A heart-felt thank you to friends of Israel

Sonia proudly and  passionately thanks all friends of Israel:

  

Wednesday 29th January 2014: International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust

International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust Organised by the Holocaust Institute of WA, UNAAWA, NCJWA (WA) and the Jewish Historical & Genealogical Society of WA On Wednesday 29th January 2014 at 10:30 am for 11:00 am start  “A Story of Survival” screening of interview with Mr Henk Piller     "WHOEVER SAVES A SINGLE LIFE SAVES THE WORLD ENTIRE"  - Talmud            The Gordon Bloomfield Hall - 61 Woodrow Avenue, Yokine                   (Behind Cafe 61)                         10:30 am display of books and DVDs on the Holocaust        Light refreshments will be served   Enquiries  NCJWA WA  wa@ncjwa.org.au or UNAA WA office@unaa-wa.org.au

 

Turn your own cheek, not mine

From Israel Hayom, 20 December 2013, by Ruthie Blum:

Shame on the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, for taking the occasion of his annual "Christmas message" to blame Israel for the plight of Christians in the Middle East. It is precisely at this juncture -- when the persecution of Christians in the Muslim-Arab world is not merely increasing at a frightening rate, but is becoming more blatant and bloodier -- that the chief Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land should be warning against the religious war being waged against his brethren.
After all, churches in every Islam-dominated country are being destroyed; Christian women (including nuns) are being raped, men (including priests) are being beheaded; and the property of those who would escape this fate is being confiscated.
Meanwhile, liberal Christians in the West have been looking the other way. Fearing accusations of Islamophobia, they prefer promoting "interfaith dialogue" to protesting the abominations being perpetrated against their own. There is also an element of "out of sight, out of mind" at work. Those "other" Christians live in faraway lands and speak foreign languages. This makes it easier to forget about them and go about the business of decorating trees, shopping for gifts, stuffing stockings and singing carols.
But there is no excuse for "His Beatitude" Archbishop Twal -- a Jordanian-born Palestinian responsible for the tens of thousands of Catholics living in Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Gaza, Jordan and Cyprus -- to view the victimization of his fellow Christians as anything other than a concerted effort on the part of radical Muslims to subjugate, convert, banish or wipe out his co-religionists.
Nevertheless, he cloaked his holiday message in diplo-speak, based on false premises.

"The situation in the Middle East is becoming more complex and dramatic," he told reporters. "The scenarios in Syria and Iraq can be repeated elsewhere, as seen in Egypt and Libya. The instability affects everyone, but especially our faithful who are tempted to emigrate. In Gaza our people are suffering from the effects of the embargo imposed by Israel and even Egypt. To prevent the conflict from spreading in the whole region, a 'sustainable' cease-fire in Syria should be immediately established and prevent any entry of outside weapons. As the Syrian problem cannot be resolved by the force of arms, we call on all political leaders to assume the responsibility for finding a mutually acceptable political solution that will end the senseless violence, and uphold respect for the dignity of people. … The Israeli-Palestinian talks resumed in late July, after three years of interruption. But the efforts are hampered by the continuous building of Israeli settlements. As long as this problem is not resolved, the people of our region will suffer."

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has nothing whatsoever to do with the assault on Christians in the Middle East. And the mere mention of Israeli settlements in this context takes the art of lying to a whole new level.

Even Britain's Prince Charles -- who has spent the last two decades trying "to build bridges between Islam and Christianity to dispel ignorance and misunderstanding" -- has come to grasp this. On Tuesday, at a reception for Middle East Christians at his official Clarence House residence, he said, 

"It seems to me that we cannot ignore the fact that Christians in the Middle East are increasingly being deliberately targeted by fundamentalist Islamist militants."

Israel doesn't come into it at all, other than being an ally under similar attack for its biblical values.
Twal knows this all too well. He is also aware that Israel is the only country in the Middle East whose Christian population is growing. His behavior is the kind of collusion with the enemy that should not be tolerated.

"Turning the other cheek" may be a Christian tenet. 
But offering an aggressor someone else's cheek as a method of self-protection is sinful.

Bigotted Boycotters

Jewish state singled out unfairly by academics

From The Boston Herald, Tuesday,December 31, 2013, by Jeff Robbins

Not long ago, a friend of mine who was critical of Israeli settlements confessed that he was unaware that...

