BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained

Subject: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jun 09 - 11:49 AM

Israeli government rabbis frame it as a holy war against Gentiles...

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE52J36V20090320

http://www.shovrimshtika.org/news_item_e.asp?id=28

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jun 09 - 11:54 AM

Some of the effects of such indoctrination...

http://www.shovrimshtika.org/press_item_e.asp?id=133

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 11:57 AM

I see nobody is condemning what the Israeli government rabbis have been doing. In fact, I notice that any time I bring this kind of thing to people's attention, the only condemning that takes place from those who support the government of Israel is condemnation of me for having brought it to peoples' attention.

Here's more behavior that is a product of the mindset illustrated in the first post in this thread...


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0506-06.htm


Employees of the local radio and television station, Amwaj, also hastened to the scene, as did the employees of the local television channel, Istiqlal, which take up three stories of the building.

But what awaited them was beyond all their fears, and also shocked representatives and cultural attaches of foreign consulates, who toured the site the next day.

In other offices, all the high-tech and electronic equipment had been wrecked or had vanished - computers, photocopiers, cameras, scanners, hard disks, editing equipment worth thousands of dollars, television sets. The broadcast antenna on top of the building was destroyed.

Telephone sets vanished. A collection of Palestinian art objects (mostly hand embroideries) disappeared. Perhaps it was buried under the piles of documents and furniture, perhaps it had been spirited away. Furniture was dragged from place to place, broken by soldiers, piled up. Gas stoves for heating were overturned and thrown on heaps of scattered papers, discarded books, broken diskettes and discs and smashed windowpanes.

In the department for the encouragement of children's art, the soldiers had dirtied all the walls with gouache paints they found there and destroyed the children's paintings that hung there.

In every room of the various departments - literature, film, culture for children and youth books, discs, pamphlets and documents were piled up, soiled with urine and excrement.

There are two toilets on every floor, but the soldiers urinated and defecated everywhere else in the building, in several rooms of which they had lived for about a month. They did their business on the floors, in emptied flowerpots, even in drawers they had pulled out of desks.

They defecated into plastic bags, and these were scattered in several places. Some of them had burst. Someone even managed to defecate into a photocopier.

The soldiers urinated into empty mineral water bottles. These were scattered by the dozen in all the rooms of the building, in cardboard boxes, among the piles of rubbish and rubble, on desks, under desks, next to the furniture the solders had smashed, among the children's books that had been thrown down.

Some of the bottles had opened and the yellow liquid had spilled and left its stain. It was especially difficult to enter two floors of the building because of the pungent stench of feces and urine. Soiled toilet paper was also scattered everywhere.

In some of the rooms, not far from the heaps of feces and the toilet paper, remains of rotting food were scattered. In one corner, in the room in which someone had defecated into a drawer, full cartons of fruits and vegetables had been left behind. The toilets were left overflowing with bottles filled with urine, feces and toilet paper.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: wysiwyg
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 12:15 PM

I don't condemn what I do not understand, and the Middle East is not my particular area of current, intense study. When I lack information, context, or understanding, I watch but I do not evaluate. I don't think anyone has the right to evaluate what is not understood well.

In some ways it seems clear to me that the situation there has changed a great deal since it WAS an area of intense study; in other ways it seems not to have changed at all, for hundreds of years. What I DO know about the Middle East is that it is more culturally and historically complex than can be quickly understood.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jun 09 - 02:10 PM

I only made that comment because of something that was said in another thread about how the behavior of rabbis like this one, and behavior like this is universally condemned in the Jewish world. But I see no condemnation of that kind of behavior in this thread, nor did I see it in the other thread.

I also did not see any condemnation of the behavior of the group of people in the second link above among any members of the Jewish community anywhere. I only saw people making excuses for their behavior by saying they were drunk. Personally, I don't think drunkenness for these young people is any more of an excuse for their behavior than Mel Gibson's was an excuse for his. In fact, the very same person who was excusing the behavior of the people in my link above, in response to Mel Gibson's behavior, expressed the belief that being drunk merely has the effect of causing people to lose their inhibition against freely expressing thoughts that they would not express while sober because it would get them into trouble. So clearly, that person doesn't really believe that the drunken state of the people in my link above would cause them to express any thoughts or ideas that weren't already in their heads.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: Peace
Date: 20 Jun 09 - 02:57 AM

Excuse me. I just now saw this thread. Part of the reason no one condemns it might be because you have turned so many people off talking on your threads that folks just don't show up.

Moving on.

If Friedman said this '"The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle)," Friedman wrote in response to the question posed by Moment Magazine for its "Ask the Rabbis" feature', then he's an asshole, IMO. As much as the Muslim clerics who put that kind of thing forth as a method of 'getting rid of Israel (read Jews)'.

As for your video, C.Ham did state on the now-closed thread that they were Americans doing all the yelling and screaming. Do any of my Jewish friends think it good? NO, Carol. Not at all. But neither do any of them (myself included) appreciate that your every post about the mid-East seems to denigrate Jews. And I cannot recall you saying that Muslim clerics who spew that kind of shit are bad for doing so. I think you have let your hatred of Jews get to you, so much so that it shows for what it is.

Have a good evening.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jun 09 - 03:40 AM

I never said those people were Israelis, so I really don't know why that person would consider the fact that they were Americans relevant. They were spreading hate, and they belong to the same group as the person started the thread, the person who felt a need to post a thread that could not possibly have any other purpose than to spread hate towards another group. And my point in posting the video was to show that person that pointing fingers at other groups for things that one's own group also does is hypocritical.

I realize some people like to conflate the group that consists of people who are Jewish, and those who support the government of Israel, and to try to make it look like people who oppose what the government of Israel does are criticizing Jews generally, and like they hate Jews, but this is a hasbara tactic that has no basis in truth and is used specifically for the purpose of shutting people up. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence can see right through it. Please show me a single post of mine in which I have denigrated Jews or expressed hatred of Jews in any form. Criticizing the government of Israel, or the behavior of individual Jews (if that criticism is not couched in terms of their being Jewish) does not qualify as denigration of Jews, any more than criticism of the US South under Jim Crow (or supporters of that institution) or the South African government under apartheid (or supporters of South African apartheid) counts as denigration of White people. But just find me a single post of mine in which I have denigrated Jews as a group, or held all Jews responsible for the behavior of the government of Israel, or indicated any enmity or hatred at all of Jews as a group, or of individual Jews for any reason, and particularly for reason only that they are Jews. Just find me one single post in which I have done any of those things and show it to me. Otherwise, we all know how much credence to lend a person who makes up lies about other people.

________________________________


On the subject of Jews who have my profound gratitude and respect, I misspoke in my last post. I said that I had not seen any condemnation of the behavior of the people in that video among any members of the Jewish community anywhere. This is incorrect. The people who made the video, along with the owners of the blog where it was first posted online, are all Jews, as are many of the people who offered criticism of the behavior of the people in the video in the comments section of the blog where it first appeared online.

These people, being very publically vocal in their opposition to the Israeli government and its agendas, do not have the support of most of the Jewish community (and some of them, being self-proclaimed anti-Zionists, have been pretty thoroughly chewed up and spit out by a large portion of this community, and the above poster appears to be determined to deny their existance entirely), so I sometimes don't think of them as belonging to any community other than the community of people I identify with - those who are fighting for Palestinians' rights and Palestenian freedom. However, I know that at least one of them does identify very strongly with what he calls "my Jewish community", so I should have phrased my comment differently. I should have said that I hadn't seen any condemnation of that behavior among any members of the Jewish community outside of the Palestinian rights community (among those who support the government of Israel, and those outside the Palestinian rights community, I have seen only criticism of the people who made the video and excuses for the behavior of the people in the video - and I have seen quite a lot of this).

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: bobad
Date: 20 Jun 09 - 07:18 AM

Defining New Anti-Semitism

Gradually, a consensus is developing on the definition of "new" anti-Semitism, i.e., the variety of Jew-hatred targeting the state of Israel. Once this mutation's key characteristics have been classified, an analysis of any speech, writing or action can be made to determine its anti-Semitic elements. It is no longer relevant who the author is and whether he is Muslim, Christian, atheist, communist, Maoist, Trotskyite, Socialist, Liberal, neo-Nazi, Israeli or Diaspora Jew.

One effort to define the borders between critique and anti-Semitism was made by the Berlin Technical University's Center for Research on Anti-Semitism. It characterized new anti-Semitism inter alia as a critique of Israel - that the Jewish state is negatively distinct from all others, and therefore has no right to exist.3

Irwin Cotler, the Canadian Justice Minister undertook a more detailed analysis of the multiple aspects of the new anti-Semitism. He claims that people become anti-Semites when calling for the destruction of Israel and the Jews; when denying the Jewish people's right to self-determination; when they de-legitimize Israel as a state or attribute all the world's evil to Israel; when Nazifying Israel, denying the Holocaust or singling out Israel for discriminatory treatment in the international arena. Cotler also mentions cultural anti-Semitism as a characteristic of the new anti-Semitism. He defines it by saying that "Israel is attributed a mix of evil qualities by salon intellectuals and western elites."4

http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-30.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jun 09 - 01:26 PM

More hasbara manipulation of people's perceptions. It's absolutely necessary for the government of Israel and its supporters to try to smear and discredit people who support freedom and equal rights for Palestinians by falsely accusing them of being anti-Semites, because that's the only thing they've got to work with. They are trying to defend the indefensible, and they know it. The only way to ensure that they can continue their indefensible practices is to silence those who speak out about them. The government of South Africa under apartheid used similar tactics in its efforts to hold onto power.

