Israel – Page 8 – praag.org

Tutu calls Presbyterians to back divestment from Israel

Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu urged Presbyterians, meeting in Detroit, to name Israel as an apartheid state and divest monies from certain companies that contribute to the occupation of the Palestinian people.
As Presbyterians meeting in Detroit consider divestment from three companies linked to the Israeli occupation of Palestine – Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett Packard – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the leader who more than any other human being alive is associated with the successful use of divestment to help overturn apartheid in South Africa, is calling on Presbyterians to choose divestment from the Israeli occupation.
Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 in recognition of his leadership, as general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, of the nonviolent resistance campaign to challenge apartheid.

As the Presbyterian General Assembly gathers for its biennial meeting, I reach out in prayer and solidarity that the assembly will make a strong witness for reconciliation, justice and peace. I am aware that the assembly will consider eight overtures on the confounding and intractable conflict in Israel and Palestine, however, I am especially urging the assembly to adopt the overture naming Israel as an apartheid state through its domestic policies and maintenance of the occupation and the overture calling for divestment of certain companies that contribute to the occupation of the Palestinian people. Both are worthy of adoption, by speaking truth in the first instance, and owning up to the church’s complicity in maintaining the occupation through its investments in the second.
The sustainability of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people has always been dependent on its ability to deliver justice to the Palestinians. I know firsthand that Israel has created an apartheid reality within its borders and through its occupation. The parallels to my own beloved South Africa are painfully stark indeed. Realistic Israeli leaders have acknowledged that Israel will either end its occupation through a one- or two-state solution, or live in an apartheid state in perpetuity. The latter option is unsustainable and an offense to justice. We learned in South Africa that the only way to end apartheid peacefully was to force the powerful to the table through economic pressure.
The overtures proposed at the General Assembly are not about delegitimizing the State of Israel, but about ending its suppression of 4,000,000 Palestinian sisters and brothers. It’s about naming an unjust system and refusing to participate in it. The stubbornness of Israel’s leaders in wanting to hold onto and settling land that is not theirs can only lead to tragedy for both peoples. For the sake of them both as God’s cherished, the strong witness of the two overtures is the only peaceful route left in the cause of justice and ultimate reconciliation. My prayers today are with the members of the General Assembly and with all the peoples of the Holy Land in Israel and Palestine.

South Africa’s last president under white rule has also suggested that Israel risks heading toward apartheid if it does not reach a peace deal with the Palestinians.

The comments by FW de Klerk echo warnings from Palestinian, American and dovish Israeli officials.

De Klerk was the last president under apartheid and along with the late Nelson Mandela, the two jointly winning the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

Comparisons to South Africa have increased in public discourse about Israel and its treatment of Palestinians. In April, US Secretary of State John Kerry – who had been mediating negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians – created uproar when he made a similar warning.

Israel no ‘oasis of human rights and equality’

Onlangse betoging in Johannesburg teen 'Apartheid-Israel' — Recent protest in Johannesburg against ‘Apartheid-Israel’ with photo of Mandela and Arafat

by Salomé Oosthuizen, Helderkruin, Johannesburg

The letter below was sent to Business Day newspaper in response to a letter to the same newspaper written by a Ms. Shapiro of Glenhazel, Johannesburg about Israel. In her letter she says, inter alia, that Israel is “a miracle that is a rebirth” and that the country is where “black and white walk hand in hand on the streets”. She also says the country is “an oasis of human rights and human equality amidst a sea of oppression and brutality”. Her letter gives the impression that Arabs and Jews are treated equally in Israel and that Arabs are laughing and singing and are “picnicking on the grass outside her apartment”. But let me first quote her letter in full:

FAADELAH Patel queries the definition of a Jewish state (Hamas has changed, Letters, May 12).

I have spent the past two weeks in Israel so will try to explain to her just what a Jewish state is. It is the state where Jews walk their streets proudly, celebrating the miracle that is the rebirth of their country.

It is the state where every Jew stands at attention for two minutes while the sirens drone on Yom Hashoah (the day commemorating the wilful slaughter of 6-million Jewish men, women and children during the Holocaust).

It is the state where every citizen stands at attention for two minutes while sirens drone on Yom Hazikaron (the day commemorating the loss of Israeli life, Arab and Jew, both on the battlefield and as a result of terrorism). It is the state where businesses close on the Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, and it’s the state where religious Jews do not need to search for kosher restaurants.

But it is also much else, and herein lies the true miracle of what Israel is.

It is the state where my family and I encountered a group of Arabs celebrating a birthday, laughing, singing and dancing on a boat ride on Lake Kinneret. We were the only Jews on this trip. It is the state where, when alighting from the boat, and going into a kosher restaurant in the harbour, we were followed by many of the self-same Arabs who had shared the boat ride with us.

