Saturday, June 2, 2007

UnNews:Syria: tension mounts as presidential elections enters final phase

Some humour. From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia.

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-microsecond misinformation.
28 May 2007
 
Damascus, Syria
VOTE FOR THE YOUNG LION NOW! SEVEN MORE YEARS FOR PRESIDENT AL ASSAD!
As the presidential elections enter their final round, excitement and turmoil flood the Syrian street, for the first time in many years.
Supporters of the current president, Bashar Al-Assad pour into the usually calm streets of Damascus roaring their enthusiasm for the stoned face president.
"President Assad resembles the liking of his name" exclaimed an excited supporter, Mr. Ana Bin Sharmuta "Assad means lion in Arabic, and so he is! Standing tall against the western capitalism set by the American dogs and their servants, the Zionists. He is like a tall tree in storm, never bending! Never giving up! I say - SEVEN MORE YEARS! SEVEN MORE YEARS!" and with that, the crowds shouted their enthusiastic support for their beloved president.

On the other side of the political fence, nearly evenly matched supporters of the new rising political power shout insults at their brethren.
"We are here today to show our contempt to the presiding president, Mr.Assad." said Mr. Ali Rooch-Min-Hoon. "He alienated us with the entire western world, he brought us to the brink of war with the Israelis, he supports that Iranian nut case and that Lebanese son of a motherless goat . He will be the end of us all."
"I therefore urge you all to vote for the young and promising candidate, Bashar Al-Assad! The right man for the right job! He will strengthen us all! He will rebuilt the Syrian economy! He will restore our honor! Who wants that Alawi bastard, Assad, anyhow??? BROTHERS! LET US VOTE FOR ASSAD! ASSAD FOR PRESIDENCY! ASSAD FOR PRESIDENCY!"

As the first round between the two candidates, Syrian officials claim that the gap between the two candidates seem to be extremely narrow, so a second round seems inevitable, but "Both candidates are more than capable of elevating the great Syrian nation to its rightful place among the Arab nations."
VOTE FOR THE YOUNG BASHAR AL ASSAD! KICK PRESIDENT ASSAD OUT OF DAMASCUS AND LET THE YOUNG GENERATION SET THE RULES!

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Syria:_tension_mounts_as_presidential_elections_enters_final_phase

Hellish ideology and leaders - Beheadings by Muslim psycopaths

NA PRADU, Thailand (AP) -- It took two days for the young Muslim assassin to calm his nerves before the slaying.

Then, Mohama Waekaji says, he walked one cool morning to a rice mill, carrying a knife and following orders from a guerrilla commander to behead the 72-year-old Buddhist owner.

He asked the elderly man, Juan Kaewtongprakam, for some rice husks. As he turned to collect them, Waekaji says, he slashed the blade through the man's neck.
 
"Islamist militants in Southeast Asia are very frustrated that the region is considered the Islamic periphery," Abuza added. "Militants of the region are actively trying to pull the region into the Islamic core. They want people to understand that their jihad is a part of the global jihad."
 
 
Thomas Braun, Lima, Peru

Daily Telegraph " mistaken - to see the presence of Israel as the mainreason for the lack of peace in the region"

This article from the Daily Telegraph of Saturday 2 June deserves the widest distribution. Charles Moore was editor of the Daily Telegraph from 1995 to 2003. Before that he edited The Spectator (1984-1990) and The Sunday Telegraph (1992-1995).

Ezra Golombok


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/06/02/do0201.xml

What if Israelis had abducted BBC man?

By Charles Moore

Watching the horrible video of Alan Johnston of the BBC broadcasting Palestinian propaganda under orders from his kidnappers, I found myself asking what it would have been like had he been kidnapped by Israelis, and made to do the same thing the other way round.

The first point is that it would never happen. There are no Israeli organisations - governmental or freelance - that would contemplate such a thing. That fact is itself significant.

But just suppose that some fanatical Jews had grabbed Mr Johnston and forced him to spout their message, abusing his own country as he did so. What would the world have said?

There would have been none of the caution which has characterised the response of the BBC and of the Government since Mr Johnston was abducted on March 12. The Israeli government would immediately have been condemned for its readiness to harbour terrorists or its failure to track them down.

Loud would have been the denunciations of the extremist doctrines of Zionism which had given rise to this vile act. The world isolation of Israel, if it failed to get Mr Johnston freed, would have been complete.

If Mr Johnston had been forced to broadcast saying, for example, that Israel was entitled to all the territories held since the Six-Day War, and calling on the release of all Israeli soldiers held by Arab powers in return for his own release, his words would have been scorned. The cause of Israel in the world would have been irreparably damaged by thus torturing him on television . No one would have been shy of saying so.

But of course in real life it is Arabs holding Mr Johnston, and so everyone treads on tip-toe. Bridget Kendall of the BBC opined that Mr Johnston had been "asked" to say what he said in his video. Asked! If it were merely an "ask", why did he not say no?

Throughout Mr Johnston's captivity, the BBC has continually emphasised that he gave "a voice" to the Palestinian people, the implication being that he supported their cause, and should therefore be let out. One cannot imagine the equivalent being said if he had been held by Israelis.

Well, he is certainly giving a voice to the Palestinian people now. And the truth is that, although it is under horrible duress, what he says is not all that different from what the BBC says every day through the mouths of reporters who are not kidnapped and threatened, but are merely collecting their wages.

The language is more lurid in the Johnston video, but the narrative is essentially the same as we have heard over the years from Orla Guerin and Jeremy Bowen and virtually the whole pack of them.

It is that everything that is wrong in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world is the result of aggression or "heavy-handedness" (have you noticed how all actions by American or Israeli troops are "heavy-handed", just as surely as all racism is "unacceptable"?) by America or Israel or Britain.

