1. J Street aims to distance US from Israel and undermine US support for Israel
a. Their own statements demonstrate it: “As Americans, we worry about the impact of Israeli policies on vital U.S. interests in the Middle East and around the world”
b. Ben-Ami is so intent on driving a sharp wedge between Israeli and U.S. interests that he totally ignores multi-layered security ties that bind Washington and Jerusalem -- from missile defense to intelligence sharing to thwarting terrorist threats from Hezb'allah and Hamas.
c. Not content to peddle a fictional incompatibility between U.S. and Israeli interests, Ben-Ami then goes on to depict Israel as a threat to "the health and vitality" of the U.S. Jewish community. This is nothing but another attempt to revive baseless fears that, if Israel exercises its right to self-defense, American Jews will be at risk. .
d. J Street is a very non-pacific front organization for Arab designs on Israel . It has issued a call for "forceful" opposition to Israel . Here's their language “J Street Calls for Stronger American Engagement to Stop Provocative Actions in Jerusalem . ...J Street urges the U.S. government to forcefully oppose provocative, unilateral actions …J Street condemns .....We urge the United States and American political leaders to seek an end to actions “
2. J Street policy effect would be the end of Israel.
a. If Israel were to deviate from its current path and shape its security according to J Street and world opinion, Israel definitely would be a goner.
b. J Street's agenda is to turn Israel into a state in which Jews might find a home -- leaving plenty of room for a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees and a bi-national state that dare not identify itself as Jewish.
c. How far left is J Street? President Obama has no trouble describing Israel as Jewish state. J Street does.
d. The Israeli ambassador to the United States blasted J Street, saying the organization was "fooling around with the lives of 7 million people." Among the policies Oren pointed to as problematic were J Street 's criticism of Israel 's attack on Gaza last winter, its refusal to reject the Goldstone report
e. J Street Refused to accept Israel ’s right of self-defense in Gaza
In regard to the recent Gaza conflict, it is J Street ’s address of Israel ’s side that truly casts some doubt on its “pro-Israel” stance. J Street ’s website features a section titled “ J Street ’s Response to the Gaza Crisis” (note, the word, crisis). The organization lists a number of statements and articles condemning Israel ’s military response to the rocket attacks, calling it “disproportional,” “counterproductive” and “deepening the cycle of violence.” No such criticism exists for Hamas’ rocket warfare and even more disturbing is the website’s lack of information about the destructive impact of the Gaza rockets on Israeli civilians. It appears that for J Street , the issue of the Gaza conflict is not even about Gaza but Israel ’s military response to Palestinian rocket terrorism. Not once does J Street point out that Palestinians who commit terror acts against Israel adhere to a radical Islamic ideology that teaches them to do so, nor that key players, like Iran and Syria , are heavily involved in supporting the terror war against Israel . Of course, J Street also refrains from mentioning that Hamas’ charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel .
3. J Street interferes in sovereign democratic government of Israel. What moral right do they have to interfere? As the far-left voice of J Street, Ben-Ami takes dead aim at Netanyahu's government, even though its diplomatic and security agenda does not differ materially from that of the previous centrist-led Kadima government of Ehud Olmert.
4. J Street has deep ties to enemies of Israel.
a. Iranian ties J Street conspiring with an organization run by an Iranian national -- an organization that Congress has asked AG Holder to investigate for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and lobbying disclosure laws -- to kill that legislation? Parsi was invited to speak at J Street 's conference. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the unofficial spokesman for Iran 's Green Movement. "I think Trita Parsi does not belong to the Green Movement. I feel his lobbying has secretly been more for the Islamic Republic," Makhmalbaf said. It seems J Street isn't just redefining "pro-Israel" -- they're redefining "pro-Iran" as well.
b. Others According to the US Federal Election Commission, donors to J Street ’s political action committee hail from forums aligned against Israel . J Street’s donors are affiliated with the National Iranian American Council, “Stop the Occupation”, AMIDEAST, the US State Department and the Arab American Institute -establishments not exactly known for pro-Israel views. Among the many private Jewish and Christian donors to J Street , there are also a number of Islamic and pro-Iranian activists, as well as Palestinian and Arab American businesspeople. One such example is Zahi Khouri, a major Palestinian businessman with a Coke franchise in the West Bank . Khouri actually decried Israel ’s attempts towards economic peace with the Palestinians in an article he wrote in the New York Times on September 9.
c. One member of the J Street Philly Host Committee “compared Israel's treatment of Gaza with the genocide in Sudan .
d. "Another Host Committee member is involved with ICAHD, a radical group which interferes with Israeli efforts to stop terrorism and which advocates "Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel .”
e. J Street is Raising money for Congress people who blast Israel “from the Arabist New Day”: J Street Raises $15,000 for Donna Edwards in 240 Minutes | TPMCafe By Issandr El Amrani New Day: J Street Raises $15,000 for Donna Edwards in 240 Minutes | TPMCafe Donna Edwards, another African-American representative who did not endorse Israel's Gaza brutalities, now defended by J Street.
5. J Street Influences Obama to ruin negotiations with Israel and the Palestinians
a. :Obama took the great advice of “progressive” geniuses like Rashid Khalidi and J Street. J Street , when not bad-mouthing AIPAC behind closed doors, spent much of the year openly bragging about their White House influence. According to Time, here are the results. Nothing pushed Israel and the Palestinians further away from negotiations than Obama doing what J Street suggested: making harsh demands on Israel, insisting on a total freeze on ‘natural growth,’ treating even Jerusalem as if it was a hilltop settlement, demanding that Israel give in on just about everything prior to negotiations. (Why even negotiate? Obama made all his dictates – exactly as J Street advised — in lieu of Israel and the Palestinians actually negotiating these things themselves.) Obama once pretended to be an “honest broker” only to expose himself as a Jimmy Carter-type advocate for the bad guys. And he did it in record time. Good job, J Street . Maybe that’s what “J” stands for: Jimmy
b. This is the reality- Obama brought J-Street into the center of the Israeli Palestinian issue, appointing their people to his Administration, and allowing J-Street a place at the table. Put simply, Obama is the face of J-Street. And J-Street is not pro-Israel
1. It's nothing less than an attempt to revive the old canard that Israel stands athwart U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond. “As Americans, we worry about the impact of Israeli policies on vital U.S. interests in the Middle East and around the world”
2. Ben-Ami is so intent on driving a sharp wedge between Israeli and U.S. interests that he totally ignores multi-layered security ties that bind Washington and Jerusalem -- from missile defense to intelligence sharing to thwarting terrorist threats from Hezb'allah and Hamas.
3. As the far-left voice of J Street, Ben-Ami takes dead aim at Netanyahu's government, even though its diplomatic and security agenda does not differ materially from that of the previous centrist-led Kadima government of Ehud Olmert.
4. Not content to peddle a fictional incompatibility between U.S. and Israeli interests, Ben-Ami then goes on to depict Israel as a threat to "the health and vitality" of the U.S. Jewish community. This is nothing but another attempt to revive baseless fears that, if Israel exercises its right to self-defense, American Jews will be at risk.
5. If Israel were to deviate from its current path and shape its security according to J Street and world opinion, Israel definitely would be a goner.
6. J Street's agenda thus is to turn Israel into a state in which Jews might find a home -- leaving plenty of room for a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees and a bi-national state that dare not identify itself as Jewish.
7. How far left is J Street? President Obama has no trouble describing Israel as Jewish state. J Street does.
8. The Israeli ambassador to the United States blasted J Street, saying the organization was "fooling around with the lives of 7 million people." Among the policies Oren pointed to as problematic were J Street's criticism of Israel's attack on Gaza last winter, its refusal to reject the Goldstone report
9. Why is J Street conspiring with an organization run by an Iranian national -- an organization that Congress has asked AG Holder to investigate for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and lobbying disclosure laws -- to kill that legislation? Parsi was invited to speak at J Street's conference. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the unofficial spokesman for Iran's Green Movement. "I think Trita Parsi does not belong to the Green Movement. I feel his lobbying has secretly been more for the Islamic Republic," Makhmalbaf said. It seems J Street isn't just redefining "pro-Israel" -- they're redefining "pro-Iran" as well.
10. This is the reality- Obama brought J-Street into the center of the Israeli Palestinian issue, appointing their people to his Administration, and allowing J-Street a place at the table. Put simply, Obama is the face of J-Street. And J-Street is not pro-Israel.
11. One member of the J Street Philly Host Committee “compared Israel's treatment of Gaza with the genocide in Sudan.
12. "Another Host Committee member is involved with ICAHD, a radical group which interferes with Israeli efforts to stop terrorism and which advocates "Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.”
13. Ruined Israel Arab negotiations :Obama took the great advice of “progressive” geniuses like Rashid Khalidi and J Street. J Street, when not bad-mouthing AIPAC behind closed doors, spent much of the year openly bragging about their White House influence. According to Time, here are the results. Nothing pushed Israel and the Palestinians further away from negotiations than Obama doing what J Street suggested: making harsh demands on Israel, insisting on a total freeze on ‘natural growth,’ treating even Jerusalem as if it was a hilltop settlement, demanding that Israel give in on just about everything prior to negotiations. (Why even negotiate? Obama made all his dictates – exactly as J Street advised — in lieu of Israel and the Palestinians actually negotiating these things themselves.) Obama once pretended to be an “honest broker” only to expose himself as a Jimmy Carter-type advocate for the bad guys. And he did it in record time. Good job, J Street. Maybe that’s what “J” stands for: Jimmy.
14, Raising money for Congrespeople who blast Israel from the Arabist New Day: J Street Raises $15,000 for Donna Edwards in 240 Minutes | TPMCafe By Issandr El Amrani New Day: J Street Raises $15,000 for Donna Edwards in 240 Minutes | TPMCafe Donna Edwards, another African-American representative who did not endorse Israel's Gaza brutalities, now defended by J Street.
15. According to the US Federal Election Commission, donors to J Street’s political action committee hail from forums aligned against Israel. J Street’s donors are affiliated with the National Iranian American Council, “Stop the Occupation”, AMIDEAST, the US State Department and the Arab American Institute -establishments not exactly known for pro-Israel views. Among the many private Jewish and Christian donors to J Street, there are also a number of Islamic and pro-Iranian activists, as well as Palestinian and Arab American businesspeople. One such example is Zahi Khouri, a major Palestinian businessman with a Coke franchise in the West Bank. Khouri actually decried Israel’s attempts towards economic peace with the Palestinians in an article he wrote in the New York Times on September 9.
16. J Street Refused to accept Israel’s right of self-defense in Gaza
In regard to the recent Gaza conflict, it is J Street’s address of Israel’s side that truly casts some doubt on its “pro-Israel” stance. J Street’s website features a section titled “J Street’s Response to the Gaza Crisis” (note, the word, crisis). The organization lists a number of statements and articles condemning Israel’s military response to the rocket attacks, calling it “disproportional,” “counterproductive” and “deepening the cycle of violence.” No such criticism exists for Hamas’ rocket warfare and even more disturbing is the website’s lack of information about the destructive impact of the Gaza rockets on Israeli civilians. It appears that for J Street, the issue of the Gaza conflict is not even about Gaza but Israel’s military response to Palestinian rocket terrorism. Not once does J Street point out that Palestinians who commit terror acts against Israel adhere to a radical Islamic ideology that teaches them to do so, nor that key players, like Iran and Syria, are heavily involved in supporting the terror war against Israel. Of course, J Street also refrains from mentioning that Hamas’ charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel.
17. Wrong on ceasefires -J Street asserts that ceasefires are “positive first steps in the long road to a lasting two-state solution.” The organization deliberately overlooks that three ceasefires between Hamas and Israel have all contributed to the strengthening of the Islamic government regime in Gaza, since Hamas came to power in 2006.
17. Distort the Middle East reality to fit their left-wing agenda.
18. J Street is a very non-pacific front organization for Arab designs on Israel. It has issued a call for "forceful" opposition to Israel. Here's their language “J Street Calls for Stronger American Engagement to Stop Provocative Actions in Jerusalem. ...J Street urges the U.S. government to forcefully oppose provocative, unilateral actions …J Street condemns .....We urge the United States and American political leaders to seek an end to actions
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Obama still believes it is all israel's fault
By Noam Shelef on January 21, 2010 10:53 AM | No Comments
In an interview published today by Time Magazine, President Barack Obama spoke about some of the obstacles he's faced in his efforts to pursue peace for Israel:
I'll be honest with you. A: This is just really hard. Even for a guy like George Mitchell who helped bring about the peace in Northern Ireland. This is as intractable a problem as you get. B: Both sides--I think the Israelis and Palestinians--have found that the political environment, the nature of their coalitions, or the divisions within their societies were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation. And I think that we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that. From Abbas' perspective, he's got Hamas looking over his shoulder and I think an environment generally within the Arab world that feels impatient with any process.
