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NUL POINTS AS LEBANON QUITS CONTEST

Nul points as Lebanon quits contest
By Nicholas Christian
The Scotsman
March 20, 2005

news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=299182005

Lebanon has pulled out of this year’s Eurovision song contest because an Israeli is competing, organisers said.

The country withdrew because it would have had to broadcast the Israeli portions of the contest, to be held on May 19 and 21 in Kiev, Ukraine.

A statement on the Eurovision website said: “According to Lebanese legislation, Tele Liban is not permitted to broadcast the performance of the Israeli participant, thereby breaching the rules of the Eurovision Song Contest 2005.”

All national broadcasters of participating countries must televise the entire event, comprising a semi-final and a final.

Tele Liban’s head, Ibrahim Khoury, confirmed the decision to pull out, saying that the broadcaster was unaware of the presence of an Israeli participant when it confirmed its entry in December.

“Lebanon is in a state of war with Israel. If the Israeli contestant wins, we would have to show the celebrations,” Khoury said.

He would also be obliged to allow viewers to vote for the Israeli entry. “I cannot do this,” he said.

 

LEBANON OFFICIALLY WITHDRAWS FROM EUROVISION

Lebanon officially withdraws from Eurovision
Al Bawaba
March 29, 2005

www.albawaba.com/en/news/181808

As international attention has been focused on the pull out of Syrian military troops from Lebanon, another type of “withdrawal” has dramatically taken place involving a beautiful Lebanese rising star, politics and music…

Lebanon has withdrawn from the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest, after refusing to show the Israeli entry on Lebanese TV channel Tele-Liban. The channel told the European Broadcasting Union that Lebanon’s legislation made it nearly impossible to broadcast the Israeli performance. This puts in breach of contest rules, which state all countries taking part must show the entire event.

Lebanon was expected to take part for the first time in the contest this year.

According to the Eurovision’s official website, “Tele-Liban has confirmed to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) the withdrawal of Lebanon from the Eurovision Song Contest 2005 (ESC 2005) to be hosted in Kiev by NTU, the national Ukrainian broadcaster, on 19 and 21 May”.

Lebanon would have been represented by talented singer Aline Lahoud representing it in the semi-final in Kiev on May 19.

Eurovision’s executive supervisor Svante Stockselius told Eurovision website ESC, “When we told them (Lebanon) they had to broadcast the entire program, they decided to withdraw from the contest.”

“I feel particularly sorry for Aline Lahoud.”

Aline Lahoud was born in 1981. She grew up in an artistic family. Her mother Salwa Katrib is a famous singer and her father Nahi Lahoud is a well-known producer. Her uncle Roméo Lahoud is one of the most famous musical directors and composers in the Arab world.

Tele-Liban will still have to pay the participation fee for the contest and faces a further fine for withdrawing. The channel had originally said it would take part in December 2004, meeting a deadline by which all countries had to confirm their participation.

Lebanon would have been one of three newcomers to this year’s contest, the other two being Bulgaria and Moldova. The final will be held on May 21, with a record 39 countries taking part overall.

The affair actually began several weeks ago after the official Lebanese website set up for the competition avoided any mention of Israel. Eventually, Lebanese broadcaster Tele-Liban found a creative solution by removing the names of all participating countries from the site. However, the EBU sought assurances that the upcoming contest would be broadcast in full, including the Israeli song.

Shiri Maimon, 24, will be representing Israel in the upcoming Eurovision, singing a song called “The Quiet that Remains”.

Tele-Liban was apparently unable to provide the assurances requested by the EBU and Lebanon subsequently withdrew from the popular music competition. According to the ESC rules, all national broadcasters of the countries taking part in the Contest must broadcast the entire event, comprising two live televised shows – a Semi Final and a Final.

Lebanon’s withdrawal of its Eurovision entry is not the first time that Israel has affected Arab countries’ entries into various global contests.

A Miss Lebanon once dropped out of a Miss Universe pageant after she refused to be photographed with Miss Israel. In 1978, the Jordanian broadcaster showed pictures of flowers when the Israeli participants took to the stage, avoided any mention of Israel’s win in the competition and announced second-place Belgium as the winner.

Tele-Liban’s head, Ibrahim Khoury, confirmed the decision to pull out, telling The AP that Lebanon was unaware of the presence of an Israeli participant when it confirmed its entry in December.

“Lebanon is in a state of war with Israel. If the Israeli contestant wins, we would have to show the celebrations,” Khoury said. He added that Lebanon would also be obliged to air the Israeli website on which viewers could vote for the Israeli participant. “I cannot do this,” he said.

Khoury said the decision to withdraw was “painful,” particularly as Lebanon was participating with a talented contestant.

Jad Rahbani, a Lebanese musician who composed the song Lahoud was to sing, said the withdrawal from Eurovision was “another blow” for Lebanon. Aline was to perform the song “Quand tout s’enfuit” (When everything escapes) for the upcoming contest.

“I’m very disappointed,” Rahbani said.

