Information You Will Rarely Hear about (Continues from here)

Houses demolished

Latest reports indicate that 90 percent of the Baha'i homes in Ivel have now been destroyed, most of which have been unoccupied since their residents fled after previous incidents of violence or as a result of official displacement.

Members of the Baha’i community have made repeated complaints both before and after the latest incident to local government officials, including to the provincial governor in Sari. In every case, knowledge of the demolitions or the motive behind them was denied.

In the meantime, while the trial of the seven Baha’i leaders in Tehran ended on June 14, 2010, we do not yet know what the verdict is nor do we know a date when a verdict may be announced. We will keep you informed as soon as we learn any further information.

Palestinians demand civil rights: where is the world's outrage?

Some 425,000 Palestinians are registered as refugees in Lebanon by UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees. Many live in 12 camps across Lebanon in conditions the UN has described as deplorable and appalling.

Palestinians in Lebanon are barred from working in dozens of professions and are generally paid lower wages than their Lebanese counterparts when they do find jobs.

They are not allowed to benefit from public social or medical services.

Proposals for a draft law due to be debated in parliament in a few weeks would give Palestinians the right to own a residential apartment and would legalise work rights.

Ahmadis persecuted in Pakistan: Why?

To understand what the persecution of Ahmadis achieves, we have to see how it works. Its first step is to say that Ahmadis are non-Muslims. And its second is to say that Ahmadis are not just non-Muslims, but apostates: non-Muslims who claim to be Muslims. These two steps are easy to take: any individual Pakistani citizen has the right to believe whatever they want about Ahmadis and their faith.

But the process goes further. Step three is to say that because Ahmadis are apostates, they should be victimised, or even killed. We are now beyond the realm of personal opinion. We are in the realm of group punishment and incitement to murder. Nor does it stop here. There is a fourth step. And step four is this: any Muslim who says Ahmadis should not be victimised or killed, should themselves be victimised or killed.

In other words, even if they are not themselves Ahmadi, any policeman, doctor, politician, or passerby who tries to prevent, or just publicly opposes, the killing of an Ahmadi, deserves to die. Why? Because anyone who defends an apostate is themselves an apostate.

Aha.

This is what the persecution of Ahmadis achieves. It allows any Muslim to be declared an apostate. For the logic can be continued endlessly. When an Ahmadi man is wounded in an attack and goes to a hospital for treatment, if the doctor agrees to treat him, she is helping an apostate, and therefore she becomes an apostate and subject to threats. When a policeman is deputed to protect the doctor, since she is an apostate, the policeman is helping an apostate, so he too becomes an apostate. And on and on.

The hallmark of an intelligent person - Knowing what you don’t know

Explanation: here

Les Fleurs du mal

The horseman waves a sword that lights the gloom
Of nameless crowds he tramples to their doom,
And, like a prince his mansion, goes inspecting
The graveyard, which, no skyline intersecting,
Contains, beneath a sun that's white and bleak,
Peoples of history, modem and antique.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

According to AP report:

"Arab youths threw stones at a Jewish dance group during a street festival in Hannover, injuring one dancer and forcing the group to cancel its performance, German police and dance officials said Thursday.

The teenagers also used a megaphone to shout anti-Semitic slurs during the attack Saturday, Hannover police spokesman Thorsten Schiewe said."

I suppose noticing that Arab youths hurl rocks at Jewish dancers in a street festival in Germany while shouting antisemitic slurs would count as indication of anti-Arab racism in some quarters. How dare we call them Arab youths? How dare we refer to their ethnicity? Imagine if someone said "Jewish youths threw stones at an Arab dance group during a street festival". Wouldn't we immediately accuse the journalist of being antisemitic?

It's the blockade, idiot

A new flotilla initiative is underway, with innovative ideas on how to make Israel look like the big bad wolf, the neighbourhood bully.

"... the ship would be carrying cancer medication for children, and women suffering from breast cancer and cancer of the uterus due to “chemical bombs” dropped on Gaza by Israel."

