Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Rabid anti-Semite speaks at House of Lords at invitation of Muslim Lord Ahmed

by Stephen Pollard
A TERM has returned to the lexicon of political debate in recent months; a term for which, in a decent world, we should have no need. That term is “anti-Semitism”.

In January, Labour produced two posters. One depicted Michael Howard as a Shylock or Fagin caricature. The other pasted the faces of Mr Howard and Oliver Letwin on to pigs’ bodies. In February, figures showed that anti-Semitic attacks rose to record levels in 2004 — 42 per cent higher than in 2003. Add to this Ken Livingstone’s comparison of a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard, and the odour of anti-Semitism is clearly with us once more.

But there is a more astonishing incident which has yet to receive any coverage.

Lord Ahmed, who has been a Labour life peer since 1998, is the first Muslim to have been so honoured. His presence in the House of Lords is symbolically important. His behaviour matters, both in the message it sends to his fellow Muslims and in what it represents to the rest of us.

In May, Lord Ahmed called — at considerable personal risk — for Islamic militants such as Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri to be deported. The risk was real: a fatwa was immediately issued against him.

But his behaviour has not always been so admirable.

On February 23, Lord Ahmed hosted a book launch in the House of Lords for a man going by the name of Israel Shamir. “Israel Shamir” is, in fact, a Swedish-domiciled anti-Semite also known as Jöran Jermas.

The gist of Shamir/Jermas’s speech at the meeting can be gleaned from its title, “Jews and the Empire”. It included observations such as: “All the [political] parties are Zionist-infiltrated.” “Your newspapers belong to Zionists . . . Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking.” “In the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble — and that is Jewish supremacy drive . . . in Iraq, the US and its British dependency continue the same old fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy in the Middle East.” “The Jews like an Empire . . . This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance . . . Simple minds call it ‘treacherous behaviour’, but it is actually love of Empire per se.” “Now, there is a large and thriving Muslim community in England . . . they are now on the side of freedom, against the Empire, and they are not afraid of enforcers of Judaic values, Jewish or Gentile. This community is very important in order to turn the tide.”

Why would Lord Ahmed have hosted such a man in the Lords? It is, of course, possible that Lord Ahmed had no idea that Shamir/Jermas was a rabid anti-Semite. Yet it takes only a quick Google to discover his views and background. He has worked for Zavtra, Russia’s most anti-Semitic publication, and is allied with the Vanguard News Network, set up by an American, Alex Linder — a man so extreme that he was even ostracised by the US neo-Nazi National Alliance.

Indeed, Shamir/Jermas’s own website proudly reprints his views: “Jews asked God to kill, destroy, humiliate, exterminate, defame, starve, impale Christians, to usher in Divine Vengeance and to cover God’s mantle with blood of goyim . . . ” “The Ashkenazi Jews believed that spilled Jewish blood has a magic effect of calling down Divine Vengeance on the heads of the Gentiles . . . The picture of Jews slaughtering children for cultic reasons exerted huge impact on the Christian peoples of Europe.” On and on it goes.

Other figures at the forefront of campaigns against Israel are wise to Shamir/Jermas’s toxic anti-Semitism; Ali Abunimah, for example, who writes for the Electronic Intifada website and Hussein Ibish, press spokesman of the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, gave warning in 2001 that Shamir/Jermas was not anti-Israeli but anti-Semitic. It is surely not unreasonable to expect Lord Ahmed to have exercised a cursory check on his guest.

If, however, Lord Ahmed does feel that he made a mistake in inviting him, he has yet to demonstrate it. Shamir/Jermas’s speech was made nearly two months ago. On learning of its contents, I wrote to Lord Ahmed, asking him two questions. Did he consider the invitation to have been a mistake? Did he condemn the remarks? He did not reply.

Yesterday, I phoned him. When I told him that I planned to write a piece drawing attention to his actions in hosting Shamir/Jermas and that I wanted to give him every opportunity to respond, he replied: “I am not even going to speak with you.” He then put the phone down.

Lord Ahmed’s refusal to condemn the remarks seems to indicate that he sees nothing wrong with inviting such a man to speak, or with the words Shamir/Jermas used.

There is an instructive parallel. Howard Flight was stripped of the Conservative whip for expressing a mild opinion about spending cuts. Lord Ahmed invited a known anti-Semite to speak in the House of Lords, has not uttered a word of criticism since and remains a Labour peer. Before hearing from Lord Ahmed, I also wrote to Lord Grocott, the Labour Chief Whip in the Lords. I asked him if, given Lord Ahmed’s apparent lack of contrition, Lord Grocott considered it appropriate that Lord Ahmed should still hold the Labour whip? No reply.

