Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Re: Protest fear prompts St Andrews hotel to cancel pro-Israeli charity ball.
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/fife/protest-fear-prompts-st-andrews-hotel-to-cancel-pro-israeli-charity-ball-1.88849
Protest fear prompts St Andrews hotel to cancel pro-Israeli charity ball
By Andrew Argo, 30 April 2013 5.46pm.
St Andrews Jewish Society president Joel Salmon outside the Golf Hotel.DC Thomson
A St Andrews hotel called off a pro-Israeli charity ball after being told there would be a Palestinian protest outside and the possibility of violence.
The two sides were unrepentant after the latest outbreak of Middle Eastern tension in the university town at the weekend.
The St Andrews Golf Hotel on the Scores pulled the plug on the St Andrews Jewish Society event on Friday for “health and safety reasons” after discussing the situation with the police.
The venue had accepted a booking for the event for seven charities, including Friends of the Israeli Defence Forces and the Jewish National Fund.
The hotel then received emails and phone calls of an aggressive nature and also learned there would be a protest outside by the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.
Manager Neil Thomson raised the issue with the police and decided that the health and safety of patrons, staff and neighbours could not be guaranteed.
“We decided to cancel the booking for health and safety reasons,” he added, declining to comment further.
A spokesman for police in Fife said: “The hotel discussed the situation with us and the decision to cancel was taken by the hotel.”
The event was rearranged at another venue which Joel Salmon, president of St Andrews Jewish Society, declined to reveal. It was “a resounding success” and raised nearly £1,000.
Of the beneficiaries, he described FIDF as Israel’s Help for Heroes and said the JNF was building a bomb shelter for a community targeted by Gaza rocket attacks.
“Despite the adverse circumstances of the venue pulling out the day before due to allegedly aggressive phone calls and emails from individuals supporting the SPSC, the Jewish Society was able to secure an alternative venue,” he said.
“The security of our guests will always be our primary concern and so we relocated the ball to a secret location.”
The society has been “overwhelmed by the support received from the Jewish community, the university and the local authorities.”
He said the protest was organised by people with little or no connection to St Andrews, and added that the society “will not cave in to intimidation or bullying”.
Mick Napier, of the SPSC, said his organisation was involved in the protest and had nothing to do with threats of violence.
He described the beneficiaries as militant Zionist organisations, which supported apartheid and perpetrated terrible crimes against the people of Palestine.
“We hope the cancellation of the event will set a precedent and it will be increasingly difficult for the society to hold fundraising events for these organisations,” he said.
Thursday, 4 April 2013
BDS Tries, But Can't Break Dead Sea Product Sales - Inside Israel - News - Israel National News
BDS Tries, But Can't Break Dead Sea Product Sales
The Dead Sea products business is alive and well, despite the best efforts of the BDS crowd
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By Arutz 7 StaffFirst Publish: 4/4/2013, 11:04 AM
Floating in the Dead Sea
Flash 9i0
For as long as the Dead Sea has been around, people have been visiting it to take advantage of the legendary healing properties of its water, minerals, and mud. While the salt in the ocean is almost entirely sodium chloride (table salt), the Dead Sea contains a complex mixture of chloride and bromide salts of sodium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and others, in addition to various sulfates.
The unique mixture of minerals at the bottom of the world has been recognized for thousands of years as a wonderful source of healing and youth for the skin and joints. Israel leads the way in bringing the Dead Sea to people around the world via personal care products.
The Dead Sea cosmetics industry brings prosperity to all residents and employees, regardless of race or religion. And the minerals are sourced from undisputed Israeli sources.
However, because some of the factories are on disputed lands, all Dead Sea products have fallen into the realm of the Boycott-Divest-Sanction (BDS) movement. Consequently, the largest of the Dead Sea brands, Ahava, has closed some of its stores.
Undeterred, loyal fans of Dead Sea products, from America to Singapore and from Italy to South Korea turn to the Internet to find their favorite products. Arik Barel, CEO of Jerusalem-based Judaica Webstore, says that the harder the forces of BDS work, the more business gets sent his way. Whether it’s the publicity the products receive from the BDS movement or the desire to fight against the BDS movement itself, business just isn’t drying up for Dead Sea cosmetics.
