Our World: Reclaiming Language from the Left May 31, 2010

 

By CAROLINE B. GLICK
05/25/2010 05:40

Courtesy of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Thursday Israel will again be the target of a jihadist-leftist propaganda assault. A flotilla of nine ships which set sail for Gaza from Cyprus earlier this week is scheduled to arrive at our doorstep.

The expressed aim of the flotilla’s organizers is to unlawfully provide aid and comfort to Hamas – an illegal terrorist organization. Since it seized power in Gaza three years ago, Hamas, which is openly committed to the genocide of world Jewry and the physical eradication of Israel, has transformed the Gaza Strip into a hub of the global jihad. It has been illegally holding hostage Gilad Schalit incognito for four years. And it is continuously engaged in a massive, Iranian-financed arms buildup ahead of its next assault.

Beyond providing aid to Hamas, the declared aim of the “Free Gaza” movement is to coerce Israel into providing Hamas with an outlet to the sea. This too is in contravention of international law which expressly prohibits states and non-state actors from providing any support to terrorist organizations.

IN SENDING out the latest group of ships, Turkey and its Irish, Greek and Swedish partners seek to appropriate the imagery of the Jewish pre-statehood struggle for independence from Britain. In a bid to appease Hamas’s jihadist precursors, in 1939 Britain’s Mandatory authorities broke international law and prohibited Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine. The League of Nations’ letter of mandate for Britain specifically enjoined the British to facilitate Jewish immigration to the land of Israel. Yet following the Arab terror war from 1936-1939, the British issued the White Paper that all but prohibited Jewish immigration. This move blocked the one place on Earth where European Jews were wanted from accepting them and so trapped 6 million Jews in Hitler’s Europe.

In the aftermath of the war, the British maintained their prohibition on Jewish immigration. To fight this British policy, the Zionist leadership in pre-state Israel organized the Aliya Bet program of illegal immigration. Jewish agents scoured the world for ships large enough to bring Europe’s Jewish refugees to the land of Israel.

The ship most emblematic of the era was the Exodus. The Exodus which set sail from France in July 1947 with 4,515 Jewish Holocaust survivors on board was the Zionist response to a new British policy to force illegal immigrant ships to return to Europe.

The British rammed the Exodus in Haifa. They boarded and killed three Jewish defenders. They then forced its passengers to board British prison ships that would return them to Europe. French authorities denied the ships the right to land in France, so the British sailed on to Hamburg, Germany, where the
refugees were forced to disembark.

The international outcry against Britain in the wake of the Exodus affair shamed London into cancelling its new policy. It also paved the way for Israel’s independence 10 months later.

Now the Turkish, Greek, Swedish and Irish governments are colluding with Hamas to purloin the imagery of the Exodus and the heroism of the Jewish people in the years leading up to statehood and project that imagery onto a terrorist organization that seeks to complete Hitler’s work. They further seek to invert reality by portraying Israel, which in accordance with international law is trying to contain and defeat Hamas, as a combination of the German Nazis and the British imperialists.

SO FAR, they are getting away with it. So far, for their efforts on behalf of a genocidal terrorist organization Erdogan and his ilk are being extolled as human rights champions. Barring any unexpected events, Israel will suffer yet another public relations disaster on Thursday when the ships approach Gaza.

How has this happened? How is it that we have become so overwhelmed by the Left’s propaganda that most of our political leaders and intellectual elite are incapable of even describing the evil that it being advanced against us?

Over the past generation, the Left has commandeered our language. It has inverted the terminology of human rights, freedom, morality, heroism, democracy and victimization. Its perversion of language has made it nearly impossible for members of democratic, human rights respecting, moral societies to describe the threats they face from their human rights destroying, genocidal, tyrannical enemies. Thanks to the efforts of the international Left, the latter are championed as the victims of those they seek to annihilate.

Two incidents in recent weeks make clear just how disastrous the Left’s wholesale theft of language and through it, their inversion of reality has been for Israel.

Last Monday, Noam Chomsky arrived at the Allenby Bridge and requested a visa to enter Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The police at the border refused his request. The radical leftist Israel-basher made a fuss and waited around for several hours before he went back to Jordan.

Chomsky left Jordan at the end of the week and travelled to Lebanon. For the second time in four years, on Friday Chomsky toured southern Lebanon with a Hizbullah guide. Now an official guest of Hizbullah, Chomsky is scheduled to give an address in Beirut Tuesday to celebrate the IDF’s pullout from south Lebanon 10 years ago.

As David Hornik detailed in *FrontPage Magazine on Friday, the leftist-dominated Israeli media went nuts when they discovered Chomsky had been turned away at the border. *Yediot Aharonot and *Haaretz heralded Chomsky as a great mind and proclaimed hysterically that the refusal to allow him to enter the country marked the end of Israeli democracy and the start of a slide into fascism. The Western media quickly piled on and within hours Israel’s right to deny its avowed enemies entry was under assault.

And Chomsky is Israel’s enemy. As Hornik pointed out, Chomsky has repeatedly defended Holocaust deniers while accusing Israel of being the ideological heir of Nazi Germany. When he hasn’t been too busy championing the Khmer Rouge and Josef Stalin, and attacking the US as the Great Satan, Chomsky has devoted much time and energy to calling for Israel’s eradication and defending Palestinian and Hizbullah terrorists.

