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Stand for Israel Blog

Author of vile cartoon blames Israel for anti-Semitism

March 4, 2010

A German cartoonist who drew an image of a Jew about to eat a Palestinian child, with a glass of blood to wash it down, distanced himself from the cartoon following criticism of it — “because it can be perceived as anti-Semitic” – but then went on to blame the Jewish state for it anyway.

Walter Hermann’s caricature was visible as part of an enlarged photo of an anti-Israel demonstration, JTA reports. Until recently it was on display as part of a “Wailing Wall exhibit” in the center of Cologneby Hermann, but it has been removed from Cologne’s Cathedral Square.

We’re not sure what the “Wailing Wall exhibit” was, although its title is rather ironic. After all, the Western Wall of the Temple Mount got the nickname the “wailing wall” (which many modern Jews find a touch offensive) from the crying of Jews who would go there to pray for the restoration of the Temple, of Jewish sovereignty, and for God to stop the endless persecution of the tiny people.

In a remarkably un-self-aware statement distancing himself from his work, Hermann said that  Israel itself was to blame for anti-Semitism and should “avoid actions that can revive deep-seated, anti-Jewish sentiment.”

Meanwhile, according to German newspapers, the local prosecutor failed to bring charges of ” incitement to hate” because they were brought by non-Jews. He said he will consider charges only from Jewish groups since only complaints by the group affected can be considered.

Perhaps the prosecutor has forgotten that most of Germany’s Jews are not around to file complaints.

(Also, we wonder whether the infamously anti-Semitic cartoons in the Nazi rag Der Sturmer were also Israel’s fault.)

Israel Apartheid Week Targets Students

March 2, 2010

A movement known as “Israel Apartheid Week” (a misnomer, since the official website designates March 1 to 14th for this “important global event”) is trying to take over college campuses this month in the name of  “education” and “Palestine solidarity.”

2010 is the 6th year Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) has taken place, and the official website lists 45 host cities this year, up from last year’s 38. U.S. cities include Boston (Boston University), New Britain (Central Connecticut State University), Chicago (DePaul University), New York City (Columbia University), and San Fransisco and Seattle (no host colleges listed).

IAW was first launched in Toronto, and the movement has met serious resistance in its native Canada. Although several Canadian colleges (including the University of Ottawa, in Ontario) plan to host IAW this March, the Ontario legislature condemned IAW in the last week of February. Members of the legislature object to the use of the word “apartheid,” which — aside from being utterly inapplicable to Israel – demeans the suffering of those who lived under real apartheid in South Africa.

David Frum, writing for the Canadian National Post, documents some of the challenges Israel advocates (including the U.S.-based Christian group Christians United for Israel) have faced on campuses (specifically York University, in Toronto) that tend to be very open to anti-Israel events such as IAW. And an article in Ha’aretz this week details the efforts of some to counteract IAW, especially in Israel.

Report shows that London has become the epicenter of Hamas activity, Jews feel “under attack”

March 1, 2010

We’ve told you before how the British legal system is allowing itself to be used to harass Israelis — often at the behest of pro-Palestinian groups that are openly supportive of terror groups like Hamas.

Now, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, a research center near Tel Aviv, has released a report showing that, beyond having a conveniently quirky judiciary, London has become the epicenter of Hamas’ political, propaganda and legal activities in Europe (click the link – that’s basically the report’s title).

Hamas operatives have been particularly successful in controlling the discourse regarding Arabs in Israel, and initiating widespread anti-Zionism throughout the UK.

Ironically, Hamas’ success is due to its taking advantage of Britain’s open society:

1. Political freedom and freedom of speech prevailing in Britain allows Hamas to incite against Israel, despite Hamas’ designation as a terrorist organization by the European Union. Though activities by terror groups is technically illegal in Britain, the legal system has shown great tolerance, which has been exploited by radical Islamic elements, including Hamas.

