Scott Martelle, The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial, Rutgers University Press, 2011, $26.95.

The trial of Communist Party USA bosses in 1949 was actually a trial of American democracy, an attack on civil liberties and free speech that, as the jacket copy says, “takes on added resonance in today’s environment of suspicion and the decline of civil rights under the U.S.A. Patriot Act.” That’s the basic story of The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial, which also holds deeper significance.

Coming out of the gate, it seems to be squarely in the genre of American history as a chronicle of oppression. The Fear Within could also pass for the latest edition of Commie Dearest, dedicated to all those whose lives are guided by “the desire to make a better world.” The cover shows more Stalinists per square inch than any book in recent memory.

“I am not a communist myself,” says author Scott Martelle, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, “though, in truth had I lived in the 1930s I likely would have been at some of the same meetings of political progressives that caused so much trouble for the attendees in the 1950s.” Even so, he notes that “The fear was not abstract – Hitler’s Abwehr and Stalin’s NKVD were actively trying to plant spies in the United States, and pro-Nazi and pro-Soviet agitation by American supporters was common.”

A book in this genre from 60s to the 80s would have avoided all that, along with the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Comintern, the Profintern and other uncomfortable subjects Martelle feels compelled to mention. He is also fair to Elizabeth Bentley and Igor Gouzenko, defectors from Stalin’s spy service and both the target of countless attacks from the American left.

As for CPUSA bosses, “Their alliance with the Soviet Union was clear, but they were not engaged in covert acts against the United States.” The proceedings against Benjamin Davis, William Z. Foster (author of Toward Soviet America), Eugene Dennis et al., were based on the Smith Act, whose founder, Rep. Howard W. Smith was “xenophobic and virulently anti-communist.”  Likewise, back in the day, the Los Angeles Times was “virulently anti-communist.”

In this book, nobody is “virulently anti-American” or “virulently anti-capitalist.” And no person of any country other than the USA can possibly be xenophobic or indulge in hysteria. The defendants included black Communists Benjamin Davis and Henry Winston. Martelle provides some helpful background on racial issues. William Nowell, also a black Communist, was opposed to “the party’s call for a segregated black homeland in the Black Belt of the South.”

Like any legal proceedings, the tactics of the prosecution were open to criticism, but the trial was held in the open, under the rule of law, and duly covered by the press. The defendants, who as Communists did not believe in the United States Constitution, enjoyed full representation by competent counsel. Martelle fails to convince that this trial was a failure of American democracy.

The United Nations Security Council continues to sink lower and lower in an effort to find language acceptable to all members condemning the Syrian government’s ruthless massacre of its unarmed citizens. Meanwhile, under the leadership of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently called a “reformer,” more than 1000 civilians have been killed to date.

Rather than confront directly the evil of mass murder imposed by the Syrian regime, the latest draft resolution proposed by the United Kingdom “calls upon all sides to act with utmost restraint.” This moral equivalency between the acts of government forces and protesters was an attempt to win over Security Council members such as India who complained that there were “armed extremists among the protesters” and wanted the council to condemn the demonstrators as well.

The draft resolution does little to bring international pressure to bear on the Syrian regime. Instead, it reportedly declares that the “only solution” is a “Syria-led political process.” Apparently, some members of the UN Security Council still believe that the “reformer” side of President Assad will show up sooner or later.

According to a report by Inner City Press, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) threw an additional monkey wrench into the drafting process. The OIC issued its own statement on May 22, 2011 calling upon the Syrian security forces to show restraint and to refrain from targeting innocent civilians. But the OIC objected to including, with attribution, a quote in its own words critical of the Syrian regime in the UN Security Council resolution. The resolution authors removed the OIC language from the most recent draft circulated to the Security Council members for their review.

Even this latest watered-down, moral-equivalency-version of the resolution is meeting resistance from Russia and a possible veto. The following is a transcription by Inner City Press of comments made on the latest draft by Russia’s Permanent Representative Vitaly Churkin:

Amb. Churkin: No, because we’re not persuaded it can establish dialogue and reach a political settlement to put an end to violence in Syria. We are concerned it may have an opposite effect.

[Questioner]: Russia’s been pretty strong all along, so you’re basically saying — I don’t want to put words in your mouth — that this is a veto situation?

Amb. Churkin: You know, someone else made even before us our position. It is exactly as I’ve described it to you now. We don’t think this helps.

While the Security Council did not hesitate to refer members of the Libyan regime to the International Criminal Court for possible prosecution, nothing of the sort is presently contemplated for the leaders of the Syrian regime. When asked at a press conference held on June 8, 2011 at UN headquarters in New York whether he would recommend a referral of Syrian authorities for possible prosecution for human rights violations, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Mr. Luis Moreno Ocampo, demurred. He had no jurisdiction to investigate in the absence of a formal Security Council referral, he said, because Syria is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which is the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court.

Reprinted from JewishPress.com.

The decision last week by CUNY’s Board of Trustees to deny playwright Tony Kushner an honorary degree sparked an uproar in the media, and Jeffrey Wiesenfeld has been at the center of it.

Wiesenfeld, a longtime outspoken Israel supporter and a member of CUNY’s board of trustees, convinced four of his colleagues that honoring Kushner – who believes Israel’s founding was a mistake and resulted from ethnic cleansing – would be inappropriate. Kushner needed nine votes out of 12 to receive the degree. He got only seven.

But then, responding to public pressure, the board’s seven-member executive committee – which does not include Wiesenfeld – overturned the decision Monday night and voted to grant Kushner the degree.