In the late 1990s, Aline began her professional career as a singer and actress. Under the supervision of Mrs. Hélou and Mrs. Haddad, Aline studied singing and dramatic art. After graduating from school, she enrolled in St. Joseph University IESAV (Institut des Etudes Scéniques et Audio Visuelles). In 2002, she obtained a BA degree in Communication Arts with a major in Screenplay and Directing Studies.

Aline had participated in several plays as well. She was awarded the Special Award Trophy of the FIDOF (Fédération Internationale de l’Organisation des Festivals) during the Megahit Festival in Turkey in September 2004 as well as the ‘Murex d’Or’ trophy. Apart from singing, Aline Lahoud has directed several short films and studied modern ballet and jazz dance.

 

‘WORLD NEEDS TO HELP LEBANON’

‘World needs to help Lebanon’

Well-known Lebanese musician and composer speaks to Ynet in exclusive interview; wants Lebanese culture exposed to help change country’s image
By Merav Yudilovitch
Ynetnews
March 21, 2005

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3061319,00.html

Help us show the world our other side - people want peace, quiet and culture, well-known Lebanese musician and composer Elias Rahbani told Ynet in an exclusive interview Sunday.

Rahbani is the father of Jad Rahbani, who composed and wrote the song “Quand Tout S’enfuit” (When Everything Fades), chosen to represent Lebanon in the 2005 Eurovision song contest.

The song was supposed to be the first Lebanes song ever to take part in the show, but Lebanese Télé-Liban television station aired an announcement last week stating that Lebanon had decided to withdraw from the contest in order to avoid airing the Israeli song on local television.

Rahbani said he is disappointed at the decision to withdraw from the contest.

“It’s bad luck; the whole story, and of course the withdrawal, is connected to the current situation in Lebanon,” he said.

The reason Lebanon canceled its participation in the contest was the local broadcasting station’s fear radical Islamic groups may blow the station up should it air the contest, Rahbani said.

“I find it strange, as it’s not the first time we are participating in an international contest along side Israel,” he said. “But this year you can feel the fear.”

‘Ground burning beneath our feet’

It has been reported by the news agencies that the withdrawal from the competition is due to a Lebanese law prohibiting the media to air any content that focuses attention on Israel.

Rahbani said he does not understand why people are making such a big deal about Lebanon’s latest decision.

He said last September representatives participated in a cultural festival in Turkey that was sponsored by the Fidof organization, which merges international festivals.

About 15 countries participated in the festival, and his son won a prize alongside Israeli musicians, Rahbani said.

“What’s the problem? I understand this year the situation is a little sensitive because the ground is burning beneath our feet,”he said. “I remind you that until recently it was not like this.”

‘We need to help Lebanon’

Rahbani said he believes the Lebanese song chosen for the contest should be heard on the night of the competition.

“Due to the problems, I’d like to believe it would be possible to hear it as a guest song, if not as a contender,” he said. “We need to help Lebanon. It’s is a cultured country, as it gave the world the first alphabet and the rule of geometry.”

According to Rahbani, the European Broadcasting Union’s contest coordinator Svante Stockselius told news agencies sources he had requested that Lebanese singer Aline Lahoud perform the song at the show as an artist and not as a participant in the contest.

However, her request was denied.

Over the past years, Rahbani said he has listened to the news on all of the all satellite stations.

“People always speak about Lebanon in a negative context, the time has come to help us,” he said. “Let us play the song; I’m convinced exposure to our culture will help.”

FULL ARTICLES

A BATTLE OVER PROGRAMMING AT NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

A Battle Over Programming at National Public Radio
By Stephen Labaton
The New York Times
May 16, 2005

www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/business/media/16radio.html

Executives at National Public Radio are increasingly at odds with the Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday.

The corporation’s board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations.

Top officials at NPR and member stations are upset as well about the corporation’s decision to appoint two ombudsmen to judge the content of programs for balance. And managers of public radio stations criticized the corporation in a resolution offered at their annual meeting two weeks ago urging it not to interfere in NPR editorial decisions.

The corporation’s chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, has also blocked NPR from broadcasting its programs on a station in Berlin owned by the United States government.

Mr. Tomlinson denied several requests last week to discuss the relationship between the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR, but he issued a one-sentence statement saying that he looked forward to “working through any differences that may exist between our institutions.” In a column last week in The Washington Times and in an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s talk show on PBS, he repeated his belief that public broadcasting’s reputation of being left-leaning was a problem.

Mr. Tomlinson has been waging a campaign to correct what he and other conservatives see as a liberal bias in public television programming. That effort has been criticized by leaders of public television who say it poses a threat to their editorial independence. At the request of two senior Democratic members of Congress, the inspector general at the corporation is examining whether Mr. Tomlinson’s decision to monitor only one television program, “Now,” with Bill Moyers, and his decision to retain a White House official who helped create guidelines for the two ombudsmen may have violated a law that is supposed to insulate public broadcasting from politics.

But the law also assigns the corporation the responsibility of ensuring balance and objectivity in programming, a function that Mr. Tomlinson says is of paramount importance for the sustained viability and political support of public broadcasting.

