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1. Secular Egypt Opposition Head: Treaty with Israel - Bad
by Hillel Fendel
The leader of the secular Al-Ghad (Tomorrow) opposition party in Egypt,
Ayman Nour, says that the peace agreement with Israel "has ended" and
must be re-negotiated.
“In practice, the Camp David agreement [of 1979, in which
then-President Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel – ed.] has ended,” Dr.
Nour told an interviewer on Sunday, “because it is an old agreement,
and we must improve its conditions in a way that will correspond to
Egypt’s interests.”
The remarks are worrisome to Israel, as they come from a leader of a
non-Islamic party. The Tomorrow Party, in fact, was formed to represent
a secular liberal democratic perspective, with a strong interest in
human rights issues and political reform.
Nour, who sat in prison for over three years for his opposition to the
now-deposed Hosni Mubarak, ran for President of Egypt in 2005.
Officially, he received 7% of the vote, but is estimated to have
actually received 12-13%.
“Egypt’s rights in the Camp David agreement are very modest,” Nour
said. “Egypt will act with total equity towards all sides that want a
just peace in the region.”
2. PA Cabinet Resigning, Fayyad to Appoint New Ministers
by Gil Ronen
The Palestinian Authority's cabinet ministers will tender their
resignations Monday and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad will select new
ministers in their stead. The shake-up is being carried out at the
request of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, political sources told
international news agencies.
The shake-up was "long demanded by Fayyad and by some in Abbas's Fatah
faction," according to Reuters. It is perceived as part of a domino
effect in the Arab world, following the Tunisian and Egyptian
rebellions. A similar move has been announced in Jordan, as well.
"There will be massive change in the composition of the government,"
one political source said of the planned resignations in the PA. Another
source said some of the ministers who resign will keep their portfolios
in the new government. Fayyad himself, who is also submitting his
resignation, would be asked to stay on in the post he has occupied for
four years, Abbas has said.
In an interview with The Washington Post on Sunday, Fayyad said he was
confident that Egypt would continue to support the PA. "Why would I
presume that Egypt in the aftermath of this movement is going to be any
less supportive?" he asked. "Egyptian people are very supportive of the
Palestinian people."
The PA said it plans to hold elections July 9, but the move is being
opposed by Hamas. "The executive committee has decided to start
preparations for presidential and parliamentary elections in the coming
months... no later than September," the PLO's Yasser Abed Rabbo said
Saturday.
In response, Hamas called the planned polls "invalid" because "Abbas
has no legitimacy and is not fit to organize such elections."
3. Israel's 'Role' in Egypt
by Hillel Fendel
With Egypt refusing to drop from the news, anti-Israel columnists insist on dragging in - and blaming - Israel.
Thomas Friedman of The New York Times outdid himself in Sunday’s
column, writing that though “Israel was not part of this [uprising] at
all,” the “children of Egypt were having their liberation moment and the
children of Israel decided to side with Pharaoh – right to the very
end.”
“Israel today,” Friedman wrote, “has the most out-of-touch, in-bred,
unimaginative and cliché-driven cabinet it has ever had,” adding that
the White House became “thoroughly disgusted” with Israeli government
representatives.
Behind Friedman’s attack on Israel is his particular understanding of
the Egyptian uprising, touted unquestioningly by the liberal end of the
American political spectrum. Friedman believes that the rebellion is
about nothing more than the pursuit of “the most basic human rights…
freedom, dignity and justice.”
“What makes the uprising here so impressive,” according to Friedman,
“is precisely the fact that it is not owned by, and was not inspired by,
the Muslim Brotherhood. It is so much more powerful than that. As I
said, it is being propelled by the most basic, universal human emotions –
a quest for freedom, dignity and justice... It is not about anything
narrow, like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, America or Palestine. It
cannot easily be pigeon-holed and delegitimized. Most of all, it is not
about some populist upsurge that craves restarting the war with Israel.
It is all about a people who crave the chance to restart their own
future, their own lives.”
Yes, But What About the End?
The writer relates not at all to those who have shown that
historically, revolutions that begin in the pursuit of justice and
freedom often end up in the hands of dictatorial, fanatical,
war-mongering zealots.
