Coteret

Diskin

In May 2007, the current head of Israel’s internal security agency, the General Security Service (GSS aka Shabak and Shin Bet), Yuval Diskin, unilaterally revolutionized his agency’s mandate.  Disken was responding to a request by Adalah to clarify the scope of the GSS’s authority to investigate Israeli citizens, Haaretz reported:

The Shin Bet security service believes it is within its charter to carry out surveillance operations, such as phone taps, on individuals deemed as “conducting subversive activity against the Jewish identity of the state,” even if their actions are not in violation of the law.

The announcement was made a month before the 40th anniversary of 1967 war, the moment when Israel became a border-less country embroiled in a never ending internal security war. Under these conditions, it may have been just a matter of time before unaccountable security services inserted themselves into the political sphere of a nation lacking a constitution and a bill of rights. Indeed, Diskin was probably only formally publicizing a long standing practice.

Still, the fact that this development barely registered in the Israeli public debate was remarkable. Part of the explanation for the silence is that those with the power to influence this debate — Jewish Israelis — did not feel threatened. The GSS was investigating the politics of Palestinian citizens. Jews were immune. No comparison and all that, but those who remained silent then are now learning that Martin Niemoller’s lesson, as expressed in “First they came,” is applicable anywhere a society allows the freedoms of minorities to be compromised.

Even when the GSS became a tool in the latest incarnation of the government-sponsored, NGO Monitor-led, campaign to suppress the Israeli human rights community — Im Tirzu’s assault on the NIF — the “mainstream” opposition was nowhere to be found. Nor was the silence broken yesterday (March 24 2010), when politicians called on the security agency to investigate Peace Now for treason, because of the suspicion that it had leaked the embarrassing story of new East Jerusalem construction just ahead of the Obama-Netanyahu summit.

Ramon

Therefore, it is hard to resist a little Schadenfreude that a senior Kadima leader — Haim Ramon — is the latest victim of creeping fifth-columnization, now apparently a convenient weapon even in run-of-the-mill coalition-opposition fracas.

This morning’s media (March 25 2010) was a PR disaster for Netanyahu: Everywhere  the Prime Minister’s trip to US was billed as a fiasco. Everywhere, that is, except Sheldon Adelson’s Israel Hayom, whose front-page provided a scapegoat (full translated text at bottom):

The senior officials say that according to information recently obtained by intelligence agencies that was placed on the desk of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak, Ramon is working with senior PA officials to prevent negotiations from being launched between Jerusalem and Ramallah.  According to this information, PA sources confirmed this.  It was also said that other figures in Kadima might be partners Ramon’s activity.  Political sources say that Ramon has been urging Palestinian and European figures to wait for Kadima to come to power, saying that this would make it possible to launch negotiations under better conditions for them.

In 2007, by the way, the government was lead by Kadima and Ramon was one of the most influential figures in the party.

—–

Officials: Ramon working with PA to obstruct the start of peace negotiations

Matti Tuchfeld, Israel Hayom, March 25 2010 [front-page]

Kadima Council Chairman Haim Ramon is working to sabotage the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians — say high-ranking political officials.

The senior officials say that according to information recently obtained by intelligence agencies that was placed on the desk of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak, Ramon is working with senior PA officials to prevent negotiations from being launched between Jerusalem and Ramallah.  According to this information, PA sources confirmed this.  It was also said that other figures in Kadima might be partners Ramon’s activity.  Political sources say that Ramon has been urging Palestinian and European figures to wait for Kadima to come to power, saying that this would make it possible to launch negotiations under better conditions for them.

Likud sources recently said that Ramon is surrounded by a number of people with whom he maintains close friendships.   Read more…

Foxman

In a Tuesday (March 16 2010) interview with the Jerusalem Post, the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman took criticism of the US administration’s handling of the current confrontation to a new frontier

Israel should immediately battle a charge emerging in the US that its actions are endangering the lives of US soldiers, because it is a particularly “pernicious” argument that “smacks of blaming the Jews for everything.”

Later in the in the article we learn that the purveyor of this blood libel is no other than Vice President Biden himself

US Vice President Joe Biden was quoted by Yediot Aharonot last week as telling Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in an angry exchange over the Ramat Shlomo incident, that “this is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Biden was quoted as saying. “That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”

Petraeus

Petraeus and the CENTCOM top brass, however, are the authors

On Saturday, the Foreign Policy magazine Web site ran a story saying that the commander of the US Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, sent a briefing team to the Pentagon at the beginning of the year “with a stark warning: America’s relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America’s soldiers.”