Alan Johnston, under terrorist orders, spoke of the "absolute despair" of the Palestinians and attributed it to 40 years of Israeli occupation, "supported by the West". That is how it is presented, night after night, by the BBC.

The other side is almost unexamined. There is little to explain the internecine strife in the Arab world, particularly in Gaza, or the cynical motivations of Arab leaders for whom Palestinian miseries are politically convenient.

You get precious little investigation of the networks and mentalities of Islamist extremism - the methods and money of Hamas or Hizbollah and comparable groups - which produce acts of pure evil like that in which Mr Johnston is involuntarily complicit.

The spotlight is not shone on how the "militants" (the BBC does not even permit the word "terrorist" in the Middle East context) and the warlords maintain their corruption and rule of fear, persecuting, among others, the Palestinians.

Instead it shines pitilessly on Blair and Bush and on Israel.

From the hellish to the ridiculous, the pattern is the same. Back at home, the Universities and Colleges Union has just voted for its members to "consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions".

Well, they could consider how work by scientists at the Technion in Haifa has led to the production of the drug Velcade, which treats multiple myeloma. Or they could look at the professor at Ben-Gurion University who discovered a bacterium that fights malaria and river blindness by killing mosquitoes and black fly.

Or they could study the co-operation between researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who have isolated the protein that triggers stress in order to try to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and their equivalents at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

The main universities of Israel are, in fact, everything that we in the West would recognise as proper universities. They have intellectual freedom. They do not require an ethnic or religious qualification for entry. They are not controlled by the government. They have world-class standards of research, often producing discoveries which benefit all humanity. In all this, they are virtually unique in the Middle East.

The silly dons are not alone. The National Union of Journalists, of which I am proud never to have been a member, has recently passed a comparable motion, brilliantly singling out the only country in the region with a free press for pariah treatment. Unison, which is a big, serious union, is being pressed to support a boycott of Israeli goods, products of the only country in the region with a free trade union movement.

The doctrine is that Israel practises "apartheid" and that it must therefore be boycotted.

All this is moral madness. It is not mad, of course, to criticise Israeli policy. In some respects, indeed, it would be mad not to. It is not mad - though I think it is mistaken - to see the presence of Israel as the main reason for the lack of peace in the region.

But it is mad or, perhaps one should rather say, bad to try to raid Western culture's reserves of moral indignation and expend them on a country that is part of that culture in favour of surrounding countries that aren't. How can we have got ourselves into a situation in which we half-excuse turbaned torturers for kidnapping our fellow-citizens while trying to exclude Jewish biochemists from lecturing to our students?

Nobody yet knows the precise motivations of Mr Johnston's captors, but it is surely not a coincidence that they held him in silence until the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War approached, and only then made him speak. They wanted him to give the world their historical explanation - Israeli oppression - for their cause.

Yet that war took place because President Nasser of Egypt led his country and his allies declaring "\u2026our basic aim will be to destroy Israel".

He failed, abjectly, and Egypt and Jordan later gave up the aspiration. But many others maintain it to this day, now with a pseudo-religious gloss added.

We keep giving sympathetic air-time to their death cult. In a way, Mr Johnston is paying the price: his captors are high on the oxygen of his corporation's publicity.

As for Israel, many sins can be laid to its charge. But it is morally serious in a way that we are not, because it has to be. Forty years after its greatest victory, it has to work out each morning how it can survive.

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
  Israel Information Office, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
          E-mail: ezra@isrinfo.demon.co.uk        
  News from Israel: http://www.isrinfo.demon.co.uk
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+

 



--
"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."  
Cowboy Saying.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Lebanon army storms militant posts at camp, 19 die

By Nazih Siddiq

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (Reuters) - Advancing under a blanket of artillery and tank fire, Lebanese troops overran positions held by al Qaeda-inspired militants at a Palestinian refugee camp on Friday and 19 people were killed.

Artillery and machinegun fire shook Nahr al-Bared camp in north Lebanon from early morning to well into the night. At times shells exploded at a rate of 10 a minute.
 
 
Thomas Braun, Lima, Peru

Palestinian Kindergardeners Vow to Die for Allah

Palestinian Kindergarten Graduates Vow to Die for Allah
By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
June 01, 2007

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - A televised graduation ceremony at a Palestinian kindergarten in Gaza shows little boys dressed in black masks, camouflage fatigues, carrying toy guns, and waving green Hamas flags.

The children vow that their most "lofty aspiration" is death for the sake of Allah.

The ceremony aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa Television on Thursday. The kindergarten is run by the Islamic Association in Gaza, which is the group that gave rise to Hamas.

In part of the video, girls in white dresses, some wearing butterfly wings, are shown dancing.

Then the boys, dressed like Palestinian militants, march in formation before dropping to flat to the floor to crawl on their stomachs like fighters do.

The boys shout, "Allah Akbar" (Allah is great).

"Who is your role model?" the boys are asked. "The Prophet," they respond.

"What is your path?"

"Jihad," they shout.

"What is your most lofty aspiration?"

"Death for the sake of Allah."

The video clip and translation were provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute on Friday.

Hamas is well known throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a charitable organization, providing schools, kindergartens, medical clinics and other social services to Palestinians. But experts say the group also works to instill a message of hatred and "jihad" in future generations.

Hamas openly calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and wants to establish an Islamic Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and all of Israel.

Full text at: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200706/INT20070601a.html

--Wendy in Washington

How the Soviets turned the Six Day War into Israeli Agression

The Victory and The Lie:

Four Decades after the Six-Day War a Soviet Lie and local Mismanagement threaten to deprive Israel of its Victory

Joel Fishman
 Makor Rishon

1 June 2007

Commemorating the Six day War is a valuable practice because it encourages us to draw comparisons between the past and the present. While we may observe the anniversary of this war annually, every decade which passes provides a distinct perspective, and for this reason, the fortieth anniversary of this dramatic historical event is all the more meaningful.

