Russia rebuffs Israeli rebuke over relations with Hamas: Haaretz
On Wednesday, Israel slammed Russian President Medvedev for meeting with Hamas leader Meshal in Damascus.
Russia on Thursday rebuffed Israel’s criticism of President Dmitry Medvedev’s meeting with the leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas this week.
Calling Hamas “a terror organization in every way”, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday it was “deeply disappointed” that Medvedev met the group’s exiled leader Khaled Meshal during a visit to Syria this week.
Russia, the United States, European Union and the United Nations, make up a quartet of Middle East mediators. The U.S., EU and Israel consider Hamas a terrorist group. Russia insists that Hamas should not be isolated.
“Hamas…is a movement supported by the trust and sympathy of a significant part of Palestinians,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said in a statement. “We have regular contacts with this movement.”
“It is known that all other participants of the Middle East quartet are also in some sort of contact with Hamas leadership, although for some unknown reason they are shy to publicly admit it,” Nesterenko said.
During the meeting with Meshal, Medvedev called for the quick release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip for nearly four years. Hamas later dismissed the Russian pressure and said Shalit would not be set free without an “honorable” prisoner exchange deal with Israel.
EDITOR: Zionism’s Lunatic Heart
You to read it to believe it. No, this is not the satire page of some left wing publication. It is the genuine article: Zionist freakish conspiracy-crazed, the-whole-world-is-against-us dyed in the wool lunacy. I raed that Obama is being carefully protected by the CIA from various white supremacist groups. Maybe the danger is coming from a different direction altogether? Maybe it is Jewish Zionist supremacists they should be watching?
Obama’s Plan to Destroy Israel: Israel National News
by Daniel Greenfield
Obama’s plan is to destroy Israel, and to do it by pushing Israel to the edge of the cliff and then over the cliff, says the writer. If you agree with this persuasive analysis, you can-or must- try to do something about it.
If there’s one thing that the Carter Administration can be given credit for, it’s creating the new wave of Islamist terrorism, both Sunni, operating out of Afghanistan, and Shiite, operating out of Iran. The Carter Administration cracked down on Israel and put its “faith” in Muslim terrorists, who then went on to wage war on America, even while Carter was in office. 28 years after Carter was removed from office, we’re in reruns again with the Obama Administration, which is not only following the Carter line, but whose plans greatly exceed it.
28 years ago, Wahhabi Sunni and Shiite terrorists were generally an afterthought when compared to the standard
Iran is to be our new best friend under this arrangement, Israel is to be our new best enemy.
USSR backed Marxist terrorist groups, such as the PLO.
Today, thanks in part to the Carter Administration, they control several countries and have designs on several more. From Pakistan to Afghanistan, from Gaza to Lebanon, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, the threat is very real and bigger than ever particularly as the race by both Sunni and Shiite groups to build and deploy nuclear weapons continues.
Like Carter before him, Obama has chosen to cut backdoor deals with the Mullahs in Iran, offering them power over Iraq and Afghanistan, in exchange for quieting things down enough to let him hang up a Mission Accomplished banner and pull the troops out. “Peace with honor”, preferably before the next election. The rape law for Shiites in Afghanistan, the push for a US funded Hamas/Fatah Unity government in the territories and the rising expansion of the Taliban are all fruits of this arrangement.
If Iran is to be our new best friend under this arrangement, Israel is to be our new best enemy.
Obama stacked the deck by deploying Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in a position that gave her an important title, but absolutely no power to go with it, while stacking the National Security Council and even the Pentagon with oil appointees in the pockets of the Saudis or his own left wing radical friends.
Israel electing a conservative government really put the ball into play, freeing up even more resources for attacking Israel. The strategy runs something like this.
The Obama Administration has broken down the Israel problem into two subsections, Israel itself, and American Jews.
Obama’s people have studied the problem and understand where Carter went wrong. Obama does not want to have the same image problems as Carter in the Jewish community. Should that happen, the Beloved Leader and his lapdog press are fully prepared to unleash a Chavez style hate-on targeting American Jews. But that would be inconvenient and messy. Even with the changing face of America, there are significant differences between the average American and European or Venezuelan, and what kind of ugliness they are willing to tolerate. So Obama’s people have split their attention in handling the two factors as two different problems.
American Jews – Obama has been clever about putting his Jewish appointees front and center. Like many minorities, some American Jews suffer from self-esteem problems that are soothed when they see a seeming acceptance. Of course what they fail to realize is that exploitation is not acceptance. And that Obama’s appointees are creatures of his backers, Nazi collaborators like Soros, who have nothing but contempt for Jews, individually or collectively.While outwardly courting Jews, Obama’s people have also been quietly shoving Jewish organizations and their leaders into a corner. Within the Jewish organizational world there has been a silent but deadly takeover of major Jewish groups by left wing radicals. Former alumni of the far left wing and anti-Israel groups like Breira or Coname in the 70’s have been elevated to key positions in such organizations as the UJA Federation. Behind the scenes any Jewish leaders who expressed even doubts about Obama during the primaries
The Beloved Leader and his lapdog press are fully prepared to unleash a Chavez style hate-on targeting American Jews.
were intimidated and silenced.
Much as with conservatives, a list has been drawn up of those figures who can be won over, and those who cannot. The ones who can be won over are described as “moderates”, the ones who cannot be won over are described as “extremists”.
Meanwhile a bevvy of left wing Jewish In Name Only groups have been organized to play their part. Key among them is the Soros funded J Street, a group created as an anti-Israel lobby meant to eventually replace AIPAC. Meanwhile AIPAC itself has been kept on the ropes with such things as the well timed Harman leak. The message once again is fairly clear, cooperate and keep quiet, or we’ll destroy you.
