Pacifism and the War

George Orwell
Pacifism and the War

About a year ago I and a number of others were engaged in broadcasting literary programmes to India, and among other things we broadcast a good deal of verse by contemporary and near-contemporary English writers — for example, Eliot, Herbert Read, Auden, Spender, Dylan Thomas, Henry Treece, Alex Comfort, Robert Bridges, Edmund Blunden, D. H. Lawrence. Whenever it was possible we had poems broadcast by the people who wrote them. Just why these particular programmes (a small and remote out-flanking movement in the radio war) were instituted there is no need to explain here, but I should add that the fact that we were broadcasting to an Indian audience dictated our technique to some extent. The essential point was that our literary broadcasts were aimed at the Indian university students, a small and hostile audience, unapproachable by anything that could be described as British propaganda. It was known in advance that we could not hope for more than a few thousand listeners at the most, and this gave us an excuse to be more ‘highbrow’ than is generally possible on the air.

Since I don’t suppose you want to fill an entire number of P.R. (Partisan Review) with squalid controversies imported from across the Atlantic, I will lump together the various letters you have sent on to me (from Messrs Savage, Woodcock and Comfort), as the central issue in all of them is the same. But I must afterwards deal separately with some points of fact raised in various of the letters.

Pacifism. Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr Savage remarks that ‘according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be “objectively pro-British”.’ But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious ‘freedom’ station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U. They would stimulate pacifism in Russia as well if they could, but in that case they have tougher babies to deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.

I am not interested in pacifism as a ‘moral phenomenon’. If Mr Savage and others imagine that one can somehow ‘overcome’ the German army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen. As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force. But though not much interested in the ‘theory’ of pacifism, I am interested in the psychological processes by which pacifists who have started out with an alleged horror of violence end up with a marked tendency to be fascinated by the success and power of Nazism. Even pacifists who wouldn’t own to any such fascination are beginning to claim that a Nazi victory is desirable in itself. In the letter you sent on to me, Mr Comfort considers that an artist in occupied territory ought to ‘protest against such evils as he sees’, but considers that this is best done by ‘temporarily accepting the status quo’ (like Déat or Bergery, for instance?). a few weeks back he was hoping for a Nazi victory because of the stimulating effect it would have upon the arts:

As far as I can see, no therapy short of complete military defeat has any chance of re-establishing the common stability of literature and of the man in the street. One can imagine the greater the adversity the greater the sudden realization of a stream of imaginative work, and the greater the sudden katharsis of poetry, from the isolated interpretation of war as calamity to the realization of the imaginative and actual tragedy of Man. When we have access again to the literature of the war years in France, Poland and Czechoslovakia, I am confident that that is what we shall fined. (From a letter to Horizon.)

I pass over the money-sheltered ignorance capable of believing that literary life is still going on in, for instance, Poland, and remark merely that statements like this justify me in saying that our English pacifists are tending towards active pro-Fascism. But I don’t particularly object to that. What I object to is the intellectual cowardice of people who are objectively and to some extent emotionally pro-Fascist, but who don’t care to say so and take refuge behind the formula ‘I am just as anti-fascist as anyone, but—’. The result of this is that so-called peace propaganda is just as dishonest and intellectually disgusting as war propaganda. Like war propaganda, it concentrates on putting forward a ‘case’, obscuring the opponent’s point of view and avoiding awkward questions. The line normally followed is ‘Those who fight against Fascism go Fascist themselves.’ In order to evade the quite obvious objections that can be raised to this, the following propaganda-tricks are used:

1. The Fascizing processes occurring in Britain as a result of war are systematically exaggerated.
2. The actual record of Fascism, especially its pre-war history, is ignored or pooh-poohed as ‘propaganda’. Discussion of what the world would actually be like if the Axis dominated it is evaded.
3. Those who want to struggle against Fascism are accused of being wholehearted defenders of capitalist ‘democracy’. The fact that the rich everywhere tend to be pro-Fascist and the working class are nearly always anti-Fascist is hushed up.
4. It is tacitly pretended that the war is only between Britain and Germany. Mention of Russia and China, and their fate if Fascism is permitted to win, is avoided. (You won’t find one word about Russia or China in the three letters you sent to me.)

Now as to one or two points of fact which I must deal with if your correspondents’ letters are to be printed in full.

My past and present. Mr Woodcock tries to discredit me by saying that (a) I once served in the Indian Imperial Police, (b) I have written article for the Adelphi and was mixed up with the Trotskyists in Spain, and (c) that I am at the B.B.C. ‘conducting British propaganda to fox the Indian masses’. With regard to (a), it is quite true that I served five years in the Indian Police. It is also true that I gave up that job, partly because it didn’t suit me but mainly because I would not any longer be a servant of imperialism. I am against imperialism because I know something about it from the inside. The whole history of this is to be found in my writings, including a novel (Burmese Days) which I think I can claim was a kind of prophecy of what happened this year in Burma. (b) Of course I have written for the Adelphi. Why not? I once wrote an article for a vegetarian paper. Does that make me a vegetarian? I was associated with the Trotskyists in Spain. It was chance that I was serving in the P.O.U.M. militia and not another, and I largely disagreed with the P.O.U. M. ‘line’ and told its leaders so freely, but when they were afterwards accused of pro-Fascist activities I defended them as best it could. How does this contradict my present anti-Hitler attitude? It is news to me that Trotskyists are either pacifists or pro-Fascists. (c) Does Mr Woodcock really know what kind of stuff I put out in the Indian broadcasts? He does not — though I would be quite glad to tell him about it. He is careful not to mention what other people are associated with these Indian broadcasts. One for instance is Herbert Read, whom he mentions with approval. Others are T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Reginald Reynolds, Stephen Spender, J. B. S. Haldane, Tom Wintringham. Most of our broadcasters are Indian left-wing intellectual, from Liberals to Trotskyists, some of them bitterly anti-British. They don’t do it to ‘fox the Indian masses’ but because they know what a Fascist victory would mean to the chances of India’s independence. Why not try to find out what I am doing before accusing my good faith?

‘Mr Orwell is intellectual-hunting again’ (Mr Comfort). I have never attacked ‘the intellectuals’ or ‘the intelligentsia’ en bloc. I have used a lot of ink and done myself a lot of harm by attacking the successive literary cliques which have infested this country, not because they were intellectuals but precisely because they were not what I mean by true intellectuals. The life of a clique is about five years and I have been writing long enough to see three of them come and two go — the Catholic gang, the Stalinist gang, and the present pacifist or, as they are sometimes nicknamed, Fascifist gang. My case against all of them is that they write mentally dishonest propaganda and degrade literary criticism to mutual arse-licking. But even with these various schools I would differentiate between individuals. I would never think of coupling Christopher Dawson with Arnold Lunn, or Malraux with Palme Dutt, or Max Plowman with the Duke of Bedford. And even the work of one individual can exist at very different levels. For instance Mr Comfort himself wrote one poem I value greatly (‘The Atoll in the Mind’), and I wish he would write more of them instead of lifeless propaganda tracts dressed up as novels. But his letter he has chosen to send you is a different matter. Instead of answering what I have said he tries to prejudice an audience to whom I am little known by a misrepresentation of my general line and sneers about my ‘status’ in England. (A writer isn’t judged by his ‘status’, he is judged by his work.) That is on a par with ‘peace’ propaganda which has to avoid mention of Hitler’s invasion of Russian, and it is not what I mean by intellectual honesty. It is just because I do take the function of the intelligentsia seriously that I don’t like the sneers, libels, parrot phrased and financially profitable back-scratching which flourish in our English literary world, and perhaps in yours also.

1942

THE END

Barry Rubin on the Corruption of the Information Professionals

Barry Rubin on the Corruption of the Information Professionals

A Period of Consequences | The Weekly Standard

A Period of Consequences | The Weekly Standard

A geopolitical game changer - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

A geopolitical game changer - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

RealClearPolitics - What Helen Thomas Missed

RealClearPolitics - What Helen Thomas Missed

Mort Zuckerman: Why No Outrage for Anti-Israel, Phony Flotilla? - US News and World Report

Mort Zuckerman: Why No Outrage for Anti-Israel, Phony Flotilla? - US News and World Report

Muslim French Intellectuals Criticize Obama's Statement on the Hijab

MEMRI - Middle East Media Research Institute

In his June 4, 2009 Cairo speech, U.S. President Barack Obama emphasized that Muslim women in the U.S. are free to don the hijab. He said: "...Freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it."[1]

Obama's statements triggered strong criticism among Arab intellectuals in France, where for the past few years there has been an ongoing debate about the permissibility of wearing the veil in public.

read the rest at MEMRI

PA Finds Bibi's Biblical Reference 'Distasteful' - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

PA Finds Bibi's Biblical Reference 'Distasteful' - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

by Maayana Miskin

(IsraelNationalNews .com) Senior Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat has criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for mentioning the Jewish people's historic tie to Jerusalem as described in the Bible. He accused the prime minister of "[using] religion to incite hatred and fear."

