EDITOR: The poem which has done its job…

Now, more thana week after Grass first published his poem, the issue still rocks Germany, and Israeli politicians and their media sidekicks are all aflame. What can they do to Grass? He is 80, and had all the fame he could want, so now he can afford to be disliked by Israel and the German yeah-sayers of Philo-Zionism. That he has only said what everyone knows fora long time, does not make it any better for him. The truth cannot be told.

Guenter Grass’s Israel poem stirs German debate: BBC

By Stephen Evans
BBC News, Berlin

To people outside Germany, a furore about a mere poem might be hard to understand.

In Britain or the United States, poets opine and some of the people may listen – and then usually they move on.

The chattering class might chatter a little louder, but the great sweep of politics is rarely changed.

But in Germany, artists are taken very seriously and few more than Guenter Grass.

It is not just his Nobel Prize, but the way his novels reflected Germany’s Nazi past with brutal clarity. They were like mirrors that revealed the true face to those brave enough to look at themselves.

That’s why the Swedish Academy gave him the Nobel Prize, citing his courage in “recalling the disavowed and the forgotten: the victims, losers and lies that people wanted to forget because they had once believed in them”.

Searing honesty
In the years after the war, Guenter Grass’s writing gave him a status of Conscience of the Nation, and in a nation which takes its soul-searching very seriously indeed, particularly because the Holocaust and the other crimes of the Nazis provided so much material through which to search.

For more than 60 years after the war, he showed a zeal and what seemed like a searing honesty in the way he berated those who refused to admit their own dark pasts.

But this reputation was dented when it emerged in 2006 that he had kept quiet about his own past as a member of the Waffen-SS (a branch of the military under the direct control of the Nazi party).

Even then, he was not universally discredited. Some took this as evidence of the complexity of the psyche of the man (and by implication of the nation).

With this background, the poem “What Must be Said” was never going to be a passing work of whimsy, filling space on the arts pages but not troubling the rest of the newspaper.

It is a poem which concentrates on Israeli nuclear weapons as the prime danger in the Middle East.

Iran is mentioned (“subjugated by a loud-mouth”, as the poem says). But it is Israel which is the focus (“It is the alleged right to the first strike that could annihilate the Iranian people”).

And he criticises Germany for selling submarines to Israel which could be used in this “first strike”.

It is this one-sided concentration which has brought the fiercest criticism within Germany.

The chairman of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Ruprecht Polenz, said that Grass “has difficulties whenever he comments on politics and is often wrong”.

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said: “Putting Israel and Iran on the same moral level is not ingenious but absurd”.

The truly biting criticism is that Guenter Grass is displaying a sophisticated anti-Semitism.

‘One-sidedness’
On this argument, his fault is not that he criticises Israeli government policy but that he criticises it especially hard without doing the same to others (like Iran).

This alleged one-sidedness amounts, according to Henryk Broder of Die Welt, to “educated anti-Semitism”.

The literary critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who survived the Holocaust, called the poem “disgusting”, adding, “Iran wants to wipe out Israel, and Guenter Grass is versifying the opposite”.

After the poem’s publication, Guenter Grass went on television and defended himself.

“I expected dissent,” he said “particularly because the fact that Israel is a nuclear power is still treated as a taboo”.

But: “I didn’t expect the reactions to be directed at my person rather than my arguments, and I didn’t expect them to be so insulting and venomous, culminating in the accusation of anti-Semitism. Such a massive condemnation, to be pilloried in such a way – that is something I have never experienced before”.

One of the accusations against the writer is that he cites Israel as the likely first striker in a nuclear conflict.

He replied to this: “Excuse me, if you attack a nuclear plant with conventional missiles you run the risk of a nuclear catastrophe”.

All this matters very much in Germany as it wrestles with its own past – and so it matters in the rest of the world too, because Germany is an economic giant which is finding its feet.

In 2008, Chancellor Merkel addressed the Israeli parliament and declared that the security of Israel was central to German foreign policy.

It has been a given in Germany that it would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel.

What Guenter Grass has done is to open up debate on that relationship.

Poems do matter, particularly this one, in Germany and in Israel.

Germany official: Israel’s reaction to Grass’ criticism ‘exaggerated’: Haaretz

German Health Minister criticizes Nobel laureate for his controversial poem, saying it was sad to see that someone experienced post-war Germany ‘remains marked by so much prejudice and stubbornness.’

A minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s German government has described as “exaggerated” an Israeli visa ban on Nobel Literature laureate Gunter Grass, a report said Monday.

“I cannot imagine that Mr. Grass has any interest in showing up in Israel after the explicit criticism he has faced in Germany,” said Daniel Bahr, the health minister, in an interview to appear Tuesday in the daily Die Welt.

The minister, who also criticized Grass, was apparently not speaking for the government. He is a senior member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), a junior partner in Merkel’s cabinet. Die Welt issued a summary to other media in advance of publication.

Grass is persona non grata in Israel, Interior Minister Eli Yishai announced Sunday after Grass criticized the country in a poem.

Attacking Grass, Bahr said it was “sad to see that someone who has experienced all the controversies of post-war Germany remains marked by so much prejudice and stubbornness.” But he called the visa ban an “utterly exaggerated” response, Die Welt said.

Grass’ poem, “What must be said,” claimed Israel was preparing a first strike to “wipe out the Iranian people” as it attempts to derail Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The novelist, 84, is widely regarded as Germany’s greatest living writer.

Renate Kunast, co-leader of the opposition Green Party in parliament, criticized Grass for his refusal to recognize that Israel was threatened by Iran, but she also deplored Yishai’s move.

“It means everyone will end up discussing the ban instead of Grass’s views,” she told DPA.

Israel is deeply concerned about Tehran’s nuclear program, coupled with repeated vows by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

Speculation has been growing in recent months that Israel intends to launch a military strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities, to end, or at least retard significantly, Iran’s drive toward atomic weapons.

Grass has been furiously attacked in Germany over the poem. Early Saturday, someone daubed graffiti on a sculpture in the city of Gottingen commemorating free speech which Grass commissioned and donated. The red paint called on him to “shut your mouth.”

Interior Minister declares Gunter Grass persona non grata in Israel: Haaretz

Yishai condemns the German Nobel laureate for his controversial poem, published last week; Lieberman warns against how ‘small seeds of anti-Semitic hate can turn into a large fire that harms all of humanity.’

By Ophir Bar-Zohar     and Barak Ravid

Interior Minister Eli Yishai declared Sunday that German Nobel laureate Gunter Grass is a persona non grata in Israel, after Grass published a poem last week which was highly critical of Israel and its policies.

Yishai harshly condemned Grass’ poem, and said that he is declared a persona non grata in Israel for wearing SS uniform in the past.

“Grass’ poems are an attempt to guide the fire of hate toward the State of Israel and the Israeli people, and to advance the ideas of which he was a public partner in the past, when he wore the uniform of the SS,” Yishai said. “If Gunter wants to continue publicizing his distorted and false works, I suggest he do it in Iran, where he will find a supportive audience.”

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman also issued a harsh condemnation of Grass’ poem on Sunday, during a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti.

Lieberman said that Grass’ poem is the expression of “egoism of so-called Western intellectuals, who are willing to sacrifice the Jewish people on the altar of crazy anti-Semites for a second time, just to sell a few more books or gain recognition.”

Lieberman called on European leaders to condemn statements that could possibly influence public opinion toward anti-Semitism. “We have witnessed in the past how small seeds of anti-Semitic hate can turn into a large fire that harms all of humanity,” said Lieberman.

In his poem, which was published in several European newspapers last week, the 85-year-old author claims that Israel’s nuclear reactor – and not Iran’s – presents a threat to world peace. Grass’ poem calls for Germany to cease supplying Israel with submarines, and warns against an Israeli strike on Iran.

Grass’ poem entitled “What must be said” drew strong criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well. “His declarations are ignorant and shameful and every honest person in this world must condemn them,” Netanyahu said.

In an interview published in Germany on Saturday, Grass claimed that his poem was meant to target the current Israeli government, not the country as a whole. “It’s that which I criticize, a policy that keeps building settlements despite a UN resolution,” said Grass.

 Israel has reacted with hysteria over Gunter Grass: Haaretz Editorial

German author Gunter Grass, a Nobel laureate for literature, did no more than write a poem. The State of Israel, through its interior minister, reacted with hysteria.

