Monday, January 08, 2018
David Harris: Ten Ways That Israel Is Treated Differently
The recent focus on the Jerusalem issue is a telling reminder that Israel is treated according to a totally different standard than other countries in the international system.Cary Nelson: Judith Butler Plans a Stealth MLA Presidency
Of course, Israel deserves attention and scrutiny — as does every other nation. But it also merits equal treatment — nothing more, and nothing less.
Yet here are ten ways that Israel is constantly treated differently from all other countries on earth.
First, Israel is the only state whose capital city, Jerusalem — with which the Jewish people have been umbilically linked for more than 3,000 years — is not recognized by almost all other countries.
Imagine the absurdity of this. Foreign diplomats live in Tel Aviv, while conducting virtually all of their business in Jerusalem, where the prime minister’s office, the Knesset, the Supreme Court, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are located.
In fact, look at the listings of world cities, including places of birth in passports, and you’ll see something striking — Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; Pretoria, South Africa; Lima, Peru; and Jerusalem, sans country — orphaned, if you will.
Second, Israel is the only UN member state whose very right to exist is under constant challenge.
Notwithstanding the fact that Israel embodies an age-old connection with the Jewish people, as repeatedly cited in the most widely read book in the world, the Bible; that it was reborn based on the 1947 recommendation of the UN; and that it has been a member of the world body since 1949, there’s a relentless chorus denying Israel’s very political legitimacy.
Although half the hour was spent challenging and berating me, the core strategy Butler and the other senior member there, David Palumbo-Lio of Stanford, were using was nonetheless clear. After more than a decade of debating anti-Israel resolutions, MLA members had their fill. In June 2017 they voted by a 2-1 margin to bar further academic boycott resolutions. MLA’s Executive Director Rosemary Feal immediately pointed out that nothing prevented a vote on a resolution to overturn the 2017 vote, but the BDSers preferred to ignore this option, as it was clear they would lose such a contest. Unwilling to see themselves as a radical fringe group indulging in sour grapes complaints, they were left with one way to explain their loss: as they asserted repeatedly this evening, they were cheated.West Bank: Ancient sites destroyed 'as ISIS did in Syria and Iran'
“All we wanted was a level playing field,” Palumbo-Liu declared, “but we didn’t get one.” Incredibly, he revived his 2014 accusation that MLA Members for Scholar’s Rights had obtained outside Zionist funding to copy the email addresses of 20,000 MLA members. He was well aware of my public reply at the time because he responded to it: I had paid a student $650 to gather the emails. I didn’t need to contact Baron Rothschild for funds through a seance. But now he lied and complained I never answered him, even though he answered my reply, just as he lied recently in claiming he had run for the MLA Executive Council on an explicit BDS platform. In fact he had run on a stealth platform claiming he was seeking to help grad students and never mentioned Israel.
Members had only received pro-boycott materials, and we wanted them to hear our case. The MLA refused to distribute our anti-boycott dossier. We used the same emails once more in 2017. Palumbo-Liu and Butler both insisted this was unethical, despite MLA assuring members we had followed the rules. Butler incredibly added that the 2017 resolution violated the US Constitution by supposedly restricting speech. Of course speech in 800 MLA sessions was unrestricted, as was anything else anyone wanted to say from sea to shining sea. Members had democratically voted to stop squabbling about Israel and instead focus on humanities disciplines in crisis and exploited academic labor. But for a BDS disciple like Palumbo-Liu that was a cowardly distraction. Seeing it as the only hope for a newspaper headline he resigned from MLA’s Executive Council in January, absurdly protesting that his academic freedom had been violated.
What Butler and Palumbo-Liu managed to do this evening was to convince a group of young faculty and students that only a corrupt conspiracy could have defeated them in their effort to demonize the Jewish state. Their opponents were unethical and unscrupulous. At the end, Butler turned and pointed to me to conclude: “We need to overcome those who are dedicated to making the fight unfair.”
