The JNF Land Bill-The ZOA "Gets It"

Thank God a Jewish Organization beyond the JNF understands what the JNF land is all about. The ADL doesn't and neither does the Reform movement see (JNF BILL: The Reform Movement is SO WRONGand The JNF Land is JEWISH--Its time to shift Donations from the ADL to the JNF). Morton A. Klein and Irwin Hochberg the top two people in the ZOA have written a great essay about the upcoming second Knesset vote on The JNF land bill.

We agree with the Knesset and reject the critics who regard it as unacceptable that the JNF should be able to allocate its land to Jews only. Their criticism misconceives the function and purpose of the JNF, a body funded by private donations to purchase and develop land for Jewish settlement. The critics do not seem to understand that JNF land is private land, not state-owned public land.

Please read the entire essay below:

Private Land Bought for Jews Belongs to Jews

by Morton A. Klein and Irwin Hochberg

The JNF has a contract with its Jewish donors.

There has been criticism of the clear decision of Israel's democratically-elected Knesset, voting overwhelmingly, by a margin of 64 votes to 16, to approve the first reading of a bill reaffirming that all lands belonging to the Jewish National Fund (JNF) should continue to be leased to Jews, in accordance with the terms of its charter.

We agree with the Knesset.

We agree with the Knesset and reject the critics who regard it as unacceptable that the JNF should be able to allocate its land to Jews only. Their criticism misconceives the function and purpose of the JNF, a body funded by private donations to purchase and develop land for Jewish settlement. The critics do not seem to understand that JNF land is private land, not state-owned public land.

For over 100 years, Jews from around the world put their small change and small bills into the well-known blue and white JNF boxes in homes, schools and synagogues. Jews understood there was a sacred promise that their money would buy land in Eretz Yisrael for Jews to emigrate there and build a Jewish state in our ancient, Biblical homeland, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived, and where Kings David and Solomon once ruled. This was the contract, the promise, the covenant between the JNF and the Jewish people.

During its century-long existence, from the time of Turkish and later British rule, the JNF has been involved in the legal purchase and reclamation of 250,000 acres of largely uninhabited, malaria-ridden swamp lands and desert that no one wanted or could live on. The JNF eliminated disease, rendered the land fit for habitation and agriculture, planted 220 million trees and built many reservoirs.

There is increasing pressure now to lease parts of this private land (constituting about 10% of Israel) to Israeli Arabs, although they already have the right to lease public Israeli state land (about 70% of Israel, the remainder, like JNF land, being in private ownership). We disagree. No one would dream of telling private land owners like the Catholic Church or the Muslim Wakf to whom they can lease their land. Moreover, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported on "some cases where Jews attempted to move into non-Jewish neighborhoods... that have been vigorously protested by non-Jews, saying they should be allowed to maintain ethnically and culturally distinct communities."

It seems clear that this JNF contract with its Jewish donors must be respected. That's why the Knesset voted to reaffirm that all private JNF land continue to be leased to Jews.

Additionally, there are many laws, institutions and practices in Israel that we all support that promote and protect the Jewishness of the state, such as the Aliyah laws, the Jewish education in schools, the Jewish-starred flag and the national anthem, Hatikvah, which speaks of the Jewish soul.

As Philadelphia's Jewish Exponent editorialized, "The land in question is not mere real estate. JNF property is the inheritance of the entire Jewish people.... JNF policies should stand." In the late 1800s, the Jews rejected settling in Uganda because it lacked any historic or religious connection to Jews. The Exponent added, "JNF's task is building homes for a nation that has no other haven." Indeed, Holocaust survivors, former Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, Argentinean and French Jews, and Jews from Arab countries are among the millions of persecuted and oppressed Jewish immigrants who have come to Israel.

