BoycottIsraelNetwork Footage Of The Batsheva Disruption (video)

An outfit calling itself BoycottIsraelNetwork has uploaded this footage of the outrageous scenes outside and inside the Edinburgh theatre on the opening night of the Batsheva Dance Company's performance there.

There's manic screeching of the blood libel, the burning of tickets, and a female activist gloatingly telling a wildly receptive mob of the impact of the disruptions upon the audience...

Writes the uploader:

'Boycott campaigners turned the empty Zionist slogan "Culture unites, Boycotts Divide" totally on its head in Edinburgh last weekend, drawing some of Scotland's best known cultural figures, many theatre--goers and Ohad Naharin, artistic director of Israel's world-renowned Batsheva dance company, into public dialogue about its role as a state-funded "cultural ambassador."'

And here's a BBC2Newsnight report uploaded by BDS stalwart Alex Seymour:

"No Israel=No War" & Other Judeophobic Filth: The Ugly Side Of Facebook

The Australia-based Online Hate Prevention Institute (OHPI), founded this year and headed by Dr Andre Oboler, has drawn Facebook's attention to a number of loathsome Jew-hating images posted by users on the site, images which for some unfathomable reason Facebook denies are antisemitic, and consequently allows:

 "OHPI recently reported a number of antisemitic images to Facebook using the regular reporting facility available to all users. Every one of our reports was swiftly reviewed and swiftly rejected.

Facebook is making a serious effort to respond faster to complaints, but this is meaningless if the response is to invariably reject the complaints. There is also no appeal and we have no details of any internal review process – if there is one, Facebook is welcome to share details to reassure us."

These reported images fall into several categories identified by the OHPI:

Mocking victims of the Holocaust ("Whats that burning? Oh it's my family" is superimposed upon a photograph of a smiling Anne Frank);

Promoting blood libel ("No Israel=No War" appears below two other lines, one in Arabic, on an image of a baby awaiting its turn to go through a meat grinder embossed with a Magen David and made into mince); Denying Jews human rights; and Holocaust denial.

Observes the OHPI:

"There is no way of knowing what is going on at Facebook, but three possibilities suggest themselves: (1) Facebook is giving control of the review process to a group of died in the wool racists, (2) Facebook review staff are well intentioned but seriously ignorant about hate speech, (3) Facebook as policy is doing everything it can in order to normalise the presence of hate speech on its platform. Either the recruitment process is serious[ly] flawed, or the training provided to staff is seriously inadequate, or something is rotten at the core of Facebook.

OHPI believes that these examples are exceedingly clear demonstrations of racism. We call on Facebook to:

1. Remove the offensive images

2. Close the offensive pages they are posting them

3. Permanently close the accounts of the users abusing Facebook to spread such hate

4. Review which staff assessed these examples and audit their decision making

5. Take active measures to improve staff training to avoid similar poor decisions in the future

6. To institute an appeal process as part of the online reporting system

7. To institute systematic random checks of rejected complaints
 
 .... The concern here is not simply that this content was on the Facebook platform, but that Facebook staff were not able to identify this as hate even after it had been reported to them."

To read and see more, click here
Update: please sign this petition

David Singer On Why Divided Palestinian Factions Must End Rejectionism Re Israel

"Palestine – Narrowing the Great Divide" is the title of Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer's latest article.

Writes David Singer:

'The political rift between Hamas and Fatah arising from their struggle to control the minds and the hearts of the Palestinian Arabs has continued unabated and unresolved for the last six years.

Gaza and the West Bank have become two separate and distinct political fiefdoms that have materially contributed to making the attainment  of the "two-state" solution envisaged in the Oslo Accords and the Bush Road Map impossible to achieve.

The divide is so wide that the areas themselves have been dubbed "Hamastan" and "Fatahland"  –  signifying the utter hopelessness of reconciliation between two very polarized forces.

Political commentators Amos Harel and  Avi Issacharoff have succinctly summed up the position in their recent article "Palestinian unity can wait – discord still growing between Hamas and Fatah":

"Both entities – the West Bank (Fatahland) and the Gaza Strip (Hamastan) - continue their bizarre dance: endless negotiations on the need for unity with zero actions or results, and a reality that only proves how wide the internal Palestinian divide is."

The results of a recent survey indicate that there is also deep division between the "1948 Arabs" –  those who did not flee the 1948 War between the Jews and six invading Arab armies – and those Arabs who did, identified as the "1967 Arabs".

The survey was undertaken by Professor Shifra Sagy, director of the Conflict Management and Resolution Program at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev –  with funding from the German research foundation DFG.

