Israel ads perverted in battle for public opinion in Ireland‘Visit Israel’ becomes ‘Boycott Israel’ as pro-Palestinian activists move beyond mere rhetoric and demonstrations to property defacement

DUBLIN — An advertising campaign in the Irish city of Cork urging people to visit Israel was defaced almost immediately on its unveiling by anti-Israeli activists. The ad campaign, which featured colourful images of Israeli society with the slogan “Visit Israel,” was overwritten with the slogan “Boycott Israel” and other messages critical of Israeli policy. The vandalism was clearly well organized and photos of the defacement were posted on the Internet and the Facebook page of the Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The original ads were placed by a growing advocacy group for Israel in Ireland calledIrish4Israel which campaigns against the often vocal anti-Zionist sentiment in the country, and which has been robust and relatively successful in its advocacy efforts. The Irish4Israel group has already organized a Love Israel rally in Dublin’s city center, in front of the iconic General Post Office (venue of the 1916 uprising against the British), and has been active on social media in defence of Israel.

The poster campaign was actually the result of a partnership between two pro-Israel organizations on opposite sides of the Atlantic. It was funded by Blue Star, a San Francisco-based pro-Israel advocacy agency, which teamed up with Irish4Israel to raise funds for the advertising campaign in Cork, Ireland’s second-largest city. The money was raised over the St Patrick’s Day period of late March and went towards producing and putting up billboards with positive messages about Israel on bus stop shelters near University College Cork.

Visit Israel poster

Ireland’s reputation for having a vocal anti-Israel lobby was a big factor in BlueStar’s response to Irish4Israel’s request for a partner on the project. The organization has done other collaborative projects in Europe, but Ireland represented “one of Europe’s most challenging countries for Israel” said Blue Star in its fund raising letter. The Irish Government has been especially critical of Israel in an EU context and Irish activists are very involved in international protests against Israel and in the Palestinian territories.

However, such a perspective is not generally shared by the wider public in this island nation which is mostly indifferent to foreign issues.

Jonathan Carey, executive director of Blue Star, said they were impressed with the Israel advocacy work Irish4Israel had already been doing, and with how quickly it has developed. “We get a dozen emails daily from around the world with requests for assistance or partnering, but Irish4Israel stood out as a serious group and the kind we’d like to work with,” said Carey.

Irish4Israel was founded in 2010 by Barry Williams, a non-Jewish student at University College Cork, and mostly uses Facebook as its main platform for communication and organizing. The group has 2,500 members on Facebook, with most of them under the age of 35. Members are encouraged to sign petitions and write or call media outlets and politicians to protest anti-Israel coverage and rhetoric. The group also encourages “buycotts,” where it encourages consumers to go out and buy Israel-made products, in retaliation for calls for boycotts of such goods.

Despite the calls for boycotts, Israeli goods, especially fresh herbs and vegetables, continue to be prominently stocked and sold in the big supermarkets.

Visit Israel ad campaign defaced to Boycott Israel. (photo credit: courtesy)

Clearly, there are no winners in the battle for public opinion about Israel in Ireland. The rising articulation of pro-Israeli sentiment shows battle has been taken up against the pro-Palestinian lobby, who for years had a relative dominance in debate and in media coverage.

The Israeli Embassy in Dublin has also been very active and last week it held a large reception in the capital to celebrate Israeli Independence day, with a stirring performance by Mary Byrne, the Irish singing star who rose to fame on TV’s talent show the ‘X Factor’. Byrne, like many Irish Israel fans, spent a long spell on kibbutz when she was younger.

“The reception was packed, and Mary wouldn’t’ stop singing!” quipped one observer.

Significantly, for the first time the Independence Day reception was not picketed anti-Israeli activists, proof perhaps that the battle for opinion is now being fought out elsewhere, on social media — and in night time raids on bus shelter ad campaigns.

'Palestinians' boycott Israel

Muslim Op-Ed in the NY Times: End the Arab Boycott of Israel By ED HUSAIN, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

On Jerusalem’s ancient walls hung old fans that made a rattling, windy noise. There was no money for air-conditioning. The carpet for worshipers was old and ragged. I was inside one of the world’s most significant buildings, but scaffolding and clutter prevented me from seeing the center of the Dome of the Rock.

Water leaks, disheveled shoe shelves, and unclean antique tiles brought a sense of disharmony to Islam’s third most sacred site. No, this was not the fault of the Jews or the West, but we Muslims who claim to fight daily for “liberating Jerusalem” and yet neglect the very heart of this city. Why? And how can this change?