• when the United Nations had partitioned Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish one, it had been the Israelis who accepted the partition and the Arabs who had rejected it... 
• it was the Arab invasion of Israel that followed that rejection which had brought about the flood of Palestinian refugees...
• the Palestinians had rejected Israeli offers for an independent Palestine in 2000 and again in 2008 — offers which, had they been accepted, would have eliminated the settlement issue that Palestinian leaders claim is the cause of the conflict.

The only thing remarkable about the fact that this was news to him is that he has two degrees in international relations: an undergraduate degree from an Ivy League university and a master’s to boot.

Unfamiliarity with even the core facts of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a complicated region, and the facts are often obscured by rhetoric that ranges from misleading to unhinged.

In the case of the American Studies Association boycott of Israel, however, the problem is not unfamiliarity with the facts. It is the disregard of them. For the ASA boycotters, as for those urging that the Modern Language Association endorse a similar boycott, it is not that they are unaware that the Israelis have repeatedly had their offers rejected by the Palestinians, or that acceptance of these offers would have ended the conflict. It is that these facts are quite immaterial to them.

Confronted with the question why his organization has never proposed a boycott of institutions any place other than Israel, yet alone places with human rights records far less admirable than that of Israel, ASA head Curtis Marez offered this disingenuous reply: “One has to start somewhere.”

But Israel is where the boycotters start, and also where they finish.

Thus, the U.S. State Department reports that under Hamas control, residents of Gaza are subjected to pervasive human rights abuses including “killing, torturing, arbitrarily detaining and harassing,” and that Hamas “launch[es] rockets and mortars against civilian targets in Israel, killing and injuring civilians.” The ASA would never dream of a boycott against the government-run universities in Gaza.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for restrictions on freedom of speech, press and assembly, violence against women, discrimination against the LGBT community, “forced labor, including by children” and the sanctioning of anti-Semitism. There is no boycott of institutions in the West Bank.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Qatar and Turkey are egregious human rights violators. The boycotters have no problem with the partnerships between American universities and academic institutions there.

According to the State Department, Saudi Arabia is guilty of “pervasive restrictions on universal rights such as freedom of expression, assembly, association, movement and religion,” as well as rampant “violence against women, trafficking in persons and discrimination based on gender, religion, sect, race and ethnicity.” American universities such as Georgetown and George Washington receive significant Saudi Arabian funding. This, too, is apparently undeserving of a boycott.

The boycotters deny that their targeting of Israel, whose credentials as a democracy are unrivaled in the Middle East, is the product of bigotry...

Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, has called the boycotters “phony progressives.” They are that, to be sure. 

But the singling out of the Jewish state legitimately raises the troubling question of whether they are bigots as well.

As Israel sets Palestinian murderers free, remember their victims

From Tablet Magazine, 31 Dec 2013, by Liel Leibovitz:

Monday morning, as part of the U.S.-brokered effort to rekindle peace talks, Israel released 26 Palestinian prisoners, the lion’s share of which are convicted murderers.

Reasonable people may debate whether or not the move is likely to promote true reconciliation, and, even if it does, whether it is worth the excruciating pain caused to the families now witnessing the men who had killed their loved ones set free. Such a conversation is currently heatedly unfolding in Israel, and ought to take place among all of us who cherish the Jewish state and share a concern for its future. As we debate, let us keep an open mind and empathize with arguments on either side. But no matter where we come down on this question, let also fulfill the primordial commandment to remember the dead.

Let us remember Friedrich Steven Rosenfeld, who was born in New York and served in the 82nd Airborne Division before finding work on a merchant ship and taking a short shore leave in Israel. Falling in love with the country, Rosenfeld made aliyah, got married, and spent much of his time hiking. On one such hike, on June 17, 1989, in the hills outside Ariel, he was attacked by a group of Palestinian shepherds who seized Rosenfeld’s knife, stabbed him to death, and tossed him by the wayside.

Let us remember Menahem Stern, a leading historian of the Second Temple period. Married to Hava Brenner, the niece of the great Hebrew writer Yosef Haim Brenner—himself murdered by Arab rioters in 1921—Stern attended Oxford University before returning to Jerusalem and receiving his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University, where he soon became a member of the faculty. His brilliant and innovative work earned him the Israel Prize, the nation’s top honor, as well as a host of other prestigious awards and appointments. On the morning of June 22, 1989, he was walking from his home to the university’s library in Givat Ram, as was his daily routine. Two terrorists attacked him and stabbed him to death. He left behind a wife, a daughter, and four sons.