The Jewish Press: In various newspaper interviews over the years, Tony Kushner has “deplored [the IDF's] illegal and brutal tactics” against the Palestinians; argued that Israel is engaged in “a deliberate destruction of Palestinian culture and a systematic attempt to destroy the identity of the Palestinian people”; and stated that Israel’s founding “was a mistake.” And yet, he now claims to be “dismayed by [your] vicious attack and wholesale distortion of [his] beliefs.” How do you make sense of that?

Wiesenfeld: Kushner is disingenuous and dissembling. If his libelous statements against Israel were made by anyone outside the Jewish community, that person would be labeled an anti-Semite. When you hold the State of Israel – a nation in a struggle for its survival from the beginning and a target for the misogynist, racist, anti-western, dictatorial regimes that surround it – to a standard you would hold no other nation under normal circumstances, let alone under such exigencies, and when you spew libel against our sole regional democratic ally for “crimes” concocted by delegitimizers, you’re an anti-Semite.

It’s a tragedy to tell you that we could do without 80 percent of the Jews. It’s the good Christians who stand up for Israel and for us. It’s a very sad thing for me to say.

The Jewish Press: Some people argue, though, that politics should be irrelevant when deciding whether to give a famous playwright an honorary degree.

Wiesenfeld: As I wrote in my letter to the editor of The New York Times: If Kushner were a CUNY student degree candidate, no trustee or administrator would have the right to deny him a degree if he fulfilled his requisite requirements.

But an honorary degree is wholly within the discretion of CUNY’s board to grant. It identifies the university with accomplished, generous citizens or public figures. It is also a tool that highlights the university and enhances its image in the educational marketplace. Kushner is an extremist. And no extremist from any quarter is a good face for any university – from the far left or from the far right.

The Jewish Press: This “Kushner affair” is not the first time this year you’ve fought for Israel’s reputation at CUNY. In March you were responsible for arranging security so that conservative pro-Israel speaker David Horowitz would be able to lecture at Brooklyn College and provide an alternative view during Israel Apartheid Week.

Wiesenfeld: Every year the situation for Israel’s reputation and Jewish students on campus around the country gets worse and worse. As David Horowitz has said, the left can’t win the argument with normal people. They can only win the argument with their fellow radicals. So how do they try to win the argument with regular folks? They shut them down. They win with hooliganism – there’s no other word for it.

So they’ll find out about an event where a pro-Israel speaker is lecturing – it could be Michael Oren, Benjamin Netanyahu, David Horowitz, or Daniel Pipes – and they will disrupt the event until the college relents and says, O.K., everyone has to leave, we’re canceling this event. That has been the predominant response in this country.

Here, at CUNY, thanks to Chancellor Matt Goldstein, our view is that if there’s an anti-Israel event, there has to at least be an opportunity for a student or professor who wants to arrange a pro-Israel event to be able to do so without disruption.

The Jewish Press: What can Jews do to counter increasing anti-Israel sentiment on American college campuses?

Wiesenfeld: For one, Hillel must undertake the obligation to instill in our students Jewish pride and educate them on how to defend Israel. For decades it has been sufficient for Hillel to be like an identity center where kids can be with other Jewish students, shake a lulav, have some challah, and light a Chanukah menorah. That’s not enough anymore. I’m not attacking them; I’m just saying they’ve been a little slow to react to this new reality.

“It’s time to speak out against hate,” declared Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a video introducing the State Department’s new “campaign to stop bigotry.” Created by the Obama administration’s Special Representative to Muslim Communities, Farah Pandith, and Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Hannah Rosenthal, 2011 Hours Against Hate will “promote respect across lines of culture, religion, tradition, class, and gender.” (All 23 current classifications of gender? Just wondering.) The campaign was launched at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna, February 17, 2011.

At the OSCE, Pandith raised legitimate concerns about the defacing of mosques and of Jewish tombs, schools, synagogues, and kosher shops. But she also said that the “latest trends show growing movements that target ‘the other’ – be they immigrants, or religious and ethnic minorities, in the name of protecting the identity and ‘purity’ of their nation.” By 2011 Hours Against Hate standards, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s declaration that multiculturalism has failed is a dangerous targeting of “the other.” Pandith also noted that “permissibility of anti-Muslim speech is growing.” Really? A host of individuals facing charges, paying fines, and hiding from death threats would be surprised to hear this. But then it seems permissible to target “the other” of “the other.”

“Hate is hate, no matter who the target is,” 2011 Hours Against Hate intones. But some targets of hatred appear to be more equal than others. Perhaps because some leftist elites never got over their assumption that Christians are the persecutors, not the persecuted, they have difficulty speaking out against hatred aimed at those whom the mainstream media sees as hate-mongers.

On April 29, 2011, the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom (IRF) co-sponsored a 2011 Hours Against Hate event. Hosted by George Washington University, the event was billed as a “Town Hall Discussion on U.S. efforts to combat discrimination and hatred against Jews, Muslims, and others.” Hopefully, the 100 million-plus Christians experiencing persecution around the world today, along with Hindus, Sikhs, Baha’i, etc., are included in “and others.” The IRF office should be reminded that advocates for persecuted Christians played a major role in its creation, along with the creation of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Both were mandates of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA).

