Tribute to Helen Thomas by a Hezbollah/Hamas supporter and 9/11 "truther" (update)

I mentioned that Helen Thomas was honored in a Washington ceremony last week as the recipient of the "Courage in Journalism" award last week by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. My conjecture was that she received her award not in spite of her anti-semitism, but because of it.

It appears I am right.

The person who presented the award to her was James Abourezk, former senator - and terrorist supporter.

When Abourezk gave a glowing review to the Walt/Mearsheimer book on the Jewish Lobby, I noted that he had been on Hezbollah TV praising Hamas and Hezbollah, and saying that Zionists were involved with the 9/11 attacks. This gave rise to a comment thread on the review site where he and I argued a bit. I'm fairly sure I won that argument, decisively.

Here's part of what Abourezk said at the Helen Thomas tribute:

from People's Cube

Even Barack Obama, who has been advertised as a tolerant man, had to join in the denunciations of Helen. He, along with the others in the press corps, acted very much like children in a school yard. When one of the children falls down, the rest start kicking.

Helen was not necessarily done in by her statement about Israel. What she said is what I’ve been saying for years - the Zionists should get the hell out of Palestine.

Where they go when they leave there is not my concern, just as it is not the Zionists' concern where the Palestinians went when they were driven out of Palestine.

...As the Zionists and the Israelis are working very hard to get our country into a war with Iran, there remains almost no voice in the press or in the Congress to call a halt to this madness.

That is why we are all paying tribute to Helen tonight, and I hope, for a long time after this night. We pay tribute to all soldiers who act with bravery, and tonight, we add Helen Thomas to that company. She deserves our thanks, and she deserves the thanks of our nation.

So indeed Thomas was not honored by the ADC for her decades of journalistic work but for her anti-semitic and genocidal comments about Jews in Israel.

And James Abourezk is proud to agree with her.

(The rest of his speech shows that his regard for the truth has not gone up at all since my little exposure of his lies.)

By the way, i see that previous award recipient Ray Hanania finds my earlier mention of Thomas to be reprehensible:

On the one hand, the writer argues that Helen Thomas did not say that Jews should get out of the occupied territory, making the precision of the words their strongest case. And then they hypocritically violate principle, morality and even truth, arguing that Helen Thomas said that Jews should get out of Israel. The fact is Helen Thomas NEVER used the word "Jews." She was asked by a racist rabbi what Israelis should do and she said "Get the hell out of Palestine."

And then that "racist rabbi" said to her "So you are saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany" and she added "And to America, and everywhere else."
Hanania knows this, of course, as he attacks EoZ as "an often racistly anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate site."

Sorry, Ray, but you are a liar. Helen made very clear what she meant, and the video shows that. Your defense of her is indefensible.

UPDATE: Not that this is the first time that I caught Ray Hanania lying....

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Iran's involvement in a Nazi website

Last week, Barry Rubin had a scoop:

Is Iran’s government sponsoring an Internet site that extols the German Nazis, their history and achievements, including the antisemitism that the current Iranian regime also supports? Or is it merely permitting one to operate in its highly censored communications' system?

Here are the facts. There is a discussion group site entitled IranNazi that has an Iranian internet URL. It is written in Persian and seems to have begun on August 24. All the material on the site is pro-Nazi and features pictures of Adolph Hitler, the swastika, and goose-stepping German soldiers. There is an English-language part as well.

This site pretends to be an association for the research of Nazism and to be "completely historical and scientific."

کاملا پژوهشی و علمی تاریخی است

It includes such topics as claims that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the well-known antisemitic forgery is true; insistence that the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis never happened and is in fact a lie; makes the prediction that Israel will collapse in five years; and highlights cartoons and satire ridiculing the Holocaust. All four of these positions are also taken by the Iranian government and official media.

The main page includes the following message:

این تارنما طبق قوانین جمهوری اسلامی ایران و تحت نظارت کارگروه رسانه های دیجیتال وزارت فرهنگ و ارشاد جمهوری اسلامی فعالیت می کند .

In English it means: "This website is under Islamic Republic of Iran laws and it is under the supervision of the working committee on Digital Media of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance."

