Recently, a popular Israeli singer composed a song called “Kakdila”. Many Israelis interpreted this song as an insult to the character of Israelis of Russian origin. In my opinion, this song was uncalled for. The many wonderful contributions of Russian Aliyah to the State of Israel is well known. Their economic, cultural, and demographic impact on the country and to Israel, the Start-Up Nation, has been profound. However, this controversy led me to travel down memory lane on a personal and nostalgic journey. What I experienced on this journey refutes everything this song implies.
Forty three years ago, I was an Aliyah emissary of the Jewish Agency for Israel, based in the office of the Consulate General in Boston. I was approached by the Office of the Prime Minister and the Nativ Organization to travel on a mission to the Former Soviet Union to visit Jewish activists and refuseniks. In 1979 there were of course no diplomatic relations between Israel and the Soviet Union. My partner on this mission was Mark Sokoll, then the regional director of the American Zionist Youth Foundation for New England campuses, and later served as the President and CEO of JCC Greater Boston. Our mission included visits to Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent, Bukhara, and Samarkand.
Men on a Mission. Posing as university lecturers, Jonathan Davis (left) and partner Mark Sokoll in Tashkent, one of the many places in the Former Soviet Union they visited to engage with Jewish activists and ‘Refuseniks’.
Our cover story was that we were university lecturers in the USA. We were briefed on how to behave during our few weeks as “tourists” in the Soviet Union. For example, we were told to not bring written lists of the activists, but memorize them instead; do not talk about anything sensitive in the hotel rooms as they may be bugged and that our tour guide was probably working and reporting for the Soviet Government. We were instructed to update the activists on current events in Israel and encourage and reassure them that we in Israel were fighting for their freedom. Strange as it may seem now, we were to provide them with duty free items from the local tourist shop called the Birioska, as gifts for their livelihood. At night we were to quietly reach out to the Jewish Activist destinations in the most subtle way possible.
Free at Last. The writer enjoying a meal and kosher wine with a Jewish family in Bukhara who he would meet again five years later, free in Israel.
We were honoured to participate in this Zionist mission.
Amongst many memorable experiences was celebrating in Leningrad a Pesach seder – somewhat poignant as the Passover festival spotlights ‘freedom’ by celebrating the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt . The seder was held in a small apartment, with at least 70 people squeezed in. We had brought Matzot and wine from the USA, a real treat and delicacy for the locals. We led the Seder with great vigour including singing traditional songs, “Let My People Go” and “Next Year in Jerusalem“. This was a Seder I would never forget. To my amazement the guest of honour at the Seder was Yuli Kosharovsky, the famous refusenik and Jewish activist who had been released from jail just 24 hours earlier. What an honour it was to meet this Jewish hero. Yuli was an outstanding engineer in the Soviet Union, but his ‘crime’ was to request the right to make Aliyah.
Celebrating Freedom. The writer (right) with Yuli Kosharovsky famous refusenik and Jewish activist who had been released from prison 24 hours earlier (left) and family at Seder in Leningrad.
As a result, he was persecuted and imprisoned. Together with other engineers, they clandestinely taught themselves Hebrew and prepared their Aliyah (immigration to Israel). In every way, this hero exemplifies the qualities of a modern-day Joseph Trumpeldor, embodying courage, tenacity, leadership, and Zionist values. Ten years after our visit at the Seder, Yuli managed to receive his permit to come to Israel, where he succeeded in becoming an important advisor to the Jewish Agency and helped found a political party. Yuli, of blessed memory passed away in 2014, but his Zionist values and spirit lives on with his family and grandchildren.
Risky Business. Trying to revive Jewish national life by teaching Hebrew, Judaism and Zionist values in the Former Soviet Union was a dangerous activity. Here, under the noses of the KGB, the writer (Center: fifth from the left) meets with Hebrew teaching activists in Moscow
In Moscow we had the opportunity to address 30-40 Jewish activists packed into a small apartment to help explain the current events facing the State of Israel in 1978. They were hungry for knowledge and were carefully taking notes. Each of them was teaching Hebrew to a few dozen activists and were going to repeat what they perceived to be our Zionist words of wisdom to their students. Years later, when visiting the Knesset, the late Member of Knesset Yuri Stern, a refusenik and Zionist activist in the Soviet Union came up to me and told me:
“Jonathan, you were the first paratrooper I ever met in person“.
Memorable Moment. Hitting home the enormity of the success of the mission to the Former Soviet Union was years later when the writer bumped into famed former refusenik and Zionist activist, Yuri Stern at the Knesset. Then an MK, he reminded the writer that he was once one of the many sitting in a parlor meeting in Moscow listening to Jonathan and said the impression it made meeting the first Israeli paratrooper in person.
I felt proud that he remembered.
Ten years later while working for the Jewish Agency for Israel I was sent on a special mission to Italy. My assignment was to reach out to tens of thousands of Russian Jewish refugees in Ladispoli, Netuno, Santa Marinella and other locations to create awareness of the importance of living in Israel.
Full Circle. Jonathan Davis (right) in a fundraising event with an orphan of a fallen Israel paratrooper preparing to jump from a Hercules aircraft in the sea off Haifa was later picked up in a rubber dinghy with the outstretched hand of a Navy Seal born of Russian immigrant parents.
It was a hard job to compete with the “easy life” in the USA, Canada, or Australia. It was an almost impossible mission, but in the end together with a dedicated team, a few hundred families emigrated to Israel. They were mostly young couples with small children, and professionals in the fields such as medicine, music, art, engineering, and others.
Their life choice to become Israelis has certainly enriched our country.
In 2000, I participated in a parachute jump into the sea, near the Dado Beach in Haifa. Lt. General Shaul Mofaz led this fundraising event for orphans of paratroopers. Each veteran paratrooper jumped with an “orphan buddy“. Navy seals in rubber dinghies were awaiting to assist us back to shore. A tall and handsome navy seal with a Russian accent assisted me. He was born in Novosibirsk and had been living in Israel for less than a decade. The navy seal, son of Russian immigrants who chose to serve in one of the most elite units in the IDF, was lending me a hand. This brought me full circle in my appreciation and recognition of an immigration which changed the face of the State of Israel.
Fruits of one’s labor. Today as head of the international school at Reichman University, Jonathan Davis savors the joy of having an ever-increasing number of students from the Former Soviet Union.
About the writer:
Jonathan Davis is head of the international school at Reichman University (formerly the IDC) and vice president of external relations there. He is also a member of the advisory board of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. Mr. Davis also serves as a Lieutenant Colonel (Res) in the IDF Spokesman’s office.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
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Savage Streets! Woman and children caught up in the 1922 Rand Revolt captured in this contemporary drawing.
On the centenary of South Africa’s 1922 Rand Revolt, the writer shares his father’s intimate childhood recollections and personal experiences as they retrace the steps along Johannesburgstreets that were bloodied by skewed values.
Care for a Dance? Yes, provided it has nothing to do with Israel – the message from the 2022 Sydney Festival.
