Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Israeli doctors perform life-saving heart surgery on 5 Palestinian children
As Israel carries on its search for kidnapped teenagers Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach, and Naftali Fraenkel, Israeli doctors of Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) continue to save the lives of Palestinian children at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon.Israel Lobby Is Playing Mind Games With Stephen Walt Again
Since the beginning of Operation Brother’s Keeper, five Palestinian children have undergone life-saving heart surgery at Wolfson, eight Palestinian children were admitted, including two urgent cases brought by ambulances from the West Bank and from Gaza, and 15 children are expected to arrive this week to the SACH free weekly cardiology clinic for Palestinian children.
“Children are children”‘ says Dr. Lior Sasson, SACH chief surgeon, “for us it doesn’t matter where the children come from, every child deserves to receive the best medical treatment and children from both sides, shouldn’t be a part of the conflict.”
Wait — those aren’t drums of war. Israel opposes American intervention in Iraq.
How can this be? The answer is that Israel’s primary rival is Iran, and its client Hezbollah, both of which are Shiite. Iran is backing the Iraqi government, which is fighting the Sunni ISIS rebels. Israel may not like ISIS, but it does not want to increase Iran’s power, and aiding the Iranian-backed government in Baghdad would do that. And so the neoconservatives currently demanding American intervention in Iraq are acting not in the service of Israel’s interests but against them. Indeed, Israel was always far more ambivalent about war with Iraq in 2003 than Walt’s crude argument ever allowed.
Anyway, Walt’s column today is about how people who have been proven to be ignorant about foreign policy should no longer have prestigious outlets in which to disseminate their ill-informed beliefs. (h/t Zvi)
Why the Arab World Is Lost in an Emotional Nakba, and How We Keep It There
It’s not that our policy makers—and here I speak of not only Israel but the democratic West—don’t take account of honor-shame dynamics. They just don’t take it seriously. For them, what they regard as childish, superficial concerns can be palliated with polite words and gestures, and then these good people will behave like rational choice actors, and we can all move forward in familiar, sensible ways. So, when the Pope Benedict’s remark about an “inherently violent Islam” set off riots of protest throughout the Muslim world, the onus was on the pope to apologize for provoking them. Only thus could one spare Muslims global derision for randomly killing—killing to protest being called violent.
But culture is not a superficial question of manners. In the Middle East, honor is identity. Appeasement and concessions are signs of weakness: When practiced by one’s own leaders, they produce riots of protest, by one’s enemy, renewed aggression. Benjamin Netanyahu stops most settlement activity for nine months. Barack Obama goes to Saudi Arabia for a reciprocal concession he can announce in Cairo. King Abdullah throws a fit and the Palestinians make more demands. And too few wonder whether basic logic of the negotiations—land for peace—has any purchase on the cultural realities of this corner of the globe. If only Israel would be more reasonable …
When we indulge Arab (and jihadi Muslims’) concerns for honor by backing off anything that they claim offends them, we think that our generosity and restraint will somehow move extremists to more rational behavior. Instead, we end up muzzling ourselves and thereby participating in, honoring, and confirming their most belligerent attitudes toward the “other.” They get to lead with their glass chin, while we, thinking we work for peace, end up confirming and weaponizing the Arab world’s most toxic weaknesses—their insecurity, their embrace of all-or-nothing conflicts, their addiction to revenge, their paranoid scapegoating, their shame-driven hatred. And there is nothing generous, rational, or progressive about that. (h/t Herb Glatter)
The whole world is supporting the three captives....
While the western world has totally ignored the plight of the three kidnapped Israeli kids, it was united today in outrage and condemnation at the imprisonment of three Al Jazeera journalists in Egypt. Yet, as Daniel Greenfield explains, these journalists worked for the mouthpiece of a terrorist supporting regime which had done everything possible to bring about the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt. While I do not support the imprisonment of these journalists, I find it hard to understand why the world has sympathy for them and not the kidnapped Israeli kids.Celebrity Mensch Of The Day: Ron Thal
Guns ‘N Roses guitarist Ron Thal supports the cause to bring back those sweet children of ours.Gang of 20 Attacks Jewish Kids In Paris Library
The scourge of anti-Semitism continues to grow in France. According to reports, on Monday, a gang of 20 attackers assaulted visibly Jewish students wearing kippot (yarmulkes). The students were studying at a local library in Paris. The attackers, described as being of North African descent (probably Muslim immigrants), approached the Jewish students from two directions in the library, pouncing on them and beating them until they were bloody. The Jewish kids ran from the scene, and in the process two students were stabbed, leaving them with light wounds. Police were called and some of the attackers were brought in for investigation.VIDEO: Polish 'Neo-Nazis' Attack Orthodox Jews at London Music Festival
Monday's attack comes on the heels of an anti-Semitic attack against a rally supporting the three Israeli youths kidnapped in Hebron two weeks ago. That attack at the rally in Paris on June 19 involved anti-Semitic attackers hurling flares at the rally.
