Ever wander what the "other side" thinks of America?
Clip on the link to watch the short animated movie shown on Iranian TV:
http://switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_MemriTV_Popup/video_480x360.asp?ai=214&ar=1499wmv&ak=null
Saturday, July 14, 2007
A year on, Hizbullah continues to meet needs of victims of conflict
WOW! We need a "terrorist" group like Hizbullah in New Orleans to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina!
The Daily Star - July 13, 2007
HARET HREIK: Whether it is mothers who lost their sons in combat or other Shiites whose homes were destroyed in Israel's blitz of Beirut a year ago, Hizbullah is still riding high on its home turf. Two sisters, Loyal and Iman Shahrur, aged 20 and 21, are keen to stress it was Hizbullah - both in battle and on the social services front - that helped find them work and a new home.
Thousands of apartments, like their former home in the Haret Hreik district of the Shiite group's stronghold in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, were razed to the ground in the 34-day Israel-Hizbullah conflict which erupted on July 12, 2006.
The young women moved into a ground-floor apartment in September, with a year's rent of $4,000 paid by Hizbullah.
Iman was out of work for three months, surviving on a subsidy from the resistance group, which also covered a younger brother's school fees.
Loyal, dressed in a black abbaya robe with white embroidery, glances at a giant portrait of Hizbullah's charismatic chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah with tears in her eyes.
"Nasrallah, I would give my blood for you," she pledges.
Across the road, in a third-floor apartment, a group of former cocoa traders who have returned from the Ivory Coast show off a large metal triangle which remains from a missile fired by Israeli warplanes.
Their old apartment was flattened, as was the former Hizbullah nervecenter next door where men in black civvies
and kitted with walkie-talkies still keep tabs on passers-by around a giant crater left behind by the planes.
Half-a-million people live in and around Haret Hreik, where about 4,000 homes were destroyed in a square-kilometer zone and many thousands more damaged during the war sparked by Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers.
The Quleit family of merchants has savings, but that did not stop Hizbullah from handing them $12,000 for a year's rent and to buy new furniture. "As for the government, nobody here has received a cent," charges their angry mother.
A government source insists that 4,000 cheques have been paid out, despite long delays due to land registry problems in zones of wildfire development over the decades without any official papers.
The government and its security forces steer clear of the Shiite suburbs, with Hizbullah filling the void.
In the Chiyah area of the suburbs, Fatima, who would only give one name, swears that the death in combat of her son Ahmad, 29, as a shahid (martyr) on the last day of the war, which ended with a UN-brokered cease-fire on August 14, was definitely "worth it." Surrounded by four portraits of her son, in glossy print courtesy of Hizbullah, younger brother, Hassan, 21, is proud that Ahmad helped man batteries that rained rockets on the northern Israeli port city of Haifa.
Amid the sea of posters of fallen Hizbullah fighters plastered across the southern suburbs, Ahmad's picture figures prominently on a wall facing the apartment of his widow.
Hizbullah has a master plan for the suburbs baptized "Waad" (the promise), costing $100 million, officially launched at the end of May. But reconstruction at bombed-out sites has yet to kick off, despite the buzz of repairs which started way back in August.
Teams of architects have drawn up plans for the entire former war zone, to be divided into 30 sectors.
According to Hizbullah's Web site, three quarters of the suburb' residents have agreed to hand any government compensation they receive over to the group to allow for reconstruction to be carried out on a far more organized basis, with town planning.
While competing with the "Solidere" post-Civil War reconstruction in Downtown Beirut that was devised by then-Premier Rafik Hariri, Hizbullah has in the past also turned down an "Elissar" project for the suburbs proposed on behalf of the government by the slain former premier. - AFP
The Daily Star - July 13, 2007
HARET HREIK: Whether it is mothers who lost their sons in combat or other Shiites whose homes were destroyed in Israel's blitz of Beirut a year ago, Hizbullah is still riding high on its home turf. Two sisters, Loyal and Iman Shahrur, aged 20 and 21, are keen to stress it was Hizbullah - both in battle and on the social services front - that helped find them work and a new home.
Thousands of apartments, like their former home in the Haret Hreik district of the Shiite group's stronghold in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, were razed to the ground in the 34-day Israel-Hizbullah conflict which erupted on July 12, 2006.
The young women moved into a ground-floor apartment in September, with a year's rent of $4,000 paid by Hizbullah.
Iman was out of work for three months, surviving on a subsidy from the resistance group, which also covered a younger brother's school fees.
Loyal, dressed in a black abbaya robe with white embroidery, glances at a giant portrait of Hizbullah's charismatic chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah with tears in her eyes.
"Nasrallah, I would give my blood for you," she pledges.
Across the road, in a third-floor apartment, a group of former cocoa traders who have returned from the Ivory Coast show off a large metal triangle which remains from a missile fired by Israeli warplanes.
Their old apartment was flattened, as was the former Hizbullah nervecenter next door where men in black civvies
and kitted with walkie-talkies still keep tabs on passers-by around a giant crater left behind by the planes.
Half-a-million people live in and around Haret Hreik, where about 4,000 homes were destroyed in a square-kilometer zone and many thousands more damaged during the war sparked by Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers.
The Quleit family of merchants has savings, but that did not stop Hizbullah from handing them $12,000 for a year's rent and to buy new furniture. "As for the government, nobody here has received a cent," charges their angry mother.
A government source insists that 4,000 cheques have been paid out, despite long delays due to land registry problems in zones of wildfire development over the decades without any official papers.
The government and its security forces steer clear of the Shiite suburbs, with Hizbullah filling the void.
In the Chiyah area of the suburbs, Fatima, who would only give one name, swears that the death in combat of her son Ahmad, 29, as a shahid (martyr) on the last day of the war, which ended with a UN-brokered cease-fire on August 14, was definitely "worth it." Surrounded by four portraits of her son, in glossy print courtesy of Hizbullah, younger brother, Hassan, 21, is proud that Ahmad helped man batteries that rained rockets on the northern Israeli port city of Haifa.
Amid the sea of posters of fallen Hizbullah fighters plastered across the southern suburbs, Ahmad's picture figures prominently on a wall facing the apartment of his widow.
Hizbullah has a master plan for the suburbs baptized "Waad" (the promise), costing $100 million, officially launched at the end of May. But reconstruction at bombed-out sites has yet to kick off, despite the buzz of repairs which started way back in August.
Teams of architects have drawn up plans for the entire former war zone, to be divided into 30 sectors.
According to Hizbullah's Web site, three quarters of the suburb' residents have agreed to hand any government compensation they receive over to the group to allow for reconstruction to be carried out on a far more organized basis, with town planning.
While competing with the "Solidere" post-Civil War reconstruction in Downtown Beirut that was devised by then-Premier Rafik Hariri, Hizbullah has in the past also turned down an "Elissar" project for the suburbs proposed on behalf of the government by the slain former premier. - AFP
"I Have A Dream"
Written by Andrew Winkler, The Rebel Media Group
Thursday, 04 January 2007
"I am writing to you today in what might turn out to be one of the last expressions of freedom of speech in the history of Western democracies."
For the past two hundred years, our forefathers have risked life and limb for us to be able to think, speak, write and publish as we please. Their sacrifices came as a great beacon of light of hope to millions of human beings all around the world, longing for freedom, justice and a life in dignity. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their oppression.
But two hundred years later, we are still not truly free. Two hundred years later, we see the advent of a new ‘Dark Age’. Two hundred years later, we are facing the enslavement from a thinly disguised Jewish controlled corporate dictatorship, euphemistically called ‘New World Order’. And so I’m writing to you this sombre warning as an urgent request to raise to this enormous challenge and defend the freedom and the rights for which our forefathers had fought so hard.
In a sense I’m writing these words to cash a check. When our rulers created the laws and constitutions of our countries, they were signing a promissory note to which every human being was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men and women would be guaranteed ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’. It is obvious today that our rulers have defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as non-Jewish citizens are concerned. Instead of honouring this sacred obligation, we were given a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds”.
But I refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. I refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this great world. And so, I've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
I am also writing these words to remind everyone of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquillising drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to destroy the Judeo-Fascist ‘New World Order’ and end this Orwellian ‘War onTerror’. Now is the time to lift our nations from the quicksands of injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for all nations to overlook the urgency of the moment. This growing mistrust and discontent with our rulers will not pass until we have achieved true democracy. Two thousand and seven is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that dissidents just need to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if our governments return to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquillity until true democracy is achieved. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nations until the bright day of freedom and justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my fellow dissidents, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed our resistance must not lead us to a distrust of all Jewish people, for many of our Jewish brothers, as evidenced by their presence in the dissident community, have come to realise that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realise that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of anti-Zionism, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as Muslims and Christians in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon are the victim of the unspeakable horrors of USraeli brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as the Palestinian people is refused the right to return. We cannot be satisfied as long as Jewish-controlled corporations plunder the wealth and the treasures of an ever inceasing number of countries. We can never be satisfied as long as USraeli troops occupy foreign lands, starve and poison their populations with depleted uranium and torture and murder them by the millions. We cannot be satisfied as long as Talmudic Jews consider non-Jews as racially inferior, more cattle than human beings. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹
I am not unmindful that some of you are suffering of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have family kept by USrael in narrow jail cells. And some of you have personally been or have friends and family members who are the victims of USraeli brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Stay in the occupied Palestinian Territories, stay in Afghanistan, stay in Sudan, stay in Lebanon, stay in Iraq, go back to refugee camps and the destroyed houses of your cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the human dream.
I have a dream that one day this world will rise up and live out the true meaning of this creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day in sun-drenched Palestine, all Palestinian refuges and their children and grand-children will be able to return to a united, free and egalitarian Palestine.
I have a dream that one day the Middle-East, a region sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my little "mongrel" son will one day live in a world where nobody is judged by his religion or the colour of his skin but by the content of his character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, in Zionist occupied Palestine, with its vile Jewish supremacists, with its politicians having their lips dripping words of “massive military retaliation” and “convergence” - the Zionists' term for Apartheid - one day right there in Palestine, little Palestinian boys and girls will be able to join hands with little Jewish boys and girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day all our rulers realise that having power over other people comes with responsibility for those people affected by that power. That their first and foremost duty is to ensure that all basic needs of all human beings are taken care of: water, food, housing, electricity, heating, education, health, transport, safety, jobs.
This is my hope, and this is the faith that keeps me going with this fight.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of mankind into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to embrace each other as their brothers and sisters. And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every city, from every state and every country, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Christians and Muslims, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Adapted from Dr. Martin Luther King by Andrew Winkler. Andrew is the editor/publisher of Sydney based dissident blog ZioPedia.org and founder of Jews Anonymous He can be contacted on editor@ziopedia.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Source: ZioPedia.org
Thursday, 04 January 2007
"I am writing to you today in what might turn out to be one of the last expressions of freedom of speech in the history of Western democracies."
For the past two hundred years, our forefathers have risked life and limb for us to be able to think, speak, write and publish as we please. Their sacrifices came as a great beacon of light of hope to millions of human beings all around the world, longing for freedom, justice and a life in dignity. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their oppression.
But two hundred years later, we are still not truly free. Two hundred years later, we see the advent of a new ‘Dark Age’. Two hundred years later, we are facing the enslavement from a thinly disguised Jewish controlled corporate dictatorship, euphemistically called ‘New World Order’. And so I’m writing to you this sombre warning as an urgent request to raise to this enormous challenge and defend the freedom and the rights for which our forefathers had fought so hard.
In a sense I’m writing these words to cash a check. When our rulers created the laws and constitutions of our countries, they were signing a promissory note to which every human being was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men and women would be guaranteed ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’. It is obvious today that our rulers have defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as non-Jewish citizens are concerned. Instead of honouring this sacred obligation, we were given a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds”.
But I refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. I refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this great world. And so, I've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
I am also writing these words to remind everyone of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquillising drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to destroy the Judeo-Fascist ‘New World Order’ and end this Orwellian ‘War onTerror’. Now is the time to lift our nations from the quicksands of injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for all nations to overlook the urgency of the moment. This growing mistrust and discontent with our rulers will not pass until we have achieved true democracy. Two thousand and seven is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that dissidents just need to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if our governments return to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquillity until true democracy is achieved. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nations until the bright day of freedom and justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my fellow dissidents, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed our resistance must not lead us to a distrust of all Jewish people, for many of our Jewish brothers, as evidenced by their presence in the dissident community, have come to realise that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realise that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of anti-Zionism, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as Muslims and Christians in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon are the victim of the unspeakable horrors of USraeli brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as the Palestinian people is refused the right to return. We cannot be satisfied as long as Jewish-controlled corporations plunder the wealth and the treasures of an ever inceasing number of countries. We can never be satisfied as long as USraeli troops occupy foreign lands, starve and poison their populations with depleted uranium and torture and murder them by the millions. We cannot be satisfied as long as Talmudic Jews consider non-Jews as racially inferior, more cattle than human beings. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹
I am not unmindful that some of you are suffering of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have family kept by USrael in narrow jail cells. And some of you have personally been or have friends and family members who are the victims of USraeli brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Stay in the occupied Palestinian Territories, stay in Afghanistan, stay in Sudan, stay in Lebanon, stay in Iraq, go back to refugee camps and the destroyed houses of your cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the human dream.
I have a dream that one day this world will rise up and live out the true meaning of this creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day in sun-drenched Palestine, all Palestinian refuges and their children and grand-children will be able to return to a united, free and egalitarian Palestine.
I have a dream that one day the Middle-East, a region sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my little "mongrel" son will one day live in a world where nobody is judged by his religion or the colour of his skin but by the content of his character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, in Zionist occupied Palestine, with its vile Jewish supremacists, with its politicians having their lips dripping words of “massive military retaliation” and “convergence” - the Zionists' term for Apartheid - one day right there in Palestine, little Palestinian boys and girls will be able to join hands with little Jewish boys and girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day all our rulers realise that having power over other people comes with responsibility for those people affected by that power. That their first and foremost duty is to ensure that all basic needs of all human beings are taken care of: water, food, housing, electricity, heating, education, health, transport, safety, jobs.
