ZOA on Carter

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has condemned former President
Jimmy Carter’s latest book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, as inaccurate,
shallow and vicious. The book is but the latest in decades of attacks upon
Israel by the former President.

Examples of Carter’s distortions, inaccuracies and hostility in this book
include:

Carter: “The overriding problem is that for more than a quarter of a
century, the actions of some Israeli leaders have been in direct conflict
the official positions of the United States, the international community,
and their own negotiated agreements. . Israel’s continued control and
colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a
comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land.”
Fact: Judea and Samaria are historically, legally and religiously Jewish
land and form part of territory originally earmarked for a Jewish state by
the League of Nations. There has never been a Palestinian Arab state in
these areas, despite offers to establish one in 1937, 1948 and 2000 and
Israel won Judea and Samaria in the 1967 war of self-defense. This land was
no-one’s sovereign territory and had been illegally occupied and annexed by
Jordan in 1948. When under Arab control, no Palestinian state was set up
there. Jews have more right to live in Judea and Samaria than any other
people.

Carter: Palestinian Arabs have long supported a two-state solution and the
Israelis have always opposed it.
Fact: The 1937 Peel Commission partition plan, the 1947 UN partition plan
and the 2000 peace plan all proposed a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish
state. Palestinians rejected all three.

Carter: In 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against Jordan.
Fact: Jordan commenced hostilities against Israel by shelling Jerusalem and
opening fire on Israeli lines, despite Israeli calls for Jordan not to
intervene in the Israeli-Egyptian fighting. Israel then counter-attacked and
captured east Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

Carter: UN Security Council Resolution (UNSC) 242 calls for Israel to
withdraw from all the territories conquered by Israel in the 1967 war.
Fact: UNSC 242 does not call for immediate, total and unconditional
withdrawal by Israel. Rather, it calls for Israel to withdraw “from
territories occupied” (not “the territories”) to “secure and recognized
boundaries” produced by negotiation with the Arab belligerents of that war.

Carter: Arab-Jewish violence began when “Jewish militants” attacked Arabs in
1939.
Fact: Arabs launched attacks upon unarmed Jews in 1920, 1921, 1929 and
1936-39, murdering hundreds of Jewish civilians long before Jewish armed
units were formed to defend themselves.

Carter: Blames Israel while exonerating Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal
to accept a Palestinian state as provided for in the 2000 Barak-Clinton
peace proposals.
Fact: Arafat rejected these proposals and made no counter-offer according to
Clinton and chief U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross. Instead, Arafat launched a
terror war against Israel that still endures. Clinton said in his memoirs
that Arafat’s rejection made his Middle East policy a big failure. These
proposals, contrary to what Arafat said and Carter chooses to believe, would
have resulted in a fully contiguous Palestinian state on more than 95% of
Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Carter: Confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli
courts.
Fact: The Israel Supreme Court has explicitly outlawed the use of torture to
even extract information of impending terror attacks, let alone confessions.

Carter: Israel is to blame for the “exodus of Christians from the Holy
Land.”
Fact: The Christian population of Jerusalem and other cities controlled by
Jordan dropped steeply under Jordanian rule (1948-67) and is doing so again
under Arafat’s PA (1994 onwards), but did not under Israel rule. 70% of east
Jerusalem’s Christians left during Jordanian rule and since Arafat’s PA took
over Bethlehem in 1994, most of its Christians have left as well.

Some important facts omitted from Carter’s book:

-The long history of Palestinian and Arab-state sponsored terrorism against
Israel before 1967.
-Arafat’s efforts to import offensive weaponry and bomb making materials
from Iran via the Karine-A ship in 2002, about which Arafat lied to the U.S.
government, saying he had nothing to do with it
-The persecution, expulsion and expropriation of the property of hundreds of
thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.
-The desecration and destruction of Jewish synagogues, graveyards and homes
in east Jerusalem and prevention of Jewish worship at Jewish sacred sites
after Jordan captured that part of the city in 1948.
-The 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes in an operation funded by
current Palestinian authority president and co-founder with Yasser Arafat of
the Fatah terror group, Mahmoud Abbas.

Critical commentary of the Carter book:

Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law Professor: “Whatever Mr. Carter’s motives may
be, his authorship of this, a historical, one-sided, and simplistic brief
against Israel forever disqualifies him from playing any positive role in
fairly resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians” ( New
York Sun, November 22).

Martin Peretz, Editor-in-Chief of The New Republic: a “tendentious,
dishonest and stupid book” (New Republic, November 11).

Rich Richman, Editor, Jewish Current Issues: “The anti-Israel bias is so
clear, the credulous description of Arab positions so cringe-producing, the
key ‘facts’ on which Carter relies so easily refuted by public documents,
that the book is an embarrassment to Carter, the Democrats, the presidency
and Americans” ( American Thinker, November 14).

Michael Jacobs, Managing Editor, Atlanta Jewish Times: “A poorly written,
poorly argued, nonsensical little book” ( Altanta Journal Constitution,
November 20).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “Jimmy Carter’s inaccurate,
shallow and vicious book is unfortunately what we have come to expect from
this most mediocre of modern presidents. The book is not only riddled with
factual errors and distortions fully in keeping with Carter’s long-standing
bias against Israel and preference for neighboring Arab dictatorships, but
even manages to malign Israel in its title, as Israel is a democracy that
extends full civil rights to its non-Jewish citizens, not a minority, racist
regime that like apartheid South Africa. The title seems to have been
maliciously chosen to harm Israel’s reputation in the minds of anyone who
merely sees the book’s cover, because even Carter admits in the book that
the situation in Israel ‘is unlike that in South Africa.’

“Carter’s animus against Israel has been confirmed from many reliable
quarters. His Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, once revealed that if Carter
had won a second term, he intended to sell Israel down the river. In The
Unfinished Presidency, Douglas Brinkley writes, ‘There was no world leader
Jimmy Carter was more eager to know than Yasir Arafat,’ whom he befriended
already in 1990, three years before Arafat supposedly accepted Israel’s
right to exist and signed the Oslo Accords. But what would you expect from
someone who won a prize from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan of the United
Arab Emirates whose Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-Up has promoted
Holocaust denial?