Who would have believed that the Dead Sea would become the front line in the war against Israel’s legitimacy? It is the site of the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and where Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt. Later, King David went into hiding in Ein Gedi, an oasis adjacent to the Dead Sea, when mad King Saul tried to murder him. And much later, less than two thousand years ago (virtually a blink of the eye in Jewish history!) the Zealots made their last stand for Jewish sovereignty against the Romans in King Herod’s mountaintop fortress of Masada on the shores of the Dead Sea.
As the Jews of the past faced physical persecution, Israeli businesses of today face economic persecution. The answer to this is easy – don’t let the BDS bullies win.
Neo-Nazi Greek party plans international expansion
Golden Dawn party chairman, Nikolaos Michaloliakos
Greece’s Golden Dawn party has reportedly embarked on an international expansion campaign.
The neo-Nazi party, which is linked to black-shirted gangs that terrorise ethnic minorities and immigrants in Greece, has established a transatlantic group to preach the party’s policies in the United States.
According to reports, the “Emigrants” sub-division group intends to promote the party's cause “wherever there are Greeks”. There are around three million Greeks living in the US.
Father Alex Karloutsos, a leading Greek community figure from New York, told the Guardian that "Nationalism, fascism, xenophobia are not part of our spiritual or cultural heritage - we don't see any gold in Golden Dawn.”
The party also reportedly intends to establish offices in Germany, Australia and Canada to target the estimated seven million-strong Greek diaspora.
Golden Dawn, whose logo appears to be a version of the swastika, holds 18 seats in parliament. Party members have been associated with Holocaust denial and antisemitism.
http://www.thejc.com/news/world-news/104604/neo-nazi-greek-party-plans-international-expansion
Anti-Israel union case was ‘act of epic folly’
“Disappointed”: Ronnie Fraser
A failed legal challenge to the anti-Israeli policies of Britain’s lecturers’ union has divided opinion as community activists try to grapple with the repercussions.
An employment tribunal last week dismissed a claim of harassment against the University College Union (UCU) by the director of the Academic Friends of Israel, Ronnie Fraser, who had accused the union of “institutional antisemitism”.
In his judgment, Judge Anthony Snelson, who presided over the three-person tribunal, attacked the claim as “a sorry saga”, which represented “an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means”.
One lawyer active in Jewish affairs, Jonathan Goldberg QC, commented: “This enormous but legally flawed lawsuit was an act of epic folly by all concerned which will negatively impact our community for a long time to come. You only bring such showcase litigation if you are certain to win.”
Lawsuit will have negative impact on our community for a long time'
The chairman of UK Lawyers for Israel, Jonathan Turner, also questioned the wisdom of bringing the action. “I had deep misgivings and feared it would fail,” he said. But he called it “a reverse, not a disaster”, suggesting that lessons could be learned on “which cases to fight and how”.
Anthony Julius, of solicitors Mishcon de Reya, who had represented Mr Fraser, was unavailable for comment this week.
But communal organisations which had supported the lawsuit closed ranks. A spokesman for Fair Play, the anti-boycott campaign founded by the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, said: “Years of campaigning inside UCU had convinced us and many union members that the union was incapable of fairly tackling complaints of antisemitism by itself. Supporting Ronnie was the right thing to do.”
A number of JLC members are understood to have contributed to Mr Fraser’s fighting fund.
Board vice-president Jonathan Arkush, who is a lawyer, said that “many aspects of this ruling surprised and disappointed me, not least the suggestion that the case was brought for a political end. A trade union member who feels that he is the victim of racial harassment or antisemitism is surely entitled to bring a claim without being labelled as politically motivated.”
The tribunal stated that a belief in Zionism or attachment to Israel was “not intrinsically a part of Jewishness” and was not an aspect that could be protected under equality law.
Eric Moonman, co-president of the Zionist Federation, said that this was a “wrong and worrying interpretation. It presents a very real issue for a different campaign to make sure there is an accepted definition of Jewishness which highlights the integral nature of Israel to Jews.”
Mr Fraser had argued that a succession of anti-Israel resolutions passed by the union’s annual congress, and the resulting incidents, had created an inhospitable climate for Jews.
But the tribunal said that while he may have found certain comments upsetting, they did not amount to harassment in the legal sense.
While the panel found him a “sincere” witness, it contrasted his “down-to-earth style” with the “magnificent prose” in which his lawyers had couched his case.
Although some of Mr Fraser’s witnesses were “impressive”, the tribunal was highly critical of others, saying they were “more disposed to score points or play to the gallery”.
