| Top 20 recipients of humanitarian aid, 2000-2009. One entity gets a whole lot. Posted: 20 Jul 2011 11:20 PM PDT From the new Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2011:
In absolute terms, Sudan receives the most aid and "Palestine" the second most (the gap is narrowing in recent years.)
But on a per-capita basis, the Palestinian Arabs receive about 9 times as much aid as the Sudanese do, and of course far more aid per capita than any other people on the planet.
Keep that in mind when the next mall, five star hotel or seaside resort opens in Gaza or the West Bank.
Or ask yourself whether Palestinian Arabs deserve 39 times the aid per capita that residents of the Congo receive. (h/t Challah Hu Akbar) 
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| What would an EoZ newsletter look like? Posted: 20 Jul 2011 08:18 PM PDT If I had unlimited time and funds, maybe I could put one of these out every day: 
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| Free Gaza scraping the barrel to find fault with Israel's seizure of boat Posted: 20 Jul 2011 05:37 PM PDT The Free Gaza movement was sorely disappointed that no one was killed or injured by the IDF on the Dignity. So much so, that they had to find something else to complain about: Israel's disproportionate response! After being brought back to the port of Ashdod, the passengers were transferred to a retention centre in the city of Holon next to Tel Aviv. They were visited by their lawyers and the French Consul in Tel Aviv before the Israeli authorities took to them to Tel Aviv airport where they spent the night.
The story of the boarding by Israeli journalist Amira Hass who was on board shows how disproportionate was the Israeli operation. 7 commando boats and 3 missile ships with 150 on board to stop 16 unarmed civilians on a 16 ms long boat.
The Israeli boarding happened in International waters is illegal. Even though no shot was fired, diverting a boat and its passengers under the threat of guns, with military boats, is an act of violence. Let's redefine words in order to maintain our outrage! Last time I stayed in a luxury hotel, I was attended to by the people on the front desk, a concierge, a bellboy, two waiters, a maid and a turndown service. That was a hugely disproportionate response to only one person staying in a hotel! 
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| "Jewish gangs forcibly converting Christians in Iraq" Posted: 20 Jul 2011 03:19 PM PDT From MEMRI, quoting Iraqi daily Al-Mustaqbal: "Iraqi Christians have revealed the presence of Jewish groups which specialize in operations for killing or expelling Christians from Iraq unless they convert to the Jewish religion. One Christian family said that Jewish groups are pressing toward converting Christian families to the Jewish religion in return for getting support and protection from the dangers that that the Christian minority has been exposed to, for not a short while.
"[The Christian family] made it clear that Jewish groups move and travel regularly under official cover that allows them to move around in areas and residential quarters where majority of Christians are found. Half of the members of that [said] family have emigrated to Turkey and a few are left behind. One of its members said: 'The pressures to which they are subjected to convert from Christianity to Judaism are enormous.'
"In light of what the Christian family has said, Iraqi national security agencies such as mukhabarat [intelligence service] and national security are making a swift pursuit in search of the Jews who spread out in Iraq under multiple covers and identities such as organizations of civil society and [commercial] companies. The source [not identified] has revealed that some Jews carry Kurdish identity cards issued by the Kurdish region. He said they follow various methods with the Christian families to convert some of them to the Jewish religion while those Iraqi Christians who have refused to cooperate with the Jews were killed, kidnapped, or expelled.
"According to the same source, some of the Jewish elements travelled in the past in American military vehicles but now they move in civilian vehicles some carrying the tags 'C.D' - diplomatic corps - and others move around in the capacity of private guards, security companies or investors. The source, who has refused to reveal his identity, said he was awaiting resettlement in one of the European countries [with the help of] Turkey that facilitates the resettlement of Iraqi Christians against large payments amounting to $20,000 per person.
"The source said that he would be meeting with the UN Office for Human Rights in Turkey in the next few weeks. After he receives approval for his resettlement he will reveal the names and characteristics [of those] that bargained with him and his family and other Christian families that he either knows or are relatives of his who reside in Baghdad.
