Which One is Which? Funded by the EU, driven by Palestinians. BDS activism in EU clothing. by David Collier

There has never been an international delegitimisation campaign as all encompassing, as widespread and as insidious as the global one that exists to demonise Israel. Scratch the surface and you are left bewildered at how anyone takes anything seriously.

David Collier..
Beyond the Great Divide..
20 February '20..

Those of us involved in fighting back against spreading antisemitism and the lies about Israel understand that the deeper we dig – the more unbelievable the situation becomes. As I said to someone yesterday when news broke of a UK KS3 schoolbook which suggests the creation of Israel may be behind the 9/11 attacks – nothing surprises me anymore. There are no limits to the level of conspiracy and disinformation – no place that the lies do not exist. The EU have also just provided another example – here is what I found.

The EU photographers

Recently the EU advertised an EU ‘Photo marathon’. An opportunity open to young European photographers to spend a week ‘capturing different aspects of Palestinian life’. The week-long trip, flights, accommodation and meals is fully funded by the EU. As part of the process, there is a request to write a ‘motivation letter’, explaining why the applicant wants to participate and they are asked how they intend to ‘spread the word’ upon their return.

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Fighting the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement (Part 2) - by Victor Rosenthal

BDS is all about delegitimizing and demonizing Israel. But where is the legitimacy in the claims of the Palestinian Arabs, who are at best descendants of colonialist invaders from Arabia, and at worst the children of 19th and 20th century migrants? And we don’t need to make up stories in order to demonize the Palestinian Arabs

Victor Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
23 July '19..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2019/07/fighting-bds-part-ii/





Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it. – Jonathan Swift

Summary of Part I:

The Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement is not intended as an economic weapon against Israel, and has not succeeded as such. It does not seek to attain its stated objectives of forcing Israel to withdraw from the territories, grant rights to Arab citizens, or accept the “return” of Arab refugees. Rather, it is a cognitive weapon to facilitate the demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state, which it does by providing opportunities for the promulgation of various “big lies” about Israel and its conflicts.

Such remedies as anti-boycott laws are unnecessary (there is little danger of economic damage from BDS). Worse, they play directly into the hands of Israel’s enemies. Every controversy about BDS, every resolution that is debated on a university campus or church board, in a union hall or the US Congress, provides a platform for the same false accusations of apartheid, racism, war crimes, and even genocide, as well as a reprise of the false historical and political Palestinian narrative.

The demonization and delegitimization of Israel present a real physical danger, because they affect the target populations, both the “street” in Western countries and their decision-makers. The effect is to increase tolerance of terrorism against Israel, to reduce support (such as the supply of arms) during wartime, to justify forcing dangerous “solutions” to the conflict, to prevent Israel from obtaining decisive victory in armed conflicts, and so on.

How should Israel and her supporters respond?

A cognitive attack demands a cognitive response. As we’ve seen, legal or legislative attempts to stop boycotts actually help BDS achieve its goal by providing loci for the promulgation of anti-Israel memes. Traditionally, Israeli “hasbara” in response to BDS has taken the form of denying its accusations. We insist that we are not an apartheid state, note that Arab citizens have full civil rights, and try to disprove particular accusations of mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs and war crimes.

But by repeating the accusations in order to deny them, we give them additional currency, and make formerly unthinkable concepts at least debatable. For example, anyone who knows anything about South African apartheid or Nazi genocide knows that there is absolutely no similarity between them and Israeli treatment of Palestinian Arabs. But if the lie is constantly repeated, it becomes a question to be taken seriously, with pros and cons. This is similar to the way Holocaust deniers claim that the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz is an “open historical question.”

There is also the constant flow of what can be called “nuisance libels.” The most well-known and consequential of these is the alleged killing of the boy Mohammed al-Durah by the IDF in 2000, but it is just one of hundreds or thousands of accusations of murder, mayhem, or mistreatment that are alleged against Israel on a continual basis. It is trivially easy to make an accusation with the flimsiest of proof, but refutation requires time and effort. As Swift said, falsehood flies and truth limps. And of course the controversy itself is the objective, as former US President Lyndon Johnson well understood.

Our sporadic, reactive, and generally less-than-serious approach to the cognitive war that we are in (whether we know it or not) has so far proven ineffective. But why shouldn’t our cognitive war fighting follow the same principles that inform Israel’s doctrine of traditional, “kinetic” warfare? In other words, why shouldn’t we take the offensive and bring the war to the enemy’s own territory? Let’s see what this might mean in terms of cognitive warfare.

