Monday, January 06, 2014
Natan Sharansky: The free world has betrayed democratic dissidents
“When the [uprising] against Assad began, 90 percent of the opposition was democratic. Today 90 percent of the opposition is fundamentalist,” he said. Obama’s “red lines” on Syria’s chemical weapons were ignored almost as soon as they were uttered.How small is the Israel-Palestine conflict? Fun with statistics
“In this situation, the only forces which can succeed are those which are already well-established: either civil dictatorships or fundamentalists… From the point of view of the free world, there should be no difference between Assad and the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Syria.”
The West’s “betrayal” of democratic dissidents in Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution has sent an extremely negative message to democratic Arab oppositionists in the Middle East today, Sharansky argued. If no democratic forces emerged in the Arab world, the West should simply stay out.
So I ask- why is the world so obsessed with the Palestinian question in terms of media time, attention, foreign aid and diplomatic efforts? Is it something to do with oil money? Is hating Israel an integral part of a prevalent ideology? Or are the other conflicts, other displaced and hungry and embattled people of the world too boring to cover on the news and sprinkle with aid money? Does CNN think that they’re ugly? Is this bias fair?Palestinians to be first buyers of Israeli natural gas
I don’t know. But anyone who spends their time painting a red X on the Star of David that is superimposed on an Israeli flag, or designing fabulous ‘Bethlehem seperation walls’ to decorate churches with, may want to ask themselves that same question. And when they ask- if these ‘Palestine activists’ decide that a Palestinian life is more valuable than the life of a Papuan’s, a Sudanese person’s, or a Colombian’s that they spend all their time focusing on that issue even if they have never been to Gaza, then they need to ask some serious questions about their perception of humanity.
The first buyer of natural gas from Israel’s largest gas field will be the Palestine Power Generation Company, which will purchase some $1.2 billion-worth of gas over 20 years, one of the major partners in the field announced on Sunday.
The Leviathan group will sell the PPGC, which supplies power to Palestinian areas in the West Bank, as much as 4.75 billion cubic meters of gas when the Leviathan reserve begins to yield in 2016 or 2017, the Delek Group said in a statement.
‘Bethlehem Unwrapped’: Rally for Israel – update
More Videos from Sussex Friends of Israel
I think St James’s Church deserves priority to the Saturday BDS action.The failed boycott campaign against Israel
On reflection, St James’s response to us and their initial decision to build the ‘Separation Wall’ is even more bizarre!! To build a wall and then stop people going in to the wall, by way of a CHECK POINT!! (Yes, I did mean CHECK POINT!) is irony personified. Don’t believe me……
The president of Haverford pronounced the boycott “[so] intellectually clumsy and shortsighted that it’s hard to understand what actually they [the ASA] were thinking.”NYU Prof to Head ASA,
There is, in these statements, a return to clarity and confidence in academic principles, and a refusal to accord the rote declamations and slanders against Israel even minimal respect or notice.
And that has produced an interesting result. For is it not now the case that the group proposing the boycott, the American Studies Association, is far more tarnished and isolated than the academic institutions it was asking the whole world to shun?
If anyone deserves to be “boycotted,” it’s the ASA itself.
Supports Israel Boycott; NY Lawmakers Threaten to Withdraw State Aid
While New York University’s president and provost have condemned a boycott of Israeli academics by the American Studies Association, NYU Social and Cultural Analysis Professor Lisa Duggan, set to become the next president of the ASA, told the New York Post that she supports the boycott.Moral narcissism and the MLA’s obsession with Israel
The disagreement at NYU comes as New York State Senate Co-leader Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx) and Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) introduced legislation this week to withdraw state funding from any New York college that boycotts Israel, according to the New York Daily News.
The lure of Palestinianism has proven to be positivity irresistible to left-leaning humanists and literary scholars who burrow into Western thought to uncover the dark underpinnings of imperialism, militarism, colonialism, oppression, racism, and, as a result of one of the MLA’s notorious past presidents, Edward Said, the theory of “Orientalism,” a mode of thought which claimed to reveal the inherent racism and imperialism imbedded in Western scholarship and politics. The fascination with Third-world victimism, identity politics, and multiculturalism, coupled with harsh critiques of both the U.S. and its proxy in the Middle East, Israel, have all led academics like those in the ASA and the MLA—whose fields are, in a normal world, unrelated to these issues—to involve themselves aggressively in answering calls for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions solely against the Jewish state.Eleven links in four BBC articles promote baseless second Intifada myth
Since the evening of January 1st the BBC News website has produced no fewer than four separate reports at different URLs on the subject of the deteriorating health of Israel’s former prime minister Ariel Sharon.CAMERA Prompts Ha'aretz Corrections on Ethiopians' Contraception
Each of those articles includes between two and three links to the BBC’s recently updated profile of Ariel Sharon which still promotes the erroneous claim that his visit to Temple Mount in September 2000 was the cause of the second Intifada.
Months after CAMERA's Israel office prompted Ha'aretz to publish corrections of coverage concerning Depo Provera contraception injections among Ethiopian women, the media watch organization last week set off another round of corrections at the influential Israeli news outlet.German Hooligans Desecrate Berlin Holocaust Memorial
Last week we flagged an end of the year round up by Ha'aretz's Mairav Zonszein, "Most Read Stories of 2013," which inaccurately quoted a directive sent out by Health Ministry director-general Prof. Roni Gamzu's to health-maintenance organizations concerning the use of the drug.
