Israeli Group Suing European Union

Jan. 25, 2010

By Nicole Jansezian

European taxpayers are pouring millions of Euros into anti-Israel organizations through the European Union, an Israeli watchdog group charged at a news conference.

NGO Monitor is suing the European Union for failing to produce details of its funding of non governmental organizations, wary that most of the Palestinian institutions receiving money are using it to “demonize and delegitimize” Israel. The suit was filed last week.

Many of the organizations that have or are receiving EU funding have signed documents expressing anti-normalization with Israel, Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, said on Wednesday that his organization has petitioned for the information since 2008.

“We have made every effort to obtain the documents necessary for analysis for over a year, without any substantive response,” he added. "”We therefore have no other option than to take this issue to the courts and sincerely hope this will lead the European Union to act in a responsible, law-abiding manner on such critical funding issues.”

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday against the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union.

Based on information gathered from the EU’s website and scant information the EU provided to the group, NGO Monitor identified some $50 million given to about 90 Israeli and Palestinian NGOs.

“A lot of these organizations are at the core at the center of the campaign to demonize Israel and delegitimize Israel,” Steinberg charged. “They call Israel an ‘apartheid state.’ They are using terms like war crimes. This demonization process was recently characterized by Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu as parallel to the Iranian nuclear threat. We take this seriously.”

The EU denied many requests made by NGO Monitor citing issues such as “security,” “privacy,” and “commercial interests.”

NGO Monitor legal counsel, Trevor Asserson of Asserson Law Offices, said the withholding of information is “absurd when you are talking about an NGO who is carrying out peace within a region.”

Asserson pointed out that in the documents that the EU did send, information was erased and eligibility criteria was blanked out.

Using information available on the EU website, Steinberg estimated that up to 70 Israeli NGOs receive funding but that three quarters of them are groups that “are involved with demonization” of Israel. Some 70 to 80 Palestinian organizations receive funding, and very few of them supply humanitarian aid. Most are consider “peace partnership” groups.

But Steinberg charged that many of these organizations are involved in strategizing how to bring legal action against Israel in other nations and promoting economic boycotts of the Jewish state.

“We’re not saying that they only fund groups that delegitimize Israel, but we’re saying they fund a lot of groups that delegitimize Israel,” Steinberg said. We’re talking about a well-funded, highly structured campaign to delegitimize Israel.”

David Kriss, EU press and information manager, said that the European Commission has provided NGO Monitor “with comprehensive information on the funding of projects in Israel and in the region.”

He added that EU policy is not required to be reflected by the funding recipients “in all their statements, seminars or publications.... Moreover, the EU fully supports diversity of opinion and the right of expression as long as this is in line with its fundamental democratic principles.”

Beer Festival Highlights Accomplishments of Palestinian Town

Oct. 6, 2009

TAYBEH - Not everything that shimmers in this West Bank town is golden. In fact, at Oktoberfest one of the brews is amber and another is as dark as Guinness, providing a spectrum of choice for consumers of the only micro-brew beer in the Middle East.

The Taybeh Brewing Company proudly hosted its fifth annual Oktoberfest last weekend. In addition to Taybeh beer on draught, Middle Eastern food, dancing and specialty goods were displayed in a fest

ive celebration of Palestinian culture.

Taybeh, the only 100-percent Christian town in Palestinian territory located about 5 miles from Ramallah, is surrounded by 16 Muslim villages. The population was 12,000 just a decade ago, but has dropped to 2,000. Mayor David Khoury blames Israel’s military presence for the town’s economic hardships, but his town has become an example of producing a good thing in a difficult situation. Khoury and his brother Nadim, the brewery’s founder, after living in Boston for 30 years, returned to their hometown of Taybeh to invest in the economy, create jobs and forge a reputation that Palestine as a nation can create excellent products. Nadim founded the brewery in 1995 after the Oslo Accords were signed.

“Nadim thought, ‘If we have a country, we’d make excellent products,’” explained Maria Khoury, David’s wife. “After the first uprising (in the 1990s), the image was very bad. We came here to change the image.”