Numerous archaeological sites throughout the West Bank are being destroyed and robbed by Palestinians and according to an Israel News Company report, this is a common phenomenon. Hebrew University archaeology doctoral student Haggai Cohen Klonymus described to the Israel News Company how tractors and bulldozers arrived at an archaeological site where the ancient city of Archelaus once stood, digging away at the ancient site.
The Palestinian assailants completely level the compound in order to locate hidden archaeological treasures to sell in the antiquities market. “It was flat and in a very short period of time, they lifted the entire area with tractors,” Bar Ilan University archaeology doctoral student Assaf Avraham told the Israel News Company. Other sites are deserted and filled with holes and trash after the wreckage.
Klonymus explained the deteriorating situation of the historical sites in the report, stating that a complaint was filed, but that there is only one inspector for all of the West Bank’s archaeological sites, who is responsible for the antiquities robbery and destruction issue. “Just as ISIS destroyed sites in Iran and Syria that were thousands of years old, the same situation is occurring here,” Klonymus said to the Israel News Company. “This is a deliberate and systematic destruction of an archaeological site without anyone responding to it. It’s just a tragedy.”
Downgrading Israel degrades South Africa
The African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling party, has resolved to downgrade the South African embassy in Israel. This resolution is an affront not only to the South African Jewish and Christian communities, who hold spiritual, religious and historical ties to Israel, but also to the ANC’s own constitution of working toward a “united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous society in South Africa.” It will not serve the interests of South Africa, or provide any assistance to the Palestinians, and should be rescinded or abandoned before further embarrassment is caused to South Africa.A new twist for academic Holocaust distorters
Israel-bashing appears to have been the prime focus of the ANC’s foreign policy commission at its national conference in December 2017. No resolutions were made on Africa’s repressive regimes, their discrimination against women, homosexuals or minorities, or their impingement on political and civil liberties. Nothing was resolved around assisting South Sudan alleviate one of the world’s worst famines since World War Two. Nothing was said about the armed conflicts in Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Nigeria or atrocities in the Middle East or Asia.
Tiny Israel was singled out and victimized while the elephants in the room comfortably sat. It is surprising how easily captured by outside forces who call its hateful anti-Israel tune the party’s foreign policy agenda has proven to be.
The ANC chose to miss an opportunity and squander its foreign policy discussion on Israel. It wasted its valuable time obsessing over the imperfect liberal democracy of Israel as opposed to the perfect dictatorships on South Africa’s doorstep. It was a very shallow claim that this was all in the name of improving the lives of Palestinians, as the ANC failed to speak out against their true oppressors: the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Instead the ANC chose to warmly receive them both at the conference.
Besides being an internationally-classified terrorist organization, Hamas is also one of the most openly antisemitic organizations on earth. It called for the murder of Jews worldwide in its very founding charter (which it recently “updated” for a gullible Western audience), and incites the Palestinians, including impressionable and innocent children, on a daily basis toward this vile act.
“Since I cherished a naïve conviction that scholars in the newly emerging field of genocide studies by definition would be humanists and democrats, my disappointment and horror are powerful. It turns out that there are a good number of scholars who indulge in Holocaust denials or minimization and are entirely bona fide according to all the rules and conventions of academia."Media Is Still Portraying Islamic Terrorists as ‘Aggrieved’ Victims
Prof. Israel W. Charny is a psychologist and genocide scholar. He served as co-founder and a past president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, president of the International Family Therapy Association, and was the founder and first president of the Israel Family Therapy Association.
“In the academic world an alternative has developed to the classic ‘sloppy’ denials of the Holocaust. Several scholars now propagate the explicitly false thesis that the Jews were not targeted as victims because they were Jews. What is claimed instead is that they were a minority who were persecuted by the Nazis along with other minorities.
“This kind of specious intellectual juggling has led to outright false statements in several articles in the ‘respectable’ Journal of Genocide Research (JGR). In one article it is claimed that the specifically anti-Jewish Wannsee Conference was not at all motivated by hatred of the Jews, but represented a policy towards European minorities as a whole, this despite the fact that it was this conference that cemented the plans for the ‘Final Solution.’
