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‘Airflotilla 2′ & “normal, average Europeans”

April 13, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | by | 36 comments

Earlier in the week the organisers of the ‘Airflotilla 2′ (‘Welcome to Palestine’) campaign held a press conference in Bethlehem. Among the speakers the organisers chose to address journalists was the mayor of Bethlehem, Victor Batarseh who urged Israel to allow the flytilla activists in.

“These people are coming to talk about peace, they are not coming to wage war against Israel,” he said. “They are coming to visit the Palestinian people who are under occupation and to talk to them and to help them because these people are isolated.”

 “We are asking our neighbors the Israeli government to make it easy for these people to enter the Palestinian National Authority, so that we can have this message of peace starting from this holy city of Bethlehem.”

He called on Europe and the United States to support the protest. People who speak out about Israel’s policies are called “anti-Semitic,” he said, but urged the US and Europe not to fear this label.

Whilst he can certainly talk the talk, Mayor Batarseh’s ‘message of peace’ should be seen in light of the fact that he recently took part in the ‘Christ at the Checkpoint‘ conference held in his town, during which he told the audience that the Palestinians were being crucified by Israeli security measures, Bethlehem was a giant prison and that Jesus Christ, embodied by the Palestinian people, was imprisoned in the city by the security barrier.

Batarseh is known to be allied to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – a terrorist organization proscribed by Canada, the EU and the US. In January this year Batarseh attended a memorial service for PFLP founder George Habash held in Beit Sahour.  Terror attacks perpetrated by the PFLP include:

  • On July 22, 1968, the PFLP hijacked its first plane, an El Al flight from Rome to Tel Aviv.
  • In September 1970, the PFLP hijacked three passenger planes and took them to airfields in Jordan, where the PLO was then based; after the planes were emptied, the hijackers blew them up. In response, King Hussein of Jordan decided that Palestinian radicals had gone too far and drove the PLO out of his kingdom.
  • In 1972, PFLP and Japanese Red Army gunmen murdered two dozen passengers at Israel’s international airport in Lod.
  • In 1976, breaking a PLO agreement to end terrorism outside Israeli-held territory, PFLP members joined with West German radical leftists from the Baader-Meinhof Gang to hijack an Air France flight bound for Tel Aviv and landed the plane in Entebbe, Uganda. In a now-famous raid, Israeli commandos freed the hostages. [Despite the overall success of the raid, three hostages were killed in the firefight and one was killed by Ugandan Army officers in a nearby hospital.]

Also speaking at the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ press conference was project organizer Mazin Qumsiyeh who said of the campaign’s participants:

“These are not hooligans. The people who are coming are normal, average Europeans who want to learn and visit people under occupation,”

Hooliganism is defined as ‘rowdy, violent or destructive behaviour’ or alternatively; ‘willful, wanton and malicious destruction of the property of others’. Some might say that the attempts of Mazin Qumsiyeh and his Palestine Justice Network to eliminate the Israeli state amount to little less.

Certainly, Mazin Qumsiyeh and Mustafa Barghouti –  an endorser of the ‘Air Flotilla 2′ – do not qualify as being best placed to define hooliganism in light of their equally suspect definition of the recent March 30th ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ events  (which they also co-organised) as ‘non-violent resistance’ and Barghouti’s active participation in the Qalandiya riots.

Neither, of course, is Qumsiyeh’s definition of the ‘Air Flotilla 2′ participants as “normal, average Europeans” at all accurate. Average Europeans do not – unlike the members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign or London BDS  (both of which are involved in ‘Welcome to Palestine’)  – align themselves with the oppressive human-rights abusing, terror financing and supporting  Iranian regime by promoting and participating in ‘Al Quds Day‘ marches.

Normal Europeans do not march under the flags of terrorist organisations such as Hizbollah and Hamas who indiscriminately murder civilians. Average Europeans do not disrupt cultural events and call for boycotts of a democratic country as a means of bringing about its dismantling. And ordinary Europeans certainly do not try to deliberately get themselves deported from other countries by knowingly engineering provocations.

As for Qumsiyeh’s claim that the ‘Air Flotilla 2′ participants wanting to “learn” about the conflict – that of course is highly dubious. Seasoned activists such as these are precisely what they are because of the fact that they have no desire to have their well-entrenched opinions challenged by facts and knowledge.

But let’s say they did. A viewing of this video made by Mustafa Barghouti shows exactly what participants in the ‘Air Flotilla 2′ will be ‘learning’ on their trip – should they actually arrive.

Little Ms Jihad Can’t Be Wrong: Emma Thompson and the Magic of Technicolor

April 12, 2012 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | by | 4 comments

A guest post by Gidon Ben-Zvi, a freelance Israeli writer

I recently celebrated my third consecutive Passover in Israel.

True, this historical tidbit may lack the dramatic resonance of a hike up Masada or an excursion into the Western Wall Tunnels. Still, I am but a scion of restless Diaspora gypsies, a vagabond collection of characters and scoundrels who hustled pool in halls around Coney Island and attempted to topple Disneyland by getting in on a fun little footnote by the name of Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica, California.

Passover in the United States is instantly synonymous with The Ten Commandments, filmed in glorious Technicolor and featuring a memorable performance by Edward G. Robinson as Dathan, the cruel Israelite overseer of the Hebrews who moonlighted as informant for the Egyptians.

Since the 1956 premier of this visually arresting epic, the Jewish world has turned, turned, turned. A slew of presumptive Pharaohs, including Gamel Abdel Nasser and Leonid Brezhnev, have sought to complete the good works initiated by Rameses II – by way of expulsion, persecution and imprisonment.

Yet, neither Dathan’s whip nor Joseph Stalin’s “forgotten Zion”, Birobidzhan, succeeded in foiling the Hebrews’ tryst with destiny – in a land called Canaan, at a time ordained in heaven.

A powerful cast, dazzling special effects (for the day) and, above all, a compelling narrative is at the root of The Ten Commandments’ timeless appeal. In the years since Charlton Heston led thousands of Paramount Picture extras to the Land of Milk and Honey, however, an insidious form of historical narrative has laid claim to popular perceptions about Israel and its place among the family of nations. Even the phrase ‘right to exist’ is applied in reference to only one nation on Earth.

When the telling of a rollicking good tale supplants the rigorous pursuit and accumulation of facts, the result is historical relativism. If truth differs over time and bends over space, then all notions of objectivity are lost. This is the United Colors of Benetton School of Historical Inquiry: non judgmental, superficially egalitarian and incessantly self-righteous.

At first, this diluting of history’s richness and depth into a tepid stew of bumper sticker catch phrases was confined to the hallowed halls of academie. It took a few years, but history-as-you-like-it eventually received the full red carpet treatment. And in no corner of society has relativism been more warmly embraced than in the arts – a subculture noted for its garish sentimentalism and ersatz tolerance.

A recent incident of fashionable bigotry masquerading as politically courageous theater was that of Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson’s call for the exclusion of Israel’s Habima Theater Company from Globe to Globe, a renowned international festival being held at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.

The elegant Ms Thompson cites ‘policies of exclusion practiced by the Israeli state’ as fuelling her moral outrage.

When I clicked on to the Globe to Globe website, then, I naturally assumed, based on the effervescent Emma’s righteous indignation, that the festival would consist of the tried and true assemblage of British Commonwealth nations: Australia, India, Jamaica and of course the United Kingdom. A cross-section of enlightened societies with an appreciation for the Bard of Avon was a safe bet, no?

I stand corrected. Here’s just a partial list of nations that have “partnered” with the World Shakespeare Festival in some way, shape or form, along with some of their own state-sponsored ‘productions’:

*China: “Forced Abortions: One Child Left Behind”

* Palestinian Authority: “All in the Family: Murder Most Honorable”

*Oman: “No Comment: Of Jailed Journalists and Pesky Freedoms”

*Russia: “Now Steal This II: Putin’s Revenge”

*Tunisia: “The Rise of Moderate Jihad and the Twilight of Liberty”

While Emma Thompson’s intellectual dishonesty and selective outrage is certainly sufficient to induce a temporary spike in one’s blood pressure, I must hereby admit that I couldn’t care less.

Thing is, life is quite a bit about timing. I happened to hear about Ms Thompson’s casting her lot in with butchers and tyrants right as I was heading out, with my very pregnant wife in tow, to have our pots and pans, forks and knives kosherized prior to the onset of Passover, 2012.

At some point on the short walk from our Nachlaot apartment to the site of the holy boiling, feelings of anger at a misguided British thespian melted away like so much fermented grain from a freshly steamed pot.

Then, my mind wandered to stories my father would tell me about he being the son of a bona fide hustler…and owner of the Ocean Highway Ride at Pacific Ocean Park. Emma Thompson and Sabba Harry…no obvious connection, right?

Not so fast.

Ms Thompson’s rant actually bares a remarkable resemblance to my grandfather’s blue and orange ride. Both rumble and hiss at exaggerated decibels, making an instant impact on anyone in earshot. And both will eventually be forgotten but for the tired recollections of a few old peddlers and faded theater impresarios.

Ill fated ideas, be they Pacific Ocean Park or boycotting Israel, are slated for disposal into the trash bin of cold, objective, inevitable history.

By the way, Operation Zero Chametz (Thanks Chabad!) was a success and I’m proud to say that our floors were so clean, Elijah himself could have eaten off them.

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Bigotry & justifications for terror as ‘progressive’ politics: Air Flotilla 2′s York PSC contingent

April 12, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | by | 18 comments

Along with the members from Greater Manchester, three members of the York branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign will also be taking part in the ‘Air Flotilla 2′ (or ‘Welcome to Palestine’) publicity stunt scheduled for Sunday, April 15th.

“Terry Gallogly, Mary Watson and Carol Pearman will be among visitors flying into Israel as part of the Welcome to Palestine campaign.”

Carol Pearman (left) and Terry Gallogly (centre)

Ms. Pearman appears to consider herself something of an expert on Israeli security needs:

“The Israeli government tries to make out that anyone wanting to visit Palestinian friends is a security risk, but that’s nonsense,” said Carol Pearman, 69, of Hull Road.

“We just want to visit friends who are kept like prisoners under this illegal occupation. Even prisoners are allowed visitors.”

