Tag Archives: Antisemitism

May 19 2013

A blood libel is born: Fisking the Guardian’s original report about Mohammed Al Durah

Today, an Israeli Government Review Committee published a long-awaited report on the Mohammed Al Durah incident, determining that the Palestinian boy was in fact not harmed by Israeli forces and did not die in the exchange of fire on September 30, 2000 at the Netzarim Junction in Gaza.  

The Israeli committee arrived at the conclusion which had been reached by other serious observers who have studied the incident (and its tragic consequences) over the years: The incident was in all likelihood a hoax.

The report was released just three days before a French court is to rule on a defamation case involving the producer who broke the story for France 2, Charles Enderlin, and the French media analyst who accused Enderlin of fabricating the story, Philippe Karsenty.  (You can learn more about the background, evidence, and consequences of the Al Durah incident here.)

The following is my fisking of the original report in the Guardian on the Al Durah incident, written by Suzanne Goldenberg and published on Oct. 3, 2000 and titled ‘Making of a martyr’:

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Suzanne Goldenberg begins her Oct. 3, 2000 Guardian account of an incident which had taken place three days earlier, near the Netzarim Junction in Gaza, ‘Making of a martyr’, thus:

“A circle of 15 bullet holes on a cinder block wall, and a smear of darkening blood. That is what marks the spot where a terrified 12-year-old boy spent his final moments, cowering in his father’s arms, before he was hit by a final shot to the stomach, and slumped over, dead. Those last minutes in the life of Mohammed al-Durrah, captured in sickening detail by a Palestinian cameraman working for French TV, have taken on a power of their own. His death, aired around the world on Saturday night, has become the single searing image of these days of bloody rioting.”

Goldenberg, as with nearly every journalist who reported on the incident, was relying entirely on a one minute, deceptively edited, France 2 video, as well as uncorroborated Palestinian “eyewitness” accounts.

While the the video purported to show the boy’s final moments – filmed by stringer named Talal Abu Rama, and which was cut by France 2 producer Charles Enderlin – the last few seconds showed a clearly alive boy lifting his hands and peeking out through his fingers and then slowly putting his arm down.

There is no video or still photos – despite the numerous journalists at the scene – of the boy being carried away in a stretcher, or being loaded onto an ambulance.

Additionally, despite claims that the IDF fired on the boy and his father for 40 minutes – which somehow only managed to produce a dozen or so bullet holes in the wall and barrel – and supposedly died of a stomach wound, it evidently didn’t seem odd to Goldberg that there was only a “smear” of blood?

Goldenberg:

“The pictures of Mohammed’s death seemed not just to encapsulate the horror of these last five days but also to have become its motor.

Though more Palestinians have been killed since Mohammed’s death – including a two-year-old yesterday – it is his image that haunts Israel. For all of the claims of the prime minister, Ehud Barak, and other officials that their soldiers only fire to protect Israeli lives, Mohammed’s death seems an irrefutable reply.”

Here, any semblance of objective reporting is shrewn to pieces. Not only in the last sentence of this passage is Goldberg determining Israeli guilt in the boy’s death, but imputing malice to the entire army – all based on 63 seconds of video.

Goldenberg:

“By the end of the weekend the evidence was pointing to a still more chilling conclusion: that the 12-year-old boy and his father were deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers.”

The blood libel begins.

Goldenberg has now established – a mere four days following the incident – that the 12-year-old Palestinian child was deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers.

“Caught in a burst of firing, the pair sought shelter behind a concrete water butt, about 15 yards to the east of the Palestinian post, diagonally opposite the Israeli position. The father gestured frantically towards the Israelis, as if pleading with them to stop firing. They did not.

They were cleaning the area. Of course they saw the father,” says Talal Abu-Rama, the camera man who watched the horror unfold. “They were aiming at the boy, and that is what surprised me, yes, because they were shooting at him, not only one time, but many times.”

Goldenberg takes the hideous claim that the IDF decided to fire mercilessly at a young boy until he was dead at face value, without even a hint of journalistic skepticism.  It didn’t occur to the Guardian journalist to ask why, if the  the camera man was filming for 40 minutes, there is no footage of the IDF shooting at the boy and his father, no footage of the Israeli position – and, thus, no evidence even demonstrating where the fire was coming from.

Goldenberg:

“The result of that salvo is visible on the cinderblock wall. Aside from the circle of bullet holes – most of them below waist level – the expanse of wall is largely unscarred. This appeared to suggest that the Israeli fire was targeted at the father and son.”

The ballistic tests had proved that the three bullets shown in the filmed sequence by Abu Rahma came from the Palestinian side and not from the Israelis. The bullets kicked up dust in a way that could not come from a 30-degree angle of a bullet shot against the wall behind the barrel. Furthermore, given the protection provided by the barrel, it would have been nearly impossible for the Israelis to have hit either father or son once, yet alone over a dozen times.

Goldenberg:

“Inevitably, the Israeli army version of Mohammed’s death is rather different.”

“Inevitably”? You can see her eyes rolling. Her mind was made up. Judgement was passed.

Goldenberg:

“Although the army expressed regret about the boy’s death, it said the soldiers in their armoured post had been under fire.”

The incident occurred on the Jewish New Year, so it took a few days for a proper investigation to get under way.

However, Nahum Shahaf, an Israeli physicist, later conducted a thorough investigation and concluded that the killing of Muhammad al-Durah was staged.

Goldenberg:

“Abu Rameh also believes it unlikely that the Israeli fire could have been directed further down the road from the water butt where the al-Durrahs sought shelter. “In that whole area, there was nobody except me, the boy and his father,” the camera man says.

“Whatever the truth about the circumstances surrounding his death, Mohammed’s terrified face has now entered the grim gallery of images that have come to symbolise – and often to powerfully influence – a conflict.

“Nothing good will come of this. We will have many more martyrs, and nothing will change.”"

The image had a spectacular effect, inflaming Palestinian-and Israeli Arab-violence and justifying the Intifada  and the insidious use of suicide bombings, to the West.

There was a mass demonstration in Paris on Oct. 6, 2000.  There were large banners, including one indicating that a Star of David = a swastika = a picture of the father and the son behind the barrel, with ‘They kill children too‘ written over it. The crowd shouted ‘Death to the Jews’ and ‘Death to Israel’ for the first time since the Holocaust.”

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Goldenberg’s protagonist in the story, Abu-Rama, was correct about one thing: Nothing good would come of this media manufactured event, for Israel, Jews or the West.

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May 11 2013

Guardian’s BDS promotion fails to tell readers what it really is

The Guardian’s coverage of Stephen Hawking’s decision to withdraw from a conference in Israel has so far included no fewer than eight items in three days.

