COMMENTARY FROM JAPAN TO CALIFORNIA

[Note by Tom Gross]

I attach a number of articles, with summaries first for those who don’t have time to read them in full.

Thank you to the subscribers to this email list in Japan and Turkey who sent me the articles included from those countries.

The authors of the other articles – Ishmael Khaldi, Josef Joffe and Dan Kosky – are all long time subscribers to this email list.

SUMMARIES

“YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM, NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION”

Writing in The San Francisco Chronicle, Ishmael Khaldi, an Israeli Arab who is also a longtime subscriber to this email list, says:

For those who haven’t heard, the first week in March has been designated as Israel Apartheid Week by activists who are either ill intentioned or misinformed…

Last year, at UC Berkeley, I had the opportunity to “dialogue” with some of the organizers of these events. My perspective is unique, both as the vice consul for Israel in San Francisco, and as a Bedouin and the highest-ranking Muslim representing the Israel in the United States.

I was born into a Bedouin tribe in Northern Israel, one of 11 children, and began life as shepherd living in our family tent. I went on to serve in the Israeli border police, and later earned a master’s degree in political science from Tel Aviv University before joining the Israel Foreign Ministry.

I am a proud Israeli – along with many other non-Jewish Israelis such as Druze, Bahai, Bedouin, Christians and Muslims, who live in one of the most culturally diversified societies and the only true democracy in the Middle East. Like America, Israeli society is far from perfect, but let us deals honestly. By any yardstick you choose – educational opportunity, economic development, women and gay’s rights, freedom of speech and assembly, legislative representation – Israel’s minorities fare far better than any other country in the Middle East.

So, I would like to share the following with organizers of Israel Apartheid week, for those of them who are open to dialogue and not blinded by a hateful ideology: You are part of the problem, not part of the solution…

You are betraying the moderate Muslims and Jews who are working to achieve peace: Your radicalism is undermining the forces for peace in Israel and in the Palestinian territories…

JAPANESE PAPER VOICES UNUSUALLY HARSH CRITICISM OF UN’S ATTACKS ON ISRAEL

The Japan Times, the English language paper of Japan, writes a lead article, titled “Durban II in danger.”

The paper says:

On paper the U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance is an eminently laudable project – if you believe that the United Nations should promote grand statements that promote norms of good behavior. But the preparations for this meeting, and its predecessor, suggest that good intentions are not enough. Instead of fighting racism, the conference looks set to enshrine it as policy by singling out Israel for criticism and equating Zionism with racism.

Meetings like this undermine the U.N. and empower its critics. Acquiescing to this agenda is a mistake. The more countries protest against this meeting, the more hope there is for getting the U.N. back on track.

… Durban is an attempt to punish Israel and the Jews, regardless of what they have done. By either explanation, Durban is flawed and should not proceed.

AUSCHWITZ RALLY TO OPPOSE DURBAN II’S “HATRED TODAY”

Tom Gross adds: one of the subscribers to this list in Japan, someone in governmental circles, tells me that the editorial above is unusually damning of the UN. In general the Japanese media is quite anti-Israel, though not as much as media in Western Europe.

Japan remains the second biggest economy in the world. With about 90 percent of its oil imported from the Middle East, it takes care to avoid angering the Arab states, or to criticize the UN, since Japan is continuing to try to gain a seat on the UN Security Council.

Meanwhile, Australia became the latest country to indicate it would likely join the U.S., Canada, Italy and Israel in withdrawing from Durban II. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told the Australian parliament on Thursday that “if we form the view that the text is going to lead to nothing more than an anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic harangue, an anti-Jewish propaganda exercise, then Australia will not be in attendance.”

This morning, Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen announced that he will call on European Union states to withdraw from the Durban II conference. Otherwise, he said, Holland will join Italy in withdrawing unilaterally.

Also: The International March of the Living has announced that at the exact time on Tuesday, April 21 that many countries will be convening in Geneva for the Durban II gatherings, 10,000 Jewish and non-Jewish youngsters will hold a rally at the gates of Auschwitz in Poland, under the banner “Say No to Hatred Today.”

“NO ARAB REGIME HAS STARTED PREPARING ITS PEOPLE FOR PEACE WITH ISRAEL”

In the third article below, German writer Josef Joffe writes in Newsweek magazine about “anti-Semitism in Araby.”

“To achieve Arab-Israeli peace,” he says, “will mean dealing with a civil society on one side that is by no means civil.”

He continues, using various examples already covered on this website:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is stepping into the longest-running show in American diplomacy, one that goes all the way back to the Rogers Plan of 1969. The play is called “Mediating in the Middle East,” and it might be another 40 years before the cast sings the finale.

The reasons for this slow pace are familiar: the status of Jerusalem, problems with security, Jewish settlements, civil war among the Palestinians, etc. But one other key problem is stubbornly ignored: the fact that no Arab regime has shown itself willing to truly prepare its people for peace with Israel, which would mean accepting the lasting presence of Jews in their midst. Indeed, anti-Semitism – the real stuff, not just bad-mouthing particular Israeli policies – is as much part of Arab life today as the hijab or the hookah. Whereas this darkest of creeds is no longer tolerated in polite society in the West, in the Arab world, Jew hatred remains culturally endemic.

… Open Egypt’s Al-Gomhuria newspaper, and there is The Jew as a serpent strangling Uncle Sam over a caption that reads “The Jews taking over the world.” On Al-Nas TV, Egyptian cleric Ahmad Abd al-Salam tells his viewers, “The Jews conspire to infect the food of Muslims with cancer [and] to ship it to Muslim countries.” Al-Salam’s colleague, Zaghloul al-Naggar, has called Jews “devils in human form.” And this is a country at peace with Israel. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ chief propagandist, would be proud...

***

Tom Gross adds: In the same edition of Newsweek, there were plenty of articles defaming Israel too.

For cartoons whipping up hatred of the West and Jews in the government-controlled media of supposedly moderate, pro-Western Arab countries (Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Syria and Egypt), see here. And for more cartoons, see here.

