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Turkey, Austria Fail To Play Israeli Anthem At Sporting Events

By
David Bedein
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Jerusalem – Moments after her moving victory in the world junior chess championship, Marcel Efroimsky of Kfar Saba, Israel, stood proudly at the podium as the new world champion. She grasped her silver cup, stole another glance at the gold medal around her neck, and expected the Israeli national anthem to be played in the background, as is customary in every competition. But silence filled the air. An irksome silence.

Ms. Efroimsky, 14, comes from a dynasty of chess masters. She began playing at the age of 6 and at 9 competed in her first world championship. Her dream came true when she won the first place in the world championship for players ages 14 and under, which was held in Turkey, but was very disappointed when the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikva,” was not played, as the winning country’s national anthem customarily is.

“This is simply a scandal,” fumed Shai Efroimsky, the new champion’s father. “How dare they mix politics with sports? The rules explicitly say that the national anthem is to be played. And that was the case two years ago as well, when she won the championship for girls up to the age of 12 that was held in the same location in Turkey.”

Indeed, two years ago Ms. Efroimsky won the championship for girls aged 12 and under, held in Turkey, and she became the first Israeli girl to do so. At that time, before relations between Ankara and Jerusalem had deteriorated, the Israeli national anthem was played.

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But, this time the competition ended in a very different way. The medals were handed out, the trophy was presented to Ms. Efroimsky and, after the speeches, the organizers suddenly decided not to play the national anthems of the countries from which the award-winners hailed. The exception was the Russian national anthem, after Russia won the largest number of awards in the various competitions that were held. This is the second incident in the space of a week in which Israel’s national anthem was not played despite the fact that an Israeli won first place.

The organizers claimed in their defense that they had been forced to shorten the ceremony and that was the reason why the national anthems were not played, but officials involved in the competition said they suspected that the Turks’ intentions had been clear-to refrain from playing the Israeli national anthem. “I suspect that this was a specific move against Israel,” said Mr. Efroimsky.

In the wake of the incident last night, Aviv Bushinsky, the chairman of the Israeli Chess Association, sent a telegram to the president of the World Chess Federation with a request that he investigate the incident. Mr. Bushinsky wrote that steps ought to be taken against the Turks if it should become evident that the decision to refrain from playing the national anthem was deliberate.

Hatikva Not Played At

Fencing Championship

Precisely one week ago Daria Sterlinkov, of Israel, won the gold medal in a prestigious fencing competition in Austria, while Alona Komorov won the bronze medal. However, in this case, too, the Israeli national anthem was not played upon the conclusion of the ceremony at which the awards were handed out.

The Israeli team coach, Yaakov Federman, said that the person responsible for playing the national anthems told him they were unable to find the Israeli national anthem.

“So, we decided to take the initiative and all the members of the delegation, 22 in number, sang Hatikva ourselves,” said Mr. Federman, who added that this was not the first time that an incident of this sort has happened. “Five months ago in Sweden we had the same story,” he said.

Yesterday, a moving ceremony was held at the Ort Maalot school in honor of the pupils Ms. Sterlinkov and Ms. Komorov, and in honor of the teacher at the school, Yaakov Federman, their professional coach. “We decided not to be silent over the Austrian decision to ignore playing the national anthem of the first place winner and that is why we held a ceremony at the school, in the course of which the Israeli national anthem was played proudly,” said the school’s principal, Avi Manshes.

“The Austrian ambassador was also invited to the ceremony, but he did not attend and sent a letter of apology about what happened in Austria as well.” The ceremony was conducted with the blessing of Dr. Orna Simhon, the director of the Israel Education Ministry’s northern district

Norway, Israel and the Jews

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
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JCPA seminar 19 November 2009

I asked myself what would have happened if I had to give a lecture on Norway, Switzerland and the Swiss in Norway. I looked in Google and I did not see any way to fill half an hour.

When speaking about Norway, Israel and the Jews, however, there is so much material that one wonders where to start. Israel is far away from Norway. It has as many inhabitants as Switzerland, on which you find very little in the Norwegian papers. On the other hand part of the Norwegian elite, which falsely calls itself progressive, is obsessed with another small country, Israel. This includes the leftwing government, many media, NGOs and part of the academic world. There are at most 1 300 Jews in Norway, of which 700 are organized in two communities, Oslo and Trondheim. They also are subject to the obsessive attention of the Norwegian elite.

A Short Quiz

The subject if today is complex and difficult to handle in a short time span. So, let’s try to get into the mood quickly with a little quiz.

First question: What is the name of the only country in Europe where, during the restitution negotiations at the end of the previous century, government officials threatened a Jewish member of the Government commission of inquiry and tapped her phone. Who was the person threatened? (Norway, Berit Reisel)

Second question: What is the name of the king who granted the St. Olav

Order to an artist who had drawn Israeli Prime Minister Olmert as a Nazi and who was the artist? (King Harald V of Norway to Finn Graf slide1) This is not the only act of strange behavior by the royal family. Crown Prince Haakon was present at a discussion where the Muslim anti-Semite Mohammed Ali Chisthi explained why he dislikes Jews. (slide 2)

Third question: Who was the member of the Nobel Peace Prize committee who, in 2002, wanted to take back the Nobel Prize for Peace, if possible, from Shimon Peres, and what was her background? (Hanna Kvanmo of the Socialist Left Party – she was condemned to a jail sentence after the Second World War as a collaborator of Nazi Germany because she had served as a nurse with the German troops on the Eastern front.)

Fourth question: Who was the only minister of a European government who marched in an anti-Israeli demonstration in January this year? (Kristen Halvorsen, leader of the Socialist Left Party. At the time she was minister of finance. During that demonstration there were shouts of “Death to the Jews.”) (Slide 3 shows Halvorsen next to a sign which states “USA and Israel, the greatest axis of evil”)

Fifth and last question: What is the name of the first rector of a European state university to use university money to finance a series of anti-Israeli propaganda lectures and what is the name of that university? (Torbjorn Digernes of NTNU Trondheim)

Trade Union and Media

I could have spent the entire time on this presentation with similar questions. The Norwegian trade union LO was among the first trade unions to call for a boycott of Israel in 2002. The then leader Gerd-Liv Valla later had to resign because of her misbehavior on other matters. In 2009 the current leader of that trade union Roar Flathens attacked only one country in his 1 May speech this year – of course it was Israel.

Some data show that the Norwegian media give more attention to Israel than to the neighboring Russia, a country which may cause Norway somewhat more problems than Israel. Furthermore it also seems that the Norwegian media give more attention to the Israeli army than to their own troops in Afghanistan.

Former Israeli minister Michael Melchior who still is officially Norway’s chief rabbi is always very careful in not attacking Norway. In 2002 in an interview for my book Europe’s Crumbling Myths he however said to me “In most Norwegian media, there is no true reflection of the problems and dilemmas of the nations in the Middle East. They have lost every sense of proportion, of democracy and of basic moral values.”

A little background story: The publisher of my forthcoming book in Norwegian – Anti-Semitism in Norway: Behind the Humanitarian Mask – came here for the recent Feast of Tabernacles. I had finished writing the book some time in June, as it was unlikely that anything would happen during the summer holidays, and it was ready to be published. At the beginning of October the publisher said to me: “I want to delay the book by a few weeks, because there were so many anti-Israeli issues in September that I want you to update the book.” I did what he wanted; it took over 2 500 words to cover anti-Israeli acts in Norway over a period of perhaps five weeks. With what has happened in the past few weeks the book is now again already not fully up to date.