“Gerhard Wolf, who lectures at the University of Sussex – a center of Holocaust distortion -- wrote: ‘The Wannsee conference is still largely understood as the echo of an earlier decision to annihilate European Jewry.’ The interpretation of the Wannsee Conference as aiming at the Jewish population ‘mistakenly concludes that because the conference targeted only Jews, it also emerged from within the narrower confines of the regime’s anti-Jewish policies. Heydrich’s actions at Wannsee can be better understood as a response to early failures in Germanizing annexed Poland and the settlement fantasies coming out of the SS apparatus after the invasion of the Soviet Union. It was part of a larger program that disposed those who stood in the way of expanding German living space.’
The mainstream media’s approach to and apologias for Islamic terrorism have become as predictable as they are farcical.NGO Monitor: The Members of Israel’s BDS Blacklist
In a recent piece titled “A Mysterious Act of Mercy by the Subway Bombing Suspect,” New York Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman portrays would-be suicide bomber Akayed Ullah -- whose foiled attempt under Times Square could have massacred countless Americans -- as just another Muslim youth angered at and responding to the mistreatment of Muslims. Ullah was just a Muslim with legitimate “grievances” against the United States:
Before Akayed Ullah returned home to New York from his native Bangladesh … he had one last thing to do -- an all-night bus ride by himself to help Rohingya refugees [Muslims]. After visiting relatives here in the capital city, Dhaka, he traveled across the country, slept in a mosque and under a tree, and passed out a few hundred dollars of medicine in the crowded refugee camps.
“When he left [America], he seemed happy,” said his mother-in-law, Mahfuza Akhter. “But when he returned, he was so upset. He said those people were living in hell, each and every minute.”
“That lonely trip across Bangladesh in September remains a mystery,” Gettleman opines, wondering whether Ullah was “following his own heart, reflecting some sort of inner struggle as he headed toward his first known act of violence and self-destruction.” Gettleman based this on “extensive interviews with more than a dozen friends, relatives and acquaintances,” all of whom say that the Muslim youth was “outraged by injustices inflicted on Muslims. He was also described by several people who know him well as loving and giving.”
According to Gettleman, such claims “still leave a hole as to why Mr. Ullah did this.”
And so it goes. To anyone paying attention, the NYT’s portrayal of Ullah is virtually boilerplate; the duplicate structure of the portrayals of all Islamic terrorists who strike at the United States.
Recall, for instance, when Abdul Razak Ali Artan -- an 18-year-old Muslim refugee from Somalia who was receiving aid from Catholic charities -- rammed his car into a building at Ohio State University, then got out and stabbed people with a butcher knife, hospitalizing 13 people. CNN, NBC, the Washington Post, and many others sought to rationalize Artan’s violence by citing one of his Facebook posts. Artan had written: “Seeing my fellow Muslims being tortured, raped and killed in Burma led to a boiling point. I can’t take it anymore.”
The problem with both Ullah’s and Artan’s supposed “grievances” is twofold. First, the obvious: how, exactly, does terrorizing and slaughtering Americans avenge the plight of Rohingya Muslims in Burma/Myanmar? If Ullah and Artan were primarily motivated by the suffering of the Rohingya, shouldn’t they have sought to terrorize and kill Burmese?
The Israeli government has prepared a list of 20 organizations that lead BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns, such that officials of these groups will not be allowed to enter Israel. Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not banning activists who seek to harm the country they desire to enter is the best policy approach or not. To be sure, the critiques of this policy and similar legislation tend to be highly political instead of substantive.Opposition slams blacklist barring members of boycott groups
The organizations listed by Israel include the leaders of BDS against Israel – groups that through their “anti-normalization” and selective application of the universal principles of human rights, fail to promote peace and a two-state framework. Likewise, many of these groups go beyond simple critiques of Israel and instead aim their frustration at the very existence of the Jewish State.
