Switzerland not invited to Israel’s 60th anniversary festivities

From the EJP

"Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has expressed disappointment that no one from the Swiss government has been invited to Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations.

Switzerland will be represented at the festivities through its ambassador in Tel Aviv, she told the Swiss ‘SonntagsZeitung’ newspaper.

"Personally, I am disappointed that our country was not invited at government level," she said.

Israeli President Shimon Peres has invited heads of state, ministers, scientists, philosophers and artists for a three-day conference to mark the Jewish state's 60th birthday on May 14.

Among those invited are President Bush, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, Abdurrahman Wahid, former president of Indonesia, a country that has no diplomatic ties with Israel, and Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress.

The relationship between Israel and Switzerland has been strained since a recent visit by the Swiss Foreign Minister to Iran to witness the signing of a multibillion-dollar natural gas supply contract between Swiss company EGL and Iran's state-owned National Iranian Gas Export Company.

The deal prompted angry reactions from US Jewish groups because Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel.

Earlier this month the New York-based Anti-Defamation League took out full page adverts in Swiss and international newspapers describing Switzerland as "the world's newest financier of terrorism".

Israel had summoned the Swiss ambassador and lodged a complaint over the deal.

Alfred Donath, outgoing president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities said that by signing the gas deal Switzerland sent the wrong message at the wrong time.

But he called the Israeli measure towards Switzerland “exagerated.” Donath told EJP he regrets that "sixty years of friendship between Switzerland and Israel are deleted because of a gas deal." (...)

In March, Switzerland was the only European member of the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council to vote in favour of a resolution condemning the Israeli military action in Gaza. The action was prompted by Palestinian groups escalating their rocket attacks against Israeli cities."

Another Tack: No Swiss surprise
Swiss blasted for anti-Israel UN vote

The United Nations and Jean Ziegler

Excerpts from Hillel Neuer's essay, Ziegler’s Follies, in Azure: “On March 26, 2008, to cheers and acclaim, Jean Ziegler was elected by the newly formed United Nations Human Rights Council to serve as one of its expert advisers. It was hardly an unexpected development. Switzerland had announced his nomination in December 2007, beginning an unprecedented lobbying campaign by the Swiss government on behalf of its nominee, featuring, among other things, a glossy booklet sent to capitals around the world documenting his “unwavering commitment to,” “excellent knowledge of,” and “unstinting support for” human rights. (…) Besides being one of Europe’s most successful celebrity activists, Ziegler is also one of the continent’s most industrious anti-American and anti-Israel ideologues as well as a prominent apologist for a rogues’ gallery of Third World dictators, including Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. During Ziegler’s tenure as Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, the cause of world hunger consistently took a backseat to the promotion of his anti-Western ideology. (…) Ziegler has also helped to promote and protect the careers of several European intellectuals with questionable if not disturbing reputations. In April 1996, for instance, he came to the defense of Roger Garaudy, a former French Stalinist and convert to Islam whose book The Founding Myths of Modern Israel denies the Holocaust. In response to the public controversy provoked by the book, Ziegler wrote a letter of support to Garaudy, which the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (codoh) - a group dedicated to the promotion of Holocaust denial - published in full on its website: “I am outraged at the legal case they are making against you.... All your work as a writer and philosopher attests to the rigor of your analysis and the unwavering honesty of your intentions. It makes you one of the leading thinkers of our time.... It is for all these reasons that I express here my solidarity and my admiring friendship.” (…) There are several reasons Ziegler’s official conduct remains largely unchallenged: First, there is the role that major NGOs, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, play at the UN. Few people outside the institution realize just how influential NGOs have become within the UN’s Byzantine human rights system. In fact, they wield immense power: They initiate the creation of new mandates, nominate the mandate-holders, and supply much of the data then cited by the newly appointed experts, who are unsalaried and understaffed. In short, the legitimacy of every UN human rights official lies in their hands. Among the major NGOs, some have openly endorsed Ziegler, while others have been complicit through silence. Many of them have refused to protest Ziegler’s support for such tyrannical regimes as those of Castro and Qaddafi even after being explicitly asked to do so by dissident groups. Instead of using their enormous influence to counteract Ziegler’s questionable conduct, the leading NGOs have enabled it. Second, there is the peculiar culture of the UN itself. Among European officials, more than a few may secretly admire Ziegler’s forthright anti-Americanism and his rhetorical broadsides against Israel. Moreover, in what may be a strategic move on his part, Ziegler has largely refrained from criticizing specific European governments at the UN, thereby disarming potential opposition to his anti-American statements. Most important, however, is the fact that UN diplomats prefer a certain measure of vice over bad publicity for the world body as a whole, leading them to indulge even the most problematic conduct by their peers. To be a UN diplomat is to be a member of an exclusive club that has the potential to reward loyalty with lucrative jobs and benefits from an array of interconnected foundations and organizations. This practically requires that members “go along to get along” - or face the loss of their professional future. For all these reasons, UN officials such as High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, despite repeatedly being asked to speak out against Ziegler’s politicization of his mandate, have - with one exception in 2005 - chosen to remain silent. Whatever Jean Ziegler may say or do, he is still one of their own. It is this same climate of impunity that has led to such serious abuses of UN power as the Oil for Food scandal and the cycle of sexual abuse perpetrated by UN peacekeepers in Africa and Haiti. It is therefore highly unlikely that the newly formed UN Human Rights Council will change the direction set by its predecessor. Libya, for example, has recently been elected to chair the council’s anti-racism program, which is scheduled to culminate in a 2009 “Durban Review Conference,” likely to be a repeat of the notorious anti-Western and antisemitic colloquium held in 2001. Condemnation of Israel remains the council’s first and, it often seems, only priority.” Hillel Neuer is executive director of UN Watch in Geneva