But before we consider the present, let us look back two decades. On the war's twentieth anniversary in 1987, Israel Television, -- there was only one channel then, -- organized a panel of the generals who had won the war. The late Yitzhak Rabin, the Chief of Staff in 1967, presided over this group. In this discussion, only one basic thought emerged and it was repeated over and over: the war had brought Israel strategic depth (omek astrategi, to use the exact term).

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, this was the end of an era. These men, the military and political elite of Israel, evaluated the situation in spatial but not human terms. They did not grasp that one day the inhabitants of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza might have a will of their own. They lacked the imagination to envisage unforeseen possibilities. In their capacity as military strategists they simply overlooked the human dimension. They assumed that the secure world of May 1987 would go on forever, which explains why, just six months later, the outbreak of the Intifada caught them by complete surprise. They were unprepared for the challenge of asymmetrical war, low intensity conflict, a type of political warfare which appealed to world opinion through the intensive use of the media. Because they never quite understood this type of warfare, these men failed to cope with it.

In retrospect, the twentieth anniversary of the Six Day War represents a dividing line between an age when the country's security could be assured mainly through military force, when the political part of the equation – which included world opinion – was marginal. Since then, the mix has gradually changed. For years, there had been some awareness of this reality, although it was not uppermost in people's thoughts.

Today, four decades after the event, recent scholarship has dramatically improved our understanding of the Six-Day War and its political context. Two Israeli researchers, Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez recently examined the policy of the Soviet Union in the Six-Day War. They published their findings in their new book, Foxbats over Dimona; The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six Day War [Ataleifim beshmei Dimona, hahimur hagarini shel Brit HaMoatsoth be-Milchemeth Sheshet ha-Yomim.] They found that "the Soviets had prepared a marine landing, with air support, on Israel's shores, which was not only planned but actually set in motion; they had readied strategic bombers and nuclear-armed naval forces to strike…." Their main target was the nuclear reactor in Dimona, and their real objective, although they did not say so openly, was to end the existence of Israel. It was in this context that Ginor and Remez presented their conclusion that the "Six-Day War was definitely not premeditated by Israel for expansionist purposes. Rather, it resulted from a successful Soviet-Arab attempt to provoke Israel into a preemptive strike." The Soviet plan was to provoke Israel into making the first move, framing it in the role of aggressor, in order to provide the pretext for a massive intervention. When the Israel Air Force bombed the Egyptian airfields, it foiled the Soviet strategy.

Ginor and Remez give further evidence in support of their interpretation. "According to the not unfriendly account of India's delegate at the United Nations, on 5 June the Security Council's deliberations were complicated 'by the Soviet demands that [it] should condemn Israel's aggression' as a condition for any cease-fire." Separately, Dore Gold pointed out that the Soviet Union attempted unsuccessfully to get both the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations to condemn Israel as the aggressor. In due course, the Soviets transformed the proposition that Israel was the aggressor into the centerpiece of their own propaganda campaign in which the East Bloc also participated. One contemporary example may be found in the East German newspaper Neues Deutschland of 9 August 1968: "The new Israeli acts of aggression prove the urgency which in the Declaration of the Communist and workers' parties of the Socialist countries confirms the demand for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied Arab territories. This demand is the voice of the people."

Reacting to the East German propaganda campaign, Simon Wiesenthal in a press conference, held in Vienna on September 6, 1968, pointed out that the propagandists who participated in this campaign had once served the Third Reich and were actually using Nazi terminology in their campaign against Israel. He said that this campaign was characterized by "aggression, wrongful accusation, and unlimited exaggeration."

In addition to the Soviet efforts, one must also recall France's negative contribution. On 25 November 1967, at his semi-annual press conference, General de Gaulle not only attacked the State of Israel but also the Jewish people. He was careful to state that Egypt which created the "vexatious affair of Aqaba" but added that this move gave the Israelis the opportunity for which they waited, and they now became the conquerors. De Gaulle did not use the actual word "aggressor," but the meaning of his comments was abundantly clear. His infamous description of the Jewish people will always be remembered: "an elite people, self-assured and domineering." Raymond Aron, who defined himself as a French citizen who did not want to break his links with the other Jews in the world or with Israelis, observed in his essay, De Gaulle, Israel and the Jews, that the outcome of de Gaulle's brutal language was to make the public expression of antisemitism acceptable in postwar Europe: "…General de Gaulle has knowingly and deliberately initiated a new phase of Jewish history and perhaps of antisemitism. Everything has once again become possible; everything is beginning over again…."

The above information explains the origin of the lie that Israel is an aggressor, the motives of the perpetrators, in this case the Soviet Union, and, after the fact, the East Bloc and France. It follows also that in a war of self defense, Israel had a good reason take the territories and in the absence of a final settlement still has a valid reason to hold onto them. A defensive response to aggression is completely different from a war of conquest, and the use of the term "occupation," as it is widely understood is inappropriate. A challenging question is why certain parties chose to buy into this lie, although they knew the truth.

Continued at Six Day War: The Victory and the Lie 

http://zionism-israel.com/ezine/Six_Day_War_lie.htm

Thursday, May 31, 2007

family values and faith based action in the Middle East

At least one government is defefending family values and keeping women in their place. There are lots of immoral women in Iran it seems. The Iranian government has been arresting and harassing women who do not dress according to the code:
 
Tehran, 29 May (AKI) - In the four weeks since a highly publicised government moralisation campaign kicked off, 14,635 people were temporarily detained under strict new Islamic dress code laws punishing offenders with arrest. Another 67,000 people were reprimanded by police, according to a tally kept by the local Rooz daily based on police statements. Only in airports and train stations some 1,115 people, mostly women, were arrested while 17,135 were not allowed to board planes or trains as they were not dressed properly
 
If you like family values and old time religion, you'll love Iran. 
 
