Hillary Clinton has a selective way of getting insulted.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Hillary Clinton has a selective way of getting insulted.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Adar 26, 5770, 12 March 10 06:49
Israel must not cave in here.
Israel - not Apartheid
An Arab member of the Knesset who goes all the way to the US and Canada to tell university students and professors that Israel is an apartheid state is not only a hypocrite and a liar, but is also causing huge damage to the interests of his own Arab voters and constituents.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Glory for terrorists? Role models for children?
Dalal Mughrabi helped kill 38 innocent men, women and children in Israel. Palestinians named a square after her.
March 17, 2010
March 11 marked the 32nd anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel's history, and this year the Palestinian Authority decided to honor the 19-year-old leader of the attack, Dalal Mughrabi, by naming a square in a town outside Ramallah after her. The commemoration was scheduled for the anniversary.
The official ceremony was ultimately canceled to avoid antagonizing Biden during his visit, but the square was nevertheless named for Mughrabi, and several dozen Palestinian students from President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement gathered in her honor for an unofficial dedication.
So what was the deed that deserved this commemoration? On a Saturday in March 1978, the squad of Palestinian terrorists led by Mughrabi entered Israel by boat from Lebanon and made their way to the main road between Haifa and Tel Aviv. By day's end, they had murdered 38 innocent men, women and children.
The first person Mughrabi and her gang of terrorists encountered was Gale Rubin, an American photojournalist taking photos of birds near the beach. They killed her and continued on their deadly path.
They then hijacked a bus full of happy families returning from a Saturday excursion. On their way to Tel Aviv, the terrorists shot at passing cars and killed more innocent people.
The terrorists tied all the men's hands to the bus seats. When Israeli security forces stopped the bus, the terrorists ran out while throwing hand grenades into the bus, setting it on fire. The men inside were burned alive.
The three of us writing this article each have experience with Palestinian terrorists. Seven years ago this month, on March 5, 2003, our children were killed by a Palestinian suicide murderer who exploded the bomb he was carrying on a city bus in Haifa. Seventeen people, mostly children on their way home from school, were killed.
Our children were just beginning their lives when that bomb exploded. Tal Kehrmann was 18 years old. Yuval Mendelevich was 13 1/2 . Asaf Zur was almost 17 years old.
We don't believe people who murder children should be held up as heroes. Though the official Ramallah ceremony was canceled, Mughrabi's name will remain on that square. And she is already commemorated in Hebron, where a girls school is named after her.
What message is the Palestinian Authority trying to send to the Palestinian people, especially to the children growing up under its rule? These children are taught to hate Israelis and Jews and to disrespect their own lives.
When the mother of the suicide murderer who killed our children heard about the attack her son committed, she refused to wear customary black clothes because she thought his death should be celebrated rather than mourned. She wore everyday clothes and served her guests candies. How can a mother hate our children more than she loves her own?
How can terrorists use children as human shields in fire exchanges? Where are the parents, teachers, community leaders?
How does a society have a suicide-murderer waiting list of 500 young Palestinians wanting to kill themselves along with Israelis, as was the case during the worst days of the second intifada, when a terror attack occurred almost daily?
The answers lie in years of brainwashing, which starts at a very young age, through education and religious television channels, mosque prayers and lessons that make people believe that death is better than life; that killing innocent people, without distinction, will improve Palestinian life.
The answers are rooted in years of glorifying the murderers, putting their posters on streets, giving their families money and respect, and yes, in naming city squares after them.
Dalal Mughrabi came into Israel 32 years ago this month with one intention: to kill Israelis, randomly, as many as possible. In most countries, she would be condemned for eternity. In today's Palestinian society, she is a heroine.
Israelis want a genuine peace with our neighbors. But as long as Palestinian society glorifies terrorists and murderers such as Mughrabi and the ones who killed our three children, we cannot believe that Palestinians are ready to live in peace with us.
Ron Kehrmann, a former Olympic swimmer, owns a print shop in Haifa. Yossi Mendelevich is a retired engineer in Tel Aviv. Yossi Zur is a software engineer in Haifa. All three work with projects to protect children from terrorism.
A Middle East Without American Influence?That's the logical outcome of the Obama administration's current policies.
... victory does not always go to the smartest -- or even to those who have the most airplanes, the most military bases, and the best technology. It goes to those who do not hesitate to impose their wills on the world in order to reshape it to their liking.
A Middle East Without American Influence?That's the logical outcome of the Obama administration's current policies.
By Lee Smith
Posted Wednesday, March 17, 2010, at 4:47 PM ET
Last week, one of Syria's government news organs riffed on the title of my book The Strong Horse; Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. "The American president," Al Tharwa wrote, "was betting on the sick horse." Instead of siding with Syria's Hamas allies, Obama was backing the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas. From Damascus' perspective, the description also applies to the United States' other Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikhdoms, as well as to Egypt and Jordan. These states are ready to be put out to pasture, while it is Iran's "axis of resistance," including Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as Syria itself, that represents the rising power.
Of course, with those arms shipments, Kissinger meant to drive home another lesson as well, this one to Israel—in effect, that Washington held the power of life and death over the Jewish state and that Israeli leaders had best keep in line. This arrangement—Israeli strength and Arab weakness—secured what some have called the Pax Americana of the Middle East. After Egyptian President Anwar Sadat jumped from the Soviet side to the American one after the '73 war, our regional hegemony was never again seriously contested—until now.
was shown by America's chief diplomat
More Editorials Stories
- EDITORIAL: Mrs. Clintn's hissy fit
- EDITORIAL: Obama personnel chief defends big government
- EDITORIAL: Health care bill can be beat
- EDITORIAL: Obama nominee's sympathy for sexual sadists
It says a lot when Vice President Joe Biden comes across as the Obama administration's most skilled statesman. Last week during a visit to Israel, Mr. Biden was caught off-guard by an announcement that work would progress on 1,600 apartment units in Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, a Jewish enclave in the northern part of the city claimed by Palestinians. This faux pas could have ended civilly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for the bad timing of the announcement, and Mr. Biden reiterated the strength of the relationship between the two countries. Life should have gone on.
Instead, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in close coordination with President Obama, called Mr. Netanyahu and launched a 45-minute telephone tirade. White House senior adviser David Axelrod declared Sunday that the announcement was an "insult" and an "affront" and that resolving this issue was "important for our own security." The Obama administration is demanding the Ramat Shlomo project be cancelled or peace talks cannot continue. Meanwhile, Palestinians - emboldened by the White House chastising Israel - are rioting in the streets.
This absurd crisis is both a mark of the Obama administration's frustration with its unsuccessful efforts at reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace framework and the O Force's general lack of foreign affairs acumen.
Israel's announcement last week was hardly provocative. This project has been on the drawing board since 2008. And compare the atmospherics to January. After meeting with American special envoy George Mitchell, Mr. Netanyahu went to the Gush Etzion settlement and said, "Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here, this place will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel for eternity." If that did not put a bee in Mrs. Clinton's bonnet, why should this?
The linkage between construction in Jerusalem and U.S. security is also slim. Mr. Biden told Mr. Netanyahu, "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan." This argument apparently emerged in January when senior officers from U.S. Central Command briefed Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, conveying the sense of Arab states that the U.S. inability to move Israel on this and other issues made America appear weak.
It's hard to see how throwing a hissy fit like this will make the United States appear strong. Publicly berating an ally while reaching out the hand of friendship to terrorist sponsors like Iran and Syria doesn't inspire confidence. These countries give material support and sanctuary to insurgents in Iraq who kill American troops; maybe they deserve a few angry phone calls as well.
In July, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin revealed that Qatar-based Egyptian Sheikh Yousuf Qaradawi gave $21 million to a Hamas-controlled group to build houses in Jerusalem. Mr. Qaradawi believes that suicide terror attacks are "evidence of God's justice." In a Jan. 9, 2009, sermon that aired on Al Jazeera, he said, "Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one."
Nice folks the Obama administration is siding with. Perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize should have gone to Joe Biden.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Holocaust Inversion: The Portraying of Israel and Jews as Nazis1
Manfred Gerstenfeld
- The false accusation of Holocaust inversion-the portraying of Israel, Israelis, and Jews as Nazis-is a major distortion of history. This anti-Semitic concept claims that Israel behaves against the Palestinians as Germany did to the Jews in World War II. "The victims have become perpetrators," is one major slogan of the inverters. By shifting the moral responsibility for genocide, Holocaust inversion also contains elements of Holocaust denial.
- Holocaust inverters come from many circles. A large number are Arabs or other Muslims. Others come from the extreme Left in the West. A variety of Western mainstream public figures have made Holocaust-inversion statements, including politicians, academics, authors, as well as the occasional Jew or Israeli.
- The portrayal of Israelis and Jews as Nazis occurs in speech, writing, and the visual media, also including cartoons, graffiti, and placards. It employs sinister characterizations, Nazi symbols, and sometimes takes the form of genocidal terminology to describe Israel's actions.
- The motivations of the Holocaust inverters are manifold. Some aim at the destruction of Israel and seek to lay the infrastructure for its moral delegitimization through demonization. Some are extreme pro-Arabs, others anti-Semites. Yet others know little about the Holocaust, the Nazis, and contemporary Israel. For Europeans it is also an effective way to cover up for Holocaust crimes of their countries and expunge guilt by claiming that what was done by the Nazi perpetrators and their many collaborators is a common phenomenon and by now is practiced by Israelis and Jews.
- Contemporary followers and admirers of Nazi methods can mainly be found in the Muslim world, but are also present in Europe and elsewhere. Prewar Palestinian Arab actors had links to Nazi Germany. Examples are the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jerusalem mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini. After World War II, many Nazis fled to Egypt and served in its propaganda apparatus. In particular, current Egyptian but also Palestinian propaganda dates back to this era.
In recent years the attempts to manipulate the history and memory of the Holocaust have greatly increased. For several decades there has been much focus on Holocaust denial. Misrepresentations regarding the Holocaust, however, involve many other aspects as well. The number of these false mutations of Holocaust history is expanding. Related to these is the promotion of a second Holocaust through the destruction of Israel. Mutations include Holocaust universalization and banalization, that is, comparing real or supposed misbehavior in contemporary society to what happened in the Holocaust.
The focus here will be on another major distortion of the Shoah, namely, Holocaust inversion, or portraying Israelis and Jews as Nazis. This anti-Semitic concept claims that Israel behaves toward the Palestinians as Germany did to the Jews in World War II. "The victims have become perpetrators," is one major slogan of the inverters.
Holocaust inverters come from many circles. A large number are Arabs or other Muslims. Many others come from the extreme Left in the West. A variety of Western mainstream public figures have made Holocaust-inversion statements, including politicians, academics, authors, as well as the occasional Jew or Israeli.
Definitions of Anti-Semitism
Natan Sharansky, when he was the Israeli minister of Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs, developed a simple formula that he called the "3D test" to help distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism: demonization, double standards, and delegitimization.
Sharansky included the portrayal of Israel as a Nazi state within his definition of "demonization": "When the Jewish state is being demonized; when Israel's actions are blown out of all sensible proportion; when comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis and between Palestinian refugee camps and Auschwitz-this is antisemitism, not legitimate criticism of Israel."2
By 2001 Prof. Irwin Cotler, who later became Canada's justice minister, explicitly identified the anti-Semitic character of Holocaust inversion. He pointed to several relatively new aspects of anti-Semitism such as calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people, the portrayal of Israel as a Nazi state, and the discriminatory treatment of Israel through denial of equality before the law.3
The EUMC Working Definition of Anti-Semitism
In its 2004 report on anti-Semitism, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) noted the lack of a common characterization of anti-Semitism. This led to the EUMC working definition, which has subsequently been widely accepted.4 It states: "Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.... In addition, such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity."
The document that contains this working definition also offers examples of contemporary anti-Semitism. One of these is: "Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust."5
This text also states that "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic." It lists examples of how anti-Semitism can manifest itself toward Israel:
- Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
- Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
- Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel . . . .
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
- Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.6
The core motif of classic anti-Semitism was that Jews embody the most extreme malevolence. During the postwar era, the Nazi regime has become the paradigm for absolute evil. Comparing Israel's conduct to its actions is a new mutation of this ancient theme.
As anti-Semitism historian Robert Wistrich put it:
"anti-Zionists" who insist on comparing Zionism and the Jews with Hitler and the Third Reich appear unmistakably to be de facto anti-Semites, even if they vehemently deny the fact! This is largely because they knowingly exploit the reality that Nazism in the postwar world has become the defining metaphor of absolute evil. For if Zionists are "Nazis" and if Sharon really is Hitler, then it becomes a moral obligation to wage war against Israel. That is the bottom line of much contemporary anti-Zionism. In practice, this has become the most potent form of contemporary anti-Semitism.7
French linguist Georges-Elia Sarfati points out that the term anti-Zionism was pioneered by the Soviet Union's Information Ministry after the Six Day War. Researching the matter, he found that the word did not appear in dictionaries until the 1970s. He observes that "a number of key equations dominate the anti-Zionist discourse. The master one-which transversally commands all others-is 'Zionism equals Nazism.'... the anti-Zionist propaganda conveys that you have only to be against, for instance against Nazism-and who is not?-to be an anti-Zionist."8
Historian Joel Fishman asserts that "inversion of reality" constitutes the basic principle of current anti-Israeli propaganda, noting:
One of its most frequent expressions has been the accusation that the Jewish people, victims of the Nazis, have now become the new Nazis, aggressors and oppressors of the Palestinian Arabs. Contemporary observers have identified this method and described it as an "inversion of reality," an "intellectual confidence trick," "reversing moral responsibility," or "twisted logic." Because Israel's enemies have, for nearly half a century, repeated such libels without being challenged, they have gradually gained credence.9
American historian Deborah Lipstadt has also pointed out this method of establishing a fraudulent proposition as a historical truth. She says about the historical writer and Holocaust-denier David Irving: "Irving realized that a pre-condition for Nazism's resurrection was to strip and wash it of its worst elements. The first important tool to accomplish this was the creation of immoral equivalencies, essentially a balance of bad behavior."10
The article continues....... Please read the remainder here:
Editorial: The Spanish disease
10/03/2010
How is Israel to cope with the Spanish challenge? Obviously, Ambassador Shotz cannot brave it alone.
