Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Status of anti-semitism/anti-Zionism on US campuses

A pretty comprehensive report at Hudson-NY by Alexander Joffe. Here's how it begins:

The situation on campus continues to change for Israel's supporters: abuse is now almost everyplace. There have been important successes, like upholding the recent veto of a "boycott, divestment and sanctions" (BDS) proposal at the University of California at Berkeley's student council, and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission's recent definition of anti-Semitism on campus as a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But there have also been notable failures, such as the continuing unwillingness of the administration of the University of California at Irvine to take harassment of Jewish and Israeli students and speakers seriously. Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was heckled and silenced there by a group of students from the Muslim Student Association before university security stepped in and removed them. These students later accused the university administration of denying them their First Amendment rights.

At Evergreen State University Jewish students have felt compelled to transfer to other schools after overt harassment. Sukkahs have been vandalized in recent years at Stanford, the University of Colorado, the University of Southern California, and other campuses. "Israel Apartheid Week" is now an established part of the calendar at colleges across the country, bringing verbal harassment and even physical assaults against Jewish students. At these events, "Jews" are assumed to be "Zionists" and are subject to abuse on this basis, as well as because they are Jews. Worse, universities and the community at large are getting accustomed to it all.

Read the whole thing.

"The Oral Historian of Israel’s Terror War" (Totten)

Michael Totten scores with another great interview, with the author of a new book about Israel's victims of terrorism, Giulio Meotti. Here are some excerpts where this non-Jewish author talks about the book, and about European anti-semitism and anti-Zionism:

Giulio Meotti: What’s the difference between a Western democracy, such as France or the United States, and Israel’s democracy? It’s not the start-up nation, the job opportunities, the scientific progress, or the number of Nobel laureates. The most important difference between Israel and the other Western countries lies in the young men and women killed for what they are: Israelis living as free human beings in their historical homeland.

The Jewish state is the only member of the United Nations condemned to death. Its existence is the only one widely considered temporary by a large number of countries in the world. In 2003 I decided to investigate the great black hole that in the last fifteen years has snuffed out thousands of lives, Jews killed because they are Jews.

The book is the result of many years of research inside the painful heart and soul of Israel. There were no books devoted to this single dramatic question. I give a voice to dozens of families and survivors of terrorism who have been neglected by an arrogant media industry. I think the blood spilled by terrorism is the most precious and fragile story that Israel has today, a story that even Israeli writers have neglected.

MJT: Why do you suppose the Western media, especially European media, are so biased against Israel? And why are you different?

Giulio Meotti: Europe is an anti-Semitic continent. The wave of hatred from the European and American ruling classes, the “mainstream” international press with its headlines that repeat diabolical condemnations without appeal, and the satisfied hate of academics is like a pile of straw that waits only for the match to be struck before it will burst into flames.

In Italy the National Order of Journalists, which is a state funded institution, is hosting the presentation of the “Freedom Flotilla 2,” the so-called “humanitarian” ship that will be sent to break the Israeli siege of Hamas in Gaza. Among the speakers are Turkish militants of the IHH group, which is now on Germany’s black list of terrorist organizations. A few weeks ago hundreds of writers and personalities from Norway promoted a massive boycott of Israel. Spain decided to ban the homosexual Israeli movement. Israeli politicians are afraid to land in London’s airports because they might be arrested for “war crimes.” In Sweden the popular newspaper Aftonbladet wrote that Israeli soldiers ripped out the organs of Palestinians in order to sell them.

In the Netherlands the former European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein just invited the Dutch Jews to emigrate to Israel or the United States. There is no future for them in Netherlands due to Islamic anti-Semitism. The Netherlands is hosting the United Nations International Court of Justice. Its condemnation of the Israeli security barrier in 2004 and the Goldstone Report against Israel in 2009 simply forbids Israel to defend itself. The most important Dutch writer, Leon de Winter, who is also of Jewish descent, recently explained in a magnificent essay forStandpoint magazine why he decided to move to the United States. It’s much better to live in California, a place without history, than in a country where the synagogues are protected by the police and Jews can not wear their religious symbols in public. The beautiful Holland of Galileo, Spinoza, and Descartes, the shelter of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews fleeing the Inquisition, is dying. In its place there is fear, intimidation, and subjugation. There is so much darkness in Europe and in its newspapers and books.

