusalem that involves facts on the ground. The Palestinian Authority fosters this illegal building.
~~~~~~~~~~
Briefly, now, let us look at the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which was established in the 1870s:
From its establishment, through the 1930s, it was sparsely populated, but became an upper-class area where some wealthy Arab families established themselves.
Today it is the site of several European consulates. It is also where a number of Israeli government offices, such as the police headquarters, are found, having been located here during the time of PM Menachem Begin. Three Jewish hotels are also in the neighborhood.
And, of course, it is the site of the Shepherd Hotel. The history of this hotel is so enormously convoluted that I will provide only a brief summary.
~~~~~~~~~~
Of primary note is the fact that the building was constructed in the 1930s by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who actually never lived there. Because of his collaboration with the Nazis -- he was involved with an SS unit that murdered 90% of Yugoslavian Jewry -- he fled from the British.
The building -- which at one point was in the hands of al-Husseini's secretary, George Antonius -- then was utilized by the British as a military outpost; it was actually a Scottish regiment that was housed there.
After 1948, the Jordanians had use of the building. When Israel acquired the region in 1967, it took control of the property under the Absentee Property Law. Two Christian Arab brothers were permitted to take over the building with protected tenancy status. They ran it as a pilgrim hotel until 1982.
The building was then sold to a Swiss firm. What is not entirely clear at this point is whether the family of the Christian brothers (who were deceased by then) had been permitted to acquire the property outright and sold it, or whether the Israeli custodian of the property arranged the sale. What is clear is that the Israeli courts have ruled that the Husseini family has no claim to the property (legally, as I have been given to understand it, the fact that Hajj Amin al-Husseini had fled to the Nazis was a factor in this ruling).
In 1885, Irving Moskowitz legally bought the property. For a period of time, Israeli border police used it, while awaiting construction of a new building.
The property had been designated as residential, and zoned for 20 units. Moskowitz hired a lawyer to secure a change in the zoning so that 100 units might go up. But as this has proved to be difficult legally, the decision was made to go ahead with the 20 units, and municipal approval was received. Legal work to secure permission for additional units will continue.
~~~~~~~~~~
The demolition of part of the building has now taken place, and hopefully construction will proceed.
I have already written about the ludicrous situation in which local Arabs are mourning the outrage of Israel destroying a piece of Arab heritage. Arab heritage: A building put up by an Arab Nazi collaborator. This is closer to the truth of their heritage than they usually like to admit, but anything to make trouble.
The Husseini family went to court again just days ago to try to stop the construction. Their claim (are you ready?) was that they still owned a piece of the driveway -- they're not even trying to claim the entire building. The court threw it out, saying that this issue had been dealt with already. But it's unlikely we've heard the last from them.
~~~~~~~~~~
An aside, before closing:
That Nazi collaborator and eager murderer of Jews, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was a mentor to Yasser Arafat, founder of Fatah and for many years head of the PLO. Arafat addressed him as "uncle," whether affectionately or because he really was his uncle is not certain. This tells us a great deal that the world would rather not know.
~~~~~~~~~~
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution
The entire subject -- not just of the Shepherd Hotel -- but of all of eastern Jerusalem is of great importance because of the issue being made, both by Palestinian Arabs and by their left-wing sympathizers, with regard to Jews living there.
There is, of course, the attempt to represent eastern Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state. (Although, actually, if you watch the words of the Palestinian Arabs carefully, you will notice that frequently they refer to their right to "Jerusalem." Make no mistake about it, in the end they want it all.)
And there is apparently even more going on beyond this: an attempt by the PA to gain control of a swath of land that runs from Ramallah, through eastern Jerusalem, to Beit Lehem (Bethlehem) and even beyond to Hevron. Jewish residence in eastern Jerusalem generates a stumbling block to this goal. Let us begin, then, at the beginning, with a definition of eastern Jerusalem. (While it is commonly alluded to as "East Jerusalem," I decline to utilize this term, as it implies a separate entity that in reality does not exist.)
What eastern Jerusalem refers to is everything within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem that is beyond the Green Line: By the conclusion of Israel's War of Independence (fought in 1948-49 when the Arab League attacked the new Jewish state), the city of Jerusalem had been divided for the first time in 3,000 years. Israel had gained control of the western, more modern, part of the city, while the eastern part of the city, including the Old City, fell into Jordanian hands, and for 19 years was rendered Judenrein. The temporary armistice line that separated the two parts of the city was the Green Line.
(For the record: While eastern Jerusalem is, obviously, more or less east of western Jerusalem, there are areas of Jerusalem beyond the Green Line that are north or south of western Jerusalem. The world still refers to these areas as "East Jerusalem.")
~~~~~~~~~~
In 1967, Israel took the eastern part of the city and reunited Jerusalem. Israeli civil law was extended to eastern Jerusalem, which was now under Israeli administration; full annexation was implemented in 1980, with passage by the Knesset of the Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel. At that time. the municipal borders were extended in anticipation of the development of new Jewish neighborhoods -- and, indeed, neighborhoods such as Neve Yaakov and Pisgat Ze'ev were established.
There are presently 108 sq. kilometers within the city's borders.
~~~~~~~~~~
While eastern Jerusalem is represented as "Arab" Jerusalem -- in good part because it had an exclusively Arab population when under Jordanian control -- the reality is far more complicated.
This is, first, because of Jewish history -- the ancient history of the Old City and more modern, pre-1948 Jewish history in the area.
And then because of the current population. Today eastern Jerusalem has some 450,000 residents, roughly half of whom are Jewish. (The area is larger than Tel Aviv and has a more substantial population.) Neighborhoods are checkerboard and cannot be divided with a line between Jewish and Arab; in some instances, Jews and Arabs live in the same neighborhoods.
~~~~~~~~~~
In the news today, there is frequently reference to two neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem that are considered controversial: Sheikh Jarrah and Shimon HaTzaddik (Simon the Just). Often they are alluded to as if they are two names for the same area. In point of fact they are two adjacent areas. Last week, I visited both of these neighborhoods, when I accompanied a tour.
Beginning with a look at the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood: It is the site of the tomb of Shimon HaTzaddik -- a high priest in the Temple, approximately 350 BCE, he is credited with convincing Alexander the Great not to destroy Jerusalem.
In the mid-1800s, when the Ottoman Empire controlled the region, Jews found it difficult to get permission to visit the tomb of Shimon HaTzaddik. The two chief rabbis of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities of Jerusalem cooperated in raising the necessary funds, and, in 1875, purchased the area that contained the tomb and some dunams surrounding it privately from its Arab owner.
Hundreds of Jews lived on that land until the British expelled them in 1948, saying they couldn't protect the Jews from the Arabs.
~~~~~~~~~~
In the 1960s, Jordan settled poor Arabs in Shimon HaTzaddik.
In the 1970s, the Israeli courts recognized the legality of the Jewish ownership of this neighborhood. Arabs living in the area, however, were awarded the status of "protected tenants." That is, they could not be evicted.
There were, however, certain rules to abide by: The tenants were, for example, required to pay rent, and forbidden from expanding the building they lived in without permission.
The first evictions occurred in the late 1990s, when a group of Arab residents challenged the ownership of the buildings they were living in, and went to court to secure title. The court found that the papers that were presented were forged, and subsequently held that the Jewish community had the right to evict them.
In the years since, after long procedures, there have been other evictions approved by the courts because of failure by the Arab tenant to abide by the rules, so that protected status was forfeited. In each instance in which this occurs, the challenge must be brought to the courts separately.
When an Arab family is evicted, a Jewish family is permitted to move in. To date, there are 18 Jewish families living in Shimon HaTzaddik. The goal over time is to see many more Jews return to this area that had been Jewish.
~~~~~~~~~~
This is an area, my friends, where there are protests because of the "grave injustice" of poor Arabs being summarily driven from their homes to make way for Jews who usurp Arab property.
Or so they say, while playing fast and loose with the facts. Who cares about facts, when it's possible to grab a good deal of media attention making Israel look bad? And rule of law? No need to respect that when it's Israeli law.
But let's look again at this situation, before moving on: Jews were driven off of land that was Jewishly owned, and Arabs moved into their homes when Jordan controlled the area. When Israel gained control, the Arabs were protected legally, given a special tenancy status. Seems to me both eminently humane and decent. Should the tenants fail to abide by the rules -- in some instances not paying rent for years, for example -- petitions to have them removed from the property require a court procedure.
~~~~~~~~~~
An important and little known fact: There are over 40,000 illegally built houses in eastern Jerusalem. Arabs and their defenders will tell you they build illegally because they cannot get permits.
But there's another side to this story. Very often they don't seek permits because they don't want to tacitly recognize Israeli sovereignty -- who is Israel to say where they can build? -- and they don't want to pay taxes.
We're talking about a fight for Jerusalem that involves facts on the ground. The Palestinian Authority fosters this illegal building.
~~~~~~~~~~
Briefly, now, let us look at the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which was established in the 1870s:
From its establishment, through the 1930s, it was sparsely populated, but became an upper-class area where some wealthy Arab families established themselves.
Today it is the site of several European consulates. It is also where a number of Israeli government offices, such as the police headquarters, are found, having been located here during the time of PM Menachem Begin. Three Jewish hotels are also in the neighborhood.
And, of course, it is the site of the Shepherd Hotel. The history of this hotel is so enormously convoluted that I will provide only a brief summary.
~~~~~~~~~~
Of primary note is the fact that the building was constructed in the 1930s by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who actually never lived there. Because of his collaboration with the Nazis -- he was involved with an SS unit that murdered 90% of Yugoslavian Jewry -- he fled from the British.
The building -- which at one point was in the hands of al-Husseini's secretary, George Antonius -- then was utilized by the British as a military outpost; it was actually a Scottish regiment that was housed there.
After 1948, the Jordanians had use of the building. When Israel acquired the region in 1967, it took control of the property under the Absentee Property Law. Two Christian Arab brothers were permitted to take over the building with protected tenancy status. They ran it as a pilgrim hotel until 1982.
The building was then sold to a Swiss firm. What is not entirely clear at this point is whether the family of the Christian brothers (who were deceased by then) had been permitted to acquire the property outright and sold it, or whether the Israeli custodian of the property arranged the sale. What is clear is that the Israeli courts have ruled that the Husseini family has no claim to the property (legally, as I have been given to understand it, the fact that Hajj Amin al-Husseini had fled to the Nazis was a factor in this ruling).
In 1885, Irving Moskowitz legally bought the property. For a period of time, Israeli border police used it, while awaiting construction of a new building.
The property had been designated as residential, and zoned for 20 units. Moskowitz hired a lawyer to secure a change in the zoning so that 100 units might go up. But as this has proved to be difficult legally, the decision was made to go ahead with the 20 units, and municipal approval was received. Legal work to secure permission for additional units will continue.
~~~~~~~~~~
The demolition of part of the building has now taken place, and hopefully construction will proceed.
I have already written about the ludicrous situation in which local Arabs are mourning the outrage of Israel destroying a piece of Arab heritage. Arab heritage: A building put up by an Arab Nazi collaborator. This is closer to the truth of their heritage than they usually like to admit, but anything to make trouble.
The Husseini family went to court again just days ago to try to stop the construction. Their claim (are you ready?) was that they still owned a piece of the driveway -- they're not even trying to claim the entire building. The court threw it out, saying that this issue had been dealt with already. But it's unlikely we've heard the last from them.
~~~~~~~~~~
An aside, before closing:
That Nazi collaborator and eager murderer of Jews, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was a mentor to Yasser Arafat, founder of Fatah and for many years head of the PLO. Arafat addressed him as "uncle," whether affectionately or because he really was his uncle is not certain. This tells us a great deal that the world would rather not know.
~~~~~~~~~~
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Two Big Developments: Lebanon: Government Falls; Egypt/Islam: Jihad? We're Just Getting Started!
Rubinreports
Barry Rubin
Both of these stories are important so please read to the end as the new fatwa it discusses could be a turning point.
1.
--Hizballah ministers walked out of Lebanon’s government bringing it down. Why? They didn’t have to do it since they have veto power and would have prevented the government from endorsing the international tribunal investigation that would point to Syria (and perhaps Hizballah) as the source of terrorism in Lebanon, including the killing of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. I view this as a power grab. Hizballah doesn’t just want the government just to be silent on the tribunal but to condemn the investigation explicitly. They want to renegotiate the coalition agreement to give themselves more power. And they timed it for the moment when Lebanon’s prime minister was meeting with President Obama to embarrass their opponents. In Middle East talk, that timing signals: Our enemies are American puppets.
Finally, it is a message to America and the world: We--Iran, Syria, and Hizballah--are in control of Lebanon now, not you. There is no question--no question at all--that this assertion is true, yet U.S. and Western policy is simply not adjusting to meet this situation.
Here's are some good analysis on this issue from: David Schenker; Lee Smith; Michael Young; Jonathan Spyer; and Tony Badran. Funny note: It's been hysterically funny as the Western mass media has quoted as Lebanon experts almost exclusively either people who are no such things or those who are reliable flunkies of Hizballah and Syria. These five people know what they are talking about.
Actually, media coverage on this story was worse than usual. Here's my favorite line from the end of a New York Times story:
“`Hezbollah doesn’t want to control the government or country, even though they could if they wanted,” said Anis Nakkash, director of the Aman Research Center here in Beirut.'"
Well, now I feel much better! No need to worry about Hizballah trying to grab power. For the record, I don't think Hizballah wants to control the country and I don't think they could do so. I do think they want to control the government, not in the sense of being in power exclusively but by deciding all the main policy questions.
But one little detail: Nakkash is well-known as a strong Hizballah supporter, a point nowhere indicated in the story, so this point of view might be a tad biased. In fact the other two people quoted in the story are:
Robert Malley, who always sides with the anti-American forces, and a reporter from al-Safir, described as an opposition newspaper. In fact, it is historically an extremely radical newspaper that has long been in the pockets of the Syrians and a supporter of Hizballah. However, since last week the Times raved about the wonderfulness of al-Akhbar, the other Syrian-backed newspaper in Lebanon, I guess this week al-Safir has to be given some time as well.
Nobody either neutral or supporting the March 14 coalition is quoted. And isn't how it always seems to be with articles in the Times and a long list of other mass media outlets? Either everyone is on the left-wing, anti-Israel, anti-American side or, at best, one person is thrown in to provide cover so that bias can be credibly denied.
So is there nothing to fear from Hizballah? Well, let's go to the Washington Post's coverage. The headline?
"Hizballah Reaches for More Power in Lebanon."
"A day after toppling the Lebanese government, the Shiite Hezbollah movement and its allies were working to gain enough support in parliament to control the selection of Lebanon's next prime minister, Lebanese officials said."
Yes, that's more like it.
On the more negative side (Western policy, naturally), the French have asked Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad to help mediate the situation in Lebanon, which is sort of like asking Usama bin Ladin to mediate the situation in Afghanistan.
2.
--An off-duty Egyptian policeman killed a Christian and wounded five others on a train. He reportedly made sure they were Christians (women not wearing veils; people with a tattooed cross on their arm which is a custom of Coptic Christians) before shooting them and shouted “Allahu Akhbar” while doing it. Obviously, this is an Islamist terrorist attack but the media is sort of ignoring this point, unlike the rush to judgment after the Tucson shootings.
This is also part of a huge anti-Christian campaign in the Muslim-majority world, the biggest in our lifetime, including bloody attacks on churches in Iraq and Egypt within the last month among many other assaults. When the Pope called on world leaders to protect Egyptian Christians, after 21 were killed during a Christmas mass in Alexandria, the Egyptian government recalled its ambassador to the Vatican complaining about “interference” in Egyptian affairs.
It was also denounced by Egypt’s highest-ranking Muslim cleric with an intriguing argument: "I ask why did the pope not call for the protection of Muslims when they were subjected to killings in Iraq?"
Presumably, he wanted the Pope to condemn the United States and other countries for their actions in Iraq. In other words, Egypt’s government-appointed and government-supervised leader of the country’s Muslims defines the fighting in Iraq as Christians cold-bloodedly murdering Muslims. No wonder Muslims seek revenge on local Christians if “moderate” clerics tell them this.
And here's a question for you: Do you think that radical Islamist attacks on Christians in the Middle East over the next few years will:
A. Increase; B. Decrease; C. Stay the same.
I'd say "A," until, of course, they run out of Christians.
--But there’s more, and worse, to come. An extraordinarily important fatwa has been issued by Dr. Imad Mustafa, the professor on that subject at al-Azhar University, the world's most important Islamic university. He began by stating the well-known doctrine of “defensive jihad,” that is Muslims must go to war against infidels who attack them. Of course, the word “attack” is often spread rather thinly to justify aggression.
But now Mustafa has publicly and explicitly come up with a new concept, one that up until now was supposedly restricted to groups like al-Qaida:
“Then there is another type of fighting against the non-Muslims known as offensive jihad…which is to pursue the infidels into their own land without any aggression [on their part]….
“...Two schools [of Islamic jurisprudence] have ruled that offensive jihad is permissible in order to secure Islam's border, to extend God's religion to people in cases where the governments do not allow it, such as the Pharaoh did with the children of Israel, and to remove every religion but Islam from the Arabian peninsula....”
What does it mean about extending "God's religion," i.e., Islam? On the surface, "where the governments do not allow it" and the reference to Pharaoh seems to imply the complete prohibition of Islam.
But in the current context, I think this means that it is permissible to wage jihad on a country.if anything "necessary" to Islam according to (hardline) clerics' interpretations is blocked (polygamy, child marriage, special privileges at work places, building mosques anywhere, permitting the wearing of headscarves or burqas, and so on).
