Jennifer's Blog

Imag­ine if Al Qaeda funded groups inter­na­tion­ally to warn peo­ple about the wicked nature of Jews. Far­fetched? Not exactly. It’s hap­pen­ing right now except the group isn’t Al Qaeda it’s the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Harm­less? Try ask­ing those close to for­mer Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Anwar Sadat. Heck, you could ask Sadat your­self if the Broth­er­hood hadn’t assas­si­nated him in ‘81 for sign­ing a peace treaty with Israel. Alarm­ing? I’d say. The Broth­er­hood is the main sup­porter of the Coun­cil of Amer­i­can Islamic Rela­tions (CAIR). And right now CAIR is tak­ing its anti-Israel mes­sage to over 40 loca­tions world­wide that include major uni­ver­si­ties, town squares and shop­ping cen­ters to beg peo­ple to boy­cott, divest and sanc­tion (BDS) Israel.

Don’t be rail­roaded by CAIR’s BDS cam­paign. Most are unaware that CAIR is a spin­off of the Islamic Asso­ci­a­tion for Pales­tine (IAP). This might not raise red flags except that CAIR’s founders, Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad, both served in the IAP and had close ties to a senior Hamas oper­a­tive, Mousa Abu Mar­zook. In fact, the IAP oper­ated as Hamas’ pub­lic rela­tions and recruit­ment arm in the United States. But there’s more. CAIR’s founders, board mem­bers and affil­i­ates have had numer­ous run-ins with the FBI result­ing in fed­eral indict­ments and prison sen­tences mak­ing their ter­ror­ist front look more like America’s Most Wanted List than a grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion formed to pro­mote a pos­i­tive image of Mus­lims and Islam. Hmm. A makeover for Islam? Are they magi­cians? How can any­one “makeover” using planes as bombs, cut­ting off heads and the like?

Today, CAIR has over 30 affil­i­ates in the US in 19 states and 10 alone are in Cal­i­for­nia. Just to give you an idea of the threat state­side, CAIR’s co-founder, Ahmad, told a Fre­mont, Cal­i­for­nia audi­ence in July 1998:

“Islam isn’t in Amer­ica to be equal to any other
faith, but to become dominant.”

CAIR funds the Mus­lim Stu­dents Union and other orga­ni­za­tions like it that extort the Pales­tin­ian cause via protests at Israeli Con­sulates, Holo­caust Muse­ums, uni­ver­sity protests, free­way blog­ging and vir­tu­ally any­where they can drum up an audi­ence. So don’t be sur­prised if you see the lat­ter two groups this month sup­port­ing the Sixth Annual Israeli Apartheid.

Really? Apartheid? Com­par­ing Israel to South African apartheid is about absurd as com­par­ing Israel to Nazi Ger­many. Detrac­tors that try to dele­git­i­ma­tize Israel or chal­lenge Israel’s exis­tence have repeat­edly made these bizarre com­par­isons. The truth is that these com­par­isons are noth­ing other than moral inver­sions. Ene­mies of Israel (and we all know that this means Jews) are com­par­ing the Jew­ish State to the worst abusers of all time.

This is trou­ble­some because peo­ple begin to believe lies when that is the only story they hear. The truth is that the Arab League offi­cially adopted a boy­cott of Israel just shy of the Jew­ish state’s found­ing in 1948 but hasn’t always enforced it. But the Pales­tin­ian cry to boy­cott Israel of late has hem­or­rhaged into other areas like Britain, Lon­don, Nor­way, South Africa and iso­lated groups in the US. Unless Jew­ish and Israeli activists groups refute Pales­tin­ian claims more could occur. Frankly, boy­cotting Israel is just as abom­inable as boy­cotting Jew­ish shops by the Nazis in the 1930’s.

Luck­ily, Stand­WithUs is edu­cat­ing peo­ple on where the real apartheid is. And guess what? It’s not in Israel. It’s smack dab in the Arab world that has silenced its vic­tims and veiled them so heav­ily that in some cases only their eyes show. But the out­ward appear­ance only begins to tell the story of the degra­da­tion many women expe­ri­ence in Arab League nations. Women most at risk are those that have lim­ited legal rights and actions com­pared with men. This is none other than gender-based oppression.

Why would any­one want to rewind to a time where women receive less hon­or­able treat­ment than a man’s flock of sheep. Vot­ing rights in many coun­tries are reserved for men and don’t even think about own­ing prop­erty, dri­ving a car, going as you please or tes­ti­fy­ing in court. Women in these coun­tries lack equal oppor­tu­ni­ties to edu­ca­tion, wages and career sta­tus. Their lot in life is best described as one where polit­i­cal and eco­nomic seg­re­ga­tion is the norm.

For instance, Sharia law forces women in Islamic coun­tries to cover their faces. Saudi Ara­bia enforces seg­re­gated side­walks for men and women. And many Islamic coun­tries like Jor­dan, Syria, Egypt and Iran restrict women from trav­el­ing with­out a male escort. This back­wards attempt at piety doesn’t gel when the male escort just might be the per­son sex­u­ally abus­ing  women he’s escort­ing. By all accounts, Sharia law has reduced rights of women in Islamic coun­tries to that of minors in West­ern countries.

What’s worse is that domes­tic vio­lence is com­mon in Islamic coun­tries and there are no laws in effect to pro­tect women. What kind of sick soci­ety blames vic­tims for their rape? I mean, really. How can women be respon­si­ble for rape when we know rape is about power? This becomes more ridicu­lous when you con­sider other known facts. Sharia law forces women to wear what looks like a drab cur­tain from head-to-toe. Could it be the provoca­tive eyes? Or maybe the risque eye­brow? The idiocy of this reminds me of Bill Maher’s burka fash­ion show. Or how about the Islamic soci­ety that enforces laws that date back cen­turies where women are mere prop­erty?  And if you think this is hor­rific, I can do one bet­ter. Rapists in many of these coun­tries can escape pun­ish­ment by mar­ry­ing their vic­tim. This means women lose all the way around. Like­wise, there’s a good chance the fam­ily of the rape vic­tim will mur­der her for dis­hon­or­ing her fam­ily (aka “honor killing”). I can’t think of a any­thing worse. This is a night­mare all over again for rape vic­tims.  Many legal sys­tems includ­ing the PA grant light sen­tences for honor killings as Islam teaches that fam­ily mem­bers are respon­si­ble to restore honor to one’s family.

Feel­ing like you’ve landed in the mid­dle of the Salem witch tri­als? Well, hang on. More atroc­i­ties on the way. Any guess how Arab League coun­tries treat gay men and women? If you guessed tor­ture and death, then you won another apartheid prize. That’s right. Iran, Saudi Ara­bia, Sudan, Syria and oth­ers treat homo­sex­u­al­ity as a crime pun­ish­able by impris­on­ment, flog­ging, ston­ing, hang­ing or behead­ing. And who has the best record of enforc­ing tor­ture? Bingo if you guessed Iran. The Iran­ian gov­ern­ment hung about 4,000 homo­sex­u­als between 1979 and 1999.

Local law enforce­ment in Egypt and the PA often arrest gay men and women for lewd con­duct then beat and tor­ture them. Any­one “con­victed” of mur­der­ing homo­sex­u­als receives lenient sen­tences reserved for honor killings. Bar­baric?  I’ll say. Com­par­ing these total­i­tar­ian dic­ta­tor­ships dol­ing out human rights abuses to demo­c­ra­tic Israel where all peo­ple enjoy equal rights, rea­son­able pay, and oppor­tu­nity is like com­par­ing slave own­ers to Mar­tin Luther King. It just doesn’t work.

Israel is a thriv­ing democ­racy respon­si­ble for some of the lat­est life­sav­ing med­ical and tech­no­log­i­cal advances. The world has even dubbed it the Sil­i­con Val­ley of the Mid­dle East. It has the high­est amount of col­lege grad­u­ates per capita. Israel val­ues its peo­ple as it has released hun­dreds of enemy sol­diers for a hand­ful of Israeli sol­diers (even sol­diers bod­ies). Unlike sur­round­ing Arab League nations, Israel is not a mil­i­tant regime that teaches hate and rewards fam­i­lies for sac­ri­fic­ing sons and daugh­ters as human bombs in the name of Allah.

