Sunday, April 27, 2014
European Jewish Congress: Amid rising anti-Semitism, Jewish life in Europe unsustainable
“Normative Jewish life in Europe is unsustainable,” European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor said on Sunday. Presenting the results of a study on worldwide anti-Semitism in 2013 by the eponymous Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, Kantor cited increasing anti-Semitism and rising “fear and insecurity” as factors leading to a European Jewish decline.Honest Reporting: Palestinian Christian Reveals the Reality Over the Propaganda
Citing a November study by the European Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights which showed that almost a third of Jews in several European countries are mulling emigration, Kantor asserted that “Jews do not feel safe or secure in certain communities in Europe.”
“According to that survey, almost half of the Jewish population is afraid of being verbally or physically attacked in a public place because they are Jewish and 25% of Jews will not wear anything that identifies them as Jewish or go near a Jewish institution for fear of an attack,” he said.
In April 2012, CBS’s 60 Minutes broadcast one of the most biased pieces of reporting of that year (and a Dishonest Reporter Award finalist) on the status of Christians in the Holy Land. Bob Simon presented an unbalanced picture blaming Israel for virtually every difficulty experienced by Palestinian Christians.CAMERA: 60 Minutes Source Undermines Credibility of Segment Aired in 2012
The segment included an interview with Christy, a young Palestinian from Bethlehem, whose family home had been affected by Israel’s security barrier on three sides. Christy was forced to flee to the UK to escape persecution by Palestinians who disagree with her political views and sympathy for Israel’s case. At meeting in London in 2013, Christy explained to me how Bob Simon and CBS had, through selective editing, misrepresented her views on the security barrier and the situation of Christians in Bethlehem.
Christy greatly impressed me, both for her courageous stance and the intelligent manner in which she presented her side of the Palestinian issue in stark contrast to the anti-Israel propaganda that so dominates the discourse.
After speaking in defense of Israel's right to exist with her fellow Palestinians, Christy reports she was threatened by one of her own family members – who said he would put a bullet in her head if she didn't stop talking in defense of Israel. The explanation for the threat was that she was putting her family in danger by speaking out in Israel's defense.Christy a Palestinian Christian's plea to Dr. Saeb Erekat
During her talk in Sweden, Christy also described how one of her uncles was shot in the head and blinded for his refusal to pay protection money, or “al-jizyah,” to Muslim extremists in the West Bank.
His life was only saved by the treatment he received in an Israeli hospital. She also describes how Palestinian judges have colluded with the theft of land from Christians in Palestinian society.
Netanyahu: Abbas formed alliance with group that wants to carry out another Holocaust
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu linked Holocaust Remembrance Day with Fatah's recent reconciliation with Hamas, saying at Sunday's cabinet meeting that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has formed an alliance with a Holocaust-denying terrorist organization that wants to kill more Jews.Holocaust, Hamas and reconciliation
"Hamas denies the Holocaust while trying to bring about a new Holocaust through the destruction of the State of Israel," Netanyahu said at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting. "Abu Mazen [Abbas] needs to choose between his alliance with Hamas and true peace with Israel. We hope that he will return to the peace track."
The prime minister said that difference between the situation facing the Jews today and during the Holocaust is that today the Jews have a sovereign state with a strong army that can defend the country from those, like Iran and Hamas, who want to destroy it.
In Ramallah during a meeting with Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the New York-based Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, last week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas referred to the Holocaust as “the single greatest tragedy in modern-day history.”Holocaust denial and the Iranian regime
In response to a request from Schneier, Abbas even agreed to issue a public declaration in commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day. In a statement published on Sunday by WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, the PA president was expected to announce that “what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust was the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity in the modern era.”
Abbas’s announcement, while welcome, was surprising considering that his own doctoral dissertation, “The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement 1933-1945,” written at the People’s Friendship University of Russia and accepted in 1982 by the Institute of Oriental Sciences of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, engages in Holocaust denial.
Well, we know that there's at least one person who won't be marking Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday.Hamas-Abbas: A reality check
"Observe that no one in Europe dares to speak about the Holocaust even though it's not clear what the reality is about it, whether it even has a reality, or how it happened," said Iran's ruling cleric, Ali Khamenei, in a March 21 speech.
"Expressing an opinion or doubts about the Holocaust is considered to be one of the greatest of sins [in Europe] where someone can get stopped, arrested, sued or imprisoned for this offense."
The ayatollah's recent comments on the Holocaust were part of a longer speech that was a scorching stemwinder against the West and Iranians who embrace Western ways. Holocaust revisionism is part of Mr. Khamenei's resistance to a world organized around Western norms and history. Other strategies include developing Iran's nuclear program, making its economy more sanctions-proof, and maintaining a religious culture capable of closing the "cracks" opened by the allure of a deviant Occident.
