HIZBULLAH’S WESTERN APOLOGISTS

[Note by Tom Gross]

I attach four articles of interest from recent days (the first two written by subscribers to this email list) and various other related notes.

In the first, Dean Godson (writing in The Times of London) asks why, when Israel defended itself against attack by Hizbullah in 2006, the world was outraged, but now that Hizbullah are deliberately slaughtering Lebanese civilians (include a massacre of Lebanese Druze last week), in what is the worst sectarian strife since the 1975-90 civil war, the world is strangely silent.

“Even the Israeli enemy never dared to do to Beirut what Hizbullah has done,” lamented Fouad Siniora, Lebanon’s embattled Prime Minister, last weekend.

Yet there has been not a peep from the concerned humanitarians of the Stop the War Coalition, which boasted of putting 100,000 people on to the streets to protest against Israeli assaults.

If Hizbullah is, as their Western apologists claim, an entirely indigenous “resistance” movement, why have pictures gone up in Beirut of the Iranian leader, Ali Khamenei, and the Syrian President, Bashar Assad, for the first time since the Cedar Revolution of 2005?

(For a photo montage about Hizbullah and Iran, please click here. )

 

HIZBULLAH CAPTURE OF MOUNTAIN VILLAGE SEEN AS A THREAT TO ISRAEL

Tom Gross adds: It was reported that as part of their attacks last week, Hizbullah seized control of the strategic mountain-top village of Niha in Druze heartlands 25 miles south-east of the Lebanese capital Beirut, thereby consolidating strategic gains that could be used in confrontations with Israel.

If the reports are accurate, the village could now provide the Iranian-backed terror group with a crucial link between its stronghold in the eastern Bekaa Valley and the coastal highway that leads to Hizbullah’s bases in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

It was also reported that Hizbullah gunmen took over key positions in Aley, a Druze town north of the Chouf mountains, which abuts the main Beirut-Damascus highway, giving them control of another key artery.

(Other reports suggest the Druze gave Hizbullah a thrashing in the Chouf mountains, and Druze websites claim they killed at least 32 Hizbullah fighters there.)

 

FATAH AL-ISLAM SAYS IT WILL FIGHT “HUMILIATION” BY IRAN IN LEBANON

The fundamentalist Sunni group Fatah al-Islam, defined by Lebanese government as a terrorist organization, has vowed to confront those “bowing the heads of the Sunnis in Beirut” with “bloodshed,” the pan-Arab Al-Hayat daily reported on Thursday.

In an indirect reference to the Shia Hizbullah group, Fatah al-Islam said in a statement that what happened in Beirut, “the killing, burning and humiliation to the Sunni people, is not justified or accepted.”

“Anyone who wants to bow the heads of our people in Beirut” will be confronted even if the price is “bloodshed,” the statement said.

Fatah al-Islam fought deadly battles with the Lebanese army last spring in the Palestinian camp of Nahr el-Bared in northern Lebanon. The Lebanese army crushed most of the fighters but some remain at large.

(For background on Fatah al-Islam, see the notes on these three dispatches.)

 

“APPLYING ELECTRICAL SHOCKS TO HIS GENITALS”

Amazingly, this morning’s International Herald Tribune finally carries a front page story revealing some of what went on in Lebanon in the last two weeks. The first two paragraphs of the report read as follows:

“For two and a half days, Hussein al-Haj Obaid lay on the floor of a darkened warehouse in west Beirut, blindfolded and terrified. Militiamen loyal to Hizbullah had kidnapped him at a checkpoint after killing his nephew in front of him.

“Throughout those awful days, as his kidnappers kicked and punched him, applied electrical shocks to his genitals and insulted him with sectarian taunts, he could hear the chatter of gunfire and the crash of rocket-propelled grenades outside, as Hizbullah and its allies took control of the capital.”

***

IHT: OBSESSED WITH ISRAEL

But lest anyone imagine that the International Herald Tribune has suddenly decided to criticize Hizbullah rather than Israel, both comment pages of today’s Herald Tribune are dominated by articles critical of Israel; the entire letters column is devoted to letters critical of Israel (save for a two paragraph letter on Burma); the paper’s editorial is harshly critical of President Bush’s speech last week in the Knesset (a speech I praised in my previous dispatch); one comment piece sneers at American Jews for supporting Israel; another praises the duplicitous anti-Zionist pseudo-historian Ilan Pappe, and says that Israel has never accepted that the Palestinians should have their own state (this is a complete lie: Israel has on many occasions agreed to plans that would have created a Palestinian Arab state); a third comment piece says Israel is “building settlements all over the West Bank.” (In fact settlement building has ground to an almost complete halt.)

 

IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS CAUGHT FIGHTING IN LEBANON

Lebanese Intelligence sources revealed that a number of Hizbullah fighters who were captured during last week’s clashes cannot speak Arabic, but only Farsi, Ya Lebanon, a Lebanese website reported.

The sources said that those detained either have identified themselves or been identified by third parties as members of the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

Last week, Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt called for an end to flights from Iran to Lebanon. He said that these flights were being used to transport Iranian fighters and their weapons into Lebanon.

***

IRANIAN-TRAINED TERRORIST ARRESTED IN GAZA

This morning the IDF made public that Alaa Jihad Ouad Abu Madif, a resident of Karara located near Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, was arrested on April 15 in a joint IDF-ISA operation. Abu Madif participated in a month-long military training course in Iran in May 2007, after being recruited to the Abu Rish faction a short time previously.

His training in Iran included the use of heavy weapons, hand grenades, and target practice.

The Abu Rish faction which splintered from the PLO in the 1990s, was involved in rocket attacks against and suicide attacks Israel.

 

OFFICIAL IRANIAN PRESS YESTERDAY AGAIN DENIES GAS CHAMBERS AT AUSCHWITZ

More Holocaust denial yesterday here for an English-speaking international audience on the official Iranian government-run Press TV.

