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December 10, 2013

The spy turned big-shot Hollywood producer- read the translated interview with Arnon Milchan!

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

What you are about to read sounds like a big Hollywood production, but it is the true story of the former life of the very successful film producer, Arnon Milchan, as an Israeli spy…

The popular Israeli news show, Uvda (Fact) opened its 20th season with a revelation of one of the biggest secrets of Hollywood. Arnon Milchan, the Israeli-born businessman who owns New Regency Films and has been a part of an array of blockbusters, confirmed the speculations of his past as an Israeli spy. In an interview with reporter Ilana Dayan on Channel 2’s Keshet Broadcasting Uvda, he detailed his real-life work on numerous operations, including the purchase of technology needed to operate nuclear weapons.

 

Israelife brings you the parts of the transcript of the show, translated to English, courtesy of Keshet and Uvda. Hollywood stars such as Russell Crow, Robert De Niro and Ben Affleck, as well as significant characters in Milchan’s past and present lives, were interviewed as well, but the parts brought to you here contain solely the interview with Milchan.

 

“Do you know what it’s like to be a 20-something kid whose country let him be James Bond? That’s action, it’s exciting!” he says to Dayan, as she begins to unveil his story. She then begins tracing Milchan's career from the late '60s and early '70s, when he was a young businessman in the United States. Around that time, he met with Shimon Peres (now the President of Israel) and the two became close. As Peres was in the midst of creating the nuclear reactor in Israel, Milchan assisted with the efforts to acquire equipment and knowledge for Israel’s nuclear project through the secretive agency Lakam, Israel’s Bureau of Scientific Relations.

 

Milchan: “As a foreigner, I was able to open foreign bank accounts. “

Dayan: “Which is something the country can’t do?”

Milchan: “Which is something the country can’t do. There are all kinds of things that the country can do, but won’t, such as buying things that indicate something else. So it was better if someone else buys them.”

 

Dayan then mentions that in the 1970s, Milchan begins brokering international deals in the shadows. At the peak of his secret activity, he operated 30 companies in 17 different countries, all being a cover to Lakam’s activity. At the time, the man who ran Lakam was Benjamin Blumberg.

 

Dayan: “Were there any missions that Blumberg gave you, which up until today no one knows they ever occurred?”

Milchan: “Sure!”

Dayan: “Were there any missions that Blumberg gave you and you replied ‘no way! Not gonna happen’?”

Milchan: “No”

Dayan: “Is there something he asked you to do and you tried and failed?”

Milchan: “Eventually, I succeeded in everything”

 

Dayan explains how back at the time, Israel was in need for secret plans for a nuclear facility, but no country in the world was willing to sell it.

 

Milchan: “I knew that if I would be in a certain place at a certain time with certain people, I will get something specific that the country needs.”

 

Milchan then traveled to Germany, where he managed to convince a German engineer to give him classified documents with plans for a facility, from a safe place where he worked.”

 

Milchan: “[I was wondering] how to make friends with him? Organically, so that in the end he would help me either as a friend or as someone who understands the problems of my country.”

Dayan: “Not for money?”

Milchan: “No, never. This never works”

Dayan: “If you know that this person, who works in such an eminent position…”

Milchan: “A person at an eminent position does not need money.  A chairman of a big company or something like that, I can’t buy him and the country does not have enough money to ‘buy’ him.”

Dayan: “What is your deal with him?”

Milchan: “Give me some information, I need something. Help me.”

 

Eventually, that engineer took those classified documents home with him one day, and “left” them on his dining table while leaving the house with his wife. The idea was that someone will come inside, take pictures and leave without a trace.

 

On September 22, 1979 there was a nuclear flash off the coast of South Africa. That was believed to be an Israeli nuclear test, as part of an alliance with South Africa. As part of that pact, South Africa provided Israel with the Uranium it needed, when in return, Israel produced an international PR campaign for the then Apartheid regime. The team producing the campaign was led by Milchan and Eschel Rhoodie, a propaganda specialist.