Ms. Watson, however, somewhat spoils the ‘kept like prisoners’ meme by admitting:

“We have visited Palestine before”

York PSC is rather infamous for its extremism. Before it was removed following complaints, the FAQ section of its website included the following: (emphasis added)

1. Do we condemn the suicide bombers?

Yes, we condemn  ALL violence on all sides, but PSC seeks to understand causes and means of prevention. For example, Palestinians  do not have  the sophisticated weaponry of the occupying forces. Suicide bombing is their only weapon, it is a last resort of a desperate people who see no alternative way of defending their homeland. Extreme injustice breeds extreme responses.

2. Does PSC recognise the State of Israel?

Yes we recognize A State of Israel  with the borders that existed before the 1967 six day war. The continuous extension of those borders by war and occupation have been condemned by numerous UN Security council resolutions (beginning with number 242 in November 1967).  Individuals can comment on the right or otherwise of the land grab which created the state of Israel in the first place and its biblical justification,  but we must emphasize that PSC, like Arafat, accepts the inevitable presence of the Israelis and that pushing them all in to the Mediterranean is now not an option.

 

York PSC members prior to their departure on a 'Viva Palestina' convoy in 2009.
Carol Pearman in the centre. http://tiny.cc/69dncw

Predictably, Ms. Pearman is keen to add her signature to campaigns against nefarious Zionist activities such as exhibiting Israeli scientific achievements in British museums. She also appears to have some business interests in the Middle East.

Terry Gallogly is a familiar name to many. Besides being Secretary (and former Chair) of the York PSC and a member of the Green Party, he is also an organizer of the ‘Stop the JNF’ campaign and accuses the JNF of attempting to “greenwash its ethnic cleansing”.

Gallogly also campaigned for a boycott by British unions of the Histadrut – Israel’s main labour union – describing it as “this appalling apparatus of the Zionist structure”. As a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s national executive committee, he was involved in 2007 in bringing a member of Neturei Karta to give a lecture entitled “Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism” at British universities during ‘Palestine Awareness Week’.

Gallogly’s main claim to fame, however, is his 2010 attempt to rig an online poll conducted by the Jewish Chronicle in order to create the impression that British Jews are racists. 

Amazingly, the MP for York Central, Hugh Bayley, is backing Gallogly et al in this attempt to interfere with the right of another country to exercise control over its own borders. That may or may not be connected to Gallogly’s additional activity as regional coordinator for a lobbying group known as Coordin8.

Members of several other PSC branches in the north of England are planning to accompany the ‘Air Flotilla 2′ delegates to Manchester airport, already in ‘spontaneous demonstration’ mode. 

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‘Boycott Israel,’ the movie, starring actress Emma Thompson

April 11, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | by | 27 comments

 

This is cross posted by Ben Cohen, and originally appeared at Jointmedia News Service.

If Hollywood ever makes a movie about the movement to boycott Israel, I can think of no one better suited to the starring role than Emma Thompson.

I imagine Thompson’s character as a schoolteacher or a librarian, dowdy looking with just a hint of prettiness. She lives alone in a cozy apartment filled with potted plants and books on personal growth, third-world politics and vegetarian cookery.

Her significant other is a fluffy cat that nestles in her lap every night as she sits in front of her computer reading the latest dispatches from occupied “Palestine,” her face etched with righteous disbelief.

She doesn’t have time for a boyfriend, but that won’t stop her would-be suitor, an equally self-righteous, mildly kooky Jewish writer—think Peter Beinart—from trying to win her heart.

By the time we’re halfway through the film, Emma will have decided that she simply must visit the West Bank, despite the enormous dangers posed by the Israeli occupation forces. She comes to this awareness while attending a Passover seder hosted by her aspiring boyfriend, during which he pulls out a fading photograph of his great-grandmother who was murdered during the Holocaust. 

Fighting back the tears, he confides that, “If she could see what Israel has become, she’d die all over again from the shame.” The two fall into each other’s arms, waking the next morning to a breakfast of matzo brei— as Emma tries to pronounce the name of the dish she’s eating, we giggle through the obligatory moment of light relief—before she’s whisked away in a taxi to the airport, and thence to the beautiful-yet-tragic land of Palestine.

In the West Bank, she cavorts with cute little kids—“just like the ones I teach back home”—drinks mint tea with effusive women who bear the daily humiliation of occupation with a smile and a shrug, and admires the steely-eyed men who stand up to the nasty Israelis with all the conviction of a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King.

Emma embraces their anger but concludes that violence is not the answer. Just before she leaves the Palestinian village that now feels like home, she regales the enthusiastically nodding villagers with a speech—tearful, of course—expounding on the importance of non-violence. “Don’t use bombs,” she exhorts. “Use boycotts.” Their applause can be heard all the way to the adjacent Israeli army base, where the commander is suddenly struck by the realization that the Palestinian aspiration for freedom can never be crushed.

Roll the credits. And don’t call it a chick flick.

With a movie like this one, art would be imitating life—to be precise, Emma Thompson’s life. Recently, the Oscar-winning actress joined with other darlings of stage and screen to protest the participation of Tel Aviv’s venerable Habimah Theater in a London festival that is performing the plays of William Shakespeare in 37 different languages.

In a letter published by The Guardian—a liberal newspaper with a long track record of publishing anti-Semitic material—Thompson and her cohorts slammed “Habima” [sic] for its “shameful record of involvement with illegal Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territory.” They ended with a demand to exclude the theater from the festival. No such objections were voiced concerning the participation of a Palestinian theater troupe, nor the involvement of the National Theater of China, which is directly funded by one of the world’s most repressive regimes.

In fact, there are many good reasons to ditch political objections and keep the festival open to all—which its organizers, to their credit, have done, in spite of Thompson’s fulminations. To perform Shakespeare is in itself a celebration of artistic freedom. Habimah’s version of “The Merchant of Venice,” the play that gave us the figure of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender who embodies anti-Semitic canards even as he challenges them, is sure to be enticing. And I would genuinely love to see how actors from communist China interpret the story of “Richard III.”

For those like Emma Thompson, though, boycotts are predicated on supposedly universal principles and then applied to only one target—Israel. To understand the strategy here, it’s worth recalling the campaign in the UK for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Ten years ago, an article in The Guardian noted that Israel’s universities are victims of their own success:

“The nature of Israel’s academic pre-eminence,” the article explained, “makes it vulnerable to a boycott.”

The same logic applies to the flourishing arts scene in Israel. The excellence of a theater like Habimah, along with its enthusiasm to perform outside Israel’s borders, renders it a sitting duck for boycott campaigners. In their warped view of the world, Palestinian freedom can only be achieved by quarantining Israelis on the basis of their nationality.

Thus do apparently free-spirited artists echo the racist policies of the Arab League, which began its boycott of the Jewish community in Eretz Israel in 1945, three years before the state of Israel was born.

What, then, is the appropriate response to Emma Thompson and those like her? Certainly not to make the movie I described earlier. Instead, they should be given a taste of their own medicine.

We are often told that Jews run Hollywood—the same Hollywood that carried on casting Vanessa Redgrave, Emma Thompson’s fellow Brit, in leading roles after she denounced so-called “Zionist hoodlums” in an Oscar acceptance speech in 1978. Will the studio moguls continue to indulge Thompson as they indulged Redgrave? Or will they show some gumption, and tell her that, for as long as she seeks to discriminate against Israeli artists, she will be banished from our screens?

I think I know, sadly, what the answer is. But I’d love to be proved wrong.

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Letter published in the Guardian: “We welcome Israel’s national theatre”

April 11, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , | by | 12 comments

H/T to Jonathan Sacerdoti, of the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, who wrote the letter in the Guardian posted below.

To read some background on the Guardian’s coverage of shameful efforts by UK artists to bar the Israeli national theater company from performing at the Globe in London (as part of next month’s Cultural Olympiad event) read here, here, here and here.

Briefly, a letter signed by 37 leading actors, directors, producers and writers – including Emma Thompson, Mike Leigh and Mark Rylance – published in the Guardian last week, called for the invitation to be withdrawn because Habima had performed in Israeli settlements.

The following letter was published in the Guardian on April 10th. 

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When is Saudi Arabian Apartheid Week?

March 2, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , | by | 8 comments

Posters below created by our good friend, Elder of Ziyon.

Actually, Israeli Apartheid ‘Week’ (is it that time of year already?!) spans three weeks, Feb. 20 to March 11,  and seems once again to be an abysmal failure – based on the dearth of media reports on IAW – given the organizers’ herculean efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state.  

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Middle East – you know, in countries whose citizens could only dream of securing the freedoms enjoyed by citizens of the region’s only Jewish state – religious discrimination is codified, and misogynistic mores are more or less blindly accepted.

I’d humbly suggest contacting the organizers of IAW and asking when they plan to organize Saudi Apartheid Week.  Though, realistically, those who suffer from such an acute case of Israel Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, IOCD, (See the Guardian for evidence of this seemingly incurable ideological virus) are not likely to be moved by even the most stubborn evidence of Israel’s progressive advantages. 

‘Global March to Jerusalem’ Update: Quarrels within anti-Zionist ‘Sunni-Shia/Red-Green’ Alliance?

February 24, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | by | 9 comments

A guest post by Hadar Sela

Since the publication of the two-part report on the Global March on Jerusalem scheduled for March 30th, further information and several new developments have come to light thanks to the work of some wonderful people.

 Aaron took a look at the subject of the registration and hosting of the various GMJ websites and found that they share an IP address with the website of the AhlulBayt Islamic Mission – the Islamic Republic of Iran aligned Shia missionary organisation in the United Kingdom. The server hosting both the AhlulBayt site and the GMJ sites is registered to a Leicester resident named Shabbir Hassanally. Read all the details here.

Mr Hassanally appears to be quite a fan of Hizbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah. In fact he puts considerable effort into making English language sub-titles for Nasrallah’s frequent speeches which he then posts on his own blog – apparently unconcerned by the fact that Hizbollah’s military wing is proscribed by his own government and that the glorification of terrorism is a criminal offence in the UK.  

Hassanally has also acted as roving reporter in Lebanon for the Palestine Telegraph – founded and edited by Sameh Habib (aka Sameh Akram Subhi Habeeb) who is also spokesman for the flotilla-organising ‘European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza’ which was set up by the Muslim Brotherhood’s European arm – the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE) – in 2007. The Palestine Telegraph proved to be too extreme even for its former patron Jenny Tonge and it and its editor have been involved in multiple scandals.

Here is Shabbir Hassanally celebrating the 32nd anniversary of the Iranian regime last year. Note his apparent subscription to the messianic Mahdi concept and his description of Israel as “the cancer occupying our beloved Palestine“.

