NOVANEWS
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‘If Popeye and Olive Oyl were Islamists, would they be fair game as well?’ –Blumenthal on Gaza strikes
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Gandhi Project produces Gaza Youth Breaks Out video
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US consulate documented West Bank blockade. State Dep’t left it out of annual human rights report
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Read the post for which Derfner was fired: ‘The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror’
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Update on Vittorio Arrigoni’s murder– trial to begin next week
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Wikileaks: US Embassy officials got upclose view of marginalization and removal of Bedouins in Negev in ’05 (and said nothing publicly)
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‘JPost’ fires Derfner for writing that Palestinians have the ‘right’ to use terrorism, notwithstanding his apology
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Important study shows that a small network is fostering widespread hatred of Islam inside US politics and public opinion
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Orwell in East Jerusalem
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The exclusive revolution– reflections on the tent protests
‘If Popeye and Olive Oyl were Islamists, would they be fair game as well?’ –Blumenthal on Gaza strikes
Aug 29, 2011
annie
Max Blumenthal, interviewed by Sternchen Productions, on Israel’s failure to distinguish civilians from combatants in Gaza in retaliating for Eilat killings…
“This thin but I think really effective and noble structure of international law is just being eaten away each time Israel practices its tactics of asymmetrical warfare on Gaza. That’s what this is about, that’s what the siege of Gaza is about. It’s about going beyond the threshold of what should be acceptable to human values and to our recipe for surviving as a civilization. It goes beyond…. Was it justified? Who’s responsible? It can never be justified because the structure itself affects us all and is damaging to Israelis and Palestinians. I think everyone should have the right to be a civilian and enjoy certain protections.”
Gandhi Project produces Gaza Youth Breaks Out video
Aug 29, 2011
annie
We first reported on Gaza Youth Break Out back in January when we published Gaza youth breaks out with a ‘manifesto for change’. Here is a video produced by Pam Bailey as part of herPalestinian Gandhi Project featuring impressive members of the GYBO. Watch just the first minute, Ruba Salipi, describing her father’s imprisonment, and you’ll be hooked…
US consulate documented West Bank blockade. State Dep’t left it out of annual human rights report
Aug 29, 2011
Philip Weiss
Noam Sheizaf has turned up another interesting Wikileaks cable that details the Israeli “blockade” of foreign citizens working for Palestinian businesses in the West Bank– not letting them in. Writes Sheizaf:
While most people who follow the news from Israel and the Palestinian territories know well enough that Israel blocks travel to and from Gaza, it is always surprising how few are aware that all exists and entries to the West Bank are also controlled by Israel.
Now here’s the 2009 State Department Human Rights report.
You won’t find any mention of the issue there. Nothing about foreign workers having trouble getting visas.
But just read the US consulate’s report to the State Department about the matter. This is during the Obama administration, October 2009. Pretty screwed-up case:
Upon returning from Amman in early October, a 23-year old Amcit [American citizen] employee of Rawabi developer, Bayti, was delayed and questioned for eleven hours by GOI officials at the Allenby crossing. She said she told them she worked for a private company in Ramallah, owned by Bashar Masri, and that she had left Israel to Jordan so as not to overstay the terms of her three-month tourist visa. During the course of the day, she claims to have been informed that the Ministry of Interior intended to arrest her for immigration violations and/or deport her.
…She claims that different Israeli officials argued (in front of her) about what to do with her, noting that she worked for Masri, who is well known to GOI officials who work on West Bank economic issues. After many rounds of questioning, she was given an entry stamp restricting her travel to “PA-areas” only. She reiterated that her work requires regular travel to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for meetings with Israelis, but was rebuffed. Fearing deportation, she says she accepted the “PA-only” restriction and will abide by it, despite the fact that it hampers her ability to do her job for Rawabi.
