November 6th, 2009 by steve_bronfman
IKibbitz cleverly graphs the voters in the UN goldstone report vote. He says the following;
I know it’s a bit late, but here it is …
Being a numbers oriented person, I divided the UNHRC members into 3 groups to better explain its vote on the Goldstone report. The first group (A), the countries that voted against the resolution endorsing the Goldstone report and those that refused to vote summed up to 8 UNHRC members. The second group (B) were countries that abstained or were not present for the vote totaling 13 UNHRC members. And lastly, the 25 UNHRC members (C) that voted for the resolution.
Then, I used Freedom House’s 2009 Freedom Index average rating of each country, summed them up into their 3 groups, and got the average of each group. Free countries have a rating between 1 and 2.5, partly free countries have a rating between 3 and 5, and not free countries have a rating between 5.5 and 7.
Group A had an average rating of 1.25, with the worst rating attributed to Ukraine with 2.5 . Group B had an average rating of 2.77 with countries ranging any where from 1 to 6. Group C had an average rating of 3.82. Remember, higher the rating, the worst it is.
Freedom House gave Israel a rating of 6 in the Territories, and 1.5 in Israel proper.
The graphs are here.
Very very interesting.
Tags: Goldstone
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
November 6th, 2009 by steve_bronfman
Elder of Ziyon also has a post about this saying much of what I wanted to point out. S’audi Arabia attacked targets in Yemen with Jets with many civilian casulties. Where is the media condemnation? Where is the UN? Double standards, what does Goldstone say about this?
Tags: S'audi Arabia
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
November 5th, 2009 by steve_bronfman
Imagine you were a leader from the Arabs/Palestinians. You have just been defeated militarily by Israel in Gaza again. Despite countless wars and terrorist attacks you cannot defeat Israel militarily. You do realise you can count on an automatic majority of non-aligned and Islamic countries at the UN to pass any anti-Israel resolution however. How can you defeat Israel? Take away its advantage. Discredit its ability to fight terrorism with its military strength. If Israel cannot use its military might it can be defeated.
Sounds like a conspiracy? Until you learn that the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) was behind the Goldstone report.
Tags: Goldstone
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
November 4th, 2009 by steve_bronfman
Israel-Indian relations are going from strength to strength with the economic relationship surpassing 5 billion dollars annually. The two countries also have very good military links with India being the largest importer of Israeli arms and Israel training Indian commandos in Kashmir. One little known fact though is that it was a Jewish general who defeated Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971; Lieutenant General JFR Jacob.
Tags: India
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
November 4th, 2009 by steve_bronfman
Jews have lived in Yemen since biblical times. There is currently a civil war in Yemen. A few months ago 100,000 Arab refugees fled into S’audi Arabia but the UN and the mainstream media were of course largely silent since this Arab-on-Arab violence doesn’t involve Israel they don’t care.
Have we heard anything at all about these refugees since? The cynical world only cares about Arab refugees when the story involves Israel. The Human rights watch website is pretty bare when it comes to this tragedy. There is no “Goldstone” report about this. No UN Human Rights Council extraordinary meeting about this?
Another news story ignored by not only the mainstream media but by most Jews is the rescue by America this week of Yemeni Jews who are virtual prisoners in Yemen at the hands of the fascist Islamists. Thank you America.
Tags: USA, Yemen
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
October 29th, 2009 by steve_bronfman
I came across Helena Cobban because of her criticism of Marc Garlasco and assumed she was a fair-minded balanced liberal. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was kicked of her website and insulted personally by her simply for standing up for Israel and pointing out the flaws in her arguments/facts. Here is her criticism of me;
http://justworldnews.org/archives/003834.html
Here is my take on her (Shortly after I started my own blog);
http://defendisrael.blog.com/page/3/
I have published all comments in full and you can double check them on her blog. I have nothing to hide. At no time was I rude or insulting and you can see that Cobban is merely an Israel-hater (very much bordering on anti-semitism in her obsession with Jews and Israel) disguised as a liberal.
Tags: Helena Cobban, Israel
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
October 27th, 2009 by steve_bronfman
Recently Turkey has downgraded its alliance with Israel, canceling a Nato-Israeli military drill with Turkeys President criticising Israel on several occasions. My view is that its time for Israel to more opening support the Kurds. Israel needs to encourage Kurdish independence and form a stron Kurdish-Israeli alliance in the region.
Tags: Kurds
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
October 27th, 2009 by steve_bronfman
A very disturbing fact is that,” statistically speaking, in the Koran of Medina 10.6% of the text is devoted to Jew hatred, whereas, only 6.8% of Mein Kampf is devoted to Jew hatred.”
Tags: Anti-Semitism
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
October 27th, 2009 by steve_bronfman
I commented on Elder of Ziyon here;
What annoys me is in ever interview Goldstone says that Israeli’s haven’t responded to the report specifically. He was saying this as soon as the report was released (without giving any time to read the report and respond) but he’s still saying it even though there are now numerous Israeli government and other critiques of the report. I know of at least 10 including the wonderful work done on this blog but also;
http://www.goldstonereport.org/
http://honestreporting.com/ artic…he_UN_Farce.asp
http://www.honestreporting.com/ a…nian_Terror.asp
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?…& x_article=1736
More;
I’ve now watched a number of Goldstone interviews via youtube and he basically says the same things. If you read the article linked above you can see that there are some very serious legal flaws in his argument. Trevor Norwitz’s whole letter is here. Goldstone is seemingly oblivious to his many detractors arguments. Instead he plays the victim and claims people are attacking the man rather than the report.
Tags: Goldstone
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
October 20th, 2009 by steve_bronfman
I talk to a lot of -especially younger- American Jews about Israel and I really do not share your pessimism. I think that Israel is very important to American Jews who identify themselves as Jewish. Even the Jewish critics of Israel (The “As a Jew” crowd, of which alas, there are many in America) still make Israel a central theme in there lives, even if just to discredit Israel.
However, despite their “noise” amplified by the anti-Israel main stream media, these people represent a significant minority. I really think that American Jews remain zionist to as large a degree as ever. You are forgetting the many anti-zionist groups (bund etc) that existed amongst Jews in previous generations whereas today’s starting point in any discussion about American Jews and Israel is the assumption that 100% of American Jews should hold Israel in a central position with any deviation from 100% seen as reason to panic.
The worry for American Jewish life is not how American Jews consider Israel but instead assimilation and loss of Jewish identity. I am not even pessimistic about this issue however. We must remember the paradoxical census figure (that there are 5.5 million US Jews but 10 million Jewish households) in other words the “who is a Jew” question has seen us ignore the large increase in Jewish life in America.
Tags: Israel, Israel Matzav
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
