The Garbanzo Annex

Official PA daily acknowledges Israel's Hadassah hospital's treatment of Palestinians, by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:59:04 -0400

Official PA daily acknowledges Israel's Hadassah hospital's treatment of Palestinians, by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik:

The official PA daily reported on a visit by the PA Minister of Health, Hani Abdeen, to Israel’s Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. The daily noted that 30% of the child patients in Hadassah are Palestinians and that the Israeli hospital is training “60 Palestinian medical interns and specialist physicians who will be returning to the [Palestinian] Authority areas to carry out their work.” The hospital has a special program to train Palestinian doctors to treat cancer among children, reported the PA daily.

The following is the report:

“[PA] Minister of Health, Hani Abdeen visited the [Israeli] Hadassah Hospital yesterday [May 5, 2013]. This is the first visit by a Palestinian minister to one of the most important Israeli hospitals, according to the hospital’s announcement.
Minister Abdeen who was accompanied by a delegation that included senior officials of the ministry and of the PA, met with the Director of Ein Karem Hadassah Hospital, Yuval Weiss. He [the minister] visited Palestinian patients being treated in the hospital, and he distributed gifts. [Hospital director] Weiss said: ‘We relate to patients without regard to nationality and religion. We treat Muslims, Christians, Jews, and other nationalities without bias, and 30% of the patients who are children are Palestinians.’
He went on to say: ‘We’ve begun cooperating with the Palestinians. We now train teams of physicians from the hospital in Beit Jala in the southern West Bank, to treat cancer among children. We have about 60 Palestinian medical interns and specialist physicians who will be returning to the [Palestinian] Authority areas to carry out their work.’”

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 6, 2013]

This article documenting Israel’s medical care for Palestinian children is a change from common PA accusations that Israel intentionally tries to hurt Palestinians, for example by spreading drugs intentionally among Palestinian youth.

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Wed, 22 May 2013 17:41:12 -0400

The World's Sophisticated Hypocrisy Mechanism, by Ron Jager

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:58:00 -0400

The World's Sophisticated Hypocrisy Mechanism, by Ron Jager:

It seems as if the World always focuses exclusively on blaming Israel, employing hypocrisy and a double standard as standard fare when relating to Israel.

It seems that when ever possible the world ignores crimes against humanity such as are being implemented daily in Syria, and instead blames and castigates Israel for initiating or responding to this threat.

Every day, Israel is accused of being an Apartheid nation, the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement ranks successes day by day as universities, organizations, corporations, and whole nations boycott the State of Israel.

All of this leads up to an indefensible conclusion that has taken hold in recent years, that there is something fundamentally illegitimate about Israelis, Israeli institutions and the State of Israel in its entirety.

Much of the intellectual landscape that justifies this kind of thinking is proudly and unashamedly expressed by these self-appointed “guardians” of the Western world, having managed to produce a hypocrisy mechanism that is among the most sophisticated in human history.

This global monitoring apparatus strictly monitors the violation of human rights, including the most minor ones in Israel, while forgiving almost any case of trampled rights, absence of democracy, cutting off of limbs, oppression of minorities and women, the stoning of homosexuals, and even sanctioning the right of a Muslim man to conduct intimate relations with a wife up to 8 hours after her death– as long as these are undertaken in the Arab world and their perpetrators are not suspected, heaven forbid, of collaboration with the spearhead of Western “imperialism”, Israel.

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Mon, 20 May 2013 17:52:41 -0400

Itâs official: thanks to Stephen Hawking's Israel boycott, anti-Semitism is no more, by Howard Jacobson

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:42:00 -0400

Itâs official: thanks to Stephen Hawking's Israel boycott, anti-Semitism is no more, by Howard Jacobson:

And now, with Stephen Hawking announcing, by means of an Israeli-made device, that he no longer wants to talk to the scientists who invented it, or to Israeli scientists who invented or might invent anything else, or indeed to Israeli historians, critics, biologists, physicists of any complexion, no matter what their relations to Palestinian scholars whom he does want to talk to, we are reminded that the cultural boycott with which he has suddenly decided to throw in his lot is entirely unJew-related, which is more good news. “Peace”, that is all Professor Hawking seeks, a word that was left out of his statement as reproduced on the Palestine Solidarity Campaign website, presumably on the grounds that everyone already knows that peace is all the PSC has ever wanted too.

