Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

NYU responds about Lisa Duggan's anti-Israel ASA conference

JTA picked up on my scoop about the anti-Israel ASA conference scheduled for NYU this weekend:

The New York University American studies program’s annual conference this year is focused on the boycott-Israel movement and dominated by its supporters.

The student-organized conference is scheduled to take place this Friday and Saturday and is titled “Circuits of Influence: U.S., Israel and Palestine.”

A flyer advertising the conference promises discussion on how “recent American Studies scholarship on the political economy of racialization, empire, and settler colonialism led the highlighting of this particular ‘triangle.’”

The flyer notes the American Studies Association’s decision in December to boycott Israeli educational institutions.

Lisa Duggan, a professor of social and cultural analysis at NYU who is the president-elect of the ASA, is moderating one of the conference’s panels, on the “History & Efficacy of Boycotts.”

Individuals and organizations identified with the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement feature throughout the conference.

The conference’s three workshop sessions are all led by representatives of groups that advocate for various Israel-related boycotts: Adalah-NY, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. These sessions focus on activism, with titles like “Movement Building,” “Student Organizing” and “Public Engagement.”

A pro-Israel blog, Elder of Ziyon, on Sunday re-posted the conference flyer after Duggan posted it on Facebook. In a comment below her Facebook post, Duggan asked that the flyer not be widely distributed, writing, “We are trying to avoid press, protestors and public attention.”

NYU downplayed the event:

In a statement issued to JTA, New York University said that the conference was intended for academics, not the press or the public.

“This weekend’s American Studies Program Annual Conference is an annual academic conference that is organized by graduate students in NYU’s American Studies Program and designed for faculty and students in this and related disciplines,” said Philip Lentz, the university’s director of public affairs. “Given the purpose of the conference and space considerations, it is not open to the general public or the press.”

Duggan told JTA in an email that nothing was unusual about how the conference was planned or announced.

“It is not ‘secret,’ it is simply a limited registration academic conference, not a public event,” she wrote in her email.

She said that the student organizers did not deserve to be caught up in “the maelstrom of publicity surrounding the ASA boycott vote.”

“I wish our students could have their conference in relative peace and obscurity, as is usual for their conferences,” she wrote.

This is somewhat contradicted by Duggan's Facebook post about the conference, where she urged like-minded Israel bashers to "Feel free to share [the conference invitation] with friends, colleagues and grad students." She said nothing about limiting it to faculty and students only.

Likewise, the registration page says nothing about the conference only being intended for academics and students. And neither did the flyer.

It appears that this limitation on who could attend was created after the publicity from my scoop. I am quite certain that if Mondoweiss or Electronic Intifada wanted to send someone to report about the conference, no one there would have objected. In fact, I still expect them to post articles about the conference afterwards.

NYU is simply covering for its American Studies Program and trying to avoid bad publicity.

02/25 Links Pt2: German Paper Depicts Zuckerberg as Hook-Nosed Octopus; Harold Ramis dies at 69

From Ian:

Palestinian State of Failure

A fascinating discussion from Jonathan Schanzer on the John Batcheler show.
Listen to the whole thing and learn yourself something.
I was not aware, until Batcheler’s introductory comments, about the NYC bomb plot targeting Golda Meir. Guess who uncovered the plot. The NSA.
Note how Fatah was formed in 1959, 8 years before the “occupation” of the West Bank. It’s never been about the West Bank, it’s been the failure to recognize Israel, and the use of the “peace process” as just a stepping stone.
Schanzer’s book is State of Failure: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Unmaking of the Palestinian State.

