Over the course of the past decade, Israel has gone to great lengths to strengthen and develop its navy, which now rivals the air force in its offensive capabilities using the best military resources available. Israel is now able to confront all of the military threats it may face. The Israeli government's massive investment in naval technology is justified by the fact that the navy is responsible for about 50 per cent of all military operations carried out by the Zionist state; this was reported by the Jerusalem Post on 13 August last year.
The most obvious evidence suggesting of Israel's investment in naval technology is the fact that it now has submarines capable of carrying nuclear missiles. By the end of the decade, it is expected to have the most German-built Dolphin Class submarines in the world. These are regarded as the fourth most effective of their kind. Nowhere else in the world will you find a country with a population of just 8 million people having six such submarines in its arsenal. In addition to investing in strategic submarines, Israel has also doubled its number of naval attack vessels and has the sea-to-air and sea-to-surface rockets, both medium and long range, to go with them.
What has undoubtedly pushed Israel to make such a large investment is the reality of the changes taking place within the Arab world. The Zionist state believes that these could affect its foreign trade as 90 per cent of its imports and exports go by sea freight. Hence the need for the navy to take centre stage.
According to Professor Ephraim Inbar, Director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at the University of Bar-Ilan, the fact that Arab and Islamic countries control the world's most important maritime routes make it necessary for Israel to secure its commercial vessels with a strong navy. In a recent study, Inbar warned that militant Islamic groups could target Israeli merchant ships. He emphasised that he has no doubt that the most important strategic role in securing Israeli interests needs to and will be carried out by the navy; it also needs to be able to retaliate in the event that it is the victim of a nuclear attack.
According to Umair Bouhbout, a military commentator for Wala News, Israel believes that the only way it can retaliate in such an event is from its seaborne nuclear capabilities. Moreover, having submarines with nuclear warheads makes it possible for Israel to keep its options open with regards to manoeuvrability and the stationing of submarines close to target countries. Israel also looks upon its navy as the means to combat arms smuggling by Palestinian resistance groups and Lebanon's Hezbollah. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have gone so far as to claim that they have prevented several smuggling operations via Sudan, Iran and other states. In addition to all of this, we must not forget that the Israeli navy will play a crucial role in securing the natural gas fields that have been discovered off the coast of Palestine.
Israel fears that a hostile party will attack those fields within its territorial waters and it is for this reason that the government and the IDF are focusing the most energy and financial resources on strengthening the navy, which has a key strategic role.
According to Hebrew-language newspaper Yedioth Ahranoth last August, dozens of Palestinian homes were destroyed during the summer war on Gaza by rockets fired from Israeli warships stationed off the coast of the besieged territory; this confirmed that the navy is not only complementing all other sections of the IDF but is also quite possibly the most favoured and used.
Former Israeli naval commander Rear-Admiral Eli Marom said recently that because the submarines can stay underwater for a long time, they are often used by special units to implement covert operations that are thousands of miles away from Israel. An investigation published by Wala News confirmed that Israel employs submarines in electronic warfare against several parties. There is currently no doubt in Tel Aviv that its navy acts as a major deterrent factor that makes other states think twice before launching any attack against Israel.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
- Wednesday, April 22, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
Middle East Monitor translates an article from Hamas' Felesteen about the importance of Israel's navy. And the article is surprisingly impartial.
- Wednesday, April 22, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
Stockholm, April 22 - The Royal Swedish Academy announced today that it would bestow the Nobel Prize in Physics on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to recognize his accomplishments in challenging existing notions of mathematical certainty by showing that a four-year presidential term actually lasts more than twice that duration.
Abbas was elected in January 2005 to a presidency that, according to Palestine National Authority law, lasts four years, after which another election is to be held. However, the president demonstrated that those four years must, in fact, have not elapsed, since he retains his office and title, and shows no indication of arranging for another round of presidential elections. The Academy described this achievement as, "challenging and expanding our understanding, and the boundaries, of number, of units of measure, and of time itself, with the potential to revolutionize every arena of human affairs."
Previously, the concept of "four years" was understood to refer to a finite, measurable period on Earth, with empirically observable characteristics, says Dick Tater, professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago. "But Dr. Abbas has changed all that. We used to think that observable time could only be distorted or redefined when great distances and velocities are involved, something Einstein proved. What Abbas has done is to throw into question all the commonly accepted notions of what 'four years' essentially means, ans in doing so, has opened up a world of possibility."
Potential applications for the discovery, says Tater, include everything from medicine to space travel to economics. "Imagine being able to give a dying cancer patient more time just be using Dr. Abbas's principles," he explained. "If four years really equals more than ten - and it might yet end up equaling considerably more; the window is yet open on that front - then a terminally ill person given four months to live actually has almost a year, and possibly more. Annual government budgets can actually cover at least two-and-a-half years, a prospect with immense potential for savings and public works. Really, the possibilities are endless."
A spokesman for the Palestinian president told reporters Abbas was humbled by the announcement, as well as gratified. "It can be daunting to try to fill the shoes of Yasser Arafat," said Yasser Abed-Rabbo, referring to the iconic Palestinian leader who preceded Abbas. "Arafat won a Nobel Prize for peacemaking, and that is a very tough act to follow. All of Palestine is proud of our president for demonstrating a similar commitment to the rigor and principles of the field in which our successive leaders have now been recognized."
