BBC News continues to deny audiences relevant Jerusalem background information - by Hadar Sela

...While there is nothing new about the BBC’s failure to provide its audiences with the full range of information necessary for their understanding of the background to these stories concerning the relocation of foreign embassies to Jerusalem, the fact that it adopts that editorial policy – committed as it is to “due impartiality” under BBC editorial guidelines and even as it repeatedly tells audiences that “Jerusalem’s status is one of the most contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians” – is truly remarkable.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
05 November '18..

On November 2nd the BBC News website published its latest report on the proposed relocation of a foreign embassy to Jerusalem – “Israel’s Netanyahu welcomes Brazil Jerusalem embassy vow“.

“Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has welcomed a decision by Brazil’s president-elect to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Mr Netanyahu praised it as “historic, [and] correct”. Palestinians called the move “provocative and illegal”.

Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right politician, expressed strong support for Israel during his election campaign.

Jerusalem’s status is one of the most contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel considers the whole of Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a hoped-for Palestinian state.”

As was the case in an article published last month, a problematic backgrounder video by Yolande Knell dating from December 2017 was promoted in this latest report. Later on readers found a typical BBC ‘nothing worth mentioning happened before 1967’ portrayal of the story’s background:

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Dani Dayan and the challenge to Israeli democracy - by Caroline Glick

...Dani Dayan’s appointment is a test case. Shaked’s bill is also a test case. If the government stands its ground on Dayan’s stationing to Brasilia, and if the Knesset passes Shaked’s bill as written or a stronger version of it, then Israel will have taken its first steps towards ensuring that it will not be undermined by fringe elements of its society funded by hostile foreign governments. If the government fails in either of these undertakings, then it can expect acts of diplomatic, political and legal subversion to proliferate and will see its ability to advance the policies it was elected to implement disappear.

Caroline Glick..
Our World/JPost..
28 December '15..

Today Israel's bilateral relations with Brazil are moving toward a full-blown crisis. If the government doesn’t address the causes of the crisis, going forward it will find itself unable to competently advance Israel’s interests in the international community.

Brazil has the ninth largest economy in the world and is a rapidly growing market for Israeli exports.

Israel’s bilateral trade with Brazil expanded nearly 60 percent between 2009 and 2013. Israeli exports comprise two-thirds of the overall trade.

Economics isn’t the only reason that Brazil and Israel have important joint interests. According to Alberto Nisman, the slain Argentinean prosecutor who investigated the Iranian bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, Brazil serves as a major hub for Iranian and Hezbollah activities in Latin America.

Given Brazil’s importance as a market and as a defense partner, Israel needs a serious ambassador posted to Brasilia capable of advancing relations. In Dani Dayan, Israel has such a representative.

Dayan is a native of Argentina. He knows Latin America better than career diplomats.

Dayan was an early hi-tech entrepreneur. He led his company, Elad Systems for 23 years, building it from a small information technology firm into a 500-employee company with an annual revenue stream of NIS100 million. Given his business background, Dayan’s ability to promote Israeli-Brazilian trade is self-evident.

Dayan is a political pragmatist. When he served as the leader of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, he made it his goal to demonstrate to the wider public that the communities are an integral part of Israel. As the council’s representative to the international community, Dayan worked tirelessly to combat the delegitimization of Israel as a whole and of the Israeli communities in the areas. In a sphere where Israel has precious little to show for its efforts, Dayan’s public diplomacy efforts stood out.

In light of this, when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed Dayan to serve as Israel’s ambassador to Brazil in August, the appointment was not seen as controversial. Rather it was widely viewed as a sign that Netanyahu is keen to expand Israel’s bilateral ties with Brazil and more generally, that Israel is interested in seriously advancing its ties to Latin America.

This apparently was bad news for the EU- and US-financed radical Left. For many years radical leftists have made no effort to hide their interest in maintaining and expanding Israel’s international and economic weakness. As they see it, the stronger Israel is, the less vulnerable it will be to foreign pressure to make further concessions to the PLO.

And so, after the government approved Dayan’s appointment, fringe leftists associated with EU- and US-funded political NGOs set out to scuttle the appointment.

