AND YOU THOUGHT ZIONISM COULDN’T SINK TO THIS NEW LOW?

May 15, 2013 at 19:18 (Boycott Israel, Hasbara, Israel, zionist Media, zionist Slander)

A News Break …. (UPDATE)

Just received the following comment plus an email from one of the leaders of the Boycott From Within Movement in Israel, Ofer Neiman ….

Hi People
Come on!
Eli is being IRONIC. googlize him. He’s strongly opposed to Israeli apartheid

Ofer

Thanks Ofer.

The FORWARD is usually the most progressive of the Jewish Press in the United States, but today they proved that zionism has no limits as to how low they can sink in their bed of hatred …

Brief History of Stephen Hawking’s Hypocrisy

By Eli Valley

British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking waded into the Israel debate last week by announcing his decision to boycott an academic conference. Eli Valley offers his own unique graphic take on the controversy.

Got wheels, Mr. Hawking?
*

28 Comments

ZIONISTS LOSE AT THEIR OWN GAME ….

May 10, 2013 at 11:36 (Action Alert, Boycott Israel, International Solidarity, Israel, Palestine, zionist Slander)

It was The Guardian that broke the news that Stephen Hawking has decided to publicly support the BDS Movement by pulling out of a scheduled conference in Israel.

It was the zionists that tried to find any reason to deny that this was true, slandering the eminent Professor and lying about his reasons for pulling out of the event (a thing zionism does best).

Yesterday, they went as far as adverising a poll, also sponsored by The Guardian, urging their supporters to vote … the letter they sent out follows;

Dear friends,

Early yesterday, a story broke in The Guardian claiming that famed physicist and author Stephen Hawkings had withdrawn from his participation in Israel’s President’s Conference.

Whether or not his cancellation is due to political pressure, it has already been “celebrated” by anti-Israel activists as a victory for BDS.

While those who support BDS are in the minority, they are a vocal one. On The Guardian‘s web site, there is currently a poll asking users “ Is Stephen Hawking right to join the academic boycott of Israel?” Currently, about 2/3 of respondents answered yes, that heshould support an academic boycott of Israel.

I would like to ask that you, your community, and friends not just of Israel, but of open dialogue and democracy, make your voices heard. It may be “just a poll” on a website which has been far from objective in covering Israel, but it is an easy, and important way for our voices to be heard on this issue.

So far, the online reaction does not seem to reflect what I know to be a global consensus on the logicbehind boycotting the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Again, I ask you to cast your vote by clicking below, and together our community can respond to the latest round of vitriol.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2013/may/08/stephen-hawking-boycott-israel

Thank You,

Gil Lainer

Consul for Public Affairs
Consulate General of Israel in New York

BUT

It looks like they lost at their own game! You still have a few hours to vote YES …. if you go to THIS site.

Is Stephen Hawking right to join the academic boycott of Israel?

Stephen Hawking has pulled out of a conference hosted by the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Is he right to do so?

A statement published with Stephen Hawking’s approval said his withdrawal was based on advice from academic contacts in Palestine. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

64%	Yes
36%	No

Poll closes in 12 hours

1 Comment

HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO SUPPORT THE BDS MOVEMENT

May 9, 2013 at 22:10 (Action Alert, Boycott Israel, International Solidarity, Israel, Palestine, zionist Slander)

Is Stephen Hawking right to join the academic boycott of Israel?

Stephen Hawking has pulled out of a conference hosted by the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Is he right to do so?

67%	Yes
33%	No

Poll closes in 1 day

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Help us stop the zionist attempt to discredit the entire BDS Movement …… Click HERE to vote YES.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here are the lies being spread about Hawking’s decision ….

Dear friends,

Early yesterday, a story broke in The Guardian claiming that famed physicist and author Stephen Hawkings had withdrawn from his participation in Israel’s President’s Conference.

Whether or not his cancellation is due to political pressure, it has already been “celebrated” by anti-Israel activists as a victory for BDS.

So far, the online reaction does not seem to reflect what I know to be a global consensus on the logic behind boycotting the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Again, I ask you to cast your vote by clicking below, and together our community can respond to the latest round of vitriol.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2013/may/08/stephen-hawking-boycott-israel

Thank You,

Gil Lainer

Consul for Public Affairs
Consulate General of Israel in New York

Phone:

(212) 499-5000
www.israelfm.org

1 Comment

ALAN DERSHOWITZ HAS FINALLY LOST HIS MIND

May 8, 2013 at 12:52 (Deception, Israel, Oppression, Palestine, zionist Slander)

A couple of hundred well-heeled, mostly liberal MV vacationers went home enlightened about Israel’s extraordinary generosity toward the vanquished Arabs in the wake of victory, and the Fakestinians who pretend to be aggrieved about the loss of something that was never theirs. But Dershowitz has been getting away with and even thriving on this mendacity for decades. Probably the only interesting thing about Thursday’s debate will be to see if there are any new whoppers in the hopper.

Surely you don’t want this guy representing you at a trial …..

The three whoppers of Alan Dershowitz

by David Samel

Alan Dershowitz (Photo:Salon)

This Thursday, Peter Beinart and Alan Dershowitz will once again square off on the subject of Zionism at CUNY, a debate that promises to cover a spectrum of opinion from A to B. It is unclear exactly what new ground they will cover, having debated at least twice before, once at CUNY last October, and a few months earlier onMartha’s Vineyard. One possibility is that Dershowitz will use the occasion to unveil newer and better lies. There is no shortage of exposés of his breathtaking dishonesty, including my own modest contributions about his 2010 debate with Susan Abulhawa, his whining about the BDS conference at Brooklyn College, and his recent claim that the Israel Army has the lowest rape rate of civilians. But Dershowitz keeps the lies coming fast and furious, and someone has to keep up with the Great Fabricator.

Take this short excerpt from last year’s Martha’s Vineyard debate with Beinart. Starting at about 29:20:

There’s a lot of common ground between us. Let me start by giving you a little of my own history on these issues. In 1967, as you probably all know, Israel tried very hard to keep Jordan out of the 1967 war… It was a responsive war, not a preemptive war. The War with Egypt and with Syria was a preemptive war, but the war that resulted in the capture of the West Bank was a reactive war. Israel captured the West Bank, immediately it offered to give it back, immediately… As … Moshe Dayan said, “I sat by the phone. We put an offer out, land for peace,” and the response was the meeting at Khartoum between all the Arab countries and the Palestinian leadership in which they issued the three famous no’s – no negotiation, no peace, and no recognition.
At 31:20: Israel has complied completely with 242. . . Any country that has made peace with Israel has gotten all of its territory back. So one has to remember that history and think of it very carefully. –
At 32:00: The Palestinian leader at the time, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, said there is no such thing as the Palestinian people. The last thing we want is a Palestinian State, we just don’t want there to be a Jewish State. So there’s a history here.

Those who view Dershowitz’s opening statement will no doubt spot other indefensible assertions of “fact,” but there are three major whoppers that I have never seen made by anyone else.

First whopper: “Israel captured the West Bank, immediately it offered to give it back, immediately.”

Seriously? Israel immediately offered to give back the West Bank? Where does Dershowitz get this from? Apparently by grossly embellishing on a more modest lie he previously spouted in his 2002 book, The Case for Israel. There, on p. 96, Dershowitz wrote that Israel agreed to comply with the principles of UNSC Resolution 242, and he recounts the story of poor forlorn Dayan waiting for a phone call from King Hussein. This earlier Dershowitz version does not make the claim that Israel actually offered to give back the West Bank, or that Dayan was ever quoted as saying, “We put an offer out, land for peace.” The book cites p. 330 of Benny Morris’s Righteous Victims for support.

Putting aside the problems presented by Morris’s historically inconsistent histories, what did he actually say on p. 330?

Morris does claim that Israeli leaders thought that “the conquered territories could be traded for peace,” that Dayan was waiting for King Hussein’s call (but not that Dayan said anything about an offer of land for peace), and that the Israeli cabinet secretly offered to give up the Sinai and Golan Heights for peace with Egypt and Syria, who rejected the overture.

However, when Morris discusses Israel’s plans for the West Bank, it’s a very different story.

[Israel] “postponed a decision concerning the West Bank, about which the ministers disagreed. There was a consensus not to return to the prewar borders – which Foreign Minister Abba Eban, nothing if not a dove, was to immortalize as “the Auschwitz lines” . . . The majority eventually coalesced around the plan proposed by Yigal Allon at the end of July 1967: to divide the West Bank between Israel and Jordan . . . Israel would retain and six-seven-mile-deep strip along the west bank of the Jordan as a “security belt”. . .

In other words, Israel’s plan was to expand its width into Jordanian territory rather than return to the pre-existing border, and in addition, acquire a 6 to 7 mile wide swath stretching west from the Jordan River, in the middle of Jordanian territory!

To recap, in 2012, Dershowitz claimed that Israel immediately offered to give the West Bank back to Jordan, based upon his own decade-old book that makes no such claim, which was in turn based upon a 1999 Morris work that explicitly stated the opposite.

Second whopper: “Israel has complied completely with 242. . . Any country that has made peace with Israel has gotten all of its territory back.”

The only two countries that lost territory in 1967 and subsequently signed a peace treaty with Israel are Egypt and Jordan. Israel conquered the Sinai peninsula and Gaza from Egypt in 1967, and built Jewish settlements in each territory. In the early 1970’s when Egypt indicated a willingness to agree to peace with Israel in return for its captured territories, PM Golda Meir dismissed the overture out of hand. This led directly to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and eventually to the Camp David agreement five years later in which Israel finally agreed to withdraw from the Sinai. This was not compliance with 242. It took another war to get Israel to part with the Sinai. Moreover, Israel continued its control of Gaza after the peace treaty. So Egypt never got “all of its territory back” and only got the Sinai not out of Israel’s compliance with SC 242 but after Israel’s initial rejection of the resolution’s principles.

As for Jordan, Dershowitz’s lie is even worse. Jordan made peace with Israel but did not get any of its territory back. It is true that it renounced its claim to the West Bank, but it assigned its rights over the territory to the Palestinians. If Israel, in exchange for a peace treaty with Jordan, had returned “all of [Jordan’s] territory” captured in 1967, it would have returned the entire West Bank to Jordan’s designated beneficiary, the Palestinian people. Instead, it has never relinquished one inch of that territory.

Third whopper (this one a double): “The Grand Mufti said there is no such thing as the Palestinian people. The last thing we want is a Palestinian State.“

Where does Dershowitz get this from? Apparently from his own peculiar powers of deduction. It is, of course, true, that the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, as well the overwhelming majority of Palestinians, opposed the 1947 UN Partition Plan proposing a Jewish and an Arab State, but the objection was to the Jewish State, where hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Palestinians resided. There was no objection to a state for Palestinians that was independent from the surrounding Arab states. There is zero support for the proposition that al-Husseini rejected the notion of a Palestinian State or the existence of the Palestinian people. With respect to the latter, Dershowitz might be confusing the Mufti with Golda Meir, who famously did deny the existence of Palestinians; people make that mistake all the time.

Beinart did not challenge Dershowitz on any of these lies, as conspicuous and indefensible as they were. In fact, at 43:40, he meekly responded that “I agree with some of that history. . . much of it was back many, many decades ago.” It was not only outdated, Peter, it was fictional.

