Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Despite everything, Zionism won
The days between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israeli Independence Day tend to reveal the true faces of the many who oppose the modern era's biggest humanist endeavor: the movement to bring Jews back to Israel. The Jewish people have returned home after many years in exile, but our ship, which constantly navigates the tempestuous sea, nearly drowned forever in history's biggest massacre.MEMRI: Arab Writers Praise Israel's Technological Superiority, Morality And Democracy, Call To Learn From It And Mimic Its Success
The gates of Israel were shut when the survivors came knocking, but the gates did not shut themselves. The British, and their friends, made sure those gates were locked tight. The U.S. did not lag far behind in the race to win over the hearts of the Arab states, be it out of greed for oil or a fundamental lack of understanding of the global order, and more specifically, of the Middle East. Immigration ships were ejected back into the stormy sea as they tried to enter the land of freedom and equality.
Arab media is known to be unsympathetic towards Israel. It even avoids using the country's name, usually using terms such as "the Zionist entity" or "the Hebrew state" instead. Furthermore, reports and editorials in Arab press are rife with expressions of hatred and hostility towards Israel. However, the Arab press occasionally features articles by Arab intellectuals and pundits praising Israel, listing its achievements – mainly in hi-tech – and urging Arab countries to learn from the Israelis in order to better their own global standing.Greetings from Apartheidia
This report will include excerpts from recent articles praising Israel.
We just need some help here getting with the Apartheid program. This place looks too much like one of those Benetton ads.
So, as that master of diplomatic acrobatics John Kerry so aptly pointed out, there is nothing left for us to do but to come out of the Apartheid closet.
There is just one problem we are all grappling with. Who are we exactly “apartheiding,” if I can put it that way. There have been numerous concerned citizen meetings in our town and others trying to get answers to this.
We asked our Ethiopian gardener about it and he said that he is saving up for an apartment, so if the country goes to hell, it should drive down the price of real estate. Our Arab family GP said no more antibiotics, get out and get some fresh air, even if it meant rubbing elbows with the apartheided.
Our Druze contractor did say that many of his family were being apartheided to death across the border in Syria, but he admitted that this didn’t have much to do with events on this side of the Golan.
Israel Accuses UN Envoy of 'Abusing Position' to Stoke Tensions
UN envoy Robert Serry said he and other diplomats had joined an Easter procession at the invitation of Jerusalem's Palestinian Christian community but were denied access to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at a police checkpoint.Rahm Emanuel Slanders Supporters of Israel
A letter to UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon from Israel's UN ambassador Ron Prosor - made public Tuesday by the Israeli foreign ministry - said that on the day of the Holy Fire ceremony on April 19, the narrow lanes of Jerusalem's walled Old City were packed with worshippers and crowd control was a major challenge.
"Against this backdrop, and instead of taking constructive actions to help mitigate the sensitive situation, Robert Serry, the UN's special envoy to the Middle East, took disruptive steps that exacerbated tensions on the ground," the letter said.
"It is unfortunate that a UN official abused his position and the UN platform to express personal opinions."
It turns out that American citizens “are not allowed” to criticize Israel.Dutch Muslims plan ‘Palestinian Holocaust’ event
Or so says Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and former chief of staff to President Barack Obama.
Emanuel was asked his view of the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace in an interview appearing in the April 21 issue of The New Republic. He ventured to say that while Israel “has a security concern involving geography, geography does not have the same value it did in 1967.”
Emanuel’s strategic notions are highly debatable. Without the territories captured 47 years ago, during the Six-Day War, Israel would be nine miles wide at its midsection. Stripped of the geographical protection of the highlands of Judea and Samaria, Israel’s security would depend entirely on Arab dictators and terrorists abiding by peace treaties.
The Platform Bewust Moslim group, whose name means “Platform Aware Muslim,” is planning to hold the ceremony on May 4 in Hilversum near Amsterdam under the banner ”Palestine, the Shadow Holocaust,” the Jewish television channel Joods Omroep reported on its website Monday.No takers on my debate challenge to Vassar pro-boycott faculty, but I’m still going
The event was advertised as a symposium offering “a review of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the passive attitude of the international community” and is slated to take place at Hilversum’s Al-Amal mosque.
May 4 is the Netherlands’ official day for Remembrance of the Dead, when official commemorations are held for Dutch civilians and members of the armed forces killed by enemy forces, in terrorist attacks or in combat. The date was selected after World War II and many of the events held on May 4 are designed to commemorate victims of Nazism, often with an emphasis on victims of the Holocaust.
You may recall My debate challenge to Vassar pro-boycott faculty who signed an Open Letter defending the American Studies Association academic boycott of Israel:100 Shofars in New York Against BDS
"Any or all of the 39 Vassar faculty members are welcome to debate me. All I insist on is equal time cumulatively. If none of the 39 Vassar faculty agree to debate, I will give a lecture on why the academic boycott of Israel should be opposed."