The blood bond between the leader of the "good" terrorists from Ramallah and the leader of the "bad" terrorists from Gaza once again proves that they both share the same goal: destroying the State of Israel, not just expelling the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria. They differ only in style. Whereas Hamas has made its objectives painfully clear, Abbas has assumed a deceptive posture that has won him many supporters in the enlightened world, including the Obama-Kerry duo and radical Israeli lefties. These pro-Abbasites won't let the facts get in the way; it won't be long before they ask us to bury our heads in the sand and continue the "peace process."EU: American peace efforts ‘must not go to waste’
The new reality requires each player to rethink their strategy. The Americans should stop banging their heads (and our heads) against the wall in search of the right formula for peace. They should also shed the false premise that has guided their Middle East policy and address other foreign policy challenges (Ukraine, for example). The Arab world has already begun to focus on the Abbas/Hamas twins, analyzing their points of agreement and disagreement. Israel should not pick a favorite; both are our enemy.
The European Union on Sunday urged Israel and the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table, saying US efforts to broker peace must not be allowed to “go to waste.”Danon: Abbas Becoming a Professor of Terrorism
“Negotiations are the best way forward,” EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in response to the breakdown last week in months of efforts by Washington to keep the two sides talking.
“The extensive efforts deployed in recent months must not go to waste,” Ashton’s statement added.
Danon particularly took issue with Abbas’s claim in the speech that a unity government with Hamas is not a terrorist government.Senior minister: Israel should annex Area C
“Abbas is on his way to becoming a professor of terrorism,” said Danon, adding, “After denying the Holocaust in his doctoral thesis, he now claims that Hamas is not a terrorist organization.”
The PA Chairman, added Danon, “Seems to have forgotten that after the elections in Gaza, Hamas threw members of Fatah off the roofs of buildings. He forgot for that the Hamas’s stated goal is to destroy Israel, he forgot that the entire world defines Hamas as a terrorist organization.”
Speaking to Army Radio on Sunday morning, Erdan, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, criticized the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement announced last Wednesday and called on the Israeli government “to start preparing for the annexation of Area C,” the part of the West Bank under full Israeli administrative control.Hamas: We will never recognize Israel
Wherever “there is a Jewish population [in the West Bank] that should remain in place; we can start to prepare to annex [that area] if there is no Palestinian partner and the situation seems unlikely to change,” Erdan said.
But subsequent comments by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas saying that a unity government led by him will recognize Israel, coupled with statements to the same effect attributed to Hamas government spokesman Taher Nunu by The Washington Post on Saturday night, prompted several Hamas officials to speak up on Sunday.Palestinian Authority Applies for Membership in Interpol
“What I was quoted as telling the American paper is wrong, and I unequivocally deny it,” Nunu told the Palestinian Qudsnet news agency. “The issue of Hamas recognizing Israel is a complete nonstarter… aimed primarily at weakening the movement’s positions on Israel.”
Nunu said he would seek legal recourse against The Washington Post for its “false report.”
The Palestinian Authority (PA) applied to over fifteen international agencies earlier this month, in a unilateral move which torpedoed peace talks with Israel.Jewish Youths Attempted to Enter Temple Mount Dressed as Muslims
But on Sunday, according to Ma'ariv, PA officials announced that they had finished the application process for a different agency entirely: the International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL.
Two Jewish youths were taken in for questioning by Jerusalem police after attempting to enter the Temple Mount dressed as Muslim worshippers.Palestinians attack Israeli in Berlin
According to initial reports the pair are "secular Jews" who were touring Jerusalem together and wanted to include the Temple Mount on their trip; it is not clear why they chose to disguise themselves.
A group of six Palestinian youths punched an Israeli in the face on Friday in Berlin after they questioned him about citizenship.IDF Doctor Saves Life of Month-Old Palestinian Baby
The 31-year-old Israeli filed a criminal complaint, according to the daily BZ newspaper. The paper titled its article ”Anti-Semitism: Punched in the face because he is Israeli.”
The BZ reported that the Israeli left his apartment with his wife and was confronted by a group of six young men. The youths surrounded the man and his wife, and struck his face. His wife was not injured. According to the report, the youths insulted him.
Last night, a tragedy nearly happened to a Palestinian family from the village of Beitin–their youngest daughter, a month-old baby, began to choke while playing with her sister. Her troubled mother ran to the checkpoint seeking help, and an IDF officer from the division noticed the panicking mother with the choking infant in her arms. The officer immediatly called the nearest IDF doctor. Within a few minutes, Sec. Lt. Ben Tzanani and his team were at the scene and saved the baby’s life.US academic group begins vote on anti-Israel resolution
The 30,000 member-strong Modern Language Association has launched an all-membership vote on an anti-Israel resolution passed in the group’s Delegate Assembly last January.BBC’s Bowen promotes BDS and apartheid analogy on main TV news programme
Opponents of the resolution, which seeks State Department intervention regarding “denials of entry to the West Bank by US academics” traveling to Palestinian universities, complain that the MLA’s leadership has unfairly favored the pro-resolution camp in the run-up to the vote and are disturbed by voices within the organization that have made anti-Semitic comments.
