http://www.wikio.co.uk/blog/search/State of Israel Wikio Blogs - search: State of Israel wikio wikio http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68895663 IDF Begins Major Move to the Negev - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Arutz Sheva Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:47:00 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68895663 Brad Burge 2008-08-25T10:47:00Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=69298575 It's been a week since I tried anything drastic, like posting. But there have been funny events afoot recently, involving the far right, the Ku Klux Klan, the far left, the State of Israel, Hamas, the UCU and a clutch of emails. Sounds like Carry on up the Khyber , doesn't it - passion, greed and missing underpants? The background of this story is the UCU (which stands for University and College Union) "boycott" of Israeli academic institutions. While this attempt at anathemizing all organisations linked with the state of Israel failed last September when a lawyer alerted some of the less rabid members of the union to the fact that they would be committing a crime if they supported it with union funds (to wit, the crime of fraudulent misappropriation of trust funds, also known as embezzlement). Since such a thing was hopeless without financial aid, the movement collapsed. However, that did not altogether stop the work of those behind the scenes. One of them was Jenna Delich - who, according to a little research, works at Hillsborough HE and FE College in Sheffield (the posts about her refer vaguely to "a Sheffield-based academic", and it is curiously difficult to run her to earth in any other way). Recently she circulated an email to 700 or so recipients on a mailing list about further work to try and force a boycott - presumably an unofficial one - in which she included a link, described as "a bit long but also an interesting reading; http://www.davidduke.com/general/humanitarian-disaster_595.html. The facts are speaking for themselves." (English is not her first language, incidentally.) Unfortunately for her she was linking with the website of David Duke (link to Wikipedia, not his website, although it's scarcely better) a former Republican congressman, notorious white supremacist, racist nutjob, and former Grand Wizard of a rather well-known and not very pleasant organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, dedicated since its creation by the defeated Confederates in 1867 to the extermination by shooting of anyone charmingly termed as a member of the "lesser races" (although they're becoming slowly more careful about admitting it aloud). Even more unfortunately, this link was leaked to the pro-Zionist blog Harry's Place , where it was met with the appropriate ridicule - maybe over the top in the personal abuse, but then her remarks had been over the top as well, not to say downright stupid. However, Delich, apparently furious at the laughing stock she had made of herself, threatened to sue the ISP (or a any rate, the Blogger hosting site) for slander - this despite the fact that the substance of the allegation was true. As usual the ISP caved in in cowardly fashion and took Harry's Place off line. There was a slightly happier ending when, in a storm of publicity, they were rehosted by a more forthright server and are now running follow ups to this story here . It seems that Delich has been removed from the mailing list - but, bizarrely, she still has her defenders on that list, who can't see what the fuss is all about. My reccomendation to those persons is that they go a bit easier on the old booze - term is about to start again and they will need the full use of what little brains they have. Iain Dale has made the explicit paralell with the Alisher Usmanov farrago - when a random Russian billionaire, accused of various crimes on an obscure blog, used his heavyweights to get the blog taken down. It's an obvious one too, and one that highlights more than ever the need for urgent revisions to our libel laws. First and foremost, the publisher of a website needs to be exempted from liability for the remarks of any hostees. However, it should also be necessary to prove malice in a claim against someone - rather than leaving the defence to prove justification, misunderstanding or lack of damage, as it is at present. It does bother me that that will leave our most unpleasant redtops - the Sun, the Express and the Mirror, to name a few - to publish whatever total nonsense, including unpleasant nonsense, that they like. However, the thought of active censorship of anyone they please by the wealthy, amoral and crooked, or merely the influential (as in this case) bothers me more. Time they were reminded that the law does apply to them too - whatever they may think (and I have no doubt that many of them do think themselves above the law). But this goes a little deeper than that. It goes, in fact, to the very heart of one of the most revolting organisations in Britain - the UCU. Let's take a look at that statement. Five years ago, there were two HE and FE unions in Britain - the AUT, the Association of University Teachers, and NATFHE, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education. They were both pretty ineffectual, and usually at loggerheads. However, they did at least stop any one union becoming too powerful and bloated. In 2006, when the last major strike in higher education took place (it was officially "action short of a strike," but I still regard it as a strike, i.e. the withholding of labour in hope of a pay rise) the two merged in a bid to force something better than 12.6% out of the employers. Eventually they got 13.1% (having earlier rejected 13.12%) when it became clear that students were breaking with the corrupt, oligarchic and ineffectual