Anti-Islamist bloggers banned from entering UK

From BBC:

Two prominent US bloggers have been banned from entering the UK, the Home Office has said.

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer co-founded anti-Muslim group Stop Islamization of America.

They were due to speak at an English Defence League march in Woolwich, where Drummer Lee Rigby was killed.

A government spokesman said individuals whose presence "is not conducive to the public good" could be excluded by the home secretary.

He added: "We condemn all those whose behaviours and views run counter to our shared values and will not stand for extremism in any form."

The specific letters they sent to Geller and Spencer are most interesting. Here is Geller's:

I am writing to inform you about the British governments measures for excluding or deporting extremists under the Unacceptable Behaviour policy. The list of unacceptable behaviours covers any non-UK national whether in the UK or abroad who uses any means or medium including:
• writing, producing, publishing or distributing material,
• public speaking including preaching,
• running a website,
• using a position of responsibility such as a teacher, community or youth leader

to express views that:

• foment or justify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs,
• seek to provoke others to terrorist acts,
• foment other serious criminal activity or seek to provoke others to serious criminal acts,
• foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.

The list is indicative and not exhaustive.

The Home Secretary has considered whether, in light of this list, you should be excluded from the UK. After careful consideration on 25 June 2013 she personally directed that you should be excluded from the United Kingdom on the grounds that your presence here is not conducive to the public good. The Home Secretary has reached this decision because you have brought yourself within the scope of the list of unacceptable behaviours by making statements that may foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.

The Home Secretary notes that you are a prolific blogger, author, political activist and commentator, You co-founded Stop Islamization of America', an organization described as an anti-Muslim hate group. You also operate a number of websites including Jihad Watch and Atlas Shrugs.

You are reported to have stated the following:

• 'Al-Qaeda is a manifestation of devout Islam...it is Islam.'

• 'If the Jew dies, the Muslims will die as well: their survival depends on their constant jihad. because without it they will lose the meaning and purpose of their existence.'

The Home Secretary considers that should you be allowed to enter the UK you would continue to espouse such views. In doing so. you would be committing listed behaviours and would therefore be behaving in a way that is not conducive to the public good. You are therefore instructed not to travel to the UK as you will be refused admission on arrival. Although there is no statutory right of appeal against the Home Secretary's decision. this decision is reviewed every 3 to 5 years.

In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 the Home Office treats all personal information in confidence. However, such information may be disclosed to other government departments. agencies. local authorities, the police, foreign governments and other bodies for immigration purposes or to enable them to perform their functions.

Spencer's letter has a different example of his writing:

"...it [Islam] is a religion and a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose of establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society because media and general government unwillingness to face the sources of Islamic terrorism these things remain largely unknown."

Whether or not you agree with Geller's and Spencer's statements on Islam, there is no way that these writings reach the defined  level of "unacceptable behaviours" listed in the beginning of the letter.  To say that these opinions can incite people to terror acts is simply not defensible. To compare their statements with the hate speech and clear incitement that radical Islamic clerics spout in the UK against Jews, infidels and gays is a perversion.

Will Human Rights Watch and Amnesty defend Geller's and Spencer's right to enter Great Britain and to speak there?

Moreover, will the people who complain when Israel bans people from entering (on "flytillas") for the express purpose of combating Israel's existence and causing disturbances act equally outraged that England has a much looser standard for banning anyone who might act in a way that "is not conducive to the public good"?

After this disgraceful decision on the part of the UK we can expect a wave of hypocrisy from all the "liberals" who pretend that Israel is far worse.

This decision proves that a powerful nation, not under any direct threat from anyone,  is far more restrictive of basic freedom of expression than Israel is. Not that anyone from the Left would ever, ever admit it.

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Egypt charges 9 with spying for Israel

From AFP:

Egypt's public prosecutor on Wednesday referred nine people, including six foreigners, to trial for allegedly spying for Israel, the official MENA news agency reported.

Three Egyptians and six Israelis were referred to a criminal court, though it was unclear if any of them were in the country.