I recently visited Israel and the West Bank for the first time. I am Muslim and in Muslim communities around the world to visit Israel is to support “the Zionist entity” and therefore risk social isolation. Not only is this mind-set outdated, it is self-defeating.

The Arab League began its boycott of Zionist goods back in 1945 and later created a Central Boycott Office to ensure minimal Arab contact with Israel. In reality, the Gulf states and others circumvent this policy, but the Arab and Muslim masses have yet to break free from the mind-set of boycotting all things Israeli.

A prominent cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, in addition to justifying suicide bombings against Israelis, regularly upholds his fatwas urging Muslims to avoid contact with Israel from his Al Jazeera podium. Recent attempts by European Marxist academics to boycott Israel have given support to this counterproductive attitude.

In many mosques and universities this view might bolster the superiority complex of some academics and Muslim clerics. But the main victims of this boycott are not Israelis, but Palestinians. Israel’s economy is booming, while Palestinians languish in abject poverty. The decades-long Arab boycott has failed miserably. An estimated 70 percent of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem live below the poverty line.

Arabs from neighboring countries do not visit Jerusalem because of the boycott, but many Arab men do not have that luxury: They find jobs as cleaners and porters in the city’s hotels, or with Jewish-owned businesses, or travel to the West Bank to find work.

Many people condemn Israeli settlements and call for an economic boycott of their produce, but I saw that it was Arab builders, plumbers, taxi drivers and other workers who maintained Israeli lifestyles. Separatism in the Holy Land has not worked and it is time to end it. How much longer will we punish Palestinians to create a free Palestine?

I abandoned Muslim groupthink and went to Israel because there is a new momentum in the region. Egypt’s former grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, and the prominent scholar Habib Ali al-Jifri, broke ranks with Qaradawi andwent to Jerusalem last April. They justified their visit on scriptural grounds, citing the Prophet Muhammad’s encouragement for believers to visit the Holy Land. Their trip was facilitated by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan, the principal religious adviser to King Abdullah II.

Muslim leaders in Jerusalem welcomed both men and Palestinian imams called for the end of the Arab boycott on Al Jazeera Arabic and other media outlets. This was a direct challenge to radicals like Qaradawi and his supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo and the Islamist party Ennahda in Tunis. Why do they want to continue the boycott?

Turkey’s free-trade agreement with Israel, which is yielding results for both countries, Jordan’s cordial relations with the Jewish state, and the new show of leadership from two prominent scholars shows us that not all Arabs and Muslims are dedicated to confrontation.

President Obama is due to visit Israel and Jordan this month. Talk of renewing peace negotiations is once more in the air, but talks will fail again unless there is a wider change in attitudes. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for all his faults, is correct in identifying a wider strain of intolerance of Israel. The nations of the Arab Spring cannot be serious about wanting democracy when they are banning their citizens from visiting Muslim (and Jewish and Christian) holy sites.

The voice of the Palestinian imams who want to see an end to the boycott needs to be amplified. Religious leaders at Al Azhar seminary in Egypt or the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia who advocate peace are often ignored by policymakers, even though they have vast popular influence. A peace agreement underwritten by moderate imams like these would have broad political and religious clout.

Without a shift in attitudes, Israel’s security concerns will never be allayed. Humanizing Israel to Arabs — by bringing together America’s Muslim allies, by addressing anti-Semitism in school textbooks and in sermons at mosques, by permitting Arab citizens to visit and trade with Israel — are requisite first steps.

To be credible in Muslim eyes, any peace agreement requires backing from major Sunni powers, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt. With Islamist organizations of various hues in power in Ankara, Tunis, Gaza, Cairo and on the rise in Libya, Yemen, Syria and Jordan, the West cannot continue to ignore religious dimensions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Unless we tame the Islamist tiger, a decade from now we will look back and lament.

Why Are You Protesting Against Israel?

ISRAEL MATZAV: Jerusalem Marathon route changed

Adidas has caved in to thethreat of an international boycott, the Jerusalem City Council has caved in to Adidas, and the Jerusalem Marathon will bererouted not to take in any areas of Jerusalem that were liberated in 1967, including the Jewish neighborhoods in those parts of the city.

The Jerusalem Municipality had decided to change the course of the Jerusalem Marathon. The new route will not include running paths in areas of Jerusalem that were added to the city after 1967. Last month, two Meretz members of the Jerusalem City Council asked Adidas, which I sponsoring the marathon, to pull out of its sponsorship, threatening to start an international campaign accusing the company of supporting “occupation.”