SYRIA’S DYING OPPOSITION

In the fourth article below David Schenker writes in The Los Angeles Times:

Reports from Damascus say Syria’s leading dissident, Riad Seif, 62, is on his deathbed. He is in Adra prison as punishment for attending a meeting of pro-democracy groups in Damascus. Seif is the most respected member of Syria’s dwindling secular, democratic opposition to the iron-fisted rule of Assad and his Alawite clan. Syrian President Bashar Assad has prohibited him from seeking treatment abroad, a restriction Seif once called “a slow death sentence.”

As the Obama administration prepares to resume diplomatic engagement with Damascus, Seif’s plight is a poignant reminder of the abysmal state of human rights in Syria. During the George W. Bush era, the White House devoted at least rhetorical importance to the cause: Bush publicly mentioned Seif at least three times. It would be a mistake for Obama to sweep human rights under the rug.

Seif’s 21-year-old son, Iyad, has already died under “mysterious circumstances.”

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL AND HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH’S DANGEROUS GAME

In the fifth article below, from the (London) Jewish Chronicle, Dan Kosky, the Communications Director of NGO-Monitor.org, writes:

Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) are playing a dangerous game of moral equivalence and disinformation concerning the recent Gaza conflict which threatens the ethics of human rights and international law.

In a recent article published in the Financial Times Deutschland, HRW officials brazenly claimed that “it is clear that both Israel and Hamas have perpetrated serious violations of the laws of war.” Not a shred of evidence was supplied, and HRW didn’t even have the courtesy to wait for the IDF and others to release the findings of their internal reports…

This week, Amnesty International’s report provided an inventory of weapons used in Gaza, but no proof of their illegal use. Using pure conjecture, Amnesty concluded that countries must place an arms embargo on Israel…

If the standard set by Amnesty, HRW and others were to be adopted, there could be no such thing as a just war and all leaders who defend their populations against attack, as is their responsibility, would become potential “war criminals”…

Some 50 NGOs released over 500 statements in the month covering the fighting and its aftermath. A constant feature of these statements is the failure to differentiate between the actions of Israel, apologetic at each civilian death and Hamas, which measures its success by the quantities of innocent blood spilled…

ERDOĞAN’S ANTI-SEMITIC GAME BETRAYS A PROUD OTTOMAN LEGACY

The final article is from Hürriyet, one of Turkey’s leading newspapers. (Hürriyet means “liberty” in Turkish.) Burak Bekdil writes, in relation to the sudden deterioration in Turkish attitudes to Israel, which I wrote about at length in a dispatch last month:

“How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king? He has made his land poor and enriched ours,” thus spoke Sultan Beyazit II (1447-1512) when a majority of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 went to the Ottoman Empire to settle down.

Five hundred and seventeen years later, a wannabe Ottoman sultan, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan I [the present Turkish Prime Minister], said of the Jews, “When it comes to killing, you know it too well.”

… Mr. Erdoğan is playing a dangerous game. He plays his Islamist self in public, and his pragmatist self in private. Easy game: You call the Jews – that “cursed nation” as most dogmatic Muslims think of them – “killers” in public road shows and win votes.

Then you resort to all possible means of private diplomacy and back channels to avoid Jewish-American hostility because you must also behave like a survivor. Excellent blend! And you don’t care the least because you have perilously added to the already explosive anti-Semitic sentiment at home. Plus, you can now play the new Ottoman sultan, the darling of all the oppressed nations of the Middle East. Very cunning indeed.

The writer goes on to criticize what he terms “Erdoğan’s all-too enthusiastic love affair with Hamas.”

***

I attach six articles in full below. All summaries above by Tom Gross.

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

RIOTS AS ISRAEL PLAYS TENNIS MATCH IN SWEDEN

There were riots in the Swedish city of Malmo over the weekend against Israel being allowed to play tennis in Sweden. Even though this was prominently reported by the world’s largest news agency, The Associated Press, to which most media subscribe, it has barely been mentioned in most international newspapers.

Over 1,000 police were deployed in Malmo to keep the protesters, estimated at 7,000 strong by the AP, from entering a closed arena where Sweden and Israel were playing a Davis Cup tennis match.

Below is some footage of the riot from one part of the stadium:

Here is a report from Danish TV news:

Sweden’s Left Party leader Lars Ohly told the crowd that “Europe and the whole world should boycott the racist regime in Israel.”

As reported in my dispatch of Feb. 19, 2009, no spectators were allowed inside the stadium because of the fear of violent attacks by anti-Zionist protestors.

ISRAEL WINS MATCH

On the court, Israel defeated seven-time Davis Cup champion Sweden 3-2 to advance to the Davis Cup quarterfinals for the first time since 1987. Israel will play Russia in the quarterfinals on July 10-12. (The other countries to reach the quarterfinals are Argentina, the Czech Republic, the United States, Croatia, Germany and Spain.)

Last month, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) finally allowed the Israeli player Andy Ram to compete in the men’s Dubai Tennis Championships after the UAE was widely criticized for disallowing the Israeli women’s champion, Shahar Peer, from competing the week before. Andy Roddick of the United States was among the players to withdraw from the Dubai tournament, saying he wouldn’t participate in any tournament where Israeli Jews were banned.

JEWISH CENTER BOMBING INVESTIGATOR KIDNAPPED, TORTURED IN ARGENTINA

One of the senior investigators in the 1994 Iranian-Hizbullah bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires was kidnapped and tortured in Argentina over the weekend, by assailants trying to coerce him into disclosing documents relating to the case.

The masked attackers grabbed Claudio Lifschitz from his Buenos Aires home at midnight on Friday, threw him into the trunk of a van and violently interrogated him for several hours.

The massive truck bomb attack on the “AMIA” Jewish center in 1994 killed 85 people and wounded over 200. Following a lengthy investigation, Interpol issued arrest warrants in March 2007 for five Iranian government officials and a Lebanese national suspected of organizing the attack.

Lifschitz’s attorney told Argentina’s C5N television that during this weekend’s kidnap ordeal, the kidnappers covered Lifschitz’s head with a garbage bag, punched him and carved the case file number onto his arm and the letters A-M-I-A onto his back.