What is behind this obsession with Israel and the Jews by a Norwegian elite which falsely calls itself progressive? Why are so many pioneering anti-Israeli, and also anti-Semitic, acts coming out of this country? I have tried to do a similar exercise for a country which I know much better than Norway – the Netherlands, where I grew up. With great difficulty I found two examples there of pioneering anti-Israeli acts in the last decade.

Before I answer this question I want to make it clear that all the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic incitement comes from two small groups. One occupies strategic positions in Norwegian society. This left wing elite, obsessed with Israel, controls the government, is enormously over-represented in the media and has a strong representation in the trade union and in the NGOs as well as in academia. The other group consists of some Muslim immigrants.

Not all is black. There is even a small group of very devoted friends of Israel. Earlier this year 3,500 Christians from all over Norway marched in Stavanger in favor of freeing Gilad Schalit. Another example: Trondheim and Petach Tikva are twinned cities and the Petach Pikva football team was very cordially received in Trondheim earlier this year, with the trip being subsidized by the municipality of Trondheim.

Arab Crimes

Most ordinary Norwegians of course have problems other than those of the Middle East. But they are influenced by the anti-Israeli inciters in the media. However, it is only if the media remain largely silent about the enormous criminality in the Muslim world that you can present Israel in an evil way. Imagine that the Norwegian state television would say regularly, dear viewers just stop eating your meatballs for a few minutes, we are going to show you a beating of a woman, the cutting off of the hand of a thief in Saudi Arabia, or a nice beheading in Yemen.

On other evenings they would tell them to stop eating the meatballs while they are shown the victims of a suicide bombing or mass killing in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan committed by Muslims against other Muslims. And finally they should stop eating for a moment because a new chapter of genocide by Muslims of other Muslims in Sudan is being shown. If this truth were shown in Norway hell would break out.

Why is there no Challenge?

The anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli acts have now been going on for many years. Why have they gone largely unnoticed and unchallenged? One major reason is that very little is written by foreigners about Norway. It is a country which is of little interest to the world. It is mentioned mainly in tourist papers or in business news because of its major oil and gas production. It also gets some attention once a year when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, in particular when the Nobel committee makes such an absurd decision as it did this year by awarding the prize to Barack Obama.

To put it in some perspective, I would say that there are today more foreign journalists in Israel than there have been in Norway during the thousand years which have elapsed since the Vikings terrorized Europe. The absence of foreign interest combined with a language which few people speak allows for a situation where the anti-Israel hate promotion of the elite is largely unchallenged. It also allows to leave the vague Norwegian myth of the country having a humanitarian policy intact.

Another reason for this situation is that Communism crumbled by itself. It didn’t have to be defeated in a bloody war. This meant that left wing ideas were not disqualified in the same way as those of the Nazis and the fascists. Hard core left wing ideologists and people influenced by their ideas remained in important positions in many European countries.

The Norwegian government is also deadly afraid to offend Muslims. It behaved as real cowards during the Danish cartoon crisis. It tries to please Muslim countries with its criticism of Israel.

Biased Journalists

All these aspects together provide part of the explanation for the obsession of Norway’s arrogant progressive elite with Israel. The Soviet Union was a master of anti-Israeli hate propaganda, and those influenced by it today continue it. Those who write in the Norwegian media are far more left wing than the general Norwegian population.

For instance, a recent study showed that among youngsters studying journalism, 10% support the extreme left Red Electoral Alliance, which didn’t get enough votes in the September 2009 parliamentary elections to obtain even one seat in Parliament.[1] Another study showed that the great majority of journalists vote for the government parties or even more to the left.

As Professor Frank Aarebrot pointed out,a poll in 2005 showed that the close to 70 percent of the journalists supported the three left wing parties: Labor, the left Socialists and the Red Electoral Alliance.[2] The largest opposition party, the Progress Party on the right, had the support of 26% of the population in the elections and only of 2% of the Norwegian journalists.

In my book Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews, there is an article by Odd Sverre Hove, the editor of the small Norwegian Christian daily Dagen, who analyzes how the state TV station NRK systematically manipulated the news from Israel in the first days of the second intifada in 2000.

There are only two TV stations in Norway: the state NRK and the commercial station TV2. The latter has hosted the infamous comedian Jespersen who said that he commiserated with the lice and fleas who made the bad choice of going onto the bodies of Jews in concentration camps. Worse still is that these remarks were considered acceptable by the director of the TV2 station.

That same station TV2 paid for the Holocaust denier David Irving to come to Norway this year and had him interviewed for more than a quarter of an hour by one of its journalists who showed hardly any knowledge of the Holocaust.

I can tell you from my own experience that the TV2 people are major falsifiers of what a person says and the National Telegraph Bureau, which is the main provider of foreign news to the 300 Norwegian papers, is hardly any better. The situation is one of a mixture of manipulation and a widespread very low level of journalistic professionalism in Norway.

No Level Playing Field

Let me make this clear. Norway is a democratic country – it is not the Soviet Union under Communist rule. It is not that the ruling parties rigidly promote only anti-Israel hate. But once you promote hatred this overshadows everything else you do. There is no state sponsored anti-Semitism in Norway. The government however supports a reality which is conducive to anti-Semitism. This means that in Norway there is no real possibility for a battle of ideas. For that you need a level playing field, and that level playing field does not exist in Norway.

The reasons why there is no level playing field in Norway are many: Thete is this hard core extreme left elite, others are socialists who have a tendency to show solidarity with the weak. This includes whitewashing those weak people who are extreme criminals, such as genocidal Muslims. Added to this is the fact that there are no checks and balances resulting from foreign newspapers reporting on the Norwegian realities. That is also why there is so little selfcriticism in the country.

The situation is complicated by other factors. First is that with the immigration of a large number of Muslims into Norway, a number of extreme criminal anti-Semites have entered the country. This became evident in the riots during the Gaza campaign which, according to the police, were the most severe Oslo had seen in decades. Shops were burned on Oslo’s main street. Today the extreme anti-Semitic Muslims in Norway probably outnumber the 700 members of the Jewish community. (Slide 4)

Furthermore, there is a long tradition of anti-Semitism in the country. It is not true that what one sees in Norway is pure anti-Israelism, which has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Minister Halvorsen however did not leave the anti-Israel demonstration when there were shouts of “Death to the Jews.”


Another Obsession: No anti-Semitism

Besides the obsession with Israel, there is another obsession in Norway which concerns the Jewish people. That is the obsessive way in which one is told by many Norwegians that there is no anti-Semitism in Norway.

Because of that lack of anti-Semitism two of the three Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated in the last five years, the synagogue has been shot at in 2006, the cantor has been attacked on Oslo’s main street. Jewish children in schools have been harassed. Some Jews have received death threats. The community, the school and the old age home need heavy security. All these signs of lack of anti-Semitism show that Norwegian Jews are in a position which is typical of all other Norwegians.