The initial report by Harriet Sherwood and Matthew Kalman – published on May 8th – was followed by a sensationalist Guardian poll on the subject and another article by Sherwood on the same day. The next day – May 9th – Sherwood and Kalman were joined by Sam Jones to produce an additional report which includes quotes from Omar Barghouti and Samia al Botmeh, without making it clear that the latter is a member of PACBI – the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel – and a policy advisor for Al Shabaka. 

Also on May 9th, the Guardian published an article by Jennifer Lipman criticising Hawking’s decision and a piece by Ali Abunimah – also of Al Shabaka – in its support. On May 10th yet another article by Harriet Sherwood, together with Robert Booth, appeared on the Guardian’s pages and that was accompanied by the publication of four letters on the subject – three of which supported Hawking’s decision. 

Throughout all that plethora of coverage, the Guardian has made no effort whatsoever to explain to its readers the aims of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign and the ideology which steers quotees such as Barghouti and al Botmeh or contributor Abunimah.

Ironically, the nearest thing to such an explanation comes in Abunimah’s article where he states: 

“The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) aims to change this dynamic. It puts the initiative back in the hands of Palestinians. The goal is to build pressure on Israel to respect the rights of all Palestinians by ending its occupation and blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip; respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees who are currently excluded from returning to their homes just because they are not Jews; and abolishing all forms of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.”

Couched in the fashionable, yet much abused, language of “universal human rights”, Abunimah’s flowery yet anodyne description will do little to help readers understand that the ultimate product of the BDS delegitimisation campaign – if allowed to succeed – will be the denial of the basic human right of self-determination to Jews.

“PACBI leads the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, but of course its real aim is not merely to persuade musicians to refuse to appear in Tel Aviv or to encourage people not to buy Israeli goods.  The bottom line of all the PACBI rhetoric is that with its uncompromising demand for the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees to places west of the ‘green line’, it aspires to eliminate Israel as the Jewish state in precisely the same manner as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad do.  Members of PACBI, including the suited academics at Birzeit, may not be building bombs, firing rockets or strapping on suicide belts, but their ultimate aims are identical to those who do.”

The leaders of the BDS movement are ‘one-staters’: their ultimate hope is not to see the Israeli state and a Palestinian state existing peacefully side by side. Their aim – which is entirely transparent to those not dazzled by the faux human rights rhetoric – is one Palestinian state ‘from the river to the sea’, with – at best – a minority Jewish group making up part of its population. It is therefore not surprising that in 2010 an Al Shabaka policy brief opened with the following question:

“Many commentators expect the direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians to fail. But there is a much worse scenario: What if they “succeed?” “

It is, of course, the Guardian’s prerogative to promote the BDS campaign’s latest high-profile ‘poster boy’ as much as it likes, but in the name of common or garden honesty it should at least have the courage of its ‘feel good’ convictions to explain to its readers the precise nature of the discriminatory, antisemitic, anti-peace ideology (which stands in direct opposition to international efforts to bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to a peaceful conclusion) which the Guardian appears to have etched upon its banner. 

May 9 2013

‘CiF’ contributor Patrick Seale accuses Israel of “provoking” the US to war in Syria

seale

Patrick Seale

Whilst even before the state of Israel was reborn antisemitic demagogues like Henry Ford and Father Charles Coughlin characterized American Jews as disloyal “fifth columnists” who were pushing the U.S. to war for financial reasons, even after the war any temporary post-Holocaust taboos on the imputation of such malevolence to Jews soon were eroded. 

Paul Findley, a former U.S. Congressman whose book They Dare to Speak Out, an attack on the ‘pernicious’ influence of the “Israel lobby,” became a bestseller in 1985.  And, a couple of decades later academics considered to be foreign policy “realists”, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, became popular within anti-Zionist circles after their publication of ’The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’.  The book warned of the “stranglehold” which the Israel “Lobby” exercises over Congress; of their “manipulation of the media” and efforts to “squelch debate”.  They also argued that the 2003 Iraq war wouldn’t have been possible without the influence of Israel and the American Israel lobby.

While paleoconservative commentators in the mid to late 2000s have unsurprisingly also championed this narrative – Pat Buchanan wrote in 2008 that “Israel and its Fifth Column in [Washington , DC] seek to stampede us into war with Iran” – some liberal columnists have engaged in similar rhetoric.  For instance, columnist Joe Klein asserted in his TIME blog that Jewish neoconservatives “plumped” for the war in Iraq and are now doing the same for “an even more foolish assault on Iran” with the goal of making the world “safe for Israel.”  

Additionally, Guardian contributors have advanced the specious claim that Israel, or the Israel lobby, are primarily responsible for US sanctions against Iran, and represent a powerful and dangerous force pushing the US to outright war against the Islamic Republic. Such narratives, with varying degrees of explicitness, have been advanced by, among other CiF contributors, veteran Guardian journalists Simon Tisdall and Simon Jenkins, and the paper’s associate editor, Seumas Milne.  And, of course, Glenn Greenwald has been the most explicit promoter of the ‘Jewish necon’ cabal to take the country to war against Iran’ meme, arguing the following at his previous blog at Salon.com in 2007.

It is simply true that there are large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups which are agitating for a U.S. war against Iran, and that is the case because those groups are devoted to promoting Israel’s interests and they perceive it to be in Israel’s interests for the U.S. to militarily confront Iran.

Turning to the crisis in Syria, whilst we recently commented on suggestions made by Robert Fisk at the Indy that recent Israeli strikes on weapons in Syria intended for Hezbollah was an act which would recklessly push ‘the West’ into the Syrian war, a recent commentary by occasional Guardian contributor Patrick Seale, writing in ‘Middle East Online‘, takes Fisk’s hysterical claim a few steps further.

He writes:

On April 23, a senior Israeli officer, Brig Gen Utai Brun, head of research at army intelligence, made a serious accusation against Syria. In a lecture at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, he declared: “To the best of our professional understanding, the Syrian regime has used lethal chemical weapons against gunmen in a series of incidents in recent months…” General Brun gave no evidence for his accusation and produced no physical proof, but he added that the Israel Defence Forces believed Syria had used the nerve agent sarin on several occasions, including a specific attack on March 19.

In addition to Seale’s erroneous suggestion that it was Israel alone which charged Syria with using chemical weapons – French and British intelligence claimed on April  18 (several days before the Israeli claims cited by Seale) that “there is credible evidence that Syria has fired chemical weapons”  – his argument that such charges are without “proof” is contradicted by recent statements by the Obama Administration  charging Assad with using such weapons.

Seale’s commentary continues: 

As it happened, [Israeli] General Brun made his accusation against Syria during a three-day visit to Israel by America’s new Defence Secretary, Chuck Hagel — a man whose appointment Israel’s supporters in the United States had sought to prevent. Some Jewish organisations had come close to calling him anti-Semitic. Only by eating humble pie did Hagel manage to have his appointment confirmed. He now clearly hopes to put an end to his quarrel with America’s pro-Israeli lobby.

