Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 11, 2015

06/11 Links Pt1: Michael Oren's Memoir to Expose Obama Administration's Abuse of Israel

From Ian:

'Ally': Michael Oren's Memoir to Expose Obama Administration's Abuse of Israel

Former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren is set to release a new memoir June 23: Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide. The book tells the story of Oren’s four years (2009-13) as Israel’s representative in Washington–and reveals just how hostile the Obama administration is towards Israel. Though he argues Obama is not anti-Israel, Oren notes that his administration did all it could to bully Israel into compliance with its hopelessly naïve new agenda in the Middle East.
Breitbart News was shown an uncorrected galley of the text, on the promise that we would not quote from it. Suffice to say that the Obama administration–and to a lesser extent Hillary Clinton, who was responsible for carrying out its foreign policy at the time–emerge looking ill-informed at best, thuggish at worst.
In one episode, State Department staffers cheer as a senior official slams Israel’s envoy. In another, Susan Rice does her best impression of a Chicago mobster, with an implied threat.
Oren is uniquely placed to chronicle the deterioration of relations between the two government–just as he was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s best choice to limit the damage. An American Jew who became an Israeli citizen, Oren understands both countries and their cultures. A distinguished historian, he has a keen sense for detail, and his book weaves personal recollections and anecdotes into a detailed, even forensic, narrative of diplomatic disenchantment.
Oren encounters an administration stacked with left-wing professors and their students, who are attempting a perilous experiment in American foreign relations, and who treat Israel, at best, as their guinea pig. He begins to worry that many of Obama’s public gestures of support for Israel are also attempts to constrain Israel in a bear hug, preventing it from acting on its own. And he frets about an erosion of support for Israel among American Jews, urged along by left-wing J Street.

A new inside account of Obama’s Israel ire

When it’s released June 23, the new book by bestselling historian Michael Oren is going to be the talk of Washington and Jerusalem — not to mention everywhere people take an interest in the relations between the United States and Israel, which is to say, in many if not most places on the planet.
It’s called “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,” and I’m not sure that in the annals of diplomatic history there’s ever been anything quite like this astonishing account of Oren’s four years (2009-2013) as Israel’s ambassador in Washington.
It’s an ultimate insider’s story told while all the players save Oren are still in place; the Israeli prime minister he served still holds office and the administration to which he was the ambassador will remain in power until January 2017.
It’s not that there’s lots of breaking news in “Ally” that will startle people. Rather, it makes news on almost every page with its incredibly detailed account of the root hostility of the Obama administration toward the Jewish state.

Isi Leibler: American Jewish leaders fail to respond to Obama’s threats

Stressing that he considers Israel’s security paramount and that he “understands Israeli concerns and fears,” he insisted that the Jewish state needed tough love from its friends, assuring his audience that he felt he had a better understanding of Israel’s needs than Israelis themselves. He effectively called on American Jews to choose between his flawed evaluation of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the concerns about security and survival shared by the majority of Israelis.
Obama had the chutzpah to warn that the current Israeli government would alienate the people of America and the global community because it was diverging from the noble sentiments expressed in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.
Intensifying his vendetta against Netanyahu, he effectively described him as a deceitful liar who could not be trusted. He constantly harped on two statements that Netanyahu had uttered in the heat of the election and had subsequently repeatedly repudiated. However, not even once did he condemn the Palestinian Authority for its daily incitement of hatred, sanctification of mass murderers, or criminalization of Israel at the UN.
He warned that Israel has become obsessed with fear, claiming ludicrously that the US had proposed solutions by which, given goodwill, Israel’s security concerns could have been overcome. He urged Israelis to adopt “the politics of hope.”
He chided Israel for being obstinate and inflexible, thus preventing the peace process from moving forward, and clearly held Israel responsible for the breakdown of negotiations – conveniently ignoring the fact that it was PA President Mahmoud Abbas who terminated the talks and breached the Oslo Accords by unilaterally seeking recognition at the United Nations and uniting with Hamas. He failed to make mention of Israel’s major concessions, including a 10-month settlement freeze to pave the way for negotiations – to which Abbas only responded in the 10th month – and the wretched release of mass murderers who were subsequently fêted as heroes and many of whom renewed their terrorist activities.
And to top it off, Obama even made the outrageous observation that Netanyahu “had so many caveats, so many conditions” that the Palestinian officials and others might not see Netanyahu as a reliable negotiating partner.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Obama’s No Anti-Semite – But He Fails To Understand History’s Oldest Hatred

In his recent Atlantic interview with President Obama, Jeffrey Goldberg asked about Iran, anti-Semitism, and the nuclear bomb.
While admitting “there are deep strains of anti-Semitism in the core [Iranian] regime,” the president tried to explain them away with a historical analogy: “Well, the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival. It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations. You know, if you look at the history of anti-Semitism, Jeff, there were a whole lot of European leaders . . . .”
This argument is essentially a revival of the Western democracies’ (wishful) thinking in the years leading up to World War II. Hitler’s regime, they admitted, was anti-Semitic – but the same could be said, they noted, for other European regimes, past and present. The problem with this apology for appeasement was its failure to recognize the difference between the traditional anti-Semitism of European leaders and the Nazis’ genocidal anti-Semitism.
Genocidal anti-Semitism had never been put into practice when in 1938 Neville Chamberlain ignored the potential catastrophic threat it posed. By 1945 a shocked world saw the results of a war of extermination against the Jews carried out by a modern state – a state so driven by virulent anti-Semitism that it often diverted personnel and materials from the epic military conflict in order to expedite the killing of Jews.

Ma'an has a fawning article about the latest Gaza flotilla. In the middle we learn its cargo:

On board, the Marianne is carrying one solar panel to al-Shifa hospital and medical equipment for Wafa hospital, both in Gaza City. If everything goes as planned, activists will also leave the fishing trawler for Palestinian fishermen to use.

“The people in Gaza never have electricity all day long. Solar panels could be a sustainable solution for the power shortage,” Ighe said.

The spokesperson admits that bringing only one solar panel is mainly a symbolic message.

Israel allows solar panels into Gaza. Many UNDP solar-power projects are in flight, Individual Gaza homeowners have been importing solar panels for years,

And Shifa Hospital already has a system of solar panels.

Given that there are no restrictions on imports to Gaza except for materials that can be used to kill Jews, there is only one reason that these people want to end the naval blockade.

The Global Ministries website of the United Methodist Church says:

Janet Lahr Lewis is a missionary with the Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church serving in the Middle East as liason between ecumenical groups, Israel and Palestine.