Hints of the mathematical achievement were already apparent to some observers much earlier in Abbas's career. Academy representatives pointed out that his doctoral thesis, examining the Holocaust, involved important efforts to prove that the number six million actually referred to a significantly smaller quantity.
From Ian:
Isi Leibler: Independence Day: We have reason to rejoice
Isi Leibler: Independence Day: We have reason to rejoice
Alas, the dream of peace with our neighbors remains just a dream. But we should exult in the realization that we are stronger today than in the past when we overcame far greater challenges and genuinely faced annihilation.Col. Richard Kemp: Killing Americans and their Allies: Iran’s Continuing War against the U.S. and the West
Opinion polls indicate that we rank among the happiest and most contented people in the world.
However, many young Israelis now take Jewish statehood for granted, never having undergone the chilling experience of European Jews in the 1930s as they desperately sought entry visas to countries to avoid the impending Shoah. Nor can they appreciate the devastating impact of living in an anti-Semitic environment where Jews are considered pariahs.
Today, on our 67th anniversary, we should give thanks to the Almighty for enabling us to be the blessed Jewish generation, privileged to live in freedom in our resurrected ancient homeland. We should continually remind ourselves that our success defies rationality and by any benchmark must be deemed miraculous.
Chag Sameach.
IntroductionAmb. Prosor reads Israel's National Anthem at the UN Security Council
It appears that the recent framework agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the P5+1, led by the U.S. Administration, will result in a deal that would allow Iran to become a nuclear-armed state. In this context, it is worth recalling the true nature of the Islamic Republic, in particular its recent track-record of violence against the United States and its allies. Both authors of this study had responsibilities for UK national intelligence assessment and crisis management during the period when this violence reached its peak in Iraq.
Many have forgotten, or perhaps never realized, that Iranian military action, often working through proxies, usually using terrorist tactics, has led to the deaths of well over a thousand American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade and a half. Does it make sense to risk allowing a regime that, since its inception, has been conducting a war against the United States and its allies to become a nuclear power?
Anti-Americanism helped fuel the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. A violent anti-American doctrine that challenges any role for America in the Middle East, has been and remains the central focus of Iranian foreign policy. Since the revolution, Iran has waged and continues to wage war against the United States and its allies.
"Tomorrow, Israel will commemorate Yom Hazikaron and honor the 23,320 individuals who lost their lives to war and terror. We will remember the brave soldiers who died so that we can have our freedom and mourn the thousands of men, women, and children who were robbed of their lives simply because they were Israeli.
War has never been the choice of the State of Israel. Our choice is and always has been the path of peace. But when war and terror are forced upon us, we will not surrender and we will not back down. For nearly 2,000 years, the Jewish people were stateless and powerless in the face of hatred and indifference. Those days are no more.
On Thursday, Israel will celebrate Yom Haatzmaut, our 67th anniversary as a free and independent Jewish state. With great joy and with heads held high, we will celebrate the realization of the words in our national anthem, Hatikvah
- Wednesday, April 22, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
How may lies can you find in this IMEMC dispatch?
Extremist Israeli settlers raised the Israeli flag on the walls and over the rooftop of al-Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs, today in Hebron.The Mufti of Jerusalem said that "the Ibrahimi Mosque is an Islamic mosque, a place of prayer and worship of Muslims alone."
The reconstruction committee in Hebron condemned, in a press statement, this measure and considered it a continuation of ongoing Israeli attempts to alter the character of the mosque and annex it to the list of Jewish heritage sites.
According to the PNN, the committee slammed this Israeli measure as a provocative act and an assault against Muslims in general and Palestinians in particular.
It called on all relevant human rights and humanitarian organizations to take the necessary actions to protect the mosque.
Al-Ibrahimi Mosque is located in the old city of Hebron, few hundred meters away from the part of the city illegally occupied by around 400 extremist settlers, who are protected by about 1,500 Israeli soldiers.
Since 1967, al-Ibrahimi Mosque, like all other Muslim holy sites in Palestine, became a target for the Israeli occupying forces and Zionist settlers, reported the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee.
Of course, Hamas flags flying openly in Judaism's holiest spot are quite fine.
The Islamic movement expressed in a statement issued on Wednesday its strong rejection of the Israeli provocative move, considering it an attack against the religious and historic stature of this site to millions of Muslims around the world.The Waqf reacted then with similar hyperbole:
“This is an attack against the religious and historic stature of this site to millions of Muslims around the world,” Tayseer Abu Snaineh, the director of the Wakf (endowment) Department in Hebron, told Saudi Gazette on Thursday, October 3.
He added that the “settlers desecrate this holy mosque and often embarrassed and ridicule Muslims while praying”.
See a pattern?
Muslims have managed to turn outrage into an art, routinely describing the most minor incidents in apocalyptic terms and erasing any real meaning from words. And they do it because it works.
- Wednesday, April 22, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
Yesterday I posted about how Amnesty International members voted at their annual general meeting against a resolution calling on Britain to fight antisemitic attacks.