About a quarter of the corporation’s $400 million budget goes to radio, with most of the rest to television. NPR recently received a huge bequest from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, the widow of the founder of McDonald’s, and it gets only about 1 percent of its overall funds directly from the corporation. But its member stations are far more reliant on the corporation’s money, and they use a significant part of that to buy programs produced by NPR and others.

Last month, the corporation’s board, which is dominated by Republicans named by President Bush, told the staff at a meeting that it should prepare to redirect the relatively modest number of grants available for radio programs away from national news, officials at the corporation and NPR said.

“We heard sentiments from the board that they are interested in support of more music,” said Vincent Curran, a senior vice president in charge of the radio division. He said that the board had made no final decisions on funds.

Participants in that meeting said there was a brief discussion by board members in which one of them, Gay Hart Gaines, talked about the need to change programming in light of a conversation she had had with a taxi driver about his listening habits. Ms. Gaines, a Republican fund-raiser and the head of the political action committee of Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, did not return a call to her office seeking comment.

In recent years, the corporation has provided funds for NPR programs like “The Tavis Smiley Show” and “Day to Day.” A third NPR program, “News and Notes,” recently applied for money. Mr. Tomlinson has told some board members that the corporation would no longer provide funds for “Weekend America,” a public affairs program produced by Minnesota Public Radio, people briefed on those discussions said.

Over the objections of senior NPR executives, the corporation decided in April to appoint the two ombudsmen to monitor radio and television content. At a meeting in February, Kevin Klose, NPR’s president, was told by Mr. Tomlinson that the corporation would have a liberal ombudsman and a conservative one, participants in the meeting said. They said Mr. Klose told Mr. Tomlinson that this idea showed a fundamental misunderstanding of both journalism and the role of an ombudsman.

NPR has had its own ombudsman for the last five years, and executives there say they are concerned that having two at the agency that provides funds for programs could lead to editorial interference.

The resolution from representatives of public radio stations that was presented at the recent meeting in Washington denounced the move, and called on the corporation to “refrain from interfering in constitutionally protected content decisions” and to act as a firewall to insulate public broadcasting from politics. The lack of a quorum prevented a vote on the resolution, but a poll of the more than 80 people there showed unanimous support for it.

Late last year, without notifying board members or NPR, Mr. Tomlinson contacted S. Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a research group, about conducting a study on whether NPR’s Middle East coverage was more favorable to Arabs than to Israelis, Mr. Lichter said. He added that although there were follow-up conversations as recently as February, officials at the corporation had not moved ahead with the project.

A spokesman for the corporation, Eben Peck, said it had not decided how it would monitor coverage of the Middle East on NPR.

“We’re still assessing and looking at various methodologies that would allow an assessment of NPR’s Middle East coverage,” Mr. Peck said.

Other officials said Mr. Tomlinson had heard complaints about the coverage from a board member, Cheryl Halpern, a former chairwoman of the Republican Jewish Coalition and leading party fund-raiser whose family has business interests in Israel. The corporation has also heard complaints from Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California.

Besides his role at the corporation, Mr. Tomlinson heads the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which supervises most United States government broadcasts overseas, including those of the Voice of America. He has continued the policy of his predecessors on that board of blocking NPR from putting its programs on a Berlin station that the German government gave to the United States in the early 1990’s after reunification. NPR, which has a significant presence overseas, has long sought to enter Berlin, the largest radio market in Western Europe.

Mr. Tomlinson has instead favored programming offered by a European business executive that includes newscasts produced by the Voice of America, which is restricted by law from broadcasting in English in most European countries. German regulators are considering the two options.

In a 2003 letter to Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Tomlinson suggested that it would further the national interest to use the station to broadcast programs by Voice of America rather than NPR.

Some NPR officials suggest that Mr. Tomlinson has a conflict of interest as the head of both the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“It certainly calls into question where his allegiance lies,” said Tim Eby, chairman of NPR and manager of the public radio stations run by Ohio State University in Columbus.

Mr. Peck, the corporation spokesman, said Mr. Tomlinson “does not think there is a conflict of interest.”

In an interview last week, Mr. Eby said NPR executives had been particularly worried because they were not getting full information about what had been happening at the corporation.

“Everybody has been concerned in a lot of ways because there’s been a real lack of transparency about what’s been going on there,” he said.

 

GAINING CONFIDENCE: ‘NY TIMES’ RELEASES KEY INTERNAL REPORT

Gaining Confidence: ‘N.Y. Times’ Releases Key Internal Report
By E&P Staff
The Editor and Publisher
May 9, 2005

www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000912502

An internal committee at The New York Times has recommended steps to increase readers’ confidence in the newspaper, including reducing errors, increasing coverage of religion, “rural areas” and “middle America,” making reporters and editors more accessible, and possibly starting a blog.

Executive editor Bill Keller, who had asked the panel to study questions of journalistic credibility, endorsed the recommendations in Monday’s editions, calling the report “a sound blueprint for the next stage of our campaign to secure our accuracy, fairness and accountability.”