In practice, according to this doctrine, then, any non-Muslim can be attacked anywhere in the world. Thus, mainstream, powerful clerics are now calling for a seventh-century-style Jihad against non-Muslim lands even if the victims cannot be accused of attacking Muslim-ruled lands! Merely to "extend God's religion" to others is a sufficient motive. Mustafa says that two of Islam's main schools have always endorsed offensive Jihad but I doubt if he would have made that argument ten or twenty years ago.
Of course, that doesn't mean most Muslims will accept this new stance. But it does mean that radical groups now have mainstream support for their most extreme, aggressive behavior. Even if nobody repeats Mustafa's statement publicly--if for no other reasons than it is bad public relations in the West--this idea will be more and more taken for granted. Presumably, Mustafa won't be forced to retract this fatwa by his colleagues or Egypt's government. Moreover, we probably won't see senior clerics denouncing and rejecting the doctrine of offensive Jihad.
This is a development of stupendous proportions that will probably not even be covered in the Western mass media. If this view point continues to spread--along with the growing al-Qaida type doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood--it could be a historical turning point that will greatly intensify revolutionary Islamist terrorism and attacks on the West. Watch this trend very carefully.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
Barry Rubin
Both of these stories are important so please read to the end as the new fatwa it discusses could be a turning point.
1.
--Hizballah ministers walked out of Lebanon’s government bringing it down. Why? They didn’t have to do it since they have veto power and would have prevented the government from endorsing the international tribunal investigation that would point to Syria (and perhaps Hizballah) as the source of terrorism in Lebanon, including the killing of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. I view this as a power grab. Hizballah doesn’t just want the government just to be silent on the tribunal but to condemn the investigation explicitly. They want to renegotiate the coalition agreement to give themselves more power. And they timed it for the moment when Lebanon’s prime minister was meeting with President Obama to embarrass their opponents. In Middle East talk, that timing signals: Our enemies are American puppets.
Finally, it is a message to America and the world: We--Iran, Syria, and Hizballah--are in control of Lebanon now, not you. There is no question--no question at all--that this assertion is true, yet U.S. and Western policy is simply not adjusting to meet this situation.
Here's are some good analysis on this issue from: David Schenker; Lee Smith; Michael Young; Jonathan Spyer; and Tony Badran. Funny note: It's been hysterically funny as the Western mass media has quoted as Lebanon experts almost exclusively either people who are no such things or those who are reliable flunkies of Hizballah and Syria. These five people know what they are talking about.
Actually, media coverage on this story was worse than usual. Here's my favorite line from the end of a New York Times story:
“`Hezbollah doesn’t want to control the government or country, even though they could if they wanted,” said Anis Nakkash, director of the Aman Research Center here in Beirut.'"
Well, now I feel much better! No need to worry about Hizballah trying to grab power. For the record, I don't think Hizballah wants to control the country and I don't think they could do so. I do think they want to control the government, not in the sense of being in power exclusively but by deciding all the main policy questions.
But one little detail: Nakkash is well-known as a strong Hizballah supporter, a point nowhere indicated in the story, so this point of view might be a tad biased. In fact the other two people quoted in the story are:
Robert Malley, who always sides with the anti-American forces, and a reporter from al-Safir, described as an opposition newspaper. In fact, it is historically an extremely radical newspaper that has long been in the pockets of the Syrians and a supporter of Hizballah. However, since last week the Times raved about the wonderfulness of al-Akhbar, the other Syrian-backed newspaper in Lebanon, I guess this week al-Safir has to be given some time as well.
Nobody either neutral or supporting the March 14 coalition is quoted. And isn't how it always seems to be with articles in the Times and a long list of other mass media outlets? Either everyone is on the left-wing, anti-Israel, anti-American side or, at best, one person is thrown in to provide cover so that bias can be credibly denied.
So is there nothing to fear from Hizballah? Well, let's go to the Washington Post's coverage. The headline?
"Hizballah Reaches for More Power in Lebanon."
"A day after toppling the Lebanese government, the Shiite Hezbollah movement and its allies were working to gain enough support in parliament to control the selection of Lebanon's next prime minister, Lebanese officials said."
Yes, that's more like it.
On the more negative side (Western policy, naturally), the French have asked Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad to help mediate the situation in Lebanon, which is sort of like asking Usama bin Ladin to mediate the situation in Afghanistan.
2.
--An off-duty Egyptian policeman killed a Christian and wounded five others on a train. He reportedly made sure they were Christians (women not wearing veils; people with a tattooed cross on their arm which is a custom of Coptic Christians) before shooting them and shouted “Allahu Akhbar” while doing it. Obviously, this is an Islamist terrorist attack but the media is sort of ignoring this point, unlike the rush to judgment after the Tucson shootings.
This is also part of a huge anti-Christian campaign in the Muslim-majority world, the biggest in our lifetime, including bloody attacks on churches in Iraq and Egypt within the last month among many other assaults. When the Pope called on world leaders to protect Egyptian Christians, after 21 were killed during a Christmas mass in Alexandria, the Egyptian government recalled its ambassador to the Vatican complaining about “interference” in Egyptian affairs.
It was also denounced by Egypt’s highest-ranking Muslim cleric with an intriguing argument: "I ask why did the pope not call for the protection of Muslims when they were subjected to killings in Iraq?"
Presumably, he wanted the Pope to condemn the United States and other countries for their actions in Iraq. In other words, Egypt’s government-appointed and government-supervised leader of the country’s Muslims defines the fighting in Iraq as Christians cold-bloodedly murdering Muslims. No wonder Muslims seek revenge on local Christians if “moderate” clerics tell them this.
And here's a question for you: Do you think that radical Islamist attacks on Christians in the Middle East over the next few years will:
A. Increase; B. Decrease; C. Stay the same.
I'd say "A," until, of course, they run out of Christians.
--But there’s more, and worse, to come. An extraordinarily important fatwa has been issued by Dr. Imad Mustafa, the professor on that subject at al-Azhar University, the world's most important Islamic university. He began by stating the well-known doctrine of “defensive jihad,” that is Muslims must go to war against infidels who attack them. Of course, the word “attack” is often spread rather thinly to justify aggression.
But now Mustafa has publicly and explicitly come up with a new concept, one that up until now was supposedly restricted to groups like al-Qaida:
“Then there is another type of fighting against the non-Muslims known as offensive jihad…which is to pursue the infidels into their own land without any aggression [on their part]….
“...Two schools [of Islamic jurisprudence] have ruled that offensive jihad is permissible in order to secure Islam's border, to extend God's religion to people in cases where the governments do not allow it, such as the Pharaoh did with the children of Israel, and to remove every religion but Islam from the Arabian peninsula....”
What does it mean about extending "God's religion," i.e., Islam? On the surface, "where the governments do not allow it" and the reference to Pharaoh seems to imply the complete prohibition of Islam.
But in the current context, I think this means that it is permissible to wage jihad on a country.if anything "necessary" to Islam according to (hardline) clerics' interpretations is blocked (polygamy, child marriage, special privileges at work places, building mosques anywhere, permitting the wearing of headscarves or burqas, and so on).
In practice, according to this doctrine, then, any non-Muslim can be attacked anywhere in the world. Thus, mainstream, powerful clerics are now calling for a seventh-century-style Jihad against non-Muslim lands even if the victims cannot be accused of attacking Muslim-ruled lands! Merely to "extend God's religion" to others is a sufficient motive. Mustafa says that two of Islam's main schools have always endorsed offensive Jihad but I doubt if he would have made that argument ten or twenty years ago.
Of course, that doesn't mean most Muslims will accept this new stance. But it does mean that radical groups now have mainstream support for their most extreme, aggressive behavior. Even if nobody repeats Mustafa's statement publicly--if for no other reasons than it is bad public relations in the West--this idea will be more and more taken for granted. Presumably, Mustafa won't be forced to retract this fatwa by his colleagues or Egypt's government. Moreover, we probably won't see senior clerics denouncing and rejecting the doctrine of offensive Jihad.
This is a development of stupendous proportions that will probably not even be covered in the Western mass media. If this view point continues to spread--along with the growing al-Qaida type doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood--it could be a historical turning point that will greatly intensify revolutionary Islamist terrorism and attacks on the West. Watch this trend very carefully.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Clinton in Qatar: Stop Corruption or Extremists Will Take Over
Amiel Ungar
A7 News
The featured speaker at the Forum for the Future conference in Doha, Qatar was American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but the audience could be excused if it thought that it was hearing a representative of the Bush Administration. It was the Bush administration that had embraced the approach that the best way to combat Islamic radicalism was to introduce democracy to the Middle East. When the Obama Administration took office it scrapped the Bush approach for a combination of what it portrayed as realism with an extra helping of American humble pie.
The new policy was that it would be arrogance for the United States to attempt to preach to other nations how they should conduct themselves. Simultaneously, the world would be safer and the burden on the United States reduced if the United States could forge agreements even with authoritarian regimes that served mutual interests.
Critics of the Obama Administration have claimed that it is so enamored of engagement that it fails to defend democratic forces throughout the world, with a notable example being the too little-too late response to the student demonstrations in Iran.
In its report today, Freedom House reported that Twenty-five countries showed significant declines in democracy in 2010 while the democratic world displayed apathy. David J. Kramer, executive director of Freedom House, lamented "Our adversaries are not just engaging in widespread repression, they are doing so with unprecedented aggressiveness and self-confidence…And the democratic community is not rising to the challenge." This, too, could be seen as implicit criticism of the Obama Administration.
Yet here was Clinton warning the Arab elites that "the region's foundations are sinking into the sand,"due to the pervasive culture of corruption that discouraged participation and hard work. Since the ordinary citizens were now more politically aware, they realized that the tiny elite was the beneficiary of the petrodollars and this engendered attitudes ranging from apathy to anger. If the Arab regimes would not provide vehicles for participation, they would be outflanked by 'Extremist elements, terrorist groups and others who would prey on desperation and poverty are already out there appealing for allegiance and competing for influence'".
The Forum of the Future was launched in 2004 by the G-8 to encourage civil groups who were not mere puppets of the government. The Arab leaders at the forum replied with a stock answer that the pace of reform had to be measured because too rapid a change could play into the hands of extremists (with the obvious example of the Shah of Iran whose ambitions to rapidly remake his country led to his downfall). Secretary of State Clinton was reverting to the Bush administration in rejecting that argument.
Responding to a question about America's failure to induce Israel to stop settlement building, Clinton testily replied that the United States has failed to get a lot of countries to do what it wanted and in general America carried a disproportionate burden of the world's problems on her shoulders. For example, America was the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority, meaning that it was time for the Arab states to walk the monetary walk in addition to the pro-Palestinian talk.
A7 News
The featured speaker at the Forum for the Future conference in Doha, Qatar was American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but the audience could be excused if it thought that it was hearing a representative of the Bush Administration. It was the Bush administration that had embraced the approach that the best way to combat Islamic radicalism was to introduce democracy to the Middle East. When the Obama Administration took office it scrapped the Bush approach for a combination of what it portrayed as realism with an extra helping of American humble pie.
The new policy was that it would be arrogance for the United States to attempt to preach to other nations how they should conduct themselves. Simultaneously, the world would be safer and the burden on the United States reduced if the United States could forge agreements even with authoritarian regimes that served mutual interests.
Critics of the Obama Administration have claimed that it is so enamored of engagement that it fails to defend democratic forces throughout the world, with a notable example being the too little-too late response to the student demonstrations in Iran.
In its report today, Freedom House reported that Twenty-five countries showed significant declines in democracy in 2010 while the democratic world displayed apathy. David J. Kramer, executive director of Freedom House, lamented "Our adversaries are not just engaging in widespread repression, they are doing so with unprecedented aggressiveness and self-confidence…And the democratic community is not rising to the challenge." This, too, could be seen as implicit criticism of the Obama Administration.
Yet here was Clinton warning the Arab elites that "the region's foundations are sinking into the sand,"due to the pervasive culture of corruption that discouraged participation and hard work. Since the ordinary citizens were now more politically aware, they realized that the tiny elite was the beneficiary of the petrodollars and this engendered attitudes ranging from apathy to anger. If the Arab regimes would not provide vehicles for participation, they would be outflanked by 'Extremist elements, terrorist groups and others who would prey on desperation and poverty are already out there appealing for allegiance and competing for influence'".
The Forum of the Future was launched in 2004 by the G-8 to encourage civil groups who were not mere puppets of the government. The Arab leaders at the forum replied with a stock answer that the pace of reform had to be measured because too rapid a change could play into the hands of extremists (with the obvious example of the Shah of Iran whose ambitions to rapidly remake his country led to his downfall). Secretary of State Clinton was reverting to the Bush administration in rejecting that argument.
Responding to a question about America's failure to induce Israel to stop settlement building, Clinton testily replied that the United States has failed to get a lot of countries to do what it wanted and in general America carried a disproportionate burden of the world's problems on her shoulders. For example, America was the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority, meaning that it was time for the Arab states to walk the monetary walk in addition to the pro-Palestinian talk.
CAIR Imagery Makes Obstructionist Goal Clear
IPT News
http://www.investigativeproject.org/2492/cair-imagery-makes-obstructionist-goal-clear
Any question about the Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) attitude toward law enforcement in terrorism investigations has been put to rest by the group's San Francisco chapter.
"Build a Wall of Resistance," a poster announcing a Feb. 9 event published on the group's website says, "Don't Talk to the FBI."
A dark, sinister FBI agent is shown lurking in front of people's homes as doors slam shut. It's in response to an FBI investigation in Minneapolis and Chicago involving possible support for two designated terrorist groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). A series of raids Sept. 24 targeted the homes of activists in both cities. They claim the investigation is an attempt by Eric Holder's Justice Department to silence anti-war dissent.
"This type of investigation is a tool to repress our movements for social justice and divide our communities," the announcement of the event said.
But that assessment is based solely on the word of those targeted. So far, no official information about the ongoing investigation or the probable cause that led a federal judge to authorize the searches has been released.
In response, however, supporters of those targeted have protested outside of courthouses and federal offices in several cities. The next one is scheduled for Jan. 25 in Chicago and elsewhere, corresponding to compelled grand jury appearances by several people. A website, stopfbi.net, posts articles and updates on the case.
CAIR's Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab called the investigation "a waste of taxpayer dollars." His chapter issued a statement denouncing the September raids. "The FBI has overstepped its bounds in targeting individuals based on their commitment to peacefully challenge US policies in Palestine and Columbia," it said. The Justice Department should call off the investigation and return what was taken in the searches.
Subsequently, Rehab's Michigan counterpart called the raids "a witch hunt to chill the 1st amendment rights of Americans." Dawud Walid later accused the FBI of having "recruited more so-called extremist Muslims than al-Qaida themselves" and likened the use of informants in terrorism-related investigations to the systematic discrimination inherent in Jim Crow laws, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Walid's rants follow his year-long campaign to find fault in FBI's shooting death of a Detroit imam in October 2009 after the imam opened fire first. That effort continued even after separate investigations by the state of Michigan and the Department of Justice found no wrongdoing.
CAIR's hostility toward law enforcement is long-standing, but the organization's rhetoric has increased since the FBI cut off formal communication with the group in 2008. That decision was based on exhibits admitted into evidence during a terror-financing trial in Dallas that showed CAIR founders were part of a Hamas-support network.
"[U]ntil we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner," an FBI official explained in a 2009 letter to U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.
CAIR petitioned the Texas court to be removed from a list of unindicted co-conspirators in that case. But the district judge refused, ruling there is "ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR" and others "with Hamas."
It remains to be seen what, if anything, will result from the FBI investigation in Minneapolis and Chicago. CAIR, in one image, has spoken more than 1,000 words about its hostility toward law enforcement.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
The Woman with Many Names
Naomi Ragen
My mother- in- law passed away yesterday in Jerusalem at age 85 after seven torturous years succumbing to a merciless illness which left her unable to speak, walk, or move her limbs. But the last period of her long life, was not her worst. The worst happened when she was eighteen and the Nazis come to her home in Uzhhorod (now in Ukraine), beating her little brother
senseless, and carting away herself, her three sisters, two brothers, parents, and beloved grandmother. The worst was the cattle car ride, and the platform in Auschwitz in which she and her sisters were separated from their mother, never to see her, or any other member of their family alive again. The worst was the year spent in concentration camp starving, trying desperately with her older sister Zipporah to keep their youngest sister Malka alive. I remember the stories she told me those Friday nights when my husband, her beloved only son, was away in the synagogue with his father. How she cut her slice of bread into tiny portions instead of eating it all at once, to save some for the next day, the willpower that took. How she managed to take bits of cloth and form them into collars that she bartered to other prisoners for food and other essentials. Her sisters and camp shvesters' called her by her Czech name, Magda.
And then there was the death march and the story of how she and her sisters and some friends took the life or death plunge to escape, hiding under hay in a hayloft, as the Germans stuck pitchforks in looking for them, until finally giving up. On the road, finally free, they found a crate. Starving, they pried it open. Inside was the finest French champagne, fallen off some German truck. They celebrated the end of their captivity by drinking it straight from the bottle still in the striped uniforms of Auschwitz. And then they found an empty house abandoned by the German family who lived there to escape the advancing Russians. Using the soap and towels left behind they heated water and bathed, seeing the color of their skin for the first time in many months.
