Some theories on the Boston Marathon Bombing

As the blasts occurred (Courtesy of Dan Lampariello-Reuters)

With news that the April 15^th terrorist assault on the Boston Marathon killed three, including an eight year old boy, and caused over one hundred and eighty to be injured (some critically), those touched by the tragedy and horror of this bloodthirsty indiscriminate attack on innocent civilians will of course be speculating a great deal on the source of the terrorism.

Definitive assertions would of course be unjustified at this stage but it is reasonably certain that the terrorist attack came from one of arguably three politically distinctive categories of terrorism.

Domestic terrorism

Numerous journalists have speculated that American right-wing extremists are responsible because the assault occurred on Tax Day, tax being an issue politicised in American politics perhaps to a greater extent than that of most other nations, partly due to being a traditionally low-tax economy that focused on a philosophy of small governance. A more European scale of governance, funded by the taxpayer is seen as impacting on liberty on a number of levels.

The attack also coincides with Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts, which commemorates the anniversary of the earliest battles for the American War of Independence, giving further credence to the right-wing extremists claim. However, prima facie, it seems that such a historic date would be more likely the cause of celebration for patriot groups, rather than a time to generate such widespread infamy in America.

On the other hand, some individuals or groups may of course see the date as a symbolic starting-point for further conflict with what they deem to be a State that has turned tyrannical, and in breach of the values espoused in the US Constitution. However, such groups tend to favour very symbolic targets, such as government institutions as well as certain organisations (e.g. abortion clinics) and related events that have a distinctive political character that they deem to be objectionable. 

The prospect of an Islamist attack

There is some reason to tentatively suspect that the attack originated from an Islamic source, be it a group, or an American citizen/convert:

A Middle East counter-terrorism official based in Jordan said the blasts “carry the hallmark of an organised terrorist group, like al-Qaeda”. He did not give actual evidence linking al-Qaeda to the bombing. “From the little information available, one can say it was a well-coordinated, well-targeted and near-simultaneous attack,” he said.

The counter-terrorism official highlighted the fact that the massacre featured the dual-assault hallmarks of an Islamist attack. This strategy of maximising casualties has become near ubiquitous for such groups. However, it should be noted that this same technique has also been used by other terrorist groups in the past, including the IRA.

It has been reported that the authorities investigating the case may suspect al Qaeda or an affiliated group although evidence is lacking at this early stage, and the search for a specific motivation remains open. Richard DesLauriers, the FBI agent in command of the investigation, stated that fragments recovered from the bombsite suggest the bombs were a specific pressure cooker based design that was recommended in al Qaeda’s magazine Inspire because they are easy to construct, can make use of widely available materials, and avoid detection from sniffer dogs. Such bombs have been used in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It has also been noted that Abdallah Dhu-al-Bajadin, a senior al Qaeda weapons specialist, made threats against the US last month. This coincided with a rash of threats from other al Qaeda affiliated sources.

The Inspire connection also rears its head with an article attributed to Abu Musab al-Suri, a well known Syrian terrorist, which described sports events as being one of “the most important enemy targets” in the US.

Islamists have shown a tendency to target the city of New York since the 1993 World Trade Centre attack. It took on a symbolic dimension, being the most successful Islamic attack on non-ambassadorial US soil until 9/11. This fact would make Boston a less likely target for Islamists, although it could perhaps become more attractive from a terrorist perspective since the city clearly possessed a lower rank of security, and numerous plots to attack New York since 9/11 were prevented.

The prospect of state-sanctioned terrorism

It tends to be the case that terrorist groups rapidly claim responsibility after an attack takes place. The objective for any terrorist group is to maximise gain in terms of political capital, and to bolster a fearsome reputation. Making the claim soon after a horrified public response, to what is typically a most callous act of murder, will inevitably burn the identity of the terrorist group into the collective consciousness of a society. The fact that no group or individual has claimed responsibility is puzzling, and leaves open the possibility that the attack might involve a foreign nation.

Iran has not been mentioned to a significant extent in the media as a possible source for the assault, even though their attacks on foreign soil, involving their elite Quds Force (part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard), and closely allied Hizbullah, have greatly increased in the last number of years. Indeed an attack in 2011 on the Saudi Ambassador to the United States is likely to have had Iranian/Quds origins.

It is thought the United States has been involved in extensive efforts to prevent Iran developing nuclear weaponry. In parallel, it has introduced increasing rounds of sanctions against the Islamic State, which have been taking an ever-increasing toll on its economy since 2012.

One would speculate that such an attack would have a degree of sophistication but the terrorists having used relatively crude technology, suggesting that an inexperienced individual or individuals constructed the bombs, works against the theory. However, the pressure cooker bomb is a common device found in Islamist insurgency, and some security experts have speculated in the media that the use of less experienced bomb makers could be intentional, with the aim of enhancing the possibility of escaping detection by US authorities.

Coda

Regardless of the source of this attack, the Boston Massacre is a tragic reminder of what terrorism truly constitutes.

Terrorism is the act of assaulting what are so often purely civilian events. In this instance it was a marathon in Boston, where competitors and bystanders were the sole target. It cannot even be said by apologists that this is simply an attack on Americans, over some sort of domestic or foreign policy, for the event attracts many international visitors. It is terrorism designed to maximise the carnage of innocents, be they men, women, children or infants.

The harm visited on the city will no doubt scar the victims, their families, and the greater community of Boston for years to come, giving rise to fear where there was once implicit trust. Yet it’s a community that has long possessed a strong individual identity, one that will surely survive the malign purpose of the instigators, whosoever they may be.

Update (19/4)

A dramatic sequence of events in the search for the Boston Marathon bombers has claimed the life of one police officer, and led to areas of Boston being placed in lockdown. The older of the suspects has been killed in a shootout with police. The younger second suspect continues to evade police despite a vast manhunt, which some speculate is due in part to the impact of social media.

