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Israeli Refusenik Soldiers Reveal The TRUTH About Israel
Who would know better about what Israel is really about than the soldiers who are given their orders to carry out the dirty deeds their leaders order them to do. The thing is, at least 400 of them REFUSE to continue down on this pathway to hell. Here is what they have to say about Israel.
Talk for “Yesh Gvul” Event – Tzavta Hall, December 2002
Anat Matar
The IDF rules the current government, just as it ruled the previous one and the one before that. The prime ministers and ministers of defense, Barak, Sharon,
Ben-Eliezer, Mofaz, and some of their reigning cheiftans, know no thought or feeling that is not militarized. The IDF, and the state it tows behind, are waging a war the
sole goal of which is the utter subjugation of the Palestinian people living in the occupied territories. We should not forget this for a moment. The IDF is a criminal army.
Immersion in the details of daily events – including the shootings of children and elderly women – diverts our gaze from the overall view, from the broad move being
undertaken here, minute by minute, by well-disciplined soldiers.
The soldiers’ role is to crumble the Palestinian population. Unthinkingingly, they are destroying not only the physical infrastructure of West Bank and Gaza Strip cities,
not only homes and roads and fields and orchards, but also every trace of life-spirit. Over 50% of the Palestinians in the occupied territories are suffering from
malnutrition. Overall health conditions verge on a catastrophe, and people in need of more than a bare minimum of health care fade silently away, uncounted among
the casualties. At least 75 people have died in the last two years because the curfew, the road blocks and the ruined passes prevented them from receiving medical
attention in time. Just yesterday we got word of two stillborn babies whose mothers could see the ambulances waiting from a distance, but couldn’t reach them. The
Palestinian educational system is limping along, functioning with extreme difficulty, and the universities hold classes in warehouses and private homes, in order to
keep alive a small ember, so as not to burn out altogether. Family visits, travel from cities to villages, going to the beach – all these are concepts long forgotten.
Some of those present here today were justly stirred to strong protest against the transfer of Palestinian farmers out of the South Hebron Hill region and the village of
Khirbet Yanoun. But the transfer is not limited to these, and it isn’t waiting for photogenic truck scenes. A terrible and hidden transfer is constantly ongoing, as
alongside the weakening of the weak, the educated Palestinian middle class dwindles continuously. The Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University
recently published a survey in which 50% of the schools in the Ramallah area reported a growing phenomenon of emigration: at least 422 children had dropped out of
these schools due to their families’ emigration. This is no coincidence, and it is not the by-product of some mysterious war against terror. This is the war that the IDF is
waging: the war to deplete and annihilate the Palestinian civic community as a living, healthy, unified, educated, working, potent factor.
Everyone who lends a hand to the IDF today is complicit in this move. Not just the soldiers of the combat units bearing idyllic names and insignias of birds and flowers,
but the sentry at the army headquarters in mid-town Tel-Aviv as well, the “grease-monkey” in the Negev armor corps, and the woman soldier working in military
intelligence, and the woman computer programmer at the army adjutancy center, and the flight instructor. All of them are accomplices to the crime.
My son Haggai has chosen the route of resistance. For succeeding not to drown in the IDF fascism that the education system in Israel tried so hard to teach him, he is
now paying the price of imprisonment. Like him, in prison too, are Yoni, Yoni, Uri, Matan, Shimri, Hillel, Adam, Dror, Dror, Eshel, Itzik, Ido and my student Ori. Alongside
the major war against Palestinian civic life, the IDF is conducting a minor but stubborn battle against its own “other” – those citizens of Israel who refuse to be
militarized, who understand that any service in the IDF is service of the IDF and of its horrendous goals. Early this afternoon we heard that the commander of military
prison number 4 has decided to separate the refusers who signed the “Seniors’ (Shministim) Letter,” dispersing them among the various military prisons and their
platoons, so that they won’t be able to help each other keep up spirits.
These young objectors teach us an important lesson and I call on the people here in the audience, and equally – or perhaps even more – on those speaking here
tonight, the Israel Prize Laureates, to understand and internalize this lesson. Haggai and his friends are realizing in full the concept ‘citizen.’ To be a citizen means, first
and foremost, to act. Just as being a soldier means being passive, obedient, well-disciplined, being a citizen means the exact opposite: action, resistance. In Israel in
2002 it is very difficult to be a real citizen. Precisely because of the near-total rule of IDF over everything, it is almost impossible to give expression to its civic, civilian
“other.” But people unwilling to be swallowed up by fascism are compelled to turn resistance into practice – not into a single, one-time performance. There are many
wonderful left-wing organizations struggling due to lack of activists and poor funding. Help them! Write letters to the editors of the press, letters to the authorities,
articles, poems, speak out on television, make noise, noise, noise to counter the sleepy IDF silence, or the IDF-style pitter-patter of news announcers. Uncover what
they wish to hide, screen the banned film, demonstrate in support of the marked Knesset Members. Come out in support – public, stubborn, clear and consistent – for
refusers. All of these acts are successful expressions of citizenship.
(To conclude I mentioned the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who served a six-month prison sentence for criticizing the policy of the British government in World War I, a
fact he was proud of till the end of his days. I ended with thanks to those who have insisted on being citizens in the past few years, Yesh Gvul, New Profile, Knesset
Member Tamar Gozansky who accompanied Haggai and continues to encourage him and the other refusers, and to two “future laureates of the Israel Prize,” poets
Yitzhak Laor and Aharon Shabtai, who dedicated poems to Haggai on the occasion of his refusal. Yours, Anat Matar)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Anat Matar
The IDF rules the current government, just as it ruled the previous one and the one before that. The prime ministers and ministers of defense, Barak, Sharon,
Ben-Eliezer, Mofaz, and some of their reigning cheiftans, know no thought or feeling that is not militarized. The IDF, and the state it tows behind, are waging a war the
sole goal of which is the utter subjugation of the Palestinian people living in the occupied territories. We should not forget this for a moment. The IDF is a criminal army.
Immersion in the details of daily events – including the shootings of children and elderly women – diverts our gaze from the overall view, from the broad move being
undertaken here, minute by minute, by well-disciplined soldiers.
The soldiers’ role is to crumble the Palestinian population. Unthinkingingly, they are destroying not only the physical infrastructure of West Bank and Gaza Strip cities,
not only homes and roads and fields and orchards, but also every trace of life-spirit. Over 50% of the Palestinians in the occupied territories are suffering from
malnutrition. Overall health conditions verge on a catastrophe, and people in need of more than a bare minimum of health care fade silently away, uncounted among
the casualties. At least 75 people have died in the last two years because the curfew, the road blocks and the ruined passes prevented them from receiving medical
attention in time. Just yesterday we got word of two stillborn babies whose mothers could see the ambulances waiting from a distance, but couldn’t reach them. The
Palestinian educational system is limping along, functioning with extreme difficulty, and the universities hold classes in warehouses and private homes, in order to
keep alive a small ember, so as not to burn out altogether. Family visits, travel from cities to villages, going to the beach – all these are concepts long forgotten.
Some of those present here today were justly stirred to strong protest against the transfer of Palestinian farmers out of the South Hebron Hill region and the village of
Khirbet Yanoun. But the transfer is not limited to these, and it isn’t waiting for photogenic truck scenes. A terrible and hidden transfer is constantly ongoing, as
alongside the weakening of the weak, the educated Palestinian middle class dwindles continuously. The Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University
recently published a survey in which 50% of the schools in the Ramallah area reported a growing phenomenon of emigration: at least 422 children had dropped out of
these schools due to their families’ emigration. This is no coincidence, and it is not the by-product of some mysterious war against terror. This is the war that the IDF is
waging: the war to deplete and annihilate the Palestinian civic community as a living, healthy, unified, educated, working, potent factor.
Everyone who lends a hand to the IDF today is complicit in this move. Not just the soldiers of the combat units bearing idyllic names and insignias of birds and flowers,
but the sentry at the army headquarters in mid-town Tel-Aviv as well, the “grease-monkey” in the Negev armor corps, and the woman soldier working in military
intelligence, and the woman computer programmer at the army adjutancy center, and the flight instructor. All of them are accomplices to the crime.
My son Haggai has chosen the route of resistance. For succeeding not to drown in the IDF fascism that the education system in Israel tried so hard to teach him, he is
now paying the price of imprisonment. Like him, in prison too, are Yoni, Yoni, Uri, Matan, Shimri, Hillel, Adam, Dror, Dror, Eshel, Itzik, Ido and my student Ori. Alongside
the major war against Palestinian civic life, the IDF is conducting a minor but stubborn battle against its own “other” – those citizens of Israel who refuse to be
militarized, who understand that any service in the IDF is service of the IDF and of its horrendous goals. Early this afternoon we heard that the commander of military
prison number 4 has decided to separate the refusers who signed the “Seniors’ (Shministim) Letter,” dispersing them among the various military prisons and their
platoons, so that they won’t be able to help each other keep up spirits.
These young objectors teach us an important lesson and I call on the people here in the audience, and equally – or perhaps even more – on those speaking here
tonight, the Israel Prize Laureates, to understand and internalize this lesson. Haggai and his friends are realizing in full the concept ‘citizen.’ To be a citizen means, first
and foremost, to act. Just as being a soldier means being passive, obedient, well-disciplined, being a citizen means the exact opposite: action, resistance. In Israel in
2002 it is very difficult to be a real citizen. Precisely because of the near-total rule of IDF over everything, it is almost impossible to give expression to its civic, civilian
“other.” But people unwilling to be swallowed up by fascism are compelled to turn resistance into practice – not into a single, one-time performance. There are many
wonderful left-wing organizations struggling due to lack of activists and poor funding. Help them! Write letters to the editors of the press, letters to the authorities,
articles, poems, speak out on television, make noise, noise, noise to counter the sleepy IDF silence, or the IDF-style pitter-patter of news announcers. Uncover what
they wish to hide, screen the banned film, demonstrate in support of the marked Knesset Members. Come out in support – public, stubborn, clear and consistent – for
refusers. All of these acts are successful expressions of citizenship.
(To conclude I mentioned the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who served a six-month prison sentence for criticizing the policy of the British government in World War I, a
fact he was proud of till the end of his days. I ended with thanks to those who have insisted on being citizens in the past few years, Yesh Gvul, New Profile, Knesset
Member Tamar Gozansky who accompanied Haggai and continues to encourage him and the other refusers, and to two “future laureates of the Israel Prize,” poets
Yitzhak Laor and Aharon Shabtai, who dedicated poems to Haggai on the occasion of his refusal. Yours, Anat Matar)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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It must be ACDC's "HELL'S BELLS", no doubt!!!!!!
Another IDF theme song has to be Pink Floyd's "I Have Become Comfortably Numb". Especially the part about "just another pin prick"...
I'd say it's a tossup between "Money for Nothing" and "War Pigs".
Knowing that Israeli soldiers are ordered not to shoot live ammunition at children, and face disciplinary procedures or court martial for breaches, Palestinian snipers hide among youngsters or use them as human shields. Three recent developments are also notable:
Yasser Arafat's deputy, Abu Mazen, admitted to a Kuwaiti newspaper in June that Palestinian children have been paid NIS 5 (about $1) for every pipe bomb they throw.
Children have been increasingly mobilized during 2002 for suicide attacks; their parents have received cash payments from the Palestinian Authority, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
The attempt at a cover-up: The Palestinian Journalists' Association has warned members that they would be punished if they photographed armed children.
On March 30, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl named Ayat Akhras walked into a Jerusalem supermarket and detonated a bomb concealed under her clothing, killing two Israelis and wounding 22 others.
On April 23, three teenagers Anwar Hamduna, Yusef Zakut, and Abu Nada from Gaza, attempted to crawl under the perimeter fence and attack the residents of the nearby Jewish community of Netzarim, only to be shot dead by guards.
For over a month, Palestinian children as young as 10 barricaded themselves in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, alongside Palestinian gunmen.
In May, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy was arrested in a taxi near Jenin with a bomb strapped to his body.
On June 13, a 15-year-old Palestinian girl, arrested for throwing a firebomb at IDF soldiers, admitted during interrogation that she had previously been recruited as a suicide terrorist.
On July 9, Israeli security forces arrested another 15-year-old Palestinian girl who admitted to having agreed to carry out a suicide attack in Israel.
These are some of the latest developments in the intifada, an unprecedented wave of ongoing attacks that has roiled the region for two years. Although some elements in Palestinian society oppose using children, or at least their children, in "martyrdom" operations, these voices remain isolated. IDF soldiers who participated in Operation Defensive Shield, for example, reported that children were sometimes left behind to trigger booby-traps that terrorists set for troops.
But why are these young people willing to throw away their lives?
Who led them to believe that assuming dangerous roles in the violence will result in improving their personal, family, and political situation?
How did the celebration of violence against Israelis become so deeply ingrained in Palestinian culture?
What cause, no matter how deeply held, can motivate a society to sacrifice its children, its future?
The pressure to sacrifice oneself in the intifada often originates at home. Stoked by Arafat's speeches lauding the role of children in the struggle and the importance of martyrdom, many Palestinian parents have come to view the role of youth in the uprising as useful and, indeed, honorable. Thus, after 15-year-old Ahmat Omar Abu Selmia was killed on his way to attack the Israeli community of Dugit, his father celebrated his "martyrdom" at a street festival attended by about 200 men.
Martyrs people who die for the sake of jihad (holy war) and Islam are held in such high regard by the Palestinian people that at times parents accept the death of their children as a badge of pride. Parents of toddlers proudly recount their little children saying they want to become martyrs, and a father of a 13-year-old said, "I pray that God will choose him" to be a martyr.
One mother told a journalist from The Times in London, "I am happy that he [her 13-year-old son] has been martyred. I will sacrifice all my sons and daughters (12 in all) to Al-Aksa and Jerusalem."
Another reason Palestinian parents allow and even encourage their children to get involved is the financial incentive offered to families of "martyrs." The PA furnishes a cash payment $2,000 per child killed and $300 per child wounded.
Saudi Arabia announced that it had pledged $250 million as its first contribution to a billion-dollar fund aimed at supporting the families of Palestinian martyrs.
In addition, the Arab Liberation Front, a Palestinian group loyal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, pays generous bounties to the injured and the families of the dead according to the following sliding scale: $500 for a wound; $1,000 for disability; $10,000 to the family of each martyr; and $25,000 to the family of every martyr suicide bomber lavish sums, given the chronic unemployment and poverty of the majority of the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Violent death is sanctified throughout the Palestinian areas. The streets are plastered with posters glorifying the exploits of individual suicide bombers. Children trade martyr cards, purchased at their local shops, instead of Pokemon or baseball cards, and necklaces with pictures of martyrs are also very popular.
