Berlin Film Festival Peace Prize winner questions Israel's right of existence

Israeli Berlin correspondent Eldad Beck told EJP that he was disgusted with the “overtly anti-Israeli” undertone which Fleifel portrayed in his film because he knew that it would be seen as harmless by the average viewer. What disturbed him most, however, was the lack of sensitivity and judgment which the patrons of the film prize showed. [...] The film's title was inspired by the novel of Palestinian activist Ghassan Kanafani. Kanafani, a former spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was implicated in the 1972 Lod Airport massacre carried out by members of the Japanese Red Army. 26 people were killed in the attack.  (Amazingly the Festival is supported by the International Auschwitz Committee...)

Oliver Bradley @ BERLIN (EJP)--- Criticism against Danish-Palestinian film director Mahdi Fleifel is growing after he publicly questioned Israel's legitimacy, only days after receiving the Peace Film Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. The jury of the Peace Film Award (PFA) honored Fleifel's autobiographical documentary, 'A World Not Ours', for its “social-political and humanistic” background.

Jury-members were impressed with Fleifel's depictions of “hopelessness and isolation... free from the unusual patterns classifying the conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians”. The jury recognized Fleifel's film as a “plea for a new peace process in the Middle East... at a time where more and more people around the world have to live in refugee camps”. But the jury members apparently did not listened to the public Q&A sessions which followed the public screenings. The simplified yet extenuated appraisals which Fleifel projects in his film - implicating Israel with sole responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem or lack of any kind of sympathy during his visit Yad Vashem memorial – is tempered through the documentary's tragic yet “heartwarming” humor that could easily win over the hearts of a non-critical moviegoer.

But the ensuing Q&A revealed Fleifel's true intentions of “creating a cliché-ridden narrative”, as one moviegoer put it, “with an overt anti-Israeli sentiment which would have disqualified the film from any sort of peace prize – had the judges remained put for several minutes after the film's screening”. At the public Q&A Fleifel did not recognize Jewish legitimacy to their biblical homeland. He also made a plea for the right of Palestinian refugees to be able to return within the 1967 borders of Israel.

French Protestant NGO refuses to attend Shoah commemoration

Sadly European Jews fail to see what is going on.  Strange that a French Jewish umbrella organisation invited CIMADE, an NGO involved in anti-Israel militancy to attent a Holocaust commemoration ... and they were only too happy to decline and to publicise their views...  More HERE about CIMADE.

EJC: A French Protestant organization which was strongly involved in the rescue of Jews during the Nazi occupation of France and whose then Secretary-General was honoured by Yad Vashem as Righteous of the Nations refused to attend a commemoration event marking the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Marseille Jews.

The Marseille regional branch of CIMADE, which campaigns for the rights of migrants and asylum seekers, wrote to the Marseille branch of the French Jewish organization and EJC affiliate, CRIF, that it would not attend the event on January 20 because of its opposition to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. In the letter, the group said that the work of memory also involved “the importance of not repeating horrors which were committed and because it was “equally engaged against the policies of the State of Israel, which, in our view, are colonial, discriminatory and warlike towards the Palestinians, and in violation of international law,” it was unable to attend the commemoration event.

Support from the organization also came from the collective “Cercle des Volontaires” who interviewed the head of the CIMADE branch, Jean-Pierre Cavalié on Tuesday. The interviewer suggested to Cavalié that “the so-called work of memory” also serves to create a sort of very traumatic stress syndrome in the Jews, which allows them to tolerate acts of violence committed against the Palestinians.

Their letter in French has been put on line by French anti-Zionist Jews!

How the EU-NGO alliance destabilizes Jerusalem

It is bad enough that the EU funds a group whose leaders promote "one-state" polices and use demonizing rhetoric that incites hatred - the fact that this becomes the basis for policy is even worse. [...] If the goal of EU policy is to renew the friction, prevent the growth of peaceful cooperation and trigger renewed violence in Jerusalem, these leaked documents produced by the NGO echo chamber will help them. On the other hand, if the EU, which has more than enough problems of its own, wants to promote peace, stability and compromise, this process needs to be replaced in its entirety.

Source: Times of Israel, co-written by Gerald M. Steinberg and Naftali Balanson

Jerusalem is the most complex and sensitive issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict. For over 3,000 years, the Holy City has been the focus of intense religious and national importance, as well as numerous outbreaks of violent conflict that spread across the region and the world. If this history provides any lessons, it should be the need for external parties to exercise extreme caution, and to avoid casual policy pronouncements that could easily inflame an already tense situation.