So next time you come across a group like CAIR or the MSU, track the money back. If you can track their fund­ing back to ter­ror­ists like the Broth­er­hood or Hamas, you prob­a­bly want to dis­tance your­self. Instead, ask the hard ques­tions. Where are the bil­lions that for­mer Pres­i­dent Yasser Arafat received? Where are the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in inter­na­tional aid that Hamas-run Gaza is receiv­ing each year? Hmm. I haven’t heard of much infra­struc­ture cre­ated in Gaza like schools, hos­pi­tals, pub­lic build­ings or other facil­i­ties that peo­ple need to rise above inter­na­tional hand­outs and become pros­per­ous.  Why haven’t the 22 Arab nations lent a hand to raise the refugee pop­u­la­tion? Why can’t they give any land when they are 640 times big­ger than Israel? Why is Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad send­ing arms/missiles and threat­en­ing to dec­i­mate Israel at every turn? Why are there some 300 tun­nels com­ing from Egypt into Gaza? Why do we hear about the unfair wall in Gaza when there are 21 oth­ers in the world includ­ing the U.S. wall with Mex­ico? On that note, should Egypt and all the other coun­tries remove their wall too?

Instead of Israel, blame the real cause. Blame the Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship for liv­ing the high life on an inter­na­tional dole while leav­ing their peo­ple in the lurch. Blame sur­round­ing Arab nations for caus­ing the refugee sit­u­a­tion dur­ing the Sixth Day War and repeat­edly refus­ing to lift Gazans. Blame the coun­tries who are send­ing aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Pales­tine refugees while groups like Hamas and the PA are lin­ing their pock­ets and using them as pawns to bomb Israel. Blame coun­tries fund­ing and arm­ing Hamas. Blame the Hamas-led, UN approved schools that teach hatred of Jews and Israelis to youths at 59 Pales­tin­ian refugee camps. Lastly, blame the ter­ror­ist groups like Hamas that wield their pub­lic rela­tions arms like CAIR and MSU to mis­lead peo­ple around the world into becom­ing the Fourth Reich.

Ask Israelis about peace prospects with neigh­bor­ing Pales­tini­ans and chances are most will share their dream of a day when both can live in har­mony. Yet we know peace has eluded every Israeli admin­is­tra­tion of late. But what about Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu? Does he have what it takes to bring peace to the region? Hmm. His sup­port­ers would argue that he has the right mix of inter­na­tional diplo­macy com­bined with exper­tise in for­eign affairs, eco­nomic lib­er­al­iza­tion, deficit reduc­tion, anti-terrorism poli­cies and enough chutz­pah to get the job done. His detrac­tors would argue that he has no real inter­est in a two state solu­tion and only buck­led last year under intense pres­sure from the West. But his Bar-Ilan Uni­ver­sity speech seemed to sug­gest oth­er­wise. Let’s gain an inside track from a polit­i­cal ana­lyst who has spent over half his life track­ing the PM’s moves, logged numer­ous hours on his cam­paign and today pub­lishes a blog and hosts a weekly radio pro­gram that pays trib­ute to “Bibi.”

Part Five: Jacob Korn­bluh, Bibi Report/ Bibi Report Live

Known inter­na­tion­ally by his first name, Jacob has his pulse on Netanyahu, Israeli pol­i­tics and the volatile cli­mate in the Mid­dle East. In fact, it’s fair to say that Jacob knows more about Netanyahu and Israel’s thorny pol­i­tics than most Amer­i­cans know about their pres­i­dent and cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion. Yet, bring­ing peace to Israel and its neigh­bors has never seemed as crit­i­cal as it does with a nuclear Iran on the hori­zon. But is it possible?

There is no doubt that Netanyahu extended an olive branch fur­ther than any pre­vi­ous Israeli prime min­is­ter has, yet Pales­tin­ian pres­i­dent Mah­moud Abbas and the Arab world replied with dis­dain. Detrac­tors called his pol­icy shift an about face and said it came too late. Right-wing sup­port­ers in his Likud party had mixed feel­ings – any­where from praise to com­par­ing his pol­icy shift to a u-turn but ulti­mately sup­ported it. Left-wing sup­port­ers in the Kadima Party said it was a step in the right direc­tion but some went as far as call­ing it a PR move.

Then there is the “O” fac­tor to con­sider. U.S. Pres­i­dent Obama out­lined a one-sided effort for regional peace in his Cairo speech a month ear­lier that called for a con­struc­tion freeze on all set­tle­ments. Netanyahu not only met this chal­lenge but also reit­er­ated his promise not to build new set­tle­ments or expro­pri­ate addi­tional land for exist­ing set­tle­ments while allow­ing set­tlers to main­tain nor­mal lives. End result? Netanyahu’s actions won praise for his abil­ity to change direc­tions while Obama’s pointed mea­sures drew crit­i­cism from Jews world­wide as the U.S. admin­is­tra­tion failed to sanc­tion those pur­port­ing anti-Israel hatred, vio­lence and ter­ror­ism like the Pales­tin­ian Author­ity and Iranian-backed Hamas.

Asleep at the wheel? No doubt. How could Obama over­look terrorist-run Gaza with its 59 Pales­tin­ian camps teach­ing hate via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)? Obama recently gifted this same agency with an ini­tial $40 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion just weeks ago. But guess what?  US cit­i­zens should be out­raged. Sup­port­ing refugees might sound noble but NOT when UNWRA employs Hamas ter­ror­ists whose sole goal is to teach hatred of Jews and anni­hi­la­tion of Israel. So sud­denly build­ing new homes for Israeli fam­i­lies seems irrel­e­vant when it comes to fund­ing terrorist-run Gaza with U.S. tax­payer dol­lars.

So in all this polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing, what do Israelis want? Jacob believes that the vast major­ity of Israelis sup­port a two state solu­tion but only under the con­di­tions Netanyahu set for­ward in his Bar-Ilan speech. Those include:

1. Recog­ni­tion: Pales­tini­ans must unequiv­o­cally rec­og­nize Israel as the state of the Jew­ish people.
2. Demil­i­ta­riza­tion: Ter­ri­tory under Pales­tin­ian con­trol must be devoid of an army, with­out con­trol of its air­space and with effec­tive secu­rity mea­sures to pre­vent weapons smug­gling into the ter­ri­tory. Real mon­i­tor­ing is imper­a­tive (not what occurs in Gaza today). And the Pales­tini­ans must not be able to forge any mil­i­tary pacts.

Jacob dri­ves home the notion that any­thing less puts Israel in dan­ger of fur­ther ter­ror­ism. He also empha­sizes other parts of Netanyahu’s speech that state there can be no peace if a Pales­tin­ian state makes pacts with Hezbol­lah to the north or Iran. Clearly, this couldn’t be truer. At the end of the day, Jacob is con­vinced Netanyahu means what he says. He is quick to reit­er­ate what many in the Obama admin­is­tra­tion have played down: the need for Pales­tin­ian con­ces­sions. Jacob states what the admin­is­tra­tion hasn’t, “The Pales­tini­ans have to stop ask­ing for every­thing in order to get what they say they want.”

We all want to believe the Pales­tini­ans lead­ers want state­hood but that’s hard to swal­low with the auto­matic refusal that comes from the lips of Abbas and other Arab lead­ers each time Netanyahu (or any pre­vi­ous Israeli PM) make ges­tures towards peace. So how many ges­tures has Netanyahu made? Try many. And how many ges­tures or con­ces­sions has the PA made? Try zilch. At some point, grand­stand­ing from the PA and other Arab lead­ers has to stop if they want to build pro­duc­tive lives for Pales­tini­ans. How else will they ever trade refugee camps and depen­dence for homes and inde­pen­dence? Jacob urges those that are unsure of the PM’s motives to lis­ten to his Bar Ilan Uni­ver­sity speech and note his vision:

“In my vision of peace, two peo­ples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect.  Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government.”

Israel is well aware it can’t afford to repeat the mis­take of the Gaza pull­out. If we rewind, we see Israel faced with world­wide pres­sure to pull its mil­i­tary forces out of Gaza only to receive a blan­ket of mis­siles tar­get­ing civil­ian homes and schools. Sur­prised? Hardly. This isn’t the first time Hamas or the Pales­tin­ian Author­ity invaded after Israel with­drew mil­i­tary forces from Gaza. Acts of good­will don’t deserve an onslaught of mis­siles. That is exactly the dan­ger Israel deals with at nearly every step.

But we know that demil­i­ta­riza­tion works as it has for Japan since post World War II. Besides renounc­ing war, Japan also main­tains a pol­icy against export­ing mil­i­tary hard­ware. Trad­ing war for pros­per­ity should be no prob­lem if the PA wants a state. In fact, if they are seri­ous about help­ing their peo­ple pros­per then sign­ing an agree­ment to demil­i­ta­rize and mak­ing a pol­icy against arms trans­porta­tion or forg­ing pacts with other forces or coun­tries shouldn’t be a deal breaker. His­tory shows this works.