 

GERMAN SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL SLIPPING AWAY FAST

In the second article below, Daniel Schwammenthal, writing in the European edition of The Wall Street Journal, examines attitudes to Israel in Europe’s largest country, Germany.

Contrary to popular opinion, Germans dislike Israel as much as other west Europeans. In a BBC survey last month even the respondents in the United Arab Emirates had a more positive perception of the Jewish state than Germans did.

Schwammenthal, who is German-born, notes: “Guilt is an unhealthy basis for a relationship; it easily turns into resentment. This may help explain why so many Germans – 30% according to last year’s survey by Bertelsmann Foundation – are so eager to compare Israel to fascist Germany. If it were true that Israelis are modern-day Nazis, there would be less reason to feel guilty about the real Nazis.

“... Churchill debunked the idea that Israel could be justified only as reparation for past atrocities long before the Holocaust: ‘The Jews are in Palestine by right and not by sufferance,’ he said in 1922.

“... Unlike Americans, German officials almost never argue that Israel deserves solidarity as a Western ally... Given the similar threats Europe and Israel face from Islamic terror and a nuclear Iran, an alliance between them would seem natural. But as long as Europe’s public considers Israel more as part of the problem than as part of the solution, any such alliance will suffer. It’s time for German and European officials to make the real case for Israel – that of solidarity with an embattled ally.”

 

REPORTING HISTORY

In the third piece below, veteran journalist Ruth Gruber recounts how she covered the independence of Israel on May 14, 1948, for the New York Herald Tribune, having previously gone to Germany and Austria to interview Holocaust survivors.

This is an emotionally powerful piece worth reading in full for those who have time.

 

PALESTINIANS LEARNING ABOUT THEIR ISRAELI ENEMY

In the fourth and final article below, Nathan Jeffay, writing in the weekly education supplement of The Guardian reports that “a masters degree in Israeli studies is proving popular among students at a Palestinian university.”

“... What is surprising, though, is that Noful is a Palestinian whose husband is a prisoner in Israel, and she wants an end to the country’s existence. So why is she praising Israel’s achievements?

“The answer is that she one of a growing number of Palestinians who want to study Israel. Noful is a student on the fast-growing Israel studies course at the Palestinian Al-Quds University. Between the university’s West Bank and Gaza campuses, the two-year masters degree has more than 100 students – reflecting a year-on-year growth of about 10% since 2005.”

THE GUARDIAN’S OBSESSIVE VERBAL POGROM

It should be noted that an article of this kind is extremely rare in The Guardian, a newspaper which is almost daily filled with libels against Israel. Jeffay’s article appears in the education supplement. Meanwhile last week’s series of articles maligning virtually every aspect of Israel in the main section of The Guardian led commentator Melanie Philips to note that “The Guardian’s hatred of Israel and the Jews truly is a fathomless – and unfathomable – well. The last few days around Israel’s 60th anniversary have seen a further escalation of its obsessive verbal pogrom.”

With the hate generated against Israel in large parts of the British media, it is perhaps not surprising that anti-Semitic attacks are continuing to rise. Last week four synagogues in London were daubed from head to foot in anti-Jewish graffiti and death threats, reports the Evening Standard newspaper.

***

AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER TO THE GUARDIAN

Here’s a copy of a letter sent to The Guardian last week by Dr. Denis MacEoin of Newcastle upon Tyne, one of a rare band of non-Jewish defenders of Israel in the UK. Since The Guardian declined to publish it, I do so here:

May 14, 2008

Dear Sir,

Israel (whose 60th birthday you celebrate so harshly) is not without its faults, but it is equally not without its achievements. As many of us, Jews and non-Jews alike, celebrate the great things Israel has done and continues to do, you choose to focus on one thing, Gaza. Israel no longer occupies Gaza, yet you present no other images to mark the post-Holocaust recovery but images of Gaza, no other articles than articles stressing the miseries of Palestinian life. Where are your photographs of Israeli hospitals where Jews and Palestinians are treated on the same wards? Where are your images of Israel’s cutting edge medical and technological research? Her scientific and artistic achievements? Her preservation of a genuine democracy in the face of repeated attack and splenetic hatred? Her aid work round the world (and today, before almost anyone else, in Burma)?

The words that spring to mind for this week’s coverage are ‘churlish’, ‘bitter’, ‘unfair’ and ‘one-sided’. Your motives are harder to place. Love for Palestinians is commendable, though love for Hamas is harder to understand. And do you feel love and fellowship for their ingrained racism, their religious fundamentalism, their praise of suicide bombers, their celebrations of death, their regular use of misguidance through the media? By all means be politically correct, but BE correct. Palestinian values are not liberal values, yet your animus towards Israel and your embrace of movements like Hamas give credence and respectability to them.

Is it beyond your ability to show photos of Jews and Arabs working together, of Israeli doctors saving Palestinian lives, of prosperous Arab communities in Israel, of women enjoying full equality with men, of gay pride parades in Tel Aviv, of minority religions like the Baha’is living without harassment, given freedoms no other Middle Eastern country will give them? There are poor Israelis, there are Israeli victims of terror, there are Israelis living under daily barrages of rockets, there are Israelis who build schools and invent new technologies, who run orphanages and sing songs and write poetry and dance. What makes Palestinian suffering, much of it self-inflicted, so all-encompassing that it drives all positive images from the other side from your pages? We deserve better. You deserve to be better.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Denis MacEoin

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

MURDOCH: EUROPEAN MEDIA HOSTILITY TO ISRAEL HAS ANTI-SEMITIC ROOTS

A “pretty strong degree of anti-Semitism” in Europe is at the root of the hostile coverage Israel receives in parts of the European media, media mogul Rupert Murdoch said on Thursday.

Murdoch, owner of broadcasting and print media throughout the world, was in Israel as part of the state’s 60th birthday celebrations. He made the comments in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

Murdoch added: “If you go to the BBC, the French press, places like that – they start as hostile, and it’s very difficult to overcome. But you’ve just got to press on and do what you can.”