You Need a Work Visa (But Can’t Get One) —————————————-
…Over the course of her eleven hours at Allenby, the Amcit (who has no family ties to the West Bank or Gaza) was repeatedly told that she was “working illegally” in the West Bank, and that she needed to get a “work visa” and “stop pretending to be a tourist.” She says she clarified that she has always been upfront about her work in Ramallah, and she asked the MOI official what the process is to secure a work visa. She claims he did not reply….
Negotiations Support Unit (NSU) Legal Advisor Hala Rashed clarified that there is no documentation that will satisfy all elements of the GOI at the Israeli-controlled points of entry other than an Israeli work visa. However, she said, to get a work visa, she said, the company or NGO in the West Bank must also have a branch in Israel, which can secure Israeli work visas for its employees in the West Bank. As a result, she said, such visas are “virtually ungettable” for foreigners working in Palestinian companies….
Contacts working in Ramallah confirmed that the customary practice is to go to Amman every three months, with proof of employment, and renew their visas upon re-entry.
Read the post for which Derfner was fired: ‘The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror’
Aug 29, 2011
Philip Weiss
Below (I believe) is the post that Larry Derfner published on his blog on August 21 but has since removed that resulted in his firing by the Jerusalem Post. I’m also publishing Derfner’s apology for this post following the original post. (I found the original at Alice in Wonder-Land. Thanks to James North and Shmuel).
The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror. [link to Derfner’s site doesn’t work anymore]
Posted on August 21, 2011 by Larry Derfner
I think a lot of people who realize that the occupation is wrong also realize that the Palestinians have the right to resist it – to use violence against Israelis, even to kill Israelis, especially when Israel is showing zero willingness to end the occupation, which has been the case since the Netanyahu government took over (among other times in the past).
But people don’t want to say this, especially right after a terror attack like this last one that killed eight Israelis near Eilat. And there are lots of good reasons for this reticence, such as: You don’t want to further upset your own countrymen when they are grieving, you don’t want to say or write anything that could be picked up by Israel’s enemies and used as justification for killing more of us. (These are good reasons; fear of being called a traitor, for instance, is a bad reason.)
But I think it’s time to overcome this reticence, even at the cost of enflaming the already enflamed sensitivities of the Israeli public, because this unwillingness to say outright that Palestinians have the right to fight the occupation, especially now, inadvertently helps keep the occupation going.
When we say that the occupation is a terrible injustice to the Palestinians, but then say that Palestinian terror/resistance is a terrible injustice to Israel, we’re saying something that’s patently illogical to anyone but a pacifist, and there aren’t many pacifists left, certainly not in Israel. The logical, non-pacifist mind concludes that both of those statements can’t be true – that if A is hurting B and won’t stop, then B damn sure has the right to hurt A to try to make him stop. But if everybody, not only the Right but the Left, too, is saying that B, the Palestinians, don’t have the right to hurt A, the Israelis, then the logical mind concludes that Israel must not be hurting the Palestinians after all, the occupation must not be so bad, the occupation must not be hurting the Palestinians at all – because if it was, they would have the right to hurt us back, and everybody agrees that they don’t. So when they shoot at us or fire rockets at us, it’s completely unprovoked, which gives us the right, the duty, to bash them and bash them until they stop – and anybody who tries to deny us that right doesn’t have a leg to stand on, so we’re just going to keep right on bashing them. And when the Palestinians complain about the occupation, we Israelis can honestly say we don’t know what they’re talking about.
This, I’m convinced, is how the Left’s ritual condemnations of terror are translated in the Israeli public’s mind – as justification for the occupation and an iron-fist military policy.
But if, on the other hand, we were to say very forthrightly what many of us believe and the rest of us suspect – that the Palestinians, like every nation living under hostile rule, have the right to fight back, that their terrorism, especially in the face of a rejectionist Israeli government, is justified – what effect would that have? A powerful one, I think, because the truth is powerful. If those who oppose the occupation acknowledged publicly that it justifies Palestinian terrorism, then those who support the occupation would have to explain why it doesn’t. And that’s not easy for a nation that sanctifies the right to self-defense; a nation that elected Irgun leader Menachem Begin and Lehi leader Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister.