And on the Israeli front, although the Israelis I think after a lot of time showed a willingness to make some modifications in their policies, still found it very hard to move with any bold gestures. And so what we're going to have to do--I think it is absolutely true that what we did this year didn't produce the kind of breakthrough that we wanted and if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high. Moving forward, though, we are going to continue to work with both parties to recognize what I think is ultimately their deep-seated interest in a two-state solution in which Israel is secure and Palestinians have sovereignty and can start focusing on developing their economy and improving the lives of their children and grandchildren.
(Note: not one demand has been placed on the Palestinians; Netanyahu has frozen settlements; accepted a two-state solution; is removing one security measure after another in the West Bank; is facilitating the rapid growth of the economy in the West bank and helping build Palestinian institutions there).
In an interview published today by Time Magazine, President Barack Obama spoke about some of the obstacles he's faced in his efforts to pursue peace for Israel:
I'll be honest with you. A: This is just really hard. Even for a guy like George Mitchell who helped bring about the peace in Northern Ireland. This is as intractable a problem as you get. B: Both sides--I think the Israelis and Palestinians--have found that the political environment, the nature of their coalitions, or the divisions within their societies were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation. And I think that we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that. From Abbas' perspective, he's got Hamas looking over his shoulder and I think an environment generally within the Arab world that feels impatient with any process.
And on the Israeli front, although the Israelis I think after a lot of time showed a willingness to make some modifications in their policies, still found it very hard to move with any bold gestures. And so what we're going to have to do--I think it is absolutely true that what we did this year didn't produce the kind of breakthrough that we wanted and if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high. Moving forward, though, we are going to continue to work with both parties to recognize what I think is ultimately their deep-seated interest in a two-state solution in which Israel is secure and Palestinians have sovereignty and can start focusing on developing their economy and improving the lives of their children and grandchildren.
(Note: not one demand has been placed on the Palestinians; Netanyahu has frozen settlements; accepted a two-state solution; is removing one security measure after another in the West Bank; is facilitating the rapid growth of the economy in the West bank and helping build Palestinian institutions there).
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Why have Muslim nations given 0 vs Israel's amazing response
a 'teabagger' »
Email Friend | Print Article | 30 Comments | Share
January 18, 2010
Israel's Disproportionate Response
Peggy Shapiro
In the midst of the tragedy and chaos in the Haitian capital, Israeli doctors, part of IsraAID -F.I.R.S.T. (the Israel Forum for International Aid), delivered a healthy baby boy in an IDF field hospital. When the baby's grateful mother, Gubilande Jean Michel saw her newborn son, alive and well, she named him Israel in gratitude to the people and nation who brought her this blessing.
Little Israel is one of the hundreds who have been saved by Israeli doctors or rescue teams. A search and rescue team from the ZAKA Israel's International Rescue Unit pulled eight Haitian college students from a collapsed eight-story university building. Despite its small size, Israel sent a large contingent of highly-trained aid workers to quake-stricken Haiti. Two jumbo jets carrying more than 220 doctors, nurses, civil engineers, and other Israeli army personnel, including a rescue team and field hospital, were among the first rescue teams to arrive in Haiti. In fact, they were the first foreign backup team to set up medical treatment at the partially collapsed main hospital in Port-au-Prince. Yigal Palmor, Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman said, "It's a large delegation and we're prepared to send more."
The international agencies that condemn Israel for its "disproportionate response" when it is attacked are not mentioning Israel's disproportionate response to human suffering. The U.S. has pledged 100 million and sent supplies and personnel. The U.K. pledged $10 million and sent 64 firemen and 8 volunteers.China, a country with a population of 1,325,639,982 compared to Israel's 7.5 million sent 50 rescuers and seven journalists. The 25 Arab League nations sent nothing.
Israel's "disproportionate" response stems from Jewish memory and tradition. Mati Goldstein, head of the ZAKA International Rescue Unit delegation managed described the scene, "Everywhere, the acrid smell of bodies hangs in the air. It's just like the stories we are told of the Holocaust - thousands of bodies everywhere. You have to understand that the situation is true madness, and the more time passes, there are more and more bodies, in numbers that cannot be grasped. It is beyond comprehension." At the start of Sunday's regular Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the Israeli team had already treated hundreds of patients. "I think that this is in the best tradition of the Jewish People; this is the true covenant of the State of Israel and the Jewish People," he said. "This follows operations we have carried out in Kenya and Turkey; despite being a small country, we have responded with a big heart. The fact is, I know, that this was an expression of our Jewish heritage and the Jewish ethic of helping one's fellow. "
In the rubble and suffering of Haiti, Israelis are relentlessly searching for and saving lives. It is this "disproportionate response" that rankles their enemies the most, for it shines a light on their failings.
Email Friend | Print Article | 30 Comments | Share
January 18, 2010
Israel's Disproportionate Response
Peggy Shapiro
In the midst of the tragedy and chaos in the Haitian capital, Israeli doctors, part of IsraAID -F.I.R.S.T. (the Israel Forum for International Aid), delivered a healthy baby boy in an IDF field hospital. When the baby's grateful mother, Gubilande Jean Michel saw her newborn son, alive and well, she named him Israel in gratitude to the people and nation who brought her this blessing.
Little Israel is one of the hundreds who have been saved by Israeli doctors or rescue teams. A search and rescue team from the ZAKA Israel's International Rescue Unit pulled eight Haitian college students from a collapsed eight-story university building. Despite its small size, Israel sent a large contingent of highly-trained aid workers to quake-stricken Haiti. Two jumbo jets carrying more than 220 doctors, nurses, civil engineers, and other Israeli army personnel, including a rescue team and field hospital, were among the first rescue teams to arrive in Haiti. In fact, they were the first foreign backup team to set up medical treatment at the partially collapsed main hospital in Port-au-Prince. Yigal Palmor, Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman said, "It's a large delegation and we're prepared to send more."
The international agencies that condemn Israel for its "disproportionate response" when it is attacked are not mentioning Israel's disproportionate response to human suffering. The U.S. has pledged 100 million and sent supplies and personnel. The U.K. pledged $10 million and sent 64 firemen and 8 volunteers.China, a country with a population of 1,325,639,982 compared to Israel's 7.5 million sent 50 rescuers and seven journalists. The 25 Arab League nations sent nothing.
Israel's "disproportionate" response stems from Jewish memory and tradition. Mati Goldstein, head of the ZAKA International Rescue Unit delegation managed described the scene, "Everywhere, the acrid smell of bodies hangs in the air. It's just like the stories we are told of the Holocaust - thousands of bodies everywhere. You have to understand that the situation is true madness, and the more time passes, there are more and more bodies, in numbers that cannot be grasped. It is beyond comprehension." At the start of Sunday's regular Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the Israeli team had already treated hundreds of patients. "I think that this is in the best tradition of the Jewish People; this is the true covenant of the State of Israel and the Jewish People," he said. "This follows operations we have carried out in Kenya and Turkey; despite being a small country, we have responded with a big heart. The fact is, I know, that this was an expression of our Jewish heritage and the Jewish ethic of helping one's fellow. "
In the rubble and suffering of Haiti, Israelis are relentlessly searching for and saving lives. It is this "disproportionate response" that rankles their enemies the most, for it shines a light on their failings.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Israel in haiti
updates of IDF Medical and Rescue Team in Haiti: @IDFinHaiti
The Israel Project offers its condolences to the victims of the earthquake in Haiti.
Israeli and Jewish groups continue their efforts to provide relief to the people of Haiti.[1]
On Jan. 15, the Israel Defense Forces’ emergency aid team arrived in Haiti, consisting of a medical mission and search and rescue teams.[2] The team has established a major field hospital adjacent to Port-au-Prince’s soccer stadium, which is reported to be one of the largest medical facilities currently operating in Haiti with the capacity to treat up to 500 patients per day.[3] The field hospital is equipped with:
•Operating rooms
•An intensive care ward
•A maternity ward
•Pediatrics ward
•Incubator units
•Pharmacy
•X-ray equipment
•10 tons of medical equipment
•90 beds, 66 intensive care beds and two delivery beds
•Approximately 250 personnel, including 40 doctors and specialists, 20 nurses and several paramedics.[4]
The IDF search and rescue teams include about 30 operators and dozens of operations personnel including logistics IT, communications and canine units.[5]
The IDF rescued a 52-year old man from the ruins of a government office building Jan 17 after he communicated his location by SMS.[6] The Israeli team worked for six hours before finally freeing him.[7]
On Sunday, (Jan. 17), a baby boy was delivered inside the Israeli field hospital. The mother of the child said she would call him Israel. [7]
Israeli emergency response service (ZAKA) volunteers on the ground in Haiti rescued eight students from the rubble of a flattened university building in Port au-Prince, Haiti, on Saturday (Jan. 16).[8] Deploying a six-man team, ZAKA worked for 38 hours with a Mexican military team to rescue the students.[9]
The team is comprised of observant Jews who continued with their life-saving activities over the Jewish Sabbath because Jewish law instructs that Sabbath can be broken to save a life. “With all the hell going on outside, even when things get bad, Judaism says we must take a deep breath and go on to save more people" said Commander of the ZAKA mission to Haiti Mati Goldstein in an interview with Israeli news outlet YnetNews.[10]
The Israel Project offers its condolences to the victims of the earthquake in Haiti.
Israeli and Jewish groups continue their efforts to provide relief to the people of Haiti.[1]
On Jan. 15, the Israel Defense Forces’ emergency aid team arrived in Haiti, consisting of a medical mission and search and rescue teams.[2] The team has established a major field hospital adjacent to Port-au-Prince’s soccer stadium, which is reported to be one of the largest medical facilities currently operating in Haiti with the capacity to treat up to 500 patients per day.[3] The field hospital is equipped with:
•Operating rooms
•An intensive care ward
•A maternity ward
•Pediatrics ward
•Incubator units
•Pharmacy
•X-ray equipment
•10 tons of medical equipment
•90 beds, 66 intensive care beds and two delivery beds
•Approximately 250 personnel, including 40 doctors and specialists, 20 nurses and several paramedics.[4]
The IDF search and rescue teams include about 30 operators and dozens of operations personnel including logistics IT, communications and canine units.[5]
The IDF rescued a 52-year old man from the ruins of a government office building Jan 17 after he communicated his location by SMS.[6] The Israeli team worked for six hours before finally freeing him.[7]
On Sunday, (Jan. 17), a baby boy was delivered inside the Israeli field hospital. The mother of the child said she would call him Israel. [7]
Israeli emergency response service (ZAKA) volunteers on the ground in Haiti rescued eight students from the rubble of a flattened university building in Port au-Prince, Haiti, on Saturday (Jan. 16).[8] Deploying a six-man team, ZAKA worked for 38 hours with a Mexican military team to rescue the students.[9]
The team is comprised of observant Jews who continued with their life-saving activities over the Jewish Sabbath because Jewish law instructs that Sabbath can be broken to save a life. “With all the hell going on outside, even when things get bad, Judaism says we must take a deep breath and go on to save more people" said Commander of the ZAKA mission to Haiti Mati Goldstein in an interview with Israeli news outlet YnetNews.[10]
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Obama anti-Israel?
*By: Jim Meyers*
President Barack Obama’s anti-Semitism “czar” Hannah Rosenthal has been
castigated by Jewish leaders for publicly criticizing Israel’s
Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren.
The flap began when the Israeli embassy said Oren would not attend a
conference hosted by J Street, an advocacy group based in the U.S. that
promotes American leadership to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The embassy asserted that Oren would not attend because J Street
supports positions that may “impair Israel’s interest.” In fact, the
American Israeli Action Coalition (AIAC) has stated that J Street is “a
radical, far left, anti-Israel, American organization funded by Arab and
radical sources" which "has been almost universally condemned by
mainstream Jewish organizations."
Rosenthal, a member of J Street’s advisory panel before being appointed
by Obama to head the Office To Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, called
Oren’s decision “most unfortunate.” She also said he would have “learned
a lot” at the conference, and criticized him for pointing out to an
assembly of Jewish leaders that J Street was “fooling around with the
lives of 7 million people.”
The AIAC has responded to her criticism by calling for Rosenthal’s ouster.
Harvey Schwartz, AIAC’s chairman, stated: “As a high ranking member of
the Obama administration, Rosenthal’s criticism of the Israeli
Ambassador to the U.S. is beyond bizarre, and highly offensive in the
extreme. It is a virulent anti-Israel attack which AIAC interprets to be
anti-Semitic.
"That the State Department took the highly unusual step of announcing
its 'complete support' for Rosenthal confirms that she was expressing
the views of the Obama administration. Contrary to her duty to fight
anti-Semitism, Rosenthal used her bully pulpit to advance it. This is
deplorable.
“Even more deplorable is the Obama administration’s public slap at
Israel, utilizing Rosenthal as its mouthpiece,” Schwartz continued in
remarks reported by IsraelNationalNews.com.