The committee proposed taking steps including encouraging high-ranking editors to write a regular column dealing with the internal workings of the Times -- this is in addition to the fairly new public editor’s column. Other suggestions include using the Internet to provide documents used for stories and transcripts of interviews, and further curtailing the use of anonymous sources. It saw no point in boycotting background briefings.

Recommendation #4 reads: “Consider creating a Times blog that promotes interaction with readers.”

As for accessibility: “The Times makes it harder than any other major American newspaper for readers to reach a responsible human being,” the committee’s 16-page report said. It also noted that the paper printed 3,200 corrections last year.

The committee was made up of 11 editors, 6 reporters, a copy editor and a photographer.

The committee also recommended that the paper “increase our coverage of religion in America” and “cover the country in a fuller way,” with more reporting from rural areas and of a broader array of cultural and lifestyle issues. The report will be available today on the Times company’s Web site, www.nytco.com.

The “credibiity” committee also declared that The Times should respond to its critics, nothing “there are those who love to hate The Times.” The report urged The Times to explain itself “actively and earnestly” to critics and to readers often confused when charges go unanswered. “We strongly believe it is no longer sufficient to argue reflexively that our work speaks for itself,” the report stated. “In today’s media environment, such a minimal response damages our credibility,” it added.

The Times this morning quoted early reaction to the report from Orville Schell, dean of the journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley, who said The Times had to strike a balance between “smart public relations” and “letting your work speak for itself ....

“I would be loath to see a paper like The Times begin to spin its image too ardently through public relations techniques,” he said. “But I do firmly believe that the paper has to defend itself.”

 

NYTIMES.COM TO OFFER SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE

NYTimes.com to Offer Subscription Service
By Timothy Williams
The New York Times
May 17, 2005

www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/business/media/17times.html?ex=1118894400&en=46be4207b87babb5&ei=5087

The New York Times announced yesterday that it would offer a new subscription-based service on its Web site, charging users an annual fee to read its Op-Ed and news columnists, as the newspaper seeks ways to capitalize on the site’s popularity.

Most material on the Web site, NYTimes.com, will remain free to users, The Times said, but columnists from The Times and The International Herald Tribune will be available only to users who sign up for TimesSelect, which will cost $49.95 a year. The service will also include access to The Times’s online archives, as well as other features.

The service, which is scheduled to start in September, will be provided free to home-delivery subscribers of the newspaper.

A decision by The Times about charging users for portions of its Web site had been expected for months in the media industry. While some efforts by other newspapers to charge for content online have worked, others have been withdrawn, including most recently one by The Los Angeles Times, which decided last week to stop charging users a fee for its online entertainment listings, reviews and criticism.

Though advertising on Web sites accounts for only 2 to 3 percent of the revenues of most newspapers, it is the fastest-growing source of revenue. Still, many newspaper Web sites fear that charging money for Internet content may send readers to free sites, with advertisers following close behind.

The New York Times’s decision to charge a fee came after about a year of study, said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the Times Company and publisher of the newspaper.

Mr. Sulzberger said that while some Internet users accustomed to free content might not be willing to pay, many others would be attracted by the online package of columnists, archives and other material.

“The advertising growth on the Web has been just spectacular the last few years,” he said. “But like any business, it’s going to mature over time, and when that happens, it will flatten and then you’ll get into the normal cycles just like we do it on print. And at that point you’re really going to need to have another revenue model.”

He added, “This is going to help sustain the quality of the information that we make available.”

Alexia S. Quadrani, a senior managing director at Bear, Stearns who follows the publishing and advertising industries, said The Times’s plan made sense as a business model.

“All newspapers are looking for new advertising revenue and The New York Times realizes they have high-quality content and are looking at other ways to capitalize on it,” she said. “The key is to that you want to maximize the dollars you get on the Internet without alienating the people.”

In April, The Times’s Web site had 1.7 million unique daily visitors. Its daily newspaper circulation in March 2005, the most recent month available, was 1,136,433.

The Times already charges for some content, including its crossword puzzle, news alerts and online archive. Articles are free for seven days after publication; a fee is charged once they are archived.

TimesSelect will also provide subscribers access to TimesPast, the paper’s archives; exclusive multimedia, including audio and photo essays and video; TimesFile, a tool that will help users organize articles; and Ahead of The Times, which will allow subscribers to take an early look at articles that will appear in The New York Times Magazine, and the newspaper’s Travel, Sunday Arts and Real Estate sections.

Martha Goldstein, a spokeswoman for The Los Angeles Times, said the paper still might charge for certain portions of its site.

Caroline Little, publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the online media subsidiary of the Washington Post Company, said a fee is “something we’re looking at very carefully,” but added, “there haven’t really been a lot of successful ventures.”

The Wall Street Journal, which is the only national paper to charge for all of its online content, requires a $79 annual fee - $39 a year to those who have a newspaper subscription.

Todd Larsen, president of consumer electronic publishing at Dow Jones & Company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal, said he believed that his paper’s approach could be sustainable for a general-interest newspaper like The Times.

