Israel distributed falsified video about Hamas beating civilians back into their houses

A few days ago far rightist Zionist sites like "'The Allgemeiner'' and similarly rightist blogs carried a video that showed Hamas police chasing civilians in the streets of Gaza. The suggestion was made that it showed how Hamas prevented people, who had been warned by Israel of an imminent strike and wanted to flee, from leaving their houses. That was also what the subtitle of the video said: "Hamas members brutally beating civilians of Gaza who leave their homes following IDF warning".
My attention was drawn to the video some time after it was tweeted by Esther Voet, director of the local Dutch Israel lobby called "CIDI'', and found its way to Facebook pages. Unfortunately, however, for the believers of hasbara, the video is a clear fake. It has been put together by an Israeli entity called ''IsareMedia'', from  images taken from a German documentary by Doku Channel, which was broadcasted  two years ago. The beating actually had to do with differences of opinion about religion.
I first show the Israeli fake version:

 And next part 4 of the German original from 2012 (which can be found here on Youtube in 5 parts). The similarity is clear, from about 3' 50'' minute in the film.


The above video was actually by no means the only one of a kind. Another one which ''showed'' how Hamas  was using children as a human shield, had earlier been unmasked by blogger Ali Abunimah of The Electronic Intifada. He showed  the video had been shot  in Syria. There will probably be others as well. 

Liar without borders

It's high time to devote a few lines to Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard and Bar Ilan, a former defense lawyer of celebrities like Mike Tyson (accused of rape) and O.J. Simpson (double murder), a self appointed defense lawyer for the Case of  Israel, about which he wrote a book with the same title, and one of the most skilled and thoroughly experienced liars of our time.    
 It's a miracle how Dershowitz, one way or other, manages to be constantly in the news these days. Hardly has he refused Benyamin Netanyahu's offer he was not supposed to refuse, namely to become Israels next representative (and defense lawyer?) at the United Nations  (check the Coteret blog, where you'll find a translation of a column in which author Meir Shalev wrote mocks this fact) or he attires attention because of the column he himself wrote in the Jerusalem Post about the bar mitzvah of Judge Goldstone's grandson in Johannesburg. Remember that Goldstone initially took the decision to stay away, because the Zionist Federtion of South-Africa intended to use the ocaasion to hold a demonstration against him?  In his column Deshowitz does not just twist the truth a bit, he compoletely turns it upside down. In his version it is not the South African Zionist Federation that politicized the occasion of this bar mitzva, oh no, it was judge Goldstone himself.
Dershowitz:

So now it turns out to be Richard Goldstone - author of the notorious Goldstone Report - who is politicizing his grandson's bar mitzvah. Jewish authorities in South Africa didn't "ban" Goldstone from the synagogue at which his grandson was being bar mitzvahed, as Goldstone and his supporters had alleged. A small group of protestors had said they would exercise their right of expression to picket Goldstone. Though they clearly had the right to do so, most Jews in South Africa and elsewhere - including me - were uncomfortable with the idea of picketing a grandfather attending his grandson's bar mitzvah. It was Goldstone who decided not to attend and instead to publicize the matter   

So far, so hypocritical and completely untrue. But this comes next:

The South Africa Board of Deputies have now persuaded the protestors to pick a different time and place to show their disdain for Goldstone. The matter should have been put to rest, with Goldstone quietly attending the bar mitzvah. But Goldstone won't let it go. He has attacked the Chief Rabbi of South Africa, who was instrumental in working out a compromise where the protests would be called off and Goldstone would agree to meet with Jewish leaders. Goldstone escalated the dispute by writing a letter to the local newspaper complaining that "the Chief Rabbi would so brazenly politicize the occasion of my 13-year-old grandson's bar mitzvah to engage in further personal attacks on me."