One favorite wall slogan reads: "Beware of death by natural causes."
Suicide bombing is considered a source of neighborhood pride, as streets are named after the perpetrators of these atrocities. There is even a band named "The Martyrs," whose lyrics espouse the virtues of "sacrificing yourself for Allah."
Under these cultural influences, many children readily admit that they want to become suicide bombers. Some draw pictures and fantasize about the day when they will achieve their goal.
The young are taught that, as suicide bombers, they will ascend to a paradise of luxury staffed by 72 virgins waiting to gratify the martyrs as they arrive.
An American psychiatrist with 22 years of experience studying and treating suicidal patients stresses that suicide bombers both children and adults are "tools used by terrorist leaders" with "a whole culture encouraging [them] to die."
The PA the entity established, empowered, funded, and armed to carry out the Oslo peace process uses diverse vehicles to incite the youth to participate in anti-Israeli street violence and even outright terrorism.
The campaign to incite children emanates straight from the top of the PA. Documents signed with the PA emblem and Arafat's office feature inciting words referring to Israelis as "land plunderers" and "creators of international terror."
Arafat himself refers to the children as "the generals of the stones," playing to their pride and young egos.
In a PA-run summer camp, a New York Times reporter observed campers staging the kidnapping of Israeli leaders, stripping and assembling Kalashnikov assault rifles, and learning techniques for ambushes.
One PA television program clip, aimed at young viewers, features a boy killed in Gaza arriving in heaven where there are beaches, waterfalls, and a Ferris wheel. He is saying, "I am not waving goodbye, I am waving to tell you to follow in my footsteps." On the accompanying soundtrack a song plays, "How pleasant is the smell of martyrs, how pleasant the smell of land, the land enriched by the blood, the blood pouring out of a fresh body."
In an October 2001 interview in a PA-controlled newspaper, Youssef Jamah, the Palestinian minister of holy sites, stated, "The suicide bombings are a legitimate means through which the Palestinians fight the enemy....The attacks are the command of Allah."
Although some Islamic authorities oppose suicide bombing, Sheikh Ikrimi Sabri, the PA-appointed mufti of Jerusalem, said, "There is no doubt that a child [martyr] suggests that the new generation will carry on the mission with determination. The younger the martyr the greater and the more I respect him."
Not surprisingly, senior PA officials attend the funerals of the "martyrs."
Signs on the walls of kindergartens proclaim their students as "the shaheeds [martyrs] of tomorrow," and elementary school teachers and principals commend their young students for wanting to "tear their [Zionists'] bodies into little pieces and cause them more pain than they will ever know."
Posters in university classrooms proudly remind the world that the Palestinian cause is armed with "human bombs."
Sheikh Hassan Yosef, a leading Hamas member, summarized this process of incitement by saying, "we like to grow them from kindergarten through college."
Palestinian Brig. Gen. Mahmoud M. Abu Marzoug reminded a group of 10th-grade girls in Gaza City that "as a martyr, you will be alive in Heaven."
After the address, a group of these girls lined up to assure a Washington Post reporter that they would be happy to carry out suicide bombings or other actions ending in their deaths.
These factors cumulatively explain why young Palestinians are so excited at the prospect of "martyrdom."
"When I become a martyr, give out Kannafa [sweet cake]," one 14-year-old boy was reported to have told his friends in the days prior to his death in the riots.
A 12-year-old boy who died in the fighting was reported to have so yearned for martyrdom that he wrote his own death announcements on the walls of his home.
An injured 13-year-old boy was reported as having said, "My goal is not to be injured, but rather something higher martyrdom."
A 13-year-old girl from Egypt tried to sneak into Gaza in order to "join the Palestinian children in anything, even throwing stones."
A week earlier, a 12-year-old boy was stopped at the Israeli border after attempting the same thing.
But why does the PA encourage Palestinian children to become involved in this violence?
Clearly, sympathy for the Palestinian cause has been generated as Western media reports have often highlighted instances in which Palestinian children have been killed or injured by Israeli troops or policemen. These knee-jerk reports have generated criticism of Israeli policies, but few in the Western world have thought through the chaos they see on the television news to consider whose interests are served by the casualties
There seems to be no end to the list of Palestinian children killed after being shoved into the front lines of the conflict by the Palestinian leadership. In February, Nora Shalhoob, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl, was killed while charging a group of Israeli soldiers at a military checkpoint with a knife in her hand.
Andaleeb Taqataqah was only 17 when she was recruited by a terror squad and sent to her death in a suicide attack on a crowded Jerusalem market on April 12.
As a result of the increasing frequency of such attacks, two points have become clear. The first is that Palestinian children and teenagers are lining up to throw their lives away, and the second is that there is an across-the-board effort by Palestinian leaders, parents, clerics, and educators to turn youthful energy into deadly violence.
And contrary to the above-mentioned Amnesty International's report, that apparently seeks to equate the killings of Palestinian and Israeli children, numerous dissimilarities cry out for attention.
To mention just a few:
Israeli parents are not paid rewards by their government or foreign governments when their children are wounded or killed.
IDF soldiers do not use Israeli children as human shields when they initiate a firefight with Palestinian gunmen.
There is no doctrine in Jewish law akin to that guaranteeing Muslim shaheeds that, after death, bountiful rewards await them in paradise.
Israeli schools and synagogues never brainwash children to undertake life-threatening violence against Palestinian civilians.
The government of Israel does not have thousands of armed terrorists on its payroll.
Israeli parents have never been quoted in the media urging their children to sacrifice their lives for a political or religious cause. Nor do they send their children to the front to riot before the television cameras.
Israeli summer camps do not indoctrinate children to kill or instruct them on how to ambush or use firearms.
Israeli television children's programming never features teachers smiling and clapping hands as their pupils sing of their intent to become martyrs.
Israeli children do not collect or exchange martyr cards, or listen to music by a group called "The Martyrs."
Senior Israeli political and religious figures do not laud, or pander to, children who engage in violence.
And most importantly, Israeli soldiers do not intentionally target Palestinian children (or others not involved in the violence), on buses, in restaurants, discos, etc.
Recently, six children armed with M-16 and Kalashnikov rifles took part in a pro-Iraq rally in the Gaza Strip. Exposed to such shocking images, including those of Palestinian toddlers wearing mock suicide bomber's vests, Western public opinion began to shift. Revulsion increasingly replaced curiosity.
But rather than fulfill its professional obligation to publicize newsworthy and controversial issues, in August, the Palestinian Journalists' Association warned its members that it would punish any journalist or photographer who took photographs of armed or masked Palestinian children. This intimidating message, which was faxed to journalists and news agencies, stated that Palestinian journalists employed by foreign news agencies are even responsible for making sure their colleagues act according to the warning. The association further added that it would not defend any journalists who do not implement the new policy, should the PA decide to punish them.
Blatant child abuse of this kind, and efforts to cover it up, would not be tolerated anywhere else in the civilized world. Where are the children's welfare advocates to condemn the practices that poison the minds and imperil the bodies of young Palestinian
Yasser Arafat's deputy, Abu Mazen, admitted to a Kuwaiti newspaper in June that Palestinian children have been paid NIS 5 (about $1) for every pipe bomb they throw.
Children have been increasingly mobilized during 2002 for suicide attacks; their parents have received cash payments from the Palestinian Authority, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
The attempt at a cover-up: The Palestinian Journalists' Association has warned members that they would be punished if they photographed armed children.
On March 30, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl named Ayat Akhras walked into a Jerusalem supermarket and detonated a bomb concealed under her clothing, killing two Israelis and wounding 22 others.
On April 23, three teenagers Anwar Hamduna, Yusef Zakut, and Abu Nada from Gaza, attempted to crawl under the perimeter fence and attack the residents of the nearby Jewish community of Netzarim, only to be shot dead by guards.
For over a month, Palestinian children as young as 10 barricaded themselves in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, alongside Palestinian gunmen.
In May, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy was arrested in a taxi near Jenin with a bomb strapped to his body.
On June 13, a 15-year-old Palestinian girl, arrested for throwing a firebomb at IDF soldiers, admitted during interrogation that she had previously been recruited as a suicide terrorist.
On July 9, Israeli security forces arrested another 15-year-old Palestinian girl who admitted to having agreed to carry out a suicide attack in Israel.
These are some of the latest developments in the intifada, an unprecedented wave of ongoing attacks that has roiled the region for two years. Although some elements in Palestinian society oppose using children, or at least their children, in "martyrdom" operations, these voices remain isolated. IDF soldiers who participated in Operation Defensive Shield, for example, reported that children were sometimes left behind to trigger booby-traps that terrorists set for troops.
But why are these young people willing to throw away their lives?
Who led them to believe that assuming dangerous roles in the violence will result in improving their personal, family, and political situation?
How did the celebration of violence against Israelis become so deeply ingrained in Palestinian culture?
What cause, no matter how deeply held, can motivate a society to sacrifice its children, its future?
The pressure to sacrifice oneself in the intifada often originates at home. Stoked by Arafat's speeches lauding the role of children in the struggle and the importance of martyrdom, many Palestinian parents have come to view the role of youth in the uprising as useful and, indeed, honorable. Thus, after 15-year-old Ahmat Omar Abu Selmia was killed on his way to attack the Israeli community of Dugit, his father celebrated his "martyrdom" at a street festival attended by about 200 men.
Martyrs people who die for the sake of jihad (holy war) and Islam are held in such high regard by the Palestinian people that at times parents accept the death of their children as a badge of pride. Parents of toddlers proudly recount their little children saying they want to become martyrs, and a father of a 13-year-old said, "I pray that God will choose him" to be a martyr.
One mother told a journalist from The Times in London, "I am happy that he [her 13-year-old son] has been martyred. I will sacrifice all my sons and daughters (12 in all) to Al-Aksa and Jerusalem."
Another reason Palestinian parents allow and even encourage their children to get involved is the financial incentive offered to families of "martyrs." The PA furnishes a cash payment $2,000 per child killed and $300 per child wounded.
Saudi Arabia announced that it had pledged $250 million as its first contribution to a billion-dollar fund aimed at supporting the families of Palestinian martyrs.
In addition, the Arab Liberation Front, a Palestinian group loyal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, pays generous bounties to the injured and the families of the dead according to the following sliding scale: $500 for a wound; $1,000 for disability; $10,000 to the family of each martyr; and $25,000 to the family of every martyr suicide bomber lavish sums, given the chronic unemployment and poverty of the majority of the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Violent death is sanctified throughout the Palestinian areas. The streets are plastered with posters glorifying the exploits of individual suicide bombers. Children trade martyr cards, purchased at their local shops, instead of Pokemon or baseball cards, and necklaces with pictures of martyrs are also very popular.
One favorite wall slogan reads: "Beware of death by natural causes."
Suicide bombing is considered a source of neighborhood pride, as streets are named after the perpetrators of these atrocities. There is even a band named "The Martyrs," whose lyrics espouse the virtues of "sacrificing yourself for Allah."
Under these cultural influences, many children readily admit that they want to become suicide bombers. Some draw pictures and fantasize about the day when they will achieve their goal.
The young are taught that, as suicide bombers, they will ascend to a paradise of luxury staffed by 72 virgins waiting to gratify the martyrs as they arrive.
An American psychiatrist with 22 years of experience studying and treating suicidal patients stresses that suicide bombers both children and adults are "tools used by terrorist leaders" with "a whole culture encouraging [them] to die."
The PA the entity established, empowered, funded, and armed to carry out the Oslo peace process uses diverse vehicles to incite the youth to participate in anti-Israeli street violence and even outright terrorism.
The campaign to incite children emanates straight from the top of the PA. Documents signed with the PA emblem and Arafat's office feature inciting words referring to Israelis as "land plunderers" and "creators of international terror."
Arafat himself refers to the children as "the generals of the stones," playing to their pride and young egos.
In a PA-run summer camp, a New York Times reporter observed campers staging the kidnapping of Israeli leaders, stripping and assembling Kalashnikov assault rifles, and learning techniques for ambushes.
One PA television program clip, aimed at young viewers, features a boy killed in Gaza arriving in heaven where there are beaches, waterfalls, and a Ferris wheel. He is saying, "I am not waving goodbye, I am waving to tell you to follow in my footsteps." On the accompanying soundtrack a song plays, "How pleasant is the smell of martyrs, how pleasant the smell of land, the land enriched by the blood, the blood pouring out of a fresh body."
In an October 2001 interview in a PA-controlled newspaper, Youssef Jamah, the Palestinian minister of holy sites, stated, "The suicide bombings are a legitimate means through which the Palestinians fight the enemy....The attacks are the command of Allah."
Although some Islamic authorities oppose suicide bombing, Sheikh Ikrimi Sabri, the PA-appointed mufti of Jerusalem, said, "There is no doubt that a child [martyr] suggests that the new generation will carry on the mission with determination. The younger the martyr the greater and the more I respect him."
Not surprisingly, senior PA officials attend the funerals of the "martyrs."
Signs on the walls of kindergartens proclaim their students as "the shaheeds [martyrs] of tomorrow," and elementary school teachers and principals commend their young students for wanting to "tear their [Zionists'] bodies into little pieces and cause them more pain than they will ever know."
Posters in university classrooms proudly remind the world that the Palestinian cause is armed with "human bombs."
Sheikh Hassan Yosef, a leading Hamas member, summarized this process of incitement by saying, "we like to grow them from kindergarten through college."
Palestinian Brig. Gen. Mahmoud M. Abu Marzoug reminded a group of 10th-grade girls in Gaza City that "as a martyr, you will be alive in Heaven."
After the address, a group of these girls lined up to assure a Washington Post reporter that they would be happy to carry out suicide bombings or other actions ending in their deaths.
These factors cumulatively explain why young Palestinians are so excited at the prospect of "martyrdom."
"When I become a martyr, give out Kannafa [sweet cake]," one 14-year-old boy was reported to have told his friends in the days prior to his death in the riots.
A 12-year-old boy who died in the fighting was reported to have so yearned for martyrdom that he wrote his own death announcements on the walls of his home.
An injured 13-year-old boy was reported as having said, "My goal is not to be injured, but rather something higher martyrdom."
A 13-year-old girl from Egypt tried to sneak into Gaza in order to "join the Palestinian children in anything, even throwing stones."
