Head of Judea and Samaria Division says documents received from Palestinians show Jawaher Abu-Rahma did not attend anti-fence rally, died of illness. Leftist: IDF's version not based on facts Hanan Greenberg Published: 01.07.11, 15:58 Israel Defense Forces officials said Friday that the army was about to reach an agreement with official Palestinian sources that the death of Jawaher Abu-Rahma in the West Bank village of Bilin last week was not caused by tear gas fired during an anti-fence rally in the area. "Our assumptions were verified this week after we received additional documents from the Palestinians," said Judea and Samaria Division Commander Brigadier-General Nitzan Alon. He added that "the documents and data we received strengthened the understanding that her death was caused by the method of the medical treatment and other medical aspects." The division commander said some details remained to be examined on the matter, but that further talks would be held with the Palestinians in a bid to reach a final understanding. "We now understand that she herself was not at the protest, but in a more distant place, where remains of the tear gas may have reached her. But this was not the cause of her death. She died from other illnesses and medical care." Commenting on the weekly rallies against the separation fence, Nitzan said the IDF distinguishes between a quiet protest and a violent protest, in which demonstrators throw stones at soldiers and police officers. "In such cases we must use the same crowd dispersal measures we have. We did not find that these measures caused Abu-Rahma's death. We will continue using these measures according to regulations." Palestinians and left-wing activists have claimed that Abu-Rahma did take part in the rally. "I saw Jawaher actively participating in the protest," Yonatan Pollack of the Anarchists Against the Wall organization told Ynet, while presenting an update on the incident on his Twitter account. "I saw how they put her in the ambulance that took her to the hospital. I know with certainty that she arrived there and stayed there, and later died at the hospital," he said. "I was in constant telephone contact with people who were at the hospital throughout the night and the following morning." Despite the problematic findings presented by the army, Pollack insisted that "the IDF's version isn't based on any facts…the only thing the army's claims are based on is the error of a doctor who got one digit wrong when he wrote down the time." =========
vrijdag 7 januari 2011
Vrouw uit Bi'ilin niet overleden door traangas volgens IDF woordvoerder
Wikileaks bevestigt lekken donorgeld PA naar Hamas
Econoff called Udi Levi, Counterterrorism Finance Bureau Director at the [Israeli] National Security Council (NSC) and a senior intelligence officer on December 2 to press for release of NIS 250 million to the Gaza banking system, as requested by the Palestinian Monetary Authority. Levi said continued rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, stalemate in negotions on release of Hamas-held Israeli Defense Force soldier Gilad Shalit, and new information on Hamas access to the Palestinian Authority salary payments funded by the requested transfer all made it unlikely that the GOI would honor the request.A cable from November gives some background:
Levi did say that the GOI is considering a policy to permit about NIS 40 million in new liquidity to enter the Gaza Strip banks on a monthly basis. The exact amount is still under discussion, said Levi, but the Israeli security services have agreed that monthly transfers of some amount of shekels to Gaza are necessary to avoid collapse of the banking system there.
However, Levi noted GOI intelligence has indications that Gaza banks are being forced by Hamas to underreport their true reserve holdings, so it is difficult for the GOI to assess the current state of the banking system in Gaza. He said that the banks have had no choice but to follow Hamas instructions and conduct business as if they were operating on insufficient reserves. He posited that the present pre-Eid crisis might be an attempt by Hamas to further consolidate its power in Gaza though he was vague on how the crisis would forward the Hamas agenda. Regarding the PA's payroll, Levi told Econoff that it included Hamas members and many other questionable individuals that the GOI did not believe to be working as civil servants for the Fatah-controlled PA. He offered to share all GOI information on the topic in a meeting with relevant USG officials at their earliest convenience. We will take him up on that offer and report septel.
The PA contends that Hamas' ability to pay its workers' salaries each month combined with the inability of the PA to do so causes further deterioration in support for PA/Fatah relative to Hamas (reftel &I8). The GOI, on the other hand, believes that many of the estimated 77,000 wage earners on the PAs payroll may actually be Hamas members or affiliates. Israeli security analysts argue that a considerable portion of the civil service salaries that the PA attempts to pay each month to its Gazan employees actually find their way to Hamas or Hamas supporters (see reftel "D"). They have therefore determined that full coverage of the payroll is contrary to Israel's security interests, even if Hamas gains some political advantage from being able to pay its salaries in full.
Furthermore, GOI officials, while often praising the credentials of PA technocrats, doubt the effectiveness and authority of the Palestinian Monetary Authority (PMA) to regulate and police Palestinian, and especially Gazan banks.
CIDI wijst Knesset onderzoek naar financiering NGO's af
CIDI wijst instelling Knesset commissie af
Het is natuurlijk heel vervelend als je in een regeringscoalitie zit en allerlei mensenrechten organisaties je constant het vuur aan de schenen leggen. Tenminste, dat vond Fania Kirshenbaum van de regeringspartij Yisrael Beiteinu en zij heeft daarom een voorstel ingediend bij de Knesset tot het oprichten van een commissie, die de financiering van een aantal Israëlische mensenrechtenorganisaties onder de loep moet nemen. Het voorstel hiervoor is dinsdag in de Knesset met 47 tegen 16 stemmen aangenomen.
Niets te verbergen
De reden voor het onderzoek is dat er gesuggereerd is dat sommige van die organisaties banden zouden hebben met terrorisme, maar uit het Knesset debat is gebleken dat het eigenlijk gaat om de kritiek die de organisaties hebben over misstanden in de IDF. Deze organisaties functioneren echter binnen het rechtssysteem van de staat Israel en zij hebben dan ook verklaard dat alle informatie die de commissie nodig heeft bij de belastingdienst, op hun websites en bij het registratieorgaan voor NGO's te vinden is. "Wij hebben niets te verbergen", luidde een gezamenlijke verklaring van meer dan twaalf organisaties die verwachten dat ze onderzocht zullen worden. De commissie heeft niet de macht om mensen te dwingen een getuigenis af te leggen, of papieren af te geven, maar de organisaties vrezen wel dat hun reputaties hier onder te lijden zullen hebben.
B'Tselem noemde de kritiek op de regering noodzakelijk om Israel democratisch te houden. Het Publieke Comité Tegen Marteling in Israel (PCATI) reageerde met de woorden: 'Als [Kirshenbaum] zich zorgen maakt over wat de wereld zal vinden van Israel, dan moet ze wetten introduceren die straffeloosheid beëindigen en afdwingen dat alle klachten over overtredingen van mensenrechten onafhankelijk en objectief worden onderzocht." MK Shlomo Molla van Kadima noemde het een treurige dag voor de Israelische democratie, anderen vergeleken de beslissing met McCarthy-isme en uitten hun vrees voor het democratische proces in Israel.
CIDI
De directeur van het CIDI, Ronny Naftaniel, spreekt zijn afkeuring uit over de wijze waarop een aantal parlementariërs uit de regeringspartijen de Israëlische mensenrechten organisaties verdacht probeert te maken en zegt bang te zijn dat er hierdoor een heksenjacht wordt ontketend. Hij acht het van belang dat deze mensenrechten organisaties in een democratie vrijelijk kunnen functioneren. Naftaniel tekent daarbij overigens aan in principe tegenstander te zijn van het subsidiëren van dit soort clubs door buitenlandse regeringen, maar dat is een zaak van de subsidiërende landen en niet van Israel. Als er meer dan geruchten zouden zijn over banden met terroristische organisaties, zou het onderzoek gerechtvaardigd zijn, maar een bron binnen Yisrael Beiteinu verklaarde aan Haaretz dat het naar verwacht alleen zal gaan om organisaties die betrokken zijn bij de 'delegitimering' van de IDF, door het bestempelen van IDF militairen als 'oorlogsmisdadigers' en door 'het bevorderen van het ontduiken van de dienstplicht.'