Focusing on advocacy and activism, Janet's responsibilities are numerous. She is the main contact for VIM teams and United Methodist visitors who wish to follow the recommendation of the General Conference to spend a significant amount of time in the area with local Christians, acting to make those connections with UMC partner organizations and Advance Projects.

Janet circulates updates about developments in the ongoing crisis and suggests courses of action people can take to address it.

What kinds of courses of action?

Here's one, from an article she wrote last month:

Don't participate in Holocaust Remembrance Day without participating in Al Nakba Remembrance Day. Don't visit a Holocaust museum until there is one built to remember the other holocausts in the world: the on-going Palestinian holocaust, the Rwandan, the Native American, the Cambodian, the Armenian ... You could be waiting a long time!

The love of one does not automatically mean enmity towards the other.

Calling for the boycott of remembering the Holocaust sure sounds like an expression of enmity to me. Her statement is outrageous and antisemitic, implying that Jews are blocking the commemoration of other genocides. Her equation of the situation of Palestinians today with the Holocaust is pure antisemitism.

But the Methodist Church has no problem with her.

Lewis was the keynote speaker for a Methodist Federation for Social Action conference in Iowa last weekend, and people paid $25 for the honor of listening to her wisdom borne from years of antisemitic indoctrination:.

A Methodist bishop in Iowa, when asked, wrote an implied mild rebuke but hardly a condemnation of Janet Lahr Lewis' hate and antisemitism.

This is yet another example of how hate of Jews is made kosher by pretending to be "pro-Palestinian."

Janet has written other outrageous things, for example "the state of Israel is directly and indirectly imposing its goal to be rid of all non-Jews and justify it’s declaration of Israel as a Jewish state." This is on the United Methodist Holy Land Task Force website.

Of course, you will not find a word in her writings about how Arabs treat their Palestinian brethren. No, for Janet as well as so many others, the only time that Palestinian suffering matters is when it can be blamed on...Jews.

(h/t Mark)

RAND falsely claims that releasing terrorists would save money

From the NYT, June 6:

Supporters of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generally start with a moral argument: Both peoples deserve the rights of self-determination and sovereignty; one should not rule over the other. Lately, President Obama and liberal American Jewish leaders also frame their case in security terms, saying Israel cannot survive as a Jewish democracy without ending its occupation of Palestinian territories.

But how about $173 billion as incentive for a peace deal?

That is how much a new report by the RAND Corporation says the Israeli and Palestinian economies stand to gain over the next decade if an independent Palestine were to emerge tomorrow — admittedly a development that might require divine intervention. It translates to an average per capita income increase of $1,000 (36 percent) for every Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and $2,200 (5 percent) for each Israeli.

There is a lot to criticize in this study, and Joe Settler covered many of the issues. But I want to look at one specific point that RAND makes in order to highlight how little the "experts" know.

The study lists eight costs that the Palestinian Authority would avoid if there is a peace deal. One of them is the cost of paying terrorists a stipend:

An estimated 6 percent of the PA’s budget is spent annually providing stipends to the families of prisoners held in Israel. The total annual value of this direct cost is approximately $200 million.

So if there is a two-state solution, RAND says, the state of Palestine can save these $200 million annually.

This neatly shows how worthless this study is.

First of all - why do these terrorists have to be paid today? What exactly makes this expenditure so important that the PA must go deeper into debt to pay the families of terrorists? Why not recommend that the PA stop these payments today?

The answer is because one of the two states that RAND is pushing happens to wholeheartedly support terrorism. These payments are, after all, an insurance policy to support terrorist activity.

Secondly, why should Israel be obligated to release murderers in any "peace" agreement? Isn't releasing known terrorists the antithesis of peace?

Thirdlly, there is more than one financial issue with releasing terrorists. There is in fact a good chance that some of these terrorists will return to terrorism, peace deal or not. While RAND obviously doesn't care about Israelis being killed in this scenario - the study is only about money, after all - what about the financial costs to the victims of terror, of hospitalization and insurance and funerals?

Finally, a point that shows how the authors of the study aren't even aware of the basics of Palestinian Arab priorities. When hundreds of prisoners were released in the Shalit deal, the PA didn't stop paying them - they hired them in ceremonial jobs that they have for life! These ex-prisoners are paid as much as $50,000 annually as their reward for killing Jews.

There is no cost savings!

RAND makes the fatal assumption that a Palestinian state would not support terror and would not pay lifetime stipends to murderers. Yet we know they do.

When researchers have blind spots, their research is next to worthless.

06/10 Links Pt2: The Islamization of World Soccer?; Calling BS on BDS; Israel-UK Trade in a ‘Golden Era’

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: BDS threats thwart Israeli-Palestinian normalization meeting in Bethlehem

A meeting between Israelis and Palestinians that was supposed to take place in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, on Thursday has been relocated, after the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement threatened to thwart the gathering.
The meeting was meant to be the founding congress of the Two States One Homeland Initiative, which advocates the establishment of two sovereign states on one open homeland.
The Israeli-Palestinian group believes in equality for both people living with open borders.
The Israeli side is represented by former Haaretz journalist Meron Rapoport, while the Palestinian side is represented by Awni al-Mashni, a senior Fatah official from the West Bank.
“Because of difficulties on the Palestinian street, we have decided, in agreement with our Palestinian partners, to postpone the Founding Congress of Two States One Homeland Initiative in Beit Jala on Thursday to a more calm period,” the group said in a statement on Tuesday.
The organizers decided to hold the meeting on the same day but in Jerusalem.
Palestinian sources said that BDS activists in Bethlehem threatened to wage protests against the meeting if it were held in Beit Jala. (h/t Yenta Press)

British Business Secretary Says Israel-UK Trade Ushering in ‘Golden Era’

The British business and innovation secretary declared on Monday that the U.K. and Israel had entered a “golden era” for trade.
“The past few years have been a golden era for Anglo-Israeli business,” said British Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Sajid Javid, during the annual British Israel Business Awards event.
“Over the past 67 years, Israel has made business bloom in the barren desert,” said Javid. “What really excites me are the possibilities for the years that lie ahead.”
The MP, self-described as a “proud British-born Muslim,” and keynote speaker at Monday’s event said he held Israel in high regard, and expected bilateral trade and services– currently valued at about $6.9 billion, according to Javid — to continue to grow.
Javid told the audience of about 250 people that he has traveled to Israel extensively, “both for business and with family.”
“Over the years I’ve taken a great interest in [Israel’s] affairs. Because the values that have made Israel such a success are values that matter a great deal to me. I share Israel’s love for freedom and democracy. I admire its tenacious determination when the odds are stacked against it,” he said.
“And, like millions of Israelis, I have a mother who’s still waiting for me to get a proper job!” he quipped.
Javid said the British National Union of Student’s decision to adopt boycott measures against Israel, while rejecting a motion to do the same against the Islamic State, “speaks volumes.”
He said he “had no time for a boycott campaign. Because for me, freedom is an absolute concept.”

