Saturday, March 01, 2014
Former British Commander: Amnesty Report Will Incite Even More Hatred (INTERVIEW)
“The undisguised one-sidedness in this report is a technique reserved by human rights groups like Amnesty for Israel alone,” [Colonel Richard] Kemp said. “No other nation on Earth is singled out for this kind of distortion of the truth, not even the worst human rights offenders, such as Syria, Sudan and Pakistan.”Greg Sheridan: ABC Four Corners on Israel: Evil and deeply untrue
Kemp said Amnesty’s report was reminiscent of the Goldstone report on Cast Lead, Israel’s 2009 operation in Gaza, produced for the United Nations that was subsequently discredited.
“The flawed methodology of the Goldstone report has been re-cycled by Amnesty,” he said. “Both treated unsubstantiated allegations made by local people as being absolute proof of Israeli heavy-handedness and wrong-doing. Both failed to take any account of the immense pressures imposed on Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank to follow the anti-Israel line of their leaders, irresistible pressures that self-evidently have an effect on what is said to UN and Amnesty investigators, even when witnesses are guaranteed anonymity.”
WE are living in a time of infamous lies against the state of Israel and the Jewish people. We are witnessing, even in Australia, a recrudescence of some of the oldest types of anti-Semitism. One of the worst recent examples of anti-Israel propaganda that led directly to anti-Semitic outbursts was the Four Corners episode Stone Cold Justice, purporting to be about treatment of Palestinian children in the West Bank.Don't Buy the Israel Boycott Hype
So this is what we’ve come to in 2014. The national broadcaster tells us that Jewish soldiers crucify innocent children and Christian clerics routinely portray Israel as the murderous oppressor of the Middle East. But these stereotypes are both evil, and deeply untrue.
But as soon as one examines these cases individually, the boycott story melts away. They are either not new, not motivated by the boycott movement or have limited impact.
For instance, Danske will maintain its banking relationship with Hapoalim. It simply stopped buying shares in Hapoalim as a default policy for its investment banking clients; if a client wants the shares, Danske will happily buy them for the account. In any case, Danske made the decision almost a year ago and announced it in September, so it could hardly be part of a boycott "wave."
Deutsche Bank has excluded Hapoalim from a single investment fund it set up for a specific client; otherwise, it is doing business with Israel as usual. Boskalis says that far from dropping out of the port tender, Israel disqualified it from the bidding.
So how did this become an "exodus" from Israel, as the Financial Times headlined it in a February article?
For the Western media, the boycott and all the ideological baggage it carries makes it irresistible. But the hysterical coverage was mostly a function of laziness (almost no one was fact-checking) and ignorance (boycott stories are typically covered by political reporters who know nothing about business, trade or investment).
National Geographic: Syrian Jews Suffered Only from 'Suspicion'
It is fair to describe the Alawites of Syria as a "long-oppressed group," which National Geographic does in its March 2014 feature about fighting in Syria. But in the same paragraph, reporter Anne Barnard downplays the suffering of Syria's Jews, stating only that "most left after the founding of Israel, when the government began viewing them with suspicion."MJ Rosenberg Sides With Racist Richard Over Anti-Semitic Mondoweiss
Was it mere "suspicion" (the author doesn't clarify whether the mistrust was deserved or unfounded) that reduced a community of tens of thousands to just a few dozen, or was it much worse?
It was in Syria that the "first serious blood libel in the Arab world" targeted the Jewish community, historian Norman Stillman explained. The charge that Jews murdered two Christians to use their blood for Passover rituals in 1840 brought torture and death to the Jewish community. Jewish children were taken hostage. A letter from Damascus pleading for help reported that "the Governor with a body of 600 men proceeded to demolish the houses of his Jewish subjects, hoping to find the bodies, but not finding any he returned and again inflicted on them further castigations and torments, the most cruel of which was the tying one end of a cord to the member of virility by the other end of which they were dragged through the Governor's Palace to a water closet into which they were thrown."
Silverstein continued to dig himself deeper and deeper into a hole, this time with a post accusing "the anti-Zionist left," most notably the Mondoweiss crowd of trying to police his freedom of speech. Misunderstanding how freedom of speech works seems to be trait across all anti-Zionists. But what does all this have to do with the Huffington Post, you might be wondering? Well, Huffington Post blogger and Israel hater MJ Rosenberg marched into Silverstein's thread to defend him, shockingly:UN Watch: Top UN official condemns “Israel’s adamancy that it is a Jewish state”
I'll admit, I didn't think that defending racism was something I would ever see MJ Rosenberg do. Nor did I expect him to play the 'anti-Semitism' card against Mondoweiss. I have a feeling that they won't be accusing him of using that word to "stifle debate," though. This whole thread is an amazing mess of conflicting alliances and enemies, which just goes to show the state of anti-Zionism today.