The Coalition Against Anti-Semitism in Europe tweeted to Amnesty-UK asking for comment. Here was their shameful response:
Here are the resolutions, outside of internal governance topics, that easily passed in the meeting:
This is a neat inversion on the answer that latent antisemites give for choosing to condemn only Israel for things that every nation does - "You've got to start somewhere. " Just like the Jewish state is always the first, last and only one to be condemned by so many, so is Jew-hatred the first, last and only human rights issue that cannot be tackled because of so many other issues worldwide.
The Coalition Against Anti-Semitism in Europe tweeted to Amnesty-UK asking for comment. Here was their shameful response:
@caasecoalition We condemn all forms of hate crime and discrimination. Unfortunately we can't campaign on everything.
— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) April 21, 2015
Here are the resolutions, outside of internal governance topics, that easily passed in the meeting:
- Amnesty International’s stance on Abortion: Pro - Choice
- Addressing impunity in Guatemala
- Violations of the rights of Colombian activists including trade union leader Huber Ballesteros
- The United Kingdom: Rendition and Torture
- Asylum detention in the UK -AIUK will undertake research into the wrongful detention of torture and trafficking victims in British detention
2014 resolutions all passed as well, including:
- Sex Work - Decriminalisation
- Garment workers in Asian countries
- Guantanamo
- Guatemala
- Sri Lanka Human Rights
Their mission statement says:
But, hey, you can't campaign on everything.
You can, however, campaign on everything except antisemitism.
But, hey, you can't campaign on everything.
You can, however, campaign on everything except antisemitism.
- Wednesday, April 22, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
- DCI-P
"Defense for Children International - Palestine" has released their latest report. This one claims that Israel directly targeted children during last summer's Gaza war.
As we have shown in the past, DCI-Palestine has zero credibility. They elicit "testimonies" from children and then go back and iron out any glaring inconsistencies.
Their mandate is explicitly biased - to "develop its programs and act according to Palestinian children's needs and Palestinian priorities." Yet they claim that their researchers, under a biased mandate, can be objective. Here is the methodology they published for this report:
The story is so obviously fake that only people who hate Israel to begin with can believe it.
The most obvious lie was published, unchallenged, by the NYT:
Because he knows that the media will believe the lies without any evidence!
Abu Raida's bogus story is featured from pages 55-57 of this new report. It proves that DCIP has no regard for accuracy or truth, as we've shown before when they claimed that children who were actively involved in attacks on IDF soldiers were innocent civilians or when they claimed that hundreds of people, including children, were killed in Jenin in 2002.
NGOs like DCIP manage to keep getting lots of money from European governments and NGOs, with obviously no oversight or accountability.
And so it goes.
As we have shown in the past, DCI-Palestine has zero credibility. They elicit "testimonies" from children and then go back and iron out any glaring inconsistencies.
Their mandate is explicitly biased - to "develop its programs and act according to Palestinian children's needs and Palestinian priorities." Yet they claim that their researchers, under a biased mandate, can be objective. Here is the methodology they published for this report:
This report is based on investigations conducted by DCIP’s fieldworkers in the Gaza Strip between July 8, 2014 and January 30, 2015. DCIP fieldworkers visited sites where children had been killed or maimed in attacks to collect sworn affidavits from victims, family members, neighbors, and eyewitnesses in accordance with established UN standards. Lawyers and human rights documentation professionals reviewed testimonies and other documentation for accuracy and assessed any gaps that required further research. Fieldworkers frequently returned to the site of an incident to verify details and collect further evidence.Their claims of objectivity and non-leading questions are obviously not true. The reason we know this is because this report includes the story of Ahmad Abu Raida, the 16-year old who told DCIP, along with +972 Magazine and the New York Times, that IDF soldiers held him for five days and forced him to search for tunnels and to dig for them, beating him and threatening him sexually. They expect people to believe that IDF soldiers, in the middle of a war zone, would trust a 16 year old son of a Hamas member to enter houses alone and tell them whether he found tunnels or not. They would sit around and use a 16-year old to dig with his hands under the "afternoon sun" to find tunnels.
To ensure reliable testimonies, DCIP’s fieldworkers ask a series of non-leading questions, exercise judgment about the credibility of witnesses, and examine possible influences that may shape a response. Fieldworkers have sought medical evidence to verify details such as the victim’s injuries and cause of death, and collected photographs documenting evidence of international law violations at particular sites. DCIP has also sought expert opinions on certain incidents from military and forensic
specialists.
The story is so obviously fake that only people who hate Israel to begin with can believe it.
The most obvious lie was published, unchallenged, by the NYT:
Ahmed’s father, Jamal Abu Raida, who held a senior position in Gaza’s Tourism Ministry under the Hamas-controlled government, said the family forgot to take photographs documenting any abuse in its happiness over the youth’s return, and disposed of the clothing he was given upon his release.Bruises last for weeks. DCIP interviewed Abu Raida within weeks of his supposed beatings. If they took photos of his bruises, as they claim they routinely do to corroborate stories, where are these photographs? Why wouldn't a Hamas employee do everything possible to support his accusations to incriminate Israel to NGOs and the media?
Because he knows that the media will believe the lies without any evidence!
Abu Raida's bogus story is featured from pages 55-57 of this new report. It proves that DCIP has no regard for accuracy or truth, as we've shown before when they claimed that children who were actively involved in attacks on IDF soldiers were innocent civilians or when they claimed that hundreds of people, including children, were killed in Jenin in 2002.