Netanyahu had made reference to numerous Biblical references to Jerusalem while addressing the Knesset in a session honoring Jerusalem Day – the anniversary of the day on which Israel's capital was reunited after 19 years during which Jordan held control of the eastern half of the city.

The Bible refers to Jerusalem and Zion 850 times, Netanyahu said.

At first he did not say how many times Jerusalem is mentioned in the holy writings of other faiths, but after he was challenged by an Israeli Arab MK, he said Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran at all, although a 12th century interpretation of the Koran does say one passage referred to the city. However, the prime minister clarified, "It is not my intention to detract from the bond other peoples have with Jerusalem... I am challenging the attempts to distract from, distort or erase our unique bond with Jerusalem."

Leaders in the PA, and Muslims leaders in Israel, have often portrayed the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, and to the Temple Mount in particular, as a threat to Islam. Israel has been accused of attempting to "Judaize" Jerusalem and to damage or destroy the Al-Aksa mosque.

The PA has claimed all of the neighborhoods formerly held by Jordan, including the Old City, the City of David and the Temple Mount, as the future capital of a PA state. Speaking Wednesday, Erekat warned, "East Jerusalem cannot continue to be occupied if there is to be peace."

Netanyahu, like previous prime ministers, states that Israel's capital will not be divided.

-con't - here

Human Rights Just a Joke At the U.N.

Human Rights Just a Joke At the U.N.

By Anne Bayefsky

- FOXNews.com

Things are going from bad to worse at the U.N. Come Thursday, the U.N. Human Rights Council will include Libya!

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/05/11/anne-bayefsky-iran-united-nations-human-rights-council-libya/

Islam's Nowhere Men

Islam's Nowhere Men
Millions like Faisal Shahzad are unsettled by a modern world they can neither master nor reject.


By FOUAD AJAMI

'A Muslim has no nationality except his belief," the intellectual godfather of the Islamists, Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, wrote decades ago. Qutb's "children" are everywhere now; they carry the nationalities of foreign lands and plot against them. The Pakistani born Faisal Shahzad is a devotee of Sayyid Qutb's doctrine, and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, was another.
.....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703338004575230142684329162.html

'This is a big day for Israel' - OECD accepts Israel into its ranks

'This is a big day for Israel'
By GIL HOFFMAN, JPOST STAFF AND AP
10/05/2010 12:39

PM speaks of his delight after OECD accepts Israel into its ranks.
.....
Uri Gutman, the Foreign Ministry's director of the OECD accession process, said Israel was now a "member of a prestigious organization, but also an organization that has some credibility and influence on the world economy."

Speaking to Army Radio after the vote, Steinitz hailed the decision to accept Israel into the "most respectable socioeconomic club" as being of “immense importance,” saying it had both economic and political value.
.....



http://www.jpost.com/Business/BusinessNews/Article.aspx?ID=175158

The Welfare State's Death Spiral

The Welfare State's Death Spiral
By Robert Samuelson

WASHINGTON -- What we're seeing in Greece is the death spiral of the welfare state. This isn't Greece's problem alone, and that's why its crisis has rattled global stock markets and threatens economic recovery. Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven't fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies.
.....


http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/05/10/the_welfare_states_death_spiral_105503.html

'Talks doomed due to Arafat's legacy'

'Talks doomed due to Arafat's legacy'

".....
No matter what we do, I do not see a Palestinian leader who is willing to accept what Arafat rejected, and I don’t see a Jewish prime minister who can give more than what [Ehud] Barak offered. Therefore, I see it as a dead end," he said.
....."


cont here

RealClearPolitics - In Afghanistan, the Clock is Ticking

George Will,,
Must read:

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- The ticking clock does not disturb the preternatural serenity that Gen. David Petraeus maintains regarding Afghanistan. Officially, the U.S. Central Command is located here; actually, it is wherever he is, which is never in one place for very long. He is away about 300 days a year, flying to and around his vast area of responsibility, which extends from Egypt to where his towering reputation is hostage to a timetable -- Afghanistan.

He earned his own chapter in American military history by advocating and presiding over the surge that broke the back of the Iraq insurgency. This was an instance of a military intellectual given full opportunity for the unity of theory and practice.

con't here

More Inconvenient Obamacare Truths | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

From the Heritage Foundation. The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

Last week the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final cost projections for Obamacare, finding that, contrary to White House claims, the legislation will increase national health spending by $311 billion over the next decade and will cause 14 million Americans to lose their current employer-based health coverage. President Barack Obama unleashed his staff to attack Foster’s work. Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, and White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer downplayed and criticized Foster’s analysis on the White House website. As Heritage’s Rob Bluey reports this was not the first time the author of the report, Medicare and Medicaid chief actuary Rick Foster, had been attacked by a White House:

con't.

YouTube - Ed Koch Israel BREAK THE SILENCE RALLY 25APRIL2010

YouTube - Ed Koch Israel BREAK THE SILENCE RALLY 25APRIL2010

Must see and hear

An Earth Day tradition: George Carlin on the intellectual bankruptcy of "saving the planet" | Washington Examiner

Israel prepares for Remembrance Day

From the Jerusalem Post:

When the nation bows its head on Sunday evening for Remembrance Day, it will be mourning the 22,682 servicemen and women who fell defending the Land of Israel since 1860 – the year the first Jews left Jerusalem’s Old City walls to settle other parts of the country.

con't here

Friend of the Enemy - Michael Barone - National Review Online

National Review Online

Barack Obama’s decision to postpone his trip to Indonesia and Australia — to a democracy with the world’s largest Muslim population and to the only nation that has fought alongside us in all the wars of the last century — is of a piece with his foreign policy generally: attack America’s friends and kowtow to our enemies.

Examples run from Britain to Israel. Early in his administration, Obama returned a bust of Churchill that the British government had loaned the White House after 9/11. Then Obama gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of DVDs that don’t work on British machines and that Brown, who has impaired vision, would have trouble watching anyway.
Click here to finish ''Friend of the Enemy ''- Michael Barone - National Review Online

Obama breaking up our old friendships?!

Special relationship is over, MPs say. Now stop calling us America's poodle -The Guardian, UK

Britain needs to use "sharp elbows" in its dealings with Washington because Barack Obama is "less sentimental" about the historic links between Britain and the United States, a former ambassador to the US has claimed.

The warning from Sir David Manning, who was Tony Blair's main foreign policy adviser during the Iraq war before serving as ambassador to Washington, was cited by a Commons select committee which called today for a reassessment of Britain's "special relationship" with the US.

Prime ministers of all hues, from Harold Macmillan to Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, have fostered the idea that the two largest English-speaking countries enjoy a historic bond which elevates their relationship to a special level.

But MPs on the cross-party foreign affairs select committee said this romantic vision had had its day. "The use of the phrase 'the special relationship' in its historical sense, to describe the totality of the ever-evolving UK-US relationship, is potentially misleading, and we recommend that its use should be avoided," the MPs concluded. "The overuse of the phrase by some politicians and many in the media serves simultaneously to devalue its meaning and to raise unrealistic expectations about the benefits the relationship can deliver to the UK."

Mmm...Mmmm...Mmm... He has the reverse Midas Touch.
read on here

Cal Thomas

Cal Thomas

Jewish World Review March 18, 2010 / 3 Nissan 5770

Israel's New Enemy: America?

By Cal Thomas

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "Enemy: "a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent." — Dictionary.com


Despite Vice President Joe Biden's recent pledge of unswerving fidelity to Israel during his recent visit there, the rhetoric and pressure directed by the Obama administration against the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East more accurately resembles the behavior of an enemy. Increasingly under this administration — but also present in Republican administrations — America's policy toward Israel is full of "harmful designs" and "antagonistic activities." The intentions may not be deliberate, but the outcome would lead to the same injurious end.


