Posts
Time and time again Israel is accused of the use of disproportionate violence. Reality and perception are not always the same thing. The BBC and SKY Communications have been accused recently of what might be called the "disproportionate use of objectivity" in reporting. Here too there is a non-trivial distinction to be made between reality and perception.
As a consequence of the recent warfare between Israel and Gaza, approximately one Arab of Gaza is dead for every ten Qassam rockets that these same Gazan Arabs launched into Israel provoking Israel's response. A third of the dead Gazan Arabs may be civillian dead, undesired yet inevitable collateral damage of war. Many of these dead civilillians voted for Hamas, and therefore cannot be said to be innocents, as the overt platform of Hamas calls for the annihilation of Israel.
One must ask: "When your next door neighbor is hell bent on waging war against you to the point of your annihilation, and terrorizes you daily towards that end, is there such an applicable concept as 'proportionate' force?"
One must ask as well: "At what point is the world itself culpable, when it lends it's hand, it's heart, it's mind, and it's resources to the reconstruction and 'humanitarian' aid, re-vitalization and re-arming that evil neighbor, therefore DE FACTO and even DE JURE showing favor to your terrorist neighbor, that same neighbor who denies your humanity and your existential right to a peaceful co-existence?"
If anything is to be said about the BBC and world media coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, it is that the plaints of the Arabs have been disproportionately elevated and extolled to the level of a worldwide propaganda campaign against Israel. Only recently has the media even begun to publish occasional stories both recent and historical that pierce the ballooning of worldwide anti-Israel propaganda. We only begin to hear in the media about the mass expulsions of Jews from Muslim nations post-WW2. We only begin to hear about the Arab-Hitler alliances of WW2 that included the Arabs of Palestine, who continued Hitler's war against the Jews by seeking to destroy Israel both before and after it's legal existence. Holocaust denial is now a weekly scandal in the news, most recently given attention by the Pope's decision this past week to revoke the excommunications of certain priests, one of whom is a blatant Holocaust denier. And where Holocaust deniers have been screaming that six-million Jews were not murdered by the Nazis, in the past year mass graves of Jews in areas such as the Ukraine have been uncovered; it is estimated that perhaps an additional 1.5-million Jewish souls must be added to the six-million already accounted for.
Are the BBC and SKY being disproportionately objective in choosing not to air the Appeal for humanitarian aid for the Arabs of Gaza, when both BBC and SKY have determined that that Appeal is biased against Israel? Probably not...
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
KUDOS, BBC AND SKY! GREATER QUESTIONS LIE WITH MANY BRITISH MP'S AND MANY CHARITABLE GROUPS PARTNERED IN THE APPEAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AID TO GAZA.
In Britain on January 22 the DEC (Disaster Emergency Committee) launched an humanitarian appeal to raise funds to aid the distressed Arabs of Gaza. Although certain of the British media decided to air the appeal film, the BBC and SKY communications did not. The BBC stated that it's reasons for not broadcasting the appeal pertained to avoiding bias in broadcasting and uncertainty as to whether or not the DEC could insure that the funds raised would indeed reach the target purpose of immediate humanitarian aid and not be diverted for other purposes.
Last Week British MP Hilary Benn called for Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor to be expelled, said that Israeli airlines should be banned from British airports, and accused Israel of committing war crimes. One hundred British MP's supported a declaration calling for the BBC and SKY to broadcast the Gaza humanitarian appeal. Thus far the BBC and SKY can be said to have been quite courageous in not doing so.
It is not entirely a glorious thing. There is no doubt that the Arabs of Gaza suffer now terribly as a consequence of Israel's recent incursion into Gaza. From the standpoint of humantitarian need alone, and ignoring the fact that the Arabs of Gaza brought the sky down upon their own heads by their own incessant terrorism of Israel, there is a basis for a call for humanitarian aid for Gaza. But, the Appeal has neither limited itself to an humanitarian appeal for Gaza, has not provided guarantees as to where the funds will actually go, has not sought objectively to include a call for humanitarian aid to Israel, and in fact has an Israel-bashing element to it that puts the Appeal into the category of biased political action.
It is a sad fact of the Arab-Israeli Conflict that the concept of humanitarian aid somehow applies only to the Arabs and not to the Israelis. Around the world, people and media and even governments scream and shout about war crimes that Israel has allegedly committed against Arabs, and in so doing they not only are not fair with respect to their evaluations of Israeli actions undertaken in self-defense, but, they also ignore the real war crimes perpetrated today by the Arabs. Some even go so far as to accuse Israel of committing crimes such as were committed by the Nazis, which accusation they make out of one side of their mouth, while out of the other side of their mouth they deny that the Holocaust ever happened. All the while the real Nazi alliance with the predecessors of such as Hamas and Hezbollah are never a part public discussion, least of all amongst so-called human rights groups such as "Solidarity" (perhaps Rachel Corey of the USA would still be alive today, and not thrown herself in front of an Israeli bulldozer, if she had even a clue as to the true nature of those for whom she threw her life away, may she rest in peace and her family find solace).
For the record, in any normal nation, what happened in Gaza the past few weeks would have happened years ago and with far greater collateral damage, had any other nation had to put up with the terror that Israel put up with. Perhaps this is why the world is so upset with Israel. Only Israel is expected to live up to the standards of Israel, no one else; and even then, Israel is still decried as guilty.
For the record, in the past four years, twelve thousand Qassam rockets have been launched from Gaza into Israel, mostly into the town of Sderot. This -- and the kidnapping and continued captivity of Gilad Shalit -- is how the Arabs have said "thank you" to Israel's "disengagement" from Gaza.
For the record, the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit led to the June 2006 Lebanon War, when Hezbollah picked up on Hamas' kidnapping strategy and did the same thing up in the north of Israel, kidnapping Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev - whose tortured remains were eventually returned to Israel in exchange for live Arab prisoners.
Only a few days ago Muamar Qadafi of Libya suggested that for humanitarian reasons all of Israel should be relocated away from the "sea of Arabs" in which Israel would never be welcome. (What a guy.... Don't you just love him?)
For humanitarian reasons the world ought to reconsider it's deliberate blindness as to the source of suffering of both Arabs and Israelis. Perhaps, if any relocation is called for, it is not Israelis, who ought to be relocated - as the failure of the Gaza "disengagement" clearly shows. Perhaps, if land for peace is called for, it is not Israeli land that should be given for peace - as the gift of Gaza clearly shows. Perhaps, when it comes to humanitarian suffering, the world should show the same compassion for Israeli suffering as for Arab suffering - as the Arab abuse of the gift of Gaza shows.
I call on the DEC to issue an appeal to raise funds on the behalf of Israeli suffering for the past hundred years. The Appeal participants are Action Aid, British Red Cross, Cafod, Care International, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Help the Aged, Islamic Relief, Merlin, Oxfam, Save the Children, Tearfund, and World Vision. The DEC website is triple-w dot dec dot org dot uk. Send an e-mail to each of these organizations or at least to the DEC and ask, "Why no humanitarian aid for Israel?"
Last Week British MP Hilary Benn called for Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor to be expelled, said that Israeli airlines should be banned from British airports, and accused Israel of committing war crimes. One hundred British MP's supported a declaration calling for the BBC and SKY to broadcast the Gaza humanitarian appeal. Thus far the BBC and SKY can be said to have been quite courageous in not doing so.
It is not entirely a glorious thing. There is no doubt that the Arabs of Gaza suffer now terribly as a consequence of Israel's recent incursion into Gaza. From the standpoint of humantitarian need alone, and ignoring the fact that the Arabs of Gaza brought the sky down upon their own heads by their own incessant terrorism of Israel, there is a basis for a call for humanitarian aid for Gaza. But, the Appeal has neither limited itself to an humanitarian appeal for Gaza, has not provided guarantees as to where the funds will actually go, has not sought objectively to include a call for humanitarian aid to Israel, and in fact has an Israel-bashing element to it that puts the Appeal into the category of biased political action.
