Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Stop the Misuse of Phony Passports by Assassins!
1. Stop the Assassination!!
The details are only now coming out. Alas, the plan had to be called off at the last minute because of leaking of the fact that British and French passports would be used. A very angry set of letters was sent to the group of Israeli scientists and to the heads of the Weizmann Institute about the proposed misuse of the passports by the heads of all countries in the EU.
The Israeli media have also been vocal in this matter. "Hitler is a politician and not a military figure," insisted the editorial in Haaretz. "Hence it is not legitimate for him to be targeted for assassination. We must do everything to stop the attempts on the lives of political figures and civilians."
"Besides," added Naomi Chazan, "if Hitler were to die, the demographic situation would change, with Israel's Jewish population being millions larger, and under those circumstances peace with the Palestinians will NEVER be achieved!"
"We agree entirely," added Henry Siegman. "Hitler's life must be preserved because even if he is not a bona fide peace partner as of 1937, he certainly is a potential one for the period after that. If he is killed, then only the true radical Germans will remain."
In light of the world's outrage over the misuse of passports, the whole plan has been called off and World War II is now to take place on schedule as originally planned.
2. http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/42598
Why The Left Hates Im Tirtzu
By: Steven Plaut
Date: Wednesday, February 17 2010
Israel's Im Tirtzu student organization bills itself as the "Second Zionist Revolution." Until a few weeks ago, that sounded like youthful bravado. But the group has raised eyebrows - and hackles - with its unprecedented grand slam in the Israeli media against the New Israel Fund.
Led by Hebrew University graduate student Ronen Shoval, Im Tirtzu has emerged as the leading campus organization among Israeli students. It is solidly Zionist and nationalist, and has both secular and religious members.
Im Tirtzu had been making headlines even before the controversy surrounding NIF. It earlier collected complaints from students at several schools, especially Tel Aviv University, concerning harassments of Zionist students by anti-Israel faculty radicals. Many students claim they are penalized by leftist faculty members if they dare challenge the classroom biases imposed on them.
In response to Im Tirtzu's complaints, the administration of Tel Aviv University launched an investigation into those abuses and the matter was also raised for debate in the Knesset.
The New Israel Fund is a left-of-center outfit funded in part by American Jews but mainly by the Ford Foundation and some groups in the EU. Critics of NIF sometimes claim the "New Israel" it seeks to fund is really Palestine.
Some of what NIF funds is harmless, or even beneficial, like shelters for battered women. But the bulk of its funding goes to leftist political activism inside Israel.
The current media frenzy began when Im Tirtzu released a 120-page report on the activities supported by the New Israel Fund. As Im Tirtzu's Shoval told me: "Supposedly in the name of freedom of speech, the New Israel Fund has financed a massive campaign of defamation against Israel and its soldiers, but then has demanded that Im Tirtzu be silenced. Inventing imaginary war crimes by Israel is NIF's idea of progressive democracy, but criticism of NIF by students is incitement and must be suppressed."
The new controversy was triggered by the UN's Goldstone report, which denounced Israel for war crimes and human rights abuses supposedly committed by Israeli soldiers during Operation Cast Lead while glossing over the thousands of rocket attacks that had made military action necessary in the first place.
The fairy tales of Israeli "human rights abuses" and "war crimes" by Goldstone were taken not from the usual anti-Israel propaganda websites and media outlets but were provided to the Goldstone "investigators" by numerous radical Israeli propaganda groups.
The funding of these extremist groups has long been the focus of the NGO-Monitor watchdog group, headed by Bar-Ilan University professor Gerald Steinberg. His website exposes non-governmental organizations that pretend to be human-rights or peace organizations but are in fact nothing more than Bash-Israel hate groups. They invariably get the bulk of their funding from outside Israel, often from sources hostile to Israel.
The Im Tirtzu students gathered data from NGO-Monitor and other sources and issued their devastating report (which includes 60 pages of tables). According to it, 92 percent of the anti-Israel smears in the Goldstone report came directly from organizations financed by the New Israel Fund.
