News & Analysis Focusing Primarily on Issues Affecting Israel

 
April 15, 2013 2

Anti-Israel Organizations Attack Israel with Tax Day-Themed Campaigns

Today, April 15, is “Tax Day,” the date by which all Amer­i­cans are required to sub­mit their tax returns to the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice (IRS). While it is an appro­pri­ate day to spend a few min­utes think­ing about what our gov­ern­ment spends our tax dol­lars on, there are sev­eral anti-Israel orga­ni­za­tions that are cap­i­tal­iz­ing on today’s dead­line to ini­ti­ate cam­paigns about what the U.S. gov­ern­ment should not spend its money on: aid to Israel.

In the past week, two promi­nent anti-Israel orga­ni­za­tions have launched a new web­site and a new report call­ing for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. Although a pri­or­ity that has long been at the fore­front of the domes­tic anti-Israel movement’s agenda, it has picked up steam in recent years due to eco­nomic con­cerns caused by the Great Reces­sion, seques­tra­tion and bud­get deficits.

The first cam­paign, titled “Demand a Refund,” was ini­ti­ated by the US Cam­paign to End the Israeli Occu­pa­tion in coor­di­na­tion with Amer­i­can Mus­lims for Pales­tine, Jew­ish Voice for Peace, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Com­mit­tee (ADC) and CODEPINK. The campaign’s web­site fea­tures a peti­tion from tax­pay­ers to Pres­i­dent Obama which reads, in part, “As a tax­payer, I am out­raged that your admin­is­tra­tion is report­edly open­ing nego­ti­a­tions to give Israel up to $40 bil­lion in U.S. taxpayer-financed weapons,” an appar­ent ref­er­ence to defense weaponry and tech­nol­ogy that the U.S. sells to Israel.

The peti­tion claims that Israel uses Amer­i­can weapons to “com­mit sys­tem­atic human rights abuses” and “oppress Pales­tini­ans.” It also crit­i­cizes Pres­i­dent Obama for increas­ing the amount of aid to Israel dur­ing his admin­is­tra­tion. The orga­niz­ers of the peti­tion hoped to gain 10,000 sig­na­tures by today (the cam­paign was launched last week). At present there are a lit­tle more than 3,000 signatories.

And just last week, the anti-Israel orga­ni­za­tion If Amer­i­cans Knew (IAK) released a new report titled “The Stag­ger­ing Cost of Israel to Amer­i­cans” to coin­cide with Tax Day. Orig­i­nally pub­lished in 1998, the new ver­sion of the report was writ­ten by Pamela Olson, a new ana­lyst for IAK.

Although the report makes sim­i­lar alle­ga­tions to the anti-aid peti­tion high­lighted above – not­ing, for exam­ple, that “it is crit­i­cal to exam­ine why we lav­ish so much aid on Israel” – the lan­guage cited in this report is far more egre­gious. It claims that U.S. aid to Israel is a result of the “Israel lobby” and insists that the U.S.-Israel rela­tion­ship harms the U.S. because Israel causes “rage and resent­ment among bil­lions of peo­ple… and sells America’s mil­i­tary secrets to its enemies.”

In its men­tion of the “Israel lobby,” the report goes so far as to allege that the U.S. and Israel do not enjoy a strong rela­tion­ship because of shared val­ues or inter­ests but because “Con­gress­men receive pay­ments and sup­port from the lobby in exchange for their loy­alty.” The report also asserts that U.S. aid to Israel makes the pos­si­bil­ity for peace between Israel and the Pales­tini­ans “even more distant.”

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April 15, 2013 2

New Black Panther Party Returns From Africa With New Goals And Same Message

The New Black Pan­ther Party(NBPP), the largest orga­nized anti-Semitic and racist black mil­i­tant group in Amer­ica, has announced plans to expand its inter­na­tional activ­ity and out­reach after a del­e­ga­tion of its lead­ers returned from a March trip to South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Malik Zulu Shabazz and New Black Pan­ther Party in Africa

In the group’s online radio broad­casts on Black Power Radio in April, the NBPP lead­er­ship dis­cussed the trip and their plans to increase mem­ber­ship through addi­tional out­reach in South Amer­ica, the Caribbean, Canada and the rest of Africa.

In South Africa, the del­e­ga­tion met with mem­bers of the Pan-Africanist Con­gress of Aza­nia, a minor pan-African polit­i­cal party, and in Zim­babwe they met with Pres­i­dent Robert Mugabe’s cab­i­net (Mugabe did not attend the meet­ing). NBPP National Chair­man Malik Zulu Shabazz later made his sup­port for the Zim­bab­wean dic­ta­tor clear, offer­ing to have a web­cast up on the NBPP web­site “within 60 days” in sup­port of Mugabe in the upcom­ing elec­tions. He also hopes to have the web­cast shown on the Nation of Islam (NOI)’s website.