All Lord Ahmed need do to destroy the notion that he supports Shamir/Jermas’s views is to admit that he made a mistake in inviting him, and to condemn his words.

If anyone had ever told British academics that there would come a time when they would punish colleagues because of the views they held, and would treat them as pariahs and try to destroy their livelihoods in order to intimidate others into toeing the sole approved political line, they would have been incredulous. In the western tradition the universities are, after all, the custodians of free intellectual inquiry and open debate. Censorship, suppression of ideas and intellectual intimidation are associated with totalitarian regimes which attempt to coerce people into the approved way of thinking.

Yet that is what is now happening in British universities -- and the pariah is, of course, Israel. As the Guardian reported yesterday, the Association of University Teachers is about to debate a proposed boycott of Israeli academics who refuse to denounce their government's policies in the occupied territories. But the motion will 'exclude "conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's colonial and racist policies".' So in true totalitarian tradition, those who denounce their own will be permitted to have a livelihood. Gee, thanks! To survive in the cradle of free expression, Israelis will have to betray their own people. This is a natural development from the implicit -- and sometimes explicitly stated -- assumption that has been coursing through British intellectual circles in the current hate-fest against Israel, that only those British Jews who denounce Israel's policies can be considered to be British; anyone who supports Israel is guilty of 'dual loyalty'.

This requirement to denounce Israel as the price of continued social acceptance is doubly disgusting. First, it is a profound betrayal of the cardinal principle of intellectual endeavour, which is freedom of speech and debate. And second, it is a monstrous inversion of right and wrong, victim and victimiser which turns Israel, the victim of unbroken annihilatory Arab terror for the past half century, into the regional bully while sanitising Palestinian aggression. Yes, the Palestinians have suffered hardship and restrictions in the last few years; but that is because they have been engaged in a murderous war against Israel which has deliberately targeted innocent civilians and against which Israel, like any other country, has had to defend itself. Before this current intifada started, the Palestinians were living under Palestinian governance. If they genuinely foreswore their war of extermination against Israel, there would be no barrier to their quest for self-government and prosperity. To pretend that their difficulties are caused by the victims of their own aggression is simply Orwellian double-speak.

An unnamed academic defends the boycott in the Guardian story 'as a means of registering my protest against Israelis' lack of respect for human rights and continuing illegal occupation of Palestinian land.' This parrot mindlessly repeats the mantra of the left about the 'illegal occupation' in apparent ignorance of the fact that a) the occupation is perfectly legal under international law as the defensive measure against attack that it was; b) that it is not 'Palestinian land' at all but territory that belonged to the British colonial power until it was illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt and is now -- since they have washed their hands of it -- most fairly to be described as no-man's land; and c) that parts of these territories, such as Hebron, are the sites of Jewish settlement of great antiquity, predating the Arab colonisation by several centuries but where Jews were massacred and driven out by Arab occupiers. If we're talking colonisation here, the Jews of Palestine were the historic victims.

What is notable about the AUT motion is that it reflects the truly shocking ignorance of the region's history and current political reality, the resulting deep gullibility to propaganda based on lies, and the consequent vicious double standards and prejudice that now characterise British received opinion on the subject of Israel. Yet these are our university teachers, the very people responsible for shaping the assumptions of a society, whose own profound ignorance, prejudice and twisted morality are now on such conspicuous display.

Another Oslo deja-vu moment: Palestinians ask Israel for free weapons

Amazing how history repeats itself!

Senior officials in the Palestinian Authority have presented a plan to American and Israeli officials for coordinating the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.

A source involved in the contacts told Haaretz on Wednesday that the plan includes coordinating the handover of overall security responsibility in the areas the Israel Defense Forces leaves to the PA's National Security force; a complete cease-fire during the evacuation process; and a Palestinian commitment to take all necessary steps to prevent shooting at Israeli targets outside the Strip.

However, the Palestinians condition the plan on Israel agreement to it and on Israeli help in equipping the Gazan security forces with weapons and other equipment necessary for upholding law and order in Gaza. They say that during the conflict with the Israelis over the last four years, the PA security services lost their combat capabilities and that the armed organizations have far more weapons than the forces under the authority of the PA.

Noble Iraqi terrorists are thugs who kill for $50

The true mind of a terrorist revealed.

