Ezra Nawi, an Israeli Jewish plumber, has a long history as a left-wing activist helping Palestinians in their struggle against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Now he is under arrest in Israel, after a right-wing activist surreptitiously filmed him bragging about exposing Arab brokers who tried to sell Palestinian land to Jewish settlers. Such sales are a capital crime under Palestinian law.
Considered
variously as a big-mouthed provocateur and a colorful human-rights
adventurer, Mr. Nawi has become the latest symbol in the battle between
advocacy groups on opposite sides of Israel’s political spectrum, and
the increasingly fierce debate here over the nature of Israeli society
and democracy.
The debate has heated up as Israel’s conservative government is pushing
forward contentious legislation that would require nongovernmental
organizations to disclose funding they receive from foreign governments
in their publications, advertising and meetings with public officials.
The proposed bill, which supporters say is meant to increase
transparency, would apply mainly to leftist groups critical of Israel’s
policy toward the Palestinians, since rightist groups mostly receive
private funding from abroad, and it has already drawn harsh criticism
from the Obama administration and European diplomats.
No, this story is not about the NGO law, which the Times so hates. It's about yet another Leftist fascist who thinks he has the right to endanger other people's lives.
It
is an odd case. Mr. Nawi, described in a 2009 New York Times profile as
“the Robin Hood of the South Hebron Hills,” helping Palestinians who
love him and “thwarting settlers and soldiers who view him with
contempt,” is now accused of endangering the lives of Palestinians. That
is because selling land to Israeli Jews is punishable by death
according to the Palestinian Authority. Although the authority is not
known to have carried out any executions for any offense in more than a
decade, there have been reports of torture in its prisons.
The
Ad Kan video, from about a year ago, shows Mr. Nawi behind the wheel of
his jeep, bragging about what appeared to be a dubious sideline to his
activist work in the West Bank.
He told the man sitting next to him, whom he believed to be a fellow
sympathizer, that he sometimes posed as a land broker and engaged with
other land dealers mediating sales of Palestinian-owned land to Jewish
settlers, then handed over their details to the Palestinian Authority
security services.
Asked what the Authority did with such people, Mr. Nawi said it “catches them and kills them.”
Days later, he was arrested at the airport as he was about to leave the country.
Odd? Not to anyone who knows the history of Israel's prosecutorial regime burying charges against the Left. Only by gathering evidence so convincing that even the Left-leaning Uvda had to run with it or lose all credibility could Nawi's disgusting behavior be exposed.
There is a story here. Too bad it's not the one the Times chose to tell.
Jewish Voice for 'peace' seeks to free accessory to murder
Israel Radio reported this morning that a Jew and a 'Palestinian' - both 'peace activists' - are being held for meeting with an enemy foreign agent.
While the radio did not disclose who they are, the uber-Leftist Jew-haters at Jewish Voice for 'peace' are petitioning for his release (if you think my description of JVP is an overstatement, go here).
If you're wondering why this Jewish-born drek is being held, go here.
Video with English translation of Ezra Nawi saying he turns 'Palestinian' land sellers over for torture and death
Thursday night's video showing Leftist 'human rights' activists Ezra Nawi and Nasser Najawa ran 44 minutes long. Now, StandWithUs has translated two of the key minutes into English (subtitles).
Let's go to the videotape.
Palestinians deserve the freedom to make decisions about their own property. Those who consider themselves Palestinian...
Posted by StandWithUs on Sunday, January 10, 2016
By the way, I hope the gentleman referred to in the video as 'Arik' (the one who did the recording) is well-hidden. Nawi undoubtedly knows who he is and surely wants to have him killed.
Israel's Left is circling the wagons around two of its own. Ta'ayush's Ezra Nawi (pictured) and B'Tselem's Nasser Nawaja were shown on Israeli television on Thursday night telling a Right wing activist with a hidden camera that they turn over 'Palestinians' who wish to sell land to Jews to the 'Palestinian security forces' for torture and death.
Although the story has gotten little exposure outside of Israel, here it's all the rage. Over the weekend, Israel's hard left has been circling the wagons to defend Nawi and Nawaja.
Both Nawi and Nawaja are among the most internationally renowned
members of Israel’s radical left. Earlier this year, Nawaja published an
anti-Israeli op-ed in The New York Times,
accusing the Jewish state of “dispossession and oppression.” Nawi is
considerably more prominent: when he was arrested, in 2007, for
attacking Israeli policemen during a West Bank demonstration, more than
20,000 people—including a long list of prominent Israeli academics as
well as progressive American celebrities like Noam Chomsky and Naomi
Klein—signed a petition demanding his release.
Responding to the piece with a statement on its Facebook page,
B’Tselem said that while it opposed tortures and executions, reporting
Palestinians interested in selling land to Israelis to the PA was “the
only legitimate course of action.”
These revelations comes at an inopportune moment for the two NGOs, as
the Israeli government is considering measures to regulate non-profit
organizations receiving financial support from foreign governments. Ta’ayush,
according to the Jerusalem-based group NGO-Monitor, receives some
foreign donations but does not disclose its funding.
B’Tselem, on the
other hand, is considered one of Israel’s leading civil rights
organizations, and receives financial support from
the governments of Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands,
Norway, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, as well as the European
Union and the New Israel Fund.
Amazingly, B'Tselem, a favored grantee of the American non-profit organization The New Israel Fund, defended the action portrayed on today’s show, claiming that “This is the only legitimate channel for a Palestinian.”
Israel’s Education Minister Naftali Bennett accused the
New Israel Fund and the European Union of funding Israeli human rights
activists who turn in innocent Palestinians, and later urged foreign
ambassadors to Israel to stop transferring funds to these organizations.
