THE BLACK FLAG OF JIHAD IS THE REAL THREAT TO THE WORLD

FINALLY SOME TRUTH AND COMMON SENSE FROM A UNITED KINGDOM NEWSPAPER, THE DAILY EXPRESS.

HOPEFULLY THE REST OF THE WORLD WAKES UP TO REALITY. WORTH READING EVERY PARAGRAPH.

Douglas Murray, 21.08.2014

 http://tinyurl.com/podjhcs

Stop blaming Israel and wake up: 

Jews are attacked here in Britain, they are blockaded into a synagogue in Paris and the chant ‘Death to the Jews’ is heard in Germany for the first time in 70 years.  

But too few people seem to want to notice this or admit what it means. They think this is just about Israel, or just about Jewish people. It isn’t. It is about all of us.

The decision last month by the Israeli government to respond to Hamas rocket-fire from Gaza is the response any government would choose if rockets were fired at its citizens. The Israeli government has the right - as does any government - to stop the bombarding of its people.

However, in recent weeks it has become plain that much of the world expects a different response from Israel. They expect Israel not to fight for the safety, security and survival of their people, but to lie down in front of the Islamic extremist enemy.  

The UK government has even - disgracefully - stopped selling some arms to Israel just when the country needs such weapons most.  But in expecting Israel to behave differently from the rest of us our societies and governments reveal far more about our own state than the State of Israel.
 
Because the truth is that behind the demands for Israel to lie down in front of its enemies is a fatal unwillingness of our own to face the problem which is in our midst.

There are those who think that Israel is somehow the cause of the world’s problems, or that in defending themselves from Islamic extremists Israel is somehow causing Islamic extremism. Nothing could be further from the truth.  

The extremists of Hamas are the ideological bedfellows of the extremists of ISIS who are rampaging through Syria and Iraq, crucifying and beheading as they go.

The video of the apparent beheading of American journalist James Foley by an ISIS murderer with a British accent has shocked the world. ISIS or IS are the soul-mates of Boko Haram who kidnap and kill Christian villagers in the North of Nigeria and stole 300 schoolgirls earlier this year.  

They also share the exact same ideology – if not yet the same means – as those people who were found in Birmingham earlier this year teaching British pupils to hate wider British society and cut themselves off from non-Muslims.
 
But it is this last part of the equation which many people seem so incapable of dealing with. They see the millions of Muslims who have come to our continent and see how many of them are radical. But it is a problem they fear they cannot deal withISIS mi

They believe that if Israel just gave up fighting and disappeared that the rest of us would be able to live in peace.  They see the young Muslims who stormed into a supermarket in Birmingham last weekend, trashing the products and assaulting a British policeman and they think “this is caused by Israel.”  

They see young Parisian Muslims throw slabs of concrete at police and set fire to cars and they think “If only Israel weren’t responding to Hamas rocket-fire.”  And they see Imams in Germany and Italy preach that all Jewish people  must be killed and they pretend that it is not a problem for all of us.
 
How wrong they are.  The problem of anti-Semitism, and Islamic anti-Semitism in particular today, is undoubtedly a problem for Jewish people. But it is only a problem for them first. It is a problem for all of us next.

What is it that lies behind this terrible Hamas-driven rage against Israel?  What lies behind the desire for Israel to disappear? Today the world is finding out.  

Because behind the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah which have flown at anti-Israel demonstrations in recent weeks is another flag. The black flag of jihad – the black flag most recently being waved in Iraq and Syria by ISIS.

Last month the black flag was flown from a car in London’s Blackwall tunnel as East End Muslims blocked the traffic. At the entrance to a council estate in East London earlier this month there were anti-Israel banners and Palestinian flags. And then, on top of the lot, the black flag of jihad was flown. In Oxford Street last week Islamic extremists set up stall to try to recruit people to rally around the black flag of ISIS.
 
The black flag is not about Jewish people. Today in Iraq and Syria it is about Christians who ISIS is forcing to convert to Islam at gunpoint or face beheading. Many Christians are being killed by ISIS for refusing to renounce their faith. On some occasions Christians have tried to save their lives by “converting” at gunpoint and ISIS have killed them anyway.
 
And this is not only about Christians. It is also about other minority faiths in Islamist dominated countries. In Iraq it is also about the Yazidis, the Mandeans and other ancient beliefs which predate Islam.  
 
The ambition of the jihadists – from al-Qaeda to Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram and more – is to subjugate the entire world.  

It is now the duty of all decent people – including decent Muslims – to turn on these barbarians and make it clear they will not win.  

Rather than offer up beleaguered Israel we should send another message.  That the extremists will not win in their desire to take over Israel anymore than they will win in their stated desire to raise the black flag of jihad over Rome, Washington, Downing Street and Buckingham Palace.  

Israel is not the cause of the world’s problems. It is simply on the front line of them.  

But increasingly so are we all. And if we abandon Israel today then one day – too late – we will realise that in fact what we abandoned was ourselves.

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A video has recently come to light, which if true, shows the Hamas activities rebuilding tunnels since the “ceasefire”. http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/4478.htm. The world must be made aware of Hamas intentions not to accept a demillitarised zone and to let Israel live in peace.