The Judean People's Front: Calling BS on BDS - BDS Handbook: Forward

This is the first post in our new series Calling BS on BDS. In this series the JPF will not only debunk the major theories driving the BDS movement, but also go through the BDS Divestment Handbook used by anti-Israel "activists" all over the world and show how to counter their lies.
The forward of the BDS handbook sets the stage with two important points that must be properly understood:
The use of an anti-apartheid framework can be instrumental for student BDS activists, because some schools already have policies prohibiting investment in apartheid. (page 4)
Here they are admitting that their use of the "anti-apartheid framework" is tactical rather than substantive! BDS supporters are attempting to hijack a cause that is not their own in order to manipulate the system for their own benefit. The article this quote is referencing attempts to make the charge fit and is very effective if the reader knows nothing about the conflict, which is precisely why this debunking is so important
Showing reverence for the concept of self-determination is key when struggling in solidarity, and this call should be the basis for international BDS campaigns to challenge Israel’s occupation and apartheid. (page 5)
Anyone hearing a BDSer make this charge should immediately ask, "What about Jewish self-determination?! Why should the Jews be the only people denied the right to self-determination? If BDS cares so much about the right of self-determination, why are they trying to take this right away from one of the most persecuted groups in history?" Most supporters of Israel are not against the idea of Palestinian self-determination, but they do not support the idea of establishing a Palestinian state without it making peace with Israel.

J-Street poll shows American Jews don't quite support J-Street positions

J-Street is pretending to be happy:

Just weeks ahead of the June 30 deadline for negotiations, this morning J Street released a new poll that confirms the majority of Jewish Americans support President Obama's approach to keeping a nuclear bomb out of Iran’s hands.

In fact, the data prove yet again that the pundits and presumed Jewish communal representatives are flat-out wrong in assuming this community is hawkish on Iran or US policy in the Middle East in general.

But the poll itself has results that J-Street would prefer not to be publicized.

Here are some:

Binyamin Netanyahu, who J-Street vilifies at every opportunity, has a higher favorability rating than Barack Obama, 56-49.

Would you support or oppose the United States playing an active role in helping the parties to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict if it meant the United States publicly stating its disagreements with Israel? 56% oppose, J-Street supports.

Other results are skewed by the nature of the question:

72% say "I support a two-state solution that declares an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, resulting in all Arab countries establishing full diplomatic ties with Israel and creating an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza."

J-Street says this is their position. it also happens to be Binyamin Netanyahu's position. The question is whether every square inch across the Green Line must be part of a Palestinian state - J-Street seems to say yes, judging from their adamant opposition to Israel building in areas that would remain part of the Jewish state. So the question is tilted to get answers that J-Street can claim supports their position.

Even the nuclear Iran question is skewed:

Imagine that the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, China, Russia, and Iran reach a final agreement that places significant limits on Iran's nuclear program to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
The agreement imposes intrusive inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities by international nuclear experts, and it caps the level at which Iran can enrich uranium to far below what is necessary to make a nuclear weapon. In exchange for limiting its nuclear program and agreeing to intrusive inspections, Iran would receive phased relief from U.S. and international economic sanctions, as Iran complies with the terms of the agreement.
Would you support or oppose this agreement?

78% of American Jews support this, but the problem is that recent news stories show that there will not be "intrusive inspections" - and J-Street has not uttered a word of concern.

Wording is everything. Let's say the question had been written as "Iran has a history of cheating on its nuclear agreements. They have insulted the US and its leader has said 'Death to America.' They refuse to give adequate access to IAEA nuclear inspectors. They have created secret nuclear facilities Do you support an agreement that is unenforceable?" - would the answers be the same?

Russia: We Won't Get In Way If World Decides Not To Strike Syria (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Moscow, June 10 - Russian Foreign Minster Sergei Lavrov told reporters at a press conference this evening that if the Western powers decide to maintain their inaction on Syria, Russia would not impede the move.

A longtime supporter of embattled Syrian leader Basher Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed his foreign policy team not to oppose the supporters of the Syrian rebels in the event that those allies decide to continue not significantly aiding the rebels militarily against Assad's forces. The death toll in the four-year-old conflict has surpassed 200,000, while the violence has also created millions of refugees and internally displaced persons that aid agencies have struggled to help.

The announcement marks a clear shift in Russian strategy, which until now has focused on countering Western efforts to bolster Assad's opponents. The new approach, says Near East Institute analyst Mark Mywords, takes a more circumspect approach that recognizes other countries' ability not to intervene. For some countries, their ability even exceeds that of Russia, though the US and Iran, historically, have been loath to use it.

"What we're seeing is a new appreciation by the Kremlin that sometimes the most effective form of inaction is to let others perform the non-action," he explained. "In the rush to abandon much of the Communist government legacy, Russia was quick to let go of generations-old incentives not to do anything. But a resurgence of nostalgia for the simpler old times, as rough as they were, has prompted the leadership to revisit many of the Soviet practices such as providing no reason to do things at all, since the end result will be the same anyway," he continued.

The change presents Washington and other Western governments with a new opportunity not to act, coming as hundreds of thousands of Americans continue not to demand US action despite ongoing atrocities by all parties to the conflict. The Obama administration continues to weigh its options on how best not to respond to the use of chemical weapons in Syria, despite a vow by Obama that any such development would not be tolerated by the international community.

Several other key nations have embarked on a similar policy regarding Iran as well as Syria. The US itself under the Obama administration has made it clear that if no one else acts to stop Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons, it would not hesitate to leave well enough alone.

Discreetly getting out of the way of someone else's not doing anything has a venerable history, according to military historian Anne Nabler, author of See No Evil, See No Evil. "Perhaps the most famous example of not standing in the way of non-action is the world's reaction to Hitler's annexation of the the Czechoslovakian Sudetendland in 1938," she wrote in an e-mail. "But history is rife with nations standing idly by while other nations stand idly by."