NGOs like DCIP manage to keep getting lots of money from European governments and NGOs, with obviously no oversight or accountability.
And so it goes.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
From Ian:
'Meaning of independence is the ability to defend yourself'
'Meaning of independence is the ability to defend yourself'
At 8 p.m. Tuesday night, a one-minute siren will sound throughout Israel to mark the start of Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism. A total of 23,320 Israelis have fallen in battle or been killed in terrorist attacks since 1860, when Jews first moved outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.JPost Editorial: Unique remembrance
In the past year, 116 Israeli soldiers were added to the list of the fallen, including 67 who were killed in Operation Protective Edge last summer and 35 disabled IDF veterans.
There are 553 Israeli soldiers whose places of burial are unknown, including most recently Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, whose body was seized by Hamas last July.
On Tuesday night, the traditional Memorial Day opening ceremony will be held at the Western Wall, with President Reuven Rivlin and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot in attendance.
On Wednesday, around 1.5 million Israelis are expected to visit military cemeteries across the country, from Kiryat Shmona in the north to Eilat in the south. At 11 a.m. on Wednesday, a two-minute siren will sound throughout the country.
Latma: We'll be the Judge, episode 10
Of course, the day was set aside to remember and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure that the world’s only Jewish state continues to thrive and to comfort those whose loved ones are no longer with us.
But Remembrance Day is also a time of introspection.
Defense of Jewish sovereignty in Israel is a two-pronged challenge. One aspect consists of the physical protection of the Jewish people from its many enemies. Jewish power must be brandished through a strong army that is well-equipped with the most advanced weaponry. Maintaining a technological edge over the nations that inhibit the region is essential to deterrence.
Even mutually assured destruction – that element in the balance of powers that prevented a nuclear Holocaust during the long years of the Cold War – might not deter religious fanatics like the apocalyptic Shi’ite mullahs presently running Iran. But in general, it is safe to assume that as long as Israel’s enemies are cognizant of Israel’s unparalleled military advantage, they will refrain from aggression.
However, keeping a technical advantage over neighboring nations and terrorist organizations is not enough, and is ultimately tied to more fundamental aspects of Israeli society. Israel’s astounding technical innovation cannot be divorced from Israel’s unique character.
- Tuesday, April 21, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
Saudi-led airstrikes hit a target near the PLO embassy in Sanaa yesterday, damaging the building.
Tariq Ahmed Hardan of Iraq, of Palestinian ancestry, was killed.
The ambassador, Diab al-Louh, said that the target was a "metal workshop" nearby.
The PLO has moved its operations to the ambassador's home.
Some 700 Palestinian students study in Yemen; 500 of them have left through Oman. There are also some 59 Gazans in Yemen, according to the ambassador.
Tariq Ahmed Hardan of Iraq, of Palestinian ancestry, was killed.
The ambassador, Diab al-Louh, said that the target was a "metal workshop" nearby.
The PLO has moved its operations to the ambassador's home.
Some 700 Palestinian students study in Yemen; 500 of them have left through Oman. There are also some 59 Gazans in Yemen, according to the ambassador.
- Tuesday, April 21, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
Al Arabiya (Arabic) notices something interesting.
As we have mentioned before, the Houthi slogan and logo includes the phrase "Damn the Jews."
There are a few hundred Jews left in Yemen. They don't want to move to Israel despite the war.
So they are the direct targets of the Houthis.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has thrown his support behind the Houthis even though their slogan is purely antisemitic.
Officially, the Arab and Muslim world s claim that they have nothing against Jews, only Zionists, and as long as the Jews keep their place as second-class citizens. Yet the remaining Jews of Yemen fit the profile the "good Jew" - poor, wretched, and no threat at all to Muslims. And even so, the Houthis are cursing them.
And by having Hezbollah (and Iran) openly supporting the Houthis, they are openly supporting Jew-hatred!
Now in reality, Al Arabiya is a Sunni newspaper, and Sunnis don't love Jews any more than the Shiites do. it is just funny that the Sunnis are using antisemitism as an insult to Shiites, instead of doing what they normally do.
Which is to accuse their Shiite enemies of being Zionist.
As we have mentioned before, the Houthi slogan and logo includes the phrase "Damn the Jews."
There are a few hundred Jews left in Yemen. They don't want to move to Israel despite the war.
So they are the direct targets of the Houthis.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has thrown his support behind the Houthis even though their slogan is purely antisemitic.
Officially, the Arab and Muslim world s claim that they have nothing against Jews, only Zionists, and as long as the Jews keep their place as second-class citizens. Yet the remaining Jews of Yemen fit the profile the "good Jew" - poor, wretched, and no threat at all to Muslims. And even so, the Houthis are cursing them.
And by having Hezbollah (and Iran) openly supporting the Houthis, they are openly supporting Jew-hatred!
Now in reality, Al Arabiya is a Sunni newspaper, and Sunnis don't love Jews any more than the Shiites do. it is just funny that the Sunnis are using antisemitism as an insult to Shiites, instead of doing what they normally do.
Which is to accuse their Shiite enemies of being Zionist.
