Israel Is 'Canceled' in Berlin, WSJ editorial

Editorial in the WSJ

"Iranian calls for the destruction of Israel are almost routine these days. But for a former official of the Islamic Republic to call for the destruction of the Jewish state in the city where the Holocaust was planned adds a repugnant twist – especially as the German government sponsored the event that gave the man from Tehran a Western stage.

At a conference on the Mideast in Berlin on Wednesday, Muhammad Javad Ardashir Larijani said the "Zionist project," which has "created only violence and atrocities," should be "canceled." Mr. Larijani, a former deputy foreign minister, is the brother of Iran's former nuclear negotiator and current parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani.

The conference organizers, the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt, made a clumsy attempt at damage control. "We very much regret that the feelings of several Israeli participants were hurt," the institute said in a statement, making it sound as if the problem was with oversensitive Israelis rather than with the Iranian's call for the destruction of their country. While the institute said that it rejects Mr. Larijani's comments, it still defended the decision to invite him.
The institute says it wants to provide a "forum where politicians and experts can exchange positions – also controversial ones." But calling for the destruction of a country isn't "controversial" – it's beyond the realm of civilized debate. To give such views a "forum" is to give them legitimacy."

Related:

Germany admits financing Larijani forum, by Benjamin Weinthal

Berlin forum calls for Israel's destruction, by Benjamin Weinthal

When academics stray

Posted on A Liberal Defence of Israel blog

"Every year an assembly of British academics gathers to pass a motion condemning Israel and attempting to introduce a boycott against academics, universities, and colleges in Israel. It never goes off the agenda, not even after last year's fiasco when the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) passed a boycott motion only to be told by their national executive that it would be illegal to implement it. Nothing daunted, they have come back this year with another variation on a tired but increasingly racist theme. (...)

When academics find it hard to condemn terrorism as terrorism, praise hatred and call it legitimate political expression, and single out for vituperation the only democracy in the Middle East, it's a sure sign they aren't thinking straight. Surely this is the irony of these boycotts, that they should be spearheaded by academics of all people. Academics are supposed to have been taught how to use their minds. A great many do. But a host of left-wing post-structuralists and post-colonialists, who have been taught how not to think by thinkers who love obscurity, have forged ahead to be the standard-bearers of a new ignorance. The hatefulness of radical Islam doesn't faze them in the least. Just as Ken Livingstone was able to give the finger to his gay, feminist, and Jewish allies when he decided to embrace the notorious anti-Zionist, anti-gay, and anti-feminist Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, so these hardcore illiberals abandon all pretence to morality and progress. They admire a group like Hamas that would eat them alive if it got the chance. They defend Iran, a country that bans some religious minorities from its universities and calls it freedom. They condemn Israeli actions without once citing the context within which those actions take place. But what do facts matter? They make their minds up, despise open debate, and clamour to break the law against discrimination."

Read the full article here

What the British media are smoking, Fresno Zionism blog

The same anti-Israeli biais can be found in most European editorial boards - the British media is not the exception, it is the rule.


Article posted @ the FresnoZionism blog


"A recent survey of the British media on the occasion of Israel’s 60th anniversary shows, unsurprisingly, that the British media don’t like Israel very much. This is not a shock to anyone that has ever looked at the BBC website or read the Guardian but there is one particular aspect that I want to discuss:

Eighty-three per cent of articles in all newspapers which took a position on Israel’s stance on peace contained the message that Israel did not seek peace…

Overall, only 6% of articles carried the message that Israel seeks peace. This message was only contained in three articles in The Daily Telegraph, The
Independent and The Sunday Telegraph…

Twenty-six per cent of coverage [on the BBC website] contained the message that Israel is not seeking peace.

A neutral observer on Mars, for example, might have trouble understanding this.

