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BDS banned! – Hear them whine

January 11, 2018

BDS banned! – Hear them whine | Anne’s Opinions, 10th January 2018

Back in August I wrote about anti-Israel boycotters being banned, and the irony of their complaints at having a taste of their own medicine.

Last week the Israeli government expanded on their original decision by publishing a list of about 20 anti-Israel organizations whose members will be denied entry to Israel:

“We have switched from defense to offense,” said Public Security and Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan.

“The boycott organizations need to know that the State of Israel will act to stop them and prevent their representatives from entering the country to harm its citizens.”

The list features BDS groups who, according to the ministry, carry out campaigns of “falsehood and incitement” in an effort to undermine Israel’s legitimacy worldwide.

The blacklisted groups “consistently and continuously act against the State of Israel by pressuring groups, institutions and states to boycott Israel,” the ministry said.

Among the groups on the list are six US based organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace, and 10 European organizations, including leading BDS groups in Italy, France, Norway and Sweden.

The ban is set to be enforced beginning in March and will be limited to people who hold senior positions or who are very active within the organizations.

“The formulation of this list is another step forward in our battle against the incitement and lies of the BDS organizations. No country would grant entrance to visitors who seek to harm it, especially ones whose goal is to terminate Israel as a Jewish state,” said Erdan.

The ministry added that it will be passing the names of the organizations over to the Interior Ministry and border patrol.

Interior Minister Arye Deri said, “As the minister in charge of the Israel Entry Law, I made it perfectly clear that I would use my authority to prevent individuals and representatives of groups, whose sole purpose is to harm Israel and its security, from entering its borders.”

“These people are trying to take advantage of the law and our hospitality in order to act against and defame Israel,” he added.

Erdan claims a certain degree of success in this new method for deterring BDS:

The ministry pointed out that this approach is successful in curtailing BDS efforts, highlighting the recent announcements by Denmark and Norway, who said they would toughen their stances against the funding of pro-Palestinian organizations.

The ministry also touted their efforts which they claim led 24 US states, as well as the federal government, to pass anti-BDS legislation.

The BDS-ers themselves dispute this of course:

The organizations on the list, however, seem undeterred by the latest tactic. Several organizations on the list issued statements on Sunday, claiming that Israel’s move only serves as proof that the BDS movement is spreading and having an impact.

Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, issued a statement and said the ban was “disconcerting but not surprising, given the further erosion of democratic norms and rising anxiety about the power of BDS as a tool to demand freedom.”

…

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign issued a statement via its Facebook page and said being on the list was a “badge of honor” and that it was “in good company.”

In fact Prof. Gerald Steinberg, director of NGO Monitor, warned that the ban, while a good idea in theory, might backfire by giving the haters free publicity:

Professor Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of the NGO Monitor watchdog group, told JNS that the government’s move signals that Israel “won’t turn a blind eye to those who work to delegitimize it — but the downside is that it also serves to raise the profiles of these groups.”

The list drew fire from “rights” groups – that is, rights for everyone except Jews. I can’t say I am surprised or even disappointed. They are acting precisely as I expected.

See these tweets for example:

The blogger Edgar Davidson has a nifty graphic illustrating the hypocrisy of the boycotted boycotters:

And here is the full list of the banned organizations – or at least the leaders of the following organizations:

United States:
• AFSC (American Friends Service Committee)
• AMP (American Muslims for Palestine)
• Code Pink
• JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace)
• NSJP (National Students for Justice in Palestine)
• USCPR (US Campaign for Palestinian Rights)

Europe:
• AFPS (The Association France Palestine Solidarité)
• BDS France
• BDS Italy
• ECCP (The European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine)
• FOA (Friends of al-Aqsa)
• IPSC (Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign)
• Norgeׂׂ Palestinakomitee (The Palestine Committee of Norway)
• PGS Palestinagrupperna i Sverige (Palestine Solidarity Association in Sweden)
• PSC (Palestine Solidarity Campaign)
• War on Want
• BDS Kampagne

Latin America
• BDS Chile

South Africa
• BDS South Africa

Other
• BNC (BDS National Committee)

In my humble opinion the ban does not go far enough. There are many more such hateful organizations, plus the ban should include everyone who has been active in these groups, not just the leaders. Why should anyone working to undermine the State of Israel, and especially those trying to harm it, whether physically or politically, be permitted to enter and carry out their despicable work on our own turf? Let them try to do it by remote.

If you would like a further reminder of what BDS is all about see this post of mine about the malicious aims of BDS.

