Fresnozionism - Israeli democracy? Or US elections?

Hillary Clinton complaining that Israel
is becoming undemocratic

Fresnozionism.org
04 December '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/12/israeli-democracy-or-us-elections/

One of the themes beloved by Jewish-American critics of Israel like Peter Beinart and Rabbi Richard Jacobs has been that Israel is insufficiently democratic. This is also a staple for the Israeli Left whenever Israel’s democratically elected government does something they don’t like.

In particular, the Knesset has been debating several possible approaches to ending or at least reducing foreign funding of Israeli NGOs that delegitimize or demonize the state, interfere with its security, engage in ‘lawfare’ against it, and so forth.

Naturally the individuals for whom these organizations — which have very little indigenous Israeli support — constitute a meal ticket, are screaming bloody murder.

Now the US Secretary of State has joined the crowd:

WASHINGTON – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced deep concern on Saturday over a wave of anti-democratic legislation in Israel and in particular a bill proposing to limit donations to human rights organizations. Clinton also criticized the growing exclusion of women from Israel’s public life…

Clinton, a longtime advocate for women’s rights, noted she was shocked at the fact that some Jerusalem buses have assigned separate seating areas for women. “It’s reminiscent of Rosa Parks,” she said, referring to the black American woman who refused to give up her seat to white passengers in the 1950s.

Referring to the decision of some IDF soldiers to leave an event where female soldiers were singing, she said it reminded her of the situation in Iran. [my emphasis]

It should be made clear that neither of the phenomena related to women mentioned are government-sanctioned or widespread like bus segregation was in the US. They are confined to ultra-observant communities (in one case, observant IDF soldiers and the other, hareidi neighborhoods in Jerusalem). Israel’s government and legal system operate on secular principles, and feminism is a powerful force in Israel. I think we can depend on Israelis to solve this one by themselves.

The Case for Psychology

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
22 February '11

When Natan Sharansky published The Case for Democracy a year after the US-led invasion of Iraq, he ignited a debate about the likeliness of democracy in the Arab world. President Bush loved the book (The Economist said he was having an intellectual affair with Sharansky) and he recommended it to his aids. The idea that democracy was not incompatible with Arab culture and that its promotion would generate peace in the Middle-East neatly fitted the attempt to justify invading a country where no weapons of mass destruction could be found. But the question of whether democracy can flourish in an Arab country was both tricky and relevant at the time. With the recent upheavals in the Arab world, the answer to this question is critical.

As Israel’s Prime Minister recently observed with a well-deserved dosage of scorn, even The New York Times’ editorialists do not know what will be the outcome of the Arab revolts. Are we witnessing a repetition of 1989 Eastern Europe or of 1979 Iran? How strong is the Muslim Brotherhood? Can democracy take hold in societies with no real middle class to speak of?

Because the answer to these questions is partly speculative, the debate is mostly ideological. Liberals call upon the Google workers of the world to unite, and they accuse skeptics of being party poopers. Conservatives roll their eyes at a déjà-vu situation and accuse the Obama Administration of not having learned from Carter’s betrayal of the Shah.

While neither Sharansky, nor The New York Times or Middle East scholars can know for sure whether democracy will spread in the Arab world, lessons can be drawn from the past and reasonable guesses can be made about the future.

(Read full "The Case for Psychology")

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.
.

Palestinian Arab "democracy" in action

Elder of Ziyon
14 February '11

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/02/palestinian-arab-democracy-in-action.html

From BBC:

Palestinian ministers are due to submit their resignations on Monday as part of a cabinet reshuffle, sources say.

President Mahmoud Abbas will immediately ask Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to appoint a new cabinet.

On Saturday, the Palestinian Authority led by Mr Abbas said it seeks to hold presidential and legislative elections by September.

The move comes after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in popular protests in Egypt, an important neighbour.

The cabinet shake-up has long been demanded by Mr Fayyad and others in the Fatah faction, according to Reuters news agency.

On political source told Reuters that it would result in a "massive change" in the composition of the government.

Mr Fayyad, 58, will be asked to stay on in the post he has occupied since 2007.

An aide to Mr Abbas on Saturday said the PA planned to hold long-overdue elections before September.

"The executive committee has decided to start preparations for presidential and parliamentary elections in the coming months... no later than September," the PLO's Yasser Abed Rabbo told journalists.

The BBC's West Bank correspondent Jon Donnison says the election pledge seems intended to show that Palestinian leaders are responding to events in Egypt and Tunisia.

However, Hamas, who are in control of the Gaza Strip, immediately rejected the plan, saying Mr Abbas had no legitimacy.

"Hamas will not take part in this election. We will not give it legitimacy. And we will not recognise the results," spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said.

The prime minister will remain a man who has never been elected and who received a tiny amount of the popular vote when he ran for office.

Now, that's democracy!

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.
.