Such imaginative solutions the Arab "peace activists" can come up with. If only some of all that hostile energy had gone into conditioning the Arabs for real peace.

"Meanwhile, Yasser Kashlak, a Syrian businessman of Palestinian descent who heads the “Free Palestine Organization” and is funding this boat, as well as another that is to carry journalists and parliamentarians, said over the weekend on Hizbullah’s al-Manar television station that he was more and more optimistic that one day these same boats would take “Europe’s refuse [the Jews] that came to my homeland back to their homelands.

“Gilad Schalit should go back to Paris and those murderers go back to Poland, and after that we will chase them until the ends of the earth to bring them to justice for their acts of slaughter from Deir Yassin until today.” Kashlak, a fervent Hizbullah supporter, called Israel a “rabid dog sent to the region to frighten the Arabs. He said he had a message for Israelis: ‘Get on the ships we are sending you and go back to your lands. Don’t let the moderate Arab leaders delude you, [you] cannot make peace with us. Our children will return to Palestine, you have no reason for coexistence. Even if our leaders will sign a peace agreement, we will not sign.’” He said the boat carrying journalists and parliamentarians will carry 12 former American diplomats as well.."

The Missing Link

At what point does legitimate criticism of Israel's policies become anti-Zionist?

At what point does anti-Zionism become antisemitism?


I. Rabbi David F. Nesenoff finds the missing link:

"Where before I saw a foggy anti-Israel, anti-Jewish link, it's now clear. This feeling is not about statehood. It's about an ingrown, organic hate. It's a sentiment that bears no connection to history, dates, passages or verses. Erase the facts, the dates and the lore. Erase the Jew. Incredibly, even the Nazis said to the Jews, "Go home to Palestine." But Thomas and a babbling stream in our world and country dictate to Jewish people to "go home to Poland and Germany." Yeah, I said "oooh."

II. The Nobel laureate author who linked his humanism with his Jew hatred:

Jose Saramago, Nobel laureate in literature, died at age 87.

The celebrated author wrote that:

Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt.

And then he confirmed that his "secret" was that:

I do not just write, I write what I am.

And what he was, he explained:

Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.

Language, says Saramago, is an imperfect tool, vessel, for revealing our innermost being . A thoughtful observation though hardly an original one. Yet do we really want to have the perfect language that would define exactly what the man who wrote the following words intended to say, was longing for, was striving toward?

“[C]ontaminated by the monstrous and rooted ‘certitude’ that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God … the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner. Israel seizes hold of the terrible words of God in Deuteronomy: ‘Vengeance is mine, and I will be repaid.’"

"… those experts in cruelty with doctorates in disdain, who look down on the world from the heights of the insolence which is the basis of their education. We can better understand their biblical god when we know his followers. Jehovah or Yaweh or whatever he is called, is a fierce and spiteful god, whom the Israelis always live up to."

A man who so lacking in self-awareness that he did not realize how what he was articulating seemed quite unconstrained by any seeming impediment from language or knowledge, or basic decency. He was trembling with a primitive wrath against those insolent Israeli Jews. What was their mortal sin? They did not learn what they should have learned from Auschwitz. Unlike him, who, having " visited Ramallah... shortly after the Passover 2002 suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel that killed 30 people and wounded 140 more... expressed no grief for these murdered innocents. Instead, he toured areas damaged during fighting between Israeli and Palestinian armed forces and pronounced to a Portuguese radio interviewer:

“[I]n Palestine, there is a crime which we can stop. We may compare it with what happened at Auschwitz.”

So, Saramago, who confidently stated that he does not just write, but writes what he is, did not recognize any line that separates anti-Zionism from antisemitism. A proud Jew hater pretending to care for Palestinians.

_______

Update:

III. Shock and Dismay at Vienna City Council (Wiener Gemeinderat) :

Therefore it was a surprise to the Jewish community when the Vienna City Council (Wiener Gemeinderat) voted unanimously on an anti-Israel resolution initiated by Omar al Rawi, a Social Democratic member of city council.

