DURBAN 2 WHERE THE OBAMA GOVERNMENT IS STIRRING ANTISEMITISM

By Felix Quigley

February 26, 2009-02-26

The central question in the world today is “What is the US elite up to in promoting and stirring up Jew Hatred on a world basis?”

Another question to ask is will the Democratic Stimulus programme, where Obama pumps trillions into the system, actually work or just do any good at all.

The answer to the latter question is NO!

It will not work in the slightest. The crisis in capitalism is an historical crisis to do with the inability of the working class to take power from off the capitalist class, based on the anarchy of capitalist non planning, and replace their system wioth one based on human reason.

So if the “Stimulus” will not work, and going on the basic assumption that the American elite are not at all stupid but in fact arer highly intelligent, then what is their other strategy.

We on 4international believe that the strategy of the US elite, followed by the British, the German and even little pygmy capitalists like the Irish and their now deceased “Celtic Tiger” is to create a different form of rule.

And the method as always is…stir up antisemitism.

 

The US elite if their real intention is to stir up antisemitism on a world scale have a huge and very convenient weapon on their hands. That is the forces of  reactionary Islam. Jew Hatred is hard wired into the Islam religion and political philosophy and has taken over arguably from Christianity in that strategic for the ruling elites role of Jew Hatred.

 

We on 4international believe that the US Government has been stirring up Jew Hatred through its alliance with Islam, this is why the US elite formed a close bond with Islamist murderers in Bosnia against the Christian Serbs, and is especially true of the Bush promotion of the Palestine State which must be a direct threat to Jews in Israel. Even the blindest person can now see that the agitation for a Palestine State has assumed the status of a religion in the world, but it is a religion which has as its centre the oldest hatred of all, antisemitism

Now the US, British and Europeans are leading in bringing Hamas forward, away from its previous characterisation as a terrorist force, and into the folds of “respectability” in a unity with Fatah. It must be emphasised that Fatah is one of the bitterest Jew Hating movements on the planet and its ancestry dates back to the Holocaust of the Jews in Europe and to the planned nazi cum Arab Holocaust of every Jew in Palestine and the middle East in the precise year of 1942

As part of this over the next 6 weeks the US elite are promoting Jew Hatred in the Durban 2 conference held in South Africa.

Nothing shows better the role of the US as the main promotor of Jew Hatred in the world than the on going preparations for this conference, in which the US is taking part.

 

The role of the US in these negotiations around the format of this conference is duplicitous. This is for a particular reason. There are very many ordinary Americans, in the non Jewish American community, who hate antisemitism, love the Jews as a people, love Israel as a plucky defender of Jews against nazism, who would be very angry indeed if they knew that their own rulers was carrying on in this way against the Jews.

That’s why the US elite always talks with a forked tongue on the issue of the Jews. They always try to make it appear that they are the friend of the Jews. At the same time the content of the policy of the US rulers is always opposed to the Jews.In other words the US ruling elite is Jew hating in a way which is borrowed from the Nazis, many of whom were recruited into US intelligence post 1945, as the study in the book “Blowback” by Christopher Simpson proved.

Luckily we have on the internet a wonderfully astute writer who is following every move that is being made by the US Government in the talsk around this UN Conference in Durban. Her name is Ann Bayevsky. This planned conference due in April is promoted as being an “anti racism” conference. But that is subterfuge. The conference has already got a history. It had a predecessor. Durbam 1 turned out to be only an excuse to attack Israel and the reason for this is that the UN is controlled by the 52 strong Islamic Organization which sits at the centre of the UN, of UN decisions and of UN resolutions.

Yet it carries the prestige of the UN. OK many of us who have followed things know that the UN is full of Israel hatred, which is really Jew hatred, but it still carries prestige in billions who do not know, and the antisemites in the world know that very well and accordingly do use it

This is why this conference in Durban is so serious. It is being used to promote antisemitism. The big question really is the role of the US Government. Anne Bayefsky is really the expert in the world on this issue.

Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and editor of www.EYEontheUN.org.

 

 

Remember what we said about the US elite having to present themselves as the friends of Israel. Anne gets torn into this concept from the very beginning of this article

The Obama administration’s decision to join the planning of the U.N.’s Durban II “anti-racism” conference has just taken a new twist: cover-up. On Friday, State Department officials and a member of the American Durban II delegation claimed the United States had worked actively to oppose efforts to brand Israel as racist in the committee drafting a Durban II declaration. The trouble is that they didn’t.

 

The Feb. 20 State Department press release says the U.S. delegation in Geneva “outline[d] our concerns with the current outcome document” and in particular “our strong reservations about the direction of the conference, as the draft document singles out Israel for criticism.”

 

One member of the delegation told The Washington Post: “The administration is pushing back against efforts to brand Israel as racist in this conference.”

 

Why say that? Is it true?

 

And if efforts are being made to stir up antisemitism why be there? Is that not lending credibility?

 

But essentially is the above claim by this US delegate true?

 

Next Anne deals with the Washington Post. This next article looks like a plant. I mean who exactly is “Colum Lynch”? Who works for the Washington Post?

 

Note below that Anne using the word “fawning” to describe Lynch.

 

 

 

 

Washington Post columnist Colum Lynch championed the U.S. bravado in an article based on the story orchestrated by the American delegates. In his Feb. 20 article entitled: “U.S. Holds Firm on Reparations, Israel in U.N. Racism Talks,” he fawned: “The Obama administration on Thursday concluded its first round of politically charged U.N. negotiations on racism, pressing foreign governments … to desist from singling out Israel for criticism in a draft declaration to be presented at a U.N. conference in April.”

And to answer Lynch Anne makes this firm challenge to the US Government no less than to Lynch.

But Ann shows that fitting in to a conference that is promoting Israel, that is Jew, hatred, means silence to attacks on Israel.

Instead, Obama’s Durban II team slipped easily into the U.N.’s anti-Israel and anti-Jewish environs, taking the approach that “fitting in” was best accomplished by staying silent.

On Tuesday, the Palestinian delegation proposed inserting a new paragraph under the heading “Identification of further concrete measures and initiatives … for combating and eliminating all manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance…” with the subtitle “General provisions on victims … of discrimination.”

The paragraph includes: “Calls for … the international protection of the Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory.” In other words, it claims that the Palestinian people are victims of Israeli racism and demands that all U.N. states provide protection from the affronts of the racist Jewish state.

Pay attention to the above paragraph. That is the promotion of Jew hatred in the world today.

Israel IS the Homeland of the Jewish people. Jews look to Israel as the defence against antisemitism. In Israel is contained all of the values of the Jewish people. And the above is stirring up hatred of the Jews. Why are the US Government doing this to the Jews.

Anne continues with her minute examination of these texts although I must say there is no need to read further than the above paragraph.

 

Furthermore, the new Palestinian provision “Calls for … implementation of international legal obligations, including the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the wall…” This is a dramatic attempt to change an “advisory opinion” into a “legal obligation”–a status which attaches to no advisory opinion.

I must say that this sleight of hand is so typical of these antisemites, changing something which is advisory into legal obligation. Then repeating the legal obligation bit until it sticks. I suppose you could call this lying by repetition.

Anne continues by explaining with detail how that decision was taken, particularly telling is that the Egyptian Judge stated his verdict before the hearing, maybe a new in jurisprudence, but the simple point made by Buergenthal that the court separated the wall from the suicide bombing that made the wall kind of necessary, no!

The ICJ decision, which advises that the Israeli security fence is illegal, has always been rejected by the United States–hitherto. And with good reason. The Egyptian judge had voiced his opinion on the result before the case was even heard, in his capacity as a leading Egyptian diplomat. The terms of reference from the General Assembly who asked for the decision, and the documents they laid before the Court, predetermined the outcome. And as the strong dissent by the American judge and Holocaust survivor Tom Buergenthal pointed out, the Court came to its preposterous conclusion that “the right of legitimate or inherent self-defense is not applicable in the present case” without considering “the deadly terrorist attacks to which Israel is being subjected.”

 

 

 

Now in her study of these strange goings on re Durban 2 comes to the central issue.

Anne asks the simple and vital question, What did the US Government, Obama’s team do when confronted with this concentrated Israel hatred. The answer is the following

 

Nothing, absolutely nothing.

And if that is not bad enough it seems that the US Government also in the most duplicitous manner ensured that Holocaust Denial would be on the agenda of Durban. This now requires careful reading because the US Government delegation is very, very duplicitous.

 

 

The Obama team was not only silent on the new “Israel is racist” language, it also said nothing when faced with Holocaust denial. Negotiators from the European Union suggested on Wednesday a new provision to “condemn without reservation any denial of the Holocaust and urges all states to reject denial of the Holocaust as an historical event, either in full, or in part, or any activities to this end.” Iran–whose president is a Holocaust-denier–immediately objected and insisted that the proposal be “bracketed” or put in dispute. The move blocked the adoption of the proposal and ensured another battle over the reality of the Holocaust in April–at these supposedly “anti-racism” meetings. After Iran objected, the chair looked around the room, expecting a response. He said: “Is there any delegation wishing to comment on this new proposal by the European Union? It doesn’t seem the case. We move on.” U.S. delegates said nothing, even after the prompt.

Again, the American silence must have been deliberate. In marked contrast, after the E.U. objected to a provision calling for limits on free speech, the American delegation had no trouble piping up immediately: “I want to echo the comments from the E.U. This … call for restrictions is something that my government is not able to accept.”

 

 

That the US Government is promoting Jew hatred in the world is now for sure. Reading the above the staunchest American supporter could not dispute this. The big question is why? I feel that Jared and Fran plus some others touched on the why? But only we on 4international are getting to the central deal here.

Ann sums up her position:

 

The delay tactics are indefensible. The U.S. administration attended four full days of negotiation. During that time they witnessed the following: the failure to adopt a proposal to act against Holocaust denial, a new proposal to single out Israel, which will now be included in the draft without brackets, broad objections to anything having to do with sexual orientation, vigorous refusal by many states to back down on references to “Islamophobia” (the general allegation of a racist Western plot to discriminate against all Muslims), and numerous attacks on free speech.

This “dialogue” is not promoting rights and freedoms. It is legitimizing a forum for disputing the essence of democracy, handing Holocaust deniers a global platform and manufacturing the means to demonize Israel in the interests of those states bent on the Jewish state’s destruction.

Anne Byefsky concludes with this serious warning as to where the US Government is heading. I do not think that the conclusion of Anne is half strong enough. These are not enemies of freedom so much as antisemites, who are fascists, who hate Jews and who prepare a new Holocaust of the Jews. The US is either lending credibility to this or it is actually leading and promoting this. I prefer the latter because the US is the Master, and is in a Master relationship to the Islamofascists. But we are extremely thankful to Anne for putting in the hard work to track these momentous events, incidentally proving in her own way the extremely progressive nature of the Jewish cause in thepast, present and the future.

 

If the Obama administration does not immediately announce that its foray into the morass of Durban II has led it to decide this is no place for genuine believers in human rights and freedoms, there is only one conclusion possible. His foreign policy of engagement amounts to a new willingness to sacrifice Israel and an indeterminate number of American values for the sake of a warm welcome from the enemies of freedom.

 

 

IN ONE YEAR 6 TIMES THE NUMBER OF ANTISEMITIC ATTACKS IN LONDON

by Felix Quigley

February 26, 2009

Is this not absolutely disgraceful that in 2009 we should have to write this:

we wear a skullcap only under a hat and our youths don’t wander the streets late at night anymore

YET THERE ARE POLITICAL SHITS WHO CALLTHEMSELVES LEFTIST, SOCIALIST OR EVEN COMMUNIST WHO ARE CAUSING THIS ANTISEMITISM, IN THEIR AGITATION AGAINST ISRAEL AND IN THEIR SUPPORT FOR ANTISEMITIC PALESTINIAN ARABS, WHO SEEK THE DESTRUCTION OF THE JEWISH STATE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Anti-Semitic violence is skyrocketing in Western European countries, particularly in Britain and France, according to national Jewish organizations.

The London-based Community Security Trust reported Friday that after Israel’s counterterrorist Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, the incidence rose to more than six times the number of attacks that were carried out in the same period just a year earlier.

 

The organization, which tracks anti-Semitic incidents and tries to maintain security for the Jewish community in Britain, released the report in advance of an international conference focusing on how to deal with anti-Semitism, slated to be held Monday in London.

According to the report, in the four weeks following the start of the operation on December 27 there were 250 attacks, as opposed to 40 recorded for the same period in 2007-2008.

Among the incidents were physical assaults, verbal attacks, Jewish property damaged, threats, hate mail and anti-Semitic graffiti.

London police confirmed a rise in anti-Semitism, and said that in the period from December 27 to February 3, they recorded three times as many incidents as were reported a year earlier. Some of the increase, they said, came due to a change in record-keeping methods; however, they note that the data speaks for itself.

French Jews Afraid to Walk the Streets

Friday also marked the three-year anniversary since the murder of 23-year-old Ilan Halimi, a Parisian Jew who died in France after being kidnapped and brutally tortured by an anti-Semitic gang.

Since Halimi’s death, things have only gotten worse, according to Serge Benhaim, president of a Jewish community in the French capital.

“Almost every day we witness severe racially motivated incidents, and tension has only intensified after the operation in Gaza,” Benhaim told journalists. “We don’t take the train after 7:00 p.m., we wear a skullcap only under a hat and our youths don’t wander the streets late at night anymore,” he added.

The suspects in Halimi’s murder are expected to go on trial next month, and the Jewish community has already been warned to keep a low profile, according to Benhaim, who said Jews in Paris are “preparing for the worst. Unfortunately, Halimi’s murder probably won’t be the last,” he said.

More than 100 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in France during the period between December 27, when Operation Cast Lead began, and the end of January 2009, according to the country’s  Representative Council of Jewish Institutions. That was compared to a total of 250 anti-Semitic incidents recorded during the entire 12-month period from January to December 2007.

Organization president Richard Prasquier told journalists last month that he and several other Jewish community leaders met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to ask for his intervention. “He told us that he would do more to find a solution to this problem,” Prasquier said.

Meanwhile, six weeks ago Michael Benhamou became the next victim of French anti-Semitic brutality when he was attacked by three “Arab-looking men” on the Parisian metro while on his way home. The attackers cursed him, threatened to kill him and then beat him up. Benhamou was hospitalized for four days with multiple facial fractures, including a broken nose.

His attackers disappeared, and no arrests have been made. “We can’t count on the police,” said the young victim. “Nothing has changed here since Ilan’s murder. There is no place for Jews in France; we can’t keep living here with these acts of barbarism. I already told my girlfriend that we are going to make aliyah. There’s nothing left for us here; I want my child to be a sabra.”

NETANYAHU MUST HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH TRAITOR LIVNI

by Felix Quigley

February 25, 2009

It is a great betrayal that Netanyahu is carrying out…seeking an allaince with the arch traitor Livni when Netanyahu has been given a majority by the Israeli people if his votes are counted with parties on the patriotic Jewish side.

Livni represents the most dangerous and reacionary side of the Israeli elite. It is totally hostile to Jewish nationalism, to Zionism, and is prepared to seek alliance with Fascist Arab forces rather than advance Jewish nationalism.

Livni represents a big danger to everything Jewish in Israel.

Livni and Sharon split Likud in order to pull every Jew out of Gaza. Livni handed Gaza to Hamas on a plate.

Then Hamas proceeded for 8 years to rocket Israel.

This is a betrayal so grievous that Netanyahu must have nothing to do with Livni.

Now I can understand some of the thinking behind Netanyahu. Let us look at his situation with realism and without dogma

1. He sees the main issue as the Iranian bomb existentialist for Jews one. If Israelis not successful in that then the game is up for the Jews of Israel.

2. Netanyahu and any Jew must be extremely worried by the position of the US elite, as shown int he Obama team role in Durban 2

3. Netanyahu rightly feels Israel totally on its own. Rather than help from the US elite which is Nazi the oppsoite. Obama like Brown is heading into support for Islam land

4. Because Israel and Jews are so on their own against this mortal Iranian threat then it is natural to feel let us Israelis all unite together.

But still the Livni section of Israeli politics is so totally and ciompletely traitorous.

All of this was admirably put a few days ago by this report by DEBKAfile.

I have always argued that Fatah and Hamas would come together on a tactical basis to destroy Israel. Francisco Gil White took this position, his memorable phrase was that they are all cut from the same cloth.

And netanyahu must seek out the patriots in Israeli society and try to convince the best of the rest to go along. Livni is not a patriot I feel. She seems to me to be foremost a personal careerist.

[Begin report from Debka here]

DEBKAfile‘s military sources report that Sunday, Feb. 22, the Palestinian Authority on orders from chairman Mahmoud Abbas began releasing Hamas terrorists detained as part of his commitment to join forces with Israel to combat Palestinian terror. Abbas did not consult Israel before freeing the first batch of 21 prisoners.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas began releasing activists of Abbas’ Fatah.

Our sources reveal that, under pressure from Washington, prime minister Ehud Olmert and foreign minister Tzipi Livni agreed to their transfer to the West Bank, where they took part in a conference of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s executive committee last Saturday.

