Monday, February 8, 2010
The usual fare from Hamas for the kiddies, from Palestinian Media Watch: Palestinian child sings about victory over Israel and the US: "Daddy gave me a present, a machine gun and a rifle"
Violence is the ideal means to solve conflict. For years this has been the repeated message from both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas - from glorifying violence by honoring terrorists as role models to directly calling for the killing of Jews.
Israel, which is denied any legitimate right to any part of "Palestine," is presented along with the US as the arch-enemy against whom this violence should be directed.
Palestinian children have absorbed the message and know by heart how to sing praises to violence. In the latest episode of the weekly children's program Tomorrow's Pioneers on Hamas TV, a Palestinian boy chose to sing the following children's song...[snip transcript of above video]
...It is worth noting that the two hosts, the young girl Saraa and Nassur, an adult in a bear costume, approved of the boy's choice of song and let him sing it. Only when the boy cursed("Son of a bitch"), did the young girl cut him off, pointing out that the "program is a program for children, not for anything else." The objection was to the boy's cursing, not to the content of the song. The adult inside the puppet ended the exchange by defending the boy: "He didn't say anything else, Saraa. He said the truth."...[More.]
The incident itself took place about a week ago. The investigation is ongoing: JTA: University investigating assault on Jewish students
York University in Toronto is investigating allegations of assault against two Jewish students during a pro-Israel program.
The incident, which is alleged to have taken place Feb. 1, occurred when about 20 Jewish members of the on-campus group Hasbara Fellowships at York University gathered, with permission from the university, to raise awareness of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and terrorist acts committed by Hamas.
Tyler Golden, co-president of Hasbara Fellowships, told JTA that about 50 activists and protesters surrounded the Jewish students and began chanting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic slurs.
He said two Jewish students were slapped, one on the arm and the other across the face.
Two university security officers arrived on the scene. Toronto police were not called "because we wanted to give the university a chance to put its system into place," according to Golden.
Golden said a complaint was lodged with York's Student Conduct and Dispute Resolution Office...
...According to its Web site, the Jewish Defense League of Canada has offered a $500 reward "for the assailants [sic] identities, names, alias [sic], phone numbers and addresses."
A year ago, a group of Jewish students at York were barricaded in the Hillel lounge by a mob yelling anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs. Police had to escort the Jewish students out of the building. Two York students were reprimanded for the incident...
The other day, I quicklinked to the story of Amnesty International, the Taliban/Gitmo man, and the now-suspended whistle blower. Savor the irony of the NGO Amnesty, that has descended so far as to partner with and even sanctify a man like Moazzam Begg and a site like Cageprisoners and then suspend a whistle blowing employee for complaining about it publicly. How positively Stalinist. We need not over-season this dish in order to savor it. This whole thing is so tasty I half expect to see it on the Food Network.
It's all so well-deserved, and yet so unexpected. Our hats are off to whistle blower Gita Sahgal, without whom AI simply would have gone on and on without so much as a moment of self-examination and accountability. Here are some links for you...
Noah Pollak has a good one at Contentions: The Human-Rights Facade Is Beginning to Crumble
...There is a vital role for groups like HRW and Amnesty to play in the world. Properly understood, their mission is to use their moral authority to shame and condemn tyranny and those who wish to make the world a hospitable place for tyrants and terrorists. But moral authority requires moral clarity. HRW and Amnesty have been overtaken by activists who use their position to wage easy campaigns against open societies instead of taking on the more difficult, thankless, and sometimes dangerous struggle against closed ones.
For people who do not follow these issues closely, there have been a few recent moments that indicate beyond any doubt that something is rotten in the "human-rights community." One moment was when HRW went to Saudi Arabia to raise money. We have arrived at another such moment: a human-rights organization has suspended an employee for complaining about the organization's partnership with a terrorist. [More.]
Harry's Place has posted Gita Sahgal's statement and has a good round-up of blog reactions as well: Statement by Gita Sahgal on Amnesty International and Cageprisoners
Just Journalism has a new report out, quantifying the way in which BBC coverage of Gaza has shifted from giving responsibility for Gaza purely to Israel, to noting that the area has a border with a second country -- Egypt: BBC on the Gaza blockade: the roles of Israel and Egypt
Just Journalism has today published a study suggesting a shift in editorial policy at the BBC News website regarding the blockade of Gaza. 'BBC on the Gaza blockade: the roles of Israel and Egypt' shows that for most of 2009, the Gaza blockade was associated solely with Israel, rather than with Israel and Egypt. However, more recently, the Corporation's website has reflected more consistently the role of Egypt in enforcing the blockade at its shared border with Gaza.
