Refreshing: Rock star admits he doesn't understand politics

Elder of Ziyon
27 September '10




From YNet and The JC:

English rock star Ozzy Osbourne arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport on a private plane Sunday evening, along with his family members.

Osbourne and his wife, Sharon, who also served as his personal manager, held a press conference at a Tel Aviv hotel.

Asked whether he had any hesitations about visiting Israel, on the backdrop of the latest cancellations by international artists, he replied that he tries to stay away from politics because "I wouldn't know what I was talking about."

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Writing About “BDS”

Jonathan Cristol
The American Interest
15 August '10

For days I have been planning a series of posts on the subject of “BDS,” the anti-Israel boycott/divestment/sanctions “movement.” BDS’s aims include a cultural and academic boycott against Israel, which makes it relatively unique in the history of these types of movements. After figuring out what I wanted to say, and sitting down to start writing, I was struck with the fear that by drawing attention to BDS I would increase its notoriety and inadvertently draw additional followers to the cause. So instead of writing a long take-down of BDS, which I may well do another time, I decided to go meta- and write about writing about BDS, although this approach still increases the notoriety of BDS. Nuts.

BDS has been very slowly gaining traction in the media without gaining actual traction on the ground. Jacob Weisberg recently wrote an essay on the topic in Newsweek. The title provides a nice summary of the content, “Don’t Boycott Israel: The Very Idea is Repellent.” Like many articles opposing BDS he focuses on the uniqueness of the cultural and academic boycotts of Israel, and points out that this approach alienates the very people most sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. He does not discuss the impossibility of an effective BDS movement, which is a topic I plan to write about in the future (and touch on below).

(Read full article)

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Elvis: Johnny Rotten still has what to say

Posted by Yosef
16 August '10
H/T to Jennifer Rubin

In the U.K. Independent last month can be found a very sharp interview with John Lydon, aka "Johnny Rotten". Besides his exceptional musical talent, there has always been his caustic wit, or just plain caustic. Towards the end of the interview the following issue arose:

What I do know, having hung out with him for an afternoon, is that he's still always spoiling for a fight. As we're about to say our goodbyes, he pulls a sheaf of faxes out of his pocket. They are complaints, e-mailed to his manager, John "Rambo" Stevens, who lives in Arkansas, complaining that PiL will shortly be performing in Israel. One, from a fan called Lawrence Casin, declares: "I will destroy all my albums and paraphernalia that I have collected over the years if you bastards play that hell hole."

Most musicians, particularly those who have been around for 30 years, wouldn't let hate mail upset them. They probably wouldn't even read it. But John's anger is genuine. He wants me to record it, for posterity. "I really resent the presumption that I'm going there to play to right-wing Nazi jews," he tells me. "If Elvis-f--king-Costello wants to pull out of a gig in Israel because he's suddenly got this compassion for Palestinians, then good on him. But I have absolutely one rule, right? Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they're treated."

That's our Johnny Rotten.

Whatever issues others may have with him, he gets my vote on this one!

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BDS's Latest Victim

Jon Haber
Divest This!
21 July '10


OK - Another institution has decided to take the plunge into the BDS waters. So let’s all set our watches for what is going to happen next.

The Olympia Co-op story is similar to Somerville and Berkeley in that the decision to join the world-wide boycott movement against Israel was made by a group of leaders (the co-op’s board) working closely with BDS activists to craft their decision, but taking into account virtually no one else that the board was supposedly elected to represent.

Now co-op rules apparently say that the board can boycott anyone they like without consulting the membership. So if we are to get into a debate about the board’s responsibility (which we will on another day), it will be a discussion of propriety and judgment vs. breaking the law or the organization’s own rules.

For now, however, we can classify Olympia as comparable to those other BDS “victories” where members of an organization, church, or city wake up one morning to discover that a community in which they’ve been a member for years is now being touted on Al Jazeera as holding a political opinion (such as the BDS Israel=Apartheid analogy) that many members finds abhorrent .