The Israeli Embassy in Australia responds warmly to an appeal from the 2022 Sydney Festival management to financially support the Sydney Dance Company’s stage production of “Decadance”, only to be reciprocated by anti-Israel activists launching a vicious boycott campaign.
Reprehensible Report. Amnesty International issues its report replete with lies, distortions and misquotes on Israel.
The writer awards a number of well-earned Pinocchio’s to Secretary-General of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard as she delivers lie after lie in her biased organistion’s latest report delivered in Jerusalem – hence Chutzpah! While labeling Israel an Apartheid state, the report exposes the true state of Amnesty International.
No Amnesty for NGO’s false claims of Israeli Apartheid
By Alex Ryvchin
Amnesty out to Sea. Even nature was segregated for the exclusive use of ‘Whites in Apartheid South Africa.
Deliberately deceitful, Amnesty International presents publicly in its report, a contrived contortion of the truth. By falsely accusing Israel of Apartheid, it convicts itself guilty of antisemitism.
LOTL Co-founders David E. Kaplan (Editor), Rolene Marks and Yair Chelouche
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While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
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The Israel Brief – 10 February 2022 – Israel won’t oppose US reentry to UNESCO. UK Jews tell Smotrich “go home”. Prep for Presidents proposed visit to Turkey. Olympic joy for Israel.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
On the centenary of South Africa’s 1922 Rand Revolt, the writer shares his late father’s intimate childhood recollections and personal experiences
By David E. Kaplan
The centenary this 2022 of the armed uprising of white miners in the Witwatersrand region of South Africa – known as the ‘Rand Rebellion’ , the ‘1922 Rand Revolt’ or the ‘1922 Rand Strike” and by some even the ‘Red Revolt’ – will likely pass ignored as the experiences, passions and issues of yesterday’s long dead no longer resonate with today’s living.
Rioting on the Reef! Fear of civil war is the lead in this Cape Times March 11 1922.
Relegated today to a footnote in history, it was on foot many years ago that I learnt firsthand of what happened through a child’s eyes – my late father, Solly Kaplan.
Steely Resolve. The writer’s father, Solly Kaplan as a young man in Cape Town having left Johannesburg the year following the 1922 Rand Revolt and would with his brother Ike Kaplan and Solly Kushlich start a steel business, Cape Gate, in 1929.
On a family visit to Johannesburg shortly after the end of Apartheid, we were idly sitting at a hotel breakfast table when my father said, “Son, come I want to take you downtown to Fordsburg; show you a chapter of my childhood when South Africa teetered on the brink of civil war.”
Turmoil at the Toilet. The historic Fordsburg public toilet building on the south western corner was fortified as a blockhouse by the strikers and still showed – until the 1980s – bullet damage to the walls. Anticipating attacks, strikers dug trenches on the perimeter of the square bordering Mint and Commercial Roads.
With violence in the streets of downtown central Johannesburg rife at the time and my father well in his senior years, I cautioned against it but he replied:
“Violence! You don’t know what violence is. I was a youngster here back then and I was in the thick of it, darting between bullets.”
I was fascinated.
The Homefront. A typical Victorian semi-detached house with corrugated roofs like the one Solly Kaplan lived in as a boy and from where striker commandos fired at the ILH (Imperial Light Horse). (Photo SJ de Klerk).
I threw back my coffee and said lets go. On the way, he explained that his exposure to civil violence began a good few years before the 1922 Revolt, when as a young lad of five, he disembarked at Johannesburg Central Station in 1913, “in the midst of a violent miners revolt.”
He explained:
“What stated as a dispute over working hours of a few miners at the New Klipfontein Mine led to sackings and a strike that soon spread to other mines. By the time I arrived in Jo’burg, rioting had broken out in the centre of the town. Soon thereafter, Park Station was set ablaze, as were the offices of “The Star” newspaper. Union government troops soon joined the fray, and in the first two days of open hostilities, over 100 strikers and innocent bystanders had been killed.”
Squaring Off. Directly opposite the historic Sacks Hotel, later the Orient Hotel (seen here), was the Fordsburg Market Square and the two-storey Market Building used by strikers as their headquarters which has since been demolished. (SJ de Klerk).
This was Solly’s baptism of fire of life in Johannesburg, and by the time my father left the ‘Golden City’, for “the quiet and sedate Cape” in 1923, he would experience firsthand – “virtually on our doorstep” – the far more serious and violent miners’ rebellion, which history would record as the 1922 Rand Revolt.
Waiting Attack. Preparing for an assault, a sandbag barricade at Johannesburg’s Town Hall.
When the hostilities broke out, Solly, now 12, was living with his family in downtown Johannesburg. “It was not a Jewish area, more a mixed bag of locals and immigrants, with a plethora of rough and ready types, who had gravitated to this grubby, dusty boomtown. People tried to eke out a living the best they could.” His father, Max, worked in a small factory in West Street manufacturing wrought iron gates – an expertise that would sow the seeds with his sons and emerge as the global wire and steel manufacturing behemoth – Cape Gate.
“We had settled in Anderson Street in one of those typical small houses with a corrugated tin roof and a front porch close to an area known as the Jeppe Dip. It was here that white miners set themselves up in a makeshift stockade and from where they indiscriminately shot at any blacks within firing range.”
Country at a Crossroads. Anderson Street in downtown Johannesburg where the writer’s father lived at the time of the 1922 Rand Revolt.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
The revolt began, explained Solly, “as a strike in Witbank on 2 January 1922, when coal miners downed tools over proposed pay cuts.” What then inflamed the crisis was the announcement by the Chamber of Mines to increase the employment ratio of black to white workers, which would have resulted in a substantial diminution of white jobs. Adding fuel to the fire was a further proposal to abolish the paid holidays of May Day and Dingaan’s Day, both enormously symbolic to the English and Afrikaans workers respectively. On February 7, Johannesburg was greeted by the sight of striking miners marching through the streets under the banner:
“WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE FOR A WHITE SOUTH AFRICA’.
Ready, Aim, Fire! The seat today of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, some of South Africa’s major corporations and the University of the Witwatersrand, the central suburb of Braamfontein is seen here in 1922 reminiscent of a scene from the Great War with soldiers in trenches squaring off against the strikers. (Picture SAR Magazine)
“So, what began as a strike supporting job reservation,” explained Solly, “rapidly exploded into an armed rebellion, where Afrikaner Nationalists had no problem joining forces with English speaking communists.”
This sudden solidarity between natural foes, “showed that when expedient, traditional ideological antipathy can quickly be dispensed with for the shared common cause of self-interest.”
STREETSMART
Although only twelve, “I was very conscious of what happening, mainly because of the risks I had to take. My stepmother used to send me out daily to buy provisions from the store in Commissioner Street, some three blocks away. I would dash along, and then when crossing intersections, I would constantly be on the lockout, ducking and diving when necessary the bullets coming from the stockades and roadblocks. Any unfortunate blacks in the area were moving targets and would attract a fusillade of gunfire.”