Within days, the Israeli daily Maariv carried the story of the Im Tirtzu report on its front page, with several news and opinion pieces congratulating the students for their work and denouncing the New Israel Fund.
The Maariv story was followed up by the rest of the Israeli mainstream media. Only Haaretz, the daily described by some wags as the Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew, denounced the students as "inciters" and "right-wing extremists" and launched a shameless campaign of vilification and defamation against them.
The Knesset announced it would hold hearings into Im Tirtzu's findings. Within days, public statements endorsing the student report and denouncing the New Israel Fund were being published, notably one by a group of Israeli army generals.
Meanwhile, Im Tirtzu students escalated their criticism of the current president of the New Israel Fund, former Meretz MK Naomi Chazan. They mischievously issued a poster/advertisement with a cartoon showing Chazan with a rhino horn coming out of her forehead.
It was all a play on words: "new fund" in Hebrew is exactly the same expression as "new horn." So the poster shows Chazan wearing her "new fund" as a rhino horn on her forehead. The cartoon also played on the Israeli slang expression l'hitkarnef, literally "to become a rhinoceros," a popular term referring to "selling out."
Chazan and her leftist legions were not amused. She and NIF decided to bully the students by threatening to sue. They also instituted a lawsuit against the Jerusalem Post for running the Im Tirtzu ad. The Jerusalem Post responded by sacking Chazan, who had been a Post columnist. A "progressive" group of Jews in Australia, hearing about Chazan's behavior, decided to withdraw an offer to host her for a speaking tour.
Leftist groups, led by the anti-Israel Human Rights Watch, repeated their familiar take on democracy: Israelis denouncing and demonizing Israel build peace and progress, but people denouncing leftists threaten democracy itself.
A few dozen far-left academics, joined by some others, placed large ads in newspapers denouncing Im Tirtzu and endorsing the agenda of the New Israel Fund. Leftist professors filled the chat lists with messages insisting Im Tirtzu was a clear and present danger to democracy and freedom of speech in Israel.
Several tenured leftists insisted that Im Tirtzu's exercise of freedom of speech would lead directly to political murder, repeating the old calumny about how right-wingers exercising their freedom of speech caused the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Others, led by Haaretz writers, argued that the rhino horn in the Chazan cartoon was anti-Semitic.
That so many of Israel's leftists have stooped to such nonsense shows only one thing: They are in a high state of panic over the appearance of possibly the most important authentically Zionist grassroots movement in Israel in decades.
3. Pancake syrup time?
For anyone under the mistaken impression that Bibi Netanyau has developed a backbone, along comes this:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1151700.html
Israel grants visas to witnesses in suit over Rachel Corrie death
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
Under pressure from the United States, Israel is to grant visas to four activists from the International Solidarity Movement so they can testify in suit brought against the government by the family of Rachel Corrie, an activist killed by an IDF bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in March 2003.
Corrie, a U.S. citizen, was 24 when she was struck and killed by a bulldozer as she and others tried to stop Israel razing homes in Rafah by using their bodies as human shields.
The Interior Ministry informed the family's attorney, Hussein Abu Hussein, that the British and American witnesses, including a peace activist expelled from Israel in the past, would be allowed entry into to testify in the civil suit against the Defense Ministry.
The case is due to open the Haifa District Court in two weeks.
However, the Defense Ministry blocked the family's request to allow Dr. Ahmed Abu Nakira from the Al-Najar Hospital in Rafah, who treated Corrie's injuries and later confirmed her death, to enter Israel.
A request by Abu Hussein to question the physician via video conference was also rejected because "it is difficult to identify the witness and present him with documents".
Ahead of the court deliberations the Corrie family contacted Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Human Rights Michael Posner, who visited Israel several weeks ago in connection with the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead.
