Bogus 'pro peace' organizations undermine Israel

Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking From Jerusalem
27 May '10

Of late, the western media has provided inordinate prominence to Jewish fringe organizations like J Street and its European clone, JCall, which define themselves as "liberal" and "pro-peace", but concentrate on castigating the Israeli government and undermining mainstream Diaspora pro-Israel Jewish organizations.

These bodies are primarily controlled by anti-Israeli activists, but also include many well-meaning but confused liberal fellow travelers. They also attract uninformed Jews and members of the anti-Zionist chic influenced by constant negative media depictions of Israel.

Their core message is that the Jewish establishment is alienating the bulk of the Jewish street, by blindly supporting the policies of an extremist right wing Israeli government and indulging in "McCarthyite" tactics to excommunicate anyone who dares to criticize Israeli policies.

These unrepresentative bodies receive widespread favorable exposure by a media which relishes quoting Jews beating up on Israel. Whenever Jewish writers or academics condemn Israel or castigate their own community, they are portrayed as heroic voices of conscience resisting a harsh and bigoted Jewish leadership. One only has to compare the enormous media coverage provided to the European J Call petition criticizing Israel with a counter petition by Italian MP Fiamma Nirenstein which contained many more signatories and was effectively ignored.

This was also exemplified in the US by the extraordinary media coverage extended to former New Republic editor Peter Beinart who wrote a lengthy essay titled "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" in the New York Review of Books, a periodical renowned for its longstanding hostility to successive Israeli governments. Beinart selectively chose extremist remarks from Israeli hawks, falsely alleged that Prime Minister Netanyahu repudiated the Oslo Accords, quoted the "renowned" Hebrew University professor Ze'ev Sternhell - a bitter post-Zionist - alleging that Israel has "fascist characteristics" and accusing the Israeli government and Jewish leadership of alienating the younger generation of liberal Jews.

There is an uncanny parallel between these "pro-peace" groups and the bogus peace councils sponsored by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which also claimed to be the true custodians of peace and succeeded in duping many "fellow travelers" into becoming accessories in promoting the global objectives of the Evil Empire.

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A Petition Against JCall -- Below

Fiamma Nirenstein
Hudson New York
07 May '10

The attack against Israel by the Jcall document is inspired by a short-sighted view of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The signatories of this appeal do not fully understand the global physical and moral threat to which Israel is currently exposed. It is indeed incredible that intelligent and cultivated people like Alain Finkelkraut and Bernard-Henri Levy - instead of dealing with Iran, which will soon keep the world under the threat of the range of its atomic bomb - play with the idea that Benjamin Netanyahu is the true hindrance to peace, and that the essential obstacle to a resolution of the conflict is the attitude of Israel. The intellectuals who have signed the French document ignore history and do not care about the help that the document will give and -- is already giving -- to the delegitimization intended to threaten the life of Israel.

Pushing Israel to concessions without rewards, simply means to surrender the enemy without any guarantee: the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza has produced disastrous consequences, the land from which the Gush Katif inhabitants were forcibly removed by their own Israeli soldiers several years ago has since become a launching pad for missiles and a safe haven for terrorists; Ehud Barak’s concessions in Camp David, designed to give Arafat virtually everything he was asking for, led to the Second Intifada, with its 2,000 people killed by suicide attacks; the evacuation of Southern Lebanon in 2000 only strengthened the Hezbollah, supplied them with 40,000 missiles and led to the 2006 war.

(Read full petition and sign)

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Brilliant analysis of J Call, the “radical” new Jewish group in Europe

Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
07 May '10

In Europe, there’s a new kid on the block. It’s called J Call
and it brings together Leftist European Jews to combat what its mission statement calls “Systematic support of Israeli government policy” which “is dangerous and does not serve the true interests of the state of Israel”. It’s primary focus is to oppose Israeli settlement policy which it sees as the core of the problem between Israel and the Palestinians.

J Call was launched with a fanfare at the European Parliament on Monday earlier this week. So what’s it all about? There is a brilliant, and superbly written analysis on the matter in Haaretz by Emanuele Ottolenghi, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. I highly recommend reading it and would be interested in your thoughts.

On another matter, readers will be aware that the British elections took place last night, leaving no party with an overall majority.

What is going to happen is too unclear at this stage to give a reasonable analysis, especially on foreign policy. But I will do so as soon as possible, hopefully over the weekend. One thing, though is sure. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats and the most anti-Israeli of the major party leaders, will not be prime minister as his supporters had hoped. The Liberal Democrats scored far worse than opinion polls had suggested.

