Heart Warming Photos of Gazan Children Celebrating Eid

Sometimes, no caption is even needed

Oh, those poor starving Gazans!

I just received this alarming email from Noura Khouri and Manal Elkarra. They claim:

The people of Gaza are literally being starved of basic food and needs; while caged in and locked out from the rest of the world. When governments of the world fail to act, we the people must. Please join us!

Poor Noura and Manal. Perhaps they don't read "Palestine Today" . Its possible they can't even read Arabic. If they did, they would have seen these photos from Gaza, taken just last week


Gaza Fruit Market


Gaza Bakery


Gaza Candy Seller


Noura. Manal. Just what basic foods are the people of Gaza being deprived of? The markets seem pretty well stocked to me. UNICEF thinks so too- Palestinian children are the second healthiest in the Arab world, after oil rich Qatar.

Top Ten Israeli Products to BUY BUY BUY

The Support Democracy, Buy Israeli list, modified ever so slightly from the BDS folk's list

AHAVA
This brand’s cosmetics are produced using salt, minerals, and mud from the Dead Sea.

2. Delta Galil Industries
Israel’s largest textiles manufacturer provides clothing and underwear for such popular brands as Gap, J-Crew, J.C. Penny, Calvin Klein, Playtex, Victoria’s Secret and many others. Its founder and chairman Dov Lautman is a close associate of former Israeli President Ehud Barak.

3. Motorola
While many of us know this brand for its stylish cellphones, did you know that it also develops and manufactures bomb fuses and missile guidance systems? Motorola components are also used in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or “drones”) and in communications and surveillance systems to keep the citizens of Israel safe.

4. L’Oreal / The Body Shop
This cosmetics and perfume company is known for its investments and manufacturing activities in Israel, including production in Migdal Haemek, the “Silicon Valley” of Israel. In 1998, a representative of L’Oreal was given the Jubilee Award by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for strengthening the Israeli economy.

5. Dorot Garlic and Herbs
These frozen herbs that are sold at Trader Joe’s, and support the beseiged kibbutzim of southern Israel. Trader Joe’s also sells Israeli Cous Cous and Pastures of Eden feta cheese that are made in Israel.

6. Estee Lauder

This company’s chairman Ronald Lauder is also the chairman of the Jewish National Fund.

7. Intel
This technology company that manufactures computer processors and other hardware components employs thousands of Israelis and has exports from Israel totaling over $1 billion per year. They are one of Israel’s oldest foreign supporters, having established their first development center outside of the US in 1974 in Haifa.

8. Sabra
This brand of hummus, baba ghanoush and other foods is co-owned by Israel’s second-largest food company The Strauss Group and Pepsico. Yes, its manufactured in New York, but it sounds vaguely mid-eastern and vaguely Israeli so the BDS folks have targetted it for action. No, I don't get it either, but the lemon hummus is really yummy, so just go for it.


9. Sara Lee
Sara Lee holds a 30% stake in Delta Galil (see #2) and is the world’s largest clothing manufacturer, which owns or is affiliated with such brands as Hanes, Playtex, Champion, Leggs, Sara Lee Bakery, Ball Park hotdogs, Wonderbra, and many others. Similar to L’Oreal (see #4), a representative of Sara Lee received the Jubilee Award from Netanyahu for its commitment to business with Israel. Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee.

10. Victoria’s Secret
Most of Victoria’s Secret’s bras are produced by Delta Galil (see #2), and much of the cotton is also grown in Israel.

Continue to support democracy and to support Israel!

Fight the BDS Movement- Shop at Seattle Trader Joes- redux

Cross posted here


Einstein was known for saying "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". In spite of their repeated, dramatic failures throughout the country, the BDS folks are at it again, this time targeting Seattle Trader Joe's.

Our favorite grocery store, Trader Joe's, is being targeted by these groups for boycotts and vandalism simply because of their refusal to cave to pressure to remove Israeli products from their shelves. Israeli products at Trader Joes include Pastures of Eden feta cheese, Israeli couscous, and Dorot frozen cubes of garlic, basil and cilantro. The feta cheese is particularly lovely. Try in tossed in a spinach salad, with kalamata olives and sliced red onion.