Erwin Javor and Peter Menasse of the Jewish periodical “Nu” sent three letters to Godwin Schuster, the Social Democratic President of the Council. They received no answer.

The first letter:

We call upon the Vienna city council in continuation of its foreign policy activities and in line with its unanimous Resolution of May 31, 2010 condemning Israel to consider the following resolution:

“The world has learnt with shock and horror about the massacre of the Uzbek Minority in Kyrgyzstan in which at least 124 victims lost their lives. The Viennese city council condemns this brutal behaviour against peaceful people.”

Kindly transmit this demand to the members of Vienna city council

With best regards

Erwin Javor, Publisher NU

Peter Menasse, editor NU

A Musical Pause:

Songs from the lyricist, composer, singer and pianist Shlomo Gronich:

An Israeli Song

Sympathy for Tel Aviv

Hot Land

Painting (With Matti Kaspi)

Gaza Misery

"Gaza evokes memories of Warsaw Ghetto" (Richard Falk, UN rapporteur on human rights)

Here

Unexpected New European Voices

It's a meagre yield, considering the tsunami of world condemnations, but of high quality. Most of the noise we have been hearing from the various organs condemning Israel cannot stand the test of close scrutiny of facts, records and evidence. At least in these two pieces, one an opinion editorial, the other an investigative report, the signal is clear and stands out.

José María Aznar, former Spanish Prime Minister: In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship. In an ideal world, no state, let alone a recent ally of Israel such as Turkey, would have sponsored and organised a flotilla whose sole purpose was to create an impossible situation for Israel: making it choose between giving up its security policy and the naval blockade, or risking the wrath of the world.

German TV Report on the flotilla's pseudo peace activists

Decoy Jews

Via Islam in Europe:

"If it would be up to Ahmed Marcouch, violence against Jews would be handled by sending in so-called 'decoy Jews'.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog - islamineurope.blogspot.com

The PvdA parliament member responded on BNR Nieuwsradio to reports that Jews in some Amsterdam neighborhoods don't dare go out with a kippah.

Marcouch said the problem was serious and unacceptable. He wants the police to act decisively against perpetrators of antisemitic violence. "I think that you should do everything to get those bastards, those tormentors, those criminals."

So what's a "decoy Jew", asks one commenter.

The question immediately brought to mind a scene in "Witness". John Book (Harrison Ford), a hardened and tough police investigator pretending to be an Amish, beats up on the thugs who, under a false sense of impunity, had been taunting his Amish benefactors. "You are making a big mistake", says Book, quietly.

Jewish plots exposed

The Zionists Produced the Hepatitis C Virus and Injected 400 Prisoners with It

Abd Al-Azim Al-Maghrabi: As you've said, sometimes [the Israelis] turn prisoners into laboratory mice. In Al-Mahalla Al-Kubra, Egypt, there is a man called Abd Al-Rahman Al-Karadusi. This man suffers from liver failure, from cancer, and from many other diseases, but most importantly, it all started with a C virus in his liver. He said that the C virus is produced by the Zionists, and that 400 prisoners were injected with this virus. This virus is now spreading in Egypt like wildfire, as a consequence of this crime. I'd like to say that this is also classified as one of the war crimes perpetrated by the Zionist enemy.

Egyptian Cleric Mus'id Anwar: Soccer, a Means Prescribed by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Order to Rule the World:

As you know, the Jews, or the Zionists, have The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Over 100 years ago, they formulated a plan to rule the world, and they are implementing this plan. One of the protocols says: “Keep the [non-Jews] preoccupied with songs, soccer, and movies.” Is it or isn’t it happening? It is. (Here)

The only respondent to Syrian grotesque blood libel

The libel:

"I am referring to the Syrian statement falsely accusing Israel of being a state that is not only “built on hatred… and a paranoid feeling of superiority,” but also one that glorifies the “ripping of flesh” and the “sucking of blood.”