Tragically, the evidence indicates that the diplomats and officials of the European Union, and some of its member states, have failed to learn any of these lessons. These officials, based primarily in east Jerusalem and Ramallah, have prepared two "policy documents" that present ill-considered analyses and very dangerous recommendations.

The EU draft documents, written between 2009 and 2011, were never presented for public debate, thus failing to follow democratic procedures that Europe preaches to others. Instead, they were strategically leaked in Haaretz, Guardian, and the European Observer.

To make matters worse, the claims that served as the foundation for the EU documents on Jerusalem were provided by a small number of political advocacy groups, or non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which, despite their self-identification as "non-governmental," are funded by the governments (and taxpayers) of Europe. In the EU, budgets for political NGOs, amounting to tens of millions of euros annually, are provided through entirely secretive processes, with no information on who makes these choices or the basis for their decisions.

Belgian UN hunger expert investigates Canada

"De Schutter does not want you to know that Havana’s Communist government created his post, nor that the co-sponsors included China, North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe. [...] "De Schutter has repeatedly made one-sided attacks on Israel lacking any nexus to his mandate. Last July, he issued a pre-emptive attack against his own boss, in a press release titled “UN Special Rapporteur opposes Ban Ki-Moon’s conclusions on flotilla.” De Schutter was outraged that a panel appointed by the UN chief found that Israel’s blockade of Gaza, to stop Hamas importing Iranian missiles, was actually legal — contradicting what De Schutter’s human rights council had said the year before."

Source: Hillel Neuer: As much of the world starves, a UN hunger expert investigates Canada, National Post (May 4, 2012)

“There is no food and no clean water, nothing,” Mahmoud, a 12-year-old boy from Homs, Syria, told Reuters Thursday. “There is no shop open and we only have one meal a day. How can we live like that and survive?”  According to the World Food Program, half a million people don’t have enough to eat in Syria. Fears are growing that the regime is using hunger as a weapon.  This is the kind of emergency which should attract the attention of the UN Human Rights Council’s hunger monitor, who has the ability to spotlight situations and place them on the world agenda. Yet Olivier de Schutter of Belgium, the “Special Rapporteur on the right to food,” is not going to Syria.  [He is a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain.  In 2006 he wrote this report for a Belgian human rights NGO: Failing the Palestinian State : The human rights impact of the economic strangulation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory ]  Instead, the UN’s food monitor is coming to investigate Canada.

That’s right. Despite dire food emergencies around the globe, De Schutter will be devoting the scarce time and resources of the international community on an 11-day tour of Canada—a country that ranks at the bottom of global hunger concerns.

A key co-ordinator and promoter of De Schutter’s mission is Food Secure Canada, a lobby group whose website accuses the Harper government of “failing Canadians … and [failing to] fulfill the right to food for all.” The group calls instead for a “People’s Food Policy.”

I asked De Schutter if his time wouldn’t better be spent on calling attention to countries that actually have starving people.  “Globally, 1.3 billion people are overweight or obese,” he responded via his spokesperson, “and this causes a range of diseases such as certain types of cancers, cardio-vascular diseases or (especially) type-2 diabetes that are a huge burden.”  In other words, the hunger expert is not even that interested in hunger, but the opposite. Sure, we should all eat less fries, but do Canadians need a costly UN inquiry to tell us that?

Europe: Hands off Israel!

"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).

European Jewish NGOs members of NGO headed by a Muslim Brother

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.

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

"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.

A record 220 Swiss NGOs support the Gaza flotilla

Swiss NGO, the Red Cross, hasn't been incapable, in five long years, of doing anything about Gilad Shalit - not event to obtain evidence that he is still alive, but 220 Swiss NGOs are busy supporting the anti-Israel flotilla.

"In Switzerland, more than 200 NGOs are supporting the flotilla. It is being coordinated by a Geneva-based group called Droit pour Tous (Right for All), which in March 2011 sponsored ‘The First International Conference on the Rights of Palestinian Prisoners and Detainees.” Three members of the Swiss National Council, the lower house of the Swiss parliament, want to sail with the flotilla.

If Gaza has become an obsession for many ordinary Europeans, so too for Europe’s political class, which rarely misses an opportunity to rebuke Israel for a blockade the latter says is necessary to prevent weapons for reaching Iran-backed Hamas militants."

Source: Pajamas Media (Europeans Are Major Force Behind Second Gaza Flotilla, by Soeren Kern, Senior Analyst for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group.)