“When coupled with the Obama administration’s numerous other slaps at
Israel, including its almost hysterical non-recognition of Israel’s
inalienable right to build civilian homes in its Jerusalem capital and
[U.S. peace envoy and former Senator George] Mitchell’s recent public
threat to withdraw U.S. loan guarantees from Israel, while at the same
time saying and doing nothing to the Palestinians to ‘encourage’ them to
return to the peace talks, the Obama administration has laid bare its
anti-Israel focus and has proven itself to no longer be an honest broker
for peace.”
Aaron Tirschwell, AIAC’s Executive Director, declared that “Rosenthal
has committed an unpardonable sin. She must go promptly. AIAC calls upon
all American Jewish organizations, as well as all Americans of good
will, to demand that the Obama administration dismiss Rosenthal forthwith.”
President Barack Obama’s anti-Semitism “czar” Hannah Rosenthal has been
castigated by Jewish leaders for publicly criticizing Israel’s
Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren.
The flap began when the Israeli embassy said Oren would not attend a
conference hosted by J Street, an advocacy group based in the U.S. that
promotes American leadership to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The embassy asserted that Oren would not attend because J Street
supports positions that may “impair Israel’s interest.” In fact, the
American Israeli Action Coalition (AIAC) has stated that J Street is “a
radical, far left, anti-Israel, American organization funded by Arab and
radical sources" which "has been almost universally condemned by
mainstream Jewish organizations."
Rosenthal, a member of J Street’s advisory panel before being appointed
by Obama to head the Office To Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, called
Oren’s decision “most unfortunate.” She also said he would have “learned
a lot” at the conference, and criticized him for pointing out to an
assembly of Jewish leaders that J Street was “fooling around with the
lives of 7 million people.”
The AIAC has responded to her criticism by calling for Rosenthal’s ouster.
Harvey Schwartz, AIAC’s chairman, stated: “As a high ranking member of
the Obama administration, Rosenthal’s criticism of the Israeli
Ambassador to the U.S. is beyond bizarre, and highly offensive in the
extreme. It is a virulent anti-Israel attack which AIAC interprets to be
anti-Semitic.
"That the State Department took the highly unusual step of announcing
its 'complete support' for Rosenthal confirms that she was expressing
the views of the Obama administration. Contrary to her duty to fight
anti-Semitism, Rosenthal used her bully pulpit to advance it. This is
deplorable.
“Even more deplorable is the Obama administration’s public slap at
Israel, utilizing Rosenthal as its mouthpiece,” Schwartz continued in
remarks reported by IsraelNationalNews.com.
“When coupled with the Obama administration’s numerous other slaps at
Israel, including its almost hysterical non-recognition of Israel’s
inalienable right to build civilian homes in its Jerusalem capital and
[U.S. peace envoy and former Senator George] Mitchell’s recent public
threat to withdraw U.S. loan guarantees from Israel, while at the same
time saying and doing nothing to the Palestinians to ‘encourage’ them to
return to the peace talks, the Obama administration has laid bare its
anti-Israel focus and has proven itself to no longer be an honest broker
for peace.”
Aaron Tirschwell, AIAC’s Executive Director, declared that “Rosenthal
has committed an unpardonable sin. She must go promptly. AIAC calls upon
all American Jewish organizations, as well as all Americans of good
will, to demand that the Obama administration dismiss Rosenthal forthwith.”
Adminstartion uses faulty polls to pressure Israel
Here is an excerpt of the Q and A between Charlie Rose and George Mitchell:
q/
Charlie Rose: Why is President Obama's popularity so low in Israel? It's four percent.
George Mitchell: No, that's completely false...Several polls that I've seen in the past month show that he is—I'll give you the numbers, 49 favorable, 45 unfavorable, 43 favorable, 37 unfavorable; it's a reasonable. A plurality support him in Israel and a small plurality oppose him.
http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-monitor/2010/01/interesting-george-mitchell-interview
q/
The poll Mitchell relies upon seems to be from the New America Foundation. As far as I have been able to determine, this has been the only one poll regarding the views of Israelis towards the administration that comes anywhere near matching Mitchell’s statements. Previous polls done by Israelis themselves have shown far more problematic views http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371037911&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull , including one that show only 6% of Israelis who see the administration as pro-Israel http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1245184872947&pagename=JPArticle/ShowFull and one that shows only 4% of Israelis Jews consider Obama pro-Israel. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251145138121&pagename=JPArticle/ShowFull
The New American Foundation is a left wing group, with a connection to Jonathan Soros, son of George Soros. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=New_America_Foundation . Steve Rattner is involved; Bernard Schwartz, Lew Cullman also involved-very generous donors to not just the Democratic Party but also strong supporters of Barack Obama. James Fallows is the Chairman-certainly leans to the left.
Ben Smith, of Politico, wrote this about the poll’s authors:
The surveys authors, who support robust Israeli and American engagement in the peace process, said in an analysis accompanying the poll’s findings that the numbers are encouraging, and that the responses leave Netanyahu room to maneuver toward peace, and Obama sufficient support to demand it.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30442.html#ixzz0cUoBhtkh
This poll was basically done by Jim Gerstein (founding VP of J Street-a group that its founder admitted served to have Barack Obama’s back on matters relating to Israel; that has connections to George Soros- a foe of Israel’s; that has been linked to Hamas supporters; has Arab donors; had a line-up of anti-Israel speakers scheduled for its first Washington conference, etc).
Below is one Commentary magazine writer’s view of the New America Foundation poll. Noah Pollak is the expert on J Street and he has critiqued J Street’s polling methods before http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/pollak/75641.
The moral of the story?
George Mitchell seems to be using a poll that should be viewed skeptically in order to give him leeway to influence Israel to comply with American plans. Domestically, will the administration rely on this quite useful poll to justify its actions to American Jews? That strategy may have been presaged by Mitchell’s views expressed during the Charlie Rose interview.
Is Mitchell relying on a poll concocted by political allies to rationalize predetermined policies regarding Israel?
Agenda Polling
Noah Pollak - 12.10.2009 - 12:25 PM
So J Street’s pollster, Jim Gerstein (who was also a founding VP of J Street), has done a poll of Israelis for the New America Foundation. It is being billed as a repudiation of the famous Jerusalem Post poll conducted in June that found that only 6 percent of Israelis consider the Obama administration to be pro-Israel. The new Gerstein poll is advertised by NAF as proving that “Israelis actually demonstrate a much more supportive and nuanced view of President Obama” than was the case in the previous poll.
I was always skeptical of the original poll. The numbers just seemed too low to be credible, and the poll was conducted right after Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech, when passions were high. But the way to credibly disprove those numbers is to sample a similar group and ask the same questions. Unsurprisingly, that’s not what Gerstein did.
The JPost poll was conducted among Jewish Israelis. Gerstein, however, polled everyone, including Arabs, who comprised 16 percent of his sample (an under-sampling, actually — almost 20 percent of Israelis are Arab). More important, he did not ask the same, or even a similar, question. He asked a question that was sure to make Obama look better than the previous poll: not whether the respondent thought that the Obama administration was pro-Israel, but whether the respondent had warm feelings toward Barack Obama personally.
This is where the poll found a 41 percent “favorable rating” for Obama. But having warm feelings toward a politician is not the same thing as approving of his performance in office. The exact same phenomenon has been documented in numerous polls of Americans, who consistently give Barack Obama higher approval marks than his policies.
It looks to me like the poll itself was conducted responsibly, and it has many interesting findings, including that more than twice the number of Israelis identify with the Right than with the Left. But the PR effort being waged on its behalf, however, is not being conducted all that honestly. There was no effort in the Gerstein poll to replicate, even vaguely, the question that the Jerusalem Post poll asked: Do you believe that the Obama administration is pro-Israel? Instead, Gerstein asked an Oprah Winfrey–style question about whether Barack Obama gives you warm fuzzies, and included the Israeli Arab population in his sample, which the JPost poll did not.
I have little doubt that another poll replicating the JPost’s questions and sample demographic would find that far more than 6 percent of Israeli Jews believe that the Obama administration is pro-Israel. It’s too bad that the New America Foundation didn’t take the opportunity to find out. The full poll can be read here.
q/
Charlie Rose: Why is President Obama's popularity so low in Israel? It's four percent.
George Mitchell: No, that's completely false...Several polls that I've seen in the past month show that he is—I'll give you the numbers, 49 favorable, 45 unfavorable, 43 favorable, 37 unfavorable; it's a reasonable. A plurality support him in Israel and a small plurality oppose him.
http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-monitor/2010/01/interesting-george-mitchell-interview
q/
The poll Mitchell relies upon seems to be from the New America Foundation. As far as I have been able to determine, this has been the only one poll regarding the views of Israelis towards the administration that comes anywhere near matching Mitchell’s statements. Previous polls done by Israelis themselves have shown far more problematic views http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371037911&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull , including one that show only 6% of Israelis who see the administration as pro-Israel http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1245184872947&pagename=JPArticle/ShowFull and one that shows only 4% of Israelis Jews consider Obama pro-Israel. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251145138121&pagename=JPArticle/ShowFull
The New American Foundation is a left wing group, with a connection to Jonathan Soros, son of George Soros. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=New_America_Foundation . Steve Rattner is involved; Bernard Schwartz, Lew Cullman also involved-very generous donors to not just the Democratic Party but also strong supporters of Barack Obama. James Fallows is the Chairman-certainly leans to the left.
Ben Smith, of Politico, wrote this about the poll’s authors:
The surveys authors, who support robust Israeli and American engagement in the peace process, said in an analysis accompanying the poll’s findings that the numbers are encouraging, and that the responses leave Netanyahu room to maneuver toward peace, and Obama sufficient support to demand it.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30442.html#ixzz0cUoBhtkh
This poll was basically done by Jim Gerstein (founding VP of J Street-a group that its founder admitted served to have Barack Obama’s back on matters relating to Israel; that has connections to George Soros- a foe of Israel’s; that has been linked to Hamas supporters; has Arab donors; had a line-up of anti-Israel speakers scheduled for its first Washington conference, etc).
Below is one Commentary magazine writer’s view of the New America Foundation poll. Noah Pollak is the expert on J Street and he has critiqued J Street’s polling methods before http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/pollak/75641.
The moral of the story?
George Mitchell seems to be using a poll that should be viewed skeptically in order to give him leeway to influence Israel to comply with American plans. Domestically, will the administration rely on this quite useful poll to justify its actions to American Jews? That strategy may have been presaged by Mitchell’s views expressed during the Charlie Rose interview.
Is Mitchell relying on a poll concocted by political allies to rationalize predetermined policies regarding Israel?
Agenda Polling
Noah Pollak - 12.10.2009 - 12:25 PM
So J Street’s pollster, Jim Gerstein (who was also a founding VP of J Street), has done a poll of Israelis for the New America Foundation. It is being billed as a repudiation of the famous Jerusalem Post poll conducted in June that found that only 6 percent of Israelis consider the Obama administration to be pro-Israel. The new Gerstein poll is advertised by NAF as proving that “Israelis actually demonstrate a much more supportive and nuanced view of President Obama” than was the case in the previous poll.
I was always skeptical of the original poll. The numbers just seemed too low to be credible, and the poll was conducted right after Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech, when passions were high. But the way to credibly disprove those numbers is to sample a similar group and ask the same questions. Unsurprisingly, that’s not what Gerstein did.
The JPost poll was conducted among Jewish Israelis. Gerstein, however, polled everyone, including Arabs, who comprised 16 percent of his sample (an under-sampling, actually — almost 20 percent of Israelis are Arab). More important, he did not ask the same, or even a similar, question. He asked a question that was sure to make Obama look better than the previous poll: not whether the respondent thought that the Obama administration was pro-Israel, but whether the respondent had warm feelings toward Barack Obama personally.
This is where the poll found a 41 percent “favorable rating” for Obama. But having warm feelings toward a politician is not the same thing as approving of his performance in office. The exact same phenomenon has been documented in numerous polls of Americans, who consistently give Barack Obama higher approval marks than his policies.
It looks to me like the poll itself was conducted responsibly, and it has many interesting findings, including that more than twice the number of Israelis identify with the Right than with the Left. But the PR effort being waged on its behalf, however, is not being conducted all that honestly. There was no effort in the Gerstein poll to replicate, even vaguely, the question that the Jerusalem Post poll asked: Do you believe that the Obama administration is pro-Israel? Instead, Gerstein asked an Oprah Winfrey–style question about whether Barack Obama gives you warm fuzzies, and included the Israeli Arab population in his sample, which the JPost poll did not.