The multi-layered approach to American Jews can then be summed up as follows;
1.) Co-opt existing Jewish organizations and swing them to the left using old school 70’s leftists.
2.) Create new “progressive” organizations to appeal to a younger generation of ethnically Jewish youth detached from any actual identity. Have these organizations generate attacks on the Israeli government and pro-Israel Jews, while creating phony polls indicating that most American Jews are behind them and Obama.
3.) Silence and intimidate remaining Jewish organizations and leaders behind the scenes.
The overall idea is to keep a happy face pasted on American Jewry while the knives are out in the dark.
Israel – The basic understanding in the Obama Administration is that Israel Must Go. In the worldview of the more moderate Obama appointees, Israel is a destabilizing factor in the Middle East. To the more left wing Obama advisors, Israel is a Western imperialist colonialist state that must be destroyed in the name of revolutionary justice. To the Islamist mindset, Israel is a Kufir state that has no right to exist in the Dar Al Islam.While intractably hostile to Israel, the Obama Administration wants to avoid the kind of public confrontations that marked the Carter and Bush Sr administrations. Instead they would much rather model the way that the Clinton Administration waged a quiet war against Israel, removing one government, and forcing extensive concessions to terrorists, all the while keeping a happy face pasted on the whole affair.
On the one hand that means avoiding harsh public attacks on Israel, but keeping the pressure up for Israel to make extensive far reaching one sided concessions, to accept Saudi and Arab League “peace plans”, to legitimize Hamas as the new government of the Palestinian Authority, and to insure that Israel does not reply to any rocket or terrorist attacks.
There are two forms of quiet leverage that the United States has on Israel, the first is financial and the second is military.
On the financial side, the goal will be to bring down the Netanyahu government coalition by destabilizing Israel economically. This is the surest and most direct path to bringing down Israel’s conservative government and replacing it with a left of center coalition. The Obama Administration has a wide variety of tactics at its disposal for doing so, from the overt, such as targeting Israeli exports and imports, to the covert, that would involve targeting the Shekel. Additionally fundraising in the US could be investigated and groups such as the Jewish National Fund, prevented from raising money in the US. All of these have been in play before at one time or another.
On the military side, Obama’s people will make their non-existent efforts to stop Iran’s nukes conditional on more concessions to terrorists. Since Israel will never be able to make enough concessions and since Obama is working with Iran, rather than working to stop Iran’s nukes, this is a hollow charade.
Furthermore while Israel has already been locked out of the military technology pipeline for anything cutting edge, it still remains dependent on US military equipment for parts and supplies. The decades of US foreign aid have also served to create dependency. Unlike many other countries, including even Sweden, Israel does not have its own jet fighter. Israel’s Air Force is heavily dependent on US weapons, parts and equipment. Cutting Israel off, would leave the Israeli military dangerously vulnerable in the case of a war. This is an effective chokehold that has been used before to prevent Israel from attacking Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War, as well as preventing Israel from carrying out a preemptive strike against its enemies before the Yom Kippur War.
The overall Obama policy will be to push Israel to the brink, using financial and military blackmail against the Netanyahu government, while maintaining control over American Jews to prevent any protests or backtalk.
…American Jewish groups will support Obama… some because they were created precisely for that purpose, and others because they have been hijacked, cowed or subverted.
The more Israel will offer, the more the Obama Administration will tighten the screws. No offer will be good enough, and Israel will be blamed for every breakdown in talks and every bit of violence that takes place. The media will portray Israel and particularly Netanyahu as extremist and intransigent. Hamas will be slowly whitewashed in the media, the same way that Arafat’s goons were, (assuming that they prove more willing to cooperate in creating a positive media image of themselves than Ahmadinejad is.)
The plan is to destroy Israel, and to do it by pushing Israel to the edge of the cliff and then over the cliff. Israel’s enemies will be getting top of the line US military equipment. Israel will not. Israel will be squeezed economically until the Netanyahu government collapses, leaving a weak left wing leader like Livni in charge of Israel, and in charge of acceding to the new Pharaoh’s demands.
Meanwhile so-called American Jewish groups will support Obama all the way, some because they were created precisely for that purpose, e.g. J-Street, and others because they have been hijacked, cowed or subverted.
That is the game plan and some of it’s coming. The rest is already here.
Incitement Day in Jerusalem: Haaretz Editorial
As proximity talks with the Palestinians begin, Israel’s real policy is being revealed vis a vis the government’s incitement which drowns out its whispered promises to the United States.
For a long time now, Jerusalem Day has served as an excuse for the far right to excoriate Arab residents of the city’s eastern part and violently demonstrate their presence in their neighborhoods. But this year, the baton of incitement has passed from the delusional fringes to the very heart of the political arena – the government.
Of all the places the city has to offer, the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva is the site where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to celebrate the day. In front of the students devoutly singing “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning,” Netanyahu promised the yeshiva’s head, Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, that “we have never conceded Jerusalem.”
It would be better not to make such statements right now – and especially not in a place so identified with stubborn resistance to any division of the capital. But Mayor Nir Barkat went even further: He promised that the freeze on construction in the city would not continue.
Then, as if all this were not enough, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch hastened to respond to Washington’s request that Israel refrain from provocative actions by announcing that “we will resume razing houses in East Jerusalem over the next few days.”
The greatest achievement of all, however, belongs to Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who has doubled the number of schoolchildren visiting the Temple Mount and the City of David, from 200,000 two years ago to 400,000 since the start of the current school year. Under a new program drafted by the Education Ministry on the minister’s orders, students are obligated to visit Jerusalem at least three times during their 12 years of school.
