WAS JOHNSTON TOO PRO-FATAH?

Stephens’s view, however, is widely accepted among reporters covering the Middle East, including myself. It is common knowledge that Johnston, who was abducted in Gaza on March 12, was one of the most pro-Palestinian reporters in the region. However, sources tell me that some in Hamas may have felt that his reporting had become too pro-Fatah, which is one possible factor in his abduction by a Hamas-connected group, and also a possible reason why (despite the BBC’s repeated claims that the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority is doing everything in its power to secure Johnston’s release) in fact the Palestinian Authority has been doing next to nothing to help release the kidnapped BBC man.

When will the BBC realize that pandering to terrorism just doesn’t work?

Below I attach the pieces by Stephens and Unsworth.

-- Tom Gross

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: A TALE OF TWO TERROR GROUPS CALLED FATAH

The Associated Press, which along with Reuters stubbornly refuses to use the word “terror” when Palestinian terror groups (including Fatah) deliberately murder Israeli civilians, has been frequently using the word “terror” in its reports in recent days on the group also named Fatah in Lebanon. This is despite the fact that the Lebanon-based Fatah group has not indiscriminately murdered civilians in a wave of terror attacks on schools, buses, shopping malls, fast food restaurants, and so on, as has been the case by Fatah in Israel.

For example, this report by the AP’s Chief of Middle East News, Sally Buzbee, is titled “Lebanon: A haven for terror,” and contains phrases like “terrorists training to attack the west” and “a new front to the war on terror”. The article can be read on many news sites, for example here and in a slightly different version here at the New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune.

** Please see this telling photo and caption for how the AP does not use the word terror when writing about the other, more murderous wing, of Fatah.

SEVERAL? THE BBC CONTINUES TO DISTORT REALITY

The BBC’s twisting of events concerning Israel is relentless. Stephen Pollard (who is a longtime subscriber to this email list), points to the BBC online article of May 19 as typical of the way the BBC distorts events. The BBC says that Israel has carried out air strikes on Gaza after “several rocket attacks on Israel.”

“Several rocket attacks” is completely unrepresentative of the real nature of the attacks. On that day, 24 rockets hit Israel and wounded 30 Israelis (all civilians), some seriously. In the three days preceding the Israeli strike the BBC wrote about, the Israeli town of Sderot had been hit more than twenty times daily.

As Melanie Phillips, another longtime subscriber to this email list, points out: “Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian terrorists have fired more than 1,300 rockets into Israel. No other country would have experienced such sustained rocket attack for so long and do virtually nothing in response. No other country in the world is expected in such circumstances to respond to such acts of war by turning the other cheek. Only the Jewish state.”

According to Reuters, since May 15, more than 245 rockets have been launched toward Israel. Following deaths and injuries, several thousand residents of the town of Sderot, with a population of 24,000, have left.

Meanwhile the BBC continued to say that Israel “alleges” that rockets are being fired at it from Gaza. For example, the announcer on BBC Radio 4’s prestigious “Today” program said that “Israeli forces were attacking the Palestinians in Gaza in response to alleged rocket attacks.” As another subscriber to this email list points out: “Like the alleged Islamist attack on the USA on 9/11? Or the alleged attacks in London on 7/7? Why do the British continue to allow their money to go to the BBC to put up with this nonsense?”

The BBC have also used phrases like “which Israel says is aimed at stopping rocket attacks on its territory by militants,” as though this is only what Israel says when in reality it is a fact. The BBC does not use phrases like this when reporting on what the Palestinians are doing or saying.

THE BRITISH PRESS DON’T CARE IF THERE ARE BRITISH VICTIMS IN ISRAEL

Meanwhile, as far as I can tell from a thorough check, not a single British news outlet today mentions that Susanna Oz, the wife of Oshri Oz, who was killed yesterday by a Kassam rocket fired by Hamas into Israel, is a British expat. Susanna, who is a mother of a 2-year-old and is six months pregnant with their second child, realized her husband was the unidentified victim while reading a report on the Internet. Oz, 36, was killed after a rocket hit his car. At the same time as not mentioning this, the British media continue to belittle the deadly Palestinian-manufactured devices of the kind that killed him by referring to them as “homemade” rockets.

