vrijdag 23 oktober 2015

Lies and slander in three Israeli newspapers about Kristallnacht commemoration in Amsterdam

Three Israeli newspapers yesterday carried an outrageous  article about the fact that the ''Platform Stop Racism and Exclusion''(Platform stop Racisme en Uitsluiting) in the Netherlands invited the Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament Haneen Zoabi for its yearly commemoration of the ''Kristallnacht'', the progrom with which the nazis in 1938 started their persecution of the Jews.
The article, by the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA), most probably written by its correspondent in the Netherland Cnaan Liphshiz (it was not bylined) was printed in Haaretz, as well as the Jerusalempost and The Times of Israel. 
Its most outstanding feature was that it contained no more than one true fact: namely that Haneen Zoabi indeed is expected to speak at the Kristallnacht commemoration in Amsterdam. The rest consisted of inaccuracies, or should we say:  outright lies, and in one case slander of a well-known youth imam in the Netherlands of a most despicable kind. One wonders how it is possible that no less than three Israeli newspapers which consider themselves quality papers, print rubbish of this kind without even trying to get the true picture.
The article calls the organizing Platform a ''far left group that is shunned by local Jews for its members' perceived animosity toward Israel  and sympathy for Hamas''. That's three lies in one sentence.
The Platform is in reality  left nor right. It consists of a number of organisations. It has no political affiliation whatsoever and  is only concerned with racism and dsicrimination. Of course it has nothing to do with Israel, let alone with Hamas. Its yearly Kristallnacht commemoration, which has taken place since 1992, is supported by - among others - at least two Jewish organisations, and a number of organisations of Dutch people of Moroccan and Turkish descent.
Then JTA goes on to tell us that  ''in 2010, the Central Jewish Board of the Netherlands  broke its ties with NBK (a forerunner of the Platform, AbuP.) because of the group’s perceived attempt to tie the Holocaust with the Arab-Israeli conflict''. In fact there has never been any attempt to tie the Holocaust to the Arab-Israeli conflict'' nor did the Central Board ever even suggest such a thing. The reason why the Central Board (CJO) tried to stop the commemoration by the Platform (or rather tried to sabotage it) was that the platform used the commemoration not only as a Holocaust remembrance opportunity, but also as an event to warn for contemporary racism. (A secondary reason was that one of the (20) member-organisations of the Platform posted the announcement of the commemoration on its site, next to a call for BDS, i.e. a boycott of Israel. As if the Platform is responsible for how its events are announced by other organisations).
The next thing that the anonymous writer of this remarkable example of journalistic craftmanship tries to make us believe, is that ''NBK activist Miriyam Aouragh in 2004 organized a commemoration service in Amsterdam for Ahmed Yassin, a Hamas leader whom Israel killed that year''. The truth in this case is, that Miryam Aouragh has never been a NBK activist. Neither did she organize a commemoration of Ahmed Yassin, as far as I know, I believe that she spoke at a po-Palestinian rally that by coincidence was held around the time that Yassin together with seven members of his family were killed by an Israeli rocket and that she paid attention to this fact. But then, again, Aouragh is not an NBK activist and has no ties with the Platform.
And last but certainly not least Liphshiz, or whoever the author, tells us that ''in 2009, NBK’s Kristallnacht commemoration featured a speech by Yassin Elforkani, an imam who in 2009 said that Jews in Damascus used blood to make matzah''. Of course Yassin Elforkani, an imam who has been working relentlessly for the improvement of ties between the Moroccan and Jewish communities in Holland, never said a word that even in the remotest way ressembled such a thing. This is really  slander of the worst possible kind. How would one call it when a remark like that about a well known Dutch youth imam is published in Jewish newspapers of today ? My suggestion would be: an inverted blood libel, nothing else. That a text like this could appear in three serious Israeli newspapers, without anybody asking questions, having second thoughts, or attempting to contact the organisation and people in question, is very worrysome indeed.
What does that tell us about the present state of the Israeli press? If I were an Israeli I would start to be concerned.

