In A Letter Sent To Turkish PM; Likud MK Says Israel Should Have Killed All Marmara Passengers
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – December 15, 2010
Israeli sources reported Wednesday that Israeli Member of Knesset of the Likud Party, Dani Dannon, sent a sarcastic letter to Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, telling him that Israeli soldiers should have killed all of the passengers of the Marmara Ship that was heading to Gaza to deliver humanitarian supplies.
During the attack that took place on May 31, Israeli soldiers who boarded the ship before towing it to Ashdod, shot and killed nine Turkish activists and wounded several others.
In his letter, Dannon said that he is sorry the soldiers “had lots of discipline and only killed nine activists”.
He added that “should Israel had a prior knowledge that terrorist were on board, the soldiers would have received orders to kill everyone who threatened their safety”.
Dannon also stated that he is sorry because Israel did not conduct a security check on all passengers of the Turkish ship before it sailed, in addition to “being sorry” because Israel “did not prevent the passengers from arming themselves”.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, denied reports stating that Israel intends to pay compensation to the families of the nine Turkish peace activists who were killed when the Israeli army attacked the Turkish Mavi Marmara solidarity ship that was heading to Gaza to deliver humanitarian supplies.
During a Monday session with his Likud Party, Netanyahu said that Israel is holding talks with Turkey to drop all charges against the soldiers who took part in the attack, and added that any official apology or compensation will make it easier for Ankara to file lawsuits against the soldiers.
Illegal U.S. Experiments Went Far Beyond Guatemala
Inside Costa Rica | 14 December 2010
GUATEMALA – The illegal experiments conducted on human beings by a U.S. medical team in the 1940s went far beyond Guatemala, according to local news reports.
The team headed by Dr. John Cutler did the same thing in the United States, India, and African nations, said Leon Arango, member of the commission in charge of investigating the experiments on Guatemalans, quoted in the Diario de Centro America newspaper on Monday.
Cutler headed a team that from 1946 to 1948 intentionally infected 610 Guatemalans with venereal diseases, including prostitutes, prisoners, soldiers, and mentally disabled people, according to a report published by a U.S. investigator.
That disclosure triggered a wave of indignation in that country. President Alvaro Colom called the incident a crime against humanity, and ordered the creation of a commission to make the corresponding investigations.
Arango said he had information that showed the experiments were also conducted on U.S. prison inmates and citizens from a community in Alabama, as well in African countries and in India.
As was the case in Guatemala, the alleged studies to find medicines to fight venereal diseases were allowed by authorities in Africa and India in return for the setting-up of clinical labs.
The former chief of the Public Health Department for Venereal Diseases, Juan Funes, was the one who encouraged those experiments. At that time, he was being trained at a New York institute for research on venereal diseases, Arango said.
Defend Jennifer Peto, a Brave Canadian Critic of Zionism
By Jay Knott / Dissident Voice / December 14th, 2010
Canada is mostly a diluted version of the USA. But Canadians are justly proud of their country’s resistance to the abrasive style of American politics. In one respect, though, it is more extreme than the United States – it is the only country with a more fanatical Israel Lobby.
When the University of Toronto recently accepted a Master’s thesis critical of Jewish privilege, the Lobby, the media, and politicians, immediately condemned it as ‘hate’. Some of these legislators declared the University should not have awarded the M.A. to Sociology and Equity Studies student Jennifer Peto, an unprecedented interference of the government in academic freedom.
When a Jewish anti-Zionist like Peto is physically threatened by Zionists and denounced by politicians, the first thing is obviously to defend her and her freedom of speech. But there is a danger in giving extra credit to her argument because it has come under such vicious attack from the Lobby.
The extreme reaction of the Lobby to any criticism has the effect of encouraging narcissism in critics, especially Jewish ones – there is nothing like persecution to make people self-righteous, and Zionists know this better than anyone! To be a Jewish critic of Zionism in a Western country today is less risky than to have joined the white anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, who were on the receiving end of letter-bombs as well as abuse. Still, Peto is a brave woman, and her thesis honestly describes her difficult break with her Zionist upbringing.