Note Dershowitz’s demeanor, which he cleverly uses to bolster his fabrications. He casually recites this invented history as if it were facts we can all agree on, like 2+2=4. He throws in the reassurances that this history is “common ground,” and “as you probably all know.” In fact, such phrases act to promote unanimity of agreement with the fabrications to follow, since anyone who dares dissent from or even acknowledges ignorance of Dershowitz’s thumbnail narrative would be confessing to an embarrassing level of crudeness and lack of cultivation.

Does it work? It looks like it. A couple of hundred well-heeled, mostly liberal MV vacationers went home enlightened about Israel’s extraordinary generosity toward the vanquished Arabs in the wake of victory, and the Fakestinians who pretend to be aggrieved about the loss of something that was never theirs. But Dershowitz has been getting away with and even thriving on this mendacity for decades. Probably the only interesting thing about Thursday’s debate will be to see if there are any new whoppers in the hopper.

Written FOR

8 Comments

SLANDER: ZIONISMS’ LATEST TRICK

March 15, 2013 at 12:07 (Hasbara, Israel, zionist Slander)

Replacing it’s oldest trick …

Slander Israel’s critics as anti-Semites, shut down debate on Israel’s atrocities

Diaspora Jewish defense organizations’ calculated paranoia brands harsh critics of Israeli policy as anti-Semites because it serves their interests: What’s good for the occupation is good for Netanyahu’s Israel, which is good for the Diaspora Jewish establishment.

Larry Derfner

A screengrab of The Algemeiner showing The Sunday Times cartoon of Netanyahu building a wall on top of Palestinians. Photo by The Algemeiner

The British Jewish “defense” organizations are coming off a double victory in the cause of shutting down deservedly harsh criticism of Israeli tyranny over the Palestinians.

In late January this year they got an apology from the Sunday Times of London for a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paving a wall with the blood and bodies of Palestinians. They also got the Liberal Democrat Party to censure its MP, David Ward, for a statement he wrote in a memorial book for the Holocaust and on his website.

It went: “Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.”

Neither Scarfe’s cartoon nor Ward’s statement are aimed at any Jews except the Israeli Jewish public that is collectively responsible for what this country has done and is doing to the Palestinians. Scarfe focuses strictly on Netanyahu, leader of that public; Ward focuses strictly on the Israeli Jews who defeated the Palestinians in 1948 and those who imposed a military dictatorship on them from 1967 on.

There are no other Jews in that cartoon or that statement. No British Jews, no Jews anywhere but in Israel, where they are the hugely powerful majority that can and does victimize its Arab minority, and can accurately be accused of bloody atrocities, are in the dock.

Yet Britain’s Jewish establishment decided otherwise. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Community Security Trust claimed the cartoon and statement were anti-Semitic. They accused Scarfe of drawing what amounted to a “blood libe l,” and Ward of blaming Jews in general, including Holocaust victims, for atrocities against Palestinians. The Holocaust Educational Trust charged Ward with “Holocaust equivocation and anti-Semitism.”

Instead of defending their cartoonist and MP like they should have and telling the British Jewish defense organizations to stop slandering opponents of Israeli oppression as anti-Semites, the Sunday Times and Liberal Democrat Party caved in.

Following an outburst by the Times’ right-wing owner Rupert Murdoch, acting editor Martin Ivens told a group of Jewish community leaders: “The associations on this occasion were grotesque and on behalf of the paper I would like to apologize unreservedly for the offense we clearly caused.”

The Liberal Democrat party, meanwhile, said it ”deeply regret[s] and condemn[s] the statement issued by David Ward,” and ordered him to meet with the party’s “Friends of Israel” chapter to “identify and agree [on] language that will be proportionate and precise” when he speaks out again on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

That conflict got completely forgotten in the uproar, which is what the British Jewish defense organizations intended. They successfully made the case that the victims whom people need to pay attention to are not the Palestinians, as Scarfe and Ward would have it, but British Jewry, or whatever segment of British Jewry the Board of Deputies et al represents. The injustice that cried out for remedy, the British Jewish leaders insisted, was not the occupation but the hostility toward it, which one way or the other is the same as hostility toward British Jews and indeed to all Jews.

Not everyone enjoyed watching this spectacle. Eli Valley, an American Jewish cartoonist who satirizes AIPAC types and Israel, ridiculed the response to Scarfe’s cartoon in a visual display titled “17-Point Guide to Anti-Semitism and its Abuse” on the Open Zion group blog. I blasted the BOD and the other defense organizations in a post titled “The Israel lobby at its intimidating worst – in Britai n” on +972 Magazine, the group blog for which I write.

Mark Gardner, director of communications at the Community Security Trust, writes that he was offended. In his Haaretz op-ed, “Jewish critics who betray the struggle against anti-Semitism,” he accuses Valley of the same thing the cartoonist accused British Jewish leaders of: “abuse of anti-Semitism and Holocaust memory for political point-scoring.”

Gardner makes the same charge and several others against me, beginning with my having falsely accused the defense organizations of immediately going after Ward as an anti-Semite.

“[T]he closest we have come, after over four weeks of intensifying twists and turns, is an exasperated reference to ‘what amounts to anti-Semitism,’” he writes, pointing up the difference between accusing someone of “anti-Semitism” and accusing him of “what amounts to anti-Semitism.”

In the same vein he describes the reaction to Scarfe’s cartoon: “In Britain, we did not call the cartoonist an anti-Semite, but did say that his picture bore echoes of blood libel charges, befitting contemporary Arab anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate propaganda.”

And I thought you were calling him an anti-Semite. Silly me.

Gardner then brings in the murders in Toulouse and the anti-Semitic parties in Hungary and Greece, he mentions Malmo, Istanbul, Buenos Aires and other cities that have suffered violent anti-Semitic attacks, and for good measure he throws in the “legal pressures against circumcision and shechita [religious animal slaughter].”

Finally he asks: “What more needs to happen to Europe’s Jews before the Derfners of this world realize that our local Jewish representative bodies sincerely regard all such issues as Jewish – not Zionist or Israeli?”

Such visions of comprehensive, panoramic assaults on Jews are all extrapolated from a cartoon of Israel’s prime minister crushing the Palestinians, and a statement accusing Israeli Jews of committing atrocities against them and thereby forgetting the meaning of the Holocaust.

Gardner’s problem, and that of so many Jews in Israel and in Diaspora Jewish defense organizations, is that they don’t know the difference between attacks on Jews and attacks on the Board of Deputies of British Jews and AIPAC, and tend to operate out of what I call a calculated paranoia: They turn full-throated rebukes of Israel and its Diaspora Jewish lobbyists into anti-Semitism partly because they really are paranoid, but also because they know that their paranoia serves their interest.

Branding harsh critics of Israeli policy as anti-Semites helps the occupation thrive, and what’s good for the occupation is good for Israel, certainly for Netanyahu’s Israel, and what’s good for Netanyahu’s Israel is good for the Jewish establishment of Britain, the United States and several other countries.

It’s a shame: These people are going to bat for Israel’s subjugation of a people, for Israel’s wars of aggression to defend that practice, and they’re doing it in the name of all the horrors the Jews ever faced and at times still face. I don’t know anything more cynical than that. I don’t know any greater dishonor of Jewish history than that.

One last thing: On reflection, I think Ward should not have made his statement on the eve of Yom Hashoah – that’s a day that should be left strictly for the Holocaust and its victims. (Scarfe apologized for the “very unfortunate timing” of his cartoon, but not for its content.) The truth is, though, that the British Jewish establishment would have branded Scarfe and Ward as anti-Semites no matter when they’d drawn or said what they did about Israel. International Holocaust Memorial Day just made the job easier.

Larry Derfner is an Israeli journalist who blogs at +972 Magazine.

Source

2 Comments

ZIONISM HAS FOUND ITS ENEMY

February 25, 2013 at 17:13 (Cartoons, Internet, Israel, Palestine, zionist Slander)

Instead of engaging in self examination of their wrongdoings, zionists have decided to concentrate on those opposed to it. Who is a better target for them than our very own Carlos Latuff?

Here is their latest round of attacks from a site called The Coordination Forum For Countering AntiSemitism. Apparently these groups have the time and resources to spread their evil on the Net rather than attempting to rectify their ways.

The more exposure Carlos’ works get, the louder our message becomes. Listing him on hate lists only strengthens our cause. For this we are grateful.

Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff utilizes “Judeophobic stereotypes” in his attacks on Israel

Carlos Latuff

Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff was listed by The Simon Wiesenthal Center as No. 3 in its 2012 Top Ten Antisemitic/Anti-Israel Slurs for “slandering Prime Minister of Israel [Binyamin] Netanyahu. The cartoon shows Netanyahu profiting politically by squeezing votes out of the body of a dead Arab child in Gaza (the attack was carried out within 2 months from the elections in Israel).

According to the Wiesenthal center, during the November 2012 conflict instigated by Hamas against the Jewish state, the Brazilian cartoonist slandered Israel and her Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for doing what every world leader would do against the onslaught of rocket attacks targeting innocent civilians.

Latuff responded mockingly to his inclusion in the list by the Simon Wiesenthal Center by tweeting his “Thanks to Rabbi Marvin Hier and @simonwiesenthal for the award for my toons on #Gaza slaughter.” Latuff attached a cartoon depicting himself being “awarded” a third-place medal by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Wiesenthal Center.

In the cartoon (shown above) an aggravated Hier presents a beaming Latuff with a medal that says “3rd” as Latuff sits on a chair drawing an airplane indiscriminately bombing Gaza. Hanging above Hier’s right ear are two lightning bolts that Petra Marquardt-Bigman, a historian and blogger for The Jerusalem Post, noted are the symbol of the SS – an elite Nazi unit.

Latuff won second prize in the International Holocaust Cartoon Competition hosted in Iran in 2006 under the auspices of the Iranian regime. Submissions mocked the Holocaust, inverted it, or denied it happened.

Latuff’s award-winning cartoon (see above) shows a man against the backdrop of the Israeli security fence but given the appearance of a Nazi concentration camp. Instead of wearing the Nazi required Star of David for Jews, he is wearing a red patch the shape of an Islamic crescent. Latuff’s entry was described as “Holocaust inversion,” a “motif” of antisemitism, by Manfred Gerstenfeld.

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian freelance political cartoonist with an impressively large portfolio of work – much of which openly express antisemitic themes. Although Latuff claims to be only anti-Zionist, his cartoons have drawn criticism and allegations of uninhibited utilization of “judeophobic stereotypes.”

Latuff is of Lebanese Christian ancestry; in his own words he said he has “Arab roots.” He claims this Arab background had no relevance to his work and clearly it is his Leftist beliefs that influence his work but many of the antisemitic themes in his work appear to come from the Arab world. Since 1990 he has worked for a Leftist trade union (workers) press, Vapt-Vupt, the journal of the Workers’ Syndicate of the Federal Fluminense University (in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro).

In his antisemitism he joins other Arab Christians in their attacks on Israel such as Mark Glenn of Lebanese Christian descent who created an antisemitic website “the Ugly Truth,” and Mauricio Abu-Ghosh Parham and Daniel J. Jadue of Palestinian Christian descent who are predominant in much of the anti-Israel activity in Chile.

Latuff’s works have been posted mostly by himself on Indymedia websites and private blogs. However, some of them have been picked up and featured in magazines such as the Brazilian edition of Mad, Le Monde Diplomatique, and the The Toronto Star. In addition, a few of his works were published on Arab websites and publications.