It is the state where the lady in the queue in front of me in the clothing shop was an Arab dressed in a burqa, buying clothes for her grandchildren, as was I. It is the state where Arabs picnic on the grass outside my apartment.

It is the state where the pharmacist on my corner is an Arab woman, and black and white walk hand in hand on the streets.

And it is the state where Jew, Muslim and Christian worship freely and without fear the G-d of their choice.

And so Ms Patel, while Israel is and will remain the state of the Jewish people, it will always, because of, not in spite of, its Jewish character, be an oasis of human rights and human equality amidst a sea of oppression and brutality.

Monessa Shapiro
Glenhazel

Following is the letter I wrote to Business Day in response to this fairy tale. My letter was not printed by Business Day. My letter was based on verifiable facts, Ms. Shapiro’s letter was based on her rose-tinted impressions after a two week visit. What can we make of this omission? Why would the truth be hidden by Business Day while a glossy, fanciful story is printed as the truth about Israel?

We leave the reasons for this to the imagination of our friends and contacts. Please send this to your friends to show how the so-called press freedom of South Africa really operates. After all, my letter was based on facts from international newspapers, including the Israeli press. Why would Business Day want to hide the truth?

Dear Sir,

I refer to your correspondent’s letter “Defining a Jewish State” (BD 15 May) where a rose-tinted narrative attempts to explain to us how pleasant life is in Israel, and how well everyone – Jew and Arab, black and white – get along with each other. The letter is so far removed from reality that it is incumbent on anyone who knows history to rebut this fanciful tale.

“Black and white walk hand in hand on the streets” says your correspondent. Perhaps she saw an instance of this, but it certainly does not represent the true picture of race relations in Israel. On May 29 2012, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was adding African “infiltrators” to his list of threats to the Jewish homeland. He said he would build the world’s biggest detention centre and deport all those within, starting with the south Sudanese. (The Economist, June 2, 2012)

Demonstrators attacked African migrants in Tel Aviv in protest against refugees and asylum-seekers, indicating an increasingly volatile mood in Israel against blacks. (The Guardian 24.5.12) Miri Regev a member of the Israeli Parliament told an angry Israeli crowd that “the Sudanese are a cancer in our body”. A car containing Africans was attacked and shops serving the refugee community were looted. “African infiltrators are threatening the identity of the Jewish state”, said the prime minister. (The Guardian 20.5.12) “Israel belongs to the white man” declared Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai. (Haaretz newspaper 3.6.12). Israel introduced a law to detain illegal immigrants for up to 3 years, according to Haaretz.

Despite the happy hand-holding, Israel remains a racially-sensitive country. In an announcement from the Prime Minister’s office at the end of July 2013, Israel said it plans to introduce DNA testing to ensure that no non-Jews from Russia enter the country. (The Times of Israel, 29.7.13). In addition, in order to get married in Israel, applicants have to prove their Jewishness and this is done by DNA testing, Rabbi Naftali Schreiber told Haaretz (11 July 2013). This is the extent of the checks undertaken by the Jewish state to make sure that no Gentiles are allowed to marry Jews in their country.

Your correspondent says Israel is a miracle rebirth, but clearly prefers to ignore the ethnic cleansing that occurred when Israel drove thousands of Palestinians from their homes in 1948 and afterwards, and that millions of these refugees still languish in camps throughout the Arab world. This is a fact of history. If Israelis believe it’s their “divine right” to occupy Israel, then do other nations not have divine rights or even civil rights? Israel snubs its nose at the world. Despite repeated international condemnation, including a UN General Assembly resolution and a ruling by the International Court of Justice, the population of Israel’s illegal settlements (on Palestinian territory) has grown by an average of 5% annually since 2001. That compares to an average growth of just 1,8% for the population of Israeli proper. Israel refuses to dismantle these settlements.

Israel has broken or ignored more UN resolutions than any other country in UN history. It is in violation of at least 102 of these resolutions, mainly to do with invasions of neighboring countries and the dispossession of the Palestinians.