(Both, B’Tselem and Ta’ayush receive funding from France and the United Kingdom, as well as from American Jews.)
Ta’ayush has in the past partnered with Rabbis for Human Rights
– of which Rabbi Gordon Tucker of Temple Israel of White Plains is a
donor - to bring “hundreds of volunteers to work side-by-side with
Palestinian farmers during Olive Harvest campaign.”
The pushback from the Left has been so fierce that even journalists like Maariv's Ben Caspit and Haaretz's Barak Ravid (both Leftists themselves) have criticized the Left wing organizations for not disavowing Nawi and Nawaja (links in Hebrew).
Of course, then there are the real Jew haters, like Gideon Levy, who still has a platform at Haaretz.
In a report on left-wing groups which operate in the West Bank, Uvda aired secretly recorded footage
of Israeli activist Ezra Nawi saying that he had exposed Palestinian
land brokers who sold West Bank land to Jews, and turned them over to
the Palestinian Authority.The right wing and the settlers celebrated the
event of course. Another outpost has fallen into their hands. They have
already compared the left-wing activist Nawi to the Duma murderers, no
less. The rightists and settlers, known for their deep concern about the
lives of Palestinians, were shocked by Nawi’s statements. But the right
is not the story. The story is how a lethal virus has penetrated what
is almost the last outpost of real journalism.
How has a McCarthyist right-wing organization, whose motives are
clear (and despicable) and whose sources are unknown, succeeded with
such ease in enticing such respected journalists as Ilana Dayan and Omri
Assenheim? How has this flagship joined the ranks of the false
propaganda which masquerades as journalism?
That is how to conduct delegitimization. That is how it is done to
liberal organizations in the darkest of regimes, and now here too, and
on Uvda – no less.
Presenting the human rights organizations as dangerous groups, and
penetrating them, is compared to penetrating ISIS. The McCarthyists are
glorified, depicted as heroes of Israel who excelled in battles in Gaza.
All these are well-known ploys. And against this background, all that
is left is to record Nawi boasting, to catch him uttering the taboo
words, to present him as a “senior” activist, to ignore the entire
context — the crimes of the occupation and the expulsion form the
Southern Hebron Hills, which you never heard about on Uvda. Just ignore
the holy work done by left-wing activists in this battered region, spice
it with a few lies such as “execution” by the Palestinian Authority,
add a few generalizations, suspicions and slander – and the dish is
ready.
To those of you with even the slightest suspicion that Levy is onto something, I suggest that you go watch the video of Thursday night's broadcast (it's in Hebrew only, but I summarized it here). It doesn't get much more clear cut. Nawi and Najawa turned 'Palestinians' who wanted to sell land to Jews ('Palestinians' whose existence the Israeli Left denies) over to the 'Palestinian security services' for torture and murder. And they did it with a sadistic smile.
'Human rights' organizations @taayush and @btselem turn 'Palestinian' land seller over to 'Palestinian security services' for torture
For those who can, I strongly recommend watching the original report (44 minutes in Hebrew). Unfortunately, Blogger only allows the uploading of videos up to 100 megabytes - this one is nearly 180 megabytes.
Here's a brief summary:
Ilana Dayan's Uvda (Fact) program on Israel's Channel 10 last night featured an expose on a group of Right wing activists from the center of the country who managed to place a mole in Taayush, a Jewish-Arab organization that advocates for 'Palestinian human rights.'
The mole, an alumnus of an elite IDF combat unit who won an award for bravery during the war in Gaza in the summer of 2014 (while this was going on!), managed to record Ezra Nawi, the Jewish leader of Taayush, in conversations with an Arab land owner who wished to sell land south of Hebron (near Jewish villages) to Jews.
Nawi met with the land seller (in the mole's presence), and then proceeded to conspire with a Btselem 'Palestinian' activist named Nasser Nawajeh to turn the land seller over for 'investigation' by the 'Palestinian security services.'
Yes, that's right, the European-financed 'human rights organizations' turned over (and apparently not for the first time) a 'Palestinian' who wished to sell land to Jews to the 'Palestinian security services' for torture (Nawi says it outright) and 'neutralization' (i.e. murder).
I'm hoping this video will be translated into English because it rips the mask off the 'human rights' activists and the self-hating Jews who are trying to destroy the Jewish state.
The laws on ownership of land under the Palestinian Authority (PA),
originally enacted during the Jordanian occupation of Judea and Samaria
(1948–1967), prohibit Arabs from selling Arab-owned lands to “any man or
judicial body corporation of Israeli citizenship, living in Israel or
acting on its behalf.” According to several media sources, including the
NY Times, Ha’aretz and Jerusalem Post, selling land to Jews is
considered an act of treason by the Arabs because it threatens the
future Palestinian state and leads to “the spread of moral, political
and security corruption”. Arabs in the Palestinian Authority who sell
land to Israelis may be sentenced to death. The interrogation by PA
security forces of Arabs suspected of selling land to Jews involves
severe torture.
...
When asked what happens once Palestinian Authority police lays its
hands on the sellers, Nawi says, “It catches them, kills them.” He then
added with a vicious smile, “First Zubur, then Gazanga.” Zubur is an
Arabic word used in Hebrew to describe hazing—humiliation and physical
torment. The Gazanga part is not a known word, but implies, in the
context of the tape, the demise of the victim.
Ezra Nawi and his Arab associate, B’Tselem activist Nasser Nawaj’ah,
from the village of Yatta, are left-wing stars, who have been part of
the anti-settlement movement for decades. This is why the Israeli left,
before and immediately following the broadcast Thursday night, began a
campaign in their defense.