DEBKAfile‘s military sources warn that the reopening of the covert corridor to terrorist traffic between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is a recipe for the revival of Palestinian attacks against central Israel, Hamas’ long-held goal.

While Israel’s unity talks stumble forward, the rival Palestinian Fatah and Hamas are on a fast-moving secret track towards a power-sharing accord.

It is Abbas’ intention to unveil his Palestinian unity administration simultaneously with the presentation of Binyamin Netanyahu’s broad national government. By this means, he expects to maneuver the Americans into non-cooperation with Israel unless its new government swallows the Hamas component of a legitimate Palestinian government.

Hamas, for its part, is making hay. Not only are the Islamist fundamentalists not asked to meet international demands and give up their avowed aim to destroy Israel, they have cornered Abbas by requiring him to give up his security partnership with the United States and Israel. He has responded with a directive to Fatah negotiators to promise that their joint regime will in time edge out of this partnership.

The undercover Palestinian moves climax Wednesday, Feb. 25 at a formal Palestinian reconciliation conference in Cairo chaired by Egypt’s intelligence minister and senior Palestinian negotiator Gen. Omar Suleiman.

Cairo has reopened Gaza’s Rafah gateway for three days as a gesture to Hamas.

Abbas is therefore moving along his own underhand track unrelated to the Palestinian pretext Kadima’s Livni is using to opt out of Netanyahu’s coalition government. She wants him to commit to the two-state solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict as his government’s top priority. Netanyahu argues that the Olmert-Livni talks with Abbas over many months got nowhere, while the perils posed by Iran and its advance on Israel’s borders are immediate and existential.

Some of Livni’s key associates in Kadima have launched their own freelance approach to Abbas. It aims at discrediting the Netanyahu administration from the moment he presents his lineup to the president. At that moment, on their advice, Palestinian Authority leaders will announce the break-off of contacts with Israel until the new Israeli prime minister publicly states his commitment to a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel and a halt to settlement expansion.

Livni’s close circle is thus hoping to use the Palestinians as a blunderbuss to beat the Netanyahu government into accepting Kadima’s point of view or face international condemnation.

 http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5926

 

I feel that Netanyahu needs support. We are well aware of his past betrayal over Hebron, but now he must have the feeling that groups like Israpundit etc are fighting (not just endlessly talking) inside the American ordinary people to rally behind Israel, on the clear understanding that the US elite are setting out to create a kind of havoc in the Middle East, in an attempt to emulate the old British Empire maxim, divide and rule. Obama will try to play off the Jews against Iran etc. The result for Jews could well be Holocaust. As serious as that.

WILDER´S SPEECH IN NEW YORK MISSES THE WHOLE POINT

by Felix Quigley

February 25, 2009

WE UNCONDITIONALLY DEFEND GEERT WILDERS BUT THINK THAT HIS NEW YORK SPEECH KINDA MISSES THE POINT, ESPECIALLY THE ROLE OF THE US ELITE IN PROMOTING ANTISEMITISM AND ISLAMOFASCISM

We reprint the speech by Geert Wilders in New York on February 23 in the interests of free speech and as part of our struggle against Fascism. We on 4international unconditionally defend Geert Wilders against the Fascist attack of his government on the basic right of free speech. Unlike the readers of Jihadwatch however we are critical of this speech by Wilders. He seems to think that the US Government is an opponent of Islamofascism. If so why then did the US and British support the Islamofascist and associate of Hajj Amin el Husseini in the destruction of Yugoslavia and in the war against the Serbs. During all of that lengthy episode the US Government and Islamofascism, all varieties, were joined together at the hip. And still are!Wilders in this speech misses that connection between US Governments and Fascism, he therefore obscures it.

Still the essence of this Wilders issue is the nature of Fascism straight out of the Koran and Wilders cry for free speech. Every socialist must support and defend both.

[Begin speech by Geert Wilders on February 23 here]

Thank you.Thank you very much for inviting me. And – to the immigration authorities – thank you for letting me into this country. It is always a pleasure to cross a border without being sent back on the first plane.

Today, the dearest of our many freedoms is under attack all throughout Europe. Free speech is no longer a given. What we once considered a natural element of our existence, our birth right, is now something we once again have to battle for.

As you might know, I will be prosecuted, because of my film Fitna, my remarks regarding Islam, and my view concerning what some call a ‘religion of peace’. A few years from now, I might be a criminal.

Whether or not I end up in jail is not the most pressing issue; I gave up my freedom four years ago. I am under full-time police protection ever since. The real question is: will free speech be put behind bars? And the larger question for the West is: will we leave Europe’s children the values of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem, or the values of Mecca, Teheran and Gaza?

This is what video blogger Pat Condell said in one of his latest you tube appearances. He says: “If I talked about Muslims the way their holy book talks about me, I’d be arrested for hate speech.” Now, Mr Condell is a stand-up comedian, but in the video he is dead serious and the joke is on us. Hate speech will always be used against the people defending the West – in order to please and appease Muslims. They can say whatever they want: throw gays from apartment buildings, kill the Jews, slaughter the infidel, destroy Israel, jihad against the West. Whatever their book tells them.

Today, I come before you to warn of a great threat. It is called Islam. It poses as a religion, but its goals are very worldly: world domination, holy war, sharia law, the end of the separation of church and state, slavery of women, the end of democracy. It is NOT a religion, it is an political ideology. It demands your respect, but has no respect for you.

There might be moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam. Islam will never change, because it is built on two rocks that are forever, two fundamental beliefs that will never change, and will never alter. First, there is the Quran, Allah’s personal word, uncreated, forever, with orders that need to be fulfilled regardless of place or time. And second, there is al-insal al-kamil, the perfect man, Muhammad the role model, whose deeds are to be imitated by all Muslims. And since Muhammad was a warlord and a conqueror we know what to expect. Islam means submission, so there cannot be any mistake about it’s goal. That’s a given. It’s fact.

This is Europe 2009. Muslim settlers calling for our destruction, and free speech on trial. All this is the outcome of a sick and evil ideology, the ideology that is weakening us, the surrender ideology of cultural relativism. It believes that all cultures are equal, and therefore Islam deserves an equal place in the West. It is their duty, the left thinks, to facilitate Islam. This way the cultural relativists paradise comes within reach and we will all be happy, and sing kumbaya.

The forces of Islam couldn’t agree more. Islam being facilitated by government is their agenda too. But they see it as jizya, the money dhimmis pay in order not to be killed or raped by their Muslim masters. Therefore, they happily accept the welfare cheque or the subsidies for their mosque or the money governments donate to their organizations.

This is just one example of cultural relativists and Muslim settlers having the same agenda. There is another. Islam considers itself a religion and therefore we are not permitted to criticize it. The left agrees. Although it hated Christianity for decades, now that Islam appears on the scene, they suddenly change course and demand ‘respect’ for something they call a religion.

Again we see the left and Islam having the same agenda: it is a religion, so shut up.

This all culminates in a third coming-together: nor the left nor Islam is in favor of criticism. In fact, given the opportunity, they would simply outlaw it. Multiculturalism is the left’s pet project. It is actually their religion. Their love of it is so great, if you oppose it, it must be hate. And if you say it, it is labeled hate speech. Now here is something the Islam can agree on.

This is the essence of my short introduction today: where the left and Islam come together, freedom will suffer.

My friends, make no mistake, my prosecution is a full-fledged attack by the left on freedom of speech in order to please Muslims. It was started by a member of the Dutch Labour party, and the entire legal proceeding is done by well-to-do liberals, the radical chic of Dutch society, the snobbish left. Too much money, too much time, too little love of liberty. If you read what the court of Amsterdam has written about me, you read the same texts that cultural relativists produce.

How low can we go in the Netherlands? About my prosecution, The Wall Street Journal noted: “this is no small victory for Islamic regimes seeking to export their censorship laws to wherever Muslims reside”. The Journal concluded that by The Netherlands accepting the free speech standards of, “Saudi-Arabia”, I stand correct in my observation that – I quote – “Muslim immigration is eroding traditional Dutch liberties”.

Now, if the Wall Street Journal has the moral clarity to see that my prosecution is the logical outcome of our disastrous, self-hating, multiculturalists immigration policies, then why can’t the European liberal establishment see the same thing? Why aren’t they getting at least a little bit scared by the latest news out of, for example, the UK. News that tells that the Muslim population in Britain is growing ten times as fast as the rest of society. Why don’t they care?

The answer is: they don’t care because they are blinded by their cultural relativism. Their disdain of the West is so much greater than the appreciation of our many liberties. And therefore, they are willing to sacrifice everything. The left once stood for women rights, gay rights, equality, democracy. Now, they favour immigration policies that will end all this. Many even lost their decency. Elite politicians have no problem to participate in or finance demonstrations where settlers shout “Death to the Jews”. Seventy years after Auschwitz they know of no shame.

Two weeks ago, I tried to get into Britain, a fellow EU country. I was invited to give a speech in Parliament. However, upon arrival at London airport, I was refused entry into the UK, and sent back on the first plane to Holland. I would have loved to have reminded the audience of a great man who once spoke in the House of Commons. In 1982 President Reagan gave a speech there very few people liked. Reagan called upon the West to reject communism and defend freedom. He introduced a phrase: ‘evil empire’. Reagan’s speech stands out as a clarion call to preserve our liberties. I quote: If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. What Reagan meant is that you cannot run away from history, you cannot escape the dangers of ideologies that are out to destroy you. Denial is no option.

So, what should we do? Is this a good moment for freedom-loving people to give in or to change course? To all-of-a-sudden start singing praise of Islam, or proclaiming there is such a thing as a moderate Islam? Will we now accept the continuation of Muslim mass immigration to the West? Will we appease sharia and jihad? Should we sacrifice gay rights and women rights? Or democracy? Should we sell out Israel, our dearest ally, and a frontline state of Islam?

Well, my humble opinion is: No way, Jose!

I suggest to defend freedom in general and freedom of speech in particular. I propose the withdrawal of all hate speech legislation in Europe. I propose a European First Amendment. In Europe we should defend freedom of speech like you Americans do. In Europe freedom of speech should be extended, instead of restricted. Of course, calling for violence or unjustly yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre have to be punished, but the right to criticize ideologies or religions are necessary conditions for a vital democracry. As George Orwell once said: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.

Let us defend freedom of speech and let us gain strength and work hard to become even stronger. Millions think just like you and me. Millions think liberty is precious. That democracy is better than sharia. And after all, why should we be afraid? Our many freedoms and our prosperity are the result of centuries of endeavour. Centuries of hard work and sacrifice. We do not stand alone, and we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Late December 1944 the American army was suddenly faced with a last-ditch effort by the Germans. In the Ardennes, in the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler and his national-socialists fought for their last chance. And they were very successful. Americans faced defeat, and death.

In the darkest of winter, in the freezing cold, in a lonely forest with snow and ice as even fiercer enemies than the Nazi war machine itself, the American army was told to surrender. That might be their only chance to survive. But General McAuliffe thought otherwise. He gave the Germans a short message. This message contained just four letters. Four letters only, but never in the history of freedom was a desire for liberty and perseverance in the face of evil expressed more eloquently than in that message. It spelled N – U – T – S. “Nuts”.

My friends, the national-socialists got the message. Because it left no room for interpretation!

I suggest we walk in the tradition of giants like General McAuliffe and the American soldiers who fought and died for the freedom of my country and for a secular and democratic Europe, and we tell the enemies of freedom just that. NUTS! Because that’s all there is to it. No explanations. No beating around the bush. No caveats.

Our enemies should know: we will never apologize for being free men, we will never bow for the combined forces of Mecca and the left. And we will never surrender. We stand on the shoulders of giants. There is no stronger power than the force of free men fighting for the great cause of liberty. Because freedom is the birthright of all man.

THOSE WHO MAKE JEWS OUT TO BE NAZIS ARE CONSCIOUS ANTISEMITES

by Felix Quigley

February 26, 2009

The growth of antisemitism is a major topic for this website.

This website is socialist, revolutionary socialist, and what kind of a socialist does not fight against antisemitism

Yet the material evidence coming out of the colleges of England shows that the Left of today are antisemitic and Nazi actually is not too strong a word to use to describe them

[begin article from Engage here]

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=2216

It is from Mira Vogel and although we have not met Mira we extend to her our solidarity int he face of this obscene antisemitism…FQ

 Last night, “formally hosted” and “subsidised” by the Student Union, Suzanne Weiss darkened the door of my institution as an invited speaker. She was invited by the Palestine Twinning Campaign to which the officers of the local branch of my trade union, UCU, voted to donate £200 of our subs. The meeting – From the Warsaw Ghetto to the Gaza Ghetto – had been advertised with a monochrome poster juxtaposing images of the Warsaw Ghetto wall and a segment of wall round Gaza. Beforehand the Activities Officer read out a statement to the effect that the opinions expressed that evening were those of the speakers, and not the Student Union. It was hard to reconcile this with the October motion resoundingly passed by the 16-member student assembly which included the statement, if I have it correctly, that “hosting Ms Weiss would be a great honour to the union and what our union ethos incorporates”.

In January 2008 (1) Weiss wrote that Israel deliberately kills Palestinians as part of a genocidal plan. She asserted that

“the Jewish people are the most hated people in the world today – because they are associated with the Zionist policies of Apartheid”.

Rather than resisting any such racism against Jews – fully manifest in the language of extreme hostility to Israel – she acquiesces to it. In August 2008 she wrote an article in Socialist Voice (2) titled ‘The siege of Gaza: Israel uses Hitler’s methods against Palestinians’. In it she writes:

“The Zionists’ aim is to remove Palestine from the world’s family of nations. They hope that the world will forget that a Palestinian people ever existed. That is the Zionist “final solution” for the Palestinians”.

She then pre-empts objections by appealing to ‘Zionist’ duplicity:

“The Zionists misuse the memory of the holocaust to breed and justify new wars in the Middle East”.

Because her comparison between Zionists and Nazis is so dangerous, I and others had simply and without demands written in protest. Free speech and the value of debate had been raised in response. As it turned out, there wasn’t debate. The hall was full to capacity with over 120 people with sufficient overflow for a decision to be made to repeat the presentation. The first presentation was made by a refugee from Gaza, the Exeter academic Ghada Ageel who gave an emotional presentation about the shortages food water and medicine in Gaza and their devastating impact on lives there. She had lost family members to poor healthcare. An uncle with liver failure had been prevented from crossing into Israel after refusing a request to collaborate with the Israeli army. She told of her father’s death from cancer without even aspirin to relieve the pain. Her presentation was about the human toll taken by the occupation.

Then Suzanne Weiss made her presentation, which had the specific purpose of drawing an analogy between the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza. It began with her sole and spurious claim to authority, “I’m a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust”. It became clear over the course of the evening that many audience members, including twinning organisers, believed that Weiss had survived the Warsaw Ghetto, and that this conferred on her the authority to speak on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her family perished in Auschwitz when she was a baby, however she herself was spared the inside of a camp or a ghetto. She was sent to an orphanage in her native France aged three and adopted by Americans at the age of nine. Her brief sketch of the US was as a racist and war-fevered state. Israel – “religious and ethnic exclusive state” – more so, she contended, ignoring the plurality of Israel’s population and the absence of a category of race in Israeli law. She talked of the great hate provoked by Zionism and vaguely of Israel’s use of methods once employed by Nazis. She said that Zionists did not want to kill all Palestinians but the basic philosophy of Zionism is the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians “off the face of the earth” so that the world would forget they had ever existed. This she declared, is Israel’s “final solution”. She went on to mention Matan Vilnai’s threat to Gazans – which was already unacceptable enough – confidently interpreting it as an “unmistakeable” threat of a holocaust.

Next came a systematic comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza with respect to methods; motivation; resistance, much of which was made up.

“Racism is the ideology of Euro-American colonial settlers”

she said, wrongly leading her audience to believe that Israel is a colony but failing to clear up the mystery of the colonial power. She told us that

“Zionists want their state to expand and dominate the region”.

She made much of the alliance between Europe’s Jews and the socialist resistance movement. But in those drastically polarised times, many who opposed the Fascists aligned themselves with the Communists. Things are different now and there exists a range of different political opinion and space for free and open discussion. The main obstacle for Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are their respective extremists – they both agree that there should be one state and they would wage war on each other for it if there were. The origins of racism apparently lie with “Euro-American colonialist ruling settlers”, not with the Nazis. The “colonialist settler movement” was “hellbent” on depriving the Palestinians of everything. She quoted Avram Burg that “there are two kinds of people coming out of Auschwitz – those who say “Never again” for the Jews, and those who say “Never again” for humanity.” The latter, she declared, was her type, meaning that people like me – people who believe that the persecution of Jews which saw its zenith in the Holocaust justifies a Jewish state, a place where Jews do not have to exist on sufferance – are designated the other type. As if you can’t say “Never again” for Jews and at the same time “Never again for humanity”.

I made a disgusted remark to my neighbour, was overheard and later repeatedly condemned as a racist. It’s not the first time members of this campaign have called me racist because I’m not an anti-Zionist. This kind of thing has put a lot of people off badly. But then, that may be the idea – “Zionists out of the peace movement” and all that. We are repeatedly told, almost like a mantra, that we are welcome at meetings. But somehow there is a vast gulf between being told we are welcome, and feeling welcome. Speakers like Suzanne Weiss occupy that gulf.

