If this were my attempt at a spoof, I would agree with you that it is in really poor taste.  After all, it is insensitive to invent an Israeli sociologist devoting his or her life to "Queer Studies," claiming he is organizing a special academic journal volume on "Queering the Middle East," promoting transvestism and cross-dressing, and then making up for him or her an insulting mock name to top it off. 

Only one problem.  Even I could not invent such a critter.  He or she really exists.  In fact, he/she is one of the leaders and founders of the communist-front pro-Israel group "Machsom Watch." 

I keep saying he-or-she because, frankly, I do not know which he-or-she is.  I must explain that several web pages describe her as a female, although she sure looks like a male to me.  And – please forgive me  - this critter's real name is (gulp!!) Adi Kuntsman!  No, I did not make that one up, so do not scream at ME for vulgarity!  It is what the he-or-she-or-it is now calling itself.  His/her web page is here: http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/llc/files/MDCSN/AdiKuntsman.pdf  Note the photo and how he/she claims to be an expert on Russian transvestites who made aliyah to Israel.  See also http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/ricc/aboutus/people/kuntsman/index.html   Naturally he/she is fanatically anti-Israel (http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/kuntsman261009.html)   Here is a testimonial about young Adi from his/her anti-Israel wife/partner:  http://www.gilasvirsky.com/yehuditkeshet.html

Here is the announcement for the conference:

Queering Middle Eastern Cyberscapes

Special issue of Journal of Middle Eastern Women's Studies

http://sites.google.com/site/queeringmideasterncyberscapes/home

Guest Editors: Noor Al-Qasimi and Adi Kuntsman

Call for Papers

Digital media and cybercultures have long been explored as fields of 

identity formation, cultural contestations, and political tensions. 

Digital mediascapes have also been of particular interest to  

scholars of gender and sexuality for their potential to transform  

some gendered, racial, and sexual power structures while  

reaffirming, and often violently reinforcing, others. This special  

issue ofJournal of Middle Eastern Women's Studies aims to bring  

feminist and queer analysis of media and communication technologies  

(the Internet, mobile phones, surveillance technologies, digital  

television, and telecommunication) to the field of the Middle East  

as both a geo-cultural space and a political entity.

Our intention is to examine the intersections, tensions, and co- 

constitutions of queer sexualities and communication technologies;  

queerness as a form of digitalized affect and as a political  

practice; mediated violence and violence of mediation; new  

technological frontiers and frontiers of identities; and practices  

of everyday use and digitalized imaginaries. We hope to explore  

these and other phenomena as they emerge in Middle Eastern countries 

and communities and their diasporas. In recent years, much work has 

focused on media in the Middle East, and gender/sexuality in the  

Middle East; however, there is a paucity of scholarship on the  

intersection of these fields. Still less work has emphasized  

queering as a political metaphor in relation to the field of Middle  

East Studies. The aim of this special issue is to acknowledge the  

utility of a postcolonial queer critique as applied to this region  

and its diasporas.

We are soliciting work that engages with the intersection of media  

and sexuality with reference to the Middle East. Possible topics  

thus include:

Surveillance, war on terror

The policing of sexuality

Orientalism in new media cultures

Governmentality, biopolitics, and the Middle East

Sexuality and media censorship

Media technologies (e.g., YouTube, mobile phones, bluetooth, 

picture/ video messaging) and queerness

Queer and/or social networking websites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace)

Queer Middle Eastern diasporas in cyberspace

HIV/AIDS-related online communities

Homophobia

LGBT and NGO activism

Drag, cross-dressing, butch/femme identities, other queer  subjectivities

Gay imperialism

We welcome abstracts of articles to be considered for inclusion in  

this special volume. Please send a bio and a 500-word abstract  

detailing the topic of your article, the overall context, your  

material, methodology, and theoretical argument by the 1st of  

February 2010 to qmecissue@googlemail.com . Authors will be notified 

by the 15th of February 2010 of the outcome of their submissions.  

If  accepted, full papers should be submitted by the 1st of July 

2010.  Papers will then be reviewed individually in the standard 

double- blind review process.

We also welcome shorter pieces of creative or analytical writing (up 

to 1000 words, or 4000 words for interviews) or visual material on  

the theme of this special volume. These pieces may be topical and/or 

polemical. They are not sent out to be peer-reviewed but are  

selected by the editors of the issue. If you would like to submit a   

short piece, please contact us to discuss the format and deadlines.

Abstracts and inquiries about this issue should be sent to 

qmecissue@googlemail.com  .