Joel Kotek a professor at Belgium’s Free University of Brussels, in his book Cartoons and Extremism: Israel and the Jews in Arab and Western Media (Vallentine Mitchell, 2009) calls Latuff “the contemporary Drumont of the internet.” (Edouard Drumont was the founder of the French Antisemitic League of France and the publisher of La Libre Parole, a magazine that printed numerous classically antisemitic cartoons during the years of the Dreyfus Affair). Latuff is one of the more prolific anti-Semitic cartoonists on the web, with a staggering amount of work dedicated to advancing explicitly antisemitic political imagery.

Themes of Latuff’s cartoons

Zoomorphism

Zoomorphism describes the attribution of animal forms or symbols to characterize a human being. In a classical antisemitic stereotype, Jews are drawn with horrific physical characteristics. According to Dr. Joel Kotek: “To abuse one’s adversaries, one dehumanizes them by turning them into animals. In Nazi and Soviet caricatures, the Jew is often depicted as a spider or an octopus, perceived as an evil animal.”

Jews, or Israel, may be pictured as savage beasts and its leaders as demons, devils, and vampires. Jews are all drawn with large noses and small eyes. In many cartoons, Israelis are shown with yarmulkes (Kipot), despite the majority not wearing a yarmulke.

Latuff makes frequent use of the Jews as beast theme.

In the above cartoon, Latuff makes fun of the Israeli charge that its citizens have been targeted by rockets fired from Gaza. Yes, rockets are fired from Gaza but they are without explosives – of course, this is not so – while the Israeli reaction is overproportionate. Israelis, however, are shown as being religious though the targeted areas in Israel were primarily non-religious communities, which also had many children not shown in the cartoon.

The bestiality of Israeli leaders reached a high point in Latuff’s drawings of Ariel Sharon, previously Prime Minister of Israel from February 2001 to January 2006. The top two cartoons show Sharon as a devil and as a monster. The bottom two cartoons show Sharon as a pig and as anti-Christ. The bottom two cartoons also show the USA showering money on the war criminal Sharon.

In their 2003 Annual Report, the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism noted that Latuff’s “portrayal of [former] Israeli Prime Minister Sharon is reminiscent of the anti-Semitic caricatures…in Julius Streicher’s [Nazi publication] Der Sturmer.”

The cartoon above represented a commentary on the May 30, 2010 flotilla of six ships incident off the coast of Gaza. It combines both the cartoonist’s frequent claim that Israel has become a Nazi-like state (Note the Jewish Magen David on the Israeli flag is morphed into a swastika) and imagery portraying the Jewish state as a beast, with its tentacles wrapped around the flotilla – which is emblazoned with the word freedom.

Next to the flotilla cartoon, for comparison, is a Nazi antisemitic cartoon from about 1938 in which an octopus with a Star of David over its head encompasses the world with its tentacles.

In the cartoon above drawn a week after Latuff drew Israel as an octopus, he now makes Israel into a shark. The cartoon was based on the interception by Israeli Defence Forces of the1,200 cargo ship Rachel Corrie on June 5, 2010. The ship was purchased by the Free Gaza Movement in Ireland and attempted to break the Gaza blockade. The vessel was brought to Ashdod harbor with none of its passengers harmed.

Associations between Israelis/Jews and Oppressors in other societies

In Latuff’s “We are all Palestinians” cartoon series, various well-known oppressed groups in history and elsewhere in the world now are shown stating “I am Palestinian.” If you are a victim of oppression anywhere, then you are Palestinian as well.

The cartoons include African-Americans after U.S. Civil War, Tibetans under Chinese rule, South-African black people in apartheid days, South-Vietnamese civilians during Vietnam War, Native Americans facing U.S. Cavalry, and Natives from Chiapas facing Mexican troops.

Association of Israel with South African apartheid

Latuff makes use of the evil history of South African apartheid to claim that Israel is resorting to the same method. Apartheid (“the status of being apart”) was a system of racial segregation enforced through legislation by the National Party governments, who were the ruling party from 1948 to 1994, of South Africa, under which the rights of the majority black inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained.

Apartheid compelled Black South Africans to live in separate places defined by race, prohibited marriage and sexual relations between persons of different races, provided for segregation of municipal grounds creating, among other things, separate beaches, buses, hospitals, schools and universities.

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is clearly not an apartheid situation. Israeli Arabs are not segregated and have full civil rights. Those Arabs who live in the areas of the Palestinian Authority have established their own State institutions.

These two cartoons above show how Latuff links Israel to South African apartheid.

In the cartoon above, the State of Israel is shown as a park bench that is only for Jews. This, however, is not in any way accurate since 21% of the country’s population is made up of Israeli Arabs and they include 12 members of the Israel parliament and a Supreme Court Justice. Israeli Arabs are also employed in significant proportions as medical staff in every major Israeli hospital, some serve as soldiers in the Israeli army, and they are well represented as members of the Legal and Judicial professions. There are no segregated parks or other public facilities.

Holocaust inversion

The last cartoon drawn in 2002 for the series “We are all Palestinians” shows a scene from the Nazi-era Warsaw Ghetto, where a Jewish boy says “I am Palestinian.” The figure of the devastated Jewish child is transformed into a different one. Now the Palestinians are the ghetto-child whose fate is in the hands of oppressors who clearly intend his extinction.

The cartoon abuses, polemically, sensationally and luridly, the suffering of the Jewish people in the holocaust to cast the Jews as the evil incarnated in the Middle East. The ghetto wardens of today are not the Nazis anymore, but the Israelis.

For the purpose of holocaust reversal, all means seem justifiable to defame the Jews. The “Jews” are the “Germans” of the Middle East, the murderous invaders who attack as well – and foremost – children. Their only goal is the total extermination of the Palestinian people.

This puts an end to any possible dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. No communication is possible between the mutely murderous black wall and the helpless child. The only solution is a demolition of the wall and as the wall stands for Israel = Jewry, when all is said and done, the cartoon stands for the extermination of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.

Latuff repeats the Warsaw ghetto image in 2008 from the infamous photograph of the little boy who is threatened by an SS-man armed with a gun. Hardly any other picture from any ghetto has the same symbolic and emotional impact. This time he makes the cartoon into a closer representation of the original holocaust picture with Israeli soldiers replacing the Nazis and one soldier with a look of pleasure as he terrorizes a Palestinian child.

Latuff again uses the Holocaust as a backdrop for his attack on Jews for this cartoon published on Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2009. He shows a Jew embedded on the wire of a concentration camp with a Palestinian next to him. He makes fun of the slogan that Jews use after the holocaust that they would “never again” allow a holocaust to occur by putting “over again!” below the Palestinian.

In 2010, Latuff again draws a cartoon based on the holocaust by making the Palestinians into the Jews of today. The cartoon shows Palestinians being deported into the Gaza ghetto.

The Blood Libel and Infanticide

Latuff makes frequent use of the blood libel antisemitic theme and particularly involving infanticide. The blood-libel motif originated in the twelfth century in Christian England. It alleges that the Jews have a non-existent Jewish religious law that commands them to kill non-Jews. In today’s Arab world this staple image of unbridled hatred has mutated into the alleged quest for Palestinian blood. The blood libel sees Jews not only as murderers, but murderers who prefer to target children.

In the Latuff cartoon above we see the bloody Jews ready to cut off Palestinian heads. The blood libel also has Jews eating body parts.

The Latuff cartoon at the beginning of this article showed Netanyahu squeezing dead Palestinian babies for ballots. This was not the first time he used this theme as in 2009 he drew a similar cartoon but with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert cradling a dead Palestinian baby. Latuff suggests Israeli leaders kill Palestinian children because it is popular among the Israeli public and helps Israeli politicians get elected.

The Latuff cartoon above was posted under the title “Gaza Holocaust Has Begun.” While the theme of the cartoon is child murder, the title corresponds to the Israel-as-Nazi theme.

Latuff’s cartoon entitled “Baby Killer Zombies” manages to make the Jews into both baby killers but also into the beastly zombies. Their helmet is inscribed with “born to kill” so as to let us know that Jews are genetically killers. And we have the count of babies killed on the rifle illustrated by infant pacifiers implying that the killing of infants is the objective of the Israeli soldier.

Continuing the infanticide theme, Latuff in this 2012 cartoon shows Israel killing infants in Gaza and Prime Minister Netanyahu stamping terrorist on the bodies in order to justify their killing as being actually a war against terror.

Israel as a Nazi State

Latuff has drawn a large number of images comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. He shares this emblematic set-up of the Israelis = Nazis symbol with many within the Arab world who have used this topos since the foundation of Israel in 1948. It is published regularly in Arab newspapers.

Adam Levick, managing editor of CiF Watch, a blog that combats antisemitism, describes Latuff’s Nazi State cartoons as advancing “the narrative that Israel is a unique and immutable evil in the world. His work includes imagery clearly indicating moral equivalence between Israel and Nazi Germany, which he has explicitly acknowledged to be his view.”

‘Just following orders’ shows Nazi SS members compared to Israeli soldiers described as “born to kill.” Text in the shape of a Nazi swastika says: “Israeli soldiers are just following orders”

The above is a Latuff cartoon comparing the war in Gaza with the genocide of Jews by the Nazis. After what he calls Israeli collective punishment in Gaza, he claims that the next logical step for the Jews is to build gas chambers to exterminate the Palestinians.

In another Latuff cartoon, he makes sure there is no doubt that the Jewish state has morphed into the new Nazi Germany by showing the tracks of the Israeli tank shaped like swastikas. The Israelis are outfitted in Nazi uniforms.

Again we see Israeli soldiers dressed in Nazi uniforms using flame throwers against mosques and with the USA preventing the UN from taking any action against the killings.

Dual Loyalty and conspiratorial notions of Jewish control

Latuff makes use of the antisemitic theme that Jews have secret control of world leaders through their desire for world domination. Jews are said to already control banks, the stock exchange, politicians, and the media

Latuff in the cartoon above claims that the powerful Israel lobby has the power to silence or to discredit anyone criticizing Israel.

In this cartoon, Jewish control over the American government leads to a shift in the blame for Israeli “war crimes” on the presumably innocent [terrorist group] Hamas.

In the cartoon above, Israel is shown controlling Greece. On Friday July 1, 2011, the Greek government announced that it was prohibiting the departure from Greek ports of any ships, Greek or foreign, for Gaza. In the cartoon, Prime-Minister Netanyahu of Israel is shown throwing dog biscuits to reward Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou who was in office from October 6, 2009 to November 11, 2011, for this decision. Greece is presumably succumbing to Israel and its wealthy powerful lobbies.

Iran

A campaign is being waged by Latuff against any action that might be taken against the nuclearization of [peace loving] Iran. He sees such military action as being driven by Jewish power to influence US policy by shaping the debate on this issue.

In the cartoon above it is Jewish influence represented by the lobby group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) that has built a wall with an Israel flag to prevent those from being heard by the US Congress who object to the bombing of Iran.

In the two cartoons above, Latuff is showing Israel’s control over the USA as leading to an attack on Iran.

In the two cartoons above Latuff shows Jewish influence on not just the USA but the entire Western bloc of countries. It is Israel that is planning a nuclear attack on [peaceful] Iran and using the questionable assertion (as Latuff apparently sees it) that the Nazis killed six million Jews as justification to remove the threat to the Jewish State.