Four of the Israelis are said to be intelligence officers and two are Arab Israeli citizens, MENA said.

Investigations by the state security prosecutor showed the defendants had "passed on information to Israeli military intelligence services to harm Egypt's national security and the country's higher interests," MENA said.

The information pertained to the security situation in the Sinai peninsula and the presence and movements of extremist Islamist groups there, the agency reported.

Given Egypt's incompetence in figuring out who is a spy, I doubt highly that Egypt caught any real spies.

The names of the alleged spies have been published in Arabic; the ones I figured out are Danny Ovadia, Aharon Danone, David Jacob, Shlomo Sofer, Israeli Arabs Abdullah Salim Ibrahim Darokheeba and Omar Harb Abu Jarad, and Egyptians Salameh Hamed Abu Jarad and Mohammed Ahmed Abu Jarad.

My guess is that the Abu Jarads of Rafah are related (or assumed to be related) to the Israeli Abu Jarad, and Egypt built a "case" based on that.

One also cannot discount the idea that Egypt is trying to divert attention from the upcoming June 30 anti-government demonstrations by trying the tried-and-true "unite around hating Israel" card.

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Terror-supporting Islamist visits the White House

The Investigative Project on Terrorism reports:

Radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi is considered so radical that the United States bans him from entering the country.

Qaradawi, considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, has called for the killing of Jews and Americans.

That history makes the June 13 White House meeting with Sheik Abdullah Bin Bayyah all the more inexplicable. Bin Bayyah is vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a group founded by and headed by Qaradawi. The IUMS has a long history of supporting Hamas –a top Hamas leader is an IUMS member – and of calling for Israel's destruction.

Bin Bayyah's website claims that he met June 13 with senior Obama administration officials at the White House.

Nonetheless, it was the Obama administration which sought the meeting with Bin Bayyah, his website's account said.

"We asked for this meeting to learn from you and we need to be looking for new mechanisms to communicate with you and the Association of Muslim Scholars (another name used for the IUMS)," Gayle Smith, senior director of the National Security Council, reportedly said.

Bin Bayyah's June 13 account placed other senior officials in the meeting, including:Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and White House spokeswomanJennifer Palmieri. But the account was later changed to delete the reference to Donilon's presence at the meeting.

Smith also thanked Bin Bayyah for "his efforts to bring more understanding amongst humanity" during the meeting, the Bin Bayyah account said.

The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comments between June 14 and Tuesday.

This was reported in Arab media, including Al Jazeera. There is no way to verify whether his report on what happened at the White House is accurate without the administration verifying or denying it.

Here's the largest photo I could find so people can identify who was there (click to enlarge):

While the major topic seems to have been Syria, Bin Bayyah is simply not someone the White House should be speaking with.

Interestingly, on his website Bin Bayyah seems to be a big advocate of Muslim dialogue with Western non-Muslims, as long as it can bring advantage to Muslims. He doesn't say that Muslims can learn anything from this dialogue; but rather they can speak to Westerners using the language of human rights and diversity to help the Islamic agenda, as well as to teach Westerners that issues like human rights and equality are Muslim values as well - but not absolute values, rather they must be interpreted within Islamic ideas of "justice."

(h/t Dennis)

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Muslims warn that Jews plan to build, um, second Temple

From Saudi Gazette:

Israeli authorities on Monday began new excavations near Al-Aqsa Mosque Complex in occupied Jerusalem, a Palestinian foundation said.

The Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage said that the Israeli authorities began the excavations in the southern part of Al-Magharebah Gate, the eastern part of the Umayyad palaces and at the entrance of the Wadi Hilweh neighborhood. The three sites are located in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The foundation said that its inspection teams documented the new excavations in the three sites. It added that these excavations take place at night and are covered with tents and plastic sheets.

It warned that the use of huge machines in the excavation work in the area puts in serious danger the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It added that the Israeli will build in the sites several facilities, including synagogue for women, restroom facilities, police station, tourists’ centers, a network of bridges and iron stairs.