“They questioned me a number of times about tapes that tie Iran to the terror attack,” he said. “They told me ‘you can relax, we won’t murder you.; you’ll live until we decide otherwise’.”

ARAB-JEWISH DUO CHOSEN TO REPRESENT ISRAEL AT EUROVISION

The Israeli public has voted for a Jewish-Arab duo to represent Israel in the Eurovision song contest in May.

Achinoam Nini, a Jewish singer better known outside Israel as “Noa,” and Mira Awad, a Christian Arab Israeli, will perform a peace song. They received the most votes in text messages from the Israeli public after a contest was held on Israel’s state-owned Channel One television.

The song has lyrics in Hebrew, Arabic and English.

Awad has been criticized by some Palestinians, both for singing with a Jew and for being a woman. Fundamentalist Islamists have banned singing by women.

The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition in which countries across Europe and beyond participate and is one of the most-watched non-sporting events in the world. This year’s Eurovision will be held in Moscow.

Awad, 33, who was born in the Galilee and now lives in Tel Aviv, appeared to enthusiastic reviews in a popular Israeli television sitcom last year. She will be the first Arab to represent Israel at Eurovision. Arab Israelis have previously represented Israel at Miss World and other competitions.

FORMER ISRAELI PRESIDENT TO BE INDICTED FOR RAPE

Israel’s attorney-general, Meni Mazuz, announced yesterday that former President Moshe Katsav will be indicted on rape charges, allegedly committed when he was serving as Israel’s Minister of Tourism, and on sexual harassment charges from when he was serving as president.

Katsav is accused of rape and sexual harassment against several women who worked closely with him. Mafuz also filed obstruction of justice charges against Katsav.

Katsav said he was not surprised by decision, and was “eager to have the chance to prove his innocence in a court of law.”

Following growing public and political criticism over rumors about sexual misconduct, Katsav resigned as president in June 2007 and was replaced by Shimon Peres.

Israeli women’s groups hailed Katsav’s indictment yesterday.

The trial will show, once again, that alone among the countries of the Middle East, Israel is a fully functioning democracy where no politician is above the law.

A RECORD NUMBER OF WOMEN IN THE KNESSET

Yesterday, Israel proudly celebrated International Women’s Day – in contrast to the Arab world.

In recent years, women have made notable advances in Israeli society. For example, over 50 percent of doctors qualifying in Israel are now women. In the recent Knesset elections, a party headed by a woman (Kadima) garnered most votes and a record number of twenty-one women (including Arab women) were elected to the Knesset.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday: “Even though Israel is proud of the accomplishments it has made towards the advancement of women, there is still much to be done, including putting an end to violence against women, trafficking in women and discrimination in various fields. We still need to struggle to ensure women gain complete equality in the workplace.”

WOMAN ARRESTED IN SAUDI ARABIA FOR DRIVING

Police in the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca last Wednesday arrested a woman for violating the country’s ban on women driving, according to the Saudi English-language daily Arab News.

Police spokesman Maj. Abdul Mushin Al-Mayman said the woman was turned over to the Saudi Prosecution and Investigation Commission for investigation.

Last year, more than 125 women signed and sent a petition to Saudi Interior Minister Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, asking that the ban on women driving in the kingdom to be overturned. Women can be lashed with a whip for what the Saudi regime considers to be offensives against Islam.

For example, the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan reports today that an elderly woman has been sentenced to 40 lashes for “mingling”. Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, 75, also faces four months imprisonment followed by deportation from the despotic kingdom to her native Syria.

Al-Watan said the religious police had found two male family friends in her house. Both of them have also been sentenced to receive lashes.

Last week, the religious police detained two male authors for questioning after they tried to get the autograph of a female writer, Halima Muzfar, at a book fair in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

“NO RELATIVE DARED GO TO HIS FUNERAL”

I have on several occasions criticized The New York Times and its sister paper The International Herald Tribune for downplaying, or failing to report at all, human rights abuses (unless somehow Israel could be blamed). It is therefore welcome that the Tribune ran the following news report on March 6 prominently on page 1. (The New York Times ran it only on page 6.)

The report, from the Swat district of Pakistan which has just been handed over to the Taliban, began:

“The Taliban and the Pakistani Army signed a truce last month in Swat, the once popular tourist area just an hour north of the capital. But far from establishing peace, the pact seems to have allowed the Taliban free rein to expand their harsh religious rule.

“Just days after the truce was signed, a member of a prominent anti-Taliban family returned to his mountain village, having received assurances from the government that it was safe. He was promptly kidnapped by the Taliban, tortured and murdered. The militants then erected roadblocks to search cars for any relatives who dared travel there for his funeral. None did.

“This week, two Pakistani soldiers who were part of a convoy escorting a water tanker were shot and killed because they failed to inform the Taliban in advance of their movements.

“On Wednesday, the provincial government signed an accord with the local Taliban leader that imposes Islamic law, or Shariah, in the area, and institutes a host of new regulations, including a ban on music, a requirement that shops close during calls to prayer and the installation of complaint boxes for reports of anti-Islamic behavior. Local residents are skeptical that girls’ schools will be allowed to reopen.

“…There was no mention of the future of girls’ education in the accord on Wednesday, an ominous sign, said opponents of the Taliban. The militants have burned hundreds of girls’ schools in Swat in the past year, and banished the students to their homes.

“… Rahmat Ali, the man who was killed after returning home to his mountain village, Mandal Dag, was abducted and held for five days, ‘There was no skin on his back [when we found him],” [a relative] said. ‘We had advised him, ‘You shouldn’t go, you shouldn’t trust the Taliban.’”

OBAMA PLAYING WITH FIRE

Tom Gross adds: But amazingly trusting the Taliban is what Barack Obama seems about to do. In an interview with The New York Times yesterday (in a piece titled “Obama Ponders Outreach to Elements of the Taliban”), Obama indicated he would open talks with the Taliban.

The Swat region of Pakistan which has now been handed over to the Taliban, is not some small province, but an area in which millions of people will now be subjected to the horrors of Taliban rule. Hundreds of thousands of people have already fled the area in recent months.