1.  Harvard Psychiatrist Kenneth Levin on self-hating Jewish anti-Semites:

http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/24/auto-genocide-jewish-style-by-kenneth-levin/?dsq=27137291#comment-27137291

Auto-Genocide, Jewish Style – by Kenneth Levin

Posted By Kenneth Levin On December 24, 2009 @ 12:10 am In FrontPage | 1 Comment

Demonization not only of Israel's Jews but of all Jews, and calls for their mass murder, are a staple of media, mosques and schools throughout most of the Arab world and in some non-Arab Muslim countries such as Iran. Jews are portrayed as vermin or as satanic beings, the source of all human ills, ritual murderers of Muslim and Christian children, evil-doers fit only for extermination.

Yet, as in virtually every past situation when incitement against Jews and attacks on them have intensified, some Jews have rushed to volubly defend the Jews' attackers. They have become supporters and cheerleaders even for those most committed to translating their Jew-hatred into action.

Hamas's charter quotes a Hadith in which Allah declares that the Day of Judgement will not come until the Jews are all killed and even the stones and trees will help in murdering them. The charter adds that Hamas "aspires to the realization of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take." Hamas has, of course, perpetrated innumerable terrorist attacks targeting Israeli civilians, including suicide bombings and rocket and mortar barrages, and Hamas children's television instructs its young audience to kill Jews.

Yet Jewish member of Britain's Parliament Gerald Kaufman has affectionately compared Hamas to Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto. American Sara Roy, a "researcher" at Harvard's Center for Middle East Studies and a perennial figure on the Israel-bashing lecture circuit, has waxed rhapsodic about the supposed "evolution in [Hamas's] political thinking… [and] its position on a two-state solution" and defends the organization's administration of Gaza. This as Hamas seeks to impose Sharia law across Gaza and repeatedly proclaims its unswerving commitment to its anti-Israel and anti-Jewish agenda.

Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah has declared that "If [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide," and Hezbollah has in fact gone after them worldwide, as in its 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires that claimed 87 lives. But none of this has constrained Noam Chomsky from visiting with Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders, praising the organization and advocating its arming. Norman Finkelstein has likewise met with Hezbollah leaders and offered encomiums to the group. Emoted Finkelstein at one point, "I say this without fear: for those who believe in freedom and dignity, we are all Hezbollah now."

Iran's Achmadinejad has, of course, repeatedly asserted there was no Holocaust while promising to visit a future Holocaust on Israel. He has virulently attacked "the Jews" and ratcheted up Iran's support in money, weapons and training to Hamas and Hezbollah. Yet Achmadinejad's Iran, too, has its Jewish supporters, who cast the Iranian theocracy as Israel's victim. This is not limited to the usual culprits such as Chomsky. For example, the voice of the blog "Tikun Olam" (which has now widely come to mean somehow healing the world by attacking and seeking to undermine the Jewish state), one Richard Silverstein, declared, regarding Iran's nuclear threat, "Of course, the Iranians do not have an ICBM to carry such a warhead. Nor do they have a nuclear weapon. But these are mere technicalities when it comes to frightening the world into adopting the Israeli government's priorities and interests."

Noteworthy is that many of those who embrace today's would-be exterminators of the Jews make a point of advertising that they are themselves children of Holocaust survivors. Examples are Finkelstein and Sara Roy. In their twisted thinking, they trumpet their parents' history as though it somehow confers on them a special right to back forces that aspire to another Holocaust.

A variation on outright Jewish support for purveyors of genocidal Jew-hatred is the spectacle of Jews who downplay the threat and indict those taking it seriously. The latter are ridiculed as paranoiacs mentally scarred by past assaults on the Jews and simply projecting that past onto a relatively benign present. The leader of the new American Jewish lobby "J Street" (which has opposed stronger sanctions against Iran), Jeremy Ben-Ami, characterized as irrational anyone who would construe the threat presented by Hamas or Hezbullah or Iran as so great as to justify a military response. Ben-Ami went on to observe, in a New York Times interview, "… there's their grandmother's voice in their ear; it's the emotional side and the communal history…"

Some Israelis promote the same line. Hebrew University political scientist Yaron Ezrahi has virtually made a career of purveying this comprehension of reality. Ezrahi has suggested that the perception of existential threats reflects in large part less actual dangers than a warped world view embraced by some Jews and "founded on a long memory of persecution, genocide, and a bitter struggle for survival…"

Many more Jews could be mentioned who support those openly calling for the Jews' annihilation, and still more who downplay the threat and caricature concerned voices. Hardly less unsavory are the myriad Jews who attack Israel's policies as the source of all the nation's difficulties, insist that "peace" can be had if only Israel would reform itself and make sufficient concessions, militantly advocate such a course and say nothing of the genocidal agenda of the nation's enemies or of their aggressive indoctrinating of additional cadres dedicated to enacting that agenda.