Deciding to go to Israel, she and her two sisters waited for the Zionist organizers to bring them. But delay after delay made Magda lose hope. And so she decided to go home to see if anyone she knew had survived. Leaving her sisters behind, she traveled by train to her home town. But, she said later, she couldn't bring herself to look her neighbors in the face,
remembering how they had lined up to watch her family being taken away, smirking with satisfaction. She boarded the next train out, taking it down the line to where the Sudenten Germans had been chased out, leaving behind houses the government was handing over to refugees like herself. By chance, my father-in-law got off at this same stop. He had also gone home
to see if his wife or son and daughter had survived. Finding proof that Auschwitz had taken his entire family, and that his neighbors had helped themselves to all his belongings, he went house to house gathering his possessions together, then left them in the wagon, handing them over to the wagon driver as he hopped the next train out.
Fate brought them together. And they brought each other love, comfort and the hope for a new beginning.
Eventually, they wound up in New York City, working as a tailor and a seamstress. There she was known as Shirley. They raised a son and a daughter. They achieved the American dream, owning a home. And when their son married and moved to Israel, they decided to join him.
Those were, they always said, the best years of their lives. They owned a lovely apartment in Netanya near the sea, and spent their time being grandparents, enjoying their many friends, or volunteering for good causes.
When we say Yizkor for her, we will use the name Shaindel, the name her parents gave her. But I always called her "Mom." And my kids called her "Bubbee." She was a wonderful, giving person as well as a tough cookie. Though not always easy to accept, her criticism came from love and from wanting things to be better for those she loved, in the way she understood
it. We loved her very much. May her name and memory be blessed.
--
Naomi
www.naomiragen.com
Check out my new book on Amazon -
http://tinyurl.com/39r5j5v
My mother- in- law passed away yesterday in Jerusalem at age 85 after seven torturous years succumbing to a merciless illness which left her unable to speak, walk, or move her limbs. But the last period of her long life, was not her worst. The worst happened when she was eighteen and the Nazis come to her home in Uzhhorod (now in Ukraine), beating her little brother
senseless, and carting away herself, her three sisters, two brothers, parents, and beloved grandmother. The worst was the cattle car ride, and the platform in Auschwitz in which she and her sisters were separated from their mother, never to see her, or any other member of their family alive again. The worst was the year spent in concentration camp starving, trying desperately with her older sister Zipporah to keep their youngest sister Malka alive. I remember the stories she told me those Friday nights when my husband, her beloved only son, was away in the synagogue with his father. How she cut her slice of bread into tiny portions instead of eating it all at once, to save some for the next day, the willpower that took. How she managed to take bits of cloth and form them into collars that she bartered to other prisoners for food and other essentials. Her sisters and camp shvesters' called her by her Czech name, Magda.
And then there was the death march and the story of how she and her sisters and some friends took the life or death plunge to escape, hiding under hay in a hayloft, as the Germans stuck pitchforks in looking for them, until finally giving up. On the road, finally free, they found a crate. Starving, they pried it open. Inside was the finest French champagne, fallen off some German truck. They celebrated the end of their captivity by drinking it straight from the bottle still in the striped uniforms of Auschwitz. And then they found an empty house abandoned by the German family who lived there to escape the advancing Russians. Using the soap and towels left behind they heated water and bathed, seeing the color of their skin for the first time in many months.
Deciding to go to Israel, she and her two sisters waited for the Zionist organizers to bring them. But delay after delay made Magda lose hope. And so she decided to go home to see if anyone she knew had survived. Leaving her sisters behind, she traveled by train to her home town. But, she said later, she couldn't bring herself to look her neighbors in the face,
remembering how they had lined up to watch her family being taken away, smirking with satisfaction. She boarded the next train out, taking it down the line to where the Sudenten Germans had been chased out, leaving behind houses the government was handing over to refugees like herself. By chance, my father-in-law got off at this same stop. He had also gone home
to see if his wife or son and daughter had survived. Finding proof that Auschwitz had taken his entire family, and that his neighbors had helped themselves to all his belongings, he went house to house gathering his possessions together, then left them in the wagon, handing them over to the wagon driver as he hopped the next train out.
Fate brought them together. And they brought each other love, comfort and the hope for a new beginning.
Eventually, they wound up in New York City, working as a tailor and a seamstress. There she was known as Shirley. They raised a son and a daughter. They achieved the American dream, owning a home. And when their son married and moved to Israel, they decided to join him.
Those were, they always said, the best years of their lives. They owned a lovely apartment in Netanya near the sea, and spent their time being grandparents, enjoying their many friends, or volunteering for good causes.
When we say Yizkor for her, we will use the name Shaindel, the name her parents gave her. But I always called her "Mom." And my kids called her "Bubbee." She was a wonderful, giving person as well as a tough cookie. Though not always easy to accept, her criticism came from love and from wanting things to be better for those she loved, in the way she understood
it. We loved her very much. May her name and memory be blessed.
--
Naomi
Check out my new book on Amazon -
http://tinyurl.com/39r5j5v
The Crime of Building a House at site of Shepherd Hotel in Jerusalem
Daniel Greenfield (Sultan Knish)
In Niger, two Frenchmen were murdered by their Islamic kidnappers. Saudi Arabia sentenced a 23 year old girl who was gang raped to a year in prison and 100 lashes. Iran arrested two dozen Christians for the crime of being well… Christians. Which of these awful things did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU’s Red Baroness Ashton forcefully condemn?
The answer is none of them.
Instead they forcefully and vigorously condemned the demolition of a hotel built by a Muslim Nazi collaborator and now owned by an American-Jewish businessman who bought it in order to build an apartment complex on the spot. An apartment complex for a mere 20 families that is somehow worse than all the aforementioned murders and atrocities. So much worse that they demanded the personal intervention of the highest diplomatic officials of the United States and the European Union. The Shepherd Hotel in Jerusalem is not the Plaza Hotel. It is a dilapidated neighborhood eyesore that has been abandoned since the 1980′s. No one lives in the Shepherd Hotel, a grim ugly fortress surrounded by barbed wire, that remains behind as a legacy of the Mufti of Jerusalem, who championed Hitler and helped recruit Muslims to serve in the SS. But with its demolition, people might actually begin to live on that spot. Children might actually play on ground that had been previously fenced off by barbed wire. And the worst thing of it all is that those people and their children will be Jews.
Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, might have been displeased to look up from the netherworld and behold the demolition of his hotel, but to see the representatives of the United States and the EU taking up his work and treating the demolition of his hotel as the gravest issue of the day would surely have cheered him up. If he had ever been worried that his work would die with a bullet in Berlin or when his Holy War Army, even with the support of seven Arab countries and half the British officer corps failed to drive the Jews into the sea during the War of Independence, the statements of Hillary Clinton and the EUSSR’s Red Baroness Ashton testify once again that the evil that men and muftis do lives on after them.
In her statement, Hillary Clinton said the United States is “very concerned” about the demolition of a Nazi collaborator’s abandoned hotel. In a world where North Korea and Iran are racing ahead to build nuclear weapons, Russia and China are racing to outstrip the United States in weapons development and the economy is on the brink– that is what the Obama Administration is “very concerned” about. That 20 Jewish families will be able to have homes in the capital of their own city.
Hillary Clinton chose to attack Israel from Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, a totalitarian regime whose own construction boom was built on slave labor imported from India. Where there are no political freedoms and where non-Muslim foreigners have few rights, if any. Where a video showed the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi torturing a man in ways too horrifying to describe, with the approval of the police and the judicial system over a debt. Where 42 percent of the prisoners are there for being indebted. The UAE is essentially a slave state, built on the backs of mostly non-Muslim migrant workers with no human or legal rights.
While in Abu Dhabi, Hillary Clinton might have called on its rulers to open up the system to democratic elections. She might have raised the issue of Western women who are raped in Dubai and then sentenced to jail for being raped. Or the case of Roxanne Hillier, who was sentenced to jail for just being in the same room as her male boss. It certainly would have been appropriate for Hillary Clinton to have challenged the UAE on its abusive treatment of female visitors and tourists. But none of that happened.
How dare the Jews bulldoze this man’s hotel?
Instead Hillary Clinton used the platform of a barbaric skyscraper studded dictatorship to denounce the only democracy in the region. In a speech more inspired by Monty Python, than any concern for human rights, she described the demolition of a long abandoned hotel as a “disturbing development” and warned that “this move contradicts the logic of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the parties on the status of Jerusalem”. Yet oddly enough, Arab construction does not contradict such an agreement, only Jewish construction does.
This is not about Israel vs Palestine. The population of Jerusalem, both Jew and Arab, are Israeli citizens. If the Shepherd Hotel were being demolished to build homes for Arab citizens of Israel, does anyone seriously believe that Hillary or the Red Baroness would be getting so worked up over it? It’s not the passport that makes the difference, but the race and the religion. And if so, it’s not Israeli roads that are Apartheid, but the policies of Obama and the EU which strive to carve out a new “Pale of Settlement” where Jews may and may not live.
The Red Baroness, who has been too busy ordering bulletproof limousines and dispatching dozens of EU diplomats to such trouble spots as Barbados for vital martini drinking assignments, to actually attend European Commission meetings– found time to blast Israel instead. Baroness Ashton has missed two thirds of the EC meetings, but she has found time to show her commitment to human rights by lobbying on behalf of the People’s Republic of China. She may have ignored the persecution of Christian Copts in Muslim Egypt– but when the Jews demolish an abandoned hotel, then by all of the EU’s stars, the Red Baroness is on the ball.
“I strongly condemn this morning’s demolition of the Shepherd Hotel and the planned construction of a new illegal settlement,” said Baroness Ashton. The “settlement” is somewhat confusingly a housing project being built in place of an existing hotel in one of the oldest cities of the world. But somehow the term “settlement” no longer means a new town in an unsettled region, it now simply means a place where Jews live. Or propose to live. As Nazi Germany termed some art as “Jewish art” and the Soviet Union euphemistically labeled some science as “cosmopolitan science”, the word “settlement” has become untethered from its literal meaning and instead become synonymous with a Jewish dwelling place.
While Baroness Ashton sent out her spokesman to condemn the attack on Christian Copts in Egypt and the assassination of Salman Taseer in Punjab, she personally declared her outrage over a hotel in which no one was killed, aside perhaps from a stray lizard or two sunning themselves on the nearby rocks. It’s rather clear where her priorities lie and it isn’t with the victims of Muslim terror, rather with its perpetrators. For that same reason, Hillary Clinton can’t be bothered to offer sympathy to the Western women raped in Dubai and raped again by its Muslim legal system, but lashes out over something as petty as the demolition of an abandoned hotel.
The EU’s Red Baroness
It was perfectly fitting for Hillary Clinton to deliver her condemnation of Israel from Abu Dhabi, one of the region’s centers of corruption, where oil money buys human slavery, and rape victims are sent to jail by the law of a Muslim tyranny. And the West keeps silent, rather than offend the fat greasy hands of the royals who control the pipeline. It was similarly fitting that the Red Baroness neglected representing her country, in order to come prancing down to Israel, berate the locals for not dismantling itself quickly enough to suit the rulers of those same oil rich countries, who pull the strings on those like Baroness Ashton, that the Soviet Union grew tired of playing with.
Hillary Clinton and the Red Baroness accuse Israel of obstructing peace negotiations by demolishing the Shepherd Hotel. But was there any serious prospect for negotiations before that? While the Mufti’s hotel still stood, then Israel was charged with obstructing peace by allowing Jewish families to build homes in Judea and Samaria. And during the 9 month construction freeze in which they were not allowed to do it– then Israel was charged with obstructing peace through its blockade of Gaza’s terrorists. And before Israel withdrew from Gaza, it was charged with obstructing peace by not withdrawing from Gaza. And before Israel liberated Gaza in 1967, it was still charged with obstructing peace by refusing to do one thing or another that the Arab Muslim regimes wanted from it. Israel is always under attack and always at fault. If not for one thing, then for another. And while women are gang raped and whipped by our friendly allies in the Gulf, Israel is charged with the terrible crime of building a house.
In Niger, two Frenchmen were murdered by their Islamic kidnappers. Saudi Arabia sentenced a 23 year old girl who was gang raped to a year in prison and 100 lashes. Iran arrested two dozen Christians for the crime of being well… Christians. Which of these awful things did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU’s Red Baroness Ashton forcefully condemn?
The answer is none of them.
Instead they forcefully and vigorously condemned the demolition of a hotel built by a Muslim Nazi collaborator and now owned by an American-Jewish businessman who bought it in order to build an apartment complex on the spot. An apartment complex for a mere 20 families that is somehow worse than all the aforementioned murders and atrocities. So much worse that they demanded the personal intervention of the highest diplomatic officials of the United States and the European Union. The Shepherd Hotel in Jerusalem is not the Plaza Hotel. It is a dilapidated neighborhood eyesore that has been abandoned since the 1980′s. No one lives in the Shepherd Hotel, a grim ugly fortress surrounded by barbed wire, that remains behind as a legacy of the Mufti of Jerusalem, who championed Hitler and helped recruit Muslims to serve in the SS. But with its demolition, people might actually begin to live on that spot. Children might actually play on ground that had been previously fenced off by barbed wire. And the worst thing of it all is that those people and their children will be Jews.
Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, might have been displeased to look up from the netherworld and behold the demolition of his hotel, but to see the representatives of the United States and the EU taking up his work and treating the demolition of his hotel as the gravest issue of the day would surely have cheered him up. If he had ever been worried that his work would die with a bullet in Berlin or when his Holy War Army, even with the support of seven Arab countries and half the British officer corps failed to drive the Jews into the sea during the War of Independence, the statements of Hillary Clinton and the EUSSR’s Red Baroness Ashton testify once again that the evil that men and muftis do lives on after them.
In her statement, Hillary Clinton said the United States is “very concerned” about the demolition of a Nazi collaborator’s abandoned hotel. In a world where North Korea and Iran are racing ahead to build nuclear weapons, Russia and China are racing to outstrip the United States in weapons development and the economy is on the brink– that is what the Obama Administration is “very concerned” about. That 20 Jewish families will be able to have homes in the capital of their own city.
Hillary Clinton chose to attack Israel from Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, a totalitarian regime whose own construction boom was built on slave labor imported from India. Where there are no political freedoms and where non-Muslim foreigners have few rights, if any. Where a video showed the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi torturing a man in ways too horrifying to describe, with the approval of the police and the judicial system over a debt. Where 42 percent of the prisoners are there for being indebted. The UAE is essentially a slave state, built on the backs of mostly non-Muslim migrant workers with no human or legal rights.
While in Abu Dhabi, Hillary Clinton might have called on its rulers to open up the system to democratic elections. She might have raised the issue of Western women who are raped in Dubai and then sentenced to jail for being raped. Or the case of Roxanne Hillier, who was sentenced to jail for just being in the same room as her male boss. It certainly would have been appropriate for Hillary Clinton to have challenged the UAE on its abusive treatment of female visitors and tourists. But none of that happened.
How dare the Jews bulldoze this man’s hotel?
Instead Hillary Clinton used the platform of a barbaric skyscraper studded dictatorship to denounce the only democracy in the region. In a speech more inspired by Monty Python, than any concern for human rights, she described the demolition of a long abandoned hotel as a “disturbing development” and warned that “this move contradicts the logic of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the parties on the status of Jerusalem”. Yet oddly enough, Arab construction does not contradict such an agreement, only Jewish construction does.
This is not about Israel vs Palestine. The population of Jerusalem, both Jew and Arab, are Israeli citizens. If the Shepherd Hotel were being demolished to build homes for Arab citizens of Israel, does anyone seriously believe that Hillary or the Red Baroness would be getting so worked up over it? It’s not the passport that makes the difference, but the race and the religion. And if so, it’s not Israeli roads that are Apartheid, but the policies of Obama and the EU which strive to carve out a new “Pale of Settlement” where Jews may and may not live.
The Red Baroness, who has been too busy ordering bulletproof limousines and dispatching dozens of EU diplomats to such trouble spots as Barbados for vital martini drinking assignments, to actually attend European Commission meetings– found time to blast Israel instead. Baroness Ashton has missed two thirds of the EC meetings, but she has found time to show her commitment to human rights by lobbying on behalf of the People’s Republic of China. She may have ignored the persecution of Christian Copts in Muslim Egypt– but when the Jews demolish an abandoned hotel, then by all of the EU’s stars, the Red Baroness is on the ball.
“I strongly condemn this morning’s demolition of the Shepherd Hotel and the planned construction of a new illegal settlement,” said Baroness Ashton. The “settlement” is somewhat confusingly a housing project being built in place of an existing hotel in one of the oldest cities of the world. But somehow the term “settlement” no longer means a new town in an unsettled region, it now simply means a place where Jews live. Or propose to live. As Nazi Germany termed some art as “Jewish art” and the Soviet Union euphemistically labeled some science as “cosmopolitan science”, the word “settlement” has become untethered from its literal meaning and instead become synonymous with a Jewish dwelling place.
While Baroness Ashton sent out her spokesman to condemn the attack on Christian Copts in Egypt and the assassination of Salman Taseer in Punjab, she personally declared her outrage over a hotel in which no one was killed, aside perhaps from a stray lizard or two sunning themselves on the nearby rocks. It’s rather clear where her priorities lie and it isn’t with the victims of Muslim terror, rather with its perpetrators. For that same reason, Hillary Clinton can’t be bothered to offer sympathy to the Western women raped in Dubai and raped again by its Muslim legal system, but lashes out over something as petty as the demolition of an abandoned hotel.
The EU’s Red Baroness
It was perfectly fitting for Hillary Clinton to deliver her condemnation of Israel from Abu Dhabi, one of the region’s centers of corruption, where oil money buys human slavery, and rape victims are sent to jail by the law of a Muslim tyranny. And the West keeps silent, rather than offend the fat greasy hands of the royals who control the pipeline. It was similarly fitting that the Red Baroness neglected representing her country, in order to come prancing down to Israel, berate the locals for not dismantling itself quickly enough to suit the rulers of those same oil rich countries, who pull the strings on those like Baroness Ashton, that the Soviet Union grew tired of playing with.
