French Court finds boycotters guilty of lying

From Jewish Press, 28 Jan 2014, Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu:



A SodaStream ad in France, where a BDS-linked group has been found guilty of maligning the company.

A French court has ordered a Pro-Palestinian Authority group affiliated with the Boycott Israel movement to compensate the company and to stop all activities alleging that SodaStream products are illegally made and sold.
The company, whose Mishor Adumim factory in Israel’s Judean Desert is only one of 20 around the world, sued the Association France Palestine Solidarite (AFPS) in a Paris civil court for activities that the company said included “falsely claiming that the products are ‘illegally sold’ as a result of being manufactured in ‘occupied territories’ while bearing the ‘Made in Israel’ label.”
AFPS lobbied retailers to remove SodaStream products from their shelves and has been actively encouraging a boycott since 2010.
“While SodaStream has succeeded to stop this campaign at the retailer levels, AFPS has persisted with active and sometimes violent demonstrations in store,” the company told The Jewish Press Tuesday.
OPM, SodaStream’s exclusive distributor in France, filed a suit three years ago against AFPS Court for the campaign and for denigrating SodaStream products at French retailers.
The Civil of Court of Paris now has ruled in favor of SodaStream.
The court concluded that a boycott, even if instituted for political or moral considerations, must be “fair” and not abusive, a condition that AFPS violated by defacing a SodaStream advertisement and covering it with an image of blood as part of its smear campaign.
AFPS told retailers and the public that SodaStream products were being sold illegally and, according to the company, “advised French stores that selling SodaStream products constitutes a fraud, and that store managers could be prosecuted for doing so.”
The court said the boycott was unfair because false information was disseminated about SodaStream.
The court ordered AFPS to cease and desists from claiming that SodaStream products are being sold illegally or fraudulently and gave it two weeks to remove such indications from its website and media
The amount of compensation to SodaStream for damages has not been available for publication.
The decision came at the most opportune time for SodaStream. The BDS lobby thought it could take the fizz out of the company’s recent hookup with Scarlett Johansson as its new world ambassador. The actress, who is Jewish, also is starring in SodaStream’s commercial to be aired during the Super Bowl game next week.
But Johansson, after a couple of days of silence, did not crumble under the pressure and instead stood up for SodaStream.

She has done a better job than any Israeli official could ever do to state the view that SodaStream’s employment of several hundred Palestinian Authority Arabs, with the same benefits and conditions as Jews, is the best peace process around.

Make peace with this?

Disgusting child abuse:

False Assertions from PLO's Ashrawi

A Press Release dated 19 January 2014, from the Department of Culture and Information of the PLO Executive Committee contains several false assertions about international law by Hanan Ashrawi:

     1   “Article  49  of  the  Fourth  Geneva   Convention  and  Article  43  of  the  Hague  Regulations,  among  other   international  conventions, explicitly state  that  Israel  is  in  direct   violation  of  international  law  with  its  illegal  settlement  activities.”  

In fact, neither the Fourth Geneva Convention nor the Hague Regulations make any explicit or other reference to Israel at all. 

The Hague Regulations date back to 1907, more than 40 years before the State of Israel was established.  The PLO statement is a disingenuous way of making a contentious claim about the legality of the settlements appear to be an incontrovertible truth.

Even among eminent international lawyers, there are numerous, diverse opinions about the legality of the settlements, but there has never been a definitive determination of the issue by a court.  The ICJ Advisory Opinion in 2004 was just that, a non-binding “opinion”, and not legally determinative.

Because the term “settlements” is used loosely to describe a number of different situations (including unauthorised “outposts” which Israel itself characterises as illegal under Israeli law), it is possible that different settlements have a different status in international law (see 2 below).  

Under agreements entered into between Israel and the PLO, the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank will be resolved by the delimitation of a final border in a negotiated agreement. 

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (August 2009), the territory lying between Israel’s security barrier and the pre-1967 "Green Line" accounts for only 8.5% of the total area of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem). Approximately 85% of Israeli 'settlers' live within that 8.5% area, and all settlement construction activity, authorized by Israel, takes place there.   In 2008, Israel’s then Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, presented the Palestinians with a comprehensive peace proposal including a map with a proposed border which, including land within pre-1967 Israel, would have granted a Palestinian state land the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank and Gaza.  There has never been a similarly definitive counter-proposal from the Palestinian side.  