It was all so adrenal and so insubstantial. You listen to Ageel and learn compassion but no strategy. You listen to Weiss and learn nothing about the Palestinians, but why it is necessary to reject and condemn Zionists. There is already a big problem with rejecting Jewish nationalism while accepting and promoting Palestinian nationalism – a bigger danger arises with the term ‘Zionist’ being left undefined and being used in such a way that it readily slips between ‘Jew’ and ‘Israeli’. Indeed there is large overlap between the three. Half of the world’s Jews are Israeli, and the overwhelming majority of them believe in the existence of their state – i.e. are ‘Zionists’. It’s a small step from hating Zionists to hating Israeli Jews, and from hating Israeli Jews to hating all Jews who do not condemn Israeli Jews. So, the Hamas Charter wages explicit war on Jews. In their Democratiya review of Al-Qaradawi’s book Fatawa on Palestine, Gardner and Rich observe that Israelis, Zionists and Jews are conflated and the terms freely mixed throughout the book. The anti-Israel graffiti last Nakba Day appeared on the walls of synagogues in the in the ultra-orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Stamford Hill. There is a current of thought which believes, as the erstwhile doyenne of the Socialist Worker Party Gilad Atzmon believes, that

“the Hebraic identity is the most radical version of the idea of Jewish supremacy, which is a curse for Palestine, a curse for Jews and a curse for the world. It is a major destructive force”

and consequently

“For an Israeli to humanise himself, he must de-zionise himself. In this way, self-hating can become a very productive power. It’s the same sense of self-hating I find, too, in Jews who have given the most to humanity”.

This idea that, while a good Palestinian can be a Palestinian nationalist, Arab nationalist or even an Islamist, a good Jew cannot be a Zionist, is a current of thought which is also familiar in the boycott campaign in UCU which many who oppose it have experienced directly. It is false and corrosive.

Immediately after Weiss had finished the Chair, one of the twinning organisers, attempted to end the event right there. All pretence of debate was abandoned. We were there to be talked at. Protests from the floor persuaded him reluctantly to allow ten minutes for questions. The first few comments permitted from the floor were in criticism of Weiss, and a further question was addressed to the panellists about whether Goldsmiths should twin with an Israeli as well as a Palestinian institution. The panellists were reluctant to answer this, attempting to defer to the chair. Then Ageel was permitted 5 minutes of response before the meeting ended. One audience member rose to her feet, gestured in the direction of the previous commenters and said, “You see, the ones that support Israel have the main power”, urging us to act to counter this in the future.

I left with a colleague, a senior academic whose family died in the Warsaw Ghetto, and who is Zionist, optimistic and left wing. A vigorous debate among maybe 15 students was ongoing in the corridor, which we joined. Students asked my colleague about Zionism and several listened carefully to his responses. Some said they felt that they knew too little about Zionism. There seemed to be a will to find out more. My colleague and one of the twinning organisers swapped details. The activities officer regretted the lack of debate and the imbalanced panel. We objected to the title and poster, which Weiss had chosen and the Student Union had accepted unchallenged.

We carried candles to a vigil on the steps of Deptford Town Hall. There the Chair of the meeting called bombastically for Israel to be subsumed into a single state, and Suzanne Weiss called for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, in order to (her voice rose above the traffic) “force” Israel to submit.

That more or less wrapped things up. One of the organisers told me that we shouldn’t censor such views as Weiss’. I would say in response that the twinning campaign’s invited speakers – and Weiss came to London from Canada specially – defines the character of the twinning campaign. Inviting extremists to paint Israelis as Nazis clearly indicates the priorities of the twinning campaign. Although debate is made much of, only anti-Zionist external speakers have been invited, meaning that what debate there is takes place between privileged official speakers and dissenting Student Union members. And the lack of debate or opportunity for response at this, the most contentious and damaging event to date, with a speaker who controlled the title and publicity, has harmed the reputation of the twinning still further. How does implacable, unopposed hostility to Jewish nationalism help the students at Al-Quds University towards a better education or Goldsmiths students towards a better understanding of the conflict? We need to return to these things and away from bad stories about Israel.

Update (15th November): Two relevant pieces of infomration. What the chair promoted that evening as a “vigil” is he is now retrospectively referring to in a circular email as a “picket”. It was the promotion of the event on Facebook which gave students the false impression that “Suzanne will be speaking about her time in the Warsaw ghetto in Poland as a child and her experiences in the ghettos of the Gaza Strip”.

Mira Vogel
Goldsmiths

THIS JEW HATRED TODAY IS PREPARING THE GROUND FOR A NEW HOLOCAUST OF THE JEWS

by Felix Quigley

February 26, 2009

We on 4international stand totally behind the Jews of the world and of their Homeland Israel.

There has been a huge rise in antisemitism in every part of the world. In Paris 2 years ago a young Jewish person was murdered. In Paris in recent weeks during the Gaza War there has been a massive increase in attacks on Jews.

One of the results is that in Paris the home of the Renaissance Jews have been advised not to go out on the streets after 7 oclock in the evening, and that they should not appear as Jew, meaning to watch what they wear and how they look, headgear etc.

This is due to 2 things.

One is the massive influx of Arabs into France, Arabs who are really Islamists. They are carrying on an invective against Israel.

The second is the role of the modern Media. It was seen in the Mohammed El Durra France 2 affair that the French Media was totally hostile to Israel.

Consequently these antisemitic Arabs in Paris have an unchallenged right to attack Israel politically and Jews physically. Along with that movements which call themselves erroneously “Leftist” are fully joined at the hip with Islam; Marx Lenin and Trotsky are spinning in their graves I am sorry to say.

 

All of these things mean a huge increase in the level of antisemitism.

One of the very worst things which came to a head during the Gaza war was the intense propaganda against Israel. I live in Spain and it was coming from all sides, from the Media and from confused Spanish people, confused by the lies of the Media

Let me go over a few things.

 

1. The Jews withdrew from Gaza. I mean every single last Jew left Gaza and handed the area over to the Arabs. The Jews even left the Arabs property such as green houses which could be used by the Arabs to help them on their way. The Jews also even left synagogues which stripped of the contents Jews look on as mere buildings. But they were sound concrete structures. They could have been used as youth clubs. The Arabs tore them down stone by stone.

2. But then the Arabs of Gaza promptly elected a Fascist Nazi movement of Jew killers, Hamas, who then stepped up their attacks on Israel. Materially with rockets. Verbally by calls to wipe Israel off the map etc. (They are supporters of Ahmadinejad)

IT CAME DOWN TO A CONCRETE PROBLEM…HOW COULD THE JEWS STOP THE ROCKETS

So basically Israel had to decide how to stop the rockets. It is a fact that the Israeli Labourist Kadima Government members were very weak and unpatriotic and allowed Jews to suffer these rockets for many years.

Still that is not my point here.

Those who have attacked Israel must say 2 things

 

1. They must say that Israel has to simply absorb these rocket attacks on their state. This is antisemitism in action. Is that not clear!

2. They must say that Israel must give in to these attacks on its people and follow the agenda of these antisemitic Arab terrorists which means

*pack up their bags and leaving their Homeland set out on their travels around the world once more as a stateless people

*return to the lines of 1967, from where they were attacked actually in 1967 by Nasser and the other Arab states. So why?

Both of these are also obviously antisemitic suggestions to put to Jews.

 

Becoming again a persecuted people is antisemitic suggestion. No?

Returning to lines which the Arabs used to attack before is antisemitic suggestion as well. No?

And in our next part we will look at some of these antisemitic ideas in action in the West of today.

I take the following from the Harry´s Place website despite certain differences with the organizers there

In the first they take a quote from the notorious Israel hater George Galloway. Here Galloway is comparing the Jews to nazis.

“In April and May of 1943, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto were surrounded by barbed wire fences, by the occupiers of Poland, and they faced a choice, in the words of the song of the partisans: ‘They could die on their knees or they could live forever’. And they chose to rise up against their occupier, to use their bodies as weapons, to dig tunnels, to fight, not to die in ones and twos of hunger and typhus, but to die as free men and women. Today, the Palestinian people in Gaza are the new Warsaw Ghetto, and those who are murdering them are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 1943.”

So in that quote from Galloway it is clear that the Palestinians of Gaza are the Jews of the Holocaust and that the Jews today of tiny Israel are the Nazis

And the same kind of thing is seen in the next set of pictures. There is the attack on Jews as being Nazis and carrying out a Holocaust of the Arabs.

But 1300 Arabs were killed and Hamas killed some of these through executions etc. Also Hamas set up so that the Israelis had to kill civilian Arabs. I mean it is quite possible to do this.

The British Muslim Initiative, one of the organisers of the demonstrations, put it on their placards:

As did the Palestinian Forum in Britain:

So this is conscious.

This is an attempt to make the Jews of Israel out to be Nazis.

And this we argue on this site is the preparation for a new Holocaust of the Jews. Nothing ever is as it seems. And when people argue that the Jews are the Nazis of today then that is going to result in a Holocaust of the Jews.

 

It is such an enormous lie that it must have the most severe intent and implications.

IRAN AND THE BOMB REMAINS THE MAIN THREAT TO ISRAEL

by Felix Quigley

February 25, 2009

 

The great dangers facing Israel inthis report from DEBKAfile are obvious

[Begin report here on Iran´s bomb]

The preliminary phase of Iran’s first reactor, built with Russian help at the southern town of Bushehr, was marked by a ceremony Wednesday, Feb. 25. Our sources report that Iranian nuclear teams will first activate the 1,000-MW reactor’s sections in sequence with the help of advanced Russian computers flown in to monitor their progress. The head of Iran’s nuclear commission, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, and the head of Russia’s state Rosatom Atomic Corporation, Sergey Kiriyenko will be on hand.

Iranian and Western nuclear experts say this stage is a vital step forward to making the Bushehr reactor operational. Barring hitches, it will be ready for full operation by August 2009.

The announcement by the Iranian News Agency took Washington and Jerusalem by off-balance. Moscow has continually delayed meeting the deadlines in its $1 billion contract for completing the project. It was hoped that the reactor would never be finished – at least until the US and Russian presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev met for the first time on April 2, at the G-20 summit.

However, the Moscow and Tehran have clearly got together for moves ahead of that meeting: Bringing Iran’s first nuclear reactor to preliminary operation and a contract for selling Iran advanced Russian S-300 air defense missile systems. Israeli officials point to Russian press reports maintaining that Moscow will not execute this contract. However that is not what the Iranian defense minister Gen. Mostafa Najar heard during his visit to the Russian capital last week. Our Moscow sources disclose that he was assured that the S-300 missile sale would be separated from the Moscow-Washington controversy over the deployment of US missile interceptors and radar in East. Europe and delivered by the end of the year.

The Iranian defense minister said Sunday, Feb. 21: “Russian officials are well aware that Moscow, rather than Iran is the target of Washington’s missile plans.” Just back from Moscow, Najar remarked: “The United States, mired in an all-out financial meltdown, will eventually avoid the unnecessary cost of a missile project” – a view he apparently picked up from his Russian hosts.

DEBKAfile‘s military sources reported earlier that that defense minister Najar and his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov made good progress in their talks on the sale of advanced S-300 ground-to-air missiles to Iran. Both sides agreed it was essential to provide Iran’s Bushehr reactor with an effective system against air and missile attack.

Western military sources say the Moscow talks are refining a formula to enable Iran to deploy the S-300 batteries guarding Bushehr at its other nuclear sites as well.

 

Iran’s official news agency says the country’s first nuclear power plant will begin preliminary phase

 

In the above it seems that the role of the US Government of Bush and now Obama in driving for war against Russia, China and India, is at the centre of world power politics.

It is this which is driving Russia and possibly China to line up with the Fascists of Iran. This is not to excuse Russia no more than Trotsky was prepared to excuse Stalin in 1939 in joining with the Nazi regime.

It helps to understand the role of the US though as the main driver for war in the world, and the way the US drives Israel into great danger

THE PROJECTION OF ONE´S OWN MENTALITY ONTO OTHERS…NOT WISE!

I liked these musings by Richard Landes of Augean Stables

[Begin quote from Richard Landes here]

COGNITIVE EGOCENTRISM

The projection of one’s own mentality or “way of seeing the world” onto others, e.g., the teenager who is obsessed with sex, and assumes the same about everyone else. In the current situation of globalization, cognitive egocentrism has its greatest impact in the political relationships between people coming from civil societies and those raised in prime divider societies. Since the basic political principle of Prime divider societies is “rule or be ruled,” “do onto others before they do onto you,” political actors from those cultures assume the same zero-sum, domineering intentions in their opponents (the “enemy”). Since the basic political principles of civil societies is “I’ll give up trying to dominate and trust you to give it up as well,” “if I’m nice to you, you will be nice in return,” assume positive-sum attitudes in their opponents (the “other”). The current situation testifies to a dangerous mis-apprehension that works to the distinct disadvantage to civil society. The media, in particular, as the representative of civil society, emphasizes its role as empathizer, often failing to defend civil society, even exposing it to danger.

LIBERAL COGNITIVE EGOCENTRISM (LCE):

The projection of good faith and fair-mindedness onto others, the assumption that “other” shares the same human values, that everyone prefers positive sum interactions. In a slightly more redemptive mode, LCE holds that all people are good, and if only we treat them right, they will respond well. This is a form of empathy that, like MOS, aspires to the radical victory of justice, and robs the “other” of his or her own beliefs and attitudes. It projects onto rather than detects what the “other” feels.

DOMINEERING COGNITIVE EGOCENTRISM (DCE):

The projection of bad faith onto the other, the assumption that everyone abuses power, that one must rule or be ruled. In deep-seated cases, DCE cannot even perceive the possibility of a positive-sum game: whatever the “other” does, no matter how generous it may seem, is a trap, a covert act of hostility in which the other is really jockeying for superior position in a zero-sum game. Hence DCE has strong affinity for conspiracy theories (the other is malevolent evil that must be opposed at all costs).

MOEBIUS STRIP OF COGNITIVE EGOCENTRISM:

Demopaths are particularly adept at exploiting LCE. They speak in precisely the terms that appeal to LCE, insisting that their struggle is for human rights, fairness and justice, even as their notions of these matters differ wildly from those of the liberals to whom they appeal (DCE). Liberals find themselves confused, since both genuine moderates and demopaths use more or less the same language. Forced to judge, many liberals, eager to believe anything civil these people might say and any hope for peace now they may hold out, prefer to project good faith, taking the protestations of demopaths at face value, becoming their dupes.

As a result, a dysfunctional relationship between demopaths (DCE) and their dupes (LCE) has emerged. Under current circumstances, where most liberals cannot even detect the existence of their own LCE nor imagine the possible DCE of others, this dysfunctional relationship works radically to the advantage of the demopaths. When Western authorities empower demopaths rather than sincere moderates, they hurt the forces of civil society and human rights and empower the forces of dominion and war.

The surprise of the British to the 7-7 bombings, and subsequently to the much higher levels of support for it in an English Muslim population than they had previously been led to believe (by a paradigmatically credulous press and intelligentsia), reflect precisely this dynamic. Europe may fall to this dysfunctional dynamic, although the emergence of hard questioning has begun to identify demopaths disguising themselves as moderates, and to reveal the jihadi discourse beneath the moderate rhetoric.

 

Landes laid the basis. Then he went on to look at some writing by Joel Fishman. I include comments at the end. It was written September 2008. Since then Obama has come onto the scene.  It is lengthy but brilliant.

Joel Fishman, an American-born and -trained historian living and thinking in Jerusalem and whom I am pleased to call a friend, has an excellent meditation on the 70th anniversary of the “Munich Agreement,” the prime example of the folly of appeasement in Western history. It is a sad tale of liberal cognitive egocentrism, moral arrogance, and, as Fishman puts it, “lack of imagination [for evil]” that drove Chamberlain not only to pursue a(n effectively) suicidal policy, but to silence anyone who disagreed with it and keep “his” public in the dark. The interesting thing is that not only are those who forget history condemned to repeat it, but especially those who refuse to learn from history… And therein lies our curious paradox: why are our leaders – even, here below, George Bush – so intent on denying the lesson Munich offers.

Seventy Years Since the Munich Agreement

By Joel Fishman
FrontPageMagazine.com Friday, September 26, 2008

Photographic stills and newsreels have immortalized the moment when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich and at Heston airport triumphantly waved the signed agreement in the air. The British Prime Minister proclaimed that he had brought “Peace in our Time… Peace with Honor,” and the crowds received him as a hero because he responded to their deepest hopes.

The job of the historian is not merely to look back from a sadder and wiser time – after some 50 million people died in World War II, most of them civilians – and say, “what folly!” The historian needs to recreate that time of “innocence,” before people knew it was folly, and grasp the enthusiasm, the sense of triumph that this folly inspired at the time. Only then can we begin to grasp the conditions under which it can happen again. Note the reference to an “honorable peace” in Chamberlain’s statement

[The following is the wording of a printed statement that Neville Chamberlain waved as he stepped off the plane on 30 September, 1938 after the Munich Conference had ended the day before]: 

“We, the German Führer and Chancellor, and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for our two countries and for Europe.