Municipality officials denied that it was pressure from Adidas that led to the change of the route. In a statement, a city spokesperson said that the municipality was hoping to keep politics out of the event.

Maybe they forgot to point that out to the 'loyal opposition.'

Is Israel Doing Enough to Counter the Boycotts?

Is Israel Doing Enough to Counter the Boycotts?

How to Boycott Israel

How to boycott Israel ? 
If you really want to stop Israel, please follow these simple instructions: In your office or home, do not use any computers, as Israel developed The Intel Pentium chip, Windows MP, XP and Vista as well as Microsoft Office and AOL IM instant messaging. Also remove your firewalls, as These were developed in Israel.
In your home and car, do not use cellphones that were developed in Israel by Motorola, as was voice mail and camera phones. Quickly Destroy your TV remote control, as this also was developed in Israel. 
Now for your health: Do not under any circumstances let your Gastroenterologist use the camera pill you swallow that photographs Your esophagus, colon, etc. Just let him ram his scope up your Backside. That will show those Zionists who's in charge. Don't use
Copaxane for MS. If you have a heart attack, do not let the surgeon put in a stint, which was developed in Israel, or use a defibrillator on you. Also decline the new Israeli medication for Parkinson's or Ex Ablate 2000. We'll show 'em!

Seattle Bus anti Israel ads

'Israeli War Crimes' signs to go on Seattle buses

"Israeli War Crimes," the enormous advertisement reads. "Your tax dollars at work."

To the right of the image is a group of children -- one little boy stares out at the viewer, the others gawk at a demolished building, all rebar and crumbled concrete.

It's an ad you'll be seeing soon on a handful of Metro buses in downtown Seattle.

A group calling itself the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign has paid King County $1,794 so that 12 buses will carry that message around town, starting two days after Christmas. That's December 27: the two-year anniversary of Israeli attacks on Gaza, aimed at stopping rocket attacks and weapons smuggling.

Ed Mast, a Seattle man who is a spokesperson for the group, says it’s not meant to be an anti-Israel message, but a message designed to generate discussion and awareness.

"I wouldn't say it's an anti-Israel message any more than any complaint about a country is anti-that country. We would like Israel to stop violating human rights. We would like Israel to give equal rights to its Palestinian citizens and its Palestinian subjects who live under occupation," said Mast.

At the Pacific Northwest office of the Anti-Defamation League, the ad campaign is seen quite a bit differently.

"We're dismayed," says Community Director Hilary Bernstein, who calls the bus-born advertisement grotesquely one-sided. "Citizens young and old will be seeing this sort of propaganda, this very one-sided distortion. It's unfortunate."

So, is the side of a public bus the right place for this kind of attack? Are the issues that regularly inflame one of the most flammable hot-spots in the world appropriate fare for people strolling the sidewalks of Seattle?

As far as King County is concerned, it's not really up to them what appears on the side of their buses, as long as it fits specific guidelines regarding:

• Pornography
• Alcohol
• Tobacco, and
• As long as the images and material used don't interfere with public safety or insult specific groups to the point that a riot could be incited, vandalism could occur or public safety could be threatened.

King County Metro Transit spokesperson Linda Thielke acknowledges some people will be offended by the campaign, but that is not enough to prevent the rolling billboards from hitting the streets.

"As a government, we are mindful of the provisions in state and federal constitutions to protect freedom of speech. So, we can't object these campaigns simply because they offend some people," said Thielke.

The Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign has targeted their advertising so that the buses carrying their message will run mostly on Seattle routes.

Steven Spielberg was target of Arab League boycott, WikiLeaks cable shows Leaked dispatch reveals diplomats from 14 Arab states voted to ban the director's films in response to his donation to Israel

Steven Spielberg was blacklisted by the Arab League's Central Boycott Office after making a $1m (£570,000) donation to Israel during the 2006 conflict in Lebanon.

A US embassy memo released by WikiLeaks reveals that during a meeting of the group in April 2007, diplomats or representatives from 14 Arab states voted to ban all films and other products related to Spielberg or his Righteous Persons Foundation.

At the confidential US briefing, the head of the Syrian regional office for the boycott of Israel, Muhammad al-Ajami, said that Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen had agreed to ban all Spielberg's works.

Malaysia, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia were also present at the meeting and voted in favour of the boycott. The memo from the US embassy in Damascus to Washington says that "they and other countries will likely implement their own bans" similar to that adopted by the Arab states.

