On the latest edition of Radio JAI, Eduardo Kohn, B'nai B'rith director of Latin American Affairs, discusses several important issues facing the continent's Jewish population. 

Topics include: the fallout of Hosni Mubarak's acquittal in Egypt, Mahmoud Abbas' latest slander against Israel, and the common link of hatred toward Israel and Jews that impedes the Middle East peace process.

Listen to the full podcast below:

El director ejecutivo de la Bnai Brith Latinoamérica, Eduardo Kohn explicó en Radio Jai la situación actual entre Israel y sus vecinos. “Israel no está dispuesto a que sus ciudadanos reciban eternamente misiles. Hamás ha dicho que no reconocerá nunca a Israel y Mahmmud Abbas ha optado por la confrontación y al apoyo de los terroristas. Cuando se considera al otro como un enemigo, cuando asesinar es una misión sagrada, cuando los asesinos son mártires y las madres glorifican a sus hijos por inmolarse y cuando el terrorismo es convertido en movimiento político, el camino a la paz es una utopía”, sentenció.

Don’t Play Politics With Genocide

At the United Nations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas asserted last month that Israel’s efforts to protect its citizens have amounted to “genocide.”

He did so, in language never remotely reciprocated by Israel, despite well knowing the nature of his current partners in Hamas, which had violently ended Abbas’s rule in Gaza, tossing his loyalists off buildings there.

In 1948, three years after the end of the Holocaust, two events represented a pivotal rejoinder to that most systematic of genocides. The State of Israel was founded – stemming a 2,000-year Jewish exile pervaded by persecution. And the U.N. General Assembly adopted its Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to help ensure that no people would again be subjected to massive violence of the most unprovoked, calculated and indiscriminate kind.

The world body’s adoption of the Genocide Convention was celebrated as a deeply hopeful achievement by Jews. Yale legal scholar Raphael Lemkin – a Jewish émigré who lost nearly his entire family to the Nazi atrocities – coined the term genocide in 1943, defining it as “the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.” Later, he drafted the Genocide Convention.

While the Holocaust was a distinct event in history, the appeal “never again” must apply to other people as much as it does to Jews.

However, not every loss of life can be labeled genocide. If genocide means everything, it could, dangerously, come to mean nothing.

Some of the world’s worst violators of human rights have an interest in stripping the term genocide of its purpose and potency through misuse.

More generally, ours is an era of stridency and populism, too often lacking nuance. When it comes to the most grave of charges, though, context matters and details matter, concerning both intentions and actions.

‎Iran pledges Israel’s destruction while illicitly pursuing nuclear capabilities and sustaining the groups, including Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, responsible for perennially forcing Israeli counterterrorism. Despite this, some commentators condemn as overblown any comparison of the Tehran regime to those, historically, who made good on remarkably open threats of monumental aggression.

By contrast, the subjection of Israel to the most inflammatory of rhetoric has again over recent months been met with astounding silence.

Iran’s supposedly moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, accused Israel of a “huge genocide” in Gaza – this from the leader of a government enabling bloodshed in Syria that has claimed far more Arab life in three years than Israel has in sixty-six.

Not given pause by the absence of gas chambers or crematoria, Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Israel has “surpassed Hitler in barbarism.”

And in an interview with the BBC, Hamas’s official spokesman (who, separately, alleged that Jews use Christian blood in matzo) charged Israel with “Nazism.” The allegation was met with a bumbling response from the BBC’s normally opinionated interviewer.

All this is not without consequence. Singular abuse of Israel in international forums creates the distortion that Israel has one of the worst, not one of the best, records as a progressive society.

When 56 U.N. member states – including nearly all of the world’s foremost oil exporters – belong to the Arab and Muslim bloc, a Human Rights Council resolution on Gaza can assail Israel but not even mention Hamas.‎ And, of course, countries deemed to be perpetrating crimes like “apartheid,” genocide and Nazism – all-too-often interchanged – are expected to be dealt with accordingly.
If Israel has intended apartheid, it has proven mind-bogglingly inept, having created the freest and most pluralistic society in the Middle East in the face of relentless warfare.

And if Israel has intended genocide, it is among history’s most abysmal failures. Despite its military abilities, the population of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs has multiplied dramatically, even as the number of Jews, Christians and other minorities has tellingly plummeted elsewhere in the region.

After the genocides of the last century, there were among the victims no “victory” parades, as there were in Gaza after the latest hostilities. There was silence.

And during past genocides, there were no refusals of ceasefires by the beleaguered or pledges of new violence, as by Gaza’s factions – typically because the victims were not doing the firing.

Notably, despite the rush to equate Israel with Hamas in indiscriminate fire, males of fighting age appear to have been the most overrepresented group among recent Palestinian casualties in Gaza, the overwhelming majority of which went untargeted by Israel.