This is my hope, and this is the faith that keeps me going with this fight.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of mankind into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to embrace each other as their brothers and sisters. And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every city, from every state and every country, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Christians and Muslims, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Adapted from Dr. Martin Luther King by Andrew Winkler. Andrew is the editor/publisher of Sydney based dissident blog ZioPedia.org and founder of Jews Anonymous He can be contacted on editor@ziopedia.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Source: ZioPedia.org
An Open Word About Anti-Semitism
Written by Andrew Winkler, The Rebel Media Group
Monday, 22 January 2007
"In the olden days, an anti-Semite was someone who hated Jews; these days it’s someone the Jews hate"
Accusing an opponent of anti-Semitism is probably the most powerful political weapon that exists in Western society. Its destructiveness equals – if not surpasses - the label of paedophilia. The whole topic has developed over time to such a powerful taboo, that there is hardly an open discussion of anti-Semitism, without the participants scrambling to uncritically condemn it as utterly evil. Anybody suspected – or worse - publicly accused of anti-Semitic views or activities, becomes automatically – without trial and conviction – a societal leper. He can kiss his job and career good-bye, and will loose, more often than not, most of his friends and family, in many cases even his freedom.[1]
In spite, or maybe because of its taboo nature, there is a lot of confusion about what exactly constitutes anti-Semitism. This essay tries to break through the taboo and examine the various aspects of anti-Semitism and what lead to its taboo nature. The author is conscious of the fact that by doing so, he will attract bitter criticism of those sections of the community that – for one reason or another - are the most interested in maintaining the taboo.
Origins of European Jewry
European anti-Semitism cannot be understood without knowledge of the origins of European Jewry. There are two distinct ethnical and linguistical Jewish groups in Europe, the Sephardic[2] and Ashkenazi Jews[3].
Sephardic Jews
The Sephardic Jews are the direct descendants of the Roman days’ inhabitants of Palestine. Their ancestors were part of the Jewish ‘establishment’ that left Palestine after the failed Jewish uprise against the Roman occupation in the first century around 70 A.D. They eventually settled in the Southern Spanish province of Andalusia where, for many centuries, they had a privileged position under Moorish rule. Sephardic Jews still speak today a medivial Andalusian dialect.
Historic Spanish and Portuguese anti-Semitism
While Christian zealotism was most likely a factor, Spanish and Portuguese anti-Semitism has its main cause in the resentment against the Jewish role in the century long Moorish occupation of the Iberian peninsula. Jews were considered to be traitors and collaborateurs. After the final defeat of the Moors in 1492, the ‘Catholic Kings’ gave the Sephardic Jews the choice to either leave for the (Spanish ruled) Netherlands, convert to Christianity or die. Since most Jews picked the easy option of simply pretending to have converted, a common way of testing their religious allegiance was to make them eat a stew cooked out of pork and seafood, both forbidden ingredients under Jewish religious rules.[4]
Throughout the centuries, Spanish and Portuguese anti-Semitism – as elsewhere - continued to be motivated by a mix of religious and socio-economical reasons. In spite of pretending to be Christians, numerous Jewish families secretly adhered to their Jewish beliefs as so-called crypto-Jews, often ‘sacrificing’ their eldest son by making him become a Catholic priest, to protect his family. Many crypto-Jew priests had prominent roles in the Spanish inquisition, which provided them with a powerful tool to fight against their enemies. They were also massively over-represented amongst the financers of the genocidal slave and spice trade, flourishing in both Spain and Portugal.
Ashkenazi Jews
Middle and Eastern European Jewry has its roots in the ethnic Turk tribes from Mongolia who invaded Europe under their Hun King Attila and eventually settled in the area of today’s southern Russia and Ukraine, where they formed the biggest and most powerful European kingdom of the Middle Ages, Khazaria. In the 8th century, the Khazarian kings decided to import thousands of rabbis to set up Talmud schools and convert the entire population to Judaism. This purely commercial decision enabled the Khazars to trade with both Christian and Muslim neighbours and dominate the extremely profitable trade between Europe and Asia, paying for the largest standing army of the Middle Ages. Ironically, Khazaria was eventually destroyed in the early 13th century by a second wave of Mongolian invaders under Genghis Khan, leading to many Ashkenazi Jews ending up in Southern and Middle European countries like Italy and Germany.
Historic Western and Middle European anti-Semitism
Western and Middle European anti-Semitism is widely considered to have its origin in the Middle Ages, where sporadic pogroms often coincided with the departure and the return of Christian crusaders, due to a mixture of religious zealotry and resentment against the high interest charged by Jewish money lenders involved in the financing of the campaigns. Killing the Jewish money lenders under the pretext of Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus was obviously a convenient way of getting around repaying ones debts.
Right through to the19th century, anti-Semitic feelings and pogroms tended to be triggered by reports of unethical Jewish business practices, counterfeiting of coins, and ritual killings of Christian children on Passah, also known as the ‘blood libel’[5]. While the veracity of those allegations is widely disputed, there is agreement that they were frequently used as a pretext to avoid repaying Jewish money lenders.
Historic Eastern European anti-Semitism
Eastern European Jews tended to be far less integrated in local societies than Jews in Western and Middle European societies. This was largely due to bigger concentrations of Jewish populations, which brought the Yiddish[6] speaking Ashkenazi Jews in more prominent contrast to the local Catholic or Orthodox Christian Slavic populations. This was particularly true for the strictly Orthodox Tsarist Russia with a deeply rooted mistrust for the descendants of her Khazarian arch-enemies.
German post-WWI anti-Semitism
Contrary to popular beliefs, German anti-Semitism after World War I was mainly motivated by resentment against the perceived responsible of ‘International Jewry’ under leadership of the Rothschild banking dynasty for Germany’s loss of World War I and the humiliating conditions of the Versailles Treaty. However, the resulting misgivings often resulted in the application of popular 19th century social-Darwinist teachings[7] on European Jews.
The Hitler government worked closely with international Zionist groups on a large-scale emigration programme for European Jews, psychologically aided by the increasingly hostile behaviour of the German government towards Jewish citizens. These groups were even allowed to maintain training camps featuring Zionist flags, preparing emigrants for a life in Palestine.
Nazi time Germans greatly resented the hostility of international Jewish groups and blamed them for the Western allieds war effort against Germany. This resulted in the perception amongst many Germans that European Jews were hostile aliens who could be interned and forced to support the German war effort.
Post WWII anti-Semitism
While most historians and politicians agree on pre-World War II anti-Semitism, the situation is far less clear cut for the time after World War II. While Jewish and pro-Israel lobby groups tend to liberally apply the label of anti-Semitism, there seems to be very few cases of racially motivated acts of anti-Jewish behaviour. Many cases of vandalism and terrorist attacks against Jewish synagogues and cemeteries turned out to be false flag operations of Zionist groups such as Mossad, designed to revive war time memories of Nazi persecutions and coerce Jews to ‘take refuge’ in the Jews-only state.
In today’s use of the term, any criticism of Jews or the Jews-only state is widely considered to be anti-Semitic. In particular, any mentioning of the slightest doubt with respect to the veracity of the mainstream narrative of the Jewish Holocaust or any suggestion of Jewish responsibility for certain aggressive aspects of US foreign policy or the events of September 11 are widely considered to be tell-tale signs of anti-Semitism. The same applies to anyone giving the slightest credibility to alleged conspiracy theories such as ‘New World Order’, ‘Illuminati’ or – worst of all – the infamous ‘Protocols’.
Jewish Power
The skinner-box like automatism with which any criticism or suggestion of any wrong doings is perceived to be anti-Semitic, has as much to do with Jewish power[8] as it has with a bad conscience with respect to a perceived inaction of the world in response to the Jewish Holocaust. Jewish control over most of Western mainstream media and investment capital has resulted into a situation where it is impossible to have a successful career in politics, science, media, entertainment or the corporate arena if there is even the slightest suspicion of ‘anti-Semitism’. Given the generous use of the term, it is no wonder that there is wide-spread fear amongst most Westerners, especially in Germany and the US, to do, say or even think anything that might attract that deadly label.
Muslim anti-Semitism
Given the unqualified support by the vast majority of Jews for the Zionist entity, the civilian and human rights abuses against the Palestinian people and the unqualified US sponsored contempt for numerous UN resolutions with respect to the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, there are strong misgivings amongst Muslims all over the world towards Jews in general and the Jews-only state in particular. Not surprisingly, these misgivings are wide criticised in the Jewish controlled Western media as anti-Semitism.
What makes these ill fellings different from most Western countries, is that they are not hampered by any bad conscience about the Jewish Holocaust, in fact, there is wide-spread scepticism amongst many Muslims regarding the veracity of the mainstream narrative. The recent Holocaust conference organised by the Tehran government, providing a platform of discussion for over 60 Holocaust revisionists is a clear expression of this scepticism and refusal to give in to Jewish pressure.[9] This is even more notable, since for the first time since World War II, an entire government, not just some maverick historian, has dared to challenge the mainstream narrative of the Holocaust.
The Walt-Mearsheimer Effect
In addition to the headache caused by the Tehran conference, last year’s high profile study of Harvard and Chicago University professors Walt and Mearsheimer on the inappropriate influence of pro-Israeli lobbies on US foreign policies drew attention to the indiscriminate Jewish use of the label of anti-Semitism as a political weapon[10]. The long-term effect of this study remains to be seen. Anecdotal evidence suggests however, that Jewish lobby groups have become more careful with the application of the term, and frequently resort to alternative labels such as ‘conspiracy theory’.
The mere existence of a powerful taboo such as the one surrounding the political term of ‘anti-Semitism’ is already a strong indication for the urgent need of a rigorous examination of its use. By avoiding such an examination, we are allowing powerful interest groups to abuse the term for their selfish political aims in a less than ethical manner. The recent Tehran conference breaking the Holocaust taboo and the debate started by the Walt-Mearsheimer study on the influence of the pro-Israel lobby have started a process that will hopefully lead to a rational debate on this important matter.
Most people don't have much of a clue what anti-Semitism actually is, but they 'know' how to spot it
Most Westerners are adamant that the Jews are the innocent victims of centuries of wicked persecution. They don’t have much of an idea why people keep picking at Jews, but they know for sure that the Jews are the goodies and their enemies the baddies.
When asked for their thoughts on what motivates anti-Semitism, most Westerners don’t have a clue. The most frequent answer is that anti-Semites consider themselves to be racially superior to people of Semitic race. At first sight, this doesn’t make a lot of sense, given the vast majority of today’s Jews are of ethnic Turk origin mixed with Germanic and Slavic elements, and not Semitic. However, since this fact isn’t even known to the majority of Jews, leave alone their critics, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the concept that anti-Semitism is caused by racial supremacism.
The myth of racially motivated anti-Semitism
Throughout history, dehumanisation of other ethnic groups has been the prime tool of morally justifying actions, that otherwise would be considered as evil. Ransacking another tribe to get hold of their winter rations, going to war against another people to rob all their possessions and kill or enslave everyone, all that had to be morally justified by the rulers of the aggressors towards their own people. In 19th century, a school of thinking called social-Darwinism justified European imperialism and colonialism based on Charles Darwin's theories on the survival of the fittest. This school was further developed in Germany[11], to a detailed list of racial ranking, in which Aryan races, such as Germans, Scandinavians, Persians and Northern Indians, were – mainly due to their warrior qualities - considered to be heading the racial ranking list, Semitic races, such as Arabs, Maltese and – not quite correctly - Jews, were ranked, together with Africans and Australian aborigines, at the bottom.
Not surprisingly, this kind of dubious theories didn’t find much resonance anywhere in German society, until – in close cooperation with the Zionist movement - they got heavily promoted by crypto-Jewish publisher Alfred Rosenberg, one of the chief ideologists of National Socialism. The prime purpose of his trailer-trash racism was to scare German Jews into emigrating to Palestine.
Rampant ignorance of what constitutes anti-Semitism
Where does this rampant ignorance of the nature and reasons behind anti-Semitism come from? Most people’s knowledge of the topic is limited to the three pillars of the ‘Jewish Holocaust’: a plan to kill all European Jews by Nazi Germany, the use of gas chambers (and other grisly methods) and 6 million murdered Jews. Thanks to a constant flow of books, newspaper articles, movies and TV shows, there are very few Westerners who aren’t more familiar with this particularly gruesome narrative of World War II, than they are with any other part of history.
More educated people, especially those with a Jewish background, will also have some knowledge of centuries of European anti-Semitism covered in Part 1 of this essay, most notably the ‘blood libel’[12] and the infamous ‘Protocols’[13]. But that’s about as far as it goes.
Eight ways how to spot an anti-Semite
Most Westerners only know as much about anti-Semitism as they need to spot an anti-Semite. An anti-Semite – according to common belief - is someone who:
• thinks anything bad of Jews,
• thinks that Jews could have ever done anything bad,
• doesn’t believe in the ‘Jewish Holocaust’,
• suggests that the ‘Jewish Holocaust’ should be open to free research and discussion,
• criticises any aspect of Judaism, e.g. Talmudism,
• criticises organised Jewry,
• criticises Israel, or
• criticises anyone who is supporting Israel.
Please note that this list is far from being exhaustive.
Skinner-box like reactions
The most interesting aspect of this ‘how to spot an anti-Semite’ list is that is has no base in rational thinking, but is purely belief based. It doesn’t matter whether and how any criticism of Jews, Judaism, organised Jewry, Holocaust beliefs, Israel or its lobby is justified. Most Westerners are conditioned to identify - in a skinner-box like automated reaction - anyone engaging in any of the above mentioned activities as an anti-Semite. The reactions of wide sections of the community to the Tehran Holocaust conference, the Walt-Mearsheimer study[14] on the pro-Israel lobby, Jimmy Carter’s book ‘Palestine: Peace not Apartheid’[15] and General Wesley Clerk’s ‘New York money people’ comment[16] are only some of the most notorious examples in recent months.
While there are subtle difference between individuals, when their skinner-box like reactions of identifying anti-Semitism are triggered, these are only gradual differences. Sooner or later, they always kick in. For example, an increasing number of Westerners are increasingly tolerant to criticism of ‘Zionists’, especially when it comes to the treatment of native Palestinians by Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers, but if the same criticism uses the term ‘Jews’, or worse ‘the Jews’ instead of Zionists, the critic is immediately considered to be an anti-Semite.
The taboo factor
The reason for both the general disinterest in and lack of rational thinking in the context of anti-Semitism, is its taboo nature. A taboo is a strong social prohibition (or ban) relating to any area of human activity or social custom declared as sacred and forbidden; breaking of the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society.[17]
There is no doubt, that large sections of the community consider anti-Semitism to be utterly evil and a danger to society. Most people will react with very strong feelings ranging from anger to fear, shock and disgust, when exposed to any perceived threat to beliefs relating to anti-Semitism. Even discussing its taboo nature causes considerable levels of discomfort.