Let us remember Sarah Sharon, the mother of Limor, Mikey, Rami, Tali, Hagit, Noam, and David. She was walking down Ha’Yogev Street in Holon on her way to work on Wednesday morning, January 20, 1993, when she was jumped, stabbed, and killed.

Ora Shahaf, Yigal Shahaf's mother (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

Let us remember Yigal Shahaf, an amateur basketball player and dog trainer who worked the night shift in a bakery to put himself through engineering school. On his way back from a visit to the Kotel, he met Ronit, and soon the two fell in love and married. They made it a habit to visit the wall each Saturday night, read some psalms, and say a prayer. On the 10th of October, 1987, they prayed to God to grant them happiness until their very last breath. For Yigal, that breath came seven minutes later: as he and Ronit walked back home, a terrorist emerged from a nearby alley and shot Yigal in the head. He died in his wife’s arms.

• Damra Ibrahim Mustafa Balal was the one who stabbed Rosenfeld. 
• Salah Halil Ahmad Ibrahim and Muamar Ata Mahmoud Mahmoud murdered Menahem Stern. 
• Daagna Nafal Mahmad Mahmoud planned and executed the deadly attack on Sarah Sharon. 
• Abu-Hadir Mouhamad Yasin Yasin shot Yigal Shahaf. 

[These murderers] are all free men now. 

As we watch the massive, official celebrations that greeted their arrival in Ramallah, and as we debate the strategic and moral merits of their release, we owe their victims, at the very least, a moment of silent reflection.

From Times of Israel, 29 December 2013:

...Following are the names of the prisoners slated for release, as published by the Israel Prison Service..., along with their offenses.

• Muhammad Yusuf Adnan Elafandi, arrested May 13, 1992, for stabbing two youths in Jerusalem. After the attack, his life was saved by an Israeli woman who defended him from a lynch mob. He was convicted of attempted murder. The woman who saved his life, Bella Freund, was the subject of a song by the hip hop band Hadag Nahash, in collaboration with rocker Barry Sakharof.

• Farid Ahmed Shahade, arrested February 16, 1985, for the murder of Yosef Farhan, a suspected collaborator with Israel, in Jaffa.

• Yakoub Muhammad Ouda Ramadan, Afana Mustafa Ahmad Muhammad, and Da’agna Nufal Mahmad Mahmoud, arrested April 1, 1993. The three were convicted of stabbing Sara Sharon, 37, to death in Holon on January 20, 1993.

• Abu al Rub Mustafa Mahmoud Faisal and Kamil Awad Ali Ahmad, convicted of murder in the killing of 20-year-old IDF soldier Yoram Cohen in a shootout in the West Bank town of Jenin. Ali Ahmad was also convicted of kidnapping, torturing and murdering 15 Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. Faisal was convicted of manslaughter in four of those cases.

• Damara Ibrahim Mustafa Bilal, arrested June 16, 1989, and convicted of murdering Steven Friedrich Rosenfeld, 48, a US-born immigrant to Israel. Damra and several others accosted Rosenfeld outside the West Bank settlement of Ariel, grabbed the knife he was carrying, and stabbed him to death with it. His body was found on the following day by a Palestinian shepherd.

• Abu Mohsin Khaled Ibrahim Jamal, arrested April 10, 1991, and convicted of murder. Abu-Muhsan ambushed Shlomo Yahya, a 76-year-old gardener, in a public park in Moshav Kadima and stabbed him to death.

• Tamimi Rushdi Muhammad Sa’id, convicted of kidnapping and murdering Hayim Mizrahi at a Palestinian-owned farm outside the settlement of Beit El, where Mizrahi lived, in 1993. Mizrahi had come to the farm to shop for eggs.

• Silawi Khaled Kamel Osama, one of three Palestinians convicted in the murder of Motti Biton. Similar to Mizrahi, Biton was shot while he was shopping for groceries in a Palestinian-owned store. Afterwards his wife, who was in the car outside, fired at his attackers, who detonated a pipe bomb and fled. Biton was gravely wounded in the attack and died in an Israeli hospital three days later. Osama was also convicted of murder and manslaughter in the deaths of four Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the authorities.