Swat was historically a tolerant, princely kingdom. Until recently it attracted much tourism. Surprisingly, European donors have budgeted money for development in Swat.

“THE NATIONAL UNITY GOVERNMENT WILL NOT RECOGNIZE THE ZIONIST ENTITY”

Hamas leader Dr. Mahmnoud Al-Zahhar has reiterated in an interview with the UAE-based Al-Khalij newspaper that “a Palestinian national unity government would not recognize the Zionist entity.” (i.e. Israel)

“The Zionist entity is an alien body and should be removed from Palestine,” he said.

Several western governments and left-wing Israeli Jews have said they would welcome a Palestinian unity government. Apparently they think the relative moderates of Fatah rather than the extremists of Hamas would gain the upper hand in any such government.

DONOR CONFERENCE EXCEEDS GOAL FOR GAZA RECONSTRUCTION

Last Monday’s donors’ conference in Sharm A-Sheikh succeeded “beyond expectations,” according to an Egyptian official. Eighty-seven nations and financial organizations were represented at the Sinai resort town as the pledges poured in. While the target goal was about $3 billion, $4.4 billion in new funds was pledged. When added to pledges previously made this year to the Palestinian Authority, the total exceeds $5 billion in donations.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it “a very productive conference.”

Israel’s Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu, however, voiced serious reservations about cash going into Gaza Strip before the rocket fire on Israel has stopped.

Surprisingly, one of the few discordant Arab voices sharing Israel’s reservations, was Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal, who said rebuilding Gaza would be “difficult and foolhardy, so long as peace and security do not prevail there.” Hamas attacked his remarks.

Mark Kirk, a Republican member of the U.S. Congress was among those criticizing Clinton. “For the U.S. to give $900 million to Gaza, and let’s say Hamas was only able to steal 10 percent of that, we would still become Hamas’ second-largest funder after Iran,” he said.

ISRAEL SUBMITS LETTER OF COMPLAINT TO UN ON CONTINUING ROCKET FIRE

In the wake of continuing rocket and mortar fire from Gaza at civilians in southern Israel, a letter of complaint was submitted last week by Israel to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and to the President of the Security Council.

The letter began: “On 1 March 2009 alone, twelve Qassam rockets were fired at the Israeli city of Sderot from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. One day earlier, on 28 February 2009, an advanced Grad rocket hit a school in Ashkelon, destroying classrooms and spraying pieces of shrapnel in all directions. Two civilians were wounded in the attack. Had the school building not been closed for the Jewish Sabbath, there almost certainly would have been many more casualties. Since Israel declared a unilateral hold-fire on 18 January 2009, there have been nearly 100 rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip…”

The UN has yet to respond to Israel’s letter.

ROCKET HITS SYNAGOGUE

Six more rockets were fired at Israel this weekend as Hamas said it welcomed the record amounts of money foreign governments pledged last week to pour into Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Last week civilians in southern Israel endured a further barrage of short and long range rockets fired from “cash-strapped” Gaza. The long range rockets included several with increased range and penetrating power.

One rocket hit a synagogue in the town of Netivot, causing damage to the building. Even though news editors were aware of the attack on the synagogue since Reuters and The Associated Press reported on it, few western media bothered to tell their readers or viewers about it.

Representatives of ten schools and 22 kindergartens in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon pleaded with the Israeli government yesterday to reinforce their premises with even thicker roofs to try and protect children from incoming missiles.

ISRAEL CONCERNED AS WHITE HOUSE FAILS TO CONDEMN BULLDOZER TERROR ATTACK

On Thursday, a Palestinian driver rammed his bulldozer into a bus and a car at one of Jerusalem’s busiest intersections, injuring two Israelis, before he was shot dead by an alert Israeli policeman.

Reuters reported that an open Koran, the Muslim holy book, was found in the driver’s cabin, at a page extolling the “virtues” of “martyrdom.” The driver shouted Koranic verses as he carried out the attack. This detail was omitted by many of those western news outlets that did bother to report on this latest bulldozer terror attack. Last year, several Israeli men and women were killed in a series of terror attacks carried out by Palestinians driving bulldozers.

Video from a traffic camera showed the bulldozer carefully lowering its front shovel, maneuvering round, before striking a car, rolling the vehicle across the intersection, flipping it over and smashing it into a bus. The bus was not empty, as incorrectly reported by some media, but filled with youngsters in Purim holiday dress. Miraculously none of the children was seriously hurt. One of the Israeli policemen injured by the terrorist was an Israeli Arab.

Riyad al-Malki, information minister for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s western-backed government, described the incident as a “traffic accident.”

Hamas welcomed the attack saying it was a “natural response to the policies of the Zionist entity.” The attack took place on a major traffic intersection close to the city’s largest shopping mall.

Israeli officials expressed astonishment that the White House failed to swiftly condemn the Jerusalem attack. This seems to mark a departure from the practice by previous U.S. administrations of immediately condemning terrorism against Israelis. President Bush had condemned the previous terror tractor rampages.

THE REMARKABLE STORY OF KINNERET CHAYA

Where is the Palestinian Anwar Sadat?
By Tom Gross
The Wall Street Journal
March 2, 2009

TEL AVIV– Hillary Clinton arrives in Israel today on her first visit since becoming Secretary of State, at a time when many influential people in America and beyond are clamoring for the Obama administration to pressure Israel into making major concessions.

Before she succumbs to those pressures, she might want to bear in mind the pain Israel suffered the last time it was forced to make such concessions – when Mrs. Clinton’s husband was president.

It is a pain that has many names and faces. One of them is Kinneret Chaya Boosany. At the very moment that Barack Obama was delivering his historic victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park in the early hours of November 5, a small miracle was happening over 6000 miles away in Israel when Kinneret gave birth to her first child.

Six years earlier, Kinneret, then a 23-year-old part-time dancer and student of alternative medicine, was blown up as she worked as a waitress in a small coffee shop on Tel Aviv’s Allenby Street. (Like many young Israelis, she worked as a waitress to earn extra money. She was also exceptionally good-looking: Heads would turn wherever she went.)