The suspects were identified as brothers Tamerlan (26) and Dzhokhar (19) Tsarnaev, from Dagestan, a federal republic within the Russian Federation, which neighbours Chechnya. The brothers lived in the US for nearly a decade.

Dagestan is a principally Muslim region that has had substantive issues with Islamic insurgency and terrorism in recent decades, spilling over from chechnya, where there has been protracted conflict in an effort to gain independence. Whilst the conflict there has not threatened the US, regional Chechen fighters constitute part of the membership of certain groups fighting against the US presence in Afghanistan, with some believing Chechen rebels have links with al Qaeda.

The belief in an Islamist motive behind the attack has been strengthened, with an aunt of the brothers stating that Tamerlan Tsarnaev became a devout Muslim two years ago, while US government officials state that he travelled to Russia last year and returned to the US six months later. Similarly strong expressions of faith were made by the bothers on the Internet, with the suspects also expressing pride in their ethnic Chechen origins, and a desire to see independence from Russia. 

 
 
 
A similar article is featured at Crethi Plethi.

The Hypocrisy of the Irish Teachers Boycott of Israel

In April 2013 the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) became the first European trade union involved with education and academia to adopt a resolution calling on its members to “cease all cultural and academic collaboration with Israel”. The boycott includes any co-operative research programs with Israeli institutions, and also proscribes the exchange of students between the nations.

The resolution also calls on the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), an umbrella organisation representing some 55 Irish trade unions of which the TUI is affiliated, to “step up its campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the apartheid State of Israel boycotting Israeli academia until it ends the embargo of Gaza, withdraws from the West Bank, and abides by all anti-Israel UN resolutions.” The ICTU has officially boycotted Israel since 2009, and has already gone out of its way to demonise the Jewish State with extremely one-sided pro-boycott conferences.

The TUI motion also instructs the Union’s executive to institute an information programme to justify the boycott. To use their own Orwellian language, it will be “an awareness campaign amongst TUI members on the need for a full boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel”. It will likely invoke the dubious apartheid claims that led to the boycott in the first instance, in an attempt to reinforce the ideology behind the motion, and guarantee its continued support in the face of objections.

Assertions of the leading BDS advocates

According to the Jerusalem Post

The motion was raised by Jim Roche, a lecturer at the Dublin Institute of Technology and member of the fringe groups Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) and Gaza Action, and seconded by the vice-president of the TUI Gerry Quinn. […]

David Landy, a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, member of the radical IPSC and founder of Academics for Palestine, called on other unions to follow suit. […]

He said it was “nonsense” that boycotts stifle academic principles.

“Undoubtedly apologists for Israeli apartheid will complain that such motions stifle academic freedom, but this is nonsense.”

So Mr. Landy haughtily deems it a “nonsense” that the boycott will discourage the free movement of academics and students, a valued principle within the academic world, and likewise it is a “nonsense” that it will discourage the free exchange of information and research? If his assertions are correct then why has he and his colleagues advocated a boycott that seeks to isolate Israeli academia and students?

“The Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israel is an institutional boycott, not a boycott of individuals.”

Does Mr. Landy have no notion of the fact that academic institutions are composed of individuals both working and studying within them? When Israeli students attend schools from childhood, will they not almost inevitably be Israeli schools? What exactly does Mr. Landy and his IPSC colleagues foresee as happening when their motion proscribes the exchange of students with Israeli institutions? Clearly the real nonsense is the claim by boycott advocates that the process won’t harm individual Israeli students.

Israel and Arab-Palestinian education

Both Landy and Roche assert that Israel is somehow destroying the Palestinian education system, to the extent of even boycotting it:

“Ironically, those that will jump to complain about this motion will have no words of condemnation for the de facto boycott imposed on Palestinian education by Israel, nor for its continuing attacks on Palestinian education, students and educators,” Landy said.

Does such an assertion have any substantive basis in fact? Perhaps not, for literacy in the West Bank was at 88% before Israel administered the territory. It has now risen to 93%, comparing favourably with neighbouring Jordan.

Furthermore, university education was non-existent in the West Bank prior to Israel’s presence. Israel built six third level institutions to serve Arab-Palestinians. Several were temporarily closed during the Second Intifada as they were being used to advance the cause of conflict.

One example of third-level incitement is Al Najah University, which featured perhaps the most debased exhibit celebrating the death of Israeli civilians. It became a centre for Hamas’ al-Qassam brigade, and yielded numerous suicide bombers from amongst its student body.

Jim Roche and David Landy

Two chief advocates for the TUI boycott have become quite well known in Ireland for extremist views.

Jim Roche and Ahmed Muheisen at the Islamic University of Gaza

Jim Roche is a veteran of the flotillas that attempted to break the legal Israeli embargo on Gaza. He is a senior member of the jihadist-supporting Irish Anti-War Movement. His views echo that of the basest pro-Palestinian propaganda. He has openly perpetuated the long-disproven assertion that Arab-Palestinians in Gaza are starving, which was untrue even before Israel lifted all food import restrictions in June 2010.

Mr. Roche postulates fanciful notions, claiming Israel “has erased and continues to erase indigenous Palestinian architectural heritage from the physical landscape and collective consciousness….”, whilst ignoring the destruction to the holiest Jewish sites through the decades. He not only inverted the sequence of events leading to the Operation Pillar of Cloud conflict in 2012 but actually congratulated Hamas on showing ‘restraint’ while it was indiscriminately attacking Israeli civilians:

…what is remarkable about the current escalation, purely manufactured by Israel for internal electoral reasons, is the resilience and restraint shown by the Gazan people and its elected government.

Roche opposes all sanctions against Iran, and speaking after the successful TUI vote, he stated:

I am very pleased that this motion was passed with such support by TUI members, especially coming the day after Israeli occupation forces shot and killed two Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank.

