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ADC Webwatch
15 June 2010
Volume 3 No. 23 |
Israel points finger at Turkish PM
Not as Byzantine as you may think |
ISRAELI intelligence sources claim Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan knew in advance that a group of militants aboard the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara would violently resist an Israeli boarding. Mr Erdogan had earlier denied the use of violence against Israeli naval commandos who took over the vessel, accusing them of wantonly murdering nine pro-Palestinian activists without provocation. He was reported to have been furious when Turkish newspapers published photographs taken by passengers of wounded Israelis, lending indirect support to Israel's claim that its soldiers had been attacked first.
According to a report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, described by Haaretz yesterday as an unofficial branch of Israel's intelligence community, the Turkish government supported the militants who were recruited by a charitable organisation, IHH. Israeli sources describe IHH as having a "radical Islamic, anti-Western orientation". The report said files found on laptops belonging to the militants indicated strong ties between IHH and Mr Erdogan. Some of the activists allegedly told the interrogators that Mr Erdogan was involved in the flotilla's preparations. Abraham Rabinovich, The Australian, 11 June 2010 |
West silent on Muslim atrocities
Predictable double standards transform debating chamber to lynch mob |
One senior military source was quoted last week as saying that it did not matter what his country did; however carefully it responded to such events as the peace flotilla, it would always be condemned in the UN, on the BBC and almost everywhere else. The "bien pensants" of the West are never prepared to give Israel any benefit of any doubt. In regard to Israel, the UN has become more of a lynch mob than a constructive debating chamber. Israel's right to defend itself is ignored. So is the fact that Iran has threatened to obliterate Israel and that the Hamas rulers of Gaza are Iranian agents also pledged to Israel's destruction.
Last week, the UN, as always, jumped instantly to the conclusions most damaging to Israel. The UN Human Rights Council, of which Iran is a member, denounced Israel for its "attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance". Similarly, the Israeli ambassador to the EU was harangued and abused in the European parliament's foreign affairs committee. No one was interested in his explanation and when he showed images of Israeli soldiers being beaten with iron bars on the Mavi Marmara, MEPs asserted the film was faked propaganda. William Shawcross , The Australian, 12 June 2010 |
Open season on the Jewish state
Jews who were murdered in cannot speak out. The rest of us have absolutely no excuse. |
Helen Thomas’s stomach-turning comments about the Jews returning to Germany and Poland, where six million were killed, are striking for their racism and insensitivity. Whether she said them out of senility or anti-Semitism is beside the point. Either way she has no business working for any respectable media organization or sitting as the senior White House correspondent directly in front of the president of the United States. When Don Imus made racially charged statements against a woman’s basketball team, candidate Barack Obama demanded he be fired. It will be interesting to see how President Obama, who could not offer a single word of support for Israel since the flotilla affair, will react.
One can only imagine the uproar against Thomas had she said that all blacks should go home to Africa, or illegal immigrants to Tijuana. It seems that Jews are the only group that you can attack with impunity, because they are the only ones unwise enough to tolerate it. Better yet, we’re the only group often filled with so much self-loathing that we actually initiate many of the attacks. Shmueli Boteach, Jerusalem Post, 7 June 2010
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How historians remove stains
Laundering the past |
Holocaust history remains a vicious political battlefield. Memory and truth are under assault not only by the blunt frontal attacks of those who deny the gas chambers; there is a second form of Holocaust writing even more pernicious because its distortions and interpretations are more subtle. Established historians in Germany and elsewhere would not dream of identifying with the hard-core Holocaust deniers of the far-right. But some of them tirelessly minimise, trivialise and explain away the deeds of the Nazis. Their works feature prominently on university curricula in the USA and in Britain.
Two common interpretations are that the Holocaust was neither "intentional" nor caused by antisemitism. It was, rather, a result of the cumulative circumstances of total war that defy any simple causal explanation. The reason that Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners was so brutally attacked in the 1990s was that he dared to suggest that German antisemitism was one core reason for the destruction of European Jewry.