If UK readers are now pondering the efficacy of their government’s ‘Prevent‘ counter-terrorism policy upon which so much of their taxes have been spent, they will certainly not be reassured by the fact that Hassanally has also been given a platform at the Muslim Shia Welfare Foundation in Leicester, which is – of course – a registered charity.

A variety of interested parties are making intense efforts to bring Jerusalem to the top of the publicity agenda ahead of the planned march next month, including a conference in Qatar earlier this week (for some reason apparently attended by UN representative Robert Serry), an incendiary press release  by the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual mentor Yusuf al Qaradawi and publicity on the websites of Hamas and ‘Unified Umma’.

However, it would appear that all is not rosy in the world of joint Sunni-Shia/Red-Green alliance project management.

From the Facebook account of ‘Viva Palestina Australia‘  (h/t to F.) we learn that initial enthusiasm for the GMJ project has been somewhat dampened due to apparent differences of opinion with co-ordinator Zaher al Birawi.

Feb 19

 Feb 21

Feb 21/22

Feb 22

 Feb 21

 

 Feb 21

Feb 22

 

Meanwhile, over at ISM California, Paul Larudee is chastising his fellow activists for not getting behind the GMJ in sufficient numbers.

Well well; it seems as though some people even within the ‘pro-Palestinian’ movements are waking up to the extremist nature of the GMJ venture and its leaders and organisers and the fact that such publicity stunts do nothing to help the Palestinian people.

About time.  

 

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Coordinated assault on Israel’s legitimacy in Montgomery County, Maryland (Part 2)

February 23, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | by | 2 comments

A guest post by AKUS

Read Part 1, Here

Part 2 – Susan Kerin coordinates the attack

When Montgomery County proposed raising the choice of Bet Shemesh as its second sister-city, a pro-Palestinian Montgomery County activist, Susan Kerin, began raising objections as early as 2009 – long before the recent violence carried out by ultra-Orthodox extremists in Bet Shemesh made headlines. According to the Washington Post:

Susan Kerin, a Derwood resident and a human rights activist, said the county has “dodged a bullet” by delaying the process.

Kerin said the city has had a “systemic” issue with segregation and hate violence. She said that since 2009, she has been telling the county of her concerns. In October, however, she was told by members of the Montgomery Sister Cities board that the agreement with Beit Shemesh was a “done deal.”…

Meanwhile, the county’s Commission for Women and the Commission on Human Rights are meeting in upcoming weeks to discuss the sister-city agreement. On Wednesday, the county’s Committee on Hate/Violence, of which Kerin is a member, held a conference call on the issue.

Kerin’s objection to Bet Shemesh was leveled on feminist grounds – the treatment of women in that town. If we go back to Gondar for a moment, no similar objection has been raised on the grounds that FGM may be widely practiced there. Clearly, what we are seeing is a false flag operation. There is an attempt to block a sister-city agreement with an Israeli city using the issue of the mistreatment of women by a tiny extremist ultra-Orthodox group as the lever.

This campaign has taken place despite the voluminous reports that virtually every Jewish community in Israel, including ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox Jews, has roundly condemned the violence and discrimination against women in Bet Shemesh and the little girl who was spat upon, women including leading female politicians have held flash- dances in the city to demonstrate their opposition to the perpetrators, there have been massive parades in the city to express opposition and disgust towards the perpetrators. From Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu down, the clear message has been that these acts towards women will not be tolerated.

So who is Susan Kerin, and why is she so concerned about feminist issues in Bet Shemesh, while not raising such concerns in the cases of Ethiopia, El Salvador, China, or Ukraine? None of those places is known as a beacon of light on the issue of women’s rights.

We have learned from the way the Guardian hides the true agendas of its contributors to peel back short bios that hide so much  (“a Derwood resident and a human rights activist”) and look at the track record of those opposing Israel.

It turns out Ms Kerin is quite an active supporter of Palestinian causes. For example, she had a comment  as long ago as September 7th, 2003 on Daniel Pipes’ blog about Palestinian refugees:

Submitted by Susan Kerin (United States), Aug 22, 2003 at 14:31

With regard to Pipes’ statute of limitation philosophy(sic) (i.e., that all rights to return are null and void when the parents die), I’m fine with that. But, of course, it would also apply to Israelis who claim a “right of return” based on a rationale that they might have had relatives living on the land 4,000 years ago. I presume most of those original refugees are deceased as well. Regards…Susan

Ms Kerin is a member of a Church group called PAX Christi USA – PCUSA. PCUSA noted February 8, 2012 that:

PC St. Francis Church (MD) coordinator Susan Kerin had a letter on Israeli-Palestinian issues published in the Washington Post … 

The letter was headed “Let’s talk about the plight of Israeli women”

This month, Montgomery County will enter into a sister-city relationship with Beit Shemash (sic), Israel, where the events described in the Dec. 28 news story “Religious limits on women roil Israel” were centered.

For several months, local peace and human rights groups have been trying to schedule a forum to discuss our concerns about the selection of that city from a human rights standpoint. County officials initially told us our concerns were without merit.

 One hopes that our county decision-makers might now be more open to a dialogue after reading The Post’s report, which indicates that even Israeli citizens take issue with the hate violence and discrimination taking place in that city.

This is not a sisterhood that reflects the diversity and tolerance of Montgomery County.

Susan Kerin, Rockville

The writer is co-chair of Pax Christi at St. Francis Catholic Church in Derwood.

But there is more. On February 5th, 2007, Susan Kerin published an account of her trip to Palestine. She chose to write about it at the well-known anti-Israeli, terrorist-supporting blog, Electronic Intifada. Her report included the following:

Next week, for example, my hometown of Washington, DC will host two Holy Land visitors. The warrior, Knesset Minister Benny Elon, will arrive with a hero’s welcome on Capitol Hill as keynote speaker for a reception to launch Congress’ newly formed “Israel Allies Caucus.” Sponsored by several members of Congress, invited guests will include prominent political figures and national Christian leaders.

[Lengthy description of Elon’s sins followed]

In contrast, Reverend Naim Ateek, the Anglican-Palestinian pastor who founded Sabeel, a nonviolent faith-based liberation movement, will also arrive here that same week and his small but loyal supporters have arranged a modest lecture at a local university and perhaps a lunch with some local pastors. It’s not that Rev. Ateek is reluctant to meet with Congress or prominent Christian leaders in the West. It’s just that, as a peacemaker, he is not well-known in these circles. My hometown is, after all, the global headquarters for Pax America. And Ateek, who was raised in Nazareth, advocates a different Way towards peace, one that is based on the teachings of his town’s most prominent native son… In contrast, Rev. Ateek would be able to provide these influential listeners with very intimate insight on the implications of such a plan, as he and his family were victims of the 1948 expulsions known as the Nakba….

Susan Kerin, an American Catholic residing in Rockville, MD, served as a 2006 peace delegate with the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPTs). She is the author of the soon-to-be-published book “Prophecy Interrupted” on Christian Zionism.

Sabeel is a virulently anti-Israeli organization headed by Dr. Naim Ateek who is far from being a “peace-maker”.  Incomprehensibly, Israel allows Sabeel to remain headquartered in Jerusalem. Sabeel thrives on infiltrating Christian churches, particularly the Presbyterian Church of the USA and the Toronto-based World Council of Churches to promote its anti-Israeli agenda.

Every two years an anti-Israeli hate-fest under the guise of promoting peace in the Middle East (at least that part that includes Israel!) is organized by a determined leadership group presenting anti-Israeli position papers at the biennial Presbyterian General Assembly. Sabeel is a founding supporter of the Kairos Document (which calls for a one-state solution)  issued under the umbrella of the fervently anti-Israeli, not to say anti-Semitic, Toronto-based World Council of Churches. Its organization in the USA is FOSNA  – “Friends of Sabeel – USA”. FOSNA’s “beloved patron” is none other than Archbishop Desmond Tutu, notorious for his accusations of apartheid hurled at Israel.

IsraeliNurse and I have written several times of Palestinian Christians’ malign influence on the Anglicans, Wesleyans, Methodists, and Presbyterians, and the way Sabeel has captured the leadership of these churches despite the objections of large numbers of their members. The method of small leadership groups staking out anti-Israeli positions before the people they represent realize what has happened is reminiscent of the same tactics used in the UK by small determined leadership groups of the academic and trades unions.

Via Pax Christi Sabeel appears to have infiltrated the Catholic Church in the USA as well, and via the possibly well-meaning but naïve Ms Kerin, is now using the concept of women’s rights to try to prevent Montgomery County from concluding its agreement with Bet Shemesh. Women’s rights are not famously well-protected among the Palestinian Christians  – Muslims in Jordan have even accused Arab Christians as perpetrating a higher per capita number of honor killings, for example, than their Muslim neighbors.

Yet even this is not all there is to this story or Ms Kerin’s support for the Palestinians. Ms Kerin is also a volunteer coordinator at FreeGaza.org:

Free Gaza Affiliates
The Free Gaza Movement has volunteers all across the world, available for media interviews and local coordination. In order to expand outreach, help spread information about our efforts, and get as many people as possible involved within their localities, the Free Gaza Movement encourages the establishment of local FG affiliates everywhere in the world.

VOLUNTEERS COORDINATOR
Susan Kerin
volunteer [at] freegaza.org

And here she is staging a protest on Capitol Hill: http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Susan+Kerin .

Finally, to cap it all off, the Washington Post report  reported that Kerin hopes to involve the Middle Eastern American Advisory Group:

Adams, a political ally of Leggett’s, said the nonprofit board [Montgomery Sister Cities, the nonprofit group that was set up by Leggett ]has proposed a public meeting on Beit Shemesh in late March. The board is also inviting the Middle Eastern American Advisory Group, a county committee that was contacted by Kerin’s group and expressed concerns in December about the sister-city agreement.

Who are the members of the “Middle Eastern American Advisory Group, a county committee that was contacted by Kerin’s group and expressed concerns in December about the sister-city agreement”?

Middle Eastern American Advisory Group: Member List 2009 – 2010

CLICK TO ENLARGE

It is a joke to consider that this is the group, which has no representatives of a certain Middle East country among its members, that is concerned about women’s rights in Bet Shemesh!  It is not difficult to believe that for many of its members their concerns lie with the very concept of a relationship with any Israeli city, or with Israel at all, rather than the attitude of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Bet Shemesh to Jewish women.

