"On
the road from Durban..."
"Israel, in many respects, has become the South Africa of today. It is the litmus test of one's progressive credentials. If you are on the left, you can be friendly with Jews, you can be a Jew, but you cannot be on the side of Israel. ... And yet the comparison with South Africa is intellectually lazy, morally questionable, and possibly even mendacious." (Ian Buruma)
News and commentary on anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli bias.
Part 1: 2001/09/12 - 2001/12/28
Part 2: 2002/01/04 - 2002/04/29
Part 3: 2002/05/02 - 2002/06/29
Part 4: 2002/07/04 - 2002/08/29
Part 5: 2002/09/05 - 2002/11/25
Part 6: 2002/12/02 -
August 2002
"Crude Zionist Propaganda" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2002/08/29)
"Eminent Arab Scholars" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2002/08/28)
"'Neo-Nazi' Group Plans Anti-Israel Rally and Concert in DC" (Jeff Johnson, CNSNews.com, 2002/08/22)
"MSNBC's Messy Altercation" (HonestReporting, 2002/08/19)
"'Demon Israel' and the ivory tower" (Noga Tarnopolsky, Haaretz, 2002/08/19)
"The Saudis' Bad Press" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/08/16)
"PA minister: 'Jews live by scheme and deceit'" (Michael Freund, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/12)
"A complimentary double standard" (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, 2002/08/11)
"Flunking with Flying Colors" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2002/08/09)
"The road to irredentism" (Caroline B. Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/09)
"The rising tide of anti-Semitism" (Suzanne Fields, The Washington Times, 2002/08/08)
"Saudis blame Jews for hostile views" (UPI, 2002/08/07)
"Whatever happened to Amnesty International?" (National Post, 2002/08/06)
"Hebrew U Survivor" (Michael Ledeen, National Review, 2002/08/06)
"Will France Clean Up Anti-Semitism?" (Kenneth R. Timmerman, Insight, 2002/08/05)
"An Ugly Rumor or an Ugly Truth?" (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, 2002/08/04)
"No tolerance for genocide" (Caroline B. Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/02)July 2002
"Jewish leaders angered by Chirac's conspiracy theory" (Tovah Lazaroff, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/07/31)
"Israel Cancels Exhibit in China" (Joe McDonald, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/07/30)
"Egyptian TV sermon: The Jews have been destined by God to be humiliated until Doomsday" (IMRA, 2002/07/29)
"Iraq: Suicide bombings legitimate" (William M. Reilly, UPI, 2002/07/25)
"Do not treat Israel like apartheid South Africa" (Ian Buruma, The Guardian, 2002/07/23)
"Islam rejecting globalization - and Jews and Israel" (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, 2002/07/22)
"Their Kampf - Hitler's book in Arab hands" (David Pryce-Jones, National Review, 2002/07/18)
"Call It What It Is: a Global Surge of Anti-Semitism" (Yossi Klein Halevi, Los Angeles Times, 2002/07/17)
"Driven by vengeance and a desire to defend the homeland" (Amira Hass, Haaretz, 2002/07/16)
"A battle in which the pen has become the sword" (Magnus Linklater, The Times, 2002/07/11)
"Saudi envoy: Israel occupation worse than Nazis" (Reuters/Haaretz, 2002/07/09)
"Fury as academics are sacked for being Israeli" (Charlotte Edwardes, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/07/07)
"Officials Puzzled About Motive of Airport Gunman Who Killed 2" (Rick Lyman and Nick Madigan, The New York Times, 2002/07/06)
"Misreporting Israel's war" (Joel Himelfarb, The Washington Times, 2002/07/05)
"The feel of religion" (Al-Ahram Weekly, 2002/07/04)
"Fear and loathing at 'The Economist'" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/07/04)
"Crude Zionist Propaganda" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2002/08/29)
Johnson examines an anti-Semitic review of Michael B. Oren's "Six Days of War" written by Arab News editor John R. Bradley: "It isn't long before the favorite equation of the non-anti-Semite makes an appearance: Zionism = Nazism. ... "The Biblical context was dragged in later, when the early Zionists realized "Israel" could serve as a Western colonialist outpost. The Biblical myth was then successfully confused with the terrible consequences for Jews of the Holocaust, just when the Zionists themselves - we should remember - were behaving like fully-trained Nazis." ... Are you getting the feeling that Bradley would only be happy if Oren changed the full title of his book to Six Days of War: Perpetrated by a Fully-Trained Nazi-Like State Born of Terror, Against Blameless Peaceful Arabs?" (See also: "An official history of Israel" (John R. Bradley, Arab News, 2002/08/29 [?])