It is a sad fact of the Arab-Israeli Conflict that the concept of humanitarian aid somehow applies only to the Arabs and not to the Israelis. Around the world, people and media and even governments scream and shout about war crimes that Israel has allegedly committed against Arabs, and in so doing they not only are not fair with respect to their evaluations of Israeli actions undertaken in self-defense, but, they also ignore the real war crimes perpetrated today by the Arabs. Some even go so far as to accuse Israel of committing crimes such as were committed by the Nazis, which accusation they make out of one side of their mouth, while out of the other side of their mouth they deny that the Holocaust ever happened. All the while the real Nazi alliance with the predecessors of such as Hamas and Hezbollah are never a part public discussion, least of all amongst so-called human rights groups such as "Solidarity" (perhaps Rachel Corey of the USA would still be alive today, and not thrown herself in front of an Israeli bulldozer, if she had even a clue as to the true nature of those for whom she threw her life away, may she rest in peace and her family find solace).
For the record, in any normal nation, what happened in Gaza the past few weeks would have happened years ago and with far greater collateral damage, had any other nation had to put up with the terror that Israel put up with. Perhaps this is why the world is so upset with Israel. Only Israel is expected to live up to the standards of Israel, no one else; and even then, Israel is still decried as guilty.
For the record, in the past four years, twelve thousand Qassam rockets have been launched from Gaza into Israel, mostly into the town of Sderot. This -- and the kidnapping and continued captivity of Gilad Shalit -- is how the Arabs have said "thank you" to Israel's "disengagement" from Gaza.
For the record, the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit led to the June 2006 Lebanon War, when Hezbollah picked up on Hamas' kidnapping strategy and did the same thing up in the north of Israel, kidnapping Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev - whose tortured remains were eventually returned to Israel in exchange for live Arab prisoners.
Only a few days ago Muamar Qadafi of Libya suggested that for humanitarian reasons all of Israel should be relocated away from the "sea of Arabs" in which Israel would never be welcome. (What a guy.... Don't you just love him?)
For humanitarian reasons the world ought to reconsider it's deliberate blindness as to the source of suffering of both Arabs and Israelis. Perhaps, if any relocation is called for, it is not Israelis, who ought to be relocated - as the failure of the Gaza "disengagement" clearly shows. Perhaps, if land for peace is called for, it is not Israeli land that should be given for peace - as the gift of Gaza clearly shows. Perhaps, when it comes to humanitarian suffering, the world should show the same compassion for Israeli suffering as for Arab suffering - as the Arab abuse of the gift of Gaza shows.
I call on the DEC to issue an appeal to raise funds on the behalf of Israeli suffering for the past hundred years. The Appeal participants are Action Aid, British Red Cross, Cafod, Care International, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Help the Aged, Islamic Relief, Merlin, Oxfam, Save the Children, Tearfund, and World Vision. The DEC website is triple-w dot dec dot org dot uk. Send an e-mail to each of these organizations or at least to the DEC and ask, "Why no humanitarian aid for Israel?"
Monday, January 19, 2009
CHOICE OF LANGUAGE, PART TWO: OF WAR CRIMES, COLLATERAL DAMAGE, HOLOCAUST, AND MARTIN LUTHER KING
Today is Martin Luther King Day in the USA, as well as it is the eve of the inauguration of Barak Obama as President of the USA. On the eve of the terrible day of his assassination in 1968, Martin Luther King called out to the world, saying, "I may not get there with you; but, I have been to The Mountain Top and I have seen The Promised Land...." May we all hope and pray that President Barak Obama does not suffer the same fate of assassination that met Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, John Kennedy, and many other leaders of our nation in historic times.
Repeatedly in his life Martin Luther King spoke of equality for all people, be they "Christian, Atheist, Jewish, Muslim, or Gentile...." One expects, or at least hopes, that President Obama shares Martin Luther King's view. President Obama can take office tomorrow, knowing that the current Gaza crisis is not likely to demand his immediate or priority attention amidst the panorama of world affairs crises that he will face. President Obama will have a unique opportunity to give new ear to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, one hopes from a genuine, objective, egalitarian view.
It can be no coincidence that Israel has chosen today as the day to commence cessation of it's recent incursion into Gaza, to commence withdrawal from Gaza, and to commence it's unilateral ceasefire - unilateral in that Hamas has declared it's own unilateral one-week ceasefire "to give Israel a week to get out of Gaza". It is good politics and good timing of that politics in that the IDF has devastated Hamas and has set their terror clock back at least a year or two, if not more. Israel has defended itself and Sderot in particular. The suffering in Sderot has no longer been in vain.
It is now up to the Palestinian Arabs to again decide their future: Hamas and Hamas ideology, or an alternative of Palestinian Arabs accepting of Israel's right to a peaceful coexistence?
Where one would hope that the United Nations would keep a neutral stance, reality shows the same face of the UN on the ground that it shows in the General Assembly and to a large degree as well in the Security Council: an anti-Israel bias that is pervasive, obvious, unhidden, public, and disgusting to anyone with conscience, clarity of mind, and knowledge of history.
The likes of Christopher Gunness -- by no means restricted to Christopher Gunness -- waste no time, neither from the commencement of Israel's defensive incursion till now, and no doubt as well in the days ahead, to accuse Israel of having committed war crimes. This is a profound UN failure on two counts. Firstly, the UN and it's representatives and agents on the ground in Gaza ought not to be choosing sides or acting as an outlet of propaganda and demagoguery for terrorist groups such as Hamas. Secondly, even in appropriate venues, to assign language such as "war crimes" to the actions of the Israeli army is incendiary and biased and reflects no conscience in choice of language.
There is a difference between "collateral damage" and "war crimes". Although, for those living in a fantasy world in which they presume to speak for the "underdog" (e.g. in their view, Hamas is the underdog) there is no difference between war crimes and collateral damage, and the latter in their view is merely a euphemism for the former.
These types will never see suicide/homicide bombings, the imprisonment of Gilad Shalit, nor the incessant rocket terror of Sderot as the War Crimes that they are; like a mule wearing blinders, they will see narrowly, viewing such violence as the righteous outrage of "revolutionary" groups such as Hamas.
They make no distinction at all between the willful intent of Hamas to murder Israelis and to annihilate the State of Israel versus the inevitable accidental death of Gazan civilians, where the combat circumstance is such that Israel's tormentors mix in among the civililian crowds and use hospitals, mosques, schools, and homes as military bases and as arms storage and arms deployment depots. Nor does it seem to bother these self-proclaimed persons of worldwide conscience that where Israel clearly distinguishes between military and civilian targets, Hamas defines all Israelis, be they old man, woman, or child, as a combatant.
Where Israel shows grief at the suffering of it's enemy, which it defines as a human enemy, Hamas rejoices in the suffering of Israelis, whom it refers to in it's political and religious liturgy as monkeys, pigs, and dogs, seeing no common humanity with Israelis, and defining as well an ethos of cruelty to animals (Why isn't PETA crying out in defense of Israel? Oh, right, PETA is too busy expressing it's "humanistic" bigotry against Jews by decrying painless Kosher animal slaughter for food).
Hamas does not acknowledge Israel's existential right nor Jewish identity in the family of humanity. By Hamas definition, all of it's combatants are civilians; by Hamas definition, all of Israel's civilians are combatants. As the world looks on at the rubble of architecture that Israel has just destroyed in Gaza -- destruction made necessary by Hamas's misuse of civilian property for military purpose -- it is not trivial that the world understand that the hospitals, school, homes and mosques that the world funded for civilian use and humanitarian purpose was co-opted by Hamas' insane and Hitleresque agenda.