A Very Clever Kind of Lie: Accusing Israel of Future Crimes - By Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

One tool of verbal demonization that is extremely difficult for Israel to combat is accusations of crimes it supposedly will commit in the future. These are far more difficult to contest than outright lies about current events. An example of this kind of manipulative lie is a remark in an interview by the outgoing French ambassador to the US, Gérard Araud, in which he said that Israel will officially be an apartheid state in the future.

Gérard Araud is a long-time anti-Israel
basher and vocal antisemite

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,168..
09 May '19..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/accusing-israel-crimes/

Outgoing French ambassador to the US Gérard Araud is a long-time anti-Israel basher and vocal antisemite. In a parting interview with the Atlantic, he said that Israel will have to either make Palestinians totally stateless or turn them into its citizens. “They won’t make them citizens of Israel,” he said. “So they will have to make it official…which is an apartheid. There will be officially an apartheid state. They are in fact already.”

Peculiar semantics aside, Araud’s slander is smart. It levels an accusation about what may happen in the future, which is extremely difficult to refute. If someone tells an individual, “You are a rapist,” proof can be demanded. But if one says instead, “You will be a rapist someday,” nothing has to be proven. The falsehood of the hateful accusation is not made fully clear until the accused person dies. By placing his emphasis on Israel’s future ignominy as an apartheid state, Araud feels comfortable throwing in the aside that Israel is already such a state.

Of all people, a French ambassador should be among the last to slander Israel in this way.

After France’s defeat by the Germans in 1940, the elected parliament of the French Third Republic ended its existence by naming Philippe Pétain head of state, and subsequent governments turned France into a country that was far worse than an apartheid state. Vichy France, still autonomous, banned Jews from many professions, including the civil service. Eventually it confiscated Jewish businesses entirely. It held tens of thousands of Jewish refugees in concentration camps. The Vichy regime handed over many tens of thousands of Jews to the Germans, who then deported them to their deaths.

There was massive wartime collaboration between the French and the Germans. Post-war French governments did not want to assume responsibility for Vichy’s acts. This was the case even though Pétain had come to power legally. Socialist president François Mitterrand, who served from 1981 to 1995, was once a Vichy employee. He changed sides and joined the resistance in 1942. He was clearly well aware of Vichy’s crimes, yet refused to accept France’s responsibility for them.

It was only in 1995 under Jacque Chirac, the center-right successor to Mitterrand as president of the Fifth French Republic, that the country’s official policy finally changed. In July of that year, Chirac admitted France’s role in the murder of Jews, whom it had not protected and instead delivered to their executioners. In a memorial ceremony, he said France had given the Nazis assistance in arresting Jews as a step on the way to their murder. He said: “We maintain toward them an unforgivable debt.”

Debunking the ‘Disproportionate Force’ Charge - by Simon Plosker

The next time Israel is accused of disproportionate force, consider whether the charge is clearly defined and based on international law or if it’s simply hyperbole designed to delegitimize Israeli self-defense.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
06 March '19..

It’s unequivocal that greater numbers of Palestinians than Israelis have been killed or injured during periods of intense conflict. This has repeatedly led to accusations that Israel has employed “disproportionate force” for security measures and during military operations over the years.

The term has has been abused by activists, journalists, non-governmental organizations and politicians who have employed it without bothering to research precisely what disproportionate actually means in terms of international law. One thing it does not mean an imbalance in casualty figures proves Israeli disproportionate force.

So what does it mean? Here are some explanations.

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Amnesty International's latest attempt to sever Jews from their history and their religious sites - by Karen Bekker

...Ironically, Amnesty claims to be standing up for the rights of indigenous people. Yet, like the others in the BDS movement, it attacks Jewish indigeneity, by trying to sever Jews from their history and their religious sites. It calls for the four travel companies not only to stop listing accommodations, but also to stop listing “activities and attractions” in the West Bank and even eastern Jerusalem. Amnesty even laments that the Western Wall is one of the top three most visited sites in the “OPT,” ...

Karen Bekker..
CAMERA..
13 February '19..

This past November, the internet travel company Airbnb buckled after two years of pressure from Human Rights Watch and other anti-Israel NGOs, and announced that it would remove listings of Jewish-owned properties in the West Bank from its site. Not wanting to be outdone, Amnesty International has now followed that up with a campaign not only targeting Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor, but also asking Airbnb to add Jewish-owned properties in eastern Jerusalem to its blacklist. The central part of the campaign is Amnesty’s 96-page report titled, “Destination: Occupation.”