The left has praised Nawi and Nawaj’ah to high heaven over the years,
including accolades from linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist,
historian, logician, social critic, and political activist Noam Chomsky;
author, social activist, and filmmaker Naomi Klein; Ben-Gurion
University Prof. Niv Gordon; and Meretz Chairperson MK Zehava Galon.
They will not allow for these two folk hero activists to gain a new
renown as agents of death.
B’Tselem accused the show of legitimizing what was, essentially, a
right-wing operation. In that sense, the fact that journalist Dayan
described sending to their certain death Arabs whose only sin is wanting
to sell land to Jews, appears from B’Tselem’s point of view like her
embracing of the “occupation.” Gideon Levy told Dayan on air that “If
that’s all that those plants discovered, it’s a badge of honor for the
human rights organizations.”
...
Deputy Knesset Speaker MK Betzalel Smotrich said “what we’ve watched
tonight is the loss of a moral compass, a betrayal of the State of
Israel and an injury to life under the guise of defending human rights.
This phenomenon is not an invention of Ezra Nawi, unfortunately it is
typical of many of the extremist left wing organizations which are
concealing an extremist political agenda under the cover of human
rights.”
The report’s editor, Ami Assenheim, told Makor Rishon about the
process that preceded the screening: “Nawi is not alone,” he said. “You
see a mix of left-wing activists from other places. Nawi collaborates
with another Jewish activist in Ta’ayush. These are not the actions of a
single individual in a single organization. You see people conspiring
to turn in a land broker to the Preventive Security Force (PSF), knowing
what would be the fate of people like him. They were very embarrassed
when we called them up for a response. There were long silences and
phone hang-ups.”
Nawi himself accused the report of being an effort to sabotage his
heroic work on behalf of the Palestinian population in the southern
Hebron Mountain. “I wasn’t the one trapping the land broker, the
opposite is true,” he said. Nasser Nawaj’ah also denied his role as it
was described in the report, but not quite with the same level of
self-righteousness.
A couple of comments. The timing of this show's release is probably not accidental. As I have noted previously, the Knesset is currently considering a bill to expose foreign government funding of 'NGO's. This show could well advance that bill.
The comments by the Right wing infiltrators at the end were particularly notable. They said that they actually feel sorry for the ordinary 'Palestinians' who are being used not only by their own 'leadership,' but also by organizations that purport to protect their human rights. In other words, the Israeli Right is far more humane to 'Palestinians' than are the 'human rights' organizations.
Sadly, this story is unlikely to get a lot of publicity outside of Israel. But that shouldn't stop us from trying.
Bennett to BBC: 'The 'human rights' groups will criticize us even if we hand out chocolates'
Here's the reason why Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home party is gaining in the polls faster than the Likud. Here's a great interview that Bennett did with the BBC today.
And they call themselves a 'human rights' organization
B'Tzelem is one of Israel's better known 'human rights' organizations. One of the things that they fight is 'administrative detention,' which is a remnant of the British Mandate that allows persons suspected of crimes to be held without trial for several months. In this video, you will see two interesting things about B'Tzelem.
First, you will see that B'tzelem managed to get the leader of the terror cell that carried out the Bat Yam bus bombing last month released from administrative detention just a few months ago.
And second, you will see that B'Tzelem only objects to administrative detention when 'Palestinians' are being detained. When Jews are detained - as has been happening regularly going back to the early protests against the 'peace process' in 1993-94 - B'Tzelem isn't interested.
I have a troll on Twitter whose bio describes him as an 'activist for human rights.' I don't bother to answer him because when a troll has 29 followers and you have 4,789, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to give him exposure by responding to him. So I let him vent in privacy knowing that 30 people or less are actually seeing what he says. Regardless, it will be interesting to see whether and how he responds to this story.
You see a story like this, and you have to wonder why the 'human rights' organizations seem to have no interest. Oh wait, I don't have to wonder. They can't find a way to blame Israel for the marriage partners chosen by the 'Palestinians,' for the birth defects that result from those choices, for the fact that Muslims are allowed to have more than one wife, or for the fact that 'Palestinian' society thinks it's Sparta. So the so-called defenders of 'human rights' just don't care about a kid like Mohammed. Besides, Israel is paying for his care anyway....
Born in Gaza with a rare genetic disease, Mohammed’s hands and feet were
amputated because of complications from his condition, and the
3½-year-old carts about in a tiny red wheelchair. His parents abandoned
him, and the Palestinian government won’t pay for his care, so he lives
at the hospital with his grandfather.
...
Mohammed’s plight is an extreme example of the
harsh treatment some families mete out to the disabled, particularly in
the more tribal-dominated corners of the Gaza Strip, even as
Palestinians make strides in combating such attitudes.
It also demonstrates a costly legacy of Gaza’s
strongly patriarchal culture that prods women into first-cousin
marriages and allows polygamy, while rendering mothers powerless over
their children’s fate.
Mohammed was rushed to Israel as a newborn for
emergency treatment. His genetic disorder left him with a weakened
immune system and crippled his bowels, doctors say, and an infection
destroyed his hands and feet, requiring them to be amputated.
In the midst of his treatment, his mother
abandoned Mohammed because her husband, ashamed of their son, threatened
to take a second wife if she didn’t leave the baby and return to their
home in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis, Farra said. In Gaza,
polygamy is permitted but isn’t common. But it’s a powerful threat to
women fearful of competing against newer wives.
Now Mohammed spends his days undergoing treatment and learning how to use prosthetic limbs.