“The ZOA, however, agrees with Jimmy Carter on one matter. On a recent visit
to Israel, he said, ‘I condemn very deeply any teaching of Palestinian
children or college students that they should despise Israel, not recognize
the legitimacy of Israel’s existence, [and] not work with Israel
side-by-side in peace.’ It’s a pity that Carter fails in his book to enlarge
on this and related issues of incitement to hatred and murder and failure to
arrest and jail terrorists in the PA which stems from Palestinian Arab
non-acceptance of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. This was and
remains the actual reason for the Arab war on Israel, not Israel’s
self-defensive measures, none of which would be necessary if Arabs truly
accepted Israel’s existence.”

Why I’m backing Israel.

Some said I should have my head examined after I agreed to become the chief executive of a pro-Israel advocacy group, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. But people said the same when I joined Labour in the mid-80s.

There is never a wrong time to do the right thing and if, like me, you are convinced of Israel’s cause, then why not support Israel and why not now? I have always been a practical idealist, a non-Jew who has always believed in a two-state solution. But I have never been more concerned about the false reality many people are constructing around Israel and the Middle East, here and abroad. Our polling shows that opinion formers know that Israel is a fully functioning democracy, but care more about what Israel does than what Israel is.

Since its birth 58 years ago, Israel has always been prepared to compromise for peace. From Begin’s agreement with Sadat in 1979 to the Arafat-Barak talks at Camp David in 2000, Israeli leaders have been prepared to challenge their own people in pursuit of peace. Last summer Israel withdrew from Gaza, angry settlers and all. Yet the terror from the Gaza Strip has continued – more than 1,000 rockets have been fired into southern Israel in the past year. Since 2000, nine fatalities have been caused by Qassam missiles.

Some media have reported the panic these missiles have caused but they downplay the impact because of the small scale of fatalities compared with those on the Palestinian side. My husband, a British soldier, is currently serving a tour of duty in Iraq. His unit has come under mortar fire nearly every night for the past six months. Not many service personnel have been killed by these missiles but every soldier fears that the next one might have his or her name on it. Do you think that a child, a parent or a grandmother in one of the towns bordering Gaza thinks there have been “only” nine fatalities? Can you imagine what that does to a civilian population?

We need to think carefully about the consequences of questioning the defensive reactions of a nation-state that is constantly bombarded by an enemy calling for its destruction, especially after it has withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza. Would we as British citizens accept a single rocket on a British town, let alone hundreds?

The commentators’ objection is that the response is “disproportionate”. But how does a nation-state defend itself against a terrorist organisation or organisations that are part of, and deliberately hide behind, ordinary citizens? Of course the Israeli military and all military forces must act ethically. But if the number of civilian casualties continues to be the main issue, there is no incentive for the terrorists to stop using the civilian population as a shield.

We live in dangerous times when, in parts of the left especially, you can’t be a friend to Islam or to Muslims unless you are anti-Israel. That is exactly what al-Qaida wants us to think. Events in Rochdale at the last election represent a microcosm of what we are sleepwalking into globally. The Islamists and the left argued that, because I supported Israel and its right to exist, all my work for my Muslim constituents was a lie. They suggested I was an opportunistic, neocon Zionist, aiming to dupe them.

Israel’s willingness to compromise for peace has never been enough, because Israel alone cannot gain peace. The Palestinians and others in the region also have to want peace. Israel needs a serious interlocutor so that peace can stand a chance. So my question to the left is this: why not concentrate your attention there, rather than on the one player in the region who has always been serious about peace?

· Lorna Fitzsimons is chief executive of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre and the former Labour MP for Rochdale
lf@bicom.org.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1955804,00.html

EURABIA, UN, IRAN in PROXY WAR AGAINST – GUESS WHO…….

FOUR months after Israel launched its onslaught against Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrillas are back in south Lebanon stronger than ever and armed with more rockets than they had before the conflict, according to Israeli intelligence.During the month-long war, which began on July 12, Hezbollah fired 200 to 250 rockets a day into Israel, killing 43 civilians and terrorising much of the north of the country.

“Since the ceasefire, additional rockets, weapons and military equipment have reached Hezbollah,” said an Israeli intelligence officer. “We assume they now have about 20,000 rockets of all ranges — a bit more than they had before July 12.”

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has confirmed the Israeli estimate. In a recent interview with al-Manar, the Hezbollah television station, he claimed his organisation had restocked its arsenal and now held at least 30,000 rockets, sufficient for five months of war.

Israeli military intelligence has warned the government that renewed fighting with Hezbollah, which it regards as a terrorist organisation, should be expected as early as next spring.

In response, Israeli forces have taken emergency action. They have postponed a plan to reduce the length of national service — currently 36 months for men and about 24 months for women — and are stepping up production of better armoured tanks.

They are also grouping all special forces into a single new division and are developing laser technology, jointly with the United States, to shoot down Hezbollah’s rockets.

On the border with Lebanon it is easy to understand Israeli concerns. A sniper from the Israeli 50th infantry brigade said last week that Hezbollah was active, although its members wore civilian clothes rather than uniforms.

The sniper, a 24-year-old lawyer from New York on national service, watched through his gun sight as a young man carrying an AK-47 assault rifle climbed from a Jeep. “He was walking quickly and all of a sudden he disappeared into a hidden shelter,” he said. “Then the guy went back to the Jeep and back to the tunnel, checking how quickly he could get there. Then he climbed into the Jeep and drove away.

He added: “We feel that Hezbollah are constantly there, though we rarely see any weapons.”

The Israeli military estimates that at least 5,000 rockets are hidden in secret shelters along the border, which it failed to find before the ceasefire came into effect on August 14.

Iranian-made long-range Zelzal rockets, which could reach Tel Aviv, have been stored in hidden locations. “We’re now in a race to locate the new rockets,” said a Mossad source.

