| September 3, 2009
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'Hatred is turning me into a Jew' |
Deuteronomy 28:37
"You shall become a horror, a proverb, and a taunt among all the people where the LORD drives you.
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Romans 11:25-27
For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery--so that you will not be wise in your own estimation--that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, "THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB." "THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS."
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Jeremiah 30:16-17
`Therefore all who devour you will be devoured;
And all your adversaries, every one of them, will go into captivity;
And those who plunder you will be for plunder,
And all who prey upon you I will give for prey.
`For I will restore you to health
And I will heal you of your wounds,' declares the LORD,
`Because they have called you an outcast, saying:
"It is Zion; no one cares for her."'
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Genesis 12:3
And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed."
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Romans 11:17-21
But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in." Quite right, they were broken off for their unbelief, but you stand by your faith. Do not be conceited, but fear; for if God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you, either.
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Shalom in Christ Jesus,
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For clarity sake, I
personally am not stating "Hatred is turning me into a Jew." However, hatred is
causing many Jewish people to consider their ethnicity whom never have before.
This is prophetic fulfillment.
The title of this alert
comes from a commentary by Nick Cohen published back in February called "Hatred
is turning me into a Jew". This commentary appears about half way down this
edition of Be Alert!
What struck me immediately
when reading this is how The Word of The LORD is coming true and so few know or
understand it. Through the worldwide hatred of the Jewish People, God is
drawing them together, back to their heritage and back to their land. God
prophesied all this thousands of years ago in intricate details. Now more
Jewish People are coming to believe in their Messiah Yeshua than ever before. Indeed, they need to before the time of Jacob's trouble when the Bible tells us that two thirds of all Jewish people will be killed before Christ returns. This is terrible but the truth that must be told.
Indeed His return is very
near.
Additionally, our president,
our country and increasingly much of the church are turning against Israel.
This is something the Lord does not take lightly and judgment has always come
upon those who have turned against Israel.
One commentary below is from
News Corp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch. Not known for being a righteous man
due to three marriages and ownership of numerous sources of sleazy entertainment that pollutes and destroys families, children and marriages, many
of his large group of news organizations tend to be quite fair and friendly to
Israel and Christians [Note: For info on Murdoch's connection to
Zondervan and Rick Warren, see pages 35-37 of Roger Oakland's excellent book on
the Emergent Church, Faith Undone]. In America Fox News stands out as the only national
network that reports unbiased towards the Jewish Nation. As Fox News continues
week after week, month after month to literally blow away the competition in
the ratings Genesis 12:3 stands:
And I will bless those who
bless you,
And the one who curses you I
will curse.
And in you all the families
of the earth will be blessed." - Genesis 12:3
May this alert be an
encouragement in this time of growing persecution of both Jew and Christian.
The LORD bless you, and keep
you;
The LORD make His face shine
on you,
And be gracious to you;
The LORD lift up His
countenance on you,
And give you peace.' -
Numbers 6:24-26
BE/\LERT!Scott Brisk
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Do not be arrogant toward the branches
Israeli occupation a 'sin against God' says global churches' leader
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ECUMENICAL NEWS INTERNATIONAL - By Peter Kenny and Stephen Brown - August 26, 2009
Geneva - The general secretary of the World Council of Churches has said that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories should be declared a "sin against God".
"Occupation along with the concomitant humiliation of a whole people for over six decades constitutes not just economic and political crimes but, like anti-Semitism, it is a sin against God," said WCC general secretary the Rev. Samuel Kobia, in a report on 26 August to a meeting of the church grouping's main governing body, its central committee.
He noted that at its founding assembly in Amsterdam in 1948, the WCC has declared that anti-Semitism is a "sin against God". Kobia said, "Are we ready to say that occupation is also a sin against God?"
In his speech, Kobia, a Methodist from Kenya, referred to areas he visited during his tenure and noted the need for urgency in seeking peace for the Middle East region. "In the context of war and violence in the region, people are desperately searching for security for themselves and their families," Kobia said.
He was giving his final report to the main governing body of the WCC as the grouping's general secretary, before he steps down at the end of 2009. The 26 August to 2 September meeting of the WCC central committee will on 27 September elect a new general secretary.
Kobia was elected to a five-year term that began in 2004 and announced in February 2008 that for "personal reasons" he would not seek a second term.
The WCC groups 349 churches, principally Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox. The Roman Catholic Church does not belong to the WCC but has members on some of its committees.
Speaking to journalists after delivering his report, Kobia referred to the "dehumanisation" of both the occupied and the occupiers in the Palestinian territories. "The concern is not only for the victims but also the perpetrators," he stated, referring to Israel.
Kobia recalled that former South African president Nelson Mandela had once said that a condemnation by the WCC of apartheid as "sin" had helped undermine the system of minority white rule.
In his report to the WCC governing body, Kobia said that the "the ongoing construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories" needed to be seen "within the broader historical context of ethnic upheaval in Palestine which paved the way for the creation of the modern state of Israel".
While he said Israelis recalled "The War of Independence" that led to the foundation of the State of Israel, for Palestinians the period would always be known as the "Nakba" or "catastrophe". Many Palestinians would remember this as "a form of 'ethnic cleansing' that saw the largest forced migration in modern history", Kobia said.
"It is estimated that no less than a million people were expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians were massacred, hundreds of Palestinian villages deliberately destroyed, mosques and churches profaned, and convents and schools vandalised.
"What in 1948 was described by Palestinians leaders as 'racism and ghettoising the Palestinians in Haifa" has by the beginning of the 21st century in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza become a full-blown apartheid system complete with its brand of 'Bantustans'," argued Kobia, referring to the nominally black-ruled territories in South Africa during the apartheid era.
He said that hundreds of church-owned properties were at risk in current evictions of Palestinian families and demolition of their homes in East Jerusalem, and that the Israeli actions hobbled efforts by the new U.S. administration to reach out to the Middle East.
Kobia also referred to visiting Damascus with the heads of the Middle East Council of Churches and of the Christian Conference of Asia.
There they met, "Iraqi Christians who had been forced to leave their country simply because they were Christians and the occupation of their country was seen as a form of modern day Christian crusade".
"This issue requires, at the least, close co-operation with churches in the receiving countries but, even more, a common commitment for peaceful solutions to the conflicts in the region," asserted Kobia. "We must all play a part in finding solutions. The Middle East needs peace and needs it today, for tomorrow is too late."
Original Report
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Live Teaching Engagements
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Fallen Away: "So called brothers" thumb the nose at God and the apple of His eye
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Brian McLaren, Christian social justice and the boycott of Israel
SEISMIC SHOCK - June 15, 2009
This week the Jerusalem Post identifies three of the most prominent evangelical critics of Israel as Jimmy Carter, Stephen Sizer and Brian McLaren. Whilst Carter is world famous, and I have discussed Sizer at length on this blog, Brian McLaren is less well-known.
Brian McLaren is a leading figure in the Emergent Church movement, which seeks to deconstruct traditional church culture and move away from the conservative American evangelicalism. McLaren is portrayed on his website as someone who takes peace and social justice seriously. Thus, it is important for Christians who listen to McLaren to closely scrutinise his approach to social justice and the accuracy of his statements.
McLaren signed the Joint declaration by Christian Leaders on Israel's 60th Anniversary, which was organised by Ben White and Philip Rizk. McLaren's interest in global social justice focuses in particular upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the immediate aftermath of the Gaza war back in January, McLaren urged his readers to take these words of Ben White seriously:
THERE are often two obstacles to the taking of an appropriate stance towards a just peace in Palestine/Israel by Churches and Christian groups in the West. First, it can be difficult to formulate a meaningful critique of Israeli policies without attracting cries of "excusing terrorism" or "anti-Semitism". The latter accusation is especially levelled against Christians who join the global movement to put pressure on Israel by using boycotts and disinvestment.
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More than ever, Christian leaders and Churches need to stand up and be counted. This could mean many things: pilgrimages that show solidarity with Palestinians; targeted boycotts of Israeli products; writing to MPs; inviting Palestinian speakers; twinning; film screenings; selling Palestinian-made goods.
So here we have Brian McLaren, a leading proponent of Christian social justice, drawing attention to Ben White's call for boycotts against Israel (I am sure McLaren is ignorant of Ben White's bigoted attitudes towards Israel and Jews, his approach to antisemitism and antisemitic violence, his flirtation with Holocaust denial, as well as his view that boycotting Israel itself is 'non-violent resistance' that is designed to go hand-in-hand with violence resistance).
So should Christians really take Ben White's call for an anti-Israel boycott seriously, even when endorsed by so widely-read a figure as Brian McLaren? And should Christians sympathetic to the Palestinian national cause join in anti-Israel boycott campaigns?
The Engage group of academics, itself a progressive, left-wing movement concerned with social justice and sympathetic to Palestinians, has already dealt with Ben White's arguments for a boycott of Israeli academics as part of the boycott movement against Israel (for more visit the BDS website).
Back in 2007, Mira Vogal wrote (referring to the proposed UCU boycott of Israeli academics):
"...Engage came into existence to oppose the growing phenomenon of left antisemitism which, most notably in the case of the boycott campaigns, often takes the form of anti-Zionism. The boycott calls have aims that are utterly unrealistic. The 2007 academic boycott call lacked proper aims or endpoints and in their absence the campaign was obliged to rely heavily on depicting Israel only as an atrocity. And if Israel is beyond redemption then people who oppose its frenzied condemnation must be reprehensible people. And if most Jews are in the ranks of those reprehensible people, then watch out Jews. Engage, which is left-wing, against the occupation and skeptical about nationalism, exists primarily to make and illustrate these points."
And here's the crux of the matter: the organised global boycott movement against Israel includes a call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israelis from other countries. And surely excluding individuals based upon the country they are from is racist. It doesn't matter what you say, what matters is where you were born. It is socially unjust. Christian leaders interested in social justice should be able to find productive methods of encouraging peace in conflict zones. Israel-Palestine should be no different (although it appears to be for Stephen Sizer).
Using socially unjust, racist boycotts in an attempt to create social justice is morally and intellectually flawed. Whilst it is of great concern that Brian McLaren does not appear to recognise this in his blog post from January, it is still hopeful that McLaren will publicly distance himself from the organised global anti-Zionist boycott movement.
As Conor Foley puts it:
We need more critical engagment, open debate and dialogue. Bans and boycotts achieve precisely the opposite effect.
Of course, when it comes to racism, Brian wouldn't want to be seen as adding more fuel to the stereotypical fire that Christians are judgmental, insensitive, reactive, more ideological than theological, and so on. If this is true of anti-Hispanic racism then what of antisemitic racism?
Original Report
Christian group holds 'die-in' to protest Gaza
NEW ZEALAND PRESS ASSOCIATION - January 13, 2009
A Wellington Christian group and members of the public held a "die-in" in the city centre to protest the Gaza conflict this afternoon.
