Category Archives: Israel

Anne Bayefsky on Durban II. The outrage continues

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Jewish World Review April 23, 2009 / 29 Nissan 5769

The outrage continues

By Anne Bayefsky


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The UN’s racist anti-racism conference “Durban II” rammed through a final declaration three days before its scheduled conclusion. On Monday Iranian President Ahamadinejad had opened the substantive program by denying the Holocaust and spewing antisemitism. A day later UN members rewarded Iran by electing it one of three Vice-Chairs of the committee which adopted the final declaration.


The committee meeting was chaired by Libya and lasted fifteen minutes. No discussion of the merits of the Durban II declaration was tolerated.


The document reaffirms the 2001 Durban Declaration which alleges Palestinians are victims of Israeli racism and mentions only Israel among all 192 UN member states. It also multiplies the anti-Israel provisions, using the usual UN code, by adding yet another rant about racist foreign occupation.


Not surprisingly, such a manifesto encouraged the racists and antisemites which had pressed for its adoption. Speaking on Tuesday the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Faysal Mekdad, alleged “the right of return” of Jews to Israel — Jewish self-determination — was “a form of racial discrimination”. He also objected to the “Judaization of Israel” and to the “ethnic cleansing…of 1948.”


Palestinian Riyad Al-Maliki claimed that “for over 60 years the Palestinian people has been suffering under…the ugliest face of racism and racial discrimination…” and said an Israeli government “declaration…regarding the Jewish nature of the state is a form of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” Al-Maliki was delighted with the result of the conference and gloated by reading excerpts from the 2001 Durban Declaration that he was pleased to see had been reaffirmed.


The remnants of the European Union which remained inside the conference — in particular France and the United Kingdom — entirely ignored their many promises not to accept anything which singled out the Jewish state. Though these Europeans undoubtedly enabled the hatemongering, their excuses in the coming days are predictable.

Continue Reading →

Dr. Phyllis Chesler’s April 21, 2009 Speech about Muslim Women’s Rights

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From Pajamas Media. Bookmark this site and read it at least twice a week. This is liberalism as it was meant to be, and must be made to be again.

For many years, the United Nations has conducted itself in ways that range from the ridiculous to the surreal. They have been utterly ineffective in all things save one: the legalization of Jew-hatred. That grim project continues to gather force and is now a potentially genocidal one. The current Durban II conference is more of the same diabolical Mad Hatters party. But make no mistake: The UN and the Organization of Islamic States take themselves very seriously. They think there is nothing illogical, biased, perverted, or even “racist” about their condemnation of the Jewish state.

The failure to stop Durban I not only led to Durban II. It played a role in the escalating and never-ending intifada against Israel and in the “hate Israel” mob demonstrations in the Islamic world and in the West, including on American and European campuses that have taken place ever since.

Let me suggest that President Ahmadinejad means exactly what he says. He does plan to implement another Holocaust against the Jews. We deny this at our own peril. And, Amadinejad does plan to “play,” shame and, if possible, defeat America in terms of Iran’s obtaining and using nuclear power. The arrest of Iranian-American journalist, Roxana Sabari, as an American “spy” is only the first of many steps in response to President Obama’s open hand and conciliatory tone.


Dr. Phyllis Chesler speaking at the Durban II Counter Conference, April 21, 2009, Fordham Law School, NYC

I have just returned from speaking at the second day of the Durban II “Counter-Conference” in New York City, organized by the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (AAJLJ) and co-sponsored by an additional twenty six Jewish organizations , including NYC’s The Jewish Week. I hope that someday soon, many Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim groups will organize similar counter-conferences along with Jewish groups.

The “Counter-conference” took place at Fordham University Law School and is running for five days to parallel Durban II in Geneva. Many good people are speaking here including Hon. Scott Stringer, Hon. Carolyn Maloney, Ambassador Richard Schifter, Hon. Jerahmiel S. Grafstein, Samuel M. Edelman, Ali H. Alyami, Andrew Apostolou, Jacqueline Murakatete, Ambassador Daniel Carmon, Hon. Irwin Cotler, Charles Asher Small, Michael Meyers, etc.


Some audience members at the Durban II Counter Conference

It is hard to know what to do when evil gets up on it’s hind-legs and preaches to the crowd. Keeping away is one sane approach and I am very glad that a number of governments, our own included, decided to do that. Getting up and walking out is nice too–that’s what some European countries did but they knew all along what kind of speech Amadinejad was going to make and they came anyway. (America only pulled out of Durban II at the very last possible moment). Demonstrating outside the forum held hostage to evil and hate speech is another chosen path. That is happening in Geneva as well. Finally, organizing a counter-conference elsewhere is also an honorable thing to do, which is why I agreed to speak.