Revolutions in the Middle East

IsraeliGirl
06 February '11

Every beginning has an end. As I witness the millions protesting in Egypt over the last 2 weeks this saying keeps resonating in my head. Where does this revolution leads Egypt and what will be the domino effect on its neighbors in the Middle East?

A revolution - power to the people - democracy, these are the core foundations of the free world. We all hope to make the world a better place - and the people in Egypt are no different.

All revolutions are blissful in the first days and the Egyptian revolution is greeted with euphoria by many in the world. PM Netanyahu acknowledged that saying: "These hopes are understandable. All those who cherish human liberty, including the people of Israel, are inspired by genuine calls for reform and by the possibility that it will take place."

But are all revolutions the same? In the last three decades images of revolution came from a range of autocracies under threat - from the Shah's Tehran, Deng Xiaoping's Beijing and Ceausescu's Bucharest to the uprisings of the last couple of years in Iran, Tunisia, and now Egypt. Some revolutions failed and some succeeded. The frightening concept of a revolution is that you know where you start but you don't know where you'll be when the revolution ends.

In Israel and every other democratic country we appreciate the significance of liberty. We enjoy independent courts that protect the rights of individuals and the rule of law, free press, and of a parliamentary system with a coalition and an opposition. One can only hope Egypt will come out of this revolution as a democratic state providing freedom to its people.

Anyone that believes that democracy is the likely option in Egypt, or the only option, has not done his homework on the recent history in the Middle East.

In 1979 the Iranians have rallied against an autocratic regime only to end up with an oppressive radical Islamic one. The West has lost a strong ally in the Gulf region and the Iranian people lost their freedom and human rights. The same radical regime in Iran is looking at the Egyptian revolution with glee. They have embraced the protesters, proclaiming an Islamic awakening is under way.The Mullahs in Iran are not interested in seeing democracy in Egypt that protects the rights of individuals, women, and minorities. They want Egypt to become another Gaza, run by radical forces that oppose everything that the democratic world stands for.

A few years ago, Hamas, a non democratic radical Islamic group, used democratic elections to gain control of Gaza. Hamas became the rulers of Gaza without demonstrating any commitment to democracy, and Palestinian society had no checks in place to prevent the outcome from being one man, one vote, one time.

Let's look at Lebanon - a fragile unstable democracy in which the terrorist group Hezbollah is now the dominant force in government. Radical Islam does not believe in democracy. It may use democracy to gain power but will not deliver democratic values.

Does Iran enjoy freedom? Is there a real democracy in Gaza? Does Hezbollah promote human rights?

The House of Mubarak is no more. He is 82 and not running for reelection. The only question is who fills the vacuum in Egypt. There are two principal possibilities: a provisional government of opposition forces or an interim government led by the military.

In the chaos created by a revolution all of us in Giyus.org hope peace and democracy will prevail but we must maintain watchful eyes that recognize reality.

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.
.

Israel and Arab democracy

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
04 February '11

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2011/02/israel-and-arab-democracy.php

Whether they are democrats or autocrats, we fully expect they will continue to hate us.

Over the past week, Israel has been criticized for being insufficiently supportive of democratic change in Egypt. While Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been careful to praise the cause of democracy while warning against the dangers of an Islamic takeover of the most populous Arab state, many Israelis have not been so diplomatic.

To understand why, it is necessary to take a little tour of the Arab world.

n the midst of Tunisia’s revolution last month, the Jewish Agency mobilized to evacuate any members of the country’s Jewish community who wished to leave. Until the end of French colonial rule in 1956, Tunisia’s Jewish community numbered 100,000 members. But like for all Jewish communities in the Arab world, the advent of Arab nationalism in the mid-20th century forced the overwhelming majority of Tunisia’s Jews to leave the country. Today, with between 1,500 and 3,000 members, Tunisia’s tiny Jewish community is among the largest in the Arab world.

So far, six families have left for Israel. Many more may follow. Two weeks ago, Daniel Cohen from Tunis’s Jewish community told Haaretz, “If the situation continues as it is now, we will definitely have to leave or immigrate to Israel.”

Since then, Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia’s Islamist party Ennahda, has returned to Tunisia after 22 years living in exile in London. He was sentenced to life in prison in absentia on terrorism charges by the regime of ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Then on Monday night, unidentified assailants set fire to a synagogue in the town of Ghabes and burned the Torah scrolls. In an interview with AFP, Trabelsi Perez, president of the Ghriba synagogue, said the crime was made all the more shocking by the fact that it occurred as police were stationed close by.

The day after the attack, Roger Bismuth, president of Tunisia’s Jewish community, disputed the view that the scorching of Torah scrolls had anything to do with anti-Semitism. The man responsible for representing Tunisia’s Jewish community before the evolving new regime told The Jerusalem Post that the attack was the fault of the Jews themselves, “because they left [the synagogue] open... This is not an attack on the Jewish community.”