One day, recalled Solly:
“We heard shooting outside our house. We ran out onto our stoep (porch), and saw a black man writhing in pain on the road. He had been shot by a dum-dum bullet, filled at the head to implode on impact. The poor fellow’s leg was completely shattered. We had no phones in the area, so I ran to the nearest greengrocer, run by the Regalsky family, and asked someone to phone for an ambulance. We did the best we could for the fellow as he lay bleeding profusely on our stoep. It was clear that he would lose his leg.”
Under Fire. Cross the centre of a main street, government forces raise their rifles behind sand bags to face an attack by the strikers.
SMUTS STEPS IN
By mid-March the strike leaders lost control of the mobs that had virtually seized most of Johannesburg and were calling for armed insurrection and the overthrow of the state. It was then that Prime Minister Jan Smuts made his move. He declared martial law; travelled by train from the Cape to the Rand and “alighted at Potchefstroom and continued the journey to Jo’burg by car. He was acting prudently, afraid he could be bumped-off if word got out that he would be arriving at a given time at the central station,” related Solly who had remained fascinated by the turbulent history surrounding this early chapter of his youth. “Smuts then personally took control of more than 20,000 troops backed by airplanes, tanks and field artillery.”
Sending in the big Guns. With tanks sent onto the streets of Johannesburg, a Whippet tank is seen here approaching Fordsburg.
Walking around the streets where this drama played out, Solly continued:
“There were mass arrests of strikers, and many of the ringleaders who had been trapped in their headquarters in the Trades Hall were picked up and then jailed at The Fort. Fierce retaliation on police stations followed, mainly to replenish arms, but after five days of fierce battles against trained government troops, the insurrection was brought to a climactic violent finale. Brixton Ridge, which was captured by troops on March 12th, provided the ideal position from which the artillery could open fire on the main rebel strongholds in Fordsburg. It was subjected to a thunderous pounding and on March 14th, government troops swept into town. Rather than face the inevitable charge of treason, two of the strike leaders, Spendiff and Fischer, committed suicide.”
Revolutionary Road. Following strikers congregating at the Rissik Street Trades Hall (above),police reports described strikers armed with bicycle chains, old swords and bayonets, poles barbed with spikes and a variety of firearms. Overnight, striker violence seemed to spread across the Rand. (Wikipedia)
In the legal proceedings that flowered, Solly continued, “118 strike leaders were sentenced to death of which four were finally executed. They walked defiantly to the gallows singing the communist anthem, “The Red Flag”.
The Aftermath. Fordsburg Market Square after the revolt. In the foreground the trenches dug around its edges and in the background McIntosh’s store damaged by artillery fire.
Walking through the area of his youth, it took a lot of imagination on my part as too few buildings remained from that period, only the street signs like Anderson, Fox, Rissik, Eloff, Jeppe and Commissioner. Bustling with traffic and pedestrians, we had to carefully look out for oncoming vehicles as we crossed these same streets.
“A far cry from dodging bullets,” observed Solly wryly.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO)
The 2022 Sydney Festival was one of the most controversial ever, but not for artistic reasons.
At the festival management’s request, the Israeli Embassy in Australia provided $20,000 to help stage a production by the Sydney Dance Company of “Decadance”, a work that has been performed in theatres and festivals all over the world since its creation 20 years ago by renowned Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin.
From Tel Aviv to Sydney. Crafted from excerpts of Israeli visionary choreographer Ohad Naharin’s works over a decade with Tel Aviv’s Batsheva Dance Company, Decadance is a contemporary dance that speaks to everyone – except haters of Israel!
The donation was acknowledged on the festival’s website by an Israel logo alongside those of other government and community partners.
This angered local pro-Palestinian activists, who demanded the festival return the embassy’s donation and remove the logo. When the board of the Sydney Festival refused to meet their demands, the activists launched a boycott campaign, supported by the global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, calling on artists to withdraw from the festival, nonsensically branding it a “culturally unsafe” environment for Palestinian and Arab artists.
A number of artists acceded, some willingly. But as festival chairman David Kirk revealed, the only unsafe environment was caused by boycott supporters – many of whom subjected artists to blatant bullying, name-calling and moral blackmail.
On Jan. 13, Kirk told the ABC Radio National “Breakfast” audience that many of the artists were being pressured to withdraw their performances. Some were receiving an unacceptable “battering” on social media, and were as a consequence feeling “unsafe and compromised”.
The Australian newspaper reported Kirk’s comment that some artists and festival staff had been subjected to “emotionally damaging” attacks. He called on activists to behave like “decent human beings”.
In a tweet on January 13, Jennine Khalik, one of the boycott organisers, said that claims that the “artists were bullied + pressured to withdraw [were] completely untrue.”
This article will demonstrate otherwise.
The production of “Decadance” by the Sydney Dance Company choreographed by Israeli Ohad Naharin, was supported by a small grant from the Israeli Embassy.
BDS goals and tactics
The anti-Israel boycott movement likes to present itself as a non-violent resistance, encamped on the high moral ground, but its tactics in securing martyrs for the cause show otherwise. In many cases, it claims it has gained the solidarity from those it has in reality intimidated.
BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti does not prevaricate about the movement’s real goals, having declared “No Palestinian will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” In a recent interview, he expressed the view that “Jewish culture is part of Arab culture,” negating any concept of self-determination for Jews after centuries of persecution.
As the BDS movement cannot physically eliminate Israel, it aims instead to “cancel” the Jewish state in whatever ways possible, trying to render it unseen and unheard. Activists campaign for the ostracisation of Israeli artists and academics internationally, and attempt to sabotage the normalisation of relations between Israelis and Palestinians, and between Israel and Arab states.
Having no success with the latter, as the Abraham Accords attest, the ire of BDS is directed at vulnerable targets – and this often does not involve simply putting one’s case and asking nicely.
In June 2018, the BDS movement claimed a campaign victory after the Argentinian national football team cancelled a friendly match scheduled in Israel. BDS activists shared widely a “quote” from star player Lionel Messi in which he supposedly said he could not play against “people who kill innocent Palestinian children. We had to cancel the game because we are humans before we are footballers.” But Messi never said any such thing.
Claudio Tapia, head of the Argentine Football Association, said the team actually had been forced to cancel due to serious threats against the players, and would try to play in Israel at a future time. The then Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie said the threats had exceeded those of Islamic State.
Jibril Rajoub, the President of the Palestinian Football Association, who claimed he had only been involved in peaceful protests against Israel, was suspended by FIFA for a year and given a hefty fine for “inciting hatred and violence”.
Another own goal for BDS was its “triumphant” campaign against the Israel-based manufacturing company Sodastream. As a result of activist bullying, the company relocated a plant in the West Bank to the Negev region, resulting in 500 Palestinians losing their jobs.
Yet the welfare of Palestinians has never been the real focus of the anti-Israel boycott movement; its ultimate desire is the elimination of Israel, as Barghouti noted.
Anti-Israel activists are always seeking new ways to “cancel” Israel. A recent example is the Australian “Do Better On Palestine” campaign, which called for media coverage that avoids “bothsiderism” – a euphemism for insisting that only the Palestinian viewpoint should be aired when news organisations report the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The same local activists who introduced that campaign to Australia are also responsible for attempting to disrupt the Sydney Festival because of the Israeli logo on its website. That logo is to them symbolic of Israel being afforded a space like any other country in international affairs and in the public consciousness, and must therefore be removed. They seek to impose on Australia their discriminatory view that Israel must be always treated as uniquely, irredeemably evil.