Soros: Israel is the Main Stumbling Block
Another swipe against Israel was taken by billionaire George Soros, a
Hungarian-born Jew famous for blaming Israel and the Jews for
anti-Semitism. In his most recent column – in the Washington Post on
Feb. 3 – Soros wrote that Israel is the “main stumbling block” on the
path to peaceful transition in Egypt. In listing the concerns of some
who fear “adverse consequences of free elections in Egypt,” he equates
Israel’s “adamant” opposition to regime change with the fear that
“supply of oil from the region could be disrupted.”
Suissa's Rebuttal
David Suissa, CEO of Suissa Miller Advertising and a columnist for the
Jewish Journal in Los Angeles, responded to Soros and especially to
what he called Soros’ “luldicrous” claim that Israelis the “main
stumbling block.” Suissa wrote on JewishWorldReview.com, “As if some
real and concrete stumbling blocks aren't already there in Egypt, like a
history of anti-democratic regimes that have ruled the country since
before Israel was born; or the absence of myriad democratic institutions
that are essential to the flourishing of a civil society; or the
widespread dissemination of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and
anti-anything Western; or the fact that the only significant organized
group in the country - the Muslim Brotherhood - is enamored more with
the theocracy of Shariah law than the democracy of Thomas Jefferson.
Aren't these ‘made in Egypt’ stumbling blocks big enough for you? You
still had to find a way to squeeze in Israel as the main culprit?..."
"You, Mr. Soros, have been criticizing Israel for so long that you have
become that criticism," Suissa wrote. "Even when you are presented with
a glaring example of the value of Israel's open and civil society, you
refuse to give the country its due. You must criticize Israel, you must
find a way to blame it, because this is what you do - and this is who
you are.”
4. UN to PMW: Publicize Our Non-Involvement in Terror Promotion
by Hillel Fendel
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) publicized last week that a UN logo was
proudly featured on the website of an Arab campaign aggrandizing a
murderous female terrorist mastermind as a "role model for Arab women."
Following a United Nations denial
of its involvement, the UN has now asked PMW to publicize that despite
the claims of the campaign, it has nothing to do with it.
As one of its role models for Arab women, the Arab media campaign
listed Dalal Mughrabi. Mughrabi organized the worst single terror attack
ever to have hit Israel - the Coastal Road massacre of 1978 in which 37
civilians were murdered and 51 were wounded. Mughrabi is venerated in
the campaign's video clip as a role model for "martyrdom" and "victory
over enmity.” She has similarly been touted as a heroine throughout the Palestinian Authority, having had a city square, school and day camp named for her.
PMW
publicized that the campaign lists UNFPA (United Nations Population
Fund) as its partner. In light of that report, Itamar Marcus and
Nan Jacques Zilberdik of PMW write, UNFPA issued a press release
"disavowing" its involvement in the campaign. It also contacted PMW
and said it "would appreciate any kind action you [PMW] take as a result
of this information."
The press release stated that UNFPA "had no involvement in the
selection of women profiled in the 'White Hands Campaign' of the Arab
Producers' Union for TV (APUTV)." UNFPA added that it has asked that its
logo be removed from the site."
As role models for Arab women today, the Arab "White Hands" Campaign
chose to promote not only Dalal Mughrabi, but also 7th- century poetess
Al Khansa, famous for celebrating the martyrdom deaths of her children.
PMW further reports that the White Hands Campaign's English website is
no longer accesible, and the UNFPA logo no longer appears on the
campaign's Arabic website.
UNFPA emphasized that the organization was "neither consulted nor
involved in the selection of Arab women to be featured by the
initiative, and it condemns any acts of violence that take the lives of
innocent people. The Fund therefore disassociates itself from the
campaign activities." It said that in 2008, it had supplied the
campaign's organizers with "information and data on reproductive health
and youth issues," but that it "provided no funding."
5. Hamas Chief: China, India to Replace Failing US as Superpowers
by Hillel Fendel
The U.S. empire is in decline and will fall because of the country’s
“immorality,” promotion of “open sexuality,” and political “injustice,”
says Mahmoud al-Zahar, the chief of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Speaking with reporter Aaron Klein, Zahar also predicted the rise of
China and India as new world superpowers. He welcomed and blessed the
revolution in Egypt that led to the resignation of President Hosni
Mubarak, with whom the U.S. had a strong and supportive relationship up
to the day the revolution began.
