Nicky Larkin: Israel is a refuge, but a refuge under siege

I saw this at Gay and Right and it is a great read.

From: Nicky Larkin, Irish Independent

I used to hate Israel. I used to think the Left was always right. Not any more. Now I loathe Palestinian terrorists. Now I see why Israel has to be hard. Now I see the Left can be Right -- as in right-wing. So why did I change my mind so completely?

Strangely, it began with my anger at Israel's incursion into Gaza in December 2008 which left over 1,200 Palestinians dead, compared to only 13 Israelis. I was so angered by this massacre I posed in the striped scarf of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation for an art show catalogue.

Shortly after posing in that PLO scarf, I applied for funding from the Irish Arts Council to make a film in Israel and Palestine. I wanted to talk to these soldiers, to challenge their actions -- and challenge the Israeli citizens who supported them.

I spent seven weeks in the area, dividing my time evenly between Israel and the West Bank. I started in Israel. The locals were suspicious. We were Irish -- from a country which is one of Israel's chief critics -- and we were filmmakers. We were the enemy.

Then I crossed over into the West Bank. Suddenly, being Irish wasn't a problem. Provo graffiti adorned The Wall. Bethlehem was Las Vegas for Jesus-freaks -- neon crucifixes punctuated by posters of martyrs.

These martyrs followed us throughout the West Bank. They watched from lamp-posts and walls wherever we went. Like Jesus in the old Sacred Heart pictures.

But the more I felt the martyrs watching me, the more confused I became. After all, the Palestinian mantra was one of "non-violent resistance". It was their motto, repeated over and over like responses at a Catholic mass.

Yet when I interviewed Hind Khoury, a former Palestinian government member, she sat forward angrily in her chair as she refused to condemn the actions of the suicide bombers. She was all aggression.

This aggression continued in Hebron, where I witnessed swastikas on a wall. As I set up my camera, an Israeli soldier shouted down from his rooftop position. A few months previously I might have ignored him as my political enemy. But now I stopped to talk. He only talked about Taybeh, the local Palestinian beer.

Back in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, I began to listen more closely to the Israeli side. I remember one conversation in Shenkin Street -- Tel Aviv's most fashionable quarter, a street where everybody looks as if they went to art college. I was outside a cafe interviewing a former soldier.

He talked slowly about his time in Gaza. He spoke about 20 Arab teenagers filled with ecstasy tablets and sent running towards the base he'd patrolled. Each strapped with a bomb and carrying a hand-held detonator.

The pills in their bloodstream meant they felt no pain. Only a headshot would take them down.

Conversations like this are normal in Tel Aviv. I began to experience the sense of isolation Israelis feel. An isolation that began in the ghettos of Europe and ended in Auschwitz.

Israel is a refuge -- but a refuge under siege, a refuge where rockets rain death from the skies. And as I made the effort to empathise, to look at the world through their eyes. I began a new intellectual journey. One that would not be welcome back home.

The problem began when I resolved to come back with a film that showed both sides of the coin. Actually there are many more than two. Which is why my film is called Forty Shades of Grey. But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.

An Irish artist is supposed to sign boycotts, wear a PLO scarf, and remonstrate loudly about The Occupation. But it's not just artists who are supposed to hate Israel. Being anti-Israel is supposed to be part of our Irish identity, the same way we are supposed to resent the English.

But hating Israel is not part of my personal national identity. Neither is hating the English. I hold an Irish passport, but nowhere upon this document does it say I am a republican, or a Palestinian.

My Irish passport says I was born in 1983 in Offaly. The Northern Troubles were something Anne Doyle talked to my parents about on the nine o'clock News. I just wanted to watch Father Ted.

So I was frustrated to see Provo graffiti on the wall in the West Bank. I felt the same frustration emerge when I noticed the missing 'E' in a "Free Palestin" graffiti on a wall in Cork. I am also frustrated by the anti-Israel activists' attitude to freedom of speech.

Free speech must work both ways. But back in Dublin, whenever I speak up for Israel, the Fiachras and Fionas look at me aghast, as if I'd pissed on their paninis.

This one-way freedom of speech spurs false information. The Boycott Israel brigade is a prime example. They pressurised Irish supermarkets to remove all Israeli produce from their shelves -- a move that directly affected the Palestinian farmers who produce most of their fruit and vegetables under the Israeli brand.