For 15 years, NGO Monitor has tracked the funding and activities of self-proclaimed human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that promote BDS and other delegitimization campaigns against Israel. NGO Monitor’s years of research into many of the organizations on the Israeli government list exposes that many of these groups advocate for a total boycott of Israel – including Israeli-made products, as well as academic, cultural, and sports institutions. This research also demonstrates that these groups are active in campaigns that promote hatred, antisemitism, and even utilize violent language regarding Israelis.
For example, the France Association Palestine Solidarity (AFPS), which receives French government funding, calls for the end of financial ties between French banks and insurance companies with Israeli banks and enterprises, accusing them of being “actors of colonization.” It also legitimizes the use of “armed struggle” against Israelis, as stated in its 2013 charter; in 2017, the group clarified that “support of popular resistance includes attacks against soldiers of the occupation…” AFPS also advocates for the removal of the terror groups Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) from the European list of terrorist organizations.
Israeli opposition leaders on Monday slammed the government’s policy toward the BDS movement, following the publication of a list of organizations whose members will be banned from entering the country.BDS activists complain of harassment by Israeli students
The blacklist, published a day earlier, covers some 20 groups the Strategic Affairs Ministry says are part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which it says consistently and openly works to delegitimize Israel. One of the groups listed is the US-based Jewish Voice for Peace.
Speaking at the weekly Yesh Atid faction meeting at the Knesset, the chairman of the opposition party, MK Yair Lapid, called the list an “idiotic idea.”
“BDS activists are detestable but this is an idiotic idea. So our policy to fight boycotts is by implementing another boycott?” he asked.
Lapid said that beyond “harming the war against BDS,” the list also makes no sense since members of some of the Jewish BDS groups on the list, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, “can just make aliyah and then they will be here anyway.”
The official group for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to vilify and isolate Israel internationally, uploaded a Facebook post this week urging their supporters to donate money because, "Israeli students are disturbing our activities by using an app and through social networking sites."In which Israel-hater Paul Larudee whines about lack of support
The disturbance BDS leaders complained about was Act.il, launched three years ago as an initiative by students of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC) and the Israeli-American Council (IAC) as a response to the rise in anti-Israel sentiments on social networking sites, especially after the IDF's military campaigns of Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
More than 1,000 students, most of them at IDC, volunteer and use the platform to respond to what they see as anti-Israel slander on the web. IDC students hail from dozens of countries, enabling them to respond to online defamation in some 35 languages.
About six months ago, Act.il released a mobile app that was downloaded by thousands of people around the world and significantly widened its circle of activists.
The post on the BDS page continued, "They disrupted an internet event attended by senior BDS figures and they are paid trolls, racists, inciters and Islamophobes and they are spreading anti-Palestinian propaganda."
The post was received with glee among pro-Israel activists. "This post is a certificate of honor for our volunteers," said Yarden Ben Yosef, the administrator of Act.il. "If we have reached a point in which they are anxious about us and are using us to ask for donations, apparently we are doing a good job."
After such failed high profile ventures as the Gaza flotilla and the Global March to Jerusalem, hapless Israel-hater Paul Larudee can't get any respect. The El Cerrito activist recently sent out an impassioned email blast, bemoaning the "lack of volunteers and funding" for the once vigorous International Solidarity Movement (ISM)IsraellyCool: Israel Hater Films Herself Defacing Product (A Crime) in Supermarket
Apparently, the response to Paul's plea for help was underwhelming. Not one check? Poor, poor Paul.
Denied entry into Israel in 2006, Larudee was once described in the Jerusalem Post as one of the International Solidarity Movement's "top leaders"
Was it his ties to Iran's mullahs, and his open support for terror groups? Was it his endorsement and promotion of notorious Jew-haters like Gilad Atzmon and Alison Weir? Was it his connection to the frighteningly conspiratorial International Union of a Unified Ummah?
Whatever the reason, its time for the aging activist to take on a new hobby. Have you considered macrame, Paul?
We’ve seen it before: Israel haters and BDS-holes filming themselves defacing Israeli products or otherwise admitting to it..