- Tuesday, April 21, 2015
- Elder of Ziyon
On 5 June 1969, the second anniversary of the
outbreak of the Six Day War, a four-page advertising spread appeared in The Times and other major British
newspapers. Sponsored by the League of
Arab States, and issued by the Anglo-Jordanian Alliance, it proclaimed that the
Alliance’s committee “salutes the Palestinians rendered homeless and those in
occupied territory”. Beneath were the
names of five Labour MPs: Margaret McKay, William Wilson, David Watkins, John
Ryan, and David Ensor. As well as a
quotation from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Rosalind and Helen”:
Fear not the tyrants shall rule forever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith;
They stand on the brink of that mighty river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death
The four-page spread contained nine articles, by
contributors including Ian Gilmour, Christopher Mayhew and Anthony Nutting,
three MPs prominently associated with the Council for Arab-British
Understanding (CAABU), which, funded by Arab money, had been established
immediately after the Six Day War. (David Watkins, mentioned above, was also a
zealous member; indeed, he would serve as CAABU’s director from 1983 to 1990.) Retired diplomat Sir Geoffrey Furlonge
(1903-84), another contributor, would serve as treasurer of CAABU and write Palestine is my country: the story of Musa
Alami (London, 1969); also a contributor was retired diplomat Sir Harold
Beeley (1909-2001), who that same year had begun lecturing at London
University, and would eventually chair the World of Islam Festival Trust.
The article by Gilmour – a
born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth future Secretary of State for Defence
under Edward Heath, whose government so appallingly refused to supply Israel
with spare parts for British-made tanks during the Yom Kippur War –
was referred to the Race Relations
Board as “likely to have an unsettling effect on race relations”; however, the
Board declined to proceed with the complaint, citing a lack of remit.
The extract
from Shelley’s poem caused a furore, as the second line was widely believed to
refer to Judaism. Anglo-Jordanian
Alliance president Margaret McKay – a working-class firebrand feminist who
nevertheless espoused the Arab cause with vigour, wore Arab dress in
Parliament, and ended up living in Dubai – wrote to The Times (10 June 1969) explaining that the line referred to “the
Zionists”. Ensor – a colourful
upper-middle-class member of the Labour benches – apologised for the extract;
the other three refused to do so. In any
case, many supporters of Israel, Jew and non-Jew alike, remained unconvinced by
Mrs McKay’s assurance. (She would make
headlines later in the year when she declared in New York that Britain’s Middle
East policy was controlled by the fact that 62 Jews sat in Parliament.) The
Times itself had in the very issue in which the advertisement appeared
distanced itself in a leading article from the contents, which it called
“extremely partisan” and “not calculated to bring a settlement any nearer”; on
7 June, beneath a complainant’s letter, it added that it “much regretted”
publication of the “grossly offensive” Shelley extract, which it would not have
carried had the advertisement, owing to a mix-up, not escaped the usual
practice of being “submitted for editorial clearance”.
This furore
took place against the backdrop of what the late Professor Lionel Kochan, in
his review of events in Britain for the American Jewish Committee’s Year Book, described as “an
intensification of pro-Arab propaganda” – which had made headway in the United
Nations Association, Oxfam, and Save the Children Fund, and was tightening its
grip on sections of the Labour and Liberal parties. Michael Foot (later a life peer), former
editor of the left-wing weekly Tribune,
had recently been recruited to the Arab cause.
Nastiness had infiltrated the Movement for Colonial Freedom (an
organisation with many Labour Party parliamentarians, including that future foe
of Israel, Tony Benn) whose monthly bulletin for September carried two
offensive cartoons: one using a dollar sign to depict Israel, the other bearing
the inscription “Apartheid-Zion Nazi system”.
The Palestine
Solidarity Campaign (PSC) was consolidating.
It, to quote Kochan, consisted of “most of the members of the General
Union of Arab Students (with about 30 branches at the universities, and a
variegated collection of British and Commonwealth New Left groups dominated by
Trotskyites and Maoists” and was supported by a number of extreme left
expatriate Israelis. Thirty left-wing British students were reportedly among
145 students from Europe and the United States who flew out of Jordan to join
Arafat’s Al-Fatah. It was suspected that
the person who bombed the Zim Shipping Line’s Regent Street offices was not an
Arab but a far left adherent of the Arab cause.
The year saw numerous attacks on Jewish premises in London, including
bombs at a Marks & Spencer store, and more attacks were warned of by the
Amman-based PFLP leader George Habash, who added that
“Our enemy is
not Israel full stop. Israel is backed
by imperialist forces…. Consequently, if the West continues to back Israel, we
have to regard the west as part of … the enemy.”
A Scotland
Yard Special Branch officer told The
Times:
“Frankly, keeping an eye on all these places is
almost impossible. All we can do is hope
for the best luck in the world.”
(Sounds
familiar.)
CAABU
was also gaining influence. Unlike the
PSC, CAABU was the respectable face of the anti-Israel cause. One of its contributors to the 1969
advertisement mentioned above –
Christopher Mayhew (1915-97; created a life peer as Baron Mayhew in 1981; a
Labour MP until 1974, when he joined the Liberals ) – received in 1969 from
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of Dubai £50,000 to set up an Arab Friendship
Foundation in Switzerland. Mayhew
recalled in 1977 (see the pamphlet CAABU's Tenth Anniversary, published
in London that year by the Arab-British Centre):
"Those who founded CAABU, at
a meeting here in the House of Commons ten years ago, took on a formidable task
– to challenge the deeply held beliefs about Palestine of the overwhelming
majority of the British people.
