Long Term Critic Of Israel Gets Slammed By British Embassy Staff Member

Israel apologises over threats to 'take down' UK minister

James Pheby

AFPJanuary 8, 2017

Alan Duncan addresses the 2004 Conservative party conference in Bournemouth (AFP Photo/Jim Watson)

London (AFP) - The Israeli embassy in London sought Sunday to head off a diplomatic storm with London, apologising after one of its staff was caught on camera threatening to "take down" a British government minister.

The Mail on Sunday newspaper posted the footage showing the embassy's senior political officer Shai Masot telling an undercover reporter from Al-Jazeera television: "I want to take down... the Deputy Foreign Minister (Alan Duncan)."

Duncan, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson's second-in-command, and a long-time critic of Israel, was "doing a lot of problems," he added.

Duncan once described Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory as a "stain on the face of the globe", calling them an "act of theft".

"Occupation, annexation, illegality, negligence, complicity - this is a wicked cocktail which brings shame on Israel," he told the BBC in 2014.

Masot also called Johnson an "idiot" and mocked "crazy" opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his "weirdo" supporters.

The embassy issued an immediate apology, saying it "rejects the remarks concerning minister Duncan, which are completely unacceptable".

"The comments were made by a junior embassy employee who is not an Israeli diplomat, and who will be ending his term of employment with the embassy shortly," it added.

Ambassador Mark Regev apologised personally to Duncan on Friday, according to the embassy.

Britain's Foreign Office confirmed it had received an apology, and that it now considered "the matter closed".

- 'A little scandal?' -

The incident comes amid an Israeli diplomatic offensive against countries which backed a UN resolution last month demanding a halt to settlement building on Palestinian land.

All 15 members of the UN Security Council, including permanent member Britain, voted in favour of the resolution except for the United States which abstained, sparking Israeli fury.

It was not immediately clear if Masot's comments were linked to the resolution.

Conservative chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee Crispin Blunt told the Mail on Sunday the comments were "outrageous".

The footage was recorded at a restaurant opposite the Israeli embassy in London's upmarket Kensington district, during a meeting attended by Maria Strizzolo, senior aide to Conservative Education Minister Robert Halfon.

Strizzolo spoke of her influence in helping Halfon become a minister, prompting Masot to ask her: "Can you do the opposite stuff as well?"

However, Strizzolo said Duncan would be "impossible to rebuff" due to having powerful "friends", but then suggested "a little scandal, maybe?"

Strizzolo told the newspaper that she was speaking to Masot as a friend and that the conversation had been "tongue-in-cheek and gossipy", adding: "Any suggestion that I ... could exert the type of influence you are suggesting is risible."

Should France Be Divided Into Muslim And French Areas With A Shared Capital? Sounds Reasonable!

THE 2-STATE SOLUTION FOR FRANCE

Exclusive: Joseph Farah offers 'fair and equitable' plan for Muslims and non-Muslims

 JOSEPH FARAH

Editor’s note: It shouldn’t need to be stated with Joseph Farah’s long history of defending Israel and exposing what he characterizes as “the myths of the Middle East,” but the following commentary is a tongue-in-cheek satire. The writer and the editors of WND want to make clear to France, and particularly the families of the victims of the recent terrorist attack, that we mourn for them as we did our own losses in earlier senseless assaults on our own population.

While the recent deadly attack by French Muslims resulting in the tragic deaths of 12 has many Parisians calling for tighter security and limits on immigration, the path to averting future violence lies in negotiations, redress of legitimate grievances and the right to self-determination.

Let me suggest an obvious endgame: With a teeming population of Muslims in France, the only fair and equitable solution is the creation of two states for two peoples, living side by side in peace and security with Paris as the shared capital.

Nearly unanimously, political leaders and thought leaders the world over, including France, long ago came to this conclusion regarding tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. It only makes sense to apply the same logic to France’s crisis.

Muslims in France, as in many other countries in the world, seek to live by the tenets of their faith, their culture, their laws. That faith, that culture and those laws often conflict with Western ideas about free expression, marriage, the role of women and the free exercise of religion. There exists an irreconcilable divide that is best addressed through physical and legal separation that permits self-determination. The only alternative is a neo-colonial occupation of Muslim-dominated communities in France and the kind of protracted, endless bloodshed the world has witnessed for 67 years in the Middle East.

Occupation is not an optimal solution for either party, as we’ve seen in Israel. Occupation leads to human rights violations, corrupts morally the occupier, fuels violence regionally and worldwide, discourages tourism and in pariah status for the troubled nation. France needs to focus on protecting the state, not policing hostile communities within its borders.

Then there is the issue of demographics: Muslims have a much higher birth rate than native, non-Muslim Europeans. It’s a simple fact that will complicate and exacerbate France’s troubles in the future.