“We’re happy to see The New York Times acknowledging the importance of subscription-based revenue that we have long seen as a key element,” he said.

John Tierney, an Op-Ed columnist in The Times, said he had mixed feelings about the change.

“The capitalist in me applauds any effort to make money from these columns,” he said. “The columnist in me would rather not lose any readers.”

Clyde Haberman, a columnist for The Metro Section, said that he thought the experiment would work, but “I hope that if it does fail, they don’t decide the reason was us.”

 

WSJ TURNS TABLOID

WSJ turns tabloid
By Jason Deans
The Guardian
May 9, 2005

media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,7495,1479726,00.html

The Wall Street Journal Europe is following in the footsteps of the Independent and the Times, switching from broadsheet to tabloid format from October.

WSJ Europe and its Asian counterpart will both change to tabloid from October 17 in a move that will also see the two titles more closely aligned with WSJ.com.

The switch will allow the papers to offer more pages of colour advertising, including colour ads on the front page for the first time.

Dow Jones, the publisher of the WSJ, is also promising more regionally specific content, more stories in the European and Asian editions and fewer pieces that run over from one page to another.

The company said it expected the tabloid move, and related cost reductions, to produce a saving around £9m a year from 2006.

As part of the tabloid switch, a number of WSJ news posts at its European HQ in Brussels and Asian base in Hong Kong will be relocated to the US, where the paper is expanding its staff in preparation for the launch of a weekend edition in September.

Among journalists moving to the US will be the WSJ Europe editor and associate publisher, Frederick Kempe, who will return to New York on August 1 to become assistant managing editor, international.

The managing editor of the WSJ Europe, Raju Narisetti, will replace Kempe as editor.

WSJ Europe has a circulation of just over 86,000, while the Asian edition of the title sells nearly 81,000 daily.

FULL ARTICLES

THE ACADEMIC BAN – NAZI CONNECTION

The academic ban - Nazi connection
By Yaakov Lappin
The Jerusalem Post
May 1, 2005

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1114913918708

The Web site of Sue Blackwell, the Birmingham lecturer who presented motions calling for boycotts of Israeli universities, contains a recommended link to a Web site owned by an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi activist. Wendy Campbell, who owns the MarWen Media Web site, has promoted Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories discussing “unrivaled Jewish power,” and maintains an additional Web site entitled “Exposing Israeli Apartheid,” which is also linked by Blackwell.

MarWen Media, which is linked directly from Blackwell’s Web site, advocates the views of Kevin Macdonald, an anti-Semitic pro-Nazi author, who has claimed Jews are responsible for a “breeding program” to conquer other “races.”

Under the heading “Sue Blackwell’s links on Israel and Palestine,” Blackwell provides a link to the MarWen site, along with the following description: “MarWen Media offers the latest in groundbreaking documentaries, breaking through barriers and taboos that mainstream media – and even most alternative media do not venture.” Blackwell writes that “the documentaries, mostly about Israel, Zionism, and Palestine, are by Wendy Campbell; see her other site, Exposing Israeli Apartheid.”

Combining anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial and vilification of Israel, Campbell writes: “It is no accident that Israeli ‘security’ is now the centerpiece of US foreign policy. How are the highly placed “friends of Israel” able to bamboozle so much of the world?”

She peddles Holocaust denial, saying, “It’s a staggering fact that in numerous ‘free, Western democracies’ (such as Germany, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, and others) it’s a crime to question the official Jewish death toll figures or the gas chamber story in the events now called The Holocaust. Penalties include fines and actual imprisonment! Holocaust heretic Ernst Zundel was deported from the US to Canada where he spent two years in solitary confinement. Now he sits in a German prison. Who’s next?”

MarWen Media offers a videotaped interview with Kevin MacDonald, accompanied by the following description: “Prof. Kevin MacDonald is the author of three groundbreaking books on Judaism, the most recent being The Culture of Critique. In it, MacDonald concludes that Jewish intellectual movements including Freudian psychology, Marxism (including other radical, Leftist politics), the Frankfurt School of Social Research, the New York intellectuals and others, including right-wing NeoConservatism, have all been designed to advance specifically Jewish interests – often at the expense of non-Jewish interests. MacDonald’s incisive analyses offer an alternative view of western history and has the potential to change the course of major events still unfolding.”

MacDonald is a pseudo-intellectual white supremacist,who claims that Jews have been practicing a “breeding” program “masked” as a Jewish religious code, in a sinister bid to subjugate the world, and holds that Jews are responsible for an impending “race war” in the US.

Blackwell, who was described by columnist David Aaronovitch as a “former Christian fundamentalist,” has said on her Web page that “I do not include links to sites which promote either racism or terrorism. This has always been my policy and applies to all my 200+ Web pages, not just this one.”

Her Web site is reported to be under a House of Commons Committee investigation for a previous link to a Web site blaming Jews for the 9/11 attacks.