1. After all, Israel was attacked by the Arab nations in 1948, preempted an imminent attack in 1967, and was attacked again in 1973. The 1948 and 1967 wars were declared by Arab leaders to be genocidal in intent. Insofar as Israel initiated hostilities, it was in response to clear acts of war such as the closing of the straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping in 1956, and the Katyusha attacks on northern Israel by the PLO in Lebanon in 1982.


2. In 1978 Israel agreed to return the entire Sinai peninsula to Egypt in the interest of peace, giving up a huge strategic advantage and a large amount of natural resources, including oil. In return, she received a 'cold peace' - really just an extended truce.


3. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo agreement with terrorist Yasser Arafat in the interest of peace. In return, she received several years of escalating terrorism against her population, culminating in Arafat’s rejection of the Clinton-Barak proposals and the murderous second intifada. Israel offered to transfer 97% of the West Bank and all of Gaza to the Palestinian authority, give up control of Judaism’s holiest sites in east Jerusalem, etc., all for peace.


4. Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000 in the interest of peace and received in return the Hezbollah buildup which led to the 2006 war.


5. In the interest of peace, Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005, at great cost to uprooted residents - who still have not received just compensation as promised — and to the nation. In return, she received a Hamas terrorist state, thousands of rockets fired on her population, cross-border attacks, and will soon have to fight another war.


6. Israel is presently negotiating with the Palestinian Authority for what may be a ‘do-over’ of the Clinton-Barak proposal, in the face of clear evidence that neither Fatah nor Hamas is prepared to accept the existence of a Jewish state of any size.


7. Most of the Arab nations, as well as the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas movements, have never stopped the continuous barrage of anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda and incitement in their official media, while the Israeli government always stresses its desire to live in peace with its neighbors.

Considering all this, you would think that the Arabs are the ones who are uninterested in peace, and that Israel has been, over and over, prepared to make great sacrifices for peace - even after they’ve been kicked in the teeth in response.

Yes, you would think this. But you are not smoking the same stuff as the British media."

Beheading Hitler, by Bridget Johnson

Piece posted @ Pajamas Media blog

"By ripping off Hitler's waxy head, a patron of Madame Tussauds reignited the touchy issue of the murderous dictator's legacy."

"The headless Hitler story reminded me of the controversy over the movie Downfall, which was nominated in 2005 for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The movie has an intense focus on Hitler’s last days in the bunker, with Bruno Ganz delivering an astounding performance as the dictator in the depths of not just the earth, but his paranoia as well. In a particularly disturbing scene, Magda Goebbels calmly kills off the family’s six children one by one rather than live in a country without National Socialism.

Yet the film was criticized in many circles for showing Hitler as too human: He was nice to his dog (until Blondi got force-fed a cyanide caplet as a test subject) and kind to his secretaries (until something set him off - something he would invariably peg on traitors, Jews, Russians, etc.) (...)

It’s crucial to remember, though, that evil people display human characteristics that make it possible to hoodwink the masses, draw in admirers, or get a slap on the wrist from the world’s powers that be. After all, Idi Amin threw cool parties. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sends out "Merry Christmas" messages. Pol Pot had a friendly smile - a killer smile, really, because a summary execution would likely follow the grin. (...)

Those who suffered under the Nazi regime would understandably have little interest in seeing such a film, as was the controversy when it was released in Israel. But the people who really needed to see a movie such as Downfall are those who never suffered under the hands of Hitler.

By not only remembering the past but striving to learn from it, we can hopefully have our eyes open enough to recognize and stop those who would continue along Hitler’s destructive route. We need to not only see how evil Hitler was; we need to recognize that human beings are capable of such evil, and Hitler wasn’t the last one. We need to see how a country bought into the Nazi philosophy and followed their charismatic leader without question.

We need to remember how easy it is for the global community - and its often hapless leaders - to lose its head and turn the other way when forced to confront utter evil."

