FROM TOM GROSS
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/
CONTENTS
1. Sky News uses “Auschwitz remembered” program to blame the Jews for anti-Semitism
2. BBC: “Is the time coming to lay the Holocaust to rest?”
3. 84% of “Palestinians” believe Israel was behind Paris jihad massacres
4. The anti-Israel cult
5. Netanyahu’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day address at Yad Vashem
6. ISIS handbook: permissible to have sex with captured children
7. State Department-funded group pays for anti-Netanyahu campaign
8. Mossad chief angered by fake reports about him put out by Obama and Kerry
9. The Arab Spring, four years on
10. Israeli C4I network extends special ops reach
***
[All notes below by Tom Gross]
SKY NEWS USES “AUSCHWITZ REMEMBERED” PROGRAM TO BLAME THE JEWS FOR ANTI-SEMITISM
Sky TV’s most highly-regarded presenter, Adam Boulton, used an interview with the British Chief Rabbi on Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday to pursue the “Jews bring it on themselves” myth.
Blaming the victim, whether it is Jews or blacks or homosexuals, is of course one of the cruelest tricks played by racists and bigots.
You can see the clip from Sky’s “Auschwitz remembered” program here.
(Sky is a major international British-based broadcaster carried throughout the world. Rupert Murdoch owns it, although he doesn’t have any editorial control.)
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BBC: “IS THE TIME COMING TO LAY THE HOLOCAUST TO REST?”
The BBC marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day by promoting its “Big Questions” program with the question “Is the time coming to lay the Holocaust to rest?”
Only one month ago, the head of BBC TV himself asked whether Jews even have a future in Britain given the sharp rise in anti-Semitism (see here, http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/127118/bbc-boss-danny-cohen-says-rise-hate-places-future-jews-uk-doubt together with my response).
Holocaust denial, Holocaust inversion and Holocaust belittling are of course key tools used by anti-Semites. Many are surprised the BBC would ask such a crass and insensitive question at the very moment Holocaust survivors were gathering in Auschwitz.
The BBC ran a number of important programs to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, including showing the Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah” on BBC Four.
The Big Questions program was originally titled “The Holocaust: Could something like this happen again?”
(For examples of outright Holocaust denial on the BBC Facebook page, please see here.)
(Both the director of BBC TV and the director of BBC News and Current Affairs are subscribers to this list.)
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84% OF “PALESTINIANS” BELIEVE ISRAEL WAS BEHIND PARIS JIHAD MASSACRES
A poll conducted by the independent (and most reliable) Palestinian news agency, Ma’an, has found that 84.4% of Palestinians said yes to the statement “the operation (i.e. terror attack on the Kosher market) was suspicious, and Israel may be behind it.” Only 8.7% believed Islamic extremists were behind the attack.
These results are not so surprising when one reads the (partly European-funded) official Palestinian media, which are full of conspiracy theories about Jews.
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) have translated many articles from Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and other Palestinian media, arguing that Mossad planned the attacks in Paris.
Commentator Akram Atallah, interviewed on official PA TV, lied that “it is well know that in the past, the Israeli Mossad carried out operations (i.e. terror attacks). It bombed synagogues in order to force the Jews to emigrate.”
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THE ANTI-ISRAEL CULT
Former AP reporter Matti Friedman delivered a very interesting talk on Monday. It is too long to include in this email but I recommend reading it here if you have time.)
(Matti Friedman is a subscriber to this email list.)
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NEVER AGAIN
In his speech (text below) at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raises important matters concerning Holocaust remembrance, and also the grave dangers of appeasing Iran which will likely lead to a nuclear arms race throughout the Middle East.
Netanyahu:
“My responsibility as Prime Minister of Israel is to ensure that the State of Israel will never again be threatened with destruction. My responsibility is to see to it that there will not be a reason to build additional memorial sites such as Yad Vashem.
The pending agreement with Iran is an agreement that endangers the State of Israel. It leaves Iran with the capabilities that will allow it to arm itself with nuclear weapons, one bomb at first and afterwards many atomic bombs. We cannot live with such an agreement; therefore, we oppose it. Even those who try to challenge us within our borders will discover that we are ready to respond with force. Israel views with utmost gravity the attack against it from Syrian territory. Those who play with fire will get burned.
Preserving the memory of the Holocaust is more important today than ever before.