"It is worth noting that the UN Human Rights Office in Turkey is headed by a Jewish employee." Those Jews and their forced conversions! The circumcisions must be painful. MEMRI wryly adds that "of the 150,000-strong, vibrant Jewish community that lived in Iraq for 2500 years there remain about 7 elderly individuals." (I could not find a website for any Iraqi newspaper named Al-Mustaqbal, only a Lebanese paper.) (h/t NormanF) 
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| Gazans shut down UNRWA again Posted: 20 Jul 2011 12:30 PM PDT Palestine Today reports that Gazans blocked all the doors to UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, shutting off all services. The reason? Because UNRWA has been reducing services. There have been a lot of similar Palestinian Arab protests against UNRWA lately, which are all ignored by major media outlets. Khaled Abu Toameh elaborates: In recent weeks, UNRWA has come under attack from many Palestinians who fear that the international agency is planning to cut its services to the refugees.
UNRWA has in fact reduced some of its services to refugees – but only due to a $60 million budget deficit.
The reactions of both Hamas and the PLO show that neither party is willing to assume responsibility for the refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The two parties do not want to provide any services to the refugees, and want UNRWA to do the job for them. Their goal is to keep the refugees in their places so Hamas, the PLO and the rest of the Arab governments can continue exploiting their plight for political purposes.
The anti-UNRWA protests are aimed at extorting the agency and the international community into continuing to provide services and jobs to tens of thousands of Palestinians, exempting Hamas, the PLO and the Arab world from any responsibility.
Instead of threatening UNRWA, the PLO and Hamas should start thinking of ways to help the refugees to improve their living conditions and find jobs.
Instead of demonstrating in front of the UNRWA headquarters in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian refugees should be demanding that oil-rich Arab countries help them. It is worth repeating that the PA and Hamas have not lifted a finger to dismantle "refugee" camps in territories under their control - inside the area of British Mandate Palestine! Instead of preparing their citizens in camps to be normal members of society, they have been ensuring that they remain second-class and living in misery; refusing to build permanent housing for them. 
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| Saudi anti-witchcraft unit swings into action! Posted: 20 Jul 2011 11:31 AM PDT From The Media Line:  When the severed head of a wolf wrapped in women's lingerie turned up near the city of Tabouk in northern Saudi Arabia this week, authorities knew they had another case of witchcraft on their hands, a capital offence in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.
Agents of the country's Anti-Witchcraft Unit were quickly dispatched and set about trying to break the spell that used the beast's head.
Saudi Arabia takes witchcraft so seriously that it has banned The Harry Potter series by British writer J.K. Rowling, rife with tales of sorcery and magic. It set up the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in May 2009 and placed it under the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPV), Saudi Arabia's religious police.
"In accordance with our Islamic tradition we believe that magic really exists," Abdullah Jaber, a political cartoonist at the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, told The Media Line. "The fact that an official body, subordinate to the Saudi Ministry of Interior, has a unit to combat sorcery proves that the government recognizes this, like Muslims worldwide."
The unit is charged with apprehending sorcerers and reversing the detrimental effects of their spells. On the CPV website, a hotline encourages citizens across the kingdom to report cases of sorcery to local officials for immediate treatment.
In the case of the wolf's head, the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in Tabouk was able to break the spell. The Saudi daily Okaz reported on Monday that the unknown family that had fallen victim to the spell had been "liberated from the jaws of the wolf."
The Anti-Witchcraft Unit was created in order to educate the public about the danger of sorcerers and "combat manifestations of polytheism and reliance on other Gods," the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
The belief in sorcery is so widespread in Saudi Arabia, that it is even used as a defense in criminal court cases. Last October, a judge accused of receiving bribes in a real-estate project told a court in Madinah that he had been bewitched and is undergoing treatment by Quranic incantations, known as ruqiyah, a common remedy for the evil eye.
...Belief in sorcery is not necessarily more widespread in Saudi Arabia than in other Gulf countries, Wilcke added. On Monday, the Emirati daily Al-Khaeej reported that Dubai police had arrested an Arab African national on charges of fraud and sorcery, after he charged 15,000 Dirham ($4,000) from a woman whose husband had left her, promising to bring him back using magic.