Author Gunter Grass sees the State of Israel as a threat to world peace. He believes Israel is armed with nuclear weapons, and is threatening Iran as the Islamic Republic looks to obtain a nuclear arsenal.

After the poem he published to this effect in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung last week drew extensive criticism, he asked to distinguish between the state and its government. It’s not Israel that worries him, he said, but the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The reactions to Grass’ claims focused on the man, not on his positions. Naysayers recalled his past as a soldier for the Third Reich – a past he concealed until late in life. Interior Minister Eli Yishai hurried to declare Grass persona non grata. Should he land at Ben-Gurion International Airport and hand his passport to the immigration control officers, he will be hurriedly escorted by burly policemen to the first Lufthansa flight back to Frankfurt – or, even better, to Munich, as befits someone who once followed der Fuhrer’s orders.

The emotions can be understood, but it’s hard to accept the overreaction. When the interior minister says, “If Gunter Grass wants to continue to distribute his false and distorted works, I suggest he do so from Iran, where he’ll find an appreciative audience,” he doesn’t even detect the irony in his words. Because it’s precisely his decision not to let Grass enter Israel because of a poem he wrote that is characteristic of dark regimes like those in Iran or North Korea.

The combination of declarations against Israel and a past as a Nazi soldier is an explosive combination that invites sharp reactions. But while Benjamin Netanyahu’s remark describing Grass’ work as “ignorant and shameful declarations that any fair person in the world must condemn” can be accepted as part of the public debate, Yishai’s use of his governmental authority is not legitimate. Any protest should be expressed within the democratic-liberal framework, which allows every person to express his views – provocative though they may be.

Grass, a Nobel laureate for literature, did no more than write a poem. The State of Israel, through its interior minister, reacted with hysteria. It seems that at issue is less an undesirable person than an undesirable policy.

Ian McEwan: misery of attack on Iran would be beyond belief: Guardian

Author says regime is ‘looking very wobbly,’ but that an attack would reunite the country behind its leaders
Lisa Allardice

Ian McEwan, the writer whose 2005 novel Saturday was widely interpreted as making the case for military intervention in Iraq, said on Sunday any attack on Iran with the aim of destroying its nuclear capability would end in disaster.

Speaking at the Guardian’s Open Weekend festival, McEwan said: “I belong to that very large cohort who think it would be absolutely disastrous to attack Iran … I think the mischief and misery and unintended consequences of an attack on Iran would be beyond belief.”

McEwan’s Saturday is set on 15 February 2003, the day of a huge anti-war demonstration in London. He said the debate over intervention in Iran mirrored the arguments over Iraq in 2003, but said that readers were wrong to attribute to him the pro-war views of Saturday’s neurosurgeon hero, Henry Perowne.

In fact, McEwan said, his views on Iraq were a combination of Perowne’s and those of his anti-war daughter, Daisy. Although he sympathised initially with arguments that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power, he became “deeply convinced” that the Bush administration was not capable of running the country following a conflict.

As the invasion loomed, McEwan said he spent a “white night of complete sleeplessness” hatching a plan to personally persuade Tony Blair to move 10,000 British troops from Kuwait to Afghanistan. He planned to ask his publisher, Gail Rebuck, to set up a meeting with the prime minister through her husband, Blair’s pollster Phillip Gould, but thought better of it in the morning.

McEwan said the Iranian regime was now “looking very wobbly” with “real splits between Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader Khamenei” – but any attack on the country would “bind the country back together behind the theocracy”.

He also rejected Israeli claims that if military action were not taken against the Iranian nuclear programme within months, Tehran’s weapons capability would be secreted away underground in facilities where it could no longer be knocked out.

“I wish that Israel had never embarked on [its own nuclear weapons programme] because it was inevitable that one or other of the powers in the region would follow … [but] There is a massive feeling of resentment against the [Iranian] regime, within the population and it’s quite a sophisticated population, to drive them to the other side would be a disaster.

During the interview, with the Guardian’s deputy editor, Ian Katz, the novelist also said:

• The British education system is limiting children in forcing them to choose between humanities or scientific studies at an early age. He said the American GRE test for postgraduate entrants produced more rounded students.

• When he was introduced to Tony Blair at a Tate Modern function, “the prime minister got hold of my hand in that intense way politicians have, not letting it go, and said: ‘I’m a great admirer of your work. We have a couple of your pictures hanging in Downing Street.'” He included the anecdote in Saturday.

