[All notes below by Tom Gross]

“OH I FORGOT, THE JEWS HAVE ALL THE OIL”

(The item below was first published on Tuesday on the website of The National Review.)

“Oh I forgot, the Jews have all the oil”
By Tom Gross
National Review
November 17, 2009

Following up my post on Sunday (There is no effective pro-Israel lobby in Britain), and having now watched the program in question, I wonder whether the directors of Britain’s well-regarded Channel 4 television, or the program-makers, have read – or even care about – the European Union’s working definition of anti-Semitism, part of which reads:

“Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective – such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.”

The program – which may leave many viewers with the impression that Britain’s 290,000 Jews somehow control the rest of the British population of 62,000,000 – has been widely plugged by neo-Nazi and left-wing anti-Semitic groups.

Do the program-makers care?

Apparently not.

The hour-long documentary didn’t even mention (apart from one minor and insignificant reference in passing) the numerous pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian organizations in the U.K., the activities of which help explain why hostility to Israel among Britain’s media and political elites is so much stronger than in many other countries. These organizations are, of course, an integral part of the story.

Among those omitted were the CAABU (Council for Arab-British Understanding), the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Arab Media Watch, the Muslim Council of Britain, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the International Solidarity Campaign, the Stop the War Coalition, to say nothing of numerous other anti-Israel campaigners among parliamentary groups, trades unions, and student movements. And then there are the twenty-odd Arab embassies (including the Palestinian Authority’s) in London churning out stuff.

To paraphrase a quip by Melanie Phillips today, “Oh, I forgot, the Jews have all the oil.”

***

The item above, and my previous writings on the Channel 4 documentary, have been picked up on many other websites around the world, for example, here and here by Melanie Phillips on the website of the British political magazine The Spectator.

IN PAST WRITINGS, OBORNE CALLED ISRAEL “BARBARIC” AND “DETESTABLE”

Chas Newkey-Burden has tracked down some of the Channel 4 program-maker Peter Oborne’s previous statements on Israel.

“The visceral hatred Peter Oborne demonstrated in his shoddy documentary Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby did not, unsurprisingly, come out of nowhere,” he notes. Among them:

A few days after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Oborne wrote in The Observer (the Sunday sister paper of The Guardian): “The thought of the West taking reprisals against bin Laden without demanding major concessions from Israel makes the blood run cold.”

In 2004, he wrote about “U.S. support for state terrorism in Israel” in The Evening Standard (London’s main citywide newspaper).

In 2005, Oborne interviewed British government minister John Denham for The Spectator magazine. It was a wide-ranging interview, but it was headlined “Israel’s actions affect our security” despite Israel being only mentioned very briefly in passing in the article.

Then in 2006, he wrote of “Israeli barbarism” and said he was among “those who find Israeli actions detestable”.

(Newkey-Burden’s full item is below in the full articles section.)

UPDATE: Chas has posted some very nice comments about these dispatches.

NEW ISRAEL FUND ON DEFENSE FOR “RAPE” POSTER DEMONIZING ISRAEL

The New Israel Fund (NIF) is defending its sponsorship of three Arab groups behind a poster suggesting that IDF soldiers rape and sexually violate Arab women. (Both accusations are, needless to say, utterly false).

The poster, in which an Israeli soldier is seen with his hand groping the breast of a Palestinian woman, says, “Her husband needs a permit to touch her. The occupation penetrates her life everyday.” It is part of a campaign launched on November 9, titled “My Land, Space, Body and Sexuality,” organized by the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies.

(Naturally the campaign makes no mention of the treatment of women in Arab countries.)

The three groups behind the campaign reportedly received some $340,000 from the NIF last year. Women Against Violence got $217,000, Mada Al-Carmel got $100,000 and the Arab Forum for Sexuality got $23,000.

The chairman of the British branch of the NIF, Nicholas Saphir, defended support given to the campaign in the London Jewish Chronicle, provoking outrage among many British Jews. “NIF supports free expression of the various views of our broad spectrum of grantees – whether we agree with all their positions or not,” he said. “As long as the work is within the framework of Israel’s charity law and other Israeli laws, NIF will continue to support them in the interests of sustaining its vibrant democracy.”

NIF receives huge funds from gullible liberal Jews in Manhattan and elsewhere, who are under the false impression that NIF only uses their donations to promote peace and reconciliation in the Middle East. In fact the NIF has often been accused of giving money to groups that seek to damage or effectively even to destroy Israel.

Some of those who aid and abet such groups are extremist leftist Israeli Jews. One graduate student at the Hebrew University even produced a “study” claiming that the absence of any history of rape of Palestinian women by Israeli Jewish soldiers proves that the Jews are “such extreme racists that they do not regard Arab women as sexually desirable.” The graduate student then received an awarded from Hebrew University for her impressive “discoveries”, provoking further outrage from the Israeli mainstream.

OBAMA TAKES FRIENDLY FIRE OVER HUMAN RIGHTS

(The item below was published on Wednesday on the websites of The National Review and National Post.)

Obama takes friendly fire over human rights
The National Post
By Tom Gross
November 18, 2009

It seems that the liberal press really are – finally – beginning to take note that Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama cares much less about human rights and press freedoms than George W. Bush did as president.

* The New York Times begins its news report today on the president’s trip to China:

“Whether by White House design or Chinese insistence, President Obama has steered clear of public meetings with Chinese liberals, free press advocates and even average Chinese during his first visit to China, showing a deference to the Chinese leadership’s aversions to such interactions that is unusual for a visiting American president.

“Mr. Obama held a “town hall” meeting with students on Monday. But the students were carefully vetted and prepped for the event by the government, participants said. And the Chinese authorities, wielding a practiced mix of censorship and diplomatic pressure, succeeded in limiting Mr. Obama’s exposure to a point where a third of some 40 Beijing university students interviewed Tuesday were unaware that he had just met in Shanghai with their peers.

“Some students who were aware cast him in terms rarely applied to American leaders, like “rather humble” and “bland.”

* And on the other side of the Atlantic, the left-liberal Independent (of London) begins its news report this morning:

“America used to take pride in speaking softly and carrying a big stick, but in China Barack Obama has had to speak softly and keep any stick he might feel like flourishing well out of sight.

“Boxed in by ceremony, with any hint of controversy airbrushed out of his remarks by the regime’s censors, with press conference questions banned and his interlocutors ruthlessly screened, he has struggled to get his message across.”

* And yesterday the British paper The Financial Times, which has been as strongly supportive of Obama in recent years as it has been hostile to President Bush, also criticized Obama:

“It is right and proper that the US acknowledge the rising significance of China. Mr Obama’s assurances that China’s rise need not be a threat were spot on. But by the same token, US accommodation can be taken too far. Contrary to common perception, China’s huge holdings of US treasuries are not a sign of great strength. They are evidence of how dependent Chinese growth has been on the US consumer.

“Equally, any idea that China, with an economy less than a third the size of the US and a GDP per capita roughly the same as Angola’s, can somehow save the world is ludicrous. Mr Obama is right to show respect to China. He need not – and must not – kowtow.”

***

* Among my past writings on Obama and human rights, please see last month’s dispatch: Does Obama believe in human rights? (and what that might mean for Israel)

* Please also note the short item attached below by Victor Davis Hanson, one of the few commentators who agrees with me that the George W. Bush years will be remembered much more kindly by historians in future than they are by journalists today. As Hanson writes: “The fact that in the Bush years we were increasingly disliked by Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chávez, Kim Jong Il, Morales, Ortega, and Putin, may in retrospect seem logical, just as their current warming to the U.S. may prove to be cause for alarm, given the repugnant nature of these strongmen.”