But worst of all, this boycott mentality is affecting artists. In August 2010, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign got 216 Irish artists to sign a pledge undertaking to boycott the Israeli state. As an artist I have friends on this list -- or at least I had.

I would like to challenge my friends about their support for this boycott. What do these armchair sermonisers know about Israel? Could they name three Israeli cities, or the main Israeli industries?

But I have more important questions for Irish artists. What happened to the notion of the artist as a free thinking individual? Why have Irish artists surrendered to group-think on Israel? Could it be due to something as crude as career-advancement?

Artistic leadership comes from the top. Aosdana, Ireland's State-sponsored affiliation of creative artists, has also signed the boycott. Aosdana is a big player. Its members populate Arts Council funding panels.

Some artists could assume that if their name is on the same boycott sheet as the people assessing their applications, it can hardly hurt their chances. No doubt Aosdana would dispute this assumption. But the perception of a preconceived position on Israel is hard to avoid.

Looking back now over all I have learnt, I wonder if the problem is a lot simpler.

Perhaps our problem is not with Israel, but with our own over-stretched sense of importance -- a sense of moral superiority disproportional to the importance of our little country?

Any artist worth his or her salt should be ready to change their mind on receipt of fresh information. So I would urge every one of those 216 Irish artists who pledged to boycott the Israeli state to spend some time in Israel and Palestine. Maybe when you come home you will bin your scarf. I did.

Gaza-bound flotilla "Freedom Waves" leaves Turkey

From: Almasry Alyoum

Two boats set sail from the Turkish port of Fethiye on 2 November, bound for the Gaza Strip in another activist attempt to break the Israeli siege on the Palestinian territory.

The two boats, one Irish and one Canadian, were supposed to carry some 50 activists and journalists from around the world in an attempt to draw attention to the isolation Gaza has suffered since 2007. The number was reduced to about 25 at the port in Fethiye due to complications with Turkish bureaucracy.

The Canadian boat is carrying US$30,000 in medical aid.

“Stay human,” shouted David Heaps, a member of the boat’s steering committee, echoing the words of Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian Gaza solidarity activist who was murdered in April.

The flotilla, called “Freedom Waves” by the organizers, sails after a flotilla of activist boats attempted to break the Israeli siege of Gaza in July but were prevented from leaving port by Greek authorities in a move that activists on board dubbed “Israeli outsourcing” of the Gaza blockade.

The two boats set sail separately but plan to meet in international waters.

"I am ecstatic that we are out of port. Hopefully both ships will get to Gaza and we will show the world that we can break the siege," said Kit Kittredge, an American activist on board.

Unlike previous flotillas, the organizers this time had decided to keep the mission secret until they reached international waters. And although they left from a Turkish port, they had no plans of coordinating with any state as they wanted to keep their action entirely civilian-based.

“We don't want to find out whether the Turkish government would feel some pressure to stop us. Our preference is not to engage any state actor. We're civil society and we prefer to act with as little interference as possible with state actors, even if that state, like Turkey, has taken a constructive approach in isolating Israel,” said David Heap, a member of the steering committee on the Canadian boat, which is called Tahrir.

In September 2011, Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador after the government in Tel Aviv refused to apologize for killing nine activists aboard the Turkish Mavi Marmara boat attacked by Israeli troops as it tried to break the siege on Gaza in June 2010. The attack caused a diplomatic rift between the two countries, which had previously had strong military and economic ties.

Organizers have made sure to keep the current trip secretive after reports emerged that the engine of one of the boats in a 10-ship flotilla that was supposed to set sail in July was sabotaged. The perpetrators of the sabotage went unknown, but most suspected Israel’s involvement.

Meanwhile, the Canadian delegation to the flotilla insisted on setting sail again in November. “We always said we will sail again, especially since we already own the boat; we have the main asset. In September there was a lot of attention on Palestine for political and diplomatic reasons. We felt it was important to keep pressure up,” Heap said.

The boat was acquired right after the Mavi Marmara incident, when Canadian activists insisted on acquiring a boat and attempting to break the siege again.

“People dug into their pockets, some stopped me on the street and gave me five dollars, others signed checks of US$5000. The Canadian boat is owned by all these people,” Heap said.

