News Investigations of Americans for Peace Now, the Courage to Refuse campaign and Israeli Arab Holocaust Denial

1. Shalom Achshav: Malshin Achshav

Over the past month, the Americans for Peace Now have been conducting an unprecedented campaign for a Jewish organization, and a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. The APN took out ads in the Jewish media on January 10th and the APN director, Deborah DeLee, wrote an oped in the Washington Post of January 21stWhen I asked the APN spokesman if that means that APN will new oppose nursery schools and baby clinics in Gush Etzion, the APN spokesman aid that children “should not grow up in communities that they will not live in during a time of peace”.

I wonder what “time of peace” he is referring to.

When I asked the spokesman of Peace Now in Israel about their organization using a foreign government to attack Israeli gov’t, The Peace Now spokesman in Israel tried at first to say that Americans for Peace Now acts independently of the Israeli office of Peace Now. And what about the $2.2 Million that APN provided for Peace Now political demonstrations in Israel over the past two years? The Peace Now spokesman in Israel had no further comment. Meanwhile, the APN spokesman in DC was clear about the fact that their effort to lobby the US government against Israeli policy was coordinated with Peace Now in Jerusalem.

The APN campaign has produced results. The Washington Post ran its own editorial on January 31 in which it championed APN campaign on the “settlements”, and the Bush Administration issued a statement on February 4th in which it also endorsed that same campaign.

The Americans for Peace Now will now dispatch two delegates to participate in the annual visit of the Conference of Presidents Delegation to Israel that is scheduled for February 16th, where the delegation will receive sensitive briefings from Israeli government officials. Since the APN has established the fact that it sees its role as a lobby of the US government against Israel, the question remains as to whether the APN should be permitted to participate in such briefings or even allowed into Israel. I asked for a comment from Malcolm Hoenlein, the conference director, but none was forthcoming.

2. Israel deserters group spokesman raises funds in North America to subsidize IDF deserters

Amit Mashiah, spokesman for the Courage to Refuse campaign, arrives in New York this Monday, February 10th, to raise funds from church groups and Jewish organizations in the US and in Canada.

Mashiah says that funds will be allocated to build his organization and to provide funds for IDF combat soldiers who would be arrested for refusing orders to serve beyond the 1949-1967 armistice line, even in fierce combat.

All funds for the IDF desertion campaign are channeled through the IRS tax deductible Shefa Fund in Philadelphia.

Mashiah also says that his organization would even provide finances for an Israeli soldier who deserts his unit rather than pursue a PLO terrorist who had just blown up a hotel in Netanya and taken refuge in an Arab village in Judea, Samaria or Jerusalem, Mashiah states emphatically that any all IDF incursions there would be illegal and immoral, even when pursuing a terrorist. Mashiah explains that funds raised during his forthcoming trip will be allocated for legal fees of the deserter and for a salary that would come to 50% of the average wage in Israel during any jail sentence of a deserter.

In other words, Mashiah’s Courage to Refuse campaign gives you a better deal than the Israel Unemployment Office, which only provides 50% of the minimum wage for many unemployed Israeli citizens.

Now we have a new reason for Israelis to wait for Mashiah.

One place that Mashiah is scheduled to speak is at the Kraft Center for Jewish Life Hillel Foundation at Columbia University on February 18th.

When I asked the Columbia Hillel Director, as to whether it was appropriate to invite a representative of the Israeli deserters group while Israel was at war, he answered that the question was inappropriate.

When I asked the Hillel Director as to whether Columbia Hillel would provide equal time for a speaker from Israel to refute Mashiah’s claims that Israel’s policies in Judea and Samaria were “illegal and immoral”, the director slammed down the phone.

It is instructive to know how a major Hillel Foundation educates its students about Israel during a time of war.

3. Israeli Arab peace group initiates a visit to Auschwitz with agenda: to remove any knowledge of Moslem involvement in the murder of the six million Jews.

This week, I covered a packed press conference at the Beit Agron Press Center in Jerusalem where a delegation of Israeli Arab citizens, led by a Catholic priest from Nazereth, announced their intention to launch the first Israeli Arab study group to examine the “pain suffered by the Jews at the hands of the Nazis during World War II”.

The name of their new organization: “Memory of Peace”.

So far so good.

A positive message communicated by Israeli Arab citizens to their Israeli Jewish brethren.

And then the kicker. Buried on the third page of their press release. carefully written by a leading Israeli Arab lawyer, also from Nazareth, was a stunning statement of their underlying purpose: to show the world that ” no Arabs or Moslems” were in any way responsible for the holocaust.

Well, the week before, it so happened that I visited a new center for Holocaust documentation in San Antonio, Texas (Check it out at www.holocaust-history.org) where I requested and received documentation concerning the role of the Mufti of Jerusalem in the mass murder of the Jews.

The center provided 22 documented sources on the Mufti – how the Mufti advised and supported Hitler’s idea for a Final Solution, how the Mufti helped to organize Moslems to participate in the mass murder of the Jews of Bosnia, how the Mufti visited the death camps, how the Mufti had taken refuge in Hitler’s bunker, and how the Mufti had been tried in absentia for crimes against humanity and that the Mufti had ultimately escaped justice when French intelligence had helped him to escape to Cairo in 1945.

With this background material in hand, I asked the Israeli Arab holocaust study group if they would devote themselves to learn more about the role of the Mufti and the Palestinian Arab community in the murder of European Jewry. I also asked them if they would delete their statement that neither Moslems nor Arabs had anything to do with carrying out the crime of the holocaust.

The Israeli Arab holocaust study group would not commit themselves.

It would seem that a new form of Moslem holocaust denial was launched this week,made in Israel.

Excerped from the Makor Rishon, a weekly news magazine published in Petach Tikva, Israel