Wrapped in bandages covered in fake blood, 150 people, including a number of young children, met in Civic Square and lay on the ground while a drum beat 844 times to symbolise the 831 Palestinians and 13 Israelis killed in the month-long conflict.
The protest was organised by a group called Christians for Justice in Palestine, who said they were "shocked into action" by Israeli attacks on Gaza, and could not "stay neutral".
Father Gerard Burns, who drew attention last week when he smeared blood and paint on an Israeli memorial, said today he was delighted with the number of people who took part in the protest.
He declined to comment on his actions last week, saying only that there were various forms of protest.
Commenting on banners at other marches which placed the Star of David alongside swastikas and compared Israel to the Nazis, Father Burns said: "...I would just say the blood of Palestinians is of equal value to the blood of anyone else". ...
Read Full Report
Report: Israeli envoy to U.K. accuses church service of being anti-Semitic
HAARETZ [Schocken/DuMont Schauberg] - December 11, 2008
Ron Prosor, Israel's Ambassador in Britain lashed out against the Church of England on Wednesday for having approved an anti-Israel carol that was sung as part of a service, according to the Times of London.
The carol was part of an "alternative" event called 'Bethlehem Now: Nine Alternative Lessons and Carols' that took place at the end of November in the Wren church of St James's in Central London, and was organized by anti-Israel campaigners, including one liberal Jewish group.
The carol Twelve Days of Christmas was sung as: "Twelve assassinations/Eleven homes demolished/Ten wells obstructed/Nine sniper towers/Eight gunships firing/Seven checkpoints blocking/Six tanks a-rolling/Five settlement rings. Four falling bombs/Three trench guns/Two trampled doves/And an uprooted olive tree." "It was appalling to see a church allow one of its most endearing seasonal traditions to be hijacked by hatred," Prosor told the Times, accusing the Church of having failed to condemn such a carol which provokes anti-Semitism and disregards years of efforts to bridge gaps between the two religions. ...
Read Full Report
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"Obama clearly has Muslim sensibilities. He sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective."
The Source Of Obama's Anti-Israel Policy
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By Bishop E W Jackson Sr (United States) - June 16, 2009
Like Obama, I am a graduate of Harvard Law School. I too have Muslims in my family. I am black, and I was once a leftist Democrat. Since our backgrounds are somewhat similar, I perceive something in Obama's policy toward Israel which people without that background may not see. All my life I have witnessed a strain of anti-Semitism in the black community. It has been fueled by the rise of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, but it predates that organization.
We heard it in Jesse Jackson's "HYMIE town" remark years ago during his presidential campaign. We heard it most recently in Jeremiah Wright's remark about "them Jews" not allowing Obama to speak with him. I hear it from my own Muslim family members who see the problem in the Middle East as a "Jew" problem.
Growing up in a small, predominantly black urban community in Pennsylvania, I heard the comments about Jewish shop owners. They were "greedy cheaters" who could not be trusted, according to my family and others in the neighborhood. I was too young to understand what it means to be Jewish, or know that I was hearing anti-Semitism. These people seemed nice enough to me, but others said they were "evil". Sadly, this bigotry has yet to be eradicated from the black community.
In Chicago, the anti-Jewish sentiment among black people is even more pronounced because of the direct influence of Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Most African Americans are not followers of "The Nation", but many have a quiet respect for its leader because, they say, "he speaks the truth" and "stands up for the black man". What they mean of course is that he viciously attacks the perceived "enemies" of the black community - white people and Jews. Even some self-described Christians buy into his demagoguery.
The question is whether Obama, given his Muslim roots and experience in Farrakhan's Chicago, shares this antipathy for Israel and Jewish people. Is there any evidence that he does. First, the President was taught for twenty years by a virulent anti-Semite, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In the black community it is called "sitting under". You don't merely attend a church, you "sit under" a Pastor to be taught and mentored by him. Obama "sat under" Wright for a very long time. He was comfortable enough with Farrakhan - Wright's friend - to attend and help organize his "Million Man March". I was on C-Span the morning of the march arguing that we must never legitimize a racist and anti-Semite, no matter what "good" he claims to be doing. Yet a future President was in the crowd giving Farrakhan his enthusiastic support.
The classic left wing view is that Israel is the oppressive occupier, and the Palestinians are Israel's victims. Obama is clearly sympathetic to this view. In speaking to the "Muslim World," he did not address the widespread Islamic hatred of Jews. Instead he attacked Israel over the growth of West Bank settlements. Surely he knows that settlements are not the crux of the problem. The absolute refusal of the Palestinians to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is the insurmountable obstacle. That's where the pressure needs to be placed, but this President sees it differently. He also made the preposterous comparison of the Holocaust to Palestinian "dislocation".
Obama clearly has Muslim sensibilities. He sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective. His construct of "The Muslim World" is unique in modern diplomacy. It is said that only The Muslim Brotherhood and other radical elements of the religion use that concept. It is a call to unify Muslims around the world. It is rather odd to hear an American President use it. In doing so he reveals more about his thinking than he intends. The dramatic policy reversal of joining the unrelentingly ant-Semitic, anti-Israel and pro-Islamic UN Human Rights Council is in keeping with the President's truest - albeit undeclared - sensibilities.
Those who are paying attention and thinking about these issues do not find it unreasonable to consider that President Obama is influenced by a strain of anti-Semitism picked up from the black community, his leftist friends and colleagues, his Muslim associations and his long period of mentorship under Jeremiah Wright. If this conclusion is accurate, Israel has some dark days ahead. For the first time in her history, she may find the President of the United States siding with her enemies. Those who believe as I do that Israel must be protected had better be ready for the fight. We are.
NEVER AGAIN!
E.W. Jackson is Bishop of Exodus Faith Ministries, an author and retired attorney.
Email: bshpjksn@gmail.com
Original Report
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Obama extols Koran; press missed it
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ONE NEWS NOW [American Family News Network] - By Jim Brown - June 10, 2009
A Christian writer says President Obama's recent speech in Cairo praising Islam is further evidence the American president has a "low view" of biblical Christianity.
Robert Knight, a senior writer for Coral Ridge Ministries, has written a column titled "Obama Nation's Low View of Christianity." Knight says he wrote the column as a service to everyone who wants thorough documentation -- not just bits and pieces -- of President Obama's statements distorting Christianity.
Knight argues that the most disturbing thing President Obama said in his Cairo speech was that the Middle East was the first place where Islam was "revealed."
"That word 'revealed' is very important," Knight explains. "It means an unveiling, and it means a divinely-inspired unveiling -- which would indicate that the president is saying the Koran is a holy book. In fact, he referred to the Koran several times as the 'Holy Koran.'"
Such a perspective from their elected chief executive, says Knight, should concern Bible-believing Christians.
"If you're a Christian, you don't regard the Koran as a holy book of any sort," he states. "You regard it as springing out of the Old Testament, because it incorporates a lot of the Torah, as does the Christian Bible -- but then it goes off into a false religion."
Knight says to call the Koran a holy book goes beyond diplomacy, yet Obama understood the significance of what he was saying because "of all people, he knows the power of words." However, Knight points out that most of the press in the United States missed or ignored the remark.
Original Report
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Obama hosts dinner for Islamic holy month
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President praises American Muslims for contributions to culture, country
ASSOCIATED PRESS - September 2, 2009
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Tuesday praised American Muslims for enriching the nation's culture at a dinner to celebrate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
"The contribution of Muslims to the United States are too long to catalog because Muslims are so interwoven into the fabric of our communities and our country," Obama said at the iftar, the dinner that breaks the holiday's daily fast.
The president joined Cabinet secretaries, members of the diplomatic corps and lawmakers to pay tribute to what he called "a great religion and its commitment to justice and progress."
Attendees included Congress' two Muslim members - Reps. Keith Ellison and Andre Carson as well as ambassadors from Islamic nations and Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.
'Inspiration to all of us'
Obama shared the story of Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, another invited guest, who broke a state record for most career points as a Massachusetts high school student.
"As an honor student, as an athlete on her way to Memphis, Bilqis is an inspiration not simply to Muslim girls - she's an inspiration to all of us," he said.
Obama also noted the contributions of Muhammad Ali, who was not in attendance, though the president borrowed a quote from famous boxer, explaining religion.
"A few years ago," Obama said, "he explained this view - and this is part of why he's The Greatest - saying, 'Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams - they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do - they all contain truths.'"
Ramadan, a monthlong period of prayer, reflection and sunrise-to-sunset fasts, began Aug. 22 in most of the Islamic world. It is believed that God began revealing the Quran to Muhammad during Ramadan, and the faithful are supposed to spend the month in religious reflection, prayer and remembrance of the poor.
Bush also held iftars
White House dinners marking the holy month are nothing new. Former President George W. Bush held iftars during his eight years in office.
Obama has made a special effort since taking office to repair U.S. relations with the world's Muslims, including visits to Turkey and Cairo. In a June speech at the Egyptian capital, as well as in one to another important Muslim audience, in Turkey, Obama said: "America is not - and never will be - at war with Islam."
Obama also released a video message to Muslims before the start to Ramadan. In the video, he said Ramadan's rituals are a reminder of the principles Muslims and Christians have in common, including advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
Original Report
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Obama's 'Hit Man' Emanuel Splitting US American Jewry
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - July 31, 2009
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has denied calling White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and senior Obama advisor David Axelrod "self-hating Jews." The alleged use of that term is particularly timely as Jews mourn on Thursday the destruction of the First and Second Holy Temples; Judaism teaches that "causeless hatred" among Jews was the reason for the fall of the Second Temple.
Whether or not the Prime Minister used the term, increasing criticism by American Jews of U.S. President Barack Obama signals a split in the American Jewish community.
The trigger for the growing crisis between Israel and the U.S., and among American Jews, is the issue of "settlements," which President Obama labeled as "illegitimate" in his speech in Cairo nearly two months ago. He later included Jewish communities in eastern Jerusalem as part of the "settlement" label.
President Obama revealed this week that his White House advisor Rahm Emanuel, whose father was an Israeli and part of the underground resistance movement under the British Mandate, tells him everything he needs to know about Israel.
Emanuel also is the man who choreographed the handshake between former President Bill Clinton, former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn.
He has pushed the president into a head-on collision with the Netanyahu government, but there is a growing opinion that he has also left the president out on a limb. Emanuel's strategy was to demonstrate that the pro-Israel lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) no longer speaks for American Jewry.
Mondoweis Blogger Philip Weis, who continually attacks a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, wrote last month, "Obama's game is to defeat the Israel lobby from within. He could not defeat the lobby from outside it.... But now he is cracking it like a nut, and counting on Jews to do the cracking."
That strategy has turned into a wall of opposition, both in Israel, where the president's popularity rating is near-zero, in the U.S. where Emanuel has simply ignored opposing views of major Jewish organizations, and in the normally anti-settlement American press.
