Zion. An island of sanity in an ocean of savagery.
Friday, August 13, 2004
Unwelcome and expendable Jews
The remembrance of the Warsaw uprising is cause for Rafael Medoff to remind us all how the allies consciously left millions (YES, MILLIONS) of Jews to die in the last half year or so of WW2.
Much research has been done wether the Allies knew of the ongoing Holocaust, and if so, wether they could have done anything about it.
The answer to both questions is an emphatic yes.
The Allies' knowledge is a matter of record. As for their capacity:
Auschwitz is most infamous for its Birkenau section, where the gas chambers and crematoria were situated. An estimated 1.6 million people were murdered there. Less well known is that Auschwitz also contained dozens of slave labor camps. One was known as Buna-Monowitz, where the Germans had set up factories for the production of synthetic oil, which was crucial to their war effort. In the summer of 1944, U.S. and British bombers began hitting the oil factories. On August 20, they dropped over 1,300 bombs on the oil factories of Auschwitz, less than five miles from the gas chambers.
But there were powerful forces in play that dreaded an influx of Jews into the US or UK:
The real reason for the refusal was that the War Department had already secretly decided, back in February 1944, that as a matter of principle it would never use military resources "for the purposes of rescuing victims of enemy oppression." This policy was in accord with the policies of President Roosevelt and his State Department, who feared that saving Jews would create pressure to bring them to the United States. One internal State Department memo specifically warned against the "danger" that the Nazis "might agree to turn over to the United States and to Great Britain a large number of Jewish refugees."
One thing Medoff does not mention in his article is a much overlooked possibility: Implementation of the Balfour Declaration. A national home in Palestine (then a British Mandate) for the Jews. Adopted and sanctioned by the League of Nations (predecessor of the UN). It was all official, a done deal. There was even a window of opportunity when Hitlers first choice was to see all Jews leave.
Except that the British didn't want the Jews in Palestine anymore then they wanted them in Britain. The British put Jews in concentration camps on Cyprus before the Germans ever thought of it.
So it was better to let the Germans have their way with the Jews. Better for everyone involved (except of course the Jews, but they'd all be dead soon anyway). No one wants the Jews.
Officially the Allies stated they simply were not in a position to rescue or even aid the Jews, it would draw resources away from the vital war effort. The real reason was political: An election was coming up (isn't there always?), and
The Poles were viewed by FDR as an ally -- and as a people whose relatives in America constituted an important voting bloc in a presidential election year. Roosevelt administration officials feared Polish-American voters would turn against FDR in November if they believed he was ready to abandon Polish aspirations for independence and permit the Soviet occupation of postwar Poland. In his private diary that summer, senior State Department official Breckinridge Long wrote that Polish-Americans were "popping off in a nationalistic (Polish) direction" and "they may hold the balance of power in votes in Illinois, Ohio, and New York -- and Pennsylvania..."
By contrast, Roosevelt believed (correctly) that he had the Jewish vote in his pocket. Convinced the vast majority of American Jews would vote for him anyway, FDR felt no political pressure to bomb the gas chambers, or loosen America's tight immigration procedures, or even to ask England to open Palestine to Jewish refugees.
So the best thing to do for Roosevelt was to do nothing. The problem would take care of itself. Or more precisely, the Germans would. And did.
Half a million Hungarian Jews died in the last few months before the Russans liberated Eastern Europe. According to some estimates, there were days in Auschwitz when 20.000 people were gassed and burned. The Germans were all but defeated, but they had this one last, important thing to do.
And the Allies let them.
Medoff closes with saying the Warsaw uprising (and the Allies' effort to aid them) should be remembered with honor, and the Allies' refusal to aid the Jews in the same way should be remembered with shame.
Shame doesn't do it for me. The people responsible for letting the Jews perish lived long and prosperous lives, had airports named after them, and leave as a legacy a modern US State department with exactly the same mentality. Shame is meaningless, and certainly worthless if it doesn't effect real change. As long as anti-Semitism and opportunistic pragmatism go hand-in-hand as the leading principle in US and UK foreign policy, the West will keep returning to shame. The current Enemy of the Jews is Islam. Sworn to annihilate Israel. And again the West is bending over backward to accomodate.
Shalom Freedman (you think he might be Jewish?) has a nice op-ed on the difference between the way the Arabs/Muslims conduct politics and the way Israel does. Especially (but not exclusively) their rhetoric is subject of his analysis.