06/10 Links Pt1: Poll: half of Gazans want to emigrate; Gazans Upset over UNRWA Aid to Syria

From Ian:

Palestinian poll shows discontent with Hamas

Gaza Strip residents are unhappy with Hamas and the results of the war with Israel last summer, a new Palestinian poll released Tuesday shows.
The poll, by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, shows that half of Gaza's residents want to emigrate, compared to 25% of the West Bank's residents.
The center's director, Khalil Shikaki, said the 50% emigration figure in Gaza is the highest ever, and is even higher among young people, about 80%.
"Gaza is definitely showing tremendous frustration," Shikaki said.
A majority, 63%, expressed dissatisfaction with "achievements compared to human and material losses" during Operation Protective Edge last summer. More than 2,100 Palestinians died in Gaza, while 67 Israeli soldiers and six Israeli civilians were killed.
The fighting devastated parts of Gaza, and reconstruction has been slow, causing many there to ask if it was worth it.
Of those polled, 63% said they support launching rockets at Israel while a blockade is in place. The same number said they favor indirect talks between Hamas and Israel to negotiate a long-term truce in exchange for lifting the blockade. (h/t djcelts)

Int'l Legal Experts Slam IDF - For Over-Warning Gazans

The IDF went to extraordinary lengths last summer to prevent civilian casualties while fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza, achieving a remarkable 1:1 civilian to combatant ratio, but according to international legal experts it went too far in avoiding casualties among the enemy population.
Willy Stern of Vanderbilt Law School, in an article to be published next Monday in the Weekly Standard, details what he found while spending two weeks with attorneys in the IDF's international law department dubbed "Dabla" as well as front-line commanders, and documents the IDF's "legal zeal" which as he notes has not stemmed the deluge of international criticism against it.
Stern listed how the IDF bombarded Gaza residents with thousands of telephone calls, leaflet drops, TV and radio messages, as well as calls to influential citizens urging them to evacuate residents, and in doing so gave the terrorist enemy detailed information about its troop movements.
"It was abundantly clear that IDF commanders had gone beyond any mandates that international law requires to avoid civilian casualties," writes Stern. He reported how Dabla attorneys have to sign off on a "target card" for each airstrike on terror targets, with the cards enumerating all of the relevant data about the planned strike.
In contrast, the Hamas "doctrine manual" captured by the IDF in the Shejaiya neighborhood early last August documents how the terror group urges its fighters to embed themselves among civilians in hopes that the IDF will kill civilians.
"Hamas’s playbook calls for helping to kill its own civilians, while the IDF’s playbook goes to extreme - some say inappropriate - lengths to protect innocent life in war," reads the article.

JPost Editorial: Jerusalem, Israel

Ostensibly, the State Department’s position on Jerusalem – as presented to the US federal appeals court – is that the “reversal of US policy” could “provoke uproar throughout the Arab and Muslim world and seriously damage our relations.”
But kowtowing to extremists in the Arab and Muslim world only encourages more extremist behavior, because it proves that intimidation works.
Setting policy because of fear of violence also strengthens the Palestinian “Nakba” narrative that views Israel as the aggressor in the 1948 War of Independence. In reality, it was a radicalized Palestinian leadership – backed by bellicose Arab nations – that rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan: the original two states for two peoples. The Palestinians made the historic mistake of attempting to annihilate out the fledgling Jewish state at birth. Thankfully, they failed. But they refuse to face the consequences of their own acts of violence. By refusing to recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel, the US is essentially strengthening this distorted narrative.
Just walking around Jerusalem, a city that has flourished and grown beyond recognition for the betterment of both Jews and Arabs during the years it has been under Israel’s control, one is struck by the sheer absurdity of the US’s position.
The time has come for the Obama administration to amend America’s policy.
Through direct negotiations, Israelis and Palestinians will decide the final borders of Israel and a future Palestinian state. No matter what the outcome, however, parts of Jerusalem always have been and will always remain Israel’s capital. US policy should reflect this simple fact.

Report: Israeli malware targeted hotels hosting Iran negotiations

It sure looks like Israel is doing some very sophisticated reconnaissance of the nuclear talks.

A fascinating report from the WSJ:

When a leading cybersecurity firm discovered it had been hacked last year by a virus widely believed to be used by Israeli spies, it wanted to know who else was on the hit list. It checked millions of computers world-wide and three luxury European hotels popped up. The other hotels the firm tested—thousands in all—were clean.

Researchers at the firm, Kaspersky Lab ZAO, weren’t sure what to make of the results. Then they realized what the three hotels had in common. Each was targeted before hosting high-stakes negotiations between Iran and world powers over curtailing Tehran’s nuclear program.

The spyware, the firm has now concluded, was an improved version of Duqu, a virus first identified by cybersecurity experts in 2011, according to a Kaspersky report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and outside security experts. Current and former U.S. officials and many cybersecurity experts believe Duqu was designed to carry out Israel’s most sensitive intelligence-collection operations.

Senior U.S. officials learned Israel was spying on the nuclear talks in 2014, a finding first reported by The Wall Street Journal in March. Officials at the time offered few details about Israel’s tactics.

Kaspersky’s findings, which the Moscow-based company is expected to disclose publicly Wednesday, shed new light on the use of a stealthy virus in the spying efforts. The revelations also could provide what may be the first concrete evidence that the nuclear negotiations were targeted and by whom.

No intelligence-collection effort is a higher priority for Israel’s spy agencies than Iran, including the closed-door talks which have entered a final stage. Israeli leaders say the emerging deal could allow Iran to continue working toward building nuclear weapons, a goal Iran has denied having.

Kaspersky, in keeping with its policy, doesn’t identify Israel by name as the country responsible for the hacks. But researchers at the company indicate that they suspect an Israeli connection in subtle ways. For example, the company’s report is titled “The Duqu Bet.” Bet is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Researchers at the company acknowledge that many questions remain unanswered about how the virus was used and what information may have been stolen. Among the possibilities, the researchers say, the intruders might have been able to eavesdrop on conversations and steal electronic files by commandeering the hotel systems that connect to computers, phones, elevators and alarms, allowing them to turn them on and off at will to collect information.

Israeli officials have denied spying on the U.S. or Israel’s other allies, although they acknowledge conducting close surveillance on Iranians generally. Israeli officials declined to comment specifically on the allegations relating to the Duqu virus and the hotel intrusions.

...
U.S. intelligence agencies view Duqu infections as Israeli spy operations, former U.S. officials said. While the new virus bore no overt links to Israel, it was so complex and borrowed so heavily from Duqu that it “could not have been created by anyone without access to the original Duqu source code,” Kaspersky writes in its report.
...
A Kaspersky employee in Moscow discovered the virus while testing a new security program on a company computer he assumed was bug-free. Rather than try to kick the hackers out, the company set up a special team to monitor the virus in action to figure out how it worked and what it was designed to do.
...
The company ran tests to determine if any of its 270,000 corporate clients world-wide had been infected. Kaspersky’s list of corporate clients includes big energy companies, European banks and thousands of hotels.