Yet most of the world still regards Palestinian thugs as somehow more noble than their like-minded Iraqi counterparts.

Iraq's hottest new television program is a reality show. But the players are not there by choice. And they don't win big bucks, a new spouse or a dream job.

Instead, all the characters on "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" are captured suspected insurgents. And for more than a month, they have been riveting viewers with tales of how they killed, kidnapped, raped or beheaded other Iraqis, usually for a few hundred dollars per victim.

Seated before an Iraqi flag, the dejected and cowed prisoners answer questions from an off-camera inquisitor who mocks their behavior. Some sport bruised faces and black eyes. Far from appearing to be confident heroes battling U.S. occupation, they come across as gangsters.

"I watch the show every night, and I wait for it patiently, because it is very revealing," said Abdul Kareem Abdulla, 42, a Baghdad shop owner. "For the first time, we saw those who claim to be jihadists as simple $50 murderers who would do everything in the name of Islam. Our religion is too lofty, noble and humane to have such thugs and killers. I wish they would hang them now, and in the same place where they did their crimes. They should never be given any mercy."

Broadcast on al-Iraqiya, the state-run network set up by the U.S. occupation authority in 2003, "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" has become one of most effective arrows in the government's counterinsurgency propaganda quiver.

"It has shown the Iraqi people the reality of those insurgents, [that] they are criminals, killers, murderers, thieves," Interior Minister Falah Naqib said last week.

US Senate to give Palestinians $200 million - without conditions

Unbelievable. Time to write to your senator.

The Senate will restore a presidential waiver to $200 million in fast-track aid for the Palestinians, meaning the money will be spent without conditions.

The removal of the presidential waiver last month by the U.S. House of Representatives would have made it much harder for President Bush to send funds directly to the Palestinian Authority. JTA has learned that the Senate Appropriations Committee will restore the waiver Wednesday when it refers the request to the full Senate. It will keep in place nonbinding language urging the president to assign the money to projects run by nongovernmental organizations, and requiring two spending reviews in the next six months, but restoring the waiver removes any conditions on the aid.

Bush wants to fast-track the aid to facilitate Palestinian sovereignty after Israel pulls out of the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank this July.

Sharon's folly, continued

I know I've covered this before, but the follies of "disengagement" keep adding up and the Bulldozer keeps going ahead.

Sharon says (and maybe thinks) that Bush will support him in keeping Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, at least near Jerusalem (another possible retreat for Sharon?) He is apparently hoping that by trading Gaza he can strengthen Israel's hold on the WB.

But Bush is making no such commitment, and anyway the clock is running out on his presidency. Who says the next President will be as sympathetic to Israel as W is?

More troubling is that Israel is not only preparing for rocket attacks on Ashkelon after the Gaza withdrawal - they are expecting it!

And of course Hamas is considering the withdrawal a victory for the intifada and evidence of Jewish weakness.

There are very few reasons being given for this bizarre plan besides those that involve lots of wishful thinking. It didn't work during Oslo and one had to ask why, exactly, people think it is a good idea now to give up the most precious commodity in the Middle East while asking for nothing in return.

Abbas solves terrorist problem!

Abbas, being the brilliant head-of-pseudo-state that he is, decided that he can get rid of all wanted Palestinian terrorists by just hiring them as trusted employees!

I mean, it isn't as if they've done anything that he disapproves of, right?

Notice also the fractured English in this press release from the Palestinian International Press Center.

GAZA, Palestine, April 4,2005 (IPC+Agencies)---Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) issued Sunday a decree to set up two committees in charge of solving the issue of the wanted people by Israel by recruiting them in the PNA institutions

According the local Al Ayam daily newspaper, the decree gave the committees of officials in Gaza Strip and the West Bank two weeks to resolve the issue of the wanted people.

The statement by presidnet office siad that the wenated people will be no more liable to amy attack or chase up by the israelis.

The president moved to contain the chaotic and lawlessness and place all the security service in the west bank in high alert staring in late Saturday evening.

On the other hand, the interior minister Nasser Yousef announced the appointment of an acting interim national security chief Nidal el-Assouri, a veteran security agent, a day after the former commander Hajj Ismail had quit over the Ramallah incident.

Shin Bet foils Museum attack

One wonders how much of the current "calm" is from Palestinians really agreeing to halt attacks and how much is from the excellent work of Israeli intelligence.