Holocaust Remembrance Day, Simply Jews

"This image was created by Dzeni. It contains the names of 1,692 victims of the Shoah. These names were found on the Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims. The boy in the image is taken from the famous Warsaw Ghetto Photograph.

This image is also special for another reason. It is part of the Holocaust Yellow Badge in Art Exhibit which opens in Safed (Israel) today. This is the first time Dzeni's work has been exhibited.

The really large image can be seen at the preceding link."

Source: Simply Jews

Day of Holocaust Remembrance, AJC

Holland: anti-Jewish rhetoric on the net

Bert @ Dutch Blog Israel reports on anti-Jewish comments on the net in Holland:

"In Holland, these days you will hear and read comments about Israel and the Jews that - unless my memory deceives me - you would not hear and read ten, fifteen years ago. I do not know if what is behind that is anti-Semitism (old or new, indigenous or 'imported'), anti-Zionism, an anonymity (provided by the internet) that did not exist or was not very common yet in the 1990s, the effect of 9/11 and Islamist terror, a false sense of solidarity with the Palestinians or a combination of all that. Still, in Dutch online media which offer the possibility of providing feedback you will almost always encounter anti-Jewish verbal violence whenever a subject comes up that involves Israel or the Jews. And I am not talking about (one-sided, or balanced and totally justified, even welcome) criticism of Israel here. It appears to me that in this context there is no real difference between Right and Left, even though in Dutch politics anti-Israel bias has more and more become a characteristic of the Left. A good example of the tone of anti-Jewish comments I just found on the website of the Dutch free daily De Pers, underneath an article that is titled "Israel remembers Holocaust". I will translate the two first comments, even though they do not deserve that and should be ignored. Someone 'named' Tuurke, registered at the website since December 2007 and the writer of 540 posts since then, commented:

"Holocaust is a word that the Jews have appropriated unlawfully. As if Gypsies, gays and many more do not fall in that category. Typical "Jews' trick"."

"From my mother I heard about the Jews. In the war a Jewish family had to leave (*). That is why they left the main household effects with neigbors. With one neigbor they left a box of with shoes. A few streets further down they also left a box with shoes. After the war, when those Jews did not come back (**), the box was checked more closely. In one box there were only left shoes, and a few streets there were only right shoes in that box. My mother always said after that: "... those are real 'Jews' tricks' "."

(*) Notice the euphemism.
(**) You can almost hear Tuurke think: "Good riddance!". Many if not most Dutch Jews who wrote or spoke about their return from the camps or from hiding mentioned neighbors who refused or were quite unwilling to return valuables, clothes and other effects that the Jews left with their neigbors before they went into hiding or were deported. The cynical term for these neighbors is "Bewarier", a combinatie of the Dutch words for 'to keep/save' (bewaren) and 'Aryan' (Arier)."