The report denies Jewish history, ignores both terrorism and Arab states’ attacks on Israel, implicitly legitimizes Jordan’s 1948 ethnic cleansing of eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank, and, in its conclusion, explicitly calls for further ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. Amnesty not only proposes, as the campaign against Airbnb did, that Jews should not live in the West Bank, it goes even farther and attempts to limit Jews’ ability to even visit the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. While Amnesty has a history of singling out Israel for disproportionate condemnation and relying on demonizing rhetoric rather than facts, this report is particularly malevolent because it targets private businesses and attempts to coerce them into signing on to Amnesty’s bigotry.

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Courtesy of BBC Radio Ulster, audiences hear that ‘Israel should be wiped off the map’ - by Hadar Sela

...not for the first time ,we see that unfettered defamation, demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel – along with promotion of the antisemitic denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination – gets a free pass on BBC Northern Ireland radio stations.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
12 February '19..

On January 30th the BBC News website published an article that included the BBC’s response to calls from supporters of the anti-Israel BDS campaign to boycott the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv.

Notwithstanding the BBC’s statement on the issue, the following day – January 31st – BBC Northern Ireland’s BBC Radio Ulster decided to air a long phone-in item on its ‘Talkback’ programme hosted by William Crawley. Titled “Is the BBC right to take part in Eurovison being held in Tel Aviv, or should the corporation stay away?”, the item included contributions from journalist/activist Eamonn McCann and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards as well as seven callers.

On the hook of the Eurovision Song Contest, listeners heard thirty-eight minutes of mostly unchallenged falsehoods and delegitimisation – often outstanding for their ignorance even by the ‘standards’ of BBC Radio Ulster.

Having informed listeners in his introduction that “Jerusalem is a disputed capital” and after noting the BBC’s statement on the call to boycott May’s event in Tel Aviv, Crawley invited listeners to phone in.

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The real racists? People who claim "Palestine is a racial justice issue" - by Elder of Ziyon

The people who are calling "Palestine" a racial justice issue are not only liars - they are the only racists in this discussion.

Elder of Ziyon..
07 February '19..

I received an email from the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, about Angela Davis receiving a human rights award. In the email it says, "Palestine is a racial justice issue, and Dr. Davis’ insistence that the Palestinian people be included in that vision of justice qualifies her for the award all the more."

There is nothing remotely racial about the conflict between Israel and the Arab world, including Palestinians. After all, half of Israelis have some heritage from northern African and Middle Eastern communities and are indistinguishable from Arabs. (European Jews are genetically closer to Middle Eastern Jews than to other Europeans, as well.)

If skin pigmentation is your criterion, there are roughly 100,000 Israelis from Ethiopia who are darker than virtually any Palestinian Arab. Yet they are considered "white" by the bizarre logic of those who want to paint this as a racial justice issue.

Of course there is discrimination in Israel, just as there is in every other country on Earth. But the Palestinian Arabs aren't discriminated against based on race. It is a political, religious and cultural conflict but there is no racial component - half of Israelis are the same "color."

The people who want to call this a racial conflict are the racists. Against all visual and genetic evidence, they want the world to view Israelis as the evil "white" oppressors and the Palestinian Arabs as the victimized people of color. If racism is the idea that some people are better than others based on skin color, the anti-Israel racists are demanding that the world hate Israelis based on skin color that most don't even have!

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Demonization, Israel and the dirty little secret of the ‘diversity’ agenda - by Melanie Phillips

The default narrative on the left singles out Israel for demonization based on lies and distortions afforded to no other country, people or cause, and which has legitimized anti-Semitic tropes straight out of the Nazi or medieval Christian playbooks.

Melanie Phillips..
JNS.org..
24 January '19..

If there’s one concept in Western progressive circles that is deemed essential for a decent society, it’s “social inclusion.” The promotion of diversity is assumed to be morally unchallengeable.

That’s also the prevalent attitude among Jews in both America and Britain.

Many if not most support liberal immigration policies and equate anti-Semitism with “Islamophobia.” The belief is that those who are against immigration and diversity will be against the Jews too.

In fact, the opposite is the case.

The default narrative on the left is venomous hostility to Israel. This is the “new anti-Semitism,” singling out Israel for demonization based on lies and distortions afforded to no other country, people or cause, and which has legitimized anti-Semitic tropes straight out of the Nazi or medieval Christian playbooks.

In Britain, this has all but consumed the Labour Party under its far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn. In the United States, it is making steady and unchecked headway in the Democratic Party.

