Sunday, November 10, 2013
From Ian:
Understanding global anti-Semitism
Understanding global anti-Semitism
As our global age is political in that people now understand that virtually all spheres of life are governed or profoundly influenced by politics. So too today’s anti-Semitism, which before was mainly cultural or socially oriented, has now adopted a political cast.Europe marks 75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht with new calls for boycotts
Hence anti-Semitic governments, through the UN and as a matter of domestic and foreign policy, promote anti-Semitism, and indeed have forged something against Israel that exists against no other country: an international eliminationist political alliance.
Finally, because nothing incites anti-Semites more than the specter of Jews being powerful, and because the global world is a world organized by the international state system, global anti-Semites relentlessly focus their ire and efforts on deprecating, demonizing and delegitimizing Israel. Many though certainly not all of them want to destroy the country.
Such is the logic of today’s globally oriented global anti-Semitism.
Having concluded that by and large, the European political class has long abandoned Israel, it would be nice to state that this is not the case for European civil society. Romantic perceptions would have it that, at the very least, ordinary European citizens would be on the right side of history. Sadly this is not the case. In parallel with their political leaders, much of European civil society, consisting of trade unions, academia, churches and other non-governmental organisations, has stepped up its dipomatic war against Israel and is pressing for more sanctions and boycotts. When the World Council of Churches met recently for its annual meeting in Geneva, there was little concern for its persecuted Christian brothers and sisters in the Middle East; but there were four workshops on the issue of – you guessed it – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Gantz: ‘We will never again be helpless against our enemies’
The problems in Europe in 2013 are the same as in 1938. When the boycotts and singling out of the Jewish people began, the good people chose to look the other way. It is now high time to look in the right direction.
Speaking at the Berlin- Grunewald station’s Track 17 memorial, used by the Nazis as a major deportation site to send Jews to concentration camps during the Second World War, Gantz said. “The State of Israel in 2013 is strong. The Jewish nation-state is a democratic and advanced country with a powerful military that deters [its enemies]. Today too, we are required to deal with hostile states and organizations that seek to harm us, but unlike the past, we face our enemies from a position of strength – stronger than ever before.”Israel’s chief rabbi remembers Kristallnacht in Berlin
Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi marked the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht with a visit to a Jewish kindergarten in Berlin.Christianity is based on love; but sometimes hate prevails
“Connecting Jews in Germany to their roots is the worthiest retort to the darkness that prevailed here 75 years ago,” Rabbi David Lau said during his first official visit to Berlin, where he went to the Chabad-run Judische Traditionsschule Talmud-Thora kindergarten.
It has always been puzzling why the WCC, and similar mainstream organizations purporting to pursue peace continue to use extravagant, biased rhetoric and misleading historical statements in their approach to the controversial issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict. That rhetoric degrades rather than attempts to repair relations between the competing parties.NGO Monitor Awarded the 2013 Begin Prize
It also refuses to acknowledge the historical consequences, in territory and refugees, of the Arab invasion of the State of Israel after its establishment on May 14, 1948.
The PIEF claims to be a forum intended to rally churches and groups to "end the illegal occupation of Palestine in accordance with UN resolutions" and to press for a "just peace in Palestine-Israel." However, the real nature of its objective is clear from its approval of the Kairos Palestine Document.
The prestigious Begin Prize, in recognition of "their strong stance in the defense of Israel and the Jewish people," will be awarded to NGO Monitor on December 4, 2013. Founded in 2002 by Professor Gerald Steinberg and the Wechsler Family Foundation, NGO Monitor is an independent research institute based in Jerusalem and the primary source of expertise on activities and funding of political non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. NGO Monitor was nominated by 2010 Begin Prize recipient Prof. Alan Dershowitz and Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky, among others.Lessons on hypocrisy from Syria
The fighting in Syria once again proves the sad old adage that human rights organizations and their advocates in the mainstream Western media are essentially anti-Israel. There is no other way to explain the fact that all these high-and-mighty moralizers are ignoring the frightening plight of Palestinians and Christians in the Syrian civil war.First robbed of their books, now robbed of their history
You see, there is no anti-Israel angle to the story of Palestinian or Christian suffering in Syria. That suffering can’t really be blamed on the Jews. So nobody cares.
Pleading in the New York Times for the archive not to be sent back to Iraq, Cynthia Kaplan Shamash begins by describing the 1941 Farhud, ‘the forgotten pogrom of the Holocaust’. The murder of over a hundred Jews, seven years before the establishment of Israel, caused Iraqi Jews to conclude that they had no future in the country.Controversy surrounding Iraqi Jewish Archive ignored in BBC feature
Cynthia’s family, however, stayed in Iraq on until the 1970s. She was eight years old when an officer accused her of being a spy. Her doll was taken apart to see if it contained a bugging device. She still has the doll. In their desperation to escape Iraq’s anti-Jewish human rights abuses, the family had to leave behind almost all their other possessions. The archive represents essential ‘lost luggage’: it reconnects them with the life they left behind.
