http://frontpagemag.com/2012/giulio-meotti/time-for-a-nuremberg-trial-for-hamas-and-the-pipers-of-death/print/ Back in the 1970s, law expert Yoram Dinstein argued that according to UN definitions, terrorism and incitement against Israelis constituted genocide. That’s why Israel, with the help of a few Western democracies, should set up a Nuremberg-type initiative for Palestinian terror leaders, who must be charged for inciting and committing genocide. In the name […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/carol-levine/a-tenured-extremist-in-israel-leads-the-campaign-to-defame-his-country-2/print/
“Here is how Ruth King from the “Americans for a Safe Israel” described Goldblum’s pseudo-poll:
As part of “surveygate,” Goldblum and his hit team insisted that if Israeli Jews favor separate roads in the West Bank for Jews and Arabs, because of the daily attempts by Arabs there to murder Jews, it shows that Jews are racists who favor an apartheid regime. The survey evidently used the term “hafrada” in Hebrew, meaning separation, a word that can also mean apartheid. So when many Israeli Jews indicated that they favor hafrada, Goldblum and his Smeartroopers had their headline: Israelis favor apartheid. Other indicators of “Jewish support for apartheid” were found by the Goldblum team when many Israeli Jews favored affirmative action preferences in hiring in favor of Jews. Never mind that the entire Left in Israel has long lobbied for racist quotas in favor of Arabs!Even the predominantly leftist Israeli press including Ha’aretz denounced Goldblum and his smear campaign, some comparing it to the lies and distortions of the UN’s “Goldstone Commission.” On October 26, 2012, the deputy editor of Maariv, Ben Dror Yemini, called Goldblum an anti-Israel anti-democratic fanatic.”
Israel has long been the target of campaigns of vilification by its own anti-Israel radical academics, enjoying their cushy salaries at Israel’s taxpayer-funded universities. Many of these individuals lead the world campaigns of economic aggression against Israel (the so-called BDS or “Boycott, Divest, Sanctions” campaign). Some openly call for Israel’s annihilation or support terrorist atrocities against Jews.
A few weeks back, one of the worst campaigns to undermine Israel’s legitimacy was launched by Amiram Goldblum, a radical leftist professor in pharmaceutical studies at the country’s Hebrew University. He is also a hater of democracy and freedom of speech. He was a founder of the radical group “Peace Now,” which demands complete and unconditional capitulation by Israel to the diktats of the Arab world. Goldblum gave an address to a forum of leftists last spring in which he called for Israel sovereignty and democracy to be suppressed by means of foreign pressures to coerce the country to agree to the far-Left’s pro-Palestinian political agenda.
Goldblum’s anti-Israel activism was suddenly thrust into the spotlight when he organized and funded a tendentious pseudo-survey of Jewish public opinion in Israel, in which he claimed that Israeli Jews support “apartheid.” The “findings” of the “survey” were quickly taken at face value by the media and especially by the bash-Israel lobby.
As it turned out, the “survey” was nothing more than a shoddy manipulative pseudo-scientific exercise in distortion. It was Goldblum’s own private personal initiative, paid for and sponsored by a fund Goldblum single-handedly manages (named after his late wife). Goldblum assembled a small group of far-leftist anti-Israel activists in Israel, only one of whom is an academic (and even he is a political scientist, not a statistician). They composed survey questions that were designed to produce responses that could be twisted into making it look like Israeli Jews are racists and supporters of apartheid.
Writing in the Israel Hayom daily, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, a world-class political scientist, denounced Goldblum and his team for the manipulation. He writes:
[A] great deal of damage has been done outside Israel, where this farce was used to further the campaign of anti-Israel political warfare and demonization….The poll that generated such attention was flawed in many dimensions. In Maariv, Ben-Dror Yemini details many of the false claims and absurd statements it contains. And in Haaretz, former Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Dr. Yehuda Ben-Meir emphasized that the actual conclusion to be drawn from the poll results was “exactly the opposite of what’s written in the article’s headline” and that the majority of Israelis were “unwilling to live in a country with an apartheid regime.” As a “push” poll used for crude political manipulation, and involving only 503 people, this survey was driven by clear political objectives. The pseudo-poll is another form of attack in this political war to demonize Israel. Responsibility for the attack, beyond Haaretz, lies with Amiram Goldblum, a founder of Peace Now, who runs the Yisraela Goldblum Fund (named after his late wife), which paid for costs, under the wider framework of the non-profit group known as “Signing Anew.” This funding, in turn, was provided by the New Israel Fund, and Goldblum is a member of NIF’s International Council. In addition, according to Goldblum’s press release, the “questions” used in this transparent political stunt were formulated by individuals closely connected to the NIF, the Durban Strategy and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. … Everyone connected with this travesty shares responsibility for the immense political damage that has been caused. Goldblum, in particular, owes the Israeli public an apology.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323501404578161483449849070.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop wise judge once wrote in dissent that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Let us now extend that wisdom to presidential elections. Barack Obama says his election victory is a mandate to pursue the policy course he’s insisting on in negotiations with Republicans on the fiscal cliff. He wants a tax increase of […]
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/12/05/netanyahu-abbas-israeli-settlements/1749713/
Israel’s pugnacious prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seems most comfortable when he’s in a fight. Sometimes he fights with justification, as he did last month in retaliating for rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza, where the ruling Hamas Party fervently denies Israel’s right to exist and caters to even more extreme factions in its midst.