"Girls were girls and men were men
Mister we could use a man like Ayatollah Khomeini again"
 
So remember, if you support family values and faith based action, don't vote Republican, vote for the Mullahs.
 
Ami Isseroff

Blood Money

Dear Friends,

 

Finally, a way has been found to relieve Palestinian financial isolation and suffering.   New arrangements, authorized by the US, have been found to pay Palestinian Authority salaries. Money is to be deposited with the PLO and channeled via "moderate" Palestinian leaders, represented by Fatah party leader President Mahmoud Abbas and the independent Finance Minister, Salam Fayyad.   The mechanism is designed to avoid funding terrorism or dreaded "extremists" (represented by the Hamas government) who reject a two-State solution.  Reuters reports that the US initiative is already bearing fruit, with over $80 million in international aid from Arab countries and Europe starting to flow. In fact, "Fayyad was expected to receive enough money through the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) account to pay government workers, including members of the security forces, at least half of their normal monthly wages later this week."

 

So let's do a double check.  I invite you to read the following extracts from the Palestinian National Charter – the official PLO doctrine.   Decide for yourself if this seems to be a "moderate" organisation which accepts a two state solution and rejects violence and terrorism.

 

Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.

 

Article 7: … [the Palestinian] must be prepared for the armed struggle and ready to sacrifice his wealth and his life in order to win back his homeland and bring about its liberation.

 

Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. Thus it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it….

 

Article 10: Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war. This requires its escalation, comprehensiveness, and the mobilization of all the Palestinian popular and educational efforts and their organization and involvement in the armed Palestinian revolution…

 

Article 20: …Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history…

 

Article 21: The Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves by the armed Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine…

 

Article 22: Zionism is…racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement, and geographical base for world imperialism…

 

Article 30: Fighters and carriers of arms in the war of liberation are the nucleus of the popular army which will be the protective force for the gains of the Palestinian Arab people.

 

And Article 3 of the General Principles (Chapter I) of the Constitution of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (which is annexed to and regulates the Charter):

 

"…the armed Palestinian struggle shall be supported, and every possible effort shall be made to ensure that it continues and escalates…"

 

Moderate?  Reject violence and terror? Accept a two state solution?

 

But the real test is not the theory of charters and of principles.  The real test is practical. Who are the salary earners who benefit?  Where does the money go?

 

The Funding for Peace Coalition has been issuing reports for years documenting the diversion of international aid to corruption and violence by the Palestinian Authority lead by the PLO – and especially by Fatah leaders such as Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat.   Despite denials by European politicians and bureaucrats, Fatah's terrorist "military wing" the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade were prime beneficiaries.

 

Have things changed? Who are the "government workers, including members of the security forces" who will benefit from this new funding mechanism?   A little snippet of news from the Israeli Ha'aretz paper lets us in on the secret.   Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades founder Khaled Shwish was arrested by the IDF two days ago, for murdering 8 Israeli civilians and injuring tens of others.  This terrorist murderer is one of the many "government workers" with military rank that would be getting salary payments from the international aid channeled through "moderate" Fatah and the PLO.

 

Once again, the international community has found a way to fund terror and murder Jews.

 

David

To subscribe or unsubscribe to my occasional "letter from Israel", just email me at David.Frankfurter@iname.com  

To comment on this letter or read my archive, go to http://dfrankfurter.livejournal.com/

If you post this letter on other sites, please include a link to the source at http://dfrankfurter.livejournal.com/112211.html



--
"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."  
Cowboy Saying.

Shame on the UK Left


DAILY EXPRESS

SHAME ON THE LEFT AND ITS VICIOUS HATRED OF ISRAEL

Thursday May 31,2007

Leo McKinstry


ANTI-RACISM is supposed to be one of the guiding principles of our society, preventing discrimination on the grounds of ethnic origin or nationality.

Yet it is a bizarre paradox of modern Britain that there is now a climate of increasing hostility towards Jews, particularly in those Left-wing intellectual circles which otherwise make a fetish of their concern for racial sensitivities.

Dressed up as criticism of the state of Israel, anti-Semitism is becoming not just tolerated but even fashionable in some of our civic institutions, including the universities and parts of the media.

Thanks to the Left's neurotic hatred of Israel, we now have the extraordinary sight of self-styled liberal campaigners launching McCarthyite witch-hunts against anyone deemed to have Israeli connections , as in this week's debate at the University and College Union's annual conference at Bourne�­mouth calling for a boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.


Respect for democracy, individual rights and freedom of speech are being crushed beneath the juggernaut of shrill indignation.


What is particularly disturbing is the way opposition to the Jewish state descends into vicious antagonism against Jews themselves, as shown by this sickening recent outburst from writer Pamela Hardyment, a member of the National Union of Journalists, which in April voted to boycott Israeli goods.

Explaining her support for the NUJ's stance, Ms Hardyment described Israel as "a wonderful Nazi-like killing machine backed by the world's richest Jews".


Then, like some lunatic from the far-Right, she referred to the "so-called Holocaust" before concluding: "Shame on all Jews, may your lives be cursed."


Such words could have come straight from Hitler or the most fervent supporter of Osama Bin Laden.

But Ms Hardyment is hardly unique.