An opinion poll just published by
the Sunday Times had shown that only 2% of the
British people supported the Arabs. It was almost universally agreed that
the 1967 war had been planned and started by the Arabs with Russian support;
that the Arabs were racialists who aimed to drive the Jews into the sea; that
the Palestinian refugees had left Israel in 1948 and should resettle elsewhere
in the Arab world; that the refugee camps were kept in being by the Arab
Governments as a political weapon against Israel; that Israel, a small country
surrounded by numerous enemies, had no designs at all on Arab territory unless,
reasonably enough, to secure her own security; and that, in general, after the
appalling sufferings of the Jewish people, Israel was entitled, on moral, legal
and historical grounds, to the wholehearted support of the civilised world.
To make things worse, these
opinions were shared at that time by almost all newspaper proprietors and
editors, almost all the directing staff of the BBC and ITV, almost all MPs, and
almost the entire publishing and film industries.
They were also supported, with
enthusiasm and sincerity, by the great bulk of Britain's large, lively and
influential Jewish community, many of whose members were totally dedicated to
Israel's cause and were willing to make great sacrifices of time and money to
support it…
None of the founders of CAABU, I
feel sure, expected to enjoy the experience of challenging the Zionist lobby
... but it was plainly a job that had to be done by someone…”
Another of the contributors to the
advertisement, baronet’s son (Sir) Anthony Nutting (1920-99), a Foreign
Office Arabist who became a Conservative MP in 1945 and was once talked of as a
future prime minister, had resigned as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs
during the Suez Crisis of 1956, and soon afterwards lost his seat in the
Commons. On 12 November 1969 the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency reported that he had been
refused entry to Israel
‘because of "hostile"
remarks he was reported to have made while visiting Arab countries…
Mr. Nutting attributed the Israeli
ban to his remark that the Israel-occupied West Bank was "one large
prison" [sounds
familiar!] adding that they "must have something terrible to
hide."
An Israeli spokesman said yesterday
that Mr Nutting would have been welcomed to visit the West Bank and see
conditions for himself. He was barred
because of a speech he made to students in Beirut several days ago in which he
reportedly said that the Palestine question can be solved only by force and
that it was up to the Palestinian guerrillas to impose such a solution. The
spokesman called those remarks inimical to Israel's security.’
Among CAABU’s enthusiasts was journalist
Michael Adams (1920-2005), its
inaugural director. He had worked for the BBC early in his career (his
son Paul is its chief diplomatic correspondent) but had later joined The Guardian. It had been
one of his articles which prompted a columnist in the Jewish Chronicle (30 June 1967) to observe:
"It is with a sinking feeling
and eventually turning stomach that one examines the Guardian each
morning."
While
still employed by The Guardian, Adams
had gone on a CAABU-sponsored trip to
the Middle East, which resulted, as intended, in a series of articles biased
against Israel. The Guardian printed them without explaining that
they had been subsidised by Arab money. There was also a despatch by
Adams from Cairo which talked of the "forcible expulsion across the
burning desert of Palestinian Arabs to Gaza". In fact, those
deportees were members of the Palestine Liberation Army and a threat to
Israel's security, as The Guardian afterwards grudgingly
acknowledged. Adams also used the offensive term "final
solution" to describe Israeli policy. In
the summer of 1969, on the BBC's Panorama, a flagship weekly current
affairs programme, Adams spewed out vitriol about "nation-wide and even
world-wide Jewish pressure" – in
other words, a certain lobby.
And in one of his platform
appearances, he foreshadowed the avoidance by the BBC and its ideological twin The
Guardian of the T-word, rhetorically enquiring why the British press
referred to "Arab terrorists".
Nevill Barbour (1895-1972), an
Oxford-educated Arabic scholar from Northern Ireland, was another CAABU
activist with influence at the BBC. He had lived in Tangier and then
Cairo for some years before moving to Palestine in the 1930s with his wife and
children, acting as local correspondent for The
Times, and editing the Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society.
Following the outbreak of the Second World War he returned to Britain, joining
the BBC in 1940 as Arabic Public Relations Officer. He launched the
magazine Arabic Listener and subsequently became Assistant Head of the
BBC's Eastern Service, retiring in 1956. The best-known of his
publications, Nisi Dominus: A Survey of the Palestine Controversy, was
published in 1946.
Yet another facilitator of a CAABU/BBC
nexus was Doreen Ingrams (1906-97), wife of a British colonial
administrator, Harold
Ingrams (1897-1973), who had been
stationed in Zanzibar, Hadhramaut, and southern Arabia, dressing like the
locals. Her diaries of the couple’s travels formed the basis for her book
A Time in Arabia (1970). Adams himself wrote her obituary in The Independent (31 July 1997):
'Doreen Ingrams spent 12 years as a
Senior Assistant in the Arabic Service of the BBC, where she was in charge of
talks and magazine programmes, especially programmes for women. Gathering
material for these, she travelled widely and after her retirement in 1967 she kept
closely in touch with developments in the Arab world.
