Anti-Semitic, Who Us?

I hate Zionists, nor Jews. It's anti-Zionism, not anti-Semitism:

* A Chicago Jewish day school received a bomb threat.
* A molotov cocktail was thrown at a Chicago synagogue.
* Hand-made posters in support of Hamas were placed on two synagogues in Irvine, California.

None of these places are Israeli. And yet, somehow, they're all being attacked as if they were connected to Israel. Why is that?

Hmmm... Let's think:

Officials say they don't know if there's a link between the incident and increased violence in the Middle East.

Right. They don't know. They can't figure out why people will attack Jewish schools and religious institutions when they're angry with Israel, the Jewish State. But again, it isn't anti-Zionism. It's anti-Semitism.

Anti-Zionism has become the most dangerous and effective form of anti- Semitism in our time, through its systematic delegitimization, defamation, and demonization of Israel. Although not a priori anti-Semitic, the calls to dismantle the Jewish state, whether they come from Muslims, the Left, or the radical Right, increasingly rely on an anti-Semitic stereotypization of classic themes, such as the manipulative "Jewish lobby," the Jewish/Zionist "world conspiracy," and Jewish/Israeli "warmongers."

One major driving force of this anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism is the transformation of the Palestinian cause into a "holy war"; another source is anti-Americanism linked with fundamentalist Islamism. In the current context, classic conspiracy theories, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, are enjoying a spectacular revival.

The common denominator of the new anti-Zionism has been the systematic effort to criminalize Israeli and Jewish behavior, so as to place it beyond the pale of civilized and acceptable conduct.

Indeed, Israel is today the only state on the face of this planet that such a large number of disparate people wish to see disappear - itself a chilling reminder of the Nazi propaganda of the 1930s. The most virulent expressions of this "exterminationist" or genocidal anti-Zionism have come from the Arab-Muslim world, which is the historical heir of the earlier 20th-century forms of totalitarian anti-Semitism in Hitler's Germany and the Soviet Union. Even "moderate" Muslim statesmen such as Mahathir Mohammad have publicly repeated the classic anti-Semitic belief that "Jews rule the world" while eliciting virtually no objections in the Islamic world. The more radical Islamists from Al-Qaida to the Palestinian Hamas go much further since they fuse indiscriminate terror, suicide bombings, and a Protocols of Zion style of anti-Semitism with the ideology of jihad. In this case, the socalled "war against Zionism" unmistakably embraces the total demonization of the "Jewish other":

As the "enemy of mankind," as deadly poisonous snakes, as barbarian "Nazis" and "Holocaust manipulators" who control international finance, not to mention America, or the Western mass media, while they busily instigate wars and revolutions to achieve world domination.

Such conspiracy theories sailing under "anti-Zionist" colors constitute a highly toxic, even murderous worldview that today is linked to religious fanaticism and a worldwide revolutionary agenda. The same demonizing stereotypes can, however, be found in moderate pro-Western Egypt (home to the Protocols based anti-Semitic soap opera Rider without a Horse), secular Baathist Syria, conservative Wahhabite Saudi Arabia, and the Shiite fundamentalist Iran of the ayatollahs. This is an ideological anti-Zionism that seeks both the annihilation of Israel and a world "liberated from the Jews" - in other words, it is a totalist form of anti-Semitism.

Palestinian suffering and Arab "anti-Zionism" have helped to infect Europe with an old-new version of anti-Semitism in which Jews are rapacious, bloodsucking colonialists. The theme is that Jews were rootless, imperialist invaders who came to Palestine to conquer the land by brute force, to expel or "cleanse" it of its natives. They are the modern "Crusaders" with no legitimate rights to the soil - an alien transplant, absolutely foreign to the region. They succeeded only because of a gigantic occult conspiracy in which the Zionists (the Jews) manipulated Great Britain and subsequently America. This is a typically anti-Semitic narrative of which Hitler might have approved - widely believed around the world, even credited by millions of educated people in the West. The popularity of the Protocols today is the one telling symptom of the growing merger between anti-Semitism and "anti-Zionism".

Zionism is increasingly depicted in some mainstream media as being "criminal" in its essence as well as its behavior.

Zionism, the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, advocated, from its inception, tangible as well as spiritual aims. Jews of all persuasions, left and right, religious and secular, joined to form the Zionist movement and worked together toward these goals. Disagreements led to rifts, but ultimately, the common goal of a Jewish state in its ancient homeland was attained. The term “Zionism” was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum.

Hamas Posts New Gilad Shalit Video

Group shows gunmen flanking kidnapped soldier in latest propaganda clip threatening his death

By Ali Waked

VIDEO - A new video was posted on YouTube by Hamas on Monday, showing kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit flanked by two gunmen on either side. The clip ends with the sound of gunfire.

In the video one of the men holds a rifle while the other removes various items from a case. Between them is the image of Gilad Shalit, as he appeared in a previous video made public one year ago.

After a few moments the screen goes dark, and a phrase appears on the screen: "Will the mission be completed?" it says. Then gunshots are sounded.

The film was not the first to be released by the terror organization responsible for kidnapping the soldier. The previous propaganda clip was posted on a website belonging to Hamas's military wing in June.

It showed an Israeli tank on the border with Gaza, and a drone flying through the air above. Then the tank, in which Shalit is located, blows up. "The illusion is shattered," says the screen.

The website's homepage displays a timeline ranging from June 25, 2006 – when Shalit was kidnapped – until today. Next to 2010 it says, "Four years and Gilad is still ours".



Ynet News

The Forgotten Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries

By: Avi Beker

Historically, there was an exchange of populations in the Middle East and the number of displaced Jews exceeds the number of Palestinian Arab refugees. Most of the Jews were expelled as a result of an open policy of anti-Semitic incitement and even ethnic cleansing. However, unlike the Arab refugees, the Jews who fled are a forgotten case because of a combination of international cynicism and domestic Israeli suppression of the subject. The Palestinians are the only group of refugees out of the more than one hundred million who were displaced after World War II who have a special UN agency that, according to its mandate, cannot but perpetuate their tragedy. An open debate about the exodus of the Jews is critical for countering the Palestinian demand for the "right of return" and will require a more objective scrutiny of the myths about the origins of the Arab- Israeli conflict.

Introduction
Why was the story of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries suppressed? How did it become a forgotten exodus?

Semha Alwaya, an attorney from San Francisco and former Jewish refugee from Iraq, wrote in March 2005 in the San Francisco Chronicle that the world is ignoring her story simply because of the "inconvenience for those who seek to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East." As she notes, since 1949 the United Nations has passed more than a hundred resolutions on Palestinian refugees and not a single one on Jewish refugees from Arab countries. The UN makes a clear divide between the "right of return" of millions of refugees even into Israel proper (the pre-1967 borders) and the rights of these Jewish refugees.

Although they exceed the numbers of the Palestinian refugees, the Jews who fled are a forgotten case. Whereas the former are at the very heart of the peace process with a huge UN bureaucratic machinery dedicated to keeping them in the camps, the nine hundred thousand Jews who were forced out of Arab countries have not been refugees for many years. Most of them, about 650,000, went to Israel because it was the only country that would admit them. Most of them resided in tents that after several years were replaced by wooden cabins, and stayed in what were actually refugee camps for up to twelve years. They never received any aid or even attention from the UN Relief And Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, or any other international agency. Although their plight was raised almost every year at the UN by Israeli representatives, there was never any other reference to their case at the world body.

Only at the end of October 2003 was a bipartisan resolution (H. Con. Res. 311) submitted to the U.S. Congress that recognized the "Dual Middle East Refugee Problem." It speaks of the forgotten exodus of nine hundred thousand Jews from Arab countries who "were forced to flee and in some cases brutally expelled amid coordinated violence and anti-Semitic incitement that amounted to ethnic cleansing." Referring to the "population exchange" that took place in the Middle East, the resolution deplores the "cynical perpetuation of the Arab refugee crisis" and criticizes the "immense machinery of UNRWA" that only "increases violence through terror." The resolution called on UNRWA to set up a program for resettling the Palestinian refugees.

Typically, the issue of the Jewish refugees was not on the agenda of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for a final settlement at Camp David in July 2000. The subject emerged only after the parties failed to reach an agreement on the issue of the Palestinian refugees. Only then did the Israelis raise the question of justice for the Jews from Arab countries.

