.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

Emet m'Tsiyon

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Contemptible Europe: EU & non-EU Collaborated with PLO Terrorism against Israel

We have written here at Emet m'Tsiyon about the corruption of the European Union. The corruption also extends to Switzerland, a non-EU state. Lately, the EU wants to label products from Jewish enterprises from the parts of the ancient homeland beyond the old, 1949 armistice line. What Westerners call the "West Bank" which the UN's 1947 partition plan proposal called "Samaria and Judea." This EU policy denies Jewish rights to dwell and produce in those parts of the ancient Jewish homeland, whereas the Land of Israel was recognized in international law as the Jewish National Home (League of Nations in 1922, etc). This EU policy constitutes anti-Jewish racism and anti-Jewish apartheid.

 Moreover, the EU has shown itself stingy and cruel to Greece, one of its member states, plunging Greece into a grave economic crisis, thus failing to abide by one of the EU's supposedly cardinal principles, that is, solidarity among the members of the Union in time of need.

However, Switzerland, preserving its facade of neutrality, is also guilty of collaborating with Arab terrorism against Jews and Israel. The Swiss are even worse because Switzerland is the headquarters of the International Red Cross, the world red cross movement, and the International Committee of the Red Cross which is a semi-official arm of the Swiss government which played a morally corrupt role in the Holocaust by deliberately withholding information it had about the early stages of the Holocaust and other acts of commission and omission.