• His son had to study his novel Enduring Love for A-level. McEwan had given him “some key points” but he still got a low mark – “I think quite wrongly. His tutor thought the stalker carried the authorial moral centre. Whereas I thought he was a complete madman.”

McEwan also revealed that he wrote notes for his novels initially in longhand, in ringbound green notebooks, working on a table he built himself in the 90s. “Black ink always. Pressing medium hard,” he joked.

Theresa May’s haste to ban Raed Salah will be repented at leisure: Guardian

May acted credulously on a dossier produced by the Community Security Trust – who strayed unwisely from their core purpose
David Hearst
Theresa May was ‘under a misapprehension as to the facts’ when she banned the Palestinian political activist Sheikh Raed Salah. Photograph: Chris Helgren/Reuters
Antisemitism is a fact of life, and all too often, a fact of British life. We do not need the events of Toulouse to remind us of that. They could all too easily have happened here.

The Community Security Trust, a registered British charity, plays an invaluable role in monitoring both the number of antisemitic attacks in Britain each year and instances of antisemitic discourse. If anyone needed reminding, it provided the physical security for synagogues at Passover. Even though I do not always agree with the inferences the CST draws – and the Guardian has appeared several times in its report on antisemitic discourse – I uphold the CST’s right to make those calls and acknowledge its proven expertise in doing do.

The quid pro quo of the trust placed in the CST by the local police and the Home Office is that this organisation get its facts right. That when it calls out an antisemite whose presence in Britain is not conducive to the public good, this very grave charge – the gravest of all charges it can make – sticks.

In June last year, home secretary Theresa May banned Sheikh Raed Salah, a Palestinian activist and religious leader, on the grounds that he had allegedly made a series of grossly antisemitic statements in sermons and a poem, and that his presence in Britain was not conducive to the public good. He was then arrested and detained in London after it emerged he had entered Britain despite the exclusion order being issued against him.

The principal source for the decision to ban him, according to witnesses who testified in court for the Home Office, was a report compiled by the CST.

Almost a year on, all four charges against Salah, supporting his deportation, have been thrown out by the vice-president of the Upper Immigration Tribunal. In his ruling, Mr Justice Ockelton said May was misled and “under a misapprehension as to the facts”. Calling the case against Salah “very weak”, Ockleton said the matters raised by the home secretary were not a fair portrayal of Salah’s views or words as a whole; that those views caused no difficulty at the time or since, and that there was no evidence that the danger perceived by the home secretary was shared by any of the other countries Salah visited, least of all by Israel, whose citizen he is and who only took out an indictment against him on these grounds after May’s deportation order in June.

Although Salah is now free to return home after a year, the matter will not end here. The CST’s confidential advice to the home secretary was accompanied by a well-orchestrated and poisonous campaign against Salah in the media, who so swiftly and conclusively condemned him as a “hate preacher”.

Libel writs will now be pursued against those who fabricated and peddled the dodgy quotes from this increasingly dodgy dossier. A man who has now been declared by the highest immigration court to be innocent, was arrested and spent 10 months either in prison or on restrictive bail conditions amounting to house arrest, on the basis of these allegations, as he fought to clear his name.

There are more important issues than Salah’s treatment in Britain. The first is the way the home secretary came to her decision to deport Salah. The court papers show it was done with some speed. Timings of the emails sent and received from the home secretary’s private office do not make a good case for the calm, clear deliberation which we all imagine should precede a deportation order from Britain against a high-profile Palestinian.

The second is May’s apparent reliance on a single source of information. She did not consult Muslim or Palestinian groups about Salah’s speaking tour in Britain.

This point is made by Salah’s solicitor, Tayab Ali, who said: “I find it wholly inappropriate that the secretary of state should base such an important decision on a narrow single source, such as the Community Security Trust. There should be an investigation into how such a relationship was allowed to exist in the Home Office.”

The CST says it has not yet seen a copy of the judgment and could not make a general comment on the ruling or the reasons for the decision. But it rejects the accusation that it was responsible for misleading anyone with inaccurate information, saying: “Throughout this process we have done more than anybody else to ensure that the most accurate information possible was available for the government, and the immigration appeal tribunal, to use in making their decisions”

The third issue is about the role of monitoring antisemitism itself. As the CST makes clear in its reports, there is a world of difference between antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and criticism of the actions of the Israeli state. All three discourses have their own dynamic. There are grave dangers in conflating the three.

