Philosemitism

Belgian newspaper accused of deligitimizing Israel by not mentioning the country on Mideast map

2011-12-28T11:23:00.000-08:00

Le Soir is notoriously and obsessively hostile to Israel, promoting boycotts etc. The newspaper featured the map for two successive days (26 and 27 December) without realising after the first day that something was amiss. A clear indication of the quality its experts and its readership's apathy... Jean-Philippe D., who is not Jewish, wrote to Le Soir: "One thing still confounds me. The words "Palestinian Authority" target the West Bank [Cisjordanie in French] territories (the Israelis say "Judea and Samaria" and English-speakers "the West Bank") and Gaza. The Palestinian Authority is not a territory but a government! Strange ... Another mistake is to make a connection between the P.A and Gaza. The real Authority in Gaza is obviously the Hamas!". Spot on!

Reminder: Maroun Labaki of Le Soir wrote in 2010 that EU Commissioner De Gucht had broken taboos re the Jewish Lobby and Jewish irrationality. This also gives an idea of where the paper's sympathies lie: Brussels: Jihad by vuvuzela!

BRUSSELS (EJP) ---Being accused by the Jewish community in Belgium of "deligitimizing Israel” by failing to mention this country’s name on a Middle East map illustrating articles on the Arab Spring, Belgian daily Le Soir speaks of an "indisputable error" but said it was "outraged and insulted" by the accusation.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the CCOJB, the umbrella body representing Jewish organizations in Belgium, regretted "that once again newspaper Le Soir delights in the delegitimization of the State of Israel by publishing, during two consecutive days, a map of the Middle East, which simply ignores the existence of the State of Israel."

"In addition, the words ‘Palestinian Authority’ were included in the place of Israel, which is also untrue and denies the duality existing between Gaza and the West Bank," the statement added. "The CCOJB condemns this double breach of truth and rigorous information."

Reacting to the accusation, the paper's chief editor Didier Hamman admitted that "this is undoubtedly a mistake, I plead guilty and apologize." But he also said he was "shocked and insulted" by the accusation from CCOJB that the newspaper did it intentionally.

"I am outraged and I informed CCOJB chairman, Mr. Sosnowski. It is unworthy of his organization to imagine that this error has been committed intentionally," Hamann said.

He spoke of a "simple mistake" that occurred during two days without anyone at the newspaper noticing it.

The map will be corrected for the rest of the series of articles, the chief editor added.

French lawyer: Israel war crimes question festers

2011-12-27T10:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we posted a translation of this interview without realising that Euronews has posted an English version. It has also posted a version in Turkish and Arabic (but not a Hebrew one!) and several other languages.

- Gilles Devers, avocat : "les crimes de guerre israéliens sont trop gros pour être cachés" (original in French)
- Israel war crimes question festers
- “Europa spielt mit Palästina ein doppeltes Spiel”
- Devers: “L’Europa con Israele fa il doppio gioco”
- Gaza: “El crimen es demasiado grande para ser ocultado”
- Gilles Devers o advogado que defende a Palestina nas mais altas instâncias jurídicas
- “İşlenen suç İsrail’in saklayamayacağı kadar büyük”
- Адвокат Жіль Девер: “З яких таких причин безпеки не дозволяють експортувати квіти з Гази?”
- جيل دفيرز ليورونيوز: ملف الأسرى الفلسطينيين سيحال إلى المحكمة الجنائية الدولية

Consuelo Maldonado, Euronews: Gilles Devers, you are the spokesman for a group of lawyers who, in 2009, filed a complaint of war crimes against Israeli officers with the International Criminal Court. Since then, what progress has there been?

Gilles Devers: The facts are established in the Goldstone Report. Everybody knows that warcrimes and crimes against humanity have been committed. While Palestine has the legal competence but has not exercised it because of the occupation, it can transfer this to the International Criminal Court. We are in a waiting phase which, unfortunately, corresponds with a double standard that has always been a mark of international law. But the crime is too big to be hidden.

Euronews: You have been given a mandate by Gaza’s minister of justice to defend the rights of Palestinian prisoners. Are you looking at filing a new complaint with the international court?

Devers: For the prisoners it is systematic torture, unfair judgements and conditions of detention – three chapters of violation of international law, therefore yes, the prisoners’ cases will be put before the International Criminal Court.

Euronews: You are also investigating a case which in Gaza is called ‘the number cemeteries’. What is that about?

Devers: Some detainees die in prison and Israel refuses to hand over their bodies, which is to say they make dead bodies serve sentences. Therefore, through the International Red Cross, we tell the families when someone has died, but the family does not have a death certificate, so they do not even know, are never sure if there has been a death, and the bodies are buried in numbered cemeteries. The person becomes a number and continues to serve out his sentence when he is dead.

euronews: How many are we talking about?

Devers: When we last visited Gaza, we worked with the authorities and found that 350 families were concerned.
euronews: Let’s look at the military blockade. You are also working to free up goods exports from Gaza. What legal arguments are being used by Israel to maintain this blockade?

Devers: They say it’s for security reasons, which means absolutely nothing. Who can tell me that forbidding flowers from leaving Gaza is for security reasons? They’re waiting for these flowers in the Netherlands. We have a European agreement from September this year which will make them tariff-free from the beginning of 2012. The European Union, feeling very guilty about not helping Palestine more, removed the customs duties on Palestinian exports. Since these are free products, we don’t have to go through Israeli customs, and exporters are organising to send their flowers to Europe.

euronews: Are there products other than flowers?

Devers: The European Union is always playing a double game. It said that the lifting of customs duties does not apply to fruit and vegetables, as if the European market could be threatened by produce coming from Gaza. For the moment, Gaza can export flowers. It can also be processed agricultural produce. This blockade is illegal. It has been recognised as such by the United Nations, and there is, unfortunately, a consensus among western powers to pretend it is not there. It is a scandal, and we are working to weaken this blockade by legal means.

European TV: French lawyer says Israel punishes Palestinian prisoners' corpses

2011-12-26T13:42:00.000-08:00

"A number of inmates die in prison and Israel refuses to return the bodies, i.e. Israel enforces sentences on corpses. So we notify the families through the Red Cross that they have died, but the family does not get a death certificate, and it cannot even be sure, it is never sure, whether death has occurred or not, and the bodies are buried in cemeteries which are numbered. The person becomes a number and continues to serve the sentence when dead."

This is what Europeans listen to on Euronews (funded among others by the European Union), and other European news outlets about Israel. Gilles Devers is a French lawyer and is interviewed in French by Spanish-speaking journalist Consuelo Maldonado.The transcript has been translated with the help of Google. You can read the original and watch the video HERE. Bear in mind that Euronews offers "information from a European perspective".

Euronews:
"Maître Gilles Devers, good evening. You are the spokesman for the group of lawyers who filed in January 2009, a complaint before the International Criminal Court for war crimes against Israeli officers. Since then, has there been progress?"

Gilles Devers:
"The facts were established by the Goldstone report, everyone knows that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed. If Palestine has jurisdiction and cannot exercise it because of the occupation, it may transfer it to the International Criminal Court. Currently, we are in a waiting phase, which corresponds, unfortunately, to a double standard that marks the life of international law, but the crime is too big to be hidden."

Euronews:
"You have been appointed by the Minister of Justice in Gaza to defend the rights of Palestinian prisoners. Are there any plan to file a new complaint with the ICC?"

Gilles Devers:
"For prisoners, it is the systematic torture, judgments that are not fair and also there are the conditions of detention, three chapters of international law violations. So yes, the files of prisoners will be filed with the International Criminal Court."

Euronews:
"You also investigating another case, in Gaza it is called the "cemeteries number" (cimetières numéro), what is it?"

Gilles Devers:
"A number of inmates die in prison and Israel refuses to return the bodies, i.e. Israel enforces sentences on corpses. So we notify the families through the Red Cross that they have died, but the family does not get a death certificate, and it cannot even be sure, it is never sure, whether death occurred or not, and the bodies are buried in cemeteries which are numbered. The person becomes a number and continues to serve the sentence when dead."

Euronews:
"How many cases do you you mean?"

Gilles Devers:
"During our last visit to Gaza, we worked with the authorities and found 350 families that were involved."

Euronews:
"Let us recall now the military blockade. You also work to unlock the export of goods from Gaza. What are the legal arguments that Israel uses to keep this blockade? "

Gilles Devers:
"Security reasons, which does not mean anything. Who can tell me what is the security reason which prohibits the export of flowers from Gaza? These flowers are expected in the Netherlands, they are registered and we have a European agreement dated September 2011 which came into force in January 2012. The European Union, which feels guilty for not helping Palestine more, has waived tariffs on Palestinian exports. To the extent that trade for these products is free, we don't have to go through Israeli customs and exporters are getting organized, indeed, for exporting flowers directly from Gaza towards Europe. "

Euronews:
"You talk about flowers, are there other other products?"

Gilles Devers:
The European Union is still playing a double game. It said that waiving customs duties do not apply to fruits and vegetables, as if the European market could be threatened by fruits and vegetables that come from Gaza. For the moment, Gaza can export the flowers, and processed agricultural products.

The blockade is illegal, it is recognized as such by the UN and there are, alas, a consensus of Western powers to act as if nothing had happened. This is outrageous and we are working to undermine the blockade legally.

Denmark: More Scandinavian Blurry-Headed Anti-Semitism

2011-12-24T09:08:00.000-08:00

Source: Sweden, Israel and the Jews

Off-topic a bit again, I suggest that our readers have a look at a brief critique from Piety on Kierkegaard. The blogger rakes Ole Jørgensen over the coals for dragging out anti-Semitic stereotypes to defend Peter Tudvad’s book Stadier på antisemitismens vej: Søren Kierkegaard og Jøderne (Stages on the way of anti-Semitism: Søren Kierkegaard and the Jews). Jørgensen's article appeared in the Danish Kristeligt Dagblad (Christian Daily News).

I think this gives you a little peek into how insular people can drag out Christ-killer accusations along with greedy-Jew characterizations, and then claim that these are simply factual depictions. Under this rubric, no one tarring Jews with these lies can be termed an anti-Semite. The blogger concludes that: "It makes the textbook example of 'For a fat girl, you don’t sweat much,' seem positively considerate!"

Damning with Faint Praise: Bizarre Defense of Kierkegaard in Danish Newspaper

Just when you thought the debate surrounding Peter Tudvad’s book Stadier på antisemitismens vej: Søren Kierkegaard og Jøderne (Stages on the way of anti-Semitism: Søren Kierkegaard and the Jews) (Rosinante, 2010), had probably died down, it’s actually flared up again. Ole Jørgensen published what has got to be the most bizarre defense of Kierkegaard yet. Jørgensen’s article, “Sjusk med ord. Søren Kierkegaard var ikke antisemit” (Linguistic carelessness. Kierkegaard was not an anti-Semite) appeared in Monday’s edition of Kristeligt Dagblad (Christian daily news). The title might lead one to suppose that Kristeligt Dagblad is a relatively obscure paper. It isn’t. Remember, Denmark has a state church. The Danish Lutheran Church is the official church of the Danish people. This undoubtedly explains why Jørgensen took it upon himself to defend not only Kierkegaard, but also Martin Luther against the charge of anti-Semitism. Luther, he asserts, merely “chastens the Jews in his book On the Jews and their Lies.” One might be tempted to conclude from that remark that Jørgensen hasn’t actually read Luther (or Tudvad either since Tudvad quotes extensively from Luther’s works where they bear on the Jews).

It’s not clear whether Jørgensen has seriously studied Luther on this issue. What is clear, however, is that Jørgensen has what one could charitably call a rather idiosyncratic understanding of what constitutes anti-Semitism. He observes, for example, that far from being an anti-Semite, “Kierkegaard even had a Jew in his employ for several years: Israel Levin, who […] was thus able to advance himself, in the manner Jews are so good at...Post in full here.

Five arrested in Rome for plotting against Jewish community

2011-12-22T04:55:00.000-08:00

ROME (AFP-EJP)---Police in Rome have arrested five Italian neo-fascists belonging to the "Militia" movement on harges of plotting violence against the Rome Jewish community.

The accused plotted to attack Rome's Jewish community president, Riccardo Pacifici [right], as well as the city's mayor, Gianni Alemanno [left]; the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Gianfranco Fini; and the president of the Senate.

All five are charged with having spread ideas based on ethnic and racial hatred by means of a bimonthly magazine called "Insurrection," as well as through offensive graffiti on the eternal city's ancient walls. Police said 11 others were under investigation.

Those arrested Wednesday include the "Militia" longtime leader, Maurizio Boccaci, who is in his 50s. Police raids were carried out in several cities across the country.

According to Italian state television, the accused wanted to foment a "revolutionary war" against the official Italian institutions. Alemanno and Fini both are mainstream right-wing politicians who had their political roots in the neo-fascist movement but now demonstrate strong support for Israel.

Alemanno has been the target of neo-Nazi "Militia" banners and graffiti. Alemanno and Pacifici made a two-day visit to Israel this week to meet with freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Italy’s Jews have expressed solidarity with victims of recent racist attacks in Italy and pledged to fight against a new outbreak of racist violence. [Italian man kills two Senegalese traders in Florence]

"The news in Italy in recent days marks the return of hate, prejudice and xenophobia in our cities," Renzo Gattegna, the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said in a statement.

"The response to these attacks must be constant vigilance and a merciless fight against whoever foments hatred," he said. "The Italian Jews will certainly do their part."

The charges include criminal association to spread racial hatred, incitement to violence, and discrimination for racial, ethnic and religious reasons.

Vaclav Havel, a ‘great friend' of the Jews and of Israel, dies at 75

2011-12-21T10:05:00.000-08:00

Havel was a "true friend" of Israel who in recent years joined with other international leaders to defend the Jewish state against delegitimization.

PARIS/PRAGUE (EJP)---European Jewish Congress (EJC) President Moshe Kantor said former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel, who died on Sunday, "was known as a great friend of the Jews and did much to confront anti-Semitism and teach the lessons of the dark chapter of the Holocaust during his two terms in office."

Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright who was jailed by communists and then went on to lead the Prague "Velvet Revolution" and become Czech president, died at 75 after a long illness.

"He was a figure for a new and modern Europe to emulate. President Havel lived through communism and led the Czech Republic to a new era helping move his countrymen through a troubled past to a more open, free and tolerant future," Kantor said.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Havel was a "true friend" of Israel who in recent years joined The Friends of Israel group with other international leaders to defend the Jewish state against delegitimization.

Belgian designers to erect flashy Holocaust-themed fence featuring a crematoria

2011-12-19T12:37:00.000-08:00

"The annihilation of six million Jews and millions of others must not become a tool to merely titillate and outrage in the name of art.”

Source: JPost Belgians Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel plan to erect Holocaust-themed fence in Amsterdam.

AMSTERDAM – Two famous designers from Antwerp have announced plans to erect a flashy, Holocaust-themed fence here featuring a crematoria and replicas from the Buchenwald concentration camp. Designers Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel revealed the project after a Dutch museum rejected their “inappropriate” works on Auschwitz.

The fence, which Smeets, 40, and Tynagel, 34, designed, had been commissioned by a Dutch art collector for the collector’s estate, Smeets said during a performance on a prime time Dutch television show on December 7. He said he would not reveal the collector’s identify. The fence design includes a translation of the German writing on the gates of Buchenwald – Jedem das Seine (“to each his own”).

Smeets and Tynagel – described in a New York Times profile piece as “the poster boy and girl of the new expressionism in design” – designed for the same collector a dining set with a mass-grave motif. They also sent the Groninger Museum prints of tablecloths with an Auschwitz-Birkenau theme to be displayed along with other works by Smeets and Tynagel in the museum’s reception room. However, the museum – among Holland’s finest contemporary art museums – refused to show the tablecloths, which display an overview of the compound and a heap of reading glasses in the middle. Willemien Bouwer, a spokeswoman for the museum, said the hall is sometimes used to host parties and dinners.

“Placing such tablecloths struck us as inappropriate,” Museum Director Kees van Twist said.

“I cannot treat beauty unless I also treat evil,” Smeets said about his Holocaust works. As an artist, he added, “I try to bring not only good news.”

Merijn Bolink, an acclaimed Dutch visual artist, said he did not oppose controversial treatment of the Holocaust, but said it should also be meaningful. “Smeets’s work seems provocative but hollow.”

“Those responsible for such disgusting works may be just seeking attention, or it could be something more sinister,” Michael Freilich, editor-in-chief of the Belgian Jewish paper Joods Actueel, said. “In the latter case, the authorities should look into the matter. In Germany the construction of such a thing would definitely be prevented. In Belgium – maybe.”

CIDI, a Hague-based watchdog on anti-Semitism, wrote the alderman of the city of Amsterdam, urging him not to issue a permit for building the “offensive fence, which is an attempt to attract attention regardless of the pain their actions cause.”

Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress said of the proposed design, “Trivializing the Holocaust in such a way minimizes its importance and relevance for the current generation.”

He added that while EJC “safeguards” freedom of speech, “there must be standards of decency and morality in the public sphere. The annihilation of six million Jews and millions of others must not become a tool to merely titillate and outrage in the name of art.”

Europe: Hands off Israel!

2011-12-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

"The last thing that Israel needs is for the sanctimonious, hostile and (to a great extent) stupid European Parliament to stick its nose into the relationships between Jews and Arabs in Israel."

Considering that the Far Right gaining strength and that neo-Nazi groups (like in Italy and Germany) have attacked and killed immigrants, as welle as the rise in anti-Semitism, it takes a lot of arrogance for Europeans to lecture Israel. Deborah Lipstadt said recently "that overall the situation in Europe was "not good" and added: "I wouldn’t want to send my kids to Jewish school in Belgium.""

Source: Fresno Zionism

The European Union, as well as EU countries independently, provide millions of dollars annually to finance left-wing Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which could not survive on what they would get from the small number of Israelis that support them.

These organizations use their resources to try to influence Israeli policies, laws, actions and even elections. They sponsor anti-government demonstrations, protests against the security fence, etc. In addition, they present highly distorted ‘data’ to the UN and to the media outside of Israel. For example, the majority of the material cited by the Goldstone Commission to support its false and libelous conclusion that Israel deliberately targeted Arab civilians in Gaza came from these NGOs.

They have also participated in ‘lawfare’, instigating prosecutions in foreign countries of Israeli officials for ‘war crimes’ which did not occur, supported boycott-divestment-sanctions, encouraged anti-Zionist activities among Arab citizens of Israel, etc.

These groups are in the forefront of the effort to delegitimize the Jewish state from without and destabilize it from within, and there is an ongoing debate in Israel’s Knesset about how to control, or at least expose, their foreign funding. An excellent summary of the issue is provided by NGO Monitor here.