New information has lately come out about Switzerland's dirty role in promoting Arab terrorism. Vic Rosenthal at the Abu Yehuda blog has done a great job of compiling and laying out for the reader many of the corrupt acts and policies of the European Union and supposedly "neutral" Switzerland. His recent blog post on the subject begins with the morally corrupt Swiss. Bear in mind, that Swiss corruption also bears on the morally corrupt and anti-Israel ICRC [international committee of the red cross]:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Posted on  by Vic Rosenthal
According to the author, Swiss journalist Marcel Gyr, Switzerland was in turmoil after a spate of Palestinian terror attacks, including the February 1970 bombing of a Swissair flight from Zurich to Tel Aviv, which killed all on board shortly after takeoff. Gyr recounts that in the wake of the attacks in 1969 and 1970, then-foreign minister Pierre Graber contacted the PLO clandestinely and without informing his fellow ministers, the BBC reported Friday. …
Graber, through a Swiss member of parliament, purportedly reached an agreement with the PLO to free those charged for [a deadly 1969 attack on an El Al plane in Zurich] in return the release of the hostages in Jordan. Furthermore, he agreed that Switzerland would “quietly shelve” the investigation into bombing of the Swissair plane, and make a diplomatic push for international recognition of the PLO.
The Swiss MP, Jean Ziegler, now 81, confirmed that he had been the go-between and said “This might be absolutely shocking, but the reward was that there were no more attacks.”
Shocking? No, it was standard operating procedure. Take Italy for example:
…former Italian President Francesco Cossiga revealed that the government of Italy agreed to allow Arab terrorist groups freedom of movement in the country in exchange for immunity from attacks in Italy. Cossiga wrote that the government of the late Prime Minister Aldo Moro reached a “secret non-belligerence pact between the Italian state and Palestinian resistance [sic] organizations, including terrorist groups,” in the 1970s. According to the former president, it was Moro himself who designed the terms of the agreement with the foreign Arab terrorists. Ironically, Moro later met his death at the hands of homegrown Italian terrorists, the Red Brigades, in 1978. [we can add to this paragraph the apparent guilt of PLO terrorists for the awful Bologna train station massacre circa 1980 for which an Italian neo-fascist was sentenced to jail, whereas the bomb was set in the train station by Germans, members of the Red Army Fraction, who were working for a PLO terrorist sub-group].
Even Germany, with its “special relationship” to Israel, sold its soul. Matt Rees, in his book Cain’s Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East (p. 100) explained,
Arafat put Zakaria Baloush in charge of European operations and contacts. He built a fine relationship with Italian antiterrorist intelligence. His biggest coup, however, was a secret mission to West Germany. Through Libyan intelligence, West Germany asked the PLO for a deal. In 1980 Zakaria went to West Germany with a delegation of PLO officials. They agreed not to carry out any attacks on West German territory. In return they were allowed to operate in West Germany and exchange information with the West Germans.
Today European governments and the European Union provide a hefty part of the cost of running the PLO-based Palestinian Authority, spend millions of Euros financing illegal Arab construction in Area C – the part of Judea/Samaria that according to the Oslo Accords is under full Israeli control – and of course provide tens of millions to Israeli left-wing NGOs which act as a fifth column inside Israel. These NGOs, which have been called “wholly-owned subsidiaries” of the EU and European governments, provide raw material for anti-Israel UN resolutions, ‘lawfare’ against Israeli leaders and IDF soldiers, and provoke violent confrontations to try to destabilize the country. There is no doubt that this anti-state movement would barely exist were it not for European subsides.
The hypocrisy of claiming to oppose terrorism while giving its greatest perpetrators a free pass is obvious. It is no less hypocritical to oppose Israeli construction in disputed areas while paying for illegal Arab building there, and to require products of Judea/Samaria to have special labels while products of countless other “occupied” and disputed territories in the world need not be labeled.
The PLO is possibly one of the most malign entities to come into being in the 20th century, no less than the Nazi party or the Stalinist soviet regime, albeit on a smaller scale. In the years from its founding in 1964 and through its unfortunate legitimization by Israel as the representative of the Palestinians – one of the two greatest strategic mistakes made by an Israeli government since the founding of the state – the PLO brought terrorism into the mainstream of international politics, started wars and destabilized governments. It always kept its primary objective foremost: to destroy Israel by killing Israeli Jews. Thanks to Oslo it now has the status of a governmental authority.
The Palestinian Authority has no economy to speak of except the international dole, and much of this flows directly into the Swiss bank accounts of PLO officials. Some is also used to pay PLO fighters that are incarcerated in Israel for murder and terrorism, as well as pensions for the families of ‘martyrs’, who died in the process of killing Jews. Over the years, literally billions of dollars of aid that has been given to ‘the Palestinians’ has been used to support terrorism and the lifestyle of PLO honchos.
The PLO never allowed any voices to be heard among the Palestinian Arabs except those calling for confrontation. Moderates were liquidated and a reign of fear established. The PLO rules the areas under its control with an iron fist. Those who want to cooperate with Israel in any way are silenced.
PA leader Mahmoud Abbas claims to be opposed to “violence,” but what he means is that he does not advocate that the PLO return to organized attacks on Israelis using firearms and explosives. On the other hand, he encourages what he calls “popular resistance,”calling on individual Palestinians and groups on their own to kill Jews with knives, Molotov cocktails, stones, automobiles, meat cleavers, and so on. And the PA continues to name schools, streets and sports teams after terrorists, as well as treating the ‘martyrs of the popular resistance’ as heroes in its official media. It also makes numerous false accusations to stir up trouble, such as that Israel plans to build a third Temple on the Temple Mount, or that soldiers and police murder Palestinians and plant knives nearby.
The PLO/PA’s educational system continues to present Israeli Jews as subhumans who stole the land from them and to present the recovery of all of ‘Palestine’ from the river to the sea and the expulsion of the Jews as their objective, and not the creation of a peaceful Palestinian state on part of the territory. This system and the PA media which glorify martyrdom in the name of Palestine are directly responsible for children as young as 11 trying to murder Jews and often being killed themselves.
The PLO is a cancer in the international body. Initially given life by Egypt in 1964 as another weapon against Israel, it took its own direction when it was taken over by Yasser Arafat in 1968. It drew strength from the great-power conflict of the cold war, when it was armed by the Soviets as part of their struggle against the West. More recently it has parasitized the US (which provides the PA with $400 million/year, including a program to arm and train its ‘security’ forces) and of course the EU which gives it somewhat less. It’s difficult to determine the total amount of international aid, because it comes through many different sources (the US, UN, EU and other donors) and multiple programs. But it is at least $1 billion/year.
What is truly shocking is not that the Europeans made deals with the devil in order to protect themselves. It’s that after all these years nobody – not even Benjamin Netanyahu – has been prepared to stand up and say “enough.”
Enough money and assistance has been given to these terrorist murderers. Enough blackmail has been paid. Enough resources that could have been used to help alleviate hunger and fight disease have been squandered on this destabilizing force which has demonstrated over and over that its primary objective – its only objective – isn’t peace, but the destruction of a nation.
One of the main reasons that the PLO has continued to exist is that Israel since Oslo has believed or pretended to believe that it is in some sense a peace partner. Now that there seems to finally be a consensus here that the Oslo idea has blown up in our faces and there will not be a two-state solution in the near future, Israel has a great opportunity to do the world – including the Palestinian Arabs – a favor.
The PLO and its creature the PA has proven to be a failure – a failure as a peace partner, and a failure as a governing authority for the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria. Israel could root out and destroy this cancer by removing the PLO from power, disarming its militias, and going back to its pre-Oslo position that it would only negotiate with non-terrorist entities.
This might end up with Israel in full control of the territories again, something that many Israelis see as a burden they are loathe to undertake. But in the long term there is no alternative. The PLO, like a tumor, can’t be fixed. It must be removed.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Now the EU Is Facing Subversion by Russia, Doing What the EU Does to Israel

Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Europe

The EU and US have lately been complaining about the non-profit organization transparency bill being promoted by Ayelet Shaked, Israel's minister of Justice. They complain that it inhibits democracy, human rights and freedom, etc, the usual excuses for their attempts to bend Israel to their will so that it will capitulate to Arab fascists, jihadists, and genocidists --embodied in Fatah and Hamas-- and give up territory to them so that it loses its strategic terrain needed for defense against ground attacks. But now it turns out that Russia is supplying funds to political parties in EU countries that work against the EU. When Russia does it, it's not fair, it's not right, it's subversion. When the EU itself plus EU member states supply tens of millions of euros over the years to supposed Israeli "non-governmental organizations," supposed non-profit bodies, instead of using the money to help needy EU citizens, in Greece for example, then that's OK. That's democracy. But democracy depends on transparency, a supposed value of the EU. However, when Israel wants to subject foreign-funded so-called NGOs to transparency requirements, then that is not nice, not fair, not democratic. Just by the way, NGO Monitor has pointed out that the EU funding to the "palestinian authority" is anything but transparent. It is often very difficult for NGO Monitor to find out from official EU sources which "NGOs" the EU is funding and with how much money. Hypocrisy thy name is Europe.

Of course, when the shoe is on the other foot, when Russia does it to the EU, then . . . . See below:
American intelligence agencies are to conduct a major investigation into how the Kremlin is infiltrating political parties in Europe, it can be revealed.
James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence, has been instructed by the US Congress to conduct a major review into Russian clandestine funding of European parties over the last decade. . . .
The review reflects mounting concerns in Washington over Moscow’s determination to exploit European disunity in order to undermine Nato, block US missile defence programmes and revoke the punitive economic sanctions regime imposed after the annexation of Crimea.
The US move came as senior British government officials told The Telegraph of growing fears that “a new cold war” was now unfolding in Europe, with Russian meddling taking on a breadth, range and depth far greater than previously thought.
“It really is a new Cold War out there,” the source said, “Right across the EU we are seeing alarming evidence of Russian efforts to unpick the fabric of European unity on a whole range of vital strategic issues.”
A dossier of “Russian influence activity” seen by The Sunday Telegraph identified Russian influence operations running in France, the Netherlands, Hungary as well as Austria and the Czech Republic, which has been identified by Russian agents as an entry-point into the Schengen free movement zone.The US intelligence review will examine whether Russian security services are funding parties and charities with the intent of “undermining political cohesion”, fostering agitation against the Nato missile defence programme and undermining attempts to find alternatives to Russian energy.[The Telegraph, London, 16 January 2016. For the full article see here]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
In a related development, Austria, an EU member state, is passing legislation to limit foreign influence on Islamic religious institutions in Austria. See below:
More significantly, Paragraph 6.2 of the law seeks to limit the religious and political influence of foreign governments within the Austrian Muslim community by prohibiting foreign countries -- presumably Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states -- from financing Islamic centers and mosques in Austria. [here]

Labels: , , , ,

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Western Hypocrisy regarding Ruins in Ramadi as against Ruins in Gaza

The hypocrisy of Western governments is and has been blatant and sometimes gross. Their moralizing scolding of Israel belongs to their Judeophobic and self-righteous self-regard. Evelyn Gordon exposes just how deep and how offensive this hypocrisy is.