In the last week of July 2004, the erstwhile leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards said that if Israel dared to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, then Israel would be wiped completely from the earth. As usually happens with genocidal threats when they come from the Islamic world toward Israel, there was no protest on the part of the nations of the world. This silence is in a sense expected, for the world has for years been encouraging and cheering at Arab, and most especially Palestinian Arab, rhetoric calling for the destruction of Israel. This kind of abusive language is not some rare exception, but a kind of accepted slogan when it comes to Israel.
This is very true. Muslims can say WHATEVER they want, no matter how outrageous, and not only will no other Muslim ever speak out against it (not even the mythical "moderate" Muslim), in fact NO ONE, no nation, no organization, NOBODY will tell such Muslims off.
One explanation of all this is that the threats are the language of the weak, while Israel with its superior military might needs no such hysterical assurance of its own power. Another explanation is that as part of the cultured world, the West, we understand it is simply not considered right to talk that way. And this while our supposedly more primitive opponents have a strange freedom from any moral restraint linguistically.
I have commented on this before. It seems that the West treats the Arabs as children. You can't really take everything they say serious. You know, it's a cultural thing, like the funny clothes they wear.
Israel is measured by Western standards, only held a little higher. Problem is, the Arabs act on what they say. If they could make good on their prosaic threats, THEY WOULD. And so their use of language is significant. The fact that they use flowery language does not mean they aren't serious, talk that sounds like it came right out of Shakespeare SHOULD be taken at face value.
"The four Jewish towns in northern Samaria which the government will dismantle as part of the disengagement plan are not going to be the only ones,” Deputy PM Ehud Olmert declared today.
It is a mistake to cede ANY land to Arabs. It may well still prove to be a mistake that Sinai was returned to Egypt (more than once, I might add). To give land to Arabs, who certainly have no stronger claim to the land than the Jews do is sickening. No American "ally" is worth such sacrifice, and the blood and grief it is sure to cost in the future.
Olmert implied that if the Prime Minister succeeded in carrying out the Gaza withdrawal, it would actually speed up the withdrawal process in Judea and Samaria. "The government is going to get rid of many settlements, and not just those willing to leave, in order to combat the daily disagreements with the nations of the world."
"the daily disagreements with the nations of the world."
So if the world would just voice its disagreement with the fact that Jews breathe and eat in order to live, they'd have to stop breathing and eating as well, according to Olmert.
Well I have news for him. For those who listen closely, the world's already stated as much. "The world" is not an entity worth listening to, if you're a Jew.
For some odd reason (I really can't explain, I'm not kidding) Sudan's been making the headlines lately. The world's media (perhaps for a lack of anything more newsworthy) have started reporting on the genocide being perpetrated against blacks by their own government, aided by Arab militias.
Recent documented evidence of tens of thousands of people murdered, raped, displaced and sold into slavery has not been cause for the media to speak of genocide.
But genocide is exactly what has been going on. In The Rape of Sudan, Donna Hughes shows why it is important to have a memory that goes back for more than two weeks.
Since 1983 — when the Sudan People's Liberation Army started the warfare that preceded Bashir's coup — an estimated 2 million people have been killed and 4.5 million people have become refugees and internally displaced persons. Two hundred thousand women and children have been captured for labor and sexual slavery. Some of the victims were trafficked into slavery and sexual servitude beyond northern Sudan to Middle Eastern countries.
And while it may seen like the world is ready to act, thousands of people are being murdered and raped daily still. Perpetrators? Arab Muslims. Which goes a long way to explaining the "strange" unwillingness of the planet to act. Millions. MILLIONS of people die, and the world stands idly by, does not even take notice. But Israel builds a defensive barrier, that saves not only Israeli lives but Arab ones as well, and the world condems, ostracizes and boycotts.
How do people explain this selective moral outrage they feel? To themselves?
Well, the truth is out. At least according to a EU investigation into donation to the "Palestinian Authority". But
The independent European Anti-Fraud Office said the inquiry was ongoing and final conclusions had not been drawn.
Most important of all of course is the fact that the EU didn't want to initiate this investigation in the first place. It took years of prodding (stalling no doubt intended to allow Arafat to hide his tracks) before OLAF took off.
But even Palestinian Arabs themselves accuse Arafat of abuse. The EU Observer reported nearly a year and a half ago about this issue, and then today, they cast a rather different light on OLAF's findings.
What has taken OLAF so long? The PA’s own documents demonstrate how the PA and Arafat used EU funds to pay for terrorism were discovered by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and have been available for over a year.