This is #BDS. Attacking the #kosher aisles in supermarkets, defacing kosher products, boasting about it by uploading videos to social media and then pretending it isn't against #Jews. pic.twitter.com/1cuBQQOJrE
— David Collier (@mishtal) January 6, 2018
I am not entirely sure who this is in the video, or where this was filmed, but I assume where she is, defacing supermarket goods is a crime. So if any of you recognize her or where the store is, please let me know.
Besides being a hatemonger and criminal, she is also a dumbass. The Israeli “couscous” she is defacing and suggesting is appropriated from the palestinian Arabs is truly an Israeli invention, and is not the same as regular couscous
Daphne Anson: Hot & Heavy in Old London Town: "The Whole of Palestine is Occupied!" (videos)
If I'm not mistaken, the well-built chap who tells the beautifully spoken lady behind the camera at around 0:54 on the first of these three videos "Go away! I know you!" is Kamel Hawwash, professor of engineering at Birmingham University, and decidedly not a fan of what we hear a ranting speaker term "the Zionist Entity". A London bobby is also not too keen on the lady's presence, as she films anti-Israel protesters bussed in from the West Midlands outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square at the weekend.Three years after the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks, the satirical magazine struggles with £1.3m security bill
To quote the uploader:
C4T Campaign4Truth Published on Jan 7, 2018
On Saturday 6 January 2018, a Shabbat lunchtime, West Midlands Mosques decided to bus peoiple down to demonstrate outside the American Embassy at London's Grosvenor Square against President Trump's decision to honour the US committment to move its Israeli Embassy to Israel's capiral city, Jerusalem. Filming there we found antisemitism again masked as "anti-zionism", that ruse to hide race hate against Jews. The worst culprits were the Jews and the Imams on that podium speaking to a scant audience of not more than 100.
Campaign4Truth Published on Jan 7, 2018
Part two of our day at Grosvenor Square that hosted a pile of Jew hating travellers from the West Midlands mosques to propagate their hatred in London, amongst them a couple of Jews spreading antisemitism to an audience lapping it up whilst clearly despising those two Jews for being, well, Jews. Hear our interview with a well indoctrinated courier with a background infashmir, that place in Asia that experiences a similar India/Pakistani struggle to that of Israel/Gaza. You'd think these people would be protesting for their own kinfolk instead of raising hate against Jews, based in a total lack of any knowledge of the history and background.
Charlie Hebdo is struggling with an annual security bill of €1.5 million (£1.32m) as President Emmanuel Macron leads commemorations on the third anniversary of the terror attack on the satirical weekly on Sunday.5 lies in Guardian op-ed claiming ‘Christians being driven out of the holy land’.
Sales have slumped after surging to an unprecedented 7 million copies following the attack on 7 January 2015.
Saïd and Chérif Kouachi murdered 12 people including five cartoonists and journalists, all household names in France.
The attack triggered a wave of international solidarity.
Many people defended Charlie Hebdo’s characteristically provocative, irreverent cartoons, which often lampoon the Prophet Mohammed.
Public support for the weekly has since fallen after its cartoons caused offence by poking fun at earthquake and terror victims.
Sales of the niche newspaper have tumbled back to about 30,000, close to pre-attack levels. But death threats continue to flood in on social media, forcing the newspaper to install security systems and hire bodyguards in addition to police protection.
In its latest issue, under the headline “Three years in a tin can,” Laurent Sourisseau, the director of the publication and its main shareholder, complained that Charlie has been left to fend for itself.
“Is it normal for a newspaper in a democratic country that one out of every two copies sold goes on paying for the security of its offices?”, wrote Riss, as he is known.
The attack and others that killed a policewoman and four Jews the same week horrified the nation.
A Guardian op-ed by Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, (“Christians are at risk of being driven out of the Holy Land”, Jan. 7th) is full of errors, lies and distortions:The New Yorker Can't Get the Facts Right on Jerusalem
Lie #1
“there is a threat…to the religious status quo, a threat instigated by radical settlers in and around Jerusalem, the heart of Christianity.