Hillary Clinton and the Red Baroness accuse Israel of obstructing peace negotiations by demolishing the Shepherd Hotel. But was there any serious prospect for negotiations before that? While the Mufti’s hotel still stood, then Israel was charged with obstructing peace by allowing Jewish families to build homes in Judea and Samaria. And during the 9 month construction freeze in which they were not allowed to do it– then Israel was charged with obstructing peace through its blockade of Gaza’s terrorists. And before Israel withdrew from Gaza, it was charged with obstructing peace by not withdrawing from Gaza. And before Israel liberated Gaza in 1967, it was still charged with obstructing peace by refusing to do one thing or another that the Arab Muslim regimes wanted from it. Israel is always under attack and always at fault. If not for one thing, then for another. And while women are gang raped and whipped by our friendly allies in the Gulf, Israel is charged with the terrible crime of building a house.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
New Palestinian conspiracy theories: Israel and US behind major crises in Arab world
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Blaming Israel, the Jews and America for the Arab world's problems, is a recurring theme of Palestinian ideology.
The latest Palestinian Authority libel accuses Israel of involvement in major international conspiracies to undermine Arab and Muslim countries, from Yemen to Sudan, all in order to distract international attention from what Palestinians call the "Palestinian cause." These conspiracy accusations were expressed by a senior PA official, the Director General of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's office, Abd Al-Rahim.
According to Abd Al-Rahim, Israel has orchestrated all of the following major destructive events in the Arab world:
1- the civil war in Lebanon
2- the division of Sudan
3- the civil strife in Yemen
4- the massacre of Christians in Iraq
5- the persecution of Palestinians in Iraq
Also blaming Israel for Arab world troubles, the General Union of Palestinian Writers, following the murder of Christian Copts in a bombing in Egypt, said that Israel was behind conspiracies against the Arab world, including Egypt:
"The conspiracies that are being concocted against Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and anywhere else in the world are proof that the Israeli occupation and the imperialist circles are still damaging the spirit of the [Arab] nation and its unity."
Joining the chorus of conspiracy accusations, Tawfiq Tirawi, member of the Fatah Central Committee, accused America of collaborating to attempt "to stir up civil strife" "in Arab countries, from Yemen to Sudan."
The following are excerpts from the three news items accusing Israel and America of conspiring against the Arab world, all from the official PA daily:
"There are other conspiracies which the occupation [Israel] plans so as to cause a decrease [in attention] to the Palestinian cause and to turn it into a secondary matter with no priority, such as the ethic-religious battle going on in Lebanon. There is a third [Israeli] conspiracy, which is the division of Sudan. In addition, there are Arab countries which are facing dangers, such as what is happening in Yemen and the existence of the so-called Southern Movement, the Houthis, and Al-Qaeda in Yemen... There are also the massacres being carried out against the Christian communities in Iraq, and what some regional groups have done to Palestinians in Iraq." He warned of additional [Israeli] conspiracies, whose aim is that our [Palestinian] cause will not be a top priority, all in accordance with a precise plan."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 4, 2011]
Headline: "The Writers' Union denounces the attack on the church in Alexandria"
"The General Union of Palestinian Writers, and Palestinian intellectuals both inside and outside [of Palestine], denounced the attack on the church in Alexandria, describing it as a cowardly attack aimed at lighting the fuse of strife and fighting between Muslim and Christian brethren in Arab Egypt...
The union said that the conspiracies that are being concocted against Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and anywhere else in the world are proof that the Israeli occupation and the imperialist circles are still damaging the spirit of the [Arab] nation and its unity, with the aim of ripping apart, dividing, and deflecting attention from what is most important."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 6, 2011]
"[Tawfiq] Tirawi [member of the Fatah Central Committee] denounced what happened in Egypt [reference to the terror attack at the Coptic Church in Alexandria, in which more than 20 people were killed, -Ed.] and what is happening in Arab countries, from Yemen to Sudan, carried out by foreign elements and with American collaboration, in an attempt to stir up civil strife, which our nation decries."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 5, 2011]
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Blaming Israel, the Jews and America for the Arab world's problems, is a recurring theme of Palestinian ideology.
The latest Palestinian Authority libel accuses Israel of involvement in major international conspiracies to undermine Arab and Muslim countries, from Yemen to Sudan, all in order to distract international attention from what Palestinians call the "Palestinian cause." These conspiracy accusations were expressed by a senior PA official, the Director General of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's office, Abd Al-Rahim.
According to Abd Al-Rahim, Israel has orchestrated all of the following major destructive events in the Arab world:
1- the civil war in Lebanon
2- the division of Sudan
3- the civil strife in Yemen
4- the massacre of Christians in Iraq
5- the persecution of Palestinians in Iraq
Also blaming Israel for Arab world troubles, the General Union of Palestinian Writers, following the murder of Christian Copts in a bombing in Egypt, said that Israel was behind conspiracies against the Arab world, including Egypt:
"The conspiracies that are being concocted against Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and anywhere else in the world are proof that the Israeli occupation and the imperialist circles are still damaging the spirit of the [Arab] nation and its unity."
Joining the chorus of conspiracy accusations, Tawfiq Tirawi, member of the Fatah Central Committee, accused America of collaborating to attempt "to stir up civil strife" "in Arab countries, from Yemen to Sudan."
The following are excerpts from the three news items accusing Israel and America of conspiring against the Arab world, all from the official PA daily:
"There are other conspiracies which the occupation [Israel] plans so as to cause a decrease [in attention] to the Palestinian cause and to turn it into a secondary matter with no priority, such as the ethic-religious battle going on in Lebanon. There is a third [Israeli] conspiracy, which is the division of Sudan. In addition, there are Arab countries which are facing dangers, such as what is happening in Yemen and the existence of the so-called Southern Movement, the Houthis, and Al-Qaeda in Yemen... There are also the massacres being carried out against the Christian communities in Iraq, and what some regional groups have done to Palestinians in Iraq." He warned of additional [Israeli] conspiracies, whose aim is that our [Palestinian] cause will not be a top priority, all in accordance with a precise plan."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 4, 2011]
Headline: "The Writers' Union denounces the attack on the church in Alexandria"
"The General Union of Palestinian Writers, and Palestinian intellectuals both inside and outside [of Palestine], denounced the attack on the church in Alexandria, describing it as a cowardly attack aimed at lighting the fuse of strife and fighting between Muslim and Christian brethren in Arab Egypt...
The union said that the conspiracies that are being concocted against Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and anywhere else in the world are proof that the Israeli occupation and the imperialist circles are still damaging the spirit of the [Arab] nation and its unity, with the aim of ripping apart, dividing, and deflecting attention from what is most important."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 6, 2011]
"[Tawfiq] Tirawi [member of the Fatah Central Committee] denounced what happened in Egypt [reference to the terror attack at the Coptic Church in Alexandria, in which more than 20 people were killed, -Ed.] and what is happening in Arab countries, from Yemen to Sudan, carried out by foreign elements and with American collaboration, in an attempt to stir up civil strife, which our nation decries."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 5, 2011]
Join Our Mailing List
Spanish government sponsors PA TV ad calling for boycott of all Israeli products
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
spanish boycottLast week Palestinian Authority TV started broadcasting an ad promoting the boycott of all Israeli products.
The ad is sponsored by the Spanish government, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and AECID - the Spanish governmental humanitarian aid development. The TV ad opens as a Palestinian boy enters a store and overhears a conversation. A customer informs the shopkeeper that "they're plastering the city with advertisements about boycotting Israeli goods." The shopkeeper argues that he has to offer Israeli goods because the Palestinian customers demand it. The customer agrees adding that "Israeli products are better than the local products."
The shopkeeper then ask the boy him what he wants. The boy looks at the Israeli products in the store and says: "I want Israeli chips." He takes the chips, walks to the door, and then hears gunfire, presumably from Israeli soldiers, and he decides that he will not buy Israeli goods. He looks to each side, drops the chips on the floor, returns to the shopkeeper and says: "I don't want the Israeli product, I want the Palestinian product."
The ad ends with this text on the screen:
"Don't prolong the occupation's life upon our land,"
while displaying the logo of the Palestinian NGO Health Work Committees, followed by the logos of the ad's sponsors:
"The Spanish government, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and AECID (Spanish governmental humanitarian aid development), ACSUR (a Spanish non-profit organization), and Canaan Joint Development Project for Jerusalem (Palestinian)."
The following is the full description and transcript of the PA TV ad calling for boycott of all Israeli products sponsored by Spain:
A boy enters a store and overhears a conversation.
Customer to shopkeeper: "Do you see them? They're plastering the city with advertisements about boycotting Israeli goods."
Shopkeeper: "I can't not bring in [Israeli products], because people ask for them."
Customer: "Israeli products are better than the local products."
Shopkeeper to the boy: "What do you want?"
Boy, after looking at Israeli products: "I want Israeli chips."
He takes the chips, walks to the door, and hears gunfire. He looks around, drops the chips on the floor, returns to the shopkeeper and says: "I don't want the Israeli product, I want the Palestinian product."
The advertisement ends by displaying the text: "Don't prolong the occupation's life upon our land," with the logo of the Palestinian NGO Health Work Committees, followed by the logos of the ad's sponsors:
The Spanish government,
the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
AECID (Spanish governmental humanitarian aid development),
ACSUR (a Spanish non-profit organization),
Canaan Joint Development Project for Jerusalem (Palestinian).
[PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 5, 2010]
spanish boycottLast week Palestinian Authority TV started broadcasting an ad promoting the boycott of all Israeli products.
The ad is sponsored by the Spanish government, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and AECID - the Spanish governmental humanitarian aid development. The TV ad opens as a Palestinian boy enters a store and overhears a conversation. A customer informs the shopkeeper that "they're plastering the city with advertisements about boycotting Israeli goods." The shopkeeper argues that he has to offer Israeli goods because the Palestinian customers demand it. The customer agrees adding that "Israeli products are better than the local products."
The shopkeeper then ask the boy him what he wants. The boy looks at the Israeli products in the store and says: "I want Israeli chips." He takes the chips, walks to the door, and then hears gunfire, presumably from Israeli soldiers, and he decides that he will not buy Israeli goods. He looks to each side, drops the chips on the floor, returns to the shopkeeper and says: "I don't want the Israeli product, I want the Palestinian product."
The ad ends with this text on the screen:
"Don't prolong the occupation's life upon our land,"
while displaying the logo of the Palestinian NGO Health Work Committees, followed by the logos of the ad's sponsors:
"The Spanish government, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and AECID (Spanish governmental humanitarian aid development), ACSUR (a Spanish non-profit organization), and Canaan Joint Development Project for Jerusalem (Palestinian)."
The following is the full description and transcript of the PA TV ad calling for boycott of all Israeli products sponsored by Spain:
A boy enters a store and overhears a conversation.
Customer to shopkeeper: "Do you see them? They're plastering the city with advertisements about boycotting Israeli goods."
Shopkeeper: "I can't not bring in [Israeli products], because people ask for them."
Customer: "Israeli products are better than the local products."
Shopkeeper to the boy: "What do you want?"
Boy, after looking at Israeli products: "I want Israeli chips."
He takes the chips, walks to the door, and hears gunfire. He looks around, drops the chips on the floor, returns to the shopkeeper and says: "I don't want the Israeli product, I want the Palestinian product."
The advertisement ends by displaying the text: "Don't prolong the occupation's life upon our land," with the logo of the Palestinian NGO Health Work Committees, followed by the logos of the ad's sponsors:
The Spanish government,
the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
AECID (Spanish governmental humanitarian aid development),
ACSUR (a Spanish non-profit organization),
Canaan Joint Development Project for Jerusalem (Palestinian).
[PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 5, 2010]
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
My Conclusion Is That You Simply Cannot Trust An Article By Isabel Kershner
Martin Peretz
She is not Walter Duranty, the New York Times’ fancifully favorable correspondent in the Soviet Union during the darkest years of Stalin’s rule. And she also is not Herbert Matthews, the Times’ ritual denier of Castro’s crimes in Cuba. To both of these journalists but not them alone (after all, we had I.F. Stone to put lies in our eyes during both regimes) we can credit the infatuation of many liberals and radicals with two of the differently paradigmatic communist tyrannies of the twentieth century.
Believe me, Isabel Kershner, the Times reporter who mostly covers the Palestinians, has few illusions about them and their leaderships. But her war is in Israeli politics where a battle won for the Palestinians in the New York Times is a battle lost by the Netanyahu government in Washington. Now, in God’s world, everybody’s life is worth anyone else’s. But if you read the Times online, you will find that Kershner’s reports of one Palestinian woman killed is more important than scores of human beings elsewhere. he particular tale I have in mind has been written up by Barry Rubin, a scholar of the Middle East and an essayist on the Palestinians. He and just about every other reliable journalist (some of them forced into retractions by the facts and only the facts) found Jawaher Abu Rahmah of Bilin died not from tear gas, which never kills, but from an overdose of medicine for cancer. Anyway, here’s the story.
A New Palestinian Lie About Israel and The Need to Discount Such Stories Systematically
By Barry Rubin *
January 4, 2011
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What happens when the New York Times publishes, with no investigation, an atrocity story about Israel that is not only false but ridiculously so, based on the most obvious starting point: death by tear-gas doesn't happen?
Well, much of the world media may not report it and the anti-Israel crowd won't believe it but the IDF has concluded on the basis of Palestinian hospital documents that the woman who allegedly died of tear gas poisoning in fact was being treated for cancer and died as a result of being overdosed with medicine. In other words, this isn't an Israeli war crime but a potential Palestinian malpractice suit.
That's why the death certificate has no medical diagnosis, there was no autopsy, and the body was quickly buried.
Let's assume that nobody wanted to take the IDF's word for it but conducted a serious investigation and reviewed the evidence. And let's say that it turns out what I've reported here and earlier turns out to be true.
Would a more general lesson be drawn and an end be put to the transmutation within hours of phony Palestinian tales about Israel into page-one news stories around the world? Probably not, but it would be nice to think that.
There's a long history of Palestinians (including the Palestinian Authority) making up atrocity stories that blame Israel and then having these widely disseminated by the mass media. This is one of the main factors leading to increased hatred or criticism of Israel. These tales are disproven but the facts never catch up with the lies. Here's a history of the phenomenon with a number of examples.
Now we have the first phony slander of 2011. You can check out the cartoon version also. The Palestinian Authority claims that Jawaher Abu Rahma, 36 years old, died during a demonstration, killed by "poison" in tear gas fired there by Israeli soldiers.
This was put out by Saeb Erakat, one of the main PA leaders, and the story was published as true by the French press agency (AFP), the Guardian and Associated Press (note the picture of the huge funeral given her as a "martyr" to an Israeli "war crime)," The Independent, UPI, Voice of America, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, China's news agency and main newspaper, and also in important Dutch newspapers. And here's National Public Radio's usual obviously biased version. The BBC played up the story big, stating as a fact (it is still on their site with no hint that another side to the story exists) that she was killed by teargas.
Even the U.S. State Department apparently gets its information from reading misleading newspaper stories. Here's a round-up of the online reporting and an analysis of the incident appropriately entitled, "Repeating Palestinian Allegations without Evidence."
By the way, Saeb Erakat was the man who claimed that Israel massacred 500 Palestinians in Jenin, a claim that was massively covered in the media and turned out (as even the UN admits) to be a total lie for which he had no evidence at all.
And so, these publications reported as fact something about which they had zero direct knowledge merely because partisan Palestinian sources--with a bad track record due to past misstatements of fact--claimed it.
So far, as I can discover, only AFP has even published additional information showing the story might be false or even mentioning the results of the IDF's quick, detailed investigation of the incident in anything approaching a balanced account.
A day later the New York Times did deign to take notice in an article that presented every Palestinian claim as fact while the journalist challenged every point on the other side. [See detailed critique of this article in Reference Material, below]
[Update: The Times has finally run a story pointing out some of the contradictions in this story written about by us bloggers.]
Will any of these places publish a prominent correction or a balanced story? Will any of them learn anything from this experience, though they haven't from dozens of previous, precisely-the-same experiences?
[On the other hand, the Washington Post has usually done a better job on this kind of thing. Here's an article about past anti-Israel propaganda scams published there in 1997. Why hasn't the mass media caught up with this issue 13 years later?]
Let's suppose that she had participated in the demonstration, the Israeli troops had fired tear gas, and she had died. That would hardly be a war crime since police and military forces around the world routinely use tear gas. There was obviously no intent to kill anyone or even injure them. So it is a non-story to start with in terms of any evil-doing.
But it is also based on a series of lies. In fact, it is impossible for any normal person to die from tear gas in an open area. There is no recorded incident of this happening in any country. But that's only the beginning of the truth, explained also here and here. The woman was not even at the demonstration itself where she was supposedly killed--according to her cousin and mother--though she might have been in the general area (where tear gas concentrations would be even lower).
Equally, the PA refused to produce any medical record and there is no emergency room report at all. The Palestinian story about her medical history keeps changing. The family says that she went to the hospital from home, not the demonstration (another contradiction), making it less credible that her death came from tear gas since even a short time outside the place of highest concentration dispels symptoms. Moreover, she had been given a CAT scan previously, implying she had some serious health problem.
What the hospital records for the day of the demonstration do show--obtianed by Ha'aretz and others--is that two people were taken there with light injuries and released. She wasn't one of them. Only later did the story change and it was claimed that she had died. Studying the videotape of the demonstration doesn't show any picture of her there. In fact, according to videotapes she had not participated in previous demonstrations there either.