Taybeh has been successful despite a second intifada beginning in 2000 that severely curtailed i

ts export ability. The company sold more than 150,000 gallons last year and in 1998 the beer became the first Palestinian product to be produced in Germany under the Taybeh license. It is made from the German formula that uses no preservatives or additives, rendering the beer 100 percent natural with malts from Belgium, hops from Bavaria and yeast from the United Kingdom. Taybeh produces four brews: golden, light and dark and just last year unveiled a nonalcoholic version, a beverage more marketable to the town’s Muslim neighbors.

But because of its natural ingredients and lack of preservatives the beer spoils quickly and long delays at Israeli checkpoints threaten to ruin kegs-full of beer as Taybeh trucks wait to pass into Israel. This challenge to get the beer from Taybeh to Jerusalem--a mere 20 miles away--prompted a new strategy: If the beer can’t get out, the town will bring the outsiders to them. Thus Oktoberfest was born.

“We are trying to find creative ways to boost the economy,” Maria, who has voluntarily taken on promotion for the beer and the town itself, said. “We can’t afford to go three hours to (the) checkpoint and other businesses cannot afford that. So we entice people to come here. The whole theme behind Oktobebrfest is to promote local products. Its a nonviolent way to resist harsh conditions.”

Each year the festival attracts thousands of people, including Palestinians, foreigners and a few Israeli citizens who defy the official warning posted outside the town prohibiting their entrance under Israeli law. The festival also features homegrown products such as honey, olive oil and embroidery. Maria Khoury said some local merchants sell more in these two days than they do the entire year.

Oktoberfest has remained largely unopposed by surrounding Islamic villages and a rising fanaticism in the region, Maria said. But this year the mayor’s car was firebombed during a meeting at the municipality. Maria Khoury said authorities have no idea who did it and whether it was a personal attack against the mayor or related to the beer festival. David Khoury was lightly injured. Relations have been more tense since three years ago when 14 Christian houses were burned down and a Muslim woman was killed in an “honor killing” after residents of the neighboring Muslim town accused a Christian in Taybeh of having an affair with the woman.

Called Ofra in the Old Testament and later Ephraim in John 11:54, the town has been occupied by Christian Arabs for hundreds of years, Khoury said. His own family claims about 12 generations there. The village has kept its unique identity as Christian for 2,000 years. Khoury wants to keep it that way and to improve life for its citizens.

Palestinian Leader Renews Vow to Destroy Israel

By Nicole Jansezian

Article originally published here.

The Palestinian party that the West considers moderate reaffirmed its commitment to a violent struggle against Israel and called for the removal of all Jews from Jerusalem.

It also refused to renew the peace process until all Palestinian prisoners are released form Israeli jails - language that paves the path for another round of violence in the region.

Reiterating its theme of armed struggle, the Fatah platform states: “We believe that all forms of resistance are a legitimate right of the peoples of territories in the face of occupation.”

“The struggle stems from the Palestinian people’s right to oppose the occupation and the settlements, the expulsion and the racist discrimination – and this right is a right guaranteed by international law,” the official wording reads.

In a one-man race, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was re-elected as head of Fatah for another five-year term.

“Although we have chosen peace we reserve the right to return to armed resistance,” Abbas said, setting the tone of the assembly in his keynote address.

The Fatah General Assembly's approval of the radical language could lead to another violent Palestinian uprising against Israel, said Avi Dichter, Israel’s former internal security chief. “Fatah’s statements clear the way to what may eventually be the third intifada,” he said. “Once you say that the fight will go on by all means necessary, anyone in their right mind understands that spells an armed conflict.”

The Palestinian party, which the Obama administration and other Western nations cited as a peace partner for Israel, held its first general assembly in more than 20 years with about 2,260 delegates in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Israel allowed participants from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and the United States to travel to the West Bank while Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza, prevented Fatah members there from leaving the strip.

The assembly, which was scantly reported in mainstream media outlets, ended late last week with militant statements and even a call from one member for the party to forge a strategic alliance with Iran. Fatah ratified a political platform that includes the Palestinians’ right “to resist occupation in all forms;” the continuation of the armed struggle until all Palestinian refugees are repatriated inside Israel; refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; and a call for Palestinian sovereignty over Jerusalem, according to the Arabic language Al Quds newspaper.

“Fatah will continue to sacrifice victims until Jerusalem will be returned [to the Palestinians], clean of settlements and settlers,” language used to refer to Israelis, the platform states. “Fatah is still a liberation movement, and since we have not yet achieved our goals, we have popular resistance,” said Fatah Central Committee member At-Tayyib Abdul-Rahim.

