Wednesday, 11 February 2009

THE BBC REPORTS ON LIEBERMAN



The BBC is one of the world's top media outlets; some would simply say it's the top. It's not some blog some fellow uses to bloviate. It's a serious place.


Here's what its website has to tell us about Avigdor Lieberman's party today:


Meanwhile, far-right winger Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party may beat Labour into third place...


Mr Lieberman says he is opposed to the principle of "land-for-peace", on which the two-state solution is based. He wants a "land-for-land" swap - the transfer of areas in Israel currently populated by Israeli-Arabs to the control of the Palestinian Authority, in exchange for Israeli control of major Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank...


Although described as "far right", Mr Lieberman has backed giving some predominantly Arab areas of East Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority as part of a land swap deal, but says he is opposed to any sharing of the holy sites in the Old City...


Mr Lieberman lives in a settlement himself. His land swap plan would also involve Israel relinquishing parts of the West Bank - presumably including the settlers on them - but it is assumed this would be less than under Ms Livni or Mr Barak's two-state solution, as some areas would be kept in exchange for Israeli-Arab areas of Israel...

Mr Lieberman advocates totally severing links with Gaza - for example tightening the blockade by closing all the crossings in and out of the Strip and ending the transfer of humanitarian goods through Israeli ports and territory...


As Mr Lieberman is opposed to the concept of "land-for-peace", he objects to the type of deal Ms Livni and Mr Barak would pursue. He says Israel should hit back at Syria if it is attacked from Lebanon, and backs what he describes as a "peace-for-peace" deal where Syria would gain recognition and economic aid from the international community in exchange for accepting an Israeli presence in the Golan on a renewable 99-year lease...


Back when I taught 7th graders, I assure you I would have flunked any student who had written such a description. I'm not talking about adherence to facts, mind you, though one might expect that, too, from a reputable media outlet. I'm talking about simple coherence, such as if Lieberman is or isn't willing to hand over control of territories to Palestinians. Or if he is center, right, far right, or anything else, and what the criteria for the depiction are. Simple things like that: that's all I'd like to have from someone telling me stuff.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)

Israel Matzav: 'Palestinian' women urged to sacrifice their children#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: 'Palestinian' women urged to sacrifice their children#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Amnesty accuses Hamas of 'eliminating' rivals, calls on Hamas to allow 'investigation'#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Amnesty accuses Hamas of 'eliminating' rivals, calls on Hamas to allow 'investigation'#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Arab newspapers view all candidates as 'extremists'#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Arab newspapers view all candidates as 'extremists'#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Israel's Alabama moment#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Israel's Alabama moment#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: What if there were rockets in Judea and Samaria#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: What if there were rockets in Judea and Samaria#links#links#links

Tuesday, 10 February 2009

Israel Matzav: The price for Shalit goes up again#links#links

Israel Matzav: The price for Shalit goes up again#links#links

Israel Matzav: Iraqi MP: 'Only nations living in the past produce martyrs'#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Iraqi MP: 'Only nations living in the past produce martyrs'#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Video: Boy Scouts of Hezbullah#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Video: Boy Scouts of Hezbullah#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: British diplomat arrested after expletive-laced tirade against Jews#links#links

Israel Matzav: British diplomat arrested after expletive-laced tirade against Jews#links#links

Israel Matzav: Another myth exposed: Most Israelis oppose a 'Palestinian' state#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Another myth exposed: Most Israelis <i>oppose</i> a 'Palestinian' state#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Pallywood 1948#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Pallywood 1948#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Hopenchange for Syria#links#links

Israel Matzav: Hopenchange for Syria#links#links

Israel Matzav: Shalit exchange means the end of Fatah?#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Shalit exchange means the end of Fatah?#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Shiny Happy Dhimmi#links#links

Israel Matzav: Shiny Happy Dhimmi#links#links

Israel Matzav: Gaza in Malmo#links#links

Israel Matzav: Gaza in Malmo#links#links

Israel Matzav: Clenching Israel's fists#links#links

Israel Matzav: Clenching Israel's fists#links#links

EDUCATION IS ALL IN OUR MIND



I spent eight years of my early adulthood teaching high school - long enough to prove I could do it without the students cowing me, a real problem in Israeli schools full of cocky adolescents with zero tolerance for their elders. Actually, once I got the hang of compelling them to listen long enough that they started to learn, I mostly enjoyed it, and in all the years since have never again encountered such a concentration of fine minds as the more unruly 11th or 12th graders I used to confront.


So I'm not automatically into educational policies based on what you might call touchy-feely tactics of making the students feel good about themselves and what have you. Find the way to challenge them, and then never stop doing it, if you ask me. Ah, and employ fine teachers, who know their material and know their trade (or art, more likely).


Still, Richard E. Nisbett's op-ed column in the NYT explains why with some groups, a little bit of that is exactly what's needed - and not the large expensive and grandiose programs. I think his point is that with some groups, there's a societal handicap that convinces the kids they can't learn and succeed, so they don't; remove that by suggesting it's all about their efforts, not their identity, and they'll flourish. Sounds reasonable to me: set it up so they decide to learn, and they will.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)

JUST JOURNALISM



While I'm linking to stuff without seriously reading it, Gavin sends us to the Just Journalism report on the Gaza Operation. Just Journalism is an outfit that has taken upon itself the hopeless and thankless task of holding British journalism to its own professional standards on issues of Israel and its neighborhood. I get bellyaches from doing this as a hobby; these folks deserve either a medal or a straitjacket, or both. Anyway, their Gaza report is here; if you ever get up in the morning with a feeling of unwanted elation, this will do the trick to get you back to normal.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)

UNRWA



John Lindsay, who was apparently the top lawyer at UNRWA from 2002-2007, isn't exactly the type of person you'd expect to find at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Still, someone had the inspired idea of hosting him, and the result seems to have been worth the effort. He has recently published a paper about what UNRWA does and what it could do better. I have so far only read the first few pages, in between other more pressing activities, but it certainly seems an item we need to be looking at (p. xi):


The most important change, the one mostrequired and least subject to rational disagreement,is the removal of citizens from recognized states—persons who have the oxymoronic status of “citizenrefugees”—from UNRWA’s jurisdiction. This wouldapply to the vast majority of Palestinian “refugees”in Jordan, as well as to some in Lebanon. If a Palestinianstate were created in Gaza and/or the WestBank, such a change would affect Palestinian refugeesin those areas. Meanwhile, for those who are stilldefined as refugees, UNRWA’s move toward greateremphasis on need-based assistance, as opposed tostatus-as-refugee-based assistance, should be accelerated.No justification exists for millions of dollarsin humanitarian aid going to those who can affordto pay for UNRWA services. In addition, UNRWAshould make the following operational changes: haltits one-sided political statements and limit itself tocomments on humanitarian issues; take additionalsteps to ensure the agency is not employing or providingbenefits to terrorists and criminals; and allowthe UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO), or some other neutral entity, toprovide balanced and discrimination-free textbooksfor UNRWA schools.
With the above changes, UNRWA would be betteraligned with what should be its ultimate objectives.For the Palestinians it serves, this means ending theirrefugee status and returning, after nearly sixty years, towhat most of them so desperately seek: normal lives.


According to Haaretz, the report is predictably raising hackles at UNRWA itself:


An UNRWA spokesman slammed the report, accusing the author of bias and a failure to employ a sufficiently wide range of sources.


"The agency is disappointed by the findings of the study, found it to be tendentious and partial, and regrets in particular the narrow range of sources used," Andrew Whitley, director of the UNRWA representative office at UN headquarters in New York, said.


"The study ignores the context in which UNRWA operates and the tight line the agency walks due to various pressures," Whitley said. "Someone reading this paper with no background would assume that the Israeli government was a benign actor. No mention is made of the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."


Here's a proposed translation: Lindsay doesn't realize we're beholden to the Arab version of the story ("various pressures"), and his starting point isn't that Israel is the source of all evil. Sniff.


If I ever find the time I'll read and report, but now you know it's there, feel free not to wait for me. Go ahead, by all means.
takem from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)

ON HAVING AN OPINION, AND PUBLICIZING ONE



Well, it looks like I'm getting flak for that previous post: do you mean to say, Yaacov, that one needs truly to be an expert and know the right languages before having an opinion? So here's some clarification:


First, there's a difference between having an opinion and publicizing it in a public forum, such as the BBC. The larger the forum, I'd argue, the greater care one ought to take when expressing one's opinion. Yes, I stand by that - and the BBC is one of the most public of forums the world can offer, and it even comes with a mantle of respectability that was acquired, sometimes at great price, over generations.