These facts, though, don’t suffice to penetrate international politics. Not in an age when a pop culture personality like Russell Brand can smugly invoke Israeli “occupation” in questioning Hamas’s categorization as a terrorist movement. No matter that Israel, which has supported a two-state peace, completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005 – and that if Jews lack even a right to exist in their historic homeland then Brand would hardly have a right to legitimately reside anywhere.

The British funnyman even likened Hamas to Gandhi – a comparison that might be worth discussing if not for Gandhi’s insistence upon non-violence, and the fact that Gandhi never aspired to the obliteration of Britain itself.

The continuing Arab-Israeli conflict has unquestionably claimed all too many lives, and those losses are heartrending. But not all loss of life constitutes murder, let alone genocide.

In the 1940s, in the face of a fascist onslaught, Britons and others responded, despite the heavy toll, not with complacency but with the necessary force.

Today, an array of countries is committed to combating such groups as Boko Haram, al-Shabab, Jemaah Islamiyah, the Taliban, al-Qaeda and ISIS.

As Palestinians again threaten to take Israel to the International Criminal Court over its struggle against fanatics deliberately operating among, and targeting, non-combatants, we must consider the implications of precluding counterterrorism by recklessly mislabeling it as genocide.

Jewish leaders converged on the State Department to discuss rising anti-Semitism across the globe, which is of “deep concern” to the Obama administration, US officials said this week.

Meeting with the group for four hours on Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry shared in worries over “the prevalence and pervasiveness of anti-Semitic threats and attacks,” the State Department said.

US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski and Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Ira Forman led the discussions, attended only briefly by the secretary. Several other senior State Department officials participated the meeting.

Jewish representatives included leaders from the Jewish Federations of North America, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, B’nai B’rith, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and European Jewish communities.

[...]

On Iran, the secretary was firm in stating that negotiations over that country’s nuclear program would not be extended past it’s November 24 deadline.

“I think he wanted us to communicate the message to Israel,” the source stated. “I think the message was quite serious: That he is frustrated about what is happening. They [the administration] feel they invested a lot in it [peace negotiations].”

More than 400 Jewish leaders, rabbis, and Holocaust and genocide scholars have signed a public statement denouncing accusations that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

The statement was organized by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, based in Washington, D.C. It follows a July 9 claim by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, that Israel is "committing genocide," an August 1 assertion by Fatah foreign affairs spokesman Nabil Sha'ath that the situation in Gaza is "a Holocaust," and an August 1 accusation by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan that Israel is guilty of "Hitler-like fascism." 

"The Holocaust was the deliberate, systematic mass murder of six million innocent Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators," the statement by the 400 leaders notes. "By contrast, Israel is acting in legitimate self-defense against Hamas terrorism. Israel has no interest in harming innocent civilians, and indeed has done its utmost to avoid civilian casualties, whereas Hamas deliberately targets Israeli civilians. Any comparison between Israel and the Nazis outrageously distorts Israel's actions and trivializes the enormity and nature of the Holocaust."

The signatories include:

*  Prominent figures in the American Jewish leadership, including David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee; Michael Siegal and Jerry Silverman, the chair and president, respectively, of the Jewish Federations of North America; David J. Michaels, Director of UN and Intercommunal Affairs for B'nai B'rith International; Rabbi Dr. Yitz Greenberg and Prof. Walter Reich, past chairman and past executive director, respectively, of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; and leaders of the American Society for Yad Vashem, the Simon Wiesenthal Center; the National Council of Young Israel; the Religious Zionists of America; and the Wexner Foundation.

On the latest edition of Radio JAI, Eduardo Kohn, B'nai B'rith director of Latin American Affairs, discusses several important issues facing the continent's Jewish population. 

Topics include: the double speech of the Palestinian president, the hypocrisy of the radical left in Latin America with regards to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and the failed Fatah-Hamas agreement that proves that they cannot be partners for peace.

Listen to the full podcast below:

El director ejecutivo de la Bnai Brith Latinoamerica, Eduardo Kohn, habló en Raidio Jai sobre la hipocresía de la izquierda latinoamericana sobre la situación actual del Estado Judío y el doble discurso del lider palestino Mahmoud Abbas ante la prensa internacional, que acusa constantemente el accionar defensivo del país. "No tienen idea de lo que es vivir bajo constantes ataques, solo están para acusar a Israel," aseguró.

As Hamas rocket attacks on Israel intensify, the European Union seems to have a case of amnesia over who, exactly, is pushing the buttons. In a statement, the Europeans condemned the indiscriminate firing, but never once mentioned Hamas. 

Who exactly does the EU think is firing rockets at Israel?

One thing is for sure: the Hamas rockets have nothing to do with Israel's settlement policy. Yet, the European Union, which looked the other way when the Palestinian Authority threw the Kerry peace initiative overboard by announcing a reconciliation with Hamas, has, for years, been fixated on settlements as being the one and only impediment to peace.

This, despite it being widely known exactly what territory would remain with Israel, and what would go to the Palestinians -- if there were ever to be an agreement between the two sides.