IT WAS the government’s job to point this out. But instead, faced with the leftist onslaught against its right to control its borders, the government crumpled. Instead of explaining that Chomsky is an enemy of Israel and an abettor and defender of genocide, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev apologized for the unpleasant reception Chomsky received at the Allenby Bridge. Regev also promised that if Chomsky returns, he will be granted an entry visa.

The government’s cowardly handling of the Chomsky incident is testament to the Left’s success at intimidating Western leaders to the point where instead of standing up to leftist propaganda and lies, they accept them as truth and even collaborate in disseminating them.

Probably the PMO figured no one would listen if it told the truth about Chomsky. It probably felt that defending the decision to bar Chomsky from the country would only elicit a second barrage of media attacks.

And perhaps they were right. But the fact that the Left would have remained unconvinced doesn’t excuse the government’s abject surrender of the truth about Chomsky to Israel’s enemies on the Left who portray the MIT professor as a human rights activist and a great intellectual humanitarian. As David Horowitz and Peter Collier prove in their book *The Anti-Chomsky Reader, there doesn’t seem to be a tyrant that Chomsky hasn’t championed or a victim that Chomsky hasn’t demonized in the entire span of his 50-year career as a radical activist.

The government is not alone in its fear of exposing and fighting the Left’s campaign to demonize the country.

THE RADICAL left’s ability to block voices of dissent from its anti-Israel and anti-freedom positions was similarly demonstrated two weeks ago at Tel Aviv University’s annual Board of Governors meeting.

For several years, a large, vocal group of tenured professors from the university have actively participated in the international campaign to boycott Israeli universities and academics while actively supporting Hamas and Hizbullah. That is, many Tel Aviv University professors, whose salaries are paid by university donors and Israeli taxpayers, have been using their university titles to undermine the university and to advance the cause of Israel’s destruction.

This year the university’s Board of Governors bestowed an honorary doctorate on Harvard Prof. Alan Dershowitz. In his acceptance speech, Dershowitz called these professors out for their vile behavior and named three of the most vocal enemies of the university and Israel on the international stage: Profs. Anat Matar, Rachel Giora and Shlomo Sand.

The university’s tenured anti-Zionist activists were quick to retaliate. More than 46 professors signed a letter to university president Joseph Klaffter demanding that the university disassociate itself from Dershowitz’s statements.

Klaffter was quick to oblige. At the Board of Governors meeting, Klaffter silenced board member Mark Tanenbaum when he tried to put forward a resolution calling for disciplinary action against university professors who use their university titles to defame the university or Israel. Klaffter, who isn’t even a member of the Board of Governors, reportedly grabbed the microphone away from Tanenbaum and adjourned the meeting. Klaffter justified his physical denial of Tanenbaum’s freedom of speech by claiming that he was defending academic freedom.

Like the Prime Minister’s Office’s apology to Noam Chomsky, Klaffter’s action – aside from arguably being prohibited by his own university’s constitution – was further proof of the Left’s success in appropriating the language and imagery of freedom and tolerance in the service of forces that seek to destroy freedom and end tolerance.

ON THURSDAY Hamas’s maritime enablers from Europe, Turkey and beyond will arrive at our doorstep. The navy will block their entry to Gaza. Israel will be demonized by terror-abettors disguised as human rights activists and journalists worldwide. And the story will pave the way for the next assault on Israel’s right to exist.

This endless circle of demonization and aggression will continue to widen and escalate until our political leaders and our intellectual elite reclaim our language from those on the terror-abetting Left. True, our reclamation of our language will not go unopposed. But if we do not reassert our right to describe objective reality, our inability to explain why we are right and our detractors serve evil will be our undoing.

caroline@carolineglick.com

Innocent peace loving people on board the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara May 31, 2010

 

 

 

 

Check out the video with the innocent peace loving people on board the ship boarded for Gaza: 

 

Click here: Mideast Dispatch Archive: Fancy restaurants and Olympic-size swim pools: what the media won’t report about Gaza

 

 

 

The crowd shout:

 

“Intifada, Intifada, Intifada!

 

 

“Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews! The army of Mohammed will return!”

Please watch:

Click here: Special Alert: Flotilla Battle Unleashes Anti-Israel Wave

 

GROUND ZERO DEMONSTRATION May 15, 2010

 

 

Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) Rally

 

June 6, 2010, at Noon at Ground Zero

Calls for Halt to Ground Zero Mosque

The rally was scheduled after the Community Board for New York City ’s financial district unanimously approved the construction of a 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center right across from Ground Zero

Rubin’s Painting called incendiary

The enormous masterpiece “Atrocity 911” by Marc Rubin will be hung at stageside. It’s blunt imagery depicts the tragedy and the perpetrators of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. “ Liberty ’s Lamp held high as she cries for her children while the sword of Islamic Jihad stabs her book of Law. The souls of the victims ascend from the inferno of destruction.” Image and description;  www.marcrubin.com/TANROOM.ivnu

The artist will display the masterwork at the Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) demonstration in memorial to the deceased and to document the genocidal tragedy. No other painting, including Picasso’s ” Guernica ” has engendered such a mass emotional response. The artist refuses demands to remove the symbol of Islamic Jihad from the painting.

As with all World Trade Center’s demonstrations, thousands are expected to attend. The rally is being organized by consortium of important organizations.

