Thursday, May 05, 2016
The Case for Israeli Sovereignty on the Golan
The purpose of international law is to protect the international order, one in which states exist within secure and recognized borders. When the law provides no clear answers, it should be interpreted in the spirit of bolstering this international order. If the international community wishes to do this, nothing can legally stop it. The only way to bolster this international order and resolve the open question of the Golan is to recognize Israeli control over the territory.
From the Israeli perspective, this is obvious. Realistically speaking, there is no longer any incentive for Israel to return the Heights to Damascus. Until recently, some in Israel hoped to offer the Golan in order to seduce Syria away from the Iranian axis, a bold gamble to thwart Tehran’s push for regional hegemony. But with Iran emboldened by the recent nuclear deal and Syria now firmly under its domination, that possibility is foreclosed.
The process by which the world might recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Heights, however, will not be easy. The world needs not wait until the official collapse of Syria, but these scenarios may still be a way off, as the world powers resist recognizing the inevitable. Iran and Russia have every interest in maximizing Assad’s control over Syria, and would only write off the country as an absolute last resort. Recognizing breakaway states would raise uncomfortable questions about what is to be done about ISIS. And the current areas of control by various parties to the Syrian civil war do not neatly divide into separate, coherent entities that could be viable states.
But as surrounding states collapse further into a war of all against all, international recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan would be a bold statement in defense of the international order. Should the world fail to make such a statement, the Middle East could yet pay a heavy price for the world’s failure to let an anachronistic policy fall into desuetude.
Matti Friedman: The Peculiar Language of Soldiers
“We have two flowers and one oleander. We need a thistle.” Listening to the Israeli military frequencies when I was an infantryman nearly two decades ago, it was (and still is) possible to hear sentences like these, the bewildering cousins of sentences familiar to anyone following America’s present-day wars. “Vegas is in a TIC,” says a U.S. infantryman in Afghanistan in Sebastian Junger’s book War. What does it all mean?In Their Own Words: An Invented Palestinian Nation
Anyone seeking to understand the world needs to understand soldiers, but the language of soldiers tends to be bizarre and opaque, an apt symbol for the impossibility of communicating their experiences to people safe at home. The language isn’t nonsense—it means something to the soldiers, of course, but it also has something to say about the army and society to which they belong, and about the shared experience of military service anywhere. The soldiers’ vernacular must provide words for things that civilians don’t need to describe, like grades of officers and kinds of weapons. But it has deeper purposes too.
I was drafted into the Israeli army in 1997, when I was 19, having moved to Israel from Canada a few years before. I served until 2000. In those years Israel controlled a strip of Lebanese land along the Israeli border and fought a long war there with guerrillas from Hezbollah—a war which involved IEDs, videotaped hit-and-run attacks, and the wearing down of a modern military by Muslim guerrillas operating in a failed state. It was thus a prologue of sorts to the kind of warfare Americans have seen in the 21st century. (I just spent a few years writing a book about it.) When I happened to land in this conflict after high school, I found a hazardous reality described not just with the usual acronyms and numbers—“APC,” “81 mm”—and with the energetic obscenities one would expect, but with a language that seemed drawn from a horticultural handbook.
Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will begin issuing “State of Palestine” passports this year. The made-up “Palestinians” now have a made-up people and a made-up state, fly a made-up flag, and carry passports confirming the ruse.
To promote the fiction of a uniquely Palestinian indigenous population, Abbas pursues a simple strategy begun by Yasser Arafat. Disregarding Biblical, archeological and other well-substantiated facts, the Arabs have rewritten the past to deny the 3,000-year-old connection of Jews to the Land of Israel, supplanting it with a fabricated “Palestinian” narrative. They learned the Nazi lesson well — if you tell big lies and repeat them often enough, people start to believe you. You steal Jewish history and then inherit their homeland.
To promote its goal of eliminating Israel, the PA portrays modern Israelis as lacking any connections to the ancient Hebrews.
“Zionism is the invention of robbers who stole Palestine from its inhabitants… whose lies are not supported by any archeological remnants…. Israel has no right to exist…. The stories of Jewish prophets are a sick invention,” reported the PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, recently. In that same official PA newspaper, columnist Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul remarked, “Religious, historical, and even biblical facts deny any connection between the Jews and Jerusalem” or to “historic Palestine.” Fatah Commissioner Nabil Shaath stated in January, Israel is “a colonialist project on our land.”
The widely accepted Jewish connection to Palestine is substantiated by the Old and New Testaments, the Quran, academic scholarship, archeological evidence, historical records and genetic genealogical research. Jews have a distinct ancient language, culture, and religion that are inextricably linked to the area. There have always been Jews in Jerusalem, a place mentioned in the Bible more than 400 times. The Quran makes no reference either to “Palestinians” or to Jerusalem.