It found infections on a limited number of clients in Western Europe, Asia and the Middle East. None of Kaspersky’s clients in the U.S. were targeted. A targeted cyberattack against a hotel struck researchers as unusual but not unprecedented.

The first hotel with Duqu 2.0 on its computers piqued Mr. Raiu’s interest right away, in light of the revelations he read in the Journal about Israeli spying efforts, he said. The hotel, he said, was a well-known venue for the nuclear negotiations. But he wasn’t sure if it was an isolated case.

Soon thereafter, Kaspersky found the same virus at a second luxury hotel. Initially, Mr. Raiu didn’t see a connection between the hotel and the nuclear talks. Then, a couple of weeks after the discovery of the second hotel, he learned that the nuclear negotiations would take place there. His team was “shocked,” Mr. Raiu recalled. In both cases, the hotels were infected about two to three weeks before the negotiators convened.

Kaspersky provided information about Duqu 2.0 to one of its partners, which did its own round of tests. That search turned up a third infected hotel which hosted the nuclear talks. Mr. Raiu said the third hotel was discovered last but appeared to have been infected first, sometime in 2014.
...
In addition to the three hotels reported to have been hacked, the virus was found in computers at a site used to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Some world leaders had attended events there.

A former U.S. intelligence official said it was common for Israel and other countries to target such international gatherings. “The only thing that’s unusual now is you hear about it,” the official said.

Mr. Raiu said Kaspersky doesn’t know what was stolen from the three hotels or from the other venues. He said the virus was packed with more than 100 discrete “modules” that would have enabled the attackers to commandeer infected computers.

One module was designed to compress video feeds, possibly from hotel surveillance cameras. Other modules targeted communications, from phones to Wi-Fi networks. The attackers would know who was connected to the infected systems, allowing them to eavesdrop on conversations and steal electronic files. The virus could also enable them to operate two-way microphones in hotel elevators, computers and alarm systems.

In addition, the hackers appeared to penetrate front-desk computers. That could have allowed them to figure out the room numbers of specific delegation members.

The virus also automatically deposited smaller reconnaissance files on the computers it passed through, ensuring the attackers can monitor them and exploit the contents of those computers at a later date.

The mistake by the hackers seems to have been to use the same malware for attacking Kaspersky as for attacking the hotels.

Orange employee provided French jihadists with "hit list" of addresses, phone numbers

As Orange Telecom's CEO tries to limit the damage behind his anti-Israel statements in Egypt last week, it turns out that Orange has a bigger problem.

DW reports:

The trial of 15 members from the radical Islamist group Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride) got underway in Paris this week. The accused were arrested in 2012 amid a crackdown on radical Islamists following a shooting rampage in southern France.

Police had allegedly uncovered illegal weapons in a series of raids at group members' homes. They also found a document belonging to the group's leader, Mohamed Achamlane, which listed targets including Jewish supermarkets and the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo - which both became scenes of shootings in Paris in January that left 17 people dead.

Even though this group is not accused of the Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher attacks, they certainly considered them targets, along with a host of politicians and journalists.

Le Figaro is covering the trial, and they reported something astonishing: (English translation)

Accused of having wanted to perpetrate several attacks, the members of the small Islamist group had collected the personal details of several well-know personalities.

In addition to three Jewish grocer's shops, a café in rue des Rosiers in Paris and five shops in the chain Hyper Cacher [kosher], the "Knights of Pride", as the members of Forsane Alizza called themselves, had two Lyonese judges in their target sights, one of whom had been chosen because of the Jewish sound of his name and a child protection order, based on mistreatment, applying to the children of one of the presumed Islamists. The members of the radical group, fifteen of whom are appearing in Paris starting from Monday, did not exclude attacking "enemies of Islam" such as Fabrice Robert, leader of the party Bloc Identitaire.

Thanks to "Dawoud", an acquaintance working for Orange, Mohamed Achamlane, the self-proclaimed "emir" of Forsane Alizza, also received a "small gift", specifically a list of names, addresses, landline and mobile telephone numbers of political personalities such as Nicolas Sarkozy, Roselyne Bachelot, Édouard Balladur, Jean-Louis Boorlo, Dominique de Villepin, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Jean-Louis Debré and even Philippe Douste-Blazy. Forsane Alizza also obtained details of media figures such as Éric Zemmour [Jewish anti-immigration commentator] or Silhem Hachbi of the movement "Ni pute, ni soumise" ["Neither bitch, nor submissive", a sort of brown women feminist movement]. Insatiable, Mohamed Achamlane had even demanded details of "cops, judges, MPs, etc., so we have a big database to have a means of exerting major pressure."

In a file called "UMP data.odt" [UMP was the major right-wing party in France, Sarkozy's party], the anti-terrorist judges also discovered that the Islamists had "personal data of members of the UMP, including MPs, former ministers and media personalities," including "addresses, telephone numbers, electronic messages, vehicles, number of children, professions".

Yes, an Orange employee who is sympathetic to Islamists provided confidential information for a group to intimidate or kill them.

Any modern company guards against the threat of insiders stealing data, and with European privacy laws being mush stricter than those in the US, it is a big deal that such a breach occurred.

Orange cannot guard its own databases from Islamist sympathizers.

(h/t Yoel)

Bassam Eid, the Palestinian human rights activist who was forced out of B'Tselem for asking why no one was looking at human rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority, wrote a must-read article last weekend that has not gotten the attention it deserves (even though, as always, Ian excerpted it in the linkdump Sunday)

From TOI:

Israel is accused by “pro-Palestinian” activists of having little care for Palestinian civilians, of dehumanizing them, but reality is quite different. Although there is extensive dehumanizing of the Palestinians, the guilty party is not who you might think.

Israel is accused of humiliating Palestinians at security checkpoints, and she is accused of not taking enough care in attacks against Hamas to avoid civilian casualties. Some even go as far as accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians.

The truth is quite different. Although Palestinians do indeed experience humiliation in some cases at checkpoints, and although there are too many civilian casualties during Israeli attacks on terrorists (even one is too many), there is extensive evidence that Israel applies standards of care that are at least as good as any Liberal democracy would apply in similar circumstances. And there is certainly no genocide.

The dehumanizing of the Palestinians does indeed happen among overzealous pro-Zionist activists. Some of these activists, especially the ones who do not live in Israel, tend to think of Palestinians in abstract terms. They use arguments such as “there is no such thing as Palestinians”, and they insensitively dismiss real Palestinian tragedies (such as the destruction caused by wars in Gaza, or the dire situation of refugees in Arab countries) as unimportant since Israel is legitimately defending itself.