In another step backward for peace, the party endorsed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as Fatah’s official armed wing despite previous agreements with Israel and the U.S. to dismantle the faction.

“The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are the jewel in Fatah's crown,” said Fahmi Al-Za'arir, a Fatah spokesman. “We must strengthen their status . . . [and] maintain them in a state of alert.”

Tom Gross, an expert on Middle East affairs, said that, instead of proving itself the “responsible Palestinian party that could form an independent Palestinian state that would live in peace with Israel, the extremely hard-line pronouncements and resolutions Fatah adopted during the past week show that it still has not made the transition from a guerrilla movement in exile bent on destroying Israel to a political party charged with establishing Palestinian self-rule.”

The Bethlehem rhetoric ostensibly buries the chance for peace in the near future. Israeli leaders were frustrated with Fatah’s resolutions to support an armed struggle.

“If its program is to be believed, Fatah is just as extremist as Hamas, and that’s worrying because it damages the prospects of reaching a compromise with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority,” said Israel’s Information Minister Yuli Edelstein. “We must not act as if we haven’t heard. We must emerge from the circle of illusions that these are moderates who want peace.”

Caroline Glick, a right-wing columnist for The Jerusalem Post, had harsh language for the West, particularly the White House.

“A central pillar of the Obama administration’s Middle East policy paradigm was shattered at the Fatah conference in Bethlehem — but don't expect the White House to notice,” she writes in her column Friday. “Fatah was supposed to be the poster child for moderate terrorists . . . It was supposed to be the group that proved the central contention of the Obama White House's strategy for dealing with terror, namely, that all terrorists want is to be appeased.”

“But over the past week in Bethlehem, Fatah's leaders said they will not be appeased,” Glick writes. “They remain an implacable terror group devoted to the physical annihilation of Israel."

Rep. Hoyer: Obama Israel Stance Misperceived

By Nicole Jansezian

Aug. 14, 2009

Article originally printed here.

JERUSALEM - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said President Barack Obama’s forceful stance on stopping construction in Israeli neighborhoods and settlements has been “blown out of proportion” and misperceived both by Israelis and American supporters of the Jewish state.

“The Obama administration shares ... strong, unwavering support of Israel as a Jewish state,” Hoyer told Newsmax. “The settlements has become such a focus, but there are more important issues. The settlement issue has been blown out of proportion and is not what he is articulating.”

While a GOP delegation to Israel last week criticized the president’s policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iranian nuclear weapons, a group of 29 Democrats this week sought to reaffirm “that the relationship between the U.S. and Israel remains as strong as ever,” Hoyer said during a news conference in Jerusalem on Thursday. Obama has been pressuring Israel to freeze all settlement construction, including “natural growth” in existing settlements.

But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said while he will not approve the building of new settlements, he will allow construction in existing ones. Hoyer defended the White House, saying that U.S policy hasn’t actually changed since the implementation of the Roadmap. But Hoyer’s own position that Jewish building in East Jerusalem is acceptable is at odds with the State Department.

The State Department last month summoned Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren to press Israel to stop construction by an American Jewish millionaire in East Jerusalem, according to Israeli media reports. In the midst of dubious directives coming from the White House that have set relations between Jerusalem and Washington on edge, this summer saw the largest delegation of U.S. congressmen ever to visit the Holy Land.

Last week, 25 Republicans, led by Minority Whip Eric Cantor, took the same tour and met with the same leaders as their Democratic peers. Both trips were sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the largest pro-Israel lobbyist in Washington. Earlier in the week, the Democrats met with Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who said the chance for peace in the near future had been obliterated by the political situation in Palestinian territories.

“The current situation in which no one authority represents all of the Palestinians, in which there is ‘Hamastan’ in Gaza and ‘Fatahland’ in Judea and Samaria ... buries any possibility to reach a comprehensive settlement with the Palestinians in the next few years,” he said. “The uncompromising, extremist positions of the Palestinians concerning Jerusalem, the right of return (of refugees) and the Jewish settlements create an unbridgeable gap between us.” Hoyer on Thursday blamed the Palestinians for stalled peace talks with Israel.