Her thesis, ‘The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education’, is a development of the tradition of left-wing criticism of various kinds of ‘privilege’ – white, male, etc.1 She reviews How Jews Became White Folks.2 She thinks that race is socially constructed: “race, whiteness and ethnicity produce, and are produced by, nationalist discourses.” She uncritically repeats the idea that Israel is a US ‘client state’ but admits “the discourses that are used in defence of Israel are different than those used to excuse or deny American, Canadian and other Western imperial violence.” It’s not that complicated. Never mind ‘discourses.’ Is it in the interests of the other Western capitalist countries to give unconditional support to Israel, or not? In short, she has no critique of Jewish power.
Peto states, “My work is based in the understanding that Zionism – the belief that Jewish people have a right to a nation-state built on top of the ruins of Palestine – is a racist, imperialist ideology that can only effectively be challenged through anti-racist, anti-imperialist theory and activism.” I argue the exact opposite – I want to challenge her and the left in general to ask why this approach was so effective in the case of South Africa, and so ineffective against Israel. She has nothing to say about ‘the chosen people’ and the festivals which celebrate massacres of gentiles – she makes no attempt to answer the question “is Zionism an expression of Judaism”? She explicitly says, “Jews of European descent now enjoy white privilege,” which implies a) they didn’t used to enjoy privilege at all, and b) the privilege they now enjoy is not specifically Jewish. She compares Canada’s history of ethnic cleansing with Israel’s. This is not how to undermine Zionism.
A thesis is not a political manifesto, but obviously, Jennifer Peto is an activist, and her paper’s argument leads to certain conclusions, certain tactics, for the growing campaign to reduce uncritical support for the apartheid state in the rest of the world. Therefore, I think it is appropriate to criticize it from a tactical point of view.
My argument is, quite simply, that left-wing anti-oppression politics is inadequate for combating Zionism. Telling the white European majority of the Western countries that Jewish privilege is essentially a variant of their own is not only false, it leads logically to solidarity with Israel. Surely it would be more effective to point out that most Americans have no interest in supporting Jewish supremacy, rather than telling them they are ‘complicit’ in racism? Concern with the history of white European racism assisted the dismantling of apartheid in Africa, desegregation, affirmative action, busing and African-American studies, but it doesn’t lead to opposing the Jewish apartheid state.
The Palestine solidarity movement should be trying to drive a wedge between supporters of the Jewish state and everyone else. This involves emphasizing the differences between the former and the latter, putting forward the overwhelming case that a) Israel is morally worse than all the other Western countries, and b) most of their inhabitants, rich or poor, have no reason to support it. It implies showing, in complete contrast to the dogmas of modern leftism, how Western countries are the most egalitarian societies which have ever existed – except Israel. Trying to fit opposition to Zionism into the general framework of opposing oppression in general doesn’t work. For example, feminist and gay politics don’t aid opponents of Jewish apartheid; its defenders point out that Israel is by far the most liberal country in the Middle East. Analyses derived from Marxism are also unhelpful; Western support for Israel is not based on material interests, and the conflict in Palestine is about race, not class.