A week earlier, a 12-year-old boy was stopped at the Israeli border after attempting the same thing.
But why does the PA encourage Palestinian children to become involved in this violence?
Clearly, sympathy for the Palestinian cause has been generated as Western media reports have often highlighted instances in which Palestinian children have been killed or injured by Israeli troops or policemen. These knee-jerk reports have generated criticism of Israeli policies, but few in the Western world have thought through the chaos they see on the television news to consider whose interests are served by the casualties
There seems to be no end to the list of Palestinian children killed after being shoved into the front lines of the conflict by the Palestinian leadership. In February, Nora Shalhoob, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl, was killed while charging a group of Israeli soldiers at a military checkpoint with a knife in her hand.
Andaleeb Taqataqah was only 17 when she was recruited by a terror squad and sent to her death in a suicide attack on a crowded Jerusalem market on April 12.
As a result of the increasing frequency of such attacks, two points have become clear. The first is that Palestinian children and teenagers are lining up to throw their lives away, and the second is that there is an across-the-board effort by Palestinian leaders, parents, clerics, and educators to turn youthful energy into deadly violence.
And contrary to the above-mentioned Amnesty International's report, that apparently seeks to equate the killings of Palestinian and Israeli children, numerous dissimilarities cry out for attention.
To mention just a few:
Israeli parents are not paid rewards by their government or foreign governments when their children are wounded or killed.
IDF soldiers do not use Israeli children as human shields when they initiate a firefight with Palestinian gunmen.
There is no doctrine in Jewish law akin to that guaranteeing Muslim shaheeds that, after death, bountiful rewards await them in paradise.
Israeli schools and synagogues never brainwash children to undertake life-threatening violence against Palestinian civilians.
The government of Israel does not have thousands of armed terrorists on its payroll.
Israeli parents have never been quoted in the media urging their children to sacrifice their lives for a political or religious cause. Nor do they send their children to the front to riot before the television cameras.
Israeli summer camps do not indoctrinate children to kill or instruct them on how to ambush or use firearms.
Israeli television children's programming never features teachers smiling and clapping hands as their pupils sing of their intent to become martyrs.
Israeli children do not collect or exchange martyr cards, or listen to music by a group called "The Martyrs."
Senior Israeli political and religious figures do not laud, or pander to, children who engage in violence.
And most importantly, Israeli soldiers do not intentionally target Palestinian children (or others not involved in the violence), on buses, in restaurants, discos, etc.
Recently, six children armed with M-16 and Kalashnikov rifles took part in a pro-Iraq rally in the Gaza Strip. Exposed to such shocking images, including those of Palestinian toddlers wearing mock suicide bomber's vests, Western public opinion began to shift. Revulsion increasingly replaced curiosity.
But rather than fulfill its professional obligation to publicize newsworthy and controversial issues, in August, the Palestinian Journalists' Association warned its members that it would punish any journalist or photographer who took photographs of armed or masked Palestinian children. This intimidating message, which was faxed to journalists and news agencies, stated that Palestinian journalists employed by foreign news agencies are even responsible for making sure their colleagues act according to the warning. The association further added that it would not defend any journalists who do not implement the new policy, should the PA decide to punish them.
Blatant child abuse of this kind, and efforts to cover it up, would not be tolerated anywhere else in the civilized world. Where are the children's welfare advocates to condemn the practices that poison the minds and imperil the bodies of young Palestinian
So, these children are doing this because they have too much homework? Or is it because they have too many sports clubs to play on, or pools to swim in, or bikes to ride idyllically across the "holy'" land. I keep forgetting how exciting the life of a child must be, until I look at Palestine. Then I remember! Watching my brothers, father, mother, and sisters killed, beaten, humiliated, jailed. Under house arrest continuously, with NOTHING to do... I guess when you cage an animal, piss and shit on it, beat and starve it, once you let it out for a few moments, its going to want to show you something special.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. Every comment you made is because of the occupation, NOTHING ELSE! Israel is willing to kill for its "land'. Why can't Palestine? The point is moot, because there is no end to that violence. But, you should always remember these words...
"We did not make sufficient efforts to get, if not the full agreement of the Arabs, at least their acquiescence to a Jewish state, which I think would have been possible. That was the original sin."
Dr. Nahum Goldmann
President of the World Jewish Congress
1974
Now, you keep denying that anyone else has a right to defense. Or, only Israeli acts of terror are for freedom. Its a joke, and you know it!
Nothing happens in a vacuum. Every comment you made is because of the occupation, NOTHING ELSE! Israel is willing to kill for its "land'. Why can't Palestine? The point is moot, because there is no end to that violence. But, you should always remember these words...
"We did not make sufficient efforts to get, if not the full agreement of the Arabs, at least their acquiescence to a Jewish state, which I think would have been possible. That was the original sin."
Dr. Nahum Goldmann
President of the World Jewish Congress
1974
Now, you keep denying that anyone else has a right to defense. Or, only Israeli acts of terror are for freedom. Its a joke, and you know it!
children throwing pipe bombs, etc. deserve to be shot, don't forget, they are doing what they are trained to do, they aren't innocent.
As of November 20, 2002, there had been a total of 15,298 Palestinian terror attacks against Israel since the start of the "intifada" in September 2000. The number increased by one a day later, on November 21, when a Palestinian bomber blew up a bus filled with elderly women and young children in Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, the world has likely taken more angry notice of Israel's defensive actions to prevent further terror than of the grotesque cowardice of Palestinian terrorism. Murdered Jews, after all, are an old story.
Israelis have endured nearly one terror attack every hour of every day for twenty-five consecutive months. These attacks have had nothing to do with self-determination or freedom-fighting. Rather, they have targeted, almost exclusively, the most vulnerable and defenseless civilians. And while Palestinian propaganda, funded heavily from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, always seeks to suggest equivalence between Arab terror and Israeli counterterror, there is a longstanding and meaningful difference between premeditated murder and unintentional casualties of essential self-defense against murder.
Nonetheless, the world chooses not to notice. At best, public opinion refuses to blame the Palestinians or supporters of Arab/Islamic terror in other countries. At worst, public opinion openly supports such terror as "national liberation."
Universities, at best, are unmindful. The scholars are busy with more weighty matters, especially those that do not pertain to real life in any way. In academe the truly fashionable concern is now for "diversity," "strategic planning" and "multiculturism." Understandably, there is no time for Jewish agony, anguish and suffering.
Who is to blame for cowardly forms of terror? If the Palestinians are to be blamed at all, we hear from almost all educated quarters, responsibility belongs only to Hamas, or to Islamic Jihad, or perhaps to Nobel laureate Arafat's Fatah. But surely it does not belong to the broader Palestinian community. Surely only the Arab "extremists" are blameworthy.
Yet, as we learn from all reliable survey research, an enormously disproportionate share of Palestinians fully supports the bus bombings, the burnings, the lynchings, and the shootings of Jewish noncombatants. Enjoying the now open support of Al Qaeda - support which is often accepted gratefully and without embarrassment - Palestinians in Israel as well as in Judea, Samaria and Gaza revel proudly in shedding the blood of Jewish children. And why not? Most of the "civilized world" argues that they may wage their particular armed struggle "by any means necessary." And the killing of Jews always buys them and their families a secure place in Paradise.
What could be easier to understand? Of course they could earn such a piece of immortality just as confidently by targeting Israeli military personnel, but they avoid such an option wherever possible. That course, after all, would require courage.
The cowardice of the Palestinian terrorist is unparalleled in the history of insurgent warfare. Although there is no shortage of examples of revolutionary fighters who disregard humanitarian boundaries in battle, the record of fighters who purposely and consistently seek utterly innocent and defenseless targets is actually very small.
- Several weeks ago, when a Palestinian terrorist machine gunned two Jewish infants still sucking on pacifiers (after stabbing the mother), the image of the murdered children was a source of feverish exaltation throughout the Palestinian communities in Jenin, Ramallah and Gaza.
- When, a year earlier, a newborn Jewish child was shot deliberately by a sniper, Palestinian celebrants hailed the murder as "yet another military victory against the Zionist occupation."
- When, several years ago, two Russian-Jewish Israelis who had not yet learned to speak Hebrew took a wrong turn into Ramallah, they were torn apart - literally - by howling mobs of frenzied Palestinians.
- When, after blinding and disemboweling the two Israelis, several young men in a Palestinian "police station" held up the still-dripping eyes and internal organs for all to see, THOUSANDS of ordinary Palestinians began to dance and chant wildly.
- And when, so very recently, a terrorist from Bethlehem entered the Jerusalem bus on November 21, he waited, patiently, until it was fully loaded with schoolchildren. Only then, only then - did he turn his wretchedly defiled body into a bomb.
What kind of people are these?
What boundless levels of cowardice are they willing to undertake and sustain? What manner of fear can occasion such an utter lack of human regard for life? What vision of "Jihad" can transform schools, nurseries and buses into exploding altars of human sacrifice? Are there no limits, no limits at all, to Palestinian terrorism?
I don't know the complete answers to these questions. I do know, however, that it is not despair. There are many, many other peoples on this planet whose conditions of daily life are much, much worse - indescribably worse - and these people never resort to pure barbarism. I know, also, that Palestinian schools and mosques systematically demonize "The Jew" and emphasize his or her alleged subhumanity. It is far easier to kill "the sons of pigs and monkeys" than it is to kill a fellow human being.
But this still does not explain the incomparable cowardice of the Palestinian terrorist. I suspect the truest answer has something to do with this murderer's overwhelming fears of death. Let us not forget that the suicide/homicide bomber does not really feel he is giving up his own life in his terrible deed. Rather, he murders Jews to ensure his absolute freedom from death - and also, according to the latest authoritative rulings of Arab clerics, the immortality of his closest relatives - by "dying" for the sake of Allah. "Do not consider those who are slain in the cause of Allah as dead," says the Koran. "They are living by their Lord."
As of November 20, 2002, there had been a total of 15,298 Palestinian terror attacks against Israel since the start of the "intifada" in September 2000. The number increased by one a day later, on November 21, when a Palestinian bomber blew up a bus filled with elderly women and young children in Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, the world has likely taken more angry notice of Israel's defensive actions to prevent further terror than of the grotesque cowardice of Palestinian terrorism. Murdered Jews, after all, are an old story.
Israelis have endured nearly one terror attack every hour of every day for twenty-five consecutive months. These attacks have had nothing to do with self-determination or freedom-fighting. Rather, they have targeted, almost exclusively, the most vulnerable and defenseless civilians. And while Palestinian propaganda, funded heavily from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, always seeks to suggest equivalence between Arab terror and Israeli counterterror, there is a longstanding and meaningful difference between premeditated murder and unintentional casualties of essential self-defense against murder.
Nonetheless, the world chooses not to notice. At best, public opinion refuses to blame the Palestinians or supporters of Arab/Islamic terror in other countries. At worst, public opinion openly supports such terror as "national liberation."
Universities, at best, are unmindful. The scholars are busy with more weighty matters, especially those that do not pertain to real life in any way. In academe the truly fashionable concern is now for "diversity," "strategic planning" and "multiculturism." Understandably, there is no time for Jewish agony, anguish and suffering.
Who is to blame for cowardly forms of terror? If the Palestinians are to be blamed at all, we hear from almost all educated quarters, responsibility belongs only to Hamas, or to Islamic Jihad, or perhaps to Nobel laureate Arafat's Fatah. But surely it does not belong to the broader Palestinian community. Surely only the Arab "extremists" are blameworthy.
Yet, as we learn from all reliable survey research, an enormously disproportionate share of Palestinians fully supports the bus bombings, the burnings, the lynchings, and the shootings of Jewish noncombatants. Enjoying the now open support of Al Qaeda - support which is often accepted gratefully and without embarrassment - Palestinians in Israel as well as in Judea, Samaria and Gaza revel proudly in shedding the blood of Jewish children. And why not? Most of the "civilized world" argues that they may wage their particular armed struggle "by any means necessary." And the killing of Jews always buys them and their families a secure place in Paradise.
What could be easier to understand? Of course they could earn such a piece of immortality just as confidently by targeting Israeli military personnel, but they avoid such an option wherever possible. That course, after all, would require courage.
The cowardice of the Palestinian terrorist is unparalleled in the history of insurgent warfare. Although there is no shortage of examples of revolutionary fighters who disregard humanitarian boundaries in battle, the record of fighters who purposely and consistently seek utterly innocent and defenseless targets is actually very small.
- Several weeks ago, when a Palestinian terrorist machine gunned two Jewish infants still sucking on pacifiers (after stabbing the mother), the image of the murdered children was a source of feverish exaltation throughout the Palestinian communities in Jenin, Ramallah and Gaza.
- When, a year earlier, a newborn Jewish child was shot deliberately by a sniper, Palestinian celebrants hailed the murder as "yet another military victory against the Zionist occupation."
- When, several years ago, two Russian-Jewish Israelis who had not yet learned to speak Hebrew took a wrong turn into Ramallah, they were torn apart - literally - by howling mobs of frenzied Palestinians.
- When, after blinding and disemboweling the two Israelis, several young men in a Palestinian "police station" held up the still-dripping eyes and internal organs for all to see, THOUSANDS of ordinary Palestinians began to dance and chant wildly.
- And when, so very recently, a terrorist from Bethlehem entered the Jerusalem bus on November 21, he waited, patiently, until it was fully loaded with schoolchildren. Only then, only then - did he turn his wretchedly defiled body into a bomb.
What kind of people are these?
What boundless levels of cowardice are they willing to undertake and sustain? What manner of fear can occasion such an utter lack of human regard for life? What vision of "Jihad" can transform schools, nurseries and buses into exploding altars of human sacrifice? Are there no limits, no limits at all, to Palestinian terrorism?
I don't know the complete answers to these questions. I do know, however, that it is not despair. There are many, many other peoples on this planet whose conditions of daily life are much, much worse - indescribably worse - and these people never resort to pure barbarism. I know, also, that Palestinian schools and mosques systematically demonize "The Jew" and emphasize his or her alleged subhumanity. It is far easier to kill "the sons of pigs and monkeys" than it is to kill a fellow human being.
But this still does not explain the incomparable cowardice of the Palestinian terrorist. I suspect the truest answer has something to do with this murderer's overwhelming fears of death. Let us not forget that the suicide/homicide bomber does not really feel he is giving up his own life in his terrible deed. Rather, he murders Jews to ensure his absolute freedom from death - and also, according to the latest authoritative rulings of Arab clerics, the immortality of his closest relatives - by "dying" for the sake of Allah. "Do not consider those who are slain in the cause of Allah as dead," says the Koran. "They are living by their Lord."