Let me say that it is an outrage for America to pretend that the United Nations, as we know it, is worth funding. The organization has embarked on a very dangerous course which we, in the democratic nations, will have to stop, sooner or later. Sooner is always wiser. Continue Reading →

More on the Starbucks Jihad

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One of the more peculiar threads of the global Jihad Vladtepesblog follows, is what we call the Starbucks Jihad. We have several posts here on attacks on Starbucks especially in Europe as well as the sureal video of an Egyptian Imam demanding Starbucks be boycotted because he claims, its logo is of an ancient Jewish queen of Persia.

Below please find an article from Pajamas media on the Starbucks relationship to the left and Islamic world. They also suggest a coming Chrystalnacht, something we at Vlad have been predicting for some time. Only it will start with coffee shops.

Eeyore

starbucks-muslim-logo

Starbucks Boycott Turns Violent

Poor Howard Schultz. No matter how hard the Starbucks head tries, he can’t seem to avoid being in the news as he is hated in so many parts of the world. Here in the UK he is hated because it is fashionable to spurn American globalization. I will never forget a “Jews for Justice for Palestinians” activist screaming at me shortly after 9/11, saying “American enterprises clogging the British high street” contributed to the hatred that caused the terror attacks. I reminded her that if KFC, Woolworths, McDonalds, Domino’s, Subway, and Starbucks closed all at once there would be about 500,000 Brits on the dole.

Schultz is hated by Anglo-Muslims because he is an alleged “mega-Zionista.” He is hated by the Guardianista intelligentsia of Primrose Hill, who were successful in banning Starbucks and its baristas from their high street. He is hated by the mullahs of the Middle East who have demanded the coffee chain be closed down because Queen Esther appears in its world-renowned logo. My esteemed journalistic colleague and respected historian Melanie Phillips, who does not suffer fools gladly and has an unparalleled instinct for a major news story, thinks the Queen Esther issue is more than just Islamist propaganda.

Now that the novelist Howard Jacobson has published a screed alerting the world to the explosion of anti-Semitism in Britain, which our mild-mannered chief rabbi calls a “tsunami,” and now that Zionist-hatred has metamorphosed into violence on the streets of London, I thought I would examine the process of hate-mongering evolving into mini-Kristallnachts.

Continue Reading →

Excellent analysis on the demonization of Israel and what proportion really means.

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From The Australian:

FEW places on earth have been as systematically brutalised over the past decade as Chechnya. So you might have thought that the Russian Government’s decision last week to declare an end to its “counter-terrorism” operations in the territory would have been an occasion for sombre reflection in the Western media. Forget it. It’s a 600-word news item at best.

Here’s a contrast to ponder. Since the beginning of the second intifada in the autumn of 2000, about 6000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire. That figure includes combatants as well as those killed in January’s fighting in Gaza.

As for Chechnya, there are no solid figures for the number of civilians killed since the second war began in late 1999; estimates range from 25,000 to 200,000. Chechnya’s population, at a little more than one million, is about one third or one fourth that of the Palestinians. That works out to between 25 and 200 Chechen deaths per 1000 as against 1.5 to two Palestinian deaths per 1000.

Now type the words Palestine and genocide into Google. When I did so on Monday, I got 1,630,000 results. Next, substitute Chechnya for Palestine. The number is 245,000.

Taking the Google results as a crude measure of global outrage, that means the outrage over the Palestinian situation was 6.6 times greater than over the Chechen one. Yet Chechen fatalities were between 13 to 133 times greater.

Final calculation: With an outrage ratio of 6.6 to one, but a proportional kill ratio of one to 13 (at the very low end), it turns out that every Palestinian death receives somewhere in the order of 28 times the attention of every Chechen death. Remember that in both cases we’re mainly talking about Muslims being killed by non-Muslims.

I’ll admit this math exercise is a bit of a gimmick. But it raises a worthwhile question: Why is Palestinian life so dear in the eyes of the world, and Chechen life so cheap?

Maybe the answer is that the Palestinian cause is morally worthier than that of Chechnya. But that can’t be right. Yes, Chechen terrorists have committed spectacular atrocities, notably the 2004 Beslan school massacre. Yet modern terrorism is a genre Palestinians practically invented. As it is, Chechnya has been suffering grievously under Russia’s thumb since the 1800s. (Just read Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad.) If colonialism is your beef, the case for Chechen independence is inarguable.