This conflation of criticism of Israeli policies with “blaming the Jews,” is dangerous. Think of the position of the family of a US soldier in Afghanistan. They could, quite reasonably, believe both Petraeus’ anlaysis and Foxman’s assertion of its implications. Making them patriotically “anti-Semitic.”

Hopefully, mainstream Jewish-Americans have already realized that they need to curb Foxman’s recklessness and it is referenced here for a different reason: as a prelude to an account of what appears to be a coordinated and aggressive anti-Obama campaign in the Israeli media aimed at the Israeli public.

For an Israeli media consumer, Tuesday morning appeared as the launch of a focused messaging campaign: The crisis was engineered by Obama to subvert Israeli democracy and topple Netanyahu.

A prominent Jewish-American neoconservative, Elliot Abrams, led the charge in an IDF Radio interview [full transcript and link to recording below].

The administration was very hostile to the Netanyahu government. They were hostile before he did anything. So the argument you can make is that they really don’t like dealing with the Netanyahu government and that they want to see if they can get rid of it and bring down the coalition.

In parallel, the front page of Yisrael Hayom, Sheldon Adelson’s Netanyahu fanzine ran two aggressive articles by Israeli neoconservatives.

Amidror

Under the headline “Facing the international left,” Yaacov Amidror, a retired Israeli General and now a program director at Netanyahu confidant Dore Gold’s Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, asserted (full translated text here)

The administration chiefs, as well as New York and Tel Aviv reporters — those who do not like the fact that a right-wing government was elected in Israel against their will — are trying to seize the opportunity of the regrettable mistake to drive Israel to its knees.  The State of Israel, its government, and it citizens must not crack under this pressure, applied by the international left that is exploiting the mistake Israel made to besmirch and exert unfair pressure on it.

Idar

Facing Amidror’s op-ed was another by Dror Idar, Yisrael Hayom’s deputy editor and a fellow at the The Jewish Statesmanship Center for Strategic Planning entitled “Obama’s mistake” (full translated text here)

According to senior government members, the basic assumption when dealing with the crisis is that we are looking a series of premeditated events that are meant to replace the Israeli Government with one that would be more “convenient” for Obama.

Readers of the three items not another underlying message: Obama picked the wrong battle with Netanyahu. The Israeli public will rise up to support him as he singlehandedly defends Jerusalem against the foreign usurper.

—–

Interview with Elliot Abrams

Morning Newsmagazine, IDF Radio, March 16 2010 07:11 [Click here to listen to recording]

Micha Friedman: Elliot Abrams is a name that hasn’t been in the news for some months, because the man, a key figure in the George W. Bush Jr. administration, hasn’t been in the news since the administration went over to the Democrats headed by Obama. Abrams, a warm Jew, who is involved up to his ears in the Israeli-Palesitnian conflict, gave an interview today to Bar Shem Or, our foreign affairs correspondent, and says some particularly harsh things about his president, Barack Obama. Good morning to Bar Shem Or.

Elliot Abrams and an associate

Bar Shem Or: Hello Micha, good morning. Senior officials in Washington continue to attack Benjamin Netanyahu. The liberal media justified the White House’s actions, but this morning we are bringing you different voices from America. We held a special interview with Elliot Abrams, who played key roles during the Bush administration and is considered a foreign relations expert. He is also very close to the former president. Among other things Abrams served as the deputy national security adviser. He was responsible for the Middle East. He is a conservative Republican and has a lot of resentment towards the current president and his advisors, and he is a Jew. This morning he tells us the crisis between Israel and America was not created by Netanyahu’s decisions but only by Barack Obama.Elliott Abrams [English]: The Obama administration is to blame for creating this crisis. There was no real reason for it. If it continues it will turn into a strategic mistake because it will really harm the relationship between the United States and Israel.

BSO [Hebrew]: Blame for creating the crisis is all the Obama administration’s, says Abrams. Obama had no real reason to create it. Therefore if this crisis continues, it will be a strategic mistake that harms the US-Israel relationship. We asked Abrams why he thinks Obama decided to create this crisis, and here is his very surprising answer:

Elliott Abrams [English]: The administration was very hostile to the Netanyahu government. They were hostile before he did anything. So what argument you can make is that they really don’t like dealing with the Netanyahu government and that they want to see if they can get rid of it and bring down the coalition.

