Police clash with protesters in the Arab-Israeli city of Uhm el-Fahm
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Arab-Israelis use dust bins for protection as they clash with Israeli riot police in Umm Al-Fahm
Picture: AFP/GETTY
From The Telegraph U.K.
Category Archives: Israel
The Imam always gets his man. Why RCMP outreach is not working.
Islamists, Iran, and the RCMP’s “cultural diversity”
by Michael Petrou on Tuesday, October 26, 2010 3:06pm — 3 Comments
An RCMP “ethnic liaison officer” is urging his colleagues to attend a conference on a “ Just and Sustainable Peace “ that was organized in part by a Green Party of Canada candidate who believes the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job,” and whose participants include the director general of an NGO that endorses hate-filled stereotypes about Jews. Three academics from Iran are flying in for the event.
Among speakers scheduled to speak at the conference, which will take place in Ottawa on Oct. 28, is Davood Ameri, director general of the Iran-based “ Islamic World Peace Forum,” an organization whose website includes cartoons of Israeli soldiers murdering babies, and one of a hook-nosed Jew wearing a top hat full of tiny skulls.
Saied Ameli, identified by conference organizers as dean of the faculty of global studies at Tehran University, is scheduled to attend, as is Elham Aminzadeh, reportedly of Tehran University’s faculty of law, who has praised Iran for what she describes as its efforts to protect women’s rights since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. She was formerly an Iranian parliamentarian and in 2006 claimed stoning sentences were no longer handed down in Iran. They are. A third Iranian academic scheduled to participate is Hassan Hosseini.
Nasir Islam, a professor at the University of Ottawa, is on the program; as is Vern Neufeld Redekop of Saint Paul’s University in Ottawa; Ottawa lawyer Ernest Tannis; and Zijad Delic, head of the Canadian Islamic Congress.
The conference has been organized by Green Party members who call themselves the “ Ottawa Group of Four.” They include Qais Ghanem, a doctor whose posting on the “Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth” reads: “I have, from the outset, believed that the 9/11 horrendous massacre of thousands of innocent civilians could not possibly be the work of a dozen amateur Saudis. Close watching of video clips and reading of lots of expert opinions convinced me further that this is an inside job, or that it was at the very least done with inside help.”
Other members of the group are Paul Maillet, a retired air force colonel; Sylvie Lemieux, who retired from the Canadian Forces as a lieutenant-colonel and then worked in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade; and Akbar Manoussi, who was recently hired as chair of “clean energy education” at the Willis College of Business, Health, and Technology in Ottawa.
Manoussi’s Green Party online profile for the 2007 provincial election in Ontario says he is “secretary general” of the “Iranian Scholars Association of Canada” — which appears to exist only in Manoussi’s imagination. His claim prompted nine Iranian-Canadian journalists and academics to write Green Party leader Elizabeth May in 2008 and inform her that they had never heard of the organization.
Manoussi has also identified himself as “director general” of the “Iranian Cultural Centre” in Ottawa, which shares the same address as the Iranian embassy. At least once in the last year he has attended a conference in Iran hosted by the government there and geared toward burnishing the country’s image and attracting foreign investment.
First Communist Dublin city councilor quoted by Al Qaeda in ‘Inspire’ Magazine
Bernie Farber and Len Rudner: Selling anti-Semitism in the book stores
This is in the ‘Hitler wore pants, Israeli’s wear pants, Jews must therefore be Hitler’ category of absurd leftist logical fallacies.
From The National Post:
Bernie Farber and Len Rudner: Selling anti-Semitism in the book stores
National Post October 22, 2010 – 7:09 pm
By Bernie M. Farber and Len Rudner
Adbusters Media Foundation, which publishes the slick, anti-consumerist Vancouver-based Adbusters magazine, describes itself as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.” Judging from the latest edition of the magazine, the Adbusters “activist movement” has become infected with plain, old-fashioned bigotry.
In the current edition, Adbusters offers its readers a one page “photo essay” — Truthbombs on Israeli TV — that makes comparisons between the situation that Palestinians are experiencing in Gaza and what the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto experienced under the Nazis. There are pictures of people fighting fires in Gaza … and people fighting fires in the Warsaw Ghetto. There are pictures of people injured in the Warsaw Ghetto … and of people injured in Gaza. There are pictures of people smuggling food into the Warsaw Ghetto … and of people smuggling goods into Gaza. It’s truly a tour de force of investigative journalism.
The argument is obscene, and continues the disgusting tradition of some supporters of the Palestinian cause to turn Jews into Nazis and Palestinians into Jews. In so doing, these propagandists not only demonize Israelis (i.e., Jews), but minimize the murderous extent and intent of Nazism’s genocidal project. In other words, such vile analogies become a form of Holocaust minimilization.
