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Opponents of the Jewish state’s existence – such as CiF contributors Ali Abunimah, Tel Aviv University student Omar Barghouti, and Ahmed Moor - will be converging on my native city of Philadelphia (at the University of Pennsylvania) on February 4th and 5th for a BDS Conference.
As our friend and ally Jon, of the anti-BDS blog, Divest This!, put it:
“An international lineup of BDS advocates will meet, greet and try to breathe life in a ‘movement’ that has yet to achieve a single major victory after more than a decade of effort.”
Divest This! has even created a unique page to combat the Philly event, titled “PennBDS-Oy!”
Since I know a few of the local Philly anti-Zionist Jews who will likely participate in the conference on how best to isolate my nation, and, in the off-chance they read this post, here’s some advice.
As always, you will fail miserably at your efforts.
Not only does Philly have an especially well-organized pro-Israel community, which includes college Zionist activists, my friend Lori Lowenthal Marcus and her group Z Street, and my former colleagues at the local office of the Anti-Defamation League, but, more broadly, Israel, my new country, has one weapon which we’ll continue to deploy that you have no answer to: Our success.
In addition to our undeniable regional advantage in every conceivable democratic category, we continue to achieve economically, academically and socially to a degree remarkably disproportionate to our size.
Though our right to exist as a Jewish state is axiomatic and unreserved – and we need not demonstrate our utility to gain the privilege granted to all other nations unconditionally – our achievements stand as a testament to what you’re up against when you engage in cognitive warfare against us.
Israel has the 2nd highest ratio of university degrees in the world, produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin, has the largest number of startup companies than any other country except the U.S., and has the largest number (per capita) of biotech companies.
What we may lack in natural resources we more than make up for in grit, determination, and hard work.
Further, unlike our Arab neighbors, our liberal values are consistently demonstrated by our free and fair elections, our independent judiciary, our democratic legislature (which even grants rights to political parties opposed to our existence), our free and feisty press, and the rights afforded to women, religious minorities, and the LGBT community.
My nation – the first sovereign Jewish state in 2000 years – is a proud, robust, dynamic, and thriving pluralistic democratic Jewish state, and there is little you can do to thwart our will to survive.
Finally, here’s a small reminder of what a small group of thoughtful, committed supporters of the Jewish state can do in the face of a coordinated anti-Zionist campaign:
Am Y’srael Chai! (The Jewish nation lives).
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Ali Abunimah, who was published at ‘Comment is Free’ and The Huffington Post through 2009, is a Palestinian American journalist who’s argued that Zionism is inherently incompatible with human rights, is an opponent of the existence of a Jewish state within any borders, has characterized Israel as a “supremacist” state, and has approvingly cited those who compare Israeli behavior to Nazi Germany.
Abunimah is also co-founder of the site, Electronic Intifada.
More recently, Abunimah, from the safety of his Chicago home, Tweeted the following.
The essay at Electronic Intifada he linked to explicitly calls for another Intifada – necessarily evoking the 2nd Intifada, which, from 2000 through 2004, claimed over 1,000 innocent Israeli lives.
Ali Abunimah believes Israel is based on a Jewish “supremacist” ideology, has no right to exist and whose end should be facilitated by a coordinated campaign of violence against its civilians – men, women and children who, per such moral calculus, are fair game.
Its getting harder and harder to understand how such anti-Israel activists can be characterized as “progressive” in even the broadest sense of the word.
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My first guest post at CiF Watch, before becoming managing editor, was devoted to critiquing a Ben White essay published at ‘Comment is Free’.
I noted then, with intentional understatement, that White seemed an odd choice to provide “analysis” on anything having to do with the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict for ‘CiF’ readers.
I observed that White, the author of “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide”, is on record expressing sympathy towards those who hold antisemitic views - as an understandable reaction to Israel’s “Racial Supremacy” and a justifiable frustration with the Western media’s “subservience to Israel”.
I similarly questioned why any media group which fancied themselves “liberal” would license a commentator who morally justified anti-Jewish racism, and opposes the existence of the Jewish state within any borders.
White’s CiF essay on May 11, 2010, “Israel seeks to silence dissent” championed the cause of ‘human rights defender’, Ameer Makhoul, head of the Israeli NGO Ittijah, whose arrest by Israeli security officials White characterized as an attempt to stifle voices demanding accountability, and as a “crackdown on dissent and human rights work.”