The role of the media
Corporate media are playing a big role in the taboo nature of anti-Semitism. Not only do they consistently reinforce beliefs surrounding the topic, they also remind us of what happens to those people who dare to break the taboo. We all have heard of numerous cases of people who attracted the anger of the self-declared guardians of the taboo and saw their careers and livelihoods destroyed. In fact there are thousands of new cases every year where people get imprisoned for anti-Semitic activities, most of them for committing ‘Holocaust denial’ related offences, also known as ‘Holocaust revisionism’.
Not many people can afford to risk loosing everything, their jobs, their livelihoods, their family and friend, simply for being regarded to be an anti-Semite. Not many people are willing to risk their own future, leave alone that of their partner and children, by wearing that label. It is hard to think of anything worse that could happen to a 21st century Westerner than being burdened with this stigma.
Jewish Power
So why are the media so interested in maintaining the taboo? The answer lies in who owns respectively controls Western media. It’s hardly a secret that they are controlled by Jews. Not many people talk about it, for fear of attracting the dreaded label, but anyone who has heard of Rupert Murdoch, Haim Saban, Michael Eisner, Mortimer Zuckerman, Leslie Moonves, Jonathan Miller, Neil Shapiro, Jeff Gaspin, David Westin, Sumner Redstone, Mel Marmazin, Don Hewitt, Jeff Fager, David Poltrack, Sandy Krushow, Lloyd Braun, Barry Meyer, Sherry lansing, Harvey Weinstein, Brad Siegel, Peter Chrnin, Marty Peretz, Arthur Sulzberger, William Safire, Tom Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Cohen, Jeff Jacoby, Norman Ornstein, Stephen Emerson, David Schneiderman, Kenneth Polack, Barry Diller, Kenneth Roth, Richard Leibner, Terry Semel, Mark Golin, Warren Lieberford, Jeffrey Zucker, Jack Myers, Sandy Grushow, Gail Berman, Stephen Spielberg, Jefrfrey Katzenberg, David Geffen, Joran Levin, the list goes on and on, he or she must realise that there can’t be any reasonable doubt about the fact that our media are controlled by Jews. There can also be no reasonable doubt that they act together as a political and social force pursuing distinctly Jewish and pro-Israel interests[18].
The pro-Israel lobby
Jewish media power acts as leverage for Jewish political power. A well funded and highly organised lobby, as described by Walt and Mearsheimer[19], has been able to ensure that there is rarely a US politician who dares to stand in the way of what the lobby perceives to be in the best interest of Israel, regardless of the effect on the United States and the American people. Doing so or saying anything critical about Israel or organised Jewry, would automatically result in massive funding through AIPAC and other Jewish lobby groups for his or her opponents, both within and outside his or her party. Most likely, it would also result in a concerted media effort of the likes of AJC, New York Times, Forward, Boston Globe and hundreds of others, to portray the politician as an anti-Semite. Given the fact that in many cases only a couple of percentage points make the difference between winning or loosing the election, no candidate can afford this kind of trouble.
Not surprisingly, ambitious politicians from both parties, Republican and Democrats, are at pains to demonstrate an ‘Israel first’ attitude on guest appearances at various lobby events such as the annual AJC and AIPAC meetings or by acting as speakers on thousands of regional and national lobby events organised by an ever growing number of Jewish lobby groups. Needless to say, they wouldn’t get an invitation if they were suspected to foster anti-Semitic feelings.
Jewish media and lobby groups are enjoying an unprecedented degree of power over Western societies in which criticism of or resistance against this power is a fail-proof method of committing political, social, financial and career suicide. This essay will now examine - as part of a comprehensive ethical analysis of the subject of anti-Semitism - whether they are using this power in an ethical manner.
The Ethics of Anti-Anti-Semitism
Why is it that many Jews react so defensively when non-Jews say anything bad about another Jew? Why is it okay to talk about the stranglehold of the Cosa Nostra over Italian society, but anti-Semitism to even mention the existence of a Jewish equivalent? Why is it okay to talk about the killing of baby girls and embryos in China or the burning of married women in rural India, but not about ritual Passover sacrifices of abducted Christian children in the Middle-Ages? Why is it okay to call the Pope a Nazi collaborator, the American president a child molester with a weakness for young boys, and the virgin Mary a whore, but racist to suggest that some Jews had either prior knowledge or were involved in 9/11, for example ‘lucky Larry’ Silverstein, who bought the WTC for US$124 million a few months before 9/11 and made a healthy profit of US$ 4 billion in insurance payment out of it? Why is it okay to suggest that President Roosevelt deliberately set up the Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbour for the Japanese navy to shoot and destroy like a barrel of fish, shortly after cornering the Japanese government by a crippling oil embargo, but a crime deserving the most severe punishment to suggest that there might be something wrong with the mainstream narrative of the Jewish Holocaust? What makes criticism of a Jew by a non-Jew the latter automatically a racist, regardless of the merits of his or her criticism?
Paranoia, bad conscience, supremacism or ruthless politics?
This over the top Jewish defensiveness is commonly explained with the experience of the Holocaust. Jews supposedly react kind of paranoid when criticised because of the vilification and persecution their ancestors experienced 3 generations ago in Nazi Germany. Does that justify ruining and imprisoning the critics for their alleged acts of anti-Semitism without regard to their reasoning?
Another explanation for the extreme Jewish defensiveness could be bad conscience. Employees who feel that they are not qualified for their role, often react more defensive when criticised than employees who are more confident. Could it be that many Jews overreact to any criticism because they suspect the criticism to be well founded and therefore rather attack the man than the argument?
An even less flattering theory suggests that many Jews feel that they are so high above non-Jews that they consider any criticism by non-Jews to be unacceptable, similar to noble people or officers in the olden days who refused to be judged by anyone but their peers? After all, the holiest book of Judaism, the Talmud, describes non-Jews as cattle which can be killed, abused and exploited at will by Jews. Goyim, how the Talmud calls them, are only there to make Jews richer and their life more comfortable, just like cattle or slaves. For someone brought up in this kind of tradition, being criticised by non-Jews might indeed feel like blasphemy.
Or could it be, as some critics suggest, that the libel of anti-Semitism is purely a cynical political weapon, abused by a powerful lobby to fend off their political enemies? Maybe it is a mixture of all four, depending on the person, but it’s difficult to research this matter, given the viciousness any doubts in the saint-like innocence of all Jews is routinely punished.
Do ends justify all means?
Decisions with ethical consequences can be guided by different moral philosophies. From a teleological or consequentialist perspective, which focuses on ends and consequences, acts are considered to be morally right or acceptable if they produce a desired result. From that angle, it could be argued that modern anti-anti-Semitism was morally acceptable because it produces the desirable end of preventing a repeat of Nazi style discrimination and persecution of Jews. The downside of this approach though is that it is frequently abused for egoistic purposes, as it is the case of what Normal Finkelstein describes the ‘Holocaust Industry’, i.e. the misuse of the Jewish Holocaust for the maximisation of financial and political self-interest. Other examples are the coercing of US politicians by pro-Israel lobby groups such as AIPAC to blindly support Israel - financially, militarily and politically – or otherwise be labelled an anti-Semite and face, at the next election, opponents both from within the own party and from the opposition, who are swimming in Jewish money.
People cannot be used as a means to an end
Critics of the teleological or consequentialist approach argue that everyone must be treated with respect because they have universal rights including the freedom of conscience, consent, privacy, speech and due process. According to this so-called deontological philosophy, individual rights must not be violated. They demand that both intentions and actions of our behaviour should conform with universal moral principles.
From a deontological perspective it is difficult to justify, why someone should be ostracised, his career destroyed and his freedom taken, because he exercised his right of free speech to criticise aspects of modern Jewry or make claims that the mainstream narrative of the Jewish Holocaust was a hoax and should be reinvestigated.
Is anti-anti-Semitism a case of subjective ethicalness?
Moral relativists focus on themselves and the people around them. Their morality is based on the consensus of their relevant group. To them, ethicalness is subjective, based on individual and group experience. A consensus from the relevant group sets their ethical standards, which can change as the group’s views or its members change.
Moral relativism is very common amongst politicians, military and other professional groups. The Enron case is a good example for how relativist moral standards can easily lead to behaviours that – from an outsider’s point of view – are clearly unethical. It demonstrates that subjective ethicalness is prone to corruption and manipulations by powerful groups and individuals.
There is no doubt, that large sections of the community consider anti-Semitism to be utterly evil and a deadly danger to society. They feel that anti-Semites have forfeited their human and civil rights and deserve to be sentenced to death or at least locked up in some kind of high-security facility for as long as possible. This is the same strong reaction most people have when it comes to other powerful taboos such as child molestation and an indication of the amount of brainwashing Western societies have endured when it comes to Jews. This kind of brainless skinner box like reactions as the result of societal taboos as well as the above mentioned risk of corruption and manipulation as demonstrated in the Enron case are convincing proof that subjective ethicalness is unsuitable as a tool to guide our behaviours.
What would a mature person with good moral character consider appropriate?
Conventional morality values virtues such as trust, self control, empathy, fairness and truthfulness. It is fairly obvious that there is a lack of trust amongst many Jews towards those people they destroy for being alleged anti-Semites. They would probably argue that how they could be expected to trust someone who is being anti-Semitic. But that’s exactly what trust is about: trusting another even if there is a risk of betrayal or disappointment. Transferred to the situation of Jewish criticism, the virtue of trust would call for trusting the critic that he is not motivated by racial hatred and some secret wish to kill all Jews.
Self-control, the second virtue, calls to avoid exploiting self-serving opportunities. Many critics, for example Norman Finkelstein and Jeffrey Blankfort, would argue that the exploitation of self-serving opportunities is what the ‘Holocaust industry’ and the pro-Israel lobby are all about.
The third virtue, empathy, the promotion of civility and anticipation of needs, is clearly missing. So is fairness, the fourth virtue, because it can hardly be considered to be fair to ruin or imprison someone purely for exercising his right of free speech.
And last, but not least, truthfulness. Critics of Jews and the Holocaust get persecuted regardless of the merits of their claims. In Germany, for example, the veracity of the Holocaust is treated as ‘self-evident’ and Holocaust revisionists, such as Germar Rudolf of Ernst Zündel, are refused an opportunity to provide proof for the accuracy of the claims they are put on trial for. Similarly, anyone criticising Israel or the stranglehold the pro-Israel lobby has on US politics, for example Jimmy Carter in his recent book ‘Palestine: Peace not Apartheid’, is automatically condemned as an anti-Semite, irrespective of the strength of his argument.
The question of justice
Is justice, the fifth moral philosophy, that is fairness in outcomes, processes and communication, served by throwing people into jail, their character assassinate and their careers ruined for being critical of Jews? Throwing someone into jail or destroying his career for criticising Jews or claiming that the Holocaust was a hoax designed to humiliate a beaten enemy and mount international support for the creation and ongoing support of a Jewish state, would immediately be considered to be unjust by most people, if the recipient of the criticism weren’t Jews.
The set-up-to-anti-Semitism syndrome
The more people learned about Apartheid in South Africa, the more supportive they got for the idea of a boycott. Did that make those people hate White South Africans? Of course not. With Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian people it’s very similar. The more people find out about the private homes and orchards bulldozed by Israeli soldiers, the kids and teenagers shot by Israeli snipers, the systematic use of torture and extra-judicial killings, the disastrous impact of the so-called security fences, the daily harassment and intimidation by armed settlers and occupation soldiers, the more angry they get. It’s called sense of justice. Does that make them anti-Semites? Only, if you ask the pro-Israel lobby.
Having said that, a statement of fact should be treated solely on its merits. A fact is a fact, irrespective of who is stating it. As long as that person can proof that his or her claims are logical and reasonable, we all agree that we are dealing with a fact, until proven otherwise. The motivations and personal biases of that person do not change that, even if he or she is an ‘anti-Semite’.
The more difficult Jews are making it for critics to voice their views, the stronger their resentment will become. The more they are accusing critics of being motivated by racism and bigotry, the more angry they will get. The harder they make it for people interested in history and politics to research and publish on crimes of Jews, the more suspicious and mistrusting they get of Jews. In other words, the more Jews combat perceived anti-Semitism, the more 'anti-Semitic' people will become.
Footnotes
[1] There are hundreds of cases of imprisonment each year in over a dozen of countries, most notably Germany and Austria, on the grounds of 'hate crime', referring to written or verbal statements made with respect to Jews or the Holocaust.
[2] Sephardic, adj (Hebrew) Spanish
[3] Ashkenazi, adj (Hebrew) German; given the fact that almost 90% of today's Jews are Ashkenazi, i.e. ethnic Turk, the term 'anti-Semitism' doesn't make a lot of sense. However, since the focus of this essay is not so much the term itself, but the actions and attitudes it describes, the author decided - for simplicty reasons - to stick with the commonly used term.
[4] Pork stew with cockles or clams is still today a national dish in both Portugal and Spain.
[5] The infamous term ‘blood libel’ is frequently used by Jewish lobbyists to discredit any suggestions that Israeli official might have been involved in any murderous activities.
[6] Yiddish is a medivial German dialect mixed with Turk and Hebrew words. For speed and logistical reasons, the ethnic Turk Huns didn’t bring their women along when invading Europe, forcing them to ‘source’ women from the local Germanic tribes. Those women then passed on their own language to the fruits of those ‘marriages’.
[7] English social-Darwinism, which puts European races above populations of European colonies, was instrumental for the dehumanisation of non-European people, necessary for the moral justificiation of their suppression and exploitation.
[8] Paul Eisen, http://www.ziopedia.org/content/view/380/58/
[9] Fredrick Töben, http://www.ziopedia.org/content/view/2799/58/
[10] Jeffrey Blankfort, http://www.ziopedia.org/content/view/566/58/
[11] By the time Germany entered the imperialistic race, immediately after its unification in 1870, most of the non-European world was already divided by England, France, Russia, Spain, Portugual, Turkey and the Netherlands. Germany was only left with the ‘rejects’, countries like Papua, Namibia and Tonga that nobody else wanted.
