Seminar in Israel for overseas activists

Dear Friends,

I do not usually advertise or promote events and conferences.  As a founding member of the Council of Hasbara Volunteers (CoHaV), however, I am pleased to let you know about the attached seminar, and invite you to attend.  Make your way to Israel, add a short vacation.  Support Israel by your presence, your tourism.  Meet with members of the world wide Israel advocacy community, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs representatives responsible for Israel's image in the diaspora.  An opportunity to support, learn and influence.

David

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Under the auspices of CoHaV, we are planning a seminar "Learning Effective Public Diplomacy for Israel" on May 14-17, 2007 as a grass- roots program for community leadership in public diplomacy for Israel.

Full details of this seminar can be found at
http://IsraelSeminar.Info    

This seminar is intended for our overseas members and the affordably priced seminar is designed for learning the intricacies of peace advocacy

The charge of $450 for hotels, meals, transportation within Israel, guides, tips, entry fees ($200 or less single supplement) and optional add-on activities can be arranged.

The seminar has been endorsed by CAMERA, Honest Reporting, ICAN - Israeli Citizens Action Network, Sonoma County Israel Action Committee, Frequent Hasbara Flyers, Take-A-Pen, Kol Emeth Israel Action Committee, Zionist Freedom Alliance and  The Other Side of the Coin

If you are interested please complete the application form and release on the web site.  For more information contact Etta Korenman at ettakorenman@yahoo.com

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Finland joins Germany, Belgium: Offensive for Jews to object to another holocaust

Dear Friends,

 

Israeli band Teapacks has created quite a storm with its song "Push the Button". It's been selected to represent Israel in the coming Eurovision song festival. While it does not seem (at least to me) to have sufficient artistic merit to win, stranger things have happened. But the Finnish contest organisers have made sure that it does get ample publicity. Accusing the song of being inappropriately political, the Finns are scrambling for ways to ban the song from the competition. 

The lyrics are a protest against nuclear weapons in the hands of unstable political leaders. And Kobi Oz , teapacks' founder and lead singer, probably knows what he is singing about.  He comes from the southern Israeli town of Sderot - now best known as a target for Palestinian rocket squads firing from the Gaza Strip.  

Blogger Tundra Tabloids points out that the Finnish 1982 Eurovision entry was the group Kojo, titled "Nuku Pommin" ("Bomb Out" or better yet "Sleep while the bombs fall"), which told of the threat to Europe during the height of the Cold War when most of Europe were against the US deployment of nuclear tipped cruise and Pershing missiles. So while you ponder the hypocrisy of Finland joining the club of people offended by Jews objecting to being the victims of another holocaust, you can click the links and decide the musical merits for yourself.
 

David

To subscribe or unsubscribe to my occasional "letter from Israel", just email me at David.Frankfurter@iname.com

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PS: Here are the links for the HTML deprived:

"Push the Button" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_h_rLKTLvs

"Nuko Pommin" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8HdS0ukSwk

 

German discomfort at Jewish self-protection

Dear Friends,

Thank you to those of you who wrote me emails about the Belgian encouragement of Palestinian hatred of Israel. Unfortunately, the Belgians are not alone. Last weekend, German Bishops came on a solidarity mission to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Israel's Yad Vashem holocaust museum was a fitting place for them to visit, and so they did. And straight after, they were swept off to visit the Palestinian territories, where they promptly drew comparisons with what they had just seen - labelling it "Ghetto Ramallah", and comparing the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to German treatment of Jews.

It is hard to tell if this odious comparison was to whitewash what the Germans did in WWII, or a malicious attempt to demonise the Jewish state - or both. Certainly it shows they didn't learn much at Yad Vashem. Maybe someone should remind them. The Germans rounded up peaceful citizens and herded them into ghettos. Then they systematically annihilated them. Shot them on the spot or herded them into cattle cars to be gassed and cremated in concentration camps.

By comparison, peaceful Arab citizens of Israel (and some less than peaceful ones) benefit from every democratic right and are part of every element of society - as far as members of parliament and a minister of state. Arabs who are part of a neighbouring declared enemy territory can live anywhere in that territory that they chose. But suicide bombers, drive-by shooters, Kassam rockets and other threats must be kept out at all costs. Military action is essential to arrest or kill everyone involved in the vile Palestinian war crimes they so love to label "resistance". And I won't apologise to anyone for actions my government takes to protect me, my wife and my children. Israel has made it clear time and time again. Stretch out your hand in peace and we will grasp it. But we will not sit idly by while terrorists plot another holocaust.

Best wishes,

David

To subscribe or unsubscribe to my occasional "letter from Israel", just email me at David.Frankfurter@iname.com

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How will Belgian historians rate World War III?

Dear Friends,

I have frequently questioned how Western diplomats manage to deceive themselves that they have been funding Palestinian "peace initiatives" and the basis of "good governance". Even more wondrous the self-deception when the money goes specifically toward developing a hate curriculum in schools designed to "educate" young children to Jihad and "martyrdom", reinforcing that peace is neither desirable nor an option. Wiping the Jews out of the Middle East in history, geography, in poetry, grammar, mathematics and, after graduation, by terror, murder and war.

My previous essays pointed to copiously documented reports by the Prism Group, the Funding for Peace Coalition and others. The latest new and revised 2006 year 12 textbooks have been analysed by Palestinian Media Watch. While previous negative publicity of the damage created by their funding led many European countries to withdraw from curriculum revision, the latest text books bear the inscription shown in the picture below.




The Ministry of Higher Education thanks from the bottom of its heart the international institutes and organisations and the friendly Arab states, and especially the Belgian government, for their monetary support in the curriculum project. Signed by "Ministry of Education and Higher Education and the Curriculum Development Center Sept. 2006"

So what have the Belgians been funding?

Read the report yourself, and see if (like me) you agree with the conclusion:

"One of the most meaningful gauges of the ideology and aspirations of a people is the education of its youth. For this reason, the new Palestinian Authority schoolbooks introduced in the end of 2006 by the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Higher Education apparatus are a continuation of the tragic disappointment of the earlier books. Instead of seizing the opportunity to educate future generations to live in peace with Israel, the new PA schoolbooks teach their children to hate Israel and vilify Israel’s existence while they glorify terror. Instead of working to minimize the current hate, the new PA curriculum is ingraining it into the next generation’s consciousness, and packaging the war against Israel as existential, mandatory and religious."

A breathtaking coincidence is that just before sitting down to write, I read a headline from Sunday's Ha'aretz: How Belgium sacrificed its Jews to the Nazis. The story details a Belgian government appointment committee of historians report on the role of the Belgian authorities in the persecution and deportation of the Jews during World War II.

David

To subscribe or unsubscribe to my occasional "letter from Israel", just email me at David.Frankfurter@iname.com
To comment on this letter or read my archive, go to http://dfrankfurter.livejournal.com/
If you post this letter on other sites, please include a link to the source at http://dfrankfurter.livejournal.com/110322.html