Categories: BDS, Boycott of Israel, NGO's
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The Paris Piece Conference

January 16, 2017

The Paris Piece Conference | Anne’s Opinions, 16th January 2017



A little piece of this, a little piece of that – until there’s no more Israel. Hence my title.– anneinpt)

Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs illustration: International representatives negotiating now among themselves on a text for Sunday’s #ParisConference. They Should instead push Abbas and the Palestinians to negotiate peace directly with Israel.

While the Paris Peace Piece Conference’s aims were ostensibly to bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, it was quite clear from the start that its only intention was to make Israel give up a piece of this and a piece of that (hence my title) in order to weaken it if not destroy it altogether.

The predictions, the declarations – both for and against – and the outcome, were precisely as expected. Binyamin Netanyahu panned the pointless parley as rigged: while the Palestinians of course welcomed it:

“The conference that is convening today in Paris is a pointless conference,” he told ministers at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.

“It was coordinated by the French and the Palestinians and aims to force conditions on Israel that conflict with our national interests,” the prime minister said.

…

Netanyahu has previously claimed the talks were “rigged” against the Jewish state, insisting that direct bilateral talks between Jerusalem and Ramallah was the only way to negotiate a peace agreement.

At the Sunday cabinet meeting, Netanyahu reiterated his position that the Paris-sponsored initiative makes the prospect of peace more as it “hardens Palestinians conditions and keeps them from direct negotiations.”

“I have to say that this conference is among the last remnants of the world of yesterday,” Netanyahu said. “Tomorrow will look different, and that tomorrow is very close.”

…

Unlike Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has welcomed the bid to reaffirm global support for a two-state solution, and will meet French President Francois Hollande in the coming weeks to be briefed on the conference outcome, diplomats said last week.

Paris officials said that Netanyahu declined a similar invitation.

Likud MK and Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara described the conference in a perfectly snarky way:

Translation:

The Paris Conference is an old age home collecting politicians on their way to their retirement from a political career as they step off the stage.

Europe needs to understand that Israel is a strong country that will not tolerate diktats.

Foreign ministers before the meeting in Paris REUTERS/Kamil Zihnioglu

Foreign ministers before the meeting in Paris REUTERS/Kamil Zihnioglu

Despite Israeli fears that the conference would lend backing to UNSC Resolution 2334, Israeli officials cheered the weakened declaration that ultimately issued forth:

Israeli officials on Sunday credited the efforts of the National Security Council and the Foreign Ministry for a “significant weakening” of the text of the final joint declaration issued by the participants of a peace conference in Paris.

The one-day summit came to a close on Sunday evening with a statement, backed by the 70 countries, calling on Israel and the Palestinians to restate their commitment to a peace settlement and to refrain from unilateral actions.

The statement urged both sides to “officially restate their commitment to the two-state solution” and disassociate from voices that reject that goal. It also called for them not to take one-sided actions that could preclude fruitful talks.

The Israeli officials were jubilant that “problematic passages” in a contentious recent UN Security Council resolution on the settlements were not included in the Paris document. Resolution 2334, passed on December 23, harshly condemned the settlement enterprise, declaring that it has “no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.”

Furthermore, the Israeli officials expressed satisfaction over the fact that no further action against Israeli settlements is planned at the Security Council. US Secretary of State John Kerry had promised as much to Prime Minister Netanyahu in a phone call from Paris earlier Sunday.

The ostensible success, the officials concluded, was the “result of harsh reactions” voiced by Israel against Resolution 2334.

Wrapping up the conference, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters that the purpose of the meet was to convey a sense of urgency about the threat to the two-state solution.

The Elder of Ziyon quibbles with the Israeli jubilation, saying that while the declaration was better than the original draft, it is not much better:

The good part is that the paragraph about the June 1967 lines being sacrosanct is gone, along with the call to essentially boycott any Israeli person or entity beyond the Green Line. That is probably what Israel is happy about.

The bad part is that they took out the language saying that “solutions cannot be imposed” on the parties along with one of the two mentions insisting on direct negotiations. Also the follow-up conference added in the statement will again be more one-sided pressure on Israel.

So it is somewhat better than the draft but not a whole hell of a lot.

Interestingly, in another show of support for Israel, Britain questioned the purpose and the timing of the conference, and sent only a low-level representative to the conference:

Prime Minister Theresa May sent neither her foreign minister, Boris Johnson, nor her envoy to France to the parlay. Britain instead had observer status at the conference.

“We have particular reservations about an international conference intended to advance peace between the parties that does not involve them– indeed, which is taking place against the wishes of the Israelis– and which is taking place just days before the transition to a new American President when the US will be the ultimate guarantor of any agreement,” a Foreign Office statement read.

For some more commentary on the conference, The Elder of Ziyon links to a series of very interesting related articles.