Ramadi, Gaza, and Western Hypocrisy

14
shares
During the Hamas-Israel war of 2014, both Obama Administration officials and their European counterparts repeatedly accused Israel of excessive force over the “massive” destruction of civilian property in Gaza. But if those officials retain even a shred of intellectual integrity, the recent devastation of Ramadi during a joint Western/Iraqi effort to retake the city leaves them only two options: either hand themselves over to the International Criminal Court as suspected war criminals, or publicly apologize to Israel for all the slurs they hurled at it over far less extensive damage.
As the New York Times reported last week, the successful recapture of Ramadi from the Islamic State left the city “in ruins.” Reporter Ben Hubbard described one neighborhood as “a panorama of wreckage so vast that it was unclear where the original buildings had stood.” The city has no electricity or running water, and “Many streets had been erased or remained covered in rubble or blocked by trenches used in the fighting.” When Hubbard asked an Iraqi officer how residents would return to their homes, the officer replied, “Homes? There are no homes.”
Indeed, a different Iraqi officer told the Associated Press “that more than half of the city’s buildings have been destroyed, including government offices, markets, and houses.”
This is devastation orders of magnitude greater than what Gaza suffered. According to UN figures, 9,465 homes in Gaza were completely destroyed and another 9,644 badly damaged, out of a total of roughly 319,000 (the latter figure is my own calculation based on  official Palestinian statistics: Dividing Gaza’s total population of 1.82 million by its average household size of 5.7 people gives you 319,000 households). Thus even according to the UN – which traditionally exaggeratesPalestinian casualties and damage – only about 6 percent of Gaza’s homes were destroyed or badly damaged. That’s a far cry from “more than half of the city” in Ramadi.
But the reasons for the destruction, in both places, are no less significant than its scope. One, as Hubbard noted, is the inherent difficulty “of dislodging a group that stitches itself into the urban fabric of communities it seizes by occupying homes, digging tunnels, and laying extensive explosives.” In Ramadi, he reported, Islamic State built tunnels under the streets and planted explosives in roads and buildings. Indeed, “Entire areas are considered no-go zones because they have yet to be searched for booby traps left by the jihadists.”
These are the same tactics Hamas used in Gaza: Tunnels, booby traps, and weapons stockpiles were placed in and under civilian buildings on a massive scale. On July 30, 2014, for instance, three Israeli soldiers were killed by “an explosion at a booby-trapped UNRWA health clinic that housed a tunnel entry shaft,” the Times of Israel reported. At the same press briefing where those deaths were announced, an Israeli officer said Hamas had thus far detonated more than 1,000 bombs, destroying “thousands of buildings” in Gaza. As an example, he cited a street the army searched the previous night in which 19 out of 28 buildings were booby-trapped.
But in Gaza, both the Obama administration and European officials blamed Israel for the ensuing destruction. In Ramadi, in contrast, both American and Iraqi officials quite sensibly “placed blame for the city’s destruction on the jihadists, who mined roads and buildings.”
The other factor in Ramadi’s devastation was airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition. As AP reported, these strikes “smashed large parts of the city into rubble.” Nor is that surprising: When a target area is extensively booby-trapped, even precision airstrikes often cause greater-than-expected damage, because the attacking force can’t know which buildings are wired with explosives, and hitting a wired building will set off massive secondary explosions. Yet airstrikes are unavoidable when fighting militants entrenched in a sea of tunnels and booby-trapped buildings, because using ground troops alone would result in unacceptably high losses for the attacking force.
Consequently, a Pentagon spokesman correctly blamed Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) for the damage to Ramadi: “One hundred percent of this is on ISIL because no one would be dropping any bombs if ISIL hadn’t gone in there,” Colonel Steven H. Warren told Hubbard.
Yet in Gaza, both the Obama Administration and European officials largely blamed the damage on Israel rather than Hamas, even though Israeli airstrikes were employed for the exact same reason, sometimes caused greater-than-expected damage for the exact same reason, and obviously wouldn’t have been launched at all had Hamas not attacked Israel to begin with. Indeed, Israel’s airstrikes were arguably far more justified than America’s were: Islamic State wasn’t firing missiles at America from Ramadi or digging attack tunnels into American territory from Ramadi. In contrast, Hamas had fired thousands of rockets at Israel from Gaza over the previous decade and dug dozens of cross-border attack tunnels, including one that notoriously emerged right next to a kindergarten.
Ramadi, incidentally, is far from the only example of the way the Obama Administration and Europe hold Israel to a double standard. On Monday, the Elder of Ziyon blog highlightedanother one: According to the Herald Scotland, “The British government is refusing to accept evidence of civilian fatalities in UK air strikes from human rights groups monitoring the results of bombing raids” in Syria and Iraq; instead, it relies exclusively on “evidence from its own internal surveillance.” But that same government uncritically accepted NGO reports saying that almost 70 percent of Palestinian casualties in Gaza were civilian, even though Israel scrupulously investigated those reports and found that in reality, about half the casualties were documented members of either Hamas’ military wing or smaller terrorist organizations like Islamic Jihad.
I don’t really expect any Obama Administration or European official to admit to having unjustly criticized Israel during the Gaza war. But any fair-minded person comparing the devastation of Ramadi to that in Gaza should reach the same conclusion a group of high-ranking Western military experts did in a comprehensive report issued last month: that during the Gaza war, Israel “met and in some respects exceeded the highest standards we set for our own nations’ militaries.”
- - - - - - -30- - - - - -
The hypocrisy of the United States and other Western powers concerning Israel is well-established fact. The European Union is too foolish to even understand that it is being hypocritical.