And what does the PA death certificate say? "Cause of death: Inhaling gas of an Israeli soldier according to the family." But there was no autopsy, no certification of that cause of death by a doctor, and she was buried with suspicious speed, quite the opposite of what would happen if the Palestinians thought they had a real case.
The Palestinian claim that the demonstrations there were peaceful is also not true. Here is the IDF's response on that point:
"In 2009, there were weekly riots in both Nil'in and Bil'in every Friday, with the exception of 18.12.2009 in Nil'in. Every one of these protests has featured violence on the part of the protesters, for the most part that entails rock throwing, although firebombs, and burning tires are also a frequent occurrence.
"These riots have been taking place on a regular basis at both locations for the past two years. In 2009, 57 defense force personnel were injured by rioters. The security forces take standard riot dispersal measures when the riots turn violent and in 2009 they arrested 20 rioters in Nil'in and 20 in Bil'in.
"On several occasions during these riots, defense force personnel were seriously injured. In January, a Nil'in rioter hurled a rock, hitting a reservist in the face, causing permanent damage to his eye socket. In another incident during a Nil'in riot in April, both an IDF officer and Border Police officer were seriously injured by hurled rocks and had to be taken to a hospital to treat their facial injuries."
Oh, by the way, her brother, Rahman, is a militant anti-Israel activist who was leading the demonstration. Presumably he is the source of this claim.
So that's the bottom line: The whole worldwide story and still another blood libel is based on...zero evidence.
As you've probably guessed by now, however, few people--and most incredibly of all, very few if any journalists--are going to read this article or go through all of this evidence.
That's precisely my point: Anti-Israel sources can produce an infinite number of these stories that take time and a detailed explanation to debunk. And then nobody will pay any attention to such responses. That's why this kind of thing should be systematically discounted and not reported unless some real evidence is offered that there is any truth in the accusation.
The huge anti-Israel demonstration at her funeral and mass media coverage shows us that Abu Rahma will be remembered as a Palestinian martyr to an Israeli war crime. She will also figure anonymously in the statistics intended to prove how evil Israel behaves. In future, people might be killed in terrorist attacks intended to revenge her death. And so on.
Only when it is understood in general that the Palestinian Authority and such sources as extremist anti-Israel activists who happen to be Jewish do everything possible in order to slander Israel--and that none of these claims should be accepted unless accompanied by real proof--will the situation improve. Haven't the mass media and others had enough lessons that they should discount such claims?
Here, here, and here are some sources on the story. But these are all on blogs that will be read by hundreds or a few thousands. The credulous behavior of spreading anti-Israel propaganda and making it credible for a big audience is on mass media outlets read or seen by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
Again, what is needed is not the obligation to disprove these wild stories one by one, but rather their being discredited as a group, in general, as a propaganda technique that no one should believe. There will be 365 days in 2011 but there will be far more than 365 information scams manufactured by the Palestinian And Friends propaganda machine.
Meanwhile, the mass media hardly ever reports what Palestinian leaders, media, and clerics actually say in Arabic unless it can be spun as proving moderation. Indeed, it barely reports that this month marks the second anniversary of the Palestinian Authority's refusal to negotiate with Israel.
Reference material:
Map of event
Tear gas and its medical effects: (Israel uses CS)
"CN, CS and CR cause almost instant pain in the eyes, excessive flow of tears and closure of the eyelids, and incapacitation of exposed individuals. Apart from the effects on the eyes, these agents also cause irritation in the nose and mouth, throat and airways and sometimes to the skin, particularly in moist and warm areas. In situations of massive exposure, tear gas, which is swallowed, may cause vomiting. Serious systemic toxicity is rare and occurs most frequently with CN; it is most likely to occur when these agents are used in very high concentrations within confined non-ventilated spaces. Based on the available toxicological and medical evidence, CS and CR have a large safety margin for life-threatening or irreversible toxic effects. There is no evidence that a healthy individual will experience long-term health effects from open-air exposures to CS or CR, although contamination with CR is less easy to remove." (emphasis added)
Analysis of NY Times follow-up article:
From: Leo Rennert [mailto:leorennert@verizon.net]
Sent: January 5, 2011 1:21 PM
To: public@nytimes.com; nytnews@nytimes.com; Ethan Bronner; SeniorEditor@nytimes.com
Cc: Isabel Kershner
Subject: NY TIMES JOURNALISM -- THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
T O: EDITORS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES:
On New Year's Eve, a weekly protest at a West Bank Palestinian village against Israel 's security barrier turned violent . The barrier was breached in three places and demonstrators hurled stones at Israeli security forces. Isreli troops responded by firing tear gas to disperse the crowd. The next day, Palestinian offcials announced that a Palestinian woman was sickened by the tear gas during the demonstration. taken to hospital and died on New Year's Day.
The New York Times published a dispatch by Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner on Jan. 2, which flatly declared that Israel 's use of tear gas had killed the woman. Kershner relied entirely on Palestinian accounts and failed to inform readers that the IDF has asked to be included in a joint investigation with Palestinian medical personel into the woman's death -- an offer immediately rejected by the Palestinian side.
In the ensurng couple or three days, Israeli military officials raised a series of questions about the circumstances of the woman's death -- whether she had other ailments requiring strong medications that might have been contributing factors. After all, there were about a thousan protesters at this weekly demonstration and nobody else seemed to have been seriously harmed or dealt a lethal blow from the tear gas. Israeli officials also pointed to nconsistencies in medical records released by Palestinian doctors, lack of an autopsy and a hurried process to get her quickly buried.
All these questions immediately received prompt attention from Israeli media. But the Times, like most Western media, kept silent. Until three news cycles later, on Jan. 5, when the paper published a follow-up dispatch by Kershner under a headline that reads : "Israeli Military Officials Challenge Account of Palestinian Woman's Death."
To a Times reader, the headline seems at first blush a welcome initiative by the Times to make up for its exclusive reliance on Palestinian sources in the original Kershner piece and finally present what Israel had to say. Better late than never.
Except that Kershner's story unfortunately does not comport with the straightfoward headline about Israel challenging the Palestinian account of the woman's death.
Instead, Kershner makes it clear that, in sum, she's more than willing to believe what the Palestinians tell her and to disbelieve what the Israerlis tell her.
So, she puts great weight on the fact that the Israeli account is based on unidentified sources -- something that otherwise doesn't bother Times correpondents very much -- and that Palestinian medical records about the woman's death are unassailably true.
Here's Kershner's lead paragraph:
"BILIN, West Bank -- Clashing narratives over the case of a 36-year-old Palestinian woman who died on Saturday is fast making her a new symbol of the enduring conflict here, with the Israeli military anonymously casting doubt on Palestinian accounts -- backed by medical documents -- that she died from inhaling tear gas."
Quite a clumsny, convoluted lead -- but it tells us where Kershner is headed. Note Kershner's emphasis on the anonymity of Israeli sources and the presumed reliability of Palestinian "medical documents."
In fact, a few paragraphs farther down, Kershner preemptorily dismisses Israel 's slepticism about the Palestinian account of events as based on "anonymous conjectures."
When Israeli officials question whether the woman had pre-existing medical conditions that might have contribured to her death or whether there had been medical negligence in the treatment she received from Palestinian doctors, Kershner will have none of it.
"Dr. Mohammed Aideh," she writes, "said her death was caused by 'unknown gas inhalation' after an 'attack by Israeli soldiers as the family said.'''
Here's a Palestinian doctor filling a death certificate and he finds it obligatory to stress that everything happened "as the family said." The official Palestinian narrative already was in full sway and this doctor felt obliged to fall in line. Yet, this doesn't register with Kershner that the doctor might have been coached in what he was supposed to write. After all, what reputable medical examiner would go out of his way to signal that his conclusions were based on what "the family said"? Kershner, however, swallows this Palestinian doctor's report hook, line and sinker.
Kershner would have Times readers believe that there were just two "narratives" about the woman's death -- a credible Palestinian one and a conjectural Israeli one. Actually,therre are three "narratives" in her piece. Not just what the Palestinians said and what the Isrelis said, but Kershner's own narrative that tilts heavyily toward the Palestinian side and is thoroughly dismissive of questions raised by IDF officials.
I was not in Bilin when this incident occured. Neither was Kershner. Short of exhuming the woman's body for a thorough post-mortem, there can be no certainty about this event. Under these circimstances, when faced with conflicting versions, it behooves a news reporter to dispasionately lay out what one side claims and what the other side claims. But this is not Kershner's modus operandi. She's determined to ram her "truth" down readers' throats.
When it comes to Palestinian veracity, there's also no awareness on her part that, while Israeli officials may occasionally fall a bit short, that's nothing compared to the shameless lies that are part of the Palestinians' stock in trade. After all, the doctor who signed the death certificate works for a regime that, as part of its official creed, proclaims that Jews have no historical or religious ties to Jerusalem and that Jesus was a Palestinian.
With that kind of a record, one would think that any journalist would take with a grain of salt any self-serving Palestinian assertions when reporting second-hand abput a disputed, murkey event. But not Kershner, who vouches for Palestinian veracity without batting an eye.
Bottom line: The only part of this Times report that qualifies as good journalism is the headline. The bad part is Kershner's determination to steer readers to believe the Palestinian version and dismiss as "anonymous conjectures" important points and questions raised by Israel . The ugly part is that Kershner and the Times peddle such blatant editorializing as fair, accurate and objective news reporting.
LEO RENNERT
She is not Walter Duranty, the New York Times’ fancifully favorable correspondent in the Soviet Union during the darkest years of Stalin’s rule. And she also is not Herbert Matthews, the Times’ ritual denier of Castro’s crimes in Cuba. To both of these journalists but not them alone (after all, we had I.F. Stone to put lies in our eyes during both regimes) we can credit the infatuation of many liberals and radicals with two of the differently paradigmatic communist tyrannies of the twentieth century.
Believe me, Isabel Kershner, the Times reporter who mostly covers the Palestinians, has few illusions about them and their leaderships. But her war is in Israeli politics where a battle won for the Palestinians in the New York Times is a battle lost by the Netanyahu government in Washington. Now, in God’s world, everybody’s life is worth anyone else’s. But if you read the Times online, you will find that Kershner’s reports of one Palestinian woman killed is more important than scores of human beings elsewhere. he particular tale I have in mind has been written up by Barry Rubin, a scholar of the Middle East and an essayist on the Palestinians. He and just about every other reliable journalist (some of them forced into retractions by the facts and only the facts) found Jawaher Abu Rahmah of Bilin died not from tear gas, which never kills, but from an overdose of medicine for cancer. Anyway, here’s the story.
A New Palestinian Lie About Israel and The Need to Discount Such Stories Systematically
By Barry Rubin *
January 4, 2011
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What happens when the New York Times publishes, with no investigation, an atrocity story about Israel that is not only false but ridiculously so, based on the most obvious starting point: death by tear-gas doesn't happen?
Well, much of the world media may not report it and the anti-Israel crowd won't believe it but the IDF has concluded on the basis of Palestinian hospital documents that the woman who allegedly died of tear gas poisoning in fact was being treated for cancer and died as a result of being overdosed with medicine. In other words, this isn't an Israeli war crime but a potential Palestinian malpractice suit.
That's why the death certificate has no medical diagnosis, there was no autopsy, and the body was quickly buried.
Let's assume that nobody wanted to take the IDF's word for it but conducted a serious investigation and reviewed the evidence. And let's say that it turns out what I've reported here and earlier turns out to be true.
Would a more general lesson be drawn and an end be put to the transmutation within hours of phony Palestinian tales about Israel into page-one news stories around the world? Probably not, but it would be nice to think that.
There's a long history of Palestinians (including the Palestinian Authority) making up atrocity stories that blame Israel and then having these widely disseminated by the mass media. This is one of the main factors leading to increased hatred or criticism of Israel. These tales are disproven but the facts never catch up with the lies. Here's a history of the phenomenon with a number of examples.
Now we have the first phony slander of 2011. You can check out the cartoon version also. The Palestinian Authority claims that Jawaher Abu Rahma, 36 years old, died during a demonstration, killed by "poison" in tear gas fired there by Israeli soldiers.
This was put out by Saeb Erakat, one of the main PA leaders, and the story was published as true by the French press agency (AFP), the Guardian and Associated Press (note the picture of the huge funeral given her as a "martyr" to an Israeli "war crime)," The Independent, UPI, Voice of America, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, China's news agency and main newspaper, and also in important Dutch newspapers. And here's National Public Radio's usual obviously biased version. The BBC played up the story big, stating as a fact (it is still on their site with no hint that another side to the story exists) that she was killed by teargas.
Even the U.S. State Department apparently gets its information from reading misleading newspaper stories. Here's a round-up of the online reporting and an analysis of the incident appropriately entitled, "Repeating Palestinian Allegations without Evidence."
By the way, Saeb Erakat was the man who claimed that Israel massacred 500 Palestinians in Jenin, a claim that was massively covered in the media and turned out (as even the UN admits) to be a total lie for which he had no evidence at all.
And so, these publications reported as fact something about which they had zero direct knowledge merely because partisan Palestinian sources--with a bad track record due to past misstatements of fact--claimed it.
So far, as I can discover, only AFP has even published additional information showing the story might be false or even mentioning the results of the IDF's quick, detailed investigation of the incident in anything approaching a balanced account.
A day later the New York Times did deign to take notice in an article that presented every Palestinian claim as fact while the journalist challenged every point on the other side. [See detailed critique of this article in Reference Material, below]
[Update: The Times has finally run a story pointing out some of the contradictions in this story written about by us bloggers.]
Will any of these places publish a prominent correction or a balanced story? Will any of them learn anything from this experience, though they haven't from dozens of previous, precisely-the-same experiences?
[On the other hand, the Washington Post has usually done a better job on this kind of thing. Here's an article about past anti-Israel propaganda scams published there in 1997. Why hasn't the mass media caught up with this issue 13 years later?]
Let's suppose that she had participated in the demonstration, the Israeli troops had fired tear gas, and she had died. That would hardly be a war crime since police and military forces around the world routinely use tear gas. There was obviously no intent to kill anyone or even injure them. So it is a non-story to start with in terms of any evil-doing.
But it is also based on a series of lies. In fact, it is impossible for any normal person to die from tear gas in an open area. There is no recorded incident of this happening in any country. But that's only the beginning of the truth, explained also here and here. The woman was not even at the demonstration itself where she was supposedly killed--according to her cousin and mother--though she might have been in the general area (where tear gas concentrations would be even lower).
Equally, the PA refused to produce any medical record and there is no emergency room report at all. The Palestinian story about her medical history keeps changing. The family says that she went to the hospital from home, not the demonstration (another contradiction), making it less credible that her death came from tear gas since even a short time outside the place of highest concentration dispels symptoms. Moreover, she had been given a CAT scan previously, implying she had some serious health problem.
What the hospital records for the day of the demonstration do show--obtianed by Ha'aretz and others--is that two people were taken there with light injuries and released. She wasn't one of them. Only later did the story change and it was claimed that she had died. Studying the videotape of the demonstration doesn't show any picture of her there. In fact, according to videotapes she had not participated in previous demonstrations there either.
And what does the PA death certificate say? "Cause of death: Inhaling gas of an Israeli soldier according to the family." But there was no autopsy, no certification of that cause of death by a doctor, and she was buried with suspicious speed, quite the opposite of what would happen if the Palestinians thought they had a real case.
The Palestinian claim that the demonstrations there were peaceful is also not true. Here is the IDF's response on that point:
"In 2009, there were weekly riots in both Nil'in and Bil'in every Friday, with the exception of 18.12.2009 in Nil'in. Every one of these protests has featured violence on the part of the protesters, for the most part that entails rock throwing, although firebombs, and burning tires are also a frequent occurrence.
"These riots have been taking place on a regular basis at both locations for the past two years. In 2009, 57 defense force personnel were injured by rioters. The security forces take standard riot dispersal measures when the riots turn violent and in 2009 they arrested 20 rioters in Nil'in and 20 in Bil'in.
"On several occasions during these riots, defense force personnel were seriously injured. In January, a Nil'in rioter hurled a rock, hitting a reservist in the face, causing permanent damage to his eye socket. In another incident during a Nil'in riot in April, both an IDF officer and Border Police officer were seriously injured by hurled rocks and had to be taken to a hospital to treat their facial injuries."
Oh, by the way, her brother, Rahman, is a militant anti-Israel activist who was leading the demonstration. Presumably he is the source of this claim.
So that's the bottom line: The whole worldwide story and still another blood libel is based on...zero evidence.
As you've probably guessed by now, however, few people--and most incredibly of all, very few if any journalists--are going to read this article or go through all of this evidence.
That's precisely my point: Anti-Israel sources can produce an infinite number of these stories that take time and a detailed explanation to debunk. And then nobody will pay any attention to such responses. That's why this kind of thing should be systematically discounted and not reported unless some real evidence is offered that there is any truth in the accusation.
The huge anti-Israel demonstration at her funeral and mass media coverage shows us that Abu Rahma will be remembered as a Palestinian martyr to an Israeli war crime. She will also figure anonymously in the statistics intended to prove how evil Israel behaves. In future, people might be killed in terrorist attacks intended to revenge her death. And so on.
Only when it is understood in general that the Palestinian Authority and such sources as extremist anti-Israel activists who happen to be Jewish do everything possible in order to slander Israel--and that none of these claims should be accepted unless accompanied by real proof--will the situation improve. Haven't the mass media and others had enough lessons that they should discount such claims?