 

Milchan: “It wasn’t about just getting Uranium. It was about helping those who are helping us.”

Dayan: “Did you receive this briefing from Shimon Peres?”

Milchan: “More than Shimon Peres.”

Dayan: “From Benjamin Blumberg?” 

Milchan: “From Benjamin Blumberg and also from the Americans.”

Dayan: “They were also involved in this secret?”

Milchan: “Yes.”

 

When asked by Dayan how did he shed a bright light on the horrors of the Apartheid regime, he replies: “you do this through connections in television, with newspapers… Even financial support for organizations that decrease the heavy weight of the Apartheid, and I did that with joy and happiness…”

 

Dayan: “But it even came to purchasing a television station in California, for example.”

Milchan: “That’s right.”

 

Milchan’s latest film, Dayan mentions, is named “12 years of Slavery,” and tells the story of a black man who is abducted and sold into slavery.

 

Milchan: “What are you thinking about, Ilana? What is going through your head right now?”

Dayan: “I will tell you: you talked about 12 Years of Slavery and I asked myself if maybe, on a certain
level, it was you trying to make amends  in the story with South Africa, which still probably bothers you?”

Milchan: “Yes, probably. Subconsciously, it is possible that I hadn’t done enough.”

Dayan: “What do you mean?”

Milchan: “I hadn’t fought enough for the injustice of the Apartheid.”

 

According to Dayan, in the late 70’s, Milchan’s close relationship with the Israeli security system and the Lakam turns him into an important player in the rink. At that time, he brokered deals for hundreds of millions of dollars between Israel and U.S. companies for helicopters, missiles and other equipment.

 

Milchan: “What are ‘Security Deals?’ let’s say that the US sold missiles for 900 million dollars, the state of Israel paid the US, not me.”

 

Dayan then revealed that Milchan, as a mediator, took 60% of sales profit as a commission. She asks him what did he do with these profits.

 

Milchan: “Check, you can check.”

Dayan: “And what will I find?”

Milchan: “First, you’ll find that everything was returned to the state. Second, there were barely any profits.”

Dayan: “So you’re saying that from all the many deals you made for the state of Israel, or in the name of Israel or in favor or Israel, Arnon Milchan did not earn a penny?”

Milchan: “Yes. The state of Israel earned sometimes.”

 

After leaving a mark in the Israeli film industry with the movie Disengoff 99, Milchan moved to Hollywood. After several small productions, he encounters the script for a romantic comedy about a prostitute and a man who saves her. That film, originally named “3000,” became the major hit film, Pretty Woman.

 

Even at the top of the entertainment world, Milchan was still involved in several secret missions, including one that he would rather forget. In the early 1980’s, there was an Israeli attempt to smuggle “switches” – equipment that can be used for nuclear weapons manufacture, but can also be used for medical equipment. Behind the attempt was the California-based Milco company, owned by Milchan, with Richard Kelly Smyth as CEO.

 

Milchan: “I did not know they ordered the “switches.” I didn’t even know what those “switches” were…”

 

Robert Bonner, the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles at the time, was interviewed by Dayan and insisted that Milchan knew about the switches. Milchan, on his behalf, denied the accusations.

 

Milchan: “He [Smyth] received a permission and sent. The fact that he maybe broke the law or not, or maybe received…The entire deal…”

Dayan: “But there’s something here I don’t understand. Even if it required breaking the law, doing things…in the shadows, and you tell me ‘It needed to be done for the state of Israel’…”

Milchan: “Yes.”

Dayan: “So you say that when he told me ‘Milchan knew’, he lied.”

Milchan: “Certainly.”

 

One of the biggest revelations made by Dayan on the show was that Sydney Pollack, the director of Tootsie and Out of Africa who died in 2008, was Milchan’s business partner and his confidant. Pollack, on his behalf, never confirmed this information.

 

Milchan: “He was my partner in export, aerospace manufacturing and airplanes, all kinds of things.”