2.  A broad infrastructure of Hamas activists, supporters, and collaborators took refuge in Britain in the 1990s, which work with radical leftist organizations that are hostile to Israel and the West. This enables Hamas to reach British political, media and academic elites.

3. The UK is one of the world’s media hubs, especially for Arab s newspapers, and broadcast and electronic media. This gives Hamas access to key outlets to spread its messages throughout the Muslim world.

The report notes that much of Hamas’ propaganda work is targeted at children and that the organization is able to get money and supplies “for Gaza” (really, for Hamas) from British organizations and politicians.

None of this would come as a surprise to brilliant British firebrand Melanie Phillips, whose book “Londonistan” argued that British “benign neglect” has allowed radicals to gain way too much of a foothold in the city. In her blog, Phillips quipped that, now, it should be called “Hamasistan.”

Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that Britain’s Jewish community reports feeling “under attack.” According to London’s Independent, Lord Mitchell, a Labor MP, ” praised the multi-cultural nature of London but pointed to rising incidents of anti-Semitism.”:

Stickers such as “death to Jews” had been displayed at some of the UK’s leading university campuses and had been “slow to be removed”, he said.

He told peers in a debate on tolerance in British society that universities had a “duty of care to all students and in many cases they are slow to uphold this duty”, citing free speech as the reason for not interfering.

Lord Mitchell said: “It may well come as a shock that the Jewish community in this country feels under constant attack.

“I don’t want to overstate the case but many Jewish friends have said to me that they felt more frightened, more threatened, than at any time in their lives.”

British colonel sees “dark forces” arrayed against Israel, thanks Jewish state for life-saving work

February 24, 2010

Col. Richard Kemp

As the UN and other zealous critics of  the Jewish state continue to condemn her for defending herself against the terrorists who seek her annihilation, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan is  praising Israel for her contributions to the war on global terror and harshly criticizing the “dark forces” motivating those who unfairly target Israel.

Col. Richard Kemp told a London audience that the media often is exploited by “dark forces” who want to harm Israel. He also praised Israel for pioneering military technology and tactics that he said had been “invaluable” in combatting Afghan suicide bombers. In fact, he said, the Israeli tactics form the basis of official British army guidelines used by soldiers on the ground there.

Remarking on the unusual amount of criticism lobbed at Israel, Kemp said that–even though there are tremendous similarities between the IDF and British forces, UK soldiers did not have to deal with the same amount of criticism from the international community:

“When we go into battle we do not get the same knee-jerk, almost Pavlovian response from many, many elements of the international media and international groups, humanitarian groups and other international groups such as the United Nations which should know better… of utter automatic condemnation. We don’t have to put up with that.”

As usual, a small group of British Jews who oppose Israeli actions in Gaza protested outside the hotel where Kemp spoke.

Bombing attempt at Cairo’s main synagogue

A clumsy attempt to bomb Cairo’s historic main synagogue failed Sunday when a make-shift explosive device in a suitcase failed to ignite fully after an assailant hurled it at the house of worship from window above it. There were no injuries or damage.

According to a police report, early Sunday morning, a man entered a hotel on the fourth floor of a building across from the synagogue, ostensibly to check in. As he was going through the process, he abruptly threw his suitcase out the window (toward the synagogue below).

The man’s suitcase held four containers of gasoline, each of which was attached to a glass bottle filled with sulfuric acid. Police theorized that the bottles of acid were meant to shatter on impact, thereby igniting the makeshift bomb. Instead, the bag fell onto the sidewalk in front of the hotel and briefly caught fire before being extinguished.

The synagogue, Shaar Shomayim (“Gates of Heaven”), was built in 1899 and was once the largest building on its main downtown street. Its style is intended to evoke the look of ancient Egyptian temples. See photos of the beautiful building and read about its history here.

Egypt was long home to a thriving Jewish community with a storied history that included some of the Jewish world’s greatest leaders, including Maimonides, the great 12th century philosopher who is still considered the premiere codifier of Jewish law. Prior to the establishment of Israel, the community numbered around 80,000 people.

