New French F.A. Minister deplores leniency towards Israel

Le Monde: A report on foreign policy written in 2010 by the newly appointed French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius indicates that a Socialist government will make a departure from the excessive leniency of Sarkozy's (not noted to be a great friend of Israel either) policy towards the Israel government:

"We shall break with the excessive leniency of the French government towards the Israeli leadership.  We shall tell them to move out quickly from the colonized territories."

French cultural center in Gaza will cost USD 1.3 million

The coffers are empty but ... France is building a new cultural center in Gaza at a cost of around one million euros (USD 1.3 million).  France is the only country to have such a cultural center in Gaza.  

Model of the building

Source: Consulate General of France in Jerusalem:  Nouveau Centre Culturel Français de Gaza: premier convoi de matériaux. The first convoy of building materials crossed the border on 17 January 2012. 

Plans are under way to build a new 1,000 m2 building in 2008 on Charles de Gaulle Street, a main road in Gaza City. The structure will be built on a 2,000 m2 plot of land that was given to the CCF by the Palestinian National Authority. The new building is a direct response to the increasing demand for and growing popularity of the centre's activities over the years. It will also house the consular offices for visa and passport services as well as guest quarters for French visitors and artists who will come to participate in the planning and implementation of the centre's programmes.

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?

Belgian newspaper accused of deligitimizing Israel by not mentioning the country on Mideast map

Le Soir is notoriously and obsessively hostile to Israel, promoting boycotts etc.  The newspaper featured the map for two successive days (26 and 27 December) without realising after the first day that something was amiss.  A clear indication of the quality its experts and its readership's apathy...  Jean-Philippe D., who is not Jewish, wrote to Le Soir: "One thing still confounds me. The words "Palestinian Authority" target the West Bank [Cisjordanie in French] territories (the Israelis say "Judea and Samaria" and English-speakers "the West Bank") and Gaza. The Palestinian Authority is not a territory but a government! Strange ... Another mistake is to make a connection between the P.A and Gaza. The real Authority in Gaza is obviously the Hamas!".  Spot on!

Reminder: Maroun Labaki of Le Soir wrote in 2010 that EU Commissioner De Gucht had broken taboos re the Jewish Lobby and Jewish irrationality.  This also gives an idea of where the paper's sympathies lie: Brussels: Jihad by vuvuzela!

BRUSSELS (EJP) ---Being accused by the Jewish community in Belgium of "deligitimizing Israel” by failing to mention this country’s name on a Middle East map illustrating articles on the Arab Spring, Belgian daily Le Soir speaks of an "indisputable error" but said it was "outraged and insulted" by the accusation.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the CCOJB, the umbrella body representing Jewish organizations in Belgium, regretted "that once again newspaper Le Soir delights in the delegitimization of the State of Israel by publishing, during two consecutive days, a map of the Middle East, which simply ignores the existence of the State of Israel."

"In addition, the words ‘Palestinian Authority’ were included in the place of Israel, which is also untrue and denies the duality existing between Gaza and the West Bank," the statement added.  "The CCOJB condemns this double breach of truth and rigorous information."

Reacting to the accusation, the paper's chief editor Didier Hamman admitted that "this is undoubtedly a mistake, I plead guilty and apologize." But he also said he was "shocked and insulted" by the accusation from CCOJB that the newspaper did it intentionally.

French lawyer: Israel war crimes question festers

Yesterday we posted a translation of this interview without realising that Euronews has posted an English version.  It has also posted a version in Turkish and Arabic (but not a Hebrew one!) and several other languages.

- Gilles Devers, avocat : "les crimes de guerre israéliens sont trop gros pour être cachés" (original in French)
- Israel war crimes question festers
- “Europa spielt mit Palästina ein doppeltes Spiel”
- Devers: “L’Europa con Israele fa il doppio gioco”
- Gaza: “El crimen es demasiado grande para ser ocultado”
- Gilles Devers o advogado que defende a Palestina nas mais altas instâncias jurídicas
- “İşlenen suç İsrail’in saklayamayacağı kadar büyük”
- Адвокат Жіль Девер: “З яких таких причин безпеки не дозволяють експортувати квіти з Гази?”
- جيل دفيرز ليورونيوز: ملف الأسرى الفلسطينيين سيحال إلى المحكمة الجنائية الدولية


Consuelo Maldonado, Euronews: Gilles Devers, you are the spokesman for a group of lawyers who, in 2009, filed a complaint of war crimes against Israeli officers with the International Criminal Court. Since then, what progress has there been?

Gilles Devers: The facts are established in the Goldstone Report. Everybody knows that warcrimes and crimes against humanity have been committed. While Palestine has the legal competence but has not exercised it because of the occupation, it can transfer this to the International Criminal Court. We are in a waiting phase which, unfortunately, corresponds with a double standard that has always been a mark of international law. But the crime is too big to be hidden.