Would this happen to be the same teenagers who threw petrol bombs at an armed Israeli checkpoint in the darkness of night? Haaretz reported that they were carrying seven incendiary devices, despite describing them as “unarmed”!

David Landy

David Landy is a figurehead of the Irish pro-Palestinian movement. It has been suggested that he has a rather problematic stance toward his own Jewish identity. Indeed Landy wrote a book on the very issue, entitled “Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights”, which taps into the increasingly vocal negation of Jewish identity in the Jewish quarter of the anti-Zionist movement. A review by Professor Philip Mendes, also featuring a similarly themed book, states that:

Both authors rightly suggest that their samples are involved in creating alternative communities of Jews who reject Israel. These communities give them a sense of belonging and mutual support that was denied to them in the mainstream Jewish community. This then begs the question of what if anything distinguishes their anti-Zionist beliefs from the views of anti-Zionists who aren’t Jewish…

Double standards, Irish style

Whether or not one thinks Israel is violating the rights of Arab-Palestinians, the singling out of this small nation above all others must surely seem an oddity to all but those who obsessively hate Israel.

Numerous Irish academic institutions have strong links with regimes that possess dubious human rights records. Moreover, one would think this issue would be a source of even mild concern to those supposedly interested in human rights because these links have grown ever stronger, such as with Russia, and particularly China, the developments of which have been well publicised. Consequently, the obsession over a few rather tenuous academic links with Israel is outlandish, to say the least.

As musician and academic Ciarán Ó Raghallaigh noted, perhaps with a hint of sarcasm in a letter to the Irish Times

There seems to have been no discussion of the extensive academic ties that Trinity College, Dublin Institute of Technology and University College, Dublin all have with Russia and China, despite the former country’s illegal occupation of parts of the sovereign state of Georgia… This is all the more surprising given that it was the Dublin Colleges Branch of the TUI that sponsored the anti-Israel motion.

Neither were any corresponding demands placed by members of the TUI onto the opposing Arab-Palestinian side. It should be recalled that the Arab-Palestinian education system & academia has been used to incite extreme hatred and violence throughout the Palestinian populace for decades, thereby dealing a death-blow to any chance of a peace process, thanks to a permanently radicalised populace. It would seem that even an education system using children in endeavours to exterminate another state, going as far as to institute militaristic camps is not worthy of censure!

On prejudice and discrimination

The notion that the TUI boycott is an assault on Israel, rather than an attempt to weaken any sense of a perceived occupation, is well founded. The boycott extends to all Israeli institutions, rather than merely those involved with the West Bank or Samaria and Judea. The organisation Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine, which unites both Israeli and Palestinian workers and attempts to foster dialogue, noted the indiscriminate nature of the TUI boycott resolution:

The resolution does not specifically call for a boycott of Israeli academics or students who are, for example, based in the occupied territories. The boycott covers all Israelis, even those students and academics who oppose the occupation and who support self-determination for the Palestinians.

Similarly, one wonders what is to be achieved by including a cultural aspect to the boycott. Proponents argue that any manifestation of Israeli culture “whitewashes the occupation”. However, it can easily be inferred that behind such senseless words an uglier truth lies. These individuals are afraid that we will see Israeli people as human beings rather than as bloodthirsty monsters so often portrayed on the news.

Interestingly, British academic unions considering a similar boycott received legal advice that it might be in breach of European Union anti-discrimination laws. BDS was found to be illegal by the French Supreme Court, and the European Court of Human Rights upheld this ruling. However, it is unclear whether the TUI will be challenged on their boycott.

Some implications for Ireland

It should not be thought that the arguments of BDS advocates were overwhelmingly superior simply because the TUI vote was unanimously in favour of a boycott. Rather it is a somewhat unexpected conclusion that there would be little if any dissent to the boycott motion because pro-Palestinianism is by far the pre-dominant paradigm in Ireland when it comes to any discussion on this Middle Eastern conflict. Moreover, there appears to have been no speakers voicing opposing anti-boycott views at the TUI conference. Sadly the voices of a fanatical well-funded terrorist-applauding element have undue influence on the debate in Ireland in the absence of any substantive defence of Israel by opposing sides.

The boycott could have profoundly divisive implications. It may lead to TUI members singling out Israeli exchange students, and refuse to assist them as has occurred in other boycott scenarios. In 2009 a lecturer at NUI Maynooth mounted an unofficial boycott of Israel which was discovered when his refusal to assist an Israeli student was reported in the media. It may even cause industrial unrest if an employee of the TUI is disciplined for refusing to work with Israeli students or institutions since no Irish colleges appear to endorse a boycott.

The boycott also comes at a time when recession-hit Ireland has been increasingly looking to Israel due to its economic model, which is weathering the economic downturn.

Israel’s record when it comes to academic achievement can be justifiably described as outstanding. It ranks as the second best educated nation in the world according to the OECD, and one of the more remarkable aspects of those going along with the agitators of such a boycott is the inability to conceive of the way in which Israel substantively contributes to world academia, and scientific innovation, where it is known for its strides in health care.

Education is a key element in any nation’s economic recovery, and whilst Ireland can no doubt exploit opportunities with other nations, Israel still stands out in a number of key respects. It has the largest per capita number of third level and PhD graduates in the world. It is a world leader in science and high technology as evidenced by its remarkable showing on the NASDAQ which is almost comparable in scale to that of the entire EU, whilst it also gained substantive inward investment from multinationals. These are the very areas of industry in which Ireland seeks to advance, and to position itself.

The BDS movement seeks to isolate Israel economically, academically and culturally, in a quest to bring a remarkable nation to its knees. Whether or not such an action is deemed offensive from a moral perspective, simply from a position of self-interest, boycotting Israel’s education and academia is likely to make Ireland the worse off if it takes hold and spreads to other Irish academic unions in the long run.




Also published at Crethi Plethi.