On this his first visit to Israel as Defence Secretary, he announced that Israel was to receive a rich haul of advanced U.S. weapons — air refuelling tankers, cutting-edge radar and the V-22 Osprey ‘tiltrotor’ aircraft, an advanced plane so far denied to all other US allies. But Hagel’s generous gesture was to no avail.

Seale’s facile logic assumes that the decision by the US Defense Department to sell Israel advanced weaponry – which was part of a broader Middle East arms package which included weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – must be the result, not of deliberations by the national security apparatus of the Obama administration, but of Secretary Hagel’s wish to mollify the pro-Israel lobby.

Seale then jumps to his broader conclusion:

Although Israel was evidently delighted with the weapons, this did not inhibit it from accusing Syria of using chemical weapons — clearly in the hope of provoking a U.S. attack on that country.

…

Hagel was angry that Israel was putting pressure on the United States to intervene in Syria. The Israeli authorities may well have thought that Hagel, still recovering from the beating pro-Israelis had given him in Washington, would not dare dispute Israel’s assessment

Finally, Seale makes this extraordinary leap:

By insisting that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons, General Brun’s aim seems to have been to persuade the United States to destroy both the Syrian regime and its Hezbollah ally

Interestingly, however, while some anti-Zionists have indeed accused Israel of siding with the rebels, many others have made the opposite claim – that Israel is siding with Assad and against the revolution in order to maintain relative peace on their northern border.  The failure of anti-Israel propagandists to stay on message aside, Israel has continually made it clear both in word and in deed that it is not at war with Syria, but primarily concerned with the threat posed by Hezbollah – an Iranian backed heavily armed Shiite Islamist terror group occupying large swaths of Lebanon.

Moreover, you’d be hard pressed to find a commentator or analyst other than Seale who has seriously argued that Israel is deviously trying to provoke the US into a Middle East war against its will. Seal’s accusation that Israel is “provoking” the US to “destroy” both the Syrian regime and Hezbollah is pure fantasy, concocted by a lazy and easily suggestible mind mired in historically based conspiratorial notions imputing enormous power to both the Jewish state and its supporters in the US.

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May 7 2013

A ‘Jew of color’ speaks out against Berkeley’s racist BDS movement

One of the more insidious elements of the BDS movement is the supremely dishonest racial narrative which suggests, in varying degrees of explicitness, that Zionism is a racist movement in which ‘white’ privileged European interlopers continue to displace indigenous Palestinians ‘of color’.  

Whilst the racial demographics of Israel alone disproves the fiction of a ‘caucasian nation’, facts clearly have never been an obstacle to those intent on demonizing the Jewish state. 

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Yemeni Jews arrive in Israel, 2009

Aryella Moreh, a Jew of color whose mother was a refugee from Iran, addresses the racial dynamic of the BDS movement (at Berkeley and elsewhere) head-on in an eloquent and inspired essay published on May 6 at the Daily Californian – the student run newspaper at UC Berkeley:

I come from a family of refugees. My mother was younger than I am now when she was forced to flee for her life from the Islamic Revolution of Iran. My mother recalls being forced to sit in the back of her classroom along with a group of young Jewish children during her school years.

When my mother went to buy groceries in the market, she was not allowed to touch the produce because she was considered a “dirty Jew.” These are only a few indicators of the systematic oppression of the Iranian Jews, some of the oldest inhabitants of Persia. At the age of 20, she was forced to abandon her life in Iran as her family was scattered across the world. My grandmother, Mamanjani, was never allowed to return home because of her active involvement in Jewish organizations. Though she had no ties to any other government, she was warned not to go home for fear of execution without trial. Despite calling Persia home for 2,500 years, in 1979, my family and many Jewish families like my own were forced to forced to flee their homes. My family’s home, business and property was confiscated. We were torn from our homes, forced to flee to whichever country would take us in.

Though these experiences define me, some students on our campus seem to think my history does not count. During the “divestment” meeting two weeks ago, Students for Justice in Palestine tweeted about those opposed to divestment: “the Zizis are literally white people crying about their privilege, lol.” Apparently, Zizi is SJP shorthand for Zionist. And later, Daily Cal Blogger Noah Kulwin discussed a clear division he seems to see between “students of color” and “Jewish students,” implying that Jewish students like me cannot be considered students of color. I am here to address ignorance about what truly defines the Jewish people. Amid claims — or rather accusations — of “privilege” or the inability of Jews to understand the plight of “colored people,” I realized many people on this campus are unaware of who the Jewish people actually are.

We encourage you to read the rest of Moreh’s passionate plea, by clicking here.

Also, you can learn more about the broader issue of Jewish refugees from Muslim and Arab lands here and here.

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May 5 2013

Glenn Greenwald’s predictable dishonesty over pro-terror Tweets of Mona Seif

In April it was announced that an Egyptian woman named Mona Seif was a finalist for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders – a prize established in 1993 to honour  those “who demonstrate exceptional courage in defending and promoting human rights”.  A jury, composed of officials from several NGOs, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, selects the winner.

On May 1 UN Watch issued the following statement:

UN Watch today called on the juryof the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, comprised of Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and eight other NGOs, and chaired by Hans Thoolen, to cancel its nomination of Mona Seif, an Egyptian activist who openly advocates terrorism and war crimes, as a top contender for the 2013 prize.

Further, the United Nations watchdog organization wasn’t alone in their condemnation of Seif, as the nomination was also fiercely criticized by such notable Egyptian human rights activists as Maikel Nabil and Amr Bakly.

On May 3, the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald – parroting the predictable narrative of Electronic Intifada – tweeted the following:

First, neither report which Greenwald linked to in his Tweet (which included a post by the virulently anti-Israel NY Times commentator Robert Mackey) demonstrated that Seif’s positions were unfairly characterized by UN Watch.  

Moreover, as we’ve noted previously, Greenwald’s expansive definition of the word “smear” seems to include factually based claims about those whose political orientation he happens to be in alignment with, and this particular Tweet would suggest that he simply didn’t conduct serious research into Seif’s background before expressing his outrage at her opponents.

UN Watch’s evidence consists of the several quite unambiguous Tweets by Seif demonstrating that she did in fact defend Palestinian terrorism, including rocket attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas.

Here are  a few examples of Seif’s decidedly selective regard for human rights:

Support for Islamist terrorists involved with blowing up Egyptian gas pipelines to Israel:

Here, Seif requests the services of one of the more prolific antisemitic cartoonists, Carlos Latuff:

The following was Tweeted by Seif after Amnesty International called on both Hamas and Israel to stop attacks on civilians during the recent war in Gaza.

Finally, just in case there was any doubt regarding her position, Seif Tweeted the following just a few days ago, after the row erupted.

And, Glenn Greenwald’s patently dishonest Tweets accusing UN Watch of of engaging in a “smear” campaign won’t change the fact that Mona Seif is an open and evidently proud supporter of terrorism against Israelis.

