Canadian MP Prof. Irwin Cotler Spearheads Campaign for International Sanctions on Iran

Canadian MP Prof. Irwin Cotler Spearheads Campaign for International Sanctions on Iran

By David Bedein and Arlene Kushner

This past Wednesday, December 30, 2009, Professor Irwin Cotler, a member of the Canadian parliament and former Canadian minister of justice and Canadian Attorney General, conducted a press briefing at the King David Hotel in which he announced that he was spearheading new international sanctions against Iran.

Speaking of the parallels between the current situation and 1939, Prof. Cotler addressed the issue of the Iranian threat from multiple perspectives:

The Iran of Ahmadinejad, says Cotler, is a clear and present danger to Middle East stability, Israel and Jews more broadly, and its own people.

Of great concern is the indifference and inaction of the international community with respect to these dangers, and the impunity with which Ahmadinejad is permitted to proceed.

He proposes an approach to Iran that is broad-based, and demands accountability of Iran with regard to all of the threats it currently represents:

1) Iran is defying the international community with regard to its nuclear development. It is in standing violation of UN prohibitions.

2) Iran has already committed incitement to genocide, as forbidden by the Genocide Convention.

3) Iran is a state sponsor of international terrorism.

4) Iran commits major human rights violations against its own people.

Prof Cotler asserts thatr it is a mistake to focus only on the nuclear threat. This marginalizes the other threats, and allows Iran to proceed as if there is no international concern at these various levels.

Engagement with Iran must deal with all of it. Professor Cotler is working with some 60 international human rights lawyers, who will be releasing a petition very soon that will provide documented evidence of Iranian violations and propose actions to be taken.

Members of this group will be visiting Western capitals -- 15 have been targeted -- in an attempt to energize specific actions against Iran. Recommendations include comprehensive, calibrated and targeted sanctions:

a) Iran is currently in violation of five sets of UN resolutions, which are not being enforced. The start is the enforcement of these resolutions.

b) Gasoline sanctions: measures against those who export refined petroleum products to Iran, or facilitate such export.

c) Curbing of energy investments in Iran. This would include the energy infrastructure -- shipping, etc.

d) Include the Iranian Central Bank -- which is at the heart of Iranian financial dealings -- in financial sanctions. This has not been done yet.

e) International institutions must be monitored with regard to money laundering for Iran.

f) Companies that facilitate domestic repression in Iran must be sanctioned.

g) Sanction companies that do business with the Revolutionary Guard -- the most vicious and radical element in Iran and the one that now has control. The Guard must be put on terrorism lists.

h) Embargoes must be placed against technology and arms transfers to Iran.

i) Landing permission must be denied to the Iranian transportation industry -- planes and ships. Note: The UN is serving as a third party in money laundering for Iran. Iran has been using a UN office -- The Asia Clearing Union -- to avoid US financial sanctions that forbid dealing with Iran.

These sanctions are only the beginning, however.

Additional Cotler recommendations include:

1) The eight precursors to genocide have already been identifiedas existing in Iran.

In such a situation, the Genocide Convention calls for specific actions.

HOWEVER, not one single signatory nation has undertaken these actions.

They are not voluntary -- they constitute a legal obligation. Says Cotler: "International legal responsibility is not a 'policy option.'"

1) The issue must be raised in the Security Council and an inter-state complaint must be brought before the International Court of Justice.

2) Interpol, the international criminal police organization, has a warrant out for the arrest of Ahmad Vahidi, the Iranian Minister of Defense, for his role in the 1994 terrorist bombing of the Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. But the world seems to be ignoring this.

3) It is important to provide solidarity with the Iranian opposition forces -- those challenging the government.

We are not at a tipping point yet, but it may come, and they may in time overturn the current regime.

They need international support.

Professor Cotler says there is no absence of remedy -- the problem is absence of action.

"We are witnesses to the crime of indifference", he concluded.