BSO [Hebrew]: The Obama administration was hostile to Netanyahu from the beginning, even before Netanyahu had done anything. Therefore the theory I can think of, says Abrams, is that the Obama administration simply does not like, and does not want to deal with Netanyahu, and therefore it is trying to get rid of him and to bring down his right-wing coalition. Beyond political considerations, Abrams claims that the current situation harms the peace process and toughens the Palestinians’ positions.Elliott Abrams: If the White House is saying, ‘this is terrible, this is a crisis,’ of course the Palestinians are going to say the same thing. It’s very bad for the possibility of negotiations because it means the Palestinians will demand more and more preconditions.

BSO [Hebrew]: If the White House claims that building new housing units in East Jerusoing to say the same thing. The latest admonitions by senior White House officials harm the negotiations because they actually make the Palestinians climb up higher trees and demand more preconditions. Abrams claims that during the Bush administration the term “preconditions” did not exist in the lexicon of the negotiation process. But that whole approach was invented by the current administration, and here is a very interesting point that Abrams brings up from the past, which can even be called a kind of full disclosure. When I worked in the White House, Abrams tells us, we knew that we must not demand Israel freeze construction in East Jerusalem.

Read more…

Ofer Neiman is a co-editor of Occupation Magazine. He is a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science, teaches computer science and also works as a translator.

Sloppy McCarthyism is still McCarthyism: From the lectern of the Israel Academia Monitor

On the art of using invented headlines as “proof”

Steinberg

Recent years have seen the flourishing of various right-wing “monitoring groups”, claiming to act in the name of truth and justice, in order to expose those evil ones among us “scheming against Israel” (a euphemism for taking action against apartheid, racism and war crimes committed in our name). In the past few weeks, we have also witnessed one-sided attempts to block funds going to Israeli peace and human rights NGOs or smear and even muzzle Israeli peace and human rights activists.

Coteret has covered the honorable Prof. Gerald Steinberg and his NGO Monitor‘s attempts at silencing our criticism of Israeli policies. However, the jewels in the crown of a vast McCarthyite US-Israeli network may be those academic monitoring groups which keep a watchful eye on lecturers and students who have the nerve to criticize American or Israeli human rights violations. Most US-based readers are probably familiar with fifth columnist hunter Daniel Pipes and his

Pipes

Campus Watch. Another monitoring group is Haifa University Dr. Steven Plaut‘s IsraCampus. Plaut is a rather vociferous fellow. A few years ago he smeared dedicated Israeli peace activist Dr. Neve Gordon as a ”Judenrat Wannabe”, which resulted in the filing of a successful libel suit by Neve. Plaut seems to be consistent in his reluctance to mince words.

It turns out that IsraCampus has a little sister, called the Israel Academia Monitor (IAM). According to various publications, IAM is run by one Dana Barnett, whose righteous views are presented here (Hebrew), in an interview with Israeli Channel One TV’s Keren Neubach. Note that around minute 03:00 Barnett vehemently denies allegations that her NGO is all about silencing dissenting

Plaut

voices. She speaks in the name of “academic excellence”, and argues that IAM merely monitors all forms of political activity by lecturers (carried out at the expense of academic duties.) Well, not exactly…

This writer has been communicating with the IAM for some time now (let it be known, for the sake of full disclosure, that his support of terrorism had been exposed by an IAM headline). The following excerpts from various exchanges should speak for themselves. The often frustrating exchanges beg a sigh of frustration along the lines of O sancta simplicitas! One should bear in mind that a great deal of harm has been done throughout history by righteous useful idiots.

If it is of any comfort, please note that our eloquent opponents are not always united, and that trouble may erupt in the McCarthyite paradise too.

Now, without any further delay, let us delve into the wonderful world of IAM polemics (with pearls of spelling and grammar left untouched).

——–

Read more…

Professor Aeyal Gross is a faculty member  in the law faculty of Tel Aviv University, a guest lecturer at the University of London, and research fellow  at the Human Rights  Program at Harvard Law School. His bio is available at www.aeyalgross.com. A Hebrew version of this article was published on Prof. Gross’s blog this morning (February 2 2010.)