Swedish Social Democrats flirt with extremist anti-Zionists, Jonathan Leman

Excerpts from an article by Jonathan Leman, freelance writer, in Engage:

"Mona Sahlin, leader of the Social Democratic Party, spoke a while ago at Stockholm’s Great Synagogue about the importance of working towards a two state solution in the Middle East and combating antisemitism in Europe. Despite this, organizations affiliated with her party have on numerous occasions held conferences where extremist views have been propagated. Mona Sahlin has said nothing about the views harbored by some of the guests at a recent meeting of the Palme Center, just as she kept silent when the Christian Social Democrats last year invited the antisemitic writer and activist Gilad Atzmon. What do all Social Democrats who dislike the links with extremism and doctrines of hate have to say about this?

On the 11th of June I attended a conference that claimed to have a "sustainable peace in sight" (sic). (...) it is deeply worrying that to a conference that is said to promote peace, speakers such as Azzam Tamimi from the Institute of Islamic Political Thought, and Ghada Karmi from the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Studies at Exeter University, are invited. Both of these speakers deny the existence of a Jewish people and Israel’s right to exist. For a genuine debate on peace and dialogue there are many reasonable representatives one could have invited. Instead, the Palme center deliberately chooses extremists with messages of intolerance.

What then are Azzam Tamimi’s views? Well, he for example sees Israel as a "cancer" that has to be "eradicated", he believes that suicide bombing "is the straight way to pleasing my God and I would do it if I had the opportunity" (BBC 02/11/04 transcript), he justifies violence against women, and he considers Muslims who oppose radical Islamism as traitors (Al-Quds Al-Arabi 29/08/05). How could a person holding such views contribute to "dialogue" at a so called "peace conference"? And how come the audience applaud his extremist statements? (...)

Karmi wrote that "The power of the Israel lobby in the US is legendary" in an article on Guardian’s Comment is free (25/10/07). She elaborates further on this topic in her book under the chapter "Who controls America?" where she describes the US as an Israeli puppet. "All media – film, TV, newspapers and magazines have supported Israel", she writes. The only possible reason for this support, Karmi argues, is that Jews control newspapers, Hollywood and TV channels. She looks for Jews among owners, editors and writers. This kind of thinking is common in antisemitic propaganda. (...)

Ghada Karmi believes that Palestinian freedom cannot come about through a peace agreement with Israel, the only solution, in her view, is that the Jewish state no longer exists. In spite of this, the Palme Center characterizes Karmi's views as expressions of "optimism" and of an "openness for new alternatives". As has been pointed out on Engage (25/10/07 and 24/05/08), Karmi also supports the idea of a boycott against Israeli scholars and sees opposing ideas as a "gross interference in British democratic life".

In her book ["Married to Another Man"], Karmi mocks Holocaust education, and complains that films and books have been made on the topic. "A type of philosemitism, often as extreme as the antisemitism that preceded it, took over in a number of European countries" (p.113).

In Karmi's world, the fact that young Europeans are taught about the Nazi genocide against the Jews is as extreme as virulent antisemitism. At the conference Lena Hjelm-Wallén, chair of the board of the Palme International Center, was on good terms with Karmi and recommended her book, which also was for sale. Ironically, Hjelm-Wallén was Deputy Prime Minister in the former Social Democratic government, which signed the declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust in 2000. In this declaration the importance to teach about the Holocaust was stressed and promises were made to fight prejudice and hatred. Now Hjelm-Wallén recommends Karmi’s book which denies the existence of the Jewish people, spreads conspiracy theories and portrays Holocaust education as Zionist propaganda. Hjelm-Wallén is also a former Chair of the Living History Forum, a government agency which has been commissioned with the task of promoting knowledge of the Holocaust and to combat all forms of racism. (...)

In spite of the fact that Tamimi at the meeting in Stockholm clearly stated that he thinks Israel is a "cancer" and that he supports suicide bombings, the Palme Center in a report from the conference falsely claimed that Tamimi no longer held such views.

