The Stupid Left

“Um tom radical, de direita mesmo.”

2012-01-22T15:57:00.001-02:00

Começou o processo de escolha do candidato republicano que enfrentará Barack Obama em novembro. Significa que o Comitê do Partido Democrata para o Brasil (vulgo “escritório da Globo nos Estados Unidos”) tem pela frente grandes oportunidades para desinformar os seus telespectadores e fazê-los acreditar que os direitistas americanos são um bando de idiotas.

Não deixa de ser um avanço. Um ano atrás, os correspondentes da Globo, altamente capacitados no ofício de ler o esquerdista New York Times e repetir a coisa para o público brasileiro, estavam insinuando que certos direitistas lá, além de serem idiotas, incitam o assassinato de adversários políticos. Vocês devem se lembrar da deputada baleada na cabeça por um transtornado mental no estacionamento de um mercantil no Arizona.

Gabrielle Giffords é deputada pelo Partido Democrata. Com base nisso, seus correligionários na imprensa elucidaram o caso em menos de vinte minutos: ela foi vítima de um atentado tramado pela venenosa Sarah Palin, alçada ao posto de líder de um grupo de extremistas determinados a derrubar o governo do santo Obama, a quem se opõem por puro racismo.

O Jornal Nacional foi logo reproduzindo: “Muita gente está acusando o grupo extremamente conservador Tea Party, da ex-candidata a vice-presidente Sarah Palin, por incitar o confronto com os democratas”, comunicou o apresentador. Não foi informado quem era essa “muita gente”. Algumas horas depois, no Jornal da Globo, o correspondente Rodrigo Bocardi reiterou que “o Tea Party, liderado por Sarah Palin, é formado por conservadores extremos”.

É norma da redação: tudo que envolva a direita deve vir acompanhado de adjetivos como "extremista", "radical" e sobretudo "ultraconservador" (este último sempre enfatizado pelos locutores). Já a esquerda nunca leva adjetivo nenhum. Ela nem mesmo é identificada como tal. Na cabeça dos jornalistas, ser de esquerda é apenas ser normal.

Pois bem. Fui ouvir o que a Globo News está falando sobre as primárias republicanas. No Jornal das Dez, um dos apresentadores, ao chamar a correspondente, disse que os candidatos adotam “um tom radical, de direita mesmo” (portanto, não ser de esquerda já é radicalismo). A correspondente, Sandra Coutinho, concordou e ilustrou com uma informação apresentada em discreto tom de reprovação: Rick Perry, governador do Texas, “andou dizendo que a teoria da evolução é só uma teoria, e também disse que não acredita nessa história de aquecimento global”. Bem que me avisaram, esses conservadores são uns imbecis mesmo! Como ousam questionar duas verdades cujas provas de veracidade ainda não apareceram?

Bruno Pontes é jornalista.

Aplausos para ONGs

2011-12-08T06:04:00.002-02:00

Presidente do "Viva Rio": que tal assumir de vez o nome "Viva Bandido"?

por Peter Hof em 15 de fevereiro de 2007

Resumo: Qual seria a reação do Viva Rio se em vez do menino João Hélio a vítima fosse um "di menor", armado, que tivesse sido morto a tiros ao invadir uma residência?

© 2007 MidiaSemMascara.org

Qualquer pessoa de bom senso, que leia quotidianamente os jornais, certamente já terá observado a relação, para se dizer no mínimo estranha, entre ONGs como a Viva Rio, do Rio de Janeiro, e a Sou da Paz, de São Paulo, e as forças da marginalidade que atormentam a vida do cidadão de bem. Essas instituições vivem às custas de gordas contribuições de governos estrangeiros - a Viva Rio recebe, de acordo com o Embaixador Inglês em Brasília, 2,5 milhões de reais por ano, fora as doações de fundações estrangeiras como a Soros, Ford e Rockfeller.

A coisa chega a tal ponto que por ocasião do Referendo sobre o Comércio de Armas, de outubro de 2005, a Justiça Eleitoral proibiu que essas duas ONGs se envolvessem nas campanhas, que antecederam o referendo, devido às suas relações com entidades de outros países. E a coisa não fica por aí: as arcas do Tesouro Nacional despejam, sem nenhum tipo de controle, imensas somas de dinheiro para essas ONGs. Sempre é bom lembrar que essa dinheirama tem origem na carga tributária de quase 40% que a população brasileira, exaurida, carrega nos ombros.

Para exemplificar o que está escrito acima pincei quatro exemplos recentes:
Caso 1: Os leitores deste Mídia Sem Máscara, que também me honram com sua leitura, devem estar lembrados de um artigo intitulado " E agora, senhor Rubem César Fernandes?" em que eu manifestava minha indignação pela apaixonada defesa que o senhor Fernandes, dirigente da ONG Viva Rio, fazia do dirigente comunitário William de Oliveira. Oliveira, dirigente comunitário na favela da Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, e protegé do senhor Fernandes, estava atolado em acusações de ligações espúrias com o tráfico que domina aquela favela.

Indignado com a "injusta perseguição" que a polícia vinha fazendo a um inocente dirigente comunitário, o sociólogo (Deus deu cangurus para a Austrália e sociólogos para o Brasil) Rubem César saiu-se com esta cândida explicação sobre as mentiras do dirigente comunitário à polícia, publicada no jornal O Globo de 5/3/05: "Mentira não chega a ser crime". E a turma da patifaria resolveu levar a sério e ampliar o âmbito da declaração do doutor Fernandes: acrescentaram que também não chega a ser crime receber dinheiro para votar matérias de interesse do governo no caso do mensalão que, por extensão, também não chega a ser crime receber propina em negociatas com ambulâncias. Não chega a ser crime receber veículos Land-Rover de fornecedores do governo. E comprar dossiês falsos sobre candidatos da oposição? Crime? Nem pensar, quando muito é um escorregão de bem intencionados aloprados. Como se viu, "bons exemplos" são facilmente absorvidos por uma significativa parcela da população...
Para azar do sociólogo e do líder comunitário, o jornal O Dia - que pelo visto não concordava com o final que queriam dar à história - publicou uma série de cinco arrasadoras reportagens mostrando que acobertar roubo de armas do Exército e entregar aos traficantes rádios de comunicação comprados pela associação comunitária (muito provavelmente com dinheiro doado pelo Viva Rio), podiam ser considerados "apenas" como "pequenos desvios de conduta" só para o pessoal do Viva Rio, o que resultou na prisão de William de Oliveira.

Caso 2: Ano passado, admitam ou não as "autoridades competentes", o crime organizado efetuou uma verdadeira ação de guerrilha urbana em São Paulo. Um grande número de policiais civis, PMs e até bombeiros foram cruelmente chacinados no decorrer de poucas horas. Alguém viu ou leu alguma declaração do Sou da Paz condenando a chacina de agentes da lei? Se alguém leu por favor me escreva. Agora, bastou a polícia começar a responder ao ataque e matar alguns bandidos para que todo mundo caísse de pau nas "desumanidades" cometidas pela polícia. Não se trata aqui de negar a existência de exageros por parte de alguns maus policiais, ações essas que devem ser severamente punidas. O que não se pode aceitar é a forma como as coisas foram colocadas por uma parte da imprensa. Só faltaram dizer que um grupo de pobres desafortunados, vítimas de uma sociedade cruel e excludente, foi barbaramente trucidado por infames policiais.

Caso três: Em 8/10/2006 uma viúva de 67 anos, moradora no bairro do Flamengo, Rio, cansada de ser ameaçada por ladrões, deu um tiro em um vagabundo que tentava assaltá-la. O mundo quase veio abaixo. Um integrante do Viva Rio declarou que ela merecia apodrecer na cadeia; o senhor Antonio Rangel Bandeira, outro "especialista" do Viva Rio ouvido pelo jornal O Globo - para esse jornal, "especialista" é qualquer pessoa de uma ONG contrária ao direito de autodefesa - criticou o fato de um juiz ter soltado a viúva. Suas palavras publicadas no jornal da Família Marinho: - "A gente fica com pena, mas leis devem ser cumpridas". Pablo Dreyfus, também do sempre presente Viva Rio, declarou que o caso abre um precedente perigoso quando se solta alguém que infringe a lei, embora o tenha feito em defesa da própria vida. Para o senhor Dreyfus e o senhor Bandeira a única lei por eles aceita é da total submissão dos cidadãos de bem aos desmandos da bandidagem.

Caso quatro: O Rio de Janeiro e o Brasil assistiram horrorizados a um ato de barbárie que nem os carrascos nazistas, os mais insensíveis dos seres humanos, seriam capazes de perpetrar: uma criança de seis anos foi arrastada por mais de sete quilômetros por um carro dirigido por marginais. Um policial que chegou ao local contou que chorou ao ver o estado do corpo da criança, completamente dilacerado e não conseguiu transmitir pelo rádio a mensagem. A revolta atingiu níveis nunca vistos neste desgraçado país. O jornal O Globo recebeu em 12 horas mais de 2.500 e-mails de cidadãos revoltados contra um ato que ultrapassa todos os limites até então imaginados da selvageria. Entre essas milhares de manifestações, pincei uma do leitor Jader
Neiva Mello, publicada em 10/2/2007:

"Até agora não vi, ouvi nem li notícia que algum órgão de direitos humanos tenha ido prestar solidariedade à família do menino João. Porém já li sobre a preocupação da ONG Viva Rio para com os bandidos. É sempre assim: vamos defender os facínoras".

Tem toda a razão o referido leitor. Vejam o que declarou o amigo do marginal William de Oliveira, o sociólogo (lembram-se da história da Austrália e dos cangurus?) e dirigente do Viva Rio sobre o caso, em entrevista ao Globo (sempre ele...):

"É uma coisa sem nome, totalmente insuportável. As pessoas de meu trabalho comentaram o assunto durante todo o dia. A violência chegou ao limite da insensibilidade. O perigo é a sociedade entrar nesse clima de violência, ser dragada (sic) por esse sentimento e querer fazer justiça com as próprias mãos".

Perceberam qual a maior preocupação do sociólogo Fernandes? É de a sociedade chegar ao limite da paciência e da capacidade de suportar os golpes que leva diariamente, de ver corrupção e desvio do dinheiro que deveria ser investido em sua segurança parar nos bolsos de mensaleiros e sanguessugas e resolver fazer justiça com as próprias mãos! Para os membros do Viva Rio o que importa é que, acima de tudo, animais que executam mulheres nas ruas, que incendeiam famílias inteiras dentro de carros, que praticam tiro ao alvo em policiais e extorquem e aterrorizam toda uma sociedade, tenham seus direitos humanos respeitados. Será que para variar um pouco, e talvez conseguir mais verbas de fundações e governos estrangeiros, o Viva Rio não pode mudar a cantilena e se preocupar também com os direitos humanos das vítimas? Eles podem começar dando assistência à família de Rônei Cândido Resende, 32 anos, escrivão da Polícia Federal, que em 11/2/2007, ao ser descoberto que era policial foi executado com 9 tiros de fuzil, seu corpo foi colocado na mala de seu próprio carro que foi incendiado pelos perpetrantes, um grupo de vítimas da exclusão social.

Não lembro de ter visto durante toda minha vida uma manifestação de solidariedade e indignação como agora no caso do menino João Hélio. Reunidos na mesma dor e na mesma revolta lá estavam o Governo do Estado, o Governo da Cidade, A Cúria Metropolitana, a Sociedade de Pediatria do Rio de Janeiro, comerciantes como a Confeitaria Colombo que distribuiu fitas pretas aos clientes e pilotos de asa-delta. O site Orkut reuniu 22.255 membros protestando contra o fato. Até mesmo uma escola de samba pretende fazer uma homenagem a João Hélio no desfile de carnaval. Tudo isto não foi suficiente para fazer com que um membro sequer do Viva Rio juntasse sua voz à de milhares de pessoas em uma das raras e contundentes manifestações de uma sociedade entorpecida pela violência que a tem afligido por décadas.

Deixo aos leitores uma pergunta: Qual o ilustre leitor (a) acredita que seria a reação do Viva Rio se em vez do menino João Hélio a vítima fosse um "di menor", armado, que tivesse sido morto a tiros ao invadir uma residência?

O leitor que teve a paciência de ler este texto até aqui deve estar se perguntando a razão para o título desse artigo: Viva quem? Creio que a melhor reposta está contida na carta do leitor Rodrigo Dardeau Vieira, publicada no Globo de 12/10/2006, comentando o caso da idosa que atirou no bandido:

"Quer dizer então que a turma do Viva Rio revogou o direito de legítima defesa, quer a prisão daquela senhora que reagiu a um assalto e a considera uma ameaça à sociedade? Diante disso, proponho a imediata mudança de nome da referida ONG para VIVA BANDIDO! Fica bem mais de acordo".

Ah, a velha, mas sempre bela sabedoria popular!

E agora, senhor Rubem César Fernandes?

2011-12-08T06:03:00.000-02:00

Escrito por Peter Hof | 31 Março 2005
Arquivo

Em artigo publicado aqui no MÍDIA SEM MÁSCARA de 09/03/05 eu citei uma entrevista dada pelo senhor Rubem César Fernandes, diretor do Movimento Viva Rio, à jornalista Taís Mendes, publicada em O Globo de 05/03/05, pág. 21. Na referida matéria ele fazia uma apaixonada defesa de William de Oliveira, presidente de uma organização de moradores da favela da Rocinha e acusado de ligações com o tráfico. Para defender seu protégé, o senhor Fernandes comete verdadeiros absurdos e afrontas ao bom-senso ao declarar que o dirigente comunitário, que em vez de chamar as autoridades joga, ou manda jogar no mato fuzis que haviam sido furtados das Forças Armadas, é coerente com o William que conheci. E que: Mentira não chega a ser crime.

Tudo indica que até para o jornal da família Marinho, que publica num mesmo dia anúncios de prostituição e reportagens contra o lenocínio, o destempero verbal do senhor Fernandes, fiel escudeiro do jornal O Globo na campanha do desarmamento, foi longe demais.

A impressão que ficou é que para consertar as coisas, a direção do jornal escalou um jornalista respeitado: Zuenir Ventura, que na quarta-feira, 09/03/05, publicou em sua coluna semanal de 1/3 de página um artigo intitulado Versão Polêmica, onde procurou livrar a cara do dirigente da comunidade da Rocinha. Interessante que um jornalista tarimbado como Zuenir cometa um erro básico e mortal para quem pretende bem informar seus leitores: o de dar voz somente a um lado interessado, “por acaso”, o do senhor William de Oliveira. Zuenir baseia seu artigo em uma entrevista que o dirigente comunitário deu a uma outra pessoa (Xico Vargas) em um site chamado Nominimo. Entretanto nada o impediria, em nome de um jornalismo isento, que Zuenir telefonasse para o secretário de Justiça e ouvisse sua versão dos fatos, de vez que as acusações eram graves e incluíam o próprio titular daquela pasta.

Aproveitando a oportunidade única que lhe era oferecida, o dirigente comunitário posou de vítima do sistema e de uma armação da Polícia. Segundo ele, o doutor Marcelo Itagiba, secretário de Segurança Pública do estado do Rio de Janeiro não queria que o Ministro Edson Vidigal do STJ, que tinha uma visita planejada à favela da Rocinha, se encontrasse ‘com um dirigente de nada, um preto favelado’ (Atenção: isto é transcrição literal do que foi dito na matéria escrita por Zuenir). William reiterou que tudo o que querem é arruinar sua ilibada reputação e Zuenir encerra a matéria com as seguintes palavras: “Há informações que William diz só fornecer à Justiça. A ela caberá decidir se houve de fato armação política.”

A matéria de Zuenir teve pronta resposta do doutor Itagiba, publicada na seção de cartas de O Globo de 10/03/05 que negou categoricamente a frase racista a ele atribuída, e mostrou fatos e ações da PM e da Polícia Civil na verdadeira Zona de Guerra que é a favela da Rocinha.

Por uma dessas ironias da vida, no domingo seguinte, a revista Veja de 16/03/05, trouxe uma extensa reportagem intitulada O Fio da navalha, com transcrições de conversas do líder comunitário onde fica exposto todo o envolvimento de William de Oliveira com o crime organizado. Ao contrário das unilaterais afirmações de Rubem César Fernandes e Zuenir Ventura, a matéria de mais de três páginas da Veja traz testemunhos de pessoas com vasto conhecimento dos problemas das favelas: a antropóloga Alba Zaluar, que há 25 anos estuda a violência nas favelas e o domínio do tráfico, e do deputado Carlos Minc, que comprovam as espúrias ligações entre o tráfico e um substancial número de lideranças comunitárias em favelas.

O capítulo seguinte da emocionante novela aconteceu no dia 17/03/05 quando o Secretário de Segurança Pública e o senhor Rubem César Fernandes foram solicitados pelo Globo a expressar suas opiniões sobre O Caso Rocinha. Não vale a pena aqui fazer uma análise profunda do artigo do doutor Itagiba, uma vez que este se concentra em demonstrar com números a ação da polícia em comunidades como a Rocinha e outras. Do que ele escreveu discordo apenas quando diz que nos últimos dois anos mais de 30 mil armas foram retiradas das mãos de criminosos. A razão de minha discordância é a matéria publicada em O Globo que informa que a polícia apreendeu, em 2004, 880 armas (18/01/05, pág. 10). Se a afirmação do doutor Itagiba é correta, no ano de 2003 foram apreendidas 29.120 armas, o que me parece um pouco exagerado, se comparado com 2004.

O senhor Rubem César Fernandes em sua matéria (quem sabe, devido a ajuda de um ghost-writer) foi bem mais moderado do que quando faz declarações aos jornais. Até aí nada demais: ele está na boa companhia do Presidente da República que quando fala de improviso faz inveja aos melhores autores de besteirol. Ele abriu a matéria, intitulada Insurreição pela cidadania, relatando que em 2004 o Movimento Viva Rio desenvolveu 1.134 projetos em favelas e periferias pobres. Segue dizendo que estas ações foram desenvolvidas com 1.380 instituições parceiras. Ele só “esqueceu” de dizer, ou de contestar as afirmações contidas em Veja, que daquele total apenas 73 (5,3%) ações foram em parceria com entidades de moradores. Que explicação teria o dirigente do Viva Rio para o fato? Teria sido também muito interessante se o senhor Fernandes, um dos paladinos da nefanda Campanha do Desarmamento, nos dissesse quantas atividades para o recolhimento de armas, do mesmo tipo que o Movimento Viva Rio leva a cabo quase que em caráter permanente na sua própria sede, em igrejas e em outros locais da cidade, foram também desenvolvidas nas comunidades onde o Viva Rio atua, e quantas armas foram entregues pelos moradores dessas comunidades.

Outro ponto interessante no artigo do senhor Fernandes é a seguinte frase: Não fazemos contato direto com bandidos, nem com a polícia mineira. Está aí uma coisa que não entendi: contato direto o pessoal do Movimento Viva Rio não faz, isto pressup&oti lde;e que eles fazem contatos indiretos? Talvez seja este o papel do senhor William de Oliveira. Fazer a parte dura do trabalho para que o pessoal do Movimento Viva Rio continue recebendo generosas doações tanto do Brasil como do exterior, sem a necessidade de sujar as mãos nem correr riscos. Mais adiante o senhor Fernandes escreve: Preservamos nossa segurança (alguém diria “integridade”) à custa do risco de nossos parceiros. Como alguém pode defender alguém a quem está usando como bucha de canhão? Ainda segundo o senhor Fernandes: os integrantes do Viva Rio receberam a graça de não ter nenhuma só pessoa nossa ferida ou morta em conflito . Enquanto isso 350 líderes comunitários foram assassinados no município do Rio de Janeiro entre 1992 e 2001 (O Globo 20/03/05, pág.17). Como o senhor Ruben César Fernandes está tão orgulhoso das estatísticas das ações do Viva Rio pode acrescentar mais uma: com a segurança e a integridade dos membros do Viva Rio devidamente assegurada, a cada 32 ações comunitárias de sua ONG morre Um dirigente comunitário! Preservar sua própria segurança e integridade às custas do risco de parceiros, senhor Fernandes, tem um nome: COVARDIA.

A pá de cal sobre a pacotilha montada por O Globo, com a participação do senhor Rubem César Fernandes e do jornalista Zuenir Ventura, foi dada pela série de reportagens do jornal O Dia, que se iniciou em 24/03/05, página 3 e se prolongou pelos quatro dias seguintes. Na primeira das reportagens, em uma matéria de página inteira com direito a transcrições das conversas de William com o traficante Bem-Te-Vi e outros marginais da favela da Rocinha, a história inteira é contada. Além de celulares, o amigo querido do dirigente do Movimento Viva Rio, também usava rádiotransmissores para alertar seus parceiros do crime sobre a chegada de policiais. Estes rádios era comprados pela associação de moradores e repassados aos traficantes. Será que alguém tem uma idéia de quem fornecia dinheiro para a associação dos moradores comprar tais equipamentos?

No caso dos três fuzis roubados em 27/07/04 do Forte Copacabana, e comprados por Bem-Te-Vi por 24 mil reais, William Oliveira orientou o traficante a se desfazer das armas, jogando-os na mata junto à vizinha favela do morro do Vidigal. William fora informado de que o Exército estava preparando uma operação na favela para recuperar as armas.

Para julgamento dos leitores transcrevo a seguir o que disse William de Oliveira ao traficante: “Se liga, eu menti pros caras do Exército, disse que as armas não estavam aqui. Agora, se aparecer as peças (fuzis), até eu vou ser preso” (O Dia, 24/03/05, pág. 3). Interessante que o próprio William reconheceu que a mentira poderia levá-lo para a cadeia. Já o senhor Rubem César Fernandes, com a inocência das almas puras, afirmou sobre o caso: “Mentir não é crime”.

Na sexta-feira, dia 25/03/05 o mesmo repórter, Sérgio Ramalho, publica em O Dia, pág.12 outra extensa reportagem onde transcreve mais fitas mostrando toda extensão do envolvimento do líder comunitário e darling do senhor Rubem César com os traficantes da favela da Rocinha. Chega a ser repulsivo o trecho onde William manda um funcionário da União Pró-Melhoramentos ligar para o comandante do batalhão da PM e denunciar policiais militares que faziam uma blitz no morro (O Dia, 27/03/05, pág. 18). O crime desses policiais? Serem honestos e estarem atrapalhando os negócios dos traficantes.

As fitas com as gravações das conversas entre o líder comunitário e os traficantes foram enviadas pela 16ª DP (Barra da Tijuca) ao Instituto de Criminalística Carlos Eboli a fim de serem periciadas. Esta providência é importante, não só do ponto de vista da justiça como também para que os leitores de O Globo, que leram na coluna do jornalista Zuenir Ventura, que “ele (William de Oliveira) afirma que gravações foram adulteradas para comprometê-lo”, saibam que a verdade é bem diferente daquilo que o líder comunitário afirma a seus amigos e defensores.

Depois disso tudo o que fez o jornal da família Marinho, tão rápido em mandar ou aceitar que um de seus mais conceituados articulistas fizesse a defesa de um marginal? Nada! Sobre o assunto o jornal O Globo mergulhou no mais profundo silêncio.

Infelizmente para William de Oliveira, presidente da União Pró-Melhoramentos da Rocinha, a Justiça tem um entendimento a respeito de “coerência” e “mentir não é crime” diferente daquele do seu protetor, senhor Rubem César Fernandes. Em 17/03/05 William teve sua prisão preventiva decretada novamente. Os agentes da Polinter, encarregados de executar a prisão, foram recebidos na favela com tiros e bombas de fabricação artesanal. Ao que tudo indica o dirigente comunitário, ao desaparecer, perdeu uma oportunidade única de ser coerente com o que sobre ele havia escrito o jornalista Zuenir Ventura: usar aquela oportunidade para fornecer à Justiça as tais informações que diz possuir.

Na madrugada de 29/3/05, quando tentava evadir-se da favela da Rocinha no banco traseiro de um carro, William foi reconhecido por policiais e preso. Ironicamente, William de Oliveira vestia uma camiseta com a inscrição “A Gente Faz Paz”, camiseta esta distribuída pelo “Movimento Viva Rio”. Quem leu as matérias de Veja e a devastadora série de reportagens sobre o assunto publicadas pelo jornal O Dia, há de achar pouco ortodoxa a maneira que o líder comunitário tem de fazer paz.

Ao manifestar-se sobre o assunto O Globo foi bastante moderado, talvez porque seus leitores já houvessem assistido na véspera as declarações dadas por William ao Jornal Nacional. Ao contrário de O Dia, o jornal da família Marinho não explicou a seus leitores que a inscrição “A Gente Faz Paz”, estampada na camiseta de William, e claramente visível na foto do dirigente comunitário na página 20 de sua edição de 30/03/05, era patrocinada por sua ONG parceira, o Movimento Viva Rio.

Em “defesa” de O Globo é preciso dizer-se: desta vez, escaldados com a ri dícula reportagem de 05/03/05, a direção do jornal não correu a ouvir a opinião do seu interlocutor favorito, o senhor Rubem César Fernandes, O Coerente.

Israel’s immoral novelists

2011-08-24T01:09:00.001-03:00

Op-ed: Italian journalist says likes of David Grossman, Amoz Oz promote vicious distortions about Israel

Israeli authors have never been shy. They have always commented on their governments and always speak about politics in their novels. But the best-selling Israeli writers are now captives of a dangerous syndrome. One can legitimately criticize Israeli governments, their errors and deafness. But a dark malaise is now driving these authors to toe the line with the worst emotions of global public opinion.

Peaceful Gesture?

Amos Oz sends book to jailed Barghouti / Zvika Brut

Acclaimed Israeli author sends Palestinian prisoner convicted of several terror attacks book with personal dedication: 'Hope to meet soon in peace and freedom'

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This is the same public opinion that in essence boycotted the tragic news about a large, beautiful and caring Jewish family destroyed in a minute, when terrorists burst into their home in Itamar with one aim in mind: To murder as many Israelis as possible.

There is now a deep chasm between the pretension of the "good conscience" of these writers and the crude realism of history. This is even sander and more significant because we are not talking about writers who hate Israel or novelists who pontificate against the Jewish State from abroad, but rather, about locals.

Amos Oz and David Grossman, Israel’s most popular authors, have a track record of genuine Zionist endeavor. But Oz just got in touch with Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian terrorist leader convicted of murdering five Israelis and planning several terrorist attacks. The Israel Prize recipient sent the Palestinian prisoner one of his books with a personal inscription wishing him a speedy release from prison: “This story is our story. I hope you read it and understand us better, as we attempt to understand you. Hoping to meet soon in peace and freedom.”

Indeed, the gap between these authors and the guillotine threatening Israel grows larger every day. David Grossman, whose son Uri was killed in the Second Lebanon War, was the first Israeli writer to explore the psychology of the Israeli occupation after 1967. Since then, Grossman’s paradigm, simply put, was always the same: Israel must end its role of occupier and oppressor if the horror of terrorism is to end.

Israel deserves better

It seems as though Grossman’s conscience as an intellectual hasn't been shaken by the Twin Towers attack, by the 1,600 Israeli civilians killed in terror attacks, by a decade of rockets on southern Israeli cities or by Iran’s atomic death cult.

Shortly after the Gaza war, Grossman called for an independent inquiry into the conduct of the IDF, paving the way for the biased Goldstone’s report. He also urged dialogue with Hamas. When Grossman went to collect a cash prize funded by the Israeli state, he refused to shake hands with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

After the flotilla incident, Grossman charged that Israel behaves like “a band of pirates.” He said the blockade on Gaza was “despicable,” attacking the Israeli government “which is prepared to embitter the lives of a million innocent people in the Gaza Strip, in order to obtain the release of one imprisoned soldier.”