At the same meeting, cosmetics giant Estée Lauder was added to the blacklist while financial services behemoth Merrill Lynch was placed on a "watchlist".

The only Arab states which did not attend the meeting were those who have signed separate peace accords with Israel, namely, Egypt (which also has a thriving film industry and holds the annual Cairo film festival), Mauritania and Jordan. Djibouti and Somalia were not present at the meeting either.

Marvin Levy, spokesman for Steven Spielberg, said: "While we can't comment on a leaked cable, we know that the films and DVDs have been sold globally in the normal distribution through all this time."

But Chris Doyle at the Council for Arab-British Understanding said the boycott was an "understandable" reaction to Spielberg's donation.

"It would be consistent with other decisions in the past over boycotting both companies and people who have done something equivalent," he said. "The donation would have been seen as hypocritical, given the ethical stance Steven Spielberg has taken on other issues including Darfur, and would have caused a lot of anger.

"The depiction of Arabs in Raiders of the Lost Ark was very poor, cartoon-like and full of the usual stereotypes," he added. "In a broader context, this applies to so many Hollywood films where Arabs for decades have been ludicrously depicted."

The Arab League boycott is a systematic, pro-Palestinian effort by Arab League member states to economically isolate Israel and weaken the country's economic and military strength.

Israeli boycotts by the League are, however, inconsistently enforced across the member states, with individual states often going their own way. Only Lebanon and Syria now adhere to it stringently.

Steven Spielberg set up the Righteous Persons Foundation in 1994. Using his personal profits from the film Schindler's List and, later, Munich, the Foundation is dedicated to helping create a strong Jewish community in the United States.

Shameful Boycott Against Israel

Coming soon to a Best Buy near you.... a pro-'Palestinian' 'flash mob' protests against Motorola.

Members of the St Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee performed their well-coordinated piece to the tune of Lady Gaga's 'Telephone', having replaced the lyrics with anti-Israel rhetoric.

Among the dancers, many of whom appeared in traditional Muslim dress, was the 86-year old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, who has previously tried to enter the Gaza Strip and went on a hunger strike when entrance was denied.

Don't these morons have anything better to do with their time?

By the way, 'Holocaust survivor' should be in scare quotes - she spent most of the war in England.

Boycotting Israeli Products - Where are the Police?

When a muslim-owned South African store refused to fill an order from a Jewish organization, Maurice Ostroff sent them the open letter reproduced below. It’s worth saving (and editing somewhat) for use in future situations of a similar nature – and there WILL be others!

Hall of Infamy: Saley’s Travel Goods
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa --
Saleys, a Muslim-owned supplier in Johannesburg canceled an order placed by a South African Jewish group with comments about "blood money." The South African Zionist Federation had ordered conference bags from Saley’s Travel Goods previously without problems, and had received a confirmation from them the day prior to their hate-filled rejection of Jewish business. Saley’s faxed a hand-written cancellation of the confirmation, on which they printed these phrases:
"Please don’t pay! Don’t contaminate our account with your blood money
"We cannot supply you any of our goods as we don’t want or need your blood money! Please do not contact us any more."
An open letter to the Managing director of Saley's
From Maurice Ostroff

Congratulations on your brave refusal to continue to do business with a long-standing customer because of your antagonism to Zionism. To ensure that your action is not a meaningless gesture, we look forward with great interest to seeing you demonstrate your sincerity and consistency by following through with a complete boycott of all Israeli products.

You can make an immediate start by examining your computer and throwing it out if it contains software or an Intel Pentium chip that was developed in Israel. Of course you should also avoid instant messaging based on ICQ, that was invented by Israeli teenager Arik Vardi and three friends. And you will of course avoid mobile telephony, developed in Israel by Motorola, the camera telephone chip and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) as used in Skype and similar applications.

You will be hard pressed to locate all the Zionist components in your Security Software, Network Firewalls, Anti-virus programs, System Software, Microsoft Operating Systems (XP and Vista), Google, Disk on Key and Wi-Fi, but I am sure you will assiduously check your equipment and rule out everything with Zionist roots. Unless you do so thoroughly, it will appear that you don't have the courage of your convictions and that your refusal of the small SAZF order was an insincere gesture playing to the anti-Israel gallery.

I could go on and on about the items you must avoid to be consistent in your attitude, but for humanitarian reasons you will be excused if for medical reasons you or members of your family use the "camera pill" developed in Israel to investigate the intestines painlessly by swallowing a pill containing a mini camera and transmitter.