Her injuries that night were so horrific that the doctors gave her only a 2 percent chance of survival. She remained in a coma for four months. When she awoke, she changed her name from Kinneret to Kinneret Chaya (meaning “Kinneret Lives” in Hebrew). In her own words, “Kinneret died that night in the flames, but Kinneret Chaya was born.”

Kinneret and her mother, and right, after one of her operations

JUST ONE OF THOUSANDS

She is just one of the thousands of Israelis – both Jews and Arabs – injured by Palestinian suicide bombers who were sent out on their deadly missions by either the Islamist Hamas movement or by the Fatah faction headed by “moderate” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat. The number of Israelis killed in buses and pizza parlors and shopping malls has been greatly reduced in recent years after the government built a security fence to make it harder for bombers to get through.

Today Kinneret has one fully operating lung, sees in only one eye and hears in only one ear. Her skin still bears the scars of burns over 85 percent of her body. She spends many hours in a heavy pressure suit and face mask to prevent the scarring getting worse, and she cannot go out in the day because the sun has become her enemy.

But Kinneret has struggled back to life, through countless operations and long sessions of physiotherapy, learning to accept her disfigured body and to smile in spite of her scarred face. And then in November, even though the doctors said she had only a very slim chance of a successful pregnancy, this beautiful former teenage ballerina, who got married at the start of last year, gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

This story is worth reflecting on as Hillary Clinton arrives here in Israel. Barely a day goes by without Jimmy Carter and assorted European politicians calling on Obama to coerce Israel into hastily withdrawing from more land no matter what the security risks. The reigning Nobel Peace Prize laureate, for instance, former Finnish Prime Minister Martti Ahtisaari, went so far as to use the prize ceremony as a soapbox to urge Obama to make pressure on Israel the principal focus of his first year in office.

A relative of one of the dead outside the scene of a suicide bomb

NOT A VOTE AGAINST PEACE

Like most Israelis Kinneret Chaya, who I saw again last week, desperately wants peace with the Palestinians. Indeed it is my experience of covering the region as a reporter for many years that no one wants the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to be peaceably resolved more than Israelis do.

But Israelis are also very aware of the dangers of naively handing over territory to terrorists, as was done during the presidency of Secretary of State Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, in the 1990s. The vote by Israelis in elections two weeks ago was not a vote against peace as many Western commentators claim. It was a vote for realism and security.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s likely next prime minister, has been wrongly vilified as being against a two-state solution. In fact he is open to the creation of a Palestinian state but only if it is one that will live in peace with Israel. And for this, Netanyahu argues, you can’t simply wave a magic wand at some fancy signing ceremony on the White House lawn and say “hey presto” – which is exactly what leftist politicians tried to do at the Oslo signing ceremony in 1993.

First the Palestinians need to do the hard work of building institutions that would allow such a state to succeed – a functioning economy, the rule of law, and so on. And Netanyahu is very willing to offer Israeli assistance in building such mechanisms.

Avigdor Lieberman, one of Netanyahu’s possible coalition partners, who has been misleadingly described as an extreme rightist by many journalists, has been even more explicit than Netanyahu in calling for a two-state solution, including the division of Jerusalem between Israel and a future Palestinian state.

PERES: UNILATERAL ISRAELI CONCESSIONS A MISTAKE

Even Shimon Peres, Israel’s dovish president, now has second thoughts about unilateral Israeli concessions. Having long championed territorial withdrawals to attain peace, Peres last week acknowledged that it was a mistake for Israel to withdraw from Gaza in 2005 without first having a peaceful and democratic Palestinian party to hand that territory to.

Israel has always shown a willingness to make peace if a peace partner exists, as it did in the case of the late Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Jordan’s King Hussein. Israelis are still waiting for a Palestinian Anwar Sadat.

One of Netanyahu’s most difficult challenges during his first term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999 was coping with the Clinton administration that berated him for his belief that peace must be built from the bottom up through the liberalization of Palestinian society, rather than from the top down by giving land to terrorists. The question is whether President Obama and Hillary Clinton have come round to Netanyahu’s way of thinking.

Kinneret Chaya is an exemplary and courageous figure. The international community owes it to her and the countless other terror victims to confront the basic realities of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. By all means pressure Israel into making concessions that do not threaten its security – into not expanding West Bank settlements, for instance. But Israeli concessions will never resolve the conflict in themselves. They will only work if there is corresponding pressure on the Palestinians to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and to make aid to the Palestinians conditional on putting an end to their inciting for the destruction of Israel.

(Tom Gross is the former Jerusalem correspondent of The Sunday Telegraph.)

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

BRICK BY BRICK

Because these dispatches so often contain depressing items, here to begin with, is a more uplifting story with a Middle East connection.

An elderly British man has spent the last 30 years building an incredible model of Herod’s Temple. Brick by brick, tiny figure by tiny figure, he has constructed an astonishing recreation of Herod’s ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem. He also sculpted 4,000 half-inch figures to populate the courtyards. Each one takes three hours to make.

The temple, which was destroyed by the Romans 2,000 years ago, is regarded as one of the most remarkable buildings of ancient times. Today, all that remains of the temple is the Western Wall. The temple itself was located on the site where Muslims later built the Dome of the Rock.

Click here to see the pictures of his model.

***

Here is another unrelated light item for those interested:
* Change some of us can believe in;
* and a cartoon about last weekend’s terror attack in Egypt.

MIRACLE: HAMAS TERRORIST COMES BACK TO LIFE

This video clip from January provides yet another example of how Hamas fools gullible western journalists and UN officials about Palestinian casualty figures.

(For previous such clips, please see past dispatches on this website.)

LIBYAN LEADER GADDAFI BLAMES ISRAEL FOR DARFUR CRISIS

Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has blamed Israel for the conflict in Darfur. Gaddafi, who is currently the president of the African Union, said last Tuesday that “It will be no surprise to anyone when we say that we have found unequivocal proof that the Darfur problem was fomented by foreign forces.”

“We discovered that some of the main leaders of the Darfur rebels have opened offices in Tel Aviv and hold meetings with the military there to add fuel to the conflict fire,” the Libyan leader said in a speech carried live on the Al-Libya television channel.