M.J. Rosenberg, erstwhile director of Israel Policy Forum's Washington Policy Center, has written multiple articles on, for example, Israel and Hamas. He has invariably used them to excoriate Israel and complain about the Jewish state and the U.S. not being more forthcoming to the Palestinian Jihadists – as in "The U.S. should be extending carrots to Hamas" – and has never addressed Hamas's explicit and continually reasserted commitment to the extermination of Israel and the Jews. He has acknowledged Hamas's involvement in terror and its opposition to Israel's existence but has uniformly done so in the context of criticizing Israeli policies.

Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian mullahs and others of Israel's enemies have not hidden their objective. As has been the case whenever Jews have been under threat, there is no shortage of those from the community who side with the aggressors, or dismiss the threat and demean anyone taking it seriously, or rationalize the threat, cast fellow Jews as instigating it and demand their reform. All, shamefully, lend succor and cover to the would-be annihilators.

Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist and historian and author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege.

2.  Scratch a leftist and you will find a bolshevik fighting against market competition and in favor of cartels and monopolies.   Take Nitzan Horowitz, one of the few remaining Knesset Members of the rump Meretz party.   Horowitz wants to pass a new law against competition in pricing books in the country of the People of the Book.

How come?

Well, the past few days some of the leading members of Israel's Literary Left took time off from fighting for the annihilation of Israel by the terrorists to demand that the government manipulate book prices to force them artificially higher.  It seems that they are upset because they earn royalties based on a percent of the take when their books get sold.  This past week David Grossman, A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, and several other literary lefties issued a whine about competition driving book prices lower.  The solution, they seem to have sold to Meretz, is to restrict competition in book stores and force prices up.

3.  Fighting the New Blood Libel

BY LOU MARANO, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

http://www.jewishjournal.com/ world/article/fighting_the_new_blood_libel_20091222/

4. 

5.  http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/12/shhhmubarak-is-building-a-wall.php
by Khaled Abu Toameh
Journalist

Shhh…Mubarak is building a wall  An Apartheid Wall?

6.  Anyone see anything bizarre about this?  http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/12/mosque-at-ground-zero-adding-insult-to-agony.html

Mosque at Ground Zero in NY

7.  The Zohar on Left vs. Right:  http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2009/12/left-out-from-this-weeks-zohar.html

1.     Placing a Former Prime Minister on Trial as a War Criminal

By Steven Plaut

     Well, a British court has just issued a subpoena for the arrest and indictment of Israel's past Prime Minister Tzipi Livni, in response to a petition of the court by the Hamas and its supporters inside Britain.  The British court claims that there is historic precedent for its attempt to indict Livni.   I have done a bit of research and have found that they are correct.  I have uncovered this earlier petition to indict a Prime Minister for war crimes that was submitted to the World Court in 1946.  I reproduce it for you here in full.

To:    The International Court of Justice

From:   Professors and Other Nice Peace for Peace and Justice (PONPPJ)

Date:  September 11, 1946

Regarding:  Petition to arrest and try Winston Churchill

        We, the Professors and Other Nice Peace for Peace and Justice (PONPPJ), do hereby call upon the International Court of Justice in the Hague, established last year by the newly formed United Nations, to take immediate steps and seek the arrest and indictment of a war criminal.  The Court, as the new institution that has just replaced the Permanent Court of International Justice, must take a moral stand make it clear that ex-Prime Ministers who have engaged in war crimes must be brought to justice.

     The war criminal in question, Winston Churchill, was until the last election Prime Minister of Great Britain.   Now that he has been replaced in office, we believe that the time is right for him to  be arrested and placed on trial if he enters any of the countries seeking peace and justice as a tourist. 

    To begin with, Churchill is guilty of unspeakable war crimes against innocent German civilians.  In battling against German "terrorists," (and let us bear in mind that one man's terrorist is the other's freedom fighter) Churchill ignored the fact that masses of innocent German civilians were living in the areas of military conflict.  Churchill sent in the Royal Air Force and they indiscriminately bombed broad areas in acts of disproportionate response to German provocations.   The English had no right to enter sovereign German territory in the first place in response to the Blitz bombings of London and other English cities.   Churchill should have entered negotiations with Hitler if he really wanted the attacks on Britain to end.   After all, one can only make peace with one's enemies and the Germans had legitimate grievances.  The Nazi Party was the legitimate representative of the German people, chosen in open elections.