His 55-year-old grandfather cares for him.
Mohammed’s Israeli doctors, who’ve grown attached to the boy, fund-raise
to cover his bills, allowing him and his grandfather to live in the
sunny pediatric ward.
But it’s not clear how long he’ll stay in the
hospital, or where he’ll go when his treatment is complete. As a
Palestinian, Mohammed is not eligible for permanent Israeli residency.
Yet his family will not take the child back, the grandfather said. His
parents, contacted by The Associated Press, refused to comment.
What if a 'Palestinian journalist' went on a hunger strike and no one noticed?
Earlier this week, a 'Palestinian' journalist named Youssef Al-Shayeb was arrested for writing a story for the Jordanian daily al-Ghad about corruption at the 'Palestinian' embassy in Paris. On Wednesday, al-Shayeb was arrested and remanded into custody for 15 days. Now, he has gone on a hunger strike.
Al-Shayeb was detained for interrogation following a complaint filed against him by PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki and the head of the diplomatic mission in Paris.
"Al-Shayeb has gone on hunger strike to protest against his arbitrary detention," a Palestinian journalist in Ramallah said. "We see the detention as an assault on freedom of expression in the Palestinian territories." Another journalist said that the detention of Al-Shayeb was aimed at sending a warning to all reporters who dare to criticize the PA government or report about cases of corruption.
"In the coming days we will launch a campaign to demand the release of Al-Shayeb," he told The Jerusalem Post. "His arrest is a flagrant violation of freedom of speech." Several Palestinian human rights groups have also joined calls for releasing Al-Shayeb, who faces charges of "slander and libel." The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms said that the "era of imprisoning journalists belongs to the past." The center said that there was no reason why the journalist should remain in detention despite the charges against him.
...
The group said that it was ironic that that on the same day that Al-Shayeb was taken into custody, the PA government in Ramallah announced an Award for Freedom of Media in 2012 and invited Palestinian journalists to submit their candidacy.
Several Palestinian bloggers have also condemned the detention of Al-Shayeb, urging the PA to release him immediately and unconditionally. Malki, meanwhile, defended the decision to detain the journalist and accused him of "committing a sin against the media." Malki told the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency that he did not understand why Palestinian journalists were angry over the detention of their colleague.
Accusing Al-Shayeb of publishing lies and fabrications, the PA foreign minister said that the journalist deserved to be punished. He also urged Palestinian journalists to distance themselves from Al-Shayeb.
Will anyone care? Will the New York Times even notice? Will 'Human Rights Watch'? Reporters without Borders? No, none of them will notice or care. Al-Shayeb's problem is that he was arrested by the 'Palestinian Authority' and not by Israel.
Shavua tov v'chodesh tov, a good week and a good month to everyone.
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, March 23.
1) Ready? Yes. Credible? Not so much.
In his defense of the New York Times's treatment of Israel, Neil Lewis lists a number of factors that led to changes in the way the paper covered Israel. One factor was:
The development of non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) within Israel as advocates for the Palestinians which gave Western journalists a ready and credible source which could be used to criticize the Israeli government.
Anyone familiar with the behavior of human rights NGO's in the Middle East recently would question the modifier, "credible." As Avi Bell wrote earlier this week:
NGO Monitor, which contacted UC-Davis to protest Whitson's invitation to the school, has catalogued the most egregious instances of her selective advocacy. Whitson's actions in Libya are particularly revealing. Only a year and a half before the International Criminal Court indicted Saif al Islam Gaddafi for crimes against humanity for his role in the torture and massacre of Libyan civilians, Whitson hailed him for helping to create a supposed "Tripoli Spring." Though Saif al Islam is the son of Moammar Gaddafi and was one of the tyrannical regime's top officials, Whitson focused on his leadership of a quasi-governmental charity foundation and his establishment of two semi-private newspapers. Committed to marketing "a shift in the Libyan winds," Whitson did not mention that the Libyan regime had already closed the papers and was censoring the internet. Eight months later, Whitson called Saif al Islam one of Libya's "forces of reform" and praised a "hard-hitting" human rights report released by his foundation. While lauding tyrants, Whitson was measured in her advocacy on behalf of Fathi al-Jahmi, Libya's foremost dissident. Al-Jahmi died in 2009 after years of torture and solitary confinement. His family continued to suffer persecution from the Libyan regime following his death, with his brother singling out Whitson, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International as illustrations of the corrupted human rights complex in Libya.
Now it's true that this is only one NGO, but Gerald Steinberg writes about how widespread dishonesty is among NGO's is and how it has impacted Israel.
From the apparently staged death of Mohammed al Dura in 2000, filmed dying in his father’s arms, through the inventions of the 2009 Goldstone Report and the recent responses to missile attacks from Gaza, Israel has been repeated and falsely accused of deliberately killing Palestinian children. As Joe Hyams wrote, this is the modern version of the blood libel. As often happens in this crude propaganda war, the terrorist targeting of Israeli and Jewish children is flipped into an accusation against the defenders. Even the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, echoed the ignominious comparison in a public statement. In this long campaign, many of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that claim to promote human rights and humanitarian assistance have become accomplices, both willingly and unwillingly. The leaders of international organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International propagated the al Dura accusations based entirely on the claims of a single Palestinian cameraman working for French television, without any independent corroboration. In the notorious 2001 UN Durban conference in which 1500 NGOs, including HRW and Amnesty, launched a deadly political war to isolate Israel as a “racist” and “apartheid” state, the image of al Dura was dominant. As part of the Durban plan of action, a 2009 HRW “report” on Israeli drone strikes in Gaza had an emotionally laden cover picture with photos of two children – alleged victims of these attacks. The graphic and HRW’s entire report were based on a combination of unverifiable Palestinian “eyewitness” testimony and pseudo-technical claims that were contradicted by military experts. The lead author this report, Marc Garlasco, was forced to leave HRW after his obsessive collection of Nazi memorabilia was revealed, but no independent review of the accuracy of his reports was undertaken. This report reinforced the propaganda campaign that seeks to label Israelis as child murderers and war criminals.