Second, if you read my response, it contained a twist: Not only was I castigating the ignorance of the BBC person, who lacks the qualifications to educate us on her topic; I was also saying that even after I had spent something like 15 years on acquiring the qualifications, some experts still felt I was wrong (and they may have been right).


Third, I pointed to the silliness of her methodology: in order to say something about the Israelis, she asked some Palestinians.


I was not saying one must have a PhD in order to have an educated opinion, nor that academia is necessarily better at reaching the truth than journalism. Actually, academia is often a poor way - look at Prof. Juan Cole. And journalism can be a very reasonable way for understanding reality - keep in mind the number of times I have praised Avi Issacahroff, a journalist who really knows what he's talking about.


That was my point. That some people take the time, acquire the languages, and make the effort - a never-ending one, by the way - to become experts. Other people don't. The first group are worth listening to, whether we like their opinions or not. The second are harmless if they talk to themselves, and an affront to our intelligence if they pontificate from a public stage.

To Shaul who reproves me for doing the same, my response is that I try not to. At times I link to things other people write, but as a general rule, I talk about the things I've acquired some expertize about: Jewish things, German things, American things. I'm told the Spanish are virulent antisemites these days: yet I haven't written about this, because I lack the language, the background and the context; so I leave that to others. Nor, to my best recollection, have I written about the Iranians, the Kurds, the Turks, or the Iraqis, even though they all touch upon the story I do tell. The two exceptions are the Palestinians and the Islamists. But even then, I try to be careful. Not knowing Arabic, the most I can say about the Islamists is that according to what I can see and read, they have patterns of cognition and behavior which resemble earlier patterns I actually do know a lot about, as an expert. As for the Palestinians, I really don't know what makes them tick, but unlike the BBC lady, I've been watching them from close up for my entire life, I read lots about them that comes from experts who know more than I, I read translations of things they say - and after all that, I try to limit my statements about them to what I feel competent to say.


It's a free world (part of it, though not the Gazan part), and people can say what they will. Even BBC folks can. But by putting themselves in the public square, they also put themselves up to our scrutiny - and to our derision, if justified.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)

Stop Raping Israel: It Still Exists

Stop Raping Israel: It Still Exists

ATTACKS ON JEWS AND JEWISH PROPERTY INCREASING IN S. AMERICA



Jews in S. America Increasingly Uneasy


Government and Media Seen Fostering Anti-Semitism in Venezuela, Elsewhere


"We are blaming the incendiary rhetoric of government officials and media," says Miguel Truzman, at the synagogue vandalized Jan. 30. (By Juan Forero -- The Washington Post) CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 7 -- Jewish leaders said it had never before happened in Venezuela: a break-in with anti-Jewish intent at one of the city's most prominent synagogues. A dozen armed men overpowered guards, spray-painted office walls with anti-Semitic insults, desecrated historic Torah scrolls and made off with computers containing personal information on congregants.


President Hugo Chávez condemned the Jan. 30 attack, which has shaken the country's political establishment. But Jewish leaders, supported by Israeli and U.S. officials, have said the populist government's often incendiary rhetoric toward the Jewish state, coupled with rising anti-Semitic diatribes in pro-government media, has helped foster a climate of intolerance that might have prompted assailants to target the Tiferet Israel synagogue.


Anger at Israel's recent military strikes in the Gaza Strip against the Islamist group Hamas have sparked demonstrations here and in two countries closely allied with Venezuela: Bolivia and Argentina.


But Jews in these countries are concerned about the growing anti-Semitic tone of the protesters, who frequently equate Israel with Nazi Germany, a theme increasingly evident on placards that juxtapose the Star of David with the swastika and in some public pronouncements.


In Argentina -- which has the largest Jewish population in Latin America, about 250,000-strong -- Jewish leaders describe a tense climate in which swastikas have been painted on Jewish schools, and graffiti demanding that Jews leave the country have been scrawled on walls. Protests have taken place at the Israeli Embassy, and demonstrators have also gathered in front of the InterContinental Hotel, which is owned by a prominent Argentine Jewish businessman, Eduardo Elsztain.


"It has created a climate of worry, a climate of terror," said Julio Schlosser, secretary general of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, whose building was destroyed by a bombing in 1994 that killed 85 people. Prosecutors have accused the Iranian government and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement in the attack.


In Bolivia, where President Evo Morales expelled the Israeli ambassador over the Gaza war, residents have held peaceful protests in several cities. But with the demonstrations have also come troubling signs of anti-Semitism. In the Plaza Israel in the capital of La Paz, for instance, vandals removed a large Star of David from a monument and spray-painted "plaza palestina" on it.


"I think it is the worst that we have seen it in all the years," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League in New York, adding that outside of the Middle East, anti-Semitism has been most intense in Latin America. "There is no longer even an effort to differentiate between criticism of Israel and criticism of the Jewish people."
In Venezuela, Jewish leaders say they have felt harassed under the Chávez government and anxious about Venezuela's tightening alliance with Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has called for Israel's destruction.
In December 2007, authorities in Caracas raided the Jewish community's social club, searching for guns, which were not found. Then last month, tear gas was tossed inside Tiferet Israel's compound, and anti-Semitic messages were spray-painted on the outer walls.
A prominent rabbi reported being threatened by men who addressed him as "Jew." He was whisked away to safety by a cabdriver who witnessed the confrontation, said Michael Truzman, a lawyer for the Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela, a group representing the Jewish community. He and other leaders put the blame squarely on the president, who aside from controlling all levers of official power in the country also directs Venezuela's formidable state media apparatus.
"We are blaming the incendiary rhetoric of government officials and media," Truzman said. "The language used by the president and high government officials and different personalities in the media has provoked a campaign that has led to hate against a minority community."
After breaking relations with Israel over Gaza and expelling the ambassador and six other Israeli diplomats, Chávez gave a series of speeches in which he called Israel's government "the assassin arm of the United States" that is carrying out "a genocidal policy." Chávez urged Venezuela's Jewish community to "speak out" against the Gaza strikes. "Don't you the Jews reject the Holocaust?" he said. "Isn't that what we're seeing?"
Even more troubling to Jewish leaders has been commentary in the state press and on such Web sites as Aporrea, which is closely linked to the government. Pro-government pundits have waxed on about Jewish control of U.S. foreign policy and banks and offered conspiracy theories about the Holocaust ("Hitler's associates were Jewish," one commentator said last year on state television).
One commentator on Aporrea called on Venezuelans to boycott companies owned by Jews and "publicly challenge every Jew that you find in the street."
At first, the Venezuelan government suggested that opposition figures might have carried out the attack on the synagogue to cast blame on the government ahead of a referendum next Sunday. In that election, the government is asking residents to vote for a constitutional amendment that would allow Chávez to run for office an indefinite number of times.
"All this is part of a great lie that is trying to be built against Venezuela," Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro said in the past week. Five days after the attack, Maduro and Communications Minister Jesse Chacón met with Jewish leaders and promised an investigation.
"Why do they have to blame me for everything?" Chávez said Friday. "They attacked the synagogue, and we condemned the act and we're investigating." On Thursday in Caracas, Jews gathered outside the synagogue for a solemn ceremony of speeches and prayer.
Suddenly, as Rabbi Isaac Cohen was to speak, a bus carrying the president's supporters, in their trademark red T-shirts, passed. The message, amplified by loudspeakers, was simple: "The United States and Israel, it is they who are spreading terror in Arab countries and in the world."
The crowd quickly responded by holding up their Venezuelan identity cards and singing the national anthem.
Minutes later, Andres Gordan, a Romanian-born Jew who survived the Holocaust, said he felt "sad, very sad." Venezuela had been a refuge for him, he said, a country tolerant of his religion.
"It's disappointing that this can happen in 2009, when the whole world knows the history," he said. "Here, we found a paradise -- until now."
Partlow reported from Buenos Aires. Special correspondent Andres Schipani in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report.
taken from : B'NAI ELIM (http://bnaielim.blogspot.com/)

Monday, 9 February 2009

THE DANGER IS REAL - CONSIDER ALIYAH SOONER THAN LATER !