     In addition, British land forces infiltrated German territories in many acts of aggression.   All of the violence that resulted from British occupation of the legitimate territories of the German people is understandable.  After all, the German people are suffering from British occupation and embargo.   Germans are being prevented from using the Suez Canal.  The Germans cannot freely import and export arms from the ports in the neighboring countries or from Bristol.   Indeed they have been prevented from doing so for years by the British occupation authorities.   The anger at this occupation is understandable.  The fact that the British ended their earlier illegal occupation of Dunkirk does not change their responsibility for the situation.

      German activists and militants have been killed mercilessly by British armed forces, which behaved themselves little better than primitive beasts.  The German victims were executed by British forces without so much as the benefit of a trial or a Miranda warning.  All those nice English words about people being innocent until proven guilty have been forgotten by the British occupation forces.

     The British have behaved barbarously in all of this.  Numerous German churches and schools have been destroyed in the indiscriminate bombings and artillery attacks by the British military.  As Prime Minister of Britain during the anti-insurgency campaign, Churchill bears direct personal responsibility for this.  Moreover, an objective panel of experts who served in the commission of investigation into British war crimes in Germany, has studied the matter.  Led by Judge Oswald Mosley and representatives of General Franco, the commission issued its findings recently, including an unambiguous condemnation of the excesses carried out by the British.

      Indeed when it was discovered that Wehrmacht and SS fighters were hiding among the civilian population in Germany, Churchill should have ordered an immediate halt to all bombing and fighting.   Instead, he ordered an escalation.   The deaths of those innocent German civilians now cry out for justice.  Churchill must be held accountable.

      Churchill should have known that the V-2 rockets and the problem of German terrorism cannot be resolved through military action.  He should have sought to end the violence by first ending occupation.  After all Britain today occupies large swathes of land that properly belong to the German tribe of the Saxons, not to mention territories rightly belonging to Welsh, Irish and Scots. 

     The Saxons are a people, deserving of independence and self-determination, unlike the English who are nothing more than converted Celt interlopers.   The Saxons deserve their own state some place within the British Isles.  The English are guilty of having seized land legitimately belonging to the Saxons in a land grab.  Those same English refuse to share land and resources, and that is what ultimately led to the buzz bomb attacks on London. 

     Finally Germans living inside Britain have been victimized and have suffered from racial discrimination.  Britain obstinately refuses to release from prison the peace activist Rudolf Hess.  German-Brits and British Saxons have complained of being targets of surveillance. 

      Meanwhile, the suffering on the continent is directly attributable to the selfishness, racism, and obstinacy of Britain and its former Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.   Britain is, after all, the occupying power and as such it bears responsibility for all violence that takes place in its areas of control. 

      Accordingly, we look forward to testifying in the war crimes trial to be convened against Churchill.

Signed, Professors and Other Nice Peace for Peace and Justice (PONPPJ)

2.  University of Haifa international relations lecturer Uri Bar Yosef has a proposal for dealing with Iran - Israel should ARM it!
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1135976.html
'Therefore, no matter how absurd it sounds, the most reasonable thing Israel could do with the submarines Germany is building for it - and which, according to foreign reports, are to serve as platforms for a second strike - is to deliver them to Iran so that, like their counterparts already in service in Israel (as foreign sources report), they will calm Iran's fears about losing its nuclear capability after a surprise Israeli attack. This will contribute to stability.'

3.  http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Alon%20Ben%20Shaul%20–%20the%20Protocols%20of%20Zion%20are%20Alive%20and%20Kicking.htm

Ben Gurion University - David Newman (Dept of Political Science – Neve Gordon's sidekick) Collaborates in Production of anti-Semitic Documentary; defends it as "Legitimate Journalism"

So Newman is remorseful, not necessarily because of what he said, but rather because of the outrage he caused. He was petrified by people's reactions and he freaked out. He ran all the way to the Post to clear his tarnished image as an Israeli scholar who appears to be giving his name to a conspiracy theory that could easily fit inside the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But Channel 4 was quick to refute his righteousness and its spokesman issued a statement saying: "We are absolutely clear that David Newman understood the subject matter of the film before being interviewed by Peter Osborne." … The programme … [gave] the impression that Jewish donors are profiteering from the "occupation" in exchange for their financial generosity to political parties. … The truth was that, like David Newman, Osborne was "shocked" by some of the comments made after Dispatches was aired. What shocked him and caused his outrage was not the programme's anti-Semitism, however, but rather the charges of anti-Semitism made against the programme, Newman defended the programme as legitimate journalism. … So what did the veteran Channel 4 investigative reporter do? He fabricated a mountain of rumors and speculations, and then admitted, after the act, that they have no substance. … Newman also suddenly "saw the light" after the broadcast, saying the program "wasn't balanced in the context of the Middle East and didn't explain that lobbying is a legitimate part of the political process." But he did enormous damage, not only to Israel, but also to the Anglo-Jewish community of which he was once a member. He lent his name as a prominent Israeli academic to baseless anti-Semitic allegations that accuse perfectly normal political activities as a sinister cabal orchestrated from Jerusalem against the British people.