Wikileaks: Brazil illustrates how to sacrifice principles for the Arabs

8

Elder of Ziyon
07 February '11

This 2009 Wikileaks cable discusses why Brazil, a country with a culture that is very much against restrictions on free speech, consistently abstains from any UN resolutions that are against "defamation of religion" - i.e., Islamic attempts to stifle free speech.

Embassy has raised the issue of Brazil's voting record on "defamation of religions" several times in the Department of Human Rights and Social Affairs (DDS), Ministry of External Relations (MRE). The last time was with DDS Chief (A/S level) Minister Glaucia Gauch. Brazil has not disagreed with a single argument in our previous demarches and non-papers. The response has been always the same: the concept of "defamation of religions" is repugnant to Brazilian values and principles, and it is inconsistent with Brazilian law and international law. For those reasons, Brazil cannot and will not support a resolution that purports to punish the "defamation of religions"; instead, Brazil consistently abstains.

When asked why Brazil does not vote against a resolution it finds totally objectionable, Gauch responded that it was enough to abstain. In the GOB's view, Brazil is taking a principled but practical position on the issue, not desiring to offend OIC countries, in particular powerful ones like Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia with which Brazil is attempting to deepen relations. Moreover, obtaining a permanent seat on the UNSC remains Brazil's overriding foreign policy goal. As a result, the GOB prefers to avoid antagonizing countries and groups of countries whose votes might be valuable in a future election.

In a similar vein, an earlier set of memos detail the Arab-South America Summit held in 2005 in Brazil, which turned into a farce as radical Arabs hijacked the session to put out outrageously anti-Israel and anti-American statements, leaving the major reasons for the summit (economic cooperation) in the dust.

By the time of Cast Lead, Brazil had already cast its lot with the radical Arabs.

(Read full "Wikileaks: Brazil illustrates how to sacrifice principles for the Arabs")

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Latin America Picks Palestine

Matt Gurney
frontpagemag.com
20 December '10

Over the last two weeks, emerging global powers Brazil and Argentina have both given diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, existing within the 1967 borders and with a capital city in Jerusalem. This understandably annoyed the Israelis, who have been struggling to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians for decades. Given that every reasonable observer agrees that any Israeli-Palestinian peace accord will involve some border adjustments and territory swaps, it is odd that Brazil and Argentina would choose to recognize a Palestinian state as existing on territory that even the Palestinians would likely concede, if only off the record, will remain Israeli under any settlement.

Argentina and Brazil are not significant players in the Middle East. As the Israelis correctly point out, neither of them has played any part in the peace process, so their input, while welcome news for the Palestinian negotiators, is entirely symbolic. Argentina even tacitly admitted the entirely symbolic nature of their recognition when they said they recognized Palestine because it had a right to become a state — in other words, they’re recognizing it as a state today in the hopes it will become one tomorrow. A rather strange use of diplomacy, but not unprecedented in recent times — recall the choice to award the Nobel Peace Prize to a President who had probably not even finished unpacking from his move into the White House when the decision was reached.

The move by the Latin American nations is unlikely to have any impact whatsoever on the achingly slow progress of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

(Read full "Latin America Picks Palestine")

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Trampling International Accords

Brazil, Argentina, Others Recognize Palestinian State

Anna Mahjar-Barducci
Hudson New York
14 December '10

In direct violation of the Oslo Accords, which call for settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute by direct negotiations, Brazil and Argentina have formally recognized the state of Palestine as a free and independent within 1967 borders. This includes the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Uruguay has already announced that it also will proceed with a similar recognition in the coming month of January. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said that he expects Paraguay to recognize Palestinian statehood in the next few days, followed by Bolivia and Ecuador.

The decision of the two South American States provoked harsh reactions in the US and in Israel. The United States. Officials said that direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians are still "the only way" to reach peace in the Middle East. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor commented: "They [Brazil and Argentina] never made any contribution to it [the peace process]… and now they are making a decision that is completely contrary to everything that has been agreed so far; it is absurd." Palmor said that such a disappointment would be conveyed by Israel to the concerned governments.

