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Month: October 2012
October 9, 2012
The Atlantic and Wolfensohn’s Strawberries
A Palestinian looter carries away equipment from a hothouse donated by James Wolfensohn and other Jewish American donors (2005 Photo by Emilio Morenatti /AP)The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons gives a highly selective account of James Wolfensohn’s involvement with Gaza’s strawberry crops to make the argument that Israel’s occupation prevents the Palestinian economy from growing. Just like his distorted account of Wolfenshon and the strawberries, his larger thesis does not take into account any Palestinian responsibility for their economic problems. About the former head of the World Bank, Clemons writes:
Wolfensohn invested his own money in an effort to get Palestinian-grown strawberries to markets in Europe and worked out deals with the Israelis and established a greenhouse project and processing infrastructure at Israel’s Karni Crossing. To make a long and sad story short, even the great James Wolfensohn failed to overcome Israeli arbitrariness in what it allowed and didn’t in terms of earnest Palestine commerce with the rest of the world.
What does Clemons forget to mention about Wolfensohn and Gaza’s strawberries? When Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, Wolfensohn organized American Jewish donors to buy Gaza hothouses from settlers and hand them over to the Palestinians, who proceded to vandalize and loot them, as opposed to make use of them. Wolfensohn put up $500,000 of his own money. As the Associated Press reported at the time:
Palestinians looted dozens of greenhouses on Tuesday, walking off with irrigation hoses, water pumps and plastic sheeting in a blow to fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip.
American Jewish donors had bought more than 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers in Gaza for $14 million last month and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who brokered the deal, put up $500,000 of his own cash.
Palestinian police stood by helplessly Tuesday as looters carted off materials from greenhouses in several settlements, and commanders complained they did not have enough manpower to protect the prized assets. In some instances, there was no security and in others, police even joined the looters, witnesses said. . . .
The failure of the security forces to prevent scavenging and looting in the settlements after Israel’s troop pullout Monday raised new concerns about Gaza’s future.
October 9, 2012
LA Times Misleads About Hamas in Bank Hacking Story
Bank of America was one of several American financial institutions attacked by a group identifying itself as the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters A Los Angeles Time article about a Middle Eastern hacker attack on American banks whitewashes Hamas. E. Scott Reckard, Andrew Tangel and Jim Puzzanghera report:
The attacks on banks began last week on the largest institutions in the country: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. They spread to Wells Fargo on Tuesday and U.S. Bank on Wednesday. Another attack has been threatened against PNC Financial Services on Thursday.
The U.S. government and banks have been working feverishly to learn more about the attackers. A financial executive not authorized to speak publicly described a “war room” where bankers were coordinating efforts with the Department of Homeland Security.
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam is the name of the military wing of Hamas, the political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Experts say the attacks appear to have originated from the Middle East, thought it isn’t clear who is behind them or the motivation. (Emphasis added.)
But Hamas isn’t merely “the political party that governs the Gaza Strip.” It’s also been designated as a terror organization by American (as well as European and Israeli) authorities.
Hamas’ designation as a terror group is more than slightly relevant to a story about shadowy Middle Eastern hackers named after a wing of Hamas. Why in the world would the Times withhold this critical information from American readers?
October 5, 2012
Texas Pastor Jokes With Morsi
Bob Roberts, Jr. speaking at the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference in Bethlehem in March, 2012.In an article published at PJ Media on Oct. 4, CAMERA Analyst Dexter Van Zile details how Texas Pastor Bob Roberts exchanged pleasantries with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, “the man who can do more than anyone else in the world to protect the safety and well being of more than eight million Coptic Christians who are under siege in their homeland.” He writes:
(more…)October 2, 2012
The New York Times and “Zionist” Innuendo
A “Zionist” is nothing more than someone who supports Israel’s right to exist as the national home of the Jewish people.
This means that, notwithstanding attempts by anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activists to redefine the term, virtually all American Jews, minus a few isolated but outspoken outliers, are Zionists.
So it was somewhat odd to read the second paragraph of the Sept. 27 New York Times story, “Republicans Intensify Drive to Win Over Jewish Voters”:
… the Republican Jewish Coalition, backed mostly by the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a Zionist, has begun spending $6.5 million on an air-and-ground strategy to reach Jewish voters who may view Mr. Obama as unreliable on the question of Israel’s security. Jewish voters, who generally vote for Democrats in big numbers, overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama in 2008, giving him 78 percent of their vote, according to exit polls …
Why did reporter Lizette Alvarez go out of her way to describe Adelson as a Zionist? It’s certainly true that the Republican funder is a Zionist. But it’s also certainly true that an “overwhelming” majority of Jews who supported Obama are likewise Zionists. A Luntz Global/CAMERA poll found that 94 percent of American Jews would consider it a “tragedy” if Israel “no longer existed tomorrow,” and the poll’s cross tabs reveal that 93.7 percent of Jews who voted for Obama feel this way.
Again, people who support Israel’s right to exist — including but not limited to the subset of people who think it would be a “tragedy” if it ceased to exist — are Zionists.
But the lexical waters lately have been muddied.
It’s not just that bigots have taken to using the word “Zionist” euphemistically, as a way to attack Jews without saying the word “Jew.” (See, for example, the video segment in which David Duke begins to say “Jewish” but quickly corrects himself when complaining to CNN about impositions “from the Je… from the Zionist domination of American foreign policy.”)
It’s not just the absurd mantra of radicals who insist, “I don’t hate Jews, I hate Zionists,” as if it is reasonable to claim you aren’t against Jews, but are only against the vast majority of Jews — those who feel their people should not be discriminated against in a world that believes “all peoples have the right of self-determination.”
The problem is also that others, including the mainstream Daily Beast on a Web page curated by Peter Beinart, have promoted the false claim that it is impossible to be both Zionist and liberal. Some pretend that Zionist means you support a particular war, or belong to a particular party. And if you redefine the term “Zionist,” you distort the meaning of a concept that formed the bedrock of the renewal of Jewish national rights, and undermine the philosophical defense of those rights.
It is an uncomfortable reality for Israel haters that Zionism is not a partisan issue in the U.S. That is, unless and until anti-Israel activists, or sloppy writing in the New York Times, succeed at retrofitting a new definition to the word.
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