Worth reading: "Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People"

From JCPA:

Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People:

From the San Remo Conference (1920) to the Netanyahu-Abbas Talks

Joshua Teitelbaum

• According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the real root of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians had been their ongoing refusal to recognize "the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in their historic homeland" and he has singled out this issue as a key "prerequisite for ending the conflict." Netanyahu's proposal puts back on the global agenda a fundamental Jewish national right that was once axiomatic but today is rarely mentioned.
• Ninety years ago at the San Remo Conference following World War I (April 1920), the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers determined the allocation of the Middle Eastern territories of the defeated Ottoman Empire and decided to incorporate the 1917 Balfour Declaration supporting a Jewish national home in Palestine into the British Mandate for the territory, a move which confirmed international recognition of the right of Jewish self-determination.
• The language adopted at San Remo was a triumph for Zionism, which saw a national solution to the problem of the Jews. It recognized the existence of the Jews as more than individuals who subscribed to a certain religion - Judaism - but rather as a corporate group deserving of national expression, in this case in the form of a national home. And this home was to be in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews. The language agreed upon at San Remo was, as British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon put it, "the Magna Carta of the Zionists." It was clear at the time that the term "national home" really meant a state.
• Jewish self-determination was part of a process that ended up decolonizing the Middle East in an effort that led to Arab as well as Jewish independence. Repeated recent associations of Israel with colonialism - an ahistorical canard that erases the millennia-long association of Jews with the Land of Israel as an indigenous people - ignores the benefit that Zionism actually brought to the Arabs through the process of decolonization. The British Peel Commission Report of 1937 was quite clear on this. Indeed, it was the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel that gave critical mass to a distinct and unique Palestinian identity as well.
• The Jews have been brought back into history through the establishment of the State of Israel. This was accomplished with the aid of international institutions which recognized the justice and importance of Jewish national self-determination. These institutions accepted the validity of Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jews. Today, those who deny the Jewish right to national self-determination, more than 60 years after the founding of Israel, engage in a new kind of anti-Semitism.

Read the whole thing.


(h/t Joel)

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Some news about Amnesty

A couple of recent items about Amnesty International:

In May, Amnesty released a strongly worded communique condemning Israel for arresting a "human rights activist:"

Amnesty International has called on the Israeli authorities to end their harassment of a human rights activist whose week-long detention by the Israeli authorities was extended today.

Ameer Makhoul, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was arrested in a dawn raid at his home in Haifa, northern Israel, by the Israeli security services and police on 6 May. He has been charged with "contact with a foreign agent" on the basis of “secret evidence”.

"Ameer Makhoul is a key human rights defender, well-known for his civil society activism on behalf of the Palestinian citizens of Israel," said Philip Luther, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme.

"His arrest and continued detention smacks of pure harassment, designed to hinder his human rights work. If this is the case, we would regard him as a prisoner of conscience call for his immediate and unconditional release.”

Last week, this "key human rights defender" admitted to being a spy for Hezbollah.
As Yaacov Lozowick asks - will Amnesty apologize to Israel for accusing them of harassing someone for their human rights work?

The other story is about a kangaroo court called the Russell Tribunal for Palestine. It plans to meet in November to create its second show trial against Israel, with members of the "jury" including such rabid Israel bashers as Mairead Corrigan Maguire, John Dugard, Ronald Kasrils and even conspiracy theory nutjob Cynthia McKinney. It is sponsored by the Law Society of England.

A meeting to discuss the goals of this farce is going to take place on November 8th. The venue? The Amnesty Human Rights Action Centre!


UPDATE: Summing up the Russell Tribunal for Palestine:

From the Israel Embassy in Spain, h/t Elder of Lobby

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PA restricts how and what media can report. Journalists silent.

From the Jerusalem Post:

The Palestinian Authority said on Monday that foreign journalists who visit the West Bank through Israeli media facilitators are “unwelcome.”


The move is seen as an attempt by the PA to prevent journalists from writing stories that may reflect negatively on the Palestinian government’s image.


The Jerusalem-based Media Central organization thus canceled a planned tour of foreign journalists to Jericho, which was to have taken place on Tuesday.


