Why does the world target Israel?

All of us that are involved in advocating for Israel ask ourselves this question. Kasim Hafeez is an interesting character - see a biography at the end of the article below.
This op-ed states that by singling out Israel, human rights activists abandon those who really suffer from apartheid

Kasim Hafeez

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4347381,00.html 

Genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid; if you've ever had the pleasure of speaking with some of the more zealous haters of Israel you'll hear these phrases at some point, normally yelled at you by a delightful middle class keffiyeh-wearing student.

I guess to some extent, sadly, we have become slightly accustomed to these libels. The hypocrisy of those claiming to be pro-Palestinian and champions of human rights and their obsessive hatred of Israel has led to the abandonment of those who suffer true apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Detractors will undoubtedly be quick to ask why supporters of Israel point to other regimes to exonerate Israel. But this is not really what I'm doing. Israel needs no exoneration as, fortunately, Israelis are able to protest, challenge and choose their governments. That's democracy folks. But, just for the sake of argument, let us say all the malicious lies have some truth to them. Still the question remains: Why is Israel singled out for protests and global marches lauded by the 'enlightened' regimes in Tehran and Damascus, yet some of the world's human rights catastrophes carry on daily, completely ignored, by the same holier than thou activists?

For me, a particular source of pain and anger is the situation of minorities and women in my parents' homeland. In Pakistan, not a week goes by without a story of rape, murder, humiliation and torture. In this Islamic country, terms such as Jesus Christ are banned in text messages and a young girl is shot for demanding basic education. Yet apart from the attempted murder of Malala Yusufzai, these stories rarely make it to the press. The brutally oppressed Christian minority suffers at the hands of an archaic blasphemy law, yet, apart from small-scale protests held by Pakistani Christian groups, there were no calls to boycott Pakistan and no flotillas were planned. I guess murdered Pakistani Christians maybe not a trendy enough cause. I wonder if a British newspaper would publish a cartoon of a Pakistani mullah murdering minorities to pave the way for a Sharia state. Our journalists love freedom and liberty, but the love their lives a little bit more.

Obsessed with destruction of Israel

The House of Saud promotes religious apartheid, destroys history and spreads wahhabism, yet the world remains silent. Maybe the cause isn't cool enough. Or maybe we should just allow people to suffer and dismiss it as a cultural phenomenon; maybe we should say this is how things are in that part of the world and focus on the need to stop 'apartheid Israel,' which just elected another Knesset member of Ethiopian descent.

Remember when a handful of Darfur nationals and real human rights activists protested outside the UN Human Rights Commission against the atrocities in the region? Well, the instigator of the ethnic cleansing, Sudan, sat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Once again, so many of our activists remained silent because Israel was not involved. It is interesting to note that some of Israel's fiercest enemies like Syria, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain dismissed the UN report on Darfur, penned by Nobel laureate Jody Wolfe, and acted to protect Sudan at the UN.

Why are the self-appointed defenders of Palestinian rights silent while Palestinians are being massacred in Syria by Assad's regime? And why do they remain silent when a Palestinian girl is murdered in the name of honor? Where were they when Hamas fired rockets from inside a school in Gaza? Oh, I forgot, they were outside the nearest Israeli embassy chanting slogans in support of Hamas.

I know there are many people who genuinely care about Palestinians and want to see them live in peace with their neighbors, but there are too many modern-day Jean-Paul Marats who are full of fiery rhetoric and demand blood. People have become obsessed with the destruction of Israel. These people should be ashamed of themselves, emulating the Nazis by urging boycotts of Jewish businesses while murder, rape and humiliation are rampant in so many nations. Real apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing are occurring on our watch, yet these people have become so obsessed with the end of Zionism that the suffering of others had become a side show.

Protest the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia and you'll have my respect. Protesting against an Israeli theater group is pathetic.

Numerous Middle East countries consistently violate human rights, yet the UN vilifies Israel. Is it just me or is something deeply wrong with our moral compass?

Kasim Hafeez was born in a British Muslim household of Pakistani origin. As a result of the constant indoctrination at home and in his circle of friends, he became both anti-Israeli and antisemitic. After reading Alan Dershowitz's 'The Case for Israel' in 2007, he began to doubt his own beliefs, researched the issue and visited Israel. After his return to the UK, he became convinced that he had to take a stand by speaking out about Israel and against Islamist radicalization.

A Christian Holocaust in our time – is it possible?

Howard Stern, Mediator and Negotiator.
hstern@amadeus-mediators.eu

The short answer is yes. One only has to consider the Egyptian Copts facing genocidal threats from the Moslem Brotherhood should they oppose the new government’s Sharia constitution to see the potential: a regime we helped bring to power!

So I must ask why the West is funding the systematic persecution, torture and discrimination of Christians, demonstrated well by Egypt having just been awarded $6.4 billion in “aid” by the EU. My concerns are echoed by Dutch novelist Leon de Winter, who recently stated that “offering aid to Egypt is the same as giving billions to Nazi Germany.” Many observers have commented on how the Arab Spring has become a Christian Winter. The Open Doors charity recently published its world watch list of nations who persecute torture and violate the rights of Christians. "Islamic extremism is the prime persecutor of Christians in the world today," said Ron Boyd-MacMillan, Open Doors' chief strategy officer, at a Washington D.C. news conference. Among 24 of the leading 30 persecuting countries, "it is Islamic extremists, either in government or in violent opposition forces, that are the source of the persecution," he said. The list of 50 countries -- which have a total Christian population of nearly 530 million, may be accessed online at: http://www.worldwatchlist.us/.