The family told Haaretz yesterday that it is working with members of Congress and the State Department to pressure Israel so that a "thorough and transparent investigation" of the death of their daughter can be carried out, "as was promised to President Bush by Prime Minister Sharon in March 2003."
The family says that the issue has been brought to the attention of President Barack Obama. They also noted that Vice President Joe Biden, in his former capacity as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had also raised the issue.
In the damages suit filed by the Corrie family it is stated that no thorough and objective investigation was held into the death, which the family maintains occurred either because of intent or the bulldozer driver's negligence. The plaintiffs also maintain that the recording documenting the incident was deleted.
4. http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/42595
J Street's Wrong Turn
David
Posted Feb 17 2010
See also http://sdjewishworld.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/the-word-for-j-street-irrelevance/
5. Arabs Begin to Blame Their Own Leaders for 'Refugee' Status
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Arabs who left Israel in the 1948 are are beginning to blame Arab countries for leaving them stateless after promising a quick return to "Palestine." "They [Arab leaders] said, 'A week, two weeks, approximately, and you'll return to Palestine,'" Sadek Mufid, formerly of Akko (Acre) and now living in Lebanon, recently told Palestinian Authority television.
His comments were translated by Palestinian Media Watch.
Saudi Arabia has led an Arab world demand that normalization of ties with Israel and the establishment of the PA as a state be conditioned on Israel's allowing the immigration of approximately five million Arabs. Most of them are descendants of Arabs who claim they used to live in Israel.
The United Nations has classified them as "refugees" and placed them in villages, known as "camps," in Judea, Samaria and Gaza and Arab countries. The Arab designation of "refugees" is maintained today by the refusal of Arab countries to allow them citizenship, voting rights, or the ability to move into better housing, in order to preserve their "unique status."
Mufid's testimony represents a new trend of Arab leaders, writers and former Israeli Arab residents who have begun to speak out and openly blame the Arab leadership for the creation of their situation.
Mufid describes a mass departure to Lebanon from Israel, which led to the creation of "11 or 15 refugee camps." He does not place the blame on Israel. As Palestinian Media Watch has previously reported, other recent accounts also describe a deliberate exit from Israel under orders from Arab leaders, as the Israeli government has always claimed, which contradicts the Palestinian leadership's charge that the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who left in 1948 were expelled by Israel.
Mufid, who left the village of Dir Al-Qasi near Akko in 1948, told the PA TV's weekly program Returning, "We headed first from Dir al-Qasi to Rmaich [Lebanon], considering what they [Arab leaders] said at the time: 'By Allah, in a week or two, you will return to Palestine.'
"The Arab armies entered Palestine, along with the Arab Liberation Army. We left - we and those who fled with us - and we all headed for Lebanon. Some people came to Rmaich and others came to the villages on the border, such as Ein Ibl and also to Bnit Jibil. People scattered. And we have about 11 or 15 [refugee] camps in Lebanon."
In another PA television interview, an elderly Arab recalled how his family left Ein Kerem, in eastern Jerusalem. "The radio stations of the Arab regimes kept repeating to us. 'Get away from the battle lines. It's a matter of 10 days or two weeks at the most, and we'll bring you back to Ein Kerem.'
"And we said to ourselves, 'That's a very long time. What is this? Two weeks? That's a lot!' That's what we thought [then]. And now 50 years have gone by."
Two years ago, Jordanian-based Aryan journalist Jawad Al Bashiti wrote in Al-Ayyam, "The reasons for the Palestinian Catastrophe [establishment of Israel and the refugee problem] are the same reasons that have produced and are still producing our catastrophes today... The first war between Arabs and Israel had started and the 'Arab Salvation Army' told the Palestinians, 'We have come to you in order to liquidate the Zionists and their state. Leave your houses and villages, you will return to them in a few days safely. Leave them so we can fulfill our mission in the best way and so you won't be hurt.' It became clear already then, when it was too late, that the support of the Arab states [against Israel] was a big illusion."