The Jerusalem Post’s editorial “No tango in Paris” states:

Conferences in Paris will not bring peace. That will only come from negotiations. For peace to happen, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas needs to first come to Jerusalem and meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The problem is that Abbas is a known rejectionist. He rejected the peace deal offered to him by Ehud Olmert in 2008 and has since remained intransigent in his refusal to even meet Netanyahu.
While France might be sincere in its desire to see peace come to the Middle East, holding a conference is misguided. Unfortunately, the more the international community supports Abbas’s unilateral diplomatic delegitimization campaign, the more stubborn he will become in his refusal to sit down for real and sincere negotiations.
Our suggestion – cancel the meeting in Paris.

Unfortunately, that – they didn’t.

Since the conference participants were so concerned with international law, Brian of London at Israellycool recalled an earlier article that he had written in which he reveals that the conference actually ignores French law:

(Update: I discovered that I too had written, way back in April 2013, about the same French law!).

Quoting here from Israellycool:

Today in France 70 nations will come together in Paris and blindly ignore the legal ruling of a highly significant French court (Court of Appeal of Versailles) just a few years ago. They will most likely issue a statement which creates the impression that Israel’s activities in Judea and Samaria are illegal.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that there hasn’t been a proper legal case to decide the legality of Jews living in the lands captured back from Jordan in ’67, specifically Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem. I was wrong! There was exactly such a case and, even though I’ve written about it, it has received almost no attention and been buried.

…

As we first reported here on Israellycool last week, a French court has confirmed some aspects of the legal situation regarding Israel and the hills of Judea and Samaria, especially around Jerusalem.

Now the larger news outlets have had time to think about this and get the opinion of greater legal minds than this humble blogger.

And the answer seems to be, it is a victory, but only if you didn’t know anything about international law and the specifics of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions.

Well I’d say that’s just about everyone on earth and doubly so for everyone who is deluded by BDS campaign lies!

Exactly as I noted then, the legacy media completely ignored this ruling or downplayed it because it didn’t fit their lethal narrative: Jews are illegal settlers in what was once their own land. Nobody in the hostile legacy media has referred to it since (try to google for it).

…

Jean-Patrick Grumberg (the original reporter I linked to back in 2013 on the story) has now re-published a more detailed account of the technicalities of the case which related to the building, in Jerusalem, of the light rail system which connects both predominantly Arab and Jewish neighbourhoods to the centre of Jerusalem.

…

This is how Jean-Patrick concludes his post (which also includes the entire court decision in French).

The Court of Appeal therefore sentenced the PLO (and Association France Palestine Solidarité AFPS who was co-appellant) to pay 30,000 euros ($32,000) to Alstom, 30,000 euros to Alstom Transport and 30,000 euros to Veolia Transport.

Neither the PLO nor the Palestinian Authority nor the AFPS appealed to the Supreme Court, therefore the judgment has become final.

This is the first time that a Court has legally destroyed all Palestinian legal claim that Israel’s occupation is illegal.

But don’t bother trying to confuse the “experts” with facts. Their minds are closed to any arguments that contradict their received wisdom.

In a similar fashion NGO Monitor exposes how the French are funding NGOs that sponsor BDS campaigns and which have ties to terror groups

An international peace summit, spearheaded by the French government, will be held on January 15, 2017, in Paris. In this report, NGO Monitor documents French government support of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that support discriminatory BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns against Israel and with alleged ties to terror groups. This type of financial support casts doubts on the ability of France to serve as an impartial host of a summit dedicated to peace.

The best part of the whole shindig? The support that Israel received outside of the conference. Col. Richard Kemp was at a rally of support, and you can watch him being interviewed on Israeli i24TV:

The demonstration of support for Israel itself, held outside the conference venue drew hundreds of people:

PARIS – Hundreds of people rallied in support of Israel outside of the Jewish state’s embassy in Paris on Sunday as foreign ministers from dozens of nations gathered for a Middle East peace parley in the French capital.

Pro-Israel rally outside the Paris Peace Conference

Pro-Israel rally outside the Paris Peace Conference

Among those present at the demonstration were Israeli and Jewish leaders, including Israel’s ambassador to France and the president of the French-Jewish umbrella organization CRIF.

…

CRIF President Francis Kalifat told The Jerusalem Post that upon learning of the scheduling of the Paris summit, “we scheduled our own rally, in support of Israel and in support of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.”

“More than that, we are here today to express our objection to the Paris Middle East Conference, which we consider an anti-Israeli tribunal, similar to the negative decisions adopted by UNESCO and the UNSC [United Nations Security Council],” he said.