For another example (among many) of the British press not caring if there are British victims in Israel, please see: “The Forgotten Rachels”.

A machine gun attack in Jerusalem on Saturday night, claimed by Fatah, which injured Israelis (before the Fatah gunmen were shot dead as they were continuing to fire on Israelis) has also been barely mentioned in the British or international media.

SILENCE BY THE PALESTINIAN SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGNS

There are dozens of “Palestinian Solidarity Campaigns” in Britain. Yet with more than 150 Palestinians killed in “internal violence” in Gaza since the beginning of the year, and over 50 others killed in the past week alone in “clashes” at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian Refugee camp in Lebanon, there has been complete silence from these pro-Palestinian groups.

As the popular blog Harry’s Place notes:

* The International Solidarity Movement,
* The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign,
* The Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign,
* The Exeter Palestinian Solidarity Campaign,
* The York Palestinian Solidarity Campaign,
* The Brighton Palestinian Solidarity Campaign,
* The Stop the War Coalition,
* George Galloway’s “Respect” political party,

and many other pro-Palestinian groups “have nothing to say about these deaths at all.”

All these groups tirelessly protest Palestinian deaths (including those of terrorists) if Israel is to blame.

One can only conclude that these so-called Palestinian Solidarity Campaigns are in fact merely groups that wish to single out Israel for attack. Given the fact that Israel’s human rights record is far better than dozens of other states throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world, it is hard not to reach the conclusion that anti-Semitism, rather than concern about Palestinian civilians, is a strong motivating factor for these groups.

WHAT MASSACRE?

As HonestReporting points out, can anyone imagine the LA Times writing an editorial like this during the height of Jeningrad? (Editorial of May 26, 2007, headlined “Lebanon’s latest war: It’s unacceptable to shell a refugee camp, but terrorist havens have no claim to sovereignty either.”)

Just to remind readers, Israel didn’t mount its April 2002 operation in Jenin in a vacuum. It did so after sustaining seven deadly suicide bombings in a two-week period, emanating from Jenin, and culminating in the bombing of a Passover meal, which killed 30 civilians, including two elderly Auschwitz survivors. For more, see Jeningrad.

Yet the ongoing assault at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian Refugee camp in Lebanon, which has already witnessed more deaths than in Jenin in April 2002, began not after a wave of suicide bombings on civilian targets, but after a bank robbery was carried out by Fatah al-Islam gunmen.

However, the accusations by the media, the UN, and human rights organizations that a “massacre” or “genocide” is being carried out by the Lebanese Army are now remarkably absent.

So are claims of “disproportionately” of the kind leveled against Israel by just about everyone during last summer’s Hizbullah-Israel war. (In Israel’s case it sustained and was trying to prevent 4000 Katyusha rockets; yet Fatah al-Islam haven’t launched Katyushas at anyone.)

NOBEL LAUREATE CANCELS VISIT TO LONDON

Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg has cancelled a visit to Imperial College (a part of London university) due to “widespread anti-Israel and anti-Semitic current in British opinion”.

Weinberg, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1979, was invited to deliver a talk at a conference on particle physics.

In a letter to Michael Duff, his host at Imperial College, Weinberg wrote: “I know that some will say that these boycotts are directed only against Israel, rather than generally against Jews... But given the history of the attacks on Israel and the oppressiveness and aggressiveness of other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, boycotting Israel indicated a moral blindness for which it is hard to find any explanation other than anti-Semitism.”

In his letter, Weinberg also cited the new boycott on Israeli goods by Britain’s National Union of Journalists. For more on the NUJ boycott, see For first time, British journalists officially vote to boycott Israeli goods (April 14, 2007).