- Instead of trying to fit the square peg of opposition to Jewish ethnocentrism into the round hole of political correctness, we should list the ways in which Jewish power is more powerful than white supremacy:
- 1. The open advocacy of white power – in any country – is taboo – no politician in the world does it
2. The open advocacy of Jewish power – in Israel – is mandatory for all Western politicians
3. The Western countries boycotted, and caused the end of, white apartheid, thirty years ago
4. The Western countries support Jewish apartheid today, uncritically and very expensively
5. Desmond Tutu has stated that Israeli policies are at least as bad as apartheid
6. Apartheid South Africa fought for US interests against Soviet-backed forces
7. Apartheid Israel has never fought for US interests
8. There has been no violence against Jews in any Western country for sixty-five years – unless you count Palestinian resistance, which is the result of Jewish supremacy
9. When US colleges, co-operatives and other bodies initiated a boycott of South Africa over thirty years ago, no white supremacists tried to stop them
10. When, today, US colleges, co-operatives and other bodies tentatively discuss a boycott of Israel today, right-wing Jewish activists issue lawsuits and stage protests, and left-wing Jewish activists try to undermine their efforts from within, complaining of ‘oppression’ and ‘anti-Semitism’
Jewish power is so much more important than white privilege that I argue that concern with the latter works, consciously or otherwise, to the benefit of the former. Critics of white privilege, for example critical race theorist Stanley Fish, often claim that Zionism is not a form of racism, by emphasizing how Jews have suffered at the hands of white supremacists.3 Peto boldly challenges the use of the holocaust to reinforce Jewish self-righteousness. She describes The March of Remembrance, a Zionist project aimed at making gentiles aware of the holocaust, but, because of her perspective, she doesn’t go so far as to see it as part of the culture of ‘white guilt’. I would criticize it as such, and advocate, and organize, open discussion about the holocaust and the rest of the larger Holocaust of World War II. Canada’s laws against questioning aspects of the Shoah are a clear expression of Jewish privilege. Opposing that privilege by defending freedom of speech means trying to overturn those laws as much as defending Jennifer Peto and her comrades against Jewish power.
- Jennifer Peto (2010) “The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education,” Master of Arts thesis, University of Toronto.
- Karen Brodkin (1998). How Jews Became White Folks: and what that says about race in America. Rutgers University Press.
- Stanley Fish (1994). There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It’s a Good Thing, Too. Oxford University Press.
Amnesty International challenges British draft law protecting war criminals
Palestine Information Center – 15/12/2010
LONDON — Amnesty International is challenging amendments the British government has proposed that shield war criminals who step foot in London. The measures the UK suggested are to limit the courts from issuing arrest warrants against war criminals visiting the country.
The House of Commons began Monday discussing proposed measures in a draft law on social responsibility and police reform that make arrest warrants require for the first time approval by the Director of Public Prosecutions in the UK before they are issued.
The principle of universal jurisdiction allows prosecution of those accused of highly dangerous crimes, such as torture, before UK courts even if the offenses occurred outside of the state or by citizens of other countries.
The British government announced that the system of issuing arrest warrants for charges of war crimes was subjected to abuse by political groups citing on their behalf insubstantial evidence. But they did not offer any examples of the courts issuing warrants under such circumstances.
Amnesty International’s UK branch director Kate Allen said: British MPs should stand by the victims of war and torture and guarantee to drop these dangerous measures from the new draft law for police reform.
What kind of reform makes people suspected of the worst crimes able to flee from justice? she added.
Adopting the measures would send the wrong signal making the UK appear to be tolerant of crimes related to war and torture, Allen went on to explain.
England’s step was kicked off after Israel became outraged over several attempts to issue arrest warrants against Israeli war criminals and UK leaders vowed to amend laws in their favor.
Bangladesh factory fire kills 20
Press TV – December 14, 2010
A fire has ripped through a garment factory in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, killing at least 20 workers and wounding over 100 others.
Around 5,000 people were at the factory when the fire broke out on the ninth floor.
About 50 people have been taken to hospital with severe burns. Many more are stranded on the roof of the 10-story building.
Police sources say others were injured in a stampede of hundreds of workers trying to escape to safety.
“It is a big fire and many workers are trapped on the roof of the building. We are mobilizing all our teams from around the city,” AFP quoted fire department Chief Abu Nayeem as saying.
Fire teams have been mobilized from across the capital to control the blaze.
Fires are common in Bangladesh clothes factories. Scores of workers are killed each year due to fires sparked by substandard electrical wiring in these factories.
This comes as thousands of garment workers in Bangladesh have launched a strike over low wages and poor working conditions over the past months.
At least four workers died on December 12 after Bangladeshi police opened fire with live ammunition on protestors, who had demanded the implementation of a hike in the minimum wage, approved by the government and industry in July.
The violence in the Asian nation erupted after the government refused to increase the minimum wage from $27 to $73 a month.