Your correspondent says she saw many “happy Arabs, laughing and having picnics on the grass outside her apartment”. This could be because Israel’s largest theme park segregates Arabs and Jews. A posting on the Arab Israeli Balad party Facebook page reveals that Arab Israelis and Jews do not share the park on the same day. Schools are the same. Haaretz newspaper refers to this phenomenon in an article entitled “Schools for Jews and Arabs : separate but definitely not equal” as “plain segregation” in the school system. (Haaretz 25.6.12). In Jerusalem there is a separate “ditch” between Jewish and Arab neighborhoods (Haaretz 13.9.13). State-built housing complexes are routinely reserved for Jews only. (Financial Times 1.5.12)

It is ironic that those whites in the forefront of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa were overwhelmingly Jewish. Joe Slovo is credited with writing the Freedom Charter. What’s good for the goose is obviously not good for the gander. Israel is certainly not an “oasis of human rights and human equality” as your correspondent states. A cursory glance at the website of any Israeli newspaper will put paid to that mirage.

Salomé Oosthuizen, Helderkruin

RIP Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela Muntz, the main bully in The Simpsons.

By Brian Goldfarb.

Ben Cohen has written a most perceptive remembrance of Nelson Mandela on 5 December, the day he died, in The Algemeiner. Before quoting some of that, I’d like to add my own memories of Mandela.

Early on, Cohen remembers where he was when Mandela walked free from prison. Well, we watched it on television at home, and then listened on the radio. I remember being astounded when the radio commentator expressed surprise, not to say astonishment, when Mandela got out of his car and walked out of the prison gates.

I am old enough to have been a student with a poster remembering the Sharpeville Massacre (those reading this aged less than 30 may need to Google that) on my wall, as well as other anti-apartheid posters thereon. Indeed, the Sharpeville massacre was the final straw in creating my own personal boycott of South African goods (from then – in 1960, two years before I became a university student – until 1991, when Mandela was released from prison), and I can remember when Mandela and his comrades were sentenced to jail for “treason”. Just imagine it, being called a traitor for demanding equal treatment, indeed freedom, for your people: difficult for those under 40, perhaps even for those under 50 (sorry, I’m trying not to be a reverse ageist here, but you have to have been there, in the 60s and 70s to understand this): we saw it unfold and wondered at the stupidity of the Afrikaaner South Africans – not difficult, they did appear to have a problem in coming to terms with the modern world.

I remember thinking, when the apartheid regime (the real one: the one at the tip of the African continent) sentenced him to life imprisonment that maybe, just maybe, they had avoided the obvious risk of creating a martyr. It turned out that that they had, instead, created the only avenue of escape from the corner they were painting themselves into, even it did take 27 painful years to become a reality.

I also remember Steve Biko, effectively beaten to death, who might otherwise have been one of the contenders for the succession to Mandela as President. And I also remember that other far right whites killed another likely (and potentially great) successor to Mandela: Chris Hani, leaving only, sadly, mediocre people to succeed Mandela.

But I also remember that many of Mandela’s comrades were Jews: I remember Joe Slovo, who survived to become Housing Minister in the Rainbow Nation, before succumbing to cancer; I remember Ruth First, his wife, assassinated by BOSS (the South African Bureau of State Security) with a parcel bomb when she had been exiled to Mozambique; I remember Benjamin Pogrund, anti-apartheid fighter who, having made aliyah, now rejects the equation of Israel=apartheid; and I remember Arthur Goldreich, of whom Cohen says:

“[Mandela] recalls that he learned about guerilla warfare not from Fidel Castro, but from Arthur Goldreich, a South African Jew who fought with the Palmach during Israel’s War of Independence.” Further, Mandela “relates the anecdote that the only airline willing to fly his friend, Walter Sisulu, to Europe without a passport was Israel’s own El Al.”

Of course, many of these Jews were Stalinists (such as Joe Slovo and the viciously anti-Israel Ronnie Kasrils). To understand their position (if it’s possible to do that), I would remind readers of the book by Colin Shindler “Israel & The Left“, mentioned in my report on London’s Jewish Book Week, 2012, on this blog.

On the other hand, there are those non-Stalinists Jews, such as Albie Sachs, who lost an arm and an eye to the struggle, and the Jewish lawyers who took Mandela on as an articled clerk, when this just wasn’t done. This enabled Mandela to complete his qualifications and become an accredited lawyer of the South African system. Just as we all know that there are anti-Zionist Jews (would we condemn all Haredi Jews just because of Naturei Kartura? I hope not), similarly, we shouldn’t condemn all anti-apartheid South African Jews because of those who were and are anti-Zionist (and by implication, cast doubts on Mandela’s own philo-semitism and support for Israel).

Furthermore, for anyone who still wants to believe that Mandela was an anti-Zionist, Cohen goes on to say (re Mandela autobiography) that

“the ultimate smoking gun — the equation of Israel’s democracy with apartheid — doesn’t exist.”

