Richard Kemp: Fighting the Blight of Durban
Hamas started this war [in May] as part of its power struggle with Fatah... But its... acts of aggression — seen repeatedly since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 — were also intended to engender an Israeli reaction that would unavoidably lead to the deaths of Palestinian civilians, and in turn provoke vilification against the Jewish state and its isolation from the international community.
All of this takes place and is legitimised within a wider international political web with the United Nations, spider-like, at its centre. Under the instigation of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation... at the end of the Gaza conflict the obedient UN Human Rights Council resolved to create a permanent "Commission of Inquiry" into Israel's treatment of Palestinians, the only open-ended inquisition of its kind against any country in the world. Its findings are sickeningly certain even before they are written.
[The UN's upcoming Durban IV conference] marks the anniversary of the Durban Declaration made at the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance. Shocking even for this corrupt ... world body, the conference was itself characterised by racism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance — the direct opposite of its declared purpose. In one hate-filled speech after another, Israel was falsely accused of racism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide.
The conference and subsequent linked events in 2009 and 2011 have served to legitimise Jew-hate.
France, Italy, Bulgaria, New Zealand and Poland, each of which refused to attend in 2011, have yet to declare their intentions.
Amb. Ronald Lauder has called on President Biden to take the lead against this vitriol... by declaring such hatred beyond the pale... . Lauder says the US president is the one man in the country who can make a difference... He is right and the same applies to presidents and prime ministers everywhere.
Anything less than full support for Israel's vital and lawful defensive actions amounts to encouragement of violence by Hamas and tacit approval of its actions. Leaders who fail to support Israel and condemn these terrorists share culpability not just for antisemitic hate in their own countries but also for an increasingly violent cycle in the Middle East in which the greatest victims are Palestinian civilians, betrayed and endangered by the vicious actions of their own leadership.
Dear France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Ireland, Norway and Sweden:
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 28, 2021
You say you stand against racism, that you are committed to fighting antisemitism. Then why won't you #SayNoToDurbanIV 'Festival of Hate'?@franceonu @SpainUN @ItalyUN_NY @PLinUN @irishmissionun @NorwayUN @SwedenUN https://t.co/kWfFNz34UK
Biden, Bring the Sbarro massacre mastermind to justice
Last year, 18 American Jewish organizations issued a strongly worded joint letter expressing “collective outrage over the Kingdom of Jordan’s refusal to extradite the murderer of American citizens.”3 Filmmakers Arrested in Nigeria Return to Israel
They further urged US officials to hold Jordan “accountable to its commitments under its extradition treaty with the United States and bring all pressure to bear” on the desert kingdom.
Nonetheless, earlier this year, Interpol inexplicably decided to drop its international arrest warrant against Tamimi.
And when Jordan’s King Abdullah visited Washington last week for a much-publicized visit to the White House, a US government spokesman refused to say whether the Tamimi case had been raised in discussions between the president and the monarch.
But Joe Biden did go to the trouble of lavishing praise on Abdullah in front of the cameras, calling him a “good, loyal and decent friend.” This is nothing less than scandalous.
After all, Washington sends $1.3 billion of US taxpayer money to Jordan each year in the form of foreign aid, even though the kingdom continues to harbor a terrorist wanted for the murder of Americans.
And, as Arnold Roth told the Daily Caller website on July 20, “There is an important issue of justice no one is addressing and to the extent that this woman is still free is a stain on the moral fabric of the US.”
It is time for this outrage to end and for America to demand that King Abdullah hand over Tamimi to stand trial for her crimes. The victims of Sbarro deserve no less.
Three Israeli filmmakers landed back in Israel Thursday morning after spending 20 days in a Nigerian prison.
Pro-Israel activist Rudy Rochman, filmmaker Noam Leibman and French-Israeli journalist E. David Benaym were released from prison Tuesday night with the assistance of the Israeli Embassy in Abuja and handed over to US custody. They were then escorted to a Chabad center where they spent the night.
They departed Nigeria on Wednesday night for Istanbul and arrived to Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday morning.
Rochman, Liebman and Benaym were arrested while making a documentary on the Igbo Jewish community, who consider themselves a lost tribe of Israel but are not recognized as halachically Jewish by the State of Israel or the Chief Rabbinate.
Nigerian authorities on July 9 arrested and interrogated the men on suspicion of having coming into contact with Biafran separatists.
The group was detained at a synagogue during Friday night services in the Igbo village of Ogidi by Nigeria’s secret police and taken to Abuja.
They were in the West African country to shoot a documentary titled “We Were Never Lost,” which explores communities on the continent that claim Jewish or Israelite descent.