Mustafa Barghouti, major Israel-basher, awarded France's highest honour (2)

"There isn’t any place in the world where apartheid is so systematic as it is today in Palestine… You are talking about a situation where we the Palestinians are prevented from using all our main roads because they are exclusive for Israelis and Israeli Army and Israeli settlers. This did not happen even during the segregation time in the [United] States." (Mustafa Barghouthi)

"I do not accept calls for the boycott of Israel products for the reason that they are kosher or because they come from Israel." (Michèle Alliot-Marie, French Minister)

Mustafa Barghouti, BDS leader awarded France's highest honour (1)

Whereas the official line of the French government is that Israel boycott appeals are illegal, the same French government awards the highest honour, the Legion of Honour, to someone who makes the most vile accusations against Israel and is a leader in the BDS movement.  Doesn't this smack of hypocrisy and blatant duplicity on the part of the French ?
 
There Could Never Be Peace Without a Minimum of Justice (Editor Palestine Monitor)
18 November 2010

Mustafa Barghouthi, Palestine, PNI, thanked the Socialist International for its constant efforts to support the cause of peace in Palestine and in the Middle East, and he apologised for questioning whether the current discussion could be called a debate when the representative of the Israeli Labour Party had left immediately after giving his speech.

He urged participants to face the reality that there was a deadlock in the so-called peace process. It was not hard to imagine what would happen to the proximity talks, and the very big risk of failure due to the continuation of the same policy of settlement expansion, ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, and oppressive measures in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel was negotiating via bulldozers. He mentioned Aualage, a small village in Bethlehem in the heart of the West Bank which was losing all its land to Israeli bulldozers and a wall that was three times the length and twice the height of the Berlin Wall. Time was of the essence because we were about to lose the opportunity for peace based on the two-state solution. It was clear that Israel was trying to gain time through the peace process, imposing its own solutions through settlements and wall-building.

He feared that Israel was not considering an independent Palestinian state, but rather a cluster of bantustans and ghettos, each separated from the other. What was being consolidated on the ground was a system of apartheid, he asserted. How else, he asked, could the situation be described when Israel controlled 80% of the water resources in the occupied West Bank, when Israeli settlers were allowed to use 48 times more water than Palestinian citizens who had to buy Israeli products at Israeli prices and pay for the water Israel had taken from them. No other word could be used for the segregation of roads and street, or the situation where a husband and wife living in Jerusalem could not live together if one had an ID for the West Bank. He himself had been a physician in Jerusalem for 15 years but now for five years had not been allowed to enter Jerusalem.

Mustafa Barghouti, BDS leader awarded France's highest honour (1)

To the dismay of many, Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti was awarded the Legion of Honor, the highest decoration in France, by outgoing Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner, a friend of 25 years and "a resistant for the freedom and independence of Palestine". Mustafa Barghouti made his views of Israel and the United States (Europe seems to be OK for him) clear in an op-ed (05/04/2010) in the Financial Times entitled "Israel knows apartheid has no future". He argued that "apartheid is here" and that "notions of racial supremacy and colonization" are "antiquated". He is a leader of the the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement of which he has "spoken on many American and European campuses". He also accuses Israel of  "ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem".

Excerpts:

"After decades of military rule over Palestinians and theft of our land, Israeli leaders are increasingly seeing the writing on the wall. [...]

Apartheid is here. There is one set of Israeli laws applied to Palestinians in the West Bank and another set applied to Jews in the West Bank. Israeli settlers live illegally in beautiful subsidized housing on stolen Palestinian land while we are relegated to smaller and smaller bantustans. [...]

Presidents and congressional leaders will always face opposition to US calls for constraining Israeli growth in the West Bank and East Jerusalem -- if not from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Zionist Organization of America then from the John Hagees of the Christian right. [...]

We are now in the early stages of a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) directed at this Israeli government for its refusal to abide by international law. Such action successfully overturned Jim Crow laws in the American South and apartheid in South Africa, and we are slowly applying it to Israeli occupation and apartheid. But until students seize on it with the same moral fervency as earlier generations did against Jim Crow and South African apartheid, we will achieve only marginal success.