We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.”

[Chamberlain read the above statement in front of 10 Downing St. and said:]

“My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour… I believe it is peace for our time… Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”.

“Peace in our time… peace with honor!” Something for everyone. Curious that someone who had so little understanding of what “honor” meant in the Nazi context would declare his concessions honorable. And behind it lurks the coming of the worst war in history and the greatest disgrace imaginable for Chamberlain. As for sleeping soundly, it was almost two years to a day that the blitz began and Londoners slept underground.

The contemporary historian and Zionist, Sir Louis Namier, described this scene which has provided one of the iconic images of the twentieth century:

When Chamberlain, stepping from the aeroplane at Heston, waved his “treaty” with Hitler, like a happy autograph hunter—”here is a paper which bears his name”—Europe was astounded. Could Chamberlain’s trust, joy, and triumph be genuine? …. He was shrewd, ignorant, and self-opinionated, and had the capacity to deceive himself as much as was required by his deeper instincts and his purpose, and also to deceive those who chose to be deceived.

As my pappy says, “sincerity is the cheapest of virtues.” To which I would add, “and those who place their faith in cheap sincerity have no one but themselves to blame.”

This year, Rosh Hashanah falls on Tuesday, 30 September, the seventieth anniversary of the Munich Agreement.

And the eighth anniversary of the Al Durah affair.

Just after midnight on Sunday, 30 September 1938, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, Eduard Daladier, and Benito Mussolini signed it. This agreement transferred to Germany the fortified frontier region, the Sudetenland which was inhabited by a German-speaking minority (as well as a good number of Czechs) whom the Nazis had incited into a state of revolt against the Czechoslovak government. This gathering took place under the threat of war, and no Czechoslovak representative was present. To make things worse, France, which had a treaty of alliance with Czechoslovakia, betrayed its junior partner.

Munich was a transaction by which the larger democratic powers of Europe, Britain and France, imposed fatal sacrifices on a smaller state in the name of peace. They forced Czechoslovakia to make “territorial concessions” in order to appease an aggressor, but the aggressor, Nazi Germany quickly violated the agreement and in March 1939 gobbled up the whole state of Czechoslovakia.

In the lingo, this is what’s known as “sharing your lunch with a polar bear.” But in this case, it’s really telling someone else to share his lunch with a polar bear. And it’s done by redefining polar bear. Would a polar bear by any other name be less of a carnivore?

After grabbing the sacrifices which England and France forced on others, Hitler went on to make fresh demands. This episode shows the high cost of politics without morality both to the large states that engaged in it and the small ones upon which they forced suicidal sacrifices.

I think Fishman understates a key element here. For Hitler, Chamberlains folly in misreading his intentions was not only useful in getting what he wanted without having to declare open hostility, it was a sign of weakness that invited further aggression. Appeasement not only did not quench Hitler’s thirst, it whet his appetite.

Frank McDonough, an historian from Manchester University, republished a citation from a document of 1926 which revealed how the policy-making elite of the Foreign Office viewed Britain’s place in the world:

We have all we want – perhaps more. Our sole object is to keep what we want and live in peace … The fact is that war and rumours of war, quarrels and friction, in any corner of the world, spell loss and harm to British commercial interests… whatever else may be the outcome of a disturbance of the peace, we shall be the losers.

Britain, according to this outlook, was a “satisfied” power and would have been reluctant to assume a world leadership role. Considering this cautious perspective and the great interests at stake, the principle of appeasement had a distinct appeal. Not the least, those who wished to maintain the status quo hoped to achieve a policy objective through what was essentially a commercial transaction, using the territory of others to purchase of peace and quiet.

Fishman’s emphasis brings out one element of the mentality revealed in the quotation: the positive-sum mentality that prevails among those who substitute business for war as the principle of international relations. It’s profitable for everyone (win-win), even if more so for some than others (what I call closed positive sum: everyone wins, we win more than anyone), and it’s above all “rational” in the sense that Adam Smith defined economic behavior in the Wealth of Nations.

But there’s more to this than just “rational, positive-sum behavior.” To those of us who benefit from it most – educated, capitally endowed or salaried individuals – it “makes sense.” It’s the definition of rational. But to assume that everyone else shares this perspective, or at least, once offered a chance to share the perspective, will in fact do so, is liberal cognitive egocentrism. And that projection is a masterpiece of “generous” self-deception: everyone is really “like us”; they all want peace and prosperity. The end product of this kind of projection of our liberal good will – everyone is, at heart, a good person – is what I’ve called the Politically Correct Paradigm (PCPI).

But as I have argued, this kind of mutually beneficial approach to human and international relations makes important emotional demands, in particular the renunciation of everything from the thrill of defeating someone (hard zero-sum, I only win when you lose, or as some historians describe the mentality of prime-divider societies, “take not make”), to trusting others to give up that thrill too, to renouncing the quiet pleasures of Schadenfreude (delighting in the suffering of others). It takes real emotional maturity and considerable courage to do so. We who grow up in societies where we are, from an early age, encouraged to relegate such zero-sum emotions to the playing fields, have difficulty appreciating how difficult these demands really are.

Shortly after the Second World War, Sir Orme Sargent, (1884–1962), a senior member of the Foreign Office, and opponent of appeasement, stated that under certain circumstances it could be justified, but

[Appeasement] becomes questionable as a method of negotiation only if it can be shown to be immoral; i.e. the appeaser sacrifices the rights and interests of a third party and not his own when making his concession; or if it is clearly dangerous, i.e. where the concession made seriously undermines the strength of the appeaser either internally or internationally; this is especially so when the concession has to be repeated, for appeasement then becomes nothing less than blackmail; and lastly when the whole process of appeasement is just ineffective; i.e. when the appeaser having to make his concession gets no quid pro quo in return.

Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s biographer and an historian, writing in the sixties explained that

Appeasement was rooted in the belief that human nature could not be entirely overwhelmed by evil, that even the most dangerous looking situation could be ameliorated and that the most irascible politician could be placated, if treated with respect.

Note the use of the term “respect.” What people want most of all is to be treated with respect, and since respect is a monetarily cost-free expense, for those most concerned about counting their coins, it’s cheap at half the price… why not?

This is, of course, the high-minded version: treat your “neighbor” well and he’ll reciprocate. Especially when your neighbor has mistreated you – shown you contempt publicly, moved your boundary stones so as to shave off land, cheated you or bullied you – to be kind is not to gain his confidence and good will, but his contempt. Positive sum behavior registers as generosity to those with liberal cognitive egocentrism, to those who work from an honor-shame paradigm, it registers as weakness.

Of course, such respect and trust “invested” in people who don’t deserve it has long term costs, as the nations led by Chamberlain and Daladier were soon to learn. Because, on one level, it’s pure self-deception to think you’re being generous when in fact you’re being bullied. And the key way to know that you’re being cowardly rather than brave, is when the person you respect betrays your expectations. If you continue to show him respect, you’re a coward. Once shame on you; twice shame on me.

A businessman who possessed great self-confidence, Chamberlain did not know European history and the characteristics of its different peoples. He took firm control of Britain’s foreign policy and regulated the information which reached the public. This was particularly dangerous, because he over-estimated his own abilities and failed to recognize the danger of Hitler’s methods as well as the moral costs of submitting to blackmail. As was frequently the case, personal ignorance and complacency found expression in over-optimism.

This aggressive optimism deserves close attention. It’s the same thing that drives groups like the “J Street” initiative. we know what the problem is. We know that if only the Israelis would make enough concessions, then the Palestinians would accept and we’d have peace. Therefore any means to make Israelis make concessions is legitimate… including keeping from the public information that could undermine the picture we have drawn.

I think Joel may actually understate the problem here. Chamberlain comes off in this paragraph as an over-confident, well-intentioned fool. My impression is that Chamberlain was an enthusiastic fool, someone who not only believed in himself, but did so with a kind of enlightened zeal. And that, further, he was assisted here by a media and a world of public opinion that eagerly embraced his perception of himself and reality. As Joel noted earlier: Chamberlain “had the capacity to deceive himself as much as was required by his deeper instincts and his purpose, and also to deceive those who chose to be deceived.” Aye, there’s the rub. Why would be “choose” to be deceived, especially when the costs are so high? And if they didn’t know what was coming down the pike, what’s our excuse today?

Over the decades, revisionist historians have written that Chamberlain was “strong-willed, competent and clear-sighted.” According to them, the blame for the Second World War really dated back to the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles which the victorious Allies imposed on Germany after the conclusion of the First World War.

Historian’s note here. I’ve always found the “cause” of WW II to be most bizarre. In the canon of international post-war behavior, the conditions of Versailles were hardly egregious in their desire to humiliate a defeated foe. (After all, putting them in their place, is often the point of a war.) The Germans had done far more humiliating things to the French in 1871, including using Versailles to crown their emperor. The problem after WW I — the war to end all wars — arose because the most paranoid, shame-enraged lunatics in German culture managed to sell the Germans on a narrative that fed their grievance. The victory of the “man of resssentiment” that Neitzsche had railed against a generation earlier.

And Chamberlain’s insistence on treating Hitler like an equal, a man who could share his world view if treated with enough respect, played right into that. Still worse, as Richard Bassett has recently argued, by cutting this hasty deal with Hitler, Chamberlain actually forestalled a plot to drive Hitler from power by people who understand the catastrophe that would befall Germany if it went to war with Europe. But apparently Chamberlain felt that Hitler’s anti-communist measures (including concentration camps for CP members), made keeping him in power a good idea.

It’s a similar approach — treat the problematic figure with respect no matter what he says or does — that one sees, for example, in Obama’s reference to Putin as a “20th century dictator,” whom we can bring ‘up’ to being a “21st century leader.” Idem our MSM’s treatment of Ahmadenijad.

Despite this insight and new findings, the great historical questions relating to this serious failure of judgment still haunt the present. How could Chamberlain have failed to grasp the intentions of his enemies; how did he fail to sense the danger before him; and why did he place his trust in Hitler?

Chamberlain’s contemporaries tried to answer these questions. One of these was the First Lord of the Admiralty Duff Cooper who wrote that Chamberlain’s greatest personal shortcoming was his lack of imagination. Cooper, who was a member of Chamberlain’s cabinet and resigned after the Munich Agreement, wrote that “Chamberlain … lacked experience of the world, and he lacked also the imagination which can fill the gaps of inexperience. He had never moved in the great world of politics or of finance, and the continent of Europe was for him a closed book. He had been a successful Lord Mayor of Birmingham and for him the Dictators of Germany and of Italy were like the Lord Mayors of Liverpool and Manchester, who might belong to different political parties and have different interests, but who must desire the welfare of humanity, and be fundamentally decent men like himself. This profound misconception lay at the root of his policy and explains his mistakes.”

This is what I call “liberal cognitive egocentrism” (LCE). It’s a tendency to project his world onto the world. In more brutal terms it boils down to the liberal’s lack of an imagination for evil. “Who would choose war? War is hell! We all know that.” To someone like this, the world of zero-sum emotions are a closed book (and hence, the European continent). After all, the Europe he visited was about to get swept by an ecumenical movement of the ultimate in hard zero-sum, exterminationist anti-Semitism).

Note that one of the findings of the 9-11 Commission was that our intelligence forces “lacked imagination” — they never imagined that hijackers would commit suicide rather than negotiate. If they had, for a moment, considered that the fires that drove suicide bombers in Israel, burned among the Islamic enemies of the USA (rather than that Palestinian rage at Israel was sui generis, and probably deserved), they might have not lacked the imagination. But then, who wants to imagine they have the same enemies the Jews do?

Chamberlain viewed the world in his own image and actually believed that Hitler at heart was as decent as he was.

Substitute Larry King for Chamberlain and Ahmadinejad for Hitler.

Therefore, he hoped to look him in the eye, talk to him man-to-man, and get his personal word. Chamberlain, who viewed the problem in personal terms, was not concerned with the message of weakness he conveyed to Hitler. His efforts strengthened Hitler in Germany at a time when his own generals opposed the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Hitler, for his part, contemptuously referred to Chamberlain as a fool, to use a generous euphemism.

The perfect pair of demopath and dupe and the inevitable conclusion of their interaction: “peace” in our time.

Winston Churchill, in his speech to the House of Commons, of 5 October1938 explained what Chamberlain did not quite grasp, that the real issue at stake was one of morality and justice: “Many people, no doubt, honestly believe that they are only giving away the interests of Czechoslovakia, whereas I fear we shall find that we have deeply compromised, and perhaps fatally endangered, the safety and even the independence of Great Britain and France….We have sustained a defeat without a war….”

In contemporary terms, Churchill would be (and was) labeled an (apocalyptic) alarmist who made a mountain out of a molehill. Czechoslovakia is the acorn, and Churchill is a Chicken-Little.

A parallel with the current situation may not be politically correct, but is worthy of some attention. In his address to the Nuremberg Rally, on 12 September 1938 Hitler made an explicit comparison between the Sudeten Germans and the Palestinian Arabs: “I am in no way willing that here in the heart of Germany a second Palestine [i.e., Jewish state within a state] should be permitted to arise. The poor Arabs are defenseless and deserted. The Germans in Czechoslovakia are neither defenseless, nor are they deserted, and people should take notice of that.”

The comparison is revealing, and parallels the current Palestinian effort to claim they are the “Jews” of the conflict, the innocent victims of terrible aggression. And certainly the German inhabitants of the Sudeten had grievances. But they were far from innocent. Hitler used them as a fifth column, and when the Nazis took power, they joined the Nazi party (17+%) at more than twice the rate of Germans (7+%). The best parallel today might be the way the Palestinians who lived in Kuwait behaved when Saddam took it over.

Thus, if in today’s discussions one compares the bitter fate of the Sudeten Germans with that of the Arabs of Palestine, it is a legitimate part of the discourse. Hitler made the comparison. Today, many Sudeten Germans now live in the German state of Bavaria, and as a result of hard work have largely rebuilt their lives and achieved financial comfort. This group is well-represented in German politics and vocal in its claims for return. Nonetheless, there seems to be a tacit international appreciation of the reason that the successors of Czechoslovakia have firmly refused to permit this minority to live in their midst.

Do the Israelis have to let the Palestinians misbehave so badly (try and almost succeed in their vicious desires) in order to have the world say, “you know, Arabs, do something about those poor Palestinian refugees, but don’t expect the world community to insist that they have a right to ‘do their thing’ within a sovereign Jewish state.”?

In recent times, the proposition known as “Land for Peace,” bears some similarity to the original appeasement transaction. For example, the leading powers of the West in their desire to gain favor with the Arab world, have forced Israel to make all manner of unreciprocated sacrifices. The method is similar to that of appeasement of the thirties as well as a cycle of concessions which are met with fresh demands. However, when such a process takes place in slow motion and the absence of a direct threat of war as in 1938, it is possible to conceal what is really happening. When on 4 October 2001, Prime Minister Sharon protested against this type of appeasement in his famous Czechoslovakia Speech, the Bush administration publicly and forcefully rebuked him.

This incident, occurred shortly after 9-11, and illustrates some fascinating dynamics of international diplomacy and the media. Sharon said:

“I call on the Western democracies, and primarily the leader of the Free World, the United States, do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938 when Europe sacrificed Czechoslovakia. Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense… Israel will not be Czechoslovakia. Israel will fight terrorism.”

Sharon made this remark in anger at the pressure on Israel to make further concessions to the Palestinians — this is in the run-up to the “Road Map for Peace” — while the Palestinians carried on a campaign of murderous violence against Israelis — this was in the waxing wave of suicide bombings. In short, he felt he was being asked to share his lunch with a polar bear.

Bush, through a number of spokesmen, objected vehemently to the implied comparison to Chamberlain, insisting that the US was Israel’s best friend. The indignation needs to be understood in the context of Bush’s efforts to woo Arab countries in his fight against Bin Laden, and his need for Israel to keep a low profile during that process, just as they had for his father during the first Gulf War. Later, Bush indirectly took back his indignation and echoed Sharon’s remarks in his speech to the Knesset in 2008 — piquing an outraged response from Barrak Obama and the MSM.

Sharon had stepped on a politically incorrect mine. The prevailing wisdom, for reasons beyond reason, insists that no one can be compared to Hitler, that such things are inflammatory, the equivalent of hate speech, and if applied to Muslims, signs of extreme Islamophobia. (So an exhibit in Toronto that compares Ahmadinejad to Hitler has been banned as “too controversial and inflammatory.”) So we can’t analyze the situation, nor meditate on how sacrificing Israel (intentionally or not) will only whet the appetite of Jihadis, who’s problems with the West only begin with Israel.

Although much has been written on the subject, and new sources will still emerge, we may identify some of human shortcomings which seventy years ago led to the disastrous attempt to purchase peace at Munich with the “concessions of the weak.” Some of these were: a lack of imagination, self-delusion, denial of danger, ignorance of history and exaggerated optimism.