“I SEE IN THE BRITISH PRESS AND THE BBC SIGNS OF A VERY STRONG ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS”

As noted in the first article below (from The Guardian), Weinberg’s “decision comes a week before members of the University and College Union are to call for an academic boycott of Israel at their inaugural annual conference.”

The second article below contains an interview with Steven Weinberg in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. The American physicist says “I don’t want to say I’m cutting ties with the U.K. – I love England. I just feel personally uncomfortable going with the atmosphere there at the moment. It’s increasingly hostile to Israel, especially in the intellectual world.”

He adds that “I see in the British press and the BBC signs of a very strong anti-Israel bias – a kind of blind hostility that whatever Israel does, it is always in the wrong – so this is not an isolated action of a small group of anti-Semitic conspirators. This represents a widespread feeling among British journalists.”

120,000 members of the British University and College Union will be asked tomorrow (Tuesday) to vote on a proposed boycott of Israeli universities at its annual congress in Bournemouth. As noted on this email list / website, in March 130 British doctors called for the Israeli Medical Association to be the only country in the world to be expelled form the World Medical Association (this despite the fact that Israeli doctors do more than any other country, per capita, to help patients in the developing world, including Palestinian patients.)

UK ARCHITECTS CONDEMN ISRAEL

The lies about Israel in the British media (see for example here in The Independent and in The Daily Telegraph) are continuing to have an effect as more and more British “professionals” single out Israel for special treatment.

The latest are British architects, who have launched a petition condemning Israeli “oppression of the Palestinians,” and called for a boycott of Israelis.

The petition was brought by a group calling itself Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP). “We ask the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA) to meet their professional obligations to declare their opposition to this inhuman occupation,” a spokesman for the group told The Guardian.

Architect Will Alsop told Building Design magazine that he and his colleagues felt compelled to act. “This is not against Israel, it’s for Palestine,” he said. “I think the Palestinians are living in a prison. I’d like fellow colleagues in Israel to feel some responsibility about this.”

Other signatories include the architectural historian Charles Jencks and the president of the Institute of Royal British Architects Jack Pringle.

Jon Benjamin, the chief executive the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: “What they are saying is that they have a certain view and that Israeli architects must publicly declare that to be their position as well.”

ROLLING STONES TOLD NOT TO PLAY IN ISRAEL

Anti-Israeli groups in Britain and elsewhere are pressuring the Rolling Stones to cancel their upcoming concert in Israel.

In a letter to the band’s managers one group claimed that “performing in Israel at this time is morally equivalent to performing in South Africa during the apartheid era.”

So far there has been no reaction from the Rolling Stones who are expected to play in Israel in the fall. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ron Wood and Charlie Watts will launch the Stones “Bigger Band 2007” European tour on June 5 in Belgium.

The Israeli media have also reported that Britney Spears is due to appear in Israel some time in the summer. Mother-of-two Spears recently emerged from another stay at a rehab clinic to perform in San Diego’s “House of Blues” – her first appearance in three years – and is shortly to embark on a tour which, according to reports, will include Israel.

OPRAH WINFREY TO MAKE ISRAEL SOLIDARITY VISIT

Oprah Winfrey has accepted a proposal from Elie Wiesel to come to Israel on a solidarity trip. The American talk show queen is expected to visit in the near future.

Wiesel asked Winfrey to visit Israel, where “the major war against terror is currently taking place.”

Winfrey was recently honored by the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity for her contribution to promoting humanitarian issues. In her acceptance speech Oprah said she sympathized with the suffering of the people of Israel, and that she intended to accept Wiesel’s invitation to accompany him to Israel.

Last year Oprah visited Auschwitz with Elie Wiesel. For more on that trip, see “War on Denmark! Death to Denmark!” (& Oprah visits Auschwitz) (Feb. 1, 2006).

-- Tom Gross

A FIERCE ADVERSARY

The reporting by the western media on the ongoing violence in Lebanon (against Fatah al-Islam, an offshoot of the PLO) has been very different from the reporting on the violence in Gaza and southern Israel.