Indeed, the morality of Israeli writers is not longer in tune with reality and its contradictions, Israel’s security, very existence, identity and memory. These authors’ publications attract so much attention abroad because of the baleful influence they have on Israel’s reputation, as they promulgate the most vicious distortions about Israel.

When Ariel Sharon sent forces into the West Bank to defeat the terrorists, both Grossman and Oz went to help the Palestinians with their olive harvest. Their noble generosity didn’t stop Hamas from slaughtering two Jewish girls in a nearby settlement, Linoy Sarussi and Hadas Turgeman. Now, again, after a new Jewish family was destroyed in Itamar, the writers chose to send postcards and books to the terrorists. Israel deserves better bards.

Uribe descreve Lula como hipócrita e covarde

2011-08-08T03:53:00.001-03:00

Álvaro Uribe também assegurou que “Lula combatia (o presidente da Venezuela, Hugo) Chávez ausente e tremia frente a Chávez presente”.

O ex-presidente colombiano Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2010) respondeu através de sua conta Twitter (@alvarouribevel) ao ex-presidente brasileiro Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), depois que este revelou em Bogotá, em um encontro com o presidente Juan Manuel Santos que, quando foram governantes, “Não havia confiança entre Uribe e eu”.

“Lula nos maltrata e no governo fingia ser o melhor amigo”, escreveu Uribe através de sua conta no Twitter, e acusou Lula de ser “mal perdedor”, porque a Colômbia ganhou do Brasil a presidência do Banco Interamericano de Desenvolvimento (BID).

Em outra mensagem, Uribe disse: “Lula incapaz de declarar a narcofarc de terroristas”, em alusão à insistência do governo de Uribe de que os países vizinhos declarassem como grupo terroristas às Forças Armadas Revolucionárias da Colômbia (FARC, comunista). Uribe acrescentou que “Lula foi incapaz de extraditar o padre Camilo, terrorista refugiado no Brasil”, que segundo as autoridades colombianas era o representante das FARC nesse país.

Além disso, Uribe assegurou em outra mensagem que “Lula combatia (o presidente da Venezuela, Hugo) Chávez ausente e tremia frente a Chávez presente”. Finalmente, o ex-presidente colombiano afirmou que “hoje Lula confessa que me teve desconfiança, porém o investimento do Brasil teve toda a confiança”.

O que Lula disse?

O ex-mandatário do Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, de visita a Bogotá, afirmou que acredita que os presidentes Juan Manuel Santos e Dilma Rousseff podem fazer muito mais “do que fizemos eu e Uribe. Não confiávamos inteiramente entre os dois (sic)”, anotou.

O ex-presidente propôs ao governo colombiano criar um fundo de garantia para investir no desenvolvimento estratégico do Sul, de maneira que se avance em novas hidrelétricas, portos e vias. “há que aproveitar o gasto para a riqueza do continente. Projetos estratégicos para daqui a 10 anos. Isto é o melhor que está acontecendo entre Brasil e Colômbia”, acrescentou Lula.

O ex-presidente do Brasil pediu para dar importância ao crédito. “Presidente Santos, você não deve ter medo de emprestar dinheiro aos pobres. Os pobres pagam”, disse Lula ao fazer um chamado à “bancarização”. Ele destacou a gestão do presidente colombiano, Juan Manuel Santos e disse que o país “está vivendo um momento de tranqüilidade extraordinária com alguns vizinhos polêmicos”.

Lula assegurou que Santos está marcando na UnaSul uma política muito importante. Segundo Lula, a lição que o mandatário colombiano deu é de que não dedicou seu tempo em brigar com os demais vizinhos, senão em fazer a paz com eles.

O ex-mandatário brasileiro ressaltou a presença de empresas do Brasil como a Petrobras, Odebrecht, Grupo Sinergy, entre outras. “Este é um sinal muito promissor das relações bi-nacionais”, disse Lula.

Publicado no La Patilla.

Thank you, Edward Saïd: Wikileaks, Linkage, and the Appalling State of Western Understanding of the Arab World

2011-07-19T13:34:00.001-03:00

by Richard Landes

This is an essay I wrote back at the time of Wikileaks, and it got rejected from two different journals. I got distracted by my book, and forgot about it. I just got a nice email from a fan who asked me where I wrote the following:

The problem with middle eastern studies in the USA (a fortiori in Europe) is that it’s been colonized by Muslim and Arab scholars who have politicized the field and intimidated western scholars into ”respecting” Islam (which means giving it the honor that they feel it deserves). this hegemonic discourse makes it impossible to speak of honor-shame, the very hegemonic principle that has made Islamic studies such a retarded field.

If Western academics had done this with their own culture and religion, we’d have no academics. The appalling propaganda that passes for scholarship today — Finkelstein and abu el-Haj come immediately to mind — that would get tenured from faculty and administrators in thrall to a political correct discourse that is, to use the Marxist term, “objectively” a form of cowardice and dhimmitude, is what drives sound people to take extraordinary measures.

Today’s middle eastern studies more closely resembles the kind of atmosphere that dominated the late medieval university (inquisitorial) than a free and meritocratic culture commited to honesty. the only difference is that in pursuing this oppressive and ultimately dishonest form of “academic discourse” the people who admire “scholars” like F and e-H, actually betray the very culture they pretend to uphold.”)

It was in response to an article about tenure in Middle Eastern Studies in Inside Higher Ed. He also asked me if I’ve developed those thoughts, and I wrote back that in addition to my essay on Edward Said, there’s the following essay, which I post here.

Wikileaks, the Middle East and Edward’s Said’s Legacy

One of the most interesting revelations in the cache of recently released Wikileaks documents concerned Obama’s Middle East policy. Remarks from several and varied Arab countries confirmed in a rather dramatic way, what some experts had claimed earlier: that the Arabs wanted the US to “cut off the head of the snake,” and that for these Arab leaders the head was Iran.

On one level, this wasn’t groundbreaking news; anyone paying attention knew that Sunni Arab leaders were terrified of the power of Shiite Iran. But somehow this awareness had failed to penetrate Obama’s policy circle, which had consistently argued that in order to gain the support of the Arab world to move against Iran, the US had to “solve” the Palestinian problem. Obama explained this policy of linkage to Netanyahu in their April meeting of 2009: by swiftly reaching a “two-state solution” that gives the Palestinians a viable state, Obama could win the favor of the Arab world and the global community, enabling him to tackle problems like Iran.

Linkage had widespread approval not only in academic and policy circles, and among global “elders” like Jimmy Carter, but also among newspundits like Tom Friedman, who considers it “very logical.” A cynic might call this the narcissistic messianic approach: let’s make everyone love us, have peace prizes all around in Denmark, and then calmly and collectively tell the Iranians: “Oh, behave!”

Of course others have argued against this Rube Goldberg machine (Kramer, Shavit, Ceren, Rubin, Phillips, Weinthal). What strategy would hold urgent diplomacy (Iranian nuclear ambitions) hostage to solving a problem that has resisted the most energetic diplomatic efforts for generations? And just what kind of solution to the Palestinian problem could Obama come up with that would a) leave even a diminished Israel in peace and security and b) so enthuse the Arab world that they’d now rally around America’s banner? It’s one thing to think you can squeeze some kind of grudging truce out of that adamantine conflict; it’s quite another to think you can, in a couple of years, produce a peace that will inspire the Arab world to renounce its resentment of American hegemony.

And (predictably) as soon as Obama implemented linkage, it backfired; indeed the Palestinians saw linkage as a reason to become intransigent: no direct talks without total settlement freeze. Asked why they insisted on this, if the Palestinians had earlier negotiated peace agreements while settlement construction went on throughout the West Bank, Nabil Shaath didn’t claim they said yes (as the MSNM would have us believe), but rather responded, “We have to say ‘no’ sometime” (5:15).

And why just now? Because, as Shaath went on to explain, with linkage the Palestinians saw themselves in a position of strength and Israel in a position of alienating Obama:

Isn’t President Obama impatient with what the Israelis have done? …Wasn’t Mr. [sic] Obama’s strategy that, [by] starting with the Palestinian-Israeli peace, [he] will really get America a better image in our area, will help America achieve what it really wants to do, disentangling itself from Iraq, resolving problems in Pakistan and in Iran and in Lebanon? Isn’t that what he said? Doesn’t that make him impatient of what Mr. Netanyahu has done to him? (6:57-7:30).

Did Obama and his advisors really think that everyone in the Middle East was just waiting for the right gesture, the positive-sum magic that will make everyone happy? Have they contemplated the opposite possibility: that Arab leaders do not want an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and that our linkage may play right into their version of linkage: Blame Israel for the misery they themselves inflict. Our linkage – Israeli concessions before and in place of Palestinian concessions – enables and empowers Arab scape-goating; it aggravates the belligerent forces in the region.

Some accordingly argued that Obama should reverse the sequence: If he really wants peace (rather than a quick take-down of Israel) then taking care of the critical problem – Iran – will make it easier for Israel to make the highly risky concessions Obama wants from them. Put the pressure on the most radical and, by the standards of a community committed to peace, the least “rational” actor on the scene, undermine the culture of apocalyptic violence they encourage among their proxies in the region (Hamas, Hizbullah), so that Palestinian moderates, who want to put an end to their own people’s suffering can rally support for the difficult concessions necessary for peace.

So when the Wikileaks documents revealed no hint among the Arab leaders of a Palestinian state as a prerequisite for dealing with Iran, many noted how they undermined the rationale behind Obama’s insistence on a linkage that went, via Israeli concessions, to Arab and world cooperation against Iran. On the contrary, these cables give the impression that Obama had a strong hand to play against Arab intransigence: “if you want me to attack Iran, then these are the things I want from you.”

One might imagine that Obama had his strong hand in mind when, a day before his speech in Egypt, he visited King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, asking for a gesture towards Israel in response to their concession on settlements. Such a Saudi concession might have a powerful impact on the mood in the Arab and Muslim world; it certainly would have added dramatic luster to his Cairo speech. And yet, when King Abdullah went into a tirade at the mere suggestion, Obama played none of his strong cards. Instead he went to Cairo empty-handed and disgruntled. Tough cop is not a role Obama seems comfortable playing.

Those who follow the honor-shame dynamics here understand that the weaker the Israelis look to the Arabs, the more intransigent they become. One need not be an insider with access to high-level intelligence to understand the basic pattern that the last two decades of peace diplomacy have revealed: Israeli concessions elicit no hint of reciprocity towards a positive-sum solution. On the contrary…

And yet none of this had even a slightly sobering effect on the giddy optimism of the administration. Only two months after Abdulla’s tantrum, in August of 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a peace settlement within a year, and in January 2010, after four further fruitless months, Presidential envoy George Mitchell prognosticated “within two years.” Either these folks were pulling some clever feint (the predominant belief in the Arab world), or they are genuinely clueless (the most generous reading).

Others, more knowledgeable about the political players can try to figure out why neither Obama nor Clinton (who’s husband got burned by this Peace debacle in a most spectacular fashion in 2000) permitted any of these developments – the Arab urgency about Iran, the king’s temper tantrum about Israel, the backfiring of Israeli concessions – to disturb the main lines of their version of linkage.

Having just reread with students Edward Said’s Orientalism and some of his critics, I was struck by the role that his epigones have played in formulating this counter-intuitive strategy. In The Ivory Tower, Martin Kramer writes about the strong impact the book had on a generation of Western students, eager to dissociate themselves from any participation in American imperialistic hegemony, to empathize with, rather than “other” Arabs.

After all, had not Said, even as he illustrated the point, insisted that to “other” necessarily involves invidious comparison, “either in self congratulation (when one discusses one’s own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the “other”)…” Saïd appealed to our “common humanity” to do away with this us-them mentality to shift our attention from “cultural, religious and racial differences” towards “socio-economic categories [and] politico-historical ones (p. 325):

At all costs the, the goal of Orientalizing the Orient [what post-colonialists more generally call “othering” someone, RL] again and again is to be avoided, with consequences that cannot help but refine knowledge and reduce the scholar’s conceit. Without “the Orient” there would be scholars, critics, intellectuals, human beings, for whom the racial, ethnic, and national distinctions were less important than the common enterprise of promoting human community (328).

Never mind that most Oriental scholars had a passion for their subjects and extended far more empathic effort in understanding the objects of their study than did Saïd did in critiquing the Orientalists themselves. And never mind that Arabs tend to “other” on a scale the beggars Saïd’s complaints about Western tendencies. On the contrary, Saïd, demonstrating his asabiyya, his loyalty and solidarity with the Arab cause, had no problem “othering” those he accused of the sin:

It is therefore correct [sic] that every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric (p.68).

But these flaws had no discernable effect on the enthusiasm with which the field of Middle Eastern studies embraced his critique of its forebears, and remade itself along post-colonial lines. A pervasively flawed book became canonical for a generation, inspiring a paradigm shift that shaped Middle Eastern Studies in the USA. As a result, the field virtually became committed to not seeing what was before them. They could thus see vibrant civil societies everywhere (Syria!), even in Islamist NGOs (Hamas!), that promised democracy soon. After all, if they were humans like us, why not?

It greatly assisted all these scholars who hailed the thriving proto-democratic, civil-society movements in the Middle East, men and women who could proudly claim they were not Orientalists, that they, like their mentor Saïd, detected few traces of the imperialism that so marks the first thirteen centuries of Islam. It made sense that those who could ignore or downplay the patriarchal ferocity so dominant in the Middle East, could also turn a blind eye the enduring culture of Muslim imperialism, and the strong odor of frustrated ressentiment in the Arab discontent with modernity. For the Saïd’s post-colonial epigones, the Arabs were the innocent subaltern victims of our imperialism; not exasperated failures at implementing their own. History may have gone wrong, but post-Orientalist scholars made a profession of believing that the wrong turn was when Western imperialism prevented Arab societies from being (naturally) free, not that the Arabs had failed to maintain and expand their empire.

This approach, divorced from reality even as it spoke of the “variegated” and “layered” phenomena it tried to represent, ended up anticipating developments and concocting strategies so fantastic, that just contemplating their spread and acceptance in policy circles gives insight into the dynamics of how a certain legendary emperor could parade before his people naked. As “I will make a lot of peace in the Middle East,” the spoof animation inspired by Wikileaks– has the US spokesman say in defense of linkage, “We have consulted with many foreign policy experts, they have many Ph.D.s about the Middle East.” Along with the spectacle of Europeans acclaiming Noam Chomsky as the great American intellectual, few things better illustrate the failings of this generation of Western intelligentsia than Orientalism’s profound impact on Middle Eastern studies and beyond.

Amongst the many noxious effects of Orientalism on our scholars’ ability to understand the Arab world, was the ban it put on discussing “honor-shame” culture, so strong an elective affinity in Arab culture that even Islam’s disapproval has failed to prune back the “honor-killings” of daughters and sisters by their family. Said’s moral scorn for the patent racism involved in this cultural approach made “honor-shame” itself a shameful discourse to hold in academic circles. As Jerrold Green noted “the mere recognition that cultural factors matter labels specialists as anti-scientific heretics by their more dogmatic colleagues.” According to a reliable source, this singularly successful political correctness has even invaded intelligence services, where one had to refrain from suggesting honor-shame motivations in analyzing the data!

The greatest irony of this accomplishment comes from the fact that Saïd himself illustrates the honor-shame dynamic. The second half of his career embodies the very “oriental” traits that he forbade us to discuss. On a very basic level, Orientalism represents an aggressive effort to “save face”: Westerners have no right to look critically at the Arab world. Noted Kramer:

Instead [of serious analysis], Said skimmed across its [Oriental scholarship’s] surface in search of the most offensive quotes, presented as the core or essence of orientalism, whose gravitational field no Westerner could hope to escape.

And the offenses were precisely those that were most wounding to Arab pride. On some level, Orientalism is a cri de coeur of someone whose amour propre has been wounded by the opinion outsiders have of his people. And the generation of scholars who adopted that book as the Bible (as one of my students described another professor’s attitude), considered their most important task not to upset those for whom honor and shame meant everything.

And yet, if we don’t understand that some cultures (not only Arabic or Islamic ones) accept, expect, even require that one shed someone’s blood for the sake of one’s honor, then we don’t understand how people in those cultures “reason.” Our initial (and abiding) response, coming from a culture that has fought a long hard battle with the tendency towards violent retaliation for insult, views this behavior as irrational, as self-destructive – “their own worst enemies.” But to think along these lines turns us into “the apogee of Orientalist confidence,” guilty of the “racism” Saïd so despised.

For Westerners aspiring to study the Arab world without becoming colonial collaborators, that meant an anti-Orientalism every bit as distorting as the Orientalism Saïd condemned among the scholars. The new, non-“othering” dogma insisted that Arabs can and would behave rationally (i.e., positive-sum), in roughly the same way the Europeans did in creating the European Union.

So why not “land for peace”? It makes sense. This conflict, the “very logical” argument goes, like all others, is about “rational” grievances. Presumably it will respond to the appeal of positive-sum solutions that call for mutual self-sacrifice in order to achieve mutual gain, and bury the hatchet. Israel gives land and the Arabs give recognition and an end to the state of war produces “peace.” Win-win.

In a Saidian conversation, one cannot, without heavy moral opprobrium, suggest that it’s not about boundaries but existence, not about rational grievances, but much more about honor and shame, about the humiliation of a tiny Israel fighting off the combined might of the Arab empire, about the blasphemy of a dhimmi people, throwing off their yoke and daring to be “a free people in our own land,” in the heart of Dar al Islam. I mean, how can you solve a problem like that?

It’s a lot easier to believe that poverty causes terror (rather than vice-versa): at least we know how to generate wealth… and we dare not think about the way some cultures generate poverty. And we certainly dare not ask the obvious question: If they will kill their daughters for shaming them in their communities, and they burn dozens of homes of dhimmi Copts when one of them dates a Muslim woman, imagine what they want to do to Israel for blackening their face and shaming their religion before the eyes of the world community and of history?

Thus we end up with a foreign policy based on fantasy, mired in denial, a community of experts that refuses to process feedback that contradicts cherished truths, people who cling to PC “grand” narratives with the ferocity of true believers. Of course, they might say off the public record, everyone knows about touchy Arab honor, especially when it comes to Israel! Arabs themselves admit that Israel is a psychological problem “in the genes of every Arab.” The very notion that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the most fundamental issue in the Middle East, constitutes a acknowledgment of that massive Arab “hang-up” on an area that is a mere .002 of their own, deeply troubled portion of the globe.

Our experts and academics understand this, and even have policy solutions: do everything to avoid situations where it becomes a problem. That, of course, means leaving Israel out of as many situations as possible. In other words, whenever honor-shame dynamics rear their ugly head, back down. Like Yale University Press or the New York Met, don’t confront, don’t provoke violence.

Similarly, we never confront them on their double speak: When the positive-sum, peace oriented liberal cognitive egocentrists hear Palestinians complain about the occupation, they think “Green line,” while the zero-sum, honor-comes-from-revenge oriented Palestinian spokesmen think “shoreline.” (NB: I’m not essentializing, not talking about “the Arabs,” but specifically about those who are in thrall to an irredentist mind-set that we have difficulty imagining.) If we knew this, and worked around it without confronting it, that might make sense; but to ignore it, to make plans based on our projected understanding, to pressure Israel into concessions based on these fantasies, is either criminal negligence or malice.

Not surprisingly, with such anti-Orientalist flaws at the base of their thinking, the Obama administration’s Middle East foreign policy team got everything wrong. They expected long-term rationality in solving the Arab Israeli conflict (a quick positive-sum solution), and short-term irrationality (we won’t do anything about Iranian nuclear weapons until something is done about Israel). Instead we encountered the opposite: short-term rationality on Iran, long-term irrationality on Israel. Indeed, the take-home message of Arab behavior is that the Arab-Israeli lies at the heart of their most self-defeating behavior: it is the hardest and last thing we’ll resolve, not the first. And the idea that, if only Israel were gone, the self-destructive belligerence of Arab political culture would disappear is as loopy a messianic hope as being carried off by aliens on December 21, 2012 by hanging out in Bugarach, France.

Maybe the cultural relativists are right: Who says Westerners behave rationally?

Dando truque nos evangélicos: um dia depois do 1º turno, governo prorroga convênio com grupo que quer legalizar o aborto

2010-10-16T18:28:00.000-03:00

Por Leandro Colon, no Estadão:
A postura da candidata Dilma Rousseff (PT) em prometer aos eleitores não mudar a lei do aborto contradiz a atuação do próprio governo que representa. O Ministério da Saúde publicou, em 4 de outubro, um dia depois do primeiro turno, a prorrogação de um convênio que estuda mudanças na sua legislação. O projeto, segundo o contrato publicado no Diário Oficial da União, chama-se “Estudo e Pesquisa - Despenalizar o Aborto no Brasil”.

Dilma divulgou ontem uma carta em que diz ser contra o aborto e promete não tomar “iniciativa de propor alterações de pontos que tratem da legislação” sobre o assunto. O objetivo dela é diminuir a resistência de grupos religiosos que pregam voto contra a petista, por ter defendido no passado a descriminalização do aborto.

Só que a promessa vai na contramão da atuação do Ministério da Saúde nos últimos anos e tem incomodado entidades que atuam em parceria com o governo. Esse recente convênio, prorrogado até fevereiro de 2011, foi fechado no ano passado com a Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, do Rio, e faz parte do Grupo de Estudo sobre o Aborto, que reúne desde 2007 entidades civis dispostas a debater o assunto com o Executivo, o Judiciário e o Legislativo. O governo desembolsou, só para a Fiocruz, R$ 121 mil para incentivar a discussão.

Coordenador desse grupo de estudos em todo o País, o médico Thomaz Gollop lamenta a carta de Dilma e o rumo da discussão sobre o tema no segundo turno. “O enfoque está errado, inadequado, seja para qual for o candidato. O Brasil precisa se informar. Nas alturas dos acontecimentos, isso virou uma discussão de posicionamento radical”, diz. “Acho muito ruim que esse tema seja motivo de barganha. É completamente inadequado que o candidato diga o que vai ser feito.”

O projeto apoiado pelo governo trata, segundo extrato do Diário Oficial, de estudo para “despenalizar” o aborto, ou seja, não aplicar penas às mulheres que adotam essa prática, condenada por lei. Mas, segudo o coordenador, a idéia é ir mais longe e não fazer mais do aborto um crime.
(…)

Dilma defende aborto em Sabatina da Folha

2010-10-15T18:05:00.001-03:00

Durante sabatina realizada pela Folha de São Paulo em outubro de 2007, Dilma Rousseff defendeu a desciminalização do aborto.

Aqui, a verdade sobre Dilma e o aborto. Não é um boato anônimo da Internet. Ela defendeu a legalização

Se a página não for tirada do ar, a entrevista em que a candidata petista à Presidência, Dilma Rousseff, defende a legalização do aborto está aqui. Foi concedida a Carla Gullo e Maria Laura Nevesm da revista Marie Claire. O título é “A mulher do presidente”. Eu cometi um engano aqui. Havia escrito que a entrevista era de 2007. Não é, não! É de abril de 2009, há pouco mais de um ano.

Dali a alguns meses, a Casa Civil tornaria publico o decreto com o Programa Nacional dos Direitos Humanos, que trazia a legalização do aborto como um… “direito humano”, o que certamente assombra as áreas da política, da filosofia, da religião, da moral e da lógica. E Dilma estava muito à vontade porque, como se nota, falava com interlocutoras que concordavam com ela.

Quando as tais “pesquisas qualitativas” indicaram que essa opinião poderia não trazer votos e até tirar, então a “mulher do Lula” resolver mudar de idéia e se comportar como “a mulher do pastor” — não dá pra dizer “mulher do padre” porque não fica bem…

Então não venham agora alguns coleguinhas escrever coisas como: “O PT combate o boato de que Dilma defende a legalização do aborto…” Ou: “Há uma corrente na Internet segundo a qual Dilma defenderia a legalização do aborto”…

Calma lá!

Em abril do ano passado, já candidata oficiosa, Dilma defendeu a legalização do aborto. Não é boato! O futuro do pretérito, a depender do caso, pode ser só o tempo verbal da história reescrita.

Trecho da revista:
MC Uma das bandeiras da Marie Claire é defender a legalização do aborto. Fizemos uma pesquisa com leitoras e 60% delas se posicionaram favoravelmente, mesmo o aborto não sendo uma escolha fácil. O que a senhora pensa sobre isso?
DR - Abortar não é fácil pra mulher alguma. Duvido que alguém se sinta confortável em fazer um aborto. Agora, isso não pode ser justificativa para que não haja a legalização. O aborto é uma questão de saúde pública. Há uma quantidade enorme de mulheres brasileiras que morre porque tenta abortar em condições precárias. Se a gente tratar o assunto de forma séria e respeitosa, evitará toda sorte de preconceitos. Essa é uma questão grave que causa muitos mal-entendidos.

White Liberals and Politically Correct Racism

2010-07-30T18:47:00.000-03:00

This is a cross-post by Edmund Standing

The white liberal is an unhealthy type of creature that you will undoubtedly have encountered, if not in real life, certainly via the media. By ‘liberal’, I do not mean simply someone who has a generally liberal outlook, in the sense of a ‘live and let live’ philosophy, nor do I mean liberals in the sense of the classical liberals of the conservative tradition. By ‘white liberal’, I mean a white Western individual who is likely to come from a middle class background and have a university education, considers him or herself to be both ‘left-wing’ and socially ‘liberal’, and almost certainly reads The Guardian or The Independent. White liberals espouse an artificial and pretentious form of ‘egalitarianism’, a patronising and hypocritical approach to ethnic minorities and non-Western cultures, and – in a re-hash of the notion of the ‘white man’s burden’ – devote themselves to a delusional Messianism in which they seek to ‘save the world’ through protesting against war (in real terms, protesting against non-white people having a chance at freedom and democracy), Israel (the one truly liberal society in the Middle East), globalisation (thereby opposing the one great vehicle by which poorer nations can develop), and so on, while making themselves feel and look ‘good’ by flaunting their pious support for campaigns to end poverty in the Third World (which will do no such thing, as Dambisa Moyo, Stephen Pollard, Marian L. Tupy, and others rightly point out ), and boasting about how ‘progressive’ they are by showing ‘solidarity’ with genocidal Islamists in Gaza.

White liberals, despite viewing themselves as intelligent and open-minded, are actually some of the most illiberal and narrow-minded people in society today. Their reactions to the idea that anyone might think differently to them range from gut-wrenching despair to pure hatred of the kind seen in the most fanatical of ‘true believers’. White liberals are, by and large, incapable of serious adult debate (preferring innuendo and accusations of bigotry), or of dealing with the fact that not everyone will agree with them (despite their supposed love of pluralism and a multiplicity of different ‘voices’), and tend to see any view which deviates from their cultic leftist script as a form of irredeemable moral evil. White liberals do not base their world-view on rational analysis and sensible argument, but instead on an almost religious faith that they possess the ‘truth’, and just as we see in so many fundamentalist religious cults and sects, the devotees of the white liberal faith burn with hatred for the ‘sin’ that surrounds them, and indeed, all too often for the ‘sinners’ themselves. White liberals, who are the intellectual equivalent of stroppy, rebellious teenagers, have sought to subvert and undermine Western civilisation, and some offer support for authoritarian and even terrorist movements as part of their attack on ‘racism’ and ‘colonialism’.