Het CIDI is niet de enige niet-Israelische organisatie die het niet eens is met het doel van de commissie. Een woordvoeder van het Nieuw Israel Fonds in New York zei dat "een gezonde democratie de mensenrechten respecteert en beschermt. Het probeert niet internationaal gerespecteerde mensenrechtenorganisaties de das om te doen. Mensenrechtenorganisaties opereren vrijelijk in een democratie, maar dit is duidelijk niet doorgedrongen tot Yisrael Beiteinu."
Hamas bobo Zahar ontkent Holocaust weer eens
Hamas leader claims Holocaust was a lie
Mahmud Zahar, a senior leader of Hamas made the remarks during a memorial service for 43 Palestinians killed at a UN school in the Jabaliya refugee camp during an Israeli military incursion into Gaza in December 2008.
ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman issued a statement, "once again, the abhorrent and hateful philosophy of Hamas has reared its ugly head, polluting the public square with Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. These comments are a disturbing reminder of the virulent anti-Semitism promoted by Hamas and the ongoing threat the group poses to Israel.
"To compare the atrocities of the Holocaust to the actions of "Zionists" is an affront to truth and history. It is an insult to the six million Jews and millions of others who perished as a result of the Final Solution, and to those who fought the Nazis during World War II.
We must never forget that the Holocaust was a systematic effort to rid the world of the Jewish people," he continued.
Foxman concluded by stating that, "Through its incitement against Israel, Hamas continues to show that it is not a partner for peace and reconciliation, nor a force of moderation. The anti-Semitic ideas expressed by Zahar do not occur in a vacuum, but are a carbon copy of the rhetoric of Hamas's major supporters, Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."
Knesset stemt voor onderzoek naar financiering linkse organisaties
Knesset votes to probe left-wing NGOs
By REBECCA ANNA STOIL
01/05/2011 20:45
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=202367
Commission to check sources of funding of groups; MK Dov Henin calls panel "McCarthy-esque"; NGOs: "We have nothing to hide."
Left-wing NGO's ralied Wednesday evening against the Knesset's vote to establish a parliamentary committee of inquiry to probe foreign funding of Israeli organizations. The plenum voted 41 to 16 to establish the probe, initially proposed by MK Faina Kirschenbaum (Israel Beiteinu), to examine international sources of funding for Israeli organizations who "aid the de-legitimization of Israel through harming IDF soldiers."
Kirschenbaum's proposal, together with a proposal by MK Danny Danon to establish a similar probe to investigate NGOs' land purchases in Israel, will now be discussed in the House Committee. The committee will delineate the parameters of the probe, and will then return the decision to the Knesset floor for a final approval of the parameters.
Israel Beiteinu issued a statement shortly after the vote welcoming the Knesset's decision. "The committee is meant to examine the activities and funding for those groups who habitually support terror organizations, including open support for Hezbullah during the Second Lebanon War and Hamas during Operation Cast Lead."
"It is the right and the obligation of the Israeli public to know that the majority of the false testimonies that were written in the Goldstone Report were handed over by these organizations, the same ones who handed over the names of IDF officers and encouraged legal actions against them, and their representatives have even been wandering for years in Israeli schools and tell the youth to evade military service," continued the statement. "These organizations do not really care about the state of human rights, a fact evidenced by the fact that they have never worked for the rights of women in the Arab society, nor discussed the status of democracy in Saudi Arabia, a state that funds some of these organizations themselves. The entire goal of these organizations is to deter the IDF in its struggle against terror organizations and to weaken the determination of soldiers to defend the citizens of Israel, and the Israeli Knesset has the obligation to fight against this."
Outside of the Knesset, the Im Tirzu Organization, which has worked extensively throughout the past year to publish information regarding funding sources for left-wing groups, expressed satisfaction with the vote. "We congratulate the Knesset on their brave decision to investigate the sources of funding for these organizations," said the student group in a statement hours after the decision.
But the Knesset vote also met with impassioned criticism, both inside and outside of the government.
Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog warned that "the establishment of this committee will cause unnecessary diplomatic damage to Israel and to Israel's image. This is a political proposal that is appropriate for shady regimes, and Israel must not be similar to them. The use of the excuse of defending IDF soldiers, which is a very important value, in order to carry out a political witch hunt of the basest and most dangerous kind hurts the deepest soul of Israeli democracy."
"The State of Israel, as the state of the Jewish people, must be a light to the world in terms of freedom of speech and freedom to express beliefs and to repel proposals that have the scent of McCarthyism," Herzog concluded.
MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) asked the Knesset legal advisor to examine the legal basis for the committee, describing it as a politically-motivated body. "The members of Knesset from the radical right are trying to use parliamentary tools and the Knesset's budget in order to have a political investigation that is suitable for dark states, with the goal of silencing legitimate criticism, and in doing so, harming the basic rights of those with different opinions."
In voting to establish the committee, complained Horowitz, "the Knesset has far exceeded its boundaries as a body that oversees the government's activities. If the House Committee accepts the proposal, then a red line has been crossed."
Israeli NGOs quickly responded to the Knesset decision, with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and more than a dozen left-leaning NGOs jointly signed a message of solidarity of support, in which they challenged MKs: "You wish to investigate? Go ahead and interrogate all of us. We have nothing to hide. You are invited to read our reports and publications, and we will welcome if for a change you will answer our questions instead of slandering us time and again. Similar attempts to silence criticism have failed in the past, this attempt will fail too".
B'Tselem, one of the organizations named in the decision, responded that "we are proud of our work to promote human rights in the Occupied Territories, which is conducted legally and with complete transparency. Persecution and attempts at silencing will not stop us. In a democracy, criticism of the government is not only legitimate – it is essential."
The organization added that it "is absurd to claim that a committee of enquiry with no real powers can uncover information unknown to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits. The purpose of the inquiry is not to establish the facts, they are well known. B'Tselem's list of donors is available online. Our financial reports are available at the office of the NGO Registrar, which just recently issued B'Tselem a Certification of Proper Administration. Therefore, it is clear that the motive behind the investigation is an attempt to hinder our work through smears and incitement."
The vote on the proposal came after Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein decided in August that an inquiry will not be conducted into the activities of the left-wing organizations, and the proposal has garnered criticism from human rights and opposition groups.
Het zicht van Palestijnse wandelingen door de heuvels van de Westoever
Reflections on Palestinian Walks
Alas, I fear I haven't been improved. It's a very interesting book, but I expect I read it differently than David hoped.
Shehadeh is a Ramallah lawyer in his late 50s, so he's only a few years older than I. He loves walking in the hills and the idea of the book is that he describes a series of walks he's taken from the late 1970s until earlier this decade, each more hemmed in than the previous one by the Israelis, who are literally stealing his land; indeed, the power of the book is that we see how there's ever less land for him to walk on. No-one should be surprised that it was widely acclaimed, well reviewed, and was awarded the George Orwell Prize.
The book starts out badly.