Here, here, and here are some sources on the story. But these are all on blogs that will be read by hundreds or a few thousands. The credulous behavior of spreading anti-Israel propaganda and making it credible for a big audience is on mass media outlets read or seen by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
Again, what is needed is not the obligation to disprove these wild stories one by one, but rather their being discredited as a group, in general, as a propaganda technique that no one should believe. There will be 365 days in 2011 but there will be far more than 365 information scams manufactured by the Palestinian And Friends propaganda machine.
Meanwhile, the mass media hardly ever reports what Palestinian leaders, media, and clerics actually say in Arabic unless it can be spun as proving moderation. Indeed, it barely reports that this month marks the second anniversary of the Palestinian Authority's refusal to negotiate with Israel.
Reference material:
Map of event
Tear gas and its medical effects: (Israel uses CS)
"CN, CS and CR cause almost instant pain in the eyes, excessive flow of tears and closure of the eyelids, and incapacitation of exposed individuals. Apart from the effects on the eyes, these agents also cause irritation in the nose and mouth, throat and airways and sometimes to the skin, particularly in moist and warm areas. In situations of massive exposure, tear gas, which is swallowed, may cause vomiting. Serious systemic toxicity is rare and occurs most frequently with CN; it is most likely to occur when these agents are used in very high concentrations within confined non-ventilated spaces. Based on the available toxicological and medical evidence, CS and CR have a large safety margin for life-threatening or irreversible toxic effects. There is no evidence that a healthy individual will experience long-term health effects from open-air exposures to CS or CR, although contamination with CR is less easy to remove." (emphasis added)
Analysis of NY Times follow-up article:
From: Leo Rennert [mailto:leorennert@verizon.net]
Sent: January 5, 2011 1:21 PM
To: public@nytimes.com; nytnews@nytimes.com; Ethan Bronner; SeniorEditor@nytimes.com
Cc: Isabel Kershner
Subject: NY TIMES JOURNALISM -- THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
T O: EDITORS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES:
On New Year's Eve, a weekly protest at a West Bank Palestinian village against Israel 's security barrier turned violent . The barrier was breached in three places and demonstrators hurled stones at Israeli security forces. Isreli troops responded by firing tear gas to disperse the crowd. The next day, Palestinian offcials announced that a Palestinian woman was sickened by the tear gas during the demonstration. taken to hospital and died on New Year's Day.
The New York Times published a dispatch by Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner on Jan. 2, which flatly declared that Israel 's use of tear gas had killed the woman. Kershner relied entirely on Palestinian accounts and failed to inform readers that the IDF has asked to be included in a joint investigation with Palestinian medical personel into the woman's death -- an offer immediately rejected by the Palestinian side.
In the ensurng couple or three days, Israeli military officials raised a series of questions about the circumstances of the woman's death -- whether she had other ailments requiring strong medications that might have been contributing factors. After all, there were about a thousan protesters at this weekly demonstration and nobody else seemed to have been seriously harmed or dealt a lethal blow from the tear gas. Israeli officials also pointed to nconsistencies in medical records released by Palestinian doctors, lack of an autopsy and a hurried process to get her quickly buried.
All these questions immediately received prompt attention from Israeli media. But the Times, like most Western media, kept silent. Until three news cycles later, on Jan. 5, when the paper published a follow-up dispatch by Kershner under a headline that reads : "Israeli Military Officials Challenge Account of Palestinian Woman's Death."
To a Times reader, the headline seems at first blush a welcome initiative by the Times to make up for its exclusive reliance on Palestinian sources in the original Kershner piece and finally present what Israel had to say. Better late than never.
Except that Kershner's story unfortunately does not comport with the straightfoward headline about Israel challenging the Palestinian account of the woman's death.
Instead, Kershner makes it clear that, in sum, she's more than willing to believe what the Palestinians tell her and to disbelieve what the Israerlis tell her.
So, she puts great weight on the fact that the Israeli account is based on unidentified sources -- something that otherwise doesn't bother Times correpondents very much -- and that Palestinian medical records about the woman's death are unassailably true.
Here's Kershner's lead paragraph:
"BILIN, West Bank -- Clashing narratives over the case of a 36-year-old Palestinian woman who died on Saturday is fast making her a new symbol of the enduring conflict here, with the Israeli military anonymously casting doubt on Palestinian accounts -- backed by medical documents -- that she died from inhaling tear gas."
Quite a clumsny, convoluted lead -- but it tells us where Kershner is headed. Note Kershner's emphasis on the anonymity of Israeli sources and the presumed reliability of Palestinian "medical documents."
In fact, a few paragraphs farther down, Kershner preemptorily dismisses Israel 's slepticism about the Palestinian account of events as based on "anonymous conjectures."
When Israeli officials question whether the woman had pre-existing medical conditions that might have contribured to her death or whether there had been medical negligence in the treatment she received from Palestinian doctors, Kershner will have none of it.
"Dr. Mohammed Aideh," she writes, "said her death was caused by 'unknown gas inhalation' after an 'attack by Israeli soldiers as the family said.'''
Here's a Palestinian doctor filling a death certificate and he finds it obligatory to stress that everything happened "as the family said." The official Palestinian narrative already was in full sway and this doctor felt obliged to fall in line. Yet, this doesn't register with Kershner that the doctor might have been coached in what he was supposed to write. After all, what reputable medical examiner would go out of his way to signal that his conclusions were based on what "the family said"? Kershner, however, swallows this Palestinian doctor's report hook, line and sinker.
Kershner would have Times readers believe that there were just two "narratives" about the woman's death -- a credible Palestinian one and a conjectural Israeli one. Actually,therre are three "narratives" in her piece. Not just what the Palestinians said and what the Isrelis said, but Kershner's own narrative that tilts heavyily toward the Palestinian side and is thoroughly dismissive of questions raised by IDF officials.
I was not in Bilin when this incident occured. Neither was Kershner. Short of exhuming the woman's body for a thorough post-mortem, there can be no certainty about this event. Under these circimstances, when faced with conflicting versions, it behooves a news reporter to dispasionately lay out what one side claims and what the other side claims. But this is not Kershner's modus operandi. She's determined to ram her "truth" down readers' throats.
When it comes to Palestinian veracity, there's also no awareness on her part that, while Israeli officials may occasionally fall a bit short, that's nothing compared to the shameless lies that are part of the Palestinians' stock in trade. After all, the doctor who signed the death certificate works for a regime that, as part of its official creed, proclaims that Jews have no historical or religious ties to Jerusalem and that Jesus was a Palestinian.
With that kind of a record, one would think that any journalist would take with a grain of salt any self-serving Palestinian assertions when reporting second-hand abput a disputed, murkey event. But not Kershner, who vouches for Palestinian veracity without batting an eye.
Bottom line: The only part of this Times report that qualifies as good journalism is the headline. The bad part is Kershner's determination to steer readers to believe the Palestinian version and dismiss as "anonymous conjectures" important points and questions raised by Israel . The ugly part is that Kershner and the Times peddle such blatant editorializing as fair, accurate and objective news reporting.
LEO RENNERT
Monday, January 10, 2011
"One More Hoax"
Arlene Kushner
They are without shame, and they didn't give up without a real fight: That is, with regard to the accusation by the PA that Israel had "killed" Jawaher Abu Rahma with tear gas in the course of the demonstration at the fence at Bil'in a little over a week ago.
When the IDF, examining the evidence that was available, raised doubts about the story, the response was furious and all sorts of "witnesses" came forward, people who had seen her at the demonstration choking on that tear gas.
But the IDF then acquired additional information, and it became clear that this woman -- for whom a "martyr's" funeral was staged -- had been lying in a hospital for ten days before her death and clearly was not at the demonstration. She died of cancer, and of the improper treatment she received. Picture it, my friends: A mother newly bereaved, probably having watched her daughter's deterioration from cancer over the course of several days prior, facing journalists and, in the midst of what we must assume to be deep grief, recounting a series of lies: Oh, I saw her, she was at the demonstration, and then came home unable to breathe. We want to pursue peace, but how can we when the Israelis act this way?
A bit unfathomable for some -- but the better you fathom it, the better you understand the enemy Israel faces. This mother, with her lies, was convinced that she was serving the larger Palestinian cause.
~~~~~~~~~~
At any rate, there was no "war crime" by Israel, even if PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said there had been.
This is one more instance of multiple such fraudulent instances that have occurred over the years. But, as Arutz Sheva pointed out: "...when their lies are discovered, the damage has already been done and the refutation of the story will receive less publicity than the original libel did."
That's why it's important for each of you to not only know the truth, but to speak out when the accusations against Israel continue. In fact, even if the accusations don't continue, but there is no retraction or follow-up story, it's important to set the record straight.
~~~~~~~~~~
If it's a peaceful demonstration, as Erekat said it was, why did the IDF find it necessary to use that tear gas? Once you see the video available here (the action starts at about 38 seconds), you will understand that it was anything but peaceful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hih2tVi3V4
Over the years that this has been going on, week in and week out, some 200 Israeli soldiers have been hurt by the peaceful demonstrators of Bil'in.
~~~~~~~~~~
I wrote the other day about the PA prison revolving door, and the fact that when six Hamas men -- including terrorist Wael Bitar -- were released, a PA official made the comment that they would have been let go sooner, but had been held for their own safety (meaning to protect them from Israel). I wondered then what had changed, that made the PA decide to accede to Hamas pressure and let them go. The answer, according to the spokesman for the Fatah (PA) forces, is that "Hamas said they would be responsible for the safety of the men...The detainees and their families signed a document stating that they are fully aware of the risks and that they alone bear responsibility."
What a perverted situation. Both Saeb Erekat and Namr Hammad, a political advisor to Abbas, said publicly that the PA keeps Hamas people in prison to protect them from Israel.
They are playing, of course, to Hamas, and not to Israel or the West, in which case they would be talking about how they do cooperative security with Israel.
~~~~~~~~~~
The IDF did capture these men-- including Bitar -- in an arrest raid in Hevron on Friday morning. In the course of the operation, another man, who lived in the building where one of the terrorists had been hiding, was shot and killed. He had reportedly made a sudden move, so that the soldiers thought he was reaching for a gun.
The PA governor of Hevron called the Israeli operation "a campaign of incitement." Incitement? He charged Israel with undermining the PA and sabotaging efforts to end the PA feud with Hamas by arresting these terrorists so quickly after the PA had arrested them.
Did I not say it was a perverted situation?
You will have noted that the issue of what the men in prison had done was totally ignored. But it always is.
~~~~~~~~~~
Oh, and there's something else dire that we're being accused of: Destroying chances for peace (which was about to break out any moment) by demolishing the Shepherd Hotel in the Shimon HaTzaddik-Sheik Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem.
The hotel and the land it is on are owned by Jews -- it was purchased legally, a full 25 years ago, by Irving Moskowitz -- American financier and major supporter of Jewish building in Jerusalem. It's not exactly as if it was torn from Arab hands yesterday. But what upsets the Arabs is that now that the hotel has gone down, 20 housing units for Jews will be constructed.
Noam Moskowitz
~~~~~~~~~~
Said Adnan Al Husseini, whom the Palestinian Arabs call "governor of Jerusalem": "This hotel is a symbol being ruined, and is sadly not the only one. Many more Palestinian homes will be razed, all this in the future Palestinian capital. If we thought there were some Israelis left who were interested in peace it's clear we were wrong."
Husseini is correct that a symbol is being ruined, but he doesn't realize how telling is his regret in this regard. For this was the home of Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WWII, a Nazi collaborator, and, not incidentally, a mentor to Arafat.
Daniel Luria, of Ateret Cohanim – which promotes Jewish settlement in Jerusalem -- was on the site as demolition took place and got it right. Said Luria:
"These sounds are special. It’s like destroying Hitler's or Himmler's home. Haj Amin al-Husseini collaborated with the Nazis and set up a Muslim department which was responsible for the murder of 90% of Yugoslavia's Jews. This man wanted to kill any Jew who lived in Israel and therefore nothing is more just and satisfying than demolishing this house.
"The Jews are now returning to our natural home; no one can claim that Jerusalem is not Jewish, and this particular spot is in the heart of Jerusalem. Some Arabs live here, but it is a Jewish area; Simon the Just (Shimon HaTzaddik) is buried here, Jews live right below, the Police Headquarters are located nearby (as are the Jewish areas of Ramat Eshkol, French Hill, and Mount Scopus). The natural process of the Jews returning home is continuing, and with G-d's help it will pick up even more steam."
To this, should we all say Amen!
Of course, the understanding of whose house this was won't stop the outcry from Europeans and other mindless Arab sympathizers who don't get it at all.
~~~~~~~~~~~
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
They are without shame, and they didn't give up without a real fight: That is, with regard to the accusation by the PA that Israel had "killed" Jawaher Abu Rahma with tear gas in the course of the demonstration at the fence at Bil'in a little over a week ago.
When the IDF, examining the evidence that was available, raised doubts about the story, the response was furious and all sorts of "witnesses" came forward, people who had seen her at the demonstration choking on that tear gas.
But the IDF then acquired additional information, and it became clear that this woman -- for whom a "martyr's" funeral was staged -- had been lying in a hospital for ten days before her death and clearly was not at the demonstration. She died of cancer, and of the improper treatment she received. Picture it, my friends: A mother newly bereaved, probably having watched her daughter's deterioration from cancer over the course of several days prior, facing journalists and, in the midst of what we must assume to be deep grief, recounting a series of lies: Oh, I saw her, she was at the demonstration, and then came home unable to breathe. We want to pursue peace, but how can we when the Israelis act this way?
A bit unfathomable for some -- but the better you fathom it, the better you understand the enemy Israel faces. This mother, with her lies, was convinced that she was serving the larger Palestinian cause.
~~~~~~~~~~
At any rate, there was no "war crime" by Israel, even if PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said there had been.
This is one more instance of multiple such fraudulent instances that have occurred over the years. But, as Arutz Sheva pointed out: "...when their lies are discovered, the damage has already been done and the refutation of the story will receive less publicity than the original libel did."
That's why it's important for each of you to not only know the truth, but to speak out when the accusations against Israel continue. In fact, even if the accusations don't continue, but there is no retraction or follow-up story, it's important to set the record straight.
~~~~~~~~~~
If it's a peaceful demonstration, as Erekat said it was, why did the IDF find it necessary to use that tear gas? Once you see the video available here (the action starts at about 38 seconds), you will understand that it was anything but peaceful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hih2tVi3V4
Over the years that this has been going on, week in and week out, some 200 Israeli soldiers have been hurt by the peaceful demonstrators of Bil'in.
~~~~~~~~~~
I wrote the other day about the PA prison revolving door, and the fact that when six Hamas men -- including terrorist Wael Bitar -- were released, a PA official made the comment that they would have been let go sooner, but had been held for their own safety (meaning to protect them from Israel). I wondered then what had changed, that made the PA decide to accede to Hamas pressure and let them go. The answer, according to the spokesman for the Fatah (PA) forces, is that "Hamas said they would be responsible for the safety of the men...The detainees and their families signed a document stating that they are fully aware of the risks and that they alone bear responsibility."
What a perverted situation. Both Saeb Erekat and Namr Hammad, a political advisor to Abbas, said publicly that the PA keeps Hamas people in prison to protect them from Israel.
They are playing, of course, to Hamas, and not to Israel or the West, in which case they would be talking about how they do cooperative security with Israel.
~~~~~~~~~~
The IDF did capture these men-- including Bitar -- in an arrest raid in Hevron on Friday morning. In the course of the operation, another man, who lived in the building where one of the terrorists had been hiding, was shot and killed. He had reportedly made a sudden move, so that the soldiers thought he was reaching for a gun.
The PA governor of Hevron called the Israeli operation "a campaign of incitement." Incitement? He charged Israel with undermining the PA and sabotaging efforts to end the PA feud with Hamas by arresting these terrorists so quickly after the PA had arrested them.
Did I not say it was a perverted situation?
You will have noted that the issue of what the men in prison had done was totally ignored. But it always is.
~~~~~~~~~~
Oh, and there's something else dire that we're being accused of: Destroying chances for peace (which was about to break out any moment) by demolishing the Shepherd Hotel in the Shimon HaTzaddik-Sheik Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem.
The hotel and the land it is on are owned by Jews -- it was purchased legally, a full 25 years ago, by Irving Moskowitz -- American financier and major supporter of Jewish building in Jerusalem. It's not exactly as if it was torn from Arab hands yesterday. But what upsets the Arabs is that now that the hotel has gone down, 20 housing units for Jews will be constructed.
Noam Moskowitz
~~~~~~~~~~
Said Adnan Al Husseini, whom the Palestinian Arabs call "governor of Jerusalem": "This hotel is a symbol being ruined, and is sadly not the only one. Many more Palestinian homes will be razed, all this in the future Palestinian capital. If we thought there were some Israelis left who were interested in peace it's clear we were wrong."
Husseini is correct that a symbol is being ruined, but he doesn't realize how telling is his regret in this regard. For this was the home of Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WWII, a Nazi collaborator, and, not incidentally, a mentor to Arafat.
Daniel Luria, of Ateret Cohanim – which promotes Jewish settlement in Jerusalem -- was on the site as demolition took place and got it right. Said Luria:
"These sounds are special. It’s like destroying Hitler's or Himmler's home. Haj Amin al-Husseini collaborated with the Nazis and set up a Muslim department which was responsible for the murder of 90% of Yugoslavia's Jews. This man wanted to kill any Jew who lived in Israel and therefore nothing is more just and satisfying than demolishing this house.
"The Jews are now returning to our natural home; no one can claim that Jerusalem is not Jewish, and this particular spot is in the heart of Jerusalem. Some Arabs live here, but it is a Jewish area; Simon the Just (Shimon HaTzaddik) is buried here, Jews live right below, the Police Headquarters are located nearby (as are the Jewish areas of Ramat Eshkol, French Hill, and Mount Scopus). The natural process of the Jews returning home is continuing, and with G-d's help it will pick up even more steam."