...We have an indifferent majority of people about the fate of Israel and the Jews and a very powerful minority in the newspapers, political parties, universities, televisions and public arena that is extremely hostile.

America has historical, religious, cultural, political, and economic links with Israel. It’s sad to say, but Europe is probably lost to Israel.

Think about Spain. It has a very small Jewish community and its ancient synagogues are empty monuments, but it has a virulent anti-Israel ideology. In Norway and Sweden the anti-Israel hatred has become mainstream among prime ministers and best-selling writers such as Jostein Gaardner. He is the author of the global literary phenomenon Sophie’s World and he wrote an article in the Aftenposten newspaper where he said, “We no longer recognize the State of Israel… Do not worry, Israel will go to exile again.”

For the commemoration of the Nazi’s Kristallnacht, the city of Frankfurt has just chosen as speaker the Jewish essayist Alfred Grosser, author of the violent anti-Israeli pamphlet Von Auschwitz nach Jerusalem. Grosser compared what the Nazis did to the Jews to what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. I agree with the great American writer Cynthia Ozick when she says it would be best to abolish Holocaust memorial days in Europe.

As you can see, Michael, the anti-Israel ideology is now mainstream, fashionable, and even sexy all over Europe. Israel is overwhelmed by a tsunami of delegitimization. A group of Israeli tennis players was only allowed to play behind closed doors in a Swedish stadium. In Hanover an Israeli dance group was stoned by demonstrators shouting “Juden Raus.” The British Trade Union has called to boycott Israel. European supermarkets, even in Italy this year, have more than once decided to boycott Israeli goods. Israeli movies are ousted from international festivals, as in Edinburgh. Israeli academics are expelled from European universities and conferences.

Karel De Gucht, the European Union’s trade commissioner and a former foreign minister of Belgium, said in an interview in October that the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were sure to founder on two accounts; first, because Jews are excessively influential in the U.S., and second because they are not the sorts to be reasoned with. If this isn’t anti-Semitism, the term has no meaning.

MJT: You’re not Jewish. (Neither am I, by the way.) What is it that draws you to Israel and the tragedy of the Jewish experience in this world?

Giulio Meotti: If some day Israel were to fall into the hands of its enemies, the West as we know it would cease to exist. The West is what it is thanks to Rome, Jerusalem, and Athens–Rome’s rule of law, the Bible’s morality, and Greek democracy. If the Jewish part of those roots is overturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Israel is a lighthouse of life at a time when life is our most endangered value. A New Shoah is an affirmation of life in the kingdom of death.

A special friend of mine said the book is the Dead Sea Scrolls of modern Israel. It may take some years before the book’s stories have an effect, and for me the most important would be to change the world’s conscience about Israel. It’s a hard task, but one worth attempting. My enduring consolation will be to give an everlasting name and voice to those who have been murdered.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t Silke)

Mel Gibson innovates a new slur against Jews

From GQ, in an interview with Winona Ryder:

A Mel Gibson anecdote: "I remember, like, fifteen years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And he was really drunk. I was with my friend, who's gay. He made a really horrible gay joke. And somehow it came up that I was Jewish. He said something about 'oven dodgers,' but I didn't get it. I'd never heard that before. It was just this weird, weird moment. I was like, 'He's anti-Semitic and he's homophobic.' No one believed me!"

"Oven Dodgers"? Too bad the interview came out today, or else Gibson could have beat out Helen Thomas in the #1 spot of the year's Top Ten Anti-Semitic Slurs, just released by the Wiesenthal Center.

Columbia's Center for Palestine Studies - Politics masked as academia

An illuminating article in The New Republic looks at the new Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia, and finds that it is not what it is supposed to be:

Given the highly sensitive subject matter of this dialogue, the CPS faces an important choice. It can host academics interested in serious Palestine-related scholarship, or it can advance political interests under the guise of Palestine studies. Should it move in the latter direction, it could make the boundary between politics and scholarship more meaningless than ever. And there are already troubling signs that this is exactly what is happening.