Critical examination and debate on Israeli policies is tremendously important. But what we have been witnessing here is something quite different and very troubling. These tendencies have been sharply criticized by some members who are worried about the development of the party (Expressen 23/06/08). However, the party’s leadership and majority remain silent."

Europe still funding NGOs promoting Israel demonization campaigns

It is unbelievable that the Israeli government should be devoting resources to fight hostile NGOs, some of which are being generously and cynically funded by European governments (in other words by unwitting European taxpayers).

Article by Gerald Steinberg in TJP:

"Now, as the UN and the anti-Israel NGO network prepare for the Durban Review Conference to be held in Geneva in April 2009, the Foreign Ministry has left the minimalist NGO desk empty. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has denounced the anti-Semitism of the UN's Durban process, and announced that Israel will not participate if this continues. But the Israeli diplomatic corps was surprised when the Preparatory Committee for this review conference accredited the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. European members of the committee simply waved them through, and no Israeli official was aware of the process.

The damage from this black hole in the Israeli diplomatic universe goes far beyond the Durban process. Some of the NGOs promoting the demonization campaigns get more then half their annual budgets from European governments, under the misleading headlines of "partnerships for peace" or projects claiming to promote democracy and Palestinian development."

Europe's Hidden Hand, NGO Monitor report

Paris' 19th Arrondissement: 'Gang Wars' or Anti-Semitic Attacks?, John Rosenthal

In this article in World Politics Review, John Rosenthal notes that "the supposed "spiral" of "inter-community" violence appears rather to have been a veritable paroxysm of anti-Semitic violence", and not a case of gang violence with anti-semitic overtones as we are led to believe.

"After a 17-year-old Jewish boy wearing a yarmulke was brutally beaten by a gang of teenagers in Paris's 19th arrondissement late last month, the reactions of both the French news media and French authorities were notably ambiguous. The boy, known only as "Rudy" in the French reports, was not only punched and kicked during the attack, but also beaten with what has been variously identified as an "iron bar" or a "crutch." The beating occurred on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, in a neighborhood with a large orthodox Jewish population. It appears to have continued even after Rudy lost consciousness and it only came to a stop when a local resident intervened and chased away the teenage assailants. According to French cable news channel iTELE, the boy was left with multiple skull fractures and broken ribs. Sammy Ghozlan of the Office for Vigilance against Anti-Semitism relates that when the boy first emerged from a coma on the following Sunday night, he began screaming "They're going to kill me! They're going to kill me!"

"Was the young man the victim of an anti-Semite attack?" the daily Le Figaro asked (French link) two days after the incident, and without hesitating answered its own question: "Yes, but on the background of clashes between neighborhood gangs pertaining to different communities. . . . Investigators are connecting the attack to an increasing spiral of violence." According to Le Figaro, this "spiral of violence" opposed black and North African youngsters, on the one hand, and Jewish youngsters, on the other. Le Figaro added to the plausibility of the "gang wars" hypothesis by reporting that Rudy had himself been picked up by the police last December after fights broke out between Jewish youngsters and North African youngsters at Paris's Parc de Bercy. Rudy had been attending a vigil there for the three Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah. According to Le Figaro, police had found "Rudy and his friends" to be in possession of brass knuckles. According to a subsequent report in Le Monde, Rudy appears rather to have sought to defend himself with a motorcycle helmet (serving as an "improvised weapon," in the nomenclature of the French police). Le Figaro even published a report according to which the 17-year-old boy -- described in the headline as an "orthodox and militant Jew" -- was supposed to be "close" to Jewish self-defense groups. The report appeared on the Figaro Web site the day after the incident. It was quickly denied by the boy's mother.

