Rick's Café American: 16 Feb 2009

Monday 16 February 2009

GAZA ARMS SMUGGLING

Dichter: Israel must take military action against Gaza arms smuggling

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: Gaza arms smuggling

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter urged the government to operate against the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip using the same military techniques employed against rocket fire itself.

"Egyptian action is too slow and the government must set an appropriate policy for the Israel Defense Forces," he told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

According to Dichter, arms smuggling remains "Achilles Heel" of the situation in the coastal territory.
"We must not wait until rockets are fired on Yavneh," he said, referring to a central Israel town struck by rockets during the war with Gaza last month.

Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin said Sunday that there have been several instances of arms smuggling from Egypt into Gaza since the end of the war, amid Hamas' efforts to rehabilitate the smuggling tunnels bombed by Israel.

"The Egyptians are acting [against smuggling] pretty slowly," Diskin said. "But there seems to be a positive change."

Militant groups smuggle arms and ammunitions into Gaza through tunnels dug along the border with Egypt and on boats along the coast. Egypt, which has kept its Rafah border crossing with the coastal territory largely closed, has agreed to help stop the tunnel smuggling with international technical assistance.

While Egyptian forces frequently report finding and destroying tunnels on the border with Gaza, the tunnels are usually found empty. Arrests of Palestinians accused of smuggling or caught in the tunnels are rare.

MIEP GIES MARKS HER 100th BIRTHDAY

Woman who hid Anne Frank from the Nazis marks her 100th birthday

By The Associated Press

Tags: israel news, anne frank

Anne Frank called them the "Helpers". They provided food, books and good cheer while she and her family hid for two years from the Nazis in a tiny attic apartment.

On Sunday, the last surviving helper, Miep Gies, celebrates her 100th birthday, saying she has won more accolades for helping the Frank family than she deserved - as if, she says, she tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland.

"This is very unfair. So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work," she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press this week.
It was Gies who gathered up Anne's scattered papers and notebooks after the hiding place was raided in 1944. She locked them ? unread ? in a desk drawer to await the teenager's return.

Anne died of typhus in the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen seven months after her arrest. British and Canadian troops liberated the camp two weeks later.

Gies gave the collection to Anne's father Otto, the only survivor among the eight people who hid in the concealed attic of the canal-side warehouse. He published it in 1947, and it was released in English in 1952 as "The Diary of a Young Girl." Retitled "The Diary of Anne Frank," it was the first book about the Holocaust to win popular appeal, and has sold tens of millions of copies in dozens of languages.

As she looked forward to a quiet birthday with her son and three grandchildren, Gies paid tribute to the "unnamed heroes" who helped Dutch Jews escape the net during the five years of Nazi occupation.

"I would like to name one, my husband Jan. He was a resistance man who said nothing but did a lot. During the war he refused to say anything about his work, only that he might not come back one night. People like him existed in thousands but were never heard," she said.

Jan Gies, who was not one of the four office workers who supplied the Frank family with their daily needs, died in 1993.

Such people fought a lonely battle in the Netherlands. Historians say collaborators were many and anti-Nazi resistance was light. Of the prewar Jewish population of 140,000, some 107,000 were arrested and deported. The Red Cross says only 5,200 of them survived the war.

Like the Franks, about 24,000 Dutch Jews went into hiding, of which 8,000 were hunted down or betrayed in exchange for a bounty.

After the war, Gies worked for Otto Frank as he compiled and edited the diary, then devoted herself to talking about the diary and answering letters from around the world. After Frank's death in 1980, Gies continued to campaign against Holocaust-deniers and to refute allegations that the diary was a forgery.

Though she ended her travels years ago and no longer gives interviews, her son Paul Gies says his mother "still receives a sizable amount of mail which she masters together with a longtime family friend."

Miep Gies suffered a stroke in 1997 which has slightly affected her speech, but she is generally in good health, her son said in an e-mail. She spends her days at the apartment where she has lived since 2000 reading two newspapers and following television news and talk shows.

A new edition of her 1987 book "Anne Frank Remembered" is due to be published this year.

Gies was born in Austria, and came to the Netherlands at age 13 to escape food shortages and live with a foster family. In 1933 she was hired as an office assistant in Otto Frank's spice business. Frank asked her in July 1942 to help hide his family in the annex above the company's warehouse and to bring them food and supplies.

The family, joined by four other Jews, hid for 25 months before they were betrayed. Repeated investigations by police and historians failed to definitively identify who turned them in.

NOT ENOUGH !!!

ADL chief: Pope Bendedict's condemnation of Holocaust denial not enough

By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: Jewish World, Abe Foxman

Abe Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, sought to temper the enthusiastic responses expressed by Jewish leaders following their meeting on Thursday with Pope Benedict XVI over the reinstatement of a bishop who denies the Holocaust.

"The problematic and controversial chapter of the church and the matter of Holocaust denial do not end with the pope's declaration condemning Holocaust denial," Foxman told Haaretz.