In theory, there is nothing wrong with this. Yet the visits tend to focus on sites like the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, the Western Wall tunnels, Zion Gate and the archaeological excavations of the Temple Mount’s southern wall – all disputed areas that are on the agenda during negotiations with the Palestinians, and are also associated with new Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. Moreover, the tours, which are led by guides from the extreme right-wing organization Elad, blatantly ignore the Palestinians’ existence and bear the clear stamp of religious nationalist indoctrination.
The government’s stance is particularly worrying given its aggressive actions on the ground: the tightening of the belt of Jewish settlement in neighborhoods to the east and south of the Old City that overlook the Temple Mount.
The government’s dangerous incitement, which drowns out its whispered promises to the United States, appears this week to be Israel’s real policy as proximity talks with the Palestinians begin.
Israel increasingly resembling a police state: The Electronic Intifada
Mel Frykberg, 13 May 2010
Israel is continuing to crackdown on protestors and community leaders in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) – Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu has been sentenced to another three months imprisonment for allegedly refusing to perform community service in West Jerusalem.
Vanunu, a former employee at Israel’s secret Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, spent 18 years in jail after he revealed information about the facility to the international media.
He was kidnapped by Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad in Rome and brought back to Israel where he served his sentence, most of it in solitary confinement.
Vanunu was ordered on his release not to speak to foreigners or the international media, an order he has broken numerous times.
However, remarks by the prosecutor that Vanunu still poses a threat to Israel’s security decades after he was sentenced and had already revealed all he knew has raised questions about whether he is being unnecessarily persecuted.
Just how much power Israel’s domestic intelligence agency the Shin Bet has and whether Israel might be turning into a police state has also been the subject of media speculation recently.
This follows the secret midnight arrests of a Turkish national and several Palestinian citizens of Israel on espionage allegations and the gag orders surrounding the arrests.
There are a number of other incidents involving the Shin Bet. At the beginning of the year the Shabak, as the Shin Bet is also known, placed a gag order on the circumstances surrounding the arrest and interrogation of Israeli journalist Anat Kam.
Kam is alleged to have copied secret Israeli military documentation on extra-judicial killings of Palestinian resistance fighters with the liquidations being carried out in contravention of Israeli court rulings.
Israelis were the last to find out about Kam’s house arrest, months after it happened, when it made big news internationally and was reported extensively on the Internet.
A week ago two Palestinian citizens of Israel, Ameer Makhoul from Haifa, the director general of the Ittijah organization, and Omar Said, a member of the Balad political party, were arrested by the Shin Bet and heavily armed anti-terror squads during night raids on their family apartments.
The two have been accused of passing on information to the Lebanese resistance organization, Hizballah. The Shin Bet again placed a gag on the arrests until a few days ago with some of the details still remaining secret.
Critics argue that the allegations are flimsy at best and have more to do with Makhoul supporting a boycott of Israeli settlement goods and his campaigning for equal rights for Palestinians in Israel.
Speculation is also rife that Makhoul’s brother Issam (a former member of the Israeli Knesset) speech to the Knesset, about Israel’s clandestine nuclear armaments and his comments that Israel should begin nuclear disarmament, had already focused security attention on the family.
Makhoul’s arrest comes at a time when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is slated to discuss Israel’s nuclear program for the very first time ever at its forthcoming June meeting.
A number of other Palestinian grassroots activists, involved in the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign and protests against Israel’s wall, remain incarcerated in Israeli jails in administrative detention or without trial. Abdullah Abu Rahme, a member of Bilin’s village committee against Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank, which has expropriated large swathes of the village’s land, has been held for more than five months in administrative detention.
The Israeli authorities accuse him of incitement in planning weekly nonviolent demonstrations, supported by Israeli and international activists, against the wall as well as possession of arms.
The latter accusation relates to his arrangement of used tear-gas canisters and rubber-coated metal bullets into a peace sign after the Israeli military fired them at protestors.
Another Shin Bet gag order was placed several weeks ago on the arrest in the West Bank of Turkish national Izzet Shahin, a volunteer for the Turkish nongovernmental organization Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH).
Izzet is accused of belonging to IHH, an Islamic group outlawed by Israel, and of helping to organize an aid boat to Gaza as part of the flotilla of humanitarian relief which is heading towards the coastal territory at the end of May.
The deportation several weeks ago of a famous Spanish clown from Israel’s Ben Gurion international airport on the grounds he intended to make contact with “terror organizations” while in Ramallah has seen some Israeli commentators calling the Shin Bet “the real clowns.”
Ivan Prado had planned to take part in an international clown festival in Ramallah but after six hours of interrogation by the Shin Bet he was refused entry to Israel and deported to Spain on “security grounds.”
The incident caused embarrassment at the Israeli Foreign Ministry and heightened tensions with the Spanish government.
Meanwhile, a number of Israeli leftists are facing trial for “rioting and assaulting police” during a nonviolent protest in the East Jerusalem suburb of Sheikh Jarrah. They were protesting Israel’s building of illegal Jewish settlements and Judaization of the neighborhood at the expense of the Palestinian locals.
The protestors claim the charges are trumped up and they were arrested after they refused to disperse during a demonstration approved by an Israeli court.
In another development, Israeli military intelligence has also caught flak for overruling an Israeli court decision to fully open a main highway in the West Bank to Palestinian motorists.
Highway 443 has been used by Jewish settlers exclusively for years even though it is built on Palestinian land and it runs alongside many Palestinian villages.
Despite the court ruling the Israeli military will only open parts of the highway to Palestinian motorists and only after extensive security checks at roadblocks at the highway’s entrance.
In further breaking news several Palestinian medical students have been refused entry permits to Jerusalem to continue their studies at Jerusalem’s al-Quds University after they refused to spy for the Shin Bet on student activity there.
The Shin Bet declined to discuss the issue other than to say the permits had been denied “on security grounds.”