Besides the Canadian delegation, activists from Australia, the US and Denmark are part of the mission, as well as journalists from Al Jazeera, the independent New York-based program Democracy Now!, and the Iranian state-run Press TV.

Hassan Ghani of Press TV joined the Tahrir boat for his third trip on board a Gaza-bound solidarity flotilla. He was on board the Mavi Marimara when it was attacked in 2010.

“If I am not there I will feel a bit empty inside,” Ghani said. “There is always a possibility that there could be that one major flotilla that breaks through. I see it as one of those waves, and it's important to cover it because it's going to happen and people should know about it.”

Turkey vs. Israel

FROM: Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review

The organizers of the Gaza flotilla, a Turkish Islamist charity with dubious United Nation recognition, the İHH, have pledged to send a second flotilla later this month after the first one faced a deadly Israeli commando attack last year. Although the opening, and brief closure, of the Rafah crossing into Gaza has apparently made any aid flotilla meaningless, İHH’s president, Bülent Yıldırım, said the new mission is not aid but “justice.” But which justice?

The day after the Israeli raid that killed nine people aboard the Mavi Marmara, Mr Yıldırım explained his understanding of justice: “Last night everything in the world changed, and everything is progressing toward Islam. Anyone who does not stand alongside Palestine, his throne will be toppled.”

And in response to U.N., American and Israeli calls, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said governments cannot stop their citizens launching another flotilla to Gaza, and Ankara would not prevent private challenges to an illegal blockade.

Wisdom would ask Mr Davutoğlu to perhaps encourage the İHH to send a flotilla to Latakia to break the blockade on protestors and stop the Syrian police killing them. The Syrian death count is already over 1,000, or 111 times bigger than the death toll on the Mavi Marmara, excluding over 10,000 missing or detained for torture and future death.

Alternatively, if the foreign minister is so keen on the idea of freedom flotillas against illegal blockades, he can think of Varosha in Cyprus, which has remained a ghost town after the Turkish army fenced it off in 1974. But Mr Davutoğlu has other, preferred, responsibilities.

For example, the foreign minister often talks about his dream to “pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Palestinian [Muslim] Jerusalem.” He does not hide his ambition to see Jerusalem as the capital of a free Palestinian state.

Turkey Warns It Will Respond If Flotilla Impeded

This is very bad news. The Turkish government is setting itself up as the potential defenders of the Palestinians in efforts to break the blockade of GAZA. Look out. It also will have political benefits at home as more Turks could rally to a radical Turkish government.

From: Jerusalem Post

Turkey issued a warning to Israel on Saturday "not to repeat the human tragedy it caused last year" during the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a television interview, "It should be known that Turkey will give the necessary response to any repeated act of provocation by Israel on the high seas," AFP reported.

Asked about his government's efforts to prevent the flotilla from taking place, Davutoglu repeated a statement he made last week, asserting that while Ankara has "never encouraged any convoy," it "cannot give instructions to civil society" not to embark on the attempt to bust Israel's blockade, according to the report.

"We have shared our views about the safety of our citizens with all related parties," he said. "That was the case last year and it is not any different this time."

The Turkish foreign minister also addressed the recently-announced Palestinian reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas, urging the West to back the deal. "If the division of the Palestinian authorities is healed, the conditions that serve Israel's justification for the blockade will be eradicated ... and there will be no need for an aid convoy," AFP reported.

Pete Seeger’s Latest Shame—He Proves Again that he Remains a Useful Idiot

From: Ron Radosh, Pajamas Media

With the recent announcement by Pete Seeger that he joined and endorsed the BDS movement to delegitimize Israel (Boycott, Disinvest and Sanctions), Seeger has finally jeopardized any claim he might have had to be known as a supporter of reconciliation, tolerance, justice and peace.

Not only has Seeger joined the BDS movement, he has withdrawn his support from his previous participation in the Arava Institute’s “Virtual Rally for a Better Middle East,” which took place last November, and which I criticized here. That movement was flawed in that it was predicated on moral equivalence between Israel and its enemies, although it sought to work for “cross-border cooperation” and peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

Seeger has disavowed his earlier connection with the Arava Institute because he learned of its cooperation with the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an Israeli mainstream organization in existence during the days of the Yishuv, before Israel was even created. An important JNF mission was to plant trees in Palestine (one of the reasons Israel looks so different from much of the barren Middle East). When Seeger learned that the JNF was funding the planting of trees in the Israeli desert he considered it enough of a reason to withdraw his support from the Arava Institute. He now says: “I misunderstood the leaders of the Arava Institute because I didn’t realize to what degree the Jewish National Fund was supporting Arava. Now that I know more, I support the BDS movement as much as I can.”