ADL BLASTS J STREET OVER PALIN

The Anti-Defamation League has criticized the Jewish-led, partly Arab-funded Israel-hostile lobby group J Street, for its attack on Sarah Palin’s statement in an interview with Barbara Walters last week, in which Palin opposed President Obama’s admonition of Israel for planning to build new apartments in the south-west Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.

ADL director Abe Foxman (who is a subscriber to this email list) said J Street’s statement was “over the line” and wondered whether the group should be calling itself “pro-Israel.”

ISRAELIS IN SHOCK AT OBAMA’S CRITICISM OF GILO HOUSING

Meanwhile, in Israel itself there has been outrage across the political spectrum over the swingeing criticism by Obama of plans to build new homes in Gilo.

(Moreover, Obama chose to make this latest clumsy criticism of Israel on a visit to China, during which he went out of his way not to criticize the multitude of Chinese human rights abuses.)

Israeli President Shimon Peres strongly criticized Obama’s demand to stop construction in Gilo, as did Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who for the first time sided with Netanyahu over Obama.

Virtually the entire world media have misreported this story, stating that Israel plans the new homes for “Arab East Jerusalem”. (BBC radio devoted 18 minutes of their world news to it!) It is amazing that Obama and his advisors seem to actually believe what they read in The New York Times and hear on NPR and don’t check the facts before criticizing Israel.

THE DISMAY CUTS BOTH WAYS

Gilo is in south-west Jerusalem, down from Katamon and the German Colony, and west of Talpiot. It is not in eastern Jerusalem. It is on land that was legally held by Jews before 1948, and even CNN (after a policy review) defined it as a Jerusalem neighborhood and not as a settlement. It is very misleading to compare it to a West Bank settlement. Gilo, which is one of Jerusalem’s biggest areas with 40,000 people, was never inhabited by Palestinians; and unlike West Bank settlements is not the subject of any disputed land-claims – even Saeb Erekat acknowledges it will be in Israel once a two-state solution is in place.

If you look carefully at what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doing, he is actually trying to avoid building in territory that is clearly earmarked for a possible future Palestinian state.

The building permits announced for Gilo will only be ready after Barack Obama’s second term in office (if he gets one) and are next to a state-of-the-art home for the handicapped (for Jews and Arabs) and another large building for autistic children, close by.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Tuesday expressed “dismay” at the decision to build. The EU, clearly following Gibbs’s lead, released a statement on Wednesday saying, “The European Union is dismayed by the recent decision on the expansion of the settlement of Gilo. The dismay, however, cuts both ways, with many Israelis clearly dismayed at Obama and the EU.

The Jerusalem Post noted: “U.S. President Barack Obama is an extremely intelligent man surrounded by equally intelligent advisers, so his continued misreading and misunderstanding of the Israeli public is, therefore, somewhat baffling.”

Moreover the media didn’t report that at the same time that the Jerusalem Municipal Planning Committee granted approval of a plan to build some 900 new apartments in Gilo, it granted permits for 5000 new apartments to be built for Palestinians in the east of the city.

Several Israeli leaders denounced Obama as a “racist for objecting to allowing Jews to live in Jerusalem while not objecting to Arabs living in Jerusalem.”

As the Obama administration continues to criticize Israel even on issues that left-wing Israelis support, rather than rallying around Obama (as J Street and Obama’s advisors might have hoped), center-left Israelis have – according to polls – rallied around Netanyahu.

OBAMA HALVES NUMBERS INVITED TO CHANUKAH RECEPTION

The leading American political website, Politico, reports that while the Obama White House is increasing the size of other receptions (for example, the forthcoming state dinner with the Indian Prime Minister) it has decided to make this year’s White House’s Chanukah party much smaller than those of his predecessor, George W. Bush. The guest list is expected to be halved. “Several Jewish leaders said it would likely help feed feelings in some quarters of the American Jewish community that the White House is giving them the cold shoulder,” reports Politico.

The move comes on the heels of Obama’s cancellation last week of an appearance before the General Assembly of North American Jewish Federations.

Meanwhile, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reports that:

“The British government has moved its official Chanukah reception to the prime minister’s residence in a bid to make amends with the country’s Jewish community. Prime Minister Gordon Brown decided to relocate the gathering to 10 Downing St. from its Foreign Office venue as a gesture to the community. The community attacked his Labour government last week for abstaining during a United Nations vote on a resolution supporting the Goldstone report.”

OBAMA’S HOME TELEPROMPTER MALFUNCTIONS DURING FAMILY DINNER

I occasionally place pieces of political humor in these dispatches as a counterbalance to some of the more serious items.

Here is some video humor from The Onion:

(Also posted here in case the above video is slow.)

TRASHING PALIN GETS HIGHER PRIORITY THAN EXPLAINING HEALTH CARE

AP devotes 52 times as much manpower to looking for Sarah Palin faults as to healthcare
By Tom Gross
The National Post
November 20, 2009

Now this is what they call “accountability journalism”.

An Associated Press dispatch, written by Erica Werner and Richard Alonso-Zaldivar, compares the House and Senate Obama health-care bills. James Taranto compares this to the AP’s dispatch earlier this week that “fact checked” Sarah Palin’s new book:

Number of AP reporters assigned to story:
• ObamaCare bills: 2
• Palin book: 11

Number of pages in document being covered:
• ObamaCare bills: 4,064
• Palin book: 432

Number of pages per AP reporter:
• ObamaCare bill: 2,032
• Palin book: 39.3

So on a per-page basis, the AP devoted 52 times as much manpower to the memoir of a former Republican governor as to a piece of legislation that will cost trillions of dollars and affect tens or hundreds of millions of lives.

(The Associated Press, of course, wouldn’t dream of assigning a crack team of investigative journalists to sift through every word looking for muck in either of President Barack Obama’s two self-aggrandizing memoirs. Or Al Gore’s latest book on global warming.)

***

(The item above was published yesterday on the websites of The National Review and The National Post, where comments can be left.) Among my previous articles on Sarah Palin, please see: How Dare She Be a Working-Class Woman!)

***

I attach two short pieces below, by California-based historian Victor Davis Hanson and by British based journalist and author Chas Newkey-Burden, both of whom are long-time subscribers to this list.

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

WINNER OF BBC QUIZ SHOW THINKS ISRAELI SECRET SERVICE IS CALLED “AL-QAEDA”

The item below was published on Wednesday on the websites of The National Review (America) and of The National Post (Canada).

Winner of BBC quiz show thinks Israeli secret service is called “Al-Qaeda”
By Tom Gross
November 11, 2009

My friend, the British political commentator Robin Shepherd, points out that the winner of the BBC’s leading general knowledge quiz show, “The Weakest Link,” yesterday answered the question “What is the name of Israel’s most prominent secret intelligence service” by saying “al-Qaeda”.

Even the notoriously detached presenter of the show, Anne Robinson, could not avoid smirking in disbelief at the answer. The contestant went on to win the show, which goes out daily before the BBC’s much watched 6 pm news (which itself is often inaccurate when it comes to reporting on Israel).

This would be a purely funny anecdote if it weren’t for the fact that there are so many anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists out there who really do believe the ridiculous and vicious notion that Israel was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. For the record, Israelis were, per capita, one of the greatest victims of the attacks on the Twin Towers, and the Jewish state of Israel is of course one of the prime targets of al-Qaeda-inspired Muslim fundamentalist violence.

DELUSIONS OF BRITAIN’S CHANNEL 4 ABOUT ISRAEL AND BRITISH JEWS

Tomorrow evening, Channel 4’s Dispatches program will broadcast a one-hour documentary, called “Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby” hosted by Daily Mail journalist Peter Oborne, a well-known critic of Israel and America.

The preview of the program on the website of Channel 4 (a channel which is more highly revered among many in Britain’s intelligentsia than even the BBC, despite it having invited Holocaust-denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to deliver its annual Christmas message last December 25) reads:

“Dispatches investigates one of the most powerful and influential political lobbies in Britain, which is working in support of the interests of the State of Israel.