A top UN official warned of “aggressive Israeli policies” aimed at creating “discord” by establishing “Arab sectarian mini-States,” the most dangerous of which is “Israel’s adamancy that it is a Jewish State.”What have the Palestinians done for the USA?
In face of such preposterous and inflammatory remarks, why is UN chief Ban Ki-moon silent?
Rima Khalaf, head of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), with the rank of UN Under-Secretary-General, did not mention that it was her own organization’s parliament that recognized a “Jewish state” on November 29, 1947, mentioning the words 30 times in its partition resolution.
I recall the event well, and I also remember that the political aspect of it was not widely discussed. Sirhan was described as a “mentally unstable Jordanian.” But his statements and writing before and after the murder clearly evidenced his political motive: the Palestinian Cause.Palestinian Terrorists Invited to Speak at Anti-Israel Events on Canadian Campuses
Another well-known case was the 1973 murder of the US Ambassador to the Sudan, Cleo Noel; his deputy George Moore, and Guy Eid, the Belgian Ambassador. They were killed by the Black September faction of Fatah. The terrorists took ten hostages, and interestingly, one of their demands was that the US release Sirhan. In 2006, the State Department declassified a report indicating that the ‘father of Palestine’, Yasser Arafat, was personally responsible. (h/t Bob Knot)
Frank Dimant, CEO, B’nai Brith Canada, said, “Not content with smearing Israel — the only democracy in the region — with the tired but persistent ‘apartheid’ lie, organizers have now resorted to including terrorists in their rosters.”Edwin Black: Financing Mideast Flames – Confronting BDS and the New Israel Fund
B’nai Brith Canada said it was “particularly concerned” that organizers have chosen to feature Black September airline
hijacker Leila Khaled and convicted terrorist Samer Issawi among the presenters.
At a time when the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement is seen as a viable threat to Israel, many are asking where the oxygen for BDS is coming from.Did Code Pink Hire spammers to hijack AIPAC Twitter timeline?
Critics point to the prestigious New Israel Fund (NIF) as an organization whose financing has been inseparable from the boycott movement as we know it.
Its low, even by Code Pink's already subterranean standards. Its also quite revealing.Code Pink and JVP standing side by side with anti-semites. Again
Code Pink has dozens of "Sample tweets" listed on their website, in an attempt to hijack the AIPAC national conference twitter feed. But they just couldn't rely on their flighty activists leave anything to chance.
Instead, a variety of egg avatar accounts and twerps for hire appear to have been enlisted to the task.
Brand new profiles, following no one and with no followers are now tweeting Code Pinks regurgitated talking points.
Incidentally, Michael Rabb is a rabid anti Israel organizer. His fellow activists look away when he publicly declares his support for Gilad Atzmon and willfully ignore his erudite comments such as "...the ultimate cause of the “problem” in Palestine is the Zionist Jewish project to establish a Jewish homeland (Jewish state) in Palestine for Jews, of the Jews by the Jews." Michael Rabb endorses the usual lame brained conspiracy theories and has promoted the picketing of synagoguesRemains of 2 rockets found on Mount Hermon; IAF strikes rocket launching site in Gaza
Rather than being shunned by the Palestinian "peace" activists, instead Michael is embraced. His antisemitism was conveniently ignored at the Organizing conference of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation where he presented a divestment workshop.
IDF soldiers recovered the remains of two Syrian rockets on Mount Hermon on Saturday morning.Iran’s Muddy Waters
The rockets exploded in the north at approximately 12:45 a.m. on Saturday. According to initial army assessments, the projectiles were not deliberately aimed at Israel, but were fired in the course of battles raging between the Syrian army and rebel forces north of the border.
On Friday night, the Israel Air Force carried out an air strike in northern Gaza.
An IDF spokeswoman said the strike targeted a rocket launcher that posed an immediate threat to Israeli security. There were no reports of injuries in the strike.
Iran is facing a water crisis. President Rouhani could help his nation by turning to … Israel.Egypt to Hamas: Smuggling tunnels will be shut entirely
"That cooperation began in 1962, after a severe earthquake in the Qazvin region of Iran killed more than 12,000 people. The earthquake collapsed a chain of wells that engineers had drilled in a qanat, or tunnel, style. Hundreds of thousands were at risk from lack of drinking water. Israel flew in teams of drillers. New water supplies were identified, and a series of artesian wells were drilled. The drilling was such a success that Israel’s water engineering company, today a private enterprise, was hired to identify and gain access to underground resources elsewhere in Iran."
So unlike President Obama, President Rouhani wants to make the water rise. He probably could if he’d reach out to Israel. Not only does Israel have a history of helping Iran to develop its water resources, it is currently a world leader in water technologies as evidenced by its success at home.
