Category Archives: Israel

CNN editor sacked over Fadlallah tweet

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Octavia Nasr tweet

A senior Middle East editor at the US cable news channel CNN has been fired after she wrote on Twitter that she “respected” a late Lebanese Shia Muslim leader with links to Hezbollah.

Octavia Nasr lost her job after the 140-character tweet sparked fierce online debate and the channel’s management decided that her credibility had been compromised.

CNN management decided that Nasr, who had worked at the company for 20 years in mainly off-screen roles, should leave her job. “We have decided that she will be leaving the company,” said a company memo circulated on Wednesday.

Al Jazeera, 8 July 2010

See also Roy Greenslade, “CNN fires journalist for tweeting her praise for Islamic cleric”, Guardian, 8 July 2010

Suspects in mosque desecration released

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police on Wednesday released from custody four youngsters who were arrested last week on suspicion of involvement in the desecration of a mosque in the northern village of Ibtin.

The 18-year-old yeshiva students are suspected of spray-painting “Up for demolition,” “Price tag,” and “War will break out in Judea and Samaria” on the mosque. Star of David signs were also sprayed on the building.

The suspects, who were ordered to keep away from the Ibtin area, may be placed under house arrest for the next five days or be taken to their yeshiva.

Police officials said the week-long investigation did not produce sufficient evidence to link the suspects to the crime.

Ynetnews, 16 June 2010

Wilders and the US Israel lobby

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In the last televised debate before the Dutch elections on 9 June, the party leaders were asked which country they would fly to if there was a plane ready to go. Geert Wilders, as ever setting out his own path, said Israel, because it was a country that deserved support. In the context of the recent mayhem surrounding the Gaza convoys, this answer stood out.

But Wilders has good contacts in Israel who support his political movement. Likewise in the United States.

A crucial detail about Wilders’ party, the PVV, is that it only has two official members: himself, and the Friends of the PVV Foundation which he formed as a finance-gathering apparatus.

Dutch law states that every party with a membership of 100,000 or more can receive state subsidy. Wilders’ decision to keep his party in his own hands therefore also has severe financial consequences.

Someone else aside from the Dutch state has to provide the money. Much of it comes from the US, where Wilders travels regularly. According to the Volkskrant, in 2008 Wilders even changed the statutes of the Foundation to ensure that it could be used to accept donations for legal cases – the grounds of which remain unspecified in the document – that he might be faced with.

The Dutch press has tracked down several of the principal financial sources for the PVV in the US. Two figures stand out: David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes. Horowitz runs the online FrontPage Magazine and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which with an annual budget of around 5 million dollars is an important financier of outlets such as Jihad Watch and Islam critic Robert Spencer.

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Mosque vandalized in Bedouin village near Haifa

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ibtin mosque graffitiA mosque in the Bedouin village of Ibtin, east of Haifa, was vandalized overnight Tuesday with graffiti. The graffiti was discovered by village residents at 4:30 AM.

The 3 slogans spray-painted on the building’s walls read: “There will be a war over Judea and Samaria,” “price tag” and “this structure is destined for demolition.”

“This is a serious crime that cannot be ignored,” Mohammed Omaria, a village resident who works at the mosque, told Haaretz. Omria also said the crime was the result of the recent wave of anti-Arab incitement in Israel.

A village resident who lives near the mosque said he saw three yarmulke-wearing youths in the mosque’s vicinity at around 2 AM Wednesday, and that when he asked them what they were doing there, they answered that they were searching for their dog.

Dozens of village residents and Muslims from nearby villages flocked to the mosque to inspect the damage.

The village’s leaders said they plan to involve Israeli Arab MKs in the affair and hold a conference at the mosque.

The mosque has come under attack in the past when arsonists set fire to it in 1988.

Haaretz, 9 June 2010

Update:  See “Four arrested in Bedouin mosque vandalism”, JTA, 10 June 2010

CST and BoD reject EDL’s ‘Jewish division’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL We Support IsraelThe English Defence League, the extreme right-wing anti-Islamic-fundamentalism group, has launched a “Jewish division”, encouraging members of the community to “lead the counter-Jihad fight in England”.

It has signed up hundreds of followers on Facebook since the launch last week. Supporters include an ex-Community Security Trust volunteer who claims “a lot of Jewish guys want to get stuck in”.

One follower wrote on Facebook “we are all Shayetet 13”, in support of the IDF naval special forces unit involved in the Gaza flotilla incident.