The dehumanizing of the Palestinians is also widespread among Arab regimes. They used the Palestinians as pawns from the moment Israel’s independence was declared, and they continue to do so today. The fact that Arab regimes do not offer citizenship to the Palestinian refugees that they have hosted for decades is a neglect that would be vilified in the strongest terms if it were taking place in Europe or North America, but because the offenders are Arabs and the victims are Arabs, the world ignores the crime and even encourages it by funding it through a specially-formed UN agency (the UNRWA).

The all-time champions in dehumanizing Palestinians, however, are the inappropriately named “pro-Palestinian” activists. While some Zionists unfairly ignore any deaths in Gaza, “pro-Palestinian” activists use Palestinian deaths for propaganda purposes and in the same breath refuse to demand an end to terrorist attacks from Gaza. Yet stopping terrorist attacks from Gaza is the only way to prevent civilians from being caught in the crossfire of retaliations by Israel. While some Zionists see the defense of Israel as an objective that overrides any Palestinian interests, “pro-Palestinian” activists see the destruction of Israel as an objective that can only be achieved through Palestinian deaths.

In the West Bank too, “pro-Palestinian” activists use Palestinians as pawns. They are engaged in a campaign to de-legitimize Israeli businesses that operate in the West Bank regardless of the fact that those businesses typically provide good employment opportunities to Palestinians. “Pro-Palestinian” activists see the loss of jobs by Palestinians as a reasonable price to pay for the greater goal of weakening Israel.

The “pro-Palestinian” activists have therefore entirely completed the switch from supposedly being pro-Palestinian to being fully anti-Palestinian. While they claim to defend the interests of Palestinians, they in fact thrive on the deaths and unemployment of Palestinians.

Palestinians are real. They are not abstractions, and each Palestinian life matters. John Calvin is a Palestinian refugee in Canada who is in danger of being deported back to the Palestinian territories where his life would be at risk due to his homosexuality, his conversion to Christianity, and his support for Israel. We have yet to see a single “pro-Palestinian” group come to the defense of Calvin. There is no doubt that if Calvin was a supporter of Hamas and in danger of being jailed by Israel, “pro-Palestinian” groups would have sprung to his defense, but because he supports Israel, they do not see him as a Palestinian worth defending. It is not Palestinian lives that “pro-Palestinian” activists value; it is the propaganda value of Palestinian lives and deaths that they value.

Of course for anti-Zionists, it all starts with dehumanizing Israelis. If they realized that Israelis are real people, they would be more likely to realize that Palestinians too are real people. Anti-Zionists, however, see Israelis as an abstract imperialist blob. Besides the fact that Israel is not an imperialist enterprise but a native enterprise, no two Israelis are exactly the same, but to anti-Zionists, all Israelis must be denounced, boycotted, isolated, and ultimately made to disappear.

Is it important that the IDF see Palestinians as people? Yes of course it is, but the IDF is reminded of this fact 24 hours a day, every day of the year, by hordes of people, even Israelis themselves, but in reality the IDF does a decent job of it and does not need to be reminded so often. Those hordes of people do not however look in the mirror and see that they, more than anyone else, routinely and thoughtlessly dehumanize Palestinians.

Whenever they are told that their actions hurt the Palestinians far more than they hurt Israel, “pro-Palestinian” activists plug their ears and start shouting “la la la la, I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you”, then they go back to their mantra about the Israelis having stolen land and needing to be punished and being all-around evil people and so on. It would be funny if it were not real.

It is appalling but somewhat expected (given over 67 years of violence against Israel) that some Zionists would dehumanize Palestinians, but it is quite a tragedy that “pro-Palestinian” activists are even worse offenders. The compulsive and fanatical nature of anti-Zionism is the problem. It prevents its adherents from seeing the trees while they obsess about a forest that mostly exists in their imaginations. The hateful nature of anti-Zionism burns everything around it, and the Palestinians are its main victims.

We therefore call for an awakening of conscience among the ranks of those who call themselves pro-Palestinian. If they truly are pro-Palestinian, and not simply anti-Israel, then we expect them to strongly condemn Hamas terrorism and Fatah corruption which are the main causes of Palestinian suffering, rather than demonize Israel while ignoring the consequences of that demonization on the lives of real Palestinians.

It all depends on your audience (poster)

Sources:

Ashrawi quote

PA TV video

06/09 Links Pt2: The truth about international law and BDS; Israel one of the Top 5 Happiest Countries

From Ian:

Graphic anti-Israel display casts shadow over Amsterdam

Local visitors and tourists in Amsterdam's Dam Square were welcomed over the weekend by disturbing images of the bodies of Palestinian children supposedly killed by IDF soldiers – images posted by pro-Palestinian activists who also protested Israel in the square.
The display appeared in the famous square in the center of the city under the title "Save the Palestinian Children." Included in the display was a photo of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu representing Satan with red eyes and the teeth of a vampire dripping with blood over the body of a dead and bleeding Palestinian baby.
A blue Star of David appeared as a tattoo on the prime minister's forehead under the title, "Can't get enough." A side graphic listed numbers of the dead and wounded in Gaza during a specific time period.
Israeli Ambassador to Holland Haim Divon responded to the display saying, "This is indeed appalling, outrageous and repulsive. This is part of the smear campaign that provokes nausea and disgust. Unfortunately there are a number of groups whose hate for Israel knows no limits.
"They don't raise their voice when atrocities occur daily in our region or elsewhere." Divon concluded by saying that the embassy was looking at ways to convince the local government to take a firm stance on the issue. (h/t Yenta Press)

The truth about international law and BDS

The BDS folks, and the people among us here who are sort of in favor of "at least" boycotting Judea and Samaria, back up their argument using international law. Well, Judea and Samaria aren't "Palestinian territories" -- at most they are disputed territories: We also lay claim to them based on the juridical concept of "permission of the nations," history, justice and the Bible. These arguments were made by world-renowned legal scholars from the time of the Six-Day War in 1967 and onward.
In any case, the enemies of settlement on the central mountain ridge claim that international law prohibits helping the economic activity of an occupying force in belligerent territories. Well, here's a surprise: There is no such law. When the BDS storm was raging, Professor Eugene Kontorovich, an expert in international law and a senior member of the Kohelet Policy Forum, published a research paper in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law titled "Economic Dealings with Occupied Territories."
Kontorovich examined legal rulings and economic conduct of European nations and demonstrated that from a European perspective, there is no international law that forbids economic activity in occupied territories. European companies operate in Western Sahara, a region occupied by Morocco in 1979 and unrecognized by any country; the same goes for northern Cyprus, which was occupied by Turkey in 1974.
While Europe prohibits business dealings over the Green Line, it signs business contracts with Morocco that aid the Moroccans' presence ("the occupying force") in Western Sahara -- French firms included. They don't do that because they don't care about the law when it comes to Morocco, but because no such law exists!