The fabricated “Palestinian” narrative makes claims of Canaanite descent. There is neither genealogical nor genetic evidence connecting Arabs to these peoples, who ceased to exist 2,800 years ago.
There are no ancient Palestinian archaeological sites, monuments, literature, heroes, or coins and no Palestinian language. Most of the newly minted “Palestinians” are descended from Arabs migrating to the area in the early 20th century for economic reasons. Their ethnicity is common with their origins: Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese, and Saudi. As Hamas Minister Fathi Hammad recently admitted, “Brothers, half of the Palestinians are Egyptians and the other half are Saudis.”
IsraellyCool: The Electronic Intifada’s Latest Twisted Libel
Why would the Israeli Prime Minister be stupid enough to broadcast a message of incitement to murder for all to see?Ken Livingstone and the hard Left are spreading the insidious virus of anti-Semitism
Well, it is not a message of incitement to murder. It is, in fact, the exact opposite.
Bibi was quoting Chaim Nachman Bialik’s poem about the Kishniev massacre. A reader of the Washington Post explained it well almost two years ago:
The Aug. 19 news article “Suspect allegedly hunted for an Arab to kill” quoted a famous Hebrew poem out of context. The effect was to suggest that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu contributed to the atmosphere in which an Arab youth was killed by calling for revenge after the murders of three Jewish teenagers. In fact, by citing the poem, the prime minister was warning against retaliation.
The Post reported that Netanyahu said on his Twitter account, “Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created. Neither has the vengeance for the blood of 3 pure youths who were on their way home to their parents.” It did not tell readers that the first sentence paraphrases a line from Chaim Nahman Bialik’s poem “In the City of Slaughter,” a powerful lamentation of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom in which 49 Russian Jews were massacred and more than 500 wounded.
The relevant stanza reads in part: “And cursed be the man who says: Avenge! No such revenge — revenge for the blood of a little child — has yet been devised by Satan. Let the blood pierce through the abyss! Let the blood seep down into the depths of darkness . . . and breach all the rotting foundations of the earth.”
Bialik was crying out for divine, not human, retribution. In paraphrasing Bialik in what the paper noted “was an emotionally charged moment in Israel,” Netanyahu was cautioning against anyone presuming to take the law into his or her hands.
There is no doubt in my mind Electronic Intifada knew this when they tweeted what they did. In fact, the detestable Max Blumenthal dealt with it when he wrote about Bibi’s statements back then. But in typical Blumenthal style, distorted the poem’s true message.
Comments from senior and long-standing members of the Labour Party, both Jewish and not, show just how severe the problem has now become. Everyone agrees that there must be no place for anti-Semitism in our politics and I welcome the inquiry recently announced by the Party’s leadership. And yet, I would sound an urgent note of caution.Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone: The Establishment of Israel 'Fundamentally Wrong', In '32, Hitler Wanted to Deport the Zionists, Not to Kill Jews
In recent days, we have heard anti-Semitism in the Labour Party described variously as “a smear” and as “mood music” being manipulated by political opponents of Jeremy Corbyn. There has been nothing more disheartening in this story than the suggestion that this is more about politics than about substance. The worst of mistakes, in trying to address this problem, would be to treat it as a political attack which requires a political solution.
If this inquiry turns out to be no more than a sticking plaster, designed to placate and diffuse until after the elections this week, the problem will surely get worse and not better. Jeremy Corbyn has stated that his party “will not tolerate anti-Semitism in any form,” and I very much hope that this inquiry will deliver on that pledge and be followed by decisive action. All political parties share in the responsibility to rid our society of anti-Semitism but we cannot achieve that objective with political posturing or empty promises of action never to be fulfilled.
The last 10 days have lifted the lid on a challenging issue, but if anything, I feel optimistic about the way that this problem has been received. Jews are frequently compared to the proverbial “canary in the coal mine”, an enduring signal for when the world is failing to meet its obligations in tackling bigotry. It has never been clearer to me just how widely understood that truism is.
Anti-Semitism is not just a problem for Jews; it is a problem for all of our society. I draw a great deal of comfort from the very strong response that this sorry affair has elicited. There must be no corner of Britain today in which anti-Semitism can lurk.
The Holocaust: A tool for abuse and distortion
Historical events usually fade with time. Not so the Holocaust and related issues, which are increasingly appearing in the public domain. In previous years, one annual summary was sufficient for a fairly complete overview of Holocaust-related issues. However, last year the selection was so great that I had to limit myself to several issues from the main categories.Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism? How dare you!
This trend has continued. By the end of April this year, a large number of such events have already appeared in the public domain.
A major category is made up of events where Israelis are labeled as Nazis. This year it was revealed that Mehmet Kaplan, the Swedish Green Party Minister of Housing had done so in 2009, a disclosure which led to his resignation.