Irish activists urge divestment at CRH annual meeting: The Electronic Intifada
Adri Nieuwhof and John Dorman, 12 May 2010
Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) activists are pressuring the Ireland-based international building materials group CRH to divest from its Israeli subsidiary Mashav. Last week, IPSC members attended the annual CRH general shareholders meeting as activist shareholders. Their aim was to discuss the involvement of CRH subsidiary Mashav in illegal construction activities in the occupied West Bank. The four IPSC shareholders dominated the hour-long question and answer session and received support from actual CRH shareholders for the company to divest from Israel.
According to the website WhoProfits.org, CRH holds 25 percent of the shares of Mashav Initiating and Development. Mashav is the sole owner of Nesher Israel Cement Enterprises, which manufactures and sells more than 85 percent of all cement in Israel. Nesher cement bags have been photographed at construction sites in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and at worksites for the Jerusalem light rail project being built on occupied Palestinian land. The light rail connects Israel’s settlements with the city center of West Jerusalem.
Activists informed the media of the plans to target CRH’s shareholders meeting and in response the company employed a busload of security personnel who were deployed inside and outside the venue. Meanwhile, activists focused on convincing CRH shareholders to divest from Mashav. Shareholders were welcomed by a group of concerned citizens and activists from various solidarity, human rights and political groups who handed out fact sheets on CRH. There was also a replica of Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank, and banners stating “Stop Israel’s theft of Palestinian land” and “CRH builds Israeli apartheid — Let’s stop CRH profiting from human rights abuses.”
Four IPSC shareholding activists made their presence known at the annual general meeting. CRH chairman Kieran McGowan received IPSC’s 16-page report entitled “Alternative CRH Annual Report 2009” modeled on the company’s real annual report. The “alternative” report provided details on CRH, Mashav and their activities in the West Bank. The report was also distributed to shareholders after the meeting (the PDF file is available for download).
During the hour-long question and answer session, the activist shareholders asked CRH why the company is so shy about revealing the details of the profits they are deriving from Nesher’s illegal activities in the West Bank. In addition, they questioned what funds the company set aside to compensate Palestinians affected by such activities and what had been set aside to defend the company against legal actions due to its complicity in breaches of international law. Chairman McGowan refused to provide direct answers and stated that CRH was a minority shareholder and had no involvement with the day-to-day operations of their subsidiaries. He also stated that CRH was obliged by law not to discriminate against any customer. The activist shareholders reminded CRH of their significant share in Mashav, as they hold two out of nine board positions and could have significant leverage over the activities of their subsidiary.
Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, the weekly demonstration on 30 April focused on CRH’s role in the construction of Israel’s wall which effectively annexes to Israel’s settlements the agricultural land of villages like Bilin. Carrying placards calling on CRH to divest from Mashav, villagers marched to the site where resident and grassroots leader Bassem Abu Rahmah was killed by the Israeli military last year. While filming the 30 April demonstration, Irish national Tommy Donnellan was injured and detained by Israeli soldiers. He was released after two hours.
Back at the shareholders meeting IPSC chair David Landy read a statement by Iyad Burnat, the coordinator of the Bilin Popular Committee, subject to an Israeli-imposed travel ban. Burnat’s statement read: “You are complicit in the murder and killing of my friend Bassem, and all the other nonviolent activists that have been killed and injured for resisting this horrendous wall, this crime against humanity. CRH, you are directly complicit, and therefore I, as a Palestinian, am asking the Irish people to join the [IPSC], and get involved in the divestment campaign against CRH. This complicity must end.”
Activists in Ireland pledge to up the pressure on CRH to divest from Mashav. IPSC is planning a broad public awareness campaign targeting institutional investors such as financial institutions, churches and trade unions. This includes the Irish National Pension Reserve Fund, which, like CRH, will be under increasing pressure to explain and justify its continued profit from Israel’s flagrant violations of international law.
Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland.
John Dorman is Divestment Officer of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
EDITOR: As we started today with one type of Zionist lunatics, it is befitting to continue with another – Christian Zionists. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Why Christian Zionists really support Israel: The Forward
Christian support for Israel starts with the Bible, is strengthened by an understanding of history and endures because of the Judeo-Christian commitment to democratic values, Pastor John C. Hagee writes in The Forward.
By John C. Hagee,
Tags: Christian Zionism Jewish world Israel news
On May 23, pastors, ministers and priests at more than 1,500 churches in all 50 states and over 50 foreign countries will dedicate their Sunday services to teaching the importance of Christian support for Israel.
On that day — the second annual Christians United for Israel Sunday — church leaders will speak to their congregants about God’s enduring covenant with Abraham and the Jewish people, including God’s promise in Genesis 12:3 that He will bless those who bless Israel.
Worshipers will learn about the tragedies of Jewish history. Christian leaders will speak the truth about our culpability and silence during the Holocaust, pogroms and Crusades. The message at churches around the world will be clear and unequivocal: Christians can never again be silent in the face of threats to the Jewish people.
Christians attending these churches will also learn about the miraculous rise of the modern State of Israel and the existential threats it faces today. Many will leave church with a better understanding of the dangers of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Palestinian terror and the international campaign against Israel’s legitimacy.
As is the case for many Jews, our support for Israel starts with God’s promises in the Hebrew Bible, but it does not end there. Christian Zionists recognize that we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the Jewish people. As I have stressed to my Christian audiences for years: If you take away the Jewish contribution to Christianity, there would be no Christianity.
From the patriarchs to the prophets, from Jesus and his family to the men who wrote down the Bible, Jewish people have provided us with the fundamentals of our faith.
Christian Zionists also recognize that Israel is not the cause of militant Islam’s hatred of America, but an ally in the fight against militant Islam. Until 9/11 and the ensuing events, Israel largely confronted this threat alone. And to this day the frontline of this conflict remains Israel’s backyard.
