Tutu spars with Goldstone over kangaroo court
November 4, 2011 | Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz
Richard Goldstone’s op-ed in the New York Times earlier this week explaining why the claim that Israel is an “apartheid state” is baseless was primarily targeted against the so-called “Russell Tribunal on Palestine”, due to take place this weekend in Cape Town, which will allegedly “examine whether Israel’s practices against the Palestinians is in breach of the prohibition on apartheid under International Law.”
One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues “apartheid” policies. In Cape Town starting on Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization called the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will hold a “hearing” on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. It is not a “tribunal.” The “evidence” is going to be one-sided and the members of the “jury” are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known.
Goldstone seems to have struck a chord with some of the Tribunal’s organisers – Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Michael Mansfield have responded to Goldstone in the pages of the Guardian, defending the decision that the Tribunal has yet to officially consider…
The Palestinians and UNESCO/ An Attack on Iran?
November 4, 2011
This Update features two comments on the vote by the UN Educational, Social and Culture Organisation (UNESCO) to admit “Palestine” as a full member on Monday, a measure opposed by the Australia (see AIJAC’s media release on the Australian vote here). It also contains some comments on reports originating in the Israeli press alleging that the Israeli Government is stepping up preparations for a possible military strike on Iran’s nuclear program.
Media Week – Centre for Conflict; Panning partisan posturing; ‘Imbalanced’ article
November 4, 2011 | Jamie Hyams
Jake Lynch, Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, criticised his university for holding a research forum between Israelis and Australians. He told Imre Salusinszky, “The university risks sustaining reputational damage if the forum goes ahead. It risks being seen as condoning the complicity by Israeli universities in Israel’s breaches of international law and indirectly raises problems with the university’s social inclusion policy” (Australian, 25/10). Salusinszky reported that, in a letter to the university’s Deputy Vice Chancellor, Lynch “says the forum is contrary to the university’s social inclusion policy, which requires it to reach out to students in western Sydney. He says most Muslim students live in the west and feel ‘a sense of resentment and alienation resulting from the predominance of pro-Israeli voices in Australia’s political and media discourses’.” Lynch, who is also an executive member of the Sydney Peace Foundation, which awards the Sydney Peace Prize, seems to have a very skewed notion of what peace actually entails.
Sudden jump in odds on Iran attack
November 3, 2011 | Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz
A whole series of events last night made an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities suddenly seem far closer than had previously been the case. After a week of speculation in the Israeli press, Haaretz reported yesterday that the Prime Minister and Defence Minister are trying to gain cabinet support for a strike.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are trying to muster a majority in the cabinet in favor of military action against Iran, a senior Israeli official has said. According to the official, there is a “small advantage” in the cabinet for the opponents of such an attack.
Netanyahu and Barak recently persuaded Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who previously objected to attacking Iran, to support such a move.
This report coincided with the test-firing of a new long-range Israeli missile, which could be capable of reaching targets in Iran…
Israel – a strategic asset for the US… and Australia
November 3, 2011 | Sharyn Mittelman
The US-Israel alliance has come under increasing strain in recent time with both academics and US policy makers suggesting that the alliance has become more of a liability than an asset for US national interests. For instance, the infamous Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer based their whole “Israel Lobby” slander on the assumption that being associated with Israel was obviously and unequivocally bad for the US, and only some undemocratic and vaguely nefarious lobby could possible explain the continuing US alliance with Israel, as noted Middle East scholar Martin Kramer analysed and debunked brilliantly a few years ago.
However, a new report released by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy “Israel: A Strategic Asset for the United States” (‘the report’), does even more to refute this trend in analysis and instead argues that US policy makers should acknowledge that the US-Israel alliance strongly serves US national interests in several important ways.
Is the PA qualified to protect Christian and Jewish holy sites?
November 2, 2011 | Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz
As Fairfax’s Ruth Pollard reported this morning, now that they have been admitted to UNESCO, the Palestinian Authority (PA) will begin pushing for heritage protection of holy sites in the West Bank.
JERUSALEM: Significant religious sites throughout the West Bank, including the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem and Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, will be among the first to be pushed forward for world heritage status now Palestine has been granted membership of UNESCO.
A Palestinian Authority spokesman there were many sites and shrines in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that until now had been unprotected because of a lack of recognition and funding.
”Now we will be able to protect them and make sure they are known around the world,” he said. ”We believe that becoming a member of the UNESCO is an overdue right for a country that has such a significant amount of heritage sites.”
This follows from a bid launched earlier this year to gain heritage status for the Church of Nativity, believed to be the site where Jesus was born. The idea of the PA being responsible for the care of this church and other non-Muslim holy sites should raise a few eyebrows amongst those who are even vaguely familiar with their recent history…
Goldstone assaults ‘Apartheid Slander’
November 2, 2011 | Sharyn Mittelman
South African Judge Richard Goldstone has written an op-ed in this New York Times on 31 October condemning the false allegation that Israel is an ‘apartheid’ state. He writes:
“The charge that Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one that precludes, rather than promotes, peace and harmony.”
This is the same Goldstone who did a great deal of damage to Israel by lending his name to the biased UN fact-finding mission into the Gaza conflict in 2009 which condemned Israel for deliberately killing civilians and war crimes while all but ignoring the Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel.
Goldstone later recanted his support for the report after realising that much of the information relied upon in the ‘Goldstone Report’ was not credible and biased. In an op-ed in the Washington Post in April this year he stated, “if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”
Two victims from Palestinian UNESCO ploy: UNESCO and the US
November 1, 2011 | Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz
The admission of Palestine into the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, little more than a symbolic victory for the Palestinian Authority (PA), has severe repercussions on the largest funder of both the PA and UNESCO: The United States. As AFP has reported, US legislation prevents US funding of any UN body that admits the Palestinians as a member.
“We were to have made a $US60 million ($A57.11 million) payment to UNESCO in November and we will not be making that payment,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters on Monday.
Nuland said the Palestinian admission “triggers longstanding (US) legislative restrictions which will compel the United States to refrain from making contributions to UNESCO.”…
Somali-American suicide bomber calls for Muslims to fight Jihad in Australia
October 31, 2011 | Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz
Abdisalan Hussein Ali, a 22-year-old Somali who grew up in America and is believed to be one of two suicide bombers who struck African Union forces on Saturday, called for jihad against Australia in a recording obtained by The New York Times. In the recording, Ali repeats the Al-Qaeda mantra that jihad is an obligation from God incumbent on every Muslim and then calls for his “brothers and sisters” to fight jihad in America, Canada, England, “anywhere in Europe”, in Asia, Africa, China and Australia.
As noted in the Times article, Ali was seemingly an average, well-adjusted American teenager…
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Tunisia: Islamism or Democracy?/ Settlements yet again
October 31, 2011
This Update features some comment on the outcome of the Tunisian elections last week, and their wider implications.
First up is the Jerusalem Post arguing in an editorial that Tunisia demonstrated why it is the most promising candidate for democracy in the Arab world – as shown by the fair and violence-free elections. Yet the country also gave a plurality to an Islamist party, Ennahda, albeit one often described as “soft Islamist”. The paper notes, however, that the head of Ennadha is not only violently anti-Israel, but his comparison of his party to Turkey’s AKP is not as positive as some seem to imagine.