Demand of full parliamentary investigation Volumes of the Palestinian Authority’s own documents, including many graced by Yasser Arafat’s own signature, ordering the Palestinian Ministry of Finance – the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in EU budgetary aid, and additional 950 million euro in humanitarian aid just for the year 2002 – to pay members of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade for killing Israeli citizens, or to pay for the procurement of explosives and illegal weapons.
You can of course choose to disregard anything the Israeli's offered as evidence. I mean, everybody KNOWS they are biased against the "Palestinians".
Oh wait. What the Arabs themselves say is also ignored when it inconveniently contradicts the findings of Chris Patten and his cronies.
The EU claims that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) monitors the PA budget, and European Commissioner for External Affairs Chris Patten maintains that "EU assistance has clear conditions attached to it and is closely monitored… by the IMF at the Commission's request." His office has also stated that, " the IMF conducts a close review of monthly fiscal information covering the whole of the PA budget, including …the wage bill".
In stark contrast however, IMF staff members have contradicted Patten’s claim on several occasions; the Director of the IMF’s Middle Eastern Department, George T. Abed, acknowledged on September 2002 that "with weak institutions and a budget of nearly 1 billion dollars, there has, no doubt, been some abuse. And he added that even "the Palestinian Legislative Council itself has complained about this," he said, and finally that "the IMF does not and cannot control downstream spending by the various Palestinian agencies." Nevertheless, the IMF, much like the EU does not want to be held accountable: "This matter remains between the Palestinian Authority and the donors," said Abed.
It really is hopeless. And it is hopeless not because the EU is inept (they are, but that is not the reason). It is hopeless because no matter what the evidence, the EU HAS to ignore it in order to continue to blindly support and aid the Jew-killers. Which is what they've committed themselves to, a long time ago.
As if it isn't bad enough that the BBC and other news outlets routinely place Muslim terrorists and Jewish soldiers on an even moral footing, there are plenty of Jews that do likewise. Haaretz has an especially large supply of these useful idiots, or (as they would have been employed 60 years ago) wanna-be Judenrat member.
Akiva Eldar is such a stooge. She goes into the subject of Gaza and the anarchy that reigns there. She probably even believes what she says. But what she says is simply unbelievable:
...According to reports issuing from British Intelligence sources in Ramallah, the Palestinians have arrested a number of terrorists in recent months who were on their way to suicide-bomb attacks in Israel. The reports, which have been brought to Sharon's attention, say that wanted men have been arrested and hundreds of kilograms of explosives have been destroyed. But the PA will need more than pistols to destroy the Qassam factories.
To once again enlist popular support for reconciliation and determined confrontation with extremists, the PA must be given real achievements.
"To once again enlist support..." I am truly at a loss for words at the idiocy of this "analysis". As if there ever was such support! But then she easily tops it with this:
Instead of turning the evacuation of the outposts into a means of strengthening voter confidence in President George Bush, why not take advantage of the move to strengthen Palestinian confidence in Arafat?
Israel has a special interest, now perhaps more than ever, in rehabilitating Arafat. True, he is unreliable, dishonest and manipulative, and like Shimon Peres said, he is even a little crazy. But Arafat is the only glue now preventing Palestinian society from completely disintegrating into warring tribes.
How many times must it be clarified that without Arafat's blessing, Mohammed Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub are more or less equivalent to Shaul Mofaz and Silvan Shalom without Sharon?
She compares elected Jewish officials with known Arab murderers and terrorists. She ignores 40 years of documented terrorism, murder and mayhem by Arafat and states that he is exactly what Israel needs.
Akiva Eldar. The Judenrat members were only the last to be gassed. But gassed they were.
I've commented numerous times on anti-Semitism. It is in fact one of the major "raisons d'etre" of this blog.
I am of the first post-Holocaust generation. My father was 13 when WW2 started. My grandfather was married to a German woman, and so survived the war. But four of his brothers and two of his sisters were deported to Auschwitz, Sobibor and Ravensbruck, with all their families. One single brother survived. All the rest were murdered by Germans and Poles.
I would have had a huge family if it hadn't been for the Germans of WW2, and the Dutch police who helped deport the 114.000 Jews of the Netherlands, and the Poles who assisted the Germans and returned escaped Jews to the custody of the Germans.
I visited a number of death- and concentration camps. If you are as closely affected by the Holocaust as I was (and still am), it is hard just to watch the gate of Auschwitz on TV. But to walk through it for real, after crossing the railroad emplacement shown so often in documentaries and movies, that is overpowering.
