J Federation of Seattle's response to anti-Israel bus ads

Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle's  Response to Anti-Israel Bus Ads
Posted on Monday Dec 20, 2010 5:40 PM

As you may be aware, an anti-Israel ad campaign is scheduled to begin on Dec. 27. The ads, which accuse Israel of war crimes and purport that $30 billion is given each year to Israel in foreign aid, will run on twelve Seattle-area buses for the next month.

We believe that this campaign must be stopped.

The campaign features a photo of alleged war crimes and contains a strong anti-Israel message. The clear intent is to incite an emotional response by attacking Israelis. While we respect and support the first amendment right to free speech, we feel that this particular ad violates Metro Transit's own policy against running ads that "insult specific groups to the point that a riot could be incited, vandalism could occur or public safety could be threatened." The ad in question is clearly meant as a strong insult to the almost 50,000 members of the Seattle Jewish community, including the thousands of Israelis who call Seattle home. Additionally, this ad is not even accurate in its claims. Israel has never been tried or convicted of war crimes, and to claim that taxpayers fund these alleged crimes is an insult both to Americans and to our government.

We encourage Metro Transit, King County and Seattle officials to refuse to run these ads, based on a violation of their own policy.

We also encourage those who feel strongly to speak up and contact local officials by phone or email today stating your position. To send your message to King County Executive Dow Constantine and the King County Council, Metro Transit management and the local manager of transit advertising, click here.

The Jewish Federation firmly believes this type of inflammatory campaign is destructive to the peace process and undermines efforts to build positive relationships both in the Middle East and within our local community. This kind of demonization of Israel is contrary to reconciliation and does not contribute to furthering the peace process. Our core values mean we seek ways to build bridges, not to destroy them.

All parties in the Middle East want, need and deserve a peaceful cooperative coexistence. We encourage the public to become educated on all aspects of the Middle East conflict and to work for a peaceful resolution through which all parties can find a way to live and work together with respect and in peace.

Source: http://www.jewishinseattle.org/news-events/news/federation-response-anti-israel-bus-ads
 

Jasser: CAIR in denial

Jasser: CAIR "In Denial That There Is No Islamic Threat"- Counterterrorism Training On Political Islam "Very Relevant" http://wapo.st/esnpsM


Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Morris: Palestinian leaders unwilling to compromise; they want it all.

Palestine: Tergiversation Nation

Historian Benny Morris:  Palestinian leaders are not interested in a two-state settlement.  But also: "Successive Israeli governments, since 1967, should never have bowed to right-wing messianic pressures and launched the settlement enterprise in the core, hill country of the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. The enterprise has served the Palestinians well."


Benny Morris | December 9, 2010

The Americans still don't get it: the Palestinian leadership, Fatah and Hamas, are not interested in a two-state settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; they want all of Palestine, and are willing to shadowbox and dissemble and feint and bamboozle in order to defer the moment in which they must say "no,” for they will say "no,” to a realistic, historic compromise.

President Obama foolishly played into Palestinian hands when, early in his administration, he demanded that Israel freeze its settlement activity in order to shoe in a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (in abeyance since 2008, when former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas a generous two-state package and he rejected it). Abbas jumped on the gift horse and fell into step—no talks until there was a complete settlement freeze.

And when at last the Netanyahu government agreed to a one-year freeze, the Palestinians tergiversated and hemmed and hawed until the year was almost up before actually deigning to start talking. Naturally, no progress was achieved. And then the bell rang, the year was over, and Netanyahu refused to renew the freeze, despite a generous American package in return for a mere 90-day freeze.

Now the White House has announced that it has given up on persuading Israel to renew the freeze, throwing the ball back into the Israeli-Palestinian court—and the Palestinians will continue to link a resumption of the talks to a settlement freeze. Meaning, no talks anytime soon and Israel pilloried by the international community. Which, on both counts, is what the Palestinian leadership wants.

Successive Israeli governments, since 1967, should never have bowed to right-wing messianic pressures and launched the settlement enterprise in the core, hill country of the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. The enterprise has served the Palestinians well: It has tarnished Israel's image, framing the Jewish state as an expansionist, land-grabbing "imperial" power (no matter that the settlements were physically constructed by Palestinian laborers). And, more recently, it has served the Palestinians as an excuse for not joining a peace process that they feared might channel them toward a two-state settlement which they utterly reject.

And how do we know that they reject such a compromise? Because they say so, loudly and clearly to their own audiences, in Arabic, and occasionally, but more obliquely, to Westerners, who prefer not to hear what they are being told.

Hamas, the fundamentalist terrorist organization based in the Gaza Strip, has the virtue of relative honesty: the organization's constitution, or charter, of 1988 says that Israel must die and Islam, through jihad, will bring this about. Last month, Hamas's number two, Mahmoud al-Zahar, interviewed on Hamas's TV station, repeated the (anti-Semitic) credo: The Jews, because of their evil character, have been kicked out of every country hosting them, beginning with medieval Britain and France and ending, more recently, with Germany, and this is the fate that awaits them in Palestine as well.

And the supposedly secular Fatah party (note: captured failed suicide bombers from Fatah often spoke about the seventy-two virgins they hoped to meet up with in heaven), the main constituent of the PLO and of the Palestine Authority "government,” says the same thing but more subtly.