Theophilos’s assertion that “radical settlers” threaten the religious status quo in Jerusalem is not true, as later in the article we learn that the “radical settlers” are Jews who buy property in east Jerusalem. However, Jewish groups purchasing land in (east) Jerusalem do not threaten the “status quo”, at least in regards to what that term typically refers to: access to holy sites, such as the Temple Mount. (Alternatively, if he’s not referring to the status quo at holy sites, he could be making a morally troubling argument that any Jew who moves into areas of the city where Jews were ethnically cleansed and forbidden to live under Jordanian rule is itself a violation of the ‘status quo’.)
Also, note how he characterises Jerusalem as “the heart of Christianity”, but fails, in this paragraph or anywhere throughout the op-ed, to acknowledge the Jewish connection to the city.
Lie #2
The protection and accessibility of the holy places are understood through a set of rules called the “status quo”, which has been followed by all religious and governmental authorities of the region through the ages.
Contrary to his assertion, the protection and accessibility of holy places has NOT been “followed by all religious and governmental authorities of the region through the ages”. For several hundred years under Ottoman control, non-Muslims were prohibited from visiting the Temple Mount. When Jordan controlled east Jerusalem, Jews were ethnically cleansed from that section of the city and forbidden from visiting Jewish holy sites there.
By contrast, since 1967, Israel has granted access to all faiths at the holy sites.
A December 26 “Letter from Ramallah” in The New Yorker is long on emotional, artistic prose, but quite short on factual information.The Independent Labels Electronic Intifada Head an “Expert”
In “The Power Politics Behind Trump's Jerusalem Declaration,” author Raja Shehadeh laments US President Donald Trump's recent recognition that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and his announcement that he will move the US embassy to that city. Shehadeh asserts that, “for Palestinians, Trump's Jerusalem declaration ended all hopes that the long-moribund peace process might lead to an independent Palestinian state,” and that “Trump and Netanyahu have condemned us, both peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, to perpetual conflict.”
While the author is forthright about his disappointment at the announcement, he's silent on key points. For example, Shehadeh never explains to his readers that Palestinian leaders have turned down numerous opportunities to have the independent state he seems to want, including with part of Jerusalem as its capital.
Nor does he explain why Israel's capital being Jerusalem in any way precludes an independent Palestinian state, or why Palestinians couldn't designate Ramallah as a capital city.There has never been specifically Palestinian sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem, and there is no reason that Jerusalem is indispensable to an independent Palestinian state. While Palestinians may be unhappy over the announcement, it's simply not the case that the results Shehadeh describes necessarily follow from it.
resh from winning the Dishonest Reporter of the Year Award, The Independent is off to a storming start to 2018. A story concerning the Likud Central Committee’s vote calling for the state to annex parts of the disputed territories includes the following embedded video and caption.Fatah disinformation goes unchallenged on the BBC World Service
Who is this “expert” who “predicts Israel will be treated like a ‘pariah state’ in 2018”?
Only one of the main movers in attempting to portray Israel as a pariah state. Ali Abunimah is the co-founder and executive director of the anti-Israel hate site Electronic Intifada.
Abunimah has a long track record as a prominent figure in anti-Israel campaigns and he’s certainly not the first person one would consider to be an “expert” on Israeli politics or the internal machinations of the Likud Party.
That the video clip is from Al Jazeera goes some way towards explaining why he appears as a talking head. However, there’s some serious problems with The Independent’s use of the 30-second clip.
Nowhere does The Independent identify Abunimah, nor any official positions he may hold. Only at the very end do we hear the Al Jazeera interviewer thank a “Mr. Abunimah” for being on the show.
During the interview Abunimah accuses Israel of promoting apartheid and not being interested in peace. Yet, while he is attacking Israel, The Independent’s readers still have no idea who he is.