Though outspoken in their denouncement of hurtful language, the folks at Foggy Bottom have been silent about the massacre of hundreds of Christians in Kaduna State, and several other states in northern Nigeria that took place after Nigeria’s federal elections last month. Angry that Christian President Goodluck Jonathan defeated Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari, Islamists in the Shariah-ruled north began rioting on Monday, April 18, 2011, after preliminary results of the April 16 election were announced. Soon newspapers featured grisly photos of charred bodies lining the streets. Hundreds of churches were burned and thousands of Christian-owned businesses destroyed, according to the Christian human rights group, Open Doors. And International Christian Concern reported that the Kaduna-based Civil Rights Congress was still “discovering more details of massacres that have been carried out in the hinterland.” Upwards of 40,000 Christians have been displaced in the past few weeks.

In its comments about the situation in Nigeria, the U.S. State Department disregarded the religious aspect of the post-election mayhem. Secretary of State Clinton’s April 19 statement on the elections (available in Arabic as well as English) “deplored violence,” but ignored the targeting of Christians. Clinton congratulated Goodluck Jonathan for winning Nigeria’s presidential election, and applauded “the people of Nigeria for their enthusiastic and orderly participation.” She did caution that the process was “far from perfect,” though, and called on the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission “to transparently review and take appropriate and transparent action on all allegations of “under-age” voters, violence and intimidation, ballot stuffing, and inordinately high turnout in some areas of the country.”

The United Nations Security Council has reverted to its usual modus operandi: inaction. On April 27th, after receiving a detailed report by the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs, Lynn Pascoe, on the violence unleashed by the Syrian government against its own people, the council members were unable to agree on a simple press statement calling on the Syrian government to stop its brutality.

In his briefing to the Security Council, Pascoe noted that the anti-government demonstrations in Syria had started in mid-March, following the detention of fifteen schoolchildren in Deraa for anti-government graffiti, and gradually increased in geographic scope and participation.  The protests began with demands for greater freedom and political and economic reforms and eventually included calls for the regime’s downfall.  The Syrian authorities had reacted with a mix of ‘reform’ gestures, and increasingly violent repression. Despite the promise of reform, the government crackdown had dramatically intensified, Pascoe reported.  As a result, more than 100 persons were killed across the country from Friday April 22nd to Sunday April 24th alone, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Pascoe went on to say that the overwhelming majority of protests had been peaceful, but there were also credible reports of a very few instances where protesters had used force, resulting in some deaths of security forces.  Despite the Syrian government’s attempt to place the blame for the violence entirely on the protesters’ shoulders, however, Pascoe said there were no reports suggesting that violence from the protester side was a recurring phenomenon.

The Security Council members listened to Pascoe, but the result was pre-ordained. Under Security Council rules, all fifteen members must approve in order for a press statement to be issued in the name of the council. In this case, Lebanon refused to go along with any press release for fear of offending Syria.

While Russia and China expressed caution in light of the interventions in Libya and the Ivory Coast under Security Council auspices that they believed went too far, Security Council sources have told UN reporters that Russia and China were at least willing to negotiate the wording of a press statement. However, the Lebanese UN ambassador reportedly had instructions from his government not to agree to any Security Council press statement, knowing that the unanimity rule would protect Syria from any official Security Council criticism.

This article is reprinted from Israelnationalnews.com.

Several ultra-leftist groups organized a visit to the Arab village of Awarta on Saturday, April 16, in support of the villagers and against the IDF’s activities there in the search for the murderers of Ruth and Rabbi Ehud Fogel and their children Yoav (11), Elad (4) and Hadas (three months).

The leftists visited several homes in the Samaria village, including that of the Awad family, which spawned the murderers. The identities of the confessed murderers were released for publication on Sunday, the day after the visit. The murderers were already in IDF custody at the time of the leftists’ visit and their arrest – including the fact that they are relatively young – was already widely rumored and hinted at by the press.

A photograph from the visit which can be viewed here, posted by one of the activists on her Internet blog, shows Raya Yaron, spokeswoman of Machsom Watch, comforting a woman described as being 37 years old and “in a deep depression.” The blogger explained in her post that the woman fainted during the leftist women’s visit and was distraught over the arrest of her husband, her two sons and a daughter.

The woman is easily recognizable as Nuf Awad, mother of Hakem Awad, whose photograph was featured on the front page of Arab newspaper al-Hayat al-Jadida Monday.

“It is impossible that my son did this,” she is quoted by the paper as saying. “My son doesn’t know how to slaughter a chicken” (the translation is from the Seventh Eye media-watch website). The two murderers confessed, however, to slaughtering five human beings and investigators reported that they expressed no remorse, and even said that had they realized there were two more children sleeping in the house, they would have killed them as well. They saw no problem in slitting baby Hadas’s throat, they explained, since she was a Jew.

I didn't post this video only because it came in while I was very busy with preparations for the mosque rally, and by the time I was able to watch it it had already gone viral -- and indeed, you have probably already seen it. But the story now is that Israeli authorities have taken clueless dhimmitude to new heights by actually apologizing for this video, as if it is somehow wrong to mock the Palestinian propaganda machine that does, in fact, con the world. Or is it wrong to mock the self-indulgent rock stars who created "We Are the World"?

"Israel Apologizes for Music Video Mocking Gaza Flotilla," by Mara Gay for AOL News, June 8 (thanks to Pamela Hall):

(June 8) -- The Israeli government has apologized for circulating a satirical video that uses Michael Jackson's hit single "We Are the World" to mock activists from the Gaza flotilla.

"There's no people dying, so the best that we can do is create the greatest bluff of all," one refrain in the parody goes.

Last week nine people aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of six ships carrying aid to Gaza in defiance of Israel's blockade, were killed under hotly contested circumstances during an Israeli raid on the flotilla. In the video, Israelis dressed up as activists offer their own take on the incident through song.