[12] Frank Weltner PhD, The Jews in Britain, A short history of Anglo-Jewry, PhD, http://www.jewwatch.com/…
[13] Theodor Herzl, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion http://www.ziopedia.org/…
[14] Walt, Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby Influence on US Foreign Policy, http://www.ziopedia.org/... (PDF)
[15] Henry Siegman, Hurrican Carter, http://www.ziopedia.org/...
[16] James D. Besser, ADL Chief: It’s not just David Duke anymore, http://www.ziopedia.org/...
[17] Definition of ‘taboo’ on http://en.wikipedia.org
[18] Jeffrey Blankfort, Partial list of Pro-Israeli Jews who Control the American Media, http://www.ziopedia.org/...
[19] Walt, Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby Influence on US Foreign Policy, http://www.ziopedia.org/... (PDF)
Andrew Winkler is the editor/publisher of Sydney based dissident blog ZioPedia.org and founder of 'Jews Anonymous'. He can be contacted on editor@ziopedia.org.This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Source: ZioPedia.org
Monday, 22 January 2007
"In the olden days, an anti-Semite was someone who hated Jews; these days it’s someone the Jews hate"
Accusing an opponent of anti-Semitism is probably the most powerful political weapon that exists in Western society. Its destructiveness equals – if not surpasses - the label of paedophilia. The whole topic has developed over time to such a powerful taboo, that there is hardly an open discussion of anti-Semitism, without the participants scrambling to uncritically condemn it as utterly evil. Anybody suspected – or worse - publicly accused of anti-Semitic views or activities, becomes automatically – without trial and conviction – a societal leper. He can kiss his job and career good-bye, and will loose, more often than not, most of his friends and family, in many cases even his freedom.[1]
In spite, or maybe because of its taboo nature, there is a lot of confusion about what exactly constitutes anti-Semitism. This essay tries to break through the taboo and examine the various aspects of anti-Semitism and what lead to its taboo nature. The author is conscious of the fact that by doing so, he will attract bitter criticism of those sections of the community that – for one reason or another - are the most interested in maintaining the taboo.
Origins of European Jewry
European anti-Semitism cannot be understood without knowledge of the origins of European Jewry. There are two distinct ethnical and linguistical Jewish groups in Europe, the Sephardic[2] and Ashkenazi Jews[3].
Sephardic Jews
The Sephardic Jews are the direct descendants of the Roman days’ inhabitants of Palestine. Their ancestors were part of the Jewish ‘establishment’ that left Palestine after the failed Jewish uprise against the Roman occupation in the first century around 70 A.D. They eventually settled in the Southern Spanish province of Andalusia where, for many centuries, they had a privileged position under Moorish rule. Sephardic Jews still speak today a medivial Andalusian dialect.
Historic Spanish and Portuguese anti-Semitism
While Christian zealotism was most likely a factor, Spanish and Portuguese anti-Semitism has its main cause in the resentment against the Jewish role in the century long Moorish occupation of the Iberian peninsula. Jews were considered to be traitors and collaborateurs. After the final defeat of the Moors in 1492, the ‘Catholic Kings’ gave the Sephardic Jews the choice to either leave for the (Spanish ruled) Netherlands, convert to Christianity or die. Since most Jews picked the easy option of simply pretending to have converted, a common way of testing their religious allegiance was to make them eat a stew cooked out of pork and seafood, both forbidden ingredients under Jewish religious rules.[4]
Throughout the centuries, Spanish and Portuguese anti-Semitism – as elsewhere - continued to be motivated by a mix of religious and socio-economical reasons. In spite of pretending to be Christians, numerous Jewish families secretly adhered to their Jewish beliefs as so-called crypto-Jews, often ‘sacrificing’ their eldest son by making him become a Catholic priest, to protect his family. Many crypto-Jew priests had prominent roles in the Spanish inquisition, which provided them with a powerful tool to fight against their enemies. They were also massively over-represented amongst the financers of the genocidal slave and spice trade, flourishing in both Spain and Portugal.
Ashkenazi Jews
Middle and Eastern European Jewry has its roots in the ethnic Turk tribes from Mongolia who invaded Europe under their Hun King Attila and eventually settled in the area of today’s southern Russia and Ukraine, where they formed the biggest and most powerful European kingdom of the Middle Ages, Khazaria. In the 8th century, the Khazarian kings decided to import thousands of rabbis to set up Talmud schools and convert the entire population to Judaism. This purely commercial decision enabled the Khazars to trade with both Christian and Muslim neighbours and dominate the extremely profitable trade between Europe and Asia, paying for the largest standing army of the Middle Ages. Ironically, Khazaria was eventually destroyed in the early 13th century by a second wave of Mongolian invaders under Genghis Khan, leading to many Ashkenazi Jews ending up in Southern and Middle European countries like Italy and Germany.
Historic Western and Middle European anti-Semitism
Western and Middle European anti-Semitism is widely considered to have its origin in the Middle Ages, where sporadic pogroms often coincided with the departure and the return of Christian crusaders, due to a mixture of religious zealotry and resentment against the high interest charged by Jewish money lenders involved in the financing of the campaigns. Killing the Jewish money lenders under the pretext of Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus was obviously a convenient way of getting around repaying ones debts.
Right through to the19th century, anti-Semitic feelings and pogroms tended to be triggered by reports of unethical Jewish business practices, counterfeiting of coins, and ritual killings of Christian children on Passah, also known as the ‘blood libel’[5]. While the veracity of those allegations is widely disputed, there is agreement that they were frequently used as a pretext to avoid repaying Jewish money lenders.
Historic Eastern European anti-Semitism
Eastern European Jews tended to be far less integrated in local societies than Jews in Western and Middle European societies. This was largely due to bigger concentrations of Jewish populations, which brought the Yiddish[6] speaking Ashkenazi Jews in more prominent contrast to the local Catholic or Orthodox Christian Slavic populations. This was particularly true for the strictly Orthodox Tsarist Russia with a deeply rooted mistrust for the descendants of her Khazarian arch-enemies.
German post-WWI anti-Semitism
Contrary to popular beliefs, German anti-Semitism after World War I was mainly motivated by resentment against the perceived responsible of ‘International Jewry’ under leadership of the Rothschild banking dynasty for Germany’s loss of World War I and the humiliating conditions of the Versailles Treaty. However, the resulting misgivings often resulted in the application of popular 19th century social-Darwinist teachings[7] on European Jews.
The Hitler government worked closely with international Zionist groups on a large-scale emigration programme for European Jews, psychologically aided by the increasingly hostile behaviour of the German government towards Jewish citizens. These groups were even allowed to maintain training camps featuring Zionist flags, preparing emigrants for a life in Palestine.
Nazi time Germans greatly resented the hostility of international Jewish groups and blamed them for the Western allieds war effort against Germany. This resulted in the perception amongst many Germans that European Jews were hostile aliens who could be interned and forced to support the German war effort.
Post WWII anti-Semitism
While most historians and politicians agree on pre-World War II anti-Semitism, the situation is far less clear cut for the time after World War II. While Jewish and pro-Israel lobby groups tend to liberally apply the label of anti-Semitism, there seems to be very few cases of racially motivated acts of anti-Jewish behaviour. Many cases of vandalism and terrorist attacks against Jewish synagogues and cemeteries turned out to be false flag operations of Zionist groups such as Mossad, designed to revive war time memories of Nazi persecutions and coerce Jews to ‘take refuge’ in the Jews-only state.
In today’s use of the term, any criticism of Jews or the Jews-only state is widely considered to be anti-Semitic. In particular, any mentioning of the slightest doubt with respect to the veracity of the mainstream narrative of the Jewish Holocaust or any suggestion of Jewish responsibility for certain aggressive aspects of US foreign policy or the events of September 11 are widely considered to be tell-tale signs of anti-Semitism. The same applies to anyone giving the slightest credibility to alleged conspiracy theories such as ‘New World Order’, ‘Illuminati’ or – worst of all – the infamous ‘Protocols’.
Jewish Power
The skinner-box like automatism with which any criticism or suggestion of any wrong doings is perceived to be anti-Semitic, has as much to do with Jewish power[8] as it has with a bad conscience with respect to a perceived inaction of the world in response to the Jewish Holocaust. Jewish control over most of Western mainstream media and investment capital has resulted into a situation where it is impossible to have a successful career in politics, science, media, entertainment or the corporate arena if there is even the slightest suspicion of ‘anti-Semitism’. Given the generous use of the term, it is no wonder that there is wide-spread fear amongst most Westerners, especially in Germany and the US, to do, say or even think anything that might attract that deadly label.
Muslim anti-Semitism
Given the unqualified support by the vast majority of Jews for the Zionist entity, the civilian and human rights abuses against the Palestinian people and the unqualified US sponsored contempt for numerous UN resolutions with respect to the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, there are strong misgivings amongst Muslims all over the world towards Jews in general and the Jews-only state in particular. Not surprisingly, these misgivings are wide criticised in the Jewish controlled Western media as anti-Semitism.
What makes these ill fellings different from most Western countries, is that they are not hampered by any bad conscience about the Jewish Holocaust, in fact, there is wide-spread scepticism amongst many Muslims regarding the veracity of the mainstream narrative. The recent Holocaust conference organised by the Tehran government, providing a platform of discussion for over 60 Holocaust revisionists is a clear expression of this scepticism and refusal to give in to Jewish pressure.[9] This is even more notable, since for the first time since World War II, an entire government, not just some maverick historian, has dared to challenge the mainstream narrative of the Holocaust.
The Walt-Mearsheimer Effect
In addition to the headache caused by the Tehran conference, last year’s high profile study of Harvard and Chicago University professors Walt and Mearsheimer on the inappropriate influence of pro-Israeli lobbies on US foreign policies drew attention to the indiscriminate Jewish use of the label of anti-Semitism as a political weapon[10]. The long-term effect of this study remains to be seen. Anecdotal evidence suggests however, that Jewish lobby groups have become more careful with the application of the term, and frequently resort to alternative labels such as ‘conspiracy theory’.
The mere existence of a powerful taboo such as the one surrounding the political term of ‘anti-Semitism’ is already a strong indication for the urgent need of a rigorous examination of its use. By avoiding such an examination, we are allowing powerful interest groups to abuse the term for their selfish political aims in a less than ethical manner. The recent Tehran conference breaking the Holocaust taboo and the debate started by the Walt-Mearsheimer study on the influence of the pro-Israel lobby have started a process that will hopefully lead to a rational debate on this important matter.
Most people don't have much of a clue what anti-Semitism actually is, but they 'know' how to spot it
Most Westerners are adamant that the Jews are the innocent victims of centuries of wicked persecution. They don’t have much of an idea why people keep picking at Jews, but they know for sure that the Jews are the goodies and their enemies the baddies.
When asked for their thoughts on what motivates anti-Semitism, most Westerners don’t have a clue. The most frequent answer is that anti-Semites consider themselves to be racially superior to people of Semitic race. At first sight, this doesn’t make a lot of sense, given the vast majority of today’s Jews are of ethnic Turk origin mixed with Germanic and Slavic elements, and not Semitic. However, since this fact isn’t even known to the majority of Jews, leave alone their critics, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the concept that anti-Semitism is caused by racial supremacism.
The myth of racially motivated anti-Semitism
Throughout history, dehumanisation of other ethnic groups has been the prime tool of morally justifying actions, that otherwise would be considered as evil. Ransacking another tribe to get hold of their winter rations, going to war against another people to rob all their possessions and kill or enslave everyone, all that had to be morally justified by the rulers of the aggressors towards their own people. In 19th century, a school of thinking called social-Darwinism justified European imperialism and colonialism based on Charles Darwin's theories on the survival of the fittest. This school was further developed in Germany[11], to a detailed list of racial ranking, in which Aryan races, such as Germans, Scandinavians, Persians and Northern Indians, were – mainly due to their warrior qualities - considered to be heading the racial ranking list, Semitic races, such as Arabs, Maltese and – not quite correctly - Jews, were ranked, together with Africans and Australian aborigines, at the bottom.
Not surprisingly, this kind of dubious theories didn’t find much resonance anywhere in German society, until – in close cooperation with the Zionist movement - they got heavily promoted by crypto-Jewish publisher Alfred Rosenberg, one of the chief ideologists of National Socialism. The prime purpose of his trailer-trash racism was to scare German Jews into emigrating to Palestine.
Rampant ignorance of what constitutes anti-Semitism
Where does this rampant ignorance of the nature and reasons behind anti-Semitism come from? Most people’s knowledge of the topic is limited to the three pillars of the ‘Jewish Holocaust’: a plan to kill all European Jews by Nazi Germany, the use of gas chambers (and other grisly methods) and 6 million murdered Jews. Thanks to a constant flow of books, newspaper articles, movies and TV shows, there are very few Westerners who aren’t more familiar with this particularly gruesome narrative of World War II, than they are with any other part of history.
More educated people, especially those with a Jewish background, will also have some knowledge of centuries of European anti-Semitism covered in Part 1 of this essay, most notably the ‘blood libel’[12] and the infamous ‘Protocols’[13]. But that’s about as far as it goes.
Eight ways how to spot an anti-Semite
Most Westerners only know as much about anti-Semitism as they need to spot an anti-Semite. An anti-Semite – according to common belief - is someone who:
• thinks anything bad of Jews,
• thinks that Jews could have ever done anything bad,
• doesn’t believe in the ‘Jewish Holocaust’,
• suggests that the ‘Jewish Holocaust’ should be open to free research and discussion,
• criticises any aspect of Judaism, e.g. Talmudism,
• criticises organised Jewry,
• criticises Israel, or
• criticises anyone who is supporting Israel.
Please note that this list is far from being exhaustive.
Skinner-box like reactions
The most interesting aspect of this ‘how to spot an anti-Semite’ list is that is has no base in rational thinking, but is purely belief based. It doesn’t matter whether and how any criticism of Jews, Judaism, organised Jewry, Holocaust beliefs, Israel or its lobby is justified. Most Westerners are conditioned to identify - in a skinner-box like automated reaction - anyone engaging in any of the above mentioned activities as an anti-Semite. The reactions of wide sections of the community to the Tehran Holocaust conference, the Walt-Mearsheimer study[14] on the pro-Israel lobby, Jimmy Carter’s book ‘Palestine: Peace not Apartheid’[15] and General Wesley Clerk’s ‘New York money people’ comment[16] are only some of the most notorious examples in recent months.
