The call to boycott Jewish commerce is Europe’s oldest political appeal, Denis MacShane

"Kauft nicht bei Juden" will worsen the conflict, JPost

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 Greek owned 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.

We can't rely on Europe, warns Israel ambassador

"When push comes to shove, no-one in Israel really thinks that Europe will come to its aid." After Frits Bolkestein's warning, here comes another similar warning.
 
"A stark warning that Israel cannot rely on the support of European leaders in the battle against the deligitimisation and demonisation of the Jewish state was issued this week by Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor.

Source: Jewish Chronicle

At a packed meeting at London's New West End Synagogue, the envoy warned: "When push comes to shove, no-one in Israel really thinks that Europe will come to its aid."

He lambasted politicians who felt they were taking a sufficiently principled stand by simply stating that Israel had "a right to exist."  If he had found it necessary to state that Britain has a right to exist ,"people would wonder what I had been drinking?" he declared.

The ambassador also slated those who professed Israel's right to defend its people, yet took every opportunity to criticise it over actions such as the war against missile attacks, or the building of the anti-terror wall.

Israel, he said, was facing a "new kind of warfare," aimed at attempting to cast it out of the family of nations. "Our adversaries are crossing the line every day. There is more pressure, more demonisation."  It was also important to state, he said, that the international campaign in favour of a Palestinian right of return "would not result in a two-state solution but in the destruction of the state of Israel.""

More HERE

Minuscule Luxembourg wants to punish Israel

"There is growing frustration with Israel after its refusal to commit to a new settlements freeze," (European diplomat)

See also by Melanie Phillips The Europeans move in for the kill

Europe being Europe, even tiny Grand Duchy of Luxembourg with a population of  barely half a million wants to punish Israel.

BRUSSELS (AFP-EJP)---The European Union on Monday reaffirmed its readiness to recognize a Palestinian state at an "appropriate" time but stopped short of outright recognition despite mounting pressure to break the Middle East impasse.

Pressure has built on the European Union to flex muscle after Israel refused to extend a moratorium on construction in the West Bank, with 26 former European leaders last week demanding sanctions, and Argentina and Uruguay joining Brazil in recognizing an independent Palestinian state. [...]

"There is growing frustration with Israel after its refusal to commit to a new settlements freeze," a European diplomat told AFP as negotiators quibbled and clashed over a joint EU stand.

But after long and prickly negotiations, Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels adopted a statement that "notes with regret that Israel has not extended the moratorium as requested by the EU, the US and the Quartet," describing settlements as "illegal" and "an obstacle to peace."

In the letter to Ashton released last week, 26 former EU leaders, including her predecessor Javier Solana, urged her to threaten Israel with sanctions for failing to respect the freeze.  But the idea was apparently rejected by a majority at the ministerial meeting although some among them, like Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, were in favour of a "tougher" stance against Israel.

WikiLeaks: US diplomats find Norwegian anti-Israel FM arrogant and not smart

"How could it not occur to Mr. Støre, that constantly changing tack – without consulting senior partners – that, one day having tea with Hamas, another day, choosing foolishly, and as the only Western representative, to sit and listen to Ahmadinejad’s foul ranting at UNs Durban 2 conference in Geneve in 2009, would have a very high political price?"

Source: Norway, Israel and the Jews (All is fine in my little belly button, sulks Støre)

Our FM Jonas Gahr Støre reacts with incredulity to WickedLeaks that US embassy crew find him not smart, arrogant, in it for himself and with an attitude problem. "Sincerely, I have not heard any of this conveyed to me in Washington", he says – adding that perhaps this might have been the case for US diplomats during the Bush Administration, because they interpreted any sign of independent thinking as something inherently bad.

Too bad for him, then, that US diplomats posted in Oslo in the reign of Obama, continue to sound alarms that all is not well with Norway’s foreign policy. A diplomat wrote in 2009 this about Støre: "Although smart and dynamic, some people wonder if his arrogance might not work too well in negotiations".

Ouch! And with that zinger, the bubble vision he wanted to present to us, of himself as a worldly leader, standing up to the big wigs, burst – and there he was, left with his tiny fig leaf, too small to cover the bald patches where normally you would have expected to see experience, political clout, and maybe even integrity.

Netherlands: Al-Qaeda mouthpiece run by Dutch extremists

Source: Islam in Europe

The Jihadist Ansar Al Mujahideen site is mostly run by Dutch Muslim extremists.

The Dutch behind Al Ansar not only fill the website with English and Dutch hate-texts and propaganda, but also use computer servers in Amsterdam. These Dutch Muslim extremist had close ties with the Hofstad Group in the past.

The terror cell which was recently arrested in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria discussed attacks in the Jewish Quarter in Antwerp, train routes, and crowded locations [Jewish community in Belgium was target of major terror attack, according to magazine], and used the site collect money and recruit fighters for a Chechen Jihad group. The site is registered by Ali Mahmoud, with a Brussels PO Box. New members are only accepted to the site if they're trusted by the other Jihadists.