"We con the world, we con the people," the song continues, in an apparent reference to Hamas and the activists aboard the flotilla.

The Israeli Government Press Office distributed footage of the music video to foreign journalists on June 4, but then sent an apology to reporters just hours later, insisting it had been an accident.

"The contents of the video in no way represent the official policy of either the Government Press Office or of the State of Israel," Israel's Government Press Office later told CNN....

“Columnist Helen Thomas, a trailblazer for women journalists and one of the few in the White House press corps who courageously questioned President Bush and other officials in his administration on war, torture and U.S. policy toward Israel…It is a sad ending to a legendary career…”

“the greatest White House correspondent of all time,” insisting “One must view Helen Thomas’ comment in…context…She is of Lebanese heritage and understands well the Palestinian perspective on Israel.”

“Is the aging process…a rationale for what she said…she will turn 90 on August 4…One of the common symptoms of aging is a loss of cognitive ability that [makes people say] socially inappropriate [things].”

Scanning news reports this week, I was surprised to learn that according to much of the press, Turkey had been Israel’s “staunchest ally in the Muslim world,” until the Gaza aid flotilla debacle. According to the Associated Press, the UK’s Daily Mail and other media, the Gaza aid flotilla crisis has irreparably damaged the “close” relationship between Israel and Turkey.

The fact is such reports are simply untrue and misleading. It was not the Gaza aid flotilla that irreparably damaged relations between Turkey and Israel. The relationship had already been under severe strain for the past seven years, since the now ultra-conservative Islamist AK Party led by Turkish Prime Minister Erodgan took power in 2002.

Indeed friendly relations between Turkey and Israel prior to the flotilla incident had already, for the most part, been over.

Turkey, the country that led the flotilla initiative, has shown absolutely no interest in continuing peaceful relations with Israel in the past year, resorting to hostile rhetoric and policies against the Jewish state. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan barred Israel from annual military exercises on Turkey’s soil last year, while signing a military contract with Syria. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last year, the Turkish PM Erdogan verbally attacked Israeli president Shimon Peres about Gaza and stormed off the stage. In October 2009, Turkish national television aired a drama casting Israeli soldiers as sadists set to kill Palestinian children.

Not that Turkey’s human rights’ record is so squeaky clean. In 1974, Turkey invaded northern Cyprus, creating 160,000 Greek Cypriot refugees. Turkey still denies these refugees’ rights to return to their homes, as well as access and use of their property. Since the Turkish invasion, a large number of Turks have been brought to occupy the homes of the Greek Cypriot refugees, in violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention.

In 2009, the Orthodox Church of Cyprus launched legal action against Turkey for destroying 522 churches during the invasion. The Cyprus Church states that Turkey continues to destroy those remaining churches, converting them into “morgues, stables, night clubs, and chicken coops.”

But in addition to human rights abuses, it is those who Turkey counts as its friends, not its enemies, that should truly worry the West.

Turkey has announced that it would not join any sanctions aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and has warmly welcomed Iranian president Ahmadinejad to its capital city. But in May, Turkey went a step further and actually attempted to forestall UN economic sanctions against Iran much to the chagrin of the United States.

Back in February, the Turkish daily, Today’s Zaman wrote that the Turkish State Minister, Cedvet Yilmaz stated that his government was committed to working on improving relations with its neighbor Iran. The driving force behind this commitment, indicated Yilmaz, were the mutual gas transfer projects, which both Yilmaz and Iranian Foreign Minister, Manoucheher Mottaki agreed will bring both countries to a “historical era.”

Turkey and Iran have signed a number of deals to facilitate the flow of gas through Turkey to Europe, including agreements to allocate some Iran’s South Pars gas field to the Turkish Petroleum Corporation, where Iranian gas will be trasported across Turkey.

The Turkey-Iran pipeline transfers natural gas worth around $2 billion every year. “We believe that the projects for the tansfer of Iranian natural gas to Europe via Turkey will give a momentum to relations between the two largest economies in the world,” Yilmaz has stated. Another Turkish government official, Zafer Caglayan, stated that bilateral trade with Iran has grown to $10 billion in the past eight years.

But its not only economic ambitions or a record of human rights abuses that Turkey shares with Iran. Turkey’s government has grown more and more totalitarian in recent years, seeking not only to control economic and political matters but also attitudes, values and beliefs of its population. According to a recent article in Forbes, Melik Kaylan reports that the ruling pro-Islamic AK party has over 100,000 Turks wiretapped, thousands arrested and questioned, and over 200 reporters, intellectuals, academics and military officers jailed, all accused of a military coup.

“If you try to talk over the phone to people in Turkey about their current government, they will likely refuse to do so. The ruling pro-Islamic AK Party is now tapping phones so liberally that everyone is paranoid,” writes Kaylan.

A Washington Post blogger writes about similar observations of the Turkish government regime. Professor Susan Brook Thistelwaite reports that “far more Turkish women are wearing headscarves and religious dress than a decade ago. As one Turkish businessman observed about his university-age daughter, ‘They want to put a headscarf on her mind.’ He is thinking about sending his daughter to the United States to complete her education.”

“Erdogan’s administration has severely undermined the independence of the media, of the judiciary, of the banking system and has abolished long-standing rules prohibiting religious dress on university campuses. It is now moving on to re-write school textbooks to revise the country’s secular history,” writes Thistelwaite.

Indeed, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah presented the Turkish Prime Minister with one of the country’s most prestigious prizes, the King Faisal International Prize, also known as the ‘Arab Nobel Prize,’ in March.  The prize was given to Erdogan for “rendering outstanding service to Islam by defending the causes of the Islamic nation, particularly the Palestinian cause.” He received $200,000 in prize money.