Those who say the above Knesset law proves that Arabs suffer discrimination in Israel are speaking nonsense. Like Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs are members of the cabinet, Knesset and law courts; they are consul-generals and attend Israeli colleges, medical and law and graduate schools. They have full voting rights, citizenship, medical insurance and pension plans. One of the few differences is that they are not required to perform military service, but that is hardly a case of discrimination; rather, it shows great sensitivity to Israeli Arabs. In fact, if the Blacks of South Africa had enjoyed the same rights as the Arabs in Israel, discrimination would never have been a serious issue there

It is also surprising that those organizations opposed to this bill are not on record in condemning genuine racism and discrimination in the practices of many Arab states. In the Palestinian Authority, as well as in Jordan and other Arab states, it is illegal to sell any land to Jews under punishment of death. Saudi Arabia, in addition to such practices, bans any expression of religion other than Wahhabi Islam. There are no churches or synagogues, or even non-Islamic religious services, permitted by Saudi law, and women are prohibited from driving cars. Where are the critics when it comes to genuine human rights abuses in Arab states? Why, instead, do they seek to limit the rights of Jews to lease privately owned land in Israel purchased for that very purpose?

The ZOA agrees with Ronald S. Lauder, President of the JNF, that "[this] Knesset decision reaffirms the vision and the dream of Theodor Herzl and the millions of Jews over the past 106 years who contributed and participated in the rebirth of a Jewish nation after 2,000 years. The land of Israel is part of the very existence of the Jewish people from as far back as Abraham. We are a people linked to our land. Now and forever." This Knesset bill is one step towards securing this precious legacy and it deserves the support of all American Jewish organizations.

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Morton A. Klein is the National President of the Zionist Organization of America.

Irwin Hochberg is Vice-Chairman of the National Board of the ZOA, past Chairman of the Board of the UJA Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York and past National Campaign Chairman for Israel Bonds.

The Surge is Expanding Beyond Bagdad

It was just about two months ago that the Surge reached full strength and Senator Reid was rushing to announce the War was lost. Not only was Reid and fellow Democrats rushing to announce defeat but there were Republicans abandoning ship. What a difference a few summer weeks makes! What many people don't realize is that the surge was not just more troops but it was a whole new strategy.

After a few weeks of the new strategy reports began to filter out that General Petraeus and his heroes were making progress. Now reports are coming out that our troops are expanding the surge strategy to other areas AND the general might be recommending a troop reduction sometime in 2008:

Surging: It's getting harder to deny that General Petraeus is making progress

By Clifford D. May

Scripps Howard News Service

August 16, 2007

“The only thing this surge will accomplish is a surge of more death and destruction.” That was the prediction of blogger and anti-war activist Arianna Huffington back in December of last year -- one month before the Senate unanimously confirmed Gen. David Petraeus as commander in Iraq.

"I believe...that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.” That was the judgment of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in April -- two months before the reinforcements General Petraeus needed to fully implement his new “surge” strategy had arrived in Iraq.

In mid-June, just as troop strength was reaching the level needed to carry out the revised mission, Senator Reid added: “As many had foreseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results."

But now those intended results are being seen -- as even some critics of the war, to their credit, are acknowledging. “More American troops have brought more peace to more parts of Iraq. I think that’s a fact,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill) told reporters.

“My sense is that the tactical momentum is there with the troops,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) said to PBS’s Charlie Rose.

The debate over the war in Iraq is shifting, though more slowly than is the war in Iraq, thanks to a well-funded and determined anti-war movement and too many in the media for whom good news is no news.

A few days ago, CNN’s Kyra Phillips interviewed Lt. General Raymond Odierno, General Petraeus’ top deputy. She might have asked whether his troops now have both the will and a way to defeat al-Qaeda suicide-bombers and Iranian-backed death squads. Instead, her inquiring mind wanted to know: “Do you think that this job that you've taken on could be career suicide?”

Because of scant media interest, most Americans don’t even realize that the so-called surge is a new and different strategy, implemented by General Petraeus because the approach of his predecessors -- not least former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield -- failed.

Rumsfeld wanted a “light footprint” in Iraq, not an intrusive military occupation. He thought more troops would mean more targets for our enemies. He pushed hard for Iraqis to provide their own security as quickly as possible.