The Protocols are Alive and Kicking

UK's Channel 4 produced a repulsive program about the so-called "Israel Lobby," which heavily promoted the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews with money manipulating the political British system. Inevitably two Israeli academics collaborated with the film makers. One of them, a leftist from Ben Gurion University was quick to express regret, not before he was flooded with furious protests.

Alon Ben Shaul
20/12/2009

The following is a list of recent anti-Israel policies imposed by the British government: It instructs supermarkets to label products that originate in the West Bank; it denounces the Gaza operation, it imposes partial arms embargo on the Israeli Navy, it finances the group "Breaking the Silence," it failed to vote against the Goldstone report and it is in the process of negotiating with Hezbollah and flirting with Hamas. Its legal system is hunting Israeli politicians and military officers and trying to trying to subject them to kangaroo courts. Now to top it up, the new British European foreign minister declares that East Jerusalem is an "occupied city," unlike Belfast and Edinburgh.

However, an hour long British television programme, called Dispatches, which was aired in November on Channel 4, claims that the British government is staunchly pro-Israeli and the reason for that is simple - Jewish money.

These repulsive allegations were assisted by two Israeli academics who were interviewed as fig leaves by the documentary makers. One of them, Avi Shlaim of Oxford is certainly no stranger to readers of IsraCampus.Org.il. In recent years Shlaim became the darling of the Anti-Zionist loony left in his adopted country, writing for the notorious Guardian, appearing on public panels advocating so-called "one-state solution," in which Israel is erased, and supporting the notion that Israel endangers Diaspora Jews. A few months ago Robert Fisk, the Beirut-based anti-Israeli veteran journalist, devoted an embarrassingly sycophantic article to Shlaim in the Independent, praising his anti-Zionist credentials. The same Shlaim lamented the Balfour Declaration that led to Israel's creation in his book on King Hussein and has strongly sided with Norman Finklestein, the American collaborator with Hezbollah, whose entry to Israel was barred last year on grounds that he is a terrorist agent.

The other talking head was the British-born David Newman, a lecturer of political science at Ben Gurion University. But - surprise surprise - after the transmission of the program, Newman admitted he made a mistake in taking part in that circus. In an article for the Jerusalem Post, Dr Newman revealed that his appearance had prompted "some of the most fiery invective I have ever received, nearly all of it from the UK." One Jewish philanthropist in London, he wrote, "had branded me a traitorous anti-Semitic Jew, cursed me and expressed his hope that I perish. Someone from Brooklyn hoped that I and my family would be the next to be blown up by a suicide bomber."

Having watched the programme online, he felt now that he had "mistakenly" participated in it," citing the fact that the interview and the images were highly selective and that any form of balance or counter-argument was clearly missing. "It was clear that the programme had presented its topic in such a way as to insinuate that the UK Jewish community acted in covert and illegitimate ways, using its influence and its money to put pressure on British politicians, government officials and media outlets," he confessed.

Newman, who has represented Israeli universities in the UK over the past two years, is a senior academic. He told the Jewish Chronicle that he had understood from the programme-makers that they were producing a documentary about West Bank settlements. Don't laugh. He is serious. He even added, in his defense, that during the interview with him, he had said that the BBC and the Guardian's coverage of Israel were imbalanced, but these remarks had not been included in the broadcast.

So Newman is remorseful, not necessarily because of what he said, but rather because of the outrage he caused. He was petrified by people's reactions and he freaked out. He ran all the way to the Post to clear his tarnished image as an Israeli scholar who appears to be giving his name to a conspiracy theory that could easily fit inside the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

But Channel 4 was quick to refute his righteousness and its spokesman issued a statement saying: "We are absolutely clear that David Newman understood the subject matter of the film before being interviewed by Peter Osborne. As is often the case with contributor interviews, the final edit did not include everything that he said but we are confident that what was included was a fair and accurate representation of the interview."

