‘Kauft nicht bei Juden’ will worsen the conflict, by Denis McShane

In Europe, the obsession with Israel is total.  Pick up any European newspaper any day and the obsession is there for all to see - it is an obsession Europeans and Muslims share.  And things are not about to change. 

Source: The Jerusalem Post

The call to boycott Jewish commerce is Europe’s oldest political appeal. Kauft nicht bei Juden – “Don’t buy from Jews” – is back. The call to boycott Jewish commerce is Europe’s oldest political appeal. Once again, as the tsunami of hate against Israel rolls out from the Right and the Left, from Islamist ideologues to Europe’s cultural elites, the demand is to punish the Jews. That the actions of the Israeli government are open to criticism is a fact. But what are the real arguments?

Firstly, that Israel is wrong to defy international law as an occupying force on the West Bank. But what about Turkey? It has 35,000 soldiers occupying the territory of a sovereign republic – Cyprus. Ankara has sent hundreds of thousands of settlers to colonize the ancient Greekowned lands of northern Cyprus. Turkey has been told again and again by the UN to withdraw its troops. Instead, it now also stands accused of destroying the ancient Christian churches of northern Cyprus. Does anyone call for a boycott of Turkey, or urge companies to divest from it? No. Only the Jews are targeted.

Or take India; 500,000 Indian soldiers occupy Kashmir. According to Amnesty International, 70,000 Muslims have been killed over the past 20 years by these soldiers and security forces – a number that far exceeds the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the same period. But the Islamic ideologues focus on Jews, not Indians.

May we talk of the western Sahara and Morocco, or Algeria’s closure of the border there, making life far worse than that of Palestinians in Ramallah or Hebron? No, better not.

Voltaire – anti-Semite that he was – should be alive today to mock the hypocrisy of the new high priests calling anathema on the heads of Jews in Israel.

Wiesenthal Centre to Irish P.M.: "Economic Meltdown Cannot be Camouflaged by Anti-Semitism"

Unfortunately, Europeans just can't stop themselves.  Their multi-secular vicious obsession with Jews as a force for evil and now with Israel is all-consuming.

Source: Simon Wiesenthal Centre

In a letter to Irish Prime Minister, Brian Cowen, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels lamented that "the Centre was struck by the timing of an event in Dublin, sadly reminiscent of financial scapegoating of the 1930's."

The letter continued, "In the midst of Ireland's greatest post-war crisis, a poster illustrating an atomized Europe around a Star of David, invites the public on 3 December to an Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign book launch/wine and cheese reception. The book, 'Europe's Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occupation', apparently, presents the EU as encouraging 'the Apartheid State of Israel' and "calls for a continuation and deepening of international activism and protest to halt the EU's slide into complicity," adding that "it explores the complex political ties that have prevented European countries from holding Israel to account."

Samuels asked, "Who are these complex political ties?" noting that "the poster, and book cover it features, arguably fit the 2004 "Working Definition of Anti-Semitism" of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, to which Ireland is, ipso facto, party."

He explained that in the late 1980's, he had "led a mixed caucus of Irish-American and Jewish-American United States Senators and Congressmen to Jerusalem and Dublin, co-organized by the Irish Development Authority. The declared purpose of the hosts was, to adapt from the empathy of American Jewry for the Jewish State, a programme to enhance the affinity of Americans of Irish origin to the economy and land of their roots - then enjoying an economic boom."

Samuels stressed, "Anti-Semitic scapegoating has too often served to deflect attention from economic suffering. In the 1930's, this led democracies into the abyss."  The Centre urged the Prime Minister "to publicly condemn the timing of this poster and the book cover's subliminal message."

"In wishing Ireland a speedy recovery, we are confident that the people of Ireland will never allow the circumstances of the meltdown - reportedly, extortionate bank fees, obscene bonuses and mismanagement - to be camouflaged by anti-Semitism," concluded Samuels.

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.