While there are subtle difference between individuals, when their skinner-box like reactions of identifying anti-Semitism are triggered, these are only gradual differences. Sooner or later, they always kick in. For example, an increasing number of Westerners are increasingly tolerant to criticism of ‘Zionists’, especially when it comes to the treatment of native Palestinians by Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers, but if the same criticism uses the term ‘Jews’, or worse ‘the Jews’ instead of Zionists, the critic is immediately considered to be an anti-Semite.
The taboo factor
The reason for both the general disinterest in and lack of rational thinking in the context of anti-Semitism, is its taboo nature. A taboo is a strong social prohibition (or ban) relating to any area of human activity or social custom declared as sacred and forbidden; breaking of the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society.[17]
There is no doubt, that large sections of the community consider anti-Semitism to be utterly evil and a danger to society. Most people will react with very strong feelings ranging from anger to fear, shock and disgust, when exposed to any perceived threat to beliefs relating to anti-Semitism. Even discussing its taboo nature causes considerable levels of discomfort.
The role of the media
Corporate media are playing a big role in the taboo nature of anti-Semitism. Not only do they consistently reinforce beliefs surrounding the topic, they also remind us of what happens to those people who dare to break the taboo. We all have heard of numerous cases of people who attracted the anger of the self-declared guardians of the taboo and saw their careers and livelihoods destroyed. In fact there are thousands of new cases every year where people get imprisoned for anti-Semitic activities, most of them for committing ‘Holocaust denial’ related offences, also known as ‘Holocaust revisionism’.
Not many people can afford to risk loosing everything, their jobs, their livelihoods, their family and friend, simply for being regarded to be an anti-Semite. Not many people are willing to risk their own future, leave alone that of their partner and children, by wearing that label. It is hard to think of anything worse that could happen to a 21st century Westerner than being burdened with this stigma.
Jewish Power
So why are the media so interested in maintaining the taboo? The answer lies in who owns respectively controls Western media. It’s hardly a secret that they are controlled by Jews. Not many people talk about it, for fear of attracting the dreaded label, but anyone who has heard of Rupert Murdoch, Haim Saban, Michael Eisner, Mortimer Zuckerman, Leslie Moonves, Jonathan Miller, Neil Shapiro, Jeff Gaspin, David Westin, Sumner Redstone, Mel Marmazin, Don Hewitt, Jeff Fager, David Poltrack, Sandy Krushow, Lloyd Braun, Barry Meyer, Sherry lansing, Harvey Weinstein, Brad Siegel, Peter Chrnin, Marty Peretz, Arthur Sulzberger, William Safire, Tom Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Cohen, Jeff Jacoby, Norman Ornstein, Stephen Emerson, David Schneiderman, Kenneth Polack, Barry Diller, Kenneth Roth, Richard Leibner, Terry Semel, Mark Golin, Warren Lieberford, Jeffrey Zucker, Jack Myers, Sandy Grushow, Gail Berman, Stephen Spielberg, Jefrfrey Katzenberg, David Geffen, Joran Levin, the list goes on and on, he or she must realise that there can’t be any reasonable doubt about the fact that our media are controlled by Jews. There can also be no reasonable doubt that they act together as a political and social force pursuing distinctly Jewish and pro-Israel interests[18].
The pro-Israel lobby
Jewish media power acts as leverage for Jewish political power. A well funded and highly organised lobby, as described by Walt and Mearsheimer[19], has been able to ensure that there is rarely a US politician who dares to stand in the way of what the lobby perceives to be in the best interest of Israel, regardless of the effect on the United States and the American people. Doing so or saying anything critical about Israel or organised Jewry, would automatically result in massive funding through AIPAC and other Jewish lobby groups for his or her opponents, both within and outside his or her party. Most likely, it would also result in a concerted media effort of the likes of AJC, New York Times, Forward, Boston Globe and hundreds of others, to portray the politician as an anti-Semite. Given the fact that in many cases only a couple of percentage points make the difference between winning or loosing the election, no candidate can afford this kind of trouble.
Not surprisingly, ambitious politicians from both parties, Republican and Democrats, are at pains to demonstrate an ‘Israel first’ attitude on guest appearances at various lobby events such as the annual AJC and AIPAC meetings or by acting as speakers on thousands of regional and national lobby events organised by an ever growing number of Jewish lobby groups. Needless to say, they wouldn’t get an invitation if they were suspected to foster anti-Semitic feelings.
Jewish media and lobby groups are enjoying an unprecedented degree of power over Western societies in which criticism of or resistance against this power is a fail-proof method of committing political, social, financial and career suicide. This essay will now examine - as part of a comprehensive ethical analysis of the subject of anti-Semitism - whether they are using this power in an ethical manner.
The Ethics of Anti-Anti-Semitism
Why is it that many Jews react so defensively when non-Jews say anything bad about another Jew? Why is it okay to talk about the stranglehold of the Cosa Nostra over Italian society, but anti-Semitism to even mention the existence of a Jewish equivalent? Why is it okay to talk about the killing of baby girls and embryos in China or the burning of married women in rural India, but not about ritual Passover sacrifices of abducted Christian children in the Middle-Ages? Why is it okay to call the Pope a Nazi collaborator, the American president a child molester with a weakness for young boys, and the virgin Mary a whore, but racist to suggest that some Jews had either prior knowledge or were involved in 9/11, for example ‘lucky Larry’ Silverstein, who bought the WTC for US$124 million a few months before 9/11 and made a healthy profit of US$ 4 billion in insurance payment out of it? Why is it okay to suggest that President Roosevelt deliberately set up the Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbour for the Japanese navy to shoot and destroy like a barrel of fish, shortly after cornering the Japanese government by a crippling oil embargo, but a crime deserving the most severe punishment to suggest that there might be something wrong with the mainstream narrative of the Jewish Holocaust? What makes criticism of a Jew by a non-Jew the latter automatically a racist, regardless of the merits of his or her criticism?
Paranoia, bad conscience, supremacism or ruthless politics?
This over the top Jewish defensiveness is commonly explained with the experience of the Holocaust. Jews supposedly react kind of paranoid when criticised because of the vilification and persecution their ancestors experienced 3 generations ago in Nazi Germany. Does that justify ruining and imprisoning the critics for their alleged acts of anti-Semitism without regard to their reasoning?
Another explanation for the extreme Jewish defensiveness could be bad conscience. Employees who feel that they are not qualified for their role, often react more defensive when criticised than employees who are more confident. Could it be that many Jews overreact to any criticism because they suspect the criticism to be well founded and therefore rather attack the man than the argument?
An even less flattering theory suggests that many Jews feel that they are so high above non-Jews that they consider any criticism by non-Jews to be unacceptable, similar to noble people or officers in the olden days who refused to be judged by anyone but their peers? After all, the holiest book of Judaism, the Talmud, describes non-Jews as cattle which can be killed, abused and exploited at will by Jews. Goyim, how the Talmud calls them, are only there to make Jews richer and their life more comfortable, just like cattle or slaves. For someone brought up in this kind of tradition, being criticised by non-Jews might indeed feel like blasphemy.
Or could it be, as some critics suggest, that the libel of anti-Semitism is purely a cynical political weapon, abused by a powerful lobby to fend off their political enemies? Maybe it is a mixture of all four, depending on the person, but it’s difficult to research this matter, given the viciousness any doubts in the saint-like innocence of all Jews is routinely punished.
Do ends justify all means?
Decisions with ethical consequences can be guided by different moral philosophies. From a teleological or consequentialist perspective, which focuses on ends and consequences, acts are considered to be morally right or acceptable if they produce a desired result. From that angle, it could be argued that modern anti-anti-Semitism was morally acceptable because it produces the desirable end of preventing a repeat of Nazi style discrimination and persecution of Jews. The downside of this approach though is that it is frequently abused for egoistic purposes, as it is the case of what Normal Finkelstein describes the ‘Holocaust Industry’, i.e. the misuse of the Jewish Holocaust for the maximisation of financial and political self-interest. Other examples are the coercing of US politicians by pro-Israel lobby groups such as AIPAC to blindly support Israel - financially, militarily and politically – or otherwise be labelled an anti-Semite and face, at the next election, opponents both from within the own party and from the opposition, who are swimming in Jewish money.
People cannot be used as a means to an end
Critics of the teleological or consequentialist approach argue that everyone must be treated with respect because they have universal rights including the freedom of conscience, consent, privacy, speech and due process. According to this so-called deontological philosophy, individual rights must not be violated. They demand that both intentions and actions of our behaviour should conform with universal moral principles.
From a deontological perspective it is difficult to justify, why someone should be ostracised, his career destroyed and his freedom taken, because he exercised his right of free speech to criticise aspects of modern Jewry or make claims that the mainstream narrative of the Jewish Holocaust was a hoax and should be reinvestigated.
Is anti-anti-Semitism a case of subjective ethicalness?
Moral relativists focus on themselves and the people around them. Their morality is based on the consensus of their relevant group. To them, ethicalness is subjective, based on individual and group experience. A consensus from the relevant group sets their ethical standards, which can change as the group’s views or its members change.
Moral relativism is very common amongst politicians, military and other professional groups. The Enron case is a good example for how relativist moral standards can easily lead to behaviours that – from an outsider’s point of view – are clearly unethical. It demonstrates that subjective ethicalness is prone to corruption and manipulations by powerful groups and individuals.
There is no doubt, that large sections of the community consider anti-Semitism to be utterly evil and a deadly danger to society. They feel that anti-Semites have forfeited their human and civil rights and deserve to be sentenced to death or at least locked up in some kind of high-security facility for as long as possible. This is the same strong reaction most people have when it comes to other powerful taboos such as child molestation and an indication of the amount of brainwashing Western societies have endured when it comes to Jews. This kind of brainless skinner box like reactions as the result of societal taboos as well as the above mentioned risk of corruption and manipulation as demonstrated in the Enron case are convincing proof that subjective ethicalness is unsuitable as a tool to guide our behaviours.
What would a mature person with good moral character consider appropriate?
Conventional morality values virtues such as trust, self control, empathy, fairness and truthfulness. It is fairly obvious that there is a lack of trust amongst many Jews towards those people they destroy for being alleged anti-Semites. They would probably argue that how they could be expected to trust someone who is being anti-Semitic. But that’s exactly what trust is about: trusting another even if there is a risk of betrayal or disappointment. Transferred to the situation of Jewish criticism, the virtue of trust would call for trusting the critic that he is not motivated by racial hatred and some secret wish to kill all Jews.
Self-control, the second virtue, calls to avoid exploiting self-serving opportunities. Many critics, for example Norman Finkelstein and Jeffrey Blankfort, would argue that the exploitation of self-serving opportunities is what the ‘Holocaust industry’ and the pro-Israel lobby are all about.
The third virtue, empathy, the promotion of civility and anticipation of needs, is clearly missing. So is fairness, the fourth virtue, because it can hardly be considered to be fair to ruin or imprison someone purely for exercising his right of free speech.
And last, but not least, truthfulness. Critics of Jews and the Holocaust get persecuted regardless of the merits of their claims. In Germany, for example, the veracity of the Holocaust is treated as ‘self-evident’ and Holocaust revisionists, such as Germar Rudolf of Ernst Zündel, are refused an opportunity to provide proof for the accuracy of the claims they are put on trial for. Similarly, anyone criticising Israel or the stranglehold the pro-Israel lobby has on US politics, for example Jimmy Carter in his recent book ‘Palestine: Peace not Apartheid’, is automatically condemned as an anti-Semite, irrespective of the strength of his argument.
The question of justice
Is justice, the fifth moral philosophy, that is fairness in outcomes, processes and communication, served by throwing people into jail, their character assassinate and their careers ruined for being critical of Jews? Throwing someone into jail or destroying his career for criticising Jews or claiming that the Holocaust was a hoax designed to humiliate a beaten enemy and mount international support for the creation and ongoing support of a Jewish state, would immediately be considered to be unjust by most people, if the recipient of the criticism weren’t Jews.
The set-up-to-anti-Semitism syndrome
The more people learned about Apartheid in South Africa, the more supportive they got for the idea of a boycott. Did that make those people hate White South Africans? Of course not. With Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian people it’s very similar. The more people find out about the private homes and orchards bulldozed by Israeli soldiers, the kids and teenagers shot by Israeli snipers, the systematic use of torture and extra-judicial killings, the disastrous impact of the so-called security fences, the daily harassment and intimidation by armed settlers and occupation soldiers, the more angry they get. It’s called sense of justice. Does that make them anti-Semites? Only, if you ask the pro-Israel lobby.
Having said that, a statement of fact should be treated solely on its merits. A fact is a fact, irrespective of who is stating it. As long as that person can proof that his or her claims are logical and reasonable, we all agree that we are dealing with a fact, until proven otherwise. The motivations and personal biases of that person do not change that, even if he or she is an ‘anti-Semite’.
The more difficult Jews are making it for critics to voice their views, the stronger their resentment will become. The more they are accusing critics of being motivated by racism and bigotry, the more angry they will get. The harder they make it for people interested in history and politics to research and publish on crimes of Jews, the more suspicious and mistrusting they get of Jews. In other words, the more Jews combat perceived anti-Semitism, the more 'anti-Semitic' people will become.
Footnotes
[1] There are hundreds of cases of imprisonment each year in over a dozen of countries, most notably Germany and Austria, on the grounds of 'hate crime', referring to written or verbal statements made with respect to Jews or the Holocaust.
[2] Sephardic, adj (Hebrew) Spanish
[3] Ashkenazi, adj (Hebrew) German; given the fact that almost 90% of today's Jews are Ashkenazi, i.e. ethnic Turk, the term 'anti-Semitism' doesn't make a lot of sense. However, since the focus of this essay is not so much the term itself, but the actions and attitudes it describes, the author decided - for simplicty reasons - to stick with the commonly used term.
[4] Pork stew with cockles or clams is still today a national dish in both Portugal and Spain.
[5] The infamous term ‘blood libel’ is frequently used by Jewish lobbyists to discredit any suggestions that Israeli official might have been involved in any murderous activities.
[6] Yiddish is a medivial German dialect mixed with Turk and Hebrew words. For speed and logistical reasons, the ethnic Turk Huns didn’t bring their women along when invading Europe, forcing them to ‘source’ women from the local Germanic tribes. Those women then passed on their own language to the fruits of those ‘marriages’.
[7] English social-Darwinism, which puts European races above populations of European colonies, was instrumental for the dehumanisation of non-European people, necessary for the moral justificiation of their suppression and exploitation.