Tracking down the Iranian rockets was one of Israel’s few military successes in the summer. According to sources, the Israeli air force destroyed them on the first night of battle. “We believe Hezbollah have learnt their lesson and it will be much harder to locate them next time,” said the source.

Israel has not yet found a way to tackle the threat from the short and medium-range rockets. It is developing the Nautilus laser-guided cannon in an attempt to intercept them. “It still remains to be seen if the laser gun will work,” said another source. “But it will take up to three years and might be too late for the next war.”

Israel is alarmed at the burgeoning self-confidence of Nasrallah and what it perceives as his intention to undermine Lebanon’s fragile government and take over the country’s politics.

Talks in Beirut to defuse the crisis collapsed yesterday. Nasrallah has set a deadline of tomorrow for his demands to be met or he will stage mass demonstrations.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2449728,00.html

Hamas radio station in Gaza broadcast a call to northern Gaza women to go to the mosque to serve as human shields for the operatives inside.

The IDF said on Friday that they suspected that Palestinian gunmen had
dressed up as women in order to foil the army’s attempts to gain access to
the mosque in Gaza where Palestinian operatives were holed up inside.

Hamas radio station in Gaza broadcast a call to northern Gaza women to go to
the mosque to serve as human shields for the operatives inside.

A 19-hour standoff between IDF troops and the operatives ended Friday
morning after all the operatives fled.

IDF soldiers surrounded the mosque in the northeast Gaza Strip town of Beit
Hanun and exchanged fire with the dozens of Palestinians who were inside.

UN Terrors´Little Helper: Terje Roed Larsen – Baby, it´s dark out side…and our soldiers do not like that…and furthermore we do not want to see what is going on….as long as it helps Hizballah Re-arm…………

Despite the 20,000 troops deployed in southern Lebanon, the United Nations admits that weapons smuggling from Syria continues unhindered. A German report finds UNIFIL does not patrol after dark.

Hizbullah terrorists are free to roam at night without fear of being identified by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), according to a report by the German paper Der Spiegel.

Spanish UNIFIL official Richard Ortax admitted to the paper that no patrols are carried out at night “because of the danger involved.” UNIFIL commanders said their function is to “observe changes in the behavior of the local population.”

One junior officer told Der Spiegel he was glad that his battalion had only left its camp once. “It’s absurd,” he said. “We landed here and set up our tent city, but since then we’ve only left the camp to drive around and to make sure that we’re seen.”

The report cites a long tradition of UNIFIL inaction, which it says allowed time for a Finnish contingent to construct a giant sauna and an Indian contingent to decorate its base with traditional Indian artwork.

The UNIFIL troops and the 14,000 Lebanese soldiers stationed in the region add up to a total of around 20,000 troops in the 18-by 31-mile region of southern Lebanon. Another 6,000 troops are still expected to arrive.

The United Nations itself has admitted that Syria was still successfully smuggling arms to the Hizbullah, which neither UNIFIL nor the Lebanese army plan to stop.

Israel has maintained overflights in the region in order to monitor and discourage the smuggling, yet UNIFIL officials condemn the continued Israeli maneuvers. The Lebanese army even attempted to shoot down Israeli fighter jets on Tuesday. France and the European Union have been accusing Israel of violating Resolution 1701 with its flights over Lebanon.

The current state of affairs has led Israeli officials to speak about “rethinking the implementation of Israel’s commitments” made in the context of the UN-brokered cease-fire.

The UN Security Council “noted with regret [that] non-Lebanese militias” in the country had not been disbanded or disarmed, an allusion to the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hizbullah. The statement on Tuesday was termed a “presidential statement,” which is the weakest of all available Security Council actions.

Following the meeting, UN envoy to the region Terje Roed-Larsen explicitly admitted that Syria was actively smuggling weapons into Lebanon. He said that Lebanese government officials “have stated publicly and also in conversations with us that there have been arms coming across the border into Lebanon.”

Roed-Larsen added that Syria itself does not deny the flow of weapons, claiming only that the arms are not being dispatched by the Syrian government. “The consistent position of the government of Syria has been that, ‘Yes, there might be arms smuggling over the border, but this is arms smuggling and the border is porous and very difficult to control,'” Roed-Larsen told reporters.

Roed-Larsen ducked UN responsibility for the smuggling, saying UN troops had not been asked by the Lebanese army to monitor the border.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=114650

Ancient Jewish treasures in monastery, book says Ancient Jewish treasures in monastery, book says

(10-23) 04:00 PDT Mar Theodosius, West Bank — Until today, the main claim to fame of this sleepy monastery on the edge of the Judean wilderness was the tradition that the Three Wise Men slept in the caves here after visiting the infant Jesus in Bethlehem.

But a new book claims that the Greek Orthodox Monastery Mar Theodosius was the last hiding place of one of the greatest treasures of antiquity: the gold and silver vessels of the first century B.C. Temple in Jerusalem, the central shrine of Judaism that once housed the Holy Ark containing the sacred tablets brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses.

British archaeologist Sean Kingsley said he has traced the journey of the legendary vessels from the first time they disappeared from public view more than 1,500 years ago to their current location in this walled monastery east of Bethlehem in the West Bank. He said the items include “the central icons of biblical Judaism” — a seven-branched gold candelabra, the bejeweled Table of the Divine Presence and a pair of silver trumpets.

But many people, including Israeli government officials, believe the treasures are hidden somewhere in Vatican vaults. In 1996, Israeli Religious Affairs Minister Shimon Shetreet officially asked the pope to return them.

But Kingsley contends they were taken from Rome when it was sacked by the Vandals in A.D. 455. He bases his theory on new archaeological sources and contemporary accounts by ancient historians.

In his new book, “God’s Gold: The Quest for the Lost Temple Treasure of Jerusalem,” just published in Britain this month and due in U.S. bookstores in the spring, Kingsley describes the odyssey of the priceless haul from Jerusalem to Rome and back again via Carthage and Constantinople, to its final resting-place at Mar Theodosius.