When I began hill walking in Palestine a quarter of a century ago, I was not aware that I was traveling through a vanishing landscape. For centuries the central highland hills of Palestine, which slope on one side towards the sea and on the other towards the desert, had remained relatively unchanged. As I grew up in Ramallah, the land from my city to the northern city of Nablus might, with a small stretch of the imagination, have seemed familiar to a contemporary of Christ.(p.xi)Oops. And who, pray tell, was Christ? Of what group? Assuming his contemporaries might have recognized the hills - a plausible assumption - why choose him and not, say, King David, or Jeremiah, or Isaiah? A couple pages later we're told that
In Palestine every wadi, spring, hillock, escapement and cliff has a name, usually with a particular meaning. Some of the names are Arabic, others Canaanite or Aramaic, evidence of how ancient the land is and how it has been continuously inhabited over many centuries(p. xviii).Oops again.
The first chapter describes a walk in Spring 1978, and here I warmed towards Shehadeh. Not only because his love for the hills is palpable and a-political, but because he describes things I've also often seen and enjoyed. Indeed, the years between 1974-1982 were the heyday of my own hill-walking times, as my friends and I explored the hills, wadis and, as we gained confidence and experience, went out in lengthening arcs to the deserts; I've taken some of the same walks he has. Not since many years, though: it would be too dangerous.
In spite of the book's title, the walks rather recede into the background, as the double themes of Israelis stealing land and desecrating it move ever to the foreground. So let's think about them.
There is truth to the first theme: indeed, Israeli settlements have been taking over land. If you read carefully you'll note that no Palestinians are losing their homes in the process, and certainly not their lives; the Israeli occupation is far less brutal than many such exercises worldwide. The settlements are on the hill-tops, which were previously empty, yet they and the land confiscated for road-building often belonged to Palestinian individuals, who lost them in the process. Shehadeh represented many Palestinian land owners, and his descriptions of the legal machinations which have enabled Israel to set up settlements are, sadly, true. He is of course correct in saying that the settlement project has been engineered to dominate the terrain and cut the Palestinian territories into segments.
It's also hard to argue with his perspective that identifies settlements as a long-term Israeli policy. I think it isn't, not only because many Israelis such as myself have been consistently against if for decades, but also because my reading of the story is that after the mid-1980s at the very latest there was never any strategic government project of settlement. Yet this doesn't convince Shehadeh, who sees the settlements growing, and correctly understands from close up that this couldn't be happening without the connivance of many government agencies. To my mind, this demonstrates how adept the settlers have become at manipulating the system - but perhaps it's a moot discussion. The settlements are growing, in spite of the fact that it has been decades since they enjoyed broad public support.
The story of the disappearing countryside as Shehadeh tells it is wrong. He would have us believe that it was pristine and untouched, along came the Israelis with their bulldozers and constructions companies, then with their fences and walls, and now the hills are effectively gone. Not so.
Shehadeh was born on a Jordanian-controlled West Bank that had about 500,000 people. By the time the Israelis arrived, in 1967, it had something like 700,000. Today there are maybe 2,500,000 Palestinians, and 300,000 Israelis. Do the maths: it's a vastly more crowded place than it used to be, most of the added population are Palestinians, and the picturesque but primitive little villages he and I both remember from our youth are gone forever, with or without Israeli settlers. As for the roads, not long ago I was driving along Route 60, the main north-south artery of the West Bank, which in its present form has been paved by Israel. About 90% of the vehicles had Palestinian license plates, and I doubt their drivers were complaining that the road is much better than the original one paved by the British in the 1920s. If ever both sides manage to agree on partition, the Israelis will leave the infrastructures for the Palestinians, and probably also the settlements.
At one point he bemoans the ugly growth of Jerusalem, no longer a picturesque town in his mind. In 1967 there were 250,000 people there, 70,000 Palestinians; today there are 670,000, 270,000 of them Palestinians. Again, do the maths.
Also, I might add, the statement that settlements of Jews are always esthetically uglier than Arab towns is racist. No author could get away with making such a statement unless it be about Jews.
Then there's the matter of the violence. The meta-narrative, the atmosphere of the book, is all about the violence Israel is committing on the Palestinians.Yet when you read the book, the actual violence - shooting at the author, threatening to arrest him or kill his companion - those incidents are all committed by Palestinians, never by Israelis. Israelis use those legal machinations to take land, but they don't shoot or arrest hikers. That's done by Palestinians: the author implies they've been brutalized by Israel, but it's an unconvincing implication. Even odder, there are repeated cases in the book in which the author encounters settlers. Close up, they turn out to be just as human as anyone else. Shehadeh doesn't like their presence, but he's honest enough to admit that they're just people.
Finally, there's the context. If you know how to look - I did, but most English-speaking readers won't - you'll find that even Shehadeh alludes to Palestinian violence against Israeli hikers. But it's only an allusion or two. Nowhere in the book will you come across any of the following pertinent ideas: There has been a mutually waged war going on between Palestinians and Israelis for almost a century, a war in which both sides are actors, and both sides bear responsibility. This war has carved borders, and borders have consequences. Reaching peace will not make the borders go away, on the contrary, it will mean that they're permanent and mutually recognized. Most of the present security measures - walls, armed settlers, mutual suspicion when meeting - were never an Israeli policy but evolved as responses. The fact that most non-settler Israelis haven't been walking the hills of the West Bank since the late 1980s is because they're afraid (and consequently, they've written off the entire area and wish the Palestinians would take it already). Nor will the reader find any mention in this book of Israeli offers to dismantle most settlements, of their dismantling of settlements in Sinai and Gaza, and of repeated offers to partition the land between both peoples, nor of Palestinian violence that has followed such Israeli moves. (The book was first published in 2007; the Israelis left Gaza in 2005, and Hamas won the elections in 2006).
Ultimately it's a depressing book. Shehadeh comes across as a moderate, reasonable man, non-violent and rational. Yet there's no acceptance anywhere in his book - not that I could see, and I looked for it - that this very small place is the homeland of both our nations, each with legitimate claims to all of it, each with an urgent need to reconcile themselves to the loss of parts of it. He accepts that Israel is powerful and implicitly here to say, but gives no inkling of recognition that there's justice in that. The Israelis are aggressors, the Palestinians are victims, and that's the whole story.
It's hard to see how any of this will lead to reconciliation and peace.
Brief van koptische christen aan president Obama
Mr. President, in light of numerous acts of incitement and previous acts of violence, I fear that Coptic Christians in Egypt are going to have a very tough Christmas season. I implore you to use your good offices to insist that the Egyptian government protect the rights of its Christian citizens.
This letter was forwarded by a trusted source. It states:
"To put it bluntly, I fear that something very bad is going to happen to this community in the very near future."
A few days after the letter was written, there was a massacre of Copts in Egypt. Please do your best to make certain Americans and others are aware of the plight of Copts.
Ami Isseroff
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friday, December 24, 2010
Letter from a Coptic Christian
Mike, a Coptic Christian who has immigrated to the United States, has asked Restrain the Blade to publish this letter to President Barack Obama. Out of concern for his safety, only the author's first name is made public.
President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington D.C.
Dear President Obama,
I am writing to you as Coptic Christian who immigrated to the United States in the late 1970s.
I am an American citizen.
I have grave concerns about what is going in Egypt regarding the Copts.
To put it bluntly, I fear that something very bad is going to happen to this community in the very near future.