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Delegitimizing BDS is far from mission impossible - by Evelyn Gordon

Sometimes, fire must be fought with fire; only by making BDS a pariah can we keep it from turning Israel into one. Fortunately, this is an eminently achievable goal.

Evelyn Gordon..
JNS.org..
21 June '18..

The BDS movement hasn’t had much luck targeting Israel’s economy or even its cultural life: Despite some high-profile cancelations, there were 140 performances by international artists last year, up from 22 in 2010.

Yet these failures are secondary to the movement’s main goal, which is to delegitimize Israel and turn it into a pariah state by insisting that Israel—alone of all the world’s countries—is uniquely deserving of boycotts, divestment and sanctions. And in that, BDS has been more successful, particularly on American college campuses.

The only way to fight this is to turn the tables—to make BDS itself a pariah with which no decent person would associate. That’s precisely why the numerous state laws against anti-Israel boycotts are so important.

Nevertheless, many Americans who oppose BDS object to trying to ostracize the movement, arguing that doing so essentially emulates and thereby legitimizes its tactics. As a free-speech advocate, I’m sympathetic to this argument. The problem with it, however, is that it effectively legitimizes the movement’s underlying message instead.

After all, even in America, some views are so unacceptable that no respectable organization would give them a platform. By not putting BDS in this category, we’re effectively saying its message—that Israel is fundamentally morally illegitimate—isn’t beyond the pale; it’s a legitimate position over which reasonable people can disagree. And that makes it easy for BDS to grow because it enables even groups that don’t care about this issue to feel comfortable embracing the movement for tactical reasons (i.e., to gain its support for their own pet causes).

Moreover, as several recent examples show, delegitimizing BDS is far from mission impossible.

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

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As expected, BBC’s ‘Dateline London’ airs defamation of Israel but relevant facts concealed - by Hadar Sela

...In those nine minutes viewers did however see two mentions of a “massacre”, two references to “slaughter”, one allegation of “indiscriminate execution” and two references to “murder” – as well as portrayal of Israel’s government as a “barbaric regime” – all of which went completely unchallenged by the BBC presenter and with no right of reply afforded to the country accused of such acts. 

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
22 May '18..

Readers may recall that in July 2017 the BBC responded to a complaint concerning an edition of ‘Dateline London’ in which contributor Nabila Ramdani voiced some vicious, off-topic, anti-Israel slurs by saying that:

“We have spoken to the production team and presenter to remind them of the need to ensure that any contentious remarks are challenged and questioned, at whatever point they are made during the programme.”

In January 2018, the BBC responded to yet another complaint concerning falsehoods and anti-Israel smears promoted by Nabila Ramdani on the same programme by claiming that such calumnies are part of a “legitimate debate”.

“Our aim is simply to provide enough information for viewers to make up their own minds. This may include hearing opinions or accounts which some people may personally disagree with, but which individuals may be fully entitled to present in the context of a legitimate debate.”

Nabila Ramdani of course was not expressing an “opinion” – she was intentionally making false statements (such as the allegation that Palestinians “are routinely murdered in their thousands” and the claim that the intent of US military aid to Israel is “to ruin their [Palestinians’] lives”) which inevitably influenced viewer opinion because they were not challenged by the programme’s presenter.

BBC Watch hence submitted an additional complaint on that issue and in early April we received a response that included the following:

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

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Anyone surprised to find anti- Israel messaging in BBC Sport report on bike race? - by Hadar Sela

...promotion of the Old City of Jerusalem as “occupied territory” predictably fails to inform visitors to the BBC Sport website of the all-important context of the internationally rejected belligerent Jordanian occupation of that district and additional parts of Jerusalem. And so, once again, the BBC’s funding public got a dose of politically partisan messaging with its ‘news’.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
06 May '18..

On May 3rd a report by BBC Sport correspondent Tom Fordyce concerning the Giro d’Italia cycling race was published on the BBC News website’s Middle East page as well as on the BBC Sport website.

Titled “Giro d’Italia: Chris Froome in spotlight at start in Jerusalem“, the report included amplification of statements made in a press release put out by an NGO with a long record of anti-Israel campaigning that is frequently uncritically quoted and promoted by the BBC.

“Others see little more than a concerted effort to present an image of Israel to the world at odds with the reality. Amnesty International has accused Israel of trying to “sportwash” its reputation, as protests continue in the Gaza Strip that have so far led to the death of 35 Palestinian protestors.”

Obviously the ‘Great Return March’ events which Hamas and other terror groups have been staging weekly since the end of March have nothing whatsoever to do with the cycling race that is ostensibly the topic of this report but Fordyce nevertheless chose to amplify Amnesty International’s opportunistic false linkage and delegitimisation.