Why it is hypocritical to boycott Israel

By Jake Wallis Simons May 5^th 2014

http://tinyurl.com/ln65lrr

We're not normally called upon to justify a decision to travel abroad. Few people would challenge me if I were visiting China, despite that country’s appalling human rights record, repression of free speech, and colonisation of Tibet. If I was travelling to America, even though Predator drones kill hundreds of innocent people each year, and even though Guantanamo Bay still holds 154 detainees, nobody would complain.

I would not be criticised for travelling to Egypt, which has become a police state that imprisons journalists, attacks protesters, and sentences political opponents to death. Nobody would suggest that I boycott India; or Pakistan; or Venezuela; or Saudi Arabia; or indeed Britain, which – I seem to recall – ignored the United Nations and attacked Iraq.

I could go on. But later this month, I am planning to travel to Israel to appear in the Jerusalem literary festival. As surely as night follows day, I have received an “open letter” from a group of 71 activists calling themselves the British Writers in Support of Palestine (BWIP), led by a poet and “professional Tarot card reader”. They were, I was informed, “extremely disappointed” by my decision, and “respectfully encouraged” me to boycott the event. But I am honoured to have been invited to Israel, and will be proud to attend. Here’s why.

It is my strong belief that Israel is, relatively speaking, a force for good in the world. I’m not saying that it is free from controversy, and I’m not saying that I have no sympathy with Palestinians. But every country that abides by the democratic process, enshrines in law the rights of women and minorities, and conducts itself with compassion both in war and in peace – or at least aspires to do so – deserves our support and respect.

But what about Israel’s flouting of international law, I hear you ask? Very well: but has Britain always been squeaky clean? I have already mentioned the example of Iraq. Britain intentionally bombed civilian targets during the Second World War, which was the last time we were under existential threat (the Area Bombing Directive ordered the RAF to attack the German workforce and destroy morale). Moreover, the Army’s Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, based in Kensington Palace Gardens, London, between 1940 and 1948, carried out systematic torture on enemy prisoners. If we were at war again, against an enemy that was able to strike at the heart of our civilian population centres, how would we behave?

Would we, perhaps, be tempted to react as we did when the IRA were terrorising the streets of London? Would we reprise the British Army’s Operation Demetrius of 1971, which allegedly included detention without trial, beating, starving, hooding for long periods, harassment with dogs, placing nooses around prisoners’ necks, forcible head shaving, denying prisoners clothes, forcing them to run barefoot behind Army vehicles, burning them with cigarettes, dragging them by the hair and pressing guns to their heads? Would Bloody Sunday, in which 26 protesters and bystanders were shot by British paratroopers, happen again?

These examples are particularly relevant when you consider the geographical, topographical and historical context in which Israel exists. The Jewish state is roughly the size of Wales, with a ridge of high ground running along the middle of the West Bank. If Britain were surrounded by hostile neighbours at such close proximity, some of which contained terror groups bent on the destruction of the country, would we be doing any better? And would a fearful British public be outraged at the Army’s brutality? Or relieved that it was keeping us safe?

It is significant that a man who knows war, Colonel Richard Kemp – the former commander of Britain’s armed forces in Afghanistan testified to the UN Human Rights Council that the Israeli military does “more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare”. It is right that every instance of military abuse should be treated gravely. But this does not justify a boycott.

From a historical point of view, Israel has been attacked repeatedly by an enemy bent on its destruction (when the Arab world attempted to liquidate the Jewish State in 1967, the settlements had not yet been built). The country has suffered terror attack after terror attack, tragedy after tragedy. Clearly, whatever the boycott activists may say, to draw a parallel with pre-1994 South Africa is ludicrous.

Of course, Israel presents many areas of concern. In particular, the situation on the West Bank is disturbing, as are the societal disadvantages that confront minorities in Israel, particularly Israeli Arabs. The army has been guilty of heavy-handedness many times. And it is sad to witness the tit-for-tat violence the plagues the region, not to mention the heavy civilian losses that are sustained by Palestinians in warfare.

Again, I could go on. But to boycott Israel alone reveals a deeply partisan approach to the conflict, and a ridiculously na?ve and even hypocritical one.

By the standards of the pro-boycott activists, should the Palestinians not also be boycotted? Their society is severely intolerant of homosexuals, many of whom go to live in Israel rather than face oppression at home. Both on the West Bank and in Gaza, the authorities regularly harass and imprison journalists who criticise their leaders; last year, 26-year-old Anas Said Awwad was sent to prison for one year for "insulting" President Mahmoud Abbas by depicting him as a member of the Real Madrid football team on Facebook.

Moreover, the Palestinian government has signed a reconciliation deal with a terror organisation, and within weeks they may form a unity government. And as I reported in the Telegraph last week, the Palestinian leadership pays huge financial rewards to those convicted of terror offences, and cold-blooded child killers are celebrated as heroes when they are released.

If all of this does not merit a boycott, I don't know what does.

While we’re on the subject, shouldn’t the BWIP have called their group “British Writers In Support of Palestine and Israel”? And if not, why not?