Union officials have argued that the pay rise is not sufficient to ensure a minimum standard of living for workers in the face of surging prices.
Moving the goal posts for Israel
Morning Star | 13 December 2010
MPs will vote today on the Police Reform Bill, which contains a plethora of proposals concerning election of police commissioners, setting up a police reserve force, alcohol licensing, drugs enforcement and banning permanent protests in Parliament Square.
But this massive Bill also contains one clause which has been inserted at the request of a foreign government.
Clause 151 would give the Director of Public Prosecutions a veto over whether an arrest warrant could be issued for war crime suspects.
This would essentially allow the government of the day a political veto over what is a legal question.
War crimes are closely defined under international law and all legal administrations have a responsibility to apply the law strictly and impartially.
Yet Israel believes that different rules should apply to itself or that conduct which would be a war crime in any other circumstance should not be viewed as such when committed by the zionist state.
And the British political Establishment supports Tel Aviv on this issue, which is why David Cameron and Gordon Brown undertook to propose this measure after former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni cancelled a visit to London to dodge a war crimes arrest warrant.
The Israelis were furious because, in common with the European Union and the US, they believe that war crimes are committed only by Africans or by countries at odds with the western allies.
Tel Aviv complained of being “singled out” for special treatment. The opposite is the case.
The demand to arrest Livni for the well-documented crimes carried out by Israeli forces in their merciless assault on Gaza was a bid to ensure that Israel is bound by the same international law as other states.
Such a principle would also have implications for people such as George W Bush and Tony Blair, who have drawn a line under their own war crimes, moving on to build their personal fortunes.
There are obvious problems to applying the law equally to rich and militarily powerful states, as there are to powerful and wealthy individuals in society, but MPs have a responsibility not to collaborate with squalid political manoeuvres such as clause 151.
People across the world can see the continued indifference of Nato and its allies to the Palestinians’ plight.
Washington formally conceded last week that it lacked the will to force Israel to end its illegal colonisation of the occupied West Bank, including east Jerusalem.
European Union foreign affairs commissioner Cathy Ashton echoed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s weasel words, expressing regret that Israel “has not been in a position to accept an extension of the settlement moratorium.”
On behalf of the EU, she rejected constructive proposals from 26 former EU and member-state leaders, including a ban on false labelling of settlement products, and paid lip service to a non-existent US-led peace process.
In doing so, she implicated the EU in the ongoing Israeli war crime of collective punishment against the people of Gaza, where the infrastructure, including drinking water provision, remains in ruins because of Israel’s callous blockade.
If MPs allow clause 151 to pass unchallenged, they too will be colluding in Israeli war crimes and providing the means for war criminals to come and go freely in Britain.
At the very least, MPs should read the Palestine Solidarity Campaign briefing on this issue – www.palestinecampaign.org/universal-jurisdiction – before casting their votes.
Unprecedented: master’s thesis on Jewish white privilege and Israel attacked in Canadian legislature
By Cecilie Surasky | MuzzleWatch | December 10 2010
Canadian grad student, Jewish anti-Zionist activist, and descendant of Holocaust survivors Jenny Peto is breaking new ground with her University of Toronto master’s thesis The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education, though perhaps not in the way she intended.
The Canadian National Post reports:
It has provoked intense debate online, in academia and even the political realm. Progressive Conservative MPP Steve Clark raised it in the legislature Tuesday in response to sharp criticism in the Jewish community, calling it “shockingly anti-Semitic.” Citizenship and immigration minister Eric Hoskins likewise condemned the thesis in the legislature saying he was “greatly disturbed and, in fact, disgusted,” when he read media coverage about it.
These attacks (by some if not many who haven’t actually read it) on a master’s thesis, one that has already been through an academic review no less, are unprecedented. Also from The National Post:
Michiel Horn, a York University history professor and author of Academic Freedom in Canada: A History: “I know not of a single case where a master’s or a phD paper has been subject of discussion in the legislature of any province in Canada,” he said.
