Abbas thesis on Nazism to be translated into Hebrew
By Jerusalem Post staff
The Jerusalem Post, Page 3
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's 1984 book linking Nazism to Zionism, as part of his pursuit of a doctorate degree at a Moscow institution, is set to be translated into Hebrew, the Walla news website reported.
The work, titled The Other Side: The Secret Relationship, was first released in Jordan and is accessible on the PA's official website.
Abbas's text accuses the Zionist movement of participating in the Holocaust, cooperating with the Third Reich, and actively foiling plots to rescue Jews, their guiding motive being the formation of a national state in Palestine.
UNESCO head reiterates veto of Palestine poster collection
By Raphael Ahren
The Times of Israel website
A controversial collection of Palestine-themed posters will not be included in UNESCO’s register of world heritage due to their hateful nature, the head of the organization reiterated Monday. She rejected reports that suggested the collection might yet be approved if the curators make some revisions.
“I don’t think that by changing one or two posters the issue will be settled,” the association’s director general, Irina Bokova, told The Times of Israel in a telephone interview Monday. “I think this is wrong and UNESCO should not be behind it.”
While, technically, the collection has not yet been formally rejected by UNESCO, Bokova vowed to make sure this will happen eventually; she rejects not only individual posters, but the collection’s entire “approach.”
Since then, several reports appeared that claimed the poster collection remains under consideration for inscription into the register. The reports quoted a UNESCO official as saying that the nomination has not been rejected, but that the nominator was merely requested to revise it.
“It is absolutely normal for the committee to ask for revisions and improvements of the nominations to make them meet the program’s selection criteria,” the UNESCO representative was quoted as saying.
But Bokova told The Times of Israel that a misunderstanding had likely taken place, and that the UNESCO official was merely explaining a technical procedure. After the international advisory board approved the collection’s nomination last August, she sent a letter to the board’s chairman declaring her intention to oppose its inclusion into the register.
“The international advisory committee still has to take a formal decision,” Bokova explained. “That is why I wrote this letter. I want to prevent [the board] from taking this decision [to approve the collection] and I told them that even if they take this decision I will oppose it.”
As director general, Bokova has the power to veto the board’s recommendation and will do so if necessary, she asserted.
Even if the collection were to be revised and some of the more questionable posters removed she would still make use of her veto – because the collection’s “approach is wrong,” Bokova added.
“I think that very many of the posters run counter to the values of UNESCO and that is why I oppose them,” she explained. The collection includes “indeed very, very alarming posters.”
The collection was initially accepted by an international advisory board but then blocked by Bokova, who said at the time that some of the posters were “totally unacceptable” and “run counter to the values of UNESCO,” the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
UNESCO “should not associate itself with such documents whose inscription could fuel hatred and anti-Semitic perceptions,” she stated, referring to the fact that some of the posters appear to glorify violence and terrorism.
Hamas lauds Qatar minister’s ‘courage’ in Israel spat
By AFP
The Times of Israel website
A Qatar-based senior Hamas leader on Monday praised the Gulf state’s “courageous” foreign minister, Khalid al-Attiyah, after an apparent spat with Israel’s intelligence minister Yuval Steinitz at a German security conference.
In a statement, Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau in Doha, backed Qatar’s foreign minister for his “strong, courageous statements and response to the lies of the ‘Zionists,’ and his defense of Hamas and the resistance during the Munich security conference.”
At Sunday’s conference, Attiyah said during a panel discussion that failure to make progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process was “the main igniter to all the turbulence in the Middle East.”
Qatar’s foreign minister also asked why Israel wanted to be recognized as a Jewish state.
“The world is fighting a group calling itself Islamic State, and you want to come and say [you are] a Jewish state,” he said.
In response, Steinitz questioned why Qatar is “supporting a jihadist organisation like Hamas or Islamic State, instead of putting all its efforts into eliminating such jihadi organizations.”
The exchange between the two ministers was reported in several media outlets, including on Al-Jazeera Arabic.
Qatar denies backing the Islamic State group or extremist movements.
Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, who is based in the Gulf state, was told by Attiyah last month that he remained welcome amid reports that the Palestinian leader had been asked to leave.
Attiyah said Mashaal was “a dear guest in Qatar. He is in fact at home.”
Police arrest three in fraudulent West Bank real estate dealings
By Tovah Lazaroff
The Jerusalem Post, Page 2
The Serious and International Crime Unit on Monday arrested three Jerusalem residents in connection with the fraudulent sale of private Palestinian property in the West Bank.
Two of the suspects were remanded until later this week and a third suspect was released to house arrest. Their names have been withheld until charges are filed against them.
Police suspect that the three, two of whom are attorneys, falsified documents, including consent forms, in the sale of Palestinian property to Jewish organizations that deal with real estate in Judea and Samaria. At issue were transactions worth million of shekels, primarily in the Binyamin region.
Turkish PM says country won’t give in to ‘Jewish lobby’
By Marissa Newman
The Times of Israel website
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said Sunday Ankara would not give in to the “Jewish lobby” or other parties supposedly working against the government.
The comments came on the heels of accusations by the president that the Israeli Mossad was working in coordination with the “parallel structure” to bring down his ruling AKP party.
“I announce it from here: we have not and will not succumb to the Jewish lobby, the Armenian lobby or the Turkish-Greek minority’s lobbies,” Davutoğlu said, according to the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News.
The prime minister also addressed the so-called “parallel” structure, as coined by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in reference to members of the government allegedly planning a covert toppling of Erdogan’s rule.
“I call out to the parallel lobby…: We will stand before you with dignity no matter where you are; you will be despicable for the treason you have done to this nation.”
Erdogan has repeatedly lashed out against the “parallel structure,” high-ranking members of the police and judiciary who are followers of Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and who he said are attempting to undermine his government.
On January 31, Erdogan accused the “parallel structure” of working with the Mossad.
“The sincere people backing this parallel structure should see with whom this structure is cooperating with,” Erdoğan said. “Shame on them if they still cannot see that this structure is cooperating with the Mossad.”
Man tries to burn Israeli flag outside Paris kosher market
By Times of Israel staff
The Times of Israel website
French police arrested a man on Monday as he tried to burn an Israeli flag outside the kosher supermarket in Paris where four Jewish men were killed, and dozens held hostage, by a jihadist last month
The 38-year-old man was stopped in the act of burning the flag, according to Le Parisien. He was known to police for other cases of “wanton destruction.”
The January 9 terror attack at the kosher market by Amedy Coulibaly was part of a three-day terror spree that began on January 7 with the killing of 12 people at the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by jihadist brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi. Coulibaly also killed a policewomen on January 8.
The Kouachis and Coulibaly were cooperating in their attacks.
The three were killed in separate standoffs with police on January 9 after a massive manhunt in and around Paris.