I would say that one of the more fruitful alleys to explore would be the operation of a “politically correct” atmosphere in 1930s England, in which anyone who warned of danger got dismissed as a war- and hate-monger.

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19 Comments »

1. I think the need to not have the same enemies as the Jews is one cause, but not the only cause, of the new anti Semitism. When I think of the current anti Semitism in France I tend to blame it instinctively on a deep cultural atavism. Sort of like the rural Virginian taste for gambling on dog fights. But, no, something is frightening the French (and lot of other Westerners) more than the prospect of being labeled anti Semitic. Books about the Jewish control of US foreign policy issuing from Harvard have become respectable with astonishing speed. Indeed, anti Semitism has become pretty well cost free. Conversely I notice wearing Islamic clothing in the West has become a cost free form of intimidation that immigrants in Perth Western Australia use regularly. Amusingly we still have tribal Aborigines who also tend to see things in tribal terms. They sometimes dress in desert camouflage (They know who the strongest tribe is) and ride around the public transport train system intimidating those who seem to be failing to show them proper respect. They work a crowd by one good sized man getting up and saying very loudly to no one in partiulclar :”This is MY COUNTRY” some loud cutting wistles will be heard from elswhere in the train. What might happen next is left hanging – sometimes a brawl, sometimes not. I think of it as civil society at an rather earlier level of development. 🙂

   Comment by Lorenz Gude — September 28, 2008 @ 10:58 am

2. response to Lorenz:

   I think the need to not have the same enemies as the Jews is one cause, but not the only cause, of the new anti Semitism.

   agreed. given how dangerous it is for europeans — it stokes the flames of global jihad — it undoubtedly has to have great emotional appeal in order to be so popular. one thing i think is clear, there’s clearly a great pleasure (Schadenfreude) in being able to say, “you jews, thousands of years you’re oppressed and no sooner do you get the chance but you turn around and do it to the poor palestinians (PCP1), and, while you’re at it, saying “you’re as bad as we were, no, come to think of it, you’re as bad as the nazis were. (PCP2)

   When I think of the current anti Semitism in France I tend to blame it instinctively on a deep cultural atavism. Sort of like the rural Virginian taste for gambling on dog fights. But, no, something is frightening the French (and lot of other Westerners) more than the prospect of being labeled anti Semitic. Books about the Jewish control of US foreign policy issuing from Harvard have become respectable with astonishing speed. Indeed, anti Semitism has become pretty well cost free.

   just like journalistic criticism of Israel.

   Conversely I notice wearing Islamic clothing in the West has become a cost free form of intimidation that immigrants in Perth Western Australia use regularly. Amusingly we still have tribal Aborigines who also tend to see things in tribal terms. They sometimes dress in desert camouflage (They know who the strongest tribe is) and ride around the public transport train system intimidating those who seem to be failing to show them proper respect. They work a crowd by one good sized man getting up and saying very loudly to no one in partiulclar :”This is MY COUNTRY” some loud cutting whistles will be heard from elswhere in the train. What might happen next is left hanging – sometimes a brawl, sometimes not. I think of it as civil society at an rather earlier level of development. 🙂

   yes. and the brawls are interesting, because in terms of tribal and territorial rules, if you don’t resist, you end up encouraging further aggression, but if you brawl at every “insult” you end up regressing to a pre-civil-society state. what wd happen if when an aborigine said that, the response was, “yes, and my people brought the train system you’re using. we all have something to contribute.”?

   i think it’s impt to challenge civilly, but to challenge. silence invites aggression. of course, challenge can too, and you do have to be ready to defend your dignity if the interlocutor goes violent, as in, “you f***! who the f*** do you think you are?!” not something most of us honkeys are willing to do. (i haven’t been in a fight since 9th grade (last year of public school).

   Comment by Richard Landes — September 28, 2008 @ 11:26 am

3. This episode shows the high cost of politics without morality both to the large states that engaged in it and the small ones upon which they forced suicidal sacrifices.

   And for the past 70 years they have been trying, the British and the French at least, to continue sacrificing the remains of those who paid a heavy price for such base behaviour.

   But apparently Chamberlain felt that Hitler’s anti-communist measures (including concentration camps for CP members), made keeping him in power a good idea.

   Well, given British literature up to WW2 to go on that was a given and to some degree one could equate communist with today’s use of neo-con as a code-word.

   In contemporary terms, Churchill would be (and was) labeled an (apocalyptic) alarmist

   and McCain a maverick!

   Comment by Cynic — September 28, 2008 @ 11:32 am

4. Thank you so much for the excellent commentary on my essay.
   I enjoyed it.
   It helped me appreciate the subject just a bit more.

   I liked the ref. to the 9-11 report.

   I plan to pursue the matter of imagination in a future publication and in this context would like to share a quotation from one of my earlier articles, “Failure of Perception and self-deception: Israel’s Quest for Peace in the Context of Related Historical Cases,” Jerusalem Letter / Viewpoints, No. 450, 20 Adar 5761 / 15 March 2001,
   http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp450.htm:

   To site another example, the case of France in World War II, Marc Bloch noted the German army’s “methodical opportunism,” particularly its capacity to move speedily over terrain, among other things, which became an unforeseen advantage:

   What drove our armies to disaster was the cumulative effect of a great number of mistakes. One glaring characteristic is, however, common to all of them. Our leaders or those who acted for them were incapable of thinking in terms of a new war. In other words, the German triumph was essentially a triumph of intellect — and it is that which makes it so particularly serious.

   [Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat, trans. Gerard Hopkins (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 36.]

   Now, back to the commentary: Chamberlain was tough and cagey. He was not a fool, — and this is the problem. He was a strong man who kept his party intimidated. He was clever but not smart enough to know his limitations and the danger with which he was confronted. The problem was basically that he misjudged the situation and refused to grasp that he did not stand any chance. Essentially, the situation was over his head. Hitler wanted to conquer large areas of territory, starting with Eastern Europe and made it clear that he was not interested in border adjustments.

   Comment by Joel Fishman — September 29, 2008 @ 2:39 am

5. Joel, have you read Aryeh Stav’s booklet on the Czechoslovak crisis and Munich?? Stav relies a great deal on Bennett’s book on the crisis. The book includes as an appendix the so-called Halifax Report or Runciman Report [I forget the exact title]. This report sounds very much like much of what is written today about Israel and Judea/Samaria. It complains about Czech colonization of the Sudetenland, oppression of Sudeten Germans, etc. Very much like what is said today about Israel. So maybe Chamberlain’s surrender at Munich was a premeditated policy, perhaps understanding the consequences but not caring or even desiring them. Maybe NC was not so naive at all but rather cynical and disingenuous.

   Comment by Eliyahu — September 29, 2008 @ 5:48 am

6. Everything is New Under the Sun…

   Tonight is the start of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It is a time for reflection on the last year and the start of a 10 day period in which Jews repent for past sins and pray to be……

   Trackback by ShrinkWrapped — September 29, 2008 @ 8:44 am

7. cynic,

   churchill was a leader, warts and all. mccain is NOT a maverick. don’t compare them. night and day.

   there are NO leaders in the US. like in israel and most of europe (and now the east too) there is only a political/economic class catering to itself, f***ing up and then dodging responsibility. just take a look at the bailout. greed, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and cowardice.

   Comment by oao — September 29, 2008 @ 1:35 pm

8. not something most of us honkeys are willing to do. (i haven’t been in a fight since 9th grade (last year of public school).

   there are still those who fight, but they are bullying those in our society who, like you and i, have been conditioned not to respond.

   so the west instead of responding to the jihadist threat, is riddled with insider exploitation and screwing, thus actually making the job of jihad easier.

   Comment by oao — September 29, 2008 @ 1:39 pm

9. Two comments:

   1) I don’t think Chamberlain thought Hitler was decent, just not suicidally reckless. And the fact is that Hitler was extreme even among the Nazis and the German generals. Goering, for instance, didn’t want the war IIRC. Even the German public was far from eager for war in 1939 (unlike 1914).

   2) It wasn’t just Chamberlain who was desperate to avoid war, it was the whole British and French public. It’s hard to understand just how great the trauma of WW I was. If the U.S. today lost as much as France did then, it would mean over ten million dead.

   Britain suffered less, but it was still very grim. For example: earlier today, I happened to look at a short biography of Grace Crowfoot, a British woman who with her husband was a very successful archaeologist and naturalist in the early 20th century. She had four brothers: all died in the war, even the one who was a minister. Every forecast about “the next war” suggested that the fighting would just as bad, with aerial bombing of cities adding a new dimension of horror. (In pre-war planning, Home Defense Executive estimated more bombing casualties for the first week than actually happened in the entire war.)

   There is no question that Chamberlain was wrong. But it is arrogant to insist that his error was obvious at the time. We salute Churchill for being right when it was not obvious.

   Comment by Rich Rostrom — September 30, 2008 @ 4:49 pm

10. oao,

    churchill was a leader, warts and all. mccain is NOT a maverick. don’t compare them. night and day.

    I was not comparing Them, just comparing the criticism of Them.

    Rich,
    But it is arrogant to insist that his error was obvious at the time.
    Thanks to an un-free information society (where the media could not print what they wanted for all said and done) the general population could not imagine what was going on; Today the media can print basically what they want but they are now the retainers of censorship).

    Comment by Cynic — October 1, 2008 @ 1:40 pm

11. Yes, Cynic, the media censor themselves. They deliberately withhold information. Parts of the Israeli media do this in regard to Arab-Israeli peace possibilities. Tom Segev, the contemptible falsifier of history and Israeli Vichyite, recently expressed this in an NYTimes book review on a book about Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Holocaust-collaborating mufti of Jerusalem. According to a comment on his review [I believe by Noah Pollak in the Contentions blog of Commentary] Segev essentially argued that historical info about the Mufti’s and other Palestinian Arabs’ Nazi collaboration could harm “peace” prospects and the “peace process” and should therefore be suppressed. Despite Segev’s frequent dishonesty in his imposture as a “historian,” he can keep on going on his merry crooked way as long as HaAretz keeps him on the payroll and publishes his scribblings. RL mentions above that Chamberlain too suppressed untoward info.

    Now, curiously, nobody has mentioned that the Munich Pact was followed several months later by the “palestine White Paper” [Cmd 6019]. This policy effectively prevented Jewish refugees from finding refuge in the internationally designated Jewish National Home when the Jews most needed a home. It was a violation of the mandate to foster development of the Jewish National Home that the UK had received from the international community in 1920 [San Remo] and 1922 [League of Nations], as the League’s Permanent Mandates Commission determined at the time. So Chamberlain was well aware of his breach of commitment to the Jews, as well as of his betrayal of Czechoslovakia. Further, Chamberlain must have known of the tendentious nature of the Runciman Report mentioned above which served as a “moral” justification for his “appeasement” policy. So again we should ask just how naive NC was. Was he simply naive and ignorant of international politics as claimed above? Or was he disingenous? Further, there is some evidence that Daladier was well aware of the likely consequences of the Munich Pact. How foolish was NC? Didn’t he know or understand as much as Daladier did?

    Arie [Aryeh] Stav’s booklet is called: Czechoslovakia 1938 — Israel Today [Ariel/Sha`arey Tiqvah, Israel: Ariel Center for Policy Research 1997]. There was a second edition published in Sha`arey Tiqvah and available through the mail.

    What I find striking is the parallel between pro-PLO slogans uttered today and pro-Sudeten German slogans uttered before Munich. “Self-determination” has been used in both cases. Likewise “justice”. The Runciman Report reproduced in full by Bennet and from him in part in Stav’s booklet [in several quotes] elaborates the theme of Czech “colonization” of the Sudetenland and grossly exaggerates or misrepresents the situation of the Sudeten Germans. Just like today concerning the Arabs in Judea-Samaria.

    See:
    JW Bennet, Munich, Prologue to Tragedy [New York 1964].

    Runciman Report, Cmd. 5847, No. 1

    Arie Stav, Czechoslovakia 1938 — Israel Today [Ariel/Sha`arey Tiqvah, Israel: Ariel Center for Policy Research 1997].

    Comment by Eliyahu — October 2, 2008 @ 8:49 am

12. Eliyahu: “the parallel between pro-[Palestinian] slogans uttered today and pro-Sudeten German slogans…”

    One problem is that in both cases there is a valid point. “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” When a large, distinct, geographically cohesive population objects to being governed by a regime to which they never gave allegiance, they have a legitimate grievance.

    The cession of the Sudetenland to Germany was not a crime or tragedy in itself: had Germany stopped there (and had a sane government), everything would have been fine. But the German government was insane, and the Sudetenland was a step to the conquest of all Czechoslovakia and the rest of Europe.

    Likewise, granting the demands of Palestinians for self-government and even for “return” to Israel would not be a disastrous problem in itself; that is, if the political and social culture of Palestinians (and Arabs generally) was not putrescently corrupt, psychotically delusional, and murderously violent. If Arabs would behave like Swedes, or even Thais or Chileans, Israelis could live with them on the terms they ask.

    But just as Hitler used the Sudetenland to destroy Czechoslovakia, the Palestinians would use self-government and return to attack and destroy Jews there.

    That is why neither self-government or return can be conceded. Mere analogy to the Sudetenland is not sufficient.

    Comment by Rich Rostrom — October 2, 2008 @ 1:28 pm

13. When a large, distinct, geographically cohesive population objects to being governed by a regime to which they never gave allegiance, they have a legitimate grievance.

    Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that this is correct.

    Every current nation sits on conquered land and has segments of population that do not give allegiance to the govt. How many of them have the history of the jews: being expelled from their land, systematically discriminated against, exterminated, and forced to return to their original land to escape? And how many of them, even without this background, are being held to the standard of returning the land and committing suicide?

    Let me more specific: Are the americans being pressured to return the land to the indians? After all, the indians are not as barbaric as the palestinians.

    You see, if the world were as sensitive to those other nations’ problems as it is to Israel’s, one could have taken it seriously. As it is, BS.

    As to legitimate grievance, my a**. I suggest people study very carefully the history of the middle east and the details of how modern Israel was created, rather than swallow lock stock and barrel the arab propaganda, based on a myth they were indoctrinated with in order to escape their shame.

    Comment by oao — October 3, 2008 @ 2:35 am

14. Now, curiously, nobody has mentioned that the Munich Pact was followed several months later by the “palestine White Paper” [Cmd 6019]. This policy effectively prevented Jewish refugees from finding refuge in the internationally designated Jewish National Home when the Jews most needed a home. It was a violation of the mandate to foster development of the Jewish National Home that the UK had received from the international community in 1920 [San Remo] and 1922 [League of Nations], as the League’s Permanent Mandates Commission determined at the time. So Chamberlain was well aware of his breach of commitment to the Jews, as well as of his betrayal of Czechoslovakia.

    And after NC came Ernest Bevin to twist the knife more and then along came Anthony Eden to torture those remnants of the camps even more.

    That’s why I don’t accept the excuses of naivety,ignorance etc., whether applied to politicians or the MSM.
    Chamberlain may have made some un-”documented” promises to der Fuhrer.
    Likewise the MSM is obeying some un-disclosed aspect of their agenda.
    Segev is not acting through ignorance or stupidity, but from some mental incapacity to admit the truth and through chicanery trying to force a result at odds with reality to save, dare I say this, his “honour”.

    Comment by Cynic — October 3, 2008 @ 9:36 am

15. Segev is not acting through ignorance or stupidity, but from some mental incapacity to admit the truth and through chicanery trying to force a result at odds with reality to save, dare I say this, his “honour”.

    Not to mention his desire to convince himself that he’s a moral better to other israelis, by “caring” about the “poor, oppressed” pals, whose barabarity he closes himself to.

    Comment by oao — October 3, 2008 @ 10:45 pm

16. oao & cynic, consider the possibility that segev acts out of the Judeophobic tradition of most of the Left, a tradition going back in German thought to Luther and from him to Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Bauer, etc etc, and from them to Marx. Actually, this tradition of non-christological Judeophobia is also found on the “right”. [Whatever right and left mean]. So segev could very well be acting within a tradition and it may also be that he gets funding from some Judeophobic or Israelophobic source in the West, which could be the case with some other HaAretz journalists too. There is no contradiction between these two possibilities.

    Comment by Eliyahu — October 6, 2008 @ 5:24 am

17. Eliyahu,

    With the case of the Segevs, Pappes et al it is a pathological dislike of their roots which they reject to be acclaimed by the “other”; they reject what they know and wish to have no part of while the Luthers of this world want no part of what is different and which they do not “know”.
    Both of course demand that only their way is the correct way.

    Just going by Pappe’s reaction to his student’s “thesis” (forged facts) one can ascertain a certain insincerity and crookedness in his makeup.
    Segev no doubt also has had some psychotic contratemps with some aspect of Israeli (Jewish) society (just look at the behaviour of the heirs, past and present – what were they indoctrinated with in Germany? – to the NYT) and having dreamed a dream (Man of Lamancha) now wishes it to be true, trying through twisted words to make it come to life and get the better of those he holds in contempt.

    Perceiving comparable behaviour from others such as Soros and South Africa’s Kasrils I am perhaps extrapolating but then I am not a psychiatrist.