The ruling noted the testimony of two expert witnesses, Robert Lambert, a retired head of the Metropolitan Police’s Muslim Contact Unit, and David Miller, a sociology professor from the University of Strathclyde who said that while the CST has played an invaluable role in identifying threats to the Jewish community from the far right, it failed to distinguish between antisemitism and criticism of the acts of the Israeli state and therefore gave an unbalanced perspective. This is the heart of the matter.

The home secretary and the police should continue to consult organisations like the CST on all matters which pertain to antisemitism. But the CST should also examine its conscience. Was it wise to allow itself to stray from its natural terrain, the legitimate and necessary pursuit of antisemites, and be drawn into the snake pit of the Arab-Israeli conflict?

Palestinian activist wins appeal against deportation: Guardian

Tribunal overturns home secretary’s decision to expel outspoken critic of Israel’s policies during his visit to UK
Ben Quinn

The home secretary was “misled” when she moved to throw a leading Palestinian activist out of the UK, according to an immigration tribunal ruling that strongly criticised her decision and found in favour of his appeal against the government’s attempts to deport him.

Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, was held in June last year on the orders of Theresa May after he flew into Britain despite being banned from entering the country.

After launching a legal battle against the moves to expel him, he received a letter at the weekend from the Upper Immigration Tribunal stating that the decision to detain him appeared to have been “entirely unnecessary” and that his appeal had succeeded “on all grounds”.

Salah, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship whose legal team claimed he had not been aware of the ban, came to the UK for a speaking tour at the invitation of London-based Middle East Monitor (Memo), but was detained three days later after May served a deportation notice saying his presence in the UK was “not conducive to the public good”.

He sought damages for unlawful detention, and the high court ruled that since he was not given “proper and sufficient reasons” for his arrest until the third day of his detention, he should receive damages for that period.

The ruling of the immigration tribunal, which was made known on Saturday, states that May “acted under a misapprehension as to the facts” and was “misled” in relation to a poem written by Salah.

It also decided she took “irrelevant factors” into account in relation to indictments against Salah, and a conviction in Israel in 2003 over charges that his organisation funnelled funds to a banned charity in Gaza.

The ruling stated: “We have no difficulty in concluding that the Secretary of State’s decision has not been shown to be proportionate to the need to preserve community harmony or protect the United Kingdom from the dangers to which the policy refers. On the contrary, the position is that it appears to have been entirely unnecessary to achieve that purpose. lt follows that as was as a disproportionate interference with the appellant’s Convention rights, the human rights grounds are made out.”

The Home Office said it was disappointed by the tribunal’s decision: “We are considering the detailed judgment, and if we can appeal, we will.”

Bail conditions following his release are still in place so Salah is unable to comment, but the Palestine Solidarity Campaign hailed the ruling as a “very important day for British justice”.

“By arresting, imprisoning and attempting to deport Sheikh Raed Salah on what the judge has determined as a ‘misapprehension of the facts’, the British government have acted in a shameful way,” Sarah Colborne, the PSC’s director, said.

Dr Daud Abdullah, the director of Memo, said that the decision was “a landmark for freedom of speech as well the rights of Palestinians to campaign against injustice at home and abroad”. “Sheikh Raed Salah is an outspoken critic of his government’s discriminatory policies in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and it is entirely appropriate that a leading law officer in Britain has seen through the propaganda and stated clearly that someone, a group or an individual has ‘misled’ the home secretary on such an important matter.”

May has said in the past the government excluded people such as Salah because it wanted to take action early “rather than simply waiting until people have gone down the route of violent extremism”.

Emails that emerged in the course of legal proceedings indicate a measure of the haste with which May’s office moved to exclude Salah.

Just 17 minutes after receiving a report on him, prepared by the Community Security Trust, a UK charity that monitors antisemitism, Faye Johnson, private secretary to the home secretary, emailed about a parliamentary event Salah was due to attend.

“Is there anything that we can do to prevent him from attending (eg could we exclude him on the grounds of unacceptable behaviour?)” she wrote. The CST’s report said Salah’s record of provocative statements carried a risk that his presence in the UK could have “a radicalising impact” on his audiences.