You can read Jenny Peto’s thesis yourself by downloading it here. Her abstract states:
This paper focuses on issues of Jewish identity, whiteness and victimhood within hegemonic Holocaust education. I argue that today, Jewish people of European descent enjoy white privilege and are among the most socio-economically advantaged groups in the West. Despite this privilege, the organized Jewish community makes claims about Jewish victimhood that are widely accepted within that community and within popular discourse in the West. I propose that these claims to victimhood are no longer based in a reality of oppression, but continue to be propagated because a victimized Jewish identity can produce certain effects that are beneficial to the organized Jewish community and the Israeli nation-state. I focus on two related Holocaust education projects – the March of the Living and the March of Remembrance and Hope – to show how Jewish victimhood is instrumentalized in ways that obscure Jewish privilege, deny Jewish racism and promote the interests of the Israeli nation-state.
I myself can’t wait to read it. There’s not a lot here that those seriously familiar with these Jewish institutions and Israeli history and politics could really argue with. For too long, the central organizing principle of much of institutional Jewry has been fear, which has been essential in, among other things, enabling an unaccountable Israel. And few programs more dramatically reflect this than the March of the Living which inflicts a proxy Holocaust trauma on Jewish teenagers (without proper context and support, so I hear from friends who have gone) as an essential right of passage into Jewishness.
To the young N. American Ashkenazi Jews especially who can’t help but notice that Jews as a whole occupy places of real economic and racial privilege in their communities, the messages of perpetual victimhood (and the implied privileges that might go with it, as in the case with the free pass that Israel tends to get) just don’t compute.
I’d imagine that in addition to her own experience, Peto had plenty to draw on from work and discussions happening in academic environments these days regarding Holocaust studies, Israeli politics, white privilege and so on. Is it possible that Peto’s crime is to have thought too complexly –in an academic setting.
Wall Street bonuses cashed in for sex, food and art
RT | December 9, 2010
If the impressionist artist were to illustrate something of today’s New York City, it just might be moneybags.
Amid the lackluster American economic climate, Christies Auction House is seeing sunny days, with more than 600-million dollars worth of impressionist and modern art sold this year.
“Since 2008, we have seen an increasing return of confidence to the art market,” said Conor Jordan, of Christies New York.
New York has once again, become one of the Christies premier selling sites.Just as Wall Street’s wealthy and powerful, are back to indulging.
Pampering at the La Prairie Spa at the Ritz Carlton, involves wearing decadent hors d’ oeuvres. A 90-minute skin caviar facial costs more than $300 and 3.4 ounces of La Prairie’s Skin Caviar Luxe Cream sells for $710.
“This time of year, a lot of our business comes from corporate gift certificates,” said Spa Manager, Sandra Sadowski.
As corporate America is banking record breaking profits this year, it may be no coincidence that business at Wempe Jewelers has spiked. The $158,000 dollar price tag of some luxury watches exceeds the average annual income of three US households combined.
“We’re expecting a very busy time. The busiest time of the year,” said Raik Kraise, Wempe manager.
Busyness boosted perhaps by big bonuses coming mainly from one street, Wall Street, a symbol of the finance industry, the financial collapse and record breaking compensation that will reportedly reach $144 billion dollars this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, 2010 bonuses will be up 4 percent from last year’s record haul.
If anyone would know about business, it would be those who work at Rick’s Cabaret. At the New York Gentlemen’s Club, happiness bares lots of skin and beauty, but it doesn’t come free.
“For an evening, six, seven eight thousand dollars, 10-thousand dollars, it’s hard not to have a good time when you’re surrounded by nearly naked women,” said Rick’s Cabaret Communications Manager, Allan Priaulx.
Female entertainers working at Rick’s said they are continuing to benefit from a boom in business following Wall Street’s rebound.
“These guys are getting much-deserved bonuses.They want to celebrate the bonuses and party and have a great time,” said Randi Newton, an entertainer at Rick’s Cabaret.
From sex cravings, to food cravings, some of Wall Street’s cats have gotten fat by forking up $175 for a 10-ounce Kobe beef hamburger.