In Lebanon, the deaths of many Palestinian civilians since Sunday at the hands of the Lebanese army has been barely mentioned in the coverage. A typical headline is, for example, this one in today’s Washington Post: “Lebanon Confronts A Fierce Adversary: Shelling Targets Well-Armed Force.” (By contrast, Al Jazeera claims this morning that the civilian death toll is “well over 100” that “there are children under the rubble of damaged buildings.” UNRWA says the Lebanese army has stopped six UN trucks, including a water tanker, from entering the camp.)

In Gaza by contrast, many international media are failing to mention the incredible care taken by Israel to avoid civilian deaths, and some media, particularly in Europe, are all but ignoring the fact that over 150 rockets have been fired at Israeli civilians in the last week in unprovoked attacks by Hamas and other groups. This after Israel had completely withdrawn from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

Yesterday, for example, 18 rockets hit Israel, resulting in many injuries and the death of a 32-year-old Israeli woman, Shirel Friedman, who was driving in her car to bring her mother, who was in a bomb shelter, a sweater, after she asked for one. (She was the 17th Israeli to die from Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza in recent years.) The barrage continued this morning with further rockets landing in Israel.

The following letter, printed in today’s New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune, could equally well apply to coverage in many western media:

Balancing Gaza coverage

While your newspaper has been covering the fighting between Fatah and Hamas and Israel’s strikes against Hamas targets, there has been essentially no coverage of the continuing Hamas rocket attacks on Sderot.

Thanks to other sources, I have learned that in the last few days, Hamas has fired over 50 rockets – and is continuing rocket fire – at Sderot. At least two Israelis have been seriously injured, dozens of other Israelis have suffered injury, countless residents of Sderot are suffering from shock, the terrorists scored a direct hit on a synagogue, approximately 10 percent of the population has been forced to flee, schools are closed and the Israeli government is doing very little to protect its citizens from these terror attacks.

I have always felt that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the most over-reported story in the world. Yet, if one is going to report on it, one should at least report the entire story and not only report from the Arab perspective.

Josh Baker, Bangkok

IS SYRIA BEHIND THE VIOLENCE IN LEBANON?

The first article attached below, by Jonathan Spyer, a research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs center, IDC Herzliya, explains some of the causes of the ongoing violence in Lebanon and why it is likely that the Syrians are behind it.

Fatah-Intifada, the group from which Fatah al-Islam derives (and which itself is a breakaway from the PLO), was used by Hafez Assad for various bombings, and assassinations in a power struggle with Yasser Arafat in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Spyer (who is a longtime subscriber to this email list) writes that “The Assad regime has a long history of utilizing terrorist and paramilitary groups for such a purpose... Could it be that the regime in Damascus might see an escalation of tension in Lebanon as currently helpful – as a tacit reminder to the international community of what Damascus is capable of when put in a corner?”

SYRIAN DISSIDENT IMPRISONED FOR TWELVE YEARS

Kamal Labwani, a Syrian pro-democracy activist who was arrested two years ago after meeting with White House officials, has been sentenced to twelve years in prison.

He was convicted of “contacting a foreign country, passing on messages and encouraging attacks against Syria.” The Judge told Labwani that he was lucky to “only” receive twelve years in prison.

Labwani, a physician, is one of several human rights critics of the Syrian regime who are currently on trial in Syria. A few days ago, Anwar al-Bunni, a human rights lawyer, received a five-year prison sentence. He is a pro-democracy activist and ex-political prisoner and a founder of the Democratic Liberal movement.

Labwani was detained at Damascus airport in November 2005 after returning from a visit to the U.S. The White House and the State Department have called on Syria to release Labwani.

Western human rights groups, more interested in attacking the governments of the U.S. and Israel, have, as usual, barely taken note of what the Syrian regime is doing.

SAUDI ARABIA ON BEHEADING SPREE

Four Saudis, an Iraqi and a Pakistani have been beheaded for rape, murder and drug trafficking in Saudi Arabia. The six beheadings – which all happened on one day, and were all carried out by sword – brought the number of executions announced by the Saudi authorities so far this year to 72. This is almost double the figure for 2006.