Other recent posts on the latest wave of suppression of dissent in Israel | Essays Hadas Ziv; Hagai El-Ad; Yariv Mohar | News and analysis IDF joins assault on Israeli human rights community; Israeli media goes after New Israel Fund: “Responsible for Goldstone Report”; Hagee and CUFI fund anti-NIF campaign organizer |

Could it be the end? Killing the messenger, part 2

When I published my “Killing the Messenger” article on International Human Rights Day, I described, so it appears, not only things that had happened by then, but also things that have gotten worse over the weeks since.  A letter from human rights groups to the Israeli prime minister described a chain of attacks on HR organizations.  The arrests of demonstrators in Sheikh Jarrah and the attack on the New Israel Fund are two important and recent developments in this context.  The arrests continued even though the courts have repeatedly stated that the protest vigils held there are  legal and require no permit.  The arrests of demonstrators gained some media attention after ACRI Executive Director Hagai El-Ad was arrested too, though the point was not, as El-Ad remarked, the fact that he was placed in custody.  These arrests cannot be dissociated from the attacks against human rights organizations, on which I elaborated in a previous article.  Again, they go after the messenger.  We should pay attention to the way these attacks make the focus of discussion shift from the wrongdoing in Sheikh Jarrah to issues such as freedom of expression and protest, important as they may be, though in this case it seems that protests against the attempts to deny the freedom of expression draw attention to the issue at hand.

The recent attack against the New Israel Fund and Prof Naomi Chazan by an organization whose name I would not even mention here set a new record in ugliness and fascist conduct.

Plenty of information is being published on these topics in recent days.  I wish to thank those who write about these issues more frequently than I do, and recommend that you watch for the various articles, including by ACRI.  When we put together the attacks against human rights organizations, the continuation of the appalling situation in the territories, the exacerbated and continuous settlers violence against the Palestinians, and the fact that the army and the police are indifferent at best, and cooperate with them in the worst case scenario (several recent TV reports showed things we have known for quite a long time), we are left with a very heavy feeling concerning the ever-worsening situation of what was left, if at all, from the Israeli democracy.  As explained before, the state of continued occupation itself is denying the basic foundations of democracy.  Now, we witness a series of attacks against bodies that try to revive whatever was left of that democracy.  The threat posed by and the danger entailed in those attacks cannot be overstated.

If there is any consolation here, it is Read more…

It appears that Palestinian incitement is back in Israel’s public advocacy arsenal.

Netanyahu

From a Jerusalem Post report on Sunday’s (January 10 2010) Israeli cabinet meeting:

Basing himself on information provided by the Palestinian Media Watch, Netanyahu said that “incitement continues in the Palestinian media and education system; in its official media outlets and in the schools under its supervision. These serious actions represent a harsh violation of the Palestinians’ international obligation to prevent incitement. I say to the chairman of the Palestinian Authority [Mahmoud Abbas]: Stop the incitement. This is not how peace is made.”

From a report in the January 7 2010 edition of Haaretz:

The Prime Minister’s Office issued a complaint to the White House several days ago lamenting ongoing incitement against Israel by Palestinian leaders.

In the complaint, senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office urged their American counterparts to demand that Palestinians President Mahmoud Abbas cease to glorify the memory of terrorists who murdered Israelis. The complaint went on to insist that the Palestinians live alongside Israelis peacefully and spread peace. [...]

This complaint is the first of its kind — against Palestinian incitement — to gain media attention in Israel, after many years during which Israel largely refrained from making official complaints, or delivered these complaints discreetly to the Palestinian president.

Rabbi Yisrael Rosen

Haaretz’s Akiva Eldar demonstrates this morning (January 12 2010; full annotated text after the cut) that on this issue Netanyahu is throwing stones from within a glass house:

“Shabbat Beshabato,” [is] a weekly pamphlet on the Torah portion distributed in thousands of copies to synagogues all over Israel. Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, the founder of the Conversion Authority and head of the Tsomet Institute of Halacha and Technology [Hebrew], wrote in the most recent edition that “the time has come ‘to declare war’ on the Israeli Arabs, and of course on the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria, who are not loyal to the state, using clear tests to determine this, and to designate them as ‘enemies.’” [...]

What kind of enlightened democracy finances a body that is behind the publication of unacceptable remarks against its citizens? The Tsomet Institute, like quite a few “rogue elements” (such as the Od Yosef Hai Shechem yeshiva, whose rabbi, Yitzhak Shapira, permits the killing of gentile babies) receives thousands of shekels annually from the state. In 2007-2008, Tsomet received from the Science and Technology Ministry over NIS 580,000, and another NIS 100,000 or so from the Ministry of Education, as well as NIS 200,000 from the Gush Etzion Regional Council.

Yisrael Rosen and his institute are known in the US for their Kosher technological solutions the problems posed by a modern observant life. In Israel, the Rabbi serves as an official consultant to a range [Hebrew] of government bodies, including the Police and the IDF. Incitement, however, is also a regular Rosen product: In 2006 and 2008 he published Halacha interpretations equating Palestinians with Amalek and calling for their destruction.