A series of actions are being planned, organized by Nada Elia of Antioch University. Prof. Elia has said "I am particularly interested in activist resistance to institutionalized forms of violence and oppression. This involves a re-evaluation of what constitutes resistance..." Apparently she believes that unbridled rage against frozen garlic and cilantro is a legitimate form of resistance.

The Pro-Israel community is now in a position to make an immediate and positive impact on Israel's behalf.

Here's what you can do:
Please make a point of shopping at Seattle area Trader Joe's over the coming days and weeks.
Please go out of your way to introduce yourselves to store-managers and to let them know that one of the reasons that you are patronizing their store is because of their principled and courageous determination to continue selling Israeli products.

Wherever you may shop - for groceries and otherwise, please consider going out of your way to purchase Israeli products and thanking store-managers for carrying Israeli products.

1700 E Madison St, Seattle - (206) 322-7268
4555 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle - (206) 547-6299
112 W Galer St, Seattle - (206) 378-5536

"I hear the Israeli couscous goes well with grilled scapegoat, by the way."
Jeffrey Goldberg "The Atlantic"

Palestinian Children fare better than their Arab neighbors

In spite of JVP's squeals about "starving Palestinian children", a new UNICEF report shows that Palestinian children fair much better than their Arab neighbors. Children in the disputed territories suffer less from stunted growth due to maternal and childhood undernutrition than others in the region.

Palestinian Territories- 10%
Lebanon - 11
Jordan - 12
Oman - 13
UAE - 17
Saudi Arabia - 20
Kuwait - 24
Iraq - 26
Syria - 28
Egypt - 29
Yemen – 58

An estimated 200 million children aged under five in the developing world suffer from stunted growth due to maternal and childhood malnutrition, according to the report.
Yet JVP and its allied groups remain silent on the plight of the children of Yemen and Egypt and throughout the Arab world. Its as though only the Palestinian children counted to them.

With approximately 10% of Palestininian children experiencing stunting between 2003-2008, the disputed territories are on equal footing with Turkey, Tuvalu and Bahrain, which at last glance, did not suffer from Israel's "brutal and genocidal" occupation.

BRITISH JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY

If one needed anymore proof that anti-Semitism is alive and well in England, and that there is a substantial pro-Arab lobby in the British Isles, then the comments on the Channel 4 website about an upcoming "expose" on the 'Israel lobby' prove it.

QUOTE:
"Despite wielding great influence among the highest realms of British politics and media, little is known about the individuals and groups which collectively are known as the pro-Israel lobby.
Political commentator Peter Oborne sets out to establish who they are, how they are funded, how they work and what influence they have, from the key groups to the wealthy individuals who help bankroll the lobbying."
END QUOTE.

Ah yes, secretive, influential, and bankrolled. Where have we heard this before?

SOURCE:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-42/episode-1


One might think that he's smoking crack, given the singular INEFFECTIVENESS of any pro-Israel lobbying, or any other pro-Israel or even philo-Semitism in Britain.

Most of the virulent English-language Jew-hatred in the world today originates in Britain, and it will be recalled that Britain has far less than even Holland or France evinced any affection or support for the Jewish state.


How remarkable that anyone thinks that there is ANY pro-Israeli voice heard in Whitehall.


QUOTE:
"Oborne examines how the lobby operates from within parliament and the tactics it employs behind the scenes when engaging with print and broadcast media."
END QUOTE.


Tactics it employs behind the scenes? Mister Oborne, are you going to show that you are a talented writer of fiction in addition to being a reporter?

How often have British officials cozied up to Arabs, mister Oborne? Too many times to count? Have you considered a report on the inordinate influence of the Camel Corps in the Foreign Office, and the relationship between Britain's predominantly left-wing intelligentsia and certain foreign entities?


How about the strange overlap between far-right Jew-hatred and far-left Jew-hatred?