The foundation stressed that goal of excavations “is to Judaize Jerusalem and the collapse of Al-Aqsa Mosque to build the so-called second temple on ruins of it.”

Hate to break it to ya, Aqsa Foundation guys, but if you want to prevent Jews from building the Second Temple, you are a tad late.

If this story seems familiar, that's because it is an evergreen story in the Arab media. Israel's imminent plans to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque have been a weekly staple in Arabc media, even though coverage seems perfunctory nowadays. I mean, it is hard to maintain rage when all the previous predictions have been wrong.

Only last spring, we were warned that Israel planned to demolish the mosque ahead of Obama's visit to the region.

My favorite was the prediction that Israel would build the Third Temple on March 16, 2010, based on a completely stupid report from Haaretz. That was in the Arab headlines for months!

In fact, those crafty Jews keep faking out the Al Aqsa Foundation so that when they really are ready to build the Temple, no one will believe it. It is called Operation Cry Wolf. Working like a charm.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

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Arab Idol star: "I am a son of the camp." Why is that?

From Ma'an:

Mohammad Assaf declared himself a "son of the camp" on Tuesday as he returned to the Gaza
Strip, where thousands of jubilant fans awaited the arrival of the Arab Idol star.

Flag-waving crowds waited for several hours at the Rafah crossing on Egypt's border for 23-year-old Assaf, three days after he was crowned the winner of the popular regional singing contest.

Assaf bent over and kissed the ground as he crossed the border, an AFP correspondent reported, before holding a news conference alongside Hamas officials.

"I thank you for your wonderful welcome and hope the celebrations won't feature gunfire," Assaf said, alluding to the shots in the air that sometimes accompany celebrations in the Middle East.

Assaf said he was the son of Palestine and "son of the (refugee) camp," and told reporters he would continue to sing nationalistic songs and raise the Palestinian flag.

So the newest Palestinian Arab hero is a "son of the camp."

Will any reporter ask why these camps still exist in territory that is ruled by Palestinian Arabs?

Why can't Hamas or the PA dismantle the camps and mainstream the residents into more normal society? There is nothing stopping that from happening. They are not "refugees" by any definition because even the ones who are over 65 years old are living in the land they came from. (At worst, they are "internally displaced persons.")

So why do these camps, often hotbeds of terror, exist?

Netty Gross, in The Jerusalem Report in July 1998, asked an official why the camps there hadn’t been dismantled. She was told the Palestinian Authority had made a “political decision” not to do anything for the more than 650,000 Palestinians living in the camps until the final-status talks with Israel took place. (quoted here.)

Keeping the people crammed into these "camps" is a violation of their human rights, but no human rights organizations are calling for Hamas or the PA to dismantle them and end the discrimination that exists even within Palestinian Arab ruled territory.

Indeed, the UN has condemned Israel for attempting to do just that!

Where are the human rights activists demanding that the camps be demolished and the people given normal housing and services in line with everyone else, to live in their land as normal citizens? Why did Assaf have to grow up in such miserable conditions?

The sad fact is that the camps exist for one reason only - to purposefully keep hundreds of thousands of people in misery to make Israel look bad, even though Israel does nothing to keep a single person in a "refugee" camp.

Don't believe me? Then look at this quote from Palestine's ambassador to Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, in 2011, quoted in Lebanon's Daily Star:

The ambassador unequivocally says that Palestinian refugees would not become citizens of the sought for U.N.-recognized Palestinian state, an issue that has been much discussed. “They are Palestinians, that’s their identity,” he says. “But … they are not automatically citizens.”

This would not only apply to refugees in countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan or the other 132 countries where Abdullah says Palestinians reside. Abdullah said that “even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian] state, they are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens.”

Mohammad Assaf is part of the long tradition of anti-Israel propaganda where ordinary Palestinian Arabs are used as pawns and discriminated against even in places ruled by their leaders until Israel is destroyed. And that is the long-term plan - a plan that is apparently endorsed by the UN as well as by so-called "human rights" organizations who never say a word against the existence of these outdoor prisons for thousands of people.