Dayan: “Did Sydney know of the other things you did?”

Milchan: “We were pertners.”

Dayan: “No, but some of the things you did for the country, did you share with him?”

Milchan: “He had to decide what he was willing [to do] and what he wasn’t willing [to do.] To many things he said ‘no.’ To many things he said ‘yes’.”

 

In 1983, Milchan was involved in an attempt to recruit an American nuclear scientist to assist with the Israeli nuclear plan. Nervous from the meeting with Milchan and a high-ranking Israeli, the scientist turned to the FBI. The massive amount of proof on FBI desks started to pile up by the mid- 1980’s as Milchan himself released what is considered his greatest success of all times: Once Upon a Time in America, starring Robert De Niro. In 1985, the FBI discovered that the “switches” were sent to Israel without a proper license. FBI agents raided Milco and interrogated Smyth. Milchan, on his behalf, boarded the first flight to Israel.

 

Milchan: “I arrived in Israel, opened the TV and saw my face all over the screen with missiles flying, with Barbra Streisand with Once Upon a Time in America – they put it all together…That was when I called Peres and told him that there was a problem. He said that I should probably refrain from returning to the States in the near future, and I said ‘No way! What did I do? If there’s a problem it is our problem, but I, personally, did not do anything. I asked, they sent.’”

 

Then things started to get really complicated when the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles requested a statement under oath from Milchan. In Israel, they realized that if Milchan’s connection would be revealed, there would be serious damage to the Jerusalem- Washington relationship.

 

Dayan: “You were ordered to completely disconnect with Smyth?”

Milchan: “Not an order, a request.”

Dayan: “And you did.”

Milchan: “Yes.”

 

Smyth was arrested and released on bail and fled the country soon after, at a critical point of the trial, before supposedly discriminating evidence against Smyth and Milchan was presented. Smyth was declared a fugitive, and according to some reports received assistance and funding from Israel.  In 2001, he was captured in Spain and was brought back to the U.S., where he stood trial and was imprisoned for 40 months.

 

The FBI began an investigation into Milchan's affairs, yet he has never been charged.  When asked if he has any regrets, he says: “I do have one regret: that I did not realize the significance of the image I created for myself, without even being aware. That I had to struggle and confront with the image that…I cannot use the words…”

 

Dayan: “Say it.”

Milchan: “The F***ing image of an arms dealer, of a…If people would have known just how I risked my life repeatedly for the country…When I come to Hollywood they say ‘He made his money as an arms dealer’. After 150, how can they still say it?”

Dayan: “But you also say you wish you hadn’t done all of that. You’re being defensive.”

Milchan: “Yes. I should have said ‘Fuck you! You know what? I did it for my country and I’m proud of it’.”

 

Nowadays, Milchan continues his many Hollywood successes, still a very lovable character in the City of Angels and in here in Israel.

The spy turned big-shot Hollywood producer- read the translated interview with Arnon Milchan! Read More »

December 10, 2013

Leave a Comment / Israel, Must Reads /

The US

Headline: US defense bill boosts funding for joint Israel missile defense projects

To Read: Politico's Susan Glasser asks whether Hillary Clinton was a good secretary of state-

Timing, fate and the White House may have all conspired in it, but the truth is that Hillary Clinton never did find a way to turn Foggy Bottom into her ticket to history.

And perhaps that’s exactly the reason why American politicians tend to become secretary of state after they’ve run for president and lost; it just might be a better consolation prize than it is steppingstone to higher office.

Quote: “Just to be absolutely clear, we are not focused on an interim deal, we are focused on a final deal”, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki explaining why John Kerry decided to come to Israel again.

Number: $173m, the sum of the added funding for the joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense programs.