Adbusters postures as chic and eco-friendly. It describes itself as a magazine concerned with the “erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces.” In the present case, they should have been more concerned with the erosion of their own moral and ethical standards.
When we contacted the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), from whom Adbusters got the Warsaw Ghetto images, they were shocked — and they gave us this statement: “Any comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto (or the Holocaust as a whole) and the situation in Gaza is wildly inaccurate, a gross misrepresentation of the facts and offensive to victims of the Holocaust.” Interestingly, the USHMM told us that they granted permission to Adbusters to use the pictures because they were told that the magazine was doing a story on “war crimes” that would address what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto. The USHMM has sent Adbusters a cease and desist letter demanding that the photos be immediately removed from their website. Continue Reading →
UN picks well known haters of Israel to judge it in the HRC for Goldstone II
From UN Watch:
GOLDSTONE II
Questions on the Impartiality of the U.N. Tomuschat Committee
A Report by UN Watch
Submitted to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
Geneva, 21 October 2010
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The U.N. Human Rights Council’s newly-renewed committee to enforce the Goldstone Report, headed by German law professor Christian Tomuschat, has declared Israel to be in breach of a duty to investigate “those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw ‘Operation Cast Lead’,” and the “serious allegations” that “officials at the highest levels were complicit in violations.” Specifically, the committee cited the name of Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who served as foreign minister during the 2009 war with Hamas.
As soon as the Tomuschat Committee released its first report in September 2010, Palestinian organizations, echoed by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, called for the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and prosecutors worldwide, to intervene. This latest U.N.-inspired “lawfare” campaign recalls last year’s successful effort by pro-Palestinian activists in Britain to obtain a court-ordered arrest warrant, on charges of war crimes, against Ms. Livni, who has since avoided traveling to Britain.
While the Tomuschat Report emphasized the principles of independence and impartiality as applicable to investigations, there are serious questions as to whether Professor Tomuschat’s membership on the panel conforms with those same principles, as required by the standards applicable to U.N. experts. To determine these fundamental procedural aspects of the Tomuschat Committee, the present report examined Professor Tomuschat’s legal advocacy work, academic publications, and other public statements concerning the Middle East conflict.
Regarding a U.N. expert’s obligation to be independent, the report found credible evidence that Professor Tomuschat performed legal advocacy work for PLO leader Yasser Arafat. It was reported that he and four other international jurists advised Mr. Arafat in 1996 on how the PLO should make its case before the U.N. and the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Brief for Arafat
Professor Tomuschat’s claim that he “could not recall” whether his legal brief was done for Yasser Arafat was found to be not credible. Moreover, despite later opportunities to recollect the facts, and to contest the evidence during a U.N. Human Rights Council debate, and again at a U.N. press conference, Professor Tomuschat declined to do so. Accordingly, the evidence gives rise to serious questions concerning the independence of Professor Tomuschat and his committee, and, consequently, the credibility of his report.
Regarding a U.N. expert’s obligation to be impartial, the report found—from the past decade alone—more than 25 examples of statements by Professor Tomuschat that exhibited an unbalanced approach toward Israel, and, in notable instances, undisguised hostility.
The mandate of the Tomuschat Committee, as recently renewed, is to monitor and assess any domestic, legal or other proceedings undertaken by both the Government of Israel and the Palestinian side concerning the allegations in the Goldstone Report, including the independence, effectiveness, and genuineness of these investigations and their conformity with international standards.
Decided in 2002 that Israel’s Legal System Was Hopeless
Astonishingly, eight years before Tomuschat undertook to objectively and impartially perform this examination, he had already made up his mind about Israel’s system for investigations. In discussing Israel and its alleged ordering of the “systematic commission of war crimes,” he concluded that “[i]n such instances, there is little hope that the judicial system of the State concerned [i.e., Israel] will conduct effective investigations and punish the responsible agents.”
Impartiality requires that an investigator be free of any commitment to a particular outcome. Given that Tomuschat had stated, in stark and unequivocal terms, his commitment to a particular outcome—that Israel’s judicial system offers “little hope” of effective investigation or punishment of alleged violations—his impartiality on the principal question addressed by his committee are severely compromised.
Compared Israeli Actions to World War II Barbarism
One of the most peculiar and troubling findings of the report is that, on several occasions, Professor Tomuschat associated Israeli military actions not to contemporary and similar actions by American, British or NATO troops, which have resulted in many thousands of civilian casualties in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but rather to the barbarism of World War II:
· In a 2007 essay on the previous year’s Lebanon war, Tomuschat compared Israel’s actions to the “barbarism which was the particular hallmark of World War II.”