The punching bag bigots of anti-Israel boycotts

The question worth asking would be; what drives elements like Hamas and Hezbollah to hate Israel. It is not about the “settlements”, the “refugees” and the “occupation”. It is about the very existence of Israel; the existence of a free, humane and enlightened society in a neighborhood of bigotry, despotism and tyranny.
The contempt and hatred of Israel is in fact contempt and hatred of Western Democracy and Civilization. The radical Left in the West hates the values signified by Israel just as much as the religious supremacists in the Arab world do. It is a match made in hell in which the BDS campaign plays cupid bringing these sadists and masochists together to form an unholy alliance.
It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so tragic. The BDS campaign uses the avenues and free spaces provided by the liberal and open societies to hit at the very core of values that built them in the first place. It uses University campuses, faculty unions and student bodies to divide and polarize. It targets trade unions, local communities and churches to spread the mean-spirited gospel of BDS.
The BDS campaign will never achieve its intended goal of “bringing Israel to its knees”. However, it is bound to have unintended consequences.
The practitioners of BDS are bent upon disrupting the free flow of knowledge, academic discourse and civilizational advancement in the Western World. They must not be allowed to do so, for we are all in peril if they are.

Stand With US "Divestment" in Action on Campus

Naftali Bennett on BBC Hardtalk (video)

(h/t Yerushalimey)

The truth behind Palestinian water libels

Two weeks ago I noted how the PLO was successfully using water as a weapon against Israel.

Here is the beginning of a must-read paper by Prof. Haim Gvirtzman showing the truth about the water situation in the territories.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Water shortages in the Palestinian Authority are the result of Palestinian policies that deliberately waste water and destroy the regional water ecology. The Palestinians refuse to develop their own significant underground water resources, build a seawater desalination plant, fix massive leakage from their municipal water pipes, build sewage treatment plants, irrigate land with treated sewage effluents or modern water-saving devices, or bill their own citizens for consumer water usage, leading to enormous waste. At the same time, they drill illegally into Israel’s water resources, and send their sewage flowing into the valleys and streams of central Israel. In short, the Palestinian Authority is using water as a weapon against the State of Israel. It is not interested in practical solutions to solve the Palestinian people’s water shortages, but rather perpetuation of the shortages and the besmirching of Israel.

A significant public debate has been sparked by the assertion of European Parliament President Martin Schulz that the amount of water available to the average Israeli unfairly overwhelms the amount of water available to the average Palestinian. The main issue that should be discussed – and has not been sufficiently analyzed – is: What are the causes of Palestinian water supply problems?

The discussion must be informed by the following basic facts:

1. The Oslo agreements grant the Palestinians the right to draw 70 million cubic meters from the Eastern Mountain Aquifer (ground water reservoir). Yet this water resource is not currently being capitalized on by the Palestinians; the waters spill untapped underground into the Dead Sea. As per the Israeli-Palestinian agreement, some 40 sites were identified for drilling into this aquifer in the eastern Hebron hills region, and permits were granted to the Palestinians by the Israel-PA Joint Water Committee. Nevertheless, over the past 20 years, the Palestinians have drilled at just one-third of these sites, despite the fact that the international community has offered to finance the drilling of all sites. If the Palestinians were to drill and develop all these wells, they could have completely solved the existing water shortage in the Hebron hills region. But the Palestinians have preferred to drill wells on the Western Mountain Aquifer, the basin that provides groundwater to the State of Israel. Instead of solving the problem they have chosen to squabble with Israel.

2. The Palestinians do not bother fixing water leaks in city pipes. Up to 33 percent of water in Palestinian cities is wasted through leakage. Upkeep on the Palestinians’ urban water infrastructure has been completely neglected. By comparison, leakage from Israeli municipal water pipes amount to only 10 percent of water usage.

3. The Palestinians refuse to build water treatment plants, despite their obligation to do so under the Oslo agreement. Sewage flows out of Palestinian towns and villages directly into local streams, thereby polluting the environments and the aquifer and causing the spread of disease. Despite the fact that donor countries are willing to fully fund the building of treatment plants, the Palestinians have managed to avoid their obligations to build such facilities. (Only over the past two years has Israeli pressure moved the PA forward a bit on this matter.)