Shortly after the campaign against Goldhagen, a group of French historians referred me to the apologetic history, produced by Hans Mommsen and others, of Alfred Toepfer, a German multi-millionaire who masqueraded after the War as an anti-Nazi resister and "great European" and who lavished huge prizes on Prime Ministers, Presidents and leading artists --- including a smattering of Jews. The histories commissioned, after Toepfer's death, by the foundation that bears his name are prime examples of the distortions that mar so much recent Holocaust history. The foundation funds scholarships for students at Oxford, where academic studies of modern European history and politics are heavily dependent on money from German companies and foundations with strong motives in laundering their pasts. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, Jewish Chronical, 10 June 2010 |
The Flotilla Wars: one stunt begets another
Street theatre as politics |
Toporovsky tells me: ‘If the Turks are so concerned about human rights, they should think about the millions of Kurds who have wanted their own country for over 100 years. Just a few days ago, the Turks bombed a Kurdish area in northern Iraq because they believe they are terrorists. There are more Kurds in Turkey than there are Jews and Palestinians in the whole world. So if Turkey’s heart and mouth are in the same place, they should give the Kurds independence. The same with Northern Cyprus: Turkey occupied it and only Turkey recognises it as theirs.’ According to the Jerusalem Post, another Israeli ‘reverse flotilla’, organised by Pinchas Har-Zahav of the progressive Meretz party, also wants to sail to Northern Cyprus to ‘call for an end to the Turkish occupation’.
Undoubtedly it is a bizarre state of affairs when the Turkish state, which has one of the world’s highest rates of disgruntled minorities per capita, can pose as a dove of international peace. And yet, the Israelis’ newfound, high-profile concern for Kurds, Armenians and Cypriots smacks of opportunism. These planned sailings are simply ambitious political stunts, a ‘ship for a ship’ response to the Gaza flotilla. Nathalie Rothschild, Spiked, 10 June 2010 |
Indigenous graduates enjoy better health
Signs of hope for aboriginal well-being |
Indigenous Australians who finish high school have much better health than those who leave school early, a new report has found. An Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) report has found the gap between indigenous life expectancy compared with the non-indigenous population has not closed.
And while socio-economic outcomes continue to improve for indigenous Australians, they remained below the rest of the population.
The report, which used 2008 data, found indigenous students who completed school were less likely to smoke or have used drugs. The number who completed Year 12 studies increased from 18 per cent in 2002 to 22 per cent in 2008. Nearly 60 per cent of indigenous people between the ages of 15 and 34 who had finished high school reported excellent and very good self-assessed health compared with 49 per cent of those who had left school earlier. Sydney Morning Herald, 10 June 2010. |
Report warns of Indigenous Housing Program failure
Bureaucracy and rorting deprive the needy of essentials |
THE nation's largest Aboriginal housing project - blighted by delay and poor governance - is at risk of failing to deliver on its original promises as resources are squeezed and management systems flounder. They were the conclusions reached by Northern Territory Auditor-General Frank McGuiness in a report that has angered senior federal bureaucrats and added further credence to fears that the $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program is failing.
In his report tabled in the Territory's parliament on Tuesday night, it was revealed that consultants' fees comprised almost one-third of the SIHIP expenditure in 2008-09: close to $11m was spent on consultants and $22m on capital works. Intervention by the federal government last year led to a reduction in consultancy costs and a strengthening of accountability. Consultancy costs total 10 per cent of the SIHIP expenditure of $204m to date. SIHIP is due to deliver 750 houses and 2500 refurbishments in 73 remote Northern Territory communities by 2013. Natasha Robinson and Lex Hall , The Australian, 10 June 2010 |
Iran cheating on maritime sanctions
Parody of sanctions shows how nuclear weapons profileration works |
Avi Jorisch, former senior official in US Treasury Department, follows ayatollahs' efforts to obtain foreign currency, discovers that Iranian tentacles spread throughout world, even receive support from large banks in West. Money, as expected, even makes its way to nuclear program. According to the report, Iran Shipping Lines, known as Irisl, is in possession of 123 registered ships, however, a mere 46 of them are listed on paper under the ownership of the company or its subsidiaries. The other 73 ships (four more were sunk) in the company's possession are listed under shell companies erected in order to evade the US blacklist.