Almost the only prominent media in the world that give Israel a fair hearing are those belonging to Murdoch: Fox TV, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, the British tabloid The Sun. Even Murdoch, however, has at times had to struggle to keep some blatantly anti-Israel coverage, occasionally bordering on the anti-Semitic, out of his European media, which includes the Sky News network and The Times of London.

And the Fox News ticker tape refers to Palestinian terrorists who bomb Israeli towns as “militants,” while terrorists elsewhere in the world are referred to by it as terrorists.

 

RUPERT, BUT NOT JAMES, MURDOCH: LIFELONG FRIEND OF ISRAEL

As I have noted before on this list, Murdoch has been a lifelong friend of Israel. See, for example, the introduction to this dispatch: Hollywood stars blast Nasrallah, but Spielberg, Streisand and others remain silent (Aug. 20, 2006).

Less pro-Israel is his son and presumptive heir James Murdoch. This may have been an isolated incident, but James Murdoch once referred to the “fucking Israelis” in a meeting with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The revelation was made last year in book published by Blair’s top aide, Alastair Campbell, who was in the room with Blair and the Murdochs when the exchange took place.

The prime minister’s aide said James Murdoch’s outburst drew a rebuke from his father, who said “he didn’t think he should talk like that in the prime minister’s house.”

“James got very apologetic with [Blair], who said not to worry, I hear far worse [about Israel] all the time,” Campbell wrote.

James Murdoch heads News Corp.’s BSkyB satellite broadcasting division.

 

MURDOCH “IMPRESSED WITH THE ISRAELI SPIRIT AND RESILIENCE”

Rupert Murdoch was in Israel last week for Shimon Peres’s “Facing Tomorrow” presidential conference.

In a briefing that I attended in Jerusalem, Murdoch praised Israel for using its “human capital to make up for the lack of natural resources and help carve a modern society and a technological leader out of desert.”

To help maximize that Israeli human capital, he said he would join a task force that would explore setting up a new Jerusalem high school for technological excellence together with Mort Zuckerman, owner of the (rival) (New York) Daily News, and Leslie Wexner, owner of Victoria’s Secret and other clothing chains.

Murdoch, 77, also said he has spent two days before the conference “privately walking the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem” and had been very impressed with the Israeli spirit and resilience and the progress the country had made.

However, he noted, “Israel has this huge problem of hostile neighbors, financed and promoted by an Iran which has unlimited money and is led by Islamic extremism.”

“Islamic extremism is going to be around for a long time,” he added. “The greatest danger is if nuclear weapons were to fall into the hands of nongovernment extremists, who wouldn’t hesitate to put a bomb onto Tel Aviv or New York City. That’s by far the biggest danger to the world.”

***

Last time I praised Rupert Murdoch on this website, I received several anti-Semitic emails attacking him, also charging that he “is of Jewish descent.” For the record, he is not. As a young man in Australia he also went out of his way to help aboriginal victims of injustice long before it became fashionable to do so.

***

The enormous conference, masterly put together by Shimon Peres, was packed with interesting discussions from high profile speakers ranging from Mikhail Gorbachev to Vaclav Havel, to many Nobel prize winners, and the heads of Google, Yahoo, My Space and many other top companies. Yet it was largely ignored by the international media.

 

BUSH RECEIVES STANDING OVATIONS IN ISRAEL

The full content of U.S. President George W. Bush’s speeches in Israel last week went largely unreported because Barack Obama and his supporters stole the media limelight by claiming that Bush was talking about Obama, even though not by name.

Bush made some important observations, especially in his speech to the Knesset. His words are all the more significant because Bush’s political career is almost over. He no longer needs campaign support, and in all likelihood he meant every word he said.

In his speeches in Israel, including the one I attended, Bush received several standing ovations.

Sounding like he did in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he told the Knesset that the fight against terror and extremism was “the defining challenge of our time.”

“THE KILLERS CLAIM THE MANTLE OF ISLAM, BUT THEY ARE NOT RELIGIOUS MEN”

Bush said: “It is more than a clash of arms. It is a clash of visions, a great ideological struggle. On one side are those who defend the ideals of justice and dignity with the power of reason and truth. On the other side are those who pursue a narrow vision of cruelty and control by committing murder, inciting fear, and spreading lies.

“... The killers claim the mantle of Islam, but they are not religious men. No one who prays to the God of Abraham could strap a suicide vest to an innocent child, or blow up guiltless guests at a Passover Seder, or fly planes into office buildings filled with unsuspecting workers.”

Regarding Israel, he said: “The Jewish people endured the agony of the pogroms, the tragedy of the Great War, and the horror of the Holocaust – what Elie Wiesel called ‘the kingdom of the night.’ ... Yet in spite of the violence, in defiance of the threats, Israel has built a thriving democracy...”

“THIS IS A TIRED ARGUMENT AND AMERICA REJECTS IT UTTERLY”

“Earlier today,” continued Bush, “I visited Masada, an inspiring monument to courage and sacrifice. At this historic site, Israeli soldiers swear an oath: ‘Masada shall never fall again.’ Citizens of Israel: Masada shall never fall again, and America will always stand with you.”

Israel, he said, has the right to protect itself and no one should force it to negotiate with those who wanted to destroy it. He criticized, without mentioning them by name, the Carters and Walts and Mearsheimers who say that if the U.S. would just break with Israel, all its problems would somehow disappear.

“This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of our enemies, and America rejects it utterly,” Bush said. “Israel’s population may be just over seven million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because America stands with you.”

 

BLAIR: HAMAS TO BLAME FOR GAZA FUEL SHORTAGES

Also in Israel last week, former British Prime Minister and Quartet peace envoy Tony Blair implied, as I have done on many occasions this year, that the international media was falsely blaming Israel for the fuel shortages in Gaza.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, he said: “It is important to emphasize to the outside world – and most people don’t understand – that we’re trying to urge Israel to get fuel into Gaza, and then the extremists come and kill the people bringing the fuel in. It’s a crazy situation.”