In addition to the international constraints, there have been domestic political reasons for successive Israeli governments' suppression of the subject. Many Israelis regarded the immigration and later integration of the Middle Eastern Jews into Israeli society as an important element in the Zionist ethos of the ingathering of exiles, and there was a reluctance to describe it in terms of a forced expulsion or, at best, an involuntary emigration. The Zionist leadership of the newborn state chose the romanticized code-name Magic Carpet to describe the immigration from Yemen, and the biblical title Operation Ezra and Nehemiah - they were Jewish leaders who returned to Jerusalem from Babylon to build the Second Temple - for the exodus of the Iraqi Jews.

Before Camp David in July 2000, the conventional wisdom among both Israelis and international observers was that the issue of the Palestinian refugees should be left to the end of the peace process. It was believed that once the parties reached agreements on recognition, security, borders, water, normalization, and so on, the difficult refugee question would dissipate by itself. Indeed, it was never negotiated seriously since the abortive meetings of the UN Palestine Conciliation Commission in the early 1950s, which discussed a compromise on the refugees' return that the Arabs rejected.

From the very beginning, the Arabs treated the refugee issue as an instrument to achieve, through UN diplomacy, what they had failed to attain in the battles of 1948-1949 and the subsequent armistice agreements. The much-quoted General Assembly Resolution 194, which is adduced as legitimizing the Palestinian "right of return," was originally rejected by the Arab states and contains nothing that makes this "right" a principle of international law.4 The wording of 194 already compromised the basis of negotiation by establishing the Palestinian Central Council (PCC) with the aim of facilitating "indirect contacts between the sides," so as to overcome the Arab refusal to recognize Israel.

Subsequently, the General Assembly refused for many years to use the word peace in regard to settlements between the parties in the Middle East. This deletion from the UN vocabulary sharply contradicted the UN Charter and was a major failing for an organization that had mediated the armistice agreements after Israel's Independence War, for which its chief negotiator Dr. Ralph Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize.

The conspiracy to exploit the human tragedy of the refugees against Israel was consolidated when the Arabs refused to accept the concept of resettlement, which appeared in 194 as an alternative solution. This approach was manifested in the establishment of UNWRA in December 1949 as the only agency of its kind to deal with a regional refugee problem.

On 14 December 1950, the UN again reiterated the principles of "repatriation or resettlement and compensation," and even voiced a concern that "the repatriation, resettlement, economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation have not been effected." The Arabs, however, rejected the conciliation efforts of the PCC and succeeded to convince the General Assembly to separate the refugee issue from the other contested matters of the dispute. This marked a turning point in the UN's attitude toward the refugee question; subsequently it took on a clear political dimension as needing to be solved in the framework of the "right of return" to an entity known as Palestine.

The UN never discussed the plight of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries even though it had all the necessary information on their expulsion and even "ethnic cleansing" resulting in their resettlement mostly in Israel. From that point the refugee issue became an independent question, with no relationship to the Arab-Israeli conflict as a whole and the hostile acts that had created the problem in the first place. Hence, the Arabs consistently rejected ideas such as the UN Security Council's 1949 proposals for an economic survey aimed at settling the refugees in different parts of the Middle East. Similarly, in June 1959 the Arabs reacted with fury when UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld presented multi year plan for the refugees' rehabilitation.

The crisis at Camp David in 2000 highlighted the disastrous impact of this approach. It became apparent that the gaps between the parties were unbridgeable. Both the Israelis and the Americans were shocked to discover the Palestinians' unwillingness to compromise on this matter. Even the pro-Palestinian Left in Israel felt betrayed and expressed the fear that the insistence on full implementation of the right of return is an attempt to destroy the Jewish state. It was only because of this crisis that the Israelis decided to present their own demands for the rights of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries. As a result, President Clinton made a historic statement recognizing these refugees' entitlement to compensation: "the fund should compensate the Israelis who were made refugees by the war, which occurred after the birth of the State of Israel. Israel is full of people, Jewish people, who lived in predominately Arab countries who came to Israel because they were made refugees in their own land."

This American commitment was not, however, entirely new. In a press conference held twenty-three years earlier, on 27 October 1977, President Jimmy Carter said in regard to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty: "Palestinians have rights...obviously there are Jewish refugees... they have the same rights as others do." Although both presidents' statements are critical for the historical narrative of the Arab- Israeli conflict and have serious implications for solving the Palestinian refugee problem, they remained tangential to the peace process. The matter of the Jewish refugees seems to lurk as a "secret weapon" or fallback position in case the Arab side refuses to compromise on the right of return.

Are Jews Refugees, Too?
On 11 October 2003, the New York Times printed a story whose title bore a question mark: "Are Jews Who Fled Arab Lands to Israel Refugees, Too?" In its evenhanded approach and politically correct sensitivity to Arab claims, the Times left the issue unresolved because, as the article's author Samuel G. Freedman asserted, the Middle East is "typified by clashes of narratives, different accounts of flight and dispossession that are used to justify political goals today." The Times, however, could have cleared up the confusion by consulting its own archives and checking the reports on the nine hundred thousand Jews who fled Arab states amid anti-Semitic riots and threats after Israel's creation in 1948. In those accounts there was no clash of narratives but only the "news that's fit to print" about the mortal danger these Jews faced.

On 16 May 1948, the day after Israel declared independence, the Times published a front-page story with the headline: "Jews in Grave Danger in All Moslem Lands." The paper noted that for nearly four months, "the UN had had before it an appeal for immediate and urgent consideration of the case of the Jewish population in Arab and Moslem countries." A sub-headline stated that: "Nine Hundred Thousand Jews in Africa and Asia Face Wrath of Their Foes," and the article cited reports of deteriorating Jewish security including violent incidents. The Times points out that according to a law drafted by the Political Committee of the Arab League, all Jewish citizens of these countries would be considered "members of the minority Jewish state of Palestine." This implies that there was a clear Arab strategy to expel their Jewish citizens while expecting that they would find refuge in Israel.

In the same UN General Assembly, death threats were aired against Jews without much ado. The Egyptian delegate, Heykal Pasha, warned already on 24 November 1947 about the consequences of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine: "the United Nations...should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in Muslim countries...creating anti-Semitism in those countries even more difficult to root out than the anti-Semitism which the Allies tried to eradicate in Germany...making the UN...responsible for very grave disorders and for the massacre of a large number of Jews."9 The Palestinian delegate, Jamal Al-Hussayni, said the Jews' situation in the Arab world "will become very precarious. Governments in general have always been unable to prevent mob excitement and violence." Syrian UN representative Faris Al-Khuri is quoted in the New York Times as far back as 19 February 1947 stating that: "Unless the Palestinian problem is settled, we shall have difficulty in protecting the Jews in the Arab world." As reported by a Jewish publication: "With the entire Arabic press fulminating against the perfidy of Zionism, and with Arab politicians rousing their underfed and enervated masses to a dangerous pitch of hysteria, the threats were certainly not empty."

In Iraq the threats were made publicly, and its Foreign Minister Fadel Jamail offered a similar statement in the UN. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Sa'id pursued special efforts to expel his country's Jews and in different political venues raised the idea of a population exchange. Specifically, according to a diplomatic report he suggested "to force an exchange of population under UN supervision and the transfer of 100,000 Jews beyond Iraq in exchange for the Arab refugees who had already left the territory in Israel's hands." The case of the Jews of Iraq is a documented record of legislation and public executions as part an official government policy of ethnic cleansing of the Middle East's most ancient Jewish community.

Expulsion as the Goal
The Arab statements in the UN General Assembly and the New York Times reports prove that the intention to expel these Jewish populations preceded the establishment of Israel and the plight of the Palestinian refugees. At the end of the war for Israel's independence, early in February 1949, Britain's ambassador to Transjordan Sir Alec Kirkbride was present at an exchange between the abovementioned Iraqi Prime Minister Sa'id and his Jordanian counterpart, Samir El-Rifa'i, regarding the fate of the Iraqi Jews. The former leader was planning mass killings of his Jewish countrymen to induce them to flee via Jordan. According to Kirkbride, Sa'id "came out with the astounding proposition that a convoy of Iraqi Jews should be brought over in army lorries escorted by armored cars, taken to the Jordanian-Israeli frontier and forced to cross the line." Sa'id spelled out his strategy:

Quite apart from the certainty that the Israelis would not consent to receive the deportations in that manner, the passage of the Jews through Jordan would almost certainly have touched off serious trouble amongst the very disgruntled Arab refugees who were crowded into the country. Either the Iraqi Jews would have been massacred or their guards would have to shoot other Arabs to protect the lives of their charges.