White liberals approach issues of race and racism from an essentially irrational, moralistic standpoint. White liberals do not simply judge racism to be based on bad thinking and criticise it for its illogical collectivism. Instead, white liberals make the issue of racism, as with other issues, all about them. White liberals have colonised the discourse of racism and anti-racism because it offers them an opportunity to boast of the superiority of their virtue and to demonstrate their purity and holiness through ostentatious and vacuous public displays of self-flagellation. Just as early Christianity imbued adherents with a deep sense of guilt and sinfulness, so the white liberal finds in reflecting on the history of white racism the opportunity to both revel in the guilt of the sinner and to make atonement through ‘anti-racist’ initiatives, thereby offering them the opportunity to further present themselves as a holy elite tasked with saving the world. And just as at various points in the history of Christianity an overarching sense of guilt derived from an intense awareness of, and obsession with, the supposedly inherent sinfulness of human beings and of the ‘world’ led ‘holy’ men and women to conclude that the path to holiness is found in the hatred of self, world, and the human condition, white liberals indulge in a form of self-hatred which is designed to project the image of penitence and sanctity, while actually being transparently pretentious, self-aggrandising, and destructive.

Ideological white racists are collectivists who adopt the irrational position that white people form some kind of world-wide ‘brotherhood’ with a unified history and culture. The huge variations in the historical and cultural experiences and manifestations of the various majority white nations is seen to be of little importance in the bigger picture. Ideological white racists are frequently people who have made little or no personal contribution to the development and advancement of Western civilisation. You won’t find many ground-breaking inventors and innovators, great scientists, artists, composers, and so on in the ranks of the modern white supremacist movement, but you will find many bitter and insecure individuals who make themselves feel important by piggy-backing on the achievements of others. When white racist activists and ideologues talk of ‘white unity’ and ‘white pride’, they almost always claim to be ‘proud’ of the ‘superior’ achievements of white people throughout history. Ideological white racists will point to great men and women of the past and present who happen to share their skin colour and state how great the ‘white race’ is. So, you will find the absurd phenomenon of drug dealing, dole scrounging morons who somehow feel Shakespeare and Mozart can be claimed by them as great men of ‘their race’. Clearly, stating yourself ‘proud’ of things that you have not made or done just because they were made or done by people who look or looked similar to you has no rational basis.

On this point, white liberals will agree. However, at the same time, white liberals advocate an inverse form of the same collectivist nonsense by proposing that whites should feel collective guilt for the negative actions of white people of the past. It’s clearly stupid for a skinhead thug to claim to feel ‘proud’ of the works of Beethoven, yet it is also equally stupid for a white liberal to claim to feel ‘guilty’ for the actions of white slave traders or marauding white colonialists. But the white liberal simply will not accept this. White liberals hold an almost universally negative view of the history of Western civilisation and claim that modern Western whites should apologise and make amends for the actions of whites of previous generations and even previous centuries. If a Mayor of London made a public speech tearfully extolling the superior virtues of white people who happened to live in London in the past most people would be shocked by this act of collectivist posturing and irrational bigotry. However, when the tables are turned and a Mayor of London makes a tearful ‘apology’ for long dead Londoners’ involvement in the slave trade, this is seen by white liberals to be a moral and righteous act.

Here’s how The Guardian reported a 2007 case of exactly this collectivist irrationality:

Ken Livingstone yesterday marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade with an emotional and tearful ceremonial apology on behalf of the capital city and its institutions. The London mayor wept as he told a commemorative service of the cruelties inflicted on the millions transported from Africa and the legacy that confronts them today.

Before an audience of politicians, writers and dignitaries, he twice paused during his address. As he voiced the apology, the US civil rights leader the Rev Jesse Jackson walked over and placed his arm around the mayor. Mr Livingstone completed the long awaited statement, dabbing tears from his eyes, his voice shaky.

Ken Livingstone – known as ‘Red Ken’ for the far-left views he espoused for many years of his political career – took it upon himself to express collective guilt on behalf of an entire city in his role as Mayor of London. In doing so, he acted as the archetypal masochistic white liberal idiot.

As is so often the case with white liberals, Livingstone’s pathological sense of white guilt has also affected his ability to think rationally about people who happen to have a darker shade of skin than him. For white liberals like Red Ken, criticism of any non-white person is suspected to be a cover for ‘racism’, ‘imperialism’, and so on. Consequently, when Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi – an Islamist ‘scholar’ who advocates the death penalty for gay people, the beating of wives by their husbands, and calls Hamas terrorists ‘martyrs’ – came to London in 2004, Livingstone, acting in his official capacity of Mayor of London, publicly welcomed him and went so far as to embrace him before the cameras of the media.

Rational criticism of this disgusting act of grovelling to a retrograde theocratic ideologue had no effect on Livingstone. Taking white liberal idiocy to its logical conclusion, he went so far as issuing yet another of his vacuous apologies, stating that ‘On behalf of the people of London, I would like to apologise to the Sheikh for the outburst of xenophobia in sections of the media’. Livingstone’s decision to ignore Al-Qaradawi’s reactionary views was typical of the kind of double standard adopted by many white liberals. Livingstone seems to be one of the white liberal drones who thinks that while white people have been – and continue to be – somehow collectively responsible for an endless list of crimes and transgressions, the same cannot possibly be said for someone of another ethnicity. If a white leader advocated the same things as Al-Qaradawi, white liberals like Livingstone would be up in arms, denouncing the evils of homophobia, sexism, and any other ‘ism’ that could be thrown at them, and would probably go on to issue tearful apologies and dredge up issues like slavery.

Speaking of the similar attitudes of white liberals in Canada, liberal Muslim author Tarek Fatah nailed it when he told the Canadian Jewish News:

there is a tremendous amount of white guilt. The intelligentsia in this country in a selfish way tries to assuage this guilt. It caters to the most idiosyncratic behaviour of the immigrant and practices the racism of lower expectations. It sets standards of behaviour for our community, but when dealing with immigrants and especially the Muslim community, it does not expect them to live by the same standards.

Meanwhile, the Syrian-born Muslim scholar Bassam Tibi has told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine that ‘Europeans have stopped defending the values of their civilization’ because ‘they confuse tolerance with relativism’. White guilt is an irrational, intellectually and culturally crippling pathology, yet white liberals who embrace this nonsense have a huge influence in almost all the powerful and influential sectors of our society.

For white liberals, the fear of being accused of racism is a matter of constant concern. The idea that someone might be a racist has taken second place only to the idea that someone might be a paedophile. Racism continues to be a highly contentious issue, and one in which white liberals take a particularly keen interest. However, as with everything else, most white liberals get this issue completely wrong and in doing so greatly hinder the development of an intellectually honest and rational society, and a society in which racial collectivism and prejudice is eradicated.

A good working definition of racism would be that it is the belief that one or more ethnic groups are inherently, biologically inferior to another. Racists work on the deterministic assumption that people can be collectively viewed as a single group based on ethnic ancestry alone and that membership of this group connotes certain fixed, unchanging, and unchangeable factors, such as intelligence, character, and aspirations. Racists are race essentialists – they do not see individuals but rather view ethnic groups as monolithic groups whose cultures, traditions, religions, and so on in some sense spring from their genetic make-up. While I’m far from an Ayn Rand acolyte, her analysis of racism in The Virtue of Selfishness is spot-on:

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas — or of inherited knowledge — which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

When it comes to racism, a sensible approach would be to say that as the central assumptions which underpin it are false, racism is irrational and consequently a belief system that is of no value and is positively harmful. Many white people are hard-working and make a positive contribution to society; however, many do not. The same applies across all ethnic groups. A sensible approach to the issue of race is to judge individuals on their personal merits, not on the colour of their skin or their country of ethnic ancestry. The white racist would prefer to live next to a white dole scrounger than a hard-working Asian. This fact illustrates the fundamental irrationality of racism, and the indiscriminate collectivism upon which it is based. Racists are often seen as people who ‘discriminate’. In reality, they show themselves to be fundamentally incapable of discrimination, given the fact they see only undifferentiated masses termed ‘races’, instead of vastly differing individuals.

White liberals take a very different approach to the issue of racism than the one outlined above. White liberals do not predominantly base their positions on reason, but rather on emotions, moralism, and an almost religious devotion to concepts such as egalitarianism and ‘human rights’ (although their support for human rights varies according to whose rights are at stake). As moralists, white liberals see racism as evil and essentially ‘sinful’, and for them racism violates the holy precepts of ‘rights’ and ‘humanity’. White liberals are incapable of logically and adequately addressing issues of race and racism, because their moralism is not rationally founded.

In the Hebrew Bible, we find the idea of generational curses, in which God punishes the descendants of transgressors. For example, in Exodus 20:5, God is said to have stated: ‘I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation’. White liberals approach racism from a similar perspective. As we have seen, white liberals feel an almost pathological sense of guilt over the white racism of the past and this is central to their overwhelmingly negative assessment of the West and its history.

This combination of moralism and guilt has resulted in white liberals going from one extreme to the other. In attempting to avoid the mistakes of the past and to somehow atone for the sins of their forefathers, white liberals have adopted a position towards ethnic minorities and non-Western cultures in which they feel that it is not morally permissible for white people to criticise any non-white groups, belief systems, cultural phenomena, and so on. Consequently, white liberals are – for example – wholly opposed to asserting the superior values of Western modernity over the comparative backwardness of the so-called Islamic world, and indeed devote much of their time to promoting the idea that the West is in fact grossly deficient and shot through with ‘racism’.

Multiculturalism is the inevitable result of this white liberal outlook. Unable to assert the particular value of Western civilisation and the developments of modernity, white liberals have encouraged multiculturalism because a large part of their flawed ‘anti-racist’ strategy is the promotion of cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is the irrational position that no culture – or aspect of cultural belief or practice – can in any sense be stated to be better than another, and it is an important aspect of the pseudo-religion of ‘equality’. The simplistic idea underpinning cultural relativism is the view that if all cultures are seen as equal, then all races will be seen to be equal, and never again can whites assert racial superiority over non-whites. However, the white liberal approach to racism is wrong on two fundamental levels: firstly, it is irrational, and secondly, it is actually based on racist ideas.

The white liberal notion that ‘discrimination’ is an intrinsic evil involves an abuse of the concept of discrimination and the application of a moral principle that makes no sense, and is not even consistently followed by white liberals. Despite the fact the word is now so loaded it automatically conjures up images of bigotry and injustice, discrimination is a perfectly normal and legitimate concept. To discriminate is simply to choose one option from a series of options. The fact that railway companies no longer build steam locomotives is the result of superior advances in rail technology. When building new trains, rail companies could choose to build a new fleet of steam locomotives. Of course, they do not do this as to do so would be a step backwards and would be commercially harmful. In choosing to build trains using the latest technology, rail companies are using a process of discrimination. Go and see the managers of a rail company and try telling them that all trains are ‘equal’ and that they should not ‘discriminate’ against steam locomotives, but should rather use equal numbers of steam and electric locomotives. They would probably laugh in your face and call you an idiot. And they would be right. Even white liberals would find the notion of railway locomotive ‘equality’ completely absurd and irrational. However, when it comes to looking at beliefs, cultural practices, ways of ordering society, and so on, white liberals suddenly adopt the same irrational argument as used in my train example. All cultures are ‘equal’, they assert. To think otherwise is immoral and bigoted and shows that you are a ‘racist’.

In reality, white liberals do not really consider all cultures to be equal. They may say they do, but even white liberals are not actually that stupid. White liberals to do not want to live in a society ruled on theocratic lines; they don’t want to be enslaved to following ancient writings of ignorant men; they don’t want their daughters to be genitally mutilated; they don’t want to be forced into arranged marriages; they don’t believe men should be in a position of ‘authority’ over women; they don’t accept sexism, misogyny, and anti-gay prejudice; they don’t think the answer to criminality is to enact barbaric laws involving public whippings, amputation, stoning, and beheading; they don’t think people should be executed for ‘crimes’ such as homosexuality and ‘sorcery’. The West was once based around all these principles, however, a slow development away from rule by religious authority and unelected leaders, and a society ordered along brutal feudal lines and permeated with superstition, took place in the West over a number of centuries, and was particularly accelerated thanks to the Enlightenment. The often hysterical reaction to Christian fundamentalists exhibited by white liberals, and their support for the notion that harshly criticising and even ridiculing Christianity is admirable and ‘progressive’, shows where they stand when it comes to traditional Western religion and religious authority. Because of its long history in the West, white liberals tend to perceive Christianity as somehow a ‘white’ religion (despite the majority of practising Christians in the world today being non-white and non-European), and as a result are more than happy to see it dissected, neutered, and pilloried. Naturally, white liberals do not consider criticism of Christianity and theocratic Christian groups to be a form of ‘anti-white racism’, and they are right, as it isn’t, and has nothing to do with race.

Given white liberals are very clear about the way in which they wish to live, and the rights they consider essential – free speech and expression, freedom from sexism, freedom from homophobia, democratic rights, individual rights, freedom from religious authority, freedom from State oppression, and so on – you might expect them to take the position that every citizen in the West (and indeed the whole world) should share a respect for, and enjoy the benefits of, these freedoms. However, because of white liberals’ bizarre misunderstanding of what racism is, they suddenly throw out any universal commitment to such values when they find that non-white societies and ethnic minority groups in majority-white societies do not respect these freedoms. The clearest example of this bizarre and hypocritical attitude is currently found in the way white liberals approach Islam and Muslims. According to the white liberal anti-racist creed, to criticise Islam, to state that Muslims living in the West should abide by the social mores of the West, and even to criticise political Islam (Islamism) is an act of ‘racism’. How can this be perceived to be racism? According to white liberals, criticism of Islam is ‘racist’ because the majority of Muslims in the world – and in the West – are non-white, and Islam is a religion that emerged in a non-white land (the Arabian peninsula). For the white liberal, criticism of Islam, because it is a predominantly non-white belief system, must by definition in fact be based on racist contempt for non-white people, because Islam is ‘their culture’ and to criticise ‘their culture’ is to criticise ‘them’. White liberals, haunted by memories of slavery, colonialism, and white supremacist ideologies of the past, have concluded that cultures and races are integrally intertwined. Islam, they believe, is a non-white and ethnic minority belief system, which is therefore an extension of the non-white and ethnic minority communities that adhere to it. In the light of the white colonialism and racism of the past, white liberals claim, white people have no right to pass judgement on other cultures, and to do so is to engage in a racist ‘cultural imperialism’.

The notion that criticism of a culture, cultural practice, or ideology is a form of racism is, ironically enough, actually predicated on a racist outlook. When white liberals cry ‘cultural racism’, they are merely engaging in a politically correct form of a racist idea which originally formed the basis of many theories of white supremacy. Early Western proponents of notions of the inferiority of non-white people, racial hierarchies, and so on, initially based their beliefs on assumptions derived from anthropology, before going on to create full-blown pseudo-scientific racial theories that drew on such bogus ‘scientific’ methods as craniology and phrenology. These anthropological racists came into contact with various non-white peoples through exploration and colonialism. Upon finding that many non-European peoples were living in societies bereft of the technological and philosophical advances found in the West, white supremacists concluded that the reason these peoples lived in primitive conditions which lacked any evidence of modernity was not that they – for various geographical and sociological reasons – had yet to go through the radical changes from living in pre-modern societies to living in modern technological and industrialised nations that had recently occurred in the West, but rather was a result of an inherent intellectual and sociological deficiency in their ‘race’ that derived from their genetic make-up. According to the Western theorists of white supremacy, the cultures of non-white peoples were external manifestations of an innate racial essence, and it was quite impossible to hope that these peoples would ever advance from the state in which they were found, because they were biologically incapable of ever advancing or developing. Such thinking provided an ‘intellectual’ justification for slavery, for example, in that it adjudged black people to be a lesser form of being, lacking intellectual potential and aspirations, and consequently a being whose ‘natural’ role was to live in subservience to white people. When white liberals claim that criticism of Islam or Islamic politics – so-called ‘Islamophobia’ – is a form of racism, they are making exactly the same connection between culture and race. In this white liberal form of racism – the racism of lower expectations – it is seen to be bigoted to suggest that non-white people should leave behind the very same primitive ideas that once held sway in the West (fanatical devotion to religion, intolerance of critical thinking and other beliefs, persecution of gay people, and so on). Yet the true bigot here is the white liberal, who assumes that cultural ideas that have developed in non-white societies are somehow integrally intertwined with, and innately derived from, the racial groups in those societies. The racism of lower expectations views non-white people as inferior to white Westerners, but masks this racist assumption in politically correct language about ‘diversity’ and ‘respect’ for cultures.

If white liberals really believed that all cultures are ‘equal’, you would expect to see them spreading out across the world, queuing up to gain entry to countries such as Iran or Saudi Arabia. In fact, most white liberals certainly do not hike off around the world, seeking to make their homes in Islamic States. The major traffic between Islamic States and the West comes in the form of a steady flow of immigrants trying to gain entry to the West because they know they will have a better life here. Societies that attempt to organise themselves using Islam as their foundational philosophical basis are demonstrably vastly inferior to the West. One need only glance at the human rights records of Islamic States such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran to see that this is the case. None of these States has a properly functioning democracy or the freedoms we take for granted in the West such as freedom of speech and expression, freedom of belief and religious adherence, freedom of association, gender equality, and freedom of choice in personal and sexual relationships. The legal systems in these States are barbaric, prejudiced, and corrupt. Law enforcement does not adhere to any proper system of due process. Saudi Arabia is ruled with an iron fist and is marked by institutional superstition, as seen, for example, in its execution of people accused of ‘witchcraft’ and ‘sorcery’. Yemen fiercely clamps down both on individual freedom and the rights of political groups. Arbitrary house searches and arrests are common, and capital ‘crimes’ include homosexuality. Child marriage, meanwhile, is promoted by Yemeni clerics, who cite Muhammad’s marriage of a child as the authoritative precedent for this practice. Iran is governed by a Holocaust-denying Islamist lunatic who incites hatred of the West and grants police the right to detain individuals for such bogus ‘crimes’ as ‘Satanism’ or having the wrong hairstyle. Iran also executes gay men, including teenagers.

To state that life in Western democracies is demonstrably better than life in Islamic States should hardly be controversial, yet many white liberals cannot bring themselves to acknowledge what they must logically believe to be the case, because to do so would be to ‘discriminate’ and to engage in ‘cultural imperialism’, ‘Islamophobia’, and ‘racism’. Yet who is the racist here? – The honest individual who notes that modern Western civilisation is superior to that of Islamic States, or the white liberal who enjoys the freedoms of the West but claims that we cannot ‘impose’ our ‘Eurocentric’ perspective on others, because to do so would be to claim that peoples and races living in Islamic States are themselves inferior? The subtext is rather clear in the white liberal’s cultural relativism: Islamic States are the way they are because they are the creation of non-white peoples, and therefore to criticise political Islam is to pass judgement on the ethnic groups in those States. A sensible person who is not clouded by racial prejudice should be able to see that Islam and Islamic States have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with culture. Culture does not derive from race, and therefore to criticise a culture cannot be seen as a racial criticism (unless that criticism is articulated in the language of genuine ideological racism). To assume that it can be seen as that is actually to endorse the view that culture does derive from race and that therefore the backward, superstitious, and authoritarian nature of Islamic societies is actually the result of non-white peoples being inherently backward and superstitious.

The same issue applies to white liberals’ approach to Islamists living in the West. When Islam, Islamism, and Islamists are criticised, many white liberals work themselves into a frenzy, frothing at the mouth about supposed ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘racism’. In doing so, white liberals seem to be seriously proposing that non-white immigrants and children of immigrants are inherently predisposed towards theocratic and illiberal outlooks. White liberals practice the racism of lower expectations in their dealings with immigrant communities. When Islamic groups are shown to be sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-freedom, and anti-Western, white liberals do not oppose them – instead they support the bigotry and backwardness of Islamic extremists in immigrant communities by announcing that such prejudices and anti-freedom views and ideologies are ‘their’ culture and are no better or worse than the predominant culture in the West. The fact that white liberals are being racist in doing this is easily illustrated by the fact that when white racist parties and organisations promote anti-democratic views and hatred for minorities such as gay people, white liberals immediately condemn them. When the Christian Right comes out with views that are backward, superstitious, and opposed to personal freedom, white liberals start ranting about theocracy and ‘fascism’. White liberals are happy to attack bigotry, irrationalism, and extremism when it comes with a white face – they don’t claim that ‘far-right’ homophobia and anti-Semitism is somehow ‘different but equal’ to white liberal views, nor do they start making excuses about ‘understandable grievances’ when white supremacists rave about Jewish conspiracies or Christian extremists bomb abortion clinics. If virulent criticism of white racist ideologies and religiously conservative Christianity is not seen by white liberals to constitute a form of ‘anti-white racism’, then why on earth should criticism of political Islam be seen as a form of ‘racism’? The only way in which opposing political Islam can be spun as a form of ‘racism’ is to claim that Islam constitutes an expression of a racial ‘essence’, as opposed to being one cultural form among many. To claim that criticism of Islam is ‘racist’ is to claim that Islam is derived from biology. This is nonsense. It is the same as the white supremacist claim that Western civilisation is great because the ethnicity of its progenitors is great. When white liberals claim criticism of Islam or any other non-white belief or culture is racist they show themselves to be racist to the core. White liberals have a condescending approach to non-white people because in actual fact they do not view them as equals at all. White liberals are the true racists, and their ‘tolerance’, relativism, and obsession with calling other people racists is in fact an attempt at covering up this very fact.

KURDS VS ARAB 'PALESTINIANS'

2010-06-25T13:10:00.006-03:00

IT PAYS TO BE ILLEGITIMATE & MURDEROUS "PALESTINIAN" THAN TO BE A LIGITIMATE PEACEFUL KURD

As the world's about to give yet another state [Jordan ain't enough?] for the [group of immigrant Arabs into Israel that call themselves as] "Palestinians", that have never behaved and do not merely fight for a 'homeland' which Israel was never theirs anyhow, but have their goal of eliminating Israel, ethnic cleansing and racist genocide, the poor Kurds still sink under oppression by Turkey, by Arab racism in: Syria, Iraq, and by Islamic fascists regime of Iran.

THE KURDS

REAL PEOPLE, WITH REAL ASPIRATION OF A HOMELAND - THE LEGITIMATE

VICTIMS OF OPPRESSION & ARAB RACISM

Hiding Arab Racism, May 1, 2005
By Adel Makhoul

This book, like Culture and Imperialism, is essentially about Western prejudice against Islam. Said condemns intellectuals in the West who in his eyes are "agents of exploitation". Yet Said himself is an agent of racism: Arab Racism.

A Pan Arabist, he always supported Arab unity and "Islam" at the expense of non-Arab and non-Moslem peoples. Said directs and manipulates the Western taste for self criticim, and all that does is deflect the world's attention from Arab and Moslem attrocities committed against Christians, Kurds, Jews, Israelis, Coptic Christians, non-Arab Sudanese, etc.

Thus, reading Said, you would never realize that Sadam Hussein's poisoning of the Kurds has never been condemned by one Arab intellectual or leader. This is because a racist prevalent attitude in the Arab mind is that the entire Middle East should be Arab. This also explains the attitude towards Israel, a country that is predominantly non-Moslem and speaks a Middle Eastern language other than Arabic.

The pity is that Said himself is a Christian, yet he never spoke on behalf of Coptic Christians in Egypt, or the right of Christians to practice their faith in Saudi Arabia and probably other places in the Arab World. He is facilitating the overall aim of PanArab Nationalists by distracting the West from what is happening in the Arab world.

For a better understanding of relations between the West and Islam, I recommend books by Bernard Lewis, such as "The Moslem Discovery of Europe" and the "Jews of Islam". I also recommend books by the Egyptian scholar and Jewish refugee Yael Bat Yeor, such as "The Dhimmi".
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1FZS0RYTC94JP

Idea Portal: Kurds under oppression in Iran, Kurds under oppression in Iran. You can easily find more than ten top film festivals around the world from Italy to Chicago...
http://shauheen.ngareh.com/archives/000146.html

The Unknown Oppression of the Kurds, The Unknown Oppression of the Kurds .... Iran had used the Kurdish parties of northern Iraq during its war with Iraq. So, all these countries benefit from ...
http://web.mit.edu/thistle/www/v12/2/kurds.html -

Kurdish Oppression in Turkey Goes On; Short-Lived Republic - New ...Kurdish Oppression in Turkey Goes On; Short-Lived Republic ... The Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in northern Iran survived only from December 1945 to December ...
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEED61539F934A35757C0A967958260

What Really has happened in Halabja and The Racism of so-called Arab Intellectuals towards Kurds and the Kurdistan: The case of Mr. Mohammed Al Obaidi ...
http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistan5/3-1-05-opinion-hadi-halabja-arabs-racism.html

He Has Gassed His Own People
"Saddam Hussein is a man who is willing to gas his own people, willing to use ... and Iran--were responsible perhaps for the gassing of civilian Kurds. ...
http://hnn.us/articles/862.html

Iran: Kurdish journalists face executionT his case provides yet another example of the current climate of severe oppression in the Kurdish region of Iran. Mr Butimar wrote articles for agricultural ...
http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2007/3/iran-kurdish-journalists-face-execution.shtml

Kurds in Syria is between 2 to 2.5 million. ... murder, torture, discrimination and terror to keep the Kurds under control. ...
http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistan2/14-3-04-opinion-badrakhan-freedom-for-kurds-w-kurdistan.html

Stop the Syrian Violence against the Kurds in Syria - Reform Party ...The Kurds are for the Autonomy within Syria framework, is explained by the ... Islamic Barbarism, colonialism and national oppression, our people call on ...
http://www.reformsyria.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=296&Itemid=67

Second- Citizens...
For Many, Not Citizens at All

Erasing Ethnic Identity.

Syrian Kurds were banned from giving their children names reflecting their ethnic identity.
Pary Karadaghi, Director of Kurdish Human Rights Watch in Washington, says one of the most basic ways of showing Kurdish identity was taken away. "The campaign of 'Arabization' actually replaced the Kurdish names," she says. "People could not have Kurdish names on cities, buildings [and] businesses. Children's names could not be Kurdish."