Blogmaster’s Observations: As this Blog is maintained for the benefit of my Jewish Brothers and Sisters, the information published here is for their benefit directly, and for the edification of all who take the time to read the information here. That being said, it is obvious to me that the return of anti-Semitism is not only growing in unprecedented proportions not seen since the nazi scourge, it is also plain to be seen that it is being tolerated and even encouraged by Western Governments heretofore believed to be intolerant of such despicable treatment of their citizens. It is therefore, in my opinion, time now for all of us to seriously consider Aliyah (moving to the only country in the world where we can truly call home). We who live in the Diaspora are on borrowed time. We are guests in foreign lands and our presence here continues to provide our enemies with a target for blaming us for all of the ills in the world. Soon mild violence will turn to blood lust and unabashed terror and violence directed against us. Make Aliyah while you still can.


The Jihad Against Britain's Jews


Friday, 6th February 2009


I am hearing ever more alarming accounts of the deepening attrition against British Jews in the wake of the incitement against Israel provoked by the war in Gaza. In addition to the record number of attacks upon Jewish individuals and institutions and murderous incitement displayed on the anti-Israel demonstrations and riots as reported by the Community Security Trust, Jewish parents report that their children – some as young as eight – are now running a gauntlet of attack from their Muslim classmates at school who accuse them of ‘killing Palestinian children’. Comments by adults about ‘Jews controlling all the money/the media/the BBC’ (yes, really! All because it allowed Israel’s spokesman to put the case for Israel from time to time) are now commonplace in both private and public discourse. Today’s Jewish Chronicle reports that a 12 year-old Birmingham schoolgirl was terrorised by a mob of 20 youths chanting ‘Kill all Jews’ and ‘Death to Jews’ on her way home from school last week:


She said: ‘One of my friends said an Asian girl from the year above asked her why she was talking to me because I am Jewish. I asked the girl in a friendly manner if she had a problem with me being Jewish. She said “yeah, I do”. I managed to punch her before she hit me but then she grabbed me by the hair and swung me around shouting “f****** Jews, I hate Jews”. But then another Asian girl rounded up a whole gang. They were all in school uniform and they came running towards me shouting “death to Jews” and “kill all Jews.”’


A reader has sent me the following account of what happened to him when, travelling on the Tube in London, he started to read a copy of The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz:
After a time, I became aware that a man sitting diagonally in front of me near the doors at the end of the carriage was looking a bit agitated and had a disgruntled expression on his face. However, he didn't meet my eye, so I thought nothing more of it and continued reading as before...When the train reached St Paul's, the man I had noticed stood up to get off. But instead of leaving by the end doors, he made to pass me. In the process of doing so, he deliberately shoved into me and made to crush me against the side of the carriage and the passengers sitting behind me. Despite already knowing exactly what had actuated this behaviour, I asked the question anyway - and received the following response: ‘You shouldn't be reading that, you f***ing [indecipherable].’...The whole confrontation had taken place in the time it took for the tube doors to wheeze open and shut.


Other than in the Jewish press, such incidents are barely being reported. Last week, for example, there was virtually no coverage of the violent demonstration organised by the Stop the War coalition which prevented the deputy commander of Israel’s Gaza operation from speaking at London’s Jewish student centre, Hillel House, when a crowd of about 60-80 students attempted to storm the building.


One of the most troubling developments is the way in which the universities have become an extension of the Middle East conflict, with a simulacrum of the aggression, intimidation and violence from which Israel is under attack by the Arabs being directed at Jewish students on British campuses, who now routinely run a gauntlet of intimidation and abuse from Arab and Muslim students. But even more worryingly, some universities are spinelessly choosing to give in to such bullying.


Throughout last week, after the cease-fire was declared in Gaza, there was a series of anti-Israel sit-ins and demonstrations organised by the STWC at some 17 universities: in London at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the London School of Economics, Queen Mary College and King’s College, as well as at Bradford, Sheffield Hallam, Warwick, Leeds, Oxford, Cambridge, Sussex, Essex, Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan and Strathclyde. Some of these protests led to criminal damage and forced the universities to pay thousands of pounds to deal with the disruption, rearrange lectures, hire extra security guards and repair the damage.
The demonstrators took control of lecture halls and made a series of demands: that the universities should issue a statement condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza; offer scholarships to Palestinian students; send surplus educational materials to help rebuild Gaza (presumably its Islamic University, said by Israel to be a fount of terror); dedicate some of their time to fund-raising for Gaza; and take no action against the demonstrators.


Some of these universities responded robustly to such disorder and intimidation. Manchester Metropolitan, Birmingham, Nottingham and, after some delay, Leeds and Cambridge reportedly refused to accept any of these demands. At Nottingham and Sheffield Hallam, the demonstrators were forcibly evicted.


But the LSE, King’s College London, SOAS, Bradford, Strathclyde and Oxford reportedly gave in to some or all of these demands. According to the JC, the LSE agreed to waive application fees for Gaza and West Bank students ‘directly affected by the conflict’, while Bradford agreed to investigate the ‘ethical background’ of food and drink served on campus, and promised to ‘explore the feasibility of a twinning link with the Islamic University of Gaza’.


Strathclyde agreed among other things to cancel a contract with an Israeli water-cooler company. Oxford – which fined each demonstrator the princely sum of £20 – nevertheless started negotiations with them with indecent haste, and a mere few hours later had agreed to pretty well everything. In a craven letter to colleagues the Vice-Chancellor, John Hood, having stated thatunlawful action of this kind cannot be condoned proceeded to reward it by giving the perpetrators what they had demanded.


The Oxford demonstrators also demanded that the title of the series of lectures on ‘world peace’ at Balliol, recently inaugurated by Israeli President Shimon Peres and named in his honour, be changed; the Senior Proctor, Professor Donald Fraser -- who oversees disciplinary matters and who recommended ‘a relatively lenient course of action against the demonstrators ‘-- duly wrote to Balliol drawing its attention to the students’ concerns.


Thus the trahison des clercs as they crumble in the face of criminality, violence and intimidation.


And so now at British universities --which should be the most protected of all environments for free discourse and inquiry -- British Jews no longer feel safe. At Nottingham, one such student said:


The sit-in has created an atmosphere where we do not feel comfortable going into shared buildings on campus.


At King’s, another Jewish student said:


Someone from my course wrote ‘kill the Jews’ on my Facebook profile. Later he said he didn’t know I was Jewish. In public someone said to me, ‘I think all the Israelis are crazy and so are the f***ing Jews’.


And at Oxford, the JC reports:


One University Reader reportedly told a meeting that ‘within five years, Oxford will be a Jew-free zone’ and a student wrote to Professor Fraser warning that for Jewish students, the university and the city have developed a toxic atmosphere in which I and many others feel increasingly alienated and unwelcome.


Meanwhile, of course, as Sky’s Tim Marshall pointed out the other day on his blog, the government of Sri Lanka is also attempting to eradicate terrorism by a military campaign in which, according to the UN, ‘many civilians are being killed’, thousands made homeless, hundreds of thousands trapped, and to which, as food shortages grow, the government refuses to allow access to journalists. Yet there are no sit-ins on campus against the Sri Lankans, no violent riots outside its High Commission, no calls to boycott Orange Pekoe tea. As Marshall observed:


And yet somehow the lives of the 1,300 Palestinians killed by the Israelis causes far more outrage, in certain quarters, than the 2 million dead in Congo, the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by Sunni and Shia terrorists, or the growing number of Sri Lankan dead to add to the 70,000 killed over the past 25 years (far more than the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed in the same period).


Of course – because the protests in Britain have nothing to do with humanitarian concerns for the innocent. They are part of the jihad against the Jews – and those in the universities and other parts of the establishment who are capitulating to or even endorsing this are accomplices to a great evil that is now consuming British public life.
taken from : B'NAI ELIM (http://bnaielim.blogspot.com/)

HE MUST BE JOKING WITH OUR FACES - "IT WILL TAKE TIME" (to examine the evidence of nazi's mass killings) HE SAYS !!!


Report: Bishop who denied Holocaust to examine evidence on Nazi killings


By The Associated Press


Tags: vatican, Jewish World


A bishop who faces a Vatican demand to recant his denial of the Holocaust said he would examine the evidence of the Nazis' mass killings, but it will take time, a German magazine reported Saturday.