Kirkbride and El-Rafa'i turned down the plan, and Sa'id went back to Iraq to reinforce his anti-Jewish measures internally.

What, then, happened to the nine hundred thousand Jews of the Arab countries?
In a few years, Jewish communities that had existed in the Middle East for more than 2,500 years were brutally expelled or had to run for their lives. The statements made in the UN were harbingers of what became a total collapse of these Jews' security. Following the Partition Resolution of November 1947, and in some countries even earlier during World War II, Middle Eastern Jews were the targets of official and popular incitement, state-legislated discrimination, and pogroms - again, all this before the massive flight of the Arabs from Palestine.

In Syria, anti-Semitism grew after the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. By the late 1930s, Syria already served as a headquarters for anti-Semitism and hosted Nazi officers. By 1945 the thirty thousand Syrian Jews already faced restrictions on emigration to Israel and some of their property was burned and looted, including the Great Synagogue in Damascus. In December 1947 there was a major pogrom against the Jews of Aleppo, the largest community with seventeen thousand; many were killed and seven thousand fled. Jewish bank accounts in the city were frozen and private property was confiscated; fifty shops, eighteen synagogues, and five schools were burned. Later, after Israel's founding, more Syrian Jews were killed and banks were instructed to freeze all Jewish accounts.

In Yemen, Jews were always treated as second-class citizens. As far back as the 1880s, 2,500 Jews moved from there to Jerusalem and Jaffa, and as conditions worsened another seventeen thousand left to Aden and Palestine between 1923-1945. Riots and massacres also occurred in Aden, which was in British-controlled Yemen. In three days of disturbances in December 1947, many Jews were killed and the Jewish quarter was burned to the ground, so that the community lost its business and economic base. Altogether in those three days, 82 Jews were killed, 106 shops looted out of 170, 220 houses destroyed, and four synagogues gutted.

The Iraqi Jews' condition deteriorated parallel to the rise of Nazism in Germany. Nazi ideology pervaded Iraqi society including the school curricula, which praised Hitler for his anti-Jewish policy and called the Iraqi Jews a fifth column. Hundreds of Jews were forced out of their civil service jobs in the 1930s, and during the 1936 Arab Revolt in Palestine, Jews were terrorized and murdered in Baghdad. That year the Chief Rabbi of Iraq, Sassoon Khaddouri, was forced to issue a statement denying any connection between Iraqi Jews and the Zionist movement, and in 1938 thirty-three Jewish leaders cabled to the League of Nations a strong condemnation of Zionism.

The worst, however, came in June 1941 with the Farhud, a pro- Nazi uprising against the Jews. Beginning on the Shavuot holiday, in two days incited mobs murdered two hundred Jews, wounded over two thousand, looted more than nine hundred homes, and damaged shops and warehouses.

The Partition Resolution of November 1947 found Iraq's Jews in a state of fear. There had already been riots in the two preceding years, and Jewish children were no longer accepted in government schools. In May and again in December 1947, Jews were accused of poisoning sweets for Arab children and trying to inject cholera germs in drinking water. In 1948, Zionism was declared a crime, 1,500 Jews were dismissed from public service, and Jewish banks lost their authorization. Many Jews were imprisoned and some hanged on the same "charge"; in 1948 the richest Jew in Iraq, Shafiq Adas, received the death penalty for "Zionist and communist crimes." His execution by hanging was a clear message that Jews had no future in the country. Again in 1949, numerous Jews were injured in a new wave of riots. Hence, the evacuation of more than one hundred thousand Jews to Israel between 1949-1951 was precipitated by Iraqi anti-Semitism and echoed the calls of Iraqi leaders for expulsion and population exchange.

A similar wave of persecution took place in Egypt and Libya, where in 1945 there were riots and massacres of hundreds of Jews, with destruction of synagogues and other communal buildings. This recurred in 1948 with the arrest of thousands in Egypt, and deadly attacks in both countries along with synagogue burnings and confiscation of both communal and private property.

The North African countries of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia also saw periodic waves of anti-Jewish riots including mass killings, but they were less intensive and with fewer casualties because of the better protection offered by the French authorities, who were engaged in their own conflict with the Arabs. However, many testimonies express fears of sudden deterioration that were reinforced by developments in other Arab countries and in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Clash of Narratives or Deliberate Injustice?
The creation of the Jewish refugee problem in the Middle East was strongly intertwined with the establishment of Israel and the Arab rejection of a Jewish state. When, after successive wars, a peace process slowly emerged, the Palestinians expected that Israel would strongly pursue the issue of the Jewish refugees. In a 1975 article Sabri Jiryis, then director of the Institute of Palestine Studies in Beirut, accused the Arab states of expelling their Jews "in a mostly cruel manner after confiscating their possessions or taking control of them at the lowest price." Jiryis expected that the Israelis would claim, in future negotiations, that there had been a population exchange in the Middle East. Although Israelis indeed raised the issue in international forums and information material, it did not enter the peace talks as a clear and unequivocal demand. Jiryis, however, envisaged it differently:

There is no need to say that the problem of those Jews and their passage to Israel is not merely theoretical, at least from the viewpoint of the Palestinian problem. Clearly, Israel will raise the question in all serious negotiations that may in time be conducted over the rights of the Palestinians....Israel's argument will take approximately the following form: It is true that we Israelis brought about the exodus of Arabs from their land in the war of 1948...and that we took control of their property. In return, however, you Arabs caused the expulsion of a like number of Jews from Arab countries since 1948 until today. Most of them went to Israel after you seized control of their property in one way or another. What happened, therefore, is merely a kind of "population and property transfer," the consequences of which both sides have to bear. Thus, Israel gathers in the Jews from Arab countries and the Arab countries are obliged in turn to settle the Palestinians within their own borders and work towards a solution of the problem. Israel will undoubtedly advance these claims in the first real debate over the Palestinian problem.

Why did this not materialize?
Although the repression of painful memories by the Jewish refugees themselves is understandable, it is harder to grasp the silence of Israel's government and society on an issue that touches the very heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Drawing an analogy between the stories of the Jewish and Palestinian refugees enables presenting a moral argument against the Palestinian demand for a right of return. For different reasons, however, both the Israeli Left and Right have been reluctant to make that analogy.

The Left, for its part, has trouble with an argument that tends to emphasize the morally superior approach of the Jewish side, which absorbed and rehabilitated its refugees whereas the Arabs worked to perpetuate the Palestinian refugees' suffering as an anti-Israeli tool. For the Left, the Zionist ethos involves much guilt over Israel's having allegedly caused the Palestinians to flee. The radical Left has even made sweeping and false accusations that Israeli forces committed systematic massacres and deportations. According to the New Historians and post-Zionists, the state of Israel was born in sin. These notions have found their way into the public discourse, and have been adopted in academe and among the tone-setters in the Israeli culture and media.

The Israeli Right and Center have inhibitions of a different kind. These circles, which represent the mainstream ideology, believe the term "Jewish refugees" should be avoided so as to diminish the social tensions between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. In their view, it is better to stress that most of the Jews from Arab states were drawn to Israel by Zionist ideals and did not come as refugees. Indeed, many Israelis from Arab countries prefer that interpretation. The truth, however, is that the vast majority of Israelis, both Ashkenazim and Sephardim, came to the Promised Land as persecuted or deported refugees; the voluntary, pioneering leadership was always a small minority.

For ideological reasons, as part of its Zionist mission, the Israeli government did not retain the term refugees for the Jews who came from Arab countries. Because it refers to someone without a home or a shelter, the state of Israel "abolished the term from the Jewish historical lexicon," aiming to show that its door was open to Jewish immigration according to its Law of Return. However, these Zionist principles concealed the fact that almost all the Jews from Arab countries were indeed refugees who had suffered a great deal as individuals and as a community. They had undergone persecution, official and unofficial discrimination, and daily political, social, religious, and economic restrictions. They also were refugees because they arrived penniless after all their property and bank accounts were confiscated or looted.