There is nothing many Norwegians are more sensitive to than being reminded of Quisling, the war-time Norwegian prime minister whose name has become the expression of the archetype of a traitor in English and many other languages. It was not the German occupiers who arrested the Jews, but the Norwegian collaborators. They handed the Jews over to the Germans, to be sent to their death.

We are always told that Quisling had only limited support in the country. This is true as far as the elections are concerned, but the number of anti-Semites was far larger. A great majority of parliamentarians had voted to prohibit Jewish ritual slaughter already in 1929. In Germany this happened only when the Nazis came to power in 1933. A false claim is that the Norwegian prohibition derived from their concern for animals. If so, they should have long ago prohibited hunting and the killing of whales, which until today is still allowed in Norway.

Oil and Gas

Norway was an insignificant country until large quantities of oil and gas were found there. Prior to that, fishing and farming were its main activities. Today you might say that the country specializes in fish, oil and gas; one of my acquaintances has said that, to this, you have to add boredom.

The wealth gained from oil and gas has enabled the Norwegian government to build a new mythology. Norway may be small in population, but it is great in charitable, humanitarian aid. This is what I call Norway’s “humanitarian mask.” As Gerald Steinberg and Yael Beck show in an article in my upcoming book in Norwegian, under the heading “humanitarian aid” Norway provides substantial funds to Palestinian and other NGOs which incite against Israel.

The same wealth also gives the Norwegian government the feeling that it can criticize Israel, while at the same time being silent or soft on the endless crimes in the Arab world. To a certain extent, such an attitude contradicts one of the basic characteristics which Norway claims for itself: the so-called Jante Law. This law says that you should not think that you are better than someone else. The Norwegian government however thinks that it is better than Israel and can thus teach Israel some lessons. You might put it this way: to a certain extent, part of all that gas has gone to their heads.

Should Norway teach Israel lessons? The former commander of the Norwegian army General Robert Mood, is now based in Jerusalem, as part of a United Nations mission. In 2008, he said that the Norwegian army’s current capability is that it cannot defend the country, but it could defend one neighborhood in Oslo. I also read in Aftenposten that the Norwegians are only now investigating major war crimes by Norwegians in a prisoner camp during the Second World War,

The Jewish Community

Before I come to the most recent events, a few words about the Jewish community: In a country where you have two or three Jews at most among every 10,000 citizens, they of course play no role. But, the Jews in Norway play symbolic roles. When there are accusations of anti-Semitism, the Jewish community is supposed to say that it isn’t so bad.

In this way they have the symbolic role of whitewashers of the country’s misbehavior. In my recent essay, which is available here, I quote a number of examples of Norwegian Jews who, on various occasions, have said that the situation isn’t so great as far as anti-Semitism is concerned. And even the head of the Oslo Jewish community, a significant whitewasher has said on various occasions that the situation is problematic. This is the essence of the Diaspora existence in such a country. As one lives as a Jew in Norway and make his living there, one must promote the image of the country even if that means twisting the truth.

Elbit

Let me now conclude with short observations of the two most recent discriminatory events: The first one is the Elbit story. Out of so called ethical considerations, the large Norwegian pension fund disinvested from Elbit. The same pension fund however has no ethical problems with investing in companies which mine phosphate in the disputed Western Sahara. The local population there sees this as robbing their natural resources.

The Norwegian state-controlled Statoil Company is trying to get into Turkmenistan, one of the least democratic countries in the world. Statoil also is invested in a project of oil from oil sand in Alberta in Canada where it will destroy a forest the size of England.[3] Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre says that the decision to divest from Elbit had nothing to do with the Norwegian government but is the decision of a private fund.

I always have the feeling that the difference between some Norwegian politicians and politicians- in other countries is that, when these Norwegians twist the truth, they do it more transparently. If it were a private pension fund, why was the decision announced by Minister Halvorsen?

The NTNU Affair

The other recent major discriminatory issue is the NTNU affair. The NTNU university in Trondheim already had an anti-Israel record. Its student union, of which membership is obligatory, boycotted Israel for almost a year in 2004. In May this year a number of professors from NTNU and the local Trondheim college Hist, asked the boards of the two institutions to boycott Israel. Apparently, the board of the college shortly afterwards voted against this.

In September a series of seminars on the Middle East, to be given over a few months, was announced. All six lecturers are anti-Israelis. Tomorrow night Ilan Pappe speaks there. The key organizers are all people who had signed the resolution to boycott Israel. Despite all this, the rector Torbjørn Digernes supported and financed a large part of the series. It was another pioneering act of anti-Israelism in Norway.

The NTNU affair requires a detailed case study and a detailed seminar on another occasion, so let me just summarize it briefly:

Entirely by chance someone discovered a few weeks before the board meeting on 12 November that the academic boycott of Israel was on its agenda. One NTNU professor, Bjørn Alsberg, prepared a petition to the board against the boycott. It would ultimately be signed by 103 NTNU professors, far more than those who had signed the pro-boycott petition. On the basis of Alsberg’s petition, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East prepared a petition against the boycott, which was signed by 3,500 academics all over the world, among whom were 13 Nobel Prize winners including the only two living Norwegian prize winners.

Other Jewish organizations, including ADL, AJCommittee, the Wiesenthal Center, CAMERA, World Jewish Congress, Academic Friends of Israel in the UK and many others, were very helpful. The boycott was also condemned by the Association of American University Professors, the Russell Group of the leading 20 UK universities, etc.

After all the bad international publicity finally the minister of higher education, Torah Aasland an extreme leftist herself, said that the board had no legal authority to support such an issue. Suddenly a few days before the vote, NTNU Rector Digernes who had partly financed the propaganda seminars organized by people who promote the boycott came to the conclusion that he had always been against the boycott. In the end the entire board was against the boycott.

Prof. Alsberg told me that the media present at the NTNU Board meeting were afterwards mainly interested in talking to the people who had supported the boycott. In a country where the battlefield for the battle of ideas is level, they would have been more interested in interviewing the winners, rather than the losers.

In this short introduction I could not cover all the incidents of the last year. These included Foreign Minister Støre maintaining the Holocaust memory abuser Trine Lilleng as a diplomat in Riyadh; the visit of Queen Sophia to a Muslim institution in Oslo, whose imam supports suicide bombings; and Norwegian government investment of $30 million in memory of the author Knut Hamsun, who dedicated his Nobel Prize for Literature to Goebbels and remained an admirer of Hitler till the end of the war.

The present Norwegian government was recently elected for four years. We can thus expect again many anti-Semitic and anti-Israelis incidents in Norway in the coming years. My conclusion is that we will have to gradually show the Norwegian Israel-haters and anti-Semites that there are no free anti-Semitic lunches. Thank you for your attention.

[1] www.israelwhat.com/?p=3189

[2] Jonathan Tisdall, “Media want new Government,” Aftenposten, 15 August 2005.

[3] www.greenpeace.org/international/news/can-statoil-wash-it-s-hands-of

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is an internationally renowned environmental expert and business consultant and has extensive background in Jewish public affairs.

He was born in Vienna, grew up in Amsterdam and moved to Israel with his family in 1968 from Paris. He is a chemist and economist by training, holds a Ph.D. in environmental studies and has a teacher training degree in Judaism from the Dutch Jewish Seminary.