"Eminent Arab Scholars" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2002/08/28)
"The Jerusalem Post has a report on a new conference on Holocaust denial and the evil Jewish Conspiracy™ scheduled at "The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up," a Bizarro World "think tank" in Abu Dhabi. ... Please note that the Zayed Centre for Drooling Lunacy is not some kind of fringe organization; they are funded by the Arab League, and other speakers this year have included former vice president Al Gore, former secretary of state James Baker, and President George W. Bush’s brother, Neil Bush. Oh, and Lyndon LaRouche. ... This is what passes for thinking from the "eminent Arab scholars" at the Zayed Centre for Obsessive Hand-Washing and Paranoid Psychosis; first the Executive Director: 'Mr. Mohammed Khalifa Al Murar, the Executive Director of the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up repudiated Israelis claim of being the real Semites. ... Yet, they churn out lies after lies till they make people believe that they are Semites and are being persecuted by others. ... Expressing their true face, Mr. Al Murrar said, "Jews claim to be God's most preferred people but the truth is they are the enemies of all nations. Most philosophers like Zimmer, consider Jews as cheaters whose greed knows no bounds. Today, after having controlled print and electronic media, they distort facts to suit their objectives", added Mr. Al Murar.'" (See also "Eminent Arab Scholars speak at Seminar on Semitism" (Zayed Centre for Coordination & Follow Up, 2002/08/28) and "Arab League to participate in Holocaust-denial symposium" (Michael Freund, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/27): "In a press release describing the symposium, the Zayed Center said, "Israel has indulged in spreading lies and exaggerations about the Holocaust in order to squeeze out huge funds from European countries through blackmail." Labeling the Holocaust a "false fable," the center said that, 'The symposium aims at disclosing many historical, political fallacies promoted by Israel and Zionism through different means especially the spread of fibs and exaggerations regarding the so-called Holocaust.'")
"'Neo-Nazi' Group Plans Anti-Israel Rally and Concert in DC" (Jeff Johnson, CNSNews.com, 2002/08/22)
Found via Little Green Footballs. As always it's interesting to note the identical terminology used by neo-Nazis, neo-Marxists and Islamists regarding Israel: "A coalition calling itself Taxpayers Against Terrorism plans to gather at the U.S. Capitol Saturday to "rally against terrorism" and "the U.S. government's support for Israel," but religious and civil rights groups say the rally's real purpose is to incite hatred, bigotry, and violence. ... [Billy Roper, coordinator for the Taxpayers Against Terrorism coalition] blames the Sept. 11 attacks on American support for "the terrorist state of Israel." "U.S. tax money helps buy the bullets that go into Israeli guns that murder Palestinian women and children," he claimed, "and that's why the U.S. is a target for terrorism." ... Devin Burghart, director of the Building Democracy initiative at the Center for New Community, said Taxpayers Against Terrorism is merely a front group for the National Alliance, "the largest, best organized and, in fact, most dangerous neo-Nazi organization in the United States." ... "They have transformed their recruiting strategies and developed a new mission," he said. "That mission is, simply put, the eradication of Jews and people of color from the planet." ... Despite the self-described "racist" views of the rally's organizers, Roper believes they will receive support from many people of Arab descent and others who support the efforts of Palestinians against Israel.""MSNBC's Messy Altercation" (HonestReporting, 2002/08/19)
HonestReporting examines a column by Eric Alterman, which is a rather extreme example of topsy-turvy moral equivalence: "On August 15, Alterman wrote on MSNBC.com: "Marwan Barghouti plans and helps execute attacks against Israelis in the occupied territories, just as the Israelis do to the Palestinians. His people are at war over the occupation. He has expressed willingness to recognize Israel within its pre-1967 borders. He is, in other words, the very definition of a freedom fighter; a violent one, to be sure, but fighting a violent enemy. If Israel were to come to its senses, he is the kind of leader with whom it would need to make peace. But like Hamas, Ariel Sharon prefers war and occupation to peace and compromise and in seeking to try one of the other side's more moderate leaders for murder, seeks to destroy any hope for the former, thereby presenting himself as the champion of the latter. It is a horrifying spiral of death with Sharon and company leading the whirlwind. The blood of many, Jew and Arab, is on their hands." Read it again. Alterman calls the arch-terrorist Barghouti "the very definition of a freedom fighter." He says that Ariel Sharon is "like Hamas" and is leading the 'horrifying spiral of death.'" (See also: "Eric Alterman" (MSNBC, 2002/08/15), for a revised version of the column and "Fact-checking Alterman" (Matthew Hoy, Hoystory, 2002/08/16))
"'Demon Israel' and the ivory tower" (Noga Tarnopolsky, Haaretz, 2002/08/19)
"While support for Israel among the general public in America has only increased during the past year - according to most of the public opinion surveys that have been conducted there - in the leftist circles of the intelligentsia in the United States a campaign of hatred and delegitimization is being conducted against it. This campaign, which gained momentum after September 11, in fact began after the Gulf War. Israel was perceived as the major cause of suffering in the Arab states, and therefore as the factor behind their desperate behavior. ... "The post-colonialist vision has prevailed for many years now in academia as a means of understanding texts," says Professor Robert (Uri) Alter, a lecturer in Hebrew literature at the University of California at Berkeley. According to the standard bearers of post-colonialism, 'The Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular are perceived as people of the Third World and as victims of colonialism. According to their mistaken concepts on race, the Arabs are perceived as dark-skinned and the Israelis as white - the last offshoot of Western colonialism.'""The Saudis' Bad Press" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/08/16)