Strangely absent was any follow-up by White on the Makhoul case, owed, presumably, to the inconvenient fact that Makhoul is currently serving 10 years in prison for spying for Hezbollah, after pleading guilty to charges including contact with a foreign agent, conspiring to assist the enemy in wartime, and espionage.
White’s May, 2010 commentary defended Makhoul, but his broader polemical objectives were, as always, to attempt to delegitimize Israel by questioning its status as the region’s only democracy, and championing “heroic” anti-Zionist NGOs who are striving to bring about the end of Jewish self-determination.
In fact the protagonist in his current tale of Israeli villainy, “This smear against Israeli human rights activists is all too familiar“, Jan. 4, is one Hassan Jabareen, of the NGO Adalah, who is on record stating the following, in what could be White’s defining mantra:
“Activists should try to portray Israel as an inherent undemocratic state” and use that as part of campaigning internationally.”
Like White, Adalah – which, he noted, has received funds from NIF – also campaigns for the end of the Jewish state, which it has characterized as a “colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid”. Adalah also accused Israel of representing an “institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another.”
Beyond the particulars of his efforts to delegitimize Israel, it needs reminding the degree of malevolence White possess towards Israel, which are restrained by few if any moral boundaries. White is on record characterizing ”pure” Zionism as an ideology of “extermination”, has conjured a villainous Israeli caricature which forces Palestinians on “death marches”, and has even defended Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from “charges” that he denied the Holocaust.
Beyond contextualizing White’s obsessive and malign anti-Zionism, and expressed sympathy for those who hold antisemitic beliefs, the decision by editors at ‘Comment is Free’ to continually sanction White’s campaign to rid the world of the malignancy of Zionism can not be easily dismissed.
Guardian Readers’ Editor Chris Elliott’s mea culpa “On averting accusations of antisemitism” warned the paper’s writers, reporters and editors to refrain from using language, and employing tropes, which evoke antisemitic narratives – a moral guideline, it would seem, that should similarly apply to commentators they chose to publish.
By licensing Ben White – whose antipathy towards the Jewish state, and comfort level with Judeophobia, is undeniable – as a voice somehow consistent with “respectable” liberal opinion, the Guardian again demonstrates that, whatever the solitary musings of one editor, the institution continues to be compromised by a callous disinterest in the dangers of modern antisemitic thought.
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- Guardian publishes letter by Tony Greenstein suggesting comparison between anti-Israel protests & those against Nazis (cifwatch.com)
- Why do they hate the Jews? The Guardian and the toxicity of liberal racism. (cifwatch.com)
- Richard Silverstein, evidently in an attempt to ‘heal the world’, exposes & endangers pro-Israel blogger (cifwatch.com)
- Is it possible to “understand” Ben White’s antisemitism? CiF again sanctions opposition to peace with Israel (cifwatch.com)
- Fight or flight? CiF Watch, David Yehuda Stern & Ben White (cifwatch.com)
- CiF piece critical of Gilad Atzmon elicits storm of antisemitic reader comments, including organ theft libels (cifwatch.com)
Yossi Gurvitz is a 40-year old journalist, blogger and photographer who writes for several Israeli publications, including the financial daily Calcalist and the Nana portal, and +972.
Notes Gurvitz on his bio at +972:
”I was raised as an Orthodox Jew, graduated from a Yeshiva (Nehalim), but saw the light and turned atheist at about the age of 17.”
Gurvitz also believes that Israel is one of the main causes international anti-Semitism.
In an essay he published at +972 in September 2010, “The Jewish Problem”, he suggests that anti-Semitism in Europe is an understandable reaction by non-Jews to Israeli policy, and that the reactionary anti-Semitic canard that Jews outside of Israel are more loyal to Israel than their own country is the fault, not of those who hold such views, but of modern Zionism.
Says Gurvitz:
“We now see that the creation of Israel did not solve any problem. Rather, Israel is itself becoming the problem of the Jews.”
“[Israel] almost singularly, [is] responsible for creation of a new anti-Semitic [canards].”
Recently, CiF Watch engaged in a Twitter exchange with Gurvitz, which elicited some revealing comments.