Mother Palestine

Another favorite theme of Latuff is mother Palestine. Mother Palestine is an elderly but defiant grandmotherly woman. She is a sympathetic figure for the Palestinians in contrast to the Israeli Nazis. She is not particularly loveable but defiantly faces down the Nazi Israelis and the lies of their leaders.

In the cartoon above, Mother Palestine takes on the image of a holocaust survivor with a concentration camp number tattooed onto her arm. But the tattoo number is 1948 with blood coming out of it to symbolize the catastrophe (Nakba) that the Palestinians supposedly suffered with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Here Mother Palestine sits skeptically to hear the proposal of Prime-Minister Netanyahu to have two states for two peoples. And of course in the picture we also have cheering both President Obama and a religious settler with his automatic rifle.

h President Obama and a religious settler with his automatic rifle.

These two cartoons show a militant Mother Palestine who attacks Israeli army vehicles and tramples Israeli tanks. The second cartoon was for the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe) on May 15, 2011.

In this cartoon from 2012, Latuff shows Mother Palestine spanking ‘President’ of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas. He is charged with garnering the support of the United Nations but not from the people of his own nation. In particular, this is an attack on Abbas saying that he personally will not take advantage of the Right of Return of displaced Palestinians. The key in the hand of Mother Palestine is the symbol of the Palestinian demand to reoccupy the present State of Israel.

12 Comments

‘A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS’ ….

February 18, 2013 at 07:42 (anti-Semitism, DesertPeace Editorial, Ethnic Cleansing, Gaza, Hasbara, Israel, Palestine, Photography, War Crimes, zionist harassment, zionist Slander)

… Yet, there was not a peep from the Israeli government or the ADL or the Wiesenthal Center labeling Swedish photojournalist Paul Hansen an anti Semite for his winning photo in the World Press Photo Contest. Only the ultra nationalist Arutz Sheva ran THIS dribble about it. Their report starts with ‘Israel is losing the war of images against liars who have set up an industry of blood libels ‘through the lens’ …. pretty pathetic argument in my opinion.

Let’s have a look at the ‘blood libel’ referred to in this photo; just whose blood is staining the shrouds of the dead children in the image?

Every zionist and his mother jumped on the bandwagon a few weeks ago condemning the cartoonist Gerald Scarfe for penning the following;

Our own Carlos Latuff ‘won’ third place for the following on the Wiesenthal Hate List of 2012′

simon-wiesenthal-center-report-december-2012 (2)

So we can gather from the above that images penned by artists or cartoonists are a no-no, but photographs are OK. Perhaps because the photo in question shows the anguish of the mourners and the dead children themselves. Makes one think that these crimes against humanity are truly the pride and joy of zionism. It’s not blood libel at all, it’s a true picture of the evils of zionism. Perhaps zionism itself is a blood libel against all of humanity …. food for thought.

12 Comments

TRYING TO LEGALISE AN IMPENDING ILLEGAL WAR

February 12, 2013 at 08:59 (Israel, Corrupt Politics, Iran, zionist Slander)

Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program according to all Western and Israeli intelligence agencies and unprovoked, “preventative,” “anticipatory” or “preemptive” military assaults are not only totally illegal but also can not possibly be justified as “self-defense.”

Jordan Paust’s Bad Law:
UH Law Professor Tries & Fails to Legalize an Israeli Attack on Iran

By Nima Shirazi

On January 15, 2013, University of Houston Law Center professor Jordan Paust penned an article entitled “Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program and Lawful Israeli Self-Defense,” which was published on Jurist, a website of analysis and opinion pieces written by law professors, lawyers, and legal scholars. It is clear throughout Paust’s piece that his arguments are neither sound nor based in fact, and unfortunately rely entirely on false premises and long debunked propaganda. Paust himself is a contributing editor to Jurist.

To begin with, the title of Paust’s analysis itself betrays both its agenda and its absurdity, considering Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program according to all Western and Israeli intelligence agencies and unprovoked, “preventative,” “anticipatory” or “preemptive” military assaults are not only totally illegal but also can not possibly be justified as “self-defense.”

And that’s just the beginning; the falsehoods continue to stack up. In fact, Paust reveals his utter ignorance from the get-go, writing – in his very first sentence, no less – that the Iranian leadership “continues to proclaim its desire to wipe Israel off the map” – something even Israel’s own Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor admitsit has never done. His understanding of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter (which affirms the right to retaliatory self-defense if attacked first) is bizarrely lacking, especially considering he’s a well-respected professor and incredibly prolific legal scholar. He joins the shameful company of Alan Dershowitz in this regard.

Paust goes on to (1) accuse of Hezbollah and Hamas of terrorism and serving as Iranian proxies, without ever mentioning Israel’s decades of international law violations and continuing war crimes and occupation or the fact that they are autonomous organizations that don’t take direction from Iran; (2) ignore all facts pertaining to the illegality of initiating of a “war of aggression” (the “supreme international crime,” according to the Nuremberg Tribunal); and (3) claim that Iran is violating UNSC resolutions regarding the cessation of uranium enrichment, a demand many have long acknowledged is ultra vires, itself abrogates the NPT and the resolutions are themselves illegal.

Apparently, though, these facts aren’t important to Professor Paust, who describes himself as “one of the most widely cited law professors in the United States.”

Furthermore, among the “facts” that Paust marshals to advance his argument that Israel could legally launch a preemptive attack on Iran is the contention that “Iran is publicly ‘gunning’ for Israel.” Yes, he wrote that. And he still has a law degree. And is presumably literate.

From there, Paust launches into a bizarre and wholly inapplicable “Wild West Showdown” analogy in which the (Israeli) “good guy” is justified in “shoot[ing] first” since he knows the (Iranian) “bad guy” is out to get him. It is “not necessary that the bad guy shoot first,” Paust writes, elaborating (for some inexplicable reason) that “the good guy could have drawn first once it was known that the bad guy was gunning for him and they were staring each other down in the street.” By way of trying to make this dumbfounding, Manichean analogy make sense, he explains, “Someone was about to draw first and, in context, the process of attack had begun and a right of self-defense had been triggered even though it was possible that the bad guy might back down and make this clearly known before the good guy fired.”

If this passes for astute legal analysis these days, it’s no wonder the United States has little to no respect for basic tenets of international law.

The analysis is so strained, based entirely on presumptions and assumptions with no basis in fact (only in Netanyahu-approved talking points), that Paust discredits himself simply by writing it in the first place.

In the end, Paust pines for a peaceful way out. His solution? That Iranian leaders “shift their attention to peace,…comply with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” and not build a bomb. As countless IAEA reports have demonstrated, Iran’s nuclear program remains peaceful and no nuclear material has ever been diverted to a military program. Iran has also never been found to have violated its obligations to the NPT. Its leaders, for decades now, have repeated denounced nuclear weapons as, not only amoral and religiously sinful, but also strategically useless and politically irrelevant. Far from “publicly gunning for Israel,” they have also dismissed any intention to militarily attack any nation, Israel included.

But you wouldn’t know that from reading Jurist.

*****

UPDATE:

January 17, 2013 - Dan Joyner, law professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, has written another critique (a far more measured and professional one, no doubt) at his excellent blog, Arms Control Law.

Joyner’s credentials are impressive; he is the author of books entitledInternational Law and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (2009) and Interpreting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (2011) and co-editedNonproliferation Law as a Special Regime: A Contribution to Fragmentation Theory in International Law (2012). He is also a member of the International Law Association’s Committee on Nuclear Weapons, Non-proliferation and Contemporary International Law.

In his analysis of Paust’s article, Joyner determines that Paust’s conclusion that an Israeli strike on Iran would be legal (given the enumerated contingencies) is not only “not very persuasive,” but also “actually quite dangerous.”

Joyner has previously addressed the legality of an Israeli attack on Iran, as well as the IAEA’s overstepping its legal mandate with regard to the Iranian nuclear program and reference of the Iranian file to the United Nations Security Council. The later article, written in November 2011, was published on Jurist.

Written FOR

2 Comments

PRO ISRAELI ‘OVERKILL’ THAT IS KILLING ISRAEL

February 11, 2013 at 08:16 (Hasbara, Israel, Palestine, zionist harassment, zionist Slander)

Because the sad fact is that far too much of the public discourse on Israel has been dominated and dictated by super-conservatives and ultra-nationalists and the billionaires who fund them. These are people whose visceral hatred for Obama has driven them over the edge, who view any measured or nuanced debate about Israel as treason, who are hell bent on making their observation that liberals are turning away from Israel into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And who usually know very little about the actual Israel they are talking or writing about.

The Brooklyn College BDS debacle highlights the perils of pro-Israeli overkill

Overzealous Israel defenders used a five-megaton bomb to swat a fly, and it blew up in our faces. But Brooklyn is only a harbinger of nasty things to come.

By Chemi Shalev

Ireland-Palestine Solidarity protesters call for a boycott of Israel

Protesters in Ireland call for a boycott of Israel, following the Israeli bombing of Gaza, November 15, 2012. Photo by AP

Far more Americans know of the Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement today than did a week ago. Many millions of people have been exposed for the first time to the idea that Israel should be boycotted, divested and sanctioned for its occupation of the territories. Many more Americans, one can safely assume, have formed a positive image of the BDS movement than those who have now turned against it.

Tafasta merube lo tafasta, the Talmud teaches us: grasp all, lose all. The heavy-handed, hyperbole heavy, all-guns-blazing campaign against what would have been, as Mayor Bloomberg put it, “a few kids meeting on campus” mushroomed and then boomeranged, giving the hitherto obscure BDS activists priceless public relations that money could never buy.

Rather than focusing attention on what BDS critics describe as the movement’s deceitful veneer over its opposition to the very existence of Israel, the disproportionate onslaught succeeded in casting the BDS speakers who came to the Brooklyn campus as freedom-loving victims being hounded and oppressed by the forces of darkness.

Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz’s article about the “hate orgy’ that is being co-sponsored by the College’s Political Science Department may have been tactically ill advised, but Dershowitz is a private citizen and is entitled to free speech, no less than the Israel-baiting speakers invited by the students. The same is true of the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman, who took out a large ad in Friday’s New York Times in which he reprimanded Bloomberg for “confusing the issues”, and tried to equate support for the Palestinian “right of return” with anti-Semitism, a point which may have been lost on anyone but the most informed and involved of his readers.

But the true tipping point came when attention-seeking politicians got into the act. When a New York City council member engaged in nuclear overkill by claiming that a meeting of several dozen students in Brooklyn is tantamount to “a second holocaust”. And especially when eager beaver municipal pols – emulating, unfortunately, far too many of their counterparts in Israel – thought it proper to threaten cutting off city funding to a well respected academic institution because of one single student meeting that they found objectionable.

The result of all of this surfeit and excess was a clear-cut, perhaps unprecedented PR coup for BDS and a humiliating defeat for Israel’s interests. When the New York Times and Mayor Bloomberg found it necessary to step in and publicly stand up for a decidedly anti-Israeli movement – whatever one thinks of their true intentions- that only a few had ever heard of before. When the “pro-Israel camp” found itself, not for the first time, portrayed not only as heavy handed but a bit unhinged as well.