Bowen makes no attempt to clarify to viewers why previous attempts to bring about a peaceful conclusion to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have failed. He refrains from mentioning the wave of Palestinian terror which followed the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority’s decision to scupper those agreements by initiating the second Intifada, its failure to even reply to the deal proposed by Ehud Olmert in 2008 and much more. Bowen continues:Kansas killer a throwback, but anti-Semitism still thrives
“Now that is one reason I think why Fatah went for that unity deal with Hamas, because they’re not getting what they want out of talks and also because there’s a current within the PLO that says they need to try a different strategy…ah…building internal unity and also what they call non-violent resistance, which includes the movement for ….ah….for the boycott, disvestment… disvestment [sic] and sanctions; in other words, trying to isolate Israel in the way that South Africa was isolated in the 1980s.”
Here Bowen fails to clarify to viewers why any PLO claim of adoption of a policy of “non-violent resistance” is patently at odds with its latest initiative to join forces with Hamas; a group which is recognised internationally as a terrorist organisation and which repeatedly makes abundantly clear in both words and action its unwavering commitment to the annihilation of a UN member state through violent means.
An old-style white-supremacist neo-Nazi like the shooter in Kansas, evil as his crime was, is the least of this resurgent threat, especially in this country. Hitler-idolizing anti-Semites like Miller, widely regarded as abhorrent, are a negligible phenomenon in the United States. His deadly rampage was instantly condemned across the board; only among the kooks did anyone express support for Miller’s vilification of Jews.Jewish Cincinnati Resident Left Shaken After Swastika Painted on His Door (PHOTOS)
Where anti-Semitism is gaining market share today is not among those who yell “Heil Hitler” or demonize Jews as Christ-killers. The oldest and most protean of hatreds has assumed a new form for a new age: hostility to Zionism and Israel. The classic anti-Semitic motifs — Jews are aliens, Jews are murderous, Jews are rapacious, Jews are disloyal, Jews manipulate governments — have been repurposed for a post-Holocaust generation that speaks with a post-Holocaust vocabulary.
Sophisticated and educated Westerners today know better than to blame “the Jews” for society’s ills, or to suggest that the best solution to the “Jewish Problem” is for Jews to disappear. But it is widely acceptable in many circles to debate whether the world’s only Jewish state has a right to exist. Or to insist that much of the Middle East’s turmoil would be resolved if only that Jewish state would make peace with its enemies by conceding to their demands. Or to claim with a straight face, when Israel defends itself against Arab and Islamist violence, that it is behaving as the Nazis did.
A Jewish resident of Price Hill, Cincinnati, said he fears for his safety after he discovered a swastika spray-painted on the front door of his home on Thursday morning, local TV station WLWT5 reported.Nazi hunter lauds Germany, US in annual report
The victim, Ralph Ford, said he has not stopped shaking since he found the hateful marking.
He felt “instant fear, more scared than I have ever been, cold chills ran all the way through me,” he told WLWT5. “I fear for my wife. I fear for our safety.”
The organization, run by Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, placed both countries in its Category A, of states which “have taken all reasonable measures to identify the potential suspected Nazi war criminals in the country in order to maximize investigation and prosecution and have achieved notable results during the period under review.”The Holocaust's foremost unsung hero
It specifically praised Germany for implementing a legal strategy that “paves the way for the conviction of practically any person who served either in a Nazi death camp or in the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units).”
In 1986, a 78-year-old man named Moshe Kraus died in Jerusalem. You probably don't recognize the name. He was never commemorated in any way. He is not mentioned in any Holocaust encyclopedias. But Moshe Kraus is responsible for the largest rescue operation during the Holocaust, on a huge scale. German industrialist Oskar Schindler, with his resourcefulness and courage, managed to save 1,200 Jews; Kraus saved tens of thousands.“Driverless” Tesla electric car will test run on Israel’s Better Place grid
Historians are divided on the exact number, but the most conservative estimate talks about at least 40,000 people, and some estimates are even as high as 100,000 Jews who escaped the Nazis in Hungary thanks to this daring man.
In the aftermath of the demise of Shai Agassi’s Better Place electric car network company, EV car purchasers in Israel feared they might become stranded due to not being able to recharge or exchange their car’s lithium batteries. Will Tesla, who said they wouldn’t, swoop in?Asia primed to beat out US as top Israel export market
Rumors have circulated that Tesla Motors, manufacturers of high priced electric sports cars, might soon be introducing their cars into Israel to take advantage of the electric car infrastructure already set up by Better Place.
This rumor became ever stronger due to a partnership between California based Tesla Motors and the Israeli Mobileye company to produce the world’s first “driverless” car.
In 2014, Israel is expected to export more on an annual basis to Asia than it will to the United States, the Economy Ministry said Sunday. Asian markets accounted for 21 percent of Israeli exports in 2013, almost the same as exports to the US, as exports to the Far East trended higher over the past three years, and exports to the US trended downward.
If that pattern continues, Israeli exports to Asia will pass those to the US this year and continue to grow, with Asia accounting for a full quarter of Israeli exports by 2018, the ministry said. Israeli exports to Asia are predicted to grow 4.7% in 2014, while the ministry anticipates that exports to the US and European Union will rise just 1.3% and 1.5% respectively.