Listeners then heard an egregious distortion of history that likewise went completely unchallenged by the BBC presenter.German bill would allow expulsion of migrants who espouse anti-Semitism
Abu Zayyad: “It’s based on the fact that 650 years ago…in 650 years BC Palestinians arrived to this country and they have been here while the Jewish people arrived actually 350 years BC. They have been living in this land for a long, long time and at the moment at 2017 if you look at the population that is living in East Jerusalem you’re talking about 350,000 Palestinians living in it, working in it and trying to get their rights. We want equality on rights so like any other people we want either sovereignty or equality. Either you give us a state of our own – with East Jerusalem which is part of the Palestinian lands that were occupied at 1967 when Israel went into war – or you simply go to the other option which is one state with equality and basic rights that include voting and a democratic system for everyone on the historical lands of Palestine from the sea to the river.”
Making no effort to clarify to listeners that the relevant part of Jerusalem and Judea & Samaria were never “Palestinian lands” and that they were in fact occupied by Jordan for 19 years until that country elected to attack Israel in 1967, Marshall continued:
Marshall: “But what Mr Bennett seems to have in mind for the Palestinians is simply a geographical entity where you will be able to govern yourselves and collect taxes but will fall far short of statehood. But that clearly is not acceptable.”
Abu Zayyad: “For us who is Bennett at all to decide for us how to rule ourselves? Bennett is simply a fanatic extreme Israeli leader who calls…”
Marshall [interrupts]: “But does he…but does he speak for the Israeli government do you think?”
Abu Zayyad: “He speaks for an extreme right Israeli government that calls for death penalty for Palestinian prisoners, for expelling Palestinians to Gaza and to Jordan to live there instead of their houses in the West Bank and to build more settlements against the international law in Palestinian lands that are occupied in 1967. For us, actually, his words condemn him because it shows that [what] he wants to choose for the Palestinians is an apartheid system.”
Yet again making no effort to question Abu Zayyad’s ‘apartheid’ slur or his false claim that the Israeli government calls for “expelling Palestinians”, Marshall closed the interview there.
Germany’s mainstream conservative parties are proposing legislation that would allow states to expel foreigners who make anti-Semitic statements, including the refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist.What did Germans know? Secret anti-Nazi diary gives voice to man on the street
The party of Chancellor Angela Merkel — the Christian Democratic Union — and its sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union, have proposed legislation that they say would take such hate crimes “much more seriously,” according to the German newspaper Die Welt.
Party leaders reportedly hope that the legislation will be passed before International Holocaust Memorial Day, Jan. 27, which recalls the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp by Red Army troops in 1945.
Christian Democratic legislator Stephan Harbarth told Die Welt that the move was intended to crack down on anti-Semitism among “migrants with Arab background and from African countries.” While education and other preventive work are important, he said, the state must be able to wield the ultimate threat of deportation
“Anyone who incites anti-Semitic hate and rejects Jewish life in Germany cannot stay in our country,” Harbarth said.
A recent survey of new refugees commissioned by the American Jewish Committee found that anti-Semitic attitudes and rejection of Israel are widespread among the newcomers. At least 1 million Muslim refugees have arrived in Germany since the summer of 2015. The AJC and numerous Jewish leaders in Germany have called on the federal government to appoint a commissioner to deal with anti-Semitism, from prevention to punishment.
Half a century after Friedrich Kellner gifted his Nazi-era diary to a grandson in America, the clandestine writings will be published in English by Cambridge University Press in January.Israel medical devices startup Motus files for Nasdaq IPO
A vociferous critic of the Nazis, Kellner used his diary to document the regime’s atrocities beginning in 1939. The small town “justice inspector” wrote 676 entries, drawing from numerous sources and a formidable knowledge of history. In addition to content on the unfolding Holocaust, Kellner wrote about the regime’s use of propaganda to delude the populace, and what he regarded as the Allies’ criminal mismanagement of the war.
Kellner’s diary, which he titled “My Opposition,” is seen by some historians as a barometer for what “ordinary” Germans might have known about activities in the east, where members of the SS and other Germans were engaged in the mass murder of Jews, Poles, and Slavs. Some of Kellner’s information came from sources that were widely available, including the Nazi party broadsheet and illegal radio broadcasts. To gather other accounts, Kellner questioned people and sifted through gossip, attaching more than 500 newspaper clippings along the way.