But while I think the Palestinians have the right to use terrorism against us, I don’twant them to use it, I don’t want to see Israelis killed, and as an Israeli, I would do whatever was necessary to stop a Palestinian, oppressed or not, from killing one of my countrymen. (I also think Palestinian terrorism backfires, it turns people away from them and generates sympathy for Israel and the occupation, so I’m against terrorism on a practical level, too, but that’s besides the point.) The possibility that Israel’s enemies could use my or anybody else’s justification of terror for their campaign is a daunting one; I wouldn’t like to see this column quoted on a pro-Hamas website, and I realize it could happen.
Still, I don’t think Hamas and their allies need any more encouragement, so whatever encouragement they might take from me or any other liberal Zionist is coals to Newcastle. What’s needed very badly, however, is for Israelis to realize that the occupation is hurting the Palestinians terribly, that it’s driving them to try to kill us, that we are compelling them to engage in terrorism, that the blood of Israeli victims is ultimately on our hands, and that it’s up to us to stop provoking our own people’s murder by ending the occupation. And so long as we who oppose the occupation keep pretending that the Palestinians don’t have the right to resist it, we tacitly encourage Israelis to go on blindly killing and dying in defense of an unholy cause.
And by tacitly encouraging Israelis in their blindness, I think we endanger their lives and ours, their country and ours, much more than if we told the truth and got quoted on Hamas websites.
There’s no time for equivocation anymore, if there ever was. The mental and moral paralysis in this country must be broken. Whoever the Palestinians were who killed the eight Israelis near Eilat last week, however vile their ideology was, they were justified to attack. They had the same right to fight for their freedom as any other unfree nation in history ever had. And just like every harsh, unjust government in history bears the blame for the deaths of its own people at the hands of rebels, so Israel, which rules the Palestinians harshly and unjustly, is to blame for those eight Israeli deaths – as well as for every other Israeli death that occurred when this country was offering the Palestinians no other way to freedom.
Writing this is not treason. It is an attempt at patriotism.
Here is Derfner’s apology on his blog, on August 26:
I have an apology to make for “The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror,” which I posted here and on Facebook on Sunday. I didn’t mean to say anything “good” about Palestinian terror against Israelis – I see nothing good in it whatsoever, and I thought I made that clear, but I see now that I didn’t.
I wrote that because of the occupation, Palestinians are “justified” in attacking, even killing Israelis, that they have the “right” to do so. Later on I stressed that I didn’t want them to kill my countrymen, and that I would do anything necessary to stop it. I meant those two points to show that I wasn’t “for” terrorism, that while I thought the occupation justified it, that didn’t mean I supported it. But I see now that the distance from “justified” to “support” is way, way too short – and I am as far away as anybody can be from supporting attacks on Israel and Israelis.
Writing that the killing of Israelis was justified and a matter of right took a vile image and attached words of seeming approval to it. This, I’m afraid, produced an “obscene” effect, as one critic wrote. I don’t want to write obscenity about Israel. I didn’t mean to, and I deeply regret it.
I meant, instead, to shock Israelis and friends of Israel into seeing how badly we’re hurting the Palestinians by denying them independence: It’s so bad that it’s helping drive them to try to kill us. This is something I believe, something liberal Israelis and friends of Israel believe, and I wrote that if we were to start saying so publicly, it might force other Israelis to finally confront the reality of what we’re doing to the Palestinians, and thereby get them to see that it’s wrong and must stop.
My intention was to shock people into recognition, but I ended up shocking many of them into revulsion, and twisting what I wanted to say into something I didn’t and don’t mean at all.
What I mean is this: The occupation does not justify Palestinian terror. It does, however, provoke it. Palestinians do not have the right to attack or kill Israelis. They, do, however, have the incentive to, and part, though not all, of that incentive is provided them by the occupation. I believe that if Israel gives the Palestinians their independence, we have enough military power to neutralize whatever leftover incentive they would have to attack us. So my purpose with regard to Palestinian terror against Israelis is not to legitimize it, God forbid, but to end it.