Iran does not have freedom of speech and certainly not freedom of the Internet. Given the tight censorship in Iran and the fact that all sites are closely monitored, permission to publish--especially to claim government sponsorship--is evidence of state backing.

So is this, then, a state-backed site, showing just how far the regime has gone in boosting Nazism historically and antisemitism or a private initiative by some Iranian immigrants in the United States who are supporters of the Iranian regime? Is the statement on the site, which has not been suppressed by the government, accurate? It isn't completely clear.

A very well-informed and highly credible Iranian notes that the fact that it isn't blocked "is a significant indication that the government at least does not have problem with it." The deputy minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance is Muhammad Ali Ramin, who was President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's advisor on Holocaust issue and founder of Holocaust Institute in Tehran and the president of the conference of Holocaust; A Global Perspective, which denied that the mass murder of Jews never took place.

I was skeptical. I did a little digging; the server of the group is physically in Arizona and the other websites on the same Iranian host were the usual assortment of random Internet sites: one selling videos, one apparently selling perfume. The IranNazi.ir site seemed to be just another site set up by some Jew-hater.

Al-Arabiya, however, seems to be taking it as seriously as Rubin did, as the site was specifically allowed by Iran:

Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic guidance lifted the block it had imposed on a pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish website, amid concerns by both conservatives and reformists.

While it blocks around five million political, cultural, religious, and “indecent” websites, the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance permitted the operation of a website called irannazi.ir, also called the Center for Historical Studies on World War I and Nazism.” The website is run by a group called the Center for Nazi Iranian Studies.

The re-opening of the website was met with objections in Iranian political circles, which was shown in the reactions of both the pro-government website Tabnak and the pro-reformist Rooz Online.

Tabnak demanded that the Iranian government provides an explanation for allowing the website to operate while Rooz Online accused deputy minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance is Muhammad Ali Ramin of being behind lifting the ban on the website.

Rooz reported that Ramin had connections with neo-Nazis when he lived in Europe and that he is known for his support for Nazi ideas.

Ramin is also the founder of the Holocaust Institute in Tehran and was the president of a conference called Holocaust: A Global Perspective, which denied the extermination of Jews by the German Third Reich.

The website published a statement about the previous ban imposed on it after its administrators were accused of insulting religious minorities. After the re-launch, they called on visitors to use the word “Zionist” instead of “Jew.”

The website has several chat rooms that are categorized according to the topics users want to discuss like Third Reich, Second World War, principles of Nazism, and the ideas of Adolf Hitler.

It is indeed significant that the Iranian regime specifically unbanned this site while it continues to censore millions of others.

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The If/Then Fallacy

Diplomats, pundits and politicians, whether Israeli or European or American, have consistently made the same mistake when deciding what Israel must do to gain peace. I call it the "If/Then Fallacy."

The logic goes that if Israel makes a unilateral move towards peace, then it will inevitably gain some sort of reward.

And it is false - consistently and provably so.

I recently stumbled onto and quoted a 1988 version of this formulation in Time magazine, where columnist Michael Kramer wrote:

If [Israel puts forth a detailed plan for peace and] the Palestinians reject an offer reasonable people can identify as forthcoming and courageous -- as they have rejected every attempt at compromise for almost a century -- [then] no one could fault Israel for then saying, "Shalom. Come to talk to us again when you've grown up."

Of course, Israel has done exactly that - at Camp David as well as at other times. But the "else" clause didn't follow as the script demanded - on the contrary, Israel's offer was met with a pre-planned war against Israeli civilians that ended up killing thousands.

Zaki Shalom, in Strategic Assessment's October issue, goes through the goals of Israel's disengagement from Gaza. He writes many implicit and explicit reasons that the Israeli government wanted to make such a drastic move, and notes:

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, withdrawing IDF troops from the Gaza Strip, destroying the Jewish settlement there, and evacuating Israeli residents were supposed to bring about Israel’s complete divestment of responsibility for the Gaza Strip and its residents. From this point onwards, so the plan’s authors contended, the local residents would be their own lords and masters, choose the leadership they would desire, and bear responsibility for their actions, for better or for worse. Gaza, so it was explained, is a bottomless hole, an expanse of quicksand. Israel freed of responsibility for the Strip was a highly important strategic asset for the future development and prosperity of the State of Israel.