“I am the first person to prove that the temple treasure is no longer in Rome,” he said.

Kingsley said the vessels were hidden in the caves under the monastery to escape the sacking of Jerusalem by Muslim invaders in A.D. 614.

“If you were the Bishop of Jerusalem and a massive Persian force was sweeping down like locusts from the north, you would want to get the treasure out of the city,” he said.

But at least one Israeli expert has scoffed at Kingsley’s theories.

“I’ve been there several times, studying the skeletons of monks who were massacred by the Persians in the seventh century,” said Israeli anthropologist Joe Zias, a former curator for the Israel Antiquities Authority. “It doesn’t have any such treasure — and if it did, it was plundered by the Arabs or Persians centuries ago.”

Kingsley said he was unable to gain access to the monastery to prove his theory, and conceded that he had not discussed the matter with local church officials or archaeologists for fear of tipping them off before publication of his book.

The dilapidated monastery was once home to monks, but today its only inhabitants are 10 nuns. One of them, who declined to give her name, told a visitor that there was no treasure buried at Mar Theodosius, which was destroyed during the same Muslim invasion and left abandoned until the late 19th century. During a visit to the caves beneath the monastery, a Chronicle contributor was told that no precious artifacts had ever been recovered from the site, probably because it was left in ruins for nearly 1,300 years and any valuables were looted by grave robbers.

Although Kingsley may be mistaken about Mar Theodosius, his reconstruction of the odyssey of the temple treasure is compelling.

According to the first century historian Josephus, 50 tons of gold and silver vessels were plundered from the temple by the Roman Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus during the conquest of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

“They used the treasure to help finance the building of the Colosseum in Rome and paraded it through the streets in triumph in A.D. 71,” said Kingsley. The moment, he said, was captured in a frieze carved into the Arch of Titus in Rome, which clearly shows the menorah, the seven-branched temple candelabra that was the symbol of ancient Judaism, being paraded through the streets.

“Contemporary sources show that it survived on public display in the Temple of Peace in the Roman Forum from A.D. 75 into the early fifth century. Then it suddenly disappeared. Who stole God’s gold?”

According to his research, it was Gaiseric, king of the Vandals.

“In A.D. 455, Gaiseric looted and burnt Rome in 14 days and threw everything he could, including the temple treasures, into ships and took them to the temple of Carthage,” he said. “They would not have liquidated the loot. It gave them power.

“In A.D. 534, the emperor Justinian brought the Vandal king into Constantinople. The records show that they resurrected the triumphal procession in A.D. 71. The historian Procopius of Caesarea clearly describes the treasures of Jerusalem being paraded at head of this triumph.”

In Constantinople — today’s Istanbul — Kingsley found the Church of St. Polyeuktos, a unique Byzantine structure which appears to have been built according to the dimensions of the Temple in Jerusalem. Its patron, Princess Juliana, was described in terms that compared her to the builder of the original temple. One church inscription read: “She alone has conquered time and surpassed the wisdom of renowned Solomon, raising a temple to receive God.”

“The relevance of the Church of St. Polyeuktos to the temple treasure is obvious. Where would be more fitting to deposit the birthright of the chosen people than in a temple fit for God?” asked Kingsley.

But the treasure did not remain in Constantinople for long, he says.

“The emperor Justinian was a student of classical antiquity, and he was aware that every civilization that controlled the temple treasure had eventually been consumed by it. Fearful, he sent the treasure back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in around A.D. 560,” said Kingsley.

“At this point our evidence peters out, and the story becomes a question of interpretation,” he said. “But we know that the Jews of Jerusalem allied with the Persians during the invasion of A.D. 614, and one chronicler describes them violating the cave beneath the tomb of Christ in the Holy Sepulchre. What were they looking for? I can only suppose they were looking for the temple treasure.”

At that point, said Kingsley, a monk called Modestus from Mar Theodosius found himself in charge of the priceless vessels. It would only be natural for him to hide them in the isolated desert caves, not knowing that the location would also be overrun by the invading Persians a few weeks later.

Kingsley said he had peered over the wall of the monastery and seen evidence of archeological looting in the area, but hoped the temple treasures would remain undisturbed.

“It’s very important this universal treasure is not used for political purposes,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to see this deadly treasure come to life. It’s much safer left under the shifting sands of the West Bank.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/23/MNG9NLU97U1.DTL&type=printable

War is Deception: The Al Dura Jihate

Last Thursday a French court found Philippe Karsenty guilty of libeling
France 2 television network and its Jerusalem bureau chief Charles Enderlin.
Karsenty, who runs a media watchdog Web site called Media Matters, called
for Enderlin and his boss Arlette Chabot to be sacked for their September
30, 2000 televised report alleging that IDF forces had killed 12-year-old
Muhammad al-Dura at Netzarim junction in Gaza that day.

Their lawsuit against Karsenty was the first of three lawsuits that Enderlin
and France 2 filed against French Jews who accused them in various ways of
manufacturing a blood libel against Israel by purposely distorting the
events at Netzarim junction that day. The second trial, against Pierre
Lurcat, is set to begin this week. Lurcat organized a mass demonstration
against France 2 on October 2, 2002 after the broadcast of a German
television documentary film by Esther Schapira called Three Bullets and a
Dead Child: Who Shot Muhammad al-Dura? Schapira’s film concludes that IDF
bullets could not have killed Dura.

September 30, 2000 was the third day of the Palestinian jihad. That day an
IDF position at Netzarim junction was attacked by Palestinian Authority
security forces. A prolonged exchange of fire ensued. That afternoon, France
2’s Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma submitted footage of a man and a
boy at the junction cowering behind a barrel. The two were later identified
as Jamal al-Dura and his 12-year-old son Muhammad. Enderlin, who had not
been present at the scene, took Rahma’s 27 minutes of raw footage and
narrated a 50-second film in which he accused the IDF of having shot and
killed the boy. Enderlin’s film itself does not show the boy dying. There
are no blood stains where the boy and his father were crouched. No ambulance
came to evacuate them. No autopsy was performed on Muhammad’s body.