Still many NGO's in Israel find themselves increasingly marginalized, so they look for friendly media outlets where they can lament over the supposed threats to democracy in Israel so they can drum up some more donations.
If Peace Now, for example, were honest, it would be celebrating the fact that Israel now looks a lot different than it did 18 years ago instead of assailing the Israeli government for not sweetening a deal to a man who has already rejected a peace deal once.
If B'Tselem were honest it would stop claiming that Israel has failed to investigate alleged abuses that occurred during Cast Lead adequately. Given that hundreds of thousands of Israelis are living under a threat of rocket attacks, makes their complaint tasteless.
The out of touch attitude displayed by these organizations is the reason they have little real influence within Israel. If must be nice for them to have an outlet willing to accept their self-interested press releases uncritically.
Several years after leaving government, I wrote a piece in the Washington Post titled "Israel's Lawyer." The article was an honest effort to explain how several senior officials in U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration (myself included) had a strong inclination to see the Arab-Israeli negotiations through a pro-Israel lens. That filter played a role -- though hardly the primary one -- in the failure of endgame diplomacy, particularly at the ill-fated Camp David summit in July 2000. Unsurprisingly, the piece was hijacked in the service of any number of agendas, especially by critics of Israel only too eager to use my narrow point about the Clinton years to make their broader one: America had long compromised its own values and interests in the Middle East by its blind and sordid obeisance to the Jewish state and its pro-Israeli supporters in the United States.
I still don't see a huge difference between Miller's op-ed and what critics of Israel allege. Miller was saying that America was too pro-Israel to be effective and that's what Israel's critics saw his op-ed as proving. The only difference might be is that Miller doesn't see being "Israel's lawyer" as being a matter of bad faith.
Does Miller really believe eleven and a half years later that if the Clinton administration had been a bit more solicitous of Arafat there would have been agreement at Camp David? If so he has learned nothings since he left government.
Still overall, he does make one useful point.
The idea that American Jews in collusion with the Israeli government (and, for some time now, evangelical Christians) hold U.S. foreign policy hostage is not only wrong and misleading but a dangerous, dark trope. It coexists with other hateful -- and, yes, anti-Semitic -- canards about how Jews control the media and the banks, and the world as well. It's reality distortion in the extreme, with little basis in fact. The historical record just doesn't support it. Strong, willful presidents who have real opportunities (and smart strategies to exploit them) to promote U.S. interests almost always win out and trump domestic lobbies.
A number of people have quoted this article favorably for one point or another. This article is limited by Miller's myopia and his unwavering faith in the peace process.
Bill Clinton also had his run-ins. One such incident was described by Dennis Ross in his memoir about his work as the top US Mideast negotiator. Ross described a meeting in Washington with Netanyahu shortly after he became prime minister the first time in 1996. "In the meeting with President Clinton, Netanyahu was nearly insufferable, lecturing and telling us how to deal with the Arabs." Ross recounts that afterwards a frustrated President Clinton remarked, "He thinks he is the superpower and we are here to do whatever he requires." Ross added, "No one on our side disagreed with that assessment."
"[O]ur side" in this case, I would assume, included Miller.
Three years later, after Clinton's repeated run-ins with Netanyahu led to the latter's electoral defeat, Charles Krauthammer noted:
Having failed to topple Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic, Bill Clinton had to settle for Benjamin Netanyahu. In a characteristic display of partisan glee, Clinton toasted political consultant Robert Shrum on Tuesday night (reports Lloyd Grove in The Washington Post) to congratulate him (and implicitly, the administration) for helping the Israeli opposition bring down the prime minister Washington loves to hate.
But, Krauthammer warned:
Yet for all the gloating at the White House, there is deep trouble ahead in the peace process. A momentous shift has occurred that has almost completely eluded the radar screen of the Western media and the attention of this administration. While Palestinians, Americans, Egyptians, other Arabs and many Israelis assiduously assailed Netanyahu for this or that alleged violation of the spirit of the Oslo peace accords, Yasser Arafat went on a 60-nation diplomatic tour--hardly a stealth campaign--to kill the accords.
The Clinton administration outmaneuvered Netanyahu and got the Prime Minister it wanted, Ehud Barak. Fifteen months later, in the wake of the failed Camp David summit, Arafat started a new terror against Israel. If Miller learned anything from these episodes, it is not apparent from this article. While I welcome his fight against the Israel lobby canard, I wish he would take the time to address some his remaining blind spots.
Noah Pollak reports that the Israeli 'human rights' group B'Tselem is sharing a 'human rights' award from a Danish foundation with the 'Palestinian' terror supporters at al-Haq.
The award will be presented in Copenhagen a few days from now, but only Jessica Montell, the head of B’Tselem, will be on hand to receive it. The head of Al Haq, Shawan Jabarin, cannot fly to Europe, or in fact anywhere — because he is banned from travel by both Israel and Jordan owing to his extensive involvement with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an infamous Palestinian terrorist group.
Remarkably, Montell will accept the award, and so proud is she to be sharing a prize with a terrorist that B’Tselem sent out a press release announcing it.