It is the Palestinian refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, as expressly endorsed by the UN partition resolution in 1947 rather than the settlements issue, that is the real obstacle to peace.

     2   ”all (sic) settlements are illegal”

Professor James Crawford, who is one of Australia’s (and the world’s) most eminent international lawyers and is generally critical of Israeli policies, published a legal Opinion in 2012 in which he concluded that some of the settlements, such as the Nahal settlements, are “probably lawful”.

     3  “A United Nations Human Rights Council fact finding mission…“

The UN Human Rights Council has forfeited any claim to impartiality and objectivity with regard to Israel.  The Council’s obsessive bias against Israel has been publicly condemned by both Ban Ki Moon and his predecessor as UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.

For many years, the UN General Assembly has annually and routinely passed approximately 20 one-sided resolutions condemning Israel for alleged violations of international law in the West Bank.  No other country in the world is singled out in any comparable way.  This shameful process occurs both in the plenary session of the General Assembly and in five of its main committees which are supposed to deal respectively with Disarmament and International Security, Economic and Financial questions,  Social, Humanitarian and Cultural issues, Special Political and Decolonization subjects and Administrative and Budgetary issues.

Apart from the rank hypocrisy of the situation in which gross human rights offenders such as Sudan, North Korea, Iran and Syria lead the charge in castigating the open and democratic State of Israel for alleged human rights violations, there is a very real problem with the one-sidedness of the resolutions themselves, and their failure to demand reciprocity from the Palestinians and their leaders.

The terms of the resolutions in question have barely altered from year to year and Australia's objections to them, as recorded in previous years, remain valid.  The one-sided and non-reciprocal nature of the resolutions in effect rewards and encourages the Palestinians' non-compliance with the various agreements to which they have subscribed.  It also encourages elements within the UN and EU which are openly hostile to Israel to continue their one-sided, out-of-context criticisms of the Israeli government.  These resolutions therefore also make it more difficult to secure public support among Israelis and Palestinians for the painful concessions that peace will ultimately require from both sides.

These resolutions ostensibly seek to promote the international rule of law but because their terms are unmistakeably polemical and one-sided, the effect is the opposite.  As Australian representatives have observed in providing the government’s Explanations of Vote at previous Committee sessions, these resolutions pre-empt, and thus impede the achievement of, a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict, and thus do nothing to advance or enhance the prospects of a just and lasting peace.

    4   “Australia’s wilful defiance of international consensus”. 

There is no such consensus.  A majority is not a consensus, especially if it is an automatic, unthinking majority that includes the 56 states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and other States which are dependent on them for oil or financially.  

The UN Human Rights Council’s  annual ritual of passing anti-Israel resolutions is so repellent that each resolution attracts ‘no’ votes from several democratic countries each year.  Australia is a sovereign nation with a democratically elected government that makes its own decisions according to its own assessment of Australia’s national interests.  

Ashrawi’s attempt to bully Australia with the spectre of a non-existent “international consensus” can and should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

The cowardice of politically correct antisemitism

From the Washington Times, 15 Jan 2014, by Victor Davis Hanson*:

Since when is criticizing Jews and Israel cool and, even better, safe?

An obscure academic organization called the American Studies Association not long ago voted to endorse a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli universities. The self-appointed moralists were purportedly outraged over the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.

Given academia’s past obsessions with the Jewish state, the targeting of Israel is not new. Yet why do the professors focus on Israel and not Saudi Arabia, which denies women the right to drive and only recently granted them the right to vote? Why not Russia, which has been accused of suppressing free speech, or India, which has passed retrograde anti-homosexual legislation?

The hip poet Amiri Baraka (aka Everett LeRoi Jones) recently died. He was once poet laureate of New Jersey, held prestigious university posts and was canonized with awards — despite being a hateful anti-Semite.

After Sept. 11, 2001, Baraka wrote a poem that suggested Israel knew about the plan to attack the World Trade Center. One of his poems from the ‘60s included this unabashedly anti-Semitic passage: “Smile, jew. Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew … I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got the hitler syndrome figured.” Yet that did not preclude The New York Times and National Public Radio from praising him after his death.