“The largest thing impeding negotiations at this time is the unwillingness of (Palestinian President Mahmoud) Abbas to sit down now,” Hoyer said. “He had no preconditions with (former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert.” The delegation met with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad who denounced terrorism and said Israel has a right to exist, but did not specify whether he supported Israel as a Jewish state, a requirement laid out by Netanyahu.

Fayyad has been touted by the West as a moderate Palestinian official untainted by corruption, however, he is unpopular among Palestinians. At the news conference, Hoyer was presented with a report on Palestinian school books, some of which teach jihad and martyrdom, and was handed a map issued this week by the Palestinian Authority Tourism Ministry that labels the land stretching from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine with no mention of Israel.

“If we teach our children hate we cannot be surprised that they grow up to hate,” he said. “The teaching of hate and prejudice is unacceptable any place in the world and particularly here.” In response to reporters’ questions concerning reports that the United Nations in the Gaza Strip is subject to the whims of Hamas, Gene Green, D-Texas, said he was going to make sure the UN does not “continue to prop up a terrorist organization like Hamas.”

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

In Israel, GOP's Cantor Slams Obama's Iran Policy

By Nicole Jansezian

Aug. 6, 2009

Article originally printed here.

JERUSALEM - Republican congressmen visiting Israel criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, a disproportionate emphasis on stopping construction in Israeli settlements and its lack of vigilance in preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.

“We’re concerned with what the White House is signaling of late,” Eric Cantor, R-Va, told reporters on the fifth day of the visit. The minority whip in the House of Representatives emphasized the “existential threat that Iran poses” to the region and to the United States. Cantor said he was troubled by an unbalanced emphasis of the American administration on freezing Jewish settlement construction rather than attempting to extract meaningful commitments from the Palestinians and Arab states.

Cantor led a delegation of 25 Republican congressmen and women on the weeklong trip, sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, an organization affiliated with the influential pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Next week, some 30 Democrats from Congress will make a similar visit to the region.

The delegation stressed their own unmitigated support for Israel and the danger of any acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons, an issue strongly echoed by Israeli leaders.

“I don’t believe the president of the United States fully comprehends this threat of Iran (acquiring) nuclear weapons and the threat to the stability of this region,” said Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado. Coffman, who has stated in the past that radical Islamic elements are the cause for destabilizing the Middle East, said President Barack Obama’s approach to Middle East peace “is in error in a very big way.” “Many outside the State of Israel see the Arab-Israeli conflict as a centerpiece to the Muslim conflict of the West - that is absolutely wrong,” he said after the news conference. “The broader conflict has nothing to do with Israel.”

The congressional delegation met with Israeli leaders as well as with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who they said wavered when pressed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, one of Israel’s stipulations for a peace agreement. The delegation also expressed outrage that Palestinians named streets in the West Bank and Gaza after terrorists. “If there is an unwillingness on the part of so-called moderate Palestinians ... it makes it very difficult” to reach a peace agreement, Cantor said. Cantor also referred to a 2004 letter by former President George W. Bush to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in which the U.S. condones growth and permanence in major settlement blocs. The Obama camp has said it is not bound to “understandings,” including this letter, between the Israeli governments and prior administrations.

“The Bush letter indicates we could never see Israel turn back to 1967 lines,” said Cantor, who supports the letter. “Those communities (the settlements) will never be separated from Israel.” Meanwhile, the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported today that American Middle East envoy George Mitchell has asked Israel for a one-year freeze on West Bank settlement construction in order to elicit concessions from Arab countries. Israel has already agreed to suspend building in settlements for six months. The congressmen’s tour has involved meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials, briefings and visits to settlements and Sderot, the city on the Gaza border bombarded in the last eight years by Palestinians rocket attacks.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Netanyahu Corrects Obama in his own Speech

It was sort of a "Elder-statesman-schools-'man-child'-in-history" speech

June 17, 2009

First published here on ForcedExile.com

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Sunday night was directed at the Obama administration and addressed historical errors and key omissions in President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, including the history of the Jewish state and the reasons a Palestinian state has yet to be established, analysts say.

“Netanyahu responded to his main aversary and it is not the president of Iran. (Obama) made mistakes that were historically incorrect; Netanyahu corrected him,” Gil Hoffman, a political analyst from The Jerusalem Post, said in an interview with reporters.