…

Rally attendee Jean B., 25, said that “we are here today to tell our own president that Israel has already reached out to the Palestinians in peace. The Palestinians are trying to internationalize the conflict, instead of accepting Israel’s hand and begin unconditional talks.”

Another participant at the demonstration, identified as Elisabeth, a student at the Sorbonne, told the Post that “we are hoping that our leaders will hear an outcry and listen to it. I know that France wants to advance peace, but they are going about it the wrong way.”

Kol hakavod to all the attendees and supporters of Israel.

But seriously, as the British noted, what was the point of the whole exercise? I’ll give the last word to Prof. Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor:

Categories: Israel and Europe, Israeli settlements, Palestinians, Paris Peace Conference
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The Hostility and Hypocrisy of Left-Wing Israeli NGOs

October 31, 2016

The Hostility and Hypocrisy of Left-Wing Israeli NGOs, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Noah Beck, October 31, 2016

1884

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem recently appeared before a special session of the United Nations Security Council, excoriating Israel and pleading with the body to act against Israel’s settlements.

In 1975, the UN famously declared that “Zionism is racism” and, four decades later, the organization continues to hound Israel. In each of the last four years, as the Syrian bloodbath claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, there were at least five times as many resolutions condemning Israel as those rebuking the rest of the world.

The UN’s cultural body, UNESCO, recently passed a motion ignoring any Jewish (or Christian) historical ties to East Jerusalem holy sites, referring to the Temple Mount and Western Wall only by their Muslim names and condemning Israel as “the occupying power.” It turns out that some of Israel’s left-wing NGOs worked to help produce the UNESCO motion.

Given the UN’s chronic hostility, efforts by Israeli NGOs to persuade the UN to act against Israel are arguably treasonous. Indeed, one attorney and activist for Israel’s left-leaning Labor party filed a police complaint alleging treason against B’Tselem, arguing that the NGO has harmed state sovereignty, tried to give land away to a foreign entity, and taken steps that could cause a war.

Israeli democracy is extremely tolerant, to the point of allowing its members of parliament to openly support terrorism and terrorist groups. Last March, several Israeli Arab Knesset members condemned Arab states for labeling Hizballah a terrorist organization, even though it has been at war with Israel for decades and regularly threatens new hostilities.

Last February, members from the Joint (Arab) List paid a solidarity visit to relatives of Palestinian terrorists security forces killed to stop them from murdering Israelis. In 2014, MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad) drew praise from Hamas by asserting that the kidnappers of three missing Israeli youths were “not terrorists.” Hamas’s connection to the young men’s abduction and murder helped to spark the third war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Thus, Israel already has plenty of dissenting voices and activists without foreign intervention. Nevertheless, foreign interests have identified Israeli NGOs as the soft underbelly of Israeli democracy and have leveraged them to promote their own agendas. The problem became so acute that a watchdog, NGO Monitor, was formed in 2002 to track the self-hostility being funded largely by European and other foreign sources. As the organization notes: “NGOs lack a system of checks and balances, and…provide accountability to their funders and activist members, and not to the citizens or societies whose lives are directly impacted by their activities.”

NGO Monitor also notes that, even though most of the foreign government funding for these Israeli NGOs is “formally designated for ‘educating the Israeli public’ and ‘changing public opinion’ (both in violation of the norms on non-interference in other democracies), these Israeli NGOs are very active externally, in the delegitmization and political warfare against Israel.”

These left-wing Israeli NGO’s receive money from about two dozen foreign governments, and some private organizations. That includes millions of dollars from billionaire George Soros.

In Catch the Jew, author Tuvia Tenenbom exposed how foreign-funded “human rights” and “cultural” organizations in Israel tend to serve as vehicles for attacking Israel. By presenting himself to interview subjects as “Tobi the German,” Tenenbom elicits some surprising confessions. For example, the New Fund for Cinema and TV, a foreign-funded Israeli cultural NGO, told him that that about 80 percent of political documentaries made in Israel are co-produced by Europeans. That includes a documentary called “10%—What Makes a Hero,” which equates Israel’s military with the Nazis. Such films would be too scandalous to be produced in Germany, but German-sponsored NGOs can safely pay left-wing Israelis to make such movies.

Some foreign funders of Israeli NGOs have even unwittingly enriched Hamas. Last August, Hamas allegedly siphoned off “tens of millions of dollars” from World Vision, a U.S.-based charity, and used the funds for weapons purchases, tunnel construction, and other military activities.

The Knesset passed a law in July requiring disclosure of foreign funding sources for NGOs that get more than half of their money from overseas. The law is “clearly aligned with the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),” wrote legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich.