We have no incitement here

Column, Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, January 12 2010

The prime minister complains, and rightly so, that the Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas took part in a ceremony naming a square after a female terrorist. Really the time has come to change the name of all the squares named after suicide bombers and members of the pre-state undergrounds, murderers and freedom fighters. Benjamin Netanyahu protests, and rightly so, the incitement-filled publications against Israel distributed by the Palestinians.

Indeed, as he said two days ago to American senators, “this is not how you make peace.” This is not the time to encourage religious fanatics and fund extremist organizations that incite against their Jewish neighbors.

Among us, those who incite against the Arab neighbors are always “rogue elements.” So why do Israeli governments irrigate them with public water? Take for example, “Shabbat Beshabato,” a weekly pamphlet on the Torah portion distributed in thousands of copies to synagogues all over Israel. Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, the founder of the Conversion Authority and head of the Tsomet Institute of Halacha and Technology [Hebrew], wrote in the most recent edition that “the time has come ‘to declare war’ on the Israeli Arabs, and of course on the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria, who are not loyal to the state, using clear tests to determine this, and to designate them as ‘enemies.’” Read more…

Michael Oren

UPDATE: January 5 2010 — Haaretz’s Akiva Eldar posits similar arguments.

In the run-up to his appointment as ambassador, Michael Oren, with the help of the mainstream US media, pulled off an amazing image makeover — the movement neoconservative became a pragmatic centrist. The Israeli media, however, is not playing ball.

On December 22 Haaretz revealed that he  had gone off the reservation as the American Jewish Committee’s representative in Jerusalem in the nineties — suggesting that the IDF Chief of Staff replace Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Last Tuesday (December 29 2009,) Oren gave an interview to Razi Barkai at IDF Radio (listen to it here in Hebrew.) Barkai was surprisingly well informed and pressed Oren on his treatment of J Street (translated transcript of relevant excerpt after the cut.)

Oren, under pressure, tried to use the Goldstone Report to differentiate J Street from Americans for Peace Now (APN), with whom he has deigned to meet. His implication is that J Street is beyond the pale because it did not denounce the report.

The facts do not back Oren’s argument. Both organizations have not denounced Goldstone. However, between the two, APN has clearly taken a markedly softer tone regarding the report. In fact, when the House of Representatives tabled resolution 867, condemning the Goldstone report, APN called on Congressmen to oppose it, while J Street only asked for its amendment. J Street is also closer to Oren’s and Israel’s position on the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009 (IRPSA), which it supports. APN, on the other hand, urged Congress members to oppose it. Indeed, last Friday (January 1 2009,) APN’s Lara Friedman published an blog post criticizing Oren for trying to force Obama’s hand on the issue.

Razi Barkai

Clearly, J Street is closer to the Israeli position on two issues that Oren deems crucial. Why then, as reported in the Forward, did he attack the organization for “fooling around with lives of seven million [Israeli] people,” while stating in this interview that outreach to APN is “very important”?

One option is that Oren is grievously misinformed. This was also the excuse for another recent incident casting doubt on his credibility.

Last November, a woman, Nofrat Frenkel, was detained by Israeli police and interrogated for 2.5 hours after she wore a tallit and carried a Torah in the women’s section of the main plaza of the Wailing Wall. When questioned, Oren categorically denied the report.

When asked about the incident at the annual meeting of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism in December, Oren dismissed these accounts as “widely misreported,” saying she was simply “led away” from the area.

Such a blatant misrepresentation of facts could not be sustained for long, however. On December 22 2009, the Israeli Embassy issued a statement backtracking on the denial and shifting blame to the Foreign Ministry.

Oren responded to a question based upon information he had requested and received from Israel, which was later proven to be incomplete. The ambassador has since demanded a full and complete report on the incident.

Is it also the Foreign Ministry’s fault that the ambassador is misinformed on the respective positions of J Street and APN on Goldstone and IRPSA? That would be a stretch. It is Oren‘s responsibility to report on these to Jerusalem. He could shift blame to a staffer, but that would reflect badly on his performance regarding an issue at the core of his job description. More likely, as Barkai posits in the IDF Radio interview, Oren has “decided to go with AIPAC against J Street.” This is, as Leonard Fein points out, a breach of his post-appointment promise to “reach out to different groups, Jewish and non-Jewish, that have not felt a close attachment to the embassy in the past.”

Bill Kristol

That brings us to the second option: Faced with such a glaring gap, Oren makes up the facts as required. However, as with NGO Monitor’s Gerald Steinberg, one is struck by Oren’s hubris. It’s hard to believe that Oren does not realize that this type of behavior will be quickly exposed, given today’s reality of instant internet-based fact-checking.