When two of the major stakeholders in the peace process, Israel and the US, seem to be so deeply against the idea of having recognition separated from direct negotiations, why has the Palestinian Authority launched a worldwide campaign to have more and more countries recognize the "State of Palestine"? US papers are calling it the "Palestinian Plan B" -- an alternative to the peace deal with Israel. The idea is to convince as many countries as possible to recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, and use that to lobby the United States not to veto recognition by the U.N. Security Council.

(Read full "Trampling International Accords")

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Why Latin American turned

Caroline B. Glick
jewishworldreview.com
10 December '10

Israelis can be excused for wondering what happened that Brazil and Argentina unexpectedly announced they recognize an independent Palestinian state with its capital city in Israel's capital city. Israelis can be forgiven for being taken by surprise by their move and by the prospect that Uruguay, and perhaps Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Salvador will be following in their footsteps because the Israeli media have failed to report on developing trends in Latin America.

And this is not surprising. The media fails to report on trends anywhere. When the Turkish government sent Hamas supporters to challenge the IDF's maritime blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza coastline, the media were surprised that Israel's ally Turkey had suddenly become Hamas's ally and Israel's enemy. Their failure to report on Turkey's gradual transformation into an Islamic supremacist state caused the media to treat what was a culmination of a trend as a shocking new development. The same is now happening with Latin America.

Whereas in Turkey, the media failed only to report on the significance of the singular trend of Islamization of Turkish society, the media has consistently ignored the importance for Israel of three trends that made Latin America's embrace of the Palestinians against Israel a predictable conclusion.

Those trends are the rise of Hugo Chavez, the influence of the Venezuela-Iran alliance, and the cravenness of US foreign policy towards Latin America and the Middle East. When viewed as a whole they explain why Latin America is lining up to support the Palestinians. They tell us something about how Israel should be acting to advance its interests regarding Iran and the Palestinians moving forward.

(Read full article "Why Latin American turned")

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A Palestinian State Means War

Why Abbas Shouldn't Go International

Jonathan Schanzer
Foreign Policy
09 December '10
Posted before Shabbat

With the U.S.-led peace process looking increasingly moribund, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has begun enlisting foreign leaders in a dangerous effort to recognize a Palestinian state without Israel's agreement. Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, began this effort earlier this year to strengthen the Palestinian negotiating position, and it is bearing more fruit than even he could have expected. Abbas, however, should be careful what he wishes for. A declaration of statehood without Israeli approval could start a war in which the Palestinians themselves would pay the highest price.

Abbas has been laying the diplomatic groundwork for a unilateral declaration of statehood for months, visiting foreign capitals and lobbying governments to extend recognition. But his efforts have gained momentum this month as a U.S. proposal for an Israeli settlement freeze has fallen apart.

On Dec. 5, Abbas visited Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara. Afterward, the Palestinian envoy to Turkey announced that Erdogan would recognize a Palestinian state (within the 1967 borders) at an unspecified time. Erdogan also reportedly promised to go to bat for the initiative with other heads of state. The territory in question includes both the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the Fatah-led West Bank, with the presumption (no doubt invoking the ire of Hamas) that the West Bank leadership would be in charge.

In recent days, several other countries have made similar declarations. In response to a request from Abbas, outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared last week that his country recognized the state of Palestine based on the 1967 borders. On Dec. 6, Uruguay announced that it would do the same, and Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner also wrote to Abbas that her country recognizes a "free and independent" Palestine. On Dec. 8, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused a U.S. request to extend the moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements and Abbas withdrew from peace talks, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit reportedly insisted that discussions should transition to an "end game for a Palestinian settlement."

(Read full article "A Palestinian State Means War")

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Argentina and other Latin American countries to follow Brazil in recognising Palestinian state on 1967 lines

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
06 December '10

In what may yet emerge as one of the most significant and worrying developments in recent years, reports are coming out that Argentina and several other Latin American states are on the verge of recognising a Palestinian state along 1967 lines. This would follow Brazil’s decision to follow such a course of action last week (see previous entry).

