Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 17, 2011

A little anti-semitism from Belgium

The secretary-general of the Belgian teacher's union wrote an interesting letter to the editor of the Jewish News:

The Palestinian people have just stirred. A small minority thought it could not. Fortunately [they became] a member of UNESCO. [In response, Israel] suddenly decided to expand the settlements.

If this is their response, I will be happy as a union leader ACOD to put the situation of Jewish schools in Antwerp under the spotlight. I fear you are going to be scared.

Hugo Deckers,
General Secretary ACOD

This prompted the Jewish News to remind Belgians that teachers in Jewish schools have nothing to do with Israeli policy and that they have the right to hold opinions that may be contrary to those of Mr. Deckers.

A Jewish organization in Belgium gave a sarcastic response:

Let us say immediately that in our view, Mr. Deckers certainly has nothing against the Jewish students. But, given his duties, what else could he do? Had he been in charge of agriculture he would have attacked the Jewish farmers. Nothing personal!

...If he was aware of wrongdoing [the Jewish schools] have committed, is he not guilty of waiting for Israel to increase its colonies before denouncing them?

The union distanced themselves from his comments and Decker ended up apologizing.

It seems a shame, though, that I did not see any comment from the Belgian Jewish community actually defending the right of Israel to build in its capital city. Both articles took pains to distance the Belgian Jews from Israeli actions, with the subtext being that the actions themselves are indeed embarrassing and problematic.

While this might indeed be the opinion of the Jewish leaders in Belgium, this could be a manifestation of a deeper fear that Belgian and other European Jews have in expressing their political opinions publicly. They know that they would be subject to anti-semitic attacks if they were too forthright in supporting Israel.

More recently, Belgium's Pax Christi called for the boycott of Israeli goods like Osem snacks - specifically in Jewish neighborhoods.

(h/t Rudi)

The wonderful UN (video)

The Land of Israel group has produced another entertaining video.

(h/t Mike)

From Fox NY:

A vandal altered a sign at a subway station in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn to make it read "Avenue Jew," according to Assemblyman Dov Hikind. A subway rider saw the graffiti, photographed it, and contacted Hikind's office.

The photo shows the letters "e" and "w" in blue spray paintin at the end of the "J" in the Avenue J sign. The station is located at the intersection of Avenue J and East 16th Street.

Police removed the sign and are investigating it as a possible bias incident, according to a news release from Hikind's office. But the NYPD has not confirmed that information.

"Education and vigilance are our only weapons in fighting against this blatant hatred," the Brooklyn Democrat said in a statement. "We must send a message to those who perpetrate these vile acts that we will not tolerate their behavior. These cowards need to know that we will find them wherever they lurk, and when we do, we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law."

The station is in Midwood, the same section of Brooklyn where someone torched several cars and scrawled anti-Semitic and racist graffiti last week.

Midwood has a large Jewish population and is home to several orthodox synagogues.

I don't find this so offensive; actually I think it is kind of funny. The word "Jew" is not an epithet. When people like Dov Hikind (who certainly tirelessly fights for the Jewish community in Brooklyn) start acting as if the word Jew without any context is automatically offensive, that is a much bigger problem to me.

Put it this way: a proud but misguided Jewish kid could have done this, too.

This is not to minimize the recent, horrific anti-semitic attacks in Midwood (attacks that the "progressive Jewish left" like MJ Rosenberg, Max Blumenthal and the 972mag crowd were silent about, as they instead tweeted endlessly about their anarchist heroes at Occupy Wall Street.) There is a definite problem that needs to be addressed.

But this graffito* is not necessarily it.

*Yes, I couldn't resist being pedantic.

(h/t DoZ)

Amnesty support for a kangaroo court

The "Russell Tribunal for Palestine" is a publicity stunt where handpicked anti-Israel "jurists" listen to "testimony" from handpicked anti-Israel "witnesses" to come to foregone conclusions blaming Israel for everything under the sun.

To maximize their ability to promote their Ziophobia, the people behind it just came out with a book called "Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation" based on "evidence" collected at the London session of the "tribunal" last year. Naturally, none of the corporations they decided to slam in this book appeared to testify at this joke of a "tribunal" but that doesn't stop these pursuers of justice, who include anti-Zionist luminaries such as Cynthia McKinney.

The book, put out by the far-left Pluto Press, is being launched tonight in London.

At the Amnesty International Human Rights Center.

One cannot even detect the slightest bit of embarrassment at the unqualified support being given to anti-Israel bigots and their stunts.