30 opmerkingen:

Ronald van den Bergh zei

Miriam Aouragh was de organisator van de eerste anti-semitische betoging van na WO II in Amsterdam, maart 2002. Daar heb ik een zeer uitgebreide fotoreportage van gemaakt.
Wat je nu doet is alibi verschaffen voor het strafbare feit van art. 137d WSR, immers vergelijkingen tussen Israel en Nazi-Duitsland zijn strafbaar daaronder.
Je grote geluk is dat de joodse organisaties waar je zo tegenaan schopt te slap zijn om aangifte hiertegen te doen.

Abu Pessoptimist zei

Ronald van den Bergh,
Nogmaals; Miryam Aouragh heeft GEEN band met het Platform. Of ze aan antisemitische betoging heeft georganiseerd weet ik niet, ik was er net bij in 2002, maar het lijkt me uitermate onwaarschijnlijk. Ik ken haar. Ze is zeer kritisch over Israel, maar absoluut geen antisemiet.
Als je mij beschuldigt van vergelijkingen maken tussen Israel en nazi-Duitsland, (waar doe ik dat?) dien dan zelf een strafklacht in. Ik zie de afloop met vertrouwen tegemoet.

Malatesta zei

A Dutch organization called "Platform Stop Racism and Exclusion" has invited Hanin Zoabi to speak at the coming commemoration of Kristallnacht, the massive 1938 pogrom against Austrian and German Jews.
I did some research.
The platform has a Committee of Recommendation of twelve people that make the decisions. Is there was anything they all have in common?
Yes there is: they are all vocal, virulent Israel-haters who support BDS.
What do they hope to achieve?
Firstly, they are trying to hijack the Holocaust. The Palestinians are to them the new Jews.

Abu Pessoptimist zei

Malatesta,
Good research. It is only a pity that, contrary to what you presume, the Committee of Recommandation had no say whatsoever in organizing our commemoration and never had. It is a Committee of Recommendation after all and not an organizing comittee. I happen to know, because I 'm a member of he latter. As far as your remark about hijacking the Holocaust is concerned: you are intitled to your viewpoint, bu we, the people who actually take part in this commmemoration just commemorate the Kristallnacht as a the starting point of the Holocaust. And apart from that we also always pay attention to racism wherever it is to be found, as after all it was racism that was the root cause of it all.
(I'm sorry that I shortened your comment a bit, but the rest was just groundless accusations of Israel-hatred adressed to people of the Committee you mentioned, that as I said, was not involved in the organiation of our commemoration).

inke zei

Malatesta, I support BDS and do so for years now. I'm not a virulent Israël hater . I can make the difference between jews in general and Israeli Occupiers quite well. Nobody is hijjacking the Holocaust as far as I know, well, maybe Netanyahu for his own sick political gain!
The Kristallnacht was not even the beginning of the discrimination and hatred towards jews but made it very visible and no-one could be blind to it anymore. We all know were it ended.
The same goes for the discrimination and dehumanization of Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank. Let alone the 2 year tradition of bombing Gaza and it's people to smithereens. There are certainly similarities between the treatment of jews in Germany in the 1930's and the treatment of Palestinians by many of the descendants of the survivors of the Holocaust for the last decades. If we mean it when saying: Nie Wieder! than that should apply to everone suffering from hatred, discrimination and persecution. It's not just Jews whom can be victims of racism, unfortunatly it happens all over the planet.
inge

inke zei

were=where (it ended)
2 year=2 yearly (tradition)
than=(that should)
Sorry, moest het even verbeteren.

Jaap Hamburger, Broek in Waterland zei

I’m ‘a local jew’. I attended the last four Kristallnacht commerations, held in the open air, next to the Monument for Jewish Resistance ; I was impressed time and time again by five facts.