The organization has been taking foreign journalists on organized tours of the West Bank, where they have been able to speak to PA officials and other Palestinians freely. In Jericho, the journalists were supposed to meet with various PA officials, as well as the mayor.


However, a spokesman for the PA informed Media Central that foreign journalists should coordinate their visits to the West Bank through the PA’s press office and not through Israeli bodies. The spokesman said that foreign journalists whose visits are organized by Israeli groups are “unwelcome.”


The latest decision was apparently made in response to a report in the Los Angeles Times about a ceremony marking Jericho’s 10,000th birthday party. The report noted that many Palestinians and foreigners who were invited to the event did not show up.


“No foreign diplomats attended the opening ceremony, Shakira was not there to sing or shake, and even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a no-show,” according to the Los Angeles Times report. “Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, greeted by a few dozen Jericho children, unveiled a Jericho-themed postage stamp.”


The Palestinian Government Media Center also responded sharply to claims of violating press freedoms on Tuesday after the Palestinian Authority refused to accommodate any journalists who enter PA-controlled territory with the assistance of the Jerusalem-based Media Central organization.


"The Palestinian Government Media Center is very keen, as a new institution, to provide facilities for journalists wishing to report on the reality of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and give an accurate view of the political situation," said a statement released by the group. "What it is not prepared to do is work in co-operation with Israeli organizations dedicated to propaganda in support of the Occupation."

Perhaps, one might think, the PA Media Center is dedicated to freedom of the press and truth in reporting? Maybe the Jerusalem Post is exaggerating that they were upset at the negative LA Times story?

Well, let's go to their webpage and find out the goals of the Palestine Media Center - written only in Arabic:

In light of the escalation of the struggle of the Palestinian people, and their heroic sacrifices, which reached peaks in the first Intifada and the Al-Aqsa [second] Intifada ... cabinet affairs minister Yasser Abed Rabbo created an information center that addresses the media and public opinion and the Arab World at the regional and international levels, for truth and justice towards the fact that the national struggle is a just and honorable struggle of the Palestinian people and the peoples of the Arab nation, in defense of their natural rights in the liberation of their occupied land and sovereignty.


It is possible to summarize the objectives of the Centre in this manner:


* Explain and clarify the official Palestinian position towards the various issues of the Arab and Palestinian - Israeli conflict.


* To clarify the image of the Palestinian and international media and proving the legitimacy of their struggle for independence.


* Address the world public opinion in plain, understandable and contemporary language.


* Improve the process of working with existing media, especially the U.S. media, to reorganize and manage the Palestinian relationship with the networks and representatives of various agencies and global media.


The center also aims to create a system of effective information shows the official position of the National Authority towards various issues, in addition to the right of self-determination and the declaration of the state and the return of refugees and commitment to the principles of international legitimacy, and to enhance the image of Palestinians around the world through effective cooperation with the media, and influencing global public opinion about the Palestinian people, especially with regard to achieving the national goals of independence and human rights, and the cultural, social, economic and political development of the Palestinian people.

In short, foreign journalists are now being forced by the PA to coordinate their movements with an organization whose very existence is explicitly against fair reporting about the conflict and only for giving one side of the story.

Compare the PMC goals with those published by Media Central:

MediaCentral is an independent media-liaison organization offering a friendly place to work in downtown Jerusalem, with free services including:

• WiFi access & printer/fax facilities, etc.
• Primary sources (experts, analysts, interviewees, materials)
• References / contacts – photographers, translators, drivers, guides, etc.
• Field Tours to locations of interest – Sderot, Golan & the North, Security Barrier, etc.
• Updates, briefings, analysis – in a range of languages
• Translations of breaking news and critical materials
• Drop-in lounge with coffee/tea/drinks & snacks
• Wide-screen TVs with continual news feeds
• Helping hand services/info – logistics, contracts, what’s hot, what’s not
• Every Thursday - MediaCentral's TGIT! "Thank Goodness It's Thursday" end of the week gatherings every Thursday at 4pm (with wine & cheese, beer & snacks) - with occasional briefings on various topics (TBA). 