The non-existent Palestinian state’s new status as a UN non-member observer state gave its ambassador the opportunity to bring its hate mongering to that podium. Riyad Mansour distorted Holocaust history when he compared Israel’s designation of Palestinian murderers as “terrorists” to the Nazis using the same “terrorist” label for those responsible for the Warsaw uprising, something which in fact did not happen.
Israeli Arab parliamentarian Haneen Zoabi has used a similar false analogy, comparing Israel to Germany in the 1930s.
The German town of Bayreuth gave a tolerance award to the American Civil Rights group Code Pink, members of which had compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler. Furthermore members of that group had participated in a conference of Holocaust deniers.
Anti-Semites, damn them, are horribly adept at slipping out of your hand with as little effort as they slipped into it. To get an admission out of one is more difficult than gripping hold of a slithery fish in water. And that’s because anti-Semites double up as bleeding-heart critics: they don’t hate Jews; they hate Israel, the way it behaves and the “Zios” that support it.Deborah Lipstadt: We know anti-Semitism when we see it
Leaders of Britain’s Labor Party concede that the party harbors them in its ranks. The party’s flagship, Guardian newspaper agrees. Problem is, they turn shy when it comes to actually naming anti-Semites in the woodwork. They did call out an obscure Laborite after she tweeted that “Jews have big noses.” This was nakedly racist, even for the likes of a leader who counts suicide bombers among his friends. But Laborites won’t call it naked when a looked-up-to and well-liked leader is involved.
The Guardian Ken Livingstone did come close in writing, “Ken Livingstone has been suspended by Labor for inflammatory remarks about Hitler supporting Zionism. There can be no place in (the party) for presuming – as Mr. Livingstone did – to dictate to a minority the forms of hostility that it is entitled to resent.” Livingston the hater, you see, wants to make the rules for those he hates. He and his like permit other groups to define racism. Women are allowed to define sexism and Muslims have their Islamophobia to make a noise about. Everyone but Jews. Jews cry foul at peril of being laughed and ridiculed out of court.
Political figures, indeed, are the hardest anti-Semites of all to grab hold of. There’s the case of a Labor anti-Semite who sits on a parliamentary committee ‘investigating’ to what extent the British hate Jews. For heaven sake! An émigré from Pakistan, Naz Shah is the Labor MP for Bradford West who, until elected, was active on social media raving about Jews and their little state. She liked the idea of closing down Israel and relocating Jews, lock stock and barrel to the US of A. The irony escaped the good woman. Here was a Muslim from Pakistan living in Bradford, England telling Jews living in Israel to ‘go back ‘where they came from’.
David Hirsch has compiled a list of these accusations. They all follow a prescribed script. These false accusations of anti-Semitic are a tactic Jews use to draw attention away from Israel and its wrongsSetting the record straight about Jeremy Corbyn’s “peace process” lie
This is a tried and true tactic that has been prevalent ever since it became unfashionable to be an anti-Semite. (It’s an appropriate thing to remember on Yom HaShoah that prior to the Holocaust there was nothing particularly outrageous about being an anti-Semite.) Over the past decade, if not more, we have seen those who have expressed overly anti-Semitic views – be they politicians, writers, journalists or university professors – accuse their accusers of falsely labeling them as having engaged in anti-Semitism. It happens far too often to be happenstance. In short, they depict themselves as the innocent victims.
As Jonathan Freedland recently observed in The Guardian those on the left rarely challenge racial minorities when they say something is racist. Nor do they tell women that they have wrongly perceived something as sexist. However, they have no compunctions about telling Jews that they are imagining anti-Semitism.
Years ago an American Supreme Court justice said of pornography, “I can’t define it but I know it when I see it.” When we comes to anti-Semitism, we can define it and we know it when we see it. And this week we have seen it.
Jeremy Corbyn must stop telling his “peace process” lie.Labour suspends Momentum supporter who claimed Jews caused ‘an African holocaust’
He resorted to it today yet again, in Parliament:
The points he [Cameron] was making earlier relate to a discussion I was hosting in order to try to promote a peace process and it was not an approval of those organisations [Hamas and Hezbollah]. I absolutely do not approve of those organisations.
What Corbyn Really Said
This is not true. It is miles away from the truth.
See for yourself. This is the whole “friends” speech in March 2009. It is nothing but a salute to Hamas and Hezbollah. At one point Corbyn even talks dreamily of Hamas having “tea with the Queen”. There is some disapproval, but it is reserved for the British government, Israel, Zionism tout court, and people concerned about the antisemitism on display in Corbyn’s circles.
Now a peace process in a protracted and bitter conflict does require meetings with people who are unpleasant, to say the least.