As for the Zionist motives of these immigrants, they were reflected in their religious life in their Diaspora countries where they had prayed for their homeland in Israel and for the welfare of Jerusalem. But like their brethren in Europe, their strong ties to Zion, which were kept and nourished for two thousand years, were never translated into a voluntary, massive immigration to the Land of Israel. What prompted that were the riots and massacres that had been threatened and incited by the Arab leaders even from the rostrum of the UN.

The Role of the UN and UNRWA
The UN clearly played a central role in constructing the Arab narrative and ignoring and later delegitimizing the Jewish-Israeli one. The world body gave the Jews only a short grace period after the Holocaust and up to the establishment of their state. When the UN voted to partition Mandatory Palestine into two states on 29 November 1947, most Jews around the world were ecstatic. Yet even this historic decision was achieved only because of a sudden shift by the Soviet Union and its satellites motivated by political expediency. The Soviets, already engaged in the Cold War, wanted first and foremost to speed Britain's departure from the Middle East. They later reaffirmed Israel's establishment in the Security Council resolutions of 15 July 1948, which blamed the Arab League for rejecting calls for a ceasefire, and in Israel's admittance to the UN in May 1949.

The approval of Israel's UN membership has both political and legal significance, beyond the recognition itself. The passing of the resolution by the General Assembly, against the Arab will, can be considered an ex post facto acknowledgment of the armistice agreements, and a confirmation of the realities created by the Arab rejection of partition: the territorial changes and the need to resettle the Arab refugees in their new areas of residence. Such resettlement of refugees was the regular practice in numerous cases after World War II, and was referred to regarding the Arab refugees in two other General Assembly resolutions: 194 of December 1948, and 394 of December 1950.

The strategy of delegitimizing Israel was based from the beginning on the tragedy of the Palestinians. The Arabs exploited their distress in seeking to make Israel a pariah state. UNRWA was established as the only UN agency devoted to a specific group of refugees. Unlike the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, an agency that deals with all other refugees throughout the world, the Arabs opposed rehabilitation plans for the displaced Palestinians. UNRWA's political objective was clear: to create a permanent reminder of alleged Israeli misdeeds so as to keep the Palestinian issue alive. In August 1958, the former director of UNRWA in Jordan said: "The Arab States do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die."

In 2000, more than fifty years after UNRWA's establishment, an official PLO document reaffirmed the Arab strategy to perpetuate the refugees' distress by keeping them in the camps: "In order to keep the refugee issue alive and prevent Israel from evading responsibility for their plight, Arab countries - with the notable exception of Jordan - have usually sought to preserve a Palestinian identity by maintaining the Palestinians' status as refugees."

The UNRWA system has largely enabled the corruption of the Palestinian Arab leadership, who have never displayed a real concern for the refugees but only exploited them for political-financial interests. Although UNRWA has carried out laudable humanitarian work, this cannot atone for its generally destructive role. The way in which UNRWA's mandate is defined plays into the hands of militant groups, including those in the camps. The literature on humanitarian aid refers to the camps as a "refugee-warrior" community, meaning they serve as military staging grounds.

Indeed, the link between refugee camps and terror in general was recognized by the UN Security Council in 1998 when, in discussing refugees in Africa, it declared the "unacceptability of using refugee camps...to achieve military purposes." Later that year Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his report to the Security Council, demanded that "refugee camps...be kept free of any military presence or equipment." But such strictures were never applied to the UNRWA camps, where suicide-bomb belts are prepared, car bombs are constructed, and terrorists are trained.

The Myth of Arab Tolerance
Both Jewish and Arab writers, in different times and for different reasons, have contributed to the myth about the interfaith utopia between Jews and Arabs under Islam. In the nineteenth century, among Jewish authors, this reflected frustration over the failures of European emancipation, and in the twentieth century it figured in Arab accusations that Zionism and Israel had spoiled hundreds of years of pleasant coexistence. Specifically, the myth of Arab tolerance is used to deny the allegations that Jews were expelled from Arab states or faced threats and persecution there. Arab and Palestinian leaders have claimed that the Jews who left those countries can return and resume their peaceful lives.

The historical record of Jewish life under Arab rule, however, is mixed and much less encouraging. Maimonides, the greatest Jewish scholar of the Middle Ages, was close to power in Islamic society and conversant in the Arab language and culture. In his classic "Epistle to the Jews of Yemen" (1172), which he wrote to bolster the Yemenite Jews in the face of oppression and attempts at forced conversion, he wrote:

You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us. This is as the Exalted had warned us: "Even our enemies themselves being judges" (Deut. 32:31). No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have.

For Maimonides, who knew about the Crusaders' depredations against the Jews of Europe, this was an emphatic historical judgment. It may reflect his own family's experience of fleeing Spain after the deterioration in the Jews' conditions there and the death threats they faced from Muslim extremists, or it could be a great thinker's religiocultural assessment and anticipation of the future Muslim-Jewish confrontation.

The particular myth about the Golden Age and interfaith utopia in Spain was popular in Jewish historiography in the nineteenth century. The Jews' traumatic expulsion from Catholic Spain in 1492 and the fact that they found refuge in Muslim Turkey reinforced the longing for the better periods when Jews were somewhat economically and culturally integrated in Muslim Spain. Moreover, nineteenth-century Jewish historians were frustrated by their people's tortuously slow acceptance by European society in what was supposed to be a liberal age. As the greatest of these scholars, Heinrich Graetz, put it in his History of the Jews:

Wearied with contemplating the miserable plight of the Jews in their ancient home and in the countries of Europe, and fatigued by the constant sight of fanatical oppression in Christendom, the eyes of the observer rest with gladness upon their situation in the Arabian Peninsula. Here the sons of Judah were free to raise their heads, and did not need to look around them with fear and humiliation....Here they...were allowed to develop their powers in the midst of a free, simple and talented people, to show their manly courage, to compete for the gifts of fame, and with practiced hand to measure swords with their antagonists....

The height of culture...was reached by the Jews of Spain in their most flourishing period.

Bernard Lewis, however, offers a more balanced assessment of the fourteen centuries of Jewish life under Islamic rule:

The Jews were never free from discrimination, but only rarely subject to persecution;...their situation was never as bad as in Christendom at its worst, nor ever as good as in Christendom at its best. There is nothing in Islamic history to parallel the Spanish expulsion and Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, or the Nazi Holocaust; there is also nothing to compare with the progressive emancipation and acceptance accorded to Jews in the democratic West during the last three centuries.

Unlike Christianity, Islam had no tradition of deicide and Muslims did not blame Jews for the demise of their prophet Mohammed, who died a natural death. However, Muslims' attitudes toward contemporary Jews were influenced by biographical accounts of Mohammed and by hadith concerning Jewish attempts on the Prophet's life, and when the Islamic world was threatened from within or without, its leaders became harsher toward the other religions leading to discrimination and violent persecution.

Since the late nineteenth century both theological and racist European anti-Semitism, including the innovations of the Nazis, have been internalized in the Muslim world. This includes themes centering on Jewish "chosenness," with wide dissemination of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Lewis observes that hatred of Israel is the only grievance that can be freely and safely expressed in the Arab totalitarian societies; Israel serves to deflect anger about economic conditions and lack of political freedom.

Yehuda Bauer notes that the study of Islam is important for Holocaust scholars because the same patterns and threats have arisen and a second Holocaust is perfectly possible: "In radical Islam there are forces which are mentally prepared - given the power - to carry out genocide against others." Whereas in the past traditional Islamic sects like the Saudi Wahabists did not focus on Jews, they now speak explicitly of eradicating them: "Their language is a mixture of that of the Nazis and the Qur'an."

Denial of History and Justice

The denial of history has become an important tool in the Arab- Palestinian narrative. The obfuscation of the Jewish exodus from Arab countries is part of a larger revisionist endeavor. For instance, the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida quotes Muslim writer Safi naz Kallan's statement that: "there is no people or land named Israel, only Zionist thieves unfit to establish a nation or have their own language and religion." These Jews are "Shylocks of the land, busy emptying Palestinian pockets." At the Camp David talks in July 2000, Yasser Arafat denied any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, thereby contradicting the Koran, the hadith, and other Islamic sources. His representative Saeb Erekat said the very idea of the Temple is a Jewish invention with no historical basis. President Clinton replied: "it is not just all the Jews around the world who believe that the Temple was there but the majority of Christians as well."