Trendy multicultural French comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala is known for his anti-Semitic provocations and for making a gesture that has been described as an inverted Nazi salute. He recently quipped of a Jewish journalist: “When I hear him talk, you see … I say to myself, gas chambers … a pity.” Auschwitz is now a joke?

Loudmouth multimillionaire hip-hop artist Kanye West recently suggested in an interview that President Obama’s approval ratings have waned because “[b]lack people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people.” In the mind of Mr. West, Mr. Obama’s current unpopularity has nothing to do with the Internal Revenue Service, Benghazi, The Associated Press and National Security Agency scandals, or with the Obamacare disaster.

In politics, Israel often finds itself at the wrong end of a troubling double standard.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry seems to be camped out in Israel these days. The Obama administration hopes to pressure Israeli leaders to offer concessions that will lead to an elusive Middle East peace. Yet even if Israel gave this administration what it wanted, how would the United States guarantee reciprocal commitments from the notoriously corrupt Palestinian Authority, which has no democratic legitimacy among those in the West Bank? Terrorist-affiliated Hamas wants no part of any such settlement.

It is hardly anti-Semitic to focus on problems between Israel and the Palestinians, or even to pressure the Israelis. It becomes so, however, when problems elsewhere are simply ignored, and Israel alone is singled out to be chastised.

Is the United Nations focused on the 13 million Germans who were ethnically cleansed from Eastern Europe about the same time that thousands of Palestinians left what became Israel? Would the American Studies Association boycott Chinese universities over the absorption of Tibet?

Is the world really troubled about divided capitals such as Jerusalem? If so, why not an international conference on the Turkish occupation of a divided Nicosia on Cyprus?

Can’t Mr. Kerry use shuttle diplomacy to settle who owns all those disputed rocky islands that have led China and Japan to the brink of war?

Nazis and racists used to spearhead Jewish hatred, based on ancient crackpot defamations that date back to the Jewish Diaspora into Europe after the Roman destruction of Judea.

But lately, antisemitism has become more a left-wing pathology. It is driven by the cheap multicultural trashing of the West. Jewish people here and abroad have become convenient targets for those angry with supposedly undeserved Western success and privilege.

Aside from the old envy, and racial and religious hatred, I think cowardice explains the new selective antisemitism. Mr. West would not dare slander radical Muslims, given the violence and threats against European cartoonists and filmmakers who have dared to create work perceived as insulting to Islam. The American Studies Association would not call for a boycott of Russia despite its endemic persecution of homosexuals. After all, Russian President Vladimir Putin is as unpredictable as Israeli politicians are forbearing.

Mr. Kerry is not rushing into Damascus to stop the bloodletting that has claimed far more lives than all the Palestinians lost in 70 years of conflict with Israel. Syrian President Bashar Assad, Shiite terrorists and al Qaeda would not listen politely to Mr. Kerry’s pontificating sermons.

The sort of antisemitism we see from buffoons such as Dieudonne M’bala M’bala is appalling, but the double standard to which Israel is held in matters of foreign policy by those who should know better is in many ways even more galling.

*Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Australian leaders from both sides of politics point out the real obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace

From AIJAC, 17 Jan 2014, by Sharyn Mittelman:

This week both Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and former Prime Minister Julia Gillard made strong and perceptive statements in support of Israel and of a genuine negotiated two-state peace with the Palestinians.

Bishop travelled to Israel to attend the funeral of Israel's former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and while she was there gave an interview to the Times of Israel in which she suggested that settlements should not be considered "illegal" under international law. Bishop commented in the interview:

"Our interest is in a negotiated peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and we believe that every opportunity should be given to those negotiations to proceed to its solution... I don't think it's helpful to prejudge the settlement issue if you're trying to get a negotiated solution. And by deeming the activity as a war crime, it's unlikely to engender a negotiated solution."