Here the distinguished defender of O.J.Simpson and Israel overlooks the fact that Goldstone wrote the letter BEFORE the Board of Deputies changed its mind and together with the chief rabbi decided to call the picked line off. Dershowitz continues:

But it was Goldstone who brazenly politicized the bar mitzvah by mischaracterizing the Chief Rabbi's statement and using it as an excuse to continue the controversy about the bar mitzvah. The alleged "personal attack" by the Chief Rabbi consisted of a statement that every synagogue "should welcome in a tolerant and nonjudgmental way all who seek to enter and join in our service and pray to God."
The Chief Rabbi also exercised his own freedom of speech to express his opinion - an entirely accurate one - that the Goldstone report "has unfairly done enormous damage to the reputation and safety of the State of Israel and her citizens."
Was the Chief Rabbi obligated to remain silent about the report until after the bar mitzvah? It would have been irresponsible of Rabbi Goldstein to say nothing in the face of the evil represented by the Goldstone report and its biased authors. Is it not enough that he curbed those who wanted to protest in front of the synagogue? It is Goldstone who is using his grandson's bar mitzvah as a shield against legitimate criticism, just as he has used his "jewishness" as a shield against criticism of the Goldstone report. 

 Oh yes, Goldstone, by his initial decision to stay away and not politicize his grandson's bar mitzva uses this bar mitzva as a shield against legitimate criticism.... Only with the pliable logic of someone who is so used to mold the facts as he sees fit that he completely lost sight of reality, might one reach a conclusion like that. But Dershowitz is not yet finished. Remember that the South African Board of Deputies changed its mind after a lot of publicity abroad, among which was a letter by over 30 rabbis? This is how Dershowitz qualifies them:

Goldstone has not complained about another group of rabbis who have politicized his grandson's bar mitzvah in an effort to support the Goldstone report and its mendacious conclusions. A group of rabbis, many of whom have long records of anti-Israel activism, authored a "Rabbinic letter" to Goldstone congratulating him on his grandson's bar mitzvah and using the occasion to make virulently anti-Israel claims, including the blood libel that Israel deliberately targeted innocent Palestinian civilians without any military purpose. (....) These "rabbis for Hamas" have no shame and no credibility. They exploit their rabbinical status to support any conclusion that undercuts self defense Israeli actions without regard to the evidence and without regard to the truth.
Not surprisingly, the worst of these rabbis (and that's saying a lot), Michael Lerner, after attempting to politicize the bar mitzvah by offering his anti-Israel synagogue for the event, has decided to honor Richard Goldstone with Tikkun Magazine's "Ethics Award." I guess all it takes to be honored by Tikkun is to pass Lerner's litmus test of lying about Israel.   

 The man is really completely out of his mind, a liar without borders. What is worrysome,  is that his words have an effect. After this publication in the Jerusalem Post, some people attacked the house of rabbi Lerner, left slogans on the walls and glued pamphlets to it with a powerfull glue.
Cartoon: Latuff)

And hardly had we digested this morally corrupt column in the Jerusalem Post, or there was the news that Dershowitz this past Saturday received a honorary degree from the University of Tel Aviv. Richard Silverstein translated the motivation of the university:  

Professor Dershowitz…is one of the truly great American lawyers…He receives this honor because of his reputation as a sterling jurist, a well-respected public figure, a true and dear friend of Israel, international authority in criminal law, for his twenty-year advocacy for civil and human rights and for being a fanatical defender of them, and for his hundreds of articles and books which merited wide distribution.
[He receives this honor] as a sign of appreciation for his passionate and convincing defense of the State of Israel in his books, his interviews in the international media and university campuses; and for his unique ability to fight anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism with sophisticated argumentation; and for his active and thought-provoking discussion of the Middle East conflict.

His thought-provoking discussion of the Middle East conflict? It is really more a way of discussion that raises the eyebrows, or rather someone's hairs. It suffices to visit the website of Norman Finkelstein - or read his book 'Beyond Chutzpah'  to see to what extend Dershowitz twisted the facts, plagiarized the notorious Joan Peters and her book 'From Time Immemorial' which is caraterized asl a worthless fraud by 99% of  academia, to realize the 'scientific' standards that Dershowitz represents. By reading his 'Case fo Israel', or  taking note of the way he slanders, distorts and manipulates facts, one start to understand how it was possible that he defended about 15 murderers in the US and got 13 of them off the hook, while at least a number of thme (he himself seems to have admitted that it was even 'most of them') were in fact guilty. And this is the kind of guy that the today's Israeli leaders deem fit to receive honorary doctorates or represent the country in fora like the United Nations...