Al Haq, for its part, barely pretends to be interested in human rights. It advances spurious war crimes allegations against the Jewish state, promotes the worst kinds of anti-Israel (and anti-Semitic) activism, such as the Russell Tribunal and the Durban Conference, is deeply involved in the BDS and lawfare movements, and seeks the indictment of Israeli officials in European courts — goals, of course, often shared by Montell and B’Tselem.
Here's Noah's key paragraph.
The willingness of Montell to share an award with a terrorist is but a small window into the perverse world of the “human rights” community in Israel. The Palestinian groups specialize not in promoting peace and tolerance, but in attacking the legitimacy of Zionism and tarnishing Israel’s image in the world. Greatly enamored of international prosecutions of Israelis, I cannot recall a single instance in which one of the groups recommended the same treatment for a Palestinian. Tellingly, none of them takes a prominent stand against Palestinian terrorism or defends the human rights of Israelis not to be victims of attacks — and in the case of Al Haq, terrorism is in fact endorsed as legitimate “resistance.”
First, this particular moral rot isn’t confined to a few NGOs; it pervades the entire system of what is fondly called “international law” – which is why no self-respecting democracy should grant international law any credence.
Consider, for instance, a recent statementby one Awn Shawkat al-Khasawneh: “The expulsion of Hamas from Jordan in 1999 was a political and legal error. I will tell you openly, when the expulsion took place, I opposed it.” Khasawneh is Jordan’s new prime minister, and if that were all he was, the statement wouldn’t be shocking. But he also spent more than a decade as one of the 15 judges on the International Court of Justice, including three years as the court’s vice president, and before his first nine-year term expired in 2009, he was reelectedto a second.
In short, the world’s highest court included a judge who sees nothing wrong with blowing upbuses, pizzerias and Passover seders(at least as long as the slain women, children and senior citizens are Israelis), and therefore thinks it was wrong to have expelled the perpetrator of these atrocities. While almost every democracy worldwide has declared Hamas a banned terrorist organization, the distinguished judge thinks Hamas’ expulsion by his own country was an “error.”
Video: Shalit agreement shows moral failure of 'human rights' groups
Prof. Gerald Steinberg interviewed on the IBA English News October 17, 2011 about the Gilad Shalit prisoner deal and the utter failure of Human Rights NGOs during Shalit's 5 years in a Hamas prison.
Surprise: NGO's fabricated accusations against Israel during Second Lebanon War
It's been five years since the Second Lebanon War. In fact, five years ago this past weekend, was the Qana incident, which is one of those discussed in the article to which I am about to point you. It's also where the picture at left took place.
Five years is long enough that Professors Avi Bell and Gerald Steinberg have been able to research the claims made by 'human rights' NGO's (principally 'Human Rights Watch' and Amnesty) during the Second Lebanon War. Unsurprisingly, many of the accusations against Israel by those NGO's were fabricated and baseless.
We are now completing a multi-year study of all the HRW and Amnesty allegations regarding the 2006 Lebanon war, and the results so far are shocking. In our systematic and detailed research, supported by the Israel Science Foundation, we found major contradictions as well as numerous unsupported charges, double standards and false or invented “evidence.”
In some reports, such as on incidents in the Shiite towns of Srifa and Qana - Hezbollah strongholds from which numerous rocket attacks were launched - the NGOs published wildly inconsistent civilian casualty claims within a few days of each other. Errors were overwhelmingly in one direction; almost without fail, errors consisted of exaggerated Lebanese casualties or unfounded accusations against Israel.
In many incidents, HRW and Amnesty reports initially relied both on Lebanese witnesses and the personal observations of its own “researchers” to deny any Hezbollah military presence in the area of an Israeli strike, while later publications acknowledged that Hezbollah had been present, meaning the witnesses had lied and the NGO researchers were incompetent. Regarding Srifa, even after reducing the number of reported Lebanese casualties from “at least 42” to 26 to 19 before finally settling on 22, HRW found itself forced by critics and the evidence to eventually acknowledge that most of the “civilian” casualties it had “documented” were, in fact, Hezbollah combatants.
...
Indeed, in all of the incidents, the lack of reliable sources of information for the HRW and Amnesty accusations against Israel stands out. In each case, it is clear that when HRW and Amnesty issued their initial condemnations of Israel, usually within a few hours of the incident, the organizations had little or no information about the central issues of military necessity and the nature of casualties. And later reports with altered condemnations were based more on conjecture than substantive research.
The most blatant example was the incident in Qana, where Israel responded to heavy Hezbollah rocket attacks with an air raid. One of the buildings was hit and collapsed, causing a number of deaths and injuries. Within hours, HRW blasted a press release in which Executive Director Ken Roth claimed that the "Israeli military is treating southern Lebanon as a free-fire zone, relating to the strike on Qana, killing at least 54 civilians, more than half of them children." HRW then launched a campaign charging Israel with war crimes, with nine separate “reports” and op-eds, as well as press conferences.
HRW’s campaign was echoed in media headlines, creating intense international pressure, and leading Prime Minister Olmert to declare a “48-hour suspension of aerial activity pending an investigation...” A unilateral halt in military action due to unverified NGO allegations was unprecedented, allowed Hezbollah forces to regroup, prolonging the war, and probably costing many lives.
Yet, as our research reveals, HRW had no credible evidence for its claims. Roth, HRW researcher Lucy Mair (who had written propaganda for Electronic Intifada before joining HRW) and others far from the battleground, had inflated civilian casualty claims and erased the Hezbollah attacks that constituted the real war crimes as well as legal justification for Israeli actions. To create the façade of “fact finding”, the initial HRW statement referred to “researchers” in Lebanon, but they provided no names or means to verify HRW’s claims. Later reports either provided no sources or attributed allegations to “witnesses” who could well have been Hezbollah allies or operatives. The allegations that Israel had criminally and deliberately bombed Lebanese civilians were unsourced and false.