But Christian Zionists understand that Israel is merely militant Islam’s first target. While American and Israeli soldiers do not fight on the same battlefield, they defend the same values.
Given the history of Christian antisemitism, I am not at all surprised that many in the Jewish community are skeptical of Christian support for Israel. Some worry that our efforts are motivated by a desire to convert Jews.
Others posit that our Zionism is tied to an effort to speed the second coming of Jesus. Both of these allegations are flat wrong. All we ask of our Jewish friends is that they get to know us before they judge us harshly on the basis of myths such as these.
Like all people of faith, we Christians firmly believe that our religion is true. But we also believe in religious freedom and have enormous respect for the Jewish faith. The first rule adopted by Christians United for Israel was that there would be no proselytizing at our events. CUFI exists only to honor and support the Jewish people, never to convert them.
Regarding the other allegation, the fact is that the vast majority of Christian Zionists and Evangelicals do not believe there is anything we can do to hasten the second coming of Jesus. Our theology is clear that we humans are utterly powerless to change God’s timetable. Yes, like many Jews we do believe that the creation of Israel was the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
And like our Jewish friends we also search the Scriptures to understand what may come next in God’s plans for His creation. But since we are powerless to change these plans, our motives for standing with Israel come from elsewhere. They are the motives discussed above.
Another concern that some individuals have expressed is that Christian Zionists will use our influence to stand in the way of efforts to advance a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Such a claim shows a complete disregard for our record. Like many supporters of Israel, some Christian Zionists have certainly grown skeptical of land-for-peace in the face of the failures of this formula the last few times it was tried.
Yet from our founding four years ago, we decided that CUFI would never presume to tell Jerusalem how to conduct its foreign or domestic affairs. We have never, and will never, oppose Israeli efforts to advance peace.
Our involvement in the peace process will continue to be restricted to defending Israel’s right to make decisions free of international interference or pressure — including U.S. pressure.
We cannot change the past. But we can try to learn from it. During the Holocaust there were Christians who risked their lives to save Jewish families. Christian Zionists believe that the tradition of the righteous gentile has an important role in the world today. We are not the heroes they were.
We do not have to risk our lives as they did. But following their example, we will stand with the Jewish people as they face threats of a second Holocaust from Hitler’s ideological kin in Tehran and elsewhere.
Christian support for Israel starts with the Bible, is strengthened by an understanding of history and endures because of the Judeo-Christian commitment to democratic values. Everything that forms the Christian understanding of the world leads to the same conclusion: Christians should support Israel because it is simply the right thing to do.
Pastor John C. Hagee is founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel.
New weapons experimented in Gaza: population risks genetic mutations: IOA
Posted by admin on May 13th, 2010 and filed under FEATURED NEWS STORIES, Gaza, IDF/War Crimes, International-Law, Military Export/Import. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
By NewWeapons Committee – 11 May 2010
Toxic and carcinogenic metals, able to produce genetic mutations, have been found in the tissues of people wounded in Gaza during Israeli military operations of 2006 and 2009. The research has been carried out on wounds provoked by weapons that did not leave fragments in the bodies of the victims, a peculiarity that was pointed out repeatedly by doctors in Gaza. This shows that experimental weapons, whose effects are still to be assessed, were used.
The researchers compared the quantity of 32 elements present in the tissues through ICP/MS (a type of highly sensitive mass spectrometry) . The job, carried out by laboratories of Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), Chalmer University (Sweden) and Beirut University (Lebanon), was coordinated by the New Weapons Research Group (Nwrg), an independent committee of scientists and experts based in Italy, who is studying the use of unconventional weapons and their mid-term effects on the population of after-war areas. The relevant presence of toxic and carcinogenic metals found in the wound tissues points to direct risks for survivors, but also to the possibility of environmental contamination.
Biopsies of tissues were performed by doctors of Shifa hospital, in Gaza city, who selected and classified the type of wounds. Research was conducted on 16 tissue samples belonging to 13 victims. Four biopsies were taken in June 2006, during the operation “Summer Rains”, while the others were taken in the first week of January 2009, during the operation “Cast Lead”. All tissues were appropriately preserved and then examined by each of the three universities.
Some of the elements found are carcinogenic (mercury, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel and uranium), others are potentially carcinogenic (cobalt and vanadium), others are also fetotoxic (alluminium, copper, barium, lead and manganese). The first ones can produce genetic mutations; the second ones can have the same effect on animals, but they are not proven to do the same on people; the third ones have toxic effects on people ad can affect either the embryo or the foetus in pregnant women. All metals found in high amounts have pathogenic effects on human respiratory organs, kidney and skin and affect sexual and neurological development and functions.
“Nobody – says professor Paola Manduca, spokesperson for the New Weapons Research Group, genetics teacher and researcher at the University of Genoa – had never conducted bioptic analysis on tissue samples from wounds. We have focused on wounds made by weapons that do not leave fragments, as the doctors from Gaza reported on them repeatedly. We wanted to verify the presence of metals that remained on the skin and in the derma. It was suspected that these metals were present in the weapons that leave no fragments, but it had never been demonstrated before. To our surprise even the burns provoked by white phosporus contain high amount of metals. Moreover, the presence of these metals in the weapons implies that they have been dispersed in the environment, in unknown amounts and range; they have been inhaled by the victims and by bystanders, thus constituting a risk for survivors and for people that were not directly hit by the bombing.”
The research follows two previous studies conducted by Nwrg. The former was published on december 17th 2009 and statued the presence of toxic metals in areas around the craters provoked by the Israeli bombing on Gaza Strip. The latter was published on March 17th 2010 and it pointed out the presence of toxic metals in hair samples of Palestinian children of Gaza Strip area hit by Israeli bombings. Both point to the presence of environmental contamination, aggravated by the living conditions on the ground and often in shelters exposed to wind and dust, due to the impossibility to rebuild housing imposed by the Israeli blockade to the entrance of needed building materials and tools.