Then again - the report of the "tribunal"'s supposed findings was held at the exact same venue. (h/t amie for correction, see comments and his links)

PLO now saying no to "land swaps"

From Gulf News:

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) announced on Monday that it will very soon drop the "land swap" formula, which the it branded as a grave mistake that was included in any agreement with Israel.

Speaking to Gulf News, Tayseer Khalid, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, said that the formula was only mere talk by Israelis and mediators. "We have never signed an agreement with Israel, which states any shape of land swap formula," he added. "Land swap formula is a heresay [sic] in the track of negotiations," he said.

The Palestinians should have reached agreements on the borders and arranged for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and handled the other core issues before the land swap formula is addressed, he said. "It is time for this mistake to get corrected," he stressed.

As Daled Amos points out, the official PLO position had indeed included land swaps - as recently as June:

The Palestinian Authority passed on four official demands to the Mideast Quartet for discussion in upcoming meetings, PLO official Saeb Erekat told Saudi newspaper Al-Watan on Friday.

Erekat said the demands included a complete halt to all Israeli settlement activity, 1967 borders as the basis for peace negotiations with mutually agreed land swaps, EU support for reconciliation talks "which will strengthen peace opportunities" and EU support for a Palestinian UN statehood bid in September.

How many lies must the PLO utter before the world realizes that they are nothing but a bunch of liars?

This looks like a trial balloon. Abbas and his cronies have been repeatedly emphasizing the 1949 armistice lines lately without any mention of land swaps, pretending that international law supports the entire area seized by Jordan and Egypt at that time as somehow being inherently "Palestinian." The UN stunt can be interpreted minimally as the PLO claiming all of the territories, and plausibly as their claiming the 1947 partition lines.

It seems that the PLO, feeling that they are in a strong political position, is abandoning the pretense of being interested in negotiations and is pushing for the world community to award them everything without any penalty.

This means that the entire negotiations track documented in the Palestine Papers was nothing but a sham - a sop to the Americans and the EU as they pretended that they were interested in peace when in fact they just wanted not to get on the bad side of the West. The goal remains the same as it was in 1974: grab what you can in stages and then position yourself to grab more.

And if that means to pretend to be moderate for a couple of decades, no problem. As we've seen, lying comes easy for Palestinian Arab leaders. And Western leaders can still not wrap their heads around the idea that people would lie directly to their faces.

(h/t David G)

The PA offers a deal that is no deal (updated)

From Ha'aretz:

The Palestinian Authority has offered the United States a deal, saying it would freeze all moves to achieve full membership for "Palestine" in various UN agencies until the end of January, a European diplomat said, while the United States and Israel would resume transferring it funds.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's special envoy Isaac Molho met secretly in London on Tuesday with U.S. administration representatives David Hale and Dennis Ross to discuss the suggestion.

According to a European diplomat whom the PA had updated about the proposal, the PA plans to complete the process of trying to get full UN membership for Palestine recognized by the Security Council. PA President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to ask for a vote by the end of December, although the move is doomed to defeat. Even if the Palestinians muster enough votes, the United States will veto it.

Other than that, however, the Palestinians are prepared to suspend their efforts to achieve full membership in such agencies as the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, the diplomat said. Nor will they ask the General Assembly to upgrade their observer status to non-member observer state.

Though the Palestinians offered to temporarily suspend these UN efforts, if a deal is struck that restores the PA's cash flow, it is thought such moves will be stopped for the foreseeable future.

Israeli sources confirmed that Molho had met with the U.S. officials in London, while a British source said Molcho also met with a senior Arab figure.

While the Americans view the PA proposal positively, it isn't clear whether Israel will agree to it. Israel is still refusing to transfer the approximately $100 million in taxes it collected for the PA in October.

This offer is a great example of how the PA does everything nowadays:

It is a stunt.

Every UN agency like WHO sees very well what happened to UNESCO after the US stopped funding it. They are not nearly as eager to accept the PLO as a member if it means that they lose tens of millions of dollars. I haven't seen any oil-rich Gulf nations step up to offer to make up the shortfall. And since the UNESCO vote, they have been forced to add a big yellow DONATE NOW button on their home page that wasn't there before.

The PLO knows this very well and they know that forcing other UN agencies to choose between their support for the cause that has obsessed the UN for decades and losing the US money that they so desperately need to continue their giant bureaucracy will end up alienating the PLO.

Beyond that, look at the timing being offered - to wait until January before starting a new UN push for membership.

In January, five members of the security council rotate out, and it is possible that the PLO's next attempt to push for full membership would get them the 9 votes they need for a symbolic victory, forcing a US veto. They have already said they would keep trying until they get it.

So they are offering literally nothing in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars. They are not offering to return to negotiations. They are not offering compromises.