No nation likes it when others interfere in its internal affairs, and the massive scale of intervention in the case of Israel is remarkable. But recently an internal EU document has come to light which calls for an even greater attack on Israeli sovereignty:

The European Union should consider Israel’s treatment of its Arab population a “core issue, not second tier to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” according to a classified working paper produced by European embassies in Israel, parts of which were obtained by Haaretz.
This is an unprecedented document in that it deals with internal Israeli issues. According to European diplomats and senior Foreign Ministry officials, it was written and sent to EU headquarters in Brussels behind the back of the Israeli government.
Other issues the document deals with include the lack of progress in the peace process, the continued occupation of the territories, Israel’s definition of itself as Jewish and democratic, and the influence of the Israeli Arab population.
The original document also included suggestions for action the EU should take, but these were removed from the final version at the insistence of several countries.
Among these were the suggestion that the EU file an official protest every time a bill discriminating against Arabs passes a second reading in the Knesset, and that the EU ensure that all Arab towns have completed urban plans, “with each member state potentially ‘adopting’ a municipality to this end.”

There is no internal issue more pressing for Israel than the relationship between the Jewish population and the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Arabs. Simplistic understandings of the admittedly difficult relationship as one of a powerful majority discriminating against a minority ignore the increasing perception of many Arabs that they are ‘Palestinians’, not Israelis (and the idea that ‘they are all disloyal’ is also simplistic and wrong).

Regardless of the details, the last thing that Israel needs is for the sanctimonious, hostile and (to a great extent) stupid European Parliament to stick its nose into the relationships between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

Ironies abound here: the document was said to have been initiated by Britain, which did such a good job with Arabs and Jews during the Mandate! And the Europeans apparently fancy themselves experts on the question of integration of ethnic and religious minorities because they are doing it so successfully in their own countries!

But that’s not all:

VATICAN CITY (AFP) — Peace negotiations in the Middle East must tackle the issue of the status of the holy sites, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Vatican’s Council for Interreligious Dialogue, said Friday.
“There will not be peace if the question of the holy sites is not adequately resolved,” the Holy See’s former foreign minister said in response to a question on Jerusalem and the Israel-Palestinian problem at a Rome conference…
The Vatican says the answer is to have the global community regulate the sites — and it favours handing the task to a “large group” of states, rather than placing it in the hands of the United Nations Security Council or Europe.

There is really no ‘question of the holy sites’ that needs to be resolved. Israel, since 1967, has been guaranteeing access to all three major faiths to their sites for the first time in history. The problem is that Islamic radicals do not accept anything other than total Muslim sovereignty over the area, as shown by the recent fury over Israel’s actions to in closing a decrepit wooden bridge outside of the Temple Mount for repairs.

The fact that Muslims, and apparently some Christians, simply can’t bear the idea that these sites are in Jewish hands is not a legitimate reason to take actions that would almost certainly end in one or more religious groups being denied access.

So Israel is considered not capable of running its own politics, not capable of managing the relationship between its ethnic groups, and not capable of protecting the holy sites in Jerusalem. One would think that both the European Union and the Church ought to devote their energy to solving their own problems, some relatively serious, rather than Israel’s.

But unfortunately it seems that much of the world, while accepting without question the legitimacy and sovereignty of some rather tenuous ‘states’ (an extreme example being the recognition by many countries of ‘Palestine’) still does not think — after 63 years in which Israel has accomplished far more in science, medicine, literature, music, art, industry, standard of living and, yes, democracy than almost all of them — that Israel has a right to exist unmolested.

The message to them from Jerusalem should be simple:

Hands off.

Secret EU paper aims to tackle Israel's treatment of Arab minority

2011-12-16T13:29:00.000-08:00

According to a European diplomat involved in drafting the report, work on it began more than a year ago at Britain's [!] initiative. The idea was to write a report that could be debated by a forum of EU foreign ministers. At some point, however, several countries, among them the Czech Republic, Poland and the Netherlands, expressed objections to its contents.

More evidence of the total lack of consideration European élites have for Jews and Israel. Considering how Europe treats their fellow Europeans, the Roma, and other minorities, European arrogance is amazing.

Source: Haaretz

The European Union should consider Israel's treatment of its Arab population a "core issue, not second tier to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," according to a classified working paper produced by European embassies in Israel, parts of which were obtained by Haaretz.

This is an unprecedented document in that it deals with internal Israeli issues. According to European diplomats and senior Foreign Ministry officials, it was written and sent to EU headquarters in Brussels behind the back of the Israeli government.

Other issues the document deals with include the lack of progress in the peace process, the continued occupation of the territories, Israel's definition of itself as Jewish and democratic, and the influence of the Israeli Arab population. The original document also included suggestions for action the EU should take, but these were removed from the final version at the insistence of several countries.

Among these were the suggestion that the EU file an official protest every time a bill discriminating against Arabs passes a second reading in the Knesset, and that the EU ensure that all Arab towns have completed urban plans, "with each member state potentially 'adopting' a municipality to this end."

The contents of the 27-page report were kept under wraps, and a number of European diplomats contacted by Haaretz over the past two weeks refused to disclose any details. Foreign Ministry officials said they had heard about it unofficially from some European diplomats a few weeks ago, but to date no Israeli official has been able to obtain a copy.

According to a European diplomat involved in drafting the report, work on it began more than a year ago at Britain's initiative. The idea was to write a report that could be debated by a forum of EU foreign ministers. At some point, however, several countries, among them the Czech Republic, Poland and the Netherlands, expressed objections to its contents.

After lengthy debates on the issue in an effort to obtain the consensus necessary to send the report to Brussels, it was decided to water it down somewhat and drop the operative conclusions. It was also designated a "food for thought" document, rather than a "report."

The embassies declared in the document that the breakdown in the peace process was having a negative impact on the integration of Israeli Arabs into society.

"The stalemate in the peace process, and the continuing occupation, inevitably has an impact on the identification of Israeli Arabs with Israel," the document states. "It will be more difficult for Israeli Arabs to be wholly at ease with their identity while the conflict with the Palestinians continues."

At the same time, the embassies said this should not be used as an excuse for "hostile behavior by Israeli Arabs which alienates the Jewish majority, or for failure by Israeli government to achieve genuinely equal treatment of Israeli Arabs."

The document suggests that the EU discuss Jewish-Arab relations with the Israeli government, while stressing the government's obligation to bridge the gaps between the Jewish majority and Arab minority.

"We should emphasize that addressing inequality within Israel is integral to Israel's long-term stability," the document says.

The document also relates to the demand made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. "We do not believe that recognition of Israel as a Jewish State should detract in any way from the vision of equality for all its citizens enshrined in its founding documents," the report says. [...]

In response to Haaretz's report, the EU said on Friday that "a core task of any diplomatic mission is to report back to its headquarters on developments in the host country. In this regard, as part of the EU foreign policy process, the embassies of the EU Member States and the EU Delegation cooperate closely."

"This report was prepared to stimulate thinking at the EU level on how the EU might engage constructively with governmental and non-governmental interlocutors in Israel with respect to an issue that has been identified in the EU –Israel Action Plan as a shared value, namely to 'promote and protect rights of minorities, including enhancing political, economic, social and cultural opportunities for all citizens and lawful residents,'" the EU press office added.

European Jewish NGOs members of NGO headed by a Muslim Brother

2011-12-16T03:32:00.000-08:00

A handful of European Jewish associations are members of the European Network against Racism (ENAR) pompously self-proclaimed "the voice of the anti-racist movement in Europe". No less...

Two from Britain feature on their website : the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Academic Response to Antisemitism & Racism (ARAR).

ENAR is based in Brussels and is headed by Michael Privot, a Belgian convert to Islam and a Muslim Brotherhood member as he revealed himself in a newspaper "Muslim Brotherhood: Time for coming out! '". See also: Verviers: Hamas headquarters

A little background on Mohammed Abdul Aziz, a founding member of ENAR, before Privot took over: "Mr Aziz has also been involved with the East London Mosque; the London Muslim Centre; the Muslim Council of Britain; the Commission for Racial Equality; the Equal Opportunities Commission; the Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism; the European Network Against Racism [you will find his name here on p. 3 last para.]; and the UK Race and Europe Network. First, the advice Mr Aziz gives. The Daily Telegraph revealed this year that Mr Aziz had suggested that the new Government build closer ties with the controversial East London Mosque. He said that ministers should be willing to share a stage with groups that promote "a message of divisiveness, expressing intolerance towards other communities in the UK", and to treat privately with organisations that might support "violent extremism in Britain". Last night he apparently claimed that this was "completely untrue"."

Moreover, among the 13 European associations (transnational) affiliated with the ENAR, two are Jewish: the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the European Centre for Jewish information. The national Jewish associations listed as being members are:

Belgium: Auschwitz Foundation (ENAR is cited on the website of the Belgian Auschwitz Foundation)
France: Simon Wiesenthal Center
Germany: Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland
Netherlands: CIDI
Hungary: B'nai Brith
UK: Board of Deputies of British Jews and Academic Response to Antisemitism & Racism (ARAR).

See: The Muslim Brotherhood in Belgium, a NEFA Foundation report (2008). Note disturbing links with Hamas.

"Michaël Privot n’est en effet pas seulement «tendance» Frères musulmans, il est Frère musulman, comme il l’annonce sans complexe courant 2008 dans une carte blanche publiée dans Le Soir et intitulée «Frères musulmans: l’heure du coming out!». Ce jeune converti a le CV-type du « cadre » Frère musulman: intellectuel (il est islamologue et chercheur à l’ULg), il s’est aussi largement investi dans l’associatif et les ONG, notamment dans la lutte contre le racisme. Il est ainsi actuellement responsable Réseau et campagne au sein de l’ENAR, le Réseau européen contre le racisme. (Et, y a pas à dire, ça, ça doit aider à acquérir rapidement une certaine légitimité au sein du MRAX.) Avant cela, il a travaillé au sein du FEMYSO (Forum of European Muslim ans Youth Organisations), un organisme, issu des Frères musulmans, qui regroupe au niveau européen des organisations de jeunesse musulmane et dont le siège est situé à Bruxelles. Il y était responsable des Institutions européennes et des ONG (autant dire qu’il s’y connaît en matière de lobbying!), il en est maintenant membre du conseil d’administration." (Source 2009)

Top antisemitic slur film director Lars von Triers wins best movie at European film awards

2011-12-15T06:10:00.000-08:00

From Simon Wiesenthal's 2011 Top Ten Anti-Israel/Anti-Semitic Slurs list:

“I understand Hitler... He’s not what you would call a good guy, but yeah, I understand much about him and I sympathize with him a little bit. But come on, I’m not for the Second World War, and I’m not against Jews... I am of course, very much for Jews. No, not too much, because Israel is a pain in the ass… I’m very much for Speer. Albert Speer [Hitler’s Architect]… He was also maybe one of God’s best children… Okay, I’m a Nazi.”

Director Lars Von Trier was thrown out of the Cannes Film Festival after this rant, May 18, 2011. He later apologized. READ SOURCE...

Did he apologize? Not really: "In the October 2011 issue of GQ, Von Trier is quoted in an interview saying he was not really sorry for the comments he made, only sorry he didn't make it clear that he was joking. He added, "I can't be sorry for what I said—it's against my nature." On October 5, 2011, Von Trier was interviewed by police in Denmark about his remarks at Cannes. Afterwards, he announced that he had 'decided from this day forth to refrain from all public statements and interviews'."

And ...

BBC: Lars von Trier wins best movie at European film awards: Science fiction drama Melancholia, directed by Lars von Trier, was named best movie at this year's European Film Awards in Berlin.

After Canada, Holland to reconsider UNRWA funding

2011-12-14T08:30:00.000-08:00

"Last year Canada stopped its core funding of roughly 10 million dollars annually for UNRWA. In 2011 UNRWA enjoyed a budget of 1.23 billion dollars, roughly half of it provided by the U.S and the European Commission – its two largest donors, followed by Sweden, Britain and Norway."

THE HAGUE (EJP)---Holland will "thoroughly review" its policy on the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA), Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal [photo] told the parliament in The Hague.

The Dutch ruling party called UNRWA’s definitions "worrisome." Holland is UNRWA’s 6th largest donor, with an annual contribution of roughly 30 million dollars.

Rosenthal announced the review in reply to a question by the speaker of his own faction, the Liberal VVD.

"UNRWA uses its own unique definition of refugees, different to the UN’s. The refugee issue is a big obstacle for peace. We therefore ask the government acknowledge this discrepancy, which leads to the third-generation Palestinian refugees," VVD speaker Hans Ten Broeke said.

Minister Uri Rosenthal promised to "thoroughly review the subject and adopt a balanced resolution on it." He added: "I understand many involved parties regard UNRWA’s approach as highly important as it helps clarify matters and bring them into focus."

The minister’s position is expected to be submitted in the coming weeks in a letter to parliament.

UNRWA was set up in 1949 by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as an independent body entrusted with caring for Palestinian refugees who fled their homes in the years 1946-1949. Unlike UNHCR, UNRWA extends the definition of refugee also to descendants.

Additionally, UNRWA refugees keep their status after gaining citizenship. UNHCR is responsible for all refugees except Palestinians.

According to UNRWA, there are approximately five million Palestinian refugees worldwide.

Last year Canada stopped its core funding of roughly 10 million dollars annually for UNRWA. In 2011 UNRWA enjoyed a budget of 1.23 billion dollars, roughly half of it provided by the U.S and the European Commission – its two largest donors, followed by Sweden, Britain and Norway.

Belgian government anti-racist outfit accused of anti-semitism

2011-12-12T08:18:00.000-08:00

A police commissioner has filed a complaint about antisemitic statements at a seminar on multiculturalism (Source: Joods Actueel - Centrum Gelijke Kansen nu Zelf aangeklaagd wegens racisme)

It is with immense incredulity that senior police officers heard unacceptable racist, anti-semitic and Holocaust denial statements at a course run by the Centre for Equal Opportunities and the Fight against Racism (CECLR). It is unfortunate that CECLR staff, an organisation which reports to the Prime Minister and is meant to combat racism (their record on anti-semitism is very poor) believe in vicious anti-Jewish stereotypes and are prepared to make them known in public to people who in no way share their views - the vast majority of the Belgian population firmly rejects such views. The gay community was also the target of unflattering judgments. But it was against the Jews that a 50-year-old Turkish-born female anti-racist "expert" launched a tirade:

"These people [the Jews] can get away with anything because they have money and financial power, but they also exploit our guilt [meaning the Holocaust]."

Commissioner David Vroome (43) [photo] of the Federal Police of Brussels and twenty senior colleagues attended a course hosted at the Geruzet centre in Brussels. The course on multiculturalism was given by two instructors from the CECLR.

"Never in my life have I heard such remarks about the Jewish community", said Vroom to Joods Actueel. "And the fact that they came from a CECLR employee makes matters even worse."

Police commissioner Vroom, who is a lawyer by training and worked as a lawyer in Antwerp and Brussels, recounts the scene:

"At one point we were discussing the ethnic and cultural groups in our society. It was indicated that the Chinese, the Japanese and the Eurocrats [EU officials] who live in Brussels go to their own shops and restaurants and may also have different sets of rules and behavior. This led us to the Jewish community and then the speaker made shocking statements. My attention was caught when she mentioned the "financial power" that prompts Jews to believe that they can get away with anything". But when I heard her remark that "Jews always hark back to the past" - a clear reference to the Holocaust - I was shocked. Especially since she said "that Belgium has nothing to do with it." [1].

"It caught the attention of the delegates in the room," testified another police commissioner who attended the course and who wants to remain anonymous. "The silence that followed was such that you could hear your neighbours breathing and all looked in disbelief. The other CECLR female lecturer did not react and the course continued as if nothing had happened."

MORE TO FOLLOW

The record of CECLR as regards anti-Semitism is far from satisfactory. See: Jozef De Witte, an anti Israel militant, appointed director of the Center for Equal Opportunity in 2004)

[1] It is estimated that 67,000 Jews were living in Belgium before the war. 25,000 Jews were deported, including 5,093 children of which 145 were under two years old. Of the 25,000 deported, 1,205 survived: "One deported Jew out of five was under 16. There are even children under 2. The youngest, who left in the twentieth convoy, and was not forty days old. " (historian Maxime Steinberg). "Under conditions generally very sordid men, women, children and the elderly were parked in camps that served as an antechamber to the Nazi death camps: Drancy in France, the Dossin barracks in Mechelen [Malines], Belgium [situated close the Archdiocese ...], Westerbork in the Netherlands or Italy Fossoli are among the most famous." After the war, 25,000 Jews were living in Belgium and nowadays there are between 35,000 and 40,000. Several studies have shown Belgian authorities' involvement in in the Holocaust. There are more than 1,500 Righteous in Belgium. See HERE.

Cross-posted in French (Belgique: le Centre pour l'Egalité des chances est accusé de racisme)

The Committee to Protect Journalists blatant biais against Israel

2011-12-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

At least 64 jounalists are in jail in Turkey and 42 en Iran. 42 journalists were killed in 2011 (none in Israel). But by cleverly using a photo the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) points the finger at Israel! The CPJ is "A group of U.S. foreign correspondents created CPJ in response to the often brutal treatment of their foreign colleagues by authoritarian governments and other enemies of independent journalism."

The CPJ, New York, posted a special report "Imprisonments jump worldwide, and Iran is worst - Stark regional differences are seen as jailings grow significantly in the Middle East and North Africa. Dozens of journalists are held without charge, many in secret prisons. A CPJ special report." The photo they chose to illustrate this is "Here, Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian journalist. (Reuters)":

The CPJ is suggesting that Israelly prisons are full of journalists, is that the case? No. The CPJ, does not say that in the Palestinian territories under the PA and in Gaza, journalists can work without fearing censorship and being jailed.

But there is more. The way the CPJ lists the journalists imprisoned in Israel in 2011 is a model of misinformation: "Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory: 7". The last three on the list (Ziyad Awad, Mahmoud al-Barbar and Hani al-Agha) are Hamas prisoners. It follows that for the CPJ the Gaza strip seems to be Israel and Hamas an Israeli organisation. This type of biaised reporting is the best way to discredit journalists and journalism.

To get a better view of how journalists are both treated in Gaza and in the West Bank read Khaled Abu Toameh's US and EU Funding Palestinian Repression and PA Tortures Journalists.

Palestinian Authority unhappy with Gilad Shalit's release terms, complains to Europe

2011-12-09T13:10:00.000-08:00

Issa Qaraqe came to Brussels with a nine other people and was also received by the Belgian parliament. He told Belgian newspaper Le Soir: "At least people listen to me here in Brussels. European parliamentarians, European Commission senior officials, Catherine Ashton cabinet, the two chambers of the Belgian Parliament and several organisations have received me and listened to me. My message is to plead with them to put pressure on Israel - and if needs be to reconsider the association agreements that include a clause on human rights - to make this State [of Israel] respects the rights of prisoners on the one hand (those Gaza have no right to family visits, for example) and their release of the other. Israel considers itself above international law and this is everybody's concern". As to Gilad Shalit's release the minister, who spent ten years in detention in Israel, claimed that it sent the wrong signal that the only way to free Palestinian prisoners requires the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.

Qaraqe Calls on European Parliament to Investigate Palestinian Prisoners Situation
BRUSSELS, December 6, 2011 (WAFA) - Minister of Detainees and Ex-Detainees, Issa Qaraqe, Tuesday called on the European parliament to send a fact-finding committee to investigate Palestinian prisoners’ conditions and suffering in Israeli jails.