Apparently a meeting will be held in early August to discuss the decision the Co-op has already made regarding handing their reputation over to the boycott brigade. If history is any guide, this will lead to a second meeting and then finally a third when the co-op (which by now will have realized the consequences of their original decision) will have to vote to reject or double-down on this ill-conceived boycott project.

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Israel through a dark lens

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
22 June '10

In its June 22 edition, the Washington Post runs an article by Jerusalem correspondent Janine Zacharia that depicts Israelis mired in malaise about their country's "deepening isolation" -- with only an Elton John concert as a brief morale-booster. To say the least, this is a jeremiad out of sync with reality. It totally ignores Israel's many successes as a thriving player on the world stage ("In Israel, a deepening isolation -- Nation fears it may be in danger of losing its most improtant ally: The United States" page A8)

Zacharia sets the funereal tone right from the start when she writes in her lead paragraph that "in Israel, where many feel more shunned than they have in decades, the legendary pop icon's decision to perform in Tel Aviv was cause for celebration."

And she goes on in the same vein that "after weeks of dreary reports about artists caving to calls to boycott Israel, Israeli diplomats being expelled by friendly allies, and even pressure from the United States to change course in Gaza, John allowed Israel an opportunity 'for three hours,' as one music reviewer put it, 'to be a normal country.'''

Well, we get the picture: In Israel these days it's Oy Veh all the way, according to Zacharia.

However, her article is deeply flawed. By selectively assembling a few international minuses, it presents only half the picture, at most. And it turns into a caricature by carefully omitting and ignoring Israel's many international strengths and accomplishments.

(Read full article)

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Will President Obama Drop The Racist Automatic Pass for the Palestinians?

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
27 May '10

Let’s not overstate the significance of the change in President Obama’s treatment of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Yes, camera crews will no doubt record Mr. Netanyahu’s arrival and departure via the front door of the White House and the tool shed tone may be eased up a bit. But let’s make no bones about the situation.

President Obama belief system regarding a “solution” of the Arab-Israeli conflict and how this should be achieved hasn’t shifted a millimeter. And in this case, the “how” may be considerably more important that the “solution” itself, since – talk about the inevitability of the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state within some deadline notwithstanding – it would hardly be surprising if we found ourselves arguing years from now over who should be blamed and/or credit for the failure to create a Palestinian state during the window of opportunity the Obama administration provided the Arab leadership.

So back to the “how.”

And here is where we come back to the fundamentally racist and condescending attitude that the Obama Administration takes towards the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular in everything having to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Because it is fundamentally racist and condescending to give them an automatic pass.

Consider the following:

If the Israeli Government officially and openly lobbied to bar and/or expel Palestinian representatives from international bodies and forums would Washington be silent? How vocal would the White House and State Department be if the Israeli Government organized a boycott of Palestinian enterprises? If Israel took the position that any and all Jewish terrorists serving time for attacking Arabs should be released would that be ignored?

Of course none of this would be acceptable.

But when the Palestinians do the very same things, the racist and condescending automatic pass goes into play reflecting an unsaid underlying assumption that the Palestinians can’t be expected to behave in accordance with international norms.

In the coming days no doubt a team of Israelis and Americans will try to hammer out the details of the Netanyahu-Obama exchange of words before the press at the White House. Let’s hope that we can progress beyond the standard verbiage about America’s commitment to Israel’s security and get some serious remarks from President Obama regarding grossly unacceptable Palestinian behavior.

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Soft Targets

Jon
Divest This!
25 May '10

Like many of you, I’ve received a fair share of alerts that Elvis Costello has joined the ranks of entertainers planning to boycott Israel until the boycott “movement” gives them the all clear. A number of these alarms have been accompanied by condemnations of Costello as a hack, a has-been and a hypocrite, coupled with calls to counter-boycott the singer and (if it can be done with MP3s) burn his recordings for good measure.