Coptic Christians have been the victims of systematic abuse and oppression in Egypt for a long time. On November 17, 2010, the U.S. Department of State recently issued a report on religious freedom in Egypt that details the abuses they suffer on a daily basis. January of this year, six Coptic Christians were murdered outside their church after celebrating Christmas.
Sadly, I fear another attack will happen again sometime in the near future.
The tendency of blaming the State of Israel for every problem in Egypt, and linking it to the Copts, is on the rise, especially in the past a few months. By associating the Copts with the Jewish state, extremists and government officials are inciting hostility toward a beleaguered, defenseless minority.
The anti-Israel polemic is fairly well known. One official accused recent shark and jellyfish for attacks on swimmers at Sharm el-Sheikh on the Mossad. The alleged goal was to kill the tourism season.
What is less well known is that Muslim Imams throughout the Middle East are demonizing Coptic Christians in Egypt. One oft-repeated claim is that Israel is using Coptic churches to store all kinds of weapons to attack Muslims. Such accusations lead to threats of violence.
For example, Sheik Wagdi Ghoneim recently said in a video message from the State of Qatar "I swear by God, you will not have time stay alive until America and the West arrive, this is for your own good, if you understand. Do you think the Muslims inside Egypt will say thank you and may Allah give you health? "No, by God."
And on September 16, 2010 Mr., Muhammad Salim Al-Awa, Secretary-General of the International Union of Muslim Scholars announced on Al-Jazeera TV (Qatar): Copts Amass Weapons in Egyptian Churches and Are "Preparing for War against the Muslims".
Copts are even being blamed for the violence perpetrated against them by Muslim extremists in Egypt. For example, after a mob of 5,000 Egyptians recently attacked a Christian service building, President's Mubarak former assistant, Dr. Mustafa El- Feki from Ain Shams University stated that Israel and the Copts were at fault for the attack and the two deaths that resulted from it. Dr. El Feki stated that Israel was behind the subsequent protests: ""It is almost certain that the Mossad is involved in these events. The State is dealing with dangerous events that could not have succeeded without external intervention with Israel at its head."
Here, it is important to note why the mob attacked the building in the first place. While the Egyptian government does not allow Christians to build churches, it does allow them to build "service buildings" where social services can be provided to the elderly and to young people in the Coptic Christian community. The mob attacked this service building after hearing rumors that the building itself was going to be used as a church and not merely to provide social services to its members.
Mr. President, in light of numerous acts of incitement and previous acts of violence, I fear that Coptic Christians in Egypt are going to have a very tough Christmas season. I implore you to use your good offices to insist that the Egyptian government protect the rights of its Christian citizens.
For reasons of my own safety, I can only sign my first name, but nevertheless, I offer wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
I ask that you use your influence to make sure Christians in Egypt can celebrate their holidays in safety.
Michael
Dec. 24, 2010~
"Hoe kun je nu Israel verdedigen?" (2)
Since writing "How can you defend Israel?" last month, I've been deluged by comments. Some have been supportive, others harshly critical. The latter warrant closer examination.
The harsh criticism falls into two basic categories. One is over the top.
It ranges from denying Israel's very right to nationhood, to ascribing to Israel responsibility for every global malady, to peddling vague, or not so vague, anti-Semitic tropes.
There's no point in dwelling at length on card-carrying members of these schools of thought. They're living on another planet.
Israel is a fact. That fact has been confirmed by the UN, which, in 1947, recommended the creation of a Jewish state. The UN admitted Israel to membership in 1949. The combination of ancient and modern links between Israel and the Jewish people is almost unprecedented in history. And Israel has contributed its share, and then some, to advancing humankind.
If there are those on a legitimacy kick, let them examine the credentials of some others in the region, created by Western mapmakers eager to protect their own interests and ensure friendly leaders in power.
Or let them consider the basis for legitimacy of many countries worldwide created by invasion, occupation, and conquest. Israel's case beats them by a mile.
And if there are people out there who don't like all Jews, frankly, it's their problem, not mine. Are there Jewish scoundrels? You bet. Are there Christian, Muslim, atheist and agnostic scoundrels? No shortage. But are all members of any such community by definition scoundrels? Only if you're an out-and-out bigot.
The other group of harsh critics assails Israeli policies, but generally tries to stop short of overt anti-Zionism or anti-Semitism. But many of these relentless critics, at the slightest opportunity, robotically repeat claims about Israel that are not factually correct.
There are a couple of methodological threads that run through their analysis.
The first is called confirmation bias. This is the habit of favoring information that confirms what you believe, whether it's true or not, and ignoring the rest.
While Israel engages in a full-throttled debate on policies and strategies, rights and wrongs, do Israel's fiercest critics do the same? Hardly.
Can the chorus of critics admit, for example, that the UN recommended the creation of two states – one Jewish, the other Arab – and that the Jews accepted the proposal, while the Arabs did not and launched a war?
Can they acknowledge that wars inevitably create refugee populations and lead to border adjustments in favor of the (attacked) victors?
Can they recognize that, when the West Bank and Gaza were in Arab hands until 1967, there was no move whatsoever toward Palestinian statehood?
Can they explain why Arafat launched a "second intifada" just as Israel and the U.S. were proposing a path-breaking two-state solution?
Or what the Hamas Charter says about the group's goals?
Or what armed-to-the-teeth Hezbollah thinks of Israel's right to exist?
Or how nuclear-weapons-aspiring Iran views Israel's future?
Or why President Abbas rejected Prime Minister Olmert's two-state plan, when the Palestinian chief negotiator himself admitted it would have given his side the equivalent of 100 percent of the West Bank?
Or why Palestinian leaders refuse to recognize the Western Wall or Rachel's Tomb as Jewish sites, while demanding recognition of Muslim holy sites?
Or why Israel is expected to have an Arab minority, but a state of Palestine is not expected to have any Jewish minority?
Can they admit that, when Arab leaders are prepared to pursue peace with Israel rather than wage war, the results have been treaties, as the experiences of Egypt and Jordan show?
And can they own up to the fact that when it comes to liberal and democratic values in the region, no country comes remotely close to Israel, whatever its flaws, in protecting these rights?
Apropos, how many other countries in the Middle East – or beyond – would have tried and convicted an ex-president? This was the case, just last week, with Moshe Katsav, sending the message that no one is above the law – in a process, it should be noted, presided over by an Israeli Arab justice.
And if the harsh critics can't acknowledge any of these points, what's the explanation? Does their antipathy for Israel – and resultant confirmation bias – blind them to anything that might puncture their airtight thinking?
Then there is the other malady. It's called reverse causality, or switching cause and effect.
Take the case of Gaza.
These critics focus only on Israel's alleged actions against Gaza, as if they were the cause of the problem. In reality, they are the opposite – the effect.
When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it gave local residents their first chance in history – I repeat, in history – to govern themselves.
Neighboring Israel had only one concern – security. It wanted to ensure that whatever emerged in Gaza would not endanger Israelis. In fact, the more prosperous, stable, and peaceful Gaza became, the better for everyone. Tragically, Israel's worst fears were realized. Rather than focus on Gaza's construction, its leaders – Hamas since 2007 – preferred to contemplate Israel's destruction. Missiles and mortars came raining down on southern Israel. Israel's critics, though, were silent. Only when Israel could no longer tolerate the terror did the critics awaken – to focus on Israel's reaction, not Gaza's provocative action.
Yet, what would any other nation have done in Israel's position?
Just imagine terrorists in power in British Columbia – and Washington State's cities and towns being the regular targets of deadly projectiles. How long would it take for the U.S. to go in and try to put a stop to the terror attacks, and what kind of force would be used?
