Get right down to it: Israel calls Goldstone report “anti-Semitism”
The UN is waiting for Israel’s official response to the Goldstone report, the UN’s “fact finding commission” on the 22-day Gaza war which charges Israel with deliberately and disproportionately targeting civilians, among other crimes, but is silent about any misdeeds on the part of Hamas. The official response is expected as early as Thursday.
In advance of traveling to New York to present Israel’s response, Israeli Minister Yuli Edelstein told Yediot Aharonot that “The Goldstone Report … and similar reports, are simply a type of anti-Semitism.
AFP interpreted the Yediot report as suggesting that Israel “is planning an all-out attack on the report to coincide with Wednesday’s anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz.”
“The connection between the Goldstone Report and the international Holocaust memorial day is not an easy thing. On the other hand, however, we must learn the lessons from what happened,” Edelstein, the Minister of Information and Diaspora Affairs, said.
“Then too, those who yelled out were told that Hitler is a clown and that all the gloomy predictions of the 1930s were nonsense,” he added.
The UN General Assembly endorsed the report’s findings in November. In the same month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution calling on the President and the Secretary of State to reject the report and oppose any further consideration of it in the UN. The measure passed overwhelmingly with only 36 voting against it. To see if your representative was among the few who opposed it, go here.
Comments (6) »Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 7:23 AM | Stand For Israel
When will the world–and Christians–start paying attention to the persecution of… Christians?
A few days ago, we told you how worshippers in an Egyptian church had been murdered by drive-by terrorists. Adding to the tragedy is that sad fact that SFI is one of relatively few outlets that pays attention to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East– and that makes a recent essay in the Wall Street Journal was all that much more important.
The church massacre, the article said, is another “grim reminder that when it comes to persecution, few groups have suffered as grievously as Christians in Muslim lands. Fewer still have suffered with such little attention paid.”
A new report from a non-profit ministry, Open Doors USA, shines a light on the scale of oppression:
- In its annual World Watch List, Open Doors ranks eight Muslim countries among the 10 worst persecutors of Christians. The other two, North Korea (which tops the list) and Laos, are communist states. Of the 50 countries on the list, 35 are majority Muslim.
- In 2009, Iran arrested 85 Christians, many of whom were abused in prison. In 2008, some 50 Christians were arrested and one Christian couple was beaten to death by security officials. At least part of the reason for the mistreatment appears to be the result of Muslim conversions to Christianity: Apostasy carries a mandatory death sentence in Iran.
- In Saudi Arabia (No. 3), all non-Muslim public worship is forbidden, as is the building of any type of non-Muslim house of worship. Christians living there must practice their faith in private. The same goes in the Maldives, where the report notes that all citizens must be Muslim; “the handful of indigenous Christians are forced to believe in complete secrecy.” Similarly in Mauritania, conversion to Christianity or any other religions is formally punishable by death.
The WSJ continues:
Little wonder, then, that once-thriving Christian communities in the Muslim world have now largely voted with their feet by fleeing to safer havens, often in Europe or the United States. That’s true even in religiously important communities such as Bethlehem, where the Christian majority has largely fled since the arrival in the 1990s of Yasser Arafat’s repressive government and the…
Read More » Comments (2) »Sunday, January 10th, 2010 at 4:01 PM | Stand For Israel
PA would not do well on a game show
What was that TV game show that Monty Hall hosted? Where contestants got to choose “Door Number 1″ OR “Door Number 2.” No one ever got to say, “Monty, I’ll take both doors!” Or, after finding out that there was a goat and a spokesmodel in a “Heidi” costume behind the door they picked, no one got to say, “Monty! I don’t want the goat — I want ‘Door Number 2′ now!”
Wouldn’t have worked on TV, but apparently it works in the Middle East “peace process.”
“We want to resume the talks from the point where they ended in December 2008,” Chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat announced recently,which means that he wants the new Israeli government’s opening offer to include everything the PA rejected from previous Israeli government (which was, er, voted out of office).
“We have every right to talk about a Palestinian state within the June 4, 1967 borders, including Jerusalem,” Erekat avowed.
Um, not really. The Palestinians could have had a state many times over, if they’d decided to accept Israeli peace offers. Instead, they usually decided to attack and kill a bunch of Jews, and eventually would be pushed even further back by the IDF. Israel is the only country that is expected to offer ever greater concession after concession in response to the most violent of rejections:
- In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed the partition of Palestine and the creation of an Arab state.
- In 1939, the British White Paper proposed the creation of an Arab state alone, but the Arabs rejected the plan.
- In 1947, the UN would have created an even larger Arab state as part of its partition plan. Israel accepted the plan; Arab states attacked when Israel declared independence.
- The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace negotiations offered the Palestinians autonomy, which would almost certainly have led to full independence.
- The Oslo process that began in 1993 was leading toward the creation of a Palestinian state before the Palestinian-sponsored terror scuttled the agreements.
- In 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to create a Palestinian state, but Yasser Arafat rejected the deal.
- In addition, from 1948 to 1967, Israel did not control…
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Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at 6:08 PM | Stand For Israel
Real “war criminals” use human shields. (Hint: We’re not referring to Israel)
Critics of Israel poo-poo allegations that Israel’s enemies use human shields, and the UN doesn’t condemn it.
There’s a lack of proof, they say. Um, just try watching CNN. (h/t Elder of Ziyon)
Comments (0) »Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 1:30 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
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