There is more. Cohen goes on to note that:

“Mandela once wrote that Jews, in his experience, were far more sensitive about race because of their own history. Now, it is absolutely true that there are parallels between the oppression suffered by South African blacks under racist white rulers, and Jews living under hostile non-Jewish rulers. The notorious Group Areas Act, which restricted black residency rights, brings to mind the enforced separation of Jews into the “Pale of Settlement” by the Russian Empress Catherine in 1791. Many of the other apartheid regulations, like the ban on sexual relationships between whites and blacks, carried echoes of the Nazi Nuremburg Laws of 1935.”

Indeed, whatever their political orientation, Jews are noted for their respect for human rights, both for themselves and their fellow Jews and, just as importantly, for others, having their own flouted so often. Why else create Israel as parliamentary democracy?

All this culminates in Cohen noting that:

“Mandela’s diagnosis was that Africans should be the sovereigns of their own destiny. Similarly, the founders of Zionism wanted nothing less for the Jews.”

That is, Nelson Mandela was not only did not oppose Zionism and the idea of self-determination for Jews (i.e., a state of their own), he also recognised that South African Jews had played a great part in the fight for equality in South Africa, out of a conviction that, as the American Declaration of Independence has it, “All [people] are created equal”.

Source: Blog

Strike shuts down Israeli embassies worldwide

Israel has closed its embassies around the world as about 1 200 foreign ministry employees declare a strike over low salaries.

The strike by Israeli diplomats has affected Israel’s 102 missions abroad.

Israeli diplomats launched an unprecedented strike on Sunday, forcing the complete closure of embassies around the world as they escalated a dispute over pay, officials said.

The industrial action has already threatened to postpone a visit by Pope Francis to Israel planned for May – one of 25 trips by foreign officials affected by a work slowdown the diplomats began on March 5 when wage talks broke down.

By escalating the action to a full strike – the first by the diplomatic corps since the country’s establishment in 1948 – the diplomats will close all of Israel’s 102 missions abroad, paralysing most diplomatic work with other countries and the United Nations.

“We are completely shutting down the [foreign ministry] office and missions abroad. This is the first time ever,” ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor said.

Another ministry official said: “As of now, the foreign ministry doesn’t exist. It’s not possible even to submit complaints”.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called the strike “irresponsible” and “a wretched decision and a display of a loss of control on union’s part.”

“We shall do whatever possible to minimise the damage to the country and its citizens,” Lieberman said.

Diplomats said the strike – involving around 1 200 foreign service employees – was open-ended and had been called after the treasury failed to present any acceptable proposals.

They are demanding an increase in monthly salaries, which they put at 6 000 to 9 000 shekels (R18 800 to R28 200), and want compensation for spouses forced to quit jobs owing to foreign postings. They say about a third of their number has quit in the past 15 years because of poor wages.

Yacov Livne, spokesperson for the diplomats’ union, said: “the treasury is determined to destroy the foreign ministry and Israeli diplomacy.” –

Source: Reuters

Israelis tried to send arms to Iran via Greece

Israeli arms dealers tried to send spare parts for F-4 Phantom aircraft via Greece to Iran in violation of an arms embargo, according to a secret probe by the US government agency Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) carried out in cooperation with the drugs and weapons unit of Greece’s Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE).

According to the probe, which Kathimerini has had access to, the operation was carried out in two phases – one in December 2012 and the second in April 2013. In both cases, officials traced containers packed with the F-4 parts on Greek territory. The cargo had been sent by courier from the Israeli town of Binyamina-Giv’at Ada and had been destined for Iran, which has a large fleet of F-4 aircraft, via a Greek company registered under the name Tassos Karras SA in Votanikos, near central Athens. SDOE officials established that the firm was a ghost company, while the company’s contact number was found to belong to a British national residing in Thessaloniki who could not be located.

According to HSI memos, the cargo appears to have been sent by arms dealers based in Israel, seeking to supply Iran in contravention of an arms embargo, and using Greece as a transit nation.

Source: Ekathimerini

Is Israel the Sixth Eye?

It’s common to hear when Israeli prime ministers travel to the White House that there isn’t ‘an inch of daylight’ between Israel and the U.S. That’s how damn close we are. It’s one thing (and troubling enough) to say this about political issues. But now it appears that our respective intelligence operations are increasingly coordinated and overlapping. Of course, there continues to be intensive spying by Israeli agents within the U.S. (Pollard and others agents exposed over the years following testify to this). But increasingly there appears to be no reason for Israel to attempt to penetrate U.S. security as we’re willing to give them the store.

Yesterday, I reported that Israeli security correspondent Ronen Bergman had revealed the NSA maintained a secret facility in Jerusalem that monitored all U.S. satellites. I also reported something not in Bergman’s interview: that this base was part of another secret agreement allowing Israel to share in all intelligence information produced as part of the Five Eyes network. In effect, Israel has become the Sixth Eye.