A likely outcome of this development is that the BBC News website makes plainer to users that the Gaza blockade is upheld by two countries and not one. This would be an important step towards creating a more accurate picture of the factors currently impacting on the Gaza strip...
Well, that didn't last long. Yesterday, it sounded like a good start: Israel Kicks Down the Doors and Deports ISM Activists. Today, sadly, the lawyers have gotten to it: Court frees foreign activists, raps West Bank crackdown
The Supreme Court ordered two pro-Palestinian foreign activists released on bail on Monday, saying Israeli immigration officers overstepped their bounds by detaining them in the West Bank.
The activists' lawyer described their arrest as part of a campaign by Israel to choke off weekly demonstrations by Palestinians, left-wing Israelis and foreign activists against Israel's West Bank separation barrier as peace efforts remain at a stalemate.
Israeli soldiers raided the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday and detained Spaniard Ariadna Jove Marti and Australian Bridgette Chappell, handing them over to immigration officers overseen by Israel's Interior Ministry for possible deportation.
Both women belong to the International Solidarity Movement, which is at the forefront of anti-barrier demonstrations.
Palestinian authorities and the women's attorney called the entire operation illegal, arguing the military had no right to raid a city within an area designated by interim peace accords as being under Palestinian civil and security jurisdiction.
But the Supreme Court ordered Marti and Chappell released on other grounds, saying immigration officers - authorized only to operate inside Israel - had taken custody of the women from the military at a prison inside the West Bank...
I have no opinion about the court or their interpretation of the law, if that's the correct decision, then change the law if you don't like it. I recall, a long time ago on a BBS far, far away, having a...ahem..."discussion"...about Rachel Corrie, and trying to explain the ISM, and how the "activists" fake their way into the country and put themselves intentionally in dangerous situations. "So," I was asked, "why don't they just deport them?" Good question! Because Israel is a nation of laws, and when people set out to intentionally stretch and break the law, in word and spirit, and they have lawyers who set out to help them, then the law will never be adequate to address all situations. Ordinarily, we call this kind of person a "crook." The MSM and NGO establishment call them "activists."
I thought, since some of us seem to feel that only Sophia and a handful of J Street Jews believe the 2-state solution is necessary and desirable, that I would post this article by Yossi Verter in Ha'aretz:
Proponents of the Greater Land of Israel - including the recently established Land of Israel caucus in the Knesset, hawkish Likud members and other MKs - are deceiving the public because their dream cannot be fulfilled, Minister Michael Eitan (Likud) said over the weekend.
'You can't deceive all the time and speak about Greater Israel,' Eitan said at a Geneva Initiative conference in Dimona. 'It's a dream that will not be able to be fulfilled. The vast majority is willing to make significant concessions for peace. Everyone wants an agreement.'
The conference, which discussed solutions proposed by the figures behind the Geneva Initiative peace proposal, featured Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the proposal, as well as former Palestinian minister Sufian Abu Zaida and Dimona Mayor Meir Cohen.
Eitan, the improvement of government services minister and one of the few Likud MKs who has not supported the Land of Israel caucus, said it had no place in today's politics.
'Last week the Land of Israel caucus was established in the Knesset. Neither I nor [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu can join it, even though in '92 I founded a similar caucus,' he said. 'To talk about Greater Israel now - that's deception.'...[The rest.]
Sorry, but I couldn't resist. From Divest This!
It almost escaped my notice that Feb 7 was the anniversary of the great Hampshire Divestment Hoax, that is until I discovered this stunningly self-aggrandizing announcement by the jesters who started it all: Hampshire's Students for Justice in Palestine (HSJP).
So I said to myself:"Self, how best to mark this important date?"
Should I Fisk the SJP's self-celebrating announcement, pointing out that their BDS "movement" actually began in 2001 and has not enjoyed a single success on any campus in the country despite nearly ten years of effort? (HSJP and the like-minded prefer to reset their project with the 2005 PACBI letter, thus flushing most of the last decade of BDS catastrophe down the memory hole.)