Shabazz also said that over 200 Black orga­ni­za­tions from around the world will con­vene in South Africa for a con­fer­ence focus­ing on pan-Africanism on June 16, 2014, the anniver­sary of the Soweto Stu­dent Upris­ing that took place on the same day in 1976. Shabazz explained that Africa should be as cen­tral to African-Americans as “Israel is to the so-called Jew and all over the so-called Jew­ish Diaspora.”

Mem­ber­ship reports on the recent trip to Africa on Black Power Radio have fre­quently devolved into hate­ful rhetoric against whites, Jews, and other groups. National Spokesman Chawn Kweli referred to the NYPD as the “Jew York Police Depart­ment” and to the “Zionist-Jewish con­trolled media out­lets.” National Field Mar­shal King Samir Shabazz, prone to often vio­lent racist rants, called on NBPP mem­bers to shine their boots and press their uni­forms, adding that the “crease should be able to cut that cracker’s throat in half and watch his head roll down the street.”

Samir Shabazz also called on Black Mus­lims to make their Hajj to Africa instead of to Mecca. “I hate to say this but Mecca is not my home. I’m a Mus­lim but…I can’t see myself walk­ing around no black stone with those God­damn crack­ers any­way.” Instead of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the rit­ual act of throw­ing stones dur­ing the pil­grim­age to Mecca with “smelly Arabs and crack­ers,” he indi­cated that he would rather go to Africa and “throw some stones at six white peck­er­woods.” Samir Shabazz also went on a homo­pho­bic rant, express­ing dis­may at see­ing same-sex cou­ples in Africa.  He said that it “blew his mind” since he didn’t know that “the white man got Africans fag­gin’ and sag­gin’ like they do in America.”

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April 9, 2013 2

Electronic Jihad Targets Israel On Holocaust Remembrance Day

As Israelis and Jews pre­pared to com­mem­o­rate Holo­caust Remem­brance Day, var­i­ous hacker groups launched a cam­paign on Sun­day to “wipe Israel off the Internet.”

While described by some hack­ers as an attack against Israel for its treat­ment of the Pales­tini­ans, the cam­paign was specif­i­cally timed with Holo­caust Remem­brance Day and has fea­tured strong anti-Semitic rhetoric, includ­ing Holo­caust denial.

For exam­ple, a group call­ing itself Anony­mous Arab posted an Arabic-language YouTube video on April 6 call­ing for the removal the ‘Zion­ist Entity’ from the inter­net.” The video says there is “no proof” that the Holo­caust took place – “you have fab­ri­cated with your part­ners” — and that Israel is “unwor­thy to exist in your cur­rent form.”

“So long as your regime exists,” the video says, “peace shall be hindered.”

In addi­tion, the Lebanon-based satel­lite tele­vi­sion sta­tion Al Mayadeen aired an inter­view with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Al Falaga, a Tunisian hacker group that par­tic­i­pated in the cyber-attack. In the inter­view, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive said, “We chose this day because it’s the mem­ory of the Holo­caust when the Jews were burned by the hands of Hitler and today they burn by our hands.” The inter­view was posted later on the Face­book page of Al Falaga.

Accord­ing to ini­tial reports, the cyber-attack, which was announced sev­eral months ago as “OpIsrael2,” affected some Israeli gov­ern­ment and defense sites, but failed to bring them down.

Sev­eral hacker groups par­tic­i­pated in this cam­paign. A pro-Hamas hacker group, Al-Qassam Elec­tronic Brigades, posted a YouTube video on April 7 that included what appears to be a record­ing of a hack­ing oper­a­tion against the web­site of one of Israel’s polit­i­cal par­ties, Kadima.

The Moroc­can Ghosts, a polit­i­cally moti­vated hack­ers group that has pre­vi­ously tar­geted the web­sites of Jew­ish insti­tu­tions in the U.S., pub­lished on their Face­book page a long list of hacked web­sites that they claim are either Israeli are Jewish-operated.

Some of the web­sites hacked by the Moroc­can Ghosts were defaced with anti-Israel slurs and loaded with a media player that recited verses from the Quran. Despite the claims that they tar­geted Israeli and Jewish-operated web­sites, some of the listed sites have no appar­ent affil­i­a­tion with Israel or Jews, and may have been included because they were an easy-to-hack and serve to inflate the impact of the cyber-attack.

In addi­tion, sev­eral pro-Hamas web­sites, Face­book pages and other hacker forums posted threads claim­ing hack­ing oper­a­tions against Jews and Israelis worldwide.

The first OpIs­rael took place dur­ing Israel’s Oper­a­tion Pil­lar of Defense in Gaza last Novem­ber, when hack­ers tar­geted, and in some cases defaced, var­i­ous Israeli websites.

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