“We still sell a handful of them every month. A good handful,” Heather Tierney, co-owner of Wall Street Burger Shoppe said.
On Main Street where more than 15-million Americans are officially unemployed, the US Poverty Population reached nearly 44 million, a 50-year high.
Ironically, that figure marks New York City’s most expensive residential sale this year. A seven-floor, 5th Avenue mansion was purchased for $44 million dollars. This, as more than two million homes have been swallowed up by foreclosure in 2010.
In this so-called rebounding US economy, purveyors of all things luxury are, in fact, resurging. All while the majority of Americans are left wondering when life will finally begin looking as pretty as the painting.
Mike Norman, the chief economist at John Thomas Financial explained there is an expanding gap between the rich and poor in America.
“The resources of the government have been directed almost completely towards one sector of the economy, that’s been the financial, that’s been the huge beneficiary when most working people, and by far, the rest of the economy has been left to flounder,” Norman commented. “It’s very disturbing.”
He said the US now ranks near the bottom of global income inequality lists, and it is a direct result of US government policies.
The failed policies transcend American party politics, he argued, both Republicans and Democrats continue to support the financial sector at the expense of all others. … Full article and video report
Israel’s Racist Rabbis: ‘Hate the Gentile’
By Jonathan Cook – Palestine Chronicle – December 9, 2010
Jews must not rent homes to ‘gentiles’. That was the religious decree issued this week by at least 50 of Israel’s leading rabbis, many of them employed by the state as municipal religious leaders. Jews should first warn, then “ostracise” fellow Jews who fail to heed the directive, the rabbis declared.
The decree is the latest in a wave of racist pronouncements from some of Israel’s most influential rabbis.
In October, Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed, delivered a ruling, signed by 17 other rabbis in the city, telling Jewish residents not to sell or rent property to members of the country’s Palestinian Arab minority, who make up a fifth of the population.
His followers turned words into deeds by attacking Arab students in the city and threatening to burn down the homes of Jewish landlords renting to the students.
Similar edicts have recently been backed by dozens of rabbis in Tel Aviv and nearby Bnei Brak, a suburb of 150,000 mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews. They have threatened to “expose” any Jews who rent to “foreigners” — in this case, a reference to migrant workers and African refugees who are crowded into neglected neighbourhoods in the centre of the country.
After many weeks of silence on these declarations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was finally forced to issue a condemnation yesterday, describing the rabbis’ call as undemocratic and contradicting the bible, which, he said, called for Jews to “love the stranger”.
Nonetheless, racism in Israel is increasingly enjoying high-level sanction among the most influential sectors of the religious establishment.
The latest ruling was signed by Shlomo Aviner, a spiritual leader of Israel’s national-religious camp; Yosef Elyashiv, a senior ultra-Orthodox rabbi; and Avigdor Neventzal, rabbi of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Its sentiments have also been echoed by Ovadia Yosef, a former chief rabbi of Israel and the spiritual leader of Shas, an important political and religious party in Mr Netanyahu’s government. “Selling to [non-Jews], even for a lot of money, is not allowed. We won’t let them take control of us here,” Mr Yosef said recently.
Two months ago, Mr Yosef explained the logic behind his views and those of like-minded rabbis.
“Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us.” Explaining why God allowed non-Jews long lives, he added: “Imagine that your donkey would die, you’d lose your income. [The donkey] is your servant. … That’s why he [the gentile] gets a long life, to work well for the Jew.”
Mr Yosef’s remarks against “gentiles” were greeted with respectful silence by Israeli officials and most of the media. It was left to the United States government and the New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to issue rebukes. Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s head, accused the rabbi of advancing “hateful and divisive ideas”.
The rabbis’ use of theology to support racial discrimination is being applied to more than just housing.
This summer, Yosef Elitzur and Yitzhak Shapira, who head an influential seminary in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, published The King’s Torah, a 230-page guide to how Jews should treat non-Jews.