In 1972 she made use of
little-known archive material to produce a work of lasting historical
significance in Palestine
Papers 1917-1922 with the subtitle Seeds of Conflict, pinpointing the
responsibility of British ministers and officials for the subsequent tragedy in
Palestine. She was a founder-member of [CAABU] and served for many years on its
Executive Committee. At a reception in her honour in 1994 the members of the
Arab Club in Britain presented her with a silver tray as a symbol of "her
outstanding contribution to the promotion of Arab-British
understanding"....'
But it was the BBC’s Keith Kyle
(1925-2007) who, thumbing his nose at the terms of his employer’s Charter,
provided CAABU with its biggest boost from that quarter. Kyle seems to have been
the first BBC broadcaster to flout the neutrality incumbent upon the BBC
when, during the tension leading up to the Six Day War, he declared that
"fundamentally in this dispute the Arabs
are completely in the right. There can be no question about this at
all."
These words were also printed in the 1 June 1967
issue of The Listener, a BBC publication.
Kyle thus anticipating Jeremy Bowen and the rest of today’s BBC Israel-bashing coterie by several decades. However, unlike Bowen, so infuriatingly and risibly out of his depth, the intellectual Kyle clearly possessed an academic knowledge of history and politics which, but for the overt bias in which he unashamedly indulged, undoubtedly fitted him for his post as a foreign correspondent. The Oxford-educated son of an Anglican clergyman, he joined the BBC following five years as Washington correspondent of The Economist.
Kyle thus anticipating Jeremy Bowen and the rest of today’s BBC Israel-bashing coterie by several decades. However, unlike Bowen, so infuriatingly and risibly out of his depth, the intellectual Kyle clearly possessed an academic knowledge of history and politics which, but for the overt bias in which he unashamedly indulged, undoubtedly fitted him for his post as a foreign correspondent. The Oxford-educated son of an Anglican clergyman, he joined the BBC following five years as Washington correspondent of The Economist.
Outrageously – why did the BBC let him
get away with it? – he identified
openly with CAABU from its infancy. He was a keynote speaker at one of
its first major rallies, where the Jewish Chronicle (29 November
1968) noted "the intense anti-Jewish feeling generated in the CAABU
audience – and among some of the speakers – by the very existence of the Jewish
State, referred to as the Zionist State" as well as the way pro-Israel
Jewish questioners were mocked and shouted down.
One of the
worst examples of Kyle’s pro-Arab stance concerned the bungled hijacking
attempt (with innocent casualties) by PFLP terrorists of an El Al aircraft at
Zurich Airport in February 1969. He had learned of the plan from Arab
contacts in Damascus, but had not disclosed the information "to avoid
Israeli retaliation against it". In
a subsequent attempt to prevent him visiting Israel there were threats of him
being prosecuted as “an accessory before the fact” if he set foot there.
In the same
year he presented on BBC programmes such as 24 Hours reports on the
Middle East highly biased against Israel and replete with gratuitous comments
of his own. For example, he suggested that the nine Iraqi Jews convicted
on trumped up charges of spying charges and publicly hanged in Baghdad in
January were indeed guilty, accused Israel of violating the 1949 Geneva
Convention on the treatment of populations under occupation, and denounced
Israel’s policy of “massive retaliation”.
Aghast, a Jewish Chronicle columnist (9 May 1969) observed:
"The casual viewer will
doubtless have been fooled into believing that the Israeli occupation of Arab
territories is barbaric and ruthless."
On behalf of
the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Sir Barnett Janner (later Lord Janner;
1892-1982) and Victor Mishcon (later Lord Mishcon; 1915-2006), discussed
communal concerns regarding Kyle’s “slanted” reports with the Chairman of the
Board of Governors of the BBC, Lord Hill.
But following an investigation of the transcripts – by the BBC itself,
as all complaints of bias to the BBC still are – the BBC (to quote Lionel
Kochan again)
“were apparently satisfied with the
objectivity of their reporter, who happens to be political and foreign affairs
adviser to the BBC TV Current Affairs group”
(Sounds
familiar.)
Kyle was
quoted in The Times (16 July 1969) as saying:
“I simply refuse to discuss the
Middle East in terms of pro- and anti. I
am not a Middle East expert. I went
there to look at the situation afresh … I have a bias towards peace.”
Lionel Kochan
considered that
“The balance was restored, to some
extent, when opportunity was given to Kyle’s critics, in July, to confront him
on two separate occasions in the studio.
With Kyle in the chair, a confrontation between Tel Aviv University professor
Zvi Yavetz [the distinguished Romanian-born historian] and [American University
of Beirut] Professor Yusaf [Yusuf] Sayigh – who refused to appear in the same
studio – representing the PLO – was widely held to have been a verbal victory for the Israeli. A week later, Kyle met four of his Jewish
critics in the studio in a “Talkback” programme.”
(The latter
may or may not have been have been the occasion on which, according to The
Times (19 July 1969), Kyle was due to face David Pela, deputy editor of the
Jewish Chronicle, Professor Zvi Yavetz, and non-Jewish Labour MP Raymond
Fletcher.)
Also incensed
by Kyle’s bias was Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, who cancelled a
scheduled interview with the BBC journalist.