Jacob points to the Haaretz poll pub­lished two weeks ago as fur­ther proof for the PM. The poll showed that 53% of Israelis said that fail­ing to cre­ate a Pales­tin­ian state would not make Israel a bi-national state.

So what can Netanyahu do to pro­mote peace? Jacob believes Netanyahu is the best advo­cate to bring a viable peace agree­ment that the major­ity of Israeli cit­i­zens will accept. Jacob cites the most recent exam­ple of freez­ing set­tle­ment con­struc­tion as an unprece­dented move and the best exam­ple at the PM’s will­ing­ness to make peace. Netanyahu froze set­tle­ment con­struc­tion in all set­tle­ments even in the largest set­tle­ment blocs that will undoubt­edly be part of Israel in any peace agree­ment. Pre­vi­ously, PM Sharon, U.S. Pres­i­dent George W. Bush and even PA pres­i­dent Abbas accepted peace in talks with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert. But while other lead­ers failed in cham­pi­oning peace despite their inten­sive talks with the PA, Netanyahu’s plan starts from the bot­tom up. Proof of his suc­cess? Try Netanyahu’s eco­nomic peace plan that is work­ing in the West Bank.

Pales­tini­ans must demand more from their lead­ers. If their lead­er­ship stalls, accepts inter­na­tional hand­outs over self-reliance and returns to ter­ror and intifada, then the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple con­tinue to lose. Jacob is con­vinced that Netanyahu is seri­ous as he recounts what Netanyahu recently said to Euro­pean ambas­sadors over lunch:

“Test me.”

Netanyahu is refer­ring to the fact that he will sur­prise the PA if they nego­ti­ate with him. He is will­ing to make con­ces­sions but they must too. Jacob reit­er­ates that the major­ity of Israel will accept an agree­ment that Netanyahu achieves between Israel and the PA just as the Israeli peo­ple have sup­ported the PM’s recent moves that received cab­i­net approval.

While Netanyahu has suc­ceeded in show­ing mea­sur­able com­pro­mise, Pales­tini­ans are empty-handed. Obama on the other hand is largely inef­fec­tive in the Mid­dle in that none of his efforts have per­suaded Iran or the PA to move for­ward with peace­ful ini­tia­tives. Obama’s sanc­tions on Iran were highly inef­fec­tive and his con­struc­tion freeze on set­tle­ments in Israel shows that he is unaware of the real dan­ger. Jacob refers to this as Obama’s naivety when deal­ing with the Mid­dle East.

Then there is spe­cial envoy George Mitchell to con­sider. While Mitchell made head­way resolv­ing the IRA incite­ment in North­ern Ire­land, the IRA’s motives are unlike those in Gaza. For instance, the IRA wanted North­ern Ire­land free of Eng­land unlike the Pales­tini­ans (or Iran) who vowed to blow Israel off the planet. The stakes Israel is deal­ing with are quite dif­fer­ent from North­ern Ire­land and putting a freeze on set­tle­ment con­struc­tion blames Israel. Open your eyes Obama. Why not sanc­tion groups that teach hatred to kids, import arms and recruit sui­cide bombers? Hmm. Penal­iz­ing Israel seems a tad un-American.

So how can we stop Hamas and the PA from teach­ing vio­lence and hatred in UN schools? Jacob ref­er­ences what Netanyahu told his cab­i­net a few weeks ago,

“It is not only mis­siles and rock­ets that endan­ger secu­rity and push peace fur­ther off. Words can also be dan­ger­ous…”

Until Obama is able to influ­ence the Arab world to stop teach­ing hatred, incit­ing vio­lence and cel­e­brat­ing ter­ror­ist deeds, peace will always take a back­seat to bloodshed.

This begs another loom­ing ques­tion: when will the Mid­dle East acknowl­edge Israel? Tough to say. Jacob refers to the say­ing, “Your enemy is my enemy.” As Israel receives threats from Pales­tini­ans, Syr­i­ans, Egyp­tians and Saudis, those same coun­tries are in jeop­ardy of los­ing con­trol to Islamic extrem­ists. Many Islamic mil­i­tant groups like Hamas, Hezbol­lah, Al Qaeda, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and oth­ers are in cahoots with Iran. Sadly, no one wins.

The exis­ten­tial strug­gle between Hamas and Fatah, and between Israel and Iran, is even more pro­nounced between Iran and many of the Sunni states of the region. Iran is deter­mined to under­mine many of the under­stand­ings that coun­tries have reached with one another within the Arab world. With Ahmadine­jad at the helm, Iran poses a cred­i­ble threat to many of the regimes in the region. So far, Iran has not hid its abil­ity to incite unrest using var­i­ous prox­ies, and a nuclear Iran could ren­der that threat even more pal­pa­ble. Just today, the UN’s Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency con­firmed that Iran is work­ing on a nuclear war­head.

A regional nuclear arms race will likely ensue, bring­ing even more insta­bil­ity to an already volatile region. This is why it’s in the best inter­est of all par­ties in the region to encour­age peace between Israel and its neigh­bors. Luck­ily, a few promis­ing devel­op­ments are occur­ring.

So what can the PA do to secure peace for its peo­ple? Plenty. Let’s look at other suc­cess­ful exam­ples. Israel and Egypt signed a peace agree­ment 30 years ago thanks to the coura­geous lead­er­ship of Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Men­achem Begin. Just 15 years ago, Israel and Jor­dan signed a peace agree­ment cour­tesy of the brave lead­er­ship of Jor­dan­ian King Hus­sein and Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Yitzhak Rabin. Just think. Fol­low­ing in these lead­ers foot­steps could help Abbas make his­tory and do what for­mer Pales­tin­ian Pres­i­dent Yasser Arafat couldn’t: put his peo­ple on the path to peace and prosperity.

Want to learn the lat­est on Israel and its neigh­bors? Inter­ested in hear­ing about Mid­dle East peace prospects and the myr­iad obsta­cles Israel faces? Then fol­low the Bibi Report blog daily and tune into the Bibi Report Live Mon­day at 8:00 p.m. CST for news on Israel, its neigh­bors and in-depth cov­er­age on PM Netanyahu. Let the Bibi Report hear from you on Twit­ter and Face­book.

Photo credits: Netanyahu at Begin-Sadat Center: Independent (UK)

The United Nations has a long­stand­ing pas­time that is vir­tu­ally unknown. It’s not a noble one like elim­i­nat­ing blood­shed in the Congo, or restor­ing law in Soma­lia or even peace­mak­ing in Kash­mir. It’s not focused on con­demn­ing coun­tries with appalling human rights abuses like China, Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Ara­bia, Sudan and Zim­babwe. Oh, no. It has noth­ing to do with enforc­ing inter­na­tional law, secu­rity, eco­nomic devel­op­ment, social progress, peace or pro­mot­ing dia­logue. The hobby that the UN has cham­pi­oned for the last five decades is demo­niz­ing and dele­git­imiz­ing a tiny demo­c­ra­tic coun­try called Israel.

And guess what? Israel has more col­lege grad­u­ates per capita than any other coun­try in the world. It is also the most attrac­tive coun­try in the Mid­dle East for ven­ture cap­i­tal and pri­vate equity investors accord­ing to a recent sur­vey by Ernst & Young. So why is the UN tar­get­ing a pro­gres­sive coun­try nick­named “the Sil­i­con Val­ley of the Mid­dle East” for its life­sav­ing med­ical and tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments? Meet two pace­set­ters in our nation’s cap­i­tal that are pas­sion­ate about expos­ing the UN’s scape­goat­ing of Israel and Jews for what it is: anti­semitism on steroids.

Part 4: Daniel Pol­lak and Joshua Lon­don, Zion­ist Orga­ni­za­tion of America

Daniel Pol­lak and Joshua Lon­don spend their days strength­en­ing U.S. – Israeli rela­tions through edu­ca­tional activ­i­ties, pub­lic affairs pro­grams, sup­port­ing pro-Israel leg­is­la­tion on Capi­tol Hill and com­bat­ing anti-Israeli bias in the media, text­books and cam­puses. In their roles at the Zion­ist Orga­ni­za­tion of Amer­ica (ZOA), Pol­lak and Lon­don are call­ing atten­tion to a num­ber of issues affect­ing Israel and Jews worldwide.