Security authorities have foiled a plan in February to stage a terror attack at the Armored Corps Museum at Latrun, near the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway.

The story was cleared for publication Monday.

The General Security Service says a Popular Front cell planned to dispatch two suicide bombers and a car bomb to the busy tourist site.

Yousef George Daoud, 27, was arrested in February on suspicion of masterminding the plot, which also included Nadel Mahmed Yousef Abu Alma and Fahmi Basil Avodi, who were detained in January.

Under investigation, the trio admitted they were planning the attack. They picked the site because one of the terrorists was familiar with the area from a former job at the nearby Trappist Monastery.

The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected the Palestinian Authority's claim that it enjoyed sovereign immunity and upheld a lower court ruling ordering it to pay $116 million to the estate of Hamas terror victim Yaron Ungar.

"The defendants [The PA and the PLO] argue that the state of Palestine exists," wrote the court, "that they constitute core elements of the state and that therefore they are immune from suit. This argument has a quicksilver quality. It is hard to pin down exactly when or how the defendants assert that Palestine achieved statehood...

"We recognize that the status of the Palestinian territories is in many ways sui generis (exceptional). Here, however, the defendants have not carried their burden of showing that Palestine satisfied the requirements for statehood under the applicable principles of international law at any time."

Hamas increases range, accuracy of Kassams

I'm sure that they are testing the rockets to make sure that they don't accidentally hit schools or synagogues. Those Hamas thugs are so considerate!

Palestinians are performing testing of the Kassam off the coast of the Gaza Strip with the aim of improving the range and accuracy of the rocket, an IDF Operations Branch official told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday.

According to Brig.-Gen. Gadi Shamni, head of the IDF operations department and former division commander of the Gaza Strip, the missiles' range has been increased to 9 km. The previous range reported to the committee has been 7 km. He said testing was also being carried out within the strip.

Shamni said the accuracy of the rockets was also being checked by boats deployed to check the nautical landing sites.

Prime violators hold seats on U.N. rights panel

Freedom House is a human rights organization that actually gets it.

The world's most repressive countries hold more than a quarter of the seats in the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Commission and their presence has subverted the panel's mandate, a respected watchdog group reported yesterday.
In its annual report on the world's biggest human-rights abusers, Freedom House lists 18 countries as the 'worst of the worst regimes' and notes that six of them -- China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe -- are members of the commission.

Chief rabbi declares Bnei Menashe from India to be descended from ancient Israelites

Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar decided on Wednesday to recognize the members of India's Bnei Menashe community as descendants of the ancient Israelites.
Amar also decided to dispatch a team of rabbinical judges to India to convert the community members to Orthodox Jews. Such a conversion will enable their immigration to Israel under the Law of Return, without requiring the Interior Ministry's authorization.

The International Fellowship of Christians & Jews (IFCJ), a group that raises money among evangelical Christians for Jewish causes, has undertaken to finance the process of converting the Bnei Menashe community and bringing them to Israel.

The Bnei Menashe community consists of close to 7,000 members of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo tribe, which lives in northeast India near the border of Myanmar (formally Burma). For generations they kept Jewish traditions, claiming to be descended from the tribe of Menashe, one of the ten lost Israeli tribes that were exiled by the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C.E. and have since disappeared.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the tribe's members converted to Christianity, but about 30 years ago, some of the community began moving back to Judaism and set themselves apart from the rest of the tribe.

A number of researchers who visited the group over the years got the impression that their traditions are authentically Israelite in origin.

Everyone knows disengagement won't help, no one wants to stop it

Yediot Acharonot (Hebrew) reports:

Right after the Gaza disengagement, according to military assessments, the cessation of terrorist attacks will end.
The theater of operations will be Judea and Samaria.
The threat will entail attacks on major roads, military camps, and settlements.
The main threat will come from mortar and Kassam rocket attacks on Route 6 (Trans-Israel Highway) and on the cities of the coastal plain.
The terrorist organizations have started to order rockets, while Israeli security services unite in an attempt to block the smuggling.

Meanwhile, Ha'aretz reports that the Great White Holocaust-Denying Hope is losing power by the day:

Abbas' ongoing conflict with his prime minister, Ahmed Qureia - first over the composition of the cabinet, and recently over Qureia's aggressive statements against coordinating the disengagement from Gaza with Israel - show that contempt for Abbas' authority has even reached the ranks of the PA.