The latest pretext for putting more pressure on Israel to do more in the "pursuit of peace" comes from a decision by Israel's Interior Ministry to construct 1,600 new housing units in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, which is located in "disputed territory." To the Palestinians and their Arab and Muslim neighbors, most especially Iran and Syria, all of Israel is "disputed territory." It is difficult to understand why the U.S. State Department thinks not building a few houses is going to dissuade Israel's enemies from wanting less than they want now.

finish the article here

HIJAB HILLARY condemns white Europeans for being mean to Muslims « Bare Naked Islam's Weblog

HIJAB HILLARY condemns white Europeans for being mean to Muslims « Bare Naked Islam's Weblog
Spreading Shari’a (Islamic) Law apparently gets U.S. approval as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton takes to task white Europeans for manifesting increased discrimination against Muslims.

Oh my Gawd! Words fail me

American Thinker: Gaza's Rich Jewish History

American Thinker: Gaza's Rich Jewish History
By Victor Sharpe


The four thousand year old association of Jewish life in Gaza is little remembered in today's world. Of course people know of the biblical story of Samson being blinded by the now extinct Philistines and how he brought down the temple to their gods in Gaza. But very few have any idea of the rich Jewish history in the following millennia.

In the Second millennium BC, Gaza served as an administrative city and residence of the Egyptian governor of Canaan. The bible tells us that the Jewish patriarch, Isaac, dug wells in Gerar, an ancient site between Beer Sheba and Gaza, and in the 13th century BC the Philistines or Caphorites (Cretans) annihilated the Avite inhabitants of Gaza and made the city the largest of their five centers. After the Israelite Exodus from Egypt and entry into the Promised Land, the tribe of Judah was given Gaza as a possession but did not include it fully in their territory. The bible reports in Joshua 15.47 and Judges 1:18 how the city of Gaza, and those of Ekron, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Gat became a possession of Israel but how some of them were among those places ‘lying in the remaining country,' i.e., not fully possessed by the Israelites.

Down the centuries, Gaza was captured by Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, followed by Persians and later still by Alexander the Great who incorporated it into his growing empire in the 5th century BC. The strategic territory, lying as it does at the crossroads of two continents, Africa and Asia, has repeatedly fallen since earliest times to invading armies.

In 167 BC, Judah Maccabee led his Jewish fighters to victory over the Syrian-Greek pagan king, Antiochus Epiphanies. Jerusalem was liberated and the defiled Temple cleansed. The miracle of this event is now celebrated by Jews during the festival of Hanukah. But it was the Hasmonean king, Yochanan, who liberated Gaza in 145 BC. He was the brother of Judah the Maccabee and it was their other brother, Simon, who sent Jews to repopulate Gaza and its environs.

Con't here

Curcumin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Curcumin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A link related to the above post with respect to the drug Curcumin and its possible medicinal properties. Curcumin and green tea...

Spices halt growth of breast stem cells, study finds

Spices halt growth of breast stem cells, study finds

ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2009) — A new study finds that compounds derived from the spices turmeric and pepper could help prevent breast cancer by limiting the growth of stem cells, the small number of cells that fuel a tumor's growth.

con't here

If this is true, then Mexican (and Indian --from India) women should not suffer as much from breast cancer as US women. Tumeric and pepper is a staple in the Mexican diet!

Archaeologist finds Jerusalem wall matching biblical story - Haaretz - Israel News

Archaeologist finds Jerusalem wall matching biblical story - Haaretz - Israel News

A team of Israeli archaeologists has announced the discovery of a massive wall they say dates to the 10th century BCE in Jerusalem's Ophel Park on the slope between the Temple Mount and the village of Silwan. The dig director, Dr. Eilat Mazar, dates the wall according to potsherds found nearby to the period of King Solomon and the major period of construction in Jerusalem in the First Temple period, as described in the Bible.

The dig is a joint project by the Hebrew University, the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

Along with the wall, which is 10 meters high and 70 meters long, other structures were found, including a monumental gatehouse and a tower. According to Mazar, the wall is additional proof of the accuracy of the Bible's description of the grandeur of the period of David and Solomon.

According to 1 Kings 3:1, Solomon brought his royal Egyptian wife "into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of the Lord, and the wall of Jerusalem round about."

con't : here

NIF linked to negative NGO's

‘Goldstone Report was our smoking gun’

How did Im Tirtzu-The Second Zionist Revolution, which was created less than four years ago as a small student organization to voice support for IDF reservists, go from organizing campus demonstrations during the Second Lebanon War to compiling a major report that has reverberated into a major scandal?

One of the reasons, The Jerusalem Post learned this week, was that the document the group released last month, now known as the “Im Tirtzu Report,” which listed the New Israel Fund as a main financier of more than a dozen Israeli NGOs – including: The Association for Civil Rights in Israel; Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; Bimkom-Planners for Planning Rights; Gisha-Legal Center for Freedom of Movement; HaMoked-Center for the Defense of the Individual; Physicians for Human Rights-Israel; the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel; and Yesh Din-Volunteers for Human Rights – that provided testimony used in the UN’s Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead, was the result of efforts modeled after military intelligence operations that trace and pinpoint money trails leading to terrorist organizations.

Hamas' response to the Goldstone report coming up soon

Hamas' line of defense - Israel Opinion, Ynetnews




Hamas' line of defense

Jonathan Dahohah Halevi analyzes Hamas’ response to Goldstone’s charges 02.04.10

Israel has recently delivered to the United Nations Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon its official response to the UN’s fact finding mission to Operation Cast Lead, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone. Hamas’ government is also preparing to submit its official response before the grace period of six months set to the parties by the Goldstone committee is over.

In sharp contrast to the genuine fears expressed by Israel, Hamas does not seem to feel any threat in the legal arena. On the contrary, Hamas demonstrates self-confidence based on the understanding that the Goldstone committee strived only to incriminate Israel and all other limited references to the other side were just for lip service without any legal significance.

click here to read: Hamas' line of defense - Israel Opinion, Ynetnews

Ruth Etting - I'm Nobody's Baby

YouTube - Ruth Etting - I'm Nobody's Baby

Pirate stock exchange helps fund hijackings

Pirate stock exchange helps fund hijackings

HARADHEERE, Somalia -- In Somalia's main pirate lair of Haradheere, the sea gangs have set up a cooperative to fund their hijackings offshore, a sort of stock exchange meets criminal syndicate.

Heavily armed pirates from the lawless Horn of Africa nation have terrorized shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and strategic Gulf of Aden, which links Europe to Asia through the Red Sea.

The gangs have made tens of millions of dollars from ransoms and a deployment by foreign navies in the area has only appeared to drive the attackers to hunt further from shore.

Must read!: http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/story.html?id=2289558#ixzz0eopVI65V

International Law on Z Street

This is quite long and dense but the subject is formidable:

International Law

FACING NUCLEAR MADMEN?

Posted in International Law on February 03, 2010 by Lori Lowenthal Marcus

ISRAEL’S SECURITY AND ENEMY RATIONALITY

4 February 2010
Louis René Beres
----------------

"Do you know what it means to find yourselves face to face with a madman," asks Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV. "Madmen, lucky folk, construct without logic, or rather with a logic that flies like a feather." What is true for individuals is sometimes also true for states. In the often absurd theatre of modern world politics, constructions that rest upon ordinary logic can quickly crumble before madness.
Consider Israel, especially as it may soon have to confront an Iranian nuclear adversary with a potentially “suicidal” preference ordering. Left to proceed unhindered with its ongoing and illegal (under international law) program of nuclearization, Iran’s current leadership (and possibly even a successor “reformist” government in Tehran) could proceed to value Israel’s destruction more highly than even its own physical security. Such a prospect is highly improbable, to be sure, but – if rooted in particular visions of a Shiite apocalypse - it is not inconceivable.

Israel’s ultimate source of national security lies plainly in nuclear deterrence. Although obviously still implicit, and not at all open or acknowledged, this policy that is necessarily based upon enemy rationality could “crumble before madness.” In certain imaginable instances, the result of failed Israeli retaliatory threats could be total destruction.

By definition, the logic of deterrence always rests upon assumptions of rationality. History, however, reveals the persistent fragility of all such assumptions. We know too well that nations sometimes even behave in ways that are consciously self-destructive. Sometimes, perhaps even mirroring the infrequent but decisively aberrant behavior of individual human beings, national leaders choose to assign the very highest value to preferences other than collective self-preservation.