Taranto quotes two articles from Arab News: "For example, Nourah Abdul Aziz Al-Khereiji writes: "Is the vainglorious and headstrong United States taking the world to total destruction? Blind US actions against Arab and Muslim countries will undoubtedly halt global economic progress causing untold miseries the world over. ... Hasn't the US proven itself to be a terrorist country by resorting to methods of terrorizing peace-loving people in various parts of the world? Isn't its unilateral attempt to redraw the map of the Middle East an act of international terrorism?" ... Then there's Israel Shamir, who writes anti-Semitic screeds from Israel. In his latest, he suggests America and Britain were on the wrong side in World War II, faulting them for having dropped bombs on "Germans and French, for offending Jews." Offending? He refers to the "Judeo-American cult, probably the most violent and war-prone since Genghis Khan" and claims that "your average American Jew values his Jewish-ness well above his American-ness." Shamir concludes with the observation that "there are many good Jews, in Israel and in the US alike." How very reassuring." (See also: "Extension of terrorism by other means" (Nourah Abdul Aziz Al-Khereiji, Arab News, 2002/08/16 [?]) and "Take the money and run" (Israel Shamir, Arab News, 2002/08/16))
"PA minister: 'Jews live by scheme and deceit'" (Michael Freund, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/12)
"Palestinian Authority Communications Minister Imad Falouji made anti-Semitic remarks in an appearance on official PA television late last week, Palestinian Media Watch revealed Monday. "Israel does not recognize the basis of the negotiations," Falouji said in an August 8 broadcast. 'That is because Jewish nature is in control of that state and does not sanction peace or stability... The Jewish nation, it is known, from the dawn of history, from the time Allah created them, lives by scheme and deceit.'""A complimentary double standard" (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, 2002/08/11)
Professor Adi Ophir, "an instructor in philosophy at Tel Aviv University and founder/editor of Theory and Criticism," thinks Israel "deserve much more severe steps" than Milosevic' regime in former Yugoslavia: "If Europe were free of the shadow of anti-Semitism, and could stand up to Israel the way it did to Yugoslavia in the 1990s, I'm sure the criticism, and the practical steps, would be much more severe; and justifiably so, since we deserve much more severe steps. Maybe not NATO bombings, though if things go on as they are, perhaps that will come, but steps taken, for example, against South Africa - sanctions and pressure of all kind." Nonetheless, don't the leftists who are critical of Israel have to fight the anti-Semitism that Ophir admits exists? 'When anti-Semitism is exploited to silence criticism, I can understand ignoring it, because then you are playing the game of silencing the critics.'" (See also: "The charges against Milosevic" (BBC News, 2002/02/08), for a survey of the indictments against him: "It cites the July 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, where "almost all captured Bosnian Muslim men and boys, altogether several thousands, were executed at the places where they had been captured or at sites to which they had been transported for execution.")"Flunking with Flying Colors" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2002/08/09)
"For two decades Arab countries hated Israel not because the West Bank peoples suffered under Jordanian control, but only because there were any Jews at all in the new state of Israel. Unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon did not bring praise from Hamas and Hezbollah, but contempt. Offers to turn back up to 97 percent of the West Bank were seen as foolish when an intifada could get 100 percent - or more. Iraqi guided missiles raining down on Tel Aviv disappointed cheering Palestinians only because they were not laced with germs or nerve gas. All this the world ignores, as it seeks in vain to fabricate a holocaust in Jenin. For these reasons and more, the current prejudices of the United Nations and the equivocation of the Europeans, who should know better, are nauseating - and in the end simply shameful. In the latter case, the sanctimonious hedging indeed finally becomes too much and is abjectly reprehensible: Europe, after all, is the great, eternal cemetery of the Jewish people, where six million were incinerated through the evil of the Nazis and the complicity of millions of timid and opportunistic other Europeans.""The road to irredentism" (Caroline B. Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/09)
"How did it come to pass that Yassra Bakri, a 20-year-old Israeli Arab nursing student at Safed College, and her girlfriend, Samiya Asedi, another Israeli Arab student, said nothing for 20 minutes about the presence of a mass murderer on a No. 361 Egged bus this past Sunday morning? ... According to Moti Zaken, Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau's Arab affairs adviser, much of this extremist trend is the result of work by Arab non-governmental organizations that were founded over the last decade. ... One of the most active and most successful of these organizations is Adala, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. ... In a report submitted to the Amman NGO networking meeting for the UN World Conference Against Racism in February 2001, Adala claimed that in Israel, "Racism exists at almost every level of society." At Durban itself, Adala was a central force in the NGO conference, where Israel was defined to be "a racist apartheid state in which Israel's brand of apartheid is a crime against humanity." ... The widespread legitimacy given to Adala's advocacy of the notion that Israel is a racist state whose very self-definition as a Jewish state is wrong, paves the way for monstrous behavior like that of Bakri and Assedi on the No. 361 bus. After all, if the goal is irredentism, what possible responsibility should they have toward citizens of the state that they are taught to consider illegitimate and racist?" (See also: "Israeli Arab nursing student charged for failure to warn of bus bombing" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/07))"The rising tide of anti-Semitism" (Suzanne Fields, The Washington Times, 2002/08/08)