Going Gaga. Israeli choreographer, contemporary dancer, and creator and teacher of a unique system/language/pedagogy of dance called Gaga, Ohad Naharin.
Denying the Ugliness
These anti-Israel stoushes always become ugly, but the boycott organisers’ strategy entailed depicting themselves as principled and noble, simply setting out their case while remaining above the fray.
Responding to Festival chairman Kirk’s bullying allegations, Khalik tweeted “we have approached artists with love and empathy… and left the decision with them.”
Co-organiser, Sara Saleh, told the ABC that they “had approached their conversations with artists with care and sensitivity” and that they were trying to “build a movement and a future… on freedom, liberation, love and equality.”
But even from information available on the public record, it is obvious that many of the targeted (and pro-Palestinian) artists were not feeling the love.
The Abuse of Katie Noonan
Well-known Australian singer-songwriter Katie Noonan posted on Facebook on January 7:
“I decided to not get involved in this boycott, despite repeated, vigorous and quite aggressive attempts to do so. I simply said I was not contracted by Sydney Festival and was in fact contracted by SIMA [Sydney Improvised Music Association] – an awesome and very important independent cultural org [sic] I love, and I could not ask my fellow indie artists to turn down paid work after the hardest 2 years of their lives. Simple.”
She continued that she was “deeply saddened by the nature of online discussion and wish we could have respectful robust discussions without vitriol, but it does not seem possible in these difficult times.” She also revealed that she’d been called “a racist, mysogonist [sic], anti-feminist, POC [people of colour] hating, WOC [women of colour] hating, homophobic, transphobic, Palestinian hating, colonial loving, cis white, pink washing priveliged [sic] hetero c**t.”
This post then received over 1,000 comments, a mostly negative pile-on, in which Noonan was accused of being racist, Islamophobic, ignorant and a liar. Many claimed to be disappointed fans.
A couple of the more supportive comments suggested “that a group of people who likely never even followed Katie in the first place have been told to come on over here and play stack’s [sic] on”, and “this isn’t public sentiment, this is organised mob outrage.”
At no point had Noonan suggested that any of the unacceptable messages she’d received had come from the boycott organisers, but several of them nonetheless took the opportunity to attack her as if she had – while saying she was a “racist” for making such claims.
Khalik posted a series of tweets on Jan 8:
“So Katie Noonan claims she was repeatedly and aggressively told to withdraw. There was one exchange on behalf of the campaign… Not sure why she is lying — feels like some nasty racism towards Palestinians…I’m literally stunned lmao [laughing my arse off] how do people lie through their teeth like this. She told us she wouldn’t withdraw and we said best of luck, and we’re always here to chat. but this is aGgReSsIvE [sic] the crocodile tears here are next level.”
In a tweet on January 9 Khalik called Noonan’s statement “impossibly racist and untrue”.
Saleh commented on Noonan’s Facebook page:
“Katie, with all due respect, as one of the organisers I have screenshots of the conversation that took place, and your replies, which ended congenially. We would never be anything less than respectful because what we are fighting for is our freedom – underpinned by justice and love…I’m sorry you felt you needed to implicitly smear us this way…”
Another organiser, Fahad Ali, also left a comment on Noonan’s Facebook page:
“We were immensely respectful when we reached out to you and we have the screenshots of these interactions and your replies.
This post is dishonest and disingenuous. There was no reason to smear our movement and delegitimise the Palestinian struggle for freedom because you felt personally offended in some way. You have put your own ego before millions of Palestinian lives…”
To both Saleh and Ali, Noonan gave the identical response:
“pls [sic] don’t presume the boycott organising peeps [people] were the only people who contacted me.
Unfortunately that is a naive and incorrect assumption. Unfortunately they have disingenuously shared parts of our exchange, rather than the entire exchange and that unfortunately created another incorrect narrative.
I never accused the boycott organizers of anything. The incorrect and nasty slander has been v upsetting but I choose to rise about it and not engage.”
Yet these organisers, having called Noonan a liar and a racist, have not publicly apologised for, nor retracted, their potentially inflammatory comments, despite Noonan’s response and the lack of any basis on which to allege that she was actually attacking them.
It is also curious that they seemed oblivious to the possibility that some of their fellow travellers just might have engaged in aggressive exchanges, especially when Saleh and Ali’s comments on Noonan’s January 7 post appear alongside many that are openly demeaning. Did they really not notice them?
They did, of course, but took no responsibility.
Indeed, both Saleh and Ali implicitly acknowledged the aggression – even while condemning Noonan for calling attention to it. Saleh told the ABC she “could not control the actions of passionate fans who felt strongly about the issue,” while Ali was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald as saying, “We can’t control the reactions of fans or other commentators.”
Meanwhile, Ali, displaying his “immense respect”, tweeted on January 8:
“So my best guess of what happened with Katie Noonan is this: she saw [comedian] Judith Lucy coming thru with now something like 7k likes on FB for withdrawing from Sydney Fest and she thought “hey, I want some of that” but figured she could get even more attention if she went pro-Israel.”
Ali is correct in one respect: Noonan certainly received attention. On January 12 she posted again on Facebook:
“It’s been an educational and very upsetting 5 days. I have listened and learned from various disparate points of view – informed and ill-informed, from lived on-ground experience and from the anonymity of a faceless keyboard 14,000 kms away, and I have observed behaviour I abho,r and behaviour I admire.
…Twitter is a new hellhole of mentall [sic] illness and vitriol that I am quite happy to never engage with again, and I am really disappointed my name was used in am[sic] inaccurate post that was presumptive and incorrect.
…I am saddened a twitter shitshow was incited without my consent (as I posted no twitter content regarding this issue)…Sending peace/shalom/salaam and kindness to all.”
Noonan was subjected to bullying and aggression, but not just because she refused to join the boycott. It started before she made that decision. What clearly emerges is the harassment and intimidation of artists by persons probably unknown to try to force compliance with boycotts.
Katie under Pressure. Famed Australian singer-songwriter Katie Noonan experienced “vigorous and quite aggressive” social media pressure to join boycott of Israel.
Victimised, even after complying with the Boycott
Musician Sarah Mary Chadwick sides strongly with the Palestinians and did withdraw from the Sydney Festival. She wrote about the experience, posting the following on her Instagram and Facebook accounts after she’d already withdrawn:
“Me and my baby Filter are getting pretty pissed off … by pressure exerted on artists to boycott festivals and events. I do not appreciate unsolicited mail from people who have zero understanding or knowledge of my financial situation or life in general. Before you contact your ‘favourite’ artist and encourage them to ‘do the right thing’ maybe consider the following.
– do you have any knowledge as to whether the artist currently has any income due to Covid?
– is it really your place to instruct other people essentially to make significant donations to causes YOU have prioritised, regardless of the validity of the cause?