Strange as it may seem, it has happened before, and it will happen again.

con't at Z Street

Kicking the Palestinian Habit

Kicking the Palestinian Habit FrontPageMag

Conspicuous for its absence in President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last week was any mention of what is variously called the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Middle East peace process. Israeli analyst Yoram Ettinger suggests that this “reflects a US order of priorities and, possibly, a concern that mediation in the Arab-Israeli conflict does not advance—but undermines—Obama’s domestic standing.”

Conceivably, a similar premise underlies Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent demonstrative acts in favor of settlement in the West Bank. Last week, just after a meeting in Jerusalem with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, Netanyahu marked the tree-planting holiday of Tu Bishvat by planting trees in public ceremonies in the Jerusalem-area West Bank settlements of Kfar Etzion and Maale Adumim. He capped it off on Friday with a tree-planting ceremony in Ariel, a settlement somewhat deeper in the West Bank in Samaria.

continue reading Kicking the Palestinian Habit

Honest Reporting: Israel Prepares to Rebut Goldstone

Israel Prepares to Rebut Goldstone

Israel Prepares to Rebut Goldstone

As Israel prepares to publish its official response to the UN's Goldstone Report, we highlight some more recent analyses and commentaries.

As reported by the New York Times, Israel is preparing to release its own rebuttal to the Goldstone Report, some of the contents of which were released to the newspaper:

One concerned the destruction of Gaza's sole flour mill. The Goldstone report asserts that the Bader flour mill "was hit by an airstrike, possibly by an F-16." The Israeli investigators say they have photographic proof that this is false, that the mill was accidentally hit by artillery in the course of a firefight with Hamas militiamen.

The dispute is significant since the United Nations report asserts that "the destruction of the mill was carried out for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population," an explicit war crime.

A second finding concerned the destruction of a wastewater plant, leading to an enormous outflow of raw sewage. The Goldstone report contended that it was hit by a powerful Israeli missile in a strike that was "deliberate and premeditated." The Israelis say they had nothing to do with that plant's collapse and suggest that it may have been the result of Hamas explosives.

The two cases, along with the destruction of chicken coops, water wells, a cement plant and some 4,000 homes, are crucial building blocks in the Goldstone case that Israel set out to eliminate infrastructure so as to cause intense civilian suffering.

cont here: Israel Prepares to Rebut Goldstone"

My mother wears army boots

Real Cool Daddy

Have you ever seen such a cute baby in your life?

Grandfather, mother, great grandmother, horse and passerby

BBC . The British government hates the Jews, they never forgave them for kicking them out of "Palestine"

A little history from

03/Apr/2006
BBC online censured for anti-Israel bias

then the Board of Governors decided:

May 11, 2006
The BBC pro-Israeli? Is the Pope Jewish? | Martin Walker - Times Online
03/Apr/2006

from ''Martin Walker'':

There was the extraordinarily naive coverage of the London visit of Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al-Sudais, the predominant imam of Mecca, to open London’s largest new mosque. He was described as a widely respected religious figure who works for “community cohesion”, and a video on the BBC website was captioned “The BBC’s Mark Easton: ‘Events like today offer grounds for optimism’.”


The BBC must have missed his sermon of February 1, 2004, that said “the Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring, infidels . . . calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers . . . the scum of the human race whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs . . . These are the Jews, a continuous lineage of meanness, cunning, obstinacy, tyranny, licentiousness, evil, and corruption . . .”

Ann Coulter has a way with words- HUMAN EVENTS

Ivana Trump Escorted Off Plane: Napolitano Declares 'The System Worked' - HUMAN EVENTS
12/30/2009 by the inimitable Ann Coulter
I wish she were POTUS.

In response to a Nigerian Muslim trying to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, the government will now prohibit international travelers from going to the bathroom in the last hour before the plane lands.

Terrorists who plan to bomb planes during the first seven hours of the eight-hour flight, however, should face no difficulties, provided they wait until after the complimentary beverage service has been concluded.

con't here
(this article as 4207 comments )

George Dole, Cartoonist

Mike Lynch Cartoons blog did something on George Dole the cartoonist a little over a year ago. Rachel Dole, his daughter, posted on the site. Rachel is an old friend, and it is nice to know she is still up and running. I am hoping she finds this site and posts me a note. Her father was a fabulous cartoonists and there are some examples of his work on Mike Lynch's page, along with a brief bio by Rachel.

Another Iranian Revolution in the works?ا

See this

Self-Reliance

Not the greatest of orators but one of the finest essays of all time in my humble opinion. This was a defining essay for me as a adolescent.

Eli Hertz: Most Israelis Demonstrate Extraordinary Self-Restraint

December 21, 2009 | Eli E. Hertz


Calls for a freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria - while Arab construction, which far exceeds Jewish development, continues unfettered - are clearly biased and by itself a violation of international law.

Israel, as a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966) is obligated to use "all appropriate means" to promote and protect the right to housing, including the prohibition on forced evictions.

Arabs claim that Jewish settlements "change the status" of the Territories and represent a distortion of the Oslo Accords. This phrase applies to acts that change the political status of the disputed territory - such as outright Israeli annexation or a Palestinian declaration of statehood. Since Jewish settlements are legal, they should be promoted and supported in accordance of the "Mandate for Palestine" - The historical League of Nations document, that laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Oslo Accords do not forbid Israeli or Arab settlement activity. Charges that further Jewish settlement activity preempts final negotiations by establishing realities requires reciprocity. If the West Bank and Gaza were de jure part of the British Mandate, and if the Mandate borders [article 25] are the last legal document concerning this territory; and if Jews were forcibly expelled from the West Bank and Gaza in 1948 during a war of aggression aimed at them - then these Territories must be considered disputed Territories, at the least.

The Israeli-Palestinian border dispute is like every other major and minor boundary dispute around the globe. Since the West Bank and Gaza were redeemed in 1967 in a defensive war and are not "Occupied Territories" gained illegally by a bellicose power; and since this fact is recognized in the wording of UN Resolutions 242 and 338 that call for a settlement to institute "secure and recognized borders," calling for a construction freeze on Jewish settlements should, logically, be paralleled by a freeze on Arab construction in the West Bank.

The Oslo II Agreement recognizes de facto the special status and security needs of Jewish communities in the West Bank.

Rather than negotiate a settlement, as agreed to in September 1993, Palestinians elected to break their commitment and to intensify the use of terrorism as a political vehicle in a low-tech war of aggression.

The status issue has been co-opted and warped by the Palestinians in an attempt to curtail Jewish settlement. Neither the 1993 "Oslo I" (the Declaration of Principles) nor the 1995 Oslo II (Interim Agreement) stipulate that the construction of settlements, neighborhoods, houses, roads or other building projects cease.

According to a former policy planning official, the pace of Arab construction is "more than 10 times the number of buildings under construction [in the Territories] than those approved [by the Israeli government] for the [Jewish] settlers." Calls for a freeze on Jewish construction in the Territories - while Arab construction continues unfettered, are discriminatory- all the more so, in light of the fact that Jews were forcibly expelled in 1948.

Most Israelis living in the Territories demonstrated extraordinary self-restraint in recent years.

Palestinian Arabs create the impression that they are at risk from violent Israelis. A close analysis of realities reveals who is really endangered. All Jewish Israeli schools, both in sensitive areas inside Israel and settlements in the Territories, are surrounded by perimeter fences and alarm systems. Public places from restaurants and banks to wedding halls and hospitals, have armed guards at the entrance. This is not the case in Israeli Arab communities or among Palestinian Arabs in the Territories, who are not exposed to terrorist attacks on civilians.

Settlers as a community attempt systematically to avoid conflict.

Settlers travel on bypass roads built by Israel that detour around Arab villages. They ride in bulletproof buses or wear flak jackets on their commute in their cars. More recently, some settlers have surrounded their villages with security fences. Except in rare instances, Jewish settlers, have not taken wholesale retaliation against Palestinian Arab villages, or attempted to establish a balance of terror.

