Zitat:Israeli scientist Ada Yonath wins Nobel Prize for chemistry

Israeli scientists Ada Yonath and Americans Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz won the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for mapping ribosomes, the protein-producing factories within cells, at the atomic level.

Zitat:Boykott, Desinvestment und Sanktionen

Israel gerät durch die internationale Boykottkampagne zunehmend unter Druck
Die Meldungen über Boykottinitiativen, den Abzug von Investitionen aus oder Sanktionen gegen Israel häufen sich. Im September hat der britische Gewerkschaftsverband TUC auf Antrag der Gewerkschaft der Feuerwehrleute den Boykott aller Produkte aus israelischen Siedlungen beschlossen und die Einstellung der Waffenlieferungen an Israel sowie die Aussetzung des Assoziierungsabkommens der EU mit Israel [extern] gefordert. Im selben Monat wurde in Spanien eine in der Westbanksiedlung Ariel gelegene Hochschule von einem akademischen Wettbewerb zur nachhaltigen Stadtentwicklung [extern] ausgeschlossen. In Brasilien [extern] sprach sich die für Außenpolitik und nationale Verteidigung zuständige parlamentarische Kommission gegen die Ratifizierung des Mercosur-Freihandelsabkommens mit Israel aus. In der Schweiz hat anläßlich des WM-Qualifikationsspiels zwischen Israel und der Schweiz gerade eine Kampagne zum Ausschluß Israels aus der FIFA begonnen.
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Zitat:Das Trauma als Strategie
29.10.2009, 14:18

Von J. A. Heyer

Sie bestimmt jeden Aspekt des israelischen Lebens, sagt Avraham Burg - und meint die Massenvernichtung der Juden durch die Nazis. Deshalb sei die israelische Gesellschaft so grausam. Ein Treffen.
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In seinem Buch vergleicht Burg das Israel der Gegenwart mit dem Vorkriegsdeutschland der Weimarer Republik. Der Judenstaat, schreibt er, sei zu einem "Zionistischen Ghetto" geworden, innerhalb der israelischen Gesellschaft herrsche "Bunkermentalität". Oder auch einfach: Rassismus. Israel sei wie ein missbrauchtes Kind, das zu einem gewalttätigen Vater geworden ist. Schuld daran habe nicht zuletzt die "überkommene Idee des Zionismus". Ein jüdisch definierter Staat könne keine Demokratie sein, sagt Avraham Burg. Und geht noch weiter: Das Rückkehrrecht eines jeden Juden müsse überdacht werden.
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Avraham Burg, Großkritiker des Staates Israel und seiner Gesellschaft, ist weder Refusenik, noch gehört er zur etablierten Linken schreibender Intellektueller wie David Grossman oder Amos Oz. Burg war die meiste Zeit seines Lebens selbst Politiker. Er wurde mit 44 Jahren zum jüngsten Knesset-Sprecher aller Zeiten gewählt, er war der Augenstern der traditionsreichen Avoda, der Arbeiterpartei, um deren Führung er mit Ehud Barak harte Kämpfe austrug. Jahrelang erklärte Burg es zu seinem Lebensziel, Regierungschef in Jerusalem zu werden.
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Zitat:Israel prevents medical equipment supply to Gaza

GAZA, October 30 (RIA Novosti) - Israeli authorities have refused to allow medical equipment worth $800,000 to be transferred to the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported on Friday.

The news agency quoted a spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) as saying Israel had prevented, for the fourth time, the transfer of medical equipment to Gaza through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, even though WHO had provided the required permit.

There has so far been no official comment from Israel.
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Zitat:Israelis and Obama

Polls indicate that President Obama enjoys the support of only 6 to 10 percent of the Israeli public — perhaps his lowest popularity in any country in the world.

According to media reports, the president’s advisers are searching for ways of reassuring Israel’s public of President Obama’s friendship and unqualified commitment to Israel’s security.

That friendship and commitment are real, President Obama’s poll numbers in Israel notwithstanding. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to reinforce that message during her visit to Israel. The presidential envoy George Mitchell has reportedly been asked to make similar efforts during his far more frequent visits to Jerusalem.
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Israelis do not oppose President Obama’s peace efforts because they dislike him; they dislike him because of his peace efforts. He will regain their affection only when he abandons these efforts.

That is how Israel’s government and people respond to any outside pressure for a peace agreement that demands Israel’s conformity to international law and to U.N. resolutions that call for a return to the 1967 pre-conflict borders and reject unilateral changes in that border.

Like Israel’s government, Israel’s public never tires of proclaiming to pollsters its aspiration for peace and its support of a two-state solution. What the polls do not report is that this support depends on Israel defining the terms of that peace, its territorial dimensions, and the constraints to be placed on the sovereignty of a Palestinian state
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The Israeli reaction to serious peacemaking efforts is nothing less than pathological — the consequence of an inability to adjust to the Jewish people’s reentry into history with a state of their own following 2,000 years of powerlessness and victimhood.

Zitat:Henry Siegman, a former national director of the American Jewish Congress, is director of the U.S./Middle East Project.

Zitat:IDF Chief Rabbi: Troops who show mercy to enemy will be 'damned'

By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Gaza war. IDF rabbi

The Israel Defense Forces' chief rabbi told students in a pre-army yeshiva program last week that soldiers who "show mercy" toward the enemy in wartime will be "damned."
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Speaking Thursday at the Hesder yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Karnei Shomron , Rontzki referred to Maimonides' discourse on the laws of war. That text quotes a passage from the Book of Jeremiah stating: "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord with a slack hand, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood."

In Rontzki's words, "In times of war, whoever doesn't fight with all his heart and soul is damned - if he keeps his sword from bloodshed, if he shows mercy toward his enemy when no mercy should be shown."

Rontzki's remarks came during a ceremony to celebrate a new Torah scroll at the yeshiva.
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"In Israel's wars, warriors are God-fearing people, righteous people, people who don't have sins on their hands," he said. "One needs to fight with an understanding of what one is fighting for."
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Zitat:December 15, 2009
Israel fury over British war crimes warrant for Tzipi Livni
James Hider in Jerusalem

Israel’s Government issued an angry warning today that its ties with Britain were in jeopardy over a UK arrest warrant briefly issued against the Jewish state’s Opposition leader and former Foreign Minister.

It has emerged that a London court issued a warrant at the weekend, for alleged war crimes committed in last winter's Gaza offensive, and then rescinded it when it became clear that Tzipi Livni was not on British soil.
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