The Arabs' claim of a right of return for the Palestinian refugees relies on false premises: that there is such a right under international law, that it was granted to the Palestinians in UN resolutions, and that Israel is responsible for creating the refugee problem. The case of the Jewish refugees highlights the Arabs' unwillingness to recognize the Jewish right to a homeland and calculated policy of exploiting the conflict to pursue their goal of an "ethnic cleansing" of Israel. This policy has long and consistently been practiced by the Arabs. Today almost no Jews live in the Arab world, and Christian communities have dwindled sharply there.

In launching their war against the Jewish state in 1948, Arab countries were basically responsible for both the Jewish and Arab refugee problems. During this eighteen-month confrontation, in which Arab armies invaded Israel and battles raged in almost every city and settlement, there were instances in which Israeli troops forced the local Arab population to leave their homes. These were acts of self-defense in a war that killed six thousand of the six hundred thousand Jews then in the country, and it is clear that Israel did not, as alleged, mastermind a large-scale expulsion of Palestinians. According to their own testimonies, most of the Palestinians left because of the threats and fear-mongering of Arab leaders.

In his memoirs the former prime minister of Syria, Khalid Al- Azm, placed the entire blame for the refugee problem on the Arabs:

Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees...while it is we who made them leave....We brought disaster upon...Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave....We have rendered them dispossessed....Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon...men, women and children - all this in the service of political purposes.

In March 1976, in the official PLO journal in Beirut, Falastin Al- Thawra, current Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas wrote:

The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe....

The Arab demand for a right of return is a formula for destroying Israel as a Jewish state and reflects the unwillingness to seek a realistic settlement. Open discussion of the Jews' flight from Arab countries will encourage a more objective scrutiny of the myths about the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Arab and Palestinian responsibility for the population exchange that occurred weakens their argument for a "return" and highlights the double standard the UN has consistently applied to the conflict.

The case of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries and their harsh expulsion is a critical element in transforming the refugee question from a political-military tool to a humanitarian issue and helping to set the Middle East narrative straight.

Jewish Political Studies Review

Jerusalem and the Temple Mount

East and West Jerusalem and the Old City

For over 3,300 years of history, Jerusalem has been a capital city for only the Jewish People. Jews have always lived in Jerusalem, except when they were massacred or driven out. There has, however, been a nearly unbroken Jewish presence in Jerusalem for the past 1,600 years. And since the early 1800's, the population of Jerusalem has been predominantly Jewish. Even when the Jordanians captured and occupied Jerusalem from 1948-67, they (the Jordanians) never sought to change it to their capital (replacing Amman) nor make it the capital of all Arab-"Palestinian" people. Even during the 19 years Jordan "occupied" most of Jerusalem, Arab leaders from other Arab countries hardly ever bothered to visit this city! Only to the Jews has Jerusalem ever held special meaning! The reality is that Jerusalem was never an Arab capital and that it never was, until the Jews revitalized it, a dusty provincial city that hardly played and economic, social or political role.

Another myth deals with the issue of Jerusalem and its Temple Mount. The myth is that Jerusalem is really an Arab city and that it is a central focus of Islam. The truth is that the Arabs expressed very limited interest in the Temple Mount before 1967 after the Six-Day War. Besides, Mecca and Medina (both in Saudi Arabia) are Islam's holiest cities!

Islam's Holy(?) Koran mentions Mecca 2 or 3 (implied, but not actually written) times. It mentions Medina 5 times. It never mentions Jerusalem and with good reason. There is no historical evidence to suggest Mohammad ever visited Jerusalem! And if he did visit Jerusalem, it could not have been until 6 years after his death. Therefore, the notion that Mohammed ascended to Heaven from a rock in Jerusalem (today's Dome of the Rock) is even more ridiculous!

One more thing about Jerusalem in general and its Temple Mount in particular. Jerusalem appears in the Jewish Bible 669 times and Zion (which usually means Jerusalem, sometimes the Land of Israel) 154 times, or 823 times in all. The Christian Bible mentions Jerusalem 154 times and Zion 7 times. All told, in the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) and the New Testament, the terms "Judah" or "Judea" appear 877 times, and "Samaria" is used on 123 occasions.

Hold on to your hats, everybody. It gets even better. Upon closer look at their Holy Koran, we have uncovered something quite amazing. These Muslims may actually be more Jewish than Muslim! Get this... the Koran mentions "Israel" [or "Israelites"] 47 times, "Jew" or "Jewish" 26 times! Even "Christian" or "Christians" gets 15 mentions!

OK, so maybe Mohammed just forget to mention "Jerusalem". Maybe he also forgot to mention the Haram-esh-Sharif, their name for Judaism's Temple Mount. Perhaps it was an honest oversight. That desert heat can do strange things to one's brain. But surely "Palestine" is mentioned all through the Koran. After all, the poo' poo' ancient "Palestinians" go way back, right? WRONG. "Palestine" and "Palestinian" are nowhere to be found. Perhaps that's because these so-called Arab "Palestinians" have ancient historical roots going ALL THE WAY back to June 1967! So much for the Arab, Muslim or "Palestinian" ancient religious or physical connections to a single ounce of turf in the so-called "occupied" territories!

From 1948 to 1967, when East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount were "occupied" by Jordanian Forces following the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War, Jerusalem itself was ignored by the Arab world. No Arab leader ever paid a visit, not even to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque or the Dome of the Rock (both located on the JEWISH Temple Mount). Also noteworthy during this 19 year period of Jordanian occupation' no Jews were allowed there... not that there was much for them to see since the Arabs destroyed 58 of Jerusalem's Jewish synagogues! Even the Arabs of "Palestine" placed so low a priority on Jerusalem that the PLO's founding charter, the 1964 Palestinian National Covenant, made no reference whatsoever to it. Only when the Jews recaptured it after the 1967 "Six Day War" (initiated by the Arabs) did the Arab world SUDDENLY grow very passionate about Jerusalem!

Can any Muslim in the world produce any credible evidence for their connection to this holy site, other than Mohammed's dream? Believe it or not, the one and only source for the Muslim's claim to Jerusalem and the site of the Holy Temple, is a mention in the Koran of a dream that Mohammed had about an unknown "place far away". Perhaps this "place far away" is the site of the White House in Washington DC or a Nevada "chicken ranch?"

In truth, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosques are just but two of hundreds of thousands of Muslim mosques around the world. Except for these two minor mosques, Jerusalem itself has no major Islamic significance. In fact, far more Christian shrines are in Jerusalem than Muslim ones!

When a Jew prays from anywhere in the world, he faces the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. When a Moslem prays, even while IN Jerusalem, he faces Mecca, Saudi Arabia (1,300 miles away due east!). So in many cases, even when a Moslem is in Jerusalem, his "hind quarters" are facing these two Jerusalem mosques! What does THIS tell you! And when Islamic suicide bombers try to take apart Jerusalem piece by piece, what does THAT tell you!





By:Masada 2000

We Need to Fight

Time has come to change failed PR strategy, and Sweden is our test case

Hasbara is not the same as fighting. Hasbara is a refined approach bringing passion and logic to our argument. Hasbara is a lawyer-like making of the public case for Israel. Explain, defend, debate, educate.

Fighting is not nuanced in its objective. Fighting is direct; it is about causing the other guy pain. It means making the other guy pay a price for his actions. Fighting is about hurting your opponent.

I have great appreciation for Hasbara and I believe there is a significant role for Hasbara in our struggle. But it is not fighting. And it has failed as a strategy in Europe.

Continuing to pursue Hasbara objectives in Europe does not pass the marketplace test. Packaging and repackaging the same product in hopes that somehow, somebody in Europe will buy it is counterproductive and a waste of resources.

The shelves are stacked sky high with unpurchased Hasbara. Nobody is buying our product. And they have tuned out our sales pitch. Bashing your head against a brick wall over and over will only get you a bloody head.

This takes me to the subject of Sweden and the EU Jerusalem initiative. European Union (EU) foreign ministers have, with some modifications, rubber stamped a Swedish proposal to recognize east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. The Swedish EU initiative provides the framework for international recognition of a soon to be unilaterally declared Palestinian State.