To sum up, one would have to be particularly obtuse to accept that the argument that Montgomery County should not form a sister-city alliance with Bet Shemesh is based on the issue of the mistreatment of women in the city.

Despite the fact that such mistreatment has been roundly condemned by the majority of Bet Shemesh’s citizens and Israelis, the issue of women’s rights is being used by a determined activist whose anti-Israel support includes Sabeel, Free Gaza, Electronic Intifada, Pax Christi, and this Middle Eastern American Advisory Group as a lever to delegitimize any contact at all with Israel. The Bet Shemesh issue was simply a convenient lever for a pro-Palestinian, pro-Gaza, pro-Sabeel activist to use against a County Council that doubtless has other things to worry about than what lies behind the curtain of half-truths and posturing that has been laid before it to hide her true anti-Israeli agenda.

One can only hope that the true nature of this carefully coordinated attack on Israel will be laid out before the Council before its meeting in late March and possibly influence the weight it ascribes to the motives of Ms Kerin and her pro-Palestinian supporters.

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Coordinated assault on Israel’s legitimacy in Montgomery County, Maryland (Part 1)

February 23, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , | by | Leave a comment

A guest post by AKUS

On February 11th, 2012, the Washington Post published an article titled:

Montgomery delays Israeli sister-city partnership following ultra-Orthodox controversy

“Montgomery” refers to Montgomery County, Maryland, which borders on Washington DC, and is one of the most affluent counties in America, recently lauded for having the highest percentage of citizens with post-graduate degrees. The National Institutes of Health, the Bethesda Naval Hospital and numerous Federal government agencies are found in the county. It is a region rich in technology start-ups. The I-270 interstate from Bethesda to Frederick is known as one of the centers of biotechnology research in the world, with companies ranging from start-ups to large global companies like Human Genome Sciences and Medimune having their campuses along its length.

Some rather lengthy background is needed to understand what lies behind this cryptic headline and the truly global conspiracy that has created the controversy and a carefully coordinated attack on Israel in this county.

Montgomery County has embarked on a program of creating “sister-city” agreements with at least five cities across the world with which different ethnic or national constituencies in the County feel a connection.

At Montgomery County – Our Sister Cities you will find that the county has plans for agreements with three cities and a desire to find appropriate additional sister-cities in China and Ukraine (click on the links below for details):

The agreement with Morazan was signed in July 2011. Montgomery County has a large population of immigrants from El Salvador and a large African-American population (County Chief Executive Isaiah (Ike) Leggett is African-American, for example) so the selection of Morazan and Gondar would recognize the connections of those communities to their heritages and their political heft.

But Montgomery County also has very large Jewish population, many of whom are firm supporters of Israel and very active in local and national politics. The selection of a town in Israel as a candidate for a county-city “sister relationship” reflects the existence of this large community. In addition, although Bet Shemesh is far from affluent, Montgomery County has been actively trying to encourage Israeli companies to open facilities in the area to bring high-value-added high-tech companies to the wealthy county, though less successfully so than competing and equally wealthy Northern Virginia, located across the Potomac River.

According to the article, Montgomery County’s Chief Executive, Isaiah Leggett, visited the Israeli town of Bet Shemesh in 2007 and talks began about the possibility of creating a county-city “sister relationship” with Bet Shemesh.

Bet Shemesh was intended to be the County’s second sister-city. “But now”, according to the article, “Montgomery Sister Cities, the nonprofit group that was set up by Leggett after his 2007 visit to coordinate the partnerships, is turning its attention elsewhere and looking to the historic Ethio­pian city of Gondar as the county’s next prospective sister city.” The basis for the change is an attempt by a local pro-Palestinian activist, Susan Kerin, to leverage the treatment of women in Bet Shemesh by ultra-Orthodox Jews as a way to prevent the agreement.

Before continuing, it is important to note in light of the Bet Shemesh controversy that in 2009 UNICEF published a report cited here (and there are many other reports available online) that stated that:

According to the 2007 UN Secretary General’s report on violence against children, Ethiopia is still one of the countries with the highest rates of Female Genital Cutting in Africa. The 2005 Ethiopia Demographic Health Survey (DHS) shows that the rate of FGM declined only 6% from 80% in 2000 to 74% in 2005.

This atrocious practice is so prevalent in the area that Israeli doctors were surprised to find that Ethiopian Jewish (Falasha) women who had been spirited out of Ethiopia and now live in Israel also practiced FGM, and apparently some still secretly continue to do so.

There has been no criticism of the prevalence of FGM in Ethiopia, or a suggestion that treatment of women in any of the other candidate cities or countries should be a basis not to form a sister-city alliance.

Only in the case of Bet Shemesh, as much as any sensible person condemns what happened there, has the treatment of women been raised as an obstacle to the sister-city relationship.

Read Part 2, Here

Clip of Israeli Amb to UK, Daniel Taub, blasting Deborah Orr at ‘Big Tent for Zionism’ conference

February 22, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | by | 38 comments

One of the many highlights at the Nov. 27 Big Tent for Israel Conference (on combating delegimization) I attended, and participated in, was listening to the keynote speech delivered by Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, Daniel Taub.  

Taub blasted the Guardian’s Deborah Orr regarding her hideous commentary on the Gilad Shalit prisoner release deal – in the context of his broader critique of delegitimization in the British media.

Speaking to a 700-strong audience in Manchester, the ambassador’s speech represented a call to arms, arguing that anti-Israel campaigns that delegitimize Israel opened a “new front for Israel” in the UK and were “a serious problem for those institutions and organizations which allow it to fester.”

Here’s a clip of the particular segment of his speech where he singles out the Guardian.

And, here’s Taub’s entire presentation.

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My speech on countering delegitimization @ ‘Big Tent for Zionism’ conference: Manchester, Nov. 27

February 16, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , | by | 97 comments

Here’s a clip of my presentation at a session I participated in at the ‘Big Tent for Zionism‘ conference in Manchester (November 27, 2011) on countering delegitimization in the media.

The conference was an enormous success, by any standard, for the organisers, the Manchester Jewish community and the inspiration behind the event, Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag.

More than 700 people attended the event aimed at encouraging  grass-roots advocacy and activism to counter the delegitimisation of Israel in the UK.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, H.E. Daniel Taub, was the keynote speaker and – as if briefed by CiF Watch before his speech! – called out the Guardian’s Deborah Orr for opprobrium as an especially egregious example of journalists who, abandoning any claim to objectivity, employ antisemitic tropes in the service of undermining the Jewish state’s right to exist. 

Participants at the panel discussion included Jonathan Hoffman, Richard Millett, and Richard Gold.

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Finkelstein: “BDS Movement is a Cult.” (The video anti-Zionists didn’t want you to see)

February 15, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , | by | 31 comments

BDS activists posted, then removed, this YouTube video of Norman Finkelstein blasting the BDS movement  - Yes, Norman Finkelstein! - during an interview with a pro-BDS activist at Imperial College, with an interlocutor who, no doubt, thought Finkelstein was on board.

Here’s what you saw when trying to access the video following its removal.

However, thanks to our friends Zach and Matt at Huffington Post Monitor (HPM), who downloaded the video (and trimmed the original 30 minute video to include only the sections calling out the BDSers) the clip anti-Israel activists didn’t want you to see is now available.

Here’s a transcript of the shortened clip, courtesy of HPM, as well:

I’ve earned my right to speak my mind, and I’m not going to tolerate what I think is silliness, childishness, and a lot of leftist posturing.

I mean we have to be honest, and I loathe the disingenuous. They don’t want Israel. They think they are being very clever; they call it their three-tier. We want the end of the occupation, the right of return, and we want equal rights for Arabs in Israel. And they think they are very clever because they know the result of implementing all three is what, what is the result? 

You know and I know what the result is. There’s no Israel! And if you don’t want the same framework then stop talking about the law and stop trying to be so clever. Because you’re only so clever in your cult. The moment you step out you have to deal with Israeli propaganda. And here they have a case.

They say no they’re not really talking about rights. They’re talking about they want to destroy Israel. And in act I think they’re right I think that’s true. I’m not going to lie. But this kind of duplicity and disingenuous, “oh we’re agnostic about Israel.” No you’re not agnostic! You don’t want it! Then just say it! But they know full well: If you say it you don’t have a prayer reaching a broad public. Because that’s where the public is right now.

I support the BDS. But I said it will never reach a broad public until and unless they’re explicit in their goal. And their goal has to include the recognition of Israel or it’s a nonstarter. It won’t reach the public because the moment you go out there Israel will start to say what about we and they won’t recognize our right and in fact that’s correct. You can’t answer the Israelis on that because they’re making a statement that’s factually correct. It’s not an accidental and unwitting omission that BDS does not mention Israel. You know that and I know that

It’s not like they’re “oh we forgot to mention it.” They won’t mention it because they know it will split the movement. Cause there’s a large segment of the movement that wants to eliminate Israel. 

You talk about BDS they make all these claims about their victories. All their claims. You know what? You use these ten fingers? These more than suffice to count all their victories. There are superfluous fingers here to count all their victories. It’s a cult! Where the guru says we have all these victories and everyone nods their head and no one sits down to do the arithmetic on their own.

Yes it’s had some victories no question about it. But the way people promote it as if it’s proven itself and we’re on the verge of a victory of some sort. It’s just sheer nonsense. It’s a cult. And I personally am tired of it. 

There’s no Israel. That’s what it’s really about. And you think you’re fooling anybody. You think you’re so clever that people can’t figure that out for themselves? No they understand the arithmetic perfectly well. Are you going to reach a broad public which is going to hear the Israeli side ‘they want to destroy us?’ No you’re not. And frankly you know what you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t read a broad public because you’re dishonest. And I wouldn’t trust those people if I had to live in this state. I wouldn’t. It’s dishonesty.

See full video here.

Related articles

CiF Watch Special Report on extremists behind ‘Global March to Jerusalem’: Pt 2, Europe Chapter

February 15, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | by | 11 comments

A guest post by Hadar Sela

Introduction:

As we saw in part one of this report on the ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ (GMJ) scheduled for March 30th 2012, the organisers are a conglomerate of people representing the ‘red-green alliance’ the world over. Radical Leftists, Muslim Brotherhood-connected Islamists and representatives of and sympathisers with the Iranian regime have once more come together with the aim of engineering an event which will result in PR disaster for Israel and advance their long-term assault on the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

The European chapter of the GMJ also represents a text-book example of what the Reut Institute termed the ‘red-green alliance’ in 2010 and in particular indicates that the naming of London as a hub of systematic assault on Israel’s right to exist in the Reut Institute’s report is still – two years on – very relevant indeed.