For these reasons I am proud to be travelling to Israel later this month. As a journalist I value objectivity above all, and am not interested in closing my ears to one side of any story, particularly a story as complex as this. And as a novelist, my concern is with the human condition; attending a festival with fellow writers and artists who are not afraid of challenging ideas can only be a good thing.

And given that according to a YouGov poll, three-quarters of Britons “see no reason why British performers should not travel to Israel” and fewer than one in five Britons believe that Israeli artists should be barred from the UK – I travel in the knowledge that I have public opinion on my side.

Palestinian Magical Thinking

The campaign to place pressure on Israel through activism on the international stage is the latest example.

Jonathan Spyer May 7^th 2014

http://tinyurl.com/p5nep6w

So April 29^th has passed, and the nine-month period allotted by the current U.S. administration for its effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute has come and gone.  Entirely predictably, it has failed, in its entirety.

What can be learned from the failure? And what may be expected to happen now?

The failure of the talks was predictable first and foremost because of the irreconcilable positions of the sides.  This is not a matter of small details, as is sometimes maintained.  It isn’t that the Palestinians want 99% of the West Bank while Israel will offer only 98%.

Palestinian nationalism in both its Fatah and Hamas variants rejects the possibility of accepting the permanence of Jewish statehood in any part of the area west of the Jordan River.

For the Palestinian Authority, the nine-month period of negotiations came as an unwelcome interruption to a very different strategy to which it will now return.  This strategy consists of an attempt to place pressure on Israel through action in international forums to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state.  Presumably the intended result of this is to induce Israel eventually to make concessions in return for nothing. The struggle would then continue for further concessions.

This strategy is unlikely to bear fruit, but its adoption follows a notable pattern in Palestinian politics – namely, the constant attempt to find an alternative to a negotiated peace based on compromise.

At the root of Palestinian perceptions is a very notable strategic optimism.

The Palestinians see themselves as part of the local majority Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslim culture.  From this point of view, the establishment of a non-Muslim sovereignty in Israel was not only an injustice, it was also an anomaly.  Israel, being an anomaly, is therefore bound eventually to be defeated and disappear.  So there is no need to reconcile to it, with all the humiliation therein.

This core perception leads to the momentary embrace of all kinds of unlikely strategies, which are invested with tremendous hopes.

This pattern has been around for a while.

In the 1970s, in their first incarnation as an independent national movement, Palestinians believed that the long war strategy of the Palestinian terror organizations would serve to hollow out and destroy the hated Zionist entity, on the model of the FLN in Algeria.

In 1990/91, almost forgotten now, Palestinians en masse embraced the empty promises of Saddam Hussein to “burn half of Israel.”  Arafat went to Baghdad to embrace the Iraqi dictator.

In 2000, after the short Oslo period, Palestinians looked to Hizballah and its ideology of resistance as the model for what they hoped would be a successful military and terror campaign against Israel.

All these strategies failed.  All turned out to be based on illusion.

In the meantime, the Jewish state went from strength to strength – absorbing millions of new immigrants, leaping ahead economically, diplomatically and militarily.

The campaign to place pressure on Israel through activism on the international stage is the latest example of this Palestinian magical thinking.  It is likely to share the fate of its predecessors.  The noisy BDS movement  notwithstanding, Israel’s position on the global stage remains strong.

Its alliance with the U.S., despite the utter lack of warmth from the current administration, remains strong at its core, reflected in cooperation on myriad levels, both military and economic.

Israel is forging ahead in constructing positive relationships with the emergent powers of India and China.  It maintains very close and warm relations with Canada, Australia, Germany and other important western players.  None of this is under threat from the automatic majority the Palestinians enjoy at the UN because of the Arab and Muslim blocs of states.

So Palestinian optimism regarding  the model for defeating Israel is hard to understand. But then  the faith placed in the previous approaches noted above also made little apparent sense.

What we are in for now is a period in which the current chimera will need to be played out.  On the bright side, this means that a return to large-scale political violence is unlikely.  The Palestinians were defeated heavily in the 2000-4 period, and there is little energy for a return to war.

The Palestinian elite and their children live comfortable and privileged lives in Ramallah and elsewhere in the region and beyond it.  Combining this with diplomatic and political activity can be pleasant and rewarding.  Combining it with military activity, by contrast, could be harmful and has already been proven not to work.

So expect more furious and pathos-filled denunciations of Israeli crimes from various UN committees largely staffed by the representatives of sundry dictatorships.

Expect Saeb Erekat and the others to come up with yet more inventive reasons as to why Islam and Arabic are “indigenous” to Jerusalem while Judaism and Hebrew represent foreign implants.  And so on, and so forth.

And at the end of all this, expect more failure, more bewilderment and a pause until the next alternative to a negotiated peace is stumbled upon.  This is the nature of the  magical thinking that lies at the core of Palestinian Arab politics.

This politics, in its various manifestations, exists to reverse the verdict of the war of 1948. It has no other purpose.

Its  credo was perfectly rendered in the words of the Moroccan scholar Abdallah Laroui, as quoted by Fouad Ajami: “On a certain day everything would be obliterated and instantaneously reconstructed and the new inhabitants would leave, as if by magic, the land they had despoiled; in this way will justice be dispensed to the victims, on that day when the presence of God shall again make itself felt.’