If Israel would go through that exercise, then Gaza will no longer be Israel's problem. How did that work out?

In practice, these expectations were not realized. On paper, it seemed that removing IDF forces from the Strip, dismantling all Jewish settlements there, and moving the residents into the areas within the Green Line would allow a complete disengagement from the Gaza Strip and a divestment of all responsibility for it. As coined by Yitzhak Rabin and long echoed by Ehud Barak, the idea was, “We’re here and they’re there.” The disengagement plan of April 18, 2004, stated: “The process of disengagement will serve to dispel claims regarding Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”11

Five years later, it is clear that this expectation did not materialize. Rather, “We left Gaza, but Gaza didn’t leave us” is the reality. The international community sees Israel and its government as bearing full responsibility for the Gaza Strip.

The same fallacious logic was used in 2000 when Israel withdrew from Lebanon in conformity with UN resolutions. The UN certified that Israel's withdrawal was complete. Certainly there was a drastic reduction in tension in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal, but Hezbollah did not accept the UN-drawn Blue Line and made a number of additional territorial claims against Israel, of which the Shebaa Farms is the most famous.

Then, of course, in 2006 Hezbollah kidnapped Israeli soldiers to spark the Second Lebanon war. Somehow, Israel's move towards peace did not result in peace, against what everyone assumed. And in the years since the war, Israel - having no territorial claims against Lebanon and reacting to Hezbollah's increased provocations - is today perceived as the aggressor.

Now there is a new instantiation of the If/Then Fallacy, with Israel prepared to withdraw from Ghajar. The logic, as always, is that it gives one less thing for Hezbollah to complain about and therefore would contribute to peace.

And, as always, that logic is wrong.

From Ma'an:

Hezbollah on Sunday dismissed an Israeli decision to pull troops out of a disputed village on the border with Lebanon as nothing more than a "trick" and accused the UN of complicity with Israel.

"The Israeli enemy wants to show that it has fully pulled out from Lebanese territory," Hezbollah MP Mohammed Raad said in a speech in south Lebanon, excerpts of which were distributed to the media in Beirut.

"This is maneuvering in complicity with the United Nations," Raad said in the first reaction by the Shiite militant group Hezbollah since Israel announced its decision.

So the residents of Ghajar will be sacrificed for no real political or tactical benefit by Israel, except perhaps for a very limited amount of goodwill from the UN that will disappear on the next border incident initiated by Hezbollah that Israel dares respond to.

While there may be some short-term diplomatic gains for Israel when it announces these unilateral moves, there is an elemental flaw with the "If Israel does X, then Arabs will respond positively" formulation. The flaw is that it assumes good faith on the part of people who are determined to eliminate Israel.

The world, and even Israeli leaders, keep forgetting that the entire raison d'etre of Palestinian Arab nationalism (and Hezbollah's very existence) is not to build a state but to destroy one.

The "historic Palestine" desired never had anything to do with history and always was congruent with what Israel controlled. The major political and military entity controlling Lebanon has, in its charter, the phrase "Our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated." Neither Hamas nor the PA has shown the least interest in building a state, and every single PA action that seems to point towards state-building has been done because of US pressure, not because of an innate desire for independence. The fate of millions of stateless Palestinian Arabs is being purposefully delayed by their and other Arab leaders for no other reason than to use them as a demographic and political weapon against Israel. Poll after poll has shown that the Palestinian Arabs desire to wipe Israel out.

It is not possible to make peace with those who are determined to destroy you. This simple fact, which should be axiomatic, is set aside and ignored time and time again because of the deep desire for Westerners and Israelis to find a formula for peace despite all evidence to the contrary. Wishful thinking and false assumptions have replaced cold, hard and admittedly uncomfortable facts.

Just because everyone in the West wants a solution doesn't mean there is one.

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Hating Israel doesn't stop Gulf royal from seeking care there (updated x2)

From JPost:

A member of the royal family of a Persian Gulf state is undergoing advanced medical treatment in Israel, sources close to Deputy Minister for Negev and Galilee Development Ayoub Kara (Likud) revealed Sunday.