Neither is it trivial to associate the actions and ideology of Hamas with Hitlerism, so let's take a look....
World War One was not the Holocaust. Nor was World War Two the Holocaust. The Holocaust was one huge and indistinguishable aspect of WW2. WW1 and WW2 involved many of the same nations in world war, especially in Europe and Africa and the MIddle East. Yet with respect to all the horrors similar to both of those wars, the Holocaust is singled out as historically unique and historically unrivaled. Why? Tens of millions of people died horribly on a scale unrivaled in world history in both events. Why are they not also Holocausts?
The answer is that an Holocaust is defined by more than just the propagandistic demagoguery of war in which enemies are demonized and dehumanized in cartoons and in rhetoric. An Holocaust is defined by the systematic and concerted efforts of public education, national law, and boots on the ground to define a specific sub-group of humanity, be it on the basis of race, religion, or creed, to in fact not be human, to be non-redeemable as human, to be endemically evil, and to necessarily require extermination from all existence. This was the distinguishing aspect of Hitler's Third Reich, and it is the distinguishing aspect of groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. It is not accidental that during WW2 they were allies with Hitler (the predecessors of these groups existed then, most notably the Grand Mufti Amin Al-Husseini of Jerusalem). To see a photographic history of this relationship, see website WWW.TELLTHECHILDRENTHETRUTH.COM.
For current proof of Hitler's Legacy in the Muslim World, just look at the current reality in Muslim nations: (1) with few exceptions there are no Jews, as a million or more Jewish residents of Muslim countries were murdered, raped, robbed, and exiled contemporary to WW2, (2) in Gaza today, where Israel made a gift of Gaza to the Palestinian Arabs, there is neither Jewish Life nor sign of previous Jewish existence, as even functioning farms, greenhouses, industry, and empty Synagogues were annihilated by such as Hamas; the only sign of Jewish Life in Gaza today is the current departure of Israeli Defense Forces, they having just dismantled and stunned Hamas' capability to wage war on Israel; (3) there are more than twenty Muslim nations today that continue to refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist and in fact they are still in a 'de juree' state of war with Israel, (4) in many of these nations Christians and other minority religious groups such as Buddhist or Bahai or Druse are persecuted relentlessly. It is not at all inappropriate to suggest that The Holocaust in fact did not end with the official end of WW2, but, that it continues on today throughout the world, and the primary perpetrator of Holocaust is the world of Islam.
Israel has committed neither war crimes nor holocaust in Gaza. The UN ought to sanction these glib UN agents and representatives, who do suggest that Israel has committed war crimes. Given the level of embedding of UN agents and representatives in Gaza, these agents and representatives ought to be sanctioned as well for the many years they have provided safe cover to terrorist operatives in facilities constructed by both the UN and by other world NGO's for the provision of humanitarian relief to Gaza. Or does the UN officially or even unofficially have the same policy as Hamas -- that all Hamas persons and activities are civilian in nature, even if they are involve illegal engagement in the smuggling and storing of weapons, and in the commission of terror, murder, and destruction.
The incessant missile attacks on Sderot, the kidnapping and captivity of Gilad Shalit, the constant threat of suicide/homicide bombings, and the never-recanted Hamas policy calling for the annihilation of Israel, of Jews, of Christians, and of all non-Muslims they call Pigs, Dogs, and Monkeys -- if this is not behavior characteristic of Holocaust, then what is???
One need look no further than Hamas to find real origin of War Crimes. Yet, it is necessary to look further to Hezbollah, to Syria, to Iran, to Russia, and to China to see the most prominent superstructure of War Crimes and Holocaust today. One must not rule out the twenty-some Arab nations, who have yet to officially cease their state of war with Israel and to acknowledge Israel's right to exist. And Holocaust does not end their. Look to Sudan and the Janjaweed, engaged in Holocaust against the Muslims of Darfur, who are Negro and who therefore are "not Muslim enough", and against the Christians in the south, who are not Muslims....
Let us hope that on this eve of a new Presidential era in the USA, that no assassination plunge this USA into civil war, that the ceasefire in Gaza will grow like a beautiful flower, and that Hamas will free Gilad Shalit and signal that hope and peace may be realized. Amen.
Repeatedly in his life Martin Luther King spoke of equality for all people, be they "Christian, Atheist, Jewish, Muslim, or Gentile...." One expects, or at least hopes, that President Obama shares Martin Luther King's view. President Obama can take office tomorrow, knowing that the current Gaza crisis is not likely to demand his immediate or priority attention amidst the panorama of world affairs crises that he will face. President Obama will have a unique opportunity to give new ear to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, one hopes from a genuine, objective, egalitarian view.
It can be no coincidence that Israel has chosen today as the day to commence cessation of it's recent incursion into Gaza, to commence withdrawal from Gaza, and to commence it's unilateral ceasefire - unilateral in that Hamas has declared it's own unilateral one-week ceasefire "to give Israel a week to get out of Gaza". It is good politics and good timing of that politics in that the IDF has devastated Hamas and has set their terror clock back at least a year or two, if not more. Israel has defended itself and Sderot in particular. The suffering in Sderot has no longer been in vain.
It is now up to the Palestinian Arabs to again decide their future: Hamas and Hamas ideology, or an alternative of Palestinian Arabs accepting of Israel's right to a peaceful coexistence?
Where one would hope that the United Nations would keep a neutral stance, reality shows the same face of the UN on the ground that it shows in the General Assembly and to a large degree as well in the Security Council: an anti-Israel bias that is pervasive, obvious, unhidden, public, and disgusting to anyone with conscience, clarity of mind, and knowledge of history.
The likes of Christopher Gunness -- by no means restricted to Christopher Gunness -- waste no time, neither from the commencement of Israel's defensive incursion till now, and no doubt as well in the days ahead, to accuse Israel of having committed war crimes. This is a profound UN failure on two counts. Firstly, the UN and it's representatives and agents on the ground in Gaza ought not to be choosing sides or acting as an outlet of propaganda and demagoguery for terrorist groups such as Hamas. Secondly, even in appropriate venues, to assign language such as "war crimes" to the actions of the Israeli army is incendiary and biased and reflects no conscience in choice of language.
There is a difference between "collateral damage" and "war crimes". Although, for those living in a fantasy world in which they presume to speak for the "underdog" (e.g. in their view, Hamas is the underdog) there is no difference between war crimes and collateral damage, and the latter in their view is merely a euphemism for the former.
These types will never see suicide/homicide bombings, the imprisonment of Gilad Shalit, nor the incessant rocket terror of Sderot as the War Crimes that they are; like a mule wearing blinders, they will see narrowly, viewing such violence as the righteous outrage of "revolutionary" groups such as Hamas.
They make no distinction at all between the willful intent of Hamas to murder Israelis and to annihilate the State of Israel versus the inevitable accidental death of Gazan civilians, where the combat circumstance is such that Israel's tormentors mix in among the civililian crowds and use hospitals, mosques, schools, and homes as military bases and as arms storage and arms deployment depots. Nor does it seem to bother these self-proclaimed persons of worldwide conscience that where Israel clearly distinguishes between military and civilian targets, Hamas defines all Israelis, be they old man, woman, or child, as a combatant.
Where Israel shows grief at the suffering of it's enemy, which it defines as a human enemy, Hamas rejoices in the suffering of Israelis, whom it refers to in it's political and religious liturgy as monkeys, pigs, and dogs, seeing no common humanity with Israelis, and defining as well an ethos of cruelty to animals (Why isn't PETA crying out in defense of Israel? Oh, right, PETA is too busy expressing it's "humanistic" bigotry against Jews by decrying painless Kosher animal slaughter for food).