The SIOA No 9/11 Mosque Rally will be at Ground Zero on June 6 at 12 noon. Pamela Geller of Atlasshrugs and Robert Spencer of Jihadwatch are joined by supporting groups (partial list): ACT for America (ACT Manhattan chapter); Z Street ; Freedom Defense Initiative; No Mosque at Ground Zero; and Faith Freedom International; VAST, Stuart Kaufman; American Bulldogs, Center for Security Policy and  world artist Marc Richard Rubin.

Contact Information

Marc Rubin:  marc@marcrubin.com , (773) 442-7618

Pamela Geller: writeatlas@aol.com

JERUSALEM: “I HATE THE GROUND YOU WALK ON” May 13, 2010

from October 1996 

by Emanuel A. Winston, Middle East Analyst & Commentator

 

When Mohammed failed to convert the Jews to Islam, he ordered Moslems to turn their backs on Jerusalem and pray to Mecca. The Jewish city became a despised place for Islam. Neither Christians nor Moslems ever thought enough of Jerusalem to make it their capital../…until now.

Christianity, developed by Paul (Saul), and Islam, defined by Mohammed in the Koran in the 7th century both claimed supersedence over their Jewish root source. Both maintained that the Jews had abrogated G-d’s trust and, therefore in their opinion, did not deserve His Covenant. Both asserted that they were the rightful heirs to be G-d’s chosen and demanded the Jews disappear or merge with them. Not only did the Christians and Moslems NOT want Jerusalem as their holy city, but history demonstrates that they literally hated the very ground it stood on. This ground was steeped in holy Jewish history and could not be easily shed of its Jewishness, even through repeated conquest and murder of its Jews. David and Solomon, prophets and kings trod Jerusalem’s streets and such footprints are hard to erase.

Jerusalem was to be repeatedly captured, bound up and denigrated to obliterate the Jew’s right to the spiritual Covenant by these claimants. G-d’s judgement was to be set aside, according to the judgement of these two combatants who now demanded recognition as the (only) chosen people

Roman, Christian and Moslem Competition for Jerusalem

By 70 CE Rome had conquered Judea and Jerusalem, killed the Jews of fighting age, sold the women and children into slavery. Titus, the Roman Emperor ordered the Second Temple burned, destroyed all surroundings, and packed the soil with salt to prevent anything from growing and the return of the Jews. The state was renamed ‘Palestine’ (after the Philistines) to obliterate the Jew in Judea or the Israelite in Israel. Hadrian renamed Jerusalem ‘Aelia Capitolina’ after the defeat of Bar Kochba in 135 CE. Only the gods of Rome were to rule the ravaged land and Jerusalem’s holy status was to be no more for the Jews (the Hebrews).

In 610 CE Mohammed, based on his vision, offered his religious leadership to the Jews proclaiming he was the last prophet of G-d. For 19 months he ordered the direction of his followers’ prayers (the quibla) toward Jerusalem to woo the Jews. When they refused Mohammed’s offer, he and his army slaughtered the Jews of Medina. Mohammed used the trick of temporary truce, the Hudabaiya Treaty with the Jewish Koraish tribe, only to kill them all.

Recently, Arafat has told his people that he too was using Mohammed’s plan for the Koraish tribe as his (Arafat’s) plan for Israel. Mohammed turned the quibla of Moslem prayers to Mecca and insured that Jerusalem was not mentioned even once in the Koran. Jews speak of Jerusalem continually throughout the Bible and many times each day in prayer.

Mohammed died in 632 CE. Following Christian precedent, Moslems built a mosques and shrine on the Temple Mount, where the First and Second Jewish Temples stood, to show religious and secular superiority over the Jews. In 683 CE Caliph al Walid built an al Aqsa mosque (one of many called al Aqsa which mean ‘the farthest’) over a Christian church also built on the Jewish Temple Mount as a mark of supremacy. In 685-705 CE. Calif Abd-Malik of Damascus built the Dome of the Rock. Malik’s plan to acquire political/religious leadership of Islam as Mohammed’s heir failed as the Moslems continued face toward Mecca to pray, rejecting Jerusalem as Mohammed mandated. It was the construction of these buildings, as a sign of conquest in the 7th century that the Palestinians now claim as their third holiest site after Mecca and Medina.

The El Buraq Myth

After Mohammed’s death, a myth was created which was rejected by serious Islamic scholars. According to this myth, one night as he slept Mohammed flew on a white horse called el Buraq which had the face and breasts of a woman, the tail of peacock and great wings to the farthest place, al Aqsa, at the edge of Medina. (Al Aqsa in Jerusalem wasn’t built until 683 CE, 51 years after the death of Mohammed in 632 CE) He leaped skyward to Seventh Heaven on el Buraq where Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses and Jesus blessed him as the last prophet of G-d. Ostensibly Mohammed absorbed the older religions of Judaism (The Root) and Christianity.

He claimed descendance from the Jewish prophets, as the foundation for the new religion of Islam. This myth of his one second night ride to al Aqsa (where el Buraq was to have left a hoof print in the rock on the Jewish Temple Mount) is the basis for current Moslem Arab claims on the Jewish Temple of Solomon and the city of Jerusalem. As in the case with most religious based myths, the story grew in the retelling, finally to become unquestioned fact.