 

AUSTRALIAN PM CONSIDERING LEGAL ACTION AGAINST AHMADINEJAD FOR INCITING GENOCIDE

Australia is considering taking Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the International Court of Justice in The Hague for inciting genocide against Israel, Australia’s prime minister Kevin Rudd said.

“The Iranian president’s repeated extraordinary statements, which are anti-Semitic and expressing a determination to eliminate the state of Israel from the map, are appalling by any standards of current international relations,” he told Britain’s Sky News network last Thursday.

Rudd said Ahmadinejad’s repeated comments were “dangerous stuff.” “It’s not just hyperbole from the bully pulpit of Tehran, it’s the roll-on effect across the Islamic world, particularly those who listen to Iran for their guidance,” he warned.

Australian Attorney-General Robert McClelland confirmed to The Australian newspaper that the government was seeking legal advice on taking Ahmadinejad to the International Court of Justice.

 

EGYPTIAN CULTURE MINISTER: I WOULD BURN ISRAELI BOOKS MYSELF

Israel has filed a complaint with the United Nations’ education, science and cultural organization (UNESCO) after Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni told the Egyptian Parliament last week that “I would burn Israeli books myself if found in Egyptian libraries.”

Hosni is a favorite to be appointed the next UNESCO secretary-general, and Israel says it would be a sad day for UNESCO if he gets the job.

Today, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is scheduled to leave for Sharm al-Sheikh in order to participate in a summit with U.S. President Bush, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Abdullah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. She said she is likely to raise the issue in her discussions with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

Hosni also said he would oppose an initiative presented by the American Jewish Committee to establish a museum of Jewish antiquity and culture in Cairo. Jews had a long and rich history in Egypt until they were forced out following the creation of Israel.

 

FATAH CLAIMS HAMAS ATTACKED “NAKBA” RALLY IN JABALYA

Fatah claimed on Thursday that Hamas attacked a rally to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Palestinian “nakba” (the creation of Israel) in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that more than 30 participants in the rally were injured by gunshot wounds or as a result of being beaten with clubs.

Fatah’s spokesperson in the West Bank, Fahmi Za’arir, told the Palestinian-run Ma’an news agency that Hamas members assaulted the participants, specifically women. “This represents the continuation of the coup that Hamas staged in the Gaza Strip, and it came on a special day in which all Palestinian forces united to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Palestinian nakba,” he said.

 

“DEAD GAZA CANCER PATIENT” ALIVE AND KICKING

Muhammad al-Harrani, a father of six from Gaza diagnosed with cancer who reportedly died while waiting for a permit to enter Israel, has miraculously come back to life.

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, al-Harrani’s story was widely publicized in the international media after his family told the “Physicians for Human Rights” organization that he had died. (Physicians for Human Rights is one of many leftist Israeli NGOs constantly berating Israel to the international media.)

“The sick man could not withstand the wait for the permit,” Ran Yaron, Director of the Occupied Territories Department, was reported by western media as saying, adding that he blamed the Israeli government for adopting “cruel policies against cancer patients.”

But al-Harrani last week admitted that his family had deliberately lied, after he turned up for radiation and chemotherapy treatment at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.

When questioned by the Israeli tabloid Yediot Ahronot, Physicians for Human Rights admitted that they had been too quick to believe what they were told by Palestinian families without verifying the information from independent hospital sources.

 

[Readers of Israeli media will of course be familiar with the next two items; but since they were virtually ignored by the international media, I write about them here for those who do not know about them.]

MULTIPLE CASUALTIES AS ROCKET HITS ASHKELON SHOPPING CENTER

Dozens of Israelis were injured on Wednesday evening, including a mother and her 2-year-old daughter who were seriously hurt, when a rocket fired from Gaza hit the crowded Hutzot Shopping Center in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.

The rocket hit the third floor of the building, where offices and a medical center are located, and a large part of the shopping center was destroyed.

Several people were trapped in the rubble and rescue services worked frantically to free them from the debris. Fifteen people were badly injured and 87 people were treated for minor injuries and shock. The cafeteria of Barzilai Hospital in central Ashkelon was turned into a makeshift clinic because the hospital wasn’t big enough to tend to all the injured.

The attack came as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and U.S. President George W. Bush were meeting in Jerusalem.

The injured baby has now regained consciousness. She has undergone several operations to remove shrapnel from various places in her body, while doctors are waiting for her condition to stabilize further before they attempt to remove shards of shrapnel that pierced her head.

Uri Bar-Lev, the police commander of Israel’s southern district (and who is also a subscriber to this email list), said bomb experts had determined beyond any doubt that the rocket was of Iranian origin.

 

THE BBC, INCAPABLE OF TELLING THE TRUTH

When the BBC finally mentioned the attack after hours of protests in the UK from pro-Israel individuals (including subscribers to this list) about why they had not reported it, they tagged it on to the end of a story about Palestinian suffering, using the following line: “A rocket reportedly fired from Gaza hit a shopping center in the Israeli city of Ashkelon, officials say.”

In fact, the rocket (1) was fired from Gaza (Hamas admitted this), not “reportedly,” and (2) Ashkelon was hit, not “officials say”. But it is many years since the BBC, the world’s largest news network, reported honestly on the Middle East.

Here are some photos of the attack, and here are some more. Hardly any of these kind of photos appeared in the mainstream international press.

 

BRITISH TV STAR’S MOTHER-IN LAW MURDERED BY HAMAS

This latest attack in Ashkelon comes at the end of a deadly week in southern Israel, in which two Israelis were killed and many injured in an ongoing barrage of Qassam rockets and mortar shells.

Last Wednesday, 69-year-old Shuli Katz, from Kibbutz Gevaram, was killed as she visited her sister-in-law in Moshav Yesha, only days after father-of-three Jimmy Kedoshim was killed as he tended to his garden in a neighboring kibbutz, Kfar Aza.

