Our State Department Official, Haass, Who Is Not Wary

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                     

                                       Interviewed by Zakaria today on CNN was Richard Haass

Richard Nathan Haass (born July 28, 1951) is an American diplomat. He was president of the Council on Foreign Relations from July 2003 to June 2023, prior to which he was director of policy planning for the United States Department of State and a close advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell in the George W. Bush administration. In October 2022, Haass announced he would be departing from his position at CFR in June 2023.  He was succeeded by former U.S. trade representative Michael Froman.  

Haass was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, the son of Marcella (née Rosenthal) and Irving B. Haass, of which I was quite surprised.  He didn't seem to understand Israel's position pertaining to why or therefore when speaking about Trump's wanting to turn Gaza into the French Riviera, etc on Fareed Zakaria's CNN this morning.  To me, he was quite cold towards Israel, and now I can see why.  He's spent time in Ireland, who shows me the same feelings about Israel.  

This former diplomat is now arguing  for stronger tactics on Israel.  It's due to recent episodes Israel finds herself in defending Israel.  "But more and more, as Israel fights against Hamas in Gaza, both Americans and people around the world are questioning the wisdom of that commitment.

 April 4, 2024:  The questioning intensified this week after Israeli bombs killed seven humanitarian workers from the World Central Kitchen aid agency. Israel's military called it a mistake. World Central Kitchen's founder, the famed chef Jose Andres, told Reuters his group's convoy was intentionally attacked."There is no reason it would have been intentional at all.  That's not who Israel is.  What else could Israel say when they didn't know what was happening to their communications?  Now, we are working here with several languages happening in a life and death situation.  There's English, Hebrew, and Arabic being used with most people knowing scant words other than in their own tongue.  

If he understood Israel's history and how the terrorists have attacked them and what their goals are, and how much Israel has tried to avert harming those citizens that are innocent, he wouldn't think that.  I see he only accepts what is to be seen without understanding it.  Well, that's what everyone is doing these days, and they are so fast to put 2 + 2=6.  

"The United States, Israel's closest ally, said that there was no evidence Israel deliberately targeted the aid workers but that it was outraged by their deaths and Israel had an obligation to ensure aid workers in Gaza were not harmed."

Defending Israel's error is part of a new plan in the fight of Palestinians against Israel.  They have realized that a frame or set up, tricking Israel into getting a bad press, is working just as much as their past rockets, mortars and missiles.  

                                              

1. We read:  April 1, 2024: Multiple precision Israeli drone strikes on a World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy killed seven aid workers, including an American citizen. The Washington, DC-based group had coordinated its route with the IDF beforehand. The vehicles were struck in a deconfliction zone controlled by the Israeli military. 

WCK founder José Andrés said Israeli forces targeted his colleagues “systematically, car by car.” Forensic evidence backs up Andrés’s claim. “This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place,” Andrés said, pointing to the fact that it was clearly-marked humanitarian convoy with colorful WCK logos on the vehicle roofs, and the 1.8 kilometer distance between the first and the third car in the convoy, each. It was “very clear who we are and what we do,” he added.

IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said WCK had “coordinated everything correctly with the IDF in advance” and blamed “internal failures.” I'm going to try to investigate these internal failures, since I smell a rat.   

Daniel Hagari (Hebrew: דניאל "דני" הגרי; born 1976), only 49 years old,  is an Israel Defense Forces Rear Admiral (Tat-Aluf) who currently serves as the head of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit. Previously he has served as the commander of the Israeli Navy's operations directorate, the Chief of Staff's assistant, Commander of the Shayetet 13 marine commando unit and the office of the Chief of Staff.

President Joe Biden said he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the deaths, and called on Israel to investigate itself. But for WCK’s founder, “The IDF cannot credibly investigate its own failure,” Andrés said. 

 World Central Kitchen (WCK) is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization that provides food relief. It was founded in 2010 by Spanish American chef and restaurateur José Andrés following the earthquake in Haiti, and has subsequently responded to Hurricane Harvey, the 2018 lower Puna eruption, 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes, the ongoing Gaza humanitarian crisis, and the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires.                                             

Claims to get food and tents into Gaza, known to help Hamas instead, and that's UNICEF           

Heavily damaged vehicle of the U.S.-based international volunteer aid organization World Central Kitchen after seven workers were killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza on April 2, 2024.Ashraf Amra–Anadolu—Getty Images                                