To those who ask why Israel alone of all offending countries is to be boycotted, the answer comes back loud and clear from boycotters that because they cannot change the whole world, that is no reason not to try to change some small part of it, in this case the part where they feel they have the most chance of success, which also just happens to be the part that’s Jewish. That this is, in fact, a “back-handed compliment” to Jews, John MacGabhann, general secretary of the pro-boycott Teachers’ Union of Ireland, made clear when he talked of “expecting more of the Israeli government, precisely because we would anticipate that Israeli governments would act in all instances and ways to better uphold the rights of other”, which implies that he expects less of other governments, and does not anticipate them to act in all instances and ways better to uphold the rights of others. And why? He can only mean, reader, because those other governments are not Jewish.

Enough Said: The False Scholarship of Edward Said, by Joshua Muravchik

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:39:00 -0400

Enough Said: The False Scholarship of Edward Said, by Joshua Muravchik:

What was important, however, was the light shed on Said’s disingenuous and misleading methods, becasue they also turn out to be the foundation of his scholarly work. The intellectual deceit was especially obvious in his most important book, Orientalism. Its central idea is that Western imperial conquest of Asia and North Africa was entwined with the study and depiction of the native societies, which inevitably entailed misrepresenting and denigrating them. Said explained: “Knowledge of subject races or Orientals is what makes their management easy and profitable; knowledge gives power, more power requires more knowledge, and so on in an increasingly profitable dialectic of information and control.”

The archetype of those who provided this knowledge was the “Orientalist,” a formal designation for those scholars, most of them Europeans, whose specialties were the languages, culture, history, and sociology of societies of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. However, Said explained that he used the term even more broadly to indicate a “Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.”

Orientalism, he said, embodied “dogmas” that “exist . . . in their purest form today in studies of the Arabs and Islam.” He identified the four “principal” ones as these:

one is the absolute and systematic difference between the West, which is rational, developed, humane, superior, and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped, inferior. Another dogma is that abstractions about the Orient . . . are always preferable to direct evidence drawn from modern Oriental realities. A third dogma is that the Orient is eternal, uniform, and incapable of defining itself . . . A fourth dogma is that the Orient is at bottom something either to be feared . . . or to be controlled.

Initial reviews of the book, often by specialists, were mixed, but it appeared at a time when “multiculturalism” was becoming the new dogma of the intellectual elites and took on a life of its own, eventually being translated into more than three dozen languages and becoming one of the most influential and widely assigned texts of the latter part of the twentieth century.

Critics pointed out a variety of errors in Orientalism, starting with bloopers that suggested Said’s grasp of Middle Eastern history was shaky. Said claimed that “Britain and France dominated the Eastern Mediterranean from about the end of the seventeenth century on,” whereas for another hundred years it was the Ottomans who ruled that area. He had written that the Muslim conquest of Turkey preceded that of North Africa, but in reality it followed by about four hundred years. And he had referred to British “colonial administrators” of Pakistan whereas Pakistan was formed in the wake of decolonization.

More serious still was his lack of scruple in the use of sources. Anthropologist Daniel Martin Varisco, who actually agreed with Said on many ideological issues, observed in his book Reading Orientalism that “one of Said’s rhetorical means for a polemical end is to partially . . . quote a phrase while judiciously neglecting words that would qualify and at times refute what the phrase alone might imply.” He offered as an example of this duplicitous method Said’s use of two quotes from the writings of Sania Hamady, an Arab-American who wrote critically of Arabs. The quotes put her in a bad light, but both times, says Varisco, they were taken from passages where Hamady is merely summarizing someone else’s view, not giving her own. In the same vein, John Rodenbeck, a professor of comparative literature at the American University of Cairo, found that Said’s “persistent misconstruction and misquotation of [the nineteenth century Orientalist Edward] Lane’s words are so clearly willful that they suggest . . . bad faith.”