One issue ZOA loudly opposed was the appoint­ment of an anti-Israel can­di­date to one of America’s top intel­li­gence posts. Due to his rela­tion­ship with the Saudi gov­ern­ment, ties to other total­i­tar­ian regimes like China and prej­u­dice against the state of Israel, the ZOA opposed the selec­tion of Chas W. Free­man as chair­man of the National Intel­li­gence Coun­cil (NIC). Had he remained, Free­man would have had tremen­dous influ­ence shap­ing our National Intel­li­gence Esti­mates (NIEs). His record shows favor towards the Arab world, against sanc­tions on Iran, and sym­pa­thy with sev­eral repres­sive regimes. In his state­ments fol­low­ing his speedy with­drawal, Free­man specif­i­cally men­tioned ZOA as one of the rea­sons that pre­vented him from con­tin­u­ing this job.

In late March 2009, Pol­lak and Lon­don along with ZOA activists urged the United States Con­gress to tighten sanc­tions on Iran and place con­di­tions on U.S. aid to Pales­tini­ans. The ZOA stated that Con­gress should make Pales­tini­ans com­ply with com­mit­ments to “end incite­ment and arrest ter­ror­ists” before receiv­ing the $900 mil­lion that the U.S. pledged in finan­cial assis­tance. But the ZOA faced strong oppo­si­tion from Amer­i­can Israel Pub­lic Affairs Com­mit­tee (AIPAC), whose goal was to pre­vent fur­ther incite­ment. The ZOA calls for greater trans­parency when issu­ing Pales­tin­ian aid so Amer­i­cans know that their tax dol­lars are not lin­ing the pock­ets of terrorists.

Other recent exam­ples of leg­is­la­tion Pol­lak and Lon­don sup­port through ZOA include the Sen­ate approved Com­pre­hen­sive Iran Sanc­tions, Account­abil­ity, and Divest­ment Act of 2009 and the act that pre­vented US fund­ing to the Dur­ban II conference.

Rewind to the UN. Of all the issues Israel faces, the most reoc­cur­ring con­cern is the United Nations dis­parate treat­ment of Israel. ZOA is call­ing atten­tion to UN bod­ies formed solely to extort the Pales­tin­ian cause, con­tinue con­flict in the region and place mas­sive sanc­tions on Israel at every turn. For exam­ple, the UN’s Gen­eral Assem­bly enacted the 22^nd anti-Israel res­o­lu­tion dur­ing its 61^st Ses­sion (2006 – 2007) while not a sin­gle res­o­lu­tion on Sudan’s geno­cide in Dar­fur passed. The bias against Israel in bod­ies like the Gen­eral Assem­bly is palat­able. Each year the Gen­eral Assem­bly passes some 19 res­o­lu­tions against the Jew­ish State and none against mem­ber states that are the most repres­sive regimes in the world.

Con­stant attempts to cen­sure and dis­credit Israel have resulted in the mother of all biases: the Gold­stone Report. Pol­lak and Lon­don along with the ZOA are speak­ing out against the dis­tor­tions and mis­use of evi­dence in this highly con­tro­ver­sial work. Any read of this report shows that it’s yet another fee­ble attempt by the UN to put a stamp of legit­i­macy on its ongo­ing scape­goat­ing of Israel.

On Octo­ber 16, 2009, Colonel Richard Kemp, the for­mer com­man­der of British forces in Afghanistan, spoke up at the UN Emer­gency Ses­sion on the Gold­stone Gaza Report to say just that:

“Dur­ing Oper­a­tion Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safe­guard the rights of civil­ians in a com­bat zone than any other army in the his­tory of warfare.”

Kemp stated, “Israel did so while fac­ing an enemy that delib­er­ately posi­tioned itself and its mil­i­tary capa­bil­ity behind the human shield of the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion.” We know this is true because Hamas on nearly all occa­sions brought women and chil­dren into com­bat zones as soon as they learned Israel planned to strike back. And defense mea­sures were sorely needed con­sid­er­ing that Hamas sent some 50 mis­siles a day into Israel affect­ing 1.5 mil­lion Israelis. Where were Judge Gold­stone and the UN spe­cial com­mit­tee when Hamas forced Israelis and their chil­dren to evac­u­ate sev­eral times a day due to unpro­voked mis­siles that tar­geted civil­ian homes and schools? Talk about vio­lat­ing the Geneva Convention.

Kemp also dis­cussed the extra­or­di­nary mea­sures the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) took to warn Gazan civil­ians by drop­ping over 2 mil­lion leaflets in Ara­bic and mak­ing over 100,000 phone calls. The IDF not only gave away their abil­ity to make sur­prise attacks (which is unheard of in war­fare) but they aborted many mis­sions that could have immo­bi­lized Hamas mil­i­tary capa­bil­ity to pre­vent civil­ian casualties.

This also brings up the fact that there was never a “Gold­stone Report” for casu­al­ties of other major wars like Iraq, Afghanistan, Viet­nam… It again sets up a dou­ble stan­dard where the world can judge Israel dif­fer­ently than any other coun­try defend­ing its bor­ders and cit­i­zens. As Kemp added,

“War is chaos, and full of mis­takes.  There have been mis­takes by the British, the Amer­i­cans and other forces in Afghanistan. And in Iraq. Many of which can be put down to human error. But mis­takes are not war crimes. More than any­thing, the civil­ian casu­al­ties were a con­se­quence of Hamas’s way of fight­ing. Hamas delib­er­ately tried to sac­ri­fice its own civilians.”

For many Israelis, the biased report seemed like busi­ness as usual at the UN. But with mount­ing crit­i­cism over the way the UN con­ducted the Oil-for-Food scan­dal, ignored geno­cide in the Congo, Kash­mir and beyond, and to this day know­ingly spon­sor Hamas-operated Gaza schools, the UN is head­ing the line for human rights abusers. And while the Human Rights Coun­cil replaced the Com­mis­sion on Human Rights (CHR), not much has changed. Recent UN actions once again prove that its long­stand­ing hobby of Israel bash­ing is still fair game. Score?

Out of 11 ses­sions of the Human Rights Coun­cil, 5 focused on Israel

Yet the UN allowed some of the world’s worst human rights abusers — China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Ara­bia, Sudan and Zim­babwe — to go unscathed. Heck, they even let Libya serve as the CHR Chair­man in 2003. So how can any­one believe a UN spon­sored report that claimed Israel tar­geted civil­ians? At best, the com­mit­tee pock­marked the report with dis­crep­an­cies and the authors delib­er­ately ignored pub­licly avail­able evi­dence that refuted its conclusion.

Per­haps the most damn­ing state­ment about the Gold­stone Report is Judge Goldstone’s own remarks in the NY news­pa­per, The For­ward in Octo­ber of last year. Judge Gold­stone said,

“If this were a court of law, there would have been noth­ing proven.”

By admit­ting that, Judge Gold­stone called the report what it is: a 574-paged one-sided account that no judge would take seri­ously. It sets the stage for yet another moral inver­sion where read­ers are primed to believe that Israel is the antag­o­nist in this Israeli-Palestinian epic and Hamas is the pro­tag­o­nist. But the facts don’t sup­port this fantasy.

There are plenty of incon­sis­ten­cies with the Gold­stone report. Wit­nesses who came for­ward were not cross-examined. And there is enough proof to show that some of the tes­ti­mony that Goldstone’s col­leagues heard was not accu­rate. In fact, much of the recorded tes­ti­mony con­tra­dicts state­ments by Hamas or by Pales­tin­ian Islamic jihad.

And where was the inter­na­tional body formed by the HRC when Hamas was fir­ing 150 rock­ets daily into Israel? It’s inter­est­ing that HRC popped up to judge a coun­try defend­ing itself against ter­ror­ists and remained silent when Hamas blasted Israel civil­ians with mor­tar fire and missiles.

Israeli states­man, Dore Gold, dis­missed the notion that IDF killed non­com­bat­ants as the Gold­stone report indi­cated in an inter­view with David Frost on Al-Jazeera on Octo­ber 16, 2009. Gold’s ana­lysts at the Jerusalem Research Cen­ter of Pub­lic Affairs iden­ti­fied every Pales­tin­ian that died in the Gaza war. They found that 91 per­cent of those killed were com­bat mem­bers of Hamas units like the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigade and oth­ers so claim­ing that these were non­com­bat­ants is not only false but proves Gold­stone got sloppy.

Let’s face it. The UN has a his­tory of dis­pro­por­tion­ately deal­ing with Israel so what does it do? It ignores the 800-pound gorilla — the fact that Hamas hides among civil­ians on a reg­u­lar basis even to the point of launch­ing rock­ets from schools and homes, con­ve­niently revers­ing the blame on the IDF. This is no dif­fer­ent than say­ing Jews are Nazis. It’s the worst kind of moral inver­sion that exists in our soci­ety today and it is anti­semitism at its great­est. Israelis on the other hand went to extra­or­di­nary lengths that included knock­ing on doors to warn civil­ians to leave before the IDF attacked. How many ter­ror­ists groups do that?