UK Border Agency officials were dubious and a senior official wrote to May, saying that while there was evidence that would allow the home secretary to exclude Salah on the grounds of unacceptable behaviour, “the disputed underlying evidence could make an exclusion decision vulnerable to legal challenge.”

The immigration tribunal had been told that the home secretary acted on information provided to the government by the CST and the Jewish Board of Deputies.

In its ruling, it said that “it is of concern” that May apparently did not consult any Muslim or Palestinian organisations. It noted the evidence of Robert Lambert, a retired head of the Metropolitan police’s Muslim Contact Unit, and David Miller, a sociology professor from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland who set up the Spinwatch site, “that whereas the CST has done invaluable work in identifying threats to the Jewish community in the UK from the far right such as the British National party (BNP), it failed to distinguish between antisemitism and criticism of the actions of the Israeli state and therefore gives an unbalanced perspective, but they did not say that it was improper for the secretary of state to seek the views of the CST in this matter.”

The evidence of a civil servant at the Home Office was also that May “gave this issue serious consideration and looked upon all of the evidence with a discerning eye”.

Binyamin Netanyahu’s support for settlers bodes ill for peace prospects: Guardian

The Israeli prime minister’s critics say he is seeking to change, bend or bypass the law in order to protect illegal outposts
Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem

On its own, it seemed like an encouraging omen to anyone alarmed by the increasing entrenchment of Jewish settlers on the West Bank. Israeli security forces last week forcibly evacuated hardliners from a Palestinian house in the volatile city of Hebron, to the fury of the settlers and their backers.

Hours earlier, Binyamin Netanyahu had intervened to halt the eviction; now he said the rule of law must prevail. Had the prime minister had a change of heart? Did the Hebron drama signal a new tough approach against radical settlers and their supporters inside Netanyahu’s cabinet?

It seemed not. Shortly after the operation in Hebron, it emerged that Netanyahu was seeking ways of “legalising” four settler outposts in the West Bank whose demolition had been ordered by Israel’s courts because they were built on privately owned Palestinian land or were constructed without permits. These outposts have been ruled illegal under Israeli law. Under international law, specifically article 49 of the fourth Geneva convention, all settlements in occupied territory are illegal.

One, known as Ulpana, has been the subject of a protracted legal challenge over land ownership, which ended with the supreme court ordering its demolition by the end of this month. On the day of the Hebron eviction, Netanyahu asked the attorney general “to see to it that [Ulpana] not be evacuated”.

He also instructed that the status of three other outposts, built without authorisation, “be provided for”. If permits are retrospectively granted, they will gain the status of settlements. The last new West Bank settlement to be authorised by the government was in 1999.

In his statement, Netanyahu said: “The principle that has guided me is to strengthen Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria [the biblical term for the West Bank].”

Another outpost, Migron, has also been the subject of a long legal battle, at the end of which the supreme court ruled it was built on privately owned Palestinian land and must be demolished. A subsequent deal to delay demolition for three years to allow for the settlers to be relocated to land nearby was overturned by the court; the new deadline is 1 August. Intense lobbying by the settlers and their supporters may yet stop the bulldozers.

The government’s critics say that rather than upholding the rule of law, Netanyahu is seeking to change, bend or bypass the law in order to protect illegal outposts. Referring to Ulpana, Shlomo Zacharia, the lawyer for the Palestinian landowners, was quoted as saying: “The prime minister, in effect, is demanding that the attorney general find a way to prevent the return of stolen property to its legal owners … The prime minister ought to stop encouraging land theft and backing violations of the law.”

None of this bodes well for the diminishing prospects of any agreement on borders and territories with the Palestinians. The international diplomatic consensus is that a deal would take the big settlement blocs across the pre-1967 “green line” on to the Israeli side of a new border, with compensatory land incorporated into the new state of Palestine. Other settlements dotted around the West Bank would have to be evacuated.

Israeli politicians and officials speak of “painful sacrifices and compromises” that would be required to reach a deal. But the government’s reluctance even to comply with Israeli court rulings on unauthorised hardline outposts suggests that the evacuation of thousands of Israelis who moved to West Bank settlements under state encouragement and financial inducements is not on his agenda.