Richard Williamson is one of four bishops from the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X whose excommunication was lifted by the Vatican last month. The decision sparked outrage because Williamson had said in a television interview he did not believe any Jews were gassed during the Holocaust.


On Wednesday, the Vatican demanded that Williamson recant his denial before he can be admitted as a bishop into the Roman Catholic Church. Williamson made clear he does not plan to comply immediately, the weekly Der Spiegel reported.



"Since I see that there are many honest and intelligent people who think differently, I must look again at the historical evidence," the British bishop was quoted as saying.

"It is about historical evidence, not about emotions," he added, according to the report. "And if I find this evidence, I will correct myself. But that will take time."


Der Spiegel said Williamson, who lives in Argentina, insisted on having questions faxed to him and sent his replies by e-mail. It said their authenticity was confirmed in a phone call by Williamson and a lawyer for the Society of St. Pius X.


Williamson has apologized to Pope Benedict XVI for having stirred controversy, but has not repudiated his comments, in which he also said only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews were killed during World War II and none was gassed.


"I was convinced that my comments were right on the basis of my research in the '80s," Der Spiegel quoted Williamson as saying. "I must now examine everything again and look at the evidence."


The magazine suggested that he could make a personal visit to the former Auschwitz death camp. Williamson replied: "I will not go to Auschwitz," it said.

ADL HEAD DECRIES "PANDEMIC OF ANTI-SEMITISM" FOLLOWING GAZA OFFENSIVE


ADL head decries 'pandemic of anti-Semitism' following Gaza offensive


By Reuters


Tags: Gaza, Jewish World, Hamas


Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip has unleashed the worst outbreaks of anti-Semitism in decades, the U.S. head of the Anti-Defamation League said on Friday.
"This is the worst, the most intense, the most global that it's been in most of our memories. And the effort to get the good people to stand up is not easy," Abraham Foxman told Jewish community leaders in a speech in this south Florida resort city.
Foxman said Israel's military offensive against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which began in the Gaza Strip in late December, had been answered with hatred and attacks against Jews "from Austria to Zimbabwe."
Most governments were doing too little to stem "an epidemic, a pandemic of anti-Semitism," he said.


The Israel Defense Forces invaded Gaza in a three-week offensive launched in late December, which was intended to stop Hamas from launching rocket attacks on Israel from the small territory.


Palestinian medical officials said the Israeli offensive killed 1,300 Palestinians, including 700 civilians, prompting widespread international complaints that Israel had used excessive force.


The Anti-Defamation League said recent anti-Jewish attacks triggered by the Gaza conflict ranged from the shooting of two Israelis by a man of Palestinian descent in Denmark to attacks on synagogues in Venezuela, Greece, Chicago and elsewhere.


In Turkey, an Israeli basketball team fled from the court after a crowd turned on them, calling them "killers." In Toulouse, France, last month an attack on one synagogue involved two cars packed with fire bombs.


Foxman said that in protests around the world, the Star of David had been equated with the Nazi swastika and Jewish leaders were threatened. There had also been calls for boycotts of Jewish businesses in South Africa, Italy, Turkey and France.


"We need to insist that the civilized world stand up and say 'No' in every single country in the international arena to condemn this vicious, hideous violence," said Foxman, whose organization is a global leader in the fight against anti-Jewish crime.

Israel Matzav: Egyptians upset Obama hasn't abandoned Israel yet#links#links

Israel Matzav: Egyptians upset Obama hasn't abandoned Israel yet#links#links

Israel Matzav: Al-Arabiya reports on tunnels, rockets#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Al-Arabiya reports on tunnels, rockets#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: And the world is silent#links#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: And the world is silent#links#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Obama's conciliatory address#links#links

Israel Matzav: Obama's conciliatory address#links#links

Israel Matzav: Israel re-thinking stealth bomber purchase#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Israel re-thinking stealth bomber purchase#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Video: Rocket attack on southern Israel#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Video: Rocket attack on southern Israel#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Why sanctions against Iran don't work: Exhibit D - Europe#links#links

Israel Matzav: Why sanctions against Iran don't work: Exhibit D - Europe#links#links

Israel Matzav: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: NY Times' Friedman calls for US troops to build a 'Palestinian' reichlet#links#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: NY Times' Friedman calls for US troops to build a 'Palestinian' reichlet#links#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: The 'Palestinians' and Sinn Fein/IRA#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: The 'Palestinians' and Sinn Fein/IRA#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: British media coverage of Operation Cast Lead: Biased as usual#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: British media coverage of Operation Cast Lead: Biased as usual#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: 'Freedom of the Press,' Hamas style#links#links

Israel Matzav: 'Freedom of the Press,' Hamas style#links#links

HOW WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW (AGAIN)



A friend writes to tell me about a conversation he had with a BBC correspondent:


Having seen the destruction [in Gaza] and interviewed survivors, she is in little doubt that the Israeli intention was to punish the Gazans for having had the temerity to vote for Hamas.
To which I responded:


That’s what she’s convinced of, is it? Seems par for the course for the BBC.


About when I was finishing my undergraduate studies, when I already knew more about the Holocaust and Nazism than the BBC person probably knows about Israel, I decided the time had come to figure out for myself what the Nazis had thought they were doing. So I moved to Vienna and learned German, and then moved back and spent more than a decade reading tens of thousands of pages of Nazi documentation and many thousands of pages of historical research about them, and then I wrote that doctorate we alluded to; it was only at that stage that I felt confident in speculating about what the Nazis intentions had been. Once the book was published, some experts agreed with me, and others didn’t, and they were all knowledgeable about the topic.


It would seem to me that if the BBC correspondent wanted to speculate about Israeli intentions, the least she could do would be learn Hebrew and spend some time figuring out how Israelis understand the world; interviewing Palestinians seems to a peculiar method of comprehending Israeli intentions, don’t you think?
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)

WHAT DO YOU SEE WHEN YOU SEE A TREE IN ISRAEL ?



Posted by Mordechai Friedfertig


When you are walking along and you see a tree, what are you actually seeing? While it is certainly correct to say that you are seeing a tree, you are actually seeing much more than that, much more.


One hundred and seventy years ago, the French writer Alfonse De Lamartine wrote: “(Outside the walls of Jerusalem) we saw nothing living. We heard no sound of life. We found that same emptiness, that same silence that we would have expected to find before the buried gates of Pompei or Herculanum…total silence reigns over the city, along the highways, the villages… the whole country is like a graveyard.”


One hundred and thirty years ago, the American author Mark Twain visited the Land of Israel and he wrote: “There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent -- not for thirty miles in either direction. One may ride ten miles, hereabouts, and not see ten human beings. We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds -- a silent, mournful expanse. Desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We safely reached Tabor...We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land? Palestine is no more of this work-day world."


Did you hear that? There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere, not even an olive tree!Therefore, when I see a tree, I see the Jewish People rising to rebirth in our Land. For almost two thousand years, this Land was angry at us and would not smile at us. Obviously, and by no coincidence, “because of our sins we were banished from our country and distanced from our Land.”


As we know, our Sages objected to making Messianic calculations. They even said, “Let the bones be blasted of those who calculate the end of days!” (Sanhedrin 97b). If so, how can we know that the end is near? They answered, “We have no better sign of the end of days than that of Yechezkel (36:8): ‘But you, O mountains of Israel, you shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to My people Israel; for they are at hand to come’” (Sanhedrin 98a). Rashi comments, “If you see the Land of Israel yielding its fruits plentifully, be aware that the end of the exile has arrived.”


Indeed, one hundred and twenty years ago, the Land began to blossom, and since then this sign has not proven to be a disappointment. Our country is being built up, and despite all the harsh shortcomings visible in our public lives, we have to admit that we are rising up to rebirth, and we have to be happy, hold on and look forward.