To this, should we all say Amen!
Of course, the understanding of whose house this was won't stop the outcry from Europeans and other mindless Arab sympathizers who don't get it at all.
~~~~~~~~~~~
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Recognizing Palestine
Ari Bussel
Five Latin American countries have already recognized Free, Independent Palestine: Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. American Friends for Peace Now estimates that 30 more countries around the world will recognize Palestine by the next United Nation’s General Assembly in September.
APN also laid down the path for recognition as espoused by the Palestinians. The Palestinians will come to the UN and invite its members to see a viable state, building itself from the very foundation, with security forces that oversee peace and order – in close coordination and cooperation with Israeli forces – transparency that fights corruption and a government that is by the people, for the people and removed from Hamas’ military fight against Israel. It seems a recipe for guaranteed approval.
I see Israel digging her own grave, and a new Palestine emerging from the very fertile graveyard ground that used to be Israel.
APN’s head even went as far as calling one of the Palestinians technocrats the new David Ben Gurion, building an actual state, with a vision for the future.
Only the vision does not stop at the mere act of creation of a Palestinian state. It is the prelude to the grand act of destroying any remnant of the Jewish state, exterminating the Jews and ridding the world of their continued existence once and for all. That is the true and sole purpose of the “Palestinian” exercise.
There are rumblings within Israel against the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian State, even admonitions of those countries who have already taken the path toward this eventuality. Others in Israel seem to have reached the conclusion this is already the de facto state of affairs, and the full recognition is just an upgrade of current status.
How should Israel respond? Is a free, independent Palestine a bad thing? Why is the declaration of a free, independent Palestine creating such a wrath?
Should Israel boycott the world as country after country rise to the challenge, raising its hand in support of Palestine? After all, would Turkey welcome a new Kurdistan sprouting from within its borders? How about the United States of America relinquishing California or Texas to Mexico? China and a free, independent Tibet? And the list goes on as Israel is held to a different standard.
Should Israel embrace the idea, since a majority of her citizenry support “two states for two people?” Will this misguided notion (“Peace on Earth” ushered as a result of the creation of Palestine) stand the test of reality or expose the naked truth with all its horrors, evilness and ugliness? Palestine is just a stepping-stone to Israel’s destruction and that is its sole purpose of existence.
How should Israel respond?
The Palestinians have made their intentions clear for some time. There were no secrets and the goals were declared explicitly. The package was put on display for all to see. By now, Israel should have had an action plan, other than “let us live and see how this thing plays out.” Acquiescing is interpreted as a sign of weakness. Allowing a Palestinian State to come into fruition is tantamount to allowing Iran have the bomb.
Excusing the status quo as inevitable is agreeing with the process, rather than responding to it. Likewise, those who say that parts of Jerusalem are de facto “Arab,” gravely mistake. They should highlight that Jerusalem is one city, Israel’s eternal capital, unified and indivisible, and work to stem out any misconceptions, misleading notions or action of the ground that creates such a divide.
Whereas Israel has been urging the world community to act against Iran, has it heeded its own advice? In many ways, Israel’s response (or lack there of) to the latest Palestinian move is no different than the world community’s failure to do anything at all to stop Iran.
I argue that a unilateral move by the Palestinians is a blessing in disguise to Israel, and the fact it will be fully supported by the world community is nothing but a reflection of the growing tsunami of anti-Semitism to which Israel must respond.
There is one way for Israel to respond. I am afraid, though, that Israel lacks the leadership, the courage and the conviction to carry it forward.
In response to the new free, independent Palestine, Israel must annex Judea and Samaria. If the former is ludicrous, the latter is long overdue and much more reasonable. To then achieve peace, or for it to be negotiated in earnest, there would be value assigned to Judea and Samaria, whereas today there is none – it is taken for granted not to belong to Israel, not to ever have belonged to her.
Israel must fight for her survival, for she exists in the land of her forefathers, from time immemorial to time everlasting. It is the land of no other, despite any illusions to the contrary.
Israel must call things by their name, and Judea and Samaria must stop to be “Occupied Territories” with Jewish towns and cities referred to as “Settlements.” Judea and Samaria is Israel’s heart and should be no different than any other region in Israel. Possibly if Israel treated it that way, others would concede, or at the very least listen.
The Middle East understands action, as does the world. There is no one “understood” more, or possibly feared, than the Russians or the Chinese who make no bones about their intentions or determination. Israel should follow suit and do what is good for her, and the only thing good for Israel is to wake up and fight for her own survival.
Judea and Samaria are as much a part of an imaginary “Palestine” as one tearing out another human being’s beating heart and holding it for display in one’s hand with a roar of joy. Just as such an action ensures the death of the person from whom the heart was removed, likewise, removing Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem from Israel would be a brutal deathblow to the Jewish State.
There is only one Jewish country in the world, in a place that has been its home for the past three millennia. Empires rose and fell, countries were created and others disappeared into the dustpan of history. Israel was and still remains. She alone has a claim over her land, and neither Israelis nor the world at large has the right, or the ability, to relinquish even an iota of this ownership to others.
Palestinian Authority’s latest attack against the Jewish State is good in so far as it will force Israel to respond to the reality she is trying to avoid. Annexing Judea and Samaria is an equally brilliant move that will force the world to recognize that Israel is not a laboratory in which experimentations are carried out on a live subject.
Judea and Samaria are the cornerstones of Israel, past present and future, and Israel will not allow anyone to tear her heart out or stab her to death; in theory at least.
The series “Postcards from America—Postcards from Israel” by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager is a compilation of articles capturing the essence of life in America and Israel during the first two decades of the 21st Century.
The writers invite readers to view and experience an Israel and her politics through their eyes, Israel visitors rarely discover.
This point—and often—counter-point presentation is sprinkled with humor and sadness and attempts to tackle serious and relevant issues of the day. The series began in 2008, appears both in print in the USA and on numerous websites and is followed regularly by readership from around the world.
© “Postcards from America — Postcards from Israel,” January, 2011
Five Latin American countries have already recognized Free, Independent Palestine: Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. American Friends for Peace Now estimates that 30 more countries around the world will recognize Palestine by the next United Nation’s General Assembly in September.
APN also laid down the path for recognition as espoused by the Palestinians. The Palestinians will come to the UN and invite its members to see a viable state, building itself from the very foundation, with security forces that oversee peace and order – in close coordination and cooperation with Israeli forces – transparency that fights corruption and a government that is by the people, for the people and removed from Hamas’ military fight against Israel. It seems a recipe for guaranteed approval.
I see Israel digging her own grave, and a new Palestine emerging from the very fertile graveyard ground that used to be Israel.
APN’s head even went as far as calling one of the Palestinians technocrats the new David Ben Gurion, building an actual state, with a vision for the future.
Only the vision does not stop at the mere act of creation of a Palestinian state. It is the prelude to the grand act of destroying any remnant of the Jewish state, exterminating the Jews and ridding the world of their continued existence once and for all. That is the true and sole purpose of the “Palestinian” exercise.
There are rumblings within Israel against the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian State, even admonitions of those countries who have already taken the path toward this eventuality. Others in Israel seem to have reached the conclusion this is already the de facto state of affairs, and the full recognition is just an upgrade of current status.
How should Israel respond? Is a free, independent Palestine a bad thing? Why is the declaration of a free, independent Palestine creating such a wrath?
Should Israel boycott the world as country after country rise to the challenge, raising its hand in support of Palestine? After all, would Turkey welcome a new Kurdistan sprouting from within its borders? How about the United States of America relinquishing California or Texas to Mexico? China and a free, independent Tibet? And the list goes on as Israel is held to a different standard.
Should Israel embrace the idea, since a majority of her citizenry support “two states for two people?” Will this misguided notion (“Peace on Earth” ushered as a result of the creation of Palestine) stand the test of reality or expose the naked truth with all its horrors, evilness and ugliness? Palestine is just a stepping-stone to Israel’s destruction and that is its sole purpose of existence.
How should Israel respond?
The Palestinians have made their intentions clear for some time. There were no secrets and the goals were declared explicitly. The package was put on display for all to see. By now, Israel should have had an action plan, other than “let us live and see how this thing plays out.” Acquiescing is interpreted as a sign of weakness. Allowing a Palestinian State to come into fruition is tantamount to allowing Iran have the bomb.
Excusing the status quo as inevitable is agreeing with the process, rather than responding to it. Likewise, those who say that parts of Jerusalem are de facto “Arab,” gravely mistake. They should highlight that Jerusalem is one city, Israel’s eternal capital, unified and indivisible, and work to stem out any misconceptions, misleading notions or action of the ground that creates such a divide.
Whereas Israel has been urging the world community to act against Iran, has it heeded its own advice? In many ways, Israel’s response (or lack there of) to the latest Palestinian move is no different than the world community’s failure to do anything at all to stop Iran.
I argue that a unilateral move by the Palestinians is a blessing in disguise to Israel, and the fact it will be fully supported by the world community is nothing but a reflection of the growing tsunami of anti-Semitism to which Israel must respond.
There is one way for Israel to respond. I am afraid, though, that Israel lacks the leadership, the courage and the conviction to carry it forward.
In response to the new free, independent Palestine, Israel must annex Judea and Samaria. If the former is ludicrous, the latter is long overdue and much more reasonable. To then achieve peace, or for it to be negotiated in earnest, there would be value assigned to Judea and Samaria, whereas today there is none – it is taken for granted not to belong to Israel, not to ever have belonged to her.
Israel must fight for her survival, for she exists in the land of her forefathers, from time immemorial to time everlasting. It is the land of no other, despite any illusions to the contrary.
Israel must call things by their name, and Judea and Samaria must stop to be “Occupied Territories” with Jewish towns and cities referred to as “Settlements.” Judea and Samaria is Israel’s heart and should be no different than any other region in Israel. Possibly if Israel treated it that way, others would concede, or at the very least listen.
The Middle East understands action, as does the world. There is no one “understood” more, or possibly feared, than the Russians or the Chinese who make no bones about their intentions or determination. Israel should follow suit and do what is good for her, and the only thing good for Israel is to wake up and fight for her own survival.
Judea and Samaria are as much a part of an imaginary “Palestine” as one tearing out another human being’s beating heart and holding it for display in one’s hand with a roar of joy. Just as such an action ensures the death of the person from whom the heart was removed, likewise, removing Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem from Israel would be a brutal deathblow to the Jewish State.
There is only one Jewish country in the world, in a place that has been its home for the past three millennia. Empires rose and fell, countries were created and others disappeared into the dustpan of history. Israel was and still remains. She alone has a claim over her land, and neither Israelis nor the world at large has the right, or the ability, to relinquish even an iota of this ownership to others.
Palestinian Authority’s latest attack against the Jewish State is good in so far as it will force Israel to respond to the reality she is trying to avoid. Annexing Judea and Samaria is an equally brilliant move that will force the world to recognize that Israel is not a laboratory in which experimentations are carried out on a live subject.
Judea and Samaria are the cornerstones of Israel, past present and future, and Israel will not allow anyone to tear her heart out or stab her to death; in theory at least.
The series “Postcards from America—Postcards from Israel” by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager is a compilation of articles capturing the essence of life in America and Israel during the first two decades of the 21st Century.
The writers invite readers to view and experience an Israel and her politics through their eyes, Israel visitors rarely discover.
This point—and often—counter-point presentation is sprinkled with humor and sadness and attempts to tackle serious and relevant issues of the day. The series began in 2008, appears both in print in the USA and on numerous websites and is followed regularly by readership from around the world.
© “Postcards from America — Postcards from Israel,” January, 2011
THE CHALLENGE OF PUBLIC DIPLOMACY VIS-A-VIS THE DELEGITIMISATION OF ISRAEL
Melanie Phillips
melaniephillips.com, January 3, 2011
Address to Ariel Conference on Law and Mass Media, 30 December 2010
As we all know by now, Israel has lost the battle for public opinion in the west. Even the Israel government is now acknowledging this fact. Israel and its defenders have been outclassed and outmanoeuvred in a war of the mind being waged on a battleground it never even acknowledged it was on.… The message [and] narrative promoted by Israel and its defenders misses the point of the attack being waged upon it…by a mile.
You cannot resist or overcome a threat unless you first understand its nature. The first thing to say is that this phenomenon is characteristic not just of the media animosity or economic or academic boycotts. It goes across the intelligentsia and political class, spreading well beyond the normal suspects on the left into the mainstream middle-classes.… The scale of this phenomenon is nothing short of a multi-layered civilizational crisis.
The west is experiencing a total inversion of truth evidence and reason. A society’s thinking class has overwhelmingly subscribed to an immoral, patently false and in many cases demonstrably absurd account of the Middle East, past and present, which it has uncritically absorbed and assumes to be true.
In routine, everyday discourse history is turned on its head; logic is suspended; and an entirely false narrative of the conflict is now widely accepted as unchallengeable fact, from which fundamental error has been spun a global web of potentially catastrophic false conclusions. This has led to a kind of dialogue of the demented in which rational discussion is simply not possible because there is no shared understanding of the meaning of language. So victim and victimiser, truth and lies, justice and injustice turn into their precise opposite.…
This madness is being promulgated through a global alliance between state and non-state actors--diplomats and journalists, politicians and NGOs and websites.… What Israel is up against is grossly--and fatally--underestimated and misunderstood.
The problem is that we are dealing with a pathology--to which we nevertheless respond as if it were rational behaviour. What’s happened is a pattern of thinking in the west which turns reality upside down. Remarkably, this in turn echoes a very similar inversion of reality within the Islamic world, where such inversion has a theological base.
Because Islam is considered perfect, its adherents can never do wrong. All their aggression is therefore represented as self-defence, while western/Israeli self-defence is said to be aggression. So in this Orwellian universe the enslavement of Muslim women is said to represent their liberation; democracy is a means of enslavement from which the west must be freed; and the murder of Israelis is the purest form of justice.
Furthermore, this is overlaid by the phenomenon of ‘psychological projection’ in which the Islamic world not only denies its own misdeeds but ascribes them instead to its victims. So while Muslims deny the Holocaust, they claim that Israel is carrying out a holocaust in Gaza. Antisemitism is central to Jewish experience in Europe; Muslims claim that ‘Islamophobia’ is rife throughout Europe. Israel gives all Jews the ‘right of return’ to Israel on account of the unique reality of global Jewish persecution; the Muslims claim a ‘right of return’--not to their own putative state of Palestine, but to Israel. They even claim that the Palestinians are the world’s ‘new Jews’.…
What is remarkable is that instead of treating this as a pathological deformity of thinking, the western progressive intelligentsia has largely embraced it as rational and true. And to a large extent this is because that same western intelligentsia has itself supplanted rationality by ideology--or the dogma of a particular idea.… Across a wide range of such issues, it’s no longer possible to have a rational discussion with the progressive intelligentsia, as on each issue there’s only one story for them which brooks no dissent. This is because, rather than arriving at a conclusion from the evidence, ideology inescapably wrenches the evidence to fit a prior idea. So ideology of any kind is fundamentally anti-reason and truth. And if there’s no truth, there can be no lies either; truth and lies become merely ‘alternative narratives’.
Moral and cultural relativism--the belief that subjective experience trumps moral authority and any notion of objectivity or truth--has turned right and wrong on their heads. Because of the dominant belief in multiculturalism, victim culture and minority rights, self-designated victim groups--those without power--can never do wrong while majority groups can never do right. And Jews are not considered a minority because--in the hateful discourse of today--Jews are held to be all-powerful as they ‘control’ the media, Wall Street and America.
So the Muslim world cannot be held responsible for blowing people up as they are the third world victims of the west; so any atrocities they commit must be the fault of their victims; and so the US had it coming to it on 9/11. And in similar fashion, Israel can never be the victim of the Arab world; the murder of Israelis by the Arab world must be Israel’s own fault.
So the way has been opened for mass credulity towards propaganda and fabrication. The custodians of reason have thus turned into destroyers of reason--centred in the crucible of reason, the university. All these different ideologies are utopian; in their different ways, they all posit the creation of the perfect society. That is why they are considered ‘progressive’, and people on the progressive wing of politics sign up to them. That helps explain the distressing fact that so many Jews on the left also sign up to Israel-hatred, since they too sign up to such utopian ideologies.
But when utopias fail, as they always do, their adherents invariably select scapegoats on whom they turn to express their rage over the thwarting of the establishment of that perfect society. And since utopia is all about realising the perfect society, these scapegoats become enemies of humanity. For Greens, such enemies of humanity are capitalists; for anti imperialists, America; for militant atheists, religious believers. Anti-Zionists turn on Israel for thwarting the end to the ‘Jewish question’: the redemption of western guilt for the persecution of the Jews--a guilt which can never be redeemed as long as the wretched Jews continue to make themselves the targets of attack.…
It cannot be stressed enough that the reason why those promoting genocidal bigotry are winning is that the western world has not sought to defeat them but instead has appeased them from the very start. In Palestine under the British Mandate, when the Arabs used terrorist violence to frustrate the will of the League of Nations in restoring the Jewish home, Britain rewarded them by offering them part of the Jews’ legal and moral entitlement. When the Arabs started hijacking planes, the west’s response was to invite them to the UN to plead their cause. And despite the Arabs’ repeated refus[al] to accept the two state solution, offered in the 1930s, in 2000 and under Ehud Olmert and their current refusal to negotiate at all, America punishes Israel for not making enough concessions to them--while giving a free pass to those who still refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist.