The response


Watch here Charlie Rose's last week's schmoozing interview with Syrian President Assad: Remember, he is the leader whom Senator Kerry met for at least six times since President Obama's ascension to the role of world leader. he is also the boss of that woman who "quoted" little Israeli children singing "merrily" a song about ripping flesh and sucking blood.

Israel shining...

A reminder that as the dogs are barking in the howling darkness, Israeli scientists persevere in discovering new ways of healing the mass of suffering humanity...

Or: the dogs bark but the caravan pushes on...


World-Recognized Research on Stem Cells

World-recognized discoveries in the study and manipulation of human embryonic stem cells have won first prize in a prestigious applied research competition for a Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher.

For his work in this field, Prof. Nissim Benvenisty of the Silberman Institute of Life Sciences will be presented with a Kaye Innovation Award on June 9 during the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Board of Governors meeting.

Benvenisty and his research team were the first in the world to demonstrate in vitro
differentiation of human embryonic stem (ES) cells, and to achieve the first directed differentiation and the first genetic manipulation of these cells. Their work has led to a patent on the directed differentiation of human embryonic stem cells and is at the center of industrial use of this research, aimed primarily at developing a stem cell based approach for battling type 1 diabetes. :

A pluripotent (developmentally undefined) cell that may differentiate in culture to all cell types is the ”holy grail” of the study of cellular differentiation and of cell-based therapy.

Human embryonic stem (ES) cells may give rise to many cell types of the body, such as nerve, muscle, liver, heart and blood, and thus they hold the promise to change the face of transplantation medicine. These cells may be able to play a vital role in the therapy of a large number of diseases, such as Parkinson’s, diabetes, liver cirrhosis, cardiac failure, and others.

Benvenisty’s laboratory has made, over the years, significant discoveries in the field, showing for the first time, among other things, in vitro differentiation of human ES cells and generation of embryoid bodies – aggregates of cells derived from embryonic stem cells. They also have been able to induce differentiation of the ES cells by placing them next to a developing tissue in a chick.

Benvenisty cautions that the issue of transplantation of human ES cells also brings up the challenge of their possible rejection. His analysis of the immunogenicity of human ES cells has shown that although undifferentiated human ES cells express extremely low levels of immunogenic (rejecting) molecules, this expression is up-regulated when they differentiate,. Thus, human ES cells will probably be a target for cell rejection, and ways to overcome this issue should be further explored, he says.

Read more, here.

Some interesting information about Islamism

Gaddafi: “We await the day when Turkey joins the European Union to serve as a Trojan horse”«If Turkey joined the European Union, and the presence of both states the Balkans in the European Union and Albania in the European Union, the meaning of this is that the European continent is no longer a crusade or a Christian as it was, but Islam has become a strong partner in the European continent to the ground and human beings and actually».

«We await the day when Turkey joins the European Union to serve as a Trojan horse, which tells the history».

Nazis, Muslims and the CIA "This was a program, Johnson writes, which Hitler “explicitly blessed,” saying, “I consider only the Mohammedans to be safe. All the others, I consider unsafe.”

In the eastern regions of the Soviet empire, where the Nazis were more interested in oil than ethnic cleansing, the Third Reich mobilized Muslims and other ethnic minorities to fight for the liberation of their homelands. The Nazis plucked Muslims from German prisoner-of-war camps: some Muslims became German soldiers; some, members of the SS; some, professional propagandists. Although rumors and half-truths about this historic collusion have long existed, Johnson does the painstaking archival work of retracing the lives of these largely unknown Muslim Nazis, and pieces together their lives compellingly.