It’s impor­tant to know that the U.S. Con­gress voted 344 to 36 to con­demn the Gold­stone Report. Coun­tries within the UN were not so gra­cious. Note that all of the Arab oil pro­duc­ing coun­tries voted to approve the report as well as those that ter­mi­nated trad­ing rela­tion­ships with Israel due to the oil embargo of the 1970’s like African coun­tries. Many of these oper­ate total­i­tar­ian dic­ta­tor­ships and are well-documented human rights abusers. Let’s review the coun­tries who voted to approve this uncon­ven­tional and flawed report:

UN Vote to Approve Gold­stone Report by Coun­try

Bottom-line? The UN has gone to great lengths to lynch the Jew­ish State ever since its Gen­eral Assem­bly voted in favor of cre­at­ing Israel in 1947. Most famil­iar with that vote would agree that the UN expected the seven invad­ing Arab armies to dec­i­mate Israel so it was more of a PR move than a vote of con­fi­dence. In fact, it cre­ated three spe­cial enti­ties ded­i­cated to fur­ther­ing the Pales­tin­ian cause at Israel’s peril. The old­est is the Spe­cial Com­mit­tee to Inves­ti­gate Israeli Prac­tices Affect­ing the Human Rights of the Pales­tin­ian Peo­ple and Other Arabs of the Occu­pied Territories.

Don’t be fooled by the title of the Com­mit­tee. The ter­ri­to­ries ref­er­enced are not “occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries” but “undis­puted ter­ri­to­ries” that belong to Israel. Gaza (Samaria and Judea), the West Bank and the Golan Heights are ter­ri­to­ries of Israel and chang­ing their sta­tus is inac­cu­rate. How many times have you heard some­one refer to land dis­putes out­side of Israel as “occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries”? Per­haps, only Nazi Ger­many. Terms like “occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries” and “set­tle­ments” are pro­pa­ganda cre­ated by Arabs who wish to dele­git­imize Israel’s right to exist and den­i­grate it at the same time. Need proof? Try find­ing Israel on a map in Gaza or any other Arab con­trolled area. There is a good chance the Jew­ish State is notice­ably absent. Most Arab states still refuse to acknowl­edge Israel even though it offi­cially became a coun­try 62 years ago.

Fast for­ward to 1975 when the Gen­eral Assem­bly added the Com­mit­tee on the Exer­cise of Inalien­able Rights of the Pales­tin­ian Peo­ple. Sup­port­ing its work is the Divi­sion for Pales­tin­ian Rights. Lodged within the UN Sec­re­tariat, the Divi­sion boasts a 16 mem­ber staff and a bud­get of mil­lions. Unfor­tu­nately, the fund­ing pro­motes con­stant anti-Israel pro­pa­ganda through­out the world.

ZOA is expos­ing that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is bankrolling Hamas and they want you to take action. It’s high time that we ask our gov­ern­ment offi­cials why they are sup­port­ing ter­ror­ists. There is no doubt that giv­ing aid to those in dire need is heroic but not when the peo­ple hoard­ing your tax dol­lars are Hamas. So why did our gov­ern­ment – you know the one that just released an all-time high deficit of 3.8 tril­lion – announce an ini­tial con­tri­bu­tion of $40 mil­lion to UNRWA for Pales­tine refugees last Fri­day? That’s a good ques­tion and one that needs a real answer.

Those fol­low­ing the Gaza sit­u­a­tion know that UNRWA listed the orig­i­nal refugee pop­u­la­tion in 1950 at 900,000. Now, UNRWA solic­its world­wide fund­ing for a “refugee” pop­u­la­tion of more than 4.7 mil­lion. There is some­thing ter­ri­bly wrong with this num­ber as it sug­gests UNRWA is not help­ing refugees return to pro­duc­tive lives but instead cre­at­ing a bur­geon­ing pop­u­la­tion that can only exist on inter­na­tional hand­outs. Most aid orga­ni­za­tions bring in staff from out­side affected areas to reset­tle dis­placed indi­vid­u­als and help them inte­grate into soci­ety. This is not the case with UNRWA. In fact, quite the oppo­site. UNRWA recruits nearly 99 per­cent local Pales­tini­ans, which con­tributes to the cor­rupt environment.

Aid­ing refugees has become such big busi­ness that with more than 29,000 staffers, there isn’t a “hap­pily ever after” in sight

Besides the United Nations, can you guess who specif­i­cally has cor­rupted UNRWA? Bingo, if you guessed Hamas. It’s com­mon knowl­edge that Hamas seized con­trol of Gaza fol­low­ing the Israeli with­drawal in 2005. After dri­ving out the Pales­tin­ian Fatah in June 2007, Hamas is sit­ting on a gold­mine that includes two boom­ing main­stays: aid and terrorism.

Reports cite Hamas using UNRWA schools and ambu­lances to con­duct ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties. There is lit­tle won­der why so many sui­cide bombers come from Gaza when you under­stand the cal­iber of UNRWA’s employ­ees. One of the UNRWA school head­mas­ters, Awad Al-Qiq, moon­lighted as the head of the Islamic Jihad’s engi­neer­ing unit that built bombs and Qas­sam rock­ets. But that’s not all. UNRWA uses anti-Israeli text­books that incite hatred of Jews. By omit­ting one of the great­est geno­cides of all time — the Holo­caust— the UN is per­pet­u­at­ing revi­sion­ist his­tory by pre­tend­ing or deny­ing the event took place. While UNRWA recently dis­cussed adding Holo­caust edu­ca­tion to school cur­ricu­lum, doing so is unlikely as Hamas has voiced strong oppo­si­tion. Adding Holo­caust edu­ca­tion seems moot until pol­i­cy­mak­ers force the UN to change its anti­se­mitic cur­ricu­lum that teach ele­men­tary math prob­lems like this:

“If I kill 3 Jews and you kill 2, how many does that equal?”

Teach­ing hatred and vio­lence to any child is unthink­able. Doing so with Amer­i­can tax dol­lars is unimag­in­able. But the US gov­ern­ment just agreed to give UNRWA a whop­ping $40 mil­lion ini­tially and that means a con­sid­er­able amount US tax­payer dol­lars are lin­ing the pock­ets of Hamas ter­ror­ists. Think of how that sup­ports their effort to con­tin­u­ally bomb Israeli citizens.

So far, the UN is one of the worst anti­semites in his­tory and now it’s rap­ing 38 coun­tries of over half a bil­lion dol­lars annu­ally to sup­port 59 refugee camps in Gaza. The effort is the largest funded of its kind in the world, and it is has done lit­tle to stem hatred, teach self-sufficiency or prompt peace in the region. Tour Gaza and you won’t see the kind of infra­struc­ture that most areas have with this amount of fund­ing like schools, hos­pi­tals, pub­lic build­ings, parks, trees, sub­urbs, etc.

So what demo­c­ra­tic coun­try is set­ting an exam­ple for the world these days? Our north­ern neigh­bor for one. Canada recently with­drew funds from UNWRA cit­ing a report com­mis­sioned by the Euro­pean par­lia­ment that doc­u­mented UNRWA labor unions chose Hamas ter­ror­ists to admin­is­ter UNRWA facil­i­ties. Wake up Amer­ica! News orga­ni­za­tions uncov­ered that Hamas oper­ated Gaza refugee camps over a year ago and this ter­ror­ist con­nec­tion is far from break­ing news.

When will our admin­is­tra­tion come out of their coma? Hard to tell. It will be inter­est­ing to see how long UNRWA (err, I mean Hamas) can con­tinue amass a for­tune, cor­rupt young minds all while pass­ing arms through 300 smug­gling tun­nels snaking beneath the Gaza bor­der from Egypt’s Sinai Desert. And this doesn’t even count the mam­moth trucks with mis­siles that Egypt has allowed entrance at Israel’s expense. Many have con­demned Israel’s pro­tec­tion wall but few ever utter the fact that Egypt put theirs up first (and is still adding on). And why the brouhaha over Israel’s wall? There are 21 oth­ers in the world includ­ing the U.S. wall with Mex­ico. This bla­tant dou­ble stan­dard is why the ZOA is count­ing on you to voice your con­cern to Con­gress to pres­sure the United Nations into tak­ing steps to ensure UNRWA is not pro­vid­ing fund­ing, employ­ment or other sup­port to terrorists.