Shuli Katz, who was born and grew up on the kibbutz, worked for 35 years as a nurse. She left four children and five grandchildren.

Even though President Bush was about to arrive in Israel, and even though Katz was the mother-in-law of famed British TV comedian Paul Kaye, her death was barely mentioned in the international media.

Kaye said: “To think that the Palestinians were handing out sweets in Gaza after the attack, it’s sick. The idea of people celebrating Shuli’s death is just too awful. She was such a gentle and beautiful lady who loved helping people in her work as a nurse and you just can’t imagine her having such a violent end.”

***

The Israeli media and public has been reacting with fury against the Israeli government for its inaction following attacks from Gaza. Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s most popular daily, said in an editorial that “The Government has forgotten that it has a central mission: To safeguard the state’s citizens and not try to satisfy the Americans, Egyptians and Europeans.”

 

MI CHIEF: ROCKETS COULD HIT BEERSHEBA IN 2 YEARS

Israel’s Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin has told Ha’aretz that in two years time Hamas’ Iranian-supplied rockets would be capable of reaching Beersheba, one of Israel’s largest cities.

On the likelihood of agreeing on a lull (tahadiyeh) in the fighting with Hamas, with Egyptian mediation, Yadlin said that “the tahadiyeh, as agreed between [Egyptian intelligence chief] Omar Suleiman and Hamas perhaps solves the problem of terror from Gaza for the short term. But in the long term, it does not provide an answer to the ongoing smuggling or the Hamas buildup of a substantial arsenal.”

 

QASSAM ROCKET STRIKES SDEROT SYNAGOGUE

Three Qassam rockets were fired into the western Negev town of Sderot from the Gaza Strip on Thursday evening, one of which struck a synagogue, causing extensive damage to the building but no casualties. Several passersby were treated for shock.

 

BOMB EXPLODES AT CHRISTIAN SCHOOL IN GAZA

Unknown assailants detonated a bomb outside a Christian school in Gaza City before dawn on Friday, the latest in a string of attacks on Christian institutions in Gaza. The powerful explosion was heard in surrounding neighborhoods at around 4 am. Damage was visible at the entrance to the Zahwa Rosary School, which is run by Catholic nuns but caters mainly to Muslim students.

Two nuns were in their convent adjacent to the school when the bomb went off, a school official said. The official declined to be named, saying she was frightened by the incident and concerned for her safety.

The school had been ransacked in June 2007, along with the nuns’ adjacent convent, during the week Hamas seized power in Gaza.

The bombing was the latest in a string of attacks on Christian institutions in the historically Jewish but now overwhelmingly Muslim territory. In one attack, a local Christian activist was murdered in October. His killers have not been found.

(For background on attacks on Christians by Muslims in Gaza and the West Bank, please see previous dispatches on this website.)

 

THE MOST SERIOUS TERRORIST BOMBING YOU HAVEN’T READ ABOUT THIS WEEK

In an editorial, The Wall Street Journal Asia asks why the terrorist attacks that killed 61 people and wounded more than 200 in Jaipur, India, last Tuesday was barely reported upon. Was it, the paper wonders, because the perpetrators were Islamic Jihadists?

The paper notes: “Like other free nations, India is under severe and growing threat from Islamic jihadists, and has been for decades. New groups such as the Indian Mujahedeen, which yesterday claimed responsibility for the Jaipur attacks, appear regularly. More than 1,000 people died in India last year from terrorists attacks by Islamists and others. Only Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan suffered more casualties over the same period.

“... Jaipuris saw the face of terror this week. But as in New York, Bali, London, Madrid, Mumbai and elsewhere, the bombings in Jaipur represent an attack on the values democracies hold dear by those who would impose their fanaticism on all of us.”

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

CANADIAN PM: MUCH CRITICISM OF ISRAEL IS THINLY-VEILED ANTI-SEMITISM

“Some of the criticism brewing in Canada against the state of Israel, including from some members of Parliament, is similar to the attitude of Nazi Germany in the Second World War,” Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned last Thursday.

“I guess my fear is what I see happening in some circles is an anti-Israeli sentiment, really just as a thinly disguised veil for good old-fashioned anti-Semitism, which is completely unacceptable,” Harper said in an interview with CJAD/CFRB radio.

“We learned in the Second World War that those who would hate and destroy the Jewish people would ultimately hate and destroy the rest of us as well, and the same holds today.”

(Report from The Ottawa Citizen here.)

 

BRITISH PM BROWN: ISRAEL’S CREATION ONE OF THE 20TH CENTURY’S “GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has congratulated Israel on its 60th anniversary, calling the state’s creation one of the “greatest achievements” of the 20th century.

One should not, however, confuse the attitude of Brown, who is a lifelong friend of Israel – as his father (a Church of Scotland minister) was before him – with the attitude of many British journalists and academics who are lifelong haters of Israel (as in many cases, their fathers were anti-Semites before them).

“Many articles in papers like The Guardian and The Independent have become so stridently anti-Israel that it is difficult to distinguish them from anti-Semitism,” a British Muslim who subscribes to this list said to me last week.

For example, Johann Hari, an award-winning columnist for The Independent, for the second week in a row has written a column so dripping in hatred for Israel, and so packed with misinformation, that even one of his fellow columnists for The Independent, Howard Jacobson, devoted his column this past weekend to criticizing Hari (although Jacobson only dealt with part of what was wrong with Hari’s piece).

I am not going to waste my time further critiquing this latest hateful polemic from Hari – or “Dirty Hari” as British commentator Richard Littlejohn has now called him. You can read my previous item on Hari here: Journalist of the year calls Israel “shit,” as Israel marks Holocaust Memorial Day

***

There have been many other programs in Britain and elsewhere in the last week, rife with anti-Israel propaganda and revisionist history. For example, the documentary by the BBC’s Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, titled “The Birth of Israel,” has been widely criticized. Even such a moderate commentator as Alex Brummer, the Business Editor of The Daily Mail, wrote last week: “The shameful thing is that the revisionist historians have bought into ‘Arab disinformation’. After watching the BBC program the Birth of Israel and delving into the press coverage, one recognizes how corrosive this process has become.”