Jane O’Brien’s article is both interesting and informative – in so far as it goes. Curiously, it avoids any mention of vital aspects of the story including the controversy surrounding the subject of the proposed hand-over of the restored archive to Iraq, making do with one short sentence on that subject.Terrorist’s Facebook Profile Exposes Recent Stabbing Attempt as Suicide Attack
Readers remain entirely unaware that Iraqi Jewish organisations are opposed to the documents being sent to a country where almost no Jews remain or of the fact that such a move would mean that Jewish scholars and the descendants of Iraqi Jewry would have no further access to the archive.
A terrorist’s Facebook profile reveals the truth behind his attack against Israeli soldiers last Thursday. His suicidal Facebook messages suggest that he acted like many terrorists before him – attempting to end his own life and murder IDF soldiers in the process.PA Digging for Oil in Judea and Samaria
On Saturday Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs, Mohammed Mustafa, said that the PA is in the final stages of preparation before advertising bids internationally to drill for oil in Judea and Samaria.The Palestinian Tamarrud Protest Movement Aims To Bring Down The Hamas Government In Gaza
The drilling is planned for the area around Rantis, according to an interview for Palestinian TV by the Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah. He claims Israel produces 800 barrels of oil per day from the region.
Recently, the Gaza-based Palestinian Tamarrud movement has been waging a campaign on social networks to bring down the Hamas government in Gaza. The movement's activity is mainly in Gaza, but it also has members in the West bank and among the Palestinian diaspora. The spokesmen of the 90,000-strong movement say that it is apolitical and that its members do not belong to any Palestinian faction. However, several characteristics of the movement clearly show a connection to Fatah – including the involvement of Fatah members in its activity; its setting of its official founding date and the date its activity begins as November 11, 2013, which is the ninth anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death; and the similarity of its messages to those of Fatah.Egypt ‘skeptical’ about Israeli-Palestinian peace deal
In an interview with AFP Saturday, Fahmy said that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “essentially accepted a historic compromise between the Palestinians and the Israelis and is simply asking for a contiguous state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”Netanyahu lauds delay in Iran nuclear talks
“We are worried, I would even add to it, to a degree skeptical, but committed to trying to help as much as we can,” Fahmy said, adding “settlement activity … is expanding and also going to the heart of the West Bank.”
“Over the weekend I spoke with President Barack Obama, with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with French President Francois Hollande, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron,” Netanyahu related.The devil is in the nuclear details
“I told them that, based on information Israel has received, the deal taking shape is bad and dangerous. Not just for us, but for them as well. I suggested they wait and think carefully, and it’s good that they decided to do so. We will do everything in our power to convince these powers and these leaders to avoid a bad deal.”
There are four possible deals that may be reached during the next round of talks in Geneva, following the narrow failure of the attempt to reach an agreement on Sunday morning. Amos Yadlin, a former IDF military intelligence chief who heads the INSS think tank, labeled them in an October article in the Wall Street Journal as such: Ideal, reasonable, bad and in phases.US has ‘folded’ on Iran, Israeli political sources charge
Senior political sources said that the deal that has been sitting on the negotiations table since the weekend is “very bad.” It calls on Iran to stop enriching uranium to the 20 percent level, but allows them to continue enriching uranium to 3.5% at all of its enrichment sites. In addition it fails to place a limitation on the number of centrifuges in Tehran’s possession, estimated to number 19,000.Rouhani: Enrichment is our Red Line
Iran’s president described the right to enrich uranium as the country’s “red line” Sunday, as Tehran and the groups of six major world powers concluded negotiations in Geneva, reported the official Press TV.Iran state TV calls France ‘Israel’s representatives at the talks’
Addressing Iranian lawmakers in Majlis, Hassan Rouhani said the Islamic Republic “will not bow to threats by any power.”
“While the French people want an improvement in the relations between Paris and Tehran, unfortunately the French government has preferred the Zionist regime’s views to its people’s demand,” he added.Norway Coalition Government Weighs Ending Arms Ban to Israel to Increase Exports
“We hope that the French foreign minister casts a logical look at the negotiations,” Hosseini said.
Norway’s new coalition government is weighing a decision to lift a 2002 ban on selling arms to Israel, Israel’s Globes business daily reported on Friday, citing an interview with Norwegian MP Jorund Rytmanin in Defense News.Cloud gives Google another reason to like Israel
The ban was supported by the previous Socialist regime of Jens Stoltenberg that governed from 2005 until last month.
There are a lot of reasons for Google to like Israel. With two major R&D facilities, Google Israel has been behind many important innovations for the company – including the technology behind Google products like Search Live Results, Person Finder, Google Suggest, Youtube Annotations, and more. It’s fair to say that Google just wouldn’t be the same without its two major Israeli research centers.
There’s another reason for the company to like Israel, said Dan Powers, Director of the Google Cloud Platform. “Israel is one of the fastest growing markets for cloud technology,” Powers said. Unlike the situation in other countries, “Israeli companies are not afraid of the cloud, and they realize that this is the best way to go globally quickly.”