Said’s misleading use of quotes shows the problem with his work in microcosm. On a broad view, Said fundamentally misrepresented his subject. In challenging Said’s first alleged “dogma” of Orientalism, which ascribes all virtue to the West and its opposite to the Orient, Varisco says that Said is describing “a stereotype that at the time of his writing would have been similarly rejected by the vast majority of those [Said] lumps together as Orientalists.” And the British writer Robert Irwin, whose book Dangerous Knowledge offers a thorough history of Orientalism and also a rebuttal of Said, notes that, historically, “there has been a marked tendency for Orientalists to be anti-imperialists, as their enthusiasm for Arab or Persian or Turkish culture often went hand in hand with a dislike of seeing those people defeated and dominated by the Italians, Russians, British, or French.” (Like Varisco, Irwin makes clear that he is no opponent of Said’s political position, but is offended by his travesty of scholarship.)

This is but a small instance of a large methodological problem that invalidates Said’s work entirely, namely, his selectivity with evidence. Said made clear that his indictment was aimed not at this or that individual but at “Orientalists” per se, which, as we have seen, was a category in which he included all Westerners who said anything about the Orient. Thus, he wrote, “all academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact of empire.” And: “No one writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism.”

Why did Said choose to paint with such a broad brush? Because he knew that if he had asserted merely that some Westerners wrote pejoratively or condescendingly or misleadingly about the East while others did not, his argument would have lost much of its provocation. It would have demanded clarification about the relative numbers or influence of the two groups, about variations within the groups, about reciprocal attitudes among Easterners toward the West. Above all, it would have drawn the inevitable retort: so what? Was it news that some individuals favored their own societies over others?

The only way Said could make his generalized indictment seem plausible was to select whatever examples fit it and leave out the rest. When challenged on his omissions, Said replied with hauteur that he was under no obligation to include “every Orientalist who ever lived.” But of course the real issue was whether the ones he included made a representative sample (and whether he presented them faithfully).

"A Land without a People for a People without a Land" by Diana Muir

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:36:51 -0400

"A Land without a People for a People without a Land" by Diana Muir:

“A land without a people for a people without a land” is one of the most oft-cited phrases in the literature of Zionism—and perhaps also the most problematic. Anti-Zionists cite the phrase as a perfect encapsulation of the fundamental injustice of Zionism: that early Zionists believed Palestine was uninhabited,[1] that they denied—and continue to reject—the existence of a distinct Palestinian culture,[2] and even as evidence that Zionists always planned on an ethnic cleansing of the Arab population.[3] Such assertions are without basis in fact: They both deny awareness on the part of early Zionists of the presence of Arabs in Palestine and exaggerate the coalescence of a Palestinian national identity, which in reality only developed in reaction to Zionist immigration.[4] Nor is it true, as many anti-Zionists still assert, that early Zionists widely employed the phrase.

Origins of the Phrase

Many commentators, such as the late Arab literary theorist Edward Said, erroneously attribute the first use of the phrase to Israel Zangwill, a British author, playwright, and poet.[5] In fact, the phrase was coined and propagated by nineteenth-century Christian writers.

In 1831, Muhammad Ali Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, wrested control of Greater Syria from direct Ottoman control, a political change which led the British Foreign Ministry to send a consul to Jerusalem. This development catalyzed the popular imagination.

The earliest published use of the phrase appears to have been by Church of Scotland clergyman Alexander Keith in his 1843 book The Land of Israel According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.[6] Keith was an influential evangelical thinker whose most popular work, Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion Derived from the Literal Fulfillment of Prophecy,[7] remains in print almost two centuries after it was first published. As an advocate of the idea that Christians should work to encourage the biblical prophecy of a Jewish return to the land of Israel, he wrote that the Jews are “a people without a country; even as their own land, as subsequently to be shown, is in a great measure a country without a people.”[8] Keith was aware that the Holy Land was populated because he had traveled to Palestine in 1839 on behalf of the Church of Scotland and returned five years later with his son, George Skene Keith, believed to be the first photographer to visit to the Holy Land.

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Wed, 15 May 2013 20:20:00 -0400

Juan Cole loses head, by Martin Kramer

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:07:31 -0400

Juan Cole loses head, by Martin Kramer:

Cole’s description of beheading as “very modern” isn’t just a mistake. It tells you just how driven he is to blame the West for everything he deplores and relativize even the most revolting acts of Muslim terrorism. Terrorists are cutting off heads in Iraq? The West started the beheading with Napoleon, so we’re just reaping what we’ve sown. They use terror? It’s because Bush, like Napoleon, has followed “the strategy of ruling by terror and swift, draconian punishment for acts of resistance.” We are guilty not only of our sins. We are guilty of theirs, by our example and our actions. You see, until we came along, everyone got to keep his head.