In truth, I have a slightly softer spot for Elvis Costello than I do for Carlos Santana, another rocker who has decided to dabble in moral consciousness at the expense of the Jewish state, if only because I saw E.C. in concert once (at Brandies as a matter of fact) and a friend one succeeded in impersonating the British singer to get into a sold-out comedy club. The fact that celebrity endorsements (even ones in favor of causes I support) have always seemed pretty vacuous and imbecilic also keeps the danger signal of Costello’s choice flashing yellow instead of red.

Related article: Open letter to Costello

That said, if the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that BDS is pretty good at capitalizing on even small successes, at least in terms of keeping its militant project energized. So the recruitment of pop-stars as the latest anti-Israel bludgeon needs to be taken seriously. At the same time, placing this month’s BDS “triumph” in the context of how the whole boycott and divestment thing has been going over the last year or two might provide some guidance as to how to meet this latest challenge.

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Open letter to Costello

Singer who called off Israel show no anti-Semite, just self-righteous hypocrite


Assaf Wohl
Opinion/Ynet
25 May '10

Dear Costello:

Firstly, accept my sincere apologies for being unable to refer to you as “Elvis,” for the obvious reason that you aren’t really Elvis.

Secondly, allow me to address your decision to cancel the show planned for Israel. I attempted to understand the reasons you referred to in your cancellation notice. You addressed the “humiliation of Palestinians civilians in the name of national security,” and I wonder what you meant.

Perhaps you’re referring to the roadblocks and fence we built in order to prevent suicide bombers from exploding in our buses and coffee shops. The dramatic decline in Palestinian massacres, from an average of one a day to almost nil may indeed be humiliating for them, as you noted.

Or maybe you referred to Operation Cast Lead. If that’s the case, you are in fact condemning us for deciding to put an end to eight years of rocket attacks targeting our kindergartens. If you think this is demagoguery, please go ahead and check the timers which the “humiliated” terrorists set for the rockets. They were aiming for the hours where our children head to kindergarten and to school.

Immediately after doing so, these terrorists rushed to hide being their own women and children. And why did they do so? So you, Costello, will see our response on your television screen, and proceed to express shock and suddenly call off your show in Israel – a year and a half later.

What exactly did you expect? That we’ll allow Islamic terror to butcher our citizens? We should remind you that we were not the ones to send our army thousands of kilometers away to spill blood at some remote islands near Argentina. We’re fighting for our very homes.

Related article: Elvis (yellow) Costello boycotts Israel, becomes “a silent partner in someone else’s mistake”

On this issue, Costello, you may wish to ask what British soldiers are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, and why they’re humiliating the Afghan people every day without the latter ever dispatching suicide bombers or rockets to Britain. Did you also call off your shows in England? And what about the United States? Will you continue to perform there while Guantanamo is still intact?

(Read full letter)

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Elvis (yellow) Costello boycotts Israel, becomes “a silent partner in someone else’s mistake”

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
21 May '10

A very nice piece today from David Horovitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post, on rock legend Elvis Costello’s decision to boycott Israel.

Horovitz writes the article in the form of an open letter, and pretty much hits every right note on this the latest indictment of Europe’s long and inexorable slide into barbarism over Israel and the Jews. Costello’s decision to cancel a series of concerts in Israel was announced on his website thus:

“It is a matter of instinct and conscience. It has been necessary to dial out the falsehoods of propaganda, the double game and hysterical language of politics, the vanity and self-righteousness of public communiqués from cranks in order to eventually sift through my own conflicted thoughts.” [Meaning?]

“I have come to the following conclusions,” he says. ” One must at least consider any rational argument that comes before the appeal of more desperate means. Sometimes a silence in music is better than adding to the static and so an end to it. [Meaning?]

“I cannot imagine receiving another invitation to perform in Israel, which is a matter of regret but I can imagine a better time when I would not be writing this. With the hope for peace and understanding. Elvis Costello.”