In the past thirty-five years he has been an international consultant specializing in business strategy. He has worked in twenty countries and his clients have included the boards of several of the world’s largest multinational companies as well as governments. Dr Gerstenfeld was a Board Member of the Israel Corporation, one of Israel’s largest investment companies, and several other Israeli public companies.

He is chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), is Co-Publisher of the Jerusalem Letter/Viewpoints and Co-Publisher of Jewish Environmental Perspectives.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is a leading expert on Judaism and the environment. He lectures and publishes extensively on the subject, internationally and in Israel.

By the beginning of 2008, he had published 12 books in five languages, among which the best-selling Rivalutare l’Italia (jointly with Lorenzo Necci).

Contact:manfredg@netvision.net.il

Hate Radio: The long, toxic afterlife of Nazi propaganda in the Arab world

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-


http://chronicle.com/article/Hate-Radio-Nazi-Propaganda-in/49199/

Between 1939 and 1945, shortwave radio transmitters near Berlin broadcast
Nazi propaganda in many languages around the world, including Arabic
throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and Persian programs in Iran.
English-language transcripts of the Arabic broadcasts shed light on a
particularly dark chapter in the globalization of pernicious ideas. The
transcripts’ significance, however, is not purely historical. Since
September 11, 2001, scholars have debated the lineages, similarities, and
differences between Nazi anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism of Islamic
extremists. These radio broadcasts suggest that Nazi Arabic-language
propaganda helped introduce radical anti-Semitism into the Middle East,
where it found common ground with anti-Jewish currents in Islam.

In a 2007 book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11
(Telos Press), the German political scientist Matthias Kuentzel details how
Nazi ideology influenced Islamist ideologues like Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid
Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as well as the Palestinian leader
Haj Amin al-Husseini. More recent examples abound. The founding charter of
Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, recapitulates conspiracy theories
about Jews that were popular in Europe in the 20th century. Al Qaeda’s war
against “the Zionist-Crusader Alliance” and the anti-Zionist rants of
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran also display a blend of anti-Semitic
themes rooted in Nazi and fascist, as well as Islamist, traditions. To be
sure, each of these movements and ideologies have non-European, local, and
regional causes and inspirations. But the formulation of Nazi propaganda
during World War II and its dissemination stand as a decisive episode in the
development of radical Islamism.

After Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, German embassies and
consulates were closed throughout North Africa and the Middle East,
hampering Nazi propaganda efforts. Between 1941 and 1943, as German forces
were engaged in heavy fighting in North Africa, millions of leaflets were
dropped from airplanes and distributed on the ground by propaganda units
operating with Rommel’s Afrika Korps. But in a region where fewer than 20
percent of adults were literate, radio was considered a much more effective
medium of communication. Radio stations like Radio Berlin and the Voice of
Free Arabism adapted Nazi propaganda to the circumstances of the Middle
East.

Only a fraction of the Nazi regime’s broadcasts in Arabic survived the war
in the German archives. But in the fall of 1941, the American Embassy in
Egypt began to produce verbatim English-language translations of Nazi
broadcasts. Every week for the remainder of the war, the embassy sent a
digest, “Axis Broadcasts in Arabic,” to the secretary of state in
Washington. In the parlance of contemporary intelligence operations, “Axis
Broadcasts in Arabic” would be described as “open source” intelligence
gathering, that is, an examination of what adversaries say in public. As far
as I have been able to determine, “Axis Broadcasts in Arabic” comprise the
most complete record of Nazi Germany’s efforts to win the hearts and minds
of the Arab and Islamic world.

That task was made more difficult because of ideas about Aryan racial
superiority and purity that were central to Nazi ideology. Nazi diplomats
had long been sensitive to the fact that such views made it difficult to
garner Arab allies. Before the war, German officials went to great lengths
to reassure Arabs that Nazi policies, like the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935,
were aimed strictly at Jews, not non-Jewish Semites. In addition, Arab
leaders were given private assurances that the Third Reich opposed British
and French colonialism, as well as Zionist aspirations in Palestine. But
Mussolini’s imperial ambitions around the Mediterranean remained at odds
with an open declaration of support by the Axis powers for Arab
independence. By the summer of 1942, however, when Hitler and Mussolini
believed that they were on the verge of victory over the Allies in North
Africa, the two leaders publicly called for an end to colonialism in the
region. And for the remainder of the war, Nazi radio broadcast an
unrelenting flood of anti-British, anti-American, anti-Soviet, and
especially anti-Jewish propaganda into the Middle East. It was hate radio
with a vengeance.

The Nazi Arabic-language broadcasts were the result of a collaboration
between officials in the German foreign ministry and pro-Nazi Arab exiles
who found refuge from the British in Berlin, most notably Haj Amin
al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the most important Palestinian
religious and political figure of the era, and Rashid Ali al-Kilani, leader
of a pro-Axis coup in Iraq in 1941, which was quickly reversed by the
British military. Husseini’s and Kilani’s arrival in Berlin in 1941 provided
the Axis with a rare asset: Arabs who could communicate Nazi ideas in
colloquial, fluent, and passionate Arabic. Previously, the Arabic broadcasts
drew on the expertise of German Orientalists and the local knowledge of
German diplomats who had served in the Middle East.

Those early broadcasts tended to present the Third Reich as an ally of both
Arab nationalists and Muslim fundamentalists. Speeches by Hitler or Joseph
Goebbels, his propaganda minister, were generally omitted. Instead, the
programs combined commentary on political events in the Middle East with a
selective appropriation and interpretation of the Koran. The broadcasts
began with an incantation-“Oh Muslims”-and a call for listeners to return to
the words of the Koran. During the winter of 1940-41, several broadcasts
described Muslims as “backward” because they had “not shown God the proper
piety and do not fear him.” A return to traditional Islam, the broadcasts
suggested, would lead to victory over Islam’s enemies.

This appeal is indicative of the reactionary modernist character of Nazi
propaganda, which combined modern technology with calls to reject modern
liberal democratic values and institutions. The early Arabic-language
broadcasts created the perception of affinity between Nazi ideology and the
Koran.

Following the arrival of Husseini and Kilani in Berlin, the broadcasts more
skillfully integrated the Nazi perspective on World War II with themes of
Arab nationalism, as well as rhetoric that we would now call fundamentalist
or radical Islamic. On July 3, 1942, as Rommel’s Afrika Korps advanced
toward El ‘Alamein, about 60 miles west of Alexandria, Egypt, a station
called Berlin in Arabic announced that German and Italian forces were coming
to “guarantee Egypt’s independence and sovereignty,” and “to liberate the
whole of the Near East from the British yoke.” Husseini, who came on the air
to celebrate Rommel’s “glorious victory,” declared that “the Axis powers are
fighting against the common enemy, namely the British and the Jews.”

In Germany, Nazi propaganda routinely blamed the Jews for starting World War
II. Hitler, for instance, famously boasted that the war would result not in
“the extermination of the Aryan race but rather the extermination of the
Jewish race in Europe.” In broadcasts to the Middle East, the Nazis repeated
that claim, arguing that Britain and the United States were stooges of the
Jews. An Allied victory, the Nazis warned, would mean Jewish domination of
the Arab world and the success of Zionism. Germans were reassured by the
regime that the process of “fulfilling Hitler’s prophecy”-to exterminate and
annihilate the Jews-was under way. In broadcasts to the Middle East,
listeners were called upon to participate in the massacre.