FRANCE 2 distributed its film free of charge to anyone who wanted it –
although not the full 27 minutes that Rahma filmed.
The film was shown repeatedly worldwide and particularly on Arab television
networks. The results of the footage were murderous. On October 12, two IDF
reservists, Yosef Avrahami and Vadim Novesche, were lynched by a mob at a PA
police station in Ramallah. The mob invoked Dura’s death as a justification
for its barbarism. The Orr Commission which investigated the violent rioting
by Israeli Arabs in October 2000 stated in its final report that “Muhammad
al-Dura’s picture, which was distributed by the media, was one of the causes
that led people in the Arab sector to take to the streets on October 1,
2000.”

Countless suicide bombers and other Palestinian terrorists have cited Dura
as a justification of their crimes. For the past six years PA television has
continuously aired a film showing Dura in heaven beckoning other Palestinian
children to “martyr” themselves by becoming terrorists and join him there.

The Palestinians are not the only ones who have used Dura as a terrorist
recruitment tool. He is prominently featured in al-Qaida recruitment videos
and on Hizbullah banners. Daniel Pearl’s murderers interspersed their video
of his beheading with the France 2 film. Throughout Europe, and particularly
in France, Muslims have used Dura as a rallying cry in their attacks against
Jews – attacks which broke out shortly after the Dura film was broadcast.

AT FIRST, Israel accepted responsibility for Dura’s death without conducting
an investigation. Yet, in the weeks that followed the event, engineers Nahum
Shachaf and Yosef Doriel conducted investigations on behalf of the IDF’s
Southern Command.

Both men separately proved mathematically and physically that the IDF forces
on the ground could not see the Duras from their position and that it was
physically impossible for their bullets to have killed Muhammad. Then OC
Southern Command Maj.-Gen.Yom Tov Samia held a news conference in late
November based on their findings at which he said that the probability that
the IDF had killed Dura was low.

Yet Samia was the only senior Israeli official to question the veracity of
the film. Then chief of General Staff Shaul Mofaz disavowed Samia’s
investigation. Prime minister Ehud Barak never questioned the veracity of
Enderlin’s murderous accusation against the IDF.

In the intervening years, private researchers and media organizations have
taken it upon themselves to investigate what happened that day. Their
findings have shown that at a minimum, the probability that the IDF killed
Dura is minuscule and more likely, the event was either staged or edited to
engender the conclusion that Dura had been killed by Israel. The few people
who have been allowed to watch Rahma’s entire film have stated that it is
impossible to conclude that Muhammad was killed because he raises his head
and props himself up on his elbow after he was supposedly shot.

Respected media organizations like The Wall Street Journal, CBS News,
Atlantic Monthly and Commentary magazine have published detailed
investigations that all conclude that the footage was either staged or
simply edited to show something that didn’t happen.

Yet, even as private individuals were dedicating their time and passion to
proving that France 2 had purposely broadcast a blood libel against Israel
that caused the death and injury of Israelis and Jews throughout the world
and marred the honor of the IDF, official Israel remained silent.

The Foreign Ministry never asked France 2 to show its officials the full
27-minute film. Neither the IDF nor the Foreign or Justice Ministries
defended the IDF or called into question the veracity of Enderlin’s film. As
late as this past June 23, IDF spokeswoman Brig.-Gen. Miri Regev told
Haaretz, “I cannot determine whether the IDF is or is not responsible for
the killing of al-Dura.”

IN THE French judicial system, the people’s interest is represented by a
special court reporter who recommends verdicts to the judges. It is rare for
judges to disregard the reporter’s recommendations. During his trial,
Karsenty and his witnesses produced piece after piece of evidence that
called into question the credibility of the France 2 film.

For its part, France 2 sent no representatives to the trial. Its attorney
did not question any of the evidence submitted by Karsenty nor did she
cross-examine any of his witnesses. She brought no witnesses of her own. She
simply produced a letter of support for France 2 from President Jacques
Chirac. The court reporter recommended dismissing the case.

In their judgment last week, the judges argued that Karsenty’s allegations
against Enderlin and France 2 could not be credible since “no Israeli
authority, neither the army which is nonetheless most affected, nor the
Justice [Ministry] have ever accorded the slightest credit to these
allegations” regarding the mendacity of the Dura film.

Over the years Israeli officials have justified their silence by saying that
it was a losing proposition to reopen the Dura case. We’ll be accused of
blaming the victim, they said.

This statement is both cowardly and irresponsible. As the French verdict
shows, without an Israeli protest, the protests of private individuals,
however substantial, ring hollow. When Israel refuses to defend itself from
blood libels, it gives silent license to attacks against Israel and world
Jewry in the name of those libels.

In 2000, Barak was desperately trying to close a peace deal with Yasser
Arafat. The last thing he wanted was to admit that Arafat was promulgating
blood libels against Israel. So he was silent. This is unforgivable, but
understandable.

Israel’s continued silence is a sign that Israeli officialdom has still not
understood what the war of images demands of it. The Dura film, like the
fictional massacre of Lebanese children at Kafr Kana in Lebanon this summer,
shows that victory or defeat in wars is today largely determined on
television. To win, Israel must go on the offensive and attack untruthful,
distorted images that are used to justify the killing of Israelis and Jews
throughout the world.

When Karsenty heard the court’s verdict last week, he said, “If this
judgment is upheld, Jews should ask themselves questions about their future
in France. Justice covers the anti-Semitic lies of a public channel. It’s a
strong signal, it is very severe.”

To this it should be added that if the Israeli government continues to be
silent as the good name of the IDF, of Israel and of the Jewish people is
dragged through the mud by distorted television images broadcast by foreign
news outlets; if the Israeli government does nothing to defend those who are
persecuted for fighting against these distortions, then Jews will have to
ask themselves some questions about how on earth we are supposed to defend
ourselves, let alone win this war against those who seek our destruction.