Or perhaps I should put their Franz Fanon quote into context, which (in its original paragraph) reads:
"Anti-Semitism cuts me to the quick; I get upset; a frightful rage makes me anemic; they are denying me the right to be a man. I cannot associate myself from the fate reserved for my brother. Every one of my acts commits me as a man. Every instance of my reticence, every instance of my cowardice, manifests the man."
Now I could leverage this full Fanon quote to note that HSJP's friends the allies in the Middle East are the major manufacturers of the very anti-Semitic propaganda that cut Fanon "to the quick" (a Vesuvius of Jew hatred that even Israel's harshest critics don't deny emanates hourly from Tehran to Damascus to Gaza and beyond). But this presumes the members of HSJP actually know who Fanon is, beyond a source for quotes on Google.
But in the end, it seems best to mark the anniversary with some links to the various parodies I've done over the last year that seem to have gotten up the nose of those who still insist on pushing the Hampshire divestment fraud with all their might. And so...
And finally, my epic time-waster: Hampshire and the Brain.
Paraphrasing William Shatner from Trouble with Tribbles: I take the issues of peace and justice in the Middle East extremely seriously. But Hampshire's SJP? Not so much.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
So how many people or groups beclowned themselves making overblown statements over what is, at root, whether you are pro or anti-choice, a really quite beautiful message and a simple and understated commercial (the final ad/s really just try to push you off to Focus on the Family's site)? Sally Jenkins had a terrific piece on the controversy in the Washington Post on Tuesday: Tebow's Super Bowl ad isn't intolerant; its critics are.
I'll tell you something else, if 1/2 of what they say about this Tebow guy are true -- and I'm most interested in the 1/2 that says he's "saving himself for marriage" -- then I am even more impressed. He must have girls throwing themselves at him, and yet he's denying himself? I have as much admiration for that as I do for a young priest who takes and keeps his vows -- the same sort of respect I have for soldiers, police and firefighters who have been tested. Think about the power you can have in life through the respect that you can earn by the simply factor of controlling your own behavior. Remarkable.
I'll post the ads when I find them embeddable with decent sound.
That's all that Hamas is good for. From Palestinian Media Watch: "A full life with Allah and 72 wives" Hamas TV sermon details Martyrs' rewards in Paradise
When dying as a Martyr for Allah, the Shahid is immediately forgiven his sins, he is crowned with honor and he marries 72 dark-eyed wives. These are among the rewards promised the Muslim believer who dies in battle for Allah.
Six privileges, or kindnesses, to be granted the holy Martyr are mentioned in a hadith (tradition attributed to the Prophet Muhammad in Islam) and were explained in a recent Friday sermon broadcast on Hamas TV.
The privileges that are bestowed upon the one who dies for Allah and mentioned in the hadith are:
1- The Shahid's sins are forgiven
2- He sees his place in Paradise and lives a full life of joy with Allah
3- He is protected from "the Great Shock" on Judgment Day
4- He is crowned with a crown of honor
5- He marries 72 dark-eyed wives
6- He will be able to intervene on behalf of 70 of his family members on Judgment Day, thereby ensuring them the reward of Afterlife
For years, both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have promoted the ideal of dying as a Martyr for Allah. The promotion has been successful...[More.]
More of this kind of thing, please. If the Corries were actually serious about making sure the same thing that happened to their daughter doesn't happen to anyone else, they'd be encouraging more of this:
Two Spanish, Australian women arrested early Sunday in Ramallah, handed over to Oz unit members. American national, who was with them in apartment, says '10 soldiers broke in, demanded our passports and then informed the two that they were arrested for not having a valid visa'
Two Spanish and Australian peace activists were arrested early Sunday after Israel Defense Forces soldiers raided the house they were staying in near the West Bank city of el-Bireh in the Ramallah area.
The two women were arrested on suspicion of staying in the area with an invalid visa. The two were taken to the Ofer Base and handed over to members of the Interior Ministry's Oz unit.
In the meantime, the two women petitioned the High Court of Justice, which decided to delay their deportation from Israel and scheduled an urgent discussion for Monday.
Ryan Olander, an International Solidarity Movement activist from the United States who shared an apartment with the two women and who was also arrested for the same allegations several weeks ago, told Ynet that "10 soldiers broke into the apartment, examined the passports and then informed Ariadna Jove Marti and Bridgette Chappell that they were under arrest on suspicion of not having a valid visa...