At 8:15 p.m. on July 7, 1942, the Voice of Free Arabism played a remarkable
program titled, “Kill the Jews Before They Kill You.” The broadcast began
with a lie: “A large number of Jews residing in Egypt and a number of Poles,
Greeks, Armenians, and Free French have been issued with revolvers and
ammunition” to fight “against the Egyptians at the last moment, when Britain
is forced to evacuate Egypt.” The broadcast continued:

“In the face of this barbaric procedure by the British we think it best, if
the life of the Egyptian nation is to be saved, that the Egyptians rise as
one man to kill the Jews before they have a chance of betraying the Egyptian
people. It is the duty of the Egyptians to annihilate the Jews and to
destroy their property.. You must kill the Jews, before they open fire on
you. Kill the Jews, who have appropriated your wealth and who are plotting
against your security. Arabs of Syria, Iraq, and Palestine, what are you
waiting for? The Jews are planning to violate your women, to kill your
children and to destroy you. According to the Muslim religion, the defense
of your life is a duty which can only be fulfilled by annihilating the Jews.
This is your best opportunity to get rid of this dirty race, which has
usurped your rights and brought misfortune and destruction on your
countries. Kill the Jews, burn their property, destroy their stores,
annihilate these base supporters of British imperialism. Your sole hope of
salvation lies in annihilating the Jews before they annihilate you.”

This broadcast, which combined secular political accusations with an appeal
to the religious demands of Islam, was unusual only insofar as it explicitly
voiced genocidal intentions that were merely implicit in other declarations
about the venality and power of the Jews. Two German historians,
Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, recently uncovered evidence that
German intelligence agents were reporting back to Berlin that if Rommel
succeeded in reaching Cairo and Palestine, the Axis powers could count on
support from some elements in the Egyptian officer corps as well as the
Muslim Brotherhood. Mallmann and Cüppers also show that an SS division was
preparing to fly to Egypt to extend the Final Solution to the Middle East.
The British and Australian defeat of Rommel at the Battle of El ‘Alamein
prevented that from happening.

How was Nazi propaganda received by Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East?
Research into this question has begun, but much more remains to be done by
scholars who read Arabic and Persian. It is clear, as Meir Litvak and Esther
Webman point out in their important new book, From Empathy to Denial: Arab
Responses to the Holocaust (Columbia University Press), that the revulsion
for fascism and Nazism that greatly influenced postwar politics in Europe
was not nearly as prevalent in the Middle East. In a June 1945 report, the
Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence
Agency, determined that “in the Near East the popular attitude toward the
trial of war criminals is one of apathy. As a result of the general Near
Eastern feeling of hostility to the imperialism of certain of the Allied
powers, there is a tendency to sympathize with rather than condemn those who
have aided the Axis.” The OSS concluded that there was no support in the
region for bringing pro-Axis Arab leaders like Husseini and Kilani to trial.

In the first months after the war, as the scope of the Jewish catastrophe in
Europe was being revealed, Arab and Islamic radicals showed no sign of
reconsidering their hostility to Zionism. On June 1, 1946, the OSS office in
Cairo sent a report to Washington about a statement made by Hassan Al-Banna
to the Arab League on the occasion of Husseini’s return to Egypt. Banna, the
leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, celebrated Husseini as a “hero who
challenged an empire and fought Zionism, with the help of Hitler and
Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin Al-Husseini will continue the
struggle…. There must be a divine purpose behind the preservation of the
life of this man, namely the defeat of Zionism. Amin! March on! God is with
you! We are behind you! We are willing to sacrifice our necks for the cause.
To death! Forward March.”

Banna’s hope that Husseini would “continue the struggle” indicates that
Banna perceived the battle against Zionism as a continuation of Nazism’s
assault on the Jews. Sayyid Qutb, another extremely influential member of
the Brotherhood, incorporated anti-Jewish ideas from Europe to forge a new
jihadist ideology. In his essay from the early 1950s, “Our Struggle With the
Jews,” which became central in the canon of radical Islamist texts-the essay
was republished in 1970 and distributed throughout the world by the monarchy
in Saudi Arabia-Qutb argued that Jews are implacable enemies of Islam. As
such, Qutb wrote, Jews merited “the worst kind of punishment.” Qutb claimed
that Allah had sent Hitler to earth to “punish” the Jews for their evil
deeds. In so doing, Qutb justified, rather than denied, the Holocaust. This
paranoid analysis, in turn, influenced the authors of the charter of Hamas,
which blends Islamist fundamentalism with the Nazi ideology of mid-20th
century Europe. The Hamas Charter holds Jews responsible for the French and
the Russian Revolutions, World War I and World War II, as well as the
founding of the United Nations-all of which were, Hamas argues, orchestrated
for the purpose of furthering Jewish world domination.

Many decades and events stand between World War II and contemporary
expressions of radical Islam. Yet the transcripts of Arabic-language
propaganda broadcasts offer compelling evidence of a political and
ideological meeting of minds between Nazism and radical Islam. The toxic
mixture of religious and secular themes forged in Nazi-era Berlin, and
disseminated to the Middle East, continues to shape the extreme politics of
that region.

Jeffrey Herf is a professor of modern European and German history at the
University of Maryland at College Park and author of The Jewish Enemy: Nazi
Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard University Press,
2006). His latest book is Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, published this
month by Yale University Press.

Radical Israeli Professor Turned Home Into Refuge for Convicted Palestinian

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

Jerusalem – Dr. Neve Gordon of Israel’s Ben Gurion University is known as one of Israel’s most radical academic Palestinian sympathizers. However, his activities appear to have peaked this year with a call for an anti-Israel boycott, and revelations that he hosted a convicted Palestinian sentenced to house arrest.

Despite being the chairman of the political science department at Israel’s Ben Gurion University, Gordon wrote an L.A. Times op-ed calling for a worldwide boycott of Israel, including Israeli universities, to achieve what he calls “ending our apartheid.“

Gordon’s call was widely seen as an anti-democratic attempt to undermine Israeli democracy and sovereignty and drew scathing criticism from his peers in both the academic and activist communities.

The president of BGU, Rivka Carmi, went so far as to say Gordon’s call meant the university “is being threatened by the egregious remarks of one person, under the guise of academic freedom.” In a rebuttal editorial, Carmi had to point out that it was only Israeli labor law that prevented the university from firing Gordon. In a blistering assessment, she said his boycott call meant “Gordon has forfeited his ability to work effectively within the academic setting, with his colleagues in Israel and around the world.”

Veteran Israeli left wing activist Uri Avnery was with Gordon and other Israeli extremists when they barricaded themselves in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah compound during a prolonged siege by the Israeli army in 2002. Despite their common background, even Avnery rejected Gordon’s op-ed, saying it was an “example of a faulty diagnosis leading to faulty treatment. To be precise: the mistaken assumption that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resembles the South African experience leads to a mistaken choice of strategy.” These were harsh words from a political colleague that raised questions about Gordon’s professional abilities as an academic.

Gordon is viewed in his own country as notorious for his venomous anti-Israel writings and statements. The Israeli media reported when Gordon and other activists illegally entered Ramallah in 2002 to serve as human shields inside Yasser Arafat’s headquarters. The activists wanted to prevent the Israeli army from arresting the suspects wanted for the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister. Gordon was shown in newspaper photos embracing Arafat. The suspects were eventually apprehended, tried and convicted.