Again, I regret what I wrote on Sunday. I apologize to everyone who was offended by it, and I apologize to my countrymen. The post is no longer on my blog; I’ve taken it down.
Update on Vittorio Arrigoni’s murder– trial to begin next week
Aug 29, 2011
Michele Giorgio
This article by Michele Giorgio was originally published on 23 August 2011 in the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto. Translation by Daniela Loffreda. Republished with Giorgio’s permission.
The trial for the two Palestinians implicated in the 15 April kidnapping and murder of the Italian journalist and activist should begin on 8 September 2011.
In recent days we have truly felt the loss of Vittorio Arrigoni. The man we loved to call “Vik” spoiled us with accurate real time information on what was happening in Gaza, without neglecting the smallest of details. His contribution would have been invaluable during these hours that the Gaza Strip is reliving the fear of Israeli bombing, “targeted” attacks which are not really so targeted and tanks ready to engage in devastating raids deep into the strip of Palestinian land which always ends up paying for everyone. Even now Vik could have told us much, but young assassins allegedly from the Salafist group “Tawhid Wal Jihad” – apparently wanting to establish themselves as an armed group by means of the important kidnapping last 15 April, ripped Vittorio away from his family and friends and to many others in Italy (and not only Italy) who followed his daily updates about the plight of Gaza.
Did things really go as the seem? There are many unresolved mysteries and few certainties. In any case, the hypothesis that Vittorio’s murder was directed by external forces is not to be discarded. Perhaps we will finally know more on 8 September when the first hearing shall take place for at least one of the assassins. For the moment, this hypothesis is only an indiscretion passed along to Il Manifesto (Italian newspaper) by a well informed Gazan journalist with good sources of information within the Hamas government who has requested anonymity. Caution is obligatory in light of the reticent behaviour bordering on ambiguity shown by the Islamic movement since 15 April when Vik was killed. This comportment has not changed despite the assurances offered on many occasions to Vittorio’s family by the foreign secretary of the Hamas government, Ghazi Hazad.
The government of Gaza has yet to make an official announcement about the inquiries made over the last months and through their representatives have advanced rather vague hypotheses to Il Manifesto about the organizers and those that carried out Vik’s murder. Not only that, but our source added that on 11 August a preliminary hearing of the trial was held. And just two months ago, the Hamas government refused to share their files containing the results of the investigations done over the last months with the lawyers of Vittorio’s parents.
The investigation implemented by the military prosecutors in Gaza was closed in the second half of June and the files were delivered to the military judges that subsequently decided to put two Palestinians (presently in jail) involved in the homicide to trial (two others were killed in a shootout with special Hamas troops immediately after Vik’s assassination). It is clear that the trial and the publication of the minutes of the interrogations of the accused will have exceptional weight in understanding the reasons of Vittorio’s assassination, who was held in high esteem among Gazans. Unfortunately however, the Gazan authorities have refused to release those files so far because Vik’s mother and father signed an imperfect power of attorney on behalf of the Centre for Palestinian Human Rights of Gaza. According to the military judges in Gaza, the Arabic translation of the power of attorney should have been done by the Palestinian Delegation in Italy, with the proper stamp affixed, in addition to another stamp from the Italian Foreign Office.
Over the last weeks, the lawyers of the Arrigoni family in Italy have been working hard to meet the demands of Gaza and the stamps required by Hamas for the delivery of the files. The hope is to get them to Gaza before the opening of the trial. But the obstacles to overcome are still many, beginning with the heavy restrictive Israeli measures that limit the ability of Gaza residents to receive mail from another country (for important documents it is required to use a courier). Additionally, it is uncertain whether or not there will be an open door trial with access permitted to the foreign press.
Wikileaks: US Embassy officials got upclose view of marginalization and removal of Bedouins in Negev in ’05 (and said nothing publicly)
Aug 29, 2011
Philip Weiss
The latest from Wikileaks (thanks to Ali Gharib). Once again, we see American Embassy officials in Israel learning intimately about an outrage back in 2005– the Judaization of the Negev, the Israeli program to move Bedouins into a few approved townships– and did we hear a word publicly about the outrage, no. Why do we have a State Department?