Some interesting thoughts on Arab economics: Palestine's 'economic miracle' - Immense amount of international donations inflate Palestinians' disposable income
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has been crowned as "the Palestinian Ben-Gurion at the recent Herzliya Conference. However, there is a great gap between the achievements attributed to him and his abilities in practice.
Fayyad is credited with changing the corrupt PA apparatus, but even in the financial realm where his expertise lies, his abilities are mostly manifested through the drafting of impressive documents as well as fundraising.
Meanwhile, the absurdity inherent in his statements regarding "Palestinian independence within two years" is clear to anyone familiar with the Palestinian economy. Fayyad is a former World Bank official, but even on the financial front his deeds are far from the image he has nurtured.
The Palestinian economy is the only place in the world where the per capita GDP is less than half the disposable income per capita. This is the result of three factors:
1. The Palestinians barely produce anything. Most of their GDP comes from government expenditures by the PA itself.
2. The Palestinians receive immense sums donated by the world.
3. Tax collection is almost unheard of, aside from the taxes collected (for Fayyad) by the Israeli government, which provides the PA with NIS 450 million (roughly $120 million) monthly; this comprises about 40% of the PA's budget.
The result is clear: Low GDP, but high disposable income. Indeed, it's an economic miracle.
Meanwhile, the situation is even more extreme in the Gaza Strip, where the PA spends 57% of its budget. Fayyad hands over salaries and allowances to 150,000 people, yet tens of thousands of them don't work, while others receive two salaries: One from Fayyad and another from Hamas. This is why the only industries active in Gaza are imports through smuggling tunnels and real estate - the surplus of cash in Gaza's banks prompts them to offer mortgages, and this results in a rise in real estate prices...
Comment #19 is good:
The economies of Gaza and the West Bank (Judea/Samaria) thrived in the first decades (1967-1987) of that so-called occupation. Aside from UNRWA, little outside aid entered the territories. Yet under Israel's security umbrella and open borders, the areas thrived.
Those who get their "history" from the Palestinians ignore how much Israel invested in their infrastructure - water and sewage lines, electricity, schools and medical facilities - all of which were neglected under Jordanian and Egyptian rule. Infant mortality went down, average lifespan went up, agricultural output and average incomes skyrocketed.
Then Palestinian "nationalism" came to the fore in the first intifada, but it took Arafat's arrival to really screw things up. The territories are now rife with welfare dependency, corruption and bloated non-productive bureaucracies.
Canada learned its lesson, cutting direct funding for UNRWA. Nothing here has changed: US to donate $40 million to UNRWA
The United States announced it will donate $40 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Thirty million dollars will be allocated to basic services that the agency provides to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The remainder sum will be especially allocated to the West Bank and Gaza and will include food deliveries and a program to create work places.
Not just money down the drain, money that hurts.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
You've heard it going around. Here's that expletive-laced radio interview with Baltimore Orioles managing great, Earl Weaver:
What's the back story? Is it real? I really wish it had aired. Sadly...partially real: Weaver's prank tape is still ripe, decades after leaving tomato patch
...Yesterday, when Marr finished his morning show on WCBM-AM, he called me - "Let me tell you how it happened ... " - and popped the balloon.
"It never actually aired," Marr said. "It was never meant to air."
Marr said it was a prank. Marr and Weaver were pre-recording a segment from Seattle in 1982, when the pair flubbed a take of the Manager's Corner. They got to laughing and decided to record an entire fake segment and send it back to the station engineer as a joke.
The dialogue was all off-the-cuff and off-the-air. Weaver didn't have to try very hard to act like an old cuss. The engineer, of course, got a kick out of it, and the listeners heard a different, sanitized version of the segment before Sunday's ballgame.
The prank tape didn't die, though. It was kicked around Baltimore on audiocassette for years, and naturally, when YouTube was born, colorful Weaver made the jump into the digital age.
"It's been all around the world by now," Marr said. "Just grown like ivy."
Earl Weaver Baseball 1.5 was the best computer baseball game evah, btw.
Very interesting. I guess the New Israel Fund's Naomi Chazan is getting another lesson in accountability -- a difficult matter for her. If your lawyer sends your employer a threatening letter about what advertising they can accept...prepare to be bereft of some income: 'Post' stops Chazan column after threat
NIF and its president Chazan threatened legal action over ad in paper.