Or consider the security barrier.
It didn't exist for nearly 40 years. Then it was built by Israel in response to a wave of deadly attacks originating in the West Bank, with well over 1000 Israeli fatalities (more than 40,000 Americans in proportional terms). Even so, Israel made clear that such barriers cannot only be erected, but also moved and ultimately dismantled.
Yet the outcry of Israel's critics began not when Israelis were being killed in pizzerias, at Passover Seders, and on buses, but only when the barrier went up.
Another case of reverse causality – ignoring the cause entirely and focusing only on the effect, as if it were a stand-alone issue disconnected from anything else.
So, again, in answer to the question of my erstwhile British colleague, "How can you defend Israel?" I respond: Proudly.
In doing so, I am defending a liberal, democratic, and peace-seeking nation in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood, where liberalism, democracy, and peace are in woefully short supply.
De delegitimatie van Israel (Bat Ye'or)
Delegitimizing the Jewish State
http://www.meforum.org/2813/delegitimizing-the-jewish-state
by Bat Ye'or
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2011, pp. 3-14 (view PDF)
In a move that caught the Israeli government and the Jewish world by complete surprise, on October 21, 2010, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Tomb of the Hebrew Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories," admonishing the Israeli decision to add these biblical shrines to the list of Jewish historical and archaeological sites as "a violation of international law."[1]
What is less known, however, is that the driving force behind "the attempt to detach the Nation of Israel from its heritage" (to use Israeli prime minister Netanyahu's words)[2] was the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which pressured UNESCO to issue the declaration and drafted its initial version.[3] U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has recently described the OIC as "a strategic and important partner of the U.N."[4] In fact, it has been the OIC that has successfully exploited its marked preponderance at the U.N.—where it constitutes the largest single voting bloc—to turn the world organization and its specialized agencies into effective tools in the attempt to achieve its goals, two of which are to bring about Israel's eventual demise and to "galvanize the umma [Islamic world] into a unified body."[5]The OIC's Israel Obsession
Established in September 1969 as the "collective voice of the Muslim world," the OIC has evolved into the second largest intergovernmental organization after the U.N., bringing together fifty-six Muslim and other states, as well as the Palestinian Authority.[6] Though boasting a global range of objectives from the "promotion of tolerance and moderation, modernization, [and] extensive reforms in all spheres of activities," to the cultivation of "good governance and promotion of human rights in the Muslim world,"[7] this body has constantly and disproportionately focused on Israel and its supposed misdeeds. It was established in response to an attempt by a deranged Australian to set fire to the al-Aqsa mosque, which was duly blamed on "the military occupation by Israel of Al-Quds—the Holy City of Jerusalem."[8] The "State of Palestine" (i.e., the then-five-year-old Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO, established as a tool for promoting the expansionist ambitions of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser) was among the OIC's original twenty-five founding members, and the pledge of "full support to the Palestinian people for the restitution of their rights, which were usurped"[9]—the standard Arab euphemism for Israel's destruction—has become a central plank of the organization's policy, reiterated in countless decisions and resolutions on issues that have nothing to do with questions concerning the Palestinians.[10]
The Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), an OIC organ mandated "to strengthen cooperation among member states in the field of education, science, and culture,"[11] has occupied pride of place in the campaign to delegitimize Israel. Since its inception in 1982, it has run dozens of programs and symposia on the Jewish state's supposed desecration of Islamic and Christian holy sites and the attendant need to wrest them from the Israelis' control. The most important of these were the international conferences on the "Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine," held in Rabat in 1993 and 2002 and in Amman in November 2004 respectively under the patronage of the Moroccan and Jordanian monarchs. An examination of conference activities reveals a systematic effort to devise an anti-Israeli media strategy that was to be adopted not only by Arab and Muslim states but also by international groups and organizations, including some of the U.N.'s most powerful agencies.
Unifying the Umma, Bashing the Jews
In his address to the 2002 Rabat conference, King Muhammad VI of Morocco stated:
The acts of destruction and distortion committed by the occupation authorities to distort the facts and truths of history cause serious damage to the Islamic and Christian holy sites and violate their sanctity and the values they embody for all the believers of the different religions.[12]
For the Moroccan monarch, as president of the OIC's al-Quds Committee, such actions as archaeological excavations and the placement of artifacts in museums constituted an attack against all believers. In fact, Christian churches that had been reduced to ruins by centuries of Islamic occupation were restored by successive Israeli governments because, unlike Shari'a or Islamic law, the Jewish state has no laws prohibiting the restoration or construction of churches. The king could have also benefitted from a measure of introspection: Morocco, like the other Maghreb states, is a place where virtually no vestiges of pre-Islamic Christian history have survived.
Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, the Saudi-born, University of Oregon-educated ISESCO director-general, went a step further, asserting that "the crimes against humanity committed by Israel have reached an extent of oppression, injustice, and aggression that humanity has never witnessed, neither in this age nor in previous ages."[13] He amplified this diatribe at the Amman conference where he claimed that Muslim responsibilities toward the Islamic and Christian holy sites in the Palestinian territories sprang from ISESCO's commitment to the Palestinian cause, which in his opinion, constituted the essence of all issues and the supreme task of both the Muslim world and those Eastern Christian circles that were part of the Arab and Islamic civilization.[14]
The proceedings of the Rabat and the Amman conferences represent a monument to anti-Jewish hatred and incitement, featuring such assertions as "Jews are the enemies of Allah, the enemies of faith, and of the worship of Allah."[15] They also brim with denials of Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel and claims to its Arab (and later Muslim) character since the third millennium BCE. The Jews are accused of having "judaized" the biblical prophets who were in fact Muslim and of having usurped the antiquity of other peoples since they themselves have no history. In the words of Adnan Ibrahim Hassan al-Subah, president of the Jenin Information Center:
People familiar with the Torah, which we believe to have been distorted, know the extent of the evils they attribute to their prophets: corruption, treachery, fornication or approval of it. It is with these facts that we need to arm ourselves when we confront the Zionist propaganda in the world with tangible facts, as part of our defence of the faith and the faithful on earth, wherever they may be.[16]
These examples of incitement to religious hatred were on display at the U.N.'s Palais des Nations in Geneva at a reception given by the OIC on December 19, 2008, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And why not? After all, the OIC is not only "the collective voice of the Muslim world"[17] but also the U.N.'s largest single voting bloc and a prominent collaborator with many of its specialized agencies.
Influencing the U.N.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that these conferences did not content themselves with anti-Jewish diatribes but sought to devise a strategy to harness the international community to the anti-Israel campaign in general and the re-Islamization of Jerusalem (al-Quds) in particular. As one of the speakers explained, "Jerusalem is the cornerstone of the spiritual edifice and the Zionist Jewish entity. Were it to be dislodged, the whole edifice and the Zionist entity itself would crumble like a deck of cards."[18]
Action plans show a media strategy of employing an attractive style and scientific language and magnifying Palestinian suffering since the establishment of the "racist Zionist entity" in 1948. These plans would be effectively replicated by the U.N.'s Alliance of Civilizations' Report of the High Level Group (HLG), which would endeavor to "make it clear to the Palestinian people that the price of decades of occupation, misunderstanding, and stigmatization is being fully acknowledged," although this "story had been left untold or deliberately ignored by the community of nations."[19]
This assertion is not merely false but the inverse of the truth. The Palestinians have benefitted like no other nation from world indulgence. Europe, for one, has vigorously championed their cause since 1973, devising a string of political schemes on their behalf and pouring immeasurable sums of money into the bottomless Palestinian pit.