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Naivete Can Be Deadly: J Street in Europe and the Two State Solution

Phyllis Chesler
Chesler Chronicles
04 May '10

Fiamma Nirenstein is a member of the Italian Parliament and a journalist. She is a tireless champion of democracy and freedom and therefore of Israel. Some French intellectuals, including Bernard-Henri Levy (of the famously bared chest, tousled mane, and starlet wives), and Alain Finkelkraut (who should know better), have launched a petition which they plan to present to the European Parliament. The petition, (which, so far, has 5000 signatures), is more naive than pernicious but may still lead to an unfortunate outcome; further confirmation of the view that both Israel and the Palestinians are to blame for the stalemate and that both must be forced to come to the table. It is, as Nirenstein says, a very “Obama-like” kind of document. The desire for a two state solution has, historically, been an Israel-only desire; the Palestinians have rejected every single opportunity for statehood and have consistently rejected a Jewish state.

If you don’t believe me, please read Daniel Pipes’ review of Ephraim Karsh’s excellent new book Palestine Betrayed. Karsh definitively and brilliantly lays out the case for the historical Palestinian rejection of both a state and of a second, separate Jewish sovereign state. Pipes writes: “Palestine Betrayed reframes today’s Arab–Israeli debate by putting it into its proper historical context. Proving that for 90 years the Palestinian political elite has opted to reject ‘the Jewish national revival and [insisted on] the need for its violent destruction,’ Karsh correctly concludes that the conflict will end only when the Palestinians give up on their ‘genocidal hopes.’”

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JCall: the European Echo to JStreet

The incisive and undaunted Nidra Poller provides a roadmap to J Street's French offspring, JCall:


Nidra Poller
J Street Jive
03 May '10

May 2, Paris

What follows is the kernel, the beginning, or the false start of an article that will be developed in the coming days. But I wanted it to exist right now in its imperfect state. The creation of a JStreet look alike in Europe might be a ho-hum ripple in a long saga, but it comes as a last straw at a time when the noose is tightening around our necks. This JCall, one more frivolous example of how much we love Israel but just give the Palestinians what they want, whatever they want, is going to be presented to the EU Parliament on May 3rd and meanwhile back at the UN, Ahmadinejad will present his plan for nuclear disarmament… of Israel. With the blessings of Barack Hussein Obama. The JCall Appeal, at a time like this, is so infuriating, that it immediately provoked a vigorous response here in France. A genuine intellectual debate is underway, and I take it upon myself to report it with the fullness it deserves. We are good at this kind of debate in France.

The debate goes to the heart of a conflict that has been brewing in our societies, communities, and families in the first decade of the 21st century. I cannot approach it with any pretense to distance and objectivity. It is the dilemma that occupies my thoughts from morning to night. How do I reconcile my respect for freedom of thought and expression with my conviction that this kind of thinking—call it leftist, progressive, peace nowish—is so harmful that I must combat it? In a fair fight! That’s what I’ll try to explain.

JCall: the European echo to JStreet / Part 1

Let me begin with a prediction before I even explain the tune that JCall is calling: it won’t get anywhere. It’s no JStreet because it has no Obama in the wings, no AIPAC to snipe at, no Soros or Saudi money, and because European Jews are too close to the bone to heed this call.

Friday, April 30, Strasbourg. David Pariente, age 41 and wearing a kippa, was brutally attacked in the center of town at 12:30 in the afternoon as he got off the tramway in a square aptly named “l’Homme de Fer” [Iron man]. A vivid account of the incident by Maylis a 16 year-old lycée student is reported in the local paper--Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace: The victim was attacked by “ …two men in djellaba. One hit him in the back with an iron bar and knocked him down. Then he gave him a terrible kick in the face. I saw his head flung back.” Maylis called for an ambulance, the assailants ran off. One was caught shortly afterward, the other was arrested at his home where police found the iron bar—actually part of a weight lifting apparatus--and the knife. One of the aggressors is allegedly deranged. He said he attacked a Jew because a Jewish doctor sent him to a mental hospital.

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JFools and JKnaves

Fresnozionism.org
28 April '10

I don’t know how many posts I’ve written about anti-Israel Jews — J Street, Israeli intellectuals, leftist anti-Zionists, etc. I even thought about creating a special category called “With Jews like these, who needs Arabs?”

The inimitable Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine, for example, recently gave an award to Richard Goldstone because… get ready for this — “the peace community both in Israel and around the world see Justice Goldstone as upholding the best ethical values of the Jewish community”. Ethical values?

It doesn’t work anymore to say “Oh, Michael Lerner (or Chomsky, or Finkelstein, or half the faculty of Tel Aviv University, etc.) is crazy. If the problem is mental illness, it’s an epidemic.

The latest is a new European organization called “JCall“. Like J Street, JCall claims to be “unfailingly” committed to the Jewish state, but nevertheless holds that “Systematic support of Israeli government policy is dangerous and does not serve the true interests of the state of Israel,” and calls for the EU and the US to “put pressure on both parties” to achieve a “solution” to the conflict.

I suppose it’s worth saying again why ‘putting pressure on both sides’ won’t end the conflict (a more complete argument is here):

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