This carelessness could be the result of a situation where Oren’s fundamental political training tends to overpower his common sense. Michael Oren is a product of the Shalem Center, Sheldon Adelson‘s neoconservative institute in Jerusalem, which he joined in 1998 as part of its initial group of senior fellows.

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald points out that the [Leo] Straussian “noble lie” is a tenet of neoconservative thought. He quotes Prof. Shadia Drury:

[Strauss] therefore taught that those in power must invent noble lies and pious frauds to keep the people in the stupor for which they are supremely fit. . . . Like the Grand Inquisitor, he thought that it was better for human beings to be victims of this noble delusion than to “wallow” in the “sordid” truth. And like the Grand Inquisitor, Strauss thought that the superior few should shoulder the burden of truth and in so doing, protect humanity from the “terror and hopelessness of life.

In this context, Greenwald specifically describes William (Bill) Kristol as a “Straussian clone.” It is probably no coincidence that Kristol is a member of the Shalem Foundation’s board.

Both options are worrying. The Israeli ambassador has a credibility problem, either the result of incompetence or, more likely, his ideological bent.

The confrontational Oren that has emerged in the little amount of time since his appointment may have bigger problems than his credibility, however. Oren’s dishonesty seems to be the result of a need to defend positions that do not resonate well in the beltway, among most American Jews and in Israel. It is hard to believe that these positions originate in Jerusalem. Increasingly, they appear to be closely coordinated with two groups disenfranchised under the Obama administration – the old Jewish-American establishment and the pundits at the Weekly Standard and the National Review. If this is case, Michael Oren, who disingenuously called J Street a “unique” problem, is becoming one himself, for both Israel and the US.

Interview with Michael Oren

IDF Radio, December 29 2009 10:07

[...]

Razi Barkai: because you are everyone’s ambassador in the US, not only the Israeli right’s.

Michael Oren: yes, that is how I see it.

Razi Barkai: so why did you avoid the very important J Street conference? Read more…

Adelson

Sheldon Adelson, an American billionaire casino tycoon, has long been trading money for political influence in the Israeli sphere. He’s the underwriter of the  Shalem Center, for example, Israel’s neoconservative nexus. It numbers among its alumni many of the senior staffers at the current Prime Minister’s Office, including Ron Dermer, a leader of the ongoing campaign to suppress Israeli human rights groups, and Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, who recently boycotted the J Street conference  and continues in his attempts to de-legitimize the the organization.

In 2007, Adelson went a step further and established a newspaper, Israel Hayom. Obviously not for profit, the new venture was quickly dubbed the “Bibiton”, Hebrew for “Netanyahu paper”. On December 4 2009, Coteret quoted Israel prize laureate Nahum Barnea of Yediot, who, in a recent Globes interview, bluntly warned that Adelson was a clear and present danger to Israeli democracy. On December 10 2009, we reported on a new bi-partisan Knesset bill aimed at outlawing foreign ownership of Israeli newspapers, obviously aimed at Adelson and Israel Hayom.

The proposed legislation has put Adelson on the defensive. On December 17 2009 he gave an interview to the JTA’s Jacob Berkman (The Funderamentalist), in which, ironically, he argued that Israel Hayom was “fair and balanced.” The public war of words has escalated as Maariv, which Haaretz reports was intimately involved in drafting the bill, has been running op-ed pieces decrying the threat to democracy posed by Israel Hayom on a near daily basis.

Sharansky and admirer

On Friday (December 25 2009) Israel Hayom threw a lavish 700 guest bash in Tel-Aviv to celebrate the launch of its weekend edition. Adelson used the podium to promise he would not surrender and to reiterate the “fair and balanced” message. This morning’s (December 27 2009) edition of the paper devotes half of a page to the speech. The rest of the page is devoted to criticism of the new bill by three high-profile advocates of Israel: Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Jewish Agency; Abraham Foxman, Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); and Alan M. Dershowitz (full text after the cut).

As much as I dread Adelson’s undue influence on the Israeli public sphere, I oppose the new bill. As Noam Sheizaf points out, the dangers this type of legislation poses to the remains of Israeli democracy far outweigh Israel Hayom’s damage. The neoconservative rush to Adelson’s defense, however, is worthy of scrutiny because of the insight it provides into their unique brand of influence peddling, rife with hypocrisy and factual omission.

