New Zealand’s Mossad Paranoia
July 21, 2011 | Geoffrey Levin
After New Zealand media outrageously accused an Israeli victim of February’s Christchurch earthquake of being a Mossad spy, Prime Minister John Key yesterday publically announce that an investigation demonstrated that neither the victim, Ofer Mizrahi, nor any of his friends, had any involvement in espionage. In a statement on Wednesday, Key said, “Security agencies conducted the investigation and found no evidence that the people were anything other than backpackers.” It turns out Mizrahi held two passports, his Israeli and his EU one, rather than the five that a Southland Times article initially alleged. The story quickly spread throughout New Zealand newspapers, and was covered as one of the biggest stories of the week.
Only hours before Key’s announcement, Fred Tulett, the journalist behind the initial story, said he was “unshakable in his conviction his facts are accurate.”
AIJAC’s response to Israel’s new anti-Boycott law
July 21, 2011 | Colin Rubenstein
In response to the passage of a controversial new anti-boycott law by the Israeli Knesset last week, AIJAC has issued the following statement:
AIJAC believes that anti-Israel boycotts represent a serious and significant political and diplomatic challenge to Israel as part of a larger campaign of delegitimisation, and that the Israeli government is fully justified in taking serious legal and political action to counter these threats wherever they originate. However, in AIJAC’s view, overall, the anti-boycott law passed last week appears ill advised, will have opposite effects to those intended and may provide opportunities for Israel’s detractors to further misrepresent the reality of its vibrant democracy.
Another anti-Israel rant by Randa Abdel-Fattah
July 21, 2011 | Allon Lee
On Wednesday, the Sydney Morning Herald featured a rant by Australian-born-Egyptian-Muslim-Palestinian pro-Palestinian activist Randa Abdel-Fattah arguing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the latters’ ongoing suffering stems from Israel supposedly seeking to safeguard the ”purity” of a Jewish-only state.
The ostensible motivation for her article was a desire to share the numerous experiences of racism she claims to have witnessed when visiting Israel and the West Bank in May. Yet nowhere in the article is she able to recount a single example of the alleged racism because her real motive is to justify her support for a one-state solution.
Pressuring Syria/Syria and Iran
July 21, 2011
This Update looks at policy options, as well as the potential benefits and costs, for Western governments seeking to pressure Syria’s Assad regime as the protests in Syria continue to spread and the death toll continues to mount.
The opening entry is an editorial from the New York Times, which urges that while a military invention is out of the question, Western nations “can bring a lot more pressure to bear” on the Assad regime. The paper notes that “awe” is the only possible response to the courage of Syrian protesters. It goes on to castigate US and European leaders for sending mixed message and various lifelines to the regime, urges the consumers of Syrian oil to stop buying it, and calls the Arab League’s recent intervention on behalf of Assad a “disgrace”.
They think it’s all over
July 20, 2011 | Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz
The 2011 flotilla saga ended quietly yesterday when the only vessel to actually sail for Gaza was boarded without incident. As Isabel Kershner reports in The New York Times, the ship’s crew lied to Greek authorities about their destination – claiming to be sailing for Egypt before diverting in international waters and heading towards Gaza. Then, when the Israeli authorities were certain of its destination and had given up on convincing the crew to change course, the ship was boarded by Israeli naval commandos…
Entebbe, Mein Kampf, and the New Antisemitism
July 20, 2011 | Tzvi Fleischer
American author, thinktanker and foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead has used the anniversary of the publication of Mein Kampf to set out some important and valuable thoughts on modern expressions of antisemitism…
Meanwhile, some interesting thoughts on how the far left became susceptible to this sort of prejudice in their dedicated hatred of Israel have come from British academic and writer Alan Johnson, himself a man of the left…
Can Iran block America’s ‘Internet in a suitcase’?
July 20, 2011 | Geoffrey Levin
Several weeks ago, the New York Times reported an Obama Administration effort to distribute a device it had developed called ‘Internet in a suitcase’, which could bring web access to dissidents in authoritarian countries across the world. The report stated:
Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet…The State Department, for example, is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, according to participants in the projects.
This week, Iranian intelligence minister Heidar Moslehi responded to the news.
Sectarian Explosion beginning in Syria?
July 19, 2011 | Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz
The situation in Syria took an even graver turn yesterday. As the ruling Assad regime continues to brutalise dissenting citizens, some Syrians appear to be lashing out at the regime’s minority Alawite sect. In retaliation, several Allawites went on a rampage of their own. Nada Bakri reports in The New York Times:
On Sunday, residents of Homs, Syria’s second-largest city, discovered the bodies of three Alawites mutilated and dumped in a deserted area, according to Omar Idlibi of the Local Coordination Committees, a group that helps organize and document protests. All three were armed government loyalists, he said…
More Quiet corners of the Arab Spring
July 19, 2011 | Tzvi Fleischer
Following up on Geoffrey Levin’s post yesterday on the Jordanian Hashemite Monarchy’s apparent success so far in weathering the Arab Spring, it is worth noting some other Arab countries which also appear to be managing the protest movements fairly successfully – especially Iraq and Morocco.
PA rebroadcasts antisemitic cartoon
July 19, 2011 | Sharyn Mittelman
In another example of antisemitism sponsored by the Palestinian Authority (PA), this week the PA rebroadcast an antisemitic cartoon from a Jordanian newspaper regarding the division of Sudan on official PA television.
The cartoon had the headline “Division of Sudan,” and it showed the distorted images of an American and a Jew toasting the division over barrels of Sudanese oil.