The Brooklyn College incident, after all, is far from isolated. It is, in fact, symptomatic. The distressing tone and self-defeating tactics of the most vocal elements of the so-called pro-Israeli camp in America have been the rule, not the exception, in recent years, and they are also bound to backfire on us all.

This inflated and melodramatic nature of what passes as political pro-Israelism was evident to many Americans, as the New York Times correctly noted, in the dismayingly over-the-top inquisition of Chuck Hagel at his confirmation hearings in the Senate last week. Senator after senator found it necessary to extract from Hagel meaningless vows of allegiance to Israel and to press him again and again on the etymology and usage of the two or three words he may have used many years ago.

The Armed Services Committee devoted more time to Israel than it did to all the other world trouble spots combined, a proportion no less preposterous, frankly, than the comparison between a college get together and a second Holocaust.

But that’s the way it’s been over the past year, since the Republican debates and primaries and throughout the presidential election campaign: disproportionate, hyperbolic and ultimately counterproductive. Did Obama really “throw Israel under the bus”, as Mitt Romney repeatedly claimed? Did the fact that Obama failed to visit Israel in his first term – as Ronald Reagan before him during his entire eight years – really constitute proof of his undying animosity towards the Jewish state? Was there anything that connected the overwrought campaign against Obama to the complex reality of his policies towards Israel? And was it truly to Israel’s benefit that candidate after Republican candidate found it necessary to vow undying allegiance to Israel in a way that, in some cases, could easily have been confused with an oath of subservience?

They make mountains out molehills, carve Nazis out of Palestinians, evoke pogroms and massacres from each and every violent incident. They don’t acknowledge the occupation, see nothing wrong with settlements or “Price Tag” violence, turn a blind eye to 46 years of Palestinian disenfranchisement, regardless of whose fault it is. They recognize only one truth, their own, and view all the rest as heresy and abomination. By their narrow definitions, no less than 50% of Israelis who voted in the last elections for parties that support a two-state solution should be condemned – possibly by the U.S. Senate itself – as Israel-hating, Arab-loving defeatists.

This preposterously simplistic portrayal of Israel is bound to backfire. It is dishonest, and therefore self-defeating. It quashes disagreement and abhors true debate. It distances anyone and everyone who does not subscribe to its narrow definitions of what it means to love Israel and to truly support it, warts and all.

And it will eventually erode the genuine bedrock of support that Israel enjoys in America.

It will be like Brooklyn, but on a much grander scale.

And it will eventually erode the genuine bedrock of support that Israel enjoys in America.

It will be like Brooklyn, but on a much grander scale.

Source

3 Comments

FALSE FLAGS, HOAXES AND ZIO LIES

February 2, 2013 at 09:32 (Deception, DesertPeace Editorial, False Flags, Israel, Syria, zionist Slander)

Is there a difference?

Yesterday I posted a report from Ynet regarding a ‘cyberwar’ from Syria in retaliation to Israeli attacks.

Nowhere on news sources is there mention of this. The Israeli government has not issued a statement about this. Both are reasons to believe that the entire story is one conceived in the minds of zionists who are trying to escalate the situation with Syria up to and including a full scale war.

The above image is a word completely alien to zionism and its followers. There is no reason to believe the report I posted and I apologise to my readers for doing so.

3 Comments

ANOTHER ‘JEWHAD’ DECLARED AGAINST A CARTOONIST

January 28, 2013 at 10:23 (ADL Hatemongering, anti-Semitism, Cartoons, Chutzpah, DesertPeace Editorial, False Flags, Israel, Palestine, zionist Slander)

Carlos Latuff is not alone in his anti zionist works. As Israel continues with its genocidal policies against the people of Palestine, more works are appearing throughout the media condemning those policies.

But, Israel does not view these works as anti Israel or anti zionist, they view them as anti Semitic. This is one of zion’s oldest tricks …..

There’s a difference ….. as shown by Pete Pasho

Latuff’s image depicting a pre election, bloodthirsty Netanyahu won him third place on the Wiesenthal Centre’s Top Ten anti Semitic list’ …

simon-wiesenthal-center-report-december-2012 (1)

Just a few days before the Wiesenthal Centre’s list came out he was cited by the ADL for his works.

Other cartoonists rocked the foundations of zion by depicting the truth in their works as well, among them was Pat Oliphant for depicting a nazi-like soldier going after innocent civilians in Gaza. Again, anti Semitism or truth?

This week there was a new twist used by Israel, It is apparently strictly forbidden to criticise or condemn Israeli genocide on International Holocaust Memorial Day. The London Times of Britain ran a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe showing Netanyahu paving a wall with the blood and limbs of Palestinians. Once again, anti Semitism or truth? Apparently critics of Israel are expected to show some leniency on Holocaust Memorial Day…

This latest work is the ‘talk of the town’ on the Zio Websites. Surely a work that will ‘win’ Scarfe a place on next year’s hatelist.

Here’s what the zionists are saying about this latest cartoon (From)

London Times Cartoon Depicts Benjamin Netanayahu Building Bloody Wall

Image Comes on Holocaust Remembrance Day

An editorial cartoon showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall on the bodies of Palestinians and using their blood as cement was published in London’s Sunday Times.

The caption on the cartoon reads: “Israeli Elections… Will Cementing Peace Continue?” The cartoon was drawn by Gerald Scarfe, who drew the cover illustration for Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters has been a critic of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

The cartoon published Sunday – International Holocaust Memorial Day – is “sickening” and “offensive,” the European Jewish Congress said in a statement.

European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor called for an apology from the Sunday Times on Sunday.

“This cartoon would be offensive at any time of the year, but to publish it on International Holocaust Remembrance Day is sickening and expresses a deeply troubling mindset,” Kantor said. “This insensitivity demands an immediate apology from both the cartoonist and the paper’s editors.”

“Amazingly, as this cartoon was published days after the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel, underwent fully democratic elections, as others in the Middle East were being butchered by the tens of thousands, the Sunday Times focuses its imagination solely on the Jewish State,” Kantor said in the statement.

HonestReporting called the cartoon “a blood libel on a day when the millions of victims of the Holocaust are remembered.”

“Holocaust Memorial Day is an opportunity to remember the most appalling atrocities carried out in modern history. It should also be a day when the media remembers that Israel’s actions to defend its citizens bear no relation whatsoever to the genocidal crimes of the Nazis. On any day, this cartoon’s imagery is an assault on the real victims of genocide, demeans their suffering and insults their memory. The Sunday Times should be mindful that what started as cartoons in the 1930′s ultimately led to violence and unspeakable tragedy. This is a lesson that The Sunday Times has clearly not absorbed,” said HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams in a statement issued Sunday by the organization.

Needless to say, the ADL was one of the first to join the chorus with the following (From) …

ADL Slams Sunday Times ‘Blood Libel’ Cartoon Published on Holocaust Memorial Day, Calls for Immediate Apology

In an email to The Algemeiner, the Anti Defamation League has slammed Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper for publishing a cartoon “with a blatantly anti-Semitic theme,” which appeared Sunday, on Holocaust Memorial Day, and has called for an immediate apology.

Raheem Kassam, Editor of The Commentator which first reported on the publication of the shocking image described the cartoon as depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “large-nosed Jew, hunched over a wall, building with the blood of Palestinians as they writhe in pain within it.”

“Penned by Gerald Scarfe (the cartoonist behind Pink Floyd’s The Wall), the caption reads: ‘Israeli Elections… Will Cementing Peace Continue?’” added Honest Reporting which also reported on the image.

“The Sunday Times has clearly lost its moral bearings publishing a cartoon with a blatantly anti-Semitic theme and motif which is a modern day evocation of the ancient ‘blood libel’ charge leveled at Jews,” Michael A. Salberg, ADL International Affairs Director told The Algemeiner. “There is nothing subtle about the caricatured image of Prime Minister Netanyahu using Palestinians and their blood to build a wall to ‘protect’ Israelis,” he added.

Salberg called for an immediate response from The Sunday Times saying, “The Sunday Times should be ashamed and should immediately apologize for its gross insensitivity.”

The ADL also made reference to the history of such gross portrayals of Jews and their role in fanning the hatred that led to their slaughter. “This is the stuff which historically justified hatred of Jews and led to the wholesale slaughter of Jews,” he said.

CEO of Honest Reporting, Joe Hyams, added criticism of the publication, saying, “Holocaust Memorial Day is an opportunity to remember the most appalling atrocities carried out in modern history. It should also be a day when the media remembers that Israel’s actions to defend its citizens bear no relation whatsoever to the genocidal crimes of the Nazis. On any day, this cartoon’s imagery is an assault on the real victims of genocide, demeans their suffering and insults their memory. The Sunday Times should be mindful that what started as cartoons in the 1930′s ultimately led to violence and unspeakable tragedy. This is a lesson that The Sunday Times has clearly not absorbed.”

The Sunday Times of owned by News International which is in turn owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. In the past Murdoch has been recognized by a number of Jewish organizations including the Anti Defamation League for his friendship to the Jewish community. Murdoch has been consistently listed by The Algemeiner as one of the “top 10 non-Jews positively influencing the Jewish future.”

When reached on the phone by The Algemeiner a representative of the News International Press Office would not immediately comment on the cartoon.

UPDATE: The Sunday Times responded to The Algemeiner’s request for comment, issuing the following statement: “This is a typically robust cartoon by Gerald Scarfe. The Sunday Times firmly believes that it is not anti-Semitic. It is aimed squarely at Mr Netanyahu and his policies, not at Israel, let alone at Jewish people. It appears today because Mr Netanyahu won the Israeli election last week. The Sunday Times condemns anti-Semitism, as is clear in the excellent article in today’s Magazine which exposes the Holocaust-denying tours of concentration camps organised by David Irving.”

5 Comments

WHO SAID THAT PALESTINE WAS A LAND WITHOUT A PEOPLE?

January 18, 2013 at 11:41 (DesertPeace Editorial, Ethnic Cleansing, Hasbara, History, Israel, Palestine, zionist Slander)

“A land without a people for a people without a land” …. the mantra of the zionist movement, used to con the world from the very beginning that Palestine belonged to them.

I guess they never watched the following video, simply called Jerusalem 1925 …. watch it to see the people that lived there before Israel was created on THEIR land.

The commentary is in Hebrew but the images speak for themselves. The camera doesn’t lie, but zionists obviously do.

1 Comment

DOES HUMAN RIGHTS INCLUDE EXPOSURE OF ISRAELI ATROCITIES?

January 15, 2013 at 12:11 (Cover Up, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, zionist Slander)

Just one of many crimes committed by Israel…

Stealing of Palestinian land by Israel with the help of the west

Should non-governmental organizations (NGOs) criticize governments when the latter fail to uphold democracy and good governance? Should governments be accountable to the private citizens who are affected by their policies?

In democratic frameworks, the answer to these questions should be “yes.” Criticism of governments, whether by media or civil society, is a fundamental human right and an essential element of democracy, and prevents abuse of power. Likewise, democracies are expected to be transparent in their decision-making and operations, with rare exceptions relating to national security and protecting lives. In the age of Wikileaks, some argue that there should be absolutely no barriers to the “public’s right to know” about internal government proceedings.

BUT …. criticism of Israel is a no-no!

