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Contents: Weekly Quotes | Short Takes | On Topic Links
Ya'alon: Iran Should Be Forced to Choose Between Nuclear Weapons or Survival: Yaakov Lappin, Jerusalem Post, June 19, 2013
Preconditions Have no Basis in Law or Fact: Alan Baker, Jerusalem Post, June 18, 2013
The United Church of Chelm: Abraham Cooper, Times of Israel, June 17, 2013
"The leaders of the Allies knew about the Holocaust in real time. They understood exactly what was happening in the death camps. They were asked to act, they could have acted, and they did not. To we Jews the lesson is clear. We must not be complacent in the face of threats of annihilation. We must not bury our heads in the sand or allow others to do the work for us. From here, the place that attests to the desire to destroy us, I, the Prime Minister of Israel, the state of the Jewish People, say to all the nations of the world: The State of Israel will do whatever is necessary to prevent another Holocaust." — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the dedication ceremony for the permanent pavilion at Block 27 at Auschwitz-Birkenau. (Yadvashem, June 13, 2013)
"We cannot accept anything less than the total cessation of all enrichment of nuclear materials at all levels, removal from Iran of all enriched nuclear material, closure of Iran's illicit nuclear facilities. Until Iran meets these demands, pressure must be stepped up and Iranian nuclear program must be stopped. Period. He [new Iranian President Hasan Rowhani] is the author of a document – you could call it talk and enrich – that is, talk and continue to enrich uranium. For nuclear weapons. He wrote this in the book. He said that by calming international community, Iran is able to steadily move forward in its nuclear weapons program. We cannot allow Iran to play this game. We cannot let Iran ride out the clock." — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird. (Ha'aretz, June 18, 2013)
"It is the Jews who have instigated wars in the world. They instigated World War I, as well as World War II. It is well known that during the Passover, they make matzos called the 'Blood of Zion.' They take a Christian child, slit his throat and slaughter him. Then they take his blood and make their [matzos]. This is a very important rite for the Jews, which they never forgo." — Khaled Al-Zaafrani, founder of the Egyptian Justice and Progress Party, to Al-Hafez TV on May 12, 2013 as translated by Middle East Media Research Institute. (MEMRI TV, May 12, 2013)
"The dawn of return is approaching. This generation will witness the liberation and return….We will…pass the right of return on to this [new] generation. Israel has no future on our Palestinian soil." — Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, at the opening ceremony of Hamas-run summer camps in Gaza. Hamas is operating 700 camps in Gaza this summer, attended by approximately 100,000 children and teens. Their motto this year is "Generation of Return." (MEMRI TV, June 18, 2013)
“The attempt to establish a Palestinian state in our land has ended. Never have so many people spent so much energy on something so pointless.” — Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home party, a member of the security cabinet and the third most powerful figure in the coalition, at a conference of Jewish settlers whom he urged to “build, build, build” in Judea & Samaria. (Washington Post, June 18, 2013)
“Israel enjoys today a relatively calm situation security-wise. The border with Lebanon has been quiet since 2006. The border with Syria is, generally speaking, calm. In Gaza we have gone a couple of weeks with not even one provocation on behalf of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or any other faction. Sinai: again, a relatively calm situation. Having served in the military, I don't remember such a calm situation for such a long period of time. But we have to warn ourselves that what dominates the Middle East is instability. So far, they are engaged among themselves, fighting each other, but it might be, in the end, that the weapons are directed toward us. They are well-armed – militias, elements, whether Hizbullah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad – with rockets and missiles, which are a threat for our security.” — Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ayalon, in an address to The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, on a recent visit to Washington, DC. (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, June 18, 2013)