The two rabbis concluded that Jews were obligated to kill anyone who posed a danger, immediate or potential, to the Jewish people, and implied that all Palestinians were to be considered a threat. On these grounds, the pair justified killing Palestinian civilians and even their babies.
Last month Mr Shapira also backed the use of Palestinians as human shields, a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and a practice that Israel’s supreme court has outlawed.
The King’s Torah, far from being condemned by moderate rabbis, has been greeted with a general silence and enthusiastic support from a number of notable religious leaders.
Arik Ascherman, head of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, said the growing extremism of the the Orthodox religious establishment in Israel reflected the increasingly right-wing atmosphere in Israel that made the expression of ultra-nationalist views permissible.
In the current climate, he said, moderate rabbis were reluctant to speak out against their colleagues. Many of these rabbis belong to the Conservative or Reform streams of Judaism, which are not officially recognised in Israel.
“The religious sanction being given to the political right by these rabbis is dangerous. It makes their opinions seem more acceptable,” he said.
That is being reflected in public surveys, in which many Israeli Jews express support for anti-Arab views. A poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute published last week showed that 46 per cent of the country’s Jews did not want to live near Arab citizens, and 39 per cent felt the same about foreign workers.
Even more, 53 per cent, wanted Arab citizens to be encouraged to leave Israel and half believed Arabs should not have equal rights with Jews. Among the religious public, racist sentiments were more popular.
Israeli prosecutors, meanwhile, have turned a blind eye to the refusal of several prominent endorsers of The King’s Torah to obey a summons calling them for investigation. “Our holy Torah is not a subject for investigation or trial by flesh and blood,” the rabbis said.
In all, the rabbinical establishment is growing increasingly bold in promoting its vision of a Jewish state run according to holy law, according to Zvi Barel, a commentator with the daily newspaper Haaretz.
“They and their supporters are transforming zealous fundamentalism and the shameful The King’s Torah into the mainstream,” Mr Barel wrote recently.
The general trend towards extremism has not happened by chance, said Sefi Rachelevsky, a prominent Israeli writer critical of the Orthodox rabbinate. Israel’s public coffers pay the salaries of some of the most extremist rabbis, and the education system regularly falls under the political control of religious parties like Shas.
Mr Shapira, who advocates killing non-Jewish babies, receives large sums from the education ministry for his yeshiva — a seminary where he spreads his message of hate. Religious students also receive extra subsidies unavailable to normal students to encourage their attendance at such yeshivas.
The rabbis exert their influence on the youngest and most impressionable too. When the new school year started in September, 52 per cent of Jewish children in first grade attended a strictly religious school.
Pupils in some of the most religious schools, Mr Rachlevsky pointed out, are taught that Jews sit above nature, which comprises four categories: “inanimate”, “vegetable”, “animal” and “speakers” — or non-Jews, who are considered no more than talking animals.
– Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.jkcook.net. (A version of this article originally appeared in The National – www.thenational.ae – published in Abu Dhabi.)
Indian envoy ‘frisked’ at US airport
Press TV – December 9, 2010
Indian Ambassador to the United States Meera Shankar
India is to file a diplomatic complaint with the US after its ambassador to Washington was singled out and frisked at a US airport.
The incident took place on December 4 at the Jackson-Evers International Airport when the Indian envoy to the United States, Meera Shankar, was about to board a flight to Baltimore after attending an event at Mississippi State University.
The Indian Embassy in Washington has strongly protested the incident.
Shankar was pulled out of the security line and frisked at the airport. She was subjected to a hands-on search despite staff being told about her diplomatic status, Press Trust of India news agency quoted an Indian Embassy official as saying.
“This is unacceptable to India and we are going to take it up with the US government and I hope things could be resolved so that such unpleasant incidents do not recur,” India’s Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna told reporters in New Delhi.
The incident has also embarrassed the university officials who invited Shankar to give a speech for an international studies program.
“It was a wonderful program, maybe the best we’ve had, (but) this stupid incident ruined the whole thing. She said, ‘I will never come back here,'” said Janos Radvanyi, chair of Mississippi State University’s international studies department.
“We are sending her a letter of apology.”