But who appointed Mr Corbyn, a backbencher at the time, as a one man Foreign Office?
Moreover, where does he grit his teeth and warmly salute “friends” who are, oh, violent religious settlers? Go on, show me.
Actually, when it comes to Israelis, for many years Corbyn backed “universal jurisdiction” for alleged war crimes, the tactic used by his thuggish friends to hassle Israeli leaders visiting this country. They want the likes of Tzipi Livni arrested on sight at Heathrow. No tea for her.
A leading member of the pro-Corbyn Momentum hard-left activism group claimed Jews were responsible for an “African holocaust”, the JC can reveal.Jeremy Corbyn ally and Momentum founder tells Labour left to stop saying 'Zionists'
Jacqueline Walker is a vice-chair of the movement’s national steering committee and activist in south-east England.
Labour suspended Ms Walker from the party after the JC brought her comments to the party’s attention.
She has repeatedly claimed the ongoing allegations of Jew-hate against party members are part of a “witch-hunt” against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Describing herself as an anti-Zionist, Ms Walker responded to a critic who asked her about the Holocaust on Facebook in February by writing about “the African holocaust”.
“As I’m sure you know, millions more Africans were killed in the African holocaust and their oppression continues today on a global scale in a way it doesn’t for Jews,” Ms Walker wrote.
Left-wing activists should stop using the term ‘Zionist’, a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn has said.PreOccupiedTerritory: PR Expert Suggests Nazis Call Victims ‘Zionists’ Instead Of ‘Jews’ (satire)
Jon Lansman, a founder of the Momentum campaign group, said that the term was “counter-productive” and should not be used as a shorthand way of describing supporters of Israeli government policy.
Pointing out that a majority of British Jews consider themselves Zionists – but that an even larger majority also support the existence of a Palestinian state and oppose forced Israeli settlements – he said it was time for the left to “start talking in a new language” that allowed criticism of the Israeli government “without alienating any of those who might agree with us”.
Zionism means support for the existence of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. However the term has been commonly used by some left wing campaigners when criticising the actions of the Israeli state. Former chief rabbi Lord Sacks last month said that anti-Zionism had become “the new anti-Semitism”.
A consultant in Public Relations has suggested to the leadership of the Nazi Party that they will encounter less international opposition to their anti-Jewish policies if they use the term “Zionists” instead of “Jews” in their propaganda.Amid Labour Party Anti-Semitism Crisis, Things Could Get Even Uglier for British Jews
Al E. Abunima of the PR firm Finkelstein, Blumenthal, and Silverstein presented a report to Nazi leaders this week in which he delineated a number of strategies to forestall or prevent opponents from seizing on the movement’s central platform, its existential hatred of Jews. Abunima stressed that use of the term “Jews” runs the risk of evoking a downtrodden, persecuted minority, a prospect that carries the danger of giving enemies fodder for mobilizing their societies to fight Germany. If, however, the movement says it only seeks to eliminate “Zionists” from the world, or at least from the areas under its control, other societies will be much less likely to feel compelled to intervene.
“It has been demonstrated repeatedly that claiming only to oppose Zionism, and not Jews or Judaism, acts as a reasonably effective shields in Western academia, and to some extent even in Western politics, against charges of bigotry,” wrote the consultant. “At the same time, those who claim only to oppose Zionism can continue their anti-Jewish activities as before. It requires only a semantic change, not a policy alteration in the slightest.”
Indeed, Corbyn and his allies are already spinning the current crisis as a fabrication—and it is not difficult to imagine by whom. “It’s not a crisis, there is no crisis,” Corbyn vowed recently. “I suspect that much of this criticism…actually comes from those who are nervous of the strength of the Labour Party at a local level.” Ken Livingstone, the former London mayor who ignited the furor with his contention that “Hitler supported Zionism,” blamed the entire scandal on “embittered old Blairite MPs.” Trade union chief Len McCluskey dubbed the row a “cynical attempt” to challenge Corbyn’s leadership. “It is a smear to say that the Labour Party has a problem with anti-Semitism,” concurred Diane Abbott, the shadow international development minister, on the BBC.British Jew Recounts Having to Flee His London Neighborhood After Enduring More Than 100 Antisemitic Assaults
Not only is the crisis supposedly fabricated, in the mind of much of the Left: anti-Semitism is too. The “Livingstone Formulation,” named for Ken Livingstone years ago, describes how allegations of anti-Semitism are often met with a counter-accusations of dishonesty and bad faith on the part of the accusers. In the context of modern thought on the Left, in which the world is viewed through hierarchies of oppression and—in a historical U-turn—places Jews within the “white” and “privileged” end of the matrix, the logical conclusion is that anti-Semitism is a Jewish conspiracy in itself: an attempt by a powerful group to advance its predatory interests through inventing allegations of victimhood.