A group of Orthodox Jews were attacked by a gang of Polish ‘Neo-Nazis’ at a free music event in Tottenham, north London. The International Business Times reports that police were called to the event following reports of a disturbance at Markfield Recreation Ground on Saturday.‘Sickening and Cruel’ Anti-Semitic Attack on Manchester Cemetery
The attack also saw a 24-year-old man stabbed. He was taken to an east London hospital, but his condition is not believed to be serious.
A man has been arrested for racially and religiously aggravated assault, after allegedly pulling a skull cap from a Jewish man’s head, but no one has yet been arrested in connection with the stabbing.
Oz Katerji, a journalist who witnessed the assault, said: "About 150 of us were having a party in Markfield Park in Tottenham, neo-Nazi Polish fascists turn up, full scale riot erupted."
Gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in Manchester were tagged with anti-Semitic graffiti and about 40 headstones were toppled over, the BBC reported on Tuesday.Discrimination against Judea and Samaria needs to stop
Bernard Freeman, 88, was visiting his mother’s grave when he discovered the desecration.
“I come here to say a prayer to my mother and my father and tell them in my own way about the children, the grandchildren and great grandchildren – to come here and find this, it’s diabolical, it really is,” he said.
In response to this, United States Congressman Steve Stockman (R-Texas) introduced the “Prohibiting Discrimination Against Israel Act.” This bill will prevent the European Union and other foreign entities from discriminating against Israeli organizations that operate beyond the 1949 armistice line using US taxpayer dollars.Report Reveals Anti-Semitism Behind Presbyterian BDS Vote
The discriminatory conduct of these governments needs to stop.
These governments have no moral authority to claim to be supporting human rights when they are engaged in such blatant acts of discrimination.
Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor on Thursday released a report, revealing how anti-Semitic hatred fueled the Presbyterian Church USA's vote last Friday to join the boycott against Israel.Christians United for Israel Takes on Presbyterian Church USA’s Divestment Vote; Elicits 26,000 Responses in Support in 1 Day
The decision by the Church to divest from three companies that provide supplies to Israeli security forces and Jews living in Judea and Samaria was led in part by the Israel-Palestine Mission Network (IPMN), an activist group affiliated with the Church.
NGO Monitor in its report released evidence of how IPMN promotes blatant anti-Semitism, both on its Facebook page and in a booklet entitled "Zionism Unsettled: A Congregational Study."
"The IPMN's Facebook page is in fact a hate site operating under the protective wings of the Presbyterian Church," said Yitzhak Santis, NGO Monitor's Chief Programs Officer. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Christians United for Israel, CUFI, on Tuesday said it distributed an action alert to its membership in opposition to the Presbyterian Church USA’s recent vote to divest from three companies that do business with Israel, and, within 24 hours the alert generated more than 26,000 responses in support.Queers Against Israeli Apartheid to march in Toronto parade
David Brog, executive director of CUFI, the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S. with 1.6 million standing members, said, “The Presbyterian Church USA has demonstrated its moral cowardice to the world.”
For the first time in five years, there has been no organized opposition to QuAIA participating in the parade, which will be held June 29. Jewish community and some city officials have opposed the group joining in the past.Australian Jews as Jihadists
“People got pretty tired over the years of the same fight,” Martin Gladstone, a Toronto lawyer and gay rights activist, told the Jewish Tribune. “These guys don’t quit and everyone’s tired of giving them oxygen.”