Despite your anti-Zionist feelings, if you have a heart attack, don't hesitate to let the surgeon insert a stent, which was developed in Israel.

You will also be excused if you or members of your anti-Zionist business use new Israeli methods to measure and inject insulin for diabetics or Copaxone to reduce the physical breakdown caused by MS and other MS medicines such as Betaseron and Avonex. Similarly you will be excused for using Israeli developments in computerized tomography (CT), magnetic resonance systems (MRI), ultrasound scanners, nuclear medical cameras and laser surgery.

You will be excused too, if you use the Israeli developed Resperate, an interactive breathing device, for lowering blood pressure as well as treatments for cancer, diabetes, AIDS, auto immune diseases, Alzheimer, cardiovascular diseases and aging as well as the ReWalk, a robot suit that enables wheelchair users to walk, sit and stand again.

On second thoughts I suggest that it would be more rational to re-examine your prejudices and enter into a civil discourse with the Zionists. You may be pleasantly surprised to find that we have much in common and I would be happy to enter into a dialog with you about the issues on which you feel so strongly.

This letter is being publicized as will the response I hope to receive from you.

Sincerely
Maurice Ostroff

Deshelving Israeli Goods at Trader Joe's

ISRAEL MATZAV: Iranian weight lifter banned for life for appearing with Israeli

On Thursday, I showed you video of the award ceremony for the 105 kilo category at the World Weightlifting Championships in Poland. The Israeli competitor came in first, an Iranian came in second and a German came in third.

The Iranian refused to shake the Israeli's hand, although he did stand at the podium while the Israeli national anthem - HaTikva - was played. I remarked that based on past precedent I was surprised that the Iranian didn't just forfeit the match with the Israeli.

Apparently, the Iranian government was also surprised. It has banned the weightlifter and his coach from all sporting activities for life.
Jalal Yahya-Zadeh, head of Physical Education Committee for Youth Committee announced this news and and added: "The fact that an Iranian weightlifting veteran has competed against an Israeli during the worldwide competitions and has stood beside him during the distribution of medal is unjustifiable."

He added: "Unfortunately, those who supposedly had the primary responsibility in this regard did not see any problem in this matter, however did not see it fit to be distributed within the public, which itself is an obvious mistake on their end."
If the sporting community had any morals, it would pit Israeli competitors against Arabs and Muslims in every event until the Arabs and Muslims tired of forfeiting and either withdrew from competition altogether or decided to compete. But expecting that kind of courage of conviction from a community that insisted that 'the games must go on' at Munich nearly 40 years ago is probably asking too much.

An open letter to Tutu; The sanctions campaign against Israel is morally repugnant because it is based on grotesquely false accusations against the Jewish people. By WARREN GOLDSTEIN

Dear Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I write to you with a heavy heart.

You are a revered leader in South Africa, but recently have added your iconic voice to the campaign for sanctions against Israel.

Archbishop, I believe you are making a terrible mistake. Without truth there can be no justice, and without justice there can be no peace. The Talmud says: “The world stands on three things: justice, truth and peace.” These three values are inseparable. Archbishop, I am convinced that the sanctions campaign against Israel is morally repugnant because it is based on horrific and grotesquely false accusations against the Jewish people.

The truth, archbishop, is that Israel is simply not an apartheid state. In the State of Israel all citizens – Jew and Arab – are equal before the law. Israel has no Population Registration Act, no Group Areas Act, no Mixed Marriages and Immorality Act, no Separate Representation of Voters Act, no Separate Amenities Act, no pass laws or any of the myriad apartheid laws.

Israel is a vibrant liberal democracy with a free press and independent judiciary, and accords full political, religious and other human rights to all its people, including its more than 1 million Arab citizens, many of whom hold positions of authority including that of cabinet minister, member of parliament and judge at every level, including that of the Supreme Court. All citizens vote on the same roll in regular, multiparty elections; there are Arab parties and Arab members of other parties in Israel’s parliament. Arabs and Jews share all public facilities, including hospitals and malls, buses, cinemas and parks. And, archbishop, that includes universities and opera houses.

The other untruth is the accusation of illegal occupation of Arab land. Like the apartheid libel, this is outrageously false. There is no nation that has a longer, deeper or more profound connection to its country than the Jewish people have to the land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem.

Archbishop, you and I as religious leaders always turn to the Bible as a source of truth. What does it mean that Israel is the “promised land”? It means, as we both know, that it was promised by God to the Jews – the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This promise was first fulfilled by God more than 3,300 years ago, when Joshua led the Jewish people into the land of Israel. Since then there has been an unbroken Jewish presence in the land, albeit small during the Roman exile.