Working with an Israeli researcher, I’m publishing the first known picture of the facility, which is located on Martin Buber Street near the Hebrew University campus on Mt. Scopus. This is one of the highest points in Jerusalem and would offer the best vantage point to receive and transmit signals to space satellites. The NSA facility is located within an IDF SIGINT base called Ofrit, which intercepts telecommunications throughout the West Bank. Frankly, I’ve never heard of a U.S. intelligence facility housed within an Israeli military base. This brings home even more strongly how little separation there now is between Israeli and American intelligence operations. Or to paraphrase Lennon-McCartney: I am you and “you are me and we are all together.”

Source: richardsilverstein.com

Zurich air traffic controllers bring Iran, Israel together

Zurich air traffic controllers may have inadvertently succeeded where diplomats have failed for decades: to bring Israelis and Iranians together.

As the jets of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Switzerland today to take their leaders to the World Economic Forum, their planes were parked side-by-side under cloudy skies.

Rouhani, the first Iranian leader in a decade to visit Davos for the World Economic Forum, will be looking for deals to boost an economy that shrank more than 5 percent in the last fiscal year through March under the weight of international sanctions. He’s due to address the forum in the ski resort tomorrow during a session called “Iran in the World.”

Netanyahu, among the most outspoken critics of the Iranian government, is seeking to keep the sanctions in place. He has called Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and urged the world to be wary of his “charm offensive.”

Source: Bloomberg

A soldier in the style of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson

by Ilana Mercer

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Barack Hussein Obama at war and George W. Bush at war: How does the 44th president of the United States differ from the 43rd?

If nothing else, former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has settled that question. Bush sent troops to fight futile battles without flinching; Obama did the same with some reservation.

Hardly a peacemaker, Obama questioned the mission in Afghanistan and was skeptical of the military brass’s motivation in securing for itself—to the detriment of the grunts on the ground—a long-term commitment to the theatre of war in that country.

Like Obama, 82 percent of Americans oppose the war the president is being panned for having embraced publicly, but agonized over privately. On Afghanistan, Obama is more aligned with the American people—and the truth—than the former defense secretary and his Republican champions.

This I say with reluctance. I awarded Barack Obama brownie points thrice in his tenure: for doing not a thing about the 2011–2012 protests in Iran, for ceasing the criminalization of cancer and AIDS patients for their medicinal use of illegal substances, and for breaking with Bush and his neocons in refusing to step on the Russian Bear’s claws. Obama scrapped the missile-defense shield in Russia’s backyard.

Yet this revelation in Gates’ “Duty,” a book that hangs on one hook, has Republicans gurgling with pleasure. Limitless is the GOP’s zest and zeal for ignoring the negative right of the American people to be free of the Sisyphean (and Jacobean) struggle to save the world.

If anything, it sounds as though Gates might have had misgivings of his own about the missions in which his “soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines” were dying for nothing.

A bereft Gates tells of “evening sessions” during which he’d write condolence letters “to the families of service members killed in action.” There “probably wasn’t a single evening in nearly 4 1/2 years when I didn’t — when I didn’t weep,” he confessed. Gates relates how focused he became “on the strain on our troops and on their families.” After all, “they’d been at war for 10 years.” “My highest priority,” he averred in an interview with NPR, was “trying to avoid new conflict … in terms of recommending against intervention in Libya,” and expressing “concerns about going to war in Syria, much less in Iran.”

It just seemed to me that some of the areas where we were looking at potential conflict were more in the category of wars of choice. And it was those that I was trying to protect the troops from.

Having fought for the survival of his people—and never to democratize or “save” another—Ariel Sharon was far less of a study in contradictions than poor Mr. Gates. The former Israeli prime minister died on Jan. 11, after languishing in a vegetative state for 8 years.

Seared in my mind as a child growing up in Israel is a 1973 image of the late Ariel Sharon. He is on the western bank of the Suez Canal in Egypt, head bandaged because of an injury sustained in combat. What is he doing? Winning. Sharon was beating back an enemy that came close to vanquishing Israel.

Ariel Sharon led his men into battle and won the 1973 Yom Kippur War in which the Israeli government and the intelligence failed miserably. He himself had said that “his greatest military success came during that war, during which he surrounded Egypt’s Third Army and, defying orders, led 200 tanks and 5,000 men over the Suez Canal, a turning point.”

Had Sharon himself not performed military miracles, who knows if Israelis, myself included, would have survived? How many Americans can point to a leader who had actually saved their lives, rather than send other men to die in foreign lands, and then propagandize his countrymen about having fought for their freedoms?