The EU's posturing on this issue actually helps Hamas by deflecting attention from its nihilistic campaign against Israel, but also aids and abets Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority by dismissing or marginalizing Palestinian incitement against Israel and Jews.

Hamas has now added social media, texts and video threats to its arsenal, telling Israelis to prepare for suicide bombings and other terror attacks. This psychological warfare coupled with the hundreds of rockets launched at Israel demonstrates, yet again, that Hamas simply seeks the destruction of Israel.

Even after the Palestinian Authority and Hamas joined forces and announced a new Palestinian “government,” and even as the news of the kidnapping of three Israeli teens was being reported, and as Israel charged Hamas with the kidnappings, the EU’s envoy in Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, was warning that Europe is “losing patience” with Israel over the settlement issue.

While all this was happening, EU member states such as Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the United Kingdom  warned investors that doing business in Israeli enterprises beyond the Green Line would transgress international law. In others words, continuing their fixation on Israeli settlements—as if it were the only issue preventing peace from breaking out.

But it is Israel that should be showing frustration with the one-note narrative the Palestinians have laid out and that the Europeans seem to be accepting, without challenge. How presumptuous for those European countries to lecture Israel on “losing patience.”

When the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, the Palestinian side solemnly promised to end incitement. It has not. Hardly a day has passed over these past two decades without inflammatory articles in the official media, sermons by paid Palestinian Authority clerics, anti-Semitic lessons in schoolbooks and glorification and praise of terrorist acts saturating the population of both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Teach hatred of Israelis and Jews for more than 20-years, and you will raise a generation that sees no problem at all in taking the lives of three young men trying to get back home on that dreadful evening. More than that: you've made murder a badge of honor.

Since Oslo, the EU and most of its member states have marginalized this unending stream of hatred and have largely focused on settlements. The Palestinian spokesmen and their apologists zero in on settlements to further grind away at Israel’s international standing, and to minimize whatever concessions they must make if a deal is to be reached.

By looking past or dismissing the fomenting of hatred against Israel and Jews, the Europeans are setting back, not advancing, the cause of peace. As long as the Palestinian leadership sanctions the demonization of its erstwhile negotiating partner and its people, one can’t speak seriously about achieving an agreement, or one that can last. 

Whatever one thinks of the settlement issue, it’s not as if there has been no discussion of it in hours of face-to-face meetings. The Palestinian side would prefer to sell, and the Europeans have clearly bought into, the notion that nothing has been discussed.

Without a clear rejection of the official hatred that emanates not only from Gaza, but from official circles in the West Bank itself, we’ll not likely get to the point where real coexistence can be achieved. The Europeans should know that.

Wouldn't it better that Faaborg-Andersen and the Europeans lose their patience with those on the Palestinian side who teach children to hate and who proffer garlands and bonuses to terrorists released from prison?

Europe is losing its patience? What about Israel's patience? For years Israel has been relentlessly and repeatedly excoriated at the United Nations Human Rights Council, and yet most anti-Israel resolutions have too often been met with rote abstentions from Europe, and in certain instances, votes against Israel.

The increased hyper-criticism pouring out from a number of governments in Europe seemingly removes any pretext of objectivity in helping settle the tough issues.

In issuing declarations on settlements only, by ignoring incitement, and by not harshly criticizing Hamas by name and not calling on the Palestinian Authority to end its strange joint governing arrangement with the Gaza terrorist organization, the European states as well as the EU itself, only serve to elevate Palestinian expectations, reinforcing their belief in a zero-sum outcome to this contentious conflict. After all, why do the tough work when the European silver platter of pressure on Israel is a constant?

With Syria still burning out of control, Iraq about to split into three parts, and Iran supplying arms to Hezbollah and Hamas, along with the murder of the teens, you'd think these European countries would be "losing patience" with those developments. Instead, they zero in on Israel, which is democracy's staunchest practitioner in the region.

On the latest edition of Radio JAI, Eduardo Kohn, B'nai B'rith director of Latin American Affairs, discusses several important issues facing the continent's Jewish population. 

Topics include: the murder of the three Israeli teenagers, the unjustified demands of some governments for Israel to "restrain the use of force" and the failure of the Hamas-Fatah agreement.

Listen to the full podcast below:

Shalom TV Daily News featured B'nai B'rith International's condemnation of the newly sworn in Fatah-Hamas unity Palestinian government, emphasizing the organization's call for Congress to review Palestinian aid that will now fund a known terrorist organization.

B'nai B'rith International has stood alongside Israel in denouncing the inclusion of Hamas in Israeli-Palestinian relations, stating that it "creates an irreconcilable obstacle to restarting negotiations."

Read the full statement here.The story begins at the 4:00 mark in the video:

B'nai B'rith International was featured on Shalom TV Daily News, denouncing the Palestinian reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas, a terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction.

Announced on April 23, the Fatah-Hamas pact has been widely criticized by Jewish organizations around the globe, and political entities committed to brokering peace talks. The move forced the end of negotiations following months of dialogue.

The story begins at the 3:43 mark in the video: