The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism
Newsletter
Volume 1 No. 29
12 October 2007
SPECIAL YIISA EVENTS
SATURDAY, OCT. 13 @ 1 PM (Congregation B’nai Jacob in Woodbridge)
Dr. Charles Small, Director of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, will kick off the B’nai Jacob Speaker’s Series as the first speaker in the Shabbat Lunch and Learn Series.
The lecture will take place after Saturday services and Kiddush at 1 pm. For further information, call Congregation B’nai Jacob at (203) 389- 2111, or visit www.bnaijacob.org.
THURSDAY, OCT. 18 @ 4:15 PM (Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High St., Rm. 211)
YIISA Seminar Series:Never Again? When Holocaust Rhetoric Becomes Empty Rhetoric, Diplomatic Tool, and a Weapon against Israel
Speaker: Prof. Walter Reich, George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs
OTHER EVENTS
TUESDAY, OCT. 16 @ 12 PM (ISPS, 77 Prospect St., Room B-012)
Special YIISA Seminar Event: From Philo-Semitic to Anti-Semitic: Shifts in Attitude towards the Jewish People among a Western European Minority Community
Speaker: Dr. Grahame Davies, University of Wales, Cardiff, and Goodenough College, London
Author of The Chosen People: Wales and the Jews
Space is limited, so please RSVP at (203) 432-5239 or yiisa.program@yale.edu
BOOK REVIEW
What’s Left by Nick Cohen
(Guardian) David Smith writes about Cohen’s book. “Cohen asks: how does democracy square with a defence of universal human rights? Does respect for non-western customs trump feminist pleas for battered women, or gay rights pleas for homosexuals on death row? Cohen believes the left has come down on the wrong side, led by postmodern academics into a stupefying cultural relativism that refuses to condemn fascists if they have brown skins.”
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SPECIAL ARTICLE OF INTEREST
Ann Coulter on CNBC Show: Jews Need ‘Perfecting’
(Editor and Publisher) An incredible instance of blatant anti-Semitism on the part of controversial columnist/author Ann Coulter. Appearing on Donny Deutsch’s CNBC show, “The Big Idea,” Coulter suggested that the U.S. would be a better place if there weren’t any Jewish people and that they needed to “perfect” themselves into Christians. A transcript of Coulter’s preposterous statements on the show is included.
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YIISA IN THE NEWS
As the inaugural speaker for YIISA’s Professor William Prusoff Honorary Lecture, Prof. Alan Dershowitz packed the Yale Law School Levinson Auditorium on Oct. 11. A videotape of his talk will be posted by the end of the month on www.yale.edu/yiisa.
(Yale Daily News) Deshowitz visit rouses protestors
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(New Haven Register) Dershowitz talks of free speech, torture
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ARTICLES OF INTEREST
MIDDLE EAST
High Level Debate Stalled Syria Air Strike
(ABC News) The September Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear site in Syria had been in the works for months, and was delayed only at the strong urging of the United States. In early July the Israelis presented the United States with satellite imagery that they said showed a nuclear facility in Syria. They had additional evidence that they said showed that some of the technology was supplied by North Korea. One U.S. official said the material was “jaw dropping” because it raised questions as to why U.S. intelligence had not previously picked up on the facility.
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Gaza Rocket Is Said to Have Longer Range
(NY Times) Palestinian militants fired a Katyusha rocket into Israel from Gaza, a rare instance of the use of a more sophisticated missile than the usual crude, Gaza-made Qassams. The Katyusha, which landed in open ground in Netivot, almost seven miles east of Gaza, did little damage. But the Katyusha, a factory-manufactured missile with a longer range, better accuracy and a warhead weighing about 11 pounds, must be smuggled into Gaza.
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Suicide bombers head to Iraq from Damascus
(Times) Hala Jaber and Ali Rifat explore the surprising profiles of men who are involved with suicide bombing. Their interviews found that these men confounded expectations – they were no psychopathic loners from the ghetto, but articulate, middle-class men in their twenties and early thirties who had come from good homes and gone to university.
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Petraeus: ‘Show me’ if Iran has stopped supplying Iraqi insurgents
(CNN) Although America’s top general in Iraq called al Qaeda “the wolf closest to the sled,” he said sectarian fighting among militias fueled by Iran could be the biggest long-term challenge for Iraq.”Militias could potentially be the long-term problem for Iraq, if you assume that we can continue to make progress against al Qaeda,” said Gen. David Petraeus.
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1,000 rockets and mortars fired since Hamas takeover
(Ynet) Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fired 1000 mortar rounds and rockets towards Israel since Hamas took power four months ago, said Israeli security officials. A military official told Ynet that “Hamas-sponsored terror groups are trying to maintain a constant level of terror activity against Israel.