It would take a special kind of mentality to attack and harass Jews or Israeli's in that place, after all that has taken place there. And that is where Europe has gotten to.
Jewish students attacked at Auschwitz heads the Jeruzalem Post.
It's really nothing major, considering what goes on in most major W-European cities. Jews get accosted and insulted routinely nowadays when they are recognizable as Jews. As in the 1930's in Germany and most of Eastern Europe, no one even takes notice any more.
But in Auschwitz?
Weinbaum, who has been to Poland more than 30 times on educational tours, says he never before saw anything like what happened, happen. "It was simply shocking," he says. "In some way, I felt that these men were satisfied to visit Auschwitz. This was another reminder that in Western Europe there is sympathy for dead Jews; it's just the live ones that they cannot tolerate."
I don't believe there is sympathy even for dead Jews. Shame perhaps for what was done, and more shame for the knowledge that if such circumstances came about once more, the same WOULD happen again. And no one would change a thing. Except the Jews. I hope.
For a piece of quality journalism not found at the BBC or New York Times go to the Jeruzalem Post. It goes into great detail about what motivates the suicide bombers, and what's been causing the drastic decrease in the number of attacks of late.
When Israel assassinated Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin this past March, critics warned that it would produce more men like Mukdi. But for all the talk about rage and root causes, there has not been a single suicide bombing in the past four-and-a-half months. That is because these terrorist acts are just a tactic of war, one that is on the decline.
The author recounts a number of interviews with would-be suicide bombers and their recruiters/handlers. It soon becomes clear that whatever does motivate them, grief and anger over the loss of relatives and friends is not often the main factor, if it is a factor at all. Much more important is the role of religion in their decision to "become martyrs".
Asked where he got the theological sanction to become a suicide bomber, Mukdi answers, "I listened to the Muslim preachers on television. They were my main authority."
As if he repeating an old lecture, he adds, "Dying for martyrs doesn't mean real death."
The dispatchers are a diffent breed. More pragmatic, coolly sending their own young men and women off to die, taking with them as many of the hated Jews as possible.
...I ask Barghouti if he would recruit his own parents to be suicide bombers, half-expecting a burst of righteous indignation at the question. But it does not come. Instead, he answers cryptically that becoming a shahid is an "individual decision" - implying that, if they so desired, he would send his own mother and father to die.
The article is long, but packed with relevant information. A must-read.
Jimmy Bitton has an intriguing thesis about the source of the conflict between Israel and the Arabs.
...The answer to this question may be found by investigating two Islamic principles: Dar Al-Islam and infidels.
From an Islamic perspective, the world is divided into two camps: Dar Al-Harb - lands not yet under Islamic rule - and Dar Al-Islam - lands where Islamic shari'a law exists. Once under Islamic rule, land remains a part of Dar Al-Islam until Judgement Day.
Thus, since Palestine was once under Muslim control (634-1099 CE), it can never be relinquished.
In other words, not only have the Arabs never REALLY accepted Israel as permanent and legitimate neighbour, they NEVER WILL.
Muslims have an inherent interest of maintaining their socio-religious supremacy by denying non-Muslims equality. In the words of the Algeria's first president, "Ce que nous voulons, nous autres Arabes, c'est ךtre. Or, nous ne pourrons ךtre que si l'autre n'est pas (What we want, as Arabs, is to be. However, we can only be, if the other is not)."
This is something you see EVERYWHERE where Arab Muslims and non-Muslims live together (also in countries where Muslims are a minority, where they are immigrants): They cannot have dignity while "the other" has it, they can only have worth if "the other" does not.
Well, tough. In the end, it is the Arabs that will have to do without. At least THEY have been used to it for centuries.
...And coming up equal.
in Amnesty is a Travesty, Angela Bertz analyzes Amnesty's attitude and trackrecord with regards to Israel, and she finds it sorely lacking. As did I in this commentary.
Amnesty refers to Israel as "Israel/Occupied Territories". No other country is singled out for such a derogatory title. In fact, with 404 reports, behind only the United States with 1,178 reports, Colombia with 499 reports and Indonesia with 409 reports, few other countries have received such attention. The Palestinian Authority, corrupt to its core, with the worst abuse record against its children in the world, has only 167. This is a disgrace, considering that the PA has committed or allowed over 100 suicide attacks against Israel, lynchings, shootings by the score... And who in Israel will ever forget the brutal killing in May 2004 of 13 young soldiers, blown to pieces while trying to destroy tunnels in Gaza used to smuggle ammunition? We had to watch as the soldiers' dignity was abused beyond anything humanly acceptable by Gazan ghouls, who raced with joy through the streets with blown up body parts. The Gazans even commandeered an UNRWA ambulance, hoping to extract painful concessions from Israel for the return of the blown up body parts. Where is the AI report condemning this cannibalistic act?