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How KGB actions led to Arab and Muslim terror

From The Daily Mail:

The highest-ranking Soviet-bloc intelligence officer ever to defect to the West claims in a new book that anti-American Islamic terrorism had its roots in a secret 1970s-era KGB plot to harm but the United States and Israel by seeding Muslim countries with carefully targeted propaganda.

Yuri Andropov, the KGB chief for 15 years before he became the Soviet premier, sent hundreds of agents and thousands of copies of propaganda literature to Muslim countries.
'By 1972,' according to the book, 'Andropov's disinformation machinery was working around the clock to persuade the Islamic world that Israel and the United States intended to transform the rest of the world into a Zionist fiefdom.'

'According to Andropov, the Islamic world was a petri dish in which the KGB community could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought.'
Those claims come from former Romanian Lt. Gen Ion Mihail Pacepa and University of Mississippi law professor Ronald Rychlak.

In their book, titled Disinformation, Pacepa spills the secrets he kept for decades as head of Romania's spy apparatus and secret police, the DIE, before he secured political asylum in the U.S. in 1978.

Andropov began his leadership of the KGB just months before the 1967 Six-Day War between Arabs and Israelis, in which Israel humiliated the key Soviet allies Syria and Egypt. And he decided to settle the score by training Palestinian militants to hijack El Al airplanes and bomb sites in Jerusalem.

But more shocking, Andropov commissioned the first Arabic translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian-forged 1905 propaganda book that alleged Jews were plotting to take over Europe - and were being aided by the United States.

Much of this was already known - see this post from last year.

I have also noted that a 1968 PLO document that created a blueprint for destroying Israel that seems to be mostly in place even today has all the hallmarks of being originally drafted by the Soviets.

(h/t/ Shlomedic)

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PressTV has a new columnist!

His name is Arif Hussain, and here is his bio:

Arif Hussain is a Pakistani journalist. A graduate of a prestigious military institution in Pakistan, Arif Hussain has been writing articles about international relations, global politics, Middle East and the expansion of Zionism across the globe.

Oh goody!

His first article informs us:

When human, religious and cultural values vanish from a society, it eventually changes into capitalism. Then murder, injustice, bribery, oppression and occupation becomes the practices of the society.

Zionists being totally deprived of all these values have put their all-out efforts to deprive societies from their highest religious and human values. To accomplish this dirty mission of spreading capitalism, they have been using pornography, bribery and interest-based banking systems worldwide. They kept on invading societies psychologically and enslaving them in a net of racism.

In the process of building puppet governments, the Zionist regime of Israel has been very successful in replacing many Arab and non-Arab governments so far. Under the slogan of democracy, Israel has toppled many governments which tried to resist its policies, and replaced them with its own versions.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Bahrain in the Arabian Peninsula and Turkey, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan and other countries outside the Arabian Peninsula are by now standing under the Zionist Umbrella, offering their best services in return for its barbarism on the innocent people of Palestine.

Now that he gets to the second article, he can start to expand on his theme:

It has been almost two and half years when the enemies of humanity allegedly applied a well plotted mind-set in Syria. The aim was to topple the government of Bashar Assad, resultantly cutting blood supply to other organs of the resistance against Zionism.

The mechanism started with simple anti government peace demonstrations as usual. But a very few people knew that the wolves were hiding within the herds, with their skins changed. It was easy for the wolves to catch the black sheep; the black sheep then created havoc in the peaceful environment.

The false flag propaganda of nine eleven and the invasion of Afghanistan, the years long hunt for Osama and the final drama of his imprisonment in dark depths of sea, allegation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and shameful return after mass destructing the country, the Libya's so called civil war, the war with Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen and friendly table talks with them in Qatar, the decades long so called hunt for Al Qaeda and support for them in Libya and Syria, the false flag Boston bombings and handling the self created situation with extreme un professionalism in nervousness, accusing other nations for spying and their own spies being caught and expelled by others, the so called nuclear talks with Iran and secret killing of its nuclear scientists. What else should i mention, every step they take is hypocritical, every decision they make is a double standard decision.