The late Professor Ehud Sprinzak, a fellow at the Counter-Terrorism Institute in Herzliya, an expert on right-wing extremism, published a study entitled Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination. Professor Sprinzak not only stated that in his estimation, Israelis, including settlers, would not resort to armed resistance if ordered by their government to abandon their homes; he said that had other Western nations faced Israel’s external and internal challenges, their streets would have been flooded with blood." This was said before the quantum leap in levels of violence since September 2000. There were 18,787 (!) incidents where Jews were targeted by Palestinian Arab terrorists between September 2000 and May 2003 alone (with and without casualties) on both sides of the Green Line.

Legalities aside, before 1967 there were no Jewish settlements in the West Bank and for the first ten years of so-called occupation there were almost no Jewish settlers in the West Bank. And still there was no peace with the Palestinian Arabs. The notion that Jewish communities pose an obstacle to peace is a red herring designed to blame Israel for lack of progress in the Peace Process and enable Palestinian leadership to continue to reject any form of compromise and reconciliation.

from Myths and Facts.

I hadn't thought of it quite that way!

Petition to: declare the UK’s opposition to the Goldstone Report and to ensure its rejection when a vote is taken in the UN Human Rights Council in March 2010. We believe that the Report was biased against Israel from the announcement of the UN mission’s mandate. This was compounded by its composition, by the selectivity of the incidents it investigated, by the witnesses it interviewed and by its almost complete failure to refer to terrorism and to the defensive context of Israel’s operation in Gaza in January 2009. | Number10.gov.uk

Must be a British citizen to sign.

Rights groups: Hamas disinters Christians in Gaza | Middle East

Every three minutes a Christian is being tortured in the Muslim world, and in 2009 more than 165,000 Christians will have been killed because of their faith, most of them in Muslim countries, according to a human rights organization that is visiting Israel starting Sunday.
Majed El Shafie, who will...

Majed El Shafie, who will head a delegation of human rights activists, members of parliament from Canada and religious personalities at the Van Leer Institute inJerusalem.
SLIDESHOW: Israel & Region | World

"Hamas digs up the bodies of Christians from Christian burial sites in the Gaza Strip claiming that they pollute the earth," said Reverend Majed El Shafie, President of One Free World International (OFWI), who will head a delegation of human rights activists, members of parliament from Canada and religious personalities.

During their visit to Israel the delegation will hold a conference on human rights and persecuted minorities at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. The conference will provide new statistics on the persecution of minorities in Muslim countries.

read on:
Rights groups: Hamas disinters Christians in Gaza | Middle East

Climategate: the scandal spreads, the plot thickens, the shame deepens… – Telegraph Blogs

Climategate: the scandal spreads, the plot thickens, the shame deepens… – Telegraph Blogs

Wow! The scandal just gets juicier and juicier. Now it seems that the Kiwis may have been at it too – tinkering with raw data to make “Global Warming” look scarier than it really is. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That; Ian Wishart)

The alleged villains this time are the climate scientists at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NiWA) – New Zealand’s answer to Britain’s Climate Research Unit. And to judge by this news alert by the Climate Science Coalition of NZ, both institutions share a similarly laissez-faire attitude to scientific accuracy.

Must Read: Here

Part 2 of 2 - Statist Islam: A continuing challenge to civilization - The Métropolitain

Part 2 of 2 - Statist Islam: A continuing challenge to civilization - The Métropolitain

By Thomas O. Hecht on December 3, 2009

History has a tendency to repeat itself. In the days of expansionist communist Russia, the country was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet Russian communist leadership was responsible for the murder of at least 20 million of their own people. The peaceful majority was irrelevant.

Prior to that, 80 million Germans were not all confirmed Nazis, but they were irrelevant when Hitler and his murderous minions caused the death of one-third of the Jewish population in the world and brought about WWII.

The so-called German majority was too uninvolved to care. And we are learning today how the ordinary citizens of Germany, Poland and the Ukraine stood silently by while trains and trucks transported Jews to be murdered.

China's huge population was peaceful, but Chinese communists under Mao Tse-tung managed to kill 30 million people in China.

History's lessons, when analyzed, are simple and blunt. Peace loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence, just as the majority of Germans, Russians and Chinese. It is the extremists like Ahmadinejad, the Wahabists in Saudi-Arabia, who dictate policies, set the agenda, and cause the majority to remain silent and to progressively even lose their naturally endowed rights to human freedom and dignity.

Like Nazism, like cruel communism, Islamo-fascism – the extremists – must be defeated not only for the sake of the silent majority in the Islamic world, but also for the sake of our own survival in World War IV, which we are waging today.

President Obama has inherited massive policy challenges, but one of the most challenging will be the existential struggle between societies of freedom and societies of fear – our way of life against those who advocate the Sharia and limit human development.

Hecht goes on to discuss Sharia law, the menace of Iran, the weakness of the West, and the Lessons of History, quoting Churchill.
Here: http://www.themetropolitain.ca/articles/view/734

Op Ed on The NY Times by Friedman

Are some in the left finally catching on? Well maybe some...

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: November 28, 2009

What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood?

Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America — the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by “The Narrative.”

What is scary is that even though he was born, raised and educated in America, The Narrative still got to him.

The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand “American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy” to keep Muslims down.

Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.

read more:
Op-Ed Columnist - America vs. The Narrative - NYTimes.com

and interesting companion piece at AIM.org which speaks to the question of the NARRATIVE
By Alan Caruba |

When President Obama delivers a speech on why he is going to send more thousands of U.S. troops and spend more billions on the eight-year-old conflict in Afghanistan, it would be a good idea to better understand why so much of what is reported from the Middle East suffers a great disconnect from the truth.

In 1998, Joris Luyendijk, a Dutch student who studied Arabic at Cairo University for a year, was offered a job as a Middle East correspondent for a Dutch news agency despite having no experience as a reporter. What followed was his real education about the Middle East and the way it is presented to the West by the news media.

His book about that experience, People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East was initially published in the Netherlands in 2006 and has since then been translated and published in Hungary, Italy, Denmark and Germany. In October, an English edition was published by Soft Scull Press, an imprint of Counterpoint, a Berkeley, California publisher.

read more:

http://www.aim.org/guest-column/the-middle-east-reporting-an-enigma/

More on the "Global Warming" fiasco

good article from AIM on so-called "Global Warming"

Blogs: The New Peer-Review Process
By K. Daniel Glover | November 24, 2009

"Climate scientists who believe man is warming the globe have a love-hate relationship with the blogosphere. They love their own blogs but hate that critics also use blogs to bypass the "peer review" process in order to question the science behind global warming theory.

The conflicting attitudes toward new media emerge in e-mails made public last week as the result of a computer hacking at a climate research unit in England.

Global warming advocates appreciated the potential power of blogs enough in late 2004 to launch the group blog RealClimate. Inspired by their "frustration with the current state of media reporting on the climate change issue," they saw the blog as a way "to be a little bit more pro-active" in responding to critics."

read more:

Blogs: The New Peer-Review Process

Obama book ghostwritten by terrorist Bill Ayers?

Obama book ghostwritten by terrorist Bill Ayers?

According to Accuracy in Media, "There is now credible sourced evidence that Obama lied about his dealing with Ayers." Co-written or ghosted?

Private climate documents hacked, published - Lateline (23 Nov 2009)

Looks like the evidence for man-made global warming just might not be there. After the movie (4 mins) read this article on Climategate: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

Ilan Pappe silenced in Munich - Israel News, Ynetnews

Ilan Pappe silenced in Munich - Israel News, Ynetnews

This is very good news.

Ilan Pappe silenced in Munich

Left-wing groups enraged by Germany municipality's decision not to allow anti-Zionist Israeli historian to speak at governmental institution.
Pappe writes to Munich mayor his policy reminiscent of Nazi Germany
read on
Ynet news
*****

The irony is delicious... and Pappe is shocked! shocked! mind you! that "legitimate criticism" (lol) is silenced in Germany! Perhaps Pappe can give his speech in Iran, or Gaza instead. They would happily have him in. This is a thoroughly despicable man!

Palin: Jewish Settlements Should Be Allowed to Expand, Because More Jews Are 'Flocking' to Israel

The Jews who settled the moon

The Jews who settled the moon

By Janet S. Tiger

The Jews settled the moon in 2053, just about five years after the end of the Islamic Wars of the 40’s, where the Middle East, and Israel, of course, had been obliterated by nuclear weapons.

The two million Jews remaining throughout the rest of the world -less than 100,000 total in all the Islamic countries - banded together and purchased the dark side of the moon, which no other companies or people wished to colonize.