It’s even anti-Semitic according to some…

NGO Monitor is one of those ‘some’ …

For years, NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute, has requested key documents relating to EU funding of a small group of political NGOs that claim to promote human rights, and which has been exploited for anti-Israel initiatives. For instance, the Gaza-based “Palestinian Center for Human Rights” received a 3-year €300,000 grant and Israeli NGO “Yesh Din” is receiving €150,000 over 2 years for projects that seek to portray Israel and its security forces as guilty of “war crimes” and unaccountable to the rule of law. A different grant to the fringe Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, worth €170,000, was used to press a similar demonization agenda in biasedUnited Nations frameworks.

Ynet looks into this today in an Op-ed ….

Irony of EU funding

Op-ed: NGOs claiming to promote human rights use EU funds to promote anti-Israel initiatives

Yet, it appears that when it comes to funding political advocacy NGOs in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the EU considers itself unconstrained by these basic tenets of democracy.

For years, NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute, has requested key documents relating to EU funding of a small group of political NGOs that claim to promote human rights, and which has been exploited for anti-Israel initiatives. For instance, the Gaza-based “Palestinian Center for Human Rights” received a 3-year €300,000 grant and Israeli NGO “Yesh Din” is receiving €150,000 over 2 years for projects that seek to portray Israel and its security forces as guilty of “war crimes” and unaccountable to the rule of law. A different grant to the fringe Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, worth €170,000, was used to press a similar demonization agenda in biased United Nations frameworks.

And for years, EU officials have refused to provide details about how NGOs are chosen and about the result of project evaluations, under the guise of unspecified “security” concerns. In one instance, in response to a freedom of information request, the EU sent a disk containing a number of documents, but they were heavily redacted and all meaningful details were erased.

A recent European Court of Justice decision, denying a petition by NGO Monitor concerning this lack of transparency, confirmed that the EU did not provide the requested documents in a timely fashion. But, the court upheld the non-transparent behavior, permitting the EU to continue to shield its decision making from public scrutiny.

And, indeed, the evidence suggests that the EU has something to hide.

Secrecy replaces lofty principles

As mentioned above, EU officials either denied our requests for information, or obfuscated and dissembled. In fact, the EU’s impulse to conceal was so great, NGO Monitor later found that some of the redacted information was already available in the public domain.

Further evidence is a leaked protocol of an EU meeting on NGO funding from 1999, one of the only uncensored documents dealing with this topic to emerge from EU offices. The protocol shows an explicit and concerted plan to support NGOs in an effort to manipulate Israeli voting patterns. When the founder of NGO Monitor, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, referred to the protocol at a public event, a European diplomat attempted to silence him, claiming that the document was top secret and should not be the subject of public debate.

Finally, an independent evaluation of a global EU program on the “Abolition of the Death Penalty” noted the inadequacy of available materials on a funded project carried out by a Palestinian NGO. The evaluators concluded that “there are few substantive documents held (in Brussels) on file…It is impossible to make any useful comment on this project without more information.” In other words, EU secrecy prevented contracted evaluators from effectively reviewing EU funding, and may have kept essential information out of the hands of EU officials in Brussels.

The lack of transparency and public accountability that plagues the EU on matters of NGO funding is ironic. Democracy, good governance and strengthening civil society, the very values that the EU has discarded in denying NGO Monitor’s requests, are precisely the rationale and justification given for the EU’s financial support of Israeli and Palestinian NGOs. The groups receive massive EU funding to challenge government policy, increase accountability for alleged violations of democracy standards, and to petition courts on matters of public concern.

But, when it comes to the EU’s own activities, institutional secrecy replaces these lofty principles.

Needless to say, this is in direct violation of the EU’s guidelines on transparency, which recognize citizens’ right to demand transparency. They also mandate that “interaction” with NGOs “take place in compliance with the law as well as in due respect of ethical principles, avoiding undue pressure, illegitimate or privileged access to information or to decision makers.”

Instead, it appears that the EU is operating outside of accepted diplomatic norms. As opposed to promoting human rights and democracy, the EU is manipulating Israeli political processes by funding advocacy groups to lobby and engage in other forms of political intervention. In lieu of traditional diplomacy with the Israeli government, the EU uses NGOs to advance its policy agendas.

Until the EU corrects its transparency deficit, however, Europeans and Israelis who have a clear right to know how and why these funding EU decisions are made, will remain in the dark.

4 Comments

THE ‘ANTI-SEMITE’ WHO ISN’T

January 8, 2013 at 11:36 (ADL Hatemongering, anti-Semitism, Guest Post, Israel, Palestine, zionist Slander)

The controversy as to who is an anti-Semite and who isn’t one has become the most talked about item in the Progressive Jewish Blogesphere. Both the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre have outdone themselves in this year’s listings. These Progressive sites are helping to ‘Break the Silence’ daily.

The following was written by Mark Elf of Jews Sans Frontiers …. in case you missed THIS post, it’s a must read, as is THIS one.

The more idiotic their accusations get, the more legimate our struggle to liberate Palestine becomes.

After the list was published, a passionate debate erupted in German newspapers over what constitutes justifiable criticism of Israeli policies and what exactly defines anti-Semitism.

Jakob Augstein: also ran in Wiesenthal’s Zionist Olympics

In the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s top ten antisemites list there were bound to be some real cases of antisemitism. Carlos Latuff stood out in third place as the kind anti-zionist who you’d expect to be smeared by a zionist organisation like SWC. Carlos came sufficiently high in the hit parade to be noticed. He also has a very large anti-racist following. But there is another highly questionable case and that is Jakob Augstein.

Here’s Der Spiegel:

The usual suspects can be found in the top spots of the 2012 list of “anti-Semitic/anti-Israel slurs”: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is in first place, followed by the Iranian regime, which aims to destroy the state of Israel. Not the kind of list one wants to be a part of.

[note they stopped short of third place which was awarded to Latuff]

But prominent German journalist Jakob Augstein, publisher of the weekly newspaper Der Freitag and author of a regular column on SPIEGEL ONLINE (which is occasionally translated into English for publication), appears in 9th place on the list.

It’s a scandal. SPIEGEL immediately sought to find out what had happened and why Augstein had appeared on the list — but failed. It is a failure that speaks volumes about the methods and position of the Wiesenthal Center. At issue are absurd demands and emails that seem to stem from a different world.

After the list was published, a passionate debate erupted in German newspapers over what constitutes justifiable criticism of Israeli policies and what exactly defines anti-Semitism. Most journalists felt that the accusation against Augstein was absurd, with the exception of Henryk Broder, a former SPIEGEL writer and well-known polemicist. Broder, in an effort to illustrate Augstein’s lack of self reflection, even went so far as to liken him to a pedophile who views himself as a friend of children.

Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, seemed to put an end to the debate when he said that he had never had the impression that Augstein’s writings were anti-Semitic, and suggested that the Americans hadn’t done their homework. Korn said on the radio station Deutschlandradio Kultur, that the Americans were “pretty far removed, in a manner of speaking, from German reality.”

Now of course Germany has all sorts of issues around Jews, Israel and zionism so what’s a mainstream publication to do when one of its own contacts is falsely accused of antisemitism by so august an organisation as Wiesenthal? And for Der Spiegel there was another problem:

It’s a tricky issue for SPIEGEL. Augstein isn’t a member of the editorial staff, nor does he have any influence over the content of the magazine. Augstein doesn’t even write for the magazine per se, since SPIEGEL ONLINE, its Web-based sister publication, has its own editorial staff.

Nevertheless, he is the adopted son of SPIEGEL founder Rudolf Augstein. As heirs, he and his siblings own 24 percent of the SPIEGEL publishing house. We didn’t want to attack him, because we believe that the accusation against him is wrong. But we could hardly defend him, because every reader would expect us to defend him. Doing so would devalue every sentence.

But there was a possible solution: We believed that readers could form their own opinions about the accusations if we presented both positions. So we tried to organize a debate between Augstein and the person at the Wiesenthal Center in charge of the list so as to allow the opponents to argue their sides in detail. We contacted Augstein by telephone, and he agreed.

But the SWC didn’t seem up to defending its position:

It took Cooper less than 24 hours to respond by email. He wrote that he appreciated the “kind offer” and that he was willing to participate, but only under certain conditions. “If you wish to interview me together with him,” Cooper wrote, “Mr. Augstein must publicly apologize in advance for the statements that earned him his designation on the Wiesenthal Center’s Top Ten anti-Semitism List.” Otherwise, he added, he would refuse to “sit in the same room with him.”

Such a request is nothing less than a snub, yet Augstein reacted matter-of-factly when told about Cooper’s response. Of course he wouldn’t apologize for criticizing Israel, he said, noting that he is, after all, a journalist.

Since Cooper apparently finds Augstein’s physical presence intolerable, we thought the debate could also be held via Skype. The two men could sit in two different rooms, as Cooper wanted, and conducting the debate online wouldn’t diminish its quality.

Augstein doesn’t really like Skype conversations owing to the sometimes poor technical quality, but there was no getting around it. The editorial office sent Cooper the proposal, along with a plan covering its technical aspects.

In his email response to the proposal, Cooper was even more adamantly opposed to the idea: “I will not participate in any face-to-face, simultaneous ’discussion’ live, in the same room or digitally with Mr. Augstein unless he has apologized,” Cooper wrote (italics in original). Instead, he added, he would prefer to have a page for himself in SPIEGEL, apparently so that he could tell its readers about his accusations without having to entertain any opposing arguments.

The SWC are actually being more underhanded than simply dodging the debate. See this tweet:

It could be a withdrawal of the allegation but the link is to a Jerusalem Post article which pretty much supports the SWC.

All fairly standard zionist stuff. Allege antisemitism and then refuse to debate. The difference this time is that mainstream German media has come into the frame and traveled a long way up its learning curve in the process.

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THE REAL ANTI-SEMITISM THAT GOES UNREPORTED

January 7, 2013 at 18:46 (ADL Hatemongering, anti-Semitism, Hasbara, Israel, Palestine, zionist Slander)

The ADL, Wiesenthal Center and others of their ilk have been working overtime as of late documenting false cases of anti-Semitism, while the real culprits get away without any mention by them or by the press.

It’s no accident that the diligent anti-Semitism researchers have left out this data. That’s because they don’t see it as relevant, since the Semites who were attacked live in villages with names like Jalud, Mughayer and At-Tuwani, Yanun and Beitilu. The daily dose of terrorizing (otherwise known as terrorism ) that is inflicted on these Semites isn’t compiled into a neat statistical report, nor is it noticed by most of the Jewish population in Israel and around the world – even though the incidents resemble the stories told by our grandparents.

Tens of thousands of people live in the shadow of terror

By Amira Haas

Here’s a statistic that you won’t see in research on anti-Semitism, no matter how meticulous the study is. In the first six months of the year, 154 anti-Semitic assaults have been recorded, 45 of them around one village alone. Some fear that last year’s record high of 411 attacks – significantly more than the 312 attacks in 2010 and 168 in 2009 – could be broken this year.

Fifty-eight incidents were recorded in June alone, including stone-throwing targeting farmers and shepherds, shattered windows, arson, damaged water pipes and water-storage facilities, uprooted fruit trees and one damaged house of worship. The assailants are sometimes masked, sometimes not; sometimes they attack surreptitiously, sometimes in the light of day.

There were two violent attacks a day, in separate venues, on July 13, 14 and 15. The words “death” and “revenge” have been scrawled in various areas; a more original message promises that “We will yet slaughter.”