"The comparison of the Jews to the Nazis is commonplace among Palestinian sympathizers in Europe and the Middle East. It is especially virulent among European intellectuals and journalists who attempt to camouflage their anti-Semitism in political virtue as a defense of the Palestinian "victims." ... A cartoon in the Ethnos, the main pro-government paper in Greece, contains a cartoon in which two Israeli soldiers look like Nazis slaughtering innocents. "Don't feel guilty brother," one of them says. 'We were not in Auschwitz and Dachau to suffer, but to learn.'""Saudis blame Jews for hostile views" (UPI, 2002/08/07)
An article on reactions in Saudi media to the Pentagon breefing at which Saudi Arabia was decribed as an enemy of the United States: "The mass circulation Okaz said the description of Saudi Arabia as an enemy to the United States "did not come as a surprise to us because all it's (the Pentagon's) members are either Jews or allies of the Zionist lobby." ... Al-Nadwa accused the Zionist lobby of waging a campaign against Saudi Arabia because it represents the religious center of Muslim nations. "Although it has failed to exploit the Sept. 11 attacks to sow dissent between the United States and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Zionist Lobby has not despaired from taking advantage of any chance to achieve its nasty objective," Al-Nadwa said. ... Okaz called the U.S. reactions to Sept.11 harsh and said ... "Accusing Muslim countries of supporting and financing terrorism and fundamentalist groups were all extreme reactions by the Americans who countered terrorism with terrorism," a reference to the United States response to the Islamist terrorist attacks on New York and Washington last Sept.11. Of 19 men believed to have carried out the attacks, 15 have been identified as Saudi." (See also: "Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies" (Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/08/06))"Whatever happened to Amnesty International?" (National Post, 2002/08/06)
"But in practice, AI has begun to fritter away its well-earned moral capital on fashionable causes that have nothing to do with any of these issues. For instance, some of AI's supporters were alienated when the group supported last year's disastrous UN "anti-racism" conference in Durban, South Africa. Of all the nations in the Middle East, Israel has by far the most humane and civilized justice system. Yet in Durban, Amnesty International singled out Israel for special blame. And the group refused to walk out on the proceedings even when the NGO conference degenerated into a festival of unvarnished anti-Semitism. ... The broader question is this: Given AI's mandate and limited resources, why is the group wasting its time and resources complaining about inconvenienced lobster thugs and "stereotyped" refugees when people are being butchered and railroaded en masse in places like Angola, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia? The answer is that it has become more politically fashionable to sniff for racism in the First World than to hunt for torture in the Third. Like Human Rights Watch and other brand-name NGOs, AI has been tempted away from its original mandate, and now fritters away its credibility attacking Zionism, globalization and the West.""Hebrew U Survivor" (Michael Ledeen, National Review, 2002/08/06)
An interview with Eliad Moreh, a survivor of the Hebrew University terror attack: "If I have survived while the young man sitting next to me - my dearest friend Diego David - was assassinated, it must be because I am obliged to speak out. ... The seven people murdered here were targeted because they were Jews, and found themselves on the soil of Israel. That was their crime, that was why they were assassinated. ... I see history repeated. It is again considered a crime to be a Jew, just as it was during the thirties and forties. Nobody gives a damn. Just as in the thirties and forties, the rest of the world stands by while Jews are assassinated every day. ... By finding reasons to justify the assassins, some people in Europe encourage them to shed more Jewish blood. ... Is there anything that can justify the deliberate murdering of as many people as possible?""Will France Clean Up Anti-Semitism?" (Kenneth R. Timmerman, Insight, 2002/08/05)
"The Representative Council of French Jewry (CRIF) has catalogued more than 1,000 violent threats against Jews and overt anti-Semitic acts. During the last three months of 2000 alone, physical violence included 44 firebombings, 43 attacks on synagogues and 39 assaults on Jews as they were leaving places of worship. ... An Interior Ministry report late last year concluded that the violence was the work of "petty criminals," not anti-Semites. "There was no rejection of the Jew," the author of the report, Khadija Mohsen-Finan, told the New York Times after interviewing nearly 500 young Muslims. "So far, the number of incidents has been small." ... "Are there verbal attacks? Sure. But that goes both ways," she said. The "verbal attacks" Mohsen-Finan dismissed as "inconsequential" included such incidents as bands of young Muslim youths gathering in front of synagogues as Jewish worshippers emerged, chanting "death to the Jews." ... Many of the individuals caught firebombing synagogues in April still are awaiting trial. How they are treated by the French courts will provide the best yardstick for judging the sincerity of Prime Minister Raffarin's pledge to crack down on an anti-Semitic violence that has been tolerated for 18 months by the French political establishment from right to left.""An Ugly Rumor or an Ugly Truth?" (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, 2002/08/04)