Those aren't children, they are trained terrorists. kids throwing pipe bombs deserve to be shot, those used as human shields by other terrorists, are the responsibility of arafat, not the idf
As of November 20, 2002, there had been a total of 15,298 Palestinian terror attacks against Israel since the start of the "intifada" in September 2000. The number increased by one a day later, on November 21, when a Palestinian bomber blew up a bus filled with elderly women and young children in Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, the world has likely taken more angry notice of Israel's defensive actions to prevent further terror than of the grotesque cowardice of Palestinian terrorism. Murdered Jews, after all, are an old story.
Israelis have endured nearly one terror attack every hour of every day for twenty-five consecutive months. These attacks have had nothing to do with self-determination or freedom-fighting. Rather, they have targeted, almost exclusively, the most vulnerable and defenseless civilians. And while Palestinian propaganda, funded heavily from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, always seeks to suggest equivalence between Arab terror and Israeli counterterror, there is a longstanding and meaningful difference between premeditated murder and unintentional casualties of essential self-defense against murder.
Nonetheless, the world chooses not to notice. At best, public opinion refuses to blame the Palestinians or supporters of Arab/Islamic terror in other countries. At worst, public opinion openly supports such terror as "national liberation."
Universities, at best, are unmindful. The scholars are busy with more weighty matters, especially those that do not pertain to real life in any way. In academe the truly fashionable concern is now for "diversity," "strategic planning" and "multiculturism." Understandably, there is no time for Jewish agony, anguish and suffering.
Who is to blame for cowardly forms of terror? If the Palestinians are to be blamed at all, we hear from almost all educated quarters, responsibility belongs only to Hamas, or to Islamic Jihad, or perhaps to Nobel laureate Arafat's Fatah. But surely it does not belong to the broader Palestinian community. Surely only the Arab "extremists" are blameworthy.
Yet, as we learn from all reliable survey research, an enormously disproportionate share of Palestinians fully supports the bus bombings, the burnings, the lynchings, and the shootings of Jewish noncombatants. Enjoying the now open support of Al Qaeda - support which is often accepted gratefully and without embarrassment - Palestinians in Israel as well as in Judea, Samaria and Gaza revel proudly in shedding the blood of Jewish children. And why not? Most of the "civilized world" argues that they may wage their particular armed struggle "by any means necessary." And the killing of Jews always buys them and their families a secure place in Paradise.
What could be easier to understand? Of course they could earn such a piece of immortality just as confidently by targeting Israeli military personnel, but they avoid such an option wherever possible. That course, after all, would require courage.
The cowardice of the Palestinian terrorist is unparalleled in the history of insurgent warfare. Although there is no shortage of examples of revolutionary fighters who disregard humanitarian boundaries in battle, the record of fighters who purposely and consistently seek utterly innocent and defenseless targets is actually very small.
- Several weeks ago, when a Palestinian terrorist machine gunned two Jewish infants still sucking on pacifiers (after stabbing the mother), the image of the murdered children was a source of feverish exaltation throughout the Palestinian communities in Jenin, Ramallah and Gaza.
- When, a year earlier, a newborn Jewish child was shot deliberately by a sniper, Palestinian celebrants hailed the murder as "yet another military victory against the Zionist occupation."
- When, several years ago, two Russian-Jewish Israelis who had not yet learned to speak Hebrew took a wrong turn into Ramallah, they were torn apart - literally - by howling mobs of frenzied Palestinians.
- When, after blinding and disemboweling the two Israelis, several young men in a Palestinian "police station" held up the still-dripping eyes and internal organs for all to see, THOUSANDS of ordinary Palestinians began to dance and chant wildly.
- And when, so very recently, a terrorist from Bethlehem entered the Jerusalem bus on November 21, he waited, patiently, until it was fully loaded with schoolchildren. Only then, only then - did he turn his wretchedly defiled body into a bomb.
What kind of people are these?
What boundless levels of cowardice are they willing to undertake and sustain? What manner of fear can occasion such an utter lack of human regard for life? What vision of "Jihad" can transform schools, nurseries and buses into exploding altars of human sacrifice? Are there no limits, no limits at all, to Palestinian terrorism?
I don't know the complete answers to these questions. I do know, however, that it is not despair. There are many, many other peoples on this planet whose conditions of daily life are much, much worse - indescribably worse - and these people never resort to pure barbarism. I know, also, that Palestinian schools and mosques systematically demonize "The Jew" and emphasize his or her alleged subhumanity. It is far easier to kill "the sons of pigs and monkeys" than it is to kill a fellow human being.
But this still does not explain the incomparable cowardice of the Palestinian terrorist. I suspect the truest answer has something to do with this murderer's overwhelming fears of death. Let us not forget that the suicide/homicide bomber does not really feel he is giving up his own life in his terrible deed. Rather, he murders Jews to ensure his absolute freedom from death - and also, according to the latest authoritative rulings of Arab clerics, the immortality of his closest relatives - by "dying" for the sake of Allah. "Do not consider those who are slain in the cause of Allah as dead," says the Koran. "They are living by their Lord."
As of November 20, 2002, there had been a total of 15,298 Palestinian terror attacks against Israel since the start of the "intifada" in September 2000. The number increased by one a day later, on November 21, when a Palestinian bomber blew up a bus filled with elderly women and young children in Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, the world has likely taken more angry notice of Israel's defensive actions to prevent further terror than of the grotesque cowardice of Palestinian terrorism. Murdered Jews, after all, are an old story.
Israelis have endured nearly one terror attack every hour of every day for twenty-five consecutive months. These attacks have had nothing to do with self-determination or freedom-fighting. Rather, they have targeted, almost exclusively, the most vulnerable and defenseless civilians. And while Palestinian propaganda, funded heavily from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, always seeks to suggest equivalence between Arab terror and Israeli counterterror, there is a longstanding and meaningful difference between premeditated murder and unintentional casualties of essential self-defense against murder.
Nonetheless, the world chooses not to notice. At best, public opinion refuses to blame the Palestinians or supporters of Arab/Islamic terror in other countries. At worst, public opinion openly supports such terror as "national liberation."
Universities, at best, are unmindful. The scholars are busy with more weighty matters, especially those that do not pertain to real life in any way. In academe the truly fashionable concern is now for "diversity," "strategic planning" and "multiculturism." Understandably, there is no time for Jewish agony, anguish and suffering.
Who is to blame for cowardly forms of terror? If the Palestinians are to be blamed at all, we hear from almost all educated quarters, responsibility belongs only to Hamas, or to Islamic Jihad, or perhaps to Nobel laureate Arafat's Fatah. But surely it does not belong to the broader Palestinian community. Surely only the Arab "extremists" are blameworthy.
Yet, as we learn from all reliable survey research, an enormously disproportionate share of Palestinians fully supports the bus bombings, the burnings, the lynchings, and the shootings of Jewish noncombatants. Enjoying the now open support of Al Qaeda - support which is often accepted gratefully and without embarrassment - Palestinians in Israel as well as in Judea, Samaria and Gaza revel proudly in shedding the blood of Jewish children. And why not? Most of the "civilized world" argues that they may wage their particular armed struggle "by any means necessary." And the killing of Jews always buys them and their families a secure place in Paradise.
What could be easier to understand? Of course they could earn such a piece of immortality just as confidently by targeting Israeli military personnel, but they avoid such an option wherever possible. That course, after all, would require courage.
The cowardice of the Palestinian terrorist is unparalleled in the history of insurgent warfare. Although there is no shortage of examples of revolutionary fighters who disregard humanitarian boundaries in battle, the record of fighters who purposely and consistently seek utterly innocent and defenseless targets is actually very small.
- Several weeks ago, when a Palestinian terrorist machine gunned two Jewish infants still sucking on pacifiers (after stabbing the mother), the image of the murdered children was a source of feverish exaltation throughout the Palestinian communities in Jenin, Ramallah and Gaza.
- When, a year earlier, a newborn Jewish child was shot deliberately by a sniper, Palestinian celebrants hailed the murder as "yet another military victory against the Zionist occupation."
- When, several years ago, two Russian-Jewish Israelis who had not yet learned to speak Hebrew took a wrong turn into Ramallah, they were torn apart - literally - by howling mobs of frenzied Palestinians.
- When, after blinding and disemboweling the two Israelis, several young men in a Palestinian "police station" held up the still-dripping eyes and internal organs for all to see, THOUSANDS of ordinary Palestinians began to dance and chant wildly.
- And when, so very recently, a terrorist from Bethlehem entered the Jerusalem bus on November 21, he waited, patiently, until it was fully loaded with schoolchildren. Only then, only then - did he turn his wretchedly defiled body into a bomb.
What kind of people are these?
What boundless levels of cowardice are they willing to undertake and sustain? What manner of fear can occasion such an utter lack of human regard for life? What vision of "Jihad" can transform schools, nurseries and buses into exploding altars of human sacrifice? Are there no limits, no limits at all, to Palestinian terrorism?
I don't know the complete answers to these questions. I do know, however, that it is not despair. There are many, many other peoples on this planet whose conditions of daily life are much, much worse - indescribably worse - and these people never resort to pure barbarism. I know, also, that Palestinian schools and mosques systematically demonize "The Jew" and emphasize his or her alleged subhumanity. It is far easier to kill "the sons of pigs and monkeys" than it is to kill a fellow human being.
But this still does not explain the incomparable cowardice of the Palestinian terrorist. I suspect the truest answer has something to do with this murderer's overwhelming fears of death. Let us not forget that the suicide/homicide bomber does not really feel he is giving up his own life in his terrible deed. Rather, he murders Jews to ensure his absolute freedom from death - and also, according to the latest authoritative rulings of Arab clerics, the immortality of his closest relatives - by "dying" for the sake of Allah. "Do not consider those who are slain in the cause of Allah as dead," says the Koran. "They are living by their Lord."
you don't read very well, do you washed hog? go back, and read the article, then you will know why "little terorists" get shot.
Hmm, lets see... I'm just reviewing your facts over at the IDF page... I think they have all the facts, right?
"I know, also, that Palestinian schools and mosques systematically demonize "The Jew" and emphasize his or her alleged subhumanity. It is far easier to kill "the sons of pigs and monkeys" than it is to kill a fellow human being."
Gee, I've NEVER seen the Israelis do THAT
(/sarcasm off)
Gee, I've NEVER seen the Israelis do THAT
(/sarcasm off)
nope, your right, I haven't seen the IDF do that, You have to realize, they don't go try nutralize a threat with the intent of killing children, but, myself, I'd shoot the little bastard if he was about to throw a pipe bomb or grenade at me. so would you if you were in a war.
Well, now you see the point. The "war" is just a land grab buddy. And they are hoisting any Israeli carcasses that they can in front of the camera's to make sure that we see that they are true and just. There was no war before the creation of Israel, and the World Jewish Congress President himself agreed that the Zionists did nothing to get the support of the Arabs. Instead, they use propaganda to sell their message of defense.
Here is an interesting fact. Everytime Hamas blows something up, the talk about Arafat. The distinction between the two is immense. Arafat is akin to the Zionists, in that he runs a SECULAR POLITICAL organization which seeks to create a secular, political statehood for the Palestianian people. A kind of Israel for the Palestinians. What a concept! Hamas, on the other hand, is a SPIRITUAL RILIGIOUS organization which seeks to create a religious homeland for Palestinian Muslims. There is a HUGH difference between the two that an Ashkenazi racsist would not be able to comprehend. So, when Hamas blows stuff up, why blame Arafat? Because Hamas is paid for by Israel, that's why! OF COURSE Israel does not want a secular political state for Palestine, as that would make it impossible to call them religious fanatics. Better to support a rival faction which fits the mold better. Check it out.
JEFFREY STEINBERG: SHARON'S PLAN FOR MIDEAST WAR EXPOSED
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/07/13/10045.html
http://www.freedomdomain.com/Templemount/sharon1.html
http://www.meib.org/articles/9906_me2.htm
Here is an interesting fact. Everytime Hamas blows something up, the talk about Arafat. The distinction between the two is immense. Arafat is akin to the Zionists, in that he runs a SECULAR POLITICAL organization which seeks to create a secular, political statehood for the Palestianian people. A kind of Israel for the Palestinians. What a concept! Hamas, on the other hand, is a SPIRITUAL RILIGIOUS organization which seeks to create a religious homeland for Palestinian Muslims. There is a HUGH difference between the two that an Ashkenazi racsist would not be able to comprehend. So, when Hamas blows stuff up, why blame Arafat? Because Hamas is paid for by Israel, that's why! OF COURSE Israel does not want a secular political state for Palestine, as that would make it impossible to call them religious fanatics. Better to support a rival faction which fits the mold better. Check it out.
JEFFREY STEINBERG: SHARON'S PLAN FOR MIDEAST WAR EXPOSED
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/07/13/10045.html
http://www.freedomdomain.com/Templemount/sharon1.html
http://www.meib.org/articles/9906_me2.htm
Wow! if you think arafat runs a secular government (Pausing to laugh) you have some screwed up Idea what a secular government is. Arafat elected himself, the destroyed the economy, and uses the poverty to rally people to blame the jews. Israel is the employer in the region, not arafat. It's not an uncommon stratagy. An as far as who land is it, it was always the jews, alway was, and when the britts took over the ottoman empire, they carved up the area, giving jews more land than they occupy now. here's a little atricle about it for you:
The Arabs have successfully pilloried Israel in the court of public opinion through the deft propagation of two big lies. Relying on the sketchy historical knowledge of most people, and on the propensity of oft-repeated lies to become accepted wisdom, Arab officials have fabricated a historical narrative that has gained wide acceptance. It justifies Arab aggression, even terror, as an understandable response to cruel Israeli "occupation" and to the "stealing of Palestinian lands." The charges often stick, even though they are based on falsehoods.
JUST THE FACTS
What are the facts, then?
Since the second stage of Oslo was implemented in 1995, and most Palestinian towns and villages were ceded to the control of Arafat's Palestinian Authority, over 95 percent of the Palestinian Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza have not been under physical Israeli occupation. Yet amazingly, Arab spokesmen keep talking about their need to fight Israeli occupation, and officials and the media seldom challenge them. It seems like everyone forgot that in signing the 1992 Oslo accords, Israel recognized Arafat's PLO as the official representative of the Palestinian people. Arafat was brought back, with his henchmen, from exile in Tunisia and given control of territories that Israel occupied in the defensive 1967 war — areas that never belonged to any Palestinian entity.