 

Israel

Headline: Knesset approves Infiltration Prevention Bill

To Read: Brent Sasley believes that following the Iran deal Israel will cooperate, not clash, with the US-

 The tendency of Western, and particularly American, observers to describe Israel in one-dimensional terms, however, is not new. U.S. commentators have long viewed the country and the region through a prism of American politics and priorities. They assume that recent electoral and coalition politics in Israel are about Iran — which is certainly on the minds of American foreign policy specialists and journalists — when they have actually been more about domestic politicking and crude power struggles. Such assumptions miss the deeper processes at work in Israeli foreign and security policymaking, which suggest that U.S.-Israeli relations are not in grave danger since there are still, in fact, enough common policy concerns keeping the two countries together. Those include maintaining strict sanctions on Iran during negotiations and ensuring close ties with Egypt in the post–Hosni Mubarak era.

Quote: “The president is recovering from flu and doctors advised him not to fly”, President Peres' spokesman explaining why he too will not be attending Nelson Mandela's funeral.

Number: 3,500, the number of Gazan construction workers who will get back to work after Israel agreed to allow building materials into Gaza.

 

The Middle East

Headline: Iran says new US sanctions would kill deal

To Read: Eric Trager writes a piece about Mohammad Morsi's brother, Hussein Morsi, and finds the Muslim Brotherhood still very much active in rural Egypt-

Indeed, while the Brotherhood’s leadership is severely depleted and its organization is barely functional in the major cities, it retains legions of members who are committed to its power-seeking program and rural cells that are still active. Of course, the Brotherhood is hardly on the cusp of a dramatic comeback, but the fact that it is far from dead means that the struggle for Egypt’s future isn’t over.

For countryside Muslim Brothers like Hussein Morsi, that’s the way it’s always been.

Quote: “[Tehran knows that the likelihood of military intervention now] is almost zero”, Netanyahu's ex top-advisor Ya'acov Amidror discussing Iran.

Number: $240m, the cost of a new pipeline which would provide Dead Sea water to Israel and Jordan.

 

The Jewish World

Headline: US-Israeli Jews' intermarriage rate up

To Read: John Acocella writes a review of a new book (by Mark Larrimore) which takes a look at the history of the reception of the book of Job-

Kant said that all we could do with doubts about God was admit them. For Kant, Larrimore writes, “the book of Job shows that the problem of evil must remain an open wound.” Larrimore thinks that’s still true: that the dispute between Job and his friends epitomizes modern thought. There are no answers, only riddles. In the face of that impasse, the discussion often shifts from content to style. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a number of people who wrote on Job—the German theorist Johann Gottfried von Herder, the Anglican bishop Robert Lowth—stopped trying to figure out God’s plan, and instead focussed on his poetry, whose sublimity, they felt, was meaning enough. Indeed, the ambiguity boosted the sublimity. This position was undoubtedly reassuring, but the new aestheticism could also be seen as a failure of moral seriousness. Furthermore, it placed God at a very far remove from humankind. One of the reasons that Job complains so bitterly is that he thought that he and God had a relationship. Now it is sundered: “I cry unto thee and thou dost not hear me.”

Quote: “For an artist to go and play in a country that occupies other people’s land and oppresses them the way Israel does, is plain wrong. They should say no. I would not have played for the Vichy government in occupied France in the Second World War, I would not have played in Berlin either during this time”, Roger Waters sparks some more controversy with remarks about Israel.

Number: 1000, according to reports, over a thousand Ultra Orthodox people came to protest the detention of Ultra Orthodox Jews for not appearing at the IDF's initial draft assessment.

December 10, 2013 Read More »

Israel’s Bedouins: Another Reasonable Plan Fails to Overcome a Volatile Political Atmosphere

Leave a Comment / Israel, Israel /

Israel's seven-billion-NIS ($2 billion) plan to advance the lives of the Bedouin community in the Negev desert was the topic of an article I wrote a week ago for The New York Times. This plan is currently being debated at a Knesset committee, prior to the expected final parliament vote. It is fiercely opposed by right-wing Jewish leaders – who view it as the state's capitulation before unlawful expansionism – and left-wing Jewish and Arab leaders – who consider it a violation of human rights. Both groups of opponents look at the plan and see a proposal that is far from being able to grant them all their wishes – the reason for which so many decent and reasonable compromise plans fail in the highly volatile political atmosphere of the Middle East.