Maybe, then, the answer is that there is no shortage of imagery of Palestinian death, and thus it engages more of the world’s attention. By contrast, the Russians imposed a virtual media blockade on Chechnya, and journalists who covered the story, such as Anna Politkovskaya, had a way of ending up dead.

But imagery need not be televised to be vivid, nor does the world lack for testimonials of Russian brutality. “I remember a Chechen female sniper,” a Russian soldier told Los Angeles Times reporter Maura Reynolds. “We just tore her apart with two armoured personnel carriers, having tied her ankles with steel cables. There was a lot of blood, but the boys needed it.”

Maybe it’s that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simply more important strategically than Russia’s war against Chechnya, in the same way that the attacks of 9/11 mattered more in the scheme of things than, say, atrocities by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

Yet even before 9/11, there was evidence that al-Qa’ida was feeding money and arms to Chechen fighters, putting Chechnya squarely into the context of what became the global war on terror. Evidence of al-Qa’ida involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is sparser and only came to light in 2007.

Of course, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict inflames the Muslim world in a way the Chechen one does not. But why is that, when so many more Muslims are being victimised by Russia?

Then too, why does the wider world participate in the Muslim world’s moral priorities? Why, for instance, do high-profile Western writers such as Portuguese Nobel laureate Jose Saramago make “solidarity” pilgrimages to Ramallah but not to the Chechen capital of Grozny? Why do British academics organise boycotts of their Israeli counterparts but not their Russian ones?

Why is Palestinian statehood considered a global moral imperative, but statehood for Chechnya is not?

Why does every Israeli prime minister invariably become a global pariah, when not one person in 1000 knows the name of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, a man who, by many accounts, keeps a dungeon near his house in order to personally torture his political opponents? And why does the fact that Kadyrov is Vladimir Putin’s handpicked enforcer in Chechnya not cause a shudder of revulsion as the Obama administration reaches for the reset button with Russia?

I have a hypothesis. Maybe the world attends to Palestinian grievances but not Chechen ones for the sole reason that Palestinians are, uniquely, the perceived victims of the Jewish state. That is when they are not being victimised by other Palestinians. Or being expelled en masse from Kuwait. Or being excluded from the labour force in Lebanon. Things you probably didn’t know about, either.

As for the Chechens, too bad for their cause that no Jew is ever likely to become president of Russia.

Accessed 22 April 2009, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25367401-7583,00.html

09-04-22, Brett Stephens, “Outrage reserved for Israel,” theaustralian.news.com.au, 22 April 2009, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25367401-7583,00.html (accessed 22 April 2009).

Hat tip INSIGNIS

European delegates walk out on Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at racism forum

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From The Australian:

DELEGATES from several European states attending the UN conference on racism walked out as Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke about Israel.

“They sent migrants from Europe, the United States … in order to establish a racist government in the occupied Palestine,” he said.

More to come later. Hat tip to our Ozzie Friend RR

From The Washington Times:

switzerland_un_racism_bada_r350x200

GENEVA (AP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Israel of being the “most cruel and racist regime,” sparking a walkout Monday by angry Western diplomats at a U.N. racism conference.

The hardline leader’s appearance overshadowed the substance of the weeklong United Nations attempt to stamp out intolerance worldwide. The United States and eight other Western countries, expressing concerns about its fairness, were already boycotting the event.

Protesters dressed with clown wigs and holding placards repeatedly interrupted Ahmadinejad’s speech with shouts of “Shame! shame!” and “Racist! racist!” throwing soft red objects on the podium. Later, about 100 members of mainly pro-Israel and Jewish groups blocked Ahmadinejad’s entrance to a scheduled news conference.

Ahmadinejad, in a rambling speech, accused Israel of being the “most cruel and racist regime” and pointed the finger at the United States and Europe for helping to establish the country after World War II “under the pretext of Jewish suffering.”

That prompted a walkout by some 40 diplomats from European countries such as Britain and France, which had threatened to leave the conference if it descended into anti-Semitic or other rhetoric harshly critical of Israel, which marred the U.N.’s last racism gathering.

The boycotting countries expressed concern that Muslim countries would drown out many issues with calls for a denunciation of Israel and a global ban on criticizing aspects of the Islamic faith.

“As soon as he started to address the question of the Jewish people and Israel, we had no reason to stay in the room,” said French Ambassador Jean-Baptiste Mattei.

Speaking directly after Ahmadinejad, Norway’s foreign minister said the Iranian leader’s comments “run counter to the very spirit of dignity of the conference.”

Ahmadinejad “has made Iran the odd man out,” Jonas Gahr Store said.