GMJ – the European chapter:

The radical Leftist ‘Anti-Imperialist Camp’ is promoting support for and participation in the Global March to Jerusalem by means of the following rhetoric:

Jerusalem has been a centre of the three monotheistic world religions for more than 1,000 years. This plurality has been threatened since the creation of the state of Israel and more so with the occupation of east Jerusalem and its annexation, in violation of international law. Jerusalem’s Palestinian inhabitants are subjected to a continuous process of expulsion from the city.

85% of its territory has been robbed by foreign settlers, while the Israeli state systematically destroys the livelihood of Palestinians. Every day, the Apartheid state of Israel demolishes Palestinian homes. Armed Israeli gangs, supported by the state, terrorise the old city’s inhabitants demanding, “Arabs out, Jerusalem is Jewish!” Jewish religious fanatics even attack Jewish women if they don’t abide by the rules emanating from their extremist interpretation of religion. All this is happening while the people of the Arab world are clamouring for democracy and self-determination

……..

After decades of submission to a world order dominated by NATO and Israel, the Arab masses have begun to rid themselves of their dependent and dictatorial regimes. 

………..

The sole reaction of the last settler colony in the world to the growing protest is increased brutality. The Apartheid state of Israel is hastening to create more facts on the ground, particularly in Jerusalem, before the balance of forces in the region turns completely against them. Once again, Israel’s claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East is exposed to be a racist fallacy – as only Jewish citizens are entitled to it.

As may be concluded from the type of language used above, many (though not all) of the endorsers of the European branch of the GMJ come from the radical Left

Individual endorsers:

Fatima Radjaie, Peace Movement, Karlsruhe, Germany
Thomas Zmrzly, Initiativ e.V. Duisburg, Germany
Ron Ridenour, author, Denmark
Benjamin Monnet, World Assembly Member, USA/Korea
Raymond Deane, composer and political activist, Ireland
Dekmak Haidar, coordinator Quds association in Lebanon
John Beeching, Hon. Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Yvonne Ridley, Vice President of the European Muslims League, England
Dr S Sivasegaram, retired professor, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
Nadine Rosa-Rosso, senior anti-imperialist activist, Bruxelles, Belgium
Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, publicist, Germany
Franz Fischer, Palestine activist and CC of the Labour Party, Switzerland

Organisations:

Canada Palestine Association, Vancouver, and the Voice of Palestine, Canada
Campaign against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq, Spanish state

Among the organisers, we find an interesting mix of radical Leftists and Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-linked veteran activists.

European preparatory committee for the Global March to Jerusalem
Rome, January 14, 2012

Zaher Birawi, leading Palestine activist, Britain
Gretta Duisenberg, Chair Foundation “Stop the Occupation”, Board member Free Gaza Movement, Netherlands
Leo Gabriel, Journalist and Anthropologist, Member of the IC of the World Social Forum, Austria
Dr. Hafiz al Karmi, Chairman Palestinian Forum in Britain
Mohammad Kozber, British Muslim Initiative
Wilhelm Langthaler, Anti-imperialist Camp, Gaza must live coalition, Austria
Mikalis Lukianos, Ship to Gaza, Greece
Daniela di Marco, Chair of Sumud – Anti-imperialist Voluntary Association, Italy
Moreno Pasquinelli, Anti-imperialist Camp, Italy
Ismael Patel, Chairman Friends of Al Qqsa, Britain
Attia and Verena Rajab, Palestine Committee Stuttgart, Germany
Elsa Rassbach, Film maker, journalist and peace activist, Berlin, Germany
Massimo de Santi, President of the International Committee for Education for Peace, Italy

Mikalis Lukianos is, as stated, connected to ‘Ship to Gaza, Greece’ which is part of the coalition of groups behind the organisation of the flotillas and which includes the ‘European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza’ which was established by the Muslim Brotherhood’s European arm, the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe, (FIOE) in 2007 and includes Hamas operatives among its senior figures.

Greta Duisenberg is a long-time anti-Israeli activist from the Netherlands. She sits on the board of the ISM-linked ‘Free Gaza‘ movement chaired by Huweida Arraf and is the founder of ‘Stop the Occupation’ . In 2003, during the second Intifada, her use of a Dutch diplomatic passport in order to visit Yasser Arafat in Ramallah provoked scandal , as have many more of her actions and statements.

Leo Gabriel is a member of the Austrian Social Forum who took part in the failed 2011 flotilla. A long time anti-Israel activist, Gabriel has participated in demanding that the partial embargo on the Gaza Strip (aimed at preventing the flow of weapons into that area) be lifted.  He also campaigns for the removal of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups from the European list of proscribed terror organisations. Here he is speaking in 2009 at a protest against the ‘Tel Aviv Beach’ project in Vienna.

Wilhelm (Willi) Langthaler is the other GMJ organiser in Austria and spokesman for the far Leftist  Anti-Imperialist Coordination (AIK) – mainly active in Austria and Italy – which courted controversy with its 2003 ’10 Euros for the Iraqi resistance’ campaign.   According to the Stephen Roth Institute:

The AIK (Anti-Imperialist Coordination), in particular, is involved in anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda activities and collaborates with Muslim extremists. During a “solidarity trip” to the Palestinian refugee camp Baka near Amman, leading AIK activist Wilhelm Langthaler asserted that the destruction of Zionism and the so-called state of Israel was “the only way to achieve justice” in the Middle East. He branded Israel “an apartheid regime worse than the one that existed in South Africa.” Before and during the US-led campaign in Iraq, the AIK together with other extremist left-wing and Muslim organizations organized pro-Ba`ath demonstrations against the US. In AIK publications, the murder of Israeli citizens (“occupants”) is supported.

Moreno Pasquinelli from Italy is also part of the Anti-Imperialist Coordination and a GMJ organiser. This former chef and long-time communist has, as mentioned above, been involved in supporting the Iraqi ‘resistance’ as well as Turkish extremists. In November 2011 he attended an ‘Anti-Imperialist’ conference in Bangladesh (together with Maan Bashour;  see part one of this report) and the previous month was to be found in Tehran at the regime organised ‘Fifth International Conference for Defending the Palestinian Intifada’, also attended by Khaled Masha’al and the General Secretary of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Daniela di Marco is secretary of ‘Sumud Volunteering and Resistance’ which appears to have interests in Lebanon. Sumud is also involved with the Italian branch of the ‘Freedom Flotilla‘ movement which is also planning another ‘flytilla’ on April 15th 2012 together with ‘Welcome to Palestine’.

Massimo de Santi is a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Pisa who last year attended the Iranian regime organised ‘International Conference on Global Alliance Against Terrorism for A Just Peace’ at which Ahmadinejad stated that “The Zionist regime is the main base for exerting cruelty and terror acts of the main terrorisms around the world including South America, Africa and the Far East; and this regime is the main pillar of terrorism and the unjust system of arrogant world“. De Santi is director of the ‘International Committee of Education for Peace’ and apparently thinks that France is a “danger to world peace” and promotes the idea that Israel is the ‘real threat‘  in the Middle East.

Elsa Rassbach is an American film-maker living in Berlin. She is the founder of ‘American Voices Abroad Military Project’; an “initiative to support GIs who resist in Europe” and is involved with several other ‘anti-war’ groups. Her particular bête noire appears to be American military bases in Germany. Rassbach is also a member of ‘Codepink‘ and took part in the organization of the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ ‘flytilla‘ in 2011 together with Mazin Qumsiyeh (see part one of this report).

Attia & Verena Rajab are prominent members of the Palestine Committee of Stuttgart and were involved in the organization of the 2010 Stuttgart Conference that produced the ‘Stuttgart Declaration’ which rejects a negotiated two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Ismail Patel is a well-known anti-Israel activist in the United Kingdom. An optician from Leicester, he founded ‘Friends of Al Aqsa‘ in 1997, which he also chairs, and which is described as being “concerned with defending the human rights of Palestinians and protecting the sacred al-Aqsa Sanctuary in Jerusalem”. ‘Friends of Al Aqsa’ is one of the organisations which collaborate with the Khomenist ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’ in organizing the annual ‘Al Quds Day‘ events in London. It is also part of the ‘Britain 2 Gaza‘ campaign.

Patel is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked British Muslim Initiative (BMI) and also sits on the board of ‘Conflicts Forum‘. He has been involved with Islam Expo and the Stop the War Coalition and collaborates with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He took part in the 2010 flotilla aboard the Mavi Marmara and has also participated in the ‘Union of Good’-linked ‘Miles of Smiles‘ convoy to Gaza organized by Interpal – a banned organization in Israel due to its Hamas links. Here he is in Gaza, meeting Ismail Haniyeh (far right, second row).

 (Note: second from the left at the back is Mohammed Kozbar; see below.)

An occasional contributor to the Guardian, Patel has tried to draw equivalence between British citizens serving in the IDF and those seeking to join terror organisations banned by his own country.

‘Friends of Al Aqsa’ was one of the groups involved with the UK speaking tour by Raed Salah of the Northern Islamic Movement last year and Patel was one of the public figures who rushed to Salah’s defence after his arrest.

Patel has made much of his self-described status as a “survivor” of the Mavi Marmara incident, using it as a platform to spread his anti-Israel rhetoric. Here he is at a ‘Rage against Israel’ rally in London in 2010 stating that Israel’s “days are numbered”.

Hafiz al Karmi is Chairman of the ‘Palestinian Forum in Britain’ (PFB) – another one of the organisations involved in the sponsoring of a speaking tour in the UK by Raed Salah, whom he also in prison.

(More on Ahmad Nofal here)

Al Karmi is also director of the Qatari funded Mayfair Islamic Centre in London (a registered charity), a member of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). In addition, he belongs to ‘The Coalition of British Muslim Organisations Concerned with the Rights of the Palestinian People‘ which produced this letter in 2009.

In 2010 al Karmi took part in a conference on the subject of European foreign policy towards the Palestinian issue alongside Osama Hamdan of Hamas, Istanbul Declaration signatory Daoud Abdullah, Alistair Crooke of ‘Conflicts Forum‘, Tariq Ramadan and a member of the Lebanese Al-Jama’a Al- Islamiyah.