Syria's Kurds struggled for years to survive despite government oppression on many fronts. They closely watched their Iraqi counterparts, who achieved a measure of autonomy in the 1990s, and pressed Damascus for their own rights. Their demands were ignored or sometimes met with waves of repression.
http://www.khrw.org/advocate/2005/syrias_kurds_struggle_for_rights.htm

_____________

THE FAKE 'NATION' CALLED: "PALESTINIANS" THE ILLEGAL GROUP SINCE THEY THAT DEFIED UN'S PARTITION PLAN IN 1948 WITH GENOCIDAL GOALS

ROOTS

Who Are the Palestinians? At DePaul, Don't Ask and Don't Tell September 1, 2005 Historically, Palestinian Arabs were not a distinct nationality. Though not all Muslims are terrorists, most major international terrorism today is committed by Muslims. .
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=1028

Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian People, there is no Palestinian entity ...
http://www.peacefaq.com/palestinians.html

What is a Palestinian? Arabs have been flocking to Israel ever since it was created and even before, coinciding with the wave of Jewish immigration into Palestine prior to 1948. ...
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22564

Illegal Arab immigration into "Palestine" - part of OsloT, he Arab Legion never allowed a census of Palestinian refugees. .... Israel doesn't enforce immigration laws (and other laws) in Arab communities. ...
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/immigration-oslo.html

How the Israel-Palestine Problem Came to Pass Trying to force Britain to convert Palestine immediately into an Arab state, ... Jewish immigration into Palestine was going to be limited to a total of ...
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/02/how_the_israelpalestine_proble.html

History of Israel and Palestine in VERY Easy To Understand Maps The Arab countries occupy 640 times the land mass as does Israel and ... The Jews had already begun mass immigration into Palestine in the 1880's in an ...
http://www.masada2000.org/historical.html

Is Jordan Palestine? That homeland is Trans-Jordan, or Eastern Palestine.... A second Palestinian state to the west of the River is a prescription for anarchy.
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/298

Jordan, Transjordan - The Peace FAQ Transjordan being to the east of the River Jordan, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine." - King Hussein, writing in his Memoirs ...
http://www.peacefaq.com/jordan.html

1950 - Transjordan changes its name to Jordan and begins to call Judea and Samaria the West Bank. 1964 - The Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) is ...
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=3/b/050820021

American Thinker: Palestine - Partition and Propaganda, It was then called Trans-Jordan, it comprised 77% of the territory administered by Great Britain under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/06/palestine_partition_and_propag.html

Jordan is Palestine In other words, Jordan is Palestine. Arab Palestine. There is absolutely no difference between Jordan and Palestine, nor between Jordanians and...
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/janfeb04/jordan.html

Jordan is Palestine In other words, Jordan is Palestine. Arab Palestine. There is absolutely no difference between Jordan and Palestine, nor between Jordanians and...
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/janfeb04/jordan.html

Palestinian people do not exist, In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, ... the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand ...
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28222

"PALESTINIAN" IDENTITY AS PROPAGANDA DEVICE In deference to this non-assertion of "Palestinian" Arab ethnic identity, the League of .... In reality, Today, there is no difference between Jordanians, ... ...
http://www.rosenblit.com/Palestine.htm

-----

GOAL

Israel Has Always Faced Arab Genocide
http://www.tzemach.org/fyi/docs/beres/sept02-03.htm

Israel not only has the moral right to do so, but legal rights as well. ... that the resolution "was an invitation to genocide against the Jewish people. ...
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/dec97/shustef1.htm

Israel's Survival... Historically, the Islamic world's orientation to genocide against the Jews has not been limited to idle phrasemaking. Even before Israel came into existence ...
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/jun00/beres.htm

Teach Kids Peace – Sharansky: ‘PA Promotes Genocide’But are such depictions laying the groundwork for genocide? Natan Sharansky, Israel’s minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, called a news conference
http://www.teachkidspeace.org/doc1015.php

Hamas Issues Islamic Call For Genocide on PA Television - Defense …Israeli news covered by the Arutz Sheva news team bringing news briefs and in-depth stories covering Israeli politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict, …
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/122094

The Palestinian War of Annihilation of the Jewish State The PLO mission is “the elimination of Zionism in Palestine! ... accommodation with Israel; only a renewed war of annihilation - the combined PLO-Arab state ...
http://www.ortzion.org/archnws07_2.html

February poll 75 of palestinians don't give Israel a right to exist... IMRA - Friday, February 16, 2007 NEC 12-15 February Poll: 75% of Palestinians do not think that Israel has the right to exist ...
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=33100

Fatah-Controlled TV Promises Elimination of Israel - Inside Israel ...The lyrics of the latest PA video calling for Israel's elimination, as recorded from PA TV on October 23, 2007 and translated by PMW, are as follows: ...
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124079

The Gaza Flotilla Op

2010-06-01T12:17:00.001-03:00

Special Alert: Flotilla Battle Unleashes Anti-Israel Wave

Thomas Lifson
The latest elaborate operation put into effect to marginalize Israel, as a predicate to destroying it, has succeeded. William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection puts it all into perspective

The left-wing blogosphere is full of useful idiots, who pretend that the flotilla which just was stopped by Israel was a humanitarian mission.

The flotilla was organized by the Islamist government in Turkey to aid Hamas with the goal of opening up shipping channels for Turkey's new friend, Iran, to ship more and better weapons as it is doing to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran is busy turning Lebanon and Syria into one large missile launching pad against Israel, and a southern base in Gaza will complete the encirclement of Israel for the coming crisis over Iran's nuclear program.

The Europeans on the ships were cover, and the placement of an 18-month old child on these ships was the utmost cynical use of a human shield.

If getting humanitarian supplies to Gaza really was the goal, this flotilla was not necessary. The supplies would have been off-loaded in Eqypt or Israel and then shipped in by land after being checked for hidden weapons.

And that is the rub, only sea-based shipping would provide Iran with the mechanism for almost unlimited armament of Hamas. There is a limit to the quantity and size of missiles and other armaments which can be smuggled through tunnels from Egypt. That is why the sea blockade must be broken for Iran to get what it wants.

But the useful idiots (no offense to idiots) in the left-wing blogosphere ignore this reality, and use the incident for their ultimate goal, which is the cut off of U.S. support for Israel.

The Op must be counted a success, for the world is blaming the Israelis, who did not initiate violence but were rather victims of it. This will increase pressure on Israel to stop enforcing its legitimate blockade to prevent the instruments of its destruction being positioned on its borders. There will another Gaza flotilla to test the defenses of Israel. Her enemies feel the wind at their back.

Richard Baehr adds:

Facts:

From Memri: some on the flotilla were looking for martyrdom.

Bookworm with video of what happened.

An eyewitness account.

From Haaretz -- note the charming "peace activist" with the knife, and the camera crew behind him, ready to record bad deeds by Israel.

From the Israel Project, the facts on Israel's provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

This was an ambush, which the flotilla crowd planned, and wanted to happen. They were ready to record any injuries or death to their shipmates from any Israeli military actions (which in this case, occurred ENTIRELY in self defense), for a ready and willing international media circus on board, and at the ready at their desks.

Despite all the facts, it won't likely matter in the court of international opinion. My guess is that President Barack Obama, who never utters a critical word about Islamic radicals, or jihad, or the Muslim Brotherhood (which now effectively runs not only Gaza, but Turkey), probably sympathizes with the flotilla protestors far more than with Israel.

Gaza Clash: Turkish Charity’s Terror Links

2010-06-01T12:05:00.000-03:00

The United Nations Security Council can’t decide how to sanction Iran or punish North Korea over killing 46 South Korean Sailors in last month’s unprovoked attack on one of its submarines. But on Monday, the UN called an emergency session to take Israel to task over the boarding of a Turkish registered boat on its way to deliver aid to Gaza which led to at least nine deaths following violent altercations between Israeli forces and a significant number of armed protestors.

Yet the Turkish group that funded and ran the boat the Mavi Marmara, where the confrontation occurred is documented as having ties to terrorists, was named in federal court papers as playing a role in the failed millennium bomb plot and is named in a C.I.A. report in 1996 as having links to terrorist groups. The Foundation for Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) is a Muslim charity and non-government organization (NGO) that was formed in 1992 with the goal of assisting Muslims in Bosnia. Since then it has branched out to many places including Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia and the Palestinian territories.

According to a report by the Israeli based Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, IHH is a “radical Islamic Organization with an anti-Western orientation.” Written by Jonathan Fighel, the report says “besides its legitimate philanthropic activities, it supports radical Islamic networks, including Hamas, and that at least in the past, even global jihad networks.”

Fighel’s report also notes that the C.I.A. report that was declassified in 2001 and titled “International Islamic NGOs and Links to Terrorism” states that the IHH had links with extremist groups in Iran and Algeria and was either active or facilitating activities of terrorist groups operating in Bosnia.

IHH's Oguzan Ulas, told Fox News from its headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey that his organization has “no relation to radical Islamic groups,” and that it was “a rubbish accusation.” Ulas blamed this on a smear campaign by the Israelis against his group. As to his organization’s support of Hamas he said that it disagrees with the U.S. government’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist group and that IHH “openly accepts Hamas.”

Steve Emerson, a leading terrorism expert, tells Fox News that IHH was banned by Israel in 2008 for its affiliation with Hamas and the so-called “Union of Good.” The Union of Good is a coalition of Islamic groups led by Muslim Brotherhood leader Yousef Al Qaradawi who has issued Fatwas calling for the killing of Americans and Jews.

Emerson who heads the Investigative Project on Terrorism points to U.S. Court documents which reveal IHH played “an important role” in the Millennium bomb plot. The Millennium bomb plot was foiled following the arrest of Ahmed Ressam who had planned to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport.

During Ressam’s trial, federal prosecutors called Jean Louis Brugiere, a French counter-terrorism expert and Magistrate, to testify. As part of his testimony he told the court that “The IHH is an NGO (non-governmental organization), but it was kind of a type of cover-up in order to obtain forged documents and also to obtain different forms of infiltration for Mujahideen in combat. And also to go and gather these Mujahideens. And finally, one of the last responsibilities that they had was also to be implicated or involved in weapons trafficking.”

According to court documents, he went on to say when talking about the cell involved in the Millennium plot that the apartment they used was “a conspiratorial flat.” All this was based on phone calls placed from that apartment “particularly to Turkey and Istanbul and I am talking about the IHH.”

IHH has offices in Gaza and the West Bank and according to reports in Israel has transferred money to Hamas in support of its goals. IHH leadership has also met with Hamas Chairman Khaled Mashal and other top Hamas leaders. Hamas is on the U.S. State Department list of designated terrorist organizations.

Emerson says IHH’s financial and political support for Hamas is “very troubling” and told Fox News that “it’s surprising that IHH has not been designated (as a terrorist group) by the U.S. government.”

Late last night the U.N. Security Council issued a Presidential Statement which condemned yesterday's action and called for an investigation into yesterday's events.

The Politicization of Peace

2009-10-10T15:08:00.002-03:00

By Bruce Walker

Few spectacles so clearly show the politicization of life than the surreally silly award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama. The Nobel Prize has long been a reflection of the whims of those who run political correctness. The politicization of peace extends beyond just the Nobel Prize. The very day that the Nobel Committee announced its choice of Obama, Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin miraculously "discovered," eight years after American forces invaded Afghanistan that "If the U.S. troops left - the country would collapse. We'd go into civil war." The about face on our domestic peace movement reflects only who now commands American forces. Benjamin likes Obama, so her doctrinaire commitment to peace goes wobbly when Obama is Commander-in-Chief.

Many people have noted the total disconnect between Peace Prize winners, like Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, and world peace. Gore, of course, supported our undeclared war against Serbia ten years ago. Before that, Gore supported "Operation Just Cause," the insertion by Clinton of American troops into Haiti to impose our will on that nation's politics. He voted for Operation Desert Storm, but most notably, he pandered his vote on that crucial question based upon how it would help him politically. Gore does not even seem to care about world peace.

The politicization stretches back earlier. Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned in 1916 with the slogan "He kept us out of war," and five months after his re-election, shortly after his inauguration, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany, plunging us into an utterly unnecessary war whose ultimate end almost ensured a Second World War. Wilson, the vile racist bigot who lied to the American people about going into war, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Terrorists like Yasser Arafat, Communist apparatchiks like Michael Gorbachev and Le Duc Tho, have won the Nobel Peace Prize. Willy Brandt, the socialist chancellor of West Germany who left office under a scandal when it was revealed that his closest aide was a Communist spy, won the Nobel Peace Prize. What is the common thread that links Obama, Arafat, Carter, Gorbachev, Tho, Wilson, and Gore? All are planted firmly on the left of the political spectrum.

Even when the winner is a truly decent man, like Andrei Sakharov, if the candidate does not support the left, he does not win and if he supports the left then he can win the Peace Prize no matter what. Sakharov, after all, won the Stalin Prize and the Lenin Prize for helping the Soviet Union build an Atomic Bomb and then masterminding the Soviet development of the Hydrogen Bomb. The greatest nuclear explosion in human history, a 25 megaton blast, occurred in 1961 under the guidance of Sakharov. When Sakharov began to worry about the nuclear weapons he built, his attitude was traditionally leftist: he called, specifically, for an end to anti-ballistic defenses. Sakharov opposed building weapons which could make nuclear missiles useless.

Just as revealing are all the people who did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot, the greatest triumph for peace in world history. Pope John Paul II boldly reached out to end the historic distrust between the Catholic Church and Jews; he also showed how passive resistance could work in Poland; he also went around the world preaching peace and love; he also forgave the Moslem who tried to assassinate him. Alexander Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but not for Peace, even though he proved, perhaps more courageously than any man in modern history, that the pen could be mightier than the sword. Konrad Adenauer worked hard for a peaceful Germany at the end of the First World War; he opposed the Nazis and spent time in a concentration camp for that; after the Second World War ended, Adenauer reunited the three western sectors of Germany and reached out to Israel and offered, without being asked, for the Federal Republic of Germany to pay reparations to Israel. None of these magnificent champions of peace won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize, like the support of Code Pink is based upon ideology and nothing else. So Obama, Gore, Carter, and Wilson have won the Peace Prize, but Reagan, who dedicated his last term in office to ridding the world of nuclear weapons and who actually won a world war without violence, does not. Willy Brandt, a thoroughly unlikable socialist West German chancellor, who left office in scandal, wins the award, while a magnificently noble conservative West German chancellor does not. So two Soviets who buy the rhetoric of the chic left - Gorbachev and Sakharov - win the award, while a much braver and clear voice for peace, Solzhenitsyn, does not?

We should know by now, if we ever needed to know, that the awards, compliments, and honors which the establishment of the world offers is offered only to those who have first paid homage to the ideology of the left. Awards given to communist terrorists, like Le Duc Tho, or anti-Semitic ogres like Jimmy Carter, are no badges of achievement: such awards are evidence of moral surrender.

HONDURAS: CONSTITUTIONAL LAW ISSUES

2009-09-24T22:23:00.003-03:00

This report discusses the legal basis under the Honduran Constitution for President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales’s removal from office. http://www.elheraldo.hn/var/elheraldo_site/storage/original/application/48519cf8ceca6f1fffd32ee9aa0c5dd8.pdf

Schock Releases Report Contradicting State Department on Honduras

Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL) today released a report written by the Library of Congress which concludes that the removal of former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was legal and Constitutional.

“The bottom line is one of the most basic foundations of the world community is the rule of law,” said Schock. “The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded that the removal of former President Zelaya was Constitutional, and we must respect that. It’s unconscionable that our Administration would attempt to force Honduras to violate its own Constitution by cutting off foreign aid.”

Schock is offering a compromise to resolve the situation by:

1. Resuming US aid, international aid and ending the VISA sanctions.

2. Cooperating with the Honduran government by sending normal election observers to ensure the fairness of the regularly scheduled November election and recognizing the legitimacy of that election, so long as it is conducted in a fair and accurate manner.

3. While the Library of Congress report found the removal from power of former President Zelaya legal and constitutional, they also found Zelaya’s removal from the country to be explicitly unconstitutional. Schock is calling for the Honduran government to allow Zelaya out of the Brazilian Embassy, recognize that his punishment for what led to his removal from power IS his removal from power, drop plans to prosecute him and issue a general amnesty for everyone involved in his removal from power. As a private citizen, Zelaya would have the right to campaign for his choice in the upcoming presidential election. However if he resorts to the incitement of violence, or advocates the violent overthrow of the Honduran government, then he should be arrested and put on trial as the government would do with any other citizen.

The report was written by Norma C. Gutierrez, a Senior Foreign Law Specialist in Central America. Among its conclusions is that: "The Supreme Court of Honduras has constitutional and statutory authority to hear cases against the President of the Republic and many other high officers of the State, to adjudicate and enforce judgments, and to request the assistance of the public forces to enforce its rulings."

Just Don’t Touch their Symbol: Ben-Dror Yemini tackles the al Durah affair in the pages of Maariv

2009-09-13T19:45:00.004-03:00

Just Don’t Touch their Symbol

(Article by Ben-Dror Yemini, Ma’ariv, 20.6.08, Weekend Supplement, pp. 18-19)
En français au site de l’UPJF.

Everyone remembers the death of Muhammad Al-Dura. France 2 accused the IDF; the Israeli media went along. One Frenchman dared to doubt and began a kulturkampf; the Israeli media was silent. It has now become clear that he was right. Israel is still silent.

The Muhammad Al-Dura affair refuses to die. In Israel, it is mainly the first part that is recognized. In France, in recent weeks, there are those who are already calling it a new Dreyfus Affair.

The beginning is well-known. The pictures that were broadcast seven and a half years ago shocked public opinion in the country and around the world. They saw a father and boy hiding behind a barrel. They shout for their lives as the bullets strike them. The father tries to protect his son. Unsuccessfully. Tal Abu-Rahma, the France 2 cameramen, delivered the material to the network’s well known and veteran Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin. From the raw material, the latter filtered less than 60 seconds of harsh and horrifying footage, and added commentary that cast the responsibility on IDF soldiers. Within a few days, this item became the harshest propaganda ever against the State of Israel. Whoever tried to cast doubts then was considered a heretic. After all, there was photographic evidence and there is nothing higher.

Muhammad Al-Dura became a symbol. Public squares have been named after him. Stamps have been issued in his honor. The Palestinian poet Muhammad Darwish dedicated a poem to him. His pictures became much better known than that of the Jewish boy raising his hands opposite a Nazi soldier. Already, one can no longer count the number of times Al-Dura has been cited in articles written against Israel around the world. And not just against Israel. For some of the writers, well-known authors, Nobel laureates, Israel became a Nazi, child-murdering country.

This did not happen solely due to Muhammad Al-Dura’s 60 seconds. But the weight of that short clip was very high. This was biting, ultimate evidence of Israel’s murderous character.
But there were a few among us, and around the world as well, who thought that something was amiss in those 58 seconds that became a global sensation. Among those was Israeli physicist Nahum Shahaf, who was a member of the committee of inquiry that was appointed shortly afterwards. There was also Esther Schapira from German television, who came to curse because she was convinced that the IDF had killed the boy, but it became clear to her that France 2’s version had more holes in it than Swiss cheese. There was also Luc Rosenzweig, a respected French journalist, formerly of Le Monde, who had prepared his own investigation. His editor did not believe what he saw. They went together, along with another journalist, to the heads of France 2 in order to view all of the footage that was filmed that bitter and hasty day. They saw and were surprised. Their doubts only grew. The investigation was published in L’Express.

Among Charles Enderlin’s and France 2’s most outspoken critics was Philippe Karsenty, a young and successful Jew, who set up a media criticism internet site (”Media-Ratings”). Karsenty claimed that Enderlin had lied and that he and the channel had to draw conclusions.
France 2 is not just another television station. It is a superpower. It is a flagship and establishment channel in one. The channel and Enderlin sued Karsenty for libel. Karsenty demanded one thing: Show the full film that was shot of the event. The court refused. Karsenty lost and was convicted of libel. He did not give up.

In the appeals court, Karsenty reiterated his demand. This time his demand was met. It was a turning point. The full film, to all those who have seen it, leaves no room for doubt. The verdict was handed down four weeks ago on May 22. It was determined that Karsenty is not guilty of libel. The verdict analyzes the item that was broadcast, the full film, the evidence, the contradictions. The conclusion is unequivocal. The plaintiffs, Enderlin and France 2, come out not well at all.

The verdict did not cause many reverberations. In France, there was scant mention. In Israel, the affair came up against the Olmert affair and the talks with Syria, so that the story received very little coverage. What could have been a great achievement for Israel was about to go out with nary a whisper. But this is not what happened.

Before we continue, it would be worthwhile to recall the Israeli side. Articles appeared in Israel that were critical of Karsenty. What does it matter who killed him, wrote Arad Nir on Ynet. Gideon Levy went further and wrote that it did not matter since it is known that Israel kills children. It is certainly known. There is an old hobby to this effect. Jews. Children. It is a matter of history. Even journalist and historian Tom Segev mocked the inquiry of German journalist Esther Shapiro, who prepared a report for German television. It was not really proper on her part to exonerate the IDF soldiers of blame for the killing. She is not serious.
A series of prominent Israeli journalists were recruited not only to enshrine the libel that it was Israeli soldiers who killed or murdered Al-Dura. They were against the very idea of an inquiry. After all, they are energetic journalists. They had vigorous conclusions. Why confuse them with facts?

Let us return to France. Just as the affair was due to expire, Enderlin’s supporters decided to organize a petition of support for him. True, Enderlin said that the full footage included harsh segments of Al-Dura dying and it became clear that this was a lie. True, the verdict is unequivocal regarding the lack of credibility of those who were involved in broadcasting the doubtful segment. True, that Enderlin himself was nowhere near the scene when the events took place. But Enderlin’s friends, or those who believe that their enlightened state finds expression in besmirching Israel, lined up alongside one of their own. After all, he belongs to ‘the vanguard.’

The initiative for the petition came from Le Nouvel Observateur, an important and prestigious weekly, founded by Jean Daniel. His daughter is Sarah Daniel, a journalist in her own right. We will return to her. Nobody among the signatories is familiar with the affair. But all of the signatories, without exception, are identified, to one degree or another, with the anti-Israeli line.

Most, like Daniel and his daughter, are Jews. And this is strange because Daniel himself, as a leftist, has criticized the French media in the past for exaggerated hostility towards Israel. It is interesting when he will write the article against himself.

Among the signatories are Hubert Védrine, former French Foreign Minister, and Theo Klein, former president of CRIF, the French Jewish umbrella organization. The petitioners also succeeded in recruiting an Israeli supporting player, who is only a millimeter away from comparing Israel to the Nazis. He is Avraham Burg, the former Speaker of the Knesset.

What is strange is that the petition is not only a defense of Enderlin’s impugned integrity. The petition, in a precise manner, supports the first version, on Israel’s guilt: “Seven years. For seven years a despicable campaign of hate has been trying to stain the professional honor of Charles Enderlin. For seven years, there have been those who have tried to present as ‘fabricated’ and as a ’staged scene’ his report that shows how a twelve-year-old boy was killed by shots fired from an Israeli position.” Yes, that is their one-sided conclusion despite the court’s verdict. Like the anti-Dreyfusards, who also stubbornly clung to the first version.

The signatories are correct about one thing. For seven years, in their words, “A despicable campaign of hate has been conducted”. But the campaign has been waged against Israel, not against Enderlin. The many and the prominent were on Enderlin’s side. The few and the negligible came out against him. The French system of justice, after entering into details, after viewing the entire footage, after having heard expert testimony, after uncovering the lies, arrived at a sound verdict. It was a victory of David vs. Goliath. One stubborn, unknown young man forced the large network and the celebrity journalist to reveal the truth. The libel was refuted. The verdict leaves no room for doubts.

So how exactly did the signatories reach the conclusion, which has already been refuted in court? As usual, hostility against Israel forced the hand. It is possible to assume that none of the signatories were well versed in the details. But they all share one thing in common: They all belong to the same loathsome and fashionable anti-Zionist stream, in France as well as in Israel. Not all are on the same level of hostility. But they are all in the same direction.

Among the signatories, as we have mentioned, another name pops up, unknown to most Israelis:
The journalist Sarah Daniel. In November 2001, this same Sarah Daniel wrote about Muslim girls murdered for reasons of family honor. Except that she added one paragraph: “Palestinian women raped by Israeli soldiers are systematically murdered by their own families. The rape, in practice, is a war crime, because the Israeli soldiers act in full awareness of the consequence of their deed”.

From where did Daniel take this fabrication? That is it. From nowhere. In fact, this is another libel disseminated in very marginal circles. And where was it published? In Le Nouvel Observateur, the journal of her father, Jean Daniel. The same paper and the same people who just sponsored the petition for Enderlin.

The petition took flight. In the last two weeks, it has become the focus of conflict between opposing camps in France. The defensive text of the signatories, against journalists in service of the truth, recalls the text of the anti-Dreyfusards, against officers working in the service of the state. One must not criticize them. The truth is theirs. Harming them is harming the holiest of holies. Then they were anti-Semites. Today they are anti-Israelis.

In the wake of the petition, a courageous and important verdict, that almost foundered in deep water, received a new lease on life. The debate on the petition put the Al-Dura affair back on center stage, in France, not in Israel. The historian, Professor Richard Landes from Boston, who followed the affair and even testified himself, wrote a comprehensive and very un-complimentary article about the signatories. Landes is the one who coined the phrase “Pallywood”, about the media of Arab and Palestinian propaganda. He also investigated the Al-Dura affair in depth. He came to Karsenty’s side.

The argument also spread to France’s leading newspapers. Professor Eli Bar-Navi, former [Israeli] Ambassador to France, wrote a scathing article against the signatories. “Since Deir Yassin,” he wrote “there has not been an affair which has caused so much damage to Israel.” Afterwards, additional articles appeared, most in the same vein. An editorial appeared in Le Figaro this week asking the signatories whether media personnel are beyond criticism. Also the big guns, like philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, expressed serious doubts about the petition, and the CRIF has already announced that it has joined the appeal for a commission of inquiry into the entire affair.

Enderlin’s supporters are trying to paint him as the new Dreyfus. Poor guy. It is a little hard for him on Devil’s Island. He made a nice little career for himself out of the Muhammad Al-Dura story. Now the achievement has become a stain. Enderlin is not an Israel-hater. He is no different than most of the foreign journalists in Israel, and he is even an Israeli citizen. He is part of the herd. A herd which is also well-represented in the Israeli media.

And where is Israel? It does not exist. It is the Dreyfus in this affair, but a strange Dreyfus. A Dreyfus who has had a libel stuck to it, but who remains nonchalant. Others fight for it. Official Israel has never bothered to thank Karsenty, or others who have fought to dispel the libel. Regarding assistance, there is nothing to even discuss; on the contrary. Unofficial Israel was on Enderlin’s side. Most of the articles, mind you, were against Karsenty and for Enderlin.
Justice came to light, in France, not in Israel. This is not by chance. If the trial had been held in Israel, there is concern, only concern, that the result would have been different. Freedom of speech is indeed a supreme value but on one condition: That it is found in the hands of very specific people. But that is the subject of a different article.

http://www.theaugeanstables.com/category/al-durah-affair/

Barack Fidel Che Obama, the Bolivarian Revolution's useful idiot, reverses the Monroe Doctrine

2009-07-08T16:48:00.006-03:00

Gerald Warner http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/geraldwarner

Barack Obama has now made a statement far more significant than any of the stale rhetoric of his Inauguration Address. It is both a major upheaval in US foreign policy and a frightening insight into Obama’s total incapacity for office. If you are American, read it and weep. If you are not an American, but have concerns about freedom, be very afraid.

In response to the crisis in Honduras and the growing turmoil in Latin America, the President of the United States has now said: “The United States has not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies. But over the last several years I think both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have recognized that we always want to stand with democracy, even if the results don’t always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable towards the United States.”

My emphasis, as the convention phrases it. And it deserves emphasis because, in that brief statement, Obama has just reversed the Monroe Doctrine, dating from 1823, and the later Roosevelt Corollary. The principle that European influence would not be permitted in Latin America gradually translated into a recognition that Latin America was a US sphere of influence. Since Marxism is a European influence, surely it is important to exclude that poison, so far as is practicable, from Latin America.

Yet Obama has aligned himself with the so-called Bolivarian Alliance of Marxist fruitcakes, led by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. To both men “democracy” is a useful slogan while they pursue its elimination in their own back yards. Ortega, now the chief backer of ousted president Manual Zelaya of Honduras, is the old Sandinista tyrant who only escaped prosecution for child abuse of his adopted stepdaughter from age 11 due to a statute of limitations and parliamentary immunity. Last year he successfully falsified the municipal elections in Nicaragua by fraud and intimidation.