And Dershowitz marches on. At a conference at Tel Aviv university on Tuesday he accused left wing Jewish intellectuals to slander Israel in such a way that it causes more harm than Islamic and pro-Palestinian movements. He called it 'legal terror' and a 'strategic threat' and he singled  out US intellectual Noam Chomsky as particularly dangerous because he creates a hostile atmosphere in the US and on American campuses. 

Dershowitz is really unbelievable, obnoxious, nauseating, someone who goes on and on, as indefatigable and  subtle as the bulldozers with which Israel builds its Sepration Barrier. It is a phenomenon and it is frightening, because deep down I'm convinced that he is merely a symptom of the deepening rift between right and what could be called liberal, enlightened/progressive/left within the Jewish communities. A rift that may already be beyond repair, or soon will be.

PS. The latest news in today's Haaretz is that about 80 staff members of Tel Aviv university in a letter to the university's president ask that the university distances itselfs fromt Dershowitz' speech on Saturday, at the acceptance of his honorary doctorate, in which he named  faculty members who, as he called it, hurted students and harmed the interests of the state. What specifically angered the academics was that he called two TAU-staffers (Anat Matar and Rachel Giora) by name. For more background see Jerry Haber's blog  

PS2. There was still one point I missed: Dershowitz in an interview with Israeli tv compared judge Goldstone to Joseph Mengele, th 'Angel of Dreath' at Auschwitz where he did the sections for the gas chambers, because Goldstone was an appeal judge in Soujt Africa during the apartheid era and in that quality  confirmed a number of death penealties. It probably isn't the finest page on Goldstone's curriculum, but compare him for that reason to Mengele is simply outrageous. Here is the video:

Clinton at AIPAC: status quo ME is unsustainable, Netanyahu defiant

These days all eyes are directed towards AIPAC, the American Jewish lobby. Or rather the eyes of everbody  who is either Israeli or American and interested in Middle East politics. AIPAC's annual Policy Conference is indicative of how popular the lobby  is with American policy makers  and gives - since some of the actors are present  - an idea about the current state of affairs.
Well no big surprises there. In the presence of many members of Congress Bibi Netanyahu yesterday gave a speech at the gala, He showed himself  defiant  and without mentioning the recent crisis in the relations after Israel announced the building of another 1600 appartments in East-Jerusalem, he said that 'the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel cannot be denied. The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 year ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.'
Netanyahu also said that 'in Jerusalem, my government has maintained the policies of every single Israeli governments since 1967, including those led by Golda Meir, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin. .... Everyone knows -- everyone, Americans, Europeans, Israelis certainly, Palestinians -- that these neighborhoods will be part of Israel in any peace settlement. and terefore, building them in no way precludes the possibility of a two-state solution.'

One day earlier it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's turn for a speech. She told the conference that the status quo is unsustainable.'For President Obama, for me, and for this entire administration, our commitment to Israel’s security and Israel’s future is rock solid,' Clinton said. But, 'as Israel’s friend, it is our responsibility to give credit when it is due and to tell the truth when it is needed.'

The status quo is unsustainable for all sides," Clinton said. 'It promises only more violence and unrealized aspirations. Staying on this course means continuing a conflict that carries tragic human costs. Israeli and Palestinian children alike deserve to grow up free from fear and to have the opportunity to live up to their full God-given potential.'

On the subject of Iran she said: ' let me be very clear: The United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons'.
Netanyahu, however, was equally clear on this. 'The future of the Jewish state can never depend on the goodwill of even the greatest of men,' Netanyahu said, after praising the role of Roosevelt and Churchill in World War II, but pointing at their failure to save 6 million Jewish people. 'Israel must always reserve the right to defend itself.'