The organizers of the debate, the recently renamed Vassar Conservative Libertarian Union (VCLU), informed me a short while ago that none of the 39 Vassar faculty who signed the Open Letter had accepted my debate challenge by the deadline of last night.
A "100 Shofar" protest was held on Tuesday in New York, in front of the UJA-Federation Building in Manhattan, to condemn the invitation of three pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) groups to the 50th annual Israel Day Parade.Admit J-Street? May as well let in PLO and Fatah
Arutz Sheva contributor and Americans For a Safe Israel National Director Mark Langfan was on scene to record the protest.
The protest follows an April 8 rally in front of the building, which similarly called on UJA to dis-invite "Partners for Progressive Israel," which lists Israeli products to boycott on its website; the New Israel Fund (NIF), which has supported BDS and reportedly been encouraging Arab riots; as well as B'Tselem, whose volunteers have taken part in Arab riots.
Conference members include span the ideological spectrum from American Friends of Likud to Americans for Peace NowDivestment votes surge but largely fail on US campuses
They may as well be advocating be advocating the admission of Fatah and the PLO. All claim to want peace and are dedicated to the destruction of Israel. J Street is a front organization for the apostate George Soros. Differerentiating among them is making a distinction without a difference.
Leftist Jeremy Ben-Ami is executive director of J Street. an organization that styles itself as a liberal advocacy organization. It is actively funded by the apostate George Soros, but covertly, giving Ben-Ami deniability. Ben-Ami, in the past, supported John Mearsheimer and claims to articulate a philosophy and an agenda of pro-Zionist, and pro-peace Judaism based on religious and humanist values.
He argues for a two-state solution and for U.S. efforts to promote it.
His professed love for Israel is a sham. Sadly, it appeals to some leftists who haven’t done their homework.
The April 23 votes were part of a surge in student governments at American universities voting on divestment resolutions. In the past two years, at least 16 student governments have weighed divestment measures, including nine this spring, though a majority have rejected them.Guardian’s Former Jerusalem Correspondent Smears Jews on Holocaust Remembrance Day
“There’s been a significant increase in divestment votes,” said Max Samarov, a senior research assistant with the Israel advocacy group StandWithUs. “I think activists were using previous years to test the waters and are now rolling divestment out as a truly national strategy.”
The divestment measures proposed to student governments generally strongly criticize Israeli policies and urge universities to divest themselves of investments in companies doing business with the Israeli military or with West Bank settlements. Their significance is largely symbolic, since they are not binding on universities.
Shortly after the sirens stopped, and colleagues in our office returned to their desks, we noticed a series of Tweets by the Guardian’s former Jerusalem correspondent Chris McGreal.What the Guardian won’t report: Pew study reveals extreme homophobia in Palestinian society
The anti-Zionist malice of the Guardian “journalist” has been the subject of many posts at this blog. The far left propagandist – who fancies the idea that Israeli snipers target Palestinian children, and has shown himself obsessed with the power of the Israel lobby – has achieved the rare status as one of the few Guardian reporters singled out by the Community Security Trust in their annual report on anti-Semitic discourse.
Here are a few of the Tweets today from McGreal, enthusiastically responding to news that the Jewish state was smeared again with the Apartheid lie.
One of the more bewildering aspects of the UK media’s advocacy on behalf of the Palestinian cause is how many putatively liberal journalists reconcile their views on Israel-Palestine with undeniable evidence attesting to decidedly reactionary political values within Palestinian society.CiF Watch prompts correction to Robert Fisk’s gross under count of Arab Israelis
While news of Israel’s liberal advantages in the region on a myriad of social issues are often cynically dismissed as ‘hasbara’, or even framed as efforts to ‘whitewash‘ the occupation, news of Palestine’s less than enlightened views on the rights of gays, women and religious minorities are either buried or, sometimes, even excused as the result of Israeli oppression.
As case in point of such news which won’t reach the pages of the Guardian – or, likely, any other UK broadsheet – is the recent publication of a Pew Global Survey on Morality.
Leaving his bizarre use of the word “deleting” aside, Fisk was so far off in is count of Arab Israelis one wonders if he was working without the use of an internet search engine while ‘fact checking’ his work.Reuters’ Bungled Headline
As we pointed out in an email to Indy editors, there are over 1.6 million Arab Israelis (not “tens of thousands“), based on statistics published by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Shortly after our correspondence, the passage was corrected.
If — instead of skimming the headlines — you bothered to read down to the sixth paragraph, you’ll see that the demolition had nothing to do with the passing of the April 29 peace deadline:More Advocacy Journalism at The New York Times
"The Israeli army said in a statement that eight structures, including a “mosque in use”, were demolished because they had been built illegally inside a dangerous live-fire military training zone."