The Palestinian cause has become a rallying banner for the Muslim world, serving as a means to distract the rest of the world from the human rights abuses that continue in countries like Turkey, Iran and Saudia Arabia, as well as from their growing economic power.

Indeed the humanitarian goods, among the weapons and arms, on the Gaza-bound flotilla should have gone to refugees elsewhere in the Middle East who have been displaced by Muslim powers. But then the incitement and hatred against Israel which unifies Muslims worldwide would have been lost.

Anav Silverman is a columnist and educator whose work has been published widely online and in print, both in Israel and internationally. She has appeared on Al Jazeera, BBC Radio, and CBS 2 and has contributed to BBC News, The Philadelphia Bulletin, Sderot Media Center, Front Page Magazine, Bangor Daily News, Maariv, The Jerusalem Post, Ynet News, and other publications.

[Editor's note: This article was translated from Spanish into English by Mario from the website Portal of Ideas.]

Why don’t we see demonstrations in London, Paris and Barcelona against Islamic dictatorships? Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship?

Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection?

Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam?

Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of the Islamic dictatorship in Sudan?

Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel?

Why is there no outcry by the European Left against Islamic fanaticism? Why doesn’t it defend Israel’s right to exist?

Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism?

Finally, the million dollar question: Why is the Left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet? The two most solid democracies, who have suffered the bloodiest attacks of terrorism, and the Left doesn’t care.

And then, to the concept of freedom. In every pro-Palestinian European forum I hear the Left yelling with fervor: “We want freedom for the people!” Not true. They are never concerned with freedom for the people of Syria or Yemen or Iran or Sudan, or other such nations. And they are never preoccupied when Hamas destroys freedom for the Palestinians. They are only concerned with using the concept of Palestinian freedom as a weapon against Israeli freedom. The resulting consequence of these ideological pathologies is the manipulation of the press.

The international press does major damage when reporting on the question of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. On this topic they don’t inform, they propagandize. When reporting about Israel, the majority of journalists forget the reporter code of ethics. And so, any Israeli act of self-defense becomes a massacre, and any confrontation, genocide. So many stupid things have been written about Israel, that there aren’t any accusations left to level against her. At the same time, this press never discusses Syrian and Iranian interference in propagating violence against Israel; the indoctrination of children and the corruption of the Palestinians. And when reporting about victims, every Palestinian casualty is reported as tragedy and every Israeli victim is camouflaged, hidden or reported about with disdain.

And let me add on the topic of the Spanish Left. Many are the examples that illustrate the anti-Americanism and anti-Israeli sentiments that define the Spanish left. For example, one of the leftist parties in Spain has just expelled one of its members for creating a pro-Israel website. I quote from the expulsion document: “Our friends are the people of Iran, Libya and Venezuela, oppressed by imperialism, and not a Nazi state like Israel.”

In another example, the socialist mayor of Campozuelos changed Shoah Day, commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, with Palestinian Nabka Day, which mourns the establishment of the State of Israel, thus showing contempt for the six million European Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Or in my native city of Barcelona, the city council decided to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel, by having a week of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Thus, they invited Leila Khaled, a noted terrorist from the 70’s and current leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization so described by the European Union, which promotes the use of bombs against Israel. And so on and so on.

This politically correct way of thinking has even polluted the speeches of president Zapatero. His foreign policy falls within the lunatic Left, and on issues of the Middle East, he is unequivocally pro-Arab. I can assure you that in private, Zapatero places on Israel the blame for the conflict in the Middle East, and the policies of foreign minister Moratinos reflect this. The fact that Zapatero chose to wear a kafiah in the midst of the Lebanon conflict is no coincidence; it’s a symbol.

Spain has suffered the worst terrorist attack in Europe and it is in the crosshairs of every Islamic terrorist organization. As I wrote before, they kill us will cell phones hooked to satellites connected to the Middle Ages. And yet the Spanish Left is the most anti-Israeli in the world.

And then it says it is anti-Israeli because of solidarity. This is the madness I want to denounce.

Conclusion:

I am not Jewish. Ideologically I am Left and by profession a journalist. Why am I not as anti-Israeli as my colleagues? Because as a non-Jew I have the historical responsibility to fight against Jewish hatred and currently against the hatred for their historic homeland, Israel. To fight against anti-Semitism is not the duty of the Jews, it is the duty of the non-Jews.

As a journalist it is my duty to search for the truth beyond prejudice, lies and manipulations. The truth about Israel is not told. As a person from the Left who loves progress, I am obligated to defend liberty, culture, civic education for children, coexistence and the laws that the Tablets of the Covenant made into universal principles. Principles that Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. That is to say that as a non-Jew, journalist and lefty I have a triple moral duty with Israel, because if Israel is destroyed, liberty, modernity and culture will be destroyed too.

The struggle of Israel, even if the world doesn’t want to accept it, is the struggle of the world.

Pilar Rahola is a Spanish politician, journalist and activist. She is a passionate defender of the United States and Israel and an indefatigable fighter against anti-Semitism. All of this despite being ideologically from the left. Her articles are published in Spain and throughout some of the most important newspapers in Latin America. She is the recipient of major awards by Jewish organizations.

Tripoli - Firas Press: urged the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Muslims in the European Union to unite and join the People's Leadership of the Islamic World, which he chaired, to counter what he considered a threat to the Muslims there, pointing out that God - the Almighty - created the earth for all people and not for sex particular, in reference to the Europeans.

