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1. FIFA Bans Campaign to Free Shalit
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The world soccer federation FIFA has banned the waving of “Free Shalit” flags at the World Cup, calling it a political act. Fearing lawsuits and political recriminations, the Johannesburg Jewish Community Center called off a planned flag-waving protest at the World Cup finale between Spain and Holland Sunday.
The FIFA decision prevents the flags from being seen by hundreds of millions of viewers throughout the world who are expected to view the championship game. Shalit was kidnapped four years ago last month by Hamas and allied terrorists in an attack on an Israeli army checkpoint at a Gaza crossing.
“Free Shalit" flags have been seen at games at the South African stadium where the World Cup is being held, but the organized e-mail campaign for Sunday’s game prompted FIFA to officially ban the rally.
Hamas has not honored the Geneva Convention, which requires that Red Cross officials visit prisoners of war and act as mediators for communication with the victim’s family. His condition is not known.
In Israel, Shalit’s family has conducted a new media-sponsored campaign to free the soldier at “any price.” Counter-protestors have demonstrated for his release without any price, and have cited previous “price tag” releases of terrorists that have boomeranged, resulting in the deaths of nearly 200 Israelis by terrorists who were freed.
In England, Bnei Akiva youth movements gathered thousands of signatures from British citizens, in front of British Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing St. in London. Bnei Akiva UK Director Zak Jeffay said that several British Parliament members have signed the petition.
2. Arab MK Helped Libyan Ship; MK Ben-Ari: Sink it
by Hillel Fendel
Amid conflicting reports as to the destination of the blockade-busting Libyan ship, it has been learned that MK Ahmed Tibi was involved. MK Ben-Ari says it should be sunk, which would be a legal act if done within Israeli territorial waters.
Dr. Tibi, an Arab Knesset Member of the Raam-Taal party and past official advisor to Yasser Arafat, confirmed Sunday morning that he had been in touch with the organizers of a Libyan ship headed eastward. The captain originally said he was headed for Gaza, in an attempt to break Israel’s naval blockade, and Libyan backers repeated again today that this is still their plan.
It was reported last night that Israeli diplomatic efforts had borne fruit and that the boat would set anchor in Egypt instead.
Tibi said he gave the organizers a list of medicines needed in Gaza. The ship is reportedly laden with 2,000 tons of food and medicines.
Meanwhile, MK Dr. Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) said he believes that this latest threat against Israeli sovereignty should be met with force. “In order to stop this flood that could lead to dozens of ships and thousands of refugees storming our borders, this ship should be sunk.”
“This is the only way they will realize that we are ‘crazy’ and that we will do whatever necessary to defend our right to exist,” Ben-Ari said. “It will cost us in the short run, but will have great benefits in the long run.”
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the Libyan ship is an “unnecessary provocation… Goods can be delivered to Gaza via our Ashdod port, after they are properly checked. We will not allow weapons and the like for combat-supporters in Gaza. We advise the ship to allow itself to be escorted to Ashdod, or to sail directly to El-Arish [Egypt].”
3. Obama Changes ‘Pressure Point,’ Phones Abbas to Push for Talks
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Prime Minister Netanyahu announced candidly while in the USA that he is waiting and willing for direct negotiations without precoditions. That seems to have shifted the focus of U.S. efforts from monitoring building in Jerusalem to requesting face to face talks from the PA. U.S. President Barack Obama changed his “phone diplomacy” target Friday, calling Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in an attempt to push the PA into beginning direct talks with Israel on a new PA state.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had been on the receiving end of most of the president’s phone calls to regional leaders in his demands for more Israeli concessions to Abbas to coax him into direct talks. President Obama book-ended his phone call with Abbas with flowery praise for his efforts to bring about the establishment of the PA as a country, but the point of his call was clear: stop dilly-dallying and start talking.
The call came only three days after Prime Minister Netanyahu met with the president at the White House for an 80-minute one-on-one meeting. Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abou Rudeina said that the PA chairman assured President Obama of his commitment "to a peace process that is serious and continuous, and which leads to the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories."
The White House was more open in its recap of the phone call. ”He [President Obama] and President Abbas reviewed ways to advance to direct talks in the near term," according to a statement from the Obama government. The phone call was widely viewed as “reflecting President Obama's ambition, or impatience to some extent, to push Israel and the Palestinians to make peace deal as soon as possible.” Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.