Asked about Australia's decision to change its vote from "in favour" to "abstain" on UN resolutions regarding settlements and the Geneva Convention, Bishop said:

"I considered each one [of these votes] on its merit and looked at the totality of the resolutions on similar matters across the UN and I decided and asked the [Foreign Affairs and Trade] Department to take on my instructions accordingly that we would consider each resolution and ensure that what we're doing was balanced... The Australian government is confident that the position it has adopted is balanced. It's not one-sided."

Meanwhile, on January 15 Gillard's speech at the Emirates Centre For Strategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi, delivered a strong message about what a genuine two-state solution must entail - especially in terms of recognition of Israel as a Jewish homeland.

According to a transcript by the Emirates Centre For Strategic Studies and Research , Gillard said:

"My message to you this evening is the same as I delivered to an audience in Melbourne in November: I support a Palestinian State for the Palestinian people. I want to see the dawn of Palestine Independence Day. I want the Palestinian people to enjoy and pursue their destiny in full, and to have a prosperous and successful country of their own - a nation they call home at long last. But I also want to see Israel continue to pursue its destiny as it was conceived - as a Jewish State and as a democracy.
Everyone talks about a ‘two-State solution.' I did consistently as Prime Minister. That is my view today. There is - there can be - no other course. Everyone understands a State for Palestine. But not everyone says there should be a State of Israel. Indeed, some countries, some leaders, still want a world without Israel. Those are the words that come out of the lips of the leaders in Tehran, and Gaza, and Southern Lebanon. I am convinced that the key to peace for Israelis and Palestinians is a simple declarative statement by Palestinian leaders - that they accept Israel as a Jewish State. Once that is stipulated, then virtually everything can be successfully negotiated -- because Israel's existential identity is successfully secured.
Once that is stipulated, two great peoples can finally begin working together to build themselves up as an economic powerhouse in the region, as a wellspring of science and innovation, as leaders in agriculture, water conservation, solar power and renewable energy. Indeed the list of potential shared areas of achievement is without end. This is an objective specifically endorsed by Secretary of State John Kerry in his marathon negotiations between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas."

As Gillard said, she made similar comments in a speech delivered to the Jewish community in Australia in November. It says much about Gillard's integrity and genuine support for Israel that she is willing to tell an Arab audience the same message she tells a Jewish audience - especially with regard to her point that the failure to recognise Israel as a Jewish state is at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In the same speech, Gillard also had some pointed and sensible words to say about Iran, which some of Australia's commentators on the subject could benefit from hearing:

"The P5+1 interim agreement - whose implementation is just being finalized this week - is a first step but to make this sacrifice worth it. It is now imperative that Iran follow through in both the letter and the spirit of putting a halt to its nuclear programs. So I want to propose a corollary to President Reagan's famous dictum in reaching arms control agreements with the Soviets: ‘Trust but verify,' he said. But we can't trust the Iranians - yet. Compliance with the interim agreement and all the enforcement provisions will test whether there can be trust. And so for now I say: ‘Hope, but verify.' There is no doubt that Iran's nuclear ambitions pose an existential threat to Israel. But they also pose the same threat to Muslim nations on this side of the Gulf." 

Sharon is unfairly cast in bad light

From Canberra Times Letters, 16 Janb 2014, by Bill Arnold:

Ian Birrell judges Ariel Sharon harshly for Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, (''The death of Israeli ideals'', Times2, January 14, p4) but it is important to remember the context.

The south of Lebanon had in effect become a mini-state of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, at the time a heavily armed terrorist organisation bent on destroying Israel.

It had carried out many terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians from its base there.

In relation to the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, Sharon was only guilty of allowing the Christian militia that carried out the atrocity into the camps.

He did not know about the massacre until after it happened.

It says a lot about the coverage of the Middle East that Sharon's link to the massacre is repeatedly raised, but so little is known about the actual perpetrators. Birrell bemoans the ''endless expansion of settlements'' but their boundaries haven't expanded since 2003. He alleges ''dreadful cruelty towards Palestinians'', but Israel has only done what it has needed to do to prevent terrorist attacks.
Had the Palestinians responded positively to Israel's various peace initiatives, including Sharon's Gaza withdrawal, they could have had their state by now.