4. The Palestinians absolutely refuse to irrigate their agricultural fields with treated sewage effluents. By comparison, more than half the agricultural fields in Israel are irrigated with treated waste water. Irrigating Palestinian agricultural fields with recycled water instead of fresh water would free up large amounts of water for home usage. This would greatly reduce the water shortage in many places.

5. Some Palestinian farmers irrigate their fields by flooding, rather than with drip irrigation technology. Drip irrigation, as practiced in Israel, brings water directly to the root of each plant, thereby reducing water consumption by more than 50 percent. Flooding fields causes huge water evaporation and leads to great waste.

6. The international community has offered to build a desalination plant for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians have refused this gift. A desalination plant could completely solve the Gaza Strip’s water shortages. The Palestinians refuse to build this plant because they claim they have the right to access the fresh groundwater reservoir in Judea and Samaria, and they are prepared to suffer until they realize this dream. In the meanwhile, Gaza residents suffer from severe shortages of water.

These basic, undeniable facts are extremely important because they have wide-ranging consequences.

Today, the Palestinians consume some 200 million cubic meters of water per annum in Judea and Samaria. The Palestinians could easily raise that amount by at least 50 percent, without any additional assistance or allocation from the State of Israel. This would require several simple actions:

If the Palestinians were to begin drilling the Eastern Mountain Aquifer, at the sites already approved for drilling, they very quickly would secure an additional 50 million cubic meters of water per year.

If the Palestinians were to reduce urban water waste from 33 percent to 20 percent by fixing the main leaks in their urban water pipes (something that can be done without great effort), they would immediately benefit from 10 million additional cubic meters of water per annum.

If the Palestinians were to collect and treat their urban waste water, they would gain at least 30 million cubic meters of water a year. This would free up 30 million cubic meters (per annum) of fresh water, currently used for agriculture, for home usage. This would allow them both to improve their urban water supply and to expand agricultural lands.

If the Palestinians were to adopt drip irrigation technology, they would save 10 million cubic meters a year. This would allow them to expand their irrigated lands.

In the Gaza Strip, too, the Palestinians could easily double the amount of water available, without additional assistance from the State of Israel. If the Palestinians agreed to build a desalination plant on the Gaza coast (funded entirely by the international community), they would increase the amount of water available by 60 to 100 million cubic meters a year. If they fix leakages, treat and recycle sewage, and adopt drip irrigation, they would double their water allocation, as well.

...The sum total of the situation described above is that the Palestinian Authority is using water as a weapon against the State of Israel. It is more interested in reducing the amount of water available to Israel, polluting natural reservoirs, harming Israeli farmers, and sullying Israel’s reputation around the world than truly solving water problems for the Palestinian people. The Palestinians are not interested in practical solutions to address shortages; rather, they seek to perpetuate the shortages, and to blame the State of Israel.

Unfortunately, President Schulz’s Knesset address, with its seemingly straightforward but baseless accusations against Israel, suggests that the PA is succeeding in this effort to befuddle international observers and besmirch Israel.

An astonishing 150-200 million cubic meters of water a year are available to Palestinian Arabs, virtually for free, with only changes to policy and accepting help from the West. They are refusing to take it.

This proves two things:

Palestinian Arab leaders don't care about their own people.
Rather than act as a peace partner, Palestinian Arab leaders prioritize demonizing and damaging Israel in the international arena.

The water issue is merely a symptom, albeit a very important symptom, of a much larger problem, a problem that the international community refuses to recognize. Every single action that the Palestinian Arab leaders - namely, all of their "red lines" in negotiations with Israel - adhere to these same two principles.

And the world closes its eyes.