But Jewish community organisations responded to the initiative with shock, saying the EDL intimidated Muslim communities and claiming its support for Israel was “empty and duplicitous”.

The former CST member, Mark Israel, claimed Jews should back the EDL as an alternative to existing community groups. He said: “I’ve been involved with groups like CST and the 62 Group for 40 years. At first I thought the EDL was an off-shoot of the BNP but I have been investigating them. They are very pro-active, unlike the Board of Deputies. They are our allies. We have a common cause. These guys want to have dialogue with the Jewish community.

“I know a lot of Jewish guys who want to get stuck in and want to support a physical presence. It is not your typical thing people want to be associated with, but in this day and age we need something like this. Is the CST enough?”

The EDL mission statement says the new division is for “Jewish supporters of the EDL, and supporters of Jewish people everywhere. We are non-racist/fascist and anyone is welcome if they want to live under English values and fully integrate into our way of life”.

Last September the EDL brandished the Israeli flag at a demonstration and called on supporters to launch a counter-protest against a pro-Hizbollah march in Trafalgar Square.

Mark Gardner, CST communications director, said: “The EDL intimidate entire Muslim communities, causing tension and fear. Jews ought to remember that we have long experience of being on the receiving end of this kind of bigotry.”

Jon Benjamin, Board of Deputies chief executive, said: “The EDL’s supposed ‘support’ for Israel is empty and duplicitous. It is built on a foundation of Islamophobia and hatred which we reject entirely. Sadly, we know only too well what hatred for hatred’s sake can cause. The overwhelming majority will not be drawn in by this transparent attempt to manipulate a tense political conflict.”

Jewish Chronicle, 3 June 2010

UN envoy voices concern at mosque fire, calls on Israel to curb settlers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lubban al Sharqiya mosque arson

A senior United Nations official today called on Israel to curb extremist settlers following a report that a blaze earlier this week in a mosque in a Palestinian village on the occupied West Bank was probably the result of arson.

“There have been a number of attacks upon mosques in recent months, as well as violence against Palestinian property and individuals by extremist settlers,” Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry said, voicing deep concern at a fire service report that Tuesday’s blaze in a mosque in Lubban al Sharqiya was probably started deliberately.

“I condemn these attacks. It is vital that the Israeli Government impose the rule of law and that those responsible for such crimes are brought to justice,” he added in a statement.

UN News Centre, 6 May 2010

New York rally for united Jerusalem and against international Islamist jihad

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Solidarity with Israel demo

About 2,500 people rallied in the rain for a united Jerusalem, on Sunday, April 25.  They understood the attempt to detach Jerusalem from Israel as piecemeal conquest.  They came to support Israeli existence and self-determination.

Organized by Beth Galinsky of the Jewish Action Alliance, 50 organizations of Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, and Christians demonstrated at the Israeli Consulate.

Examiner, 28 April 2010

See Jihad Watch and Atlas Shrugs.

Update:  See also “Feeling the hate in New York”, LoonWatch, 29 April 2010

Europe ‘too soft’ on Muslims, says Jerusalem Post

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Jerusalem Post offers its take on moves across Europe to ban the wearing of the veil:

Those who support such legislation realize that an easygoing multiculturalism works only when there are basic shared values and a willingness to integrate. But European multiculturalism has deteriorated into rudderless moral relativism and a pusillanimous reluctance to criticize radical Islamic customs for fear of being branded an Islamophobe.

Sadly, some Jewish leaders, such as Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, chief rabbi of Moscow and leader of the Conference of European Rabbis, have helped foster such unfounded fears. “Sixty-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz,” wrote Goldschmidt in the New York Times in February, in an op-ed opposing the idea of bans on the burka, “Europeans can permit themselves to be squeamish about how things start and how things, if left unabated, can end.” As a rabbi, he added, “I am made uncomfortable when any religious expression is restricted, not only my own.”

Goldschmidt has got it wrong. Europeans have a right to feel uncomfortable. But not, as Goldschmidt argues, because Europeans are being too hard on Muslims. Rather, because they are being too soft.

Settlers deface West Bank mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

West Bank mosque

More than 300 olive trees were uprooted and two cars set alight in the West Bank village of Hawara in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Stars of David and the word “Mohammed,” as well as racist slogans, were also sprayed in Hebrew across the town, including on the walls of a mosque.

A military official told Army Radio that the army suspected settler violence against Palestinians, part of some settlers’ policy of imposing a “price tag” on a government order to freeze Israeli construction in the West Bank.

Haaretz, 14 April 2010