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May 1 2013

Buried by the Guardian: Disturbing data on Palestinian support for suicide bombing

Following a disturbingly high number of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis in recent months, including the lethal stabbing assault of a 32-year-old Israeli man in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, Israeli defense officials have expressed concerns that the conflict could lead to a Third Intifada.

Whilst recent violence by Palestinians has involved rock throwing, knife attacks, shootings and the hurling of fire bombs, the fear that such a coordinated outbreak of Palestinian violence could include suicide bombings – which caused so much death and carnage during the Second Intifada – was amplified by a new Pew poll released on April 30.

The new ‘Pew Research Center Survey of Muslims around the Globe‘ finds that Muslim support for suicide bombing in the Palestinian territories is the highest among the the twenty countries surveyed – with 40% of Palestinians agreeing that ‘suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are often/sometimes justified’.

Here’s the Pew graphic illustrating the data:

suicide bombing

Additional poll findings on Palestinian opinion includes the following:

  • Homosexuality: 89% of Palestinians think it’s immoral.
  • Women’s rights: 89% of Palestinians think women must always “obey” their husband.
  • Sharia Law: 89% favor the imposition of Sharia Law into their society.
  • Honor killings: 45% of Palestinians think it’s sometimes justifiable.

Whilst the Guardian’s Ewan MacAskill did briefly note, in passing, the findings on Palestinian support for suicide bombing, in a broader April 30 report which centered on the moderate views of American Muslims, the report was not tagged with the term ‘Palestinian territories‘ – nor did it appear on the Israel, Palestinian territories, or Gaza pages.

Moreover, whilst Harriet Sherwood did recently take a tepid step towards acknowledging the problem of Palestinian incitement, it seems unlikely that she will properly incorporate this disturbing new data into future reports on violence in the region.

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Glorifying Suicide Bombing: Official Fatah Facebook Page, Oct. 2012

As we’ve argued repeatedly on this blog, it is impossible to honestly debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without an honest assessment of Palestinian values and social mores, which are, by any measure, on the extremist right end of the political spectrum and, it would seem, irreconcilable with the ideals of peace and coexistence.

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Apr 30 2013

The Guardian: Where Jews are “hardline”, while Hamas tries to ‘rein in extremists’.

In an April 7 post, we asked how many of the roughly 800 Jews currently living in the ancient city of Hebron Harriet Sherwood had spoken to or interviewed.  Our interest in the Guardian Jerusalem correspondent’s familiarity with Hebron’s Jews was piqued by the following sentence in her April 4 report about an outbreak of violence in the West Bank – including in Israelis cities such as Hebron.

After the funeral Palestinian youths threw stones at Israeli soldiers close to an extremist Jewish settlement in the heart of the city. The Israeli military responded with teargas, stun grenades and rubber bullets

We noted that by referring to a community of hundreds of Israelis as “extremists”, Sherwood was lazily imputing widespread fanaticism without evidence – and, more broadly, conveying a message that there’s something radical or extreme about the desire to maintain even a small Jewish presence in Hebron, the oldest Jewish community in the world.

Our April 7 post is relevant in contextualizing Sherwood’s report on today’s terrorist attack in the West Bank – in which a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli man to death, then grabbed his weapon and fired at nearby border police.

Sherwood begins her piece, entitled ‘Israeli security forces deployed in West Bank after settler is stabbed to death‘, April 30, with the following information, which includes a curious reference to the victim’s home town:

Large numbers of Israeli security forces have been deployed in the West Bank after an Israeli settler was stabbed to death by a Palestinian amid fears that the killing could trigger widespread confrontations.

Eviatar Borovzky, 30, a father of five children and a part-time security guard at the hardline settlement of Yitzhar, near Nablus, died of his wounds at the scene of the attack.

Even if the contention that some Jews who live in Yitzhar are “hardline” has merit, it’s unclear what significance the politics of the victim’s home city has in understanding the attack, anymore than the fact that the terrorist suspect is reportedly from a city (Tulkarem) where several deadly terrorist attacks have originated would have relevance.

Sherwood’s report also included the following:

Around the same time [as the attack on Borovzky],an Israeli air strike killed an alleged Palestinian militant in Gaza in the first targeted assassination since the eight-day war last November. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said Haitham Masshal, 24, had been involved in a recent rocket attack on the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat. It described him as a “Global-Jihad-affiliated terrorist” and said he had “acted in different Jihad Salafi terror organisations and over the past few years has been a key terror figure”.

…

Hamas, the Islamist organisation which controls Gaza, has observed the ceasefire agreement that ended November’s conflict. However, in the past two months there has been renewed intermittent rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, blamed on small extremist organisations that Hamas is trying to rein in.

So, according to Sherwood, Hamas is trying to “rein in” extremism in Gaza.

Briefly:

  • Hamas is recognized as a terrorist movement by the US, EU, Canada, Japan, the U.K., and Australia.
  • Hamas’s founding charter cites the wisdom of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to “prove” that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world.
  • Hamas has carried out hundreds of deadly terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.
  • Hamas leaders have called for genocide against the Jews.

Regarding the final bullet point, here’s one example: Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior leader and co-founder of Hamas, is seen in this video waxing eloquently (on Al-Aqsa TV in 2010) about the the Jews’ future in the Middle East:

No, there’s clearly nothing “extremist” or “hardline” about that!

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Apr 30 2013

Guardian/AP story on Tunisia’s Jews omits history of antisemitic persecution

An AP story written by Bouzza Ben Bouzza, and published by the Guardian on April 27, entitled ‘Jews ease back into Tunisia for famed pilgrimage‘, reports on a three-day Jewish pilgrimage (which took place over the weekend) to the Ghriba synagogue.  Ghriba is the oldest synagogue in N. Africa, and traces its origins to Jewish exiles who fled the destruction of the first Temple  in 586 BCE.

Rabbis at the entrance of El Ghriba synagogue Djerba, Tunisia, 1940's

Rabbis at the entrance of El Ghriba synagogue
Djerba, Tunisia, 1940′s

The pilgrimage to the Tunisian island of Djerba – where the ancient synagogue is located – is linked to the Jewish holiday of Lag Ba’Omer, and, in past years, has attracted thousands of Jews from Europe, Israel and the US.

The AP/Guardian story aptly describes some of the more interesting details of the synagogue, such as the following:

The site is rich with legend. The first Jews who arrived were said to have brought a stone from the ancient temple of Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Babylonians. The stone is kept in a grotto at the synagogue. Women and children descend into the grotto to place eggs scrawled with wishful messages on them.

The report also provides some proper historical context – such as the deadly Islamist attack on the synagogue in 2002 which significantly deterred Jewish participation in the pilgrimage for several years.  