The BBC Monitoring Service produced the following report based on the Palestinian Authority’s WAFA website.

From BBC Monitoring:

“Yasir Abd-Rabbuh, secretary of PLO Executive Committee, has said that the Brazilian recognition of the independent Palestinian state along the 1967 borderline has encouraged other countries to recognize the Palestinian state.

“In a statement he made to the Voice of Palestine radio this morning, Abd-Rabbuh said that President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has stressed, in a phone conversation she held with President Mahmud Abbas on 5 December evening, that her country intends to recognize the independent Palestinian state along the 1967 borderline.

(Read full post)

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Non-existent 'state' sends 'ambasador' to European country

Carl
Israel Matzav
05 December '10

Incoming Chairwoman of the House Foreign Relations Committee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl) has blasted Brazil for its severely misguided and regrettable decision to recognize the imaginary state of 'Palestine.'

Brazil's decision "is regrettable and will only serve to undermine peace and security in the Middle East," charged Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Ros-Lehtinen, set to chair the panel come January, said "responsible nations" would wait to take such a step until Palestinians return to direct talks with Israel and recognize its "right to exist as a Jewish state."

Congressman Elliot Engel (D-NY) also blasted Brazil.

Brazil's decision also drew fire from Democratic Representative Eliot Engel, who said it "is severely misguided and represents a last gasp by a Lula-led foreign policy which was already substantially off track."

Engel tied the move to Lula's "coddling" of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and warned that Brazil "wants to establish itself as a voice in the world, but is making the wrong choices as it tries to do so."

(Read full post)

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First big step to unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence as Brazil formally recognises Palestinian state

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
04 December '10

Brazil, the leading power in Latin America, has formally recognised a Palestinian state on 1967 lines. News agencies reported that the announcement was made on the Brazilian foreign ministry’s website. This is a matter of the profoundest significance since Palestinian leaders have been increasingly vocal in recent weeks and months in saying they will make a unilateral declaration of independence in the middle of 2011 and then seek recognition through the United Nations. Now that one of the most important emerging economies in the world –Brazil is one of the much vaunted BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) tipped by many to become a major world power in the 21st century — has made such a move, the risk of an avalanche is very real.

It needs to be understood why this is so dangerous, both to Israel and to the cause of peace. First, the Brazilian move, if copied by many others, all but scuppers any hope of meaningful peace talks. Why would the Palestinians make concessions or negotiate for something the world is going to give them anyway? Second, for Israel the 1967 lines are militarily indefensible and no Israeli government could ever agree to them as the borders of a Palestinian state. Recognition along 1967 lines would therefore place Israel in a state of perpetual conflict with the Palestinians and the international community.

(Read full post)

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We Do Not Live in Normal Times: A Small Case Study of Incompetence and Ideological Insanity

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
25 May '10

Although these two stories—the first regarding Turkey and Brazil’s relationship with Iran; the second (covered in another article), anti-Israel hysteria in the United Kingdom—are totally different, they reflect the two parts of our current crisis.

These are the ideological and policy derailment of Western governments, on the one hand and, on the other hand, the collapse of the fail-safe systems for key public institutions, especially academia and media. To understand the crisis in both sectors—the greatest perhaps since the end of World War Two—these two halves of the puzzle must be assembled.

The first story relates to a detail in the recent engineering by Turkey and Brazil of a deal with Iran to try to slow or even stop the effort to put sanctions on Iran regarding its nuclear weapons program. This plan is basically a retread of something that failed more than six months ago. Iran would send out a portion of its potential material for making bombs but keep the rest. It was an obvious trick and quickly rejected as such by the United States and other leading powers.

A friend, however, was deeply puzzled by one detail of this situation. It was widely reported that the Turkish and Brazilian governments consulted with the United States prior to making this farcical arrangement with Tehran and got a green light to go ahead. How, my friend asked, could the U.S. government give the okay to actions that would clearly destroy one of its main policies?

Another element in the story is the defection of two historically reliable allies of the United States to the other side. There’s no sense concealing the fact that Turkey and Brazil are friendlier to Iranian interests than to American ones. And this is with the allegedly internationally beloved Barack Obama in the White House!