The response should properly be that they get zero support until they are ready to act like grownups and stop relying on publicity stunts and political games to avoid making the decisions necessary for peace.

We have heard Israeli leaders from the right and the left all admit that they are willing to make "painful compromises" in order to achieve true peace with the Arabs. We have not heard the Palestinian Arab leaders ever say that phrase. Asking their people to give anything up for peace is utterly foreign to them, so instead we will keep seeing stunts - stunts that prove that the Palestinian Arabs have never been serious about a peace agreement and that today's leadership is just as intransigent as Arafat was.

(h/t CHA)

UPDATE: The PLO is now denying the story.

Too funny: Lebanese politicians get into fight on TV

From AP:

Two prominent Lebanese politicians debating the unrest in neighboring Syria have exchanged blows on live television, in an indication of the deep divide between Lebanese factions over their relationship with Damascus.

Pro and anti-Syrian regime demonstrations are common in Lebanon, whose politics have long been heavily influenced by Damascus, now facing increasing isolation over its bloody crackdown on protestors.

The fight late Monday night broke out in a debate between anti-Syrian former legislator Mustafa Alloush and the head of the Lebanese branch of Syria's ruling Baath party Fayez Shukur.

The video:

MEMRI has the translated video (not embeddable, unfortunately), where it includes such gems as "My shoe commands more respect than you" and "Your sister..."

Abbas lies again in Wednesday speech

Wafa reports on Mahmoud Abbas' speech Wednesday night.

It's filled with the usual lies. Here's one of them:

He said Israel was established based on UN Resolution 181 of 1947, which partitioned Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, on condition that it should accept this resolution and Resolution 194, which calls for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes they had fled from in Palestine.

“This is our right, which does not go away in time,” he said.

As I noted in July when Saeb Erekat said the same lie:

The easiest way to find out is to read the text of the resolution accepting Israel itself:

Having received the report of the Security Council on the application of Israel for membership in the United Nations,

Noting that, in the judgment of the Security Council, Israel is a peace-loving State and is able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the Charter,

Noting that the Security Council has recommended to the general Assembly that it admit Israel to membership in the United Nations,

Noting furthermore the declaration by the State of Israel that it "unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honour them from the day when it becomes a member of the United Nations,"

Recalling its resolutions of 29 November 1947 and 11 December 1948 and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the Ad Hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions,

The General Assembly,

Acting in discharge of its functions under Article 4 of the Charter and rule 125 of its rules of procedure,

1. Decides that Israel is a peace loving State which accepts the obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those obligations;

2. Decides to admit Israel to membership in the United Nations.

While the resolution "recalls" UNGA 181 and 194 there is no conditional language in this resolution at all. The actionable part of the resolution is unambiguous. Beyond that, the preamble explicitly notes that Israel clarified - at length - its interpretation of those resolutions in a number of now obscure UN documents (here and here, among others.)

Abba Eban was, as usual, masterful in explaining Israel's position, and his explanation is referred to in this resolution just as the UNGA resolutions are. The language of the resolution seems to accept Eban's words as being just as important as the texts of the earlier resolutions themselves.

To sum it up: Abbas lied yet again.

And, to top it off, he showed his intransigence once again as well:

He said negotiations with Israel will not resume before it accepts the 1967 lines as the borders of the Palestinian state and stops all settlement activities.

“Without these two conditions, there will be no negotiations,” he said.

Ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homeland is now being positioned as a precondition to "negotiations."

And no one even blinks.

Latest bizarre conspiracy theory: Hafez Assad sold the Golan to Israel

Nuttiness at Albawaba:

Dr. Mahmoud Jame', a close friend to late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat has recently raised an interesting issue when he said that Sadat was briefed on the secret that the Golan Heights were actually sold to Israel in ahead of the 1967 War in exchange for US$100 million. Dr. Jame', a member of the first Consultative Council in Egypt, and author of the book "I Knew Sadat", said that the money was received by Rifaat al-Assad and his brother Hafez Assad, the former Syrian president. The check was deposited in a Swiss bank.

Jame' went on to say that, "one morning Sadat took me with him in private and without a guard to the (Syrian part of the) Golan Heights, and I swear by the Almighty God that he put his hand on my shoulder and as we were standing on the Golan Heights, he told me literally: Look Mahmoud. This is the Golan, can any power seize it so easily, even if it is Israel?" And Jame' said, "I said to Sadat this is impossible, he said to me I will tell you a dangerous secret, the Golan Heights were purchased by Israel for $100 million. The check was received by both Hafez and Rifaat al-Assad and deposited in their accounts in a Swiss bank."