· In a further comment on Israel, he wrote that its alleged practice of classifying targets as military even if they “only remotely serve to benefit one war party” could be regarded “as a relapse to the Inferno of World War II, when in many cases both sides acted according to the principle that the means justify the end.”
· In 2006, Tomuschat wrote that “the observer gets the impression that the Israeli Armed Forces inconsiderately geared itself toward the overall concept of the Totalen Krieges.” This concept was made most famous by Goebbels’ 1943 Total War speech. In 2007, Tomuschat again accused Israel of actions that were “close to total war, which does not take into consideration any protection needs of the civilian population.” And in an essay from earlier this year, Tomuschat wrote that Israel’s actions are “a recipe for total war.”
Israel is “State Terrorist”
An additional theme that emerges from Tomuschat’s statements is Israel as a state terrorist—morally indistinguishable from, and equally blameworthy as, those who deliberately target Israeli civilians with suicide bombs. For example, in a 2002 essay, Tomuschat singled out Israel as a prime example of “state terrorism,” of the “systematic” commission of “war crimes,” and of “crimes against humanity.” Such states, in his view, “deserve the same blame as those targeted by them.”
In a 2007 interview, Tomuschat equated Israel’s targeting of Hamas terrorist leader Ahmed Yassin with terrorism itself, saying that “Targeted killings are as reckless as terrorist attacks.” Asked if this meant “state terrorism,” Tomuschat said that “It very much leads in this direction.”
Tomuschat adopts an extreme position toward counter-terrorism in general. He has argued that the targeted killing of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden would be “absolutely illegal under international law.” Moreover, he argues that a country targeted by terrorism needs to “discover [its] own shortcomings,” “analyze its own conduct,” and “ask itself searchingly whether it has made mistakes which have given and give rise to frustration, hatred and despair.” The only way to cure terrorism, argues Tomuschat, is for countries to show that they are “seriously committed to world-wide welfare goals without any distinction as to race, colour or religion.”
It is telling that when a German academic journal featured a debate on the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Christian Tomuschat was the one chosen to present the side opposed to Israel.
Other examples of Tomuschat’s statements on Israel include:
· Israel is bombing “entire families”;
· Arab nations rightly feel that Israel receives “far better treatment”;
· Israel targets U.N. peacekeepers;
· Israel seeks “to reduce humanitarian law to irrelevance”;
· Israel’s policy is to “bomb a country out into a lunar landscape”;
· Israel’s peace concessions are a cynical plan for “dominance.”
Tomuschat’s Response
At the 27 September 2010 debate of the U.N. Human Rights Council, UN Watch raised several of these points in an interactive dialogue with Professor Tomuschat, and distributed an advance copy of this report to the press. The Reuters news agency concluded that Tomuschat’s reply to UN Watch was non-responsive to the issues raised, and, at a press conference, asked him once again to address the questions.
In response, Tomuschat attempted to defend his statements as nothing more than legitimate academic writings that criticized targeted killings, and as being unrelated to the Goldstone Report. At the same time, Tomuschat revealed that he had shared his doubts with U.N. authorities in Geneva about whether to accept the position; that he offered to step down from the committee, presumably at some later point after having assumed the chairmanship, if they felt he was biased; but that the U.N. authorities in Geneva, which would be the office of High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, saw no reason for it. Tomuschat insisted that his writings were “not in any way the offspring of some kind of prejudice.” Moreover, his opposition to targeted killings was only his “personal view.”
The report finds that Tomuschat’s attempted rebuttal misrepresented the prejudicial nature, degree and extent of his statements and actions, and failed to establish their conformity with his obligation to be independent and impartial.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Videos below the More Continue Reading →
Imadinnerjacket pounds his chest at Israeli border
JPOST: British Jews should back English Defence League’
By JPOST.COM STAFF The Jerusalem post:
10/10/2010 14:23
EDL develops ties with American Tea Party movement; invites US Rabbi and Tea Party activist to speak on Sharia in London, reports the ‘Guardian.’
Talkbacks (10)
The English Defence League (EDL), a British far-right group opposing the “Islamification” of the West and which is in contact with the US-based Tea Party organization, has invited Tea Party activist and senior Rabbi Nachum Shifren to speak about Sharia law in London this month, the Guardian reported on Sunday.
The EDL’s links with the Tea Party movement surfaced a day after roughly 1,000 EDL supporters demonstrated in Leicester, which boasts a large Muslim population, according to the Guardian.