Norwegian Government finds Arab-Palestinian anti-Semitism acceptable

This month a Norwegian news media report conveyed a message that is hardly ever addressed by the mainstream media in Europe, namely the reality of common incitement by the Palestinian Authority against Jewish people and the Jewish State. Whilst the news report focused on depictions of Israel and Jews in the Arab-Palestinian media, this is a phenomenon that affects every level of society, beginning in childhood.

The news report, carried on the state-owned TV channel NRK, interviewed Palestinian Media Watch who noted a highly divergent anti-Semitic narrative issued by the PA media in Arabic, which contrasts greatly with its peaceful international voice. A director of the TV channel that the PA control, denied that there is incitement against Israel and that Jewish people are demonised.

However, the report went on to interview numerous ordinary Arab-Palestinians who unashamedly echoed similar anti-Semitic tropes of a classical variety. The reporter even inferred that these anti-Jewish smears are very popular topics of conversation. Moreover, these ordinary folks supported the PA TV channel’s hero worship of Arab-Palestinian terrorists who have killed Israeli civilians en masse.

Most interesting perhaps is the response of the Norwegian government. The Norwegian State has long been hostile to Israel, and a generous contributor to the Palestinian Authority. Secretary of State, Torgeir Larsen, acknowledged the hateful content as being accurate but effectively dismissed it because it was being provided by what he views as a politicised organisation!

NRK narrator: “Since 2008, Norway has given over 300 million kroner a year in budget support to the Palestinian Authority. [The PA] finances and partly controls PA TV. The State Secretary [Torgeir Larsen] has read PMW’s material.”

State Secretary, Torgeir Larsen: “There are examples in the book (PMW’s Deception) that clearly express hatred. There are also examples of Antisemitism, which you find in Palestinian society. But these are examples. And it’s also important for me to emphasize that those (i.e., PMW) who have put together these examples – I do not doubt the content – are part of an ongoing political battle.”

NRK narrator: “He [State Secretary Torgeir Larsen] said Norway has discussed this with the PA, but that it is not relevant to stop the Norwegian financial support [to the PA], which goes to building Palestinian institutions.”

In effect Larsen found the anti-Semitic incitement to be acceptable, and saw no reason to even threaten the suspension of Norway’s generous funding! Mainstream politicians typically reflect the political climate of a nation so it should be of little wonder that Jewish Norwegians find their country to be an increasingly inhospitable place when there is such a blithe acceptance of the very basest anti-Semitism. A study by the Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities found that 12% of Norwegians in the survey expressed strongly anti-Semitic sentiments.

The report ends with a response from the Palestinian Authority representative in Norway. He denied there has ever been any element of anti-Semitism in Arab-Palestinian culture! Rather the envoy blamed the problems on Israel’s character as being that of a principally Jewish State. In other words, the PA do not want there to be any existent Jewish State! So much for the two-states for two-peoples peace process, the philosophy upon which all the attempts of peace have been founded since the UN in 1947.

Postscript

It appears that Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch, has been attacked several times by the Norwegian government since a debate in Norway over incitement in the Arab-Palestinian media began.

Norwegian website Israel-What noted that criticism by government officials dismissed the material by PWM because the head of the organisation is a Jewish man that lives in the Jewish ancestral land of Judea and Samaria, better known today as the West Bank. The criticism has been made without attempting to deny the veracity of the material PWM presents because it would be rather hard to do so considering their content is derived from the Palestinian media. Rather they cast doubt on Marcus by presenting him as a nationalistic Israeli. Such posturing is indicative of how far the Norwegian powers have drifted from any form of cogent sense, thanks to their embrace of ideological Palestinianism.

Interestingly, the article points out that it has been common knowledge in Norway for some time that Norwegian State funding to the Palestinian Authority is in part used to fund media institutions that incite violence and hatred, something of which the authorities appear to be very much aware.

Just as egregious is the fact that Norway seems quite OK with a portion of its funding going to convicted terrorists that have targeted/killed Israeli civilians, as reported by Dagbladet, a popular Norwegian newspaper:

- PA is the same as other countries a variety of schemes for social transfers to its citizens, including persons who are in prison. Social benefits to families of Palestinians in Israeli prisons are part of the total Palestinian welfare and social security system and is intended to compensate for loss of income. Such social transfers have been made as long as the PA has been around and have a social justification, including consideration of children in the family, writes Frode Overland Andersen in the MFA in an email.

The obsession the largely left-wing Norwegian authorities have with Israel is rather baffling. However, they intensively promote a militant Palestinian agenda, seemingly even at the behest of groups like Hamas, an organisation advocating Jewish genocide. This posturing, allied with rising anti-Semitism in the State, makes it rather unlikely that anything other than a deep malignity motivates Norway’s intent.

 



Also published at Crethi Plethi.

Rising anti-Semitism at the Sunday Times?

Cartoon by Gerald Scarfe, depicting Israeli PM
Benjamin Netanyahu building a brick wall over
the bodies of bloodied Palestinian-Arabs

On January 27^th, the Sunday Times published a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe, which is widely thought to have libelled both Israel and the Jewish people, due to apparent anti-Semitic imagery. Scarfe is a well-known English cartoonist who illustrated The Wall, the self-pitying magnum opus by ex-Pink Floyd member Roger Waters. Water’s live performances of the album also stirred controversy by linking the Star of David with greed.

Rupert Murdock, owner of News International which owns the Sunday Times, has apologised for the cartoon. Whilst the Sunday Times denies that the cartoon is anti-Semitic, claiming that it merely attacks Netanyahu and Israeli policies, the illustration nonetheless displays classic anti-Semitic motifs to the extent that it has been compared with an infamous cartoon featured on the cover of a 1934 edition of the Nazi tabloid newspaper, Der Sturmer, in terms of both its depiction of Jews and thematic content.

Anti-Semitic cartoon featured on a 1934 cover of Der Sturmer.