A US Transportation Security Administration spokesman said, “Diplomats are not exempt from the searches and that Shankar was screened in accordance with TSA’s security policies and procedures.”
Shankar suffered a similar experience in September when she was patted by a security officer at a Chicago airport, AFP reported.
US immigration authorities in the O’Hare Airport in Chicago questioned the visiting Indian Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel in September after his name and birth date matched with that of another Praful Patel, who is on the United States watch list.
See also:
Sari-clad India ambassador gets pat-down at Miss. airport
AP | December 8, 2010
… The Clarion-Ledger newspaper of Jackson quoted witnesses as saying Shankar was told she was singled out for additional screening because of her dress. She had on a sari, which drapes across the body and is worn by many Indians… Full article
Settler visit closes Salit village overnight
SALFIT — Residents of the northern West Bank town of Kilf Haris were ordered to close their shops early Wednesday as Israeli soldiers evacuated the area ahead of a visit by religious Israelis to a nearby tomb.
Locals said they believed the military escort of at least 10 armored vehicles was for a group of settler rabbis heading to a shrine in the village.
During the visit, witnesses said, a series of checkpoints and guard posts were erected and remained in place until the group withdrew.
An Israeli military spokesman said a group of 30 Israeli civilians were escorted on an “arranged, pre-authorized secured visit to the grave of Yehoshua Ben-Nun … for a Hanuka candle-lighting ceremony.” He said the visit proceeded without incident.
Security sources confirm that similar visits are carried out at night every few months, with one source saying Israeli forces do not close the area, but “advise local residents to stay indoors to avoid friction.”
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The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food
Lies Are Unbekoming | January 20, 2026
Soybeans generate approximately $80 million annually in mandatory producer assessments alone, funding a marketing apparatus that has transformed an industrial commodity into one of America’s most trusted “health foods.” The campaign succeeded. Soy milk lines supermarket shelves beside dairy. Soy protein fortifies everything from infant formula to energy bars. Vegetarians rely on tofu and tempeh as dietary staples. Doctors recommend soy to menopausal women. School lunch programs serve soy-based meat substitutes to children. An estimated 60 percent of processed foods contain soy derivatives. The premise underlying this proliferation—that Asians have thrived on soy for millennia and that modern science validates its health benefits—has been repeated so often it functions as established fact.
Kaayla T. Daniel’s The Whole Soy Story dismantles this premise through systematic examination of the scientific literature. The book documents that traditional Asian soy consumption averaged roughly one tablespoon daily, consumed as fermented condiments after processing methods that neutralized inherent toxins—a pattern bearing no resemblance to American consumption of industrially processed soy protein isolate, soy flour, and soy oil. Daniel catalogs the antinutrients that survive modern processing (protease inhibitors, phytates, lectins, saponins), the toxic compounds created by industrial methods (nitrosamines, lysinoalanine, hexane residues), and the heavy metals concentrated in soy products (manganese, aluminum, fluoride, cadmium). She traces the mechanisms by which soy isoflavones—plant estrogens present at pharmacologically significant levels—disrupt thyroid function, impair fertility, and interact with hormone-sensitive cancers. The evidence emerges from peer-reviewed journals, FDA documents, and industry sources themselves.
The stakes extend beyond individual dietary choices. Infants fed soy formula receive isoflavone doses equivalent to several birth control pills daily, with blood concentrations 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than their natural estrogen levels. Soy protein isolate—the ingredient in formula, protein bars, and thousands of products—has never received GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status; its only pre-1960s use was as an industrial paper sealant. Two senior FDA scientists formally protested their own agency’s approval of soy health claims, citing evidence of thyroid damage and reproductive harm. The Honolulu Heart Program found that men consuming tofu twice weekly showed accelerated brain aging and increased dementia. These findings have not penetrated public awareness because the institutions responsible for consumer protection have been compromised by the industry they regulate. The Whole Soy Story presents the evidence that has been systematically excluded from mainstream health messaging, enabling readers to evaluate for themselves what the soy industry prefers they never learn. … continue
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