This evening Netanyahu will see Obama who after his health care victory in Congress is, as some point out, a stronger man than before. Some believe that because of this renewed strength, Obama will take a firmer position. Others  expect him to act tactically with an eye on the long run - just as he did with respect to the health care bill - and spare a more muscular showing for the negotiations themselves, when difficult decisions are needed.

I don't believe in either of these hypotheses, although I certainly would love to. I really believe that Obama does not have the guts to withstand AIPAC (whose newly elected chaiman Lee Rosenberg sat on his finance comittee during his election campaign). Obama, however, could, if he wished to do so,  make a fist against Netanyahu with the support of a majority of the American and Jewish public. J Street, the new moderate lobby that 'competes' with AIPAC on Tusday published a survey among American Jews which showed a remarkable amount of support for a strong American role in the peace process, even if that would mean exerting pressure on Israel:

• 
  

  American Jews by a four-to-one margin, 82-18 percent, support the United States playing an active role in helping the parties to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, with 73 percent of American Jews supporting this active role even if it means that the United States were to publicly state its disagreements with both the Israelis and the Arabs.

• 
  

  * By a 71-29 percent margin, American Jews support the United States "exerting pressure" on both the Israelis and the Arabs to make the necessary compromises to achieve peace. An earlier J Street poll last March found a similar level of support.

• 
  

  A majority of all American Jews, 52-48 percent, still support an active role even if the United States were to publicly state its disagreements with only Israel. (My emphasis).

A survey by Zogby International under Americans of all denominations shows that 81% of all Amerians agree that the Middle East conflict has a negative impact on US interests. Also  40 % of Americans (63% .Democrats, 13% Republicans) think that the US should get tough with Israël in order to stop settlements.       A Rasmussen poll, also taken in March,  went even further and concluded that 49% of American voters thinks that Israel should stop building settelements as part of a peace deal. 
Let'see if it will convince the president.

Kramer's Lösung: let Palestinian have fewer babies

Martin Kramer, a rightist authority on Islam and Arab politics (he works with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the offcial Aipac think tank, and is also a visiting fellow at Harvard),

“called for ‘the West’ to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide.”

That at least is what Ali Abunimah of the Electonic Intifad accused him of.

Kramer on his blog, Sandbox, takes isssue of it. He write that he's accused:
of having “proposed that the number of Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip should be deliberately curbed, and alleged that this would ‘happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status.’
And he adds that 'he did not say such thing, in fact he said' (and here he quotes himself from his speech at the Herzliya conference in February): 

Aging populations reject radical agendas, and the Middle East is no different. Now eventually, this will happen among the Palestinians too, but it will happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies for Palestinians with refugee status. Those subsidies are one reason why, in the ten years from 1997 to 2007, Gaza’s population grew by an astonishing 40 percent. At that rate, Gaza’s population will double by 2030, to three million. Israel’s present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim—undermine the Hamas regime—but if they also break Gaza’s runaway population growth—and there is some evidence that they have—that might begin to crack the culture of martyrdom which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men. That is rising to the real challenge of radical indoctrination, and treating it at its root.

 Fo you to decide who was right, Kramer or Abunimah.

PS.  The American professor Stephen M. Walt does not think that what Kramer said was in fact a call for genocide, although he came into close range of the 1948 definition of genocide. But says Walt:

What word you use to describe his comments is actually not that important, because their substance is so offensive to any decent person that you don’t need to worry much about getting the right label for them. To illustrate this point, just imagine how Kramer would react if the Iranian government announced that it was worried its Jewish population (some 25,000 or so) was a potential “fifth column,” and that it was therefore imposing measures intended to discourage Iranian Jews from having more children?

The Ultimate Mission to.....

This seems to be an annual event. Shurat haDin - The Law Center - an organizations which is more concerned with settlers and settlements than law, yearly organizes these Ultimate Mission to Israel trips for people in the USA who can afford it. In Haaretz it is advertised as follows`

Experience a dynamic and intensive eight day exploration of Israel’s struggle for survival and security in the Middle East today: "a military, humanitarian, historical, judicial, religious, and political reality check."