“Despite wielding great influence among the highest realms of British politics and media, little is known about the individuals and groups which collectively are known as the pro-Israel lobby.

“Political commentator Peter Oborne sets out to establish who they are, how they are funded, how they work and what influence they have, from the key groups to the wealthy individuals who help bankroll the lobbying.

“He investigates how accountable, transparent and open to scrutiny the lobby is, particularly in regard to its funding and financial support of MPs.

“The pro-Israel lobby aims to shape the debate about Britain’s relationship with Israel and future foreign policies relating to it.

“Oborne examines how the lobby operates from within parliament and the tactics it employs behind the scenes when engaging with print and broadcast media.”

BRITAIN HAS NO EFFECTIVE PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY

Tom Gross comments:

If only.

Whereas there is a pro-Israel lobby with some influence in the U.S. (though not the kind of influence ascribed to it by anti-Semites), contrary to what Channel 4 and others think, there is no effective pro-Israel lobby in Britain.

The complete lack of any effective pro-Israel lobby in Britain (as opposed to well organized anti-Israel groups) goes a long way to explaining why some of the coverage of Israel in the British media is among the worst in the world, and sometimes rivals the Iranian and Egyptian media for its sheer nastiness.

It also explains why Britain failed to back Israel last week at the U.N. General Assembly vote on the Goldstone report into Israeli war crimes, while other democracies – including the U.S., Italy, Germany, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, Macedonia and the Czech Republic – did vote with Israel.

NEO-NAZI WEBSITES PROMOTE CHANNEL 4 PROGRAM

Interestingly, the makers of the program contacted the Community Security Trust (CST) for interview. The CST has got nothing to do with lobbying for Israel. It coordinates security activities with the British police to protect Jewish schools, synagogues and other institutions from attack. Physical attacks on British Jews are running at near record post-war highs. Per capita, British Jews have in the last couple of years been attacked more than any other religious or ethnic minority in Britain.

The makers of Channel 4’s program, Hardcash Productions, wrote last week to the CST’s chairman (who is a subscriber to this email list) to inform him that they “will be looking at a number of groups and leading individuals who collectively make up the pro-Israel lobby including the Community Security Trust” and to ask him for an interview.

When one looks at the advance wording about the program that Channel 4 has placed on its website (“one of the most powerful and influential political lobbies… wielding great influence… little is known about the individuals and groups which collectively are known as the pro-Israel lobby… the tactics it employs behind the scenes…”) it is hard not to conclude that they have been influenced by the many virulent anti-Zionist conspiracy theories spread around the web.

Already the readers’ comments on the Channel 4 website contains many anti-Semitic notions about secretive all-powerful Jewish conspiracies “to undermine Britain and the human race”. “The agents of a foreign power embedded at all levels of our government and politics need flushing out,” writes one reader.

Predictably, the program is being promoted on the internet message board of the far-right British National Party and various neo-Nazi websites.

Perhaps Channel 4 has even subconsciously been influenced by this 1960s leaflet from Britain’s National Socialist Movement, showing the three main British political parties bowing down before “the Jew”, with his whip in the shape of a pound sign:

THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD (IN AN HONEST WAY BY HOLLYWOOD)

From The Times of London:

Life of Mohammed to be filmed, but don’t expect to see him on screen
By Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent

In Hollywood terms, it was the greatest story almost never told – until now.

With Middle Eastern money becoming an increasingly powerful cog in the global entertainment industry, it was perhaps inevitable that, sooner or later, someone would embark on a mega-budget epic about the life of the Prophet Mohammed.

That moment has arrived thanks to a wealthy Qatari media company which has put together a team featuring a crack Hollywood producer and a Muslim cleric who is banned from visiting Britain to bring the project to life.

Plans for the $150million English-language biopic were announced at the close of the Doha Tribeca Film Festival in Qatar on Sunday. The narrative will run from the years before the Prophet’s birth through to his death but there will be one conspicuous break from conventional biopic methods: in accordance with Islamic tradition the film will not represent the Prophet himself or direct members of his family.

A source close to the project said that Mel Gibson’s hugely successful (and gruesome) crucifixion film The Passion of the Christ had proved that there was a demand for religious-themed entertainment…

FROM THE PRODUCER OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS, WITH GUIDANCE FROM SHEIKH YOUSEF AL-QARADAWI

Tom Gross adds:

The film is scheduled to be produced by Barrie Osborne, a producer on The Lord of the Rings films and The Matrix. It is being financed by Al-Noor Holdings, a media company that has created a $200million film production fund to invest in Hollywood. Al-Noor Holdings has hired the cleric Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi as their lead theological consultant for the film.

Sheikh al-Qaradawi is one of the Sunni Islam’s most high-profile theologians thanks to his popular show on al-Jazeera TV. He is a highly controversial figure who was refused entry to Britain last year because of his views. He has condoned the Holocaust, supported the stoning of homosexuals, praised suicide bombers, and denounced Shia Muslims as heretics.

Shooting for the yet-untitled picture is scheduled to start in 2011.

A previous film on the life of Mohammed, called The Message, made in 1977 and starring Anthony Quinn, sparked riots in the U.S. in which two people died, even though it respected the tradition of not representing the Prophet himself. The film is currently being remade as The Messenger of Peace.

More recently, satirical cartoons of the Prophet published in Denmark in 2006 provoked violent protests leading to hundreds of deaths worldwide, from Nigeria to Bangladesh.

Last year the planned British publication of a novel about the Prophet Mohammed’s child bride was shelved after threats of violence.

PICTORIAL PORTRAYALS OF MOHAMMED: FROM TINTIN TO SOUTH PARK TO SALVADOR DALI

The pictorial portrayal of Mohammed is not forbidden in the Koran, but only in relatively recent interpretations of Sharia law. Scroll down to the second section here for some examples of Muslims themselves portraying Mohammed. Such depictions were commonplace until the modern growth of Islamic fundamentalism. Here is one such example.

Mohammed advancing on Mecca, with the angels Gabriel, Michael, Israfil and Azrail (16th century Ottoman illustration):

(For more examples, please see here.)

***

There have also been many unfavorable or irreverent representations and pictures about Mohammed that failed to elicit the same kind of anger as the Danish cartoons, since Islamic fundamentalists didn’t choose to exploit them. Here are three examples:

Mohammed by Salvador Dali:

From a Tintin comic book in 1977:

This early Renaissance fresco in Bologna’s Church of San Petronio depicts Mohammed being tortured in Hell (and could obviously be offensive to some people):

(For more examples, please see here.)

SHEIKH AL-QARADAWI, GAYS, WIFE-BEATING AND THE EX-MAYOR OF LONDON

I have written several times in the past about Sheikh al-Qaradawi, who will be the spiritual advisor on the above-mentioned film.

For example, this passage is from a dispatch in 2004:

Meanwhile, Sheikh al-Qaradawi once again explains why London’s leftist mayor Ken Livingstone keeps on praising him.

In fact it wasn’t Zionists who objected to Livingstone’s red carpet treatment of al-Qaradawi, but homosexuals, Hindus, Jews and Sikhs – all of whom al-Qaradawi has defamed and some of whom (gays and Jews) he has said should be put to death.

THE WASHINGTON POST GETS IT RIGHT ON THE MIDEAST (UNLIKE THE NEW YORK TIMES)

I attach two pieces below.

The first is an editorial by The Washington Post. As I have already mentioned earlier this year, The Washington Post (senior staff of which subscribe to this email list) has in recent months started to differ from the rest of America’s left-liberal media in blaming Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the inept diplomacy of the Obama administration for the impasse in the Middle East, rather than blaming Israel.