We live in an age of resurgent and violent anti-Semitism, and commemorations like this ceremony remind us where humanity’s oldest and most enduring hatred can lead.
Many thought that after the horrors of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism would finally contract and disappear.
That has not happened.
Hatred of the Jews appeared to take a brief respite after World War II for a few decades.
It has now returned in full force.
Once again in Europe and elsewhere, Jews are being slandered, vilified and targeted just for being Jews.
This is taking place in the intolerant Middle East and in the very heart of the liberal and tolerant West.
It’s taking place in Tehran and Paris, in Gaza and Brussels. Around the world, Jewish communities are increasingly living in fear.
But it’s not just the Jewish people that is being slandered, vilified and targeted. It’s the Jewish state as well.
Israel is assaulted with the same slurs and libels that have been leveled at the Jews since time immemorial.
Islamist extremists have incorporated the most outrageous anti-Semitic calumnies into their murderous doctrine.
Take the Hamas Charter as one example of many.
It reads like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the anti-Semitic forgery on which it is based. It calls for the murder of Jews and the destruction of their state.
Just as classic anti-Semites portrayed the Jew as the embodiment of all evil in the world, today’s anti-Semites portray the Jewish state in the same twisted manner.
And what do the so-called ‘enlightened’ organs of the international community do in response?
A quarter of a million people are slaughtered in Syria, poison gas is used against civilians, and who do the signatories to the Geneva Convention urgently meet to discuss? Israel.
Across the region, dictatorial regimes and brutal movements brutalize their peoples – suppressing women, lynching gays, forcing Christians to live in fear.
And who does the Human Rights Council of the United Nations condemn? Israel.
Hamas fires thousands of rockets at our civilians, deliberately targeting our people while hiding behind Palestinian civilians it uses as human shields.
And who does the ICC announce it will examine? Israel.
No rational examination of the facts could justify this assault on Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy, the most beleaguered democracy on earth.
This obsession with the Jewish people and their state has a name. It’s called anti-Semitism.
Some things just don’t change.
But I can tell you today what has changed.
We have changed.
The Jews have changed.
We are no longer a stateless people endlessly searching for a safe haven.
We are no longer a powerless people begging others to protect us.
Today we are an independent and sovereign people in our ancestral homeland.
Today we can speak out against the hateful voices of those seeking our destruction.
Today we can protect ourselves and defend our freedom.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The ayatollahs in Iran, they deny the Holocaust while planning another genocide against our people.
Let me be clear.
The Jewish people will defend itself by itself against any threat.
That’s what the Jewish state is all about.
Nonetheless, we appreciate the support of our friends around the world who reject the spreading twin diseases of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. They’re one in the same.
We are especially grateful for the bipartisan support for Israel across the United States, our great ally.
We share a special bond with the United States, which is built on common values and it’s reflected in our expansive cooperation, especially on matters of security.
Yet it is the Government of Israel that holds the ultimate responsibility for the security of the one and only Jewish state.
And here we must speak out and must speak our mind about the dangers to our people and our state. This is something we could not do at the time of the Holocaust.
Israel will reject any agreement that leaves Iran as a nuclear threshold state.
Regrettably, our understanding is that the offer made by the P5+1 does exactly that.
It would enable Iran to breakout to a nuclear weapon within a few months and many more bombs within a short time.
The capabilities of Iran to produce enriched uranium for atomic bombs are left intact.
Such an agreement is sure to spark a nuclear arms race in the region that would turn the Middle East into a nuclear tinderbox.
And such an agreement is simply unacceptable to Israel. We will oppose it and we will oppose it vigorously.
On this day of Holocaust remembrance, I pledge to you what we could neither say nor do 70 years ago.
Israel will always do what needs to be done to ensure the security of the Jewish people and the one and only Jewish state. That is the significance of this day.
Thank you.”
***
ISIS PUBLISHES FEMALE SEX SLAVE HANDBOOK: PERMISSIBLE TO HAVE SEX WITH CAPTURED CHILDREN
CNN reports on the pamphlets handed out by IS militants in Mosul, Iraq, entitled, “Questions and Answers on Taking Captives and Slaves”:
Q: “Can all unbelieving women be taken captive?”
A: “There is no dispute among the scholars that it is permissible to capture unbelieving women [i.e. any non-Muslim woman].”
Q: “Can one have intercourse with a female captive?”