To be sure, the Center represents a crucial development in a nascent field. “Very simply, there’s never been a dedicated space … for this kind of research,”says CPS co-director and anthropologist Brinkley Messick. Rashid Khalidi,the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia and fellow CPS co-director, hopes that the Center will help broaden a “tiny, narrow, not well-established” field by building an archive, hosting events, and awarding doctoral fellowships to Palestinian scholars. By pursuing these admirable goals, the CPS has the potential to cast new light on the Palestinian people, who are too often only known within the context of their relationship with Israel. And the leaders of the Center are aware that they must ensure that the Center’s activities fall within a scholarly mandate. “The last thing you want is a Middle East Institute or a center for Israel or Palestine that isn’t within the university mission,” Khalidi says. “We’d avoid doing is anything that’s directly related to any political activism.”

But there are signs that politics have already infiltrated the CPS. Take, for example, the fact that Joseph Massad (the professor accused of bullying students in 2004) is associated with the center. Massad’s body of work is a postmodern mash-up of high-minded critical theory and base innuendo. His book Desiring Arabs theorizes that homosexuality is a western construct that imperial powers imposed upon the Middle East and that a “gay international” cabal (consisting of groups like Amnesty International and the Human Rights Campaign) uses the rhetoric of minority rights to unfairly vilify Muslim regimes.

More troubling than this vilification of human rights organizations is that much of Massad’s work is overtly political—exactly the type of scholarship that the CPS purportedly intends to avoid.

...[U]naccompanied by a dedication to real expertise, the CPS will be little more than a clique of like-minded academics whose defining commonality is hostility toward Israel. In its current form, it’s likely that the first Palestine Center at an American university will lead the way not in “a new era of civility,” but, rather, in politicizing Middle East studies further than ever before.

...[Legal scholar Katherine] Franke’s own work reveals the perils of such uncertainty in mission. She told us that she focuses on “gender and sexuality and how the rights of LGBT people in Israel are being used to punish Israel’s Arab neighbors.” For her, one of Israel’s greatest accomplishments (the creation of one of the most tolerant societies in the Middle East) is linked to the country’s ceaseless persecution of Palestinian Arabs. The association of Mahmood Mamdani—the former directorof Columbia’s Institute of African Studies—with the CPS further illustrates the dangers of mission-creep. Mamdani justifies his involvement by pointing to a conference he helped to organize titled “Post-Apartheid Reflections on Israel and Palestine,” which taught him “how a thematic focus [on Palestine] could bring African scholars … into the mainstream of intellectual discussions.” Mamdani associates with Palestine studies, it seems, to increase the profile of his primary field. Moreover, he has used his background as an Africanist to attack Israel. In a 2002 speech at a pro-divestment teach-in, Mamdani argued that Israel was an apartheid state and a settler-colonial enterprise comparable to Liberia.

Both Franke and Mamdani use hostility toward Israel as a jumping-off point for specific academic inquiries—issues of sexual identity politics for Franke and comparative colonialism for Mamdani. Their involvement with the CPS helps elevate this reductive and opportunistic treatment of Israel and Palestine to the cutting-edge of a new academic field, turning the CPS into a platform for niche interests that, together, share an anti-Israel agenda.

I am more skeptical than the authors are about the chances that the CPS could ever be anything but political and anti-Israel. The authors say that "the Palestinian people... are too often only known within the context of their relationship with Israel" - but this is how they define themselves to begin with! The very history of the Palestinian Arabs, as such, cannot be said to have started before the era of modern Zionism. They were never a cohesive people after the Arab nations collectively decided to treat them as such for their own political purposes. They never defined their "ancient homeland" in terms outside of whatever lands Jews have political control over.

Yes, there were costumes sewn in Bethlehem and soap made in Nablus but there was, simply, no specifically"Palestinian" Arab culture before the 20th century. Any institute that attempts to be a center for Palestine studies cannot avoid these facts - either it has to make up a new, older culture and history or it needs to start this "history" in terms of Zionism. Either way, it becomes an inherently political institution.

(h/t Jordan Hirsch, one of the authors.)

Another unintentionally funny anti-Israel protest

Via Israellycool:

If you can stand more than a minute of that horrible singing and out-of-sync "dancing" asking AIPAC to "leave Iran alone," you are made of stronger stuff than I am.

Time to play: Spot the Reuters bias!

Reuters has what could have been a good article, by Mara Arwad, about Bedouin in the Sinai smuggling arms to Gaza, but it just cannot resist finding reason to blame Israel at every turn.

