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Israel Will Be Annihilated in One Storm, Says Iran Leader
Tim Butcher

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran appeared to threaten Israel with a nuclear attack on Friday when he described it as a "rotten, dried tree" that would be annihilated by "one storm." In his most vitriolic and anti-Semitic attack to date, Ahmadinejad warned that Israel faced imminent destruction. Speaking at the opening of a conference in Teheran to support the Palestinian cause, Ahmadinejad repeated earlier anti-Semitic attacks in Israel, questioning the scale of the Nazi Holocaust and attacking Zionism. (Telegraph-UK)

Additional Headlines

Mashaal: We'll Never Recognize Israel

Sharon Era Comes to Symbolic End in Israel

Ex-USF Professor Sami Al-Arian to Be Deported in Terrorism Case

Olmert: "Israel Should Not Be on the Forefront of a War Against Iran"
by Romesh Ratnesar

"I don't know why people think this is first and foremost a war for Israel. It's a problem for every civilized country. Iran is a major threat to the well-being of Europe and America just as much as it is for the state of Israel. I don't think America can tolerate the idea of a leader of nation who can openly speak of the liquidation of another country. And therefore it is incumbent upon America and Europeans to form a strategy and implement it to remove this danger of unconventional weapons in Iran. To assume that Israel would be the first to go into a military confrontation with Iran represents a misunderstanding of this issue." (TIME)

Why "This Night" Is Still Different
by Gerald M. Steinberg

The attempt to deprive [Israel of its ancient] history denies the link between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. Jews are portrayed not as the indigenous people returning to their homeland, but as "imperialists" and "neo-colonialists," while the history, including the Exodus, is downgraded to the status of "myth." The Pessah Seder is our collective opportunity to reclaim and reassert Jewish history and the centrality of this legacy. As Ben-Gurion told the diplomatic jury in 1947: "Jews worldwide still eat matza for seven days from the 15th of Nisan, and retell the story of the Exodus, concluding with the fervent wish, 'Next Year in Jerusalem.' This is the nature of the Jewish people." (Jerusalem Post)

UCLA: Bernard-Henri Levy Warns on Anti-Semitism
by Kevin Matthews

Although Israel "can and must be" subject to criticism, "especially by its friends," Bernard-Henri Levy denounced as the first pillar of the new anti-Semitism the "Satanization" and "vilification" of Israel "in order to vilify the Jews." The other two pillars of the current anti-Semitic phase, he said, are the claim that Jews have cultivated a status as victims in order to silence others, and the outright denial of the Holocaust. (UCLA International Institute)

Colorado: Tolerating Intolerance
by Erica Seldin

The film "Tolerating Intolerance: Hate Speech on Campus" and the following panel discussion graphically exposed the reality of freedom of speech and pleaded for a solution to the resurgence of anti-Semitism. Shown to a small audience on Monday, April 10, the film highlighted the deliberately anti-Israel hate speech sweeping college campuses all over the nation. The actions illustrated in the film have made campus life increasingly more uncomfortable for Jewish students throughout the nation. (Campus Press)

Carnegie Mellon: Students Vote in Mock Israeli Elections
by Michael M. Whiston

Hasbara Fellowships, a pro-Israel activist program for college students, compiled mock election results from across the country. The results differed from the actual election results, with Likud claiming 44 out of 120 seats, followed by Kadima with 33 seats. At Carnegie Mellon, the sponsoring organization provided students with candidate information and the chance to vote in the Israeli mock election. They closed their polls last Monday night after a week and a half of tabling. (The Tartan)

Harvard: Anti-Semitic Fliers Appear in Eliot, Yard
by Daniel J. Hemel

Anti-Semitic leaflets appeared in publicly-accessible locations outside at least one upperclass House and several Yard dorms last week. One of the fliers carries the name of National Vanguard, a Charlottesville, Va.-based organization that, in its own words, "stands up for the interests of White people." One flier charges that the invasion of Iraq was "a war for Israel," and it claims that U.S. policy toward Israel "is an expression of the Jewish-Zionist grip on America"s political and cultural life." (Harvard Crimson)

Point-Counterpoint - What Are the Prospects for a Renewed Peace Process in an Olmert Government?

A Realistic Look at the Coming Olmert Years
by Yossi Alpher

Every Israeli government since 1988 has been brought down by internal politics that hinge on the Palestinian issue. No Israeli government has taken more than one significant step toward dealing with this issue without collapsing under the weight of its own coalition contradictions. Such is the nature of the Israeli political system.
Prime Minister-designate Ehud Olmert's anticipated coalition will almost certainly suffer the same fate. The 29 mandates of his own party, Kadima, representing just under one-fourth of the electorate, are not sufficient to sustain a stable coalition for the long haul.
Olmert will almost certainly now be obliged by his Labor partners, and possibly by international pressures, to attempt another round of negotiations, presumably with Abu Mazen. Only when this fails will he turn to "convergence," i.e., dismantling additional settlements.
The nature of his coalition and the built-in constraints in his own party will probably afford him breathing space for one "round," one accomplishment, before Israel is plunged back into early elections. That means the initiation of a major withdrawal of tens of thousands of West Bank settlers: initiation, because the cost and logistics of removing so many settlers guarantee that the project will take far more years to complete than Olmert's coalition can survive.
The most we can probably expect from the incoming government with regard to the Palestinian issue is low-level contacts with Hamas to ensure that Palestine is not plunged into a humanitarian crisis, along with the beginnings of another round of settlement dismantlement on the West Bank and completion of the security fence along an increasingly rational path - all with Washington's blessings. (Bitterlemons)

Seek Agreement by Negotiations
by David Kimchi

Good, but not good enough. That was how the peace camp in Israel summed up the results of the elections. The left of center had hoped for more, but was not overly dissatisfied with what it got.
Those results were, above all, a vote of no confidence in the settler movement and its backers.
This was the first national election in which the choice of staying or leaving a large part of the West Bank was put to such a clear test, and the results were as convincing as they could be.
The fact that Kadima received far fewer votes than it had expected will make it more difficult to establish a strong government able to implement its policy of withdrawal. Its first priority will be, in any case, to patch together a coalition that enables it to receive a majority of votes in the Knesset in the forthcoming debate on the government budget.
Regarding its Palestinian policy, the govenment has, theoretically, three policy options: to maintain the status quo for any number of reasons; to begin negotiations with the Palestinians for an agreed settlement; or to declare that a Hamas government precludes any possibility of negotiations and it therefore opts for a unilateral withdrawal. In practice, however, those choices are severely limited.
Washington, for its part, can also be expected to press for a resumption of negotiations and will only reluctantly approve of unilateral withdrawal as a second best choice if negotiations prove to be impossible. (Bitterlemons)

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Sunday, April 16, 2006

Israel Campus Beat - April 16, 2006

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