The conversation arose as the result of a disagreement that Gurvitz was having with two writers who oppose the existence of a Jewish state within any borders - Ben White (@benabyad) (author of Israel Apartheid for Beginners) and Ali Abunimah (@avinunu) (author of One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse).
(Note: Gurvitz has an NIF horn in his twitter image, though he claims not to be connected to NIF).
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- Guardian issues ‘progressive in good standing’ card to Carlos Latuff: racist and anti-Semite (cifwatch.com)
- Yes, denying Jews the right to self-determination is inherently anti-Semitic. (cifwatch.com)
- Immutable Victim: The Guardian continues to champion Jewish anti-Zionist writer, Tony Kushner (cifwatch.com)
- Geary Theory: A Goy contemplates “As-A-Jews” (cifwatch.com)
- Carlo Strenger again uses the Guardian as a platform to characterize Israel as “totalitarian” (cifwatch.com)
As I noted about the blog when they were first included as part of the Guardian Comment Network, The Arabist devotes an entire page of pejorative characterizations of AIPAC, called “AIPAC Logo Remakes”, several advancing anti-Semitic narratives, such as the charge of Dual Loyalty against American Jews who support Israel, as well as the suggestion that organized Jewry “buys” the U.S. Congress.
While the blog largely deals with issues relating to the larger Arab world, and has devoted much coverage to recent “Arab Spring” events, their views on Israel are evident merely by looking at their blogroll – where you can find links to such prolific Israel haters as Ali Abunimah, Helena Cobban, Juan Cole, Max Blumenthal, and, most interestingly, the blog of Guardian Editor, Brian Whitaker.
Today at The Arabist one of their most frequent bloggers, Issandre El Amrani, an Egyptian journalist and al-Jazeera commentator, blogged to request support for a film project he’s backing called “Roadmap to Apartheid”, and embeds a brief promo clip along with a link to the film’s site.
The film goes well beyond merely labeling Israel as an Apartheid state, but equates the Israeli government as morally equivalent to the Apartheid regime in South Africa by using frame after frame of images which show, side by side, depictions of brutality meted out to Blacks under Apartheid in S. Africa next to “similar” looking scenes from Israel – and also includes clips which clearly glorify Palestinian violence.
The film goes beyond mere agitprop to outright incitement – a narrative which portrays Israel as a state which, like S. African before it, must be taken down.
Here are a few images from the film, which you can see at their blog.
Yeah, I know. The film’s producers and supporters are not hateful, anti-Israel extremists.
They’re just “human rights activists”.
Related articles
- On CiF Watch and the fight against contemporary anti-Semitism (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian partners with blog which promotes anti-Semitic imagery (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian or Gaza TV News? Harriet Sherwood continues to run interference for Hamas apologists (cifwatch.com)
- Perfect illustration of Guardian’s biased moderation when dealing with Israel related reader comments (cifwatch.com)
- U.S. “slavish subservience to Israel” Update (cifwatch.com)
- Requisite photo of Palestinians behind bars accompanies “report” by Harriet Sherwood on anti-BDS bill (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade, Ha’aretz and the political pathos of the radical left (cifwatch.com)
- Israel section of the Guardian’s online bookshop includes a work by David Duke’s favorite Jew (cifwatch.com)
- At the Guardian, it’s Sheikh Raed Salah – O – Mania! (cifwatch.com)
- Conal Urquhart quotes Ben White as a source in Guardian’s second whitewash of anti-Semitic preacher (cifwatch.com)
- CiF, Henning Mankell, and the audacity of evil (cifwatch.com)
Well, if you thought the flotilla (or should that be ‘floptilla’?) was an unnecessary provocation, meet the ‘flytilla’.
This coming Friday, July 8th, hundreds of foreign activists are apparently planning a pre-coordinated touch down on commercial flights at Ben Gurion airport as part of a ‘Return from Exile’ or ‘Flight of Return’.
Some will be high-profile Western sympathisers and some will be citizens of countries from which there is no need for a visa to come to Israel and who have Palestinian origins. They will supposedly be exercising their ‘right of return’ to Israel; in other words expressing their support for the dismantling of the Jewish state.