Chomsky, scientists: Technion develops death tech: YNet
Ynetnews.com – 6 May 2010
Senior academics from Tel Aviv University, Weizmann Institute, and other top institutions around world denounce Boston Science Museum’s sponsorship of Israeli exhibit, calling it propaganda campaign. ‘This is an attempt to distract from Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations,’ they say.
WASHINGTON – Professors from Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute have signed a letter along with other academics world-wide denouncing Boston’s Museum of Science for co-sponsoring and hosting a week-long exhibit surveying ground-breaking Israeli innovations and inventions in the fields of clean energy, medicine, and technology.
The academics claim that the exhibit, known as Israel Innovation Week (IIW), is an Israeli attempt to “deflect attention from its atrocious human rights record and fundamentally discriminatory policies.”
The museum, which is considered one of the most highly regarded in the US, opened the exhibit on Sunday with an event attended by many members of the city’s heavy-hitting academic community. Many were also invited to speak alongside Israeli experts.
The exhibit included displays on Better Place, an Israeli company responsible for manufacturing electric vehicles and displays presented by the Foreign Ministry detailing its agricultural aid programs offered to developing countries.
However, this display of Israeli pride was received with little enthusiasm among some members of the academia, including Jewish linguist Noam Chomsky, and faculty members hailing from Israeli institutes of higher education – Dr. Kobi Snitz from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Prof. Rachel Giora and Dr. Anat Matar, bother from Tel Aviv University.
“IIW is far from an innocent educational endeavor. It is part of a propaganda campaign by the State of Israel to present itself as a beacon of progress in a desert of backwardness and deflect attention from its atrocious human rights record and fundamentally discriminatory policies,” the letter claimed.
Exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science (Photo: Nir Landau)
The letter protested the show of Israeli technology in part because it is, according to the signatories, inseparable from what they call Israel’s aggression.
For instance, they labeled the Technion, a source of many of Israel’s technological innovations, “an institution with a long track record of developing technologies of death used by Israel’s military. These include remote-controlled bulldozers for demolishing Palestinian homes and drones for picking off Palestinians from the air.”
The letter blasted Better Place, the electric vehicle project initiated by Shai Agassi, for hiring “Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, who oversaw the indiscriminate flooding of southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in 2006, as CEO of its Israel branch.”
The letter concluded: “Science and technology should be used to benefit humanity, not to destroy it. IIW represents a betrayal of this principle. As concerned scientists, we condemn this misuse of science and technology to serve the public relations machine of the State of Israel.”
The Consul General of Israel to New England Nadav Tamir responded to the letter: “From our perspective, this is proof of the event’s success and the importance of such an exhibit in a location so central to science and technology.”
The League Against Denial: YNet
Tuesday 27 April 2010
by: Eldad Beck, Yedioth Ahronoth
“The phenomenon of Holocaust denial in the Arab world is wrong, misleading and causes damage to the Palestinian cause.” In his new book, Lebanese-French academic Gilbert Achcar grapples for the first time with the Arab attitudes towards the Holocaust.
Gilbert Achcar left Lebanon in 1983, during the first major war Israel waged in his land. Nearly 30 years later Achcar, a professor of international relations at the London School of Oriental and African Studies and a militant leftist and peace activist, asserts that it was that brutal war between Israel and the Palestinians in Lebanon that was a turning point in the way the Arab world related to the Holocaust. The comparisons that Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin made at the time between Yasser Arafat and Hitler and between Israel’s rivals and the Nazis, he contends, cheapened the Holocaust and made many people on the Arab side compare Israel to the Nazis and even claim that Israel invented the Holocaust to justify its policy in the Middle East.
A few weeks ago, the 59-year-old French Lebanese academic published a new book in France, whose title speaks of its unusual contents: “The Arabs and the Holocaust.” In this book, Achcar, who previously published books with well-known US and Israeli left-wing activists Noam Chomsky and Michael Warschawski, addresses a most explosive subject for the first time: the Arabs’ attitude towards the Holocaust, from the rise of the Nazis to power until today. The book, which does not shy away from the most problematic aspects of the issue, just came out in two Arabic editions, in Cairo and Beirut.
Achcar, who has lectured in Paris and Berlin, begins his book with a quote from the Gospel of Matthew: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” “The lesson of this parable is that before criticizing others, a person has to ask what is wrong with himself,” Achcar tells Yedioth Ahronoth, in the first interview he has ever given to an Israeli newspaper.
But then, he goes on to ask what is wrong with us. “On the Israeli side a series of accusations are raised against the Arab world about the Holocaust, without any self-criticism,” he says. “There are some Israeli writers who are so egocentric they cannot see that their claims against the Arab world could be directed at Israel, sometimes all the more so. However, the parable also refers to the Arabs, of course. In the book I tried to address current issues that I think are reprehensible. I do not defend anybody uncritically. I think a critical look at the group to which you belong before criticizing others is the desirable approach.”
Q: Could you be more specific?
A: “On the Arab side I feel no sympathy whatsoever for what the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, did during World War II. I also think Holocaust denial in the Arab world is wrong, misleading and damaging to the Arab and Palestinian cause. But on the Israeli side, how can you criticize Holocaust denial in the Arab world when Israel denies the Palestinian nakba?
“I am not comparing the expulsion of 1948 and the Holocaust. The Holocaust was genocide and therefore it was a much greater tragedy than the suffering of the Palestinians since 1948. But the Arabs and the Palestinians did not commit the Holocaust, whereas Israel stands behind the nakba. Israeli historians have proven it. Yet still, Israel continues denying its historic responsibility for this drama. Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni protested to the Secretary General of the UN over the use of the word Nakba, which in Arabic means “disaster.” It is like protesting that Israel uses the word shoah.