Only since 1967 have the Moslems averred that Jerusalem was their third holiest city. The Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement in their terrorist Leaflet #65, Oct. 11, 1990, uses the el Buraq story to urge their Moslem followers to violence in order to show the West their devotion to the very place that Mohammed could not abide. In 1099 CE Christian Crusaders captured Jerusalem after surging in religious euphoria across Europe and into the Middle East, slaughtering Moslem and Jew alike.

In 1189 CE Saladin, a Moslem Kurd, captured Jerusalem from the Christian Crusaders. Earlier the Romans had used Caesaria on the Mediterranean Sea as their administrative capital of Judea; the Christians favored Acre as their regional capital and Saladin chose Ramle as his Moslem capital of the region. None found anything religiously compelling about Jerusalem.

Today, seeing the Jews return to rebuild their only capital, is an intolerable offense to those who now lay claim as the new (and only) chosen people.

In 1249 the Moslem Sultan al-Kamil thought so little of Jerusalem that he gave it away as a “gift” to the Roman Emperor, Fredrick II as thanks for an alliance against the competing Moslem ruler al-Malik. The Sultan remarked, “I have ceded nothing but ruined churches and wrecked buildings.”

Frederick was excommunicated by the reigning Pope for accepting Jerusalem, demonstrating that the Church also had no interest in an earthly Jerusalem. Islam gave away nothing it valued to the Christians and the Holy See of Christianity rejected it as a gift of no value.

ISLAM’S “THIRD HOLIEST CITY” Only Since 1967

The idea that Jerusalem was Islam’s Third Holiest City would have enraged Mohammed as blasphemous. Giving away Jerusalem to Fredrick II is a statement that this was a place which Mohammed considered impure and not holy for Islam. However, the Koran mandates that all lands conquered and later lost by Islam must be retaken. It seemed that the consistent goal of both Christians and Moslems was to be “G-d’s newly chosen” via territorial facts by capturing and occupying the city of Jerusalem. Denied the right to petition G-d directly, they tried to create facts on the ground.

In 19 years of Jordan’s illegal Moslem rule of North , East and South Jerusalem from the 1948 War, only Pakistan and Great Britain recognized Jordanian rule. Jordan vented its hatred against the Jews by desecrating 58 synagogues, turning them into stables, using headstones from the Mount of Olives Jewish cemetery for urinals, building roads and the Intercontinental Hotel over graves. (An emergency recovery of the headstones was recently mounted before the area was to be turned over to Arafat as part of Oslo.)

Jerusalem, a city so beautiful in the times of King David and King Solomon it was said to have 9 parts of the world’s 10 parts of beauty, was repeatedly left in a ruins with destroyed churches and synagogues. In recent times no condemnation was heard from the West, as each competed to convince the Arab Muslim oil owners of their fidelity by betraying the Jewish State time and again. False claims against Jerusalem by Arabs are supported by the Christian West, history and facts notwithstanding.

When the Arabs saw that the propaganda of religious claims played well in the West, they re-wrote history as fast as the revisions could be thought up. Moslem scholars created the fictitious history of a non-existent ‘Arab’ Palestinian people where, until 1948, only Jews were known as Palestinians. Before the Jews came in with jobs and health benefits, the sparse Arab population was a mix of Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis, with much of the land leased to peasant farmers by Arab absentee land owners. To be called Palestinian was a pejorative, as it previously applied only to the despised Jews.

In Arabic, their own tongue, they prove the Jewish claim to the land through their superstitious habit of NOT changing the name of a city, town or village. When asked, they will point out a village with an Arabized Hebrew name and claim ancient roots where there are none. The continually flowing migration pattern was clearly demonstrated when oil became pricey and Moslems went on the move in the millions to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the other Gulf Emirates for high paying jobs.

After the Gulf War another migration began. This time the ‘new’ Palestinians were ejected from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia into Jordan as a dangerous element, a fifth column not to be trusted. So again a flood of Arabs were transferred mostly into Jordan. The present Arab claim against Jerusalem is merely the part allowed to show, for the real struggle is much deeper. While neither Christianity nor Islam can storm the heavens petitioning G-d to change His will, neither can they allow the Jewish religion to re-establish itself in Israel. A thriving Jerusalem flaws the claim that the Jews have been abandoned by G-d. The mere existence of a flourishing Jerusalem again under Jewish law and religion diminishes the claims and status of both Christianity and Islam to be the rightful heirs to G-d’s Covenant.

In 1967 Moslem clerics, the Waqf, were given control of the Temple Mount by Moshe Dayan. They built cement prayer pads over foundations of Jewish origin to separate them from the Jewish essence beneath – which they consider unholy and impure. From 1948 to 1967 few Islamic religious leaders of high status visited Jerusalem. A pilgrimage to Mecca is called a haj allowing the sojourner to put the honorific Haj before his first name. Not so Jerusalem. A visit to Jerusalem was called a zira, a place for a traveler to stop on his way to somewhere else.

September 23, 1991, Yasser Arafat, who calls himself the President of Palestine, demanded Jerusalem for a capital of a yet to be established state shown on PLO and PNC (Palestine National Council) maps to be encompassing all Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The major TV networks interviews continually exalt this man who supported Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, calling him a “man of peace”.