Jerusalem Post

Relentless…Just Watch it.

http://imittsverige.blogspot.com/2006/10/relentless.html

Lebanon/Israel: Will this hit MSM: Hezbollah Hit Israel with Cluster Munitions During Conflict

(Jerusalem, October 18, 2006) ? Hezbollah fired cluster munitions into civilian areas in northern Israel during the recent conflict, Human Rights Watch reported today. This is the first time that Hezbollah’s use of these controversial weapons has been confirmed. Hezbollah’s deployment of the Chinese-made Type-81 122mm rocket is also the first confirmed use of this particular model of cluster munition anywhere in the world. Human Rights Watch documented two Type-81 cluster strikes that took place on July 25 in the Galilee village of Mghar. “We are disturbed to discover that not only Israel but also Hezbollah used cluster munitions in their recent conflict, at a time when many countries are turning away from this kind of weapon precisely because of its impact on civilians,” said Steve Goose, director of Human Rights Watch’s Arms Division. “Use of cluster munitions is never justified in civilian-populated areas because they are inaccurate and unreliable.” While it is not known when and how Hezbollah obtained these foreign-made cluster munitions, and while Hezbollah used far fewer cluster munitions than Israel did in the recent war, the new findings raise serious concerns about the proliferation of these weapons to non-state armed groups, as well as states. Human Rights Watch has previously reported on Israel’s extensive use of cluster munitions in southern Lebanon during the conflict and has documented civilian casualties caused by these weapons both during the war and afterwards. The UN has estimated that Israel fired as many as 4 million submunitions into Lebanon, which left as many as 1 million hazardous unexploded “duds” still threatening Lebanese civilians and disrupting economic recovery from the war. These submunition duds have caused an average of nearly three civilian casualties a day since the cease-fire. Cluster munitions endanger civilians in two ways. First, they spread submunitions over a broad area, virtually guaranteeing civilian casualties when fired into populated areas. Second, they leave a large number of duds that become de facto landmines, killing or maiming people well after the conflict. Each of the Type-81 cluster munition 122mm rockets used by Hezbollah carries 39 Type-90 or MZD submunitions. Each submunition in turn shoots out hundreds of steel spheres, about 3.5mm in diameter, with deadly force. Human Rights Watch discovered evidence of Hezbollah’s unprecedented use of this cluster munition in the course of ongoing investigations of the group’s attacks on northern Israel during the war that lasted from July 12 until August 14. Israeli authorities had until now prevented publication of details of Hezbollah cluster strikes in Israel, citing security concerns. Cluster Munitions in Mghar On July 25, 2006, between 2:15 and 2:30 p.m., according to 43-year-old Jihad Ghanem, a cluster munition landed between three homes belonging to his family in the western part of Mghar village (population 19,000). The attack injured three family members: his son Rami, 8, his brother Ziad, 35, and his sister Suha, 33. Rami’s arms bore irregular scars caused by pieces of shrapnel as well as smaller round marks that Jihad said were caused by steel spheres. Jihad Ghanem, a factory manager, showed Human Rights Watch 3.5mm steel spheres and pieces of metal which he said landed at the scene, and were consistent with the top of Type-90 submunitions. He said he saw in his yard a canister with small weapons stacked on top of each other. This and the relatively light injuries suffered by his son suggest that the submunitions may not have deployed properly. According to other villagers, the rocket that hit the Ghanem’s property was part of a volley of some 10 to 12 rockets that landed in or near Mghar that afternoon, one after the other. Human Rights Watch could not determine how many of the rockets in this volley contained submunitions, but witnesses said that at least one of the other rockets contained cluster submunitions. Amal Hinou, 42, who makes plate-glass products for construction, showed Human Rights Watch pieces of it that he said he collected in an open field in the Hariq area just outside of Mghar. These included several clearly identifiable pieces of submunitions and their casings. The Type-90 submunitions are easy to identify. They resemble small cylindrical bells with a ribbon at one end. A plastic band full of 3.5mm steel spheres wraps horizontally around the middle of the cylinder. Inside is an armor-piercing “shaped charge.” The steel spheres carried by Hezbollah’s regular 122mm and 220mm rockets ? that is, those that do not contain submunitions ? are 6mm in diameter. Israeli police officials told Human Rights Watch that they documented 113 cluster rockets that were fired at Israel during the conflict, causing one death and 12 injuries in all: in Mghar one death and six injuries, in Karmiel three injuries, in Kiryat Motzkin two injuries, and in Nahariya one injury. The police said they discovered the first of these rockets on July 15 in the Upper Galilee village of Safsufa. A total of 113 Type-81 cluster munition rockets would contain 4,407 individual submunitions. Israeli police also showed Human Rights Watch physical evidence of a submunition from a Type-81 rocket that they said landed in the town of Karmiel and matched the one Human Rights Watch researchers saw in Mhgar. Police and army officials did not disclose to Human Rights Watch the estimated dud rate of the submunitions from the 113 cluster rockets that they said they had handled. Legal Analysis International humanitarian law (the laws of war) obliges warring parties to distinguish between combatants and civilians (the principle of distinction) and, when attacking legitimate military targets, to ensure that the military advantage gained in the attack outweighs any possible harm caused to civilians. Hezbollah launched cluster attacks that were at best indiscriminate, i.e., they violated the principle of distinction by using unguided and highly inaccurate cluster munition models against populated areas. At worst, Hezbollah deliberately attacked civilian areas with these weapons. Five countries ? China, Egypt, Italy, Russia, and Slovakia ? produce nine types of 122mm rockets carrying submunitions. At least two other countries, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, also stockpile them.In November 2006, the Review Conference of the Convention on Conventional Weapons will decide whether to begin work on a new international instrument addressing the problem of cluster munitions. Although these weapons have been used in recent conflicts, including Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo, a growing number of nations have joined a movement to stop the use of unreliable and inaccurate cluster munitions because of the danger they pose to civilian life during and after strikes.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/8bfc26b464df5d6a717b8659ce46d763.htm

Radicals for Terror

“Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day… Allah willing, we will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains.” – Khaled Mashal, Hamas leader“The vote for Hamas was actually a vote for peace.” – John Pilger, left-wing journalist and filmmaker

It would be difficult to imagine a clearer expression of genocidal hatred than the ideology of today’s jihadist armies. What is even harder to accept is that these bloodthirsty killers, with their graphic incitement to the massacre of millions of Jews, are admired and defended by legions of intellectuals, journalists, agitators and demonstrators on the anti-Zionist Left.