Members of the Palestinian Forum of Britain are old hands at organizing anti-Israel demonstrations in collaboration with other Hamas/ Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups and the Iranian-linked ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’.

MAB: PALESTINE RALLY, London, UK
13 April 2002
Transport will be arranged from:
Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD LAUNCH BIGGEST PALESTINE RALLY IN THE UK, INSHA ALLAH

Supported by Muslim Council of Britain, UK Islamic Mission, Islamic Human Rights Commission, Stop the War Coalition, Palestinian Return Centre, Mayfair Islamic Centre, Palestinian Forum, Dawat-ul-Islam.
_________________________________________________________________________
Date: 13th April 2002
Venue: from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square: CONFIRMED

…………..

Contact Person:
Email: intifada101@hotmail.com
Mobile: 07958329879

Join the Children’s Demo to show solidarity for the children in Gaza and all over Palestine. Bring your children along; let us not be silent any more.

Date: Sunday 8th February 2009
Time: 1.30pm – 3.00pm
Place: Outside 10 Downing Street
Nearest Tube Stations: Charing Cross (Northern Line), Westminster (Jubilee Line) and Embankment (District and Circle Lines)

Organised by: Islamic Human Rights Commission and Palestinian Forum of Britain.

Supported by: Islamic Forum of Europe, Friends of Al-Aqsa, British Muslim Initiative, Muslim Association of Britain, Young Muslim Organisation UK, Palestine Internationalist, Muslimaat UK, Friends of Lebanon, FOSIS, CAMPACC, Islamic Centre of England, Innovative Minds and Palestinian Return Centre.

Join us to protest for the rights of the oppressed and innocents in Gaza. Join the Struggle for Justice.

In 2010 the Palestinian Forum in Britain organized an ‘Al Aqsa in Danger’ gala which featured among others Ennhada‘s Rachid Ghanouchi and Kamal Helbawy who joined the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 12 and functioned as its official spokesman in the West between 1995-7, establishing both the MCB and MAB. At the gala, Helbawy reportedly stated that:

“the resistance is the active heart of the Islamic nation, that resistance is the only language that the occupation understands, which Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, grasps well.” Helbawy called for action by everyone according to his capacity, “to liberate Palestine — all Palestine “.

Mohammed Kozbar (aka Kozber) is a senior member of the British Muslim Initiative (BMI) and a former director and member of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), both of which are connected to the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE) – the Muslim Brotherhood’s European arm. He is also a trustee of the Finsbury Park Mosque (also known as North London Central Mosque) and a project director for IslamExpo.

In his BMI capacity, Kozbar is involved with ‘anti-war’ groups such as the Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In the same role, he also collaborates with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and in December 2011 was to be found calling for the “end of Israel” at a London rally. 

Here he is in 2010 at one of a series of anti-Israel rallies following the flotilla incident:

Kozbar is also a member and former director of the Lebanese Association (or League) of Britain and represented that organization (alongside Hafiz al Karmi, see above) at a memorial to Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood leader and Union of Good trustee Faisal Mawlawi. In this announcement from last year, Kozbar is also described as a member of the Lebanese Islamic Association.

Kozbar is a trustee of a registered charity named ‘Lebanese Relief’ with an offshoot – also a registered charity – named ‘UK Care for Children’, of which he is also a trustee. Also on the board of trustees of the latter charity is Jihad Qundil – a senior Interpal employee.  Interpal is proscribed by Israel and the United States due to its links to the Hamas-supporting and financing ‘Union of Good’.

Here is Kozbar  (second from the right) posing for a photograph at the Gaza Legislature with members of an Interpal mission.

Zaher Birawi (also al Birawi) is official spokesman for the ‘Global March on Jerusalem’. He is also spokesman /media officer for the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) headed by Hafiz al Karmi (see above). The PFB states that it maintains the principle that “Palestine with its historic borders is an Arab Islamic land”.

As can be seen in the above announcement for the Raed Salah speaking tour, the PFB is involved in fundraising for the Manchester-based ‘Human Appeal International’ (HAI) – another registered charity in England & Wales proscribed by Israel due to its links to the ‘Union of Good’ headed by Yusuf Qaradawi. Human Appeal International was also directly named (along with Interpal) in the case of a Hamas activist tried for having been involved in fundraising for suicide bombings inside Israel.  HAI is linked to the Muslim Association of Britain and partners for fundraising purposes with another registered charity entitled ‘Syria Relief’.

The Palestinian Forum in Britain is also part of the coalition of organisations including Ismail Patel’s ‘Friends of Al Aqsa’, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Stop the War Coalition and  the BMI which came together to form the flotilla supporting and enabling ‘Britain 2 Gaza’ forum. The PFB also collaborates with many of the same organisations and additional ones on other anti-Israel projects.

In addition, Birawi is a trustee of the registered charity ‘Education Aid for Palestinians’ – also part of the ‘Union of Good’ – and acted as head of programming for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Al Hiwar TV established by Azam Tamimi. He has also acted as spokesman for George Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina’ convoys.

Birawi is most well-known, however, for his activities as a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked ‘Palestinian Return Centre’ (PRC) in London – an organization also banned in Israel due to its Hamas affiliations.  Prominent PRC figures are connected to Hamas and to the Muslim Brotherhood established ‘European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza’ (ECESG -which shares PRC office space), Interpal, MEMO and the MCB.

Here is Birawi sitting on Ismail Haniyeh’s right at a function in Gaza. Readers will also recognize Kevin Ovenden (to Birawi’s right; see part one of this report), Hamas Shura council member Mahmoud al Zahar and – on the far right – one of the Mavi Marmara participants.

Below we see Birawi (second from the left) at a classic red-green alliance event in Downing Street last September together with Sarah Colborne of the PSC, Mohammed Sawalha (see part one of this report), Lindsey German of the StWC, trade unionist Hugh Lanning, MP Andy Slaughter, former MP Martin Linton and member of the House of Lords and PSC & ECESG patron Jenny Tonge.

Conclusion:

The Global March on Jerusalem should be seen not only in the context of the broad alliance of anti-Israel activists of differing stripes brought together in order to get the project off the ground. It must also be assessed in terms of the interests of those providing considerable financial resources for its promotion and execution.

As pointed out on the ALAH blogspot , the campaign is obviously well-funded, allowing for publicity in several languages and frequent meetings of the organisers worldwide, including one for the European chapter scheduled for February 21st in London.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The financial and ideological backers of the GMJ are –each for their own reasons – currently in need of a high-profile event with substantial media coverage in order to compensate for their failures on other fronts.

With Hizbollah having been unable to produce anything of major significance in the past four or five years and its ally in Damascus under ever-increasing pressure, and with Hamas feeling the financial pinch as a result of sanctions on Iran and ideological differences with the Tehran regime over Syria, a major and well-publicised distraction is at this time of vital importance to all.

Unfortunately, as we saw in the case of the 2010 flotilla, such a need for a high-profile event is likely to result in tragedy.

The deliberate exploitation of the subject of the Al Aqsa Mosque – unparalleled in its sensitivity in the Muslim world – by the organisers of the GMJ makes this unnecessary provocation even more potentially volatile.

Cartoon on 'Global March to Jerusalem' site

It is to be hoped that governments worldwide will recognize this counter-productive assault on a fellow UN member state for what it is. Hopefully they will also realize that the ability or will of surrounding countries to prevent their being used as a launching pad for the GMJ provocation is severely diminished and that they must therefore step up to the line and take action to prevent their citizens becoming involved in this foolhardy and potentially dangerous publicity stunt engineered by hardline terrorist sympathisers, the terrorist organisations themselves and their financial backers.

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More proof that J Street is clearly outside even the broadest Zionist tent

February 11, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | by | 3 comments

The following essay, by Lori Lowenthal Marcus of the group Z Street, was published at American Thinker

Given the ideological bedlam often seen even within individual Jewish organizations, just imagine trying to get an entire community of Jewish organizations together to sign a several-paragraphs-long statement reflecting a single position — and to do that within a matter of weeks.

That miracle almost happened recently, when the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia gathered practically every Jewish organization in the Philadelphia community to send a message of strong disapproval to an anti-Israel coalition known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is holding a three-day conference at the University of Pennsylvania on February 3-5.  But the “almost” is necessary because one significant local group refused to join in.  Understanding who, and why, reveals important lessons that must be taken to heart.

Penn BDS was thrown together by a single undergraduate student with the goal of luring the BDS conference to the University of Pennsylvania campus.  BDS is a global, largely unsuccessful but widely publicized menace with the ultimate goal of demonizing, demoralizing, and destroying the state of Israel.  BDS proponents claim that their methods constitute a tool to achieve justice for those oppressed by Israel; they take their cue from the effort to overthrow the racist South African government during the 1980s.  But BDS is, in fact, merely a thin mask over enmity against any effective haven for the Jewish people.

Last month, when the Penn Hillel leadership learned that the BDS conference was to take place on their campus, the Philadelphia Jewish leadership was alerted, as was the Israeli Consulate.  A broad spectrum of at least nominally pro-Israel local organizations was quickly called together with the goal of creating a strong communal response. 

Mainstream local groups such as the Jewish Federation, the Anti-Defamation League, and Scholars for Peace in the Middle East — as well as those on the far left of the spectrum, such as the New Israel Fund and J Street, and those on the right end, such as Z STREET and the Zionist Organization of America — were included in this call to action.  Several decisions were reached: there would be a communal statement of solidarity condemning the BDS conference; there would be an event showcasing communal support for Israel just prior to the conference; and, to counter the campaign of boycotting Israeli goods, there would be a concerted effort to encourage people to purchase Israeli products.

The crafting of the communal statement took two rounds of drafts and delicate negotiations with each organization involved.  It fell to David Cohen, the senior associate for Israel and Middle East Affairs at the Philadelphia Federation, to ferret out each group’s rock-bottom red lines, then artfully craft changes to avoid crossing any of those lines, and finally to come up with a document that avoided all the pitfalls but still clearly condemned the strategy of BDS generally, and the holding of the BDS conference at Penn specifically.  

I was present at and participated in the meetings as the Z STREET representative.  In response to the first draft, I told Cohen that Z STREET objected to an emphasis on the ubiquitous “two state” mantra.  We think the one clear goal of the peace process should be peace for Israel.  Z STREET believes that the pro-Israel community disserves that goal by adding an additional goal which may not — and in our view, clearly does not — ensure that such peace will be attained.  While disappointed to see the “two states” language as part of the final version of the community statement, we decided that a show of community-wide solidarity is important.  More than two dozen other organizations felt the same, with each no doubt making its own ideological compromises so that the Jewish community could say something with one voice.