After claiming that Americans "live like animals," Zahar went on to
deem the Egytian Muslim Brotherhood - the largest organized opposition
in Cairo - the “most moderate organization, the most democratic
organization, even more than the Western people.” Hamas is an offshoot
of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks to establish an Islamic
caliphate in Egypt.
Zahar was speaking by phone from Gaza to Jerusalem-based reporter Aaron Klein on Klein’s investigative program on New York’s WABC Radio.
This was the Hamas chieftain’s first public comments on the recent
chaos in Egypt. He predicted America’s downfall because “any state
without morality will not survive. Morality is not only having money.
Morality is having justice… Look to the British empire. Look to the
French empire. Look to the German power. What was the cause of their
destruction? Their immoralities. So I am not here fabricating or
inventing a story or a theory. This is well known."
He slammed U.S. culture while upholding Islamic Shariah law as the
template for a moral society: “Your [American] style is very bad style,
is animal style. Life like animals. You have one husband but you have
fifty thousand female girlfriends. And you have, the woman has one
husband and has many boyfriends. This is the animal style, this is not
the human style. The human style has one family, one husband, or two or
three [wives] according to our tradition if she [the first wife] has no
chance to deliver or to have pregnancy, or if she is sick or so on.”
He did not mention Chapter 4, verse 34 of the Koran, which states, “As
for those [wives] from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and
send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no
further action against them.”
Zahar pointed to Hamas’ official television network, Al Aqsa TV, as
espousing proper Islamic tradition and music, as opposed to the
immodesty seen on American TV – though, again, he did not discuss the
morality of the Hamas station’s espousal of violence and hatred against
Israel and Jews.
“We produce film, we produce songs, but it's committed to our morality,
not to your style,” Zahar said. He also castigated the U.S. for its
“injustice” against minorities, saying, “Ask the Christian people in
Egypt and the Christian people in Gaza about the Islamic law, that is
the only law that protected the minority whether they are Jews or
Christian.”
Klein confronted Zahar about reports of persecution of Christians in
Gaza under the rule of Hamas, but Zahar countered that these were
isolated cases.
6. Egypt Closes Entrance to Gazans Needing Medical Care
by Elad Benari
The uprising in Egypt has had adverse effects on Gaza’s residents, Al-Jazeera reported on Sunday.
Among those negatively affected are patients living in Gaza who are
slated for medical treatment in Egypt. They are unable to receive this
treatment because the Rafah crossing has been closed hermetically ever
since the protests began, said the report.
One of those patients is a 14-year-old boy who is suffering from kidney
failure and is awaiting a transplant in Cairo from his donor father.
The transplant has been put on hold due to the protests in Egypt,
forcing the boy to continue to undergo dialysis treatments.
“What is happening in Egypt should not be affecting our exit from Gaza,
because we are patients seeking treatment,” the boy’s father told
Al-Jazeera.
During normal operations, 500 Gazans are allowed to enter Egypt through
the Rafah crossing for various reasons every day. Since the
demonstrations began, instability in the northern part of the Sinai
Peninsula has caused Egyptian police officers to flee the area and close
the crossing.
In sharp contrast to the current situation in Egypt, Israel has
provided medical treatment to many Gazans, even during times of war.
One such example is Operation Cast Lead, when dozens of Gaza Arabs received medical treatment in Ashkelon's Barzilai Hospital even while terrorists were firing rockets into the city and the IDF was acting in Gaza.
In fact, statistics which have been released
have shown that in 2009, 10,544 patients and their companions left Gaza
to access medical care in Israel, and there were 382 emergency
evacuations from Gaza for medical purposes.
During the same 12-month period, approximately 4,883 tons of medical
equipment and medicine were delivered to the region, as well as medical
supplies such as wheelchairs, crutches, first aid kits, heart monitors,
baby feeding tubes, and much more.
Israel maintains a regular corridor for the transfer of medical
patients out of Gaza, and about 200 medical staff members pass through
the Erez Crossing terminal every month.
7. Switzerland to Fund 'Slander' Conference
by Maayana Miskin
A planned “peace” event at the end of the month is likely to turn into
an anti-Israel libel session, pro-Israel activists warned this week. The
event is to be funded in part by the Swiss government, and will include
a handful of Israeli MKs.
The event in question is a conference sponsored by the leftist American Jewish group J Street.