The Jews were kicked out after the establishment of the modern state of Israel, however. According to Ha’aretz, only several dozen–mostly elderly–Jews remain in the country. A number of heavily guarded synagogues remain.

Intellectuals’ finger-pointing session yields useful Israel advocacy points

February 15, 2010

There’s an ongoing kerfluffle among the media’s intellectual elite over allegations by Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of the high-brow news magazine The New Republic, that Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan–a frequent critic of Israel–is, in fact, an anti-Semite. (Sullivan’s response is here.)

Much of the discussion is inside-baseball, but another of the bloggers at The Atlantic, the excellent Jeffrey Goldberg makes some important points about the rather strange turns that criticism of the Jewish State takes, even among ostensibly “broad-minded” thinkers. Like so many writers who think themself “fair,” Goldberg writes, Sullivan’s actually “consistently and rather wildly one-sided“:

I agree with Andrew that he’s not anti-Semitic, as I’ve written. I also think that, for whatever reason, he doesn’t recognize the severity of his language on Israel and Jewish matters over the past year. For instance, he doesn’t seem to recognize the implications of his call for the U.S. to impose a military solution on Israel and have the American army forcibly dismantle settlements. In other words, he’s opposed to military action against Iran, but he’s for military action against Israel. Let me put it this way: This is not how a friend constructively criticizes Israel. …

He also sums important facts that every advocate for Israel should know (emphasis is ours):

I’m opposed to all settlements, just as Andrew is, but it is silly to argue that for two decades Israel has simply refused to cooperate. By the end of the Camp David talks, Israel was ready to cede roughly 90 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians. By the Taba round, more than 95 percent. Recently, the former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, made — as an opening gambit — an offer of 97 percent of the West Bank, plus land swaps. These offers were rejected by Israel’s Palestinian interlocutors. And of course, Israel unilaterally reversed its land-grab in Gaza by forcibly evacuating eight thousand settlers there in 2005 (and it evacuated four West Bank settlements at the same time).

And Goldberg doesn’t note that the Palestinians’ response to evacuating those Gaza communities was to begin bombarding Israeli cities with rockets — about 12,000 of them before Israel had no choice but to launch the Gaza War last year.

Authorities say bomb that killed 9 in India probably intended for Jewish center nearby

Indian intelligence has said that it is a probability that a bomb that killed 9 and wounded 53 people at a cafe in Pune, India, on Saturday was meant to be detonated at the local Chabad House, located several dozen meters from the site of the blast. Police say a bomb that ripped through a crowded restaurant in western India on Saturday was meant to explode at the local Chabad house, Ha’aretz reports.

The bomb at the German Bakery cafe was India’s first terror attack since the 2008 Mumbai massacre, in which at least 173 people were murdered in coordinated attacks on hotels and other public venues. The attack also targeted the Mumbai Chabad house, a Jewish house of worship and visitor’s center, where six Jews were murdered, including Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivkah, who was six months pregnant.

Chabad, a Chassidic group dedicated to outreach among Jews, maintains hospitality centers in communities around the world. There are a number of centers in India, although there are few indigenous Jews, to provide kosher food, community, and assistance to the many Israelis who travel there.

The bomb went off after a waiter apparently opened a package containing the explosive device. According to officials, the bomb may have been left for someone to pick up and take to the adjacent Chabad center before it was inadvertently detonated.

Following the attacks, life has not returned to “normal” for Jews in Mumbai, Ha’aretz reported earlier this month:

Yael Jirhad, who opened the Indian chapter of the Women’s International Zionist Organization exactly one year prior to the November 2008 terror attack, said the community has been forced to cope with increased security measures at Jewish institutions around the large city.

UPDATE: 

According to the Associated Press, however, Israeli officials are questioning the Indian security forces’ determination:

Nitzan Nuriel, head of counterterrorism at Israel’s National Security Agency, said the Pune attack wasn’t directed at Chabad.