– do you have any knowledge of medical or personal costs the person you are contacting is managing and do you kno (sic) if they are in fact, able to manage them at all?
is it the artists (sic) role to give up their livelihoods when the gov[ernment] continue to underfund arts? Anyway, stop telling me what to do, strangers. I have my own moral compass and I use it effectively.”
Again, Chadwick did not directly accuse the organisers of aggressive tactics. As she had already withdrawn, it was courageous of her to blow the whistle on the bullies.
Yet this “respectful” response was received from someone operating the “Boycott Sydney Festival” Instagram account:
“This post is gross, Sarah. Yes, it’s been a rough year for artists. On the other hand, Palestinians are resisting 7 decades of massacre and dispossession. You’ve made your choice, but don’t centre yourself. And don’t try to police the ways that Palestinians or their supporters choose to expand a boycott against literal violent oppression.”
Another response comes from an account which appears to belong to Matt Chun, an organiser of the boycott:
“A public post about choosing the wrong side of a picket line is weird. You have agency, as you’ve pointed out, and you’ve used it. Nobody has prevented that. But manufacturing victimhood in opposition to those who are resisting an apartheid regime is appalling.”
Protesters outside the production of “Decadance” by the Sydney Dance Company (Image: Twitter)
Boycott organisers frequently boasted of the number of artists who withdrew, and posted their photos in a gallery on their Instagram account. Yet strangely Chadwick’s photo is missing, despite her stance.
Some of the artists who were heavily critical of festival management for putting them in what they regarded as an invidious position also confirmed the bullying tactics used to encourage withdrawal.
The band Tropical F**k Storm, led by Gareth Liddiard, issued a strongly worded statement, saying the decision to accept Israel as a sponsor “would inevitably mean that hundreds of unwitting artists (who are having a rough enough time with the pandemic as it is) would become the targets of online harassment, bullying, smear campaigns, ridiculous accusations, misrepresentations and abuse from total strangers who have no idea what’s actually going on behind the scenes, what any artist’s position is or even what they’re talking about.”
Performer Jaguar Jonze joined the boycott in mid-January and released a statement criticising the festival for creating “an environment where artists and audience are put at risk and forced to endanger their careers and well-being. Because of this, the safest decision that is left – to protect myself, my team and the audience in a way the festival has decided not to – is to withdraw and cancel my performance at Sydney Festival.”
Saleh retweeted this, calling it a “principled, sensitive show of solidarity”, which is surprising as it seems to indicate a more immediate fear of harm to one’s physical “well-being” from supporters of a boycott.
Crocodile Tears
The boycott’s organisers give an impression of respectful direct dealing with the performers. Statements by the few artists who dared go public give a glimpse into the murk below.
And then there are the crocodile tears.
In response to Festival chairman Kirk’s apology to artists for putting them in a position “whereby they’ve felt pressured or compromised to withdraw their acts,” Ali demanded the board divest itself of the Israeli funding to protect artists. “If [the decision to accept the funding] has had the effect that it has left artists feeling compromised and unsafe, why continue to put artists in harm’s way?”
Such impeccable logic – as if it were the funds that endangered the artists, and not the menacing BDS trolls.
In similar vein, how touching the concern expressed in Saleh’s tweet of January 15:
“We hope that Sydney Fest board recompenses artists for harm and loss incurred.”
Anti-Israel boycotts have never achieved anything for the Palestinian people. They have only hurt them and now, in the case of the Sydney Festival boycott, also hurt vulnerable local artists coping with the aftermath of a pandemic.
About the writer:
Judy Maynard policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO)
If Amnesty International UK has the same contempt for Yiddish as it has for the state of Israel then it has probably never heard of the word “Chutzpah”. For any Amnesty International members who should chance upon this article, it can be very roughly translated as a brazen cheek. Whether the word is known or not, it was sheer chuzpah on the part of the Secretary General when she released its most recent report on Israel this week.
The irony of Agnès Callamard, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, releasing the report in Jerusalem, Israel was not lost on me. Callamard, still notoriously remembered for her lie that the late President Shimon Peres admitted that Israel was liable for the death of Yasser Arafat, didn’t seem to see anything unusual about a British organisation coming to Jerusalem to release a report in which Israel is described as an Apartheid state. I was born and brought up in Apartheid South Africa! I can remember the dark days of Apartheid when the security police randomly arrested university students on campus for no good reason. One particular image is that of our student representative leader approaching Brigadier Rooi Rus and asking him what his security police were doing on campus. The brigadier’s response was simple. He barked an order and had our student leader arrested. That was Apartheid South Africa! Callamard, coming from Britain to Jerusalem to offend Israel by releasing a report of it’s alleged Apartheid conduct, certainly had no such fears.
Reprehensible Report. Secretary-General of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard issues its report replete with lies, distortions and misquotes on Israel during a press conference in Jerusalem, on 1 February which labels Israel an “apartheid” state that treats Palestinians as “an inferior racial group”. (photo credit: FLASH90)
As lawyers, we seek to get to the crux of an issue quickly – ‘cut to the chase’ in today’s parlance. So we might start off reading a document and then jump to its end to see what relief is requested so that we have an idea of what to look out for during the more throurough read. I read the first bit and then I jumped to the conclusions and recommendations section at the back of the document. The recommendations were long and read like a Hamas wish list to Santa Claus – with probably as much chance of being fulfilled. Although I should add, that if you do read the report, you’ll come out being none the wiser as to precisely what “Hamas” is or what it stands for. Mentions of the PLO and Palestinian Authority are also tellingly scarce. By reading the report alone, you never really understand that Hamas has military or political intentions or objectives. I could not find any reference to any type of aggression by Hamas against Israel or its citizens. Full disclosure – I could not force myself to read the full distorted report; it would have been as painfully repulsive as putting my head in a bowl of scalding hot oil!
All is Revealed. Beneath the veneer of the Amnesty International Report lies the bare antisemitic truth.
The report starts by declaring Amnesty’s integrity:
“We are independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion and are funded mainly by our membership and individual donations”.
However, as NGO Monitor points out, Amnesty receives governmental funding, including from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the European Commission, the Netherlands, the United States, and Norway.
So what’s at the beginning of the report? It opens with an Instagram quote from Israel’s former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu:
“Israel is not a state of all its citizens… [but rather] the nation-state of the Jewish people and only them.”
Perhaps I should say it starts with half a quote, because Amnesty never published the balance of the quote :
“There’s no problem with the Arab citizens of Israel––they have the same rights as us all and the Likud government has invested in the Arab sector more than any other government.”
Amnesty’s Antisemitism. The plight of Jews are ignored in the Report when wholesale violence from Hamas construed as “war crimes” that fires rockets from Gaza at Israel’s civilian population rates no mention. (photo: Mohammed Abed | AFP)
So, from the outset, there is a half quote that is completely decontextualised and misrepresents what was said. Pinocchio rating[1]:- partially true, decontextualised and misleading Three Pinocchios. It gives one an inkling of what is to follow in the rest of the report. Strike 1!