Gordon also has a fractious track record in his teaching career with numerous run-ins with students who hold opposing views. Gordon regularly denounces Israel as a fascist apartheid entity and admitted that his boycott call was a tactic to force Israeli concessions with the Palestinians. Gordon’s articles are so openly anti-Israel that they are often published on neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial web sites.

Around the same time as the boycott call, Gordon turned his own home into a refuge for convicted Fatah organizer Mohammed Abu Humus, a resident of the Issawiya neighborhood of East Jerusalem. As a local Fatah organizer, Abu Humus had previous convictions for several security related offenses including arson and assault. Despite the latest conviction for directing demonstrators to throw rocks, Gordon described Abu Humus as a “political prisoner” and “a Fatah leader.”

A Jerusalem district judge earlier this year convicted Abu Humus and handed down a nine-month sentence, converted to house arrest. Gordon organized a group of far-left academics to testify on behalf of Abu Humus, and Gordon offered the court to host Abu Humus in Gordon’s own home in Beersheva for the duration of the house arrest. It is evidently the only case on record of a Palestinian militant being released to house arrest in the home of a Jewish Israeli citizen.

Abu Humus and Gordon have collaborated in the past in an organization called Ta’ayush, which Gordon himself is on record as describing as a seditious group, but according to its website its activities appear to have petered out in 2007.

Abu Humus provided an interesting complement to Gordon’s position. Interviewed at his office in the Alternative Information Center, a pro-Palestinian lobby group in Jerusalem, Abu Humus stated that archeological excavations in the Old City prove that despite Jews worshipping at the remaining wall of the ancient Jewish temple, the Jews had no claim to Jerusalem. After years of archeological digging, he insisted no evidence of the Jewish temple exists.

Bio: Paul Shindman is a veteran journalist who has covered the
Israeli-Palestinian story for the past two decades and was the Jerusalem
bureau chief for United Press International. He is currently the Israeli
reporter for the Hokkaido Shimbun Newspaper and does freelance work for
various media agencies including North American newspapers and the BBC.

CAPITAL, ISLAMIZATION AND ACADEMIA : Is it naïveté or idiocy?

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

A huge stream of capital flows to academic institutions in the West. It greases and inflames the next generation of Islamic radicals and academics who will supply them with insights and justifications. This capital also greases the most important university chairs, and the prestigious Ivy League universities. Tell me who your sponsor is, and I will tell you what will be written in your next study.

Naïveté, and sometimes ignorance, sometimes feigned innocence, together and separately, cause blindness to reign. The academic world rolls its eyes heavenward. We? Can money influence us? We are saints. Pure and free of any influence or blemish.

Reality is a bit different. Money speaks from the throats of the academics. This works in all directions. University chairs funded by pro-Israeli bodies will sing an appropriate tune. And university chairs whose funds come from Iran or Saudi Arabia (ostensibly rivals, but in fact allies)-will also sing accordingly.

But there is a difference. The pro-Israeli money, inasmuch as it exists, does not reach a fraction of the huge capital that flows to the West, and influences the content of studies, directly and indirectly.

Two years ago, John Esposito published a book called “Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think ”. According to the book, only seven percent of the Muslims around the world belong to the radical stream. In fact, the book states, over nine of ten Muslims are moderate Muslims.

There is no doubt that this is wonderful news. An absolute majority of moderates. In comparison with the believers of other religions, the outcome will yet be that the Muslims are the most moderate on Earth. Middle East affairs expert Dr. Martin Kramer exposed the amazing misleading statements in the book. For example, it makes no mention of an important poll that found that most of the Muslims in the world think that the [World Trade Center] terror attacks were not carried out by Arabs. They were carried out, many Muslims believe, by the Mossad or the CIA, in order to defame Islam. More importantly, who stands behind the renowned researcher Esposito? Well, it is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who donated no less than USD 20 million to Esposito’s research foundation. And together they concoct for us an academic false presentation of Muslims, who are actually much more moderate than members of other religions. The money is Saudi. The result is an academic study by a prestigious university in the United States.

We can continue with Britain, where dozens of “centers of Islamic studies” were set up in universities, in order to make the Muslim students more moderate. But there is a problem. A report by Prof. Anthony Glees found that the Saudis poured GBP 233 million into these centers. The result is the radicalization of the Muslim young people in Britain. Here too, billionaire bin Talal is in the background. He donated GBP 8 million to an Islamic center in Oxford. A poll conducted in Britain revealed that one third of Muslim students justify murder in the name of religion. You will find no mention of this in Esposito’s book. No chance.

The money has no influence, they will declaim. This is what we will also be told by the professors being supported by the Iranian foundation, which wants to spread the religion of peace and love around the world. And also, of course, the wonders of the Iranian revolution and its great president Ahmadinejad.

===========

Yemini was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel in 1954, on the eve of Passover. Hence the name, Ben Dror: the son of freedom..

He studied Humanities and History in Tel Aviv University, and later on he studied Law. After his university studies, he was appointed advisor to the Israeli Minister of Immigration Absorption and then became the spokesman of the Ministry.

In 1984, he began his career as a journalist and essayist and published the book “Political Punch” which deals in a critical way with politics and society in Israel. He worked as a lawyer and was a partner in a law firm. Since 2003 he is the opinion-editor of the daily newspaper Maariv and also published many articles and essays in other journals.

In recent years he researched and published “industry of lies ” about publications against the State of Israel and its Jewish character, which he considers false. In this framework, he published a series of research articles about the Israeli-Arab conflict in which he examined the issues of genocide, refugees, Palestinian and Arab capital, the status of Israeli Arabs, Multiculturalism, and the status of women. All these articles included a comparative study about each topic.

According to Yemini, “the modern Anti-Zionism is a politically correct Antisemitism “. He argued that the same way Jews were demonized, Israel is demonized, the same way the right of Jews to exist was denied, the right for Self-determination is denied from Israel, the same way Jews were presented as a menace to the world, Israel is presented as a menace to the world. In his comparative studies, he presents the huge gap between the myths against Israel, from one hand, and the real facts, from the other hand.

America Slams Israeli Construction Efforts

By
David Bedein
-
Jerusalem – Despite firm opposition from the American government, the Jerusalem municipality decided to approve the construction of 900 new housing units in the Gilo neighborhood in southern Jerusalem. Gilo, which was no man’s land between 1949 and 1967, was acquired by Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 war and annexed to Jerusalem and Israel.

U.S. administration officials voiced their anger over the decision. Special U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell relayed to the Israeli government a request from the Americans not to build in Gilo.

A few hours after that news emerged, the Jerusalem municipality’s District Committee for Planning and Construction unanimously approved the plans to expand the built-up area in the northwestern part of the neighborhood. Within sixty days, after objections to the plans have been submitted, the plans will reach the implementation stage.

“Israeli law does not discriminate between Jews and Arabs,” explained Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. “The demand to stop construction for Jews only is not legal, neither in the United States nor anywhere else in the world.”

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Israel Interior Minister Eli Yishai said: “We won’t permit construction in Jerusalem to be stopped.”

However, U.S. administration officials responded to the decision sharply.