The day our grandparents feared was Sunday, the Christian Sabbath; the Semites, who are not of interest to the researchers monitoring anti-Semitism, fear Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. Our grandparents knew that the order-enforcement authorities wouldn’t intervene to help a Jewish family under attack; we know that the Israel Defense Forces, the Israel Police, the Civil Administration, the Border Police and the courts all stand on the sidelines, closing their eyes, softballing investigations, ignoring evidence, downplaying the severity of the acts, protecting the attackers, and giving a boost to those progromtchiks.The hands behind these attacks belong to Israeli Jews who violate international law by living in the West Bank. But the aims and goals behind the attacks are the flesh and blood of the Israeli non-occupation. This systemic violence is part of the existing order. It complements and facilitates the violence of the regime, and what the representatives – the brigade commanders, the battalion commanders, the generals and the Civil Administration officers – are doing while “bearing the burden” of military service.

They are grabbing as much land as possible, using pretexts and tricks made kosher by the High Court of Justice; they are confining the natives to densely populated reservations. That is the essence of the tremendous success known as Area C: a deliberate thinning of the Palestinian population in about 62 percent of the West Bank, as preparation for formal annexation.

Day after day, tens of thousands of people live in the shadow of terror. Will there be an attack today on the homes at the edge of the village? Will we be able to get to the well, to the orchard, to the wheat field? Will our children get to school okay, or make it to their cousins’ house unharmed? How many olive trees were damaged overnight?

In exceptional cases, when there is luck to be had, a video camera operated by B’Tselem volunteers documents an incident and pierces the armor of willful ignorance donned by the citizens of the only democracy in the Middle East. When there is no camera, the matter is of negligible importance, because after all, you can’t believe the Palestinians. But this routine of escalating violence is very real, even if it is underreported.

For the human rights organization Al-Haq, the escalation is reminiscent of what happened in 1993-1994, when they warned that the increasing violence, combined with the authorities’ failure to take action, would lead to mass casualties. And then Dr. Baruch Goldstein of Kiryat Arba came along and gunned down 29 Muslim worshipers at the Ibrahim Mosque. The massacre set the stage for a consistent Israeli policy of emptying the Old City of Hebron of its Palestinian residents, with the assistance of Israeli Jewish pogromtchiks. Is there someone among the country’s decision-makers and decision-implementers who is hoping for a second round?

Source

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DISAGREEING WITH ISRAEL = ANTI-SEMITISM

January 5, 2013 at 16:08 (anti-Semitism, Germany, Israel, zionist Slander)

Wiesenthal Center won’t back down …

The Simon Wiesenthal Center refused to back down from its decision. “Just because he is a journalist, we are not giving Mr. Augstein license to say what he wants and to hide behind journalistic integrity,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the center, adding, “His statements are incorrect and baseless.”

Perhaps it’s the Center’s ‘Hate List’ that is baseless … even the Central Council of Jews in Germany seems to think so.

Augstein published articles in support of the German poet and Nobel laureate Günter Grass, after he was denounced for being an anti-Semite last year when he published an anti-Israeli poem in which he claimed that Israel was a danger to world peace, Der Spiegel reported. Augstein wrote in an article that Grass was correct in his assessment and that he should be thanked for it. He wrote of the Iranian nuclear program that “no one knows whether or not Iran was working toward such a bomb.”

Inclusion of German journalist on anti-Semitic rhetoric list stirs criticism

Central council of Jews in Germany and others defend Jakob Augstein, who was ranked ninth on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric.

By Ofer Aderet

Jakob Augstein Photo by xtranews.de

What do Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, British soccer fans, a Brazilian cartoonist and a Ukrainian party all have in common? They are included in the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s annual list of “Top Ten Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs”, released last week.

While no one raised a voice of dissent over the inclusion of Ahmadinejad in the ignominious list, voices are being raised in Germany in opposition to the inclusion of one person on the list: journalist Jakob Augstein, editor of the weekly Der Freitag and a columnist for Der Spiegel’s online edition.

Augstein, step-son of Der Spiegel’s owner and founder Rudolf Augstein, was placed ninth in the list of top ten anti-Semites due to his anti-Israeli views. This wasn’t viewed favorably by many Germans, Der Spiegel reported. Some have called for a distinction to be made between holding anti-Israeli positions and espousing anti-Semitic views, expressing astonishment at his inclusion in the list for merely opposing Israeli policies.

The report released by the Simon Wiesenthal Center cites a number of quotes aimed at explaining why the center decided to include Augstein on the list. For example, the report quotes Augstein as saying of Gaza that “Israel incubates its own opponents there.” Referring to its relationships with U.S. presidents, Augstein wrote that “the Netanyahu government keeps the world on a leash with an ever-swelling war chant.” The report also cites Augstein as writing that “Jews also have their fundamentalists, the ultra-orthodox Hareidim,” who are “cut from the same cloth as their Islamic fundamentalist opponents.” On one occasion, he said of the Israeli government that it was insane and unscrupulous.

In addition, Augstein published articles in support of the German poet and Nobel laureate Günter Grass, after he was denounced for being an anti-Semite last year when he published an anti-Israeli poem in which he claimed that Israel was a danger to world peace, Der Spiegel reported. Augstein wrote in an article that Grass was correct in his assessment and that he should be thanked for it. He wrote of the Iranian nuclear program that “no one knows whether or not Iran was working toward such a bomb.”

This list of critical writing has earned Augstein the ignoble place on the Wiesenthal Center’s annual list, to the dismay of many Germans. “The choice of Jakob Augstein for ninth place on the list of the 10 worst anti-Semites is a serious intellectual and strategic error made by the Simon Wiesenthal Center,” wrote, for example, the influential conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Not only has a critical journalist been placed in a group into which he doesn’t belong, the nine other people and groups who have justifiably been pilloried can now exculpate themselves by pointing to such arbitrariness.”

The Central Council of Jews in Germany also defended Augstein. “I never had the impression that what he wrote was anti-Semitic,” Central Council Vice President Solomon Korn said.

Augstein himself responded with a statement that said he respected the Simon Wiesenthal Center, but was sorry that they were defaming “critical journalism” with claims of racism or anti-Semitism, Der Spiegel reported.

Source

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DEMONIZATION BY COVER-UP

January 4, 2013 at 08:01 (Conspiracy Theories, Cover Up, Humanitarian Aid Flotilla, Israel, Israeli Elections, Palestine, zionist Slander)

From an Op-ed in today’s Ynet, you can see how silence and lies can destroy an elected official or a legitimate Peoples’ Movement. This practice is not only prevalent in the ‘only Democracy in the Middle East’, but in Western ‘Democracies’ as well.

The attorney general should have acted more responsibly and declared that MK Zoabi was not involved in any illicit activity. Such a statement would have possibly hurt his popularity a bit, but it could have prevented a two-year incitement and demonization campaign against an elected official.

Cover-up led to anti-Zoabi campaign

Op-ed: AG concealed information that would have cleared Arab MK of any wrongdoing during Gaza flotilla

Sawsan Zaher*

The request to disqualify Balad MK Hanin Zoabi from running in the elections for the 19th Knesset raises serious questions regarding the easiness in which an Arab Knesset member can be delegitimized and demonized – to the point where she is branded a terrorist. The Knesset revoked some of Zoabi’s privileges following her participation in the Gaza-bound flotilla, and the attempt to physically attack her while she was addressing the plenum was the only such incident in the House’s history. In addition, numerous MKs hurled insulting sexist slurs at her – all due to her participation in the flotilla.

Most regrettable is the fact that those in charge of the investigation knew the truth, but not one of them, including the attorney general, told the public the truth about Zoabi’s involvement. While the attorney general did oppose her disqualification, he did not reveal to the public, the Supreme Court or the Central Elections Committee the information he had, which would have exonerated the Arab MK of all the allegations against her. Zoabi’s attorneys disclosed to the Supreme Court the details of AG Weinstein’s investigation after obtaining the information accidentally while working on another case.

The investigation conducted by the attorney general, who watched footage from the Mavi Marmara, concluded that there was no evidence indicating that Zoabi was involved in the violence that transpired when Israeli commandoes raided the Turkish vessel. A governmental committee headed by Judge Turkel also investigated the incident and found that Zoabi was not connected to the violence. The state comptroller, who also investigated the incident, drew the same conclusion. But the attorney general did not disclose these findings to the government.

During the Central Elections Committee’s deliberations, those who demanded that Zoabi be disqualified claimed that the MK expressed support for IHH, the group behind the Gaza flotilla. The disqualification clause bans MKs from running in the elections if it is proven that they support the armed struggle of a terrorist organization against the State of Israel. But in his response to the committee and the Supreme Court, the attorney general failed to mention that the government designated IHH as a terror organization long after the Gaza flotilla.

Zoabi aboard the Mavi Marmara (archives)

The Zoabi affair must concern the entire public, which did not receive relevant information from the law enforcement agencies. What should concern us most is the possibility that these agencies did not speak up for fear of criticism from the political establishment. The AG’s silence over the past two years and the failure to reveal relevant information to the Supreme Court and the Elections Committee must concern all of Israel’s citizens, but particularly the Arabs. In cases where incitement and the spreading of lies reach the level of revoking privileges, you may find out that the law enforcement agencies will not protect you.

*Sawsan Zaher is an attorney at Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. She represented MK Zoabi in the disqualification case

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WHERE HAVE ALL THE NAZIS GONE?

January 2, 2013 at 09:21 (ADL Hatemongering, DesertPeace Editorial, Ethnic Cleansing, Hasbara, Holocau$t Bu$ine$$, Israel, Palestine, zionist harassment, zionist Slander)

…. They’re in the graveyard (almost) every one …. (Borrowed FROM)

So what is a nazi hunting organisation supposed to do now? Since its founding, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has been actively hunting throughout the world for former nazi war criminals. It has become one of the most profitable branches of the holocaust industry, probably only second in line to the ADL itself. In an attempt to continue ‘cashing in’ ‘Operation Last Chance’ was launched in 2002.

But ‘business’ has been slow so a new scheme had to be developed …. why not create new enemies?

Why not make noise about everyone and anyone that dares criticize Israel. Why not refer to them as anti-Semites and ‘go after’ them as if they were nazis?? In doing so, it diverts the world’s attention from the ongoing genocidal polices conducted by Israel itself, including their system of apartheid which is gaining publicity via the international boycott campaigns. Israel is losing friends daily because of their policies. Ways had to be found to reverse this trend.

Among those ‘cited’ was our esteemed associate Carlos Latuff, first by the ADL, then just days later by the Wiesenthal Center itself. Needless to say, these ‘charges’ were highly publicized throughout the ziopress, the latest being the following blurb from the Jerusalem Post, one of Israel’s prime supporters of the fight to RID THE LAND OF ITS ORIGINAL PEOPLE. Here it is …

Wiesenthal ranks top 10 anti-Semites, Israel-haters

Here’s the part about Carlos; Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff was listed as No. 3 for “slandering Prime Minister [Binyamin] Netanyahu for doing what every world leader would do against the onslaught of rocket attacks targeting innocent civilians” from the Gaza Strip.

The article can be found HERE

Here is the cartoon in question, can you think of any other world leader that would do this as suggested in the article?

simon-wiesenthal-center-report-december-2012

Carlos prepared a petition which he requests you all sign and spread as widely as possible ….