Evidence that Jewish speakers were jeered and harassed at union congresses was found to be “false”, while JLC chief executive Jeremy Newmark’s cited reason for his exclusion from a UCU meeting was “untrue”.
The tribunal panel was also unimpressed with the “glib evidence” of MP John Mann and former MP Denis MacShane, key figures in the All-Party Parliamentary Campaign against Antisemitism.
The panel said it was troubled by a “worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression” underlying the claim. It was also critical of its “gargantuan scale”, with 23 bundles and 29 oral witnesses for Mr Fraser plus four written testimonies — compared to five witnesses and two written testimonies for the defence.
Mr Fraser said that, while naturally “disappointed” at the outcome, he would continue to campaign as a member of the Board of Deputies “to accept a definition of Jewishness which includes a connection with Israel”.
UCU general secretary Sally Hunt said that Mr Fraser would “be treated with respect within the union as will his views on this question. Not that a decision has been made. I hope in turn that he, and others who share his views, will play an active part in the union and its debates rather than seek recourse to the law.”
In a statement released by the British Committee for Universities for Palestine, UCU executive member Tom Hickey welcomed “a landmark judgment. The accusation of antisemitism against UCU because it supports a boycott is absurd.”
Human rights lawyer Adam Wagner said that the argument that attachment to Israel was not an intrinsic part of Jewishness could be an issue to raise in appeal.
“Discrimination law is unpredictable,” he said, “as shown by the recent European Court of Rights judgments on religious discrimination.
“However, even if an appeal was successful on the legal points, it would still be difficult to overcome the very significant factual findings — the claimant needs to show that there was harassment in his case.
“Perhaps even more problematic would be persuading an appeal court to wade into the vexed and arguable political — that is, not legal — question of whether anti-Zionism can plausibly amount to racism.
Given the court’s comments about this ‘sorry saga’, this may be the last we hear of that argument for some time.”
Citing Obama’s March trip to Israel, 100 prominent US Jewish leaders call on Benjamin Netanyahu to ‘demonstrate commitment’ to peace
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meet in Jerusalem in 2010 (photo credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO/Flash90)
NEW YORK – A group of influential American Jews delivered a letter to Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Wednesday urging Israel’s prime minister to take “confidence building steps” that might encourage peace talks with the Palestinians.
“We believe that this is a compelling moment for you and your new government to respond to President [Barack] Obama’s call for peace by taking concrete confidence building steps designed to demonstrate Israel’s commitment to a ‘two-states for two peoples’ solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict,” read the open letter, which had over 100 signatories by Wednesday.
The missive came several days before US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to return to the region in to bolster efforts to restart peace negotiations between the sides.
“Your leadership would challenge Palestinian leaders to take similarly constructive steps, including, most importantly, a prompt return to the negotiating table,” the letter explained. “We urge you, in particular, to work closely with Secretary of State John Kerry to devise pragmatic initiatives, consistent with Israel’s security needs, which would represent Israel’s readiness to make painful territorial sacrifices for the sake of peace.”
Though the letter was sponsored by the left-leaning Israel Policy Forum, the list of signatories includes names from a relatively wide spectrum of American Jewish opinion, including former senior Defense Department official Dov Zakheim, former AIPAC executive director Tom Dine, well-known philanthropists S. Daniel Abraham, Charles Bronfman, Lester Crown and Stanley Gold, Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, former Union of Reform Judaism president Rabbi Eric Yoffie and current URJ president Rabbi Rick Jacobs, Hebrew Union College president Rabbi David Ellenson, leaders from the Jewish organizational world, and others.
High-level talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been frozen since 2010, at the tail end of a 10-month settlement building moratorium. Ramallah demands settlement construction must cease before they will return to the negotiation table, while Israel has called for talks without preconditions.
During his visit last month, Obama called for the Palestinians to drop their demands, but Kerry’s trip may include efforts to coax Israel into making a number of concessions in exchange for security guarantees. The concessions may include another settlement freeze, the agreement to the 1967 lines as a starting point for talks and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
In the letter, the Jewish leaders struck a complimentary tone toward Netanyahu and backed Obama’s assertion in a speech delivered in Jerusalem that “so long as there is a United States of America, Ah-tem lo le-vad [You are not alone].”
“[We join] President Obama in expressing our steadfast support for your efforts to ensure Israel’s future as the secure and democratic nation state of the Jewish people,” the letter read.
The leaders also complimented Netanyahu for the “rapprochement with Turkey,” which they said was “achieved in great measure due to your leadership.”