I have little doubt that another poll replicating the JPost’s questions and sample demographic would find that far more than 6 percent of Israeli Jews believe that the Obama administration is pro-Israel. It’s too bad that the New America Foundation didn’t take the opportunity to find out. The full poll can be read here.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Obama =J Street=anti-Israel
from Richard baehr Rick Richman comments on the Obama team's allowing its end of 2009 deadline for Iranian cooperation on its nuclear program to come and go. But the Obama team likes deadlines- now they want a deal on borders between Israel and the Palestinians in 9 months. And all final status issues must be resolved in 2 years. This is both ham-handed and stupid. Tell the Palestinians that the US wants a deal in 9 months, and they will hold up any progress for 9 months. After all, they are getting and Israel is giving in these negotiations. As the deadline appears, the US will put pressure on only one of the two parties for not giving enough, and preventing a breakthrough. George Mitchell has already laid out his hand on what pressure will be applied on Israel if they do not make a sufficient offer- a cut-off of loan guarantees and a cut in aid to Israel. Is it really difficult for American Jews to figure out where this administration stands on the Israeli Palestinian conflict ? This is the least friendly administration towards Israel since the modern state was established in 1948. This Administration has taken sides in the Israel Palestinian conflict since it came to office. Only Honduras has been treated as rudely, and no other nation has come in for as much public rebuke. I am looking for a list of all the times Administration people have made public comments critical of the behavior or statements of the Palestinian Authority. Obama came to office with a view that Israel was at fault, and the resolution of the conflict (Israeli concessions in all areas) was essential to improving US relations with the Muslim world. He is wrong on both counts, but some can not learn, and others refuse to. Among those who refuse to learn are the liberal Jews who profess to being pro-Israel and contributed to and voted for Obama and still stand by him. This is the reality- Obama brought J-Street into the center of the Israeli Palestinian issue, appointing their people to his Administration, and allowing J-Street a place at the table. Put simply, Obama is the face of J-Street. And J-Street is not pro-Israel.
http://tinyurl.com/yg52v96
http://tinyurl.com/yg52v96
US aid
Aid to Israel: The Story in Numbers
David Hazony - 01.12.2010 - 7:03 AM
While everyone over here in Israel is tittering over the question of whether George Mitchell did or did not threaten to cut back on American aid to Israel if there is no progress in peace talks, it might be worth getting a little perspective on what those numbers actually look like, both for Israelis and for Americans.
In 1985, the year Israel started receiving such high levels of American aid, U.S. taxpayers gave Israel about $3.4 billion in economic and military grants. That year, Israel’s GDP stood at about $24.1 billion in current dollars. American aid constituted about 14 percent of Israel’s GDP — an enormous amount of support for a country struggling with both a severe economic crisis and an ongoing war in Lebanon.
In 1996, the year Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress and declared his aim of ending Israel’s dependence on American aid, total grants came to $3.1 billion, while Israel’s GDP stood at $105 billion. U.S. aid was then only about 3 percent of Israel’s GDP.
In 2008, U.S. aid was down to about $2.4 billion, while Israel’s GDP was up to $199 billion. We’re talking about 1.2 percent of Israel’s GDP.
So whereas nobody would consider $2.4 billion a trivial amount of money, the economic significance of that aid has dropped dramatically, as far as Israelis are concerned. Israel’s “dependence” on American aid is not zero, but it’s heading there.
But what about American taxpayers? Here, too, we see a dramatic drop in economic significance as measured as a portion of the U.S. federal budget. In 1985, the $3.4 billion was out of an overall budget of some $947 billion — or 0.35 percent. In 2008, Israel received $2.4 billion out of a total budget of $2.99 trillion — which looks like 0.08 percent, or less than one one-thousandth. A similar drop is seen when comparing the aid against the overall GDP of the United States: from about 0.081 percent down to 0.016 percent. So while the Israelis feel the lift of American aid less than a tenth as much as they used to, Americans feel its bite less than a quarter of what they used to.
At the same time, the makeup of U.S. aid has shifted dramatically as well. If in 1985, aid was about three-fifths economic and two-fifths military, in 2008 economic aid was down to just $120 million, with the rest as military aid. The shift reflects Israel’s economic success: it no longer needs American charity, and in fact gets very little. Military aid, on the other hand, reflects Israel’s contribution to advancing U.S. strategic interests — a proposition that can be legitimately debated but should not be confused with an anachronistic sentimentality for the plight of struggling Zionist farmers. (Note: I have focused on grants and deliberately left out the billions in military loan guarantees the U.S. makes to Israel, which are not a handout as much as a promise of business for the American military industry.)
Bottom line: U.S. aid to Israel has plummeted in the past two decades by nearly every reasonable measure. And anyone who thinks the Israel lobby is bilking American taxpayers out of a false and outdated sentimentality for Israel’s plight is not paying attention to the numbers. That kind of American generosity ended a while ago.
David Hazony - 01.12.2010 - 7:03 AM
While everyone over here in Israel is tittering over the question of whether George Mitchell did or did not threaten to cut back on American aid to Israel if there is no progress in peace talks, it might be worth getting a little perspective on what those numbers actually look like, both for Israelis and for Americans.
In 1985, the year Israel started receiving such high levels of American aid, U.S. taxpayers gave Israel about $3.4 billion in economic and military grants. That year, Israel’s GDP stood at about $24.1 billion in current dollars. American aid constituted about 14 percent of Israel’s GDP — an enormous amount of support for a country struggling with both a severe economic crisis and an ongoing war in Lebanon.
In 1996, the year Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress and declared his aim of ending Israel’s dependence on American aid, total grants came to $3.1 billion, while Israel’s GDP stood at $105 billion. U.S. aid was then only about 3 percent of Israel’s GDP.
In 2008, U.S. aid was down to about $2.4 billion, while Israel’s GDP was up to $199 billion. We’re talking about 1.2 percent of Israel’s GDP.
So whereas nobody would consider $2.4 billion a trivial amount of money, the economic significance of that aid has dropped dramatically, as far as Israelis are concerned. Israel’s “dependence” on American aid is not zero, but it’s heading there.
But what about American taxpayers? Here, too, we see a dramatic drop in economic significance as measured as a portion of the U.S. federal budget. In 1985, the $3.4 billion was out of an overall budget of some $947 billion — or 0.35 percent. In 2008, Israel received $2.4 billion out of a total budget of $2.99 trillion — which looks like 0.08 percent, or less than one one-thousandth. A similar drop is seen when comparing the aid against the overall GDP of the United States: from about 0.081 percent down to 0.016 percent. So while the Israelis feel the lift of American aid less than a tenth as much as they used to, Americans feel its bite less than a quarter of what they used to.
At the same time, the makeup of U.S. aid has shifted dramatically as well. If in 1985, aid was about three-fifths economic and two-fifths military, in 2008 economic aid was down to just $120 million, with the rest as military aid. The shift reflects Israel’s economic success: it no longer needs American charity, and in fact gets very little. Military aid, on the other hand, reflects Israel’s contribution to advancing U.S. strategic interests — a proposition that can be legitimately debated but should not be confused with an anachronistic sentimentality for the plight of struggling Zionist farmers. (Note: I have focused on grants and deliberately left out the billions in military loan guarantees the U.S. makes to Israel, which are not a handout as much as a promise of business for the American military industry.)
Bottom line: U.S. aid to Israel has plummeted in the past two decades by nearly every reasonable measure. And anyone who thinks the Israel lobby is bilking American taxpayers out of a false and outdated sentimentality for Israel’s plight is not paying attention to the numbers. That kind of American generosity ended a while ago.
world does not want Israel to be able to defend itself
Strange effects - Israel's right to self-defense
By HARRY REICHER
Print Subscribe
E-mail Toolbar
+ Recommend:
What's this?
Talkbacks for this article: 32
There is something about the Arab-Israeli conflict that does strange things to people. Even otherwise distinguished personalities, who in every other context are rational, sensible thinkers, become unrecognizable. The international law of self-defense is a case in point.
United Nations.
Photo: AP [file]
It is trite to say that the first and most basic human instinct is that of self-preservation. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which enshrines "the inherent right" of self-defense, emanates from this. The occurrence of "an armed attack" triggers the right.
In the context of Israel's incursion into Gaza last year, in response to several thousand rockets which had been fired from there into Israel over a period of years, a letter appeared in The Times of London, exactly a year ago today, signed by 31 lawyers. The lead signatory was Sir Ian Brownlie, professor emeritus of public international law at Oxford University, undoubtedly one of the world's preeminent international law authorities. The letter asserted, in so many words, the astonishing proposition that the thousands of rockets which landed in Israel (and were aimed at civilian populations and centers) "do not, in terms of scale and effect, amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defense."
ONE IS tempted to wonder what Prime Minister Gordon Brown would say to the notion that thousands of missiles lobbed into England would not, of themselves, constitute an armed attack. To this, one should add the International Court of Justice which, in its 2003 opinion arising out of the construction of Israel's security fence, concluded, by a vote of 14-1, that suicide bombers wreaking havoc on the country did not justify exercise of the right of self-defense, because they were not "armed attack[s] by one state against another state."
To get to this result, the court (a) wrote into Article 51 words that simply do not exist, requiring the attack to come from another state; and (b), in any event, disregarded the fact that suicide bombers are recruited, indoctrinated, trained, financed and dispatched from outside Israel.
And then there is Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, who issued a statement during the Gaza war, against the background of Hamas shamelessly, callously and cold-bloodedly embedding military personnel, arms, munitions and other military equipment in the heart of civilian populations (which international law expressly outlaws). Despite the fact that this made it well nigh impossible to distinguish between civilian and military targets, Falk declared that even in these circumstances, "launching [an] attack is inherently unlawful and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law."
Simply stated, there was absolutely nothing Israel could do to protect itself.
IN REFLECTING on these examples, it is important not to lose sight of something fundamental. The question is not whether a particular proposition, however bizarre, can be supported by authority. As a senior queen's counsel told me in my first year out of law school, as we sat in his book-lined chambers: "You see these books? In these books, you can find authority for any proposition you want to put."
In an adversarial situation, that makes perfect sense. It is, after all, the role of counsel to forcefully advance his or her client's interests: You give me the conclusion, I'll give you the argument!
Wisdom and sound objective judgement, on the other hand, require an altogether different line of inquiry. It involves standing back, and asking objectively: Does this make sense? Is it realistic? In the present context, does it make sense, and is it realistic, to expect a country - any country - to sit passively and not respond as thousands of missiles rain down on it or as suicide bombers wreak their ghoulish horror? And does it make sense to give terrorist organizations carte blanche to use civilian populations as human shields with impunity, secure in the knowledge that that is enough to prevent a military response? And is all of this consonant with the most basic human instinct of self-preservation?
To articulate these questions is sufficient. They really answer themselves. Sadly, though, the Arab-Israeli conflict continues to weave its spell.
The writer, an Australian barrister, lives in the US, where he teaches international human rights at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and is scholar-in residence at Touro Law Center.
By HARRY REICHER
Print Subscribe
E-mail Toolbar
+ Recommend:
What's this?
Talkbacks for this article: 32
There is something about the Arab-Israeli conflict that does strange things to people. Even otherwise distinguished personalities, who in every other context are rational, sensible thinkers, become unrecognizable. The international law of self-defense is a case in point.
United Nations.
Photo: AP [file]
It is trite to say that the first and most basic human instinct is that of self-preservation. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which enshrines "the inherent right" of self-defense, emanates from this. The occurrence of "an armed attack" triggers the right.
In the context of Israel's incursion into Gaza last year, in response to several thousand rockets which had been fired from there into Israel over a period of years, a letter appeared in The Times of London, exactly a year ago today, signed by 31 lawyers. The lead signatory was Sir Ian Brownlie, professor emeritus of public international law at Oxford University, undoubtedly one of the world's preeminent international law authorities. The letter asserted, in so many words, the astonishing proposition that the thousands of rockets which landed in Israel (and were aimed at civilian populations and centers) "do not, in terms of scale and effect, amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defense."
ONE IS tempted to wonder what Prime Minister Gordon Brown would say to the notion that thousands of missiles lobbed into England would not, of themselves, constitute an armed attack. To this, one should add the International Court of Justice which, in its 2003 opinion arising out of the construction of Israel's security fence, concluded, by a vote of 14-1, that suicide bombers wreaking havoc on the country did not justify exercise of the right of self-defense, because they were not "armed attack[s] by one state against another state."
To get to this result, the court (a) wrote into Article 51 words that simply do not exist, requiring the attack to come from another state; and (b), in any event, disregarded the fact that suicide bombers are recruited, indoctrinated, trained, financed and dispatched from outside Israel.
And then there is Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, who issued a statement during the Gaza war, against the background of Hamas shamelessly, callously and cold-bloodedly embedding military personnel, arms, munitions and other military equipment in the heart of civilian populations (which international law expressly outlaws). Despite the fact that this made it well nigh impossible to distinguish between civilian and military targets, Falk declared that even in these circumstances, "launching [an] attack is inherently unlawful and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law."
Simply stated, there was absolutely nothing Israel could do to protect itself.
IN REFLECTING on these examples, it is important not to lose sight of something fundamental. The question is not whether a particular proposition, however bizarre, can be supported by authority. As a senior queen's counsel told me in my first year out of law school, as we sat in his book-lined chambers: "You see these books? In these books, you can find authority for any proposition you want to put."
In an adversarial situation, that makes perfect sense. It is, after all, the role of counsel to forcefully advance his or her client's interests: You give me the conclusion, I'll give you the argument!