Get involved with a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion that The Wall Street Jour­nal calls, “the most cred­i­ble advo­cate for Israel on the Amer­i­can Jew­ish scene today.” The ZOA sup­ports anti-terrorism and pro-Israel leg­is­la­tion and its cam­paigns have defeated hos­tile crit­ics of Israel nom­i­nated for key gov­ern­ment posi­tions. Visit the ZOA site to learn more, sign up for email alerts and dis­cover other ways you can get help. Let ZOA hear from you via Face­book.

Some­times one per­son in the scheme of things doesn’t seem influ­en­tial enough to make a dif­fer­ence. Yet, what if that one per­son is pas­sion­ate, coura­geous and ready to take a stand? Con­sider being one of thou­sands of Hous­ton com­muters on U.S. 59 N. when dozens can­vas the Man­dell Bridge with signs that say, “Israel Out of the Mid­dle East” or “Judaism Isn’t a Real Reli­gion” or “Stop Fund­ing Israel Apartheid.” While some rolled their eyes and sighed as they as they inched past this weekly nui­sance, oth­ers stared in dis­be­lief hop­ing some­one would chase them away. Some­one did. Meet a Jew­ish Hous­ton­ian and son of Holo­caust sur­vivors who felt his home­town of over 2.25 mil­lion had no place for haters.

Part 3: Ira Blei­weiss, Bridge Houston

Ini­tially, Ira Blei­weiss was like many other evening com­muters. He drove by fum­ing silently watch­ing Pro­gres­sive Action Alliance (PAA) demon­stra­tors hold signs that demo­nized Israel. But one day in March 2007 all that changed. Fed up with the grow­ing anti­se­mitic tone of the group’s sig­nage, Blei­weiss asked the pro­tes­tors the 64 thou­sand dol­lar ques­tion: Why? They replied that they were just try­ing to stop injus­tice in the world, but Blei­weiss didn’t buy it. So he talked to them about other areas of the world fac­ing unrest and got lit­tle response.

“There are about 70 major con­flicts in the world and none fazed them. Their sole focus was on Israel and Jews. They had no inter­est Dar­fur or the Congo.”

They also didn’t care about the geno­cide in Rwanda where nearly 1 mil­lion peo­ple were hacked to death. And they didn’t care about the pile of bod­ies stack­ing up in law­less Soma­lia.  Sri Lanka wasn’t even on their radar. Nor were the Tamil Tigers. Their sole focus? Israel and Jews. And this tar­geted agenda told Blei­weiss all he needed to know.

The PAA did unspeak­able acts like tried to mis­rep­re­sent Judaism as a satanic cult and used a Tal­mud (Rab­bini­cal writ­ings con­sti­tut­ing Jew­ish laws) like it was black magic. But the group made an already fed up Blei­weiss even angrier when they held a poster of Anne Frank in a kaf­fiyah (tra­di­tional Arab head­dress). Talk about evil. Draw­ing a kaf­fiyah on a young Jew­ish girl that hid from Nazis before meet­ing an early death in a con­cen­tra­tion camp was not a just a lie it was sick. And sug­gest­ing that she’s a Pales­tin­ian sym­pa­thizer or that Israel is a Nazi is even sicker.

Both are unfath­omable and unthink­able. The length of moral inver­sion that this group stoops to is unbe­liev­able. Israel is a coun­try founded in the exact loca­tion of its fore­bears — the Israelites — after the Nazis mur­dered over six mil­lion Jews and two mil­lion oth­ers. So mis­lead­ing peo­ple with doc­tored images, smear cam­paigns and false accu­sa­tions were not only base­less but hate­ful. Blei­weiss knows the hor­rors of the Holo­caust all too well from his par­ents’ per­sonal accounts and from his ser­vice as a docent at Holo­caust Museum Houston.

But Blei­weiss had a plan. He real­ized while orga­niz­ing vol­un­teers that he needed to fill the gap that was occur­ing between false alle­ga­tions on the bridge and the thou­sands of com­muters that might begin to believe it. Blei­weiss knew there was a need to bridge peace across all groups regard­less of race, eth­nic­ity or reli­gion. So he started Bridge Hous­ton, a grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to com­bat­ing haters and coun­ter­ing their anti-Israel pro­pa­ganda and lies about Zion­ism and Judaism.

First, Bridge Hous­ton dis­rupted the PAA bridge protests numer­ous times by orga­niz­ing groups of pro-Israel activists to arrive ear­lier. Bridge Houston’s vol­un­teers held signs that read, “Co-Exist”, “Teach Peace, Not Hate.” The response was encour­ag­ing. It didn’t take long for com­muters to show signs of sup­port by honk­ing, giv­ing thumbs up and shout­ing exu­ber­antly. Hous­ton com­muters wel­comed a peace­ful alter­na­tive to the hate they had wit­nessed on the Man­dell Bridge.

One of Bridge Houston’s slogan’s is “Peace = Pros­per­ity”. Blei­weiss is a firm believer that if Gazans wanted peace, they would stop launch­ing rock­ets at Israel and start focus­ing on pros­per­ity the way Jor­da­ni­ans did after they signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. He has seen how “Pales­tini­ans” have resorted to viral cam­paigns to smear Israel’s name and demo­nize the coun­try that no Arab armies have ever defeated. He, like Israel, is fight­ing back with the truth to pro­tect its bor­ders and cit­i­zens. He and Bridge Hous­ton encour­age those who love Israel to do the same.

Bridge Hous­ton then took their pro-Israel mes­sage every place anti-Israel protests occurred. Two weeks after fight­ing began between Israel and the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist group, Hamas, hun­dreds of anti-Israel sup­port­ers held a rally near the Gal­le­ria on Jan­u­ary 10, 2009. At the time, Hamas had fired more 6,500 rock­ets and mor­tars at south­ern Israeli civil­ian tar­gets over the past three years, and refused to renew an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire, prompt­ing an Israeli mil­i­tary response against Hamas.

Sim­i­lar to pre­vi­ous demon­stra­tions, this one included com­par­isons of Jews and Israelis as Nazis, anti­se­mitic slurs and calls for the destruc­tion of Israel. Teenage pro­tes­tors car­ried a large Israeli flag with the words, “Israeli ter­ror­ism,” spray-painted across it in what looked like bloody let­ters. While the Bridge Hous­ton pro-Israel rally held signs that said “Co-Exist” and “Teach Peace not Hate,” the anti-Israel group had signs with bloody hand­prints on Israeli flags anti-Jewish pro­pa­ganda and Nazi swastikas.

Then came an onslaught of anti-Israel bill­boards across Greater Hous­ton. The Hous­ton Coali­tion for Jus­tice and Peace in Pales­tine (HCJPP) quickly blan­keted the city with 10 bill­boards that read, “Pray for Gaza.” The bill­boards fea­tured a cry­ing child, and pointed view­ers to a web­site con­tain­ing revi­sion­ist his­tory, mis­lead­ing sta­tis­tics and bogus alle­ga­tions. The pur­pose? To demo­nize Israel and dele­git­imize its right to exist. And how did the HCJPP afford to launch this lat­est pro­pa­ganda cam­paign with so many bill­boards? The Coun­cil of American-Islamic Rela­tions (CAIR) among oth­ers funds them. And who funds CAIR? The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Con­cerned? You’d have to be mis­in­formed, dead or a jihadist not to be.

So what did Bridge Hous­ton do? They part­nered with Stand­WithUs to tell the greater Hous­ton Israel’s side of the story and designed bill­boards that read SAVE GAZA FROM HAMAS, Teach PEACE, not HATE. The pro-Israel bill­boards fea­ture an Arab boy and an Israeli boy, arm-in-arm, show­ing that coex­is­tence is pos­si­ble to achieve with peace. The signs direct view­ers to Bridge Hous­ton and Stand­WithUs for more infor­ma­tion about Israel, Gaza and the Arab-Israeli con­flict. The only issue now is that there are ONLY two pro-Israel bill­boards against 10 anti-Israel billboards.

The pro­pa­ganda machine of the Pales­tini­ans has got­ten so out of hand that groups that are ultra lib­eral (i.e., we sup­port ter­ror­ists) are crop­ping up solely to demo­nize Israel. The HCJPP announced in Jan­u­ary 2009 that they were stag­ing a “silent protest” in an attempt to equate the Israeli oper­a­tion against Hamas ter­ror­ists in the Gaza Strip with the Nazi geno­cide of Euro­pean Jewry. The loca­tion of the protest was none other than Holo­caust Museum Hous­ton.