[Parashah sheet "Be-Ahavah U-Be-Emunah" of Machon Meir – Beshalach 5767]
taken from : Torat HaRav Aviner (http://www.ravaviner.com/)

Sunday, 8 February 2009

BLESSED IS THE MATCH - MOVIE TRAILER

BLFSSED IS THE MATCH
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF HANNAH SENESH

HAMAS CONVERTS HOSPITALS INTO JAILS

PA: Hamas converts hospitals into jails


Hamas back to old ways: According to Palestinian Ministry of Health in West Bank, Hamas expels medical staff from Gaza hospitals, takes control of entire wards in order to use them for torture, imprisonment


Roee Nahmias


Published:
02.07.09, 17:08 / Israel News


The Palestinian Health Ministry, run by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, accused Hamas' security apparatus Saturday of commandeering a number of hospital wards in the Gaza Strip for the purpose of converting them into interrogation and imprisonment compounds.


According to Palestinian news agency Ma'an, the Palestinian Health Ministry claimed that Hamas members expelled them and full medical teams from hospital wards despite the serious security situation.


A communiqué put out by the ministry said that "following the unilateral cessation of Israeli aggression against our people, the Ministry of Health, along with all the Palestinian people, was shocked to discover that Hamas militias have returned to their old ways and have expelled all the medical staff responding to the calls of the homeland (to continue their work.)
Unfortunately, these same militias used the medical centers, especially in a number of hospitals, converting them into centers for interrogation, torture, and imprisonment."


According to the Health Ministry, Hamas members have taken control of wards in Shifa Hospital, as well as al-Nasser Hospital and the psychiatric hospital.

The Palestinian Authority-controlled Ministry urged Hamas "to act responsibly and to cease immediately the harassment of medical staff."

In addition, the Ministry also called Hamas "to halt the stealing of medical aid sent to the Strip most of which (Hamas) has redirected to the organization's warehouses and centers."

The remarks were made in reference to the equipment reportedly stolen from UNRWA aid sent to the Gaza Strip, a incident that led the UN organization to cease its operations in Gaza.

BRITISH ISLAMIST EXTREMISTS ARE THE GREATEST THREAT TO US HOMELAND SECURITY


CIA warns Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US


Barack Obama has been warned by the CIA that British Islamist extremists are the greatest threat to US homeland security.


By Tim Shipman in Washington Last Updated: 9:08PM GMT 07 Feb 2009

The CIA has told President Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US


American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks being launched from Britain.


They believe that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US under the visa waiver programme is the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on American soil.


Intelligence briefings for Mr Obama have detailed a dramatic escalation in American espionage in Britain, where the CIA has recruited record numbers of informants in the Pakistani community to monitor the 2,000 terrorist suspects identified by MI5, the British security service.


A British intelligence source revealed that a staggering four out of 10 CIA operations designed to thwart direct attacks on the US are now conducted against targets in Britain.


And a former CIA officer who has advised Mr Obama told The Sunday Telegraph that the CIA has stepped up its efforts in the last month after the Mumbai massacre laid bare the threat from Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group behind the attacks, which has an extensive web of supporters in the UK.


The CIA has already spent 18 months developing a network of agents in Britain to combat al-Qaeda, unprecedented in size within the borders of such a close ally, according to intelligence sources in both London and Washington.


Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who has advised Mr Obama, told The Sunday Telegraph: "The British Pakistani community is recognised as probably al-Qaeda's best mechanism for launching an attack against North America.


"The American security establishment believes that danger continues and there's very intimate cooperation between our security services to monitor that." Mr Riedel, who served three presidents as a Middle East expert on the White House National Security Council, added: "President Obama's national security team are well aware that this is a serious threat."


The British official said: "The Americans run their own assets in the Pakistani community; they get their own intelligence. There's close cooperation with MI5 but they don't tell us the names of all their sources.


"Around 40 per cent of CIA activity on homeland threats is now in the UK. This is quite unprecedented."


Explaining the increase in CIA activity over the past month, Mr Riedel added: "In the aftermath of the Mumbai attack the US and the UK intelligence services now have to regard Lashkar-e-Taiba as just as serious a threat to both of our countries as al-Qaeda. They have a much more extensive base among Pakistani Diaspora communities in the UK than al–Qaeda."


Information gleaned by CIA spies in Britain has already helped thwart several terrorist attacks in the UK and was instrumental in locating Rashid Rauf, a British-born al-Qaeda operative implicated in a plot to explode airliners over the Atlantic, who was tracked down and killed in a US missile strike in November.


But some US intelligence officers are irritated that valuable manpower and resources have been diverted to the UK. One former intelligence officer who does contract work for the CIA dismissed Britain as a "swamp" of jihadis.


Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, admitted in January that the Security Service alone does not have the resources to maintain surveillance on all its targets. "We don't have anything approaching comprehensive coverage," he said.


The dramatic escalation in CIA activity in the UK followed the exposure in August 2006 of Operation Overt, the alleged airline bomb plot.


The British intelligence official revealed that CIA chiefs sent more resources to the UK because they were not prepared to see American citizens die as a result of MI5's inability to keep tabs on all suspects, even though the Security Service successfully uncovered the plot.


MI5 manpower will have doubled to 4,100 by 2011 but many in the US intelligence community do not think that is enough.


For their part, some British officials are queasy that information obtained by the CIA from British Pakistanis was used to help target Mr Rauf, a British citizen, whom they would have preferred to capture and bring to trial.


Sensitivities over the intelligence arrangement formed a key part of briefings given to Mr Obama, since they are central to what is often called "the most special part of the special relationship" and could complicate his dealings with Gordon Brown.


Tensions in transatlantic intelligence relations which were laid bare last week during the High Court battle over Binyam Mohamed, the British resident held in Guanatanamo Bay. British judges wanted to publish details of the torture administered to Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian national, in US custody. But key paragraphs were blacked out after American officials threatened it could damage intelligence sharing between the two countries.


Intelligence experts said that a trusting intelligence relationship, in which one country does not publish intelligence data obtained by the other, is vital to both countries' national security.


Patrick Mercer, chairman of the House of Commons counter-terrorism sub-committee, said: "The special relationship is a huge benefit to us. It clearly works to our advantage and helps keep the people of the UK and the US safe.


"There is no doubt that a great deal of valuable intelligence vital to British national security is procured by American agents from British sources."


Mr Riedel added: "The partnership between the two intelligence communities is dynamic; it is one of great intimacy. We overuse the term special relationship, but this is an extraordinarily special relationship.


"Since September 11 the philosophy on both sides has been to err on the side of telling each other more rather than less. It is in everyone's interests that that continues."

WHO IS HAMAS ?

Saturday, 7 February 2009

Israel Matzav: Bolton slams Condi Clueless, says Israel must go it alone on Iran#links#links

Israel Matzav: Bolton slams Condi Clueless, says Israel must go it alone on Iran#links#links

Israel Matzav: Surpise: Iranian cargo ship was carrying weapons to Gaza#links#links

Israel Matzav: Surpise: Iranian cargo ship was carrying weapons to Gaza#links#links

Israel Matzav: UNRWA suspends aid to Gaza after Hamas steals it again#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: UNRWA suspends aid to Gaza after Hamas steals it again#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Bizarre Hamas propaganda video#links#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Bizarre Hamas propaganda video#links#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Near riot at Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball game in Barcelona#links#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Near riot at Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball game in Barcelona#links#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: British Muslim MP calls for arrest of British citizens who serve in the IDF#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: British Muslim MP calls for arrest of British citizens who serve in the IDF#links#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Knesset member Ariel sues Brinks to prevent cash transfer to Hamas#links#links

Israel Matzav: Knesset member Ariel sues Brinks to prevent cash transfer to Hamas#links#links

Israel Matzav: Gaza's coming to America?#links#links#links

Israel Matzav: Gaza's coming to America?#links#links#links

THE U.K. IS LOST - POLICE RUN FROM ARAB TERRORISTS

THE U.K. IS LOST - POLICE RUN FROM ARAB TERRORISTS

THIS IS A DISGRACE...AND A WARNING TO WESTERN CIVILIZATION!