The savage murder of a pregnant mother and her four little daughters appears under Israel and not where it firmly belongs under the PA section. The Palestinians have faced a report less than 10 times for their homicide attacks on innocent Israelis, yet they have committed over 100 attacks. Maybe AI has not had the time to bring so many gross infringements of human rights up to date.
I would add to this that it is simply beyond belief that the US or Israel would outrank China or North-Korea on AI's abuse list. It must be simple inconvenience which causes this... I mean, it must be hard for researchers to get to the bottom of things (or even get a visa) in China, and N-Korea, well, no one EVER goes there! So what the hell, we'll report on democratic countries, where you can go where you like, the coffee's good, and the hotels are not bugged.
Bertz is right. AI differs from the UN in no discernable way. So they are both despicable.
FrontPageMag has this article about the Iranion nuclear ambitions. I have commented on them before, but the article offers a new and interesting angle.
On the face of such open threats to its security, Israel has every right to a preemptive strike. Prime Minister Sharon has declared that it will constitute a state of war for any country hostile to Israel to acquire a nuclear bomb. As a matter of fact, the state of war between the Islamic Republic and the state of Israel has existed for a long time, albeit unilaterally. The mullahs pay $50,000(emphasis mine, ed) to the family of every suicide bomber attacking Israeli targets. This figure is twice the amount offered by Saddam Hussein for such terrorist attacks. A considerable chunk of the budget of the country is allocated for killing Jews inside Israel – and throughout the world(emphasis mine, ed). The bombing of the Jewish Center in the capital of Argentina in July 1994, which resulted in the death of 85 people and the injury of more than 200, is only one instance of this ongoing war. The high officials of the clerical regime who masterminded this carnage spent $10 million only to bribe the Argentinian officials to keep quiet about the Iranian role in this attack.
Read it all. It won't make you feel good, but at least you will know what is coming.
I have 2 sons, ages 5 and 3, who watch The Lion King. As every parent knows, when your children are happy, you are happy, and so when they want to watch a movie, you cannot help but watch it as well. Thousands of times if need be.
In this movie, Simba is the infant son of Mufasa, a noble ruler of his part of the jungle. Mufasa grooms his son to be a worthy heir, and teaches him all about life, particularly about respect and balance.
Mufasa also has a brother, Scar, who is the quintessential bad guy. Scar is a deadbeat, physically inferior to his brother, but clever. Mufasa is aware that his brother schemes, but his nobility and mercy are abused by Scar, and ultimately lead to his death, plotted by Scar, who chases off young Simba and takes over the Lion Kingdom with the help of the evil hyenas.
Simba eventually returns, fullgrown, to reclaim the thrown and depose Scar.
The Lion King is a childrens movie. Everything in it is black-and-white. It is tempting to project such fantasy on real life.
In real life, hyenas are not cowards. Contrary to what many people believe, they are not primarily carrion-eaters but catch a lot of their own prey. They are excellent parents, and have a strong social life.
Lions in contrast steal the prey hyenas catch more often than the other way around. Lions have a lot of in-fighting, often males get killed by others while defending their position as pride leader. They also routinely kill cubs, sometimes even their own, just to stimulate the females' willingness to mate again.
I do regard most Arabs/Muslims as movie-hyenas. Incapable of a real fight except when led by a lion (albeit a rogue one). Eaters of carrion, unable to provide for themselves, preying on what others create and earn.
I do see the Jews as movie-lions. There are relatively few of them (compared to hyenas), but they count for far more. There are rogue lions there too, but they are usually easily recognized (although they may not have scars). Jews take care of themselves, groom their children to do even better. They are also noble and merciful where their enemies would not be, and these traits are often costly.
Lions are becoming an endangered species. So are Jews.
Real lions and hyenas are genetically programmed to behave the way they do. Human beings have no such excuse. Of course Arabs and Jews are physically capable of coexisting. But as long as the mentality of the movie-hyena rules in Arabia, the Lions of Zion had better takes care of their cubs.
We search the purses of little old ladies so that recent immigrants from Saudi Arabia named "Mohammed" wearing massive backpacks don't get singled out.