In announcing the opening of a formal criminal investigation for attempted murder three days after the attack, Paris District Attorney Jean-Claude Marin likewise endorsed the "gang wars"/"spiral of violence" scenario. While Marin identified anti-Semitism as an "aggravating factor" in the crime, he strongly relativized the charge by speaking merely of an "incidental anti-Semitism" (antisémitisme par incidence). Marin said the beating of Rudy was the last in a string of three incidents that occurred on that same Saturday in or around the Parc de Buttes-Chaumont. The incidents allegedly opposed, as Marin described them, "African" or "black" gangs and "Jewish gangs." "We do not find an intention to attack a person of Jewish origin in particular," Marin said, "but rather a member of this gang of young Jews." While Marin acknowledged that the assailants who attacked Rudy shouted anti-Semitic insults, he again relativized the importance of this finding. "Anti-Semitic insults were tossed around, just as racist insults are tossed around in other brawls," he said. (Source: AFP)

The problem with this "spiral of violence"/"gang wars" scenario, however, is that all the episodes in the series seem to have involved one-sided assaults on individual or greatly outnumbered Jewish youngsters and not "clashes" between rival "gangs." A first incident is supposed to have occurred around 4:30 in the afternoon, when a young Jewish man was set upon by a group of boys belonging to what Marin called a "gang of youngsters of color." According to the police account, the young man was able to get away unharmed, but he subsequently noticed that he had lost his Star of David chain in the scuffle. This is then supposed to have led to the second incident roughly half an hour later, when he returned to look for the chain with "three companions." At that point, two of the companions were then assaulted in turn. One of them suffered, in Marin's words, a "relatively serious" knife wound on the arm: namely, as he attempted to protect himself from an assailant wielding a "machete or butcher's knife."

According to Marin, Rudy was then supposed to have been assaulted in the aftermath of a third "clash" some two hours later between a "gang" of 20-25 "young blacks" and a "significantly smaller number of young Jews," among them Rudy. Marin's suggestion that Rudy formed part of a group -- or even a "gang" (bande) -- contradicts the initial reports on the episode, according to which he was alone. The accounts of witnesses subsequently interviewed on French radio RTL (French audio) and on iTELE, however, also suggest that by the time of the third incident a group of Jewish youngsters had gathered in the rue Petit where the incident took place. The local resident interviewed by iTELE reports seeing a fight break out between two groups: one "completely unarmed" and the other wielding "iron bars."RTL also spoke with the local resident who finally came to Rudy's aid. The man declined to be interviewed on the air. But as recounted by RTL journalist Thomas Prouteau (French audio), this is what he reported seeing:

"On Saturday, approaching 7 p.m., the witness sees youngsters running in all directions. One of them is taking off his yarmulke in order to hide it. Very quickly, the street is empty. But a little further up the road, the witness sees a lone teenager on the ground being worked over by a group of 15 youngsters of African origins. Five of them are hitting him. One of the assailants punches the boy very hard in the face. Another hits him with a crutch."

In addition, RTL spoke with "Sylvie" (French audio), a worker at a neighborhood bakery who witnessed earlier incidents on the same day. The incidents described by "Sylvie" likewise clearly amount to assaults, not "clashes," and, significantly, they do not appear to have been otherwise reported by the police or in the media. She describes, for instance, seeing one assailant pulling up a metal pole and striking a young man on the ground with it. The man on the ground was wearing a yarmulke. She also describes seeing a second young man being beaten so severely by a gang that his face was "completely swollen, he was unrecognizable." "I'm Jewish," the young man said to her, "Do I no longer have the right to live?" (...)

It is possible that some obviously undermanned and outgunned Jewish youngsters eventually attempted to fight back in the rue Petit. But on closer inspection, the supposed "spiral" of "inter-community" violence appears rather to have been a veritable paroxysm of anti-Semitic violence. For the Paris District Attorney's office and certain Parisian editorial boards, however, it would seem that when anti-Semitic incidents occur in a series, this is supposed somehow to vitiate their anti-Semitic character."

Jewish teens victims of gang violence in Paris 19th district

The Murder of Ilan Halimi A Jewish man is kidnapped in Paris, tortured for 24 days and then dies