It starts off as an interesting story:

Sitting cross-legged in the desert darkness, a 44-year-old Bedouin tribesman was describing how he smuggles weapons across Egypt's Sinai desert to the Gaza Strip when a heavily laden four-wheel drive vehicle pulled up.

"The latest deal just arrived from Sudan, come and see," said 'Aref' the smuggler, rising to greet the driver, who shut off the headlights that had briefly pierced the moonless night.

"These are 80 Kalashnikovs," said Aref, flinging open the trunk to reveal the stacked assault rifles, gleaming dimly in the flashlight held by his Bedouin assistant. "We will bury this shipment in the desert until we find a buyer."

Arms smuggling by Bedouin tribal networks, mainly by land along Egypt's southern border with Sudan, across the Sinai peninsula and into the Hamas-run Gaza Strip is on the uptick, according to an Egyptian official, who asked not to be named.

Sudan denies that it allows any kind of weapons shipments across its territory to any destination.

But then it takes its usual anti-Israel course:

"Sinai suffers a security imbalance," military analyst Safwat Zayaat said. "Under-development is fuelling the arms trade fed by unstable neighboring areas in northeast Sudan."

He said there was a ready market for weapons smuggled via a network of border tunnels into the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas since 2007.

This is a concern for Israel, which has frequently complained about Egypt's failure to stop the arms transfers.

Yet the terms of Camp David accords signed by Egypt and Israel in 1978 help explain why it is so hard for the Egyptians to police their borders and maintain control in Sinai, where well-armed Bedouin occasionally clash with security forces.

The accords, signed by former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, demilitarised central Sinai and allowed Egypt to deploy only a small number of lightly armed border guards there and on the 266-km (166-mile) frontier.

After Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, Egypt proposed raising the number to 3,500 to help it secure its border with the Gaza Strip. Israel refused, citing security concerns.

So the smuggling is happening and is not being stopped - because of Israel's insistence that Egypt remain weak in the Sinai. But wait:

Sinai's border with Israel is a main trafficking route for thousands of African migrants seeking asylum in Israel. Israel has criticized Egypt for not doing enough to stem the flow.

Under Israeli pressure to secure the frontier, Egyptian police have used tough tactics including shooting migrants on sight.

The same woefully weak Egyptian forces are using deadly force on migrants - because of Israel!

Egyptian forces are simultaneously too weak and too trigger-happy, and it is all because of Israel.

In fact, the entire article's detour into the African migrants seems designed just to throw in a dig at Israel, because it does not seem relevant at all and then goes right back to the smuggling story.

But, hey,. that's Reuters for you!

Israeli swim team competing in Dubai - but their name was not announced

From YNet:

The Israeli swim team found itself snubbed on Tuesday during the opening ceremony of the FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) in Dubai. As the competition organizers announced each participating nation while the teams marched into the arena, they failed to call the Jewish state by its name, curtly dubbing it 'ISR.'

Over 800 athletes from 148 countries are participating in the competition, which is taking place at the Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Sports Complex. The state of the art facility was built especially for the event, and costing $100 million.

The National (UAE) does not mention the snub:

Hanging from the roof of the Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Sports Complex, sandwiched inbetween the flags of Iceland and Italy, appears a sight virtually invisible in the UAE.

The national emblem of Israel represents just one of 153 countries - from Albania to Zimbabwe via Iraq and North Korea - that are competing in the Fina World Swimming Championships in Dubai.

The UAE does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, but the country's five-member team have been granted access to the Emirates and will compete in 20 events across the championship's five days.

Gal Nevo, who yesterday morning competed in the men's 200-metre freestyle, was their first swimmer to appear on the pool deck.

He said his team arrived a day late because "there was some problem with security" and added they are operating under heightened supervision, which includes seven or eight "visible" bodyguards.

Palestine Press Agency has a different spin, saying that the Israeli team was "exposed to humiliation and contempt" during the opening ceremony. Palestine Today called it a "great insult." They also mention that apparently the TV coverage did not show the Israeli flag or swimmers during the opening ceremony, unlike all the other nations.

Gaza terrorist killed - by the US

From Ma'an:

A Palestinian family in Gaza has received news that their son, Mahmoud Abu Rideh, died a few days ago in a US bombing in Afghanistan.

The man's family, from Bani Sheila - a town east of Khan Younis - heard from friend's of their son that Mahmoud was with a group of 'mujahideen' before the airstrike.