2. April 9, 2024: A clearly-marked UNICEF aid truck was reportedly hit by Israeli gunfire south of the Salah Al-Din checkpoint. The vehicle was at a holding point when it was struck by several bullets coming from the direction of the Israeli checkpoint. The IDF had approved the convoy beforehand. The Israeli military denied that its troops had fired the shots.                                          

3. August 27, 2024: A U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) convoy came under fire near an Israeli checkpoint at the Wadi Gaza bridge. As the vehicles approached the checkpoint after receiving multiple clearances to proceed, Israeli troops opened fire, hitting one WFP vehicle at least ten times. Several bullets struck the vehicle’s windows, just above the clearly-visible U.N. insignia and WFP logo emblazoned on the side doors. Israeli officials blamed a “communication error” for the attack.  WFP is an executive member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group, a consortium of UN entities that aims to fulfil the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), with a priority to achieve SDG 2, "zero hunger", by 2030.Being WFP is part of the UN, and the UN has been found to be helping Hamas terrorists,  how is it that Israel can trust their words? Was theircommunication really done in error?    
                                            

4. August 29, 2024: An Israeli airstrike on an Anera aid convoy killed four Palestinians as it was en route to the Emirati Red Crescent Hospital. The route was coordinated and approved by Israeli authorities. Israeli officials claim the lead car the IDF struck was carrying many weapons, but there was no indication that weapons were present. The IDF provided Anera no warning before carrying out the attack.  American Near East Refugee Aid (Anera) is an American 501(c)(3) non-governmental organization that provides humanitarian and development aid to the Middle East, specifically the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Jordan. Founded in 1968 in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, Anera initially sought to help the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians by providing emergency relief. While still providing crisis response, Anera now also addresses the long-term economic and social needs of Palestinians, Lebanese and Jordanians through its health care, education, and job creation programs.; Are they, too, a cover-up for helping assist Hamas to win?  U.S. President Joe Biden called WCK founder Andres to express condolences. Washington will press Israel to do more to protect aid workers, the White House said.

I'm just a retired teacher turned Defense lawyer in this case trying to see just what is going on here, but something stinks.  Look at what is happening: There's lots of questionable aid groups supposedly helping Israel NOT to hit the Palestinians:  Hamas would love to be hit to make Israel look really bad:  Israel pulled a good one on terrorists with pagers.  Could this be the same type of fighting?  Mess up communications?  

1.  World Central Kitchen (WCK) run by Andres

2. UNICEF Aid truck   Israel denied this shooting at checkpoint

3. United Nations Group World Food Programme (WFP)

4. American Near East Refugee Aid (Anera) humanitarian aid to Gaza

The Senate approved Haass as a candidate for the position of ambassador and he has been U.S. coordinator for the future of Afghanistan. He succeeded George J. Mitchell as the United States special envoy for Northern Ireland to help the peace process in Northern Ireland, for which he received the State Department's Distinguished Service Award.                                  

  Richard Haass (left), President Bush's special advisor to Ireland, and Brian Cowen, Irish Foreign Affairs Minister, talk to reporters in Dublin, before holding talks on Northern Ireland.

 As for Ireland's feelings towards Israel, where Haass has been living, "On 22 May 2024, the Foreign Minister of Israel, Israel Katz, announced the recall of the Israeli Ambassador, Dana Erlich, following the Irish government's announcement of its recognition of the State of Palestine on the 28th of   May.  I remember their President, a Robinson, also being unmoving towards Israel's position. " Oct 5, 2024 — Former President Mary Robinson has said Israel is making the same mistakes as the US did after 9/11 in its “disproportionate, violent” response in Gaza."

Resource:

https://www.facebook.com/fareedzakaria/videos/353454755572506/ with Richard Haass

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-airstrike-gaza-kills-foreign-aid-workers-hamas-run-media-office-says-2024-04-01/

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/04/1242933671/former-u-s-diplomat-argues-for-stronger-tactics-on-israel

Ireland's Encounters With Anti-Semitism

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

Count George Noble Plunkett (3 December 1851 – 12 March 1948) was an Irish nationalist politician, museum director and biographer, who served as Minister for Fine Arts from 1921 to 1922, Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1919 to 1921 and Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann (head of parliament of Ireland)  in January 1919.

During July 1921 Count George Noble Plunkett, Dáil minister for foreign affairs, wrote a long letter to Éamon de Valera. In it Plunkett warned the Sinn Féin 

leader that republicans should be wary of too close a relationship with ‘the Jews’.  