At its peak in 2000, about 8,000 Jews came — many from Israel, Italy and France, where they or their forebears had moved over the years. Such crowds haven’t returned since an al-Qaida-linked militant detonated a truck bomb at the synagogue in 2002, killing 21 people, mostly German tourists — and badly jolting the now-tiny Jewish community.

And, the report also includes the following passage accurately citing events during the “Arab Spring” which affected the pilgrimage:

The pilgrimage was called off in 2011 in the wake of Tunisia’s revolution, when major street protests ousted longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia, and some ultra conservative Muslims called Salafis chanted anti-Semitic slogans at their rallies. Last year, the pilgrimage resumed on a tiny scale: Only 100 or so foreigners came. This year, community leaders hope 300 to 500 will have come.

However, the report then provides the following highly selective history of Tunisia’s Jews. 

Jews have been living in Djerba since 500 B.C. The Jewish population has shrunk to 1,500, down from 100,000 in the 1960s. Most left following the 1967 war between Israel and Arab countries, and Socialist economic policies adopted by the government in the late 1960s also drove away many Jewish business owners.

First, this truncated history entirely leaves out the oppression of Tunisia’s Jews during the Nazi period.

Jewish Virtual Library (JVL) explains:

In 1940, as Tunisia was subjected Vichy policy discriminatory, anti-Jewish legislation was implemented. By 1942, the Nazi’s were occupying Tunisia arresting Jewish leaders and sending many Jews to North African Nazi camps. According to Robert Satloff, “From November 1942 to May 1943, the Germans and their local collaborators implemented a forced-labor regime, confiscations of property, hostage-takings, mass extortion, deportations, and executions.” At least 160 Tunisian Jews were deported to European death camps.

Moreover, there is much about the roughly 99% decrease in Tunisia’s Jewish population during the latter half of the 20th century that the writer left out.

For instance, per JVL, even before the Six Day War antisemitic policies enacted by the Arab government caused many Jews to flee.

When Tunisia gained independence in 1956, the new government passed a series of discriminatory anti-Jewish decrees. In 1957, the rabbinical tribunal was abolished and a year later the Jewish community councils were dissolved.  The government also destroyed ancient synagogues, cemeteries, and even Tunis’ Jewish quarter for “urban renewal” projects.

Additionally, as JVL further explains, it wasn’t Tunisia’s economic policy which drove away Jews but, rather, antisemitic persecution and violence by local Arabs.

During the Six-Day War, Jews were attacked by rioting Arab mobs, while businesses were burned and the Great Synagogue of Tunis was destroyed. The government actually denounced the violence and appealed to the Jewish population to stay, but did not bar them from leaving.

The increasingly unstable situation caused more than 40,000 Tunisian Jews to immigrate to Israel and at least 7,000 more to France. By 1968, the country’s Jewish population had shrunk to around 10,000.

Whilst the Tunisian government may have historically treated their Jewish citizens a bit better than other Arab governments, the antisemitic persecution which largely served as a catalyst for the Jewish exodus certainly mirrors what occurred in the rest of the Middle East – a regional ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands which continues to represent one of the most underreported crimes in recent history.

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Apr 29 2013

Glenn Greenwald’s column at ‘CiF’: A safe space for antisemitic commenters?

A guest post by AKUS

Antisemitic commenters at the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ have discovered that Glenn Greenwald’s columns provide a useful forum in which to post racist commentary below the line – many of which have not been deleted by CiF moderators. 

In a post by Greenwald on April 7, Bradley Manning is off-limits at SF Gay Pride parade, but corporate sleaze is embraced, which didn’t mention Jews or Israel, this comment popped up in response to another commenter who mentioned the widely used term “Pallywood” to describe the faked and discredited film clips and photographs which Palestinians have sometimes distributed:

one

This opened the doors to a bit of antisemitic jollity by “bilejones” and others based on the well-known antisemitic meme that Jews control Hollywood.

On most ‘CiF’ threads the following comments would have been deleted by moderators, but thanks to Greenwald’s unique policy regarding comment moderation, they remain in all their smart-alecky racism. Notice that the pretense that “Israelis” or “Zionists” are the people opposed to Palestinians immediately gives way to the underlying animosity towards Jews usually hidden by those terms in the following pejorative exchanges:

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Now the Pavlovian dogs had been let loose, and even MonaHol may have realized they had gone too far – or, perhaps, was just being a little coy:

newThe approval of such comments make you wonder how long a comment that proposed characterizing movies which are made by African–Americans by using a variation of the ‘n-word’ would be allowed to stay up.  Would the commenter engaging in such shamefully racist “wordplay” still be permitted to post at the Guardian? 

Lest the gentle reader think these are isolated examples, here is another recent set.

In another column by Greenwald, ‘The same motive for anti-US ‘terrorism’ is cited over and over‘, he mentioned the excuse given by some recent high profile Muslim terrorists – such as the Fort Hood shooter and the ‘Underwear Bomber’ - that they were attacking America due, in part, to its support of Israel.  A commenter then drags in Judaism as a counterbalance to criticism of Islam, and MonaHol offers to post selections from the Talmud in defense of Islam:

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The  comment by “westeastnorth” was in response to several well-known invented citations purporting to come from the Talmud provided on antisemitic websites that MonaHol repeats here:

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Given that someone like MonaHol likely cannot read Hebrew, Aramaic, or Rashi script, and it takes a lifetime of study in the original languages to learn and understand the Talmud, the question must be asked: “From where does she get her information”?

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The answer is that that she gleans the citations from the numerous antisemitic websites that have trolled selectively through an English version and then circulate the very citations MonaHol presents, without the context of rabbinic disputation. Only an obsessive anti-Semite would in turn troll through such sites to find them, and only an ignoramus would present them as representing the full range of Jewish thought on those subjects. Googling “Talmud” and any of the so-called Talmudic references MonaHol quoted will give you dozens if not hundreds of such sites.

It is the equivalent of presenting a list of straw man legal arguments that have been given to students at law school to argue over as representing exact examples of a country’s laws

Refutations can be found at this site, which painstakingly fisks the many fabrications about the Talmud that circulate on the internet, listing them one antisemitic “Claim” at a time, including the ones that MonaHol uses. The antisemitic websites provided as sources have mostly been taken down since this website was set up, but Stormfront (one of the purveyors of such gross distortions of Judaism) is still active.

I have edited the lengthy list of refutations down to the claims that MonaHol made, and further reduced the number of responses to each claim for the sake of (relative) brevity:

CLAIM (23) Jews May Steal from Non-Jews Baba Mezia 24a. If a Jew finds an object lost by a Gentile (“heathen”) it does not have to be returned. (Affirmed also in Baba Kamma 113b).

RESPONSE (1)
Found objects do not have to be returned when they are lost under circumstances that make the owner impossible to identify. This also applies to objects lost by Jews in crowded areas — as you would know had you actually read the passage in question instead of pasting it in from a National Socialist website.