Obama should have welcomed the removal of Zelaya from Honduras. Zelaya had recently sided with the Iranian ayatollahs in their suppression of a democratic election: no wonder he demanded readmission to Honduras in the name of God. His illegal attempt to defy the constitution through a plebiscite his supporters were tooled-up to rig was condemned by the Honduran Congress, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General and the chief Electoral Tribunal. Many of his own party had turned against him, alarmed by his attempt to prolong his rule on the Chavez model. His so-called referendum was an attempted coup; the army’s intervention against him, on the orders of all the constitutional organs of state, was a counter-coup.

But the Obama administration got it hopelessly wrong. Hillary Clinton denounced this reassertion of constitutional law as a crisis that “has evolved into a coup”. In this she was echoing Obama. Zelaya was given every encouragement in Washington, when he should have been told he was “on the wrong side of history”, as Obama expressed it in his Inauguration Address.

But Obama has a soft spot for socialists, hence his insane cosying-up to the Bolivarian fruitcakes. He has invented a brand new kind of foreign policy: supporting regimes that are violently anti-American. Call it neo-masochism. Obama has reversed the Monroe Doctrine as well as the definition of “democracy”. In supporting the megalomaniac dictators who are trying to drag Latin America into the year 1917, he is mouthing the same claptrap as Miguel D’Escoto Brockman, president of the UN General Assembly and former lieutenant of Ortega in the Sandinista dictatorship, and Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) and Fidel Castro’s champion.

Washington could have done much to dampen down the Honduran crisis that the Latin American Reds are prolonging. The Honduran government’s successful prevention of Zelaya’s attempted landing yesterday was a hopeful sign of resolution on the part of pro-Western forces, but the new government should by now have been recognised by the United States. The Reds need to be presented with an irreversible fait accompli. But Latin American Marxism has a new best friend: Barack Che Fidel Obama, the Bolivarian Revolution’s latest useful idiot.

PETA and the killing of Animals

2009-03-30T18:14:00.000-03:00

William D. Zeranski

The images of sad-eyed dogs and filthy kittens flash across the TV screen, especially before, during and after those heart-warming family cable movies, and then there's the plea for money along with a phone number, and for that fast guilt-relieving donation, express credit card use is available.

PETA has no cash flow problem, but the organization's handling of the welfare of animals in its care is grim:

"Despite having a $32 million budget, PETA does not operate an adoption shelter. PETA employees make no discernible effort to find homes for the thousands of pets they kill every year. Last year, the Center for Consumer Freedom petitioned Virginia's State Veterinarian to reclassify PETA as a slaughterhouse."

On the PETA website there are a lot of cute, fussy and doe-eyed pictures, and PETA focuses on "the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: on factory farms, in laboratories, in the clothing trade, and in the entertainment industry. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of beavers, birds and other "pests," and the abuse of backyard dogs." But with PETA words and deeds don't have to mesh.

Organizations exhibiting hypocritical behavior, and money grubbing, must be called on to the carpet:

That's exactly why the Center for Consumer Freedom petitioned Virginia's State Veterinarian last year to reclassify PETA as a slaughterhouse.

In addition to exposing PETA's hypocritical record of killing defenseless animals, we've been tirelessly publicizing the animal rights group's ties to violent activists, and putting the spotlight on its aggressive and grossly inappropriate message-marketing to children.

All part of PETA's modus operandi, and committed animal lovers should see what the slaughter of house pets really is, and by animal rights standards, it's mass murder.

HUDNA: A SUPREMA DISSIMULAÇÃO

2009-01-06T11:51:00.003-02:00

Heitor De Paola
02/06/2003

Ao se referir ao Road Map to Peace, a atual panacéia pacifista para o conflito entre o Estado de Israel e os grupos terroristas palestinos, nossa mídia mascarada tem evitado usar o termo hudna, o lado palestino da pantomima. Que vem a ser hudna? É uma palavra Árabe para designar aquilo que qualquer general, desde a Antigüidade, conhece e que todo adversário preparado não aceita e aproveita para atacar. Mas como foi um termo utilizado pelo Profeta Maomé adquire uma espécie de aura respeitosa que aumenta o despistamento.

Geralmente é traduzido, na imprensa ocidental, como trégua de duração temporária pré-determinada – nos jornais em Inglês truce - para entabular negociações visando à paz. Mas esta tradução deixa de lado o significado religioso, histórico e mesmo o sentido atual dado ao termo pelos chefes das quadrilhas de guerrilheiros e terroristas.

O Profeta Maomé, então exilado em Medina, era constantemente ameaçado pelos membros de sua tribo Coraixita que não reconheciam sua liderança espiritual nem aceitavam seu monoteísmo, e que controlavam Meca, a cidade mais sagrada para os Árabes. Após várias escaramuças, no ano de 628, ofereceu-lhes paz, prometendo a segurança de suas caravanas em troca da permissão de realizar os ritos de peregrinação anual à Caaba (1). Os Coraixitas responderam que um ano de paz deveria preceder o acordo. Maomé declarou então uma trégua – que denominou hudna - de 10 anos, conhecida como acordo de Hodaibiah. Para consolar seus guerreiros o Profeta atacou e saqueou os judeus Khaibar em sua colônia a nordeste de Medina: noventa e três foram chacinados e os demais, para sobreviver, entregaram suas propriedades e metade de suas futuras colheitas.

Durante os dois anos seguintes, Maomé reforçou seu exército e – como mestre do despistamento que era - usou a desculpa de uma infração menor qualquer cometida pelos Coraixitas para lançar um ataque devastador, com 10.000 homens, e retomou Meca.

Este o verdadeiro significado de hudna: acenar falsamente com uma trégua que não serve para o fim expresso – preparar a paz – mas para o fim secreto de descansar, reforçar e ampliar suas forças quando a situação é desesperadora e a derrota está próxima.

Historicamente este tem sido sempre o sentido dado pelas forças Árabes em luta: acumular forças para o próximo round. Não é mais do que uma trapaça, “veneno com cobertura de mel”, como disse há pouco Gideon Meir, Vice-Ministro do Exterior de Israel.

O PAPEL DA HUDNA NO ATUAL CONFLITO

Numa entrevista na TV Palestina, Abd Al-Malek, Membro Árabe do Knesset (Parlamento de Israel) – é, lá no “território ocupado pelos sionistas” tem disto! – ao responder a uma afirmativa de um expectador de que “nosso problema com Israel não é um problema de fronteira, mas de existência...”, respondeu: “É, nós exageramos quando falamos de ‘paz’ .... quando o que nós realmente queremos dizer é hudna”. E aqui é que vem o “pulo do gato” que quem entende Árabe já percebeu há muito. Quando as autoridades palestinas falam em seu idioma para seu próprio povo, mas não nas entrevistas em Inglês em fóruns internacionais, eles usam hudna e deixam claro que não há nenhuma paz à vista mas apenas um cessar-fogo temporário que, além da finalidade tradicional já exposta, tem outra: a de iludir a tal “comunidade internacional” – até mesmo alguns israelenses como os do movimento ”Paz Agora” - de que os Palestinos querem a verdadeira paz. Mas que fazer se os “ocupantes sionistas” traiçoeiramente os atacam? E nisto os grupos terroristas estão de pleno acordo com a própria “Autoridade Palestina”.

Todos os acordos assinados por eles são pura farsa em Inglês e conseguem enganar direitinho aos trouxas que neles acreditam, com direito até a Prêmio Nobel da Paz. Assim foi em 1994, quando Yasser Arafat explicou, em Árabe, para os palestinos que os acordos de Oslo eram uma hudna no caminho para Jerusalém. Depois, em 2000, seguindo o próprio Profeta, seu mestre de despistamento, usando como pretexto a visita de Ariel Sharon à Esplanada das Mesquitas, criou a tal da "pequena infração inimiga" quebrando a hudna e se lançando à nova guerra, conhecida como Intifada de Al Aqsa.

Principalmente nas mensagens educacionais para os jovens e nos livros textos editados ainda neste último mês, Israel é visto como uma potência colonizadora que roubou a terra do povo Palestino e expulsou os residentes – portanto Israel não tem direito de existir. O acordo de Hodaibiah é sempre mencionado como modelo para todo e qualquer ato de cessar-fogo assinado pelas autoridades, compreendidos como simplesmente parte de um processo estratégico final: a libertação da Palestina e a expulsão dos Judeus para o mar. Estes acordos são sempre assinados quando o balanço de força do momento está desfavorável às suas hostes, como agora que o Presidente Bush, que já mostrou que não está para brincadeiras – ver Afeganistão e Iraque - não acreditou na anunciada trégua e exigiu o desmantelamento do Hamas.

ALGUNS EXEMPLOS DA “SINCERIDADE” PALESTINA – EM ÁRABE, EVIDENTEMENTE

Ministro do Abastecimento da Autoridade Palestina (AP), Abd El-Aziz Shahian: “Oslo é apenas o primeiro passo na destruição de Israel, não um acordo permanente”.

Pregador Dr Ahmed Yousuf Abu Halbiah, da AP: “A Nação Palestina é a vanguarda de Allah contra os Judeus, até a ressurreição dos mortos (...) até que o destino de Allah seja cumprido”.

Othman Abu Arbiah, Assessor Político e Educacional de Arafat: ”O Estado Palestino com capital em Al Quds (Jerusalém, em Árabe) é apenas o primeiro estágio (...) na destruição dos colonizadores sionistas”.

Sheik Yousuf Abi Snina, pregador da Mesquita Al Aqsa: “A terra Palestina é terra Waqf que pertence aos fiéis do Islam desde o início dos tempos e ninguém tem o direito de (...) fazer concessões ou de abandona-la. (...) São traidores e criminosos que merecem o Inferno todos os que aceitam a existência de Israel, que inclui ceder Haifa, Lod, Nazareth e Ashkelon”. No mesmo sermão concede a Arafat um Selo de Aprovação Shariático (Lei Islâmica) para estabelecer uma hudna!.

Salim Alwadia Abu Salem, Supervisor para Assuntos Políticos da AP: “Quando nós pegamos em armas em 1965 e teve início a moderna revolução Palestina, nós tínhamos um único objetivo, que não mudou e não mudará nunca: a libertação da Palestina (da ocupação sionista)”.

Os milhares de exemplos são todos a repetição ad nauseam, da mesma cantilena.

CONCLUSÕES

As mensagens de paz das lideranças israelenses e palestinas aos seus respectivos povos são exatamente o oposto uma da outra (2).

Os líderes israelenses estão dizendo: o acordo permanente será doloroso, mas devemos aceita-lo porque ele marcará o fim do conflito.

Os líderes palestinos, por sua vez, dizem: o acordo permanente será doloroso, mas devemos aceita-lo porque não significa o fim do conflito, mas é apenas uma fase do mesmo.

Dá para acreditar em Paz, com ou sem Road Map?

(1) Para mais detalhes históricos, ver meus artigos
Fatos sobre o Islam
Islam: a conexão nazista

(2) http://www.pmw.org.il/report-31.html

A MIDIA, GAZA E ISRAEL

2009-01-05T15:33:00.003-02:00

Luis Milman

Desde o início da ofensiva de Israel contra o Hamas, na Faixa de Gaza, no último sábado, dia 27 de dezembro, a mídia ocidental vem relatando as operações israelenses com base em pressupostos flagrantemente aparvalhados. Coincidentemente, estes pressupostos são os mesmos que pautaram as primeiras manifestações oficiais de condenação moderada lançadas contra Israel, por governos de nações importantes, logo no primeiro dia ofensiva, quando pouca ou quase nenhuma informação sobre a real dimensão das operações israelenses eram conhecidas”.

As manifestações da França, Rússia, Japão e China, exortavam Israel a interromper suas ações em Gaza. Ao invés de condenarem os ataques do Hamas, que iniciaram ainda em novembro e quebraram o cessar-fogo, a retórica destes países partia de duas premissas equivocadas: Israel estava respondendo aos ataques de forma desproporcional e, por isso, elevando o número de vítimas civis. Assim, a linguagem protocolar criava o mantra da desproporcionalidade, adotado também pelo Secretário Geral da ONU, o senhor Ban Ki-moon, na última segunda-feira, dia 29.

Ki-moon convocou a imprensa mundial para expressar seu repúdio ao uso da “força excessiva” por parte de Israel em seus ataques à Faixa de Gaza. O secretário-geral da ONU foi mais longe: ele apelou “às partes” para que interrompessem as hostilidades e reiniciassem negociações para um novo cessar-fogo. O coro foi reforçado pelo primeiro-ministro inglês Gordon Brown, também no dia 29. “Estou horrorizado (ênfase aqui) com a violência dos bombardeios”, disse. “Reiteramos nosso apelo a Israel e ao Hamas (ênfase aqui) para que declarem o imediato cessar-fogo e previnam a perda de mais vidas inocentes. Não há uma solução militar para esta situação. É preciso redobrar os esforços internacionais para assegurar que tanto Israel quanto a Palestina tenham terra, direitos e segurança para viverem em paz”, finalizou Brown. Ao mesmo tempo, seguiram-se manifestações de repúdio previsivelmente mais radicais, vindas de países muçulmanos e grupos extremistas, como o Hezbollah, que passaram a percorrer o planeta: massacre, genocídio, holocausto, crimes de guerra, crimes contra a humanidade. Enfim, surradas acusações disputavam espaço na mídia internacional com cenas de passeatas e aglomerações de rua pipocando na Europa e no mundo islâmico, em protesto contra a nova “barbárie” cometida por Israel.

Enquanto isto, a quantidade de vítimas dos bombardeios parecia dar a impressão de amparar a fórmula da desproporcionalidade: já passam de 150 mortos, muitos deles civis, já ultrapassam os duzentos, entre eles mulheres e crianças agora são mais de 300, entre os quais inúmeros inocentes. Agora, quando escrevo (terça-feira, 30 de dezembro), os mortos chegavam a 360. Horrível. A mídia apropriou-se do mantra protocolar, tomando-o como axioma para sua cobertura. E, por mídia, não estou nomeando nenhuma abstração. Refiro-me à CNN, à BBC, à Sky News, à France 24, para não mencionar a Al-Jazirah em Inglês e os diários New York Times, The Guardian e Le Figaro, que podem ser todos acessados on-line.

Também não estou me referindo aos analistas de prontidão, sempre rápidos no gatilho quando se trata de comparar o “desproporcional” confronto entre a potência militar israelense e a pobre capacidade de resistência dos palestinos. Restrinjo-me ao que se chama de “noticiário”, aquele texto informativo que, recomenda-se, deve ser feito com imparcialidade e um mínimo de cautela e caldo de galinha. Pois é nele que constato a desproposital incursão, em nome do imediatismo, no domínio da estupidez e da má fé.

Ora, o que se espera de um noticiário é que ele informe e não desinforme ou deforme os fatos. E quais são os fatos? Um: no primeiro dia da ofensiva, Israel apenas reiterou publicamente uma decisão que vinha sendo anunciada desde o final do frágil cessar-fogo de seis meses, mediado pelos egípcios, que entrara em vigor em junho último e se encerrara em 19 de dezembro.

Por que frágil? Porque o Hamas, há oito anos, vinha despejando diariamente seus foguetes contra Israel. Os ataques diários haviam matado nove pessoas, ferido outras tantas, danificado prédios e vinham configurando uma situação de permanente insegurança nas cidades que se encontram num raio de 20 quilometro da fronteira com Gaza.

Durante oito anos, Israel tentou tratar do problema de modo restrito: incursões rápidas de comandos no norte de Gaza para destruir bases de lançamentos de foguetes, bloqueio marítimo para evitar a entrada de armamento enviado pelo Irã e pela Síria ao Hamas e Jihad Islâmica bloqueio terrestre, para impedir a infiltração de terroristas suicidas nas grandes cidades israelenses cortes esporádicos no suprimento de energia elétrica para a Faixa de Gaza (70% desta energia é fornecida por Israel até hoje) com a finalidade de retardar a fabricação dos tais foguetes “caseiros” (na verdade, são foguetes produzidos em fábricas erguidas em meio a bairros densamente povoados da Cidade de Gaza, Dayir al Balah, Khan Yunis e Rafah).

De qualquer modo, findo o cessar-fogo - e diante das saraivadas diárias dos foguetes contra o sul de Israel -, o governo israelense anunciou que terminaria definitivamente com os ataques que ameaçavam seus cidadãos. Esta decisão foi, inclusive, comunicada, no dia 23 de dezembro, pela ministra do exterior israelense, Tzipi Livni, no Cairo, após um encontro com o presidente Hosni Mubarak. Livni, ainda no Cairo, não deixou dúvidas: Israel desencadearia a operação militar necessária para destruir a capacidade do Hamas de atingir Israel.

Nos últimos dez anos, o Hamas construiu, com o apoio logístico e financeiro do Hesbollah, da Irmandade Muçulmana (baseada no Egito), da Síria e, sobretudo do Irã, uma estrutura policial e militar na Faixa de Gaza, a tal ponto organizada, que lhe permitiu, no primeiro semestre de 2007, dizimar completamente as forças do Fatah (o braço armado da Autoridade Palestina) que ainda restavam no território palestino. Com isso, ele consolidou suas instalações militares, estocagem de armas e munição, seus campos de treinamento e suas bases de ataque contra Israel em toda a Faixa de Gaza. Hoje, o Hamas (que é sunita) conta com 15 mil homens no seu “exército regular”, e ainda com cinco mil membros armados da milícia xiita Jihad Islâmica. Esse pequeno exército dispõe, além de armamento pessoal pesado, de mísseis antiaéreos, mísseis antitanques, mísseis de médio alcance do tipo Katiusha e minas espalhadas por toda a fronteira com Israel.

Tudo isto é do conhecimento dos chefes de governo que emitiram o mantra protocolar da desproporcionalidade. Os senhores Gordon Brown e Nicholas Sarkozy sabem disto, certamente. Mas a mídia faz de conta que não sabe.

Ora, o panorama é bem nítido: Israel desencadeou a ofensiva para defender a integridade de seus habitantes, ameaçados constantemente pelo movimento fundamentalista militarmente organizado que controla toda a Faixa de Gaza desde junho de 2007. Mais ainda, o Hamas e seus associados menores, como a Jihad Islâmica e outros grupelhos, não representam a Autoridade Nacional Palestina (AP). Eles são terroristas, não aceitam a existência do Estado de Israel e estão comprometidos explicitamente com a sua extinção total.

Como então podem os líderes da Inglaterra e da França, ou o Secretário-geral da ONU, apelarem para que “as partes” retornem a um cessar fogo. Que partes? Israel, um estado nacional soberano e membro da ONU, por um lado, e o Hamas, um movimento terrorista que usurpou à força, da Autoridade Palestina, o controle sobre a Faixa de Gaza, por outro? Se a China não conversa sequer com o Dalai Lama, líder político e espiritual do Tibet ocupado (exilado, obviamente), por que Israel deve dialogar com o Hamas? Pelo que se sabe, o Dalai Lama defende apenas uma autonomia para o Tibet e jamais pregou a extinção da China. Por que Israel deveria “dialogar” com um movimento que objetiva abertamente a sua destruição? Ou por que o senhor Ban Ki-moon não apela para que a Espanha dialogue com o ETA, a Colômbia dialogue com as FARC, a Turquia dialogue com o PKK curdo, que quer criar um estado independente no Curdistão? Ou para que os Estados Unidos da América deixem o Afeganistão e dialoguem com o Talibã? Ou para que os senhores muçulmanos da guerra que governam o Sudão interrompam imediatamente a carnificina que já matou 300 mil cristãos e animistas e deslocou quase três milhões de refugiados para a zona de Darfour? Onde estão as passeatas na Europa contra esse massacre? Ou os protestos contra a tirania assassina de Ruanda? Onde estão os apelos para o diálogo entre as trezentas tribos que se entredevoram na muçulmana Somália?

O termo médio de comparação é suficiente, para quem possui mais de dois neurônios. Talvez, dois neurônios e meio. Por isso paro por aqui. Dois: Israel não está, como apregoa aos berros Hassan Nasrallah (em vídeo e de seu bunker em Beirute), cometendo um “genocídio” em Gaza. Ao contrário, é o líder do Hesbollah (Partido de Deus, em português), hoje quase um segundo exército dentro do Líbano, abastecido e financiado pelo Irã, que repete incansavelmente o objetivo político de seu partido: destruir Israel, sem deixar pedra sobre pedra. A voz de Nasrallah é amplificada nas ruas de todo mundo árabe e encontra acolhida em alguns analistas ocidentais procurados pela mídia para que “possamos (nós, o público) entender o trágico cenário da Faixa de Gaza”. Pensemos: se desejasse destruir a população de Gaza (isto é um despropósito descomunal naturalmente, mas só assim teríamos base para falarmos em genocídio) - e estou admitindo essa possibilidade apenas (ênfase aqui) para argumentar-, Israel o teria feito durante a Guerra dos Seis Dias, em 1967, (lembram, ela ocorreu!), ou durante a Guerra do Yom Kypur, em 1973 (lembram, ela também ocorreu), ou durante a ocupação israelense de Gaza, que se estendeu de 1967 a 2000, ano em que unilateralmente (ou seja, sem qualquer pré-condição) Israel deixou a Faixa de Gaza na sua totalidade. O que é fato: a ofensiva israelense tem objetivos militares e políticos definidos. Os militares estão sendo plenamente atingidos, até agora. E com um baixíssimo custo em termos de vidas humanas. É isso mesmo. Baixíssimo! Afinal, depois de quatro dias de centenas de incursões aéreas e marítimas, depois de ter despejado sobre Gaza mais de 500 toneladas de explosivos, apenas, repito, apenas, 360 pessoas morreram! E destas, cerca de 60, segundo as informações do próprio Hamas e da ONU, são civis.

Ora, isto quer dizer que o restante fazia parte do exército terrorista, logo um alvo militar. A operação israelense impressiona, mas não pelas razões do senhor Nasrallah ou dos desavisados apedeutas de boa fé (admitamos), que usam a palavra “genocídio” sem saber o que ela significa. O conceito se aplica quando um governo deliberadamente promove o extermínio de povos ou populações inteiras, encontrem-se elas em seu próprio país ou em outros.

Os turcos foram genocidas com relação aos armênios os nazistas, com relação aos judeus os comunistas stalinistas com relação aos russos os maoístas com relação aos chineses os japoneses com relação aos chineses e, hoje, os sudaneses muçulmanos com relação aos sudaneses não muçulmanos.

Nem os cubanos castristas, que nos primeiros cinco anos após a revolução de 59, exterminaram 95 mil pessoas, praticaram um genocídio. Eles cometeram assassinatos em massa, uma ação sem dúvida abjeta e execrável, um crime contra a humanidade. Mas, não cometeram genocídio. E atentarmos para as diferenças ainda é fundamental.

Por que a operação israelense impressiona? Por duas constatações que saltam aos olhos. A primeira: a ofensiva está se processando na área mais densamente povoada do planeta (1,5 milhão de habitantes em 360 quilômetros quadrados) a segunda: o Hamas ergueu intencionalmente toda a sua infra-estrutura policial e militar nos centros urbanos, justamente os locais mais densamente povoados deste território já muito densamente povoado (a hipérbole é proposital).

Ora, se é para destruir alvos militares, é preciso atingi-los onde se encontram. E Israel está fazendo isto, de forma quase milimétrica, cirúrgica, mesmo correndo o risco, inevitável nesta situação, de atingir civis. Repito: e o faz de forma impressionante, pois as baixas civis, nesse contexto, são aquém de mínimas. Como a aviação e a marinha israelenses conseguem fazer isto? Empregando altíssima tecnologia, mísseis inteligentes e alvos previamente selecionados. Caso contrário, estaríamos diante de um massacre. E é necessário que se reafirme: não estamos sequer a milhões de milhas próximos disto. O Secretário-Geral da ONU, que jamais reuniu uma conferência de imprensa para falar sobre a situação no Sudão, deveria saber disto. Ele, desta forma, ficaria calado. Obviamente, eu não esperaria que o senhor Ki-moon aplaudisse a operação de Israel. O Secretário-geral da ONU deve, por princípio, lamentar todas as guerras. Mas ele deveria, também por obrigação, calar-se, porque esta é uma guerra legítima, sobretudo defensiva, com objetivos militares e políticos claros, de um país soberano contra um grupo terrorista que prega o seu aniquilamento e contra os governos que apóiam este grupo. Três: Falei que a guerra possui objetivos políticos claros. Ei-los: Israel quer expulsar o Irã da Faixa de Gaza. O Irã? Isso mesmo, o Irã. O Hamas e a Jihad Islâmica nada mais são do que uma extensão do governo de Teerã e de seu potencial bélico virtualmente no interior de Israel. E todos sabem o quê mais almejam os aiatolás iranianos: destruir o que eles chamam de entidade sionista. Assim, ao eliminar a capacidade do Hamas de atacar seu território, Israel, além de retomar o controle sobre sua segurança imediata, desfere também um golpe mortal nas pretensões iranianas de penetrar em sua fronteira sul. Com isso ainda pretende isolar política e militarmente o Irã, travestido de Hezbollah, na sua fronteira norte. Ao mesmo tempo, forja uma situação mais favorável para negociar com a Síria, também enfraquecida com a derrota do Hamas, um tratado de paz entre os dois paises. Esta é uma meta de médio prazo. Por essa razão o senhor Nasrallah esbraveja contra o Egito de Mubarak e a Autoridade Palestina, de Machmud Abas, chamando-os de traidores do Islã. Nasrallah sabe que, sem o Hamas e a Jihad Islâmica em Gaza, o Hezbollah, ou seja, o Irã, se enfraquece, enquanto o Egito, a Autoridade Palestina e a Jordânia se fortalecem e, pior (para o Irã), Israel recupera a posição geopolítica decisiva para sua existência na região.

A ofensiva ainda torna explicita a disposição de Israel de não tolerar que o iranianos consigam obter armamento nuclear. Ou seja, Israel está preparando o terreno para uma intervenção direta no Irã.

Como Barak Obama assume a presidência dos Estados Unidos em janeiro, Israel envia uma mensagem inequívoca para Washington: não há diálogo com o Hamas, nem com Teerã. Os Estados Unidos devem se preparar para apoiar irrestritamente a ação militar direta de Israel contra os iranianos. E essa ação não deve tardar, pelo que se depreende do palco desenhado por Jerusalém. Quer dizer: trata-se de uma ação já planejada e montada pela inteligência militar israelense, que deve ser deflagrada em breve. Pergunta oportuna: o que é “breve”? Resposta: Israel certamente sabe. E, creio agora, Barak Obama também. No fim das contas, Israel não está fazendo mais do que colocar seu destino em suas próprias mãos. E isto ele sempre fez, sob o preço de simplesmente deixar de existir. Dúvidas? Consultem a História.

Finalizando: e a mídia com relação a esse quadro? Nada informa, nada analisa, nada investiga. Pelo contrário, submete-se ao superficialismo, mistifica, embrulha-se toda no mantra da desproporcionalidade e mergulha de cabeça no noticiarismo demagógico e pretensamente humanitário. É um crime contra a lucidez e a razão. Mas, que diabos, isso lá importa?

_________
Luis Milman é Jornalista e doutor em Filosofia, professor da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, preocupado e abismado com as reações de governos e da mídia internacional a partir da ação desenvolvida por Israel na Faixa de Gaza, território controlado pela organização terrorista Hamas, desde o ano passado, escreve o artigo a seguir para esclarecer aspectos importantes da questão, que não são considerados.

Not Raping = Rape ... If You Are an Israeli Soldier

2008-12-13T22:22:00.002-02:00

Paper Proves Once Again that Academics Never Outgrow Their Need for Bullshit

Prize Winning Sociology Thesis at Hebrew U.: Lack of Rape Among Israeli Soldiers Achieves Same Aims as Rape

"A Hebrew University Sociology department M.A. thesis entitled "Controlled Occupation: The Lack of Military Rape in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict" notes that the relative absence of instances of rape by Israeli soldiers is an alternate method of achieving the same kind of degradation of Palestinian Arabs that would be achieved through a directed policy of raping Arab women."