Foxman, who was present at the meeting in the Vatican, refused to echo the compliments which other Jewish leaders feted the pope over his forceful denunciations of Holocaust denial.

"A meeting between Jews and the pope is always an important, historic event," Foxman said. Yet, "as long as the church allows an anti-Semitic bishop who denies the Holocaust to continue in his post under the aegis of the church, this means that the church is saying one thing yet doing another.

" Foxman, himself a Holocaust survivor, seeks to emphasize that he appreciates the pope's condemnation and his moving statements on his planned visit to Israel. Yet, in his words, "you cannot say that you are against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial when you allow an anti-Semitic bishop and Holocaust denier to continue serving in the clergy."

"The church gave the bishop enough time to recant," Foxman said. "But he asked for forgiveness only from the pope and he said he is waiting for proof that indeed six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and the Nazis used gas chambers."

"Holocaust denial is a crime by law in key countries," Foxman said. "Only after the church recants from the rehabilitation and restores his prior standing as excommunicated can we say that the matter of the church and Holocaust denial has been solved."

The ADL is the largest Jewish organization active in the United States.

Israeli Exoskeleton Suit Enables Paralayzed People To Walk

HUGO CHAVEZ AND ANTI-SEMITISM

Hugo Chavez And Anti-Semitism

Michael Rowan and Douglas E. Schoen,

To win votes, he's using Jews as a scapegoat.

Venezuela's Hugo Chávez has launched attacks against Jews in a campaign to win support for a Feb. 15 referendum that, if passed, would allow him to run for president for life.

On Jan. 22, vandals broke into Tiferet Israel, a Sephardic synagogue only a mile from Chávez's presidential palace in Caracas, trashing Torah scrolls and spray-painting the walls with threats of death for Jews and Israel.

While he lamented the synagogue attack in a one-line statement, for weeks beforehand Chavez had vociferously rallied his supporters to protest Israel's war in Gaza, which he called a "genocidal holocaust against the Palestinian people."

He also expelled Israel's ambassador and demanded the presidents of Israel and the U.S. be prosecuted for mass murder. Immediately afterward, a pro-Chávez Web site called for boycotting Venezuela's small Jewish community, expelling Jews from the country and launching protests against the Israeli embassy and Jewish synagogues.

That's just what happened. A week before the vandalism at Tiferet Israel, vandals covered the outside walls of the synagogue with insulting phrases while anti-Semitic demonstrators gathered at the Israeli embassy--and Chavez's police stood by silently. The synagogue's security cameras captured images of the violators, but Chávez's police confiscated the tapes for an investigation that produced no arrests. In the later break-in, those same security cameras were taken by the offenders, so police currently have no tapes available for review.

In any case, in Caracas, Chávez controls the police force, which he nationalized rather than let opposition Mayor Antonio Ledezma lead them. In fact, soon after that election, Chávez thugs took over Ledezma's mayoral office, saying it was "liberated for the revolution." Since then, the office-less mayor has been powerless to address the anti-Semitic attacks or anything else, while his mum police report only to Chávez.

This is not the first time Chávez has used Jews as a scapegoat. Several times in recent years his military police have invaded Jewish schools and community centers searching for weapons, assassination plots and regime change conspiracies; naturally, they found nothing. Nevertheless, Jews have been traumatized or silenced by this scaremongering, and thousands of them have left Venezuela.

Jewish fear of Chávez mushroomed in 2007, when he entered into $20 billion worth of joint ventures with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including a shared bank and an airline with opaque operations that is frequented by Hezbollah terrorists. Plus, the U.S. government has designated a Chávez diplomat in Lebanon and a travel agent in Caracas as Hezbollah operators.

Indeed, Chávez and Iran speak with one voice about Jews. Chávez is a vehement supporter of Iran's nuclear ambitions and is a frequent visitor to Iran and Syria. He tends to link Israel, the U.S. and Jews in a conspiracy to rule the world through war and capitalism.

In an infamous Christmas Eve speech several years ago, Chávez said the Jews killed Christ and have been gobbling up wealth and causing poverty and injustice worldwide ever since. Chávez has declared war against the U.S.' "evil empire" and sees Israel in the same way Ahmadinejad, his partner, does.

Voters are strongly against Chávez's election-for-life referendum, and Venezuela suffers from the worst inflation and corruption rates in the hemisphere--as well as the highest murder rate in the world. But Chávez might still rig the election so it appears he won it; he has total control over who votes and how they vote through centrally controlled electronic voting machines.

There's evidence that he switched the yes and no votes on a recall referendum in 2004, that he changed a 5% victory to a landslide 28% so he could claim a mandate for his revolution in 2006, and that he planned to rig a 13% margin rejecting his president-for-life referendum but then settled for a 1% loss when General Raul Baduel and hundreds of thousands of students demanded a fair count in 2007.