In a meeting in Brussels with Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, Tokia Saïfi [a former French Minister in Jacques Chirac's government], Qaraqe gave a detailed description of the difficult situation prisoners face in Israeli jails, which violates all international laws and humanitarian values.

He added that Israel does not care for any criticism regarding its violent and inhumane measures against prisoners, including 23 members of the Palestinian parliament, who are also considered international parliamentarians and cannot be detained under any justification.

Qaraqa said there is an unjustified delay by the European parliament in taking the required decisions to insure the protection of prisoners.

He stressed the need for the European parliament to support the Palestinian bid to the United Nations in order to determine the legal status of prisoners, and to be able to protect them in accordance with the relevant laws.

On her part, Saifi said she will support the request to send a fact-finding committee to the Israeli prisons as soon as possible, stressing the need to get all the information for the parliament in dealing with the prisoners’ issue.

Israel-bashing: Norwegian Church Minister in Jerusalem to open Gullvåg exhibition

2011-12-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

German-Norwegian perfect cooperation!

"Requiem for the children of Gaza" (9 metres wide)

Source: Norway, Israel and the Jews

Ministry of Government Administration, Reform, and Church Affairs
Press release 2011 12 02 (No signature)

The Minister of Government administration, reform and church affairs, Rigmor Aasrud, is to visit Jerusalem.

She will speak to religious leaders on Israeli and Palestinian side, and visit religious sites.

Among her visits, one will be a visit to the Augusta Victoria church [German Hospital and church ("Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Ascension") on the north side of Mount of Olives]in Jerusalem, to see an exhibit by Norwegian artist Håkon Gullvåg; which will open on December the 16^th. The exhibition is sponsored by the Norwegian Ministry of Government Administration, Reform and Church, The Country Municipality of Sør- Trøndelag (the first and only county council that adopted a boycott Israel motion), the Municipality of Trondheim, (which regularly sponsors pro-Arab, anti-Israel art), Fagforbundet i Trondheim, the local union chapter that asked The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) in Trondheim to convert the Mai 1 Labour Day parade into a Pro-Palestinian event. The fourth sponsor is a commercial bank who to my knowledge maintains impeccable neutrality to preserve its commercial reputation. However, three out of 4 sponsors are rabid anti-Israeli’s all coming form what now appears to be the hub of anti-Israel political initiatives in Norway, with the NTNU being their standard bearer.

Mr. Gullvåg is the artist who got the hump when the French Cultural Center in Damascus took down some of his paintings exhibited for the Terra Sancta exhibition. Censure, he furiously claimed, until confronted with the reality that his blood tainted pictures were not deemed sufficiently anti-Israel by the Damascus art lovers.

Belgium's New Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo and the Jews

2011-12-08T01:38:00.000-08:00

Please note that former Belgian PM Yves Leterme (Flemish) never expressed such disdain. On the contrary. See his comments on the right-hand column of this blog.

Newly appointed Belgian PM Elio di Rupo stated in January 2009:

Killing in cold blood: "What the Israeli government is doing in cold blood - killing innocent people, killing women and children - is totally unacceptable and I think that what happened in some parts of the world, I mean some people were dragged before international courts, should happen to those men and women who are responsible for what is being done [in Gaza]. There is nothing that can justify killing civilians. Nothing can justify killing children, women ... people like you and me. [...] I believe that one day or another they will be brought to justice. "

Jews are remorseless: "I must tell you that I have more than sympathy for the Jewish population, I feel a form of love for them. But I also wish that the Palestinians live in prosperity and peace. And this cold blooded and remorseless attitude, while witnessing schools being destroyed and all those deaths, is unacceptable. It is totally unacceptable." Soon after (March 2009) a Belgian Socialist (held in high regard by Mr Di Rupo) Pierre Galand (see below) created a ferociouly anti-Israel kangaroo court: the Russell tribunal on Palestine. Here. [1]

"I complained that while the Flemish Parliament maintained commercial and cultural treaties with Israel, similar agreements had been rejected by the Walloon and Brussels Parliaments.Wallonia had however, such agreements with Libya and Cuba. Di Rupo answered that he would correct this after the elections; yet he did nothing."

Israel's former ambassador to Belgium, Jehudi Kinar [photo]: "Di Rupo once said that he had not known there were poor Jews." Interview by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld.

"Belgium is a country with a complex political system that is difficult to analyze. It is a federal state and there are tensions between its two major populations, the Dutch-speaking Flemish and the French-speaking Walloons.

Now, 540 days after the last parliamentary elections, the Wallonian Socialist leader Elio di Rupo has been appointed prime minister of a broad six-partcoalition. An analysis of his and his party’s hostile attitude toward Israel for many years already, makes it easier to understand how he might conduct himself in future."

Jehudi Kinar was the Israeli Ambassador to Belgium and Luxemburg from 2003 until the end of 2007. Before that, he had foreign postings in the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, and Canada.

"The Socialist Party (PS) is currently the dominant party in Wallonia. Di Rupo was a big disappointment for me, yet I should have known better. After he returned from Israel in 1999 when he was Prime Minister of the Walloon Region Di Rupo said that he ‘had not known that there are poor Jews’.

During our first meeting I complained that while the Flemish Parliament maintained commercial and cultural treaties with Israel, similar agreements had been rejected by the Walloon and Brussels Parliaments.Wallonia had however, such agreements with Libya and Cuba. Di Rupo answered that he would correct this after the elections; yet he did nothing.

“We had several other bad experiences with the Socialists. In 2001, a politically motivated court case was brought against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israeli Generals Rafael Eitan and Amos Yaron, regarding their alleged involvement in the murders of Palestinians by Christian militia in the Lebanese refugee camps Sabra and Shatilla. We won in the District Court. [2] Then in 2003, the Wallonian and Flemish Socialists, the Greens and the CDH – a Wallonian former Christian party — passed a rare retroactive change of law in the Senate which enabled prosecution of non-Belgian citizens for crimes committed elsewhere.

"After the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit in 2006, Di Rupo came out with a press release claiming Israel used this as a pretext to start a war against Lebanon. The Israeli Embassy responded by pointing out that the PS had never condemned rocket attacks from Gaza at the citizens of Sderot.

Di Rupo later declared that he would continue his political line toward Israel ‘despite the arrogant letter from the Israeli Ambassador.’ That letters from the Israeli Ambassador did not deserve a response, was a trademark of the PS.

"Another powerful figure in the party is Laurette Onkelinckx, then-Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister. We met a number of times. She promised me she would speak with Di Rupo, as she could not believe that my letter had not been answered. Onkelinckx assumed there had been a technical glitch. When we did not receive an answer from Di Rupo, I sent her a letter. She did not acknowledge it. In the new government she will be Minister for Social Affairs and Health, and again Deputy Prime Minister. [Her husband lawyer Marc Uyttendaele wrote an anti-Israel book in 2006...]

"André Flahaut, then-Defense Minister, was particularly problematic. He will continue as Chairman of the Chamber. Flahaut was always available for meetings, yet came out with very strong anti-Israeli statements. In later years, he also took part in anti-Israeli demonstrations. Meetings with him were important because Belgium had soldiers in the UNIFIL force in Lebanon. Like many politicians from various parties, Flahaut was surrounded by anti-Israeli advisers. Several had close advisers with Muslim backgrounds. [More about Flahaut HERE and HERE.]

"A case apart is Philippe Moureaux, a former Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and now Mayor of Molenbeek. For years he asked the Israeli Embassy to provide Palestinian children from Bethlehem and Ramallah with exit visas so they could spend their vacations in Belgium. When I asked Moreaux why he did not organize a common visit for those children together with Jewish children from Sderot, he did not answer. A year later when he repeated his request, we asked the same question and got no reply. In June 2010, this not-so-young Mayor (seventy-two) married Latifa Benaicha, who is of Muslim background. [Philippe Moureaux, a Socialist Party (PS) senator, former Justice Minister and the mayor of the Molenbeek borough of Brussels, was interviewed by Le Vif/L'Express last week [in the aftermath of rioting in Molenbeek during Ramadan], where he said the following: "At the age of 20, when I was a Marxist, I was not a big supporter of the right to diversity. I evolved. And what made me turn around is precisely the conversations I had with representatives of the Jewish community. It saddens me, today, that they deny [!] the right [!] of diversity [!] to Muslims."]

“The most extreme anti-Israeli in the PS is former Senator Pierre Galand. He has initiated many anti-Israeli motions in the Senate. He also heads various anti-Israel organizations such as the Belgian-Palestinian Association and the Lay Action Center. Galand was also Secretary General of OXFAM Belgium during the period 1967-1996.

Véronique De Keyser, a European PS Parliamentarian, once declared that she wanted to strangle the Israeli Ambassador. Many people thought she meant me. As she is a member of the European Parliament, I can clarify that she referred to my colleague who was the Israeli Ambassador to the EU." ["One must wring the neck of the European and German culpability on the Holocaust", 2007. More here.]

Kinar concludes: "Perhaps miracles do happen and the attitudes and manners of the Wallonian Socialists will improve now they head the government. Fortunately enough some ministers from other coalition parties have a positive attitude toward Israel."

Interview conducted by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld (The writer has been a long-term adviser on strategy issues to the Boards of several major multinational corporations in Europe and North America. He is the Chairman of the Board of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

[1] In April 2011, the association converted into a non-profit organisation with a legal status in Brussels by Pierre Galand, Jacques Michiels, Jacques Debatty, Nadia Farkh, Henri Eisendrath and Roseline Sonet. Former non-elected PS senator, Pierre Galand, has been named as president of the association. In a speech given by Pierre Galand on the 12.09.2011 the budget for the Cape Town session of the tribunal is €190,000. In the same speech Galand said that €100,000 was donated by Editions Indigene, the publisher of the book “Time for an outrage.” In addition, more than €15,000 was raised at a September 24, 2011 fundraising event by the Belgian support committee of the Russell Tribunal.The Caipirinha Foundation lists the RToP as a grant receiver, but does not disclose the amount or the year of its grant.

[2] The law soon ran into trouble when a number of parties worldwide filed cases criticized as politically motivated against leaders of various nations.
Over the years filings included cases against American officials, including George H. W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf and Tommy Franks [Shimon Peres too]. [...] In an effort by the United States to pressure Belgium, United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld threatened to remove the NATO Headquarters from Brussels unless the Law was changed.

Article on anti-Semitism in Spain

2011-12-06T10:56:00.000-08:00

Source: Spain, Israel and the Jews

An article on anti-Semitism in Spain was published by El País on Friday, December 2, 2011, under the title España encabeza las encuestas de antijudaísmo (Spain leads the polls on anti-Jewishness). It was written by Juan G. Bedoya and reads as follows (translated as accurate as possible, between quotation marks):

"'We are often asked why the Jews have been being hated so much and for so long. The question has to be made to those who hate us, not to those who are hated.' This thought by Isaac Querub Caro, president of the Federación de Comunidades Judías de España (F.C.J.E. [in English, Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain]), summarized the IV International Seminar on Anti-Semitism. It was closed the last night at the Fundación Caja Navarra [Caja Navarra Foundation]. Several graffiti in the street insulted those present with phrases such as 'Zionism is terrorism' and red crossing-outs on the Star of David.

'The insults, the graffiti, and the slogans against the Jews are considered something normal, when the truth is that they reflect an underlying anti-Semitism. They're a symptom of a social pathology', Alejandro Baer, professor of Sociology at the University of Munich, had denounced previously.

Jurist Jorge Trías Sagnier, who participated in the debate Penal struggle against anti-Semitism and hate offences, expressed his repugnance regarding last April [Spanish] Supreme Court sentence which revoked the conviction against four nazis when considering that phrases such as: 'The Jews are destroyers and promote the wars'; 'The Germans were wrong for not having burnt all of them'; or that 'They're a pestilent race', don't pose a danger and don't deserve a penal reproach.

Trías Sagnier described that sentence as 'barbaric'. 'Some of the magistrates who passed it are the same who are chasing Baltasar Garzón [a Spanish magistrate currently under a judicial investigation for his alleged missconduct during his own judicial investigation on the crimes committed by former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco], but there was a particular vote, full of dignity, by magistrate Martínez Arrieta', he added.

Jews are just a o.1% of Spain's population, but the anti-Semitism levels are among the highest ones in Europe, Querub denounced. The final manifesto of the seminar concluded that 'the denial of the existence of this anti-Semitism aggravates the problem and stops its prevention'."

The 70th anniversary of Hitler meeting the Mufti (Elder of Ziyon)

2011-11-29T07:31:00.000-08:00

"The Mufti isn't a Palestinian Arab hero despite his Jew-hatred. He is a hero because of it."

"It seems that my meeting with Eichmann undermined efforts deployed at the time with the Führer to stop the genocide of the Jews." [1]

Today is the 70th anniversary of Hitler meeting the Mufti (Elder of Ziyon, 28/11/2011)

Germany stands for an uncompromising struggle against the Jews. It is self-evident that the struggle against the Jewish national homeland in Palestine forms part of this struggle, since such a national homeland would be nothing other than a political base for the destructive influence of Jewish interests. Germany also knows that the claim that Jewry plays the role of an economic pioneer in Palestine is a lie. Only the Arabs work there, not the Jews. Germany is determined to call on the European nations one by one to solve the Jewish problem and, at the proper moment, to address the same appeal to non-European peoples....At some not yet precisely known, but in any case not very distant point in time, the German armies will reach the southern edge of the Caucasus. As soon as this is the case, the Führer will himself give the Arab world his assurance that the hour of liberation has arrived. At this point, the sole German aim will be the destruction of the Jews living in the Arab space under the protection of British power. (Adolf Hitler to Haj Amin Al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem, November 28, 1941)

The Mufti of Jerusalem was the undisputed leader of Palestinian Arab nationalism from the 1920s through the 1940s, and his hatred of Jews pervaded all he did.

It will be recalled that the Mufti was given his position by the British because he was regarded as a "moderate." This is what gave him the platform to start his career of inciting against and murdering Jews in earnest.

He was responsible for the anti-Jewish pogroms in Palestine in 1920, 1921 and 1929; he initiated the deadly riots from 1936-1939, and he initiated contact with the Nazis as soon as they came to power in order to come up with ways to work together with them to get rid of the Jews.

Not only that, but towards the end of the war, he pulled out all the stops to murder Jewish children rather than have them rescued - even when the desperate Nazis were considering swapping them for money or for German prisoners. Meaning that his desire to murder Jews exceeded even that of Hitler himself.

The Mufti was an unrepentant anti-semite and desired nothing less than the complete genocide of the entire Jewish people, every man, woman and child.

Today, November 28th, is the anniversary of the Mufti's seminal meeting with Hitler where the Fuehrer explained his genocidal plans in detail to his kindred anti-semite.

Today, the Mufti of Jerusalem is considered a hero among Palestinian Arab leadership.

One year ago, Mahmoud Abbas said in a speech,

We must also recall the outstanding [early] leader of the Palestinian people, the Grand Mufti of Palestine -- Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, who sponsored the struggle from the beginning, and sponsored the struggle and was displaced for the cause and died away from his home."

The Mufti isn't a Palestinian Arab hero despite his Jew-hatred. He is a hero because of it.

[1] "Il semble que mon entrevue avec Eichmann ait compromis les démarches déployées à l'époque auprès du Führer pour arrêter le génocide des juifs". Interview by Edouard Saab, and reported by him in Le Monde (06/07/1974) in an article titled "Haj Amine El-Husseini is dead"). Quoted by Nathan Weinstock, Terre promise, trop promise - génèse du conflit israélo-palestinien, 1882-1948, Éditions Odile Jacob, 2011, p. 290.

70th anniversary of Hitler and Mufti of Jerusalem meeting at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin

2011-11-28T02:46:00.000-08:00

On 28 November 1941, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amine El-Husseini, Yasser Arafat's uncle, was invited to meet Adolf Hitler at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin where he was living at the time. Two other high-ranking Nazi criminals Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Affairs minister, and Fritz Grobba, Berlin's envoy to the Middle East and former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Irak, also attended the meeting. After the war, the Mufti boasted to Edward Saab, Le Monde's correspondent in Lebanon, of the role he had played in the Holocaust (6 million European Jews - including one and a half million children - were exterminated by the Nazis and their accomplices):

"It seems that my interview with Eichmann undermined efforts deployed at the time with the Führer to stop the genocide of the Jews." [1]
_______________
"After seeing the evidence, the International Court reported the following:

"It has been proved to us that the Mufti aimed at the implementation of the Final Solution, viz., the extermination of European Jewry, and there is no doubt that, had Hitler succeeded in conquering Palestine, the Jewish population of there as well would have been subject to total extermination, with the support of the Mufti.""

Eichman's deputy, Dieter Wisliceny, went on to speak at the Tribunal of the Mufti and his entourage:

"The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chambers of Auschwitz." [2]

See: The Hezbollah Nazi legacy, by Joël Rubinfeld

Nazi salute adopted by Palestinian terrorist groups and Lebanese Hezbollah.
Click for an enlarged version

[1] "Il semble que mon entrevue avec Eichmann ait compromis les démarches déployées à l'époque auprès du Führer pour arrêter le génocide des juifs". Interview by Edouard Saab, and reported by him in Le Monde (06/07/1974) in an article titled "Haj Amine El-Husseini is dead"). Quoted by Nathan Weinstock, Terre promise, trop promise - génèse du conflit israélo-palestinien, 1882-1948, Éditions Odile Jacob, 2011, p. 290.

[2] Jonathan Trigg, Hitler's Jihadis : Muslim volunteers of the Waffen-SS, Stroud, Gloucestershire : History Press, 2008 (pp. 203-04).

Cross-posted in French HERE.

Belgian Jewish teen threatened with more violence changes school (update)

2011-11-27T05:01:00.000-08:00

Update: Océane, the 13-year-old victim, received numerous threats this week - text messages, facebook and emails. Her father is outraged and indicated that she will change schools. Typically, the victim has to leave. She and her sister were the only Jewish pupils in the school. Her sister who is 16 and can defend herself better will remain in the school.

Background: Belgian Jews in shock over beating of 13-year-old girl (23/11/2011)

Some details have emerged since the incident was revealed. Her father is Jewish and her mother is not. But to all intents and purposes she is considered by her aggressors as being a "dirty Jew". Oceane told a Flemish TV channel that for youngsters the word Jew has become an insult. While she was being beatean only her friend tried to help, other teenagers who were at the scene just looked on. She has been called several times "Dirty Jew", but it's the first time she was beaten. Julien Klener warned that violence against Jews has become common in Brussels and that victims don't bother to report. Brussels Jewish parliamentarian, and author of the only book about contemporary antisemitism in Belgium, Viviane Teitelbaum indicated that she had received lots of emails from parents telling that their children are harrassed. Some have had to change school. Ms. Teitelbaum stated that time has come to ring alarm bells and make sure that antisemites cannot behave in the knowledge that their behaviour will go unpunished.