Washington Post vs. Obama
The liberal and highly influential Washington Post has criticized President Obama on his policy towards Israel, and an editorial on Thursday went even further. Under the title "Tough on Israel - Why: President Obama's battle against Jewish settlements could prove self-defeating," the newspaper's editors wrote:
"One of the more striking results of the Obama administration's first six months is that only one country has worse relations with the United States than it did in January: Israel. The new administration has pushed a reset button with Russia and sent new ambassadors to Syria and Venezuela; it has offered olive branches to Cuba and Burma. But for nearly three months it has been locked in a public confrontation with Israel over Jewish housing construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank."
The editorial criticized the president for his "absolutist demand" for a freeze on all building for Jews in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. "Palestinian and Arab leaders who had accepted previous compromises immediately hardened their positions; they also balked at delivering the 'confidence-building' concessions to Israel that the administration seeks. Israeli public opinion, which normally leans against the settler movement, has rallied behind Mr. Netanyahu."
The newspaper warned that any compromise by President Obama may leave him "diminished among both Israelis and Arabs."
The turning point against President Obama may have been the meeting in the White House earlier this month with American Jewish leaders. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations requested a discussion with President Obama, but Emanuel decided who would attend.
He used the opportunity to attempt to create an impression of solid support for President Obama and show off the relative new J Street lobby. Unlike AIPAC, it is active politically and endorsed and campaigned for Congressional candidates who fit their agenda, which includes Israel's surrendering all of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem that were restored to the Jewish State in the 1967 Six-Day War.
At the same time, he excluded National Council of Young Israel (NCYI) and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), both of which support a Jewish presence in all of Israel.
The latest confrontation on a new project for Jews in eastern Jerusalem prompted Alan Solow, chairman of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, to state this week, "Hundreds of Arab families have moved into Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the same right should be accorded to Jewish residents to live wherever they choose in Jerusalem. No government of Israel has or can pursue a discriminatory policy that would prevent the legitimate presence of Jews in any area of the capital."
In response, five leftist groups, including Americans for Peace Now and J Street, criticized supporters of Jews' rights to build in the area. It added, "Unilateral actions that inflame tensions, impair negotiations and make the ultimate resolution of issues surrounding Jerusalem more difficult are unhelpful and should be avoided at this particularly sensitive moment."
While Emanuel is trying to strengthen his position, he faces another challenge on the Obama administration's health plan. Emanuel's brother Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel is Obama's "health czar," and the plan is being widely panned in American media, leaving the White House Chief of Staff with two potential failures for the President.
Original Report
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Jewish Groups Slam Obama's Honoring Anti-Israel Leaders
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Avraham Zuroff - August 5, 2009
Two pro-Israel American organizations and the Republican Jewish Coalition lashed out at U.S. President Barack Obama for awarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) called on the administration to "firmly, fully and publicly repudiate her views on Israel and her long public record of hostility and one-sided bias against the Jewish state."
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) also condemned the decision to award former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The ZOA pointed out that both Tutu and Robinson "have made statements and presided over organizations and conferences that were viciously critical of Israel." ZOA's National President Morton A. Klein said, "It is deplorable that President Obama should have honored two such utterly partisan, vociferously anti-Israel figures like Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu."
Klein noted that human rights groups are continuously being controlled by figures that are anti-Israel. He added, "Neither Robinson nor Tutu ever resigned in protest at the direction these bodies have taken, or took anything that could be called a courageous stand in favor of truth. Rather, both have lent their reputations to travesties of the truth and given the bodies on which they served an aura of undeserved legitimacy. By awarding them the Medal of Freedom, President Obama compounds their offense by lending them further underserved legitimacy."
Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks said, "Mary Robinson, who was one of the people responsible for the 2001 Durban conference against racism descending into an anti-Israel propaganda forum, is not an appropriate recipient for one of our nation's highest honors. In fact, awarding the Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson does great dishonor to the many outstanding men and women who have received it in the past." ...
In April 2002, Robinson's Human Rights Commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood after Robinson initiated a drive to become a fact finder to investigate the fictitious massacre in Jenin.
Desmond Tutu has claimed that Zionism has "very many parallels with racism" and has called Jews "arrogant." Tutu accused Jews of exhibiting "an arrogance - the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support." ...
Read Full Report
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"...They are watching very closely," said an Israeli official.
Obama spies monitoring Jews house-to-house
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'They try to mingle with us to get more information on what we're doing'
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - August 5, 2009
construction in Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank to the point of watching Israeli moves house-to-house in certain key neighborhoods, WND has learned.
Obama has called for a complete halt to what he refers to as settlement activity, meaning Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem or the West Bank. Obama's edict extends to natural growth, or accommodating for the housing needs of existing local settler population centers. The demand is an apparent abrogation of a deal Israel struck with the Bush administration to allow natural growth.
For the past few months, Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, has protested to the highest levels of the Israeli government about evidence found of any Jewish housing expansion in those areas, informed Israeli officials said.
The officials, who spoke on condition that their names be withheld, said that last March Mitchell oversaw the establishment of an enhanced apparatus based in the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that closely monitors the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods, incorporating regular tours of the areas, at times on a daily basis.
Previously, under the Bush administration, the consulate kept a general eye on Jewish Jerusalem and West Bank construction, receiving much of its information from nongovernmental organizations.
"Mitchell's apparatus takes things to a whole new level. They are watching very closely," said an Israeli official.
Jewish leaders in the West Bank said the consulate takes no pains to hide their activities.
"They come out. They tour our communities. They try to interact with our leadership," David Ha'ivri, spokesmen for the Shomron Regional Council in the West Bank, told WND.
"They drive around the towns, check up on what's going on. They try to mingle with us to get more information on what we're up to and what we're doing," he said.
Ha'ivri said the consular officials present themselves as advisers to the U.S. consul-general.
"But we know they are really spies for the Obama administration," he said.
Jerusalem officials affirm the consular staff report to Obama's envoy, Mitchell. ...
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Oh No B.O.!
Poll: Only 12 percent of Israelis believe Obama supports Israel
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DEUTSCHE PRESSE-AGENTUR - August 20, 2009
Only 12 percent of Israelis believe U.S. President Barack Obama's policies are supportive of Israel, according to a poll released on Thursday.
The poll was conducted jointly by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Police and Survey Research and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It was conducted between August 9 and 15.
The poll also found that 64 per cent of Palestinians still feel Obama's policy is more supportive of Israel, while 40 per cent of Israelis think it is more support of the Palestinians. The poll's margin of error was 3 per cent.
According to the poll, a majority of Israelis were unhappy with the results of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah conference which ended Saturday, according to a joint Palestinian-Israeli poll published Thursday.
The poll found that 59 per cent of Israelis believe that in the light of the resolutions taken by the Fatah conference, Israel does not have a partner for peace negotiations. ...
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Also:
Minister Herschkowitz: Some of Obama's policies are 'borderline anti-Semitic'
THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - By Gil Hoffman - August 17, 2009
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will reject US President Barack Obama's request for a freeze on natural growth in Judea and Samaria, Habayit Hayehudi head Daniel Herschkowitz said Sunday, based on conversations with Netanyahu. ...
"I am disappointed in Obama's policies," Herschkowitz said. "Some of the steps he has taken, like giving a medal to Mary Robinson, are borderline anti-Semitic. Israel is an independent state. Relations with the US are important, but relations must go both ways. I don't know if Obama understands it, but most Americans believe that Israel is their only anchor in the Middle East." ...
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Report: Obama to Mediate Israel-PA Meeting
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Maayana Miskin - August 31, 2009
Talks between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will begin in under a month with help from a new moderator - United States President Barack Obama. So reports the American television news network Fox News, based on an exclusive interview with President Shimon Peres.
Peres told Fox that the three-way meeting is expected to take place at the United Nations compound in New York.
In advance of the meeting, Israeli, American, and European officials continue to talk regarding the PA's demand that Israel freeze construction in Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem. The PA has warned that it will not begin negotiations as long as Jews are allowed to build in areas that the PA claims as the site of a future Arab state.
The PA is backed by the U.S. and the E.U., both of which have pressured Israel to halt construction.
When it comes to the proposed building freeze, Netanyahu "knows he must do it," Peres said. The prime minister "is aware of the choice, and he knows there is no chance, no escape, no alternative to go ahead and make peace," he stated.
If negotiations between Israel and the PA resume, they will not include Hamas, Peres said. Hamas became part of the PA leadership after winning the most recent PA elections, but later split from the Fatah-led PA after staging a violent coup in Gaza. Currently, Hamas rules Gaza, while the Fatah-led PA controls Arab towns in Judea and Samaria.
Original Report
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Melanie Phillips
The bitter fruits of appeasement
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THE SPECTATOR [Press Holdings/Barclay-LONDON] - By Melanie Phillips - August 10, 2009
As we all know, because President Obama, UK Foreign Secretary Miliband and the serried ranks of the EU keep telling us, it is Israel's obduracy which is holding up a resolution of the Middle East impasse. If only it dismantled its settlements in the 'occupied' territories and agreed to split Jerusalem there would be peace. Well, now those 'moderate' Palestinians who Obama, Miliband and the EU would have us believe only want to live peacefully alongside Israel have stated what they actually want. They don't want half of Jerusalem. They want it all - and they want it ethnically cleansed of Jews altogether, every last Jewish man woman and child: gone, disappeared, airbrushed out of the picture, vanished altogether from Israel's capital and Judaism's foundational holy city. And they will continue to use violence to bring this about. Ha'aretz reports:
According to Israel Radio, the Fatah general conference, which convened in Bethlehem for a three-day gathering, adopted a position paper which also states that the Palestinian national enterprise will not reach fruition until all of Jerusalem, including the outlying villages, come under Palestinian sovereignty.
...'Fatah will continue to sacrifice victims until Jerusalem will be returned [to the Palestinians], clean of settlements and settlers,' the paper states. According to Israel Radio, the paper does not make a distinction between the eastern and western halves of the capital, nor does it distinguish between the territories within the Israeli side of the Green Line and the areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Note the terminology. To Fatah, Israeli citizens are settlers. Once again, they have taken the opportunity Obama and the west have offered them. With American and British rhetoric in particular reaching in recent months a crescendo of vituperation against the 'settlements', insisting they are dismantled (Obama) or their produce labelled as illegal (Miliband), the Palestinians are seizing on the word 'settlements' to label all Israelis the illegitimate inhabitants of Israel's capital. Who can be surprised? For the Palestinians, there is no green line, no division between 'legitimate' Israel and the 'illegitimate' 'occupation'. For them, all of Israel is illegitimately occupied. Look at their maps of the region. Israel isn't there. And the aggression of Obama and Miliband towards Israel has galvanised them into believing they can bring this about. Thus the bitter fruits of appeasement.