"A few months ago, when Tom Paulin, a poet, Oxford University professor and regular guest on BBC television, told Al Ahram, Egypt's leading newspaper, that American-born Jews who have settled on the Israeli-occupied West Bank were Nazis who "should be shot dead," his remarks, which outraged some, were also met by approval and admiration. A. N. Wilson, a prominent conservative British writer and editor, publicly defended Mr. Paulin, who has also published a poem in The Observer magazine that referred to Israeli soldiers as "the Zionist SS." "Many in this country and throughout the world would echo his views on the tragic events in the Middle East," said Mr. Wilson, who himself wrote in The Evening Standard, the London newspaper, that he had "reluctantly" concluded that Israel no longer had a right to exist. That, too, is a view that throughout Western Europe seems to command a fair degree of sympathy. ... "What you have is anti-Semitism without anti-Semites," said Oscar Bronner, the publisher and editor of Der Standard, a major Austrian daily newspaper. 'If you talk to people who use anti-Semitic clichés without knowing what they are doing, they are shocked that somebody would think they were anti-Semitic. But it's everywhere. It's in print. It's dinner party conversations. When a dozen Israeli kids are killed because somebody throws a bomb in order to kill Israeli kids, then it's regrettable. If Israel kills a dozen kids as collateral damage when they try to kill a murderer who hides among children, then this is a war crime.'""No tolerance for genocide" (Caroline B. Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/02)
"The Palestinians have reached a point in this war where it has now become clear that their goal in this struggle is not the end of the so-called "occupation," but rather the organized, premeditated mass murder of Jews because they are Jewish. That is, the Palestinian goal today is genocide. ... Contrary to what we tell ourselves, these attacks are not expressions of rage or reactions to specific actions by the IDF. They are acts of genocide perpetrated against Jews as Jews because the Palestinians have descended to the level of depravity where they do not view the Jews as human beings whose murder is an inherently immoral act. ... It is not just Hamas or Tanzim or Islamic Jihad that we must fight, but Palestinian society itself must be transformed for there to be peaceful coexistence. All major indicators point to the conclusion that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians is complicit in the aim of committing genocide against the Israelis. Poll after poll shows that a solid majority of Palestinians from all socio-economic levels supports suicide bombers and other forms of terrorism against Israel. ... Once we understand that this is the situation in Palestinian society, we reconcile ourselves with the fact that we are not in a struggle against a political movement for national sovereignty. We are being victimized by a genocidal campaign for our violent elimination supported by the overwhelming majority of Palestinians.""Jewish leaders angered by Chirac's conspiracy theory" (Tovah Lazaroff, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/07/31)
"Jewish leaders Tuesday lashed out at French President Jacques Chirac's Jerusalem conspiracy theory, which he presented on Monday to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, when he accused Israel of conducting an anti-French campaign in the US portraying France as anti-Semitic. "Saying that anti-Semitism in France is an American problem is out of the realm of reason," said Shimon Samuels, international liaison director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Paris. American Jews are not imagining that French Jews have been attacked, he said. They are simply describing reality, Samuels said. He also took issue with Chirac's assertion that French anti-Semitism is decreasing. His center's phone hotline does not stop ringing. "We have an average of three dozen reported incidents per week," he said." (See also: "Peres, Chirac seek 'road map' to peace, paths split on direction" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/07/30): "Chirac complained to Peres about what he claimed is a campaign against France in the United States, where France is portrayed as anti-Semitic. Chirac claimed that the campaign, while carried out in the US, is being orchestrated in Jerusalem, and demanded that the accusations against France regarding anti-Semitism cease.")"Israel Cancels Exhibit in China" (Joe McDonald, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/07/30)
"Israel has canceled an Albert Einstein exhibit in China after officials demanded the removal of references to his being Jewish and a supporter of creating a Jewish state, an Israeli spokesman said Tuesday. The incident adds to diplomatic strains that date back to Israel's decision two years ago to call off a deal to sell Beijing a sophisticated airborne radar system. China has also criticized recent Israeli attacks in Palestinian territories. ... "It was the Chinese Ministry of Culture's demand to omit or delete parts of the exhibition that deal with the Jewish origins and pro-Zionist attitude of Einstein and that he had been invited to be the president of Israel," said Amir Sagie, an embassy spokesman. "These three themes are very important to the biography of Einstein and can't be changed." Sagie said China's culture ministry didn't give a reason for its request.""Egyptian TV sermon: The Jews have been destined by God to be humiliated until Doomsday" (IMRA, 2002/07/29)
From a sermon delivered by Shaykh Al-Shahat al-Azazi of the Ministry of Religious Endowments in Egypt: "We forgot God, so he forgot us, made us forget ourselves and made a foreign enemy control us, take a cherished piece of Islam's land, and tortured our brothers. They [Jews] have been destined by God to be humiliated until Doomsday. Although, they are the most humiliated and most inferior people, they controlled us because we and them have become equal in disobedience. ... ...O Lord, liberate Al-Aqsa mosque from the hands of the usurpers. O Lord, liberate Al-Aqsa mosque from the hands of the usurpers. Defeat disbelief and the disbelievers. Defeat atheism, atheists, and their supporters. O Lord, make us victorious on them.""Iraq: Suicide bombings legitimate" (William M. Reilly, UPI, 2002/07/25)
"Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel were "legitimate suicidal actions in accordance with international law" against the "Zionist entity." Speaking at an emergency Arab-requested U.N. Security Council meeting on Israel's Gaza City attack, Abdul Al-Kadhe defended Palestinian actions and criticized the United States for indulging "the Zionist entity"... ... "The United States is using its power as a military machine and its power in the media for its own narrow ends," he said. "We are all aware that falsifications of the facts, attempts to mislead, derive from the world wide Zionist movement which is characterized by racism ... if not deriving from Nazism and so forth and we will not continue with this." But, it wasn't the first time Iraq mentioned Israel and Nazism in the same breath. Last August in another council debate on the Middle East, Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri said 'the neo Nazi entity ... the criminal entity, the Zionist entity ... the Nazis occupying Palestinian territory, have the blessing of the American authorities.'""Do not treat Israel like apartheid South Africa" (Ian Buruma, The Guardian, 2002/07/23)
Buruma on an article by Steven and Hilary Rose, calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions: "The significant thing about their article was the comparison of Israel and South Africa. They cited the success of "civil society" expressing its "moral outrage" by boycotting South Africa. And they mentioned the number of people they knew who felt that "cooperating with Israeli institutions was like collaborating with the apartheid regime". They are quite correct: a lot of people do think that. Israel, in many respects, has become the South Africa of today. It is the litmus test of one's progressive credentials. If you are on the left, you can be friendly with Jews, you can be a Jew, but you cannot be on the side of Israel. ... And yet the comparison with South Africa is intellectually lazy, morally questionable, and possibly even mendacious. ... Far more Muslims have been killed or tortured by the Indian army than by the Israeli defence forces. Dozens of Kashmiri victims - the number of people killed in Jenin - would not even reach the news. And if you think Kashmir is brutal, what about Chechnya? But India and Russia are not litmus tests. Moral outrage against their governments is not a badge of being progressive. No one is proposing a boycott of universities in Delhi or St Petersburg. I can think of one or two reasons for these double standards, but whatever they are, I believe that they tell us more about the boycotters than about the subjects of their rage." (Note: Thanks to Vitali Fridliand for the pointer.)"Islam rejecting globalization - and Jews and Israel" (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, 2002/07/22)
An excellent article on the affinity between the "theory of anti-globalization" and anti-Semitism: "Three weeks after the Twin Towers attack on September 11, the prestigious Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram published an article in which the writer hoped that "with the collapse of the city of globalization, it's possible to dare to predict that the whole theory of globalization will be buried with it." ... Islamic Fundamentalism today represents one of the most prominent elements in resistance to globalization; and the Jews, not only Israelis, are seen by Muslim Fundamentalists as the vanguard of the detested globalization process. This association of the Jew with a maligned global trend invariably leads to propaganda and discourse that is laden with anti-Semitism. ... It would appear that despite obvious differences between the left in Europe and radical Islamic thinkers, anti-globalization displays by both groups are animated by hostility to the United States and its growing domination around the globe. ... In this connection, Becker refers to an "unholy alliance between, on the one hand, some of the most dubious regimes in the world, belonging to Arab and Muslim states, and, on the other hand, some of the most enlightened organizations, in the name of the joint struggle against globalization" ... Mira Assau has been active for several years in "Green Action," an Israeli organization which is active in the campaign against globalization. ... Assau doesn't believe that placards which compare the Star of David and swastikas constitute anti-Semitic agitation. "On the contrary," she declares. 'This is an act of defiance against racism, and against the racist policies of the government of Israel. In no way is it against the Jewish people.'""Their Kampf - Hitler's book in Arab hands" (David Pryce-Jones, National Review, 2002/07/18)
Pryce-Jones on the fact that Adolf Hitler's self-biography "Mein Kampf" "remains an international hit": "As its Arabic translator Luis al-Haj expresses it in his preface, "National Socialism did not die with the death of its herald. Rather, its seeds multiplied under each star." ... Of all the Arabs convinced of Hitler's coming triumph, none was so eager as Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinian Arabs in the Hitler years. ... All sorts of Arab leaders were to follow Haj Amin's example and fall into the racist trap Hitler set for them, including Gamal Abdul Nasser and Anwar Sadat, the Syrian and Iraqi Baathists, and King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. ... In one Muslim country after another, leaders who may describe themselves either as Islamist or secular call for the State of Israel to disappear from the map, and its people to be annihilated. It does not seem in the least shocking to them to be proposing mass-murder. ... On the contrary: It is only natural in an absolute ruler to seek to kill off his enemies. Ahmad Ragab, a columnist for the Egyptian government paper Al-Akhbar, is only one example among many opinion-makers to "give thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory," and regretting only that Hitler had not extracted revenge for Palestine by murdering every last Jew.""Call It What It Is: a Global Surge of Anti-Semitism" (Yossi Klein Halevi, Los Angeles Times, 2002/07/17)