[8] Paul Eisen, http://www.ziopedia.org/content/view/380/58/
[9] Fredrick Töben, http://www.ziopedia.org/content/view/2799/58/
[10] Jeffrey Blankfort, http://www.ziopedia.org/content/view/566/58/
[11] By the time Germany entered the imperialistic race, immediately after its unification in 1870, most of the non-European world was already divided by England, France, Russia, Spain, Portugual, Turkey and the Netherlands. Germany was only left with the ‘rejects’, countries like Papua, Namibia and Tonga that nobody else wanted.
[12] Frank Weltner PhD, The Jews in Britain, A short history of Anglo-Jewry, PhD, http://www.jewwatch.com/…
[13] Theodor Herzl, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion http://www.ziopedia.org/…
[14] Walt, Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby Influence on US Foreign Policy, http://www.ziopedia.org/... (PDF)
[15] Henry Siegman, Hurrican Carter, http://www.ziopedia.org/...
[16] James D. Besser, ADL Chief: It’s not just David Duke anymore, http://www.ziopedia.org/...
[17] Definition of ‘taboo’ on http://en.wikipedia.org
[18] Jeffrey Blankfort, Partial list of Pro-Israeli Jews who Control the American Media, http://www.ziopedia.org/...
[19] Walt, Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby Influence on US Foreign Policy, http://www.ziopedia.org/... (PDF)
Andrew Winkler is the editor/publisher of Sydney based dissident blog ZioPedia.org and founder of 'Jews Anonymous'. He can be contacted on editor@ziopedia.org.This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Source: ZioPedia.org
Terrorism American style - 1980s (Video)
First we arm them, then we shoot them down. Twenty-five year ago, Bush Senior illegally armed Iran and directed the profits from the sales to terrorist
operations in Central America.
A little history for the under 30 crowd...and some nostalgia for folks who remember when these things were shocking enough to merit Congressional hearings.
George Bush Sr. operated a secret government while a senile Ronald Reagan dozed and coasted on his Hollywood presentation skills.Yet when the Iran-Contra scandal broke, Reagan and others took the heat, while George Sr. remained safely in the shadows.Shameless, contemptuous of the law, and masterful liars...many of the members of the Bush Sr. support term manage things today behind the scenes for Junior.
A link to a video, that illustrates the real truth about corruption in the US presidency can be found at: http://ahmedismailibrahim.wordpress.com/2007/07/14/terrorism-usa-style-1980s-video/.
operations in Central America.
A little history for the under 30 crowd...and some nostalgia for folks who remember when these things were shocking enough to merit Congressional hearings.
George Bush Sr. operated a secret government while a senile Ronald Reagan dozed and coasted on his Hollywood presentation skills.Yet when the Iran-Contra scandal broke, Reagan and others took the heat, while George Sr. remained safely in the shadows.Shameless, contemptuous of the law, and masterful liars...many of the members of the Bush Sr. support term manage things today behind the scenes for Junior.
A link to a video, that illustrates the real truth about corruption in the US presidency can be found at: http://ahmedismailibrahim.wordpress.com/2007/07/14/terrorism-usa-style-1980s-video/.
This is what the American Tax-Payer Willingly Finances for Israel (video)
This is what the silent and obedient American tax-payer has financed in Lebanon last year via America's dear beloved ally, Israel. The Bush regime expects the Lebanese people today to embrace its neocon Zionist "New Middle East" agenda... and with it of course the great American "democracy". How long are the American people going to continue silently financing the butchering and murdering of innocent people?
Mind you, these 2 videos are only about the 34 days in Lebanon in 2006. The US has been on a rampage in Iraq for 4 years... for each and every single day of every year. The US has equally been on a rampage in Afghanistan... and let's not forget that without US money, the Israelis wouldn't be able to sustain one day of fighting against the Palestinians or anybody else.
Until when will the American people silently finance all of this? How are the Arab people supposed to perceive the attitude of the American people? If you were the parents of one of the children in those videos, what would you think of the American people?
Arabs, like most people, are frankly extremely proud of Arab Resistance to occupation, oppression, and apartheid. A look however at the United States... and they ask themselves how it is that they could have been deceived so much into imagining for a single moment that America was the "land of the free" and "the home of the brave"?? It seems that Hollywood built a fictitious image for "the American" character just as it managed to build one for the Arab.
http://english.wa3ad.org/index.php?show=sounds&action=play&id=15
The New Middle East
The July War
http://english.wa3ad.org/index.php?show=sounds&action=play&id=16
The American Democracy
The July War
Mind you, these 2 videos are only about the 34 days in Lebanon in 2006. The US has been on a rampage in Iraq for 4 years... for each and every single day of every year. The US has equally been on a rampage in Afghanistan... and let's not forget that without US money, the Israelis wouldn't be able to sustain one day of fighting against the Palestinians or anybody else.
Until when will the American people silently finance all of this? How are the Arab people supposed to perceive the attitude of the American people? If you were the parents of one of the children in those videos, what would you think of the American people?
Arabs, like most people, are frankly extremely proud of Arab Resistance to occupation, oppression, and apartheid. A look however at the United States... and they ask themselves how it is that they could have been deceived so much into imagining for a single moment that America was the "land of the free" and "the home of the brave"?? It seems that Hollywood built a fictitious image for "the American" character just as it managed to build one for the Arab.
http://english.wa3ad.org/index.php?show=sounds&action=play&id=15
The New Middle East
The July War
http://english.wa3ad.org/index.php?show=sounds&action=play&id=16
The American Democracy
The July War
Zionism a uniquely dangerous form of colonialist racism. Just ask these Jews.
Published at July 11, 2007 in Israeli Politics.
By Michel Warschawski Le Monde Diplomatique - July 2007
Who are the victims of Zionism? Evidently, the Palestinians. But are they the only victims of this colonial movement? To this question, Ella Shohat responds clearly in the negative, by asserting that Zionism has also produced Jewish victims [1]. An academic of Israeli origin, Shohat has taught in New York for many years. In Israel, except in small circles, she has always been completely ostracised by the academic and intellectual world.
Without constituting an autobiography, Shohat’s writing recalls her own history - a woman, a Jewish Arab and in addition an anti-Zionist - like that of many Israelis born in the Arab culture, who never could, for this reason, be recognized as true members of the Israeli national community, in particular amongst the country’s elites.
The Zionist movement was born, at the beginning of the 20th Century, as an attempt to respond to anti-semitism. Its ideologues and pioneers have all been the children of European culture, colonial and modernist, encompassing its racism towards all that was not European. Wishing for the Jewish communities of the Arab world to emigrate - in need of manpower familiar with hard labour and no more expensive than local Arab labour, or to realise the dream of “return” of Jewish communities to their historic homeland - the Zionist leaders never considered those who were called the “brothers from the Eastern communities” as true equals.
Some of the the oldest Jewish communities in the world, such as the Jews of Iraq or Yemen, were truly manipulated in coming to reinforce the young state; the Zionist elite did not hesitate in using terrorist methods to frighten Jews into leaving their countries, as in the case of the Iraqi Jewish community, where Shohat comes from.
If some leading Zionists never hid their anti-Sephardic racism, the majority held a paternalistic view, promising an equal place to the new Arab Jewish immigrants, following a period of socialisation and adaption to modernity, so as to be like the Ashkenazim. Victims of an uprooting they did not desire, the Arab Jewish immigrants of Israel are, for the author, refugees. Admittedly privileged compared to the Palestinian refugees, but refugees nevertheless, and victims of a structural and more or less open racism.
This essay was published in 1988 in the New York journal Social Text, at the time when, in Israel, the second generation of Zionism’s Jewish victims began to call into question Ashkenazi hegemony, first in the political sphere and then in the cultural. Yet, it was not until 2001 that the essay was translated and published in Hebrew…by the Alternative Information Centre - an organisation of the radical left - and a new publishing firm, Kadem, specialising in the works of Arab Jewish authors. Which is to say it is still on the periphery of the dominant Israeli culture.
However, by the time this seminal text was finally published in Israel, it was not totally isolated. Writers such as Sami Shalom Chetrit, researchers like Yehuda Shenhav and film makers like David Ben Chetrit [2] are finally recognised for their true worth and are beginning to find their place. They all carry an extremely critical view of the racist foundations of Israeli society, and for the most part, call into question Zionism for what it has done to the Palestinians.
[1] Ella Shohat, Le sionisme du point de vue de ses victimes juives. Les juifs orientaux en Israël [Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims. Oriental Jews in Israel], La Fabrique, Paris, 2006, 124 pages, 8 euros.
[2] David Ben Chetrit’s last film, Dear Father, devoted to conscientious objectors in the military, was presented in preview in Paris at the beginning of November 2006.
Translated from French by Jews Against the Occupation (Sydney), 11 July 2007.
By Michel Warschawski Le Monde Diplomatique - July 2007
Who are the victims of Zionism? Evidently, the Palestinians. But are they the only victims of this colonial movement? To this question, Ella Shohat responds clearly in the negative, by asserting that Zionism has also produced Jewish victims [1]. An academic of Israeli origin, Shohat has taught in New York for many years. In Israel, except in small circles, she has always been completely ostracised by the academic and intellectual world.
Without constituting an autobiography, Shohat’s writing recalls her own history - a woman, a Jewish Arab and in addition an anti-Zionist - like that of many Israelis born in the Arab culture, who never could, for this reason, be recognized as true members of the Israeli national community, in particular amongst the country’s elites.
The Zionist movement was born, at the beginning of the 20th Century, as an attempt to respond to anti-semitism. Its ideologues and pioneers have all been the children of European culture, colonial and modernist, encompassing its racism towards all that was not European. Wishing for the Jewish communities of the Arab world to emigrate - in need of manpower familiar with hard labour and no more expensive than local Arab labour, or to realise the dream of “return” of Jewish communities to their historic homeland - the Zionist leaders never considered those who were called the “brothers from the Eastern communities” as true equals.
Some of the the oldest Jewish communities in the world, such as the Jews of Iraq or Yemen, were truly manipulated in coming to reinforce the young state; the Zionist elite did not hesitate in using terrorist methods to frighten Jews into leaving their countries, as in the case of the Iraqi Jewish community, where Shohat comes from.
If some leading Zionists never hid their anti-Sephardic racism, the majority held a paternalistic view, promising an equal place to the new Arab Jewish immigrants, following a period of socialisation and adaption to modernity, so as to be like the Ashkenazim. Victims of an uprooting they did not desire, the Arab Jewish immigrants of Israel are, for the author, refugees. Admittedly privileged compared to the Palestinian refugees, but refugees nevertheless, and victims of a structural and more or less open racism.
This essay was published in 1988 in the New York journal Social Text, at the time when, in Israel, the second generation of Zionism’s Jewish victims began to call into question Ashkenazi hegemony, first in the political sphere and then in the cultural. Yet, it was not until 2001 that the essay was translated and published in Hebrew…by the Alternative Information Centre - an organisation of the radical left - and a new publishing firm, Kadem, specialising in the works of Arab Jewish authors. Which is to say it is still on the periphery of the dominant Israeli culture.
However, by the time this seminal text was finally published in Israel, it was not totally isolated. Writers such as Sami Shalom Chetrit, researchers like Yehuda Shenhav and film makers like David Ben Chetrit [2] are finally recognised for their true worth and are beginning to find their place. They all carry an extremely critical view of the racist foundations of Israeli society, and for the most part, call into question Zionism for what it has done to the Palestinians.
[1] Ella Shohat, Le sionisme du point de vue de ses victimes juives. Les juifs orientaux en Israël [Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims. Oriental Jews in Israel], La Fabrique, Paris, 2006, 124 pages, 8 euros.
[2] David Ben Chetrit’s last film, Dear Father, devoted to conscientious objectors in the military, was presented in preview in Paris at the beginning of November 2006.
Translated from French by Jews Against the Occupation (Sydney), 11 July 2007.
More NeoCrazy Media Sycophany
Iran's Nuclear Sites
by Gordon Prather - July 14, 2007
According to Washington Post Staff Writer Joby Warrick, "intelligence agencies" and "nuclear experts" are "all asking the same question: Is Iran attempting to thwart future military strikes against its nuclear facility by placing key parts of it in underground bunkers?
"U.S. officials at several military and intelligence-gathering agencies said they are aware of the construction and are watching it closely, though none would comment publicly or speculate on the purpose of the tunnels.
"A tunnel complex would reduce options for a preemptive military strike to knock out Iran's nuclear program, according to U.S. officials who closely follow Iran’s nuclear activities."
Those dirty rotten Persians; frantically attempting to thwart a repeatedly threatened, but totally unjustified, act of aggression against them.
Warrick goes on;
"It also could further heighten tensions between the Bush administration and the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has said he is committed to pursuing a peaceful use of nuclear power."
That dirty rotten Islamic; committed to pursuing the peaceful use of nuclear power.
Don’t tell Warrick, but Iran – as required by the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – concluded a Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, in return for which, Iran has been guaranteed the "inalienable right" to the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes "without discrimination."
Furthermore, the NPT requires that the Safeguards agreement be implemented by the IAEA so as "to avoid hampering the economic or technological development" of a signatory or its "international cooperation in the field of peaceful nuclear activities, including the international exchange of nuclear material and equipment for the processing, use or production of nuclear material for peaceful purposes."
Here are the particularly pertinent provisions of that Iran-IAEA Safeguards Agreement [.pdf]
"Article 1
"The Government of Iran undertakes, pursuant to paragraph 1 of Article III of the Treaty, to accept safeguards, in accordance with the terms of this Agreement, on all source or special fissionable material in all peaceful nuclear activities within its territory, under its jurisdiction or carried out under its control anywhere, for the exclusive purpose of verifying that such material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices."
As of this writing the IAEA continues to "verify" that there is no indication that any amount of NPT-proscribed materials has ever been diverted from a peaceful to a military purpose.
"Article 8
"(a) In order to ensure the effective implementation of safeguards under this Agreement, the Government of Iran shall, in accordance with the provisions set out in Part II of this Agreement, provide the Agency with information concerning nuclear material subject to safeguards under this Agreement and the features of facilities relevant to safeguarding such material.
"(b) (i) The Agency shall require only the minimum amount of information and data consistent with carrying out its responsibilities under this Agreement.
"(ii) Information pertaining to facilities shall be the minimum necessary for safe-guarding nuclear material subject to safeguards under this Agreement."