This sort of seething resentment can be found throughout the Left, whether in demands that Israel be treated as a pariah state or in connivance at anti-Semitic propaganda.
Typical of this approach was the opinion of  Ulster poet and darling of the BBC Tom Paulin, who once argued that "Jewish settlers in Israel should be shot dead. They are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them."

Yet Paulin would no doubt be outraged if some English extremist uttered the same sentiments about radical Muslims settling in Britain.


One of the most nauseating rhetorical devices used by hysterical campaigners such as Paulin and Hardyment is to draw an analogy between the Nazi regime and the modern government of Israel.


Such a link is not only historically absurd, since Israel is by far the most democratic and liberal country in the Middle East, but it is also offensive because it demonises the Jews and devalues the horror of the Holocaust.

The pretence that Israel's actions in its own defence against Islamic terrorists are  somehow the equivalent of Nazi Germany's gas chambers is a lie worthy of Dr Goebbels himself. And the tragedy is that this continual assault on Israel has led to a rise in anti-Semitism in Britain, much of it fuelled by Islamic radicals.


In 2006 there were 594 anti-Semitic race-hate incidents in this country, a 31 per cent rise on 2005 and the highest total since records began in 1984.

I should perhaps stress that I do not come from a Jewish family.
Like Tom Paulin, I hail from the Belfast middle-class. But I have been repelled by the anti-Semitism – disguised as support for the Palestinians – of parts of the British Left.

I first became aware of this nasty phenomenon when, in 1985, I attended the annual conference of the National Union
of Students at Blackpool.
There I was appalled to hear delegates calling for a ban on student Jewish societies, on the grounds that because such groups supported the state of Israel they were essentially fascistic in nature.

Yet, more than 20 years later, this sort of intolerance is no longer confined to the student debating floor.
It now exists in large swathes of education, the press and the arts.

The boycott of Israel by academics was started by Professor Stephen Rose of the Open University, like Paulin another BBC favourite,
who told his colleagues that "you have no right to treat Israel as if it were a normal state ".

The boycott is now so widespread that, in one grotesque incident, an Israeli PhD student had his application for Oxford initially rejected purely because he had served in his country's army.

The professor dealing with the case, Andrew Wilkie, said he had "a huge problem with Israelis taking the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust and then inflicting gross human rights abuses on Palestinians".

Professor Wilkie would not have dreamt of turning down a Zim�­babwean because of Mugabe's tyranny, or a Chinese applicant because of his own opposition to the occupation of Tibet.

This is what is so contemptible about the intellectuals' fixation with Israel.
    

They are guilty of the most bizarre double standards.


While they scream about the Jewish state, they remain silent about human rights abuses carried out by brutal regimes across the world.

And it is ironic that, on the day the lecturers debated a boycott of Israel, they also voted to refuse to co-operate with any attempt to crack down on radical Islam on campuses, claiming such a move would be an infringement of free speech.


Given some of the lecturers' enthusiasm for silencing Israeli opinion such a position is laughable in its hypocrisy.


United by anti-Semitism, the bigots of the academic Left and Muslim fundamentalism are destroying freedom of thought in this country.


 

Iran on the Brink of the Bomb: What Should Be Done?

Iran has reached the point of no return in nuclear development. A new approach is needed since the nuclear threat is merely a symptom - the real problem is the Iranian regime itself
Ziv Maor (5/29/2007)

 
Complete article:
http://www.omedia.org/Show_Article.asp?DynamicContentID=2322&MenuID=722&ThreadID=1014010
 
Thomas Braun, Lima, Peru

The confrontation in northern Lebanon between the Lebanese army and Fath al-Islam, the Al-Qaeda offshoot in Lebanon



From:
Dr. Reuven Erlich
Director
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC)
Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at
the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC)

Dear Braun Thomas

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center Newsletter

Attached please find information about :

 

 




--
"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."  
Cowboy Saying.

Academics express outrage at Israeli boycott

From today's Guardian Unlimited.

Academics express outrage at Israeli boycott


Debbie Andalo
Thursday May 31, 2007
 < http://www.educationguardian.co.uk/>
EducationGuardian.co.uk

Academics and students today hit back at the decision by
university lecturers to support calls for a boycott of
Israeli institutions.
Yesterday the University and College Union decided by 158
votes to 99 to circulate a motion to all its branches to
discuss calls from Palestinian trade unions for a
"comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all
Israeli academic institutions". The motion is going to
branches for "their information and discussion".
But the decision taken at the inaugural UCU national
conference in Bournemouth was condemned by the Russell group
of research-led universities, the National Union of Students
and organisations with an interest in Israel and academic
free speech.
In a hard-hitting statement, the Russell group "rejected
outright" the boycott call.
Its chairman, Prof Malcolm Grant, who is also president and
provost of University College London, said: "It is a
contradiction in terms and in direct conflict with the
mission of a university.
"It betrays a misunderstanding of the academic mission,
which is founded squarely on freedom of inquiry and freedom
of speech.
"Any institution worthy of the title of university has the
responsibility to protect these values, and it is
particularly disturbing to find an academic union attacking
academic freedom in this way."
Prof Grant promised that its universities "will uphold
academic freedom by standing firm against any boycott that
threatens it".
Meanwhile, the executive director of the International
Advisory Board for Academic Freedom (IAB), Ofir Frankel,
accused the union of allowing itself "to act as a one-sided
player in Middle Eastern politics".
He said: "The IAB is amazed that the extremists that led
their union to such an initiative decided not to discuss the
option to pass this initiative to a vote of all 120,000
members, a decision that could have allowed the majority to
rescue their union from this discriminatory action by
reharnessing the values of academic freedom, discourse and
debate, as their own general secretary suggested."
The chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, Jeremy
Newmark, described the union's decision as "an assault on
academic freedom" that "damages the credibility of British
academia as a whole". He called for the union to organise a
full membership ballot before introducing any boycott.
The decision by the UCU was also condemned by the Academic
Friends of Israel, which accused the union of having "failed
to support the wishes of its membership".
Criticism of the UCU decision also came from student
organisations.
The president of the National Union of Students, Gemma
Tumelty, said it did not support the principles behind an
academic boycott of Israel because it "undermines the
Israeli academics who support Palestinian rights".
It also "hinders the building of bridges between Israelis
and Palestinians".
She added: "Retaining dialogue on all sides will be crucial
in obtaining a lasting peace in the Middle East.
International academics have a lot to offer higher education
students in the UK and a boycott of this specific country is
extremely worrying.
"We will express our concerns to UCU and we are awaiting
clarification from them on the exact nature of this policy
and its potential impact on students and the academic
community."
There were also reservations about the UCU decision from the
World Union of Jewish Students.
Its chairwoman, Tamar Shchory, a student at Ben Gurion
University in south Israel, said: "In campuses abroad the
climate of hostility towards the state of Israel and Jewish
students is getting stronger.
"It seems like the UCU has chosen a one-sided, not
constructive, position in a very complex and sensitive
matter instead of promoting the basic value of academic
freedom and constructive initiatives."