"The chances of a murderous skinhead wandering around an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood without premeditated intent to kill are about as likely as an armed Muslim fanatic who just happens to open fire at a counter of Israel's national airline. The inability of law enforcement agencies to discern a motive in the July 4 shooting into a crowd of Jews at Los Angeles International Airport by a Muslim extremist who hated Jews and accused Israel of deliberately infecting Arabs with AIDS is hardly an isolated example of stupidity and self-deception. It's part of a worldwide pattern of denial in response to increasingly lethal Jew-hatred. ... Criticizing specific Israeli policies is, of course, legitimate; self-criticism is an Israeli national pastime. But when the United Nations obsessively searches for a nonexistent massacre of Palestinians in Jenin while systematically ignoring massacres of Israelis, when the only country in the corrupt and violent Middle East to be singled out for judgment is Israel, when the context of Israel's war for survival is ignored and only Israel's self-defense is condemned, when the very existence of a Jewish state becomes immoral and the only form of nationalism considered racist is Zionism - then the line is crossed from legitimate criticism to demonization. And the ground is prepared for murder.""Driven by vengeance and a desire to defend the homeland" (Amira Hass, Haaretz, 2002/07/16)
A report from Gaza, with a bizarre defense of the "moral considerations" taken by Hamas: "'I'm not happy to see a Jew killed simply because he is Jewish. But so long as Palestinians are being killed, I long for the killing of a Jew,' says M. Children are not specifically targeted, he said, in a conversation held before the Gilo bus bombing on June 18. "There is nothing easier than putting a bomb in a school or sending a person with an explosives belt into a school, and the fact that Hamas has never done so," he declares, "is evidence that they do take moral considerations into account." The primary targets are is places where adults can be found, "but in Israel, all of the civilians are soldiers, really. That's how we see it. The fact is that Israel called up 45,000 civilians for reserve duty." Based on what M. says, the criticism of the suicide bombings has evidently filtered down to the Hamas rank and file. Because the Koran forbids the murder of civilians in war.""A battle in which the pen has become the sword" (Magnus Linklater, The Times, 2002/07/11)
"Martin Walser, a once powerful literary voice in post-war Europe, has written a novel, called Death of a Critic, which turns [Germany's leading literary critic] Reich-Ranicki, thinly disguised, into a figure of ridicule and contempt. The book has yet to be published, but already it has become a national scandal. I counted more than 120 articles in the German press, then gave up less than halfway through. This being Germany, there is one other element in the book which has sent shock waves through the literary world. It is anti-Semitism. The principal character in Death of a Critic is a Jew - and not just any Jew. He is, in the words of Die Welt, "not a man, but a monster of corruption, of vulgarity, vanity and lubricity. He personifies the Jew as an object of hate." So this is more than just an attack on Reich-Ranicki, it constitutes an assault on his race as well. It is the first anti-Semitic novel to be published in Germany since the war. Realising this, the publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has hurriedly cancelled his plans to serialise it, describing the book as riddled with "anti-Semitic clichés". ... So Walser's attack is more than just an injured writer hitting back; it is, as the current literary editor of Die Welt, puts it, "an execution, a settling of scores, a document of hate". The editor was particularly repelled by a sentence towards the end of the book where the critic’s wife observes that "getting himself killed would be out of character". As a comment aimed at the sole survivor from a family destroyed by the Nazis it was, he noted, 'nothing short of horrifying'.""Saudi envoy: Israel occupation worse than Nazis" (Reuters/Haaretz, 2002/07/09)
"Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain said on Tuesday that Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was worse than anything Europe experienced under Nazi Germany. He also defended Palestinian suicide bombers. Ghazi Algosaibi, who drew fire last April for writing a poem in praise of an 18-year-old female suicide bomber, said Israel was using its military might against civilians who were defending themselves with the only weapons available to them. "This is a war of occupation, far more severe than anything the Germans did when they occupied Europe in World War Two," he told academics and reporters after giving a speech at the University of Westminster in London. The Nazis systematically exterminated six million Jews during World War Two when Germany occupied much of continental Europe.""Fury as academics are sacked for being Israeli" (Charlotte Edwardes, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/07/07)
"A British academic has sparked worldwide protests after sacking two scholars from her highly respected international journals because they are Israeli. Mona Baker, a professor at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), admitted yesterday that she had dismissed Dr Miriam Shlesinger and Prof Gideon Toury because of their nationality. Despite a storm of complaints raised by her action, Prof Baker stood by her decision, telling The Telegraph: "I deplore the Israeli state. Miriam knew that was how I felt and that they would have to go because of the current situation." ... The dismissals raised no public opposition from within British universities. International academics, however, led by Prof Stephen Greenblatt, a world-renowned Shakespeare scholar at Harvard University, have now condemned the decision and called on British academics to stand up for intellectual freedom. ... [Baker] said that her actions were "my interpretation of what a boycott of Israel means". Prof Baker added: 'Many people in Europe have signed a boycott against Israel. Israel has gone beyond just war crimes. It is horrific what is going on there. Many of us would like to talk about it as some kind of Holocaust which the world will eventually wake up to, much too late, of course, as they did with the last one.'""Officials Puzzled About Motive of Airport Gunman Who Killed 2" (Rick Lyman and Nick Madigan, The New York Times, 2002/07/06)