But there was a conspicuous absence from the Philadelphia Community Statement’s list of signatures.  Although its representative was present at the community-wide meeting and was included in the community phone calls, J Street refused to be a part of the community and would not sign the joint statement of condemnation.  Instead, J Street Philly issued a separate statement – one very different from the community’s in title, in tone, and in apportionment of blame.  As the local representative stated clearly, J Street wanted to “maintain the integrity of our values” and their “unique position on this issue.”

Whereas the Philadelphia Community Statement is officially one of solidarity with Israel and of condemnation of the BDS Conference, J Street’s is neither.

The Philadelphia Community Statement unequivocally condemns boycotting Israel, disinvesting from its companies, or sanctioning it.  J Street’s statement criticizes the BDS tactics but explicitly recognizes, validates, and agrees with the underlying sentiments expressed by those advocating BDS, which include “the ongoing occupation and diplomatic stagnation” and the “legitimate and warranted” and shared “concern about the present and future of the Palestinian people.” 

Of particular concern to J Street was a broad condemnation of BDS — one that lacked “nuance,” such as making exceptions for boycotting goods made in Judea and Samaria.  Also, J Street refused to criticize Penn, even subtly, for allowing the conference to be held there.  J Street was unwilling to include its voice in stating that “the outrageous claims of BDS campaigns do not stand up to the rigors of academic inquiry and as such, go against the sophisticated civil discourse that is a core element of the University of Pennsylvania.”

Worse, J Street seems to have issued even its own tepid statement with not even enough enthusiasm as to post it; the J Street statement does not appear on the J Street Philadelphia website or on J Street’s Facebook page.  J Street also refused to be one of the more than thirty co-sponsors of the “We Are One ” event with Alan Dershowitz.

Much has been about why and whether J Street is allowed in the “big tent” of Jewish communal organizations.  The argument in favor, of course, is the desire to expand the marketplace of ideas, to be as inclusive as possible, and simply to give a respectful hearing even to those with whom one disagrees.  But we now know what happened when J Street was unquestioningly welcomed into the Philadelphia community tent.  When given the first opportunity to stand as one with the community and speak with one voice from one tent,  J Street snuck out the back and pitched its own tent instead

(Editor’s note: Also, see following clip, from the PennBDS conference, at a breakout session on the “Academic Boycott of Israel”. During the Q&A session, a teacher asked Amy Kaplan, professor of English at Penn, how to incorporate BDS narratives delegitimizing Israel into college courses, even when the course has nothing to do with “Palestine.”)

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CiF Watch Special Report: Extremists & terror supporters organizing ‘Global March to Jerusalem’

February 10, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | by | 45 comments

A guest post by Hadar Sela, an Anglo-Israeli freelance writer

Introduction:

As spring approaches, so the annual season for publicity stunts aimed at undermining Israel’s legitimacy begins once more. This year several high-profile events are planned and, building on the success of last year’s thwarting of the ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ by means of pre-emptive dissemination of information, this report (and those which will follow) aims to provide essential background about the aims and allegiances of the organisers  which will be useful to those engaged in combatting the assault on Israel’s legitimacy, particularly in the media and social networks.  

‘Global March to Jerusalem’:

The first large-scale event planned this year is a ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ scheduled for March 30th 2012 – Land Day. The concept behind it is to have a million people marching on Israel’s borders from all the surrounding countries – Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. The aims, according to the project’s official website, are as follows:

“The march will demand freedom for Jerusalem and its people and to put an end to the Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and Judaisation policies affecting the people, land and sanctity of Jerusalem.”

“The march will confirm that the policies and practices of the racist Zionist state of Israel against Jerusalem and its people are a crime not only against Palestinians but against all humanity.”

“The march will unite the efforts of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and all citizens of conscience in the world to put an end to Israel’s disregard for international law through the continuing occupation of Jerusalem and the rest of Palestinian land.

We aim to make this march a turning point in the nature of the confrontation, with the occupation having to face millions of protesters and demonstrators demanding Freedom for Palestine and its capitol (sic) Jerusalem.”

Obviously Israel, like any other sovereign country, cannot permit mass infiltration of its borders, especially by people who identify with terrorist organisations and enemy nations dedicated to its destruction. The results are therefore likely to be grave and perhaps similar to the consequences of attempted infiltrations of Israel’s northern borders in June 2011. The march’s organisers are undoubtedly very much aware of those facts.

They will also be aware that the current turmoil and uncertainty throughout the Middle East means that the ability of the Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian or Lebanese governments to intervene in order to prevent such a dangerous scenario is now considerably reduced. Some idea of the mindset of the event’s organisers can be gleaned from statements made in the following e-mail exchange between two of them regarding a previous identical project. (All errors in the original text)

As I have written out in the report, the liberation of Jerusalem, of Palestine are at the core of all that we have done & will do. The point is that how do we build a movement that compells the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon & Syria to let us in (which is easy) & then let us march across the borders into Palestine, challenging the Israeli army (which is difficult). Thus the idea is to keep the idea simple – We are going to pray at the Wailing Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre & the Masjid-i-Aqsa & the Qubattus Sakhra. We will not apply for visas or permissions from the Israeli’s obviously not, for reasons known to us all. But imagine a situation where we have more than a million people streaming in from four borders & israel fails to stop the human tide. Once we have broken this mental barrier, then its all over. next time we will have 5 million who will be marching in & it will ony grow from there. This is exactly the nightmare situation for Israel. How do you handle a million ordinary non-violent people who want to go back Home? – how do you handle a million non-violent people who just wish to pray in their Masjid in Jerusalem, which is under our Occupation? Thius will undermine the Israeli state, like no other strategy & then it will all begin to unravel & the Zionist edifice which is unraveeling as we speak, will soon fall. It’s a matter of time now, as we well know.

Revealingly, the following statement appears in the FAQ section of the website of the American chapter of the Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ-NA):

Q: Why is there a separate GMJ-NA organization? 

A: Because of the laws governing citizens of the U.S. and Canada, legal advisers in these countries have determined that it is better for them to operate separately and not to participate in the decision-making of the international movement, but rather as an autonomous coalition. This is because some of the groups in the international coalition are subject to legal reprisals in these countries, and there is some risk that any joint decision-making might place citizens of those countries in legal jeopardy. The risk may be small, but this is an extra measure of safety for those concerned.

In other words, the leaders of GMJ-NA are very much aware of the march’s links to proscribed terrorist groups, and yet its endorsers include a rather predictable list of organisations and US and other nationals, including a UN employee and a former British MP.

Ann Wright, former United States Army colonel

Clayborne Carson, Professor & Director, Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University

David Hartsough, Co-founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce

Edward Peck, Retired US Ambassador and career US Diplomat

George Galloway, British Member of Parliament   

Dr. Ghada Karmi, Co-Director, Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter

Dr. Hatem Bazian, Senior Lecturer in Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Izzet Sahin, International Affairs Secretary, IHH

Joe Meadors, Veteran and Survivor of the 1967 Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty

Lauren Booth, English broadcaster, journalist and pro-Palestinian activist

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, American rabbi in the Jewish Renewal movement

Mairead Maguire, , Nobel Peace Laureate

Marcy Winograd, Los Angeles teacher, peace activist and former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives

Medea Benjiman, Anti-war organizer and activist

Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian democracy activist and former presidential candidate

Richard Falk, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University

Roger Leisner, Radio Free Maine

Ronnie Kasrils, South African ANC leader and cabinet minister

Samuel F. Hart, U.S. Ambassador, ret.

Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian-American author and Founder of Playgrounds for Palestine

Tariq Ali, British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator

GMJ International Advisory Committee:

Some of the GMJ endorsers also sit on its ‘International Advisory Committee’.

INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR THE GMJ
Maan Bashour (Lebanon), Dr. Ribhi Halloum (Jordan), Prof Paul Larudee (USA), George Galloway (UK), Khaled Soufiyani (Morocco), M K Sawalha (UK), Saud Abu Mahfouz (Jordan), Prof. Mohsen Saleh (Lebanon), Mazin Qumsiyeh (Palestine), Dr. Ghada Karmi (UK), Sheikhul Islam (Iran), Huseiyn Oruc (Turkey), Huwaida Arraf (Palestine-USA), Abdul Ghaffar Aziz (Pakistan), Sandeep Pandey (India),

Maan Bashour is the General Co-ordinator for the Muslim Brotherhood centre in Beirut, head of the preparatory committee for the ‘right of return forum’ and General Coordinator of the National Initiative Committee to Break the Blockade of Gaza (NICBBG). 

Maan Bashour

Dr Ribhi Halloum joined the PLO in 1966 and was its regional underground organizer in the UAE until 1971. He was a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and the PNC until resigning in 1993 over opposition to the Oslo Accords. He heads the Jordanian preparatory committee for the march and according to an interview he gave in December 2011 prior to the recent  GMJ conference in that country, “[t]he protest aims to move the right of return possessed by Palestinian refugees from theory to practice”

Paul Larudee is one of the founders of the ‘Free Gaza’ and ‘Free Palestine’ movements as well as the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) with which he was active during the second Intifada. He took part in the 2008 and 2010 flotillas, was deported from Israel in 2006 for trying to enter the country under a false identity and allegedly volunteered as a ‘human shield’ for Hizballah during the second Lebanon war. He was also one of the organisers of last year’s ‘flytilla’. Here he is meeting Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza in 2008 (from whom he also received an award the following year) – second from the left on the front row. 

George Galloway is of course a well-known figure on the anti-Israel activism scene, his activities ranging from ‘Viva Palestina’ in its various incarnations, to working with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War Coalition and being employed by the Iranian regime’s  Press TV. Galloway believes that “Hizbollah is not and has never been a terrorist organization” and that Israel is responsible for the assassination of Rafik Hariri. Here he is handing over cash to the Hamas Economy Minister at the culmination of one of his ‘Viva Palestina’ convoys. 

Galloway also promoted the Global March to Jerusalem on Press TV prior to the latter being closed down by the UK authorities.