Things are indeed unsettling to say the least. A Belgian highschool teacher Pierre Piccinin complained on Facebook that he was being persecuted by the Jewish mafia and that soon fear will switch sides - meaning that soon it will be the Jews who will be afraid. He has made several anti-Jewish remarks. There were no reactions at all and he has now created an organisation to protect freedom of speech which he assumes the Jewish mafia is trying to take away from him and other like-minded people.

Arutz Sheva 7: Five Muslim Moroccan girls in Belgium beat a 13-year-old classmate, called her a "dirty Jew” and told her to "return your country.”

The girl, Oceane Sluijzer, has filed a complaint with police after the anti-Semitic attack at a sports training center. The attackers were identified and questioned by police.

Jewish legislator Viviane Teitelbaum of Brussels denounced the "silence" of political leaders and most of media after this attack.

Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations of Belgium (CCOJB), the umbrella group of Jewish organizations in Belgium, expressed "shock" at the attack and asked that the investigation be conducted without delay. The Jewish group added it is considering filing a civil suit and said the Jewish community is“exasperated” by repeated attacks on Jews, 40,000 of whom live in Belgium.

It also told the Belgian French community's Education Minister he should "introduce appropriate educational programs in schools to prevent unjustified tensions between communities,” the European Jewish Press reported.

The Jewish Consistory, the representative body of Jewish religious congregations in the country, also appealed to authorities to take action.

Photo of Swiss teacher with nasi goreng pack in front of the Auschwitz gate

2011-11-25T03:27:00.000-08:00

On a visit organised by a Jewish association to the Auschwitz extermination camp, Bernard Junod, a Swiss teacher had his photo taken holding a pack of nasi goreng and posted it on Internet. And what a happy and smiling face he has.

On his Smartvote profile he indicated that his favourite book is «Mein Kampf» and that his favourite composer is Richard Wagner, much loved by the Nazis and Adolf himself. As to «Mein Kampf», Bernard Junod confirmed that he likes the book because the author came from nowhere and climbed to the top.

It is not uncommon in Europe for people to make fun of the Jews and of the Holocaust.

Source: 20 minutes. The title of the article is pretty unfortunate, it reads that a teacher "shocks the Jews". One would have thought that he has shocked more people than just the Jews...

Israeli law-makers verbally assaulted in Brussels

2011-11-24T04:48:00.000-08:00

Mks Castigated in Brussels Restaurant

Some MKs participating in the Conference of the European Parliament in Brussels were verbally abused by a group of anti-Israel activists. MKs Anastasia Michaeli [photo], Yaakov Edri, Daniel Ben Simon, and Nachman Shai reported the assault at the entrance to a restaurant, but stressed that it was non-physical. (Maariv)

Belgian Jews in shock over beating of 13-year-old girl

2011-11-23T10:39:00.000-08:00

Some details have emerged since the incident was revealed. Her father is Jewish and her mother is not. But to all intents and purposes she is considered by her aggressors as being a "dirty Jew". Oceane told a Flemish TV channel that for youngsters the word Jew has become an insult. While she was being beatean only her friend tried to help, other teenagers who were at the scene just looked on. She has been called several times "Dirty Jew", but it's the first time she was beaten. Julien Klener warned that violence against Jews has become common in Brussels and that victims don't bother to report. Brussels Jewish parliamentarian, and author of the only book about contemporary antisemitism in Belgium, Viviane Teitelbaum indicated that she had received lots of emails from parents telling that their children are harrassed. Some have had to change school. Ms. Teitelbaum stated that time has come to ring alarm bells and make sure that antisemites cannot behave in the knowledge that their behaviour will go unpunished.

Things are indeed unsettling to say the least. A Belgian highschool teacher Pierre Piccinin complained on Facebook that he was being persecuted by the Jewish mafia and that soon fear will switch sides - meaning that soon it will be the Jews who will be afraid. He has made several anti-Jewish remarks. There were no reactions at all and he has now created an organisation to protect freedom of speech which he assumes the Jewish mafia is trying to take away from him and other like-minded people.

Arutz Sheva 7: Five Muslim Moroccan girls in Belgium beat a 13-year-old classmate, called her a "dirty Jew” and told her to "return your country.”

The girl, Oceane Sluijzer, has filed a complaint with police after the anti-Semitic attack at a sports training center. The attackers were identified and questioned by police.

Jewish legislator Viviane Teitelbaum of Brussels denounced the "silence" of political leaders and most of media after this attack.

Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations of Belgium (CCOJB), the umbrella group of Jewish organizations in Belgium, expressed "shock" at the attack and asked that the investigation be conducted without delay. The Jewish group added it is considering filing a civil suit and said the Jewish community is “exasperated” by repeated attacks on Jews, 40,000 of whom live in Belgium.

It also told the Belgian French community's Education Minister he should "introduce appropriate educational programs in schools to prevent unjustified tensions between communities,” the European Jewish Press reported.

The Jewish Consistory, the representative body of Jewish religious congregations in the country, also appealed to authorities to take action.

Anti-Semitism: Norwegian rap band with modern version of the blood libel

2011-11-22T00:44:00.000-08:00

"I guess some Americans just don't remember...
There’s a slave graveyard under the World Trade Center!"

Of course they obsessed with Israel and America ("I guess some Americans just don't remember...
There’s a slave graveyard under the World Trade Center!" - "some Americans" but "all Jews" - when they refer to Israelis one assumes they mean Jews and not Israeli Arabs)

Source: Norway, Israel and the Jews (Rappers delight: Norwegian band Gatas Parlament with modern version of the blood libel)

Norwegian rap band with a lefty twist, Gatas Parlament, must have a most peculiar muse inspiring their poetic and peace loving music. Here is a sample of their attitudes towards Jews (euphemistically called Israelis….)

All of us are antiracist, don’t accuse us for being antisemmetic, yeah
Grenade rain down over the roofs of Gaza.
Hits hospitals, hits kindergarden kids, hits everywhere.
Of course we’re talking about an apartheid state.
They build a wall between themselves and those who should’nt have citizenship.
For if you call it blood-palestine then no rules apply and believe that it gives
a new macabre meaning to the word blood orange
If it’s grown in stolen land and harvested from a dead body.
Not in my name, not for my money.
It’s not enough to stand around and cry anymore.
So we must attack fundamentalists and show Israel
Cause they don’t care about resolutions anyway.
Just a small piece of a much bigger picture.
Like when we boicotted when I was much younger.
The responsibility lies with us all so we want everyone
with us everyone with concience, Boycott Israel!

Lovely! I suppose we just have to take their word for their claim to be anti-racists?"

And this one about Israel and America:

Bambaataa told us knowledge was the fifth element,
Truth behind the lies is what the music represents,
So how the fuck you gonna have a peace settlement? (How?)
When people want a piece of your land to build settlements,
There’s all different kinda terrorism you can perpetrate
Every dead body causes karma to circulate,
There’s suicide bombin' buildings, full of civilians,
Or cutting off water to cities full of children,
You can't try to justify collective punishment, (Why?)
Our country never finds peace with bodies buried under it,
I guess some Americans just don't remember...
There’s a slave graveyard under the World Trade Center!
Stop the criticism of Iranian nuclear fission,
Until mutual nuclear disarmaments’ the mission,
This ain't about religion, Muslim, Jew or Christian,
It's about people making money off of that division!

Brussels: a 13-year-old girl beaten because she is Jewish

2011-11-21T02:31:00.000-08:00

After training at a sports center in a residential area in Brussels (Neder-Over-Hembeek), a Jewish girl aged 13 was getting ready to leave with a friend when a dispute broke out with five girls (from Morocco). The Jewish teen complained she was fed up with the girls making disparaging remarks about her and her family.

They told her to shut up and called her "a dirty Jew". One of the girls splapped her twice in the face. The little girl wanted to leave in order to avoid an escalation, but the same girl repeated "shut up you dirty Jew and go back to your country". The five girls then grabbed her by the hair and punched her head on her knees. Blows fell from on all sides and was unable to defend herself against the five other girls.

The incident was reported to the police in Brussels. Her tormentors have been identified and the police will investigate the case.

Source: antisemitisme.be

Ian Kershaw on the Last Days of the Third Reich: 'Hitler's Influence Was Fatal'

2011-11-20T02:31:00.000-08:00

"SPIEGEL: You write that the German arms industry produced its largest volume of weapons in December 1944, despite the devastating bombing war.

Kershaw: Without Speer's ability to maintain arms production under the most adverse circumstances, the war would have ended much earlier. Until the Ardennes Offensive, he and his people performed veritable miracles when it came to producing ammunition. There is no other way of putting it."

In a SPIEGEL interview, the best-selling British historian Ian Kershaw talks about the last days of the Third Reich, why the Germans persevered when it was clear that all was lost and the devastating consequences of the failed July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler.

SPIEGEL: Professor Kershaw, you have spent the last three years studying the collapse of Nazi Germany. In the end, are we left to shake our heads in amazement at the absurdity of the final phase, or do you, as a historian, also feel something akin to admiration for the perseverance of the Germans?

Kershaw: The head-shaking predominates, at any rate. I'm convinced that we English would have given up much earlier. It's certainly unusual for a country to continue fighting to the point of complete self-destruction. It's the sort of thing we usually see in civil wars, but not in conflicts in which hostile nations are at war with one another.

SPIEGEL: The question of why the Germans persevered for so long is the starting point of your new book. What would have been the obvious thing to do?

Kershaw: In any armed conflict, there is eventually a point at which one side realizes that it's over. If the people in power don't give up but instead continue to plunge the country into ruin, there is either a revolution from below, as was the case in Germany and Russia near the end of World War I, or there is a coup by the elites, who attempt to save what can still be saved. An example of that is the overthrow of Benito Mussolini in Italy in July 1943.
Read the whole piece :
Part 1: 'Hitler's Influence Was Fatal'

Part 2: 'There Was Something Typically German about It'

French Jewish policians evicted ahead of election

2011-11-19T02:12:00.000-08:00

The negotiations between the French Socialist party and the Greens for the appointment of candidates in Paris for the upcoming elections resulted in the booting out of several Jewish politicians Serge Blisko, Tony Dreyfus, Danièle Hoffman Rispal and Daniel Goldberg.

The CRIF (French Jewish umbrella organisation) also points out that Yves Contassot who will be put forward as a candidate is a well known Israel-basher. The whole left Socialist party and the Greens are anti-Israel, but Contassot is know for among one of the most virulent.

Elisabeth Guigou, a former minister who will replace, Daniel Goldberg also has a history of Israel-bashing and supports Israel boycott campaign.

European Parliament urges US to recognize Palestinian State

2011-11-18T08:28:00.000-08:00

European Parliament calls on EU and US to address the Palestinians’ ‘legitimate demand’ for UN statehood recognition.

STRASBOURG (EJP, by Yossi Lempkowicz)---Ahead of the EU-US summit in Washington later this month, the European Parliament has called on both sides to address "Palestinians' legitimate demand" at the United Nations.

In a resolution passed in a show of hands Thursday in Strasbourg, France, where the assembly holds its monthly session, MEPs called on the EU and the US to support emerging democracies in North Africa, push for a resumption of direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and "address the legitimate demand of the Palestinians to be represented as a state at the United Nations as a result of negotiations within the UN framework".
____________
At the European parliament, it's neither Shimon Peres nor Netanyahu who get standing ovations. It's Mahmoud Abbas who gets a standing ovation. On 4 Feb 2009, PA President Mahmoud Abbas in an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg: "You must stop cooperating with Israel as it's placing itself above the law. Their actions have no legal basis and must be ended. Israeli leaders should also be charged with infringing international humanitarian law." They love Mahmoud Abbas as they loved Arafat.

Meet the Belgian 'Checkpoint Singers'

2011-11-17T02:55:00.000-08:00

Here they are

If you happen to be in Brussels on November 25, dont miss the CheckPoint singers. They will be performing and telling their trip to the "occupied territories" and explain once again that Israelis are monsters. They will speak of "checkpoints, the wall, the theft of land by the colonialists, the struggle for water and land, detention, infrastructure apartheid. We brought our songs to Palestine. Now we are bearing witness in front of you in the hope for increased solidarity towards the Palestinian people."

The event also includes a visit to the "Cast Lead" - more Israel-bashing - exhibition/project.

The whole thing is supported by the Belgian government and obviously paid by the unsuspecting and reluctant tax-payer.

Is Belgium endorsing the 'Israel Apartheid State' concept?

2011-11-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

"To attack Israel by using the word "apartheid" is therefore to deracialise a racist concept, and it runs the risk of inviting anyone who visits, or truly understands, Israel to say that if this is apartheid, apartheid must have been a perfectly reasonable system. Hendrik Verwoerd will laugh from the depths of hell. To be fair, some of the more cunning operators inside the Israeli-apartheid brigade are aware of this." (Robin Shepherd)

It looks as though Belgium endorsing the 'Israel Apartheid State' concept. A press conference is being held tomorrow to present the findings of the third session of Russell Tribunal for Palestine held in Cape Town. See NGO Monitor report: HERE and more HERE. The findings: "The Tribunal finds that Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalised regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law. [...] the Tribunal concludes that Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid."

The kangaroo court was created by a Belgian Pierre Galand. The press conference will take place at the De Markten Theatre "the cultural centre in the heart of Brussels" - run by the Flemish authorities. An anti-Israel and anti-US exhibition ("project") "Cast Lead #2" is alsoo being shown now at De Markten.

In a full two year period since this charade has been going on Jewish leaders have not raised a single protest and ignored it. The South African Jewish community has to be commended for having ensured that the charade was a failure. The cartoon below is by Carlos Latuff.

Tribunal Russell sur la Palestine

Conférence de presse en compagnie de Stéphane HESSEL

jeudi 17 novembre 2011

11H-12H30

Théâtre De Markten

5, Vieux Marché aux grains

1000 Bruxelles

Vous êtes cordialement invités à assister à la conférence de presse relative aux travaux de la troisième session internationale du Tribunal Russell sur la Palestine (TRP) qui s’est tenue à Cape Town en Afrique du Sud les 5, 6 et 7 novembre 2011 et qui était consacrée au thème suivant : «Les pratiques d’Israël envers le Peuple palestinien violent-elles l’interdiction internationale de l’apartheid ?, en compagnie de Stéphane HESSEL, ambassadeur de France et Président d’honneur du TRP.

Au cours de cette cession pas moins de 25 experts et témoins se sont succédés à la barre. Les premiers ont présenté les principes du droit international et de la Convention des Nations sur l'élimination et la répression du crime d'apartheid de 1973 qui fondent l’interdiction du crime d’apartheid. Quant aux témoins, ils ont expliqué à partir de différents cas comment Israël pratique le crime d’apartheid dans les territoires palestiniens et en Israël, et ont dénoncé la violation des droits les plus élémentaires des Palestiniens, notamment : le droit à la liberté de mouvement, le droit au logement, le droit à un procès équitable, le droit au travail, la torture, les arrestations arbitraires, les assassinats ciblés, les démolitions de maisons, les punitions corporelles, les châtiments collectifs, la détérioration des services de santé et d'éducation notamment pour les enfants, l’interdiction d'aller et de venir dans les territoires palestiniens,…

Le Jury était composé de personnalités internationales connues pour leur intégrité morale, parmi lesquelles figuraient, entre autres, Stéphane Hessel, Ambassadeur de France et Président d’honneur du TRP, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Prix Nobel de la Paix 1976, Irlande du Nord ; Alice Walker, poétesse américaine,Yasmin Sooka, ancienne membre de la «Truth and Reconciliation Commission» en Afrique du Sud et avocate spécialisée en droits de l’Homme…. Ce Jury, assisté par des experts juristes spécialisés en droit international, a conclu à l'existence d'un régime institutionnalisé de domination qualifié d'apartheid et de persécution qui constitue un crime contre l'Humanité.

Le Jury a rappelé que tous les États doivent coopérer en vue de mettre fin à cette situation illégale en agissant dans les institutions internationales (Nations unies et Cour pénale internationale). Il a aussi appelé la société civile à recréer l'esprit de solidarité qui a contribué à la fin du régime d'apartheid en Afrique du Sud notamment par la campagne Boycott, désinvestissement, sanctions (BDS).

Au cours de cette conférence seront notamment présents :

Pierre GALAND, coordinateur général du TRP ;

Jacques MICHIELS, ex-Secrétaire général Centrale Générale FGTB ;

Paulette PIERSON-MATHY, Professeur honoraire de droit international à l’ULB présente la troisième session internationale à Cape Town ;

Marianne BLUME, témoin à la troisième session internationale de Cape Town.

Contact presse : Hocine Ouazraf, ouazraf.trp@gmail.com ; 0032479129532

Des sandwichs et boissons sont prévus

Israël commet le crime d'apartheid et la persécution qui est un crime contre l'Humanité.

More 'warnings' and criticism from France to Israel

2011-11-15T12:34:00.000-08:00

This is a little known fact. France has a Consulate in Gaza, thus recognizing the legitimacy of Hamas terrorist government in the Gaza Strip. And the site HERE. It is very cleverly done. America has a virtual e-consulate in Gaza, France has a physical very real consulate.

Source: Aroutz Sheva 7

France warned Israel on Tuesday not to endanger civilians after one of its diplomats and his family was wounded in a retaliatory strike carried out by the IAF.

French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said the French consul in Gaza, 'Franco-Palestinian' citizen Majdi Shakura, was injured in an airstrike on the Hamas-run enclave in the early hours of Monday morning.

According to Shakura, the blast blew out the windows of his house, resulting in the diplomat and his 13-year-old daughter being cut by flying glass and his 42-year-old wife to miscarry two months into her pregnancy.

The strike reportedly targeted the nearby home of a member of the Hamas terror organization, which controls Gaza. Local emergency services said a 20-year-old member of Hamas' 'naval security forces' was killed in the strike.

"France regrets this airstrike," Valero said. "While being committed to Israeli security, France notes the absolute necessity of avoiding all harm to civilians. The Israeli authorities have been reminded of this imperative."

Legal experts note – contrary to popular belief – there is no such requirement under international laws governing warfare. Billeting combatants, storing munitions, and launching attacks from civilian areas as Hamas does is a violation of international law. Nor is Israel proscribed from launching counter-strikes on such areas if legitimate military targets are present.

Rather, potential civilian casualities have to be weighed against the military necessity of the strike – which in Israel’s case is aimed at protecting its own civilian population.

The Israeli military said Tuesday that it was not aware of any diplomat being wounded in its action, and said it had launched the strike in response to rocket fire against Israeli civilians from the targeted site.

Relations between Paris and Jerusalem have been strained in recent days, after French President Nicolas Sarkozy was caught calling Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu a ‘liar’ on an open microphone. Sarkozy attempted to reassure the Prime Minister afterwards that their friendship is intact.