Since Condi Rice became Secretary of State, the IAEA Board of Governors have been demanding Iran provide them far, far more information than is required to be – in some cases even could be – supplied under the Iran-IAEA Safeguards Agreement.
"Article 18
"If the Board, upon report of the Director General, decides that an action by the Government of Iran is essential and urgent in order to ensure verification that nuclear material subject to safeguards under this Agreement is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, the Board may call upon the Government of Iran to take the required action without delay, irrespective of whether procedures have been invoked pursuant to Article 22 of this Agreement for the settlement of a dispute."
The key phrase in this article is that the Board can only call upon Iran to take certain actions "upon report of the Director General".
Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei has yet to report that he has been unable to verify that no Iranian safeguarded materials have been diverted from a peaceful purpose. Quite the contrary.
Hence, the IAEA Board has been corrupted. It has violated the Iran-IAEA Safeguards Agreement. It has violated the IAEA Statute. And when the Board had the Director-General "report" the "Iran dossier" to the UN Security Council last year, with a recommendation that sanctions be imposed on Iran, the IAEA Board may even have violated the UN Charter.
In any case, on March 29, 2007, Iran informed the IAEA that it had "suspended" its voluntary implementation of the so-called Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement which had been "accepted in 2003, but not yet ratified by Parliament."
This "suspension" of voluntary compliance with an un-ratified modification of its Safeguards Agreement is probably what Warrick has in mind when he makes this absolutely false and highly inflammatory charge.
"In April, Iran unilaterally withdrew from an international treaty that would have required it to publicly disclose design plans for any new nuclear-related construction."
Under the subsidiary implementing agreements to the Iranian Safeguards Agreement of 1974 – which is the only agreement the NPT requires of Iran – design information on new facilities that are ultimately to be safeguarded is required to be submitted "normally not later than 180 days before the facility is scheduled to receive nuclear material for the first time."
According to Warrick, an IAEA spokeswoman told him last week that "We have been in contact with the Iranian authorities about this [construction] and we have received clarifications."
So, if the IAEA has received "clarifications," and Iran is still in compliance with its original Safeguards Agreement, who cares what questions Warrick’s "intelligence agencies" and "nuclear experts" might have. Apparently what the Iranians are doing is none of their business. If it was the IAEA could answer their questions.
And what about Warrick’s report that Iran’s construction is "reducing options" to "knock out" Iran’s Safeguarded nuclear programs? Is Warrick saying that US military and intelligence officials have told him they may "have to" nuke Iran’s Safeguarded nuclear programs in order to be certain they have knocked them out?
Well, what about the NPT? What about this result of the 2000 NPT Review Conference?
"The [Sixth] Conference notes the reaffirmation by the nuclear-weapon states of their commitment to the United Nations Security Council resolution 984 (1995) on security assurances for non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons."
What assurances are those?
Well, basically Russia and China, as well as France and the United Kingdom, will "provide immediate assistance" to Iran if it "is a victim of an act, or an object of a threat of, aggression in which nuclear weapons are used."
How do you like them apples?
Inside Track: Rudy’s New Foreign Policy Posse
by Philip Giraldi - July 12, 2007The naming of leading neoconservative Norman Podhoretz as one of Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani’s senior foreign policy advisers is disconcerting to those Americans who have hoped that the current disagreements with Iran might be resolved short of war. Giuliani—together with Mitt Romney and John McCain—has publicly advocated a military strike against Iran to keep it from acquiring nuclear weapons. He has also not ruled out the use of America’s own nuclear weapons if that should prove necessary to deter Tehran.
Depending on how the situation between Washington and Tehran develops, this pledge could conceivably mean a nuclear attack on a country that has not itself attacked the United States. This would shatter the policy of only using nuclear weapons as a deterrent that has been in effect since the Second World War. It would also establish a dangerous first-strike precedent for other nuclear powers like India, China and Pakistan that might in the future feel threatened. The acquisition of Podhoretz as an adviser confirms that Giuliani’s statements should be taken seriously and are not just political rhetoric designed to obtain the support of the influential Israeli lobby.
Podhoretz has recently called on the United States to bomb Iran and he describes the current situation—pitting Washington against what he describes as "the Islamofascist threat"—as World War IV. Podhoretz basically advocates a world-wide conflict not unlike World War II to defeat Islamists everywhere they are to be found. Giuliani is already the U.S. presidential hopeful who is perceived most favorably in Israel because of his uncompromising stance on issues like the Iranian threat and terrorism, and the addition of Podhoretz will certainly be viewed favorably by many influential neoconservatives. Podhoretz is himself an uncompromising advocate of what he sees as Israeli national security imperatives very much in the mold of the right-wing Likud party.
He continues to be a leading supporter of the Iraq War and is one of the few remaining apologists for the WMD claim, insisting that they were spirited away to Syria prior to the start of the fighting. In addition to Iran, Podhoretz advocates regime change policies for Syria and renewing warfare in the south of Lebanon to eliminate Hizballah. He has also supported regime change for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians. His advocacy of foreign policy positions for the United States will be decidedly Israel-centric. Even in Israeli terms, he is from the far right, advocating simplistic military solutions to solve what are complex and multifaceted international problems.
Podhoretz’s definition of the enemy as Islamofascism is itself a borrowing from right-wing Israeli think tanks that prefer to see an enemy in unitary terms that can be conflated with international terrorism. Most experts on Islam and on the many countries that have majority Muslim populations would reject that Islamofascism or anything like it really exists, just as the "global war on terrorism" is essentially a misleading simplification that has little meaning. The basically false depiction of a hostile and menacing global entity is done deliberately to help formulate a policy which perforce makes Israel’s enemies also the enemies of the United States, even when they are not.
Beyond terrorism, Podhoretz also does not see any difference between Israel’s broader security concerns and those of the United States, an assumption that is basically fallacious and which ultimately benefits neither Israel nor Washington. Of particular concern is the possibility that Rudy Giuliani has "bought in" to the world view expressed by Podhoretz and that his willingness to incorporate those positions will bring about a shift by Romney and McCain. As Giuliani is the front-runner, McCain and Romney might seek to outflank him in foreign policy by embracing even more hard-line positions that would be even less in the U.S. national interest.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is the Francis Walsingham Fellow for the American Conservative Defense Alliance.
Iran's Jews Reject Financial Incentives to Leave Country
Maybe someone should tell these Iranian Jews that President Ahmedinejad want to wipe them off the map.
The Jewish presence in Iran dates date nearly 3,000 years.
Offers ranging from 5,000-30,000 British pounds, financed by a wealthy expatriate Jew with the support of the Israeli government, were turned down by Iran's Jewish leaders, the Guardian reported. Instead, the country's Jews pledged their loyalty to Iran.
"The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money," the Society of Iranian Jews said in a statement. "Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran's Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews."
Iran's Jewish population is the largest of any country in the Middle East besides Israel.
The Jewish presence in Iran dates date nearly 3,000 years.
Offers ranging from 5,000-30,000 British pounds, financed by a wealthy expatriate Jew with the support of the Israeli government, were turned down by Iran's Jewish leaders, the Guardian reported. Instead, the country's Jews pledged their loyalty to Iran.
"The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money," the Society of Iranian Jews said in a statement. "Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran's Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews."
Iran's Jewish population is the largest of any country in the Middle East besides Israel.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Ron Paul: U.S. In "Great Danger" Of Staged Terror
Congressman & presidential candidate Ron Paul warns of staged terror attack and economic collapse precipitated by bombing of Iranby Paul Watson - July 13, 2007
Way-to-Tell'em Ron!
Ron, Ron, He's Our Man!!!
Ron, Ron, He's Our Man!!!
Presidential candidate Ron Paul says the U.S. is in "great danger" of a staged terror attack or a Gulf of Tonkin style provocation while also warning that a major collapse of the American economy is on the horizon and could be precipitated by the bombing of Iran and the closure of the Persian Gulf.
Speaking to The Alex Jones Show, the Texas Congressman was asked his opinion on Cindy Sheehan's recent comments that the U.S. is in danger of a staged terror attack or a Gulf of Tonkin style provocation that will validate the Neo-Con agenda and lead to the implementation of the infrastructure of martial law that Bush recently signed into law via executive order, as well as public pronouncements from prominent officials that the West needs terrorism to save a doomed foreign policy.
"I think we're in great danger of it," responded the Congressman, "We're in danger in many ways, the attack on our civil liberties here at home, the foreign policy that's in shambles and our obligations overseas and commitment which endangers our troops and our national defense." "Every day we're in worse shape and right now there's an orchestrated effort to blame the Iranians for everything that's gone wrong in Iraq and we're quite concerned that the attack will be on Iran and that will jeopardize so many more of our troops, so I would say that we're in much greater danger than we even were four or five years ago," asserted Paul.
The presidential candidate expressed his despair that the situation in Iraq will not change until there is a total collapse of the American economy.
"There's no way we can afford what we're doing, whether it's domestic spending or the international spending and very few people talk about the real cost of this economically speaking....this is unsustainable and it will be a threat to our dollar," said Paul, adding that the onset of the meltdown could be sparked by the bombing of Iran and the closure of the Persian Gulf.
The Congressman added that the collapse was in its early stages with the major indication being a reduction in the living standard of middle class Americans but that "one single major world event" could change things overnight and precipitate a major downturn.
Paul added that there had "not been a national discussion on monetary policy in many many years" and the increasingly bleak outlook for the U.S. economy was also bringing more attention to the solutions the Congressman has proposed for reducing the burden of the mammoth national deficit.
Paul said that national and world events, especially the degrading situation in Iraq, were attracting support for his presidential campaign due to his resolute position on embracing a non-interventionist foreign policy.
The Congressman concluded by surmising that record lows in approval ratings for Bush, Cheney and Congress showed that, "The American people are alive and well and disgusted yet they haven't had good alternatives....it's justifiable, they are looking for true answers and options and quite frankly I think that's probably one of the reasons why our campaign is growing by leaps and bounds right now."
When Dictators Serve US Interests
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf is good for the Bush Administration
Over recent days, news from Pakistan has been dominated by the siege at the Red Mosque, which ended late yesterday. Scarcely a mile from the seat of power in Islamabad, the madrasa students and their two leading clerics inside the mosque first claimed attention with kidnappings, threats of suicide bombings and demands for the imposition of sharia law. The Musharraf regime mounted a military operation against the militants which led to the loss of numerous lives, among them one of the clerics, Abdul Rashid Ghaz. A number of questions arise. Why was action not taken immediately? How were militants and arms able to get in under the gaze of the police and intelligence services? And why were other measures, including shutting off electricity at the mosque, not exhausted earlier?
The episode appears to have been drawn out deliberately by President Musharraf. Since he sacked the chief justice in March, a movement led by lawyers, journalists and opposition parties has been clamouring for democracy on Pakistan's streets. As Musharraf faces his biggest crisis, he is desperate to prove his indispensability to the west in the war on terror.
But this use of force is likely to produce unintended and dangerous consequences, as it has in Baluchistan, Waziristan and Bajaur. It may be salutary to recall how Indira Gandhi's order for troops to attack the Golden Temple, where Sikh militants were holed up, not only failed to subdue the militants but triggered a wave of violence, including her assassination. While few Sikhs may have sympathised with the militants, many came to deeply resent the government's high-handedness.
Suicide bombing and other noxious forms of terrorism were once alien to Pakistan. After eight years of military dictatorship, radicalism and fundamentalism are in the ascendant everywhere. Musharraf is perceived among radical elements as the west's instrument in a "war on Islam"--there could be no greater failure in the battle for hearts and minds.
Terrorism requires a political solution. Extremists can be marginalised through debate and political dialogue in a democracy. Military dictatorship, as we are now seeing, only exacerbates the problem. It has become obvious to every Pakistani that, far from presiding over a transition to genuine democracy in the country, Musharraf is intent on dismantling every democratic institution in his way. Over recent months he has assaulted the judiciary, restricted freedom of the press, and put hundreds of members of the opposition behind bars.
The roots of the most shocking incident so far, however, can be found in north London, where the chairman of the Musharraf-allied Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Altaf Hussain, resides. When Pakistan's chief justice decided to address the bar in Karachi, a vast welcome was expected in the city. This worried Musharraf and his MQM allies, who control the Sindh government--and especially Karachi, the provincial capital. They decided to organise a rival rally the same day, despite protests by the opposition. What followed on the blood-soaked May 12 could be described in two words: state terrorism.
While the police stood aside, the terrorist arm of the MQM sprayed bullets into a peaceful procession of the opposition parties. Some 48 people lost their lives and 200 sustained bullet wounds. Among them were 10 members of my party. Most callously, Musharraf later that evening triumphantly claimed that the people had shown their "force". None of the opposition parties believe MQM's denials that they were involved in turning this peaceful protest violent. It was then I decided to launch legal proceedings against Altaf Hussain, who has been living in exile in London since 1992 and became a British citizen in 1999.
The MQM came into existence in the mid-1980s as a genuine people's movement in Karachi, representing the immigrant community that had arrived from India shortly after the creation of Pakistan. This community had serious grievances, the most significant being that educated young muhajirs could not get jobs because of imposed quotas. But within a few years it had degenerated into a thuggish mafia outfit, controlled by one man, Altaf Hussain.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and even the US state department and the European Union have issued reports about the MQM's terrorist activities. The only independent provincial assembly in Pakistan recently denounced the party as a "terrorist organisation", and last weekend the conference of opposition parties jointly resolved to support the legal proceedings against Hussain.
While Musharraf maintains that he is at the frontline of the war on terror--in which thousands of Pakistani soldiers and citizens have lost their lives--he has allied himself with the country's number one terrorist. And Tony Blair's government, which was at the fore of this war, gave Pakistan's number one terrorist citizenship.
It is impossible to embark on any quest for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis when these blatant double standards exist. Are dictators somehow fine when they exist to serve US interests, even if they destroy hopes of democracy in the process? And are terrorists only a problem when it is western blood that is shed?
Imran Khan is the leader of the Pakistan Movement for Justice and a member of parliament.
'A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?'
A young Iraqi girl holds up her hands as American soldiers enter her home.
What a way to "win hearts and minds......"
by Leonard Doyle - July 12, 2007
It is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the men and women in uniform at every turn. Apart from the odd bad apple at Abu Ghraib, the US military in Iraq is deemed to be doing a heroic job under trying circumstances.
