Gilad Atzmon's Blog, page 94

Happy Birthday To Jew...

Shimon Peres' Special Centennial Message to the ADL

The Staggering Cost of Israel to Americans (read it & spread it!)

This report was produced by If Americans Knew and Pamela Olson in particular

http://ifamericansknew.org

Israel has a population of approximately 7.7 million, or a million fewer than the state of New Jersey. It is among the world's most affluent nations, with a per capita income similar to that of the European Union. Israel's unemployment rate of 6.3% is much better than America's 8.2%, and Israel's net trade, earnings, and payments is ranked 146th in the world while the US sits at a dismal 193rd.

Yet, Israel receives more of America’s foreign aid budget than any other nation. The US has, in fact, given more aid to Israel than it has to all the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean combined—which have a total population of over a billion people.

And foreign aid is just one component of the staggering cost of our alliance with Israel.

Given the tremendous costs, it is critical to examine why we lavish so much aid on Israel, and whether it is worth Americans' hard-earned tax dollars. But first, let's take a look at what our alliance with Israel truly costs.

Before the Iraq War in 2003

Direct Foreign Aid

According to the Congressional Research Service , the amount of official US aid to Israel since its founding in 1948 tops $115 billion, and in the past few decades it has been on the order of $3 billion per year.
But this money is only part of the story. For one thing, Israel gets all of its aid money at the start of each year, rather than in quarterly installments like other countries.
Israel is also the only recipient of US military aid that is allowed to use a significant portion annually to purchase products made by Israeli companies instead of US companies. (The costs to Americans caused by this unique perk are discussed below.)

In Bed With Bibi

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By Gilad Atzmon

Once again we see a familiar pattern: our united 'progressives' -- a veritable synagogue, a collective of great humanists -- lend their support to the oppressed.  This time it is the ‘Syrian people’ whom they wish to liberate and their enemy is obviously Bashar Al-Asad.

It is a pattern we know only too well by now. Ahead of the ‘War Against Terror’ we witnessed years of intensive progressive Feminist and Gay’s rights groups campaigns for women’s rights in Afghanistan.  The Progressive type also disapproves of the current state of the Iranian revolution. Too often he or she would insist that we must liberate the Iranians.  This week, once again, we see a united front made by Tariq Ali, Ilan Pappe, Fredric Jameson, Norman Finkelstein and other very good people. They clearly want us to ‘liberate the Syrians’.

A Very Important Project!!! They Need your support.

New Routes: Photostories from young people across Gaza

http://www.kickstarter.com/

A collaborative project with young people across Gaza to create photostories and hold exhibitions in Palestine and the UK.

This is not simply about getting young people in Gaza to take photos but enabling them to apply multiple layers of meaning to those photographs and thereby their surroundings.

New Routes is a photostory project that will explore the lives of young people across the Gaza Strip. This project will collaborate with young people and enable them to create stories of their everyday routes and endeavors.  In other contexts this type of approach has helped highlight undocumented issues, break stereotypes, and reveal new routes forward.

Through a series of workshops young people will generate their own themes, learn composition skills, and write narratives to accompany their photographs.  The project aims to work with six diverse groups each containing between ten and fifteen young people.  Results from the different workshops will be put together in an exhibition in Gaza and the UK. 

I designed this project in response to a ‘knowledge transfer’ initiative launched by a group of Palestinians living in Southampton and civil society groups in Gaza. The creative process is punctuated with the exhibition and in subsequent dialogue generated by the photostories.  

A brilliant team of volunteers has already spent many hours advising, creating, and designing material for use in publicity and workshops.  The necessary permissions to access Gaza have been granted and we will arrive in June.  All that is now required are the funds for equipment and materials.

Welcome To The Jewnited Kingdom

THE EXILING OF MY FILM , “EXILE A MYTH UNEARTHED”, IN THE BBC

By Ilan Ziv

http://ilanziv.com/

As some of you know, my film EXILE, A MYTH UNEARTHED, which examines the myth of the Jewish EXILE and its political impact on both Israeli Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East, was going to be shown on the BBC Thursday April 25th. It was pulled out of the schedule only a few days earlier.

Since than I was flooded by dozens of emails of angry and concerned viewers asking what happened.   To be honest I debated whether to tell the story of what I think had happened. I have worked with the BBC in the past on some programs that were deemed controversial and I never had any political censorship. On the contrary I was impressed by the integrity and fairness of the people I dealt with.

So based on my past experience, I was going to wait patiently until the BBC programming executives would solve the internal drama that apparently has begun to brew inside the BBC.  “The film is gorgeous, courageous and fresh, “ I was told several times by the programming executives. I was promised that the cancellation was temporary: “Given the short timescale and your workload, we have decided to delay transmission until we’ve had the chance you’ve had the chance to go through it in detail”. 