Under the Rumsfeld strategy, most American forces spent most of their time in Forward Operating Bases (FOBs). Cut off from the local population, they received little intelligence. And since they were providing security for themselves but not for Iraqis, Iraqis turned to sectarian militias which grew larger, stronger and more violent.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda in Iraq deployed suicide-bombers to mass-murder civilians as a way to stoke sectarian violence. Al-Qaeda calculated -- not unreasonably -- that Americans would withdraw rather than remain in the crossfire of a civil war.

General Petraeus, the Army’s top counterinsurgency expert, decided it was time for a different approach. He moved troops out of the FOBs and put them into Iraqi cities and villages where they have been providing security for Iraqis -- who have shown their appreciation by providing intelligence that spy satellites can’t retrieve.

He is targeting al-Qaeda, as well as the Shia militias trained, funded and equipped by Tehran -- their cells, strongholds and bomb factories. And with added troop strength, he has been able to hold the neighborhoods he has cleared.

It also is true that most traditional Iraqi leaders have been repelled by al-Qaeda’s brutality and extremism. Americans, by contrast, have shown the local sheiks respect, while training and partnering with Iraqis -- making it clear they would like nothing better than to see Iraqis take charge of their own security as soon as they are ready.

On top of all that, U.S. soldiers have been doubling as diplomats: helping to reconcile Sunni and Shia tribal groups, and even bringing insurgents -- those not affiliated with al-Qaeda or Tehran -- into line with the Iraqi government.

This week, General Odierno launched “Operation Phantom Strike,” a new offensive that aims to pursue the al Qaeda terrorists and Iranian-backed militias displaced from their safe havens by this summer’s earlier actions: Operation Phantom Thunder, and Operation Fard al-Qanoon (the Baghdad Security Plan).

Operation Phantom Strike, if it is successful, will mean more “death and destruction” --mostly for America’s sworn enemies. No doubt, the anti-war crowd will both oppose that and pronounce it a failure even before it’s fully underway. But other Americans -- if they learn what is really happening in Iraq -- will support the troops. Most will favor giving them the time and resources they need to complete their mission.

Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

My Friend Spree Has a GREAT Exclusive interview Executive Director of Vets For Freedom, Pete Hegseth on her site--click below to read it ****EXCLUSIVE***Interview with Executive Director of Vets For Freedom, Pete Hegseth

Naqba --Shmaqba !!!

The Palestinian Arabs have always called the creation of Israel Naqba (Catastrophe) There has been a growing trend amongst Israel haters to use this term for the existence of the Jewish state. In fact one small minded person in the Israel ministry of education decided that Arabic textbooks in Israel should use the term Naqba to describe that Joyous day in 1948.

As the use of the term Naqba grows it as become another tool in the Arabs war to "water down" the Shoah. After all, they claim, we have had our Shoah they have had their Naqba. And those who don't believe they are on the same level are just Naqba deniers. Read this great report from my friend Steven Plaut:

The "Naqba" Offensive By Steven Plaut

FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/16/2007

Israel’s critics have increasingly adopted the term Naqba (or Nakba), which means "catastrophe" in Arabic, to refer to the Jewish state's creation and existence. The idea is that if "Palestinian Arabs" are thought to have suffered as a result of Israel's creation and gaining of independence, then Israel's very existence must be a disaster, a tragedy, one that must be "corrected" and cured through Israel's annihilation.

The far Left has taken the Orwellian rhetoric one step further. Not only is Israel's very existence a "Naqba" or catastrophe, but anyone denying that it is so must be guilty of "Naqba Denial," a new sin discovered by the Left that is on the same par with Holocaust Denial. Indeed, since very few Jews anywhere outside the Left consider Israel's very existence to be a "Naqba," their collective "guilt" in perpetrating "Naqba Denial" is an easy form of exoneration for Holocaust Deniers. After all, why should people be so upset by Holocaust Deniers when the Jews themselves engage in "Naqba Denial"?