1st there was an intense and deeply moving focus on the historic Kristallnacht and the plight of German jews as victims of atrocities.

2nd there was awareness of the meaning of this all-out attack -encouraged and in fact organized- by a perfidious racist regime on a well integrated minority as a Mahnmal and Warning for simmering undercurrents in our own societies; recently we have seen prove of the realism of this Warning.

3rd the link between historic racism against jews and actual contempt for other categories of people is exactly what we as jews want to see and have tried to hammer down in everybody’s consciousness: what has happened tot the jews should never happen again, not to the jews, nor to anybody else.

4th it was deeply moving to seeat these commemorating meetings jews and non-jews alike unaminously united against all kinds of prejudice, contempt and racism, whether historic or contemporary, or foreseeable in the future.

5th if commemorating historic events is to be more than a sterile remembrance of the past, if its purpose is: giving sense and meaning to the past for our own lifetime, the way the Kristallnacht is commemorated by NBK is exemplary for this approach.

It couldn’t be done better, it deserves praise and honour by everybody, first and foremost by jews and Israelis if they are to take their own driveand anxieties seriously.

Slandering the organization and the organizers is proof of narrowmindedness and the inability of perceiving jewish history as containing a message for our times and for society s a whole.

Ronald van den Bergh zei

http://www.timesofisrael.com/french-high-court-bds-activists-guilty-of-discrimination/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=c395bb6dce-2015_10_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-c395bb6dce-54571205

BDS is antisemitisch geweld en discriminatie.

Abu Pessoptimist zei

Ronald van den Bergh,
Ik had het bericht gezien en heb er (nog) geen aandacht aan besteed, omdat ik het niet helemaal begrijp. Frankrijk zou nu het enige land ter wereld zijn waar geen boycot mogelijk zou zijn van apartheids Zuid-Afrika. Maar in 2013 beoordeelde hetzelfde Cour de Cassation BDS nog als geoorloofd. Ik heb nog geen goede uitleg gezien over hoe die tegenstelling juridisch mogelijk is. Het hof sprak overigens alleen van discriminatie, het woord antisemitisme kwam in de uitspraak NIET voor.

inke zei

In dat zelfde Frankrijk werd David Perrotin, een journalist voor BuzzFeed in elkaar geslagen door rechts extremistische Kahane aanhangers van The Jewish Defense League.Omdat hij regelmatig onderzoek doet naar de werkwijze van deze League.
zie:
Far-right French Jews Assault BuzzFeed Journalist

Armed with batons, dozens of violent Jewish activists who had gathered to protest the news agency’s Israel coverage, assaulted David Perrotin.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.682067

Anoniem zei

Anoniem zei...

Malatesta, You are correct, both the organizers and the committee of recommendations consist of people from the far left (maybe not all with political affiliation), mostly known for never missing an opportunity to slander Israel. In a democracy like ours, they are surely entitled to do so, as they are entitled to invite a controversial person to their commemoration. Out of all people they could have invited, Hanin Zoabi fits best for purpose (their agenda), it´s that simple. It´s a local event where Zoabi´s known message value add is none to our society.

Inge, you said:
"I can make the difference between jews in general and Israeli Occupiers quite well".
" There are certainly similarities between the treatment of jews in Germany in the 1930's and the treatment of Palestinians".

These are bold/stupid statements. I would like to see you elaborate a bit more on both statements, can you?

Amir

Abu Pessoptimist zei

Amir,
Left and right is a matter of perspective. Most of the people who support the Platform are progressive and/or leftists. From your perspective they are apparently ''far left'', which leads me to the conclusion that you must be not very far from the ''far right''. But actually, the political outlook of the people of the Platform is quite irrelevant as it isn't a political organisation, but an assembly of several organisations with a one issue objective: fighting discrimination and racism. And so it is possible that some of the organizers (like myself) or the Committee of Recommandation belong to the people who are critical of Israel, but again, that's not the point here. Zoabi has been invited because the discrimination and outright racism the Palestinians are subjected to is a topic that can't and shouldn't be overlooked any longer.