Indeed, perhaps the most newsworthy aspect of Prof. Cotler's press conference was that Iran Ahmad Vahidi, who has been named the Defense Minister of Iran, is wanted for the mass murder attack of the Jewish community center in Argentina which he masterminded in 1994.

Vahidi was the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards known as the Quds Force when he oversaw that antisemitic terrorist attack.

At the demand of the Argentinian government, Interpol issued a "wanted persons" alert for him in 2007.

Indeed, a quick search on the interpol web site will reveal the fact that, indeed,

Ahmad Vahidi remains on the active list of people whom Interpol still posts a "wanted" poster for Ahmad Vahidi's arrest..

See:

When Vahidi got his position to oversee the entire military apparatus of Iran earlier this year, a spokesperson for the US State Department simply described Vahidi's nomination as "disturbing".

The Philadelphia Bulletin: U.S. Presidential Envoy Makes Pledge To Combat Anti-Semitism

Will that Include a Campaign against Palestinian Authority Anti-Semitism?

by David Bedein

Jerusalem - Hannah Rosenthal, appointed last week as the United States State Department’s official envoy to combat anti-Semitism, delivered an address on Wednesday to more than 500 people who participated in the Jerusalem-based Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism.

Ms. Rosenthal opened her address by invoking her own father, who was the only member of his family to live through the ordeal of the Nazi concentration camps and then went on to delineate her job description.

Ms. Rosenthal said that she has been delegated to create a policy of vigilance against anti-Semitism and to coordinate her task assignment with all diplomatic missions of the United States throughout the world. She stated that she would focus a special effort to monitor expressions of anti-Semitism at the United Nations, noting that Israel is being held to a double standard.

Ms. Rosenthal’s passionate speech was widely acclaimed and quoted in the Israeli media.

The Bulletin asked Ms. Rosenthal after her speech about whether she would indeed apply her principled statement to combat the virulent antisemitism that emanates from the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA), an entity which has received wide support from the American foreign policy establishment. Ms. Rosenthal responded that her mandate was global and would be applied everywhere.

Asked specifically about whether she would take on the anti-Semitism of the Palestinian Authority, Ms. Rosenthal said that she would consider the question. In that context, The Bulletin dispatched a letter to Ms. Rosenthal’s office, asking for a policy statement concerning official Palestinian Authority anti-Semitism.

Previous administrations of President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush had made it official policy to ignore official Palestinian Authority anti-Semitism that emanates from the media, the new constitution and the new schoolbooks of the Palestinian Authority.

At the Annapolis Summit in Nov. 2007, hosted by President Bush, The Bulletin asked representatives of the State Department and White House as to whether the U.S. would ask the PA to put an end to official anti-Semitic policies in PA education, PA media and the PA public domain. The answer was “no.”

Since Ms. Rosenthal invoked her father as an inspiration in her new task assignment, it will be instructive to see how she copes with the fact that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warmly receive Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, while overlooking the fact that Mr. Abbas remains one of the world’s greatest holocaust deniers. Mr. Abbas wrote a Ph.D. thesis entitled “The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism” which describes Nazi persecution of the Jews as a “Zionist fantasy, the fantastic lie that six million Jews were killed.”

Mr. Abbas’ Ph.D. is now widely used as a prime text in Palestinian Authority schools and Palestinian Authority Universities.

The Philadelphia Bulletin: Turkish Jews Living under the Threat of Extremism

by David Bedein

JERUSALEM - A nervous Rabbi recently appeared at The Bulletin’s bureau in Jerusalem and related that the small Jewish community in Turkey feels threatened by the new Islamic resurgence and by the new Turkish alliance with Iran.

As a result, there is a a significant increase in the number of Jews leaving Turkey and immigrating to Israel.

One hundred and thirty five immigrants from Turkey have made the journey this year, compared with 108 in 2008.

The Jewish Agency predicts that, by the year’s end, some 200 immigrants will have come, nearly twice as many as in previous years.

The assessment is based on the fact that, for the first time in many years, Jewish Agency representatives are being swamped with calls. As of now there is a 100 percent increase in those expressing interest in immigrating to Israel, inquiring as to their rights and obligations - and for the first time, a long list of Jews hoping to relocate their businesses from Turkey to Israel.