It is often pointed out that Netanyahu is under political pressure from the rightwing pro-settler factions in his coalition government who issue portentous warnings about the consequences of touching a single hilltop caravan. But despite regular threats to bring down the coalition, Netanyahu’s three-year-old government is relatively stable, his opinion poll ratings are solid and the opposition Kadima party has just replaced its leader amid internal divisions. And there are few voices inside Israel demanding action against settlements and outposts.

Most criticism comes from outside. In a strongly worded statement last week following the publication of tenders for almost 900 new units in an East Jerusalem settlement, William Hague, the UK foreign secretary, reiterated: “Illegal Israeli settlement activity poses the most significant and live threat to the viability of the two state solution … The Israeli government’s policy is illegal under international law, counter-productive, destabilising and provocative.”

But without the US weighing in heavily – unlikely in an election year – Israel can brush off such criticism. The strategy of consolidating and expanding the Jewish presence in the occupied West Bank continues unabated.

Many Israeli commentators say Netanyahu lacks vision and boldness. But his real achievement over the past three years has been to win decisively a diplomatic standoff over settlements, entrench the status quo and push the issue of a peace agreement with the Palestinians down the agenda.

Mad Israelis’ Secion: From the Horse’s Mouth

EDITOR: Back by popular demand, the section which displays Israel as it is! Ynet can be relied upon to properly represent Israeli madness at its best, every single weekend, and even more so during the holidays.

Why Jews demonize Israel: Ynet

Persecution complex prompts some Jews to align themselves with ill-advised partners
Dan Calic
Why are some Jews willing to stand side by side with the Palestinians and demonize Israel? What motivates them to think that slicing up Israel is the way to resolve the conflict?

The answer to such questions goes to the heart of the Jewish psyche, within an historical context.

No other people come close to suffering as much persecution throughout history as the Jews. They were held in bondage in Egypt, exiled to Babylonia, conquered, persecuted and exiled by Rome, persecuted and exiled by the Crusaders, by England and by Spain. The Holocaust destroyed two thirds of Europe’s Jews.

Having endured two millennia of being history’s scapegoat, it should come as no surprise many Jews have been so deeply affected, they have developed a “persecution complex.”

Most people, including Jews, view themselves and others as inherently “good,” rather than “evil.” However, when factoring in the persecution complex built into the DNA of many Jews, this becomes a game changer.

Having been ridiculed, exiled, tortured, discriminated against and killed for so long, Jews understandably prefer to be seen as making positive contributions to society. Indeed, Jewish contributions in the fields of medicine, technology, education, science, business, entertainment and so on are proportionately higher than any other group of people, by far.

The true underdog is Israel
The last thing Jews want is to be unjustly accused of doing to others what has been done to them. Sadly, some have taken advantage of this mindset. For example, how many times have you seen Israel compared to Nazi Germany, when it comes to the Palestinians? This is a vitriolic attempt at reverse psychology designed to label Jews as hypocrites.

No Jew wishes to be seen as persecuting a perceived underdog, or viewed as an obstacle to “peace, justice and reconciliation.” Indeed, Jews have been leading advocates of these noble goals for generations.

However, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some Jews in their zeal to be considered champions of the “underdog” have either failed to realize or are unwilling to accept something quite important.

Those whose cause they are promoting have no interest in reciprocating. The Muslims are not going to extend their hands in gratitude if Israel turns over land to them for a state. They will not suddenly see Jews as their friends and willingly agree to peaceful coexistence with Israel.

Indeed, at this time Arabs live in a world where many parents, schools, political and religious leaders as well as the media have convinced them the Jews are responsible for all their problems.

What’s tragic is that the Jews who are demonizing Israel are playing directly into the hands of people who will turn on them the moment their dream becomes reality. In reality, the actions of these Jews are a misguided attempt to endear themselves to others by taking up the popular cause of the “underdog,” at times to their own detriment.

This is one of those times. While championing the underdog is noble, this is the wrong “underdog.” The true underdog is Israel. Hopefully these Jews will realize this before it’s too late.

EDITOR:  This weekend we are blessed by a non-Israeli writing to declare love for Zionism, despite his earlier errors… What can one say? With friends like this one, Israel and Zionism are in trouble.