Note: The comments on the De Pers website have since been removed.

In neighbouring Belgium:
Israelis compared to Nazi SS on Belgian radio blog
Zionism, a "Tumour in the midst of Judaism", Belgian radio forum

Belgian newspaper Le Soir shows picture of bodies of Palestinian children

© Le Soir, April 29, 2008, p. 17

Source: UPJF

Luckily European newspapers not have not, so far, succumbed to the charms of morbid voyeurism when reporting on the Israel-Arab conflict. Le Soir, known for its steadfast hostility to the State of Israel, has just done that by showing the gory picture of four dead Palestinian children. It is indeed a deplorable precedent.

On the incident: 'Beit Hanun mother and children not killed by IDF fire', TJP

"A blast in northern Gaza that killed a Palestinian mother and her four children on Monday was not caused by the Israeli Air Force, a probe into the explosion conducted by the IDF Southern Command concluded on Friday.

Col. Shai Alkilai from the Southern Command conducted the probe over the last few days under orders from OC Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant and IAF Commander Maj. Gen. Elazar Shkedi.

The blast under investigation occurred Monday morning in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, when according to Palestinians, an IDF tank shell hit the home of the Abu Meatak family, as the mother Miyasar was preparing breakfast for her children. She was killed together with the four children.

According to the findings of the probe four terrorists were spotted carrying weaponry and explosives on their backs. The IAF fire was on target and only hit the armed terrorists. As a result there occurred secondary explosions which destroyed the home and killed the mother and her children.

The IDF probe ruled out the possibility that the family was hit by IDF fire. The IDF probe also revealed that the secondary explosion was far greater than the type of explosion caused by the initial IDF bombing and the munitions it had used.

The IDF said that it was unfortunate that innocent people were killed in the incident, but stressed that the blame lay with Hamas which operated from populated areas, using civilians as human shields."

As Israel marks Holocaust, future looms dark, by Con Coughlin

In The Daily Telegraph

"One former Israeli cabinet minister this week likened the danger posed by Iran's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons to the Holocaust. "Sixty-five years after Auschwitz, we cannot allow someone who wants to wipe Israel off the map to obtain the tools to get away with it," said Ephraim Sneh, Israel's former deputy defence minister.

The reality of the potential Iranian threat has been graphically brought home by revelations about last September's Israeli air strike against a top-secret military facility in northern Syria. At first Israelis took great pride in the ability of their air force to conduct such a daring mission undetected.

That has been replaced by deepening concern over the revelations that the Syrians were close to setting up a nuclear facility that could have produced two bombs worth of plutonium within a year.

The question many Israelis are now asking is that, if the Syrians, whose every move is closely monitored by Israeli spy satellites, were able to achieve so much progress with their nuclear programme, how much does the West really know about the true extent of the Iranian programme, much of which is hidden away at secret locations in remote areas of the country?

Most Israelis will try to banish such gloomy thoughts as they set about anniversary celebrations; but deep in their hearts they know they will need all the courage and fortitude that has got them this far if they are to withstand the grave challenges that still lie ahead."