    Comment by Cynic — October 6, 2008 @ 8:44 am

18. Cynic, you are illustrating my thesis about the malign influence of most of the German philosophic tradition on both “right” and “left”, not contradicting it.

    Comment by Eliyahu — October 7, 2008 @ 12:41 pm

19. Eliyahu,
    I was not trying to contradict you, but trying to put my feelings into words.
    I should have written that we must also consider what mamma and pappa brought to the table.

    Shrinkewrapped wrote:
    When people have an emotional investment in a fallacious intellectual construct, it typically serves many unconscious and conscious functions. In other words, people believe nonsense because it serves a deep psychological need. In order to loosen the hold such nonsense has on them it is necessary to unravel many of the strands of emotional investment that maintain the need for the nonsense.

    How People Change

    Comment by Cynic — October 8, 2008 @ 10:40 am

 

http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2008/09/27/appeasement-yesterday-and-today-fishman-reflects-on-the-70th-anniversary-of-munich/#comments

<!– –>

HOW SILLY AND STUPID…A MEDICAL CENTRE FOR YOUR ENEMIES!

By Felix Quigley

January 19, 2009

 

There seems no end to the silliness of Israel. Imagine creating a state of the art Medical Centre ont he border for your enemy to enjoy.

 

Or loading up lorries tot he brim with food for your enemies. Or even sending them truck loads of cash. In the annals of warfare there has never been such a silly nation as Israel!

This report tells it all

[Begin investigative report by Anav Silverman here]

The Truth About Gaza

by Anav Silverman

Ten minutes away from Sderot. (The Erez border crossing)

One of the most frequently reported items in the Arab-Israeli conflict today is the state of the crossings between Gaza and Israel.

 The crossing is open to Palestinian workers holding permits and families seeking medical treatment in Israel. Large numbers of journalists and international press also pass through the point.

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Erez Crossing, where the first sight that greeted me was a brand new gleaming medical center that had been opened at the start of the unilateral ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in mid-January. Israel’s Magen David Adom, in cooperation with the Israeli Department of Health, opened the center to treat wounded Gazans, with the Israeli government investing millions of dollars in its construction.

The new Israeli medical center can handle 30 patients per hour, and it is staffed by paramedics and doctors who specialize in emergency medicine, pediatrics, trauma, gynecology, orthopedics and other fields. It is equipped with state-of-the-art laboratories, X-ray machines and a pharmacy.

“The only problem,” tells us Shlomo Tzaban, a manager at the Erez Crossing, “is that the medical center stands empty. No one is using it because Hamas discourages Palestinians from seeking treatment at Israeli hospitals.”

Before entering Erez, Palestinians must first pass through a checkpoint on the Gaza side. Hamas controls that point on the Gaza end and therefore has complete authority on Palestinians seeking to enter Israel. Subsequently, there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of Palestinians seeking medical treatment in Israel – down 80-90% – says Tzaban.

“Everyone in Gaza lives under Hamas control,” explains Tzaban. “Hamas uses terror and fear to rule the Palestinian people.”

Tzaban uses the judicial system in Gaza as an example.

Back in December 2008, the Hamas parliament sanctioned that Palestinian courts were to condemn offenders according to violent punitive measures under Islamic Shari’a laws. Hamas punishments for Palestinian offenders include whipping, severing of hands (for stealing), crucifixion and hanging.

Tzaban, a 28-year-old veteran of the IDF, emphasizes that Hamas will use any means now to win support from the Palestinians after the heavy damages inflicted by the war.

“The fact that Hamas police recently raided an UNRWA storehouse in order to distribute the humanitarian aid on its own accord may shock the international community, but it’s happened before,” says Tzaban. “In order to maintain the support of the Palestinian civilian population, Hamas is trying to show that only their regime has the power to provide for the welfare of the Palestinian people, while simultaneously waging war against Israel.”

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency accused Hamas of seizing humanitarian aid sent into Gaza from countries across the world on February 4. UNRWA stated that Hamas had seized thousands of blankets and hundreds of food packages that were meant to be delivered to hundreds of poor families in Gaza, after UNRWA refused to hand the humanitarian aid over to the Hamas Ministry of Social Welfare.

Today, the Erez compound stands practically empty, except for a couple of Palestinian families and foreign journalists, and two peace activists standing outside. The compound was built five years ago and was meant to check through around 20,000-25,000 Palestinian workers at a time. In the meantime, hundreds of foreign journalists have used the crossing to enter into Gaza, especially during the recent war.

Although the opening of the crossings is essential to the Gazan economy, Palestinian terror networks have frequently attacked the Erez Crossing. “On average, there are between two to four attempted Palestinian terrorist attacks on the Erez compound each month,” according to an IDF security officer at the checkpoint.

In the last four years, Palestinian terror networks have targeted the Erez Crossing with almost 500 mortar shells. In May 2008, a Palestinian bomber from Gaza blew up an explosives-laden truck on the Palestinian side of the Erez Crossing, causing an estimated $3.5 million in damages to the Israeli checkpoint.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/8587

LAND FOR PEACE, THERE WAS NO PEACE SO TAKE BACK THE LAND!

by Felix Quigley

February 19, 2009

From Richard Landes of Augean Stables

I made some remarks in a post about an op-ed piece by Harold Jacobson that it’s hard to find non-Jews who will come to Israel’s defense these days, so I’m posting one by Thomas Sowell.

Thomas Sowell

He isn’t likely to be mistaken for a Jew, so if he’s going to side with Israel, he must be a right-wing fanatic, right?

Pretty Talk and Ugly Realities

No phrase represents more of a triumph of hope over experience than the phrase “Middle East peace process.” A close second might be the once-fashionable notion that Israel should “trade land for peace.”

Since everybody seems to be criticizing Israel for its military response to the rockets being fired into their country from the Gaza strip, let me add my criticisms as well. The Israelis traded land for peace, but they have never gotten the peace, so they should take back the land.

Maybe a couple of generations of Palestinians in Gaza living in peace under Israeli occupation and a couple of generations of the occupation troops squelching the terrorists— “militants” for those of you who are squeamish— would set up conditions where the Palestinians would be free to vote on whether they would like to remain occupied or to have their own state— minus terrorists and their rockets.

Casualty totals alone should be enough to show that the Palestinian people are the biggest losers from the current situation, where the terrorists among them, firing rockets into Israel, can bring devastating retaliatory strikes.

Why don’t the Palestinians vote for some representatives who would make a lasting peace with Israel? Because any such candidates would be killed by the terrorists long before election day, so nobody volunteers for that dangerous role.

We don’t know what the Palestinians really want— and won’t know as long as they are ruled by Hamas, Hezbollah and the like.

Whatever the benefits of peace for the Palestinian population, what are the terrorists going to do in peacetime? Become librarians and furniture salesmen?

So-called “world opinion” has been a largely negative factor in this situation. Nothing is easier than for people living in peace and safety in Paris or Rome to call for a “cease fire” after the Israelis retaliate against people who are firing rockets into their country.

The time to cease fire was before the rockets were fired.

What do calls for “cease fire” and “negotiations” do? They lower the price of launching attacks.

This is true not only in the Middle East but in other parts of the world as well.

 

I would like to repeat this memorable saying by this valiant writer and emphasise it

“The Israelis traded land for peace, but they have never gotten the peace, so they should take back the land.”

This man never spoke a truer word!

The above from Augean Stables

http://www.theaugeanstables.com/

BRILLIANT ISRAELI TECHNOLOGY AND VERY BRILLIANT PEOPLE

by Felix Quigley

February 19, 2009

Israel cannot fight this war with evil Islamists on its own. Israelis need the big battalions and forces of the workers world wide to be on the side of Israel and on the side in thought and deed with the persecuted Jews.

This battle will not be settled peacefully. Who can claim that it will be peace that is around the corner when we see all the Arab countries, and Turkey as well, ganging up for war with Israel.

Hence we can only marvel at how plucky are the Jews of Israel and we also marvel at their brilliance

[Begin this report on Israeli brilliant technology by Debkafile]

New tennis ball-sized camera with 360-degrees

range for Israeli infantry

 

February 18, 2009

One of the hi-tech gadgets the Israeli Defense Forces exhibited at its Southern Command headquarters Tuesday, Feb. 17, was EyeBall, the size of a tennis ball. Tossed into a closed area it relays a 360-degree picture of its interior in 15 seconds. Made by ODF Optronics, Tel Aviv, this was one of the gadgets Israeli troops used in last month’s Gaza operation to detect the booby traps with which Hamas wired homes, schools and bunkers.

Also used was an array of robots armed with cameras. One of these indestructible spies is the tiny EyeDrive, a four-wheel, remote-controlled robot which can go up and down stairs emitting a continuous stream of audio and video surveillance.

Tested for the first time in Gaza was the Matador, a shoulder-launched high-penetration missile. It was developed by Rafael after Israeli infantry in the 2006 Lebanon War were unable to hit Hizballah positions inside buildings and bunkers without tanks or helicopters. A single soldier using a Matador missile can bring down a fortified building without bulldozers or tanks. It is precise enough to drive a hole in a wall without destroying the interior of a building.

The Sky Rider miniature drone, which can be launched by three soldiers, relays images blocked by buildings to a commander’s wrist-watch screen.

As for heavy hardware, the IDF launched a new armored personnel carrier, Tiger (Namer) which provides its crew with high steel protection, behind which they can use its hi-tech weaponry and electronics without exposing themselves to attack.

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5916

NASRULLAH AND HIZBULLAH ARE ARMED WITH THE LATEST JEW KILLING WEAPONRY

by Felix Quigley

February 19, 2009

Everything about the Middle East indicates that the Arab Fascists and wider Islamists as in Indonesia are preparing for full on conflict with Israel. Along with the moves by Egypt in the desert of Sinai indicating war with Israel it is not looking like Nasrullah of Hizbullah is boasting that he is armed with the latest weaponry, from Iran, or Russia, or China, or North Korea, all possible via Iran

[Begin report on Hisbullah war plans from Debkafile here]

Nasrallah hints at Hizballah’s access to anti-air missiles

DEBKAfile Special Report

February 16, 2009

Hizballah’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah declared Monday, Feb. 16 that his terrorist organization is fully entitled to arm itself with every kind of weapon “including anti-air missiles in its struggle against Israel.”

For two years, all his speeches have been delivered by video link – never live. DEBKAfile reported earlier that sophisticated air defense missile batteries capable of attack Israeli warplanes and helicopters were poised in depots on the Syrian-Lebanese border for delivery to Hizballah.

Nasrallah did not confirm or deny that delivery had taken place. Our sources add that Israel recently warned Syria that the delivery of ground-to-air missiles to Hizballah would represent the crossing of a red line.

Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak said earlier this month that such weapons “would change the strategic balance and force Israel to act.”

This of course has got to make all socialists who defend Israel very angry indeed. It is just weeks ago that Fascist Leftists were parading around with Antisemites of Islamofascist terrorist organizations carrying placards that go right back tot he Nazi propaganda against the Jews pre Holocaust.

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5912

The threats of a Holocaust are there. The Fascist arms are there. Who is to say that there will not be a Holocaust of the Jews IN Israel?

Is there an alternative? Of course there is and it involves gaining the support of the workers in every country for the Jews and for Israel. These Fascist Leftists do not represent the good ordinary working class people, although they can be influenced by these Fascists on the Left propaganda machine which continually lie and slander the Jews.

EGYPT PRACTICES FOR WAR AGAINST ISRAEL IN THE DESERT…AGAIN!

by Felix Quigley

February 19, 2009

Israel is alone facing the might of the Arab and Islamist world, a nation of 6 million Jews against hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Islamists

 

[Begin Debkafile report on Egypt war plans here]

Egyptian war game in Sinai practices rebuffing “Israeli attack”

DEBKAfile Special Report

February 19, 2009, 10:43 AM (GMT+02:00)

 

DEBKAfile‘s military sources report that the Egyptian 2nd Army’s mechanized division carried out a 10-day military exercise in Sinai dubbed “Bedouin 3.” Infantry, armored and artillery units took part as well as F-16 fighter-bombers, Mirage 5E2 fighters and Apache assault helicopters, using live ammunition.

Their scenario hinged on a mock hostile Israeli invasion of Sinai aiming for the Suez Canal. The Egyptian units ranged in an east-to-west line across the mountainous Jebal Libni of central Sinai south of El Arish to cut off the “Israeli advance.”

The game ended Wednesday, Feb. 18, with high praise from its commanders. They found that in a two-day engagement, the Egyptian forces had forced the “Israeli attackers” to retreat behind the international border to the Negev, displaying greater mobility, flexibility and speed than in previous exercises.

The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty permits Cairo to maintain a single army division in demilitarized Sinai.

Note the expensive military hardware involved in the above. Where did it come from. America provided it.

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5919

People have become indoctrinated by the “Fascist Left” that Israel is strong and the Arab and Islamist world is weak.

This is a Nazi type lie. The Fascist Left have indeed joined the Fascists as they march around with Islamofascists from Spain to England.

And the above is just one Arab country. There are 21 others. Why prepare for war if you do not expect to wage it.

Technically Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel, reached when Begin gave away Sionai in return for “Peace”. This peace however is a cold affair, as cold as the grave, the grave of Jews.

USING THE GOOGLE TRANSLATION SERVICE

BRING UP THE SERVICE BY www.translate.google.com

 

INTRODUCE THE URL OF THE ARTICLE INTO THE BOX PROVIDED, nb just the url

IN THIS CASE, FOR EXAMPLE, https://4international.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/answering-the-lies-against-israel-in-gaza-part-2/

 

THAT IS, OF COURSE, COPY AND PASTE THE ABOVE URL INTO THAT BOX

 

THEN HIT TRANSLATE OR TRADUCIR OR WHATEVER THE LANGUAGE SAYS. OBVIOUSLY YOU HAVE A CHOICE OF MANY LANGUAGES

 

The whole article is translated for you

Thus I think using the url, that is copy and paste the url and placing it into that box is a very good method, and very fast.

ANSWERING THE LIES AGAINST ISRAEL IN GAZA (PART 2)

By Felix Quigley

 

February 18, 2009-02-18

 

Israel is victim of “war crimes” propaganda

By Rachel Neuwirth

This is an important article and should be read in full. It is on

Rachel

 

Israel is said to have damaged schools, hospitals, ambulances and mosques and to have inflicted an immense number of deaths and injuries on innocent civilians.

 

Rachel further claims

 

The same accusations have been hurled at Israel by the United Nations, by many of the world’s governments, and by numerous pseudo-do-gooder “Non-governmental organizations” (or “NGOs”), such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The International Criminal Court in the Hague is considering whether to file war crimes charges against Israeli military and political leaders, and the nations of the European Community are debating amongst themselves whether to support such a move.

 

 

 

 

The Lie: Israel waged war on Gaza’s civilian population; it deliberately killed innocent civilians.

The truth: Israel exerted more care than any other country in history to avoid inflicting casualties on civilians, even at considerable cost to the effectiveness of its military operations.

 

 

The Lie: Israel killed six hundred or more civilians in Gaza. More than half of those killed by Israel were innocent civilians.

If Israel took such extraordinary measures to protect noncombatants, why then, you will surely ask, were so many civilians killed or injured during Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” counter-terrorism operation?

 

 

The Lie: Gaza has been utterly devastated and left in ruins by the Israeli “assault.”

The Truth: The Israelis targeted buildings very carefully and selectively, aiming at buildings used for military purposes by Hamas, and rarely hitting other buildings.

 

 

The Lie: Israel has been blockading Gaza for years and denying its people access to vital humanitarian supplies, creating great suffering among its population. This blockade was intensified during the recent Gaza war.

Of all of the media’s lies about Israel’s relationship to Gaza, this is the most brazen and absurd. There has never been an Israeli blockade of Gaza. In reality, Israel has allowed thousands of truckloads of supplies into Gaza in the past eight years, despite the almost continuous armed attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers originating in Gaza.

(Above is from article by Rachel Neuwirth, Below from the excellent Augean Stables)

 

 

 

Doubts on the Number of Victims: Could be 600 rather than 1300
Lorenzo Cremonesi
Il Corriere della Sera
January 21, 2009

GAZA – “Get away! Get away from here! Do you want the Israelis to kill everyone? Do you want our children to die under the bombs? take your missiles and weapons away,” the inhabitants of the Gaza strip yelled at the Hamas militants and their allies in Islamic Jihad.

 

THE BBC DID NOT REPORT THIS!

 

“Traitors, collaborators with Israel, spies of Fatah, cowards! The soldiers of the holy war will punish you. And in any case you will all die, like us. Fighting the Zionist Jews we are all destined for paradise. Do you not wish to die with us?” This is what they yelled furiously as they broke down doors and windows, hiding themselves on high floors, gardens, using ambulances and barricading themselves near the hospitals, schools and buildings of the UN.

 

 

…they wanted the [Israelis] to shoot at the [the civilians’] houses so they could accuse them of more war crimes” asserted Abu Issa, 42, resident of the Tel Awa neighborhood.

“Practically all of the tallest buildings in Gaza that were hit by Israeli bombs, like the Dogmoush, Andalous, Jawarah, Siussi, and many others, had rocket launching pads on their roofs, or were observation decks for the Hamas.