All anyone needs to do is ask whether or not the people who support the government of Israel's policies and practices would support the same policies and practices if they were being used by their own government against they themselves. The answer, of course, is that none of the members of Israel's government and none of its supporters would stand for it. And this shows us who the real haters are.

It should also be noted that the European Jews who hold the most power in Israel are not Semites.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: Peace
Date: 20 Jun 09 - 03:19 PM

I have no wish anymore to even 'talk' with you, lady. Your attitude speaks to your views much more eloquently than anyone else ever could. Stew in your hatred. Eventually it will consume you.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jun 09 - 03:40 PM

Just as I though. The above poster cannot produce a single post from me in which I have done what they are accusing me of doing. So we all know that this person is just making shit up as they go along, and we also know how much we can trust anything that person has to say (the answer to which is - not at all).

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jun 09 - 03:51 PM

Correction - Just as I thought

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: C. Ham
Date: 22 Jun 09 - 10:03 AM

This article by Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh about the Pro-Palestinian's agenda on American campuses could certainly be written about CarolC's agenda on Mudcat.

"What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state."

article by Khaled Abu Toameh.


P.S. THat is my one and only contribution to this thread or to any other thread started or hijacked by CarolC.

BTW, I am active in Canadian Friends of Peace Now, in Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue of Toronto, and One Voice Canada, three groups working to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians via a two state solution.

Unlike CarolC, I have Palestinian friends, I have been to Palestinian villages and homes in the West Bank. Unlike CarolC, I am actively involved.

The Internet is as close as CarolC ahs ever been to Israel/Palestine. To borrow words from Toameh, her "hatred for Israel and what it stands for has blinded [her] to a point where [she] no longer care[s] about the real interests of the Palestinians."

I have a busy life. I am involved in music, in social justice issues, in helping to care for my elederly mother who lives 300 miles away. I no longer have any time for any Mudcat thread that stinks of CarolC and her anti-Semitic agenda.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jun 09 - 10:35 AM

I know her personally. You are mistaken. She is not anti-Semitic.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 09:17 AM

:-)


The poster immediately after my last post is not in any position to say whether or not I have any Palestinian friends. Nor are they in a position to say whether or not I am actively involved in any other forms of activism on the Palestine/Israel issue besides online activism. This person simply is not in a position to know any of this about me. They also are also not in a position to say whether or not I am an anti-Semite. The only reason for making any of those assumptions and/or accusations is to try to smear me and intimidate me as a way of trying to silence me. It will not work.

Peace Now is not a Palestinian freedom and equal rights group. It is Likud lite. It is not working for Palestinians' liberation from Israeli government control. I applaud its stance on the freezing of settlement building. But ts stance on US welfare to Israel is that it should continue with no strings attached, but it wants strings attached to any money we give to the Palestinians. However, it appears to support continuing the occupation after Israel withdraws. This is an anti-Palestinian organization that wants to try to achieve peace for Israel through a very limited accommodation of Palestinian rights. But it still sees the Palestinians as not entirely human, and certainly not the equals of Israelis. Peace now, and by extension, its supporters, don't believe in equal rights for all. They don't believe in holding everyone to the same standard. They advocate protecting priveledge for some people at the expense of others, and they draw their lines for who is treated in what way, according to each person's ethnicity and religion. This is an entirely racist attitude and belief system.

Now let's examine the article posted by this person, that they are suggesting could be written about my agenda on the Mudcat...

During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.

Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.

Please show me where I have expressed support for Hamas or suicide bombing. Then please go see what I have actually had to say about what I think should be done with Hamas.

I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist

Please show me where I have said Israel has no right to exist.

that Israel's "apartheid system" is worse than the one that existed in South Africa

This is entirely true. Even South Africans say that this is true. It is no more anti-Semitic to criticize Israel's apartheid than criticizing South African apartheid was anti-White.

and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.

This is partially true. Hamas was trying to get into negotiations at the time that Israel started the attack on Gaza. If Israel had really wanted peace and security, it wouldn't have broken the cease fire, and it would have been willing to negotiate with Hamas. Cast Lead was also launched because of the upcoming Israeli elections, as a further effort to utterly destroy any and all forms of Palestinian civil infrastructure to make it impossible for the people in Gaza to establish their independent state, to render them entirely dependent on foreign aid, to try yet again to break their will and any desire they may have to resist whatever Israel wants to do with them and their land, and to make their lives as completely hellish as possible so they will want to leave.

I was also told that top Fatah operative Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in prison for masterminding terror attacks against Israeli civilians, was thrown behind bars simply because he was trying to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Please show me where I have expressed any opinions about Marwan Barghouti whatever.

Furthermore, I was told that all the talk about financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority was "Zionist propaganda" and that Yasser Arafat had done wonderful things for his people, including the establishment of schools, hospitals and universities.

I don't believe I have ever characterized it as "Zionist propaganda" and I would be interested in seeing any posts in which I have done so, if I have. However, I would characterize talk about financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority as, A: the pot calling the kettle black (when this criticism comes from the government of Israel and its supporters), and B: not relevant to any questions of Palestinian freedom and equal rights for Palestinians, C: an attempt to change the subject from Palestinian freedom and equal rights for Palestinians, and D: yet another racist double standard by those who support the government of Israel. And Arafat did establish schools, hospitals, and universities with money given to the PA by other countries, including the US. And the government of Israel bombed them to smithereens.

The bad news is that these groups of hard-line activists/thugs are trying to intimidate anyone who dares to say something that they don't like to hear.

This is, of course, a perfect description of the person who posted this article in this thread.

When the self-designated "pro-Palestinian" lobbyists are unable to challenge the facts presented by a speaker, they resort to verbal abuse.

Well, that's a relief! I have never, ever self-designated as "pro-Palestinian". Other people keep trying to designate me as such, but I only self-designate as a human rights activist and a supporter of human rights and equal rights for everyone.

When the self-designated "pro-Palestinian" lobbyists are unable to challenge the facts presented by a speaker, they resort to verbal abuse.

If we change this to say "when the supporters of the Israeli government are unable to challenge the facts presented by a speaker, they resort to verbal abuse, for instance, by calling people 'anti-Semites', regardless of whether or not this label actually fits. The unfortunate side effect of this practice has been to render the term, anti-Semite, almost completely meaningless.

On one campus, for example, I was condemned as an "idiot" because I said that a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas in the January 2006 election because they were fed up with financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

Please show me where I have ever condemned anyone as an "idiot" in a discussion about Palestine/Israel, or used any language that even resembles this.

On another campus, I was dubbed as a "mouthpiece for the Zionists" because I said that Israel has a free media

Please show me where I have ever used language like this in reference to anyone.

There was another campus where someone told me that I was a 'liar" because I said that Barghouti was sentenced to five life terms because of his role in terrorism.

Well, I would definitely say that the person who posted this article is a liar, not because of anything they ever said about Barghouti, but rather because they have lied repeatedly about me. For instance, by calling me an anti-Semite, and comparing me to the people described in this article.

And then there was the campus (in Chicago) where I was "greeted" with swastikas that were painted over posters promoting my talk. The perpetrators, of course, never showed up at my event because they would not be able to challenge someone who has been working in the field for nearly 30 years.

Please show me where I have ever done anything even remotely resembling this.

What struck me more than anything else was the fact that many of the people I met on the campuses supported Hamas and believed that it had the right to "resist the occupation" even if that meant blowing up children and women on a bus in downtown Jerusalem.

Please show me where I have ever said that I support Hamas, and that I support their killing of innocents. And then, please go and read what I have actually said on the subject (many times).

I never imagined that I would need police protection while speaking at a university in the U.S. I have been on many Palestinian campuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and I cannot recall one case where I felt intimidated or where someone shouted abuse at me.

This one's pretty libelous. Please show me where I have ever threatened anyone with physical violence. I would point out that I have been threatened with material and potentially physical harm by one poster here in the Mudcat, and it was a very credible threat. Other posters (one of whom has posted to this thread) have posted my first, middle, and last names here in the open forum as an intimidation tactic, and people have used other threatening tactics and methods of intimidation. It's the people supporting the Israeli government in the Mudcat who have been acting like brown shirts. I have not seen anyone here in the Mudcat who has been advocating for Palestinian freedom and equal rights for Palestinians who have used tactics like those. And falsely comparing me to the people who behaved this way toward the author of this article is also an act of harassment and intimidation, which would make the person who posted the article one of the people in the Mudcat who behaves like a brown shirt.

The majority of these activists openly admit that they have never visited Israel or the Palestinian territories. They don't know -and don't want to know - that Jews and Arabs here are still doing business together and studying together and meeting with each other on a daily basis because they are destined to live together in this part of the world. They don't want to hear that despite all the problems life continues and that ordinary Arab and Jewish parents who wake up in the morning just want to send their children to school and go to work before returning home safely and happily.

This is entirely irrelevant to the question of Palestinian freedom and equal rights for Palestinians, and is included as yet another attempt to obscure and mischaracterize the reason for peoples' activism on behalf of the Palestinians.

Over the past 15 years, much has been written and said about the fact that Palestinian school textbooks don't promote peace and coexistence and that the Palestinian media often publishes anti-Israel material.

While this may be true...

Actually, it's not true. It's yet another great big huge stinking racist lie. The Palestinian textbooks absolutely do promote peace and coexistence, and they do not contain any anti-Israel material whatever.



If the person who posted the above article in this thread can't come up with any posts in which I have done any of the things that person is accusing me of doing, everyone will know that nothing that person says can be trusted, either.