• Sawafta Sudqi Abdel Razeq Mouhlas, who stabbed Yosef Malka (Malkin) to death on December 29, 1990, during an attempt to rob his home in Haifa.

• Barham Fawzi Mustafa Nasser, arrested December 20, 1993, for the murder of Morris (Moshe) Edri. Nasser, a former employee of Edri, 65, ambushed Edri and stabbed him in the back. After he was apprehended, he said he had carried out the murder to prove that he was worthy of joining Hamas.

• Yusuf Ahmed Nu’aman Al-Shalvi, Mahmad Anis Aiman Jaradat, and Ahmad Yusuf Bilal Abu-Hassin, convicted of murdering multiple Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel.

• Mahmad Naim Shawmra Yunis, convicted of murder in the death of Yossef Hayun, a police sapper who was killed while attempting to disarm a bomb in Moshav Shekef in June 1993.

• Mahmud Muhammad Salman, arrested May 6, 1994, and convicted in the murder of Shai Shoker. Salman strangled Shoker with a shoelace outside Tira on February 2, 1994.

• Ahmed Ibrahim Jamal Abu-Jamal, convicted of attempted murder. Abu-Jamal was slated for release in 2016.

• Mahmoud Ibrahim Abu-Ali Faiz, convicted of murdering Ronny Levy.

• Zaki Rami Barbakh Jawdat, convicted of murdering Yosef Zandani.

• Mustafa Ahmed Khaled Jumaa, convicted of aggravated assault, up for release in 2014.

• Abu Hadir Muhammad Yassin Yassin, convicted of murder. Yassin shot Yigal Shahaf, 24, in the head while Shahaf and his wife were walking through Jerusalem’s Old City toward the Western Wall. Shahaf died in hospital on the following day. The murder weapon had been bought from a Jewish Israeli. Yassin was slated for release in 2016.

• Muammar Ata Mahmoud Mahmoud and Salah Khalil Ahmad Ibrahim, convicted of murdering Menahem Stern, a history professor at Hebrew University. Stern, 64, a winner of the prestigious Israel Prize, was stabbed to death while walking to work at the university’s Givat Ram campus on June 22, 1989. A monument in his memory figures in a scene from the prize-winning Israeli film “Footnote.” Ibrahim was also convicted in the murder of Eli Amsalem. In addition, the two murdered a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israel, Hassin Zaid.

• Taqtuq Lutfi Halma Ibrahim, arrested March 3, 1989, and convicted of murder in the shooting of IDF soldier Binyamin Meisner, on February 24, 1989, in Nablus.

Racist Dogma from University of Sydney's Jake Lynch

From The Australian, Letters to the Editor, December 30, 2013:

IT is easy now to forget - though some never will - that during the Nazi's rise to power, few universities distinguished themselves by taking a stand. Indeed, many hastened to prove their impeccable credentials and loyalty to the Reich by terminating the employment of Jewish academics.

The University of Sydney should be called to account for its acceptance of the racist dogma of its employee Jake Lynch, head of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

The action taken by Andrew Hamilton representing the Israeli legal action group Shurat HaDin deserves support, just as Lynch's academic boycott against Israel deserves the strongest condemnation.

Christina Faulk, Swinger Hill, ACT

THE problem for Israelis who stand up to anti-Israel zealots is that they're damned when they do and damned when they don't.

So I'm damned if I know whether or not the legal action being launched by the Israeli group Shurat HaDin against Sydney University academic Jake Lynch is strategically sound ("Lynch like 'publican denying blacks, Jews' ", 28-29/12). A win for Lynch would presumably embolden the zealots in the boycott, divestment and sanctions brigade, while a loss could well have the same effect, with all the added zest of a bogus martyrdom to be savoured and exploited.

Neither scenario would benefit the likes of Israeli academic Dan Avnon, whose treatment by Lynch seems to have sparked this legal action. It is the rock and the hard place syndrome with a vengeance.

Helen Jackson, Higgins, ACT

Jake Lynch: "No Jews Allowed"

From The Australian, 28 Dec 2013, by Ean Higgins:

SYDNEY academic Jake Lynch's promotion of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign has discriminated against all Israelis in the same fashion as a pub owner hanging out a sign saying "No Jews or Blacks Allowed", the lawyer leading a lawsuit against him will argue.