02/25 Links Pt1: The Myth of Israel’s Refusal to Make “Tough Decisions” for Peace

From Ian:

The Myth of Israel’s Refusal to Make “Tough Decisions” for Peace

The relentless calls for Israel to take difficult decisions for peace not only neglect to account for the attitude of the Palestinian side but also of the extensive concessions already offered by the Israelis. Both under Ehud Barak during the Camp David talks in 2000 and certainly under Ehud Olmert in 2008, Israel’s offers for peace went just about as far as possible without Israel either ceasing to exist as a Jewish state or rendering its remaining territory indefensible. Similarly, the current Israeli negotiating position does not appear to be measurably different from that of Barak or Olmert’s. Certainly, if Prime Minister Netanyahu’s negotiating stance was falling significantly short of previous offers then his dovish chief negotiator, Tzipi Livni, who served in the Olmert government and remains a political rival to Netanyahu, would doubtless call him out on this. Israel is once again offering as much as it can without ceasing to survive as Israel. But then this is the crux of the matter. It really looks as if it may just be the case that no offer that leaves the Jewish state in existence will be acceptable to Palestinians. (h/t Bob Knot)

Challenging the Long-Held Notion That Israeli Settlements Are ‘Illegal’

In a 2010 column for the American Interest, Nicholas Rostow, then-counsel and vice chancellor for legal affairs at the State University of New York and today director of the Center for Strategic Research at National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies, described five of the arguments made by those who disagree that the Geneva Convention prohibits Jewish Israelis from living legally in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
In their view, the Geneva Convention is inapplicable because under Article 2, the Convention applies only to territory that is occupied by “a High Contracting Party.” Because no country has a legally recognized claim to the “occupied territories,” the argument goes, the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem do not belong to any contracting party.
Rostow wrote: “In making this argument, advocates of legality stress that the international community did not recognize Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank and that now Jordan has withdrawn its claim.”

Terrorism pays – literally

Nor is jail time a deterrent. “Nobody believes they’re going to serve [a full] sentence,” he said, “because they are going to be part of the next prisoner release, or of the next discussion even to have a discussion about a prisoner release.”
Indeed.
This travesty is supervised by the Palestinian Ministry for Prisoners and written into PA legislation. The law determines an ascending pay scale for terrorists: The more the carnage and the longer the prison term, the higher the salary.
According to [Edwin] Black, “This takes up $5-7 million a month – approximately six percent – of the PA budget. If you add in the other payments [to terrorists] for weddings, social events, special bonuses, academic scholarships, it comes to 16% of the Palestinian budget.
"And where does the money come from? From American and European taxpayers.”
Until the blood-for-money law is rescinded, he said, “There can be no peace between Palestinians and Israelis.”

Ukranian, Arab, Iranian, French antisemites together blame Jews for Ukraine violence

It seems to have started with an Iranian PressTV reporting:

Ukrainian media have reported that a former Israeli army officer is playing a leading role in the anti-government protests in the former Soviet republic.

According to reports, the unnamed Israeli commands a group of 20 Ukrainian militants.

Four other Israelis, who had previously served in the army, were recently reported to have taken part in opposition rallies in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.

They were born in Ukraine but migrated to Israel and joined its armed forces before returning to the European country for the demonstrations.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian media said that an Israeli tycoon provides financial support to the opposition in Ukraine, adding that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency is one of the instigators of the unrest in the country.

That's it. No names, no source listed, nothing. Yet it was quoted by International Business Times (UK). (UPDATE: There are sources for this.)

Then a little known French antisemitic website named "PlanetNonViolence" claimed that "the Jewish mafia" is behind the Ukrainian protests, that Israel is sending "surveillance equipment and other high tech gadgets ostensibly to protect Jews" to the region, and that Israel is fomenting violence in order to get Jews to leave the Ukraine and move to Israel.

Now mainstream Arab media is reporting all of this as fact, adding that a Jewish Ukranian businessman, Viktor Pinchuk, is also acting behind the scenes to foment revolution so he can get the Ukraine to get into the orbit of the EU to help his fortune.

No doubt the Jew-haters will claim that the Mossad was behind this Molotov cocktail attack on a synagogue in Zaporozhye on Monday, captured by security cameras.

State Dept envoy met with viciously anti-Israel Palestinian Christians

Yesterday I reported that the US State Department silently sent its new head of Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives, Shaun Casey, to meet with Palestinian Christian leaders, although apparently not to meet with Jewish leaders.