On Wednesday night, the PA security services did conduct patrols of Ramallah, on Abbas' orders, but they refrained from clashing with or arresting the armed men - and yesterday, the PA agreed that these men would also not be arrested or interfered with in the future. When some of these men later strode boldly through the Muqata's front door, no one laid a finger on them.

Almost three months after taking office, it has become clear that Abbas' influence over the armed men, the security services and the leaders of Fatah's institutions is virtually nonexistent. The gap between his exalted international standing and his ability to impose his authority at home is growing, and it is not clear what will remain of his promises to reform the PA and provide personal security to ordinary Palestinians.

And ABC points out that Abbas' tough words don't even last a day:

Palestinian officials Thursday backed away from a pledge to crack down on gunmen who shot up Mahmoud Abbas' office building, underlining the difficulties authorities face in restoring order in the chaotic West Bank.
The Palestinian leader was in the building but unhurt in the gunfire late Wednesday. He ordered his forces to go after the gunmen, who security officials said had "crossed a red line" by attacking the seat of government. But in the light of day, officials adopted a conciliatory line, and one even admitted they feared coming under armed attack themselves.

Under a compromise, the gunmen will be allowed to rejoin their former units in the security forces.

That "red line" sure moves quick in Ramallah.

So it appears that Israel and the US are relying on a weak, lying terror-supporting weasel to enforce his worthless agreements. It appears that Hamas will (or has) taken over Gaza completely, and has plans to take over the PLO, so the homes built by Israelis who sacrificed so much to build on uninhabited land will end up being used by those who are sworn to kill them.

Is there any advantage to "disengagement"? In real terms, it is unclear. Israel is certainly gaining diplomatically in trying to better relations with other Arab countries. It does not appear to be treated any better in the European press, ironically. But most of the advantages are vapor - Israel is hoping that it will have a stronger hold on the West Bank communities, Israel is hoping that major attacks stay low for a few months after disengagement (no one is realistically thinking that the violence will not return within a couple of years), Israel is hoping that Egypt will help stop smuggling of weapons into Gaza, Israel is hoping that Kassam rockets won't pour into Negev towns, Israel is hoping that Palestinians will reduce their endemic hatred of having Jews owning land in the Middle East.

And the downside of giving in to terror is significant.

Sounds a lot like Oslo, when Israel placed its trust in Arafat. And even then, Israel promised its citizens that if Arafat wouldn't live up to his agreements then Israel would re-occupy. In exchange for empty promises, Israel ended up giving up its legal claim to the territories, implicitly agreeing with the world's assessment of Israel as land thief, not as a legitimate claimant to Judea, Samaria and Gaza. And then as now, Israel trusted an American president (who is personally very fond of the Jewish state) to look out for her interests and back her up if she has to defend herself.

But in a world of geopolitics, it is a bit naive to put your faith in personalities rather than clear, enforceable, bilateral agreements in which the penalty for non-compliance is clear and agreed as well.

It does appear that the current Israeli government has not learned the lessons of Oslo well enough. It does not take a prophet to predict that disaster is looming; all we can hope at this point is that it is only a small disaster or that a miracle occurs.

Antisemitic nutcase professor in North Carolina

You have to check out this home page. It's got it all...USS Liberty, Rachel Corrie, the fake "We Control America" quote, bizarre conspiracy theories concerning Israel, ISM links, links to Al Jazeera, and much, much more. Not to mention a link to an Introduction to Islam from a website that supports suicide terror.

This is the type of idiot that is teaching at US colleges.

And, as LGF reports, her final exam reeks of bias. Can you imagine a student passing the course if he or she disagrees with this moron's ridiculous conspiracy-minded premises?

Dubai offended by picture of Jewish kids in school textbook

Once again, we'll see how long it takes NGOs to condemn the bigotry in Dubai....

DUBAI — Education authorities here have promised to review a book taught in an international private school that features a photograph of two Jewish children sporting plaited hair and yarmulke.

Dr Obaid Butti Al Mohiri, the Director of Curriculums Centre at the Ministry of Education, said he would order the withdrawal of the book for primary Class I of the Dubai International School if the complaints raised were found genuine.

Several teachers of the school telephoned Khaleej Times, complaining against the picture, captioned ‘We play together; we stick together’, featured in the book Friends Forever. The teachers said that of all the pictures in the book, the students reacted sharply to only this picture.[...]

When contacted, Dr Mohiri expressed anger that the matter was brought to him. “What should we do when we do not have enough staff to review textbooks in more than 400 schools countrywide?”

Hat tip to Dave at Israellycool.