Egypt also warned Hamas that it will hold the Islamist group responsible for any incidents on the Gaza-Egypt border.Egypt: Gunmen Murder Police Guard of Morsi Judge
The Sinai has experienced growing unrest since the ouster of president Mohammed Morsi in July 2013.
Egypt launched a new campaign with the aim of creating a “buffer zone” between the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, Ma’an news agency reported earlier this month, citing an unnamed Egyptian security official to the effect that his country’s military had destroyed 10 tunnels and seven homes in Rafah, along the border.
Gunmen on Friday killed an Egyptian policeman who was on a security team guarding the home of a judge in the jailbreak trial of ousted president Mohammed Morsi, security officials told AFP.Syrian extremists live-tweet chopping man’s hand off
Sergeant Abdallah Metwally was shot dead as he rode his motorbike across a bridge over the Nile in the city of Mansoura north of Cairo, according to AFP.
The militants, who belong to the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), carried out the Islamic punishment for theft while posting graphic photo updates of the punishment’s progression on a social media thread which has since been suspended.Signed copies of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' auctioned for $64,85
The footage showed a blindfolded man being restrained at a table, with several militants holding him down. The man’s arm was pinned to the table. Another militant, in a black balaclava, could be seen moving forward to chop off the man’s hand with a large sword.
The autographed copies of the two-volume work steeped in anti-Semitism are inscribed as Christmas gifts to Josef Bauer, an officer in the German SS during World War Two and a participant in Hitler's failed Munich coup in 1923.Ukraine Synagogue in Crimea Spray Painted With ‘Death to the Jews’
Eleven people bid during an online auction that ended on Thursday evening for the signed books, which were estimated to sell for between $20,000 and $25,000, the auctioneer said. The winning bid includes a buyer's premium, also known as commission fees.
A news website from Crimea, a Ukrainian region that is now the site of clashes between ethnic Russian residents and Ukrainians in the wake of the toppling of Ukraine’s former government, reported that a synagogue in the city of Simferopol was spray painted with anti-Semitic language.Honoring Dr. Martin luther King's legacy in New York
The spray paint included Swastika symbols and the wording “death to the Jews,” said Anatoly Gendin, head of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Crimea, reported e-crimea.info. Although there is no direct evidence linking anti-Semitic incidents in Ukraine with the broader civil unrest in the country, Gendin pointed to the fact that since the Maidan protests started, Ukrainian life has gotten 30 percent more expensive and the Ukrainian Oschadbank stopped issuing pension payments to the elderly.
Continuing a tradition of over 20 years in celebration of Black History Month, the Consulate General of Israel in New York together with the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the Jewish National Fund, will honor Dr. Clarence B. Jones, who served as a key adviser and speechwriter for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Reverend Dr. Jesse T. Williams Jr. of the Convent Avenue Baptist Church, with the distinguished Martin Luther King Jr. Award.Wounded IDF Soldier Proposes to Girlfriend on Stage of FIDF Gala (VIDEO)
Ambassador Ido Aharoni, Consul General of Israel in New York, and Rabbi Michael S. Miller, JCRC-NY, will officially present the award. Dr. Jones and Rev. Dr. Williams are being honored for their commitment to the dream of freedom and equality, their efforts in spreading compassion and for uniting communities of all backgrounds.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Award has been presented by the Consulate General of Israel in New York for over 20 years to individuals and organizations that promote ethnic and cultural understanding. To celebrate this great visionary, together with the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the Jewish National Fund, the Consulate General of Israel in New York annually honors those whose work reflects Dr. King's legacy of hope and peace. (h/t Tzanchan77)
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Captain Ziv Shilon, who lost his arm when an explosive device detonated near him while on patrol near the Gaza border in October 2012, proposed to his longtime girlfriend Adi Sitbon in front of more than 1,000 people at the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) greater Miami Chapter Solidarity Gala on Thursday.Israel Daily Picture: The Jews of Palestine after the British Pushed out the Turks and Germans in 1917-1918
“FIDF says that our job is to protect Israel; their job is to give us the reason. I wanted to take this opportunity to ask my girlfriend, Adi, just one question. You are my hope, my rock, and my everything. I wanted to ask you, will you marry me?” Shilon told his girlfriend on stage. After an emotional “yes” from Sitbon, a video message from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was aired, in which he congratulated the couple.
Within months of capturing Jerusalem in December 1917, the British Army launched a recruitment drive in Palestine itself. The IWM photos here show recruits from Jerusalem and Jaffa on their way to an army training camp in mid-1918.
It appears that many of the recruits were Jewish -- Orthodox men in Jerusalem and secular men in Jaffa.
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