Anoniem zei

Inke,

Any comparison to the the Jews in Germany in the 30´s is totally out of order. Maybe this is due to a lack of education, maybe you read the wrong books. I can only advise you to re-educate yourself as you could be conceived to be what you might not be.

Your differentiation in Jews (as you said) ..... well, never mind. I guess it is pointless to point out where you go wrong anyways.

Amir

Abu Pessoptimist zei

Amir,
A very enlightning comment. You recommend no books and you don't explain anything. I take it that you are that so much better educated on the subject that it is too much trouble to descend a step or two from you self created Olympus.
I also assume that you consider that dispossesion, loss of jobs and positions and discrimination in all spheres was bad when it happend to the Jews in Germany in the 30-ties, but good when it happened to Palestinians in Palestine in the 40ties, 50ties, 60ties, 70ties, 80ties,90ties, 2000 and after. After all there must be a reason why you think that comparisons are wrong.

Anoniem zei

Facts:

German Jews were a well-integrated ethnic group in German society before and in the early 30´s. They felt proud Germans.
Jewish businesses were boycotted from from 1934 on (BDS?).
Nuremberg laws (1938), preventing inter-faith relationship, household employment etc etc.
Kristallnacht
There was an end game (Holocaust)

Proof to me that this compares to current situation of the Palestinians and I am (unlike you) open to accept.


As for loss of jobs: I guess the BDS is doing a great job (and therefore NOT supported by the majority of Palestinians as recent polls show)

BTW, should be boycott Olympus for being taken from the Titans)

Amir

Abu Pessoptimist zei

Amir,
Nobody is suggesting that the comparison covers all the details. However, what is similiar to both situations, is that in both cases we find discrimination and a different set of laws for the two groups: Jews and ''Arians'' in the first, Jews and Palestinians in the second case.
That been said, I can note that the Palestinians were the original inhabitants in Plaestine/Israel (very well integrated), were driven from their land in the 20ties and 30ties (not in very large numbers, but still), excluded from the Jewish economy (avoda ivry), driven away and denied the permission to return (in 1948), while the remainder of their community in what had become Israel was to live under a military government till 1966 and thereafter was subjected to a different set of laws than the Jewish Israelis (some 50 differences).
When speaking about the occupied territories (an occupation that has been in place for 48 years now), we are talking about more than four million people without any rights at all, de jure ruled by a powerless administration of their own and de facto by a military government with in its hands a set of obsolete British and Jordanian laws, supplemented by more than 1.000 military orders - as opposed to the more than half a million settlers, who have all the rights, including the right to carry arms and eventually kill, and who are ruled by the Israeli juridical system.
So, you're right that the Palestians did have neither or a Kristallnacht, nor a Holocaust. In stead they got an expulsion and a lasting conflict in which tens of thousands of them have been killed (certainly more than 10.000 alone in the Israeli invasison in Lebanon in 1982, and some 13.000 or more since the year 2.000 till now). In 1948 they faced the eradictation of their history, villages and neighbourhoods, archives and institutions. In fact they were thereafter even denied the right to be a people and live a live in freedom and dignity. And certainly this last aspect, as far as I am concerned, more than warrants a comparison with the Jews in Europe before - or even after - 1940.

Anoniem zei

What you call details are indeed main issues. The motive, the execution, the circumstance and the goals all are different. The only detail (all wars/fights) that they have in common is that people suffer (and in some ways you can find similarities). I do acknowledge that and don´t turn a blind eye of the ongoing suffering. You obviously (and your activist friend Inke) find that sufficient for comparison. For me it is abuse of my family history for personal agenda gains.

