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Sunday, June 09, 2013

6/9 Links: US denounces Falk, Egypt rejected Golda peace offer in 1973, Pals protest new PM

From Ian:

US Denounces Falk's 'Outrageous Abuse' of UN Position
“We welcome U.S. Ambassador Donahoe’s strong rejection and condemnation of Richard Falk’s latest report on the human rights situation of the Palestinians, and call on Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, U.N. High Commissioner Navi Pillay and member states of the Human Rights Council to denounce Falk and his outrageous abuse of the position he holds,” said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman.
“Mr. Falk’s attempt to paint himself as the victim of an Israeli government-sponsored defamation campaign, carried out by U.N. Watch, has echoes of classical anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” asserted Foxman.
My prediction: Please help prove it wrong
A determined domestic thrust is under way to compress Israel back into its precarious pre-1967 frontiers, imperiling the viability of Jewish sovereignty.
It is important to note the metamorphosis that has taken place in the rationale of the two-state doctrine. For in contrast to the not too- distant past, withdrawal from the territories across the 1967 Green Line is now no longer presented – as least not, primarily – as a measure designed to attain a peace accord with the Palestinians. Rather, it is portrayed as a desired value in, and of, itself. Today, territorial retreat is being promoted as a standalone moral imperative which must be aspired to, no matter what the peace negotiations with the Palestinians achieve. Or don’t.
Golda Meir offered Egypt most of Sinai for peace before 1973 war
Several months before the 1973 Yom Kippur War, then-Israeli prime minister Golda Meir used West German diplomatic channels to offer Egypt most of the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace, according to documents released Sunday by the state archives.
Leftists won't Apologize over Gay Murder Smear
For four years, leftists blamed the religious sector, and especially hareidim, for the 2009 double murder in Tel Aviv's Barnoar club, which caters to homosexual youths. A gunman opened fire on youths at the club, killing a young man and a young woman, and leaving others crippled.
Now, police have arrested four people in connection with the attack. According to leaks, the police have solid evidence that the attack was carried out by a group of young men with criminal backgrounds in revenge for the alleged rape of their relative, a male youth, by the manager of the club.
BBC self-censors on gay rights in Middle East
The BBC ignored the event completely, with no reporting on the Middle East page of its website or in the ‘In Pictures’ features for that day or that week.
One brief reference to the event was, however, to be found at the bottom of a strangely headlined article concerning the arrest of suspects in the investigation into the shooting at the Bar Noar (not “Bar Noah” as stated in the BBC article) LGBT youth club in 2009 which – contrary to the headline’s implication (Four held over Israel ‘gay attack’)– appears at this stage not to have been motivated by anti-gay sentiment on the part of the perpetrators.
Alert Soldiers Thwart Stabbing in Hevron
Alert Border Police officers thwarted an attempted terrorist attack at the Tomb of the Patriarchs (Ma'arat Hamachpelah) in Hevron on Saturday night.
Palestinians protest against new PA prime minister
The first protest against Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah took place in Hebron on Saturday.
Dozens of Palestinians staged a sit-in-strike in the center of the city in protest of Hamdallah’s failure to appoint more than one minister from Hebron to his new government, which was sworn in before PA President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday.
UN Official: Syrian Army Asked IDF Not to Hit its Tanks in the Golan
"The Government of Israel Liaison Officer informed UNDOF that the IDF had provided emergency medical treatment to a total of 16 armed members of the opposition."
‘Despite Qusair victory, Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis showing cracks’
The Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis is showing cracks, but until the Syrian rebels unite and receive a steady supply of weapons, Syrian President Bashar Assad has high chances of survival, the former head of the IDF Intelligence Directorate, Amos Yadlin, said Saturday.
“This development [cracks in the axis] is beneficial for Israel, but the price is sporadic terrorist activity in the Golan Heights,” Yadlin said, during a Channel 2 interview.
German report: Berlin a hub of Hezbollah activity
Hezbollah has 950 members in Germany, including 250 in the capital, a reported released by Berlin’s domestic intelligence agency released last week showed.
A Hezbollah-controlled orphans organization in Lower Saxony state is used to raise money for the families of suicide bombers targeting Israelis, the 140-page German-language report examined by The Jerusalem Post also showed.
Erdogan rules out early elections as thousands defy call to end protest
Tens of thousands of people thronged Istanbul’s Taksim Square Saturday, and thousands more turned out in central Ankara as protests that have presented Turkey’s prime minister with the first serious challenge to his leadership entered their second week.
Hours earlier, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing party dismissed the protests, which have spread across the country, as an opposition attempt to topple the government, and rejected calls for early elections.
Weeklong protests crack Turkey’s international image
A violent police crackdown on a small environmental sit-in at Istanbul’s central Taksim Square has done more than spawn a week of protests across the country. It has left cracks in the shiny international image of a tolerant and deeply democratic Turkey.
It might even have rattled the nation’s grand ambitions on the world stage, which include a bid to host the 2020 Olympics and its long-standing aim to join the European Union.
Arab boycott of Lebanese movie filmed in Israel is the ‘height of obscenity’
When bestselling Algerian writer Mohammed Moulessehoul discovered the Arab League had asked its 22 member states to boycott the award-winning film based on his book, “The Attack,” he says, he wasn’t at all surprised.
To the 58-year-old, who publishes under the pen name Yasmina Khadra, the Arab League’s attitude is emblematic of “how ridiculous the Arabic political elite can be.”
Lebanese Film Director Ziad Dweiri/Doueiri (“The Attack”) Defends His Visit to Israel: Boycott Harms Us, Not Israel


Omri Casspi, ‘Jewish Jordan’ Partner on Basketball Camps to Inspire Youths On and Off the Court
Before last year, basketball camps for Jewish youths never had an instructor quite like Omri Casspi, a forward for the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Cleveland Cavaliers and the first Israeli-born player in NBA history.
Tel Aviv U. helps discover new planet
“This is the first time that this aspect of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity has been used to discover a planet,” said Mazeh. “We have been searching for this elusive effect for more than two years, and we finally found a planet… It is a dream come true.”
For Ethiopia-born Miss Israel, an emotional return
Israel’s first Ethiopian-born beauty queen Yityish Titi Aynaw made an emotional return trip this week to her native homeland, to accompany extended members of her family on their aliyah journey to Israel.
Aynaw, 21, from Netanya, was chosen Miss Israel 2013 in February. She had left Ethiopia with members of her immediate family at age 10.