Arutz Sheva has obtained shocking footage of a gang of hooligans partying and urinating on the world-famous Holocaust Memorial in central Berlin on New Year’s Eve during the open air New Year’s Eve party at the Brandenburg Gate.From The MEMRI Archives: Reports On French Muslim Antisemitic Comedian Dieudonne
French Comic Dieudonné: 'Muslims and Christians Should Unite' Against The Jews; 'Together We Will Be Able To Fight This Satanic Spirit Which Now Heads The Highest International Institutions'Archival - Dieudonné Praises Antisemitic "Quenelle" Salute, Calls for Coup in France
Iranian-French Co-Production by Antisemitic French Comedian Dieudonné Presents Spoof on Auschwitz Gas Chambers
Antisemitic French Comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala To Release Iran-Produced Film, 'The Anti-Semite'
French Comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala Promotes His New Song 'Shoahnanas' ('Holocaust Pineapples'), Claims: Greater Freedom of Speech in Iran Than in France; Most Slave Traders Were Jews
Paris mayor calls for ban on anti-Semitic comedian
In an interview on Europe 1 radio, Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe said it was time to bring an end to the performer’s outbursts, AFP reported on Monday.Dutch soccer team heads to Abu Dhabi without Israeli player
“We must ban the performances (of the comedian),” Delanoe said, and described Dieudonne as someone who “defends crimes against humanity.”
Two Dutch politicians and several media criticized the team, Vitesse of Arnhem, over the weekend for agreeing to play in Abu Dhabi despite the refusal Saturday to let Dan Mori into the country for matches against two German teams.Judge: ‘Let’s Burn the Jew’ not Racism, Even if you Burn a Jew
Geert Wilders, leader of the rightist, pro-Israel Party for Freedom, on Sunday called the team cowardly on his Twitter account. “Vitesse shouldn’t have gone to the United Arab Emirates to protest the refusal to let Mori in. They are now accepting the emirates’ Jew-hate. Cowardly.”
A high school student grabbed a Jewish female classmate, held a lighter to her hair and said out loud, “let’s burn the Jew,” but a Canadian judge concluded that the incident was “not racially motivated.”NY knockout suspect charged with hate crimes
The incident between two 15 year old Winnipeg, Canada high school students took place in 2011.
The lawyer for the defendant claimed, essentially, it was the girl’s fault her hair caught on fire.
Barry Baldwin, 35, was charged with six counts each of assault as a hate crime and aggravated harassment as a hate crime for attacks that allegedly took place in heavily Jewish neighborhoods from Nov. 9 to late December, the New York Police Department said Saturday, according to New York media.NY Post flogged over cover story on slain Hasidic man
The victims were all Jewish women who ranged in age from 20 to 78. One of the victims fell on the small child she was holding during the attack.
New York government officials publicly condemned the New York Post Sunday, hours after the paper published a front-page picture of a slain Hasidic businessman and the headline “Who didn’t want him dead?”Tel Aviv to commemorate LGBT Holocaust victims
The smoldering, half-burned body of real estate developer Menachem Stark, 39, was found Saturday in a dumpster in Nassau County, two days after he was reported missing.
The Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality will unveil a monument to commemorate members of the LGBT community who were persecuted by the Nazi regime for their sexual orientation and gender identity on January 10.After 68 years, daughter of Anne Frank's classmate finally gets her chance to thank the British officer who saved her mother from Nazi concentration camp
The new monument will be mounted outside the Municipal LGBT Community Center in Meir Park (Gan Meir) which serves as the city's main hub of activity for the LGBT community.
The daughter of a Jewish classmate of Anne Frank rescued from the horrors of Bergen Belsen concentration camp has met the British officer who saved her mother's life.Pope Francis Announces Plans for May Trip to Israel, Jordan
Grateful Elizabeth Kahn, 59, flew to Israel to meet Major Leonard Berney, 93, from Plymouth, Devon, and present him with a special silver platter paid for by the family in recognition of his heroics.
Jewish Leonard, of the British 11th Armoured division, was one of the first army officers through the gates of Belsen when the camp was liberated on April 15, 1945.
Pope Francis officially announced his plans to visit Israel from May 24-26, 2014.A sweet discovery takes shape in Jerusalem
“In the climate of joy, typical of this Christmas season, I wish to announce that from 24 to 26 May next, God willing, I will make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land,” Pope Francis said following his Sunday service, Vatican Radio reported.
The Oramed Pharmaceuticals company, which until a few weeks ago occupied an even-smaller space a few steps away, buys only secondhand furniture – not because CEO Nadav Kidron and chief scientific officer Miriam Kidron – his biochemist mother – are cheapskates. They are just modest, and Oramed is a public company with stockholders and investors behind it.Israel Daily Picture: Funny, It Doesn't Look Like a Mountain or Hell --Vintage Photos from Jerusalem's Hinnom Valley
But the Kidrons’ eight-year-old biotech firm is currently the world’s best hope for an oral insulin capsule, which could improve the lives and health of 400 million diabetics – both type 2 and type 1 – around the world. (h/t Norman F)
The archives at the University of California - Riverside contains this picture, but clearly the caption "Mount Tabor" was wrong.
This is a picture of "Gei Hinnom" (the Hinnom Valley) in Jerusalem, beneath the walls of the Old City.
Today, few residents or tourists know about the history of the area called "Breichat HaSultan (the Sultan's Pool), except for the occasional concert in the amphitheater.
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