Wisdom and sound objective judgement, on the other hand, require an altogether different line of inquiry. It involves standing back, and asking objectively: Does this make sense? Is it realistic? In the present context, does it make sense, and is it realistic, to expect a country - any country - to sit passively and not respond as thousands of missiles rain down on it or as suicide bombers wreak their ghoulish horror? And does it make sense to give terrorist organizations carte blanche to use civilian populations as human shields with impunity, secure in the knowledge that that is enough to prevent a military response? And is all of this consonant with the most basic human instinct of self-preservation?
To articulate these questions is sufficient. They really answer themselves. Sadly, though, the Arab-Israeli conflict continues to weave its spell.
The writer, an Australian barrister, lives in the US, where he teaches international human rights at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and is scholar-in residence at Touro Law Center.
Missile protection will take years
A new anti-missile defense system that tested successfully last week will take "years" to deploy, Israel's defense minister said Monday, Associated Press reports.
"We can't sow the illusion that now that development has been successfully completed, tomorrow morning there already will be complete protection for the Gaza area or the north," Ehud Barak said. "It will take years before we are equipped."
Though the system will one day protect Israel against missile attacks from Gaza and Lebanon, Barak was attempting to downplay hopes that Iron Dome -- as the system is called -- will be deployed soon.
"It will save time of fighting and deter in many cases a potential enemy from really launching an attack," he said in English.
Iron Dome cost Israel $200 million to develop, while the cost of terrorist rockets is in the hundreds of dollars.
"We can't sow the illusion that now that development has been successfully completed, tomorrow morning there already will be complete protection for the Gaza area or the north," Ehud Barak said. "It will take years before we are equipped."
Though the system will one day protect Israel against missile attacks from Gaza and Lebanon, Barak was attempting to downplay hopes that Iron Dome -- as the system is called -- will be deployed soon.
"It will save time of fighting and deter in many cases a potential enemy from really launching an attack," he said in English.
Iron Dome cost Israel $200 million to develop, while the cost of terrorist rockets is in the hundreds of dollars.
Monday, January 11, 2010
don't blame istrael
It's Not About Israel
January 10, 2010
by David Harris
There are those in the international community who claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root cause of the Middle East's problems. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been among the most prominent of these voices.
In his article "A Battle For Global Values" (Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007), Tony Blair reiterated what he has expressed in previous public statements: "How can we bring peace to the Middle East unless we resolve the question of Israel and Palestine?" Achieving peace, he continues, "would not only silence reactionary Islam's most effective rallying call but fatally undermine its basic ideology."
More recently, in a speech at the Istanbul Forum in October, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan named the lack of a Palestinian state as the crux of all problems in the Middle East. In so saying, he echoed a speech by his own Foreign Minister, Ali Babacan, at the Annapolis conference, who declared that “the Palestinian question is at the epicenter of all problems in the Middle East. The resulting climate of despair, hatred and pessimism continues to haunt the region and create a breeding ground for extremism."
Similarly, Aijaz Zaka Syed, a columnist for the Dubai-based, English-language newspaper Khaleej Times, wrote in November that “the key to…world peace lies in Jerusalem."
True, genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians would remove one of the long-standing conflicts in the Middle East. Moreover, to state the painfully obvious, peace would serve the best interests of those involved.
But the suggestion made by Prime Ministers Blair, Erdogan and others that such a settlement is a necessary precondition for wider peace in the Middle East and would take the wind out of radical Islam's sails is unsupported by the facts.
Let's assume for a moment that Israel did not exist. Would that have changed the basic story line of the bulk of events in the Middle East?
Would Yemen today be fighting a war on three fronts against its own rebel movements and al Qaeda?
Would Iraq and Iran have chosen not to pursue an eight-year war that cost more than a million fatalities? Would Iraq have decided not to invade Kuwait in 1990? Would it have rethought its use of chemical weapons against both its own Kurdish population and Iran?
Would Syria have refrained from slaughtering over 10,000 of its own citizens in Hama in 1982? Would it have withheld its central role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri?
Would Saudi Arabia have stopped exporting its Wahhabi model of Islam, with its narrow, doctrinaire view of the world and rejection of non-Muslims as so-called infidels, across the globe?
Would al Qaeda not have attacked the U.S. in 2001, when, it should be remembered, the Israeli-Palestinian issue was never even mentioned among Osama bin Laden's list of "grievances?"
Would the danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan magically disappear absent the Israel factor?
Would Iran today abandon its nuclear and hegemonic ambitions in the region?
Would the Shi'ite-Sunni split, with its profound political and strategic ramifications, evaporate into thin air?
Would the Sudanese government have stopped its collusion with the Arab Janjaweed militias to end the massive murder and displacement in Darfur?
Would the desperate poverty and widespread illiteracy that dampen hope and create a fertile recruiting ground for radical Islamic movements suddenly be alleviated?
Would Saudi women instantaneously have the right to drive, would non-Muslims finally enjoy equal rights in all those Arab countries where Islam is the official religion, and would the Baha'i no longer experience persecution at the hands of the Iranian government?
In reality, the destabilizing factors in the Middle East run far deeper than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Strikingly, while most Western political leaders mince their words, the courageous Arab authors of the annual Arab Human Development Report have not. They have spoken of three overarching explanatory factors for the region's unsatisfactory condition: the knowledge deficit, the gender deficit and the freedom deficit.
Unless these three areas are addressed in a sustained manner, the Middle East, which ought to be one of the world's most dynamic regions, is likely to continue suffering from instability, violence and fundamentalism, irrespective of what happens on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
Consider some of the important findings in recent Arab Human Development Reports and related studies:
* The total number of books translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years is fewer than those translated in Spain in one year.
* Greece – with a population of fewer than 11 million – translates five times as many books from abroad into Greek annually as the 22 Arab countries combined – with a total population of more than 300 million – translate into Arabic.
* According to a Council on Foreign Relations report, "in the 1950s, per-capita income in Egypt was similar to South Korea, whereas Egypt's per-capita income today is less than 20 percent of South Korea's. Saudi Arabia had a higher gross domestic product than Taiwan in the 1950s; today it is about 50 percent of Taiwan's."
As Dr. A.B. Zahlan, a Palestinian physicist, has noted: "A regressive political culture is at the root of the Arab world's failure to fund scientific research or to sustain a vibrant, innovative community of scientists." He further asserted that "Egypt, in 1950, had more engineers than all of China." That is hardly the case today.
A recent UN Human Development Report revealed that only two Egyptians per million people were granted patents (for Syria the figure was zero), compared to 30 in Greece and 35 in Israel.
In the same UN report, the adult literacy rate for women aged 15 and older was 43.6 percent in Egypt and 74 percent in Syria, while for the world's top 20 countries it was nearly 100 percent.
And finally, according to the current Freedom House rankings, no Arab country in the Middle East is listed as "free." Each is described at best as "partly free" or, worse, "not free."
The sad truth is that it is precisely political oppression, intellectual suffocation and gender discrimination that explain, far more than other factors, the chronic difficulties of the Middle East.
To be sure, there exist no overnight or over-the-counter remedies for these maladies that would allow the region to unleash its vast potential, but let’s be clear: they, not the straw man of Israel, are at the heart of the problem.
It would be illusory to think otherwise.
January 10, 2010
by David Harris
There are those in the international community who claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root cause of the Middle East's problems. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been among the most prominent of these voices.
In his article "A Battle For Global Values" (Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007), Tony Blair reiterated what he has expressed in previous public statements: "How can we bring peace to the Middle East unless we resolve the question of Israel and Palestine?" Achieving peace, he continues, "would not only silence reactionary Islam's most effective rallying call but fatally undermine its basic ideology."
More recently, in a speech at the Istanbul Forum in October, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan named the lack of a Palestinian state as the crux of all problems in the Middle East. In so saying, he echoed a speech by his own Foreign Minister, Ali Babacan, at the Annapolis conference, who declared that “the Palestinian question is at the epicenter of all problems in the Middle East. The resulting climate of despair, hatred and pessimism continues to haunt the region and create a breeding ground for extremism."
Similarly, Aijaz Zaka Syed, a columnist for the Dubai-based, English-language newspaper Khaleej Times, wrote in November that “the key to…world peace lies in Jerusalem."
True, genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians would remove one of the long-standing conflicts in the Middle East. Moreover, to state the painfully obvious, peace would serve the best interests of those involved.
But the suggestion made by Prime Ministers Blair, Erdogan and others that such a settlement is a necessary precondition for wider peace in the Middle East and would take the wind out of radical Islam's sails is unsupported by the facts.
Let's assume for a moment that Israel did not exist. Would that have changed the basic story line of the bulk of events in the Middle East?
Would Yemen today be fighting a war on three fronts against its own rebel movements and al Qaeda?
Would Iraq and Iran have chosen not to pursue an eight-year war that cost more than a million fatalities? Would Iraq have decided not to invade Kuwait in 1990? Would it have rethought its use of chemical weapons against both its own Kurdish population and Iran?
Would Syria have refrained from slaughtering over 10,000 of its own citizens in Hama in 1982? Would it have withheld its central role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri?
Would Saudi Arabia have stopped exporting its Wahhabi model of Islam, with its narrow, doctrinaire view of the world and rejection of non-Muslims as so-called infidels, across the globe?
Would al Qaeda not have attacked the U.S. in 2001, when, it should be remembered, the Israeli-Palestinian issue was never even mentioned among Osama bin Laden's list of "grievances?"
Would the danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan magically disappear absent the Israel factor?
Would Iran today abandon its nuclear and hegemonic ambitions in the region?
Would the Shi'ite-Sunni split, with its profound political and strategic ramifications, evaporate into thin air?
Would the Sudanese government have stopped its collusion with the Arab Janjaweed militias to end the massive murder and displacement in Darfur?
Would the desperate poverty and widespread illiteracy that dampen hope and create a fertile recruiting ground for radical Islamic movements suddenly be alleviated?
Would Saudi women instantaneously have the right to drive, would non-Muslims finally enjoy equal rights in all those Arab countries where Islam is the official religion, and would the Baha'i no longer experience persecution at the hands of the Iranian government?
In reality, the destabilizing factors in the Middle East run far deeper than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Strikingly, while most Western political leaders mince their words, the courageous Arab authors of the annual Arab Human Development Report have not. They have spoken of three overarching explanatory factors for the region's unsatisfactory condition: the knowledge deficit, the gender deficit and the freedom deficit.
Unless these three areas are addressed in a sustained manner, the Middle East, which ought to be one of the world's most dynamic regions, is likely to continue suffering from instability, violence and fundamentalism, irrespective of what happens on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
Consider some of the important findings in recent Arab Human Development Reports and related studies:
* The total number of books translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years is fewer than those translated in Spain in one year.
* Greece – with a population of fewer than 11 million – translates five times as many books from abroad into Greek annually as the 22 Arab countries combined – with a total population of more than 300 million – translate into Arabic.
* According to a Council on Foreign Relations report, "in the 1950s, per-capita income in Egypt was similar to South Korea, whereas Egypt's per-capita income today is less than 20 percent of South Korea's. Saudi Arabia had a higher gross domestic product than Taiwan in the 1950s; today it is about 50 percent of Taiwan's."
As Dr. A.B. Zahlan, a Palestinian physicist, has noted: "A regressive political culture is at the root of the Arab world's failure to fund scientific research or to sustain a vibrant, innovative community of scientists." He further asserted that "Egypt, in 1950, had more engineers than all of China." That is hardly the case today.
A recent UN Human Development Report revealed that only two Egyptians per million people were granted patents (for Syria the figure was zero), compared to 30 in Greece and 35 in Israel.
In the same UN report, the adult literacy rate for women aged 15 and older was 43.6 percent in Egypt and 74 percent in Syria, while for the world's top 20 countries it was nearly 100 percent.
And finally, according to the current Freedom House rankings, no Arab country in the Middle East is listed as "free." Each is described at best as "partly free" or, worse, "not free."
The sad truth is that it is precisely political oppression, intellectual suffocation and gender discrimination that explain, far more than other factors, the chronic difficulties of the Middle East.
To be sure, there exist no overnight or over-the-counter remedies for these maladies that would allow the region to unleash its vast potential, but let’s be clear: they, not the straw man of Israel, are at the heart of the problem.
It would be illusory to think otherwise.
Israel world leader in green
Israel was named by the UN as the world's leader in water recycling. Isra=
el
> recycles about 70% of its waste water and is also a world leader in
> desalination. By the end of next year, more than half of Israel's drinkin=
g
> water will be provided through desalination. In the past ten years,
> recycling in Israel has risen from a negligible 3% to 21% and continues t=
o
> rise at a rapid rate due to increasing public awareness. Israel has a 50%
> target rate for 2020. Israeli solar energy research has made solar energy
> cost competitive with fossil fuels. Over 90% of Israeli homes are equippe=
d
> with solar water heaters. Israel is a leader in drip irrigation technolog=
y
> and agricultural r&d. Israel provides foreign aid to over 60 developing
> Asian, Latin American and African countries in the areas of land settleme=
nt,
> water and land conservation, alternative energy, sustainable agriculture,
> medicine, etc. The Arava Project of the Arava Institute for Enviromental
> Studies (led by Prof. Alon Tal of the Masorti-Conservative Movement) trai=
ns
> participants from around the developing world in agricultural techniques.