The fear now gripping the Jews of Tunisia is not surprising. The same fear gripped the much smaller Iraqi Jewish community after the US and Britain toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003. The Iraqi community was the oldest, and arguably the most successful, Jewish community in the Arab world until World War II. Its 150,000 members were leading businessmen and civil servants during the period of British rule.

Following the establishment of Israel, the Iraqi government revoked the citizenship of the country’s Jews, forced them to flee and stole their property down to their wedding rings. The expropriated property of Iraqi Jewry is valued today at more than $4 billion.

Only 7,000 Jews remained in Iraq after the mass aliya of 1951. By the time Saddam was toppled in 2003, only 32 Jews remained. They were mainly elderly, and impoverished. And owing to al-Qaida threats and government harassment, they were all forced to flee.

Shortly after they overthrew Saddam, US forces found the archives of the Jewish community submerged in a flooded basement of a secret police building in Baghdad. The archive was dried and frozen and sent to the US for preservation. Last year, despite the fact that Saddam’s secret police only had the archive because they stole it from the Jews, the Iraqi government demanded its return as a national treasure.

As embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak began his counteroffensive against the anti-regime protesters, his mouthpieces began alleging that the protesters were incited by the Mossad.

For their part, the anti-regime protesters claim that Mubarak is an Israeli puppet. The protesters brandish placards with Mubarak’s image plastered with Stars of David. A photo of an effigy of newly appointed vice president, and intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman burned in Tahrir Square showed him portrayed as a Jew.

ON WEDNESDAY night, Channel 10’s Arab affairs commentator Zvi Yehezkeli ran a depressing report on the status of the graves of Jewish sages buried in the Muslim world. The report chronicled the travels of Rabbi Yisrael Gabbai, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who has taken upon himself to travel to save these important shrines. As Yehezkeli reported, last week Gabbai traveled to Iran and visited the graves of Purim heroes Queen Esther and Mordechai the Jew, and the prophets Daniel and Habbakuk.

He was moved to travel to Iran after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered Esther and Mordechai’s tomb destroyed. The Iranian media followed up Ahmadinejad’s edict with a campaign claiming that Esther and Mordechai were responsible for the murder of 170,000 Iranians.

Gabbai’s travels have brought him to Iran, Gaza, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and beyond. And throughout the Arab and Muslim world, like the dwindling Jewish communities, Jewish cemeteries are targets for anti-Semitic attacks. “We’re talking about thousands of cemeteries throughout the Arab world. It’s the same problem everywhere,” he said.

Israelis have been overwhelmingly outspoken in our criticism of Western support for the antiregime forces in Egypt due to our deep-seated concern that the current regime will be replaced by one dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Neil Lazarus: Egypt

awesomeseminars
03 February '11
Posted before Shabbat




Pro-Israel advocate Neil Lazarus is interviewed by RT News concerning the ongoing crisis in Egypt, and Israeli reaction to it. Neil is in best form, and shows us how it's done.



Neil Lazarus is a key note speaker and director of http://www.awesomeseminars.com
and http://www.trainme.org.

He is the author of "The 5 rules of Effective Israel Advocacy"
http://awesomeseminars.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.
.

Insights on Egypt from Israel

Rick Richman
Commentary/Contentions
03 February '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/richman/388752

Maj. Gen. (Res.) Yaakov Amidror, who held several senior posts in the Israel Defense Forces, including head of the IDF division preparing Israel’s National Intelligence Assessment, held a conference call this morning sponsored by One Jerusalem. In discussing Egypt, he said this:

There is no question that this is one of the fruits of the Internet technology — that these are mechanisms which give people the ability to organize without an organization … [T]his is the strength of the opposition: the fact that it was not organized by someone, but is a matter of people who organized themselves.

But when it comes to the next stage … I mean “We don’t want Mubarak” is okay, but now you want something that can bring you to another stage. For that, you need an organization. And in elections after some months, there are very few organizations who have the ability to organize themselves … [other than] the Muslim Brotherhood. They have a long history, they have very deep roots in the society and when they compete with other elements of the opposition, which do not have these traditions, this organization, these roots, it is a new phenomenon …

In The Case for Democracy, Natan Sharansky warned that elections are never the beginning of the democratic process, but can only occur after the basic institutions of a free society are in place — a free press, the rule of law, independent courts, political parties. It was why he praised George W. Bush’s landmark June 24, 2002, speech conditioning U.S. support for a Palestinian state on prior Palestinian success in building “a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty” — and then opposed the Roadmap, which he viewed as Bush’s abandonment of that condition in exchange for faith in Mahmoud Abbas as a “moderate.”