“Israel is unique in the sheer scale of the foreign government sponsorship of domestic political groups,” he wrote. “For example, the European Union alone has in recent years given roughly 1.2 million Euro a year for political NGOs in the US and roughly an order of magnitude more in Israel—a vastly larger per capita amount.”

The Obama administration opposes foreign influence only when that influence promotes a dissenting view. President Obama opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress against the Iranian nuclear deal, but was happy to give a speech to the UK parliament against Brexit. The Obama administration critiqued Israel’s NGO-funding-disclosure law, even though it sent U.S. taxpayer money to an Israeli NGO working to oust Israel’s prime minister.

The same hypocrisy seems to prevail among Israel’s foreign-funded NGOs. They ostensibly exist to promote democracy and peaceful co-existence, but are conspicuously silent when Palestinian institutions violate those ideals. Such silence enables abuse by Palestinians and promotes a distorted and incomplete picture of the complex reality in which Israelis operate. Foreign-funded Israeli NGOs remained silent  after the Palestinian Authority arrested Palestinians who visited a Sukkah in a symbolic peace event promoting coexistence.

“These organizations are silent when the Palestinian leadership pays salaries to the families of terrorists, glorifies murderers and calls streets and city centers after them,” Netanyahu said. “These organizations prove again and again that they are not actually interested in human rights, but only in shaming Israel and libeling it around the world.”

If Israel’s left-wing NGOs truly are committed to democracy and peace, why haven’t they condemned the PA’s efforts to prevent “normalization” with Israel? In 2014, Jibril Rajoub, the deputy secretary of the Fatah Central Committee and the head of the Palestinian Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs, condemned a coexistence-promoting soccer match between Israeli and Palestinian youths on a southern kibbutz, as “a crime against humanity.”

Last week, a Palestinian newspaper came under intense criticism for publishing an interview with Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. The Jerusalem-based newspaper Al-Quds was denounced by Hamas, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the supposedly “moderate” PA. The “chilling effects” and anti-peace message implicit in the harsh reactions to the interview have yet to catch the attention of any left-wing NGOs supposedly working for peace and democracy.

Categories: B'Tselem, Israeli left, Israeli settlements, NGO's, UNESCO
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US State Department’s perfidy undermining Israeli sovereignty

July 13, 2016

US State Department’s perfidy undermining Israeli sovereignty | Anne’s Opinions, 13th July 2016

 

I often write about “perfidious Albion”, referring to the hypocrisy and two-faced bias of Britain against Israel. But in the last few years under the Obama Administration, it is America, or more precisely the State Department, that has earned the dubious distinction of being the most perfidious of our friends.

The latest scandal concerns the V15 NGO which worked to undermine Israel’s election process in order to bring about the defeat of Binyamin Netanyahu. Already back then, during the election season, it was revealed that it was the State Department that stood behind V15, hiding behind other proxy organizations. In other words the United States Administration was interfering in Israel’s domestic politics – something which is an absolute no-no for democratic countries, and something for which Netanyahu himself was (wrongly) accused of by the State Department itself (!) when he led the campaign against the Iran nuclear deal.

A State Department-funded V15 anti-Netanyahu campaign poster

After this shocking revelation of State Department involvement, the US Senate, an altogether more balanced and pro-Israel institution, undertook an investigation into the accusations. The Weekly Standard reports that The Senate has now issued a report confirming this State Department interference (via Chaim):

A new report posted today by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), led by chair Rob Portman (R-OH) confirms that the U.S. State Department funded an Israeli political organization that later ran a campaign dedicated to ousting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The group, OneVoice, has drawn media scrutiny that led to this investigation.

Some key findings from the report:

On December 2, 2014, at the urging of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Knesset voted to schedule new national parliamentary elections for March 2015. Within weeks, an international organization known as the OneVoice Movement absorbed and funded an Israeli group named Victory15 or “V15” and launched a multimillion-dollar grassroots campaign in Israel. The campaign’s goal was to elect “anybody but Bibi [Netanyahu]” by mobilizing center-left voters.1 The Israeli and Palestinian arms of OneVoice, OneVoice Israel (OVI), and OneVoice Palestine (OVP), received more than $300,000 in grants from the U.S. State Department to support peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine over a 14- month grant period ending in November 2014.

The grants funded expanded “social media presence, built a larger voter database, and hired an American political consulting firm to train its activists and executives in grassroots organizing methods in support of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

Only, once the infrastructure was built, it was used in an attempt to topple the government of one of America’s closest allies.

[…] This pivot to electoral politics was consistent with a strategic plan developed by OneVoice leadership and emailed to State Department officials during the grant period. The State Department diplomat who received the plan told the Subcommittee that he never reviewed it.