Via Barbara Kay on the 'Lack of rape among Israeli soldiers' who notes, "This pinch-me item just crossed my desk and of course I assumed it was a spoof. But I Googled the names of the academics involved and to my astonishment they are real."

More from this steaming clod of manure:

"In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences - just as organized military rape would have done." -- Heb. U. Paper Finds: IDF Has Political Motives for Not Raping

I look forward to the Olmert government responding forcefully to the revelations of this research and issuing an apology to all unraped Palestinian women for not being raped. He should also note that until Israel can manage to train its soldiers own to the level of Hamas or United Nations troops that, sadly, the not-raping will continue.

** "I have now read the entire thesis (in Hebrew). [You can also, if you read Hebrew] It is not a serious piece of research. It is a disgrace and an embarrassment for all of Israeli academia." --- The complete text of an article by a man who has read the full-text of the Hebrew paper follows:

Thursday, January 3, 2008
Complete Story of “No Rape = Racism” Essay
Author: Steven Plaut in Israel
An abridged version of a longer article about the cover-up scandal at the Hebrew University, with relation to the “Abstaining From Rape of Arabs is Jewish Racism” thesis, came out this evening at the NY Jewish Press under the title Guilty By Reason Of Innocence: New Insanity From Israel’s Academic Leftists By: Steven Plaut and can be read there.

Below is the longer FULL version of the article, which has not yet been published in full length form, but is presented here.

SCOPUSGATE
By Steven Plaut

It began as just another exercise in political academic wackiness at the Hebrew University.

A graduate student claimed that the absence of any history of rapes of Arab women by Israeli Jewish soldiers proves that the Jews are racists and oppressors, people who do not even regard Arab women as sexually desirable. Such silliness is commonplace these days in academia, and ordinarily no one would have taken much notice. But the student at the Mount Scopus campus and her “research” were then awarded a university honor for her impressive “discoveries.” That drew media attention.

The matter has now become the worst recent scandal in Israeli academia because of the attempt by the heads of the Hebrew University to cover it up, in a manner a bit reminiscent of the worst days of Watergate. Maybe it should be dubbed Scopusgate. The scandal now rivals the “Toaff Affair” in Israel last year, in which a now-retired professor at Bar-Ilan University published “research” in which he claimed that medieval Jews used gentile blood for ceremonial purposes.

The very highest officials of the Hebrew University are themselves now implicated in a dishonest cover-up! The President of the Hebrew University, Professor Menachem Magidor, and the Rector Prof. Haim D. Rabinowitch jointly issued a deliberately false “spin” announcement regarding the MA thesis of the student, claiming that the media had incorrectly described what was in it. Instead of repudiating the student and her “academic advisors,” Magidor and Rabinowitch closed ranks with them and insisted that Nitzan’s “research” represents serious scholarship. The Nitzan Affair simply shows how completely devoid of serious academic standards and quality controls parts of Israeli academia are today.

Hebrew University apologists tried to defuse the cries of outrage over the “research” by claiming that reports about it were all part of some sort of vast right-wing conspiracy. The first two media reports appeared on web sites, Hebrew and one English, both associated with those on the Israeli Right. The apologists suggested that these were misrepresenting the thesis for political reasons. Then Magidor and Rabinovitch proclaimed that reading the entire thesis would show that it is a serious piece of scholarship. They obviously did not read it.

Well, I have now read the entire thesis (in Hebrew). [You can also, if you read Hebrew] It is not a serious piece of research. It is a disgrace and an embarrassment for all of Israeli academia. The descriptions of it on the two “rightwing” web sites were entirely accurate, and the heads of the Hebrew University simply lied about its contents, in a pathetic attempt at cover-up. While University apologists dismissed complaints about the thesis as tendentious misrepresentation of it by a vast rightwing conspiracy, the rallying in defense of the thesis by the Hebrew University administration and some professors looks a whole lot like a leftwing conspiracy to cover up.

Tal Nitzan was a graduate student in anthropology at the Hebrew University. Her thesis was supervised by anthropology Professor Eyal Ben Ari and by Dr. Edna Lomsky-Feder, from the Hebrew University’s school of education, a leftist with a history of denouncing Israel for its supposed “militarism.” The thesis was evidently also supported by anthropology Prof. Zali Gurevitch, the head of the Shaine Center (and himself an anti-Israel leftist radical), who defended it to the media and made the decision to award it a prize of honors.

Nitzan’s “thesis” is largely a collection of tiresome feminist rhetoric and postmodernist gibberish, not all of it related to rape. The thesis is 206 pages long and tries to appear scholarly by including many long “citations” taken from the fever swamps of radical anthropology and leftist sociology. One has to wade through it with suppressed nausea to get to its main points, and all of the main points are exactly as they were represented in the early media reports; they are at complete odds with the cover-up attempt by the Hebrew University.

Nitzan begins by noting that one should distinguish between organized military rape directly ordered by authorities as a matter of policy, such as in the Bosnian wars, and individual acts of rape by soldiers, which she labels with the nonsensical term “symptomatic rape.” She calls it that I guess because she wants us to think it is a symptom the “racist Zionist system” that is responsible for such crimes. She asserts that the first kind of rape is a form of political policy, whereas the latter kind (the “symptomatic”) is a “direct result of the blurring of social divisions and ethnic-gender barriers” (bear with me here! — SP). She confirms that the first form of organized rape has never been the policy of the Israeli army. She then says that the second form, individual “symptomatic rape,” has replaced the former as a method of humiliation and oppression of Arabs, even when - and especially when - Israeli Jewish soldiers do not do it at all! Hence, she concludes, NOT raping Arab women shows how racist the Jews are.

Nitzan cannot conceive of any rape that is not in and itself a form of establishing political control and defining political power. “Symptomatic rape” for Nitzan is a reflection of the intolerant distancing of the “dominant” group (Jewish men) from the “oppressed” group (Arab men and women). But she then completely turns this “thought” on its head by arguing that abstaining from rape is just as inhumane and oppressive as “symptomatically raping,” and in fact replaces it, because it just serves to reinforce the intolerant attitudes towards Arabs by Jewish soldiers, who think of Arabs as so inferior and horrid that they do not even feel a drive to rape them. Really. “Absence of rape is explained by the social condition in which there is blurring of attitudes towards gender power relations while at the same time social limits… are unambiguous and solid. (page 183)” While giving some shallow lip service to how the “question” of rape refusal is “very complex,” Nitzan’s own “answer” is quite simple and straightforward. And numbingly stupid.

Rape for Nitzan is not violent crime at all but rather is always a manifestation of political plotting by elites. She contradicts herself by noting that, come to think of it, Israeli soldiers do not rape Arab women as individuals either. She then contradicts her own contradictions and claims that the absence of rape by Israeli soldiers is “designed” to achieve the same goals as organized mass rape in other countries and in other wars.

Her “conclusions” are that Israel is so racist and intolerably anti-Arab that abstaining from rape is part and parcel of its way to enforce rigid “lines of division.” She asserts that individual soldiers abstaining from rape represent an intentional policy of oppression roughly similar to when governments order mass rape, because in both cases the “policy” serves to subordinate and dehumanize the oppressed victim population.

The main significance of the thesis as an academic work is in the fact that it illustrates the total collapse of any semblance of academic standards at the Hebrew University. The “thesis” is not worth the disk space on which it is printed. Yet it was not only accepted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University, the department in which the late pro-terror anti-Zionist extremist Baruch Kimmerling spent his career fabricating “Palestinian history”, but was even awarded a prestigious award, one evidently financed with contributions from the Shaine family. (I doubt the Shaines have any idea how their generosity was misused by the university!) Atrociously written and constantly contradicting herself, Nitzan would have been laughed out of any university maintaining serious standards, EVEN if she had been writing about a valid and legitimate subject.

The thesis draws its “scientific” conclusions from open interviews with 25 reserve soldiers, ages 23-32, who served as combat troops in the “occupied territories” during the “intifada.” None of the comments by any of these soldiers support or provide any confirmation, even the most indirect, to any of the lunatic “conclusions” by Nitzan. Most of the interview comments concern the day-to-day tactics and experiences of the soldiers. Nitzan then asked the soldiers why no Arab women were raped by Israeli troops. Their responses varied, ranging from assertions of ethical awareness of soldiers to effective disciple. Some noted the presence of media reporters or of NGO groups in the areas of conflict.

Nitzan constantly disregards what the soldiers actually say and instead attributes to them irrational fears and feelings of disgust and snotty superiority when they interact with Arabs (for example, page 53 and following). Long segments of the thesis are rants about how Israel brutally exercises control and suppression of the poor Palestinians.

But since when is asking 25 random soldiers why no rapes take place a scientific way to go about answering the question? The soldiers are not social scientists and are not criminologists. How any MA degree could be awarded to anyone on the basis of having conducted 25 interviews is one of the mysteries that the Hebrew University authorities have yet to explain. The thesis is totally devoid of statistical analysis or empirical testing, even using the rather primitive methodologies popular among some sociologists. At no serious academic institution would such a superficial exercise in baseless long-winded verbiage be accepted as a “research thesis.”

Nitzan’s anti-Israel political bias is also evident throughout. On page 23 she declares that “Imposing control and instilling fear is a frequent practice (by Israel in the ‘Palestinian-Israeli’ conflict) and so it would be expected that military rape should be used as an efficient method for ensuring the security and survival of a Jewish Israel.” On page 53 she asserts that “de-humanization amidst avoiding demonization is one of the most blatant features of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” [She means by the Jews.] The words “terror” and “terrorist” do not appear even once in the entire thesis. Neither does “bomb,” “bomber,” or “suicide murderer.” No one reading the thesis would have any idea that Israeli military actions in the “territories” have anything to do with suicide bombers and terrorist murderers. The political bias and open political propagandizing should have been more than enough for the thesis to be rejected altogether as pseudo-research. Instead, it got a prize.

The possibility that Israeli soldiers do not rape Arab women because they are simply decent and honorable people, or under effective command by decent and honorable people, is automatically dismissed by Nitzan. After all, there are acts of criminal rape in Israeli civilian society, citing a radical feminist group claiming such sexual abuse is common in Israel, so this could not possibly explain the mystery. How the incidence of such civilian crimes rules out the obvious real explanation for the absence of rape by soldiers is not even the worst logical inconsistency by Nitzan and her supervisors.

Nitzan’s thesis contains the Arab “narrative” about just about everything, including such things as the battle of Deir Yassin. The claims of Bash-Israel “historians” are accepted at face value. Arab propaganda is accepted as “scholarship.” Nevertheless, even these confirm that virtually no rapes of Arab women by Jewish soldiers ever occurred. [One of the few people claiming that a few such rape cases did take place is anti-Israel propagandist Uri Avnery, who is not an academic and is hardly a credible source, although one Nitzan on which is willing to rely.]

Once reports about the Nitzan “research” claiming Jews were racist for NOT raping Arabs began to circulate, the heads of the Hebrew University (the President and Rector together) evidently heard outraged complaints and so issued their own statement concerning it, dated December 30, 2007. It reads, in part: “Thank you for your concern about the thesis of the student Ms. Tal Nitzan. In her thesis, Ms. Nitzan examined a number of explanations for the question why the Israeli army is not involved in rapes, as was so widely done by the Japanese in Korea and more recently by the Europeans in Kosovo and by the Americans in Iraq, just to name a few. IDF soldiers are not involved in raping and other atrocities common to other armies, and Ms. Nitzan examined a number of explanations for this proper behavior. It seems that the source, on which the media reports were based, either did not read the thesis or used sentences that were taken out of context (emphasis in original statement). Below please find excerpts from her work (both in the original Hebrew and the English translation, side by side), providing possible explanations for the question why the Israeli army is not involved in rapes.”

This was followed by three brief citations from the Nitzan thesis in Hebrew with English translation. Sure enough, nothing in the three selections, all taken out of context, is particularly outrageous or anti-Israel. But that is only because in 206 pages of babble, it is unsurprisingly possible to find a handful of sentences that are not offensive. Indeed, Nitzan did mention in passing the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and Korea, but nearly the entire thesis is dedicated single-mindedly to proving that Jews are racists for NOT raping Arabs. The President and Rector of the Hebrew University did exactly what they disingenuously claimed the media had been doing, selecting non-representative sentences to misrepresent the thesis and make it appear harmless.

Meanwhile not a single feminist organization anywhere has spoken up about this thesis claiming that it is racist when Jews do not rape Arabs. This past spring a gang of Arabs terrorized the Galilee by raping Jewish women for political motives and was apprehended. Some of their victims were children. Nitzan and her professors have nothing to say about THAT wave of politically-motivated rapes. According to Nitzan’s own thesis logic, if a Jewish woman were to be raped by Hamas terrorists, this would pretty much prove that the Hamas are egalitarian and progressive seekers of peace and justice, not treating Jews as the inferior “Other.”

But the most outrageous aspect of this entire scandal is the behavior of the heads of the Hebrew University, defending and endorsing this “research” with a cover-up, and proving that the Hebrew University today, despite one of its retired professors having won a Nobel Prize, has jettisoned academic standards and has lost interest in seeking academic excellence.

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/tinfoil_brigade/not_raping_the.php

Quem noticia isso?

2008-10-30T01:41:00.004-02:00

O texto que segue com toda a certeza não é notícia, mas uma soldado-modelo israelense receber permissão para não carregar um rifle por este ferir suas pernas e prejudicar sua carreira é (http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/0,,MTM1823-5602,00.html).

Despite the recent riots in Acco, there is good news about the Israeli Arab situation. The IDF is reporting that the number of Arab recruits is up dramatically this yuear. It is slightly unclear when they are including Christian Arab, Muslim Arab, and Bedouin Israelis in their figures and when they are referring to the populations separately. Israeli Arabs serve almost exclusively in the 585, the desert reconnaisance battalion (the article below calls it a brigade, but it is not). Bedouins serve in a variety of regular units. The 585 is split almost evenly between Arabs and Bedouins, and they do not get along. Historical rivalries are not far below the surface in the battalion, resulting in fights, thefts, and taunting. The army is aggressively pursuing Christian Arab recruits, as they do not have the connection to Islam that make it less likely for Muslim Arabs to enlist. Towns such as Daburiyya have had residents murder local soldiers, and recruits from such communities have to return home without their uniforms.

Bedouin towns are far more supportive, and communities such as Beit Zarzir and Hujirat, almost all young men serve in the army.
It should be noted that I commanded the officer interviewed below during his basic training. Haaretz reports:

The number of Israeli Arab recruits to the IDF has increased dramatically in the first nine months of 2008, official figures obtained by Haaretz indicate.

The rise in the Bedouin recruitment rate is attributed to Bedouin’s difficulty in finding well-paid jobs outside the military and problems with the local authorities. The IDF has also improved its treatment of Bedouin army veterans and is helping them find employment.
(more…)

The Middle East's Forgotten Refugees

2008-10-12T20:11:00.003-03:00

by Semha Alwaya

In discussions about refugees in the Middle East, a major piece of the narrative is routinely omitted, and my life is part of the tapestry of what's missing. I am a Jew, and I, too, am a refugee. Some of my childhood was spent in a refugee camp in Israel (yes, Israel). And I am far from being alone.

This experience is shared by hundreds of thousands of other indigenous Jewish Middle Easterners who share a similar back ground to my own. However, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, our narrative is largely ignored by the world because our story -- that of some 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries dispossessed by Arab governments -- is an inconvenience for those who seek to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East.

Our lives in the Israel of the 1950s were difficult. We had no money, no property; there were food shortages, few employment prospects. Israel was a new and poor country with very limited resources. It absorbed not only hundreds of thousands of us, but also an equal number of survivors of Hitler's genocide. We lived in dusty tents in "transit camps," their official name since these were to be temporary, not permanent.

Housing was eventually built for us, we became Israeli citizens, and we ceased being refugees. The refugee camps in Israel that I knew as a child were phased out, and no trace of them remains. Israel did this without receiving a single cent from the international community, relying instead on the resourcefulness of its citizens, and donations from Diaspora Jewish communities. Today, many of Israel's top leaders are from families that were forced to flee Arab countries, and we make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population.

Roots in Iraq

I was born in Baghdad, and like most other Iraqis, my mother tongue is Arabic. My family's cuisine, our mannerisms, our outlook, are all strongly influenced by our synthesized Judeo-Arabic culture.

There once was a vibrant presence of nearly one million Jews residing in ten Arab countries. Our Middle Eastern Jewish culture existed long before the Arab world dominated and rewrote the history of the Middle East. Today, however, fewer than 12,000 Jews remain in these lands -- none in Iraq.

What happened to us, the indigenous Jews of the Arab world? Why were 150,000 Iraqi Jews -- my family included -- forced out of Iraq? Why were another 800,000 Jews from nine other Arab countries also compelled to leave after 1948?

When the world of the 1930s and '40s was divided between the democratic Allies and the Fascist Axis, Arab nationalists in Iraq and Palestine chose to form an alliance with Nazi Germany. The father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin el-Husseini, began his close collaboration with Nazi Germany as early as 1936.

The British expelled the pro-Nazi Palestinian leader when war broke out in Europe in 1939. A year later he arrived in Baghdad and linked up with pro-Nazi Iraqi nationalist Rashid Ali el-Gaylani. In 1941 el-Husseini and el-Gaylani engineered a pro-German coup against the pro-British Iraqi government, which brought a reign of terror to Iraq's Jews. This culminated in what we remember as the Farhud, an Arabic word akin to "pogrom."

In a two-day period in 1941, Arab mobs went on a rampage in Baghdad and Basra murdering, raping and pillaging these cities' Jewish communities. Nearly 200 Jews were slaughtered, more than 2000 injured; some 900 Jewish homes were destroyed and looted, as were hundreds of Jewish-owned shops.

My father was a survivor of the carnage. He hid in a hole dug in the ground to save his life. He saw Iraqi soldiers pull small children away from their parents and rip the arms off young girls to steal their bracelets. He saw pregnant women being raped and their stomachs cut open.

Around the Region

Britain eventually regained control, and el-Husseini and other Palestinian nationalists fled to Berlin where they became honored guests of the Nazi state. Hitler told a grateful el-Husseini that "Germany's only remaining objective in the [Middle East] would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands."

Later, in a speech over Radio Berlin's Arabic Service, el-Husseini voiced support for the Nazis' "Final Solution" and became the first Arab leader to call openly for the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands -- some eight years before there was a single Palestinian refugee.

Even though Hitler lost the war, el-Husseini's call was heeded. In 1948 Iraq rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of Jews. Others were removed from their jobs in the civil service, business licenses of Jews were revoked, and quotas were placed on Jewish high school and college students. Later, discriminatory restrictions were imposed on Jewish travel abroad and the buying or selling of property. Thus, even if Jews wanted to escape Iraq, they could not do so legally and they could not liquidate their assets.

In 1950 the Iraqi parliament passed a law called "Ordinance for the Cancellation of Iraqi Nationality for Jews, Law No. 1" that stripped Iraqi Jews of their citizenship. In 1951 the Iraqi parliament passed another law, confiscating all Jewish property. Within a year most of Iraq's ancient Jewish population -- my family included -- fled to Israel.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, Jews faced similar circumstances. In Libya in 1945 nearly 100 Jews were massacred. In 1948 the Jewish communities of Aden and Algeria were rocked by a series of massacres that left hundreds dead and many more injured. Anti-Jewish discriminatory laws were passed in other Arab countries. Within a decade the exodus of Jews from Arab countries was almost complete, with most going to Israel. All of this was conducted under the guise of law by Arab governments. This forced the flight of Jews out of lands where we had lived for thousands of years before the Arab-Islamic conquests.

Since 1949, the United Nations has passed over 100 resolutions on Palestinian refugees. Yet, for Jewish refugees from Arab countries not a single UN resolution has been introduced recognizing our mistreatment or calling for justice for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced out of our homes. This imbalance of the world's concern is itself an injustice.

Arab governments instituted policies that led to some 900,000 Middle Eastern Jews becoming stateless refugees. Those same governments forced some 750,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants to remain in impoverished refugee camps refusing them citizenship and denying them hope.

Peace between Israel and the Arab world requires a solution that recognizes that there were two refugee populations. Acknowledging and redressing the legitimate rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries will promote the cause of justice, peace and a true reconciliation.

This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle

Hipocrisia e estupidez

2008-10-07T17:36:00.001-03:00

[Estamos] numa guerra entre os que defendem a liberdade de pensamento, os direitos humanos, os mais altos valores da Humanidade e aqueles que vivem num mundo em que não há lugar para a razão.

ALI KAMEL

Os atentados na Espanha, na última semana, já foram analisados de vários pontos de vista. Mas alguns aspectos foram deixados de fora, outros não foram abordados com a necessária profundidade. Principalmente no que concerne ao terrorismo como um todo.

Por mais antipático que possa parecer, é necessário dizer que nas manifestações “pela Paz” e de repúdio ao terrorismo, há um quê de hipocrisia. Hipocrisia do tipo “pimenta nos olhos dos outros é colírio”. A Europa parece ter descoberto a palavra terrorismo, que nunca é empregada por lá para se referir às constantes chacinas de civis que ocorrem, há anos, em Israel. Segundo levantamento feito pelo Prof Luiz Nazário, da USP e da UFMG, só nos anos 2000, 2001 e 2002 contaram-se 381 mortos e 1.627 feridos em atentados dos mais diversos tipos por várias facções terroristas palestinas. Várias destas organizações, como a OLP, são ostensivamente financiadas por capitais europeus e ONGs “humanitárias” americanas.

Incrível mesmo - mais do que hipócrita, selvagem - foi a lista publicada dos atentados no mundo desde 11 de setembro pelo site Terra: não consta nenhum, NENHUM, em Israel! Um protesto encaminhado pelo Dr Miguel Gus, de Porto Alegre, obteve a cínica resposta que “a fonte da informação era a Reuters e para essa Agência o conflito entre Israel e Palestinos não havia sido incluído pois ele arrasta-se no tempo”. “Não se intimidou o editor ao emitir essa desculpa, mesmo quando na lista constavam atentados na Chechênia, Colômbia, Paquistão, Índia e Caxemira, locais onde o conflito não pode ser classificado como pontual”. [Palavras do autor do protesto].

Mas as notícias de lá sempre dão conta de homem-bomba palestino que “suicida-se” em atentado em Israel. E sempre existe a desculpa de que tais suicidas – jamais chamados do que realmente são: assassinos terroristas – pertencem a um povo oprimido pelo Estado Judeu. É impressionante, senão revoltante, ver como saem as notícias na mídia européia e latino-americana e, com menor intensidade, na americana. Os atentados palestinos são sempre noticiados em páginas centrais com poucas e pequenas fotos. Quando as Forças de Defesa de Israel reagem, as manchetes são na primeira página e as palavras utilizadas são bem mais fortes: Exército de Israel ataca líder palestino E MATA VÁRIOS CIVÍS INCLUSIVE CRIANÇAS INOCENTES. Uma foto de criança palestina sempre cai bem, principalmente se estiver ferida ou jogando uma pedrinha num enorme blindado israelense.

Mas os atentados na Espanha não, foram noticiados com ampla repercussão e as palavras são as mais fortes possíveis. Será que é porque lá em Israel só morrem judeus? E agora o terror chegou dentro das fronteiras européias? Poder-se-ia acrescentar também os citados atentados em países não europeus, que estes lêem no jornal matinal enquanto acabam seu café e ao tomarem suas conduções já esqueceram, planejando seu dia.

Não quero deixar de lado dois aspectos psicológicos importantes. A repetitividade e a proximidade. É verdade que os ataques a Israel são tão constantes e tão distantes que somente aqueles que têm parentes ou amigos lá – ou que entendem a extensão e a profundidade da crise internacional - ainda se preocupam. Toda tragédia que se repete, cansa e acaba virando rotina. Veja-se a violência urbana: acaba-se falando dela como um fato natural da vida. E é claro que um atentado na Europa, mais próximo, choca mais. Mas não posso descartar a imensa hipocrisia que está por trás destas atitudes, porque estão envolvidas outras forças que as motivam. E uma delas é, sem dúvida, a exacerbação do anti-semitismo disfarçado de anti-sionismo. E também porque Israel é aliado dos EEUU, esta potência invejada, temida e odiada!

Mas além de hipocrisia, existe uma enorme estupidez envolvida.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“Isto é parte do acerto de uma antiga conta com a Espanha Cruzada”.

Este é um trecho do pronunciamento das Brigadas Abu Hafis al-Masri, ao assumir a autoria dos atentados. Há muita discussão ainda sobre a verdadeira autoria mas os analistas de maior peso estão inclinados a uma versão mista: seriam frutos de um planejamento bem coordenado entre a al-Qaeda e a ETA (Euzkadi ta Askatasuna, Pátria Basca e Liberdade). Não tenho elementos para chegar a uma conclusão, mas não creio que isto seja importante. O fato é que, direta ou indiretamente responsável, a al-Qaeda mandou seu recado – e funcionou.

A idéia de que o “acerto de contas” tem a ver com fatos ocorridos há mil anos não passa, a meu ver, de uma excelente dissimulação. E é facilmente justificável. Já em fevereiro de 1998, quando a al-Qaeda passou a existir com plena força, Osama bin-Laden e vários outros líderes lançaram uma fatwa com o expressivo título: GUERRA SANTA MUNDIAL CONTRA OS JUDEUS E OS CRUZADOS – DECLARAÇÃO DA FRENTE ISLÂMICA MUNDIAL. A menção do pronunciamento atual sobre a Espanha Cruzada não é aleatória. Já nesta fatwa falava-se que “desde que Allah criou a Península Arábica, cercada de oceanos, esta só havia sido invadida brutalmente pelos exércitos cruzados que, como gafanhotos exterminaram suas colheitas”. Mas “há sete anos (depois da Primeira Guerra do Golfo) está ocupada pelos EEUU, humilhando seu povo, aterrorizando seus vizinhos e usando suas base para ataca-los”.

Temos aqui uma mentira, embutida numa outra mentira para dissimular a verdade, uma True Lie ou melhor ainda, uma deception. A interpretação dos ataques como uma retaliação e chantagem pela Espanha ter apoiado a invasão do Iraque pelos EEUU é correta. Mas exploram-se fatos ocorridos há mil anos como forma de insuflar as massas islâmicas contra os “cruzados” atuais, despertar a culpa do ocidente, já devidamente preparada pelo antiamericanismo e pelo anti-sionismo reinantes e desviar a atenção dos reais motivos.

Não é à toa que os líderes esquerdistas de todo mundo apressaram-se a difundir esta versão, a começar pelo ditador cubano ao novo Presidente de Governo Espanhol, Zapatero. A mídia e os leitores “engoliram” direitinho, tão doutrinados estão pelo antiamericanismo e pelo anti-sionismo obsessivos. E era esta exatamente a intenção. No entanto a menção às Cruzadas serve como pretexto de que estamos enfrentando uma guerra exclusivamente contra o Islã e não contra uma ação conjunta do moderno “fundamentalismo” Islâmico e suas fontes ideológicas e de financiamento esquerdistas, contra a civilização ocidental e seu representante mais oriental, Israel.