As one of Seeger’s supporters explained, “Arava’s online event obfuscated basic facts about Israel’s occupation and systematic seizure of land and water from Palestinians. Arava’s partner and funder, the JNF, is notorious for planting forests to hide Palestinian villages demolished by Israel in order to seize their land. Arava was revealed as a sterling practitioner of Israeli government efforts to ‘Rebrand Israel’ through greenwashing and the arts.”

As writer Hannah Sternberg points out, a press release from the ICAHD on Seeger’s turn-around shows that he believes “that JNF has been involved in ‘dispossessing’ Palestinians since 1901…meaning he considers the perfectly legal and voluntary sale of land to Zionist Jews by the resident peoples of the area in the early twentieth century to be just as much an ‘occupation’ as the military occupation of hostile areas following the Six-Day War, the latter of which is what BDS purports to object to, to avoid criticism that they’re merely hateful of Jews.” She correctly adds: “What Seeger’s making clear here is that he objects to Israel’s very right to exist, aside from the complex international legal ambiguities surrounding the occupied territories, Gaza and the West Bank. According to Seeger’s logic, any Jew in Israel is an occupier, whether he’s building a new home on the West Bank or whether he lives on a communal farm that was purchased inarguably lawfully from a Palestinian a hundred years ago.”

Seeger explains that he did not reach this decision, according to ICAHD coordinator Jeff Halper, before carefully considering the issue. Halper notes that “Pete did extensive research on this. He read historical and current material and spoke to neighbors, friends, and three rabbis before making his decision to support the boycott movement against Israel.” In other words, Seeger spoke to his leftist friends and neighbors, and all of three rabbis! We all know there are plenty of self-proclaimed rabbis, some of them real, who despise Israel. I somehow doubt Seeger searched around to find some who had a different view than those he spoke to. One call to the American Jewish Committee could have provided him with more than a few.

I have written about Seeger so many times that I cannot provide the links to send you to all of them. If you are interested, you’ll have to do a Google or Bing search on your own. The last major controversy that got into the press, and about which I had both letter and phone call exchanges with Seeger, concerned his many years of Stalinism, which I argued he had never publicly come to terms with. I wrote a few articles on this for The New York Sun, when its print edition still was being published. They can be found here, and here.

In the latter piece, I revealed that Seeger had written a new song, “The Big Joe Blues,” the lyrics of which condemned Joseph Stalin, whose regime he had for decades been a major supporter of. I wrote that “I was deeply moved that Mr. Seeger, now in his late 80s, had decided to acknowledge what had been his major blind spot — opposing social injustice in America while supporting the most tyrannical of regimes abroad.” Well, I thought — I disagree with him about many things, but at least he eventually admitted the truth about Stalinism. I wrote that “I honor and admire him for doing so now.”

Comments appeared everywhere. The humorist and writer Mark Steyn, like many others on the conservative side, thought I let him off the hook too easily. He wrote that “The Washington Post’s Style section, with its usual sly elan, hailed him as America’s ‘best-loved Commie’ — which I think translates as ‘Okay, so the genial old coot spent a lifetime shilling for totalitarian murderers, but only uptight Republican squares would be boorish enough to dwell on it.’” Steyn continues:

Still, Ron Radosh was thrilled that, just 54 years after the old brute’s death, a mere three-quarters of a century after the purges and show trials…the old protest singer had finally got around to protesting Stalin, albeit somewhat evasively…But given that the guy got the two great conflicts of the 20th century wrong [fascism and communism] …it’s a start. I can’t wait for his anti-Osama album circa 2078.