In return for self-government, the Palestinians undertook to revoke parts of their national covenant that called for Israel's destruction, and never again to resort to violence. These pledges were constantly violated the moment the Israeli occupation was removed.
Still, Israel, exhausted by incessant Arab attacks, and eager for peace, continued implementing the Oslo agreements — including the ceding of territory and relinquishing control over their population. Since Oslo 2, the Palestinians have enjoyed self-rule of sorts. We say "of sorts," not because of the repeated incursions Israel had to make to thwart suicide bombing attacks, but because rule by Arafat's Palestinian Authority was not really "self-determination." The election by which Arafat was elected with an over 90 percent majority, Bolshevik style, was rather questionable and was never repeated again.
In fact, the "Authority" Arafat has established is even more repressive than many of the 21 dictatorships governing all other Arab states. His Tunisian henchmen did what they knew best. They immediately established a rule of terror, brooking no opposition, and wrested control from the local leadership. They systematically violated the Palestinians' most rudimentary human rights, engaging in extortion, kidnap, torture, and summary execution. They robbed the inhabitants of their livelihood, creating such mayhem that the Palestinian standard of living was cut by half and unemployment rose to over 60 percent. Every resource was exploited to wage a war against Israel, including considerable funds earmarked by the EU and U.S. as aid for the refugees.
Arafat's war disrupted trade with Israel and the employment there of most Palestinian labor — both sources of increasing Palestinian wealth. A nascent Palestinian civil society was destroyed, enabling the PLO to radicalize an increasingly impoverished population, and to transform their misery into pathological hatred for Israel.
Yes, the Palestinians are right in feeling under occupation and oppressed. But they are mistaken to think it is by Israel.
The audacious lie about the occupation is based, of course, on a bigger, more basic falsehood: namely, that Israel stole "Palestinian Arab lands" and that the PLO is fighting for the restitution of these illegally "occupied lands," especially those ostensibly usurped for Israeli "settlements" (which occupy, in fact, less than three percent of the West Bank's area, and were built on empty government-owned land).
Palestinian propagandists insist that contemporary Jews are not descended from Biblical Jews, and have usurped "Palestinian Arab lands" in three stages. They first allegedly penetrated Palestine in the late 18th century, settling it by stealth under imperial colonialist protection. Then in 1948, after the U.N. partition, they took more land by force, displacing an indigenous Palestinian Arab population fighting for self-determination; and finally, in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel aggressively expanded, occupying the "West Bank" and the Gaza Strip and holding its Palestinian inhabitants in bondage, as they have ever since.
NOTHING NEW
Historical fact, however, belies this enticingly simplistic narrative.
The disputed territories, together with the territories that are now Israel and Jordan, were originally (in Biblical and post-Biblical times) Jewish kingdoms, and for most of the last seven centuries part of the Ottoman Empire. After the defeat and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the First World War, the League of Nations divided most of its former possessions in the 1922 peace conference. The Arabs were granted rights to most of the formerly Turkish-controlled lands, to an area that was 500 times larger in size than the small area reserved for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The British received an international mandate over Palestine because they undertook to establish a Jewish national home there, which the League considered as an act of "restoration" of ancient Jewish rights to the land — rights that outweighed any Arab claims based on later conquest and residence.
At first, the Arab representatives to the Versailles conference gladly accepted this division. It gave them control over vast areas lost centuries ago, without requiring them to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of soldiers, as the Allies had, to liberate these lands from Turkish dominion. They did not then consider the tiny sliver of South Syrian wasteland, known to Jews as Judea and Samaria and to the Europeans as the Holy Land, of any significance, politically or religiously, and were happy to give it up in exchange for what they so surprisingly gained. The Emir Faisal, who represented the Arabs, signed a draft agreement with the Zionist movement, welcoming the Jews back to their homeland and pledging cooperation.
So the disputed territories of the West Bank and the Gaza strip were never "Palestinian lands" — neither as national patrimony nor as private property. In fact, until the institution of the British mandate, the Holy Land never had a separate political identity or a distinct people inhabiting it. It was a neglected province of South Syria, whose few and destitute Arab inhabitants considered themselves South Syrians. As Bernard Lewis notes, "From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries… within a larger entity" of Syria.
Indeed, to date, 93 percent of the land in what was the British Mandate — including the lands of the West Bank — are still government-owned. They were so despoiled, malaria-infected, and sparsely populated that no private owners evinced any interest in owning them, so they were kept by the sultan and then inherited by the British mandate in safekeeping for the Jews.
On a visit to the Ottoman-controlled Holy Land in 1860, Mark Twain described it as "the prince of desolation." "The hills are barren… the valleys unsightly deserts… peopled by swarms of beggars struck with ghastly sores and malformations… Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes… only the music of angels could charm its shrubs and flowers again into life."
Other writers and artists visiting the Holy Land (chiefly from Britain and Germany) — as well as geographers, archeologists, and cartographers — were equally stunned by its utter desolation.
It was only toward the end of the 18th century, when a growing stream of Jewish immigrants rehabilitated the land — draining swamps, reclaiming deserts, and controlling the diseases (chiefly malaria) — that a decimated Arab population began increasing. The resuscitation of the land by the Jews and the economic opportunity they created brought an influx of Arab immigrants from dirt-poor neighboring Arab states to swell the number of Arabs in Palestine, so that by the turn of the century there were about 250,000 Arab Muslims and 150,00 Jews living there. 100,000 Christians and others
It was in fact British colonial machinations that turned initial Arab acceptance of a Jewish homeland in British-protected Palestine into unmitigated and disastrous hostility. British behavior in the Middle East in general, and in Palestine in particular, was common colonial practice: divide and rule. In India, it enabled the British to subdue the subcontinent with few troops by pitting hostile segments of the indigenous population against each other. They employed this strategy in Palestine too.
From the very first days of the mandate, a group of very influential British officials in the Colonial and the War Offices, who wanted to maintain control over the land and to prevent the establishment of an independent Jewish national home, started undermining their government's efforts to fulfill its obligation toward the Jews. These British officials, many of them avowed anti-Semites, fanned Arab resentment over broken British promises to make the Arabian chieftain, Faisal, king of Damascus and Syria, and redirected it against Jewish aspirations in Palestine.
Indeed, their naming the mandate over the Holy Land "Palestine," rather than the land of Israel, was a deliberate effort to obliterate the Jewish connection to the land by calling it by its Roman name. They also, in 1923, unilaterally removed from the original mandatory area all the land east of the Jordan River-75 percent of the territory promised to the Jews — and gave it to the Emir Abdullah of Arabia, Faisal's brother, in compensation to the Hashemite family for other broken promises. They did so despite objections from the League of Nations. The small area that had been designated as a home for the Jews was thus reduced to a mere sliver.
A distinct Palestinian Arab nationalism evolved only after the dream of an Arab Syrian kingdom — the brainchild of T. E. Lawrence — was shattered when the French evicted his protégé, the Emir Faisal, from Damascus in 1920. Only then did the South Syrian Arabs living under Britain's Palestine mandate separate themselves from Syria and start defining themselves as Palestinians. The process was accelerated by their growing negative reaction to the League of Nations' designation of Palestine as a Jewish national home.
The British helped make hostility to Zionism the defining issue of local Arab politics, and assisted in its exploitation as a lethal weapon in bloody Arab inter-clan struggles for dominance. Muslim clerics and Arab effendis exploited hostility against the Jews, always convenient scapegoats, to deflect the rage of their destitute, exploited people.
The British appointed an extremely radical upstart politician, Hajj Amin al-Hussieni, with a record of violence and incitement, as chief mufti of Jerusalem. They gave him the authority of a spiritual leader to the Arabs, and control of the considerable funds and properties managed by Muslim religious trusts. The mufti promptly proceeded to exploit these resources for his nefarious campaign against the Jews and against his Arab opponents — much as Arafat does today.
The mufti was, in fact, the originator of the murderous religious incitement used so effectively today by Arafat. Since the beginning of the British mandate in 1920, he used mosques, schools, and charitable associations to mount a racist campaign against the Jews, accusing them of betraying the Prophet Mohammed and of trying to defile and destroy Islamic holy places. The incitement resulted in periodic outbreaks of violence which culminated in several massacres and the eviction of Jews from Arab-dominated areas — notably in Hebron, where the Jews, who had lived there for centuries, were butchered by their Arab neighbors after the mufti spread a rumor through the preachers in the mosques that the Jews were conquering and defiling the El-Aksa Mosque.
The British not only failed to stop the carnage, but also arrested any Jew who bore arms in defense. British colonial officials then exploited Arab rage as an excuse to put more and more restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine and land purchase. They reneged, in fact, on their obligation to establish a Jewish national home. They even illegally blocked the entrance of Jews who were desperately trying to escape Europe. They did so even when the danger to Jewish life became obvious, helping Hitler to trap and kill many Jews.
The mufti accompanied his 1936-39 war against the Jews <../../antiholo/arabnazi.html> with a campaign of terror against his Arab opponents (again, just like Arafat). His henchmen assassinated not only every political rival that contemplated some sort of accommodation, but also practically anyone who could even potentially become a political rival. Hundreds of Arabs were liquidated, a large part of the Palestinian elites. Many more were forced to flee.
It was a tragedy from which the Palestinians, who were developing by then a hateful, xenophobic nationalism, never recovered. It explains why to date, the Palestinian, many of whom are talented, hard-working people, have been unable to build a civil society with legitimate political institutions. It was the loss and demoralization of their leadership that prevented the Palestinian Arabs from establishing a state in 1948. That in turn facilitated the takeover of their political life by the radical and criminal elements that have brought on them repeated catastrophes.
The British officials who have encouraged and exploited radical Arab elements are to a large extent responsible for the continued tragedy of Arab politics and for the repeated disasters the Arabs suffered. Most of the Arab states established by the colonialists remain artificial entities barely able to contain the hostile ethnic groups that were arbitrarily incorporated into them. Lacking a unifying principle and legitimacy, they remain politically, socially, and economically extremely unstable, held together by the military dictatorships the colonial powers left behind.
In 1948, the British gave up the mandate and the U.N. partitioned Palestine, offering the Jews only a sliver of the area originally designated as a Jewish national home. Partition arbitrarily deprived the Jews of their internationally sanctioned legal rights to all of Palestine, including what is now the kingdom of Jordan. Nevertheless, Israel accepted it.
The Palestinians, and the Arab states supporting them, refused to accept partition and launched a war of annihilation against Israel. The British left on May 15, 1948, doing everything they could to render the Jews defenseless before the onslaught of six Arab armies — including an Arab legion led by British officers which put siege to Jerusalem and almost starved its population. Against all odds, and at great cost (every ninth Israeli was a casualty of the war), Israel repulsed the Arab attacks and established itself within the 1949 armistice lines. Jordan unilaterally annexed the remaining heartland territories designated for a Palestinian state, and Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians never protested — perhaps because they considered Jordan their own, since the majority of its inhabitants were Palestinians.
Before Israel ejected Jordan from the "West Bank" and Egypt from the Gaza Strip, in 1967, Palestinians lived for almost two decades under a very repressive Jordanian occupation and under brutal Egyptian military rule in the Gaza Strip — in utter destitution and with no rights at all. Gaza was, in effect, a large Egyptian prison camp. Yet they did not protest. Their anger was skillfully directed against Israel, so that they wished it destroyed even though it did not then occupy "their land" or hold them captive. Nor did any of their friends who today pretend to defend their right for self-determination raise then even a squeak.
The true intentions of the Authority's leadership under Arafat were made apparent when Israel's prime minister, Ehud Barak, offered to cede 96 percent of the disputed territories to the Palestinian Authority and even compensate it for the remaining 4 percent. As is well known, Arafat rejected the offer and launched his war of terror against Israel, hoping to force it to accept the "return" of Arab refugees, and to undermine Israel from within by swamping it with "returning" refugees.
Barak made these far-reaching concessions despite the fact that there were conflicting legal claims to the disputed territories, and that the settlements, built on empty government land, have not displaced any Palestinians or taken any of their private property (except in rare cases for security or public works purposes).
GETTING NOWHERE
Still, the two big lies about continued Israeli "occupation" and "stolen Arab lands" continue to be used by the Arabs and have scored great successes, especially in Europe.
Since the Second World War, their alleged friends in the European Union — especially the French — systematically supported and sustained Arab dictatorships. The oppression generated by these dictators, and the poverty they perpetuated, helped create the backlash of radical Islamist fundamentalism. America's unqualified support for the repressive and corrupt regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt has also contributed its share to a continued Middle East catastrophe. Defense of the arch-terrorist Arafat, whose PLO the Saudis and the Egyptians created, fund, and support, is the logical conclusion of this dangerous policy.
The Europeans have at least good, if cynical, realpolitik reasons for supporting dictatorships in the Arab world. They sell them billions in armaments, helping to offset some of the cost of Middle East oil. They profit from "special" trade terms acquired from these corrupt regimes through the extensive use of bribery (a great competitive advantage over U.S. firms, which are forbidden by law from engaging in such practices). Israel's security is only another sop they willingly throw to these dictators in the furtherance of their interests.
They cannot, of course, openly admit such cynical behavior, since it might not sit well with their "liberal" constituencies and leftist supporters. So they cover up their cynicism with the pretence of seeking justice for the Palestinians — a pretence that plays well among their pro-third world, anti-American supporters.
The European elites are thus willing accomplices in the propagation of Arab lies that demonize Israel. Demonizing Israel makes it possible for them to support, with a clear conscience, the most horribly repressive Arab dictatorships and even the destruction of the only democracy in the Middle East. Barely 60 years after the Holocaust, Arab calumnies help the European salve their conscience so successfully that they are even ready to help Muslim rogue states acquire weapons of mass destruction, and to protect these rogue states against preventative action by the U.S.
It takes democracies a long time to absorb even the most recent and most costly lessons of history. A Europe that fell easy prey to the Big Lies Goebbels spread to keep it disarmed was to pay heavily for its complacency towards Nazi aggression. Last September 11, Americans paid heavily for their own failure to identify in time a danger from a radical and deadly challenge to their basic values and institutions — a challenge that before long may be mounted with weapons of mass destruction.
The West will continue to be exposed to grave danger until it finally wakes up and realizes how Arab lies have managed to lull it to the danger from implacable Muslim fundamentalism, a danger Israel has already been facing for so many years.
