Israel Daily News Stream 05/20/2012
May 20, 2012 12:27 by Pesach Benson
Everything you need to know about the weekend media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
Is there a relationship between the Holocaust and culturally boycotting Israel? Is London ready for a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Olympic visit? Which veteran columnist is under suspicion for plagiarizing Electronic Intifada — among others?
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Thumbs up to the Irish Times for publishing a remarkably frank op-ed about culturally boycotting Israel.
If there’s one thing western intellectuals can’t afford to be crude about, it’s the relationship of their own cultures to Jewish history. The Holocaust doesn’t excuse Israeli abuses of human rights, but it does form the context in which collective acts like boycotts have to be set. There is a nasty history of using boycotts to isolate Jewish communities in Europe: Limerick in 1904 is a relatively minor example. In the extreme case of Nazi Germany, boycotting was a prelude to attempted elimination.
This history changes the dynamic of a boycott. In the case of South Africa, the idea was that boycotts might induce shame in white South Africans, causing them to question their support for the system. In the case of Israel, Jewish history means that this effect is impossible.
Boycotts will always be interpreted as an expression of anti-Semitism and as a prelude to worse attacks.
Critics of Israel will dismiss this as special pleading and point to the cynical way the Israeli government uses accusations of anti-Semitism to deflect legitimate questions about its policies and behaviour. But the problem is actually a double one. There are false accusations of anti-Semitism – the vast majority of those supporting a cultural boycott are not motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice. But there is also a minority strain of false concern for the Palestinians, whose sufferings are used as cover for anti-Semites.
Because anti-Semitism still exists, there is a duty to be especially careful about a boycott that suggests that Israelis as such are not fit people for cultural exchange.
• Elder of Ziyon debunks AFP’s latest Pallywood special.
• The PA’s snit with Mohammed Rashid’s getting juicier. Rashid — Yasser Arafat’s longtime moneyman — says the PA gave millions of dollars to Israeli-Arab parties during general elections. Meanwhile, Interpol denied the PA’s request to arrest Rashid. Why not? asks Maan News:
The attorney-general added that he had asked Interpol to intervene but it would not help because Palestine is not a recognized state.
• South Africa has decided that products made in Israeli settlements may not be labeled as “Made in Israel.” According to the Jerusalem Post:
In a statement published last week in the governmental gazette, Trade Minister Rob Davies declared that consumers in South Africa should not be misled into believing that products originating from the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” originate from Israel.
Denmark may push a similar labeling law. West Bank factory owners told YNet:
Ironically, those who would get harmed the most by the move are some 15,000 Palestinian workers who are employed in these factories and depend on ththe em to make a living.
• Ben Lynfield (Christian Science Monitor) interviews the lawyer pushing the legal case against Migron and Ulpana.
Jannette Ben david
1:46 pm
May 20, 2012
The name Denmark was a great name to remember and honor in the Jewish history of WW II
so honestly I can’t understand why they want to down grade their good name?
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jeb stuart
1:48 pm
May 20, 2012
The aspect of the Irish Times comments I find lacking is that once again it focused on “Israel”, and ignores the greater abuses that occur with such frequency, regularity and prejudice the media ignores it. Apartheid committed in the name of Allah takes place daily in the Islamic world against all non-Muslims and even moderate Muslims. Extreme Sharia Laws enforced with increasing fervor in Egypt has made nearly 200,000 Coptics refugees, it didn’t require a civil war like the one that took place in 1948 and freed Israel, but the refugees of Sharia excesses number higher than the Palestinian refugee population in 1949. Three reasons it passes uncommented in the western press 1. It is accomplished without a shot being fired, hardly the grist for yellow journalism which the press of the West has become. 2. The refugees fleeing Sharia find sanctuary in other countries, not like the Palestinians who became a pariah in Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait and other nations that never accepted them with open arms and have become a permament refugee class in the anals of the UN. 3. A cowering western press corps intimidated and prejudiced in its coverage of the Islamists, unable to consider that elements of Islam itself is one of the principle reasons the Ottoman Empire fell into decriptitude that continues into the modern period. Where the intellectual pundits of the western media can not find enough to report on the chauvinism and fallibilities of Christianity they can find nothing similar in Islam, seldom has such hypocrisy been witnessed in an era of war where it is a central contributor.. I can’t decide if the reason for that is cowardice, intellectual dishionesty and intellectual nihilism or if the western press corps is motivated by hate mongering. Personally, I don’t think the Irish Times clever analysis of Israeli apartheid delves nearly deeply enough it is another of those fixated articles that obssesses on Jewish reactions to boycotts without laying the basic foundation of why Israel has to take more extreme means for self-preservation against increasingly hostile Islamic expressions in government that are too often the harbingers of crimes against humanity, and the real crime is that the west either by intimidation, bribery, intellectual hate mongering or self-loathing ignores the big picture for the comfort zone of continuing to focus on what they have accepted is the real problem, the Jews.
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Barhebraues
4:07 pm
May 20, 2012
Well said, Jeb Stuart!!
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Michael
9:56 pm
May 20, 2012
The article is weak and its only praise is that such an article appeared at all. If a boycott is legitimate against Israel it would be 100 times more so against the Arab/Muslim countries who are not apartheid only because they have ethnically cleansed their countries of anyone to be apartheid with. Where are these boycotters against these Arab/Muslim countries? Maybe they respect the Arab/Muslim violence and terrorism, or fear it? They show their false self righteousness against a country they do not fear while hiding from those they do. That they do not fear Israel is an indication of Israels civility and non-apartheid status among nations. Israel if anything deserves praise for maintaining the level of democracy, freedom and civil rights enjoyed by all their citizens (20% of whom are Arabs/Muslims) while being attacked at all level by those who wish its total destruction and those who wrongly accuse her. This demonstrates a level of anti-semitism in those who wrongly only boycott or call for a boycott of Israel while ignoring those countries who legitimately deserve a boycott. When wrongly used against Israel it is only another weapon aimed to destroy Israel and should be called what it is, anti-semitic.
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Michael
10:07 pm
May 20, 2012
All the machinations as to why a boycott of Israel is historically, intellectually or dangerously wrong are all beside the point and leave out the most important and full reason. It is wrong because it is based upon wrong beliefs, assumptions, anti-semitism and propaganda. It is wrong simply because it is wrong and Israel has done nothing to deserve it.
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Pastor Ortiz
6:42 pm
May 22, 2012
Michael, I have answered to you before, and I humbly give you the same perspective as before…..
IT IS WRONG BECAUSE THE TORAH SAYS IT IS WRONG!!!! I still think that if ISRAEL will get back to reading GOD’S BOOK, and OBEY what is commanded things will be very different.
Genesis 12:3 Please read it!!!!
Pastor Ortiz, Sr.
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Michael
6:58 am
May 23, 2012
Pastor, respectfully, we live in a three dimensional world and both perspectives are correct. Thank you.
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Adjutantshalom
11:52 pm
May 26, 2012
So the Copt’s in Egypt with their increased persecution under the political changes are not “Reading and obeying ‘God’s Book’?
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Norma Hart
12:46 am
May 21, 2012
spot on, well said.
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Home » Backspin» Israel Daily News Stream 05/21/2012 | Meir Weiss' Blog
9:10 pm
May 21, 2012
[...] For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream. [...]
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Len Kurtz
10:17 pm
Jun 22, 2012
I believe the Irsh Times underestimates the number of Jew haters that use the boycott as a cover for their agenda. Because the calls for a boycott are mainly based on lies, I believe the majority do it to fulfil their agenda
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