Abravanel: Antisemitic ministers and Holocaust deniers enter the new Greek government

2011-11-14T03:47:00.000-08:00

In other words a minister of the Greek government [Adonis Georgiadis] was called by a neonazi [Konstantin Plevris] to defend his book which advocated the extermination of the Greek Jewish Community. (About Plevris see: - K. Plevris: "I am a Nazi and a fascist, I am racist, anti-democratic and I am an anti-Semite" and Kostas Plevris: Hitler could have rid Europe of the Jews but did not.) And guess what? Nicolas Sarkozy has sent his congratulations to the new Government. European politicians, the elites, the media and the European Commission have remained silent and focused their attention on Berlusconi's departure. Thus avoiding unpleasant subjects.

“Let’s talk about the myth of Auschwitz and Dachau and talk about these ovens, to talk about these gas chambers, whether the gas chambers were insulated to hold gas inside or they were simple bricks” (George Karatzaferis).

Source: Abravanel blog

A. What happened ?

Under international pressure over erroneous political decisions concerning the economic policy, the socialist government led by Yorgos Papandreou collapsed. A new government of national unity was formed led by former European Central Bank vice-president Lukas Papademos and supported by the majoritarian socialist party PASOK, the conservative Nea Dimokratia and the far-Right LàOS; the leftist SYRIZA and the Greek Communist Party have declined to participate. Although there is a long history of public antisemitism within all greek parties, it was usually kept under control by moderate leadership; these new developments mark the first time that the antisemitic far-Right gains institutional access and real power by entering in four ministries with one minister and three undersecretaries.

B. The recent history of the LàOS party

Until 2000 the greek Far-Right practically consisted of two major groups: the faction inside the greek conservative party of Nea Dimokratia and a small neonazi galaxy of groups in which the violent Chrisi Avgi, (Golden Dawn) was prominent. The domination of the two major parties, the conservative Nea Dimokratia and the socialist PASOK in which nationalistic and antisemitic sentiments were tolerated but also kept in check, gave grounds to the often cited but misleading assumption that a strong Far-Right does not exist in Greece.

All this changed when Yorgos Karatzaferis, a parliamentarian from Nea Dimokratia was expelled in 2000 when he accused the party leader of being surrounded by gays. Immediately after he created his new party called LàOS, (Popular Orthodox Rally), which managed 4 years later to enter the European Parliament and 3 years afterwards to enter the Greek Parliament.

Since its foundation LàOS has professed a double identity: on one hand it has made declarations generically condemning the phenomenon of antisemitism although never specific events and has even made isolated statements supporting Greek-Israeli military cooperation; it should be marked that these statements were directed to international press and not to the greek audience in order to shake the label of an extremist.

On the other it has consistently flooded Greek media with statements varying from the explicit acceptance of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to statements saying that “the Jew smell blood” concerning Israel and Jews being responsible for 9/11, claiming world Jewish domination, Jews being Christ-killers, expressing doubts over the Holocaust etc. Although Greek Jewry has expressly tried to stay outside political rivalries, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece has repeatedly issued statements condemning various Karatzaferis statements.

C. Specific instances of antisemitism by party leader Y. Karatzaferis

There are literally hundreds of statements of LàOS top politicians in which they express antisemitism and credence to all kinds of weird conspiracy theories in which Jews are protagonists. Some are dead serious like the accusations that Jews are responsible for the Greek debt, others are traditional Christian antisemitism like the Christ-killers accusation while others are simply funny like the ones being responsible for every major Greek disaster beginning from the Peloponnesean War.

1. Should there ever be a Greek Jewish politician, then he/she will owe allegiance to foreign powers – no Greek Jew must take part in government

In 1996 as a mainstream conservative parliamentarian he accused Minister Christos Rozakis, (a Christian Orthodox whose 1 paternal grandfather was a Jew who converted to Christianity), of double allegiance after a campaign led by a neonazi newspaper. Apparently Jewish blood, diluted to 1/4 and baptized is still poison to Karatzaferis.

LàOS party newspaper advocating the veridicity of the Protocols of the Elder of Zion

2. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are true

On the Lisbon Treaty of the European Union: “Whatever is being described in the Protocols of Zion is becoming reality today. One Goverment, one currency for all of Europe. And this for me is the coming of the New Order of things”, Karatzaferis in the Greek Parliament, 11/6/2008

3. He is proud that no Jews, gays or communists are part of his party and has accused many Christian politicians as crypto-Jews.

“First of all I am not a Jew; let’s see if the Prime Minister (Simitis) can claim this. Second of all I am not a communist; let’s see if Karamanlis (conservative party leader) can claim this. And third I am not gay; and there are not many people who can claim this”, speech made on 28 May 2002.

4. Jews are directly accused as Christ-killers.

“The murderers of GOD would ever care for innocent children? Their pure blood is soaking the flesh not of the Jews whose skin has acquired a sheath of impermeability…”, in the main article in party newspaper A1, 4 January 2009

5. He has openly asked for neonazi party Chrisi Avgi to enter the Greek government.

In this video one can see Yorgos Karatzaferis in his daily television show offering neonazis a ministry.

6. Jews are responsible for 9/11

Karatzaferis even asked for an official enquiry over the rumors of Arab newspapers that 4000 American Jews did not go to the Twin Towers on 9/11. He repeated the claim multiple times in his television show, even challenging the Israeli ambassador.

7. Speaking about Israel and the Cast Lead operation of 2009

“The Jews are transforming to the same ruthless killers as their perpetrators [the Nazis]“, “The blacklettered day the State of Israel was born”, “…more Jews practicing the ruthless policies of Zionism”, main article in party newspaper A1, 4 January 2009.

8. The Jews, the Vatican and the Peloponnesean War between Sparta and Athens

A myriad of other statements like the “conspiracy of the Vatican and the Jews”, “Jews forcing their laws in countries outside their own”, “The New World Order expressed by the Jews”, “they [the Jews] print synagogues on banknotes”. A special mention goes to history lessons in which Jews are responsible for the fall of Constantinople to the ottoman Turks in 1453. Even better is the revelation that Jews are responsible for the Peloponnesean War of 431 BCE between Sparta and Athens.

I am certain that when his car hits a traffic jam he accuses the Jews of intentionally painting the traffic lights a communist red just to spike him.

9. An evergreen: Holocaust denial

“…let’s talk about the myth of Auschwitz and Dachau and talk about these ovens, to talk about these gas chambers, whether the gas chambers were insulated to hold gas inside or they were simple bricks”. The specific excerpt is from 2001 but there are many occasions, especially in his daily television show when hosting his friend Plevris, eg here.

D. Antisemitism of the new LàOS ministers

1. Minister of Infrastuctures, Transport and Networks Mavroudis (Makis) Vorides

New minister Voridis with an axe/source: enet.gr

An avowed nationalist whose violent past is evident in his photo carrying an axe (!) during clashes with leftist protesters. President of the youth faction of EPEN, a nationalistic party supporting the 1967 military junta, he later formed the antisemitic and nationalistic party Elliniko Metopo. Later on he joined forces with the man who has come to symbolize exterminationist antisemitism Konstantinos Plevris and tried to form a European alliance of antisemitic parties with the 1997 European Nationalistic Conference in which infamous Le Pen’s french Front National, Flemish Vlaams Blok and Spanish Frente Nacional took part. Here can one read his adventures in the murky waters of the Greek Far-Right.

In 2002 he expressed doubts over the authenticity of the Anne Frank diaries and said that he could not answer whether the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are true or false. He did say though that he had never met a Jew who shares his political ideas and he has absolutely no problem with the violent neonazi party of Chrisi Avgi

2. Under secretary to Growth, Competitivity, Maritime Affairs Adonis Georgiadis

The official lawsuit against the Greek Jewry, in which Georgiadis will testify against/source:GHM

A famous tele-evangelist with a popular TV show in Karatzaferis TV channel, he has made more than his fair share of antisemitic claims like the 2009 claim that “All major banks belong to the Jews” during a conversation with his brother in which they claimed that the Jewish Lobby held the keys to the Greek foreign debt.

He also systematically publicized through his TV show and sold through his bookshop the most infamous antisemitic book ever to have been published in Greece, “The Jews, the whole truth” by neonazi Konstantinos Plevris. Here one can read an extensive report over the systematic promotion of the aforementioned book.

The new under-secretary is linked with a long friendship to Plevris and was hosted in Plevris TV show several times. Due to his support he has been called as a witness on behalf of the neonazi Plevris in a lawsuit brought against the leadership of the Greek Jewry. In other words a minister of the Greek government is called by a neonazi to defend his work which advocated the extermination of Jews against the Greek Jewish Community, after having extensively publicized the book in many shows.

Given the widespread doubts over the independence of the Greek Justice system which has been proved to be sympathetic to antisemitic claims, one is left to wonder whether Georgiadis will resist the temptation to help his old friend and mentor.

E. Is the Jewish Community in Greece in danger ?

No more than it was yesterday, but a deterioration is expected. Arson attacks and vandalisms are common in Greece but since the Palestinian attacks in Greece in the 80′s and the Al Qaeda bombings of the Turkish synagogues there has been an effective synergy of both government-afforded protection and internal jewish security service; it is doubtful whether the LàOS politicians will risk violent outbreaks by antisemitic groups which would lead to international exposure.

There are three ways that the new found power of LàOS could hurt Jews, one that already has happened and two others hypothetical:

1. The first one is the LàOS has managed to make antisemitism mainstream

When LàOS politicians cast doubts over the Holocaust or accuse Jews of handling the Greek national debt they introduce vulgar antisemitic speech into the everyday discourse. These arguments existed before but they were considered populistic and vulgar-chick. Nowadays when Karatzaferis drops A-bombs like directly accusing Jews of killing the Christian God, then statements like the Communist Party of Greece leader’s on “30 pieces of silver” offered by Israel go by largely unnoticed raising the bar of what is considered acceptable.

It should be highlighted that Karatzaferis owns a television station with national television coverage and a party newspaper; these two media outlets have accomplished more in the fight against Jews than any neonazi fringe group given their wide audience and constant flow of virulent antisemitism.

2. The new ministers are not likely to directly challenge the Jewish community, but will use their power to advance antisemitic policies

Consistent statements of theirs point to the fact that they will use their influence directly or indirectly to oppose the recent introduction of the Holocaust in Greek history books, (Greece considered the murder of +60.000 Greek Jews a non-Greek event and did not teach in the Greek school system until the mid-00′s).

The new ministers will probably use their influence to discourage attacks of far-Right antisemitic groups to Jewish targets in order not to escalate mounting opposition to them. Still it is possible to withdraw police protection to Jewish institutions in case of leftist aggression in order to score points with their political rivals who would appear more antisemitic than LàOS.

They will protect neo-nazis from police prosecution as seen with the Georgiadis support of Plevris. They will also foster a climate of tolerance of racism; for example it will be less likely for a Greek organization to oppose antisemitism when its revenues will be partly controlled by the LàOS government members.

Jews in high-profile places will probably witness some discrimination in State-related jobs. Not necessarily because Voridis, Georgiadis, Rodoulis or Yeorgiou will follow a systematic antisemitic policy but because their presence creates a safety net for those mid-level government employees who foster antisemitic feelings. LàOS claims it seeks a Greece for Greeks and Karatzaferis favorite game is one day to say that Greek Jews are Greeks and another to say that they are not; one cannot realistically can expect otherwise.

3. In case of tension the Middle East they shall revert to time-honored antisemitic policies

Experience shows that despite lip-service to Greek-Israeli military cooperation, in times of crisis they have consistently turned in order to please their antisemitic voters. During Cast Lead in 2009 when Greek Jewry suffered attacks in all major Greek cities, including arson attacks on synagogues and cemeteries the LàOS leader unleashed one of the most vicious attacks mixing Greek Jews, Israel, USA and nefarious powers in a scheme to assassinate Palestinian children the same way Jews assasinated Christ. This attack warranted an unprecedented request to the President of the Parliament Siufas on behalf of the Central Board of Jewish Communities so that Greek Jews were not left at the mercy of the mob; sadly only one parliamentarian rose to the challenge settling the question whether antisemitism is embedded in greek society.

F. What to do ?

There are discussions on measures of protection to be adopted. I shall return with an article shortly.

In a nutshell. The huge economic crisis has created an opportunity for LàOS party to enter the government. It is not a party with some questionable remarks: it is a Holocaust denying party which is one step away from advocating measures that limit perceived Jewish influence in Greece – they actually believe in all kinds of jewish conspiracies. Still their number one goal is achieving power and they shall not endanger their position with openly antisemitic policies; they’re even capable of paying lip service with a generic condemnation of antisemitism or nominal support of greek-israeli military cooperation in order to shake the extremist label. The Greek Jews are not in any kind of imminent danger but antisemitism has become mainstream with unknown consequences for the future. It is inevitable that antisemitism will continue to rise with practical consequences doubting the progress made the past 15 years; Greek Jewry must acknowledge that the Greek State cannot guarantee its safety unless we admit that the wolves can protect the sheep. What measures should be taken its to be seen.

Greek member of Gov't: Jews crucified God the only time he came to earth

2011-11-13T04:54:00.000-08:00

"On a televised debate with Israel's ambassador to Greece he said: "Lets talk about all these tales of Auschwitz and Dachau"; in 2002 during a parliament session he asked the then Greek prime minister: "Is it true that your daughter secretly married a Jew?"; and during Operation Cast Lead in 2008, Karatzaferis said that the IDF was acting "with savage brutality only seen in Hitler's time towards helpless people." (YNET news)

When it is convenient Karatzaferis is a Holocaust denier speaking of the Auschwitz and Dachau tales (myth), and when it is convenient he is not and compares Israel to Nazism and accuses "the main victims of Hitler's brutality turned into the same heinous murderers as their persecutor".

Below statements made by George Karatzaferis, member of the new Greek Government:

EJP (Sept. 2007)
In 2001, Karatzaferis stated that "the Jews have no right to provoke, because they have filled the world with crimes". "The Jews have no legitimacy to speak in Greece and provoke the political world. Their impudence is crass".

Abravanel - At the Greek Parliament on 17 June 2006)

"Let me close with this one. In the Protocols of the Elders of Zion who, of course, I don’t know who wrote them. The Zionists deny that they have written them. I don’t care who he is, whoever he may be, should be a Nobel graduate. A century ago this man had predicted – whoever he is, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, I don’t care, Russian or American – these things that happen today. Whatever is being described in the Protocols of Zion is becoming reality today. One Goverment, one currency for all of Europe. And this for me is the coming of the New Order of things."

Full speech in Greek HERE. The Protocols are on sale HERE

JTA (Dec. 2008)
"Someone has to pull the ear of the darling child of the West, Israel. Its aggressiveness and malice against non-combatants, whose only precedent can be found during Hitler's time, cannot leave the international community indifferent."

Abravanel (Sept. 2009)
"Violent antisemitic incidents occurred in 9 Greek cities: Athens, Salonica, Larissa, Volos, Ioannina, Corfu but also in judenrein cities such as Komotini, Veria, Drama. Nationwide we saw outrageous statements on "blood craving Jews" by Extreme-Right leader Y.Karatzaferis [...]"

JTA (Jan. 2009)
"In less than 70 years the main victims of Hitler's brutality turned into the same heinous murderers as their persecutor."

"Israel feels that in the name of the Holocaust it can still misbehave, be indecent, blackmail, and debase institutions and people."

"[with some effort the Jews could be placed among the nations of justice] "but what do you expect from a race that crucified God the only time he came to earth."

"Yet would God killers care about a few hundred innocent children?"

"Unfortunately it is known all over the world that a Jew smells of blood."

Dec. 29, his party issued a statement regarding the bombardment of Gaza that said: "Someone has to pull the ear of the darling child of the West, Israel. Its aggressiveness and malice against non-combatants, whose only precedent can be found during Hitler's time, cannot leave the international community indifferent."

JTA (Dec. 2002)
"The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent a letter to the Greek government calling on it to close down the TV station of Yorgos Karatzaferis, the leader of the far-right Popular Rally Party. The party recently garnered nearly 14 percent of the vote in local elections for a district that includes the city of Athens. Karatzaferis, who regularly hurls epithets against Jews and the Israeli ambassador to Greece on his TV station, has propagated the libel, circulating widely in the Arab world, that Israel was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. In September, Karatzaferis submitted a question in the Greek Parliament asking the foreign minister if he was aware that the Israeli press had published articles claiming that Jews had not gone to work on Sept. 11 after they were forewarned about the attacks on the Twin Towers. The question was subsequently published in several right-wing papers in Greece with no comment, while articles embracing the rumors were even found in editorials of the official magazine of the Technical Chamber of Greece, the government body that oversees the work of Greek industrialists. The magazine is distributed to thousands of Greek businessmen."

Young Jewish artists in Germany boldly define the 'New Jew'

2011-11-12T01:48:00.000-08:00

Source: Spiegel on Line

Monsters occasionally assume a completely unexpected appearance. All of a sudden, Adolf Hitler is standing onstage wearing an Adidas tracksuit and flip-flops, and his name isn't Hitler; it's Oliver Polak. And the monster isn't really Adolf Hitler, either; it's the audience's laughter. It starts with a sputter, like something trying to break free from its restraints. But then it bursts out as if suddenly liberated.

These are the moments in which Polak has gotten very close to the truth. It's a complicated truth because it has to do with something that became a given long ago: that Germans are supposed to be ashamed and sad about what they did to the Jews. And somehow that was also enough.

But what happens when someone stands onstage at a comedy club in Berlin making jokes about Jews and the Holocaust? When the mere mention of the railway system triggers a segue into the subject of deportations? When he slyly adds: "I'm allowed to do that. I'm a Jew." And when his audience primarily laughs because it isn't quite sure whether it's even OK to laugh?

The 'New Jew' Movement
Polak is a comedian. A few weeks after his show, the 35-year-old is sitting in a friend's apartment in Berlin's downtown Mitte district. Darkness is slowly descending on the street outside.

His show is supposed to be about the new Jews, the new Jewish self-image, old German insecurities and the question of what it means when two books that deftly juggle the issues of Jewish identity and anti-Semitic prejudices are almost simultaneously published.

The "New Jew Manifesto," published in England some time ago, describes this new, self-confident "hello-I'm-Jewish generation" as "loud and proud" and as made up of people who no longer "speak of their Jewish identity in the hushed tones generally reserved for discussing terminal illness." They are also unwilling to let anti-Semites tell them who they are, have no problem saying the word "Jew" and refuse to let 5,000 years of history distract them from the fact that the future is there for them.

But does this also aptly describe the sentiments of Jews living in Germany? Or does the Holocaust keep them stuck in the past? In other words, what does it mean to be a Jew in a world in which Jews make jokes about the Holocaust and Germans actually laugh at their jokes?

Representatives of the New Generation
And then, of course, there is also the question of who can rightly be called a "new Jew"?

Would it be someone like Polak, the comedian who grew up lonely as the only Jewish boy in the northwestern German town of Papenburg, who stands onstage making fun of his mother, his foreskin and the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and whose audiences laugh even louder because they aren't quite sure whether their laughing might actually constitute hate speech under German law?

Or would it be someone like Sophie Mahlo, a 36-year-old lawyer and cultural event organizer who has a Tunisian mother and German father, who grew up in Berlin and always wanted to leave but nonetheless returned, and who says that "Jewish identity amounts to nothing more than thinking about why other people want to kill you"?