“In my book I strongly denounce Palestinian and Arab Holocaust deniers, whose numbers are greater than they were 30 or 40 years ago. It is mainly a reaction driven by rage and not deliberate denial. A Palestinian or an Arab who says that the Holocaust was invented by the Zionists to justify their actions is reacting to Israel’s use of the Holocaust for its needs.
“It is a stupid reaction. I think Holocaust denial is the anti-Zionism of fools. But these are people who are denying a historic phenomenon in which they and their people played no part. On the other hand, the Israeli denial of the nakba is much more important because Israel was responsible for it. It was a defining moment in the foundation of Israel. There were other countries that arose under similar circumstances but you must recognize the historic reality and the historic responsibility. The situation is getting worse today because of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians.”
Achcar was born in Senegal to a family of Lebanese émigrés but was raised and schooled in Lebanon. “I went to a French high school in Lebanon and I learned about the Holocaust very early in my life,” he says. “I am a humanist. The Holocaust has always been very important to me.” A few years ago, he was asked to write an article for an academic publication about the Arabs and the Holocaust. The research he did for the article led him to write this thick book on the subject.
Even those who don’t agree with everything Achcar writes will acknowledge that he bravely engages with an issue that in recent years has become taboo in the Arab world.
“I suppose if the subject didn’t interest me they would not have asked me to write about it. The people who asked me knew that I understood the historic importance of the Holocaust and that I have the necessary sensitivity to address the subject,” says Achcar. “I knew from the start that it is a very loaded subject and that each side has a different narrative, especially concerning the Arab world’s attitude towards the Holocaust. There is a lot of propaganda involved. I felt there is a very strong caricaturing of historic positions. In the course of my research I discovered that it is even more extreme than I thought and that there has been a substantial distortion.”
Q: You state in your book unequivocally that while there is no comparison between the Holocaust and the nakba, there is a connection between them.
A: “The connection is obvious. Without the Holocaust and without the rise of the Nazis I don’t think the Zionist project would have come to fruition. When you look at the Jewish migration to Palestine before 1933 and the drop in the number of immigrants after the outbreak of the 1929 riots, it is clear that without the terrible historic phenomenon called Nazism and the outbreak of anti-Semitism in Europe there would not have been a massive Jewish migration to Palestine that allowed the establishment of Israel. Hitler’s rise to power and everything that happened in World War II gave legitimacy to the Zionist idea. After all, Zionism was a minority ideology among the Jewish communities before the rise of the Nazis. Most European Jews were not Zionists. On top of that was the hypocrisy of the Western world, which closed its doors to the Jewish refugees.
“There are Israeli academics who claim the Palestinians have a responsibility for the Holocaust, because they revolted and demanded the British limit Jewish migration to Palestine. They thereby prevented hundreds of thousands of Jews from migrating to Palestine and they were exterminated in the Holocaust. That is a very tendentious justification. Why blame the Palestinians for revolting against a project whose declared goal was to establish a foreign state on their land, and forget that while the British restricted Jewish migration to Palestine they could have allowed Jewish migration to their country and to other parts of the huge empire they controlled?
“You could make the same claim against the U.S. and the other countries of the world, who were convened at the Evian conference in 1938 by President Roosevelt, and did not want to receive Jewish refugees into their countries. They are responsible for the Holocaust. Not the Palestinians. The Holocaust created the conditions that allowed the implementation of the Zionist project, which was not possible to carry out nonviolently. The violent implementation created the nakba, so that the nakba is the result of those developments.
Q: Did the cooperation of certain Arab parties with the Nazis stem from a common ideology, or was it a political tactic in the spirit of “my enemy’s enemy is my ally?”
A: “For mufti al-Husseini there was a certain amount of political opportunism and anti-Semitic ideological affinity, which seems evident to me. The mufti did not share the Nazis’ political, social and economic worldview. Those aspects of the Nazi ideology did not interest him. Meanwhile, hatred of the Jews and the British was a common basis for him with the Nazis. He was not a full-fledged Nazi but a collaborator with the Nazis. He developed hatred towards the Jews that connected with Nazi anti-Semitism. He did not hide it. In his recently published memoirs, he presents a clear anti-Semitic worldview.”
Q: How do you explain the warm welcome that he received in the Arab world after World War II?
A: “The idea that the mufti received a triumphant welcome in the Arab world is a myth. The fact that the Palestinians treated him as a national leader persecuted by his enemies — the British and the Zionist movement — is one thing. If you look at his real influence in the Arab world, even during the war, you will see that it was very limited. The mufti spent his time in Berlin and Rome in an attempt to recruit the Palestinians and the Arabs to join the German and Italian Axis against the Allies and of course against the Zionist movement. It is estimated that only 6000 Arabs joined the various armed organizations of Nazi Germany.
“Meanwhile, 9000 Palestinian Arabs fought alongside the British. A greater yet number of Arabs served in the Allied forces, including a quarter of a million North Africans who fought in De Gaulle’s ranks. Therefore, the mufti’s real influence was negligible. Today in the Arab world the mufti is of little regard. He is associated with defeat even before he left for Europe: defeat of the revolt in Palestine, the failed revolution against the British in Iraq. The fact that he stood with the Germans added to the feeling of revulsion towards him, even by Arab nationalists.”