Gaddafi urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to stop proceedings on whether to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is accused of masterminding the genocidal policies being carried out by Arab tribes against non-Arabs in Darfur. “Why do we have to hold President Bashir or the Sudanese government responsible when the Darfur problem was caused by Tel Aviv?” he asked.

Gaddafi has a long track record of stirring up anti-Semitic sentiment in Libya and abroad, as well as promoting terrorism and countless other human rights abuses. This didn’t stop The New York Times (and its sister paper The International Herald Tribune) from recently running a top-of-the-page op-ed by Gaddafi. Was the Times perhaps attempting to fool its readers into believing that Gaddafi had somehow become a respectable statesman?

NETANYAHU APPEARS TO FAIL IN EFFORTS TO FORM A CENTRIST COALITION

Despite urging from senior members of her own center-left Kadima party, Tzipi Livni has rejected efforts by Israeli prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu to include Kadima as an equal partner in an Israeli unity government.

Livni’s decision is being condemned as an act of supreme political selfishness by officials in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.

She is in effect forcing Netanyahu to form a narrow right-wing government which will decrease the chances for progress towards peace, when he has done his best to form a centrist coalition. Netanyahu even offered Kadima two of the three top cabinet posts – foreign, defense and finance. He also offered Livni a full partnership in policymaking but she turned him down.

During the negotiations, Netanyahu surprised many people by the lengths to which he was willing to go to appease Livni and demonstrate that he was serious about his offer. He even offered her a veto on other coalition partners that would join the government.

Livni’s own party colleagues as well as officials from the Obama administration and European governments, are pressing her to accept Netanyahu’s offer.

“RECKLESS LIVNI”

Livni put an end to the negotiations with a scathing personal attack on Netanyahu, accusing him of being “more extreme” than right winger Avigdor Lieberman.

Without Kadima, Netanyahu will be forced to invite pro-settler and ultra-orthodox parties into government, parties opposed to or skeptical of talks with the Palestinians.

Livni is apparently hoping that a Netanyahu government will fail and Israel will hold fresh elections in a year or two. Both leftist and rightist Israelis have criticized her for making such a reckless decision at a time when Israel needs national unity to deal with the economic crisis and the impending Iranian nuclear threat.

Among those who publically rebuked Livni is the deputy Kadima leader, Shaul Mofaz. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a former prime minister who heads the Labor party, has also turned down Netanyahu’s offer to enter the coalition, deciding instead to take his party into the opposition.

LIEBERMAN: I TOO SUPPORT A PALESTINIAN STATE

In an article published on Friday in the New York Jewish Week, Avigdor Lieberman, head of the secular right wing Israel Beitenu Party, again said he “too supported the creation of a viable Palestinian state” so long as it had a peaceful intent towards Israel.

DURING AMERICAN FINANCIAL MELTDOWN, OBAMA SENDS $1BN TO GAZA

While the United States is in the midst of a serious financial crisis, the Obama administration announced last week that it would give almost another $1 billion to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Much of the past money handed to UNRWA has ended up in the bank accounts of corrupt Palestinian officials and it has also enabled other funds to be diverted to buy bombs, weapons, and ammunition, instead of building a decent society for Palestinian children.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to formally make the $900 million pledge at the Cairo donors’ conference tomorrow. (This money – being dubbed a “bailout to Hamas” by its critics – is in addition to the $85 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money pledged to Gaza earlier in the year.)

I have previously written on this website of how UNRWA, which employs Hamas personnel, stood by as blankets, food and arms were stolen from two of its aid warehouses by Hamas militiamen, and how its allows schools under its auspices to teach hatred of Israel and the West.

HAMAS ROCKET ATTACKS ON ISRAEL NOW BACK TO PRE-JANUARY LEVELS

110 mortar shells and rockets have now been fired at Israeli civilians since Israel ended its operation in Gaza on January 18, including eleven rockets so far this weekend alone. About 20 people have been injured in total, mostly lightly. The numbers of injuries has been kept down as more Israelis are spending the night in bomb shelters.

One of the Grad rockets hit a school in the southern city of Ashkelon yesterday, penetrating the fortification used to protect the building from rocket fire.

Experts said it had the potential for “massive damage” but luckily the school was empty at the time. The rocket destroyed several classrooms and sprayed pieces of shrapnel in all directions. Two cranes were required to pull the rocket from the ground in which it had become lodged.

ISRAELI CHILDREN PULLED OUT OF SCHOOL

Israeli security forces said three of the Grad rockets that landed in Ashkelon yesterday (two in the morning, one in the evening) were new and improved models, capable of greater destruction than those usually fired from Gaza.

Other targets for attack by Qassam rockets yesterday included Kibbutz Shaar HaNegev.

Some schools in Ashkelon have been closed following the attacks and children have been told to remain at home or in shelters.

***

The Israeli army said it foiled a “large-scale terror attack” last Monday when it apprehended two Palestinians trying to cross into Israel with explosive devices.

JEWISH LEADERS BLAST CLINTON OVER HER ISRAEL CRITICISM

CBS television in New York reports that Jewish leaders are profoundly disappointed with a series of statements by Hillary Clinton last week which they said were hostile to Israel.

They say she appears to have a made “a swift about face from her views as New York’s senator, when she made statements sympathetic to Israel” and fear she may now be returning to her previous self, reports CBS.

As First Lady, Clinton raised eyebrows when she kissed and hugged Yasser Arafat’s wife Suha immediately after she (Suha Arafat) had made a speech reminiscent of medieval blood libels, in which she accused Israel of poisoning the water supplies to Palestinian areas.

“I am very surprised, frankly, at these new statements from the secretary of state,” said Jewish leader Mortimer Zuckerman, who is close to Hillary.

“I don’t believe that we should be in a position at this point to do anything to strengthen Hamas,” Zuckerman said. “We surely know what Hamas stands for and that they are the forward battalions of Iran.”

“I liked her a lot more as a senator from New York,” Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Democrat, said. “Now, I wonder as I used to wonder who the real Hillary Clinton is.”