If anything, it was the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Arab countries during and after the 1948 war and the expropriation of their worldly possessions, that was entirely ignored by the Alliance of Civilizations, as was the history of the Jews in their ancestral homeland where they had suffered ethnic and religious oppression by a long succession of foreign occupiers.
While claiming to promote peace, the HLG report added yet another page to both the defamation of Israel and the perennial Palestinian sense of victimization. One wonders what prompted it to begin the historical survey with the establishment of the state of Israel, ignoring the millenarian Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel that had been acknowledged as early as 1920 by the U.N.'s predecessor—the League of Nations.
Moreover, the report sought to rewrite, under U.N. aegis, the story of the nakba (the "catastrophe," as Palestinians and Arabs call their 1948 failure to destroy Israel at its birth) as a counterweight to the Holocaust, and to impose this narrative on Israel and the international community. In the words of the report, it is "essential for Palestinians as well as for the Arab-Muslim world and Muslims in general to understand and acknowledge the fact that we … now know and take responsibility for ensuring everyone knows the price and weight of these sixty years of misunderstanding, stigmatization, as well as veiled and abused truths."[20] Indeed, while the Alliance was established in 2005 with the specific goal "to explore the roots of polarization between societies and cultures today and to recommend a practical program of action to address this issue," it has quickly become an anti-Israel lobbying machine on a global scale. This is evidenced not only from its implementation plan, which places "a priority on addressing relations between Western and Muslim societies"[21] at the expense of other faiths and civilizations, but also by its close collaboration with numerous anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations and bodies, notably the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The OIC's influence on the Alliance has been manifested in a wide range of historical and cultural issues, including the presentation of Islam as the source of modern Western civilization; the contrasting of Islamic tolerance with European culpability for the Crusades, imperialism and colonization; and the whitewashing of jihad's true nature and its misrepresentation as a struggle for individual self-improvement.[22]
The Alliance's views on social issues often echo OIC charges about the pervasive discrimination against Muslim migrants in the West and the Western media's deliberate dissemination of "Islamophobia." This state of affairs required, in the words, of the HLG report, that "American and European universities and research centers should expand research into the significant economic, cultural, and social contributions of immigrant communities to American and European life. Likewise, they should promote publications coming from the Muslim world on a range of subjects related to Islam and the Muslim world."[23]
Such recommendations follow the injunctions of the religious scholars (ulema) who attended the OIC's 2005 summit in Mecca.[24]
Plotting the Anti-Israel Campaign
Speakers at the OIC's Amman conference stressed the media's crucial role and importance in the fight against Israel. They recommended that the Islamic world should demonstrate its unwavering commitment to Arab and Palestinian rights, alongside the conviction that the re-Islamization of Jerusalem would restore the city's spiritual preeminence and peaceful religious coexistence, enable the flourishing of faith, and make Jerusalem a worldwide agent of culture and civilization.[25]
In fact, this picture in no way corresponds to the actual Islamic history of Jerusalem, which for most of the time was a sleepy and neglected backwater. Rather it is a usurpation of the Biblical vision of Jerusalem as "a light unto the nations," developed by generations of Hebrew prophets more than a millennium before Muhammad.
Abdullah Kan'an, secretary-general of the Royal Committee for al-Quds Affairs in Jordan—whose government signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994—presented a comprehensive plan for inculcating Islamic policy into all Western cultural and media sectors and delegitimizing the Jewish state, starting with turning the Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem into a central world problem. As a first step, he suggested publicizing the history of Jerusalem as he saw it—from the city's foundation by the "Canaanite Jebusites" to date—so as to negate "the Torah-based history." He also proposed to popularize Islamic and Christian holy sites in the same manner, starting with al-Aqsa Mosque, which "according to the noble Hadith, is only forty years older than the first shrine ever created for humanity, al-Haram Mosque in Makkah."[26]
In enumerating the themes of ISESCO's media war against Israel in the West, Kan'an evoked arguments repeated by many Western journalists, intellectuals, ministers, and heads of state. These included,
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Convincing the EU that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict was in its vital interest, thus helping Europeans (especially Germans) free themselves of their guilt complex vis-à-vis the Jews and the weight of history more generally.
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Persuading Western leaders that as long as the Palestinians did not have their own state, relations between the EU and the Arab world would remain unstable. Once this goal had been achieved, Europe could look forward to an expanded partnership with the Arab world and full access to its markets.
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Emphasizing that America's pro-Israel position was in contravention of international law, threatened U.S. vital interests as well as those of Europe, and jeopardized world peace and security. This argument, consistently inculcated in European leaders and journalists by the OIC, was hammered home by the Western media and became an important catalyst of European hostility toward the United States, especially during the George W. Bush administration.
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Underscoring the alleged threats to Western interests as a result of supporting Israel. This support had to be presented as one of the foremost causes of anti-Western violence, both in the Middle East and in the Western countries themselves, by individuals and groups who reacted emotionally to personal and collective tragedies. This argument was frequently used by Romano Prodi, then-president of the European Commission, and French president Jacques Chirac, among other European politicians, to explain away the resurgence of European anti-Semitism during 2000-05, and was also invoked by President Obama in March 2010 when he publicly humiliated Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[27]
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Convincing Westerners that peace was only possible through the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the entire territory occupied in 1967 with al-Quds as its capital, the "return" of Palestinian refugees, and the abandonment of Israel's "Zionist, racist character"—standard Arab and Muslim euphemisms for the destruction of the Jewish state.
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Persuading Westerners that their shared interests with Arabs and Muslims far exceeded those they shared with Israel.[28]
Kan'an then summarized the long-term objectives of the media plan, two of which are of special note:
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Persuading the EU to abandon its slavish trailing of Washington and to form its own independent vision and positions, which "would be more in harmony with the international will vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Israeli occupation of Arab territories, including Jerusalem, and the right of the Arab Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of its independent state with Al Quds as its capital."[29]
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Transforming the Palestinian question and the Arab-Israeli conflict from internal U.S. issues to external problems, primarily governed by the mutual interests of Americans, Muslims, and Arabs. This would break the immunity of the Israeli policies and force the Israeli government to bow to the will of the international community and adhere to all of the U.N. resolutions.[30]
To achieve these goals, Kan'an recommended obtaining the support of certain intellectuals, literary figures, and influential political movements that were capable of molding Western public opinion within the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict and especially with regard to the Jerusalem question. This campaign would refer to U.N. resolutions that formed the basis for the media plan. Here, too, EU support for the U.N.'s international law amounted to endorsement of the strategy and policies of the OIC, whose position as the U.N.'s largest single voting bloc gave it the unrivalled ability to predominate the world organization and its specialized agencies.
Another proposed tactic was to infiltrate the media as well as influential cultural, intellectual, and economic circles with a view to exposing them to the Arab perspective and convincing them that their countries' policies were subservient to "the interests of the Zionist movement with its various formations and bodies and not [to] the interests of their own countries"[31] Other themes included:
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Discreetly and indirectly encouraging trends critical of Zionism and the Israeli government's "judaization policies" in Jerusalem within Western circles, so as to make them effective opponents of the "Zionist lobby and the coalition of Jewish and Christian Zionists" and defenders of their countries' vital interests.