Mission Highlights

• Briefings by Mossad officials and commanders of the Shin Bet.
• Briefing by officers in the IDF Intelligence and Operations branches.
• Inside tour of the IAF unit who carries out targeted killings.
• Live exhibition of penetration raids in Arab territory.
• Observe a trial of Hamas terrorists in an IDF military court.
• First hand tours of the Lebanese front-line military positions and the Gaza border check-points.
• Inside tour of the controversial Security Fence and secret intelligence bases.
• Meeting Israel’s Arab agents who infiltrate the terrorist groups and provide real-time intelligence.
• Briefing by Israel’s war heros who saved the country.
• Meetings with senior Cabinet Ministers and other key policymakers.
• Small airplane tour of the Galilee, Jeep rides in the Golan heights, water activities on Lake Kinneret, a cook-out barbecue and a Shabbat enjoying the rich religious and historic wonders of Jerusalem’s Old City.

And Norman Finkelstein posted on his website the following response:

A once-in-a-lifetime experience: THE ULTIMATE MISSION TO DEUTSCHLAND
Experience a dynamic and intensive eight day exploration of Nazi Germany’s struggle for Lebensraum and against the Judeo-Bolshevk conspiracy in Europe today: “a military, humanitarian, historical, judicial, religious, and political reality check.”

Mission Highlights

 * Briefings by the Gestapo and commanders of the Wehrmacht

* Inside tour of the SS unit that carries out extermination of Judeo-Bolsheviks

* Live exhibition of heroic SS units battling Jewish scum in Warsaw Ghetto.

* Observe a trial of Jewish terrorists in a Nazi military court.

* First hand tours of the Russian front-line military positions and the Polish border
check-points.

* Inside tour of the controversial Wall around Warsaw and secret bases of Jewish collaborator.

* Meeting Germany’s Kapo collaborator agents who infiltrate the Jewish terrorist groups and provide real-time intelligence.

* Briefing by Germany’s war heroes who saved the country from Jewish terrorists in Warsaw.

* Meetings with senior Nazi Ministers and other key policymakers.

* Small airplane tour of the Galilee, Jeep rides in the Golan heights, water activities
on Lake Kinneret, a cook-out barbecue and a Shabbat enjoying the rich religious and historic wonders of Jerusalem’s Old City.

NGO-Monitor sues European Commission

NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based watchdog group, announced at a press conference today that it has brought suit against the European Commission (EC) for failing to fulfill EU transparency obligations regarding the distribution of funding to non-government organizations (NGOs).
NGO Monitor President Professor Gerald Steinberg said that his group resorted to legal recourse after 13 months of attempts to secure documents detailing non-governmental agency funding by the EC, the executive branch of the European Union. Under the European Freedom of Information law, such funding details must be made available upon request. However, the EC cited “public security,” “privacy,” and “commercial interests” in denying NGO Monitor’s information request.
NGO Monitor legal counsel, Trevor Asserson  of Asserson Law Offices, dismissed these reasons as “absurd” and “essentially unsupportable.” He described the EU activity as “typical of the types of obfuscation that one gets when someone does not want to do what they are meant to do.”

The lawsuit, filed yesterday at the European Court of Justice, seeks “to obligate the European Union, which claims to be a law-abiding institution and committed to looking out for the interests of world peace and security, to act according to its mandate and reveal these documents and the full extent of their funding.”
NGO Monitor disclosed that its researchers identified 177 million shekels provided by the EC since June 2005 to NGOs active in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Many of these organizations are active in the strategy of demonization which seeks to isolate Israel, using lawfare and boycott campaigns.

 Professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University (left) gives a presentation about the Goldstone-report during a meeting of the Jewish Agencency. To his right th Agency;s chairmen Nathan Sharansky. The meeting was devoted to the study of antisemitism.
. 
Oh yes,  may the Commission follow the example of NGO-monitor itself  when we are speaking about transparancy and the interests of world peace and security. Or of the Israeli government in the case of the budgets for settlemenst building, for that tmatter. World peace and security, the chutzpah.