Furthermore, the offensive cartoon was published by the Sunday Times on Holocaust Memorial Day, which if intentional would display a rather warped mindset. Scarfe has since said he regrets the date of publication, claiming that he had not been aware it was Holocaust Memorial Day!

Yet an intent for Mr. Scarfe, and/or the Sunday Times, to incite hate and/or cause distress to the paper’s Jewish readers, is a distinct probability since pro-Palestinians have made sustained attempts to hijack the Memorial Day and the Holocaust more broadly, to push propagandistic messages, e.g. comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, Gaza with the Warsaw Ghetto etc.

And yet any decline at the Sunday Times didn’t start with a cartoon. For example, a large 4^th of March 2012 article (taking up two pages), concerning the use of private information in relation to phone apps, carried the headline “In a flash, your details are sent to Israel”, despite the fact that Israel played a very minor part in the story!

Andrew Sullivan’s Apologia

During the same month (March 25^th), the paper featured a prominent op-ed by well-known Israeli-basher Andrew Sullivan, opposite the editorial page, entitled: “The gag of loyalty destroying Israel”. The piece defended a book by another arch Israeli-basher called Peter Beinart, with such an intensity that one came away with the feeling that Sullivan felt no one was or is entitled to criticise his cherished Beinart!

Extract of "The gag of loyalty destroying Israel" by Andrew Sullivan,
Sunday Times, 25 of March 2012

The piece condensed such a remarkable miasma of primitive pro-Palestinian propaganda aimed at defaming Israel, and the pro-Israel American lobby, that one came away with the distinct feeling this American blogger, well-known for his controversial views, was wheeled in due to an agenda.

The piece stands out for intensively regurgitating quite an astonishing number of lies about settlements, the inability to criticise Israel in the US, and the situation of Arab-Palestinians in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), that it would be more suited for a propaganda site like Electronic Intifada. Sullivan refers to the growth of Jewish settler numbers in the West Bank but then fails to mention the dramatic jump in the Arab-Palestinian populace.

Sullivan starts and ends the article by predicting dire consequences for Beinart as if the dark shadowy lobby will destroy this poor truth teller. He also crosses a line by referring to the dangers of “Jewish power” in relation to the Jewish lobby, and even raised the old anti-Semitic Jewish-dual-loyalty charge:

What Beinart has done is not just illustrated (sic) this crisis and challenged a blinkered view of how it came to pass; he has blamed its relentless deepening on a complacent, out-of-touch and defensive American-Jewish establishment. He believes it remains so trapped in the post-Holocaust paradigm of Jewish victimhood that it cannot see, as earlier Zionists did, the danger of Jewish power.

While Sullivan relates these ideas to Peter Beinart’s rather unoriginal thesis, Sullivan still advances and adopts the same notions himself, in a stout uncritical defence of Beinart, an individual who has defamed Israel by recycling many pro-Palestinian falsehoods, whilst simultaneously pretending to be its friend!

And what of Jewish victimhood? Is it not legitimate to be concerned about anti-Semitism when Holocaust denial is such a popular sport today, and appears to be increasingly derived from the Middle East conflict itself?

Is it not legitimate to be concerned when Jews in the US suffer the greatest level of faith based violence of any group, which is especially worrying since religion is the greatest motivating factor for hate crime? In 2010, some 65.4% of hate crimes were against Jews, standing in stark contrast to 13.2% against Muslims, an oddity considering the oft-covered media nightmares concerning Islamophobia, which of course in the US ought to be taken in the context of 9/11 and its protracted terrorist concerns.

He [Beinart] has exposed how the Israel lobby in America, far from trying to support its president in restraining new settlements in the West Bank, and found every excuse to let the Israeli’s off the hook, engaged in character assassinations of people who tried to argue back, all but sided with a foreign minister over its own government in the clash between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli premier, and is now beating the drum for war against Iran.

Need it be added that Israel has not established any official settlements since the mid to late 1990’s, during the Oslo II process, and they can be found not infrequently pulling down illegal Jewish outposts? In a prior passage, Sullivan misrepresents the areas where settlement construction typically take place, claiming they are places Israel will have to give up in a two-state solution. Rather, settlement construction in fact focuses on areas marked for retention in all prior peace talks on a two-state solution.

Does Andrew Sullivan also need to be reminded that the Israel Lobby is entitled to criticise the policy of a given US administration, if it thinks it is wrong, without actually being disloyal or treasonous to the United States? Sullivan has made very similar assertions concerning Jewish disloyalty in the past to the extent that he thought Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby would dispose of Obama in a “lethal” fashion!

Contrary to what Sullivan asserts, there is in fact prolific criticism of the Jewish State in America, and his "character assassination" claim is actually the standard response by critics of Israel whenever there is any objection to a political appointment, regardless of how well founded those criticisms are.

Perhaps the thematic relationship between Scarfe’s cartoon, which invokes classical anti-Semitism, and Sullivan’s article dismissing it, echoes a certain stance contained within the Sunday Times editorship.

Conclusion

It should be pointed out that the examples above were found by a very occasional reader of the Sunday Times. There are likely to be other examples that have escaped any substantive notice, assuming such material would not have paralleled the intensity of Scarfe’s cartoon. Last year the paper published a photograph that had been known to be an Iranian propaganda fake for years, and its weekday sister publication has also published problematic pieces. However, other than infrequent reports, there’s insufficient material to judge the paper’s output.

Worryingly, the Sunday Times, has shown signs of indulging the most virulent pro-Palestinianism, à la its UK competitor the Guardian. The Guardian, and its cousin the Independent, have long displayed an animosity toward Israel that frequently crossed a line by displaying a rather naked anti-Semitism. In 2003 the Independent featured an infamous cartoon by Dan Brown of ex-PM Ariel Sharon eating an Arab-Palestinian child’s head.

Both the Guardian and the Independent have a somewhat more modest circulation in comparison to the London Times and its Sunday equivalent. They are distinctly left-leaning broadsheet papers, which have a by now traditional leftist animus toward Israel.