 

PARTING GIFT: “BUSH SET TO OFFER ISRAEL CRUCIAL NEW RADAR”

With new intelligence reports estimating that Iran may have a nuclear weapon by the summer of next year, the Bush administration appears ready to offer Israel a powerful new radar system capable of tracking baseball-sized objects from 2,900 miles away.

While it is not clear that the system could stop a nuclear weapon, it would greatly boost Israeli defenses against ballistic missiles in general while tying it directly into a growing U.S. ballistic missile shield. (Other locations are slated to be the Czech Republic, eastern Turkey, and possibly Georgia.)

President George W. Bush is expected to discuss the matter during his visit to Israel on Wednesday. The initiative has been spearheaded by Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, and Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat.

The system, known as a forward-based X-band radar, would let Israel’s Arrow missile defenses engage a Shahab-3 ballistic missile about halfway through what would be its 11-minute flight path from Iran to Israel, or six times sooner than Israel’s “Green Pine” Radar is currently able to do.

In the last year, Iran has expanded its ballistic missile program. In November, Iran tested a new “Ashura” long-range ballistic missile – an upgrade to the “Shahab-3” – capable of hitting Israel and Europe within minutes of launch.

BUSH AND CHENEY REMAIN GREAT FRIENDS OF ISRAEL, DESPITE UNPOPULARITY AMONG U.S. JEWS

Sources added that Bush and his vice-president Dick Cheney, generally regarded as the best friends Israel has ever had in the White House, wish to rush through as much defense cooperation for Israel as possible, fearful that a Barack Obama presidency could severely curtail military and other aid for Israel.

Cheney said last week: “America’s commitment to Israel’s security is enduring and unshakable, as is our commitment to Israel’s right to defend itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats from forces dedicated to Israel’s destruction. The United States under this administration will never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security.”

In spite of this, Bush and Cheney remain less popular among American Jews, according to opinion polls, than among the general population.

(Incidentally, last time I said something nice about Dick Cheney, I was named the “Worst Person in the Word” on MSNBC’s Countdown program with Keith Olbermann. Olbermann, true to form, misquoted me.)

 

SHELL THAT KILLED JIMMY KEDOSHIM CAME FROM IRAN

The mortar shell that killed Jimmy Kedoshim on Saturday came from Iran, according to ballistic experts. Kedoshim, a father of three, was murdered as he tended to his garden in the southern Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Aza. His house took a direct hit from the mortar fired from Gaza. Hamas proudly claimed responsibility for firing it.

Such is their bias, almost no western media have reported on the murder, let alone on the fact that Iran supplied the weapon.

During Saturday alone, at least 20 missiles were fired from Gaza towards Israeli homes. Among the buildings damaged were a synagogue and a building belonging to Sapir Academic College. No foreign religious leaders have condemned the bombing of the synagogue. And no foreign academics have condemned the shelling of Sapir College.

In February, a student was murdered by a Qassam rocket fired at Sapir College, which lies 40 minutes south of Tel Aviv. Until today, to my knowledge, there hasn’t been even one statement of sympathy from all those academics in Britain and elsewhere who never tire of expressing solidarity with Palestinian academics. This is so even though Palestinian campuses have never been targeted for a bomb attack, as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was in 2002, for example, and Sapir College is now.

As a result of the incessant Qassam fire, over 40 percent of pupils have already fled the Sapir campus and stopped attending classes. Some 40 classrooms and one third of the laboratories are not in use, because they are deemed too vulnerable to rockets and too far from the bomb shelters.

Rockets from Gaza also landed in various other towns and kibbutzim over the weekend and a number of injured Israelis were evacuated to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.

 

QASSAMS EXPLODES NEAR SCHOOL BUS CARRYING CHILDREN

One of the Qassams that hit Israel’s Negev yesterday, exploded near a school bus packed with children, Ha’aretz (but not international media) reported. There were no casualties, but several children were treated for shock.

Two of the rockets fired on Sunday afternoon from Gaza, hit populated areas in Sha’ar Hanegev. Another again landed near Sapir College, damaging a local construction site.

This morning, a Qassam rocket hit a schoolyard in the Israeli city of Ashkelon just minutes before it would have been full of children.

 

AL-AKHBAR: WASHINGTON HAS GIVEN ISRAEL GREEN LIGHT TO INVADE GAZA

The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on Saturday that the United States has given Israel a green light to carry out a large-scale military attack against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, following President Bush’s visit this week.

The Israeli town of Sderot is now the most bombed town in the world. It has been hit with more rockets than the whole of London in the blitz. (For more on the situation in Sderot, please see previous dispatches including this one.)

Quoting anonymous sources, Al-Akhbar said that Israel sent an intelligence report to Washington, stressing the importance of military action to crack down on Palestinian military groups that have amassed an unprecedented level of weaponry in Gaza. Misusing international aid money, as well as funds from Iran, Hamas has recently managed to acquire a vast arsenal of weaponry, said the Lebanese paper.

Diplomatic sources told Al-Akhbar that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have been holding meetings about the timing and scope of an invasion of Gaza.

Israel pulled its forces from the streets of the Gaza Strip in 1994, and evacuated settlers in 2005. (For more, please scroll down here to see this photo montage: Exodus From Gaza.)

 

JORDAN BANS “NAKBA” COMMEMORATIONS

Jordanian authorities have banned all events marking the “Nakba,” or “Catastrophe,” as some Arabs refer to the independence of Israel 60 years ago.

Several pro-Palestinian groups and Jordanian opposition parties had been planning to hold a rally in Amman on Friday. But the authorities banned the event, as well as other “illegal public gatherings.”