As the contradictions emerged, HRW’s Mair admitted that the Lebanese Red Cross had reported 28 dead, including Hezbollah “martyrs,” but HRW chose to continue its false accusations against Israel.
Sky News' Tim Marshall has just discovered that all those luxury hotels and restaurants in Ramallah and Gaza are being paid for by your tax money and mine.
Even if the Palestinians declare full statehood in September they would not be truly independent, not only because of the continuing Israeli occupation, checkpoints, lack of freedom of movement of goods etc, but also because Palestine is addicted to aid and as long as you are addicted you are in thrall to your supplier.
The billions that pour in here mean the Palestinian Authority does not need to try very hard to deliver the services expected by voters, it also stifles the private sector, inflates wages and causes an internal 'brain drain'.
The restaurant I went to in Ramallah had a line of expensive cars outside and ranks of NGO workers picking their way through an expensive menu inside. The NGOs do fine work alleviating suffering, helping projects with expertise etc, but they also recruit the best of the local talent and take advantage of their charitable status to get tax breaks.
No Palestinian business can compete with NGOs which routinely triple what a local firm would pay. Many NGOs fork out 'danger money' and even 'hardship payments' to both local and international staff which further undermines the local private businesses. So the NGOs get the brightest and the highest paid, and the private firms get the rest but without the tax exemptions.
“Palestine is the best-kept secret in the aid industry,” a medical NGO worker recently told This Week In Palestine, “People need field experience and Palestine sounds cool and dangerous because it can be described as a war zone, but in reality it’s quite safe and has all the comforts that internationals want.'
Marshall even got the fact that 'Palestinians' are different from all other refugees around the world because they can bequeath their 'refugee' status to their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. It's almost like he's been reading Israel Matzav or something. I wonder how long he'll last at Sky....
The real culprit in the NGO war on Israel is... the government of Israel. The transparency law would indeed have been unnecessary had these "activists" internalized what sovereignty means. If they had even a basic sense of self-respect, they would have told their donor countries: Thanks, but we'll use our own resources to realize our shared goals.
The State of Israel was established so that the Jewish people would once again be sovereign in its own land. Sovereignty, among other things, means keeping foreigners from interfering in domestic issues.
It also means that if foreign countries do start meddling in our affairs again, as they did in the dark days of exile, we should contemptuously turn our backs on them. "Stop intervening in Israeli legislation," is what the government should have said in response to the statement issued by the European Union yesterday, in which it voiced support for the leftist organizations it funds in Israel.
...
These organizations also have a silent partner - the Israeli government. Weak-willed and lacking confidence in the rightness of its path, it allows foreigners to meddle in its affairs. Britain, by contrast, would protest "It's not done" if Israel were, for instance, to donate to Scottish separatists. And Spain would pound on the table and threaten to sever diplomatic relations if Israel were to offer even verbal support for Basque aspirations.
There is no need for public rebukes. Personal conversations between the prime minister and the heads of certain European governments (some of whom may not even be aware that their embassies in Israel support leftist organizations ) might well suffice to reduce this practice significantly.
Unless, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu is perfectly happy to have Switzerland keep funding the Geneva Initiative, or to have Britain's embassy in Israel keep funding radical organizations that, inter alia, are working to unseat him. Read the whole thing.
LATMA tribal update: The UN on Muslims and a trailer for a new horror film
In this report, Jamil and Awad join the International Organization for Peace and Human Rights so that they can draw a salary from the European Union, the United Nations gives its perspective on Muslims, and you'll see a trailer for a new horror film called... I won't give it away.
Norwegian Foreign Minister slams Lieberman on NGO's
During a visit to Israel, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Storr slammed Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman for saying that NGO's are aiding terror organizations.
In the harshest comments to date from a European statesman regarding the establishment of a parliamentary committee to investigate funding of the NGOs, Store said, “When leading politicians go out and compare and link NGOs to terror, I think it is very dangerous. These messages have enormous impact and create suspicion, mutual suspicion and a climate that democracy should not have. I think it is a worrying sign.”
Lieberman on Sunday charged leftist NGOs with “aiding terror groups.”
Store, on a two-day visit, told the Post he was “very concerned” about the recent Knesset action on the NGOs.
“Israel is the democracy in this region,” he said. “A vibrant civil society, with organizations that say things which we don’t like as governments, is part of democracy, it is a test of a strong democracy.”
Lieberman did not say that the NGO's were connected to terror organizations. He said that they were aiding terror groups (assuming that the comments have been reported accurately). Given that it has already been proven that the NGO's supplied the bulk of the material used in the Goldstone Report, and that report has had a chilling effect on Israel's ability to fight terror and has subjected Israel to international condemnation for fighting terror. How is that not 'aiding terror groups'?
Moreover, no one has said that the NGO's do not have the right to say whatever they please. What has been said is that Israelis have the right to know who is financing the NGO's, because that allows us to place their statements in context, and perhaps to give less credibility to those who are being financed to make particular statements. For example, by Norway:
Norway is a significant donor to some 18 NGOs operating in Israel and the Palestinian Authority – such as the Palestinian Central Bureau for Statistics, the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen’s Rights, and the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee – and the issue came up during a meeting Lieberman and Store held in Jerusalem on Tuesday evening.
And I'm sure that has a lot to do with why Norway is concerned about this.