Hamas does not acknowledge Israel's existential right nor Jewish identity in the family of humanity. By Hamas definition, all of it's combatants are civilians; by Hamas definition, all of Israel's civilians are combatants. As the world looks on at the rubble of architecture that Israel has just destroyed in Gaza -- destruction made necessary by Hamas's misuse of civilian property for military purpose -- it is not trivial that the world understand that the hospitals, school, homes and mosques that the world funded for civilian use and humanitarian purpose was co-opted by Hamas' insane and Hitleresque agenda.
Neither is it trivial to associate the actions and ideology of Hamas with Hitlerism, so let's take a look....
World War One was not the Holocaust. Nor was World War Two the Holocaust. The Holocaust was one huge and indistinguishable aspect of WW2. WW1 and WW2 involved many of the same nations in world war, especially in Europe and Africa and the MIddle East. Yet with respect to all the horrors similar to both of those wars, the Holocaust is singled out as historically unique and historically unrivaled. Why? Tens of millions of people died horribly on a scale unrivaled in world history in both events. Why are they not also Holocausts?
The answer is that an Holocaust is defined by more than just the propagandistic demagoguery of war in which enemies are demonized and dehumanized in cartoons and in rhetoric. An Holocaust is defined by the systematic and concerted efforts of public education, national law, and boots on the ground to define a specific sub-group of humanity, be it on the basis of race, religion, or creed, to in fact not be human, to be non-redeemable as human, to be endemically evil, and to necessarily require extermination from all existence. This was the distinguishing aspect of Hitler's Third Reich, and it is the distinguishing aspect of groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. It is not accidental that during WW2 they were allies with Hitler (the predecessors of these groups existed then, most notably the Grand Mufti Amin Al-Husseini of Jerusalem). To see a photographic history of this relationship, see website WWW.TELLTHECHILDRENTHETRUTH.COM.
For current proof of Hitler's Legacy in the Muslim World, just look at the current reality in Muslim nations: (1) with few exceptions there are no Jews, as a million or more Jewish residents of Muslim countries were murdered, raped, robbed, and exiled contemporary to WW2, (2) in Gaza today, where Israel made a gift of Gaza to the Palestinian Arabs, there is neither Jewish Life nor sign of previous Jewish existence, as even functioning farms, greenhouses, industry, and empty Synagogues were annihilated by such as Hamas; the only sign of Jewish Life in Gaza today is the current departure of Israeli Defense Forces, they having just dismantled and stunned Hamas' capability to wage war on Israel; (3) there are more than twenty Muslim nations today that continue to refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist and in fact they are still in a 'de juree' state of war with Israel, (4) in many of these nations Christians and other minority religious groups such as Buddhist or Bahai or Druse are persecuted relentlessly. It is not at all inappropriate to suggest that The Holocaust in fact did not end with the official end of WW2, but, that it continues on today throughout the world, and the primary perpetrator of Holocaust is the world of Islam.
Israel has committed neither war crimes nor holocaust in Gaza. The UN ought to sanction these glib UN agents and representatives, who do suggest that Israel has committed war crimes. Given the level of embedding of UN agents and representatives in Gaza, these agents and representatives ought to be sanctioned as well for the many years they have provided safe cover to terrorist operatives in facilities constructed by both the UN and by other world NGO's for the provision of humanitarian relief to Gaza. Or does the UN officially or even unofficially have the same policy as Hamas -- that all Hamas persons and activities are civilian in nature, even if they are involve illegal engagement in the smuggling and storing of weapons, and in the commission of terror, murder, and destruction.
The incessant missile attacks on Sderot, the kidnapping and captivity of Gilad Shalit, the constant threat of suicide/homicide bombings, and the never-recanted Hamas policy calling for the annihilation of Israel, of Jews, of Christians, and of all non-Muslims they call Pigs, Dogs, and Monkeys -- if this is not behavior characteristic of Holocaust, then what is???
One need look no further than Hamas to find real origin of War Crimes. Yet, it is necessary to look further to Hezbollah, to Syria, to Iran, to Russia, and to China to see the most prominent superstructure of War Crimes and Holocaust today. One must not rule out the twenty-some Arab nations, who have yet to officially cease their state of war with Israel and to acknowledge Israel's right to exist. And Holocaust does not end their. Look to Sudan and the Janjaweed, engaged in Holocaust against the Muslims of Darfur, who are Negro and who therefore are "not Muslim enough", and against the Christians in the south, who are not Muslims....
Let us hope that on this eve of a new Presidential era in the USA, that no assassination plunge this USA into civil war, that the ceasefire in Gaza will grow like a beautiful flower, and that Hamas will free Gilad Shalit and signal that hope and peace may be realized. Amen.
Monday, January 12, 2009
LANGUAGE ACCOUNTABILITY: HOLOCAUST, COUNTER-TERRORISM, AND MASSACRE
Israel is long overdue to remind the world [via TV and Internet video media and in graphic verbal description in all media] in graphic terms about The Holocaust.
This means that, gruesome as it may be, the way to facilitating comprehension of The Holocaust must be lit [figuratively speaking] by the dim light of candles made from the tallow of murdered Jews and by the brighter electric lamplight diffused by the fine lampshades made of the stretched belly skin of pregnant Jewish women - pregnant by rape of Nazi soldiers and officials, murdered by having their legs and hips tied together as they went into labor.
This means that every Nazi horror must be addressed, be it the use of Jews as subjects of "science" experiments, be it by the mass murder and burial of Jews by machine guns and rifles or by poison gas and cremation, etc. It must be made clear that none of these practices characterize Israel's counter-terrorism in Gaza, nor any other Israeli actions.
That the Israel counter-terrorism cannot be accomplished free of undesired collateral death and destruction does not make the Israeli counter-terrorism a holocaust. Is it a massacre? Perhaps. Is there the appearance of one-sidedness or even disproportionate force by Israel? Perhaps -- just as for the past decade there has been disproportionate rocketing and suicide bombings of Israel by Arab terrorists.
Israel must press home it's point, verbally as well as militarily. Contrary to what one hears from the media barrage of conciliators, military action can indeed solve some problems. Israel should use military force to a necessary and sufficient degree to bring the entire world of Islam to recognize Israel's right to exist. That world has already had sixty years of Arab initiated warfare against Israel and thirty years of peace talks in which to give credence to Arab calls for peace. Existential acknowledgment of Israel ought not be contingent on final status negotiations -- quite the opposite. And if it requires Israel to wage war, so be it. Israeli concessions have brought neither peace not acknowledgment. Israeli concessions have brought massacres to Jews and to Arabs and a virtual reality constructed of propaganda and Jew hatred in which Israel is regarded as perpetrating an holocaust on Palestinian Arabs.
Hamas must be made fully accountable on the ground and the remainder of the world must be made accountable in cyberspace.
This means that, gruesome as it may be, the way to facilitating comprehension of The Holocaust must be lit [figuratively speaking] by the dim light of candles made from the tallow of murdered Jews and by the brighter electric lamplight diffused by the fine lampshades made of the stretched belly skin of pregnant Jewish women - pregnant by rape of Nazi soldiers and officials, murdered by having their legs and hips tied together as they went into labor.
This means that every Nazi horror must be addressed, be it the use of Jews as subjects of "science" experiments, be it by the mass murder and burial of Jews by machine guns and rifles or by poison gas and cremation, etc. It must be made clear that none of these practices characterize Israel's counter-terrorism in Gaza, nor any other Israeli actions.
That the Israel counter-terrorism cannot be accomplished free of undesired collateral death and destruction does not make the Israeli counter-terrorism a holocaust. Is it a massacre? Perhaps. Is there the appearance of one-sidedness or even disproportionate force by Israel? Perhaps -- just as for the past decade there has been disproportionate rocketing and suicide bombings of Israel by Arab terrorists.