The study came at the initiative of some of Professor Sagy’s Palestinian students. It was co-directed with her postdoctoral student Dr. Adi Mana, and PhD students Anan Srour and Serene Madjali.

The survey was taken among 1104 Israeli Arabs and 948 West Bank  Arabs - who were all personally interviewed.

Views were expressed by each group on the following matters –  and commented on by Professor Sagy:

    1. Loyalty to the land:

"We asked Arabs of ’48 about their narrative, which is that they were loyal to their land when they didn’t desert it and stayed. The ’67 people look at the same issue, and they say the ’48 Arabs stayed on their land because they gave up and succumbed to the occupation without any resistance"      

    2. The relative well-being of the 1948 Arabs as compared to the 1967 Arabs: 

"The ‘48 Arabs say this is our right as citizens of Israel, but in the West Bank, the popular narrative is that this relative affluence is because Israel coopted them into being loyal"

     3.  On marrying each other:

60 percent of Israeli Arabs surveyed said they would not want their daughter to marry a  West Bank Arab, while 41 per cent of West Bankers had the same attitude to their daughter marrying an Arab with Israeli citizenship.

Prof. Sagy concludes that:

"Both groups think of themselves as Palestinians, but narratives are different regarding very crucial issues. What it reveals here is that over the past 60 years, this has really become two distinctly different groups."

One does not have to look very far to ascertain the reasons – which can be put down to the following:

    the unification of the West Bank with Jordan and the granting of Jordanian nationality to the West Bank Arabs between 1950-1967 – with Jordanian citizenship continuing to be enjoyed until 1988;
    the West Bank Arabs being under Israeli occupation between 1967-1993; and
    the grant of civil administrative autonomy to the Palestinian Authority bringing 95 per cent of the West Bank Arab population under its control since 1993 [My emphasis here and below]

Researcher Anan Srour commented:

"Perhaps there are some radicals who see this survey and will think it’s too controversial. We heard this occasionally in comments from the participants, in both directions. Some said that it’s really an issue, that we are two groups."  

Professor Sagy further noted:

'It is possible that the ’48 Arabs’ status as a small minority, at times threatened, both within Israeli society and the Arab world, has strengthened their group cohesion and their need to protect their unique collective narrative. Despite feeling that their common connection and identity with the ’67 Arabs is very important and significant, that connection could come at a heavy price, according to respondents, by bringing into doubt their connection to Israeli society. It is possible that it is for this reason that they distance themselves from the ’67 Arabs more than the ’67 Arabs do, and stress their unique potential as a "bridge" between the two nations'

Gazan Arabs were not included in the survey because it was deemed too risky an undertaking.  One suspects that their viewpoint would be very different to each of the two groups surveyed.

Indeed it would be very interesting if the same survey was conducted among Palestinian Arabs living in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon – where their experiences have been entirely different to those of the three Arab populations in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

The results of this research herald the need for both Hamas and the PLO to give up their declared political aim of wiping Israel off the face of the map –  the only thread they have had to unite Palestinian Arabs since the formation of the PLO in 1964.

Are we indeed witnessing the genesis of a people movement not marching in step with the declared political aims of either Hamas or the PLO –  as evidenced by the easing of entry restrictions enabling 120,000 West Bank Arabs to visit Israel during the holy month of Ramadan?

Israel’s decision last month elicited the following comment from Daoud Kuttab:

"Naturally, Palestinians were delighted to be able to pray in Jerusalem's Aqsa Mosque and visit relatives and friends in Jerusalem and inside the Green Line. Many had not been in Jerusalem for decades. Parents took their children (some teenagers) to see a Jerusalem they had never seen. Many flooded West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and other locations.

Palestinians shopped (the Malha mall is said to have sold goods worth 2 million shekels in one weekend). They hit the beaches and stores, enjoying a rare occasion to get out of the closed area of the West Bank."

Denied any vote for six years –  the West Bank Arabs had voted with their feet –  indicating to their political masters that the time had come to narrow the divide between the 1948 Arabs and the 1967 Arabs, not by trying to eliminate the State of Israel but co-existing peacefully with it.'

Poetic Li[n]es

It's been quite a fortnight for lady poets intent on waxing devilishly lyrical about Israel.

Taking as her Muse that map of 1700 that never was (the map that I blogged about here and which is still being touted as the real McCoy on anti-Israel websites!) Palestinian poet Samah Sabawi, who was the keynote speaker at the BDS Conference in Byron Bay, has composed lines beginning:

"A word on a map

Offends

A reminder of

An original sin

Ethnic cleansing

People wiped off 

Like letters

Written in the sand ...."