The leaders that Casey chose to meet with are anti-Israel (and antisemitic) extremists.

Yisrael Medad points out that Bishop Munib Younan of the Lutheran Church, who Casey met, signed the Kairos Palestine document which argues, on theological grounds, that the concept of a Jewish state is illegitimate and an affront to human rights. It also implicitly supports anti-Israel terror and it implies that the "occupation" is over all of British Mandate Palestine, not just the portions over the Green Line.

However, Younan is not only a signatory to this anti-Israel screed - he was one of the authors. He later asked to have that role erased so he could maintain his relationship with Israeli and Jewish leaders.

Another bishop that Casey met with is even worse. In an interview with Famiglia Cristiana he said:

The Talmud, the holy book studied by the ultra-orthodox, more highly venerated than the Bible itself, invites religious hatred, speaks badly of Jesus, and even worse of Mary and, in general, of Christians” he said, adding that “in Israeli schools love for the other is not taught but rather the destruction of the other.

His statements on the Talmud echo those of the most vicious antisemites through history, and his blanket statement that Israeli schools teach genocide is reprehensible.

And this is one of the people Casey decided to meet.

The fact that Casey chose these people to meet, combined with the secrecy over the trip altogether, is concerning. If he would have met with any Jews who would argue that non-Jews should have no political rights between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river he would be universally condemned, yet the people he met with make the same argument about Jews, and worse.

What is Casey's - and the State Department's - objective in choosing to meet with these anti-Jewish extremists?

Egyptian siege on Gaza continues; Rafah open only 5 days in February

Egypt said it will close the Rafah crossing "indefinitely" after opening it for limited travel on Sunday and Monday.

It had been closed for over two weeks beforehand.

Here is my best approximation for days when Rafah has been opened and closed since October:

Rafah Crossings calendar 2013-2014

S	M	Tu	W	Th	F	S
Oct 27	28	29	30	31	Nov 1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
Dec 1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9 (only one bus)	10 (computer problems)	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24 (very few)	25	26	27	28
29	30	31	Jan 1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27 Pilgrims only	28	29	30	31	Feb 1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	Mar 1

Egypt is letting far fewer Gazans into Egypt than Israel is allowing Gazans into Israel. In January, 15,000 people traveled through the Erez crossing, while only 4,400 people crossed Rafah.

But if you do a Google News search on "Egyptian siege" you will find only a tiny fraction of the articles that mention "Israeli siege."

BDS news from 1929

02/24 Links Pt2: S.A. MP Meshoe -Israeli Apartheid Week is a Scam; Israel-EU Exports up 6.3%

From Ian:

Vicious and Deceptive anti-Israel Propaganda Hate Week starts

“Israel Apartheid Week” as part of the BDS movement is the direct by-product of the Durban anti-Jewish hatred — a history few of its participants probably realize.
In reality, Israel is nothing like South Africa under Apartheid.
First and foremost, Israel is a majority rule democracy. South African Apartheid was the subjugation of the majority by the minority based on racial classifications — the exact opposite of Israel.
Israel is a multi-racial and multi-ethnic society in which the dividing lines, as in many countries and certainly all Mideast countries, is religion not race. In Israel the religious minority has full voting rights, members in the parliament and in the Supreme Court, and all the civil freedoms of the majority. Even the Jewish majority (about 80%) is multi-racial and multi-ethnic, including half the population being refugees and their descendants from Arab countries, Ethiopia, and other non-Western places.