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

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Linda Sarsour’s April Fool’s Day Tweet - by Stephen M. Flatow

Sarsour spoke of her Palestinian blood, so have a look at the town from which Sarsour’s parents came, and see if we can figure out what kind of blood they passed on to their daughter.

Stephen M. Flatow..
Israel National News..
11 April '18..
Link: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/21972

“I am honored and grateful to God that he chose to let this Palestinian blood run through my veins.”

That April 1 tweet by Arab-American activist Linda Sarsour caught my eye. At first, noting the date of her tweet, I thought that Sarsour might just be kidding around. But no, it was no April Fool’s Day joke. It was just another attempt by Sarsour to make fools out of the American public.

It’s the mass Arab violence at the Gaza border that set Sarsour off on this latest tirade. “Thinking of my Palestinian sisters and others and sending them gratitude for their sacrifices,” she declared in her tweet, vicariously enjoying the thrill of watching other Arabs throw firebombs at Jews, while she tweets from her comfortable home in Brooklyn. Sarsour wrote that she is “honored” to have all that “Palestinian blood” in her veins, because it is “a blood of a courageous, determined and resilient people.”

I’m not sure what exactly is so courageous about lighting a bottle full of gasoline and hurling it the Israelis on the other side of the Gaza border fence. Trying to burn Jews to death doesn’t take courage; it takes a level of viciousness and immorality that most decent people instinctively abhor.  It’s an act of war. No wonder polls have consistently shown, for decades, that very few Americans sympathize with the Palestinian Arab cause.

Sarsour’s weird proclamation about “Palestinian blood” is part of the never-ending, but never-successful, campaign to win Americans to the Palestinian cause. She thinks that if she and her comrades can prove that the Palestinians are a separate, distinct national group, they should be given their own sovereign state. Now, she apparently believes that they have distinct blood, too.

Dear UNICEF: Using information from sources that are affiliated with terrorism, is not child's play - by Nadav Shragai

...According to the Fatah website, Adamir is a branch of the PFLP. We should perhaps clarify that the U.N. does not classify the PFLP as a terrorist organization, the same way it does not class Hamas as one. It might be easier for UNICEF to take in data from Adamir without suspecting that something is off.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
02 March '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/03/02/not-childs-play/

In 2005, Salah Hamori plotted to kill former Chief Sephardi Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. He spent seven years in an Israeli prison and was freed as part of the deal to bring home captive IDF soldier Gilad Schalit. For the past few years, Hamori has had a new career. He became an investigator for the Adamir organization, which spearheads a campaign of support for Palestinians who were convicted of security crimes, casting them as political prisoners.

Some Adamir activists are also associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group. A few have even served prison time for activity for or contact with that organization. Adamir describes the terrorist stabbing in Halamish last summer in which Yosef, Elad and Chaya Salomon were stabbed to death in their home as the "Halamish operation" which culminated in the deaths of three settlers.

Adamir wouldn't be worth our notice if it and other organizations like it weren't working to put the IDF on a U.N. blacklist of "grave violators of children's rights." Other names on the list include the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban. Adamir is no longer a curiosity to be dismissed.

Although Adamir isn't officially part of the UNICEF-led working group called Children Affected by Armed Conflict, which collects information on and reports "grave violations against children in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory," and which theoretically obligates contributors to be neutral and impartial regarding the conflict, it is a partner in UNICEF's information collecting project and therefore receives funding from them. It's hard to imagine anything farther from neutrality or impartiality than Adamir.

New Israel Fund in action. Defending and encouraging the de-legitimizers of Israel - by Douglas Altabef

...Perhaps with this latest unhinged and scorched earth attempt to dictate Israeli policy, the citizens and government will sensibly conclude that maybe it is the New Israel Fund that should be deported.

Douglas Altabef..
Israelnationalnews.com..
11 February '18..
Link: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/21683

The American-based New Israel Fund (NIF) has never hidden its mission to save Israel from itself, and its bedrock conviction that the chauvinist particularism of a Jewish State should be replaced with a more "democratic" state of its citizens.

Implicit in this posture is a belief that the enlightened folks at the NIF know better than we Israelis what is in our best interest, and even what is the moral high ground in any given situation irrespective of the real world considerations that would apply.

While we have seen time and time again the NIF supporting organizations that bolster BDS, accuse Israel of war crimes and slander Israel as an apartheid state, in its current hissy fit over the planned deportation of tens of thousands of illegal African migrants back to third party African nations, the NIF has thrown all decency to the wind.