French Islamists had Jewish store 'hit list' and nuclear bomb manual

Fourteen members of a banned Islamic group stood trial in Paris on Monday on terror charges after police found a “hit list” of Jewish stores marked "targets" in files belonging to its leader.
Several of the stores belonged to the Hyper Cacher chain, like the one in which four people were killed in a hostage drama two days after the Islamist killings at Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly.
The 14, all members of a now-banned Islamist group called Forsane Alizza ("The Knights of Pride" in Arabic), are charged with "criminal conspiracy related to a terrorist enterprise". Some also face charges of illegal possession of weapons. All face prison terms of ten years if found guilty.
The group was dismantled amid a crackdown on radicals shortly after a 2012 killing spree in southern France by Mohamed Merah, who attacked a Jewish school and soldiers, killing seven people before being gunned down by police.
The “hit list” was found during a March 2012 raid on the home of group leader Mohamed Achamlane, 37, in which they also seized an English-language manual on how to build a nuclear bomb, along with three demilitarised assault rifles, three revolvers and “easy recipes” for home-made explosives.
On Achamlane’s hard disk, investigators found a file called “target.txt”, containing the names of ten Jewish stories, five of which belonged to Hyper Cacher.

One of the more egregious attempts to whitewash Hamas comes from "analysts" who say that Hamas accepts a two-state solution.

I've documented it since at least 2006, when The Guardian reported that Hamas accepts Israel - and Hamas immediately denied it.

That didn't stop others from doing the same, over and over. And once the PA sees how clueless Western media and analysts are, they push the same lies. (So does Jordan.)

Even Hamas will allow gullible Westerners to misinterpret its ambiguous statements but will turn around and say in Arabic to its own people, very clearly, that their goal is to destroy Israel.

Luckily, Hamas organ Al Resalah has written, in English, what Hamas' position is:

Senior leader of Hamas Mahmoud al-Zahhar said all options are available to confront the Israeli occupation, including armed and popular resistance and resistance of boycott.

Armed resistance is not a political issue that may be negotiated, said al-Zahhar in a meeting organized by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Khan Younis City on Sunday to commemorate the day Jerusalem was occupied.

"It is neither a controversial, nor a negotiable issue; it is, rather, dogmatic fundamental cause in struggle with Israel," said al-Zahhar, referring to armed resistance, pointing out that Israel has long sought to erase the Palestinian constants, concerning the Palestinian lands, Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Al-Zahhar stressed that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) refuses a Palestinian state within the 1967 or 1948 territories, saying "Our policy is Palestine, all of Palestine". He explained that Palestine as a whole is a part of the Islamic dogma that is derived from the Holy Qura'an.

But good luck waiting for Reuters or the BBC to cover this story the way they cover the many fictional stories of Hamas moderation.

I last met Australian Jewish historian Professor Suzanne Rutland at a major international Jewish Studies Conference in Moscow in 2006. There, in the bustling foyer of the massive hotel where the conference was taking place, she happened to mention to me that she and the veteran Australian political journalist Sam Lipski were collaborating on a book about the Australian contribution to the struggle for Soviet Jewry. So it was wonderful to catch up with Suzanne (and Sam) again a few weeks ago when the result of their joint endeavours – Let My People Go: The untold story of Australia and the Soviet Jews 1959-89 (Hybrid Publishers, Melbourne) – was launched in Melbourne by Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian newspaper, whose columns supportive of Israel over the years will, I’m certain, be familiar to many of Elder’s readers.

In a delightfully droll but profoundly perceptive speech, Sheridan nailed it when he said:

“There’s a certain small stream of Australian braggadocio which thinks we’re a great power and can solve the world’s problems… But the other extreme is [the self-perception that] we’re really a backwater, we count for nothing, our opinions don’t matter … The truth is Australia is a very significant middle power”.

The ultimate success of Australia’s long and tenacious campaign for the prisoners of Zion and the refuseniks testifies to that. As Sam Lipski has remarked, securing the freedom of the trapped and persecuted Jews of the Soviet Union was the third most momentous occurrence in twentieth-century Jewish history, the others being, obviously, the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel.

The book’s final text is the work of Lipski, who pays due tribute to the formidable research that Suzanne Rutland undertook in Jerusalem, notably in Isi Leibler’s extensive private archive, in Sydney, and in Canberra, and to her drafts and suggestions. As Lipski notes in the book:

“Australian Jews had mobilised and lobbied on other major issues before Soviet Jewry. In 1947-48 a small group of Sydney Jewish leaders had helped to persuade Labor’s External Affairs Minister Herbert Evatt to support the partition of Palestine and the emergence of Israel. In 1950 a broader coalition of Melbourne and Sydney leaders could not prevent the Menzies government, supported by Labor, from allowing 100,000 German settlers to come to Australia.”

But the campaign for Soviet Jewry “reflected a greater militancy, especially in Melbourne, a new sophistication in engaging and informing sympathetic parliamentarians, and a new readiness to involve the mainstream media”. What makes the story so compelling is the fact that Lipski is no mere narrator of events: he was himself involved in the campaign, and he brings an insider’s eye – and the observations of a sophisticated political analyst – to the unfolding events.

Isi Leibler, whose very substantial archive proved so rich a resource in Suzanne’s research, was, of course, one of the key players in the saga. The book tells of the little-known seminal meeting in 1959 between the then 25-year-old Australian, a religious Zionist and already the “coming man” of the Jewish communal leadership scene in Melbourne, and the 60-year-old Israeli Shaul Avigur, who headed the Lishkat Hakesher (“The Liaison Bureau”), more commonly dubbed the Lishkah. Founded in 1952, it aimed to forge contacts with the three million Jews of the Soviet Union beset by Stalinist oppression and antisemitism, kindle Jewish education among them, and eventually see them settled in Israel.

It was owing to Leibler’s meeting with Avigur, and Leibler’s ensuing drive and tenacity in pressing the issue, that the plight of Soviet Jewry became a central focus of the Australian Jewish community. As early as 1958 the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the community’s federal roof body, resolved to request the federal government to urge the United Nations to seek amelioration of the Jews’ situation in the Soviet Union, to ask the Conference of Jewish Organizations convening in New York that year to raise global awareness by publicising the plight of Soviet Jewry, and to call on Australia similarly to inform the public. But only in 1962 did these initiatives begin to bear fruit.

