We like his tune!
Pianist Evgeny Kissin
It’s no secret that many believe that the news division of the BBC, the UK’s prestigious broadcasting network, is wildly biased against Israel — sometimes to the point that it lacks credibility.
Unfortunately, the arts and media industries tend to follow the elite conventional wisdom (which, ever nuanced, goes something like: “Israel bad”) and rarely provides any sort of balance. So we were delighted to hear that Evgeny Kissin, 38, a child prodigy in his native Russia now widely regarded as one of the greatest living pianists, has accused the BBC of “slander and bias” against Israel, broadcasting material he describes as “painfully reminiscent of the old Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda.”
Kissin, who became a British citizen in 2002, said he intends from now on to speak out against media bias against Israel, which he sees as both fueling and being fueled by anti-Semitism.
H/t: The Jewish Chronicle’s ever-interesting Miriam Shaviv.
Comments (0) »Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 3:01 PM | Stand For Israel
Universal harassment continues…
More stupidity this week thanks to Europe’s universal jurisdiction laws and the willingness of anti-Israel forces to use them dishonorably for political gain: A delegation of senior IDF officers had to cancel a planned visit to the UK to avoid being arrested upon landing.
The delegation included four officers with ranks of major to colonel who had been invited by the British Army. Alas, the Brits shame-facedly told their Israeli counterparts that they couldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t be arrested.
Israeli officials said that, oddly enough, consistently trying to arrest Israeli officials will ”make it difficult for the two countries to maintain a normal relationship.”
That’s sort of the point, of course. And the Europeans, as of yet, aren’t really standing up to the clowns making a mockery of what actual war crimes are.
Comments (0) »Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 3:09 PM | Stand For Israel
Advocacy info: Has Great Britain been a friend to Israel?
Note: This is the first in the series of posts that bring you useful background information about Israel that will deepen your understanding of the Jewish state and the conflicts she faces, and help you discuss these issues.
However painful it is for American lovers of Israel to see and hear bile spewed on the Jewish state by people who misunderstand or twist the historical record or taking her actions completely out of context, we have it much better than European Zionists.
Americans remain stubbornly pro-Israel, despite the relentless drumbeat of anti-Zionists deeply hostile to the Jewish people’s historical narrative and unfairly critical of any efforts Israel makes to defend herself (and not always intentionally so — many activists who work against Israel’s interests simply don’t understand the history and current context of the the Arab-Israeli conflict). Not so in Europe, where the conventional wisdom openly questions Israel’s very right to exist.
Last month, England’s Spectator published the entirety of a lecture by British historian Andrew Roberts in which he set out how the UK has deviated from its early crucial role in establishing a national Jewish homeland.
- For all the undoubted statesmanship implicit in Arthur Balfour’s Declaration of November 1917, promising “a National Home for the Jewish People” doesn’t mean that Britain has ever been much more than a fair-weather friend to Jewish national aspirations.
- There was the notorious 1939 White Paper, which severely limited Jewish immigration into Palestine at precisely the period of their greatest need, during the Final Solution. A total upper limit of 75,000 Jewish immigrants was set for the fateful years 1940-44, a figure that was also intended to cover refugee emergencies. The White Paper was published on 9 November 1938, the very same day as the Kristallnacht atrocities in Germany. The Manchester Guardian described the White Paper as “a death sentence on tens of thousands of Central European Jews,” which in sheer numerical terms was probably an underestimation.
- In April 1948, Transjordan’s Arab Legion was actually commanded by a Briton, Sir John Glubb. On New Year’s Eve 1948, the British government actually issued an…
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Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 8:28 AM | Stand For Israel
What’s good for the goose? Israelis looking to use quirky European laws to arrest Hamas officials
Only a week or so ago, Great Britain promised to change its “universal jursidiction” law, which pro-Palestinian groups have been using to harass Israeli officials in England and elsewhere. Now, a group of 15 Israelis who hold Belgian citizenship are looking to exploit Belgium’s law to get arrest warrants sworn out against Hamas leaders for their rocket attacks on civilians in southern Israel, AFP reports.
The Israelis were wounded, owned homes that were damaged by rockets and, in one case, had a relative killed by in a rocket attack.
“We want to shatter the myth that draws a parallel between Israel and terror organization such as Hamas,” said Uri Yablonka, the head of pro-Israeli lobby The European Initiative, which represents the group.
It’ll be interesting to see if European judges respond with the same enthusiasm they’ve shown for pursuing Israelis.
Orthodox Jewish websites reported that the group consists of ultra-Orthodox residents of Ashdod, a city on Israel’s coast only a few miles from the border with Gaza. The city is mentioned in the Hebrew bible multiple times.
Comments (1) »Saturday, December 26th, 2009 at 11:33 AM | Stand For Israel
Infamous Auschwitz sign (now recovered) was stolen to fund terror in Sweden? (now updated!)
According to the Swiss media, the five men who stole the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign that hung over the entrance gate to the Auschwitz death camp site were allegedly hired by neo-Nazis looking to finance terror attacks against the Swedish Prime Minister and Parliament, the Times of London reports.
An unnamed source told Aftonbladet, Sweden’s biggest-selling daily newspaper, that the group had a collector in France, Great Britain, or the U.S. who was willing to pay “millions” for the sign, which was found in northern Poland hacked into three pieces and wrapped in cloth.
Weird.
Update (12/27): An SFI reader in Sweden e-mails us:
One of the thieves appears to have been swedish. Likely, although unreported in the media, of Polish extraction: we have a large Polish-Swedish population. (Mostly jewish, actually, since the 1968 low-intensity pogroms.) Yes, there are continuous security threats against our gov’t ministers (as everywhere), but the linkage between those two facts is based on an unnamed source telling things to aftonbladet, a tabloid known never to check the facts behind a good story.
Comments (0) »Friday, December 25th, 2009 at 12:26 PM | Stand For Israel
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