Earlier this year, Jordan banned relatives of Ala Abu Dhaim, the Palestinian who murdered eight students and wounded many others at a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem on March 6, from mourning him in public.

Meanwhile, “Nakba” events are continuing elsewhere in the world. See, for example this poster advertising the University of California’s “Nakba” events (scroll down to see it).

 

RAFSANJANI BLAMES JEWS FOR HOLOCAUST

In a speech to mark “the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Zionist regime,” former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani blamed Jews for causing the Nazi Holocaust. He said that (what he claimed was) Jewish control of banks and the media had given Europeans no choice but to act. His remarks are in Persian here.

Unlike the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rafsanjani didn’t actually deny the Holocaust took place. Rafsanjani has wrongly been described in some western media as a moderate Iranian leader.

 

AHMADINEJAD: ISRAEL IS A “STINKING CORPSE” DOOMED TO DISAPPEAR

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad on Thursday called Israel a “stinking corpse” which is doomed to disappear.

“Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken,” Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official Iranian IRNA news agency.

“The Zionist entity [Israel] is on its way to annihilation,” he said. It “has reached the end like a dead rat after being slapped by the Lebanese” – a reference to the July-August 2006 war between Israel and the Iranian-controlled Hizbullah militia.

 

AHMADINEJAD CRITICIZED FOR SAYING LONG-AGO 12TH IMAM LEADS IRAN

Several leading Iranian clerics last week criticized President Ahmadinejad for saying that the last imam of Shi’ite Islam, a messianic figure who Shi’ites believe was hidden by God 1,140 years ago, leads modern-day Iran.

“We see his hand directing all the affairs of the country,” Ahmadinejad told theological students in the city of Mashad. “A movement has started for us to occupy ourselves with our global responsibilities. God willing, Iran will be the axis of the leadership of this movement,” he said.

Several clerics in the Iranian parliament accused Ahmadinejad of implying that Imam Mahdi or Imam Zaman (Imam of the Age), as the Shi’ite messiah is also called, supports his government. Since Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, he has made the “hastening of the coming of Imam Mahdi” an important aim. Some experts fear Ahmadinejad may use nuclear weapons “to hasten the Imam’s arrival.”

 

THESE BUSINESS VISIONARIES KNOW WHEN TO BACK A WINNER, AND IN ISRAEL THEY SEE A WINNER

On Friday I was asked by The National Review “to write 200 or so words as part of a panel on Israel’s 60th birthday and what the future holds.” I wrote the following:

Even before Israel’s 60th-birthday celebrations began this week, there were those who once again were predicting doom and gloom for the Jewish state — and not just in Europe. In America, the cover of this month’s Atlantic magazine has a Star of David in Palestinian colors with the headline: “Is Israel finished?” In Canada, the cover of Maclean’s magazine has a montage of three Israeli soldiers unable to raise the national flag. The headline: “Why Israel Can’t Survive.”

This is all nonsense. Israel is flourishing. Indeed among the guests arriving in coming days are not only President Bush and political chieftains from 27 countries, but such front-rank business leaders as Rupert Murdoch, Google founder Sergey Brin, and Yahoo founder Terry Semel. Even Al Gore is turning up the week after.

These business visionaries know when to back a winner, and in Israel they see a winner. There is not a single major hi-tech company (IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, Google) that hasn’t now established an R & D center in Israel.

But there is one enormous problem: Iran. It is not only the Islamic regime’s nuclear threat but its support for the deadly militia Israel faces to its north (Hizbullah) and south (Hamas). Were the Iranian regime to crumble, Palestinian pragmatists might gain the upper hand, a responsible Palestinian state could be formed, and Israel’s future would indeed be rosy.

 

ASSAD: SYRIA WON’T CUT IRAN, HAMAS OR HIZBULLAH TIES FOR DEAL WITH ISRAEL

In an interview published on Friday with the Italian magazine L’Espresso, Syrian President Bashar Assad rejected Israel’s demand that Syria cut its ties with Iran and Hizbullah as part of any peace deal. He said that detaching his country from the two was “irrelevant” to reviving peace talks.

Syria maintains close ties with both Hizbullah, Hamas and Iran, all of which seek Israel’s destruction.

In recent days Hizbullah, copying tactics used by Hamas against Fatah in Gaza last year, have seized control of west Beirut from the more moderate, pro-Western Sunni government, in fighting that left many about 50 people dead. (For more, see the article below.)

The claim by Assad to the gullible Italian journalist that Hamas and Hizbullah don’t kill civilians is obvious nonsense. Assad said: “Syria remains firmly convinced that neither Hamas nor Hizbullah are terrorist organizations for the simple reason that they don’t kill civilians.”

 

FORMER GUANTANAMO PRISONER TAKES PART IN SUICIDE ATTACK

A former Kuwaiti detainee at the United States prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was released from U.S. custody, was involved in the suicide attack in Mosul, Iraq, on April 29, which killed six people.

This has been confirmed both by forensic experts examining the corpse and by a jihadist website, which wrote that Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi was one of the “heroes” who took part in the suicide attack: “May God have mercy on you Abdullah al-Ajmi. We send you a warm greeting O you martyr, O you hero, O you, a man in a time where only few men are left,” said the website.

Al-Ajmi is not the first former Guantanamo detainee to return to terrorism.

-- Tom Gross

ISRAEL’S FRIENDS

[Note by Tom Gross]

This evening Israel begins its 60th Independence Day celebrations. The celebrations continue into next week when President George W. Bush, together with present and former presidents, prime ministers and senior officials from 27 countries, will arrive at the invitation of Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Among others scheduled to be in Israel next week as part of the country’s birthday celebrations are: Rupert Murdoch, Google founder Sergey Brin, Yahoo founder Terry Semel, Vaclav Havel, Mikhail Gorbachev and Henry Kissinger.