Or would it be someone like Lena Gorelik, a 30-year-old writer who emigrated from Russia with her parents as a child and only learned of the Holocaust once she was in Germany, who would tell her grade-school teachers that it was a Jewish holiday every three days just to see how they would react, and who "felt the pressure here of having to fall into the pattern of being a victim"?

Or would it be someone like Daniel Josefsohn [photo], a 50-year-old photographer who named his dog Jesus, whose Berlin studio boasts an AK-47 bearing the words "I love Jews," and who once climbed into the garden of the former house of Hermann Göring, a leading Nazi figure, in order to raise an Israeli flag?
More HERE

Holocaust denier and truther set for key role in Greek government?

2011-11-11T03:52:00.000-08:00

"Lets talk about all these tales of Auschwitz and Dachau."

"A professed anti-Semitic politician cannot serve in a government with which the German government will need to negotiate billions in aid," Committee Chairman of the Central Committee of German Jews Dieter Graumann told Germany's Bild.

In 2009 he complained of "blood craving Jews". Obviously he seems to be considered as a respectable man in present day Europe.

(YNet) Georgios Karatzaferis, right-wing leader who previously compared IDF to Hitler may have major role in new government

Jewish organizations in Germany have expressed their shock over plans in Greece to involve the extreme right wing party LAOS, led by Georgios Karatzaferis, in Greece's provisional government. Greek media reported Thursday that Karatzaferis played a central role in the steps that led to the establishment of a government that would try to navigate Greece out of its debt crisis by implementing a European financial plan. The reports also said he was set to be part of the new government.

Reports claim that in the last few years, Karatzaferis made a long line of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli statements. After the 9/11 attacks in New York, the politician posed the question "why were all the Jews warned not to come to work that day?" before the Greek parliament.

On a televised debate with Israel's ambassador to Greece he said: "Lets talk about all these tales of Auschwitz and Dachau"; in 2002 during a parliament session he asked the then Greek prime minister: "Is it true that your daughter secretly married a Jew?"; and during Operation Cast Lead in 2008, Karatzaferis said that the IDF was acting "with savage brutality only seen in Hitler's time towards helpless people." [...]

French newspaper op-ed: analogy of occupation and rape of Palestine by Israel

2011-11-10T04:40:00.000-08:00

Source: CRIF

Libération, a French newspaper with a large readership, published an op-ed by Rana Nashashibi, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, who is a teacher and a militant, entitled : "Peace process, an empty concept". She explains that Israel is not at war with the Palestinians because it is the occupying and colonial power.

Then she develops the idea of the Palestinian people being raped by Israel. This was developed at length in this essay 2004 at the German Goethe Institute: Violence against Women, The Analogy of Occupation and Rape; “The case of the Palestininan People”

She writes in Libération (translation): "We, Palestinians, we want a peace which gives us back justice and freedom. The international community wants Israelis and Palestinians to reach an agreement without interfering and without putting pressure on Israel. This situation can be compared to that of the police officer who flies to the rescue of a raped woman raped and then asks the couple to agree to inform him of the situation, so that he may bless it. Those who read this sentence, particularly the militants who fight against violence and rape, know that this demand and this situation are absurd! How can an agreement be forced upon an usurped Palestinian woman without stopping in the first place transgressions (violations) and rape?"

No wonder that only 32% of the Israeli public consider that France is friendly to Israel. There is not a single French newspaper which has a neutral line on Israel. They are either critical or ferociously critical. And don't say it is anti-semitism - quite a few French journalists are Jewish ... and one of the main shareholders of Libération is Jewish: "In January 2005, Édouard de Rothschild invested 20 million euros for a 37% majority shareholding in the French newspaper Libération. The left-wing daily was founded by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and Maoist militant journalist Serge July in 1973 but in recent years has sustained substantial losses."

Jews leaving Malmö in Sweden and the community Rabbi fears the hatred he meets in the city.

2011-11-09T08:15:00.000-08:00

Source: Norway, Israel and the Jews (The way Sweden is going…)

With kind collaboration from a reader with contacts in Sweden. Lets just hope this scenario does not pan out in Norway…

Jews are leaving Malmö in Sweden and the community Rabbi fears the hatred he meets in the city.

In a unique interview in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter the Rabbi of Malmö blames the political leaders for the hatred growing with young Muslims. In peaceful Sweden Jews are not safe and can not walk the streets without fear. It is almost unreal that this is Sweden in 2011, not 1941.

“I wasn’t prepared for the hatred I was to face”

In recent years the hatred of Jews has increased in Malmö. many translocate from there. Rabbi Shneur Kesselman has chosen to stay. But when he came to Malmö seven years ago, he was not prepared for the hatred he would face.

Seven years ago the Jewish Rabbi Shneur Kesselman and his wife moved to Malmö. He grew up in the car city of Detroit in the northern United States. "We had many Muslims neighbors and never experienced unpleasantness. But in Malmö … when the young guys shout “support Hitler” after me it has gone very far. I wasn’t prepared for the hatred I would meet here as a Jew."

The Jewish community in Malmö today has about 650 members, the number has steadily decreased in recent years. Young people choose to study in other locations, retirees follow their children. Anti-Semitism also make members leave the city. The Kesselman couple have no plans to leave the city.

More HERE

Sarkozy tells Obama that Netanyahu is a liar

2011-11-07T12:50:00.000-08:00

President Sarkozy told President Obama during the G20 summit that the Prime Minister of Israel is a liar. Both leaders thought the microphones were off.

Barack Obama criticized Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting for the accession of Palestine to UNESCO, while he knew that the United States strongly opposed the move. The conversation then drifted to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister. They were convinced they were not being heard and Sarkozy declared: "I cannot stant him. He is a liar". "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!" replied Obama. He then asked Sarkozy to try to convince the Palestinians to Palestinians to ease up on their membership application at the UN.

As usual the French say one thing and then do the opposite. France had been telling the Israelis that they would not vote for Palestine becoming a full member of UNESCO and then did. And then say that Israelis are liars and make the U.S. and their European partners look bad for siding with Israel!

Source: Arrêt sur Images

France: Holocaust cartoon in response to 'Charia Hebdo'

2011-11-07T08:30:00.000-08:00

Following ‘Charlie Hebdo’ is petrol bombed (see Harry's Place for story)

By way of retaliation a Dieudonné fan produced the cartoon below poking fun at the Holocaust and Jewish greed. A Jew says: "In exchange for the creation of Palestine, I'll accept a one million discount on the six million". The six million is a reference to the extermination of six million European Jews - including one and a half million children - by the Nazis and their European friends.

H/T Joël Rubinfeld

70 years ago the Mufti of Jerusalem arrived in Nazi Germany

2011-11-06T10:49:00.000-08:00

"Germany stands for an uncompromising struggle against the Jews. It is self-evident that the struggle against the Jewish national homeland in Palestine forms part of this struggle, since such a national homeland would be nothing other than a political base for the destructive influence of Jewish interests. Germany also knows that the claim that Jewry plays the role of an economic pioneer in Palestine is a lie. Only the Arabs work there, not the Jews. Germany is determined to call on the European nations one by one to solve the Jewish problem and, at the proper moment, to address the same appeal to non-European peoples."—Adolf Hitler to Haj Amin Al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem, November 28, 1941

On 6 November 1941, the Führer of the Arabs arrived in Berlin and was welcomed by the Führer of the Germans.

Source: The Hoover Institute (The Mufti and the Holocaust - John Rosenthal on Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten by Klaus Gensicke)

The persistence of widespread Judeophobia in the Muslim world is hardly a matter of dispute, even if many commentators are inclined to dismiss it as merely an “understandable” reaction to Israeli “oppression.” Among those who take the phenomenon seriously, however, a debate has been taking place of late about its origins. The debate has been spurred on, notably, by the publication in English translation of the German political scientist Matthias Küntzel’s book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11. The central thesis of Küntzel’s book is that anti-Semitism — or, more precisely, modern anti-Semitism as crystallized in the “Jewish world conspiracy” theory — was largely imported into the Muslim world from Nazi Germany.

Now, one might have expected that opponents of Islamism would welcome a book showing the direct influence of the Third Reich upon the development of the Islamist movement and, most notably, on the Muslim Brotherhood, the pivotal organization in its history. In normal political discourse, after all, pointing out the links of an organization or movement to National Socialism does not exactly constitute an endorsement. Ironically, however, Küntzel’s book has been most roundly criticized — indeed outright denounced — by precisely the most adamant foes of Islamic extremism. For the most part self-styled experts in Islam, the latter have insisted, as against Küntzel’s thesis, that Muslim anti-Semitism is, in effect, a strictly Muslim affair.

The Gensicke volume provides considerable support for the thesis that “native” Islamic sources of anti-Semitism are primordial in Muslim or Arab anti-Semitism.

Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem and the “father” of Palestinian radicalism, is obviously a key figure for such debates. As is well known, from 1941 to 1945 Husseini lived in Berlin as the honored guest of Nazi Germany. During this time, he notably collaborated with the Nazis in assembling the Muslim ss division “Handzar” in Bosnia, as well as in numerous propaganda activities aimed at Arab speakers. Whereas the facts of Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis are widely known, what is less know, however, is the degree to which the mufti was influenced by or indeed himself influenced his hosts on an ideological and programmatic level. But a new book by German historian Klaus Gensicke titled Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten — “The Mufti of Jerusalem and the National Socialists” — sheds light on precisely this question. Based largely on primary source materials from the German archives, Gensicke’s volume provides unparalleled insight into the details of the mufti’s relationship to his Nazi hosts: at least as seen from the German side.

More HERE

Tutu tells European kangaroo court: Israel has forgotten the scripture

2011-11-06T02:53:00.000-08:00

Europe may be facing a terrible financial crisis, but Europeans will always find plenty of money to demonise Israel. An association in Belgium - which was not criticized let alone condemned by any of the numerous Jewish associations - has created a kangaroo court, pompously named Russell Tribunal on Palestine. Thank you Europe, thank you Belgium.

NGO Monitor deconstructs the 'court': http://www.russelltribunal.org/ and Facebook page: Russell the Kangaroo

Their third session is being held in Cape Town and the star guest is Archbishop Tutu (in spite all their efferts he is the only famous person who accepted to be drawn into the Russell circus) who was only too happy to demonize Israel.

Source: South Africa Times

The suffering inflicted by Israel on the Palestinian people shows that it has forgotten the Jewish scriptures, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said on Saturday.

"They have forgotten their own history. They have forgotten what their own prophets have said about our God," Tutu said in his opening address to the International Russell Tribunal on Palestine.

"We worship a God that is naturally biased in favour of the suffering, the underdog, those who are suffering underfoot... God is always on the side of the oppressed. In the Holy Land, the Palestinian people are the ones suffering."

Tutu said it pained him that a people who went through great suffering could in turn cause others to suffer.

"There is a great deal of preventable suffering being caused by people who themselves suffered so deeply... who have gone through a crucible of suffering.

"Those of us who are Christian have been influenced very greatly by what one might call the Jewish scriptures. The biased God of the past is the biased God of the present... and if God is to be God, watch out," he added.

"This is the anguish that I bear."

The tribunal is an international forum aimed at promoting peace and justice in the Middle East and is meeting until Monday at the District Six Museum. It met in London and Barcelona last year and a fourth and final meeting will take place in New York later this year. The current session is widely expected to see speakers draw links between the policies of Israel and those of apartheid South Africa.

Panel members include Holocaust survivor Stephane Hessel, author and poet, Alice Walker, Irish Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire and former South African Cabinet minister Ronnie Kasrils. [Far far from a prestigious assembly!!! No Jean-Paul Sartre, no Simone de Beauvoir here.]

Several Jewish bodies, including the SA Jewish Board of Deputees, have dismissed the tribunal as a kangaroo court.

Trade union leader in Belgium threatens Jewish schools because of Israel’s reaction to UNESCO vote

2011-11-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

Deckers wrote to Joods Actueel to say that he was sorry for the offence he had caused, but did not offer a proper apology. Neither did the Teachers' Union. The Flemish have a joke that pretends that Jews have long toes, i.e. that they are always complaining - if your toes are too long they are likely to be trodden on and hurt more easily than someone whose toes are of a normal size, hence the funny and hysterical complaints by the Jews. Implying that the Jews are sly and professional complainers. On a more serious and sinister tone, if this reaction was made public by an union leader one wonders what is said and done in private about Jews and Israel among teachers, union leaders and members. There are about 20,000 Jews in Flanders.

ANTWERP (EJP)---A trade union leader in Belgium has threatened to take action against Jewish schools in retaliation for the Israeli government policy towards the Palestinians, Jewish monthly Joods Actueel reported.

Following the vote on Monday to grant the Palestinians full UNESCO membership and the subsequent Israeli government decision to accelerate settlement building and to freeze transfers of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, Hugo Deckers [photo], secretary general of ACOD, the Socialist trade union for the education sector, sent an e-mail to the chief editor of the Jewish magazine in which he welcomed the UNESCO vote and referred to the Israeli decision.

"If this is the (Israeli) reaction, I would be happy as union leader to bring the Jewish schools in Antwerp in the news. I fear you are going to scare," he wrote.

In his response, chief editor Michael Freilich said: "This is yet another proof of the new anti-Zionist anti-Semitism in which Jews over the world are threatened and accused of actions on which they have no control."

He continued: "We have said many times but will repeat it: Jews in our country are Belgians, Flemish. They have no influence on the situation in the Middle East.They do not go to the army, pay no taxes and cannot vote. Yes, they have an opinion about the conflict, and like everyone else they are free to express an opinion about anything and everything, whether the military action in Libya, the euro crisis or the situation in the Middle East. We live in a free country. To blackmail people because of their views or because of their religion is totally illegal."

"The reaction of Hugo Deckers is scandalous and reflects very little respect for our democratic values and poor knowledge about the difference between a religion and a nationality," Freilich added.

The Forum of Jewish organizations in Antwerp plans to lodge a complaint against the union leader.

Antisemitic posters in Paris

2011-11-02T02:53:00.000-07:00

Source: Facebook: here and here. These posters were spotted in several main areas of Paris.

"Dregs' dream" (déchets: garbage) Let's fulfil their hopes!"

The inscription on the little girl's body indicates that she will never grow up because she is considered as garbage by Israel.

"The dregs want us like this. Let's slaughter the dregs."

The Irish eyes not smiling on Israel: those of old anti-American warhorse Michael D. Higgins

2011-11-01T01:54:00.000-07:00

Michael D. Higgins, veteran Irish leftist politician and poet, who's now, unexpectedly, President of Eire, could never be mistaken for a warm supporter Israel. (Be sure to look here, which is where I obtained this photo.) Known for his vehement criticism of the United States as well as of Israel, he first visited Gaza in the 1980s, and in 2004 paid a fulsome tribute to Arafat following the latter's death, attending a candlelit vigil organised by the Ireland-Palestine Soldarity Campaign. He objects to the description of Hamas as a "terrorist" organisation, and in 2007 shared a platform with Hezbollah.

Although his office is largely a ceremonial one, lacking real powers, he's obviously well-positioned to influence public opinion - in a country whose Palestine Solidarity movement is widely considered to be the most virulently anti-Israel in the entire British Isles.

The following speech that he delivered in the Irish Parliament in June 2010, in which he condemns Operation Cast Lead, asserts that he's "sick and tired" of hearing that supplies are getting into Gaza, abhors the proscription of Hamas, and rails against Israel's attack on the Mavi Marmara, captures something of his attitude - albeit in a deceptively low-key way. He is good enough (unlike some of Israel's leftist detractors) to denounce rocket attacks on Sderot - but his voice becomes unmistakably ever more indignant against Israel as the speech proceeds. [There were not 20 people to listen to him....]

Source: Daphne Anson

Switzerland: again Muslims use 'Jewish-star' in anti-Islamophobia protest

2011-10-31T01:46:00.000-07:00

A reader (RR) sent this: "In fact, the yellow star used by the Nazis as a badge of shame against the Jews was first introduced by a caliph in Baghdad in the 9th century, and spread to the West in medieval times." (Bernard Lewis - The Jews of Islam - Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 25-26)

It is not the first time: Swiss Muslims denounce islamophobia with infamous yellow badge (August 2011)

And now this two months later:

Source: Islam in Europe - Via Tages-Anzeiger (German):

Several hundred Muslims gathered from across Switzerland Saturday for a protest against Islamophobia. The 'Day against Islamophobia and racism' was organized by the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS).

In addition to booths offering information about Islam, there were numerous food and market stalls. The protesters also put up a mock minaret (photo here) to protest the minaret ban.

The 'Jewish star' used by the organizers caused a stir. Two Muslim umbrella organizations, FIDS and KIOS, said the usage of the star was 'unethical' and a 'cheap provocation'. One Muslim organization called upon its members not to join the protest, saying the way to break down prejudices is not through provocations and strife.

More at WRS and the Local.

More pictures here

Finnish Foreign Minister says Israeli occupation is 'apartheid'

2011-10-29T02:08:00.000-07:00

When will Europe change and finally get rid of this type of politician and opt for a younger generation of less Israel-hating leaders? There are around 1500 Jews living in Finland today.

HELSINKI (AFP)---Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories is tantamount to apartheid, Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja [this guy is 65] said Wednesday, warning time was running out for a two-state solution.

"If you are occupying areas inhabited by... Palestinians who do not have the same rights as the Israelis in Israel, that is apartheid and that is not sustainable," he told reporters.

"I think that the majority in Israel has also realized this but they have been unable to provide a leadership that (can) move forward on the two-state solution," he added.

Tuomioja also warned that time was "running out for the two-state solution."

"There is growing frustration among the Palestinians that a two-state solution is not going to come," he said, adding: "the outlook is not very positive."

French TV Markets a 'Palestinian State'

2011-10-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

As usual in France, when Jews and their allies protest against incitement to hatred, they are accused -- first, of censoring the media, and second, of bad faith, clannishness, thin skin, emotional overreaction, dual loyalty, refusal to face the truth of their (i.e., Israel's) pernicious deeds...and finally, they are dumped into a Protocols of the Elders of Zion cesspool.

Source: The American Thinker (France 2 TV Markets a 'Palestinian State', by Nidra Poller)

Eleven years after the al Dura hoax -- produced and broadcast by state-owned France 2 TV -- the same outfit treats us to a ludicrously staged Palestinian State promotional film. Was the 2½ -hour "documentary" aired on October 3 in the geopolitical magazine Un œil sur la planète (an eye on the world), a chef d'oeuvre in the campaign to destroy the Jewish State or a last gasp of shopworn Palestinianism¹?

Looking at the world through keffieh-colored glasses, MC Etienne Leenhardt disingenuously asks: "Is the creation of a Palestinian state still possible?" First stop, Ramallah. Chic, modern, bustling with business and a humming bureaucracy that maintains law and order...everything you need to make a state. How did Ramallah get so shiny and peaceful? What keeps it from tumbling into the maw of the Islamists who rule Gaza? Who is financing its prosperity, and what does the "wall" have to do with it? Don't ask. Leenhardt and cohorts know why the Palestinians don't have the state they've been yearning for since the days of Adam and Eve: it's because the cruel, heartless, murderous, land-grabbing, gun-slinging Israelis colonize their land!