The Fatah's constitution from the 1960s, to be found on its website, is anything but subtle. It frankly calls for Israel's "disestablishment." And the PLO's "National Charter" of the 1960s, which the previous Palestinian national leader, Yassir Arafat, promised in the 1990s to amend and replace with a new charter, one which does not call for Israel's destruction, remains on the books—unreplaced. And Mahmoud Abbas, while saying "yes, yes" to two states, continues flatly to oppose the Clintonian formula of "two states for two peoples,” one for the Arabs and one for the Jews. Instead, he says, one for the Arabs, and the other for whoever lives in the territory of pre-1967 Israeli territory, while unwaveringly demanding that Israel accept the refugees' "right of return" and allow the return to Israel of the 1948 refugees and their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. These number 4.7–7.5 million, depends who's counting. Such a return would mean that the territory of pre-1967 Israel would swiftly or gradually acquire an Arab majority. Meaning, no Jewish state. Not really a "two-state solution.”

So Abbas, like Arafat—who in December 2000 rejected President Clinton's formula for a two-state solution—focuses on, and deploys the red herring of, "settlements,” knowing that such a focus will indefinitely postpone discussion of the real issue, an agreement to establish a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish Israel. And the Netanyahu government, rejecting a settlement freeze, falls into the Palestinian PR trap—and the Obama administration is left with the equivalent of diplomatic scorched earth.

But not all is necessarily lost. Perhaps the time has come for Washington to put on the table an outline of a fair peace plan or how it envisions a final settlement, which will be, to be sure, no different in principle from the Clinton proposals (or "parameters") of 2000. If America applies the thumbscrews, perhaps the two sides will even respond, and the world will be a little wiser about what Abbas (and Netanyahu) really wants.

Source:  http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/palestine-tergiversation-nation-4538

YouTube closes down site exposing Palestinian hate speech

YouTube closes down PMW account

[From Palwatch.org ]

PMW needs your help. YouTube has closed down PMW's main video account - PALWATCH - for "violating YouTube terms of use", by supposedly propagating hate speech. Of course PMW does not promote hate speech, but exposes the hate speech of the PA and the Hamas, in order to bring about its elimination.



YouTube stated that the account was henceforth terminated "due to repeated or severe violations of our Terms of Use" and they specified the following PMW videos from Palestinian sources, promoting the killing of Jews:



1. "Hamas TV teaches kids to kill Jews" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwN2M6ZIIRU
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 10/02/2009.



2. "Jews are a virus like Aids" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYaGl3KjPUw
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 01/18/2010.



3. "Farewell video before suicide attack of Hamas suicide bomber Adham Ahmad Hujyla Abu Jandal" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYdTudQhWM4
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 06/10/2010.



4. "Hamas suicide farewell video: Jews monkeys and pigs; Maidens reward for killing Jews" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryc7RqXlVdE 
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 08/14/2010.



5. "PA cleric: Kill Jews, Allah will make Muslims masters over Jews" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjuDTO8fgqM
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 12/12/2010.


6. "Hamas suicide terrorist farewell video: Palestinians drink the blood of Jews" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSftYIGH6-w
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 12/15/2010.



PMW urgently seeks to have this account reopened, since some of these videos have accumulated hundreds of thousands of viewings and the exposure is critical to our ongoing work.


 

Abu Toameh: WH and State hear 'yes' when the Palestinians are saying 'NO.'

"Americans need to listen to what the Palestinians are saying not only in English, but also in Arabic. And in Arabic, the message coming out of Ramallah remains no and no and no -- no to resumption of peace talks unconditionally, no to accepting Israel as a Jewish state, no to any solution that does not include all the territories captured by Israel in 1967. These no's are apparently being translated by the White House and State Department as one big yes."

--Khaled Abu Toameh     source: http://bit.ly/ftbJor

TIP: U.S. Supports Israel's Pursuit of Peace Negotiations

U.S. Supports Israel's Pursuit of Peace Negotiations

• Netanyahu prepared to discuss all core issues 
• House: PA unilateral actions detract from peace process
  
  http://www.theisraelproject.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=hsJPK0PIJpH&b=689705&ct=8972585  The Israel Project.org

Secretary of State Clinton meets with Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu at the beginning of peace talks, September, 2010

Washington, Dec. 16 - The United States House of Representatives has passed a resolution (Dec. 15) affirming the importance of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and rejecting unitaleral moves by the Palestinians to declare statehood.

Israel says a Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence would be meaningless since it avoids direct negotiations as a means to lasting peace, delaying the possibility of agreement on critical issues. Several countries in Latin America have recognized a Palestinian state that would occupy all territory captured by Israel in 1967 - but the United States and the European Union have rejected the move.

The House resolution supports a "negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and condemns "unilateral measures to declare or recognize a Palestinian state."

A negotiated solution, it says, is the only way to create two democratic states living side by side in "peace, security and mutual recognition."

Palestinians abandoned directed talks with Israel in September after a 10-month Israeli moratorium on building in the territories expired. The United States is now trying to get indirect negotiations going between the parties - but the Palestinians are resisting even that.

Key questions between the Israelis and Palestingians regarding security, borders, refugees and Jerusalem are still unresolved.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed the U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell on Tuesday (Sec. 14) that he is ready to discuss all the core issues in American-led indirect talks.

"The expectation is that borders and security arrangements will be the first two issues to be tackled," according to Haaretz, an Israeli daily.

Mitchell proposed bilateral talks on Wednesday (Dec. 15) - meaning parallel but separate American-led talks with the Israelis and Palestinians - as a means of restoring the negotiations.

Arab nations came out against any talks between Israel and the PA, "direct or indirect," unless the U.S. delineates what the future borders of a Palestinian state would be.

House passes resolution opposing unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state

The House passed a resolution tonight calling on the PA leadership to return to direct talks with Israel and to stop circumventing the peace process by lobbying for support for a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. No Member spoke in opposition to the resolution. The resolution was brought to the floor by Reps. Berman (D-CA), Poe (R-TX), Berkley (D-NV), Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ackerman (D-NY) and Burton (R-IN).