OneVoice’s use of government-funded resources for political purposes was not prohibited by the grant agreement because the State Department placed no limitations on the post-grant use of those resources. Despite OneVoice’s previous political activism in the 2013 Israeli election, the Department failed to take any steps to guard against the risk that OneVoice could engage in political activities using State-funded grassroots campaign infrastructure after the grant period.

You can read the whole report here.

Just one small item from the 28-page report (on p.13) demonstrates the nefarious strategy of this organization:

OneVoice refined this strategic plan over the course of several months. By August 2014, OneVoice leadership circulated a revised, “finalized AND APPROVED” strategy memo framed around a top strategic objective:

SHIFT SUPPORT WITHIN THE KNESSET AWAY FROM
LIKUD/RIGHT WING COALITION BY ADVOCATING TO
‘SWING’ CENTRIST VOTER’S [sic] POLICIES AND SUPPORT POLITICAL CANDIDATES WHO EMBRACE AN EXPEDITED NEGOTIATION TOWARD A [TWO-STATE SOLUTION] AND THE END OF SETTLEMENT EXPANSION.

Adding insult to injury, the Jewish Press reports that the State Department has been destroying evidence connected to this blatant disregard for democratic norms:

Meanwhile, according to the Washington Free Beacon, a State Department senior official admitted to the committee that he deleted several emails with information about the campaign, or as the report put it, “The State Department was unable to produce all documents responsive to the Subcommittee’s requests due to its failure to retain complete email records of Michael Ratney, who served as US Consul General in Jerusalem during the award and oversight of the OneVoice grants.”

How convenient. Again, the Senate report (p.17) contradicts the State Department’s denials:

The record is clear, however, that OneVoice did inform at least two State Department officials of its political plans, and it did so during the grant period. The Department took no action in response, although it is unclear whether the officials in receipt of the plans reviewed them.

With the exposure of this outrageous interference in a democratic ally’s domestic politics, you would think the US Administration would keep a more low profile for the moment. You would be wrong. The Elder of Ziyon discovered that the State Department is actively working to promote a boycott of Ariel University:

I visited Ariel University last week. It is a very impressive place and, considering that it is considered by most of the world to be an “obstacle to peace”by virtue of its location on the wrong side of an arbitrary line drawn by some Westerners in 1949, it is surprisingly apolitical, with students from all over the world including Israeli Arabs. (I am told that the PA will not let Palestinian Arabs attend.)

Ariel University campus

While there, a senior official told me about something that happened not too long ago.

Ariel University was in negotiations to partner with two US universities on various initiatives as universities partner with each other all the time. (I was told which ones they were but am not permitted to name them.) One was intended to be a general partnership, the other was a specific partnership with the architecture school at Ariel which is well-regarded.

Both those negotiations were abruptly cancelled.

When officials at Ariel asked the schools what happened, they were told (off the record) that the US State Department had put pressure on the American schools to stop any partnerships with Ariel University since it is in the territories.

…

The State Department is working against Israel and is taking sides against Israel before any final status negotiations. The schools involved are too scared and vulnerable to push back.

This is a new low for the State Department in working clandestinely against its greatest Middle East Ally.

Furthermore, yesterday the US voiced concern for free speech over Israel’s new NGO bill which requires transparency from foreign-funded NGOs:

The law — approved by Knesset late Monday night — mandates that non-government organizations that receive more than half their funds from foreign governments or state agencies disclose that fact in any public reports, advocacy literature and interactions with government officials, or face a NIS 29,000 fine ($7,500).

State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters at a briefing that some of Washington’s concerns regarding the bill were alleviated by amendments made before it was finally passed by Israeli legislators.

Nonetheless, he expressed the White House’s concerns “not just about free expression but association and dissent.”

The law was passed a day before a bipartisan Senate report found that the V15 campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015 was indirectly funded by US State Department dollars.

Likud minister Zeev Elkin said Tuesday that the Senate’s findings were proof “of how correct the laws of transparency in foreign state funding of NGOs is.”

Critics, meanwhile, maintain the law unfairly targets left-wing and human rights organizations, many of which receive funding from European countries.

Responding to those critics, Sheri Oz at Israellycool asks some very pointed questions:

  1. What makes an NGO that receives funds from a government, foreign or otherwise, an NGO? After all, in case people have forgotten – NGO means NON-GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION. It seems that in order to qualify as such, the organization would have to have no government contribution to its functioning.
  2. How many left-wing organizations are NOT affected by the Transparency Law? If the answer is 0, or even 5, then the question of interest becomes: what is it about left-wing issues that makes left-wing NGOs disproportionately subject to foreign government investment? After all, money talks, money is power, follow the money. There have to be vital interests at stake for foreign governments to be willing to put their money down in any particular way.