The Arabs and Muslims claim that Jerusalem is their holy city. This is untrue. Jerusalem is, historically and doctrinally, the foundational holy city of Judaism and the Jewish people. It is integral to the Torah, Jewish history, religious liturgy and belief. By contrast, its importance to Islam is not doctrinal at all: it is not even mentioned in the Qur'an. Its importance to the Arab and Muslim world --which indeed cannot be overestimated -- is principally on account of its strategic importance in the conquest of the non-Islamic world, the defeat of Judaism and Christianity and their subjection to Islam. Daniel Pipes wrote in 2001 a comprehensive summary in the Middle East Quarterly of how that strategic significance has played out over the centuries. As he concluded:
Politics, not religious sensibility, has fueled the Muslim attachment to Jerusalem for nearly fourteen centuries; what the historian Bernard Wasserstein has written about the growth of Muslim feeling in the course of the Countercrusade applies through the centuries: 'often in the history of Jerusalem, heightened religious fervour may be explained in large part by political necessity.' This pattern has three main implications. First, Jerusalem will never be more than a secondary city for Muslims; 'belief in the sanctity of Jerusalem,' Sivan rightly concludes, 'cannot be said to have been widely diffused nor deeply rooted in Islam.' Second, the Muslim interest lies not so much in controlling Jerusalem as it does in denying control over the city to anyone else. Third, the Islamic connection to the city is weaker than the Jewish one because it arises as much from transitory and mundane considerations as from the immutable claims of faith. ...
Ed. Note: I encourage everyone to read the excellent and comprehensive article concerning Jerusalem by Daniel Pipes Melanie Phillips mentions. It is 'must read' educational/historical information for every discerning believer.
BE/\LERT!
Read Full Report
The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem
Middle East Quarterly - By Daniel Pipes - September 2001
See Here
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| American government website 'ignores Jews' |
'It's as if U.S. is totally denying the existence of Israel'
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - August 10, 2009
TEL AVIV - The website for the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem ignores Jews and the state of Israel while providing news and services geared primarily toward Arabs and Palestinians, a pro-Israel group has charged.
"This disclosure is almost beyond belief," stated Harvey Schwartz, chairman of American Israeli Action Coalition. "It is as if the United States is totally denying the existence of Israel or Israelis. We do not believe that this is in accordance with the will of the American people."
The Coalition sent around blast e-mails pointing out the consulate website maintains an Arabic section but not a Hebrew one and that almost the entire website is dedicated to helping the Palestinian cause.
A WND review of the website yesterday found about a dozen announcements related to U.S. aid to the Palestinians, including English training provided to Palestinians schools; an item about a $200 million grant to the Palestinian Authority; and eight local grants provided to Arabs in eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
Not a single announcement was related to Israel except for a two-sentence item on the opening ceremony to mark the U.S. funding of an initiative to review Israel and Palestinian text books. But even that announcement was geared toward the PA.
"In attendance were religious leaders as well as a representative from the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Education and Higher Education," read the brief statement.
The website further announces the availability of educational financial grants to candidates who must be "a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the Gaza Strip," thereby excluding Israelis.
One initiative announced on the site is a U.S. grant provided to the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange, a Palestinian nonprofit whose official website refers to the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem as "Palestinian areas" even though the territories contain historically Jewish biblical areas and are recognized by international law as either "disputed" or "occupied" but not as Palestinian areas.
Asked about these finds, a spokesperson for the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem told WND the "consulate is an independent mission. We are the U.S. representatives to the Palestinian Authority."
That statement might be news to the Israeli residents of Jerusalem and the West Bank who use the consulate for visa and citizenship matters. Also, the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem is used by American citizens in Israel for all sorts of matters.
The consulate spokesperson added the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv is the official American representative to the State of Israel.
Even the embassy website, however, maintains an Arabic section but not a Hebrew one. Also that website features far more news items related to the PA and American programs for Palestinians than announcements related to Israel.
"The Obama administration's continued efforts to marginalize Israel are becoming more evident daily," said Schwartz. "The U.S. Consulate's efforts demonstrate that those efforts are continuing unabated." ...
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Jerusalem US Consulate is De Facto Embassy to PA
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hana Levi Julian - August 18, 2009
The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem is America's embassy to the Palestinian Authority, according to the U.S. Consul-General's response to a letter penned by an irate Jewish American.
Dr. Adam Splaver, a Florida cardiologist, wrote to the American Consul-General in Jerusalem on August 14 expressing outrage that the Consulate's website "did not mention Israel, projects in Israel, the people of Israel or the modern state of Israel. What it does mention is the numerous projects you have with the Palestinians and in their cities and towns."
The consulate building is located in the eastern section of Jerusalem, in an area restored to Israel's capital during the1967 Six Day War. The Palestinian Authority has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem be recognized as the capital of any future Arab state established alongside Israel. For now, the PA has refused to come to the negotiating table unless Israel first agrees to freeze all construction, including building to accommodate natural growth, in all post-1967 areas of Jerusalem, as well as in all of Judea and Samaria.
Splaver, a former president of the Young Israel synagogue in Hollywood, Florida, wrote that he was "appalled," adding that he believed the omission was not the result of an error, but rather a deliberate statement.
"As an American and as a Jew, I must voice my objections to your political message and clearly, proudly, and defiantly state that a united Jerusalem was, is and will be the capital of the Jewish homeland called Israel," he added.
The reply, received Monday, August 17, speaks for itself:
"Thank you for your feedback on the U.S. Consulate General Jerusalem's Website. Just to clarify, the Consulate General in Jerusalem is the principal representation to the Palestinian Authority. We also provide services to American citizens in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
"The U.S. embassy to Israel is in Tel Aviv and is focused on the bilateral relationship with Israel. Their website is
http://usembassy-israel.org.il/. The American Center in Jerusalem also provides information about the United States to the Israeli public. Their website is http://usembassy-israel.org.il/ac/ .
"Jerusalem is a final status issue. Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to resolve its status during negotiations. We will support their efforts to reach agreements on all final status issues."
While the current seat of the PA government is in Ramallah, the United States government appears to already recognize the Palestinian Authority's claim to Jerusalem. At the same time, successive American governments have failed to officially recognize Israel's declaration of the city as its capital since 1948.
"I am surprised that more aren't aware of the de facto embassy [to the PA in Jerusalem] that the U.S. government has set up," Plaver said in an exclusive telephone interview Tuesday afternoon with Israel National News. "I am in shock!"
Original Report
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10 King Watch
Unified Arab Front Calls for More US Pressure on Israel
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz - August 4, 2009
Arab states are putting up a unified front in pushing for continued U.S. pressure on Israel. In meetings with Kuwaiti, Jordanian and Saudi officials this week, American leaders were given the same message in different forms.
In a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday, Kuwaiti Emir Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah said that Israel must concede to Arab demands, as laid out in a 2002 Saudi diplomatic initiative for establishing relations between Israel and Arab states.
"We will implement this peace initiative when Israel implements and fulfills its obligations," al-Sabah said, referring to the Saudi proposal. He added that it is in Kuwait's interest that peace reign in the region.
The Saudi Initiative, as it is known, calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from all lands under Jewish sovereignty since 1967, including Jerusalem, the creation of a new Arab sovereignty in those lands, and Israeli shouldering of the responsibility for settling all Arabs who fled the 1948 Israeli War of Independence and their descendants. This is termed a "just solution" in the text of the initiative and is understood to refer to Israel absorbing several million more Arab citizens. In exchange, after Israel fulfills these terms, Arab states ratifying the deal would offer a full normalization of relations with the Jewish State.
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan took a similar view Monday during meetings between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh.
At a joint press conference at the State Department, Clinton said she "expressed our deep appreciation for Jordan's leadership in working with other Arab states to support peace with deeds, as well as words." However, the Jordanian official rejected an American request for the kingdom's adoption of measures that would increase normal relations with Israel.
"In the Middle East, there has been in the past an over-investment, perhaps, by the parties in pursuing confidence-building measures, conflict-management techniques, including transitional arrangements," Judeh said, "and an overemphasis on gestures, perhaps at the expense of reaching the actual end game."
The "end game", in the Jordanian view, required Israel to agree to the terms of the Saudi Initiative. The ongoing process of slow, incremental negotiations has failed, Judeh said, and has "proven repeatedly to be confidence-eroding, rather than confidence-building."
Apparently reading from a nearly identical script, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal also demanded that Israel immediately accept the terms of the 2002 proposal and rejected American efforts at building bridges with Israel before that happens. ...
Saudi Arabia rejected U.S. calls to take any steps towards normalization or recognition of Israel until the Israelis capitulate. However, he said, the Saudi Initiative offers Israel "an end to their conflict, recognition and full normal relations as exist between countries at peace." He added that the Obama Administration has stated, in agreement with the Arab position, that the presence of Jewish-owned homes in post-1967 Israeli territories is "illegitimate".
Despite the Saudi position, as echoed by Jordan and Kuwait, Clinton said, "Saudi Arabia's continued leadership is absolutely vital to achieve a comprehensive and lasting peace." In response to a journalist's question, Clinton added, "We also know that there are a series of issues that have to be resolved. As His Royal Highness said, and as I have just repeated, you have to take those issues issue by issue, but within the negotiations of the comprehensive peace agreement." That agreement, she said, is the ultimate American objective.
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| Gulf Arab money 'behind purchases of Israeli land' |
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - August 15, 2009
Vast tracts of Israeli agricultural land in north Israel's Galilee area have been bought up by Arabs with financial backing from the Gulf, Israeli public radio reported on Saturday.
It said dozens of hectares (acres) have been bought and that a local farmers' association had tried in vain to warn the Israeli authorities about the sale.
The radio station quoted Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon as saying the affair was not a matter for his department since "it concerns private land."
Galilee and the Negev desert in the south are relatively lightly populated, and Israel has a minister, Sylvan Shalom, charged specifically with development.
Much of the country's Israeli Arab population of around 1.4 million people lives in the Galilee.
On August 3 the Israeli parliament passed a controversial land reform law that allows local officials to privatise publicly owned land, triggering the ire of the Arab minority.
Arab MPs said the law, which is backed by hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would block efforts by Palestinians who fled the creation of Israel in 1948 to recover their property or seek compensation for what they have lost.
The new law allows local municipal officials to sell off state land in urban centres and maintains a previous ban on the sale to non-Jews of land controlled by the Keren Kayemet LeIsrael Jewish agency.
Original Report |
"...my experience of left-wing antisemitism has changed the way I think and made me, if you like, more Jewish."
Hatred is turning me into a Jew |
The more the British Left indulges antisemitism, the more kosher I feel
THE JEWISH CHRONICLE - By Nick Cohen - February 12, 2009
My name is Nick Cohen, and I think I'm turning into a Jew. Despite being called "Cohen", I've never been Jewish before. It's not simply that I am an atheist. My Jewish friends tell me that it is hard to find an educated London Jew who is not an atheist, but that I have no connection with Jewish culture.
The Jewish side of my family is my father's (which is not a help, I gather). My great grandparents fled from the Tsarist Empire at the time of the pogroms, but their son, my grandfather, revolted. He became a Communist and married outside the faith. My father was brought up with no connection to Judaism and, inevitably, so was I.
My sole interest in Jewish concerns came from being a left-wing opponent of the far Right, and the blood-soaked antisemitic superstitions which turned Europe into a graveyard. When I was young, such attitudes seemed unproblematic. You did not have to be a Jew to oppose fascism; everyone I knew did that regardless of colour or creed.