At least 37 people were executed in 2006, while 83 were put to death in 2005 and 35 the year before, according to tallies based on official Saudi statements. In the Saudi kingdom, beheadings are carried out with a sword in a public square.

For more on punishment in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world, see So busy attacking Israel, they forgot about these beheadings (Nov. 21, 2006).

KUWAITI EDUCATION MINISTER RESISTS CALLS TO WEAR VEIL

The newly elected Kuwaiti education minister, Dr. Nouriya Al-Subeeh, has angered Islamist MPs by refusing to wear a veil.

Dr. Al-Subeeh told the Egyptian weekly Roz Al-Yousuf that “A woman who wears a veil does so out of belief, and this belief must be respected – just as the belief of a woman who does not want to wear a veil must be respected. This is the essence of democracy, in my opinion, which is, inter alia, to respect and accept the opinion of the other.”

While many in an increasingly open Kuwaiti media have argued that no one has the right to impose a dress code on anyone, Islamist MPs claimed that she was required by law to wear a veil. An amendment to Article 1 of the 2005 Election Law, states that women had political rights but that they had to commit to the principles of Islamic law.

For more Kuwaiti media debate on this subject, see I. Rapaport’s report for MEMRI here.

EGYPT ARRESTS MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD MEMBERS

Egyptian police have arrested fourteen members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood in an ongoing campaign against the country’s strongest opposition group. The Egyptian interior ministry said the members were arrested for holding a secret meeting in Sharqiyya Province, 50 miles from Cairo.

The Muslim Brotherhood claimed on its official website that they had been participating in a course on how to make shampoo. (!)

Although the group has been banned since 1954, its lawmakers, who run as independents, hold 88 seats in the 454-seat parliament. Over 300 members, including leading figures, students and bloggers, have been arrested in a crackdown since December, when Muslim Brotherhood students carried out a military-like parade.

A military trial of 40 top Brotherhood figures on terrorism and money laundering charges began late last month. The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent party of the Palestinian group, Hamas.

In a separate development today, Egypt announced it has released some 135 other Islamic extremists, who had spent more than a decade in prison, after they signed statements renouncing violence. The prisoners all belonged to al-Jihad, a group once headed by al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, Ayman Al-Zawahri. Over a thousand militants from al-Jihad are still believed to be in Egyptian prisons.

MUSLIMS ATTACK COPTS IN EGYPT

Nearly 60 Muslims were arrested this month by Egyptian security forces, accused of setting fire to Christian homes and shops in the village of Behma, about 40 miles south of Cairo.

The Muslims and Copts had clashed over the construction of a church. Rumors that Christians did not have a permit to build a church sparked anger among Muslims which turned to violence after Friday prayers when about 500 Muslims attacked about 200 Christians.

At least 27 Christian-owned houses and shops were damaged by fire, including 10 homes that were completely gutted.

Christians, who comprise about 10 percent of Egypt’s 75 million people (the remainder being primarily Sunni Muslim) complain of discrimination and harassment by the authorities. (Western journalists and human rights groups of Christian origin seem to care little about their plight.)

In 1999, 20 Christians were killed, dozens wounded and scores of shops destroyed when attacked by Muslims in the southern village of Kosheh.

In February this year, Muslims set fire to Christian-owned shops in southern Egypt after hearing rumors of a love affair between a Muslim woman and a Coptic Christian man.

Last year, a 45-year-old Muslim man stabbed a Coptic Christian man to death and wounded five others in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.

AL-QAEDA GROUP THREATENS “CRUSADER AND ZIONIST” SARKOZY

A group linked with al-Qaeda has threatened to launch attacks in France against the “crusader and Zionist” Nicolas Sarkozy.

In an internet statement, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades said “As you have chosen the crusader and Zionist Sarkozy as a leader... we in the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades warn you that the coming days will see a bloody jihadist campaign ... in the capital of Sarkozy.”