“EU Calls For Jerusalem To Be Shared Capital,” is the Boston Globe headline. Hasbara has not dissuaded Swedish Prime Minister Fredrick Reinfeldt. Or discouraged his friends even a little.

The raw political truth behind the Swedish EU Jerusalem initiative is that Prime Minister Fredrick Reinfeldt’s government gets away with it because there is no political price to pay in Sweden.

You will not see Reinfeldt and his Rasputin-like partner Carl Bildt skulking back to Sweden, tail between their legs, apologizing for having bargained away a few details of their EU Jerusalem initiative.

Not a bit of it. They won’t say it for publication but all Europe understands the message Reinfeldt and Bildt just delivered. . . We gave the Jews a good whack – and long overdue it was too. Yes indeed, Fredrick Reinfeldt and Carl Bildt showed Europe and the world what Swedish leadership is all about.

Not only is there no price to pay for their EU Jerusalem initiative, politically, it’s a stone winner.

Do we have the will?
The Swedes hold a general election on September 19, 2010. All 349 seats in the Riksdag are up. Reinfeldt’s tenuous coalition government is in deep political trouble. Recent polling has Reinfeldt’s government at 44% and the opposition at 50%. His party risks defeat in September.

Facing defeat and a loss of power and needing to neutralize threats from Sweden’s left wing, Reinfeldt and Bildt made a calculated political decision to use Sweden’s EU Chairmanship to improve their poll numbers, neutralize the Left, and buttress their political standing in Sweden.

Politics is a copycat business. If Reinfeldt’s “hammer the Jews” gambit succeeds every politician in Europe will copy the formula. If we do not fight back, if we do not cause Reinfeldt and Bildt to suffer political consequences in Sweden, it will have a bandwagon effect all across European politics.

All Europe is watching and learning.
The stakes are nothing less than Jerusalem.

We can choose to fight. We can decide to push back. We have the means, the experience and skill to cause these guys political pain in Sweden. The question is do we have the will?

Do we have the guts to take them on, to make Reinfeldt, his political party and his pompous, anti-Israel Foreign Minister Carl Bildt pay a political price? That’s the question and the September 19 elections in Sweden are the test case.

Hasbara is not fighting. Explaining is not fighting. Fighting is causing the other guy pain.

With all due respect for my friends who have passionately made the Hasbara argument to Europe over the years, I cast my vote for fighting.

September 19, 2010, that’s the target. Send the best political campaign professionals in the world into Sweden’s national elections. Make Reinfeldt and Bildt pay a price. That’s where I’d make my stand.

An independent campaign, run by Swedes, centered on the consequences for

Sweden resulting from the Reinfeldt government’s EU Jerusalem initiative, with pro-bono assistance provided by the very best political campaign professionals in the world is a rational and potentially very effective fight back strategy.

Sweden is a test case. If we make Reinfeldt and Bildt pay a political price in Sweden, the message it sends will resonate all over Europe.

Are you in?
-------------------------------------------------
Michael Fenenbock is a long-time American political consultant. He and his wife Daphne Weisbart are the founders of The18. They live in New York, but spend a great deal of time in Jerusalem

Cool Facts About Israel!

1. Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology was pioneered in Israel.

2. The Israeli pioneer Check-Point Ltd. is a world leader in the firewall and internet security software markets.

3. Israeli laser technology is powering the latest hair removal devices on the American market.

4. Intel's double-core processor was completely developed at its design facility in Israel, as well as the MMX Chip and Centrino technology.

5. In 2007, Israel was accepted as member at the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development)

6. An Israeli doctor headed the Merck team that developed a vaccine against cervical cancer.

7. Prof. Robert Aumann, an economist, is the fourth Israeli in the last four years to win a Nobel Prize.

8. AirTrain JFK - the 8.1-mile light rail labrynthe that connects JFK Airport to New York City's mass transit - is protected by the Israeli-developed Nextiva surveillance system.

9. The Weizmann Institute of Science has been voted the best university in the world for life scientists to conduct research.

10. A 100-member Israeli delegation flew to Kenya in 2006 to rescue survivors of a building collapse.

11. An Israeli system to help dyslexic readers is being used throughout the US and Europe.

12. An Israeli 'super-sensor' has been installed in Sealy mattresses to control snoring problems.

13. Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.

14. Israel hosts IBM's, Microsoft's, Intel's and Motorola's largest R&D; facilities outside the United States.

15. Hawaiian singer Don Ho underwent an Israeli-developed stem cell treatment to strengthen his heart.

16. Israeli company Ultrashape has developed a safe replacement for liposuction - a unique new body-contouring device that "blasts" unwanted fat from the body.

17. The Israeli women's national flag football team won the largest and most important open football tournament in Europe in 2005.

18. Israeli researchers have discovered the molecular trigger that causes psoriasis.

19. Israeli research has shown that dancers display consistent differences from the general population in two key genes.

20. Israeli research shows that we can find out more about what is buried beneath the earth's surface by launching a satellite into the sky.

21. An Israeli company has developed a device that helps nurses locate those hard-to-find veins.

22. An Israeli-made device helps restore the use of paralyzed hands. This device electrically stimulates the hand muscles, providing hope to millions of stroke sufferers and victims of spinal injuries

23. An Israeli company has unveiled a blood test that via the telephone diagnoses heart attacks.

24. The Israeli-developed Ex-Press shunt is providing relief for glaucoma sufferers.

25. An Israeli research team has found that the combination of electrical stimulation and chemotherapy makes cancerous metastases disappear.

26. Israel has designed and manufactured the first flight system to protect passenger and freighter aircraft against missile attack.

27. Jewish and Arab students at Hebrew University participate in the 'Billy Crystal Workshops - Peace Through the Performing Arts' project.

28. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin - 109 per 10,000 people - as well as one of the highest per-capital rates of patents filed.

29. In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel is second only to the U.S. in the total number of startup companies (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).

30. Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the US.

31. Israel has the third largest number of companies trading on Wall Street after the U.S. and Canada.

32. More than 85% of solid waste in Israel is treated in an environmentally sound manner

33. On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech start-ups.

34. Israel has the largest raptor migration in the world, with hundreds of thousands of African birds of prey crossing as they fan out into Asia.

35. 24% of Israel's workforce holds university degrees - ranking third in the industrialized world, after the U.S. and Holland - and 12% hold advanced degrees.

36. BabySense, an Israeli product aimed at preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), is saving babies' lives around the world.

37. Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.

38. Israel has the highest number of solar-power water heaters per capita.

39. Israeli actress Hanna Laslo took home the "Best Actress" award at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival for her performance in Amos Gitai's "Free Zone."

40. In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews at risk in Ethiopia to safety in Israel.

41. When Mrs. Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world's second elected female leader in modern times.

42. When the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day - and saved three victims from the rubble.

43. Israel is one of only 8 countries in the world capable of launching their own satellites into space.

44. When earthquake struck western India and Turkey, Israel sent entire field hospitals, including medical staff and equipment, to help treat injured civilians.

45. Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship - and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 - in the world.

46. Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity.

47. Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free."

48. According to industry officials, Israel designed the airline industry's most impenetrable flight security. U.S. officials now look to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats.

49. Israel's Maccabi Tel-Aviv basketball team won the European championships in 1977, 1981 and 2001.

50. Israel has the world's second highest per capita of new books published per year.

51. Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees.

52. Approximately half of the Israelis have access to broadband telecommunication lines, compared to OECD average of 14%.

53. Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.

54. Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.

55. An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment. Every year in U.S. hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes.

56. Israel's Given Imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill. Using the view of the small intestine from the inside, the camera helps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders.

57. The Movement Disorder Surgery program at Israel's Hadassah Medical Center has successfully eliminated the physical manifestations of Parkinson's disease in a select group of patients with a deep brain stimulation technique.

58. Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with congestive heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the heart's mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.

59. In response to serious water shortages, Israeli engineers and agriculturalists developed a revolutionary drip irrigation system to minimize the amount of water used to grow crops.

60. Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.

61. Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U.S., over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany. Over 25% of the country's work force is employed in technical professions - first in this category as well

62. The cell phone was developed in Israel by Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.

63. Most of the Windows NT operating system was developed by Microsoft-Israel.

64. Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D; facilities outside the US in Israel.