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Jewish and Arab Americans Support US Engagement in Peace Process

Well, if only Americans were engaged in the peace process, we'd all agree! Unfortunately, it's Israelis and Palestinians who are living the conflict. Still, polls show that they both support a two state solution as well. It's "just" a question of borders and ending the violence. Right. --Wendy in Washington

Joint AAI/APN Poll: Jewish and Arab Americans Overwhelmingly Support Two-State Solution, U.S. Engagement in Peace Process

Briefing Call with James Zogby and Debra DeLee

WASHINGTON - May 30, 2007 - The Arab American Institute (AAI) and Americans for Peace Now (APN) on Monday, June 4, will release the results of a new joint survey of Arab Americans and Jewish Americans showing a high level of support, among both communities, for a negotiated two-state peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The poll also shows a low level of approval of President Bush's handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as an intention, by voters in both communities, to support political candidates who commit to actively advancing the Arab-Israeli peace process. The poll reveals solid support for a more robust use of American diplomacy in the region, including in Washington's policy toward Iran.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

First Israeli Pro Basketball Player in the WNBA

Here's a sweet profile of the first Israeli woman to play in the WOmen's National Basketball Association in the U.S. I confess my favorite part of the story is the correction--her name is Shay, not Shea. "Shea Stadium" is a baseball stadium in Manhattan, so it's an easy error to make.

May 20, 2007
Heart in Israel and Home (Court) in New York
By LYNN ZINSER

Shay Doron waited for her life's dream to unfold last month at the W.N.B.A. draft.

The dream had begun to take shape during her childhood in Israel, where her athletic parents marveled at how hard she practiced. Later, to help make the dream possible, her parents moved the family to Long Island for Doron's last two years of high school.

As Doron sat and hoped, Reneé Brown, the W.N.B.A. vice president for player personnel, held a Liberty jersey before announcing the team's second-round pick. ''She stared right at me,'' Doron said. ''So I knew.''

Doron had not only been granted her dream, but also the joy of being only a Long Island Rail Road trip from her parents, Yuda and Tamari. They uprooted and moved their two daughters to the United States in 2001, leaving their intifada-torn country only two weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.

[snippet]

When the Liberty opens its season Sunday at Madison Square Garden against Chicago, Doron, a 5-foot-9 guard, will become the first Israeli to play in the W.N.B.A. The Liberty took her with the 16th pick over all.

''All the hard work, all the things I've sacrificed, have been to get here,'' said Doron, who as a junior in 2005-6 led Maryland to the N.C.A.A. title. ''To be the first is great and a lot goes with that, but that wasn't my main concern. My main concern is being the best I can be and getting to the best level there is, and that's the W.N.B.A.''

None of it was easy for the Dorons, who left behind a close-knit and extended family during a period of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Yuda and Tamari had served in the Israeli military -- Yuda in the navy's special forces -- and the family had moved often, meaning Shay kept having to adjust to new schools and to finding new friends.

Yuda, who had been a decathlete, and Tamari, who had played for the national volleyball team, say they never nudged Shay toward sports. She fell in love with basketball, using it to help her fit in after every move, practicing on her own when she could not find anyone to play with.

When Doron settled into high school in Ramat Hasharon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, her childhood love evolved into the goal of playing professionally in the United States. The Dorons decided that the only way that could happen was if they moved there.

A coach they knew recommended Christ the King in Queens, the alma mater of the W.N.B.A. players Chamique Holdsclaw and Sue Bird. Doron became the only Jewish player at a Catholic high school, all in the name of her dream.

''It was the hardest decision I've ever made in my life,'' Doron said. ''I love Israel. My whole family is there. I remember crying on my dad and he said: 'Shay, I know this is hard, but this is the right thing. Trust me. When you look back on this in a few years, you will know this was the right move.' ''

[snippet]

In the United States, Doron serves as a walking tourism video for her native country. She describes Israel to everyone she meets. When she played for the United States team in the Maccabiah Games in 2005 (the Israelis entered a younger team, so Doron could not join it), she played tour guide and took her American teammates to the family's house for dinner.

''I want Americans to know Israel, how beautiful it is,'' Doron said. ''You have to get there and see that it isn't as scary as you see on the news.''


Correction: May 29, 2007, Tuesday Because of an editing error, a sports article on May 20 about a player from Israel who was selected by the Liberty in the W.N.B.A. draft in April misspelled her given name in some copies. As the article noted elsewhere, she is Shay Doron, not Shea.