So on to the first two paragraphs of the Executive Summary:
“On 18 May 2021, Palestinians across cities and villages in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip closed their offices, shops, restaurants and schools, abandoned construction sites, and refused to report to work for the whole day. In a display of unity not seen for decades, they defied the territorial fragmentation and segregation they face in their daily lives and observed a general strike to protest their shared repression by Israel.
The strike was sparked by the Israeli authorities’ plan to evict seven Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian residential neighbourhood near the Old City in East Jerusalem, which has been repeatedly targeted by Israel’s sustained campaign to expand illegal settlements and transfer Jewish settlers. To stop the threatened evictions, the Palestinian families launched a campaign on social media under the hashtag #SaveSheikhJarrah attracting worldwide attention and mobilizing protesters on the ground. Israeli security forces responded to the protests with the same excessive force they have been using to stifle Palestinian dissent for decades. They arbitrarily arrested peaceful demonstrators, threw sound and stun grenades at crowds, dispersed them with excessive force and skunk water, and fired concussion grenades at worshippers and protesters gathered in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.”
Now I am no great recorder of dates, but my friend professor Google is. I called on Google to report what was recorded about the strike on 18 May 2021. I received a response of nine pages of references. Every single article says that the nationwide general strike was to protest Israel’s flare up with terror entities in Gaza. Some suggest that there were other reasons as well. Not a single article suggests that the strike was sparked by the Israeli authorities’ plan to evict seven Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Fact check: the grounds as stated for the strike must be rejected as false. Four Pinocchios. Strike 2.
As far as the “protests” in Jerusalem are concerned, there was only one media item that I could find that dealt with this issue. The Jerusalem Post reported the following:
“According to reports from the Red Crescent, 41 people were injured in riots in Sheikh Jarrah and by Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem. The riots were in response to a call from Fatah encouraging West Bank residents to confront Israeli security forces, and as a result multiple demonstrators clashed with Border Police forces, throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks throughout the afternoon and evening, said police. Protests also occurred at other locations across the country with police saying that some disturbances occurred but that they will work to allow people to demonstrate within the confines of the law.”
Fact check: Amnesty version improbably not true, but only one contrary version. Two Pinocchios. Strike 3!
At this stage, the average attorney has by now made up his mind and will send the report to his assistant to read or send it to his advocate for closer scrutiny. I wanted to look at two other issues: Its definition of apartheid and why it is regarded as antisemitic.
Amnesty tries to go bigger and better than the reports that preceded it, which were issued by the ‘luminary’ establishments of Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem, organisations with the same similar “objective” standards that one might find amongst the rank and file of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions brigade, which also purports not to be antisemitic. The report can be nicely precise’d by referring to its statement that:
“almost all of Israel’s civilian administration and military authorities, as well as governmental and quasi-governmental institutions” are involved “in the enforcement of the system of apartheid against Palestinians across Israel and the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] and against Palestinian refugees and their descendants outside the territory.”
The BDS’ers, at least in South Africa, have largely conceded that within the 1967 borders of the state of Israel, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians are treated much the same as any other citizens. Their gripe was with the treatment of the Palestinians in the “occupied Palestinian territories”, where they were subjected to apartheid-like conditions. There are no such reservations in this report, its conclusion:
Israeli Apartheid extends far and wide, both within and beyond its borders.
Sound familiar?
A very similar to the familiar canard used by more recognised antisemites, regard the Jews as controlling the world. But a simple fact check of this short quote will reveal at least four fabrications. Were I to waste my time actually researching this totally unsubstantiated allegation, I am sure that I would find at least three more items for Pinocchios.
Part 4 of the Report deals with the concept of Apartheid and international law.The internationally defined crime against humanity of Apartheid has to be manipulated and massaged in order for Israel to be guilty of Apartheid – a human rights crime. Human Rights Watch had to do the same thing! Amnesty abandons the universal definition of Apartheid and attempts a similar rehash of HRW’s attempt but with a purported reliance on international law.
The report relies on aspects of the “Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid” in order to define Israel as an Apartheid state. The fundamental problem with such reliance is that the Convention was discussed and adopted in the General Counsel of the United Nations, not a body that can create international law.
I still remain baffled by the statement on page 37 where Amnesty states that:
“it does not seek to argue that, or assess whether, any system of oppression and domination perpetrated in Israel and the OPT {Occupied Palestinian Territories] is, for instance, analogous to the system of segregation, oppression and domination as perpetrated in South Africa between 1948 and 1994.”
It basically is alleging that while Israel is an Apartheid state, it can’t be said that Israel’s “Apartheid” is analogous to Apartheid of segregation, oppression and race domination that was the official policy of the only country that ever officially practiced apartheid!!
The Jewish communities are united in stating that this report was antisemitic. Was it because of the mere allegation that Israel is an Apartheid state? Regrettably, they all seemed to be generic and referred to the report as a whole. This is understandable as in this day and age one looks for short sound bytes. To get involved in the detail is to bore your audience, who increasingly follow media items to affirm their own pre-existing opinions. So I went looking for the smoking gun! and true to form, amnesty had gone BIG! No longer was it just Apartheid post-1967. At page 20, the embargoed version, a version which was harshly criticised in the lead article of TheWall Street Journal on 31 January 2021 and vigorously attacked by the Embassy of Israel (and which may have resulted in this origins of Apartheid Israel being subsequently deleted, just seconds before the twelfth hour) provided the justification that the antisemitic bigots around the world had been waiting for:
“this system of apartheid originated with the creation of Israel in May 1948 and has been built and maintained over decades by successive Israeli governments across all the territories they have controlled, regardless of the political party in power at the time.”
Amnesty’s True Colours. Israel’s creation in 1948 as reported here in ‘The Palestine Post’ three years after the Holocaust, is characterized by Amnesty International UK in its 2022 report not as a final haven for Jews who have been subjected to massacre after massacre for 2000 years but as the beginning of a system of Apartheid.
Finally, a large “ human rights” organisation came forward and verified the credo of every “River to the Sea” believer that Israel is a ******* country conceived and born as a result of the crime of Apartheid and therefore having no legitimate right to exist. The cherry on the top is that in its recommendations section, this initial fallacy has not been refuted in that it calls for the dismantling of “this appalling system of Apartheid” which is clearly a reference to the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel. Totally dishonest, the maximum five Pinocchios.
In a report that Amnesty International UK claims took four years to write, during all that time, not subscribing to the definition of antisemitism as set out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and refusing to acknowledge it publicly, it could not have been unaware of this definition.
Part of this definition that reads “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming the existence of the state of Israel, is a racist endeavour” constitutes antisemitism. Nonetheless, it sent out its report to the world denying the legitimate birth of Israel and its subsequent existence. Its call for the dismantling of Israel’s appalling system of Apartheid, which is the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state. In its own words, Amnesty International UK condemns itself as an antisemitic organisation. A desperate last-minute amendment for a document that had been so long in the making cannot alter Amnesty International UK‘s antisemitic intent.
So yes, the report is antisemitic!
As was noted by NGO Monitor, the report’s release:
“is timed to bolster a forthcoming March 2022 report from U.N. Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk that will advance similar allegations, and influence the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry.”