Israel = Iran

Osborne? Well, the journalist who made this disgraceful documentary is well known for his anti-Israeli views. Last summer he wrote an article in the Daily Mail, accusing the Conservative Party leader David Cameron of hypocrisy for criticizing Iran, which was shooting people in the streets of Tehran, while turning a blind eye to "Israeli atrocities" in Gaza. Newman knows Britain inside out and should have known what was expected from a creature such as Osborne in advance. Osborne distorted the events in Gaza in his Dispatches. He denounced Cameron for complementing the IDF during its operation in Gaza, when the latter stating that IDF soldiers did their utmost to save civilian life. This was during his annual speech to the party's Israeli supporters in London.

Osborne found a simple explanation for that display of "sympathy" with the evil Israelis amongst the Tories – Jewish money. He is obsessed with Jewish money. Without providing a shred of evidence and without substantiating figures, he claimed that Israel is influencing British policy in the Middle East through the deep pockets of its London-based millionaires. As one observer put it: "It was an hour of innuendo about 'pro-Israeli' moneybags controlling the Conservative and Labor Parties; 'pro-Israeli' intimidation of British media; premeditated 'pro-Israeli' abuse of anti-Semitism; and sinister music accompanying photos of 'pro-Israelis' blurred across Israeli and British flags."

Osborne claimed that by funding the Party to the tune of 10 million pounds in the last eight years, the Jewish lobbyists managed to shift its policy on Israel. This allegation proved to be baseless. He also targeted organizations that take MP's on fact-finding missions to Israel, and even criticized the BBC for bowing to pressure from the Israeli lobby.

The BBC? Even its own managerial trust established that on a few occasions in the past its journalists were impartial in favor of the Arabs. Osborne denounced it as in the pocketbook of Israel, thanks to its refusal to broadcast a Palestinian charity appeal after operation "Cast Lead", but he failed to acknowledge the real reason for that. The BBC was reluctant to air it because of domestic guidelines which included the fact that the clip in question was not shot by its staff. This, of course, was ignored by the "documentarist" who was assisted by these two learned Israeli academics.

And look who else was on this program! Alan Rasbridger, the editor of the Guardian, who wrote during the "Second Intifada" a lead article in which he compared the atrocities of 9/11 to the alleged "massacre" that the IDF had committed in Jenin in 2003. (No such massacre ever took place.) Next to him was David Goldberg, the Liberal Rabbi who does not miss an opportunity to castigate Israel. Even his London synagogue went to the trouble to denounce him, issuing a press release distancing the congregation from his rant.

The programme also targeted Bicom, the pro-Israeli media group and its chairman Poju Zabludowicz, claiming he has interests in a shopping centre in the Israeli "settlement" of Ma'aleh Adumim. (Never mind that it is really a Jerusalem suburb.) The camera focused on his house in London, giving the impression that Jewish donors are profiteering from the "occupation" in exchange for their financial generosity to political parties.

The Zionist Cabal

Soon after this "documentary" was transmitted, the British fascist anti-Semitic party, the BNP, raised its ugly head. The websites of this extremist British racist right wing party was full of anti-Jewish bigotry. The party insists that Britain is controlled by "other powers," and had a field day.

Even the usually mild Jewish community leadership was horrified. They reacted angrily by stating that "despite the assertions that the programme would not create anti-Semitism, it succeeded in eliciting an onslaught of hateful comments on the internet, and an endorsement from the BNP." Prof Eric Moonman, president of the Zionist Federation, referred to in the broadcast as part of the pro-Israel lobby, said he would be writing to Channel 4 to ask whether it is making a film about lobbying of the British government on behalf of Arab governments.

Zionist Federation co-Vice Chairman Jonathan Hoffman denounced the program, claiming: "The lack of substance was amply demonstrated by the people who were prepared to go 'on the record' – namely the usual as-a-Jew suspects accompanied by representatives of the Guardian, the (ex) BBC and the Foreign Office."

Melanie Phillips, who wrote a response to the programme in The Spectator, said: "After watching Peter Osborne's 'Dispatches' programme on the power of the Israel lobby in Britain, the scales have fallen from my eyes. I now see things in an entirely different light. I now realize that the power of this unique cabal is so vast and unprecedented in its truly demonic power – a power given to no other lobby – that both the Labor government and Tory opposition slavishly and unquestioningly support Israel's military actions and that the Guardian and the BBC have found themselves totally unable to publish or transmit anything other than wholehearted support for Israel."