65. The technology for AOL Instant Messenger (ICQ) was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.

66. A new acne treatment developed in Israel, the ClearLight device, produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free, narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct - all without damaging surroundings skin or tissue.

67. An Israeli company was the first to develop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully functional electricity generating plant, in southern California's Mojave desert.

68. The first PC anti-virus software was developed in Israel in 1979.

69. The late Christopher Reeve called Israel the "world center" for research on paralysis treatment.

70. Israeli researchers are playing an important role in identifying a defective gene that causes a rare and usually fatal disease in Arab infants.

71. An Israeli company has been given a U.S. grant to develop an anti-smallpox first aid treatment kit.

72. An Israeli company M-Systems was the first to patent and introduce key chain storage ("Disk-On-Key").

73. Israeli microbiologists have developed the first passive vaccine against the mosquito-borne West Nile virus.

74. A team of Israeli and US researchers has designed a watermelon-picking robot endowed with artificial vision to do the job of harvesting.

75. Israeli researchers are using video games to investigate future treatments for memory disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

76. An Israeli company has developed sensors that pick up signs of stress in plants.

77. Israeli medical researchers have shown that lycopene - the red pigment found in tomatoes - lowers blood pressure.

78. A small Israeli company called Lenslet has developed a revolutionary electro-optic processor which operates one thousand times faster than any known Digital Signal Processor.

79. Israeli stem-cell technology is being used in the U.S. to regenerate heart tissue.

80. An Israeli company has developed a device that could enable millions of American diabetics to painlessly inject themselves with insulin.

81. An Israeli company is providing the technology behind an American all-electric bus for urban use.

82. An Israeli medical delegation from the 'Save a Child's Heart' project recently spent two weeks in China performing open heart surgery on children.

83. Scientists in Israel have used strands of DNA to create tiny transistors that can literally build themselves.

84. A week-old Iraqi infant underwent an emergency operation in Israel to correct a congenital heart defect.

85. Some 500 million birds representing 300 species migrate across Israel's skies twice a year in the autumn and spring along the Great Valley Rift.

86. Israeli research shows that a tonsillectomy could be the key solving sleep apnea in children.

87. An Israeli company has developed a new device for monitoring coronary disease that will be integrated into future generation of cellphones.

88. An Israeli-developed algorithm enabled NASA to transmit images from Mars.

89. An Israeli has invented 'bone glue' that will reduce the need for bone transplants and heal bone defects caused by cancer.

90. A joint Israeli-Palestinian expedition recently scaled a peak in Antarctica in the name of coexistence.

91. Over 50 million Israeli flowers were sent to Europe for sale on Valentine's Day.

92. Israeli researchers have found a connection between sleep apnea and impotence.

93. Israel, American and Canadian researchers are working together to develop nanotech-based solutions to the water shortage in the Middle East.

94. The founder of the Cancer Prevention and Wellness Program at New York's prestigious Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is Israeli.

95. Between 150 to 200 multinational clinical trials are regularly taking place in Israel every year.

96. An Israeli company is the world's leading sleep disorder sensors manufacturer.

97. Israeli researchers are successfully using magnets to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

98. Israeli scientists have created a DNA nano-computer that not only detects cancer, but also releases drugs to treat the disease.

99. Tel Aviv has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

100. The U.S. Marines in Iraq are using an Israel-developed hand-held computer for communication purposes, as well as add-on amour kit for better survivability of combat Armored Fighting Vehicles (AFV's).

101. Israel engineers are behind the development of the largest communications router in the world, launched by Cisco.

102. An Israeli company - Evogene - is developing cotton plants that are resistant to adverse salinity conditions and drought.

103. An Israeli company has developed the world's first jellyfish repellent.

104. Israel has helped farmers in Niger develop a horticultural production system called the African Market Garden (AMG).

105. Jerusalem hosted an international gay rights parade World Pride in 2005.

106. A newly developed Israeli cooking oil is capable of breaking up blood fats such as cholesterol.

107. Israeli scientists have alleviated Parkinson's-like symptoms in rats.

108. Israeli scientists are developing a nose drop that will provide a five-year flu vaccine.

109. Israeli researchers have solved the mystery of Lenin's death.

110. Israeli scientists have discovered how to turn mismatched cells into cancer fighters.

111. Over 20 Israeli companies provided security systems and services for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

112. Israeli scientists have shown that hypnotism doubles the chances of success of in vitro fertilization.

113. An Israeli two-flush lavatory system can save western-world countries billions of gallons of water a year.

114. An Israeli-developed device can painlessly administer medications through microscopic pores in the skin.

115. Israeli researchers have shown that a daily dosage of Vitamin E is effective in helping to regain hearing loss.

116. Israeli researchers have created a 'biological pacemaker' which corrects faulty heart rhythms when injected into the failing hearts of pigs.

117. Two Israelis have won the 2004 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their groundbreaking work in cancer research.

118. An Israeli physicist-turned-inventor has developed the world's first air-conditioned motorcycle.

119. Israeli researchers have proven that Prozac can improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

120. An Israeli-developed elderberry extract is one of America's best-selling flu prevention medicines.

121. Children injured in the school siege in Beslan, Russia in 2004 were able to convalesce at an Israeli coastal resort in Ashkelon - at the invitation of that city's mayor.

122. An Israeli company has developed a simple blood test that distinguishes between mild and more severe cases of MS.

123. Israeli scientists have discovered the cause of chronic bad breath and a painless solution.

124. Israeli technology is behind the successful testing of in-flight cell phone use.

125. Israeli research has found that citrus oils may hold the key for asthma treatment.

126. An Israeli company - Patus Ltd. - has donated thousands of its OdorScreen olfactory gel product to counter the crippling odors faced by on-scene Tsunami disaster workers.

127. An Israeli company has developed a nano-lubricant that one day could mean the end of changing your car oil.

128. A young Israeli scientist was among those chosen as an example of carrying on the work of Albert Einstein 100 years later.

129. Intel has sold more than $5 billion worth of the Israeli-developed Centrino chipsets since they were introduced in March 2003.

130. Israel, the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population, can make claim to the following:

131. Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.

132. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin -109 per 10,000 people - as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.

133. In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the US (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).

134. Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the US.

135. Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies.

136. Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,500, exceeding that of the UK.

137 With an aerial arsenal of over 250 F-16s, Israel has the largest fleet of the aircraft outside of the US.

138. Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined.

139. On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech start-ups.

140. Israel has the largest raptor migration in the world, with hundreds of thousands of African birds of prey crossing as they fan out into Asia.

141. Twenty-four percent of Israel's workforce holds university degrees - ranking third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland - and 12 percent hold advanced degrees.

1142. Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.

143. In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews at risk in Ethiopia to safety in Israel.

144. When Gold Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world's second elected female leader in modern times.

145. When the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day - and saved three victims from the rubble.

146. Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship - and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 - in the world.

147. Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity.

148. Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free."

149. According to industry officials, Israel designed the airline industry's most impenetrable flight security. U.S. officials now look to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats.

150. Israel's Maccabi basketball team won the European championships in 2001.

151. Israeli tennis player Anna Smashnova is the 15th ranked female player in the world.

152. Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers was produced by Haim Saban, an Israeli whose family fled persecution in Egypt.

153. In 1991, during the Gulf War, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra played a concert wearing gas masks as scud missiles fired by Saddam Hussein fell on Tel Aviv.

154. Israel has the world's second highest per capita of new books.

155. Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees.

156. Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.

157. Israel has two official languages: Hebrew and Arabic.

158. Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.

159. An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment. Every year in U.S. hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes.

160. Israel's Givun imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, the camera helps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders.

161. Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with congestive heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the heart's mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.

162. With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and start-ups, Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world (apart from the Silicon Valley).

163. In response to serious water shortages, Israeli engineers and agriculturalists developed a revolutionary drip irrigation system to minimize the amount of water used to grow crops.

164. Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.

165. Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U.S., over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions. Israel places first in this category as well.

166. The cell phone was developed in Israel by Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.

167. Most of the Windows NT operating system was developed by Microsoft-Israel.

168. The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.

169. Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.

170) Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees.

171) Israel has more museums per capital than any other country.