As my article clearly states, I think the plan is painful yet reasonable.

It is in the interest of both the Bedouins and the Israeli government to see this plan implemented. It provides both camps with a rare opportunity to achieve much in a single stroke: to settle the dispute over land ownership in the Negev once and for all while bringing much-needed help to one of the country’s most disfavored groups.

Yet the chances that the plan will actually pass are decreasing by the day. The naysayers of both camps will yet again achieve what they want: maintaining a volatile status quo in the hope of achieving more in the future. The refusal of Bedouin leaders, supported by ignorant and at times malicious do-gooders, to accept the plan has provided the pretext for Jewish right-wing opponents who want to shelve the plan.

And along the way, the discussion was accompanied by all the features that have become a custom in such occasions.

Some American Jews (and rabbis!) have called on Israel to withdraw its Bedouin plan. “It is precisely because of our deep commitment to the State of Israel and the prophetic values of liberty and justice on which it was founded, that we, as rabbis, are so distressed by the potential for the use of force to resettle Bedouin and destroy their villages”, said Rabbi S. Ayelet Cohen, vice chair of T’ruah, in a press release. I don't remember any protest from Rabbi Cohen when Jewish settlers in Gaza were forcibly (and rightly) evacuated from “their villages”. But this would hardly be the first time in which an American rabbi puzzles me by advocating for something she knows little about. 

The usual mix of malicious rhetoric was used by human rights movements: ethnic cleansing, apartheid, crimes, racism. When Israel doesn't treat Arabs as equal citizens it is condemned, and when it does – when it wants to both invest in their advancement and regulate their housing conditions as it does with all citizens – it is also condemned.

A New York Times report infuriated the defenders of Israel, for reasons unclear (it did make an honest numerical mistake). The report says that “Proponents of the project say that no state can abide people’s building where and what they wish without approval, and that it promises the Bedouins, by far Israel's poorest sector, clinics, jobs, education and infrastructure that they sorely lack. Opponents call it insidious racism, ethnic cleansing or even apartheid; complain that the Bedouins were not consulted enough in the plan's construction; and accuse Israel of a land grab that ignores their culture and traditions”. Some critics found the reporter's (Jody Rudoren) contention that “The plight of the Bedouins has in many circles become a proxy for the broader Arab-Israeli conflict” to be an “anti-Israel screed”. I think she's right on the money: it has become in many circles a proxy for the conflict – and that's exactly why the chances for passing this plan are not great.

Try to have a cool-headed discussion about such a matter. Try to solve a problem of domestic nature in which Arab citizens are involved. Impossible. Frustratingly impossible. Thinking about the “broader conflict” one should wonder: would it be easier to deal with the Bedouin problem if an Israeli-Palestinian accord is finalized and signed – or would the Bedouin problem be an excuse for continuing the battle against Israel even after such a deal is reached?

Israel’s Bedouins: Another Reasonable Plan Fails to Overcome a Volatile Political Atmosphere Read More »

Kerry heading back to Israel for more talks

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, United States /

U.S.  Secretary of State John Kerry will return this week to Jerusalem and Ramallah, his second visit in two weeks.

Kerry will discuss Iran and the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during a meeting Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement Monday. He will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas the same day.

Following his visit to the region, Kerry will travel to five cities in Asia.

Speaking Monday in Washington at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s 100th anniversary celebration, Kerry said the United States is “deeply committed to the security of Israel and of the well-being of the Jewish people by virtue of that.”

He added, “We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon – not now, not ever. And I promise you that.”

Kerry asserted that the interim deal with Iran is setting back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program while a permanent agreement is negotiated.

Addressing the peace talks, Kerry said, “I believe, as President Obama does, that Israel will be far more secure if we can also put to test the possibilities of the two-state solution. And so we will continue to attempt to do that despite the skepticism, despite the cynicism in some quarters.”

