From Ian:
UNfriend: The Case for Israel Pulling out of the United Nations
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly last week took place in the Western world’s epicenter for the promotion, codification, and implementation of institutional anti-Semitism.
After all, it is no coincidence that behind every conflict Israel has ever fought there has been a failed United Nations resolution.
Simply scrape the gloss off the noble sentiments expressed in the Charter of the United Nations and you will discover that the world body’s Near East policy has from its inception fanned the flames of Arab nationalism, perpetuating regional conflicts that have effectively preserved a status quo sympathetic to authoritarian Arab regimes, at the expense of Israeli security and sovereignty.
The die was cast by Great Britain, which had occupied modern-day Israel from the end of the First World War until the 1947 UN partition. The European-based realpolitik that catered to Arab nationalism and authoritarian rule came at the expense of historical Jewish claims and contemporary Jewish interests.
Hillel Neuer, Director of UN Watch, Says UN Human Rights Council "Has the Power to Shame Abusers of Human Rights"
The UN Human Rights Council has been too welcoming to countries that abuse human rights, yet the inter-governmental body still “has the power to shame abusers of human rights,” Hillel C. Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said in a talk at the University of Michigan Law School.
“I've witnessed some of the most vicious tyrannies using every arrow in their quiver, every tool in their toolbox, to prevent their countries from being named in a resolution, from being targeted in an investigation, even to be so much as named on a watchlist—these countries will pull out all the stops, using all their political, economic, military influence, to ensure that they’re never named at all,” Neuer said in the talk on Oct. 1, presented by Jewish Law Students Association.
“Countries do not want to be shamed on the international stage—even powerful countries like China. … It harms their international prestige, it erodes their international standing, it can have economic and political consequences.”
EU walks out on anti-Israel UN debate * Arab states outraged * Hillel Neuer cheers "act for justice"
Caroline Glick: Israel bashers’ phony contrition
Dr. Richard Horton, the editor of the English medical journal The Lancet, was not transformed by his visit to Israel last week.
Horton came to Israel last week the guest of Rambam Medical Center in a bid to dig himself out of the hole he dug himself into. On August 19 Horton published a 1,600-word letter criminalizing Israel. In it, Israel was accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The authors called for a boycott of Israel, including Israeli academia. Since its publication on Lancet’s website, the letter has garnered 20,000 signatures.
The letter made no mention of the fact that the war this summer was initiated by Hamas through its illegal missile, mortar and rocket offensive against Israeli population centers. The esteemed medical professionals who wrote the letter failed to mention that Hamas’s operational headquarters was located in Shifa hospital in Gaza. And of course, they ignored the underlying fact that Hamas’s entire campaign against Israel was a crime against humanity.
Immediately following its publication, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the head of NGO Monitor, exposed that the letter’s principal authors are frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Semites. Dr. Paola Manduca and Dr. Swee Ang disseminated a video entitled, CNN, Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix. It was produced by the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke.
As Britain’s Telegraph reported, in disseminating the video, Ang exhorted her audience to understand that the Jewish threat outlined in the video is a threat to humanity. In her words, it “is not about Palestine – it is about all of us!” For her part, as the Telegraph reported, Manduca has accused Israel of responsibility for the Boston Marathon bombing. And she disseminated an article comparing Israel to a “strangler fig,” which as the Telegraph explained, “grows around other trees and takes their sunlight, often resulting in the deaths of the original trees.”
Senior Israeli scientist resigns over Lancet’s Gaza letter
A senior Israeli scientist has resigned from an advisory board of prestigious medical journal ‘Lancet’ and accused the editor of publishing an open letter criticising Israel despite knowing that the authors had conflicts of interest.
Professor Eli Pollak, Sam and Ayala Zacks, Professorial Chair and Chairman of the Chemical Physics Department at the Weizmann Institute of Science (pictured), told bosses at publishing giant Elsevier that he was resigning as a member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Chemical Physics.
In his resignation letter to the publisher’s chairman, chief executive and vice-president, Pollak said he felt saddened that he could no longer lend his name “to an organisation which has failed to uphold minimal ethical standards”.
What Jimmy Carter knows about the Arabs missing peace opportunities
The Anti-Zionist Marxist left has always contended that Israel fought the Six Day War in 1967 for conquest, and not because of Egypt’s provocative moves during April and May of that year. Therefore, anti-Zionist rhetoric insists Israel’s only motives were expansionist and imperialistic.
Of course, their common selective historical view prevents them from remembering Egypt in '79, Jordan in '94 and the Palestinians in 2000 which Arafat rejected, not Israel.