Euronews: You have been given a mandate by Gaza’s minister of justice to defend the rights of Palestinian prisoners. Are you looking at filing a new complaint with the international court?

Devers: For the prisoners it is systematic torture, unfair judgements and conditions of detention – three chapters of violation of international law, therefore yes, the prisoners’ cases will be put before the International Criminal Court.

Euronews: You are also investigating a case which in Gaza is called ‘the number cemeteries’. What is that about?

Devers: Some detainees die in prison and Israel refuses to hand over their bodies, which is to say they make dead bodies serve sentences. Therefore, through the International Red Cross, we tell the families when someone has died, but the family does not have a death certificate, so they do not even know, are never sure if there has been a death, and the bodies are buried in numbered cemeteries. The person becomes a number and continues to serve out his sentence when he is dead.

euronews: How many are we talking about?

Devers: When we last visited Gaza, we worked with the authorities and found that 350 families were concerned.

European TV: French lawyer says Israel punishes Palestinian prisoners' corpses

"A number of inmates die in prison and Israel refuses to return the bodies, i.e. Israel enforces sentences on corpses. So we notify the families through the Red Cross that they have died, but the family does not get a death certificate, and it cannot even be sure, it is never sure, whether death has occurred or not, and the bodies are buried in cemeteries which are numbered. The person becomes a number and continues to serve the sentence when dead."

This is what Europeans listen to on Euronews (funded among others by the European Union), and other European news outlets about Israel. Gilles Devers is a French lawyer and is interviewed in French by Spanish-speaking journalist Consuelo Maldonado.The transcript has been translated with the help of Google.  You can read the original and watch the video HERE.  Bear in mind that Euronews offers "information from a European perspective".

Euronews:
"Maître Gilles Devers, good evening. You are the spokesman for the group of lawyers who filed in January 2009, a complaint before the International Criminal Court for war crimes against Israeli officers. Since then, has there been progress?"

Gilles Devers:
"The facts were established by the Goldstone report, everyone knows that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed. If Palestine has jurisdiction and cannot exercise it because of the occupation, it may transfer it to the International Criminal Court. Currently, we are in a waiting phase, which corresponds, unfortunately, to a double standard that marks the life of international law, but the crime is too big to be hidden."

Euronews:
"You have been appointed by the Minister of Justice in Gaza to defend the rights of Palestinian prisoners. Are there any plan to file a new complaint with the ICC?"

Gilles Devers:
"For prisoners, it is the systematic torture, judgments that are not fair and also there are the conditions of detention, three chapters of international law violations. So yes, the files of prisoners will be filed with the International Criminal Court."

Denmark: More Scandinavian Blurry-Headed Anti-Semitism

Source: Sweden, Israel and the Jews

Off-topic a bit again, I suggest that our readers have a look at a brief critique from Piety on Kierkegaard. The blogger rakes Ole Jørgensen over the coals for dragging out anti-Semitic stereotypes to defend Peter Tudvad’s book Stadier på antisemitismens vej: Søren Kierkegaard og Jøderne (Stages on the way of anti-Semitism: Søren Kierkegaard and the Jews). Jørgensen's article appeared in the Danish Kristeligt Dagblad (Christian Daily News). 

I think this gives you a little peek into how insular people can drag out Christ-killer accusations along with greedy-Jew characterizations, and then claim that these are simply factual depictions. Under this rubric, no one tarring Jews with these lies can be termed an anti-Semite.  The blogger concludes that:  "It makes the textbook example of 'For a fat girl, you don’t sweat much,' seem positively considerate!"

Damning with Faint Praise: Bizarre Defense of Kierkegaard in Danish Newspaper

Just when you thought the debate surrounding Peter Tudvad’s book Stadier på antisemitismens vej: Søren Kierkegaard og Jøderne (Stages on the way of anti-Semitism: Søren Kierkegaard and the Jews) (Rosinante, 2010), had probably died down, it’s actually flared up again. Ole Jørgensen published what has got to be the most bizarre defense of Kierkegaard yet. Jørgensen’s article, “Sjusk med ord. Søren Kierkegaard var ikke antisemit” (Linguistic carelessness. Kierkegaard was not an anti-Semite) appeared in Monday’s edition of Kristeligt Dagblad (Christian daily news). The title might lead one to suppose that Kristeligt Dagblad is a relatively obscure paper. It isn’t. Remember, Denmark has a state church. The Danish Lutheran Church is the official church of the Danish people. This undoubtedly explains why Jørgensen took it upon himself to defend not only Kierkegaard, but also Martin Luther against the charge of anti-Semitism. Luther, he asserts, merely “chastens the Jews in his book On the Jews and their Lies.” One might be tempted to conclude from that remark that Jørgensen hasn’t actually read Luther (or Tudvad either since Tudvad quotes extensively from Luther’s works where they bear on the Jews).