One brief scene sums it up. A Palestinian in the West Bank (Judea-Samaria) points to a clump of trees in the near distance and laments: "You see that fertile land over there? That's what the colonists [Israelis] took for themselves. They left us this arid stuff."

The indictment builds and incriminates. The Israelis/Jews stole the land, siphon off the water, erect a wall between a man and his fields, expropriate the very holiness, and, one could assume, took all the fertile intelligence for themselves, colonizing the Nobel prizes and leaving the Palestinians with nothing but bile.

Actually, this docu-hoax could be used to help the Zionist cause. It is so grotesque, so crudely fabricated, so false and so dishonest that it sheds light on the subtle twists of more sophisticated products that weave their way through public discourse, gradually bending minds and condoning atrocities. We who have been working tirelessly to expose the Mohamed al Dura hoax can take some comfort in observing that this long-drawn out genocidal hate speech exercise doesn't seem to have the electrifying effect of the September 2000 blood libel. Unfortunately, this does not rule out a potential increase in thuggery against French Jews.

Intuitively avoiding the fact-check trap, I followed the film without noting one by one the lies, fibs, half-truths, distortions, misconceptions, and twists that would have distracted from a cogent analysis of the overall enterprise. The five-part broadcast, presented as the work of globetrotting reporters who gathered the facts at ground level, was a total fabrication -- so much so that Uzi Landau, granted a short minute to say that no sovereign nation would give free rein to an entity determined to exterminate it, seemed unreal, even when you know him personally.

What was the point of broadcasting this fictional documentary a few days after Mahmoud Abbas made his U.N. Security Council bid for recognition of a Palestinian state carved out along the 1947 partition lines with Jerusalem as its capital and a funnel to pour millions of "refugees" into the temporarily surviving rump state labeled "Israel"? Whom did France 2 hope to convince with its overblown, slapdash, hysterically hyped, sleazy marketing film?

Was it aimed at the European Parliament? If it's possible to be less discriminating than the U.N., the European Parliament is your man. Was it tailored for UNESCO, whose advisory board giddily recommended admission of a Palestinian state? We're the cultural arm of the U.N., dahling, we don't have to quibble about mundane things like borders and democratic institutions. Palestine, for us, is a fashion statement. Was it a sop to our local punk jihadis...if they had the patience to sit through this yawn-a-minute, low-testosterone production?

Or was it simply made to order for the choir that never tires of preaching to itself: print media, academics, NGOs, and value-added Jews who certainly slurped up Avrum Burg's six minutes of pontifications? For these aficionadas, the repetition of the word "colon" ("colonist") is as thrilling as a lap dance. According to Stéphane Juffa of Metula News Agency, the Arabic mustaotinin -- settler -- is systematically mistranslated as colon. Hallowed places like Jerusalem are polluted with colons, and in Hebron, Palestinians have to share their "mosque" with the colons: "On their Sabbath and holidays, it's half of our mosque for them, half for us." The "mosque" is no less than the synagogue built over the Cave of Machpela, said to be the tomb of Adam and Eve, Sarah and Abraham, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah.

Apparently aligned with the jihad practice of launching attacks on Jewish holidays, France 2 threw its Eye on the Planet in our faces during the "days of awe" between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. The reaction was rapid and forceful. France 2 has learned nothing from the al Dura fiasco. But we have! Thinkers, writers, associations, and honest citizens are speaking out. The CRIF (Jewish umbrella organization) and the Israeli embassy publicly protested and will be meeting with France 2 authorities later this month. Samy Ghozlan of the BNVCA (national bureau for vigilance against anti-Semitism) is filing a lawsuit.

The corporation of journalists stands shoulder to shoulder to protect France 2 and its planetary eye from the wicked Jews. The monotonously unanimous war cry is "there are no factual errors in this program." Charles Enderlin of al Dura fame says so, and he should know. All the guys and girls who worked on the film -- it took five months, by golly-- say so, and how could they be wrong when everything they said, showed, and recorded is 100% factual? Every Palestinian who walked, talked, and gestured in front of their cameras spoke the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.

They have the good Professor Walt on their side. Jimmy Carter, too. One is led to understand from the "Israel Lobby" segment that American journalists, unlike their French counterparts, are not free to give the facts on the itchy Mideast conflict. Are the garish lighting and harsh camera angles reserved for The Lobby factually true? Does AIPAC hand out envelopes to puppet politicians? A journalist fingered by CAMERA for not painting a pretty picture of Israel can't get work anywhere in the U.S., right? What's not factual about the choke-gulp-gasp panorama of Christian Zionists? The big guns aimed at Glenn Beck? The outrageous behavior of Israel-lobbied congressmen and women who threaten to punish the Palestinians for trying to put together a decent state? Aren't these people and their organizations objectively lurid, shady, manipulative, and permanently accompanied by dramatic here-comes-the-villain music?

And if you don't like it, you're a dirty Jewish censor, n'est-ce pas? The representative of the Israeli embassy said, "Press freedom, yes -- freedom to incite hatred, no."

What's not to hate? The plight of a Muslim family in Hebron -- plump mother in hijab/djellaba, mustachioed father, numerous wide-eyed children, a spoon-fed baby -- who can't go anywhere, do anything, live, breathe, or swallow in peace, because of the colons. Here, you see this window in the kitchen? The colons were always throwing rocks at it. The broken glass went into our food. Now we covered it with a steel shutter. No sunlight, but it's better than having glass in our food. The farmers of Gaza want to feed the hungry population...their fields just happen to run along the border with Israel. Israeli soldiers pop them off like clay pigeons. Helpers from the International Solidarity Movement (presented as an impeccable source of information and disinterested action) radio the soldiers: "We'll be here for a short time...just to pick our crop. We aren't doing any harm." Ha! They take three steps and the soundtrack crackles with the ping-zing and evil snickers of faceless sharpshooters.

Eye on the Planet caught a strangely muted glimpse of the "internationally famous" Charles Enderlin "interviewing" Nabil Shaat. It looked like a spliced image -- the two don't appear in the same frame. Enderlin whispers a few semi-questions, and the rest of the sequence is Shaat, supremely alone, spouting off about how they had tried everything for decades, but the Israelis just don't want to make peace, don't respect any agreement they sign, don't stop chomping away at our land to make colonies, kill our people, send dogs against them, we had no choice but to go to the U.N. We are ready for statehood.

At this writing, a meeting is scheduled with France Télévision's news director Thierry Thuillier, former chief of the Oeil sur la planète program, who has ominously warned: "They [president of the CRIF and a representative of the Israeli embassy] have something to say to us, but we have something to say to them." What? Is there an insult or accusation that was not included in the broadcast? Something saved to throw in the faces of those who dare to protest?

What can we say to reporters with no scruples, no depth, no sense of fair play, who have been covering the conflict year in, year out with no regard for the truth? How can you reach journalists who have crossed into the Palestinian camp and see nothing wrong with stamping a promotional film with the logo of state-owned French television?

The Eye on the Planet outfit has announced its line of defense: there are no factual errors in the report. Wouldn't it be wise to sidestep and attack at the fundamental level? For, in fact, the entire report is a lie; the "Palestinian State" defended in the film by French journalists and at the U.N. by Mahmoud Abbas is a lie. The sixty-plus years of Palestinian distress is due not to the lack of a state, but to the frustration at not being able to implement a genocidal project. The security barrier, checkpoints, Gaza blockade, and other vexations deplored by the Planet's Eye are not impediments to Palestinian statehood; they are a direct consequence of the genocidal project. And everything in the report, from the hustle and bustle of Ramallah to the house keys of Palestinian refugees to the fifth generation in Lebanon who participates in that genocidal project, has nothing to do with statehood. The only possible effect of the pretentious Eye on the Planet episode will be to further the genocidal project by enflaming hatred against Jews, without bringing Palestinians one inch closer to a theoretical statehood that they have never pursued.

If I were invited to the face-to-face, I would be dignified, imperious, and unemotional. No hint of lamentation or supplication. As long as the genocidal project hides behind the term "Palestinian State," I would say that it is logically and materially impossible to envision any normally functioning civil entity under the same label. It is counterproductive to quibble over details. Your film embraces the genocidal project. It is disgraceful, but it will fall by the wayside. We are strong. You are foolish. Adieu.

Addendum:

October 17: Christian Denisot, a 45 year-old unemployed IT technician, holds hostage the Director and her assistant in a state employment agency in the 11^th arrondissement of Paris. Several hours later the hostages are released, unharmed. Monsieur Denisot's gun was a fake. But the 20-page Manifesto transmitted by Denisot, curiously enough, gives short shrift to the travails of the unemployed. According to Pierre Haski, editorial director of the Rue 89 blog [1] [by the way, an anti-Israel blog], 15 pages were devoted to a denunciation of the "extremist Zionist fringe groups" that have poked a "black hole" in our democracy. Denisot declares that the purpose of his act was to awaken society to the dangers of these Zionists, namely the Betar, the Jewish Defense League, the CRIF, and Samy Ghozlan of the BNVCA. Citing various incidents that occurred over the past ten years, Denisot claims these organizations confuse anti-Zionism and criticism of Israeli government policies with anti-Semitism, and get away with it.

Shortly after taking the hostages, Denisot contacted Rue 89 and specifically asked to speak to the specialist on Mideast affairs. He kept a running conversation with Haski throughout the operation and finally surrendered after the police had assured him that his message had been relayed to major media and broadcast publicly. In fact, outside of Rue 89 his message was either not mentioned or dismissed as "vague." I contacted Rue 89 this morning to request a copy of the Manifesto and was told that Haski, who has an appointment with the police today, cannot transmit it "because it hasn't been published."

Will it eventually be made available? I have my doubts. But I will try to contact some of those "extremist Zionist fringe groups" to see if they at least have had access to the document that incriminates them.

The comparison with the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik is intriguing. In both cases, a "native" European focused on Muslims or Jews attacks his own. Will those who accused anti-jihad thinkers of propelling Breivik now suspect Un œil sur la planète of inspiring the hostage-taker?

¹Blurbs for the five segments:

A working State? by Martine Laroche-Joubert and Thierry Breton : There is already a working administration in Palestine. International organizations congratulate the management of ongoing affairs. The West Bank is much more modern than South Sudan, the State most recently admitted into the UN...

1000 faces of Gaza, by Katia Clarens and Valérie Lucas : Besides the West Bank there is the Gaza Strip, run by the Islamists of Hamas, infamous for bloody suicide attacks in Israel. In retaliation the territory is subjected to a blockade. In retorsion Hamas sends rockets to Israel, that counter-attacks... Violence that severely penalizes civilians. A majority has nothing to do with Hamas and wishes they would leave. But there are also Salafist groups that find Hamas too moderate... Exclusive report.

Frontiers of Discord, by Alexis Monchovet and Sophie Claudet: There are other obstacles to the creation of a Palestinian State. First, frontiers. The Israelis don't want to hear anymore about the lines traced before the Six-Day War. For strategic or religious reasons, they multiply colonies in the West Bank, monopolizing the water and the best land. Jewish colons also settle in and around Jerusalem. How can a viable State be created under these conditions?

And the right of return? by Negar Zoka and Malek Sahraoui: Another concern, the Palestinian refugee question. There are approximately five million outside the territories. More than in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The right of return is transmitted from generation to generation. In Lebanon some have been rotting away for more than 60 years in unsanitary camps. Only a minority can return to Israel or Palestine.

The pro-Israel lobby in the United States, Estelle Youssouffa and Christophe Obert: Despite UN Resolutions, Israel has long been able to count on unfailing support from the top world power. Because the Israeli lobby is very influential in the United States, with a mixture of Jewish organizations and conservative Christians. Their pressure weighs with all its weight on American foreign policy. But the Arab Spring has redistributed the cards.

Belgian Israel haters using children to demonize Israel

2011-10-22T09:38:00.000-07:00

It is not only in Palestine that children used as tools to demonize Israel. In Belgium too. A bunch of boycotters (mainly female) went to the Food Fair held in Brussels with a small boy who was made to hand out leaflets calling for the boycott of Israel. To illustrate their hatred, the militants played a song by French singer Abdel Azizi : "Zionism is the gangrene all the way from Tel Aviv to Paris". It is not the first time that small children are used in this way - and obviously nobody cares. Not even those entrusted with the welfare of children.

Sarkozy says that there are millions of non-Jews in Israel!

2011-10-21T05:37:00.000-07:00

"As far as I know there are millions of people who are not Jewish in Israel today."

PARIS (EJP) ---"A Jewish state I don’t know what that means,” said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in response to a question about Israel’s demand that the Palestinian recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

He added: "Speaking of a state of the Jewish people is already more interesting."

The French leader made the statement in an interview he gave Tuesday to Agence France Presse and two Jewish radios Radio J and RCJ on the occasion of the release of Gilad Shalit.

"As you know I defended the idea of two nation states," said Sarkozy.

"A Jewish state has no meaning because a state is neither Jewish nor Catholic," he said. "A state of the Jewish people is a discussion we can have, but a Jewish state itself does not make much sense," he added.

"Two states for two peoples would mean that nobody is losing face."

"If there is a Palestinian state, it is likely that Palestinians will be mainly living there and if there is an Israeli state Jews around the world know that whatever happens they will have a homeland."

"As far as I know there are millions of people who are not Jewish in Israel today."

Asked his reaction to the fact that on blogs his name is often associated with the Jews [below], Sarkozy responded: "Frankly, I prefer to be on the side of those who are victims of anti-Semitic abuse than with those who profess these kind of behaviors. I consider myself as a French of multiple origins," he added.

Germans use ‘anti-Israel’ Jews to soothe Holocaust guilt

2011-10-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

Source: TJP, article by Benjamin Weinthal

Analysis: What mechanisms are causing some German educators, students, EVZ foundation employees to turn Israel into whipping boy for Europe’s guilt?

BERLIN – The Jerusalem Post exposé on the German Holocaust foundation Remembrance, Responsibility, Future (EVZ) in late September and October revealed that two of its Holocaust high school student programs were being fueled by hatred of the Jewish state.

What social and psychological mechanisms are causing some German educators, students and EVZ foundation employees to marginalize the Holocaust and turn the State of Israel into a public whipping boy for Europe’s guilt about the crimes of the Shoah?

In a series of interviews with leading Israeli and Dutch specialists last week and on Sunday, the Post examined the need of many Europeans to expunge feelings of culpability about the memory of their ancestors’ complicity in the Holocaust.

The EVZ used 38,690 euros ($53,687) to finance studentexchange programs in 2010- 2011, in which Israel was equated with the former repressive Stalinist East German state, and students published crude cartoons of Jews in a brochure. German taxpayer monies funded the speaking engagement of a hardcore anti-Israel Holocaust survivor, Hajo Meyer, at the Anne Frank high school in Gütersloh.

During Meyer’s talk with the students, he termed Israel a “criminal state” and equated the suffering of Palestinians to the persecution and mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, the chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs who authored a book on the abuse of the memory of the Holocaust, said that “comparing Palestinians with Shoah victims is part of the much broader distortion category of Holocaust inversion. These inverters portray Jews as Nazis. The few such Jewish ideological perverts get publicity because many more non-Jews want to hear these things from Jews.”

Gerstenfeld, who was raised in Holland and is an expert on modern European anti-Semitism, cited the writer Leon de Winter’s views about the “falsifiers of history” who impose higher ethical standards on Jews because of the Holocaust. “The writer Leon de Winter once said to me: ‘They present the Shoah as an educational institute for Jews to teach Jewish morals. In other words, the Nazis held courses in the concentration camps in order to imbue Jews with humanity,’” added Gerstenfeld.

When asked about the motives of Meyer and the steady stream of NGO invitations across Europe to have Meyer express his loathing of Israel, De Winter, a best-selling Jewish Dutch novelist, told the Post that “Meyer is a sad and extreme case of ‘survival guilt,’ which has led to hatred of everything that is Jewish. He is a member of every Israel-bashing group in Holland, and because he is Jewish and a Holocaust survivor, they love him. He combines his selfhatred with vanity – a terrible mix. He can be vain and full of self-hatred at the same time because he is proud of having been able to make sense of the Holocaust: the Jews are to blame because of their rules, laws, and claims to be exceptional and ‘chosen.’”

“In a book about the ‘end of Judaism,’ an end he favors, he wrote that the Jews’ ‘otherness,’ like their dietary rules, caused antipathy already thousands of years ago,” De Winter continued. “It is a fascinating and frightening way to survive – he is still the Nazi prisoner he once was by completely internalizing the Nazi’s hatred.”

Commenting on the need to host speakers such as Meyer at European events, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the head of the Jerusalem-based watchdog organization NGO Monitor, said, “The evil resides in those who are exploiting Meyer’s tragedy for their cynical agenda.”

Steinberg and NGO Monitor exposed the improper funds for the Anne Frank high school program in an early October report. He argues there is a “readiness of organizations and individuals” in Europe to allow critics like Meyer and the American Jewish anti-Zionist activist Hedy Epstein, who fled the Holocaust to England in 1939, to voice positions that delegitimize the existence of Israel. “There is a demand for this and it soothes the guilt complexes of Europeans,” said Steinberg.

He added that the “German organization [EVZ]” provides a “platform to reinforce their extreme psychological responses” of Meyer and Epstein. A Holocaust survivor like Meyer helps to “assuage their [Europeans’] guilt” and an organization [EVZ] should not be party to this kind of exploitation.”

Steinberg and NGO Monitor have called on the EVZ to recoup the mismanaged funds and use the funds to teach Holocaust education and compensate survivors.

The use of anti-Israel Jews like Meyer and Epstein recalls the bitterly polemical line of the Austrian Jewish satirist and humorist Alexander Roda Roda (1872-1945): “Anti-Semitism could really amount to something if the Jews would just take charge of it.”

In short, some German educators exploit figures like Meyer to do indirectly what they cannot do directly, namely, compare Israel with Nazi Germany. The European Union’s definition of anti-Semitism outlines the Nazi-equals-Israel comparison to be a contemporary form of Jew-hatred.

The EVZ has defended the Anne Frank high school program and refuses to reclaim its funds for anti-Israeli activities and its trivialization of the Holocaust workshops. According to statements issued to the Post and the EVZ Board of Trustees, the controversial head of the EVZ, Dr. Martin Salm, plans to review its program structure.

Gunnar Weykam, the head of the Anne Frank school’s “Palestine Project,” has refused to to issue a comment to the Post on his school’s use of EVZ funds to bash Israel. In an e-mail to the Post, he wrote that he wished to first read the report about his school’s activities. The school is named after the German-Jewish teenager Anne Frank who was murdered by the Germans in the Bergen- Belsen extermination camp.