Perhaps because of their agenda to destroy Israel, they would be more inclined to believe one of their own.
There is a Youtube video of a 2007 conversation between Allen Gregg and Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter at the International Toronto Film Festival for the North American premiere of “Jimmy Carter, Man from Plains,” in which he said the first time he visited Israel in 1972 the “presumption was from all the Israeli leaders is that ‘we are going to withdraw from all of the occupied territories and have peace with our neighbors.’”
That just does not jive with the standard Marxist/Muslim arguments about Israel’s expanionist motives for the Six Day War.
IDF chief initially opposed 1976 Entebbe rescue
In the preliminary military assessments ahead of the 1976 Operation Entebbe, then-IDF chief of staff Motta Gur initially voiced opposition to the mission, citing insufficient intelligence, according to newly declassified transcripts published by Channel 2 Monday.
In the conversation between defense minister Shimon Peres and various military officials in the lead-up to the operation, the officers differed on whether it would be successful; expressed concerns about security leaks; and referenced the unlikelihood that a Mossad agent would be able to penetrate the Ugandan forces and gather information.
During the discussion, Gur said the campaign is “not child’s play,” and added that “if there is no intelligence for the mission, there will be no mission.
“There are risks that we take, and there are risks that we don’t take,” he continued.
“If you read my books, you’ll see that I have fantasies as much as the next person, [but] that is [reserved] for dogs, not for the army,” he added, referencing his own novel Azeet, Paratrooper Dog.
Carlos the Jackal to face trial for 1974 Paris attack
Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan who became a symbol of Cold War terrorism, is facing a new trial.
A French court has ordered Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, to stand trial over a 1974 grenade attack on Paris’ Left Bank that killed two people and injured more than 30. He is serving two life sentences for other deadly attacks in the 1970s and 1980s.
An association of victims’ families released the indictment Tuesday. The families have fought for years to see Ramirez tried for the 1974 attack.
Judge Rubinstein: Free Pollard
Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, who is in Washington, reportedly issued a call last week to pardon Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence for spying for Israel.
According to a report in the leftist newspaper Haaretz, Rubinstein said Israelis were responsible for most of the errors made in the affair, but also accused Americans for some of the mistakes.
The Haaretz report alleged that the judge's remarks may constitute an infraction of the ethical guidelines for judges.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asked President Barack Obama at their meeting last week that the White House consider the release of Jonathan Pollard from prison.
US prisons bureau changes Jonathan Pollard status to ‘life’
The US Bureau of Prisons changed Jonathan Pollard’s release date on its website from “Nov. 15 2015” to “Life.”
A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons was unable Monday to explain the change on the bureau’s “inmate locator,” which he confirmed occurred recently.
Under sentencing guidelines in place in 1987 when Pollard, a former US Navy analyst, got his life sentence for spying for Israel, he is eligible for automatic parole consideration on Nov. 21 of next year, but that does not guarantee a release, said Ed Ross, the spokesman.
“There has been no status change,” Ross said, describing the change as “administrative.”
Pollard’s wife, Esther, told the Jerusalem Post she was gratified at the change, saying the earlier status lent credence to the erroneous argument that he was likely to be released next year, and undercut efforts to get President Obama to commute Pollard’s sentence.
Summer in Paris
At perhaps 600,000-strong (recent estimates place it lower), the French Jewish community accounts for fully half of the Jews presently living in the European Union. But if France’s Jewish population stands out for sheer size, its Muslim population is at least ten times greater, anywhere from six million to perhaps as high as eight million: easily the largest such concentration in the EU, and constituting about 12 percent of the total French population (and a much higher percentage of France’s younger generation). Like most of France’s Jews since the 1950s, French Muslims immigrated principally from the country’s ex-colonies in the Maghreb—Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco—augmented later by Muslims from West Africa as well as from Turkey and Iran.
These immigrants and their progeny have proved particularly receptive to anti-Semitic as well as anti-Israel propaganda and incitement. Things have grown progressively worse in this respect ever since the onset of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000 and the growth of a massive Muslim presence in Europe, but there is a prehistory here that is now largely forgotten. French (and European) Jews first became victims of Arab rage against Israel between 1979 and 1983, when Palestinian groups and their local allies carried out a campaign of terrorist attacks.
Chloe Valdary: How to Defend Israel on College Campuses
This display had all the right words and touched all the right nerves. The objective was clear: Exploit the compassion of impressionable students passing by who would assume the information they were receiving was valid and who would not have time to question it.
Immediately my thoughts began to race. How would we respond to this? Should we even respond to this? Should we fill the grass with some symbol representing the number of rockets launched at Israel? The number of Jews killed in Intifadas? Place a sign next to the display saying Hamas killed these children?