The shell companies are located far from Iran, in places like Malta, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Germany, and even the Isles of Man. However, the NYT report revealed that the American intelligence has uncovered the connection between most of the ships save 10 and Irisl. The company IHS Fairplay, a British-based company that issues merchant vessels their unique identification numbers and tracks them throughout their lifetimes and whose data analysis revealed the gap in Irisl's ship registrations, discovered that the 10 unaccounted for ships are currently operated by newly established companies located in Irisl facilities in Tehran, and not at the addresses provided to IHS Fairplay. Yitzhak Benhorin, Ynet, 8 June 2010 |
Israel subject to cultural terror
Artists intimidated to boycott Israel, says producer |
The Pixies band's decision to call off its Tel Aviv concert, which was scheduled to take place this Wednesday, has sparked a row in the local music industry. The American band followed in the footsteps of artists Santana and Elvis Costello, who cancelled their gigs in Israel for political reasons as well. Ever since the cancellation was announced Sunday morning, thousands of Israeli surfers have been posting angry messages on the band's Facebook page, saying that the group members "should be ashamed of themselves" and slamming the band for "supporting terror".
Producer Shuki Weiss, who promoted the band's concert in Israel, admitted Sunday that the cancellation was the result of "cultural terror against the State of Israel and against art in general". "I regret the fact that repeated attempts to bring good music to Israel and produce concerts and festivals of high quality fall victim of a series of political events, which are expressed in new patters of actions which I can only define as a type of cultural power against the State of Israel and art in general," said Weiss. "Intense pressure to boycott Israel – including threatening letters, commercial sanctions, cancellations of shows from influential countries – is being exerted by Arab and other elements on most artists (as well as writers, industrialists and others) across the world. Or Barnea, Ynet, 7 June 2010 |
Beware the words of a wolf dressed in sheikh's clothing
What does the Australian Human Rights Commission say about calls to religious war? |
Hilaly's latest message is clear. Turkey has turned against Israel. And Iran is ready, through its military and its foreign proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, to wage war against Israel. It has sent thousands of rockets to Lebanon and tried to do the same in Gaza, and is prepared to confront and destroy the Zionist entity, with Hilaly and his followers cheering them on.
Sharing the stage outside the Town Hall was Paul McAleer, the Sydney branch secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia. He chose his words carefully: ''This flotilla [confronting Israel's military blockade of Gaza] was hijacked by state-sanctioned murderers, who carry out their orders with deadly precision.'' State-sanctioned murderers who act with deadly precision. Sounds like Nazis.
The irony in McAleer's comments was elements of the union now known as the MUA functioned for decades as a criminal organisation, practising system-wide blackmail, extortion, intimidation, pilfering and featherbedding on the wharves. Paul Sheehan, The Age, 7 June 2010 |
Catholic bishop stabbed to death in Turkey
Sow incitement, reap a deadly harvest |
A Roman Catholic bishop has been stabbed to death in southern Turkey, state-run media report. Luigi Padovese, 63, was attacked in the garden of his summer house in the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun, according to Anatolia news agency. Police have arrested Bishop Padovese's driver, a man identified only as Murat A. He was suffering from psychological problems, the provincial governor said.
There has been a series of attacks on Christians in Turkey in recent years. Bishop Padovese, the Pope's apostolic vicar in Anatolia and an Italian national, died in the ambulance on the way to hospital. BBC, 3 June 2010 | |
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Welcome to ADC Webwatch, a weekly update on what the public is hearing about issues of race, tolerance and human rights. Skim the newsletter to stay abreast of the issues or click on the hyperlinks for more information.
ADC Webwatch is published by the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission, a community organisation dedicated to opposing antisemitism and racism and promoting respect and tolerance.
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