Therein lies the tragic irony of the fight against modern anti-Semitism. Like the fabled hydra, it is liable to regenerate when attacked, because all resistance to it appears to vindicate the conspiratorial mindset: that regressive forces are attempting to thwart the inexorable march to progress by framing the Left. And therein lies the cruel paradox: when politicians make outrageous statements demonizing the Jewish state, Israel and the Diaspora Jewish public are placed in an impossible situation. If they do not react, they leave anti-Semitism to grow without a challenge; but if they do, as they are reasonably expected to do, they risk letting anti-Semitism grow because of the challenge.
A Jewish man was forced to flee his East End neighborhood in London after being physically and verbally assaulted more than 100 times, the Newham Recorder reported on Wednesday.The Media’s Role in Fueling Anti-Semitism
Yisroel Shalom, 52, recounted to the British newspaper the traumatic incidents he endured between 2010 and 2013 by Newham neighborhood thugs. For example, he was spat at while walking in the street and had swastikas and death threats graffitied on his home.
Following one particularly gruesome attack, in which he was held at knife-point while his assailants yelled “kill the Jew,” Shalom said he resorted to wearing a stab-proof vest each time he left his home.
Shalom, who has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), said he is speaking out now about the attacks in light of the Labour Party’s antisemitism scandal.
“I was driven out of my home. I had to flee my home just because I was a Jew,” he said. “I can’t go into Newham because I am a Jew. You hear about these no-go areas for police in France. But I never thought for a second that would happen in Newham under a so-called democratic governance.”
It is encouraging that the British media for the most part finally seem to be taking the anti-Semitism issue seriously, but there is an air of hypocrisy amidst all the outrage and righteous indignation.The Motte Wolfe Show: Trump Wins Bigly
Most anti-Semitism nowadays is expressed through a hatred of Israel, and much of that anti-Zionism stems from the media’s coverage of Israel. Their often overt hostility to Israel, bias, exaggeration of any Israeli misconduct as representative of the country, ignoring context of events, absolving Palestinians of blame, ignoring Palestinians’ anti-Semitic goals, falsely portraying Israel as deliberately killing innocents, and misrepresenting or ignoring the country’s background and history, all fuel the hatred.
People argue again and again that they have no problem with Jews in general, just with Israeli Jews and Israel’s existence, and so they can’t be anti-Semitic. To them, ‘good’ Jews condemn Israel and ‘bad’ Jews support it. We find then that the main problem when people try to distance – and defend – anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism, is that they actually seem to have no knowledge of what either of them are. Many of those who have been accused of anti-Semitism don’t even know – or care – how they’re being anti-Semitic.
Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican candidate for President. Also are there any members of Britain’s Labor Party that are not anti-Semites? Brian of London joins Mottle from England to talk about the suspension of over 50 members of Parliament over charges of anti-Semitism charges. Plus Jason Gewirtz discusses his new book, Israel’s Edge, about the most elite branch of the IDF [Talpiot].SPME BDS Monitor: Activists Try to Turn the World Against Israel
April saw confrontations emerge between faculty members opposed to BDS and academic organizations that have adopted BDS resolutions, including legal action, that took place between graduate students and university administrations, and within political parties.Jewish Novelist Michael Chabon Rails Against Fictional ‘Occupation’
At the same time, university administrations continue to express opposition to BDS, and political parties contend with spillover from BDS rhetoric to overt antisemitism. Legal outcomes notwithstanding, polarization within academia and politics will remain, and animosity against Israel will shape those spheres in the future. The ability of BDS supporters to divide institutions against themselves, and to undermine civility, is considerable. The long-term impact of reshaping Western society in these ways is consistent with the political agendas of both far left and Islamist BDS supporters.
In April, BDS in academic organizations was a focal point as a lawsuit against the American Studies Association (ASA) was filed on behalf of four members opposed to the organization’s adoption of a BDS resolution. The lawsuit alleges that the 2013 Israel boycott resolution violates District of Columbia laws that govern non-profit organizations by hijacking the ASA for a “narrow political agenda.” The suit also alleges that ASA violated its own procedures by refusing to circulate information regarding opposition to the resolution. The ASA has referred the matter to its attorneys. BDS supporters characterize the suit as an effort to silence free speech on behalf of Palestinian scholars.
As a novelist, Michael Chabon has a vivid imagination. One of his novels centers around a world in which there is no state of Israel, only a large Jewish refuge in Alaska. Chabon’s imagination was on full display last week, when he toured Israel and denounced an “occupation” that exists only in his mind.BBC silent on British link to incitement of Palestinian children
Together with other American Jewish critics of Israel, Chabon visited Hebron. Afterwards, he told The Forward that “the occupation [is] the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life.” Now keep in mind that 80 percent of Hebron is occupied by the Palestinian Authority. But for some reason, Chabon is concerned only about the 20 percent controlled by Israel.