Kara’s office confirmed that the foreign visitor had completed a series of tests Sunday, in preparation for heart surgery on Tuesday, but would not detail the medical tourist’s country of origin, or the name of the hospital in which he is being treated.

Kara’s office became involved in the visit when Kara aided the patient in securing the necessary paperwork in order to allow him to enter Israel. Israel does not have official diplomatic relations with any of the Persian Gulf states.

Reminds me of an old All in the Family episode, where the bigoted Archie Bunker, pretending to have whiplash, insists on a Jewish lawyer:


It is amazing how tolerant people become when they need help.

And how easily they revert back once they are finished.

(h/t Zvi)

UPDATE: Apparently, the patient is a princess, arriving with her husband.

UPDATE 2: Arutz-7 adds an intriguing piece:

The woman's husband, a prince of the unnamed Gulf kingdom himself, is considered a key figure in his country. He told MK Kara that if – and hopefully, when – his wife recovers, he plans to lobby for construction of a large medical center that will take in patients from around the Arab world – with Israeli doctors helping to set up the project. In a statement, MK Kara's sees medicine as an important bridge to bring Israel and the Arab world closer, “especially given the fact that in recent years more and more Arabs have been exposed to Israeli medicine, and are well aware of the high quality of Israeli medicine.”

(h/t Joel)

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Saudi-funded schools in Britain teaching Jew-hatred, homophobia

BBC's Panorama will be broadcasting this story later today:

BBC Panorama found that more than 40 Saudi Students' Schools and Clubs are teaching the official Saudi national curriculum to about 5,000 pupils.

One text book shows how the hands and feet of thieves are chopped off.

The Saudi government said it had no official ties to the part-time schools and clubs and did not endorse them.

However, a building in west London where Panorama obtained one of the text books is owned by the Saudi government.

The director of education for the Saudi Students' Schools and Clubs said the Saudi Cultural Bureau, which is part of the embassy, had authority over the network.

Education Secretary Michael Gove said there was no place for the Saudi teachings with regard to Jews or homosexuals in Britain: "To my mind it doesn't seem to me that this is the sort of material that should be used in English schools."

He said in light of the BBC's findings, the school inspectorate Ofsted was looking into the possible regulation and inspection of out-of-hours schools and clubs. At present, part-time schools do not fall within Ofsted's mandate.

"Ofsted are doing some work in this area, they'll be reporting to me shortly about how we can ensure that part-time provision is better registered and better inspected in the future," Mr Gove said.

One of the text books asks children to list the "reprehensible" qualities of Jewish people. A text for younger children asks what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam - the answer given in the text book is "hellfire".

Another text describes the punishment for gay sex as death and states a difference of opinion about whether it should be carried out by stoning, burning with fire or throwing the person over a cliff.

In a book for 14-year-olds, Sharia law and its punishment for theft are explained, including detailed diagrams about how hands and feet of thieves are amputated.

The use of these materials in Britain comes three years after a BBC investigation found a Saudi-funded school in west London was using texts that referred to Jewish people and Christians in derogatory terms. That prompted assurances at the highest diplomatic levels that the materials would be removed.

Panorama has also found evidence of extreme views on some private, full-time Muslim school websites, including messages that state: "Our children are exposed to a culture that is in opposition to almost everything Islam stands for" and "We need to defend our children from the forces of evil".

(h/t Nadav)

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Must-read CBC report shows Hezbollah murdered Hariri

CBC's Neil MacDonald has produced a great piece of investigative journalism that describes the Hariri murder investigation as well as the stonewalling being done by some of the leaders of that very investigation.

In short, the evidence is overwhelming that Hezbollah was behind the murder, but the commission has shown timidity and worse in investigating it.

Excerpts:

It wasn't until late 2007 that the awkwardly titled UN International Independent Investigation Commission actually got around to some serious investigating.

By then, nearly three years had passed since the spectacular public murder of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

A months-long CBC investigation, relying on interviews with multiple sources from inside the UN inquiry and some of the commission's own records, found examples of timidity, bureaucratic inertia and incompetence bordering on gross negligence.