A wolf in lingerie indicates sorcery? Sounds more like an Arab re-enactment of Little Red Riding Hood! 
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| The humiliation in Gaza continues: The Andaluseyya Mall Posted: 20 Jul 2011 10:10 AM PDT From Al Masry al-Youm: After marking its inaugural opening on Tuesday, the three-story mall in Gaza City now offers products running the gamut. The supermarket has nearly all possible commodities. Shoe stores with popular brand names, such as Nike, Adidas and Fox, sit next to clothing shops displaying window mannequins with hot miniskirts and vibrantly colored t-shirts.
On the Andaluseyya mall's top floor, customers are able to enjoy quality time with their families, eating at restaurants, playing arcade games and, for the first time in Gaza, watching a movie in the cinema. Escalators, rare sites in this besieged coastal enclave, escort people between floors. To top it off, air conditioning provides much-needed respite from the oppressive heat outside.
In addition to recent construction that paved the way for this mall to open, Gaza City is in the process of opening several sea-side resorts. After three years with limited to non-existent commercial building, construction firms are now breaking stereotypical images of Gaza as a destitute territory with conditions comparable to the most-devastated sub-Saharan regions.
One of the primary investors in the mall, Ihab Al-Esawy, says the opening could never have been achieved if the current situation in Gaza was similar to years past. He needed previously-absent construction materials, now available, at his disposal [from smuggling tunnels - EoZ].
"We put the [mall] plan of the project in on October 10th, 2010 and started the work immediately," al-Esawy says. "We wanted to make sure that we had enough construction material though so we could start building." Once again I am saddened to have to show you the photos of the hopelessness that Gazans are forced to live under - hopelessness that is worse than a humanitarian crisis. The captions are written in the style of the Free Gaza Movement, 972Mag, Mondoweiss and Reuters. Gazans are forced to wait in dehumanizing lines in the scorching heat to have a few minutes of respite from their unbearable lives. While there is a large selection of products, the stores are empty because the prices are too high. The owners of the mall are in danger of losing all their money.
OK, maybe the stores aren't empty. But look how poor Gazans are forced to wear second-hand Lynyrd Skynyrd T-Shirts, humiliated that they appear to be fans of Western classic rock.
 | | The abused Gazans put up a brave front as they browse the men's suits, suits that they will be forced to eat because of their crushing poverty from the illegal Zionist siege. | Once again, we see Gazans being forced to wait at virtual checkpoints to be served. Some give up and go to other sections of the mall in their frustration and humiliation. But it is all in vain - the lines are everywhere.  | | Escalators were installed at the insistence of the Zionists who manufactured, and are enriched by, them. This is meant to ensure that proud Gazans get less exercise and more heart attacks, thus contributing to their slow genocide. |
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| Isn't it past time to recall the US ambassador to Syria? Posted: 20 Jul 2011 09:12 AM PDT From Now Lebanon: Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem warned the French and US ambassadors on Wednesday not to travel outside Damascus after they both visited the flashpoint central city of Hama earlier this month.
"We will impose a ban on any [diplomatic] travel more than 25 kilometers (15 miles) outside Damascus, if the ambassadors continue to ignore [our] guidance," Muallem told the envoys at a meeting broadcast by state television.
"I hope that we will not be forced to impose the ban," he added.
"We did not expel the two ambassadors because we had hoped to maintain better relations in future."
Both US envoy Robert Ford and French ambassador Eric Chevallier visited Hama on July 7 amid repeated large demonstrations in the city against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.
Damascus reacted furiously to the visit, accusing the US ambassador of seeking to undermine the stability of Syria and calling in both envoys for consultations on July 10.
The Syrian authorities accused the pair of travelling to Hama without authorization but Washington insisted Damascus had been notified in advance. Either Ford should immediately go to Hama or he should immediately go home. There is no value to his staying under virtual house arrest while the Syrian regime slaughters thousands. And if France does it first, it would make the US look really bad. 