“The attack in India was not directed at Chabad house, even though Chabad houses appear on the potential lists of targets maintained by some of the groups that operate in the area,” Nuriel said.

Not really a shock: 90 percent of Middle East views Jews unfavorably

February 12, 2010

A new study ”paints a worrying picture” of Middle Easterners’ attitude toward Jews, the Jerusalem Post reports.

In the predominantly Muslim nations surveyed, views of Jews were overwhelmingly unfavorable. Nearly all in Jordan (97 percent), the Palestinian territories (97%) and Egypt (95%) held an unfavorable view. Similarly, 98% of Lebanese expressed an unfavorable opinion of Jews, including 98% among both Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, as well as 97% of Lebanese Christians.

It’s not really that surprising. After years of being told by their own governments that Jews eat Palestinian children for breakfast and other nonsense, of course the majority of Israel’s Arab and Muslim neighbors despise Jews. Their governments can’t take responsibility for the squalor of their countries, so they blame the thuggery and corruption of their countries on Jews. It’s not a new tactic (See blood libels, Chemielnicki pogroms, Nazi propaganda, or of the other countless violent scape-goating episodes in Jewish history.)

What is really interesting about this study, though, is that among Israeli Arabs –those who have the closest contact with Jews and who are subject to much of the same propaganda, only 35 percent expressed negative opinions and 56 percent expressed positive opinions.

The lesson? Reality seems to trump propaganda.

(Incidentally, the propaganda extends outside the Middle East, according to the survey:)

Negative views of Jews were also widespread in the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed in Asia: More than seven-in-ten in Pakistan (78%) and Indonesia (74%) expressed unfavorable opinions.

Hip mainstream finally getting hip to Hamas’ true colors?

February 6, 2010

In recent years, media analysts and social commentators haven’t known precisely what to make of the fact that a larger percentage of Americans rely on a comedy program–Jon Stewart’s Daily Show–to get news than any other outlet. For supporters of the Jewish state, this has been particularly troubling since the Arab-Israeli conflict is too complicated to boil down into pithy, funny 30-second “bits.”

(In fact, in her excellent The Other War, journalist Stephanie Guttman argues that the region’s complexity and history are part of why media coverage tends to be unfair to Israel: Journalists don’t intend to side against the Jewish State, they just don’t take–or have–the time to explain the background of issues, and therefore rely on short-cuts and familiar paradigms that end up falsely making Israel look bad.)

And so there’s much discussion over whether Jon Stewart–who every acknowledges tilts to the left–is, in fact, anti-Israel. In one Daily Show segment, Stewart reacts to last year’s Gaza incursion as if it’s just another blip in a “cycle of violence” in which the big, bad Israelis are “disproportionately” beating up the Palestinians, who are no more than a nuisance.

When New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg offers an analogy asking whether Stewart wouldn’t want the NYPD to respond “with all the resources at our command” if an “emotionally disturbed person is banging on your door, screaming, ‘I’m going to come through this door and kill you!’ ”, Stewart responded:

I guess it depends if I forced that guy to live in my hallway … and make him go through checkpoints every time he has to [go the bathroom]! But then again, by removing him by force … I guess if you believe that there are no more crazy people in New York … OK!

What? Israel forced Hamas to be there? Ands , of course, this implies that Israel places checkpoints just because Israelis like to be difficult — not that the checkpoints are literally saving lives. The whole point is that Hamas is bent on Israel’s destruction, so Israel has no choice but to do everything to defend herself — be it restricting movement to catch would-be suicide bombers, or going in full-force to stop terrorists raining missiles onto its cities.

So, this week, when Stewart did a bit lampooning the vicious anti-Semitism Hamas teaches children through cartoons, it makes us wonder if there isn’t something in the zeitgeist that’s a little more truth-focused.

Hamas’ inculcating hate is no laughing matter, but in the tradition of Jewish humor–which prizes laughing when the only other choice is to cry–we’re chuckling along with Stewart (even if we wish he had less of a potty-mouth).

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