As a Special-Forces commander, Sharon was on the front—and in front of his men—performing daring assaults that saved Israel in both the 1967 and 1973 wars.

Pugnacious and tenacious, “Arik” Sharon was nothing if not controversial. Hated though he was abroad, Sharon was, nevertheless, a soldier in the style of “Stonewall” Jackson, not Dubya the Deserter, to whom he and the Likudniks were often compared.

Agree or disagree with the methods and politics of this titanic personality—it is unarguable that Sharon’s overriding concern was with the survival and security of the Jewish state: he saw himself as bearing a “historic responsibility” for “the fate of the Jewish people.” By contrast, Bush’s Wilsonian, global missionary movement to rid the world of “evildoers” related not even tangentially to the future and safety of the American people.

Unlike George Bush the internationalist, “Arik” Sharon was a fierce nationalist, who put his country and its people first.

As with so many of our military men—cast adrift by the policies of Rome-on-the-Potomac—Mr. Gates would be less of a mess had he, too, been able to lead his men into wars of necessity, instead of charging headlong into unjust “wars of choice.”

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5 000 US Scholars vote to boycott Israel

The American Studies Association (ASA) announced Monday that its nearly 5,000 members voted in favor of the boycott by a 2-to-1 margin on Sunday night. A total of 1,252 members voted on the issue, with 66 percent voting ‘yes’ and 30 percent voting ‘no.’ Three percent abstained from voting altogether.

The boycott calls on US schools and academic research groups to end all work with Israeli groups. It does allow individual Israeli scholars to still attend conferences and speak at American universities, as long as they do not do so in any official capacity of the government.

“The resolution is in solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom, and it aspires to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians,” the statement declares. It goes on to mention “Israel’s violations of international law and UN resolutions; the documented impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian scholars and students; the extent to which Israeli institutions of higher education are a party to state policies that violate human rights,” among other points.

In April, the Association for Asian American Studies voted to enact a similar boycott, although the American Association of University Professors has voiced its opposition to such a measure.

The seeds for this month’s vote were laid last month at the ASA’s annual conference in Washington, where the 20-member national council unanimously agreed on a boycott.

“The National Council engaged and addressed questions and concerns of the membership throughout the process,” the statement explained.

“During the open discussion at the recent convention, members asked us to draft a resolution that was relevant to the ASAS in particular and so the Council final draft resolution acknowledged that the US plays a significant role in enabling the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

Monday’s announcement is the latest in a line of boycotts that may have Israeli leaders worried. Vitens, a Dutch water company, said last week that it would cut business ties with Israel’s national water company. Considerations of a more widespread boycott have also been discussed throughout Europe, where Israel has strong economic ties.

The ASA’s statement has already been called the first step toward more boycotts from American institutions, with the Modern Language Association saying its meeting next month will include a discussion on academic boycotts.

The movement to single out Israel’s academic institutions has not come without critics. Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), released a statement Monday condemning the ASA. Foxman deemed the act a “shameful, morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest attack on academic freedom.”

“Targeting Israeli institutions solely because they are in Israel – the only democratic country in the Middle East where scholarship and debate are encouraged and flourish – is based on a myopic and fundamentally distorted perspective of Israel and the conflict and is manifestly unjust,” he said. “We commend those members of the ASA who boldly spoke out and voted against this shameful resolution.” – RT

Netanyahu Moscow visit falls flat: Israeli media

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Moscow to push Russia into taking a harder line on Iranian nuclear negotiations has fallen flat, Israel’s media said on Thursday.

: Premier Netanyahu and President Putin

Netanyahu flew to Moscow Wednesday in what was seen as a last-minute bid to influence an emerging nuclear deal with Iran strongly opposed by the Jewish state and being discussed by world powers and Iranian diplomats in Geneva.

Right-leaning Maariv newspaper said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments after meeting Netanyahu at best gave little away, and suggested the Israeli premier’s visit had left no lasting impression.

“When the two men gave their joint press conference (Wednesday), it appeared Putin’s statement had been given to journalists in advance, and he only changed certain passages afterwards to make them more palatable to Netanyahu,” it said.

Speaking as the talks got under way in Geneva between Iran and world powers, Putin only said he hoped that “in the nearest future a mutually acceptable solution is found” to end the crisis.

Top-selling Yediot Aharonot said Netanyahu’s visit to Moscow was an unnecessary “put-down” to the United States after tension with Israel over a possible Iran deal.

“Every reader knows Putin supports and will continue to support the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran,” Yediot said.