Among other things, CBC News has learned that:

Evidence gathered by Lebanese police and, much later, the UN, points overwhelmingly to the fact that the assassins were from Hezbollah, the militant Party of God that is largely sponsored by Syria and Iran. CBC News has obtained cellphone and other telecommunications evidence that is at the core of the case.

UN investigators came to believe their inquiry was penetrated early by Hezbollah and that that the commission's lax security likely led to the murder of a young, dedicated Lebanese policeman who had largely cracked the case on his own and was co-operating with the international inquiry.

UN commission insiders also suspected Hariri's own chief of protocol at the time, a man who now heads Lebanon's intelligence service, of colluding with Hezbollah. But those suspicions, laid out in an extensive internal memo, were not pursued, basically for diplomatic reasons.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t t34zakat)

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Because when you think Mike Tyson, you think "quality kosher cuisine"

From the New York Post:

Mike Tyson is in talks with businessman Moshe Malamud to launch a high-end restaurant chain, a source said. The two talked shop at Malamud's favorite kosher eatery, Solo, on Madison Avenue, where Tyson dined with his pregnant wife, Lakiha Spicer, on mushroom soup and mixed vegetables. Tyson, who announced his decision to follow a strict vegan diet last spring, is said to have interest in breaking into the kosher-food business. "They discussed the concept as well as the name, but nothing was finalized," a rep for Solo said. Tyson's rep had no comment.

Which reminds me, what is the blessing one makes before taking a bite of a human ear?

Tyson converted to Islam when he was in prison for raping Miss Black Rhode Island in 1991 and he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca earlier this year. So he already has the a built in clientele from the large the Islamic wife-beating rapist cannibal glatt-kosher population.

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Muslims claim they invented etiquette

Felesteen, a Hamas newspaper, has an article that starts off with an anecdote of a British girl who converted to Islam and then noticed, six months later, that all the rules of etiquette that she grew up with were first found in the Koran!

The article goes on to show how the West "stole" the rules of etiquette from Islam.

Examples:

Honoring parents? In the Koran! (Also in the Torah, which predates the Koran by a couple thousand years.)

Don't enter a house before knocking? In the Koran! (Also in the Talmud, quoting Ben Sira from hundreds of years earlier, Nidah 10b - including not entering one's own house suddenly.)


I admit I didn't understand most of the other examples, so, who knows, maybe Islam invented proper place-settings for a formal meal.

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Israel: Doing airport security right (Michael Totten)

From Michael Totten in the New York Post (h/t Daled Amos, who has more):

Terrorists have yet to use the same weapon twice, and the TSA isn't even looking for whatever they'll try to use next. I can think of all sorts of things a person could use to wreak havoc on a plane that aren't banned. Security officials should pay less attention to objects, and more attention to people.

The Israelis do. They are, out of dreadful necessity, the world's foremost experts in counterterrorism. And they couldn't care less about what your grandmother brings on a plane. Instead, officials at Ben Gurion International Airport interview everyone in line before they're even allowed to check in.

And Israeli officials profile. They don't profile racially, but they profile. Israeli Arabs breeze through rather quickly, but thanks to the dozens of dubious-looking stamps in my passport -- almost half are from Lebanon and Iraq -- I get pulled off to the side for more questioning every time. And I'm a white, nominally Christian American.

If they pull you aside, you had better tell them the truth. They'll ask you so many wildly unpredictable questions so quickly, you couldn't possibly invent a fake story and keep it all straight. Don't even try. They're highly trained and experienced, and they catch everyone who tries to pull something over on them.

Because I fit one of their profiles, it takes me 15 or 20 minutes longer to get through the first wave of security than it does for most people. The agents make up for it, though, by escorting me to the front of the line at the metal detector. They don't put anyone into a "porn machine." There's no point. Terrorists can't penetrate that deeply into the airport.

The Israeli experience isn't pleasant, exactly, and there's a lot not to like about it. It can be exasperating for those of us who are interrogated more thoroughly.