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| "How to tell an Arab far-leftist" Posted: 20 Jul 2011 08:25 AM PDT There is a Twitter hashtag, mostly written by Arabs, called " #HowToTellAnArabFarLeftist." A lot of them are quite funny - and many apply to leftists altogether. Here are some of the entries: - can't see a single leading communist country but still thinks communism is the best, ohh just like islamists yeah
- when they say that Nutella is an American conspiracy product to taint the brains of 3 yr old kids.
- All our problems are from colonialism, till now, duh. (oh shit US was colonized bt UK? Nevermind!)
- mention colonialism every 5 min even though foreign aid has hurt economies much worse.
- They despise the west and United States but they probably graduated from American University of Beirut
- they voted for Bush in 2000 because Gore's running mate was Jewish...then they complain about how Bush "stole" Florida
- they think Norman Finkelstein is a genius
- "there has always been a secret American plan to invade and split up Iraq into 3 countries."
- Castro is not ruining Cuba. He is merely teaching his people how common misery is better than greedy capitalism.
- "The Israel lobby controls the media and the U.S. government."
- "my daughter is only allowed to marry from my village"
- the UN is a Zionist conspiracy. The Israel lobby is America's shadow government. Syrian revolt a conspiracy too.
- a sentence cannot be formed w/o: zionist, racist, imperialism, puppets, conspiracy, corporate.
- Gulf Princes are American puppets, Levant Dictators are Zionist agents, Maghreb autocrats are Colonial servants
- "USSR didn't lose the war of Ideas... Obama is a secret communist you know."
- Speaking out against religious extremism is so passé compared to railing against corporations
- Wears the Kaffiyye for protests, then takes it off before going to work... in Mcdonald's.
- "Starbucks gives money to Israel" so do you with your tax dollars now GTFO
- they bitched and moaned when Bush passed the patriot act and said nothing when Obama renewed it
- Bush hated Muslims for Iraq and Afghan but Obama doesn't and stays there and attacks Libya, Yemen and Somalia
- Obama loves Muslims because of a Ramadan YouTube video
- "Palestinians aren't allowed to own land in Lebanon because they want them to go back to their homeland"
- holocaust denial. Sad but true.
- The only scholar worth mentioning in regards to the Middle East is Edward Said.
- If you criticize West they're your best friend,if you criticize Arabs they support you're guilty of Orientalism.
- "we're replacing Mubarak thugs w our much nicer ones who'll punish the real bad guys (e.g Investors)"
- Saddam Hussein was a good guy he is just misunderstood.
- Rage rage against human rights abuses by Obama and Bush. Crickets chirping with regard to Castro, Lenin, Stalin
- they are secular but praise Osama bin Laden and yell about it on al-Jazeera while screaming conspiracy.
- their vocabulary consists in one word: colonialism. Ok two, they can say it in Arabic too: ???????
- Having an import cup of coffee at a super lavish cafe while discussing child labour
- sympathizes with and takes photos of homeless people from his 1000$ Canon camera
- tweets frequently about the rights of the poor from his iPad
- he can't be bothered to explain himself coz he always assumes u dont know what u are talking about, yells GO READ
- yells & screams in Tahrir demanding minimum wage but is driven around town by driver earning eq of $100 a month
- u thnk wearing a Keffiyeh & nagging will free Palestine, but an economically strong arab world won't.
- give you a long lecture about horror of fascist dictatorship then praise #Stalin
- strongly supports freedom of speech except when you disagree with his beliefs
- they don't smile because smiling is a western conspiracy to distract us from their plot to destroy us.
- they love revolutions and elections but hate liberty
- they would rather Palestine never get a state always be occupied, to bitch, rather than them get half the loaf.
(h/t JW) 
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| Cartoon of Jewish suicide bomber in Palestine Today Posted: 20 Jul 2011 07:40 AM PDT
Blowing up a mosque, of course.
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| Israel HaYom is read by nearly 7x as many Israelis as Ha'aretz Posted: 20 Jul 2011 06:58 AM PDT Israel HaYom, which has recently come out with an online English edition, is now the most popular newspaper in Israel, read by some 39.3% of the population in the first half of this year. The newspaper is a breath of fresh air as it reports without the sickening bias of Ha'aretz, whose readership fell to a tiny 5.8% market share. Of course, this won't stop foreign journalists from using Ha'aretz as their benchmark on how Israeli society thinks. They like to push the false idea that Israel hates its government and it more oriented to Meretz than Likud - since this is more in line with what they themselves believe. Wishful thinking trumps sober reporting nearly every time. 