Great transports were arranged via the 62,000 mile space elevator and the Space Shuttle and every Jew on Earth - including anyone who claimed any Jewish heritage whatsoever - left to go to a place where no one could blame them for anything.

The Earth rejoiced - happily rid of all Jews. There were huge parties throughout all of Sweden and the rest of Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and North America. (Now known as the Northern Alliance of Islamic States, after the United States was taken over peacefully in the elections of 2040 by a predominantly Muslim Congress and President, who immediately passed amendments making Islam the main religion of the United States and the world.) After the last Jew entered the elevator (a David Goldstein, 62, formerly of New York), the Earth was officially declared Judenrein by Hans Ibn Hitler, a great, great-grandson of Hitler who had been raised in Brazil and hidden by Nazis until this precious moment.

It was not an easy move for the Jews but, in some ways, it was no different from all their moves of previous eras. Some former Israelis (still alive because they were out of Israel when the bombs dropped) claimed that the moon was easier to deal with because there were no Extremist Muslims. Of course, this precipitated a huge argument with some Jews, who felt not having the Radical Muslims nearby was not enough challenge.

KEEP READING

Goldstone and the 36 Incidents

The always excellent Augean Stables on Goldstone, Kemp and the 36 incidents.
Must read

http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2009/11/04/goldstone-kemp-and-the-36-incidents-the-bizarro-world-of-the-unffm-to-gaza/

The Jew Flu: The strange illness of Jewish anti-Semitismbrbr - Haaretz - Israel News

The Jew Flu: The strange illness of Jewish anti-Semitism-
Haaretz - Israel News

Those inflicted include Noam Chomsky, Daniel Boyarin, Joel Kovel, Avrum Burg, Ilan Pappe, Steve Quester, Jacqueline Rose, Tony Judt, Naomi Klein, Michael Neumann, Ben Ehrenreich,
and I can think of plenty more. A great read from the Israeli paper that tends to be sick with that a lot.

The Goldstone Illusion | The New Republic

The Goldstone Illusion | The New Republic

VIDEO EXCLUSIVE :: Dore Gold debates Goldstone at Brandeis

VIDEO EXCLUSIVE :: Dore Gold debates Goldstone at Brandeis
from One Jerusalem

more on the ship from Iran --Francop

The containers on the ship Francop were marked-with the acronym IRISL, a state-controlled company listed by the UN Security Council in its sanctions resolutions against Iran due to its role in transporting equipment for Tehran's nuclear and missile programs.

The fact that Iran is trying to ship arms under the guise of civilian cargo suggests that the pressure exerted by the international community is having an impact...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126064.html

Israeli Foreign Affairs Vice-Minister Dani Ayalon accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chבvez of having turned Venezuela into an "Iranian outpost in the hemisphere. "

"The scope of the Iranian regime does not end in the Middle East. It is global, and also reaches Africa and Latin America, "

http://english.eluniversal.com/2009/11/03/en_pol_esp_israel-accuses-chave_03A2992491.shtml

Israel Navy Intercepts Iranian Weapons en route to Hezbollah, 4 Nov 2009

from the IDF Spokesman's desk:

500 Tons of Weapons for Hezbollah Intercepted by Israeli Navy, 4 Nov 2009

Massive Arms Shipment Intended for Hezbollah Intercepted by Israel Navy

Roughly 500 tons of weapons, rockets, and missiles was uncovered aboard the cargo vessel “Francop” flying an Antiguan flag, which was intercepted and brought to the Ashdod port. The Israel Navy force which intercepted the ship included naval commandos, missile boats, intelligence and explosive experts.

36 shipping containers with 500 tons of weaponry were found on the ship disguised as civilian cargo, and hidden among hundreds of other containers onboard.

Israel Naval and Engineering Corps forces are currently unloading the containers and are sorting through the various types of weaponry found aboard.

The naval commando force boarded the vessel and conducted an initial search. The search was conducted in accordance with the usual search protocols as dictated by International Law.

Following the initial search and after it became clear that the vessel was carrying weapons, the vessel was directed by the Israel Navy to dock at the Israeli Ashdod Naval base for additional searches and a detailed inspection of the hull’s cargo. It should be emphasized that the captain of the ship agreed to the search. The Israel Navy conducted all activity without any force.

The weapons found onboard the ship originate from Iran, and were intended for the Hezbollah terror organization, for use against the State of Israel and its citizens. The weapons uncovered at sea last night constitute a harsh violation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1747 and 1701 that strictly forbid Iran from exporting or trading any form of weapons.

This is a well-known Iranian technique, taking advantage of cargo ships flying different flags in order to smuggle containers loaded with large amounts of highly volatile weaponry to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah.

Following the necessary inspections of the boat, it is expected to be released.

The overnight operation was authorized by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense of the State of Israel. Commander of the Israel Navy, Maj. Gen. Eliezer Marom, commanded the operation from a forward command cell. The IDF Chief of the General Staff authorized the operation, after the confirmation of intelligence information gathered by the IDF.

http://idfspokesperson.com/2009/11/04/500-tons-of-weapons-for-hezbollah-intercepted-by-israeli-navy-4-nov-2009/