Khaled Soufiyani is a former chair of the Arab National Congress and co-ordinator of the Moroccan organization the ‘National Action Group (sometimes ‘Task Force’) for Solidarity with Palestine and Iraq’. In 2010 he called on a Moroccan Jewish advisor to the king to leave the country as a result of the former’s suggestion that the Holocaust should be part of the curriculum in Moroccan universities. He is strongly opposed to any normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco, and in particular to the establishment of the Amazigh-Israel Friendship Association, and has made several attempts to use ‘lawfare’ against Israelis visiting the country. 

Khaled Soufiyani

Mohammed Kassem Sawalha is also a well-known figure on the British anti-Israel circuit and a former Hamas commander who, since his arrival in the UK in the 1990s, has been instrumental in the founding of a series of organisations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood including the Muslim Association of Britain and the British Muslim Initiative. Sawalha is involved in the organization of the various flotillas and convoys to Gaza through a variety of roles in organisations and charities linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and in collaboration with the Turkish IHH. Here he is at an IHH press conference last year (front row, far right):

Saud Abu Mahfouz is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front. He was a participant in the 2010 flotilla, along with several other Muslim Brotherhood members from Jordan, the former leader of which is on record as having stated:

“We in the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan see Palestine as part of the Islamic and Arab land that must not be relinquished – on the contrary, defending it is a national and jurisprudential obligation… We see Hamas movement in Palestine as standing at the head of the project of the Arab and Islamic liberation for which the Muslim Brotherhood calls… The Muslim Brotherhood supports Hamas and every Arab resistance movement in the region that works for liberation.” (memri.org report 4265)

Mohsen Saleh is a professor at the Lebanese University in Beirut who takes a consistently pro-Iranian line, opposes the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (accusing it of being a US-engineered attempt to destabilize Lebanon and weaken the ‘resistance’ against Israel) and defends Bashar Assad’s actions against the uprising in Syria.  

Mazin Qumsiyeh is a well-known Palestinian political activist. He heads the ISM-linked ‘Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People’ (which was involved in the organization of the 2011 ‘flytilla’), is a co-ordinator for the ‘Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements’ in Beit Sahour and was a co-founder of Al Awda (the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition) in the US. Qumseiyeh spoke at the 2010 Stuttgart conference which produced the Stuttgart Declaration – a call for opposition to a negotiated two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Ghada Karmi of Exeter University in the UK is also a signatory of the Stuttgart Declaration. A member of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) and a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Karmi has called for “the end of a Jewish state in our region”.

Sheikhul Islam is an ambiguous title in that it can be given to any high-ranking Shiite religious leader, but obviously the man concerned holds some prominence within the Iranian regime. The listing may possibly refer to Hossein Sheikh-ul-Islam; Senior Advisor to the Parliament Speaker for International Affairs of Iran.  

Huseyin Oruc is a member of the board of trustees of the ‘Union of Good’ linked Turkish organization Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), its deputy chairman and heads its public relations department. He was a participant in the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla and was involved in the planning of the failed 2011 flotilla.

Huseyin Oruc

Huweida Arraf is of course the American-born co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) who also chairs the ‘Free Gaza’ movement which is behind the organization of the flotillas. She has taken part in several flotillas herself, including that of 2010.

Arraf is perhaps best remembered for her provision of support to Yasser Arafat in Ramallah during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 when the Israeli army sought to put an end to the campaign of suicide bombings in Israel orchestrated by Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, and for her part in the ISM’s collaboration with the terrorists who took over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem the same year.  One of the more recent publicity stunts in which Arraf took part was the so-called ‘Freedom Ride‘ in November 2011 when she, together with Mazin Qumsiyeh and four others, attempted to enter Jerusalem without permits.

Abdul Ghaffar Aziz is a member of – and spokesman for – Jamaat e Islami – the Pakistani Islamist movement which has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and was founded by Abul Ala Maududi.

Sandeep Pandey heads the National Alliance (sometimes ‘Association’) of People’s Movements in India. He was one of the organisers of the Asia to Gaza Caravan, in which he took part and reported on extensively. The convoy included a variety of Islamist and human rights organisations and received considerable en-route support from Iran, including an official reception with Ahmedinijad.  Pandey is currently involved in promotion and organisation of the Asian chapter of the GMJ, describing it as an attempt to “counter the Judaisation of Jerusalem”.

GMJ International Executive Committee:

The ‘International Executive Committee’ for the Global March on Jerusalem also includes both familiar and lesser-known figures.

INTERNATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE FOR THE GMJ
Feroze Mithiborwala (India), Nabil Hallak (Lebanon), Bashir Zmaili (Jordan), Izzet Sahin (Turkey), Zaher Birawi, Kevin Ovenden (UK), Ali Mallah (Canada), George Rishmawi (Palestine), Salim Ghafouri (Iran), Shaheen Kattiparambil (India), Ramy Zurayk (Lebanon), Mustapa Mansour (Malaysia), Roohulla Rezvi (Iran), Gauhar Iqbal (India), Irman Abdurahman (Indonesia)

Feroze Mithiborwala was a co-organiser of the 2010 Asia to Gaza Convoy and is a member of Awami Bharat – an Indian political group which describes itself as being involved in an “international struggle against imperialism, Zionism, and Brahmanism”. He is also a member of the Muslim Intellectual Forum of India and the South Asian Solidarity Initiative and is the ‘Free Gaza’ national coordinator in India. Unsurprisingly for someone who relies upon ‘Israel Shamir‘ for information, Mithiborwala seems to be rather fond of conspiracy theories: the Moscow subway terror attacks were, according to him, deliberately timed to deflect attention from the BDS movement and Osama Bin Laden died in 2001. He is also of the opinion that:

..the Arab Revolution presents new possibilities & the epic 94-year-old struggle of the Palestinian people, a proud & ancient nation, which has inspired the world for generations, will finally see a new awakening & with it, a new hope, a new Intifada, the Third Intifada!!

It is only the resistance on the ground, within Palestine, across the Palestine diaspora, across the Arab nations & then across the entire world, will we finally witness the rebirth of a nation.

Feroze Mithiborwala presenting Khalid Masha'al with a gift in Damascus whilst en route with the Asian convoy in 2010


Mithiborwala meeting Mahmoud al Zahar in Gaza, 2010


Mithiborwala and other GMJ organisers at a conference of the Asian People’s Solidarity for Palestine in Karachi, 2-3 February 2012. Representatives from Palestinian organisations were also present.  

Nabil Hallak is an Irish-Lebanese citizen who took part in the 2010 flotilla and acted or acts as co-ordinator for the National Committee to Break the Siege on Gaza. Here he is being welcomed upon his return to Lebanon after his deportation from Israel in the wake of the flotilla. 

Nabil Hallak (top left, being carried)

Izzet Sahin is an employee of the IHH. He was deported from Israel in May 2010 after having been found working for that organization which has been banned in Israel since 2008 due to its ties to the Union of Good which channels funding to Hamas.

Izzet Sahin

Zaher Birawi is a well-known Hamas operative resident in the UK. He is connected to the Palestinian Return Centre which is banned by Israel, ‘Viva Palestina’, the Palestinian Forum of Britain and the ‘Union of Good’-linked charity ‘Education Aid for Palestinians’. Birawi’s connections will be further expanded upon in part two of this report.  Here he is (far left) in Gaza along with Kevin Ovenden and Mohammed Sawalha receiving an award from Ahmad Bahar of Hamas.

Kevin Ovenden (pictured above, second from the left) was Parliamentary aide to the former British MP George Galloway. He is a former trustee of Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina’ and very active in the organization and leadership of its various projects. He was aboard the Mavi Marmara in 2010 and has received repeated recognition for his services to Hamas. Here he is in Syria, addressing a welcoming party for one of the Viva Palestina convoys whilst standing under the flags of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party.

Ali Mallah is Vice-President of the Canadian Arab Federation which supports the removal of Hamas and Hizballah from the list of proscribed terrorist organisations and an academic boycott of Israel. He is also a leader of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and a member of the ‘Gaza Freedom March Liaison Committee’.

George Rishmawi could be either of two well-known Palestinian activists – cousins – both of whom have connections to the ISM and – like Mazin Qumseiyeh above – the Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement (PCR).

Salim Ghafouri from Iran acted as spokesman for the Asia to Gaza convoy. According to him, the “war with the Zionists” is not only an “Islamic-Zionist war,” but the showdown between the “truth,” represented by “the freedom-loving people of the world,” and the “lie,” represented by Israel and its supporters. Ghafouri also appears to be involved in advancing Iranian interests in Kashmir and has represented the ‘Iranian House of Latin America’ on visits to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Shaheen Kattiparambil was another Indian participant in the Asia to Gaza Convoy, and together with Pandey and Mithiborwala, issued this statement on behalf of of the Indian chapter of GMJ following its meeting on January 23rd 2012. All three, along with the Student Islamic Organisation of India of which Kattiparambil is a member, are endorsers of the statement by the ‘India Lifeline to Gaza’ according to which:

The Palestinian people must have the freedom to exercise their right to self-determination including their right to establish on all the territories that Israel has occupied, an independent sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital. The structure of Zionist apartheid, based on ethno-religious discrimination that Israel has established, must be dismantled and it must grant equal rights to all its citizens, including the “Right of Return” to the Palestinians refugees.

Rami Zurayk is a Lebanese agronomist at the American University of Beirut who has taken part in ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ and is currently promoting this year’s events on Twitter, where his profile picture is of terrorist Leila Khaled, and on his blog.

Roohulla Rezvi from Iran is cited by Feroze Mithiborwala as having been instrumental (along with Salim Ghafouri) in securing Iranian support for the 2010 Asia to Gaza convoy.

Gauhar Iqbal is a functionary of the ‘Human Welfare Trust’ which is included in the social service wing of the Indian Jamat al Islami. He also took part in the Asai to Gaza Convoy and is pictured here first from the left.

Irman Abdurahman is also a graduate of the Asia to Gaza Convoy and is a member of the board of executives of the Indonesian Society for Palestine Freedom (aka the Voice of Palestine) which states on its website that “[n]ative inhabitants of historical Palestine are people that are expelled and dispossessed from their lands and houses by force. Since 100 years to date the ultra-nationalist Zionist movement with support of some colonial powers has been doing this brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” The Indonesian chapter of GMJ has a Facebook group featuring a book by Gilad Atzmon, a speech by Khamenei at the ‘Islamic Awakening and Youth’ conference and this graphic:

Part two of this report will focus on the European chapter of the Global March to Jerusalem.

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Exposing the truth about the Global March to Jerusalem

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