Israel must press home it's point, verbally as well as militarily. Contrary to what one hears from the media barrage of conciliators, military action can indeed solve some problems. Israel should use military force to a necessary and sufficient degree to bring the entire world of Islam to recognize Israel's right to exist. That world has already had sixty years of Arab initiated warfare against Israel and thirty years of peace talks in which to give credence to Arab calls for peace. Existential acknowledgment of Israel ought not be contingent on final status negotiations -- quite the opposite. And if it requires Israel to wage war, so be it. Israeli concessions have brought neither peace not acknowledgment. Israeli concessions have brought massacres to Jews and to Arabs and a virtual reality constructed of propaganda and Jew hatred in which Israel is regarded as perpetrating an holocaust on Palestinian Arabs.
Hamas must be made fully accountable on the ground and the remainder of the world must be made accountable in cyberspace.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
FIVE COMMENTARIES TO MEDIA (12/28/08 - 01/06/09).
CURRENT COMMENTARIES I HAVE MADE [ABOUT THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT AND THE PRESENT ANTI-HAMAS ACTION IN GAZA] TO VARIOUS MEDIA IN RESPONSE TO NEWS REPORTING, NEWS ANALYSES, AND TALK SHOWS. IT WAS A BUSY, SOBERING WEEK....
==========================
==========================
to the charlie rose show in response to Martin Indyk,
David Ignatius, and others (01/05/09):
DAVID AND GOLIATH
01/06/09
Dear Mr. Rose,
If indeed it is your birthday, as commented on earlier, then "Happy Birthday" and many more to come. Your program is a national treasure and would never be the same without you.
I'd like to support the comments of Shalom Freedman with one observation that Shalom seems to have missed. Repeatedly, spokesmen for the Israeli government, when pressed for Israel's reason for the current incursion into Gaza, have addressed the need to stem the illegal flow of weaponry into Hamas hands and into Gaza altogether. The Rockets Glaring Red into Gaza are spoken of as a matter of rhetoric and useful proximal cause, not from a sincere view of internal compassion for Sderot. The Israeli Government could care less about Sderot and believes that the people of Sderot should shut up and go away or at least accept their status as being in a place inevitably to be a welcome target for an acceptable level of terror. The current government is of the ilk that, as Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv are okay, then the rest of the country should just shut up, accept it's buffer status, remain off the radar. As for Gaza, Judea-Samaria, Golan, and Sheva Farms -- well, as long as the party can go on in Tel Aviv, who needs these territories?
May I make a request, Mr. Rose? Can you do something that no one else in our drunken media has done? Can you have a two-week long series, even if if is only one or two short conversations per larger show of other matters, in which you converse with "Jewish Settlers"? I know a few personally and I would be happy to be a liason - even to go to Israel and interview them for you - so that a conversation may begin, where there has been none, to show that Jewish Settlers are not the raving, fanatical, right wing lunatics that they are made out to be in the press!
No doubt by now you have been struck by the incongruity of the "truth" as it appears in the bas relief of reality. The "truth" is the irrational ideology - neh, dogma - that Israeli surrender of land will bring peace, and that if it does not, somehow there must be something else that Israel is either doing or failing to do, that makes Israel's enemies unwilling to cease terrorizing both Israel and the world at large. The reality is that the more Israel gives away, the more emboldened the Muslim Jihad becomes around the world. As for Israel itself, the reality can best be described as a Zeno Paradox: If Israel concedes half the land, Israel will be half-way to peace; if Israel then concedes half of the half, then Israel will again be half-way to peace; and so on indefinitely - with the qualification of course that Israel cannot survive on continually diminishing fractions of land. Even now the world expects Israel to give up territories that for so many reason are indispensable to Israel's existential rights.
A look at Gaza today gives the lie to the ideology of land for peace. A look yesterday at Lebanon gives the lie to that ideology as well. The world makes the incessant demand of Israel: "Give this piece of flesh today and we will give you peace until we demand the next piece of flesh tomorrow." Is it any wonder that the Israeli Government has become so corrupt, valuing nothing more than hotel hedonism in Tel Aviv and gambling in Jericho? Is the world at large ignorant of the Biblical prohibition to consume living flesh, to drink blood? Is the world so drunk, it does not know what it is doing?
Violent attacks today against Jews in Holland, France, England, and Spain and violent protests in those countries, Greece, and all around the world should be tolling the bell for the West as to just how emboldened the Muslim Jihad has become. They know no borders and respect no borders!
John Donne famously wrote, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. " This view is clearly a Judeo-Christian and not a Muslim Jihadist view. Those in the West, who may even perceive Israel to be nothing but a "clod" , still fail their own moral and ethical tradition by their condescension towards Israel and by failing to appreciate their own endangerment before today's Muslim Jihad.
Why such a dramatic loss in perspective after so few generations since the lessons of the Jihad-supported Holocaust? It is as if the battle of David and Goliath were being observed in an arena through dual distorted lenses, one magnifying the image of David enormously and the other shrinking the image of Goliath to such a degree that David is misperceived to be Goliath and vice versa!
"David" - if he is even still alive - is alone and miserable, a tortured human being, cut off from world and sun in a prison compound in Gaza. His name is Gilad Shalit. If there is mercy due Hamas, then all Hamas need do is free Gilad Shalit and place him safe and sound into the arms of his beloved mother and father in Israel. "David's" name is also Sderot. If there is mercy due Hamas, then all Hamas need do is to accept the right of Israel to exist, to respect the border with Israel, and to cease terrorizing the townspeople of Sderot, whom they bombard daily with Qassam rockets.
May there be miracles of peace in this New Year and again, Happy Birthday Mr. Rose!
====================================================
to the Washington Post in disagreement with John Bolton,
whose article suggests a three-state solution in which
Jordan occupies Judea-Samaria and East Jerusalem and
Egypt occupies Gaza:
THE THREE-STATE OPTION IS NOT A VIABLE OPTION
With great respect to John Bolton, whom I admire greatly, to ratify Jordan's invasion of Judea-Samaria in 1947 and to also ratify Egypt's simultaneous invasion of Gaza is not a step forward, not for the Arab Palestinian, not for the Jewish Palestinian, and not for peace in the region. A rational democratic solution demands a one-state solution in which Israel annexes the Golan, the Sheva Farms, and Judea-Samaria. Corollary to Israel's consolidation of it's rightful State is the expulsion of the anti-democratic Fifth Column of Muslim extremists, who have no respect for democracy, as democracy means the equality of all persons and not the subjugation of other peopoles of other faiths, such as Jews, Christians, Bahai, etc. -- all of whom live freely and equally in Israel -- who are regarded as pigs, dogs, and monkeys by the world of Islam, at best entitled to second class status as a Dhimmi. It is suicide for any democratic host country to permit occupancy by Muslims, except as an humantiarian gesture and with humanitarian conditions and humanitarian expectations. Would this were not so; but, the imperial history of Muslim Jihad - Holy War at the point of sword - should awaken and exercise all of us to the real risk represented by extreme Islam in our time. Israel as a nation is most directly threatened, even as regards it's existential survival. When we remember that in 1947 virtually all Jews in Muslim countries were assaulted, robbed, raped, murdered and expelled to the tune of at least one-million in number - insult and injury on the heels of The Hoocaust - and when we remember the alliances of such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Fedayeen, Iraq, Syria with HItler, then one is tested to have a conscience even with respect to humanitarian concerns, except that given the existential luxury, one hopes to set an humanitarian example for those, who show no humanitarian concerns themselves. There is a world of difference between those, who show humanitarian concern for others out of a sense of moral obligation, and those, who might do so "because it pleases them" [one hopes the reference to one particular tribal sheikh from 'Lawerence of Arabia' is not lost]. The world should get over it's dishonest sanctimoniousness, making false analogy between the suffering of Jews and the suffering of Muslims. All suffering does have a common human element; yet, the suffering of one, who denies the other's humanity and right to exist such as the majority of Arab Palestinians deny the right of Israel to exist, demands a different consideration. If anything, Israel is the proverbial "canary in the coal mine" of Muslim Jihad. The world can do right only if it ceases it's efforts to force unrealistic solutions into the dark, deep historical sandpits of Arabia. The world is so oblivious to time and history that it would barely notice the disappearance of Israel into the silicon seas of Arabia; but, then in a world in which the Jew is regarded as an anachronism, what else is to be expected? There is one difference today, however; the "canary" has armor and weaponry and is willing to fight in a world that has lost the sense of what freedom truly is as well as the willingness to fight for it. It is no polyanna gift to the Arab Palestinian, by the way, to offer him subjugation to Egypt or Jordan any more than to Israel and in fact less so, as the Jordanians and Egyptians have killed Arab Palestinians into the tens of thousands in order to maintain order in their own regimes, while the world ignored this "genocide", as it largely ignores similar Arab against Arab violence today, giving tacit approval to a cruel double standard of horrors.