Travelling regularly to Israel and the Palestinian territory I have noticed a disturbing trend over last eighteen months in which the rights of Holy Land Christians are being systematically eroded, with threats and discrimination by radical Islamists commonplace. Palestinian Christians say to me, in the privacy of their own homes, that they now regard Israel’s occupation of the disputed territory as their only protection. The Palestinian Territories rate 36/50 in the Open Doors watch list.

Notably, Israel is the only nation in the middle-east where Christianity is actually growing. This Christmas some 600 of the remaining 1500 Palestinian Christians in Gaza were issued permits by Israel to travel to Jerusalem and the West Bank. Many are seeking refuge in Israel stating they feel unsafe living among their Moslem neighbours. The Holy Land Christians are worried for their future. One Bethlehem Pastor I know well, whose identity cannot be disclosed, stated, “we think we have only five to seven years left and then there will be no more Christians in Bethlehem.” Once the City of David and long-time Christian stronghold, Bethlehem’s Christian population has declined from 85% to 9% and is now a Moslem city.

As with the funding of Egypt’s Moslem Brotherhood, I question why the EU and US fund the Palestinian Authority to the tune of $2.5billion (2010-11) when human right violations take place widely in their territory. While the West contributes vast amounts of money to prop up and embolden such regimes; pogroms, persecution and genocidal threats will continue against Christians. Worse still is the considerable amount of weaponry, munitions and military hardware flowing from the US and Europe to the region - in addition to our taxpayer’s money – weapons used against our own Christian family.

In many nations such as Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria and Syria, churches have been bombed and set on fire, homes ransacked, children terrorized. Men are dragged through the streets and killed. Women are abducted, raped and forcibly converted to Islam. Khaled Mashaal, a Hamas leader in Gaza, recently called on all Moslems and Christians to live as partners in a freed Palestine, whilst ignoring the methodical persecution of Christians throughout Africa, the Middle-East and Palestine.

I believe if action is not taken to halt the supply of arms and money to these regimes then the lives of many millions of Christians remain at risk. So what can be done? The Dutch novelist, de Winter, is withholding part of his tax. We Christians can’t do this for we must “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” But what we can do is lobby our MPs and MEPs to demand the cessation of funding and arms supplies to corrupt and violent regimes. I am well aware of the hurt and pain caused by the silence of the church in the Jewish Holocaust: my concern now is that history is repeating itself with the church appearing silent once again in the face of a second holocaust - of its own people.

The demand to ban an Israeli dance company from performing in Edinburgh is bigotry dolled up as politics

By Brendan O'Neill Politics  Last updated: August 30th, 2012

http://tinyurl.com/cjapfdr  

These are tough times for bigots. Speaking ill of ethnic minorities is frowned upon and hate speech is increasingly outlawed, which means there are fewer opportunities to be openly bigoted, to express naked intolerance of people who are allegedly inferior. So how are bigots supposed to get their rocks off? Fear not, they have found a way. Forced by the pressures of PC to carve out a form of bigotry that appears right-on rather than rotten, modern-day bigots are coalescing around hatred of Israel, and specifically around campaigns to ban Israeli artists and academics from coming anywhere near this morally pristine country of ours.

Boycotts of everything Israeli have well and truly crossed the line from political campaigns into expressions of bigotry against the people and produce of Israel. This week, a bevy of Scottish writers became the latest to join the bigoted bandwagon, as they demanded that the Edinburgh International Festival ban an Israeli dance troupe from performing. The Batsheva Dance Company was due to perform a one-hour show at the Edinburgh Playhouse and this has riled the sensibilities of some of Scotland’s literary big-hitters. Novelist Iain Banks, poet Liz Lochhead, short story writer AL Kennedy and others had a letter published in this morning’s Glasgow Herald in which they demanded that Batsheva be banned from Edinburgh on the basis that it is a “global ambassador of Israeli culture”. Well, we can’t have any of that toxic Israeli culture infecting Edinburgh, can we?

This highly intolerant effort by one group of artists to have another group of artists banned – or perhaps quarantined at the borders until they renounce their home country and everything it stands for – is part of a bigger chattering-class trend to ghettoise Israeli culture. Earlier this year, actress Emma Thompson and other luvvies sought to have the Israeli theatre company Habima banned from taking part in an international Shakespeare festival at the Globe Theatre in London. They accused the Globe of “associating itself with policies of exclusion practised by the Israeli state”. Last year, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was loudly jeered as it performed at the Proms, by people who think that even beautiful music can be evil if it is performed by Them, people who hail from Israel. Click here to watch the orchestra struggling to be heard over the din of the jeering – it’s a depressing spectacle.

Meanwhile, no decent, politically aware household in the leafier bits of Britain will have any Israeli produce in its fridge or larder. Not buying Israeli figs is one of the main ways that certain sections of society express their probity these days. Outside Marks & Spencer on Oxford Street, you will often see a group of keffiyeh-wearing radicals holding a banner saying “Boycott Marks & Spencer” in dripping, blood-red writing. They never picket other shops that sell Israeli produce, such as Sainsbury’s or Tesco. Only Marks & Spencer. I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that Marks & Spencer was founded by J*ws.

The Israeli boycotters and banners always present their campaigning as politically informed, as a well-thought-through attempt to shame Israel and champion the Palestinian cause. They depict their erection of an anti-Israeli forcefield around Britain as an attempt to challenge what they call “Israeli apartheid” – the irony being that, in the process, they practise cultural apartheid against Israelis, against dancers, musicians and thinkers whose only crime is to have been born and trained in Israel. But there is nothing political about these censorious efforts to keep everything Israeli out of Britain. It is just an acceptable form of bigotry, a way of advertising one’s own moral decency by contrasting oneself to an inferior, infected people from Over There.