The Israeli military presence in that small part of the city is necessary for one simple reason: Hebron’s Arabs have a long history of massacring their Jewish neighbors. Evidently, that reality does not trouble the visiting novelist. No, somehow the fact that Israeli soldiers protect the city’s handful of Jewish residents is — to quote Chabon — “the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life.” That tells me only that Chabon, like many pampered prize-winning novelists, has not seen many injustices.
Chabon’s knowledge of Middle East history is likewise brimming with fiction. He explained to The Forward that he first began criticizing Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War, when he was “reading about the massacres in the refugee camps. I was like, wait, Israel? Is that what they are doing?”
Ten years ago the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ made a very good programme about Interpal titled ‘Faith, Hate and Charity’ which opened with footage of Palestinian children performing similar ‘amateur dramatics’. Following that programme an investigation into Interpal was carried out (not for the first time) by the Charity Commission.Salon.com’s Ben Norton Smears Israel, Again
“Included in a wealth of material which Panorama passed to the Commission was video evidence of young girls at an event organised by one of Interpal’s partner charities being encouraged to sing: “We all sacrifice ourselves for our country” and “… we answer your call and make of our skulls a ladder to your glory, a ladder.”
Another clip shows girls dancing to a tune with the lyrics: “Fasten your bomb belt oh would-be martyr and fill the square with blood so that we get back our homeland.”
A woman, who was organizing another event was seen taking the microphone and telling the children: “To martyrs in every time and place… To the rich blood and to the wounds which have drawn the identity of Islamic land.”
In paragraph 60 of its report, the Commission acknowledged that the material presented to it “seemed to indicate that certain local partners funded by the Charity promoted terrorist ideology or activities amongst their beneficiaries.”
Despite that Panorama report, Interpal continued to function and apparently very little has changed in the last decade – apart the BBC’s level of interest in the story, which it has not covered to date.
The claim that “Zionist militias ethnically cleansed the Palestinians” trusts in the entirely unreliable research of Ilan Pappé, who is known for making up quotes to support his charges. Additionally, Norton’s statement that “One of the core demands of the BDS movement is the right to return” does not acknowledge that Palestinian return is meant to cause the destruction of a Jewish state. Norton also misrepresents the entirety of the Palestinian refugee issue, failing to include important context.ABC’s Jon Faine says belief in stoning women merely “whacky” like Creation theory
Norton's description of the creation of the Jewish State of Israel suggests the destruction of an established national Palestinian people who had lived in the land for centuries. This is patently untrue. As others have done in their reporting of Israel, Norton also completely ignores the deep and long history of a Jewish presence in Israel, as well as the necessary context of antisemitic violence.
Refuting comparisons of Israel to South African apartheid does not amount to a ludicrous "Twitter rant.” The facts prove that Israeli society, which is marked by Arab doctors, lawyers, judges, and academics working alongside Jews and Christians, is nothing like racist, apartheid South Africa. Norton quotes an Israeli activist who preposterously states that "Tel Aviv is a modern day Sun City," comparing the Israeli city known for its beaches, Gay Pride parade, and thriving cultural scene that welcomes racial diversity to the segregated South African metropolis of wealth whose only residents were white.
Ben Norton, not Steven Van Zandt, is the one who has made the “Israel gaffe."
Call it Islam and almost any violence against women can be excused by the regressive Left. Here is ABC 774 presenter Jon Faine relativising away a barbarian belief that actually gets women killed:
Caller: I’ve got a Sunni Muslim friend… He loves his AFL, you know, a real, typical kind of Aussie bloke. But I spoke to him about stuff the other day and he’s adamant that stoning is the best punishment for adultery… He was dead set serious.
Faine: Why is that any different to people in the Orthodox Jewish community for instance who have some bizarre beliefs or people in the Hillsong or any other happy clappy Christian community who have all sorts of bizarre beliefs? You know, they just live their lives. It’s not as if they put them into practice.
MLK Jr.’s Son to Visit Israel, Honor Activists on Behalf of Ethiopian-Jewish Immigrants
Martin Luther King III, the son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., will visit Israel this Sunday to honor activists who have worked on behalf of Ethiopian-Jewish immigrants to Israel.PM lambastes modern anti-Semitism as Israel remembers Holocaust
King III and the Jewish Agency for Israel Chairman Natan Sharansky will hold a special ceremony in Jerusalem recognizing Israeli singer Idan Raichel, former Member of Knesset Pnina Tamano-Shata, and journalist Anat Saragusti for their activism for the Ethiopian-Israeli community.