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Palestinian Christian activist stabbed to death in Gaza
(Haaretz) Rami Khader Ayyad, director of the Teacher’s Bookshop, Gaza’s only Christian bookstore, which is run by the Bible Society of Gaza Baptist church, was found stabbed to death in a street in Gaza City. Over the years he had received repeated death threats from unidentified people displeased with his missionary work. The Interior Ministry run by Gaza’s Islamic militant Hamas rulers condemned the killing and said it launched an investigation.
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Palestinian Christian killed in Gaza
(Ynet) Rami Ayyad, director of the Protestant Holy Bible Society and a prominent Palestinian Christian in the Gaza Strip, was found dead after being abducted near his home, six months after the religious bookshop he ran was blown up. There was no claim of responsibility for the killing, but sources in the Strip suspect a Muslim extremist group was behind the attack.
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Shin Bet: 7 suicide bombings foiled during holidays
(Ynet) The security forces thwarted seven suicide bombings in Israel in the last month-and-a-half, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told the cabinet Sunday. Diskin said that the ongoing efforts of the IDF, the Shin Bet and the police were behind the apparent calm in the country recently.
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Pope attacks Iran at Jewish Congress
(Times) The Pope hit out at Iran as he pledged to help world Jewish leaders in their fight against anti-Semitism. At a meeting at the Vatican, the Pope spoke of his concern about rising anti-Semitism and described how he wanted to use educational tools to counter the hatred of the Iranian leadership towards the Jewish people and Israel.
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‘A Way Out’ for Iran
(Washington Post) The Bush administration wants Iran to make a strategic shift — by changing its nuclear policy so that it doesn’t have the potential to make weapons, stopping its support for terrorism and working with the United States to stabilize Iraq. Officials continue to believe that the regime is capable of such a shift, despite its internal divisions. But they have concluded that Iran won’t bargain unless it feels more pressure — from tougher economic sanctions and from credible threats of military power.
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Sarkozy talks tough on Iran before Putin meeting
(Ynet) France will not compromise on the need for tougher sanctions on Iran, President Nicolas Sarkozy said, hours before he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin near Moscow. Sarkozy praised Putin as a man with whom he could do business, but his comments on Iran are likely to put him at odds with Moscow, which has said it does not believe further sanctions against Tehran will be helpful.
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Rare Protest Targets Iranian President
(Washington Post) About 100 students staged a rare protest against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he gave a speech at Tehran University marking the beginning of the academic year. Students were once the main power base of Iran’s reform movement but have faced intense pressure in recent years from Ahmadinejad’s hard-line government, making anti-government protests rare.
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NORTH AMERICA
‘US support for Israel spurred 9/11′
(Jerusalem Post) US support for Israel was a “major cause” of the 9-11 attacks, according to University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard Professor Stephen Walt, who appeared at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week to promote their book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy .
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Sukkah at California university vandalized
(JTA) Police are investigating the vandalism of an off-campus Chabad House sukkah at the University of California, Davis. Anti-Israel statements including “End Israeli Occupation” and “Free Palestine” were spray-painted on the inside of the sukkah.
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EUROPE
The anti-boycott movement’s movers and shakers
(Haaretz) “Rotten Zionist” is only one of the names David Hirsh was called during his campaign against the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Hirsh, who in 2005 founded the organization Engage with Jon Pike, was called these names not by hooligans or angry Internet posters, but by his colleagues in the British academic world, whom he – until recently – considered his professional and political equals. His only sin was daring to voice his opinion loudly and clearly: that the campaign to boycott Israeli academic institutions is racist, superfluous and even harmful.
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Kantor cites European dangers
(JTA) Anti-Semitism is as big a threat to European Jewry as a nuclear Iran, Moshe Kantor said. Following a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, told JTA, “To my understanding, these two bombs are equally dangerous for Europe and for the Jewish street. Of course, just now the Iranian threat is not so much banalized as the threat of xenophobia and anti-Semitism, and I think that it is very much a pity. It’s proof of a very weak historical memory of the young generation.”
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Cause for concern in Germany
(Ynet) Shortly before leaving Berlin, Shimon Stein, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, summed up his seven-year term as “interesting, challenging, productive, and frustrating.” Stein is not optimistic at all. “I watched with great concern how the German’s public view of Israel eroded,” he said.
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German-Iranian striker refuses to play in Israel
(Ynet) Ashkan Dejagah, the German national team’s striker, who comes from a German-Iranian background, refuses to come to Israel to play in the Under-21 European Championship qualifying match. Dejagah’s decision has sparked angered reactions throughout the Jewish community in Germany, in the German political arena and even in the media.