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Delegitimizing laws against anti-Semitism, such as France's 1990 Gayssot Act, which made it an offence to question the occurrence or scope of crimes against humanity,[32] and George W. Bush's 2004 law requiring the Department of State to monitor global anti-Semitism,[33] as laws that have no bearing on Western interests but are rather a part of a Zionist ploy to feed Westerners' guilt feelings so as to keep them subservient to Zionist machinations.
Mobilizing Western Muslims
No less importantly, the ISESCO campaign envisaged the mobilization of members of Arab and Muslim communities in the West, especially in the United States, who were to be enticed into becoming politically active so as to end their marginalization and gain major political weight. This was believed to be feasible given that these communities comprised high quality populations, including important scientists, intellectuals, and politicians. Arab and Muslim thinkers, religious scholars, and intellectuals living in Western societies ought to recommend to Muslims to reject extremism, fanaticism and violence "as this tends to be detrimental and generates negative reactions to Arab and Islamic issues." [34]
Another step would involve blocking attempts in Europe and the United States to ban Islamist charitable societies, which according to Kan'an were purely humanitarian organizations but in fact were funneling funds for jihadist and terrorist groups.[35] Within this framework, he recommended:
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Encouraging the investment of Arab and Muslim capital in all forms of the media (written, audio, and visual), especially in the United States, thus paving the way for breaking the alleged Jewish monopoly in the field. Arab radio stations and satellite television channels such as al-Jazeera and al-Arabia should broadcast "weekly programs in English [about al-Quds], targeting Western public opinion, benefiting from media personalities knowledgeable about the Western mentality and capable of influencing it to the benefit of the issue of al-Quds with the help of U.N. resolutions." Programs about al-Quds in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and other languages should be created, and a multilingual satellite channel called al-Quds would be created, "staffed with a media, information, intellectual, and historical team knowledgeable about the question of al-Quds and its various dimensions."[36]
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Encouraging Muslim and Arab investments in modern information and communication technologies, notably the Internet, and the filming of television and cinema documentaries with a view to shaping Western public opinion, which is heavily reliant on this type of educational and media sources. A special emphasis should be placed on the possibilities of "utilizing modern communication technologies, especially the opening of websites dedicated to al-Quds, and encouraging Muslims to embark on an Internet-supported war for al-Quds to counterbalance the activities of the Zionist movement and its octopus-like formations, the most dangerous of which is Christian Zionism and its mastermind, the Neo-Conservatives."[37]
On a broader level, Kan'an advised Arab and Muslim communities "to integrate as much as possible within the societies where they live, in order to gain credibility," especially in universities and institutions of higher learning. "Friends of al-Quds" associations in U.S. and European universities, organizations, and working places were to be established to support those NGOs working for the cause of al-Quds. To this would be added the worldwide distribution of propaganda materials "issued by Americans, Europeans, and Jews against Israel, its policies, and Zionism," including specifically-produced films that "reveal the barbarity of Israel, the dangers inherent in the policy of demolishing houses, murder and massacre of the Arab Palestinian people, and distributing these films as widely as possible in the Islamic world."[38]
Finally, specialists and experts in Western affairs should be drawn into "the discussion of the broad lines of the media plan in order to enrich it and guarantee all conditions of its success." Such experts would specialize in Western media, politics, public opinion, psychology, religions, law and culture, as well as in history of al-Quds. In two notes that appear in the French text but are omitted from the English proceedings, the lecturer ridicules the "Zionist stories of alleged Nazi slaughters."[39]
The OIC's World Collaborators
These were by no means novel, let alone maverick ideas. The intention to extend the OIC's influence to Western countries through immigrant populations and their growing weight in the host societies had been insinuated on previous occasions, notably by OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at the European parliament in 2005,[40] and by the founders of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, which evolved from a French initiative in the late 1960s.[41]
According to unpublished sources from the Euro-Arab Dialogue movement,[42] in November 1973, Christopher Mayhew, a member of the British parliament, and Raymond Offroy, a member of the French national assembly, envisaged the creation of an association for improving Europe's relations with the Arab world.[43] Its launching coincided with the European Commission (EC)'s Brussels declaration that urged Israel to return to the pre-1967 lines and, for the first time, recognized the PLO.[44] Mayhew and Offroy, now supported by the EC, were the first to create a Euro-Arab network, the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation (PAEAC), at a conference in Paris on March 23-25, 1975. Its secretary-general, Robert Swann, a former foreign office diplomat, had been a secretary-general of Amnesty International. The funds for PAEAC came from a Swiss foundation, ANAF, set up in 1969 and managed by an administrative committee consisting of European political personalities. PAEAC benefited from the financial aid and support of the EC and its networks, in liaison with the Council of Europe. The minutes of the PAEAC meetings were published over the years in the Documents d'Actualité Internationale by the French foreign office. These reveal the effective extension of OIC strategy to Europe, combining a policy of immigration with the cultural and political Islamization of Europe.[45]
Extensive U.N.-sponsored networks, bringing together the EU, the OIC, and ISESCO, would effectively implement this strategy in all Western countries. Europe, for example, has lavished millions of Euros on Palestinian NGOs and organs of "civil society," which advocate the economic, political, educational, and cultural boycotting of Israel and which have systematically demonized and delegitimized the Jewish state in schools, the media, Palestinian publications, and on the international scene.[46]
Since 2005, a "Palestinian Week against Israeli Apartheid" has become a regular feature on campuses and in major cities throughout Europe, Canada, and the United States, calling for divestments, sanctions, and boycotts against Israel. According to NGO Monitor, most speakers at these demonstrations belong to organizations financed by European governments, the European Commission, and the New Israel Fund, created following Obama's election.[47]
To these NGOs must be added "The Elders"—a newly-established "independent group of eminent global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering, and promote the shared interests of humanity." [48] Generating much international influence and considerable funds, the group comprises twelve leaders and dignitaries, quite a few of whom—notably former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and former Irish president Mary Robinson of Durban conference infamy—are harsh critics of Israel. It is chaired by former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu—the spiritual instigator of the world campaign of cultural and economic apartheid against Israel.
Small wonder that the group, in line with the former policies of its members while in power, has consistently misrepresented the Israelis as the unjust and warlike party and the Palestinians as hapless victims of their predatory neighbor. For The Elders, the Palestinian denial of Israel's right to exist embodies natural justice (hence, for example, their advocacy of "engaging" Hamas) while Israel's attempts to protect its citizens from sustained terror attacks—from the erection of the security fence, to Operation Cast Lead, to the naval blockade of Hamas—are illegal and disproportionate uses of force. Tutu congratulated Turkey for having sent its flotilla of supposed humanitarians in May 2010 while the Elders condemned Israel's attempt to stop this effort on behalf of Hamas, a terror organization, whose constitution openly calls for Israel's destruction.[49] They also urged the U.N. Security Council "to debate the situation with a view to mandating action to end the closure of the Gaza Strip."[50]
In what had by now become an instinctive reaction, the European parliament joined the Elders and condemned Israel by a crushing majority, insinuating its massive support for Hamas. Catherine Ashton, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and vice president of the European Commission, argued that lifting the blockade would bring peace,[51] conveniently overlooking the fact that the blockade was a defensive response to Hamas' genocidal policies rather than their catalyst.
Exploiting the Palestinian Christians
Nor has the OIC, together with its willing international collaborators, shied away from exploiting West Bank and Gaza Christians—discriminated against and oppressed by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which have ruled over them for the past fifteen years—for its anti-Israel propaganda campaign.