The system has its advantages, though, aside from the fact that no one looks or reaches into anyone's pants. Israelis don't use security theater to make passengers feel like they're safe. They use real security measures to ensure that travelers actually are safe. Even when suicide bombers exploded themselves almost daily in Israeli cities, not a single one managed to get through that airport.

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Bloggers in the Arab world methodically harassed

An important article from Qantara:

Over the past ten years, the Egyptian government and Arab states in general have invested a great deal in Internet infrastructure. However, it was probably not clear to most regimes that this would open a door to democratic development.

"One Social Network – With a Rebellious Message", the most recent publication by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, quotes from a study by the American RAND Institute: "The basis for an information revolution is free expression of opinion with exchange of and general access to information."

ANHRI then writes: "Not even the greatest hypocrite would maintain that Arab governments respect, let alone support, free expression of opinion, or that they uphold the right to access to and circulation of information." It is thus self-evident that the rift between governments and Internet activists grows daily with the latter struggling for democracy by way of the Internet.

According to ANHRI, there are around 58 million Internet users in the Arab world, 15 million of them in Egypt alone. The total number of blogs is estimated at 600,000, but only around 150,000 are actively used.

Most Arab blogs (around one-third) come from Egypt, followed by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco. The bloggers are usually aged between 25 and 35 and write about political and religious topics as well as personal matters.

"Egyptian bloggers try to use their blogs to break through political constraints and are known for their bitter criticism of the government despite its attempts to suppress them." (ANHRI)

Internet activists in all Arab countries must expect repression. There is scarcely any other part of the world where the Internet is subject to such tight surveillance as here, where bloggers are so intimidated and persecuted, or anywhere where they are so frequently arrested and even tortured. Every year, Reporters without Frontiers publishes a list of "Enemies of the Internet"; in 2009, there were four Arab countries on the list of twelve: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Syria.

Read the whole thing, and also visit the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information for news of the latest assaults on freedom in the Arab world - assaults that are all but ignored by the world at large.

(via email)

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Great Jerusalem anecdote

From the Treppenwitz blog:

My optometrist, Dr. Robert Lederman, shared an 'only in Jerusalem' anecdote with me that I couldn't resist posting here in his own words:

"I was recently examining an 8 year old boy. He looked like a regular kid wearing a T-shirt and shorts. I was in the middle of doing a retinoscopy when in the distance I heard the siren of an ambulance, as happens in any city from time to time.

The 8 yr old boy asked me if I could stop the exam.

I thought that he wanted to go to the bathroom. But what he did instead was to recite Psalm 121 by heart in Hebrew to pray for the well-being of whoever it was in that ambulance.

When he'd finished, he let me carry on."

A wonderful reminder that, despite what many think, there is far more in the clear, cool Jerusalem air than the sound of sirens.

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Al Aqsa Sheikh (and PA): Israel "Judaizing" the Kotel

Sheikh Yusuf Juma Salama, a preacher at Al Aqsa mosque and First Deputy of the Chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council in Jerusalem, is complaining about a new plan to expand the Western Wall plaza to accommodate more visitors.

He said that there is nothing Jewish about the Kotel, that it is an integral part of the Al Aqsa Mosque, and the objective of this plan is to Judaize the "Wailing Wall."

He also complained about the rebuilding of the Hurva synagogue and about plans to another major synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, possibly referring to this rumor.

In case you think that only radical Islamist nutjobs refer to Israeli renovation of the Kotel Plaza as "Judaizing," the exact same word is used by the official Palestinian Arab WAFA news agency.

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BDS: Epic FAIL

The worldwide Boycott, Divestiture and Sanctions movement somehow manages to get a lot of headlines about its efforts in making Israel look like a pariah state, convincing people to avoid using her products. Most of those efforts are fictional - for example, last week they claimed that the Netherlands' top pension fund had divested from Israeli companies in its portfolio, a claim that was found to be false, and this is a pattern of lies from the BDS leaders to try to give the appearance of gaining traction.

The best proof comes from the Country Brand Index of 2010, sponsored by FutureBrand and the BBC World News. From their report (not directly online; you can request it here:)

The Country Brand Index is an annual study that examines and ranks country brands, based on FutureBrand’s proprietary research methodology.