Assim, declara-se o verdadeiro objetivo – manipular as eleições espanholas contra os EEUU – confunde-se a opinião pública com a menção a uma guerra santa, insufla-se o natural fanatismo religioso entre os muçulmanos – disto se encarregam muito bem as mesquitas e madrassas – escondendo-se a extensão e a profundidade dos próprios objetivos: atacar o Ocidente e a civilização baseada na tradição judaico-cristã. Para todos que acreditam piamente que a queda do muro de Berlim representou o fim do comunismo, isto soa como uma teoria conspiratória paranóica que vê comunistas até de baixo da cama.

Relembro uma velha piada: o paciente que dizia ao psiquiatra que havia um jacaré debaixo da cama e o doutor interpretava como fantasia paranóica. Quando o paciente faltou três dias o psiquiatra ligou, e a esposa disse: “o jacaré comeu ele, doutor”.

Esquecendo momentaneamente a palavra comunismo, o que o socialismo tem em comum com o Islã? Um profundo ódio ao indivíduo que nada é, só valendo o coletivo. A civilização ocidental, fundada num tripé – judaísmo, cristianismo e filosofia grega – é a que ressalta o valor do indivíduo acima das massas coletivas e por isto jamais será perdoada pelos coletivistas de todos os matizes, que se aliam para atacá-la.

O extremismo islâmico corânico – a jihad corânica – havia arrefecido há umas centenas de anos, para renascer a toda força no século passado, dando a impressão de que é a mesma, mas não é! Os atuais dirigentes da jihad não dão a mínima para o Alcorão, nada têm de religiosos, mas sabem – por viverem lá – como é fácil insuflar seus conterrâneos com trechos do Livro de Allah. Da mesma forma, a solidariedade com o “povo palestino” não passa de cortina de fumaça para a destruição de Israel – e depois, do resto do ocidente, inicialmente a Europa, presa fácil por ser onde impera a maior hipocrisia e impostura.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A suprema estupidez é não perceber que Israel não é atacado porque “invadiu” a Palestina. Porém, como ao terminar este artigo, chegou-me às mãos um muito mais brilhante, de Pilar Rahola, jornalista catalã, “La Rebelión de los Canários”, deixo com ela a palavra (em tradução livre que será divulgado em breve, na íntegra, pelo MSM):

“Israel, tal como os judeus, não é odiado pelo que faz, mas pelo que é. [...] por ser um oásis democrático e ocidental num mar de ditaduras. [ ...] por sustentar valores de humanidade e liberdade, rodeado por tiranias sangrentas. Não são os defeitos de Israel – que são abundantes – o alvo do ódio terroristas mas suas virtudes.”

“A solidariedade com os Palestinos é talvez uma das maiores hipocrisias do século”. A Europa, que colonizou o mundo árabe, que oprime suas próprias minorias muçulmanas e que cala complacentemente frente às tiranias que assolam o mundo muçulmano, se descobre como campeã dos direitos humanos precisamente no tema palestino [...] Longe de ser solidária, a Europa trata outra vez de apaziguar assassinos. Os que pagam são outra vez os judeus”.

Eu não teria palavras melhores. A covardia abjeta do eleitorado espanhol só encontra paralelo na vergonhosa rendição de Munich. Como Churchill disse a Chamberlain, no seu retorno triunfal do encontro com Hitler: “Deram-lhe o poder de escolher entre o opróbrio e a guerra. Você escolheu o opróbrio, e terá a guerra!”

retirado de http://www.heitordepaola.com

Obama runs away from a lawsuit

2008-10-02T19:54:00.001-03:00

Olavo de Carvalho
Diário do Comércio, September 28, 2008

http://laiglesforum.com/2008/09/28/322/

September 24 was the deadline for Barack Obama to file a response to the lawsuit, initiated by Democrat lawyer Philip Berg, which charges Obama with not fulfilling the constitutional requirements to be elected president, since he is not a natural born citizen of the United States. Barack Obama did not actually respond: he introduced a motion for dismissal, a typical delaying maneuver that makes the defendant look even more suspect.

A motion for dismissal consists in alleging that the plaintiff did not provide enough evidence to justify the continuation of the suit. That Obama's lawyers should use this maneuver is a curious sample of the revolutionary inversion of judicial logic. Berg's central argument is that Obama has not presented a printed birth certificate. It is the duty of the candidate to prove that he is a natural born American citizen, not the duty of the plaintiff to prove that he is not. The hard fact that the document has never come to light is enough for the suit to go forward, as there is not a single piece of evidence attesting that Obama has legal citizenship. But to this undeniable assertion, Berg added some strong evidence that (1) the electronic copy of the birth certificate exhibited by Obama's campaign is false, and (2) Obama was born in Kenya. By challenging the insufficiency of these supplemental arguments, Obama's lawyers are trying to dodge the central point: Where is the paper version of the certificate? If Obama had one, it would be enough to present it, and he would be acquitted on the spot. What his lawyers did suggests that he has no American birth certificate whatsoever.

In return, they have gained time, but at the expense of sowing the seed of a constitutional crisis that will fatally blow up sooner or later. If the suit is resolved only after the election—and if Obama is elected—the United States, instead of simply nullifying a candidacy, will find itself in the contingency of having to topple a president, automatically raising the ire of his devotees. Or else the United States will have to sacrifice its Constitution and laws on the altar of a grotesque pseudo-religion, artificial to the utmost, in which millions of idiots kneel down before an improvised arriviste without even bothering to ask where he came from. Both hypotheses are frightening, and if the motion for dismissal is accepted by the court, there will be no third one any more.

More and more I convince myself that all this, from the beginning, figured in the calculations of the creators of the Obama myth. More than just electing a president, they wished to implode a nation.

PS—All the documents of the lawsuit are on Phillip Berg's site www.obamacrimes.com. If you have any difficulty in accessing it, do not be surprised: it has received over 15 million visitors in the last few days, and there has been a bit of a traffic jam.

Self-censorship of "conservative" media—be afraid!

2008-10-02T19:51:00.002-03:00

Donald Hank
Laigle's Forum, September 28, 2008

The big scandal here is that no one in the media, whether “conservative” or liberal, will talk about the lawsuit against Obama. I recall recently that a caller to the Glenn Beck radio program brought this up. Immediately, Glenn told her this issue was nothing in comparison to so many other really important issues, and that there is no need to discuss it.

So much for the “free” conservative media. Rush is silent on this issue, and so is Hannity. And even “conservative” news sites on the web are ignoring it.

So what if this is not the “opportune” time to mention it? So what if it puts Hillary in a position to regain her candidacy? So what if liberals don’t want you to know?

This silence on the issue is proof that the press, whether “conservative” (I don’t think it is) or liberal, is in some way operating in someone’s interests, and that someone is not you!

Think about it: why is it that a Brazilian Newspaper (Diário do Comércio) is carrying news that is, for all intents and purposes, censored in the US?

I hope to be able to comment further on the self-censorship and the recent distortions in the “conservative” media. (Have you noticed how no one is protesting the bailout? They limit themselves to a discussion of who gets what of your money. Sickening!)

Barack Hussein Obama III

2008-09-17T11:09:00.002-03:00

1. Ele foi admirador e companheiro de protestos do pastor Louis Farrakhan, aquele segundo o qual “o judaísmo é a religião do esgoto”. Isso faz tempo, mas depois de eleito senador ele deu 225 mil dólares em verbas federais à igreja de seu amigo Michael Pfleger, onde Farrakhan é um dos mais freqüentes e aplaudidos pregadores convidados.

· Pfleger elogia Farrakhan: http://sweetness-light.com/archive/from-obamas-church-pfleger-on-farrakhan

· Colaboração Pfleger-Farrakhan: http://dallassouthblog.com/2007/05/30/min-louis-farrakhan-visits-father-michael-pfleger-and-st-sabina/

· Pfleger, ainda mais radical que Jeremiah Wright: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjJlsGrlbUs

· Obama-Farrakhan: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011402083.html

· Obama-Farrakhan: http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/obama_farrakhan/2008/03/05/77971.html

2. No Quênia, ele deu apoio eleitoral a um agitador que depois organizou a destruição de trezentos templos cristãos e o assassinato de mais de mil fiéis, cinqüenta deles queimados vivos numa igreja, sem que Obama viesse a dizer uma só palavra contra essa gentil criatura.

· Apoio ao terrorista Raila Odinga: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=71383

3. Ele disse que o terrorista William Ayers (da quadrilha do “Homem do Tempo”) era apenas um seu vizinho com quem jamais conversava de política, mas depois se descobriu que ele e Ayers dirigiram juntos uma ONG que coletou 72 milhões de dólares para movimentos de esquerda, sendo um interessante exercício intelectual conjeturar como puderam fazer isso sem falar de política.

· Colaboração Obama-Ayers: http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/12/the-obama-ayers-top-ten-highlights-of-the-20-year-obama-ayers-connection/

4. Neste preciso momento ele responde na Pensilvânia a um processo de falsidade ideológica, por ter apresentado a seus eleitores uma certidão de nascimento obviamente forjada. A verdadeira, se existe, até hoje não apareceu, e o beautiful people da mídia não releva o menor interesse em conhecê-la.

· Processo contra Obama: www.obamacrimes.com

7. Não é só sobre suas origens ou sobre sua religião que Obama cultiva segredos. Também não é só sua certidão de nascimento autêntica que continua inacessível. Embora gabando-se de sua carreira em Harvard, ele se recusa a mostrar o histórico de seus estudos universitários. Os fofoqueiros maldosos dizem que ele tem vergonha de mostrar suas notas baixas (talvez ainda mais baixas que as de George W. Bush, Al Gore e John Kerry), mas agora se sabe que ele tem um motivo mais forte para encobrir os detalhes da sua passagem por Harvard: seus estudos ali foram pagos por Donald Warden, um americano que, islamizado sob o nome de Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, veio a se tornar um dos mentores do grupo terrorista Panteras Negras, fund-raiser para a organização pró-terrorista African-American Association e autor de um livro segundo o qual o governo americano planeja matar todos os negros.

· O patrono de Barack Obama em Harvard: http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?status=article&id=305508174916939&secid=1501

8. Em cinco campanhas eleitorais, o mais ativo coletor de fundos para Obama foi o vigarista sírio Tony Rezko, condenado por dezesseis crimes. Uma vez no Senado, Obama retribuiu com dinheiro público a gentileza, convencendo vários prefeitos a investir um total de 14 milhões de dólares num projeto imobiliário do malandro.

· Obama-Rezko: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=4111483

· Obama-Rezko: http://www.newsmax.com/smith/barack_obama_tony_rezko/2008/09/02/126890.html

_____________________________________________
http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/semana/080911dce_fontes.html

Barack Hussein Obama II

2008-09-14T21:30:00.001-03:00

Barack Hussein Obama

2008-09-14T21:17:00.004-03:00

Checando biografias

Olavo de Carvalho
Diário do Comércio (editorial), 11 de setembro de 2008

Enquanto nos EUA, no Brasil e no mundo a grande mídia esquerdista (desculpem a redundância) vasculha a biografia de Sarah Palin nos seus mínimos detalhes, trazendo ao público as revelações chocantes de que ela pertence à Igreja Pentecostal, de que sua filha transou com o namorado e de que (acrescenta a pérfida Ann Coulter) seu cabelereiro teve uma multa de trânsito em 1978, nada, absolutamente nada aí se conta a ninguém sobre alguns episódios da vida de Barack Hussein Obama, decerto irrisórios e desprovidos de qualquer alcance político, não é mesmo? Eis oito exemplos:

1. Ele foi admirador e companheiro de protestos do pastor Louis Farrakhan, aquele segundo o qual “o judaísmo é a religião do esgoto”. Isso faz tempo, mas depois de eleito senador ele deu 225 mil dólares em verbas federais à igreja de seu amigo Michael Pfleger, onde Farrakhan é um dos mais freqüentes e aplaudidos pregadores convidados.

2. No Quênia, ele deu apoio eleitoral a um agitador que depois organizou a destruição de trezentos templos cristãos e o assassinato de mais de mil fiéis, cinqüenta deles queimados vivos numa igreja, sem que Obama viesse a dizer uma só palavra contra essa gentil criatura.

3. Ele disse que o terrorista William Ayers (da quadrilha do “Homem do Tempo”) era apenas um seu vizinho com quem jamais conversava de política, mas depois se descobriu que ele e Ayers dirigiram juntos uma ONG que coletou 72 milhões de dólares para movimentos de esquerda, sendo um interessante exercício intelectual conjeturar como puderam fazer isso sem falar de política.

4. Neste preciso momento ele responde na Pensilvânia a um processo de falsidade ideológica, por ter apresentado a seus eleitores uma certidão de nascimento obviamente forjada. A verdadeira, se existe, até hoje não apareceu, e o beautiful people da mídia não releva o menor interesse em conhecê-la.

5. Embora ele diga que sempre foi cristão, todos os seus colegas e professores de escola primária, bem como seu meio-irmão e sua meia-irmã, afirmam que ele era muçulmano na época em que ali estudava.

6. Por duas décadas ele freqüentou semanalmente uma igreja que alardeava a “teologia da libertação” mais escancaradamente comunista e anti-americana, e depois disse que não tinha a menor idéia do conteúdo do que ali se pregava.

7. Não é só sobre suas origens ou sobre sua religião que Obama cultiva segredos. Também não é só sua certidão de nascimento autêntica que continua inacessível. Embora gabando-se de sua carreira em Harvard, ele se recusa a mostrar o histórico de seus estudos universitários. Os fofoqueiros maldosos dizem que ele tem vergonha de mostrar suas notas baixas (talvez ainda mais baixas que as de George W. Bush, Al Gore e John Kerry), mas agora se sabe que ele tem um motivo mais forte para encobrir os detalhes da sua passagem por Harvard: seus estudos ali foram pagos por Donald Warden, um americano que, islamizado sob o nome de Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, veio a se tornar um dos mentores do grupo terrorista Panteras Negras, fund-raiser para a organização pró-terrorista African-American Association e autor de um livro segundo o qual o governo americano planeja matar todos os negros.

8. Em cinco campanhas eleitorais, o mais ativo coletor de fundos para Obama foi o vigarista sírio Tony Rezko, condenado por dezesseis crimes. Uma vez no Senado, Obama retribuiu com dinheiro público a gentileza, convencendo vários prefeitos a investir um total de 14 milhões de dólares num projeto imobiliário do malandro.

Os brasileiros não saberão de nada disso assistindo ao “Jornal Nacional”, nem os americanos à CNN. Ante as acusações gerais de que John McCain não checou direito a biografia de Sarah Palin, o colunista Don Feder sugere que a de Obama, por sua vez, foi checada meticulosamente – por uma comissão integrada por Forrest Gump, o Inspetor Clouseau e o Agente 86, Maxwell Smart. E, quando Obama comete um lapsus linguae, dizendo “minha fé muçulmana” em vez de “minha fé cristã”, todas as almas santas do esquerdismo mundial se revoltam ante as insinuações, vindas de maldosos direitistas, de que isso possa significar alguma coisa. Eu mesmo sou tão perverso que cheguei a me perguntar se Obama não trocava os pés pelas mãos justamente por ser muito difícil, até para um ator tarimbado, exibir-se como um pavão no poleiro e ao mesmo tempo esconder-se como um rato na toca.

Mas Obama nem precisaria ser tão escrupuloso na camuflagem. A mídia esconde tudo por ele – para quê preocupar-se em vão ao ponto de ficar nervoso e atrapalhar-se no discurso? Afinal, que são os pequenos deslizes do candidato democrata em comparação com a gravidez solteira de Bristol Palin? Toda a esquerda chique, que sempre batalhou pela “liberação sexual da juventude”, está hoje escandalizada, chocada, perplexa ante essa semvergonhice incomum, sem dúvida um risco maior para a segurança dos EUA no caso de Sarah Palin chegar à vice-presidência. Com o detalhe especialmente elucidativo de que, uma vez desencadeada a campanha de ataques à devassidão abominável da família Palin, essa mesma onda é explicada retroativamente como fruto do moralismo reacionário dos americanos e assim transfigurada num argumento fulminante contra a eleição de candidatos conservadores.

_________________________________

Radiografia do caso Obama

Olavo de Carvalho
Diário do Comércio (editorial), 12 de setembro de 2008

Mesmo na hipótese altamente improvável de que Barack Hussein Obama venha a tirar da cartola uma certidão de nascimento autêntica e demonstrar enfim sua condição legal de cidadão americano, restará sempre o fato líquido e certo de que uma certidão falsa foi apresentada ao público, oficialmente, pela sua campanha eleitoral (v. a análise irrespondível de um perito forense em http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/07/atlas-exclusive.html).

Crime é crime, e não deixa de sê-lo pelo simples fato de a conduta do acusado vir eventualmente a sugerir, ex post facto, que foi um crime desnecessário e prejudicial a ele mesmo. Se Obama for eleito, será, segundo parece, o primeiro presidente americano a ser empossado trazendo nas costas uma condenação criminal. Embora abafado até o extremo limite do possível pela grande mídia e nem de longe mencionado durante a Convenção que sacramentou entusiasticamente o candidato democrata, o processo já está correndo (v. http://www.obamacrimes.com/). Foi movido num tribunal federal da Filadélfia pelo advogado Philip Berg, um militante clintoniano cuja única intenção, segundo ele diz, foi a de poupar ao seu partido o dano incomparavelmente maior de eleger um inelegível, ou mesmo um elegível que já no dia da posse estará carimbado oficialmente como criminoso.

A pergunta que não me sai da cabeça é: por que os líderes do Partido Democrata estão aceitando, aparentemente sem grande preocupação, o risco desse vexame colossal? É impossível que não saibam da certidão forjada, é impossível não perceberem que estão arriscando a sorte do seu partido no blefe mais autofrustrante de todos os tempos. É impossível, sobretudo, que o próprio Obama não saiba dessas coisas.

Uma hipótese plausível é a de que tudo seja um cálculo maquiavélico para dar a presidência não ao inexperiente Obama e sim ao tarimbado Joe Biden. O Partido Democrata terá colocado no cargo algo que pelo menos leva jeito de presidente e não um Messias de programa de auditório, com a vantagem adicional de entrar para a História como a agremiação heróica que elegeu o primeiro presidente negro dos EUA, infelizmente retirado do poder – oh, mundo cruel! -- por uma vasta conspiração direitista de advogados e juízes. Obama será jogado fora como um preservativo usado, mas levando como prêmio de seus esforços a recordação dos quinze minutos de fama e um cronograma garantido de conferências acadêmicas milionárias pelos próximos dez ou vinte anos.

A trêfega adesão dos Clintons a uma candidatura que até a véspera não aceitavam de maneira alguma fala em favor dessa hipótese. Biden é amigo do casal há décadas, e na campanha pelas eleições primárias ele cortejou Hillary o tempo todo, na óbvia expectativa de um cargo ministerial. Biden na presidência seria o retorno póstumo da Era Clinton em forma de resíduo fantasmal, como numa sessão espírita.

Há no entanto uma outra hipótese, mais sinistra, que não nega a primeira, mas a complementa espetacularmente. Para enxergá-la com clareza, é preciso ter em conta os seguintes fatores:

(1) Obama não é o candidato preferido do eleitor americano, mas é o candidato preferido da espécie humana. Na Europa ocidental e oriental, na Ásia, na África e na América Latina, uma campanha de endeusamento como jamais se viu no mundo deu ao medíocre senador de Illinois as proporções de um salvador mítico do universo e não somente dos EUA. Essa campanha não é um aglomerado de curiosas coincidências, ela tem unidade e coerência notáveis, não só no estilo retórico demencial, que toma símbolos publicitários como realidades palpáveis, e não só na orientação política subjacente, uniformemente anti-americana, mas também nas fontes que a subsidiam e orientam, entre as quais se destacam os recursos bilionários dos potentados árabes, das organizações esquerdistas e terroristas, de George Soros e do lobby globalista em geral. Na forma como no conteúdo, na identidade dos seus porta-vozes como no seu teor ideológico indisfarçável, a campanha obamista internacional é apenas a condensação eleitoral da onda de ódio anti-americano que veio crescendo, sem descontinuar, desde o fracasso do “socialismo real”, e que hoje é o único pólo aglutinador do movimento revolucionário no mundo.

(2) Nessa campanha, que não é só publicitária mas visa a uma “mudança” real, Obama não entra só como um símbolo – embora nesse papel tenha um brilho incomum – e sim também como um efetivo executor. Seu programa de governo, em todos os pontos substantivos (excluídas portanto somente algumas concessões verbais ao patriotismo americano), consiste sumariamente em demolir a economia americana por meio de impostos e legislações restritivas, em substituir a cultura americana tradicional pelo lixo “multiculturalista”, em transferir a organismos internacionais parcelas essenciais da soberania americana e em colocar os EUA de joelhos ante as “reivindicações legítimas” (palavras dele, porca miséria!) dos terroristas anti-americanos. Se todos os inimigos dos EUA apóiam esse sujeito, é por um motivo inteiramente óbvio: ele é um traidor feito sob medida, um agente local a serviço de poderes extranacionais, um Quisling em toda a linha. Embora nem todos o declarem em voz alta, praticamente todo mundo nos EUA enxerga isso. A diferença é que uns gostam, outros não. Ambos fingem que não vêem: estes, porque reconhecer esses fatos abertamente seria confessar um estado de pânico, de calamidade pública, pior do que mil furacões da Louisiana; aqueles, porque a camuflagem é a essência da traição.

(3) É claro que, para desempenhar sua parte no plano, Obama nem precisa chegar à presidência. Que quase metade do eleitorado seja imbecilizada ao ponto de endeusar um candidato tão somente pela força de seus slogans de campanha, sem examinar nem mesmo seu programa de governo e aceitando ignorar por completo sua biografia – a mais comprometedora que já se viu em tão alto escalão –, já é um dano irreparável. Os valores da democracia americana já foram corroídos pelo anti-americanismo externo e interno ao ponto de milhões de eleitores desejarem conscientemente – embora não confessadamente – um traidor na presidência. Esse mal já está feito e, sob esse aspecto, a campanha de Obama, mesmo que perca as eleições, como parece mesmo que vai perder, já saiu vencedora. O resto do serviço, no caso improvável de uma vitória dos democratas, Joe Biden poderia fazer até melhor que Obama: afinal, é o sujeito que quer reprimir a exploração de novos poços de petróleo nos EUA depois de ter apoiado a cessão de belas reservas petrolíferas do Alasca... à Rússia.

THE ASSASSINS

2007-08-09T16:02:00.000-03:00

by J. R. Nyquist

“You may succeed in silencing me,” Alexander Litvinenko explained on his deathbed, “but that silence comes at a price.” He was addressing his murderer, Russian President Vladimir Putin. “You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value. You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilized men and women.” Stalin said that one death was a tragedy while one million was a mere statistic. The slaughter of the Chechen people failed to arouse the West. But Litvinenko’s death was a tragedy that caught the world’s attention, underscoring the evil that has emerged in Moscow. British authorities have privately conceded that the Kremlin dispatched the assassins who poisoned Litvinenko with radioactive Pollonium-210 in November 2006. I bring this story up, once more, because of the indecency of President Bush, who regards Putin as his “friend.” If meeting with Putin, if praising Putin’s “frankness” is some kind of strategy, then it is doubly shameful. Embracing a treacherous partner is not a strategy. To call such a thing “political realism” is shortsighted and even suicidal. America has been down this road before, when FDR trusted Stalin, when Nixon and Carter embraced Brezhnev, when Reagan hugged Gorbachev. Only now the situation is worse. The structures used to contain Russia have collapsed on the assumption that Russia is an emerging democracy. And now, as the Russian dictator breaks out of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, NATO is unable to properly respond. President Putin will now have a stick as well as a carrot (i.e., energy) with which to bring Europe into obedience.

The political realist, if he were truly realistic, would know that the KGB regime in Russia faces a difficult transition within the coming months. Putin must step down and new elections must be held. But how can this be? If the history of Julius Caesar has taught us anything, it is that a powerful criminal cannot give up power without exposing himself to prosecution. He must cling to power as a matter of personal survival. This is the case with Putin and the thugs who serve him. More and more, the blood on Putin’s hands is visible to everyone, including the Russian people. His crimes are coming into focus at home and abroad. The apartment bombings that triggered the Second Chechen War are almost certainly his work. The assassination of journalist Anna Politkovskaya is rather obvious, like the death of Alexander Litvinenko. “You may succeed in silencing one man,” stated Litvinenko. “But a howl of protest from around the world will reverberate….”

One killing leads to another. You blow up apartments in Moscow and blame it on terrorists in order to establish your regime. And then, when investigators start digging into certain suspicious details, you assassinate the investigators – like legislator Sergei Yushenkov, Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko. You send assassins to kill the exiled Russian tycoon, Boris Berezovsky, who continues to finance these investigations. As noted above, one murder leads to another; one massacre leads to another; one war leads to another. The modus operandi takes over. If your house is built on a lie, if someone questions the lie, then your last line of defense is murder. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn once pointed out, the Communist regime in Russia survived “not because there has not been any struggle against it from the inside, not because people docilely surrendered to it, but because it is inhumanely strong, in a way unimaginable in the West.” And so, the Kremlin will not regurgitate Politkovskaya’s murderer. Putin will not hand over Litvinenko’s assassins. They are instrumental to the maintenance of his regime. If they are handed over the regime is doomed. This is the ABCs of the situation.

Just as an economic crisis is coming to America, a political crisis is coming to Russia. The two crises are interlinked. The assassination of Anna Politkovskaya and the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko foreshadow a necessary train of events in Russia – just as Stalin’s purges foreshadowed World War II. The Kremlin knows what is coming, what cannot now be avoided. The dictatorship in Russia is on a set path, firm in the understanding that Western-style freedom is the enemy. Therefore, the Kremlin must (1) exploit America’s growing strategic weakness, and (2) avoid political destabilization as the legitimacy of a criminal regime is called into question. Even if the Russian public remains sleepy and compliant, it will only be on account of carefully engineered events. And the logic of events should be obvious to everyone. As a matter of internal policy, the Kremlin must demonize the United States, naming America as its “main enemy.” It must elevate international tensions. It must divert attention from its own criminality by accusing the United States of worse criminality. The accusations over the NATO missile shield in Poland are only the beginning. Further accusations will follow. The alliance that Russia has been building with China, Venezuela, Iran, etc., will eventually come into play.

The Western experts think Russia can be gradually brought back into the democratic fold. They imagine that Russia can be turned into a solid, compliant partner by small steps. But this is not in the cards. History is a great teacher and history shows that the KGB has been here before: with Stalin at the end of the Soviet economic liberalization of the 1920s; at the end of World War II, when Moscow promised democracy to Eastern Europe; after Khrushchev denounced Stalin and announced a policy of peaceful coexistence; after the appearance of “Communism with a human face” in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The promises are always deceptive and always broken. What little is given, is used as a lure. Under whichever dictator, the Kremlin has its method: to reverse the economic liberalization of the 1920s with episodes like the Ukraine famine and Stalin’s purges; to introduce democracy to Eastern Europe through the establishment of several Communist dictatorships; to denounce Stalin and announce peaceful coexistence only to raise the Berlin Wall, arm the North Vietnamese and put offensive missiles into Cuba; to crush the Czech liberalization beneath armored columns.

Vladimir Putin has canceled the CFE Treaty because the Russian armed forces are reviving. They have new weapons, higher pay and better morale. Meanwhile, NATO is not ready. The United States is not psychologically prepared. Putin’s withdrawal from the CFE Treaty is thought to be a dramatic gesture, indicating his disapproval of NATO’s projected plans for missile defense. It is more than a gesture, however. It is the first step in a longer sequence. With further accusations, with further complaints of treachery, the Russian leader can start moving tank and motorized rifle divisions Westward. He can apply direct military pressure to supplement his economic pressure. He can tighten the screws on Europe. He can move into Serbia, bringing the Serbs into the Russian Federation itself. He can reassert the former “Soviet sphere of influence.” He can employ a subtle kind of blackmail as he assassinates his critics throughout Europe.

