Friday Links Part 2

From Ian:

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Latma: The Tribal Updates presents Bibi anticipating Obama's visit



UN Chutzpah and the Refugee Racket

That is, as long as the Arab states in the region mistreat them, the Palestinians will remain eligible for American “refugee” cash, which will be distributed by agencies who work with the regimes responsible for this racket. As you can see, it isn’t easy to justify making exceptions to American budget cuts to preserve cash that incentivizes and rewards Arab states’ abuse of Palestinian migrants and is distributed to and by Hamas and its allies. But I suppose you can’t blame UNRWA for trying.

Italian FM Giulio Terzi Why we can’t allow Iran to go nuclear

During my tenure as foreign minister, I have made it a point to place the Mediterranean and the Middle East at the forefront of Italy’s agenda.
Nuclear proliferation, and particularly Iran’s nuclear ambition, is the most pressing of these challenges. Rivers of ink have been spilled on how to tackle Iran’s nuclear aspirations. The debate seems to have polarized into two main positions. According to the first one, a nuclear Iran cannot be reliably contained because there is no guarantee that it will behave rationally; therefore, it must be prevented at all costs. The second is that Iran is a rational actor, and can be deterred and contained; hence, the risks of preventing it are not warranted for.

CIF Watch: The antisemitic reflex: A Jew-baiting Tweet by the Guardian’s Michael White

A reporter for The Times expressed surprise that news of a Labour Party investigation into racism against a member of Parliament was not in BBC radio news summaries.
A Guardian journalist, noting that Finkelstein was Jewish, immediately engaged in an ad hominem and completely irrelevant attack, raising the topic of settlements in the state of Israel.
The Guardian reporter’s ugly response to Finkelstein’s Tweet represents the classic antisemitic “reflex” of holding Jews collectively responsible for the perceived sins of the state of Israel – a bigoted association he’s made on at least one other occasion in a column at the Guardian.

PMW: Crossword puzzles in official PA daily - Safed and Haifa are Palestinian cities

In its weekly crossword puzzle, the Palestinian Authority daily presented the Israeli city of Safed as a "city in Northern Palestine." Another recent crossword puzzle defined the Israeli city of Haifa as a "Palestinian city."

ZOA Praises Walk-Out After Israel Accused of 'Genocide'
ZOA praises Obama Administration for walking out of meeting with Iranian diplomats after one accused Israel of "genocide."

“We applaud U.S. Ambassador McManus's principled walk-out from this meeting with the Iran ambassador,” said ZOA National President Morton A. Klein. "It is not a small matter when any country, let alone a rogue state like Iran, describes a fellow democracy and ally of the U.S. as guilty of 'genocide.' There is a fundamental breach of truth and morality in this claim that cannot be passed over.”

Chavez and the Jews: a Sorry Tale
Before Chavez came to power there were 30,000 Jews in Venezuela. The community has now dwindled to fewer than 9,000.

Yet there is another factor. The main ideological influence on Chavez was a relatively obscure Argentinian sociologist, Norberto Ceresole. A Holocaust denier and all-round conspiracy theorist, Ceresole’s theories became the basis for what Venezuelans know as chavismo, the matrix of social institutions and values created by the Chavez regime. The first chapter of a book in which Ceresole extolled the virtues of such a system, under which the relationship between the “leader” and the “people” is privileged, was titled “The Jewish Problem.”

Thessaloniki Jews to mark anniversary of deportations
Greek prime minister expected to participate in Holocaust commemorations

The Jewish community of Thessaloniki in northern Greece will hold a series of events commemorating the 70th anniversary of the first deportations of the city’s Jews to Auschwitz.
On March 15, 1943, the Nazis sent the first convoy of some 4,000 Jews from Thessaloniki to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. By August, 49,000 out of the city’s pre-war population of 55,000 Jews had been deported. Fewer than 2,000 survived.

Concern over Ed Miliband's Zionist credentials

Mr Miliband’s remarks were met with immediate angry responses from anti-Zionist Labour supporters. Critics took to social networking sites to claim it was “disgraceful” for the party leader to support an “extreme and nasty ideology”.
The following day his office issued a supposed clarification in an attempt to distance him from his own comments. The Labour leader’s team said he had “not used the word Zionist to describe himself”, but said he had “made absolutely clear that he is a strong supporter of Israel”.

Peres to New Pope: Come to Israel

Peres invited the new Pope to visit Israel and said, "I would like to take this opportunity to invite the newly elected Pope to pay a visit to the Holy Land at the earliest possibility. He'll be a welcome guest in the Holy Land, as a man of inspiration that can add to the attempt to bring peace in a stormy area. All people here, without exception, without difference of religion or nationality will welcome the newly elected Pope."