The Jewish Nakba

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The Jewish Nakba: Expulsions, Massacres and Forced Conversions by Ben-Dror YeminiHere's the latest excellent must-read and bookmark essay from Ben-Dror Yemini. Presented in full:
The Jewish Nakba: Expulsions, Massacres and Forced Conversions
Originally was published in Hebrew, in MAARIV
Each year, the Palestinians mark Nakba Day, the catastrophe that befell them with the establishment of the State of Israel. But the Jews in Arab countries also suffered catastrophe and it was many times worse.
By Ben-Dror Yemini (bdyemini@gmail.com)
They say that she was stunningly beautiful. Sol (Suleika) Hatuel was 17 years old when she was beheaded. A Muslim friend claimed that she had succeeded in converting her. When Sol denied the claim, she was accused of renouncing Islam and was condemned to death. Her case reached the sultan.
In order to prevent her death, the community elders tried to persuade her to live as a Muslim. She refused and said, "I was born as a Jew, I will die as a Jew." Her fate was sealed. It happened in 1834. She was from Tangier and was executed in Fez. Many make pilgrimages to her grave. Despite the fact that the incident was immortalized in eyewitness testimony, in a famous painting and in a play, her story has been forgotten. The following article is dedicated to her and to the victims of the Jewish Nakba.
Every year on the 15th of May, the Palestinians - and many others around the world along with them - "celebrate" Nakba Day. For them, this is the day that marks the great catastrophe that befell them as result of the establishment of the State of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs became refugees. Some fled, some were deported. The Nakba grew to such enormous proportions that it is preventing a solution to the dispute.
We must remember that in the 1940s, population exchanges and deportations for the purpose of creating national states were the accepted norm. Tens of millions of people experienced it, but only the Palestinians (and they are not alone in this) have been inflating the myth of the Nakba.
However, there is another Nakba: the Jewish Nakba. During those same years, there was a long line of slaughters, of pogroms, of property confiscation and of deportations against Jews in Islamic countries. This chapter of history has been left in the shadows. The Jewish Nakba was worse than the Palestinian Nakba. The only difference is that the Jews did not turn that Nakba into their founding ethos. To the contrary.
Like tens of millions of other refugees around the world, they preferred to heal the wound. Not to scratch it and not to open it and not to make it bleed even more. The Palestinians, in contrast, preferred bleeding to rehabilitation. And now they are also paying the price.
The industry of lies has intensified the myth of the Nakba and turned it into the ultimate crime. The Nakba has spawned innumerable publications and conferences, to the point of completely distorting the actual historical process. The Deir Yassin massacre has become one of the milestones in the Palestinian Nakba. There is no need to hide what occurred there (even though the issue of the massacre is in dispute). Innocent people were killed.
There were a few other instances of behavior that should be exposed and condemned.
Extermination War against the Jews
A long series of massacres was perpetrated against the Jews in Arab countries. They did not declare war on the countries in which they lived. They were loyal citizens. That did not help them. Their suffering was erased. Their story is never told. The Palestinian narrative has taken over history. There is no need for a Palestinian narrative versus a Zionist narrative. We need to shake off narratives in favor of the truth. And the truth is the number of Jews murdered was greater, their dispossession was greater, and their suffering greater.
A stunning testimonial from those years, which actually comes from the Arab side, sheds light on the issue. In 1936, Alawite notables sent a letter to the French Foreign Minister in which they expressed their concern for the future of the region. They also referred to the Jewish question: "The Jews brought civilization and peace to the Arab Muslims, and they dispersed gold and prosperity over Palestine without damage to anyone or taking anything by force. Despite this, the Muslims declared holy war against them and didn't hesitate to massacre their children and women ... Thus, a black fate awaits the Jews in case the Mandates are cancelled and Muslim Syria united with Muslim Palestine." The interesting thing is that one of the letter's signatories was none other than the great grandfather of Bashar Al Assad, the president of Syria.
We must remember that Nakba Day is the date of the declaration of Israel's independence, May 15th . We must remember what happened just a few hours after that declaration. The Secretary of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzamaha, announced the declaration of war against Israel: "This war will be a war of annihilation and the story of the slaughter will be told like the campaigns of the Mongols and the Crusaders."
The Mufti, Haj Amin Al Husseini, who was close to Hitler during the Second World War, added his own bit: "I am declaring a holy war. My brother Muslims! Slaughter the Jews! Kill them all!" The mini-Holocaust of the Jews in Arab countries.
Various documents, some of them discovered only in recent years, show that the declaration of war was far broader. It was actually a declaration of war on the Jews.
Research that was conducted, among others, by Prof. Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice of Canada, shows that the Arab League formulated a bill that would place a series of sanctions on the Jews, including confiscation of property, bank accounts and more. The preamble to the bill states that "All Jews will be considered members of the Jewish minority in the State of Palestine." And if the fate of the Jews of Palestine was sealed, the fate of the Jews in Arab countries was clear.
The bill was indeed the background to the sanctions against the Jews in Arab countries - sometimes by way of legislation, as happened in Iraq and later in Egypt, and sometimes by taking those measures without the need for any legislation. According to the industry of lies, the Jews in Arab countries lived peacefully in their environment, under the protection of the government, and it was only because of the Zionist movement and the harm done to the Arabs in Palestine that the Jews began to suffer.
This lie has been repeated innumerable times. Most of the Jews in Arab countries did not undergo the horrors of the Holocaust. But, even before the advent of Zionism, their situation was not any better. There were periods in which the Jews enjoyed relative peace under Muslim rule, but those periods were the exceptions. Throughout Jewish history in Muslim lands there were humiliations, expulsions, pogroms and a systematic deprivation of rights.
Series of Pogroms
We can, of course, start with the conflict between Muhammad and the Jews. Muhammad undertook social reforms, bringing the Arabs out of the Jahaliya period, and borrowed the concept of monotheism - primarily, perhaps, from the Jews. Many motifs from the Jewish religion appear in the Koran, for example, circumcision and the prohibition on eating pork. But Muhammad wanted to convert the Jews, they, of course, refused. The result was a confrontation that ended in the expulsion and slaughter of hundreds.
The Jews, as the "People of the Book," were given the right to live under the protection of Islam and to practice their religion. From time to time, from generation to generation, the conditions underwent changes. In many cases, the Jews lived under the covenant of Khalif Omar.
This covenant enabled them to live as protected people ("Dhimmis"), albeit with inferior status. But many times, under Muslim rule, they were not even allowed a life of inferior status.
The Golden Age: One of the proofs of the coexistence of Jews and Muslims is Jewish prosperity under Muslim rule in Spain and the Golden Age. The reality, however, was different.
It encompassed a series of violence events against the Jews. In 1011 in Cordoba, Spain, under Muslim rule, there were pogroms in which, according to various estimates, from hundreds to thousands were murdered. In 1066 in Granada, Yosef Hanagid was executed, along with between 4,000 and 6,000 other Jews. One of the worst periods of all began in 1148, when the Almohad dynasty came to power (al Muwahhidun), and ruled Spain and North Africa during the 12th and 13th centuries.
Morocco: The country that suffered from the worst series of massacres. In the 8th century whole communities were wiped out by Idris the First. In 1033, in the city of Fez, 6,000 Jews were murdered by a Muslim mob. The rise of the Almohad dynasty caused waves of mass murders. According to testimony from that time, 100,000 Jews were slaughtered in Fez and about 120,000 in Marrakesh (this testimony should be viewed with caution). In 1465, another massacre took place in Fez, which spread to other cities in Morocco.
There were pogroms in Tetuan in 1790 and 1792, in which children were murdered, women were raped and property was looted. Between 1864 and 1880, there were a series of pogroms against the Jews of Marrakesh, in which hundreds were slaughtered. In 1903, there were pogroms in two cities - Taza and Settat, in which over 40 Jews were killed.
In 1907, there was a pogrom in Casablanca in which 30 Jews were killed and many women were raped. In 1912, there was another massacre in Fez in which 60 Jews were killed and about 10,000 were left homeless. In 1948, another series of pogroms began against the Jews which led to the slaughter of 42 in the cities of Oujda and Jrada.
Algeria: A series of massacres occurred in 1805, 1815 and 1830. The situation of the Jews improved with the start of the French conquest in 1830, but that did nor prevent anti-Jewish outbursts in the 1880s. The situation deteriorated again with the rise of the Vichy government. Even before 1934, the country was permeated by Nazi influences, which led to the slaughter of 25 Jews in the city of Constantine. When it achieved independence in 1962, laws were passed against citizenship for anyone who was not a Muslim and their property was effectively confiscated. Most of the Jews left, usually completely penniless, together with the French ("pieds noirs").
Libya: In 1785, hundreds of Jews were murdered by Burza Pasha. Under Nazi influence, harassment of the Jews intensified. Jewish property in Benghazi was plundered, thousands were sent to camps and about 500 Jews were killed. In 1945, at the end of World War II, a program against the Jews began and the number of murdered reached 140. The New York Times reported the horrible scenes of babies and old people who had been beaten to death. In the riots that broke out in 1948, the Jews were more prepared, so only 14 were killed. Following the Six Day War, riots broke out once again and 17 Jews were slaughtered.
Iraq: a massacre occurred in Basra in 1776. The situation of the Jews improved under British rule in 1917, but this improvement ended with Iraq's independence in 1932. German influences increased and reached a peak in 1941 in the pogrom known as Farhud, in which 182 Jews were slaughtered (according to historian Elie Kedourie, 600 people were actually murdered) and thousands of houses were pillaged.
Those were the days of Haj Amin al Husseini, who preached violence against the Jews. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Iraqi parliament acted according to the Arab League bill and in 1950 and froze the assets of Jews. Sanctions were imposed on those who remained in Iraq. The Farhud massacre and the harassment from 1946 to 1949 to all intents and purposes turned the Iraqi Jews into exiles and refugees. The few thousand who remained in Iraq suffered from harsh edicts. In 1967, 14 Iraqis were sentenced to death on trumped up charges of espionage. Among them were 11 Jews. Radio Iraq invited the masses to the hanging festivities.