At first the 'law and order' appeal of the Three-State Solution does have an appeal. However, on deeper reflection, it satisfies none of the four major conditions in order for real peace to emerge: humanitarian, political, strategic, and security concerns. Again, my deep respect to John Bolton; how I wish I could work with him to bring about a one-state solution according to the democratic terms I described above!
A.B.E. 01/05/09
================================================
to Neal Conan and NPR "Talk of the Nation" [note - the content of the broadcast
can be inferred from my letter; the broadcast itself can be heard via the internet
at the NPR website (broadcast article entitled "The U.S. Government's Influence
Over Israel"]:
THERE IS AN UNFORTUNATE, COMMON, AND UNIQUITOUS (ubiquitous + iniquity = uniquitous) VIEW IN THE MEDIA AND TRANSITIVELY TO MUCH OF THE POPULATION THAT (1) ISRAEL DOES NOT NEGOTIATE FOR PEACE AND PREFERS MILITARY MIGHT, (2) IF ONLY JEWISH SETTLERS DID NOT OCCUPY LAND IN THE WEST BANK, THERE WOULD BE PEACE, AND (3) ISRAELI MILITARY ACTION REPRESENTS DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE TO ACTS OF TERROR.
Therefore, there is a continued mass delusion, always blaming Israel, that Israel does not negotiate honestly for peace, that Israel is acting as an imperial power in the Middle East, that Israel as a nation is nothing more than a common bully, and that peace would occur in a joyful moment, if only Israel would remove settlements from the West Bank and would stop bullying the Palestinian Arabs.
Honestly, it is difficult to listen to such ignorant hogwash and think that this presentation is anything other than an exercise in Israel-bashing and in the promotion of Muslim Brotherhood propaganda.
It is as if the Arab-Israeli Conflict, which has yet to come to a conclusion, is being viewed in the world arena in the following way: imagine that David and Goliath are in battle and that one is looking at David through a magnifying lens and and Goliath thru a microfying lens. The result is the misidentification of the scope of the conflict.
If Israel were to annex the West Bank and the Golan and the Sheva Farms and even Gaza, it would not be a "Greater Israel". It would be a restoration of Israel as an historic State to it's historic boundaries.
World obsession with ignoring the larger Arab-Israeli conflict and misperceiving the conflict to be a much smaller and theoretically easier matter to deal with, e.g. a 'Palestinian' - Israeli Conflict, can only perpetuate the suffering of the Jewish Palestinians (Jewish Israelis) and all of the non-Jewish Palestinians be they of Muslim Jihadists or the PLO or the Druse, Bahai, Christians, all of whom comprise the Palestinians of the region.
If there is a prize given for biased, dishonest, blatantly anti-democratic programming, this episode of Talk of the Nation stands head and shoulders above all other such biased programming and deserves such a prize.
01/06/09
=========================================
to AOL "Yedda" responsa blog re: current Gaza incursion:
IT IS STRIKING TO SEE THE SAFETY IN WHICH THE ARABS PROTEST THE ALLEGED "HOLOCAUST" AGAINST THEM. Despite an official Israeli limitation on the freedom of news media in Gaza during the current action, there is no shortage of images and reporting. AOL itself has posted hundreds of images. Amazingly, while the Israel Defense Forces are skillfully focused on military targets and limiting civilian casualties, the Arabs are out on the streets freely protesting what they call "Israeli Occupation of Palestine" and demanding the World to "Stop the Holocaust in Gaza". These Palestinian Arabs, who were wedded to Adolf Hitler during WW2, deny The Holocaust and yet speak of an imaginary holocaust against Palestinian Arabs, all the while referring to Palestine as if it were an historical State occupied by a foreign power [Israel], when in fact "Palestine" is the name given to Israel by Ancient Rome during the Roman Occupation, and then again by Britain during the British Occupation (1917 - 1947). Photo upon photo taken in the past 24 hours portrays Palestinian Arabs engaged in burning the Israeli Flag - metaphor for their own twin goals to destroy and occupy Israel. "Free Palestine"? "Palestine" is already free, finally free, after thousands of years of exile and holocaust, free enough to go by it's own name "Israel". "Occupation?" Subsequent to 15 centuries of "Jihad" (Holy War) marked by a credo of "convert or die" fully one fifth of the entire world (population and land) is now Muslim. If there has been a holocaust, it has certainly not been perpetrated by Israel, nor against Arabia. It has been perpetrated by Arabia against the rest of the world....
12/28/08
=================================================
feedback to CBS-TV:
RE: TERMINOLOGY AND CONTENT REGARDING ISRAEL'S CURRENT ACTION IN GAZA AGAINST HAMAS
In general your reporting on the current military engagement is commendable, following events as they occur and clearly stating the Israeli point of view and the Hamas point of view.
Respectfully, I would like to draw attention to questionable phrases I heard between 3-5am this morning (12/31/08) as introductory to the Mark Phillips report and as content in same.
LEAD IN: The "lead in" to the Mark Phillips story (as read by your anchor, I believe) referred to the Israeli "attack on Gaza".
Respectfully, Israel is engaged in an attack in Gaza against Hamas; Israel is not engaged in an attack on Gaza. THIS IS NOT A TRIVIAL DISTINCTION. ONE EXPECTS GREATER EDITORIAL CARE FROM C.B.S.
STORY CONTENT: An incorrect and inappropriate editorial reference was made by Mark Phillips in his story, when he characterized Israel's last presence in Gaza as a "fruitless occupation" that "lasted 38 years". HERE AGAIN ONE EXPECTS GREATER EDITORIAL JUDGEMENT FROM C.B.S.
Respectfully, here again the facts do not match the editorial content of the story, and one doubts that CBS intended that there be any editorial content in the reporting of the facts as they happen.
In 1967 Israel won back in war Gaza land that Jewish Pioneers had legally purchased in 1930 outside of Gaza CIty after the horror of riots in Gaza City in 1929 that led to the expulsion of an historic Jewish Community in Gaza City. By 1946 Jews were living on part of this purchased land in Gaza (Gush Katif) only to see the land occupied and stolen by Egypt in 1947, when Israel's Independence War took place. In the period from 1967 to 2005 Israel's RECLAMATION OF STOLEN TERRITORY (not at all an illegal occupation) MEANT A VERY FRUITFUL LIFE FOR 38 YEARS FOR ISRAELI'S LIVING IN THE VARIOUS SETTLEMENTS OF GUSH KATIF. Jewish history in Gaza goes all the way back to the biblical times of King David.