Here is the State Department Human Rights report from 2005. Its description of Bedouin conditions lacks the understanding reflected in this cable: That Bedouins are being relocated, that Jewish settlement in the Negev is being encouraged, that there are no high schools in the unrecognized Bedouin villages. The Israeli side of the story is presented carefully in the report.
The uprooting of the Bedouins has been a regular theme on this website in the last couple years. Many intrepid journalists have gone into the Negev to report on this. And from this cable we learn that the State Department was aware of these plans SIX years ago, was meeting with theAssociation of Forty, Bedouin leaders, and said nothing.
The cable is marked “Sensitive.” Excerpts:
Summary: Emboffs met February 17 [2005] with Bedouin community representatives in two Negev desert Bedouin villages not legally recognized by the GOI [Government of Israel] to discuss issues affecting their lives and possible PD [Policy Division] small grants assistance to educational programs. The Bedouin in these two unrecognized communities live in poor, makeshift conditions, without the benefits of municipal services or basic infrastructure. Highlighting the Bedouin’s tenuous residential status in the state, and GOI distrust of this segment of the population, the Jerusalem Post reported February 18 that the GOI intends to relocate hundreds of Bedouin families in illegal Negev communities near the perimeter fence of an airbase. The report draws the conclusion from unnamed Israeli military sources that the GOI fears that the Bedouin, who are citizens of Israel, may acquire anti-aircraft missiles for use against Israeli aircraft. This cable offers a snapshot of life in these illegal villages and a Bedouin perspective on the political context. End summary.
————————- Many Bedouin Marginalized ….
According to the Association of Forty’s data, [Attia] El-Asam said, the Negev has about 45 so-called “unrecognized” Bedouin villages, with some 70,000 Bedouin residents, or half of the total Negev Bedouin population. These unrecognized villages have never been included in GOI land planning, do not qualify for provision of any public services, and therefore do not officially exist on Israeli maps. Many Bedouin are life-long residents of these communities, but are considered squatters by the GOI. Without legal status, these communities receive no government resources, including municipal services and infrastructure development.
…El-Asam highlighted that, while the Bedouin now compose about 30 percent of the Negev population, the GOI has recognized as legal only seven communities or “townships” wherein the Bedouin population can legally reside. According to The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights In Israel – Adalah, the GOI initiated a program to resettle the Bedouin in these seven townships during the 1960s-70s.
….El-Asam claimed that the GOI nonetheless provides electrical and other municipal services to 60 Jewish National Fund-sponsored single-family farms in the Negev for Israeli Jews, none of which are connected to larger communities…
No high schools exist in any of the unrecognized villages, according to El-Asam, and only 16 of the villages contain even makeshift elementary schools. El-Asam claimed that 70 percent of the children in the unrecognized villages live below the poverty line.
‘JPost’ fires Derfner for writing that Palestinians have the ‘right’ to use terrorism, notwithstanding his apology
Aug 29, 2011
Philip Weiss
An important moment. Larry Derfner reports that he was fired by the Jerusalem Post for a column in which he stated that Palestinians have the “right” to use terrorism and that he would do everything he could to stop them from exercising that right, oppressed or not– a statement he subsequently apologized for.
From his blog: “I got fired by the Jerusalem Post today”
Posted on August 29, 2011 by Larry Derfner
I got fired by The Jerusalem Post today. The paper got hundreds of notices of cancellations of subscription after my blog post (“The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror”) of Sunday last week; the reason being given for my firing, though, is the substance of the essay, despite the apology I published later. A page-one notice to this effect will be published in the Post tomorrow.