All sane observers understand that the official program of Hamas, if implemented, would result in an epoch-making bloodbath. One broadcast by Hamas activists announced: “My message to the loathed Jews is that there is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere! We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews.”

But in the organs of the Israel-hating Left, we read that the Hamas election victory is “the best news from the Middle East for a long time” (The Guardian).We read that it is time “to reinforce Hamas resistance [to Zionist ideology]” and its “ethical cry to the world” (CounterPunch).

The goal of “reinforcing Hamas resistance” is quite widely shared in the anti-Zionist camp. Left-wing American activists in the International Solidarity Movement openly admit to collaborating with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In the Israeli communist journal News From Within, Jennifer Loewenstein, who is currently ensconced in Oxford University, urges that “Hamas, its allies and solidarity activists abroad genuinely attempt to make a difference.” Editor Michel Warschawski anticipates that the Hamas regime will bring about “Palestinian unity in fighting the Occupation…. It may provide new hopes and new confidence.”

As these writers know very well, the “resistance” that is to be “reinforced” entails the calculated murder of small children, pregnant women, the elderly and the disabled; the bombing of buses, cafes and restaurants; and occasional attempts to demolish whole skyscrapers.

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s Hizbullah is another jihadist faction much admired by today’s left-wing anti-Zionists. Claiming responsibility for massacres of Jewish civilians as far afield as South America, a Hizbullah statement pledged “an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.”

Yet Norman Finkelstein – author of The Holocaust Industry and other classics in the field of Jewish anti-Semitism – can hardly find the words to express his enthusiasm. “I truly honor [Hizbullah] for having inflicted an exceptional and deserving defeat on their foreign occupiers,” he once exclaimed. “It’s another wonderful chapter in the long and painful struggle for human emancipation and even liberty and certainly one that every human being can take inspiration from.”

During the recent war, Finkelstein echoed the sentiments of countless leftists who marched to the slogan: “We are all Hizbullah.”

In his visit to Lebanon earlier this year, Noam Chomsky justified Hizbullah’s military arsenal as a “deterrent to potential aggression.” Lebanese commentators were quick to express their disgust, warning that failure to disarm Hizbullah would lead to war – a prophesy that was fulfilled shortly afterward.

Was it in spite of this prospect, or because of it, that Chomsky allowed himself to be filmed greeting the terrorist commanders as long-lost friends? Could any parodist capture the scene of the taxpayer-financed American Jewish professor advising these murderers of Americans and Jews that instead of surrendering their weapons they should “inform the public and get them to understand your position” so that “they will put pressure on the politicians” to capitulate?

Writing in the London Review of Books, Charles Glass was impressed by Hizbullah’s ability to use rockets and suicide bombers “intelligently, in conjunction with an uncompromising political programme.” Critics promptly drew his attention to the words of Sheikh Nasrallah: “If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”

Such statements, replied Glass, “are in all likelihood fabrications.” Surely the “intelligent” masterminds of rocket barrages and suicide bombings could not possibly embrace such an “uncompromising political programme.” After all, the editors of the Lebanese Daily Star were anxious to distance themselves from the journalist who had originally recorded Nasrallah’s outburst.

If true, that would be a shocking indictment of their own professional standards, given that in the space of a year they had published no fewer than 170 reports by the employee whose veracity they supposedly did not trust. But Glass would no more share this consideration with his readers than he would mention the anti-Semitic bloodlust of Al-Manar, or the Shiite scholar Amal Saad-Ghorayeb’s carefully documented conclusion that for Hizbullah, “the Israeli Jew becomes a legitimate target for extermination. And it also legitimizes attacks on non-Israeli Jews.”

Even so, Charles Glass can hardly compete with his more flamboyant radical colleagues in his enthusiasm for terrorists and suicide bombers. For the widely read columnist and documentary maker John Pilger – who ascribes Britain’s Middle East policy to the nefarious machinations of a single Jewish businessman – Hizbullah embodies “resistance to rapacious power…humanity at its noblest.”

For the political firebrand George Galloway, Hizbullah terrorists are “martyrs and heroes,” while Sheikh Nasrallah’s “name rings in joy around the world.” The sickening list of leftist apologists for Nazi-style Jew-haters seems almost endless.

While the jihadists of Hamas and Hizbullah dream of a second Holocaust, the ayatollahs of Iran are pursuing the means to achieve it. Representative of the “moderates” in the Iranian regime is former president Rafsanjani, who predicts that “the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.” The “extremists,” as everyone knows, take their cue from President Ahmadinejad, with his assurance that “the Zionist regime is headed toward annihilation.”

But few tyrants are so depraved that radical leftists will not leap to their defense. Virginia Tilley, academic proponent of the “one-state solution” to the “problem” of Israel’s continued existence, believes that Ahmadinejad’s words promise the sort of “profound political change” that is “necessary to creating a just peace.”

Doubtless relying on her professional knowledge of Iranian dialects, she maintains that Ahmadinejad’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map” is correctly translated as a hope that the Zionist regime will “vanish from the page of time” – the “just peace” of her imagination. She also contends that Ahmadinejad is not really a Holocaust denier, given that “skepticism” about the “Holocaust narrative” arises quite naturally if the “narrative” is used in support of Israel.

Noam Chomsky offers further insights. In his mental universe, “Israel and the United States are both threatening Iran with destruction [emphasis added].” The ayatollahs would be “crazy” if they did not develop nuclear weapons to counter the military threat from the West.