Today the old certainties have gone because there are two far-right movements: the white neo-Nazi parties that the Left still opposes; and the clerical fascists of radical Islam which, extraordinarily, the modern Left succours and indulges. I am not only talking about Ken Livingstone, George Galloway and their gruesome accomplices in the intelligentsia. Wider liberal society is almost as complicit. It does not applaud the Islamist far Right, but it will not condemn it either. From the broadcasters, through the liberal press, the Civil Service, the Metropolitan Police, the bench of bishops and the judiciary, antisemitism is no longer an unthinkable mental deformation. As long as the conspiracy theories of the counter-enlightenment come from ideologues with dark rather than white skins, nominally liberal men and women will not speak out.
Fight back and you become a Jew, whether you are or not. Mark Lawson recently described an argument at the BBC over the corporation's decision not to screen the charity appeal for Gaza. His furious colleague declared that the only reason Lawson supported the ban was because he was Jewish. Lawson had to tell him that he was, in fact, raised a Catholic.
A furious Labour MP was no different when he told a colleague of mine that I had gone off the rails when I married a "hard-right" Jewish woman from North London. My friend replied that this would be news to my wife, a liberal Catholic from Stoke-on-Trent.
It was kind of him to point that out, but I would no longer protest that I wasn't Jewish, and I don't think Lawson should either. It is cowardly to stammer that you are not a Jew because you concede the racist's main point - that there is something suspect about being Jewish - as you do it.
In any case, my experience of left-wing antisemitism has changed the way I think and made me, if you like, more Jewish.
Although I want to see every Israeli settlement on the West Bank dismantled, it was clear to me that when Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel it had declared war and had to accept the consequences. I would not have thought that five years ago.
You do not need me to add that mine is a minority point of view among liberals, and that British Jews are living through a very dangerous period. They are the only ethnic minority whose slaughter official society will excuse. If a mass murderer bombed a mosque or black Pentecostal church, no respectable person would say that the "root cause" of the crime was an understandable repulsion at the deeds of al-Qaeda or a legitimate opposition to mass immigration. Rightly, they would blame the criminal for the crime.
If a synagogue is attacked, I guarantee that within minutes the airwaves will be filled with insinuating voices insisting that the "root cause" of the crime was a rational anger at the behaviour of Israel or the Jewish diaspora.
Put like this, the position of British Jewry sounds grim. Remember, however, that the first aim of radical Islam is to subjugate Muslims. When brave feminists, gays, democrats and liberals in the Muslim world and in Britain's Muslim communities make a stand, they, too, are accused of being the tools of Zionists.
As the struggle between theocracy and liberalism intensifies, I can see some being pushed into taking the same journey I have taken and finding their views towards Judaism and Israel softening as they realise that antisemitism helps drive the fascistic ideologies of the 21st century just as it drove the Nazism of the 20th.
I will tell them that the opponents of totalitarianism must never be frightened. If their enemies say they are Jews, they should shrug and say: "All right, I am." As long as readers of the Jewish Chronicle don't object, of course.
Nick Cohen is a columnist for The Observer.
Original Report |
| I am not Jewish but... |
THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - Commentary by Rupert Murdoch - March 19, 2009
Over the years, some of my wildest critics seem to have assumed I am Jewish. At the same time, some of my closest friends wish I were.
So let me set the record straight: I live in New York. I have a wife who craves Chinese food. And people I trust tell me I practically invented the word "chutzpah."
Ladies and gentleman, I am humbled by the honor you have given me - because this award speaks more to your good work than it does to mine.
The American Jewish Committee started in response to the persecution of Jews in czarist Russia. And your response took a very American form: an organization that would speak up for those who could not speak for themselves.
In the century since your founding, the American Jewish Committee has become one of the world's most influential organizations. Yet though your concerns begin with the safety and welfare of Jews, these concerns are anything but parochial. The reason for this is clear: You know that the best guarantee of the security of Jews anywhere is the freedom of people everywhere.
Your good work has helped bring real and lasting changes to our world. Unfortunately, while some threats have been defeated, new ones have taken their place. And these new threats remind us the AJC's work is more vital than ever.
In Europe, men and woman who bear the tattoos of concentration camps today look out on a continent where Jewish lives and Jewish property are under attack - and public debate is poisoned by an anti-Semitism we thought had been dispatched to history's dustbin.
In Iran, we see a regime that backs Hizbullah and Hamas now on course to acquire a nuclear weapon.
In India, we see Islamic terrorists single out the Mumbai Jewish Center in a well-planned and well-coordinated attack that looks like it could be a test run for similar attacks in similar cities around the world.
MOST FUNDAMENTALLY, we see a growing assault on both the legitimacy and security of the State of Israel.
This assault comes from people who make clear they have no intention of ever living side-by-side in peace with a Jewish state - no matter how many concessions Israel might make. The reason for this is also clear: These are men who cannot abide the idea of freedom, tolerance and democracy. They hate Israel for the same reasons they hate us.
As I speak, the flashpoint is Gaza. For months now, Hamas has been raining down rockets on Israeli civilians. Like all terrorist attacks, the aim is to spread fear within free societies, and to paralyze its leaders. This Israel cannot afford. I do not need to tell anyone in this room that no sovereign nation can sit by while its civilian population is attacked.
Hamas knows this better than we do. And Hamas understands something else as well: In the 21st century, when democratic states respond to terrorist attacks, they face two terrible handicaps.
THE FIRST HANDICAP is military. It's true that Israel's conventional superiority means it could flatten Gaza if it wanted. But the Israel Defense Forces - unlike Hamas - are accountable to a democratically chosen government.
No matter which party is in the majority, every Israeli government knows it will be held accountable by its people and by the world for the lives that are lost because of its decisions. That's true for lives of innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire. And it's also true for the Israeli soldiers who may lose their lives defending their people.
In this kind of war, Hamas does not need to defeat Israel militarily to win a big victory. In fact, Hamas knows that in some ways, dead Palestinians serve its purposes even better than dead Israelis.
In the West we look at this and say, "It makes no sense." But it does make sense.
If you are committed to Israel's destruction, and if you believe that dead Palestinians help you score a propaganda victory, you do things like launch rockets from a Palestinian schoolyard. This ensures that when the Israelis do respond, it will likely lead to the death of an innocent Palestinian - no matter how many precautions Israeli soldiers take.
Hamas gets away with this, moreover, because it does not rule Gaza by the consent of those it claims to represent. It rules by fear and intimidation. It is accountable to no one but itself.
This is the chilling logic of Gaza. And it helps explain why even a strong military power like Israel can find itself at a disadvantage on the ground.
THE SECOND HANDICAP for Israel is the global media war. For Hamas, the images of Palestinian suffering - of people losing their homes, of parents mourning their dead children, of tanks rolling through the streets - create sympathy for its cause.
In a battle marked by street to street fighting, the death of innocents is all but inevitable. That is also true of Gaza. And these deaths have led some to call for Israel to be charged with war crimes by an international tribunal.
But I am curious: Why do we never hear calls for Hamas leaders to be charged with war crimes?
Why, for example, do we hear no calls for human rights investigations into Hamas gunmen using Palestinian children as human shields? Why so few stories on the reports of Hamas assassins going to hospitals to hunt down their fellow Palestinians? And where are the international human rights groups demanding that Hamas stop blurring the most fundamental line in warfare: the distinction between civilian and combatant?
I suspect the answer has to do with the same grim logic that leads Hamas to provoke a military battle it knows it cannot win. Whether Israel is ever found guilty of any war crime hardly matters. Hamas gets a propaganda win simply by having the charge made often and loudly enough.
In this, Israel finds itself in much the same position the United States found itself in Iraq before the surge. There, al-Qaida realized that it was in its interests to provoke sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni - no matter what the cost to innocent Iraqis. That is the nature of terror. And what we are seeing in Gaza is just one front in this much larger war.
IN THE WEST, we are used to thinking that Israel cannot survive without the help of Europe and the United States. Tonight I say to you: Maybe we should start wondering whether we in Europe and the United States can survive if we allow the terrorists to succeed in Israel.
In this new century, the "West" is no longer a matter of geography. The West is defined by societies committed to freedom and democracy. That at least is how the terrorists see it. And if we are serious about meeting this challenge, we would expand the only military alliance committed to the defense of the West to include those on the front lines of this war. That means bringing countries such as Israel into NATO.
My friends, I do not pretend to have all the answers to Gaza this evening. But I do know this: The free world makes a terrible mistake if we deceive ourselves into thinking this is not our fight.
In the end, the Israeli people are fighting the same enemy we are: cold-blooded killers who reject peace, who reject freedom and who rule by the suicide vest, the car bomb and the human shield.
Against such an enemy, I will not second-guess the decisions of a free Israel defending her citizens. And I would ask all those who support peace and freedom to do the same.
Adapted from a March 4 speech to the American Jewish Committee by the chairman and CEO of News Corporation on receiving its National Human Relations Award.
Original Report |
Mass Media Deception
Media misleading on Jews evicting Arabs from Jerusalem
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Aaron Klein: 'Painting picture that could not be further from the truth'
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - August 2, 2009
JERUSALEM - The U.S. and international media are rife with misleading stories of club-wielding Israeli police evicting Palestinians from homes in Jerusalem, failing to provide proper background information while painting a picture of Jewish expansionist activity that could not be further from the truth.
A BBC article entitled, "Palestinians evicted from Jerusalem," tells of Israeli police who evicted nine Palestinian families living in two houses in "occupied East Jerusalem."
"Jewish settlers moved into the houses almost immediately. The U.S. has urged Israel to abandon plans for a building project in the area," reported the British outlet.
An AFP report, "Israel evicts Palestinians from Jerusalem homes," begins with a scene of intimidating Jews removing peaceful Arabs from their apartments.
"Israeli riot police wielding clubs kicked out two Palestinian families from their homes in occupied east Jerusalem on Sunday, defying international protests over Jewish settlement activity in the area," reported AFP.
"I was born in this house and so were my children," Maher Hanoun, one of the evictees, was quoted as stating. "Now we are on the streets. We have become refugees."
Reuters reported that Israeli police "evicted two Palestinian families on Sunday from homes in Arab East Jerusalem, and Jews moved in, despite pressure from Israel's main ally, the United States, to freeze settlements."
Scores of other news outlets featured similar pieces. Most of the articles focused almost exclusively on international condemnation of the Israeli moves. The pieces did not provide much background on just why these Arabs were being evicted other than one sentence in each article stating an Israeli court ruled the Arabs should be removed.
Most of the pieces did not cite the justification for the court ruling, with the exception of Reuters, which wrongly claimed the decision was based solely on "19th century documents."
Now, let's reveal what is really happening.
The housing complex in question is located in the Sheik Jarra neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem. The home was originally Jewish, but its Jewish occupants were chased out during countrywide anti-Jewish Arab riots in 1929. Arabs then squatted on the property, with one family, the Hejazi family, becoming the de facto occupants despite never having purchased the property.