The Arabs have successfully pilloried Israel in the court of public opinion through the deft propagation of two big lies. Relying on the sketchy historical knowledge of most people, and on the propensity of oft-repeated lies to become accepted wisdom, Arab officials have fabricated a historical narrative that has gained wide acceptance. It justifies Arab aggression, even terror, as an understandable response to cruel Israeli "occupation" and to the "stealing of Palestinian lands." The charges often stick, even though they are based on falsehoods.
JUST THE FACTS
What are the facts, then?
Since the second stage of Oslo was implemented in 1995, and most Palestinian towns and villages were ceded to the control of Arafat's Palestinian Authority, over 95 percent of the Palestinian Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza have not been under physical Israeli occupation. Yet amazingly, Arab spokesmen keep talking about their need to fight Israeli occupation, and officials and the media seldom challenge them. It seems like everyone forgot that in signing the 1992 Oslo accords, Israel recognized Arafat's PLO as the official representative of the Palestinian people. Arafat was brought back, with his henchmen, from exile in Tunisia and given control of territories that Israel occupied in the defensive 1967 war — areas that never belonged to any Palestinian entity.
In return for self-government, the Palestinians undertook to revoke parts of their national covenant that called for Israel's destruction, and never again to resort to violence. These pledges were constantly violated the moment the Israeli occupation was removed.
Still, Israel, exhausted by incessant Arab attacks, and eager for peace, continued implementing the Oslo agreements — including the ceding of territory and relinquishing control over their population. Since Oslo 2, the Palestinians have enjoyed self-rule of sorts. We say "of sorts," not because of the repeated incursions Israel had to make to thwart suicide bombing attacks, but because rule by Arafat's Palestinian Authority was not really "self-determination." The election by which Arafat was elected with an over 90 percent majority, Bolshevik style, was rather questionable and was never repeated again.
In fact, the "Authority" Arafat has established is even more repressive than many of the 21 dictatorships governing all other Arab states. His Tunisian henchmen did what they knew best. They immediately established a rule of terror, brooking no opposition, and wrested control from the local leadership. They systematically violated the Palestinians' most rudimentary human rights, engaging in extortion, kidnap, torture, and summary execution. They robbed the inhabitants of their livelihood, creating such mayhem that the Palestinian standard of living was cut by half and unemployment rose to over 60 percent. Every resource was exploited to wage a war against Israel, including considerable funds earmarked by the EU and U.S. as aid for the refugees.
Arafat's war disrupted trade with Israel and the employment there of most Palestinian labor — both sources of increasing Palestinian wealth. A nascent Palestinian civil society was destroyed, enabling the PLO to radicalize an increasingly impoverished population, and to transform their misery into pathological hatred for Israel.
Yes, the Palestinians are right in feeling under occupation and oppressed. But they are mistaken to think it is by Israel.
The audacious lie about the occupation is based, of course, on a bigger, more basic falsehood: namely, that Israel stole "Palestinian Arab lands" and that the PLO is fighting for the restitution of these illegally "occupied lands," especially those ostensibly usurped for Israeli "settlements" (which occupy, in fact, less than three percent of the West Bank's area, and were built on empty government-owned land).
Palestinian propagandists insist that contemporary Jews are not descended from Biblical Jews, and have usurped "Palestinian Arab lands" in three stages. They first allegedly penetrated Palestine in the late 18th century, settling it by stealth under imperial colonialist protection. Then in 1948, after the U.N. partition, they took more land by force, displacing an indigenous Palestinian Arab population fighting for self-determination; and finally, in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel aggressively expanded, occupying the "West Bank" and the Gaza Strip and holding its Palestinian inhabitants in bondage, as they have ever since.
NOTHING NEW
Historical fact, however, belies this enticingly simplistic narrative.
The disputed territories, together with the territories that are now Israel and Jordan, were originally (in Biblical and post-Biblical times) Jewish kingdoms, and for most of the last seven centuries part of the Ottoman Empire. After the defeat and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the First World War, the League of Nations divided most of its former possessions in the 1922 peace conference. The Arabs were granted rights to most of the formerly Turkish-controlled lands, to an area that was 500 times larger in size than the small area reserved for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The British received an international mandate over Palestine because they undertook to establish a Jewish national home there, which the League considered as an act of "restoration" of ancient Jewish rights to the land — rights that outweighed any Arab claims based on later conquest and residence.
At first, the Arab representatives to the Versailles conference gladly accepted this division. It gave them control over vast areas lost centuries ago, without requiring them to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of soldiers, as the Allies had, to liberate these lands from Turkish dominion. They did not then consider the tiny sliver of South Syrian wasteland, known to Jews as Judea and Samaria and to the Europeans as the Holy Land, of any significance, politically or religiously, and were happy to give it up in exchange for what they so surprisingly gained. The Emir Faisal, who represented the Arabs, signed a draft agreement with the Zionist movement, welcoming the Jews back to their homeland and pledging cooperation.
So the disputed territories of the West Bank and the Gaza strip were never "Palestinian lands" — neither as national patrimony nor as private property. In fact, until the institution of the British mandate, the Holy Land never had a separate political identity or a distinct people inhabiting it. It was a neglected province of South Syria, whose few and destitute Arab inhabitants considered themselves South Syrians. As Bernard Lewis notes, "From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries… within a larger entity" of Syria.
Indeed, to date, 93 percent of the land in what was the British Mandate — including the lands of the West Bank — are still government-owned. They were so despoiled, malaria-infected, and sparsely populated that no private owners evinced any interest in owning them, so they were kept by the sultan and then inherited by the British mandate in safekeeping for the Jews.
On a visit to the Ottoman-controlled Holy Land in 1860, Mark Twain described it as "the prince of desolation." "The hills are barren… the valleys unsightly deserts… peopled by swarms of beggars struck with ghastly sores and malformations… Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes… only the music of angels could charm its shrubs and flowers again into life."
Other writers and artists visiting the Holy Land (chiefly from Britain and Germany) — as well as geographers, archeologists, and cartographers — were equally stunned by its utter desolation.
It was only toward the end of the 18th century, when a growing stream of Jewish immigrants rehabilitated the land — draining swamps, reclaiming deserts, and controlling the diseases (chiefly malaria) — that a decimated Arab population began increasing. The resuscitation of the land by the Jews and the economic opportunity they created brought an influx of Arab immigrants from dirt-poor neighboring Arab states to swell the number of Arabs in Palestine, so that by the turn of the century there were about 250,000 Arab Muslims and 150,00 Jews living there. 100,000 Christians and others
It was in fact British colonial machinations that turned initial Arab acceptance of a Jewish homeland in British-protected Palestine into unmitigated and disastrous hostility. British behavior in the Middle East in general, and in Palestine in particular, was common colonial practice: divide and rule. In India, it enabled the British to subdue the subcontinent with few troops by pitting hostile segments of the indigenous population against each other. They employed this strategy in Palestine too.
From the very first days of the mandate, a group of very influential British officials in the Colonial and the War Offices, who wanted to maintain control over the land and to prevent the establishment of an independent Jewish national home, started undermining their government's efforts to fulfill its obligation toward the Jews. These British officials, many of them avowed anti-Semites, fanned Arab resentment over broken British promises to make the Arabian chieftain, Faisal, king of Damascus and Syria, and redirected it against Jewish aspirations in Palestine.
Indeed, their naming the mandate over the Holy Land "Palestine," rather than the land of Israel, was a deliberate effort to obliterate the Jewish connection to the land by calling it by its Roman name. They also, in 1923, unilaterally removed from the original mandatory area all the land east of the Jordan River-75 percent of the territory promised to the Jews — and gave it to the Emir Abdullah of Arabia, Faisal's brother, in compensation to the Hashemite family for other broken promises. They did so despite objections from the League of Nations. The small area that had been designated as a home for the Jews was thus reduced to a mere sliver.
A distinct Palestinian Arab nationalism evolved only after the dream of an Arab Syrian kingdom — the brainchild of T. E. Lawrence — was shattered when the French evicted his protégé, the Emir Faisal, from Damascus in 1920. Only then did the South Syrian Arabs living under Britain's Palestine mandate separate themselves from Syria and start defining themselves as Palestinians. The process was accelerated by their growing negative reaction to the League of Nations' designation of Palestine as a Jewish national home.
The British helped make hostility to Zionism the defining issue of local Arab politics, and assisted in its exploitation as a lethal weapon in bloody Arab inter-clan struggles for dominance. Muslim clerics and Arab effendis exploited hostility against the Jews, always convenient scapegoats, to deflect the rage of their destitute, exploited people.
The British appointed an extremely radical upstart politician, Hajj Amin al-Hussieni, with a record of violence and incitement, as chief mufti of Jerusalem. They gave him the authority of a spiritual leader to the Arabs, and control of the considerable funds and properties managed by Muslim religious trusts. The mufti promptly proceeded to exploit these resources for his nefarious campaign against the Jews and against his Arab opponents — much as Arafat does today.
The mufti was, in fact, the originator of the murderous religious incitement used so effectively today by Arafat. Since the beginning of the British mandate in 1920, he used mosques, schools, and charitable associations to mount a racist campaign against the Jews, accusing them of betraying the Prophet Mohammed and of trying to defile and destroy Islamic holy places. The incitement resulted in periodic outbreaks of violence which culminated in several massacres and the eviction of Jews from Arab-dominated areas — notably in Hebron, where the Jews, who had lived there for centuries, were butchered by their Arab neighbors after the mufti spread a rumor through the preachers in the mosques that the Jews were conquering and defiling the El-Aksa Mosque.
The British not only failed to stop the carnage, but also arrested any Jew who bore arms in defense. British colonial officials then exploited Arab rage as an excuse to put more and more restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine and land purchase. They reneged, in fact, on their obligation to establish a Jewish national home. They even illegally blocked the entrance of Jews who were desperately trying to escape Europe. They did so even when the danger to Jewish life became obvious, helping Hitler to trap and kill many Jews.
The mufti accompanied his 1936-39 war against the Jews <../../antiholo/arabnazi.html> with a campaign of terror against his Arab opponents (again, just like Arafat). His henchmen assassinated not only every political rival that contemplated some sort of accommodation, but also practically anyone who could even potentially become a political rival. Hundreds of Arabs were liquidated, a large part of the Palestinian elites. Many more were forced to flee.
It was a tragedy from which the Palestinians, who were developing by then a hateful, xenophobic nationalism, never recovered. It explains why to date, the Palestinian, many of whom are talented, hard-working people, have been unable to build a civil society with legitimate political institutions. It was the loss and demoralization of their leadership that prevented the Palestinian Arabs from establishing a state in 1948. That in turn facilitated the takeover of their political life by the radical and criminal elements that have brought on them repeated catastrophes.
The British officials who have encouraged and exploited radical Arab elements are to a large extent responsible for the continued tragedy of Arab politics and for the repeated disasters the Arabs suffered. Most of the Arab states established by the colonialists remain artificial entities barely able to contain the hostile ethnic groups that were arbitrarily incorporated into them. Lacking a unifying principle and legitimacy, they remain politically, socially, and economically extremely unstable, held together by the military dictatorships the colonial powers left behind.
In 1948, the British gave up the mandate and the U.N. partitioned Palestine, offering the Jews only a sliver of the area originally designated as a Jewish national home. Partition arbitrarily deprived the Jews of their internationally sanctioned legal rights to all of Palestine, including what is now the kingdom of Jordan. Nevertheless, Israel accepted it.
The Palestinians, and the Arab states supporting them, refused to accept partition and launched a war of annihilation against Israel. The British left on May 15, 1948, doing everything they could to render the Jews defenseless before the onslaught of six Arab armies — including an Arab legion led by British officers which put siege to Jerusalem and almost starved its population. Against all odds, and at great cost (every ninth Israeli was a casualty of the war), Israel repulsed the Arab attacks and established itself within the 1949 armistice lines. Jordan unilaterally annexed the remaining heartland territories designated for a Palestinian state, and Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians never protested — perhaps because they considered Jordan their own, since the majority of its inhabitants were Palestinians.
Before Israel ejected Jordan from the "West Bank" and Egypt from the Gaza Strip, in 1967, Palestinians lived for almost two decades under a very repressive Jordanian occupation and under brutal Egyptian military rule in the Gaza Strip — in utter destitution and with no rights at all. Gaza was, in effect, a large Egyptian prison camp. Yet they did not protest. Their anger was skillfully directed against Israel, so that they wished it destroyed even though it did not then occupy "their land" or hold them captive. Nor did any of their friends who today pretend to defend their right for self-determination raise then even a squeak.
The true intentions of the Authority's leadership under Arafat were made apparent when Israel's prime minister, Ehud Barak, offered to cede 96 percent of the disputed territories to the Palestinian Authority and even compensate it for the remaining 4 percent. As is well known, Arafat rejected the offer and launched his war of terror against Israel, hoping to force it to accept the "return" of Arab refugees, and to undermine Israel from within by swamping it with "returning" refugees.
Barak made these far-reaching concessions despite the fact that there were conflicting legal claims to the disputed territories, and that the settlements, built on empty government land, have not displaced any Palestinians or taken any of their private property (except in rare cases for security or public works purposes).
GETTING NOWHERE
Still, the two big lies about continued Israeli "occupation" and "stolen Arab lands" continue to be used by the Arabs and have scored great successes, especially in Europe.
Since the Second World War, their alleged friends in the European Union — especially the French — systematically supported and sustained Arab dictatorships. The oppression generated by these dictators, and the poverty they perpetuated, helped create the backlash of radical Islamist fundamentalism. America's unqualified support for the repressive and corrupt regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt has also contributed its share to a continued Middle East catastrophe. Defense of the arch-terrorist Arafat, whose PLO the Saudis and the Egyptians created, fund, and support, is the logical conclusion of this dangerous policy.
The Europeans have at least good, if cynical, realpolitik reasons for supporting dictatorships in the Arab world. They sell them billions in armaments, helping to offset some of the cost of Middle East oil. They profit from "special" trade terms acquired from these corrupt regimes through the extensive use of bribery (a great competitive advantage over U.S. firms, which are forbidden by law from engaging in such practices). Israel's security is only another sop they willingly throw to these dictators in the furtherance of their interests.
They cannot, of course, openly admit such cynical behavior, since it might not sit well with their "liberal" constituencies and leftist supporters. So they cover up their cynicism with the pretence of seeking justice for the Palestinians — a pretence that plays well among their pro-third world, anti-American supporters.