Andrew Hamilton, representing the Israel-based legal action group Shurat HaDin, has submitted a sweeping statement of claim to the Federal Court alleging Professor Lynch has directly discriminated against academics, but also helped deprive all Israelis of cultural, educational, and professional opportunities.
In what is likely to be a landmark case revolving around conflicting interpretations of freedom of expression, Shurat HaDin will claim that Professor Lynch, by refusing to support a fellowship application by Israeli academic Dan Avnon, deprived him of his professional rights in an act of racial discrimination.
But Shurat HaDin's case will extend to claiming that all Israeli academics are adversely affected by the BDS policy of Professor Lynch, who is head of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney.
The statement of claim also says that, by calling for boycotts of Israel, Professor Lynch also contributes to the wider international boycott campaign that disadvantages owners of Israeli-related businesses and contributes towards Israelis being deprived of cultural opportunities such as seeing big acts ranging from Santana to Pink Floyd.
Shurat HaDin alleges two academics, who have joined the case as plaintiffs, have been adversely affected by Professor Lynch's policy, even though as yet they have not been the subject of specific actions.
Dr Leonard Hammer, of the Hebrew University, a human rights lawyer, and Dr Mordechai Kedar, of Bar Ilan University, an Arabic studies specialist, have regularly lectured overseas, including in Australia, Mr Hamilton told The Australian.
"They both are people who quite realistically may want to be a visiting scholar at the CPACS, where Lynch has implemented his boycott," Mr Hamilton said. "However, just as a sign on a bar saying 'No Jews or Blacks Allowed' discriminates against and disadvantages all Jews and blacks, even if they didn't even want to go into the bar, so Jake Lynch's BDS academic boycott discriminates and disadvantages all Israeli academics," he said.
In its Federal Court action, Shurat HaDin will not seek financial penalties, but orders that Professor Lynch renounce BDS and apologise for supporting it.

Professor Lynch is a vocal advocate of the international BDS campaign against Israel, which argues that Israeli government policies claimed to be illegal under international law discriminate against Palestinians.
He made headlines a year ago when Professor Avnon sought permission to use his name as a supporter for an exchange program visit under an agreement between Sydney University and the Hebrew University.
Professor Lynch turned down the request, citing his centre's support of BDS.
Professor Lynch has told The Australian he will vigorously fight the action. He will be represented by the high-profile barrister Stuart Littlemore QC. He strenuously denies he discriminated against Professor Avnon and points out he wrote him a polite letter saying that his work sounded interesting, but the centre had adopted a principled policy of boycotting Israeli academic institutions.
The Shurat HaDin's statement of claim alleges that as a result of Professor Lynch's actions "the number of suitable visiting academic placements for which Professor Dan Avnon could seek a funded academic fellowship at Sydney University has been restricted".
It claims it also had the effect of "impairing the recognition, enjoyment and exercise of Professor Dan Avnon's rights to education; freedom of association; freedom of expression; academic freedom, and work".
"The distinction, exclusion or restriction or preference was based on the fact that Professor Dan Avnon was a Jewish person of Israeli national or ethnic origin," the statement of claim alleges.
Shurat HaDin claims Professor Lynch has breached not only the Racial Discrimination Act, but also international conventions.
Professor Lynch told The Australian yesterday: "Shurat HaDin appear to forget when I was approached by Professor Dan Avnon it was to ask me for a favour. How I chose to respond to that request was a matter for my discretion. My decision to turn down his request had nothing to do with his religion or nationality. I reserve my right not to co-operate with schemes that provide for institutional links with Israeli universities, to which I object on principle."
Shurat HaDin's statement also says that in calling for a boycott of Israel Professor Lynch shares collective responsibility for the entire international BDS campaign and its consequences.
"The calls for boycott target the providers of cultural and sporting services with the effect of pressuring them to implement the boycott calls by refusing to perform in Israel and thus depriving Israeli consumers of access to their services," it says.
It says two of the applicants, David Hans Lange and Jonathan Rose, and their wives were "deprived of the opportunity to attend the local Israeli public performances of Elvis Costello" because a scheduled performance in 2010 for which they had tickets was cancelled "due to implementation of boycott calls".