Why all these wars and everything else happen?

Well I am not going to write a paragraph on this. Everything is already mentioned and is as clear as water. I would rather prefer to write a single sentence.

All this happens to flourish a minute racist entity: the Zionist state of Israel.

I'm not one to brag, but placing Hussain at PressTV is definitely one of my best moves of the past month. I mean, its summer and there are no good original comedies on TV, so this is a great alternative.

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Egyptian sues to strip nationality of MB leader because of remarks about Jews

Last December, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Essam el-Erian suggested that when Israel is destroyed, Egyptian Jews should be allowed to return to Egypt.

Ever since then he has come under withering criticism from antisemitic Egyptians and other Arabs, of all political stripes, who are twisting his words to make it sound like he is a Jew-lover. Even this month the was criticized for his statement in the war of words between Egypt and the UAE.

Now, an Egyptian has brought a lawsuit to strip Erian of his Egyptian citizenship based not only on his record with the Brotherhood but also because of his statement about Jews. The suit states that his statement alone should be enough to strip his citizenship, by indicating that he would welcome the usurping Jews. This indicates, the suit says, that Erian has no pride in his land.

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6/25 Links Part 2: Pope Says Anti-Semites are not True Christians and Rihanna is Coming to Israel

From Ian:

---

Barry Rubin: Unlike Madonna, the Middle East Isn’t a ‘Material Girl’

A reader pointed out that in the West, it is assumed to be obvious that Arabs understand that material advancement is necessary for progress and power. For example, Tom Friedman talked about the UN Arab Human development report written by Arab liberals. In other words, the Arabic-speaking world is shaped by the failure of leaders to understand that Western pundits know far more about their society than they do.
Understanding that Friedman doesn’t understand the Middle East, though he has persuaded a big audience otherwise, is the beginning of wisdom on the region.

French marines held over anti-terror probe

The men are accused stealing military-owned bullet-proof jackets and heavy-duty helmets.
They were arrested in connection with a probe into a terror cell implicated in an anti-Semitic bomb attack near Paris last September, it was revealed on Thursday.
A brother of one of the suspects is believed to be an Islamist extremist fighting with anti-Assad rebels in Syria.

Islamist Terror Cell Arrested in France

French police arrested six members of an Islamic terrorist cell early Monday suspected of planning attacks against well-known figures in France, sources close to the investigation told France 24.
The suspects are all in custody after coordinated raids across the Paris region, the news source said.

Who Firebombed Montreal's Kosher Restaurants?

Police have released surveillance video footage of perpetrators who firebombed two kosher restaurants in Montreal in the hopes that someone in the public might have seen the perpetrators and could offer investigators a tip on their identity.
Although no one was injured in the arson, both businesses were damaged.

‘Israel’ among keywords IRS used to target groups seeking tax-exemptions

The Internal Revenue Service’s screening of groups seeking tax-exempt status was broader and lasted longer than has been previously disclosed, the new head of the agency acknowledged Monday. Terms including “Israel,” ”Progressive” and “Occupy” were used by agency workers to help pick groups for closer examination, according to an internal IRS document obtained by The Associated Press.

Study: Almost half of Belgian, French, Hungarian Jews mull emigration

Despite the absence of state-sponsored anti-Semitism, and a renaissance of sorts in European Jewish life, Jews on the continent feel insecure about their future, two new studies show.
The studies show that almost half the Jews in Belgium, France and Hungary are considering emigrating, some to Israel, others to North America. For those who want to come to Israel, there is very little political will in Israel to help with immigrant absorption bureaucracy, and there is no effective European equivalent of the popular Nefesh B'Nefesh organization.

Anti-Semites are not true Christians, Pope says

Pope Francis condemned anti-Semitism during a meeting with representatives of the international Jewish community at the Vatican.
“Because of our commons roots, a true Christian cannot be anti-Semitic,” Francis said Monday at a meeting with a delegation of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, or IJCIC.
He added that the Catholic Church “firmly condemns hatred, persecution and all manifestations of anti-Semitism.”