I was going frantic. Surely the situation called for some sort of response. I called my friends and my mentors. How could we stop this propaganda from spreading on my campus?
It took me some hours later to figure out that everything I learned this past summer interning for CAMERA had taught me that it was in these moments that one needed to pause. And breathe. What seemed to last an eternity was but for a moment. It was fleeting.
This political demonstration would come and go. This too would pass. What mattered was not them but what we did with our own demonstrations. That we did not calibrate our projects to respond to them — giving them credence in the process — but to educate the greater campus community, to expose SJP on our own terms, and to transcend this tired conversation rooted in tit-for-tat maneuvers.
Palestinian activist groups accused of attempting to influence jury
We have frequently reported on the aggressive protest tactics of anti-Israel groups.
According to a motion filed in federal court in Detroit, some of those groups allegedly have crossed a line, or plan to cross a line, from legitimate and protected protest into improperly trying to influence the jury in the upcoming trial of Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, who is accused of lying on her naturalization application by failing to disclose terrorist connections.
The Motion for Anonymous Jury (full embed at bottom of post) spells out the allegations against the protest groups. The Featured image is from that filing, showing protesters outside the courthouse.
Two Additional Swastikas Painted On Emory Univ. Campus
Emory Students for Israel, the pro-Israel group on campus, issued a strong-worded condemnation of the acts.
"Emory Students for Israel strongly condemns the recent events, during which swastikas were spray-painted on the AEPI fraternity house and in front of the KA fraternity house. The swastika is symbolic of the strategic murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis several decades ago," the group wrote. "Emory Students for Israel would like to thank Emory University President, Jim Wagner and Student Government President, Jon Darby for their condemnation of these hateful crimes and solidarity with Emory’s Jewish community."
According to Business Insider, "the second set of swastikas was also found by AEPi members. The Emory KA house is diagonally across the street from AEPi."
Financial Giant SWIFT Rejects Israel Sanctions Call
SWIFT, the Belgium-based financial transfer services giant, announced on Monday that it has received calls to disconnect Israel from its network - calls by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which it will ignore.
The massive system, whose name stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, and which connects over 10,500 banks, financial institutions and corporations in over 200 countries, addressed the issue in a statement on its website Monday.
"SWIFT and its stakeholders have received calls to disconnect institutions and entire countries from its network - most recently Israel and Russia," read the message.
The financial giant stated it "is a neutral global cooperative company set up under Belgian law," and therefore "will not make unilateral decisions to disconnect institutions from its network as a result of political pressure."
Richard Millett: Good Jew urgently needed for Liberal Democrat conference in Glasgow.
It is party conference season. There are only seven months to go to the general election and while the National Health Service, the economy and immigration will be important to most parties “Palestine” will be more important to the Liberal Democrats as they try to win votes at the expense of Israel and, more specifically, British Jews.
They will soon be planning their Mezuzah leaflets. There is no political party that fights an election more viciously than the Lib Dems., and Mezuzah leaflets are widely used by them to ensure that no Jewish house gets one of their “pro-Palestinian” leaflets which is full of anti-Israel propaganda.
This is the party that produced Chris Davies MEP who told a Jewish voter that he hoped she enjoyed “wallowing in her own filth”.
This is the party that produced Baroness Jenny Tonge who, inter alia, adores Hamas leader Ismail Haniya.
NPR Clarifies Claim That Israel "Helped" in Shatila Massacre
Regarding the Shatila misrepresentation, the Israeli Kahan commission found that Israeli figures held "indirect responsibility" for not anticipating that the Phalangists would massacre the Palestinians. A federal jury in New York concured with this conclusion. The jury found that Time Magazine defamed Ariel Sharon with false information when they claimed he "consciously intended" the killing of civilians in the camps.
It is a huge, untenable jump to say that failing to anticipate that Phalangists would massacre Palestinians is tantamount to "helping" in the massacre. "Helped" suggests that Israeli forces carried out killings; gave intelligence, arms or other support to facilitate the killings; or sanctioned the killings by the Christian forces. But Israeli leaders and soldiers did none of these things.
NPR editors agreed, and immediately amended the language on the online article accompanying the broadcast.
British Policeman Running Online Shop Selling Nazi Eagle Mugs and Gas Chamber Signs
A British policeman is running a website that sells potentially lethal weapons as well as mugs decorated with swastikas and gas chamber signs described as "ideal of kids bedrooms".