“If there’s the slightest chance of persuading world powers to take a harsher line on Iran, Israel should engage in discreet dialogue (with the US), instead of bickering publicly with Washington,” it said.

And left-leaning daily Haaretz suggested Netanyahu’s visit was futile, pointing out Russia was traditionally much more closely aligned with the Islamic republic than with other world powers.

“Russia, which built Iran’s first nuclear power plant and remains on better terms with Tehran than Western powers, has expressed less suspicion than them about Iran’s nuclear work,” it said.

Netanyahu insisted on the need for a “real” solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis, after his talks with Putin.

“We would all like a diplomatic solution, but it needs to be a real solution,” said Netanyahu, adding that this would involve Iran halting nuclear work in the same way that Syria was allowing its chemical weapons arsenal to be destroyed.

Iran would have to halt uranium enrichment, stop work on centrifuges, have enriched uranium material taken out from Iran and dismantle the Arak heavy water reactor, he said.

“We think it is possible to get a better agreement but that requires determination,” Netanyahu warned.

Israel, the region’s sole if undeclared nuclear-armed state, has not ruled out the use of force against the Iranian atomic drive.

Tehran says its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes. – AFP

Scholastic, Apple wipe Israel off the map

While Sudan, Libya, and Saudi Arabia can been seen in the right spots on a map, Israel is fully covered by Jordan with the territories of both states evenly colored in red in a book by the world’s biggest publisher of children’s titles.

In another similar Israel-missing case, Apple and its much-anticipated operating system, iOS 7, presented the new world clock options on the iOS 7. It listed Jerusalem without a country.

A senior vice president for corporate communications at Scholastic, Kyle Good, is looking into this.

“The Geronimo Stilton series is published in Italy and Scholastic translates the books for the US audience,” Good said in an emailed comment. “I’m awaiting a response from the editorial team regarding the timing of reprints and whether this will be corrected. I will get back to you as soon as I have their response.”

Scholastic, founded in Pennsylvania in 1920, is the world’s largest publishing companies known for publishing educational materials for children, parents, schools and teachers. It distributes children’s books through its book clubs, teaching resources and popular book fairs held inside many North American schools as well as online.

The company has exclusive publishing rights for the Harry Potter series in the United States.

It is not the first time Israel has not been found on the world’s map.

According to a recent study, 96 percent of Palestinian school textbooks did not mention Israel by name in their maps. At the same time, 87 percent of Israeli school textbooks did not have lines between Israel and the Palestinian Territories, or did not name it at all.

Lieberman urges S. Africa’s Jews to emigrate before it’s too late

Avigdor Lieberman, former Israeli minister of foreign affairs

Former Israeli foreign minister says ‘pogrom’ against Jews is just a matter of time

A senior Israeli politician on Sunday urged South Africa’s Jews to leave their homes and emigrate to Israel in the wake of critical comments against Israel by the interior minister there.

The South African government is creating an ant-Israeli and anti-Semitic atmosphere, which means that a pogrom against the country’s Jews is just a matter of time,” former foreign minister and Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman wrote on his Facebook page. “I call on all the Jews still living there to immigrate to Israel without delay, before it’s too late.”

Lieberman’s fiery comments followed an announcement by South Africa’s International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane that South African ministers will no longer visit Israel out of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

“Ministers of South Africa do not visit Israel currently. Even the Jewish Board of Deputies that we engage with here, they know why our ministers are not going to Israel,” she said Friday at a trade union meeting.

“Our Palestinian friends have never asked us to disengage with Israel [through severing diplomatic relations]. They had asked us in formal meetings to not engage with the regime. We have agreed to slow down and curtail senior leadership contact with that regime until things begin to look better,” she said.

Nkoana-Mashabane said she felt solidarity with the Palestinians, saying, “The struggle of the people of Palestine is our struggle.”

South Africa also slammed Israel’s plans to build new settler homes in east Jerusalem, as pro-Palestinian activists launched an international campaign for the release of political prisoners.

“That arrangement there in Palestine keeps us awake,” Nkoana-Mashabane said.

“The last time I looked at the map of Palestine, I could not go to sleep. It’s dots, smaller than those of the homelands,” she said referring to the former homelands in South Africa — which were also known as bantustans — created under apartheid to give blacks a sense of autonomy.

South Africa was chosen by pro-Palestinian activists for the launch of an international lobby seeking the release of 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners, including veteran leader Marwan Barghouti, who is currently in Israeli detention.

The campaign kicked off on Oct. 25 at Robben Island, the former prison where anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela served 18 of his 27 years in jail.

“The Palestinian quest for self-determination remains unfulfilled,” said South Africa’s top diplomat.