Ronnie Fraser, chairman of the Academic Friends of Israel group, told The Jerusalem Post that he was “shocked but not surprised.”

“Sue Blackwell denies being an anti-Semite, but her denial of being anti-Semitic cannot be taken seriously in light of the links she has put on her personal Web site,” said Fraser.

“With this revelation, I call upon the executive of the AUT to take a stand and bring the boycott motions to an end,” he added.

 

BRITISH AUT GETTING ‘DOWN WIV THE KIDZ’

British AUT getting ‘down wiv the kidz’
By Julie Burchill
Ha’aretz
May 1, 2005

www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=570880&contrassID=2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0

Prejudice is one of those things - like white shoes or Germans - for which there are very few excuses made. If someone is stingy (stinginess being the halitosis of the soul, as I always say) there’s always some do-gooding bystander who’ll stand up for them and say ‘Oh, but they’re just scared of being poor/they used to be poor!’

If someone’s a child abuser, even, some jerk will pop up and pipe ‘Ooo, it’s not their fault - it probably happened to them, too, when they were children! The abused abuse!’ Which is patently untrue to anyone with even the flimsiest grasp on mathematics in general and fractions in particular; around three quarters of child abuse victims are girls, but three quarters of child abusers aren’t women, are they? D’oh!

But you won’t find many people trying to explain why a person is prejudiced. ‘Oh, they’re just ignorant!’ is the best you’ll get. And it may well be true. Which is why the sight of ‘clever’ people showing prejudice seems singularly grotesque. What’s THEIR excuse?

I’m asking this right now because a couple of weeks ago, on April 22nd, Britain’s Association of University Teachers - an organization representing over 48,000 professional swots - voted to ban all contact with two Israeli universities, and asked its executive committee to consider a boycott against a third, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Israel was accused of being ‘a colonial apartheid state’ worse than South Africa, a ‘regime’ worthy of ‘removal’, and its universities of repressing academic freedom. Needless to say, this show of spite received rapturous applause; well, Britain IS currently playing host to the biggest ever annual number of violent anti-Semitic attacks, both on people and on property, since the 1930s. Who can blame the teachers, so conscious of their uncoolness, for wanting to get ‘down wiv the kidz’? They’re too respectable to daub swastikas on a synagogue - but it sure feels good to band together and bully them Israeli academics!

Just imagine; for once, the swots aren’t having their books ripped up in front of them by a gang of thugs - THEY’RE the ones doing the ripping. But if we learnt nothing else from the Shoah, you’d think we’d have learned that the seductive power of herd-mentality cruelty can suck in the most unlikely people; it sucked in the Germans, for instance, almost all of them, a nation thought by many to be the most cultured and civilized in Northern Europe. And now, sixty years after the rough-necked Brits showed the cultured Krauts the true meaning of civilization, we are going through our own dark night of the anti-Semitic soul.

In one way this turn of events is as unexpected as it is cruel - after all, in this country it tends to be academics who react to anything from mild censorship to book-burning with ‘That’s how Hitler started!’ That they are now doing something Hitler would thoroughly approve of, and did - barring contact with Jews - seems to have escaped them. But in another way, it makes logical, horrible sense. It’s not so long since English academia saw nothing wrong with having Jewish quotients as a matter of course, lest the ‘best’ universities be over-run by those unnaturally smart Heebs. Far from flying in the face of English academic freedom, maybe the latest haters are simply reverting to type.

I’ve always loved being English - but more and more these days, living through this latest, almost post-modern plague of anti-Semitism with a ‘caring’ face, I wish it was a club that I could resign from, as opposed to a flag I carry in my blood. Trust me, with all your trials and tribulations, you lot don’t know how lucky you are. Because you will never, ever be ashamed of and embarrassed by your country the way I am increasingly ashamed of and embarrassed by mine.

You’re too damn good-looking for your own good, you’re humourless and you don’t know the meaning of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ - but you’re not bullies, and you never will be. It makes me sad to think that just a few years ago, I thought that last thing about my people, too. I don’t anymore.

(Julie Burchill is a columnist for The Times of London.)

 

BRITAIN’S PROFESSORS AGAINST PEACE

Britain’s professors against peace
By Alan M. Dershowitz
The Jerusalem Post
April 27, 2005

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1114568597620&p=1006953079865

The British Association of University Teachers has now created a blacklist against Jewish Israeli academics – really a blue-and-white list – reminiscent of the worst abuses of McCarthyism. And just as McCarthyism was a barrier to peace between the US and the Soviet Union – by contributing to a dangerous atmosphere in which each side vilified and threatened the other – so too does the British lecturers’ boycott endanger the progress now being made toward peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

It is not surprising therefore that even the Palestinian Al-Quds University in Jerusalem headed by Sari Nusseibeh released a statement against the British association blacklist, saying, “We are informed by the principle that we should seek to win Israelis over to our side, not to win against them... Therefore, informed by this national duty, we believe it is in our interest to build bridges, not walls; to reach out to the Israeli academic institutions, not to impose another restriction or dialogue-block on ourselves.”