But in the West Bank, where the more moderate Fatah leadership has tried to negotiate a peace accord, it is Netanyahu who is the aggressor.
Last week, in a remarkable act of arrogance, the prime minister announced that he would expand Israeli settlements on a pivotal strip of Palestinian land near Jerusalem. For good measure, he said he’d withhold $100 million in tax revenue paid by Palestinians and collected by Israel.
The move, precipitated by a U.N. vote upgrading the status of Palestine, is an assault not just on the Palestinians but also on decades of U.S. efforts to secure a Middle East peace and a threat to U.S. interests in the region.
If built, the new housing would separate East Jerusalem, the prospective capital of any future Palestinian state, from the rest of the West Bank. Palestinians, already geographically divided, would see their territory cleaved again, crippling chances for the “two-state” solution at the heart of the peace process and grievously wounding American hopes for stability and improved relations with the Arab world.
Netanyahu’s excuse for this foolishness is that the United Nations had the audacity last week to grant a request from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that Palestine be granted “observer” status, which Abbas sees as an alternative route to independence. In the short term, it could put Israeli tactics against the Palestinians under tighter international scrutiny.
In our view, Abbas’ strategy is pointlessly provocative. Regardless of U.N. status, he can attain a meaningful Palestinian state only by negotiating borders and other issues with Israel.
Hamas’ control of Gaza, meanwhile, has made peace much more difficult for Israel.
But that’s no excuse for further provocation, which Netanyahu rarely resists. Since reclaiming the prime ministership in 2009, he has significantly worsened peace prospects.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/12/05/israel-netanyahu-danny-danon/1749705/ Mahmoud Abbas has avoided negotiating with us at all costs. In the days following the United Nations General Assembly vote granting the Palestinians non-member observer state status, the posture of the international community toward Israel has been nothing short of hypocritical. The prime minster was the first leader of the conservative Likud to […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ In Cairo, Morsi scribbles his decrees and in Washington DC, Obama scribbles his. There is an ocean between the two men, but there is a good deal that they have in common. Both are ideologues who piggybacked on public outrage over the national impact of international economic declines to climb to power and pursue […]
http://pjmedia.com/blog/maryland-state-police-fbi-swat-teams-thwart-guy-with-a-few-guns/?print=1 You are forgiven for thinking that a major terrorist attack was thwarted in Sharpsburg, Maryland, this past Thursday. A Maryland State Police helicopter was in the air over 4433 Mills Road most of the day, as police, FBI SWAT teams, armored vehicles, and K-9 units converged upon the residence of Terry Allen Porter, 46. […]
http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/12/05/hillary-clinton-explains-the-israel-palestinian-conflict/?print=1
“The criticisms she make all fall into the current, dominant, Western view that the world’s problems are caused by greedy, aggressive, un-empathetic white people who oppress everyone else.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said some very interesting and revealing things in her appearance at the Saban Center’s gala dinner on November 30. They are, however, being quoted out of context. Let’s look at what she actually said in some detail for a sense of how the Obama administration’s highest-ranking foreign policy official and a likely future presidential candidate thinks about this issue.
Let me note also that the statement was made at an institution that might be considered friendly to Israel and thus Clinton might have skewed her remarks to be more fair to that country than she would do in a regular international forum.
In answering a question, Clinton went into some detail about the problems facing a two-state solution and peace. Remember she is speaking extemporaneously.
First, the Israeli perception:
I think Israelis have good grounds to be suspicious. And I would never be one who tries to rewrite or dismiss history. The Palestinians could have had a state as old as I am if they had made the right decision in 1947. They could have had a state if they had worked with my husband and then-Prime Minister Barak at Camp David. They could have had a state if they’d worked with Prime Minister Olmert and Foreign Minister Livni.
Here Clinton is pointing out that the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected getting a state and that’s why they didn’t have one years ago. I cannot imagine Obama saying this kind of thing.
Now, would it have been a perfectly acceptable outcome for every Israeli and every Palestinian? No. No compromise ever is. But there were moments of opportunity. And I will also say this. When Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to a 10-month settlement freeze I flew to Jerusalem. We’d been working on this. George Mitchell had been taking the lead on it. And when Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to a 10-month settlement freeze, it wasn’t perfect. It didn’t cover East Jerusalem, but it covered much of the contested area in the West Bank.
There’s something important in this passage that no one has noticed. For the first time ever, Clinton publicly and explicitly acknowledged that the freeze did not cover East Jerusalem. Why, then, did Vice President Joe Biden throw a temper tantrum when an Israeli zoning board cleared some future construction there? At the time, the U.S. government repeatedly implied that Israel violated the agreement, which it didn’t. Now Clinton admits that.
Incidentally, the Obama administration did nothing when the Palestinian Authority refused to negotiate seriously despite the freeze on construction.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/lessons-from-the-past-if-the-impossible-happened-can-we-let-it-happen-again?f=puball Hands up those who have heard of, let alone read, any of the books by André Suarès. Nobody? I am not shocked. Virtually nobody has, and his name hardly appears in the history of literature from the time of Marcel Proust, Romain Roland, Andre Gide, Thomas Mann and so on and on-yet they read […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/10-lies-about-the-israel-hamas-conflictA ceasefire between Israel and Hamas may have been reached on paper, but evidence already indicates that it is unlikely to hold. A top Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader has already warned that the ceasefire would be short and that a “new, more savage round” of fighting with Israel lies ahead. The agreement establishes Egypt as […]