Perhaps the timing of the release of the Report until afterInternational Holocaust Day was not coincidental!
Notwithstanding the ringing endorsement of the report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates of the “State of Palestine”, I seriously question whether this report could withstand the light of critical examination in a court of law. However, I have no doubt that were such a court case to take place, the haters would flood the media with anti-Israel vitriol and run riot while such a case was proceeding.
‘International Holocaust Remembrance Day’ on the 27 January every year commemorates the victims of the Holocaust resulting in the murder of one third of the Jewish people.
After the ending of Apartheid in 1994, the new duly democratically elected South African government, established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whereby perpetrators of violence during the apartheid era could come forward, and if they fully and truthfully confessed their offences, they could then be granted immunity from prosecution. In my own little private ‘truth and reconciliation commission’, this biased report, packed with half-truths and lies, and with substantial omissions and unsubstantiated allegations, doesn’t even come close to meeting the standard required for immunity. Amnesty International UK may have gone big, but now it’s time for them to go home with their tails between their legs. But I suppose that it does not work that way in the world of realpolitik. Amnesty – no doubt to the approval of members of the Human Rights Council, and of course the State of Palestine – have once again revived the blood libel of:
“Zionism is Racism”
For Amnesty International UK, I have another Yiddish word: “Schande”. It’s pronounced the same way in German and very similarly pronounced in Dutch.
I’ll save you the trouble of translating. It’s a disgrace!
[1] Acknowledgement to the Washington Post, which rates fact checked articles with Pinocchios.
About the writer:
Craig Snoymanis a practising advocate in South Africa.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Amnesty International has released the latest report in a
coordinated non-government organisation campaign to associate Israel with Apartheid.
Following a process set down by Human Rights Watch, the report redefines Apartheid to little resemble the crimes in South Africa and disfigures Jewish-Israelis into a familiar stereotype of greed, cruelty and bloodlust.
This was Apartheid. Amnesty International; this was Apartheid! Even nature was segregated for the exclusive use of ‘Whites”.
Apartheid is a system of legal segregation under which one ethnic group subjugates another, treating citizens of the same state differently based on their ethnicity. Exclusion from schools, professions and public office, segregated toilets and restaurants, and voting prohibition are the manifestations of this crime. Speak to any South African expatriate and they will regale you with the full indignity and inhumanity of the system that once gripped that country.
Apartheid on Track. Lost on Amnesty International – a racially segregated train station entrance. (Apartheid Museum)
tand on a street corner in Israel and make up your own mind. Observe the campuses in Haifa, where my family lives, and see Arab-Israeli students in hijabs socialising and studying alongside Jewish-Israeli peers. Forty-one per cent of Haifa University’s students are Arab-Israelis.
In a Harvard University poll, 77% of Arab citizens said they preferred to live in Israel than in any other country. Israel has more than 400 mosques across the country. Ask Amnesty International how many synagogues remain in the Arab world.
Arab citizens of Israel have little interest in Amnesty’s vainglorious, deceitful pronouncements on Israel. They have productive lives to lead in every echelon of society, right up to the Islamist party that sits in Israel’s governing coalition. Amnesty knows all this. Why, then, does it invest enormous resources into publishing dangerous lies?
The answer is in the world view that guides its decision-making, its appointment of key researchers and its choice of targets.
In 2009, Robert Bernstein, who founded Human Rights Watch, published a piece in The New York Times that captured what was happening in the human rights community that Bernstein once ably led.
“We sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and non-democratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights,” he wrote. “Now the organisation casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.”
Founding Father’s Farewell. Horrified how Human Rights Watch – the organization he helped established in 1978 to denounce abuse and respect human rights – had changed into an anti-Israel organisation, led Robert Bernstein in a 2009 op-ed for The New York Times to publicly brake from the organisation. (Elisabeth Bernstein)
Bernstein saw the focus was shifting to democratic states, soft targets such as Israel, while autocratic regimes were seen to fit with an anti-Western paradigm. His own organisation had “lost critical perspective on the conflict” to the point that “Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of its criticism”.
Amnesty has played an outsized role in the decay of the human rights sector, representing all of the distorted morality Bernstein warned about. The head of Amnesty’s gender unit, Gita Sahgal, was forced out after she criticised Amnesty’s partnership with controversial British group Cage, whose director of outreach said the Taliban “should be given the right to celebrate” its conquest of Afghanistan, and its director of research called the notorious Islamic State executioner known as Jihadi John, a “beautiful young man” who “wouldn’t hurt a fly”. Why the head of Amnesty’s gender unit might feel uncomfortable over her organisation’s close ties with Taliban and Islamic State enthusiasts is painfully clear.
Look who is Judging Israel! Amnesty International had no problem partnering with the controversial British group Cage, whose director of research called the notorious Islamic State executioner known as Jihadi John, a “beautiful young man”.
Sahgal spoke of an “atmosphere of terror” inside Amnesty in which debate was suppressed and staff were forced to accept the prevailing dogmas.
In 2015, Amnesty UK voted down a motion to campaign against antisemitism amid deadly acts against Jews in Europe. It claimed it did not “support campaigns with a single focus”, dubious indeed given its anti-Islamophobia campaigns and obsessive pursuit of Israel.
But it is the incestuous relationships and conflicts of interests running through Amnesty’s work that constitutes its greatest failing. The researchers Amnesty hires to write its reports rotate through anti-Western media outlets and activist groups before winding up at Amnesty writing reports against the people they protested against.
Amnesty hired Deborah Hyams as its Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories researcher despite Hyams acting as a human shield against Israeli soldiers. Another hire, Saleh Hijazi, previously worked for the Palestinian Authority and was the listed contact for a local NGO whose slogan is “We are Intifada!”. Amnesty researcher Hind Khoudary publicly declared she wanted Israel gone. Any of these associations should have disqualified these individuals from ever touching anything concerning Israel. Instead, Amnesty prizes them as assets.
Bias Imbedded. Amnesty International researcher Hind Khoudary has publicly declared she wants Israel gone.
These failings evade the attention of journalists who broadcast Amnesty reports as matters of fact, never probing their authors or the method and motives behind their predetermined, ideologically driven conclusions.
The Apartheid slur notoriously was used by American activist Al Sharpton against the Jewish community in a speech credited with inciting the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn in 1991. Three days of deadly rioting ensued. The Jewish people know what it means to be slandered; we understand the power of words to encourage despicable deeds. This is why Amnesty’s grave insult cannot be taken lightly.
About the writer:
Alex Ryvchin is co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the author of “Zionism: The Concise History“.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO)
Also available on YouTube @The Israel Brief – Simply click on the red subscribe button (by the bell) to receive alerts when a new report is posted.
What’s happening in Israel today? See from every Monday – Thursday LotL’s “The Israel Brief” broadcasts and on our Facebook page and YouTubeby seasoned TV & radio broadcaster, Rolene Marks familiar to Chai FM listeners in South Africa and millions of American listeners to the News/Talk/Sports radio station WINA, broadcasting out of Charlottesville, Virginia.