Even before his speech, Ahmadinejad polarized the meeting, which is intended to examine all forms of intolerance around the world.

Israel recalled its ambassador to Switzerland earlier Monday to protest Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz’s meeting with Ahmadinejad late Sunday during which Merz pressed the case of a jailed American journalist in Tehran.

“The meeting between the president of a democratic country with an infamous Holocaust-denier such as the president of Iran, who calls for Israel’s destruction, does not mesh with the values that Switzerland represents and that are supposed to be represented at the U.N. conference on racism,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

President Barack Obama said Sunday that the United States would communicate with Iran about journalist Roxana Saberi through its Swiss intermediaries, which have officially represented U.S. interests in Iran since the American hostage crisis that began in 1979. The Swiss government said it also took up other “unresolved cases” of U.S.-Iranian relations.

Ahmadinejad’s attendance has provoked outrage from Jewish groups and Israel, as he has in the past questioned the Holocaust and called for Israel’s destruction.

Associated Press writer Eliane Engeler contributed to this report.

From Haaretz: Dershowitz escoted from Geneva hotel because of his plans to chalenge Iranian leader

Earlier Sunday, federal agents in Geneva escorted Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz away from the Geneva hotel where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz were meeting, after he declared plans to challenge the Iranian leader about his views on the Holocaust and Israel.

Ban Ki Moon speaks harshly on Iran’s outburst in Geneva. From the Australian:



Here is a better video of Imadinnerjacket’s speech in Geneva. Note the guy in the clown wig. Video found on Gay and Right.

Iran complains to UN about Israeli “threats”

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Oh, the hypocrisy.

_40806272_president_afp203bodyTue Apr 14, 2009  UNITED NATIONS,  (Reuters) – Iran on Tuesday called on the United Nations to respond firmly to what it described as Israel’s “unlawful and insolent threats” to launch an attack on Tehran’s nuclear installations.

Israeli officials, including President Shimon Peres, recently have suggested that the Jewish state could use military force to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, as the West suspects it is doing.

Iran insists it is only interested in building reactors that peacefully generate electricity.

Its U.N. ambassador, in a letter to Mexican U.N. Ambassador Claude Heller, said Israel was violating the U.N. charter and urged the international body to respond clearly and resolutely. Mexico holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council.

“These outrageous threats of resorting to criminal and terrorist acts against a sovereign country and a member of the United Nations not only display the aggressive and warmongering nature of the Zionist regime, but also constitute blatant violations of international law,” Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee wrote.

The letter came two days after Peres told Israel’s Kol Hai radio that Israel would respond with force if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refused to soften his position on proceeding with an uranium enrichment program.

“We’ll strike him,” Peres said in the interview.

An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted last month by Atlantic magazine as saying the government was weighing the military option.

Khazaee said the remarks were “unlawful and insolent threats” based on “fabricated pretexts.”

OBAMA WORRIED

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has said that Israel should be “wiped off the map,” has vowed to continue his country’s nuclear program. Continue Reading →

Death penalty for those who sell land to Jews

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torture

The Palestinian authorities tell the world it wants peace with the Jews then turns around and tells Palestines they will be killed for selling land to the filthy Jew. Make no mistake. Palestine’s problem with Israel has never been about Zionism, it is the fact that it is a Jewish state. Religious teachings in The Qu’ran tell Mohammedans to find and kill the Jew where ever they are.

From the Jerusalem Post April 1-2009

The Palestinian Authority has issued yet another warning to Palestinians against selling their homes or properties to Jews, saying those who violate the order would be accused of “high treason” – a charge that carries the death penalty.

The latest warning was issued on Wednesday by the Chief [Islamic] Judge of the Palestinian Authority, Sheikh Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, who reminded the Palestinians of an existing fatwa [religious decree] than bans them from selling property to Jews.

Sheikh Tamimi’s warning came in response to reports that Jewish businessmen from the US had purchased 20 dunams of land from Palestinians on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Warning the Palestinians against engaging in “suspicious real estate deeds,” the religious leader said that according to Islamic teachings it was a “grave sin” to sell houses and lands to Jews.

He said that the ban also applies to real estate agents or middlemen who are involved in such transactions.

He warned that anyone who ignores the warning would be punished in accordance with Islamic teachings and would also be ostracized by his community and family. Continue Reading →

Mosque was bomb factory. Dog food cans contain dog food.

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This is of course, a rather banal story. By now, most know that terror war and violent jihad are central dogma in Islam. So a mosque is the most appropriate place to have a bomb factory. However I feel its still worth posting these stories now and again for those who insist on imagining to themselves that Islam is just a sort of Christianity with stronger spices and a darker Jesus.