There is no shortage of genocidal anti-Semitic rhetoric and anti-Semitic terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Take the most glaring example of Iran’s regime and its desire to “wipe Israel off the map” and deny the first Holocaust, while planning a nuclear-armed second Holocaust against the Jewish state. All of this helps to explain the outrage about the EVZ’s blind spots, as well as Weykam and his students’ obsession with hyperbolic criticisms of Israel and their ignorance of lethal anti-Semitism and the Shoah. It is a tall order to expect that Weykam will abolish the “Palestine Project” and create an “Iran Project” to combat modern anti-Semitism and internalize the mission of Anne Frank’s memory.

Palestine mission in France logo suggests elimination of Israel

2011-10-18T00:30:00.000-07:00

We checked the Website of the Palestinian Mission in France and the same logo features there. France upgraded its diplomatic relations with the Palestinians in a move meant "to support efforts for creating a Palestinian state and to guarantee its credibility" in 2010. The site if full of anti-Israel propaganda (apartheid, racism, ethnic cleansing accusations). See this map too.

Source: Weekly Standard (Palestine Logo Suggests Elimination of Israel, by Anne Bayefsky)

The logo of “the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations” – on their website and on top of their official statements at the U.N. – shows the Palestinian Authority’s claim to a Palestine that stretches throughout the entire historical entity of the former Palestine mandate.

And the logo:

Absent from the logo is any hint that Palestine consists of anything other than Arab territory. No nod is given even to the U.N.’s 1948 decision to divide the region into Jewish and Arab sectors. As for the shape of Israel by the time it was forced into waging the defensive Six Day war in 1967: irrelevant. The logo illustrates that the Palestinian bid before the U.N. for support of a unilateral declaration of statehood is disingenuous and dangerous.

There is not too much left to the imagination here: Israel is “wiped off the map.”

Lest anyone believe that the map is a temporary phenomenon, pending a successful Palestinian U.N. statehood gambit, the memo appearing on the Palestine U.N. mission website makes it clear this is not the case. The memo is a response to legal opinions advising the Palestinians that the status of the Palestinian Liberation Organization is at risk if their U.N. move succeeds. The response: The PLO will continue to be “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people as a whole.” Along with their no-Israel emblem.

As the Palestinians seek statehood status from the United Nations, they claim to be interested in peace. But the logo reveals a more sinister goal: Palestinian unilateral statehood efforts go hand-in-hand with a desire by the rulers of such a state to champion the continued rejection of the Jewish state, Israel. That’s what the U.N. – with its automatic majority of Muslim countries and their undemocratic allies – is being asked to endorse.

Norway: union rep wants to boycott the Histadrut, calls it an apartheid organization

2011-10-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

"This is an organization only for Israeli Jews. In our world this is apartheid." Apartheid? Arabs and other ethnic groups have had full right to membership from 1960 and Histadrut has currently over 200,000 Arab members.

Source: Norway, Israel and the Jews

The leader of Fellesforbundet (The Norwegian United Federation of Trade Unions), Lars Frøysa wants to boycott the Israeli Histadrut, on the grounds that it is an apartheid organization, according to an article in Vårt Land

This is an organization only for Israeli Jews. In our world this is apartheid. We think that the labour movement has an obligation to protect all workers, says Lars Frøysa. He is leader of the local chapter at Celsa Armeringsstål in Mo i Rana, who has submitted the motion.

He further claims that in spite of the Union’s rejection of the proposal, he is convinced that they will prosper at the ballot, since members are free individuals.

Our old friend Hilde Henriksen Waage, the historian and researcher who on occasion slips into activist mode on Israel related matters, has been consulted (apparently nobody was available at the Histadrut for comments, but that may reflect a certain insensitivity and ignorance on Jewish matters, since probably they were closed for Yom Kippur observation in addition to the weekly days of rest for workers, in Israel on Friday and Saturday):

From its inception in the 1920ies, Histadrut was am important instrument for the Zionist movement in the construciton of the Israeli State. They were mainnly concerned with building their own economy separate from the Palestinian. Their goal was to ensure that Jews got the jobs as well as maintaining high salaries.
– How did LO (The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions) view them?
– Histadrut was an important reason why the Labour party and the LO embraced the Jewish project. They saw the society they wanted to create in Israel as their socialistic paradice. It was almost like a religious conversion, says Henriksen Waage, who underlines that she is not updated on the development in later years for this organization.

If our rabid Unionist, Lars Frøysa, had cared to check the facts and not only let himself be guided by his hatred of Jews in general, Israeli Jews in particular, he might have discovered that Arabs and other ethnic groups have had full right to membership from 1960 and has currently over 200,000 Arab members.

Also inconvenient is the fact that the Histadrut cooperates fully and advocates on behalf of Palestinian workers and activists. But he may not have wanted to notice that, since that would have forced the realization that Israel is not an apartheid state, also when it comes to union matters.

But that neither the VL journalist nor Henriksen Waage should be unable to find relevant information on Histadrut, in terms of historical background and current policies is disappointing, or maybe they could not be bothred to find the info?

The The Norwegian United Federation of Trade Unions has indicated that it wont accept this proposal, but nevertheless has singled Israel out for special treatment on more than 4 separate items. As far as I can tell, there are none for Arab dictators, even now that it is in vogue to want to get rid of them (as long as major Norwegian interests are not jeopardized). Again.

Well some sanity has prevailed. Union rejects motion to boycott Israel

43% of Belgians believe there are interesting aspects in Nazism!

2011-10-13T06:01:00.000-07:00

A survey reveals that 43% of Belgians (French- and Flemish-speakers alike) believe that Nazism "promoted interesting ideas", even though they are deemed to be "essentially objectionable" or "objectionable in part".

44% believe that Nazism should be totally rejected.

Those who believe that there is some legitimacy to Nazi ideology mainly cite nationality motives and the boosting of the economy. When one considers the phenomenal destruction wreaked by the Nazis, one wonders how they are supposed to bring material prosperity!

Most Belgians feel they are well informed about Nazism: 13% are "very well informed" and 56% "fairly well informed".

50% of those aged under 25 are not aware that anti-Semitism was an integral part of Nazism and only 26% that the Aryan race was considered to be superior.

Danish newspaper: bond between Israeli and American Jews based on myths

2011-10-12T08:22:00.000-07:00

"It is an unsustainable situation that is kept alive by myths which makes the Palestinians dreams of statehood distant."

Source: Israel in Denmark: “The Jewish People is a Myth”

Dagsbladet Information published 26-09-2011 an article on their online news site which claimed Israel was built on lies and myths, the relationship between American Jews and Israeli was built on myths, the Kingdoms of David and Solomon never existed, the Jews of Russia all from the tribe with the king in Khazar who converted, says Jews converted to Islam for pecuniary reasons, says Israel is an ethnocratic state rather than democratic. The author [Maja Naur] has previously been a vocal critic of Israel’s actions, and some claim that she was involved with pro-Gaddafi groups in the 80ies.

Interesting parts highlighted.

Last week the Palestinian president Abbas asked the UN General Assembly to vote for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israel fights the idea with tooth and nail, and USA’s president Obama find himself in a mess, as he needs the Jewish votes for the primary elections next year.

The amount of Jews in USA is almost the same as in Israel. But the bonds between the Israeli and the American Jews are based on myths rather than facts.

This revealed the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand from Tel Aviv University in his book The Invention of the Jewish People from 2008.

The Book was met with equal amounts of ‘we knew that already’ and ‘it is all a lie’.

The first-mentioned reaction was based on the argument, that it is not unique for Israel to create ideological myths, that confirms the self-perceptions of the country – those kinds of myths are build in every state.

The other reaction, was on the other hand based on a denial of any talk about the Zionist colonization was anything else than the Jews returning to their native country.

Sand’s strength is that his detailed documentation builds on a long number of interdisciplinary examinations from historical sources. Together the myths form an unpleasant pattern, that is used politically against the Palestinians, and can be a part of the undermining legitimacy of the State of Israel. It is in the long run impossible to rely on a right by denying others the same right.

The people that doesn’t exist

But first: Sand’s historical analysis. The conclusion is, that there is no other state in the world that consists of one people. People have always been moving, and with time they are more like they non-religious neighbors than their coreligionists, who live other places in the world. Chinese, Ethiopian and Argentinian Jews look more like their non-Jewish neighbors than Jews that live other places in the world.

The Zionist colonization could not in meantime have existed without an ideological preparation, that fertilized the number of myths of the Jewish peoplehood. The Jewish statehood founding simply needed an illusion of an authentic indigenous people that as ‘Israel’s children’ came ‘out of Egypt’. Because only this myth about Hebrew ancestors could justify the right to Palestine. This made the Zionist historians to emphasize their mutual ethnic origin. The Jews was seen as one biological people.

More here

Palestinian refugees in Norway living in squalor - in squatter camps

2011-10-12T05:22:00.000-07:00

Source: Norway, Israel and the Jews

Here is the tale of the Palestinina refugees who came to Norway thinking they would be well taken care of. This is also the story of a Lebanese young woman, born in Lebanon, with Lebanese passport, who, for political reasons, chooses to define herself as a Palestinian?
Am I the only person who thinks both of these stories show the utter falseness of Norwegians and others with a chip on their shoulder? And did the Lumiere brothers come to Palestine of Fatah and Hamas, or did they go to a town where Jews were in majority (according to a Prussian census) although Egyptian Muslims and immigrants from North Africa began to settle the town in order to gain influence?
Telling little lies, one little drip at a time, can slowly over time be perceived as truth. Maybe we should show the pictures showing Jewish life and culture in Israel, around the same time as the Lumiere brothers came to visit?

Life in Limbo
TONE B. VÆRVÅGEN, Published: 07.10.11 10:23

Piece of Palestine in Oslo - makeshift refugee camp
- We want to show another Palestine than the one we know from the media, showing only blood and murder, says Rana Issa (34).
She arranges the Palestinian Night Film From the South Festival.
- I do not need a movie like Tears of GAza. If I want to see dying Palestinian children, I can see it on the news, Issa says .
She is one of several Palestinians organizing the short film program Palestinian Night, where a cultural line is drawn all the way back to around teh time when film was born, when in 1897 the Lumiere brothers came to Palestine to film. One of the Lumiere short films are on the program.
- We want to create a cultural awareness of Palestine, for culture is the most important thing we have. We do not have a country, so it is culture that binds us together. And it is through culture that people can see things with different eyes.

More HERE

French journalist derides Mitt Romney and Walid Phares for Israel support

2011-10-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

French journalist with Le Monde, the 'reference' newspaper in France as it likes to be called, Gilles Paris has a blog entitled "War or Peace" wholly devoted to Israel-bashing and, as a by-product, US-bashing.

The latest target of his wrath is Mitt Romney's advisor for the Middle East Walid Phares. Gilles Paris finds Phares' views expressed here (described as "a neo-con") totally objectionable:

"Over the past many years, the body of experts serving the US foreign policy establishment “has not given the administration, the president, and Congress the right expertise.” In my book, Future Jihad, I describe how our academic expertise and the national security analysis that is derived from it are compromised. Most of those who give academic advice come from the universities, whose Middle East departments are funded to a large degree by petrodollar regimes with strings attached. Thus, we have generations that have been raised in the classroom with the ideas of apology for jihadism. In sum, this explains why the President and Congress did not have from their experts the right information on either the threat or the democracy forces in the region. The bigger change has to be done not in the Middle East but here in Washington."

Gilles Paris goes on to criticise the support Benjamin Netanyahu received in Congress and the fact that the funds given to the Palestinians have been frozen.

But he doesn't stop there. He also criticises Richard Prasquier, head of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, because he does not like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's book. For Gilles Paris there is one "lobby" and that lobby is not the Arab lobby.

More blatant lies about Israel on French public TV

2011-10-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

After posting this earlier today, French Jews protest against “violently anti-Israel’ public TV documentary, another 'spectacular' French media Israel-bashing exercise has come to light.

Benjamin Barthe is one of the several Israel-bashing journalists at the Monde. Interestingly, Bernard-Henri Lévy sits at the board of directors of Le Monde... and is held to be by French standards a pro-Israel intellectual. Other prominent French Jews are also associated with Le Monde.

The latest Israel-bashing exercise by Barthe did not go unnoticed. Yaron Gamburg, the spokesperson for the Israel embassy in France was outraged and issued a statement:

"Mr Barthe, one of the journalists who interviewed today the number two of the embassy Sammy Ravel, for TV5 Monde [the equivalent of BBC World], claimed that there is no mention of the Palestinian territories on the maps issued by the Israel Tourism Ministry. Frankly, who does he think he is kidding?"

Well you can see for yourself (link):

More here in French

French Jews protest against “violently anti-Israel’ public TV documentary

2011-10-10T05:43:00.000-07:00

French Jews are particularly docile. The French media are the most hostile to Israel in Europe. There isn't a single French newspaper which is not heavily slanted against Israel. Remember France 2, Charles Enderlin and the al-Durah affair (In France, screwing Israel makes you a hero). Ilan Halimi and Sebastian Sellam, two young French Jewish men were murdered because they were Jews. Dieudonné has many followers and is a regular guest on French TV. Another 'iconic figure' is Pascal Boniface, a French academic and an advisor to the Socialist Party made the Socialist leaders aware of Arithmetics 101: political decisions should be made according to simple accountancy rules, Arab votes outnumber Jewish votes by ten to one in France, explained Boniface. All the main contestants at the 2011 French Socialist Party presidential primary are anti-Israel, with the notable exception of Manuel Valls. The amount of anti-Israel (and even anti-semitic) books published every year in France is simply amazing. In a recent 'incident' Jews were beaten up. And the list could go on and on. At the U.N. France will never side with the United States to defend Israel!

It seems that things are changing and that French Jews are no longer prepared to stand still when French television broadcast by France 2 - yet again - another amazingly anti-Israel programme.
_________________
PARIS (EJP)---A French public tv documentary on the future of the Palestinian territories was denounced by the French Jewish community as "violently anti-Israeli."

"To my knowledge, never a public TV show had attracted such a reaction," said Richard Prasquier, president of CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish organizations.

"Those who love Israel, whether Jewish or not, felt insulted and humiliated", he wrote in a letter to the president of France televisions, Remy Pflimlin.

The documentary, "Is a Palestinian state still possible?", was aired on France 2 television on October 3 in the magazine "An eye on the planet”.

"The program has strongly shocked the Jewish community and provoked a disgusted amazement", Prasquier said. The journalist, he added, acted more like an "activist."

"Especially in a public tv channel, the search for objectivity must be an absolute requirement."

As a result of this protest, France Televisions has announced that its president will meet Israel’s ambassador to France, Yossi Gal, and with CRIF.

On Facebook, a group calling to "Boycott France Televisions" was created. It urged the channel to issue an apology.

German law-maker makes organ trafficking accusation against a "rich Israeli"

2011-10-02T03:21:00.000-07:00

Source: JSS

Arte, a French-German TV channel, held a debate on 29 Setember on illegal human organ trafficking.

When asked if they were aware of organ trafficking cases in Europe, the French guest replied that she estimated that there had been 4 ou 5 in France in 2010.

The other guest, German Member of the European Parliament Dr Peter Liese (Christian Democrat) eagerly replied that to his knowledge there had been only one in Germany: "a rich Israeli who had had an organ from a poor Moldavian peasant".

Organ trafficking. Poor Moldavian peasant. Rich Israeli.

Norwegian Red Cross sent a team to Israel to learn to cope with post traumatic stress disorder after 22/7, but tried to keep it out of the media since could be seen as controversial

2011-09-30T01:45:00.000-07:00

"Israel has an experience of treating terror victims, which I hope we never will have. It was they who contacted us and wanted to do something for Norway. What they have contributed with during this course is fantastic." (Sissel Alvheim Dubrefjord)

See also: The double standards and selective silence of the Norwegian Red Cross (Sept. 2010)

Typical behaviour of many European NGOs.

Source: Norway Israel and the Jews

Dagen broke the story that the Norwegian Red Cross sent a team of 25 first aid workers whose difficult task it was to go to the rescue on 22/7 at Utøya [Norway carnage and Israel, by Manfred Gerstenfeld].

Many have struggled with difficult memories and harrowing images, so the Israeli sister organization, the Magen David Adom, offered a course on how to cope in the wake of disaster:

Utøya-crew learn to cope with terrorism in Israel, by John Soslvik

25 of the Red Cross crew members who joined the rescue teams after the Utøya tragedy this summer, participated in a course on how to cope with trauma, in Israel this week. "We understand what they have gone through and know that they need a lot of professional help", says Asaf Ovadia (27).

The Israeli branch of the Red Cross, Magen David Adom, invited the Norwegians and pays travel and accommodation expenses. Israel has the last 30 years built up an outstanding team of experts in the treatment of traumas and post-traumatic syndrome, and the Norwegians have had a week of intensive training in the processing of their own experiences and how to help others in similar situations.

Red Cross in Norway has not gone public about the course in Israel. Grete Berdal of the Red Cross secretariat says this is normal procedure. "This is an invitation from a sister organization that we have accepted. There is an exchange of professional knowledge, and we usually do not inform the press about such courses", says Berdal.

Other participants in the course confirms that the Norwegian Red Cross has deliberately adopted a low profile viz Norwegian media, regarding the course in Israel.

Tremendous impression
Nurse Asaf Ovadia of Magen David Adoma says the tragedy in Norway made a tremendous impact. "It hurt to see the horror of the gruesome attacks you experienced, and this, in a country that is not involved in a conflict with others. We felt with you, and personally I thought of the many people who helped during Utøya tragedy. We know that it is very necessary to offer treatment for rescue crews who experienced such horrible things", says Asaf Ovadia.

He said Israel has long experience and possess a lot of knowledge on how rescue personnel need help to process the experience and move on after terrorist attacks and assaults. "We are perhaps the only country in the world who really understands what they have gone through. In this course we share our knowledge with our friends from Norway", Ovadia says.

More HERE

France: two fined for inciting antisemitism at McDonald's

2011-09-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

Source: Islam in Europe

Via AFP (French):

Two members of the radical Islamic group "Forsane Alizza" were convicted of "inciting racial hatred' by a court in Limoges for organizing an invasion into a McDonald's branch in 2010, and haranguing the crowd with antisemitic statements. Nassir Mokhtari (27) and Boumediene Nebah (31) were found guilty of "inciting to national, racial, religious discrimination in speech, writing, picture or electronic means of communication to the public". They were sentenced to 800 euro and 1500 euro respectively.

On June 12, 2010, the two men organized on the internet an invasion of the McDonald's restaurant in Limoges, where they distributed leaflets. A dozen people, most of whom masked their faces, harangued the consumers to stop eating in the chain, which they said financed the Israeli army.

A video of this event was later posted on the internet. In addition the leader of Forsane Alizza ('Knights of Pride'), Mohamed Achamlane from Nantes (nicknamed 'Brain' on the internet), will appear in court for a hearing on Sept. 27 for inciting discrimination and racial and religious hatred. He's accused of hate speech and of inciting to burn the penal code during a demonstration Sept 17, 2010. The hearing was scheduled for June 8th, but was postponed due to several minor incidents. The defendants and their supporters refused to remove their headgear inside the courthouse.