Prince Charles warns of rising antisemitism

Prince Charles has warned that Britain was suffering from an "apparent rise in antisemitism, along with other poisonous and debilitating forms of intolerance", according to . He made the comments in a speech that praised the work of Lord Sacks, the outgoing chief rabbi, in promoting tolerance.
Charles said: "Running throughout your time as chief rabbi has been that all-important principle of which this country has long been an exponent – the principle of tolerance.

Israeli Tourists Shocked by Nazi Kitsch in Bulgarian Town

Perhaps even more startling was the response of one of the shop owners selling items such as Hitler mugs, wristwatches with swastikas, and an alarm clock with a picture of Hitler on its face: “There are people who want to buy the products, otherwise we would not sell them. We sell to those who want them, those who don’t, don’t have to buy them.”

Dutch to rule on Anne Frank letters amid archival spat

A Dutch court may rule this week whether some of the letters of Anne Frank, the Jewish girl whose posthumously published diary about her time in hiding from the Nazis made her a symbol of the Holocaust, should stay in Amsterdam or be sent to Switzerland.
The letters - together with about 10,000 photographs and other documents, but not the famous diary - are at the center of a long-running dispute between Anne Frank House, the Amsterdam museum dedicated to her memory, and Anne Frank Fonds, the Basel-based foundation set up by her father Otto.

Book reveals Wallenberg also helped armed resistance

Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from Nazi-occupied Hungary, may also have had a secret military mission during World War II, a new book claims.

IDF Blog Startup Soldiers: from the IDF to High-Tech Success

The Israeli military’s ranks have included future politicians, celebrities, journalists and many other success stories. Some of the high-tech geniuses who have changed the world also wore the IDF uniform.
Behind almost every Israeli startup is an accomplished innovator who calls Israel home. But before setting out on the road to success, most of these brilliant minds served as IDF soldiers. Here we remember their roles in the IDF – and the accomplishments that followed.

Chicago mayor comes to Israel for H2O solutions

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is planning to purify his city’s water using new technologies created by a collaboration between the University of Chicago and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
The two schools, which have been working together for the last 18 months, have come up with a series of proposals that would look at ways to purify water at the molecular level, making clean, fresh drinking-water more plentiful and less expensive by 2020.

SodaStream teaming up with Whirlpool’s Kitchen-Aid

Israel’s at-home carbonation specialist SodaStream has signed a deal with KitchenAid, a leading maker of premium kitchen appliances and culinary tools and a brand of Whirlpool Corporation, to launch a new at-home carbonation machine.
The new soda maker – that lets people make fizzy soda drinks at home — is expected to be available at retail in the fourth quarter of 2013. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Rihanna to shine bright like a diamond in Tel Aviv

International singing sensation Rihanna will bring her "Diamonds" world tour to Tel Aviv for an October 22 concert in Park Hayarkon, Bookmark Entertainment Agency announced Tuesday morning.
The six-time Grammy winner last performed in Israel at Tel Aviv's Bloomfield Stadium in 2010.

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Saudi foreign minister declares Syria "occupied territory"

From Al Arabiya:

Syria can only be considered as an “occupied land,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Tuesday during a press meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Al-Faisal described the intervention of Iran and Hezbollah in Syria as dangerous, saying the opposition forces must be offered military help to defend themselves.

Saudi Arabia "cannot be silent" about Iranian intervention, al-Faisal added and called for a resolution to ban arms flows to the Syrian government.

Don't you get the impression that Faisal is just looking for the biggest insult he can use against Iran, and (short of labeling them "Zionist") the phrase "occupied territory" fits the bill?

Keep in mind that many of Syria's rebels come from outside Syria as well, so we might see this argument being used by the Syrians soon!

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Benny Morris schools author of another anti-Zionist book

At Jewish Review of Books, Benny Morris takes apart another anti-Israel screed masquerading  as a serious book.

In this case, the target is "Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country—and Why They Can’t Make Peace"
by Patrick Tyler.