Gaddafi said at the meeting, on Thursday evening, in the Libyan capital Tripoli, the heads of delegations of leaders of the Social Popular Islamic Forum Muammar friendship and networking in the Balkans, and the Association of Gaddafi to young people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who were visiting Libya, «You are a rarity in Europe, you get the large number of willing God in the day, you will have the upper hand and higher levels, you will be imams and Oarthyn of the European continent ».

He added: «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».

And reduced-Qadhafi, who holds the rotating presidency of the Arab summit, of the importance of statistics that declare the number of Muslims in Europe, said it was not true, because it is tendentious statistics show that Muslims are a minority. However, he added: «Muslims more than the number declared by the official statistics».

He added, saying: «Fortunately, the Muslims started to multiply and multiply more than the rest of the other religions, maybe this is a sign of God. Thus the will of God, made Muslims multiply times higher than other breeds. Perhaps this is proof that God wants to be more Muslims than anyone else in the end »....

He said: «We must unite in Europe, and to be an Islamic state and one under the banner of the World Islamic People's Leadership», pointing out that God created the earth for all people....

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On January 27, 1998, Yehuda Bauer, Director of Research at Yad Vashem, concluded his Holocaust commemoration address at the Bundestag in Germany with the following:

“Thou shalt not be a perpetrator.”

“Thou shalt not be a victim.”

“And Thou shalt never, but never be a bystander.”

It is remarkable that Bauer saved the strongest admonition for bystanders.

On Friday May 27, at the White House Jewish Heritage Celebration, Helen Thomas, the “dean” of the White House Press Corps, answered a journalist’s request for an opinion on Israel:

“Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied and it’s their land…not German and not Poland.”

“So, where should they go?”

“Go home. Poland, Germany.”

“So, you think the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?”

“And America and everywhere else.”

Helen Thomas is a perpetrator.  Perpetrator, because the most important aspect of the War Against Israel is the war to erode American support for Israel, the war for public opinion.  As in Vietnam, the press in America will bring about the fall of Israel and the annihilation of her people long before and more surely than those seeking the physical destruction of the Gaza blockade.

In spite of this, Helen does not fully explain the “why” of the Holocaust.  Within hours of Thomas’ Reichstag-worthy revelation, the video evidence circled the globe.  It is safe to assume that the people who come in daily contact with Helen knew what she said.

These journalists and reporters, as every educated American, have seen pictures of the Holocaust; they have probably looked in horror at images of the selection at Auschwitz, the mass-shootings in Ukraine, the portraits of Eichmann and Mengele.  This contemplation probably led to self-reassuring oaths that, “Had I been there, I would have resisted.  I would have spoken out.  The Nazis were evil monsters. How could this have happened?”

Certainly, the White House Press Corps is full of those who have thus reacted to the Nazi Holocaust.  And yet, they will sit down to dinner with Helen Thomas.  They will continue to say, “Good Morning” to her and will treat her like an icon worthy of respect.  She will stoop in her throne in the Press Corps galley.  She will not be shunned in the halls of the White House, and senators and representatives will still curry her favor or, at the very worst, attribute her rant to notorious spunk.

This is why the Holocaust happened.  A dozen average men and women weighed their careers against the consequence of protest and permitted the penetration of respectable society by anti-Semitism. The looming destruction of Israel is not to be attributed to hate-filled sectarian ideologues like Thomas, but to the reporters and journalists who will avoid nasty personal consequences, and refuse to treat her with the utter contempt she merits.  If ever Eichmann and Mengele and Goebbels deserved to be shunned as enemies of civilization, then likewise, a woman pretending to exemplify investigative excellence while suppressing the truth of the Jews’ tri-millennial claim to a homeland in the Holy Land, ought to be ostracized by anyone with a conscience.

The path to the first Holocaust was that of politically justified anti-Semitism.  Hitler began his crusade against the Jews under the pretext that they had caused, through self-interest, the defeat of Germany in the First World War.  We, fleeing precipitously towards a Second “Final Solution,” witness a similar attempt to disguise racial hatred of the Jews as dissenting political opinion.  We hear words such as “occupation, apartheid, human rights violations,” only because they camouflage an embarrassing, crass hatred.  Penetration of respectable society by this “classy, political” anti-Semitism is the first step to genocide.

The choice to become a bystander faces each member of the White House Press Corps.  Together, they should demand Helen Thomas’ expulsion from their midst, if they wish to retain their integrity and honor.

Should authorities refuse, for the obvious reason that anti-Semitism has been given the green light (no pun intended) by the example of the administration, then it is the personal responsibility of each member to treat the “Queen” and her supporters as they claim they would have treated the last batch of selectors who favored deporting the Jews to their “homeland” in the ovens of Poland.

KANDAHAR (AIP): Taliban on Friday rejected consultative peace jirga's demand that the Taliban should lay down weapons and join the peace process, stressing that they would continue their resistance till the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. Talking to Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) after President Hamid Karzai's address to the concluding session of the advisory peace jirga, Taliban spokesman Qari Muhammad Yousaf Ahmadi said, "Neither the offers of the jirga are acceptable to us nor the invitation of Karzai. All these efforts are aimed at prolonging the stay of foreigners." "The jirga is indeed a gathering of government supporters and agents of foreigners. Neither Taliban accept these jirgas nor justify their demands. If the jirga is really concerned about the welfare of Afghanistan, then it should first extend steps for withdrawal of the foreign forces," he stated.