All the books of the Old Testament – Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc. – describe the deep connection between the Jews and the land of Israel, including the West Bank, known in the Bible as Judea and Samaria – the area that contained the great cities of the two previous Jewish commonwealths, such as Jericho, Shiloh (where the Tabernacle stood for hundreds of years), Beit El (where Jacob had his vision of the ladder) and Hebron (where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried with their wives Sarah, Rebecca and Leah).

Three thousand years ago, there was no London or Paris, no Washington or Moscow, no Pretoria or Cape Town, but there was a Jerusalem, capital of a Jewish state.

“If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning... if I fail to elevate Jerusalem above my foremost joy.” Those words from Psalms are recited by Jews at every wedding. At every funeral, the statement of comfort given to the mourners refers to Zion and Jerusalem. Jews pray for Jerusalem three times a day, and also after every meal.

Archbishop, the Arab/Israeli conflict is not a struggle against apartheid or occupation. It is a century- long war against the very existence of Jews and a Jewish state in the Middle East. There have already been seven major Arab/Israeli wars since the birth of modern Israel.

Today the front includes an alliance between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah, the latter now with 40,000 rockets aimed at Israeli cities. Iranian officers train Hizbullah forces, while Iran pursues nuclear weapons and openly declares its intention to wipe out Israel. Hamas, the terrorist Palestinian government in Gaza, sides with Iran and Hizbullah in rearming with the declared aim of destroying Israel.

Since 1967, one aspect of this century- long conflict has been the demand for a Palestinian state. In spite of the deep historical and religious roots of Jews in all of Israel, generations of Jewish leaders have been prepared, for the sake of peace, to give up ancestral and covenantal land to establish a Palestinian state.

SO WHY has there not been peace? The ANC taught us you can’t make peace on your own. No matter how deeply the ANC was committed to a peaceful resolution of the South African conflict, until the National Party was prepared to accept that black South Africans had a place in their own country, there could be no peace. And so too, until the Arab/Muslim world accepts that Jews have a right to a state of their own on their ancestral land, there will be no peace.


In 1948, the Jews accepted the UN resolution establishing a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, but the Arab world rejected it and five Arab countries invaded Israel to destroy it.

After that, the West Bank and Gaza were in Arab hands until 1967.

There was an opportunity then – every day for almost 20 years – to establish a Palestinian state. It never happened. And since then there have been numerous opportunities – each rejected by Arab leaders.

Why? Because this war has been more about the destruction of the Jewish state than about the establishment of a Palestinian state. Even today, so-called moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas denies Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

In 2000, the Palestinian leadership launched a massive wave of suicide bombers into Israel, leading to more than 1,300 civilian deaths and 10,000 injuries. Proportionately, such carnage in South Africa would mean more than 10,000 killed and over 80,000 injured! Israel erected a security fence with checkpoints to shield it from such attacks launched from the disputed territories.

Archbishop, you compare these checkpoints to apartheid South Africa. But they are not about pass laws, which don’t exist in Israel. The checkpoints are on the border between sovereign Israeli territory and the disputed territories of the West Bank and Gaza in order to keep civilians from being murdered, and have been very successful in doing so. These checkpoints – like those found in all airports – are there to prevent suicide bombers from blowing up innocent people.

Archbishop, do not bestow respectability on an immoral sanctions campaign that is an affront to truth and justice, which prevents peace and prolongs the terrible suffering of people on both sides of this painful conflict. Archbishop, let us pray for an end to all this agony, and for the fulfillment of the verse in Isaiah: “And the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces.”

The writer is chief rabbi of South Africa.

ISRAEL MATZAV: Divest This! There's a new tool out to fight the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement. It's called Divest this!

Nobel Scholars Condemn Israel Boycott Efforts

STATEMENT OF NOBEL LAUREATES ON ACADEMIC BOYCOTTS, DIVESTMENTS AND SANCTIONS (BDS) ACTIONS AGAINST ISRAELI ACADEMICS, ISRAELI ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS AND ACADEMIC CENTERS AND INSTITUTES OF RESEARCH AND TRAINING WITH AFFILIATIONS IN ISRAEL
Led by Nobel Laureates, Roger Kornberg, Stanford University, and Steven Weinberg, University of Texas at Austin, 38 Nobel colleagues have endorsed the following statement written under the auspices of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) regarding worldwide attempts to boycott, divest from or sanction Israeli academics, institutions, and research and training centers.