Oh dear, oh dear. All of this can be summarised in a single paragraph: “I’m a coward who fears to stand up to the braying crowds calling for Israel’s isolation. I am incapable of independent thinking. I simply cannot deal with the moral and civilisational issues that the Israel-Palestine conflict throws up. I do not understand democracy. I do not understand terrorism. I have decided to take the easy and painless path of conformity rather than to stand up for what is right”.

(Read full post)

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BDS Flames Out in Davis

Jon
Divest This!
17 March '10

On Monday evening, the forces of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) were handed a major defeat when the Davis Food Co-op, located in Davis California, turned down demands by BDS activists to put a boycott of Israeli goods to a Co-op wide vote.

While this story may not be big enough to hit the national press, the details surrounding the decision make this as significant an event in the continuing annals of BDS failure as the Presbyterian Church’s 2006 decision to abandon divestment altogether (a decision which changed the threat level of BDS from “potential issue” to “serious loser”).

As backdrop, the Davis Food Co-op is a highly successful, member-owned cooperative with a nearly forty year history and over 9000 member-owners. Given the nature of the organization, the institution takes understandable pride in its progressive values and responsiveness to members needs, connections to the community that have contributed to its decades of success.

Sadly, it was these very qualities that made the organization a target for the local branch of the BDS movement, a movement whose two major tactics involve: (1) dressing up their mission of de-legitimization and demonization in a progressive/human-rights vocabulary; and (2) abusing the openness of organizations like the Co-op for their own narrow, political ends.

(Read full post)
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Running the Numbers

Jon
Divestthis.com
05 March '10

Given that the theme of this year’s increasingly fraying “Israel Apartheid Week” is Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), I thought it might be useful to summarize the progress of the BDS movement since it began a decade ago. Because so much of the BDS project is based on words, including competing claims of success and failure, I thought it best to provide a summary based primarily on numbers which (as I recall from my business days) are the only things that tend to get preserved as information travels up or through an organization.

Since these numbers need to be “scored” against some criterion, I’ve decided to abandon my usual critique of the BDS narrative and, in this instance, accept as a given their primary thesis: that economic activity related to Israel translates to political approval or disapproval. Now some people may say this is overly generous in that it allows them to continue to claim that purely economic decisions are actually fueled by partisan considerations. But if we accept (albeit temporarily) their founding principle on a micro level, then they must also be willing to be judged along the same criteria on a macro basis. And regarding that macro basis, here is Exhibit A:



My goodness! During the very period when BDS was supposedly on the march, the size of Israel’s economy (as measured by GDP) nearly doubled from $110B to $190B. Now given that the BDS project is based on their activity having economic consequence for the Jewish state, the takeaway from this chart seems to be that such consequence has been an explosion of growth in the Israeli economy.

(Read full article)
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Irwin Cotler: The real Apartheid? A Middle-East without Israel

Akiva
Hadar Israel
03 March '10

The real apartheid in the middle-east is the rejection of the legitimacy of a Jewish State, according to Irwin Cotler, the featured speaker at Hadar’s second public forum February 24 on Lawfare: Fighting False Legal Actions and Boycotts that Demonize Israel. Cotler, former Justice Minister of Canada, a Canadian MP and a renowned international human rights lawyer also told the packed hall at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center that groups like Hadar that mobilize citizen engagement are of vital importance in “delegitimizing the delegitimizers.”

The delegitimization of Israel – while not a new phenomenon - has been “laundered” under the banners of human rights, the UN, and the fight against racism, Cotler explained. The Palestinian narrative with its many falsifications has been adopted as the human rights narrative and Israel is portrayed as an international outlaw. In addition, the recent Goldstone commission was corrupt from its creation by the fundamentally biased UN Human Rights Council, Cotler said.

IDF Lieutenant Colonel (res.) David Benjamin, said that Israel exceeds international legal and moral standards in fighting terrorism, and minimizes civilian casualties. D.J Schneeweiss, Israel’s coordinator of anti-boycott strategy in Europe, said that Israel needs to change the rules of the game and apply a “full court press” in challenging delegitimization.

The forum’s moderator was David Horovitz, Editor in Chief of the Jerusalem Post.