By contrast, the Times is a more mainstream centre-right British publication. The portents are indeed worrying when it shows signs of acting with such prejudice. It can be deemed another indicator of the declining situation for British Jews, in what was once something of a haven during times of persecution elsewhere. More is the shame since the Times is the same paper that exposed the Protocols of Ziyon as fraudulent.




Also published at Crethi Plethi.

Anti-Israeli NGO funding - The European Union and its divergent diplomacy



Spot the difference! Source: the Excellent Dry Bones blog.


News came at the end of 2012 that the European Court of Justice threw out a three year lawsuit against the European Union, which had attempted to force the release of details on EU funding to non-governmental organisations. The lawsuit was brought by NGO Monitor, a group critical of EU funding to prejudicial NGOs that seek to defame Israel.

The EU stance on Israel has long been highly critical, and can be deemed prejudicial for good reason. For example, the EU has displayed an oddly disinterested attitude toward reports that their financial aid, derived from the unknowing EU tax payer, is used to fund anti-Israeli incitement in the Palestinian education system, and covertly assist terrorism.

Similarly, the EU has failed to proscribe Hizbullah as a terrorist entity, which allows the group to raise funds and political support in Europe. Their failure is all more bizarre considering Hizbullah’s links with the Assad regime, and the numerous rounds of EU sanctions against Assad.

Obsessive secrecy

This month Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor addressed the bizarre secrecy at the core of EU NGO funding.

On 29 September 1999, a small committee of the European Commission met to allocate €5 million for "Middle East Peace Projects" to what are ostensibly non-governmental organizations (NGOs). No protocol or record was published for the public, in contrast to most meetings involving EU allocations… The only reason that we have this information is due to a leaked protocol from this single meeting. In the thirteen years that have followed, all documents related to EU funding for dozens of Israeli and Palestinian political NGOs have been labeled top secret - reminiscent of the most highly classified military plans and nuclear weapons designs. As a result, even members of the European Parliament are also denied substantive information.

NGO Monitor have been attempting to obtain such information on NGOs from the EU for years. It should have already been in the public domain but has been censored supposedly over security concerns. The information is apparently so secretive that NGO Monitor claim it has prevented those working on behalf of the EU from evaluating the effectiveness of the EU's own spending! Steinberg continues:

While the EU funds a few political advocacy NGOs in other democracies (three in the U.S., a handful in Canada, for example – and not in secret), there is nothing comparable to the scale of its involvement in Israeli civil society... European officials understandably fear public criticism of their role in alienating millions of Israelis who reject the neo-colonialist effort to use groups like Peace Now to manipulate Israeli democracy. €600 million from European taxpayers allows their well-compensated lawyers and public relations firms to flood the courts with frivolous political lawsuits, and to travel around the world campaigning against Israel.

Steinberg asserts that approximately sixty million Euro goes to anti-Israeli NGOs each year. The figure is loosely based on fund disclosures by NGOs themselves. However, the figure may be substantially larger considering the secrecy of the endeavour, and indeed Steinberg goes on to question the judicial process adopted by the European Court of Justice, suggesting perhaps that a level of intervention occurred:

in an extraordinary violation of the ECJ’s rules of judicial procedures, we were prevented from presenting the case. To protect the EU's most important secrets, the ECJ handed down a decision without even hearing oral arguments. It blindly accepted EU assertions that public disclosure of the details of funding decisions would lead to violence, and no attempt was made to examine the record and the implausibility of such scenarios. The identities of the NGO recipients are known – many boast about their European funding; but the EU decision making has been kept secret. The ruling - for a change, a public document - is filled with inconsistencies, and also avoids the core issues regarding due process and the public's right to know.

A divergent economic motivation

The EEC (EU) signed its first free trade area deal with Israel in 1975. However, Europe's one-sided criticism of the Jewish State is just as old. Despite the development of further trade deals between the EU and Israel, European criticism of the Jewish State intensified. In the aftermath of the 1973 OPEC crisis, the EEC took an increasingly vocal role in support of the Palestinian position because its oil security, and financial stability, was subject to blackmail. 

Why would the EU attempt to appease the oil-rich Arab world whilst maintaining close trade relations with Israel? Perhaps because Israel increasingly constitutes something of a technology-based economic super-power, regardless of its tiny geographic area and populace. It has almost half the number of companies listed on the NASDAQ financial index as the totality of all twenty seven nations of which the entire European Union community comprises! Even Russia, Israel's old diplomatic foe, is showing an interest in improving relations. It would seem that strategically the EU seeks the best of both worlds.

Ultimately, Europe’s highly secretive efforts to fund anti-Israeli NGOs, its failure to properly regulate funding to the Palestinian Authority, its continued reluctance to censure Hizbullah, and its prolific criticism of the Jewish State, can justly be seen as a sustained semi-covert propagandistic assault on Israel’s legitimacy.


For further information on the EU’s conduct please see "The EU at war with Israel".

Did Hamas Engineer Border Violence to Extract a Dangerous Concession from Israel?

Protest at the Gaza border fence (east of Khan Yunis), 23/11/12

Conflict at the Gaza border on the 23^rd November, in which one Gazan man was shot dead by the IDF, has added to claims by supporters of the Palestinian cause that Israel was aggressor in the November 2012 conflict. The death of a 13 year old boy, supposedly killed by the IDF whilst playing soccer, is credited by pro-Palestinians for instigating the minor war, despite the fact that there were attacks against the IDF earlier that day, and reports indicate events surrounding the boy’s death diverge strongly.

On the 23^rd, a large number of Gazan’s amassed at a particular point by the border fence with Israel. Some claimed they were agricultural workers. Other Palestinian sources claimed these people were in fact on their way to prayer, Friday being the Muslim holy day. Hamas claimed the IDF response was a ceasefire violation but urged terrorist groups within Gaza to remain calm, should further violence harm Hamas’ gains made by Israel’s overly generous concessions in the ceasefire deal, signed two days previously, and put at risk the consolidation of its power in Gaza.