“While we’re working to renew the negotiations, an act of that sort makes it even harder for our efforts to succeed,” said a high-ranking State Department source. “This is a unilateral step, and we’ve demanded of both sides not to take any such steps. Our position is clear, Jerusalem is a final status arrangement issue.”

An official statement released by the White House noted the administration was “dismayed” by the decision, and that the United States also objected to other Israeli actions in Jerusalem that pertained to construction, including the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and the demotion of Palestinian buildings.

A U.S. administration official said that the Israeli government had “given a slap in the face to the United States’ efforts to bring about successful dialogue between the parties.”

The decision to approve the construction in Gilo was perceived by the U.S. administration as a departure from the agreements that had been reached in the previous number of weeks.

“Israel is taking unilateral measures while it demands that the world oppose unilateral measures by the Palestinians,” said an American official. “That isn’t going to work on the ground. We’re disappointed in (Israel Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu.”

Officials in the Prime Minister’s Bureau rejected the American criticism and said: “The Gilo neighborhood is an integral part of Jerusalem, just as Ramat Eshkol, Rehavia, French Hill and Pisgat Zeev are. This issue is part of a broad national consensus.”

Officials in the Prime Minister’s Bureau said that “construction in the Gilo neighborhood has been underway continually for dozens of years and there is nothing new in the construction permit procedures.”

They added that there was no crisis in relations between Israel and the United States.

Rules Of The Game

Have Changed

If anyone among the Israeli decision-makers still believed the Americans would ultimately get on with business as usual in the aftermath of the Israeli decision to build 900 housing units in Gilo, along came reality and slapped them in the face.

The U.S. administration does not accept the Israeli decision to apply Israeli law to any area acquired by Israel in the wake of the 1967 war.

Even more important to remember is that the American government does not recognize any part of Jerusalem as an integral part of Israel.

All documents processed by the American government in Jerusalem – passports, birth certificates, affidavits and even death certificates are stamped “Jerusalem” with no nation state mentioned.

Instead, successive U.S. administrations abide by the UN’s 1949 definition of Jerusalem as an international zone.

While lobbyists for Israel have, for many years, tried to influence countless American administrations to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, very few of Israel’s friends abroad ask the American government to simply recognize Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, as a part of Israel.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Israel Warned To Prepare For Ballistic Missile Threats

By
David Bedein
-

Jerusalem – Israel has been urged to prepare for ballistic missile threats from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

A senior defense executive warned that Israel’s military and Defense Ministry might not have been allowed to prepare its missile defense umbrella to combat possible future threats from Middle East states, which are not directly threatening Israel at this time, due to political constraints.

The executive, who works closely with the Defense Ministry, said the threat could come from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which have been developing or procuring medium- and intermediate-range missiles.

“We are not paying attention to what is going on in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey,” Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) vice president Yair Ramati said.

Mr. Ramati, who for years headed IAI’s Arrow missile defense program, cited Turkey’s growing missile and rocket capabilities.

He said Ankara has been acquiring U.S. and Chinese systems as well as developing Turkish weapons.

This included the Chinese-origin 302 mm rocket, with a range of 150 kilometers.

The Israel Defense Ministry has never cited Egypt or Turkey as threats. Egypt has maintained a peace treaty with Israel since 1979, and Turkey was regarded as a strategic ally of the Jewish state from 1996 until 2008. Over the last year, Turkey increased ties with neighboring Iran and Syria.

In a presentation to the International Aerospace Conference and Exhibition-Israel on Nov. 17, Mr. Ramati said Egypt and other Arab states could constitute missile threats by 2020. He said Saudi Arabia, concerned over Iran’s military modernization effort, was expected to replace its Chinese-origin intermediate-range CSSS2 for an advanced modern ballistic missile.

Yet, leading strategists in Israel forget that Saudi Arabia remains in a state of war with Israel. Saudi Arabia is the only neighboring country contiguous to Israel to have never signed a peace treaty or even an armistice with Israel since 1948.

Mr. Ramati stated clearly that Israeli missile defense exercises do not take the Egyptian, Saudi and Turkish capabilities into account.

He suggested that the Defense Ministry and military were under political constraints from the government.

“Are these scenarios politically correct?” Mr. Ramati asked.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Born In India, Doctor Has Jewish Spirit

By
David Bedein
-
Jerusalem – Dr. Aharon Avraham opens his Jewish prayer book with trepidation.

His lips mouth the verses in Hebrew, his new language.

When he finally lifts his eyes from the page, his gaze stops at the framed photograph on the shelf. Dr. Avraham glances at the photograph of the couple who changed his life, and his eyes glimmer.

“I truly loved Rabbi Gabi and his wife Rivka,” he sighs. “I miss them so much.”

On Wednesday night, Dr. Avraham was one of the guests of honor at the central memorial ceremony held by Chabad’s youth division to mark the first anniversary of the terror attack at the Chabad House in Mumbai in which six Israelis were murdered. Those attending the ceremony will also mark the third birthday of Moishie, the little son of Gabriel and Rivky Holtzberg. His parents, who were Chabad emissaries in the Indian city, were murdered by terrorists. Moishie survived.

This coming Thursday, the morning after the memorial ceremony, Dr. Avraham will mark one of the most meaningful days of his life. The 51-year-old physician, who was born to an Indian family, will remarry his wife Ruth-Malka, this time in a Jewish ceremony. In attendance will be the couple’s three children, who converted together with them: Shmuel, 18, Sarah, 15 and Sharon, 10.

The ceremony will be held at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, fairly close to Kiryat Arba, a Jewish community close to Hebron, where the physician from India has made his home.

Dr. Avraham was born Bhagirath Prasad. Materially speaking, he was very well off. He excelled in his medical studies, became well-known and served as the director of the intensive-care department at the prestigious Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai.

Spiritually speaking, an abyss opened up in his heart. In his youth, he shrank from Hinduism, a polytheistic faith.

“I found no rest for my spirit because I felt that I did not believe in the true God,” he said last night.

“Twenty years ago, I was exposed to the Bible and began to come close to Judaism. Over the past five years, I began to study the Torah and observe the commandments as a way of life. I changed my Indian name to a Jewish one, and I went to the Chabad House in Mumbai almost every day to study with Rabbi Gabi. Chabad House became my second home, until that terrible day.”

Dr. Avraham will never forget Nov. 26, 2008, the day of the terror attack in Mumbai.

“I met with Rabbi Gabi and Rebbetzin Rivky almost every day,” Dr. Avraham said. “

I was as close to them as family. On the day of terror attack, I was about 1,000 kilometers away from Mumbai. I remember that I prayed for a miracle, that the Holtzberg family wouldn’t be harmed. On the way back to Mumbai, my thoughts ran wild: how to treat Gabi and Rivky if it turned out that they’d been wounded. But when I got there, I realized that of the whole family, only little Moishie had survived.”

The massacre shocked Dr. Avraham to the depths of his soul.

He decided to immigrate to Israel with his wife and children.

“I got fed up with the corrupt way of life in India,” he explains. “Relations with my family have remained very good. I don’t believe in their religion, but I still have a great deal of love for them. They weren’t happy with my decision, but accepted it in a good spirit. ‘It’s your life,’ they told me.”