Even though documentation proves the complex is owned by Jews and that Arabs have been squatting on it illegally for almost a century, Jewish groups still legally re-purchased the property from the Hejazi family. Following pressure from the Palestinian Authority, however, the family later denied selling the complex back to the Jews despite documentation and other evidence showing the sale went through.
Israel's court system, not exactly a friend of Jewish "settlers," twice ruled now the property undoubtedly belongs to Jews.
Many of the articles on the home use the terms "occupied" and "East Jerusalem." Reuters called it "occupied Arab East Jerusalem."
According to the United Nations, eastern sections of Jerusalem are not "occupied" but "disputed." Referring to the area as "Arab East Jerusalem" presupposes the outcome of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that have yet to take place and ignores British documentation that authenticates Jews outnumbered Arabs in eastern Jerusalem from the 1800's until Jews were expelled by Arabs in 1929.
Now let's talk about "East Jerusalem."
Historically, there was never any separation between eastern and western Jerusalem. The terminology came after Jordan occupied the eastern section of the city, including the Temple Mount, from 1947 until it used the territory to attack the Jewish state in 1967. Israel reunited Jerusalem when it won the 1967 Six Day War, although the Palestinians claim eastern sections for a future capital.
Palestinians never maintained any state or official national entity in Jerusalem. Demographics from the late 1800's show Jews actually outnumbered Arabs in Jerusalem at the time.
The eviction of squatting Arabs from a Jewish-owned property in Jerusalem follows recent U.S. demands for Israel to halt all "settlement activity," meaning Jewish construction, in Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank.
Last month, Israel's ambassador to Washington was summoned by the State Department to demand a Jewish construction project in eastern Jerusalem be immediately halted.
The construction project at the center of attention, a hotel financed by Miami Beach philanthropist Irving Moskowitz, is located just meters from Israel's national police headquarters and other government ministries. It is a few blocks from the country's prestigious Hebrew University, underscoring the centrality of the Jewish real estate being condemned by the U.S.
Moskowitz's housing project, legally purchased, formerly was the house of the infamous mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who spent the war years in Berlin as a close ally of Adolf Hitler, aiding and abetting the Nazi extermination of Jews.
Al-Husseini was also linked to the 1929 massacre of Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron and to other acts of incitement that resulted in death and destruction in what was then called Palestine. Some Palestinians have expressed a desire to preserve the building as a tribute to Husseini.
Original Report
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Media Bias: Is Judgment falling the anti-Christian, anti-Israeli Press?
National Geographic blames Israel for Christianity's decline in Middle East.
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CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) - By Dexter Van Zile - June 6, 2009
In its June 2009 issue, National Geographic demonstrated just how far it is willing to go to scapegoat Israel for suffering in the Middle East. The magazine also showed how far it is willing to go to downplay the role Islam played in contributing to Christianity's decline in the region. In an article written by Don Belt, the magazine's senior editor for foreign affairs, National Geographic portrays the departure of Christians from the Holy Land as largely a consequence of Israeli (and American) policies in the region. The article offers no honest description of the well-documented mistreatment of Christians at the hands of Muslim majority populations in the Middle East.
The Crusades
Belt's efforts to whitewash the role Islamic conquest played in the decline of Christianity in the Middle East becomes obvious in the third paragraph of the article which states that "it was during the Crusades (1095-1291) that Arab Christians, slaughtered along with Muslims by the crusaders and caught in the cross fire between Islam and the Christian West, began a long, steady retreat into the minority."
In reality, Arab Christianity began its "long, steady retreat" into minority status hundreds of years before the European crusaders ever set foot in the Holy Land. As Bat Ye'or and other commentators have documented, the process of forced conversion and subjugation of Christians in the Middle East began soon after the death of Mohammed in 632. Ye'or writes that after unifying the Arabian Peninsula under Muslim rule, Abu Bakr, Mohammed's successor, brought war to non-Muslims, including Christians, outside Arabia. In her book The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (Farleigh Dickinson Press, 1996) Ye'or writes:
Arab idolaters had to choose between death or conversion; as for Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, if they paid tribute and accepted the conditions of conquest, they could buy back their right to live, freedom of worship and security of property. In 640 the second caliph, Umar Ibn al-Khattab, drove the Jewish and Christian tributaries out of Hijasz by invoking the dhimma (contract) of Khaybar: the land belonged to Allah and his Envoy and the contract could be broken at the discretion of the imam, the religious and political leader of the umma [Muslim religious community] and the interpreter of Allah's will. Umar also invoked the desire expressed by the Prophet on his deathbed: "Two religions should not co-exist within the Arabian peninsula." (Page 39)
While Ye'or is careful to explain that the subjugation of peoples and faiths was part and parcel of life in the Middle East at the time and that offering conquered peoples a chance to convert to Islam "curbed the barbarity of war," she also makes clear that Christianity declined under Muslim conquest in the region conducted under the rubric of jihad, or holy war against non-Muslims.
Instead of acknowledging this history, Belt portrays early Muslim history as a time of tolerance, describing the Levant's history of "coexistence between Muslims and people of other faiths, which dates from the earliest days of Islam. When the Muslim Caliph Omar conquered Syria from the Byzantine Empire around 636, he protected the Christians under his rule, allowing them to keep their churches and worship as they pleased."
Here again, Belt ignores an inconvenient truth: that by the eighth century Arab Muslim rulers used indigenous Christian communities as both a source of income and forced labor (slavery) in the Middle East, a policy that contributed to the decline of Christianity in the region. (For a detailed description of this process, consult Bat Ye'or's The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, pages 100-140.)
Key passage
In one key passage, Belt lays out his agenda: Obscure the facts about where Christianity is growing in the Middle East (Israel), downplay and minimize the role Muslim extremism plays in marginalizing Christians in Palestinian society, and blame Western Christians for the misdeeds of Muslims in the region. In this passage, Belt writes:
For anyone living in Israel or the Palestinian territories, stress is the norm. But the 196,500 Palestinian and Israeli Arab Christians, who dropped from 13 percent of the population in 1894 to less than 2 percent today, occupy a uniquely oxygen-starved space between traumatized Israeli Jews and traumatized Palestinian Muslims, whose rising militancy is tied to regional Islamist movements that sometimes target Christians. In the past decade, "the situation for Arab Christians has gone rapidly downhill," says Razek Siriani, a frank and lively man in his 40s who works for the Middle East Council of Churches in Aleppo, Syria. "We're completely outnumbered and surrounded by angry voices," he says. Western Christians have made matters worse, he argues, echoing a sentiment expressed by many Arab Christians. "It's because of what Christians in the West, led by the U.S., have been doing in the East," he says, ticking off the wars in Iraq Afghanistan, U.S. support for Israel, and the threats of "regime change" by the Bush Administration. "To many Muslims, especially the fanatics, this looks like the crusades all over again, a war against Islam waged by Christianity. Because we're Christians, they see us as the enemy too. It's guilt by association."
The first problem with this passage is that it obscures the increase of the Christian population in Israel.
Belt is correct when he reports that the overall percentage of Christians in Israeli society has declined from what it was in the 1800s. Christians have become a smaller proportion of the population in Israel - not because they are leaving but because of the growth of Israel's Jewish population. Israel is after all, the Jewish homeland. Despite this proportional decline, Israel's Christian population has increased substantially in absolute numbers since its founding, a fact Belt does not acknowledge. As previous CAMERA analysis on this subject reveals, the population of Christians in Israel is currently increasing at a rater faster than that of Jews in Israel. Analyst Tamar Sternthal writes:
As documented in the Central Bureau of Statistics' Statistical Abstract of Israel 2008 (Chart 2.2), in the last dozen years, Israel's Christian population grew from 120,600 in 1995 to 151,600 in 2007, representing a growth rate of 25 percent. In fact, the Christian growth rate has outpaced the Jewish growth in Israel in the last 12 years! In 1995, there were 4,522,300 Jews in Israel, and in 2007 there were 5,478,200, representing a growth rate of 21 percent - 4 percent less than the Christian population grew during the same time.
Since 1949, when there were 34,000 Christians in Israel, the population has grown 345 percent.
Clearly, Israel's population of Christians is growing substantially. Why does Belt omit this fact?
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Outrageous: Brokaw Wonders What Israel Can 'Learn' From Buchenwald And 'Their Treatment of Palestinians'
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NEWSBUSTERS.org [Media Research Center] - By Warner Todd Huston - June 5, 2009
The folks at Powerline realized the implications of an outrageous news clip featuring NBC's Tom Brokaw conducting an interview with the Obammessiah. Apparently, this hard news journalist thought he'd get deep and ask a pertinent question about Israel, the Palestinians, and just what it might be that the Jews can learn from Obama's visit to Buchenwald and how they should treat Palestinians and stuff about Nazis or something.
Seriously, what sort of historical ignorance does it take for someone to ask what Jews can learn about Buchenwald from a guy that has never visited the place before now, never had any intimate or even cultural connection to it, and wasn't even alive when it was a Nazi terror to the Jewish world? I mean, is Brokaw insinuating that the Jews did not learn anything from their own "visit" to Buchenwald?
And what sort of insensitive fool does it take to imagine that Jews have any new "lesson" to learn of Buchenwald that it has yet to learn? And how is it that Obama can be their teacher? The thought of it all is ludicrous.
But, let's get down to brass tacks, shall we? The singular point here is that Tom Brokaw just implied that Israel is treating the Palestinians just like the Nazis treated them! That is the true outrage here.
And I have to give President Obama credit for being smart enough not to take Brokaw's bait, too.
Transcript
BROKAW: What can the Israelis learn from your visit to Buchenwald? And what should they be thinking about their treatment of Palestinians?
OBAMA: Well, look, there's no equivalency here.
Of course, the proper response would have been to force Brokaw to more clearly make his point and then to ridicule him for being an idiot right on the spot. But, we can't expect Obama to scold his lapdogs too harshly, I guess.
If you don't want to endure this insufferable man (I know, which one, right?) scoot ahead to about 4 minutes into this journalistic tour de force.
Original Report
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'Huffington Post spreading anti-Semitic hate'
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Report finds site being used for propaganda, wild conspiracies
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - June 14, 2009
TEL AVIV - The Huffington Post is serving as an Internet meeting place for the spread of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda, including wild conspiracy theories and vicious slurs, according to a new report.
The Committee for Middle East Reporting in America, or CAMERA, monitored the Huffington Post for a brief period in March and May, finding the talkback threads that accompany the site's news articles and opinion columns routinely contained an alarming amount of hate material.
The report said that while such talkbacks can also be found at other sites, such as Britain's Guardian and the Independent newspaper websites, CAMERA focused on the Huffington Post "due to its large audience and because of the steady volume of hostile sentiment directed towards the Jewish state and its supporters."
CAMERA found the overwhelming majority of talkbacks it monitored on Jewish or Israel-related material at the Huffington Post contained anti-Israel propaganda, including easily disprovable lies.
The report found a popular theme on site was the steady repetition of conspiracy theories claiming excessive Jewish influence in America.