My apology was to have run in the Post yesterday, but a logistical mix-up prevented it. Today the paper ran a column by Isi Liebler titled “Justifying murder – an abomination,” which, like nearly all of the right-wing websites attacking my original essay (I took it down from my blog upon publishing the apology), it gives extremely short shrift to all the things I wrote that show my intent was not to encourage terror, but the opposite:
Thanks to commenter thankgodI’matheist
Important study shows that a small network is fostering widespread hatred of Islam inside US politics and public opinion
Aug 29, 2011
Philip Weiss
Graphic from Paul Woodward.
On Friday, the Center for American Progress published an important and excellent study, called Fear, Inc: The roots of the Islamophobia network in the US. The study shows that the wave of Islamophobia in the U.S. –Americans mistrust Muslims more than they did even after 9/11– is the product of a few energized individuals. And they’re polluting our political discourse.
Specifically, it’s a handful of exponents of Islamophobia, among them Daniel Pipes, Sharia-law “expert” David Yerushalmi (whom the NYT profiled in more neutral terms a couple weeks back), David Horowitz, and Steve Emerson, the CNN expert turned wingnut.
And the Center shows that they are getting money from just a few sources, but a ton of money at that. In short, a conspiracy, and an important one. You can’t call it a conspiracy these days, it’s a “network,” or as Steve Walt says below, a “collaboration.”
I’ll get to excerpts of the report below, but the report recapitulates the history of neoconservatism. Recall that the Iraq war crusade was implanted into the American discourse in the ’90s by the decided and earnest effort of a few true believers, backed by tons of money, who had a crazed theory of importing democracy to the Middle East by gunpoint, everywhere but in Israel/Palestine. And those beliefs soon swept the mainstream.
I’m hopeful that Islamophobia won’t be so successful, and partly because the Center for American Progress has risen against it.
The report is careful to sidestep the Israel-motivation angle of the Islamophobes. I think this is intellectually irresponsible, but inevitable. No one in the Establishment wants to touch this angle. They don’t want to be sounding like Walt and Mearsheimer, the Israel lobby. And of course, it’s good that a portion of the Establishment is denouncing the ultra-Zionists. But supporting Israel is certainly an important part of the motivation, as I pointed out about Yerushalmi a few weeks back– the Jewish right to Palestine is at the heart of his engagement, he even changed his name to Jerusalem. And donor Aubrey Chernick, whom the report focuses on — well, again, Israel support is at the heart of his public actions.
Here are two quick takes on the report. Steve Walt at Foreign Policy:
The irony in all this that the extremists examined in this report have gone to great lengths to convince Americans that there is a vast Islamic conspiracy to subvert American democracy, impose sharia law, and destroy the American way of life. Instead, what we are really facing is a well-funded right-wing collaboration to scare the American people with a bogeyman of their own creation, largely to justify more ill-advised policies in the Middle East.
And Ed Lasky at American Thinker points out the Jewishness of the list, though he leaves out the fact that George Soros is also Jewish:
The Soros-supported Center for American Progress blames rich Jews for stoking Islamophobia…
The Obama-allied Center for American Progress has released a report that blames Islamophobia in America on a small group of Jews and Israel supporters in America, whose views are being backed by millions of dollars. This “network”, according to the news release, have “have worked hard to push narratives that Obama might be a Muslim, that mosques are incubators of radicalization, and that “radical Islam” has infiltrated all aspects of American society — including the conservative movement. Who are the figures mentioned as the promoters of prejudice? Most of them are prominent Jews and supporters of Israel, such as David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson (the founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism). The eight foundations mentioned as funding this effort include are almost exclusively ones founded and funded by Jewish donors, and lest readers not be aware of this fact, the Center for American Progress lists not only the other beneficiaries of the charities and foundations (most of them having Jewish or Israel in the title) but also goes to the trouble of naming the individuals behind these charities — not just the donors but also those who serve on the boards.
Now here are some excerpts from the report itself:
This network of hate is not a new presence in the United States. Indeed, its ability
to organize, coordinate, and disseminate its ideology through grassroots organizations
increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Furthermore, its ability to
influence politicians’ talking points and wedge issues for the upcoming 2012 elections
has mainstreamed what was once considered fringe, extremist rhetoric.