Anglo-Irish Treaty:  Signed on December 6, 1921, this treaty established the Irish Free State as a dominion within the British Empire. The treaty gave the 26 counties of Ireland a parliament and significant fiscal autonomy.  Plunkett must have been feeling pretty frisky.  

Plunkett was influenced by religious anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories regarding Jewish power and anti-immigrant sentiment. But does his letter tell us anything about republican attitudes more widely? Anti-Semitism in Ireland remains a controversial subject. In one narrative, the 1904 Limerick ‘pogrom’ looms large, while the anti-Semitism of Sinn Féin’s founder Arthur Griffith and the IRA’s dealings with Nazi Germany are linked to modern-day republican hostility to Israel.

Starting with 1904:  The Limerick boycott, also known as the Limerick pogrom, was an economic boycott waged against the small Jewish community in Limerick, Ireland, between 1904 and 1906. It was accompanied by assaults, stone throwing and intimidation, which caused many Jews to leave the city. It was instigated in 1904 by a Redemptorist priest, Father John Creagh. According to a report by the Royal Irish Constabulary, five Jewish families left Limerick "owing directly to the agitation" while another 26 families remained.

A small number of Lithuanian Jewish tradespeople, fleeing persecution in their homeland, began arriving in Limerick in 1878. They formed an accepted part of the city's retail trade, centred on Colooney Street (now Wolfe Tone Street). The community established a synagogue and a cemetery in the 1880s. Easter Sunday of 1884 saw the first of what were to be a series of sporadic violent antisemitic attacks and protests. The wife of Lieb Siev and his child were injured by stones and her house damaged by an angry crowd for which the ringleaders were sentenced to hard labour for a month. In 1892 two families were beaten and a stoning took place on 24 November 1896.

In 1903, a reception was held in Limerick to mark the emigration of Bernard Wienronk to South Africa. The former Mayor of Limerick John Daly was asked to preside. He proposed a toast on the night to "Israel a Nation" Many details about Limerick's Jewish families are recorded in the 1901 census that shows most were pedlars, though a few were described as drapery dealers and grocers.

Many Lithuanian Jews had moved to Ireland, including our relatives, the Goldfus/Goldfoot line. They had first gone to Great Britain, then Ireland, and finally South Africa, where my grandfather had chosen the USA instead.  

My grandfather, Nathan Goldfus/Goldfoot, left Ireland  on June 9, 1893 and headed for Winnipeg, Canada.  Nathan had been living at 13 Arbutus Place, South  Circular Road, Dublin Ireland in 1893 when he married Lena Goldberg.  He must have divorced her, for he met our Bubba, Zlata Jermulowski, born in Lazdijai, Suwalki, Lithuania, but had eventually moved to Poland.  She finally got to  the USA through Idaho.                               

                        Ashkenazi   Yitzhak (Isaac) HaLevi Herzog (1921-1936)

I found this about the address where Nathan lived: ( "I (not my grandfather)  was born in 1949 in a nursing home located just down the street at 102 South Circular Road, Portobello, (now renumbered as no. 18), which house had been the home of the President’s father, the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Isaac Herzog, throughout the 1920s. (He later moved the short distance to 33, Bloomfield Avenue for the remaining years of his ministry here before becoming Chief Rabbi of Eretz Israel.) I was accordingly born in the same house where Chaim Herzog spent most of his Dublin childhood and where his gifted brother, the late Ya’acov Herzog, had been born in 1921."  

In 1936, he testified in front of the Peel Commission in London and participated in 1939 in the "London Conference of 1939" between Jews and Arabs from Mandatory Palestine, convened by the British government.

During the Arab Revolt, he called, together with other rabbis, for adherence to the Havlagah policy of the Haganah and for avoidance of acts of revenge.

Nathan left this address, at least 4 months later after February 21, 1893 when he married Lena.                                      

Genealogy of Herzog:  Isaac, 11th President of Israel -2021.  Son of former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, he is a lawyer by profession and had served as Government Secretary from 1999 to 2001.  He is the first son of an Israeli president to become president himself.

The first Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Isaac Herzog,   was born and raised in Ireland and his mother was born in Egypt; their families were of Eastern European Jewish descent (from Poland, Russia, and Lithuania). He has two brothers and a sister. His paternal grandfather, Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, was the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland, a post he held from 1922 to 1935, and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1936 to 1959. The third foreign minister of Israel, Abba Eban, was his uncle.

Herzog served as rabbi of Belfast from 1916 to 1919 and was appointed rabbi of Dublin in 1919. A fluent Irish speaker, he supported the First Dáil and the Irish republican cause during the Irish War of Independence, and became known as "the Sinn Féin Rabbi".