The NIF has chosen to liken the illegal migrants to Holocaust survivors, with the clear and deliberate implication that Israel must be likened to the Nazis.

By doing so, and by standing by as its supported organizations use Holocaust-themed analogies such as demeaning the memory of Anne Frank, the NIF has clearly telegraphed that there are no red lines, there are no off-limits depictions, arguments or tactics.

Perhaps this complete lack of restraint and over the top contempt is a function of having lost the usual reliable support of the Supreme Court. In a landmark ruling in August 2017, the Israeli Supreme Court, sitting with a five court panel (instead of the usual three) upheld voluntary deportations and specifically stated that there was no proof that the illegal migrants faced danger in being sent to third party African countries such as Rwanda and Uganda.

Without popular support, government support, and now the support of the Supreme Court, the NIF has decided to engage in a smoke and mirrors pseudo-populist uprising, in which its supported organizations have gone to the barricades to accuse Israel of not only heartless, cruel and inhumane behavior, but of being complicit in murder.

The NIF can therefore add blood libels to its head-on collision through the red lines of decency. Implying that Israel is knowingly sending the illegal migrants to their deaths deserves a place of infamy right alongside the blood of Christian children being used to make matzah.

Why does Europe continue to support Breaking the Silence’s demonization and smearing of Israel’s society? - by Daniel Laufer

...Breaking the Silence's anti-Israel track record would be worrying enough were it an actual grassroots part of Israeli society. But BtS’s foreign enablers, through the massive budget they provide, are ultimately responsible for the group’s international delegitimization of Israel and her people. These European funders need to consider why they are supporting such activities. They need to ask why there is such pushback from the Israeli public. And they need to decide whether their interest is to engage with that Israeli public, or whether they will continue to support BtS’s demonization and smearing of Israel’s society.

Daniel Laufer..
JNS.org..
04 December '17..

Last week, the Israeli State Attorney’s office closed its investigation into Breaking the Silence’s (BtS) spokesperson. The determination that the BtS official did not tell the truth mirrors the Israeli public’s rejection of the group’s radical anti-Israel agenda. While the NGO justifies the publication of anonymous and unverifiable allegations of wrongdoing by Israel’s soldiers in the name of “ending the occupation,” most Israelis see this campaign as an immoral attack on their entire society.

In fact, what the Israeli public thinks is not very important to BtS, which instead focuses its efforts on influential foreign audiences. This focus is not surprising considering that more than two-thirds of BtS funding comes from abroad, much of it from European governments. Continued funding is a sore issue among Israelis and was in part responsible for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to meet with Germany’s foreign minister earlier this year. Whether the latest blow to the group’s credibility will convince these supporters to end their embrace remains to be seen.

The case stems from claims by the BtS spokesperson that he physically beat a restrained Palestinian during the course of his military service, and the demand that police investigate such alleged violations of military ethics. If he was tried and found guilty of having committed a crime, BtS could claim that its anonymous testimonies against the Israeli military are not simply political props.

But the spokesperson’s fellow soldiers, in whose presence he said the incident occurred, have publicly refuted the story. A five-month-long investigation came to similar conclusions, as the state attorney’s office announced, declaring that “from the evidence collected, the events described by him did not happen whatsoever.”

This is only the latest instance of BtS spreading disturbing claims.

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Daniel Laufer is the international spokesperson at NGO Monitor, an independent research institute that provides information and analysis, promotes accountability, and supports discussion on the reports and activities of NGOs claiming to advance human rights and humanitarian agendas.

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

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Israel Is A Shitty Country, at Least According to Two Faculty Members at Hebrew U. - by Sheri Oz

...Some might say that I need not critique the rest of the article, given that the premises upon which they base it are so faulty. In principle I agree, but since future academic writers may rely on later parts of the paper regardless, I want to respond to that as well. Let us see, then, how our shitty little country, that for some reason treats teenagers throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails, stabbing people or running them over with cars as if they are terrorists, fares after an examination of its laws and court proceedings.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
24 November '17..

And here is proof from our very own Hebrew University of Jerusalem! Two faculty members at Hebrew U. got together to write an article about how Israel commits child abuse toward the Palestinian Arab children living under what they call the “settler-colonial regime”. This article is nothing more than a vehicle for promoting anti-Israel propaganda while taking a salary from an Israeli institute of higher learning that until recently had my high esteem.