And it all starts with the money flowing from a select group of foundations.
A small group of foundations and wealthy donors are the lifeblood of the
Islamophobia network in America, providing critical funding to a clutch of
right-wing think tanks that peddle hate and fear of Muslims and Islam—…Due in part to the relentless efforts of this small group of individuals and organizations, Islam is now the most negatively viewed religion in America. Only 37 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Islam: the lowest favorability rating
since 2001, according to a 2010 ABC News/Washington Post poll. According
to a 2010 Time magazine poll, 28 percent of voters do not believe Muslims should
be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, and nearly one-third of the country
thinks followers of Islam should be barred from running for president.Separate from the Fairbrook Foundation [one of the funders], Aubrey Chernick is a trustee of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and helped provide the $3.5 million in initial capital to start the conservative blog Pajamas Media, which used its online platform to oppose the Park51 community center in New York City….
Altogether, these seven charitable groups provided $42.6 million in total to
Islamophobic think tanks between 2001 and 2009—funding that supports the
misinformation scholars and experts….All five [experts pictured above] are actively promoting the deeply mistaken portrayal of Islam—a religion of nearly 1.6 billion people worldwide, including 2.6 million Americans—as an inherently violent ideology that seeks domination over the United States and all non-Muslims.
Here is the summary at the start of the report:
The funding
• More than $40 million flowed from seven foundations over 10 years.
• The foundations funding the misinformation experts: Donors Capital Fund; Richard Mellon Scaife Foundation; Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; Newton and Rochelle Becker Foundation and Newton and Rochelle Becker Charitable Trust; Russell Berrie Foundation, Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund; Fairbrook Foundation.
The misinformation experts • Five experts generate the false facts and materials used by political leaders, grassroots groups, and the media: • Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy • David Yerushalmi at the Society of Americans for National Existence • Daniel Pipes at the Middle East Forum • Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America • Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism
• These experts travel the country and work with or testify before state legislatures calling for a ban on the nonexisting threat of Sharia law in America and proclaiming that the vast majority of mosques in our country harbor Islamist terrorists or sympathizers.
• David Yerushalmi’s “model legislation” banning Sharia law has been cut and pasted into bills in South Carolina, Texas, and Alaska. His video on how to draft an anti-Sharia bill and his online tools have been picked up nationwide.
The reach • The movement is moving nationwide in more than 23 states— made possible by a combination of new, single-minded Islamophobia groups, exemplified by Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT! For America, Pam Geller’s Stop Islamization of America, David Horowitz’s Freedom Center, and existing groups such as the American Family Association and the Eagle Forum.
• Misinformation experts are broadcast around the country and the world, with their work cited many times by (among others) confessed Norway terrorist Anders Breivik.
• U.S. politicians such as Reps. Peter King (R-NY), Allen West (R-FL), and Michele Bachmann (R-MN) repeat these anti-Muslim attacks give credence to incorrect facts. The impact
• This small network of people is driving the national and global debates that have real consequences on the public dialogue and on American Muslims.
• In September 2010, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 49 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view of Islam, a significant increase from 39 percent in October of 2002.
Why it matters • These attacks go right to the heart of two critically important national issues: the fabric and strength of our democracy and our national security. Our Constitution upholds freedom of religion for all Americans. Contending that some religions are not part of the promise of American freedoms established by our founders directly challenges who we are as a nation.
Orwell in East Jerusalem
Aug 29, 2011
annie
The Alternative Information Center reports that the Jerusalem Municipality has confiscated more Palestinian-owned land in occupied East Jerusalem, for a new settler parking lot that will serve a religious Tomb.
The Municipality seems to be claiming that is not the case.
“the land remains with its owners and there is no confiscation, but temporary use of the area in coordination with its owners in order to solve parking problems in the area. Owners of the land are those who will operate the car park and (they) can even charge money for the parking. It is important to note that the landowners can stop the…parking at any time and build on (the land)”.