If France wants to protect its democratic institutions and culture, demographics cannot be ignored. Only a two-state solution allows French Muslims and French non-Muslims to chart their own cultural and legal destinies. That’s why the U.S., the international community and most major cultural institutions – from the press to academia – favor a two-state solution for Israel.

Likewise, Muslims favor this kind of independence because it addresses what they see as injustices inflicted upon them during France’s earlier colonial period and during today’s era of “cultural imperialism.”

Further, today’s French Muslim population includes a majority of citizens who have generational roots in the county. They are not all newcomers. Instead, they are in France to stay. It only makes sense then to divide up French land in two with separate Muslim and non-Muslim states with a shared capital.

This will permit Muslims and non-Muslims to establish their own separate economies, languages, governments and cultures. This is what the value of multiculturalism is ultimately all about.

After all, if the whole world, including France, thinks the two-state solution is the way to go in Israel, why wouldn’t it make perfect sense in France?

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/the-2-state-solution-for-france/#L0pZzbdrEp2MEXSp.99

At Least Some Universities Reject Anti-Semetic BDS Movement

Cornell Students Firmly Reject Anti-Israel Divestment Resolution

The anti-Israel Divestment Resolution at Cornell was timed so that the substantive vote would come up in the middle of the Passover holiday.

By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus

Published: April 11th, 2014

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Cornell University Student Assembly Voting Against the Anti-Israel Divestment Resolution, April 10, 2014.
Photo Credit: Screen Capture of video at Legal Insurrection Blog

In yet another failure of the anti-Israel divestment movement, the Cornell University student government voted on Thursday, April 10, against a Resolution to recommend that the school divest its holdings in Israeli companies.

The vote was 15 in favor of indefinitely tabling the Resolution, eight against tabling the Resolution and one abstention.

William A. Jacobson, a clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School, followed the student efforts closely. He writes an authoritative blog on campus activity regarding Israel, Legal Insurrection. His blog was the source of the most up-to-date and complete information regarding the American Studies Association’s vote to boycott Israeli academic institutions last year, as it is of so many other fast-paced and ever-multiplying threats against Israel on U.S. campuses.

“I’m very proud of the way the pro-Israel students were able to mobilize so quickly. Now they all can enjoy their Passover holiday,” Jacobson told The Jewish Press by email.

The Cornell professor was referring to the way in which the Divestment Resolution was brought to the Cornell Student Assembly for a vote. As he detailed in a post two days ago, the students, led by the nefarious campus group Students for Justice in Palestine, in a surprise move, inserted the Resolution onto the calendar just two days before,so that it came up for a vote Thursday, April 10, at 4:30 p.m.

Because the Passover holiday begins on Monday, most Jewish students ordinarily would leave for home during the day on Thursday. If the initial Resolution passed, it would mean that the substantive vote would take place the following Thursday, smack in the middle of the Passover holiday.

That cheap and dirty strategic trick, as Jacobson noted in his blog post describing it, was “reminiscent of the exploitation of the Yom Kippur Jewish holiday in 1973 to launch an attack on Israel.”

And just as effective. They lost. By a lot.

WHAT THE RESOLUTION SAID

Cornell Student Assembly Resolution is titled: Resolution Urging Cornell University to Divest from Companies Profiting from Israeli Occupation and Human Rights Violations.  That Resolution includes the usual panoply of distortions of truth regarding the situation and hyperbole regarding the “crucial role of students and scholars in finding and advocating for solutions to humanity’s various crises” (but not regarding Syria, Sudan, Eritrea, China or any other genocides or true humanitarian disasters currently taking place around the globe).

As always, the “Occupation” is the root of the only evil they recognize. The students point to the “Occupation,” the Separation Barrier and the Israel Defense Forces as the reasons for the misery of the lives of the Palestinian Arabs.

Sadly, most of the clauses cited in the Cornell Divestment Resolution cites United Nations Security Council and General Assembly Resolutions and International Court of Justice rulings.

Specific companies named in the Resolution include SodaStream, IngersollRand and Raytheon.

The students authors are outraged that “Cornell University has portfolio and direct investments in corporations that profit  Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, thereby making Cornell a complicit third party in human rights abuses and violations of international law.”

The Resolution concludes like this:

Be it further resolved, that Cornell University will make information about all of its assets public, pertaining especially to its investments;

And be it finally resolved, that Cornell University will end its complicity with the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and divest its holdings from the aforementioned companies and any other companies that profit directly from Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Cornell University will not make further investments in companies that materially support or profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

Just to be sure everyone understands, this is the student government of Cornell University. Even if the Resolution passed, the student government has absolutely no power to require the university to follow its directives.

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About the Author: Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the US correspondent for The Jewish Press. She is a recovered lawyer who previously practiced First Amendment law and taught in Philadelphia-area graduate and law schools.S