CLAIM (25) Jews May Rob and Kill Non-Jews Sanhedrin 57a. When a Jew murders a Gentile (“Cuthean”), there will be no death penalty. What a Jew steals from a Gentile he may keep.

RESPONSE (2)
Misquote. That’s a theoretical point that is being raised and subsequently rejected. Naturally, [the quote] “forgets” to mention the latter part.

CLAIM (27) Jews May Lie to Non-Jews Baba Kamma 113a. Jews may use lies (“subterfuges”) to circumvent a Gentile.

RESPONSE (1)
This is one of the most obvious pieces of out-of-context blather it has ever been my pleasure to refute. The context is evading a thief. Yes, you are permitted to lie to a robber — in particular a crooked tax collector.

Further down the same page, it not only says that robbing gentiles is prohibited, it even discusses the derivation of the prohibition.

Here, we have gone beyond going out of context and have entered the realm of deliberate falsification.

RESPONSE (2)
Refers to whether a Jew may deceive a Roman tax collector, IIRC (note that Romans were the occupying force at that time, literally playing the role of the Sheriff of Nottingham).
From Usenet message

RESPONSE (3)
The passage discusses robbers (such as tax collectors who acted beyond their legal authority) who have stolen property. The question that arises is whether it is permitted to use subterfuge to circumvent their thievery. In a long legal discussion, the entire thrust of which is that any form of stealing from heathens is forbidden, the following statement is brought forward for consideration: “we use subterfuges to circumvent him [a heathen; this is one opinion] … but Rabbi Akiva said that we should not attempt to circumvent him on account of the sanctification of the Name”. The Talmud continues and notes that Rabbi Akiva forbids subterfuges not only on account of desecration of G-d’s name, but also because theft from a non-Jew is absolutely forbidden by biblical law. The Talmud continues to explain that even the opinion which is rejected does not condone outright theft which is absolutely forbidden according to all opinions.

The Talmudic passage here is a well-known one which makes the point that the “law of the land is the law”, that is, the civil and commercial law of the nations in which Jews reside is binding on them. 

Obsessive anti-Semites like “bilejones”, “MonaHol”, “axenicely” and others congregate under Greenwald’s columns – and are left there to create an environment which extremist sites might envy.

The Guardian has banned supporters of Israel for far less, and one would think that such name-calling by “bilejones” and “axenicely” would elicit corrective action by their team of professional moderators – which begs serious questions about the Guardian and the extent of their commitment to maintaining high ‘community standards‘. 

Silence by ‘CiF’ moderators in the face of such hate speaks volumes.  

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Apr 29 2013

Harriet Sherwood and Phoebe Greenwood take steps towards understanding Palestinian incitement

gaza_2548597bThe failure of many to truly understand the ‘root causes’ of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and accurately contextualize news in the region is based in part on the MSM’s general tendency to ignore or significantly downplay the pervasive antisemitism and anti-Zionist agitation within Palestinian society.

This blog’s ‘What the Guardian won’t report‘ series often focuses on such disturbing stories about the official Palestinian glorification of violence, racist indoctrination of their children and other such grossly underreported examples of the reactionary Palestinian political ethos which ‘genuine’ advocates for peace can not reasonably ignore.

Whilst reasonable people can argue over what degree such Palestinian incitement represents an impediment to peace relative to other factors, such as the issue of Israeli “settlements”, the Guardian’s obsessive focus on the latter and their almost total silence about the former serves to grossly misinform their readers on the politics of the region.

As such, it was encouraging to read a recent story by the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood, entitled ’Gaza schoolboys being trained to use Kalashnikovs‘, April 28, which reports on news that Hamas is now providing Gaza schools with military training for young boys.  The program, which includes the use of firearms and explosives, will likely be extended to girls next year.

Sherwood even quotes Al Mezan, a Gaza-based “human rights organisation”, criticizing the program thusly:

“It’s unbelievable. Hamas has been cutting sports activities in schools for the past six years, saying there is no time in the curriculum, but now they find the time to have military training inside schools,”

Additionally, on the very same day that Sherwood filed her story, Phoebe Greenwood published a piece at The Telegraph entitled ‘Hamas teaches Palestinian schoolboys to how to fire Kalashnikovs’ – a report which is especially noteworthy in the context of a CiF Watch post back in 2011 which noted Greenwood’s skepticism over ‘claims’ made by Israeli officials regarding Palestinian incitement. 

Though both reports are problematic in many respects, and indeed ignore the broader problem of Palestinian incitement in both the West Bank and Gaza, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Further, we can at least hope that Sherwood and Greenwood will follow-up on their stories and continue to inform their readers on the pathos within Palestinian political culture which inspires the constant vilification of Israel and dehumanization of Jews - a dynamic which makes most Israelis wary of the conventional wisdom which uncritically accepts that a two-state solution will necessarily result in peace.

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Apr 28 2013

Glenn Greenwald on the sage foreign policy wisdom of the ‘Underwear Bomber’

Glenn Greenwald’s response to the terrorist attack in Boston should come as no surprise to those familiar with his ‘Comment is Free’ blog, and his previous blog at Salon.com.

In addition to smearing as ‘Islamophobic’ anyone who suggested, in the early hours and days of the investigation into the attack which left 3 dead and over 200 injured, that the culprits may be Islamists, his reaction once it seemed clear that the terrorists were radicalized Chechnyan Muslims was to argue, in a fashion similar to Richard Falk, that such attacks should ‘inspire’ us to reflect on US policy in the Mid-East.

Greenwald’s April 24 post at ‘Comment is Free’, entitled ‘The same motive cited for anti-US terrorism is cited over and over‘, provides another good example of such reasoning.

Greenwald writes thusly:

In the last several years, there have been four other serious attempted or successful attacks on US soil by Muslims, and in every case, they emphatically all say the same thing: that they were motivated by the continuous, horrific violence brought by the US and its allies to the Muslim world – violence which routinely kills and oppresses innocent men, women and children.

He then quotes the complaints against US foreign policy expressed by several convicted Islamist terrorists, such as Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American convicted of an attempted bombing attack at Times Square in 2010, Nidal Hasan, who will soon stand trial in a military court for the Fort Hood massacre, as well as the ”Underwear Bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

bomberGreenwald cites the following grievances of Abdulmutallab, which he expressed in a US court before pleading guilty of trying to murder hundreds of people on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day in 2009:

I had an agreement with at least one person to attack the United States in retaliation for US support of Israel and in retaliation of the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Palestine, especially in the blockade of Gaza, and in retaliation for the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and beyond, most of them women, children, and noncombatants.”

Greenwald, while making it clear that violence is still not justified, added the following:

But it is nonetheless vital to understand why there are so many people who want to attack the US as opposed to, say, Peru, or South Africa, or Brazil, or Mexico, or Japan, or Portugal.

