Kerry’s hatred for Israel hits a new low.
Via Daily Beast:
If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,” Secretary of State John Kerry told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday.Senior American officials have rarely, if ever, used the term “apartheid” in reference to Israel, and President Obama has previously rejected the idea that the word should apply to Jewish State. Kerry’s use of the loaded term is already rankling Jewish leaders in America—and it could attract unwanted attention in Israel, as well.It wasn’t the only controversial comment on the Middle East that Kerry made during his remarks to the Trilateral Commission, a recording of which was obtained by The Daily Beast. Kerry also repeated his warning that a failure of Middle East peace talks could lead to a resumption of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens. He suggested that a change in either the Israeli or Palestinian leadership could make achieving a peace deal more feasible. He lashed out against Israeli settlement-building. And Kerry said that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders share the blame for the current impasse in the talks.Kerry also said that at some point, he might unveil his own peace deal and tell both sides to “take it or leave it.”“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second class citizens—or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” Kerry told the group of senior officials and experts from the U.S., Western Europe, Russia, and Japan. “Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two state solution, which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to.”
Obama Regime’s Fantasy Middle East
Democrats denied Israel three times, will they try for another?
Via NY Post:
When it comes to setting Middle East policy, too often Washington prefers not to confront inconvenient realities. We now have two examples before us.The first is the fiction that the western half of Jerusalem isn’t part of the state of Israel, even though the Israelis have controlled it since 1948. Such is the power of this fiction that the dispute has now become an issue for the US Supreme Court.The issue is the State Department’s refusal to include the word “Israel” on passports of US citizens born in Jerusalem — notwithstanding a law requiring it do so. The policy dates to the Bush years but continues to be carried out by the Obama State Department. And the argument for this fiction is twofold: changing it would infringe on the president’s executive powers and incite Islamist violence.As columnist Jeffrey Goldberg asks: “What does it say that we allow the fear of violence to make us deny what is true?”
Ted Cruz: John Kerry Should Resign Over Israel “Apartheid State” Comments…
He won’t.
Israeli Minister Rips Kerry For Saying Israel To Become An Apartheid State: “Shame On You!”…
One problem, Kerry is shameless.
Via INN:
Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) sharply criticized US Secretary of State John Kerry Monday, over Kerry’s remarks claiming that Israel is bound to become an “apartheid state” if it ceased conceding to the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s demands.Katz connected Kerry’s comments to Holocaust Memorial Day.“Holocaust Day ceremonies. [We hear] terrible descriptions [of] how the Nazis and their collaborators, drenched in hate and race theory, turned millions of defenseless Jews into dust and ashes – and the world stood by in silence,” Katz wrote, in a Facebook post.“And now the Secretary of State describes Israel as an ‘apartheid state,’” Katz lamented. “Us? The Jewish state, [which was] established to protect itself after [it was] intimidated with threats of extermination?”“Kerry, shame on you!” he concluded. “There are thing you just can’t say.”
John Kerry’s “Apartheid” Comments “Nonsensical And Ridiculous” Says... Barbara Boxer?…
In related news, hell has frozen over.
Via Politico:
Sen. Barbara Boxer took an apparent swipe at Secretary of State John Kerry, saying on Twitter that any statement comparing Israel to apartheid “is nonsensical and ridiculous.”While Boxer didn’t mention Kerry by name, the comments seem directed at the Obama administration’s top diplomat, who on Friday in a closed-door meeting with world leaders said Israel runs the risk of becoming “an apartheid state” if no peace deal with Palestine is reached soon. The Daily Beast first reported Kerry’s comments.Boxer, a Democrat from California, is a frequent ally to the Obama administration and a former colleague of Kerry’s in the Senate. In 2009, Boxer and Kerry worked closely together to introduce a climate change bill.Fellow Democrat Nita Lowey of New York, ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee, also spoke out on Twitter against the comments, saying: “Inflammatory rhetoric comparing Israel’s democracy to repugnant apartheid policy is irresponsible, inaccurate & counterproductive.”
Lurch: On Second Thought, Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Used The Word “Apartheid” To Describe Israel…
He is an absolute train wreck
Via Yahoo News:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry released a statement in “support for Israel” Monday night, after a day of high-profile controversy surrounding his weekend warning that Israel may become an “apartheid state” if Israeli-Palestinian peace talks fall through.” I have been around long enough to also know the power of words to create a misimpression, even when unintentional, and if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two state solution,” Kerry said in the statement.Kerry’s original comment, made at a closed-door meeting of the Trilateral Commission last Friday, spawned a wave of denouncement Monday from various U.S. politicians, along with Jewish leaders and groups. Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor called on Kerry to apologize, and Sen. Ted Cruz, the freshman Republican from Texas, said Kerry should resign.His “apartheid” comment broke a longstanding taboo of American officials on using the loaded term to describe Israel — then-Sen. Barack Obama denounced using the term in a 2008 interview. Kerry is believed to be the most-senior U.S. official to have ever used it.