The review is long but here are some excerpts:

Tyler’s book is a gossipy overlong pseudo-history of Israel, which is noteworthy mainly for what it indicates about the standing of Israel among the chattering classes. For Patrick Tyler is the former chief correspondent of The New York Times and the former Middle East bureau chief of The Washington Post, and his book comes festooned with blurbs from former Times executive editor Howell Raines, CNN’s national security analyst Peter L. Bergen, and others lauding its scholarship as “meticulous” and describing it as “the definitive historical and analytical account” of the role of the military in Israel. Incidentally, Tyler does not know Hebrew or Arabic, and the only archive he appears to have visited is the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in his home state of Texas.

In his Prologue, Tyler asserts that “militarism” is the ruling spirit in Israeli society:

Once in the military system, Israelis never fully exit. They carry the military identity for life . . . through lifelong expectations of loyalty and secrecy. Many Israeli officers carry their “top secret” clearances after retirement, reporting back to superiors or intelligence officers items of interest gleaned from their involvement in business, finance, and interactions with foreigners.

On the next page, he writes, “the specter of the security state remains a dominant aspect of life,” and a little later, “The military is the country to a great extent.” This is all nonsense. Had Tyler been writing about Israel during the late 1940s and 1950s, perhaps he would have had a point. Perhaps. But the Israel of the past several decades, Israel today, is another animal altogether. For most Israelis, individual achievement and interests trump the old collectivist Zionist ethic. Indeed, fewer and fewer Israelis actually serve in the army or do reserve duty (as the few who carry the burden are constantly complaining). It is true that among eleventh and twelfth graders, there is still great competitiveness to get a slot, once inducted, in one of the IDF’s elite units or in pilot training, but this has more to do with adolescent competition and machismo than militaristic ideology. Indeed, a good argument can be made for depicting the Israeli army as one of the world’s least “military.” Since its inception in 1948, the IDF has abjured saluting (the practice exists only in formal parades), and the men, after completing basic training, generally address their non-coms and officers on a first-name basis. The dress code in the army ranges from informal to sloppy and always has (except in the Armored Corps), and breaches of discipline tend to be punished lightly. While females are still kept out of combat units, women non-coms and officers are playing a major role in training combat troops (in armor and artillery, for example), and there are growing numbers of women pilots and navigators, also flying combat aircraft. All of this points to a liberal rather than “militarist” military.

As with poker players, books have tells. At one point in Fortress Israel Tyler writes that Israel’s paratroops wear black berets. Had he interviewed any Israeli, even a child (even an Israeli Arab child), he would have known that, as in Britain and France, paratroopers wear red berets. Sadly, Tyler knows nothing about the nuts and bolts of Israel or its military.

Israel is, in sober fact, a small, flawed, and embattled democracy, with a strong and unusually egalitarian military that has produced an extraordinary stream of writers, academics, and artists, supported by world-class academic and artistic institutions. In short, it is more Athenian than Spartan.

Tyler is as weak on the history of Israel as he is on its sociology, though he is chock-full of opinions and judgments, all of them anti-Zionist. ...

One other point Tyler makes about the [Six Day] war’s aftermath is worth quoting because it is so blatantly untrue: “It seemed that with few exceptions, everyone in Israel had embraced a creed that envisioned a Greater Israel, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. There were differences [only] about how to achieve it.” It is true that a semi-messianic euphoria took hold, but post-1967 Israel was nonetheless a deeply divided society and remains so down to the present. Many opposed, or were uncomfortable with, retention of the Palestinian-populated territories. Tyler forgets to tell his readers that Ben-Gurion, whom he repeatedly brands an arch-expansionist and warmonger, immediately advised Eshkol to withdraw from the whole of the West Bank except East Jerusalem, nor does he mention that Labor Party minister Yigal Allon quickly formulated a plan which called for withdrawal from the bulk of the West Bank in exchange for peace with Jordan. The “Allon Plan” was never formally adopted as the Labor Party’s platform or Israeli government policy, but it guided Labor’s policies for a decade. (Settlements were not established in the areas earmarked for transfer to Arab sovereignty.) In the immediate post-1967 years, Israel’s leaders, in secret meetings, repeatedly proposed the plan to King Hussein as a basis for a bilateral peace settlement to no avail.