On Al Quds Day in London Yemeni poet Sanasino railed thus against "the Zionist entity":

In an article published on the Sunday following the outrageous harassment of patrons and disruptions to the Batsheva Dance Company's performance at Edinburgh's Playhouse Theatre (thuggishness so graphically depicted here), Scotland's National Poet and avowed "liberal" Liz Lochhead chose the medium of prose to reiterate her support of BDS:

"I have always been the kind of liberal who believes in total artistic and intellectual freedom and the self-evident value of free cultural exchange – even naïve enough to think art and politics don't, and shouldn't, mix.

Yet I was glad to join other Scottish artists and writers in signing a letter protesting the appearance of the Israeli Batsheva Dance Company at the Edinburgh International Festival this week. Why? Because I have been profoundly changed by what I witnessed and experienced first hand during a short trip with a few student friends and some other poets and singers to Palestine this June.

We started off staying for a few nights as guests in Aida Camp in Bethlehem. This meant-to-be-temporary refugee camp of about 4000 people, some 650or so families, is exactly as old as me (and I'm 64) – having been established under a terrified flurry of canvas tents in 1948 as the grandparents and parents of the present generation either fled for their lives or were, at best, forcibly displaced from their homes and villages as the State of Israel was created...

 Israel denies human rights to Palestinians. Denies that they are human beings at all....

....We must use all means. Including protesting at a dance company. Including total cultural and academic boycott."

Among the rejoinders in the comments section of the newspaper website where the above appears are these:

[First]:"The Aida camp is completely within Area A, meaning that it is under the full administrative and security control of the Palestinian Authority. It is under full Arab rule. The PA, with the funds it receives from the West, could choose to improve the camp, or build an adjacent town to move the residents there.

But it refuses to do so.

And the reason is because this camp, as well as all the other camps in the West Bank and Gaza, are propaganda tools, for useful idiots like Liz Lochhead to visit on carefully supervised dog-and-pony shows so she can write articles like this one bashing Israel. But Israel couldn't fix the camp if it wanted to. It is not allowed to!

Not one camp under PA or Hamas control has been dismantled since Oslo."

[Second]: "You pretend to have gone on a visit with an open mind and without an agenda; who are you kidding? Have you visited Sderot? No, because the Isreali [sic] children of are non[e] of your concern. It is not your concern that these children of Sderot have started the school year while rockets from Gaza keep landing in south Israel every day, inspite of Hamas signing a truce, while Israel has not yet responded to these attacks; instead it spent tens of millions of dollars on shelters in Sderot to allow the children there to go to school. Your description of the overall conditions in Gaza is false. The conditions in Gaza may not match those you are used to in your native Scotland, but there are no shortages in Gaza and the local merchants there (by their own words) can get anything they want from Egypt, except that the prefer Israeli products because they are of better quality. Why don't you tell your readers that Palestinians get more foreign aid per capita than any other group in the world? Why don't you tell your readers that a survey just found that there are 600 milionair[e]s in Gaza?...."

 [Third]: 'As Liz Lochhead proudly stands shoulder to shoulder with anti-Israel activists of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the nearest thing Edinburgh gets to Nazi-style Brown Shirts, she conveniently omits to tell us about their anti-Semitic members that they "keep under control" or their leader's prized Hezbullah flag....

"I saw someone in this crowd with a Hizbullah flag....I wish I had brought mine!"- Mick Napier....

It's time tae "send her homeward tae think again"!'

Muslim Brotherhood Official On Egypt's Peace With The Zionist Entity (video)

It brought cancer to Egypt, he explains:

(And an Iranian paper says Zionists spread homosexuality to control the world.)

In another recent video clip from MEMRI, we find Garrulous George getting very fiery indeed regarding the absence of jihad in certain countries and contrasting such countries with Iran's aid to the Palestinians:

"Jerusalem, A Jewish City By All Definitions"

The above quotation comes from this introduction by Eli E. Hertz to his illustrated and documented article entitled "Jerusalem: One Nation's Capital Throughout History".  If you missed his earlier article, an important and compelling consideration of the centrality of Jerusalem in Jewish (as opposed to Islamic) thought and practice, here's the link.

Now, he writes:

"Palestinians have nurtured a myth that historically there were two Jerusalems - an Arab 'East Jerusalem' and a Jewish 'West Jerusalem.'

Jerusalem was never an Arab city; Jews have held a majority in Jerusalem since 1870, and 'east-west' is a geographic, not political designation. It is no different than claiming the Eastern shore of Maryland should be a separate political entity from the rest of the state. 

With an overall population of nearly 800,000 today, separating East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem is as viable and acceptable as the notion of splitting Berlin into two cities again, or separating East Harlem from the rest of Manhattan. 