Bill Arnold, Chifley

Australia FM: Don’t call settlements illegal under international law

From Times of Israel, 15 January, 2014, by Raphael Ahren: 

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, left, with FM Avigdor Liberman in Jerusalem, January 13, 2014 

(photo credit: Yossi Zamir)

In candid interview, Julie Bishop [Australia’s foreign minister] 

• expresses skepticism about the peace process, 
• says boycott Israel activists are ‘anti-Semitic’... 
• has said that the international community should refrain from calling settlements illegal under international law, without waiting for their status to be determined in a deal with the Palestinians.

In an exclusive interview with The Times of Israel, Julie Bishop suggested that, contrary to conventional diplomatic wisdom, the settlements may not be illegal under international law. She refrained from condemning Israeli initiatives to build additional housing units beyond the Green Line or from calling on Israel to freeze such plans, merely saying the fact that settlements were being expanded showed the need for the sides to quickly reach a peace agreement.

“I don’t want to prejudge the fundamental issues in the peace negotiations,” Bishop said. “The issue of settlements is absolutely and utterly fundamental to the negotiations that are under way and I think it’s appropriate that we give those negotiations every chance of succeeding.”

Asked whether she agrees or disagrees with the...view that Israeli settlements anywhere beyond the 1967 lines are illegal under international law, she replied: “I would like to see which international law has declared them illegal.”

...“Our interest is in a negotiated peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and we believe that every opportunity should be given to those negotiations to proceed to its solution,” said Bishop, who came to Israel on Monday to attend the funeral of former prime minister Ariel Sharon. “I don’t think it’s helpful to prejudge the settlement issue if you’re trying to get a negotiated solution. And by deeming the activity as a war crime, it’s unlikely to engender a negotiated solution.”

The issue of Israeli settlements should be determined in the course of the current US-brokered peace talks, she added.

... since September, when the center-right Liberal Party of Prime Minister Tony Abbott came to power in Canberra, Australia has been going to great lengths to demonstrate staunch support for Jerusalem’s policy on the international stage. 

Julie Bishop changed Australia's voting patterns at the UN in favor of Israel

Under Bishop’s stewardship, Australia has changed its voting patterns at the UN in favor of Israel. While under her predecessor, Bob Carr, Canberra often supported anti-Israel resolutions at the UN General Assembly, she has had Australia oppose or abstain from several such measures.

Former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr often supported anti-Israel resolutions at the UN 

(photo credit: AP/Matt Rourke)

In November, Australia was one of only eight countries to abstain in a vote on a resolution demanding that Israel cease “all Israeli settlement activities in all of the occupied territories.” Nearly 160 nations supported the resolution. In December, Australia was one of 13 countries that did not vote in favor of a resolution calling on Israel to “comply scrupulously” with the Geneva Convention (169 countries voted yes).

“I considered each one [of these votes] on its merit and looked at the totality of the resolutions on similar matters across the UN and I decided and asked the [Foreign Affairs and Trade] Department to take on my instructions accordingly that we would consider each resolution and ensure that what we’re doing was balanced,” Bishop told The Times of Israel in the interview. “The Australian government is confident that the position it has adopted is balanced. It’s not one-sided.”

The current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks “should be given any chance of succeeding,” the minister said, yet she sounded pessimistic when asked how realistic were the prospects of a final-status deal.

Citing regional turmoil, Bishop appeared to echo her Israeli counterpart, Avigdor Liberman, who often argues that it is foolish to seek to lay the foundation for a new building amid an earthquake.

“I wonder whether the timing will work against us, given the instability in the region, with Syria and Lebanon and Jordan and Egypt and Iraq,” she said. “The peace process is a challenge in and of itself. But in these current times, in this current context, I expect it will be even more challenging.”

Australian FM Julie Bishop after she placed a wreath at the fresh grave of Ariel Sharon, January 13. 2013 

(screen capture: YouTube)

Bishop also condemned what she said was excessive pressure exerted on Israel by Western states and civil society, including the threat of boycotts.

“Israel has to be ever vigilant against such tendencies on the part of the international community,” the minister said. ...any Australian body that received state funding should be barred from calling for boycotts, she continued.She also strongly condemned the global anti-Israel BDS movement: “It’s anti-Semitic. It identifies Israel out of all other nations as being worthy of a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign? Hypocritical beyond belief.”