> And let us not forget the Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid
> http://www.israaid.org.il/. Israid and the Jewish National Fund websites
> will provide you with more PC-green-liberal-treehugging hasbara then you
> will ever need.
el
> recycles about 70% of its waste water and is also a world leader in
> desalination. By the end of next year, more than half of Israel's drinkin=
g
> water will be provided through desalination. In the past ten years,
> recycling in Israel has risen from a negligible 3% to 21% and continues t=
o
> rise at a rapid rate due to increasing public awareness. Israel has a 50%
> target rate for 2020. Israeli solar energy research has made solar energy
> cost competitive with fossil fuels. Over 90% of Israeli homes are equippe=
d
> with solar water heaters. Israel is a leader in drip irrigation technolog=
y
> and agricultural r&d. Israel provides foreign aid to over 60 developing
> Asian, Latin American and African countries in the areas of land settleme=
nt,
> water and land conservation, alternative energy, sustainable agriculture,
> medicine, etc. The Arava Project of the Arava Institute for Enviromental
> Studies (led by Prof. Alon Tal of the Masorti-Conservative Movement) trai=
ns
> participants from around the developing world in agricultural techniques.
> And let us not forget the Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid
> http://www.israaid.org.il/. Israid and the Jewish National Fund websites
> will provide you with more PC-green-liberal-treehugging hasbara then you
> will ever need.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Dwfending vs Hamas and Hezbollah missiles
http://www.aipac.org/emails/AIPACupdate/body-separator.gif
Israel Successfully Tests Missile Interceptor
The Iron Dome short-range missile defense system passed a series of tests over the last few days, successfully shooting down the types of rockets fired from Hamas in Gaza and Hizballah in Lebanon, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported. The Israeli-designed innovation is the first system of its kind capable of defending citizens in towns like Sderot against short-range rockets. Current plans are that the first Iron Dome battery will be delivered to the Israeli air force in about six weeks and is slated, if all goes well, to become operational in May. It is estimated that 20 batteries will be necessary to successfully defend Israel's northern and southern borders from rocket attacks. Such a deployment will put significant strain on Israel's defense budget, but could prove critical in deterring Hamas and affecting Israeli decision-making on West Bank security issues.
Israel Successfully Tests Missile Interceptor
The Iron Dome short-range missile defense system passed a series of tests over the last few days, successfully shooting down the types of rockets fired from Hamas in Gaza and Hizballah in Lebanon, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported. The Israeli-designed innovation is the first system of its kind capable of defending citizens in towns like Sderot against short-range rockets. Current plans are that the first Iron Dome battery will be delivered to the Israeli air force in about six weeks and is slated, if all goes well, to become operational in May. It is estimated that 20 batteries will be necessary to successfully defend Israel's northern and southern borders from rocket attacks. Such a deployment will put significant strain on Israel's defense budget, but could prove critical in deterring Hamas and affecting Israeli decision-making on West Bank security issues.
Friday, January 8, 2010
anti-semitism czar exacerbates anti-semitism
State Dept. backs its anti-Semitism envoy
January 4, 2010
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The U.S. State Department expressed its "complete support" for its anti-Semitism envoy and encouraged "broad dialogue" toward Israeli-Palestinian peace.
A statement Monday from the State Department said it would not add comment to a controversy that erupted in the last weeks of December when Hannah Rosenthal criticized Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador, for snubbing the dovish lobbying group J Street.
However, the statement went on, "Special Envoy Rosenthal has the complete support of the department. As a matter of longstanding policy the United States has supported a peaceful solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To that end the U.S. government encourages broad dialogue among responsible partners for peace."
The controversy started last month when Oren told a group of Conservative synagogue leaders that J Street was “fooling around with the lives of 7 million people." Other dovish groups and then Rosenthal criticized Oren. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Rosenthal described Oren's comments as "most unfortunate."
Some Jewish groups then slammed Rosenthal for criticizing an Israeli ambassador -- and doing so on a topic that they considered to be unrelated to her portfolio. And Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state who runs Middle East policy, issued a statement defending Oren's overall performance.
In an interview last week with JTA, Rosenthal, who had served on J Street's advisory panel before her appointment, refused to retract her criticism of Oren and said she had done nothing wrong.
Separately, Rosenthal's predecessor, Gregg Rickman, has slammed her for her remarks about Oren.
"Ms. Rosenthal's criticisms of Ambassador Oren strike a chord particularly because this is not her policy portfolio to advocate," said Rickman, who served in the Bush adminsitration, in an opinion piece on The Cutting Edge News Web site. "She is supposed to fight anti-Semitism, not defend J-Street, an organization on whose Advisory Board she formally sat before her appointment to the State Department."
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11888&pageid=16&pagename=Opinion
The Obama Edge
A Restaurant in Tel Aviv and Hannah Rosenthal
Gregg Rickman
January 4th 2010
Cutting Edge commentator
In December, in a Tel Aviv restaurant, while I sat casually discussing my successor at the State Department with my dinner companions, I mentioned Hannah Rosenthal's J-Street affiliation, suggesting that this affiliation concerned me. Nearby sat a former US Foreign Service officer who upon the conclusion of her meal took it upon herself to—quite rudely—interrupt our meal to inform me in front of several other people, that in her opinion, J-Street was “a friend of Israel, not an enemy.” She then ran off out of the restaurant in a huff, shooting me a dirty look as she left. As publicly offensive as this woman proved to be, her rude declaration seemed to suggest a bothersome arrogance. Worse was the very public repetition of this effrontery by Ms. Rosenthal, the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism when she publicly criticized and insulted Israel's Ambassador to the United States for purely political reasons.
Ms. Rosenthal suggested that Ambassador Oren “could have learned something” by attending the recent J-Street conference, which he refused to attend due to his differences over policy with the group. She attacked him in an Israeli newspaper in her official capacity, a position which dictates that she fights anti-Semitism, not breed it by openly picking a fight with Israel's Ambassador to the United States, thereby aiding and abetting anti-Semites around the world.
This episode only reinforced my early fears about her views. Her failure to see that today's anti-Semitism is so heavily dominated by anti-Zionism or anti-Israelism. Ms. Rosenthal entirely misses the point that by attacking Israel's Ambassador, for such reasons, suggests that criticism of Israel as the “Jew among the nations,” or as the collective Jew, is not off limits. If the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism can do it, then why can't anyone else?
In my term as the Special Envoy, I found the issue of Israel overwhelming in nearly every meeting. Wherever I went, denials of anti-Semitism were abundant from those I encountered. Yet, these same parties were all too willing to easily slide into denunciations of Israel to my face and then proceed to blame Jews collectively for Israel's actions next. For example, in 2008 in Jakarta, Indonesia, I met with several members of the Ulama (Muslim religious council). My hosts immediately denounced Israel and for good measure, mocked the Torah, calling it “illegitimate.” They then asked that “no more Jews come to Indonesia.” In Egypt, a journalist admitted to me Egyptians see all Jews as Israelis as did Muslim leaders in Argentina, France, Holland, the UAE, and professors and my translator in Saudi Arabia. In Venezuela, I met with members of the Jewish community who expressed great fears of Hugo Chavez's and his Foreign Minister's anti-Zionist declarations of “Israeli genocide” and of the existence in Venezuela of a “Zionist lobby” as well as claims that Jews were “Christ-killers.” In short, I found anti-Zionism to be the new anti-Semitism.
To this point, I recommend that Ms. Rosenthal read the 2008 State Department report on “Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism,” (PDF) which explains the relationship between Israel and anti-Semitism very well. The 2004 EUMC Working Definition of Anti-Semitism was included, thereby enshrining it US policy. Examples of the ways in which anti-Semitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israel taking into account the overall context could include:
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination.
Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
Ms. Rosenthal would do well to study these points to gain an understanding of the problem that will predominate her portfolio. Today, individual Jews around the world are blamed for Israel's actions and Israel is denounced for genocide and Nazi-like actions. There is hounding by the UN system, which cynically and routinely subjects Israel to double standards of criticism and denunciation to the near absolute exclusion of serial human rights offenders such as Sudan, China, and others; and there are calls for boycott and divestment on university campuses around the world by Muslim student groups who also harass and attack Jewish students, blaming them for supporting Israel's actions.
Ms. Rosenthal's criticisms of Ambassador Oren strike a chord particularly because this is not her policy portfolio to advocate. She is supposed to fight anti-Semitism, not defend J-Street, an organization on whose Advisory Board she formally sat before her appointment to the State Department.
Ms. Rosenthal and that unnamed former Foreign Service Officer share something in common: a public effrontery that was both inexcusable and unfortunate. I fear that that former official I met in Tel Aviv is beyond help. Equally I fear that Ms. Rosenthal will now be colored by her remarks and has done irreparable damage to her position fighting anti-Semitism. She will be compromised before those she seeks to persuade to curb anti-Semitism. If Ms. Rosenthal cannot figure out the borders and limits of her portfolio, perhaps then she should seek another position to avoid further embarrassment.
Cutting Edge commentator Gregg J. Rickman served as the first U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism from 2006–2009. He is a Senior Fellow for the Study and Combat of Anti-Semitism at the Institute on Religion and Policy in Washington, DC; a Visiting Fellow at The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut; and a Research Scholar at the Initiative on Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israelism of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco.
January 4, 2010
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The U.S. State Department expressed its "complete support" for its anti-Semitism envoy and encouraged "broad dialogue" toward Israeli-Palestinian peace.
A statement Monday from the State Department said it would not add comment to a controversy that erupted in the last weeks of December when Hannah Rosenthal criticized Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador, for snubbing the dovish lobbying group J Street.
However, the statement went on, "Special Envoy Rosenthal has the complete support of the department. As a matter of longstanding policy the United States has supported a peaceful solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To that end the U.S. government encourages broad dialogue among responsible partners for peace."
The controversy started last month when Oren told a group of Conservative synagogue leaders that J Street was “fooling around with the lives of 7 million people." Other dovish groups and then Rosenthal criticized Oren. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Rosenthal described Oren's comments as "most unfortunate."
Some Jewish groups then slammed Rosenthal for criticizing an Israeli ambassador -- and doing so on a topic that they considered to be unrelated to her portfolio. And Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state who runs Middle East policy, issued a statement defending Oren's overall performance.
In an interview last week with JTA, Rosenthal, who had served on J Street's advisory panel before her appointment, refused to retract her criticism of Oren and said she had done nothing wrong.
Separately, Rosenthal's predecessor, Gregg Rickman, has slammed her for her remarks about Oren.
"Ms. Rosenthal's criticisms of Ambassador Oren strike a chord particularly because this is not her policy portfolio to advocate," said Rickman, who served in the Bush adminsitration, in an opinion piece on The Cutting Edge News Web site. "She is supposed to fight anti-Semitism, not defend J-Street, an organization on whose Advisory Board she formally sat before her appointment to the State Department."
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11888&pageid=16&pagename=Opinion
The Obama Edge
A Restaurant in Tel Aviv and Hannah Rosenthal
Gregg Rickman
January 4th 2010
Cutting Edge commentator
In December, in a Tel Aviv restaurant, while I sat casually discussing my successor at the State Department with my dinner companions, I mentioned Hannah Rosenthal's J-Street affiliation, suggesting that this affiliation concerned me. Nearby sat a former US Foreign Service officer who upon the conclusion of her meal took it upon herself to—quite rudely—interrupt our meal to inform me in front of several other people, that in her opinion, J-Street was “a friend of Israel, not an enemy.” She then ran off out of the restaurant in a huff, shooting me a dirty look as she left. As publicly offensive as this woman proved to be, her rude declaration seemed to suggest a bothersome arrogance. Worse was the very public repetition of this effrontery by Ms. Rosenthal, the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism when she publicly criticized and insulted Israel's Ambassador to the United States for purely political reasons.
Ms. Rosenthal suggested that Ambassador Oren “could have learned something” by attending the recent J-Street conference, which he refused to attend due to his differences over policy with the group. She attacked him in an Israeli newspaper in her official capacity, a position which dictates that she fights anti-Semitism, not breed it by openly picking a fight with Israel's Ambassador to the United States, thereby aiding and abetting anti-Semites around the world.
This episode only reinforced my early fears about her views. Her failure to see that today's anti-Semitism is so heavily dominated by anti-Zionism or anti-Israelism. Ms. Rosenthal entirely misses the point that by attacking Israel's Ambassador, for such reasons, suggests that criticism of Israel as the “Jew among the nations,” or as the collective Jew, is not off limits. If the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism can do it, then why can't anyone else?