It is not only the Left that repeats this libel. Right-wing journalist Arnaud De Borchgrave has recently joined the campaign as well. Under the title "Embarrassing History", De Borchgrave – UPI's Editor at Large - embarrasses his own reputation by endorsing the "Naqba" pseudo-history of a Stalinist anti-Semite renowned for his academic fraud and fabrication (see below). De Borchgrave, who has a long history of Israel-bashing, in the past claimed that a cabal of "Likudniks" controls Washington.

A quick web search on yahoo.com shows that there are over 46,000 web sites now writing about "Naqba Denial" (often spelled Nakba), with a slightly lower count on Google. Counterpunch, the radical magazine that defended Noam Chomsky's denial of the Khmer Rouge genocide, has been among the leading proponents of the term. 1017 pages at Counterpunch use the Nakba term and 196 use "Nakba denial."

So what are we to make of all this?

First of all, Israel gained its independence in a war of liberation during 1948 and 1949, in which - despite being poorly equipped and enormously outgunned - Israel defeated the combined military forces of the Palestinians militias and the organized armies of the independent Arab states. As in any war, some "Palestinian" Arabs suffered during it. In that war thousands of Jews (often civilians) were murdered by those same Arabs. It was a war that could have been avoided altogether had the Arabs made their peace with the UN Partition Resolution of 1947, which proposed splitting Western Palestine into two states – one Jewish and one Arab – with roughly equal territory. The Jews accepted that Partition Resolution, including its proposal for an Arab Palestinian state; the "Palestinian" Arabs and the Arab states rejected it. The Arab armies then invaded Western Palestine and illegally annexed most of the territories that had been earmarked to form a Palestinian Arab state. They held those territories illegally until they lost them to Israel in six days, when they launched yet another war of aggression in 1967. Israel liberated those territories from their illegal occupiers in 1967 and has held most of them since, while expressing willingness for a territorial compromise in exchange for peace.

Characterizing any suffering by "Palestinian" Arabs during and subsequent to the 1948-9 war of Israeli independence as a "Naqba" is as mind-numbingly stupid as characterizing the existence of the United States as a catastrophe because of the tragic suffering of the 100,000 or so Tory loyalists forcibly evicted by the United States during its War of Independence. Those Tory refugees from the colonies were absorbed by the countries to which they fled, mainly Maritime British Canada. They forfeited all their property left behind in the United States. The American Patriot leaders opposed any sort of compensation or settlement for them, including Benjamin Franklin. They would never be granted any "right of return" to the territories they had left.

Since most nations gain independence in armed struggle of one sort or another, armed struggle in which some civilians inevitably suffer, then by the "logic" of the ranteurs about "Naqba Denial" the existence of all those states should also be deemed catastrophes. But Israel alone is singled out for condemnation.

In Israel's War of Independence, some 400,000 or so "Palestinian" Arabs ended up as refugees. The bulk of these "Palestinians" were Arabs whose families had migrated into Western PalestinePalestine" by the influx of Zionist migrants and capital. As "refugees" they fled back to those same neighboring Arab lands. Their "refugee plight" is supposedly what users of the "Naqba" term mean when they apply it. during the previous 70 years from neighboring Arab territories, during the same era in which the Zionist immigrations took place, and largely motivated by the improving conditions being generated in "

There is some controversy over how exactly those "Palestinian" Arabs became "refugees." In many cases they were ordered to abandon the war zone by their own leaders, in order to clear the way for invading Arab armies. This has been scrupulously documented by many historians, and most recently skillfully so by Efraim Karsh from the University of London. Arab historians themselves have conceded the point:

"Arab residents of Palestine in 1948 were not expelled by Israeli officials or military forces, as many claim, but were actually ordered to leave by local Arab leaders, says Palestinian journalist Mahmud Al-Habbash who writes for the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. Al-Habbash writes in his column, "The Pulse of Life," that Arab residents were explicitly instructed by their local Arab leaders to leave their homes when the 'Catastrophe' (the establishment of the State of Israel) occurred in 1948."

Other Arab sources report the same thing:

"The Arab states encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies." - Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949.

"The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in." Ad Difaa (Jordanian daily), September 6, 1954.