Inke, I never said you are an anti semite (but you might be), I also did not stand up for or try to defend Israel (Hashbara?). I said that your remarks are plain stupid for comparing apples with pears. And I do stick with that. I would even call you a usefull idiot that has no clue (sorry, but to many unfounded comments). If that makes me arrofgant, then so be it.

Amir

Abu Pessoptimist zei

Amir,
The main thing is that in both cases there was discrimination. I forgot to mention another similarity: in both cases the purpose (or in the case of the Palestinians the effect, you might want to argue) was about getting another people out of the way.

If what I wrote would be an abuse of your family history, it would be an abuse of mine as well. Bur for me it does not feel that way.

inke zei

Amir, you know nothing about me, my family or the history of my family. You speak in such a degrading, nasty way, calling me stupid or an useful idiot, because you think there is only one right way to look at things and it can only be yours.
I was born after the war as the daughter of a KZ-lager survivor who had nightmares till he died in old age.And because of his dementia the last years of his life he was back in the camps. So don't tell me about suffering.
Last year, a man I greatly admired died, Hajo Meyer. He fled from Germany to the Netherlands after the Kristallnacht. He was only 14 years old at that time. He survived Auschwitz.
AbuPessoptimist wrote a beautiful eulology when Mr.Meyer died.

I give you some quotes from this remarkable man who did teach us a thing or two.But maybe you'll find him stupid as well.

" Auschwitz existed within history, not outside of it. The main lesson I learned there is simple: We Jews should never, ever become like our tormentors …

Since 1967 it has become obvious that political Zionism has one monolithic aim: Maximum land in Palestine with a minimum of Palestinians on it. This aim is pursued with an inexcusable cruelty as demonstrated during the assault on Gaza. The cruelty is explicitly formulated in the Dahiye doctrine of the military and morally supported by the Holocaust religion.

I am pained by the parallels I observe between my experiences in Germany prior to 1939 and those suffered by Palestinians today. I cannot help but hear echoes of the Nazi mythos of "blood and soil" in the rhetoric of settler fundamentalism which claims a sacred right to all the lands of biblical Judea and Samaria. The various forms of collective punishment visited upon the Palestinian people -- coerced ghettoization behind a "security wall"; the bulldozing of homes and destruction of fields; the bombing of schools, mosques, and government buildings; an economic blockade that deprives people of the water, food, medicine, education and the basic necessities for dignified survival -- force me to recall the deprivations and humiliations that I experienced in my youth. This century-long process of oppression means unimaginable suffering for Palestinians.
"An Ethical Tradition Betrayed," huffingtonpost.com, Jan. 27, 2010. Retrieved on March 27, 2010."


Anoniem zei

Inke, the pot is clearly calling the kettle black. Since I do no buy into your story I am to blame. That is typical behaviour. About the man you admire so much, Hajo Meijer: I have not met him and can not pass judgement, expecially since he passed away. Being called an idiot is a title you have to earn and you managed doing so.
No, I do not know you and I am sorry to hear about your father´s suffering. From the majority of people that came back I learned: "I they tell you they are going to kill you, then you better damn well believe them".

Abu,
So for that sake we can compare the Palestinians to any group that ever was or still is/feels discriminated. That does not justify to me comparing to Germany in the 30´s as an effect is not the some as a motive (and yes I would debate if the effect is to get rid of Palestinians definitely). I do not debate the hardship in the territories, because those are concerns I do share.

I think I made my point: I think it is just to talk about the suffering and bring it to the general attention, but I do not agree with the way how. Putting it in the context of the Holocaust serves but one goal which I simply can not relate to. You have by far not me, sorry.

Abu Pessoptimist zei

Amir,
Ah, now I understand. You think that I (or Inke for that matter) put the fate of the Palestinians in the context of the Holocaust. We didn't, (in any case I didn't but I think this goes for Inke as well). However, I don't belong to the school that says that the Holocaust was so unique that nothing can be compared to it, and certainly the process that led to the isolation of the Jews in te countries that were ruled by the nazis - the process before they were sent to the extermination camps - is not too different from other cases of discrimination or apartheid.
But you made yoyr point, you're right. We both did.