France thanks Sephardic Jews for chocolate, 500 years too late, By Rebecca Benhamou

Sun, 12 May 2013 14:24:35 -0400

France thanks Sephardic Jews for chocolate, 500 years too late, By Rebecca Benhamou:

Importing the tools and knowledge of cocoa, along with their contacts in the New World, Bayonne Jewry taught local workers the secrets of processing chocolate, but were eventually prohibited from working in this industry by the chocolatiers guild. A Bordeaux court annulled the decree in 1767.

By 1854, Bayonne was home to at least 34 chocolate companies and became known as the first chocolatier city in the country. Today there are some 200 families in the area.

“Chocolate as we know it today probably wouldn’t have existed, or entered Europe at this time of history, had it not been for the participation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the international chocolate trade,” Kahn concludes.

It is fine to make amends for past sins, but how are Jews being treated in France today?

Israeli Settlement Facts and Falsehoods

Sat, 11 May 2013 21:41:14 -0400

Israeli Settlement Facts and Falsehoods :

1. Judea and Samaria (Jewish roots) or West Bank (Arab roots)?

“Judea” (יהודה) is the origin of the term “Jew” (יהודי). Its Hebrew spelling combines one of God’s names: Jehova (יהוה) and one of God’s acronyms: ד’. Judea and Samaria are the cradle of Jewish history, religion, culture, holidays, ethos, language and yearnings. The official name of the area was “Judea and Samaria” from Biblical times until April 1950, when Jordan occupied/annexed the area, renaming it “West Bank,” as distinguished from the east bank of the Jordan River. Judea and Samaria was the official name used by the 1922-1948 British Mandate of Palestine, as well as by the U.N.

2. Are Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria an obstacle to peace?

Jewish settlements were established in Judea and Samaria after the 1967 War. However, it was pre-1967 Arab terrorism which annihilated the Jewish communities of Hebron, Gush Etzion and Gaza and raged in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the Galilee during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s — Arab terrorism aimed at preventing the establishment of an “infidel” Jewish state in the “abode of Islam.” Several Arab armies, and Palestinian terrorists, raided Israel in 1948 and persisted in anti-Jewish terrorism before the 1967 establishment of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria.

3. Is the strategic goal of Mahmoud Abbas to uproot the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria?

Mahmoud Abbas is the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which supersedes and oversees the Palestinian Authority. The PLO was established in 1964, three years before the establishment of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. The 1964 Covenant of the PLO referred only to the pre-1967 area of Israel. The current PLO Covenant targets Judea, Samaria and the pre-1967 area of Israel for “liberation.”

Abbas is, also, the leader of Fatah, which was established in 1959, eight years before the establishment of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. The August 2009 Sixth Convention of Fatah called for the continued struggle “to eradicate the Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.” The strategic goal of Abbas is to uproot the Jewish state and not, merely, the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria.

4. Would the uprooting of Jewish settlements advance peaceful coexistence?

Peaceful coexistence on the one hand, and the uprooting of Jewish or Arab communities on the other, constitute an oxymoron. The 1.6 million Arabs, among 6 million Jews, within pre-1967 Israel do not constitute an obstacle to peace; nor do the 350,000 Jews, among 1.7 million Arabs in Judea and Samaria. The uprooting of Arab communities in pre-1967 Israel would be as immoral as would be the uprooting of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. “Judenrhein areas” contradict peaceful coexistence. In fact, the litmus test of Palestinian/Arab intent is the acceptance or rejection of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria.

5. Does Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria prejudge the outcome of negotiation?

Palestinian construction in Judea and Samaria — which is dramatically larger than Jewish construction there — presents facts on the ground, just as Jewish construction does. Western tendency to single out Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, while ignoring Palestinian construction, prejudges the outcome of negotiations! Opposition to Arab presence in pre-1967 Israel should not be tolerated; so, too, should the opposition to a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria. Israel’s government razes illegal Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria. Israel should, also, raze the 1,100 illegal Arab homes built annually in Jerusalem and the thousands of illegal Arab homes in Judea and Samaria.