"The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland." - Abu Mazen, President of the Palestinian Authority, in "What We Have Learned and What We Should Do," published in Falastin el Thawra, the official journal of the PLO, March 1976.

Granting a right to these "refugees" to return to Israel would have made about as much sense as establishing a right to return to America for ethnic Japanese who left the US in 1941 in order to participate in Imperial Japan's wars. In some cases Arabs were evicted by Israel from villages where strategic considerations required this, although generally were moved to other areas inside Israel. In some cases Arab civilians panicked because of the lurid lies being broadcast by Arab propaganda radio stations about the demonic Jews conducting imaginary massacres. And probably the most important factor of all was the simple and understandable desire of many Arabs to get out of the way of the battle zones.

Israel's War of Independence was a battle against Arab aggressors attempting to conduct ethnic cleansing of Jews inside the territories assigned by the UN to Israel. Had they succeeded, a genocidal massacre of those Jews would have taken place. Many of the Jews in question had escaped from or survived the Nazi Holocaust and were themselves refugees. More Jews died in that 1948-49 war for survival than in any of the subsequent Arab-Israeli armed confrontations.

Given the size of the Israeli state that emerged, smaller than New Jersey, the "Palestinian refugees" from that war only had to relocate a few miles away from their previous homes, into Arab states in which they spoke the language and enjoyed a common culture, Arab states who together controlled a land mass nearly twice the size of the United States (including Alaska). These Arab refugees were but a tiny drop in the sea of population relocations that occurred all over the world in the late 1940s, amounting to tens of millions of humans, ranging from the huge population relocations in the Indian subcontinent, to the repatriation of millions of ethnic Germans from countries in which they had lived for a thousand years "back" to Germany, to the mass expulsion of Japanese from mainland Asia. In every other case of refugee populations, the refugees were quickly resettled, rehabilitated, and absorbed, usually inside countries of their ethnic kinsmen, within a short period. The Arab world, awash in petrodollars, preferred to keep as many "refugees" on display as possible inside "refugee camps" funded by the United Nations and many gullible others.

Meanwhile, away from the headlines and media, Israel quietly allowed about 184,000 "Palestinian refugees" or their families to return to Israel proper (Jerusalem Post, January 2, 2001; see also Haaretz 28 December 28, 2000). This was in spite of the fact that they became refugees in the first place as a direct result of the Arab invasion and war of annihilation against Israel in 1948-9, a war in which "Palestinian" Arabs participated en masse. These were in addition to about 57,000 Palestinians from Jordan illegally in Israel, toward whom the Israeli authorities have turned a blind eye (Haaretz, April 4, 2001). All of these were resettled within Israel's pre-1967 "Green Line" borders. Meanwhile, the handing out of free food and money in the UN "refugee camps" to "Palestinian refugees" produced an enormous influx of non-Palestinian Arabs eager to share in the largesse, creating an astronomical and largely illusionary demographic increase in the numbers of "Palestinian Arabs." The bulk of those "Palestinian refugees" never lived in the territories that became Israel.

Now if the "Palestinian Arabs" experienced a small-scale outflow of refugees as a direct result of the attempted genocide against Jews conducted by the Arab armies in 1948-49, this hardly constitutes a historic "Naqba," a word implying something on the same order of magnitude as the Mongol invasions.

Israel's creation did however trigger an actual "Naqba," although it was one that hardly interests Islamofascists and their leftist amen choruses. It was the mass wholesale expulsion of around a million Jews from Arab and Moslem countries and the theft of their property. This "Naqba" of Jews living in the Moslem world produced twice as many refugees as the number of Arab refugees who fled after Israel's independence in 1948-49. Jews had been living in those lands for thousands of years. The Arab regimes responded to Israel's victory in 1948-49 by conducting ethnic cleansing of their own Jewish populations, expelling them and seizing all their property without compensation. Jewish quarters were sacked and looted, cemeteries were desecrated, while synagogues, Jewish shops, schools and houses were ransacked, burned and destroyed. Hundreds of Jews were murdered in anti-Semitic riots and pogroms.