Baffled by bullies, a worried world tittering on the edge still finds time to oppose Israel
By David E. Kaplan
Winds of War. Clarissa Ward (right) reporting on CNN from the Ukraine on the threat of an “imminent” Russian invasion.
It’s insane! With a world again on the brink of possible wars in Europe and the Far East, it is Israel that occupies global media attention with another false and libelous report against the Jewish State. Falsely accusing Israel of Apartheid, Amnesty International reveals itself as antisemitic.
Recent alarming statistics report that 2021 was the most antisemitic year in over a decade and with sham reports such as the one issued by Amnesty International this week, it’s about to get worse.
By Rolene Marks
Obsessive Hatred. The once venerated Amnesty International demonstrated again its all-consuming hatred of Israel.
Alarming statistics report that 2021 was the most antisemitic year in over a decade and with sham reports such as the one issued by Amnesty International this month, it’s about to get worse.
Violent endings and new beginnings are the weave in this tormented tapestry of three great faiths and peoples inhabiting this bewilderingly exotic city
By Alex Rose
Hell on Wheels. A train that was used by the Nazis to carry like cattle Jews from Thessaloniki (Salonica) to Auschwitz.
The writer from Ashkelon – whose maternal grandmother and a cousin were the only family members to escape the horror of the Holocaust that befell the vibrant Jewish community of Salonica, unveils its buried turbulent past, revealing today – a “City of Ghosts”.
LOTL Co-founders David E. Kaplan (Editor), Rolene Marks and Yair Chelouche
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While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
The Israel Brief – 31 January 2022 –Historical trip to UAE. We want to live – Gazans protest! Kuwaiti editor says normalise ties with Israel. Israel sends aid to Tonga.
The Israel Brief – 01 February 2022 –The Amnesty Report. Whoopi says the Holocaust is not about race. Blinken speaks with Abbas. Terrorists home demolished.
The Israel Brief – 02 February 2022 –Fallout from Amnesty Report. Whoopi suspended. Rocket lasers? UK-Israel trade ties strengthen.
The Israel Brief – 03 February 2022 – Gantz in Bahrain. Germany, Australia, US reject Amnesty Report. Qatar no to normalisation. Erdogan says President Herzog will visit next month.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Baffled by bullies, a worried world tittering on the edge still finds time to oppose Israel
By David E. Kaplan
“We have children and grandchildren, we don’t want war,” says an understandably terrified Ukrainian woman shop attendant to Clarissa Ward of CNN on assignment in a town near the ‘border’ – misnomer for frontline – between her country and a poised-to-strike, militarized Russia.
Winds of War. Clarissa Ward (right) reporting on CNN from the Ukraine on the threat of “imminent” Russian invasion.
At the other side of the world, the Taiwanese people are no less living in fear – of an invasion from mainland China. Scenarios reminiscent of the 1930s with allied dictatorial appetitive superpowers – one in Europe and another in the Far East – are again threatening war in their regions with uncertain dimensions but certain consequences – human misery.
And all happening during a global pandemic!
If it’s not chilling enough that young children have to see their elders walking around faceless, covered up with masks; that they have to further fear that their seniors are ready to wage senseless wars.
This is insane!
Adding to the theatrics is a global atmosphere of anticipation with dictators playing politics designed to obfuscate and confound while they bide their time. They playfully dangle diplomacy while massing for war.
Make no mistake this is serious stuff. After all, British Prime Mister, Boris Johnson – noted for his comedic antics and partying during the pandemic – was not joking when he said:
“Putin is holding a gun to Ukraine’s head.”
Cunningly coordinated, China is doing the same towards Taiwan.
Preparing to Defend. Taiwanese troops pose after conducting drills in front of the media at Kaohsiung in Taiwan. (Reuters)
And as this ‘theatre of the absurd’ plays out, commentators speculate that the predators first want the entertainment or circus for the masses – the 2022 Winter Olympics. And who is the host – none other than by one of the two bullies – China.
The Olympics, which stands for mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play is being hosted by a country that like its Russian counterpart is set to wage UNPROKED war and create chaos.
But before the bullets fly, it will away with a chunk of medals!
Last night I watched movie on streamer with Merle Streep and Leonardo Di Caprio called ‘Don’t Look Up’, which tells the story of two astronomers attempting to warn humanity of an approaching meteor that will shortly destroy human civilization. The meteor is a metaphor for an impending disaster but what was more disturbing was the apathy of the political leadership, totally absorbed in self-interest. Rather than trying to destroy or deflect the meteor it chose instead to try harness its potential wealth by mining it! Can this get more absurd?
Yes it can – for Israel.
While the world faces uncertainty and fallout from the actions of duplicitous players, so does Israel this week that was subjected to another false and “bully” report, designed to undermine its legitimacy and turn a world from facing existential threats to one attacking the Jewish state. Failing to ultimately remove Jews from this earth – despite endless efforts – the strategy has shifted to expunging the Jewish state – Israel.
The bully – Amnesty International whose February 1 report falsely accuses Israel of “Apartheid” has come under justifiable condemnation as being “antisemitic”. Even the Biden administration which is determined on drawing closer to the Palestinian Authority that unsurprisingly praised the report, rejected it as “absurd.” Some U.S. lawmakers denounced it as “rooted in historic prejudices and false narratives.”
Law, Lies and Labels. “We call it apartheid, because it is apartheid under international law,” Agnes Callamard, the Secretary General of Amnesty International (left) answered Becky Anderson on CNN to a global audience.
Avi Bell, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, told JNS (Jewish National Syndicate) that “the big challenge would be to find any claims by Amnesty that are defensible from a legal point of view.”
According to Bell, the nearly 300-page report is “a compilation of tired propaganda, lies and distortions” and “boils down to a simple message: The world’s largest Jewish community should drop dead.”
For Amnesty International, which apart from calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) “to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation” and further calling on all states to “exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice”, this NGO bully goes much farther in its declaration of war against Israel.
According to Amnesty:
“This system of apartheid originated with the creation of Israel in May 1948 and has been built and maintained for decades.”
This reference to 1948 exposes Amnesty’s animus, characterizing Israel as illegitimate since its inception.
From this revelatory platform it launched its global calling for a “comprehensive arms embargo on Israel” and for the UN General Assembly to re-establish the Special Committee against Apartheid in order to investigate Israel.
Telling it as he sees it. President Joe Biden rejected the Amnesty International report accusing Israel of apartheid as “Absurd”.
While state bullies like Russia and China have designs to absorb Ukraine (the second largest country in Europe) and Taiwan respectively, the NGO bully Amnesty International is banking on the world’s increasing antisemitism to coalesce in the mission:
– to dismantle the state of Israel.
Israel however sees through the smokescreens and subterfuges, and unlike the populace mostly in a state of denial in the movie “Don’t Look Up”, recognizes the meteor falling to earth for what it is and what needs to be done.
Jews haven’t bounced back after 2000 years and not learnt a thing or two!
Ignoring the Truth. Lies, spin, profiteering, bickering, undermining the science, ignoring warnings and doing nothing useful are the themes in this depressing comedy that finds resonance in today’s global politics.
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