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‘Tea Party’s Christian ties will alienate Jewish voters’
The Tea Party is expected to be an influential player in the upcoming midterm elections in the US.
Shifren, who is running for senate in the midterm elections, said Britain’s Jewish community should support the EDL. “The Jewish community is paralysed with fear, exactly what most radical Muslim agitators want,” he said. “The people of England are in the forefront of this war – and it is a war. One of the purposes of this visit is to put the kibosh on the notion in the Jewish community that they cannot co-operate with the EDL, which is rubbish.”
Devin Burghart, vice-president of the Kansas-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, was also quoted in the Guardian story, commenting on the Tea Party’s increasingly anti-Islamic views.
“As we move farther and farther away from the Tea Party origins, that were ostensibly around debt and bail-outs, social issues like Islamophobia are replacing that anger, that vigour. The idea that there is a war between Islam and the west is becoming commonplace,” he said.
Russian TV debate on Turkish flotilla to Gaza
Hillel Nuer explains why the UN basically faked this report and decided it, as it so often does on all matters Israeli, before the investigation began, declining to hear or see evidence from the Israeli point of view.
To donate to UN Watch please click here:
Excerpt of Transcript
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, told Russia Today that the results of the recent UN report on the flotilla incident were pre-determined.
“This report was determined in advance, the Human Rights Council held an emergency session only a day or two after the flotilla incident happened,” Neuer said. “They declared Israel guilty of ‘an outrageous attack’, so the outcome was entirely pre-determined, and this is not something that’s exceptional.”
“In fact, Mary Robinson, who was the UN rights chief, said the Human Rights Council has a pattern of acting politically and not for human rights,” Hillel Neuer added. “Let’s remember who the membership is — Saudi Arabia, China, Colonel Gaddafi of Libya is now a member of the Human Rights Council. This is not a body that cares about human rights. This is a body that is political, that is engaged in a constant campaign to de-legitimize Israel, and human rights is the last thing on the minds of members like Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Libya.”
Stuxnet computer worm ‘targeted Iranian nuclear power station’ in world’s most sophisticated virus attack
By Niall Firth
Last updated at 3:18 PM on 23rd September 2010
The world’s first cyber ‘super weapon’ may have been specifically designed to target a nuclear power station, experts believe.
A computer virus called Stuxnet was first detected in June and has been described as one of the most sophisticated ‘worms’ ever created.
Now internet security experts fear that it was created to target a real-world installation such as a power station, possibly in Iran.
The worm targets computer systems that are not connected to the internet for security reasons. Instead it infects PCs running Microsoft Windows via infected USB memory drives.
The Bushehr nuclear plant may have been the target for the cyber attack, experts believe
After it has hijacked a PC, Stuxnet looks for Siemens software that runs industrial control systems in facilities like factories and power plants.
It then launches an attack by reprogramming software to give any industrial machinery new, potentially dangerous, instructions.
It is capable of taking control of key processes and is able to set off a sequence that could cause the entire system to self-destruct, say experts.
David Emm, a senior security researcher at Kaspersky, said what made Stuxnet different from other viruses was its targeted nature.
His firm has worked with Microsoft to find holes in their code which could be exploited by the worm.
Mr Emm said: What sets it apart is that it is not indiscriminate. Most viruses that are created are normally blasted out like a blunderbuss. But Stuxnet is written to only target a certain systems.
‘It finds flaws in code and uses it like an open window in a house, like a jemmy to make a bigger gap’, he said. Continue Reading →
Israeli TV on Swedish Anti Semitism 25 minutes English
US envoy Oren warns: Hizbullah has 15,000 rockets on border
By JPOST.COM STAFF
09/04/2010 03:23
Ambassador says Islamist group amassing arsenal in southern Lebanon with long enough range to hit Eilat; missiles now hidden beneath hospitals, homes and schools to avoid Israeli Air Force strikes.
Talkbacks (16)
Hizbullah has an arsenal of approximately 15,000 rockets amassed on Lebanon’s border with Israel, including some with a long enough range to hit the southern city of Eilat, US envoy Michael Oren told AFP on Friday.
“The Syrian-Iranian backed Hizbullah poses a very serious threat to Israel…Hizbullah today now has four times as many rockets as it had during the 2006 Lebanon war. These rockets are longer-range. Every city in Israel is within range right now, including Eilat,” he said.
Oren expressed Israeli concerns with Hizbullah’s concealment of the weapons as well.
“In 2006, many of their missiles were basically out in the open, in silos and the Israeli air force was able to neutralize a great number of them…Today those same missiles have been placed under hospitals, and homes and schools because Hizbullah knows full well if we try to defend ourselves against them, we will be branded once again as war criminals.”