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WEEKLY QUOTES (Source: Canadian Institute for Jewish Research)
The peace process requires determination to make brave, unavoidable decisions, which involve relinquishing the full realization of the dreams that fed our national ethos for many years. Nothing is easier than to cling on to these dreams, and the price of awakening from them can be heavy for all of us. The Palestinians will also have to confront the need to relinquish the fulfillment of some of their dreams in order to create with us a reality that might not be ideal, and might not be perfect, but one that will give us all stability, security, happiness and peace. The current Palestinian leadership is not a terrorist leadership. President Abbas and Prime Minister Salaam Fayad are committed to all the agreements signed with Israel, and I believe that they want to move ahead together with us on a route that will bring about a change in the reality of relations between us and them. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in a statement seen by the opposition as referring to alleged plans to divide Jerusalem,speaking about the need for both Israelis and Palestinians to give up their dreams. Olmert attempted to alleviate criticism from Shas and Israel Beiteinu on Monday when he pledged in a speech opening the Knesset’s winter session not to withdraw from any West Bank land unless Palestinian terrorism is stopped. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 9)
The unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon created an Iranian basefrom which Israel is being attackedin the North, and the unilateral pullout from Gaza created a second Iranian base in Gaza, ‘Hamastan’. And now the government is planning a third withdrawalfrom Judea and Samariathat will lead to a third Iranian base, this time in the center of the country. I ask my friends in Shas and Israel Beiteinuwhat are you doing in this government? Do you agree with Hamas controlling neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the hilltops overlooking Kfar Saba, Ra’anana, and Tel Aviv? Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, lashing out at PM Olmert’s diplomatic policies which, Netanyahu argued, would eventually lead to an Iranian terrorist presence in Jerusalem and would make the city unlivable. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 9)
[Mohammed Hamid’s] purpose was to convert such men to his own fanatical and extreme beliefs and having given them such a foundation, thereby enabling them to move on to join others in the pursuit of jihad by acts of terrorism. Prosecutor David Farrell told Woolwich Crown Court as five men charged with terrorist training offences went on trial in London on Wednesday. The high-security court was told a sixth man, their leader, had already admitted soliciting murder. Atilla Ahmet, 43, the so-called “ emir of the group, pleaded guilty to three counts of encouraging others to commit murder in a separate hearing last month, from which media were barred until the start of Wednesday’s trial. The Tanzanian-born defendant Mohammed Hamid, 50, is accused of preparing Muslim men for jihad, by organizing terrorism training disguised as camping or paintballing trips in rural parts of England. The court heard that Hamid provided training in weapons and military tactics at camps across England. Among those to attend these camps were men convicted of attempting to bomb the London transport system on July 21, 2005, two weeks after four Islamist militants killed 52 people in almost identical suicide attacks. Four other men are also on trial over the alleged training camps, the first people to face charges using legislation brought in last year. Mousa Brown, 41, is accused of giving and receiving weapons training, while Mohammed Al Figari, 43, Kibley Da Costa, 24, and Kader Ahmed, 20, are charged with attending terrorist training camps. Da Costa is also charged with providing terrorism training, and Figari with possessing documents likely to be of use to a terrorist, including the “Al Qaeda manual” and “How I can train myself for Jihad.” (New York Times, Oct. 10)
We also must never lose sight of al-Qaeda’s persistent desire for weapons of mass destruction, as the group continues to try to acquire and use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear material…. Moreover, although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al-Qaeda senior leadership, the group likely will intensify its efforts to place operatives here in the homeland. Excerpts from a new White House report issued yesterday, stating that al Qaeda is will likely increase attempts to infiltrate the United States from its secure base in Pakistan, and there is growing concern they would use makeshift bombs in an attack. The National Strategy for Homeland Security, an update of an earlier rushed report issued in July, 2002, also said it’s clear al Qaeda wants to use improvised explosive devices and liquid explosives that are easy to make. While the report calls al Qaeda the biggest threat to the United States, it said the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah Ehud Olmertu003c/i> to alter Jerusalem’snstatus as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority ifnit were backed by 80 percent of the ministers, 22 percent if anreferendum were held, 10 percent now, and seven percent would object.n(“,1] ); //–> may increasingly consider attacking the homeland if it perceives the United States as posing a direct threat to the group or Iran, its principal sponsor. President George W. Bush, in a letter accompanying the report, said the United States is safer today, but we are not yet safe. Working with our partners and allies, we have broken up terrorist cells, disrupted attacks and saved American lives, he said in the letter. Although our enemies have not been idle, they have not succeeded in launching another attack on our soil in over six years due to the bravery and diligence of many. (Globe and Mail, Oct. 10)