The main problem Israel faces in its battle for legitimacy, according to Cotler, is the laundering of delegitimization through internationally respected agencies such as the UN and its various arms, international legal conventions and NGOs.

(Read full article)
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Ontario Defies Israel Apartheid Week

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
01 March '10

This week is Israel Apartheid Week on college campuses worldwide — an annual hatefest devoted to demonizing Israel and mobilizing support for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), made even more grotesque by the numerous Israelis serving as featured speakers. But this year, pushback came from a surprising direction: the provincial legislature of Ontario, Canada, voted unanimously to condemn this extravaganza, because it “serves to incite hatred against Israel, a democratic state that respects the rule of law and human rights, and … diminishes the suffering of those who were victims of a true apartheid regime in South Africa.”

Two things make this decision remarkable. One is that Ontario has long been a hotbed of anti-Israel activity. For instance, its largest labor union, the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, enthusiastically promotes BDS; in 2006, the chapter voted to boycott Israel until it accepts a Palestinian “right of return,” otherwise known as committing demographic suicide. Thus Ontario legislators defied a powerhouse vote machine over an issue with little political traction, just because they thought it was right.

The second is that not long ago, Canada’s foreign policy was hostile to Israel. In October 2000, for instance, days after the intifada erupted, Canada voted for a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for the violence, without a word of blame for the Palestinians. And that vote was typical, not exceptional. Thus the Ontario decision represents a sharp turnabout in a fairly short period of time.

(Read full post)
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BDS, Academic/Cultural Boycott of Israel, and Omar Barghouti

Ricki Hollander
CAMERA
24 February '10

A Palestinian call for comprehensive economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel was issued in August 2002, a year after the idea was introduced at the first United Nations-sponsored World Conference on Racism in Durban. The "Durban Strategy"— a term coined by NGO-Monitor's Gerald Steinberg—attempts to demonize the Jewish state as apartheid and isolate it with the same boycott and divestment tactics that were used so successfully to dismantle South Africa's apartheid regime.

While the comparison of Israel to South Africa is a patently false one rejected by people who have lived and suffered under actual apartheid rule and which has been throughly debunked, it is gaining traction among those who seek an end to the Jewish state. And while the Palestinian-initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement has not managed to inflict economic harm upon Israel, BDS is wielded as a propaganda tool with which to delegitimize that country.

One of its few early successes came in 2004 and 2005 through a group of liberal Protestant (or "mainline") churches in the United States that promoted divestment from companies doing business with Israel, although similar anti-Israel resolutions were defeated at subsequent national church gatherings. This campaign was covered in depth by CAMERA's Christian media analyst Dexter Van Zile (see "Mainline American Christian ‘Peacemakers' against Israel") who points out that, "largely because of their shrinking numbers, the churches involved in this campaign have had little impact on the American public's attitudes toward Israel."

Over the past year, however, BDS activists have been ratcheting up their efforts. They seized upon the biased and mendacious Goldstone report to endorse their goals, claiming that "the report, and the media attention given to it, moved the terms of international solidarity with Palestine into a new plane, where calling for BDS is no longer considered ‘unrealistic' or ‘counterproductive.'"

(Read full article)
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TAU scholar to advocate Israel boycott

Jonny Paul
London/JPost
21 January '10

A Tel Aviv University academic will call for a boycott of Israel, speaking at a London university event next month to commemorate "one year since Israel's attack" on Gaza.

Dr. Anat Matar of TAU's Philosophy Department will be speaking on February 17 at London University's School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) - a campus renowned for anti-Israel activity.

Matar's talk is to be titled "Supporting the Boycott on Israel: A View from Within."

She is taking part in a series of events over the coming weeks organized by the Palestinian societies at five University of London campuses - University College London, SOAS, Imperial College, Kings College and Goldsmiths - as well as at the University of Westminster.

In an article in Haaretz in August, Matar accused her own university of being complicit with the "occupation" and questioned Israel's stance on Palestinian academic freedom and basic education.