The language is elegant. The message is one of politicide and destruction. For as long as this credo remains at the root of Palestinian politics, peace between Israelis and Palestinians will remain unachievable. All else is mere detail.

"Christ at the Checkpoint" Aims to Weaken Evangelical Support for Israel

Funding from Western governments enables religious intolerance

Jerusalem - In advance of the 3rd "Christ at the Checkpoint" conference, set to take place March 10-14 in Bethlehem, NGO Monitor released a report:

Christ at the Checkpoint: How the U.S., U.K. and Dutch Governments Enable Religious Strife and Foment Mideast Conflict.

This detailed report, part of the BDS in the Pews project, examines the funding sources of Christ at the Checkpoint, and their impact on the conference's agenda.

BDS in the Pews Director, Yitzhak Santis, said, "Our research indicates that the conference's political purpose is to weaken Evangelical Christian support for Israel in the United States and elsewhere. They do this by providing a stage to delegitimize the State of Israel and rejecting its historical, religious and legal underpinnings."

The conference's sponsors, Bethlehem Bible College and Holy Land Trust, have been directly and indirectly funded by the governments of the United States, the Netherlands, the UK, and prominent religious and educational institutions.

Previous conferences in 2010 and 2012 advanced the Palestinian nationalist agenda within Evangelical Christian churches, while simultaneously reviving theological antisemitic themes such as replacement theology.

Speakers at these previous conferences made antisemitic comments, such as "God is continuing to have a program with the Jewish people who Paul describes as enemies of the Gospel..." and "Jesus is the true vine, not Israel. He is the faithful Israelite who will accomplish all that the nation of Israel failed to do." Other anti-Jewish themes promoted at Christ at the Checkpoint conferences include the de-Judaizing of Jesus and the promotion of a racial theory of Jewish origins.

"The funding from governments and other sources enables the promotion of religious intolerance precisely when what is needed most is to calm the waters in this region," said Santis.

The conference offers several field trips to checkpoints, the "segregation wall," a Palestinian neighborhood in "East Jerusalem," as well as meetings with Palestinian families. No visits appear to be organized to Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, nor do there appear to be meetings with Israeli Jewish families. Moreover, there do not appear to be any visits arranged to the many sites in Jerusalem where Palestinians carried out terrorist attacks. Apart from a brief perfunctory meeting with one Israeli at a West Bank settlement, the mainstream Israeli voice is virtually absent. The only Jews conference participants will apparently meet and hear from are so-called Messianic Jews.

Read the full report for more background and examples of Christ at the Checkpoint's political goals and that of their sponsors: Christ at the Checkpoint: How the U.S., U.K. and Dutch Governments Enable Religious Strife and Foment Mideast Conflict.

Interview with Khaled Abu Toameh

 Charley J. Levine,  September 2013                    

http://tinyurl.com/p43ydf7

Khaled Abu Toameh, 50, an award-winning Israeli journalist and documentary filmmaker, has reported on Arab affairs for three decades. He writes for The Jerusalem Post and the New York-based Gatestone Institute, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit international policy council and think tank, where he is a senior adviser. Since 1989, he also has been a producer and consultant for NBC News. He grew up in the Arab Israeli town of Baqa al-Gharbiyye near Haifa and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He now lives in Jerusalem.

Q. What are the challenges of working as a journalist in the West Bank and Gaza?
A. Before the Oslo peace process began, Arab journalists had almost no problem traveling throughout the West Bank and Gaza, speaking freely with Palestinians. But ever since the Palestinian Authority came to the West Bank and Gaza, the situation has become much more challenging and dangerous. The P.A. expects you to serve as an official spokesperson and avoid criticism of its leaders.
With Hamas in power in Gaza, it’s become even more dangerous for independent Arab journalists. Because of the BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] movement against Israel, journalists representing the Israeli media, like myself, face not only difficulties but threats and even physical violence when we go to Ramallah. The P.A. leadership in the West Bank promotes BDS against Israel and also fights normalization with Israel. It bans meetings between Palestinians and Israelis and condemns the Israeli media as extremely hostile, which makes it impossible to work there and endangers our lives.

Q. How does the Arab street respond to your reporting?
A. No one tells me that what I am reporting is inaccurate or untrue. I am often criticized, however, for reporting the facts. I am only reporting what many Arab journalists want to report. If I resided in Ramallah, I would not be reporting many things. There are P.A. journalists who post critical things on Facebook and risk prison. Those who ask the wrong questions at press conferences are sometimes detained or even tortured.
I live inside Israel, so my reality is sharply different. I receive more threats from pro-Palestine students and academics in the U.S. than I do from local Palestinians.

Q. What happened to the moderate Palestinian center?
A. Palestinians have been so radicalized that you will find very few Palestinians who will openly talk about making any significant compromise with Israel. No P.A. leader would dare to sign any agreement with Israel for fear of being condemned as a traitor. Israel has been delegitimized in the eyes of most Palestinians and this is the result of decades of indoctrination and incitement against Israel. This is true throughout the entire Arab world.
Ironically, this incitement intensified after the peace process began. The Palestine Liberation Organization leadership used the media, the mosques and every available podium to delegitimize and discredit Israel in the eyes of the Palestinians. By doing so, the P.L.O. has actually shot itself in the foot. P.A. leaders know that they have radicalized their people to the point where there are people who don’t want to hear about peace with Israel at all. I believe this is why [Mahmoud] Abbas will not sign any agreement with Israel. He simply doesn’t want to go down in history as a traitor.