David Chalbanar zei

Abu,

What you say is legal nonsense.
The jurisprudence of the ECHR is crystal clear when it comes to the uniqueness of the Shoah. That is why Holocaust denial or its proxy thereto it considered ipso iure against the values of the Convention.

Abu Pessoptimist zei

David Chalbanar,
It is of course not nonsense. In the first place what I said has nothing to do with Holocaust denial, and in the second place, not everyone is happy with this clause about the uniquenesse of the Shoah. I'm not the only person who thinks that it is an exaggerated and unnecessary limitation of the freedom of speech and that abuse is sufficiently covered by other articles.

Abu Pessoptimist zei

David Chalbanar,
Oh, really? I challenge you to point out for me and my readers where and when I ''eroded the Holocaust''. By the way you point directly to what is poblematic in this respect: the fact that the Holocaust is used by Israelis to label criticism of Israel as off limits. Someone recently coined a name for that kind of behavior: ''Holocaust abuse'' (prof Michael Sells of Chicago University). That is what it is.

inke zei

Werd er ergens op dit blog een Holocaust ontkend? Dat was me nog niet opgevallen.Ik weet wel dat in de V.S. de Roma en Sinti nog steeds worden uitgesloten bij de Washington Holocaust Memorial Day.Elie Wiesel ging zelfs zo ver dat hij zei dat het de Herinnering omlaag zou halen als deze twee groepen werden inbegrepen bij de Herdenking. Het kan verkeren.

Anoniem zei

Holocaust inversion: "This anti-Semitic concept claims that Israel behaves against the Palestinians as Germany did to the Jews in World War II. “The victims have become perpetrators,” is one major slogan of the inverters. By shifting the moral responsibility for genocide, Holocaust inversion does also contains elements of Holocaust denial".

Holocaust Inversion involves the abuse of the Holocaust memory to issue a
moral structure aimed at Israel and ‘the Jews’, imposing upon them a uniquely onerous moral responsibility and accountability in their treatment of others.

Amir


David Chalbanar zei

Your posted commentaries speak for themselves.
May I challenge Inke to give his/her family name in order to find out whether there is some veracity as to his/her background. I think it is a concocted story.
May be he/she suffers from Holocaust abuse.

David Chalbanar zei

By the way, I looked up Prof Michael Sells, he doesn't use Holocaust abuse in any sense you aim at depicting it.
You avoid any serious discussion most likely defunct of intellectual ability.
You will ban me now, I realize.

Abu Pessoptimist zei

Amir,
This is getting boring. The only one who talks about Holocaust inversion here is you.

David Chalbanar,
OK, you draw your conclusions from my comments. I take it that you also are able to conclude that the history department of the University of Amsterdam is antisemitic because during a course we read parts of Mein Kampf and compared the Holocaust with the desastrous and murderous results of Stalin's collectivization. I assume that you are a simple soul.
As fas as Michael Sells is concerned, whom you say you googled, he was quoted a few days ago in an Haaretz article in the sense I described. You find it here: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/.premium-1.682892

David Chalbanar zei

ttps://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/150b548c8663c786

Simon Wiesenthal Institute correctly points out the Palestinian Authority is using children Nazi books to imbue hatred against Jews, 29.10.2015.

You are familiar with the fact Hamas is committing war crimes, cf. Rome Statute ICC art.8 e i, ii, vii. I am quite sure you will amicably communicate that with her own self-falsification, Mrs Haneen Zoabi next week.
Art. 8 e vii finds her corollary in art 34 International Convention on the Rights of Children, prohibition to use children as soldiers or belligerent instrument

I found the article in Haaretz you mentioned, but Michael Sells does not phrase Holocaust abuse the way you seem to apply.

I am still eagerly awaiting Inke's ancestry.

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