MediaCentral can be your 'base-camp' in Jerusalem. We take an open, direct and needs-based approach to serving you, in cooperation with both Israeli and Palestinian partners from the government and NGO sectors. Initiated by Honest Reporting, our goal is to promote impartial and comprehensive coverage; confident that accuracy is Israel’s best ally, we aim to simply help you achieve your goals of understanding and reporting the facts and providing insightful analysis.

Note the highlighted section: to MediaCentral, truth and accuracy is the primary goal, even as it is confident that this very accuracy will help Israel. Contrast that the the PMC, whose entire stated purpose is explicitly pro-Palestinian propaganda and no balance whatsoever.

While MediaCentral can and does arrange for reporters to meet with Palestinian Arab officials, the PMC would never dream of facilitating reporters meeting with Jewish leaders who live in Judea and Samaria. That is the difference between an organization that is meant to help the media and one meant to mislead it.

If the PA is now telling its officials to stop working with MediaCentral, that means that the PA is afraid of the truth and wants to force journalists to adhere to their narrative. This is, to put it simply, outrageous, and the media should be making their objections clear to this attempt to influence their opinions and limit their ability to hear both sides of the story.

Unfortunately that is not happening. The media is silent on this explicit curtailing of their freedoms under the "moderate" yet authoritarian Palestinian Authority. The only person to report on this outrage is - as usual - Khaled Abu Toameh, the brilliant and courageous Arab journalist who reveals the stories that the Western media are too timid to touch.

In what is seen as yet another bid to restrict freedom of the media, the Palestinian Authority government has announced that journalists who wish to report "accurately" on Palestinian life are urged to do so directly with Palestinians.

The Palestinian government's decision is aimed at sending a warning to journalists who dare to report anything that may reflect negatively on its reputation.

It is not clear why representatives of the foreign media have not protested against the new restrictions directed against them.

The Western-funded Palestinian government is actually telling foreign journalists that from now on they should report only on matters that shed a positive light on the Palestinian Authority and its leaders.

By insisting that foreign journalists arrange their visits to the Palestinian territories only through Palestinians, the Palestinian government is proving that its attitude toward freedom of the media is not much different that that of Hamas, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Bashar Assad.

(h/t Backspin)

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Kuwait to run for UN Human Rights Council

Another joke in the offing:

Kuwait has decided to run for the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) membership for 2013-2015 in aim to what it calls “buttressing and disseminating” the culture of human rights, Kuna news agency reported on Thursday.

The country’s permanent representative at the U.N. Mansour al-Etebi has embarked on the UNHRC country’s decision during a U.N. General Assembly Social, Human and Cultural Committee meeting late Wednesday.

Al-Etebi repeated Kuwait’s commitment to spread the culture of human rights through the involvement of the country in all of the relevant international events pertinent to the development and protection of human rights and dignity.

The article goes on to helpfully point out that Kuwait has recently banned books at a book fair as well as stripped a man of his citizenship because he insulted Aisha, one of Mohammed's wives.

In addition, Kuwait restricts the hours that women are allowed to work, its press engages in self-censorship and you can get arrested for eating in public on Ramadan.

Sounds like a good fit with Libya, Saudi Arabia, China and the other freedom-loving members of the council.

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Two wrongs

From AP:

One of Egypt's best-selling novelists lashed out on Friday at an unauthorized Hebrew translation of his best known novel, describing it as intellectual "theft."

Alaa al-Aswany told AP that he will sue an Israeli center for translating his hit book, "The Yacoubian Building," without his permission.

The Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information acknowledged it translated the novel against al-Aswany's will on the grounds of "expanding cultural awareness."

The center's founder, Gershon Baskin, said that al-Aswany is against culture normalization with Israel and that is why he turned down several requests to translate the novel into Hebrew.
In consultation with the organization's board, Baskin said, he decided to offer a link to a PDF file of the Hebrew translation, sending it out to the 27,000 people on the group's e-mail list.

"This man apparently rejects the fact that his country has been at peace with Israel for 30 years," Baskin said. "With all due respect to his copyright privileges, we decided it was important for people here to read this book. Let's give the Israeli Jewish public an opportunity to understand Arab society better."