This was not the first time that Oren has warned of the threat that Hizbullah poses to Israel. Following a clash on the northern border between the Lebanese Army and IDF soldiers last month, in which Lebanese soldiers opened fire on two IDF officers, killing one and seriously wounding the other, Oren warned that the distinction between Lebanon’s Army and Hizbullah has become “cloudy.” He expressed concerns that advanced weaponry given to the regular army could find its way into the hands of the Islamist group.
Following the border clashes and Oren’s warnings, the US Congress voted to suspend $100 million in aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces.
Speech for Peace by Israeli PM at White House.
Four Jews Murdered in Arab Terror Attack Near Hevron
UPDATE:
From J Post: The four were two couples – one aged 25 and the other 40. One of the women was pregnant. According to eyewitness reports, the terrorists succeeded in hitting the passengers in their initial fire but then approached the car and shot them occupants at close range.
“When we arrived on the scene, all four doors of the car were open and four bodies were strewn on the road,” Magen David Adom paramedic Guy Ronen told The Jerusalem Post. “We saw that the vital organs had been struck by a very large number of bullets, and that there was no chance of saving their lives,” he added.
by Gil Ronen Israel National News:
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Terrorists murdered four Jewish civilians in a shooting attack at the Bani Naim junction just south of Hevron Tuesday evening. Emergency service paramedics could do nothing to save the victims whose bodies were riddled with numerous bullets. The terrorists reportedly made sure their victims were dead by shooting them from close range after the initial fusillade.
According to report on Channel 2 television, the victims are two couples, and one of them is a pregnant woman. The IDF is combing the area, searching for the terrorists.
Initial reports said one of the victims had a license for a firearm that was suspended shortly before the attack.
Hamas and Fatah are blaming each other for the terror attack.
The terror attack is typical of Arab nationalist attacks that intentionally target civilian victims.
The attack was probably timed to coincide with the direct talks between Israel and the PA in Washington, DC, that are to begin Thursday.
The scene of the attack.
Bullets smashed through the windshield.
JDL event Toronto: Israel’s rights under international law
*Tomorrow* Tues. Aug 31st – “Israel’s Legal Rights According to International Law” – 7pm @ Toronto Zionist Centre
*JDL* Canada Program
What Everyone Should Know …
Israel’s Legal Rights
in a world of Insanity
Presented by: Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights (CILR)
Where: Toronto Zionist Centre, 788 Marlee Avenue
Date: Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Time: 7:00 pm.
The objective of this presentation is to inform the uninformed — but keen to learn — general public about the FACTS of Israel’s legal rights under International law, enabling them to confront the overwhelmingly destructive messages being disseminated by the Media, Politicians, Policy Markers, Academics, etc.
The LEGAL RIGHTS OF ISRAEL- has been developed by Salomon Benzimra, who compiled widespread information and facts based on the findings of top experts in the field.
He will give a one-hour talk excerpting the programme, including some compelling questions on the recent distortions of International law, following the flotilla saga.
…If you cannot attend, and wish to acquaint yourself with the subject, you can book a date with CILR for a subsequent presentation.
Contact: Goldi Steiner
Email: in**@**lr.org
Tel: 416 782 7021
Website: www.cilr.org
Another religious psycho curses ‘unbelievers’ except this time its a Jew
I’m sad to report that irrational religious authority in Israel can be as hate filled, venomous and counter peace when they are Jewish as they are when they are Muslim. Not as often certainly and not genocidaly so, but nonetheless this is repugnant.
From Israel Matzav:
Rabbi Yosef curses the ‘Palestinians’
Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, the Shas party’s spiritual leader who once advocated ‘land for peace,’ cursed ‘moderate‘ ‘Palestinian‘ President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen and the ‘Palestinians’ in his Saturday night Torah class.
Senior Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in his weekly lecture on Saturday night, said that he hope Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas and the people he represents would disappear. “May Abu Mazen and all those evil people be utterly destroyed. May G-d strike them, and the evil Palestinians, with a plague,” he said.
JPost
:
Shas veteran Yehuda Avidan responded by saying that anyone who knows Yosef knows that there is no one who wants and seeks peace more than him. Avidan explained that the rabbi sees the Palestinians as Israel’s enemies but wants there to be peace.
Until now Yosef has steered clear of commenting on anything related to diplomatic negotiations. At the end of the 1980s Yosef ruled that the country should seek peace, even at the price of painful concessions, given the supremacy of the Jewish value of ‘pikuakh nefesh’ (saving of life).
I don’t believe that the Rabbi needs defending. I believe that he is being quite sensible.