In the last few decades, no one has done more to damage the State of Israel than one Judge Richard Goldstone, who grew up in South African Apartheid. He would, it should be obvious, a person infinitely familiar with the derogatory, degrading, racist, and abhorrent practise of actual apartheid. His reports to the United Nations and other virulently anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic organisations were praised, elevated, and consider tomes of truth without peer. His venerated status on the Left was both unquestioned and unparalled. If Al Gore was the High Priestess of the Cult of Gaia, Judge Goldstone as the God of Anti-Zionism, Pro-Palestinian to the point that nary a Pallywood premiere wasn't attended and triumphed by him. If not filmmaker, he was certainly the Leni Riefenstahl cheerleader of all things condemnatory of Israel and canonisation of Pallywood.
For Judge Richard Goldstone to reverse-virulent-course, repudiate his over-the-top condemnations, and castigate his fellow travellers and followers cannot be adequately given proper weight in words along. Thus, complimentary of PJ Media, I believe that the very words of Judge Goldstone can be done no better service by the finest writer on the planet. Without further adieu, Judge Goldstone;
Judge Richard Goldstone has done great harm to Israel. The Goldstone
Report, as many writers on this website have documented in the past few
years, has been used by Israel haters around the world as the main
weapon in the campaign to delegitimize Israel. This past April,
Goldstone ran an op-ed in the Washington Post that he had submitted to
the New York Times but which the paper’s editors turned down. In that
piece, Goldstone re-evaluated some of the conclusions he had signed onto
when the 2009 report was issued. Readers of that April op-ed could
easily see its tentative nature and its rather half-hearted repudiation
of the original damage the judge had done.
But this morning, readers of the New York Times were stunned to find a
new op-ed by Goldstone, which not only is a personal mea culpa of the
most dramatic sort, but one that blasts one of the major arguments
regularly engaged in by the hate-Israel Left, especially the
reprehensible Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and former President Jimmy
Carter. Titled “Israel and the Apartheid Slander,” the judge, in effect,
also answers the approach regularly taken by the editors of the paper
in which his article appears.
Goldstone begins with noting that “it is important to separate
legitimate criticism of Israel from assaults that aim to isolate,
demonize and delegitimize it.” In effect, the judge is referring to his
own previous report and those of its many leftist and anti-Semitic
defenders.
Most surprisingly, the judge, who grew up in South Africa and knows
apartheid well, refers to the “particularly pernicious and enduring
canard that is surfacing again,” which “is that Israel pursues
‘apartheid’ policies.” In writing this, he is trying to head off in
advance the mock trial taking place next week in Cape Town, held by the
’60s leftover of the far Left, the so-called Russell Tribunal, convened
decades ago by the late Bertrand Russell as a mechanism to condemn the
United States in the Vietnam War era. As Goldstone writes, “It is not a
‘tribunal.’ The ‘evidence’ is going to be one-sided and the members of
the ‘jury’ are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known.”
Most importantly, Goldstone calls the charge that Israel is
an apartheid state an “unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel.”
First, he tells his readers what apartheid really was in South Africa,
and then concludes with the following:
In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: “Inhumane acts … committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Israeli Arabs — 20 percent of Israel’s population — vote, have political parties and representatives in the Knesset and occupy positions of acclaim, including on its Supreme Court. Arab patients lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli hospitals, receiving identical treatment.
Turning to the West Bank, Goldstone notes that there, too, “there is
no intent to maintain ‘an institutionalized regime of systematic
oppression and domination by one racial group.’”
While South Africa’s apartheid was meant to enforce racial separation
to benefit the white minority, Israel “has agreed in concept to the
existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the west
Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to negotiate the parameters.”
Moreover, Goldstone adds that since Israel is under threat of attacks
from both of those areas, it has to take measures “necessary for self
defense.” To deal with the substantive issues that divide both sides by
making the claim of apartheid, he argues, muddies the water and makes
solving the disputes harder. He then writes:
Those seeking to promote the myth of Israeli apartheid often point to clashes between heavily armed Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank, or the building of what they call an “apartheid wall” and disparate treatment on West Bank roads. While such images may appear to invite a superficial comparison, it is disingenuous to use them to distort the reality. The security barrier was built to stop unrelenting terrorist attacks; while it has inflicted great hardship in places, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the state in many cases to reroute it to minimize unreasonable hardship. Road restrictions get more intrusive after violent attacks and are ameliorated when the threat is reduced.