The secretary of state said he speaks two to three times a week with Netanyahu.

Kerry also praised the “bond” between the State Department and the JDC.

Kerry heading back to Israel for more talks Read More »

Israel, others urged to join chemical arms treaty

Leave a Comment / Israel, Mobile, News /

Israel, Egypt and North Korea should renounce chemical weapons, especially after Syria joined the convention banning them and three other nations plan to do so, the chief of an international watchdog said on Tuesday.

Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said Angola, Myanmar and South Sudan were preparing to join the pact.

“Now since Syria has become a member country, I think (Israel) can reconsider,” Uzumcu told Reuters in Oslo, where he accepted the 2013 Nobel award for the OPCW.

Israel, which has observer status at the OPCW, signed the convention in 1993, but has never ratified it.

As with its presumed nuclear arsenal, Israel has never publicly admitted having chemical weapons. Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said in September that Israel would be ready to discuss the issue when there was peace in the Middle East.

“I don't see any excuse for not joining the convention,” Uzumcu said. “Three (nations) are very close to membership and I hope the others will reconsider their positions.”

The OPCW's mission gained critical importance this year after a sarin gas attack outside Damascus in August killed hundreds of people, exacerbating a 2-1/2-year-old conflict in Syria in which more than 100,000 have died.

Syria then agreed under a deal arranged by the United States and Russia to destroy all of its 1,300 metric tons of sarin, mustard gas and other lethal agents, averting U.S. missile strikes.

“The only consolation is that those attacks led to renewed efforts by the international community to eliminate them,” Uzumcu said, referring to chemical weapons around the world.

CHALLENGES

Work is Syria is hampered by security challenges and needs more money but the Syrian government is doing its best to cooperate and OPCW expects soon to secure a port where the deadliest chemicals can be neutralized offshore, he said.

“There are some contacts which are under way and we may be informed within a week to 10 days,” Uzumcu said, without identifying the port. “The Syrian government has been quite cooperative, constructive and transparent so far.”

The United States is donating a naval ship and equipment to destroy Syria's most dangerous chemical weapons but securing a port has proven especially difficult and the OPCW is at risk of missing its December 31 deadline to remove these weapons from Syria.

Getting rid of the less dangerous weapons is also a challenge, unless more funds are forthcoming, Uzumcu said.

“The financial contributions have been encouraging but we expect more because we have built a trust fund for the second category of chemical substances, which will have to be destroyed at commercial plants,” he said.

“The United States will cover all the costs for the priority-one chemical weapons. For the second category of weapons, we estimate 35 to 40 million euros,” Uzumcu said.

The OPCW hopes to remove all chemical weapons from Syria by February 5 and to destroy them by June 30. The most dangerous of the chemicals, about 500 metric tons, will be processed by the United States and stored at an undetermined location.

The U.S. ship cannot sail into a Syrian port so current plans call for Danish and Norwegian merchant ships to get the chemicals out, some to be transferred to the U.S. vessel and the less lethal ones to commercial chemical plants for incineration.

Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Alistair Lyon

Israel, others urged to join chemical arms treaty Read More »

Exploiting Israel’s Negev Bedouin

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Mobile, Opinion /

While many believe that a successful peace process will end demonization of Israel based on incendiary terms such as “apartheid” and “racism,” and in accompanying boycott campaigns, the evidence suggests that this hatred goes far deeper. Indeed, the organizations that lead these campaigns are not focused on the post-1967 “occupation”, but rather target all of 1948 Israel, from Kiryat Shemona, along the border with Lebanon (and Hezbollah), to Eilat at the southern tip. For these groups, any form of Jewish self-determination and sovereignty equality, is, in their language, a form of racism, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. And Israeli Jews who live in the Negev or Tel Aviv are “settlers”.