Kyle, on entering Israel, was refused security clearance to examine the
work of the UN observers in the Suez Canal zone. He subsequently became
prominently associated with the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA;
Chatham House) and wrote tendentious books on Suez and on Israel. In
1983, when membership secretary of the RIIA, he invited as speaker Dr Israel
Shahak, chairman of the so-called (and miniscule) Israel League for Human and
Civil Rights, who had written a book containing this evil claim:
"In
the Jewish State, only the Jews are considered human. Non-Jews have the
status of beasts."
Need we be surprised that Kyle's obituary in that
infamously anti-Israel newspaper The Guardian
(27 February 2007) observed that Kyle "would have made a wise foreign
secretary"?
Daphne Anson is an Australian who under her real name has authored and co-authored several books and many articles on historical topics including Jewish ones. She blogs under an alias in order to separate her professional identity from her blogging one.
From Ian:
Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Arabs Loathe Hezbollah
Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Arabs Loathe Hezbollah
Tariq al-Hamid, a prominent Saudi editor and political analyst, said that both Iran and Hezbollah have "gone haywire" as a result of the Saudi-led coalition's air strikes against the Iranian-backed Houthi militias in Yemen.The Emergency
Al-Hamid pointed out that Iran and Hezbollah were now frustrated because of the severe blows that their allies have been dealt in Yemen. "They were hoping that the Houthi control over Yemen would boost the morale of their followers, who are already frustrated because of what is happening to them in Syria," he said. "All the crazy folks in the region are now targeting Saudi Arabia. What is the difference between Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda? And what is the difference between Iran and the Islamic State? The answer is simple; they are all trying to establish a foothold on the border with Saudi Arabia."
Addressing the Hezbollah leader, a Saudi blogger wrote: "You must pay the price for the crime you committed against Lebanon in 2006, when you destroyed Lebanon through your light-heated actions. All what you were seeking back then was to rally as many Arabs and Muslims behind you through your dirty trick." Another blogger wrote: "It is time for the Arab countries to arrest the terrorist Nasrallah and bring him to trial for his interference in Yemen's affairs and crimes against Syria, as well as his betrayal of his country, Lebanon."
Nasrallah and his Hezbollah terrorist group are now more isolated than ever in the Arab world. Until a few years ago, Nasrallah was seen as a "hero" of the Arab world because of his fight against Israel.
Now, however, many Arabs seem to have woken up to the reality that Nasrallah is nothing but an Iranian puppet whose sole goal is to serve his masters in Tehran. This, of course, is good news for moderate Arabs and Muslims in the region. But it remains to be seen whether the U.S. Administration and other Western powers will also wake up and realize that Iran and its proxies pose a real threat not only to Israel, but also to many Arabs and Muslims.
Let us be clear about what the White House is considering. It is threatening to cease protecting Israel from the jackals at the United Nations and other international organizations. These words from the Obama administration came the same week that the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women singled out Israel—alone among the UN’s 193 member nations—as the worst abuser of women’s rights in the world. In brief, Obama is signaling his desire to Europeanize American policy toward Israel.Why I began labeling Guardian Readers and their ilk “The Fascist Left”
Two weeks later, Obama told Friedman: “It has been personally difficult for me to hear…expressions that somehow…this administration has not done everything it could to look out for Israel’s interest.” Why? “Because of the deep affinities that I feel for the Israeli people and for the Jewish people.”
Translation: Some of my best friends are Jewish.
Many liberal American Jews think of Obama as their friend. He is not—not the friend of any Jew who understands his people are under unique and unprecedented threat. Obama is working to strengthen not only Iran’s hand but also the hand of those in the United States who believe the relationship between the U.S. and the Jewish state should be cleaved.
Nor is Obama a friend of Israel, for his policies are now aiding and abetting the nation that poses a literally apocalyptic danger to the Jewish people. If this deal is signed on June 30, Barack Obama will have made the world a far less safe and far more dangerous place—and by signing it, he will have signaled his willingness to see the Jewish future sacrificed on the altar of his own ambitions.
The threat is not immediate. The emergency is.
Madeleine Albright was the first woman to become the United States Secretary of State when she was sworn in on January 23, 1997.
According to Wikipedia “Albright was raised Catholic, but converted to Episcopalianism at the time of her marriage in 1959. She did not learn until adulthood that her parents were originally Jewish and that many of her Jewish relatives in Czechoslovakia had perished in the Holocaust, including three of her grandparents.” It was during her tenure as Secretary of State that she learned of her Jewish religious background (or so she claimed at the time).
It was when her family history was mischievously ‘revealed’ by Britain’s Guardian Newspaper that I became forever alienated from that racist publication. They editorialized that the knowledge of her antecedents made for an unbridgeable conflict of interest between her Jewish ‘past’ and her senior American administration position as Secretary of State and therefore she had no choice but to resign from that position. It was a moment of shocking clarity for me, my Damascene conversion.
We do not ever repudiate a persons’ right to express themselves because of their race, their religion, their color, their ethnicity, their sex or their sexuality. That is one of the fundamental rights that inhere in a democratic system. To state that a politician should not have an opinion is absurdly illogical. In fact, I cannot stress enough how infantile the Guardian editorial was. If we assume the sanity of the Guardian Newspapers’ editorial staff then the only possible explanations for making such a statement was either temporary insanity or a concealed agenda.
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