RUTHFULLY YOURS

Britain’s historic responsibilities for the Israel-Palestine conflict:
starting an honest conversation

0930-1700 Friday November 2nd 2012

Quaker Meeting House, 7 Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh EH1 2JL

Space in the hall is limited, 3 places still available at 25 Oct.

The Balfour Project, in association with the Church of Scotland, is organising a one-day conference on the British involvement in Palestine in the first half of the last century. This is a first step in exploring how to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration in exactly five years on 2nd November 2017.

The Balfour Project has been created by a group of academics and activists who believe that this anniversary should not pass unremarked. Mindful of Britain’s responsibility for what has come to pass in the Middle East, the Balfour Project will encourage understanding of what led to the Balfour Declaration, and what flowed from it. Through our website, we plan to facilitate a network of educational, political, religious and humanitarian groups who share this conviction. We aim to stimulate conferences, cultural exchanges and the production of multimedia resources. Above all, we believe that the search for the truth of what took place, and the acknowledgement of wrong-doing, can contribute to justice, peace and reconciliation in the Middle East.

In the morning Dr Mary Embleton, whose special interest is Britain’s involvement in the Middle East, will outline the contradictory promises Britain made to Arabs and Jews, and their consequences for all parties before and during the British Mandate in Palestine. This will be followed by keynote papers from Rev Dr Stephen Sizer, who will talk about the ideas that shaped this period, Professor Mary Grey will talk about the main players and Dr Imad Karam will talk about the consequences for Palestinians today. In the afternoon John Bond OAM, former Secretary of Australia’s Sorry Day campaign, will use the 2008 national apology to Aboriginal Australians to discuss the impact of acknowledgement and apology.

This will be followed by workshops where you can both interact further with the main speakers and pool ideas on how we move forward. How can we create a momentum over the next 5 years towards an acknowledgement of our responsibilities? Can there be a cascade of events, not centrally organised, but all working to the same ends?

Registration is £20 which includes lunch and refreshments. Space is limited so please book your place on the attached registration form. We hope you will find it an informative and stimulating day.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2012/10/angling-for-apology-britons-battling.html
Angling For An Apology: Britons Battling The Balfour Declaration

“With the Balfour Declaration of 2nd November 1917 Britain unleashed a series of events in Palestine that have not only caused enormous suffering and loss to the Palestinian people but also unleashed recurrent waves of terrorism affecting many parts of the world to this day. The British Government must accept its historic responsibility and issue an apology.”

So runs a silly doomed-for-the-dustbin e-petition to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office concocted last year by an anti-Israel activist. Tweeted at intervals by its framer, who also happens to head a small Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch somewhere in the British boondocks, the e-petition closed in August this year, having attracted just 155 signatures.

The idea behind the petition, however, has evidently stirred independently in other breasts.

Step forward the Steering Committee of an initiative calling itself The Balfour Project:

Dr Mary Embleton, Historian
Professor Mary Grey, Theologian, writer and activist.
Dr Imad Karam, Academic and film maker
Peter Riddell. Peace activist
Dr Monica Spooner, Medical Doctor
Professor Roger L Spooner OBE, Scientist
Rev Dr Stephen Sizer Anglican vicar and author

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1919/jewish_settlement_in_the_west_bank_is_not_the_issue Palestinian Authority leaders pay a great deal of lip service to their desire to create a state of their own, even turning to the United Nations to try to achieve some kind of unprecedented observer status for their as yet nonexistent state. At the same time the Palestinians, their friends, and even elements of […]

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=e6zyq5bab&v=0015qcJ7P_42YgKkXk9gM0LkccrwZXidwa_yye0QrqpHmSL74HZPRXEbW-6kbencIRKDWtEZ4PwRr1Vk_nW7I7Pq6FbT0QbBTlBr_AScPwif_8%3D The decision to award this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union – announced as the EU edges ever closer to disintegration is no mere foolishness. It reflects a worldview that is largely responsible for Israel’s marginalization in the international community. The decision to award this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the European […]

Another Tack: When the darling departs Israel’s agenda-driven pundits are strict mono-measurers with no other political yardstick but how any hullabaloo impacts on the Likud – or, more specifically, on its headliner Binyamin Netanyahu. They cheer whatever damages the Likud or diminishes Netanyahu. Look at how the second coming of Shas’s Arye Deri’s was greeted. Regardless […]

http://www.d-intl.com/articles/international/2012-10-25/french-jihad-cell-dismantled

It has nothing to do with Islam, say the government, the experts and the media

PARIS. The day after the Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to Serge Haroche, a French Jew born in Casablanca, material to make IEDs were found in a garage rented by Jérémie Bailly, alleged ringleader of the jihad cell dismantled on October 6th. The Naouri grocery store in Sarcelles, hit by a grenade attack on September 19th, is at the top of the list of a dozen Jewish targets found in Bailly’s apartment. One suspect, Jérémie Louis-Sydney, was killed in a shootout with the police and twelve suspects were arrested in a coordinated operation in Cannes, Strasbourg, and Torcy, a banlieue of Paris. Five have been released and seven charged with terrorist associations, attempted assassination aggravated by anti-Semitic motivations and/or recruiting jihadis to fight in Syria. The story dominated the French news stream for several days, triggering belated recognition of twelve years of anti-Semitic violence at a level unknown since the Shoah. The lid has finally been lifted on a seething cauldron whose explosive powers are slightly dampened by the breakup of one cell among how many?

The torrent of news report, commentary, and official declarations gave a false impression of ample information. Looking back, it seems that we know next to nothing about the suspects and their projects. Only three have been named—the Antillais Jérémie Louis-Sydney, the failed soccer player of Congolese origin Yann Nkusa, and Jérémie Bailly. Not a word, not a detail, not a leak about the others except that they are all born in France, delinquents and, save one, converts to Islam. Because Louis-Sydney had served a brief prison term, it was assumed the others, too, must have been “radicalized” in jail. Hours of discussion were devoted to the problem of criminals converting to Islam or getting radicalized in jail. Now it turns out only one or two of them had been in prison. So how did they get to be Muslim?

The attack on a kosher grocery store in Sarcelles with a bizarre kind of “low-level” grenade seemed minor on the scale of physical violence perpetrated on Jews over the past twelve years—bashed, stabbed, stomped and, in the worst cases, tortured, murdered, mutilated. The grocery store didn’t burn or explode, the window was smashed with a brick, one person was slightly injured. The story dropped out of sight.

And reappeared with the dawn raid on the 6th of October. The investigation had been transferred from local police to the anti-terrorist unit when the DNA of Louis-Sydney, who had attracted the attention of internal security (DCRI) last spring, was found on the grenade. Officials did not want to repeat the error of passive surveillance that had left Mohamed Merah free to commit heinous murders before he was finally cornered and killed. Investigators, convinced that the jihadis were preparing an imminent major attack, moved in on them swiftly.

Which Future Do You Want?By Frank Salvato

http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/7272

As the media pushes the cosmetic differences between the two presidential candidates, I have long said that this election is about a fundamental question: Do you want more government or less government? Today, after the release of President Obama’s interview with the Des Moines Register, I would add a second tier to that question, but a tier just as important. Do you want a poor country or a plentiful country? The choice you make at the ballot box will, indeed, answer both of these questions, so I pray to the Almighty above that you are not voting with your emotions, but with your brains.

In the Des Moines Register interview, President Obama said:

“So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, the commitment of both myself and my opponent – at least Governor Romney claims that he wants to reduce the deficit – but we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business.

“It will probably be messy. It won’t be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending, and work to reduce the costs of our healthcare programs.

“And we can easily meet – “easily” is the wrong word – we can credibly meet the target that the Bowles-Simpson Commission established of $4 trillion in deficit reduction…Now, once we get that done, that takes a huge piece of business off the table.”

What? What did he say? Did he say that he was going to let both the Bush tax cuts expire and allow the sequester to take place? Indeed he did.

In September, the AP reported that the White House itself issued a report in which it said allowing the sequester to proceed would be catastrophic:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/arsen-ostrovsky/palestine-bombs-israel_b_2011785.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

THE AUTHOR IS AN INTRNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS ATTORNEY

I’m angry.

You see, as most Americans were waking up this morning, and those in Europe and elsewhere around the world were going about their daily routines, here in Israel — over one million people were running for cover from a hail of rockets being rained down by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza. In the space of 24 hours, since Tuesday evening, 80 rockets have been fired on southern Israel. That’s more than three rockets per hour. By the time I finish this article, odds are that count will have risen to 85 rockets.

Just to put things in context: one million Israelis is roughly 13 per cent of the population. Thirteen per cent of the U.S. population equates to about 40 million people.

A dozen Israelis have already been injured, with several of them seriously. The only reason more have not been hurt is because Israel has invested millions of dollars in bomb shelters and the Iron Dome defense system, while Hamas has invested millions of dollars in foreign aid in more rockets.

But here is why I’m angry.

I’m angry that in 2012, over 600 rocketshave already been fired from Gaza with no end in sight. I’m angry that the world only notices when Israel undertakes its (sovereign) right to defend its citizens. Can you imagine if even one rocket was fired on Washington, London, Paris or Moscow? No nation on earth can, or should, tolerate such attacks on its people.

I’m angry that while the United Nations never hesitates to call a ‘special emergency session’ on the ‘Question of Palestine’ or pass the umpteenth resolution blindly condemning Israel, that I am still waiting for a session on the ‘Question of Israel’ and Palestinian terror. In fact, 24 hours after the rocket attacks started, I am still waiting for even one syllable of condemnation from the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly or Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

I’m angry that Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, could not find a moment to condemn the Palestinian rockets, but did find time to laugh and dance with South Korean rapper Psy from the popular dance craze Gangnam Style.

I’m angry that while the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton slammed Israel last week over the building of several hundred apartments (in an area that will arguably remain part of Israel anyway), that I am still waiting for her to slam the Palestinians for firing 80 rockets in one day.

I’m angry that there are those who continue to call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the Jewish State, but are silent in the face of Palestinian terror.

http://www.jinsa.org/fellowship-program/david-p-goldman/demographic-sources-turkeys-foreign-policy-crisis#.UInKYcVG-QJ Syria’s two million Kurds have become a wild card in the country’s crisis, after the Assad regime encouraged Kurdish autonomy as a ploy against its Sunni opposition in the ongoing civil war. The importance of the small Syrian Kurdish zone extends far beyond its possible role as a base for PKK guerillas to attack […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/331635 Andrew’s post describing the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Mali is essential, if excruciating, reading. Beyond the monstrously cruel but all too usual punishments being imposed, I’m struck by two things, which really show how willful blindness leads inexorably to spring fever: The Guardian attributes the atrocious penalties to the “menace of al-Qaida”; it also […]