Sharansky’s insight was that moderation is not a function of a leader’s disposition or promises but of the society he governs: “One can rely on a free society to create the moderate, but one cannot rely on a moderate to create a free society.” In thinking about Egypt and its future, perhaps we can profit from a comparison of the Bush administration’s great achievement — the long, hard slog to create a representative government in Iraq — and the administration’s signal failure: the “shortcut” elections it sponsored in 2006 that produced the victory of Hamas.

The Obama administration’s current approach may be, as former State Department senior adviser Christian Whiton argues, too clever by half — closer to what produced Hamastan than what is necessary for a lasting democratic result.

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.
.

How the Hard Left, By Focusing Only on Israel, Encouraged Arab Despotism

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
02 February '11

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1860/hard-left-arab-despotism

Now the hard left is finally talking about torture and other undemocratic abuses in Egypt and Jordan, as well as the despotism of virtually all Arab regimes. Do you recall any campus protests against Egypt or Mubarak? Do you recall any calls for divestment and boycotts against Arab dictators? No, because there weren't any. The hard left was too busy condemning the Middle East's only democracy, Israel. Radical leftists and campus demonstrators, by giving a pass to the worst forms of tyranny, encouraged their perpetuation. Now, finally, they are jumping on the bandwagon of condemnation, though still not with the fury that they reserve for the one nation in the Middle East that has complete free speech, gender equality, gay rights, an open and critical press, an independent judiciary and fair and open elections.

The double standard is alive and well on the hard left, and its victims include the citizens of Arab regimes who suffer under the heal of authoritarian dictators. Even more important they include victims of genocides, such as those perpetrated in Rwanda, Darfur and Cambodia—victims who did not prick the consciences of the hard left because the perpetrators were Arabs or Communists, rather than Americans or Israelis.

The same must be said for the United Nations, which rewarded Arab despots by according them places of honor on human rights bodies that devoted all of their energies to demonizing Israel. In a recent op ed, Amnon Rubenstein, the conscious of Israel, has pointed out that the UN Human Rights Commission, to which both Egypt and Tunisia were elected, has gone out of its way to compliment both regimes. Egypt was praised for steps it has "taken in recent years as regard to human rights…." Tunisia was lauded for constructing "a legal and constitutional framework for the promotion and protection of human rights." Israel, on the other hand, was repeatedly condemned for violating the human rights not only of Palestinians, but of its own citizens as well.

Nor do I recall Bishop Tutu urging the Cape Town Opera to boycott Egypt, Tunisia or Jordan as he urged them to boycott Israel. I do recall Jimmy Carter, who has falsely accused Israel of Apartheid, embracing some of the Arab's worlds worst tyrants and murderers. Many who claim the mantle of human rights ignore or even embrace the worst human rights violators and direct their wrath only against the Jewish nation.

The anti-American and anti-Israel hard left is a topsy-turvy world where the worst are declared the best and the best are condemned as the worst. This topsy-turvy view has become a staple of higher education, particularly among Middle East study programs in many colleges and universities. Among many on the hard left, where the only human rights issue of concern seems to be Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, the views of convicted terrorists Marwan Barghouti are preached as gospel. This is what Barghouti, who is serving a life sentence for planning terror attacks against civilians, but who remains among the most popular Palestinian leaders, recently said about Israel: "The worst and most abominable enemy known to humanity and modern history." It is this skewed view of modern history that runs rampant through the hard left and that gives exculpatory immunity to Arab and Muslim tyrants.

There is only one acceptable standard of international human rights: the worst must come first. Under that universal standard, any person or organization claiming the mantle of human rights must prioritize its resources. It must list human rights violators in order of the severity of the abuses and the ability of its citizens to complain about those abuses. It must then go after the worst offenders first and foremost, leaving right-left politics out of the mix. This standard must be applied by individuals, such as Bishop Tutu, by organizations, such as the United Nations, by the media and by everyone who loves human rights. Until that standard is universally applied, despotism will continue, interrupted only occasionally by revolutions such as those taking place in Tunisia and Egypt.

The irony, of course, is that in the most repressive regimes, such as Iran, revolution is well nigh impossible. Revolution is far more likely to occur is moderately despotic regimes, such as Tunisia and Egypt, where at least some basic liberties were preserved. It is the citizens of the most despotic regimes that need the most help from human rights activists. But don't count on it because too many so-called "human rights" leaders and organizations misuse the concept of "human rights" to serve narrow political, diplomatic or ideological agendas. Unless we restore human rights to its proper role as a neutral and universal standard of human conduct, the kind of tyranny and despotism that stimulated the current protests will continue.

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.
.

From Israel: Shifting Tides

Arlene Kushner
Arlene from Israel
02 February '11


It's still not possible to call with any measure of certainty what the end result of the unrest in Egypt will be, but the picture is looking different today.

What we see is that Mubarak and his military had decided at the beginning of the major protests not to be confrontational. It is for this reason that the ruthless and much-hated police were pulled back, and that the army took their place, with a pledge to not shoot at demonstrators. The plan was to let the demonstrations play themselves out peacefully -- the expectation being that at some point the people on the street would tire of yelling and go home.