Syria: The first blood libel in a Muslim country occurred in 1840, and led to the kidnapping and torture of dozens of Jewish children, sometimes to the point of death, and a pogrom against the Jews. In 1986, the Syrian Minister of Defense, Mustafa Talas, published a book, "The Matzah of Zion," in which he claims that the Jews did, indeed, use the blood of a Christian monk to bake matzah. Same old anti-Semitism, new edition. Other pogroms occurred in Aleppo in 1850 and in 1875, in Damascus in 1848 and in 1890, in Beirut in 1862 and in 1874, and in Dir al Kamar there was another blood libel which also led to a pogrom in 1847. That year, there was a pogrom against the Jews of Jerusalem, which was the result of that blood libel. In 1945, the Jews of Aleppo suffered severe pogroms. 75 Jews were murdered and the community was destroyed. There was a resurgence of the violence in 1947, which turned most of the Syrian Jews into refugees. Those who remained there lived for many years as hostages.
Iran: There was a pogrom against the Jews of Mashhad in 1839. A mob was incited to attack Jews, and slaughtered almost 40. The rest were forced to convert. That is how the Marranos of Mashhad came into being. In 1910, there was a blood libel in Shiraz in which 30 Jews were murdered and all Jewish homes were pillaged.
Yemen: There were fluctuations in relations that ranged between tolerance and inferior subsistence, between harassment and pogroms. The Rambam's Letter to Yemen was sent following a letter he received from the leader of the Yemeni Jews, describing edicts of forced conversion issued against the Jews (1173). There were further waves of apostasy edicts which cannot be detailed here for lack of space.
One of the worst milestones was the Mawza exile. Three years after Imam Al Mahdi took power in 1676, he drove the Jews into one of the most arid districts of Yemen. According to various accounts, 60 - 75% of the Jews died as a result of the exile. Many and varied edicts were imposed on the Jews, differing only in severity. One of the harshest was the Orphans' Edict, which ordered the forced conversion of orphaned children to Islam. In nearby Aden, which was under British rule, pogroms occurred in 1947 which took the lives of 82 Jews. 106 of the 170 shops that were owned by Jews were completely destroyed. Hundreds of houses and all the community's buildings were burned down.
Egypt: As in the other Arab countries, the Jews of Egypt also suffered inferior status for hundreds of years. A significant improvement occurred when Muhammad Ali came to power in 1805. The testimony of French diplomat, Edmond Combes, leaves nothing in doubt: "To the Muslims, no race is more worthy of contempt than the Jewish race." Another diplomat added, "The Muslims do not hate any other religion the way they hate that of the Jews."
Following the blood libel in Damascus, similar libels began to spread in Egypt as well and incited mobs to carry out a series of attacks: in Cairo in 1844, 1890, and in 1901-1902; and Alexandria in 1870, 1882 and in 1901-1907. Similar attacks also occurred in Port Said and in Damanhur.
Later on, there were riots against the Jews at the end of World War II, in 1945, in which 10 were killed and hundreds were injured. In 1947, the Companies Law was passed, which severely damaged Jewish businesses and led to the confiscation of property. In 1948, following the UN resolution on partition, riots began in Cairo and Alexandria. The dead numbered between 80 and 180. Tens of thousands were forced to leave, many fleeing and abandoning their property. The lot of those who remained did not improve. In 1956, a law was passed in Egypt which effectively denied the Jews citizenship, forcing them to leave the country with no property. This was an act of pure expulsion and mass property confiscation.
***
The above is just a partial list out of a long series of massacres in Muslim countries. It happened before the Zionist endeavor. It continued with the Zionist endeavor. We are talking about a succession of events. Tens of thousands were murdered simply because they were Jewish. So the fairytale of coexistence and blaming Zionism for undermining that coexistence is yet another completely baseless myth.
Before the UN vote on partition in November 1947, Egypt's ambassador to the UN, Heykal Pasha, warned that "The lives of a million Jews in Muslim countries will be in danger if the vote is for partition... if Arab blood is spilled in Palestine, Jewish blood will be spilled elsewhere in the world."
Four days afterwards, the Iraqi foreign minister, Muhammad Fadil al Jamali said that "We will not be able to restrain the masses in the Arab countries, after the harmony in which Jews and Arabs lived together." There was no harmony. There had been a massacre of Jews just a few years earlier. El Jamali lied, of course. The very same Iraqi government had encouraged the harassment of Jews and issued orders to confiscate all Jewish property.
Additionally, the Iraqi leader of the time, Nuri Said, had already presented a plan for expelling the Jews in 1949, even before the hasty - actually forced - exit of the Jews from Iraq. He also explained that "The Jews are a source of trouble in Iraq. They have no place among us. We must get rid of them as best we were able." Said even presented a plan to lead the Jews via Jordan in order to coerce them into passage to Israel. Jordan objected, but the expulsion was implemented anyway. Said even admitted that this entailed a type of population exchange.
So the massacres, the pogroms and the great expulsion of the Jews was a continuation of their suffering under Muslim rule. There have always been Muslims who came out in defense of the Jews. They are also worthy of mention. That were also periods of prosperity, but it appears that most of the Jewish prosperity, as in Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s, in Algeria in the 19th and 20th centuries, in Iraq in the 1920s - was under colonial rule. In most cases, the situation of the Jews was bad before the European invasion and worsened once again with the end of the colonial era.
* * *
Throughout the relations between Jews and Arabs, in Arab countries or in the course of the Zionist enterprise, there was not one case of a pogrom against Muslims of the type committed by the Arabs against the Jews. Even in the worst cases, which must be condemned, such as Deir Yassin, they occurred as part of a military confrontation.
Those are cases that should be condemned, but we need to put things in perspective. The Arabs slaughtered the Jews without any hostilities and without any military excuse, just because they were Jews. And those few Arabs who were killed, were killed as part of a military campaign. Despite this, any injury inflicted on the Arab population resulted in innumerable investigations and references. The worst abuse of all, the abuse of Jews by Arabs, was erased and forgotten.
Let's return to Deir Yassin, the ultimate symbol of the Nakba. We have called it an indecent act and we will repeat that. But we must note that it was preceded by a series of murderous terrorist attacks against the civilian population. Waves of incidents, which to all intents and purposes were actual pogroms, by an incited mob that attacked the civilian population. Thousands of Jews were slaughtered - women, children and the elderly. The Palestinians even murdered their own people. In the great Arab Revolt in the 1930s, 400 Jews and 5,000 Arabs were killed, most of them at the hands of their brethren.
The months before Deir Yassin were the worst of all. 39 workers were murdered at the Haifa refineries, 50 Jews were killed by car bombs in Jerusalem, and on and on. In total, in the four months between the vote on partition and the declaration of establishment of the State of Israel, 815 Jews were murdered, most of them before the Deir Yassin incident (on April 9, 1948), some afterward (the slaughter of the Hadassah hospital convoy, 79 killed, April 13, 1948). Most were civilians. Most died in massacres and terrorist attacks. And that is the real background. Far more murdered Jews. But they have all been forgotten. They should be mentioned. That is the Jewish Nakba, whose victims, in Israel and around the world, are mentioned less and less.
The Palestinians paid the price
Close to a million Jews lived in Arab countries at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel. Just a few live there today. Most left because they suffered from pogroms and the threat to their lives. It was a crueler expulsion than the one suffered by the Arabs of Palestine, who paid the price for the declarations of war and annihilation made by their leaders. Even the Jewish property that was confiscated or abandoned as a result of the expulsion is more valuable than the Arab property that remained in Israel.
Various investigators have tried to estimate the value of the confiscated Jewish property following the forced departure of the Jews from Arab countries, compared with the Arab property left in Israel following the forced departure of the Arabs. Economist Sidney Zabludoff, an international expert in the field, estimates that the value of the Arab property is $3.9 billion, compared with the value of the Jewish property which is $6 billion (at 2007 values).
So even in this area, the Palestinians' claims are refuted. They dragged the Arab countries into war. They paid the price. And they are the ones who caused the Jews to pay an even higher price. Both in property and in blood.
This article is not intended to cultivate the Jewish Nakba, and it by no means includes all the cases of pogroms, property confiscations, forced conversions and other harassment. The purpose is precisely the opposite. When they understand, in the Arab world in general, and the Palestinians in particular, that suffering, expulsion, loss of property, the cost in lives, is not the monopoly of one side, they may, perhaps, have the sense to understand that this past is a matter for history lessons. Because if we start to perform a political accounting, they have an overdraft. The Jewish Nakba was far greater. The suffering was enormous. But it is the suffering of many nations, Jews and Arabs among them, who went through the experience as part of the creation of new nation states.
It is therefore worth presenting the story of the Jewish Nakba. Not for the purpose of increasing the hostility, but for the purpose of presenting the truth, and for the purpose of reconciliation between the nations. Inshallah.
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Mohammed Al-Dura -- Real or Real Hoax?

The new court ruling in French and in English. If you want to catch up on the details first I recommend the HONEST REPORTING timeline here: http://www.honestreporting.com/a/alDura.asp

The Court decision or "I would not like to be Charles Enderlin" at the Augean Stables: here

It is generally a good feeling when the truth comes out, even when it is late in coming. This time however, I feel this hoax (if it is one, and I believe it is)is responsible for the deaths and maiming of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians.

Be sure to see the 18 minutes of unedited footage below as well. Especially pleasing is seeing little Mo peeking out from under his arm some seconds after we was supposedly shot. How about an autopsy of the little boy along with some DNA testing of Dad and boy? Time to lay this business to rest and find out the truth.

I believe that France 2 will not want to take this to France's higher court although it claims it does. If it does it will doubtless be disgraced again. Claiming to appeal and not doing so is their best way to save face, and nothing at all will come of it in the long run.