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| Erekat spouts lies in response to Israeli YouTube video Posted: 20 Jul 2011 05:57 AM PDT This week, Israel's Foreign Ministry put out a video that has spread quickly, called The Truth About the West Bank: PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, who apparently has never resigned even though he claimed he did, lashed out at the video. His sputtering statement has a lot of nonsense, but I want to concentrate on one of his many lies that we have not covered before: Chief negotiator Saeb Erekat Wednesday expressed his shock at a Youtube video produced by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which the Israeli Ministry distorts international law regarding the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.
"With this video, the Israeli government has left no doubt on its pro-conflict agenda," said Erekat in a press release....
Erekat continued: "In its desperate attempt to gear international discourse away from the pursuit of genuine peace to the outdated arguments of those who oppose it, this official video went as far as discarding United Nations Resolution 181 (II). I want to remind the government of Israel that it was accepted at the UN as a full member based on its acceptance of this resolution." This is a claim that has been made before by anti-Israel activists. Was Israel's acceptance to the UN conditional upon accepting UNGA 181? The easiest way to find out is to read the text of the resolution accepting Israel itself: Having received the report of the Security Council on the application of Israel for membership in the United Nations,
Noting that, in the judgment of the Security Council, Israel is a peace-loving State and is able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the Charter,
Noting that the Security Council has recommended to the general Assembly that it admit Israel to membership in the United Nations,
Noting furthermore the declaration by the State of Israel that it "unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honour them from the day when it becomes a member of the United Nations,"
Recalling its resolutions of 29 November 1947 and 11 December 1948 and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the Ad Hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions,
The General Assembly,
Acting in discharge of its functions under Article 4 of the Charter and rule 125 of its rules of procedure,
1. Decides that Israel is a peace loving State which accepts the obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those obligations;
2. Decides to admit Israel to membership in the United Nations. While the resolution "recalls" UNGA 181 and 194 there is no conditional language in this resolution at all. The actionable part of the resolution is unambiguous. Beyond that, the preamble explicitly notes that Israel clarified - at length - its interpretation of those resolutions in a number of now obscure UN documents ( here and here, among others.) Abba Eban was, as usual, masterful in explaining Israel's position, and his explanation is referred to in this resolution just as the UNGA resolutions are. The language of the resolution seems to accept Eban's words as being just as important as the texts of the earlier resolutions themselves. Which means that Erekat is shown yet again to be a liar. 
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| UNESCO's Islamicization of Maimonides Posted: 20 Jul 2011 04:24 AM PDT YNet has a damning article by Giulio Meotti about UNESCO that makes a very good case that the agency is actively engaging in a fight against Israel, and even against Jewish culture and history - especially if that history happened to occur on the "wrong side" of an imaginary green line. The Arabs find it difficult to convincingly portray Israel as usurper of the land as long as the world believes there is a huge connection between the people of the Bible and the land of the Bible. UNESCO is denying this connection by depicting Jewish history in the Middle East as no more than an insignificant, brief sojourn by arrogant colonizers.
UNESCO appears to deny that the Jewish people has laid its roots in Israel more than 4,000 years ago, or that 1,000 years before Christ, King David made Jerusalem the Jewish city par excellence, never entirely abandoned even in times of deadly persecution.
The City of David in Jerusalem, a major target of UNESCO's anti-Jewish fury, is now the hottest open archaeological site in the world, with biblical artifacts, ancient burial spots and royal seals. There, UNESCO is using archeology to bash Israel and treats Israeli archeologists as nationalistic martinets.
In recent years, UNESCO increased its collaboration with ISESCO, the cultural body of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. According to ISESCO's propaganda, the Biblical story and the Jewish temples are only fiction, Jewish monuments are Islamic treasures stolen by the Zionists, and Israeli archeological works are criminal acts against Muslims.