THEY MUST BE STOPPED!!!




taken from: B'NAI ELIM (http://bnaielim.blogspot.com/)

HAMAS BUDDY "CAIR" (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) IS RUNNING SCARED


In the past seven days, evidence surfaced that the FBI was cutting off its primary contacts with CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), after CAIR refused to address FBI questions about CAIR’s relationship to Hamas (a designated terrorist organization). Then, five members of Congress sent a letter to other members of Congress entitled “Beware of CAIR,” citing the evidence that the FBI had severed ties with CAIR. CAIR has responded in its predictable fashion – attack the messengers. The commentary below, from the website of SANE (Society of Americans for National Existence), includes the response letter that CAIR sent to Congresswoman Sue Myrick, co-chair of the House Anti-Terrorism Caucus. One line in CAIR’s letter is telling:
“If enduring these baseless attacks from you is part of God’s price for freedom, we embrace them.”
Playing the victim, or in this case, the martyr, is a common tactic among Islamists. In CAIR’s world, any critique or criticism of it, no matter how reasoned or documented, is anti-Muslim bigotry. For CAIR to claim that allegations against it are “baseless” is, well, baseless. Why would the FBI finally make the decision it did to sever ties with CAIR if there was no basis for doing so? Why would the Justice Department list CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial if there was no basis for doing so? Why would an FBI agent, testifying under oath during that trial, label CAIR as a front organization for Islamist extremism if there was no basis for saying so? The answer is they wouldn’t.
Updated: CAIR, the unindicted Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood co-conspirator, is running scared! by SANE Staff, Thu, February 05, 2009, 08:00:AM Available files: CAIR Scare Letter to Cong Sue Myrick When Representative Sue Myrick learned that the FBI had severed its connections with and ties to CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, D.C., she understood the significance of this event. On the one hand, the US Attorneys prosecuting the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (the largest Muslim charity in the US post-9/11), CAIR Texas officials and others for materially supporting terrorism in the Middle East had taken the unprecedented step to publicly identify CAIR, ISNA, and other such groups as unindicted co-conspirators in the HLF criminal trial. On the other hand, members of the FBI would use CAIR as a sounding board for the "Muslim community" notwithstanding the lack of any evidence that CAIR represents anyone much less a "Muslim community" known largely for its lack of community organization. As a result, Rep. Myrick, who is deeply involved in counterterrorism issues in Congress, wrote a letter outlining this new awareness by the FBI to her congressional colleagues. (See here, here, and here for the fallout from the FBI decision to cut ties with CAIR and Rep. Myrick's letter to her colleagues warning them of CAIR's nefarious beginnings, middles, and ends.) As a result, and almost precisely on cue, CAIR went on the offensive in an abject display of desperation. In the midst of their explanation that they are just a "civil rights organization" defending the downtrodden and oppressed among Muslims in America, they launch into a personal attack on Rep. Myrick, and this organization, SANE. (The letter is available above in pdf format for download at the unique url for this entry.) What CAIR has done here they have done before and will continue to do in the future. SANE, David Yerushalmi, Rep. Myrick, Robert Spencer, Stephen Coughlin, Dr. Andy Bostom, Frank Gaffney, Brigitte Gabriel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tawfiq Hamid, and many others, have taken on the difficult but critically important task to identify precisely the Enemy Common Threat Doctrine which animates the worldwide jihad against unbelievers and the West generally. This doctrine is of course Shariah or Islamic law. This doctrine commands the faithful to engage in the conversion, subjugation or murder of those who resist Shariah's call for submission to a worldwide hegemony called a caliphate. CAIR's approach to public discourse on this subject, however, is to take writings out of context and to conceal the careful and thoughtful analysis of Shariah and to distort that body of work into a caricature of simple anti-Muslim bigotry. We have responded to this ad hominem approach in broad strokes here but for those interested, the more telling response to CAIR is to simply quote two of the most authoritative and "mainstream" Shariah authorities in the world. The first is the Dow Jones Shariah advisor Mufti Taqi Usmani, who has written a book on how a "good" Muslim ought to behave while living among the infidels in the West. In that book, published in 1999 in English and available on Amazon.com, Usmani wrote:
I am in receipt of your esteemed letter. Whatever you have written about Jehad can be summarized as this “If a non-Muslim state allows for preaching Islam in its country, Jehad against it does not remain lawful.” If this is what you mean, my humble self does not agree with it. Obstruction in the way of preaching Islam does not mean only a legal obstacle, but greater power or domination of a non-Muslim state against Muslims is by itself a great obstacle in the propagation of Islam. There are no legal restrictions in most of the countries today on preaching Islam, but since their grandeur and authority is established in the world, it has led to developing a universal feeling which forms a greater obstacle than the greatest legal binding in the way of free propagation of Islam. For this reason the most important purpose of Jehad is to break this grandeur so that the resulting psychological subordination should come to an end and the way of accepting the Truth become smooth. As long as this grandeur and domination persists the hearts of people will remain subdued and will not be fully inclined to accept the religion of Truth. Hence Jehad will continue. The Qur'an said in Sura Tauba:
Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.Here, killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay Jizyah [subjugation tax on non-Muslims] after they are humbled or overpowered. If the purpose of killing was only to acquire permission and freedom of preaching Islam, it would have been said “until they allow for preaching Islam.” But the obligation of Jizyah and along with it the mention of their subordination is a clear proof that the purpose is to smash their grandeur, so that the veils of their domination should be raised and people get a free chance to think over the blessings of Islam. Imam Razi has written the following commentary on this verse:
The purpose of “Jizyah” is not to let the unbelievers stay in their contumacy against Islam but sparing their lives to give them a chance for a time during which they may hopefully get convinced of the truth of Islam and embrace it. So when an unbeliever is given time wherein he would be observing the respect and honour of Islam, and hearing the arguments of its validity, and also observing the baselesness of disbelief, these things would convince him to turn towards Islam. This, in fact, is the real purpose of legalizing Jizyah.
According to CAIR and it's national leadership, the most important and authoritative Shariah authority for them and their Muslim Brotherhood associates is Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Mr. Qaradawi is well known for his fatwa ordering the mujahideen of Afghanistan and Iraq to murder American combat soldiers and civilian contractors. He has also issued a fatwa authorizing the suicide-murder of any Jew in Israel--man, woman, or child. He is quoted from Al-Jazeera t.v. as follows: Oh Allah, take your enemies, the enemies of Islam. Oh Allah, take the Jews, the treacherous aggressors. Oh Allah, take this profligate, cunning, arrogant band of people. Oh Allah, they have spread much tyranny and corruption in the land. Pour Your wrath upon them, oh our God. Lie in wait for them. Oh Allah, You annihilated the people of Thamoud at the hand of a tyrant, and You annihilated the people of 'Aad with a fierce, icy gale. Oh Allah, You annihilated the people Thamoud at the hand of a tyrant, You annihilated the people of 'Aad with a fierce, icy gale, and You destroyed the Pharaoh and his soldiers — oh Allah, take this oppressive, tyrannical band of people. Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one. If CAIR were interested in a real discussion of these matters, as they suggest in their letter to Rep. Myrick, they have lacked neither opportunities nor platforms. Instead, they engage in the rankest form of ad hominem and issue statements denouncing "terrorism" and the murder of "innocents" and the need for "justice" in the world. But anyone who has spent any time studying this Shariah propaganda understands it for what it is. All of the Shariah authorities, including OBL (who is not himself a Shariah authority), issue the same pronouncements because, per Shariah, jihad is not "terror"; the "killing of infidels" is not the "murder of innocents"; and "justice" is only achieved, as Mufti Usmani and Sheikh Qaradawi tell us ever so clearly, when Shariah-Islam rules the world and CAIR and its minions can shed their western disguises and apply Shariah's rule of law without apology or ruse and dominate all others who continue to resist Shariah-Islam. NB: Full disclosure: CAIR isolates on David Yerushalmi because he is representing several African American Muslims who are suing CAIR in federal court for racketeering, fraud and other crimes. See here.
taken from : B'NAI ELIM (http://bnaielim.blogspot.com/)

THE PHILOSOPHER WHO GAVE THE IDF MORAL JUSTIFICATION IN GAZA


The philosopher who gave the IDF moral justification in Gaza


By Amos Harel


Tags: Hamas, Gaza, IDF, Asa Kasher


When senior Israel Defense Forces officers are asked about the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians during the fighting in the Gaza Strip, they almost all give the same answer: The use of massive force was designed to protect the lives of the soldiers, and when faced with a choice between protecting the lives of Israeli soldiers and those of enemy civilians under whose protection the Hamas terrorists are operating, the soldiers take precedence.


The IDF's response to criticism does not sound improvised or argumentative. The army entered Gaza with the capacity to gauge with relatively high certainty the impact of fighting against terror in such a densely populated area. And it operated there not only with the backing of the legal opinion of the office of the Military Advocate General, but also on the basis of ethical theory, developed several years ago, that justifes its actions.