Later in his essay, he writes:

Mr Seeger has a song called “Treblinka”, because he thinks it’s important that we should “never forget”. But wouldn’t it be better if we were hip to it before it snowballed into one of those things we had to remember not to forget? Would it kill the icons of the left just for once to be on the right side at the time? America has no “best-loved Nazi” or “best-loved Fascist” or even “best-loved Republican”, but its best-loved Stalinist stooge is hailed in his dotage as a secular saint who’s spent his life “singing for peace”. He sang for “peace” when he opposed the fascistic armaments stooge Roosevelt and imperialist Britain, and he sang for “peace” when he attacked the Cold War paranoiac Truman, and he kept on singing for “peace” no matter how many millions died and millions more had to live in bondage, and, while that may seem agreeably peaceful when you’re singing “If I Had A Hammer” in Ann Arbor, it’s not if you’re on the sharp end of the deal thousands of miles away.

Showing that in fact he has learned very little, Seeger now turns his public scorn on Israel alone, the country he once celebrated in his hit record with The Weavers, “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena,” and his song about the Kibbutzim in Israel, “Hey Daroma.” [“Who’ll bring bread and water/Food for Your Sons and Daughters/Life and youth is what we bring”] Of course, these were written when the Soviet Union stood with the U.S. in favor of the partition resolution at the UN in November of 1947, and in Israel’s first years, when Seeger thought of it as a labor-led country that could move quickly to the kind of socialism he liked, like the regimes in Stalinist Eastern Europe.

Now he stands firmly with the BDS movement, and gives royalties from “Turn, Turn, Turn” to the anti-Israeli cause, something you should remember next time you hear it played on the radio. (I wonder how Roger McGuinn feels about this, since his version with The Byrds made it popular.) Have no mistake about what BDS is for. It says nothing when Hamas lobs rockets on Israel; when suicide bombers ply their trade in Jerusalem, as happened yesterday. It offers no criticism; calling only for sanctions against and boycotts of Israel. I have not heard Seeger protest about the brutal and vicious killing of the Fogel family last week, a brutal murder by Palestinian terrorists celebrated by Hamas with the handing out of candy to the Gaza populace.

The BDS movement stands for the destruction of Israel, not an end to the “occupation,” as it claims. Indeed, many of its leaders oppose a two-state solution, which most people in Israel favor. Their view of occupation is to free all of Israel for a new Palestinian state, and to them, all of Israel is a settlement, not just some of the disputed territory over the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank.

BDS favors, as does Seeger, no cultural exchanges between Israeli and Palestinian artists, or Israeli and Palestinian universities, and it calls peace talks “collaborationist.” As Omar Barghouti, a BDS leader, said recently: “If the occupation ends,…would that end support for BDS? No it wouldn’t-no.” And it supports the phony “right of return” for all Palestinians supposedly ousted from Israel during the 1948 war of independence. Even President Obama said that “The ‘right of return’ would extinguish Israel as a Jewish state, and that is not an option.”

Whether Obama believes that is another matter, but it is on the record. So this is the movement to which Pete Seeger, now 91 years old, has hitched his wagon.

Seeger is a man of the Left, and he perhaps believes that as a good leftist, he too must hope for Israel’s destruction. I suggest he read the comments made by the Spanish leftist writer and former parliamentarian Pilar Rahola on June of 2010, who writes, that although she is not Jewish, and “Ideologically I am Left,” she understands that “I have the historical responsibility to fight against Jewish hatred and currently against the hatred for their historical homeland, Israel. To fight against anti-Semitism is not the duty of the Jews, it is the duty of the non-Jews.” She concludes: “I have a triple moral duty with Israel, because if Israel is destroyed, liberty, modernity and culture will be destroyed too. The struggle of Israel…is the struggle of the world.”

Instead, Seeger joins the likes of Elvis Costello, Tom Morello, The Pixies, Gil Scott-Heron, Carlos Santana, and most recently, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. All these singers have made clear their hatred of Israel, and have not said one word about the murder of Israelis in recent days.

Fortunately, Bob Geldof so far is standing firm in his decision to go to Israel to accept an honorary award from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Elton John has performed in Israel, as have Leonard Cohen and others. Just a day ago, Gene Simmons of Kiss did not mince words when he called artists who boycott Israel “idiots.” Born Chaim Witz in Israel, Simmons told the Israeli press that “The countries they should be boycotting are the same countries that the populations are rebelling…People long to be free … And they sure as hell don’t want somebody who’s a ruler who hasn’t been elected by them.”