A: “It is permissible to have sexual intercourse with the female captive. Allah the almighty said: ‘[Successful are the believers] who guard their chastity, except from their wives or [the captives and slaves] that their right hands possess, for then they are free from blame [Koran 23:5-6]’.”
Q: “Is it permissible to have intercourse with a female slave who has not reached puberty?”
A: “It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn’t reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse; however if she is not fit for intercourse, then it is enough to enjoy her without intercourse.”
More here.
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I have written in previous dispatches about the thousands of Yazidi women and girls captured in Iraq and held as sex slaves by the Islamic State.
I also noted last summer when Mosul was captured by Isis that if John Kerry and others in Washington hadn’t been constantly obsessing in the first half of last year about Israel, he might have noticed the advance of Isis. Had Obama began his bombing campaign against Isis during this period, Mosul may well never have fallen to Isis in the first place. — Tom Gross
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STATE DEPARTMENT-FUNDED GROUP PAYS FOR ANTI-NETANYAHU CAMPAIGN
The Obama administration is directing considerable resources to trying to bring down the democratically elected leader of Israel.
A group funded by the U.S. State Department is financing a campaign by an Israeli leftist group to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and has hired former Obama aides to help with its grassroots efforts, the Israeli paper Haaretz reported.
The national field director for President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign Jeremy Bird is spearheading the effort, writes Haaretz.
The anti-Netanyahu Israeli organization OneVoice confirmed it is receiving assistance from former Obama staffers “on voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts”. Haaretz reported that Bird is now working with other former Obama aides out of an office in Tel Aviv.
American donors are reportedly paying for the Obama campaign team.
Israel will hold elections on March 17.
Obama has refused to meet Netanyahu during his upcoming visit to the U.S.
There is much anger in Israel, even among those who don’t support Netanyahu, at the treatment of Israel in general and of Netanyahu in particular by Obama over the last 6 years.
As Israeli media commentators noted, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was hosted at the White House prior to the recent German elections. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited the White House twice prior to British elections. Those were won by Conservative party leader David Cameron, who himself visited Washington this month at Obama’s invitation to lobby the U.S. Congress against adopting new sanctions on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. So why does Obama treat Israel differently, many are asking.
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MOSSAD CHIEF ANGERED BY FAKE REPORTS ABOUT HIM PUT OUT BY OBAMA AND KERRY
The head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service Tamir Pardo issued an extremely rare public statement earlier this month in order to deny U.S. press reports which cited anonymous White House sources claiming he and other senior Mossad officials expressed opposition to a proposed bill by the U.S. congress designed to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.
The bill is welcomed by the Israeli government (and most Americans) but opposed by the Obama administration.
There was anger in Israel at what one commentator called “Obama’s below-the-belt attempts to pretend there was disagreement between Netanyahu and the Mossad on the need to keep the pressure on the Iranians, when in fact there is not.”
The Mossad statement “emphasized that the exceptional effectiveness of the sanctions imposed on Iran in recent years are what brought Iran to the negotiating table. The bad agreement taking shape [by the West] with Iran is likely to lead to a regional arms race.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also said that a senior Israeli intelligence official told a Congressional delegation that recently visited Israel that additional sanctions would be “like throwing a grenade into the process.” The Mossad statement also specifically denied Kerry’s remarks.
On his forthcoming visit to Washington, Netanyahu is scheduled to be snubbed by the president but he has been invited for the third time to address both houses of Congress, a record held by only one other foreign leader, Winston Churchill.
Last week, Senator Robert Menendez (a senator from Obama’s own Democratic party) charged that the administration’s positions on talks with Iran sounded “like talking points that come straight out of Tehran.”
Menendez, speaking at a senate hearing, said his impression was that the administration backed “the Iranian narrative of victimization,” countering that, “they are the ones with original sin, an illicit nuclear weapons program going back over the course of 20 years that they are unwilling to come clean on. So I don’t know why we feel compelled to make their case.”
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THE ARAB SPRING, FOUR YEARS ON
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2924709/Shocking-moment-female-socialist-activist-gunned-police-demonstrations-4th-anniversary-Arab-Spring-ousted-Hosni-Mubarak.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-publicly-behead-man-in-syrian-town-square-for-insulting-allah-as-he-screams-for-help-10007806.html
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ISRAEL SOLIDIFIES ITS DEFENSES
Israeli C4I Network Extends Special Ops Reach
By Barbara Opall-Rome
Defense News
January 27, 2015
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/show-daily/solic/2015/01/26/israel-c4i-network-special-operations-roip-radio/22039469/
TEL AVIV — As Israel grapples with an arc of threats that emanate up and around the Arabian Sea, an Internet Protocol (IP)-supported communications network is augmenting its ability to command complex operations at its borders and far beyond.