Consider the document titled Kairos Palestine, drawn up by Palestinian theologians and published in Bethlehem on December 11, 2009, by the Geneva World Council of Churches.[52] In the name of love, peace, and justice, the paper portrays Israel as the epitome of evil and oppression, urging all Western churches to initiate a policy of economic strangulation and defamation of the Jewish state. This was followed by a letter from the Greek Catholic patriarch of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, Gregorios III, to Pope Benedict XVI,[53] in preparation for the October 2010 Synod, planned to bring together the Catholic churches of the Middle East to discuss the greater problems facing the local Christians and to devise ways and means for stopping their ongoing flight from the region.
Invoking his duty to inform the pope on the dangers in the region, the patriarch had no qualms about blaming Israeli actions for the surge of militant Islamism throughout the region and its adverse implications for the local Christian communities. He wrote:
There is a diffuse but sure rise of Islamic extremism, provoked by the threats of the Israeli government against Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, [and Iran], which is spreading throughout all the countries in the region. Even in Syria, where such extremism has been up to now very limited, its advance has become more and more evident, despite efforts from the government against it.
Gregorios lamented the widespread terror attacks by these Islamists on local Christians, especially in Iraq and Egypt. Yet rather than ask the pope to help restrain the perpetrators of this violence, he begged that
the Holy See's diplomacy redouble its efforts to persuade the Tel Aviv government, despite the views of its most intransigent wing—probably via the United States and those European countries which, having sponsored the birth of the State of Israel and supported it ever since, should be able to exert effective pressure on it—of the grave danger of this development which in the medium and perhaps short term, runs against the interests and future of the State of Israel itself, which needs peace in the region just as much as Arab countries, to be able eventually to live normally all together. [54]
Conclusion
Judging by Israel's growing international isolation, the OIC's sustained effort to delegitimize the Jewish state has borne substantial fruit. Not only is Israel's right to exist constantly debated and challenged in Western public opinion forums, but sixty-three years after establishing the Jewish state in an internationally recognized act of self-determination, the United Nations has become a foremost purveyor of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement.
Time and again, year after year, its Commission on Human Rights discusses Israel's supposed abuses while turning a blind eye to scores of actual atrocities around the globe. This world organization has 192 member nations, but its Security Council has devoted about a third of its activity and criticism to only one of those states—Israel. Nowhere has this obsession been more starkly demonstrated than in the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in September 2001 in the South African town of Durban where, for eight full days, delegates from numerous countries and thousands of nongovernmental organizations indulged in a xenophobic orgy of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement that made a mockery of the conference's original purpose.[55]
As UNESCO follows suit by denying the Jews some of their most cherished historical and religious symbols, the OIC scores yet another palpable hit in its ceaseless hate campaign.
Bat Ye'or is the author, most recently, of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005). This article contains extracts from her forthcoming book Europe, Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011).
[1] "Executive Board adopts five decisions concerning UNESCO's work in the occupied Palestinian and Arab Territories," UNESCO Media Services, Paris, Oct. 21, 2010.
[2] Jerusalem Post, Oct. 29, 2010.
[3] See, for example, International Islamic News Agency (Jeddah), Mar. 3, 2010; "Decisions Adopted by the Executive Board at its 184th Session," UNESCO, executive board, Paris, May 14, 2010.
[4] World Bulletin (Istanbul), Sept. 28, 2010.
[5] "About OIC," Organization of the Islamic Conference, Jeddah, accessed Nov. 7, 2010.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] "Declaration of the First Rabat Islamic Conference," Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Rabat, Sept. 1969.
[9] Ibid.
[10] "Resolutions," Second Islamic Conference of the Ministers of Health, OIC, Tehran, Mar. 1-4, 2009.
[11] "Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO)," Specialized Institutions and Organs, OIC, Rabat, 2009, accessed, Nov. 7, 2010.
[12] "Message of His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco," June 6, 2002, Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine International Conference, Rabat, June 7-8, 2002 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2004), p. 11.
[13] "Address of Dr. Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, First International Conference, Rabat, June 7-8, 2002 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2004), p. 15.
[14] "Address by Dr. Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004, (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 18.
[15] Adnan Ibrahim Hassan al-Subah, "Role of Palestinian Civil Society in the Protection of Holy Sites in Palestine," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 253.
[16] Ibid., p. 254.
[17] "About OIC."
[18] Abdullah Kan'an, "Media Plan for Publicising the Cause of Al Quds, Al Sharif in the West and Mechanisms for Its Implementation," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 195.
[19] "Report of the High Level Group," Alliance of Civilizations, United Nations, New York, Nov. 13, 2006, p.18, art. 5.7.
[20] Ibid., p. 53.
[21] "Implementation Plan, 2007-2009," Alliance of Civilizations, United Nations, New York, p. 2.
[22] "Report of the High Level Group," pp. 11, 15.
[23] Ibid., p. 39, italicized in the text.
[24] "Recommendations of the OIC Commission of Eminent Persons (CEP)," Makkah al-Mukarramah, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 7-8, 2005.
[25] Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 175.
[26] Kan'an, "Media Plan," p. 201.
[27] The Sunday Times (London), Mar. 26, 2010.
[28] Kan'an, "Media Plan," pp. 202-3.
[29] Ibid, p. 205.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid., p. 204.
[32] Tendant à réprimer tout acte raciste, antisémite ou xénophobe, République Française, Paris, July 13, 1990.
[33] Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004, PL 108-332, U.S. Congress, Oct. 16, 2004; BBC News, Oct. 20, 2004.
[34] Kan'an, "Media Plan," pp. 205-6.
[35] See for example, Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, "CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2006, pp. 3-20.
[36] Kan'an, "Media Plan," pp. 206-7.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid., pp. 207-8.
[39] Ibid., p. 208.
[40] Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general, Organization of the Islamic Conference, address to Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe, Oct. 4, 2005.
[41] Roy H. Ginsberg, The European Union in International Politics. Baptism by Fire (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), pp. 112-3.
[42] 1974-1994 Association Parlementaire pour la Coopération Euro-Arabe, association archives, unpublished document in author's possession, pp. 6-12.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Joint statement, European Economic Community, Copenhagen, Nov. 6, 1973.
[45] Bat Ye'or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Cranbury, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005), pp. 93-5.
[46] Gerald M. Steinberg, "Europe's Hidden Hand. EU Funding for Political NGOs in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Analyzing Processes and Impact," NGO Monitor Monograph Series, Apr. 2008.
[47] "Israeli Apartheid Week 2010: NGO Involvement," NGO Monitor, updated Mar. 3, 2010.
[48] "About the Elders," The Elders website, accessed Oct. 13, 2010.
[49] "Hamas Covenant 1988," Yale Law School Avalon Project, Aug. 18, 1988.
[50] "The Elders Condemn Israeli Attack on Gaza relief Ships," The Elders, May 31, 2010.
[51] Catherine Ashton, speech to the European Parliament, Strasbourg, June 16, 2010.
[52] Kairos Palestine, Bethlehem, Dec. 11, 2009; Al-Jazeerah: Cross-Cultural Understanding (Dalton, Ga.), Dec. 15, 2009 .
[53] Gregorios III, Patriarch to Pope Benedict XVI, Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East of Alexandria and of Jerusalem, Mar. 1, 2010.
[54] Ibid.
[55] Gerald M. Steinberg "NGOs Make War on Israel," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004, pp. 13-25.