Al Gore will also visit Israel on May 19, when he will open a Tel Aviv University conference on renewable energy.

Jewish left-wing celebrities are once again shunning Israel. (Barbra Streisand, for example, cancelled her invitation from Peres.) But non-Jewish actors such as Jon Voight will pay a solidarity visit to the rocket-battered town of Sderot next week. (Oscar-winner Voight played leading roles in Midnight Cowboy, Mission Impossible, and many other films.)

 

“IS ISRAEL FINISHED?” ...

Even before the celebrations have begun, much of the international media have been using Israel’s birthday as an excuse to once again attack the Jewish state.

For example, in America, the cover of The Atlantic magazine’s May edition has a Star of David painted in Palestinian colors of red, black and green. The headline asks: “Is Israel finished?”

In Canada, the cover of Maclean’s magazine’s May 5 edition has a montage of three Israeli soldiers struggling to raise the national flag. The headline reads: “Why Israel Can’t Survive.”

These and other articles aide the general efforts by people in the west, as well as in the Arab world, to destroy Israel.

 

... CERTAINLY NOT

But amidst the doom and gloom and outright hate and resentment of the world’s only Jewish state, some positive articles stand out.

The first article I attach below is by the distinguished British historian Andrew Roberts. It will be published in the coming days in The Daily Express, a mid-market British paper that tends to buck the anti-Israel trend of most of the British media.

Roberts writes:

“The State of Israel has packed more history into her sixty years on the planet than many other nations have in six hundred. There are many surprising things about this tiny, feisty, brave nation the size of Wales, but the most astonishing is that she has lived to see this birthday at all.

“... When during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Medal for bravery: today Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long.

“... ‘We owe to the Jews,’ wrote Winston Churchill in 1920, ‘a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all wisdom and learning put together.’

“... Civilization owes Judaism a debt it can never repay, and support for the right of a Jewish homeland to exist is the bare minimum we can provide...”

(Roberts’s full piece, which I recommend reading, is below, followed by an article by Melanie Phillips. Both Roberts and Phillips are longtime subscribers to this email list.)

 

THE NASTY BBC

The Jew-baiting BBC has in recent days been running promos virtually every hour plugging their half hour special interview with Richard Falk. In each promo the BBC, citing Falk, compares Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis. Falk, a despicable man, is Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. (I previously mentioned Falk in this dispatch.)

As I have written before, The Guardian (and The Independent) are overwhelmingly the papers of choice for BBC news staff. For an example of what they so admire in The Guardian, please click here.

 

POLICE STORM WARSAW HOTEL ROOM, FREE 3 CAPTIVE JEWISH TEENS

This is a follow up to my “Holocaust Day” dispatch last week.

* A ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day was interrupted shortly after it began in the southern Israeli town Sderot on Wednesday evening when two Qassam rockets landed in the vicinity and participants, including Holocaust survivors, ran for cover. The ceremony, which was being held outdoors opposite the town’s Holocaust memorial, was then moved to a sheltered indoor location at the request of residents. At least 15 rockets fell in Sderot during Holocaust day (and dozens more since then).

* The Associated Press reports that armed Polish police broke into a room at the Holiday Inn hotel in Warsaw on Monday and freed three Jewish teenagers who were being held captive by a 23-year-old man who claimed to have a bomb. The three 16-year-olds, from Brazil, had been in Poland to take part in the “March of the Living” at the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau on Holocaust Day last week. Polish police said the hostage-taker was the son of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Poland.

 

UNITED NATIONS OFFICIALS SAY THEY’RE SHOCKED – SHOCKED!

Reuters has revealed that the headmaster at one of the United Nations’ top prep schools in Gaza was also the chief rocket-maker for Islamic Jihad.

Israel has long accused the UN agency of complicity with senior Palestinian terrorists.

Reuters writes:

By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at an UNRWA school in Gaza. By night, Palestinian militants say, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad. An Israeli air strike killed Qiq, 33, last week.

His family denied he had any militant links, despite a profusion of Islamic Jihad posters at his home. But militant leaders hailed him as a martyr who led Islamic Jihad’s “engineering unit.”

The full Reuters article is here. Few newspapers in the west have bothered to report this news, which ought to have grave implications about the nature of the UN.

One paper that did, The New York Post, asks:

So much for UNRWA’s self-proclaimed “zero-tolerance policy toward politics and militant activities.” Now the which, must explain how it let a high-ranking terrorist take charge of its Rafah Prep Boys School.

He was guilty, of course: Islamic Jihad actually ID’d him as “chief leader of the engineering [i.e., bomb-making] unit.” His home was bedecked with Islamic Jihad posters – and an Islamic Jihad flag was draped over his body at his funeral.

Indeed, Islamic Jihad gave him the ultimate sendoff tribute: firing a barrage of his rockets into Israel in mourning.

Of course, that policy was pretty well shown up as a joke when a UNRWA teacher named Saeed Seyam was named interior minister of the Hamas-led government in Gaza and immediately vowed never to arrest any Palestinian for “resisting the occupation.”

According to Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), UNRWA confirmed last December that families of suicide bombers have received money from the agency. The United States, incidentally, pays 30 percent to 40 percent of UNRWA’s budget - $505 million last year alone.

***

Tom Gross adds: Local Palestinian UN workers have complained that no senior official from the UN attended Qiq’s funeral or paid their respects to the family, adding that Qiq’s widow and five children “had heard nothing about a UN pension.”

 

RICE PUSHING FOR ANNOUNCEMENT OF BORDERS NEXT WEEK

U.S. government sources tell me that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is pressing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to announce an agreement on the final borders between Israel and a future state of Palestine next week.

Rice is apparently pushing for the move, both to coincide with the visit of President Bush and also to make as much headway as possible before Olmert might be neutralized by developments in the latest criminal investigation. Last Friday, Olmert was again questioned by Israeli police as part of a corruption investigation and there is speculation in Israel that he may have to resign soon.

-- Tom Gross