Berlin exhibition singles out Israel's security barrier

Berlin could have chosen to mount an exhibition on all or several of the fences/barriers/walls listed below. Berlin's decision to single out Israel, and only Israel, betrays the true intentions of the organisers. On a note of optimism: the decision drew strong criticism from some quarters. Berlin exhibit equates security fence with Berlin Wall, by Benjamin Weinthal, TJP "A highly controversial publicly funded photo exhibit equating Israel's security fence with the Berlin Wall has sparked political controversy in the German capital. In late April, a majority of District representatives from the Green and the Left parties approved German photographer Kai Wiedenhöfer's "Wall on Wall" display, showing photos of the West Bank security fence at the East Side Gallery, a historical landmark containing sections of the Berlin Wall that commemorates a divided Berlin during the Cold War period. (…) Still, the Social Democratic Party faction within the District council voted against the exhibit and wrote on its home page that the display "relativizes the SED dictatorship and at the same time condemns, among other things, the policies of the State of Israel." Critics charged that the images in Wiedenhöfer's book fanned the flames of anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiments. For example: A photo of graffiti on the separation barrier shows the message, "Warsaw 1943," accompanied by a swastika and Jewish star and the statement "America Money Israeli Apartheid." Dr. Clemens Heni, a German political scientist whose area of expertise is anti-Semitism, said the photo was a "typical expression of the new anti-Semitism" because of the description of the Palestinian situation as the modern embodiment of persecuted Jews in the Nazi-controlled Warsaw ghetto in 1943, as well as the parallel between the swastika and the star of David. According to the "Working Definition of Anti-Semitism" issued by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, "comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" are an expression of anti-Semitism. Heni has organized an on-line petition campaign demanding that the Berlin government cancel the exhibit, and he called for the "creation of a partnership with the Israeli town of Sderot." "In the motifs he chooses for his photos, Wiedenhöfer's political views become clear. In his work, he presents a completely distorted, one-sided image of the Israeli security installation. The lifesaving function of the wall is not taken into account," said Levi Salomon, the newly appointed representative of the Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against anti-Semitism, an initiative of the 12,000-member Berlin Jewish community which launched on Wednesday. (…) "Freedom of art" is an important right, said Regine Sommer-Wetter, the Left party representative who voted for the exhibit. Asked about her party co-chairman Gregor Gysi, who delivered a blistering attack on anti-Israeli attitudes within his party in mid-April, Sommer-Wetter said she read the speech but it did not play a role in the "political valuation of the photos." Gysi said, "Anti-Zionism cannot be, or at least can no longer be, a tenable position for the Left in general, for the party." (…) Günther Schaefer, a prominent artist whose works address the Berlin Wall, remarked to the Post that it was "tragic that the political parties are taking part" in "using the East Side Gallery as a form of propaganda." Schaefer, a member of the Board of Directors of the East Side Gallery, sees the Berlin Wall location to depict the Israeli separation barrier as an "equalization with the East German terror regime," and called this comparison unacceptable for Israel." The City of Berlin's decision to single out Israel, and only Israel, looks highly suspcious to me. Security fences or barriers to peace? from A Liberal Defence of Israel blog US/Mexico Proposed. 3,360km. Several barriers already exist with Mexico (California, Texas, Arizona). This would cover the entire border. Anti-immigration. Belfast, N. Ireland. Built early 1970s. Average 500m. Number around 40. Anti-terror. Padua, Italy 2006. 85m. 3m-high, round mainly African Anelli estate. Internal. Ceuta, Morocco 2001. 8km. €30m. EU-funded. Anti-immigration. Mellila, Morocco 1998. 11km. Anti-immigration Morocco/Western Sahara 1987. 2,700km. To keep out W. Saharan (Polisario) insurgents Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt 2005. 20km. Anti-terror Botswana/Zimbabwe 2003. 500km. Anti-immigration. South Africa/Mozambique 1975. 120km. Anti-immigration. Carries 3,300 volts. Has killed more people than Berlin Wall Israel/West Bank Under construction. 703km. Anti-terror. Adhamiyya, Iraq 2007. 5km. Anti-terror. Cyprus 1974. 300km. Conflict zone barrier. Kuwait/Iraq 1991. 193km. Conflict zone barrier. Saudi Arabia/Yemen 2004. 75km. Anti-terror. United Arab Emirates/Oman 2007. 410km. Anti-immigration. Russia/Chechnya Proposed. 700 km. Anti-terror Kashmir 2004. 550km. Anti-terror (India). Pakistan/Afghanistan Proposed. 2,400km. Anti-terror (Pakistan). Uzbekistan/Kyrgyzstan 1999. 870km. Conflict zone. China/North Korea 2006. 1,416km. Conflict zone. Korea Demilitarized Zone 1953. 248km. Av. 4 km wide. Patrolled by 2 million soldiers. Most heavily border in world. Conflict zone. China/Hong Kong 1999. 32km. Internal barrier. China/Macau 1999. 340km. Internal barrier. Brunei/Limbang 2005. 20km. Anti-immigration. Thailand/Malaysia Proposed. 650km. Anti-immigration. India/Bangladesh Under construction. 3,268km. Conflict zone.