Thus some 250,000 protestors (not a million) were able to come to Cairo's central Tahir Square yesterday, unimpeded in their gathering and in their vociferous demands.

~~~~~~~~~~

Last night, Mubarak gave his talk on Egyptian state TV. He said he would finish his term, which ends in September, and then step down.

“My priority now is for a peaceful transfer of power to whoever the people choose in the election,” he said, explaining that the law would be changed to allow for a more open competition for the presidency.

“In all sincerity, regardless of the current circumstances, I never intended to be a candidate for another term.” This might be interpreted as a defiant poke at the demands being made, but may well be the truth, as he is a sick old man.

Responding to the demand that he leave the country, he said, "I was born in Egypt, I defended Egypt, and I will die in Egypt."

~~~~~~~~~~

Obama then communicated that the transition had to start now. Clearly, he would like to see Mubarak step down tomorrow, and would be quite content to see El-Baradei moved into his place. He even says that the Muslim Brotherhood can have a place within the new "democratic government" of Egypt. (More on this below.)

The Foreign Ministry of Egypt has since responded with a statement that transition would not begin until the president's term was completed. The US and the EU were advised not to meddle.

As for El-Baradei, he said that Mubarak had 48 hours to leave the country, and that if he didn't he wouldn't just be a lame duck president, he would be a "dead man walking."

~~~~~~~~~~

Moty & Udi learn about democracy

Fresnozionism.org
18 January '11

Thousands of demonstrators protested the ‘anti-democratic’ actions of the government Saturday night, in particular the decision to create a Knesset commission to investigate the sources of funding for non-governmental organizations active in Israel.

I’ve already discussed this at length. Regardless of the applicability of this or some other remedy, no country can be expected to tolerate massive foreign-financed subversion.

Here’s how it works:

- Arabs claim that IDF soldiers or ‘settlers’ have committed some kind of atrocity: mistreating Arabs, uprooting olive trees, even burning sheep.

- An NGO like B’Tselem, funded by organizations and countries hostile to Israel — the New Israel Fund, the Ford Foundation, the governments of The Netherlands, the UK and Norway, and various left-wing church groups — ‘investigates’, meaning they uncritically accept Arab claims.

- The NGO holds a news conference or releases a report, which is picked up by the press as fact — period. Even when what is alleged is unlikely or impossible, there is no attempt at confirmation beyond the NGO report.

- Anti-Israel media then present it to the world in dramatic, emotional ways.
UN commissions add it to their list of verified Israeli crimes. A case is built which can be grounds for future resolutions or, at some point, even sanctions.
European activists file charges based on universal jurisdiction, so that Israeli officials become fugitives subject to arrest if they land in Europe.

This process is ongoing. Every day there are new incidents. It’s a highly leveraged attack, since it’s trivial to make up stories, but responding to them takes actual investigation, which is time- and resource-consuming, and in many cases nearly impossible. Anyway, even when they are proven false, the damage is done.

The demonstration, which was organized by a coalition of left-wing political groups and some of the same organizations that are at the center of the funding controversy, was aimed at Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose Israel Beitenu party introduced the bill to investigate the NGOs into the Knesset, and who has spoken strongly about the issue.

Lieberman was also attacked for championing a loyalty oath for Israeli citizenship, which his opponents consider ‘racist’.

Lieberman gives voice to a reaction against increasing — and increasingly damaging — anti-Zionist activities by extreme left-wing Israeli Jews and Arab citizens of Israel. In my opinion, such a reaction is justified and has been a long time coming, although perhaps Lieberman presents himself in a way that many see as demagogic.

Nevertheless, Israel is a small and vulnerable society and cannot survive if there are absolutely no limits on subversive behavior within the state.

There is now a counter-reaction from the Left, which is also spilling over into the US, with numerous articles springing up like mushrooms after a rain, all viewing with alarm various ‘undemocratic’ phenomena in Israel. As usual, Israel is expected to be more tolerant of ‘dissent’ than any nation in history, even when the ‘dissent’ is paid for by its enemies and involves deliberate violent provocations, such as occur every week at Bili’in.

Loose lips sink ships

Anat Kamm may have been exploited by the unscrupulous media, but her offense wasn’t about freedom of the press.


Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
2 April '10

In herself Anat Kamm could not be more unimportant. As a symptom of the psycho-political ills that plague Western democracies Anat Kamm could not be more important.

The malaise her pseudo-intellectual narcissism mirrors can obviously be least afforded in beleaguered Israel, but it’s not only endemic here. Moreover, it’s lauded as the epitome of politically correct bon ton not only by this country’s homegrown left-leaning media.

True, Israel can also least afford the damage inflicted by left-wing popularized misrepresentations – far more pervasive here than anywhere else due to the incomparable dominance of local leftist opinion-molders, who are particularly aggressive in the Kamm case. After all, they are covering their exposed rear ends.