I naively believed and decided to wait quietly. But things have their own momentum and as I learned more, I realized that the story of “EXILE” in the BBC is far more complex.

Today Gilad Atzmon @ Southampton University

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On FRIDAY - CAFE PALESTINE Vs. FREIBURG UNIVERSITY

On FRIDAY: CAFE PALESTINE FREIBURG e. V. versus THE UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG before the ADMINISTRATIVE COURT FREIBURG

http://othersite.org/

BY Dr. Gabi Weber  

  On Friday, 3 May 2013 at 09:30 a.m. the Administrative Court in the German city of Freiburg will hear Cafe Palestine Freiburg e.V.'s application against  Freiburg University. This application has been filed in order to expose the University’s discriminatory action against Cafe Palestine Association. 
We are going to point at Freiburg University's impartiality, its attitude towards freedom of speech,  ethics  and the Palestinian plight. We will provide the court with gross evidence of  double standards, false accusations and defamation on the University’s part.

We would like to thank all our supporters who wrote protest letters to the University,  comments and who posted our case on their websites. Your support gives us hope and strength to continue this battle.

Cafe Palestine Freiburg e. V.

 

On FRIDAY - CAFE PALESTINE Vs. FREIBURG UNIVESITY

On FRIDAY: CAFE PALESTINE FREIBURG e. V. versus THE UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG before the ADMINISTRATIVE COURT FREIBURG

http://othersite.org/

BY Dr. Gabi Weber  

  On Friday, 3 May 2013 at 09:30 a.m. the Administrative Court in the German city of Freiburg will hear Cafe Palestine Freiburg e.V.'s application against  Freiburg University. This application has been filed in order to expose the University’s discriminatory action against Cafe Palestine Association. 
We are going to point at Freiburg University's impartiality, its attitude towards freedom of speech,  ethics  and the Palestinian plight. We will provide the court with gross evidence of  double standards, false accusations and defamation on the University’s part.

We would like to thank all our supporters who wrote protest letters to the University,  comments and who posted our case on their websites. Your support gives us hope and strength to continue this battle.

Cafe Palestine Freiburg e. V.

 

Apologists for Israel take top posts at BBC

Introduc tion by GA: The Zionification of Britain is completed. However, the piece below is also a tragic glimpse into UK PSC's impotence.

It is far from being a secret that the PSC has been Zionised. However, Considering PSC  colossal failure in representing Palestinian interests within British media,  PSC unprecedented success in expelling Palestinians from its ranks is pretty remarkable indeed. 

Apologists for Israel take top posts at BBC

by Amena Saleem / April 28th 2013

http://21stcenturysocialism.com/

The American poet T.S. Eliot wrote that ‘April is the cruelest month’. The phrase springs to mind in April 2013, the month that a new director-general took up his post at the BBC and, within two weeks, had installed a line-up of hardline Zionists at the top of the world’s largest publicly-funded news organization.

Tony Hall, whose role as director-general commenced on 2 April, is a former BBC director of news and can boast a total of nearly 30 years working at the corporation. As such, he is well-versed in the BBC’s values — he knows what the BBC wants.

Soon after his own appointment, Hall named James Harding as the BBC’s new director of news and current affairs. Until December, Harding was editor of The Times, an avowedly right-wing, pro-Israeli paper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International group.

In 2011, Harding spoke at a media event organized by The Jewish Chronicle, telling his audience: “I am pro-Israel. I believe in the State of Israel. I would have had a real problem if I had been coming to a paper [The Times] with a history of being anti-Israel. And, of course, Rupert Murdoch is pro-Israel.”

Glee

The strongly Zionist Jewish Chronicle reprinted those words with glee as news of Harding’s BBC appointment broke. And it also took the opportunity to remind its readers that, during the Israeli massacre in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009, when more than 1,400 Palestinians were slaughtered, Harding wrote a Times editorial titled, 'In defense of Israel'.

Now bringing his pro-Israel biases into the top ranks of the BBC, Harding will be in charge of its flagship news and current affairs programs including Today, Newsnight, Panorama and Question Time. He will also be responsible for daily news bulletins on the BBC’s main television channels and radio stations.

According to the Guardian, Harding now holds “arguably the most important editorial job in Britain”.

The news of his appointment to the £340,000 ($518,000) per year post comes just a fortnight after the former Labour Party minister James Purnell took up his new position at the BBC as director of strategy and digital.

Purnell, who was one of Hall’s first appointments, served for two years while in Parliament as chairman of the Westminster lobby group Labour Friends of Israel. Hugely influential, Labour Friends of Israel has drawn support from senior figures within the party, including the former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Liberating The American People by Gilad Atzmon & OHE (musiK / Enja)

Liberating The American People by Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble on Grooveshark

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http://www.amazon.com/