The editorial below, in my opinion, essentially gets it right, in sharp contrast to the utter nonsense often written about the Middle East peace process in the editorials of other papers, notably The New York Times.

HA’ARETZ SLAMS FAR-LEFT AMERICAN JEWISH DENIGRATOR OF ISRAEL HENRY SIEGMAN

In the second piece below, titled “Why do Israelis dislike Barack Obama?” Bradley Burston, a leading liberal columnist for the left-leaning Israeli paper Ha’aretz, criticizes far leftist American Jews like former American Jewish Congress national director Henry Siegman for their utter mis-analysis of the Middle East.

“There are many people, gifted with rare intelligence and tolerance for humankind, who, when addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, run off the rails. This week, it was the turn of Henry Siegman,” writes Burston in this weekend’s Ha’aretz, concerning Siegman’s latest piece which appeared November 1 in both The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune.

Burston adds: “From the tone of Henry Siegman’s arguments, he belongs to the school of thought which suggests that hating Israelis is a form of working for peace… Siegman doesn’t merely think that Israelis are mistaken. He loathes them. In his reading, they are venal, deceitful, the source of the conflict and the obstruction to its solution.”

The Ha’aretz columnist notes that “the Obama administration may have made more major mistakes in handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, than it has made in any other primary policy sphere,” a point I have made in several previous dispatches on this list (although I would add that Obama’s approach to Iran, Afghanistan and various other foreign policy issues, has also been muddled and clumsy). (See also, Obama’s mistaken bow.)

(As I noted in this article I wrote for The National Review on The New York Times, Siegman’s past New York Times columns are proudly displayed on the website of the Palestine Liberation Organization.)

It is worth reading both the articles below in full if you have time.

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

ISRAEL: UN “DETACHED FROM REALITY” FOR ADOPTING GOLDSTONE REPORT

Israel today rejected yesterday’s United Nations General Assembly resolution adopting the Goldstone report accusing Israel of war crimes, as “completely detached from reality”.

In a statement after the vote, the Israeli government said Israel “would maintain the right to self-defense and would continue to act to protect the lives of its citizens from the threat of international terrorism,” whatever the UN might say.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel had “demonstrated higher military and moral standards than each and every one of this resolution’s instigators”.

The 192-member General Assembly adopted the resolution by a vote of 114-18, with 44 countries absent or abstaining.

Those voting with Israel and against the resolution were the United States, Italy, Germany, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, Macedonia and the Czech Republic, together with (the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Panama).

To Israel’s great consternation, Britain and France once again did not vote with Israel, but abstained.

HOLOCAUST DENIER APPOINTED AS IRAN’S MEDIA BOSS

(The item below was published on Wednesday on the websites of The National Review (America) and of The National Post (Canada). I sent it to some subscribers to this list then.)

Ahmadinejad appoints leading Holocaust denier as new official in charge of the press
By Tom Gross
National Review / National Post
November 4, 2009

Not only did Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, today say that negotiating with the United States would be a “naive and perverted” thing to do (Khamenei revealed President Obama has approached him several times through oral and written messages which he has not replied to).

Not only did Israeli commandos today intercept a ship carrying hundreds of tons of Iranian weapons intended for Hizbullah in Lebanon – the biggest ever seizure of arms on their way from Iran to its client terrorist militia, Hizbullah, which Iran plans to use as one element in its attempt to wipe the Jewish state off the map (BBC story and video here).

Not only did Iran brutalize pro-democracy demonstrators once again on the streets of major Iranian cities today (there are several videos if you scroll down here from France 24, and a report here by BBC Persian).

But in addition Iran has appointed as its new deputy culture minister, in charge of media and communications, Mohammad-Ali Ramin, who previously served as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s top advisor on Holocaust matters and is known as “the brain” behind the president’s strategy of Holocaust denial.

Ramin hasn’t just repeatedly said that Jews invented the Holocaust, he has also said (sounding quite like Hitler) that “everyone knows Jews are filthy people who have spread lethal disease throughout history.”

In his new post as official in charge of communications and the press, Ramin will be able to influence Iran’s media agenda, as his boss continues the rush to acquire nuclear weapons despite a phony deal that Barack Obama and other western powers seem to have been suckered into by the Iranian regime.

BIGGEST EVER SEIZURE OF WEAPONS DESTINED TO BE USED AGAINST ISRAELIS

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is believed to be behind the arms ship that was intercepted by Israeli commandos on high seas in the Mediterranean on Tuesday night. This was the largest arms cache Israel has ever intercepted. The cargo seized was far greater than the quantity of weapons and ammunition captured aboard the Karine-A seven years ago. The vessel, named the Francop, was loaded with the equivalent of 20 cargo planes of weaponery.

The German vessel flying the flag of Antigua contained hundreds of crates filled with a variety of weapons, including thousands of rockets that were manufactured in Iran, China and Spain.

The ship was also loaded with 20,000 fragmentary grenades, 9,000 mortar shells, 3,000 106 millimeter artillery shells and 600,000 rounds for AK47 assault rifles.

While Israeli defense analysts hailed the “outstanding achievement” of the Mossad and Israeli military intelligence in identifying and apprehending the ship, there are fears that other arms ships have successfully made their way to Hizbullah and Hamas.

There are reports that the U.S. Navy initially tracked the ship from its departure at Bandar Abbas, Iran, following a tip off by Israeli intelligence. A special Israeli commando unit boarded the ship on Tuesday night, in stormy weather, after Israeli intelligence had tracked it for a number of days once it entered the Mediterranean.

The weapons uncovered constitute a violation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1747 and 1701 that strictly forbid Iran from exporting or trading any form of weapons.

NEW YORK TIMES NEGLECTS TO TELL ITS READERS THE ARMS WERE FROM IRAN

While The New York Times went out of its way to try and convince its readers that the arms were not Iranian (I wonder whether The New York Times editors think it was the Antiguan government arming Hizbullah – or maybe it was Costa Rica, Greenland or Swaziland), the Associated Press detailed that evidence:

“Open crates from a cargo ship seized by Israel revealed dark green missiles inside. Containers from the vessel bore writing in English that said ‘I.R. Iranian Shipping Lines Group.’

“Some of the weapons were hidden in the Francop’s containers behind stacked bags of polyethylene labeled in English ‘NPC National Petrochemical Company,’ and the flame logo used by both the company and the Iranian Petroleum Ministry.

“The Francop’s containers were carefully unloaded on army forklifts to avoid accidental detonation. Some of the containers had the initials ‘I.R.I.S.L.’ printed on one side and the fuller title, ‘I.R. (Islamic Republic of) Iran Shipping Lines Group’ on the other.”

SAUDIS BOMB YEMEN: ALMOST NO INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION

Saudi Arabia yesterday launched waves of air strikes and fired hundreds of shells across the border into Yemen, killing and wounding hundreds of Shia civilians and rebels, according to Arab media reports.

Yet there has been no international condemnation, no demands to launch a “Goldstone report” finding Saudi Arabia guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, barely any Western media coverage and scarcely a peep of protest from the international human rights groups that spend so much of their time criticizing Israel.

FAR MORE DEATHS IN YEMEN THAN IN GAZA

As I have pointed out previously in my writings, far more civilians have died this year in Yemen alone, as the fighting there that has cost many thousands of lives since 2004 intensifies, than have died in the West Bank and Gaza in recent years. But Yemen is only an Arab country and the fighting there doesn’t involve Jews, so the world media, the UN, and international human rights groups don’t have anyone to condemn.

Those Western media that did bother to report on the Saudi airstrikes yesterday, made no reference at all to casualties – in stark contrast to the way they have reported on any Israeli defensive action in Gaza.