Five months ago, the physician arrived in Israel. Today, he is crowded into a tiny apartment with his wife and their three children in Kiryat Arba.

Dr. Avraham says that no one is happier than he. “I’m thrilled anew every day that I live near Hebron, the second-holiest place to the Jewish people. Soon, when I get my Israeli medical license, I’ll start working at the Kiryat Arba first-aid center. At the same time, I hope to be accepted for work at Shaarei Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem.”

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

ARE THERE QUESTIONS PEOPLE ARE AFRAID TO ASK FAYAD?

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

In his column of November 20, “Salam Fayyad builds Palestine,”

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1258624595789&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Jerusalem Post Editor David Horovitz describes “two staunch Jewish supporters of Israel” – Senator Joe Lieberman, former vice presidential candidate, and Representative Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee – “nodding their encouragement” at a recent Ramallah press conference, where Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad explained how he was preparing Palestinians for statehood. The piece goes on to outline a Palestinian state in formation, regarding security forces, the economy, and civic institutions, with an optimistic sense of what the PA is achieving.

Regrettably, Senator Lieberman and Representative Berman did not use the press conference to raise some troublesome questions.

Since these American elected officials let that opportunity pass, perhaps it was the journalistic responsibility of Mr. Horovitz to explore these matters, to offer a more balanced picture. Instead, he alluded to “staunch supporters of Israel nodding their agreement,” conveying the notion that, except for some technical problems, all is well.

Questions that Senator Lieberman, Rep. Berman or Mr. Horovitz could have asked would have included:

Renunciation of the PLO state of war with Israel.

The charter of Fatah – the predominant element in the PLO and the PA – to this day continues to call for the destruction of Israel. Written in 1964, before Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza, it uses the term “Palestine” to refer exclusively to Israel within the Green Line. The charter declares that “Liberating Palestine is a national obligation,” and that “Armed public revolution is the inevitable method” for doing so. This cannot be dismissed as an irrelevant anachronism. Last August, Fatah held its first General Congress in 20 years. Hope was held out for a charter revision, with violence officially renounced, but it never happened. Instead, Fatah continued to unambiguously embrace “armed resistance” to liberate Palestine.

Cessation of incitement via changes in PA-produced textbooks.

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT http://www.impact-se.org ) has issued six reports on new PA textbooks issued over the last eight years. Journalist and scholar Dr. Arnon Groiss, who translated these PA textbooks, has just completed an update. He writes that the new PA texts…

  • Deny the historical and religious presence of Jews in Palestine.
  • Fail to recognize the State of Israel.
  • Demonize Jews and Israel.
  • Assign blame for the conflict exclusively on Israel, totally absolving Palestinians.
  • Stress the idea of a violent struggle of liberation rather than a peaceful settlement.

It is disingenuous for Fayyad to profess dedication to peace, while the PA curriculum infuses these ideas within its youngsters. Peace is impossible until the message changes. Why do visiting elected officials and journalists not hold Fayyad and the PA accountable for the new PA textbooks?.

Cessation of PA pursuit of Hamas as a coalition partner.

The PA inclination to participate in a government that includes Hamas remains an “elephant in the room” that the international community, somewhat inexplicably, has chosen to ignore: Hamas is recognized by the US and the entire Quartet as a terrorist entity. Yet in March 2007, Fatah and Hamas briefly formed a “unity government” – negotiated by Saudi Arabia via the Mecca Accord – that saw Fatah acceding to Hamas demands. It fell apart with the Hamas coup in Gaza, but in recent months the news is awash with reports of negotiations via Egypt for a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation. Pursuing negotiations with Israel and Hamas at one and the same time is not acceptable. Why not ask the PA to make a choice?.

Renunciation of the “right of return.”

The “right of return,” promoted for 60 years by UNRWA and embraced by the PA as a non-negotiable right, remains a recipe for the destruction of Israel from within. If Fayyad and the PA are serious about peace, why not ask them to accept the principle of perma­nent resettlement of the refugees? UNHCR, the UN High Commission for Refugees – which oversees all refugees except Palestinians – operates according to this principle. Only Palestinian refugees are not resettled, but instead, for purely political reasons, are forced to linger in a (rage-inducing) state of limbo. Fayyad, in his master plan for a Palestinian state, openly states that he supports the “right of return.” Isn’t it time to ask Fayyad and the PA to openly embrace the UNHCR policy and pave the way for UNRWA to adjust its mandate?

Lastly, Mr. Horovitz writes that “most of the international community completely supports [PA] demands for a 100% Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank,” noting that “Netanyahu…is intent on driving a harder bargain.” The reader is left with the impression that Netanyahu is obstinately resisting what the world expects. Left unsaid is that the Israeli electorate is most definitely not in favor of complete withdrawal, and that the prime minister simply reflects the will of the nation in this regard. What is more, Mr. Horovitz neglects to say that neither does international law support this: UN Security Resolution 242, which does not demand full Israeli withdrawal, acknowledges Israel’s need for secure borders.

END

*David Bedein works as the Director of the Israel Resource News Agency and the Center for Near East Policy Research, www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and the Middle East Correspondent for the Philadelphia Bulletin, www.TheBulletin.us.

Arlene Kushner is the senior research analyst for the Center for Near East Policy Research and author of a daily blog, “Arlene From Israel”, www.arlenefromisrael.info

U.S. Uneasy Over Turkey-Iran Deal

By
David Bedein
-
Jerusalem – The Middle East Newsline has confirmed that the United States has expressed increasing dissatisfaction with Turkey’s alliance with neighboring Iran.

U.S. officials said the Turkish rapprochement with Iran would be a leading item on the agenda of talks during a summit in Washington in December and added that President Barack Obama would raise the Turkish alliance with Iran during his meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan.

“It’s not a good thing to make business, at the moment, with Iran,” U.S. Assistant Secretary Philip Gordon said.

Mr. Gordon, responsible for European and Eurasian affairs, met Turkish officials in November to discuss the agenda for Mr. Erdogan’s meeting with the Obama administration. During a wide-ranging briefing, the U.S. official stressed that Ankara and Washington would be required to resolve a range of issues.

“There were more points of disagreement than of agreement with Turkey,” Mr. Gordon said.

In November, Iran and Turkey signed a multi-billion-dollar energy agreement that elicited strong opposition from Washington.

Officials said the Obama administration warned the Erdogan government that the accord sent the wrong signal to Iran amid the international drive to stop its uranium enrichment program.

“Iran needs to be assured that it has to cooperate with the international community,” Mr. Gordon said.

“Otherwise, it will face consequences.”

The Obama administration has also been alarmed by Mr. Erdogan’s statements that Turkey would not support United Nations Security Council sanctions on Iran. Turkey, a leading member of NATO, has been a non-permanent member of the council.

Other disagreements between Ankara and Washington were said to include Turkey’s warm relationship with Sudan. In November, Turkey invited Sudanese President Omar Bashir, accused of war crimes in the Darfur province, to an Islamic summit in Istanbul.

The American government has also been dismayed by Mr. Erdogan’s efforts to reduce Turkish defense and strategic relations with Israel. Mr. Erdogan was warned by the U.S. that the prime minister’s policy would hurt Turkish interests in the U.S. Congress.

“Americans watch closely Turkey’s relations with its neighbors,” Mr. Gordon said.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

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