But instead of heeding the moderate words of those they claim to support, British university teachers will collectively punish Israeli academics in a manner that leading Palestinian academics do not support. They’ve become more Palestinian than the Palestinians, and at precisely the time when Israel is taking more risks and making more sacrifices for peace than it has since Camp David in 2000.

A spokesman for the Union of Jewish Students got it exactly right when he said, “Things in the Middle East are moving forward while in the UK they are moving backwards. These boycotts have struck a blow at talks between Israel and Palestine.”

As Israel’s Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s Zvi Hefetz noted, “The last time that Jews were boycotted in universities was in 1930s Germany.”

Not only is the academic blacklist harmful and wrong; it may also be illegal. According to Jocelyn Prudence, head of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, “This would appear to run contrary to contractual law, race and religious discrimination law, and academic freedom obligations...”

It’s a good thing Israel has only to make peace with its Palestinian neighbors and not European university professors.

The terrible message being sent by this anti-Semitic action – anti-Semitic because it will apply only to Israeli Jews, not Arabs or Christians – is that the Jewish state will not be rewarded for taking steps toward peace and ending the occupation. Instead it will be punished.

This isn’t the first time the AUT has targeted Israeli professors and universities. Back in May 2003, in response to Israeli re-occupation of several West Bank towns, the union considered but voted down a proposed boycott of Israeli academics. The ban would have directed members to “sever academic links with Israeli institutions and funding agencies, boycott conferences in Israel, and refuse to participate as referees in hiring or promotions by the country’s universities.”

The resolution failed by a ratio of two to one, because the members feared that a boycott would “harm progressive Israeli academics campaigning against the Sharon government.”

Why did the boycott resolution succeed this time around? What’s changed in the last two years? From the Palestinian perspective, the political and social climate is objectively improved over what it was two years ago. In just this year, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have signed a cease-fire agreement, Israel agreed to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and Israel is about to withdraw from all of the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements.

The “second intifada” has effectively ended, and Palestinians are preparing to police their own streets after the Israelis disengage. By any reasonable standard, things are better for Palestinians today than they were in 2003.

Instead of applauding Israel for taking courageous actions toward ending the occupation, British lecturers choose to attack Israel by blacklisting the nation’s Jewish academics. From now on, professors in the UK are not only permitted, indeed, they’re instructed, to discriminate based on nationality and ethnicity. As The Jerusalem Post wondered, “Why is it that just as the Palestinians are about to receive the greatest unilateral concession ever from Israel they urge a boycott? It is hardly the manifestation of goodwill that would encourage Israelis to support yet greater existential risks.”

The Guardian concurred, pointing out a troubling double standard: “Singling out Israel raises other questions. AUT members are not proposing, after all, to boycott universities in North Korea, Zimbabwe or Sudan, where the government has been accused of perpetrating genocide against its own people.”

“I used to think that it didn’t matter what we did,” an Israeli moderate once told me. “They will hate us just as much even if we give back the whole West Bank as well as Gaza.”

He paused and then continued: “I was wrong. It does make a difference. They hate us even more when we give more, because it confuses their image of us as totally evil. And our enemies see it as a sign of our weakness and their strength.”

My friend was right. This academic boycott makes clear that when Israel does precisely what its detractors demand that it do, even then – especially then! – extreme left-wing academics will only despise Israel more for putting the lie to the professors’ hate-filled views.

By targeting Israeli Jews, Britain’s “Professors Against Peace” – that’s what they really should be called – have displayed bigotry against Jews, done violence to academic freedom and anti-discrimination laws, and are fast closing a window of opportunity for reconciliation in the Middle East.

(The writer is a professor of law at Harvard. His latest book is Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights.)

FULL ARTICLES

IDF ‘RECRUITS’ HARLEY-DAVIDSONS

IDF ‘recruits’ Harley-Davidsons
Military Police purchase 60 legendary motorcycles using American aid money
By Hanan Greenberg
Ynetnews
May 10, 2005

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3083694,00.html

The IDF’s Military Police have purchased 60 new Harley-Davidson motorcycles using American aid money. The legendary motorcycles will gradually replace older models over the next two years.

The first six Harleys were showcased Monday at a prize-giving ceremony for exemplary soldiers at an IDF instruction base north of Tel Aviv.

Military Police Head Brigadier General Miki Barel said his unit plans to replace all its motorcycles over the next two years with new Harley-Davidson Sportsters, at a cose of USD 10,000 a piece.

“We are indeed talking about a prestigious bike, but in practice it did not cost that much, because it was partly paid for with money from the U.S.,” Barel told Ynet. “This is no doubt a step up from the motorcycles we have in the corps today.”

Older is better?

However, despite the enthusiasm, Corporal Moran Benisti remains loyal to her old Honda, despite having an opportunity to take the new Harley out for a test drive.

“It’s obvious this motorcycle is better,” she said. “But I still prefer the old Honda...it’s the right size for a small person like myself. It’s more comfortable than the new motorcycle, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.”