In April that year Liberal federal MP Billy Wentworth, a staunch anti-Communist who had sought advice on the subject from Leibler and who would be in touch with him again, asked the Minister for External Affairs, Sir Garfield Barwick, about the extent and purpose of antisemitism in the Soviet Union – to which Barwick responded that there were indeed “indications of a recrudescence of antisemitism in Russia”. The upshot was that in October that year, Barwick announced that Australia would raise the matter the following month at the United Nations. Thus, on 2 November, at the UN General Assembly’s Social Committee, Australia’s representative Douglas White described examples of antisemitism in the Soviet Union, adding: ‘should the USSR find difficulty in according to Soviet Jewry full freedom to practise their religion, it should, we believe, permit them to leave the country. Indeed, it has a moral obligation to do so under article 13, paragraph 2, of the UN Declaration of Human Rights …

”

This initiative, presenting the plight of Soviet Jewry as a human rights issue, set a precedent for the West, and convinced the previously wary Israeli government no longer to prevaricate on the issue. Moreover, Canberra had acted without prior consultation with Washington. Over the years, as the situation of Soviet Jewry grew more visibly dire (especially after 1967 with the publication of overtly antisemitic material) there was a groundswell of support in Australia for Soviet Jewry, emanating from various sides of politics, and involving a campaign by Jews themselves, officially started in 1970 by their federal roof body.

In 1965 appeared Leibler’s influential small book Soviet Jewry and Human Rights – endorsed, crucially, by a sympathetic Australian Communist, Rex Mortimer, thus undermining the odious stance taken on the issue by sections of the Communist Party and elements on the political left, including, especially reprehensibly, the Jewish Senator Sam Cohen.

In 1967 Leibler, representing Australia, received a standing ovation at the World Jewish Congress in Strasbourg when he accused the WJC’s president, Dr Nahum Goldmann, of shtadlanut, of opposing public rallies to publicise the cause in favour of exclusive reliance on unobtrusive overtures.

Unlike his Labor predecessor Gough Whitlam, Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser proved sympathetic to the plight of Soviet Jewry, allowing refuseniks’ highly sensitive documents to be sent out of the country in the Australian embassy’s diplomatic bag, and declaring that his government fully supported its American counterpart’s “strenuous efforts in negotiations with the Soviet Union to allow free emigration of Jews and others who wish to leave…” During Fraser’s prime ministership, owing to a petition introduced into federal parliament in November 1976 by Billy Wentworth, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence’s Inquiry into Human Rights in the Soviet Union was set up. Chaired by Kim Beazley, who had been a minister in the Whitlam government, it heard first from the former refusenik Professor Alexander Voronel, a distinguished scientist living in Israel, and tabled its lengthy landmark report in November 1979.

As a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Robert Goot, put it at the Lipski/Rutland book’s Sydney launch:

“A significant part of this wonderful book focuses on events surrounding the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the way in which that event not only presented opportunities for the Soviet Jewry movement, but also demonstrated the lack of leadership consensus on how to leverage those opportunities – to boycott or not to boycott. We read of the appointment of Isi Leibler’s company Jetset as the Australian Olympic Committee’s official travel agent for the games and the controversy that generated; the opportunities that the AOC appointment provided Isi Leibler to visit Russia, meet with and advance the cause of the refuseniks; the Hawke visits [to Israel and to Russia]; the Australian government’s boycott of the games; and much more. It is a part of the story filled with excitement, allegations of conflict of interest, leadership schisms, intrigue, shady KGB operatives; lots of vodka, some beer (in deference to Hawke), hope and despair, but above all of Soviet Jewish heroes. In short, the book conveys a fascinating plot, larger than life characters and most importantly for Soviet Jewry, a happy ending. And not only is it true, but it recounts a part of the saga that is driven uniquely by Australians.”

In 1987, Leibler was invited by Moscow’s chief rabbi to address worshippers from the pulpit of the KGB-controlled Archipova Synagogue at Rosh Hashana. “Giving a Zionist address in broken Yiddish to a packed synagogue in the presence of refusenik friends ... was an unforgettable experience”, he has recalled.

The book ends with the opening in Moscow in February 1989 of the Solomon Mykhoels Cultural Centre, named in honour of a famous Yiddish theatrical figure murdered on Stalin’s orders in 1948. Leibler affixed the mezuzah to the Centre’s door in the presence of over 70 Israeli and international Jewish communal representatives and to the echo of encouraging messages from, among others, Australian prime minister Bob Hawke and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Concludes that chapter:

“[The far-reaching consequences of Gorbachev’s perestroika] still lay in the future. But enough had happened for Isi Leibler to look back 30 years to a meeting with Shaul Avigur…. Israel’s legendary spymaster … had asked him to work for Mission Improbable: to bring the Soviet Union’s imprisoned and persecuted Jews to Israel. And to work for that goal from Australia, a relatively minor player in the Cold War, with a small post-Holocaust Jewish community of limited influence.

In 1959 the signs were not all that propitious. But over the next 30 years Australian Jews and their leaders worked with Australian governments, parliamentarians, diplomats and opinion makers and took up the Soviet cause with growing fervour. They made a difference....”

Sam Lipski began his speech by pointing out that, entirely by serendipity, the date of the book’s launch, 17 May, coincided, to the very day, with the concert for former refuseniks held in 1988 at the Melbourne Concert Hall – a joyous event entitled “From Russia With Thanks” that I remember well. To thunderous applause the elderly scientist Professor Alexander Lerner, on behalf of himself and the other fourteen ex-refuseniks present, presented Bob Hawke (the intended hero of the occasion, who had endeared himself to the refuseniks by visiting Russia in 1979 to intercede for them) with a specially commissioned silver sculpture and told him:

“Through your strength, you have saved the Jewish community of Russia from a loss of dignity and from death. Your name will be remembered forever…”

As the book recalls in some detail, however, that occasion was unexpectedly marred by inappropriate remarks by Hawke, who had been veering away from his celebrated championship of Israel into a more even-handed approach and who – too cocksure of the affection in which the Australian Jewish community held him – ten minutes into an otherwise splendid on-topic speech gratuitously referred to the Intifada that had broken out six months earlier and proceeded to drew an analogy between the Palestinians and the refuseniks, giving dismay and offence in consequence, not least to Isi Leibler, who had a humdinger of a row with Hawke afterwards. Lipski wrote at the time, in his editorial in the Australian Jewish News, “The special relationship [between Hawke and Australian Jewry] will never quite be the same again”. Nor, indeed, has it been.