If there is anything fruitless with respect to Israel and Gaza, it is that IN 2005 ISRAEL STUPIDLY DISREGARDED AND TOSSED AWAY ALL THE VALUE OF IT'S FRUITFUL RECLAMATION OF GUSH KATIF AND THE SECURITY BENEFITS OF ISRAELI MARTIAL LAW IN GAZA. One can argue technicalities of "occupation" or "reclamation" once final status issues resolve in a sustainable peace agreement. BUT NO ONE MAY ARGUE THAT FOR 38 YEARS THE JEWISH LIFE IN GUSH KATIF ANYTHING BUT FRUITFUL - LITERALLY. NOR MAY ANY PERSON ARGUE THAT GIVING GAZA TO HAMAS HAS BEEN ANYTHING BUT FRUITLESS AS REGARDS ARAB-ISRAELI PEACE.
Thank you,
AARON BENEZRA
12/31/08
==========================
==========================
to the charlie rose show in response to Martin Indyk,
David Ignatius, and others (01/05/09):
DAVID AND GOLIATH
01/06/09
Dear Mr. Rose,
If indeed it is your birthday, as commented on earlier, then "Happy Birthday" and many more to come. Your program is a national treasure and would never be the same without you.
I'd like to support the comments of Shalom Freedman with one observation that Shalom seems to have missed. Repeatedly, spokesmen for the Israeli government, when pressed for Israel's reason for the current incursion into Gaza, have addressed the need to stem the illegal flow of weaponry into Hamas hands and into Gaza altogether. The Rockets Glaring Red into Gaza are spoken of as a matter of rhetoric and useful proximal cause, not from a sincere view of internal compassion for Sderot. The Israeli Government could care less about Sderot and believes that the people of Sderot should shut up and go away or at least accept their status as being in a place inevitably to be a welcome target for an acceptable level of terror. The current government is of the ilk that, as Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv are okay, then the rest of the country should just shut up, accept it's buffer status, remain off the radar. As for Gaza, Judea-Samaria, Golan, and Sheva Farms -- well, as long as the party can go on in Tel Aviv, who needs these territories?
May I make a request, Mr. Rose? Can you do something that no one else in our drunken media has done? Can you have a two-week long series, even if if is only one or two short conversations per larger show of other matters, in which you converse with "Jewish Settlers"? I know a few personally and I would be happy to be a liason - even to go to Israel and interview them for you - so that a conversation may begin, where there has been none, to show that Jewish Settlers are not the raving, fanatical, right wing lunatics that they are made out to be in the press!
No doubt by now you have been struck by the incongruity of the "truth" as it appears in the bas relief of reality. The "truth" is the irrational ideology - neh, dogma - that Israeli surrender of land will bring peace, and that if it does not, somehow there must be something else that Israel is either doing or failing to do, that makes Israel's enemies unwilling to cease terrorizing both Israel and the world at large. The reality is that the more Israel gives away, the more emboldened the Muslim Jihad becomes around the world. As for Israel itself, the reality can best be described as a Zeno Paradox: If Israel concedes half the land, Israel will be half-way to peace; if Israel then concedes half of the half, then Israel will again be half-way to peace; and so on indefinitely - with the qualification of course that Israel cannot survive on continually diminishing fractions of land. Even now the world expects Israel to give up territories that for so many reason are indispensable to Israel's existential rights.
A look at Gaza today gives the lie to the ideology of land for peace. A look yesterday at Lebanon gives the lie to that ideology as well. The world makes the incessant demand of Israel: "Give this piece of flesh today and we will give you peace until we demand the next piece of flesh tomorrow." Is it any wonder that the Israeli Government has become so corrupt, valuing nothing more than hotel hedonism in Tel Aviv and gambling in Jericho? Is the world at large ignorant of the Biblical prohibition to consume living flesh, to drink blood? Is the world so drunk, it does not know what it is doing?
Violent attacks today against Jews in Holland, France, England, and Spain and violent protests in those countries, Greece, and all around the world should be tolling the bell for the West as to just how emboldened the Muslim Jihad has become. They know no borders and respect no borders!
John Donne famously wrote, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. " This view is clearly a Judeo-Christian and not a Muslim Jihadist view. Those in the West, who may even perceive Israel to be nothing but a "clod" , still fail their own moral and ethical tradition by their condescension towards Israel and by failing to appreciate their own endangerment before today's Muslim Jihad.
Why such a dramatic loss in perspective after so few generations since the lessons of the Jihad-supported Holocaust? It is as if the battle of David and Goliath were being observed in an arena through dual distorted lenses, one magnifying the image of David enormously and the other shrinking the image of Goliath to such a degree that David is misperceived to be Goliath and vice versa!
"David" - if he is even still alive - is alone and miserable, a tortured human being, cut off from world and sun in a prison compound in Gaza. His name is Gilad Shalit. If there is mercy due Hamas, then all Hamas need do is free Gilad Shalit and place him safe and sound into the arms of his beloved mother and father in Israel. "David's" name is also Sderot. If there is mercy due Hamas, then all Hamas need do is to accept the right of Israel to exist, to respect the border with Israel, and to cease terrorizing the townspeople of Sderot, whom they bombard daily with Qassam rockets.
May there be miracles of peace in this New Year and again, Happy Birthday Mr. Rose!
====================================================
to the Washington Post in disagreement with John Bolton,
whose article suggests a three-state solution in which
Jordan occupies Judea-Samaria and East Jerusalem and
Egypt occupies Gaza:
THE THREE-STATE OPTION IS NOT A VIABLE OPTION
With great respect to John Bolton, whom I admire greatly, to ratify Jordan's invasion of Judea-Samaria in 1947 and to also ratify Egypt's simultaneous invasion of Gaza is not a step forward, not for the Arab Palestinian, not for the Jewish Palestinian, and not for peace in the region. A rational democratic solution demands a one-state solution in which Israel annexes the Golan, the Sheva Farms, and Judea-Samaria. Corollary to Israel's consolidation of it's rightful State is the expulsion of the anti-democratic Fifth Column of Muslim extremists, who have no respect for democracy, as democracy means the equality of all persons and not the subjugation of other peopoles of other faiths, such as Jews, Christians, Bahai, etc. -- all of whom live freely and equally in Israel -- who are regarded as pigs, dogs, and monkeys by the world of Islam, at best entitled to second class status as a Dhimmi. It is suicide for any democratic host country to permit occupancy by Muslims, except as an humantiarian gesture and with humanitarian conditions and humanitarian expectations. Would this were not so; but, the imperial history of Muslim Jihad - Holy War at the point of sword - should awaken and exercise all of us to the real risk represented by extreme Islam in our time. Israel as a nation is most directly threatened, even as regards it's existential survival. When we remember that in 1947 virtually all Jews in Muslim countries were assaulted, robbed, raped, murdered and expelled to the tune of at least one-million in number - insult and injury on the heels of The Hoocaust - and when we remember the alliances of such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Fedayeen, Iraq, Syria with HItler, then one is tested to have a conscience even with respect to humanitarian concerns, except that given the existential luxury, one hopes to set an humanitarian example for those, who show no humanitarian concerns themselves. There is a world of difference between those, who show humanitarian concern for others out of a sense of moral obligation, and those, who might do so "because it pleases them" [one hopes the reference to one particular tribal sheikh from 'Lawerence of Arabia' is not lost]. The world should get over it's dishonest sanctimoniousness, making false analogy between the suffering of Jews and the suffering of Muslims. All suffering does have a common human element; yet, the suffering of one, who denies the other's humanity and right to exist such as the majority of Arab Palestinians deny the right of Israel to exist, demands a different consideration. If anything, Israel is the proverbial "canary in the coal mine" of Muslim Jihad. The world can do right only if it ceases it's efforts to force unrealistic solutions into the dark, deep historical sandpits of Arabia. The world is so oblivious to time and history that it would barely notice the disappearance of Israel into the silicon seas of Arabia; but, then in a world in which the Jew is regarded as an anachronism, what else is to be expected? There is one difference today, however; the "canary" has armor and weaponry and is willing to fight in a world that has lost the sense of what freedom truly is as well as the willingness to fight for it. It is no polyanna gift to the Arab Palestinian, by the way, to offer him subjugation to Egypt or Jordan any more than to Israel and in fact less so, as the Jordanians and Egyptians have killed Arab Palestinians into the tens of thousands in order to maintain order in their own regimes, while the world ignored this "genocide", as it largely ignores similar Arab against Arab violence today, giving tacit approval to a cruel double standard of horrors.