And for this purpose it suits them to parade Kamm as a selfless journalist, standing her ground courageously in desperate defense of freedom of information. This, their basic contention, already constitutes a gross cock-and-bull narrative. One must either be mulishly gullible or uninformed in the extreme to consider Kamm a crusading journalist and portray her offense as inspired by allegiance to journalistic ethics.

OF LATE Kamm found employment as a gossip purveyor on an Internet site.

It’s quite a stretch to consider the 23-year-old philosophy student a professional in the forefront of investigative reporting. Besides, she broke the law long before her Web site connection. She wasn’t remotely in journalism when, as a young conscript, she worked in the OC Central Command’s office, duplicated 2,200 documents, hid her haul and hung on to it long after her 2007 discharge.

That she later postured as a newswoman cannot retroactively justify her larceny. Would Kamm’s thievery be reckoned more reprehensible had she earned her living at a supermarket check-out counter?

Kamm basically emptied everything in her commander’s computer. She wasn’t selective. She didn’t home in on a particular issue (which would have been bad enough). Unlike a whistleblower, which she claims to be, Kamm snatched everything indiscriminately. That was an unmitigated breach of her oath.

(Read full story)

Please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Yemini Takes Out Blau's Assassinations Article

TS
CAMERA/Snapshots
18 April '10

In his 2008 article in Ha'aretz, Israeli journalist Uri Blau used illegally obtained military documents obtained by soldier Anat Kamm to accuse the army of committing war crimes and violating a High Court ruling by assassinating West Bank terrorists. As pointed out recently in Snapshots, a letter by former Attorney General Menachem Mazuz destroyed Blau's claims that the killings violated the court ruling.

Now Ben-Dror Yemini of Ma'ariv has thoroughly decimated Blau's allegations. In "Libel Manufactured by Ha'aretz," he writes:

The headline, at the time, was "The chief-of-staff and IDF leadership authorized killings of wanted and innocent men.

(Read full post)

Please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Kam You Get Any Dumber?

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
16 April '10

I'm reading an article published in the Haaretz news site about Anat Kam, the idiot woman who stole 2,000 secret and top secret documents while working for a top level military commander...and now wants the world (or at least the courts) to believe she didn't do anything wrong. The full article in which Anat Kam admits to having stolen the documents can be read here (please make sure not to click on any advertising links on the page...I would hate to think I helped Ha'aretz in any way!) I rejected to comments posted to my blog by the once-again brave "Anonymous" trying to alert us to this article and suggesting if true, that he (the poster) fully supports Kam...I guess as dumb as Kam is...there are still even dumber...but as to the full nature of Kam's arrogance and stupidity...here are some example:

She said she stole sensitive military information because: "certain aspects of the IDF's conduct in the West Bank that I thought were of interest to the public." Really, this naive, stupid 20-year-old girl thought she had the right to decide what was of interest to the public? Amazing, the arrogance.

Anat Kam says she turned to Israeli journalists (as opposed, one would assume, to Israel's legal system) because "the censorship would not allow the publication of information classified as top secret or that is dangerous for publication." Gee, can you imagine? A country not allowing the publication of top secret and dangerous for publication items...who would have imagined that?

She talks of her wish to "serve" the nation: "I didn't have the chance to change some of the things that I found it important to change during my military service, and I thought that by exposing these [materials] I would make a change." Gee, again...here I was thinking that the purpose of national service was to SERVE the nation...not change it, not reform it into the nation you, in your incredible ignorance and arrogance, think it should be.

(Read full post)

Please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

The Haaretz Spy Scandal

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
16 April '10

Over the past two weeks Israel has been rocked by a major espionage scandal in which the Haaretz newspaper plays a central role. To understand the significance of the scandal, it is worthwhile to preface a discussion of it with a look at a smaller story Haaretz developed this week.

On Sunday, Haaretz's Amira Hass reported that in January, the IDF published a new military order that paves the way for the mass expulsion of illegal aliens from Judea and Samaria. The story sported the disturbing headline, "IDF order will enable mass deportation from West Bank."

In a follow-up on Monday, Hass reported that 10 self-described human rights organizations (all funded by the New Israel Fund) sent a joint letter to Defense Minister Ehud Barak asking him to rescind the order. She noted, too, that, "the international media also has taken great interest in the story."

And indeed, on Wednesday, a Google news search for "IDF West Bank deportation order" drew nearly 20,000 results.

Also on Monday, Haaretz published an editorial based on Hass's stories. Titled, "IDF bid to expel West Bank Palestinians is a step too far," the editorial asserted, "Implementing this new military order is not only likely to spark a new conflagration in the territories, it is liable to give the world clear-cut proof that Israel's aim is a mass deportation of Palestinians from the West Bank."

That is, Israel is fomenting a war and Israel deserves to lose that war because it is the villain.

On Wednesday, Haaretz reported that Jordan had joined it in condemning Israel.