"Alice Walker has sunk to new lows with essays that remove the gloss of her anti-Israel activism to reveal someone who is unabashedly infected with anti-Semitism. It seems Walker wants the uninformed reader to come away sharing her hate-filled conclusions that Israel is committing the greatest atrocity in the history of the world." — Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, in a review of The Cushion in the Road, Alice Walker’s new book which describes Israel’s actions vis-à-vis the Palestinians as “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “crimes against humanity,” and “cruelty and diabolical torture.” According to the ADL, the book also devotes 80 pages to a "screed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict replete with fervently anti-Jewish ideas and peppered with explicit comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany." (Jerusalem Post, June 18, 2013)
“Here we are advised by some that we should be prepared to cut out parts of the Land of Israel − Judea and Samaria, the biblical heartland − based on certain demographic prognostications indicating that in time the Jewish population would constitute a minority in the State of Israel unless this decision was taken now. The Danish-Jewish physicist Niels Bohr famously said that prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. That is certainly true in this case. Most past demographic forecasts in Israel have turned out to be wrong….Those using these demographic forecasts hold them as a Damocles sword above our heads, insisting that we take a decision now and abandon Judea and Samaria, a decision that would be irreversible. Yet it might turn out in the years to come that their forecasts were off by 10, 20, maybe 30 percent. Hurry, they shout, there’s no time to lose − the window of opportunity is closing. They are not talking about a mastectomy, they are talking about cutting the heart out of the Land of Israel. Not very good advice.” — Moshe Arens, former Israel ambassador to the United States, Defense and Foreign Affairs Minister, in an opinion piece in Ha’aretz. (Ha’aretz, June 19, 2013)
“The problem is the guy has failed to be forthright and honest and credible on things like Benghazi and the IRS, so he’s got no credibility. It [the IRS targeting] clearly was used for political purposes to go after a particular category of organizations. That is the kind of gross abuse of power that everybody is legitimately concerned about. I have trouble believing that two guys in Cincinnati dreamed this scheme up I just don’t think that’s true.”” — Former Vice President Dick Cheney to "Fox News Sunday." (Newsmax, June 16, 2013)
JEWS ARRESTED FOR TEMPLE MOUNT PRAYER— (Jerusalem) Four Jewish Israelis were arrested at the Temple Mount Wednesday after praying in the Jerusalem compound, considered Judaism’s holiest site. The four prostrated themselves at the site, prompting police to detain them and escort them to a nearby police station for questioning, police said. Under current laws, Jews are allowed to ascend the mount and pray at the site, which is revered as the location of both ancient Jewish temples. However, police have the right to veto any visits and in practice prevent both prayer and high-profile Jewish visits. Earlier this year, the director-general of the Religious Affairs Ministry announced that regulations governing the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount will be reviewed and updated in an initiative that may relax the informal ban on worship at the holy site. (Times of Israel, June 19, 2013)
UNDERGROUND TUNNEL DISCOVERED AT FORMER SOBIBOR DEATH CAMP —Archaeologists have discovered that Jews at the Sobibor death camp built a tunnel in an attempt to escape the gas chambers. Archaeologists have discovered that Jews at the Sobibor death camp built a tunnel in an attempt to escape the gas chambers. Polish and Israeli archaeologists discovered traces of an underground tunnel that apparently was never used at the site of the former death camp in Sobibor. The tunnel ran from a barracks to outside the camp fence and may have been dug by the prisoners of the Sonderkommando who worked in the camp burning the corpses of murdered Jews. The archaeology work at Sobibor is directed by Wojciech Mazurek of Chelm, Poland, and Yoram Haimi of Israel. Though the tunnel would have helped the prisoners to escape, Mazurek does not believe it was used. “The Germans found the tunnel and therefore shot and then burned the entire crew of the Sonderkommando,” Mazurek told the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. (Jewish Press, June 9, 2013)