172) Israel has two official languages: Hebrew and Arabic.

Medicine...
173) Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.

174) An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment. Every year in U.S. hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes.

175) Israel's Given imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, the camera helps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders.

176) Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with congestive heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the heart's mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.

Technology...
177) With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and start-ups, Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world (apart from the Silicon Valley).

178) In response to serious water shortages, Israeli engineers and agriculturalists developed a revolutionary drip irrigation system to minimize the amount of water used to grow crops.

179) Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capital.

180) Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U.S., over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions. Israel places first in this category as well.

181) The cell phone was developed in Israel by Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.

182) Most of the Windows NT operating system was developed by Microsoft-Israel.

183) The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.

184) Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.

185) Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.

186) The technology for AOL Instant Messenger was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.

187) A new acne treatment developed in Israel, the ClearLight device, produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free, narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct - all without damaging surroundings skin or tissue.

188) An Israeli company was the first to develop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully functional electricity generating plant, in southern California's Mojave desert.

IDF - Marva Program

General Description:
Marva is an IDF program that allows young Jews to learn and experience the basics of IDF and Israeli life. The program lasts between seven to eight weeks and each week, students are stationed at a different base.

Program Outline:‏
This program is open to participants from all over the world.
The program is conducted in simple Hebrew, allowing for significant improvement of Hebrew skills. Activities range from camp craft, navigation, and topography to hikes, lectures, seminars and walking tours, participation in training exercises, and being in the field. Emphasis is placed on Israel’s security situation during lectures on specific social and political issues. The program is based in the Southern Negev on a Gadna base, but participants will spend considerable time in various other parts of the country, including Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Galilee, and more.‏

General Information
Category: General Long Term Programs

Organizer: Tnuat Aliyah

Dates Information: This program runs more than once a year. Contact the organizer for further details.

Length: 8 weeks

Requirements:
Minimum Age: 18
Maximum Age: 28

Target Population: Jewish Tourists

Special Requirements: *Excellent physical condition. *High motivation. *Minimum of aleph level Hebrew. There is no ulpan as part of the program. If your Hebrew is not sufficient, we suggest you do an ulpan prior to the program.

Acceptance Criteria:‏
Applicants should be Jewish tourists between the ages of 18-28. A working knowledge of Hebrew is required (must complete ulpan level aleph). Marva is a physically and mentally demanding program. Applicants are expected to be in excellent physical health and must be highly motivated. It is necessary to undergo a personal interview prior to acceptance.‏

Marva - Frequently Asked Questions(FAQ):
Q: What is Marva and how did it come about?
A: Marva began in 1982 as an advanced gadna (the educational youth branch of the IDF) style program. It originally started on a base called Marva (Sage) in the Gallil.

Q: What is the goal of the program?
A: One of the great forces in the Israeli experience is the army. It is one great leveler and probably the best tool for absorption of new immigrants. Yet in most western countries the word Army bring out negative connotations. The goal of Marva is to expose foreign students to the complexities of the problems and challenges facing the Israeli Army, and the role of the IDF within the framework of Israeli society. It must be emphasized that one who does Marva is not doing army service and is no way part of the IDF. The course is open to any Jew who is interested in learning about the IDF. You do not have to think about Aliyah or army service. During the course participants will have to deal with army disipline, the challenge of the mind will be harder than the challenge of the body.

Q: Do I need to speak Hebrew?
A: Since the program is given in Hebrew the more Hebrew you know the more you will gain out of the program. There is a Hebrew test as part of the application procedure. You need to be able to carry a conversation, even if it's only on a "street level."

Q: Do I have to be especially fit?
A: You must be physically healthy and have documentation. Beyond that you do not need physical strength but you do need determination and stamina.

Q: What is the application procedure?
A: If you are applying from abroad, see your local Aliyah representative. If you do not know how to contact your representative abroad, or you are in Israel, contact Tnuat Aliyah.

Q: Where is the program located?
A: Today's main base is the Gadna base at Sde Boker however during the program participants travel all over the country.

Q: What are the living conditions like?
A: Army accommodations. Be aware that it is located in the Negev and the heat in the summer is very dry and the winter nights can be quite cold.

Q: How many people, on an average, do the program?
A: There are approximately 40 people in each session from all over the world.

Q: What will I learn there?
A: You will learn, topography, campcraft, history, celestial navigation, as well as current events and their effect on the army and riflery. You will visit army bases and see army projects with other sectors of Israeli society. For around 6 weeks of the program you will be "on the road," including one week at the Wingate Institute for physical fitness training. Most of all you will learn how to act as a group and how to help others in your unit to achieve a common goal - as such you will learn the true secret of the Israeli army moral and team cooperation. For more information, contact your local Shaliach or call or write to:

Marva Program Tnuat Aliyah
Shmuel Hanagid 7 POB 92
Jerusalem 91000
Phone:(972)2-620-4407

Quotes by previous program participants: "Marva is a chance to see a side of Israel that only Israeli soldiers get to see. On one occasion we stood on a runway as six f-16’s taxied by. Wow. We met many soldiers and spoke to them. We were considered soldiers and for a short time at least experienced a little bit of what it is like to be a soldier in a country in which the army is survival itself. Marva is not only about what we get out of it. It is also about what we can give to others. Our presence can help boost the morale of soldiers and provide pride for Israelis. In short Marva is a great way that Diaspora Jews can at least show how much we love and appreciate Israel, and how much we appreciate the sacrifice that real Israeli soldiers make so that we can have a country of our own." Anthony Herman, Melbourne

Israel Experience (Marva Program)Zach Goelman
I’ve made the trip to Israel several times in my life, and I used to notice the same thing when I first climbed off the jet. I always stared at the soldiers, everywhere, in packs of olive green and khaki. Young Israelis, my age, carrying their guns, black and shiny, slung casually over their shoulders. Between the uniforms and the guns, I never thought about the actual people wearing the heavy leather boots, or how it felt to wear them. I simply stood and stared, imagining fighter pilots and romantic one-eyed generals. I was never so bold as to ask one of them to pose in a picture, but I was fascinated.

I spent a year in Israel in 2000-2001, in between high school and university. It was an incredible year, and was made drastically more intense by the explosive Intifadah that flared up. Traveling alone and constantly feeling the violence that was gripping the country, being a young Jew in Israel forced me to look at the concept of Zionism, and what it meant to me. It was on a program called Marva that I got a completely new look at the State of Israel and its history. I spent ten weeks in a pair of black leather boots that carried me through mud, dust and water.
I had a new bed mate, a long black rifle that hogged the sleeping bag. I started to forget about relaxing when I began averaging about four hours of sleep a night and I realized that often it is better to agree with a commanding officer rather than do another set of push-ups.

Marva is a program organized by the Educational & Youth Corp. of the IDF, designed for Diaspora Jews to salute, march, and otherwise pretend to be soldiers in the IDF. On a simple level, it was basic training, stressing physical fitness, discipline, military history, and firing ranges. We learned skills such as field navigation, radio operation, combat first aid, squad tactics and camouflage. We ran alarm drills, simulated a base under attack, combat in urban areas and a uniquely Israeli form of unarmed combat, Krav Maga.

On a higher level, a large part of the program was to show us new ways of looking at the State of Israel. We reenacted the 1967 Battle of Ammunition Hill. We went to the Memorial Day Ceremony at Yad VaShem, where speakers included Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President Moshe Katsav. We went on long hikes, off the beaten path to see those still-rugged areas of Israel denied to tourists but ideal for training. We had a full day trek up Mount Ardon in the
Ramon Crater, carrying full gear and extra food. By the end of the hike, full of outward-bound camaraderie we felt like we actually had earned the mountain. It was ours, we conquered it with our sweat and our determination.

But the most meaningful part of the ten weeks was not the muscle I built, not even the "chavura" I formed with the others in my unit but rather it was the reaction of Israelis around me. It was the old woman who brought me to the front of the line to buy a train ticket one Friday afternoon. It was the Ben Yehuda shop owner who refused to charge me for the falafel I ordered. It was the rabbi who gave me a blessing, calling me, .Magen Yisrael. Those are the moments that I think of when I’m asked about my time in the Israeli Army. I even chuckle when I think about the tourists who asked to take a picture with me at the Knesset, and I, faking a Sabra dialect, obliged.