Posts Tagged ‘anti-Israel’
 
May 3, 2013 1

Alison Weir Laments On “Jewish Power” To Anti-Semitic Newspaper

Ali­son Weir, the direc­tor of two orga­ni­za­tions that try to steer pub­lic sup­port away from Israel and traf­fic in con­spir­acy the­o­ries about the Jew­ish state, gave an inter­view ear­lier this week lament­ing the allegedly all-powerful “Israel lobby.”alison-weir-american-free-press-podcast

Weir’s inter­view was with the Amer­i­can Free Press (AFP), a Wash­ing­ton, DC-based conspiracy-oriented anti-Semitic news­pa­per pub­lished by long-time anti-Semite Willis Carto.

Dur­ing the pod­cast inter­view, titled “AIPAC Slaps Amer­ica in the Face, Again,” Weir claimed that the “Israel lobby” is pres­sur­ing Con­gress not to reduce for­eign aid to Israel despite seques­tra­tion and seem­ingly is uncon­cerned with the fact that the money could oth­er­wise be spent on domes­tic projects that would ben­e­fit Amer­i­cans. She alleged that the lobby sup­presses any oppo­si­tion to Israel, Zion­ism or “Jew­ish power.”

Her inter­viewer, Dave Gahary, read­ily agreed with her, call­ing her analy­sis “ter­rific” and reit­er­at­ing that there is strong evi­dence of “Jew­ish power.” He pointed to Jews’ “con­trol” of Hol­ly­wood and Weir agreed, say­ing that it’s an “inside joke” in LA that Jews con­trol Hol­ly­wood. She also defended Helen Thomas’s anti-Semitic remarks and claimed that Jewish-Americans are “very pow­er­ful in pol­i­tics.” Weir even reflected that she was uncom­fort­able her­self talk­ing about the sub­ject in a pub­lic broad­cast because it is “taboo.”

At one point dur­ing the inter­view, Gahary rhetor­i­cally asked “why should we have to hide dis­cus­sions about Jews or Jew­ish power? We shouldn’t. We should be able to say what­ever we want.” Weir agreed, assert­ing that even when peo­ple apol­o­gize for mak­ing anti-Semitic com­ments, their apolo­gies are some­times deemed insuf­fi­cient and they have to “grovel and grovel and grovel.”

It is not the first time that anti-Israel ide­o­logues have appeared on Amer­i­can Free Press. In August 2012, Rebecca Vilkomer­son, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Jew­ish Voice for Peace, was inter­viewed by AFP to pro­mote JVP and the group’s boy­cott cam­paign against Israel. The par­ents of Rachel Cor­rie, a young activist who was killed while protest­ing Israeli pol­icy in Gaza, and Yis­roel Dovid Weiss, the spokesper­son for the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta, have also been inter­viewed by AFP in recent years.

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May 2, 2013 0

Advocate For Palestinian Prisoners On U.S. Tour

sahar-francis-addameer

Sahar Fran­cis

In an effort to gar­ner Amer­i­can atten­tion and sup­port for Pales­tin­ian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Addameer, a Pales­tin­ian NGO based in Ramal­lah, is sched­uled to deliver pre­sen­ta­tions on the topic in sev­eral U.S. cities this month.

Sahar Fran­cis, Addameer’s Gen­eral Direc­tor, will likely address per­ceived issues in the Israeli prison sys­tem for Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers, but she also seems to be engaged in an effort to analo­gize the Pales­tin­ian pris­oner cause to the way the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in the U.S. addresses issues of crime in the inner-city.

Francis’s talks will take place in sev­eral cities that have faced trou­bling rises in crime, including Philadel­phia, Chicago and San Fran­cisco. The titles of the pre­sen­ta­tions, “From Pel­i­can Bay and Guan­tanamo to Pales­tine: Pris­ons, Repres­sion, Resis­tance;” “End­ing Mass Incar­cer­a­tion: From Pales­tine to Penn­syl­va­nia;” and “Juve­nile Injus­tice: Crim­i­nal­iza­tion of Youth in Pales­tine and Chicago,” under­score Francis’s appar­ent goal of link­ing prob­lems in the Amer­i­can prison sys­tem, such as dis­crim­i­na­tion, racial pro­fil­ing and lack of reha­bil­i­ta­tion options, to the issues faced by Pales­tin­ian prisoners.

Spon­sors of the events vary widely and include many groups whose mis­sions seem to be wholly unre­lated to the Israeli-Palestinian con­flict, such as the Cal­i­for­nia Coali­tion for Women Pris­on­ers, the Black Youth Project in Chicago and the Com­mit­tee to Stop FBI Repres­sion. The diverse num­ber of groups sup­port­ing these events is likely to fur­ther cred­i­bil­ity to Addameer’s intended com­par­i­son between the Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers’ cause  and prob­lems in the inner-city.

Sev­eral of the other sched­uled speak­ers work on social jus­tice issues related to undoc­u­mented stu­dents and immi­grant rights. At the Philadel­phia event, for exam­ple, the other speaker is a mem­ber of Drea­mAc­tivist PA, a youth orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates for immigrants.

Fran­cis has been out­spo­ken about the Israeli government’s treat­ment of Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers. In a 2010 inter­view with Elec­tronic Intifada, she asserted that Israel tries to demo­nize Pales­tin­ian resisters by describ­ing them as “ter­ror­ists” but that “cit­i­zens should be aware that Pales­tin­ian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers are not terrorists.”

She also alleged that “tor­ture, ill treat­ment and abuse” are norms of the Israeli prison sys­tem, and that Israel’s “pol­icy of impris­on­ment” is aimed at sup­press­ing non­vi­o­lent resis­tance like the Boy­cott, Divest­ment, and Sanc­tions cam­paigns against Israel. In her talks, Fran­cis urges her audi­ence to call for the uncon­di­tional release of all Pales­tin­ian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers despite the fact that many of these pris­on­ers have been con­victed of vio­lent crimes against Israeli civilians.

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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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