ARAB LEAGUE: ARAB STATES HAVEN’T DELIVERED ON GAZA PLEDGES

A senior Arab League official told The Associated Press at the weekend that Arab countries have not yet delivered any of the more than $1 billion they pledged to Gaza after the Hamas-Israel fighting in December and January.

The money was pledged in mid-January. Most Arab states are very reluctant to give the money to the Islamist group Hamas and prefer to give it to its relatively secular rival Fatah. Saudi Arabia alone pledged $1 billion for Gaza reconstruction, Qatar $250 million, and Algeria $100 million. Hamas seized control of Gaza from Fatah in 2007.

At least 72 governments will attend tomorrow’s international meeting on Gaza reconstruction in Egypt. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of much poorer and more distressed areas of the world than Gaza, but none of these receive anything like the levels of international aid and attention that Gaza does. Unlike many other parts of the world, not a single person has been reported as malnourished in Gaza, where living standard remains higher than in many parts of neighboring Egypt, for example. There is no acute hunger in Gaza because Israel, which supplies humanitarian aid on a daily basis, would never allow this to happen.

By contrast, a homeless Israeli man died of cold and hunger last night in Tel Aviv, reports Israel radio today. Last winter 12 homeless Israelis died on the streets.

HAMAS: WE WILL NEVER RECOGNIZE ISRAEL

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday that any unity government with Hamas would have to agree to a two-state solution with Israel, a demand quickly rejected by Hamas.

Hamas official Ayman Taha said Abbas’s comments undermine chances for reaching a unity agreement. “Hamas will never accept a unity government that recognizes Israel,” he said. Hamas says its founding charter that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state is “sacrosanct”.

A dozen Palestinian factions including Fatah and Hamas began reconciliation talks in Cairo on Thursday to try to agree on a unity government by March 20. Previous efforts by Arab negotiators to reconcile Fatah and Hamas have failed.

HAMAS SAYS IT RESERVES THE RIGHT TO BRING ARMS INTO GAZA

Gaza-based Hamas strongman Mahmoud Zahar also declared last week that his group “reserves the right to bring arms into Gaza.”

FATAH, HAMAS AGREE ON PRISONER SWAP

Hamas and Fatah agreed on Wednesday to exchange prisoners as part of a deal still being negotiated to reconcile the bitterly divided groups. In a “goodwill gesture,” Fatah went ahead and released 42 Hamas detainees in the West Bank and promised to release more.

PCHR CALLS FOR INVESTIGATION INTO LATEST GAZA CITY MURDER

The nonprofit PCHR (Palestinian Centre for Human Rights) today called for there “to be an immediate investigation into the murder of Hamza Mahmoud al-Shoubaki, age 40, who was abducted by unidentified gunmen on Thursday, 26 February and subsequently died.”

Al-Shoubaki was the latest Gazan to be killed by gunmen linked to Hamas. International media outlets have included dozens of Gazans executed by Hamas in statistics that wrongly suggest Israel killed them.

Al-Shoubaki’s body was brought to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Friday after he had been shot dead by two gunshots to the head.

Western journalists, despite continuing to file daily reports from Gaza, are barely mentioning these ongoing murders by Hamas, and hence the issue is not on the agenda for tomorrow’s Gaza donors’ conference.

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN

This week is the fifth annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” at universities across the world, a week in which students (and quite a number of professors) try to delegitimize Israel even more than usual.

This year more universities than ever are participating with events demonizing Israel and spreading falsehoods at campuses from New York to San Francisco, and from Edmonton to Atlanta. Universities in many other cities are also participating, including Johannesburg, London, Caracas and Copenhagen. Some of the events call for the outright destruction of the Jewish state, while ignoring the genuine apartheid states elsewhere in the Middle East. (A number of Arab states deny citizenship to Shia and other groups.)

Among star speakers at “Israeli Apartheid Week” are Hizbullah supporter Norman Finkelstein, who will appear at Emory University in Atlanta and at Fordham University in New York to talk about Israel’s uniquely evil nature. In an interview published last week in Iran in The Tehran Times, Finkelstein called Israel a “vandal state,” an “insane state,” a “lunatic state” and a “terrorist state.” He added it is a “satanic state” from “the boils of hell” which “is committing a holocaust in Gaza.”

Finkelstein is one of a number of people of Jewish origin who make a career out of demonizing Israel and are increasingly popular with anti-Semites worldwide.

Another is South African Ronnie Kasrils, who argues that Israelis are “baby killers... who behave like Nazis.” Kasrils will be speaking at Carlton University in Ottawa, McGill University in Montreal, and at Vancouver Public library.

ANOTHER ATTACK IN VENEZUELA

A small explosive device was detonated at the Jewish Center in Caracas, Venezuela on Thursday. There were no injuries. Last month the main synagogue in Caracas was attacked. (See a previous dispatch for details.)

WILLIAMSON APOLOGY OVER HOLOCAUST REMARKS REJECTED

The Vatican in Rome, and Catholic and Jewish leaders in Germany, have sharply rejected the “apology” made on Thursday by the Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson.

German Catholic leader Hans-Joachim Meyer told the Tagesspiegel newspaper that Williamson’s statement was “barely an apology” and “in no way satisfactory.”

Dieter Graumann, vice-president of the Central Council for Jews in Germany, told the Handelsblatt newspaper that in his “thoroughly bungled” statement, Williamson “unfortunately takes nothing back.” Williamson’s apology “leads one to the conclusion that he still believes in the Holocaust-denial,” Graumann said.

Last week Bishop Williamson, of the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X, was expelled from Argentina and returned to his native Britain. He raised his fist and pushed a reporter at Buenos Aires airport.

THE BBC AGAIN GIVES AIRTIME TO HOLOCAUST DENIERS

Bishop Williamson was met at London’s Heathrow airport by the British socialite Lady Michele Renouf, who has described Judaism as a “repugnant and hate-filled religion.”

Renouf was appointed to an “international fact-finding committee on the Holocaust” at the end of Iran’s Holocaust Denial Conference in December 2006, at which she was a speaker. Bishop Williamson was introduced to Renouf by convicted Holocaust revisionist David Irving.