6. Are Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria legal?

Judge Stephen Schwebel, former president of the International Court of Justice, determined that Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria was rooted in self-defense and therefore did not constitute “occupation.” Eugene Rostow, former dean of Yale Law School, former undersecretary of state and co-author of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which sets out the criteria for Israel-Arab peacemaking said U.N. Resolution 242 does not call for withdrawal to the pre-1967 boundaries; Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai amounts to a 90 percent withdrawal from post-1967 areas; the legality of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria “cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors, and perhaps not even then, in view of Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, ‘the Palestine article,’” which upholds the 1922 British Mandate for Palestine. This 1922 international legal instrument considered Judea and Samaria part of the Jewish national homeland: “Jews have the same right to settle [in Judea and Samaria] as they have to settle in Haifa.” The 1993 Oslo Accord does not prohibit the construction of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria.

The campaign against Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria is based on gross misrepresentations. It is not a peace-enhancer; it is an appeasement-enhancer, fueling terrorism and undermining the pursuit of peace.

This article was originally published by Israel Hayom.

The Pleasures of Anti-Semitism (by Eve Garrard)

Wed, 08 May 2013 20:00:00 -0400

The Pleasures of Anti-Semitism (by Eve Garrard):

Anti-Semitism is fun, there’s no doubt about it. You can’t miss the relish with which some people compare Jews to the Nazis, or the fake sorrow, imperfectly masking deep satisfaction, with which they bemoan the supposed fact that Jews have brought hatred on themselves, especially by the actions of Israel and its Zionist supporters, and that they have inexplicably failed to learn the lessons of the Holocaust. (The Holocaust was not, of course, an educational exercise; and if there are lessons to be learned from it, we might think that the weakest pupils are those who once again wish to single out Jews above all others for hostile attention.) Like other forms of racism, anti-Semitism provides a variety of satisfactions for those who endorse it, and it’s worth trying to analyse these pleasures, so that we may better understand and combat the whole phenomenon. In what follows I will be mentioning and briefly describing various anti-Semitic attitudes, all of which I believe to be deeply and often culpably misguided. But I won’t be discussing their errors, nor will I be distinguishing the circumstances in which criticism of Jews and Israel is legitimate and accurate, and circumstances in which it is not. Much has been written on just those topics; here I will simply take it for granted that some such criticisms are accurate, but that others, often many others, are false, and constitute a form of racist discrimination against Jews - in short, anti-Semitism. My concern here is not with the falsity of anti-Semitic discourse, but with the pleasures which it offers to those who engage in it.

There are (at least) three principal sources of pleasure which anti-Semitism provides: first, the pleasure of hatred; second, the pleasure of tradition, and third, the pleasure of displaying moral purity. Each of these is an independent source of satisfaction, but the three interact in various ways, which often strengthens their effects. No doubt the different sources of pleasure appeal to different individuals and groups, so that the appeal of tradition may resonate most strongly with those who are politically on the Right, and the attraction of displaying moral purity may be most strongly felt by those on the political Left, but both varieties can be detected in most political groupings, and the pleasures of hatred are well-nigh universal.

Information Cancer, by Richard Fernandez

Sun, 05 May 2013 21:29:00 -0400

Information Cancer, by Richard Fernandez:

Never let it be said that we live in a profane age. There are more shibboleths and altars today than in any sacred grove that ever existed. To illustrate this take the current lineup of the FBI’s Most Wanted For Terrorism. Apart from the first two, the first being a member of an animal rights extremist group and the second a member of the Black Liberation Army hiding as a fugitive in Cuba, what would you make of the list?