The European elites are thus willing accomplices in the propagation of Arab lies that demonize Israel. Demonizing Israel makes it possible for them to support, with a clear conscience, the most horribly repressive Arab dictatorships and even the destruction of the only democracy in the Middle East. Barely 60 years after the Holocaust, Arab calumnies help the European salve their conscience so successfully that they are even ready to help Muslim rogue states acquire weapons of mass destruction, and to protect these rogue states against preventative action by the U.S.
It takes democracies a long time to absorb even the most recent and most costly lessons of history. A Europe that fell easy prey to the Big Lies Goebbels spread to keep it disarmed was to pay heavily for its complacency towards Nazi aggression. Last September 11, Americans paid heavily for their own failure to identify in time a danger from a radical and deadly challenge to their basic values and institutions — a challenge that before long may be mounted with weapons of mass destruction.
The West will continue to be exposed to grave danger until it finally wakes up and realizes how Arab lies have managed to lull it to the danger from implacable Muslim fundamentalism, a danger Israel has already been facing for so many years.
For so many years Israel has been under attack by Muslim fundamentalism? How many years is that again? 50? So, for the other 6000 years, what happened? I guess no other nation or people have suffered as much as the Jewish people, and so, you are entitled to be craven and cold in your actions to others and YOUR OWN PEOPLE?!!?!?!
What is fascinating is how wonderful the lives of people who have Jewish faith enjoy is so many Western nations currently. Economic, social and cultural prosperity are norms for many Jewish communities in the world, and so many Jewish people are pilars of the community. The greatest lie of Israel was that it was land to protect the Jews. Well, Sharon and his government have done NOTHING of the sort, and continue onwards to destroy the soul of Israel. Good job boys!
http://www.flamemag.dircon.co.uk/weissmandel_ten_questions.htm
1. IS IT TRUE that in 1941 and again in 1942, the German Gestapo offered all European Jews transit to Spain, if they would relinquish all their property in Germany and Occupied France; on condition that:
* a) none of the deportees travel from Spain to Palestine; and
* b) all the deportees be transported from Spain to the USA or British colonies, and there to remain; with entry visas to be arranged by the Jews living there; and
* c) $1000.00 ransom for each family to be furnished by the Agency, payable upon the arrival of the family at the Spanish border at the rate of 1000 families daily.
2. IS IT TRUE that the Zionist leaders in Switzerland and Turkey received this offer with the clear understanding that the exclusion of Palestine as a destination for the deportees was based on an agreement between the Gestapo and the Mufti.
3. IS IT TRUE that the answer of the Zionist leaders was negative, with the following comments:
* a) ONLY Palestine would be considered as a destination for the deportees.
* b) The European Jews must accede to suffering and death greater in measure than the other nations, in order that the victorious allies agree to a "Jewish State" at the end of the war.
* c) No ransom will be paid
4. IS IT TRUE that this response to the Gestapo's offer was made with the full knowledge that the alternative to this offer was the gas chamber.
5. IS IT TRUE that in 1944, at the time of the Hungarian deportations, a similar offer was made, whereby all Hungarian Jewry could be saved.
6. IS IT TRUE that the same Zionist hierearchy again refused this offer (after the gas chambers had already taken a toll of millions).
7. IS IT TRUE that during the height of the killings in the war, 270 Members of the British Parliament proposed to evacuate 500,000 Jews from Europe, and resettle them in British colonies, as a part of diplomatic negotiations with Germany.
8. IS IT TRUE that this offer was rejected by the Zionist leaders with the observation "Only to Palestine!"
9 IS IT TRUE hat the British government granted visas to 300 rabbis and their families to the Colony of Mauritius, with passage for the evacuees through Turkey. The "Jewish Agency" leaders sabotaged this plan with the observation that the plan was disloyal to Palestine, and the 300 rabbis and their families should be gassed.
10. IS IT TRUE that during the course of the negotiations mentioned above, Chaim Weizman, the first "Jewish statesman" stated: "The most valuable part of the Jewish nation is already in Palestine, and those Jews living outside Palestine are not too important". Weizman's cohort, Greenbaum, amplified this statement with the observation "One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Europe".
There are additional similar questions to be asked of these atheist degenerates known as "Jewish statesmen", but for the time being let them respond to the ten questions.
These Zionist "statesmen" with their great foresight, sought to bring an end two two-thousand years of Divinely ordained Jewish subservience and political tractability. With their offensive militancy, they fanned the fires of anti-Semitism in Europe, and succeeded in forging a bond of Jew-hatred between Nazi-Germany and the surrounding countries.
These are the "statesmen" who organized the irresponsible boycott against Germany in 1933. This boycott hurt Germany like a fly attacking an elephant - but it brought calamity upon the Jews of Europe. At a time when America and England were at peace with the mad-dog Hitler, the Zionist "statesmen" forsook the only plausible method of political amenability; and with their boycott incensed the leader of Germany to a frenzy. And then, after the bitterest episode in Jewish history, these Zionist "statesmen" lured the broken refugees in the DP camps to remain in hunger and deprivation, and to refuse relocation to any place but Palestine; only for the purpose of building their State.
The Zionist "statesmen" have incited and continue to incite an embittered Jewish youth to futile wars against world powers like England, and against masses of hundreds of millions of Arabs.
AND THESE SAME ZIONIST "STATESMEN" HEEDLESSLY PUSH THE WORLD TO THE BRINK OF ANOTHER TOTAL WAR - REVOLVING ENTIRELY AROUND THE HOLY LAND.
What may befall the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, of the Arab crescent, Europe, or the USA; is of no concern to these Zionist leaders. The rising anti-Semitism in the Western World is the product of their "statesmanship".
Under the guise of "love of Israel", the Zionist "statesmen" seduced many Jews to replace devotion to the Torah and its Sages with devotion to the scoundrel who founded Zionism. It is of no little significance that Herzl originally sought conversion of the Jews as a solution to the problems of the Diaspora. When he realized that this was not acceptable to the Jewish masses, he contrived Zionism as a satisfactory alternative!
A look into history reveals that this very same type of "statesmen" opposed the call of Jeremiah the prophet to yield to the minions of Nebuchadnezzar at the destruction of the first Temple. Five centuries later, Rabbi Yochonon Ben Zakai appealed to the people to surrender to Titus the Roman to avoid bloodshed. The "statesmen" rejected this appeal, and the second Temple was destroyed by the Romans. - And now for the past fifty years, the Zionist "statesmen" rebuff the leadership of our Sages; and continue in their policy of fomenting anti-Semitism. When will they stop?? Must every Jew in America also suffer?? - Even the Nazi monsters had more sense, and gave up their war before all Germany was destroyed. The Zionist "statesmen" ridicule the sacred oath which the Creator placed upon the Jews in the Diaspora. Our Torah, in Tractate Kesuvos, folio 111, specifies that the Creator, blessed be He, enswore the Jews not to occupy the Holy Land by force, even if it appears that they have the force to do so; and not rebel against the Nations. And the Creator warned that if His oath be desecrated, Jewish flesh would be "open property", like the animals in the forest!! These are words of our Torah; and these concepts have been cited in Maimonides' "Igeres Teimon", "Be'er HaGola", "Ahavas Yehonosson", and in "Toras Moshe" of the Chasam Sofer.
IT IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE THAT ALL THE SAGES AND SAINTS IN EUROPE AT THE TIME OF HITLER'S RISE DECLARED THAT HE WAS A MESSENGER OF DIVINE WRATH, SENT TO CHASTEN THE JEWS BECAUSE OF THE BITTER APOSTASY OF ZIONISM AGAINST THE BELIEF IN THE EVENTUAL MESSIANIC REDEMPTION.
Yidden - merciful sons of merciful fathers - how much longer must holy Jewish blood continue to be shed??
The only solution is:
* 1.The Jewish people must reject, outright, a "Jewish State".
* 2.The Jewish people should accept the US compromise.
* 3.We must depose the atheist-Zionist "statesmen" from their role as Jewish leaders, and return to the faithful leadership of our sages.
* 4.We beseech the Nations to open all doors to immigration - not only the doors of Palestine.
* 5.Peaceful, non-Zionist religious personalities in Palestine, (particularly from the native population) and their counterparts in the Diaspora, should engage in responsible, face-to face negotiations on behalf of the Jewish people, with the British and the Arabs; with an aim of amicable settlement of the Palestine issue.
Every Jew is obliged to pray to the Blessed creator, for in Him lies all our strength. Let us bear in mind that our prayers be forthright. One should not entreat the Creator to provide a banquet on Yom Kippur, and one can not perform a ritual ablution with a dead bug in his hand. Similarly, we should avoid the untenable position of the robber who prays for Divine help in carrying out his crime. We should pray that Zionism and its fruits vanish from the Earth, and that we be redeemed by the Messiah with dispatch.
A prisoner is released only when he has served his time, or if he is pardoned by the President for good behavior. If he attempts escape and is apprehended, his term is lengthened, besides the beating he receives when he is caught.
Faithful Jews - for over three and one-half thousand years, in all parts of the world, through all trials, our grandfathers and grandmothers marched through seas of blood and tears in order to keep the Faith of the Torah unswervingly. If we have compassion for ourselves, for our women and children, and for the Jewish people, we will maintain our golden legacy today. We have been sentenced to exile by the King of Kings because of our sins. The eternal blessed be He, has decreed that we accept the exile with humble gratitude until the time comes, or until we merit His pardon through repentance if we seek to end the exile with force, G-d will catch us, as our sages have forewarned, and our sentence becomes longer and more difficult.
Many times in the past have segments of our people been defrauded by false messiahs - but none of the false messiahs has been as fallacious and delusory as the lie of Zionism. With our historical experience as our guide, no retribution has been or will be greater than the retribution for giving credence to Zionism. If we wish our exile-sentence commuted, we must appeal through repentance; and through total physical and spiritual observance of the Sabbath, laws of family purity, and study of Torah.
Let it be clearly understood that never in Jewish history (even in the time of Jeroboam or Achav) have such hostile atheists stood at the helm of the Jewish people as today.
How can we plead to the Almighty for mercy while we tolerate these vile, "wicked" leaders as spokesmen! Beloved brothers - let us cleanse our ranks and cleanse our midst; let us entreat the Almighty through prayer, repentance, and fulfillment of mitzvos that He alone redeem us, His people, immediately.
May Hashem our G-d avenge the blood of all those who perished in the Holocaust !
May we merit to see them once again with the coming of Moshiach speedily in our days !
What is fascinating is how wonderful the lives of people who have Jewish faith enjoy is so many Western nations currently. Economic, social and cultural prosperity are norms for many Jewish communities in the world, and so many Jewish people are pilars of the community. The greatest lie of Israel was that it was land to protect the Jews. Well, Sharon and his government have done NOTHING of the sort, and continue onwards to destroy the soul of Israel. Good job boys!
http://www.flamemag.dircon.co.uk/weissmandel_ten_questions.htm
1. IS IT TRUE that in 1941 and again in 1942, the German Gestapo offered all European Jews transit to Spain, if they would relinquish all their property in Germany and Occupied France; on condition that:
* a) none of the deportees travel from Spain to Palestine; and
* b) all the deportees be transported from Spain to the USA or British colonies, and there to remain; with entry visas to be arranged by the Jews living there; and
* c) $1000.00 ransom for each family to be furnished by the Agency, payable upon the arrival of the family at the Spanish border at the rate of 1000 families daily.
2. IS IT TRUE that the Zionist leaders in Switzerland and Turkey received this offer with the clear understanding that the exclusion of Palestine as a destination for the deportees was based on an agreement between the Gestapo and the Mufti.
3. IS IT TRUE that the answer of the Zionist leaders was negative, with the following comments:
* a) ONLY Palestine would be considered as a destination for the deportees.
* b) The European Jews must accede to suffering and death greater in measure than the other nations, in order that the victorious allies agree to a "Jewish State" at the end of the war.
* c) No ransom will be paid
4. IS IT TRUE that this response to the Gestapo's offer was made with the full knowledge that the alternative to this offer was the gas chamber.
5. IS IT TRUE that in 1944, at the time of the Hungarian deportations, a similar offer was made, whereby all Hungarian Jewry could be saved.
6. IS IT TRUE that the same Zionist hierearchy again refused this offer (after the gas chambers had already taken a toll of millions).
7. IS IT TRUE that during the height of the killings in the war, 270 Members of the British Parliament proposed to evacuate 500,000 Jews from Europe, and resettle them in British colonies, as a part of diplomatic negotiations with Germany.
8. IS IT TRUE that this offer was rejected by the Zionist leaders with the observation "Only to Palestine!"
9 IS IT TRUE hat the British government granted visas to 300 rabbis and their families to the Colony of Mauritius, with passage for the evacuees through Turkey. The "Jewish Agency" leaders sabotaged this plan with the observation that the plan was disloyal to Palestine, and the 300 rabbis and their families should be gassed.
10. IS IT TRUE that during the course of the negotiations mentioned above, Chaim Weizman, the first "Jewish statesman" stated: "The most valuable part of the Jewish nation is already in Palestine, and those Jews living outside Palestine are not too important". Weizman's cohort, Greenbaum, amplified this statement with the observation "One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Europe".
There are additional similar questions to be asked of these atheist degenerates known as "Jewish statesmen", but for the time being let them respond to the ten questions.
These Zionist "statesmen" with their great foresight, sought to bring an end two two-thousand years of Divinely ordained Jewish subservience and political tractability. With their offensive militancy, they fanned the fires of anti-Semitism in Europe, and succeeded in forging a bond of Jew-hatred between Nazi-Germany and the surrounding countries.
These are the "statesmen" who organized the irresponsible boycott against Germany in 1933. This boycott hurt Germany like a fly attacking an elephant - but it brought calamity upon the Jews of Europe. At a time when America and England were at peace with the mad-dog Hitler, the Zionist "statesmen" forsook the only plausible method of political amenability; and with their boycott incensed the leader of Germany to a frenzy. And then, after the bitterest episode in Jewish history, these Zionist "statesmen" lured the broken refugees in the DP camps to remain in hunger and deprivation, and to refuse relocation to any place but Palestine; only for the purpose of building their State.
The Zionist "statesmen" have incited and continue to incite an embittered Jewish youth to futile wars against world powers like England, and against masses of hundreds of millions of Arabs.
AND THESE SAME ZIONIST "STATESMEN" HEEDLESSLY PUSH THE WORLD TO THE BRINK OF ANOTHER TOTAL WAR - REVOLVING ENTIRELY AROUND THE HOLY LAND.
What may befall the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, of the Arab crescent, Europe, or the USA; is of no concern to these Zionist leaders. The rising anti-Semitism in the Western World is the product of their "statesmanship".