French Jews win right to choose their own names | The Times of Israel
PARIS — After decades of denying Jews the right to change their French last names to their original Jewish ones, the French Ministry of Justice recently revised its position.
Fearful of anti-Semitism, many French Jews decided to adopt French surnames in the late 1940s and ’50s.
“Even though the French administration never forced them to adopt less foreign-sounding names, they were highly encouraged to do so,” says Céline Masson, a lecturer in psychoanalysis at Université Paris-Diderot and a co-founder of La Force du Nom (“The Strength of the Name”), a Paris-based organization that lobbies for the right to reclaim old names.
Nearly 70 years after World War II, many descendants of both Holocaust survivors and Jews from North Africa have decided to reconnect with their roots by taking back the names of their ancestors.
French law, however, stipulates that once changed, a last name is considered “immutable.” It also prohibits citizens from reverting to a “foreign-sounding name.”
Céline Masson says changing one’s name can be a “trauma.” (Courtesy of Céline Masson)
In 2010, the debate entered the national spotlight when Masson and co-founder Natalie Felzenszwalbe submitted their first name-change requests to the State Council, the relevant government agency.
“We’re talking about a very small minority here,” Masson told The Times of Israel. “So far, we’ve had about 30 cases or so. But in a country where 76,000 Jews were deported [during the Holocaust], it’s bound to be a powerful debate.”
In their applications, both advocates argued that allowing the reversion to previous names constitutes a “symbolic reparation” that France owes its Jewish citizens.
“Reparation has been achieved at every level in France: when Nazi collaborators Klaus Barbie, Paul Touvier and Maurice Papon were brought to justice in the 1980s and 1990s; when President Chirac made his famous 1995 speech and became the first French politician to recognize France’s responsibility in the July 1942 Vel d’Hiv Roundup; and of course financial reparations. What’s missing is the right of name reversion,” Masson said.
Even though she and Felzenszwalbe were initially told the law wouldn’t be repealed, the French Ministry of Justice has revised its policy, adopting a case-by-case approach.
In an op-ed entitled “Stranger to One’s Name,” published in the daily Libération newspaper Feb. 28, 41-year-old David Forest — now renamed Fuks — explained how he was finally allowed to revert to his Polish-born grandfather’s name in October 2012, more than 60 years after the family changed it.
“When I was asked about the origins of my name, even people with the best intentions never failed to ask what my ‘real name’ was,” he wrote. “In fact, I often heard my parents say that our current name wasn’t a ‘real one’.”
“The truth lay within the name we abandoned — the only one that truly said where our family came from and who we were.”
In her 2012 book, “Rendez-nous Nos Noms! Quand des Juifs Revendiquent Leur Identité Perdue” (“Give Back Our Names! When Jews Reclaim Their Lost Identities,” Masson writes that the number of name changes within the French Jewish community peaked between 1945 and 1957 — a total of 2,000 requests.
Originally from Tunisia, Masson’s family — the Hassans — changed its name when it immigrated to France in the ’60s, like many other Sephardic families from Morocco and Algeria.
‘Sometimes family members don’t agree on what their name should be and what it represents’
“My name has been changed, and it’s not difficult to pronounce it,” she wrote. “It is cut off from its history and its original language; it has lost its flavor, its accent.”
In her book, Masson also interviews Tunisian-born Magali Taillé — originally Taieb — whose family emigrated to France at the same time.
“Changing one’s name is like changing jurisdiction,” said Taieb. “Magali Taieb was a young Jewish girl raised in the values of Tunisian society of the 1950s. She stopped growing up in 1970. Magali Taillé was born in the same year and studied in Parisian universities. Between the two, there’s a gap, a distance, a duality, an incompatibility. Until they were finally reconciled.”
Backed by years of experience as a psychoanalyst and her personal history, Masson explains that changing one’s name can represent a “trauma,” especially for younger generations that now want to reconnect with their Jewish roots and family past.
In some cases, certain family members choose to revert to their old Jewish names, while others maintain the newer one.
“Sometimes family members don’t agree on what their name should be and what it represents,” Masson said. “I’ve seen cases where children feel like having a Jewish name, and the parents or the grandparents don’t, or vice versa.”
“This is the kind of problem we didn’t think we would encounter at first,” she continued. “But this is definitely something we ought to analyze more in the years to come. It is yet another interesting aspect of how complex a Jewish identity can be, even today.”
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