"American Jews who support Israel are derided as disloyal citizens or agents of Israel. Unsubstantiated accusations that Jews control the media, American foreign policy and the Congress abound," the report stated.
A typical comment appeared on a thread discussing the meeting three weeks ago between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
"The only reason Israel has been able to get by with this is because American Jews have bought off Congress in a number of ways - all real," read that comment.
Other comment threads revealed widespread ignorance about basic facts about America's Mideast policies.
"American financial support for Israel is routinely exaggerated, often to the point of absurdity," stated the report.
A Huffington Post article from May 20, discussing tensions between Obama and Netanyahu, for example, generated a series of comments reciting false figures:
- 30 billion a year goes to that country [Israel] ...
- Israel stole 2.3 trillion dollars from the Pentagon when Dov Zackheim was controller of the Pentagon under Rumsfeld.
Another piece critical of Israeli settlers on June 1, 2009 elicited the comment:
- money given to Israel by the U.S. comes out to approximately $55,000 annually per person in that country.
Atual U.S. aid to Israel is less than three billion dollars, amounting to about $400 per Israeli citizen. Nearly all U.S. support to Israel comes in the form of military aid, and usually involves the purchase of American-made supplies and equipment.
Continued the CAMERA report: Alongside complaints about American aid with Israel are the denials that Israel has ever provided anything to America in return. Israeli software expertise, medical innovations, water conservation methods and shared intelligence are not acknowledged by these detractors.
"Nor is there any attempt to inject a balanced perspective. Aid to Israel is only a minor component of American foreign commitments to the defense of its allies, yet the far more costly commitments to the defense of Europe, Japan and South Korea receive no consideration."
'Move all Jews to Texas'
Other typical threats misrepresent Israeli society to tar Israel as a racist and exclusionary state, according to the report's findings.
Some typical talkbacks, followed by facts provided by CAMERA:
Talkback: "You have to be Jewish to hold office in Israel."
Fact: There are Arab and Druse members of Parliament, judges, government ministers and military commanders.
Talkback: "Most Israelis are of European origin. Today there are six million Europeans and Americans who happen to be Jewish occupying land that was peacefully occupied by Palestinians before 1948... "
Fact: Over half of all Israelis are of Middle Eastern and African origin. Jewish settlement prior to 1948 drew in Arabs from surrounding regions into what had previously been mostly depopulated areas.
Talkback: The Palestinians are fighting for survival against Israeli extermination.
Fact: The population of Gaza and the West Bank is ten times what it was in 1948. Since Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the average Palestinian life span has increased from 48 to 72 years. All measures of health and well-being improved steadily from 1967 to 2001. Despite intensified conflict since 2001, this has not been reversed. (Refer to data collected by the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the Palestinian Authority's Central Bureau of Statistics.
Other monitored talkbacks contained anti-Semitic material following articles about Iran or about Jews in the U.S.
Following one May 20 one commenter proposed forcibly removing Jews from their homes. Another agreed, adding:
- Good suggestion. I would give them Texas so they can bring in all the Jews from all over the world. Then, the world will take a deep breath of relief.
Another piece from May 21 reporting on the testing of an Iranian missile prompted one commenter to suggest that the "commotion over the missile launch" was an Israeli ploy to incite the world against Iran. Nine of the first 10 comments expressed sympathy for the Iranian regime whose leader has openly vowed to erase the Jewish state.
The CAMERA report concluded by recommending more stringent monitoring of talkbacks by the Huffington Post and other sites.
"While CAMERA does not support limiting the opinions expressed on talkback threads, insufficient filtering of slanderous accusations and the absence of fact-checking encourages the spread of misinformation about Israel and the Middle East conflict."
Original Report
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Global Media Attack on Israel
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Sweden Funded Anti-Israel Allegations
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - August 23, 2009
Antagonism between Israel and Sweden over Swedish media accusation that IDF soldiers sold Arab body parts is heating up, in light of evidence that Sweden's government funded the "research" for the story. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is expected to demand a Swedish government condemnation of the accusations.
News of the funding was broken Sunday morning by Maariv/NRG. Maariv's correspondent in Sweden, Liran Lotker, reports that most of the material in last week's controversial article is old, having appeared in a book written in 2001 by the author of the article. The book, entitled Inshallah, was funded by various bodies, including the Foreign Ministry of Sweden, Swedish labor unions, and some organizations based in the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas.
said he would not grant work visas to Aftonbladet reporters in Israel, and the Government Press Office (GPO) says it will not, at this stage, grant press cards to Aftonbladet journalists. GPO Director Danny Seaman said newspapers such as Aftonbladet employ leftists in the guise of journalists, who later enter the country to participate in international protests against Israel.
The current controversy began last Tuesday, when Donald Bostrom authored an article in Sweden's most popular newspaper, the Aftonbladet tabloid, accusing IDF soldiers of murdering Arabs and harvesting their organs. Bostrom based the story on testimony by several Arabs identified only by their first names, and told Voice of Israel Radio on Wednesday that he does not know for sure if their accounts are true. ...
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Hizbullah Media Goes Worldwide, To Broadcast in Australia
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - August 5, 2009
Australia has reversed two previous decisions and is allowing Hizbullah's Al Manar satellite television network to broadcast in the continent. Jewish groups expressed outrage at the decision.
The Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) ruled that the Lebanese-based network does not violate Australia's anti-terrorism standards, although the network is banned in the United States, France, Spain and Germany. Australia's ban on the armed wing of Hizbullah remains in effect.
The ACMA previously stopped Al Manar from broadcasting and conducted an investigation last year after the Australian news outlet The Age alerted it that Al Manar was reaching Australia from Indonesia. Al Manar previously has endorsed suicide bombings and has occasionally referred to Jews as being descendants of apes and pigs. ...
Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council director Colin Rubenstein said he was not surprised by the ACMA decision because its regulations have been watered down. ''The hatred, incitement to violence and racism broadcast on Al-Manar, and its attempts to raise funds for a terrorist organization, have not changed in recent years,'' he said. ...
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What is the evidence that the media is biased against Israel?
PALESTINE FACTS
Journalists are supposed to be objective and independent, delivering reporting that is as close to the "real truth" as humanly possible. Journalists insist they belong to a profession that does just that. But, sadly, there often seems to be an unwarranted bias against Israel and in favor of Israel's opponents when covering events in the Middle East, a bias that ranges from blatant unfairness to much more subtle misrepresentation of Israel's situation.
This discussion does not include partisan publications that obviously advocate for one side or another. No one expects the Tehran Times (Iran) to have anything postive to say about Israel. Rather, the concern is with the elite media, the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC, among others, organizations that should represent the highest journalistic ethics but frequently fail to do so.
Some examples:
ABC's Nightline, in covering the March 27, 2002 suicide bombing in a Netanya hotel that had occurred just hours earlier, reduced the Israeli dead and wounded to mere statistics, while they gave Arab spokesmen free rein to portray the Palestinians as the real victims of terror attacks. Reporters rarely make clear that most Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism are innocent civilians, while most Palestinian casualties have been killed with weapons in their hands as a result of their participation in violence against Israel.
Andrea Koppel of CNN, in a report about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process which aired on October 16, 2000 said, "When Camp David ended without an agreement, Palestinian despair eventually led to violence." The reference to "dispair" implies little was offered by Israel at Camp David, when in fact most of the Palestinian demands were met. Reporters almost never ask Palestinian representatives, "Why did you resort to terror when an agreement was so close?" They rarely mention that President Clinton blamed Yasser Arafat for the collapse of the Camp David talks. ...
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How many Jews would there be if not for the Holocaust?
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HAARETZ [Schocken/DuMont Schauberg] - By Ofri Ilani - April 19, 2009
If not for the Holocaust, there would be as many as 32 million Jews worldwide, instead of the current 13 million, demographer Professor Sergio Della Pergola has written in a soon-to-be published article.
Della Pergola, who holds the Shlomo Argov chair in Israel-Diaspora relations and is the director of the Division of Jewish Demography and Statistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, attempts to estimate the demographic damage to Jews of the Holocaust. The Holocaust 'struck a mortal blow particularly at the Jews of Eastern Europe because of their especially young age structure,' and particularly the number of children. This led to significant long-term demographic damage. The quantitative ramifications are far beyond what we think," he writes. ...
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All European Life Died In Auschwitz
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GENTIUNO (Via ISRAEL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY) - By Sebasti�n Vivar Rodr�guez - November 21, 2004
I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz.
We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.
The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.
And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.
They have turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime.
Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.
And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.
We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.
What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.
* This is a free translation of an article reportedly first published in a Spanish [GENTIUNO] newspaper (original article in Spanish). The editor of this site could not confirm the name of the author. A variant of the name is Sebastian Villar Rodriguez. The author's name appears to be a pseudonym, apparently to avoid attack by Arabs.
Original Report in English
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Hamas Refuses UN Plan to Teach Holocaust
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - August 31, 2009
Hamas has condemned a United Nations decision to teach refugee children in Gaza about the Holocaust, saying it is a "lie invented by the Zionists" and would reinforce Israeli control over the Holy Land.
Reuters broke the story on Monday, saying the Hamas terrorist movement, which currently controls the Gaza Strip, demands that UNRWA - the UN organization that controls many aspects of the lives of Arab refugees and their millions of descendants - withdraw plans for a new history book in UN schools in Gaza.
In an open letter to John Ging, who heads the Gaza chapter of UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), Hamas wrote that it had learned that UNRWA was about to start using a text for 13-year-olds that included a chapter on the Holocaust. "We refuse to let our children study a lie invented by the Zionists," the letter stated.
Hamas: "So-Called Holocaust"
Hamas's official spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, did not say the Holocaust was a "lie," but told Reuters that Hamas opposes "forcing the issue of the so-called Holocaust onto the syllabus, because it aims to reinforce acceptance of the occupation of Palestinian land."
Some Israelis questioned what UNRWA was doing dabbling in education altogether. "Why isn't UNRWA rehabilitating and finding permanent housing for the refugees, instead of perpetuating their misery for decade after decade?" they want to know. ...
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40 Percent of Israel's Arab Citizens Deny Holocaust
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Gil Ronen - May 17, 2009
Two out of every five Arab citizens of Israel, or 40.5 percent, say that the Shoah, or Holocaust, never happened. This figure is up from 28 percent who denied the Holocaust in a similar survey three years ago.
Only 41 percent of the Arab citizens of Israel recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, down from 65.6 percent who did so in 2003. A mere 53.7 percent recognize Israel's right to exist as an independent state at all, compared with 81.1 percent in 2003.
The statistics appear in the annual "Jewish Arab Relations Meter" published by Prof. Sami Samocha of Haifa University. The full content of the survey will be released Monday. The survey encompasses numbering 700 Arab men and women, who are a representative sample of Israel's Arab population, including Bedouin and Druze.
According to Samocha, Holocaust denial is common, not just among the less educated Arabs. A full 37 percent of Arabs who possess an education level above high school deny that the Holocaust happened.