UNESCO's ideology portrays the Jews as no more than invading colonizers, while the Muslims who invaded the country and ravaged it in the Seventh Century are, by some inexplicable leap, the descendants of the so called "indigenous Canaanites."
In 2010, UNESCO decided that Rachel's Tomb and Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs are "Muslim mosques." Western countries didn't raise any protest. UNESCO never mentioned that in addition to the famous Tomb of the biblical Patriarchs, Hebron contains also the tomb of the first judge (Otniel Ben Kenaz), the tomb of generals and confidants to Saul and David and the tombs of Ruth and Jesse, David's great-grandmother and father. There is also no word by UNESCO about the fact that Rachel's tomb is unanimously revered as the burial site of one of the Bible's great women, the wife of Jacob, the Jewish blessed mother.
During the Second Intifada, UNESCO condemned Israel for "the destruction and damage caused to the cultural heritage in the Palestinian territories" as "a crime against the common cultural heritage of humanity." However, UNESCO remained silent when a Palestinian mob destroyed Joseph's tomb, a major Jewish religious shrine, and built a mosque on the site.
Upon the outbreak of the Second Intifada, Palestinian terrorists also attacked Rachel's tomb, and for 41 days Jews were prevented from visiting the compound. UNESCO never condemned it. Recently, dozens of graves at the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem were vandalized, the latest in a series of attacks on Judaism's oldest cemetery, where Jews have been buried since biblical times. Again, UNESCO remained silent. This one part of the article was stunning to me: On a final note, a recent UNESCO report on science, Jewish physician and theologian Maimonides is classified as a Muslim named "Moussa ben Maimoun." So the Rambam - for Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon – has been forced to "convert" to Islam by the UN's revisionist historians.
During the Middle Ages, the French Inquisition confiscated and burned Maimonides's books. From the elegant Parisian boulevards, UNESCO's inquisitors are now following the same dreadful solution of rendering history and the Holy Land "Judenrein." I asked Meotti for the document where UNESCO calls Maimonides (the Rambam) a Muslim, and after a bit of searching we found it. It was in the French version of a December 2010 report on science in the Arab world by Adnan Badran: Une fois Tolède reprise aux Maures par les croisés en 1085, les savants européens y affluèrent afin de traduire les anciens textes classiques du grec (que l'Europe avait oubliés) vers l'arabe et l'hébreu, puis le latin, rendant ce la première partie du Moyen Âge européen (1100-1543), les noms de quelques savants européens apparaissaient dans la littérature scientifique à côté d'un grand nombre de savants musulmans, parmi lesquels Ibn Rushd (Averroès), Moussa ibn Maïmoun (Maïmonide), Tousi et Ibn Nafis.
After the recovery of Toledo from the Moors by the Crusaders in 1085, European scholars flocked there to translate the ancient classical texts from the Greek (which Europe had forgotten) to Arabic and Hebrew and Latin, making it the first part of the European Middle Ages (1100-1543), the names of some European scholars appeared in scientific literature next to a large number of Muslim scholars, including Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Maimouna Ibn Moussa (Maimonides), Tousi and Ibn Nafis. This is in marked contrast to how UNESCO used to act. In 1986, it organized a roundtable to celebrate the 850th anniversary of Maimonides' birth, and dedicated an entire issue of its cultural magazine to Maimonides and Averroes that same year where his Jewish roots are emphasized. In that issue they mention that he is known as The Rambam and they say his name was Moses ben Maymun. That began to change as UNESCO started de-emphasizing his Judaism. In their description of Cordoba, for example, he is referred to as "Musa-ibn-Maymun." And now - he is a Muslim. This isn't the usual anti-Zionism that we come to expect from the UN. This is a consistent pattern of the denial of Jewish history and culture. In other words - this is UN-sanctioned anti-semitism. 
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| Hasbara 2.0 - the video Posted: 20 Jul 2011 02:00 AM PDT Yesterday I posted the slides for my Hasbara 2.0 speech last year. Here is the video of the presentation. If you have a couple of free hours, you might find it interesting. 
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