The sheriff of Sderot

A human face on the suffering in Sderot. I do admire these people, and feel quite terrible, as someone who supported the evacuation of Israeli settlements in Gaza, about the suffering of the citizens in Sederot.
--Wendy in Washington

The sheriff of Sderot

by Rebecca Anna Stoil, THE JERUSALEM POST May. 28, 2007

Uri Bar-Lev is doing what he tends to do a lot in his spare time recently - cruising around Sderot at 20 kph - when the emergency siren sounds. He instructs his driver to pull over to the side of the residential street, and then he notices a young woman who has stopped her car and is paralyzed with fear, unable to turn off the engine or leave the vehicle.

As the first rocket falls in the distance, Bar-Lev leans into the woman's car window, slowly coaxing her to leave the vehicle and take cover in a nearby house. A second later, a rocket shrieks overhead, plunging into a nearby house, but Bar-Lev does not show that he has even heard the boom. Slowly and shakily, the woman, a Sderot resident who has witnessed one too many barrages in recent days, exits the car and is escorted into a nearby house, whose residents have opened their doors to the passers-by.

After making sure that the woman is safely ensconced, Bar-Lev gets back into his car and speeds away, arriving first on the scene where the shrieking Kassam has barreled through the house's wall. Realizing that he is the first emergency responder there, he checks to make sure his first-aid kit is ready, scopes out the scene, and crouches down next to the house's owner, who is holding his ears and rocking back and forth in shock.

Bar-Lev, the commander of the Israel Police's Southern District, is the face of the police in the western Negev town of Sderot. The citizens see him coming, and leave their yards and stores to say hello to him, to congratulate him on the police's efforts, and to express their support - even love.

"Uri, Uri, come look! You're on television!" a group of men at a local barbershop call out to the police chief as he patrols the center of town. Bar-Lev smiles and walks in, watching the Channel 10 broadcast as the barbershop's patrons clap him on his back.

Bar-Lev, personable and soft-spoken, has temporarily relocated the district headquarters to Sderot, and so he and his staff officers meet with the local residents - as well as the Sderot cops - every day.

"I moved my headquarters here since the beginning of this upswing in violence to serve as a personal example, to the citizens as well as to the police officers. [I wanted] to demonstrate our presence, which is especially important because Sderot is an intimate city."

The intimacy in Sderot can be seen on a daily basis, in the interactions between police and residents.

"We understand the disillusionment of Sderot residents and we understand that, sometimes, they need to release their stress," says Sderot Station Chief Ch.-Supt. Haim Bublil. A total of 81 police officers live in the western Negev city, and many times when residents hold protests, it is their neighbors, dressed in blue, who are called upon to respond to the disturbances.

"When they want to demonstrate, I respect their right and their desire to do so," Bublil says, "and I am ultimately responsible for determining what is the red line of acceptability that they can not cross." Most of the time, he says, dialogue with the residents is all that is needed to keep the demonstrations from spinning out of hand.

Even at the most heated recent protests, police officers addressed their fellow Sderot residents by name in mostly successful appeals to maintain a strict doctrine of non-violence.

"They know that the police are with them, stuck in the same cauldron. We are here with them, day in and day out. And they value that," explains Bublil.

Bar-Lev is sitting in a local caf drinking a milkshake when he hears loudspeakers blaring in the streets, calling on residents to come and protest in front of city hall. He smiles; the noise is coming from the same pickup truck, with a cargo of watermelons and a watermelon drawn on the driver's door, that has been the focal point of many recent demonstrations. It is one of the few vehicles in the town outfitted with a loudspeaker system, intended to call would-be customers out from their houses to buy fruit.

After finishing the milkshake, Bar-Lev goes over to the parking lot near the municipality building to check out what's unfolding. "They won't let us hold the protest here!" complains one of the handful of demonstrators, leaning in to the police chief's car window.

Bar-Lev explains to him that protesting in the street could cause traffic jams and block rescue equipment should a missile land. He calls over the local police intelligence officer, and after a quick roadside situation assessment, the police and protesters agree to move the demonstration out of the street. After waiting a few minutes to make sure everything runs as planned, and clapping demonstrators and policemen on the back, he is off again.

"The work here is special because the residents here are very warm people. They don't just ignore you. Maybe there are a few who yell, but in general, the residents here hold a lot of love toward the police," Bar-Lev says, smiling.

Like the rest of the police in Sderot, Bar-Lev has little time to rest while the rockets fall. He begins his days often with the first rocket strike before 7 a.m., and finishes after midnight. He holds meetings with local residents - not just in Sderot, but also visiting the surrounding kibbutzim and moshavs - to understand their special needs....

The full text of this article is online at: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1178708701559&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Monday, May 28, 2007

One day in the Guardian

Guardian readers (like myself) are curious folk. There's no doubt that they have decent liberal values: they sympathize with the poor, with the downtrodden, with the dispossessed. They hate bigotry. They hate racism. They are feminists of varying styles and persuasions. Their hearts are in all the right places. Except for three things: they hate complementary medicine with a loathing bordering on fanaticism. (I have my own prejudice here: I used to be President of the Natural Medicines Society, and my wife is a homeopath.) They hate Israel. And they can't find it in their hearts to call terrorists terrorists, unless they explode themselves on the British transport system. This won't come as a surprise to anyone likely to read this blog.

I don't want to take up your time analysing all this. I just want to draw your attention (especially if you are a Guardian reader) to today's (28 May 2007) edition.

On page 14, a report on the disgraceful neo-fascist attack on European MPs and others protesting a ban on a gay rights parade in Moscow. The mayor of Moscow dubbed gay rallies as 'satanic'.