The British communist intellectual Alex Callinicos is also certain of the correct ideological approach: “If Bush attacks Iran tomorrow, which side are you on?” he asks. “I would be on Iran’s but – as Lenin put it – I would refuse to paint Ahmadinejad in communist colours; in other words, I would be for an Iranian victory despite his anti-Semitic rantings…”

Perhaps, in the annals of political lunacy, historians will eventually discover a 1930’s leftist who was insisting on the duty of all revolutionaries to side with the Nazi regime, while cautioning that Hitler was not a communist and that a Nazi victory would be desirable in spite of his policies toward the Jews, not because of them.

If it seems that these are the isolated opinions of a few individuals, albeit figures of some prominence, it is worth pointing out that Britain’s Stop the War Coalition has informed Iranian refugees that they will not be allowed to speak since the movement “cannot allow any statement against the Islamic regime in Iran from the platform.”

Although left-wing extremists refuse to tolerate Iranian critics of the Iranian regime, respectable universities are quite happy to offer a platform for meetings organized by the most bigoted spokesmen of that very regime. In July I had the memorable experience of attending such a conference at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

The event had two main sponsors. The first was the Islamic Human Rights Commission, described by journalist Melanie Phillips as “the most conspicuous promoter of Khomeini jihadism in the UK.” Its advisory board includes the likes of Mohammed al-Massari, a Saudi exile with Al Qaeda sympathies whose website implores Allah “grant his mujaheddin victory” over “the Jews, the Americans and the apostates.”

The second sponsor was the NEDA Institute, an Iranian body whose main function seems to be the dissemination of “research” that denies the Holocaust.

The theme of the conference was the need to do away with Zionism. A newsletter distributed at the entrance applauded Ayatollah Khomeini’s “arguments” for the destruction of Israel. Speakers included three Marxist-Leninist writers (Uri Davis, Michel Warschawski and John Rose) and a notorious left-wing American Jew (Jeffrey Blankfort). Apparently they were only too happy to offer their intellectual services to the advocates of a second Holocaust.

It must be stressed that the genocidal fanaticism of Hamas and Hizbullah and their Iranian sponsors differs in no significant respect from that of Al Qaeda. In the words of bin Laden: “We are sure of our victory against the Americans and the Jews as promised by the Prophet: Judgment day shall not come until the Muslim fights the Jew, where the Jew will hide behind trees and stones, and the tree and the stone will speak and say, ‘Muslim, behind me is a Jew. Come and kill him.’ “

What is truly incredible is that some radical leftists are so consumed with hatred that they are prepared to make excuses for these mass murderers as well. Only three months after the 9/11 massacres, CounterPunch published a revealing interview with Norman Finkelstein: “It’s payback time for the Americans,” he gloated, adding that “we deserve the problem on our hands because some things bin Laden says are true.” Finkelstein kept a studied silence about the implication of these thoughts for his fellow Jews.

Another line of argument was suggested by Noam Chomsky: “It’s entirely possible,” he hypothesized, “that bin Laden’s telling the truth when he says that he didn’t know about the [9/11] operation,” and in any case bin Laden was “courageously fighting oppressors, who are quite real,” although regrettably his crimes were “extremely harmful” to the Palestinian cause.

Not content with these observations, Chomsky traveled to Pakistan, where he hastened to assist Al Qaeda’s recruitment efforts by informing his audiences that the Bush administration was planning to impose mass starvation on neighboring Afghanistan.

The gold standard in collaboration with genocidal anti-Semites was undoubtedly set by the radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, convicted last year of providing material support for the terrorism of Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman. The so-called “Blind Sheikh” was linked to the jihadist cell that tried to massacre 250,000 people in the 1993 World Trade Center attack. The bombers expected that most of the victims would be Jews.

Stewart’s actions on behalf of her imprisoned client included refusing to disclaim a fatwa inciting Muslims “to fight the Jews and to kill them wherever they are.”

It is of no small significance that Stewart is acclaimed as a martyr by her comrades at the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights, not to mention far-left media such as Z Magazine, CounterPunch and Democracy Now.

In Britain, where I live, the anti-Zionist Left has broken all records in its promotion of Jew-killers. So deep is the malaise that a major national newspaper, The Guardian, has seen fit to open its opinion pages to the jihadists and their admirers. One fanatic (Faisal Bodi) managed to insert a series of columns proclaiming that “Israel simply has no right to exist” and that “martyr-bombers” are “heroes defending the things we hold sacred.”

Other op-ed contributors have included a well-known Hamas ideologue, official leaders of Hamas, and a member of Hizbullah’s executive committee. Neither these outrages nor The Guardian’s countless libels of Israel and “Zionist” Jews have evoked the slightest dissent from its politically correct readership.

The British Left’s infatuation with jihadists has even produced a new political party. In 2004, the country’s leading Marxist-Leninist and Islamic extremist groups announced the formation of RESPECT: The Unity Coalition, which now functions as a national megaphone for anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and would-be destroyers of Israel.

But is this development any more surprising than the public political romance between Ken Livingstone, the leftist mayor of London, and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Middle East hatemonger who demands the mass slaughter of Jews? Or the insistence of the world-famous journalist Robert Fisk that the Bush administration is controlled by “the Perles and the Wolfowitzes and the Cohens,” and that “I’m amazed that Muslims have been so restrained”?

The enthusiasm of today’s radical leftists for the genocidal anti-Semites of the far right is not without precedent. The opening of communist archives revealed that for decades the Soviet bloc had tried to destabilize West Germany by financing neo-Nazi violence. To embarrass its rivals on the other side of the Berlin Wall, the Stasi created movements such as the “Veterans of the Waffen-SS” and financed a campaign by the “German Imperial Party” to “justify the need for exterminating the Jews.”

These examples can be multiplied. It is tempting to conclude, with Ecclesiastes, that there is nothing new under the sun. There is, however, an important difference. Yesterday’s communists sponsored Nazis in the hope of discrediting their enemies. Today’s ultra-leftists think that their alliance with Nazis brings credit to themselves.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=24931