One other thing:
Spanish Ambassador Alvar Iranzo, whose country is another major contributor to the NGOs, told the Post that while he understood that on one hand this was naturally a domestic issue subject to internal legislation, the policy of the EU and most member states was to subsidize civil society in Israel, the PA and other countries, promoting the values of peace in the region.
Iranzo said that the EU would “not be too happy” if Israel made “things more difficult.”
Where else in this region do the Europeans subsidize NGO's other than Israel and the 'Palestinian Authority,' both of whose NGO's are aimed at Israel? Perhaps if we had a transparent answer to that question, the Europeans wouldn't appear as biased against us as they do today.
Caroline Glick weighs in on the proposal to investigate the sources of funding of Israel's NGO's.
ONE OF the reasons that false stories by the likes of B’Tselem and its fellow Israeli-staffed anti-Zionist pressure groups are treated with respect by the local media and the international community alike is because they are perceived as Israeli groups.
Why would Israelis lie about their own army? On Wednesday, the Knesset voted to form a commission of inquiry to examine these groups’ sources of funding. The rationale behind this parliamentary investigation is clear. The time has come to determine just how “Israeli” these organizations that form such an integral part of the international political war against Israel actually are. How much of their funding comes from foreign governments? And if their foreign funding is significant, then how can they claim to be Israeli groups? B’Tselem for instance receives funding from the British, Swiss and Irish governments, Christian Aid, the Ford Foundation, DanChurchAid (funded by the Danish government), Diakonia (funded by the Swedish and Norwegian governments and the EU), Trócaire (funded by the Irish and UK governments), and others.
Yesh Din, which specializes in conducting domestic lawfare against the IDF, is funded by the Irish, Dutch, British, German and Norwegian governments, the EU, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, Breaking the Silence, Bimkom, Peace Now, Gush Shalom, Adalah, the Geneva Initiative, the Committee for Peace and Security and so on and so forth all receive massive funding from foreign governments.
The Samaria Regional Council alleges that over the past decade, foreign governments have donated hundreds of millions of euros, dollars and shekels to these Israeli “grassroots” groups.
The fact is that these groups’ claim to grassroots status is as credible as their allegations of Israeli criminality and Palestinian victimhood. In truth, these NGOs are local agents of foreign governments who use them to advance their anti-Israel policies.
The Knesset’s move to investigate these groups was greeted by righteous rage from the groups’ leaders and sympathetic Leftist Knesset members.
The Knesset’s decision was castigated as “McCarthyite” and “anti-democratic.” But it is clear these groups and their parliamentary allies doth protest too much.
No one is talking about shutting them down. But the Israeli public has a right to know what these groups really are. And our political representatives have an obligation to investigate and expose subversive foreign agents. Israel and Israel’s democratic system are weakened, not strengthened, when the state’s international reputation and domestic discourse is hijacked by foreign governments who hide behind their Israeli foot soldiers.
Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon on NGO transparency
Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon does a great job of defending the Knesset decision to investigate NGO funding. As usual, our critics are being hypocrites because they do the same thing themselves.
The Knesset panel of inquiry is simply about transparency. If there are groups who receive funds from foreign nations then the Israeli public deserves the right to know. Some voices have mistakenly declared that this type of inquiry is reminiscent of undemocratic regimes. Perhaps they should take a look at America’s Foreign Agents Registration Act which is, according to the U.S. Department of Justice website, a “disclosure statute that requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities.”
It is understandable to want to identify those citizens or organizations that are being paid to act at the behest of a foreign government or organization.
Furthermore, a cornerstone of the European Transparency Initiative (ETI), adopted by the European Commission in 2005, remains to provide public information on the recipients of EU funds. In reaction to this initiative, the EU Civil Society Contact Group that brings together eight large rights and value based NGO sectors, called for “better publicity and accountability regarding EU funding, enhanced ethical rules for EU institutions and more transparent lobbying”.
The concepts of accountability and transparency in funding have been endorsed by the U.S. and the European Union, including by its civil society representatives. So why do some Israeli NGO’s cry foul? Simply put, if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear.
On Wednesday, I reported that the Knesset has decided to investigate the funding of (mostly Leftist) NGOs. Some of you might be wondering why the Knesset would do this. It smacks of a politically motivated search. NGOs already report where they get their funding and it isn't supposed to be from governments. And some of you may still believe (despite Goldstone and everything else) that ' human rights' organizations are unbiased do-gooders. Emmanuel Navon explains.
The same way that the UN “Human Rights Council” is dominated by human rights abusers, many NGOs use the “human rights” fig leaf to harass democracies at war and to whitewash murderous regimes. Why else would the Human Rights Council be presided by Thailand (since June 2010) and why else would Human Rights Watch do fundraising in Saudi Arabia (as revealed by the Wall Street Journal in July 2009)? Not all human rights organizations in Israel and in the world are a sham, of course. Some actually do care for human rights and dignity. But for many NGOs (including Israeli NGOs that are trying to get IDF officers arrested in London), using the “human rights” agenda has become a clever way of enjoying impunity for political activities that have hardly anything to do with human rights.
Claiming that the sources of funding for Israeli NGOs are already public knowledge is no less misleading. Of course, Israeli NGOs report every penny raised and spent to the Non-Profit Authority. But many funds and foundations that donate money to Israeli NGOs are themselves supported by individuals, organizations and governments whose name and identity do not appear when NGOs report their donations. The public information disclosed by Israeli NGOs on their donations does not reveal the entire money trail –a trail that often includes foreign governments. The same way that many “human rights” organizations have nothing to do with human rights, those organizations call themselves “non-governmental” while being funded by governments.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