To sup­port Israel and those that endured the Holo­caust (both alive and deceased), Blei­weiss orga­nized over 300 Hous­to­ni­ans both Jews and non-Jews along with six rab­bis, Chris­t­ian Zion­ists, sev­eral Holo­caust sur­vivors and U.S. Con­gress­man John Cul­ber­son, R-TX to counter the anti-Israel group. The haters showed up with 200 pro­test­ers, some wear­ing mock-Auschwitz uni­forms hold­ing signs equat­ing Israel to Nazi Ger­many. Unbe­liev­able. The result? Only 200 anti-Israel pro­tes­tors showed and most who reported on the inci­dent saw the attempts to dis­credit Israel and the Holo­caust a failure.

But Blei­weiss has cause for con­cern as there is resur­gence in anti­se­mitic attacks occur­ring against Jews, syn­a­gogues and stu­dents world­wide. He recounts 2009 defac­ing of meno­rahs and syn­a­gogues in Europe not to men­tion the Auschwitz sign that neo-Nazis stole last year. He is see­ing more anti-Israel groups and speak­ers descend on uni­ver­si­ties glob­ally, and recalls a recent inci­dent in Ft. Laud­erdale where pro­tes­tors screamed “The Ovens Weren’t Big Enough” and another in Los Ange­les where pro­tes­tors held signs that read, “Hitler was Right.” For Blei­weiss, this tide of reli­gious intol­er­ance, anti­semitism and vio­lence world­wide is not a ques­tion of will it ever hap­pen again but will it ever hap­pen here.

Recently, Bridge Hous­ton marched in the 32^nd annual “Orig­i­nal” Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Parade held Jan­u­ary 18 to com­mem­o­rate MLK’s staunch sup­port of the State of Israel and to honor the legacy of black-Jewish part­ner­ships. Sup­port­ers for Bridge Hous­ton wore blue and white and car­ried a large ban­ner that read MLK LOVED ISRAEL. The group’s involve­ment was crit­i­cal as the pre­vi­ous year the HCJPP injected an anti-Israel mes­sage into the Black Her­itage Society’s MLK Day parade. By chant­ing, “Pales­tine will be free – from the [Jor­dan] River to the [Mediter­ranean] Sea,” the anti-Israel group paid a great insult to Dr. King’s mem­ory and life’s work. Bridge Hous­ton was deter­mined not to let that happen.

Blei­weiss most recently debunked the notion that kids are starv­ing in Gaza on the Jan­u­ary 25^th edi­tion of the What’s Up Radio Pro­gram with con­ser­v­a­tive host, Terry Lowry. How so? He got stats from UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) that proved Gazan chil­dren fare much bet­ter when it comes to nutri­tion than most of the Arab oil-producing nations around it. He described the stats as eye-opening:

Mal­nu­tri­tion in the Mid­dle East

Source: UNICEF, 2009

Any­one fol­low­ing Israel closely knows the UN has not been much of a friend to Israel since the incep­tion of the Jew­ish state in 1948. The fact Blei­weiss pulled the UN’s stats shows he’s going out of his way to dis­prove false allegations.

Blei­weiss is also con­cerned about col­leges becom­ing more lib­eral and find­ing it fash­ion­able to den­i­grate Israel. He called atten­tion to the fact that Rice Uni­ver­sity Baker Insti­tute invited the con­tro­ver­sial speaker and for­mer Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion and Research for the Pales­tin­ian Author­ity, Hanan Ashrawi, to speak with­out invit­ing an equiv­a­lent Israeli speaker. Ashawari played a promi­nent role in the 1^st Intifada and worked hand-in-hand with for­mer PLO Leader Yasser Arafat. Not quite the role model most law-abiding par­ents want their col­lege stu­dent to hear.

Ashrawi is quoted as say­ing, “I see it (the intifada with its sui­cide bomb­ing that began Sep­tem­ber 20) as an expres­sion of the will of the spirit of the peo­ple that will not suc­cumb to coer­cion or sub­ju­ga­tion. Pop­u­lar protests and acts of resis­tance, polit­i­cal human resis­tance, are nec­es­sary to demon­strate the people’s will.”

Blei­weiss takes issue with the fact that most par­ents would be out­raged if they knew they were bankrolling speak­ers that sym­pa­thized with ter­ror­ists and sui­cide bombers at their kid’s uni­ver­sity. He also shines the light on the fact that Ashrawi is a Chris­t­ian Lebanese woman and she is defend­ing a reli­gion — Islam — that den­i­grates women and is either killing or forc­ing a mass exo­dus on Chris­tians. For instance, Beth­le­hem used to be over 80 per­cent Chris­t­ian 40 – 50 years ago. Today, Beth­le­hem is less than 20 per­cent Chris­t­ian. Assault is on the rise among Chris­tians in Beth­le­hem, and so are reports of Pales­tin­ian mafia extort­ing Chris­t­ian busi­ness own­ers for pro­tec­tion money.

Another alarm­ing fact is what is about to occur next month. The Mus­lim Stu­dent Asso­ci­a­tion is spon­sor­ing its sixth annual Israel Apartheid month in cities and col­leges world­wide in March. Blei­weiss is get­ting the word out that much of what they are doing is a moral inver­sion by com­par­ing Gaza to South African apartheid, call­ing Israel a Nazi, com­par­ing Gaza to the Holo­caust and ask­ing the world to divest, sanc­tion or boy­cott Israel. He is ask­ing for those who care about jus­tice to come together as a group and not allow this kind of atroc­ity to occur at uni­ver­si­ties and cities around the world.

In his effort to bridge the com­mu­nity, Blei­weiss has found an ally in for­mer Black Pan­ther Quanell X. The activists recently joined forces Octo­ber of 2009 to chal­lenge a speech in Hous­ton by Holo­caust denier, David Irving.

Other recent devel­op­ments along this line include protests at the Israeli Con­sulate that involved stu­dents from the Al-Hadi School of Accel­er­a­tive Learn­ing, an Islamic school in Hous­ton, Texas. While Hous­ton is not expe­ri­enc­ing the same degree of anti-Semitism as reported in some cities like Dear­born, Michi­gan, the FBI claims it has a strong Hamas base. Proof: The U.S. fed­eral gov­ern­ment seized the school along with a Man­hat­tan sky­scraper and four U.S. mosques cit­ing alleged links to the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment. All are owned by Iran­ian backed Alavi Foun­da­tion and the Assa Cor­po­ra­tion.

Orga­ni­za­tions like Act! for Amer­ica urge cit­i­zens to step up and find out who owns busi­nesses like the ones seized by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment if you feel they might be mis­us­ing tax­payer fund­ing. In fact, Act! for Amer­ica was one of the first to claim the Ft. Hood shooter would have links to a local mosque, and author­i­ties iden­ti­fied it shortly after the mas­sacre to one just out­side of D.C.

Bridge Hous­ton is proof that one person’s involve­ment mat­ters. But with all the anti­semitism, anti-Zionism and left­ists who cod­dle ter­ror­ists, crim­i­nals and those who fund them, we need everyone’s help. Ready to counter the pro­pa­ganda, stem hatred and stop revi­sion­ism? Visit the Bridge Hous­ton site to learn more, sign up for email alerts and dis­cover other ways you get involved. Stay abreast of the lat­est devel­op­ments by fol­low­ing Bridge Hous­ton on Face­book.

All pho­tos: Jew­ish Her­ald Voice

The world is full of lov­ing, car­ing indi­vid­u­als that make it a bet­ter place. But it’s also full of hate-mongers, mis­in­formed twerps, anti­semites, anti-Zionists, Holo­caust deniers, ter­ror­ists and other unsa­vory char­ac­ters bent on rewrit­ing his­tory or try­ing to blow it up. Instead of focus­ing on the haters for a change, let’s review the first of a five part series that salutes stand­outs on my radar that have gone beyond the call of duty to com­bat anti­semitism, anti-Zionism and those who recy­cle hate.

Part One: David Apple­tree, JIDF

When Face­book groups started appear­ing hon­or­ing the Mer­caz HaRav mas­sacre, David Apple­tree did some­thing about it. Fed up with eight years of anti­semitism and ter­ror­ism in the wake of the 2^nd Intifada, 9/11, the dis­en­gage­ment from Gush Katif (Gaza), the war with Hezbol­lah, watch­ing groups applaud the Pales­tin­ian gun­man via Face­book was more than he could stand. Each attack made him more deter­mined to do what most large bureau­cra­cies can’t – develop a grass­roots activist orga­ni­za­tion that can instantly expose anti­semites, ter­ror­ists, haters and the like to erad­i­cate hatred and vio­lence online.