"The man officials say opened fire at a crowded El Al airlines ticket counter on Thursday was an Egyptian-born owner of a limousine service who apparently went to the airport heavily armed and determined to kill, managing to take two lives before Israeli security guards shot him to death during a fierce, bloody struggle. ... But a former driver for Mr. Hadayet, Abdul Zahab, 36, said in an interview this afternoon that he often heard his boss express virulent anti-Israeli sentiments. "He had hate for Israel, for sure," said Mr. Zahab, who was born in Syria and worked a month for Mr. Hadayet about two years ago. 'He told me that the Israelis tried to destroy the Egyptian nation and the Egyptian population by sending prostitutes with AIDS to Egypt. He said that the two biggest drug dealers in New York are Israeli.'""Misreporting Israel's war" (Joel Himelfarb, The Washington Times, 2002/07/05)
"During Operation Defensive Shield - the five-week-long military campaign Israel launched March 29 in response to a devastating series of suicide bombings by Palestinian terrorists operating out of areas controlled by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority - CNN and other major news organs in the United States consistently portrayed Israel's actions in the most malevolent light possible while ignoring serious misconduct from the Palestinian side. During one CNN broadcast, for example, anchor Carol Lin demanded to know why the United States should press Mr. Arafat to rein in terrorist violence without simultaneously demanding that Israel agree to the creation of a Palestinian state. "What sense does that make?" Mrs. Lin indignantly demanded. ... On MSNBC, Martin Fletcher allowed suicide bombers and their defenders to argue without challenge that suicide bombings were a purely defensive response to unprovoked Israeli attacks. ... On the Fox News Channel, correspondent Geraldo Rivera suggested that Israel was "not fighting terrorism" but "inflicting terrorism" by attacking terrorists operating out of densely populated civilian areas. ... All too often, the only news fit to print seemed to be that which portrayed Israel in the darkest possible light.""The feel of religion" (Al-Ahram Weekly, 2002/07/04)
An interview with the author Karen Armstrong, in which she not only defends suicide bombers but also claims that Europe is charged of anti-Semitism because "the Zionist lobby" wants "to discredit European input in any future peace process": "Armstrong believes that the Israeli occupation is responsible for the kind of violent resistance it meets from the Palestinians. "The resistance will be as ruthless and violent as the occupation is," she says. "Every occupation breeds its own kind of resistance." Armstrong believes that the phenomenon of the Palestinian suicide bombers has more to do with politics and hopelessness than it does with religion. "I don't think people sit at home and read the Qur'an and say, yes, I must go and bomb Israel. This is not how religion works, and I see just absolute hopelessness when people have nothing to lose. Palestinians don't have F-16s, and they don't have tanks. They don't have anything to match Israel's arsenal. They only have their own bodies. Violence of any sort always breads violence, and the occupation itself is an act of extreme violence, domination and oppression. The way things have been moving has been aggressively against the Palestinians." ... Armstrong thinks that charges of anti-Semitism in Europe play into the hands of the Zionist lobby in America because "this will discredit anything Europe says. They say Europe is anti-Semitic because for the first time Europe is becoming aware of the plight of the Palestinians. It is part of a campaign to discredit European input in any future peace process.""Fear and loathing at 'The Economist'" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/07/04)
"Is there a newsweekly smarter, better written, or more globally influential than The Economist? ... For sheer intelligent entertainment, there is nothing like it. ... Straight, sensible and fair, that is, except when it comes to Israel. ... To the editors of The Economist, Israel is America's "often awkward" (June 27) and "pampered ally" (April 6). Israel's defenders, notably Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, are prone to "scatological excess and testicular obsession." Prime Minister Ariel Sharon represents Israel's "uglier face" (October 7, 2000); he is a calculated liar (April 21, 2001), whose modus operandi is "calculated brutality" (March 10, 2001). ... Thus the magazine, citing Amnesty International, alleges in its June 29 issue that Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti (whom it describes as "an inspiring resistance leader") is "being tortured" in an Israeli jail. What The Economist does not say is that the Amnesty claim is in turn based on one unverified allegation from the Palestine Media Center. ... It is, of course, always important not to jump to damning conclusions on the strength of a couple of sentences. But as novelist Cynthia Ozick has noted in this context, "It all adds up." ... "This is terrorism harnessed to a deserving cause."... "Mr Bush is no Zionist."... "Israel is a superior country with superior people: its talents are above the ordinary. But it has to abate its greed for other people's land." It all adds up."
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Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.
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