In December 2012, the Simon Wiesenthal Center published a ranking of the “top ten anti-Semites of the world”, citing me, the cartoonist Carlos Latuff, as third on the list for charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s bombing of Gaza .There is much that organizations and individuals try to associate legitimate criticism of the state of Israel and hatred of Jews. Figures as writer José Saramago, the Nobel Peace Prize Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter has been taxed by their anti-Semitic positions regarding the conflict in Palestine.Enough of trying to silence the voice of those who stand up against apartheid imposed by Israel on the Palestinian people. Anti-Semitism can not and should not be used as a political tool. If you are against this manipulation, sign the petition and declare: NO anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism!

To access the petition, go to THIS site.

Getting back to the Wiesenthal Center, it must be noted that their own record over the past few years has not been a clean one. They have themselves been conducting a Lebensraum campaign around what they call the Museum of Tolerance. A Palestinian cemetery in Jerusalem was totally destroyed to make room for this. Is that the zionist definition of tolerance?

See for yourselves….

They themselves have been doing exactly what the nazis would have done. Perhaps they should look within their own organisation to find the real enemy rather than wasting our time the way they have been doing.

5 Comments

THE GRINCH THAT WOULD KILL JESUS AND MARY

December 19, 2012 at 14:52 (Hasbara, Israel, Palestine, Racism, zionist Slander)

With shame not at all and malice towards all…..

Oh…. but wait, there was an apology

*

How about removing the racist bastards that posted it in the first place!

Israeli embassy’s Christmas message of hate: Bethlehem Palestinians would “lynch” Jesus and Mary as “Jews”

Submitted by Ali Abunimah

Screenshot from official Facebook page of Israeli embassy in Dublin

“A thought for Christmas…If Jesus and mother Mary were alive today, they would, as Jews without security, probably end up being lynched in Bethlehem by hostile Palestinians. Just a thought …”

That was the Christmas message posted today, along with a depiction of Jesus and Mary,on the official Facebook page of the Israeli Embassy in Dublin.

The message drew immediate criticism from Gary Spedding, an activist with the cross-community Alliance Party in Northern Ireland, and a student at Queens University Belfast, who demanded that the embassy should “apologize for this vile Christmas message of hate and sectarianism.”

Embedded rich on Twitter

Spedding offers further analysis of the posting on his personal blog.

Israeli attacks on Christians and Christianity

The offensiveness of the message needs no further elaboration, but Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem will find it particularly galling given that it is Israel, with its wall surrounding their city, and other violent manifestations of the occupation, which has done most to strangle the home of the Nativity. Recently, Israeli settlers, with the collusion of Israeli authorities, have stepped up so-called “price tag” attacks on Christian holy sites.

Palestinian Christians living under Israeli rule also face widespread discrimination.

The idea of the modern Israeli settler-state providing “security” to Jesus is even more absurd and offensive given the contempt in which Christianity is held by some Israeli officials. Earlier this year Israeli lawmaker Michael Ben-Ari tore up a copy of the New Testament and, throwing it in the trash, claimed, “This abominable book brought about the murder of millions of Jews.”

For several years, Shimon Gapso, the notoriously racist mayor of the Israeli settlement of “Upper Nazareth” in the Galilee, has banned Christmas trees, calling them a provocation. “Nazareth Illit [Upper Nazareth] is a Jewish city and it will not happen – not this year and not next year, so long as I am a mayor,” Gapso said.

Finally, the notion that Palestinians would “lynch” Jesus is also a disturbing echo of the anti-Semitic “Jews killed Jesus” canard.

Unhinged

This is not the first time the Israeli embassy in Dublin has been responsible for messages that are even more unhinged than typical Israeli government propaganda.

In June, Nurit Tinari-Modai, the deputy ambassador, made headlines when she proposed a plan to personally smear Palestine solidarity activists – especially Israelis – to “humiliate and shame them” as suffering from psychological and sexual problems and imply that they work for Israel’s spy agency Mossad.

Update: Israel embassy claims hate message unauthorized

Following the outrcy over its hateful Christmas message (see above), the Israeli embassy in Dublin has deleted the message from its Facebook page and posted an apologyclaiming it was unauthorized:

To whom it may concern: An image of Jesus and Mary with a derogatory comment about Palestinians was posted without the consent of the administrator of the Facebook page. We have removed the post in question immediately. Apologies to anyone who may have been offended. Merry Christmas!

There’s something disingenuous and unbelievable about this. First of all, how did someone unauthorized get hold of the password or Facebook account of notoriously “security”-conscious Israeli officials? Perhaps there should be an investigation.

Early comments under the “apology” post indicated skepticism about the explanation.

“ ‘An image was posted without the consent of the administrator’ just doesn’t cut it. Are you running this page from a public cyber cafe?” commented Facebook user Zeeshan Shahid.

But of course the other reason the “apology” lacks credibility is that the social media accounts of the Israeli embassy in Ireland have a history of posting bigoted material.

Earlier this year, for example, the @israelinireland Twitter account made an Islamophobic comment suggesting that real Irish citizens could not be Muslims. “Ah yes… those Saladin O’Sullivans and Faisal O’Farrells… #Irish to the backbone!” the embassy tweeted to Irish Times journalist Mary Fitzgerald who had just published a story “on the fighters from Ireland who have joined the Syrian uprising.”

Embedded rich on Twitter

And, as mentioned earlier, there is the bizarre plot by deputy ambassador Nurit Tinari-Modai to malign Palestine solidarity activists as sexual deviants.

If today’s Christmas message was unauthorized, what about all the rest of the hate being spewed by Israel’s representatives in Dublin?

Written FOR

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WESTERN PRESS DEMONISING HAMAS’ LEADERSHIP

December 11, 2012 at 11:13 (Deception, Hamas, Hasbara, Israel, Media Lies, Palestine, zionist Slander)

Of course Zionists and Israelis are free to interpret Meshaal’s words according to their wildest fantasies and fears, but supposedly impartial news organizations like the AP never claim that by attacking Gaza and killing and injuring thousands of people, and destroying public buildings and infrastructure, that Israel is “wiping Gaza off the map.”

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff

When Israel says ‘jump’, much of the Western Press says ‘how high’? When Israel says ‘lie about what is being said by Hamas’ leadership’, that same press says ‘no problem’!*As Hamas gains popularity among the Palestinian people, both in Gaza and in the Occupied West Bank, the zionists have swung into ‘fast forward’ trying to demonise the Movement by attacking its leadership.

So here we have it …. first from Britain’s Observer; UK’s Observer adds “kill Jews” to Hamas leader Khaled Meshal’s Gaza speech when he did not say it …. that was on Sunday …

Then on Monday AP follows the lead with …

AP tries to put “wipe Israel off the map” into Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal’s mouth
*By Ali Abunimah
*

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal is driven to the Rafah border crossing by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh at the end of Meshaal’s first ever visit to Gaza, on 10 December 2012.

(Mohammed Ostaz / APA images)

After the Observer mistranslated a section from Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal’s speech during his historic visit to Gaza last week, to falsely insert the words “kill Jews,” a report from Josef Federman of the Associated Press (AP) includes this:

Making his first trip to the Hamas-ruled territory over the weekend, Mashaal delivered a series of speeches to throngs of supporters vowing to wipe Israel off the map.

Although Federman does not attribute the words directly to Meshaal, who did not say them, the phrase “wipe Israel off the map” is notorious and provocative since it is the phrasecontroversially attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and used to falsely claim that Ahmedinejad or Iran had threatened to attack Israel unprovoked to destroy it, which neither has ever done, or would do so if they had the chance.

The phrase has been used emotively by Israel and its propagandists to stir up war fever against Iran under the pretext of stopping Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. In no way can this phrase be seen as a neutral or descriptive term.

Listening to the speech

In his speech, Meshaal did restate a refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Israel, spoke about liberating all of historic Palestine and praised resistance. Does that amount to “wiping Israel off the map”?

“Liberation” of course can mean many things, especially ending a racist and oppressive system and freeing the people who live under it.

As I pointed out previously, Meshaal talked about resistance as a means, not an end, and a necessity for an occupied people who are offered no other path to regaining their rights.

Meshaal was also very clear in his speech that he accepted all forms of struggle, including political and diplomatic, but argued that in light of recent events armed resistance provided a base of strength that no other form of struggle could match at the present time.

It is an arguable point of view, but undoubtedly strengthened by the fact that the only serious negotiations Israel has conducted with Palestinians in recent years have been with Hamas, over the prisoner swap last year, and the Gaza ceasefire last month.

Meshaal and other Hamas leaders view it as a “victory” that they forced Israel to negotiateand reach an agreement closer to their terms. They are under no illusion that they can achieve their goals by strictly military means.

Meshaal’s comments about historic Palestine, meanwhile, should be understood as a direct rebuttal to recent and wildly unpopular remarks by Mahmoud Abbas claiming that only the West Bank and Gaza Strip were “Palestine”.

Double standards

I’ve never seen an AP report that matter-of-factly states that Israel is “wiping Palestine off the map” by continuing its construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Nor have I ever seen a news organization use the phrase “wiping Palestine off the map” even though it would be a pretty accurate description of the Nakba, the 1947-48 ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Look at schoolroom maps and atlases from before 1948 and they all say “Palestine.” That word was erased from most maps after 1948.

More recently, Israel has begun stamping passports of visitors to areas nominally controlled by the Palestinian Authority with the words “Judea and Samaria,” a nomenclature intended to assert Jewish nationalist claims to the land and, well, wipe Palestine off the map – or ensure it doesn’t get back on to any maps.

Yet no AP writer would dare use the phrase “wipe Palestine off the map” in a manner similar to how Federman used “wipe Israel off the map.”

Meshaal and the 1967 borders: missing context

AP’s report highlights the broader problem of the media’s refusal to put Meshaal’s speech, or indeed any Palestinian politics, into a broader and Palestinian context, and the insistence, instead, on sticking to simply storylines.

Although Meshaal did not talk about it in his Gaza speech, he and other Hamas leaders have a long record of implicitly edging toward the so-called “two-state solution.” In 2009, for example, Meshaal told the New York Times:

We are with a state on the 1967 borders, based on a long-term truce. This includes East Jerusalem, the dismantling of settlements and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.

As The New York Times noted:

Apart from the time restriction and the refusal to accept Israel’s existence, Mr. Meshal’s terms approximate the Arab League peace plan and what the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas says it is seeking. Israel rejects a full return to the 1967 borders, as well as a Palestinian right of return to Israel itself.

Meshaal’s interview with The New York Times was part of a concerted effort to build a bridge to the new Obama administration and mark Hamas’ way into the international political fold.

Yet these openings by Hamas were completely rejected, and the Obama administration maintained and even increased its support for Israel’s siege on Gaza, where Hamas has its stronghold.

So given that context there was absolutely no reason to expect Meshaal, in Gaza of all places, in the wake of Israel’s recent savage attack, to reiterate far-reaching concessions that had gotten him no credit or reciprocation previously.

If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were making what media would typically call a “hardline” speech, you’d expect all sorts of excuses and justifications about how he needed to shore up his base, or appeal to his right-wing. Palestinians, apparently, don’t have politics.

The AP’s eagerness to paint Meshaal with the same brush as Ahmedinejad and replicate the wild misreporting and fear-mongering about Iran suggests the organization’s Jerusalem bureau is more interested in churning out propaganda than helping readers understand the world.

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