These are very important questions, and the foreign-funded NGOs – as Sheri points out, foreign-government funded – should answer these points forthwith. But please don’t hold your breath.

And as a last aside on this issue of foreign interference, the ToI notes that the European Union too asserts that the NGO bill undermines Israel’s democratic values. This is indeed rich coming from that most undemocratic of institutions, i.e. the EU itself, which decrees how many refugees every country must take, and issues floods of regulations on the most minor of matters! No wonder that Britain voted to leave!

As David Hazony remarked:

The Israeli government must be much more forceful in rejecting this insidious foreign interference and undermining of our sovereignty and democracy. And they should throw the accusations of “violation of free speech” or “undermining democratic values” back in the faces of these foreign governments who have forgotten that Israel is not a vassal state nor managed by a UN Mandate.

 

Categories: America
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Obama’s UN Whoppers Exposed

October 10, 2015

Obama’s UN Whoppers Exposed Another analysis of the mind-numbing banalities and outright falsities that emanated from Barack Obama’s mouth at the United Nations

Source: Obama’s UN Whoppers Exposed

This article originally appeared at Kopp Online. Translated from the German by Boris Jaruselski

Stupidity…arrogance… or both?

Those who made the effort during US President Obama’s speech to listen without falling asleep as Secretary of State John Kerry would clearly have preferred to do would have noticed a clear contrast with the later speech of the Russian President.

Barack Obama’s emotions were discernible before he ended his first sentence. He displayed an extraordinary mix of contempt and arrogance: “We possess the largest, baddest Armed Forces; to the rest of you, we determine where they will go.”

It is scarcely possible to find an honest sentence whilst reading through the official transcription of Obama’s speech in this example of not grey, but black propaganda art. I quote some of the most egregious points where right at the beginning after the usual pious evaluation of 70 years of US history Obama says:

“The United States has worked with many nations in this Assembly to prevent a third world war — by forging alliances with old adversaries; by supporting the steady emergence of strong democracies accountable to their people instead of any foreign power.”

I am hard pressed to find a single strong democracy accountable to its citizens which has been supported by US interventions in recent years. On the contrary, since the US invasion and destruction of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 the US State Department under Hillary Clinton initiated the Arab Spring destabilizations, a false flag installation of “democracy” perpetuated through NGO’s and Social Media.

This destruction was brought to Africa’s most stable and peaceful state namely Ghaddafi’s Libya and thereafter in 2013 to Ukraine with a US supported Maidan-coup which propelled a band of Neofascist hooligans to power for the purpose of destabilising Russia.

Every covert and overt US intervention has brought the world substantially closer to the Third World War. The most recent step in this direction is the US intention to station their most modern nuclear weapons on German soil which will represent a significant imbalance to the current status quo between NATO and Russia.

Continuing with Obama’s speech, after presenting the audience with snazzy sounding words from the wonderful principles of the UN Charter including shining examples such as “collective endeavours” and “diplomatic cooperation of the major world powers”, follows this illogical conclusion:

“I lead the strongest military that the world has ever known, and I will never hesitate to protect my country or our allies, unilaterally and by force where necessary.”

A modern cover-version of 1970’s Jim Croce songs would go something like “You don’t mess around with Barack”. So much for the UN Charter. This is the iron fist in the velvet glove which has only too often represented the core of the US’s Foreign and Military policies.

Obama then proceeds to talk about tyrants and dictators. He attempts to dismiss accusations of US involvement with NGO’s to facilitate regime change.

“It is not a conspiracy of U.S.-backed NGOs that expose corruption and raise the expectations of people around the globe; it’s technology, social media, and the irreducible desire of people everywhere to make their own choices about how they are governed.”

The reality as most amongst the UN Audience are already aware of, through personal experience with US financed NGO’s such as the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, is that it is exactly these “US backed NGO’s” and “weaponised democracy and human rights” methods which topple legitimate governments when they refuse to bow down to Washington’s agenda.

As revelations by Snowden and others confirmed, US Social Media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and others are connected to or cooperate with the CIA and State Department in order to facilitate slick NGO regime change. A blatant lie follows as the US President explains:

“No matter how powerful our military, how strong our economy, we understand the United States cannot solve the world’s problems alone. In Iraq, the United States learned the hard lesson that even hundreds of thousands of brave, effective troops, billions of dollars from our Treasury, cannot by itself impose stability on a foreign land.”

With all due respect, Mr President, if you’ve gained this bitter experience after seeing “Billions of Dollars” not belonging to the US Treasury but to the American Taxpayer, Chinese and others who invested in your Treasury Bonds to finance the Iraq War debacle wasted, why are you then in Syria today?