The European Union wishes good luck to the Israel-bashing Russell tribunal

Belgian newspaper Le Soir reports that the European Commission - accused by the Russell kangaroo court of complicity with Israel - declined the invitation to stand before the kangaroo jury, but sent a letter wishing "good luck" to the work of the London "conference". 

Among the outstanding members of the court, Le Soir lists Stéphane Hessel, Mairead Maguire and John Dugard - three well-known Israel-bashers.

The boss of the court, Belgian Pierre Galand, is happy with the "growing notoriety of the tribunal gained thanks to its seriousness".  Well neither the BBC nor the British newspapers covered the session. So much for the notoriety.

Pierre Galand announced that the next two sessions to be held in South Africa in October 2011 and the United States in 2012 will examine whether the "apartheid" accusation is reflects what is going on in the occupied territories and the role of the Unites States and in the United States in this "dossier".

- Israel lynching tribunal coming to the United States in 2011 (Russell Tribunal on Palestine, Belgium)
- The judgment of the "embarrassing sham kangaroo spectacle"

100 "famous" Norwegians hate "apartheid" Israel

"Norway’s case is unique because it is a country dominated by a political, media and cultural elite with deep-rooted anti-Israeli attitudes stemming from their political world view. It poses a threat to Israel because it may be the place where precedents are set in the campaign to delegitimize Israel." (Manfred Gerstenfeld)

Norway, Israel and the Jews reported about these "famous" Norwegians : "The posterboy for the call appears to be Egil Drillo Olsen, coach of the national football team. The rest of the names are the usual diehards, readers of this blog will recognize many of them. There is the usual apartheid rhetoric and such."

OSLO (EJP)---One hundred famous Norwegians, led by the country’s national football coach, have signed a petition demanding a cultural and academic boycott of Israel, accusing its educational institutions of “playing a key role in the occupation” and equating it with apartheid. A Norwegian ex-premier denounced their boycott call.

Egil Drillo Olsen, coach for the national Norwegian football team, recently wrote in Aftenposten, the country’s second largest paper, that the call to boycott Israel was "in line with what 90 percent of the world’s population believes. There cannot be many other opinions".

The petition is the last item in a string of similar and high-profile initiatives to have taken place in Norway over the past two years. It was signed by coach Olsen and 99 other public figures from the arts and culture, who stated that a boycott is "necessary" not only to help Palestinians, but also to "support Israelis opposing the occupation".

Norwegian former Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik called the boycott call "unhelpful" and "not representative" of the current government’s policy. Bondevik, who presided over the Norwegian government for seven years over the period 1997 until 2005 on behalf of the Christian Democratic Party, added he wished to "reassure" Israelis that "boycott is not an issue in Norway".

But Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, a senior researcher of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionist trends in Scandinavia, alleges Norway is a "pioneer" in the Western world promoting boycotts and hatred against Israel. Gerstenfeld, Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, notes some "uniquely Norwegian developments unparalleled elsewhere in the West".

Paris museum : suspended Israel-bashing exhibit to re-open today

Update: according to AFP, Kai Wiedenhöfer's exhibition is to open today.  It is difficult to tell because as reported "a thorough search of the museum's website on Wednesday by Israel National News did not reveal any mention of the exhibition either in French or in English, nor any indication that it was either currently being shown, or was scheduled to appear". Clever tactics by the museum. 

Source: Elder of Ziyon (Paris museum suspends Israel-bashing exhibit)

I mentioned on November 10th that the Museum of Modern Art in Paris was showing an "award winning" collection of photos from the Gaza Strip meant to bash Israel. Not only were the photos biased, but the very rules of the award were created for a single purpose - to compare Israel to Nazis.

Last Sunday, a group of Zionists mobilized on Facebook to create a unique counter-protest. In the words of the leader of the group, Jean-Patrick Grumberg :

"With the active support of members of the Europe-Israel group, volunteers recruited on Facebook, and members of the JDL, leaflets was distributed on Sunday 21 November, before the exhibition opened.

The flyer was a perfectly neutral, and could not be construed as an attack. Photos, taken from Palestinian sites, with this title: "Disturbing Gaza photos." Thus, we followed the logic of the show: the audience was invited to see for themselves that there is another truth, in Gaza.