TURKEY'S ERDOGAN WELCOMES HAMAS LEADERS — (Ankara) Even as the EU canceled a parliamentary visit to Ankara scheduled for Wednesday, and UN Secretary-General Ban Kimoon criticized Turkey for its handling of the recent protests, embattled Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday [June 18] welcomed Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal and Ismail Haniyeh for meetings in the Turkish capital. It was not immediately clear if the arrival of the Hamas leaders was in lieu of a visit Erdogan has said he intended to make to Gaza. Shortly after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu phoned Erdogan in March to apologize for operational errors that might have caused loss of life on the i, Erdogan announced he would visit Gaza in April. The planned visit, which annoyed the US because it seemed to undermine the Palestinian Authority, was then pushed off until after Erdogan’s mid-May visit to Washington. Officials in both the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry refrained from commenting on the Hamas leaders visit to Ankara. (The Jerusalem Post, June 19, 2013)
LA CITY COUNCIL PASSES ANTI-BDS RESOLUTION — (Los Angeles) The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a resolution to continue awarding city contracts without regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The resolution passed Wednesday [June 12] was intended as a rebuttal to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which aims to bring economic pressure to bear on Israel, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal reported. The resolution comes less than a year after BDS activists called on the city to not renew a bus contract with the French company Veolia Transportation, which also has business holdings in the West Bank. The resolution states “that the City of Los Angeles will continue to make contracting decisions based on the best interests of the City, its residents, businesses and taxpayers and in accordance with the City Charter and applicable State and Federal law and hereby affirms that issues related to the Arab-Israeli conflict will not be considered and will have no impact on the awarding of contracts with the City of Los Angeles.” Council members Paul Koretz and Mitchell Englander sponsored the resolution. The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles helped draft the resolution. (Jewish Press, June 14, 2013)
A-LIST CELEBRATION FOR ISRAELI PRESIDENT'S 90TH BIRTHDAY — (Jerusalem) At a gala in honor of Israeli President Shimon Peres, the world's oldest leader who turns 90 in August, there were former statesmen (Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev), celebrities (Robert DeNiro, Sharon Stone), scholars and scions (five Nobel laureates and authors of 1,412 books, all with a collective net worth topping $24 billion, according to organizers), gathered Tuesday at Jerusalem's convention center to fete Mr. Peres, whose public life has paralleled that of the modern State of Israel. “We, in Britain, have our queen, and you have your Shimon," declared former British prime minister and Middle East envoy Tony Blair. Clinton cracked that Peres was "the last living Israeli who knew King David." A protege of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, after helping establish early Jewish settlements in the heart of the West Bank, Peres shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the Oslo accords with the Palestinians. (New York Times, June 19, 2013)
ISLAMISTS PRESS BLASPHEMY CASES IN A NEW EGYPT — (Cairo) Egypt's prosecutors have been flooded with blasphemy complaints since 2011 as Islamists exercising their new societal clout have pushed for prosecutions and courts have handed down steep fines and prison terms for insulting religion. This month alone, a Christian teacher in Luxor was fined $14,000 for insulting the Prophet Muhammad in class, a writer was given five years in prison for promoting atheism, and a Christian lawyer was sentenced to one year for insulting Islam – in a private conversation. The campaign is driven at the local level, where religious activists have also forced officials to suspend teachers and professors. (New York Times, June 18, 2013)
EL AL TESTS ANTI-MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM FOR PASSENGER AIRCRAFT —(Tel Aviv) An El Al plane has been outfitted with the anti-missile C-MUSIC system for the first time, Israel National News has reported. The new, compact system dubbed ‘mini-MUSIC’ is designed to protect small rotary and fixed-wing aircraft against heat seeking Ground to Air Missiles (MANPADS) threats. The MUSIC DIRCM (Directional Infrared Countermeasure) system is to be placed on all EL Al, Arkia and Israir planes that travel through high-risk areas susceptible to shoulder-fired missile threats. According to the website Defense-Update.com: “The system comprises a fiber-laser based DIRCM housed in a sealed turret for maximized reliability. A missile warning system provides the initial detection of incoming threats. When a threatening missile is detected, the warning is passed to the DIRCM that then directs a thermal tracker to acquire and track the threat. A powerful laser beam is then fired accurately at the missile causing it to be deflected away from the aircraft.” (Algemeiner, June 18, 2013)