Once World War II ended, many of these men, stuck in Germany and having lost their homelands, found a new employer: the United States. Radio Liberty, the lesser-known stepsister to Radio Free Europe, was the CIA’s effort to broadcast anti-Soviet propaganda into Eastern Europe. In order to reach the thirty million Muslims living within the Soviet Union, the Americans turned to many of these former Nazi sympathizers. The idea, from the 1940s onwards, was to use Islam to undermine the Soviet system. Islam, American officials mistakenly believed, was the ideal antidote to godless communism. Although many of Johnson’s readers will know this story in broad strokes, no book before this one so deftly traces the history of this ideological misstep. And no one, until Johnson, has traced how far back this error in judgment went.

Germany: Religious Muslim youth more violent:

A study conducted by the German authorities has found that the more devout young Muslims become, the more prone to violence they get. The study says the phenomenon is not due to Islam itself, but to the way it is taught.

Interesting Facts about the Mavi Marmara "Humanitarian" Mission

Peter Hitchens investigates:

For instance, one of these 'activists' is a lawyer who once represented a terrorist for free (his client was the interesting Kozo Okamoto, still in the Middle East and anxious not to return to his native Japan). Mr Okamoto took part in the 1972 Lod Airport massacre, in which 25 innocents were massacred.


Aboard were others who are active supporters of Hamas, the despotic and murderous Islamist rulers of Gaza. Hamas hurled their Fatah opponents to their deaths from the tops of high buildings when they took over, and recently imprisoned in disgraceful circumstances a British freelance journalist, Paul Martin (look it up) to a chorus of almost total silence from the British media and left-wing intelligentsia.

Then there were some members of the Egyptian 'parliament', who are supporters of that country's rather unmoderate, and barely-tolerated, Muslim Brotherhood.

One of these legislators is reported to have said at a March 2010 conference, ‘A nation that excels at dying will be blessed by Allah with a life of dignity and with eternal paradise.’ He also said that his movement ‘will never recognize Israel and will never abandon the resistance,’ and that ‘resistance is the only road map that can save Jerusalem, restore the Arab honour, and prevent Palestine from becoming a second Andalusia.’

This is a most interesting statement. Andalusia, as Muslims call Spain, is the only territory Islam has ever permanently lost. The reference underlines the fact that the real issue in this conflict is not what everyone thinks it is. This has nothing to do with the 'rights' or 'freedoms' of the 'Palestinians', who would be oppressed and neglected by whatever Arab state (probably a Greater Syria) that arose on the ruins of Israel (and probably Lebanon and Jordan too). It is the Muslim belief that no territory, however small, should be conceded by Islam to be ruled by non-Muslims.

MEMRI also produce a photograph which purports to show one Yemeni Parliamentarian on the deck of the Mavi Marmara, clutching a rather large curved dagger, doubtless ornamental.

There were also some keen Salafists from Kuwait, not to mention our old, old friend Bishop Hilarion Capucci, whose idea of Christian charity once (in 1974) involved smuggling weapons to the PLO, misusing his diplomatic status to do so. (His release from prison was among the demands of the Entebbe hijackers - you know, the charmers who separated the Jewish passengers from the non-Jewish ones - back in 1976.) The Bishop (I particularly appreciate this fact) is also said to have appeared on postage stamps in Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria, so much is he loved in the Arab world. I'm sure it's his sermons that they like, rather than his smuggling. Sorry to hark back so. I have this thing about history.

When one reads the above one can't help but relish the rich irony offered in the following tribute to the dead Turkish "humanitarians". The poet is an Arab blogger with a fanciful self-regard, and literary aspirations:

I watched the live feed,
All through the night,
I slept on a happy note,
Having seen the cheerful faces,
Of those who'd come from all places
To lift the siege
to end the collective moral handicap
of an apathetic world

but when I woke up,
I heard of the dead,
of the martyrs,
of the selfless
of the fearless
of those who'd put their lives
on the line
For Gaza
And Palestine

So this time around
our dead,
we wrap you in red
we wrap you in white
we wrap you in the crescent
and we wrap in the star, instead

A sincere poetical attempt

Legitimate criticism of Israel

Go back to Auschwitz

Hitler we need you

Jews should go home to Germany, Poland

Starvation at Gaza