Most of those Jewish refugees were resettled in Israel. The Jews from Arab countries left behind property worth many times more than anything left behind by "Palestinian refugees." Israel has expressed willingmess to discuss compensation for property lost by Arab "refugees" as part of any peace accord, provided that compensation for Jewish refugees from Arab lands is also part of the package. The Arabs have always dismissed that idea out of hand.

Among those promoting the complaint about a "Naqba" inflicted upon "Palestinians" by the Jews are a handful of Israeli pseudo-academics. The most notorious of these Israeli "academics," and the one who has done more than any other anti-Israel Israeli to promote the moral equivalence of "Naqba Denial" with Holocaust Denial, is "New Historian" Ilan Pappe. Nearly all those beating the "Naqba" drum today cite Pappe and his "books" about the supposed "ethnic cleansing" of Arabs by Israel in its war of independence. Pappe was until recently a lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa, and has now moved to an academic propagandist position at the University of Exeter in the UK. The chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews recently said: "After taking full advantage of all the freedoms accorded to him in Israel, a country he has so shamelessly attacked, Pappe has decided to set up shop here. Whilst this provides the opportunity for academics here to challenge him on his revisionist agenda, the uncomfortable fact is that in the lecture theaters and seminar rooms at Exeter, many impressionable young minds will be exposed to his partial and biased views."

Pappe is a notorious fabricator, someone who claims proudly that facts and truth are of no importance. "Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts, Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers," the French newspaper Le Soir, has cited Pappe as saying. Even other anti-Zionists have repudiated Pappe as a liar and fabricator. He openly calls for Israel to be exterminated and endorses Hamas. He dedicated one of his "books" to the hope that his children can group up in a world in which there is no Israel. He openly endorses Arab terrorism. He considers Noam Chomsky insufficiently anti-Israel.

Pappe, who ran for the parliament in Israel on the slate of the Stalinist communist party and played a central role in fomenting boycotts of Israel in the UK and elsewhere, was the central figure in the now infamous "Tantura Affair." In it, Pappe coached a graduate student of his into inventing a non-existent "massacre" of Arabs by the Hagana Jewish militia (Alexandroni Brigade) in Tantura, south of Haifa, a "massacre" that Pappe claims took place in 1948. Not a shred of evidence for any such "massacre" exists. Arab and other journalists who were present at the time of the battle that took place in Tantura reported no massacre. Arabs living in the town at the time confirmed that a battle occurred, but that after the battle the Jewish militiamen aided and assisted the townspeople, not massacring anyone. The graduate student, sued for libel by the veterans of the Hagana militia, later admitted in court with his lawyer present that the entire massacre was an invention.

No matter – Pappe roams the world and continues to spread the lie about the Tantura "massacre," a lie that has found its way into nearly every anti-Semitic web site on earth and even Neo-Nazi magazines, although even a handful of respectable mainstream journalists rely on him. Pappe has also lied about just about everything else, including about being "persecuted" by his own university. In fact, Pappe was never fired for his fraud and fabrication by the University of Haifa, although he should have been. (Some wags even suggested the University should be boycotted for NOT firing Pappe!) That did not stop Pappe from waving his stigmata as "victim of Zionism" before the European anti-Semites promoting "divestment" from Israel. His recruitment by the University of Exeter proves how indifferent that school is to scholarly standards. The fact that so many of the people shouting about "Naqba Denial" rely upon such a notorious liar states volumes about their real agenda.

Meanwhile, Israel's own daffy Minister of Education, Yuli Tamir (from the Israeli socialist Labor Party and herself a longtime Moonbette member of the Tenured Left at Tel Aviv University), recently issued a ruling under which textbooks in Israeli Arab schools will start referring to Israel's creation as "The Naqba." This is just in case those Arab students are not picking up enough hatred of Jews and Israel on their own at home. The numbers of Israeli Arabs blowing themselves up inside buses to murder Jews will no doubt increase in the future thanks to her. If Israel ever surrenders to terror and capitulates to Arab fascism, future historians may consider that decision a watershed.