Why, then, Achcar asks, does the mufti get so much attention in Israel? “Israel and the Zionist movement had no answer to the Palestinian claim that the Holocaust may have been a terrible thing but they were not responsible for it, and therefore there was no reason for them to pay the price for the acts of the Europeans,” he explains. “Then came the Zionists and said that the mufti is the proof that the Palestinians were complicit in the Holocaust. This created a narrative that presents the Arabs as accomplices with the Nazis, and therefore you could say that the war of 1948 was the last battle of World War II against the Nazis. But this narrative does not hold up to the historic fact. It is propaganda.”
Q: The collaboration did not stop with the mufti. There were many Nazi criminals who found refuge in Arab countries and various Arab parties such as the Baath that took inspiration from the Nazi ideology.
A: “There is no proof that the Baath was influenced at the beginning by Nazi ideology. Even the attempt to present the Baath and its founder, Michel Aflaq, as Nazis is propaganda. Aflaq was influenced by the left and was in contact with communists and Marxists who opposed Nazism. The only evidence against him is that in his library there was a translated copy of a book by Alfred Rosenberg [the chief ideologue of the Nazi movement and author of its racist platform – E.B.]. That is like saying that anyone who had a copy of Mein Kampf in their house was a Nazi. People who read books don’t necessarily agree with their contents. When you talk about the Baath in the 1960s and 70s, Nazism no longer existed then. Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Baath party may have used anti-Semitic arguments but it was not connected to Nazism.
“There were indeed a number of ex-Nazis who found refuge in the Arab world, in Egypt and Syria. Except for Alois Brunner [Eichmann’s right-hand man] who escaped to Syria, there was no other senior Nazi among them who was part of the extermination machine. But why is this argument raised against the Arabs, when Israel’s friends, starting with the US, gave refuge to Nazis and helped the migration of much bigger criminals than the ones who found refuge in the Arab world?
“After all, Israel received tremendous funding from federal Germany, which was full of ex-Nazis, who also sat in the government. The closest advisor to Chancellor Adenauer, Israel’s friend and financier, wrote the Nuremberg race laws. The desire to present the Arabs as Nazis retroactively makes all of Latin America, the US and Germany into Nazis. It is pure propaganda.”
Q: Does the lack of discussion about collaboration with the Nazis in the Arab world have an impact on Holocaust denial in different sectors of Arab and Muslim society?
A: “The heightened tension between Israel and the Arabs and the Palestinians in the last years has radicalized positions on both sides. But even Hamas never established brigades named for mufti al-Husseini. Nor are there any missiles or streets named after him. Nobody is interested in him. The hero of Hamas is Izz el-Din al-Qassam. You have to understand that in order to cut through the propaganda. Furthermore, if people cared about the mufti, there would be no Holocaust denial.
“Al-Husseini was not a Holocaust denier. In his memoirs he tells how Himmler told him in 1943 that Germany was exterminating the Jews and had already killed three million of them. The mufti writes with satisfaction that in the bottom line of the war, the Jews paid a heavier price than the Germans, and that one third of world Jewry was dead. He thereby confirms the known number of Holocaust victims.
“The denial in the Arab world today comes mainly from ignorance. However, you have to distinguish it from Holocaust denial in the West, which is a pathological phenomenon. In the West these people are mentally ill, complete anti-Semites. In the Arab world, the denial that exists among certain strains of public opinion, who are still in the minority, comes from rage and frustration over the escalation of Israeli violence, along with the increased use of the Holocaust. It began with the invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
“Menachem Begin abused the memory of the Holocaust, including in Israel’s domestic political discourse. This led people and the Arab world to react in the stupidest way and say: if Israel is trying to justify its actions by reference to the Holocaust, then the Holocaust is an exaggeration or a propaganda invention. The more violence there is, the more you will find this reaction, which is actually a symbolic challenge. It is nothing deeper.”
Q: You also claim that Arabs who compare Israel to the Nazis are reacting to the Israeli comparison between Arab leaders and Hitler.
A: “The desire to see Nazis everywhere leads to the banalization of the Nazis. Hitler was such a negative historic figure that comparing [Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad to him is absurd. You can think whatever you want about the president of Iran, but his country does not have concentration camps and is not carrying out genocide. It is a society in a political conflict. But it is not a totalitarian society like Nazi Germany. The comparison to Nazis and Hitler is very common in Israel, too. Ben Gurion compared Begin to Hitler. The extreme right in Israel distributed pictures of Rabin in an SS uniform. Israelis see Hitler everywhere: Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Arafat, Nasrallah. So why be surprised when the Arabs do that too? It is of course political hyperbole that is not helpful.”
Q: How can the many obstacles be overcome if the Arab side does not recognize Israel’s sensitivity to the Holocaust?
A: “The Arab side does understand that sensitivity. You do not have to see the Arabs as a monolithic bloc. Of course there are streams of people who do not understand it. But that is not the position of the majority. Take Arafat, who was completely demonized. After all, the PLO began a serious effort to understand this issue in the 1970s. When the French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy was welcomed with honors throughout the Arab world, Arafat understood the damage it would cause the Palestinian cause. That is when he asked to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington. The museum administration refused to treat him as a VIP and he was insulted and canceled the visit. Yet he still went to visit the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. The press, except for in Israel, almost completely ignored it.
“People like Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish completely understood the Israeli sensitivity towards the Holocaust. We have to stop portraying a caricature image of the enemy, which poisons the atmosphere. I guarantee that if Israel had a different attitude towards the Arab world and the Palestinians, an attitude of peace, these phenomena that have gotten stronger in the last few years would disappear very quickly.”
The following interview with Gilbert Achcar about his latest book, The Arabs and the Holocaust, was published on April 27, over two pages, in Yedioth Ahronoth, the daily newspaper with the widest circulation in Israel. A differently edited English version was published on May 2 in The Jerusalem Report, the best-known Israeli biweekly magazine in English. It will be soon available on the JR website. Above is the translation of the interview as it was published in Yedioth Ahronoth.
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