Entitled, “Child arrest, settler colonialism, and the Israeli juvenile system: A case study of Occupied East Jerusalem“, this article found a home within the covers of the British Journal of Criminology (BJC). With a high impact factor, it is curious to me that they accepted this paper for publication given the problems I note below. It makes me wonder if they purposefully selected biased reviewers, those who go over manuscripts and either recommend them for publication with or without changes, or reject them. The problem is that, once published, this article can serve as a resource for other antisemites to cite as they churn out fake academic papers in the service of the demonization of Israel.

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

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BBC World Service continues amplification of PA’s anti-Israel campaign at FIFA - by Hadar Sela

...Considering that BBC audiences have a permanent deficit of information concerning Palestinian glorification of terrorism through sport (and in general), that they rarely receive information on Palestinian Authority internal politics and that their understanding of delegitimisation campaigns against Israel is decidedly limited, it would have been appropriate for Bateman to supply listeners with actual facts rather than repeatedly and unhelpfully telling them what “Israel says”.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
10 May '17..

For years Jibril Rajoub has been exploiting his various sports-related positions in the Palestinian Authority to advance delegitimisation of Israel.

In May 2012, he volunteered to lead a campaign to have Israel expelled from all Olympic unions and committees, stating that he opposes any form of ‘normalisation’ with Israel, including in the field of sports. In June 2012 Rajoub demanded that UEFA cancel Israel’s hosting of the 2013 European Under-21 Championship.

Not infrequently, Rajoub’s assorted campaigns have been covered on BBC platforms: see for example here, here and here. Over the last two years, the BBC has repeatedly amplified Rajoub’s current campaign against the Israeli football association at FIFA (which is supported by the political NGO HRW) on multiple platforms:

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

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The inversion/perversion of reality by the greatest historical/cultural thieves of all - by Vic Rosenthal

It’s ironic that the same people that accuse us of cultural appropriation of falafel are the greatest historical/cultural thieves of all.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
01 May '17..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2017/05/historicalcultural-appropriation-and-reality-inversion/

Imitation may really be the sincerest form of flattery. We Zionists, therefore, should be flattered that our deadly enemies have claimed our history and our land for themselves.

The enemies of the Jewish state and the Jewish people have been trying to reverse history and re-disperse the Jewish people. They employ increasingly sophisticated means, including war, terrorism, and lately a combination of these with a carefully planned and executed diplomatic and cognitive assault aimed at Israel’s supporters and Israelis themselves.

The cognitive part of the attack on our state and people is intended to delegitimize our claim to be the indigenous people of the land of Israel, and to replace us with a fictitious people, the “Palestinians,” who actually are a group of heterogeneous Arabs who have little common history prior to the 20th century.

Nevertheless, the story is that Jews are actually Europeans (this doesn’t account for the half of Israelis whose ancestors did not live in Europe, but nobody cares), and that the Arab inhabitants of the land of Israel have been here for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Jewish history and provenance in the land of Israel are denied, and “Palestinians” are falsely cast as victims of oppression, expulsion and genocide thus appropriating the historical experience of the Jewish people.

Denial of Jewish provenance is pervasive. Yasser Arafat said that there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and his successor Mahmoud Abbas joined him, despite massive archaeological and historical evidence for the existence of both the first and second Temples. UNESCO, prompted by Arab members, passed a resolution in 2016 referring to the Temple Mount only as “Al Aqsa Mosque/Haram al Sharif,” thus attempting to erase Jewish connections to the site. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat claimed to be “the proud son of the Canaanites who were there 5,500 years before Joshua bin Nun burned down the town of Jericho,” but he is actually descended from Hashemites who lived in Arabia before coming to Israel “many decades ago, but not centuries nor millennia.” Erekat is actually an old-timer among Palestinian Arabs, because many (if not most) of them are descended from migrants who came to Israel in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Jewish history, the story of a people dispossessed from its land treated cruelly in exile, and triumphally reestablishing sovereignty in its historic homeland, seems to the Palestinian Arabs to be a powerful and appealing narrative, so they appropriate it and fit it to their purposes.

There’s Too Much Speech in Israel! - by Matthew Continetti

The Israeli left cannot accept that their country is far less isolated, far more stable, far more liberal, and far more democratic than it has been in decades. Israel is not only secure. It has also withstood efforts to isolate it internationally even as its economy grows and diversifies, its population increases, its culture matures, its society variegates. Israeli media have long been the left’s redoubt, but here, too, the walls are crumbling, they are losing their grip, and they can’t stand it. Margalit quotes a journalist who says, “Sometimes competition is the refuge of the antidemocrat.” How incredibly wrong that is. The last refuge of the antidemocrat isn’t competition. It’s the New York Times.