Al-Aswany, a dentist-turned novelist, said bringing up his opposition to normalization with Israel was an attempt to distract from what he characterized as a theft.

"The fact is someone's intellectual property has been stolen and that this happened in Israel, a country that claims to be democratic," he said.

For al-Aswany to be against translating his novel to Hebrew is stupid and bigoted.

But that doesn't give the ICPRI the right to publish it and distribute it for free without giving al=Aswany royalties. If they had published it, sold it and given his the proceeds, they might have an argument, but to use al-Aswany's bigotry to justify IPCRI's theft is a bit outlandish.

I find it especially ironic that the same Gershon Baskin wrote an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post last month about the peace process, saying that both sides are right but "two rights don't make a wrong." Perhaps he should re-visit the original expression that he was twisting.

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Left wing activists caught cutting down Arab olive trees

From YNet:

Arabs and leftist activists staged an attack on Palestinian fields in a bid to accuse settlers of vandalism, an organization that claims to have documented the incident says.

Tazpit Unit [is] an organization identified with the settlers which documents news events in the territories. Tazpit says that these staged attacks were meant to falsely accuse settlers of attacking Palestinian land.

The photos, taken by members of the Tazpit Unit, were shot on Palestinian land Friday, near the Neveh Tzuf settlement. The images allegedly show Palestinians and left-wing activists cutting down Palestinian olive trees using an electric saw.

Here's the picture enlarged:

While it is possible/probable that some Jews have cut down Arab olive trees, I have still never seen a picture such as this one showing it - even though these "peace" activists are all over the West Bank looking for just such an event.

 I had mentioned this phenomenon before.

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You can always count on Palestinian Arab intransigence

I've mentioned how an outgoing UNRWA official, Andrew Whitley, caused a storm of protest by stating an obvious truth: that most Palestinian Arab "refugees" will never end up in Israel and that it is cruel to keep feeding them that fantasy - a fantasy that has already ruined three generations of families.

Now, that oh-so-"moderate" PA spokesman and serial liar Saeb Erekat has added his voice to the complaints, writing a letter of complaint to the UN and happy that UNRWA distanced itself from the speech Whitley gave.

An additional lie that Erekat added to his stellar record is that UN General Assembly Resolution 194 calls for the "right of return" for Palestinian Arab refugees from 1948. Of course, it doesn't - it calls for "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date." That clause about living at peace with their neighbors limits its applicability by quite a bit, besides the simple fact that it was a General Assembly resolution that is not binding (it also called for the internationalization of Jerusalem and a huge chunk of the West Bank, including Bethlehem - something that Jordan certainly didn't do and that Palestinian Arabs today are not contemplating.)

And, I would add, the definition of "refugee" used at that time did not include descendants of refugees, a unique interpretation that was made up only for Palestinian Arabs by UNRWA, an agency that didn't exist at the time this resolution passed.

So, no, UN 194 does not give any "right of return" and those who say it does, like Erekat, are liars. They are placing the well-being of millions of people behind their own petty politica and hatred of Israel. Erekat doesn't give a damn about the descendants of the refugees - he just wants them to fester in misery forever, rather than have them become full citizens of the host countries that the vast majority of them were born in.

And while we are talking about Erekat's and the PA's intransigence, he also said that the "secret plan" supposedly floated by the US to Israel where Israel would lease parts of Jerusalem and the West Bank from the PA for a number of decades is a non-starter, saying that "Palestine is not for rent." A Fatah leader also said that Abu Mazen (Abbas) would never agree to that.

So no matter what possible compromises anyone comes up with, rest assured that the Palestinian Arabs will not accept them - secure in their knowledge that their consistent rejectionism will not be noticed by the West, who will continue to label only Israeli leaders "hardline" and "intransigent" and Palestinian Arab leaders as "moderate" and "pragmatic."

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Baruch Dayan HaEmet

RivkA, an Israeli blogger who has been chronicling her battle with cancer, passed away on Friday. Her funeral was Saturday night in Jerusalem.

While I did not frequent her blog, she sounds like she was an amazing person.

Since the topic of Rachel's Tomb came up yesterday, here is her account of her visit there in 2008.