Most online (and broadcast) video of the incident comes from Russian news channel RT, which is not often regarded as an impartial source. The footage is heavily edited but still indicates the Palestinian presence at the border was far from peaceful.

Indeed, a provocative element within the gathering is at least partially acknowledged by the comments of a relative of the deceased man, who was present during the Israeli gunfire. To quote Reuters:

“Anwar [Qdeih] was trying to put a Hamas flag on the fence,” said Omar Qdeih, a relative of the man killed who was at the scene.

“The army fired three times into the air. Anwar shouted at them ‘Jaabari is behind you’, then they shot him in the head,” he told Reuters.

Thus the intensity of the Palestinian presence seems to have been significant. Many sources also refer to the fact that the border area has long been understood to be a closed zone due to terrorist attacks, e.g:

Health officials said Anwar Qdeih, 23, was hit in the head by Israeli gunfire after he approached the security fence that runs between Israel and Gaza — an area that Israel has long declared a no-go zone for Palestinians.

It would seem probable that a significant portion of the three hundred or more Palestinians present tried to damage and/or cross the border, which is a common activity when protests at the border occur.

Warning shots were fired into the air to distance the crowd from the fence but some kept coming or remained on scene as the video footage suggests. The IDF claim that shots were also fired at the legs of some protestors after they continued their apparent attempt to cross into Israel. Such actions tally with standard IDF procedure at the border — an area that has long been a source of conflict. Reportedly, a Gazan man infiltrated Israeli territory in the course of the border commotion but was promptly sent back to Gaza.

Furthermore, the fact that a significant number of people gathered in one place along many miles of border suggests a level of planning prior to the confrontation. There are no reports of similar incidents involving casualties at other parts of the border.

Although accounts vary on the way in which a Gaza-based Palestinian man got through the border in the early hours of the following Monday, to then commit a knife attack against an Israeli woman and her children in their home, some reports state that it occurred after he was able to infiltrate the border due to damage caused by the events of November 23^rd.
 

Showing little fear of their supposed oppressors

It is notable that the trouble at the Israeli-Gazan border occurred at the same sort of location to that of several other significant flash-points of conflict, which led to Operation Pillar of Cloud. Moreover, there were reports of further demonstrations in the area after the death of Anwar Qdeih was known.

Protest at the Gaza border fence (east of Khan Yunis), 23/11/12

On the one hand, this behaviour suggests that many Palestinians do not take the risk of confronting the IDF seriously. This is a definite possibility, when considering the spectacle of children attempting to provoke armed soldiers, in collusion with older Palestinians shooting video nearby. Such behaviour does not neatly fit the common anti-Israeli portrait of the IDF as barbaric genocidal Nazi-like killers.

However, background to this post-Pillar of Cloud border conflict suggests a complex political intent.

An article by the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency states there was a little-reported incident at the Gaza border one day after the ceasefire (Thursday the 22^nd), where it was claimed some two hundred protestors tried to break through the border. The Times of Israel also alludes to the event, stating two Palestinians were injured by Israeli gunfire when “marching” near the same area as the bigger protest the next day.

The common and repeated nature of these two confrontations may well suggest that Hamas was involved in the incidents. Hamas is noted for ruling Gaza with an iron grip and a watchful eye, to the extent that its crackdowns on dissent have harmed its popularity in Gaza to a significant degree. The very high sensitivity of the border area, especially in the immediate aftermath of outright war, would of course be obvious to the group. There is a high probability that the group engineered or at least gave their assent to the border confrontations.

Hamas having such an intent would be far from unprecedented, as the Nabka Day border attacks attest. In 2011, 45 Palestinians were injured attempting to break through the border. There were a number of casualties in similar protests this year, and the Gaza-Egyptian border has not been exempt from similarly well organised violent protests/riots either.

At this time, engineering confrontations at very sensitive border areas has a positive political benefit for Hamas. In the short term, direct terrorist attacks are no longer a viable political option, after having agreed to the ceasefire. It would lead to criticism of their stance, and also place at risk the significant political gains they have obtained in the ceasefire agreement. Hamas also have cause to complain to their clearly sympathetic Egyptian mediators by claiming Israel were the first to break the ceasefire.

According to the Ma’an News Agency, Hamas have since deployed “security forces” nearer the border with Israel in the aftermath of the border incidents. Reports suggest the conflict at the border would seem to have legitimised such a move, perhaps even in Israel’s eyes.

The increased vulnerability of the border has already been exposed with the crossing of a Gazan terrorist, who stabbed a woman in her family home whilst she was attempting to defend her four children, before fleeing and being shot. The event echoed the savage attack on the Fogel family last year, and could have been just as destructive if it were not for the fact the woman in question was a martial arts expert [h/t AnneinPT]. However, such a significant violation has been largely ignored by the international media, after they produced a high volume of content over the November 23^rd border shooting, and a substantial reportage critical of Israel’s border buffer zone.

The loss (or compromise) of the buffer zone will also make Israeli forces more vulnerable to attack and kidnap, a stated aim of Hamas’ leaders, with tunnelling made easier. Hamas has openly refused to stop re-arming because it claims it can only extract concessions from Israel with violence.

If Hamas poses a medium-term risk, there is still reason to think there may be a more imminent risk of hostilities re-commencing, with Islamic Jihad’s deputy-leader, Ziad Nakhalah, describing the ceasefire as “temporary and partial.”

 


Also published at Crethi Plethi.

Manufacturing blood libel: Hamas’ propaganda war

(Updated November the 19^th 2012)

Intensive propaganda campaigns led by Palestinian terrorist groups are perhaps the most predictable occurrence when it comes to any minor or major conflict involving Israel. Typically, the strategy is to exaggerate death tolls, and conflate the killing of terrorist combatants with that of innocent civilians, in an effort to turn the issue on its head when Israel engages in morally legitimate acts of self-defence.