The Jerusalem Post has canceled Naomi Chazan's biweekly column, after she and the New Israel Fund of which she is president threatened legal action against the paper over a recent advertisement.
The decision was taken by Jerusalem Post management after a legal threat was received at the paper from the NIF and Chazan's lawyers.
Along with other publications, the Post last Sunday carried an advertisement criticizing Chazan and the New Israel Fund in the context of the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead.
In Friday's paper, the Post carried an advertisement defending the NIF and Chazan against their critics.
Update: Shmuel Rosner -- no fan of the anti-NIF campaign -- says the decision is justified: I'd also eliminate Chazan's column. He also commented on the overall situation a week ago: Why the vicious attack on the New Israel Fund was inevitable. [h/t: Seva]
Well Israel Apartheid Week is just around the corner (be still my heart), and the theme of this year's festivity of hostility is (you guessed it): the ever-popular Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (or BDS)!
Anyone who's been following the BDS follies over the last year will recall how much of 2009 was made up of one BDS hoax after another: from Hampshire College's non-divestment in February, through failed attempts to portray normal business decisions by companies like TIAA-CREF and Motorola as political divestment decisions targeted at Israel.
Other than that, we were provided a cavalcade of boycott flops from Trader Joe's to the Toronto Film Festival that simply led to sellouts of Israeli products or massive lines to see Israeli films.
Well the folks who brought us the attempted Toronto film boycott have managed to merge both fraud and failure in what is looking like the most hilarious BDS hoax yet.
Earlier this month, a letter began circulating around North American film schools asking them to not partake in an Tel Aviv Student Film Fest that takes place this coming June. And, to demonstrate their depth of support, the letter writers included the names of supporters, including none other than James Cameron, the King of the World director of such spectacles as Titanic and Avatar.
The trouble was, Cameron never heard of this petition, has no idea of how his name became associated with this squalid little boycott project, and (at least according to one source) is pissed and demanding answers.
A preliminary report appears over at Divest This. Stay tuned as more details emerge.
Just saying. According to a new Pew poll [h/t: Citizen Wald], compared to other Arab populations, the number of Israeli Arabs who support Hamas or Hezbollah is lower...but "lower" is a relative term:
A survey conducted May 18 to June 16, 2009 by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project also finds limited support for the Lebanese Shia organization Hezbollah.1 While most Palestinians (61%) and about half of Jordanians (51%) have a favorable view of Hezbollah, elsewhere opinions are less positive, including Egypt (43%) and Lebanon (35%). As with many issues in Lebanon, views of Hezbollah are sharply divided along religious lines: nearly all of the country's Shia Muslims (97%) express a positive opinion of the organization, while only 18% of Christians and 2% of Sunni Muslims feel this way.
Meanwhile, Turks overwhelmingly reject both groups -- just 5% give Hamas a positive rating and only 3% say this about Hezbollah. There is also little support among Israel's Arab population for either Hamas (21% favorable) or Hezbollah (27%). Outside of the Middle East, many in Pakistan, Indonesia and Nigeria are unable to offer an opinion about these groups...
21%? I suppose you could describe that as "little"...if you wanted. Is it? So...about 1/5th of 1/5th of the population of a state supports the destruction of the state by an outside genocidal force. In American terms, that would be like 12 million people supporting Al Qaeda (and to get more of an equivalence, you have to imagine a far stronger more immediately threatening Al Qaeda, so there is in fact no exact corollary).
And yet they carry on with a vigorous, and often rancorous, democracy. Amazing.
[The following, by Joy Wolfe, is crossposted from CiF Watch, where a good comment thread is underway.]
So Ben White knows better than all the financial experts and Palestinian spokespeople when he claims that stories of the remarkable growth in the Palestinian Authority economy in the West Bank are false.
Yes, the same Ben White who is currently congratulating himself on being instrumental in a facebook campaign which resulted in the Cambridge University withdrawing an invitation to Benny Morris, calling him a racist. Whatever happened to the hallowed concept of freedom of speech that is used to ensure terrorists, Hamas supporters and pro-Palestinian speakers who call for the destruction of Israel and "death to the Jews" to be welcome on campuses such as Birmingham and Manchester?