South African MP Kenneth Meshoe: Discover the Scam Israeli Apartheid Week 2014

Palestinian Refugees Welcome Arab Apartheid; ‘For Our Own Good’ (satire)

In the Palestinian-administered territories themselves, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has made it clear that for their own good, refugees would not be granted citizenship in the eventual State of Palestine, because that might imply acceptance of Israel’s refusal to be inundated with a population that would erase the Jewish identity of the world’s only Jewish State. It would be better for everybody, explained Abbas, to create yet another Arab country instead of somehow absorbing Palestinian Arabs into the 22 Arab states in the region.
“I know the surveys say only a minority of refugees are actually interested in returning to their ancestral homes,” concedes Abbas, “but do the refugees really know what’s best for them? I mean, we’re talking about people holding on to the house keys of places destroyed ages ago. Talk about unrealistic.”

The usual stupid argument given by Arabs against accepting Israel as a Jewish state is that it would result in the expulsion of all Arab citizens of Israel.

But Abdel Bari Atwan, former editor of UK-based al Quds al-Arabi and now head of a HuffPo-style Arab outlet called Rai al-Youm, has upped the stupidity factor.

Speaking at a lecture in Jordan, Atwan said that if the PLO would recognize Israel as a Jewish state it would ultimately result in Arabs being shipped out of their homes in the West Bank as well, because Israel considers it to be part of Israel.

This is the state of Arab intelligentsia, where creating wild rumors out of thin air has more gravitas than serious political analysis.

Haaretz doing its part to push BDS from "settlements"

Haaretz writes::

Boycott = anti-Semitism? Some Israelis avoid settlement products, too

There are no official figures, but probably thousands of Israeli consumers check the labels before they buy.

Long before Scarlett Johansson came under international fire for promoting the West Bank SodaStream factory, these Israelis were getting their seltzer elsewhere.

And long before world Jewish leaders pronounced the international boycott movement anti-Semitism in its latest manifestation , these Israelis steered clear of products sold by Jewish-owned businesses located beyond the country’s internationally recognized borders. [sic]

It’s hard to know their exact numbers, but they are boycotters too, many for as long as they can remember: These Israelis do not, as a matter of principle, buy goods or produce from Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

Vardit Shalfy, a theater director from Tel Aviv, not only checks every label carefully when she does her own supermarket shopping, but she also makes a point of alerting other customers who might not be aware that what they’re throwing into their carts was made in contested territory. “I’m absolutely shameless about it,” she acknowledges, “and very often, I get people to return products to the shelves. They simply didn’t know until I told them that what they were about to buy was made in the settlements and that by buying it they are supporting the occupation. Once, a woman almost smacked me, but more often than not, people listen.”

If she’s invited to an event where food is being served, says Shalfy, she has no qualms about calling over the chef to ascertain where exactly the ingredients in each dish came from. At the home of an acquaintance, she recounts, she once noticed her daughter innocently take a bite out of a cookie made by a factory in the East Jerusalem industrial park of Atarot. “I pulled it out of her mouth and reminded her that we don’t eat such things,” she says.

Netta Hazan, a facilitator for interfaith groups who lives in Jerusalem, admits she doesn’t take things that far. “I’m not going to lie and say that I check every label, and it’s not that I never drank something made with SodaStream, but if I know something’s made in a Jewish settlement, I won’t buy it,” she says. “On the other hand, I do make a point of buying things in Bethlehem in order to support the Palestinian economy.”

...Adam Keller, the spokesman of Gush Shalom, estimates that “tens of thousands” of Israelis who oppose the occupation boycott products from the settlements. “I’m basing that on the number of people who downloaded the list from our site when it was still up and the number who’ve signed up to receive our pamphlets,” he said.

...Longtime peace activist Naftali Raz...puts the number of Israelis who boycott products from the settlements at “many thousands.”

Here is a classic example where Haaretz is reporting what it sincerely hopes to be true rather than what is true.

When lists of "settlement" products are offered, I download them myself. Why? So I can make sure that I buy from them! And I'm sure that many other people do the same thing.

I'm also certain that many, if not most, of those who download such lists don't live in Israel to begin with.

In other words, while there are certainly some fanatics who go out of their way to ensure that not a crumb of Jewish-made food from across the Green Line passes their lips, saying that there are "probably thousands" is nothing but a myth that Haaretz believes (and that the people they interview want to promulgate) - because Haaretz still thinks that it represents more than a tiny minority of ultra leftists.