But the mistake and defection only seem inexplicable because of a failure to face two facts.

(Read full post)

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Decline an answer

Soccer Dad
21 May '10

Last October Charles Krauthammer identified the premises of President Obama's foreign policy:

Henry Kissinger once said that the only way to achieve peace is through hegemony or balance of power. Well, hegemony is out. As Obama said in his General Assembly address, "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation." (The "can" in that declaration is priceless.) And if hegemony is out, so is balance of power: "No balance of power among nations will hold."

The president then denounced the idea of elevating any group of nations above others--which takes care, I suppose, of the Security Council, the G-20, and the Western alliance. And just to make the point unmistakable, he denounced "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War" as making "no sense in an interconnected world." What does that say about NATO? Of our alliances with Japan and South Korea? Or even of the European Union?

This is nonsense. But it is not harmless nonsense. It's nonsense with a point. It reflects a fundamental view that the only legitimate authority in the international system is that which emanates from "the community of nations" as a whole. Which means, I suppose, acting through its most universal organs such as, again I suppose, the U.N. and its various agencies. Which is why when Obama said that those who doubt "the character and cause" of his own country should see what this new America--the America of the liberal ascendancy--had done in the last nine months, he listed among these restorative and relegitimizing initiatives paying up U.N. dues, renewing actions on various wholly vacuous universalist declarations and agreements, and joining such Orwellian U.N. bodies as the Human Rights Council.

These gestures have not gone unnoticed abroad. The Nobel Committee effused about Obama's radical reorientation of U.S. foreign policy. Its citation awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize lauded him for having "created a new climate" in international relations in which "multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other institutions can play."

Of course, the idea of the "international community" acting through the U.N.--a fiction and a farce respectively--to enforce norms and maintain stability is absurd. So absurd that I suspect it's really just a metaphor for a world run by a kind of multipolar arrangement not of nation-states but of groups of states acting through multilateral bodies, whether institutional (like the International Atomic Energy Agency) or ad hoc (like the P5+1 Iran negotiators).

But whatever bizarre form of multilateral or universal structures is envisioned for keeping world order, certainly hegemony--and specifically American hegemony--is to be retired.

Today he spells out the Fruits of Weakness:

But the deeper meaning of the uranium-export stunt is the brazenness with which Brazil and Turkey gave cover to the mullahs' nuclear ambitions and deliberately undermined U.S. efforts to curb Iran's program.

The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.

(Read full post)

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Turkey, and the United States, Going Forward

JINSA Report
#: 988
18 May '10

(One thought about Turkey. The second thought is about the United States/Israel.)

Turkey and Brazil announced they have "brokered" a "deal" to bring some percentage of Iranian LEU (Low Enriched Uranium) to Turkey. The "deal" is a fraud-without knowing how much uranium Iran has, you cannot know how much it "lent" to Turkey and how much remains in its weapons program. And knowing that Iran has lied about every single stage of its nuclear program, we will assume it is lying about this stage as well.

So much for Iran.

But there is something compelling about a country that looks at its position, determines its interests, and changes course to achieve new objectives. Turkey has done that.

Let us be clear: we don't have to like the direction or the choices; we don't have to support them; and we don't think the United States should treat Turkey as if it hadn't made those choices. That was one reason we wrote-and strongly believe-that the Congress of the United States is the wrong place to parse and judge someone else's history. Our Armenian friends entirely misunderstood-we were neither denying nor denigrating their history. But Congress has to be about the present and, more important, about the future. Our ongoing irritation with our Congress and our Administration is that they find it easier to pronounce on a past for which they are not responsible than to deal with present circumstances.

For the moment, it may be easier but it is shortsighted in the extreme.

After decades of resolutely secular, pro-Western economic and security policy, during which it was resolutely rejected by Europe, the Turkish government, specifically the AKP, surveyed the landscape in the absence of the Soviet Union and the apparent decline of the United States and decided to stop banging its head against a closed European door. Turkey, in their view, didn't have to be the stepchild of Europe; it has a strong military, a good economy in regional terms and historic interests.

(Read full report)

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