The group previously claimed responsibility for the July 2005 terror attacks in London, as well those in Madrid in March 2004 and in Istanbul in November 2003. The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades is named after an al-Qaeda commander killed during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.

For more on the new French president, see Sarkozy: The Palestinians deserve a homeland, but the security of Israel is not negotiable (May 8, 2007).

HOSPITAL IN MILAN REMOVES CRUCIFIXES “TO PLEASE MUSLIMS”

Milan’s leading obstetric hospital has removed its crucifixes in order to avoid offending a growing number of Muslim patients, reports the Italian daily La Repubblica. (Italian speakers can read it here.)

The director of the Mangiagalli hospital said “Our wards have become multiethnic. We want to respect all religions and avoid any form of discrimination. That is why we have decided to replace the crucifix with the image of the Madonna, which is also appreciated by Muslim women.”

Officials at the hospital hope to replace all crucifixes within the next few months. However, patients will still be able to have a crucifix hanging in their room if they request one.

KUWAITI BUSINESSMAN HELPS RENOVATE LAS VEGAS SYNAGOGUE

An American Muslim businessman born to a Kuwaiti father and a Lebanese mother, has donated $35,000 to Temple Beth Sholom, Las Vegas’ largest Conservative synagogue.

Mike Abul said he made his donation due to a friendship he had struck with Jeff Michelman, one of Las Vegas’ Jewish residents.

Abul said, “As open-minded as my family is, the Kuwaiti perception of Israel isn’t the most positive one... I guess the joint interests Jeff and I have in real estate, and our similar family background has resulted in our business relations turning into a friendship. Our friendship has opened many doors for me, and I’ve met some wonderful people. I am grateful, and the most natural place for me to show this gratitude was the temple.”

Temple Beth Sholom is honoring Abul by naming one of the classes after his daughter, Sophia.

It is unusual for Muslims to donate to Jewish causes, though quite a number of Jewish businessmen donate to Muslim charities.

***

The second and final article below is by the esteemed scholar Bernard Lewis, who asks whether “Osama was right?”

“Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won’t change their view,” says Professor Lewis, who is arguably the greatest authority on Islam in the world today.

He concludes that “more recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences – both for Islam and for America – will be deep, wide and lasting.”

-- Tom Gross

DAVID IRVING AND HIS JEWISH COUNTERPART, NORMAN FINKELSTEIN

Convicted Holocaust denier David Irving was ejected from the Warsaw book fair on Saturday. He had planned to display his books there.

Polish organizers said there was no room at the book fair for a man who denied that the Nazis murdered six million Jews, half of whom were Polish citizens. “We asked him to leave,” said Grzegorz Guzowski, the book fair organizer. “Our employees helped him pack up his things, and our car drove him to the address he specified.” (For more, see the first article below.)

Among previous dispatches on Irving, see David Irving: Auschwitz “was a tourist attraction” (& British Muslims scrap Holocaust Day) (Jan. 31, 2007).

The second article below is by Marty Peretz, who strongly criticizes the decision by DePaul University, the largest private educational institution in Chicago, to consider Norman Finkelstein for tenure. Peretz cites “The wife of the neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Ernst Zuendel (who) gushed... Finkelstein is a Jewish David Irving.”

For more on Finkelstein and DePaul University, see the twelfth note in the dispatch, Auschwitz death toll was higher, UK government archives reveal (April 16, 2007).

Among others I quote the respected German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which wrote about Finkelstein: His “assertions are pure invention... No facts alleged by Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no quotation in his book should be assumed to be accurate, without taking the time to carefully compare his claims with the sources he cites.”

BUT THE BBC DECIDE TO GIVE HIM MORE AND MORE AIRTIME

Despite (or perhaps because of) Finkelstein’s distortions of the Holocaust, the BBC is increasing the times they invite him on their programs to air his hateful views. For example, earlier this month BBC World TV carried an appearance by Finkelstein at the prestigious Oxford Union at Oxford University where Finkelstein was given plenty of air time to spread disinformation. (The BBC doesn’t usually carry broadcasts from the Oxford Union.)