Labels: , , , , ,

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Again Arabs Refute "Israeli Apartheid" Lie

An Arab reporter for the New York Times filed a report [3 January 2016] about Arab life in Israel, specifically about Arabs who might be considered Yuppies or Bohemians. The report exposed the fraud of charges of apartheid in Israel. It reports Israeli Arabs talking about their  living in Jewish neighborhoods, and even that Arab women, especially single women, have more freedom living among Jews than they would have if they lived among Arabs. For instance:

“If you are in an Arab neighborhood, you have a community. If you live in a Jewish neighborhood, you are a stranger, and that gives you freedom as an Arab woman,” said Fidaa Hammoud, 32. “There are many de facto couples, and older women living alone without having to hear gossip.”

Consider this too:
Ms. Hammoud moved to Haifa in 2011 after studying speech therapy for four years in Barcelona, Spain. She and her partner live together in a Jewish neighborhood where they run a Palestinian cafe called Rai. “I couldn’t do this anywhere else,” she said.

Or this:
The liberal Arab renaissance in Haifa began with the opening of Fattoush, a Palestinian restaurant, in 1998. The restaurant, which hosted cultural discussions and art exhibitions, was once a scandal to polite Arab society because men and women openly drank alcohol and flirted. Now, it is a tourist-friendly fixture on Ben Gurion Boulevard, Haifa’s main drag.
More Arab-owned businesses opened on that street in the years since, with signs welcoming all people in Arabic, English and sometimes Hebrew. Many of these bars, cafes and restaurants were crowded on a recent weeknight with couples strolling along teeming sidewalks decked with Christmas lights.
Arabs operating shops on Haifa's main drag. Not quite apartheid but no doubt that Nazi-like charge will continue to be made by Arabs and partisans of the Arabs in Europe, the US, and elsewhere. Moreover, the Arabs interviewed for this article by Diaa Hadid, an Arab woman reporter for the NYT, expressed a desire to live separately from Jews eventhough they were forced by circumstance to actually live among Jews, at least in order to satisfy some other of their values, specifically the values of tolerance of unmarried couples living together, of homosexuals, etc. See below:

 “Haifa is a center for Arabs, like Tel Aviv is a center for Jews,” said Asil Abu Wardeh, the Elika patron who practices a performance-based form of psychotherapy. “There is a cultural movement. There is a youth movement. There’s a kind of freedom here.” “We have our own parties. Our own places. Our own discos. We dance. We drink. We do it all in Arabic,” she added. “This all began in Haifa.”

Furthermore, some of those interviewed seem to aim for a future with no Jews around. They want a new "palestinian society."
 “This is the new Palestinian society we are aiming for.”

 For those who are unaware, the draft constitution for a "palestinian state" drawn up by persons working for Abu Mazen/Mahmoud Abbas/ calls for a Judenrein society, a society which excludes Jews, an apartheid society which excludes Jews. It is especially outrageous that the Palestinian Authority looks forward to a "palestine" without Jews, a state of apartheid against Jews, while in the West and elsewhere Israel is falsely accused of being an "apartheid state."

Just incidentally, labeling Israel an "apartheid state" is a big lie of Goebbelsian dimensions. It is a Nazi type lie. Those who repeat this lie are Nazi allies and collaborators. The lie of "Israeli apartheid" is meant to justify the killing of Jews in the West where the original apartheid system is justifiably abhorred. Those who utter this big lie are Nazi collaborators at best.
- - - - - - - - -
We have posted several times before on Arabs refuting, at least with their feet, the "Israeli apartheid" lie. Search this site for apartheid + Arabs.
-- What was the real apartheid like in South Africa in the old days? [here]
-- Arabs refute "apartheid" lie in the Land of Israel here & here.
-- Euros want apartheid against Jews in the Land of Israel here.
-- Euros slander Israel on false "apartheid" charge [here]
-- Condoleezza Rice smears Israel as an "apartheid state" [here]
-- Obama demands apartheid against Jews in the Land of Israel [here]

Labels: , , , , ,