Once again, some familiar faces are behind this latest stunt. It was dreamed up by a co-founder of the ‘Free Gaza’ movement – one of the partners also behind the flotillas – Paul Larudee. Larudee – who also has a long history of involvement with the ISM and was deported from Israel in 2006 – now heads the California-based ‘Free Palestine’ movement which, despite his Hamas connections, is both UN accredited and a registered US ‘not for profit’ organisation with 501(c)(3) status.
This is a letter dating from 2007 on official Hamas notepaper inviting Larudee and the ‘Free Gaza’ movement to help breach the blockade on Gaza.
The year after that letter was sent, Larudee did indeed reach Gaza – and received an honorary Palestinian passport straight from the hands of Ismail Haniyeh for his pains. Here he is (second from the left), together with a few other familiar faces.
The other major partner behind this ‘flytilla’ is Al Awda – the ‘Palestine Right to Return Coalition’ – which campaigns for the replacement of Israel with a Palestinian majority state and promotes BDS. ‘Electronic Intifada’ co-founder and writer Ali Abunimah is also involved with Al Awda , which has clear Hamas links and helped George Galloway raise over one million dollars for his Hamas-enabling ‘Viva Palestina’ convoys.
Other partners in the organisation of the project include the ISM and, according to an interview given by Paul Larudee to Hizbollah’s ‘Al Manar’ TV, the London-based ‘Palestinian Return Centre’, which is banned in Israel because of its Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood links. The ‘flytilla’ is also being promoted by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign which was recently the focus of attention due to its attempts to introduce BDS into Scottish local councils.
Apparently, Scottish participants will be joined by Belgian and other European activists, as well as others from North America, South America, Asia and Africa.
So, here we go again: yet another pointless, publicity-seeking, money-wasting stunt designed to try to embarrass Israel is being initiated by Hamas-supporting activists and executed by Western ‘useful idiots’ in an attempt to advance the ‘no negotiations, no two-state solution’ agenda of Hamas.
Of course, if it is anything like the second flotilla, this escapade too could yet prove to be more media-orientated hype than anything else, but it could also potentially cause unnecessary delays at Ben Gurion airport on Friday. Not that any of these ‘activists’ would of course care in the least about deliberately causing inconvenience to other travellers rushing home for the weekend or legitimate tourists just trying to enjoy a well-earned holiday, because, as we already know, it’s all about them and their own personal smug self-gratification.
Related articles
- Great comment by Guardian reader in reply to Greenslade blog post about limits on journalists covering flotilla (cifwatch.com)
- Mya Guarnieri laments possible demise of flotilla stunt; Quotes activist who blames “Zionist tentacles” (cifwatch.com)
- All Dutch reporters have now quit the flotilla. Additional terrorist affiliations of flotilla organizers revealed) (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ – Update 4 – ‘Brothers’ in Arms (cifwatch.com)
- Plagues of the Flotilla (cifwatch.com)
- The tangled web they weave – the eminence noir behind the “Freedom Flotilla 2″ (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ – Update 5 – Dutch journalists jump ship. (cifwatch.com)
This essay was written by Hadar Sela, and published at The Propagandist.
The broadcast and publishing of the leaked ‘Palestine papers’ by Al Jazeera and the Guardian puts a spotlight on some issues which are actually much more interesting and far-reaching than the papers themselves. After all, it is only those who hold completely unrealistic ideas about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict who could claim to be surprised by their content; the rest of us know that in the end, the 2008 Olmert offer is more or less how the future will look because it represents the most Israel can give and the least that the Palestinians can accept.
Nevertheless, we have witnessed waves of selective outrage from foreign journalists and commentators – their words conveying a deep sense of betrayal. Horrified by the Palestinian negotiators’ pragmatism, indignant at the very idea of compromise, they rushed to brand them as traitors and sellers-out of the Palestinian cause.
What is interesting is that these voices are for the most part not coming from the people who would actually be affected by a Palestinian/Israeli agreement. They are coming from those who sit high up in the seats of the amphitheatre, demanding loudly that their favourite gladiator below carry on the fight, despite the fact that he is already wounded, bloody and exhausted.
There is nothing new about this, of course; for many years now certain far-Left journalists, academics, politicians and other ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists who have no physical link to the conflict have displayed much more extreme and uncompromising views than the people who actually live in this region. Every time I encountered the virulent bile and blind hatred spewed by ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists during my recent years spent in the United Kingdom, I would thank my lucky stars that here in the Middle East I get to live with the Palestinian people themselves who are, in general, considerably less extreme than their foreign advocates.