But back to the real subject in hand.
It is a well documented fact that the growth of the economy in the West Bank is nothing short of remarkable and said to be among the fastest growing economies in the world at the moment.
A British Trade Union fact finding group which recently returned from visiting the West Bank reported how surprised they were by the conditions there and the economic growth and potential.
What the Palestinians really need is for people like Ben White and others who devote their energies to demonising Israel, calling for boycotts which potentially damage the Palestinian economy, to put their efforts into improving the situation of the Palestinian people, and also to encourage them to get back to the peace negotiating table.
Continue reading "Promoting Hatred; Thwarting Peace"Friday, February 5, 2010
[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted with permission from Z-Word]
I received an e-mail circular from B'Tselem today about Israel's policies towards Gaza. The first substantial argument offered is this:
"The siege of Gaza is causing enormous suffering among innocents, and it's hard to see how that deprivation can be justified," said Uri Zaki, B'Tselem's USA Director. "International law, as well as basic human and Israeli values, demands that Israel do its utmost to address its legitimate security concerns without inflicting unnecessary harm to the civilians of Gaza. The current policy doesn't come close to meeting that standard." Gazans' rights to minimal standards of food security, shelter, health, education and to travel are protected under international law. These needs should not be held hostage to security and political issues.
I could quibble about the adjective "enormous" but I won't. The argument is basically sound. To respond to it, the government of Israel would have to accept its premises, that is, it would have to say that the harm it's causing to Gazans is not unnecessary and/or that it's exaggerated and that in any case it's the only viable option for protecting its security. I'm not saying that any of this is true or false, just that the way B'Tselem sets out its arguments obliges the government of Israel to put its case in terms of human rights.
Now let's turn to the next set of arguments:
Israel's closure policy is designed to weaken Hamas' hostile leadership, to persuade Hamas to cease firing rockets at civilian targets in Israel, and to release Corporal Gilad Shalit. However, the closure has instead harmed Israel's security by strengthening Hamas and adding to tensions that threaten renewed violence.
If I was a member of the Israeli government I'd be much happier to respond to this kind of vulgar pragmatism. I'd just ask why, if Hamas is so much stronger now than before, it's acting to suppress rocket fire into Israel by smaller groups, I'd point out that such rocket fire is a fraction of what it was before Operation Cast Lead and that we have no way of knowing what, if any, effect Israel's broader policies towards Gaza are having on negotiations to release Shalit. Oh, and I'd probably die laughing at the stuff about tensions and future violence. It's not like Hamas's attitude to Israel has varied much over the years; not when Israel still occupied the Strip, not when it left, not when Gazans could travel in large numbers to Israel and not when they were stopped from doing so. What has changed is that Hamas's behavior towards Israel has notably softened over the last 12 months or so.
There's another severe problem with these arguments. They imply that if Israel's policies towards Gaza were achieving their political and security goals they would therefore be justified.
B'Tselem declares itself to be an organization that acts in favor of the protection of universal human rights. It should argue on that basis and stop dishing up half-baked political analysis that even the most obtuse Israeli politician wouldn't have much difficulty dealing with.
Here's some depressing news from Britain - antisemitic incidents and attacks have risen shockingly -
From Harry's: Depressing Report on Antisemitism
Also, more on the Haitian Blood Libel, promoted by our friends Jenny Tonge and Lauren Boothe, also from Harry's: The Haiti Libel
Now - it's obvious that much of this is coming from certain "Asians" - which isn't fair to Indians, Sikhs, Tibetans etc but oh well, that is how they refer to certain religious radicals in Britain.
But - there's another side to this - which a poster on Harry's, Thinking of England, pointed out - there's an antisemitic tradition in Britain which has made this sort of thinking acceptable there. When I found out that the panties bomber had gone to school in London I wasn't at all surprised. Some of the most dangerous, evil-minded people in the world find a ready platform in London and even have friends in high places.
And, the BBC and other British media outlets have been so anti-Israel since Day #1, since before Day #1, that the propaganda is finally resulting in outright and open hostility to Jews including physical attacks and vicious websites devoted to hatred.
This is bad news especially since Times Are Hard and we all know what happens to Jews when Times Are Hard.
Oh help.
Where is British leadership on these issues? The state-sponsored BBC won't even publish the Balen Report, about biased coverage of Israel.