War is deceit, and side effects may include short-term memory loss:

He added that "First the real cause of the Afghanistan war should be found. Everyone knows that war was started by the incumbent administration and with arrival of foreigners. The fighting would continue unless the foreigners leave Afghanistan." The Taliban spokesman repeatedly said if the incumbent government and the jirgas want an end to fighting in the country then foreign forces should leave Afghanistan, adding the withdrawal of foreign forces would remove the cause of war. "Taliban would continue their resistance and Jihad as long as the foreign forces stay in Afghanistan," he concluded. A consultative peace jirga was started in capital Kabul on June 02 which concluded today (June 04) after discussing mechanism for talks with Taliban for three days. The jirga urged both Taliban and Afghan government to hold talks for brining [sic] peace to Afghanistan. It also urged United States to make long term policies for Afghanistan.

An update on this story. "Nigeria: Court to hear child-bride case," by Bashir Adigun for the Associated Press, June 4:

ABUJA, Nigeria -- A Nigerian federal court will hear a case over whether the West African nation's religious freedom and privacy laws allow a Muslim senator to marry a 13-year-old girl, the latest rift in a country split between Christians and Muslims.

The lawsuit filed by the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria on behalf of Senator Ahmad Sani Yerima challenges the country's child protection laws that ban women from marrying before age 18. The suit, obtained Friday by The Associated Press, claims that Yerima's constitutional rights are being trampled over the controversy surrounding his alleged marriage to a 13-year-old Egyptian girl.

It's a common ploy the world over in courtroom jihad: pleading in the name of constitutional rights to advance an agenda that would trample those rights if given the chance.

"The Nigerian constitution guarantees and protects the privacy of any citizen (and) his family member ... against invasion, intrusion and interference," the lawsuit reads.

The suit names the government's National Human Rights Commission, the Senate president and the speaker of the house as defendants. The Human Rights Commission has urged the police to investigate Yerima, while both chambers of the National Assembly have called for their own investigations.

Human rights groups say the 49-year-old lawmaker married the girl at the National Mosque in Abuja after paying her family a $100,000 dowry. Under child protection laws enforceable in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, a woman must be 18 before being able to consent to marriage. However, those laws aren't enacted in all of Nigeria's 36 states and activists say child brides have been married off in Muslim communities after their first period.

It also isn't the first time Yerima has apparently married a child. The rights commission alleges he married a 15-year-old girl, only to divorce the young mother at 17.

Yerima himself appears unrepentant in recent interviews, though he has declined to say how old his new wife is. He told the BBC's Hausa language service in April that he considers "God's law and that of his prophet above any other law."...

And, he observes, Muhammad also married a child.

One can only trust the apologists are burning up the phone lines trying to reach him and tell him Aisha was actually older, and that the account given Sahih Bukhari, for example, is a bunch of hooey taken out of context by cheeky Islamophobes.

Remember the big stories in the national media when George W. Bush waited four days to tour New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit? Here’s a pop quiz: How long did it take President Obama to visit the Gulf coast after the Deepwater Horizon oil leak began?

The answer is 13 days. Here is how The Washington Post described that visit:

“He flew in and out of New Orleans on May 2, drove two hours to a Coast Guard station and got a briefing before taking a quick helicopter tour. He did not even see the oil slick.”

Mark Knoller of CBS News reported last week that in the first 39 days after each respective catastrophe, Obama visited the Gulf coast twice; Bush visited New Orleans seven times. But remember, this is not Obama’s Katrina!

Now imagine if President Bush, five weeks into one of the largest oil leaks in U.S. history, and without ever having seen the slick, jetted across the country to headline a $17,600 per-person fund-raiser at the home of an oil-fortune heir. How do you think the national press would have treated that? Bush didn’t do that, which is why you didn’t hear about it. President Obama did — which is why you didn’t hear about it.

The media covered Obama’s trip to San Francisco to raise money for Barbara Boxer. Some news outlets even reported that Obama spoke at a private reception at the home of Democratic Party donor Gordon Getty. But few reported that Getty is the heir to the Getty Oil fortune. For instance, the New York Times reports on Obama’s trip never identified Getty as an oil heir. Do you think that would have been omitted had Bush been Getty’s guest?

What if, hours after the head of the U.S. Minerals Management Service left her job over Washington’s mishandling of that giant oil spill, President Bush held a press conference (his first in months) and, when asked about that agency head, could not say whether she had resigned or been fired? What if, hours later, the White House stated that the President knew all along that she had been dismissed, but that story was contradicted by the Cabinet secretary — the one who supposedly did the dismissing — having said that morning during a congressional hearing that she’d resigned voluntarily?

That happened in the Obama administration last week. Where are the outraged cries of incompetence and dishonesty?

Can you imagine the charges of buffoonery that would pour forth from New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, if the George W. Bush administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a state law that had been signed into law by one of Bush’s own cabinet secretaries?

Well, last week the Obama administration did exactly that. The Department of Justice asked the court to overturn a 2007 Arizona immigration law that punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano signed the bill into law when she was Arizona governor.

All of these events were reported in the mainstream media. But they were not reported in the same way they would have been had a Republican been president. The point of this criticism is not to say that Bush was great and Obama stinks. Bush was not a great president. The point is to illustrate the double standard most of the media have.

Media bias exhibits itself in the subtle favoring of liberal politicians and ideas. The same rules don’t apply to the left and the right. The left is presumed to have good intentions, the right bad. So when Bush took four days to get to New Orleans after Katrina hit, it was evidence of racism, elitism, a general lack of concern for the little people. But when it took Obama three times as long to visit the Gulf Coast, there was silence.

