From the Middle East Quarterly*

Following a lengthy period during which Hamas bombarded southern Israel unopposed, Israel finally attacked Gaza in an attempt to cripple Hamas’s fighting capabilities. The ensuing conflict in December 2008 and January 2009 led to a high casualty count on the Palestinian side. Even before the war ended, the U.N. Human Rights Council, a body thought biased against Israel, met at the behest of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in a special session to condemn the Israeli assault and to call for a mandate to carry out a fact-finding mission designed to investigate the conflict.

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By Fern Sidman

Chants of “Free, Free Palestine” and “Israel Is Here To Stay” resounded along New York City’s Park Avenue, as both anti-Israel forces and pro-Israel supporters squared off in front of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Tuesday evening, March 9th, while inside the hotel the organization known as The Friends of the Israel Defense Forces gathered for their annual gala fund-raising dinner. The guest of honor and keynote speaker for this year’s dinner was Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi, Chief of Staff of the IDF.

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From the ADL:

Right now, Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is taking place in more than a dozen cities and on many college campuses. In past years, IAW has been marked by extreme anti-Israel rhetoric, including accusations of Israeli racism and apartheid, and calls for boycott and divestment campaigns against Israel. We anticipate similar efforts to delegitimize Israel at this year’s events.

Your college student may encounter demonstrations or hear extreme anti-Israel protests in conjunction with IAW. To help students, parents and grandparents respond to these demonstrations in strategic yet powerful ways, ADL experts have developed and distributed resources on dealing with anti-Israel rallies on campuses.

We are closely monitoring the events and ADL Regional Office staff are available if your student needs help creating a response or is not receiving appropriate support from college administration officials.

Find your ADL regional office.

ADVICE TO STUDENTS

• While anti-Israel protests are protected by free speech rights, protestors can’t obstruct access to school buildings or physically intimidate or threaten students. When protests violate these standards, students should ask administrators to act.
• Students should be vigilant in responding to anti-Israel articles, op-eds and letters-to-the-editor in campus papers. ADL Regional Offices can help create an appropriate response.
• If anti-Semitic materials appear on campus, students should publicly condemn the materials and ask the administration to combat the atmosphere of hate on campus.
• Students should use social networking tools like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and campus blogs to post positive messages about Israel.

Visit our site to download “Fighting Back,” a comprehensive handbook for strategically responding to demonstrations on campuses. You will also find a range of resources on how people can support Israel.

IAW is scheduled to continue until March 14 and ADL will closely monitor events. You can stay up to date on IAW activity by visiting our Web site.

ADL regional staff are also here to help students respond to anti-Israel rallies on campuses. This is an example of the expertise and “on-the-ground” work of the Anti-Defamation League.

At ADL, we monitor, we advocate and we work to protect the Jewish people, but we cannot do so without your help.

Please consider donating to the Anti-Defamation League to help us always be ready to respond.

Contact

by Phyllis Chesler

For years now, newly arrived refugees have been contacting me. They write to tell me that they’ve lost nearly everybody they once knew. Their whole world is gone now. Some whisper over the phone. Others write long letters. They ask me how I’ve managed.

I am talking about ideological refugees from feminism, leftism, gay liberation, socialism, and progressivism.

Yesterday, I received a letter from someone in Berkeley. She tells me that, earlier this week, she was “overjoyed to see the feisty Tikvah students on the steps of Sproul Plaza giving out Israeli flags and t-shirts and dancing in circles,” and how afterwards, some “went to confront the theatre of the absurd, enacting the checkpoints.” Referring to the feminist movement in Berkeley, she asks: “Could you ever have believed it? From anti-patriarchy to pro-Hamas in a few decades?” Her letter continues: Continue reading…

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By Fern Sidman

Hip Hop artists and graffiti virtuosos from New York painting their way throughout Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Sderot? Who’d a thunk it, but it appears that a new organization called Artists 4 Israel will be doing just that. Founded about a year ago following Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, young artists in the New York area had just about enough of the incessant anti-Israel propaganda being spewed forth by the “politically correct” denizens of the radically left-wing enclaves that figure so prominently in the eclectic world of the New York artist and decided to do something about it.

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by Phyllis Chesler

Everywhere I turn — or so it seems — attacks on Israel and Israelis are in process. The other day, after a long day of writing, I idly, instinctively channel surfed — and there was the infamous Christiane Amanpour grilling Israeli Foreign Minister Ehud Barak. Oh, how this half-British, half-Iranian journalist relished this task. All her questions were hostile and were meant to embarrass or castigate both him personally and Israeli policies in general. CNN’s poor excuse for Oriana Fallaci never paused to take a breath; she gave Minister Barak absolutely no quarter. Except once. That’s when Amanpour told Barak that he was still saying the same things about peace that he’d said ten years ago when she’d interviewed him, at which moment, she flashed back to that very interview. Continue reading…

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

All you Jew-haters and Israel-haters (same thing) think you know what’s best for the rest of us, just like Hitler and Stalin did. The problem is that you’re completely out of step with the collective intelligence of the greatest nation in the world, the U.S.:

… The findings of the February 19, 2010 Gallup poll put President Barack Obama at odds with the US public, when it comes to attitudes toward the Jewish state, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Arabs, Muslims and Islamic terrorism.