The person who posted the above article has provided an example of a Palestinian who agrees with their perspective on Palestine/Israel. This is not an effective strategy, because for every Palestinian who agrees with them on this subject, I can produce at least a thousand Jews from all over the world who agree with me on this subject. (And I have provided quite a few right here in this thread: http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=118542&messages=57a )

When people are accused of being anti-Semites and they try to prove they are not by pointing out that they have Jewish friends, the immediate response from numerous people is always that their using the fact that they have Jewish friends as proof that they are not anti-Semites, is absolute proof that they really are anti-Semites. It happens every time. So if using the excuse that one has Jewish friends to deny one's anti-Semitism is proof of anti-Semitism, the use by the person who posted the above article of their Palestinian friends as proof of their not being racist towards Palestinians, must therefore be absolute proof that this person is racist towards Palestinians.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 09:39 AM

Once someone has publicy accused you of being an "anti-semite", there is nothing on Earth you can possibly do to prove to them that you are not...regardless of what you really are. It is about the same thing, in effect, as it once was to be accused of being a "witch" in medieval times....once accused of that, once stuck with that all-purpose damnation label, you are deemed guilty (and evil) no matter what, and there is no escape. Period. You have been damned and condemned by the mere uninformed accusation of somone with a political ax to grind. You have in all likelihood been slandered in an untrue manner, and yet there's no effective way to respond to that slander, because there's no legal recourse. That's a really handy way of destroying people by silencing them or ruining their professional careers, and that is exactly how it is used in the current political era.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 09:53 AM

It's used specifically for the purpose of shutting people up and intimidating them so they will not speak up for equal rights, and it's definitely true that many people have been harmed by the cynical use of this tactic by supporters of the government of Israel. However, I think it's beginning to lose its punch because of its overuse, like for instance, by the people here in this thread who have used it to try to silence me. Personally, I don't see any need to defend myself against this accusation, because intelligent people who have read my posting history can see right through it.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 10:29 AM

"Actually, it's not true. It's yet another great big huge stinking racist lie. The Palestinian textbooks absolutely do promote peace and coexistence, and they do not contain any anti-Israel material whatever.
"

You lose the arguement when you make blatent lies like this. I have seen the textbooks, ( pictures and transcriptions of the text, since I do not read Arabic. Do you?)

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 10:38 AM

The textbooks referenced by the above poster were not Palestinian textbooks. They were Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks that were given to the Palestinians for their classrooms by the governments of those two countries before 1967. The Palestinians did write textbooks that promoted peace and coexistence and do not contain any anti-Israel material, and those are the ones they use (except in East Jerusalem, where Israeli government doesn't allow them to use their own texbooks, and forces them to use the Egyptian and Jordanian textbooks), but the supremacist liars who are trying to spread hate towards the Palestinians don't want anyone to know about this.

The above poster loses the argument then they post lies and propaganda.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: bobad
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 10:39 AM

Irwin Cotler: The new anti-Semitism

Reflecting on the contemporary surge in anti-Semitism, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has stated, "I have not felt the way I feel now since 1945. I feel there are reasons for us to be concerned, even afraid ... Now is the time to mobilize the efforts of all of humanity." This sentiment is what brings together parliamentarians from around the world, for the first conference of the International Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism.

What we are witnessing today is a new sophisticated, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism, reminiscent of the atmospherics of the 1930s, and without parallel since the end of the Second World War. This new anti-Jewishness found early juridical expression in the United Nations' "Zionism is Racism" resolution, but has gone beyond that. Traditional anti-Semitism is the discrimination against, denial of or assault upon the rights of Jews to live as equal members of whatever host society they inhabit. The new anti-Semitism involves discrimination against the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations -- the denial of, and assault upon, the Jewish people's right even to live -- with Israel as the "collective Jew among the nations."

Observing the complex intersections between the old and new anti-Semitism, Per Ahlmark, Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, pithily remarked that the new anti-Semitism is marked by attacks on the "collective Jews -- the State of Israel," which then "start a chain reaction of assaults on individual Jews and Jewish institutions." In and around my home city of Montreal, I have witnessed chilling examples of these phenomena -- from the firebombing of my own high school, to the physical assault of Jews in the Laurentians, to the vociferous chants against Israel during recent Gaza hostilities.

Let me be clear: I have never argued that Israel should be immune from criticism. But the protesters at purported anti-Israel rallies who cry "Jews are our dogs" are of common ilk with traditional anti-Semites. The whole underscores Ahlmark's conclusion: "In the past, the most dangerous anti-Semites were those who wanted to make the world Judenrein, 'free of Jews.' Today, the most dangerous anti-Semites might be those who want to make the world Judenstaatrein, 'free of a Jewish state.'"

The indices of this new anti-Semitism are different from those of the old. Today it may be uncommon for a Jew to be refused service in a restaurant. But now Israel remains the standing object of genocidal threat from Iran and its terrorist proxies Hezbollah and Hamas; the Jewish state is singled out in the international arena while the major human rights violators of our time enjoy exculpatory immunity; the legitimacy of Israel is discriminatorily scrutinized to the extent that, for the purpose of country groupings at the United Nations, it is considered not even to "exist" in Asia; and less sophisticated voices spread rumors of Israelis injecting Palestinians with the AIDS virus. Jews may no longer be denied equal housing, but they are now being denied an equal homeland.

As New York Times commentator Thomas Friedman put it: "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanctions, out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest."

It is this escalation of anti-Semitism that necessitates the establishment of an International Parliamentary Coalition to confront this oldest and most enduring of hatreds. Silence is not an option. The time has come to act. For as history has taught us only too well: While it may begin with Jews, it does not end with Jews. Anti-Semitism is the canary in the mine shaft of evil, and it threatens us all.


Irwin Cotler is the MP for Mount Royal and former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada. He is a professor of law (on leave) from McGill University who has written extensively on matters of hate, racism and human rights. He is a co-founder of the International Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism with U. K. MP John Mann.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 11:16 AM

Let's take that one apart, too...


What we are witnessing today is a new sophisticated, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism, reminiscent of the atmospherics of the 1930s, and without parallel since the end of the Second World War. This new anti-Jewishness found early juridical expression in the United Nations' "Zionism is Racism" resolution, but has gone beyond that.

Zionism is a racist ideology, when its expression results in the disenfranchisement, suppression, and ethnic cleansing of a group of people because of their ethnic and religious background, and it's not anti-Semitic to say so. Discriminating against any group because of its ethnic and/or religious background is always racist.

Traditional anti-Semitism is the discrimination against, denial of or assault upon the rights of Jews to live as equal members of whatever host society they inhabit.

This is a correct definition of anti-Semitism.

The new anti-Semitism involves discrimination against the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations -- the denial of, and assault upon, the Jewish people's right even to live -- with Israel as the "collective Jew among the nations."

No one in this thread is denying the Jewish people the right to live as an equal member of the family of nations or denying the Jewish people's right to live. The right to live in Israel as the "collective Jew among the nations" really is a rather meaningless phrase for the purpose of this discussion. The Jews who currently live in Israel have a right to remain there. The Jews who are there, however, do not have a right to withhold or suppress the rights of the other people who live there, and it is a racist and supremacist thing to say that they do.

Observing the complex intersections between the old and new anti-Semitism, Per Ahlmark, Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, pithily remarked that the new anti-Semitism is marked by attacks on the "collective Jews -- the State of Israel," which then "start a chain reaction of assaults on individual Jews and Jewish institutions." In and around my home city of Montreal, I have witnessed chilling examples of these phenomena -- from the firebombing of my own high school, to the physical assault of Jews in the Laurentians, to the vociferous chants against Israel during recent Gaza hostilities.

If someone is criticizing Israel specifically because it is a collective of Jews, then that is definitely anti-Semitism. If, on the other hand, if people are criticizing it because of its supremacist and racist behavior towards other groups of people based on their ethnic and religious backgrounds, then not only is it not anti-Semitic do that, it is racist and supremacist to call those who do criticize Israel for those reasons anti-Semitic.

Let me be clear: I have never argued that Israel should be immune from criticism. But the protesters at purported anti-Israel rallies who cry "Jews are our dogs" are of common ilk with traditional anti-Semites.

Please show me where I have said anything even resembling the above comment.

The whole underscores Ahlmark's conclusion: "In the past, the most dangerous anti-Semites were those who wanted to make the world Judenrein, 'free of Jews.' Today, the most dangerous anti-Semites might be those who want to make the world Judenstaatrein, 'free of a Jewish state.'"

This is not a valid construct. Let's look at the history of the Roma. Where is their state? They have suffered just as much as Jews throughout their history. They suffered just as much as Jews during the holocaust. They still don't have a state. Is anyone being condemned as "anti-Roma" for not suggesting that an entire group of people should be dispossessed and denied their rights in order to create an independent state for the Roma? Of course no-one is being condemned for this. And why not? Don't the Roma deserve a state of their own based on their history?

The problem with this construct is that any state that is defined as a "Jewish state", is, by definition, a state that discriminates against all of the people in it who are not Jewish. This is not a sustainable proposition. So the above formulation is saying that unless everyone supports a state in which everyone who doesn't belong to the privileged group will be permanently discriminated against, they are discriminating against the privileged group, is a nonsensical formulation. It cancels itself out by its own discriminatory nature.

The indices of this new anti-Semitism are different from those of the old. Today it may be uncommon for a Jew to be refused service in a restaurant. But now Israel remains the standing object of genocidal threat from Iran and its terrorist proxies Hezbollah and Hamas;
Israel is not under a genocidal threat from Iran, or from Hezbollah or Hamas.

the Jewish state is singled out in the international arena while the major human rights violators of our time enjoy exculpatory immunity;

This is a huge lie.

the legitimacy of Israel is discriminatorily scrutinized to the extent that, for the purpose of country groupings at the United Nations, it is considered not even to "exist" in Asia;

All of Asia? I rather doubt it. Some of Asia, perhaps. On the other hand, Israel does not recognize the Palestinian state, either. However, if the reason for including this is to suggest that I have not recognized that Israel exists, that is also a lie.

and less sophisticated voices spread rumors of Israelis injecting Palestinians with the AIDS virus.