President Obama clearly threw the ball into Abbas’ court several months after Prime Minister Netanyahu surrendered to pressure from Washington. The Israeli leader not only agreed to stop new construction for Jews in Judea and Samaria but also placed an unofficial de facto freeze on new building in parts of Jerusalem claimed by the PA.
Abbas has held out for an official and permanent declaration from Israel that it will stop allowing more building for Jews in the same areas. President Obama previously has not pressured Abbas, but the near-solid opposition in the Israeli coalition government to extending the building freeze apparently has also frozen any American hopes for a new coalition that would include the left of center Kadima party.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has pounded away at the theme that he is ready for direct talks and that the PA is the stumbling block. "I think it's high time to begin direct talks, “the Prime Minister said in Washington last week. “ I think with the help of President Obama, President Abbas and myself should engage in direct talks to reach a political settlement of peace, coupled with security and prosperity.”
One sign that Abbas is retreating is his spokesman’s denial that Abbas added more conditions for face-to-face discussions with Israel. Although the conditions were clearly stated to the BBC last week, “Abbas had not drawn up conditions," according to spokesman Abu Rudeineh.
Abbas’ next stop is the Arab League, with which he will consult on how to respond to President Obama. He has drilled into the Arab public that he will stand fast against direct talks without a total building freeze and Israel’s acceptance of the 1949 Armistice lines as the borders of a PA country.
4. PA Intelligence Agent: Hamas and Fatah Plotting to Kill Fayyad
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Fatah and Hamas leaders are plotting to kill Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad because he is becoming more popular than PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, according to a senior PA intelligence agent quoted by Arab activist and writer Fadi Elsalameen.
"Hamas and Fatah agree only on one thing: getting rid of Fayyad by hook or crook,” the agent, identified only as “J,” told Elsalameen, who runs the PalestineNote.com web site. “They will kill him if need be, and this is the only issue they work on together. Fatah wants the Ministry of Finance, and Fayyad refuses and threatens to resign every time they bring this up. No one has loyalty to him."
Elsalameen, who also is a leader in the American-funded Seeds for Peace program, wrote that the senior intelligence agent also complained to him that “all I'm doing is chasing Hamas guys for Fatah, and now in the strangest circumstances, Fatah and Hamas are plotting together.”
The agent also revealed that Fayyad acts as though he is not aware of the assassination plan. “Fayyad thinks he commands the loyalty of the security apparatuses, but he doesn't.” he said. “
Elsalameen wrote, “This is a dangerous sign. The fact that Fatah and Hamas could disagree on every national agenda item but agree on the elimination of Fayyad is sinister and telling. If Palestine is to be established as a legitimate state, dirty backroom dealings to squeeze out an inflexible political element must come to an end."
5. Compliment in Presbyterian Report Embarrasses J-Street
by Gil Ronen
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) convening in Minneapolis will debate this week whether to endorse an official church study committee report that compares Israel to the worst regimes of the 20th century, including Nazi Germany. The report, which also mentions ultra-liberal Jewish lobby group J Street as a sign of “hope,” seems to have embarrassed that group.
J Street Vice President Rachel Lerner called out to the Presbyterians to reject the 'study.' She said that the report’s authors never consulted her group before choosing to mention it.
She added that “with the passage of this study, the Church will alienate us and as a result our activists will not want to work with you and this will damage completely the possibility of a future relationship.” She said she was “saddened” and “angered” by the report. However, Lerner clarified that even if the study is adopted, J-Street will not be issuing a directive to its local branches to cease partnering with local Presbyterian churches.
Presbyterian Alan Wisdom also asked his fellow church members to reject the report. In his testimony in Minneapolis, he said that the report likens Israel to a “Nazi state,” to South Africa under apartheid, and to the former Soviet Union.
Wisdom was quoted by Mark Tooley, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, in an article in FrontPage Magazine.
The report mentioned Hamas as being “militant” but fails to note that its charter calls for Israel’s annihilation. It also claims that Iran poses no danger even if it acquires nuclear weapons because it “has not invaded any other country for centuries.” The study further urges that the U.S. cut off aid to the Jewish state in order to “bring Israel to compliance.”
New York Times religion reporter Gus Niebuhr, grand nephew of pro-Zionist Christian ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr, warned fellow Presbyterians that the “terribly imbalanced” report would “obscure” Presbyterian influence in America.