Netanyahu stressed several times in his foreign policy address that he was speaking on behalf of a “consensus of Israelis,” which Hoffman says was an implication that Obama’s policies are not merely coming down against the Likud leader and right wing, but against the majority of the nation.

“He said (to Obama) ‘you’re wrong about certain things and these things have major implications,’” said Jonathan Rynhold, senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

One of the issues Netanyahu clarified was the establishment of a Jewish state. Obama said in Cairo that “the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.” Netanyahu instead went back 3,500 years and pointed to Abraham and continuous Jewish history in the region as the reason Jews claimed this land as home.

“The right of the Jewish people to a state in the land of Israel does not arise from the series of disasters that befell the Jewish people over 2,000 years - persecutions, expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, murders, which reached its climax in the Holocaust, an unprecedented tragedy in the history of nations,” Netanyahu said. “The right to establish our sovereign state here, in the land of Israel, arises from one simple fact: Eretz Israel (the land of Israel) is the birthplace of the Jewish people.” 

Netanyahu also focused on oversight in Obama’s Cairo speech of why a Palestinian state has not been established despite overtures, peace talks and international agreements. Obama asserted that Palestinian suffering stems from dislocation, lack of a homeland and “the daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation.”

Countering that, Netanyahu said the Palestinians had a chance to create a state first in 1947 when the United Nations proposed the Partition Plan for a Jewish state and an Arab state. The plan was rejected by Arab states.

“Whoever thinks that the continued hostility to Israel is a result of our forces in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is confusing cause and effect,” he said. The prime minister outlined attacks in the 1920s, a war in 1948, continued attacks in the 1950s and another war in 1967 on the eve of the Six-Day War that occurred “nearly 50 years before a single Israeli soldier went into Judea and Samaria.” 

“A great many people are telling us that withdrawal is the key to peace with the Palestinians. But the fact is that all our withdrawals were met by huge waves of suicide bombers,” Netanyahu said.

As Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, noted, “What has brought Palestinian suffering is the priority on total victory and Israel’s destruction rather than merely getting a homeland.” 

 

Even Palestinians, while overwhelmingly disappointed with the speech, said it was critical of Obama’s Cairo address. Mustafa Barghouti said  Netanyahu’s address was an indirect swipe at Obama, particularly for clarifying his mention of the Holocaust.

“We were hoping that after Obama’s speech to have some flexibility,” he said. Instead, “this speech was a plan for war and not for peace. He negated all possibilities of negotiations.” 

Mark Regev, spokesman for Netanyahu, said that while the address may have seemed like a response to Obama’s Cairo University speech, it was in fact a reiteration of positions the prime minister has taken before, except for calling for a Palestinian state. “You could have said the same things last month,” he said. 

Nevertheless, Rhynhold said Netanyahu particularly emphasized Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state because of the historic connection to the land. 

“He took Obama to task for not recognizing Jewish ‘peoplehood,’ the link of the people to the land,” he said.

The prime minister recognized the need for the Palestinian population to have a state, but his recognition, as opposed to opposition leader Tzipi Livni’s call for a “two states for two nations,” is based on the pragmatic issue of a displaced population, not on their claims to the land. 

“He accepted Palestinian statehood, but not as a nation,” Rhynhold said. “He was saying ‘I recognize there’s a practical problem here, but I still think the Jewish people’s claim to the land is more significant.’”

Why Running is Fun in Israel

Jogger finds roadside bomb in the Galilee

June 1, 2009

A jogger discovered a roadside bomb, possibly intended to detonate as a car or school bus drove by, at the entrance of the Avtalion neighborhood in the Galilee, police said.

Police released this news two months after the discovery. They believe the device, packed with fireworks in addition to other explosive materials, was planted by an organization of Israeli Arabs.

Ynet reports: 

"It is clear to us that the planting of the bomb was nationalistically-motivated," a source in the police's Northern District told Ynet on Sunday. 

He said the bomb was laid there in an attempt at carrying out a terror attack, and that there was no doubt the attempted attack "could have caused casualties."

...The official added that the explosive device was "amateur, but no different from others that were previously used to cause casualties".

"It included gunpowder among other things, and if it had gone off the damage would have been extensive. Ninety percent of these amateur bombs can maim and kill," he said.