Under the guise of "love of Israel", the Zionist "statesmen" seduced many Jews to replace devotion to the Torah and its Sages with devotion to the scoundrel who founded Zionism. It is of no little significance that Herzl originally sought conversion of the Jews as a solution to the problems of the Diaspora. When he realized that this was not acceptable to the Jewish masses, he contrived Zionism as a satisfactory alternative!
A look into history reveals that this very same type of "statesmen" opposed the call of Jeremiah the prophet to yield to the minions of Nebuchadnezzar at the destruction of the first Temple. Five centuries later, Rabbi Yochonon Ben Zakai appealed to the people to surrender to Titus the Roman to avoid bloodshed. The "statesmen" rejected this appeal, and the second Temple was destroyed by the Romans. - And now for the past fifty years, the Zionist "statesmen" rebuff the leadership of our Sages; and continue in their policy of fomenting anti-Semitism. When will they stop?? Must every Jew in America also suffer?? - Even the Nazi monsters had more sense, and gave up their war before all Germany was destroyed. The Zionist "statesmen" ridicule the sacred oath which the Creator placed upon the Jews in the Diaspora. Our Torah, in Tractate Kesuvos, folio 111, specifies that the Creator, blessed be He, enswore the Jews not to occupy the Holy Land by force, even if it appears that they have the force to do so; and not rebel against the Nations. And the Creator warned that if His oath be desecrated, Jewish flesh would be "open property", like the animals in the forest!! These are words of our Torah; and these concepts have been cited in Maimonides' "Igeres Teimon", "Be'er HaGola", "Ahavas Yehonosson", and in "Toras Moshe" of the Chasam Sofer.
IT IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE THAT ALL THE SAGES AND SAINTS IN EUROPE AT THE TIME OF HITLER'S RISE DECLARED THAT HE WAS A MESSENGER OF DIVINE WRATH, SENT TO CHASTEN THE JEWS BECAUSE OF THE BITTER APOSTASY OF ZIONISM AGAINST THE BELIEF IN THE EVENTUAL MESSIANIC REDEMPTION.
Yidden - merciful sons of merciful fathers - how much longer must holy Jewish blood continue to be shed??
The only solution is:
* 1.The Jewish people must reject, outright, a "Jewish State".
* 2.The Jewish people should accept the US compromise.
* 3.We must depose the atheist-Zionist "statesmen" from their role as Jewish leaders, and return to the faithful leadership of our sages.
* 4.We beseech the Nations to open all doors to immigration - not only the doors of Palestine.
* 5.Peaceful, non-Zionist religious personalities in Palestine, (particularly from the native population) and their counterparts in the Diaspora, should engage in responsible, face-to face negotiations on behalf of the Jewish people, with the British and the Arabs; with an aim of amicable settlement of the Palestine issue.
Every Jew is obliged to pray to the Blessed creator, for in Him lies all our strength. Let us bear in mind that our prayers be forthright. One should not entreat the Creator to provide a banquet on Yom Kippur, and one can not perform a ritual ablution with a dead bug in his hand. Similarly, we should avoid the untenable position of the robber who prays for Divine help in carrying out his crime. We should pray that Zionism and its fruits vanish from the Earth, and that we be redeemed by the Messiah with dispatch.
A prisoner is released only when he has served his time, or if he is pardoned by the President for good behavior. If he attempts escape and is apprehended, his term is lengthened, besides the beating he receives when he is caught.
Faithful Jews - for over three and one-half thousand years, in all parts of the world, through all trials, our grandfathers and grandmothers marched through seas of blood and tears in order to keep the Faith of the Torah unswervingly. If we have compassion for ourselves, for our women and children, and for the Jewish people, we will maintain our golden legacy today. We have been sentenced to exile by the King of Kings because of our sins. The eternal blessed be He, has decreed that we accept the exile with humble gratitude until the time comes, or until we merit His pardon through repentance if we seek to end the exile with force, G-d will catch us, as our sages have forewarned, and our sentence becomes longer and more difficult.
Many times in the past have segments of our people been defrauded by false messiahs - but none of the false messiahs has been as fallacious and delusory as the lie of Zionism. With our historical experience as our guide, no retribution has been or will be greater than the retribution for giving credence to Zionism. If we wish our exile-sentence commuted, we must appeal through repentance; and through total physical and spiritual observance of the Sabbath, laws of family purity, and study of Torah.
Let it be clearly understood that never in Jewish history (even in the time of Jeroboam or Achav) have such hostile atheists stood at the helm of the Jewish people as today.
How can we plead to the Almighty for mercy while we tolerate these vile, "wicked" leaders as spokesmen! Beloved brothers - let us cleanse our ranks and cleanse our midst; let us entreat the Almighty through prayer, repentance, and fulfillment of mitzvos that He alone redeem us, His people, immediately.
May Hashem our G-d avenge the blood of all those who perished in the Holocaust !
May we merit to see them once again with the coming of Moshiach speedily in our days !
You have to go back to your books and read properly.
The land of Palestine never was nor is of Israel. They occupied the land, sure in the name of God as chosen children, there were indigenous people before Jews.
Nor there was any nation called Israel, for what we know from archeology, there were two kingdom: one called Israel and the other Judeah, they have different lifestyles, and probably different religions (if we look at the archeological discoveries).
The modern trouble has to do not with Jews but Zionists. These are European Jews that they lost the semitic lineage or race.
The indigenous jews are considered as second class citizen.
I may go on and on, the point is the land of Palestine belong to Palestinians. Ottoman empire never hurt indigenous jews, they were living together with peacefully with palestinians.
The land of Palestine never was nor is of Israel. They occupied the land, sure in the name of God as chosen children, there were indigenous people before Jews.
Nor there was any nation called Israel, for what we know from archeology, there were two kingdom: one called Israel and the other Judeah, they have different lifestyles, and probably different religions (if we look at the archeological discoveries).
The modern trouble has to do not with Jews but Zionists. These are European Jews that they lost the semitic lineage or race.
The indigenous jews are considered as second class citizen.
I may go on and on, the point is the land of Palestine belong to Palestinians. Ottoman empire never hurt indigenous jews, they were living together with peacefully with palestinians.
Were the logical consequences not so tragically flawed, I would find the "facts" by secular above quite laughable. An appropriate title for his next presentation could quite seriously be called " By Way of Artifice". The Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine for 700 years granted, and secular would have us believe that mitigates from any lawful claim on the land the inhabitants had. By such logic, let us also deny the rightful existence of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, Greece, and even the various Balkan states that the Ottomans also conquered for that same period of time. What secular fails to mention because it doesn’t quiet fit into his “factual” causality, is that the existence of the modern day state as a body politic is exactly that: modern. The phenomenon is mostly a 20th century evolution derived precisely from the recognition of various ethnic and religious divides that had been abridged and blurred in the Age of Empires before it. One look at Africa should suffice to confirm that.
On another point of sophistry, this time by omission, is that the Balfour Declaration had been issued when the Rothschildes, significant creditors to the British government (and others, in the true spirit of covering one’s bets) during a string of continental wars culminating with WW1, had exerted the tremendous leverage of their monies to pressure the Balfour government into that concession, in the spirit of the Sykes/Picot agreement which also violated the indigenous people of the Levant’s rights to self determination, contrary to earlier promises made to them by the colonial powers in their zest to rid themselves of the Ottomans. That various Zionist congresses, under the auspices of that failed play write Theodore Herzl, had even considered countries in Latin America and Africa as potential homes for the Jewish peoples highlights the fact that there was little care with who they had to displace to achieve it (unless of course secular will claim that those destinations were too devoid of a local populace).
That the British and French had nefarious intentions and pitted the Arab against the Jew is indubitable, that the Zionists caused the death of untold numbers of their brethren in their refusal of alternate destinations for the Jews of Europe is equally unquestioned. The blood of those who perished must surely be on the consciousness of the state of Israel, tainting its very soul, although judging from its sure strangulation of the Palestinians and its dispossession of their lands and negation of basic human rights, an awakening is yet a while away…
On another point of sophistry, this time by omission, is that the Balfour Declaration had been issued when the Rothschildes, significant creditors to the British government (and others, in the true spirit of covering one’s bets) during a string of continental wars culminating with WW1, had exerted the tremendous leverage of their monies to pressure the Balfour government into that concession, in the spirit of the Sykes/Picot agreement which also violated the indigenous people of the Levant’s rights to self determination, contrary to earlier promises made to them by the colonial powers in their zest to rid themselves of the Ottomans. That various Zionist congresses, under the auspices of that failed play write Theodore Herzl, had even considered countries in Latin America and Africa as potential homes for the Jewish peoples highlights the fact that there was little care with who they had to displace to achieve it (unless of course secular will claim that those destinations were too devoid of a local populace).
That the British and French had nefarious intentions and pitted the Arab against the Jew is indubitable, that the Zionists caused the death of untold numbers of their brethren in their refusal of alternate destinations for the Jews of Europe is equally unquestioned. The blood of those who perished must surely be on the consciousness of the state of Israel, tainting its very soul, although judging from its sure strangulation of the Palestinians and its dispossession of their lands and negation of basic human rights, an awakening is yet a while away…
Were the logical consequences not so tragically flawed, I would find the "facts" by secular above quite laughable. An appropriate title for his next presentation could quite seriously be called " By Way of Artifice". The Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine for 700 years granted, and secular would have us believe that mitigates from any lawful claim on the land the inhabitants had. By such logic, let us also deny the rightful existence of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, Greece, and even the various Balkan states that the Ottomans also conquered for that same period of time. What secular fails to mention because it doesn’t quiet fit into his “factual” causality, is that the existence of the modern day state as a body politic is exactly that: modern. The phenomenon is mostly a 20th century evolution derived precisely from the recognition of various ethnic and religious divides that had been abridged and blurred in the Age of Empires before it. One look at Africa should suffice to confirm that.
On another point of sophistry, this time by omission, is that the Balfour Declaration had been issued when the Rothschildes, significant creditors to the British government (and others, in the true spirit of covering one’s bets) during a string of continental wars culminating with WW1, had exerted the tremendous leverage of their monies to pressure the Balfour government into that concession, in the spirit of the Sykes/Picot agreement which also violated the indigenous people of the Levant’s rights to self determination, contrary to earlier promises made to them by the colonial powers in their zest to rid themselves of the Ottomans. That various Zionist congresses, under the auspices of that failed play write Theodore Herzl, had even considered countries in Latin America and Africa as potential homes for the Jewish peoples highlights the fact that there was little care with who they had to displace to achieve it (unless of course secular will claim that those destinations were too devoid of a local populace).
That the British and French had nefarious intentions and pitted the Arab against the Jew is indubitable, that the Zionists caused the death of untold numbers of their brethren in their refusal of alternate destinations for the Jews of Europe is equally unquestioned. The blood of those who perished must surely be on the consciousness of the state of Israel, tainting its very soul, although judging from its sure strangulation of the Palestinians and its dispossession of their lands and negation of basic human rights, an awakening is yet a while away…
On another point of sophistry, this time by omission, is that the Balfour Declaration had been issued when the Rothschildes, significant creditors to the British government (and others, in the true spirit of covering one’s bets) during a string of continental wars culminating with WW1, had exerted the tremendous leverage of their monies to pressure the Balfour government into that concession, in the spirit of the Sykes/Picot agreement which also violated the indigenous people of the Levant’s rights to self determination, contrary to earlier promises made to them by the colonial powers in their zest to rid themselves of the Ottomans. That various Zionist congresses, under the auspices of that failed play write Theodore Herzl, had even considered countries in Latin America and Africa as potential homes for the Jewish peoples highlights the fact that there was little care with who they had to displace to achieve it (unless of course secular will claim that those destinations were too devoid of a local populace).
That the British and French had nefarious intentions and pitted the Arab against the Jew is indubitable, that the Zionists caused the death of untold numbers of their brethren in their refusal of alternate destinations for the Jews of Europe is equally unquestioned. The blood of those who perished must surely be on the consciousness of the state of Israel, tainting its very soul, although judging from its sure strangulation of the Palestinians and its dispossession of their lands and negation of basic human rights, an awakening is yet a while away…
Anyone interested in the TRUTH about Israel's dirty war can get the video "Truth: Exposing Israeli Apartheid" featuring a Refusenik, footage from Gaza showing harsh apartheid conditions forced onto Palestinians, Palestinian children maimed and killed by Israeli soldiers, local rallies and activists speaking out --- send $20 cash to: TRUTH, P.O. Box 10458, Oakland, CA 94610. Remember to include the address you want the tape sent to. The question is, can you handle the truth????
Who Are You
(Tom Waits/K. Brennan)
They're lining up
To mad dog your tilta whirl
3 shots for a dollar
Win a real live doll
All the lies that you tell
I believed them so well, Take them back
Take them back to your red house
For that fearful leap into the dark
I did my time
In the jail of your arms
Now Ophelia wants to know
Where she should turn
Tell me... What did you do,
What did you do the last time?...
Why don't you do that
Go on ahead take this the wrong way
Time's not your friend
Do you cry, Do you pray
Do you wish them away
Do you still leave nothing
But bones in the way
Did you bury the carnival
Lions and all
Excuse me while I sharpen my nails
And just who are you this time?
You look rather tired
(Who drinks from your shoe)
Are you pretending to love
Well I hear that it pays well
How do your pistol and your Bible and your
Sleeping pills go.
Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?
Well I fell in love
With your sailor's mouth and your wounded eyes.
You better get down on the floor
Don't you know this is war
Tell me who are you this time?
Tell me who are you this time?
(Tom Waits/K. Brennan)
They're lining up
To mad dog your tilta whirl
3 shots for a dollar
Win a real live doll
All the lies that you tell
I believed them so well, Take them back
Take them back to your red house
For that fearful leap into the dark
I did my time
In the jail of your arms
Now Ophelia wants to know
Where she should turn
Tell me... What did you do,
What did you do the last time?...
Why don't you do that
Go on ahead take this the wrong way
Time's not your friend
Do you cry, Do you pray
Do you wish them away
Do you still leave nothing
But bones in the way
Did you bury the carnival
Lions and all
Excuse me while I sharpen my nails
And just who are you this time?
You look rather tired
(Who drinks from your shoe)
Are you pretending to love
Well I hear that it pays well
How do your pistol and your Bible and your
Sleeping pills go.
Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?
Well I fell in love
With your sailor's mouth and your wounded eyes.
You better get down on the floor
Don't you know this is war
Tell me who are you this time?
Tell me who are you this time?
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