...The War of Attrition came to an end after the Soviets sent in thousands of their own personnel to man anti-aircraft missile batteries and fighter squadrons to counter the IAF. In one incident, Israeli Phantoms shot down five Soviet-piloted MiG-21s. At this point, both sides called it quits. The Egyptians were now thoroughly exhausted, and the Israelis feared an open-ended clash with the Russians. Tyler, as usual, has the story all wrong. He tells us that Soviet pilots “shot down half a dozen Israeli Phantoms.” This never happened.

...The subtitle of Tyler’s book carries a clear message: Bloodthirsty Spartan generals “run” Israel and that is why it has not achieved peace with its neighbors. The actual history of the various post-1967 Israeli-Arab peace processes gives the lie to this argument. IDF generals and ex-generals have actually loomed large in these peace processes, both those which succeeded and those which didn’t.

Israel so far has signed two peace treaties with Arab states, with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994, both of which are still in force (though how they will fare in the coming years, with fiercely anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic Islamists on the ascent in Arab politics, is anyone’s guess). Negotiations with Egypt were led by Menachem Begin, a civilian who had headed the pre-state right-wing Irgun Zvai Leumi (IZL). But the two men who pressed and persuaded him to make the requisite concessions, including handing over to Egypt the whole of Sinai, were his foreign minister Moshe Dayan and his defense minister Ezer Weizman, both of whom had spent most of their lifetimes in the IDF. Dayan was a former chief of general staff, and Weizman was a past commander of the Israel Air Force. The peace treaty with Jordan, in which Israel ceded several hundred square kilometers of territory in the south, was negotiated and signed by Yitzhak Rabin, also a former IDF chief of general staff.

...The basic problem with Fortress Israel is that Tyler dismisses, or is simply unaware of, the pan-Arab desire to rid the Middle East of the Jewish state and its periodic efforts to do so. According to Tyler, Israel alone is to blame for the wars, for the absence of peace, for the hopelessness. Thus, he fails completely to deal with the 1948 War, about which all acknowledge that the Arabs—first the Palestinians and then the neighboring Arab states—were the aggressors; thus, he fails to come to grips with the very real Arab threats to Israel in 1956 and 1967 and, indeed, ever since. He pooh-poohs Saddam Hussein’s effort to achieve nuclear weaponry in the early 1980s and writes off Israel’s destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor outside Baghdad in 1981 as merely “a new phase of [Israeli] militarism.”

Indeed, Tyler kicks off the book with a description of how, in 2011-2012, Israeli agents “murdered” two top Iranian nuclear scientists on the streets of Tehran. “The astonishing thing,” Tyler writes, “was that Iran might not have been engaged in clandestine nuclear weapons development at all.” Rather, Israel’s “highly provocative” killing of the scientists pushed Iran into pursuing, or resuming the pursuit of, nuclear weaponry. All of this flies in the face of what almost all the world’s intelligence agencies believe, which is that Iran aims to build nuclear weapons and has been trying to do so for more than two decades.

...Tyler’s purpose in writing this book was not to offer his readers an honest history, it was to blacken Israel’s image. Fortress Israel is just the latest in a spate of venomous perversions of the record that have appeared in the past few years in the United States and Britain, all clearly designed to subvert Israel’s standing in the world. Deliberately or not, such books and articles are paving the way for a future abandonment of the Jewish state.

(h/t Mel)

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Khaybar update: Press Release issued, petitions being delivered today, Arab media notices

I created this press release today:



You can still sign the petition, because all comments get emailed to HRW and Amnesty. There are over 1100 signatures and 250 comments, including from places like Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco!

The Call to Action and supporting materials can be seen in this document:

Egyptian website Rassd reported on the Zionist Organization of America's condemnation of the series and their call for President Obama to pressure Egypt's president to have it stopped.

(Special thanks to Dian for delivering the petitions and working so hard on this material. All during her vacation in New York!)

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