Just for fun, imagine one of these uber-liberal parties. Imagine what would happen if one of the guests badgered the chef about whether he bought kosher ingredients and prepared the food according to Jewish law. Imagine the reaction if the guest would loudly announce "I will never eat food that is not kosher!"

Just think how upset the guests would be, how embarrassed that one of their friends would dare embarrass them this way, with such an uncivil display of self-righteousness. How gauche!

That person would never be invited to another party, that's for sure.

Of course, Muslim guests who insist on eating Halal would be admired for being true to their culture.

(h/t Alex)

02/24 Links Pt1: Follow the blood money Banks Fund Bombers; Chloe Valdary In Defense Of Liberty

From Ian:

Follow the blood money: Exposing the secret US banking operations that help fund suicide bombers

Turner, who has taken part in negotiations with Arab Bank that were overseen by a mediator, has been asking for $2 billion to settle. The price could get a lot higher if it goes before a jury, he points out, since the Anti-Terrorism Act provides for a tripling of damages.
He doesn’t mince words when characterizing Arab Bank executives. Turner calls them “criminals,” “roaches” who “move around in the dark of night, inciting terrorism for profit. There’s no lower form of humanity than a guy in a suit making money off a teenager detonating a bomb on a bus, then slithering home to watch CNN.”
Arab Bank isn’t the only bank in lawyers’ crosshairs. Osen has levied lawsuits against Crédit Lyonnais, and NatWest, which he also accuses of maintaining accounts tied to Hamas, and others have filed suit against Bank of China and Lebanese Canadian Bank, which allegedly used an account in New York City to transfer millions to the financing arm of another terrorist group, Hezbollah.

"American Taxpayers Must Not Subsidize anti-Semitism ... Stop Funding the United Nations"

The Washington, DC-based American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), headed by Jay Sekulow, and with offices in several countries, concerns itself with constitutional and human rights law worldwide. Here is the text of a petition it has initiated, addressed to Barack Obama and John Kerry, requesting the United States government to cease funding the United Nations:

Chloe Valdary: In defense of liberty

On February 22, a gentleman by the name of Richard Silverstein took considerable issue with an article I wrote in the The Times of Israel about the contentions of one Judith Butler, professor at the University of California, Berkley. I find Butler’s analysis regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict lamentably disagreeable.
Silverstein did not point out any possible faulty premises in my column. He did not question the evidence I presented. He did not find I was lacking in my analysis. Instead, to illustrate his (ahem) intellectual prowess, he shared a Facebook status linking to my column and in his commentary, wrote: “They finally did it: found a Negro Zionist: Uncle Tom is dancin’ for joy!”

Yemenis upset at woman who said Jews should have equal rights

Arabic media reports:

"People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" is applicable for Tawakkul Karman, a hijab-wearing Yemeni Muslim woman, who demanded (on video) that Yemeni Jews be given the right to be nominated to presidency, local councils and the parliament, in a step that Yemenis described as "outrageous".

Yemeni activists said: "It is not strange for someone who belongs to the (Muslim) Brotherhood to say this. After all, Issam Eryan also demanded that the Jews return to Egypt and that their possessions be given back to them. This video is the price that Tawakkul paid for getting the Nobel Peace Prize."

Karman did receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.

Here's the video, from a UN webcast, that is getting her these insults:

Kerman: Concerning the religious minorities: We stress the necessity of equality for Jewish Yemeni citizens to their fellow citizens in enjoying all political rights, including the right to be nominated to the parliament, to local councils and the presidency.

Kerman has been repeatedly accused by her political opponents in Yemen and also Egypt of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. The political party she belongs to includes Muslim Brotherhood members and she has railed against the rule of Egypt's Sisi, but it is unclear if she supports the Muslim Brotherhood directly - and this statement does not sound like something that the Ikhwan would support.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)