A 2012 report by Toronto’s Department of Equity, Diversity and Human Rights concluded that the phrase “Israeli Apartheid” did not violate the city’s anti-discrimination policy. A dispute resolution committee later ruled that QuAIA’s message was not discriminatory toward the Jewish community.
The prospect of young Muslims travelling to Iraq and Syria to fight with jihadist groups such as ISIS, before returning home to their countries of citizenship is something that is of mounting concern to many Western governments.The Committee to Protect Journalists From What?
Writing in Brisbane’s Courier Mail, Paul Syvret argues, however, that “Islam does not have a monopoly on hard-line malcontents and all religions and societies tend to breed their own brands of extremist ratbaggery.” On this he may have a point. But lumping Australian Jews serving in the IDF with Al-Qaeda acolytes is utterly misguided:
Or what, for that matter, of the young Jewish Australians who “make Aliyah” with a return to Israel and service in that (foreign) country’s military – an armed force well schooled in bloody regional and religious conflict?To press home the point, the article includes two news video reports on current IDF operations to bring home three kidnapped Israeli teens despite bearing no relevance whatsoever to the subject matter at hand.
It’s been five days since CNN reporter Ben Wedeman was roughed up by Palestinian police while covering a Hamas rally in Hebron.Guardian legitimizes claim that Jews are responsible for European antisemitism
That’s more than enough time for the Committee to Protect Journalists to come out with a statement condemning the assault.
Wedeman, along with cameraman Joe Sheffer and producer Kareem Khadder, thankfully escaped with nothing more than cuts and bruises; PA security forces also smashed CNN equipment but footage of the assault survived.
For every letter published at the Guardian, presumably there are hundreds which, due to space limitations and editorial decisions, don’t get published. Thus, their letters editor must carefully choose a select few based (one would think) the seriousness of the argument, and conversely omit letters which promote or excuse racism, or otherwise fail to abide by their community standards.Video: Jay Leno Slaying Them In Israel
Yet, as we have exposed on several occasions, they have sometimes chosen letters from writers with extremist and/or racist views.
As readers know, Jay Leno was recently in Israel hosting the Genesis Prize ceremony in Jerusalem. At the time, I posted some of his jokes in the absence of footage.
Now I’ve found some video.
CeeLo Green to get crazy in Jerusalem
CeeLo Green, the Grammy-Award winning musician popularly known as the voice behind the Gnarls Barkley classic single “Crazy,” will be performing in Jerusalem’s Independence Park August 19.Michael Douglas takes in historic sites in Jerusalem
Green is just one of a slew of stars taking the stage in Israel this summer, but unlike the majority, who light it up in the confines of Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park or Ramat Gan stadium, the 40-year-old rapper singer-songwriter will be bringing his talents to Israel’s capital city, the Ynet news site reported.
Famed actor, wife Catherine Zeta-Jones are in Israel to celebrate son's bar mitzva.Prolific Jewish actor Eli Wallach dies at 98
Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones celebrated the bar mitzva of their son in Jerusalem.
The Hollywood power couple arrived in Israel on Thursday for the weekend bar mitzva of Dylan Michael Douglas, Israeli media reported.
The family stayed in the presidential suite of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
They toured Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount tunnels, according to the Forward, which noted that Zeta-Jones has considered converting to Judaism.
Eli Wallach, an early practitioner of method acting who made a lasting impression as the scuzzy bandit Tuco in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", died on Tuesday at the age of 98, the New York Times reported.Israeli Arab community raises unprecedented funds for Israeli charity
"It's what I wanted to do all my life," Wallach said of his work in an interview in 2010.
Having grown up the son of Polish Jewish immigrants in an Italian-dominated neighborhood in New York, Wallach might have seemed an unlikely cowboy, but some of his best work was in Westerns.
Many critics thought his definitive role was Calvera, the flamboyant, sinister bandit chief in "The Magnificent Seven". Others preferred him in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as Tuco, who was "the ugly", opposite Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's classic spaghetti Western.
Israeli Arab community: The Arab city of Kalansua last week held a fundraising event called ‘A Smile of Hope’ for leading Israeli disabilities organization, Beit Issie Shapiro and their Sindian Center, which serves the Arab community in the Southern Triangle. The event raised a record breaking 300,000 NIS and was attended by 700 people. It is believed to be the largest fundraiser of its kind in an Arab community for an established Israeli charity.