First, he turned to large orga­ni­za­tions to get them to address the gap he saw between false report­ing and cor­rec­tion, but vir­tu­ally noth­ing occurred. His expe­ri­ence taught him that large orga­ni­za­tions steeped in bureau­cracy and red tape were less equipped to fight today’s online hate. After all, how can huge orga­ni­za­tions launch effec­tive cam­paigns instantly when sad­dled with cor­po­rate pol­i­tics, multi-level approvals and most impor­tantly, polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness? In an online envi­ron­ment, response time means the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess and failure.

So Apple­tree did what any inno­va­tor should – he addressed the lack of enforce­ment on the web in an uncon­ven­tional way. He founded the Jew­ish Inter­net Defense Force (JIDF) in May of 2008 on the premise that he would oper­ate it with the help of a col­lec­tive group of indi­vid­u­als just as con­cerned with erad­i­cat­ing online anti­semitism, vio­lence and hate. And he’s has done just that.  The JIDF is lead­ing the fight against anti­semitism and ter­ror­ism on the web.

Under his guid­ance, the JIDF pro­vides advo­cacy, news and infor­ma­tion to sites like Twit­ter, Face­book, You Tube, Net­worked­Blogs, My Space, Digg, Wikipedia and Google Earth. But that’s not all. It mon­i­tors, exposes and reports online con­tent that is against inter­net com­pa­nies’ terms of ser­vice. And the work doesn’t stop there. The JIDF uncov­ers groups, orga­ni­za­tions and social media sites that either directly or indi­rectly aid and abet haters and ter­ror­ists. In fact, it man­ages to do this with lim­ited resources while still tak­ing a holis­tic approach to advo­cacy by pro­mot­ing Jew­ish pride, knowl­edge and unity. Need more? The JIDF also is a staunch advo­cate for Israel.

Apple­tree recently gave a keynote address at the World Union of Stu­dents Con­gress held recently in Jerusalem. More often than not, the JIDF is quickly gain­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for expos­ing com­pa­nies that allow haters to mis­use their tech­nol­ogy. And to its credit, the JIDF has quite a few suc­cess sto­ries under its belt. For instance, the JIDF alerted hun­dreds of thou­sands of his online fol­low­ers that Mus­lims were attack­ing pro-Israel Face­book groups by prais­ing Hitler, Hamas and Hezbol­lah and com­par­ing Jews to pigs. It also put Google on the hot seat for fail­ing to block neg­a­tive search rec­om­men­da­tions when users type in the words: Judaism is…

Another notable cam­paign included get­ting Face­book to remove Sheikh Has­san Nazrallah’s fan page. This weekend-long inter­net cam­paign led by the JIDF with the help of Israeli Knes­set Mem­ber, Avi Dichter, proved that online activism makes a difference.

JIDF sent action alerts to approx­i­mately 100,000 peo­ple via social net­work­ing sites and email, urg­ing them to press Face­book to enforce its pol­icy of remov­ing con­tent that is “fake, hate­ful or threat­en­ing to oth­ers, or that rep­re­sents or pro­motes rec­og­nized ter­ror­ist organizations.”

Another tri­umph occurred when JIDF uncov­ered dozens of Face­book groups and hun­dreds of pages of Holo­caust denial and was able to get Face­book to revise their poli­cies and not make the con­tent avail­able to 13 coun­tries where Holo­caust denial is ille­gal. The JIDF admits that more peo­ple need to press com­pa­nies — Face­book and Google included — that pro­vide a fer­tile breed­ing ground for ter­ror­ists, anti­semites and haters.

Because the JIDF is lean and not lay­ered, it has the flex­i­bil­ity to launch an effec­tive cam­paign at a moment’s notice. It had no qualms about pub­li­ciz­ing Ynet News for spread­ing anti-Israeli hate, The Huff­in­g­ton Post for giv­ing a voice to a Pro-Hamas, anti-Israel activists that pro­fess hate to Israel and Israelis and even Pres­i­dent Barak Obama for blam­ing Jews for dam­ag­ing the peace process. Let’s be hon­est. It’s high time to hold the real per­pe­tra­tors account­able and the JIDF is doing just this while remain­ing per­son­able, authen­tic and consistent.

In a way, the JIDF is about the clos­est thing that Israel has to a Jew­ish Caped Cru­sader. Heck, it’s doing such a great job that both Hamas and Hezbol­lah know of the JIDF. Only days ago the JIDF uncov­ered a Nazi Forum in Ger­many as one of its vis­i­tors came from the same site. The JIDF posted the users IP address for all to see. Gotcha!

Are you tired of ter­ror­ism, anti­semitism, holo­caust deniers and the like? Want to get involved with a front­line orga­ni­za­tion that com­bats anti­semitism, anti-Zionism and has no tol­er­ance for polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness? Then visit the JIDF site to learn more, sign up for email alerts and dis­cover other ways you can get involved. Let JIDF here from you via Twit­ter, Face­book or any of the other sites men­tioned sites earlier.

Potty Humor is at an all time high thanks to the lat­est failed Islamic ter­ror­ist, AKA the Under­wear bomber. Butt. Seri­ously! What can we expect next? Ter­ror­ists with explo­sive anal plugs, tam­pons, implants or pros­the­ses? I mean how far we can expect Islamic extrem­ists to go to destroy our way of life? Appar­ently, far. Killing inno­cent peo­ple world­wide is fair game in the name of Allah. Let’s recap.

It didn’t take long for Al Qaeda in the Ara­bian Penin­sula to claim respon­si­bil­ity for what looked like a shabby pair of skivvies that didn’t do did­dly. In fact, Al Qaeda said the under­wear bomb didn’t go off due to a “faulty det­o­na­tor.” Hmmm. Sweaty balls? Peed in his pants? Nope. Not going to see where this leads.

The fact is that the 23-year old Niger­ian Under­wear Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdul­mu­tal­lab, agreed to blow up a North­west Air­lines flight from Ams­ter­dam to Detroit filled with inno­cent pas­sen­gers with his butt. If that’s not a dirty way to fight, I don’t know what is.

So how did this hap­pen? Extrem­ist Islamic groups like Al Qaeda have pen­e­trated Lon­don col­lege cam­puses in recent years to recruit poten­tial jihadists from stu­dent polit­i­cal groups and reli­gious stud­ies cir­cles. The prob­lem has become so wide spread that Lon­don is becom­ing Islam­i­fied.  Think I’m exag­ger­at­ing? Guess again. The most pop­u­lar name for baby boys this year in Lon­don was Mohammed. Think this is a fluke? Guess again. Mohammed has already gained the top slot for baby boy names in Brus­sels, Ams­ter­dam, Copen­hagen and Oslo. Think this is con­cern­ing. Dang right.

So what about other 100 per­cent Islamic areas like Afghanistan. Well, the other bad guys, the Tal­iban, just claimed respon­si­bil­ity for a sui­cide bomb­ing that killed eight Amer­i­cans believed to be CIA employ­ees. Per the Taliban’s site (ya know they all have them), an Afghan National Army sol­dier det­o­nated his explosives-packed vest, killing 20 peo­ple and injur­ing 25 others.

Then, a road­side bomb hit an armored vehi­cle Wednes­day in south­ern Afghanistan, killing five Cana­di­ans – four sol­diers and a female jour­nal­ist. The list goes on.

Then there’s Yemen – another hotbed for Islamic ter­ror­ists. And guess what? It’s 100 per­cent Islamic. And what about Saudi Ara­bia where 15 of the 19 9/11 hijack­ers (two were from the United Arab Emi­rates, one was Egypt­ian and one was Lebanese) came from. Yes, it’s also 100 per­cent Islamic.

Then there’s war-torn Soma­lia where an Islamic man car­ry­ing chem­i­cals, Abdi Has­san Abdi, tried to board a com­mer­cial air­liner in Mogadishu last month with chem­i­cals that author­i­ties believe dou­bled for an explo­sive device. And yes, you got it. Somali is 100 per­cent Islamic.

We have to fig­ure out a way to com­bat would-be Islamic ter­ror­ists head-on with­out cav­ing to polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. Our intel­li­gence agen­cies have to do more than just “mon­i­tor” or put these per­sons of inter­est on a “watch list.” We have to penal­ize the alarm­ing num­ber of sym­pa­thy groups that arm Islamic ter­ror­ists and cre­ate viral cam­paigns on their behalf.  We have to silence the hate mon­gers: the Holo­caust deniers and the wave of unfore­seen Anti-Semites and Anti-Zionists spread­ing like wild­fire. And we have to tell the annoy­ing pri­vacy groups whin­ing over full body scans to get a life. Heck, I’m not opposed to full cav­ity scans for those that require it. Are you?