That's quite an accomplishment for an Israeli newspaper with a negligible share of the domestic market.

(Read full article)

Please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Awakening the Left

The lifting of the gag order on the Anat Kamm affair should prompt some serious introspection on that side of the political spectrum.


Michael Freund
Fundamentally Freund/JPost
15 April '10

The Anat Kamm affair has sent shock waves throughout the military and political establishments. Allegations that the young soldier stole reams of sensitive IDF documents and passed them to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau raise serious questions about basic security procedures and information controls in the army. Sweeping changes will need to be implemented to ensure that such an outflow of documents does not recur, and one assumes that the military brass has already taken steps to plug the leaks.

But of all the secrets that Kamm may have revealed, few are likely to be as explosive as the real bombshell she has unwittingly uncovered. Kamm has cast a spotlight on a critical question that does not get nearly as much attention as it deserves: Why does the Israeli Left seem to produce so much treachery against the state?

Indeed, the sad fact is that if the charges against Kamm are true, she is but the latest in a long line of ideologically-driven left-wingers who have betrayed the country.

Remember Mordechai Vanunu, the former nuclear technician who disclosed details of Israel’s atomic-energy program to The Times of London in October 1986?

Or how about Marcus Klingberg, one of the country’s top military scientists, who passed data to the Soviets out of ideological conviction before his arrest in 1983? And then there is Tali Fahima, who was convicted in 2005 for her contact with Zakaria Zubeidi, a Palestinian terrorist from Jenin who headed the local branch of Fatah’s Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

There are plenty of other such examples, which only leads one to wonder why some on the Left seem to have no compunction about committing duplicitous acts which harm the state.

(Read full story)

Please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

The Kam Case: Freedom of Expression or Freedom of Baloney?

by Uri Heitner, Yisrael HaYom


Yitz
Shilo Musings
13 April '10

The following is my translation of an editorial which appears in today’s Yisrael HaYom newspaper in Hebrew.

Immediately upon exposure of the Kam affair, it was clear that for certain groups in Israeli society, a new hero was born. I knew that Kam would be portrayed as a heroine: a knight of freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom for the struggle against the ‘corrupt occupation’ and so forth.

Indeed, since publication of the affair, we’ve read dozens of articles about an important journalist who sits in detention because she revealed the war crimes of Israel. The second journalist involved, Uri Blau, has informed us, without the least bit of modesty, that he did not struggle at all on his own behalf, rather but on behalf of Israel.

Articles of support maintain that the great sin of Kam amounts to the fact that she has a world-view that led her to reveal illegal acts of Israel. Or, alternatively, some argue that she just did her duty of conscience, and that the problematic factor here is the IDF, whose injustices she has exposed.

Well, even if we are a ‘baloney-ridden’ State, such a concentration of nonsense has not been seen here in a long time. Then there is nothing further from the issue of freedom of expression and freedom of the press than this case.

The "journalist" that was arrested, is rather an Internet website gossip columnist. There is no connection at all between her vocation and her arrest.

After all, she was not arrested for her work as a ‘journalist’, but for what she did as a soldier. As a soldier, she stole classified documents, kept them, and passed some on. This is the truth under the false code of "free press".

(Read full article)
.

Israel’s Lefty Rag Haaretz Defends Treason and Espionage

P. David Hornik
Pajamasmedia.com
13 April '10

The partial lifting of the gag order on the Anat Kam espionage affair, which had already been exposed to the world media in March by Judith Miller, is stirring up a storm in Israel. The charge sheet accuses Kam of “divulging secret information with the intent to harm the security of the state,” which falls under “serious espionage” and carries a maximum life term. Haaretz, Israel’s left-wing daily, is at the center of the storm — and tying itself in knots to defend Kam, its journalist Uri Blau, and itself.

First, to recap: Kam, born in Jerusalem in 1987 and a gifted student, served as an office clerk under the then head of Central Command, Yair Naveh, from 2005 to 2007. She’s charged with illicitly copying about 2000 computer documents — 700 of them classified secret or top secret — and taking them with her when she left the army. The charge sheet says the documents contained, among other things, “plans of military operations, summaries of discussions within the IDF, deployment and order of battle … of IDF forces … , IDF situation estimates, IDF targets, and so on.” Security sources say they could have cost soldiers’ lives and posed a grave danger.

In 2008 Kam, then a student at Tel Aviv University and a journalist for the Walla news site, delivered a large amount of the documents to Blau. He, in turn, published in Haaretz some stories based on them that were cleared with the military censor. The stories involved assassinations of terrorists in the West Bank who, allegedly, could have been arrested; the Israeli Supreme Court had ruled that in such cases, the terrorist has to be arrested rather than killed. (Meanwhile, on Sunday the IDF spokesperson said Blau’s claims in these articles were “upsetting and distorted.”)