Others who cheer-lead the rejection of compromise from the safety and comfort include the often foreign-born people of Palestinian descent who have made careers out of the prolonged Palestinian struggle. Most of them tend to be ideologically aligned with Hamas, such as electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah or ISM founder Huweida Arraf. In addition, there are foreign actors such as Iran, Syria and Qatar for whom the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is a mere side-show in a much bigger spectacle and who shore up the Hamas regime financially and militarily, ensuring that reconciliation with other Palestinians remains just as remote as compromise with Israel.
The Jerusalem Post recently reported that twenty-six former EU leaders issued a letter (to current EU leaders) calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel. The letter was signed by EU’s former top diplomat, Javier Solana, former Irish President Mary Robinson, and former German ex-chancellor Helmut Schmidt, among others.
In light of this letter, we’re cross-posting the following, by Naftali Balanson (Managing Editor of NGO Monitor), which makes a moral case against BDS. While Balanson’s piece naturally focuses on the NGO angle, his argument is relevant in the broader context as well, and serves as a strong rebuttal to arguments made by commentators at the Guardian (such as Ali Abunimah, Ben White, and others), who shamefully abuse the rhetoric of human rights to advance highly discriminatory policies against the Jewish state.
This is cross posted from NGO Monitor, and originally appeared in the online journal, Zeek:
New Israel Fund (NIF) Director of Communications Naomi Paiss “Don’t Divest; Invest” makes an important statement by rejecting the global boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement and its accompanying “apartheid” rhetoric. Paiss reaffirms the notion that BDS is totally incongruous with Jewish values, and demonstrates that progressives within the community cannot tolerate its “inflammatory and counter-productive” agenda. Her piece is a sharp blow to the very legitimacy of BDS campaigns, particularly those conducted by Jewish groups (see “Peace Process or Land Grab?” by Rebecca Vilkomerson).
However, although her argument is compelling, Paiss significantly understates the case against BDS. Yes, attempts to isolate Israel “penalize the innocent along with the guilty, push moderates towards right-wing nationalism, and spur rejection of progressive and humanist values.” But, more importantly, BDS is the antithesis of universal human rights values, rooted in immoral double standards that single out and condemn Israel as a pariah state. The BDS movement also rejects the very existence of Israel as a Jewish entity. Inasmuch as BDS activists seek to eliminate Jewish self-determination, the movement (as a movement, not necessarily every individual linked to it) is anti-Semitic.
The core goals of the BDS agenda expose the true nature of the movement. One of them is the “rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes,” falsely portrayed as a “precept of international law.” There is no such legal obligation, nor is the right of return a peaceful goal. Rather, it is an attempt to reverse partition, refight 1948 – at least demographically – and overturn the right to Jewish sovereignty.
It is, therefore, no surprise that proponents of BDS resort to racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. A particularly offensive and common theme – exemplified by the hate speech of PACBI’s Omar Barghouti, Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah, and others – is identifying Israel with Nazi Germany and the IDF with Nazi soldiers. The Palestinian Christian non-governmental organization (NGO) known as Sabeel claims that “Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him,” persecuted by an “Israeli government crucifixion system.” These pronouncements revive classic anti-Semitic theological themes.
A recent typical “Guardian Left” anti-American rant published on CiF by Elizabeth Wurtzel – America, land of the free to be stupid - produced this (which was a reply to another commenter who was critical of Wurtzel’s essay):
Hmmm…Israel killed President Kennedy? I gotta admit, I was caught a bit off-guard by that one. There are clearly some anti-Israel/anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that are more popular than others. I – though I pride myself on being “in the know” on which historical calamities the Jewish community is responsible for – actually had to do a few minutes of research on this one. I discovered that the “Israel/Mossad assassinated JFK” conspiracy is shared by a truly bizarre ideologically diverse array of figures – such as brutal Arab dictators (Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi) and American anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists (Jeff Rense).
Sadly, since I’m only 42 years old, and didn’t receive my official Mossad Receiver until many years after the assassination in 1963 (Note to Ben White, Ali Abunimah, Ken Livingston, George Galloway, John Pilger and others: Yes, we all really do have one!) I’ll never know for sure what my fellow Jews/Israelis did or didn’t know about JFK’s assassination.