It is astonishing that the west expects Israel to make any concessions to such attackers at all. After all, forcing a country which has endured more than six decades of existential siege to give any ground to its attackers amounts to forcing such a victim to surrender. This is expected by the civilised world of no other country. Yet we are repeatedly told even by certain supporters of Israel that the Palestinians have a right to a state. Why? In any other conflict, such aggression forfeits any rights at all.…
The single greatest reason for the endless continuation of the Middle East impasse is that Britain, Europe and America have continuously rewarded the aggressor and either attacked the victim or left it twisting in the wind. That’s what needs to be said by Israel and its defenders. But Israel and its defenders themselves have been crippled or cowed by the false analysis of the enemy’s narrative. Even many of Israel’s friends spout the demonstrably absurd proposition that a Palestine state would solve the problem, that the impediment to a Palestine state is the ‘settlers’, but that Israel is not taking action to remove the ‘settlers’--and so therefore they too inescapably agree that Israel is the problem.
Israel and its defenders have been fighting on the wrong battleground: the one that has been chosen by its enemies. The Arabs brilliantly reconfigured the Arab war of extermination against Israel as the oppression by Israel of the Palestinians. That has transformed Israel from victim to aggressor--the reversal of reality which lies at the very heart of the western obsession with the ‘settlements’ and the territories.…
The Arab and Muslim world long ago realised if it set the narrative in its own image, it would recruit millions of fanatics to its cause and also confuse and demoralise its victims. In this it has wildly succeeded. There is therefore an overwhelming need for Israel to alter its strategy. Indeed, it needs to have a strategy.… The fact remains that both Israel and Diaspora Jews have to rethink. They have to realise they must start fighting on the battleground where the attack is actually being mounted against them. And the goal has to be to seize and retake the moral high ground. This strategy requires two different tactics: one for those who are capable of rational thought, and another for those who are not.
The first group comprises those who are not irrational but merely desperately ignorant. Much of the obsession with Israel’s behaviour is due to the widespread belief that its very existence is an aberration.… People believe that Israel was created as a way of redeeming Holocaust guilt. Accordingly, they believe that European Jews with no previous connection to Palestine…were transplanted there as foreign invaders, from where they drove out the indigenous Arabs into the West Bank and Gaza. These are territories which Israel is now occupying illegally oppressing the Palestinians and frustrating the creation of a state of Palestine which would end the conflict.
Of course every one of those assumptions is false. But from those false assumptions proceeds the understandable belief not just that Israel’s behaviour is unjust, illegal and oppressive but that it is unjust and oppressive by virtue of its very existence. For these people there is an urgent need for a proactive educational approach. No-one has ever told them that these beliefs are false--and when they are told, the effect is often transformative.…
For bigots, however, there is no point arguing with them. They are, by definition, beyond all reason. Their influence simply has to be destroyed. They have to be held to account for their lies and bigotry which should be forensically exposed. So Israel and its defenders should be demanding of the world why it expects Israel alone to make compromises with people who have tried for nine decades to wipe out the Jewish presence in the land and are still firing rockets at it.
They should expose the pretence of Britain or European countries which claim to have Israel’s security needs at heart but forbid it from using military means to defend itself.… Israel and its defenders should be asking why so-called friends in the west want a Palestine state, since once the IDF depart the disputed territories they will become in short order yet another Iranian-backed Islamic terrorist entity which will pose a further threat not just to Israel but to the west.
They should be asking why the EU is continuing to fund the genocidal incitement against Jews promoted by the Palestine Authority. They should be asking so-called ‘progressives’--including Jewish ‘progressives’--why they support the racist ethnic cleansing of every Jew from a future state of Palestine. They should be asking them why they are not marching against Hamas on account of its tyrannical oppression of Palestinians in Gaza. Why they are ignoring Arab and Muslim persecution of women and homosexuals.
Why they are not mounting a boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Mahmoud Abbas’s PA and Hamas, on account of Abbas’s Holocaust denial and the clear evidence of continuation of Nazi Jew-hatred in a direct line of descent from predecessors who were Hitler’s supporters in Palestine.
As for western Israel-bashers, Israel and its defenders should accuse them not of Jew-hating motives that cannot be proved but of absurdities and contradictions and untruths they cannot deny. They should ridicule them, humiliate them, destroy their reputations; boycott them, not invite them to social gatherings, show them disapproval and contempt. Treat them as pariahs. Turn their own weapons against them.
They should be telling the Jews’ own story of refugees and ethnic cleansing--the 800,000 Jews driven out of Arab lands after 1948, and who now make up more than half of Israel’s population. It’s good to see that at last Israel is beginning to bring this to the world’s attention.… At a stroke it takes the ground from under the feet of those demanding the ‘right of return’ for Arabs.
They should be holding Arab and Islamic democracy weeks on campus, to expose the oppression and persecution within that world against women, homosexuals and others. They should be singling out the Anglican church and the revival of ancient theological Jew-hatred being spread within the Anglican world by the Palestinian Christians of the Sabeel centre.… They should be campaigning against the UN and the hijacking of international law and human rights by anti-western, anti-Jewish and anti-Christian ideologues.
They should be confronting head-on the false claim that bigotry is confined to the right. They should be pointing the finger at the ‘progressive’ left to show how it is actually supporting the mortal enemies not just of Israel but the west. And they should be making this case to Israelis themselves, to counter the delegitimisation and ignorance in Israeli universities and to educate the Israeli young in their own national history.
In other words, both Israel and Diaspora Jews have to stop playing defence and go onto the offence. Israel has nothing to be defensive about or for which it needs to apologise. It is the enemies of Israel who are promoting injustice and the denial of international law and human rights. Playing defence intrinsically cedes ground to the enemy.…
In short, Israel and its defenders must understand that the tsunami of bigotry against Israel sweeping the west is intimately related to Israel’s seriously flawed diplomatic strategy. For years, Israel has been playing a defensive diplomatic game, which suggests inescapably that it has a case to answer.… It’s time for Israel to realise that military campaigns against its enemies are not enough. It has to call time on its false friends too, and start fighting both these and its more obvious enemies on the battleground of the mind.
melaniephillips.com, January 3, 2011
Address to Ariel Conference on Law and Mass Media, 30 December 2010
As we all know by now, Israel has lost the battle for public opinion in the west. Even the Israel government is now acknowledging this fact. Israel and its defenders have been outclassed and outmanoeuvred in a war of the mind being waged on a battleground it never even acknowledged it was on.… The message [and] narrative promoted by Israel and its defenders misses the point of the attack being waged upon it…by a mile.
You cannot resist or overcome a threat unless you first understand its nature. The first thing to say is that this phenomenon is characteristic not just of the media animosity or economic or academic boycotts. It goes across the intelligentsia and political class, spreading well beyond the normal suspects on the left into the mainstream middle-classes.… The scale of this phenomenon is nothing short of a multi-layered civilizational crisis.
The west is experiencing a total inversion of truth evidence and reason. A society’s thinking class has overwhelmingly subscribed to an immoral, patently false and in many cases demonstrably absurd account of the Middle East, past and present, which it has uncritically absorbed and assumes to be true.
In routine, everyday discourse history is turned on its head; logic is suspended; and an entirely false narrative of the conflict is now widely accepted as unchallengeable fact, from which fundamental error has been spun a global web of potentially catastrophic false conclusions. This has led to a kind of dialogue of the demented in which rational discussion is simply not possible because there is no shared understanding of the meaning of language. So victim and victimiser, truth and lies, justice and injustice turn into their precise opposite.…
This madness is being promulgated through a global alliance between state and non-state actors--diplomats and journalists, politicians and NGOs and websites.… What Israel is up against is grossly--and fatally--underestimated and misunderstood.
The problem is that we are dealing with a pathology--to which we nevertheless respond as if it were rational behaviour. What’s happened is a pattern of thinking in the west which turns reality upside down. Remarkably, this in turn echoes a very similar inversion of reality within the Islamic world, where such inversion has a theological base.
Because Islam is considered perfect, its adherents can never do wrong. All their aggression is therefore represented as self-defence, while western/Israeli self-defence is said to be aggression. So in this Orwellian universe the enslavement of Muslim women is said to represent their liberation; democracy is a means of enslavement from which the west must be freed; and the murder of Israelis is the purest form of justice.
Furthermore, this is overlaid by the phenomenon of ‘psychological projection’ in which the Islamic world not only denies its own misdeeds but ascribes them instead to its victims. So while Muslims deny the Holocaust, they claim that Israel is carrying out a holocaust in Gaza. Antisemitism is central to Jewish experience in Europe; Muslims claim that ‘Islamophobia’ is rife throughout Europe. Israel gives all Jews the ‘right of return’ to Israel on account of the unique reality of global Jewish persecution; the Muslims claim a ‘right of return’--not to their own putative state of Palestine, but to Israel. They even claim that the Palestinians are the world’s ‘new Jews’.…
What is remarkable is that instead of treating this as a pathological deformity of thinking, the western progressive intelligentsia has largely embraced it as rational and true. And to a large extent this is because that same western intelligentsia has itself supplanted rationality by ideology--or the dogma of a particular idea.… Across a wide range of such issues, it’s no longer possible to have a rational discussion with the progressive intelligentsia, as on each issue there’s only one story for them which brooks no dissent. This is because, rather than arriving at a conclusion from the evidence, ideology inescapably wrenches the evidence to fit a prior idea. So ideology of any kind is fundamentally anti-reason and truth. And if there’s no truth, there can be no lies either; truth and lies become merely ‘alternative narratives’.
Moral and cultural relativism--the belief that subjective experience trumps moral authority and any notion of objectivity or truth--has turned right and wrong on their heads. Because of the dominant belief in multiculturalism, victim culture and minority rights, self-designated victim groups--those without power--can never do wrong while majority groups can never do right. And Jews are not considered a minority because--in the hateful discourse of today--Jews are held to be all-powerful as they ‘control’ the media, Wall Street and America.
So the Muslim world cannot be held responsible for blowing people up as they are the third world victims of the west; so any atrocities they commit must be the fault of their victims; and so the US had it coming to it on 9/11. And in similar fashion, Israel can never be the victim of the Arab world; the murder of Israelis by the Arab world must be Israel’s own fault.
So the way has been opened for mass credulity towards propaganda and fabrication. The custodians of reason have thus turned into destroyers of reason--centred in the crucible of reason, the university. All these different ideologies are utopian; in their different ways, they all posit the creation of the perfect society. That is why they are considered ‘progressive’, and people on the progressive wing of politics sign up to them. That helps explain the distressing fact that so many Jews on the left also sign up to Israel-hatred, since they too sign up to such utopian ideologies.
But when utopias fail, as they always do, their adherents invariably select scapegoats on whom they turn to express their rage over the thwarting of the establishment of that perfect society. And since utopia is all about realising the perfect society, these scapegoats become enemies of humanity. For Greens, such enemies of humanity are capitalists; for anti imperialists, America; for militant atheists, religious believers. Anti-Zionists turn on Israel for thwarting the end to the ‘Jewish question’: the redemption of western guilt for the persecution of the Jews--a guilt which can never be redeemed as long as the wretched Jews continue to make themselves the targets of attack.…
It cannot be stressed enough that the reason why those promoting genocidal bigotry are winning is that the western world has not sought to defeat them but instead has appeased them from the very start. In Palestine under the British Mandate, when the Arabs used terrorist violence to frustrate the will of the League of Nations in restoring the Jewish home, Britain rewarded them by offering them part of the Jews’ legal and moral entitlement. When the Arabs started hijacking planes, the west’s response was to invite them to the UN to plead their cause. And despite the Arabs’ repeated refus[al] to accept the two state solution, offered in the 1930s, in 2000 and under Ehud Olmert and their current refusal to negotiate at all, America punishes Israel for not making enough concessions to them--while giving a free pass to those who still refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist.
It is astonishing that the west expects Israel to make any concessions to such attackers at all. After all, forcing a country which has endured more than six decades of existential siege to give any ground to its attackers amounts to forcing such a victim to surrender. This is expected by the civilised world of no other country. Yet we are repeatedly told even by certain supporters of Israel that the Palestinians have a right to a state. Why? In any other conflict, such aggression forfeits any rights at all.…
The single greatest reason for the endless continuation of the Middle East impasse is that Britain, Europe and America have continuously rewarded the aggressor and either attacked the victim or left it twisting in the wind. That’s what needs to be said by Israel and its defenders. But Israel and its defenders themselves have been crippled or cowed by the false analysis of the enemy’s narrative. Even many of Israel’s friends spout the demonstrably absurd proposition that a Palestine state would solve the problem, that the impediment to a Palestine state is the ‘settlers’, but that Israel is not taking action to remove the ‘settlers’--and so therefore they too inescapably agree that Israel is the problem.
Israel and its defenders have been fighting on the wrong battleground: the one that has been chosen by its enemies. The Arabs brilliantly reconfigured the Arab war of extermination against Israel as the oppression by Israel of the Palestinians. That has transformed Israel from victim to aggressor--the reversal of reality which lies at the very heart of the western obsession with the ‘settlements’ and the territories.…
The Arab and Muslim world long ago realised if it set the narrative in its own image, it would recruit millions of fanatics to its cause and also confuse and demoralise its victims. In this it has wildly succeeded. There is therefore an overwhelming need for Israel to alter its strategy. Indeed, it needs to have a strategy.… The fact remains that both Israel and Diaspora Jews have to rethink. They have to realise they must start fighting on the battleground where the attack is actually being mounted against them. And the goal has to be to seize and retake the moral high ground. This strategy requires two different tactics: one for those who are capable of rational thought, and another for those who are not.
The first group comprises those who are not irrational but merely desperately ignorant. Much of the obsession with Israel’s behaviour is due to the widespread belief that its very existence is an aberration.… People believe that Israel was created as a way of redeeming Holocaust guilt. Accordingly, they believe that European Jews with no previous connection to Palestine…were transplanted there as foreign invaders, from where they drove out the indigenous Arabs into the West Bank and Gaza. These are territories which Israel is now occupying illegally oppressing the Palestinians and frustrating the creation of a state of Palestine which would end the conflict.
Of course every one of those assumptions is false. But from those false assumptions proceeds the understandable belief not just that Israel’s behaviour is unjust, illegal and oppressive but that it is unjust and oppressive by virtue of its very existence. For these people there is an urgent need for a proactive educational approach. No-one has ever told them that these beliefs are false--and when they are told, the effect is often transformative.…
For bigots, however, there is no point arguing with them. They are, by definition, beyond all reason. Their influence simply has to be destroyed. They have to be held to account for their lies and bigotry which should be forensically exposed. So Israel and its defenders should be demanding of the world why it expects Israel alone to make compromises with people who have tried for nine decades to wipe out the Jewish presence in the land and are still firing rockets at it.
They should expose the pretence of Britain or European countries which claim to have Israel’s security needs at heart but forbid it from using military means to defend itself.… Israel and its defenders should be asking why so-called friends in the west want a Palestine state, since once the IDF depart the disputed territories they will become in short order yet another Iranian-backed Islamic terrorist entity which will pose a further threat not just to Israel but to the west.
They should be asking why the EU is continuing to fund the genocidal incitement against Jews promoted by the Palestine Authority. They should be asking so-called ‘progressives’--including Jewish ‘progressives’--why they support the racist ethnic cleansing of every Jew from a future state of Palestine. They should be asking them why they are not marching against Hamas on account of its tyrannical oppression of Palestinians in Gaza. Why they are ignoring Arab and Muslim persecution of women and homosexuals.
Why they are not mounting a boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Mahmoud Abbas’s PA and Hamas, on account of Abbas’s Holocaust denial and the clear evidence of continuation of Nazi Jew-hatred in a direct line of descent from predecessors who were Hitler’s supporters in Palestine.
As for western Israel-bashers, Israel and its defenders should accuse them not of Jew-hating motives that cannot be proved but of absurdities and contradictions and untruths they cannot deny. They should ridicule them, humiliate them, destroy their reputations; boycott them, not invite them to social gatherings, show them disapproval and contempt. Treat them as pariahs. Turn their own weapons against them.
They should be telling the Jews’ own story of refugees and ethnic cleansing--the 800,000 Jews driven out of Arab lands after 1948, and who now make up more than half of Israel’s population. It’s good to see that at last Israel is beginning to bring this to the world’s attention.… At a stroke it takes the ground from under the feet of those demanding the ‘right of return’ for Arabs.
They should be holding Arab and Islamic democracy weeks on campus, to expose the oppression and persecution within that world against women, homosexuals and others. They should be singling out the Anglican church and the revival of ancient theological Jew-hatred being spread within the Anglican world by the Palestinian Christians of the Sabeel centre.… They should be campaigning against the UN and the hijacking of international law and human rights by anti-western, anti-Jewish and anti-Christian ideologues.
They should be confronting head-on the false claim that bigotry is confined to the right. They should be pointing the finger at the ‘progressive’ left to show how it is actually supporting the mortal enemies not just of Israel but the west. And they should be making this case to Israelis themselves, to counter the delegitimisation and ignorance in Israeli universities and to educate the Israeli young in their own national history.
In other words, both Israel and Diaspora Jews have to stop playing defence and go onto the offence. Israel has nothing to be defensive about or for which it needs to apologise. It is the enemies of Israel who are promoting injustice and the denial of international law and human rights. Playing defence intrinsically cedes ground to the enemy.…
In short, Israel and its defenders must understand that the tsunami of bigotry against Israel sweeping the west is intimately related to Israel’s seriously flawed diplomatic strategy. For years, Israel has been playing a defensive diplomatic game, which suggests inescapably that it has a case to answer.… It’s time for Israel to realise that military campaigns against its enemies are not enough. It has to call time on its false friends too, and start fighting both these and its more obvious enemies on the battleground of the mind.
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