Finally, Goldstone writes that “Israel, unique among democracies, has
been in a state of war with many of its neighbors who refuse to accept
its existence.” He concludes with these words, which I highlight in
bold:
The charge that Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one that precludes, rather than promotes, peace and harmony.
One cannot help but speculate on what accounts for this startling
change on the part of Judge Goldstone. Perhaps, coming soon after Yom
Kippur, the judge took the New Year personally and decided that it was
time to personally atone for the sins he had done to Israel. Perhaps the
many critiques of his report from writers like Alan M. Dershowitz and
Peter Berkowitz, whom Goldstone heard debate on the subject in
California, hit home and affected him deeply.
As Tom Gross has noted on his own blog:
Goldstone’s op-ed is a direct repudiation as well of so-called human rights groups that spend all of their time criticizing Israel while avoiding any condemnation of Arab violations of human rights, and of groups like Israel’s B’Teselem, whose director Jessica Montell has said that Israel is “worse than apartheid in South Africa.”
Nazi flag flying over Palestinian mosque
Another note of interest...
The ‘Israel is an apartheid state’ is one of the fundamental planks
of Oxfam. Oxfam is behind the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
movement. A major beneficiary of the tens of millions of dollars
donated to a slew of left-wing causes by Teresa Heinz-Kerry, Lurch’s
wife, is, but of course, Oxfam.
One would think that John Kerry would be a little more careful in his word choice considering the fact (apologies for wikipedia, but Kerry has confirmed the story)…
It was discovered in early 2003 by genealogist Felix Gundacker that Kerry’s paternal grandparents, Austrian-born shoe merchant Frederick A. “Fred” Kerry (May 11, 1873 – November 23, 1921) and Hungarian-born musician Ida Lowe (February 20, 1877 – January 19, 1960), had changed their names from “Fritz and Ida Kohn” to “Frederick and Ida Kerry” in 1900 and converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901 or 1902. They were baptized at the same time as their infant son Eric. Fritz’ brother Otto also embraced Catholicism and took on the “Kerry” name. The “Kerry” name, widely misinterpreted as indicative of Irish heritage, was reputedly selected arbitrarily: “According to family legend, Fritz and another family member opened an atlas at random and dropped a pencil on a map. It fell on County Kerry in Ireland, and thus a name was chosen.” Leaving their hometown Mödling, a suburb of Vienna where they had lived since 1896, Fred, Ida, and Eric emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915.The village where Fritz Kohn was born was at that time known as Bennisch and was a part of Silesia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but is today known as Horní Benešov in the Czech Republic. After learning of his ancestral connection with their village, the mayor and citizens sent congratulatory correspondence to John Kerry with regard to his political pursuits. For a time, Fred Kerry was prosperous and successful in shoe business. He and Ida along with their children Eric (born c. 1901), Mildred (born 1910), and Richard (who would become the father of John Kerry) were able to afford to travel to Europe in the autumn of 1921, returning on October 21. A few weeks later, on November 15, Fred Kerry filed a will leaving everything to Ida and then, on November 23, walked into a washroom of the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston and committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a handgun. The suicide was front-page news in all of the Boston newspapers, reporting at the time that the motive was severe asthma and related health problems, but modern reports cite family sources saying that the motive was financial trouble: “He had made three fortunes and when he had lost the third fortune, he couldn’t face it anymore”, according to granddaughter Nancy Stockslager.John Kerry has said that although he knew his paternal grandfather had come from Austria, he did not know until informed by The Boston Globe on the basis of their genealogical research that Fred Kerry had changed his name from “Fritz Kohn” and had been born Jewish, nor that Ida Kerry’s brother Otto and sister Jenni had died in Nazi concentration camps.
A few more 'concrete proofs' of Israeli Apartheid:
Meet Miss Yityish Tit Aynaw, the first Ethiopian-born woman, to become Miss Israel 2013...
Meet Miss Rana Raslan, the first Arab-Muslim Miss Israel, won the pageant in 1999 and competed in the Miss World pageant...
Meet Salim Joubran--- the first Arab Supreme Court justice in Israel...
Meet Raleb Majadele – A member of the Knesset for the Labor Party.
Majadele became the country's first Muslim minister when appointed
Minister without Portfolio on 28 January 2007.
Meet Abdullah Nimar Darwish – the founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel...
Meet Taleb el-Sana – politician and lawyer, and is currently the longest serving Arab Member of the Knesset...
.
Meet Hussein Faris – former politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Mapam and Meretz between 1988 and 1992...
Meet Masud Ghnaim – politician who currently serves as a member of the Knesset for the United Arab List...
Meet Hussniya Jabara – former politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Meretz between 1999 and 2003. She was the first Israeli Arab woman to become a Knesset member...
Meet Hamad Khalaily – a former politician who served as a member of the Knesset for the Alignment from 1981 until 1984...