That perception will take a severe knock today with the publication in The Nation magazine of a series of in-depth interviews with 50 combat veterans of the Iraq war from across the US. In the interviews, veterans have described acts of violence in which US forces have abused or killed Iraqi men, women and children with impunity.
The report steers clear of widely reported atrocities, such as the massacre in Haditha in 2005, but instead unearths a pattern of human rights abuses. "It's not individual atrocity," Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armour Battalion, said. "It's the fact that the entire war is an atrocity."
A number of the troops have returned home bearing mental and physical scars from fighting a war in an environment in which the insurgents are supported by the population. Many of those interviewed have come to oppose the US military presence in Iraq, joining the groundswell of public opinion across the US that views the war as futile.
This view is echoed in Washington, where increasing numbers of Democrats and Republicans are openly calling for an early withdrawal from Iraq. And the Iraq quagmire has pushed President George Bush's poll ratings to an all-time low.
Journalists and human rights groups have published numerous reports drawing attention to the killing of Iraqi civilians by US forces. The Nation's investigation presents for the first time named military witnesses who back those assertions. Some participated themselves.
Through a combination of gung-ho recklessness and criminal behaviour born of panic, a narrative emerges of an army that frequently commits acts of cold-blooded violence. A number of interviewees revealed that the military will attempt to frame innocent bystanders as insurgents, often after panicked American troops have fired into groups of unarmed Iraqis. The veterans said the troops involved would round up any survivors and accuse them of being in the resistance while planting Kalashnikov AK47 rifles beside corpses to make it appear that they had died in combat.
"It would always be an AK because they have so many of these lying around," said Joe Hatcher, 26, a scout with the 4th Calvary Regiment. He revealed the army also planted 9mm handguns and shovels to make it look like the civilians were shot while digging a hole for a roadside bomb.
"Every good cop carries a throwaway," Hatcher said of weapons planted on innocent victims in incidents that occurred while he was stationed between Tikrit and Samarra, from February 2004 to March 2005. Any survivors were sent to jail for interrogation.
There were also deaths caused by the reckless behaviour of military convoys. Sgt Kelly Dougherty of the Colorado National Guard described a hit-and-run in which a military convoy ran over a 10-year-old boy and his three donkeys, killing them all. "Judging by the skid marks, they hardly even slowed down. But, I mean... your order is that you never stop."
The worst abuses seem to have been during raids on private homes when soldiers were hunting insurgents. Thousands of such raids have taken place, usually at dead of night. The veterans point out that most are futile and serve only to terrify the civilians, while generating sympathy for the resistance.
Sgt John Bruhns, 29, of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armoured Division, described a typical raid. "You want to catch them off guard," he explained. "You want to catch them in their sleep ... You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall... Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds. You'll ask 'Do you have any weapons? Do you have any anti-US propaganda?'
"Normally they'll say no, because that's normally the truth," Sgt Bruhns said. "So you'll take his sofa cushions and dump them. You'll open up his closet and you'll throw all the clothes on the floor and basically leave his house looking like a hurricane just hit it." And at the end, if the soldiers don't find anything, they depart with a "Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice evening".
Sgt Dougherty described her squad leader shooting an Iraqi civilian in the back in 2003. "The mentality of my squad leader was like, 'Oh, we have to kill them over here so I don't have to kill them back in Colorado'," she said. "He just seemed to view every Iraqi as a potential terrorist."
'It would always happen. We always got the wrong house...'
"People would make jokes about it, even before we'd go into a raid, like, 'Oh fuck, we're gonna get the wrong house'. Cause it would always happen. We always got the wrong house."
Sergeant Jesus Bocanegra, 25, of Weslaco, Texas 4th Infantry Division. In Tikrit on year-long tour that began in March 2003
"I had to go tell this woman that her husband was actually dead. We gave her money, we gave her, like, 10 crates of water, we gave the kids, I remember, maybe it was soccer balls and toys. We just didn't really know what else to do."
Lieutenant Jonathan Morgenstein, 35, of Arlington, Virginia, Marine Corps civil affairs unit. In Ramadi from August 2004 to March 2005
"We were approaching this one house... and we're approaching, and they had a family dog. And it was barking ferociously, cause it's doing its job. And my squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots it... So I see this dog - I'm a huge animal lover... this dog has, like, these eyes on it and he's running around spraying blood all over the place. And like, you know, what the hell is going on? The family is sitting right there, with three little children and a mom and a dad, horrified. And I'm at a loss for words."
Specialist Philip Chrystal, 23, of Reno, 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry Brigade. In Kirkuk and Hawija on 11-month tour beginning November 2004
"I'll tell you the point where I really turned... [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little two-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs and she has a bullet through her leg... An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me... like asking me why. You know, 'Why do I have a bullet in my leg?'... I was just like, 'This is, this is it. This is ridiculous'."
Specialist Michael Harmon, 24, of Brooklyn, 167th Armour Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. In Al-Rashidiya on 13-month tour beginning in April 2003
"I open a bag and I'm trying to get bandages out and the guys in the guard tower are yelling at me, 'Get that fuck haji out of here,'... our doctor rolls up in an ambulance and from 30 to 40 meters away looks out and says, shakes his head and says, 'You know, he looks fine, he's gonna be all right,' and walks back... kind of like, 'Get your ass over here and drive me back up to the clinic'. So I'm standing there, and the whole time both this doctor and the guards are yelling at me, you know, to get rid of this guy."
Specialist Patrick Resta, 29, from Philadelphia, 252nd Armour, 1st Infantry Division. In Jalula for nine months beginning March 2004
'Every person opened fire on this kid, using the biggest weapons we could find...'
"Here's some guy, some 14-year-old kid with an AK47, decides he's going to start shooting at this convoy. It was the most obscene thing you've ever seen. Every person got out and opened fire on this kid. Using the biggest weapons we could find, we ripped him to shreds..."
Sergeant Patrick Campbell, 29, of Camarillo, California, 256th Infantry Brigade. In Abu Gharth for 11 months beginning November 2004
"Cover your own butt was the first rule of engagement. Someone could look at me the wrong way and I could claim my safety was in threat."
Lieutenant Brady Van Engelen, 26, of Washington DC, 1st Armoured Division. Eight-month tour of Baghdad beginning Sept 2003
"I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, 'A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?'... [Only when we got home] in... meeting other veterans, it seems like the guilt really takes place, takes root, then."
Specialist Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry. In Baquba for a year beginning February 2004
"[The photo] was very graphic... They open the body bags of these prisoners that were shot in the head and [one soldier has] got a spoon. He's reaching in to scoop out some of his brain, looking at the camera and smiling."
Specialist Aidan Delgado, 25, of Sarasota, Florida, 320th Military Police Company. Deployed to Talil air base for one year beginning April 2003
"The car was approaching what was in my opinion a very poorly marked checkpoint... and probably didn't even see the soldiers... The guys got spooked and decided it was a possible threat, so they shot up the car. And they [the bodies] literally sat in the car for the next three days while we drove by them.
Sergeant Dustin Flatt, 33, of Denver, 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. One-year from February 2004
"The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at those who were attacking us led to tactics that seemed designed simply to punish the local population..."
Sergeant Camilo Mejía, 31, from Miami, National Guardsman, 1-124 Infantry Battalion, 53rd Infantry Brigade. Six-month tour beginning April 2003
"I just remember thinking, 'I just brought terror to someone under the American flag'."
Sergeant Timothy John Westphal, 31, of Denver, 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. In Tikrit on year-long tour beginning February 2004
"A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that if they don't speak English and they have darker skin, they're not as human as us, so we can do what we want."
Specialist Josh Middleton, 23, of New York City, 2nd Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division. Four-month tour in Baghdad and Mosul beginning December 2004
"I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with, and everybody else be damned."
Sergeant Ben Flanders, 28, National Guardsman from Concord, New Hampshire, 172nd Mountain Infantry. In Balad for 11 months beginning March 2004
The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness, by Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian, appears in the 30 July issue of The Nation.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Restoring the People's Power
A Referendum on Bush and Cheney
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - July 12, 2007
The American political system has failed. The fabled checks and balances of American politics were no match for a neoconservative administration with a secret agenda. The American people were deceived and tricked into supporting two invasions that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard.
US aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq and the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians have radicalized Muslims throughout the world and swelled the ranks of insurgents. Despite the "surge" and an additional 30,000 US troops in Baghdad, the US is unable to protect its own embassy. On July 10, the fortified Green Zone, which contains the US and British embassies and the puppet Iraqi government, came under intense mortar and rocket attack. Within the protected Green Zone, 18 people were wounded and 3 were killed.
The US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus said that the US is a decade away from victory in Iraq. Gen. Petraeus could have added another truth and acknowledged that the US military lacks sufficient fresh troops to remain in the conflict. Last year Colin Powell said the US Army is "about broken." The US military is exhausted by the insurgencies and will be driven out if not withdrawn.
Gen. Petraeus assumed command in January. Six months later, Petraeus says "the question is how can we gradually reduce our forces so we reduce the strain on the army."
In the US Senate, Republican support for Bush's wars is fading as senators face a hostile public that has had enough of Bush's pointless and lost wars based on lies and deception. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq never had any valid reason. The US occupations of these countries have failed, and no purpose has been achieved except the enrichment of the military-security complex and the swelling of al-Qaeda's ranks and credibility.
One trillion dollars has been totally squandered. Moreover, Bush's wars have had to be financed by borrowing abroad. The result has been a reduction in the dollar's value and an erosion of the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. The dollar has fallen to a new low against the Euro and has reached a 26-year low against the British pound.
The latest comprehensive worldwide Pew poll reveals the complete collapse of America's standing in the world.
This is a huge price to pay for Bush's childish ego, for the enrichment of Cheney's cronies at Halliburton and merchants of death, and for Congress' appeasement of AIPAC.
Bush's and Cheney's lies and assaults on the US Constitution and American civil liberty, their plans to attack Iran, and the war crimes for which they are responsible provide an open and shut case for their impeachments. The latest polls show that 54% of Americans support impeachment of Vice President Cheney, with only 40% opposed. Bush hangs on by a hair with 45% favoring his impeachment and 46% opposed. But Democrats, like Republicans, have failed the electorate and refuse to do their duty. Congress is a creature of special interests and no longer represents the American people.
Obviously, some new method is needed for removing incompetent or dictatorial presidents and vice presidents.
Constitutional reform might be next to impossible, but before dismissing the possibility consider that according to British news reports, Britain's new prime minister, Gordon Brown, intends a wide-ranging program of constitutional reform, including giving up the prime minister's power to declare war.
The London Telegraph says: "The measures are intended to restore trust in politics after the by-passing of Parliament and the Cabinet, as well as the culture of spin and media manipulation, that characterized the Blair decade."
If America is to remain a democracy, the people need refurbished powers to hold "government of the people, by the people, for the people" accountable. One way of doing this would be a vote of confidence by the people. The question can be put to a national referendum: "Shall the President remain in office?" "Shall the Vice President remain in office?"
The state of Florida does this for judges, including Florida's Supreme Court, so there is precedent for allowing the people to decide whether officials may remain in office.
As the American people can no longer rely on elected officials to respond to public opinion, the people must do what they can to gather power back into their hands before they become the subjects of tyrants.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - July 12, 2007
The American political system has failed. The fabled checks and balances of American politics were no match for a neoconservative administration with a secret agenda. The American people were deceived and tricked into supporting two invasions that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard.
US aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq and the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians have radicalized Muslims throughout the world and swelled the ranks of insurgents. Despite the "surge" and an additional 30,000 US troops in Baghdad, the US is unable to protect its own embassy. On July 10, the fortified Green Zone, which contains the US and British embassies and the puppet Iraqi government, came under intense mortar and rocket attack. Within the protected Green Zone, 18 people were wounded and 3 were killed.
The US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus said that the US is a decade away from victory in Iraq. Gen. Petraeus could have added another truth and acknowledged that the US military lacks sufficient fresh troops to remain in the conflict. Last year Colin Powell said the US Army is "about broken." The US military is exhausted by the insurgencies and will be driven out if not withdrawn.
Gen. Petraeus assumed command in January. Six months later, Petraeus says "the question is how can we gradually reduce our forces so we reduce the strain on the army."
In the US Senate, Republican support for Bush's wars is fading as senators face a hostile public that has had enough of Bush's pointless and lost wars based on lies and deception. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq never had any valid reason. The US occupations of these countries have failed, and no purpose has been achieved except the enrichment of the military-security complex and the swelling of al-Qaeda's ranks and credibility.
One trillion dollars has been totally squandered. Moreover, Bush's wars have had to be financed by borrowing abroad. The result has been a reduction in the dollar's value and an erosion of the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. The dollar has fallen to a new low against the Euro and has reached a 26-year low against the British pound.
The latest comprehensive worldwide Pew poll reveals the complete collapse of America's standing in the world.
This is a huge price to pay for Bush's childish ego, for the enrichment of Cheney's cronies at Halliburton and merchants of death, and for Congress' appeasement of AIPAC.
Bush's and Cheney's lies and assaults on the US Constitution and American civil liberty, their plans to attack Iran, and the war crimes for which they are responsible provide an open and shut case for their impeachments. The latest polls show that 54% of Americans support impeachment of Vice President Cheney, with only 40% opposed. Bush hangs on by a hair with 45% favoring his impeachment and 46% opposed. But Democrats, like Republicans, have failed the electorate and refuse to do their duty. Congress is a creature of special interests and no longer represents the American people.
Obviously, some new method is needed for removing incompetent or dictatorial presidents and vice presidents.
Constitutional reform might be next to impossible, but before dismissing the possibility consider that according to British news reports, Britain's new prime minister, Gordon Brown, intends a wide-ranging program of constitutional reform, including giving up the prime minister's power to declare war.
The London Telegraph says: "The measures are intended to restore trust in politics after the by-passing of Parliament and the Cabinet, as well as the culture of spin and media manipulation, that characterized the Blair decade."
If America is to remain a democracy, the people need refurbished powers to hold "government of the people, by the people, for the people" accountable. One way of doing this would be a vote of confidence by the people. The question can be put to a national referendum: "Shall the President remain in office?" "Shall the Vice President remain in office?"
The state of Florida does this for judges, including Florida's Supreme Court, so there is precedent for allowing the people to decide whether officials may remain in office.
As the American people can no longer rely on elected officials to respond to public opinion, the people must do what they can to gather power back into their hands before they become the subjects of tyrants.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
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