"Naqba Denial" is now the leading term of choice being tossed about by those seeking Israel's extermination. Some of those using the term also openly endorse Holocaust Denial. The others would have no problem at all with the Arab world conducting an ethnic cleansing of Israeli Jews of the sort they failed to perpetrate in 1948.

"Naqba Denial" is openly being used as a propaganda ploy to trivialize the Jewish Holocaust in World War II. After all, if the Jews are "denying" the "Naqba" they "inflicted" on the poor "Palestinians" in 1948-9, then why should the world owe the Jews any sympathy for their plight in World War II? (And why stop there – why not declare that those who deny that Ward Churchill is an Indian or that Norman Finkelstein is a scholar are also the moral equivalents of Holocaust Deniers?) And if Israelis deny they inflicted any "Naqba," why should anyone question the right of Holocaust Deniers to peddle their snake oil on campuses? Israel bashers demand that Israel be pressured into atoning for its "role" in the Naqba the same way Germany atoned for the Holocaust, but unlike Germany Israel must do so by forfeiting its national existence.

In sum, those who use the terms "Naqba" and "Naqba Denial" ignore the fact that Arabs living under Israeli rule are treated a thousand times better than are Arabs living under the rule of Arab regimes. These are the same people for whom the only Middle East regime that is not an apartheid state must be demolished and purged for its practicing "apartheid." For them, the only country in the Middle East practicing democracy and respecting human rights must be annihilated.

Steven Plaut is a professor at the Graduate School of the Business Administration at the University of Haifa and is a columnist for the Jewish Press. A collection of his commentaries on the current events in Israel can be found on his "blog" at http://zioncon.blogspot.com/

I think its time for us Naqba denier to have an educational conference on Naqba. Maybe we can hold it in the Unified Israeli Jerusalem and invite Naqba deniers from all over the world. Maybe Naqba supporters such as Tom Friedman of the NY Times can write columns about how hateful we are being and the Daily Kos can have an anti-Israel field day. Wait that's silly, that kind of reporting is happening anyway, I guess we don't need the conference....Never Mind.

Holy Land Foundation Terror Trial-Israeli Testifies-CAIR Upset

Lots of action surrounding the Funding terror trial of the Holy Land foundation. Another Israeli witness testified. This one testified as Hamas Expert and detailed the tangled web of "charity" foundations that served to raise money for the the terrorist group.

HLF Trial Update: 2nd Israeli Witness Takes the Stand

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

The usual tranquility of the overflow courtroom in the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse in Dallas was disturbed Wednesday, as supporters of the defendants in the government’s case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) were forced to leave the main courtroom of Judge A. Joe Fish, as the prosecution called an expert witness from Israel. The man, testifying under the pseudonym “Avi,” is an attorney for the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) and is an expert in the global HAMAS social structure.

Many of the observers vocally objected to his appearance as an expert, asking each other what qualifications he really has. “Avi” was certified by Judge Fish on Monday as an expert witness because of his years of experience investigating the subject for the Israeli government. In his testimony this morning, “Avi” did not rely on any classified information, rather he focused on evidence that he gathered through HAMAS and HAMAS related websites, websites of the various charitable committees linked to HAMAS in the West Bank and Gaza, Arab language newspapers and television, and HAMAS videos.

“Avi” underwent direct examination throughout the morning, describing the global network of HAMAS linked charities which were created by the terrorist group’s leaders in the West Bank and Gaza in the early 1990’s. He testified that these organizations did not just appear out of the blue but that this network was organized and created by design.

Read More »

According to “Avi,” these funds shared common characteristics regardless of the country in which they operated, be it in the United States, England, Germany, or any one of a number of others which housed HAMAS charities. These characteristics included: registration as non-profit organizations, local HAMAS activists and leaders as top officials in the various entities, the use of newspapers to publish HAMAS pamphlets and messages, support for the same organizations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and finally all of these charities supported specialized segments of the population, notably the families of HAMAS martyrs and prisoners.