The Liverpool Echo reports that PC David Woods of Merseyside Police is co-director of the Military Mart website which sells supplies from an army surplus warehouse in Ormskirk in North West England. Woods is a former anti-gun crime officer for the police force and is now under investigation after admitting his involvement in the website.
Galliano hired by Paris fashion house after anti-Semitic rant brought long absence
More than two years after he was fired from French fashion house Christian Dior for an anti-Semitic tirade, star designer John Galliano is returning to the world of high fashion.
The Paris-based fashion house Maison Martin Margiela has hired Galliano to serve as its creative director, the company announced Monday.
Dior fired Galliano, a British national, in March 2011 after he was filmed making anti-Semitic statements at a Paris bar. Galliano stated his love for Adolf Hitler and told people he believed were Jewish that their mothers should have been gassed. He blamed his outbursts on addictions to drugs and alcohol.
UEFA punishes soccer club Partizan for anti-Semitic banner
UEFA has ordered Serbian club Partizan to close a section of its stadium at a Europa League match after "racist behavior" by fans at a previous match.
Partizan fans displayed an anti-Semitic banner that mimicked the logo of British TV sitcom "Only Fools and Horses" during a 0-0 draw against Tottenham in Belgrade on Sept. 18.
Tottenham traditionally draws fans from the Jewish communities in London.
Partizan must close a section of its stadium when Turkish club Besiktas visits on Oct. 23, imposing its typical punishment for a first offense.
UEFA also fined Partizan 40,000 euros ($50,500).
Partizan issued a statement last month to "fully condemn perpetrators of this mindless act."
Neo-Nazi Waves Knife Outside Vienna Synagogue
The rampant anti-Semitism that has been ratcheting up worldwide spilled out in another incident targeting Jews this week, this time in the Austrian capital of Vienna.
A neo-Nazi biker stopped in front of a synagogue where he began to shout out anti-Semitic epithets and curses while waving a knife, reports Kol Yisrael (Israel Radio) on Monday, in an incident shortly after Yom Kippur which occurred on Saturday.
Police arrived to arrest the man, according to the report. It should be pointed out that the incident of neo-Nazism occurs in Austria, the birthplace of genocidal Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Corsica Synagogue Suffers Anti-Jewish Vandalism
On Yom Kippur eve, vandals spray-painted swastikas on the walls of the Beit Meir synagogue in the Corsica's capital of Ajaccio, in an attack which rocked the small Jewish community.
Corsica, a tiny island in the Mediterranean, is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the Italian island of Sardinia. It is a French territory.
Corsica's Jewish community today is relatively young and very small. Corsica has about 300,000 people, with a population of only several hundred Jews. In the past, however, it had a much larger Jewish community, but the vast majority left the island for France or other European countries. Thousands of Jews were deported from the island during the Holocaust.
Israeli firm is key to securing future networks: expert
Israel’s Radware is playing a key role in securing the next generation of networks, according to the people who are building that next generation. Neela Jacques, executive director, OpenDaylight Project, says Radware has been a big help in securing OpenDaylight, a collaborative open source project hosted by The Linux Foundation to encourage more companies to use Software-Defined Networks (SDN).
“Security is a key driver for SDN, and Radware has been actively participating in the OpenDaylight community to enable its security technology to work with a wide range of environments,” Jacques said. “It is contributions like this that demonstrate how OpenDaylight is becoming the de facto standard platform for the industry. We applaud their efforts and look forward to their continued contribution to the community.”
US firm Raytheon wins $149m Iron Dome contract
Raytheon, a major American defense contractor and the world’s largest producer of guided missiles, has won an Israeli contract to supply $149.3 million in Tamir missiles, the projectiles used in Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
The Iron Dome system was jointly developed and funded by the US. It is credited by the IDF with shooting down over 700 rockets from Gaza that were headed for Israeli population centers, a “kill ratio” of about 85-90 percent of the total rockets fired at population centers. (Most of the 4,500 rockets fired from Gaza fell in uninhabited areas in Israel or, in some cases, inside Gaza.)
The contract, from Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., is intended to expand Israel’s supply of Tamir missiles, according to a Raytheon press release last week.
Defense giant Lockheed to draw on Hebrew U innovations
US defense firm Lockheed Martin tightened its relationship with Israel Monday with the signing of a long-term deal with the Yissum Research Development Company, the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Under the deal, the two will sponsor and facilitate joint research at Hebrew U and at Lockheed-Martin research labs, one of which is located in Beersheba.
The collaboration will focus on basic and applicable scientific research in areas such as quantum information sciences and material sciences, as well as in other areas of joint interest, both parties said. Under the agreement, Lockheed-Martin will have the option to purchase exclusive licenses to use any invention or product resulting from joint research endeavors.