Isaac (Yitzhak) "Bougie" Herzog was born in Tel Aviv. He is the son of Major-General Chaim Herzog, who served two terms as the Sixth President of Israel from 1983 to 1993, and Aura Ambache, founder of the Council for a Beautiful Israel. 

On 21 November 2024, the UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Herzog condemned the ICC's decision, saying, "It ignores Hamas’s cynical use of its own people as human shields. It ignores the basic fact that Israel was barbarically attacked and has the duty and right to defend its people. It ignores the fact that Israel is a vibrant democracy, acting under international humanitarian law, and going to great lengths to provide for the humanitarian needs of the civilian population."

Mary Therese Winifred Robinson (Irish: Máire Mhic Róibín; née Bourke; born 21 May 1944) is an Irish politician who served as the seventh president of Ireland, holding the office from December 1990 to September 1997. She was the country's first female president. In 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama, the highest civilian honour awarded by the US.  The award was criticised by American and European Jewish groups, while others offered support. Parties opposed included the 1. AIPAC, 2. Anti-Defamation League, 3. European Jewish Congress, and 4. John Bolton, former US Ambassador to the UN. Bolton stated that those in the administration who recommended her either ignored her anti-Israel history, or missed it entirely.  Mary Robinson welcomes the decision by International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan to apply for arrest warrants against Hamas leaders and Israel's Prime Minister and Defence Minister. 

The Durban Review Conference, also known as Durban II, was a United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) held in Geneva, Switzerland from April 20–24, 2009: Durban’s racism-turned-racist conference that disgraced the UN.” "To many of us present at the events at Durban Conference-- , it is clear that much of the responsibility for the debacle rests on the shoulders of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who, in her role as secretary-general of the conference, failed to provide the leadership needed to keep the conference on track.

 For example, Robinson failed to confront the odious anti-Israel language adopted at the Tehran pre-conference of February 2001:

By appearing to condone the Asian conference’s efforts to place the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the agenda of the World Conference, she betrayed its intentions and emboldened those intent on using the conference for their own political purposes. From that moment the conference began to take a dangerous trajectory that became ever more difficult to correct.

Mrs. Robinson’s intervention with the assembled delegates later in the same day left our delegation deeply shocked and saddened. In her remarks, she advocated precisely the opposite course to the one Secretary Powell and I had urged her to take. Namely, she refused to reject the twisted notion that the wrong done to the Jews in the Holocaust was equivalent to the pain suffered by the Palestinians in the Middle East. Instead, she discussed “the historical wounds of anti-Semitism and of the Holocaust on the one hand, and…the accumulated wounds of displacement and military occupation on the other.”

Resource:

Update:  One of Fox News hosts briefly mentioned this topic.  He said he was Irish and ashamed because of their antisemitism.  That Irish newscaster’s name is Brian Kilmead!

***** update on Republican party anti-Semitism in Ireland: https://www.politico.eu/article/in-ireland-sinn-fein-embraces-palestinians-and-shuns-israel/

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/jewish-fenians-and-anti-semites-the-jewish-role-in-the-irish-fight-for-freedom-1.4526074

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Noble_Plunkett#:~:text=Count%20George%20Noble%20Plunkett%20(3,D%C3%A1il%20%C3%89ireann%20in%20January%201919.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Robinson

https://unwatch.org/something-about-mary/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_in_the_United_Kingdom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerick_boycott

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_HaLevi_Herzog#:~:text=Herzog%20served%20as%20rabbi%20of,%22the%20Sinn%20F%C3%A9in%20Rabbi%22.

https://theelders.org/news/mary-robinson-welcomes-iccs-pursuit-accountability-israel-palestine-conflict

The Anti-Semitic Conference in Durban, South Africa and What Countries Are Attending

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

                  

 "The first United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was held in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001.                            

Nelson Mandela   and Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa's Durban Conference.  
                                                             

Durban, South Africa was where Nelson Mandela became their 1st president.  The next, and present President during the 1st in 2001 Durban Conference was Thabo Mbeki, born in 1942.  Apartheid had been in practice for almost 25 years till" white minority domination and black majority rule would precipitate a bloody civil war. Instead, in 1994 South Africans replaced president F. W. de Klerk with Nelson Mandela (1994-1999)in a free and fair election that astonished the world."  He was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader and philanthropist  He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election.