…

…so many Americans, westerners, Christians and Jews love to run around insisting that the only real cause for Muslim attacks on the US is that the attackers have this primitive, brutal, savage, uncivilized religion (Islam) that makes them do it.

…

As the attackers themselves make as clear as they can, it’s not religious fanaticism but rather political grievance that motivates these attacks. Religious conviction may make them more willing to fight (as it does for many in the west), but the motive is anger over what is being done by the US and its allies to Muslims.

…

it’s crucial to understand this causation because it’s often asked “what can we do to stop Terrorism?” The answer is right in front of our faces: we could stop embracing the polices in that part of the world which fuel anti-American hatred and trigger the desire for vengeance and return violence.

However, to add some context to Greenwald’s explanation of ‘why they hate us’, here’s a relevant passage from the court transcript at Abdulmutallab’s sentencing.

Defendant poses a significant, ongoing threat to the safety of American citizens everywhere. As noted previously, in pleading guilty, defendant reiterated that it is his religious belief that the Koran obliges “every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them,” and that “participation in jihad against the United States is considered among the most virtuous of deeds in Islam and is highly encouraged in the Koran.”

The court sentencing document continues to explain what inspired him to jihad:

In August 2009, defendant left Dubai, where he had been taking graduate classes, and traveled to Yemen. For several years, defendant had been following the online teachings of Anwar Awlaki, and he went to Yemen to try to meet him in order to discuss the possibility of becoming involved in jihad.

Anwar Awlaki was the American and Yemeni Imam, killed in a US drone strike in 2011, who U.S. government officials believe was an al-Qaeda regional commander, and a senior ‘talent recruiter’ and motivator for the terrorist group – and who is believed to have influenced the jihadist rampage of the Fort Hood shooter.

Here’s an additional passage from Abdulmutallab’s sentencing:

Defendant by that time had become committed in his own mind to carrying out an act of jihad, and was contemplating “martyrdom;” i.e., a suicide operation in which he and others would be killed. Once in Yemen, defendant visited mosques and asked people he met if they knew how he could meet Awlaki.

…

Thereafter, defendant received a text message from Awlaki telling defendant to call him, which defendant did.

…

Defendant took several days to write his message to Awlaki, telling him of his desire to become involved in jihad, and seeking Awlaki’s guidance. After receiving defendant’s message, Awlaki sent defendant a response, telling him that Awlaki would find a way for defendant to become involved in jihad.

So, in short, the ‘Underwear Bomber’ sought out the advice of a senior leader of an Islamist movement which calls for global jihad, seeks states governed by religious autocracies similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, advocates death for homosexuality, and believes Jews are the embodiment of evil.

The suggestion that we should listen to the foreign policy ‘analysis’ of such homicidal jihadists is akin to imputing wisdom to the suicidal rants of conspiracists and radical cults – as if we should see the “revolutionary mass suicide” initiated by Jim Jones as a learning moment about the need for “social justice”, or that the US should incorporate the militia movement-inspired complaints of Timothy McVeigh into federal policy.

The ideological proclivity of some on the far-left to empathize with those, like Abdulmutallab, who willfully embrace the most violent, reactionary and racist movements in the world represents a dynamic as dangerous as it is baffling. 

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Apr 28 2013

Jon Snow lunges for Richard Millett’s phone at LSE event while questioned on ‘Jewish lobby’ comment

The following is a first person account by Richard Millett

Ilan Pappe, Peter Kosminsky, Jon Snow, Karma Nabulsi, Rosemary Hollis at LSE.

Ilan Pappe, Peter Kosminsky, Jon Snow, Karma Nabulsi, Rosemary Hollis at LSE.

On Friday (April 26) Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow was at the London School of Economics to chair a panel of hardcore anti-Israel polemicists but as I was questioning him face to face about his own use of the term “the Jewish lobby” he violently grabbed my mobile phone attempting to dislodge it from my hand accusing me of trying to secretly record our conversation.

He then repeatedly called me “a creep” and claimed a breach of his human rights.

He had been explaining to me (Clip 1 below) that “the Jewish lobby” is a common term in America. I asked him if he would use the term “the Muslim lobby” to which he replied that he would.

This was how the event itself was described:

On this panel discussion, chaired by Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, the speakers will discuss aspects of the current situation in Palestine, including: Palestinian domestic politics, Israel’s position, the international dimension of the impasse and the insights into the conflict provided by film-making.

I went mainly to hear Peter Kosminsky, director of Channel 4′s drama series The Promise which portrayed Jews in British Mandate Palestine and contemporary Israel by using anti-Semitic stereotypes. For example, Israeli Jews were shown to be stunningly wealthy, and there were lines like these spoken by a British soldier:

“The Jews and Arabs have been living here in relative harmony for years. But our victory over the Germans has turned the trickle of Jews coming to this land into a flood. You must understand, the Jews see it as their holy land. But the Arabs, who have been here for over a thousand years, see them as stealing their land. Our job is to keep the two sides apart…..”

And:

“After Bergen-Belsen, I thought that the Jews deserved a state, but now I’m not so sure…. Their precious state has been born in violence and cruelty to its neighbours, and I’m not sure I want it to prosper….”

Last night Kosminsky said that after the series had aired:

“Nothing prepared me for the level of vitriol that was going to drop on me from the Zionist lobby…personal, vicious stuff came my way….If I choose to criticise my country, and I often do, nobody calls me ‘a racist’. They accept that it’s a legitimate thing in a free society to criticise the political and diplomatic behaviour, the domestic and foreign policies of a sovereign state. It just means that you disagree with its political behaviour. But if you’re Jewish, as I am, and you criticise the domestic and/or foreign policy of the sovereign state of Israel you are immediately called an anti-Semite. Very clever isn’t it.” (Clip 2)

No it’s not clever actually because Kosminsky doesn’t just “disagree with its political behaviour”. He disagrees with Israel’s existence and calls for Jews in Israel to be boycotted (presumably he doesn’t wish those of other religions in Israel to be boycotted). He said:

“the boycott creates so much anger in Israelis. They really hate the idea, particularly the academic boycott, which suggests to me it would probably be quite effective. So I think, yes, we should do it.” (Clip 3)

I hear the Nazis also boycotted Jews. In the 1930s it was considered anti-Semitic but apparently in 2013 it isn’t.

On America’s support for Israel and the similarity of the creation of both countries he said:

“this is why America finds it so hard to take a stand against the illegality and the disgusting behaviour of the state of Israel, because that’s how they (the Americans) came into existence, guys!” (clip 4)

There was also a lengthy discussion on how much Jews were hated by America and Britain, this being the main driver by these countries to create Israel in order to get Jews to go there instead.