Stuart Polak, Director of Conservatives Friends of Israel said: "It is fictitious, misleading and damaging to the reputation of CFI and its supporters. CFI as an organization has donated only £30,000 since 2005. Each of these donations has been made transparently and publicly registered. In addition to this £30,000, it is undoubtedly the case that some of our supporters have also chosen, separately, to donate to the party as individuals."

The CST, the organization in charge of the community's security, said comments on the Dispatches website justified its fears that the language used in promoting the programme was "unwittingly playing up to anti-Semitic stereotypes." The CST pointed to four examples:

"Good. We want our country back. The agents of a foreign power embedded at all levels of our government and politics need flushing out. They are a menace to our foreign policy, security and reputation abroad..."

"This is remarkable. We have tried for years to have this shadowy support mechanism for Israel exposed... It isn't just the media and MPs this monster controls, it also has a mechanism to attack any individuals who oppose Israel, in any way."

"Let's see the hand of global Zionism at work. Please do keep and show ALL the information and don't fall for the old accusations of racism when doing programmes like this, to mar any unpleasant truths that may be found."

"It is disgraceful that C4 is intending to expose the pro-Israel lobby. Surely it is a signatory to the "National Press and TV Zionist Agreement," which stipulates in paragraph one: 'Thou shalt not print nor broadcast any reference to the undemocratic control by the agents of Israel over the House of Commons and/or the House of Lords.'"

Much ado about nothing

But the irony is that after all these allegations Mr. Osborne was forced to admit that the program had not found "anything faintly resembling a conspiracy." So what was all the fuss about? Well, he said, "there was some lack of transparency in some of the organizations we investigated."

The truth was that, like David Newman, Osborne was "shocked" by some of the comments made after Dispatches was aired. What shocked him and caused his outrage was not the programme's anti-Semitism, however, but rather the charges of anti-Semitism made against the programme, Newman defended the programme as legitimate journalism. But he added that he had been horrified by some of the attacks on Jews that had been circulating in response to the programme.

He explained: "Certain comments on websites have been anti-Semitic and horrible. One of the vindications of the programme is that it dispelled any notion of a conspiracy. The whole point is that it is a legal, innocent, legitimate lobby that should be more transparent. Those who have reached anti-Semitic conclusions are disgusting."

So what, in the end, did the veteran Channel 4 investigative reporter do? He fabricated a mountain of rumors and speculations, and then admitted, after the act, that they have no substance. After an hour of unfortunate imagery and unfounded suggestions that UK supporters of Israel conspire to influence Parliament and the media utilizing financial leverage, Dispatches finally admitted that this is not the case. How comforting. Alas, the damage has been done and the admission was a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Newman also suddenly "saw the light" after the broadcast, saying the program "wasn't balanced in the context of the Middle East and didn't explain that lobbying is a legitimate part of the political process." But he did enormous damage, not only to Israel, but also to the Anglo-Jewish community of which he was once a member. He lent his name as a prominent Israeli academic to baseless anti-Semitic allegations that accuse perfectly normal political activities as a sinister cabal orchestrated from Jerusalem against the British people.

4.  http://www.hnn.us/articles/121494.html

The War Over Jerusalem

By Daniel Mandel

1.   Some of you may remember Shammai Leibowitz.  He is the fanatic leftist anti-Israel Israeli lawyer who was the legal counsel for arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti.  Leibowitz's legal fees to represent Barghouti were covered by the New Israel Fund.  Shammai is grandson of the controversial late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a far-leftist professor at Hebrew University, but also a very serious and intelligent Biblical commentator. 

In the past few years we have not heard much about young Shammai.  Until this past weekend.  Shammai, like his terrorist hero Barghouti, is prison bound.  Seems he just signed a plea agreement in the US, confessing to engaging in leaking of sensitive documents to bloggers and a pro-Palestinian group.   Shammai has been living in the US and got a job working as a translator for the FBI.  The fact that the FBI would hire this collaborator with terrorism from Israel tells you a lot about how much "intelligence" there is inside the skulls of the heads of the FBI these days.  

It was in that position that he leaked the documents.  The Jerusalem Post is coyly referring to Shammai as a "linguist" which he is not (see http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1261244336668&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull) .  Why he was not given a sentence at least as long as Pollard's is not clear. 

Well, yes, it is clear.  Evidently Shammai was spying for the Palestinians!  He pled and got 20 months.  Did he also leak materials to the New Israel Fund?  Enquiring minds want to know!  