Correspondents Jodi Rudoren and Isabel Kershner's current post-mortem on the latest US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, entitled "Arc of a Failed Deal: How Nine Months of Mideast Talks Ended in Disarray," once again displays the abandonment of journalistic objectivity in the quest to blame Israel. This overtly partisan article could more aptly have been entitled "How Israel Undermined the Peace Process," or "It's All About Israeli Settlements" or "Let's Blame Netanyahu and Justify Abbas."Holocaust Museum, Synagogues Featured on Al Qaeda Hit List
Following The New York Times' editorial formula, the news reporters began with a pretense of objectivity by suggesting, "In the last few weeks, even as both sides took steps that undermined the process...." That out of the way, they immediately followed with a "but" to indicate that it was Israeli actions, rather than Palestinian ones, that were the problem:
Badat said he went to Pakistan in mid-2001 to use the Internet to research Jewish targets, which included a Holocaust museum, synagogues and the diamond industry.Hungarian Police Disperse Protest of Holocaust Whitewash
Under cross-examination from Abu Hamza's lawyer Jeremy Schneider, he said he spent two days preparing a "detailed" report for Al Qaeda bosses on the targets.
He admitted he was willing to see women and children killed should the attacks have gone ahead.
When Al Qaeda asked him instead to blow a US jet out of the sky and murder hundreds of people in late 2001, he confessed that he felt "honored" and "proud".
Police in Hungary forcibly removed protesters on Tuesday from the site of a planned World War II monument, which critics say glosses over the country's role in the Holocaust.Holocaust-Complicit French Rail Company Targeted by New York Legislators
Organizers of the sit-down protest said police physically lifted over 20 people, including a number of Holocaust survivors, from the planned site of the monument in the capital, Budapest.
The government says the structure - which will depict Hungary as an angel being attacked by a German Nazi eagle - will commemorate all the victims of the country's 1944 occupation by Nazi Germany.
U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) and New York City Council Members Mark Levine and Benjamin Kallos on Monday announced their plan to introduce a resolution prohibiting city businesses from working with companies that had profited from the Holocaust and did not compensate victims.Cobblestones to remember murdered Jews multiply in Berlin
The initiative could impact Société Nationale des Chemin de fer Français (SNCF), the French national railroad company, which deported 76,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps. SNCF recently won contracts with the states if Virginia and Massachusetts, and is among the top contenders to become the operator of the proposed Purple Line from Washington, DC into suburban Maryland.
The blocks, called "Stolpersteine" or "stumbling blocks," read: "Here lived Dr. Erich Blumenthal, born 1883, deported 29.11.1942, murdered in Auschwitz. Here lived Helene Blumenthal, born 1888, deported 29.11.1942, murdered in Auschwitz."IDF Blog: #WeAreHere: Interactive Worldwide Map of Holocaust Survivors with family
In Berlin, the blocks have become part of the fabric of the city, their plates glinting amid the grey paving on residential streets and stopping both locals and tourists in their tracks.
Houboi and her husband sponsored the Blumenthals' blocks, traveling across Germany to see them laid in the northeast Berlin neighborhood where Houboi, now 71, grew up in the 1940s.
Today, we commemorate the memory of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust and the bravery of all those who stood up against Nazi barbarism. This year, the IDF put together a special social media project, using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. From all around the world, people sent the IDF social media team pictures of survivors and their descendants from all across the world, with the hashtag #WeAreHere.The Top 10 Guardians of the Jewish People
We gathered all the pictures sent to us, which included the survivors’ names, ages, and places of residence. We then created an index of all of the photos, and built an interactive map according to location. With this map, we commemorate those who were lost, and produce a dynamic memorial to those who remain across the globe.
With the Passover holiday behind us, and Jews having celebrated our symbolic freedom, I wanted to present a special list of the Top 10 Guardians of the Jewish People, in honor of those individuals who have helped defend Jews in the past year. No voting committee, just the personal choices of me, Ronn Torossian, a New-York based entrepreneur and philanthropist.Israel Daily Picture: On Israel Independence Day, Israel Salutes the Women of Israel. We Present Here their Grandmothers who Built Israel. Part 1, The Old Yishuv
In no particular order:
The Israel Defense Forces: The Jewish army that defends the existence and sovereignty of the Jewish nation.
Scarlett Johansson: The beautiful actress sent a clear message that was heard around the world by simply doing the right thing and being so clear in her decision to continue representing Israeli carbonated beverage company SodaStream, despite criticism.
Israel Independence Day will be celebrated on May 6.Intel to invest $6 billion in Kiryat Gat facility
On its eve, May 5, twelve torches will be lit by 14 honored Israeli women - Jewish and Arab, old and young, social activists, educators, athletes, former political figures. The ceremony commemorates, "The Era of Women -- Achievements and Challenges."
Intel announced Wednesday that it would invest $6 billion to upgrade its Kiryat Gat facility, potentially creating thousands of jobs in Israel in the coming years.
Intel did not specify the technology it would be installing in the plant, but it was expected to make a decision this year as to whether it would build a plant to produce its next generation of chips in Israel or in Ireland, where it built its last such plant.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the government has been working with Intel for several years to attract the investment, and praised Intel as an example for other multinational firms to follow. (h/t Bob Knot)