Foxman

Sharansky, who indignantly states that “this act does not add dignity to societies that pass such laws,” conveniently neglects to disclose that he is materially beholden to Adelson. He found a comfortable home at the Shalem Center to pass the time between his resignation from the Knesset in 2006 to his controversial appointment to the Jewish Agency position in 2009. He was appointed to head the Center’s “new strategic studies program,” soon after christened The Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies after the billionaire’s foundation made $4.5 million donation.

Dershowitz

Dershowitz has no overt material links to Adelson, at least not any that I could find. His statement, however, is a cynical classic. Dershowitz is incensed, decrying  the bill as “an unconstitutional act.” If he was a consistent and vocal critic of Israeli domestic legislation one would be inclined this latest from the Harvard legal scholar. But the man who opens his bio with “one of [the United State's] ‘most distinguished defenders of individual rights,’” has been silent on Israel’s latest constitutional civil rights crisis and a host of other threats to Israeli democracy. The ease in which Dershowitz chooses to tether his reputation to financial interests, just because they share his political views, is testament to how pro-Israeli advocacy has warped the intellectual standards of some Jewish-Americans.

Sharansky: Believe the bill will not pass, competition for freedom of opinion must not be restricted

The Jewish Agency chairman and former prisoner of Zion: “The bill they are trying to get through the Knesset is designed against a single person only, Sheldon Adelson, which is an outrage”; American lawyer Alan Dershowitz: “This is an unconstitutional law that will give Israel a bad name”; Abe Foxman: “Israel needs aid not just from governments, but also from the world Jewry”

Yuri Yalon and Boaz Bismut, Israel Hayom, December 27 2009

“The bill is redundant at best, and impairs on individual civil rights in the worst case,” said Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency, who strongly opposes the bill that is meant to prevent foreign ownership of an Israeli newspaper.

“As a society, we are interested in greater competition in the media, but once people are prevented from investing in them, worldviews are restricted,” said Sharansky, who served many years as a prisoner of Zion under the Soviet regime and suffered gag attempts first hand.  “There must not be a media monopoly, but as many views as possible should be expressed,” he added.  “We should accept the fact that newspapers may be ideologically-motivated, just like Haaretz holds one set of views and Makor Rishon, has another.” Read more…

Hannah Rosenthal, Obama’s new anti-Semitism envoy, is very straightforward in her criticism of  Ambassador Michael Oren treatment of J Street. Her interview in this morning’s (December 24) Haaretz is also an implicit critique of the Israeli approach to anti-Semitism and is worth reading in full.

Remarks by Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, against the liberal Jewish lobby J Street were “most unfortunate” according to Hannah Rosenthal, head of the U.S. administration’s Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism [...]

[Rosenthal] said she believed Oren “would have learned a lot” if he had participated in J Street’s conference.

I’ve uploaded the video broadcast on Israeli TV on Friday (December 18 2009) with Israel’s former Chief Pathologist, Prof. Yehuda Hiss, admitting that he oversaw the unauthorized harvesting of organs in the ’90s. You can view it here, and a translated transcript with some hyperlinks is after the cut. If anybody wants to help and caption the video, that would be great: download it, upload to your account, caption and send me the link so I can re-upload.

Yehuda Hiss

Short story

There is no corroboration of what appears to be the way most of the world now perceives as the assertion of the now infamous Aftonbladet op-ed — that Palestinians were targeted and killed by Israel for the purpose of  harvesting their organs. If anything, Israel was an equal opportunity organ thief. All cadavers going through the National Center for Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir were subject to this treatment, including at least one IDF soldier. The Palestinian connection is indirect — because they are occupied by Israel, some of their cadavers also went into this production line. This is not to understate the criminality of the practice, nor it’s immorality and hypocrisy, especially from a culture that places so much value in the integrity of cadavers and a state obsessed with their recovery from enemy hands. The classic blood libel — that Jews kill gentiles and use their bodies — has not been affirmed, however.

Long (and more important) story

The behavior of the Government of Israel has made the jobs of anti-Semites and blood libelers much easier. I am not referring to its policies on the Palestinian issue, to the monstrous beliefs and actions of right-wing Jewish fundamentalists, nor to the medieval theocrats who increasingly govern the personal lives of Israelis of all persuasions. I am referring to a political class, unable to deal coherently with the country’s core problems, which has made demagoguery, disguised as ”defense of the Jewish people,” a primary weapon in its communications arsenal.

A government that truly cared about defending Jews from anti-Semitism would have  reacted to the Aftonbladet op-ed by publishing Prof. Hiss’ confession on its own, in the same paper and within a short period of time. That way, it would have remained a Swedish tabloid flap and not fueled an un-extinguishable global debate. Embarrassing but not dangerous.