A mother of a conscientious objector, on her profile page on the university's Web site Matar lists her main nonacademic activities as "movements against military service" and the "Israeli Committee for Palestinian Prisoners."

(Read full article)
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Boycott Israel and British Lives Will Be Lost

Why does the UK want to distance itself from the country best positioned to help protect British troops from IEDs?

Carol Gould
PajamasMedia.com
28 December 09

Britain has become the world center for boycotts of Israeli goods and of academic exchange. It is rare to pass a day without an email from a supporter of the Jewish state bringing to my attention yet another boycott campaign. Whether it is grassroots campaigns to label oranges and avocados in supermarkets or universities stopping academic cross-fertilization of brainpower, the many forces at work in Britain seem never to run out of momentum.

It is therefore all the more lamentable that British soldiers are suffering losses every month in Afghanistan, yet the country does not promote good relations with Israel, the world expert on defusing IEDs (improvised explosive devices). On December 13 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited troops in Kandahar, the first British head of state to visit servicemen in a war zone since Winston Churchill in the Second World War. Brown told the media during his visit that soldiers “were discovering improvised explosive devices every two hours.”

On television in the months leading up to the prime ministerial visit to the war zone, bereaved British mothers, sisters, and widows lamented the shortage of bomb disposal experts and the apparent lack of appropriate equipment and protective gear available to their sons, brothers, and husbands. On BBC television’s Question Time on Thursday, December 10, recorded in Wootton Bassett, a town hit particularly hard by recent war losses, anguished women asked panelist Sir Richard Dannatt, former head of the armed forces, for better care of the fighting men.

In the meantime Israeli bomb disposal experts are available for consultation, but if the word “Israel” so much as appears in any public discourse, those same studio audiences erupt in rage at the “apartheid” state that engages in “ethnic cleansing,” and they refuse to see the connection between Israel’s sixty-year defensive battle against terror and the war their menfolk are facing in Taliban-land.

Researching this article I came upon a compelling screed, “Countering Improvised Explosive Devices” by Colonel David Eshel of the IDF, or Israeli Defense Forces. What is intriguing is that the piece was published in the Royal Tank RegimentJournal, Volume 771, way back in March 2005.

Eshel recounts the events after cessation of initial hostilities in Iraq in 2003, when insurgent attacks began to dominate the landscape, but coalition leaders seemed uninterested in briefings on IEDs. He asserts: “It seems therefore strange, and possibly inexcusable, that the coalition forces failed to take notice of the vast combat experience that could have become willingly available from its Israeli allies, in order to at least try and reduce the heavy loss of life sustained mainly by U.S. forces from IED and suicide attacks.”

Eshel’s article makes it clear that the range and lethality of IEDs are staggering: In the early days of the Iraqi insurgency, attackers pulled out the firing pins of hand grenades and kept them from detonating by holding down the “spoon” and covering it with ducting tape. By dropping it into a canister filled with gasoline, the tape would dissolve in a few hours and cause a terrific explosion. Terrorists would place an obstruction on the road, causing vehicles to stop and investigate; the results were catastrophic.

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Can they give Britain a loan, please?

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
23 December 09

The choir of Clare College, Cambridge and its pro-'Palestinian' conductor are reported to have cancelled a planned performance in 'east' Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria because they are also performing in Israel.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign wrote a letter, signed by more than 200 people, asking that the choir cancel its tour of Israel or risk, in their words, ‘appearing indifferent to Palestinian suffering’. As a result, the PA asked the Bishop of Jerusalem to withdraw the invitation for the choir to sing in East Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Betty Hunter, the general secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, says that desire to travel to the West Bank does not excuse the choir's tour of Israel. That tour, she says, is ‘surprising and shocking’ - something which, in her words, ‘promotes Israel as a normal state rather than one which represses Palestinians’.

Is that so. Here is the parlous state of the Palestinians of the West Bank:

(Read full article)

Related: Boycott Victorious... Er... Well...
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Boycott Victorious... Er... Well...