Last Wednesday lunchtime, on the BBC’s flagship Radio 4 World at One lunchtime news report, the BC invited on Renouf to give a platform to present the Holocaust as a “legend”.

The duplicitous BBC failed to explain to listeners that Renouf is one of the world’s most prominent the Holocaust deniers. She was merely described as “a woman supporting Williamson”.

This was yet another example of the BBC promoting anti-Semites and anti-Semitism on its tax-payer funded broadcasts. (For past examples, please see previous dispatches on this list.)

When, for example, Nick Griffin, leader of the racist British National Party is invited on the BBC (which he rarely is, thankfully) the BBC do not just introduce him as “a politician” and treat him with kid gloves, but explain who he is.

GERMAN NEO-NAZI CONVICTED TO SIX YEARS IN JAIL FOR DENYING HOLOCAUST

A former extreme-left activist turned neo-Nazi was last week sentenced to six years in prison in Germany, for calling the Holocaust “the biggest lie in history.” Horst Mahler, who in the 1970s co-founded the militant far-left Red Army Faction (RAF), was convicted of inciting racial hatred by the higher regional court in the southern city of Munich.

The 73-year-old has on several occasions made public statements denying that the Nazis had killed millions of European Jews during World War II. Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany. Mahler was also found to have distributed offensive CDs and a book by convicted Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf.

He has also praised the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and has accused Jews of seeking “world domination”.

JEWISH STUDENTS IN BRITAIN PROTEST AGAINST STAFF MEMBER’S ANTI-SEMITIC CARICATURE

Jewish students in Britain have protested against what they said was a leading university’s lenient response last week to a member of staff who posted an anti-Semitic image on the social networking site Facebook.

Andrew Collingwood, who works at the Biology department at the University of York, in northern England, posted a caricature of Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni wearing a witch’s hat and holding a wand with the Star of David, declaring, “Anti-Semitic! Anti-Semitic! Anti-Semitic!”

Collingwood is also a university council member and a harassment adviser to students, as well as an active member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The university has said it supports the principle of freedom of speech and will take no action against Collingwood. (I doubt they would be so lenient if Muslim or black students were offended.)

Criticizing the university’s response, the Union of Jewish Students said the school “should be responding much more strongly than it is, saying Collingwood was helping to stoke anti-Semitism at the university.

NEW YORK TIMES FAILS TO MENTION CRITICISM OF CARYL CHURCHILL PLAY

Once again, The New York Times is completely downplaying reports about anti-Semitism.

In an 800 word story about Caryl Churchill’s “Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza,” in which the Times reported that the play may be brought to New York from London, the paper failed to mention the widespread accusations that the play was blatantly anti-Semitic and not just anti-Israeli. (For more on this play, see previous dispatches on this list.)

Even the British paper The Guardian has now acknowledged that many consider the play anti-Semitic. But The New York Times – which has a century old tradition of downplaying anti-Semitism, most notably during The Holocaust – failed to mention this.

In the latest in a series of harsh reviews in Britain, the (London) Sunday Times said the facts the play presented were “myths,” that Churchill had been “economical with the truth,” and the good acting was “ruined by the play’s ludicrous lack of even-handedness.”

Its review continued: “Churchill comes across like a very minor Old Testament prophet, bewailing the Wickedness of Israel.”

“The play isn’t art, it’s straitjacketed political orthodoxy. No surprises, no challenges, no risks. Only the enclosed, fetid, smug, self-congratulating and entirely irrelevant little world of contemporary political theatre. Fresh air is urgently needed. But I’m not holding my breath,” concludes the (London) Sunday Times reviewer.

EGYPTIAN CLERIC: “JEWS INFECT FOOD WITH CANCER AND SHIP IT TO MUSLIM COUNTRIES”

Meanwhile the anti-Semitism in parts of the Egyptian, Saudi, Syrian and Lebanese media is becoming even worse.

Among the latest examples is a sermon by Egyptian cleric Ahmad Abd Al-Salam, which aired on Al-Nas TV on January 28, 2009. (Translation courtesy of MEMRI.)

Among his hateful remarks:

“The Jews invest their utmost efforts, day and night, in conspiring how to corrupt the Islamic nation, the nation led by the Prophet Muhammad.

“I want you, Muslim viewers, to imagine the Jews sitting around a table, conspiring how to corrupt the Muslims.

“The Jews conspire to infect the food of the Muslims with cancer. It is the Jews who infect food with cancer and ship it to Muslim countries.

“We hate the Jews because they spare no effort in stripping Muslim girls of their clothes. It is the Jews who conspire to have Muslim girls, and even married Muslim women, wear clothes that are tight, short, or see-through, or clothes that are open from the front, or the back, from the right or the left.

“The sexual temptations, which are prevalent worldwide, were conspired by the Jews.”

U.S. LATEST TO SAY IT WILL BOYCOTT “WORLD CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM”

The U.S. government on Friday announced it will join Canada and Israel in boycotting the upcoming so-called UN “Durban II” conference. U.S. officials said there was every indication that the conference, despite being billed as an anti-racism conference, will be as anti-Semitic as the first “World Conference Against Racism,” which was held in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

The Durban II conference is due to be held in Geneva next month. The preparatory committee for Durban II is being chaired by Libya, with Iran and Cuba as vice-chairs.

BRITAIN AND ITALY ALSO SAY THEY WILL LIKELY DROP OUT OF DURBAN II

Britain and Italy have also announced that they will likely drop out of Durban II.

Durban I was dominated by attacks on Jews and Israel. “I was at the first conference. I have never seen such a disgraceful event in quite a long international life,” Britain’s Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch-Brown said last week.

“There are red lines that need to be made for us to participate. We are not going to stand idly by and allow this racist stuff to get through and be seen as acceptable. We are not going to have it.”

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said: “We will not send an Italian delegation [if it is the same as Durban I], and we will try to harmonize our position with other countries that are not anti-Semitic.”

Then Secretary of State Colin Powell walked out midway through the eight-day Durban I conference saying he didn’t want to listen to any more speeches singling out Israel for attack and hateful and false accusations that Israel had exaggerated the Holocaust.