Predictably, the program is being promoted on the internet message boards of the British National party and various neo-Nazi websites.

Ellen Cantarow: Apologist for Land Theft

by Becky Johnson

November 11, 2009

Santa Cruz, Ca. -- A friend of mine passed on an article by Ellen Cantarow. "Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape" published on the notorious, anti-Israel website, Counterpunch.org on November 10, 2009. In the article, Cantarow blasts all parties (except the Palestinian families themselves) and gives a unique history of the eviction of two families from the E. Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah. One that is highly selective, and which discounts the actual court decisions made regarding the disposition of the property according to law.

You can read Cantarow's article with my imbedded comments here.

BELOW IS AN EXCERPT:

ELLEN CANTAROW: In 1948 Ghawe’s grandparents fled from Ein Sfarand near Lydda. Ein Sfarand was bulldozed into the ground along with over 450 other Arab villages.

BECKY: Actually, Israel set up a commission, The Guardian of Absentee Assets, which dealt with all abandoned properties. They distinguished between public land, privately-owned land, and re-repatriated many Arabs with their property when they returned and petitioned the commission. Lands belonging to Palestinian Arab villagers in the areas taken over by Israel in 1967 generally remain in Palestinian Arab hands. To determine that these lands do not belong to anyone, the state checks the land registries, aerial photographs showing the lands to be uncultivated and then when convinced that these lands have no ownership, advertises in Arabic in the Arab newspapers that the state has declared these lands as its own and anyone having any kind of legal deed to contest this is invited to do so. If any Arab is able to produce a land deed proving the land is theirs, then the state leaves the land to the Arab. If there are still any doubts, then the issue is taken to court". But Cantarow wants readers to believe that all Arab land was confiscated and bulldozed.

ELLEN CANTAROW: Pretty national parks and kibbutzim erased any trace of the traditional Arab architecture, agriculture and the rest of life which once characterized Palestine. Hebrew names – Lod, for example, for Lydda - replaced the Arabic ones. The Ghawes fled to East Jerusalem where UNWRA (The United Nations Works Relief Agency) housed them as refugees. In 1956 they returned their refugee cards and rented a house from a local Palestinian builder.

American Red Cross co-sponsors hate speech

A friend with a remarkably pink blog kindly alerts me to an utterly odious situation.

QUOTE:
The Stanford Department of Drama and the Stanford Theatre Activist Mobilization Project (STAMP) are proud to announce a staged reading - the San Francisco Bay Area premiere - of the thought-provoking play, My Name is Rachel Corrie.
The performances feature an impressive line-up of post-show discussion speakers including Rabbi Michael Lerner, Professor Joel Beinin, and Professor Tom Sheehan.

This event is Free & Open to the public. Please email stanfordrachelcorrie@gmail.com to reserve tickets.

My Name is Rachel Corrie is Co-Sponsored by: American Red Cross, Amnesty International, Coalition for Justice in the Middle East, Emma Goldman Society for Queer Liberation, Jewish Voice for Peace, Muslim Student Awareness Network, Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Physicians for Human Rights, Stanford Says No to War, Stanford University Students for UNICEF, and Students Confronting Apartheid by Israel.
END QUOTE.

The American Red Cross? Aren't they supposed to be 'apolitical'?

Surely their sponsorship is a horrible mistake? Perhaps an agent from the other side infests a local branch of an otherwise sometimes commendable organization? And that suspicion is not entirely unfounded - the Red Cross was notorious for several decades for refusing linkage with Magen David Adom, on the spurious grounds that the Seal of Solomon, symbol of Magen David Adom (literal translation: Red Shield of David) was a religious symbol, quite unlike the cross or the crescent.

Often otherwise excellent groupss will find themselves subverted by those who would make of them mere front-organizations.

Pro-Palestinism is as much a religion as any other, and has quite as many strictures which to the skeptic seem irrational. The Red Cross may have fanatics among its ranks.
I shall henceforth not contribute even one paise to their cause.

For shame, bloodsuckers, for shame.