Fifty-six percent of Arabs think that the "Right of Return" of Arab "refugees" should not include an influx into Israel's pre-1967 territory, as opposed to 72.2 percent who thought so six years ago.
12.6 percent support armed struggle
41.4 percent said that they had participated in "protest actions" over the course of the last year, compared with 28.7 percent who said so in 2003. 12.6 percent support using "all means, including weapons" in the struggle to "improve their situation." This figure is up from 5.4 percent in 2003.
53.8 percent said that it is okay for Arab children to study in a Jewish school - down from 70.5 percent in 2003. 47.3 percent do not want a Jew as their neighbor - up from 27.2 percent six years ago.
Despite the statistics, Prof. Samocha claims that Arabs' positions have not undergone serious radicalization in the past three decades and that they seek equality and peace.
Original Report
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How Islam can make people stupid
Muslim Cleric: Pepsi is "Zionist Plot"
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - June 21, 2009
Extremist Moslems have not dropped their allegations that Pepsi Cola is essentially the code name for a Zionist plot.
MEMRI has released an English transcript of an address given by a Muslim religious leader in Egypt this past February, in which he explains that PEPSI is actually an acronym for "Pay Every Penny to Save Israel."
In addition, a member of the Hamas terrorist organization's parliament in Gaza made similar accusations against Pepsi last year. Speaking with official Hamas TV station Al-Aqsa TV on April 23, 2008, Hamas MP Salem Salamah said, "There are companies established by the colonialists and occupiers - large companies with branches all over the world, like Pepsi, Pepsi Cola. This is a well-known company. Pepsi is an acronym. P-E-P-S-I - Pay Every Pence to Save Israel. Pay every pence - pence is one-hundredth of a dollar - to save Israel. Pay every pence to save Israel..."
Al-Aqsa TV promotes terrorist activity and incites hatred of Jews and Israelis, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
More recently, this past February, Egyptian cleric Hazem Abu Ismail made a similar accusation. Speaking on Al Nas TV - a Muslim religious channel in Egypt that provides Islamic programming for Muslim Muftis - Abu Ismail all but called for a Muslim boycott of Pepsi because it stands for 'Pay Every Penny Saving Israel.' Abu Ismail said a penny is "one-thousandth of a dollar."
Specifically, Hazem Abu Ismail said as follows (transcript provided by MEMRI, the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute, at www.memri.org): Do you know what the word "Pepsi" means? Pepsi as in P-E-P-S-I. The first P stands for "Pay." E stands for "Every." The third letter stands for "Penny." A penny means any small coin you receive and don't know what to do with. Pay it to "Saving" I - "Israel." In other words, pay every small coin you receive in order to save Israel. They don't want money from you - they want your small change, your pennies. If I'm not mistaken, in American economics, a penny is one-thousandth of the dollar. It's not even worth a piaster. It's only a millime. At least I think it's worth a millime, not even a piaster.
They say: "Donate the small change you don't need, but give it to the right cause. If you collect small change, you can buy this drink." They took the first letter of each word - "Pay Every Penny Saving Israel" - and they formed the word "Pepsi." When you pay [to buy Pepsi], you are saving Israel. I am not talking about Pepsi, but about Coca Cola and all of them. I don't want to specify the products. See for yourselves. You are Muslims. You can tell me. I don't know. My little son knows more about the boycott than me. When we go shopping, he says to me: "Buy this, don't buy that." He knows them by heart. He has become an expert in this.
To view this clip, click here.
Abu Ismail is also famous for telling his adherents, "During Islam's first century, there were only four cases of theft - because thieves' hands were chopped off."
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| Global Anti-Semitism Skyrocketing |
Netanyahu: 'Shocked' by Arab Lynching of Jew
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hana Levi Julian - August 15, 2009
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu expressed his shock and concern Saturday night in response to the lynching of a 59-year-old Jewish man at the Tel Baruch beach Friday night by a gang of intoxicated young Arab men from the village of Jaljulya. A 17-year-old girl from Kfar Saba and a 19-year-old female from Petach Tikvah were with the gang.
The prime minister told Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharonvitch that he was "shocked and worried" by the recent surge in murders around the country. Seven people have been murdered in the past two weeks, including two in a homosexual club two weeks ago.
Netanyahu told Aharonovitch Saturday night that he expects zero tolerance for gang activity such as the murder of Leonard "Arik" Karp. The prime minister also instructed the public security minister to expedite probes of the murder and bring the perpetrators to justice as quickly as possible.
"The cruel violence we have seen in recent days has no place in a civilized society in general, and in Israel specifically," Aharonvitch agreed. "It is inconceivable that an innocent person could be strolling with his family and be beaten to death by a group of thugs."
The minister praised police for their quick arrest of suspects. He also said the cooperation of all government offices is needed in order to confront such violent crimes. ...
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Anti-Semitic incidents reach record levels
ASSOCIATED PRESS - April 20, 2009
TEL AVIV, Israel - An Israeli university study finds that anti-Semitic incidents in the world spiked in January, while Israel was responding to attacks from terrorists within Hamas controlled Gaza.
The Tel Aviv University study says there were about 1,000 incidents in January. That's double the number for all of 2008.
The study said Muslim groups were involved in attacks on synagogues and other Jewish institutions.
The researchers also say that as some pro-Palestinian demonstrators equated Israelis with Nazis, their goal was to claim that if Nazi Germany had no right to exist, then the state of Israel has no right to exist.
Every year the university releases its annual report on anti-Semitism in the world on the eve of Israel's memorial day for the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust of World War II. ...
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Anti-Semitism Skyrocketing in Britain and France
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hana Levi Julian - February 15, 2009
Anti-Semitic violence is skyrocketing in Western European countries, particularly in Britain and France, according to national Jewish organizations.
The London-based Community Security Trust reported Friday that after Israel's counterterrorist Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, the incidence rose to more than six times the number of attacks that were carried out in the same period just a year earlier.
The organization, which tracks anti-Semitic incidents and tries to maintain security for the Jewish community in Britain, released the report in advance of an international conference focusing on how to deal with anti-Semitism, slated to be held Monday in London.
According to the report, in the four weeks following the start of the operation on December 27 there were 250 attacks, as opposed to 40 recorded for the same period in 2007-2008.
Among the incidents were physical assaults, verbal attacks, Jewish property damaged, threats, hate mail and anti-Semitic graffiti.
London police confirmed a rise in anti-Semitism, and said that in the period from December 27 to February 3, they recorded three times as many incidents as were reported a year earlier. Some of the increase, they said, came due to a change in record-keeping methods; however, they note that the data speaks for itself.
French Jews Afraid to Walk the Streets
Friday also marked the three-year anniversary since the murder of 23-year-old Ilan Halimi, a Parisian Jew who died in France after being kidnapped and brutally tortured by an anti-Semitic gang.
Since Halimi's death, things have only gotten worse, according to Serge Benhaim, president of a Jewish community in the French capital.
"Almost every day we witness severe racially motivated incidents, and tension has only intensified after the operation in Gaza," Benhaim told journalists. "We don't take the train after 7:00 p.m., we wear a skullcap only under a hat and our youths don't wander the streets late at night anymore," he added. ...
More than 100 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in France during the period between December 27, when Operation Cast Lead began, and the end of January 2009, according to the country's Representative Council of Jewish Institutions. That was compared to a total of 250 anti-Semitic incidents recorded during the entire 12-month period from January to December 2007. ...
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| Airline sorry for omitting Israel |
BBC NEWS [PSB operated by BBC Trust] - May 1, 2009
British airline BMI has apologised after in-flight maps on its London-Tel Aviv service did not identify Israel.
The moving maps marked Islamic holy sites but showed only the city of Haifa in Israel, identified by its Arabic name, Khefa.
Israeli officials accused BMI of trying to "hide the existence of Israel".
But BMI said it was a technical error - the maps had not been changed since the planes were taken over from a former airline which flew to the Middle East.
"If BMI had any political agenda in order not to anger neighbouring countries, it would not have invested so much in the Tel Aviv line," AFP news agency quoted a spokesman as saying.
BMED, which was taken over by BMI in 2007, had flown from the UK to many Muslim countries in the Middle East and so the maps had pointed out sites which were relevant to passengers.
A BMI spokesman told the BBC the maps should have been deactivated before the planes were deployed on the new route but "due to a technical error this did not take place".
Israeli transport ministry Director General Gideon Sitterman, said it was "unacceptable" that Israel had been "wiped off the map".
"Doing business with Israel has its advantages and disadvantages, but we will not agree to a situation where they hide the existence of Israel but want to do business with Israel," he told Israeli army radio.
BMI has withdrawn the two planes from service while new maps are installed, but said larger planes had been scheduled to take over the route last Sunday anyway.
The spokesman told the BBC there had been "quite a bit of upset" from customers but that it had been a genuine error and the airline was sorry for any offence caused.
Original Report |
PA Sheikh Denies Existence of Holy Temple
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - August 27, 2009
Once again, the Palestinian Authority denies that the Holy Temple ever existed - despite a Waqf pamphlet from 1925 boasting proudly that the Temple Mount once housed Solomon's Temple.
The latest denial came on Wednesday when the PA's Chief Islamic Judge, Sheikh Taysir Rajab al-Tamimi, condemned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, as well as "all Jewish rabbis and extremist organizations," for lying and asserting that Jerusalem was a Jewish city.
Al-Tamimi nearly caused an international incident this past May when he disrupted Pope Benedict XVI's interfaith meeting in Jerusalem with a vicious verbal attack on Israel.
In his latest rampage, the PA's highest Islamic authority said - following Netanyahu's remarks in London declaring the eternal Jewish connection to Jerusalem - that his claims "are baseless and untrue. Jerusalem is an Arab and Islamic city and it always has been so." ...
Read Full Report
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Google Goes With Palestinian Authority
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Malkah Fleisher - August 17, 2009
Google, which came online 10 years ago with its leading internet search engine, has taken a political stand, opening up a domain specifically for Palestinian Authority and Gaza Arabs.
Launched August 13, www.google.ps will be specifically geared toward local Arabs. Previously, they had to use one of Google's 159 other separate domains, several of which were provided in Arabic, such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
PA and Gazan users will automatically be directed to PA Google, due to Google's IP tracking system. Specialized "AdWords" advertisements will also be specifically targeted to that audience. However, Arab dwellers in eastern Jerusalem will not automatically be transferred to the new engine.
This year, Google has launched six new domains in the Middle East and Africa, with plans to spread deeper into Africa in the coming months.
Google opened Israel's Google domain in 2002.
Original Report
Remove JewWatch.com from the Google Search Engine!
To: Google.com
When performing a search for the word "Jew" on google.. the first result
is a site that has been notorious for being anti-semitic.. the site is
called jewwatch.com .... Google is the # 1 search site and the fact that
The first search result would yield an anti-semetic site is all too
common in a growing era of increased Anti Semetism... In order for
google to remove this They would need a petition of over 50,000
requests....
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
Sign Petition
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