May her family be comforted.

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Shabbat Shalom open thread

Here's another picture I took with my camera phone this week (heavily cropped and somewhat adjusted to make it brighter.) It was through the car window so it is not as nice as the one I did yesterday.

I have been working off and on to move the products from my CafePress store to Printfection, where you have much more variety for every design. I was able to embed the store in a Blogger page so you can visit without leaving this site. Check it out! If the embedded page doesn't work for some reason, you can go straight here. 

For that store, I made (with help from Daughter of Ziyon) a different Elder logo, one that is horizontal and without Spongebob, because I thought they might not allow it because of copyright issues. 

I do need to apologize for those who have been sending links to me; I know I am not acknowledging them all but the blog and work and the other stuff in my life is making time very, very scarce. I appreciate the emails very much, even if I don't respond.

Have a great Shabbos/Shabbat/weekend!

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UNESCO pushes a lie

From the UNESCO site:

• The Palestinian sites of al-Haram al-Ibrahimi/Tomb of the Patriarchs in al-Khalil/Hebron and the Bilal bin Rabah Mosque/Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem: the Board voted 44 to one (12 abstentions) to reaffirm that the two sites are an integral part of the occupied Palestinian Territories and that any unilateral action by the Israeli authorities is to be considered a violation of international law, the UNESCO Conventions and the United Nations and Security Council resolutions.

Back in March, UNESCO went a little further and referred to "the historic Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque," helpfully putting "Rachel's Tomb" in parentheses.

The only problem is that it is completely false.

As I documented in some detail last year, the name "Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque" was never used before the mid-1990s - even by Arabs! Calling it "the historic Bilal Bin Rabah mosque" is, simply, a lie, and an easily proven one.

For a good example of this, here is a UN document from 1994 where the Arab League is describing Israeli "violations of human rights in the territories:"

[T]he settlers demanded the right to engage in acts of religious worship, like the Muslims, in a number of mosques, including the Ibrahimi Shrine, Joseph's Tomb at Nablus, Nabi Samwil at Jerusalem and Rachel's Tomb at Bethlehem.

Even the Arab League called it Rachel's Tomb a mere sixteen years ago! The only Arabic name for the site has historically been Qubbat Rukhail, or "The Dome of Rachel."

UNESCO is an institution whose entire purpose is meant to foster co-existence based on education, the sciences, and culture. By saying that an undisputed Jewish holy site is primarily a mosque, and only parenthetically a Jewish site, shows its utter disregard for those three fields represented in its name. It is pushing a lie that was created from whole cloth by Muslims to eliminate Jewish history and culture.

It is a travesty of UNESCO's goals to rewrite history in the service of those who want to eradicate Jewish culture from the Middle East.

See also JPost on Netanyahu's reaction.

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Latest Latma (10/29/10)

Starts off strong; goes downhill. But still good.

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Jordan condemns UNRWA official's comments

Earlier this week, I mentioned an outgoing UNRWA official had stated out loud what everyone knows - that most descendants of Arab refugees from Palestine in 1948 will never "return" to Israel, and it is cruel to keep feeding them that lie.

Predictably, UNRWA distanced itself from the comments.

Jordan has now condemned the comments as well:

Jordan has condemned remarks by a United Nations official saying Palestinian refugees must not be deluded about their right to return and that Arab countries must resettle them.

Wajih Azaizeh, who directs Jordan's Palestinian Affairs Department, on Thursday called remarks by Andrew Whitley, the N.Y. director of the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees, "irresponsible."

It is especially interesting that Jordan is upset, because it is the only Arab country that gave citizenship to Palestinian Arabs (the ones who lived in the West Bank that was illegally annexed by Jordan.)

In recent years, Jordan has been slowly taking away Palestinian Jordanians' rights - and citizenship, especially from Arabs who live in or have ties with the West Bank.

This is apparently more evidence that Jordan has no intent to treat its Palestinian citizens equally. From the reaction, it appears that Jordan is pushing to deport all of its PalArab citizens to "Palestine" as soon as that option arises.

And this is the Arab country that has treated Palestinian Arabs the best, by far!

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