They could easily have reported such details if they wished. For example, the Associated Press reported yesterday (but other Western media which subscribe to the AP didn’t report) that “Saudi jets dropped bombs on crowded areas including a local market in the northern province of Saada.”

SAUDIS NOT RESPONDING TO THOUSANDS OF QASSAM ROCKET ATTACKS

Of course, Saudi civilians haven’t faced waves of rocket attacks and suicide bombings from Yemen in the way that Israelis have from Gaza. But the Saudis do have one of the most sophisticated air forces in the world, including a fleet of F-15s, some of which were used in yesterday’s attacks on Yemen.

Al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite channel, reported that at least six towns and villages in Yemen were hit, part of a “sustained campaign” to “break” the rebels, according to a Saudi official.

The rebellion in Yemen has been ongoing since 2004, in a conflict fuelled by grievances about a lack of resources in the region and a sense of discrimination by the Shia population.

SAUDI BEHEADING AND CRUCIFIXION UPHELD ON APPEAL

The sentence of beheading and crucifixion handed down to a man convicted of child rape was upheld on appeal by a court in Saudi Arabia yesterday. The 22-year old defendant was convicted of raping five children.

He was sentenced to be beheaded and his headless body to be tied to wooden beams and left on public display. At least 40 legally-sanctioned public executions and beheadings have taken place so far this year in Saudi Arabia.

FORT HOOD KILLER WOULDN’T BE THE FIRST DOCTOR TO COMMIT MASS MURDER

(The item below was published yesterday evening on the website of The National Review.)

He wouldn’t be the first doctor to commit mass murder
By Tom Gross
National Review
November 5, 2009

Some commentators on television are expressing amazement that the army major, Nidal Malik Hasan, suspected of murdering 13 and wounding 31 at Fort Hood in Texas today was a doctor of many years standing. It is too early to tell whether this is an act of domestic terrorism but if it is we should not be surprised that the killer was a doctor.

As I happened to write earlier this week, doctors have a long history of playing keys roles in terrorist movements. Notable examples include Al-Qaeda’s number 2 and (terror) operations chief, Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is a qualified surgeon; Dr. Abd al-Aziz Rantissi the mastermind behind Hamas suicide bombings; and Dr. George Habash, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the instigator of many airline hijackings in the late 1960s and 1970s, and responsible for the deaths of dozens of passengers. Scroll down to items 4 (and 3) here for more details of these cases.

There have been many other instances too, including several Palestinian suicide bombers and the British Muslim doctors who carried out an attempted suicide attack at Glasgow airport in Scotland two years ago.

And then, of course, there is Dr Mengele...

PALESTINE’S MISSING CRITICS

(The following editorial was inspired by my dispatch of last Sunday, Wall Street Journal staff tell me. Many Journal editorial staff and several senior columnists at the paper subscribe to this list.)

Palestine’s Missing Critics
Where’s the outrage for Ramallah’s atrocities?
The Wall Street Journal
Editorial
November 2, 2009

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703932904574511043050416578.html

Israel’s harshest critics claim to champion the rights of Palestinians. So we’re curious about the fallout, or lack thereof, from revelations that the Palestinian Authority regularly brutalizes its own in the West Bank while enjoying a steady flow of dollars and euros.

Senior PA official Haitham Arar was quoted in the Daily Mail more than a week ago openly discussing the abuses. That follows a Mail On Sunday report in January that detailed the Authority’s regular use of beatings, whippings, attacks with electrical drills, and other methods of torture doled out to anyone seen threatening the authority of Fatah, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas. Murder and rape are also commonplace.

As Middle East analyst Tom Gross points out, the only news here is that a Western newspaper has bothered to write about it. At least some ink is spilled documenting Hamas’s blunt methods, but much less has been made of Fatah’s abuses since Yasser Arafat took over most of the territory in 1993. What’s more, Western governments support the internecine violence with ever-increasing aid. As of Sept. 15, the European Union had delivered €268 million to the Authority this year, and in July the U.S. extended an additional $200 million.

The money will not stop now that Ramallah is no longer trying to hide the mistreatment. Westminster’s one response has been to quietly send officers to the West Bank to train Authority forces on how not to torture prisoners.

So here’s the state-of-play in the department of moral outrage. When Britain is accused of abetting U.S. interrogations, lawsuits, investigations, and threats to try Tony Blair for war crimes quickly follow. When Israel attacks Hamas in order to end rocket launches on its soil, it risks a session before the International Criminal Court. But when the West funnels billions to a Palestinian government whose abuses are brazen and ongoing, there is mainly silence.

WORLD’S FIRST ARABIC SPEAKING ROBOT CONSTRUCTED IN UAE

The world’s first Arabic-speaking robot has come to “life” in the Gulf. Named Ibn Sina in honor of an 11th century Muslim philosopher, the robot was designed by a team of Greek, Pakistani, Iranian and Arab scientists at the Interactive Robots and Media Laboratory at the United Arab Emirates University.

Dr. Nikolaos Mavridis, the director of the laboratory, said “Ibn Sina is the first humanoid robot which can perform Arabic dialogue.”

Mavridis claimed that Ibn Sina represented to the Arab world what Leonardo Da Vinci is to Europeans. Ibn Sina’s writings were translated from Arabic into Latin and used “throughout the world” for 200 years after his death, he said.

The UAE-based laboratory is now working to make the robot more intelligent “by giving him more sensor ability and more complicated dialog abilities,” Mavridis said.

The Ibn Sina robot’s voice was designed by a French company, Acapela, and took nine years to develop. You can see the robot here:

***

I attach one article below. Iran’s democrats had a new chant in the streets this week: “Obama, Obama – either you’re with them or with us.” Which is it?

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY TO DEBATE THE GOLDSTONE REPORT ON WEDNESDAY

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

Various people have asked for more commentary on the Goldstone Report, and because this is an important subject, I attach three more articles and some other related notes. I have prepared summaries first for those who don’t have time to read the articles in full.

The UN General Assembly will debate the Goldstone report on Wednesday, in an attempt to turn it over to the International Criminal Court at The Hague for prosecution. A previous attempt to bring the report before the General Assembly was derailed by a U.S.-led vote to defer the discussion. A barrage of international pressure against Israel is continuing as a result of the report, which is proving to be one of the most damaging weapons used against the Jewish state in recent years.

Pro-Palestinian legal activists funded by American and European NGOs and European governments have already filed hundreds of cases under universal jurisdiction statutes in third-party countries against Israelis who served in the army during the operation, and even against some who didn’t. Those named in such petitions face arrest and make it impossible for Israeli leaders as well as Israeli laypeople to visit such nations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Israel will take no further “risks for peace” if it is attacked from lands it withdraws from and the international community does not back its right to self-defense.

J STREET STEPS IN ON GOLDSTONE’S BEHALF

J Street, the increasingly influential Jewish-led but partially Arab-funded Washington pressure group, is today reported to be actively lobbying members of the U.S. Congress not to vote to condemn Goldstone’s UN report that accuses Israel of war crimes. Many members of Congress want to urge the Obama administration to distance itself from Goldstone and his report.

House Resolution 867 which is scheduled to be voted on tomorrow – and which J Street is trying to change – “calls on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in multilateral fora.”

J Street is widely detested in Israel for the moral and sometimes practical support it gives Israel’s enemies. In particular, Israelis across the political spectrum were outraged by J Street’s attempt to lobby Obama not to impose “artificial deadlines” and “harsher sanctions” against Iran in effort to stop the regime’s nuclear program.