From Israel National News:

Huge Bomb Lab Found in Mosque

by Maayana Miskin

(IsraelNN.com) Hamas terrorists in Kalkilya built a large supply of bombs and stored them in a local mosque without raising suspicion from local Palestinian Authority armed forces who represent the rival Fatah faction. However, the terrorists were out of luck on Wednesday, Passover eve, when a simple electric shortage gave away their plans.

The shortage caused a small fire in the mosque, bringing PA forces to the building, where they found bombs ready for use and large cannisters of bomb-making materials. The mosque was closed down, and PA sappers removed the explosives.

Continue Reading →

Muslim leader sues Blears on Gaza

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A follow up on a story posted last week   http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=6699#more-6699 As is the fashion with all Muslim groups anyone who dares to speak against them will find themselves in court.

_45633680_abdullah_pa226bodcompfrom the BBC

A leading member of the Muslim Council of Britain is suing cabinet minister Hazel Blears for defamation, following a row over the Israeli bombing of Gaza.

Dr Daud Abdullah, who is the MCB deputy secretary-general, is seeking damages.

Ms Blears said a document which Dr Abdullah signed on hostilities in Gaza had advocated attacks on UK military personnel and on Jews around the world.

Ms Blears made the claim in a letter to the Guardian last week, but Dr Abdullah has vehemently denied it.

The document is known as the Istanbul Declaration and was signed by 90 Muslim leaders in response to the three-week Israeli offensive in Gaza, in December and January.

The minister said the declaration supported violence against foreign troops, including British naval forces and advocated “attacks on Jewish communities all around the world”.

Ms Blears, who is Communities Secretary, said Dr Abdullah needed to make his own position clear.

Dr Abdullah has in turn accused Ms Blears of “crude bullying”. He said the declaration did not represent an attack on Jewish people and that he did not call for or support attacks on British troops anywhere in the world. Continue Reading →

Hamas couldn’t fire smuggled Stingers against Israelis due to embedded ID system

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If this story doesn’t put a smile on your face. Read it again.pissed-off

from the World Tribune

GAZA CITY — The Hamas regime acquired U.S.-origin air defense systems but was unable to use them in combat.

Hamas sources said the Islamic military has acquired the Stinger man-portable air defense system. The sources said the Stingers were acquired from smugglers in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in 2008 and deployed in the 22-day war against Israel in January 2009.

“We were disappointed by them, and they were found to have been useless,” a Hamas source said.

The source said Hamas smuggled four Stinger systems in 2008. The source said the Hamas military deployed the Stingers against Israel Air Force AH-64 Apache attack helicopters during strike missions in the northern Gaza Strip.

“Our gunners couldn’t fire the weapon,” the source recalled. “A notice came up on the display saying ‘friendly aircraft.'”

Industry sources said Raytheon, producer of Stinger, installed identification friend/foe capabilities more than a decade ago. The sources said this would prevent Stinger from being fired against any aircraft used by the U.S. military.

Another Hamas source said gunners deployed Stinger along with heavy machine guns in attacks on Israeli helicopters during the war in the Gaza Strip. The source said one Stinger surface-to-air missile was launched, but the projectile veered off course and struck a Hamas gunner squad.

“The Stinger was drawn by the heat of our guns rather than the engines of the Israeli helicopters,” the source said. “At that point, we stopped using this weapon.”

The sources said Hamas has abandoned plans to acquire additional Stingers. Instead, the Islamic army has been ordering the Russian-origin SA-16, or Igla-1, surface-to-air missile system, with a range of five kilometers.

Best Geert Wilders speech yet! L.A. April 2009

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Obama’s Muslim Outreach

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obama-muslimbyTed Belmanof the Canada Free Press

One year ago I wrote about Obama’s Muslim connection. No matter how strong this connection was, the main stream media and ultimately Jewish Americans ignored it.

“The person who made me proudest of all,” Obama wrote, “was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam, and has sworn off pork and tobacco and alcohol.”

On February 27th, Barack Hussein Obama said the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.”

Although Obama played the Christian card while campaigning, he is playing the Muslim card now in such a blatant fashion that even I am astounded.

Here is his record to date after inauguration,

  • Obama’s first call was to Mahmoud Abbas who is not even a head of state. Obama was delivering a message to Israel and the world.
  • Obama’s first interview, within days of inauguration, was with the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya Networks In it her stressed his own Muslim ties and his hopes for a Palestinian state. His message was “U.S. not your enemy”

    “And as I said during my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,” Continue Reading →