Arab claims to Jerusalem, a Jewish city by all definitions, reflect the "what's-mine-is-mine, what's-yours-is-mine" mentality underlying Palestinian concepts of how to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. That concept is also expressed in the demand for the 'Right of Return,' not just in Jerusalem - Israel's capital, but 'inside the Green Line' as well."

See his entire article (which may be said to refute the Palestinian Arab claims set out in this recent overview by Alex Ryvchin) here

European Antisemitism: Major Survey Underway

A child among her elders in Dusseldorf, 2009

"In May 2007 a small group of religious leaders met in the E.U. headquarters in Brussels with the three most significant leaders of Europe: Angela Merkel, German Chancellor and at the time president of the European Council; Jose-Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission; and Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament.

The meeting was one of those semiformal occasions at which little is said, and a great deal of time taken in saying it. Concerned at the return of anti-Semitism to Europe within living memory of the Holocaust, I decided that the time had come to break protocol and speak plainly, even bluntly.

I gave the shortest speech of my life. Sitting directly opposite the three leaders, I said this: 

"Jews and Europe go back a long way. The experience of Jews in Europe has added several words to the human vocabulary -- words like expulsion, public disputation, forced conversion, inquisition, auto-da-fe, blood libel, ghetto and pogrom, without even mentioning the word Holocaust. That is the past. My concern is with the future. Today the Jews of Europe are asking whether there is a future for Jews in Europe, and that should concern you, the leaders of Europe"....

So recalled the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Britain and the Commonwealth, Lord Sacks, earlier this year, against the backdrop of Germany's assault on circumcision.  He went on:

It's back, in Budapest

 "I have argued for some years that an assault on Jewish life always needs justification by the highest source of authority in the culture at any given age. Throughout the Middle Ages the highest authority in Europe was the Church. Hence anti-Semitism took the form of Christian anti-Judaism.

 In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism, based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day: the "scientific study of race" and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel. Today we know that both of these were pseudo-sciences, but in their day they were endorsed by some of the leading figures of the age.

 Since Hiroshima and the Holocaust, science no longer holds its pristine place as the highest moral authority. Instead, that role is taken by human rights. It follows that any assault on Jewish life -- on Jews or Judaism or the Jewish state -- must be cast in the language of human rights. Hence the by-now routine accusation that Israel has committed the five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide and crimes against humanity. This is not because the people making these accusations seriously believe them -- some do, some don't. It is because this is the only form in which an assault on Jews can be stated today." 

This week, coincidentally not long after a rabbi was brutally attacked (by youths of Arab origin) on a Berlin street and his six-year-old daughter threatened with murder,  the second phase of research undertaken online towards a major study of antisemitism in Europe gets underway.

Says Ioannis Dimitrakopoulos, who heads the Department for Equality and Citizen’s Rights at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), which commissioned the research,:

"Antisemitism remains an issue of concern today, not only to Jews, but to everyone in the EU. The ways in which it manifests itself vary according to time and place, and it affects Jews living in the EU in different ways. The FRA is conducting this survey to collect reliable and comparable data on antisemitism. This type of robust evidence will assist EU institutions and national governments in taking the necessary measures that will ensure that the rights of Jewish people are fully respected, protected and fulfilled across the EU, and the survey has been specifically designed with this goal in mind."

Adds Jonathan Boyd, Executive Director of the UK-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), which is conducting the survey in partnership with Ipsos MORI, and with the involvement of well-known experts in Britain, Israel, and elsewhere:

"It is clear to all observers of contemporary Jewish life that antisemitism continues to be a major preoccupation and worry in Jewish communal circles.  If it is ever to be effectively tackled, it is essential to have shared, reliable data.  This survey is designed to provide that data: this is an important and unique opportunity for thousands of European Jews to share their experiences and voice their concerns with policy makers working at the highest European and national levels."

In the heart of Auld Reekie

The survey, whose results will be published next year, will involve respondents in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Romania, Sweden and the UK.  It's looking at "first-hand examples of antisemitic harassment and violence, as well as the extent to which Jews feel safe and secure in Europe today, how they characterize antisemitism, and whether or not they perceive it to be a growing threat" and it also investigates "how and whether incidents are being reported, and levels of awareness among European Jews about their legal rights."

Data collected "will provide important evidence both for European Union and national policy makers, as well as for national and European Jewish organisations concerned with security and antisemitism" and  will be used by all these "to tackle discrimination and hate crime against Jews, as well as rights awareness and under-reporting of incidents".


For further information (including, it appears, in Hebrew and Russian), and to participate in the online survey, see here

(Hat tip: reader Rita)