For previous commentary by myself and others on the Goldstone report, please see items in these dispatches, which can be read here:

* Does Obama believe in human rights? (and what that might mean for Israel) (Oct. 25, 2009)
* HRW senior staff compare Israeli conduct to 3.5 m. dead and raped in Congo (Oct. 23, 2009)
* As the UN endorses Goldstone report, even Goldstone now criticizes the UN (Oct. 17, 2009)
* Even B’Tselem now criticizes Goldstone (& Saudi Arabia’s interfaith Nazi) (Oct. 1, 2009)
* “Goldstone’s crime against human rights” (& a mental patient at the UN) (Sept. 29, 2009)
* Transcript: CNN grills Netanyahu on Israeli “war crimes” (& other items) (Sept. 23, 2009)
* Dachau survivor asks Goldstone: How dare you? (& Peres: Goldstone “legitimized terrorism”) (Sept. 21, 2009)

SUMMARIES

DEAR JUDGE GOLDSTONE, THE HAMAS DOCTORS DECEIVED YOU

In the first article below, Dr. David Zangen, writing in Israel’s second most popular newspaper, Ma’ariv, says:

Dear Judge Goldstone, I am a consultant in Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem. Over half my patients are Palestinians from Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. I speak Arabic and initiated the first training program for Palestinian physicians in the field of Pediatric Endocrinology. The trained physicians were fully respected and were included as first authors on our studies that we published in the world’s leading professional journals.

But I also happened to be the Chief Medical Officer of my brigade during Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin in 2002. I was responsible for the medical treatment of Israeli soldiers and also for enabling the Palestinian hospital in Jenin to provide full medical services to the civilian population. I was personally involved in numerous medical treatments that Palestinians (including fighters) received from Israeli physicians.

During and after the operation the director of Jenin Hospital was a source for what has been falsely called the “massacre in Jenin in which 5,000 people were slaughtered.” This same person, Dr. Abu Rali, has also claimed that one part of the Jenin hospital was destroyed by Israeli tank missiles: “12 tank rockets destroyed the hospital.”

You should know, honorable Judge, that these statements have been proven and documented as outright lies… Photographs of Jenin Hospital following the operation, showed no evidence of any destruction at the hospital buildings.

… It is hard to believe that a director of a hospital can give such an obviously false testimony. I cannot understand it. And you cannot understand it. But, unfortunately, this is what has happened.

… Tragically, moral misbehavior of doctors in the Palestinian Authority is not new. The pediatrician, George Habash, sent his terrorists to kill children in Israeli schools, as did Hamas’ leader and pediatrician, Dr. Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, as well as pediatrician, Dr Mahmud Zaher, who continues to encourage the launching of rockets from Gaza against innocent Israeli schools.

Please Judge Goldstone, you should really be careful when such blatant liars serve as the basis for your report. I am sure that you mean well, but being an eyewitness, both to the events in Jenin and to the subsequent media, and initially false, UN reporting, I do understand what happened to you, how a person of such stature and integrity could become associated with such a faulty report.

Look, Judge Goldstone, at your report on the Al Fakhura incident on January 5-6, 2009 (paragraphs 651-688). You report how Israel was accused for directly bombing the UNRWA school. It took two weeks for this accusation to be withdrawn. But you, honored Judge, went back to get your testimony only from the same people who spread the blood libel of the school bombing…

***

See these dispatches for more on this:

* Washington Post latest to report IDF didn’t hit Gaza school (Feb. 9, 2009)
* Major Australian paper latest to attack UN for disseminating “lies” about Gaza (Feb. 5, 2009)
* Investigation by Canada’s leading paper finds: No Palestinians killed in the UN school in Gaza (Feb. 2, 2009)

HOW RELIABLE IS THE EVIDENCE OF THOSE PALESTINIAN DOCTORS?

Tom Gross adds, concerning the doctors mentioned in the article above:

Dr. Abd al-Aziz Rantissi graduated from the faculty of medicine at Egypt’s Alexandria University and then obtained a master’s degree in Pediatrics. While in Egypt, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood. He then returned to Gaza, and while working at Gaza’s main medical centre in Khan Yunis (during which time he served on the administrative boards of the Arab Medical Society in Gaza and of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society) he co-founded Hamas.

Using his influence as a leading doctor in Gaza, he instructed people to exit the mosques chanting “Allah Akbar” (God is great) in order to instigate riots. Serving as the right-hand man and operations chief to Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, he masterminded hundreds of suicide bombings and other terror attacks on Israeli men, women, children and babies.

In March 2003, Rantissi told Reuters that “all Jews” should be targeted. After the assassination of Sheikh Yassin on March 22, 2004, Rantissi became head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. On April 17, 2004, Israeli security forces killed Rantisi after he ordered another wave of suicide bombings “in the name of Allah” against Israeli civilians.

* For more, see these dispatches from the day after Rantissi’s death in 2004:

Dr Abdel al-Rantissi, “the Pediatrician of Death,” in his own words
Rantissi 2: A minute’s silence by British MPs for Sheikh Yassin
Rantissi 3: The Observer newspaper: Rantissi “loved children”

***

There are also many other past dispatches on this list concerning misuse of hospitals and ambulances by Palestinian terrorists. See, for instance, “Examples of the use of ambulances and medical services for terrorism by Palestinian groups in contravention of international law” (Nov. 12, 2002)

***

Dr. George Habash, who graduated from the medical school of the American University of Beirut, was the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) at the time that it initiated a series of airline hijackings which resulted in the deaths of many passengers and led to the Black September War between Jordanian and Palestinian forces. In 1972, working in conjunction with PFLP forces, Japanese Red Army terrorists killed 24 people at Lod International Airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport) in Tel Aviv. The PFLP’s most infamous hijacking occurred in 1976, and resulted in a rescue effort by Israeli forces in Entebbe, Uganda. Habash died last year in Amman of natural causes.

***

Many doctors have engaged in terrorist activities, including for example, those in Glasgow in 2007. Al-Qaeda’s number 2 and (terror) operations chief, Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri, is a qualified surgeon.

“RICHARD RICHARD” GOLDSTONE’S MOTIVES IN JOINING THE HUMAN RIGHTS INDUSTRY

In the second article below, Douglas Davis, who is a long-time subscriber to this email list, and who came to Britain as an exile from apartheid South Africa, writes in London’s Spectator magazine:

[Barely had Israeli troops entered Gaza than] the United Nations Human Rights Council, which had been steadfastly silent about the human rights of Israelis suffering rocket attacks, quickly swung into action. It strongly condemned Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which it said, “resulted in massive violations of human rights of the Palestinian people and systematic destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure”. Then it set up a commission to confirm its opinion.

Step forward Richard Goldstone, “a Jew who has supported Israel and its people all my life,” to head the commission. The human rights council graciously accepted its findings that Israel committed war crimes and may have committed crimes against humanity. Presto! The job was done.

Goldstone will now be lionized from Pyongyang to Ouagadougou and all points between where the Oppressed of the Earth find succor. Streets will named after him, university chairs will be endowed in his honor and state medals will be struck for this great class-struggler. But to senior legal colleagues in South Africa, he will always be Richard Richard Goldstone.

Richard Richard?

“Oh yes,” says a former senior colleague who was close to Goldstone for many years. “We believed that he saw himself as a future secretary-general of the United Nations. At the time, Boutros Boutros Ghali held the post, so it seemed a logical progression for Goldstone to become Richard Richard”.

It might appear unkind to doubt the purity of Goldstone’s motives in joining the human rights industry, poignantly as Israel’s excoriator-in-chief. But he is, it seems, regarded by colleagues who knew him well as an opportunist.

… While many of his countrymen were fighting against the apartheid regime, Goldstone was loftily administering the regime’s laws from the bench of the Supreme Court… Then, just as apartheid was reaching its tipping point, Goldstone jumped… Richard Richard was on the road to redemption. With Mandela in Power, Goldstone slid seamlessly on to the bench of the new South Africa’s highest court.