 

 

 

 

They use family nicknames, but they provide important circumstantial details. It was difficult to get these testimonials. In general, fear of Hamas prevails and the ideological alimentary taboos reign in this century of wars with the “Zionist enemy.”

 

 

 

And there is another fact coming to light ever more obviously, visiting the hospitals, clinics and families of the victims of Israeli fire: In reality their numbers appear much lower than 1300 dead and another 5000 injured, as reported by the men of Hamas and repeated by the UN officials and the local Red Cross.

 

 “The dead can’t be more than 500 or 600. There are many youths between 17 and 23, recruited by Hamas, who sent them quite literally to the slaughter.” Said the doctor from the Shifah hospital who under no circumstances wanted to be quoted for he risked his life.

 

This data has been confirmed by the local journalist. “We already pointed this out to the heads of Hamas. Why do they insist on inflating the number of victims?

Its strange on the other hand that the NGOs, also the western ones, report them without and verification.

In the end the truth may come to light.

It could be like Jenin in 2002. Initially we spoke about 1500 dead. Then it came out that there were only 54, of whom at least 45 were militants who died in battle.”

How do we arrive at this figure? “Lets take the case of the Al Samoun family massacre in the Zeitun neighborhood. When the bomb landed on their houses they reported that they had 31 dead. And this is how they were registered with the officials of the Health department which is controlled by Hamas. But then, when the bodies were effectively recovered the sum total was doubled to 62 and this si how they are computed into the final balance,” explained Masoda Al Samoun, 24 years old.

Its sufficient to visit a few hospitals to understand that the numbers don’t add up.

There are many empty beds in the European Hospital in Rafah, one of the [hospitals] that should be most involved with the victims of the Israeli “war of the tunnels.”

The same goes for the “Nasser” of Kahn Yunis.

Only 5 out of the 150 beds in the private hospital of Al-Amal are occupied.

In Gaza city the Wafa was evacuated, constructed with “charitable Islamic” donations from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Countries of the Gulf, and bombed by Israel at the end of December. The Institute is marked as being a stronghold of Hamas, this is where it’s fighters came to recuperate after the civil war with Fatah in 2007.

The others, however, stayed at Al Quds, which in turn was bombed the second half of the week in January.”

Talking about this event, Magah al Rachmah, 25 inhabitant no less than ten meters from the four large buildings of the health complex, today seriously damaged. “Hamas’s Men hid themselves mostly in the building that houses the administrative officials of Al Quds. They used the ambulances and they forced ambulance drivers and paramedics to take off their uniforms with the symbols of paramedics on them so that they would be able to better confuse and escape the Israeli snipers.”

 

All of this vastly reduced the number of beds available in the health institutions of Gaza. Also,

Shifah, the biggest hospital in the city, is very far from exhausting all of it’s resources.

It seems in fact that they are densely occupied with their underground tunnels. Hamas hid the emergency jails and the interrogation rooms for the prisoners of Fatah and the people who were evacuated from the bombarded prison of Saraja,” said the militants of the democratic front for the liberation of Palestine.

This [conflict] between Fatah and Hamas was a war within a war.

local humanitarian organizations, mainly controlled by the UN, tell of “dozens of executions, torture chambers, and kidnappings in the last three weeks” committed by Hamas.

One of the more notable cases is that of Achmad Shakhura, 47 years old, resident of the Khan Yunis and brother of Khaled, the right hand man of Mohammed Dahlan (the former head of Yasser Arafat’s security services, now exiled) who was kidnapped by order of the head of Hamas’s local secret police, Abu Abdullah Al Kidra, and subsequently tortured, his left eye ripped out and, in the end, killed on the 15th of January.

 

NONE OF THE ABOVE FACTS, NOT ONE, PUBLISHED BY THE BBC OR ANY OF THE MEDIA, INCLUDING THE SPANISH MEDIA

ANSWERING THE LIES AGAINST ISRAEL IN GAZA

Israel is victim of “war crimes” propaganda

By Rachel Neuwirth

Most of the American and European media have accused Israel of having committed “war crimes” in its recent “assault” on Gaza, and of waging war indiscriminately on its civilian population. Israel is said to have damaged schools, hospitals, ambulances and mosques and to have inflicted an immense number of deaths and injuries on innocent civilians. The same accusations have been hurled at Israel by the United Nations, by many of the world’s governments, and by numerous pseudo-do-gooder “Non-governmental organizations” (or “NGOs”), such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The International Criminal Court in the Hague is considering whether to file war crimes charges against Israeli military and political leaders, and the nations of the European Community are debating amongst themselves whether to support such a move.[1]

But when we probe into the matter a little deeper by looking at the reports of journalists who did some independent investigating, and who interviewed Gaza civilians who agreed to talk with them (anonymously or using nicknames, for fear of Hamas reprisals), we get a completely different picture: Israel took great care to avoid hurting innocent people, while Hamas deliberately tried to cause as many casualties among the Gazan people as possible.

Let’s go through some of the biggest media lies one by one, and then expose the truth.

The Lie: Israel waged war on Gaza’s civilian population; it deliberately killed innocent civilians.

The truth: Israel exerted more care than any other country in history to avoid inflicting casualties on civilians, even at considerable cost to the effectiveness of its military operations.

Israel’s Minister of Welfare and Social Services Isaac Herzog, who is coordinating Israel’s humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza, has pointed out that “[The IDF] made 250,000 phone calls], it has sent text messages and delivered leaflets by air. It has [made] broadcasts on television and on radio and asked people to move away. It did whatever it could to prevent human suffering[2].”

250,000 phone calls? That is virtually every single individual household in Gaza! (total population 1.4 million, with many large families). There is no precedent in history for an army calling up each individual household in enemy territory to warn them in advance to take shelter from bombing or shelling by the army. The Israelis even went so far as to call up leading terrorists 45 minutes in advance of bombing their houses, which were used for storing weapons and ammunition and for concealing terrorist tunnels and bunkers in their basements, in order to give the terrorists and their innocent families time to escape unharmed.

When Israeli planes tracked trucks carrying weapons and ammunition to Hamas, they sometimes deflected the missiles in mid-flight, causing them to fall harmlessly in open spaces, if the trucks happened to pass by civilians on a crowded street. In deflecting their own missiles by remote control, the Israeli pilots and ground controllers passed up the opportunity to destroy enemy weapons and ammunition, solely in order to protect Arab civilians. These humanitarian measures by the Israeli forces have been abundantly documented by “live” video cameras, and the resulting video records have been broadcast by the IDF on YouTube.[3]

These unprecedented humanitarian precautions in time of full-scale war must have enabled thousands of terrorists to escape from Israeli bombing and shelling attacks by forewarning them. Israel was willing to undermine the effectiveness of its anti-terrorist operation solely in order to save the lives of “innocent” (and in some cases not-so-innocent) civilians. No other army — not the Americans, nor the British, nor French or much the less the Russian ,Chinese, Japanese or German armies — has ever exercised even comparable restraint and care to protect noncombatants on the “enemy” side of a war zone as the Israel Defense Forces routinely does. [4]

The Lie: Israel killed six hundred or more civilians in Gaza. More than half of those killed by Israel were innocent civilians.

If Israel took such extraordinary measures to protect noncombatants, why then, you will surely ask, were so many civilians killed or injured during Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” counter-terrorism operation? One part of the answer is that relatively few civilians actually were killed or injured. Lorenzo Cremonesi, a correspondent reporting from Gaza for the Italian “newspaper of record” Corriere della Serra, writes:

. . .there is [a] fact coming to light ever more obviously, visiting the hospitals, clinics and families of the victims of Israeli fire: In reality their numbers appear much lower than 1300 dead and another 5000 injured, as reported by the men of Hamas and repeated by the UN officials and the local Red Cross. “The dead can’t be more than 500 or 600. There are many youths between 17 and 23, recruited by Hamas, who sent them quite literally to the slaughter.” Said the doctor from the Shifah hospital who under no circumstances wanted to be quoted for he risked his life. 

This data has been confirmed by [a] local journalist. “We already pointed this out to the heads of Hamas. Why do they insist on inflating the number of victims? It’s strange on the other hand that the NGOs, also the western ones, report them without any verification. In the end the truth may come to light. It could be like Jenin in 2002. Initially we spoke about 1500 dead. Then it came out that there were only 54, of whom at least 45 were militants who died in battle. ”

. . . It’s sufficient to visit a few hospitals to understand that the numbers don’t add up. There are many empty beds in the European Hospital in Rafah, one of the [hospitals] that should be most involved with the victims of the Israeli “war of the tunnels.” The same goes for the “Nasser” of Khan Yunis. Only 5 out of the 150 beds in the private hospital of Al-Amal are occupied.[5]

Analysts who regularly monitor the Palestinian Arab media have come upon much information that corroborates Cremonesi’s report. These media monitors have discovered that over 75% of the individuals whom the Arab media have identified as having been killed in the fighting were males between the ages of 15 and 50—the ages, and gender, of the overwhelming majority of Hamas and other Palestinian fighters. They have also found that the names of many Palestinians who turn up on lists of “civilians” killed in the Gaza war published by Palestinian “human rights” organizations are identified as Hamas fighters by other Palestinian news publications. The “human rights” organizations also omitted from its casualty reports the names of Hamas fighters who are known from other sources to have been killed in the fighting. This misreporting and selective reporting result in a sizable overstatement of the percentage of civilians killed in the fighting. Yet much of the news media relies on these organizations, such as the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), for their data on civilian casualties in Gaza.[6]

The second part of our answer to the question, “why were Gazan civilians killed or injured during Israel’s Gaza operation?” is that Hamas deliberately forced its “own” Gazan civilians to serve as hostages and “human shields,” behind which the terrorists conducted their assault. Hamas regularly sent its troops to occupy schools, hospitals, mosques and office buildings, their grounds and adjacent streets, as well as many private Palestinian houses and business, and used them to fire at Israeli soldiers and to launch rockets against Israeli civilians. The Hamas men used mosques as weapons and ammunition storage facilities, and fired anti-aircraft guns from them The Israelis have even caught on camera, and have subsequently broadcast on YouTube, videos of Hamas fighters launching rockets and mortars from the courtyards of schools, or streets directly adjoining them [8] On at least one occasion, Hamas operatives even launched a rocket from a building used by foreign journalists; a reporter from an Arab television and radio station reported on the incident “live” as she viewed the rocket launching from her office window, in a bizarre sequence that has subsequently been broadcast in a YouTube video![7] Hamas gunmen hijacked ambulances, and sometimes even fired at Israeli soldiers from them.
These Hamas ‘tactics” put Israeli soldiers in the invidious position of having either to allow the Hamas terrorists to keep firing at them and/or at the Israeli civilian population,; or to return fire, and risking killing or injuring civilians. Israel sometimes has had no choice but to permit its soldiers to return fire in self-defense. This return of fire has sometimes resulted in civilian casualties and/or damage to civilian buildings; but in view of Hamas’ of use of Arab civilians as human shields, blaming Israel for these casualties and calling them Israeli “war crimes,” seems to us almost as vicious and unjust as the actual war crimes perpetrated by Hamas. Apropos this situation, Cremonesi reports:

“Get away! Get away from here! Do you want the Israelis to kill everyone? Do you want our children to die under the bombs? Take your missiles and weapons away,” the inhabitants of the Gaza strip yelled at the Hamas militants and their allies in Islamic Jihad. The more courageous were organized and blocked the entrances to their courtyards and locked the doors to their buildings, barricading quickly and furiously the stairs to the highest rooftops. 

But for all of that the guerrillas didn’t listen to anyone. “Traitors, collaborators with Israel, spies of Fatah, cowards! The soldiers of the holy war will punish you. And in any case you will all die, like us. Fighting the Zionist Jews we are all destined for paradise. Do you not wish to die with us?” This is what they yelled furiously as they broke down doors and windows, hiding themselves on high floors, gardens, using ambulances and barricading themselves near the hospitals, schools and buildings of the UN.

In extreme cases the [Hamas militants] shot those who sought to block them from their streets and houses to save their own families, or they beat them savagely. “The Hamas Militants looked for good places to provoke the Israelis. They were usually youths, 16 or 17 years old, armed with submachine guns. They couldn’t do anything against a tank or jet. They knew they were much weaker. But they wanted the [Israelis] to shoot at the [the civilians’] houses so they could accuse them of more war crimes” asserted Abu Issa, 42, resident of the Tel Awa neighborhood.[9]

Another Gaza civilian, calling herself Umm Abdallah, told Mr.Cremonesi that

“Practically all of the tallest buildings in Gaza that were hit by Israeli bombs, like the Dogmoush, Andalous, Jawarah, Siussi, and many others, had rocket launching pads on their roofs, or were observation decks for the Hamas. They had also put them near the big UN warehouse, which went up in flames. The same goes for the villages in the valley along the border that were more devastated by the mad fury and punishment of the Zionist[10].”

A third part of the answer is that the Hamas terrorists may have directly caused some of the civilian casualties themselves. Numerous Gaza residents and foreign reporters confirm that Hamas took the occasion of Israel’s Gaza operation to kill Palestinians whom it claimed were collaborators with Israel. Many, although not all of these alleged collaborators were actually members of the rival Palestinian terrorist group Fatah, with whom Hamas has long been at loggerheads.[11]

We have already seen the Corriere della Serra report that Hamas sometimes killed Gazan civilians who tried to refuse to allow themselves and their families to be used as human shields, declaring them to be “collaborators” worthy of death. Gazan ambulance drivers told a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald ( Australia ) of similar experiences with Hamas gunmen: these sometimes attempted to hijack ambulances for their own use, and threatened the drivers with their guns if they resisted surrendering them.[12] While the particular ambulance drivers interviewed by Sydney Morning Herald’s reporter Jack Koutsoukis survived their ordeal, others may not have been so lucky.

Then there is the question of “work accidents.” The Israel defense and intelligence forces have documented numerous cases in which explosives that Hamas was storing or that its operatives were manufacturing exploded accidentally, inflicting deaths and injuries on nearby civilians. In nearly all such cases, Hamas first tried to blame Israel for the civilian casualties, although it sometimes eventually admitted to the truth. How many of the civilian casualties reported during the Gaza operation were similar “work accidents?”[13]

In addition, when Hamas chose to fight the Israeli counter-terrorist forces in densely populated urban streets, rather than in open country, as the Israelis much preferred, Hamas operatives as well as Israeli soldiers fired off numerous rounds of bullets, mortars and rockets in areas crowded with civilian residents. As a result, many of the civilian who were killed or wounded in the fighting are just as likely to have been hit by Hamas gunman as by Israeli soldiers. [14]

How many civilian deaths and injuries inflicted by Hamas gunmen, one wonders, found their way into the civilian casualty statistics released by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), various NGOs, and the media? Yet the press and the “humanitarian” agencies have attributed all of the civilian casualties to Israel.
.
The Lie: Gaza has been utterly devastated and left in ruins by the Israeli “assault.”

The Truth: The Israelis targeted buildings very carefully and selectively, aiming at buildings used for military purposes by Hamas, and rarely hitting other buildings.

While much of the media has claimed that Gaza suffered universal and complete devastation during Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead,” a few journalists who were on the scene have admitted that Israel’s air and ground forces in Gaza were almost incredibly precise and careful in their selection of targets, and that as little damage as possible was caused to civilian buildings. Tim Butcher, in a report on the war for London’s Daily Telegraph, wrote that,

One thing was clear. Gaza City 2009 is not Stalingrad 1944. There had been no carpet bombing of large areas, no firebombing of complete suburbs. Targets had been selected and then hit, often several times, but almost always with precision munitions. Buildings nearby had been damaged and there had been some clear mistakes, like the firebombing of the UN aid headquarters. But, in most the cases, I saw the primary target had borne the brunt. . . 

But, for the most part, I was struck by how cosmetically unchanged Gaza appeared to be. It has been a tatty, poorly-maintained mess for decades and the presence of fresh bombsites on streets already lined with broken curbstones and jerry-built buildings did not make any great difference. And the same can be said for the mindset of many of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. Outsiders might have expected some sort of collective anger at the loss of life, or mass outrage at the Hamas authorities whose policy of firing rockets against Israel had brought down the wrath of the Israeli armed forces.[15]

The Lie: Israel has been blockading Gaza for years and denying its people access to vital humanitarian supplies, creating great suffering among its population. This blockade was intensified during the recent Gaza war.