Q. Is there anything Israel should be doing differently?
A. Israel is facing two camps in the Palestinian community. One is the radical camp that doesn’t believe in Israel’s right to exist and seeks its destruction. With that camp, there’s nothing that can be done. The second, less radical, camp is represented by some P.L.O. leaders in the West Bank who are unable to deliver [change or peace]. This is a camp that lacks grass-roots support. It has further been discredited due to its close relations with the U.S., Europeans and even Israel. So Israel is facing one camp that doesn’t want to deliver and another that cannot practically do so.

Q. United States Secretary of State John Kerry has tried to revive the peace process with multiple visits and public declarations. Can this break the logjam?
A. It’s a waste of time. You might be able to reach some sort of interim agreements with Abbas over certain areas that he’s actually in control of in the West Bank, but I doubt he’ll go even for that. Many in the international community see Abbas as a peace partner and this might be partially true, but so what? The question we need to ask is ‘Can this man deliver?’ What’s a peace agreement worth with Abbas when he can’t even visit his house in Ramallah that has been taken over by Hamas? The international community should go to the Palestinians and ask them to get their act together and start speaking in one voice and stop the indoctrination and glorification of suicide bombers. They must start preparing their people for possible compromise with Israel.

Q. What are Israel’s Arab citizens saying about Israel?
A. Arab citizens of Israel can act as a bridge between Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli Arab dilemma is that their State of Israel is in conflict with their people, the Palestinians. While most Israeli Arabs would like to see a Palestinian state and a better life for the Palestinians, they would nevertheless prefer to stay inside Israel for two reasons: First, this has always been their home. Second, they have always been comfortable in Israel despite all the challenges facing them.
I am worried about the process of radicalization that is taking place among the Arab community inside Israel. I blame some of the domestic Arab community leaders for inciting their fellow citizens against Israel. I’m talking about some of the Arab Knesset members. And the Israeli establishment’s failure to address very serious problems within Arab society is no less problematic: unemployment, unequal allocation of public funds and investment in physical infrastructure.

Q. Does the composition of Israel’s government or the country’s political landscape matter to the Palestinians? 
A. Most Arab Israelis don’t see a difference between Labor and Likud. Sometimes, ironically, right-wing governments do more than the left wing. In this regard, I’ve never understood the P.A. leadership. When there’s a left-wing government in Israel, they reject it, and because of that Israeli left-wing governments fall. And when the right-wing government comes to power, they complain that they can’t make peace with them.

Q. Why is there such a pronounced Palestinian denial of Jewish history—from the Holocaust to the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and Western Wall?
A. It’s part of the campaign to delegitimize Israel: [The message is that] the Jews have no historical attachment to this land. We are told...even by moderates that there is no such thing as the Western Wall; it is the southern wall of the Al Aqsa mosque. We are told that there is no such thing as Rachel’s Tomb. We are told that there’s no such thing as Joseph’s Tomb; it’s just the tomb of a Muslim sheik. And all the archaeological discoveries are fake. That Jews come at night and plant items at excavation sites and in the morning call a press conference to present these items as something that demonstrates a connection.

There are different views about the Holocaust. There are those who might admit it happened but challenge the numbers; there are those who completely deny it. Finally, there are some who recognize it happened on the full scale. But the first categories are prevalent and they contend that Israel is using the Holocaust to extort money. The common sentiment says: Why should we talk about Jewish suffering? We have enough suffering of our own.

Q. What should Israel’s approach to peace be at this time?
A. Israel’s policy should be to talk to anyone who wants to talk and shoot back at anyone who shoots. I don’t see anything that Israel can do under the current circumstances. Some would say, ‘Why doesn’t Israel just get up and leave, unilaterally go to pre-1967 lines?’ I think that would be a recipe for another war. Any land you give to the P.L.O. will undoubtedly end up in the hands of Hamas and other extremists. We’ve been to this movie before and I’m not even sure the P.L.O. wants Israel to pull out of the West Bank, although they demand that in public. The P.L.O. knows that its survival in the West Bank depends on Israel’s security presence.

BDS and Peace Talks

By EDWARD S. BECK  (Jerusalem Post 08 /01/2013)

http://tinyurl.com/kyzlhp2 

Let us be very clear: the BDS campaign does not serve the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

From the very beginning of the anti-Israel boycott, divestments and sanctions campaigns, the attempt by their advocates was not to bring about a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but to lay the foundation for the dismantling of Israel by any means necessary, starting with what Natan Sharansky called the “3-D standards” of being demonized, delegitimized and held to a double standard.

This strategy was relatively new and reaching a far more influential level of society than were the previous shouts by radical extremist groups to “drive Israel into the sea,” but had very much the same intent.

This remains true as the calls for BDS ring loud and clear even as peace talks begin in Washington. If the BDS campaign were really about bringing Israel to the peace table to make the painful sacrifices it will need to make, the campaign would be bragging success and victory.