Page 15 carries a full-page report on the coming Syrian referendum, in which Bashshar al-Asad is the only choice. This is dubbed in the headline: 'Democracy Damascus style'. 'There is no legal opposition. Tellingly, the event is described in Arabic as "renewing the pledge of allegiance" as if this young, British-educated ophthalmologist and computer buff were a medieval Calip'. I imagine the Arabic reads something like 'tajdid al-bay'a', which takes us back to the times of the Prophet and the very first caliphs. The seventh century, not the Middle Ages.

Page 17 heads witgh a piece on how 'Riot police on alert as anti-Chávez TV channel taken off air'. Ahmadinejad-loving Chávez is the darling of the Left and a hero to Guardian readers. As Radio Caracas Television prepared to be closed because of its opposition to Chávez, its director, Marcel Granier, said 'This marks a turn toward totalitarianism'.

Let's skip to page 21 (18-19 are taken up by a huge photograph of a ship amidst Arctic ice, 20 is an advert): 'Mugabe ready to seize foreign companies' — 'a move that economists warn would be as damaging as the widespread land seizures in the country'.

Now, it's fair to say that, even if they don't always occur in so concentrated a form, stories like this do feature in the Guardian on a more or less daily basis. So Guardian readers are well aware of some of the unpleasant things that happen in some foreign countries. And they know how some of these things impinge on their own most cherished beliefs (Peter Tatchell was among those beaten in Moscow). I don't doubt they feel outrage when they read such stories. But for some reason whatever indignation they feel doesn't, in Forster's words, 'connect'.

Here's a gay rights parade banned in Moscow (and dubbed 'satanic' by a politician), here's a group of European gay rights protesters badly beaten by neo-fascists. I expect there may be murmurs of protest (in fact, I hope there will be plenty). But over there in Tel Aviv (don't mention the bigots in Jerusalem) they openly hold gay rights parades. They offer sanctuary to gay men and women from Gaza and the West Bank. And Guardian readers proclaim loudly that Israel is an 'apartheid state'. Perhaps one group of gay Guardian readers might like to go to Moscow and another bunch to Tel Aviv, and write a piece for G2 six months later, telling us their experiences.

Here's a country run by yet another Arab dictatorship, a state under one-party rule. One-party rule is anathema to Guardian readers. This dictatorship gives aid to terrorist groups like Hizbullah, who threaten Israel, but clamps down on others (notably the Ikhwan al-Muslimun, the Muslim Brothers) who threaten the Baathist state. When did Guardian readers last march in the streets to protest Syrian clamp-downs on a free press, free elections, or, among others, gay rights? Never, I think. When did they take to the streets to condemn Syrian interfreence in Lebanon, or Syrian support for terrorism? Never. When did they last complain bitterly about Israel, the one democracy in the region, calling it a 'fascist' state? As far as I know, every day of the week.

Guardian readers refuse to say a word about censorship in the Middle East. Two years ago, Human Rights Watch published a report on the extensive clamp-downs in Egyptian universities. Guardian readers on the march? Not likely. An Israel-based agency publishes TV clips and press transcripts showing anti-Semitic material from Iran and the Arab woirld. The Guardian's Middle East editor takes exception to an agency based in Israel and set up by an Israeli, and dismisses all this material out of hand. Who are we dealing with here? Guardian readers? Or Goebbels? And I don't expect to see anyone on the streets protesting about censorship under the increasingly-autcratic Chávez. Though the anti-Israel lobby, many of them Guardian readers, does like to claim that Israel, a country that has no censorship beyond what we have here in the UK, covers up, hides, harasses journalists etc.

I don't suppose anyone will complain about Mugabe, bearing in mind that many of the foreign companies he will take over are multi-nationals, whom Guardian readers hate anyway. But they will be quite comfortable in calling for a boycott of Israeli products, putting at risk, among others, joint Jewish-Arab businesses, solo Arab businesses, socialist kibbutzim, and honest, hard-working Israelis of all backgrounds.

So let me say it clearly. I am a Guardian reader. I love Israel. I am a contradiction in terms. Or maybe not. Maybe I just read what's in there and draw unusual conclusions. Unlike so many of my fellow readers, I am, I believe, consistent.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

March 2007 Dhimwit: The Government of Norway


March 2007 Dhimwit:
The Government of Norway


Palestinian reform?  Not on Norway's watch.

Ismail Haniyeh is a man with blood on his hands.  His organization, Hamas, is a very successful terrorist group that has deliberately racked up hundreds of innocent Israeli lives in just the last ten years, with attacks on cafes, retail shops, hotels, and passenger buses. 

The many unfortunate victims who survived his organization's terror campaigns often suffered physical disability, mental impairment, disfigurement, and/or a lifetime of chronic pain. These include children, the elderly, and hundreds of other human beings in the prime of their lives.

Haniyeh and his fellow terrorists have promised to keep attacking the Jewish people in their own state and denying them basic human rights.  Last year, they raided Israel and captured an innocent soldier, whom they have yet to free.

As can be seen from the picture posted above (Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister, Raymond Johansen, shaking Haniyeh's hand), the government of Norway is not deterred by any of this.  Shamefully, they have chosen to recognize the Hamas government and send a diplomatic mission to Gaza.

The sly grin on Haniyeh's face belies his confidence that the murderous activities and diplomatic intransigence of Hamas are fully affirmed by Norway's recognition. 

Norway (which sent at least 737 Jews to the Nazi death camps) is the first Western country to breach the dam of international ostracism that was intended to slowly pressure Hamas into reform and peace. 

There will be none of either now, as other Western nations are sure to follow Norway's example.

(See also, Norway's Socialist Dhimmis, which briefly discusses the pathetic response to the 2001 report that the perpetrators of two out of every three rapes in Oslo are Muslim immigrants).
 
 
Thomas Braun, Lima, Peru