(The BBC’s coverage of the ongoing violence in Gaza and southern Israel in recent days has also been particularly duplicitous, omitting lots of pertinent facts vital to understanding Israel’s viewpoint, facts which were not omitted by CNN International and France 24, France’s new global 24-hour TV news network.)

Among other recent comments made by Norman Finkelstein, the man DePaul University now wants to give tenure to:

“Israel has embarked, in its own words, on a war of annihilation against the Lebanese people. Not a day passes when the language they use doesn’t escalate... This is pure and simple Nazi language… Right now, and I say it publicly, right now we are all Hizbullah... And every victory of Hizbullah over the vandals and the marauders, the invaders and the murderers; every victory by Hizbullah over Israel is also a victory for liberty and a victory for freedom... the monsters and freaks in the White House and their collaborators in Tel Aviv – so far as I’m concerned they can all drop dead.”

ELIE WIESEL RETURNS TO SAN FRANCISCO

This is an update to Ilan Halimi brought to rest in Jerusalem (& Elie Wiesel assaulted in a San Francisco hotel) (Feb. 11, 2007).

Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Auschwitz and Buchenwald survivor, has returned to San Francisco and has admitted he was “traumatized” by his visit in February when he was attacked at a hotel there.

Eric Hunt, 22, of Sussex County, New Jersey, was arrested some days later at a New Jersey behavioral health clinic after dragging Wiesel from an elevator at the Argent Hotel. Hunt told Wiesel he was being taken “into his custody” and told him to admit “the Holocaust is a lie.” Hunt faces kidnapping, false imprisonment, battery, elder abuse, stalking and hate crime charges in San Francisco.

Wiesel returned to San Francisco to receive an award for “a lifetime devoted to perpetuating Jewish life.” Guarded by police, Wiesel described the recent attack as a “new element to the equation... I call them not mentally ill but morally ill people.”

In addition, Wiesel spoke of his fear that anti-Semitism was on the rise worldwide. He described Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the “number-one Holocaust denier in the world.”

The location of Wiesel’s appearance was kept secret until reporters called to confirm their attendance, and their credentials were double-checked when they arrived.

ANTI-SEMITIC ATTACKS IN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE

The third and final article below reports that a Russian Jew was stabbed to death in northern St. Petersburg. The attack appears to be similar to other recent lethal assaults carried out by neo-Nazi groups.

Earlier this month an explosive device was detonated in front of a synagogue in the Russian city of Samara. Local Jewish leaders were angered when Russian police classified this attack as “mere hooliganism.”

“This was not in any way an act of hooliganism,” a community member told the Jewish.ru Web site. “Somebody planned this, somebody built the explosive device, somebody placed it there because someone wanted to kill random Jews. I hope that this case won’t have the brakes applied to it and that the culprits are found.” Anti-Semitic leaflets have also been circulating throughout the city recently.

A synagogue in the western Ukrainian town of Kolomiya (a synagogue famous for where the founder of Chasidic Judaism prayed) was also vandalized last week.

JAMES BOND STAR DANIEL CRAIG TO STAR IN “DEFIANCE”

James Bond star Daniel Craig is to star in the World War II action-drama “Defiance,” about a band of Jewish resistance fighters, reports Variety, the newspaper of the Hollywood film industry. The film will be directed by Edward Zwick, the director of “Blood Diamond.”

News of this movie was revealed at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival. The plot, based on a true story, follows four Jewish brothers in Nazi-occupied Poland who escape into the forest, where they join up with Russian resistance fighters to battle the Nazis and attempt to save the lives of other Jews. Filming will start in early September, before Craig begins filming the next James Bond installment.

Daniel Craig previously played a Jewish South African-born Mossad agent in “Munich.” For more on the Steven Spielberg directed-movie, see Munich (1): “Spielberg is no friend of Israel” (Dec. 15, 2005).

-- Tom Gross