                                                                

The recently opened Durban Point Magistrate’s Court

Regardless of its noble intentions, 'Durban' as it subsequently became known, quickly descended into an anti-Jewish hate-fest with an anti-Israel political agenda designed to turn Israel into a pariah state, along with attempts to deny antisemitism as a human rights issue.                                                           

Copies of the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' - a bogus and conspiratorial Russian text containing the supposed master plan for Jewish global domination were on sale, while outside the conference large antisemitic banners including those lamenting Hitler's failure to solve the "Jewish problem" were on display.
                                                                            

You may have heard in recent days that the UK is the latest country to boycott the Durban IV conference, due to be held in September 2021 in New York. The US, Canada and Australia have also announced that they will not be attending.  

 Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Menashe Erdan, is  an Israeli politician and diplomat. He is currently the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations and the Israeli ambassador to the United States,  and said he plans to hold an alternative event to the Durban Conference that will deal with combatting racism, including anti-semitism.                                                            

     President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, serving the 2nd of a 7 year term

Given the utterly shameful displays of anti-Israel bias and Holocaust inversion broadcast from Dáil Éireann,  the lower house, and principal chamber, of the Oireachtas, which also includes the President of Ireland and Seanad Éireann. It consists of 160 members, known as Teachta Dála. ) last month, Ireland's international reputation really cannot afford to be further sullied by being seen to endorse Durban IV. Enough is enough!"  

On 9 April 2018 Dublin City Council became the first European capital to vote in favour of resolutions endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and calling for the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland. The City Council boycott motion included a specific call to boycott products and services from Hewlett Packard. On 10 April, the Lord Mayor of Dublin Mícheál Mac Donncha travelled to Ramallah to attend a Palestinian Authority conference on the status of Jerusalem, avoiding an Israeli government ban due to confusion arising from the spelling of his name in Irish on his passport. In response, the Israeli government summoned the Irish Ambassador to formally demand an explanation for the boycott motions of Dublin City Council and the Lord Mayor's attendance at the conference."  The UK is not attending the Durban Conference, and Ireland is part of the UK, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do attend and even speak due to their proclivity lately of being anti-Israel.  

It occurred to me that Jews have suffered from Racism through anti-Semitism, being that Semites that are Jews have been treated as a race, for at least the last 2,000 years.                               

That a meeting about putting down racism dared to become the most racist yet towards Jews and Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, created as a Jewish refuge from a racist world,  is positively stomach-churning.  20% of it's population are Muslims.   Jews had been ostracized, and became an endogamous people within Europe.  There are 48 Muslim majority states in the world even without a Palestine. 

When Mandela became prime minister, many Jews immigrated for Israel.  They didn't know and didn't trust how he would treat Jews. "Over the years, the Jewish community had not always seen eye to eye with Mandela.  Many in the community were unhappy with his support for the Palestine Liberation Organization, and particularly his embrace of then-Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.

Another concern was that Mandela, in repeatedly referring to Israel as a "colonialist" regime, seemed to be questioning the fundamental legitimacy of the Jewish state.  It was difficult for American Jewish leaders to consider joining in the welcome for this great freedom fighter without having a better understanding of his views toward Israel and the Jewish community. " Though Mandela had died two years before the conference, how he had felt or what he had said about Israel must have remained in some minds in Durban to have put on such an anti-Semitic show in the  conference against 'racism" but okay to advocate anti-Semitism.                                                        

 It also remains a great platform for all the anti-Israelists that abound, being they would be welcomed with open arms.  

Resource:

Ireland Israel Alliance

https://www.un.org/WCAR/durban.pdf

https://jij.org/news/the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion/?campaignid=11016534694&adgroupid=108986655500&adid=461192352626&keyword_session_id=vt~adwords%7Ckt~%7Cmt~b%7Cta~461192352626&_vsrefdom=wordstream&gclid=CjwKCAjwt8uGBhBAEiwAayu_9RhXvOqOS45KFh4VU7lSrf8rvPGgVaEYpQPbM2jkNhhp_FJptN7ikBoC3VEQAvD_BwE

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/holylandings/.premium-jews-didn-t-know-how-nelson-mandela-would-treat-them-so-they-left-for-israel-1.9695238

https://www.adl.org/news/op-ed/how-mandela-won-over-the-jewish-community?gclid=CjwKCAjwt8uGBhBAEiwAayu_9WaumziOszHlryQ9USfi4Xh0eSqM5CHcWCPgaQsA5SVWGDp8LuR-hBoC4W0QAvD_BwE