… But all that was simply to prepare him for an even bigger prize – head of the UN Human Rights Council’s inquiry into the Gaza conflict… Mary Robinson quickly spotted the problems [of the biased commission and its slanted mandate] when she turned down the job (five other candidates are said to have rejected it before it reached Goldstone). The former Irish president and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said she “felt strongly that the Council’s resolution was one-sided and did not permit a balanced approach to determining the situation on the ground.

… Meanwhile, I am left with my own very personal question: Where exactly was Richard Richard, paragon of human rights, when my human rights were being comprehensively trashed in an interrogation room at the Security Police headquarters in Pretoria? I was not in Rwanda, Yugoslavia or even in Gaza. That interrogation room was less a minute’s walk from Judge Goldstone’s Supreme Court.

“DON’T COUNT ON GOLDSTONE TO CURB ISRAEL’S RESPONSE TO ATTACKS ON TEL AVIV”

In the final article below, Israeli commentator Alex Fishman writes in Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s best-selling newspaper:

While Sderot sustained rocket attacks for eight years until the military and political conditions “were ripe” for a retaliatory strike in Gaza, Tel Aviv will not sustain such attacks for eight days; not even for eight hours.

In order to put an immediate end to missile attacks on central Israel – regardless of where they originated: Syria, Lebanon, or Gaza – we will see massive retribution that will make Operation Cast Lead appear like a tiny scratch in the Middle East’s violent history.

… [As Hizbullah and Hamas get longer and longer range missiles, most supplied by Iran’s genocidal regime] the quantity of missiles in the enemy’s arsenal at this time is so great that missiles will be landing in central Israel.

… It is doubtful whether all Israel’s strategic sites, both military and civilian, are properly reinforced to ensure that Israel’s critical systems will not be paralyzed. There is also no solution for Israeli civilians in case of direct hits. Secure rooms are meant to protect against shrapnel, not against missiles with huge warheads.

… Israel’s enemies are counting on Goldstone: They will fire missiles at Tel Aviv, and the world will stop Israel from punishing them for deterrence purposes. Yet they’re wrong.

Israel would not be able to afford to wait for its ground forces to successfully operate in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, or any other site in order to curb the fire. Time is a critical element, and a successful ground operation is a matter of days or weeks, which means more casualties and more critical hits sustained by the home front. The hundreds of rockets that will penetrate through the Israeli-American defense systems will require Israel to respond immediately.

And here the formula is cruel and simple: The more effective the rocket terror war will be, the less “proportional” the response would be… The more painful the blow to the enemy’s critical sites, the greater the chance it will be convinced to hold the fire sooner.

HUMAN RIGHTS NIGHTMARE

I have posted this on my website before but I think it is worth watching again. Please note the response at the end by the Chairman of the UN Human Rights Council. Should this reprimand by a senior UN staff member go without appropriate reaction on the record by members of the Council?

Speech before UN Human Rights Council 4th Session on March 23, 2007
Delivered by Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch

[All notes and summaries above by Tom Gross]

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

BRITISH ADMIT TO FUNDING PALESTINIAN TORTURERS ON THE WEST BANK

[The item below originally appeared last week on the websites of The National Review (America) and of The National Post (Canada).]

British police to tackle UK-funded torturers on the West Bank
By Tom Gross
National Review / National Post
October 28, 2009

The Mail on Sunday (which is the Sunday sister paper of Britain’s Daily Mail) reports that:

“The British government is sending police and intelligence officers to the West Bank to try to stop a wave of brutal torture by Palestinian security forces funded by UK taxpayers. Their mission is to set up and train a new ‘internal affairs’ department with sweeping powers to investigate abuse and bring torturers to justice.

“In the West Bank city of Nablus, Nasser al-Shaer, a former academic from Manchester University who was deputy prime minister in the short-lived Hamas Palestinian Authority government elected in 2006, said many of those released from detention in recent months were telling the same story – of torture, including beatings, being suspended from the ceiling, and electric shocks.”

Tom Gross continues: Now none of this is new. In spite of what the paper says, such practices have been taking place not just for the past two years, but since Yasser Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and took over most of the West Bank in 1993. What is new is that a major newspaper (The Mail On Sunday is one of Britain’s highest circulation respected newspapers) is reporting on it.

Of course, the abuse of human rights and use of torture is even worse in other “moderate” Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan, and far worse in non-moderate countries like Syria (which yesterday the European Union eagerly signed an Association Agreement with).

Many Palestinians I know yearn for the days when Israel ruled the West Bank before Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah took over most of the Palestinian-populated territories.

Meanwhile, as Palestinian detainees are being tortured to death in Palestinian Authority jails, Palestinian prisoners (including convicted terrorists) in custody in Israel are studying for Israeli university degrees (at Israeli taxpayers’ expense) and also given cable TV, IPods and dental treatment – but international human rights groups, instead of praising such humane measures, constantly criticize the treatment of prisoners in Israel, whose deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Washington Danny Ayalon narrowly escaped being arrested in Britain for “war crimes” yesterday. (See below.)

And the world community that routinely and harshly condemns Israel even when Israel hasn’t done anything wrong, has failed to condemn the Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon which narrowly missed an Israeli town last night.

It is a strange world.

“IF NOT, WHY NOT?”

You can leave comments concerning the above post on The National Post or at one of the other places where my item was picked up, such as at the website of The Spectator, where columnist Melanie Phillips asked “Might we now see moves by ‘human rights’ activists to arraign British officials and politicians for having funded the torture of Palestinians by Palestinians? And if not, why not?”

THE GUARDIAN SINKS A LITTLE LOWER

Incidentally, there was the most extraordinarily personalized and nasty attack on Melanie Phillips (author of Londonistan) in The Guardian this weekend. It was written by Ed Husain, who also attacked Douglas Murray. (Ed Husain, Melanie Phillips and Douglas Murray are all subscribers to this email list.) Making it all the more unpalatable, Phillips was employed by The Guardian as one of their leading journalists for many years.

Ed Husain’s article can be read here. Melanie Phillips’s response can be read here.

Before I am too mean about The Guardian, they did print a letter by myself and others last week, here.

However, in response to our letter, The Guardian chose to publish two letters the following day with fabricated information. Correcting those letters: NGO Monitor is an independent organization with no ties to the Israeli government; and Avigdor Lieberman did not threaten to use nuclear weapons against Gaza. I have double-checked with his chief of staff, who confirms that this is a complete lie.

ISRAELI DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER DANNY AYALON FACES CALL FOR ARREST IN BRITAIN

Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, became the latest Israeli to have to stave off an attempt to arrest him on trumped-up war crimes charges during an official visit to Britain.

The U.K.’s International Criminal Court Act of 2001 and the Criminal Justice Act of 1988 allow for private individual complaints of war crimes to be lodged against military personnel, even if they are not British citizens and the alleged crimes were committed elsewhere.

Ayalon, who is a subscriber to this email list, was Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2002 to 2006. He was not involved in the Gaza war in any way and was not in the government or military at the time.

Last month, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon declined an invitation to travel to the UK to speak at a Jewish charity event, fearing that he might face arrest on charges of war crimes.

This followed attempts by leading British lawyers – paid for by well-funded Palestinian NGOs financed by Scandinavian and other European governments, and by the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute – to arrest Ehud Barak, the leader of Israel’s Labor party, when he attended the British Labour party conference recently. The British government had to intervene on Barak’s behalf, submitting legal briefs to the court, and thus avoiding what would have been the most serious clash between Britain and Israel since 1948.

(For more on this, please see items 5 and 6 here.)

PRO-ISRAEL GROUPS ALARMED BY HAGEL’S APPOINTMENT TO U.S. INTELLIGENCE BOARD

President Obama has named retired U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican with staunchly anti-Israel views, to co-chair the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

During his two terms in the Senate, which ended earlier this year, Hagel directed sweeping criticisms against Jewish supporters of Israel, while at the same time making comments defending Yasser Arafat. He also opposed economic sanctions on Iran in a bill sponsored by then-Senator Barack Obama.