This HAMAS social network gradually spread throughout Europe. In a letter recovered from the offices of HLF and written to Akram Mishaal, a defendant in the HLF case who served as HLF’s Programs and Grants Director, Amin Abou Ibrahim, a HAMAS leader and head of the Dutch Branch of the German based Al-Aqsa Foundation, listed for Mishaal the “addresses of the charitable organizations working for Palestine in Europe.” The letter, dated April 2, 2001, indicated that Mishaal requested this list which included Al Aqsa Foundation offices in Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, and Holland. Al Aqsa and all of its branch offices were designated as terrorist entities by OFAC on May 29, 2003.

The list also included Interpal in Britain, the Charitable Organization for the Support of Palestine (CBSP) in France, the Association for Palestine in Austria, and the Relief Organization for Palestine in Switzerland, all of which were designated as terrorist entities by OFAC on August 21, 2003.

In its announcement concerning those designations, the Department of Treasury proclaimed that, “Today’s action follows several actions taken against Hamas previously, including the designation of several entities that formed part of the Hamas network such as Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and the Al Aqsa Foundation, key sources of financial support for Hamas.”

In a story related to the trial going on in Texas, many of the Muslim organization are fighting their designation as unindicted co-conspirators in the ongoing Holy Land Foundation trial. The claim it is just another example of the US govt's effort to defame the entire Muslim community that has been going on since 9/11. I guess that all of those examples of CAIR meeting with Hamas, or praising terrorist activities has nothing to do with it:

Muslim Groups Oppose a List of ‘Co-Conspirators’

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

Two prominent Muslim American organizations took steps yesterday to reverse what they called a Justice Department effort to smear the entire Muslim community by naming some of its largest organizations as unindicted co-conspirators in a Texas terrorism trial.

The National Association of Muslim Lawyers, which is not named, sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales objecting to the list, which it said breached the department’s own guidelines against releasing the names of unindicted co-conspirators and did not serve any clear law enforcement purpose.

The letter, also signed by the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, said the “overreaching list” of more than 300 organizations and individuals would further cripple charitable donations to Muslim organizations and could ratchet up the discrimination faced by American Muslims since the Sept. 11 attacks.

In addition, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, which is on the list, announced that it would file a brief today asking Judge A. Joe Fish of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas to remove its name and all others from the list.

The brief, a copy of which was released yesterday, says the list furthers a pattern of the “demonization of all things Muslim” that has unrolled in the United States since 2001.

“Most people don’t understand what an unindicted co-conspirator is,” said Parvez Ahmed, CAIR’s board chairman, adding that the release of the list prompted death threats and hate mail against the council. “They think that being related to a terrorism case means we are terrorists.”

The unindicted co-conspirators were named in the case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which opened July 16. The charity and five of its officers are accused of providing material support for terrorism by funneling millions of charitable dollars to the Palestinian organization Hamas. The federal government ordered the foundation shuttered in December 2001.

Technically, the prosecution can introduce statements made by any individual or organization named as an unindicted co-conspirator without such statements being dismissed as hearsay. Those on the list have not been charged with anything, but they are concerned that the label of unindicted co-conspirator will forever taint them, particularly if the Holy Land group is convicted, and that they will have no legal recourse.

On July 13, Judge Fish barred lawyers from discussing the case with reporters. A Justice Department spokesman, Bryan Sierra, said the order prevented him from commenting about the list, as did the spokeswoman for the United States attorney in Dallas, Kathy Colvin. Before the judge’s order, however, the prosecution, while acknowledging that the list was unusually long, maintained that the names of the organizations would have come up in the trial anyway. Defense lawyers accused the Justice Department of using the list to create the aura of a vast conspiracy where none existed.

Both the National Association of Muslim Lawyers and CAIR said they were working in uncharted legal territory, as they had been unable to find firm legal precedents about how an unindicted co-conspirator could be removed from such a list.

Many organizations named are foreign, but among the most notable in the United States are the Islamic Society of North America, the largest Muslim umbrella organization, and the North American Islamic Trust. The Islamic Society said in a statement that it, too, was seeking a legal recourse, while the North American Islamic Trust did not respond to telephone calls seeking comment.