Another Gazan, just minding his own business while hanging with his jihadist friends.

Congress opposes unilateral PA moves - and J Street is upset

From Ha'aretz:

The United States House of Representatives unanimously on Thursday approved a resolution opposing unilateral declaration of Palestinian state.

The resolution introduced by Rep. Howard Berman, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, slams Palestinian efforts to push the international community to recognize a state in such a manner as "true and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties."

The resolution calls on the U.S. administration to "deny recognition to any unilaterally declared Palestinian state and veto any resolution by the United Nations Security Council to establish or recognize a Palestinian state outside of an agreement negotiated by the two parties."

It also urges Palestinian leaders to "cease all efforts at circumventing the negotiation process, including efforts to gain recognition of a Palestinian state from other nations, within the United Nations, and in other international forums prior to achievement of a final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians… and calls upon foreign governments not to extend such recognition."

And which purportedly pro-Israel group opposed the resolution?

The pro-Israel lobby J Street issued a statement on Wednesday criticizing Berman's resolution, saying "it addresses only one issue standing in the way of peace."

In the statement, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said that the resolution continued "a pattern in which overly one-sided resolutions are introduced and moved to the floor of the House without an adequate opportunity for debate, discussion and modification by the Members."

The irony gets better. From JPost:

While Palestinian spokesmen such as Yasser Abed Rabbo were taking a hard-line public position on the talks, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, in a teaser for an interview on Channel 2 to appear over the weekend, said the Palestinians were not going to go to the UN seeking international recognition, nor would they revert to violence if the negotiations did not work out.

Asked if he was willing to make a clear statement that no matter what happens, he would not turn to the UN for a unilateral declaration of statehood, Fayyad said, “What we are looking for now... is a state of Palestine.

“We are not looking for yet another declaration of statehood.

Remember, we had one,” he said, in reference to Yasser Arafat’s declaration of statehood in 1988, a declaration since recognized by around 100 countries.

It seems that J Street is more pro-"Palestinian" than the PA prime minister!

(h/t Lenny, Jim)

ElderToons: Nasrallah's speech to Lebanon

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave another of his lengthy televised speeches to Lebanon on Wednesday. Here's the gist of it:

World strangely silent on Iran missiles in Venezuela

Two weeks ago I posted about a report that Iran was staging medium range missiles in Venezuela - missiles that could reach parts of the US.

The story was broken by Die Welt on November 25th, but for some reason we haven't heard any outcry. Last week, Hudson-NY wrote about it and adds more details:

Venezuela has also become the country through which Iran intends to bypass UN sanctions. Following a new round of UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic, for example, Russia decided not to sell five battalions of S-300PMU-1 air defence systems to Iran. These weapons, along with a number of other weapons, were part of a deal, signed in 2007, worth $800 million. Now that these weapons cannot be delivered to Iran, Russia is looking for new customers; according to the Russian press agency Novosti[2], it found one: Venezuela.

If Iran, therefore, cannot get the S-300 missiles directly from Russia, it can still have them through its proxy, Venezuela, and deploy them against its staunchest enemy, the U.S..

Why isn't this story on the front page of every major US newspaper?

A short history of Iran's predictions of Israel's demise

Oct 29, 2005: "the Zionist regime will eventually rot from within and collapse"

October 20, 2006: "This regime (Israel) will be gone, definitely... this regime internally, and regionally from the outside, is cracking and is falling apart."

June 3, 2007: "The countdown for the Zionist regime's (Israel's) collapse has started - inshallah (God willing), we will soon witness the collapse of this regime."

February 21, 2008: "Countdown has begun for collapse of the Zionist regime, Haddad Adel said."

June 3, 2008: "The criminal and terrorist Zionist regime (Israel) which has a record of 60 years of killing and violation has reached its final phase and will soon be wiped out from the geographic scene."

December 29, 2008: "The final count down has started for the collapse of the Zionist regime."

So when is the Zionist regime going to collapse already? I mean, it's been five years since these predictions started.

Today, we receive the answer: it has already happened!

December 14, 2010: "Today we witness that the predictions made by the leaders of the fake Israeli regime have materialized and the failure of the regime has, in fact, led to its collapse."

See? Israel has collapsed, Iran's nuclear program is peaceful, and up is down.