Am, I being accused of having done this?

Jews may no longer be denied equal housing, but they are now being denied an equal homeland.

It is impossible for Jews to have an equal homeland that is based on the concept of their being privileged above all other groups. That is the opposite of equal. No Western country is based on the privileging of one group over all of the others or at the expense of all others, because it is commonly recognized in the West that this is racism, and Western countries are trying to eliminate racism from within their borders. Only Israel is claiming that privilege.

As New York Times commentator Thomas Friedman put it: "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanctions, out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest."

There are two problems with this. Most of the Western world, not only does not single Israel out for opprobrium and international sanctions, most of the Western world, in fact, lets Israel get away (with hardly a peep) with things that no other country is allowed to get away with. But if this is being used as a criticism against me, as long as the government of Israel is being assisted in what it is doing by my tax dollars and my government's foreign policy, it is absolutely my right as well as my responsibility to speak out about and to criticize what the government of Israel does. It is a lie to suggest that I don't criticize any other governments besides Israel. And it is racist to suggest that only Israel should be immune from criticism.

It is this escalation of anti-Semitism that necessitates the establishment of an International Parliamentary Coalition to confront this oldest and most enduring of hatreds. Silence is not an option. The time has come to act. For as history has taught us only too well: While it may begin with Jews, it does not end with Jews. Anti-Semitism is the canary in the mine shaft of evil, and it threatens us all.

At this point in history, it would be more apt to say that it may begin with Arabs/Palestinians/Muslime, but it will not end with them. Racism towards these groups is the new canary in the mine shaft, and if we don't do something about it now, it will threaten us all.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 11:45 AM

"The Palestinians did write textbooks that promoted peace and coexistence and do not contain any anti-Israel material,"

Of course , the article do specify the new post 2003 Palestinian textbooks.... And that they do NOT promote peace and coexistance, and do contain anti- Israel material.



I guess the the supremacist liars who are trying to spread hate towards the Jews don't want us to know this.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 11:46 AM

It is true that there are people with genuinely anti-Jewish bias and a desire to harm or persecute Jews. Clearly. And we all know that. You can call that "anti-Semitism" if that's the term you wish to use, though it's a rather odd term...since many Muslims are also Semitic people...but that's the sort of weird thing that happens now and then with the English language. People use terms that don't make sense if you look at them literally, but they become customary regardless.

If you want to say that someone is anti-Jewish, which clearly is the matter than concerns people who use the term "anti-Semitism", then you might as well say it's "anti-Jewishness" and be done with it. Call it what it really is.

Anyway, yes, of course there are people who are virulently anti-Jewish. We all know that.

Then there are other people who are not anti-Jewish at all but who are deeply opposed to various political and military policies of the Israeli government. That does not equate to being anti-Jewish. A good many Jews are deeply opposed to those same Israeli government policies....not a majority of them, clearly, but a good many.

As you say, bobad, "silence is not an option". Correct. To remain silent in the face of anti-Jewishness is not an option. To remain silent in the face of terror attacks on Israelis OR Palestinians is not an option. To remain silent in the face of land-grabbing and aggression by Israel upon its Palestinian neighbours is not an option.

No one is obliged to remain silent in the face of any such hostile actions, regardless of which side of the line they are on.

The sense of historical persecution which Jews feel is felt just as keenly by the Palestinians and Muslim people who have suffered under Israel's heavy hand since 1948. This is what you should realize. Jews are not the only people in this world who are carrying a tremendous load of pain over the past and present sufferings of their own people. Jews do not have a monopoly on that kind of suffering. They are also capable of inflicting that kind of suffering on others.

The reason you are seeing an escalation of what you call "anti-Semitism" (anti-Jewishness) is for one reason alone: it is because of the aggressive policies and behaviour of Israel toward other occupants of the western part of the Middle East in the last 5 or more decades. Period. Those actions have created a counter-reaction in many people against Israel...in some people against Jews...and that counter-reaction was inevitable. Israel has sewn seeds that have caused much hurt to the Jewish community worldwide, because those seeds have aroused what you term "anti-Semitism" (anti-Jewishness).

Look, it's simple. If you or your cousin or your neighbor kick a dog around long enough, he will eventually turn and bite someone. And if he's not too smart or he's limited in knowledge, he may well bite the wrong person in his anger...someone who had nothing to do with kicking him in the first place.

If you want to reduce the rise in anti-Jewishness worldwide, you won't do it by calling people "anti-Semites" to intimidate them into silence. You'll do it by changing the Israeli government's policies and not further persecuting the Palestinians and not further robbing them of their land.

As you said: Silence is not an option. The time hss come to act. Prejudice definitely does not end with Jews...nor did it begin with them. Prejudice is as old as humanity itself. Victims of prejudice can be found anywhere...in any community.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: bobad
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 11:55 AM

The New Anti-Semitism
by Melanie Phillips - March 22, 2003

       Melanie Phillips says that hostility to Jews is strongest among those on the Left who claim to be fighting racism

    Want to make yourself really, really unpopular if you're a Jew? Try saying that the world is witnessing a terrifying firestorm of hatred directed at Israel and the Jewish people, in which the British and Europeans are deeply implicated. Since it is now a given in many circles that Israel is a threat to the world equal to North Korea, and that Ariel Sharon is a cross between Martin Bormann and Hendrik Verwoerd, you will find yourself accused of using the Holocaust to avoid any criticism of Israel's behaviour. Because, well, you know, you Jews always stick together and are mighty quick to deal that persecution card.

    Anyone who holds that view may as well skip what follows. More objective and fair-minded souls, however, might be deeply alarmed to learn of the evidence provided at a recent conference on anti-Semitism and the media at the Vidal Sassoon Centre for the Study of Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem.

    This was scarcely a gathering of the Ariel Sharon fan club. Among academics and journalists from Israel, Europe, Britain and America were several left-wingers and liberals who were deeply hostile to Israel's Likud government, believed that the settlements should be dismantled, and were troubled by the behaviour of some of Israel's military. 'There's no doubt that Israel is committing human-rights violations on the West Bank,' said Professor Yehuda Bauer, the distinguished Holocaust expert.

    But there was equally no doubt, from what he and others said, that anti-Zionism is now being used to cloak a terrifying nexus between genocidal Arab and Islamist hatred of the Jews and deep-seated European prejudices.

    Anti-Semitism is protean, mutating over the centuries into new forms. Now it has changed again, into a shape which requires a new way of thinking and a new vocabulary. The new anti-Semitism does not discriminate against Jews as individuals on account of their race. Instead, it is centred on Israel, and the denial to the Jewish people alone of the right of self-determination.

    This is nothing to do with the settlements or the West Bank. Indeed, the language being used exposes as a cruel delusion the common belief that the Middle East crisis would be solved by the creation of a Palestinian state.

    The key motif is a kind of Holocaust inversion, with the Israelis being demonised as Nazis and the Palestinians being regarded as the new Jews. Israel and the Jews are being systematically delegitimised and dehumanised — a necessary prelude to their destruction — with both Islamists and the Western media using anti-Zionism as a fig-leaf for prejudices rooted in both mediaeval Christian and Nazi demonology.

    This has produced an Orwellian situation in which hatred of the Jews now marches behind the Left's banner of anti-racism and human rights, giving rise not merely to distortions, fabrications and slander about Israel in the media but also to mainstream articles discussing the malign power of the Jews over American and world policy.

    The Jerusalem conference heard chilling presentations about a phenomenon barely discussed in Britain: the virulent Arab and Muslim hatred of the Jews. This goes far beyond even the desire to finish off Israel as a Jewish state. Anti-Jewish hatred plays a crucial role in the fanatical jihadism that now threatens all of us in the West, pouring out in television programmes, newspapers and religious sermons throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and amounting to a new warrant for genocide.

    The dominant message is that Jewish power amounts to a conspiracy to destroy Islam and take over the whole world. Truly mad theories circulate on Islamist Internet sites which have now convinced untold numbers of Arabs and Muslims that the Jews were behind both 9/11 and the Columbia space-shuttle disaster. Egyptian television transmitted a 41-part series which presented the notorious Tsarist forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion — which purported to be a Jewish plot to control the world — as the truth. (This has prompted some Arab intellectuals to condemn such propaganda as both untrue and a tactical error, but these dissidents remain a small minority.) Meanwhile, Saudi media and religious sermons incite the murder of Jews.

    According to the Arabic scholar Professor Menachem Milsom, this Arab and Islamist propaganda persistently dehumanised Jews by representing them as apes and pigs. A preacher at the totemic Haram mosque in Mecca said the Jews were 'evil offspring', the 'destroyers of God's word', 'priest murderers' and the 'scum of the human race'. The mediaeval Christian blood libel — the claim that the Jews kill children and drink their blood — has surfaced time and again in prestigious Arab newspapers.

    And Zionism was equated with Nazism; just as the Nazis believed in the superiority of the 'Aryan' race, so Zionists (sic) believed they were the chosen people, which justified their own military expansion. This equation was not confined to a marginal few. Abu Mazen, said Milsom, the Palestinian Authority intellectual who is being talked about as Yasser Arafat's prime minister in a 'reformed' administration, wrote as much in his doctoral thesis — in which he also said that the Zionists gave the Nazis permission to treat the Jews as they wished so long as this guaranteed their immigration to Palestine.