It is not and will press on during the peace talks and after, regardless of outcome, because of the politically pathological desire to not just demonize and hold Israel to a double standard, but to delegitimize Israel to a nonexistent state in the Middle East because of their fundamentalist extreme hatreds toward Israel, with the rationale that Jews have no claim or place in the neighborhood.

Regardless of what the European Union and others may say, this isn’t about the settlements in the disputed territories, this is about the legitimate presence of a sovereign Jewish nation surrounded by a sea of Arab sovereign states.

This is about Israel delegitimizers believing that creating the State of Israel was wrong in the first place or possibly even worse, that region was betrayed when the fledgling State of Israel when created was not wiped into the sea by her Arab neighbours to finish the job Hitler started. These people don’t want to live in peace with Jews; they don’t even want Jews in the Middle East. One only has to look at the history of Jewish expulsion from Arab countries to completely understand and accept this as truth. Jews are infidels and second-class citizens and their relative degree of inferior acceptance is dictated by imams and sheikhs and not guaranteed by the Koran.

BDS movements against other countries such as South Africa accepted that there had to be peaceful coexistence of all the parties as a goal with equal rights and standing.

No such goals exist in the present BDS campaigns. The campaign does not state what it is for in terms of peaceful coexistence, only that it is against the State of Israel’s very existence in any shape, form of fashion.

In fact the Arab concept of normalization of relations is not even yet in effect with the Palestinians, who do not even choose either religiously or politically to recognize the existence of the State of Israel, which is a starting point for any negotiations. Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian leader of the BDS campaign, can speak against normalization with Israel, yet secure an academic degree from an Israeli university. The irony is both astonishing and troubling.

I wonder, if there is a peace deal with the Palestinians will Bishop Desmond Tutu come to share a blessing, and will Stevie Wonder and Roger Waters join Alicia Keyes and Eric Burden in Celebrate Peace Concert in Jerusalem? If a peace deal is hammered out and Israel gives up a good bit of land for peace, will the EU lift its boycott of goods from the newly defined areas which may be behind the current Green Line, such as Ariel and others? Will the US State Department permit US government research and aid agencies to fund basic research and development at Ariel University, which is currently banned from receiving directly or indirectly research aid from US government agencies, thus forcing it to partner with other countries for funding for basic research from which all countries benefit? I think not.

Will calls for the BDS of Israel continue? Yes. Why? Because the BDS movement will find something else endemic in Israel politics and society to protest and continue the ongoing attempt to erode any ongoing peace and legitimacy of a sovereign Jewish state. It’s in their DNA. Calls for BDS not only ratchet up the level of anti- Israelism during an incredibly important series of forward movements in peace efforts, they have the consequence of stifling the very voices in Israel that are calling for peace with the Palestinians.

To take it one step further, it has been estimated that over 15,000 Palestinians may be negatively economically affected by the EU boycott of goods produced in the disputed territories. How is putting Palestinians out of work in the territories promoting peace? It is not, and therein is the crux of the fallacy of BDS thinking.

The British academic unions are pathological in their perseverance in both publicly and silently boycotting Israeli academics and academic institutions, even though they are silencing and collectively punishing many in the academic community who are roundly in favour of peace and who work side by side with Palestinian, Israeli Arab and Arab colleagues both in Israel and internationally.

The British justice system, by scolding British academic Ronnie Fraser for his suit against the faculty union for this annual ongoing anti-Semitic effort since 2005, has not only rendered itself incapable of sanctioning anti- Semitism in Britain, but has allowed the clownish, pretentious, self-righteous, but dangerous leaders of the British academic union (more a political lot than a scholarly lot) to aid and abet those who would see an end to the state of Israel.

Let us be very clear: the BDS campaign does not serve the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The BDS campaign does not even bring justice for the Palestinians and in some cases causes them to suffer.

Whatever the real intent of the BDS campaign, the reality of it is that it serves to incite against Israel unjustly and confound efforts for peace. It is the wrong strategy for real peace and justice.

The writer is president emeritus and co-founder of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and also served as chairman of the SPME Task Force on BDS from 2004 to 2012.

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We feel it appropriate to bring to your attention the development of the UN since the establishment of the State of Israel and how it has become a forum for Israel bashing to the exclusion of dealing with the major problems that exist around the world.

For a full analysis see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1pq8Fk5arU

‘Tis the Season: how anti-Israel NGOs are abusing Christmas

DECEMBER 24, 2012, Ariella Kimmel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/tis-the-season-how-anti-israel-ngos-are-abusing-christmas/

The Christmas season is upon us, and yet instead of spreading messages of peace and good cheer, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are using this celebratory time of year to advance their politicized anti-Israel campaigns. Organizations such asChristian Aid(UK), Kairos Palestine, Sabeel, War on Want (UK), Amos Trust, and Adalah-NY-NY employ offensive and inflammatory rhetoric in Christmas carols, holiday messages and cards, nativity scenes, and other gift items to push their immoral agenda. Even more alarming, is the inclusion by some of these organizations of blatant anti-Semitism in their campaigns, and the silence of their European funders. As funders, these governments are enablers and share the moral responsibility for the repugnant actions of these organizations.