SHORT TAKES
“DEATH TO THE DICTATOR (Teheran) Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was at Teheran University to deliver a speech marking the beginning of the academic year when he was met by a demonstration of a hundred students. He continued to talk, over their chants of death to the dictator, of the merits of science and the pitfalls of Western-style democracy. The protesters faced hardliners supporting Ahmadinejad with thank you president chants of their own. Police did not enter the campus and the protesters dispersed when the president left. Until recently, students were the primary supporters of reform in Iran, but increased repressive pressure from Ahmadinejad’s regime has made anti-government protests rare. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 
ISRAELIS SPLIT OVER JERUSALEM PLAN (Jerusalem) A poll by Dr. Mina Tzemach and the Dahaf Institute was published in Yedioth Ahronoth Tuesday and shows most Israeli Jews oppose changing the current situation in Jerusalem – 61 percent believe Israel should remain sovereign — though 37 percent are willing to consider changes to the administration of the city’s holy sites. Fifty-two percent are willing to support a public mandate enabling Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to alter Jerusalem’s status as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority if it were backed by 80 percent of the ministers, 22 percent if a referendum were held, 10 percent now, and seven percent would object. ( YnetNews.com, Oct. 9)
WINOGRAD MAY NOT DELAY REPORT’S RELEASE (Jerusalem) The Winograd Committee on the Second Lebanon War will not be issuing cautionary letters and sanctioning anyone for decisions that provoked the war, according to reports Monday. Without the legal delays such letters would entail, the report is expected to be released by the end of the year. Although the news is positive for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government, it prompted Likud to remind Labor’s Ehud Barak of his promise to leave the coalition following the report’s release. Kadima MK Yoel Hasson suggested, “Labor has no more excuses to leave the coalition, so now they can stay in government until 2010.” (Jerusalem Post, Oct.
OLMERT QUESTIONED IN CORRUPTION CASES (Jerusalem) Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was questioned for five hours by the police at his official residence on Tuesday, Israeli officials said, as part of a criminal investigation into whether he tried, as acting finance minister in 2005, to help steer the sale of an Israeli bank to a friend. The investigation into the Bank Leumi sale was ordered last January by the state prosecutor, Eran Shendar, and focuses on suspicions that Olmert may have tried to tailor the terms of the sale to suit a potential bidder and friend, the Australian billionaire Frank Lowy. In the end, Lowy did not submit a formal bid for the controlling share of the bank, and it is unclear what, if anything, Olmert would have gained even if Lowy had made a successful bid. Meanwhile, in late September, Israel’s attorney general instructed the police to open another criminal investigation, this one involving Olmert’s purchase of an apartment in a historic Jerusalem house in 2004. That investigation focuses on suspicions that Olmert bought the apartment from a development company at a large discount in return for helping the company obtain special building permits from Jerusalem’s city government. The prime minister’s office has denied any wrongdoing in the purchase. Some opposition politicians have questioned how effectively Olmert can run the country while under criminal investigation, and have called on him to suspend himself. (New York Times, Oct. 10)
HAMAS AND FATAH COMMITTED INHUMANE ACTS (Gaza) A new report by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights documents that the infighting between Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip between June 7 and 14, left 161 Palestinians dead, 41 of whom were civilians, when Islamists seized control from the ruling secularists. The report states: “The two sides perpetrated grave breaches of the provisions of international law concerning internal armed conflicts, including extra-judicial and willful killings and shooting at combatants and civilians after capturing them.” (Reuters, Oct.9)
TURKEY ABOUT TO CROSS IRAQ BORDER (Istanbul) Political and military leaders in Turkey officially cleared troops to cross the border into Iraq to eliminate Kurdish rebels responsible for about 30 deaths in two weeks. The move, in spite of U.S. opposition, follows a Sunday explosion 25 kilometres from the Iraq border that killed 13 soldiers. Turkey-U.S. relations are already tense as Congress is set to vote on a resolution to declare the 1915 killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians a genocide. (Associated Press, International Herald Tribune, NYT, Oct. 10)
FIGHTING INCREASES IN NORTHERN PAKISTAN (Miranshah) Pakistani planes struck Islamists in the north yesterday, after four days of fighting left nearly 200 people dead. This latest round of fighting, which has seen 50 people killed, began when the Islamists ambushed a military convoy and the Pakistani army retaliated. Most of the 50,000 residents of Mir Ali, in the North Waziristan region, have fled, leaving only a few to defend the town, recognised as an al Qaeda-Taliban stronghold. (National Post, Oct.10)
EGYPT TIGHTENS GRIP ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH (Cairo) The editors of four Egyptian newspapers have been sentenced to a year in prison and $3,500 each, by a Cairo court, for insulting President Hosni Mubarak. The judge said “the defendants failed to prove the authenticity of what they published and didn’t present any proof (of their assertions) in their defence.” These “assertions” accuse Egypt’s ruling party of slaughtering and oppressing its own people. ( Jerusalem Post, Sept. 13)