    These sick outpourings are not so much religious or even fundamentalist doctrines as rooted in a fanatical totalitarian ideology. As Professor Bauer observed, the driving aim is the Islamic dictatorship of the world. Realisation of this utopia necessitates the destruction of the foundation creeds of Western culture, Judaism and Christianity — and especially Israel, the supposed personification of Western global power-lust, which was planted as an incubus on Arab soil as a result of the Holocaust.

    Holocaust denial is therefore central to Arab anti-Semitism, the prejudice which such historical falsehood has helped to forge a strategic alliance with Europe. For it absolves Europe of its guilt over the Jews, and replaces it with European guilt towards Arabs displaced as a result of the Holocaust.

    Europe has waited for more than half a century for a way to blame the Jews for their own destruction. So instead of sounding the alarm over genocidal Islamist Jew-hatred, Europeans have eagerly embraced the Nazification of the Jews, a process which really got under way with Israel's disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982. This marked the beginning of the media's systematic inversion of Israeli self-defence as aggression, along with double-standards and malicious fabrications, which have nothing to do with legitimate (and necessary) criticism of Israel and everything to do with delegitimising the Jewish state altogether in readiness for its dismantling.

    So the conference heard about German accusations that Israel was using Nazi methods and (repeating a claim by Hamas) that the Monica Lewinsky scandal was a Jewish conspiracy against Bill Clinton. It heard of the Nazification of Israel in Sweden, where there were charges that the Israelis were exterminating the Palestinians, that the media were controlled by Jewish interests to suppress criticism of Israel, and that influential Jewish lobby groups were 'spraying journalists with poison'.

    It heard that in France Jews were vilified and excluded from public debate if they challenged the lies being told about Israel. It was shown a devastating French film Décryptage (Decoding) — which has been playing to packed houses in Paris — about the obsessive malevolence towards Israel displayed by the French media. It was told about the way the British media described Israel's 'death squads', 'killing fields' and 'executioners' while sanitising Palestinian human bombs as 'gentle', 'religious' and 'kind'. It heard about the cartoon in the Italian newspaper La Stampa during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, depicting an Israeli tank pointing a gun at the baby Jesus who is saying, 'Surely they are not going to kill me again.'

    And of course there was Jenin, the so-called 'massacre' or 'genocide' reported as such by virtually the entire media, where in fact 52 Palestinians died, of whom more than half were terrorists, while Israel sustained (for it) the huge loss of 45 of its soldiers. This astonishing media distortion was conceded at the conference by the (extraordinarily brave) Palestinian politics professor Mohammad Dajani, who also observed that a distraught Palestinian public was — on this and other occasions — whipped up by biased and emotional Palestinian reporting which showed little concern for the truth. But the big lie of the Jenin massacre is now believed as fact, contributing to the belief that Israel is a criminal state.

    Europeans have thus made themselves accomplices to an explicitly genocidal programme. But an even more striking feature is that, while the old anti-Semitism still festers away among neo-Nazis, the new anti-Semitism is a phenomenon of their sworn enemies on the political Left. So, as the Canadian law professor Irwin Cotler observed, we now have the mind-twisting situation where anti-Jewish hatred is harnessed to the cause of anti-racism and human rights, with Israel being compared to both Nazism and apartheid by those who define themselves against these ideologies. Such a travesty of the facts involves, of course, the implicit denial of the truth of those terrible regimes, quite apart from the prelude to annihilation created by such a lethal defamation of Israel. And even more counterintuitively, many Jews and Israelis on the Left also subscribe to this analysis — and even to the demonology of Israeli Nazism and apartheid — handing an effective weapon to those who dismiss the claim of a new anti-Semitism as Jewish paranoia or Islamophobia.

    So what is the explanation for the Left's position? Partly, it's the old anti-imperialist and anti-West prejudice. Partly, it's the view that only the powerless can be victims; so Third World people can never be murderers, and any self-defence by Western societies such as Israel must instead be aggression. Partly, it's the post-modern destruction of objectivity and truth, which has ushered in the hegemony of lies. And partly, as the Left takes an axe to morality and self-restraint, it's a golden opportunity to pulverise the very people who invented the damn rules in the first place.

    A left-wing Polish journalist at the conference, Konstanty Gebert, got the real point. The Left, he said, could not face the fact that they had totally misconstrued the Middle East because this would undermine their whole philosophy. This was founded on the premise that reason could reconcile all differences; all that was needed in Israel was an enlightened government for reason to prevail. The evidence that we are facing a phenomenon which is not susceptible to reason would destroy that world view. It would also give credibility to the hated Sharon, whose demonisation is absolutely vital to the Left as a protection against the implosion of its whole ideological position.

    So the evidence is being denied, and truth is being stood on its head. The result is the defamation of a people, the greater prospect of its destruction, and the disastrous failure of the populations of Britain and Europe to understand properly the threat that all free peoples now face.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 12:10 PM

http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=3060&CategoryId=21

Since 1998, the "Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace" has persistently published reports claiming that Palestinian textbooks incite hatred against Israel and the Jewish people. While the Center claims "to encourage the development and fostering of peaceful relations between peoples and nations, by establishing a climate of tolerance and mutual respect founded on the rejection of violence as a means to resolving conflicts," its attitude towards the Palestinian National Authority and the Palestinian Curriculum has been described as prosecutorial in nature. Being overly suspicious of their produced reports is well advised given that the Center's first director, Itamar Marcus, is a right wing Israeli supporter and resident of the West Bank settlement of Efrat.

The Center's work reveals a deeply flawed methodology aimed at misleading the reader. Furthermore, evidence reveals that the Center is fair, balanced, and understanding towards Israeli textbooks, but tendentious on Palestinian books. In short, the purpose is clearly to indict the textbooks and the PNA, rather than analyze and understand the content of the books. Were the Center to take a similar approach in other countries, including Israel, it could easily find comparable material.

Studies of Palestinian textbooks have revealed that any strong anti-Israel and anti-Semitic material in the curriculum comes from books that the Palestinians did not author and are replacing. (Ironically, these same books that were actually authored by Jordanians and Egyptians were distributed by Israel in east Jerusalem after only removing the cover.) Furthermore, books that were written by the Palestinian Authority in 1994, 2000, and 2001 are free of such material. Information gathered by the EU missions on the ground, as well as independent studies carried out by Israeli and Palestinian academics and educators that have examined the new textbooks, show that allegations against the new textbooks funded by EU members have proven unfounded

Below are the various reports, articles, and studies conducted on Palestinian textbooks exonerating them of inciting hatred towards Israel and the Jewish people: (the links are in the article)


Dear Senator Clinton: About Those Palestinian Textbooks...

...I'm sorry that this letter is getting a little wordy, but bear with me as I revisit one point that the Akiva Eldar article cited above touches upon, namely that the "anti-semitic" texts that CMIP and yourself use to attack the new PA curriculum for grades one and six don't actually come from the PA curriculum at all, but appear in texts from Egypt and Jordan. To make sense of that fact, we need a little historical background.

You are of course aware, Senator Clinton, that Palestinians have been responsible for the Palestinian education system only since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Before that, Palestinian schools, and the subject-matter taught therein were the direct responsibility of the Israeli occupation authorities. And of course before the Israeli Occupation began, Palestinian schools were run by the Egyptian and Jordanian authorities who had occupied since 1948 large parts of those territories that were allocated to Arab Palestine at partition, which we now commonly call the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. So, until very recently, Palestinian education was in the hands of three foreign countries who, frankly, had no use whatsoever for an educated, articulate Palestinian populace and invested next to nothing in their education.

Consequently, the school system that was dumped in the lap of the PA in 1994 was a disgrace. As then-Deputy Minister for Education Na'im Abul Hummous explains:

    "The educational system that we inherited was in a sorry state…. overcrowded classes, lack of teachers and antiquated textbooks dating from pre-1967, teaching Gaza children, for instance, about the greatness of the Egyptian kingdom and its 20m inhabitants [Egypt became a republic in 1953 and now has a population of 65m]."

To rectify this situation, the PA established in 1994 a Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) – staffed by education professionals from the Palestinian public and private sectors, and supported by staff from UNESCO and from moderate Arab states like Morocco - in order to completely overhaul the national educational system. The CDC produced a 700-page outline for a new Palestinian curriculum which was put before the Palestinian legislative assembly and passed unanimously. In 1998 work began on the first textbooks based on the new curriculum, funded by a donation from Italy, administered by the World Bank. Because of the size (and cost) of the undertaking, the new textbooks were produced and distributed incrementally, at a rate of two grades per year. In the meantime, the Jordanian and Egyptian books that the PA had inherited from the pre-Oslo education system were still used for those grades whose new textbooks were not complete.