Why I no longer hate Israel: Ynet

Portuguese blogger explains why he changed his views, fell in love with Israel
Romeu Monteiro

I’m a 22-year-old Portuguese gay activist and PhD student. I’m not Jewish, Israeli or even religious, but I am a Zionist and strong supporter of Israel, and I want to explain why.

My story begins at the age of nine, when I went to the school library to get the Diary of Anne Frank. I had no prior idea about the Holocaust and I could not comprehend such persecution. I had never met a Jew, but I was raised to see other people as similar to myself.

The book’s story haunted me: This girl, slightly older than me, hiding for years, confined, isolated, being persecuted for who she was, constantly fearful of being discovered… How horrible; how could this have happened?

A few months later, I discovered I was gay. I was 10 and in Anne’s attic: Confined, isolated, hiding who I was, fearing what would happen if I was discovered… I felt strongly identified with Anne and the Jewish people, and this feeling never abandoned me.

Shortly after, the second Intifada started. I began seeing Israel, a country which I knew almost nothing about, on the news constantly, for the worst reasons. I learned that the Jews had invaded Palestine after the Holocaust to get a country and were occupying and controlling the native Palestinians who lived in the remaining land.

The TV showed us these people blowing themselves up inside buses and cafes and I, like most people around me, thought: “How desperate must someone be to kill themselves like this? How could the Jews go from being oppressed to oppressors? Have they not learned the lessons of History?” I grew up loving the Jewish people but hating Israel.

In 2008, when I was 18 and in college, I found myself criticizing Israel and the Gaza Strip blockade in a YouTube video about the death of Rachel Corrie. I got an answer from an Israeli commenter about my age, who wrote that there was no blockade, as several trucks were crossing into the Strip daily.

This greatly confused me and I asked him to present me with his arguments in defense of Israel. I said I would change my mind if they were convincing. He wrote me a long message, telling me about the massacres of Jews in Palestine before Israel existed, the wars of extermination, and the indoctrination for hate of Jews and Israel in the Middle East, among other things, which he compared to several examples of the humanist character of Israel and its society.

I read it all and, after verifying the information, I was convinced…

Angry and betrayed  
My world shook. I became aware that I was making unfair judgments and spreading hate and false propaganda about Israel… I was sad with myself and I felt angry and betrayed that I had trusted so much in organizations I thought were fighting for peace, equality and against prejudice, like I saw them doing for gay rights.

I realized I was being fed ignorance and hate by people who were, at best, as ignorant and prejudiced as those they were “fighting” against while believing themselves to be enlightened individuals and making me believe it too…

I read more and more about Israel, and I became fascinated with the amazing story of a people who, against all odds, had managed to survive and remain united through centuries of persecution, fight for their homeland, rebuild their country and revive their language – just like a phoenix rising from the ashes, striving for freedom and peace.

I realized Israel is a democratic, tolerant, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, rapidly developing nation. A place I could live in free and more accepted than in my home country, and the only place I could safely set foot at in the Middle East.

I found myself in love with Israel, something I never thought I would do and never really want to be.

In 2010, there was the flotilla incident. Suddenly, all media were reporting about Israel. The news reports were grossly distorted and I knew I had to do something. I found myself arguing about it with professors at the university and I started sharing videos of the IDF through my Facebook account.

I thought I would be risking much socially, but I knew it was a matter of justice, as someone had to tell the truth and not allow Israel to be demonized with no right to defense once again. After the flotilla I kept posting pro-Israel stuff, and had serious and even ugly discussions about this issue with several people.

Each discussion revealed more ignorance and double-standards and made me a stronger Zionist and supporter of Israel and its people. I thought I was the only one defending Israel but I gradually discovered other people doing it.

Once, a friend whispered in my ear: “I am also more on the side of Israel… but, please, don’t tell anyone!” She was scared to voice her opinion, and this reinforced my conviction that I had to be vocal about my defense of Israel; I was speaking for many people who were afraid to do it.

At the end it’s a matter of justice. If there’s a people that fights for its right to self-determination and to live in peace, I will be on their side. If there’s a group that is demonized by prejudice and ignorance, I will fight prejudice and ignorance with them. If there’s a culture whose main values include tolerance for different sexual orientations, races and religions – clashing with another one that educates for intolerance and hate – I know which side I’ll support.

I am a Zionist and I support the right of the Jewish people to self-rule and to life in peace, like I believe every thinking human being should.