Ansar Al Mujahideen – one of the most important propaganda mouthpieces of al-Qaeda worldwide - is carefully watched by security services, also in the Netherlands. Sources confirm that the website is not only facilitated by the Dutch, but also financed in the Netherlands. The website publicizes official announcements by al-Qaeda.

Intelligence sources confirm that the English part of the website is run by a dozen Dutch Muslim extremists, including several women. Those Dutch members were formerly the driving force behind the now-defunct Dutch extremist website Thabaat, which was tried to members of the Hofstad Group.
Read the full article HERE

- Former EU Commissioner Frits Bolkestein: "No future for Orthodox Jews" in Holland
- NGO Monitor reveals Dutch gov´t funding for Electronic Intifada

Positively Moore-ish - Charles Moore on Israel, its Foes, and the Battle for Public Opinion

"All I want to ask my fellow Europeans is this: are you happy to help direct the world's fury at the only country in the Middle East whose civilisation even remotely resembles yours? And are you sure that the fate of Israel has no bearing on your own?"

Source: Daphne Anson

There are two observations that some historians make about post-Reformation Britain. The first is that the sixteenth-century abolition of Romanish superstitions and of medieval cults such as that of “Little St Hugh”, the boy allegedly ritually murdered by Jews at Lincoln and venerated as a martyr, and that century’s introduction of the Bible in the vernacular into parish churches, prepared the way for the philosemitism that underlay Cromwell’s decision formally to admit Jews to England in 1656. The second is that antipathy to the Church of Rome and its adherents has always been far stronger in modern Britain than antipathy to Jews; in other words, that anti-Catholicism has been the British equivalent of continental antisemitism.

I believe this interpretation of British history to be broadly true, and we might perhaps cite the so-called 1904 Limerick “pogrom” (an exaggeration, to be sure, since it lacked bloodshed), which entailed rioting and a mass boycott of Jewish shopkeepers following a local priest’s ranting that Jews were usurious “leeches”, as an example of Catholic prejudice in the non-Protestant component of the United Kingdom.

Nevertheless, since Pope John XXIII’s Nostra Aetete document of 1961, which absolved Jews from the “deicide” calumny and asserted that Jews “should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God”, there have been Roman Catholics – such as the late Irish-born Father William Smith, who headed Australia’s Institute of Social Order, and the Sisters of Sion – who have worked tirelessly to forge robust links with Jewry.

This photograph shows the non-Catholic judeophile Margaret Thatcher (remember her attachment to the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Jakobovits, and to the Conservative Party intellectual Sir Keith Joseph, and how her Cabinet was jocularly said – by a former prime minister, Harold Macmillan – to contain “more Old Estonians than Old Etonians”?) in Rome last year; flanking her are two notable judeophile British Catholics – on her right, former New Statesman editor Paul Johnson, an acclaimed historian of Jewry, and on her left, former Daily Telegraph and Spectator editor Charles Moore.

I’d like to share with you extracts from some of the superb articles that Mr Moore, who writes an occasional op-ed piece for the Telegraph, has written – they are magnificent in the case they make for traduced and beleaguered Israel, and deserve to be more widely known. Please note especially Moore's observations on Israel's poor PR efforts, which I quote at the end.

‘As a boy ... I cheered as Israeli courage swept away the outnumbering Arabs who tried to destroy it again and again. I bought books about the Six-Day War, many of which carried pictures of glamorous female Israeli soldiers.

But then a different narrative supervened. People called "the Palestinians" began to be mentioned. Once upon a time, the word "Palestinian" had no national meaning; it was simply the description on any passport of a person living in British-mandated Palestine. During the 19 years to 1967 when Jordan governed the West Bank, the people there had no self-rule, and no real name. UN Resolution 242, which calls for Israel to leave territories it occupied in 1967, does not mention Palestinians; it speaks only of "Arab refugees". Palestinian nationality came along, as it were, after the fact, a nationality largely based on grievance.

Jewish community in Belgium was target of major terror attack, according to magazine

Typically, the news do not seem to be of any interest to Belgian journalists !

ANTWERP (EJP)---Terrorist suspects arrested two weeks ago in Belgium and Holland planned to target the Jewish community with a major terror attack, a Jewish magazine said, quoting information obtained by a Dutch newspaper from judicial sources.

According to "Joods Actueel" in Antwerp, Dutch daily newspaper "Het Parool" received the information from a anonymous source "close to the investigation".  Belgian authorities didn't confirm nor deny the news reports.

Quoting a senior European counter-terror expert, CNN already mentioned two weeks ago that members of the terror group arrested in Antwerp and their associates in Germany and the Netherlands had discussed targeting Jews in Belgium as well as NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The suspects were using a jihadist website to plan an attack on an unspecified target, police said at the time.

Antwerp is home of around 18,000 Jews while 15,000 live in Brussels.

To see CNN report (23/11/2010) go HERE