September 13, 1993, immediately after signing the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn, Yasser Arafat proclaimed, “We will have a Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital.” He has repeated his intentions many times since in print and on television. May 10, 1994 in Johannesburg, South Africa he was secretly tape-recorded while speaking in a Moslem mosque. He declared in Arabic: “The Jihad Islamic Holy War] will continue. Jerusalem is not for the Palestinian people, it is for all the Muslim people. You are responsible for Palestine and for Jerusalem before me [applause], the land which had been blessed for the whole world. Now after this agreement you have to understand our main battle../.. Our main battle is Jerusalem. The cherished shrine of the Moslems. ../…for this I was insisting before signing [the May 4 Cairo Agreement] to have a letter from them, the Israelis, that Jerusalem../..has to be under discussion and not to say the permanent State of Israel! No! It is the permanent State of Palestine! [applause] ../…In this letter I had insisted to mention the Christian holy sacred place before the Islamic holy sacred place because I have to be faithful to the agreement between Caliph Omar and the Patriarch Sophronius [In 638 Sophronius, the Christian bishop of Jerusalem, surrendered Jerusalem to Omar, the 2nd successor to Mohammed. A condition of that treaty was: no Jews would be allowed to live in Jerusalem! and Omar referred to the city as “Aelia” for the old Roman name of “Aelia Capitolina”] ../…./..You have to come and to fight and to start the Jihad to liberate of Jerusalem. ../…I was hesitating [referring to the May 4 signing in Cairo of the Gaza/Jericho withdrawal agreement], because I was insisting to mention Jerusalem. I want this promise from the co-sponsors [U.S. Sec. of State] Christopher and [Russian Foreign Minister] Kozyrev and [Egyptian President] Mubarak. And this has been done. ../…./..This capital is not their capital. It is our capital. It is your capital. It is the first shrine of the Islam and the Moslems../…./.. Sooner or later we will pray in Jerusalem together. This agreement [the Hudabaiya Treaty] (is not) more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Mohammed and Koraish. [The 10 year agreement called the Hudabaiya Treaty, with the Koraish allowed Mohammed to pray in Mecca. When Mohammed grew stronger, two years later, he abrogated the agreement, slaughtered the Koraish and conquered Mecca.] Onward to victory, onward to Jerusalem! We will enter the mosque as they have entered it before.”

When in power, Prime Minister Rabin, Foreign Minister Peres and Deputy Foreign Minister Beilin excused Arafat’s bald statements of intent, denied secret agreements, lied about the Jerusalem letter, and have since been exposed signing away portions of the Jewish patrimony to the Arabs and to the Vatican. Yossi Beilin arranged to have Arafat fly the Palestinian flag over the Temple Mount. They have placed Jerusalem on the negotiating table for the first time ever in Oslo 1993. The lie has since been exposed, although the present Likud government is being pressed by Clinton to keep the Peres agreement.

To say the Arabs want Jerusalem merely because the Jews have it, would be simplistic but true. The Catholic Popes have long denied Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a city of peace, except for those who seek to conquer and divide. History shows Jerusalem’s many conquerors sought only to dominate, and thereby demonstrate their military, political and religious superiority over the Jews and their capital. When either Islam or Christianity had military control of the city, they denied the other religious freedom../…and both denied it to the Jews.

Sadly, the two branches which spring from the root stock of Judaism feel it is necessary to destroy their own parent so that one or the other may claim the Covenant. If the Jews cooperate in their own destruction, how will Christianity and Islam go about defeating each other for G-d’s Covenant?

Once having won, how will the winner manage to present his claim to G-d?

Revised and reprinted from The Jerusalem Post of 25 September 1996

A COUPLE OF FILMMAKERS May 5, 2010

JERUSALEM

 

David and Daria Cohen  CoVisions.com

“We want people around the world to know that israel is not just about poitical stuff.”

The twentysomething  American-Israeli couple makes documentary films and what is called “Human Media Productions”           CoVisions Productions

‘They say there are couples who finish each other’s thoughts. We finish each other’s edits,” says [David Cohen], who works with his wife [Daria Cohen] at their small Jerusalem- based company called CoVisions.

Please watch this wonderful video “Israel’s Jerusalem Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” 

defendjerusalem.net will be featuring excerpts of life in Jerusalem through this talented couple’s eyes.

Please continue viewing defendjerusalem.net blog for our updated articles and videos.

 

 

 

MILLION MENSCH MARCH AND RALLY

TO PROTECT AND DEFEND ISRAEL AND AMERICA

The dangers are great and the need to unite is critical

June 6, 2010

The 66th anniversary of “D-Day”, the invasion of Europe to defeat the Nazis and stop the Holocaust.  Also, the 43rd Anniversary of the “Sixth Day War” which united Jerusalem and Israel.

Washington, D.C.

Scroll down for previous articles you may have missed.

Is Obama Moving To Topple Israel’s Prime Minister? May 5, 2010

Washington

Published on: May 2nd, 2010 at 11:13 PM   News Source:  The Philadelphia Bulletin

The administration of President Barack Obama has launched what officials termed a psychological warfare campaign meant to topple Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Sources in the Obama Administration and the US Congress have confirmed to the Middle East Newsline that the White House and State Department have sought to destabilize Netanyahu’s government by forcing him to agree to an indefinite freeze on Jewish construction in areas taken by Israel in the wake of the 1967 war as well as the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2012. They said the campaign sought to replace Netanyahu with opposition leader and former foreign minister Tsipi Livni.