For more details, see this: http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2009/12/couldnt-have-happened-to-better-guy.html   You can read the plea agreement here: http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2009/12/skleibowitz-plea.pdf

2.   Well, Iran is threatening to cremate Israel, the Hezb'Allah is rearming, the Pestilinians are planning a new intifada, but the Knesset has everything under control.  This week, two Knesset members, Dani Danon from the Likud and Rachel Adatu from Kadima, have submitted an important new law that would prohibit advertisements in which the female models have been made to appear artificially thin using computer graphics.  The law is based on a similar bill under debate in France and it is supposed to be intended to prevent teenagers from developing anorexia.

You see, when people see fashion models or Hollywood actors, they try to make themselves look like them, or so argue the bill's promoters.  That is why I get confused so often on the streets of Haifa with Robert Redford.  Moreover, the fashion ads affect people's eating habits, which is why I have been cutting back on the pretzels and beer so that I can look like skinny French models, a task I should accomplish, if I stick to my diet, by the year 2056.

3.   

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1260930881821&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The Jerusalem Post, December 17, 2009

The War on Chanukah

By Michael Freund

For more than 2,000 years, Jews around the world have been faithfully celebrating Hanukka, the annual festival of lights which commemorates the miracles performed for our ancestors during the great Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucid tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes.

It is a holiday rife with meaning for young and old, which in part explains its popularity among all sectors of Jewry, from the most estranged to the most observant. Who, after all, does not draw inspiration from the heroism of the Maccabees? Guided by divine providence, they restored our national and religious sovereignty, defeated the Syrian-Greek invaders and purified the Temple in Jerusalem.

What a stirring example of Jewish faith and fortitude!

AND YET, in recent years, a deeply troubling phenomenon has taken root, as the festival and its underlying themes have come under attack. By defacing and distorting its meaning, a growing number of pundits have essentially declared war on Hanukka, seeking to hijack the holiday to advance their own personal or political agendas.

For the most part, the assault on this beloved holiday has largely been led by devotees of the left, who have sought to shear away Hanukka's historical, religious or even cultural content, and transform it into a vehicle for promoting entirely unrelated issues.

Take, for example, an article in last week's Philadelphia Inquirer, which proclaimed the advent of "Hanukka with a climate-change message," It quoted Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center, who said regarding the holiday: "Can there be a more perfect occasion to focus on energy conservation and breaking our dependence on fossil fuel?" Somehow, I doubt that when Judah the Maccabee and his brothers made their valiant stand two millennia ago, they did so to promote awareness of global warming.

The fact of the matter is that the Maccabees fought to salvage Judaism, not to save the oceans or even the whales. To suggest otherwise is to misrepresent the holiday and its message.

Moreover, at a time when American Jewry is rapidly attenuating as a result of assimilation and intermarriage, it would hardly seem wise to dilute Jewish holidays of their Jewish content. If anything, ways need to be found to underline and reinforce their uniquely Jewish aspects.

But it would be wrong to suggest that the onslaught against Hanukka is solely the province of the left, for even some political conservatives have decided to take up arms against the festival.

The latest to do so is David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, who penned an article last Friday that was utterly offensive and displayed a keen misunderstanding of what Hanukka is all about. Referring to the Maccabees as a "bunch of angry, bearded religious guys," Brooks asserted that they were "best understood as moderate fanatics."

"The Maccabees," he acknowledged, "heroically preserved the Jewish faith. But there is no honest way to tell their story as a self-congratulatory morality tale."

"The lesson of Hanukkah," Brooks insisted, "is that even the struggles that saved a people are dappled with tragic irony, complexity and unattractive choices."

Brooks could not possibly have gotten it more wrong. Indeed, his moral relativism and befuddled judgment is precisely the kind of thinking that the Maccabees were fighting against.

MATITYAHU AND his sons went to war because everything that Judaism held sacred was in danger. They risked their lives for something larger than themselves, and every Jew alive today owes them a debt of gratitude as a result. Theirs was a black-and-white struggle, a straightforward encounter between good and evil, which ensured that the Jewish people did not go the way of other ancient nations and become extinct.

Sure, not everything in life is always so clear-cut, but the victory and miracles of Hanukka most assuredly are. And that is why it is so crucial that we stave off efforts by the Waskows and Brookses of the world to water down or submerge entirely the core elements of this special holiday.

Everybody, it seems, wants to reinterpret the Maccabees, rather than just accept them for what they were: national patriots and spiritual heroes.

It is those most basic of values - fidelity to Jewish tradition, love of freedom and faith in the justness of our cause - which embody Hanukka and which we must all strive to emulate.

So when I light the candles tonight, I won't be thinking about carbon footprints, hybrid cars or any other such causes, however worthwhile they might be.

Instead, I'll be celebrating the great miracles performed for our ancestors, and hoping very much for our own.