The manipulation by these organizations of religious symbols is offensive; instead of promoting co-existence and peace, as one would hope human rights groups would, they revive deep-seated Christian anti-Semitic theology. At the same time their messages conspicuously omit any references to deadly terrorism and other violence perpetrated against Israeli civilians.

For example, Christian Aid, which largely operates on a budget that stems directly from the public pockets of Britain and Ireland, holds a one-sided view on the Israeli-Arab conflict. Their publications systematically ignore the Palestinian role in the ongoing conflict and disregard Israel’s right to self-defense.

As in previous years,  Christian Aid has used their Christmas materials for politicized attacks against Israel. Christian Aid has published an “Advent Journey” and “Advent Reflections,” both under the title of “Healing in this Holy Land.” Within these publications there are clear theological overtones:

In Bethlehem, where Jesus was born…there is also an enormous wall around part of the town that makes the lives of Palestinians living in Bethlehem very difficult because they cannot move freely. As you think about Mary and Joseph making the journey to Bethlehem, pray for the people who live there now and whose lives have been affected by conflict.

Christian Aid describes travel restrictions imposed on Palestinians and other forms of suffering due to roadblocks and checkpoints, while completely removing the context of Palestinian mass terror which necessitate these security measures.

Two blatant examples of antisemitism this season include Kairos Palestine and Sabeel, who both invoke anti-Semitic imagery by linking their attacks on Israel to the ancient libel blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus (deicide).

Sabeel, which describes itself as “an ecumenical grassroots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians,” is funded by the Swedish government via Diakonia. They are active in anti-Israel political campaigns, including church divestment resolutions, and support a one state formula, meaning the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.

The director of the organization, Naim Ateek, has been no stranger to the use of offensive rhetoric in regards to Israel; this year in their annual Christmas message, he makes use of an anti-Semitic analogy equating the Palestinians with Jesus, and Israel with the evil Roman Empire responsible for his death. In a deft reversal of where Jews fit into the historical narrative, he writes that:

…people of first century Palestine were looking for salvation and liberation from the oppressive yoke of the Roman Empire…Today’s Palestinians are looking for salvation and liberation from the oppressive yoke of Israel.

Kairos Palestine, a Christian Palestinian group centrally involved in political warfare against Israel, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, published a 32-page “Christmas Alert” together with Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ). This text includes distortions on the situation of Palestinian Christians, for instance blaming Israel for a “severe water crisis” in villages near Bethlehem, ignoring the Palestinian Authority’s full responsibility for this crisis through mismanaging water distribution in Palestinian areas.

The falsehoods in the Christmas alert are interlaced with biblically-based sermons. One of these compares the situation of the Palestinians today with the “Parable of the Vineyard and the Tenants.” This parable invokes classic anti-Semitic deicide themes: the tenants (the Jews) reject the word of God (the owner of the vineyard) and kill his son, causing their land to be taken from them and given to “others.” This document casts modern day Jews as the evil tenants, and the Palestinians as Jesus, whom the tenants seek to kill.

Funding from European governments, both directly and through outsourcing designated for international aid, which is provided to these groups and their theologically-charged messages, exacerbates the impact and damage. The parliaments and taxpayers in the EU, Ireland, UK, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, and Norway should demand full transparency and an immediate end to such hate-producing activities. With this abuse of holiday and religious symbols, the NGOs and charities that claim to promote moral agendas are not offering messages of peace and good cheer. Rather, their intolerant and theologically charged messages further an already polarized and violent conflict.

Christian churches risk poisoning relations with Jews

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/op-ed/Christian+churches+risk+poisoning+relations+with+Jews/7079317/story.html

By Abraham Cooper and Yitzchok Adlerstein, The Ottawa Citizen August 12, 2012
Protestant denominations have been gathering to set the moral compass for the future of their churches. They have been grappling with theological, ecological, social and geo-political challenges at their major conclaves.

And then there is the Holy Land.

While their co-religionists bleed in Syria and Nigeria and cower in fear in Egypt, Pakistan and Iran, some find solace in zeroing in only on the misdeeds — real and imaginary — of the Jewish state.

In York, The Church of England’s General Synod recently voted to endorse the World Council of Churches’ “Ecumenical Accompaniment Program.” This program, in partnership with anti-Israel groups that reject a two-state solution, issued a publication titled Chain Reaction, calling for sit-ins at Israeli embassies, hacking Israeli government websites, and supporting for the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign whose goal is eliminating the Jewish State.

The rhetoric showed raw contempt for Jews. Speakers complained of powerful Jewish lobbies, of too much Jewish influence. They criticized Jewish organizations for having the chutzpah to protest against their proposals, even as they trotted out marginal anti-Zionist Jews parroting the extreme anti-Israel agenda.

Dr. John Dinnen waxed biblical, invoking the Jew who did not cross the road to help another human being in the story of the Good Samaritan. Today, he charged, “the Palestinians are being pushed over, while the Jews are quite powerful,” before correcting himself and saying “Israelis” instead of “Jews.”

The Church of England co-mingled classic European anti-Semitism with a theologically wrapped extreme political anti-Israel campaign.