“Bibi is extremely vulnerable to pressure,” a source familiar with the White House effort said. “We know this from his first term in office and believe he will collapse this time as well.”

The sources said the administration’s strategy aimed to delegitimize Netanyahu in his government and right-wing constituency. They said Obama and his aides have sought to portray Netanyahu as a weak and unstable politician  who will destroy relations with Washington as Israel seeks U.S. support for a military option against Iran.

“There seems to be a general belief in the circle around the president that the democratically-elected government in Israel is drunk at the wheel,” Steven Rosen, a veteran pro-Israeli lobbyist now with the Middle East Forum, said. “They clearly will use pressure tactics to bring Israel around.”

In April 2010, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, began a series of attacks on Netanyahu in the Israeli media. Indyk, a former assistant secretary of state under then-President Bill Clinton, has called

for the toppling of Netanyahu while his right-wing partners accept a more pliant prime minister.

“Indyk was sent by Obama and encouraged by his American Jewish supporters, particularly [former Rep.] Robert Wexler, to do this,” the source said.

In January 2010, Wexler resigned from Congress to become head of the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation. The center was founded by Obama supporter Daniel Abraham and a delegation met Netanyahu in February.

The sources said the administration’s campaign has included invitations to Defense Minister Ehud Barak to the White House, where he met with Obama on April 26. Barak has been regarded as the most pro-U.S. minister in Netanyahu’s Cabinet and has been lobbying ministers to accept Obama’s proposals.

“It’s not going to be easy to turn this thing around,” Rosen told a briefing on April 21. “Some of my friends in Jerusalem believe this crisis will go on for an extended period.”

The anti-Netanyahu has alarmed pro-Israeli members in Congress, particularly from the Democratic Party. Several of the Democrats have reported a sharp drop in funds by Jewish donors for congressional elections in November.

“This [campaign against Netanyahu] is counterproductive and has to stop,” Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who has threatened to issue a condemnation of the White House, said.

Some in the pro-Israeli community detect an anti-Semitic tinge to the White House campaign, despite the involvement of Jewish aides. On April 21, National Security Advisor James Jones stunned an audience at the pro-Israel Washington Institute when he told a joke of a Jewish merchant who tricked a thirsty Taliban fighter into buying a tie.

“I wish that I had not made this off the cuff joke at the top of my remarks,” Jones later said. “I apologize to anyone who was offended by it. It also distracted from the larger message I carried that day: That the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security is sacrosanct.”

Former State Department official Aaron Miller said Obama has surrounded himself with aides who blame Netanyahu for the suspension of the Arab-Israeli peace process. Miller said many of the aides had encountered Netanyahu during his first tenure as prime minister from 1996 to 1999.

“They had seen the Benjamin Netanyahu movie before and were determined not to let their chance at Middle East peace end the same way,” Miller said in the magazine Foreign Policy. “Confronted with Netanyahu again, Obama and his team needed no encouragement to talk tough on the growing Israeli Settlements in the West Bank, an issue that experts inside and outside government were clamoring for Obama to raise as the first step in his renewed push for peace. Fresh from his victory on health care, he’s [Obama] king of the world again and in no mood to let the king of Israel frustrate his plans.”

Obama’s Jerusalem stonewall
Demanding a construction freeze in the capital reverses decades of U.S. policy
By Mortimer Zuckerman
The Wall Street Journal
April 28, 2010

Thanks to a deadlock engineered by the U.S. government, the Middle
East peace process is stalled. President Obama began this stalemate
last year when he called for a settlement freeze, and he escalates it
now with a major change of American policy regarding Jerusalem.

The president seeks to prohibit Israel from any construction in its
capital, in particular in a Jewish suburb of East Jerusalem called
Ramat Shlomo. This, despite the fact that all former administrations
have unequivocally understood that the area in question would remain
part of Israel under any final peace agreement. Objecting to any
building in this East Jerusalem neighborhood is tantamount to getting
the Israelis to agree to the division of Jerusalem before final
status talks with the Palestinians even begin.

From the start of his presidency, Mr. Obama has undermined Israel’s
confidence in U.S. support. He uses the same term – “settlements” –
to describe massive neighborhoods that are home to tens of thousands
of Jews and illegal outposts of a few families. His ambiguous use of
this loaded word raises the question for Israelis about whether this
administration really understands the issue.

It certainly sends signals to the Palestinians. The Palestinian
Authority followed the president’s lead and refused to proceed with
planned talks until Israel stops all so-called settlement activities,
including in East Jerusalem.

President Obama’s attitude toward Jerusalem betrays a fundamental
misunderstanding of the history of the city. After Israel was
recognized as a new state in 1948, it was immediately attacked by the
combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and
Iraq. The attacks were repelled, but the Jordanians, who were asked
not to join the Egyptian war effort, conquered East Jerusalem and
separated it from its western half. In 1967, the Arab armies again
sought to destroy Israel, but it prevailed in the famous Six Day War
and reconquered East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula
and the Gaza Strip.

Under Jordanian rule, from 1948 to 1967, dozens of synagogues were
destroyed or vandalized. The ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of
Olives was desecrated, its tombstones used for the construction of
roads and Jordanian army latrines. The rights of Christians as well
as Jews were abused, with some churches converted into mosques.