I think they should be sued.
This is one of America's key allies yet I'm beginning to wonder if they are really at all in line with our philosophy and our interests.
When Prime Minister Brown came to see President Obama everybody was horrified when he didn't get a fancy present.
Well, I think I see the point. With all due respect to protocol, maybe we should be studying British history a little more carefully.
Let me add some notes to Hillel's post about yesterday's J Street launch.
Last week's Jewish Advocate had a profile of the local Boston head: J Street opens in Boston (requires paid subsciption)
The signpost is up: J Street is in Boston.
The left-of-center group - which bills itself as pro-Israel, pro-peace - has been welcomed with a seat at the Israel roundtable of local Jewish leaders, sponsored monthly by the Jewish Community Relations Council.
And Feb. 4, it will hold a kickoff event at Temple Ohabei Shalom in Brookline.
Janette Hillis-Jaffe started work as the New England regional political director for J Street on Jan. 1.
"I've met with folks from AIPAC and [the American Jewish Committee], and I felt very welcome," Hillis-Jaffe said. "There are no rivalries, and I don't think there will be any. The Boston Jewish community is known for being able to embrace a lot of different perspectives."...
...Now, people can choose among three ways to become involved: J Street U, which so far has a presence at Harvard, Brandeis and Tufts universities; J Street Local, for grassroots organizing and education; and J Street PAC, established as a separate entity to allow for political contributions.
Hillis-Jaffe said she would be working mainly with J Street PAC, which requires a minimum annual donation of $1,800 for membership.
"We get involved and take positions on political races," said Hillis- Jaffe. "A group like AIPAC doesn't." ...
Now that may be the most interesting part of the news. J Street, which now wants other groups to play nice with them, but came on the scene with the sharpest elbows possible and seeks to expand the definition of "pro-Israel" beyond all recognition is being welcomed at JCRC's table.
As far as I can see (correct me if I am wrong), I don't see any other partisan groups on the list. Do any of these groups get CJP money? I know that the excuse is that they maintain a separate entity for supporting candidates, which you are I know is pure bullshit designed to be eaten by idiots and IRS agents. The same guy is running things.
Here are some notes from someone else that was at the Boston event:
Continue reading "J Street's Big Launch"In case you missed the reference in Hillel's post below, here's an article about Namoi Chazan's firing from the Jerusalem Post: Amid row over contentious ad, Jerusalem Post fires Naomi Chazan of New Israel Fund
The trouble with the NIF is not that they support groups that are simply critical of Israel out of love, they support groups that would like to see Israel fundamentally changed until the word had no meaning anymore, and it's good to see the matter finally getting the wide spread attention it deserves so people have all the facts before they decide to either give money or have the NIF at the table.
Also, see Caroline Glick: The New Israel Fund and the next war
It's been some time since we heard from Thomas Klocek, the DePaul University (yes, that was Finkelstein's last employer) adjunct who lost his job after an argument with Muslim students and who decided to sue the university as a result. His court case had been dismissed, but his attorneys are circulating the following statement:
Klocek Takes Fight Against DePaul to the Appellate Court
On January 19, 2010, attorneys for former DePaul University professor Thomas Klocek filed his opening brief in his appeal of the circuit court's decision to deny him a jury trial on the merits of his defamation case against DePaul.
Klocek's case began in June, 2005, after he saw his reputation and 14 year career at DePaul destroyed by numerous DePaul publications which falsely portrayed an academic discussion Klocek had had with representatives of the Students For Justice in Palestine and United Muslims Moving Ahead. The discussion centered around the conflict in the Middle East among other things. In the face of DePaul's motions to dismiss, Klocek's defamation claims were upheld in 2006 by Judge Nudelman and upheld again in 2007 by his replacement Judge Kelley.
However, in 2008, Judge Kelley was replaced by Judge Winkler who, in several orders just 21 days and less before the jury trial was to start on March 16, 2009, dismissed Klocek's entire case. The bulk of the dismissal came on motions to which Klocek was not even given an opportunity to respond.
Klocek is hopeful the Appellate Court will give him his day in court.
If you would like to read Klocek's brief, click here
Marathon Pundit has more, here.