For example, a number of political non-governmental organizations (NGOs) recently launched campaigns that exploit the complex issues surrounding land claims on behalf of Israel's Negev Bedouin population. The Negev, with the city of Beersheva, Ben Gurion University, and Soroka hospital, constitutes over half of the country's territory. As the Israeli Bedouin population grew significantly in recent decades, partly due to the practice of polygamy and very high birthrates, illegal building, without planning or environmental considerations, has expanded widely. As is true for any other competent government, the Israeli leadership has sought to change course, in form of assisting the Bedouin by creating new towns, with schools, clinics and other necessary facilities.

[Read a response to Gerald M. Steinberg]

In response, anti-Israel NGOs that cynically use the cover of human rights hit the road with global tours, including in the United States and Europe, attacking the plan, repeating labels such as “ethnic cleansing”, “racial discrimination,” and “human rights violations”. In slick publications, videos, and presentations before the UN and European parliamentary groups, NGOs have falsely referred to the Negev Bedouin as “Palestinian victims”, and Israeli Jewish residents in the Negev as “settlers”. The campaign erases 4000 years of Jewish history in the Negev (from the arrival of Abraham in Beersheva), thereby delegitimizing Israeli sovereignty. Noted Israeli columnist Ben-Dror Yemini reviewed a slick propaganda video produced by Rabbis for Human Rights, portraying Israel “as the cruel anti-Semitic ruler, expelling and disinheriting and destroying and robbing…” (Funding for this video and for other campaigns of radical NGOs that exploit Bedouin issue is provided by groups such as the US-based New Israel Fund.)

Similarly, a radical organization calling itself “Jewish Voices for Peace”, which supports BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) has suddenly discovered the Bedouin Negev issue. Little is know about JVP’s membership or its sources of funding (over $1 million dollars annually), but its primary agenda is to promote anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda, in order to “drive a wedge” over support for Israel in the American Jewish community. In particular, JVP targeted participants in the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) Biennial conference, taking place in San Diego.

With little knowledge of the details, “progressive Jews” are deemed as likely to accept and sympathize with the campaign to “help the Negev Bedouin” stand up to the “powerful Israeli state which seeks to deprive them of their land”.

In contrast, American Jews are unlikely to hear the Bedouins themselves, unfiltered by officials of political NGOs, because their leaders lack the resources for these global tours and press campaigns. For example, Abed Tarabin, leader of one of central clans in the Negev, recently noted that “The opposition to the plan comes from belligerent politicians, making noise for their own purposes. It doesn’t come from real Bedouin leaders who are concerned with their people. There is plenty of room in the Negev for everybody, and it is good that the government is working to improve things and is investing money in us”.

These views rarely make it into many journalists writing about Israel simply repeat the unsupported NGO allegations, and exclude the Bedouins themselves. In a major article based on NGO claims, and accompanied by emotionally moving photos, the New York Times correspondent greatly exaggerated the number of individuals that would be affected by the Israeli plan. She also quoted radicals who again referred to “insidious racism, ethnic cleansing or even apartheid”, as well as “a land grab that ignores their culture and traditions.”

The prevalence of such campaigns regarding the Negev, within Israel’s 1948 “Green Line”, suggests that a peace agreement with the Palestinians will not end the demonization and boycotts. For Israelis and American Jews who support a two-state solution, the need to oppose such misleading and hate-based campaigns should be a major priority.

Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg is the president of NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute and recipient of the 2013 Menachem Begin Prize.

Exploiting Israel’s Negev Bedouin Read More »

In defense of Hitler, by Tila Tequila

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Hollywood /

If your memory of C-list phenomenon Tila Tequila is hazy at best, the former star of the MTV reality show “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila” and, natch, a sex tape, is out to change that. Or — more likely — she’s simply gone off the deep end of a pool nestled deep within the borders of Crazytown.

As reported by Tablet, Tequila yesterday posted to Facebook a shot of herself decked out in a sexy Nazi costume, standing against the picturesque backdrop of a photo of Auschwitz. A shocking and bizarre creative choice in general, but even more so from someone who right around this time last year was talking about becoming a Jew.  Not an Orthodox Jew, of course, because that would be, in the words of someone who refers to herself as Hitila (get it, Hitler plus Tila? You just smush those two names together and you get Hitila) “too hardcore.”