The first of these new, genuinely Palestinian textbooks - for grades one and six - were introduced to schools in the fall of September 2000. (It is interesting to note that this coincides exactly with the collapse of the peace process and the outbreak of the second intifada. In other words, the new school books and CMIP's immediate attack on them came out at a highly-charged period in Palestinian-Israeli relations, when established critics of the PA might well be looking for any soft target they could attack in order to discredit the Authority). These were the textbooks that CMIP claimed to be reviewing in The New Palestinian Authority School Textbooks for Grades One and Six, the report that you apparently used as the basis for your accusation of incitement in your letter to the President. Unfortunately, none of the examples of anti-Semitism cited in that CMIP report – including the "destruction of Israel" quote that you used in your letter - actually appear in the new Palestinian Authority school textbooks for grades one and six. They are extracted instead from the textbooks left over from the Jordanian and Egyptian adminstration of Palestinian schools, which the PA was actually in the process of phasing out. In hindsight, perhaps you would agree that it is unfortunate that you associated yourself with the dishonest pretence that these books were part of the new Palestinian curriculum when in fact, as Ha'aretz pointed out on 2 Jan 2001, Palestinians had no say at all in their content:

    [W]ho, dear children, is taught in the first grade that the Jews are treacherous people and the Israelis are evil enemies? Please circle the correct answer: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's grandson, Jordanian King Abdullah's nephew, or Yasser Arafat's daughter (when she is not in Paris with her mother?) The answer: These anti-Semitic and racist stereotypes are taken from Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks. For the past 33 years, these books have also been used by the Palestinian schools in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Every prime minister, military governor and Jerusalem mayor knows that to this day the Palestinians have not had any impact on the contents of the textbooks their children learn from in class…

I have gone into some detail about the historical background to PA textbooks, because a review of the historical context gives a couple of very useful insights into the way that organizations like CMIP manipulate the emotive issue of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement for their own politic purposes - a dirty process in which you, a U.S. Senator, have unwittingly inserted yourself by unthinkingly reproducing their research. Frankly, some of the things you said in your letter make you look positively foolish, once the reader is aware that the basis for the assertions you repeat is propaganda rather than objective research. For example, you wrote to President Bush:

    There cannot be a meaningful, lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians if the Palestinian Authority does not act to end the preaching of hate and replace it with the language of peace...

Doesn't that look a bit silly now you know that those hateful Palestinian textbooks that are supposedly preventing the emergence of Middle East peace aren't Palestinian at all, but come from Egypt and Jordan, the two countries that actually have actually managed to make a meaningful, lasting peace with Israel? You can surely see that it is absurd to claim that Jordanian textbooks make peace impossible between Israel and Palestine when, as Gabriel Baramki (Consultant to the Palestinian Ministry of Education) pointed out in a Jerusalem Post editorial of 7 Sept 2003, they didn't make peace impossible between Israel and Jordan?

    The same Jordanian textbooks that the Palestinian Authority is using, did not stop Israel from signing a peace agreement with Jordan and, in fact, the peace between the two countries is rather an active one. This should be a good indication that once there is intention on both sides and partners to attain peace, the textbooks cannot stand in the way.

Why Are These Books Still Used In Some PA Schools?

And of course there's a much bigger issue arising out of the historical background to Palestinian education, that blows a hole in the "Palestinians are inciting hatred in the books they use to teach their children". And it's this: Where did the PA get the Egyptian and Jordanian schoolbooks that allegedly instill anti-semitism in their schoolchildren? Well, indirectly of course they got them from Egypt and Jordan, but those two countries haven't had any responsibility for Palestinian education since Israel took over the Occupied Territories in 1967. The PA actually inherited the Jordanian and Egyptian books that are being used now to attack the Palestinians for incitement from the Israelis, who were responsible for education in Palestinian areas from 1967 to 1993. If there are anti-Semitic books in Palestinian schools left over from the Egyptian and Jordanian period, it is because Israel was content for them to be used to educate Palestinian children during the 26 years that the Israelis ran Palestinian schools. So apparently, these books are anti-Semitic enough for the Israeli Right and certain U.S. Senators to use as a stick to beat the Palestinians in the post-Oslo period, but they weren't anti-Semitic enough for Israel to stop their use in Palestinian schools in the pre-Oslo period! Are you sure you wanted to lend your good name to a partisan campaign that gets as stupid as this?

And just when you think it can get any more absurd, of course it does. Consider this interesting snippet from Ha'aretz - Reading, Writing - and Propaganda - that considers the use of old Jordanian text books in PA schools:

    Prof. Nathan Brown, from George Washington University, a former adviser to the U.S. Agency for International Development, noted an odd phenomenon in his study of the Palestinian curriculum (November 2001). He found that even though the PA's National Education books for grades 1-6 were "devoid of any anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli material," Israel "allowed the offensive Jordanian books to be used in the East Jerusalem schools but barred the innocuous PA-authored books, probably fearful that use of the PA books would be an implicit recognition of sovereignty."

Can you see what that is saying, Senator? Palestinian students in East Jerusalem are still being taught from old Jordanian schoolbooks that incite hatred, even when a new, innocuous and inoffensive Palestinian textbook is available instead, simply because Israel is concerned that the use of a PA textbook implies that Arab East Jerusalem is occupied territory to which the Palestinians have a claim of sovereignty. Are you appalled that Palestinian children continue to be taught hatred and racial incitement just so that Israel can make a political point? Will you be whisking off an outraged letter to the President about Israel's "hateful, anti-Israeli rhetoric"? I'm guessing not...

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 12:15 PM

You will have no difficulty convincing me, bobad, that there is a tremendous rise in hatred of Israel...and connected to that...hatred of Jews...and old demons of anti-Jewishness are being resuscitated in Europe and elsewhere. Obviously.

The part that you don't seem to connect to is that all that is an inevitable result of the Israeli government's political and military actions of the past 50 or so years. It is the Israeli government and military who have given "anti-semitism" (as you call it) its boost and they are continuing to do so...by their actions.

Do those actions resemble Naziism? Yes...to some extent. Not to an equivalent extent, but to some extent.

Are some of their Muslim opponents equally fascist in nature? Yes. Most definitely they are. You have two sets of equally prejudiced, bitter, and paranoid people there in the Middle East, both obsessing over the past, hanging onto old grievances, and demonizing each other. The responsibility for that is shared between them. Neither Israel NOR its Muslim opponents are particularly amenable to reason...they hate each other too much to want to compromise and they are too obsessed with their own perceived righteousness and historical victimhood.

The Left is naturally frustrated with the situation. Who wouldn't be? You have 2 sets of totally unreasonable and self-righteous paranoids raving on about how awful the other one is, and no one can get them to agree on anything. Who wouldn't be frustrated with such a situation? It's ludicrous.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 01:05 PM

Manufacturing Anti-Semites

by URI AVNERY

The first Israeli victim of Saddam Hussein is a Zionist myth on which we were brought up.

It stated that Israel is a haven for all the Jews in the world. In all the other countries, Jews live in perpetual fear that a cruel persecutor will arise, as happened in Germany. Israel is the safe haven, to which Jews can escape in times of danger. Indeed, this was the purpose of the Founding Fathers when they established the state.

Now Saddam comes along and proves the opposite. All over the world, Jews live in safety, and only in one place on the planet are they threatened by annihilation: Israel. Here the national parks are prepared for mass-graves, here (pathetic) measures against biological and chemical weapons are prepared. Many people are already planning to escape to the communities in the Diaspora. End of a myth.

Another Zionist myth died even before that. The Diaspora, so we learned in our youth, creates anti-Semitism. Everywhere the Jews are a minority, and a minority inevitably attracts the hatred of the majority. Only when the Jews gather in the Land of their Forefathers and constitute the majority there, will anti-Semitism disappear throughout the world. Thus spoke Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.

Nowadays this myth, too, is giving up its blessed soul. The very opposite is happening: the State of Israel is causing the resurrection of anti-Semitism all over the world, threatening Jews everywhere.

The Sharon government is a giant laboratory for the growing of the anti-Semitism virus. It exports it to the whole world. Anti-Semitic organizations, which for many years vegetated on the margins of society, rejected and despised, are suddenly growing and flowering. Anti-Semitism, which has hidden itself in shame since World War II, is now riding on a great wave of opposition to Sharon's policy of oppression.

Sharon's propaganda agents are pouring oil on the flames. Accusing all critics of his policy of being anti-Semites, they brand large communities with this mark. Many good people, who feel no hatred at all towards the Jews, but who detest the persecution of the Palestinians, are now called anti-Semites. Thus the sting is taken out of this word, giving it something approaching respectability.

The practical upshot: not only does Israel not protect the Jews from anti-Semitism, but quite on the contrary - Israel manufactures and exports the anti-Semitism that threatens Jews around the world.

For many years, Israel enjoyed the sympathy of most people. It was seen as the state of the holocaust survivors, a small and courageous country defending itself against the repeated assaults of murderous Arabs. Slowly, this image has been replaced by another: a cruel, brutal and colonizing state, oppressing a small and helpless people. The persecuted has become the persecutor, David has turned onto Goliath.

We Israelis, living in a bubble of self-brain-washing, find it hard to imagine how the world sees us. In many countries, television and newspapers publish daily pictures of Palestinian children throwing stones at monstrous tanks, soldiers harassing women at the checkpoints, despairing old men sitting on the ruins of their demolished homes, soldiers taking aim and shooting children. These soldiers do not look like human beings in uniform - "the neighbor's son" as they look to Israelis, but like robots without faces, armed to the teeth, heads hidden by helmets, bullet-proof vests changing their proportions. People who have seen these photos dozens and hundreds of times start to see the Israel in this image.

For Jews, this creates a dangerous vicious circle. Sharon's actions create repulsion and opposition throughout the world. These reinforce anti-Semitism. Faced with this danger, Jewish organizations are pushed into defending Israel and giving it unqualified support. This support enables the anti-Semites to attack not only the government of Israel, but the local Jews, too. And so on.

In Europe, Jews already feel the pressure. But in the United States, they still feel supremely self-confident. In Europe, Jews have learned over the centuries that it is not wise to be too conspicuous and to display their wealth and influence. But in America, the very opposite is happening: the Jewish establishment is practically straining to prove that it controls the country.

Every few years, the Jewish lobby "eliminates" an American politician who does not support the Israeli government unconditionally. This is not done secretly, behind the scenes, but as a public "execution". Just now this was done to the black Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, a young, active, intelligent and very sympathetic woman. She has dared to criticize the Sharon government, support Palestinians and (worst of all) Israeli and Jewish peace groups. The Jewish establishment found a counter-candidate, a practically unknown black woman, injected huge sums into the campaign and defeated Cynthia.