Most of those asking to register as new immigrants explain that this is due to the new extremist attitudes towards Jews in Turkey.

One of those who have registered, a 39-yard-old father of four who did not give his name, is the owner of a large and prosperous shop in the capital. The man decided to sell his business and move to Israel.

“We are being harassed, Turkey is no longer the same Turkey. They listen to the words of the prime minister and refrain from setting foot in Jewish shops. Turkey is falling into extremism,” he explained.

He said that many of his Jewish colleagues were leaving for the West, not only to Israel, and others were considering doing so.

“We anticipated that the number of people interested in moving to Israel was going to rise, but we didn’t anticipate that there would be such a large number of people who wanted to immigrate and so swiftly,” said a senior Jewish Agency executive. He said that 600 Jews were expected to immigrate to Israel from Turkey in 2010, which is an unprecedented number.

Eli Cohen, the director of the Aliyah Department in the Jewish Agency, personally oversees the immigration of Turkish Jews told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper that “2009 is going to be a very successful year in terms of Aliyah - immigration to Israel - mainly from Turkey. We are pleased with this and have been operating to absorb them across Israel in the best way possible.”

Mr. Cohen said that there has been a 20 percent rise around the world in immigration to Israel, after years in which interest had declined, and that interest in Turkey was significantly higher than that.

“That proves that Israel is the home of the Jewish people. We serve as a safe haven for Jews. We do everything we can to improve the methods of absorption and to give the new immigrants a sense of belonging,” said Mr. Cohen.

Three Jewish families that came from Turkey not long ago currently live in an absorption center in Ashdod. One of the families explained yesterday that the reason they decided to immigrate to Israel was the sense that the Turkish public was taking the statements made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan into action.

“I was born in Turkey, I grew up in Turkey, I know the Turks, and they’re tolerant of Jews. Regrettably, in the past year there has been a shift that has hurt the Jews. Curses, anti-Semitic comments, radicalization on the street - all of that left me with no choice. I took my family and immigrated to Israel. Some of my extended family intends to immigrate to Israel or to uproot for America,” said one woman who recently moved to Israel from Turkey.

View the original article in the Philadelphia Bulletin

"April Fools" Piece in the NYTimes Mimimizes Fatah/PA Anti-semitism

by Professor Gil Troy

I usually don't like playing bash-the-journalist. I try avoiding the ritualistic Tirade against the Times, which keeps pro-Israel New York Times readers' blood flowing. But an April 1, 2008 front-page article was so ridiculous it could have been an April Fools joke. "IN GAZA, HAMAS'S FIERY INSULTS TO JEWS COMPLICATE PEACE EFFORT," the headline ever so delicately proclaimed - as if there was much of a peace effort with Hamas to complicate, and as if the bombs raining down on Sderot or hundreds of cold-blooded murders over the years did not first "complicate" matters. Even the usually hostile International Herald Tribune reprinted the article under a more accurate headline "HAMAS RATCHETS UP ANTI-JEWISH RHETORIC."

Equally absurd, the one line the Times website highlighted pronounced: "While the Palestinian Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect, efforts to end incitement against Jews, Hamas feels no such restraint." Moral obtuseness is one of the great crimes of our times and of the Times. The editors too easily forgive Fatah's "imperfections" in fighting anti-Semitism.

Steven Erlanger's article unintentionally illustrates how Hamas has helped sanitize Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in the eyes of gullible Westerners. The article admits, again in surprisingly delicate language, that "the Palestinian Authority of Fatah also causes some concern - its textbooks, for example, rarely recognize the state of Israel." Erlanger ignores the systematic anti-Semitism preached in Palestinian mosques, broadcast on PA TV, weaved into so many cartoons, and permeating the culture of what they call martyrdom, what we call terrorism. Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' brigade celebrated the recent Merkaz HaRav massacre as a "heroic operation."