But there were a few sane voices who would not be cowed. One church member revoked her monthly donation of 150 pounds that she had been remitting for two decades. “It is shameful that at a time when there are beheadings, forced female circumcision, intolerance, persecution and killing of Christians, destruction of churches and Christian graves, torture and murder throughout the vast majority of the remainder of the Middle East … what exercises the mind of Dr. Dinnen and the Synod is … Israel, the only democracy in the area,” wrote Janet Brook in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Meanwhile across The Pond, American churches chose a different path. Calls to divest from companies doing business with Israel — Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions — were rejected. The rank and file saw through these measures as punitive and one-sided. Significantly, Presbyterians and Episcopalians voted to invest in Palestinian and Israeli ventures. They decided that improving the lot of people on the ground, not wallowing in harsh rhetoric, is the way to help foster Middle East peace.

Still extremists had their say. Their pro-BDS resolutions outraged the Jewish community and Christian supporters of Israel. Some demanded that Israel be labelled an “apartheid state.” Other resolutions called for the embrace of the Kairos Palestine Document, which denigrates Jewish history in the Holy Land, coddles terrorism, promotes economic warfare against the Jewish state and blames Middle East woes exclusively on Israel. All these resolutions failed, although Presbyterian Church U.S.A. passed a “pro-peace” resolution to boycott dates and cosmetics originating in Israeli settlements.

One can argue that events in the region from the installation of a Muslim Brotherhood president in Egypt, to the brutal bloodletting in Syria, to Iran’s double threat of terrorism by proxy and nuclearization, will supersede any measures by Protestant denominations.

So are these Christian debates and resolutions irrelevant? Hardly.

The exclusive focus on Israel/Palestine has rendered mute the World Council of Churches and many of its affiliates — mute to the suffering, denigration and murder of their coreligionists in the Middle East. Forced conversions in Hamas-ruled Gaza, the targeting of Coptic Christians by Muslim extremists in Egypt, the ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Christians in the historic Assyrian Triangle, elicit barely a whisper of protest.

Nothing will change for the threatened millions of Christians, unless and until these churches begin to pass resolutions, cajole politicians and petition the international community on their behalf.

While white-hot anti-Israel invective and bare-knuckled economic warfare may salve some consciences, they will surely corrode decades of positive developments in Christian-Jewish relations.

Next up is the United Church of Canada’s August conclave, underway this week. While the Middle East roils in the name of peace, church members will consider a report on Israel/Palestine that calls for a boycott of goods from settlements. It will also apologize to Palestinians for previously having asked them to recognize the Jewish State.

Perhaps the Palestinians should agree to a two-state solution, the report argues, but it is insulting to ask them to recognize that their neighbour is a Jewish state, the sole democracy in a region of more than 20 Muslim states.

Should the UCC embrace the resolution, it is unclear how it would help to advance peace.

What is clear is that it won’t help a single Palestinian, it will poison relations with Canadian Jewry and it will signal to Muslim extremists everywhere that they have nothing to fear from those followers of Christ who are prepared to fight evil only if it involves the people of Israel.

BDS IN THE PEWS

European, U.S. and Canadian Government Funding Behind Anti-Israel Activism in Mainline Churches

NGO Monitor's latest report July 2nd documents the flow of funds from European, US and Canadian governments to several Palestinian and pro-Palestinian Christian NGOs that promote boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS), and supersessionist theologies, in mainline churches across the globe.

http://tinyurl.com/cb6j89t

The main findings:

• In the last decade, BDS aimed at Israel developed as a key issue in mainline Christian denominations in the United States, Europe, Canada, and elsewhere.

• A number of European governments, plus the United States and Canada provide funds for these church-based efforts to delegitimize Israel. These taxpayer funds are disbursed as grants to church-based humanitarian NGOs, which then transfer these funds to highly politicized pro-Palestinian NGOs, including Christian groups that promote within mainline churches BDS, the one-state solution and, in many cases, antisemitic supercessionist, or replacement, theologies

• The US government, through the National Endowment for Democracy (mostly funded by the US Congress) granted the Holy Land Trust $124,300 (2009, 2010, 2012). HLT's executive director Sami Awad, speaking at the National Leadership Conference for the Vineyard Church in 2009, told the audience (at 01:20:27 in the audio): "We've actually done training in non-violence for Hamas leaders and other militant groups as well." Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department and the EU. Further, the US Supreme Court upheld a law criminalizing material support for terror organizations. (Holder, Attorney General, et al. v. Humanitarian Law Project et al. 2010). The law defines "material support" as including "any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including... training, expert advice or assistance..." Based in Bethlehem, HLT is a signatory to the 2005 "Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS" and supports the Kairos Palestine document. HLT conducts highly politicized tours to the region targeting church leaders.

• BDS strategists view the churches as a key target for promoting the BDS agenda because: "religious institutions are seen in many communities as embodying important moral and ethical principles... Divestment campaigns that target companies such as Caterpillar have been initiated in a number of major Christian churches. Not only will successful divestment campaigns financially weaken the Occupation, but will raise both the public profile and legitimacy of the BDS campaign."

To read the full report, click here. http://tinyurl.com/7lvsbyr