The anti-Semitic campaign could provide cover for Chávez's electoral legerdemain. Always in search of an enemy to blame for his failure at dealing with poverty and corruption, Chávez has steadily vanquished opposition political parties, while Chávez's "devil"--former president George W. Bush--has exited the scene.

In a shameless display of cynicism, Chávez wants to scare his dwindling supporters into believing that the Jews are going to destroy the revolution, assassinate him and take away whatever goodies he may hand out. Chávez figures enough voters might just fall for it, making him look like an underdog who has challenged those with money and power. Meanwhile, his strategic allies in Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas stay satisfied.

Chávez needs an enemy to blame for missing eggs and meat at the market, soaring prices, rampant unemployment and crime--and who better than the Jews?

Michael Rowan and Douglas E. Schoen are political consultants and writers who have lived or worked in Venezuela since 1993. They are the co-authors of The Threat Closer to Home,published in January by the Free Press.

taken from : Forbes.com (http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/13/chavez-jews-referendum-opinions-contributors_0215_rowan_schoen.html)

BBC FIGHTS TO HIDE REPORT ON ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS

BBC Fights to Hide Report on Anti-Israel Bias

by Maayana Miskin

(IsraelNN.com) The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is fighting a court order that would force it to reveal an internal report on anti-Israel bias. The media giant has reportedly spent 200,000 British pounds (roughly $280,000) on the case.

The legal battle was started by attorney Steven Sugar of London, who contends that the report on bias in its coverage must be made public under the Freedom of Information Act. The 20,000-word report is rumored to have concluded that the BBC's coverage was biased against Israel, a conclusion that Sugar says is of public interest.

The BBC argues that the document is protected under a clause exempting information held for journalistic purposes from the Freedom of Information Act.

The case has been through Britain's Information Tribunal, High Court and Appeals Court, and will now return to the High Court. The most recent round, in the Appeals Court, ended in Sugar's favor.

The BBC has faced numerous charges of anti-Israel bias, including an official complaint from Israel in 2004 after correspondent Orla Guerin dismissed terrorists' use of a teenage would-be suicide bomber as “a picture that Israel wants the world to see.” In the complaint, Minister Natan Sharansky accused Guerin of anti-Semitism and “total identification with the goals and methods of Palestinian terrorist groups.”

In the previous year, Israel had temporarily boycotted the BBC over allegations made in a documentary on Israel's weapons arsenal.

"This is not an organization that is there to get the truth. It's there to level every real or imagined accusation against Israel,” Israeli press office director Danny Seaman said at the time.
The BBC recently aroused fury among pro-Gaza activists by announcing that it would not air an appeal for money for repairs following Israeli counterterrorism operations in the area because the appeal could undermine the station's objectivity. The decision was seen by some as a reaction to charges of anti-Israel bias during coverage of the Gaza fighting.

taken from : Israel National News (http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/129932)

MODERN SEGREGATION HAS AN ISLAMIST FACE

Modern Segregation Has an Islamist Face

by David J. Rusin

In the twentieth century, minority groups such as African-Americans struggled and sacrificed to achieve integration with the societies that had excluded them. In the twenty-first century, some Muslims hope to run history in reverse, demanding separation from their Western neighbors. Three news items highlight different stages and aspects of this phenomenon.

First, it has been revealed that a primary school in Sheffield, England, holds weekly Muslim-only assemblies. The arrangement became known due to the head mistress being forced out after she insisted on mixed gatherings instead:

A teacher, who asked not to be named, said: "The head inherited the separate assemblies and she took careful advice on what to do.

"But when she tried to stop them, she was accused of being a racist. She wanted to hold assemblies for all the pupils. That is what happens in most schools but some parents wanted things to stay as they were."

Accommodating separatism only serves to encourage the adherents of Islam described in the second article. Based on a new poll, many UK Muslims "want to create their own communities and remain segregated from British society," with 44% believing that "they should be free to develop along separate lines." The numbers are similar to those of previous surveys indicating that four in ten British Muslims would prefer to be governed by Shari'a law.

Responding to the revelation, English Democrats' chairman Robin Tilbrook said, "If people don't want to integrate, they shouldn't be here. It's not at all right to have what's really a sort of ghetto situation developing — it's going to lead to trouble."

The third story illustrates the "trouble" stemming from one such "ghetto situation." Specifically, a study has found that "radical Islamists have a stranglehold" on a section of Malmö, Sweden:
"Families who have just moved into the neighborhood and who have never been particularly religious or traditional claim that they led freer lives in their home country than in Rosengaard," the report said.

Muslim women who did not wear the veil in their home country were, for example, obliged to don it, according to the study.

The authors also singled out "cellar mosques" whose members serve as a kind of "thought police."

Abraham Lincoln warned that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." A century and a half later, the West must relearn this lesson — or risk similarly catastrophic results.

taken from : Islamist Watch Blog (http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2009/02/modern-segregation-has-an-islamist-face.html)

images from LatterDay's blog (http://latterdays.stumbleupon.com/)