When a left-wing administration makes mistakes or contradicts itself, that is simply human nature. When a right-of-center administration does, it is incompetence or duplicity. Or both.

At least some on the left are calling out Obama for his inattentiveness to the Gulf oil spill. That’s no substitute for the press setting the national narrative by holding him to the same standards to which it held Bush. But it’s a start.

Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader. Follow him on twitter @Drewhampshire.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban suicide attackers struck at the national peace conference as it opened Wednesday in the Afghan capital, waging gunbattles near the venue. At least two attackers were killed but no delegates were hurt, officials said.

The attack, including rocket fire, started minutes after President Hamid Karzai began his opening address to some 1,600 dignitaries gathered for the conference, in which he appealed for rank-and-file Taliban members to stop fighting for the sake of the country.

The Taliban, which had earlier threatened to kill anyone who took part, claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to The Associated Press, saying they intended to sabotage the three-day conference.

The conference, known as a peace jirga, continued despite the attack....

Karzai's remarks were interesting:

"There are thousands of Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami, they are not the enemies of this soil," Karzai said.

He said continuing fighting would only prevent the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan.

"Make peace with me and there will be no need for foreigners here. As long as you are not talking to us, not making peace with us, we will not let the foreigners leave," Karzai said.

About 10 minutes into his speech, Karzai was briefly interrupted by an explosion outside, which police said was a rocket. Karzai heard the thud, but dismissed it, telling delegates, "Don't worry. We've heard this kind of thing before."

Soon afterward, an AP reporter nearby heard a loud explosion and saw smoke rising from a second apparent rocket attack that struck about 100 meters (yards) from the venue, a huge tent pitched on a university compound.

Bursts of gunfire could be heard to the south of the venue, and security forces rushed to the area. Helicopters flew overhead....

Facebook kowtows to violent intimidation and threats, and accepts Islamic restrictions on free speech. And Iran's Press TV is dead chuffed. Free Speech Death Watch Update: "Facebook apologizes over blasphemy," from PressTV, May 31:

Pakistan says Facebook has apologized to the country and has removed the blasphemous content that had prompted Islamabad to ban the social networking website.

"In response to our protest, Facebook has tendered their apology and informed us that all the sacrilegious material has been removed from the URL," Najibullah Malik, secretary of Pakistan's information technology ministry, was quoted by AP as saying on Monday.

Islamabad, in turn, lifted a ban it had imposed on the social networking website, after Facebook assured the Pakistani government that "nothing of this sort will happen in the future," Malik said....

Yes.

"The Jihad Flotilla and the Media War Against Israel," by Pamela Geller for Big Journalism, May 31:

Today's incident on the Gaza jihad flotilla was an act of war - but not by Israel. The tsunami of Jew-hating propaganda from the jihad-loving media has already begun. The international media, predictably, is spinning the story as if it were all Israel's fault, saying that the IDF killed innocent civilian humanitarian workers on a flotilla headed to Gaza to bring aid to the starving people there.

In reality, none of that is true. This was an act of war against Israel. The people in Gaza aren't starving, and the "humanitarian aid workers" on the flotilla were actually Islamic jihadists who attacked the IDF first. It was a planned attack -- by Hamas and the hardline Muslim groups. Hamas supporters planned an armed assault, which included the murder of captured Israeli heroes. They almost succeeded.

Will you get the real story from the media? Not a chance. Before the Israeli self-defense raid even occurred, the BBC said that Israel was facing a lose-lose situation. And that is how it is playing out now. The Associated Press is reading like Al-Jazeera:

The violent takeover dealt yet another blow to Israel's international image, already tarnished by war crimes accusations in Gaza and its 3-year-old blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.

Of course AP doesn't mention that the day before the raid, the "humanitarians" on the jihad flotilla were chanting: "Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!"

Khaibar was an Arabian oasis populated by Jews. Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, stormed the oasis and massacred the Jews there and seized their land and possessions. Says Islamic scholar Robert Spencer:

Thus when modern-day jihadists invoke Khaybar, they are recalling an aggressive, surprise raid by Muhammad which resulted in the final eradication of the once considerable Jewish presence in Arabia. To the jihadists, Khaybar means the destruction of the Jews and the seizure of their property by the Muslims.

Today the jihadist forces want war again, and a chance to repeat the Khaibar massacre. Syrian President Bashar al Assad and Lebanese Premier Saad Hariri issued a joint statement condemning the "crime committed by Israel with this barbaric attack on defenceless civilians." They "invite the international community to take measures as soon as possible to end Israel's crimes, which could lead to war in the Middle East with repercussions far beyond the regional borders."

It is no accident that reality is being rewritten, and this brazen, bloody attack by Islamic jihadists is being called a humanitarian mission. The media is the front line in the impending war. It is interesting how this new war is being waged on two fronts, very much in tandem with one another. The battle has long been in the information battlespace. Guns, bombs, and bloodshed are the results of what happens in the war of ideas. Now we enter phase II. The West has been sufficiently subdued by years of relentless anti-Semitic propaganda. Now the anti-Semitic forces of jihad are going in for the kill with the tacit approval and sanction of their copywriters in the media. They're dressing up genocide in a flotilla bow and serving it up cold.

In the information battlespace, the jihadis can count on the complicity of the subdued, Islamophiliac press. They can physically attack Israeli troops and count on the corrupt media to package any act of Israeli self-defense as an aggression. Then this repackaging will lead to international condemnation, United Nations Security Council resolutions, and further delegitimization of Israel.

This Jew-hating, jihad flotilla was the opening salvo in the war....

Read it all.