A virulently anti-Israel tribunal likened to a "lynching" by the Israeli Embassy in Madrid is the most recent in a spate of anti-Semitic incidents instigated by Spaniards. This flurry of attacks on Israel has caused us to pause and ask, What is happening on the Iberian peninsula and what can we do to combat it?
Gathering at the beginning of this month in Barcelona, which in the 13th century hosted one of Jewish history's most illustrious communities, the tribunal, which did not include a representative of Israel, was tasked with examining "on what level the European Union and its member states are complicit in... violations on the part of Israel of the rights of the nation of Palestine."
The Israeli Embassy said it was no coincidence that the "Rusell Tribunal," named after British philosopher Bertrand Russell, was held in Spain and that it was funded by Barcelona's city hall, noting the "worrying situation of anti-Semitism" in the country.
At the end of February, meanwhile, the embassy received dozens of postcards written by Spanish schoolchildren with messages such as "Jews kill for money," "Leave the country to the Palestinians" and "Go somewhere where they will accept you."
And in mid-February, Ambassador to Spain Rafi Shotz protested the display of two pieces of art at the International Art Fair in Madrid with virulently anti-Israel messages. One is a sculpture of a menorah sprouting from the barrel of an Uzi sub-machine gun. The other is a highly realistic polyurethane sculpture of a hassid standing on the shoulders of a Catholic priest who is kneeling on a prostrate Muslim worshiper, called "Stairway to Heaven."
In an interview with El Pais, Catalan artist Eugenio Merino, who made both sculptures, defended his art with the claim that "Stairway to Heaven" has been bought by a Belgian Jew for €45,000.
Ambassador Shotz, who was verbally assaulted last year with epithets such as "dirty Jew," "Jew bastard" and "Jew murderer" when he and his wife returned from a soccer game accompanied by police, chose not to demand the removal of the displays, fearing it would spark additional anti-Semitic incidents.
Spain has a long, infamous history of anti-Semitism that pre-dates the Inquisition. For centuries after the 1492 Expulsion, Spaniards enforced the ban against Jews setting foot on Spanish soil. Francisco Franco's fascist, pro-Arab dictatorship that ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975 stoked anti-Israel sentiments.
Now the left-wing prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, is aligned with anti-globalization activists whose agenda includes strong anti-Israel sentiments. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Zapatero, with a keffiyeh thrown around his neck, told a group of young socialists that "no one should defend themselves with abusive force which does not protect innocent human beings."
A year earlier, he was quoted as saying that "someone might justify the Holocaust."
Zapatero, who took power in a surprise election victory following Islamist train bombings in Madrid in 2004 and immediately pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq, was reelected in 2008. In September 2009, the Anti-Defamation League published a report titled "Polluting the Public Square: Anti-Semitic Discourse in Spain" in which it expressed concern over viciously anti-Semitic cartoons and articles in Spain's mainstream media, and opinion polls conducted over the preceding year showing an alarming rise in anti-Semitic attitudes. All this is in a country with no more than 30,000 Jews out of a population of almost 47 million.
How is Israel to cope with the Spanish challenge? Obviously, Ambassador Shotz cannot brave it alone. Nor can we expect tremendous results from Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein's new idea to conscript ordinary Israelis, who happen to be traveling abroad, to fight the PR fight, no matter how much we arm them with the "tools and tips."
A positive start would be to streamline PR. It makes no sense to disperse responsibility among the Foreign Ministry, the IDF Spokesman's Office, the Government Press Office and Edelstein's new project, not to mention the apparatus Ehud Olmert established in the Prime Minister's Office, as well as a new grouping being overseen by Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon.
Even the best public diplomacy, of course, however, will not eradicate ingrained Spanish anti-Semitism. That's a challenge for Spain to meet.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Further persecution of Kurds by the Belgian government
On Sunday 1.30 am the Belgian Police Forces raided the house of another Kurdish journalist and the human rights activist Shamzin Cihani.
During a short phone conversation with her family that took place at 6, 00 am Ms. Cihani told her family that she has no idea about her arrest. She claimed that she was ill-treated and humiliated by the cops during their raid of her house.
The Belgian Police Forces have initiated a serial of raids against the Kurdish community workers, human rights activists as well as the Kurdish journalists. Among the places raided were the Kurdish National Congress and the Kurdish national ROJ-TV. During the raid of ROJ_TV all the broadcasting equipments were crushed and the damages done are estimated around 1,200,000 Euros.