DANIEL ANDREAS SAN DIEGO
JOANNE DEBORAH CHESIMARD
ABD AL AZIZ AWDA
HAKIMULLAH MEHSUD
IBRAHIM SALIH MOHAMMED AL-YACOUB
FAOUZI MOHAMAD AYOUB
OMAR SHAFIK HAMMAMI
JEHAD SERWAN MOSTAFA
ADAM YAHIYE GADAHN
ABDUL RAHMAN YASIN
ALI ATWA
JABER A. ELBANEH
HUSAYN MUHAMMAD AL-UMARI
ADNAN G. EL SHUKRIJUMAH
MUHAMMAD AHMED AL-MUNAWAR
JAMEL AHMED MOHAMMED ALI AL-BADAWI
AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI
ALI SAED BIN ALI EL-HOORIE
ABDULLAH AHMED ABDULLAH
ISNILON TOTONI HAPILON
RAMADAN ABDULLAH MOHAMMAD SHALLAH
HASAN IZZ-AL-DIN
MOHAMMED ALI HAMADEI
ABDELKARIM HUSSEIN MOHAMED AL-NASSER
AHMAD IBRAHIM AL-MUGHASSIL
SAIF AL-ADEL
ANAS AL-LIBY
WADOUD MUHAMMAD HAFIZ AL-TURKI
MUHAMMAD ABDULLAH KHALIL HUSSAIN AR-RAHAYYAL
JAMAL SAEED ABDUL RAHIM
ZULKIFLI ABDHIR
RADDULAN SAHIRON

Clearly what any right-thinking individual should conclude is that the list proves that we as a society have a long way evolve. That the FBI is not paying enough attention to the real danger facing the nation: the white Christian extremists. As Victor Hanson impudently asks, ‘why if so many white Christian extremists are out there have so few been droned?’

How the Palestinians Trap Themselves and Drag the West Along, by Barry Rubin

Sun, 05 May 2013 21:26:00 -0400

How the Palestinians Trap Themselves and Drag the West Along, by Barry Rubin:

It is amazing how many massive revelations pass people by completely. Consider this new gleaning from the British Archives from early 1948, which sheds much light on current events. British officials in the Palestine Mandate were reporting as follows:

”The [Palestine] Arabs have suffered a series of overwhelming defeats….”Jewish victories … have reduced Arab morale to zero and, following the cowardly example of their inept leaders, they are fleeing from the mixed areas in their thousands. It is now obvious that the only hope of regaining their position lies in the regular armies of the Arab states.”

This is confirmation from hostile British official sources of what Israel and its supporters have been saying for 60 years: that the origin of the Palestinian Arab refugee problem was due to the actions of the Palestinian Arabs themselves: first, their leaders decision to reject the partition into Arab and Jewish states, then their decision to go to war, and then their disorganization and poor leadership. The British Foreign Office even uses the word, “cowardice.”

Some things have changed since then; many have not. Today, as in 1948, the Zionist side is more eager for the existences of an independent Palestinian state living in peace inside permanent borders than is the Palestinian Arab leadership.

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Sun, 05 May 2013 09:56:54 -0400

Column One: Dershowitz and tragedy, by Caroline Glick

Thu, 02 May 2013 21:24:39 -0400

Column One: Dershowitz and tragedy, by Caroline Glick:

Over the past generation, we have been inundated by disinformation from an unlimited number of seemingly credible organizations whose aim is to discredit any development related to Israel that does not advance the positions of the Left. And due to the ubiquity of this disinformation, among wider and wider circles today the belief has taken hold that there is something fundamentally illegitimate about non-leftist Israelis and non-leftist supporters of Israel.

Since most Israelis are not leftist, and since the most outspoken supporters of Israel are not leftists, there is a widening belief – particularly among liberals – that Israelis, Israeli institutions and Israel’s supporters are illegitimate.

This brings us to the second reason that it has become so difficult for Americans – and particularly liberal American Jews – who viscerally support Israel, to defend or even understand the Jewish state today.

There is a Western tendency, most pronounced on the anti-colonialist Left, to ignore the nature of the Islamic world generally and the Palestinians in particular, and concentrate their attention on Israel alone.

Case in point is Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz.

Dershowitz is rightly considered one of Israel’s most outspoken defenders in the US. But like his fellow leftist ideologues, Dershowitz apparently does not think that it is important to focus on the nature of things in the Islamic world. Rather than notice current realities, he places his faith in his power to shape the future through his intellect and his willingness to compromise.

Gaza schoolboys being trained to use Kalashnikovs, by Harriet Sherwood

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:59:26 -0400

Gaza schoolboys being trained to use Kalashnikovs, by Harriet Sherwood:

Schools in Gaza are providing military training to teenage boys in a programme that a human rights organisation says is encouraging a culture of armed resistance and a new generation of fighters.