The Times article implies that since the 1993 Oslo Accords, mainstream Palestinian leaders opposed anti-Semitic incitement. Tragically, the opposite is true. It represents one of the Oslo Peace Process's great betrayals. While many Israelis went beyond demonization to try incorporating the Palestinian narrative into their worldviews, while Israel's Ministry of Education introduced Palestinian national poets into Israel's curriculum, the PA under Fatah systematically tried to delegitimize Israel - and demonize Jews. Palestinian culture since the 1990s has marinated more than ever in this culture of hatred, with monstrous results for Israelis and Palestinians.

The rise of Hamas has helped many Palestinian Authority leaders wear the mask of moderation, legitimized by a perverted law of bogus averaging. The Hamas ideology of genocidal extremism and criticism of Mahmoud Abbas for being accommodating does not make Fatah moderate. Moderation is not just a relative term; you should be somewhat temperate to earn the label. It was Abbas, not Hamas, who recently accused Israel of committing "more than a holocaust," in Gaza, comparing 100 people killed during justified military moves with six million systematically slaughtered. It was Abbas the alleged moderate who has threatened further violence unless Israel meets his demands. And it is Abbas the supposed suppressor of incitement who, despite presiding over a political system that lacks free speech, nevertheless grants freed expression to rank anti-Semitism.

The Times article had other howlers, including the following sentence: "Intended to indoctrinate the young to its brand of radical Islam, which combines politics, social work and military resistance, including acts of terrorism, the programs of Al Aksa television and radio, including crucial Friday sermons, are an indication of how far from reconciliation Israelis and many Palestinians are" (emphasis added). Beyond the law of bogus averaging we see the tic of false equivalence. Ending a sentence about Hamas incitement with a phrase about reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians put the moral onus on both. This amoral unequal equivalence blames the victim along with the hater.

The article also views Hamas's anti-Semitism in a vacuum. Beyond one reference to Hizbullah and the mention of Hamas's "brand of radical Islam," Erlanger overlooked how typical such rhetoric has become throughout the Arab world. In fact, given that newspapers usually emphasize the exceptional, the innocent reader would finish the piece not realizing how many Arab newspapers regularly caricature Jews in the most despicable of ways, how many Muslim preachers every Friday preach against Jews in the harshest of ways, and how the Koranic characterization of Jews as "apes and pigs" has become routinized as discourse in the most disturbing of ways.

Unfortunately this foolish April article reflects a broader phenomenon. The recent State Department report charting Global anti-Semitism ignored PA incitement. Israel itself, both in its Foreign Ministry and in some university departments monitoring anti-Semitism, frequently overlooks PA and Fatah incitement. More broadly, many tend to minimize the ubiquity of the hatred, and how it is frequently linked with an appalling -- and equally genocidal -- anti-Americanism.

Too many Westerners are becoming like the iconic frog who, rather than being thrown into a pot of boiling water and jumping out, was burned to death as cold water, gradually heated, eventually turned deadly. Too many have become systematically desensitized by the steady discharge of genocidal anti-Semitism. Vitriolic Jew hatred has become so much a part of the background in the Arab world and much of the Muslim world that many have become gradually desensitized to it. And, as we saw during the terrorist wave against Israel that began in 2000, a constant onslaught slowly, gradually diffuses the outrage as people start accepting the unacceptable, tolerating the intolerable. When you add to this the journalistic compulsion to give two sides to every story, no matter how lopsided, and the broader political delusion that there is a broad Palestinian commitment to the anemic peace process, some of the ugliness now permeating Palestinian national culture ends up ignored or sanitized.

We cannot afford to be so lethargic in facing Hamas hatred or Fatah incitement. We have seen too many examples of words feeding violence; we have buried too many innocents whose killers became heroes. A culture of hate breeds more hatred, more violence. Ignoring it, minimizing it, or excusing it feeds the fires rather than dousing them as needed.

Gil Troy is a professor of history at McGill University in Montreal. He is the author of "Why I Am A Zionist" published by Gefen