The choir's director had been keen to show his students the West Bank barrier

Yaacov Lozowick
Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
22 December 09

The BBC tells the tale of a British Choir that set up a tour of six concerts in Israel, then tried to set some up some additional ones in the West Bank.

Nope. The Palestinians decided to boycott the choir, in spite of the fact that it's director, one Tim Brown, says he's actually on their side:

The choir's director says his frustration is borne of what he describes as his own pro-Palestinian stance: he has taught and performed with Palestinian musicians. Mr Brown was very keen for his students to see the West Bank barrier and, as he put it, the "privations" caused by the Israeli occupation. Betty Hunter, the general secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, says that desire to travel to the West Bank does not excuse the choir's tour of Israel. That tour, she says, is "surprising and shocking" - something which, in her words, "promotes Israel as a normal state rather than one which represses Palestinians".

Jeffrey Goldberg blogs on this from a position of ridicule. Mondoweiss, predictably, approves, calling the story the "boycott's latest victory". A Mondoweiss regular commenter, one "Potsherd",asks why Israel would have the singers in the first place:

Is it not a Jewish State? Is it not busily engaged in purging all aspects of Christianity and its subversive Christmas manifestations? Are its puritan zealots not making war on Santa Claus and Christmas trees, which aren’t Christian at all? How much more so must they purge performances of the music of Bach, which is flagrantly Christian, which mentions. (making me wonder why Bach and not Handel’s Messiah)

You've got to admire these folks' firm grasp on the reality they pontificate about incessantly.

(Read full post)

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Anti-Israel Boycott Proposal Costs NTNU Funded Professorship

CAMERA/Snapshots
07 December 09

Former NTNU Donor Olav Thon

Anti-Israel activists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, have cost the university the support of one of its most prominent donors, real estate and hotel magnate Olav Thon, who according to Forbes.com is worth $2 billion. Thon has given the university 300,000 ($52,500) annually for the past few years to support an adjunct professorship.

Not any more.

Two days before the university rejected a proposal to divest from Israel, Thon sent a letter to NTNU stating that while he expected the school to vote the proposal down, he was cutting off future donations to the university.

According to this report (based on a google translation of a Norwegian newspaper article), Thon was not interested in supporting an institution where politics takes precedence over good research.

The $52,000 Thon gave to the school annually may seem like a small amount, but according to this report, he is setting up a charitable foundation to disburse his fortune after his death. The question for the fundraisers at NTNU is whether Thon will relent and allow this foundation to donate to the school after his death, or will his judgement be final?

The lesson for anti-Israel activists? Next time, go play with your own money and future, not somebody else’s!

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Barkan remains on Gush Shalom boycott list

Jacob Kanter
JPost
03 December 09

(To tell the truth, I stopped purchasing Barkan when they made their move. I was disgusted with their having caved in, and now the question remains, will they run again?)

Though Barkan winery recently vacated its factory in the Barkan industrial zone in the West Bank, Israeli peace organization Gush Shalom has decided to keep Israel's second largest winery on its list of companies whose products are made in the settlements, along with a call to boycott the winery.

Sa'ar Faraj, Barkan's legal adviser, wrote to Gush Shalom this week asking for the winery to be removed from the list, where it has appeared since the list's creation in 1995.

"I'd like to make it clear that Barkan does not produce materials in settlements whatsoever, nor does it purchase raw materials made in settlements," Faraj wrote. "Please make sure to remove Barkan from the list immediately."

In 2004, Barkan began moving their operations from Barkan to Hulda, a kibbutz within the pre-1967 borders.

Israeli-based beverage company Tempo, which owns Barkan winery, is partly owned by Dutch-based Heineken International. According to Gush Shalom, the Dutch government's opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank led Heineken to pressure Tempo to have Barkan move out of the West Bank.

The move has since been completed, but the company still operates three wineries within the Golan Heights, which Gush Shalom considers illegally occupied territory.

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