In my term as the Special Envoy, I found the issue of Israel overwhelming in nearly every meeting. Wherever I went, denials of anti-Semitism were abundant from those I encountered. Yet, these same parties were all too willing to easily slide into denunciations of Israel to my face and then proceed to blame Jews collectively for Israel's actions next. For example, in 2008 in Jakarta, Indonesia, I met with several members of the Ulama (Muslim religious council). My hosts immediately denounced Israel and for good measure, mocked the Torah, calling it “illegitimate.” They then asked that “no more Jews come to Indonesia.” In Egypt, a journalist admitted to me Egyptians see all Jews as Israelis as did Muslim leaders in Argentina, France, Holland, the UAE, and professors and my translator in Saudi Arabia. In Venezuela, I met with members of the Jewish community who expressed great fears of Hugo Chavez's and his Foreign Minister's anti-Zionist declarations of “Israeli genocide” and of the existence in Venezuela of a “Zionist lobby” as well as claims that Jews were “Christ-killers.” In short, I found anti-Zionism to be the new anti-Semitism.
To this point, I recommend that Ms. Rosenthal read the 2008 State Department report on “Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism,” (PDF) which explains the relationship between Israel and anti-Semitism very well. The 2004 EUMC Working Definition of Anti-Semitism was included, thereby enshrining it US policy. Examples of the ways in which anti-Semitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israel taking into account the overall context could include:
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination.
Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
Ms. Rosenthal would do well to study these points to gain an understanding of the problem that will predominate her portfolio. Today, individual Jews around the world are blamed for Israel's actions and Israel is denounced for genocide and Nazi-like actions. There is hounding by the UN system, which cynically and routinely subjects Israel to double standards of criticism and denunciation to the near absolute exclusion of serial human rights offenders such as Sudan, China, and others; and there are calls for boycott and divestment on university campuses around the world by Muslim student groups who also harass and attack Jewish students, blaming them for supporting Israel's actions.
Ms. Rosenthal's criticisms of Ambassador Oren strike a chord particularly because this is not her policy portfolio to advocate. She is supposed to fight anti-Semitism, not defend J-Street, an organization on whose Advisory Board she formally sat before her appointment to the State Department.
Ms. Rosenthal and that unnamed former Foreign Service Officer share something in common: a public effrontery that was both inexcusable and unfortunate. I fear that that former official I met in Tel Aviv is beyond help. Equally I fear that Ms. Rosenthal will now be colored by her remarks and has done irreparable damage to her position fighting anti-Semitism. She will be compromised before those she seeks to persuade to curb anti-Semitism. If Ms. Rosenthal cannot figure out the borders and limits of her portfolio, perhaps then she should seek another position to avoid further embarrassment.
Cutting Edge commentator Gregg J. Rickman served as the first U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism from 2006–2009. He is a Senior Fellow for the Study and Combat of Anti-Semitism at the Institute on Religion and Policy in Washington, DC; a Visiting Fellow at The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut; and a Research Scholar at the Initiative on Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israelism of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco.
10th century BCE Hebrew inscription
[http://static.jpost.com/images/2002/site/jplogo.gif]
Inscription indicates Kingdom of Israel existed in the 10th century BCE
Jan. 8, 2010
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST
A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew scriptures has shed new light =
on the period in which the Bible was written, testifying to Hebrew writing =
abilities as early as the 10th century BCE, the University of Haifa announc=
ed on Thursday.
Prof. Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University=
of Haifa recently deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century B=
CE, and showed that it was a Hebrew inscription, making it the earliest kno=
wn Hebrew writing.
The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least som=
e of the biblical scriptures were composed hundreds of years before the dat=
es presented today in research and that the Kingdom of Israel already exist=
ed at that time.
The inscription itself, which was written in ink on a 15 cm X 16.5 cm trape=
zoid pottery shard, was discovered a year and a half ago at excavations tha=
t were carried out by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel at Khirbet Qeiyafa near the Ela=
h valley.
The inscription was dated back to the 10th century BCE, which was the perio=
d of King David's reign, but the question of the language used in this insc=
ription remained unanswered, making it impossible to prove whether it was i=
n fact Hebrew or another local language.
Prof. Galil's deciphering of the ancient writing testifies to its being Heb=
rew, based on the use of verbs particular to the Hebrew language, and conte=
nt specific to Hebrew culture and not adopted by any other cultures in the =
region.
"This text is a social statement, relating to slaves, widows and orphans. I=
t uses verbs that were characteristic of Hebrew, such as asah ("did") and a=
vad ("worked"), which were rarely used in other regional languages. Particu=
lar words that appear in the text, such as almanah ("widow") are specific t=
o Hebrew and are written differently in other local languages," Prof. Galil=
explained.
The deciphered text:
1' you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2' Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]
3' [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4' the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5' Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.
Once this deciphering is received, Prof. Galil added, the inscription will =
become the earliest Hebrew inscription to be found, testifying to Hebrew wr=
iting abilities as early as the 10th century BCE. This stands opposed to th=
e dating of the composition of the Bible in current research, which would n=
ot have recognized the possibility that the Bible or parts of it could have=
been written during this ancient period.
C Span anti semitism
mitic Exchange on C-Span
by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz Anti-Semitic Exchange on C-Span
A caller on a C-Span interview program Monday complained about "all these Jews" having "way too much power" in America and pushing the U.S. into wars with the Muslim world. He found his comments echoed and expanded upon by the studio guest.
Michael Scheuer, the former director of a CIA unit assigned to track down Osama Bin-Laden, calmly expressed the view that American soldiers are now dying in Iraq for the sake of Israelis. He further claimed that any debate of American support for Israel is squelched in the public sphere.
The interviewer for C-Span's Washington Journal program did not react to the blatantly anti-Semitic exchange. Several other callers praised Scheuer for his position regarding Israel, adding their own condemnation of the Jewish State and its supporters.
An excerpt of the initial discussion follows:
John (on the phone from Franklin, New York): "Good morning. I, for one, am sick and tired of all these Jews coming on C-Span and other stations and pushing us to go to war against our Muslim friends. They're willing to spend the last drop of American blood and treasure to get their way in the world. They have way too much power in this country. People like Wolfowitz and Feith and the other neo-cons - that Jewed us into Iraq - and now we're going to spend the next 60 years rehabilitating our soldiers. I'm sick and tired of it."
C-SPAN host (to Scheuer): "Any comments?"
Scheuer: "Yeah. I think that of course American foreign policy is eventually up to the American people. One of the big things we have not been able to discuss for the past 30 years is our policy towards the Israelis. Whether we want to be involved in fighting Israel's wars in the future is something that Americans should be able to talk about. They may vote yes. They may want to see their kids killed in Iraq or Yemen or somewhere else to protect Israel. But the question is: we need to talk about it. Ultimately, Israel is a country that is of no particular worth to the United States."
C-SPAN host: "You mean strategically?"
Scheuer: "Strategically. They have no resources we need. Their manpower is minimal. Their association with us is a negative for the United States. Now that's a fact. What you want to do about that fact is entirely different. But for anyone to stand up in the United States and say that our support for Israel doesn't hurt us in the Muslim world, or our support for Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship doesn't hurt us, is to just defy reality."
[Watch the video clip here or the full interview with Scheuer here
Earlier in the same interview, however, Scheuer made it clear what he felt should be done regarding Israel. In his opinion, the U.S. should "persuade" Islamic terrorists threatening America "to focus their anger" on Israel and on oppressive Middle Eastern regimes.
American Jewish Groups 'Hurt' Critics of Israel
Scheuer also later elaborated on what he said is the way criticism of Israel is prevented.
A caller named Nicki from Maryland thanked him for his comments on Israel and asked, "Why is it that the United States does not want to talk about Israel?" Prefacing his remarks by asserting that "Israel has every right to do what it needs to do" to defend itself, including the development of nuclear weapons, Scheuer said that the U.S. has no real interest in either Israel or the Palestinian Authority. "That is a religious war in which we have no stake," he continued.
Scheuer: "Why don't we talk about that? Because AIPAC and other influential American Jewish groups are extraordinarily involved in the funding of American political campaigns and have the ability to reach out and make sure that people lose their jobs, or are otherwise hurt, if they dare to criticize Israel."
Scheuer went on to claim that he lost a job with the Jamestown Foundation think tank for saying that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was "doing what I call the Tel-Aviv Two Step". As a result, he claimed, "the donors to that foundation" ordered that he be terminated. He concluded the discussion of Jewish political influence by saying, "You know, you always talk about the Israel Lobby and its power, but to see it up close and personal aimed right at me was very educational. In fact, it was worth the experience of losing a job."
by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz Anti-Semitic Exchange on C-Span
A caller on a C-Span interview program Monday complained about "all these Jews" having "way too much power" in America and pushing the U.S. into wars with the Muslim world. He found his comments echoed and expanded upon by the studio guest.
Michael Scheuer, the former director of a CIA unit assigned to track down Osama Bin-Laden, calmly expressed the view that American soldiers are now dying in Iraq for the sake of Israelis. He further claimed that any debate of American support for Israel is squelched in the public sphere.
The interviewer for C-Span's Washington Journal program did not react to the blatantly anti-Semitic exchange. Several other callers praised Scheuer for his position regarding Israel, adding their own condemnation of the Jewish State and its supporters.
An excerpt of the initial discussion follows:
John (on the phone from Franklin, New York): "Good morning. I, for one, am sick and tired of all these Jews coming on C-Span and other stations and pushing us to go to war against our Muslim friends. They're willing to spend the last drop of American blood and treasure to get their way in the world. They have way too much power in this country. People like Wolfowitz and Feith and the other neo-cons - that Jewed us into Iraq - and now we're going to spend the next 60 years rehabilitating our soldiers. I'm sick and tired of it."
C-SPAN host (to Scheuer): "Any comments?"
Scheuer: "Yeah. I think that of course American foreign policy is eventually up to the American people. One of the big things we have not been able to discuss for the past 30 years is our policy towards the Israelis. Whether we want to be involved in fighting Israel's wars in the future is something that Americans should be able to talk about. They may vote yes. They may want to see their kids killed in Iraq or Yemen or somewhere else to protect Israel. But the question is: we need to talk about it. Ultimately, Israel is a country that is of no particular worth to the United States."
C-SPAN host: "You mean strategically?"
Scheuer: "Strategically. They have no resources we need. Their manpower is minimal. Their association with us is a negative for the United States. Now that's a fact. What you want to do about that fact is entirely different. But for anyone to stand up in the United States and say that our support for Israel doesn't hurt us in the Muslim world, or our support for Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship doesn't hurt us, is to just defy reality."
[Watch the video clip here or the full interview with Scheuer here
Earlier in the same interview, however, Scheuer made it clear what he felt should be done regarding Israel. In his opinion, the U.S. should "persuade" Islamic terrorists threatening America "to focus their anger" on Israel and on oppressive Middle Eastern regimes.
American Jewish Groups 'Hurt' Critics of Israel
Scheuer also later elaborated on what he said is the way criticism of Israel is prevented.
A caller named Nicki from Maryland thanked him for his comments on Israel and asked, "Why is it that the United States does not want to talk about Israel?" Prefacing his remarks by asserting that "Israel has every right to do what it needs to do" to defend itself, including the development of nuclear weapons, Scheuer said that the U.S. has no real interest in either Israel or the Palestinian Authority. "That is a religious war in which we have no stake," he continued.
Scheuer: "Why don't we talk about that? Because AIPAC and other influential American Jewish groups are extraordinarily involved in the funding of American political campaigns and have the ability to reach out and make sure that people lose their jobs, or are otherwise hurt, if they dare to criticize Israel."
Scheuer went on to claim that he lost a job with the Jamestown Foundation think tank for saying that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was "doing what I call the Tel-Aviv Two Step". As a result, he claimed, "the donors to that foundation" ordered that he be terminated. He concluded the discussion of Jewish political influence by saying, "You know, you always talk about the Israel Lobby and its power, but to see it up close and personal aimed right at me was very educational. In fact, it was worth the experience of losing a job."
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Beiong Jewish does not = good for Israel
Frp, Richard Baehr
Emanuel has had a a major role in the crafting of US policy towards Israel. That policy has done wonders to antagonize Israelis, and make Palestinians more recalcitrant, a wonderful twofer. And while Obama dithered with his diplomatic offensive with Iran, the mullahs toyed with him, stole an election, , shot and arrested their protestors, and moved a year closer to a nuclear bomb, humiliating the US in the process . Israel supporters in this country need to stop counting Jewish names, assuming they are all good on Israel and look to where they will actually find real support for a strong US Israel relationship.
Emanuel has had a a major role in the crafting of US policy towards Israel. That policy has done wonders to antagonize Israelis, and make Palestinians more recalcitrant, a wonderful twofer. And while Obama dithered with his diplomatic offensive with Iran, the mullahs toyed with him, stole an election, , shot and arrested their protestors, and moved a year closer to a nuclear bomb, humiliating the US in the process . Israel supporters in this country need to stop counting Jewish names, assuming they are all good on Israel and look to where they will actually find real support for a strong US Israel relationship.