NUS - which supported the lecturers - and demanding an immediate end to the strike on penalty of walking out themselves in a wildcat strike, which would have been far more damaging to the reputation of universities in the long term - not to mention their pockets had tuition fees been withheld, as was suggested. I was behind the scenes in Aberystwyth at the time, all the more useful as an observer because I was a postgraduate who had never joined the Guild or the NUS or the AUT and therefore was one of the few real outsiders. I can say for definite that among the students, while there was confusion at the stance of the lecturers coupled with a degree of sympathy (confusion made worse by the bungling compromise efforts of Bec Corn, the then Guild president, who subsequently resigned) there was absolute fury at the intransigence of the unions. Since then matters have gone from bad to worse in HE union/employer/student relations. The near-miss of chaos in 2006 meant that the UCU was regarded with deep suspicion from the start - including by a large numbers of its members, who felt that it had behaved with a recklessness amounting to stupidity, and not achieved much by doing it. The NUS has continued to act like a headless chicken, and has not been helped by in-fighting among its members over the question of the strike. And students have continued to be turned off student politics. People wonder why able young men and women are no longer keen on politics. When things like this are their first experiences of it, is it any wonder? And so we come to the Israeli boycott. This wasn't new - it had been rumbling around in the AUT for years - but it gave a big and impressive peg to hang the hat of the new union on. Crucially, it also distracted attention from the appalling ineptitude of the union in fighting for five months, at immense cost of both money and goodwill, for a measly 0.5% improvement in the pay offer - not even the best deal that had been on the table. So the motion went ahead. Cue great publicity, endless column inches, debates on freedom and responsibility, etc., etc. - and then mysteriously, when something would have had to be done, up pops a little opinion to say - sorry bud, it ain't legal. By this time, though, the wider public has forgotten all about the class of 2006, who nearly failed to graduate. Would it be unduly cynical of me to suggest that it was all planned? Probably. But it does look a bit funny. The failure to grasp the nettle of sorting the legacy of the strike has meant that there is a lot of lurking resentment - and in times of tight budgets, that might well erupt again. The really bad thing is that now the UCU is the only union for every lecturer in England and Wales (there is only one other in Scotland). We have closed shop. Thatcher outlawed that in 1986 to hit the printers in particular, but also the National Union of Mineworkers, who had used their monopoly power to devastating effect in 1973 and 1978, and had split in 1984 on the issue of pit closures. Monopolies are always bad. They encourage complacency, corruption and distortion. It's happening in academia, fast - one reason why I am hesitating long and hard about the benefits of a lecturing job, much as I love both teaching and researching/writing. I feel I am a born academic - but I won't be one at any price. The one hope I have is that the UCU will overplay its hand on this in a bid to conserve unity, and split again, providing some desperately needed check on their power. But I'm not very optimistic. Their arrogant brutality over Harry's Place suggests they do not tolerate dissent readily. Incidentally, I do not love Harry's Place - I think that unthinking Zionism is almost as bad as rabid anti-Semitism, on the grounds it starts with its preconceived notions and then bends the facts to fit them - but Harry's Place had not denied Delich freedom to express her views, merely holding them up for ridicule. By what right did she deny them theirs? Perhaps merely another sad story of how hypersensitive our libel laws our. But I do worry about the deeper malaise it is part of. And that is what should worry all of us - not ghostly debates about falling standards or inadequate spelling. Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:25:00 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=69298575 The Half-Blood Welshman 2008-08-28T14:25:00Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68997539 Boats that last wednesday defied Israels inhuman blocade of the Gaza strip by sailing into Gaza from Cyprus are now planning to smuggle out two students which the State of Israel refers to as 'wanted terrorists'. Israel says it will not try to stop the boats Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:22:28 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68997539 Bazooka Joe 2008-08-26T11:22:28Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68926908 The State of Israel is losing hundreds of millions of shekels each year by not enforcing regulations that would charge companies for dumping pollutants into the Jewish state's waters. In its annual State of the Seas report, Israel's Zalul Environmental Association found that more than 50 million cubic meters of industrial waste is dumped into the country's coastal waters each year by special permit of the Inter-ministerial Committee for Issuance of Discharge Permits. However, the state has failed to collect any of the discharge fees that the committee is supposed to collect. Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:02:04 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68926908 2008-08-25T15:02:04Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68988510 The State of Israel is losing hundreds of millions of shekels each year by not enforcing regulations that would charge companies for dumping pollutants into the Jewish state's waters. Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68988510 2008-08-26T00:00:00Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68806382 Summary This study analyzes the mutual deterrent relationship between Israel and Hezbollah as it existed between 1982 and 2006. Its objective is to provide a better understanding of the State of Israel's deterrent capabilities against terrorist and guerrilla organizations in general, and Hezbollah in particular. ts point of departure is the discourse, which has grown stronger over the past decade, regarding the question of Israel 's ability to use a deterrent policy against terrorist and guerilla organizations. Its hypothesis is that by studying how Hezbollah ranks its interests and by investigating the relationship between Hezbollah and Israel , general insights will be gained as to the possibility of implementing such a policy against Hezbollah. Such insights will make it possible to determine whether a deterrent policy can be implemented against Hezbollah today and to draw conclusions regarding the possibility of improving its effectiveness. This study examines the development of the deterrent relationship between Israel and Hezbollah over five consecutive time periods, signifying central changes in how Hezbollah ranks its interests, making it possible to test Israeli deterrence under different conditions. The study distinguishes between the inability of implementing a deterrent policy against a terrorist organization on the one hand, and the possibility of implementing efficient partial deterrence against a guerilla organization on the other. It argues that to adjust the theory and policy of deterrence to the specific case of sub-conventional deterrence against a guerilla organization such as Hezbollah, use must be made of research tools different from those used to examine conventional deterrence. Of those tools, ranking the organization's internal interests (instead of the balance of interests between the parties) is a useful index to test the very possibility of implementing deterrence, and further, to determine the manner of its implementation. Furthermore, deterrence against a guerilla organization must be regarded as partial, incapable of existing as an exclusive policy of the State and necessarily combined with other political tools. On the practical implementation level, the study shows that successful partial deterrence must focus on the organization's political interests and not on an attempt to directly prevent its violent actions. The study also examines how the political echelons determine a deterrent policy, and present unique and different methods of policy implementation are presented which can be translated into operative deterrence. Finally, based on the findings, recommendations are made for activating deterrence in relation to a civilian population which will continue as the central tool for the implementation of Israel 's deterrent policy. 1 This is a thesis submitted by Tomer Naveh for a Masters’ degree at Tel Aviv University, October 2007. His thesis advisor was Prof. Ariel Merari. Naveh received his degree with distinction from the Security Studies Program. He served in intelligence in the Israeli Southern Command and in the Israeli Navy. The full study in Hebrew appears on the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center website. RSS 2.0: http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default'alt=rss Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:53:00 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68806382 GS Don Morris, Ph.D. 2008-08-24T15:53:00Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68773934 It seems that Russia and Syria seem to be drawing into a closer alliance . It has been reported that Israel was sending military advisors to Georgia prior to the recent war. In response, it seems that Russia has returned to the Soviet position of 1956 to 1991 of hostility towards the State of Israel and is making a deal with one of its major opponents - Syria. Sun, 24 Aug 2008 08:21:00 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68773934 Vino S 2008-08-24T08:21:00Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68766220 ...the politicians would be rushing to follow what the people want, like Panel poll: 67% Disengagement failure, 66%:29% Oppose disengagement in Judea and Samaria , instead of continuing with policies which so weaken our country that the State of Israel may not survive. A Democracy is supposed to be the "will of the people," not of the media. We have a very dangerous media here and most of the politicians are even worse. There isn't even one political party I really trust nor anyone I'd like to be Prime Minister. As impressive as Bibi Netanyahu can be when speaking, he wasn't a successful Prime Minister. There's nobody else on the right. Oops, don't say "right" to Bibi, he likes to think of himself as center. But our people would prefer someone who isn't playing games, someone who believes fully in our rights to be here and isn't willing to take risks, just to placate others. Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:42:00 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68766220 Batya 2008-08-24T04:42:00Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68762694 " The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C., August 21, 2008: “Such heart-warming news! High level Republican associates here are talking about the latest ploy on the part of the State of Israel to gain complete control of the United States government. Their idea is to offer the diseased McCain unlimited support from their papers and television stations in return for his putting Joe Lieberman on the ticket as vice president. As McCain is known to be seriously ill and will soon be unable to function, the plan will be for him to retire “for reasons of health” and then Joe Lieberman, loud and persistent Israeli supporter, will step into the Oval Office and America will have her first (unelected) Jewish president. And a firmly dedicated Zionist at that! -- MORE -- " Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:29:00 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68762694 Rocker 2008-08-24T02:29:00Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=69078698 Shortly after the outset of the foolhardy attacks on South Ossettia we posted Monday, August 11, 2008 Israel's part in arming Georgia, and the risky game of Russian Roulette they have been playing . Brigadier General (Res.) Gal Hirsch was the inept and vainglorious commander of Division 91 in the IDF. He resigned (?) after the Almog Committee (which preceded Winograd) named him as responsible Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:59:00 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=69078698 ziz 2008-08-26T21:59:00Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68649956 Again from the same email from the Israel Consulate in NY:Israel to Release Palestinian PrisonersThe State of Israel is due next week to release 199 prisoners as a gesture of good will to President Mahmoud Abbas and a signal of confidence in the Palestinian Authority. The Government's actions signal Israel's commitment to peace with the moderate elements of Palestinian leadership and demonstrate that gains in a peace process will come about only through dialogue and bilateral negotiation. More information regarding the details and the importance of this prisoner release can be found in Haaretz. [emphasis mine]So, nu--how is this prisoner... Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:47:30 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68649956 daledamos 2008-08-22T18:47:30Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68649552 Again from the same email from the Israel Consulate in NY: Israel to Release Palestinian Prisoners The State of Israel is due next week to release 199 prisoners as a gesture of good will to President Mahmoud Abbas and a signal of confidence in the Palestinian Authority. The Government’s actions signal Israel’s commitment to peace with the moderate elements of Palestinian leadership and Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68649552 Daled Amos 2008-08-22T18:00:00Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68884497 Nothing like an early morning dose of raging anti-Semitism to get the day started. This is one sick Kos Kid, quoting this dubious source. Of course, they haven't quite figured out the part where McCain makes Lieberman his running mate and wins the election first, but why quibble with minor details when you have such hatred?"Such heart-warming news! High level Republican associates here are Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:25:00 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68884497 JammieWearingFool 2008-08-25T12:25:00Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68806478 We all know about complaints that the Muslim authorities at the Dome of the Rock have been reckless in damaging Jewish archaeological remains at the site; now it’s the turn of the Israel Antiquities Authority be on the receiving end of a similar charge, from a Christian group. The Jerusalem Post reports: Last week the High Court of Justice issued [...] Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:06:03 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68806478 Richard Bartholomew 2008-08-24T16:06:03Z http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68747483 It was all a public relations stunt Gazans expressed disappointment this evening after Israel allowed two boats full of 'left-wing activists' to reach the shore near Gaza City and the boats had . What the Gazans fail to understand is that, as usual, this is about 'the cause' (of destroying Israel) and not about improving their lives. That's why the 'Palestinians' are still 'refugees' sixty years after the State of Israel declared its independence. This isn't about finding a humanitarian solution for the 'Palestinians.' It's about the 'cause' of destroying Israel. "Many people thought these boats will make a significant contribution to break the siege, not only politically but also in terms of brining in goods, equipment, food, and medicine," he said. "However, once it turned out these boats contain too little food and mostly activists…some people left the beach disappointed."Hundreds of Gazans reportedly received the leftist activists at the beach. A Hamas source told Ynet the initiative was proven successful, but added that "the Arab and Muslim world should draw lessons and learn from those dozens of activists, because they risked their lives at sea for the sake of Strip residents and against the siege."The source also slammed Egypt for being "an inseparable part of the siege."You will note that the 'activists' were nearly all cushy westerners: Americans, Europeans and one pseudo-Israeli. Look at the biographies - the only Arabs are those .Israel decided to let the boats reach the shore rather than have a media-covered confrontation on the high seas. Somehow I doubt the Russians would have had a problem with the media coverage. Hopefully there were no weapons on board, and hopefully Israel can ensure that the 'activists' don't make it into Israel proper.I wonder how they plan to leave.Heh.UPDATE 11:31 PMThe 'Palestinians' found time to fire at Israel's Negev while greeting the 'activists.' Fortunately, no one was hurt.posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ Sat, 23 Aug 2008 20:06:00 GMT http://www.wikio.co.uk/info?id=68747483 noreply@blogger.com (Carl in Jerusalem) 2008-08-23T20:06:00Z