By JORDANA HORN, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT

12/22/2011 02:33

Simon Wiesenthal Center asks UN cultural agency to halt its sponsorship of the Palestinian childrens’ magazine.

NEW YORK – The Simon Wiesenthal Center asked UNESCO’s director-general Wednesday to suspend its sponsorship of a Palestinian children’s magazine, saying the magazine applauded Hitler for murdering Jews.

According to Palestinian Media Watch, the educational children’s magazine, Zayafuna, “includes terms glorifying jihad.”

The PMW report references an essay in the magazine by a teenage Palestinian girl. The girl wrote about meeting Adolf Hitler in a dream, who tells her that he killed the Jews “so you would all know that they are a nation who spreads destruction all over the world.” In the essay, Hitler tells the child to be patient regarding the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of the Jews.

• via ‘UNESCO funds Palestinian magazine glori… JPost – International.

By REUTERS

12/20/2011 23:26

Britain, France, Germany and Portugal say settler violence damaging prospects of renewed peace talks.

Members of the UN Security Council voiced deep concerns on Tuesday about the impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and criticized Israel for pressing ahead with the construction of new settlements.

Council members were reacting to a briefing by UN assistant secretary-general for political affairs, Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, who told them the search for peace “remained elusive in a context of tensions on the ground, deep mistrust between the parties and volatile regional dynamics.”

• via Security Council members line up … JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

Ottawa, September 19, 2011 — Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird today signed the Ottawa Protocol on Combating Antisemitism.

The Protocol is an action plan developed during the second annual conference of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism (ICCA) which took place in Ottawa in November, 2010. Signing it demonstrates the Government of Canada’s support for it and a commitment to its goals.

“The Government of Canada is a leader in the fight against anti-Semitism,” said Minister Kenney. “The Ottawa Protocol complements what Canada is already doing to combat hatred and discrimination, including anti-Semitism. We are a member of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. Here at home, we have launched programs to promote integration and social cohesion of Canadians from all backgrounds.”

• via News Release – Canada becomes first country to sign the Ottawa Protocol.

Preamble

We, Representatives of our respective Parliaments from across the world, convening in Ottawa for the second Conference and Summit of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism, note and reaffirm the London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism as a template document for the fight against antisemitism.

We are appalled by the resurgence of the classic anti-Jewish libels…

We are concerned that, since the London Conference in February 2009, there continues to be a dramatic increase in recorded antisemitic hate crimes and attacks targeting Jewish persons and property, and Jewish religious, educational and communal institutions.

We remain alarmed by ongoing state-sanctioned genocidal antisemitism and related extremist ideologies. If antisemitism is the most enduring of hatreds, and genocide is the most horrific of crimes, then the convergence of the genocidal intent embodied in antisemitic ideology is the most toxic of combinations.Continue Reading …

By HERB KEINON

12/15/2011 02:11

Quartet issues another call for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks “without delay or preconditions.”

The Quartet issued yet another call for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks “without delay or preconditions” following separate meetings its envoys had Wednesday in Jerusalem with Palestinian and Israeli officials.

This is the third time the Quartet has held such meetings in Jerusalem, and put out a similar statement, since September 23, when it issued a framework for returning to talks and when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas went to the UN to ask for recognition of a Palestinian state.

• via Quartet again calls for resumptio… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

…PA official:The PA recognizes that Israel exists but utterly rejects Israel’s right to exist

PA Ambassador to India, Adli Sadeq:”[Israel] never had any shred of a right to exist”

by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

December 1, 2011

Israel is wrong if it assumes that only Hamas loathes Israel, says PA Ambassador to India, Adli Sadeq. Fatah does not respect Israel either. Moreover, the PA and Fatah utterly reject that Israel has any right to exist, he wrote in an article in the official PA daily:

“They have a common mistake, or misconception by which they fool themselves, assuming that Fatah accepts them and recognizes the right of their state to exist, and that it is Hamas alone that loathes them and does not recognize the right of this state to exist. They ignore the fact that this state, based on a fabricated [Zionist] enterprise, never had any shred of a right to exist…

…Hamas, Fatah and the others are not waging war against Israel right now for reasons related to balance of power. There are no two Palestinians who disagree over the fact that Israel exi sts, and recognition of it is restating the obvious, but recognition of its right to exist is something else, different from recognition of its [physical] existence.”
(Palestinian Media Watch)

• via PA official: “[Israel] never had any shred of a right to exist” – PMW Bulletins.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

12/05/2011 04:21

Erekat says Quartet called for separate talks with 2 parties, Palestinians have complied with demands; comments come in response to remarks by US State Department spokesman that direct talks are necessary.

The Palestinian Authority reiterated Sunday its opposition to holding direct peace talks with Israel and pointed out that the Quartet members – the US, EU, UN and Russia – had called for separate negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

The PA’s announcement came in response to remarks by US State Department spokesman Mark Toner, who said last Friday that Israel and the Palestinians must start direct talks before there can be any negotiation on borders and security.

• via PA rejects direct talks with Israel… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

November 15, 2011

This year we have experienced a new development in the relations between Israel and the Palestinians. The leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which has for years refused to enter into peace negotiations with Israel, has taken a new approach to the negotiations issue: it has sought to enlist the United Nations in an effort to impose the Palestinian terms for a peace agreement on Israel. These Palestinian terms are (1) a return to the 1949 armistice demarcation lines, often referred to as the 1967 lines, including the lines drawn in 1949 in Jerusalem, without swaps, and (2) affirmation of the so-called “right of return.”

…while the Fatah Palestinian leadership claims that it accepts the two-state solution, it considers it to be only an interim solution.

Thus, while the first of these demands implies acceptance of the two-state solution, the second negates it. The proposal is to start with two states, the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. But what is being demanded is that the State of Israel agree to the migration to Israel not only of the survivors of those Palestinian Arabs who, in 1948, fled from the war zone, but also their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The number of Arab refugees who fled in 1948 is estimated at 750,000. Today the number of persons on the rolls of the UN Relief and Works Agency, all of them of Palestinian descent, who are provided with UN support exceeds 5 million. These so-called refugees live in camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. It is worth noting that a Palestinian official recently emphasized that once a Palestinian state is established, Palestinians living in UNRWA camps in the new State of Palestine will not be accorded citizenship. They are to remain in “refugee” status until they can migrate to Israel.Continue Reading …

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

11/20/2011 20:47

Sha’ath: PA won’t succumb to “financial or moral extortion regardless of its size”; Abbas meets Clinton deputy, Burns.

Israeli and American opposition won’t stop the Palestinian Authority from proceeding with its plans to achieve reconciliation with Hamas, PA officials said on Sunday.

The officials told The Jerusalem Post the US and Israel were trying to foil the plans to end the dispute between Fatah and Hamas and reach agreement on the formation of a new unity government.

The officials were speaking shortly before PA President Mahmoud Abbas met in Ramallah with US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

Abbas told the visiting US official that the issue of reconciliation with Hamas was a Palestinian interest, the official said.

The officials denied that Burns had come to Ramallah to warn Abbas against going ahead with his plans to form a unity government with Hamas.

• via PA: US, Israel won’t stop Palestinian reconciliation – JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.