The school curriculum includes weekly classes in which boys are familiarised with the use of Kalashnikov assault rifles and other weapons. Instructors from the interior ministry’s national security arm also teach first aid, firefighting and the values of “discipline and responsibility”.

The course is supplemented with voluntary camps during school breaks, in which boys are instructed in handling guns and explosives. The Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, the Islamist faction that governs Gaza, assist in the training, according to Gaza’s ministry of education website.

It denies that real weapons are used in training. However, a video shot at the Gamal Abdel Nasser school near Gaza City appears to show students carrying Kalashnikovs and a boy firing an artillery shell at a mocked-up watchtower bearing an Israeli flag. Schoolboy Izzadine Mohammed confirmed to the Guardian that he had been trained in handling real weapons at a camp this year.

Koran (5:32): On account of this, WE prescribed for the...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 19:56:04 -0400

Koran (5:32):

On account of this, WE prescribed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killed a person - unless it be for killing a person or for creating disorder in the land - it shall be as if he killed all mankind; and whoso saved a life, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. And our Messengers came to them with clear Signs, Yet even after that, many of them commit excesses in the land.

Standard of living for Arabs in Israel in a 'different league'

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 22:13:50 -0400

Standard of living for Arabs in Israel in a 'different league':

Interesting article carried by Arab media highlights Bedouin Arab army trackers as ‘gatekeepers’ of the Jewish state, shows that Arabs have high standard of living in Israel

Continuing with the theme of debunking accusations that Israel imposes institutional racism and apartheid on the Arabs of the region is a story by the AFP on a senior Bedouin tracker in the Israeli army.

Lt.-Col. Magdi Mazarib, the highest ranking Israeli Bedouin army tracker, is featured in the story. He tells the news agency that compared with neighboring countries, the status and position of Arabs in Israel “is better…It’s a different league.”

When asked if, as a Muslim, he is bothered serving an overtly Jewish state, Mazarib responds, “The flag of England also has a cross on it, and the Jews there are fine with it.”

The article highlights the fact that, despite their Arab Muslim background, Mazarib and other Bedouin trackers are the “gatekeepers” of the Jewish state. It is they who guard against infiltration and who guide every Jewish-dominated military patrol defending the borders.

There are currently thousands of Israeli Bedouin serving in the IDF, and like Mazarib, they proudly lend their expertise and risk their lives to protect the Jewish state.

Interestingly, the AFP article was carried by the typically anti-Israel Saudi-owned news agency Al Arabiya, demonstrating that many Arabs around the region are fully aware that the claims of apartheid are nothing but a propaganda ploy.

Derek Hopper: Iceland is a Microcosm of how Europe Views Israel

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:18:39 -0400

Derek Hopper: Iceland is a Microcosm of how Europe Views Israel:

derekhopper:

Iceland made history of sorts last week by becoming the first European country to sign a free trade agreement with China. The island nation of 320,000 people can expect a boost in seafood and other exports to the world’s most populous country. In turn, China will benefit from having a new friend…

The Garbanzo Annex

Official PA daily acknowledges Israel's Hadassah hospital's treatment of Palestinians, by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

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The World's Sophisticated Hypocrisy Mechanism, by Ron Jager

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Itâs official: thanks to Stephen Hawking's Israel boycott, anti-Semitism is no more, by Howard Jacobson

Enough Said: The False Scholarship of Edward Said, by Joshua Muravchik

"A Land without a People for a People without a Land" by Diana Muir

Origins of the Phrase

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Juan Cole loses head, by Martin Kramer

France thanks Sephardic Jews for chocolate, 500 years too late, By Rebecca Benhamou

Israeli Settlement Facts and Falsehoods

The Pleasures of Anti-Semitism (by Eve Garrard)

Information Cancer, by Richard Fernandez

How the Palestinians Trap Themselves and Drag the West Along, by Barry Rubin

Photo

Column One: Dershowitz and tragedy, by Caroline Glick

Gaza schoolboys being trained to use Kalashnikovs, by Harriet Sherwood

Koran (5:32): On account of this, WE prescribed for the...

Standard of living for Arabs in Israel in a 'different league'

Derek Hopper: Iceland is a Microcosm of how Europe Views Israel

Itâs official: thanks to Stephen Hawking's Israel boycott, anti-Semitism is no more, by Howard Jacobson