Kosminsky put it like this:

“America was very keen to strong-arm Britain into accepting a Jewish-controlled state in what had been Palestine because…they really didn’t want any more Jews in New York, please.” (clip 4 also)

As for Rosemary Hollis, former director of research at Chatham House, she claimed that at the same time Lord Balfour was drafting the Balfour Declaration he was also driving anti-Jewish immigration legislation through Parliament. (clip 5)

Hollis also claimed that it wasn’t the Jews that invented Jewish nationalism but “the Europeans”. She said “it was the Europeans who decided somehow that Judaism was something above and beyond a religion”. Incredible! Who was Theodore Herzl anyway and that book he published in 1896. Der Judenstaat, anyone?

Jon Snow didn’t hold back either but suggested that Britain might well have delayed bombing the railway lines to the concentration camps because of Britain’s hatred of Jews. (clip 6)

Snow had also started the evening claiming that there was “Palestine fatigue” in the media (clip 7).

Palestine fatigue! Has he not picked up The Independent or The Guardian recently or watched his own beloved Channel 4 which aired The Promise and many other programes about the Palestinians including one being aired while we were at the event!

To round things off nicely Ilan Pappe implicitly compared Israel to Nazi Germany (clip 8). He said Israel is beginning to look like “your own worst enemy” in its obsession with having as many Jews in Israel as possible.

Meanwhile, Karma Nabulsi spent most of the evening calling for the so-called “right of return”, commonly known as a pretext to the demographic destruction of the Jewish state. Nothing new there then from ex-PLO Ms Nabulsi.

(Read Jonathan Hoffman’s account of the event here)

Clips from the event (customer warning: may contain anti-Semitism)

Clip 1:

(Snow mentions “the Jewish lobby” at 1 min 34 secs.)

Clip 2:

Clip 3:

Clip 4:

Clip 5:

Clip 6:

Clip 7:

Clip 8:

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Apr 10 2013

Ahmad Hashemi: ‘Anti-Semitism is why the Arab Spring failed’

Ahmad Hashemi is a former Iranian foreign ministry employee who worked as an English and Arabic interpreter.  He was actively involved in the pro-democracy Green Movement protests in 2009, and in early 2012 was nominated to run for parliamentary elections.  However, he was disqualified from running by the Guardians Council.

In May 2012, he was dismissed from his foreign ministry job.

Beginning in early May 2012, he began to contribute articles to the leading reformist papers but was subjected to constant threats and restrictions from the Iranian regime.  He then fled Iran and is currently seeking political asylum in Turkey where he works as a freelance journalist.

He wrote a powerful essay at Times of Israel on April 9 titled ‘Anti-Semitism is why the Arab Spring failed - one which we strongly urge you to read.

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Apr 10 2013

Richard Millett interviewed for Israeli documentary about antisemitism

H/T NGO Monitor

The following 40-minute documentary about antisemitism, which aired on Israeli Channel 2 on the eve of Yom HaShoah, April 7, features interviews with Richard Millett, Abe Foxman, Howard Jacobson, and Alan Dershowitz – and includes clips of several figures who will be familiar to CiF Watch readers, including Lauren Booth, Jenny Tonge, and Ken O’Keefe.

Much of the show is in Hebrew, but many of the interviews are in English.  You can jump to Millett’s segment by forwarding to the 17:15 mark.  The other commentators noted above follow Millett.

Apr 9 2013

The ‘utilitarian’ Zionism of the Guardian’s Giles Fraser

Giles Fraser’s April 5 column in the Guardian about Zionism in the context of the recent rise of right-wing antisemitism in Hungary includes the following passages:

Regularly, on the Hungarian football terraces, a familiar nursery rhyme is chanted, with the words adapted to “the train goes to Auschwitz”.

…

Budapest may have Central Europe‘s largest population of Jews, but some of them are now asking themselves if it is time to leave. A month after the Israel match, a prominent leader of the Jewish community was beaten up by thugs in the street who screamed at him “rotten filthy Jews, you will all die”. The Holy Crown radio station – registered in the US, and thus protected by their freedom of speech laws – defended the attack as “a response to general Jewish terrorism”. And last November, the leader of the far right Jobbik party, the third largest party in the Hungarian parliament, called for influential Hungarian Jews to be catalogued and assessed as a national security risk. Elsewhere, Jewish graves are being desecrated and, encouraged by the government, statues are being erected to Nazi ally Miklós Horthy. With a failing currency, sky-rocketing unemployment and government credit rating reduced to junk status, all this is frighteningly reminiscent of the past.

Fraser then pivots to Zionism:

Which is why re-reading Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish Question in a Budapest cafe, opposite the astonishingly beautiful Dohány Street Synagogue, feels, once again, so topical. Herzl was born in 1860 in the house next to the synagogue and had his bar mitzvah there. Later he left for Austria and went on to become the founding father of modern Zionism.

Herzl’s sense that even assimilated Jews are not always protected by their integration with surrounding society was well made.

Indeed.

Fraser then proceeds to explain the following:

I am a Zionist

He then adds the following disclaimer:

[I am] not an Israel right-or-wrong type of Zionist. Not a supporter of the settlement movement type of Zionist, and absolutely not a supporter of the shameful treatment of Palestinians type of Zionist. Tragically, the left-leaning universalist idealism of the likes of Herzl feels increasingly like a thing of the past in modern Israeli politics.

Fraser adds:

But for all Israel’s political blunders and military brutality, the place to look for the necessity of the state of Israel is not in Israel itself but in places like Budapest.

Fraser’s Zionism, as with many who similarly fancy themselves more ‘enlightened’ Zionists, seems based not on the Jews’ right to national self-determination, but on the state’s usefulness to European diaspora Jewish communities – a Jewish state whose continued existence, it would follow, is primarily ‘justified’ by virtue of the safe haven it provides for persecuted Jews throughout the world.

Whilst it is of course true that one of Zionism’s moral missions pertains to the Jewish state’s role as (what Herzl termed) ‘Guardian of the Jews‘, the nation, now established, no longer needs any further justification.  The rights of the modern Jewish state – now re-established – are not forever in a state of limbo awaiting the results of an ongoing assessment – or periodic review – tasked to affirm or deny its value.  

A nation’s rights – as with the rights afforded to individuals – which are in any way contingent upon the benevolence of others are not rights at all, but would more aptly be described as ‘privileges’.

For thousands of years European Jews were subjected to the whims and wishes of non-Jewish rulers – required to accept that whatever political liberties or physical safety they may have temporarily enjoyed in their ‘host country’ was always precarious, and often continually required that they demonstrate the usefulness of their presence.  A truly liberal case against antisemitism - expressed towards Jews as individuals and as a nation – would necessarily include the rejection such utilitarian arguments for Jewish freedom.

Nobody, argued Israel’s late foreign minister Abba Eban, “does Israel any service by proclaiming its ‘right to exist’ – a right, he added, “like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and [every] other state”, which is “axiomatic and unreserved”.

The Jewish state’s inherent right to continued political independence is not a reward it must earn, a favor to be granted or a privilege to be bestowed. 

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