The price in return was that Syrian Defense Minister at the time, Hafez Assad, order the Syrian forces to withdraw immediately from the Golan Heights in the June 1967 war without firing a single shot and handing it over to Israel. "This story and my testimony of this event, has been kept secret for many years until 1999, when I alluded in the book "I Knew Sadat" to the incident without revealing the full details. In 2006, when I was hosted by Almihwar channel, I provided the full details frankly, to the extent that even Moataz was stunned," the Egyptian writer said.

"The next day, Almihwar hosted Mr. Amin Gemayel, Lebanon's former president, and the subject was raised with him. He supported my words. Then the Beirut-based Future channel tried to invite me to Beirut to discuss the subject, but I apologized, and refused," he added.

Syrian sources dismiss the Egyptian writer's claims. They claim this "baseless" story is part of a smear campaign against the Assad regime.

So Syria withdrew from the Golan without firing a shot? Who knew?

I wonder how much Damascus would cost.

Administrivia/open thread

I haven't figured out yet how to automatically post there, but I now have a Google Plus page for those interested.

Blogger has added something called "dynamic pages" where you can view the blog in completely different ways. It does not yet have all the features I need - no sidebars or widgets, for example - but for those who have problems reading the blog, you can play with a live version of the Magazine style of the blog. If they add the customization features I need, I will probably redesign the blog around that format.

And stay tuned - it looks like there will be a live presentation of the 2011 Hasby Awards again this year, with some special surprises! More details to come.

Tunisian TV executive to stand trial for showing "offensive" cartoon

From AFP:

The head of a Tunisian television station whose broadcast of “Persepolis” sparked violent protests, said Wednesday he faced trial and up to three years in jail if convicted of offending Islamic values.

Nabil Karoui, the head of Nessma television, told AFP he was being prosecuted for having “violating sacred values, good morals and disturbing public order” by broadcasting the film in October.

If convicted, he faced up to three years in prison, he said.

“I am going to plead not guilty, of course,” he told AFP ahead of the trial opening on Thursday.

Nessma TV’s broadcast of the film on October 7, dubbed into the Tunisian dialect, provoked a wave of protests that included an attack on the station’s offices and violent street protests.

“Persepolis,” a globally acclaimed animated film on Iran’s 1979 revolution, offended many Muslims because of a scene showing a representation of God. All depictions of God are forbidden by Islam.

Karoui quickly apologised for the broadcast, but that did not stop the protests.

After an evening of street clashes on October 14, about 100 men firebombed Karoui’s home. He was not at home but his family had to flee.

Witnesses described the assailants, who were armed with Molotov cocktails, knives and swords, as members of the ultra-conservative Salafist sect.

The film’s showing came less than two weeks before historic polls on October 23 to elect a constituent assembly, the first since January’s overthrow of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Tunisia’s Islamist party Ennahda, which emerged as the largest party after the vote, condemned the violence but also denounced the broadcast of the film as a “provocation”.

Karoui said the case had been brought after a complaint filed by more than 140 lawyers.

“It is scandalous that I should be the one to appear when the people who burned my house down have been released,” he said.

“The new defenders of the moral order in Tunisia want to make an example of me. We are in a moral dictatorship even worse than under Ben Ali. Under the old regime I never had death threats,” he added.

The TV station was attacked at the time of the broadcast as well.

The film itself looks very good; it is an autobiographical coming-of-age story about an Iranian woman who simply does not fit in. it has won a number of awards.

And here's how God looks in the movie:

Another threat from Iran

From FARS agency:

A senior Iranian military commander lashed out at the Zionist regime's officials for their pleasure in the death of a number of Iranian IRGC forces and commander in the Saturday blast at an Islamic Revolution Guards Corps base near Tehran, saying that the reaction of the Zionists signified their arrogant nature.

Addressing a gathering here in Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian Armed Forces Deputy Chief of Staff for Cultural Affairs and Defense Publicity Brigadier General Massoud Jazzayeri pointed to the recent remarks made by the Israeli officials who hailed the deadly blast in Tehran, and stated, "That they voice satisfaction in the killing of innocent people showed the arrogant nature of these regimes."

Jazzayeri is deeply offended that anyone could say anything positive over the deaths of innocents.

How touching! How moral! How peaceful!

And immediately after:

"But, the Zionist regime should worry about the time when the sound of such powerful explosions are heard in Tel Aviv and other parts of the occupied territories (Israel)," Jazzayeri noted.

He seems to be pretty happy at the prospect, doesn't he?

Because, to him and to the Iranian regime, no one in Israel is considered innocent.

And who would be behind such powerful explosions in Tel Aviv, anyway?