When Israel captured the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967 it built,
and has since continued to build, neighborhoods for its Jewish
residents. Palestinian Arabs have also built in Jerusalem throughout
this period. Incidentally, today there is more new Arab housing
(legal and illegal) being built than Jewish housing according to a
report by Middle East expert Tom Gross – without any criticism from
the Obama administration.

But this is all recent history: Israel’s claim over Jerusalem does
not spring from 1948 or 1967. Rather, it signifies the revival of
historic rights stemming from biblical times.

Jerusalem is not just another piece of territory on a political
chessboard: It is integral to the identity and faith of the Jewish
people. Since the city was founded by King David some 3,500 years
ago, Jews have lived there, worked there, and prayed there. During
the First and Second Temple periods, Jews from across the kingdom
would travel to Jerusalem three times a year for the Jewish holy
days, until the Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple in 70 A.D.
That ended Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem for the next 2,000
years, but the Jews never relinquished their bond.

Jerusalem is much less embedded in Muslim culture. When Muslims pray,
they face Mecca, not Jerusalem. The Old Testament mentions Jerusalem,
or its alternative name Zion, a total of 457 times. The Koran does
not mention Jerusalem once.

Muhammad, who founded Islam in 622 A.D., was born and raised in what
is now Saudi Arabia; he never set foot in Jerusalem. And in the 1,300
years that various Islamic dynasties ruled Jerusalem, not one Islamic
dynasty ever made the city its capital. Indeed, even the National
Covenant of the PLO, written in 1964, never mentions Jerusalem. It
was only added after Israel regained control of the city in 1967.

The reality today is that in the area referred to as East Jerusalem –
that is, an area north, south and east of the city’s 1967 borders –
there are roughly a half a million Jews and Arabs living in
intertwined neighborhoods. The idea of a purely Jewish West Jerusalem
or a purely Palestinian East Jerusalem is a myth: Building in
particular neighborhoods in no way precludes the possibility of a
two-state solution.

Ramat Shlomo, the center of the most recent row, is a thriving
community of tens of thousands of Jews located between two larger
Jewish communities called Ramot and French Hill. Its growth would in
no way interfere with the contiguity of new Arab neighborhoods in
East Jerusalem. And in every peace agreement that has ever been
discussed, these areas would remain a part of Israel.

No wonder the Israelis reacted so strongly when Mr. Obama called this
neighborhood “a settlement.” For over 43 years, there has been a
tacit agreement that construction here did not constitute an obstacle
to negotiations. Thus, the new policy was seen as an Obama
administration effort to force Israel to accept the division of
Jerusalem, taking yet another negotiating card off the table for the
Israelis.

But what the world never remembers is what the Israelis can never
forget. When Jordan controlled the eastern part of the city,
including the Old City and the Western Wall (a retaining wall of the
ancient Temple), it permitted reasonably free access to Christian
holy places. But the Jews were denied any access to the Jewish holy
places. This was a fundamental departure from the tradition of
freedom of religious worship in the holy land, which had evolved over
centuries, not to speak of a violation of the undertaking given by
Jordan in the Armistice Agreement concluded with Israel in 1949.
Nobody should expect the Jews to risk that again.

Since Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967, it has faithfully protected
the rights and security of Christians, Muslims and Jews. Christians
now control the Ten Stations of the Cross; Muslims control the Dome
of the Rock. Yet the Palestinians often stone Jewish civilians
praying at the Western Wall below. Their leaders and imams repeatedly
deny the Jewish connection to Jewish holy sites. Freedom of religion
in Jerusalem should not be compromised by American policy.

That’s not all. Dividing Jerusalem would put Palestinian forces and
rockets a few miles from Israel’s Parliament. And Jewish
neighborhoods would be within range of light weapon and machine-gun
fire. This is exactly what happened after the Oslo Accords, when the
Palestinians fired from Beit Jalla toward Jerusalem’s Gilo
neighborhood, wounding scores of residents.

The vast majority of Israelis believe Jerusalem must be shared – not
divided. Even the great Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the
Oslo Accords, said in 1995: “There are not two Jerusalems; there is
only one Jerusalem.”

The final status of Jerusalem will be on the table if and when
Palestinians and Israelis talk. But Mr. Obama’s policy reversal has,
yet again, given the Palestinians every reason not to negotiate.

(Mr. Zuckerman is chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report.)

Obama’s Jerusalem Stonewall May 5, 2010

Demanding a construction freeze in the capital reverses decades of U.S. policy
By Mortimer Zuckerman
The Wall Street Journal
April 28, 2010

Thanks to a deadlock engineered by the U.S. government, the Middle
East peace process is stalled. President Obama began this stalemate
last year when he called for a settlement freeze, and he escalates it
now with a major change of American policy regarding Jerusalem.

The president seeks to prohibit Israel from any construction in its
capital, in particular in a Jewish suburb of East Jerusalem called
Ramat Shlomo. This, despite the fact that all former administrations
have unequivocally understood that the area in question would remain
part of Israel under any final peace agreement. Objecting to any
building in this East Jerusalem neighborhood is tantamount to getting
the Israelis to agree to the division of Jerusalem before final
status talks with the Palestinians even begin.

From the start of his presidency, Mr. Obama has undermined Israel’s
confidence in U.S. support. He uses the same term – “settlements” –
to describe massive neighborhoods that are home to tens of thousands
of Jews and illegal outposts of a few families. His ambiguous use of
this loaded word raises the question for Israelis about whether this
administration really understands the issue.