Benjamin Netanyahu

Instead, either incompetently or maliciously, Netanyahu and Lieberman used it to show their mettle in standing-up to the pro-Palestinian Europeans, with the Israeli neoconservative chorus, like Dore Gold and Gerald Steinberg, enthusiastically cheering. End result: Much of the world became aware of Aftonbladet allegation and now has also heard that someone exposed an Israeli admitting that it was true. That is how modern communications works, as Netanyahu, the self-proclaimed hasbara expert, should know. The damage is not limited to this specific libel, because it contributes to the perception that, as a matter of course, Israelis lie until caught.

One does not have too look far for proof that this behavior is pathological (and I don’t mean that as a pun.) Last Thursday, (December 17 2009) the Arbeit Macht Frei sign was stolen from Auschwitz. No self-respecting Israeli politician lost even a moment in decrying the anti-Semitism/neo-Nazism behind the incident. Sunday is cabinet meeting day. From the first morning radio newscast to the late-night TV news wrap Ministers tried to outdo each other in sanctimony and pathos. Then, this evening (December 22 2009,) some very minor reporting that it was theft-on-order for a collector (I am aware that the fact that he is Swedish may well keep the anti-semitic conspiracy alive. But I think readers get my point.) Tomorrow is another day, which might very well bring another incident to give these addicts their polemic fix.

When I was younger, progressives here expressed their humanistic worldview by saying that they were Israelis before they were Jews. I don’t think that works any more.

Channel Two TV News, Ulpan Shishi [Friday Newsmagazine], December 18 2009

Narrator Yair Lapid: For years it has been rumored that dark things were happening in the National Center for Forensic Medicine [popularly known as the Forensic Institute] in Abu-Kabir that must not happen.  Courageous doctors who worked in the autopsy cellars occasionally tried to break through the wall of silence and alert the media of what was really going on there, but when their testimonies were published, others denied them.  This evening, Ulpan Shishi will air the facts for the first time.  A small tape with the recorded voice of Prof. Yehuda Hiss, the institute director, where he reveals how — ceaselessly, for almost a decade — organs were harvested there without the knowledge of the victims’ families.  Yifat Glick has the story. Read more…

Michael Oren

RELATED POST Amb. Michael Oren’s credibility problem

One of the major criticisms of Ambassador Michael Oren’s attack on J Street is that it constitutes improper meddling in the internal politics of the Jewish-American community. In this morning’s Haaretz, columnist Akiva Eldar reminds (annotated excerpt after the jump) readers that Oren has a habit of intervening in his host country’s domestic affairs.

This is not the first time that Oren has stuck his nose where it does not belong. After the Oslo Accords were signed, Oren, then the American Jewish Committee‘s representative in Israel, distributed a document calling for a centrist bloc headed by Ehud Barak (then chief of staff) and MK Benny Begin as a counterweight to Yitzhak Rabin, who was being led by the left and Yossi Beilin, and to Benjamin Netanyahu, who was being led by the radical right. The American Jewish Committee’s president, Al Moses, said he did not agree with his representative’s remarks. Oren stepped down soon afterward. Incidentally, this short interval was omitted from the ambassador’s official resume.

Eldar is referencing a news report he wrote as Haaretz Washington correspondent on December 8 1993 (annotated full text at bottom). Here’s the relevant excerpt

Last week, Michael Oren, who represents the American Jewish Committee in Israel, distributed a document in which he called for the establishment of a “central block, headed by Chief of Staff Ehud Barak and MK Benny Begin, to counter Yitzhak Rabin, who is being led by the left and Yossi Beilin; and Benjamin Netanyahu, who is dragged behind the extreme right.”

American Jewish Committee President Alfred Moses said that he “does not concur with the content of the position paper that Oren distributed, and that he will make it clear to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres when they meet in Jerusalem.”  Moses clarified that the “committee does not intervene in the domestic affairs of the State of Israel, and supports the government moves.”

Note that Eldar also references another recent, but hardly noticed, Oren shocker reported by The Forward

Oren issued a surprising proclamation of a personal belief in a divine plan behind the creation of the State of Israel

In the run-up to his appointment as ambassador, Oren, with the help of the mainstream US media, pulled off an amazing image makeover — the movement neoconservative became a pragmatic centrist. It seems, however, that Mr. Hyde has overcome Dr. Jekyll. As Oren reverts to his old self, it’s time to look at his history. Just a cursory investigation reveals that this is only one skeleton of many in his closet. More to follow soon.

Read more…