Fatah are no peace seekers
Wafa Idris, the first Palestinian female suicide terrorist, was honored as a "Shahida" - holy Martyr - in a new Fatah promotional music video broadcast this week on Palestinian Authority TV. Idris killed one Israeli and wounded 150 in her suicide bombing in 2002.
This picture of Wafa Idris with the text "The Shahida (Martyr) Wafa Ali Idris" appears in the new PA TV music video, which blends scenes and pictures paying tribute to the PLO, Fatah, Yasser Arafat and PA and Fatah Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. PA TV is under the control of Abbas's office.
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1536
In addition, Abu Mazen has been busy with other measures to promote the peace process
Abbas turns 3 latest terrorists into Palestinian heroes
Rabbi Meir Avshalom Hai -- a 45-year old Israeli and father of seven children - was murdered in a drive-by shooting last Thursday. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, part of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, took responsibility for the killing. On Friday night, Israeli forces located and killed three of the terrorists involved in the attack. The fourth surrendered to the PA police.
The response of the PA has been unequivocal support and backing for the terrorists.
PA Prime Minster Salam Fayyad went even further, personally visiting the families of the terrorists along with other senior PA officials.
Salam Fayyad is promoted in the West as a "moderate" palestinian leader.
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1524
Israeli TV news reported tonight that Israel has registered a protest with US government authorities regarding Abu Mazen's recent actions.
This picture of Wafa Idris with the text "The Shahida (Martyr) Wafa Ali Idris" appears in the new PA TV music video, which blends scenes and pictures paying tribute to the PLO, Fatah, Yasser Arafat and PA and Fatah Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. PA TV is under the control of Abbas's office.
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1536
In addition, Abu Mazen has been busy with other measures to promote the peace process
Abbas turns 3 latest terrorists into Palestinian heroes
Rabbi Meir Avshalom Hai -- a 45-year old Israeli and father of seven children - was murdered in a drive-by shooting last Thursday. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, part of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, took responsibility for the killing. On Friday night, Israeli forces located and killed three of the terrorists involved in the attack. The fourth surrendered to the PA police.
The response of the PA has been unequivocal support and backing for the terrorists.
PA Prime Minster Salam Fayyad went even further, personally visiting the families of the terrorists along with other senior PA officials.
Salam Fayyad is promoted in the West as a "moderate" palestinian leader.
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1524
Israeli TV news reported tonight that Israel has registered a protest with US government authorities regarding Abu Mazen's recent actions.
Monday, January 4, 2010
NYT anti-Israel?
From Richard Baehr
There is no reason why any Jew who professes to be a supporter of Israel should be paying for the New York Times. The newspaper , long owned by a German Jewish family that has become Episcopalian over the years, could never be bothered to report the Holocaust, and has never cared much for Israel. The likes of Yassar Arafat, Ali Abunimah, Rashid Khalidi and many venomous anti-Israel leftist professors have regularly filled their opinion pages. Their "news" reporting on the Middle East is not as biased and distorted, as that of NPR and the BBC, but that is not saying much either (kind of like arguing your NBA team is better than the 2-28 New Jersey Nets). Sunday marked a new low for the Times, when a rabidly Israel hating journalist - Patrick Cockburn, reviewed a new book by a rabid Israel hater, Joe Sacco, about an alleged massacre in Gaza in the Suez War of 1956. Jonathan Tobin provides the gory details. The author of this "history" book had an odd view of history and truth when interviewed about his new book by Haaretz:
"In the Haaretz newspaper interview published just two days before Cockburn's claim that the author combined his art "with investigative reporting of the highest quality," Joe Sacco says quite frankly that he "doesn't believe in journalistic objectivity" and that he is purposefully trying to balance what he sees as the "United States pro-Israel bias." Finally, Sacco said he places himself into his books because he wants his readers to see and feel what he does. Not exactly the stuff of "investigative reporting" of any quality."
There is no reason why any Jew who professes to be a supporter of Israel should be paying for the New York Times. The newspaper , long owned by a German Jewish family that has become Episcopalian over the years, could never be bothered to report the Holocaust, and has never cared much for Israel. The likes of Yassar Arafat, Ali Abunimah, Rashid Khalidi and many venomous anti-Israel leftist professors have regularly filled their opinion pages. Their "news" reporting on the Middle East is not as biased and distorted, as that of NPR and the BBC, but that is not saying much either (kind of like arguing your NBA team is better than the 2-28 New Jersey Nets). Sunday marked a new low for the Times, when a rabidly Israel hating journalist - Patrick Cockburn, reviewed a new book by a rabid Israel hater, Joe Sacco, about an alleged massacre in Gaza in the Suez War of 1956. Jonathan Tobin provides the gory details. The author of this "history" book had an odd view of history and truth when interviewed about his new book by Haaretz:
"In the Haaretz newspaper interview published just two days before Cockburn's claim that the author combined his art "with investigative reporting of the highest quality," Joe Sacco says quite frankly that he "doesn't believe in journalistic objectivity" and that he is purposefully trying to balance what he sees as the "United States pro-Israel bias." Finally, Sacco said he places himself into his books because he wants his readers to see and feel what he does. Not exactly the stuff of "investigative reporting" of any quality."
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Don't worry about population
Israel News
Israel Opinion
Israel Business
Israel Culture
Jewish
Israel Travel
Israel Activism
Shop
Surprising Research
Photo: Gabi Menashe
Yoram Ettinger. Getting demographic story straight Photo: Gabi Menashe
A man on a mission
Former Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger out to debunk Israel’s ‘demographic myth’
Yigal Walt
Published: 01.01.10, 14:12 / Israel News
When Yoram Ettinger speaks his voice booms with conviction and his eyes are alight – however, one is bound to be persuaded, not to mention stunned, mostly by the figures and conclusions he presents.
The former diplomat is part of an American-Israeli research team devoted to debunking prevalent demographic views regarding Israel’s future; the group’s ground-breaking research paints a much rosier picture, predicting a solid Jewish majority in the region for years to come.
The figures painstakingly collected and analyzed by Ettinger and his colleagues are startling, particularly for Israelis who for years have been warned of the demographic sword hanging over the Jewish State’s future. The data point to grossly exaggerated Palestinian growth predictions, statistical flaws resulting in inaccurate figures, steadily growing Jewish birthrates, and a dramatically declining Arab-Israeli birthrate.
Ettinger has been tirelessly presenting the research to leading Israeli policymakers and other influential figures nationwide. In an interview with Ynetnews he recounts some of the astonished responses he has encountered during his quest; this includes a taken aback Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who was presented with the data during the previous government’s term in office.
“Barak told me: ‘Until I saw this presentation I didn’t know the facts…it would be good to present it soon to (then-Prime Minister) Ehud Olmert and to (then-Foreign Minister) Tzipi Livni, who still don’t know the facts,’” Ettinger says.
‘As a Jew, I will sleep better at night’
The former diplomat says that getting the demographic story straight is crucial for decision makers, regardless of their political views.
Possessing a more realistic understanding of Israel’s demographic future enables political leaders to make decisions that are not based on an unfounded sense of doom, he says, adding that senior officials who hold vastly different political views than him nonetheless embraced the findings he has presented.
“Major General (Res.) Shlomo Gazit asked that I present my information to his colleagues, senior military figures and academicians, despite the very large differences in our worldview,” Ettinger says.
Similarly favorable reactions were voiced by former National Security Advisor Giora Eiland, he says. “He clearly said: ‘You have drastically changed my demographic perception,” Ettinger recounts.
One of the most memorable responses Ettinger recalls came from former Finance Minister and Labor Party stalwart Avraham Shochat.
“After seeing the figures he told me: ‘While you are never going to transform me into a hawk, I’m very grateful to you because due to your findings, as a Jew, I will sleep much better at night from now on,” Ettinger says
‘No room for fatalism’
The figures presented by Ettinger seem to be unmistakable, and their immense significance begs the question of why decision-makers themselves have not embarked on such research before in order to challenge common perceptions.
“This reality shouldn’t surprise anyone,” Ettinger says. “The demographic issue is a symptom of the way decision-makers act on many issues.”
Similarly to the conception that led to the Yom Kippur War, Israeli politicians tend to rely on commonly accepted conceptions instead of attempting to question reality, he says.
“To my regret, usually only a crisis wakes up the sleeping people,” Ettinger says, adding that the failure to challenge the demographic myth also reflects Israel’s current leadership crisis.
“We are facing a leadership drought…and it’s easier for decision-makers to continue navigating on automatic pilot, rather than to look for new approaches,” he says.
Ettinger says the conclusions of the research are highly significant, clear and unequivocal.
“Because Jews are not doomed to become a minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, there is no room for fatalism in our process of policy-making,” he says. “When policy-makers, military leaders, investors, or potential immigrants evaluate the future of the Jewish State optimistically, rather than fatalistically, this is the difference between growth and eventual oblivion.”
“The bottom line of the study is that anybody who attempts to deploy demographic fatalism in order to scare Jews into excessive concessions is either dramatically mistaken or outrageously misleading, “Ettinger concludes. “It is absolutely legitimate to call for a retreat on moral, democratic or security grounds, yet it is absolutely immoral to call f
Israel Opinion
Israel Business
Israel Culture
Jewish
Israel Travel
Israel Activism
Shop
Surprising Research
Photo: Gabi Menashe
Yoram Ettinger. Getting demographic story straight Photo: Gabi Menashe
A man on a mission
Former Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger out to debunk Israel’s ‘demographic myth’
Yigal Walt
Published: 01.01.10, 14:12 / Israel News
When Yoram Ettinger speaks his voice booms with conviction and his eyes are alight – however, one is bound to be persuaded, not to mention stunned, mostly by the figures and conclusions he presents.
The former diplomat is part of an American-Israeli research team devoted to debunking prevalent demographic views regarding Israel’s future; the group’s ground-breaking research paints a much rosier picture, predicting a solid Jewish majority in the region for years to come.
The figures painstakingly collected and analyzed by Ettinger and his colleagues are startling, particularly for Israelis who for years have been warned of the demographic sword hanging over the Jewish State’s future. The data point to grossly exaggerated Palestinian growth predictions, statistical flaws resulting in inaccurate figures, steadily growing Jewish birthrates, and a dramatically declining Arab-Israeli birthrate.
Ettinger has been tirelessly presenting the research to leading Israeli policymakers and other influential figures nationwide. In an interview with Ynetnews he recounts some of the astonished responses he has encountered during his quest; this includes a taken aback Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who was presented with the data during the previous government’s term in office.
“Barak told me: ‘Until I saw this presentation I didn’t know the facts…it would be good to present it soon to (then-Prime Minister) Ehud Olmert and to (then-Foreign Minister) Tzipi Livni, who still don’t know the facts,’” Ettinger says.
‘As a Jew, I will sleep better at night’
The former diplomat says that getting the demographic story straight is crucial for decision makers, regardless of their political views.
Possessing a more realistic understanding of Israel’s demographic future enables political leaders to make decisions that are not based on an unfounded sense of doom, he says, adding that senior officials who hold vastly different political views than him nonetheless embraced the findings he has presented.
“Major General (Res.) Shlomo Gazit asked that I present my information to his colleagues, senior military figures and academicians, despite the very large differences in our worldview,” Ettinger says.
Similarly favorable reactions were voiced by former National Security Advisor Giora Eiland, he says. “He clearly said: ‘You have drastically changed my demographic perception,” Ettinger recounts.
One of the most memorable responses Ettinger recalls came from former Finance Minister and Labor Party stalwart Avraham Shochat.
“After seeing the figures he told me: ‘While you are never going to transform me into a hawk, I’m very grateful to you because due to your findings, as a Jew, I will sleep much better at night from now on,” Ettinger says
‘No room for fatalism’
The figures presented by Ettinger seem to be unmistakable, and their immense significance begs the question of why decision-makers themselves have not embarked on such research before in order to challenge common perceptions.
“This reality shouldn’t surprise anyone,” Ettinger says. “The demographic issue is a symptom of the way decision-makers act on many issues.”
Similarly to the conception that led to the Yom Kippur War, Israeli politicians tend to rely on commonly accepted conceptions instead of attempting to question reality, he says.
“To my regret, usually only a crisis wakes up the sleeping people,” Ettinger says, adding that the failure to challenge the demographic myth also reflects Israel’s current leadership crisis.
“We are facing a leadership drought…and it’s easier for decision-makers to continue navigating on automatic pilot, rather than to look for new approaches,” he says.
Ettinger says the conclusions of the research are highly significant, clear and unequivocal.
“Because Jews are not doomed to become a minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, there is no room for fatalism in our process of policy-making,” he says. “When policy-makers, military leaders, investors, or potential immigrants evaluate the future of the Jewish State optimistically, rather than fatalistically, this is the difference between growth and eventual oblivion.”
“The bottom line of the study is that anybody who attempts to deploy demographic fatalism in order to scare Jews into excessive concessions is either dramatically mistaken or outrageously misleading, “Ettinger concludes. “It is absolutely legitimate to call for a retreat on moral, democratic or security grounds, yet it is absolutely immoral to call f
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