The display of highly emotive imagery is central to the strategy, and the most tasteless element must surely be the use of children. Children on both sides suffer, and conflict would of course cause fear to children, if not suffering and death. This is particularly the case where conflict arises in relatively dense population areas, where terrorist groups intentionally use a civilian populace for cover. Nonetheless, many of these stories are often faked or greatly exaggerated, and any apparent suffering paraded to the point of frenzy, a phenomenon that is intensifying with the use of social media sites like Twitter.

The recent violence between Hamas and Israel, leading to Operation Pillar of Cloud, has proven no exception. Almost immediately, Hamas began misrepresenting images of children that had been injured or killed in Syria as Palestinian dead. Notably, one of Hamas’ own supporters called out some of the fakery in a Tweet.

Hamas tweeted the above image relating to the November Israeli air strikes.
However, the image appeared in an October montage relating to the Syrian conflict
(the Dar al Shifa Hospital, Aleppo).



Similarly, a heartrending image of a dead two year-old child killed by the Syrian armed forces has also been passed off as another Palestinian casualty in the recent Israeli air strikes.



The image of a dead two year-old child was posted by Abo Kazem Saad,
a Gazan Face Book user, blaming Israel for the death.
In fact the child was killed in October by a Syrian sniper in Aleppo.

Pictures of a dead boy, four-year-old Mohammed Sadallah, being held by a tearful Egyptian Prime Minister, have done the rounds through the mainstream media. It was claimed that the child was killed in an Israeli air strike, while Israel denied they had carried out attacks on the area in question. A report by The Daily Telegraph, corrections by other media sources (such as Reuters and CNN), and even a Palestinian NGO, now affirm the child was killed by a stray Palestinian rocket.

Four-year-old Mohammed Sadallah killed by Palestinian rocket

These forgeries are all the more ironic when it has been shown repeatedly that Hamas (and other "militant" groups) are intentionally endangering its own populace by positioning their weaponry within dense civilian locations, as news reports coming from Gaza itself in recent days do attest.



The strategy: Israel (AKA Jew) as child killer

There are many examples of forged Palestinian propaganda, most of which get no media attention, other than the case of Mohammad Al-Dura, a death proven to be falsified, and made in collusion with elements of the French media, a fact journalists at Haaretz and the Guardian have poured doubt upon.

In June Hamas claimed that an Israeli air strike killed a child. However, no strike appeared to have been conducted in the area in question, and the UN confirmed another cause. In March, AFP retracted a faked Hamas story concerning a child supposedly dying due to electricity shortages.

Such propaganda is heavily promoted internationally by pro-Palestinian groups, which can often come to resemble proxies, and indeed many pro-Palestinians are also very keen to take the initiative for themselves. Examples this year include an image of a young girl purportedly killed in an Israeli air strike but the girl in question was actually a casualty of an accident six years earlier, which was knowingly peddled on Twitter by no less than a member of the UN.

This content goes viral within a very short time, so viewed by millions of users. The fakery does not need to be of a good standard to be believed either. Overtly falsified incidents, such as a staged event where a child is seen under a supposed IDF soldier’s boot, have found similar success on the Internet.

Pallywood becomes Hammywood – Al Dura style

It has been noted that many news outlets minimised or failed to report that the present conflict was very much initiated by Hamas. Indeed, the strategy of delaying the reporting of news stories concerning the conflict until Israel strikes back, whereby headlines lead with Israel’s actions, seems to have almost become editorial policy at the majority of mainstream news institutions, due to the astonishing frequency of such occurrences.

The BBC, a major international news outlet, broadcast content on their prime news bulletins that was clearly falsified. This occurred only a day after Operation Pillar of Cloud had commenced.

A man in a tan-brown jacket, and black top featuring small print, is carried away by a crowd, circa 2:14 in the clip. The same man is seen walking around a short time later (circa 2:44). Both shots happened in the seemingly chaotic aftermath of a strike. Two alternatives can be posited. Either the scene was largely faked or a gravely injured man was up and walking again unassisted in a matter of minutes.

The footage is in fact redolent of old unedited Pallywood material, in which youths and men are seen falling as if just shot by the IDF only to get up again.

Consequences

The Palestinian movement, both at home and abroad, has engaged in an intensive campaign to delegitimise its enemy for decades. We see its consequences every time we view news of the conflict in our newspapers, on our TV sets, radios, computers, and increasingly our phones.

Knowledge in the hands of would-be genocidists is a tool of war, and ought to be treated as such. However, elements within the media are complicit.

Obviously such material further incites hatred in a region where there is already more than enough to go around. The examples cited in this article are just occasions when Hamas have been caught out, and it should be noted that the success of this material necessitates most being passed off as genuine.

The focus on children taps into the anti-Semitic canard of the Jew as child killer, as exemplified by Carlos Latuff’s illustrations — a motif prolifically adopted by mainstream pro-Palestinianism. It is a tool to engineer broad anti-Semitic blood libel, which Hamas has long been keen to promote for obvious reasons - it is far easier to deny an utterly dehumanised enemy any right of co-existence.

At this time of conflict, it should be affirmed that the many who defend Hamas do so at the expense of the Palestinians themselves. Those claiming Hamas are elected representatives conveniently forget that they imposed an effective dictatorship on the electorate by repeatedly delaying elections. We are constantly told Hamas are pragmatists, sheep in the clothing of wolves, but with the present fracas Hamas have essentially started an unwinnable war over the killing of a leading terrorist. It shows where their priorities truly lie.

Article Seven of Hamas’ Charter also gives a hint

The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’

Similarly the words of Hamas’ leaders attest to extremism, some of whom believe Allah brought the Jews to Palestine for the purpose of “The Great Massacre” to be instigated by the Palestinian nation.

Also published at Crethi Plethi.