Prof. Asa Kasher of Tel Aviv University, an Israel Prize laureate in philosophy, is the philosopher who told the IDF that it was possible. In a recent interview with Haaretz Kasher said the army operated in accordance with a code of conduct developed about five years ago for fighting terrorism.
"The norms followed by the commanders in Gaza were generally appropriate," Kasher said. In Kasher's opinion there is no justification for endangering the lives of soldiers to avoid the killing of civilians who live in the vicinity of terrorists. According to Kasher, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi "has been very familiar with our principles from the time the first document was drafted in 2003 to the present."


Kasher's argument is that in an area such as the Gaza Strip in which the IDF does not have effective control the overriding principle guiding the commanders is achieving their military objectives. Next in priority is protecting soldiers' lives, followed by avoiding injury to enemy civilians. In areas where Israel does have effective control, such as East Jerusalem, there is no justification for targeted killings in which civilians are also hit because Israel has the option of using routine policing procedures, such as arrests, that do not endanger innocent people.


Prof. Kasher has strong, long-standing ties with the army. He drafted the IDF ethical code of conduct in the mid-1990's. In 2003 he and Maj. Gen Amos Yadlin, now the head of Military Intelligence, published an article entitled "The Ethical Fight Against Terror." It justified the targeted assassination of terrorists, even at the price of hitting nearby Palestinian civilians. Subsequently Kasher, Yadlin, and a team that included IDF legal experts wrote a more comprehensive document on military ethics in fighting terror. Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, who was the IDF Chief of Staff at the time, did not make the document binding but Kasher says the ideas in the document were adopted in principle by Ya'alon and his successors. Kasher has presented them to IDF and Shin Bet security service personnel dozens of times.


"The article was translated into English and published in a military ethics journal and is still being debated around the world," Kasher said. "The feedback is generally positive, although the message is difficult to digest. In the end, everyone acknowledges that they conduct themselves this way. There is no army in the world that will endanger its soldiers in order to avoid hitting the neighbors of an enemy or terrorist. The media don't understand the nature of international law. It's not like tough traffic laws. Much of it is customary law. The decisive question is how enlightened countries conduct themselves. We in Israel are in a key position in the development of law in this field because we are on the front lines in the fight against terrorism. This is gradually being recognized both in the Israeli legal system and abroad. After the debate before the High Court of Justice on the issue of targeted killings there was no need to revise the document that Yadlin and I drafted even by one comma. What we are doing is becoming the law. These are concepts that are not purely legal, but also contain strong ethical elements.


"The Geneva Conventions are based on hundreds of years of tradition of the fair rules of combat. They were appropriate for classic warfare, where one army fought another. But in our time the whole business of rules of fair combat has been pushed aside. There are international efforts underway to revise the rules to accommodate the war against terrorism. According to the new provisions, there is still a distinction between who can and cannot be hit, but not in the blatant approach which existed in the past. The concept of proportionality has also changed. There is no logic in comparing the number of civilians and armed fighters killed on the Palestinian side, or comparing the number of Israelis killed by Qassam rockets to the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza."


When asked whether the IDF should be guided in its operations in Gaza by the concept that there should be zero tolerance for endangering the lives of soldiers, Kasher responds, "The soldiers' lives are endangered by virtue of their very presence in Gaza, by virtue of the fact that we send them to an area where there are enemy snipers and explosives set to go off in areas where the IDF is present. Sending a soldier there to fight terrorists is justified, but why should I force him to endanger himself much more than that so that the terrorist's neighbor isn't killed? I don't have an answer for that. From the standpoint of the state of Israel, the neighbor is much less important. I owe the soldier more. If it's between the soldier and the terrorist's neighbor, the priority is the soldier. Any country would do the same."


The decision regarding the magnitude of force used to protect the lives of the soldiers is up to the commander in the field. "The commander must be skilled in gauging the appropriate use of force," Kasher said.

FATIMA HAJAIG AND THE HISTORY OF ANTI-JEWISH CONSPIRACIES

Fatima Hajaig and the history of anti-Jewish conspiracies


Milton Shain


05 February 2009

Professor Milton Shain traces the thread linking European anti-semitism to much modern 'anti-Zionism'


The recent alleged comments by South Africa's Deputy Foreign Minister, Fatima Hajaig, about Jewish money controlling America and most Western European countries throws into sharp relief the complicated nexus between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. After all, it was at an anti-Zionist rally in Lenasia that Hajaig allegedly launched into a diatribe that would have befitted the toxic views of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad or former Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahatir Mohamad.


Ahmedinejad shares the delusional views attributed to Hajaig, while Mahatir Mohamad some years ago similarly informed 57 heads of state at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference held in Malaysia that the Jews have "control of the most powerful countries". "This tiny community," he told his gullible audience, has "become a world power." Hajaig is in good company; the conspiratorial cast of mind is widespread and has a long pedigree.


Dating back to the late middle ages, anti-Jewish conspiracies took on their most virulent and sinister form over 100 years ago in the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery referred to by the historian Norman Cohn as a "Warrant for Genocide". The Protocols was hugely popular in inter-war Germany and was widely employed by the Nazis in their propaganda as they prepared for the destruction of European Jewry. Put simply, Hajaig's alleged comments are old hat. But we do have to take heed. Ideas have consequences, especially when uttered by a government minister, albeit a junior one.


Hajaig's thinking and that of others of her ilk share common delusions. Simplistic conspiracies provide a convenient explanation for complex problems. So-called Jewish money power accounts for everything, and intractable problems are reduced to imaginary financial machinations. Hajaig's legitimate concern for the plight of the Gazans is conflated with a palpable and crude Jew-hatred.


Such slippage on her part - and indeed many others - has led some commentators to describe anti-Zionism as a hygienic form of antiSemitism. This is problematic. Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism cannot axiomatically be equated. It is possible - albeit arguably naïve in the wake of our past century and the realities of Israel's 60 years of existence - to object to the idea of Jewish peoplehood and a Jewish State. But the inordinate attention devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does raise questions of motivation.


Why did the war in Chechnya receive so little coverage? Why did the masses not regularly march in the world's capitals during the Russian siege and almost complete destruction of Grozny, the Chechen capital? Why did they not march when Nato planes bombarded Kosovo? What about the estimated five million deaths over the past 10 years in Central Africa? Only last week, we saw hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by the conflict between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan army without a peep from our foreign ministry or from the Congress of South African Trade Unions.


Fewer than 10 000 people have been killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since World War 2 - a mere fraction of the 25 million people killed in other internal conflicts during this time. Yet Israel has been condemned by the United Nations and other international organisations more often than all the other nations combined. Can this excessive and skewed attention be explained by the region's geopolitical importance? Is it because three Abrahamic faiths converge in the region? Or is it simply a case that Jews are news? Perhaps the explanation is more sinister.

For some observers, it is simple anti-Semitism; the "longest hatred" has mutated into a new form. Much anti-Zionist rhetoric, the argument goes, is riddled with anti-Jewish motifs that go beyond the bounds of normal political conflict. It is particularly powerful today in the Muslim world, where, historically, hostility towards Jews lacked the vitriolic character of Christian hatred in the medieval period.


From the thirteenth century, however, humiliation and degradation of Jews began to characterise Muslim-Jewish relations. European colonialism and its Christian influences further undermined the Jewish condition, especially in the Arab world. Anti-Semitic calumnies such as the "blood libel" entered into Muslim discourse in the 19th century amid the looting, rape and killing of Jews in numerous cities and towns.


Against a backdrop of Zionist settlement and the complicated question of "the right to the land", Arab nationalism and the growth of Islamism fuelled hostility. A vast anti-Jewish Arabic literature now makes use of texts such as Hitler's Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Extremist groups such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas have appropriated ideas of a world Jewish conspiracy in what they consider to be a holy war against "Satanist Zionism".


Such invective takes on the features of delusional Christian antiSemitism at its height. Jews are characterised as a malignant disease, bent on global domination. They are evil incarnate. The Hamas Covenant cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with approbation, while liberally employing that forgery's tropes. Jews are accused of financial manipulation, media control and of fomenting the two world wars. Indeed, they are even depicted as the force behind the Rotary Movement and the Freemasons, perceived as sinister by Hamas.