The only diplomat who plans to appear at the event is Swiss Ambassador
to the Middle East Jean-Daniel Ruch. When contacted by Israeli
investigative journalist David Bedein, Ruch explained that his
government continues to fund the Geneva Initiative, which in turn is
funding the J Street event.
MKs Orit Zuaretz (Kadima), Nachman Shai (Kadima), Shlomo Molla
(Kadima), and Amir Peretz (Labor) plan to attend, according to J Street
organizers.
Several far-Left Israeli groups plan to speak at the conference. Among
the groups involved are B'Tselem, Yesh Din, Rabbis for Human Rights and
Breaking the Silence, all of which have previously been caught libeling
Israel.
Israel Media Watch issued a warning
in 2010 not to trust B'Tselem's reports, after finding several
inaccuracies. For example, the group has often classified terrorists as
civilians in its casualty reports, in some cases reporting that slain PA
Arabs were unarmed civilians even when Arab sources report they were
killed fighting Israel.
Yesh Din and B'Tselem recently backed a false report accusing Jews in Samaria of burning an Arab man's sheep; the libel was revealed when the Arab admitted that Jews were not involved in the fire.
Rabbis for Human Rights head Arik Asherman was caught during the olive
harvest last fall attempting to convince PA Arabs to claim ownership of
Jewish farms. Yesh Din and B'Tselem were also implicated in olive harvest libel.
Asherman has also been accused of inciting violence by convincing Arabs to farm on Jewish land.
Breaking the Silence provides anonymous testimony from IDF soldiers
accusing Israel of war crimes. After the group accused the IDF of
deliberately killing civilians in Gaza, it was revealed that its reports
were widely based on rumors; the only crime a soldier claimed to have actually seen was that of minor vandalism.
J Street, which defines itself as “pro-America, pro-Israel, pro-peace,”
was formed as a left-wing lobbyist group, to counter traditionally
pro-Israel groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The organization faced embarrassment in 2010 when it was complimented in
a harshly anti-Israel report by the Presbyterian Church, and when it was revealed that George Soros, a billionaire known to be anti-Israel, provided much of its funding.
8. Bulgarian Jews Call for Truth on Country's Role in the Holocaust
by Elad Benari
Members of the Bulgarian Jewish community are calling on the government
of Bulgaria to reveal the truth over its interaction with the Jews
during the Holocaust.
A special address on this issue is planned to take place on March 1,
2011 at 7pm at The Sephardic Temple in Cedarhurst, New York, before an
audience of community members, activists, scholars and Holocaust
survivors.
March 1 was chosen as it is the 70th anniversary of the signing of the
pact uniting Bulgaria with Germany as Axis partners. A special report
will be released to the public on the same day by Sephardic historian,
author and independent scholar, Shelomo Alfassa. Alfassa has documented
how during World War II, the Bulgarian government was complicit in the
dispossession, torture and murder of thousands of Jews, and has also
documented how the Bulgarian government continues to whitewash this
fact.
Alfassa has found that while it is frequently retold that the Bulgarian
government chose not to deport some 50,000 Jews from Bulgaria to German
death camps in Poland, it is not revealed that Bulgaria was also
directly complicit in the murder of some 13,000 other Jews from their
lands of Bulgarian Thrace and Macedonia. These were mostly Judeo-Spanish
speaking Jews of Greek and Ottoman-Turkish descent.
“The Bulgarian government continues to pompously promote the fact that
they ‘saved’ (did not deport) one group of Jews (50,000), while not
disclosing the fact they indeed deported another group of Jews
(13,000),” said Alfassa. “The latter group was sent to their deaths at
Treblinka, a subject which is historically well documented.”
“These 13,000 Jews, which have been too often overlooked by history,
suffered horrible deaths with the direct participation and knowledge of
the Bulgarian government in their alliance and volunteer partnership
with the Nazis,” said Marcia Haddad Ikonomopoulos, President of the
Association of Friends of Greek Jewry. “It is time for Bulgaria to set
the record straight.”
The event on March 1 will, in fact, launch a larger campaign and will
be subsequently followed by a Northeast Regional Colloquium that will be
convened to discuss remedies to what has been described as Bulgaria's
continued “whitewashing” of their direct role in the murder of the
13,000 Jews. The colloquium will likely be held during the month of June
and will be entitled: “Ending 70 Years of Whitewashing and
Inaccuracies: the Bulgarian Government and its Treatment of Jews During
the Holocaust.”
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