All this happened in the open, with fanfares, to make a public example - so that every Senator and Congressperson would know that criticizing Sharon is tantamount to political suicide.

Now this is repeated in a big way. The pro-Israel lobby - which consists of Jews and extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists - is pushing the American administration to start a war. This, too, openly, in full view of the American public. Dozens of articles in the important newspapers point this out as a plain political fact.

What will happen if the war ends in failure? If it has unexpected negative results and many young Americans die? If the American public turns against it, as happened during the Vietnam War? One can easily imagine a whispering campaign starting: "The Jews have pushed us into this," "The Jews support Israel more than they support America," and, finally, "The Jews control our country."

Furthermore, Sharon may sooner or later bring about a revolution in the Arab world. This will be a disaster for American interests. American Jews, now completely identified with Israel, will be blamed.

Anyhow, the conspicuousness of the Jews in the United States, especially in the media, and their disproportionate influence over the Congress and the White House, can backfire one of these days.

Of course, the special political culture of the United States encourages such phenomena - but that was also true in Spain of the "Golden Age" and the Weimar republic in Germany. History does not have to repeat itself, but neither should one disregard its lessons.

There are people in Israel people who secretly wish for the victory of anti-Semitism everywhere. That would confirm another Zionist myth on which we were brought up: that Jews will not be able to live anywhere but in Israel, because anti-Semitism is bound to triumph everywhere. But the United States is not France or Argentina, it plays a critical role in the Middle East. Israel's national security, as established by all Israeli governments since Ben-Gurion, is based on the total support of the United States - military, political and economic.

If I were asked for advice, I would counsel the Jewish communities throughout the world as follows: break out of the vicious circle. Disarm the anti-Semites. Break the habit of automatic identification with everything our governments do. Let your conscience speak out. Return to the traditional Jewish values of "That which is altogether just shalt thou follow!" (Deuteronomy 16,20) and "Seek peace and pursue it!" (Psalms 34, 14). Identify yourselves with the Other Israel, which is struggling to uphold these values at home.

All over the world, new Jewish groups that follow this way are multiplying. They break yet another myth: the duty of Jews everywhere to subordinate themselves to the edicts of our government. to the edicts of our government.

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery1002.html

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 03:05 PM

More manufacturing anti-Semites...


Anatomy of an anti-Semitic falsehood: 'Jerusalem Post' said Norway's Finance Minister led chant, 'Death to the Jews!'

Bruce Wolman of Bethesda, MD, lived in Norway for more than 20 years. He reads the Norwegian press in Norwegian and offers the following exclusive report:

According to NTB, the Norwegian wire service, Norway's Finance Minister and Socialist Left party leader, Kristin Halvorsen (left) was described as a Jew-hater in an article released on the net issue of the Jerusalem Post Monday morning and later withdrawn. The article purported to describe the rising hatred of Jews in Norway.

Reporter Maya Spitzer wrote:

    "Anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment has exploded in Norway - driven by the Norwegian media and intellectual elite - due to Operation Cast Lead, according to Norwegian Jewish leaders.
    "During the war, Oslo was fraught with violent anti-Israel demonstrations. Numerous government officials decried Israel's actions in Gaza - including Minister of Finance Kristin Halvorsen, who led a march shouting, "Death to the Jews!" Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who worked in Gaza and disseminated stories about Israel's brutality, became a national hero in the Norwegian media.
    "Even before the war began, local Jews were tense because of anti-Semitic cartoons, recent boycotts of Israel merchandise, and the highly publicized affair of Norwegian comic Otto Jespersen, who made anti-Semitic remarks on national television.
    "This wave continued with renowned Norwegian painter Håken Gullvåg's opening a new exhibition entitled 'Requiem for the Children of Gaza' in Trondheim over the weekend. The city's mayor, Rita Otterwik, applauded Gullvåg for accurately depicting the Gaza conflict. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg also commended Gullvåg for 'painting pictures that place this [the plight of the Palestinians] on the agenda.'"

The article raised a storm in the Norwegian media. The strongest reaction was to the claim that Halvorsen shouted "Death to the Jews" during the march. This is an outright falsehood. Norway's leading newspaper, Aftenposten, told its readers that the Jerusalem Post article claimed "Norwegian society is riddled with anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli attitudes".

After Norwegian reporters inundated the Jerusalem Post's offices with enquiries, the article in question was temporarily removed from the Web site. The Post said that it would refuse to answer the Norwegians' questions, however, until its editor David Horovitz, became available. News editor, David Brinn, later said to Afterposten.no that the paper stands behind the contents of the article:

    We received rather many reactions after we published the article, and we removed it for safety's sake while we checked the facts. Doubts were raised about its truthfulness, but the content absolutely agrees with reality, said Brinn.

A new version of the article was published on the web site today, but was again removed. The revised version no longer had Halvorsen shouting "Death to the Jews" but instead wrote that "Death to the Jews" was heard from participants in the march. Brinn told Aftenposten:

    The Finance Minister led a demonstration against 'Operation Cast Lead' . We want to ask her why she led this demonstration and if she knew about the shouts at the demonstration. The article will return. It will be republished as soon as we have been in contact with the Finance Minister."

When Aftenposten directly asked Brinn whether the Jerusalem Post was claiming that the Finance Minister shouted "Death to the Jews," the editor responded that he couldn't hear the question due to a bad telephone connection. Aftenposten repeated the question and Brinn then cut the phone call.
The Socialist Left Party of Norway issued the following press release in English:

    Kristin Halvorsen participated in a demonstration for peace in Gaza on January 8th this year. There were no anti-Jewish slogans during the event what so ever, as The Jerusalem Post alleges.
    There were appeals for inter-religious coexistence and peace, calling on Israel to stop the war on Gaza. The demonstration lasted for about an hour, and was a dignified and peaceful event. A splinter-group continued a march towards the Israeli embassy afterwards. This was not a part of the official demonstration, and Kristin Halvorsen did not join this rally. She publicly denounced the violent outbreak that occurred in the aftermath of the peace demonstration.

When Dagbladet, another national Norwegian newspaper reached the Jerusalem Post reporter, Maya Spitzer, she told them:

    Everything I wrote is accurate. I have received information from several sources. From Israel-Wat, from Manfred Gerstenfeld and Imre Hercz. But I don't want you to cite me on anything.

Israel-Wat, "Israel's War Against Terror" web site, is an extremist propaganda source. Manfred Gerstenfeld, who grew up in the Netherlands, is Chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and director of the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs. Last year he penned an article, Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews. Imre Hercz is a Holocaust survivor living in Oslo. Hercz Dagbladet spoke with Hercz [photo above] and he is not comfortable with the Jerusalem Post article:

    The article is just crazy and I am dismayed. I spoke with the journalist at length, twice, and I said the exact opposite. But this did not fit into her scheme.

Hercz has written a reply which he wants the Jerusalem Post to publish. He plans to send his response this evening.

    I do not experience the Norwegian people as anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. There is a small part of the Norwegian radical left from the 68-generation which are that. There are some in Norway who attack Israel and America regardless. For me, anti-Semitism is when people demand something of Jews and Israel which they don't demand of others. To demand a trade boycott of Israel on account of the occupation - while at the same time not demanding a boycott of China on account of the occupation of Tibet.

Hercz is not only concerned about the Jerusalem Post article. He doubts also the objectivity of Manfred Gerstenfeld, who steadily criticizes Norway for anti-Semitism.

    I doubt his objectivity and I am very tired of his propaganda war against Norway. We are about 1500 Jews in the community in Norway, and the milieu is not large. Let Gerstenfeld show his sources. I would gladly meet them myself.

Dagbladet writes that in an interview with Norway's TV2 this month Gerstenfeld asserted that "Norway is an anti-Semitic nation."
Norway has been in the forefront of opposition to Israel with clear signs of anti-Semitism, claimed Professor Gerstenfeld, who has also characterized Norwegians as a barbaric and non-intellectual society which "has a sick need to defy world opinion."

Hercz noted,

    He [Gerstenfeld] has been to Norway once, and I don't know anyone who has spoken with him. I told him that it is not always so easy to be a Jew in Norway, but Gerstenfled goes much further than that.

Aftenposten interviewed Anna Sender, leader of the Jewish religious community in Norway. She doesn't believe that the article will worsen the relationship between Norway and Israel, but says it won't make the situation any better for the Jewish minority in Norway.

    This type of reporting is not acceptable. It is rather unfortunate, and we don't identify with it. We have discussed this also with the newspaper.

Sender wants to see an accurate picture of Norway in the Israeli media, and finds it regrettable that the papers' readers only get half the story.

    The content in the article is not correct factually. Yes, the Finance Minister went in a demonstration march, but that does not mean that she supports all the attitudes which are expressed under the demonstration....

Norway has a long and warm friendship with Israel and with the Palestinians. The possibilities which good contacts can shape are destroyed when descriptions of reality are based upon stigmatizing events and statements more than understanding and nuance. This serves neither one nor the other side.