Elements of the voice over IP (VoIP) network have been operational for years, and officials here credit it for supporting a months-long mission that culminated in the March 2014 seizure of an Iranian arms cache some 1,500 kilometers from Israel’s Red Sea coast.
But it was only in late December that the network was declared fully operational, connecting special units commanded by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) General Staff and IDF headquarters with all echelons operating under Israel’s three territorial commands.
“It’s state-of-the-art and it’s operational IDF-wide as of the end of 2014,” said Col. Yossi Mashiah, who managed the program as head of the Maof C4I Programs and Systems Engineering Department, part of the C4I Directorate of the IDF General Staff.
“We’re relative pioneers in this world. We started in early 2000 and now I can say with pride that no matter where the commanders are or where the forces are, there’s a single network-based radio communications for everyone.”
He added, “At the end of the day, you win wars and successfully accomplish special missions with radio.”
In a mid-January interview, Mashiah said parts of the network were used to support tactical forces in last summer’s Protective Edge operation in Gaza.
“In the past half-year, our people were in the field tweaking things. We went to Gaza to fix a satellite terminal one day and were out in the field with command centers on other days. … Now it’s all humming nicely,” he said.
As for special missions, Mashiah cited last year’s Operation Full Disclosure, when Israel tracked the Klos C arms smuggling ship as it plied the Arabian Gulf, eventually seizing it as it made its way up through the Red Sea.
“Where ever you have the infrastructure for backhauling, you can use it,” Mashiah said. “I can’t provide any more specifics, but suffice it to say that this operational network of ours has been very broadly deployed.”
The multiyear program, which Mashiah estimated cost “tens of millions” of dollars, is managed by Maof and operated by the IDF’s Choshen Brigade, also part of the C4I Branch of the IDF General Staff.
Technology and standards are developed by state-owned Rafael, part of them under subcontract to Elbit Systems, developer of the IDF’s digital C4I network, known as Tzayad, or Digital Army Program (DAP).
The Hebrew name for the network is classified. For public consumption, program officials generically refer to it as Radio over IP (RoiP).
But Avriel S., a product line manager in Rafael’s Communications Directorate whose surname is withheld by the company for security reasons, says the network is much more than a radio system. Elements of the IDF system are available to export to license-approved nations under land- and sea-based systems marketed by Rafael, respectively, under the names C4I-Connect and Sea-Com.
“It’s radio, but it’s actually voice and data IP,” said Avriel S. “Radio is part of the voice communications, but everything can be transferred over this infrastructure, including telephony, intercom and all types of data. The RoiP project enables true interoperability by transferring voice and data between forces and across all command echelons.”
For all operations, including special operations, the network — which the Rafael executive noted is actually an application that lays on the IDF’s IP infrastructure — enables mission planning and mission implementation even in instances when servers are jammed or shut down.
“This is one of the special features. As long as they use smart terminals, everything will remain working without interference as long as the IP network is available, even in instances when servers are jammed or shut down,” Avriel S. said. “Once the communication traffic between users and the radio is established, you don’t need any server. You can’t allocate new sessions, but those already on can keep on transmitting and receiving.”
Another feature, he said, is the high reliability and inherent security measures built into the system, which is unlimited by range and adaptable to any method of communications relay.
“The ROIP communications are flexible and highly efficient, no matter where the forces are and whether they are supported by microwave link, satellites, whatever,” Avriel S. said.
Mashiah said more sophisticated versions are in the works to hone connectivity with the Israel Air Force, which now uses its own system to patch into the network. An electronics engineer specializing in tactical communication, he retired in mid-January after 27 years in the IDF, most of them in the Signals Corps.
“I’ve been with this program from the beginning, since I was a major, and I can tell you that it’s already revolutionized our ability to operate as a joint, networked force,” he said. “We’ve left the world of point-to-point communications via radio. Now it’s flexible. It’s everywhere to everywhere, unlimited by range or the amount of users authorized to be on the net.”
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