Fortunately – especially when I’m having a bad day, and the challenges of life seem especially overwhelming – I can always count on either Guardian contributors or commenters to reassure me of my community’s nearly omnipotent power to effect world events and change the course of history.
Whether spreading the Black Plague, inventing Capitalism (and Communism!), fomenting world wars, preventing world peace, causing 9/11, controlling U.S. foreign policy, or harvesting organs, I gotta admit. We totally rock!
Banner quoting Abunimah at anti-Israel and 9/11 Truther rally in San Francisco in 2010
Ali Abunimah’s hatred for Israel is legion. Abunimah is the co-founder of the anti-Israel propaganda site, Electronic Intifada (EI) – a site which doesn’t simply criticize Israel for its policies. Rather, it is a propaganda offensive aimed at portraying Israel as a monstrous state. Abunimah strongly supports the dissolution, and radical reconstitution, of Israel into the 51st majority Muslim state – a position, let’s remember, which squarely falls within the European Union working definition of ant-Semitism. He also has flirted with, and seemingly justified, comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany – also anti-Semitic within the EU definition.
Heres’s the text from the EU document:
“Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israel taking into account the overall context could include”:
- Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming the the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavor
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis
He’s also a contributor – along with Noam Chomsky, Philip Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, Sara Roy, Omar Barghouti, Kevin Ovenden, Ilan Pappé, Ken O’Keefe, and Adam Shapiro – to the pro-IHH book about the flotilla incident, called “Midnight on the Mavi Marmara”. An excerpt from the book, notes:
“Midnight on the Mavi Marmara reveals why the attack on Gaza Freedom Flotilla may just turn out to be Israel’s Selma, Alabama: the beginning of the end for an apartheid Palestine.“
Here are some of Abunimah’s greatest hits:
Abunimah writing for Electronic Intifada
Israel-Nazi Comparison
“Gaza will likely be seen as the turning point when Israeli propaganda lost its power to mystify, silence and intimidate as it has for so long. Even the Nazi Holocaust, long deployed by Zionists to silence Israel’s critics, is becoming a liability; once unimaginable comparisons are now routinely heard. Jewish and Palestinian academics likened Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Nazi massacre in the Warsaw Ghetto. A Vatican cardinal referred to Gaza as a “giant concentration camp.” UK Member of Parliament Gerald Kaufman, once a staunch Zionist, told the House of Commons, “My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow, [Poland]. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.” Kaufman continued, “my grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.” He denounced the Israeli military spokesperson’s justifications as the words “of a Nazi.” - Why Israel wont’ survive, Jan. 19, 2009
The estimable Yaacov Lozowick brought to our attention the revealing Tweets made by occasional Guardian contributor Ali Abunimah on the subject of the brutal murder of four Israeli citizens on August 31st by Hamas terrorists. Besides penning articles for the Guardian and other supposedly reputable publications, Abunimah is of course one of the co-founders of the viciously anti-Israel ‘Electronic Intifada’ website – along with Nigel Parry, Arjan El Fassed and Laurie King-Irani. Readers will doubtless be aware that the Guardian considers Electronic Intifada to be a ‘useful link’ and that it is defined as such on the CiF Israel page.
- Useful links
- Israeli Knesset
- Office of the prime minister
- Haaretz
- Jerusalem Post
- Gush Shalom
- PLO negotiation affairs department
- Hamas military wing
- Maan news agency
- Palestine Monitor
- Electronic Intifada
- Wafa news agency
- Bitter lemons
- UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs
- UN Relief Agency for Palestinian Refugees
A closer perusal of the activities of Electronic Intifada’s co-founders – none of whom lives in the Middle East, by the way – does indeed reveal some interesting links and connections which it may be useful for readers to be aware of when reading Abunimah’s next article or even when presented with material and links from EI as so often happens above the line at CiF.
Dr. Laurie King-Irani lives in Canada and is an anthropologist and research associate at the University of Victoria, BC as well as coordinator of the International Campaign for Justice for the Victims of Sabra and Shatila; the organization responsible for trying to utilize laws of universal jurisdiction in the Belgian courts to prosecute Ariel Sharon
Nigel Parry hails from Scotland and is a former webmaster for Birzeit University. He now appears to be engaged in founding a website named delegitimize.com. At least he’s honest.