Meet Nawaf Massalha – is an Israeli Arab politician. He became the first Muslim Arab to
hold a ministerial position in the Israeli government when he was
appointed Deputy Minister of Health by Yitzhak Rabin in 1992...
Meet Ibrahim Sarsur – an Israeli Arab politician and member of the Knesset for the United Arab List, of which he is the party leader...
Meet Wasil Taha – an Israeli-Arab politician and member of the Knesset for the Israeli Arab party, Balad....
Meet Ali Yahya – born in 1947 and raised in Nazareth. He completed his BA degree
in history and Arabic literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
in 1970. Yahya is married and has five children. Prior to becoming an ambassador, Yahya was the coordinator of the
Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Special Projects Division for the Middle East
and the Peace Process. In 1995, Yahya became a member of the Board of Directors of the
Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), where he was in charge of Arabic
and radio programs. That year he also joined the Lapid Movement for
Learning the Lessons of the Holocaust. Later in 1995 he was appointed
the Israeli ambassador to Finland. He served until 1999. In 1999, he served as Coordinator and Advisor for Special Projects
(P.T.P.), at the Department for the Middle East Peace Process and was
the direct responsible for the Aqaba Eilat peace talks.In 2006, Yahya was appointed the Israeli ambassador to Greece. Yahya was the first Israeli–Arab to light the ceremonial torch at
the Israeli Independence Day celebration, and was the delegate of the
Israeli – Arab Community at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in 1995...
Meet Abdel Rahman Zuabi – who was born in Sulam, an Israeli Arab village in northern Israel near Afula. He was the first Arab to graduate from Tel Aviv University's School of Law and Economics. Zuabi served as a deputy chief of the district court in Nazareth in 1996 - 2002.
On March 3, 1999, he was appointed to the Israeli Supreme Court for a
nine-month term, becoming the first Arab justice to serve on the court...
Meet Ahmad Tibi – an Arab-Israeli politician and leader of the Arab party Ta'al (the Arab Movement for Renewal) in Israel. He has served as a member of the Knesset since 1999. He currently serves as Deputy Speaker of the Knesset...
.
Meet Abd el-Aziz el-Zoubi - who was an Israeli Arab politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Mapam and the Alignment from 1965 until his death in 1974. When appointed Deputy Minister of Health on 24 May 1971, he became the first non-Jewish member of an Israeli government...
Meet Seif el-Dinl- el Zoubi -was born in 1913 in Nazareth, where he attended high school. During the British Mandate of Palestine, he was active in the Haganah, which was a Jewish paramilitary organisation from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defence Forces. For his service, he later received the Fighter of the State Decoration. From 1959 to 1974 he was the mayor of Nazareth.
In 1949 he was elected to the Knesset on the Democratic List of Nazareth. He was re-elected in 1951 on the Democratic List for Israeli Arabs, and 1955, but resigned from the Knesset on 13 February 1956. In 1959 he became mayor of Nazareth, holding the post until 1965, when he returned to the Knesset. He was re-elected in 1969 elections, and in 1971 became mayor of Nazareth again, holding the post until 1974. After re-election in 1973, el-Zoubi was appointed Deputy Speaker of the Knesset...
Meet Haneen Zoabi - is a Palestinian Arab and an Israeli citizen, the first Arab
Israeli woman to be elected to the Israeli legislative body on an Arab
party's list. Zoabi ran in the 2009 legislative elections for the Balad
party...
During Apartheid in South Africa, IIRC, only whites were allowed to serve in political office and men like Nelson Mandela spent decades in prison.
In contrast, there have been Israeli Arab members of the Knesset since the first Knesset elections in 1949. Since the first session of the Knesset, there have been 69 non-Jewish members of the Knesset, including Sunni Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin, Palestinian Muslims and Christians.
Here is Ayoob Kara...
Former Deputy Knesset speaker, Druze
Here is Raleb Majadele...
First Muslim Arab Minister. Minister without Portfolio (2007), Minister of Science, Culture and Sport (2007-2009)
Here is Majalli Wahab...
Former Deputy Knesset speaker, briefly acting President,
Druze
Druze
Here's Jabr Moade...
Deputy Minister, Druze
Here's Mohammad Barakeh...
Member of the Knesset for Hadash, of which he is the General Secretary, and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Arab-Israeli.
Meanwhile, actual apartheid....
Nelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island For the major part of Mandela's stay on Robben Island, where he spent 18 years of the 27 years in which he was imprisoned. His cell, like all others, had no bed or mattress, just two mats.
Related Reading:
Israel. The un-apartheid state. A comparison with Australia
http://tinyurl.com/lkxs6da
Meanwhile, actual apartheid....
ReplyDeleteYeah, but that's not real apartheid. . .
Eh, no one is going to get that joke. :)