If Seeger thinks Geldof and Simmons are artists he knows little about and is not familiar with their music, he might take the measure of one singer he knows very well and who has not made any political statement, but who has spoken through his action. In a busy non-stop European tour in June, Bob Dylan has added one stop to sing in Tel Aviv on June 20th, squeezing it in between London and Milan. Some years ago Dylan wrote a song that could have been written today, “Neighborhood Bully.” Please, go to the link and read the powerful lyrics. And mail them to Pete Seeger, who regularly says how much he loves Dylan. Maybe at 91, he’ll learn something.

Pete Seeger took fifty years to openly condemn Stalin — he was fifty years too late. He may not be a fan of Stalin any more, but he still supports the enemies of the West and the United States, those who are this new century’s totalitarians and monsters. Pete won’t be around in fifty years, so we cannot wait for him to learn. He should rethink the forces of hatred that he has opted to join and endorse. At least, now that he has shown where he stands, one must hope our country see no more honors bestowed upon a man who sadly remains a useful idiot.

The UNHRC: Hard at work condemning Israel

From: Jerusalem Post

The Council is poised to adopt six resolutions this week condemning just Israel – the highest number of resolutions dedicated to bashing the Jewish state at a single session.

Talkbacks (15) The meeting on Monday at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva helps explain how it is possible for the horrifying murder of the Fogel family by Palestinian terrorists on March 11 to have been so easily minimized by the “civilized” world. Slashing the throat of a three-month old baby and stabbing a three-year old twice in the heart has sickened and anguished Jews everywhere, but the steady pounding of anti-Semitism at the United Nations has not skipped a beat.

At this session of the Human Rights Council a UN-accredited NGO distributed a publication containing the following picture:

The demonic Jew, with the swastika substituted for the star of David on the Israeli flag, is depicted as an octopus strangling freedom-loving innocents.

The Jews as a vile life-threatening octopus was also a feature of Nazi propaganda. Today, it is how the Turkish NGO, the International Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), is permitted to portray its attempt last May to defy a legal Israeli naval blockade.

An appeal made to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, to take action against the IHH and to object to the distribution of this material on the UN “designated NGO tables outside the plenary room” was ignored.

The UN-accredited IHH “humanitarians” also delivered a statement at this Council’s session in which they said: “we consider the unlawful activities of Israel to be the most serious threat, one that is even more dangerous than that of a nuclear attack.”

Being fanatical hatemongers is evidently no barrier to being UN-accredited.

The IHH is not alone. On March 11 of the current session, the Council “Bulletin of informal meetings” advertised the time and place of a meeting entitled “Human rights in Palestine.” It was organized by the UN-accredited NGO “Nord-Sud XXI” and held in a UN-provided room near the Council chamber. Invited speakers manufactured such accusations as “people are buried alive in Israeli prison cells,” and “one woman had gangrene and they cut her foot off instead of treating her,” followed by “we want a future free of Zionist crimes,” and “we need revolution and intifada against this oppression.” Imad Zuhairi, deputy permanent observer of the Palestinian Authority to the UN in Geneva, was an enthusiastic participant in this event, made possible only with the assistance of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights despite its focus on advocating violence against Israelis. Zuhairi declared a few hours before the Fogel murders: “we cannot equate resistance against occupation with terrorism.”

Such NGOs operate hand-in-glove with the Council. Currently being discussed during the Council session is another resolution on the IHH flotilla, calling for still another report to condemn Israel on the same subject in June. Because the Organization of the Islamic Conference holds the balance of power at the Council, by controlling the regional groups that form the Council’s majority, the resolution is guaranteed to be adopted later this week.

Furthermore, the flotilla resolution is just one of many. There is another resolution on settlements. It condemns only Israel, references the Road Map only to allege Israeli violations, and demands Israel end “all settlement activity, including “natural growth.”

This is not just verbiage. Such UN settlement resolutions intimate that the three young Fogel children, while living and breathing, were criminals.

And still it does not end. Incredibly, at this Council session there will be a total of six resolutions adopted condemning Israel alone – on the flotilla, settlements, the Goldstone Report and its successors, the “Syrian Golan,” other “grave human rights violations by Israel,” and Palestinian self-determination.