In a statement, the White House said the Intelligence Board’s role is to “provide the president with an independent source of advice on intelligence matters,” including the “quality, quantity and adequacy of intelligence activities,” the “effectiveness of organization structure, management and personnel” and the performance of all federal agencies involved in intelligence collection or policy.

The Republican Jewish Coalition criticized the appointment as “a matter for serious concern.” RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks (who is a subscriber to this email list) said: “A review of Hagel’s record over the years on these issues reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the Middle East and of the nature of the threats to U.S. interests in the region. Placing him in a sensitive role in the intelligence community, where he will advise the president on the effectiveness of intelligence community assessments of global issues, is very troubling.”

(Among previous dispatches concerning Hagel’s Middle East record, please see here.)

IN A HISTORIC LOW, 12 PERCENT OF AMERICANS NOW HOLD ANTI-SEMITIC VIEWS

Anti-Semitic attitudes in the United States are at a historic low, with 12 percent of Americans now saying they are prejudiced toward Jews, a survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has found. This is the lowest level in the 45-year history of the annual poll. ADL director Abraham Foxman, who is a subscriber to this email list, said the poll results could simply be attributed to the U.S. becoming “a more accepting society.”

But he warned that “at the same time, there continues to be violence targeting Jews and an increasing use of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. And 12 percent of the American people means there are still over 30 million Americans that hold anti-Semitic views.” When the poll was first conducted in 1964, it found 29 percent of Americans held anti-Semitic views.

The relatively low level of anti-Semitic views in America contrasts greatly with Europe, where openly anti-Semitic opinions are once again on the rise, fueled in my opinion, at least in part, by deliberately false and inflammatory reporting about supposed Israeli wrongs. (Please see the video in the last item in this dispatch for more.)

TWO INJURED IN LOS ANGELES SYNAGOGUE SHOOTING

Two men were injured in a shooting at a Los Angeles synagogue last Thursday. The deputy chief of Los Angeles police, Michel Moore, said the incident was being investigated as a possible hate crime. The two men were shot in the legs as they arrived for worship at the Adat Yeshurun Sephardic Congregation in North Hollywood.

Moore said a black male wearing a hooded sweatshirt opened fire on the two men before fleeing the scene. The victims are in a stable condition. Jewish organizations in the Los Angeles area have been put on high alert, and police placed extra patrols at Jewish schools and synagogues.

In 2006, a gunman stormed into the offices of the Seattle Jewish Federation, and shot dead a woman and wounded five others.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FOUNDER ROBERT BERNSTEIN’S INTERVIEW IN MA’ARIV

This is a follow-up to the dispatch containing Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein’s attacks on HRW: HRW senior staff compare Israeli conduct to the 3.5 million dead and raped in Congo.

***

Bernstein has given an interview to the Israeli paper Ma’ariv, due to be published in Hebrew shortly. Below are Bernstein’s original answers in English to Ma’ariv’s questions, which Bernstein has supplied to me through an intermediary.

MA’ARIV: Why did you write your op-ed for The New York Times? What was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” from your point of view?

BERNSTEIN: Actually it has been brewing for a long time. I had been trying to do a long piece because many of my views about human rights in the Middle East are different from those now being expressed by Human Rights Watch. The Goldstone Report made me feel I should get something out, so I wrote The New York Times op-ed piece.

MA’ARIV: What was your vision when you founded Human Rights Watch and has the organization followed your vision in the recent years?

BERNSTEIN: My vision, I should say our vision because it was supported by a wonderful board, was to go into closed societies and try and help people in those societies who wanted free speech.

I was a book publisher so that was an especially important principle to me and it’s a key part of the Declaration of Human Rights. But, of course, other basic human rights are also vitally important: freedom of religion and equal rights for women, to name just two.

When governments of closed societies asked us what we were doing about our own country we would explain that the United States had many faults but because we were an open society we had many organizations and other ways to try and bring change. But after a while we decided we would do some work in the United States but try to not replicate what was being done by others.

I also believe there can be times to do some work in open societies but, now focus is on the Middle East. I think Israel is a country where most people believe in human rights. But at this time many Israelis, and I share their view, do not believe that HRW in the issues it chooses, its tone, and even its interpretations of law are helping to bring Arabs and Israelis together.

I had a lot to learn when I began feeling uncomfortable with HRW positions on Israel-Palestine issues in 2005 and certainly still do have a lot to learn, but almost from the beginning HRW has cast me as pro-Israel. I think that is the easiest thing to do – say someone is pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. I like to think I am pro-human rights. Now that I have stated publicly, very sadly incidentally, that I am in disagreement with HRW, this will play out and others can decide if my views make sense.

“HRW THINK THEY ARE GOD”

MA’ARIV: You said that you are amazed by the reaction, from general people and mostly from people inside the HRW. Can you explain? You said, “They think they are God” – off the record.

BERNSTEIN: I was amazed and encouraged by the reaction to my op-ed. Because so many of the positive comments have come, not from those considered to be hard liners but from people who think a lot about human rights, I have been particularly encouraged.

MA’ARIV: What do you think about the Goldstone report? Is it part of the big problem you were talking about? And if so, why do Goldstone, and other human rights organizations, focus mostly on Israel?

BERNSTEIN: I think the Goldstone Report is deeply flawed. I was surprised Judge Goldstone, who I know and admired, took the job. He had to head a commission created by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which I think any fair-minded person would say had to clean up itself before it dared to criticize anything.

When I read Judge Goldstone’s op-ed in the September 17 issue of The New York Times and he said “While Israel has begun investigating into alleged violations they are unlikely to be serious and objective” I felt he was just “judging” too much.

MA’ARIV: What do you think should be Israel’s response to the Goldstone report as well as to some of the HRW reports?

BERNSTEIN: I can’t tell Israel what to do. I do not think any country would want to put up with a war of attrition, which can explode into real war any time. However I certainly don’t know the best way to stop it. I fault HRW for not taking a position on the war. The fact that Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran have declared it is their intention to try and wipe out Israel and all Jews seems to me, to be incitement to genocide, especially when it is backed by rocket attacks.

ANOTHER NASTY POST-GOLDSTONE CARTOON FROM THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

The New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune (which now bills itself on its masthead as “The Global Edition of The New York Times”) has run yet another anti-Israel cartoon arising out of the Goldstone report, this one by Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte.

SHORT VIDEO: MEET THE FOREIGN PRESS – ARE THEY OBJECTIVE?

I have attended three conferences in recent days. One of them, organized in Tel Aviv by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), with the assistance of the Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Embassy in Israel, specifically concerned the media.

Titled “Giving the Middle East context: Reporters view the world they cover,” it featured leading Middle East correspondents from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio and several European papers and TV networks, who spoke on the question of media objectivity and how they covered the Middle East.

Ethan Bronner, The New York Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, gave an impressive talk, marred only by a couple of wisecracks he told about orthodox Jews at the start – which his fellow journalists laughed at heartily. (I doubt he would dare make similar jokes about Muslims, especially given the fact that only last week there were more arrests on terrorism charges of persons threatening to murder Danish cartoonists.) Bronner is, however, in general by far the most objective Middle East correspondent The New York Times has had for many years.

The same cannot be said of other journalists at The New York Times who spoke at the conference.

But perhaps the most shocking comments came from senior Dutch journalist Connie Mus, correspondent for the Dutch stations RTL 4 and RTL 5, and for Belgium’s VTM TV, about how wonderful the Saudi authorities are.

My views on his talk are contained in the short video below for an Israeli TV and Web channel, which also contains an interview with the conference’s organizer, the highly respected Jerusalem-based journalist Hirsh Goodman.