[Crossposted from JStreetJive]
Out of the spotlight for a number of months since its disastrous October 2009 national conference which went unattended by scores of congressmen including Senator John Kerry, J Street attempted to thrust itself back into media prominence last night by kicking off "J Street Local", a two hour convocation of the faithful in 21 cities around the U.S.. The highlight of the evening was The Leader himself streamed live from Philadelphia. Most of the local events featured the alliance between J Street and two other left wing groups: Brit Tzedek v'Shalom and The New Israel Fund (often referred to as The No Israel Fund). The timing couldn't have been worse for the self-anointed, "Pro Israel-Pro Peace" group.
Just two days ago, the head of the NIF in Israel, Naomi Chazan, was forced to cancel her trip to Australia over the growing scandal that groups funded by her organization provided dubious "evidence" of Israeli atrocities to the discredited Goldstone commission. Daniel Sokatch, the Director of the American NIF, assessed the situation and decided that attack was the best defense when he said the report - apparently confirmed - was "the worst kind of vicious hate speech." Another hard left Knesset member went even further dubbing the revelations a "show trial" (an odd choice of words, considering that the antecedents of his party, Meretz, were enthusiasts for the original Stalinist show trials of the 1930's).
And now, this morning comes the news that Ms. Chazan has been fired from her position at The Jerusalem Post. According to an analysis by Im Tirtzu, the new grass roots, Israeli Zionist movment, the groups funded by the NIF supplied 92% of the negative references about the IDF to Goldstone "researchers." Needless to say, none of this important, breaking news was conveyed by either NIF staffers or Jeremy Ben Enemy to the faithful around the U.S. In fact, his constant invocation of that organization and its alliance with J Street may well come back to bite him. NIF's embarrassment, however, proved no deterrent to Israeli Consul, Nadav Tamir, embracing their regional director.
Ben Enemy's performance was more negative than upbeat. He sounded almost bitter that his prophecies weren't being taken as holy writ by the American Jewish community. The evening - at least in Boston - was more about process than substance. We heard all about building local constituencies, organizing university chapters and so on. Of course, substance had to be avoided, considering the moribund efforts and results of the Obama-Mitchell initiative that has produced exactly zero for Israelis and Palestinians. The Middle East peace process has obviously become a back burner issue for a beleaguered President facing the worst economic crisis in decades, not to mention the Scott Brown embarrassment.
At one point, The Leader let slip his frustration with Obama's apparent, unshared obsession with applying more pressure on Israeli Jews when he half-jokingly said "Well, Mr. President, with all due respect, we're going to hold you to that (Obama's commitment to resolve the conflict)..but expect us to press you to do more - a lot more. As a community organizer, you would expect no less from us." And there you have it: Israel's existence is really all about making American left wing Jews feel empowered through community organizing.
I recall a telling comment from Ben Enemy's colleague, Dan Sokatch of the New Israel Fund at the October conference. Commenting on the controversy at last summer's San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (the Festival decided to feature the intensely anti-Israel film, "Rachel") when he was CEO of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation, Mr. Sokatch said that the forces critical of him were enemies of "community organizing." A bizarre accusation, but now fully understandable and revealing of his and J Street's primary, radical focus.
Departing from his upbeat style back in October, Ben Enemy decided to invoke the full array of "victim" imagery. If J Street was not being embraced by every American Jew as he had planned, then, clearly, it was a result of "enemies all around." He began his talk by a wave of the bloody shirt, claiming that his prophecy was being "demonized, ostracized and shut out" from the American Jewish dialogue. It was a bitter, angry speech designed to paint a picture of the faithful as victims of an oligarchic, censorious Jewish "right wing."
It was a classic of demagoguery - rallying the troops by pointing out the Zionist barbarians at the gates. After all, J Street has always been primarily about the perceived, existential, Left-Right struggle and less about Israel's survival. The assembled crowd looked more like an SDS or CPUSA reunion than the "Pro Israel" supporters they claim to be. This was really all about the struggle against the fanatics of the Right.
If one can characterize the outlook of the American Jewish Left in a single phrase, it's all about demolishing the colonialist notion of "The Other". Yet, how ironic this evening was which amounted to constructing,defining and labeling the Bad Jews -"Settlers" and the "Pro Settler Movement" - as "The Other." In spite of George Soros' millions (I presume, absent J Street's opaque refusal to disclose its major donors) it's a product that more and more Americans aren't buying.
or Monthly Archives:
, p.30