Norway became one of Israel's biggest supporters upon the foundation of the state. Elements of the left have supported Palestinian rights since the sixties, but there remained amazing cross-party support for Israel up until the nineties. After Norwegian troops were assigned to Hebron to help keep the peace between the Israeli settlers and the Palestinian residents, attitudes in Norway gradually began to change in the wider population. The soldiers did not return with positive stories about the extremist settlers and their behavior towards the Palestinians or the troops. Once Israel turned "Oslo" into a dirty word, Norwegian support for Israel continued to decline. The Sharon regime did not help the Israeli cause, but the issue was not a major one in Norway. In the more recent years, labor unions and youth groups have tried to organize boycotts, but they have not come very far. Israel reacted very negatively to these even modest efforts and the demonization of Norway in the Israeli press picked up steam. The Gaza war, however, has unleashed a great deal of ill will for Israel and all the Norwegian politician's have been forced to declare a stand.
Since the war, anti-Semitism has not been a problem in Norway except among the very small extremist neo-Nazi groups. The government has moved against these groups in a manner harsher than the United States has with its similar groups. Hate speech is more restricted under Norwegian than American law. The right-wing Populist party, which has grown to one of the two biggest in Norway, is Israel's biggest political supporter.

Israel's attempts to portray any opposition or even support for Palestinians as anti-Semitism is bound to have a backlash and for the first time you are beginning to see this among Norwegians.
David Horovitz, the editor of the Jerusalem Post, has been on a crusade to paint any foreigner who doesn't accept Israeli hasbara as either naive, irrational or anti-Semitic. I would suggest you see his op-ed of the other day, but then I wouldn't want you to spend the $3.95 the Post is now charging to view it

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 03:09 PM

More manufacturing anti-Semites...


By persisting in slagging Norway, 'Jerusalem Post' drains the meaning from the word, 'anti-Semitism'

Bruce Wolman writes:

"Norwegian Jews disagree with The Jerusalem Post," blazed the headline of the Norwegian paper Dagbladet in its most commented-upon article today. For the third day the Norwegian media provided ongoing coverage of an Israeli-Norwegian spat. Surveying the wreckage, one wonders if the famed Israeli Hasbara Machine needs an overhaul.
The story continued to have legs as The Jerusalem Post posted its third effort to write about anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in Norway. The Post brought in a new reporter, Haviv Rettig Gur, and offered the following disclaimer at the end of the thrice revised article:
This article supersedes an article published earlier this week on Norway which contained inaccuracies, and has been withdrawn.

The Post dropped earlier false assertions about the Norwegian Finance Minister, but the latest version of the article leads as aggressively as the previous two with
Israel's Operation Cast Lead in January has sparked a sharp rise in incidents of violence and anti-Semitic statements in Norway that were directed at Israel and the local Jewish community.

But this time the Post reports conflicting testimonies from different Jewish Norwegians. For this version, the Post's A-team managed to find Michael Melchior, the titular chief Rabbi of Norway. Actually, it should not have been too difficult to locate Melchior. He is a former member of the Israeli Knesset and Cabinet Minister.
According to Melchior, the claim that Norway is anti-Semitic is false, and "achieved by taking a complex reality and willfully painting a bleak picture."
For example, he says, "I walk the street in Oslo wearing more than just a Star of David" - Melchior sports the beard, suit and black kippa of ultra-Orthodox Jews - "without being bothered. The same goes for my son, the rabbi of the synagogue in Oslo, and my grandchildren, who walk the streets unafraid."
Melchior notes that "on the Shabbat following the anti-Israel demonstrations, which were not so well-attended in the first place, the foreign minister and the archbishop of Oslo, together with other Norwegian leaders, came to Oslo's synagogue to protest" the anti-Semitic expressions heard at some of the demonstrations.
Dr. Imre Hercz, who reporter Maya Spitzer claimed was a source for her original article, now is quoted in the Post as saying
"It's not right to say that Norway is anti-Semitic," he insists. "Most people are not anti-Semitic. I love Norway. I love Israel. Official Norway has been very good to Israel, has helped Israel and sold oil to Israel. There's a problem with the leftists, who hate America too, and with some youngsters who demonstrate against Israel but won't demonstrate against China or Iran. But these are few. The problem is not as big as you think."

Other Jews in Norway revealed to the Post a picture closer to that portrayed in the original article:
According to Erez Uriely, an Israeli biologist who has lived in Norway since 1992, Jews in Norway "are scared to wear a kippa outside. I'm one of the few who do so. In schools, the word 'Jew' itself is a pejorative term."
Uriely founded the Center Against Anti-Semitism, which records and tries to combat anti-Semitic incidents and trends in the country of 4.6 million.

Uriely told the Post about several run-ins he had experienced with anti-Semites, but even he has to admit that Norway is not Gaza.
Uriely acknowledges that "such incidents are rare. Violence doesn't really exist in Norway. And more often, people go out of their way to be nice to you when they see that you're different."

Still Uriely maintains there is value in his anti-Semitic investigations, especially as the Norwegians are so responsive:
Though he is exasperated that the local community leadership "doesn't acknowledge the depth of the problem of anti-Semitism," he believes calling attention to anti-Semitic incidents helps bring the Norwegians themselves to correct the problem.
"In my experience, when you raise a concern in Norway - not just about anti-Semitism, also about hospital or other issues - it's corrected quickly. I wish Israel worked so efficiently," he said.

The Post claims it also talked with another Norwegian Jew, Cap. David Weiss, who has served in the Norwegian military since 1988. Weiss states:
the Jews are in "a very bad condition [in Norway]. If you wear a Star of David around your neck, as I do, you're taking a chance that you will be spat on, or attacked, or have nasty things said to you."

But Weiss also tempers his criticism:
Yet, despite such run-ins, Weiss says that in his experience, "the average Norwegian is more on the side of the Jews and Israel." He blames certain politicians, what he considers a far-Leftist media and immigrants from Muslim countries for creating the discourse that produces virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic attacks and statements.

In this third attempt The Jerusalem Post seems to be rising to the standards of journalism set by The New York Times and the Washington Post. Bbut wait, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet also did some of its own investigating:
It seems the Post failed to mention that Erez Uriely was excluded from Oslo's synagogue in 2004 on account of his close cooperation with an extreme right-wing political party and with an anti-Islamic organization, Forum Against Islamization.

And Dagbladet also tried to locate Captain Weiss. It appears that Captain Weiss cannot be found on the tax rolls, which are a public listing of every individual who pays taxes in Norway. Perhaps out of fear, Captain Weiss cannot be found in any of the Norwegian telephone catalogues either. He has never presented himself to any of the Norwegian media.
Taking everything into consideration, one has to ask, why did the Jerusalem Post see the need to write this article in the first place?

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: Joe Offer
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 04:27 PM

Attention:

Please watch the size of your copy-paste posts of non-music threads. The (very generous) limit is one screen, and I have a 32-inch screen. Many posts on this thread exceed the limit. By rights, I should delete them.
No more, please. If the text is longer than one screen, post a summary and provide a link.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 05:35 PM

How many inches is the screen that determines what is an acceptable length (from top to bottom and side to side)? I always have to basically guess based on the screen size of our Mac, but I don't usually use that computer, so it's just a guess, and I don't know if our Mac is the same size as the screen that is being used as a guide. If I know the inches, that would help a lot.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 05:47 PM

I'm afraid I have to disagree with the premise that the Palestinians are have not been willing to compromise or that they are motivated by hatred of Jews or resentment over past treatment. For one thing, the Palestinians (or at least the person claiming to represent the Palestinians) has already signed away their rights to something like seventy percent of their land. That's a hell of a big compromise, and between the two groups, it's the only compromise that's been made so far.

Would it be appropriate for us to characterize the struggles that Blacks in the US South engaged in during the civil rights era as being driven by their hatred of Whites, and by their resentment of past treatment? Or would it be more appropriate to characterize them as being driven by the natural impulse that all human beings have to want freedom and equality? Would it be appropriate for us to characterize the struggles that Blacks in South Africa engaged in under apartheid as being driven by their hatred of Whites, and by their resentment of past treatment? Or would it be more appropriate to characterize them as being driven by the natural impulse that all human beings have to want freedom and equality?

Their struggles were driven by the natural impulse that all human beings have to want freedom and equality, of course. The same is true of the Palestinians. They are not engaging in their struggle against apartheid and the suppression of their rights by the government of Israel because of hatred of Jews or because of their resentment for past ill treatment. They are engaging in perfectly normal and natural behavior for people whose freedom, equal rights, and self determination is being denied them by groups that are motivated by supremacism and the desire to maintain privilege at the expense of other groups. And not only is it perfectly normal for them to want to do this, it is also their right.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: GUEST,MarkS (on the road)
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 10:33 PM

For an interesting perspective on Hamas, please follow this link



Sorry I am not smart enough to make the link a blue clicky, but perhaps some other considerate 'catter will oblige, because it is
WAY to long to cut and paste.

Thanks

Mark

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: GUEST,mark-s(on the road)
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 10:38 PM

Sorry
could not even get the text through! Someday I have to figure out how to work this thing

Here it is in plain text - maybe it can be modified

http://wdl3.streamhoster.com/seanruiz/Other/Hamas-Steven%20Plaut.pdf

Thanks again

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Jun 09 - 11:18 PM

The right wing hard liners of Isreal are just as craven as our own variety of neocons. When a need to critisize them is called antisemetic, they are trying to have it both ways.
Sorry Schmule, you can't have it both ways.

Be it a Bush doctrine or a 'Netenyahoo' doctrine, wrong is wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Operation Cast Lead Explained
From: CarolC
Date: 24 Jun 09 - 11:39 AM

I think that piece about Hamas shows a bit of a double standard. We have worked with terrorist groups many times in our history. We recognized the government of Israel right after it was formed, even though it was composed to a large extent of terrorists who had killed a lot of people (including people working for the British government). We have worked with members of terrorist groups in Iraq who have become part of the government there. We fund and support in other ways, terrorist groups in countries like Iran and in parts of Latin America and other places. We have absolutely no problem getting in bed with terrorist groups when it is advantageous to our imperialist agenda, and we only condemn terrorist groups when it helps us accomplish our secondary agendas.