EU FUNDING FOR PRO-BOYCOTT NGOS: NEW REPORT FROM NGO MONITOR —(Geneva) Last week, NGO Monitor alerted over 100 members of the European Parliament to our new report, Lack of Due Diligence and Transparency in European Union Funding for Radical NGOs. It details the damaging impact of highly secretive EU funding for radical political advocacy NGOs, including boycott leader "Coalition of Women for Peace." Our research shows how EU-funded NGOs lead the campaigns to demonize Israel, in contradiction to the EU's proclaimed objectives of supporting peace and democratic development. For instance, the EU granted €355,130 under a Partnership for Peace project, "Addressing Fear: Strengthening the Nonviolent Alternative." The partners for a project ostensibly devoted to strengthening the nonviolent alternative include Coalition of Women for Peace, one of the leaders in global BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions movement); Palestinian Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC), which organizes protests that often turn violent; and Nova, a radical Spanish political NGO. (NGO Monitor, June 9, 2013)
SHOCK LINGERS AFTER NAZI LEADER FOUND IN U.S. — (Minneapolis) The revelation that a top former commander of a Nazi SS-led military unit has lived quietly in Minneapolis for the past six decades came as a shock to those who knew 94-year-old Michael Karkoc. World War II survivors in both the United States and Europe harshly condemned the news, and prosecutors in Poland have said they’ll investigate. An Associated Press investigation found that Karkoc served as a top commander in the Ukrainian Self-Defense Legion during World War II. The unit is accused of wartime atrocities, including the burning of villages filled with women and children. “I know him personally. We talk, laugh. He takes care of his yard and walks with his wife,” his next-door neighbor Gordon Gnasdoskey said Friday. Gnasdoskey, the grandson of a Ukrainian immigrant himself, said he was disturbed by the revelations about his longtime neighbor. “For me, this is a shock. To come to this country and take advantage of its freedoms all of these years, it blows my mind,” he said. (Ha’aretz, June 18, 2013)
JAVA’S LAST SYNAGOGUE TORN DOWN — (Surabaya, Indonesia) The last vestige of one Indonesia’s oldest and largest Jewish communities is now just a pile of rubble. Beth Shalom in Surabaya — Java’s one and only synagogue — was demolished in May after being sealed off by Islamic hard-liners in 2009. “It’s not clear when exactly it was demolished and who did it,” Freddy Istanto, the director of the Surabaya Heritage Society (SHS), told the Jakarta Globe. “In mid-May, I was informed by a member of the SHS that the synagogue was destroyed. In disbelief, I went over there and it had been flattened.” A small, Dutch-style building located on a 2,000 square meter plot of land in the middle of Surabaya’s business district, Beth Shalom looked like an ordinary house in the neighborhood. The only features that distinguished it as a synagogue were its mezuzah (Torah scrolls fastened to an entrance way) and the two Star of David carvings on its door. “There were many artifacts inside the building which can’t be found in other heritage sites,” Freddy said. (Mosaic Magazine, June 15, 2013)
Ya'alon: Iran Should Be Forced to Choose Between Nuclear Weapons or Survival: Yaakov Lappin, Jerusalem
Post, June 19, 2013 — Defense minister calls on international community to increase pressure on Iran; says Israel examining new developments in Tehran in light of presidential election results; adds that Syria's war is "nearing our borders."
Preconditions Have no Basis in Law or Fact: Alan Baker, Jerusalem Post, June 18, 2013 —The recent statements by Nabil Shaath, senior member of the Palestinian Authority negotiating team, and others, promising a return to negotiations if Israel agrees to Palestinian preconditions and commits to “negotiate on the basis of the 1967 borders,” and to freeze settlement-building, constitute a typical example of Palestinian political manipulation, duplicity and sheer falsehood.
The United Church of Chelm: Abraham Cooper, Times of Israel, June 17, 2013—In a remarkable interfaith development, the United Church of Canada (UCC) may be relocating its denominational headquarters to the storied Jewish town of Chelm, also known as the town of idiots.
Ber Lazarus , Publications Editor Canadian Institute for Jewish Research /L'institut Canadien de recherches sur le Judaïsme www.isranet.org Tel: (514) 486-5544 Fax: (514) 486-82843
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