Dutch Palestinian Arjan El Fassed is a former employee of Oxfam International and Oxfam Novib and has recently taken up a new career in Dutch politics on behalf of the Green Left Party. He is a founder of Al-Awda – aka the Palestinian Right of Return Coalition.
American Palestinian Ali Abunimah lives in Chicago and as well as being vice president of the Arab American Action Network, a board member for the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre and active with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (here is a paper her wrote for the organization promoting the right of return) he is also an endorser of and participant in the Gaza Freedom March (which is linked of course to the ISM) and is also active in Al-Awda.
H/T: Yaacov Lozowick’s Ruminations:
Ali Abunimah is the founder of Electronic Intifada, and contributor for the Guardian, Huffington Post, and New York Times when these progressive voices need a “moderate” Palestinian-perspective op-ed. Abunimah, it should be known, doesn’t believe Israel has the right to exist, and has suggested that Israel’s actions in Gaza are similar to the Nazi massacre in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Here are his responses via Twitter to the cold-blooded execution-style murder of four Jews earlier this evening, two of them women and one pregnant:
Civilian deaths are always tragic. Israel must stop using civilian settlers as human shields for the land it is stealing
And, this:
And it is indeed tragic Israel cynically uses Jewish civilians including kids as human shields for expropriated land.
And, just for clarity, he notes:
that’s my view on this attack too if you need me to grind the point. Is that still unclear?
No Ali, I think we’re all quite clear on your views.
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Telling the Truth
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Margie in Tel Aviv
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Hadar Sela
Ali Abunimah makes UNRWA Spokesperson Chris Gunness “Giggle”
February 20, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Ali Abunimah, Antisemitism, Comment is Free, Delegitimization, Gaza, Gilad Atzmon, Hamas, Hezbollah, Terrorism, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA | by Adam Levick | 11 comments
The Tweets by Chris Gunness, spokesperson for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), are worth following for those Twitterers amongst you interested in gleaning insights into the mind of those in the Palestinian Refugee industry.
Gunness has nary an unkind word for Hamas, the authoritarian Palestinian leadership in Gaza representing the only government in the world led by a recognized terrorist movement, yet continually imputes guilt to Israel for engaging in efforts to stop the flow of rockets to the strip, 676 of which were fired last year from the territory.
Here’s a quote by Gunness in a 2011 Guardian piece, which interprets Israeli efforts to prevent deadly arms from reaching Hamas as systemic cruelty, whose intent is to sow misery upon innocent civilians.
Moreover, by UNRWA’s expansive definition of what constitutes a Palestinian refugee, based on a quote from the same Guardian piece, 1.5 million Palestinians living in a Palestinian run polity in Gaza are still considered “refugees”.
Further, as research by NGO Monitor has demonstrated, UNRWA funds (almost entirely provided by voluntary contributions from governments and the European Union) “are often used for UNRWA schools and other facilities…[which] teach hatred and encourage incitement, [and] the evidence demonstrates that UNRWA staff allowed terror related activities in its camps [in Gaza and the West Bank].”
I have found nothing Gunness has written or Tweeted suggesting he is aware or concerned about such incitement, which provides context for this recent Tweet about Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, and CiF contributor through 2009.
Boy, where to begin?
Abunimah is an American pro-Palestinian activist who opposes the Jewish state’s existence, and who has not hesitated to compare Israel to South African apartheid and even Nazi Germany - describing Gaza as a “ghetto” and a “concentration camp” and arguing that “Zionism is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit.”
Abunimah has also characterized the Jewish state as “supremacist”, echoing a trope popularized by, among others, David Duke and Gilad Atzmon, and has also described Israeli policy towards Palestinians as “potentially genocidal”.
Further, Abunimah has suggested that suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israeli civilians could justly be seen as legitimate to the degree such tactics resemble ”other nationalist movements facing foreign occupation”.
So, the anti-racist Ali Abunimah is a proponent of the demise of the Jewish state – a nation which he has characterized as “supremacist”, potentially genocidal, and even Nazi-like – and has sought to justify terrorism against Jewish civilians.
If your name is Chris Gunness, it’s all apparently enough to make you giggle.
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