What are you doing now when you’re training the Ukrainian Armed Forces? Why go everywhere around the world in order to stir up people? Why do you build military bases around the world where you can dig a hole to plant the US Flag? You’ve admitted yourself that this has been an unmitigated disaster. It seems that nowadays Washington is becoming further detached from reality.

Finally the President addresses the real cause of his current discomfort: Russia.

“Consider Russia’s annexation of Crimea and further aggression in eastern Ukraine. America has few economic interests in Ukraine. We recognize the deep and complex history between Russia and Ukraine. But we cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated. If that happens without consequence in Ukraine, it could happen to any nation gathered here today. That’s the basis of the sanctions that the United States and our partners impose on Russia.”

This statement skillfully ignores the reality of events in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014.

It is proven that a Washington sponsored Colour Revolution in November 2013 brought  demonstrations to the Maidan Square against the legal, elected government of the corrupt but legitimate President Viktor Yanukovych.

These Soros NGO sponsored demonstrations began literally seconds after a tweet from  US-backed and current Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk called for “Euromaidan” protests against the legitimate decision of the Yanukovych Government to accept the economically more attractive (than joining the EU) Russian proposal to join the new Eurasian Economic Union. Under this arrangement Ukraine would have received a 30 percent rebate for Russian gas and a Russian obligation to buy 15 billion dollars worth of Ukrainian government bonds.

It was left to the Neoconservative Assistant Secretary of State Department Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland (who says Washington forgot how to act diplomatically?) together with Vice President Joe Biden, Ambassador (to Ukraine) Geoffrey Pyatt and dozens of Ukraine based CIA agents in February 2014 to – as George Friedman, American head of Stratfor, put it – stage “the most public coup in history”.

In the coup aftermath Washington selected members of the Ukrainian Government including a US State Department veteran as Ukraine’s new Finance Minister. Joe Biden’s son was apppointed to head the board of a Ukrainian State Gas Enterprise.

The Syrian Swindle

At long last Obama addressed Syria, the issue which recently brought Russian diplomacy to world attention. Obama explained:

“Nowhere is our commitment to international order more tested than in Syria. When a dictator slaughters tens of thousands of his own people, that is not just a matter of one nation’s internal affairs — it breeds human suffering on an order of magnitude that affects us all.”

Until now it has not been proven that Assad “slaughtered tens of thousands of his own people”. Secondly, it attempts to justify the pernicious concept of “Responsibility To Protect” aka RTP which Washington used in 2011 to destroy Libya.

RTP represents a violation of the UN Charter by Washington. Washington’s “coalition” air-attacks on Syria, supposedly against ISIS, is another UN Charter violation (as drafted by the US in 1945) since this involves the bombing of a sovereign country without an official request from its government.

Moderate Syrian Opposition?

Washington insists on first expelling elected President Assad whilst simultaneously claiming to want to eradicate ISIL. (Also known as IS, ISIS and Daesh depending on which of its many names you choose to use.) Russia’s position is unambiguous: Bashar al Assad’s government, the Syrian National Army and Syria’s Secret Service are the only organised forces in Syria today capable of eliminating Salafist terrorists.

Obama makes mention in his speech of US support for ‘moderate’ opposition rebels. Already in April 2013, when ISIS was still called Al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq and led by a US-trained lieutenant of Osama Bin Laden, the New York Times citing numerous US officials documented that virtually all rebel fighters in Syria were hardline Islamic terrorists. There are currently no ‘moderate’ opposition fighters. The so-called ‘moderate’ Free Syrian Army signed a non-aggression pact with ISIS in 2014.

Two weeks before Obama’s UN Address General Lloyd Austin III, who heads of the US “War against ISIS” program, testified to an Armed Services Committee hearing in the US Senate that the program which is supposed to produce 5400 trained fighters per year only had “four or five” active fighters in Syria.

All the others defected to ISIS or the al-Nusra-Front of Al-Qaeda, the US backed “moderate opposition” to ISIL. At the same senate hearing Christine Wormuth, State Secretary for the Syrian War at the Pentagon, testified that Assad still has significant resources at his disposal and that the Syrian Government “still had the most powerful military force in the country.” According to current estimates the Syrian Government need not fear being overthrown.

In Moscow a joke is making the rounds in which Putin returns to the Kremlin after his New York excursion and talks with Obama on Syria and other issues. A close confidant asks how the talks went.

Putin reports: to soothe the nerves and relax the atmosphere prior to serious discussions such as the Syrian conflict and the situation in Ukraine he suggested they sit down for a game of chess. On the game with Obama he had the following to say: “It is like playing against a dove. First it knocks over all of the pieces, then it defecates on the board and struts about as if it had won.”

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