It certainly sends signals to the Palestinians. The Palestinian
Authority followed the president’s lead and refused to proceed with
planned talks until Israel stops all so-called settlement activities,
including in East Jerusalem.

President Obama’s attitude toward Jerusalem betrays a fundamental
misunderstanding of the history of the city. After Israel was
recognized as a new state in 1948, it was immediately attacked by the
combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and
Iraq. The attacks were repelled, but the Jordanians, who were asked
not to join the Egyptian war effort, conquered East Jerusalem and
separated it from its western half. In 1967, the Arab armies again
sought to destroy Israel, but it prevailed in the famous Six Day War
and reconquered East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula
and the Gaza Strip.

Under Jordanian rule, from 1948 to 1967, dozens of synagogues were
destroyed or vandalized. The ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of
Olives was desecrated, its tombstones used for the construction of
roads and Jordanian army latrines. The rights of Christians as well
as Jews were abused, with some churches converted into mosques.

When Israel captured the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967 it built,
and has since continued to build, neighborhoods for its Jewish
residents. Palestinian Arabs have also built in Jerusalem throughout
this period. Incidentally, today there is more new Arab housing
(legal and illegal) being built than Jewish housing according to a
report by Middle East expert Tom Gross – without any criticism from
the Obama administration.

But this is all recent history: Israel’s claim over Jerusalem does
not spring from 1948 or 1967. Rather, it signifies the revival of
historic rights stemming from biblical times.

Jerusalem is not just another piece of territory on a political
chessboard: It is integral to the identity and faith of the Jewish
people. Since the city was founded by King David some 3,500 years
ago, Jews have lived there, worked there, and prayed there. During
the First and Second Temple periods, Jews from across the kingdom
would travel to Jerusalem three times a year for the Jewish holy
days, until the Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple in 70 A.D.
That ended Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem for the next 2,000
years, but the Jews never relinquished their bond.

Jerusalem is much less embedded in Muslim culture. When Muslims pray,
they face Mecca, not Jerusalem. The Old Testament mentions Jerusalem,
or its alternative name Zion, a total of 457 times. The Koran does
not mention Jerusalem once.

Muhammad, who founded Islam in 622 A.D., was born and raised in what
is now Saudi Arabia; he never set foot in Jerusalem. And in the 1,300
years that various Islamic dynasties ruled Jerusalem, not one Islamic
dynasty ever made the city its capital. Indeed, even the National
Covenant of the PLO, written in 1964, never mentions Jerusalem. It
was only added after Israel regained control of the city in 1967.

The reality today is that in the area referred to as East Jerusalem –
that is, an area north, south and east of the city’s 1967 borders –
there are roughly a half a million Jews and Arabs living in
intertwined neighborhoods. The idea of a purely Jewish West Jerusalem
or a purely Palestinian East Jerusalem is a myth: Building in
particular neighborhoods in no way precludes the possibility of a
two-state solution.

Ramat Shlomo, the center of the most recent row, is a thriving
community of tens of thousands of Jews located between two larger
Jewish communities called Ramot and French Hill. Its growth would in
no way interfere with the contiguity of new Arab neighborhoods in
East Jerusalem. And in every peace agreement that has ever been
discussed, these areas would remain a part of Israel.

No wonder the Israelis reacted so strongly when Mr. Obama called this
neighborhood “a settlement.” For over 43 years, there has been a
tacit agreement that construction here did not constitute an obstacle
to negotiations. Thus, the new policy was seen as an Obama
administration effort to force Israel to accept the division of
Jerusalem, taking yet another negotiating card off the table for the
Israelis.

But what the world never remembers is what the Israelis can never
forget. When Jordan controlled the eastern part of the city,
including the Old City and the Western Wall (a retaining wall of the
ancient Temple), it permitted reasonably free access to Christian
holy places. But the Jews were denied any access to the Jewish holy
places. This was a fundamental departure from the tradition of
freedom of religious worship in the holy land, which had evolved over
centuries, not to speak of a violation of the undertaking given by
Jordan in the Armistice Agreement concluded with Israel in 1949.
Nobody should expect the Jews to risk that again.

Since Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967, it has faithfully protected
the rights and security of Christians, Muslims and Jews. Christians
now control the Ten Stations of the Cross; Muslims control the Dome
of the Rock. Yet the Palestinians often stone Jewish civilians
praying at the Western Wall below. Their leaders and imams repeatedly
deny the Jewish connection to Jewish holy sites. Freedom of religion
in Jerusalem should not be compromised by American policy.

That’s not all. Dividing Jerusalem would put Palestinian forces and
rockets a few miles from Israel’s Parliament. And Jewish
neighborhoods would be within range of light weapon and machine-gun
fire. This is exactly what happened after the Oslo Accords, when the
Palestinians fired from Beit Jalla toward Jerusalem’s Gilo
neighborhood, wounding scores of residents.

The vast majority of Israelis believe Jerusalem must be shared – not
divided. Even the great Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the
Oslo Accords, said in 1995: “There are not two Jerusalems; there is
only one Jerusalem.”

The final status of Jerusalem will be on the table if and when
Palestinians and Israelis talk. But Mr. Obama’s policy reversal has,
yet again, given the Palestinians every reason not to negotiate.

(Mr. Zuckerman is chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report.)