Norwegian historians on thinner ice than Sonja Hennie after the war

Norwegian historians are complaining that a German exhibition is "romanticizing the occupation". Yet as Helle Aarnes reveals in her book "Tyskerjentene", Norway had more Lebensborn programs than any other occupied nation. Surely these were not all the result of date-rape?

Source: Norway, Israel and the Jews

Two Norwegian historians are claiming that Germany is romanticizing the occupation of Norway, when it is a fact that more Norwegian soldiers fought for Hitler than against him, that it was the Norwegian police who rounded up the Norwegian Jews, and that such a large number of Norwegian women swarmed to the Hugo Boss-dressed German soldiers that Norway ended up with more Lebensborn programs than any other occupied nation.

A current exhibiton in the German Historical Museum in Berlin is named “Hitler und die Deutsche”. It deals primarily with the Führer cult, also as it developed in Norway.

Norwegian historians take offense
Dagbladet tells of how the married couple Ms. Jorunn Sem Fure, professor at Humbolt University in Berlin, and her husband Odd-Björn Fure at the Center for Holocaust studies in Oslo, find that the exhibition “Hitler und die Deutsche” romantizes the occupation of Norway. The couple claims that the exhibit exaggerates the support the occupation found in Norway. Ms.Jorunn Sem Fure says: “Our Norwegian history of occupation is seen with German eyes – without understading for those who had been defeated”.

The Fures have sent a letter of complaint – in Norwegian – to the German Historical Museum. Since it has not yet been translated, the museum has not yet responded. (This brings to mind how Director Bodil Børset of the Hamsun centre, in a letter written in Norwegian and published in a Norwegian newspaper, invited Israeli academics to visit the centre. When the academics read about the invitation in Haaretz, they accepted it. And never heard from Ms. Bodil Børset again.)

The Fures are acting in accordance with how we Norwegians would like to be portrayed – as a people who fought heroically against the German occupiers. This is of course to a large extent also true. But regard the following:

Norwegian soldiers fought for Hitler
More (regular) Norwegian soldiers fought for Germany than against her: 5500 Norwegians donned German uniforms. This goes only for regular soldiers, if you count those who claim to have been resistance fighters during the war you end up with different figures. Some of these soldiers partook in subduing the uprising in Warszaw in 1944. 

Also, it was discovered only last week that some of these Norwegian soldiers served in German concentration camps. 

Additionally we might have had a Norwegian death camp at Beisfjord except nobody can say for sure since it burned to the ground at the end of the war and nobody is talking.

WWII Norway – more Lebensborn programs than any other occupied nation
Historian Helle Aarnes has written the book “Tyskerjentene” [Sleeping with the enemy] about how up to 100 000 Norwegian women had romantic entanglements with German soldiers. As a result Norway had more Lebensborn programs than any other occupied nation.

Norwegian police sent the Norwegian Jews to their deaths
It was Norwegians who rounded up and transported the Norwegian Jews to their deaths. Not Germans. Germans merely gave the order, the Norwegian Jews were sent to their deaths by fellow Norwegians.

Norway - Cowardice: 100 youths harass 2 Israeli salesgirls

"The two Israeli girls were selling cosmetics. Their only sin was to be Israelis selling Israeli products. Whoever you are and whatever you do, please take action: show the thugs that you won’t stand for this sort of behavior, and purchase some Dead Sea cosmetics products."

The picture shows a Jewish tailor-shop in Oslo in 1940, with the graffiti saying: "Palestine calls, Jews not tolerated in Norway".

Today [19/11] 100 youths, associated with various left-of-centre groups, directed a boycott action at two Israeli girls who were selling cosmetics in a shopping mall in the the centre of Oslo.

The demonstrating youths were attending an anti-globalization seminar co-financed by among other the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and Fritt Ord. The latter is a private foundations describing its paramount objective as being to “protect and promote freedom of expression and the environment for freedom of expression in Norway” [!!!].

The demonstrating youths were attached to various left-of-centre organizations, among them: Sosialistisk Ungdom (Socialist Youth) and Rød Ungdom (Red Youth), the youth group of Rødt (Red).

The two Israeli girls were selling cosmetics. Their only sin was to be Israelis selling Israeli products. The demonstration was unannounced and therefore illegal – one is required to notify the police in advance of staging demonstrations.

Sources: NRK, Adresseavisen, VG, Document

Denmark – Israeli salesclerk shot