Since the fall of the whites-only apartheid regime in 1994, South Africa has been an outspoken critic of Israel, although it maintains diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.

There is a Jewish population of rougly 75,000 people in South Africa, mosltly in the large cities of Johanesburg, Cape Town and Durban.

Last week, vandals desecrated 32 graves in the Jewish cemetery of Krugersdorp. – i24news

The two missiles that ended a confrontation in Syria

A well informed diplomatic source told a Lebanese newspaper that “the US war on Syria had started and ended the moment those two ballistic missiles were fired, leaving inconsistent information, as Israel denied and Russia confirmed, until an Israeli statement was issued indicating they were fired in the context of an Israeli-US joint drill and fell in the sea, and that they were not related to the Syrian crisis.”

The source further told the Lebanese daily As-Safir that “the US forces fired these two rockets from a NATO base in Spain, and were instantly detected by the Russian radars and confronted by the Russian defense systems, so one of them exploded in the airspace and the second one diverted towards the sea.”

In this context, the source pointed out that “the statement issued by the Russian Defense Ministry, which stated the detection of two ballistic missiles fired towards the Middle East, intended to neglect two points: the first was the location from which the two rockets were fired, and the second was their downing. Why? Because the moment the full military operation was launched, Head of the Russian Intelligence Service contacted the US intelligence and informed it that “hitting Damascus means hitting Moscow, and we have removed the term “downed the two missiles” from the statement to preserve the bilateral relations and to avoid escalation. Therefore, you must immediately reconsider your policies, approaches and intentions on the Syrian crisis, as you must be certain that you cannot eliminate our presence in the Mediterranean.”

“This unannounced direct confrontation between Moscow and Washington increased the Obama Administration’s confusion and certainty that the Russian side was ready to move until the end with the Syrian cause, and that the US did not have a way out of its impasse except through a Russian initiative which would save America’s face…” he added.

From this point, the diplomatic source clarified that “in order to avoid further US confusion, and after Israel denied knowing anything about the rocket firing in its first statement, which is the truth, Washington demanded Tel Aviv to adopt the rocket firing to save its face in front of the International Community, especially since these two rockets were the beginning of the US aggression on Syria and the announcement of the beginning of military operations, after which US President Barack Obama was supposed to go to the G20 Summit in Russia to negotiate the destiny of Syrian President Bashr Al-Assad. However, he went to find a way out of the impasse he’s in.”

The source further indicated that “after the US-Russia rocket confrontation, Moscow intended to increase its number of military experts in Russia, and added to its military units and destroyers to enhance its military presence in the Mediterranean. It also set a time for announcing about its initiative on stopping the aggression on Syria after the G20 Summit, after drawing a side scene on the sidelines of the summit which was followed by two successive visits for Iranian Foreign Minister, Hussein Amir Abdul Lahyan, and Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid Al-Moallem, in which a way out was agreed on with the Russian side, and it included a Syrian announcement on approving the Russian initiative regarding putting Syrian chemical weapons under international supervision and preparing Syria for joining the non-proliferation treaty.

Finally, the source pointed out that “One of the first results of the US-Russian military confrontation was the British House of Commons’ rejection to participate in a war on Syria. This was followed by European stances, most significantly, the German stance announced by Chancellor Angela Merkel.” – almanar.com

Obama talks to Rouhani

President Obama announced today that he talked on the phone with Iranian president Rouhani: “Just now I spoke on the phone with President Rouhani of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said. “The two of us discussed our ongoing efforts to reach an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program.”

This is the first time leaders from America and Iran have spoken since 1979.

“I reiterated to President Rouhani what I said in New York. While there will surely be important obstacles to moving forward and success is by no means guaranteed, I believe we can reach a comprehensive solution.

“I’ve directed Secretary Kerry to continue pursuing this diplomatic effort with the Iranian government. We had constructive discussions yesterday in New York with our partners, the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China, together with the Iranian foreign minister, and going forward, President Rouhani and I have directed our teams to continue working expeditiously in corporation with the P-5 plus one to pursue an agreement. And throughout this process we will stay in close touch with our friends and allies in the region, including Israel.

“Now we are mindful of all the challenges ahead. The very fact that this was the first communication between an American and Iranian president since 1979 underscores the deep mistrust between our countries.”

Obama said that “Iran’s supreme leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, President Rouhani has indicated that Iran will never develop nuclear weapons.”

“I have made clear that we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy in the context of Iran meeting its obligations. So the test will be meaningful, transparent, and verifiable actions,” said Obama, which could lead to a relaxation of sanctions.

Obama talked of a new relationship between the U.S. and Iran, if his diplomatic efforts succeed. – TWS