After its election victory, Hamas placed on its official website two Hamas suicide bombers' video testaments. "My message to the loathed Jews," noted one, "is that there is no god but Allah. We will chase you everywhere! We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood - and our children's thirst with your blood."


This mindset merges effortlessly with Holocaust denial, similarly delusional, but initially the preserve of the far right. Thus it is hardly surprising that at the 2006 "Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision" conference in Tehran - which brought together notorious far right "revisionists" (denialists) and Islamists - the nexus between the white supremacist and anti-Semitic far right and radical Muslim extremists was patently apparent. One-time Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, the French "revisionist" Georges Thiel and the Australian Holocaust denialist Colin Tobin rubbed shoulders with Islamist clerics and Iranian President Ahmedinejad.


That our deputy foreign minister allegedly shifted from a Palestinian narrative of the Middle East conflict during her Lenasia speech to blatant anti-Semitism should not have come as a surprise. Exposing one's real motivations in this arena is simple. It was certainly evident at the World Conference Against Racism and Xenophobia in Durban in 2001, where the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was on sale, despite being banned in this country.


Such rhetoric from a government minister as Hajaig's reported Lenasia speech should not be accepted in a country that values tolerance, religious pluralism and cultural diversity.


There is no room for crude prejudice in a democratic South Africa. And there is certainly no room for a rabid and vitriolic deputy foreign minister whose ranting can only be labelled anti-Semitic.


Professor Shain teaches in the Department of Historical Studies and is Director of the Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town. This article first appeared in the Cape Times, February 2 2009

ANTI-SEMITISM BACKFIRES

Israel Viewpoint Anti-Semitism Backfires



STEPHEN KRAMER Jewish Times Israel Correspondent


Anti-Semitism is a doubleedged sword. Obviously, it hurts Jews and can be murderous to them; less obviously, it may harm its perpetrators. For example, Hitler elevated the goal of ridding Europe of its Jews to the point that valuable railroad cars were used to transport Jews to the ovens, instead of utilizing them to help the failing German war effort. In contemporary Europe, where anti- Semitism is quietly encouraged by some governments and acquiesced to by all, the surge in the Muslim population threatens the historic European mindset and culture. In the Middle East, the government-induced fixation with Israel and the Jews is preventing the more moderate regimes from defending themselves against a violent Iranian takeover, a la Lebanon and Gaza.

There was no anti-Semitism per se until the Christian age. Up until that time, Jews had enemies, but the antagonism against them was generic and typical of the conflicts between warring peoples. The New Testament built a fundamental and everlasting enmity against Jews, beginning with the crucifixion of Christ. The columnist and rabbi Smuley Boteach wrote, "Yes, original Jewish culpability begins with the greatest lie ever told, that the Jews were responsible for killing G-d incarnate . . . ." In Matt: 27: 22- 25, it is written: " 'What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?' Pilate asked. They all answered, 'Crucify him!' 'Why? What crime has he committed?' asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, 'Crucify him!' When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. 'I am innocent of this man's blood,' he said. . . . All the people answered, 'Let his blood be on us and on our children!'"


Pilate, Boteach wrote, '"was the cruelest proconsul ever sent by Rome to Judea and crucified tens of thousands of innocent Jews for the most minor infractions." The New Testament put the onus on the Jews for crucifixion of Jesus. Matthew, St. Paul, and St. Augustine added to the narrative against the Jews, while John, the author of the book of Revelations, even called Jews the children of Satan.


Things got even worse in the Middle Ages, with anti-Jewish edicts, blood libels, the Crusades, expulsions, the Inquisition, the Reformation, pogroms, and more. The worst of the abuses against Jews occurred among Christians in Europe, but Mohammed's enmity against the Jews, for failing to convert en masse to Islam, stoked similar sentiments among the Muslims, who classed the Jews (and Christians) as 'dhimmis,' subservient to the Muslims and subject to onerous regulations, taxation, and pogroms.

Modern anti-Semitism dates to 1879, when Wilhelm Mahr, a German, coined the phrase "anti- Semitism" as a tool against Jews, whom he claimed were devouring German society. This new "ism" maintained that Jews couldn't save themselves from their evil ways even by assimilating into their country's culture. Mahr founded the League of Antisemites to fight the Jews to the death, or at the least, to be expelled from Germany. From Mahr to the rise of Hitler took less than fifty years.

In Europe, anti-Semitism has never lost its allure. Post-WWII Europe briefly favored recompensing the Jews for the Holocaust, to the extent that the United Nations "officially"
established the right of Jews to a national state in Palestine. But the favorable attitude soon soured. Today, even the majority of Germans, whose parents and grandparents were responsible for the slaughter of six million Jews during WWII, feel no special empathy or obligation towards Israel, the Jewish nation. European governments tend to appease or ignore anti-Semitism, rather than condemn it, such as the recent anti-Israel riots that swept across Europe during Israel's retaliation against Hamas.

The Scandinavian countries, Spain, Belgium, Holland, and Greece are the most anti-Semitic European countries. Most of the others are not far behind. They have welcomed Muslim immigrants from Africa and Asia and allowed millions of illegal Muslim refugees to remain in their countries, with little effort to assimilate them to European culture and mores. In fact, there is a conscious plan to allow Muslim culture to permeate Europe without European values being transmitted to Islamic countries. I'm referring to the EAD (Euro- Arab Dialogue), which gives Muslim culture a privileged place in Europe.

At the same time, European leaders have allowed the cancer of reactionary anti-Semitism to flourish amidst their native populations. With the Muslim contingents in their countries burgeoning because of their high fertility rate, European governments face a two-headed menace: rising Islamic demands for Sharia law and special privileges, versus a bigoted, xenophobic segment of the population that hates both Jews and Muslims. In the next few decades, the liberal, intellectual ruling class of Europe may capitulate to the Muslims "democratically," without a fight - they show signs of that already. A clash between the Muslims and native European patriots may prevent a Muslim takeover, or follow it; in either case, an exodus of European Jews is probable. Europe, as we know it, is definitely in for some changes.

The damage from fomenting anti- Semitism is more overt in the Muslim countries. Take Egypt, the largest and most powerful Arab country, and Saudi Arabia, the wealthiest Arab country. They, like all Arab countries, have used anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism as their main tools to keep their masses distracted from the excesses of the ruling class. So long as Israel and the Jews could be pointed to as the cause of all the distress afflicting the average citizen, the ruling class of each country was insulated from their collective anger. Now there is the pressing problem of Iran, whose ambition to rule the Muslim- Arabian world dates back to the 7th century CE.

Iran has deployed a proxy army (Hizbollah) in Lebanon and another (Hamas) in Gaza, plus it has made Bashar Assad's Syria into a puppet state. With these two terror forces and Syria's missile arsenal, Iran threatens to destroy Israel. But Egypt and Saudi Arabia are equally threatened by Iran's brand of militant Islam. Both countries need help from Israel (and America) to fend off Iran, which soon will attain its goal of possessing nuclear weapons. When Iran possesses even one atomic bomb, it will most likely bully its neighbors and enemies by threatening to use its new weapon. Or, Iran might supply a nuclear device to a terror ally in an attempt to deflect the disastrous consequences of using the weapon itself.

Nevertheless, the Egyptian and Saudi rulers can't overtly support Israel against Iran or its allies, because they have built their regimes on the foundation of anti- Zionism and anti-Semitism. Nor can any of the other Sunni Arab countries threatened by Iran admit that Israel is a bulwark for them. Instead, they must continue to vilify Israel publicly even if they cheer Israel on against Iran and its proxies privately.

Anti-Semitism is a useful tool for governments to funnel the anger of their downtrodden or discontented masses away from their ruling classes. But this strategy doesn't come without a price. Europe is in danger of succumbing to a Muslim takeover within two generations, while its antipathy towards Israel blinds it to the danger of Iran's growing appetite for power and influence - which stretches beyond the Middle East towards Europe and Russia. The Arab states are even more directly threatened than Europe is by the prospect of a bullying nuclear-armed Iran, but they can't stuff the anti-Semitic genie back into the bottle to join with Israel in a united front. With these trends in mind, it seems that the cultivation of anti-Semitism is a double-edged sword.

Stephen Kramer can be reached at Sjk1@jhu.edu.
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