Benisti is one of 45 IDF soldiers enlisted in the army’s traffic police unit who use motorcycles for both law enforcement and deterrence.

The IDF is expected to receive more motorcycles over the next few months to gradually replace the outdated Hondas and BMWs

 

50,000 GERMANS TO SING FOR ISRAEL

50,000 Germans to sing for Israel
By Sam Ser
The Jerusalem Post
May 11, 2005

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1115705340470

Fifty thousand Germans have never before serenaded Israel with the Stevie Wonder version of “Happy Birthday” – but they will on Thursday.

Leo Sucharewicz, who founded the “I Like Israel” movement two years ago, has organized a mass celebration of Israel’s Independence Day in 20 cities throughout Germany, and in 10 more around the world. There will be stages set up in public parks, with Israeli songs, dancing and speeches about Israel.

At each place, Sucharewicz told The Jerusalem Post, 10 people – Jews and non-Jews – will get on the stage and tell the crowd what they like about Israel.

Professional soccer players and local politicians will also take part, with some cities’ ceremonies to be opened by their mayor.

“Why do we do it?” asked Sucharewicz. “To bring legions of people to Israel, to promote Israel as a Jewish country, to stop Israel bashing, to show the media that all their nasty anti-Israel headlines have failed. Also, to show that if you want to do something to support Israel, you don’t have to be afraid.”

A communication psychologist and political scientist who lives in Munich and works on the marketing strategies of the top 50 companies in the country, Sucharewicz spent two years living in Israel in the late 1960s, serving in the Golani Brigade, and his two daughters now live here.

Two years ago, wanting to promote Israel’s hasbara (PR) efforts in Germany, he and a team of Jewish professionals in marketing and project management (together with some volunteers) developed a “strategic concept” with Israel Day ceremonies at its core. Ceremonies were held in three cities in 2003, and have expanded since.

ILI believes there is great potential for a pro-Israel “market” in Germany.

ILI has even been in touch with Turkish and Kurdish groups in Germany, as well as a group there called Arabs and Muslims for Israel, he said.

“I want to see 1 million Germans in the streets [for Israel Day] by 2010,” he said, “and I want to see this go all the way to Kuwait City.”

So far, German authorities have been very cooperative, and ILI has met with little resistance otherwise, Sucharewicz said. “We have gotten the usual e-mails from Muslims,” he said, “and we expect some counterdemonstrations from neo-Nazis – but to hell with them.”

Ironically, he said, the main obstacles have been “hyper-religious or cowardly Jews afraid of being identified with Israel” and an obtuse Israeli bureaucracy.

“We asked El Al to send brochures, and only after three months of negotiations did they say they’d send a measly 200 brochures,” Sucharewicz complained. “The Israeli Embassy sent only 30 brochures per city. It’s ridiculous.”

 

JEWS ANGRY OVER MEMORIAL PLAN FOR DEATH CAMP TOOTH

Jews angry over memorial plan for death camp tooth
By Kate Connolly in Berlin
Sunday Telegraph
May 13, 2005

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/13/wmem13.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/13/ixworld.html

Berlin’s new Holocaust memorial was embroiled in an emotional dispute just two days after its opening over a plan to fix the tooth of a murdered Jew into a concrete pillar at the site.

Germany’s Jewish community has said it may be forced to boycott the vast monument if Lea Rosh, who led the 17-year campaign to build the memorial, goes ahead with her proposal. Its leaders have accused her of “blasphemy” and “irreverence”.

In front of a thousand guests at Tuesday’s inauguration ceremony, including Holocaust survivors and rabbis, Mrs Rosh held up a molar which she found during a visit to the Belzec concentration camp in Poland 17 years ago.

It was sticking out of the sand among other teeth from Holocaust victims, she said, adding that it had given her the impetus to start campaigning for the memorial and that she had carried it around with her ever since.

Mrs Rosh, 68, is a television presenter who changed her name to its current form at the age of 18 and is the granddaughter of a Jew. She explained that the tooth would be embedded in one of the concrete pillars, along with a yellow Star of David that Jews were required to wear under the Third Reich. It had been given to her by a Dutch Jewish woman whose mother was killed in a camp.

Mrs Rosh added that the memorial’s architect, Peter Eisenman, had agreed to oversee the task.

“The dead have no grave, but this memorial should stand for one,” she said.

Yesterday leaders of the Jewish community expressed outrage at the gesture. “I am not surprised, but furious,” said Paul Spiegel, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. “I find Lea Rosh’s behaviour impious.”

He said burying body parts anywhere other than a Jewish cemetery was “blasphemous” and contravened Jewish law.

Albert Meyer, the chairman of Berlin’s Jewish community, said he was furious. “If this happens, we Jews have to consider whether or not we can set foot on this site. Mrs Rosh responded by saying she had checked with Jewish scholars before making the announcement.

“My wish is in compliance with Jewish law. I did my research,” she said.

One rabbi, Yitzhak Ehrenberg, did defend her yesterday. He wrote in a statement that while bodies or large body parts had to be buried in a Jewish cemetery, there would be no probl