Last May, Lockheed Martin, EMC Israel, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba signed a deal to work together to ferret out promising Israeli cyber-security start-ups, and then help them develop their technology into commercial products. Under the deal, the companies will invest together and fund start-ups, which will work at EMC’s R&D facilities in the Advanced Technologies Park in Beersheba.
Biden: Possible 'Win-Win' Mediterranean Gas Pipeline to EU
US Vice President Biden’s October 2, 2014 Harvard Kennedy School comments on Syria garnered most of the media attention, but he also made an important statement saying there is a “new opportunity” for a “win-win” breakthrough involving Turkey, Cyprus, and Israel, and the construction of a gas “pipeline” from the Levant Basin gas fields to Greece and Europe.
Biden was answering a question posed by a Cyprus-born Harvard student concerning America’s evaluation of Turkey’s role in developing a de facto “non-zero-sum-game” alliance between Egypt, Israel, Cyprus and Greece concerning the “eastern Mediterranean energy map.”
2 scientists get $1m, world’s biggest alternate fuel prize
The inventor of a low-cost solar cell that works even when the sun isn’t out and a researcher who is using artificial photosynthesis to convert solar energy into hydrogen fuel are the two winners of the $1million Eric and Sheila Samson Prize, the world’s largest award for innovation in the field of alternative fuels. The winners were announced Monday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Science, Technology and Space Minister Yaakov Peri.
The winners — Professor Michael Grätzel of Switzerland and Professor Thomas Meyer of the US – are well-known experts in alternative energy. They were chosen from among hundreds who submitted ideas and projects as part of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation in Alternative Fuels for Transportation, a competition that began last year. The winners were selected by a committee of international experts who submitted their recommendation to a board of trustees, headed by former Technion President Professor Yitzchak Apeloig. The winnings will be split between the winners.
Ancient bath and Aussie carvings uncovered at archaeology site
Archaeologists working in the hills outside of Jerusalem uncovered an ancient ritual bath that offers not only remnants of Second Temple-era life in the area, but also those of Australian soldiers who visited the site while passing through during World War II.
“The finds from this excavation allow us to reconstruct a double story: about the Jewish settlement in the second century CE, probably against the backdrop of the events of the Bar Kochba revolt [132-135 CE], and another story, no less fascinating, about a group of Australian soldiers who visited the site” many centuries later “and left their mark there,” excavation director Yoav Tsur said.
During a dig at the Elah junction south of Beit Shemesh, archaeologists found “fragments of magnificent pottery vessels,” such as lamps, a jug and cooking pots, that helped them date the use of mikveh, or ritual bath, back to the time of the Second Temple, but the evidence indicates that residents stopped using it as a ritual bath during the second century CE, “perhaps in light of the Bar Kokhba revolt,” according to Tsur.
Bad News For BDSHoles: Robbie Williams To Play Israel
Yediot Aharonot reports that singer Robbie Williams is set to play in Israel next May.
While it is not confirmed, Yediot also reported the Rolling Stones were coming before it was confirmed. And they weren’t wrong.
Given the rave reviews he recently received from his Australian tour, my message to BDSHoles is “Take that!”
Barkat: Formula One an Appropriate Answer to Int'l Criticism
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat told Arutz Sheva on Monday that the city’s second annual Formula One is an appropriate answer to international criticism over Israel’s construction in its capital.
The race, which began Monday and will be held on Tuesday as well, features famous drivers like Giancarlo Fisichella, as well as four young Israeli drivers, headed by Roy Nissany.
More than a dozen teams from around the world are taking part in the race, including cars from Porsche, Ferrari and Audi.
Top Seven Jewish Messages In The Princess Bride (satire)
We apologize for the lack of sarcasm and spite in this post. Poll results* indicate that we should try something completely different.
*Which we just extracted from our fundament.
So yeah, the Princess Bride. Jewish stuff. This couldn’t REALLY be a surprise, could it? I mean, the author’s name is Goldman…**
**Or, if you prefer, Morgenstern.
1. Get used to disappointment
Not since the Garden of Eden has instant gratification been so available – and so expected. Faster downloads. Instant communication. One-hour dry-cleaning. Print-on-demand. Guaranteed pizza delivery within a dangerously short span. In short, you live in the most Edenic age in history, and even that’s not good enough for the entitle whiners of the generation. Stop it. Westley’s dismissal of Inigo’s insistence that he must know his opponent’s identity will serve you well. A healthy helping of frustration is just what the doctor ordered (yes, a Jewish doctor; you expected otherwise?).