When sources in the defense establishment saw the stories, they worried about where they could have come from. The Israel Security Agency, better known as Shin Bet, eventually worked out a deal with Blau where he returned his documents and was promised they wouldn’t be used to incriminate him or his sources. A few months later, in December 2009, the Shin Bet identified Kam as the source of the documents — but the problem was that she admitted to giving Blau far more documents than he had turned over.

(Read full article)
.

"A Threat to Democracy"

Yaacov Lozowick
Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
10 April '10

(Excellent summation of the main points concerning the Kamm-Blau case)

Earlier this afternoon I was at a weekly gathering of some 15-20 friends. A judge, four professors, four mere PhDs (that's me), some attorneys, a few physicians, some highly successful business people. We convene for a Talmud study session led by the judge, but the participants are of varying degrees of religious observance, from not at all to rather strict. Our politics are likewise diverse. The consensus was that Haaretz has broken all the rules; three of those present said they were going to cancel their subscriptions. I can't remember the group ever being so agitated.

The Poles have far greater woes this weekend than the Israelis, as do the Thais. The Anat Kamm story which has us all worked up is not really important, and I hope to stop dealing with it very soon. Yet I do wish to summarize it as it looks after spending a few hours carefully reading Haaretz - where it was by far the main story - and some other papers, where it was major but not exclusive.

The story began when Anat Kamm allegedly stole 2000 classified documents from the office of her commander, CO of the Central Front, Yair Naveh, between 2005-2007. Allegedly, because she hasn't yet been convicted, let us not forget. The documents dealt with many matters, of varying seriousness. The security forces say that once they had figured out what had been stolen they had to make changes to operational procedures and change operations, out of fear their details had leaked. We're a country at war, people get killed in our wars, and this theft interfered. No-one's saying anyone was killed, but as we say in Hebrew, that was more luck than brains. Also: the documents are still out there. They haven't been retrieved yet.

The lesson to be drawn from this part of the story is that the counter-espionage folks better get their act together.

Kamm's upcoming trial may cast light on the matter of her motives. We know (because she has openly said) that she holds seriously Left political opinions. However, she tried to join pilot training when she was 18, and during her military service she tried to be sent to officer training; both would have meant adding time to her service, and neither indicate an anti-Israel position. It sounds like she was a Meretz voter, and those people don't engage in treason anymore than anyone else. I'm not a lawyer, but my sense is that they're doing her a disservice by playing up any ideological motives. Were I in their place I'd portray her as silly, unthinking, and hope for 3 years in jail rather than 20.

Some of Israel's critics are dong everything in their power to portray her as a brave whistle-blower. (Silverstone, Mondowiess). The problem with this story line is that she didn't blow any whistles while she was in a position to do so, and after she left the army it took more than a year before she found anyone willing to look at her documents. (A journalist at Yediot, Israel's most popular paper, seems to have refused to look). My sense is that she tried to show the whole trove, not a specific document in it - but I could be wrong.

Eventually Uri Blau at Haaretz was interested. That was the turning point which changed the story from minor to major, and will probably cost Anat Kamm an extra decade in jail.

(Read full post)
.

Anarchy isn’t democracy

Haim Misgav
Opinion/Ynet
09 April '10

Democracy has many faces – this is what we’ve been hearing night and day from many people since soldier Anat Kam, who apparently belongs to the anarchist leftist camp (whose members seek to undermine the legitimacy of the elected government) stole documents from the Central Command chief’s computer.

Now, they are trying to grace the theft with an ideological aspect: The soldier in fact did not steal the documents, they say, but rather, merely sought to “leak” them via an innocent journalist who would present them the public, in order to seemingly avert the death of innocents. And if this is what she did, fans of anarchy tell us, why should she be indicted?

If all the soldier sought to do was help the State of Israel maintain its moral character, we are told by all those people who are seemingly concerned about freedom of press and its ability to function in a state run by, lo and behold, the rightist camp, why was it wrong?

These types of arguments, by the way, are voiced every time spies of the same camp are caught. This article is too short to name them all –there are quite a few of them, who always premise their acts on the same ideology – but we should mention a few at least: For example, Marcus Kleinberg, a researcher at Israel’s biological institute, who was sent to 20 years in prison, or Udi Adiv, who spied for the Syrians and was sentences to 17 years in jail, or Mordechai Vanunu, who worked at the Dimona nuclear facility.

(Read full article)
.

Iran in 2010

The world watches as the Iranians battle against the illegitimate Ahmadinejad regime that stole the last election and set up show trials of the opposition. The Iranians are fighting the nasty regime that tortured, raped, and murdered demonstrators and dissenters.
Interesting to note that, as Ahmadinejad threatens the world, he himself is threatened by "the will of the people".
.