While the photo has since been taken down, a blog post intended to bust all of those terrible Hitler myths remains out there for the world to consume. In “Why I Sympathize with Hitler Part 1: True History Unveiled,” Tequila attempts to set things straight: “Here is a man who was not a coward, stood up for his country in a DESPERATE TIME OF NEED (unlike all of our cowardly leaders), and yet not only did he try his best to help his country and people get out of what was a time of depression, economic collapse, high unemployment, amongst many other things… he lost the war AND was painted out to be a monster after his death.”

Not that she has anything against the people belonging to the tribe she may or may not have converted to.

“I am not going to sit here and say that I hate Jewish people because that is not the case nor is this about Jews,” Tequila clarifies. “It is about Hitler and his side of the story that was never told since he was not the victor. However, those of you with a closed mind can think I am being anti-Semite all you want because I already told you that I am not, nor will I repeat myself again.”

Funny, because just last week, alongside a link to a report about the death of reality TV director James Marcus Howe, she shared this gentle and not at all anti-Semitic sentiment: “GOD SEE’S YOU DIRTY F[******] KIKES WORKING FOR THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN AND I HAVE RETURNED AS HIS MESSENGER! TAKE HEED NOW BITCHES!”

As the story unfolds we hope to find answers to many important questions, such as whether Tequila is dressed in last year’s Purim costume, if she high-fived herself in the mirror when she came up with her genius name hybrid, and if the Singaporean-born sorta star has ever wondered how the Fuhrer would have felt about her non Aryan-ness.

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Skeletons believed from Warsaw Ghetto uprising discovered

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Archaeologists in Warsaw discovered fragments of two human skeletons that likely were buried there during the Polish city’s ghetto uprising.

On Monday, archaeologists searching through the archive of the Jewish socialist party Bund in the basement of a former house on Swietojerska Street found a skull, arm bones and leg bones. Police will examine the bones.

In recent days, the archaeologists had found a sewing kit, a loaf of bread and a bowl of groats on the site of the former home, which is now a park, Krasinki Garden. The site is near the World War II-era Jewish ghetto but was not part of it.

The Bund archive had been hidden by party activist Marek Edelman in the home’s basement, which was unearthed by the archaeologists. During the uprising, the house was destroyed; the area was later included as part of the park area.

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Mormon Church explains, finally disavows ban on black priests

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The Mormon Church lifted its ban on black priests 35 years ago. But not until Friday had it offered much explanation or bothered to disavow the ban. That is when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints posted on its website ““>posthumous baptism). Of course, Christians once used the Bible to justify slavery, so …

Regardless of the reasons for delay and the effects that will follow, this seems like an important moment for the Mormon Church. Much more on the statement and reactions to it from Peggy Fletcher Stack at the  Mormon Church explains, finally disavows ban on black priests Read More »

Knesset passes migrant detention amendment

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Israel’s Knesset passed legislation that will allow the state to detain illegal migrants without trial for one year.

The legislation, an amendment to the Anti-Infiltration Law, passed its final readings in the Israeli parliament late Monday night by a vote of 30-15 following a lengthy discussion.

It also allows the state to operate a detention facility for the mostly African migrants that will provide food and shelter, health care and social services. The facility, which will have room for 3,300 people, will be closed at night.

Under the amendment, the migrants will not be allowed to work.

The amendment was approved three months after Israel’s Supreme Court struck down one that went into effect in June 2012 allowing the state to hold illegal migrants for up to three years without trial.

The judges gave the state until Dec. 15 to examine the cases of 1,700 African migrants who are being held in Israeli detention centers under the current amendment. Some 707 migrants have been released, Haaretz reported, and the cases of 500 remain under review.

More than 50,000 African migrants are living in Israel.

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