For example, Israel maintains its traditional spot among the five most favored nations by 67 percent of the US public, despite Obama’s “even-handed” approach toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, in spite of his attempts to force Israel into sweeping concessions, and in defiance of the US “elite” media and academia.

On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority is ranked — along with Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan — at the bottom of the list, favored by only 20% of the US public.

According to an August 10, 2009 Rasmussen poll, Israel is ranked as the third most favorable ally (70%), preceded only by Canada and Britain. The low regard toward Egypt (39%) and Saudi Arabia (23%) demonstrates that Americans remain skeptical — at least since 9/11 — of Arabs and Muslims, even as these countries are portrayed by the media and the administration as supposedly moderate and pro-American.

Moreover, only 21% of adult Americans expect that the US relationship with the Muslim world will improve in a year, while 25% expect that it will get worse. …

by Phyllis Chesler

The Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUSA) is about to release a report which denounces Israel as a “racist” nation which has absolutely no historical, covenantal, or theological right to the Holy Land. The report calls for the United States to withhold financial and military aid to Israel and for boycotts and sanctions against Israel. That’s not all. The report also endorses a Palestinian “right of return” and “apologizes to Palestinians for even conceding that Israel has a right to exist.” According to the press release, it also states that Israel’s history begins only with the Holocaust and that Israel is “a nation mistakenly created by Western powers at the expense of the Palestinian people to solve the ‘Jewish problem’.” Continue reading…

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By Jonathan Spyer

The evidence suggesting that British passports were used by members of the team responsible for killing Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is causing concern at the possibility of a new diplomatic row between Israel and the UK. Such a row would come at a time of already strained relations between the two countries, because of the failure of the British government to take firm action to end the possibility of the arrest of Israeli officials in Britain on suspicion of ‘war crimes.’

Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged to carry out a full investigation into the affair.

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by Daniel Pipes*

Rashad Hussain, Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has run into a problem: He appears to be an Islamist. The evidence largely concerns a public statement he made six years ago, as Josh Gerstein reports in Politico:

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By Richard Landes *

The first part of this two-part article explores the pervasive flaws that mar the UNHRC’s “Gaza Fact-Finding Mission Report.” It focuses on an interlocking combination of problems: 1) its failure to investigate seriously the problem of Hamas embedding its war effort in the midst of civilians in order to draw Israeli fire and then accuse Israel of war crimes; 2) its astonishing credulity concerning all Palestinian claims, contrasted with a corresponding skepticism of all Israeli claims; 3) its harsh judgments on Israelis for war crimes (i.e., deliberate targeting of civilians), contrasted with its resolute agnosticism concerning Hamas intentions. The result is that Goldstone actually participates in Hamas’ strategy and encourages the sacrificing of their own civilians.

[CLICK HERE TO READ PART II]

INTRODUCTION[1]

In response to the Israeli attack on Gaza, Operation Cast Lead (December 27-January 18, 2009), several major NGOs and public figures called for an investigation. On April 3, 2009, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed a “Fact-Finding Mission.” The mission was made up of four members, including Hina Jilani, Desmond Travers, Christine Chinkin, and at its head, Richard Goldstone, former member of the South African Supreme Court and distinguished international jurist. On the basis of the animus of the founding organization (UNHRC) and the pervasive bias of the members of the team, Israel refused to cooperate with what some observers called “a kangaroo court.”[2] In May 2009, the mission met in Geneva. It later made two visits to Gaza (from June 1-5, 2009 and June 26-July 1, 2009), held further hearings in Geneva (in early July 2009), and eventually presented its findings to the UNHRC (first draft, 575 pages, September 15, 2009; final draft, 430 pages, September 25, 2009).

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Does Not Mention Honor Killings, Forced Veiling, Arranged Marriages, etc.

by Phyllis Chesler

It’s official. Britain’s premier medical journal Lancet has been completely Palestinianized. It no longer bears any relationship to the first-rate scientific journal it once was. Perhaps Lancet is no longer a standard-bearer but has become a follower in the global movement in which standards have plunged, biases have soared, and Big Lies now pass for top-of-the-line academic, scientific work.

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The good people over at HonestReporting have documented how some Muslims continue to live in the Stone Age and harbor the most terrible hatreds:

… Canadian investigative journalist Terry Glavin recently reported on an odious story that British Columbia Muslim newspaper Al-Ameen Post had carried, which “reported” on an alleged Israeli conspiracy to kidnap 25,000 Ukranian children in order to harvest their organs. The report was entitled “Ukrainian kids, new victims of Israeli organ theft.” …

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

“Al-Qaeda’s Zawahiri Accuses Obama of Trying to ‘Enslave’ Arab World.” So reads the headline of a recent Fox News report, which goes on to quote Zawahiri saying things such as “Obama’s policy is nothing but another cycle in the Crusader and Zionist campaign to enslave and humiliate us, and to occupy our land and steal our wealth.”

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By Phyllis Chesler

In 2009, Israeli athletes were at one point shunned in the United Arab Emirates; humiliated in Vienna; and forced to play without an audience for their own safety in Sweden. The jackals took over the asylum and tossed a prominent Israeli advocate out of the United Nations; J-Street, the allegedly “pro-peace and pro-Israel” organization, held a Soros- and Arab-funded conference; and the calls to boycott Israeli academics continued apace. Today, Departments of Jewish Studies at American universities display anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian posters on their front doors.

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