Niebuhr was joined by Presbyterian pastor and Christian Century magazine publisher John Buchanan.
“Early reports suggest Presbyterians will tone down the report somewhat,” Tooley wrote, “more explicitly affirming Israel’s right to existence and deleting some of the harsher anti-Israel rhetoric.”
In June 2004, the U.S. Presbyterian Church's General Assembly adopted a resolution that called on the church "to initiate a process of phased, selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel."
6. Study Shows that Beinisch Prefers Left-Wing Groups
by Hillel Fendel
The Regavim Association has issued a report showing that the Supreme Court gives blatant preferential treatment to left-wing associations.
Regavim’s full name is the Association for the Preservation of State Lands –i.e. from being taken over by hostile elements. Its report is based on the results of a four-year study of the Supreme Court’s approach to law suits brought by various groups – and especially in the pre-ruling stages, when the legal merits of the various cases are not yet known.
The report shows the Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, in particular, is biased towards the left wing.
The preferential treatment towards lawsuits brought by the left wing is manifest in the following areas: Rushed proceedings, Beinisch’s participation on the judicial panel, the issuance of restraining orders against the State, intervention in government decisions, and especially the final rulings.
The report includes many petitions brought against illegal construction, Jewish and Arab. The seriousness with which suits against Jewish construction is taken is shown to be much greater than similar petitions against illegal Arab building.
“The Court’s approach to the various suits brought before it was analyzed based on objective and quantifiable parameters,” the report states, “and the findings show clearly that while left-wing petitions receive serious and rigorous consideration, similar suits brought by those identified with the right-wing [nationalist camp] are treated lightly and with derision.”
Among the parameters analyzed were the time it took for the Court to respond to a petition; the number of sessions held on the matter and the duration over which they were spread out; the panel of justices appointed to deal with them; and the issuance of restraining and interim orders.
Regavim explains that its report concentrated on the procedural matters of a given suit, which take place before its merits are considered. “At this stage,” the report’s author, Betzalel Smutrich, explains, “the decisions reflect the judges’ basic positions and biases, if any, towards the matter. This is why the tremendous differences between the right-wing and left-wing petitions, as we show in the report, cannot be attributed to scholarly legal hairsplitting.”
“The facts described in the report clearly indicate a consistent and conscious policy that is based on political outlooks,” Smutrich says, “and it is led unequivocally by Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch.”
Smutrich stopped short of calling for Beinisch to disqualify herself from political lawsuits, however – presumably because she is not likely to do so.
“The public cannot be expected to place its trust in its judges under such circumstance,” he concluded.
7. Polish Neo-Nazi Art Features X-Rated Mickey Mouse
by Hana Levi Julian
Nazi art is starting to make a comeback in Poland, this time using the well-loved Disney character, Mickey Mouse, on a controversial public poster that has outraged at least one official.
The work by Italian artist Max Papeschi is stretched across the top of a building in the center of Poznan, a city in western Poland.
The poster, hung by a new art gallery to advertise an exhibition, features a 1940s-style “pin-up” model wearing a Mickey Mouse mask, against a huge background of a Nazi swastika. A slogan beneath reads, “Poznan – the capital of world-class art.” An Internet web site advertised on the poster promotes an X-rated art exhibition which originates in Germany but is slated to arrive in Poland by September.
Although vandals ripped a huge hole in the two-story-high poster, the gallery immediately replaced it with a new one.
City council member Norbert Napieraj told the AFP news service that the poster violates a law banning the display of Nazi symbols. “For Poles, the swastika symbolizes the suffering and death of more than six million Poles,” he said. “Exhibiting this symbol in the city center is a particularly disgraceful and disgusting act.” At least half of all Polish citizens who died at the hands of the Nazi death machine were Jewish, and killled because of their being Jewish, sometimes with the help of Poles and Polish partisans, wiping out 90 percent of the Jews in the country.
The gallery's curator, Maria Czarnecka, defended her decision to hang the poster. “We don't have to remove it, since it's a work of art. If it were just a swastika, it would be promoting Nazi symbols – but the law allows such symbols to be used in academic and artistic contexts,” she added.
A spokeswoman for the public prosecutor told AFP on Friday that no legal action would be taken against the gallery, since “it did not break the law.”
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