At first the 'law and order' appeal of the Three-State Solution does have an appeal. However, on deeper reflection, it satisfies none of the four major conditions in order for real peace to emerge: humanitarian, political, strategic, and security concerns. Again, my deep respect to John Bolton; how I wish I could work with him to bring about a one-state solution according to the democratic terms I described above!
A.B.E. 01/05/09
================================================
to Neal Conan and NPR "Talk of the Nation" [note - the content of the broadcast
can be inferred from my letter; the broadcast itself can be heard via the internet
at the NPR website (broadcast article entitled "The U.S. Government's Influence
Over Israel"]:
THERE IS AN UNFORTUNATE, COMMON, AND UNIQUITOUS (ubiquitous + iniquity = uniquitous) VIEW IN THE MEDIA AND TRANSITIVELY TO MUCH OF THE POPULATION THAT (1) ISRAEL DOES NOT NEGOTIATE FOR PEACE AND PREFERS MILITARY MIGHT, (2) IF ONLY JEWISH SETTLERS DID NOT OCCUPY LAND IN THE WEST BANK, THERE WOULD BE PEACE, AND (3) ISRAELI MILITARY ACTION REPRESENTS DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE TO ACTS OF TERROR.
Therefore, there is a continued mass delusion, always blaming Israel, that Israel does not negotiate honestly for peace, that Israel is acting as an imperial power in the Middle East, that Israel as a nation is nothing more than a common bully, and that peace would occur in a joyful moment, if only Israel would remove settlements from the West Bank and would stop bullying the Palestinian Arabs.
Honestly, it is difficult to listen to such ignorant hogwash and think that this presentation is anything other than an exercise in Israel-bashing and in the promotion of Muslim Brotherhood propaganda.
It is as if the Arab-Israeli Conflict, which has yet to come to a conclusion, is being viewed in the world arena in the following way: imagine that David and Goliath are in battle and that one is looking at David through a magnifying lens and and Goliath thru a microfying lens. The result is the misidentification of the scope of the conflict.
If Israel were to annex the West Bank and the Golan and the Sheva Farms and even Gaza, it would not be a "Greater Israel". It would be a restoration of Israel as an historic State to it's historic boundaries.
World obsession with ignoring the larger Arab-Israeli conflict and misperceiving the conflict to be a much smaller and theoretically easier matter to deal with, e.g. a 'Palestinian' - Israeli Conflict, can only perpetuate the suffering of the Jewish Palestinians (Jewish Israelis) and all of the non-Jewish Palestinians be they of Muslim Jihadists or the PLO or the Druse, Bahai, Christians, all of whom comprise the Palestinians of the region.
If there is a prize given for biased, dishonest, blatantly anti-democratic programming, this episode of Talk of the Nation stands head and shoulders above all other such biased programming and deserves such a prize.
01/06/09
=========================================
to AOL "Yedda" responsa blog re: current Gaza incursion:
IT IS STRIKING TO SEE THE SAFETY IN WHICH THE ARABS PROTEST THE ALLEGED "HOLOCAUST" AGAINST THEM. Despite an official Israeli limitation on the freedom of news media in Gaza during the current action, there is no shortage of images and reporting. AOL itself has posted hundreds of images. Amazingly, while the Israel Defense Forces are skillfully focused on military targets and limiting civilian casualties, the Arabs are out on the streets freely protesting what they call "Israeli Occupation of Palestine" and demanding the World to "Stop the Holocaust in Gaza". These Palestinian Arabs, who were wedded to Adolf Hitler during WW2, deny The Holocaust and yet speak of an imaginary holocaust against Palestinian Arabs, all the while referring to Palestine as if it were an historical State occupied by a foreign power [Israel], when in fact "Palestine" is the name given to Israel by Ancient Rome during the Roman Occupation, and then again by Britain during the British Occupation (1917 - 1947). Photo upon photo taken in the past 24 hours portrays Palestinian Arabs engaged in burning the Israeli Flag - metaphor for their own twin goals to destroy and occupy Israel. "Free Palestine"? "Palestine" is already free, finally free, after thousands of years of exile and holocaust, free enough to go by it's own name "Israel". "Occupation?" Subsequent to 15 centuries of "Jihad" (Holy War) marked by a credo of "convert or die" fully one fifth of the entire world (population and land) is now Muslim. If there has been a holocaust, it has certainly not been perpetrated by Israel, nor against Arabia. It has been perpetrated by Arabia against the rest of the world....
12/28/08
=================================================
feedback to CBS-TV:
RE: TERMINOLOGY AND CONTENT REGARDING ISRAEL'S CURRENT ACTION IN GAZA AGAINST HAMAS
In general your reporting on the current military engagement is commendable, following events as they occur and clearly stating the Israeli point of view and the Hamas point of view.
Respectfully, I would like to draw attention to questionable phrases I heard between 3-5am this morning (12/31/08) as introductory to the Mark Phillips report and as content in same.
LEAD IN: The "lead in" to the Mark Phillips story (as read by your anchor, I believe) referred to the Israeli "attack on Gaza".
Respectfully, Israel is engaged in an attack in Gaza against Hamas; Israel is not engaged in an attack on Gaza. THIS IS NOT A TRIVIAL DISTINCTION. ONE EXPECTS GREATER EDITORIAL CARE FROM C.B.S.
STORY CONTENT: An incorrect and inappropriate editorial reference was made by Mark Phillips in his story, when he characterized Israel's last presence in Gaza as a "fruitless occupation" that "lasted 38 years". HERE AGAIN ONE EXPECTS GREATER EDITORIAL JUDGEMENT FROM C.B.S.
Respectfully, here again the facts do not match the editorial content of the story, and one doubts that CBS intended that there be any editorial content in the reporting of the facts as they happen.
In 1967 Israel won back in war Gaza land that Jewish Pioneers had legally purchased in 1930 outside of Gaza CIty after the horror of riots in Gaza City in 1929 that led to the expulsion of an historic Jewish Community in Gaza City. By 1946 Jews were living on part of this purchased land in Gaza (Gush Katif) only to see the land occupied and stolen by Egypt in 1947, when Israel's Independence War took place. In the period from 1967 to 2005 Israel's RECLAMATION OF STOLEN TERRITORY (not at all an illegal occupation) MEANT A VERY FRUITFUL LIFE FOR 38 YEARS FOR ISRAELI'S LIVING IN THE VARIOUS SETTLEMENTS OF GUSH KATIF. Jewish history in Gaza goes all the way back to the biblical times of King David.
If there is anything fruitless with respect to Israel and Gaza, it is that IN 2005 ISRAEL STUPIDLY DISREGARDED AND TOSSED AWAY ALL THE VALUE OF IT'S FRUITFUL RECLAMATION OF GUSH KATIF AND THE SECURITY BENEFITS OF ISRAELI MARTIAL LAW IN GAZA. One can argue technicalities of "occupation" or "reclamation" once final status issues resolve in a sustainable peace agreement. BUT NO ONE MAY ARGUE THAT FOR 38 YEARS THE JEWISH LIFE IN GUSH KATIF ANYTHING BUT FRUITFUL - LITERALLY. NOR MAY ANY PERSON ARGUE THAT GIVING GAZA TO HAMAS HAS BEEN ANYTHING BUT FRUITLESS AS REGARDS ARAB-ISRAELI PEACE.
Thank you,
AARON BENEZRA
12/31/08
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