The honorees will receive the 2016 Unsung Hero Award from the Drum Major Institute, a civil rights organization established in 1961 by King Jr.’s advisor Harry Wachtel and revived in 1999 by King III, New York attorney William Wachtel, and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young.
The Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem hosted the ceremony that began the memorial, during which six survivors each lit a beacon — one for every million Jews slain. Sara Kain, Robert Tamashof, Jehosua Hesel Fried, Joseph Labi, Chaim Grosbein and Lonia Rozenhoc were chosen to light the symbolic torches this year.President Rivlin at Yad Vashem: We will pursue Holocaust deniers
“Slander comes before destruction. Today millions in the Muslim world read and hear threatening lies about the Jewish people. They say Jews are the descendants of monkeys and pigs, they say Jews drink the blood of their enemies,” Netanyahu said during the ceremony. Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, he said, would not have been surprised by anti-Jewish comments on social media.
“This incitement comes from Islamic extremism and the Arab world. But in the last years it has been joined by incitement no less destructive from the Western world. British parliamentarians, Swedish officials and French thought leaders,” he said.
“If over the years, anti-Semites portrayed Jews as enemies of humanity, today they portray the Jewish state as the enemy of humanity. There is no end to these lies,” he added.
Events held in honor of the Six Million began Wednesday evening, as Israelis across the country marked Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaZikaron laShoah vela’G'vurah). The official state ceremony began at nightfall at the Warsaw Ghetto Square in the Yad VaShem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.MFA Dir-Gen Gold addresses Holocaust Remembrance Day service at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were in attendance alongside Holocaust survivors and their families. As part of the annual ceremony, six torches were lit in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.
The theme of this year’s ceremony is: “Everything is Forbidden to US, and Yet We Do Everything – The Struggle to Maintain the Human Spirit During the Holocaust”.
President Rivlin opened his address with a story from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp during the first night of Passover in 1944.
"In barrack 18, a group of Jewish prisoners gathered, determined not to eat leavened bread. Rabbi Aharon Bernard (Yisachar) Davids, the rabbi of Rotterdam and a leader in the religious Zionist movement, who decided not to escape with his family but rather was sent with his community to Bergen Belsen, explained to them that it was their obligation to do what was necessary to stay alive.”
The horrors of Bergen-Belsen and the Holocaust have bequeathed a responsibility to later generations to ensure that the Jewish people would never again be helpless.Isi Leibler: The erosion of Holocaust memory
Following is the address by Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director General Dr. Dore Gold today (4 May 2016) at the Holocaust Memorial Day memorial service at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp:
Some seventy years ago, Bergen-Belsen emerged as one of the key concentration camps established by the Nazi regime for the purpose of exterminating the Jews of Europe. Bergen-Belsen had no gas chambers like the Nazi-run death camps at Auschwitz and Treblinka in Poland. Yet thousands died in Bergen-Belsen – from disease, starvation, exposure, and sheer exhaustion, especially after the death marches in the winter of 1944-45 from the evacuated camps in the East. Typhus and typhoid fever were rampant.
Thus Bergen-Belsen's role grew as a central hub of the concentration camp system after the Red Army crushed the Wehrmacht along the Eastern Front and the Germans transferred their surviving Jewish prisoners to camps within the borders of the German state.
The extent to which Holocaust commemoration is maintained by future Jewish generations will largely be determined by the educational approach and curriculum provided in the Israeli school system.Obama calls for solidarity with European Jews, Jewish students on Holocaust Remembrance Day
My grandparents and many members of my family were exterminated by the Nazis. I would probably also have perished had my parents not had the foresight to leave Antwerp when I was an infant on what was probably the last boat to sail for Australia before the outbreak of war.
Like survivors, those of us whose families were murdered by the Nazis retain the memory of the Holocaust as part of our DNA. Indeed, in most cases this also applies to our children, who share the sensitivities of their parents. But today, 70 years later, for our grandchildren, most of whom were deprived of the opportunity of hearing their families agonize over memories, the relevance of the Holocaust will fade unless there is a conscious effort to convey it within the framework of their history.
The extent to which Holocaust commemoration is maintained by future Jewish generations will largely be determined by the educational approach and curriculum provided in the Israeli school system.
We should be under no illusions. The so-called Holocaust commemoration in Europe and other Western countries is a sham. In most cases it trivializes the Holocaust by linking it to other mass murders. In fact, commemoration has become so broad and universal that the words “Jew” and “anti-Semitism” are not even mentioned in the European Union’s lengthy call to its constituents to engage in Holocaust remembrance.
In his Holocaust Remembrance Day message, President Barack Obama called for solidarity with Jews facing anti-Semitism in Europe and on campuses.Analysis: Sec. Kerry’s Holocaust Memorial Day Message Minimizes Jewish Loss
“Today, and every day, we stand in solidarity with the Jewish community both at home and abroad,” Obama said in his statement released Wednesday afternoon, on the eve of commemorations.