Of all of the media’s lies about Israel’s relationship to Gaza, this is the most brazen and absurd. There has never been an Israeli blockade of Gaza. In reality, Israel has allowed thousands of truckloads of supplies into Gaza in the past eight years, despite the almost continuous armed attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers originating in Gaza. It continued to supply Gaza with food, medicine and all other needed civilian goods even during the three weeks of intense fighting during the recent war (December 27, 2008 – January 19, 2009). It has supplied Gaza with electricity, fuel, and water and even money to pay its officials, (who of course work for Hamas) throughout the long years of Gazan aggression against Israel. Israel continued to supply all of these things to Gaza, except the money, even during the three weeks of intense fighting during its “Operation Cast Lead.” Since the “cease fire” on January 19 of this year and even at the height of the fighting in January, Israel observed three a hour truce daily to allow supplies to get through to the Gazan civilian population (Hamas violated even these brief truces by using them to fire rockets at Israeli civilians). Israel has continued to send massive humanitarian supplies to Gaza and to allow the UN relief organizations to do so as well, even though Hamas has been hijacking the relief shipments for its own fighters—which is a serious war crime. It has even resumed its money payments to the Hamas government, despite Hamas’ daily violations of the cease-fire with rocket attacks on, and terrorist raids into, Israel .[16]

No other nation in history has treated the people of a country that was committing armed aggression against their own with the kindness, compassion, humanity and forbearance that Israel has lavished upon the people of Gaza. But none of Israel’s extraordinary humanitarian efforts have prevented the international press, United Nations officials and the “NGOs” from portraying Israel as guilty of monstrous war crimes and crimes against humanity. That they have done so does not speak well for the “international community,” or indeed for the human species as a whole.

In subsequent columns we look at a few of the specific atrocity allegations made against Israel during the Gaza war, and consider the question of who gave the press so much misinformation about Gaza, and why?

John Landau contributed to this article

FOOTNOTES________________________________________
[1]Avraham Zuroff ,”EU Leaders Debate whether to Condemn Israel for UN Bombings,”
IsraelNationalNews, January 25, 2009,

“Indicting Israel for Self-Defense.” P. David Hornik – Feb 04, 2009 . Reprinted from FrontPageMagazine.com.

[2]Haviv Rettig Gur, “UNWRA: Hamas didn’t fire from Un Compounds.” Jerusalem Post, Jan. 18, 2009,

[3] “IDF Vlog: Strikes Aborted to Protect Civilians. Lt. Barak Raz. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUeSE3WWX_M .

[4] “BBC: Former British Army Colonel Richard Kemp Discusses IDF Gaza Ops,”

[5] Lorenzo Cremonesi, “Doubts on the Number of Victims: Could be 600 rather than 1300. Il Corriere Della Sera, January 21, 2009. Translated by Noa Landes. .

[6] Steven Stotsky, “Gaza Casualties: Civilian or Combatant?” Camera, January 29, 2009.

[7] See “Hamas Uses Schools and Ceasefire to Shoot Rockets at Israel,“; “Hamas Rockets During Cease-Fire and From Schoolyard” 8 Jan. 09, ; “Mortar Bombs Shot from UN School in Gaza” 29 Oct. 2007; “Weapons Horde in Gazan Mosque, 13 Jan. 2009,” ; “Weapons Hidden in Mosque Neutralized by Israel Air Force 31 Dec. 2008 ; and numerous other videos at http://www.mefeedia.com/feeds/70791/youtube-videos-by-idfnadesk and http://www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk , the web sites for the Israel Defense Forces public information desk

[8] “Hamas fires from foreign Press building in Gaza January 2009 – Unintentional News from Al-Arabiya -TV,”

[9] Cremonesi, “Doubts on the Number of Victims,” op. cit.

[10] Cremonesi, op. cit.

[11] Khaled Abu Toameh, “Hamas Moves on Fatah ‘Collaborators’,” Jerusalem Post, Jan. 4, 2009, ; Nissan Ratzlav-Katz, “PA Internecine Killings Continued as War Raged,” IsraelNationalNews, January 19, 2009, ; and “Gaza War Crimes: Hamas Terrorists Tried To Hijack Ambulances,” :IsraelNationalNews, January 26, 2009, .

[12] Jason Koutsoukis, “Hamas tried to hijack ambulances during war”, Sydney Morning Herald, January 26, 2009,

[13] “Using civilians as human shields: ten Palestinians killed and several dozens (including women and children) injured in Beit Lahiya as a result of a ‘work accident’: an explosion flattened the house of Ahmed Hamouda, a senior Hamas operative in the northern Gaza Strip.” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, June 22, 2008, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/gaza_120608e.htm

[14] Alex Safian, “Myths and Facts about the Fighting in Gaza,” CAMERA, January 8, 2009,

[15] Tim Butcher, “Gaza has been hit hard, but has it made any difference?” Telegraph.co.uk, January 20, 2009,

[16] Alex Safian, “Myths and Facts about the Fighting in Gaza,”Op. Cit.; Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Humanitarian aid to Gaza during IDF operation,”18 Jan 2009, ;
Justus Reid Weiner and Avi Bell, “International Law and the Fighting in Gaza,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Rani Sneh, “IDF Opens Border Crossing for Humanitarian Aid Transfer to Gaza,” December 28, 2008, ;
and numerous other articles on the Israel Defense Forces web site, ; Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Humanitarian aid to Gaza during IDF operation,” Jan. 18 2009, and numerous other articles on the Israel ministry of Foreign Affairs web site, ; Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), “Continual humanitarian aid to Gaza despite grad rocket launched at Ashkelon,” February 4, 2009, ; “Humanitarian aid continues under intense mortar and rocket fire,” Feb. 2, 2009, , and numerous other bulletins from COGAT, as well as other articles, on the on the Independent Media Review Analysis web site , http://www.imra.org.il/; Tamar Yonah’s interview with David Bedein about Gaza, UNRWA, and Hamas. Israel National Radio’s “Weekend Edition,” Feb 8, 2009; http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Radio/News.aspx/623;
Hana Levi Julian, “ Israel Pumps Fuel into Gaza , Terrorists Launch Rockets in Return,” February 11, 2009, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124999 ;

Walter Bingham, “A Different View of Israel,” November 11, 2007, , and numerous other articles on the IsraelNationalNews, ; Rachel Ehrenfeld, “Israel’s suicidal choice,” http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/article.php?id=3089, Reprinted from the Washington Times, Aug 27, 2008, and many other article on the Unity Coalition for Israel site, http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/; Israel Insider staff, “Olmert admits transferring hundreds of millions of shekels to Hamas,” June 26, 2008,
June 26, 2008, http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Diplomacy/12941.htm,, and other articles on the Israelinsider site, http://israelinsider.ning.com/cover .

IT IS QUITE AMAZING THAT JEWS VOTED FOR LIVNI

The most amazing thing about the Israeli election which is scarcely commented upon is that Livni was returned with a big vote.

 

This is quite amazing and is a total disgrace and a big warning when one considers the record of this political traitor

 

Livni along with Sharon and Olmert broke up Likud in order to force Jews out of Gaza, and to make Gaza Judenfrei.

 

Livni handed Gaza over to the Nazis, the successors of the Nazi butcher of the Jews Hajj Amin el Husseini

 

Which then allowed those Nazis to bomb Jews in Israel for 8 years

 

While Livni in that Olmert Government did nothing at all as Jewish children knew no other life other than sleeping in bomb shelters

 

And then fought a war at least in part to help her election prospects, otherwise why not years ago!

 

So a big question is why so many did vote for this creature. I did notice the cynical look of smug satisfaction in her eyes and face, as if to say, My goodness, if I can do this I can do anything. Howe gullible are our Jewish people she was mentally going over!

 

In fact what this shows is the correctness of the position of Lenin in What is to be done?, a smallbook in which he repeats and repeats that the dominant ideas in any class society are the ideas of the dominant class.

 

And Israel is no different it also is a class society and the Israeli ruling class or elite of which Livni is a part control those all important organs of communication

 

 

There is an air of unreality about the Israeli election and its result. The dominant issues were lying outside of the state symbolised by the Hamas Fatah rockets onto Israel over 8 years.

 

The big issues were not discussed never mind an answer found for

 

1. Israel is hemmed in geographically. Hamas to the side, Hizbullah on top, Syria there too, Iran everywhere, the Arabs as a whole cold as the grave towards Israel and the Jews, while fearful of Islamists who threaten.
2. A US Government carrying on the same policy of all US Governments from Eisenhower Dulles, through Reagan, Carter, Clinton, the Bushes and now Obama, stirring up strife in the world, aiming to rule and maintain power through inter national strife. Throwing the Jews into huge physical danger from North Korea and Russian alliance with Islam
3. Making India pay for the Pakistani Islamist terrorists is the method of especially Obama. So making Israel pay for the terror of Hamas. This is the essence of the “Peace” Movement which the Jihad has learned to use very successfully, The US and the Brits will force Israel to capitulate. Yesterday Kosovo, today Kashmir, tomorrow the Palestine State on the doorstep of Israel.
4. The dominating factor in the world. The crisis in world capitalism. The collapse of the credit system on which the post war boom was based. The fierce and unrelenting collapse of value in housing and in commodities like cars etc. As ever with that crisis the promotion of anti-Semitism so that Jews once again become the scapegoat
5. A “Left” which has aligned with reaction and Islam. A Humanitarian Leftist Liberal media entity which first aligned with Izetbegovic and Bin Laden in Bosnia, so making the New Yorkers in the Twin Towers pay a horrible price. The true price of the work of the likes of Kamm and Marshall in Bosnia.
6. Israeli political class cannot keep up with play. Issue is not really Hamas or Iran but the aims of the US government to make Israel pay to appease Islam. THAT IS OF COURSE THE BIGGEST DANGER TO THE JEWS. The target to focus on is not Hamas but the US and European Governments. The focus is not war on Hamas but the mobilization of the American ordinary people against the US Government, thus the unity of the Jews with those, as the crisis obliterates the future for those ordinary working class people.

 

In relation to the central issue, contained in 6 above, the arrogance of the Jewish middle class, bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie who expressly even deny the existence of an American working class.

THE GAZA WAR…WHEN THE “LEFT” TIPPED OVER INTO ANTISEMITISM

by Felix Quigley

The Gaza War that we experienced over 3 weeks ago is going to be remembered as a qualitative point in the struggles and history of man.

 

This was the time when the so called “Left” tipped over completely into anti-Semitism.

 

The “Left” marched side by side with Islamist Fascist anti-Semitics in cities and in town throughout Europe and even in North America.

 

This was also a time when Jewish people came under direct attack on the streets of Europe, Canada and America from anti-Semites and in which Jews stopped feeling safe in Europe.

 

The parallels with the period of the Nazis taking power in Germany were all too obvious.

 

So imagine, just think what it must have been like to be Jewish in 2009 and to hear your own people being compared to Nazis, because of the war with Hamas.

 

As a record to this eventful war we on 4international will now do 2 things. We will spend some time

 

• Analysing the real nature of the enemy Hamas which Israel was fighting in Gaza. This also involves the nature of the PLO, the PA, Fatah and the PLO
• Placing on record some of this anti-Semitism on the streets that we experienced in the last months

 

I will be working on these articles over the weekend. I am also thinking of having them translated into Spanish and perhaps French as well.

 

I believe that this Gaza war has been a qualitative experience and I think also it is a definite stage in the history of the Jews, and it will go down as such.

 

We invite you to comment. You can do so in 2 ways private or public. If you place PRIVATE at top it will not be published. Please do so. We need to hear from readers.

SUPPORT FOR THE BNP…PEOPLE SHOULD WISE UP!

To our readers If you can please turn to a post on the site Israpundit

http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=9012&cpage=1#comment-38546

The issue of the National Front or the BNP in England is causing much confusion everywhere.

 

I hurriedly added the folowing comment just now but you can follow the problem

[start my comment on Israpundit here]

 

Please folks at Israpundit. Get a grip on yourselves. Have you lost all reason? Please do get out into the Rockies, find a deep pool and stick your head into the cool waters to come back to your senses.

The issue in England is this.

There are many weak links in this capitalist chain and England is one. America though is another.

These issues to do with this crisis will not be settled by Obama administrative measures re bank loans etc. There are huge forces being unleashed and the choice is either Fascism or Revolutionary Socialism.

Oh, slight complication here, there is no rev soc party. The Left has hightailed and joined with Islam and the Jihad.

It is in this vacumn of leadership that the workers see the BNP Fascists as an alternative. (I should rather say some and only some workers do this. The BNP is very far from convincing workers yet)

I would say their opposition to Muslims IS racist. It is not that they disagree really with Islam and its cruel methods and rule.

Why? Because Islam is also a Fascist ideology as is the ideology of the BNP.

The best and most principled position above, sorry I need to read them more carefully as this is in a bit of a rush, is number 13 by Kim.

This is indeed true and is the start and end of all discourse now. In order to be a revolutionary socialist one needs to be a Zionist. Yamit will just hate that thought.

And the point made by Kim that I  mentioned

 

If they’re not zionists – and thereby deny the jewish people their own country – they’re antisemites in my book.
Regardless of the need of any tactical alliances to defeat islam

NEITHER LIVNI, OLMERT OR BARAK EVER VISITED POLLARD IN PRISON

Farley Weiss carries a severe atack on Livni for not trying to get the release of Jonathon Pollard.

But this attack carried by Israel National News goes further and raises the nature of the whole of the Israeli ruling class. It is important not just for Pollard but to show the nature of these rulers.

[begin INN report here]

Referring to Livni Weiss says

 

Furthermore, whatever quiet diplomacy she claims she used quite clearly failed, something she needs to be able to readily acknowledge.

Of course, Livni is not solely to blame. Defense Minister Ehud Barak apparently took no action to help Pollard – a fact that is particularly disturbing some eight years after he helped get President Bill Clinton to pardon the very controversial Mark Rich. You would think he would try to correct his record right before the coming Israeli elections, but he did not do so.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was also part of this failed policy when he publicly told Eli Yishai not to raise the Pollard issue with President George Bush when he visited Israel, ostensibly because Olmert had already raised it and the president in turn said no. It is also public knowledge that Israel’s President Shimon Peres was asked repeatedly to make a request to President Bush to free Pollard, and Peres refused to raise the concern.

This much is certain: if there were indeed quiet efforts made to secure Pollard’s release, then they were too quiet. In any case, these efforts did not work, and one must wonder why Livni apparently made clear that she and this Israeli government will continue the same failed policies with the Obama Administration. One can only hope that there exists a better chance to obtain approval with the Obama Administration, in part because Vice-President Joe Biden stated in a 2007 interview on Shalom television that “there’s a rationale in my view why Pollard should be given leniency. But there is not a rationale to say what happened did not happen and he should be pardoned.” In other words, it sounds like Biden supports clemency for Pollard. It is clear from her comments on Pollard that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not be an impediment to his release and President Barack Obama, being a former law professor and one concerned about civil rights, should be an easy sell on the matter. To paraphrase the Obama campaign mantra, it is time for a change in the Israeli government’s approach to the Pollard affair.

I worked under the leadership of Rabbi Pesach Lerner of the National Council of Young Israel, the leading figure in the effort to try to obtain the commutation of Pollard’s sentence to time served. This effort included obtaining the support, in a public interview, of former CIA Director James Woolsey for Pollard’s release, a fact that helped refute the well-publicized opposition from the intelligence community. We also obtained a letter from the former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, former Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini, in favor of Pollard’s release. We approached some of President Bush’s closest and wealthiest friends in the Jewish community and asked them to lend their support; some agreed and apparently raised the issue with the president directly. We even got some of the closest people in the Jewish community to two of the three Attorney Generals for President Bush (people who were so close to the AGs that they had their home phone numbers), and they raised the Pollard issue with them. We worked with the Conference of Presidents to get a letter from them in support of Jonathan’s release; additional letters came from the Reform and Conservative Jewish community as well. We even worked with those formerly connected to the President’s Administration – non-Jews and great friends of the Jewish people who understood the injustice – who kindly helped press the case. Finally, we also solicited support for Pollard’s release from the likes of Pastor John Hagee of the evangelical Christian community.

Remarkably, what we did not get was any assistance from the government of Israel, nor any sense of a joint effort to help get Jonathan Pollard out.

There is a famous story in American Jewish history when a friend of Harry Truman, Eddie Jacobson, was approached by Chaim Weizmann and the soon-to-be government of Israel to obtain a meeting with the president. Jacobson acquiesced and the meeting helped lead to Truman’s support for the State of Israel. Today, while undertaking all of these actions for Pollard we were only aware of assistance from Natan Sharansky in Israel. We heard nothing from the government of Israel. It is not surprising that Sharansky helped, considering his personal experiences and the fact that he himself visited Pollard. It is not surprising that Binyamin Netanyahu was the last prime minister to make a serious effort for Pollard, and is the only one running for office who has actually visited Pollard in prison. Neither Livni, Olmert nor Barak ever took the time to visit Pollard on their many trips to the US, and therefore it is not surprising that they failed in their efforts, if in fact there were any, to obtain his release.

One would have hoped, on the last weekend of Bush’s presidency, that Livni would have asked, as part of a face-saving agreement to leave Gaza without Gilad Shalit, to at least have Pollard released. But, truth be told, there is no indication that she even raised the issue, despite others working tirelessly the last week to try to get the president to commute Pollard’s sentence.

I am writing this not to place blame, but rather to request a change of policy. Fact: the policy followed by the government of Israel has failed. Pollard must now be made a major issue of discussion by both the government of Israel and the American Jewish community. I met once with the Jewish liaison to President Bush and he expressed surprise that I was raising the Pollard issue. He asked why, if the matter was so important, it is not being raised by American Jewish leaders. I happen to know that not only was it not being raised, but those going to the White House were specifically told not to raise the Pollard issue.