Matthew Continetti..
Commentary Magazine..
11 August '16..

Over summer vacation, the New York Times ran an essay by U.S.-based Israeli writer Ruth Margalit. Headlined “How Benjamin Netanyahu Is Crushing Israel’s Free Press,” the article accused Netanyahu of attempting “to control the country’s pages and airwaves” while engaging in “a broader attack” on “Israel’s democratic institutions.” Netanyahu, we are led to believe, exercises a Svengali-like hold over the Israeli media, intimidating reporters and editors and broadcasters and shaping the news to further his agenda and ambitions. So terrifying has the situation become, it would seem, that Israeli journalists must turn to the most influential newspaper in the world to have their voices heard.

Finished laughing? For anyone even remotely familiar with the Israeli media landscape, Margalit’s charges are absurd. But they are also deeply revealing—of a bankrupt Israeli left that is powerless, isolated, unpopular, unlamented, and vengeful. Defeated at the polls, the left in Israel mobilizes external pressure—the diaspora, J Street, President Obama, the U.N., nongovernmental organizations, foreign press—to compel the Israeli government to enact the very policies the Israeli public rejects. It is a strategy of delegitimization, of convincing world opinion, such as it is, that Israel is neither liberal nor democratic and therefore undeserving of moral sanction, foreign aid, and other forms of diplomatic support.

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

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Surprise? UN Agency Openly Manipulates Statistics To Demonize Israel - by Rachel Hirschfeld

...OCHA, like other branches of the UN, has altogether lost sight of its founding vision. One group of besieged anti-Assad Syrian aid workers wrote an open letter to OCHA head Stephen O’Brien, stating, “For many of us in Syria, the U.N. has turned from a symbol of hope into a symbol of complicity.” So too in Israel, OCHA and other UN bodies have become instruments that exploit the UN’s original mandate of “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all.” Instead, they appease dictatorships, contribute to regional hostilities, and advance the demonization campaign against Israel in the international arena.

Rachel Hirschfeld..
Algemeiner.com..
15 April '16..

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian Territories (“OCHA-oPt”) is deeply entrenched in fighting the Arab-Israeli conflict. Despite claiming to be a humanitarian agency, OCHA is one of the leaders of political warfare against Israel, attempting to rewrite history, advance distorted statistics, and delegitimize Israel in the international arena.

OCHA is one of the primary coordinators of anti-Israel NGO funding and activity. Through annual lists and ongoing support, it facilitates government subsidies to some of the most biased and politicized regional NGOs, including a number that are highly active in promoting anti-peace BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) and “lawfare” campaigns.

In 2016, OCHA requested $571 million from international donors for partner NGOs such as Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). IRW is banned from operating in Israel and the West Bank because of its alleged role in funneling money to Hamas. And the NRC has funded hundreds of lawsuits in Israeli courts, in an attempt to “try every possible legal measure to disrupt the Israeli judicial system,” according to one of the lawyers involved. Other NGOs that are promoted by OCHA advance false allegations of Israeli “war crimes,” “violations of international law,” “genocide,” and ethnic cleansing.”

In addition to coordinating funding for hostile NGOs, OCHA manipulates statistics to advance its agenda. One of its projects, the “Vulnerability Profile,” claims to provide “the most comprehensive information on physical protection” of the Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank. According to OCHA, in 2014, an estimated 297,900 Palestinians lived under full Israeli security and administrative control. This figure, however, is significantly higher than those cited by top Israeli diplomats and military officials. Shaul Arieli, a retired Israeli colonel, told The Times of Israel, “It’s deception. Practically speaking, this [data] is meaningless. What [OCHA] did is completely political…”

This is not the only example of OCHA promoting questionable statistics. During the 2014 Gaza War, three NGOs — including B’Tselem, Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and Al Mezan — were tasked by OCHA to report on Palestinian casualties. The aforementioned NGOs all lack the credibility to conduct this task, often basing their information on the Hamas Ministry of Health. Similarly, their ad hoc methodology appears aimed at inflating the number of civilians killed. When casualties were examined by the Terror Information Center in Israel, many individuals listed as “civilians” by these NGOs were found to be members of terrorist groups.

In fact, during the course of the hostilities B’Tselem acknowledged, “… in these circumstances, reports may be incomplete or contain errors. Given the urgency of informing the public about events in Gaza, B’Tselem has decided to publish the information now available.” Despite this significant disclaimer by the NGO, the data is distributed by OCHA to the media, world leaders, and decision makers as indisputable fact.