“We stand with those who are leaving the European cities where they have lived for generations because they no longer feel safe, with the members of institutions that have been attacked because of their Jewish affiliations, and with the college students forced to confront swastikas appearing on their campuses,” he said. “And we call upon all people of good will to be vigilant and vocal against every form of bigotry.”
Obama in his message also honored the six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust and those who survived, and drew from the day a more universal message.
Secretary of State John Kerry released a statement in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day which opened with drowning the memory of the Jewish victims—undeniably the focal target of the Nazi state death industry—by mixing them with all the many other, PC approved victims. And so, Jewish survivors and children of survivors were told by the honorable Mr, Kerry that “On this day, we pause to reflect on the irredeemable loss of six million Jews and countless Poles, Roma, LGBT people, J Witnesses, and persons with disabilities brutally murdered by the Nazis because of who they were or what religion they practiced.”Holocaust Memorials Amid Hate
And so, with one infuriating paragraph, Mr. Kerry eliminated the memory of the years 1933-1939, in which the Nazi propaganda machine concentrated on the Jews of Germany and the rest of Europe, dehumanized them and prepared the citizens of the future Nazi empire for the systematic removal, processing and methodical killing of the most productive, prosperous and moral national group on the planet.
Everyone else — Polish civilians, Gypsies, Homosexuals and the infirm — were mere footnotes in the global Nazi enterprise of the “final solution.” By opening his remarks on Holocaust Remembrance Day with deliberately discounting the Jewish loss as being part of the overall sadness of the human condition, Kerry is, in effect, acting as a Holocaust denier, even as he mourns the Holocaust.
Let’s understand that this is not a matter of criticism of Israel’s government or its policies but a war being waged to eradicate the Jewish state, no matter how its borders might be drawn. Having idealized a Palestinian national movement that is inextricably tied to a war on the Jews, Israel’s foes have inevitably tapped into a powerful strain of anti-Semitism that many thought had died out after the Holocaust. The passion behind anti-Zionism is unmistakable. Without the vile anti-Jewish stereotypes and canards that anti-Semites have drawn upon, their efforts would not have attracted so much attention and support.Israel pauses to remember millions murdered in Holocaust
The only ethical way to think about Holocaust commemoration in 2016 is to realize that the contemporary movement to wipe out Israel is part of the same continuum of hate that gave us the Holocaust. It does no good to lament the crimes of the Germans and their collaborators from 1933 to 1945 and to cry, “Never Again,” if the same people paying lip service to the memory of the Holocaust are silent about the latest campaign to victimize the Jews.
The most dangerous form of denial today isn’t from those fever-swamp dwellers or from Islamists who promote the idea that the Holocaust is a fiction foisted upon the world by crafty Zionists. The really dangerous kind of denial comes from those who refuse to recognize that anti-Zionism is merely anti-Semitism with a different name. This new worldwide movement of hate cannot be separated from traditional anti-Semitic invective and violence. Those who refuse to recognize this are not only undermining Israel and its supporters but also allowing this form of hate to grow.
So Western and even Jewish figures who fill the airwaves with their sorrow over the fate of the Six Million — whether on January 27th or in the next 24 hours — should spare us their crocodile tears if they are not also prepared to stand up against the anti-Zionist engine of anti-Semitism in our own day. It must be understood that the only proper memorials to the Holocaust are not made of bricks and mortar or measured in condemnations of Hitler but to be found in a willingness to oppose the current war on the Jews. Anything else is an exercise in hypocrisy. Those who wish to demonstrate they truly remember the Holocaust and understand its meaning must redouble their efforts to oppose the anti-Zionists and the BDS crowd as well as the terror movements that continue to seek Jewish bloodshed every day of the year.
Israelis across the country paused for two minutes Thursday morning in memory of the six million Jews who perished in Europe under Nazi rule as an air raid siren pierced the clear blue sky in an annual marking of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The stark siren was to be followed by ceremonies at schools, memorials and elsewhere in honor of those who lost their lives as well as Shoah survivors.
The central event was set to take place immediately after the siren at the Yad Vashem memorial and museum in Jerusalem, where dignitaries will lay wreaths next to a monument commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.
Among those taking part are President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, IDF Chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, and President of the Supreme Court Miriam Naor.
Holocaust Remembrance Day Siren
Every year on this day, something extraordinary happens in Israel: the sirens sound, and everybody stops. We did too. Take a look with us.
IDF Blog: Remembering the Communities Lost in the Holocaust
From Libya to Hungary, from Poland to the Netherlands. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we join our soldiers and officers as they light candles in memory of their grandparents' communities that were destroyed in WWII.
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