The sixth edition of CBI incorporates a global quantitative research study with 3,400 international business and leisure travellers from 13 countries on all five continents, qualified by in-depth expert focus groups that took place in 14 major metropolitan areas around the world. The overall country brand score is calculated using FutureBrand’s Hierarchical Decision Model (HDM), which measures overall country brand performance in the following areas:

AWARENESS:
Do key audiences know that the country exists? How top of mind is it?

FAMILIARITY:
How well do people know the country and what it offers?

ASSOCIATIONS:
What qualities come to mind when people think of the country?
We look at the measured perceptions of five key association dimensions:

• TOURISM
• HERITAGE AND CULTURE
• GOOD FOR BUSINESS
• QUALITY OF LIFE
• VALUE SYSTEM

PREFERENCE:
How highly do audiences esteem the country? Does it resonate?

CONSIDERATION:
Is this one of the countries being thought about for a visit?

DECISION / VISITATION:
To what extent do people follow through and visit the country?

ADVOCACY:
Do visitors recommend the country to family, friends and colleagues?

Israel ranking this year shot up from #41 to #30.

Not only does it rank far higher than every Arab and Muslim country save one (the UAE fell from #23 to #28), but it rose more positions in 2010 than any nation except for Chile, which gained a lot of visibility for the miners' rescue and jumped 19 places on the list.

The BDS movement has nt only been ineffective - it has backfired.

Egypt went down 13 spots (45 to 58), Jordan down eight (67 to 75),  Syria down five (82 to 87), and Iran plummeted from 98 to 109, the second worst ranking in the list next to Zimbabwe.

In their words:

Israel (#30 +11) received significant marketing investment for tourist destinations. Israel moves in the right direction in 2010 – particularly in Tourism metrics like Authenticity and History, which align very well with campaigns promoting heritage and culture.

I guess that this means that most people realize that historic Jerusalem is in Israel despite the efforts of one advertising board to pretend otherwise.

(h/t VC Cafe)

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A tool of the trade

Palestine Today has another article warning that Israel will kick thousands of Jerusalem Arabs out of their homes. Nothing new there.

But the picture illustrating it is sort of nice. The sort of picture that one can put on a poster to bring to an anti-Israel rally, just to tick the protesters off.

A little research shows that it was taken by AP last December.

Now, how can I know that?

One of the items in my toolbox is this website. It can read the EXIF information from photos, which can reveal lots of interesting information. In this case, it seems that AP puts its captions into the photo itself. I Google the caption and find somewhere that the original photo can be found (and, incidentally, prove that Palestine Today rips off AP without giving it attribution.)

Usually, the viewer is good for finding the original date of a photo. Often the Arabic papers I read will illustrate a story with an older photo and make it appear that it refers to the actual even (like an explosion.) In this case AP modified the photo caption so the date says October, not last December, but the caption says the original date.

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More results from the poll of Palestinian Arabs

Here are some more highlights from  The Israel Project poll of Palestinian Arabs that should make anyone pause before wanting to grant them a state of their won.

A Palestinian state should be run by Sharia Law. 55%
A Palestinian state should be run by civil law. 35%

The best goal is for a two state solution that keeps two states living side by side. 30%
The real goal should be to start with two states but then move to it all being one Palestinian state. 60%

Israel has a permanent right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people. 23%
Over time Palestinians must work to get back all the land for a Palestinian state. 66%

In 2000, President Bill Clinton proposed a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement in which the Palestinians would receive an independent state, which included Gaza and nearly all of the West Bank, using the 1967 green line, exchanging Israeli land for larger settlements. It made East Jerusalem the capital of the Palestinian state, with control over Palestinian quarters of the Old City. Yasir Arafat rejected this offer. In retrospect, do you wish Arafat had accepted this peace agreement - yes or no?
Yes: 24%
No: 71%

Some of the answers, to be sure, seemed to contradict these, as in the abstract they seem to support a two-state solution. But when specific compromises are mentioned, they reject every one.

And they make it crystal clear that a two-state solution is not a final agreement, and that they will try to take over Israel as well, signed agreement or not.

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