Consider the absurdity of the resolution entitled “human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan.” The Council claims to be “deeply concerned at the suffering of Syrian citizens” and then demands that Israel “desist from…practices that obstruct the enjoyment of their fundamental rights.” There is no mention whatsoever of the Syrian government, its murderous rampages at this very moment in time, and its “obstruction” of the fundamental right of Syrians to live.

On the contrary, Syria is currently running for a seat on the Council and is widely expected to be elected in May.

Saudi Arabia is already a Council member and the ongoing crackdown on democracy advocates in Saudi Arabia is nowhere to be found in the Council’s repertoire. The only states other than Israel subject to a resolution of the Council at this session will be North Korea, Iran, Myanmar/Burma, and Cote d’Ivoire.

In sum, the Council is poised to adopt this week six resolutions condemning just Israel, one resolution for each of four other countries, and nothing for the other 187 UN member states. This is the highest number of resolutions dedicated to the demonization of Israel at a single session of the Council since it began in 2006 as the crown jewel of Kofi Annan’s UN reform.

A great many in the Western world believe either that discrimination against the Jewish people is an acceptable price to pay for progress on other fronts, or that the United Nations serves at worst as an incompetent but necessary escape valve for hot air and play-acting by weak countries with inferiority complexes. The atrocity committed against the Fogel family puts the lie to this reprehensible and deadly exploitation. The world should have learned long ago that demonizing Jews is not a human right.

The writer is the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Calls for Airstrikes on Israel

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Calls for Airstrikes on Israel: "pAfter assuring both Libyans and Turks that Turkey was not involved in airstrikes on Libya, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, of Turkey, said, “We wish that the United Nations had made such resolutions and countries had taken action in the face of incidents in Gaza, Palestine and the other regions.” While Namik Tan, Turkey’s ambassador [...]/p"

Cypriot president pays first visit in over a decade

From: Jerusalem Post

Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias arrived on Sunday night for the first visit by a Cypriot head of state in 11 years, reflecting ties that have improved proportionate to the degree to which Israel’s relations with Turkey have deteriorated.

Ties with Cyprus and Greece have improved markedly over the past two years, as a frigid wind has blown through ties between Jerusalem and Ankara. At the beginning of the last decade Greece and Cyprus were widely considered among the most – if not the most – unfriendly countries toward Israel in Europe.

Along with a marked warming trend with Cyprus and Greece, there has also been a strengthening of relations in recent years with Romania and Bulgaria, two other historic rivals of Turkey.

The improvement of the ties with Cyprus was manifest in Cyprus’ position regarding protest flotillas setting sail for Gaza. Cyprus has consistently refused to let these ships set sail from its ports.

The relationship between the two countries is even more interesting considering that the left-wing Christofias is Cyprus’s first, and the EU’s first and only, communist leader – by no means a natural fit for Israeli’s Likud-led government.

Christofias will be in the country for two days, accompanied by his Foreign Minister Markos Kyprianou, his Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Antonis Paschalides, and a large business delegation that will host a seminar in Tel Aviv.

Cypriot officials, while acknowledging that the deterioration of Israel-Turkish ties have played an important role in Israel and Cyprus getting closer together, said that other elements were also involved, including a business relationship that the officials said has “exploded” over the last several years.

While Israel’s exports to Cyprus is primarily in the hitech field, Cyprus provides Israeli businesses with a number of financial services, with numerous Israeli companies registered in Cyprus to enable them to do business with the Arab world.

Security and defense-related cooperation has also increase significantly, Cypriot officials said, without providing details.

The officials said that the improved attitude toward Israel is also attributed in some part to the fact that thousands of Cypriots have come to Israel over the last 15 years, a good number of them for medical reasons. The officials said 20-30 Cypriots receive treatment at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer and Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem at any given time. Likewise, the official said, a number of Cypriot doctors receive their training in Israel.

In advance of the visit, the Cypriot Embassy issued a communiqué saying that “for thousands of Israelis and Cypriots, the burgeoning of relations between the two states represents an official acknowledgment of something which started many years ago on a people to people level. Jewish communities flourished in Cyprus during ancient times, and over the past two millennia, Jews often found refuge in Cyprus.

In more recent history, many Jewish immigrants remember the support and warmth of the Cypriot people during their incarceration on the island by British forces, and with independence in 1948, many Israelis have become regular visitors to Cyprus, or have transformed Cyprus into their second home.”

Christofias is scheduled to meet with President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.