A potent sense of anger fills Kellner’s diary, not only directed toward the Nazis, but also with regard to his fellow citizens and the world for allowing Hitler to rise.
“There is no punishment that would be hard enough to be applied to these Nazi beasts,” wrote Kellner. “Of course, when the retribution comes, the innocent will have to suffer along with them. But because ninety-nine percent of the German population is guilty, directly or indirectly, for the present situation, we can only say that those who travel together will hang together.”
With indictments like that, it’s no wonder Kellner’s full diary was not published in Germany until 2011.
Israel’s Motus GI Holdings Inc., a medical device company based in Israel and the US, has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to hold an initial public offering of shares on the Nasdaq raising up to $28.8 million.Israeli company says it has developed tiniest cherry tomato
The company has developed a single-use medical device system, the Pure-Vu system, cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration, that connects to standard colonoscopy devices allowing physicians to clean poorly prepped colons in a safe and effective manner so that they can get clear visualization of the colon mucosa, as necessary for a successful procedure.
The colonoscopy is one of the most common medical procedures performed, with some 15 million undertaken in the US annually. Approximately 55 percent of colonoscopies are conducted as the standard of care for detecting colorectal cancer (CRC), while the remaining 45% are focused on diagnosis and surveillance of patients with gastrointestinal issues such as bleeding, inflammatory bowel disease and motility challenges.
CRC is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the US, with approximately 50,000 deaths and 140,000 new cases diagnosed each year. The lifetime risk of developing CRC is about 1 in 20, or 5%. Through the use of colonoscopies, however, CRC has become one of the most preventable cancers.
They say bigger is better, but in the succulent world of cherry tomatoes, one Israeli company is going smaller than ever before.Florida Jews to go to Guatemala to give thanks for Jerusalem embassy stance
The “drop tomato” is about the size of a blueberry and the Kedma company in the country’s southern Arava desert says it is the smallest one ever cultivated in Israel, perhaps even in the world. It’s a point of pride in a country known for its agricultural innovation, where fruits and vegetables are taken seriously and where several strands of the cherry tomato were first invented.
“The idea is that it is comfortable,” said Ariel Kidron, a Kedma grower. “You can throw it in a salad, you don’t need to cut it. It just explodes in your mouth.”
The seed, originally developed in Holland, was modified to match the arid growing conditions in southern Israel. Rami Golan, of the Central and Northern Arava Research and Development center, who accompanied the project, said it was definitely the smallest ever to be grown in Israel — where tomatoes are incredibly popular.
In this Jan. 4, 2018 photo, chef Shaul Ben Aderet holds a small “drop tomato” and an Israeli new shekel at one of his restaurants, in Tel Aviv, Israel. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
The tiny tomato, smaller than a one shekel Israeli coin, is offered in red and yellow varieties and will be presented to the public at a three-day international agricultural fair in Israel later this month. Early indications are it could be a big hit.
Two Florida congregations are planning a joint “mission of gratitude” to Guatemala later this month to thank the Central American country for its declared intention to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
In Guatemala City, members of the Conservative Temple Beth El in West Palm Beach and the Orthodox Palm Beach Synagogue are set to meet with senior government officials and members of the local Jewish community.
“It is our desire to demonstrate to the world how Jewish people honor and support our friends in the hope that other groups will follow with similar support,” said Peter R. Bendetson, who organized the trip. “Perhaps this can become a stimulus for other nations in Latin America and Europe to follow the lead of Guatemala in moving their embassies to our eternal capital.”
On December 24, Guatemala’s President Jimmy Morales announced his intention to relocate the embassy to Jerusalem, making his country the first to follow the US in recognizing the city as Israel’s capital earlier that month.
Other countries, including its neighbor Honduras, have been rumored to be intending to follow suit, even though El Salvador last week said it would not move its Israel embassy.
Israel is now one of the 25 richest countries in the world. This is an amazing achievement. I've been visiting Israel for over 30 years & the transformation is remarkable. I believe I will live to see it become the most advanced country in the world. https://t.co/Sc9NIIuxAq
— Mike (@Doranimated) January 7, 2018