Holocaust Inversion: The Portraying of Israel and Jews as Nazis II

2007-08-08T00:56:00.000-03:00

Israel Worse than the Nazis
Sometimes cartoons even present Israelis as worse than Nazis. Kotek says: "A 1993 cartoon in the Syrian daily Teshreen shows one soldier with a Star of David on his helmet and another with a swastika on his helmet. The caption reads: ‘The Security Council has studied the case of genocide of the Palestinians.' The long list is of Israeli crimes; the small list of Nazi crimes."22

The claim that Israel is worse than the Nazis also appeared in the Hamashahri competition. The Moroccan cartoonist Naji Benaji was awarded a special prize for his drawing of two bottles. One, on which "Holocaust" is written, contains a few skulls; the second carries the Palestinian flag and is filled with skulls.

The number of cartoon variations on the core motif of Holocaust inversion is virtually unlimited. Kotek cites the Brazilian Carlos Latuff as a well-known anti-Semitic caricaturist who has been producing such works for many years.23 He won a shared second prize in the Tehran competition for a cartoon showing an Arab as a concentration-camp inmate.

A 2002 cartoon in the Greek daily Ethnos, close to the then-ruling Pasok socialist party, has become a classic of twenty-first-century anti-Semitism. It shows two Jewish soldiers dressed as Nazis, with Stars of David on their helmets, thrusting knives into Arabs. Its caption reads: "Do not feel yourself guilty, my brother. We were not in Auschwitz and Dachau to suffer, but to learn."24

These were preceded in 1988 by the Kuwaiti paper Al Rai-Al Aam, which published a caricature of a soldier with a gun, kippa, and long nose shoving a child into a furnace. The image alluded to both the Shoah and the ancient anti-Semitic blood libel that Jews use children to bake matzo.25

Toynbee, European Communists
The same anti-Semitic motifs also occur in written and verbal form. They go back to the immediate postwar period, though today they are much more frequent. The well-known British historian Arnold Toynbee, a notorious anti-Semite, claimed in his major work A Study of History that the Israeli treatment of Arabs during the 1948 war was morally comparable to the Nazi treatment of the Jews. He repeated this accusation in a 1961 debate with the then Israeli ambassador to Canada, Jacob Herzog, who asserted that the Nazi murder of six million Jews was incomparable to the unfortunate uprooting of Arab communities.26

Soviet propaganda was one of the important roots of Holocaust inversion. Israeli anti-Semitism scholar Simcha Epstein relates how in 1953, French communist intellectuals organized a solidarity rally in Paris to support the official Soviet claim that mainly Jewish doctors had assassinated communist leaders. He notes that at the meeting many speakers, including Jews, "explained that it was normal to suspect doctors of poisoning people: one only had to look at Mengele's role in Auschwitz. If he was capable of what he did, why should other physicians not use poison?"27

Although this example concerned Jews, presenting Israelis as Nazis was also widespread in the communist world. In 1968, Simon Wiesenthal stated that East Germany's news service was far more anti-Israeli than that of other communist countries. This was because of the former Nazi propagandists it employed. "On 14 July 1967, for example, a cartoon appeared in the Berliner Zeitung, depicting a flying Moshe Dayan, with his hands stretched out toward Gaza and Jerusalem. Next to him stood Adolf Hitler in an advanced state of decomposition. He encouraged Dayan with the words: ‘Carry on, colleague Dayan!'"28

In a famous 1968 open letter, British philosopher Bertrand Russell accosted Polish prime minister Wladyslaw Gomulka: "By some twisted logic, all Jews are now Zionists, Zionists are fascists, fascists are Nazis and Jews therefore are to be identified with the very criminals who only recently sought to eliminate Polish Jewry."29

The West European Mainstream
The Holocaust-inversion theme has already appeared in the West European mainstream for several decades. Leading European politicians such as the late Swedish socialist prime minister Olof Palme and the late Greek socialist prime minister Andreas Papandreou have accused Israel of using Nazi methods.30 31

In recent years such charges have become more widespread. American congressman and Holocaust-survivor Tom Lantos described the distortions of the Holocaust at the Durban conference. He also notes that at a preparatory emergency conference in Geneva in June 2001, the UN high commissioner for human rights and former Irish president, Mary Robinson, "refused to reject the twisted notion that the wrong done to the Jews in the Holocaust was equivalent to the pain suffered by the Palestinian in the Middle East. Instead she discussed ‘the historical wounds of anti-Semitism and of the Holocaust on the one hand, and the accumulated wounds of displacement and military occupation on the other.'"32

Senior members of the Greek Socialist Party often use Holocaust rhetoric to describe Israeli military actions.33 In March 2002, parliamentary speaker Apostolos Kaklamanis referred to the "genocide" of the Palestinians. He was backed by the government spokesman, Christos Protopapas, who said that Kaklamanis spoke "with sensitivity and responsibility, expressing the sentiments of the Parliament and Greek people."34

One only has to read the recent judgment of the International Court of Justice on the Srebrenica mass murder to understand what genocide is and how perverse the genocide accusations against Israel are.35

In April 2002, Franco Cavalli spoke at a demonstration of the Swiss-Palestinian Society in Bern. He was then parliamentary leader of the Social Democratic Party (SP), which is part of the Swiss governing coalition. He claimed that Israel "very purposefully massacres an entire people" and undertakes "the systematic extermination of the Palestinians." At the rally Israeli flags were torched.36 That same year British poet and Oxford academic Tom Paulin told an Egyptian newspaper that Jewish settlers in the West Bank are "Nazis and racists [who] should be shot dead."37

Using Nazi genocidal language for Israel's actions is another tool of Holocaust inversion. The most effective way to sanitize Germany's immense crimes is to accuse Israel of acting similarly. In 2002 Norbert Blüm, a former German Christian Democrat minister of labor, charged that the Jewish state was conducting a "Vernichtungskrieg" against the Palestinians-the Nazi expression for a war of extermination.38 The Christian Democrat Party expelled parliamentarian Martin Hohmann many months after he had called Israelis in 2003 a nation of criminals, using the expression "Taetervolk," commonly reserved for Nazi Germany.39

Holocaust inversion has made major inroads in the Western world, as shown, for example, by German survey data. The major GMF poll in 2004 interviewed 2,656 representatively selected German-speaking people in the country.40 Sixty-eight percent agreed that: "Israel undertakes a war of destruction against the Palestinians." Fifty-one percent agreed that: "What the state of Israel does today to the Palestinians, is in principle not different from what the Nazis did in the Third Reich to the Jews."41

On 26 January 2007-one day before the United Nations' International Day of Commemoration for the victims of the Holocaust-the 192-member UN General Assembly approved a resolution by consensus, introduced by the United States. It condemned "without any reservation any denial of the Holocaust." It did not mention any country. Iran reacted by stating that the Holocaust should be examined to determine its scope. Mario Palavicini, the delegate from Venezuela, supported the resolution but also inverted the Holocaust by saying that Israel's "excesses under the pretext of legitimate defense has led to a new holocaust against the Palestinian people."42

In Spain in 2006, there was even an attempt to invert the day of official Holocaust remembrance. Susana Leon Gordillo, a member of Prime Minister Zapatero's ruling Socialist Party (PSOE) and mayor of the Madrid suburb Ciempozuelos, decided to commemorate in his town the "genocide of the Palestinian people." At the request of the Spanish Foreign Ministry, "Palestine Genocide Day" was canceled. References to the affair were taken from the Ciempozuelos municipality website.43

The Anti-Defamation League condemned the mayor's Holocaust-inversion attempt and addressed him a letter saying:

Your attempt to equate the industrialized mass murder of six million Jewish women, men and children, as well as millions of others, with the situation of the Palestinian people is shameful. It reflects an extremely disturbing tendency, which is particularly visible in Europe to dishonor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and de-legitimize the State of Israel by seeking to eradicate the clear moral difference between the Holocaust and the loss of Palestinian lives as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict.44

There are some Jewish Holocaust inverters as well. One is Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at the Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies. A child of Holocaust survivors herself, she used a Holocaust Memorial Lecture to suggest that Israelis are Nazis, saying: "Within the Jewish community it has always been considered a form of heresy to compare Israeli actions or policies with those of the Nazis and certainly one must be very careful in doing so." She then insinuated that they are comparable, quoting as proof-a figment of Palestinian propaganda-that "Israeli soldiers openly admit to shooting Palestinian children for sport."45

Fishman, in an essay on the Cold War origins of contemporary anti-Semitic terminology, lists a variety of Israelis, academics and others, who have made Holocaust-inverting remarks.46

Inversion of Symbols
Many Holocaust symbols have also been inverted. In Amsterdam in February 2007, graffiti appeared showing Anne Frank with a keffiya. One regularly finds cartoons or pictures comparing Arab cities and towns to the Warsaw Ghetto,47 and attempts to compare the killing of the Palestinian child Mohammed al-Dura-who probably died from a Palestinian bullet-to the iconic Jewish child raising his hands in the Warsaw Ghetto.48

Attorney Khaled Mahamid, an Israeli Arab from Nazareth, has founded a Holocaust museum. The Anti-Defamation League, while praising the existence of an Arab museum in Israel commemorating the Holocaust, expressed its deep concern that its approach undid much of the benefit it could have achieved.

The ADL statement continued that the museum was based

on the false premise that the Palestinian people are paying the price for European guilt over the Holocaust by having what they believe is an illegitimate Jewish state in the heart of the Arab world. By placing the PLO flag at the museum as well as posters of Palestinian refugees and photos of Palestinian victims of violence juxtaposed next to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Mr. Mahamid also seeks to create a totally inappropriate connection between the plight of the Palestinians and the Jewish Holocaust victims.49

The Arab World
Holocaust denial and Holocaust inversion are frequently found together in the Arab world. This is seemingly strange yet reflects the perpetrators' aim of maximum demonization of Israel. Nordbruch points out that "articles denouncing Zionism as Nazism often include Holocaust denial as well."50

The Hamas Charter is one of a large number of Arab sources that commit Holocaust inversion. Its article 20 states: "The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone. They make war against people's livelihood, plunder their moneys and threaten their honor. In their horrible actions they mistreat people like the more horrendous war criminals."

The charter is repetitive; its article 31 says: "The Nazi Zionist practices against our people will not last the lifetime of their invasion, for ‘states built upon oppression last only one hour, states based upon justice will last until the hour of Resurrection.'"51

Comparing Palestinians to Shoah Victims
Another manifestation of Holocaust inversion is comparing the situation of the Palestinians to that of the Jews in concentration camps. It is found in many cartoons as well as elsewhere.

Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago, a communist, compared the blockaded Palestinian city of Ramallah to Auschwitz.52 While visiting Brazil he declared that the Jewish people no longer deserve sympathy for the suffering they endured during the Holocaust.53

Wistrich notes that the Anglican Church Times chose to mark Britain's Holocaust Memorial Day with a particularly malevolent article by the Rev. Richard Spencer, who described events in Ramallah as a "suffering and deprivation that I could only imagine in Auschwitz."54

Durst observes: "When one calls everything Auschwitz, you deny the Holocaust. As everything becomes terrible, there is no absolute evil anymore. This is a great relief for the heirs of guilt."55
The Muslim World and the Nazis
Even superficial analysis shows that the main ideological similarity to Nazi thought and behavior is nowadays found in parts of the Muslim world. The influence of neo-Nazi movements in the Western world is small compared to the prominence of Nazi-like thought among Muslim societies.

The dominant example is Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His genocidal threats and incitement against Israel have deep roots both in fundamentalist Iran and among radical Muslim figures in other countries.56 He also has called the Holocaust a myth.57

The Hamas Charter is another document calling for genocide. Its Article 7 lays the groundwork for its ideology of murder: "the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah's promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!"

Palestinian Extremists and "Moderates"
The Palestinian incitement calling for genocide of the Jews goes back well before World War II. The abovementioned Haj Amin el-Husseini, the prewar mufti of Jerusalem, was the leader of the Palestinian Arab extremists before the War of Independence and supported Hitler's actions against the Jews. In the late 1930s, he was financially and militarily assisted by Hitler's Germany. As Matthias Küntzel put it: "a biography of the Mufti published in 1943 clarified the closeness in world view between National Socialism and Islamism from a German perspective."58

For a long time the leader of the Palestinian Arab "moderates" was Ragheb bey el-Nashashibi, the mayor of Jerusalem, who also came out in favor of the mass murder of Jews. After the 1929 riots in Mandatory Palestine, the non-Jewish French writer Albert Londres asked him why the Arabs had murdered the old, pious Jews in Hebron and Safed, with whom they had no quarrel.

The mayor answered: "In a way you behave like in a war. You don't kill what you want. You kill what you find. Next time they will all be killed, young and old." Later on, Londres spoke again to the mayor and tested him ironically by saying: "You cannot kill all the Jews. There are 150,000 of them." Nashashibi answered "in a soft voice, ‘Oh no, it'll take two days.'"59

This reflected a much broader Arab mindset. It was most succinctly put by Azzam Pasha, secretary of the Arab League, who announced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."60

Arab Countries a Haven for Nazis
Many Nazis who escaped from defeated Germany found a new home in Arab countries. Alois Brunner, an Austrian Nazi war criminal and assistant to Adolf Eichmann, fled to Syria in the mid-1950s and acted there as a government adviser.

Egypt in particular became a haven for Nazis. There, they continued their anti-Semitic activities. Among them was Johannes von Leers, a Goebbels collaborator, who was brought to Egypt by Haj Amin el-Husseini after World War II. He converted to Islam, changed his name to Omar Amin, and became a political adviser to the Information Bureau of the Egyptian government.61

When in 1953 there was a rumor that Hitler was still alive, Anwar as-Sadat, later president of Egypt, wrote in deference to him: "I congratulate you wholeheartedly.... You can be proud of it that you will be the immortal Führer of Germany. We will not be surprised when we see you rise again or when after you a new Hitler emerges."62

Fishman shows the important role of Nazi propagandists in transplanting their propaganda themes into the Middle East and particularly into the media war against Israel. He concludes: "If today's Arab anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish propaganda strongly resembles that of the Third Reich, there is a good reason."63

Conclusion
Holocaust inversion attempts to delegitimize Israel by associating it with the epitome of evil and criminal behavior, Nazi Germany. It attacks and humiliates the Jewish people by equating them with the perpetrators of the brutal genocide that nearly succeeded in exterminating the Jews completely. It also serves to sanitize Germany's immense crimes and those of other European countries by accusing Israel of acting similarly.

Yet the world's major contemporary propagators of Nazi ideology live outside Europe. The most powerful ones can be found mainly in the Muslim world. Palestinian, often genocidal, anti-Semitic incitement is part of a broader picture of a widespread, partly theocratic, Muslim totalitarianism.

Fighting Holocaust inversion and other manipulations of the Holocaust requires first exposing the perpetrators. Thereafter the accusers must be turned into the accused.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He is an international business strategist who has been a consultant to governments, international agencies, and boards of some of the world's largest corporations. Among the ten books he has authored are Europe's Crumbling Myths: The Post-Holocaust Origins of Today's Anti-Semitism (JCPA, Yad Vashem, World Jewish Congress, 2003) and European-Israeli Relations: Between Confusion and Change? (JCPA, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2006).

Notes
1. The author expresses his gratitude to Dr. Joel Fishman for his many valuable comments, as well as to several other members of the Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism staff meetings. He is also grateful to JCPA interns Yonit Golub, Elise Wiedre, and Romy Grace for their assistance in researching this paper.
2. Nathan Sharansky, "Foreword," Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 16, Nos. 3-4 (Fall 2004): 5-8.
3. www.jafi.org.il/agenda/2001/english/wk3-22/6.asp.
4. "Manifestations of Antisemitism in the EU 2002-2003," European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, Vienna. For background on the process, see Michael Whine, "International Organizations: Combating Antisemitism in Europe," Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 16, Nos. 3-4 (Fall 2004).
5. Michael Whine, "The Berlin Declaration and the EUMC Working Definition of Anti-Semitism: Progress in the Struggle in Europe," Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, No. 41, 1 February 2006.
6. Ibid.
7. Robert Wistrich, "Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism," Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 16, Nos. 3-4 (Fall 2004): 29.
8. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Georges-Elia Sarfati, "Language as a Tool against Jews and Israel," Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, No. 17, 1 February 2004.
9. Joel Fishman, "The Big Lie and the Media War against Israel: From Inversion of the Truth to Inversion of Reality," Jewish Political Studies Review, Spring 2007, forthcoming.
10. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Deborah Lipstadt, "Denial of the Holocaust and Immoral Equivalence," in Manfred Gerstenfeld, Europe's Crumbling Myths: The Post-Holocaust Origins of Today's Anti-Semitism (Jerusalem: JCPA, Yad Vashem, World Jewish Congress, 2003), 121.
11. Anne Barnard, "Conference in Iran on Holocaust Begins," Boston Globe, 12 December 2006.
12. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Nathan Durst, "Europe: From Guilt Feelings to Repackaging Anti-Semitism," in Europe's Crumbling Myths, 135.
13. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Jeffrey Gedmin, "Experiencing European Anti-Americanism and Anti-Israelism," in Manfred Gerstenfeld, Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss? (Jerusalem: JCPA, Adenauer Foundation, 2005), 149-50.
14. Gerard Rabinovitch, "Petit lexique du prêt à penser," Observatoire du Monde Juif, 2 March 2002. [French] 15. Fighting Anti-Semitism (Jerusalem: Minister for Diaspora and Jerusalem Affairs, Coordinating Forum for Countering Antisemitism, JCPA, 2004).
16. Tom Lantos, The Durban Debacle: An Insider's View of the UN World Conference against Racism (Jerusalem: Institute of the World Jewish Congress, 2002), 17.
17. Fighting Anti-Semitism.
18. Al Goumhouriya, 24 April 1996, cited in Joël et Dan Kotek, Au nom de l'antisionisme: L'image des Juifs et d'Israël dans la caricature depuis la seconde Intifada (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 2003), 62. [French]
19. Al Akhbar, 3 October 2000; Kotek, ibid., 60.
20. Teshreen, 15 April 1993, Kotek, ibid., 63.
21. Cartoon by Finn Graff, Dagbladet, 10 July 2006, cited in Erez Uriely, "Jew Hatred in Contemporary Norwegian Caricatures," Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, No. 50, 1 November 2006.
22. Kotek, Au nom de l'antisionisme, 63.
23. Kotek, ibid 161.
24. Ethnos, 7 April 2002. [Greek]
25. Kotek, Au nom de l'antisionisme, 83.
26. "Moral v. Numerical," Time, 10 February 1961.
27. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Simon Epstein, "Fifty Years of French Intellectual Bias against Israel," Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, No. 4, 1 January 2003.
28. J. H. Brinks, "Political Anti-Fascism in the German Democratic Republic," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1997): 207-17.
29. For sources, see Joel S. Fishman, "The Cold War Origins of Contemporary Anti-Semitic Terminology," Jerusalem Viewpoints, No. 517, 1-16 May 2005, fn. 1.
30. Moses Altsech (Daniel Perdurant, pseud.), "Anti-Semitism in Contemporary Greek Society," Analysis of Current Trends in Anti-Semitism, 7 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1995), 10.
31. Per Ahlmark, "Palme's Legacy 15 Years On," Project Syndicate, February 2001.
32. Lantos, Durban Debacle, 17.
33. Simon Wiesenthal Center, "Twenty Months of Antisemitic Invective in Greece: March 2002-October 2003," 14 October 2003.
34. Antisemitism Worldwide, 2002-3, Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University.
35. www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/idocket/ibhy/ibhyjudgment/ibhy_ijudgment_20070226_frame.htm
36. "Israel-Kritik oder Antisemitismus?" Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 26 April 2002. [German]
37. Giles Foden and John Mullan, "When Authors Take Sides," The Guardian, 27 April 2002.
38. "Der Vorwurf des Antisemitismus wird auch als Knuppel benutzt," Stern, 18 June 2002. [German]
39. "Hohmann vor Parteigericht der CDU," Die Welt, 21 April 2004. [German]
40. Aribert Heyder, Julia Iser, and Peter Schmidt, "Israelkritik oder Antisemitismus? Meinungsbildung zwischen Öffentlichkeit, Medien und Tabus," in Wilhelm Heitmeyer, ed., Deutsche Zustände 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 144ff. [German]. GMF stands for Gruppenbezogene Menschenfeindlichkeit (Group-Targeted Misanthropy).
41. Ibid., 151.
42. Alexandra Olson, "U.N. Adopts Holocaust Denial Resolution," The Guardian, 27 January 2007.
43. Itamar Eichner, "‘Palestinian Genocide Day,' instead of Holocaust Day," ynetnews.com, 31 January 2007.
44. ADL Press Release, "Spanish Mayor's Decision to Commemorate ‘Palestinian Genocide" on Palestinian Holocaust Memorial Day ‘Shameful,'" 26 January 2007.
45 Sara Roy, Second Annual Holocaust Remembrance Lecture, Baylor University, 8 April 2002.
46 Joel S. Fishman, "The Cold War Origins of Contemporary Anti-Semitic Terminology."
47. Kotek, Au nom de l'antisionisme, 114.
48. Ibid., 115.
49. "Tehran Rejects Israeli-Arab Seeking to Prove Shoah," ynetnews.com, 11 December 2006.
50. Goetz Nordbruch, "The Socio-Historical Background of Holocaust Denial in Arab Countries," Analysis of Current Trends in Anti-Semitism, 17 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 2001), 9.
51. www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html.
52. Associated Press, "Author Compares Palestinian City to Nazi Death Camp," Miami Herald Tribune, 27 March 2002.
53. ADL Press Release, "Portuguese Nobel Laureate's Remarks on Jews and the Holocaust Are ‘Incendiary and Offensive,'" 15 October 2003.
54. The Church Times, 24 January 2003, quoted in Robert S. Wistrich, "European Anti-Semitism Reinvents Itself," American Jewish Committee, 2005.
55. Gerstenfeld, interview with Durst, 135.
56. Manfred Gerstenfeld, "Ahmadinejad Calls for Israel's Elimination and Declares War on the West: A Case Study of Incitement to Genocide," Jerusalem Viewpoints, No. 536, 1 November 2005.
57. Manfred Gerstenfeld, "Ahmadinejad, Iran, and Holocaust Manipulation: Methods, Aims and Reactions," Jerusalem Viewpoints, No. 551, 1 February 2007.
58. Matthias Küntzel, Djihad und Judenhass (Freiburg: ça ira, 2003), 35-46. [German]
59. Albert Londres, Le Juif Errant Est Arrivé (Paris: Arléa, 1997), 209. [French]
60. Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel (New York: Knopf, 1979), 333.
61. Küntzel, Djihad und Judenhass, 50.
62 Ibid., quoting Robert Wistrich.
63 Fishman, "The Big Lie."

Holocaust Inversion: The Portraying of Israel and Jews as Nazis

2007-08-07T23:26:00.000-03:00

The false accusation of Holocaust inversion-the portraying of Israel, Israelis, and Jews as Nazis-is a major distortion of history. This anti-Semitic concept claims that Israel behaves against the Palestinians as Germany did to the Jews in World War II. "The victims have become perpetrators," is one major slogan of the inverters. By shifting the moral responsibility for genocide, Holocaust inversion also contains elements of Holocaust denial.
Holocaust inverters come from many circles. A large number are Arabs or other Muslims. Others come from the extreme Left in the West. A variety of Western mainstream public figures have made Holocaust-inversion statements, including politicians, academics, authors, as well as the occasional Jew or Israeli.
The portrayal of Israelis and Jews as Nazis occurs in speech, writing, and the visual media, also including cartoons, graffiti, and placards. It employs sinister characterizations, Nazi symbols, and sometimes takes the form of genocidal terminology to describe Israel's actions.
The motivations of the Holocaust inverters are manifold. Some aim at the destruction of Israel and seek to lay the infrastructure for its moral delegitimization through demonization. Some are extreme pro-Arabs, others anti-Semites. Yet others know little about the Holocaust, the Nazis, and contemporary Israel. For Europeans it is also an effective way to cover up for Holocaust crimes of their countries and expunge guilt by claiming that what was done by the Nazi perpetrators and their many collaborators is a common phenomenon and by now is practiced by Israelis and Jews.
Contemporary followers and admirers of Nazi methods can mainly be found in the Muslim world, but are also present in Europe and elsewhere. Prewar Palestinian Arab actors had links to Nazi Germany. Examples are the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jerusalem mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini. After World War II, many Nazis fled to Egypt and served in its propaganda apparatus. In particular, current Egyptian but also Palestinian propaganda dates back to this era.

In recent years the attempts to manipulate the history and memory of the Holocaust have greatly increased. For several decades there has been much focus on Holocaust denial. Misrepresentations regarding the Holocaust, however, involve many other aspects as well. The number of these false mutations of Holocaust history is expanding. Related to these is the promotion of a second Holocaust through the destruction of Israel. Mutations include Holocaust universalization and banalization, that is, comparing real or supposed misbehavior in contemporary society to what happened in the Holocaust.

The focus here will be on another major distortion of the Shoah, namely, Holocaust inversion, or portraying Israelis and Jews as Nazis. This anti-Semitic concept claims that Israel behaves toward the Palestinians as Germany did to the Jews in World War II. "The victims have become perpetrators," is one major slogan of the inverters.

Holocaust inverters come from many circles. A large number are Arabs or other Muslims. Many others come from the extreme Left in the West. A variety of Western mainstream public figures have made Holocaust-inversion statements, including politicians, academics, authors, as well as the occasional Jew or Israeli.

Definitions of Anti-Semitism
Natan Sharansky, when he was the Israeli minister of Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs, developed a simple formula that he called the "3D test" to help distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism: demonization, double standards, and delegitimization.

Sharansky included the portrayal of Israel as a Nazi state within his definition of "demonization": "When the Jewish state is being demonized; when Israel's actions are blown out of all sensible proportion; when comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis and between Palestinian refugee camps and Auschwitz-this is antisemitism, not legitimate criticism of Israel."2

By 2001 Prof. Irwin Cotler, who later became Canada's justice minister, explicitly identified the anti-Semitic character of Holocaust inversion. He pointed to several relatively new aspects of anti-Semitism such as calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people, the portrayal of Israel as a Nazi state, and the discriminatory treatment of Israel through denial of equality before the law.3

The EUMC Working Definition of Anti-Semitism
In its 2004 report on anti-Semitism, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) noted the lack of a common characterization of anti-Semitism. This led to the EUMC working definition, which has subsequently been widely accepted.4 It states: "Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.... In addition, such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity."

The document that contains this working definition also offers examples of contemporary anti-Semitism. One of these is: "Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust."5

This text also states that "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic." It lists examples of how anti-Semitism can manifest itself toward Israel:

*Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
*Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
*Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel . . . .
*Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
*Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.6

The core motif of classic anti-Semitism was that Jews embody the most extreme malevolence. During the postwar era, the Nazi regime has become the paradigm for absolute evil. Comparing Israel's conduct to its actions is a new mutation of this ancient theme.

As anti-Semitism historian Robert Wistrich put it:

"anti-Zionists" who insist on comparing Zionism and the Jews with Hitler and the Third Reich appear unmistakably to be de facto anti-Semites, even if they vehemently deny the fact! This is largely because they knowingly exploit the reality that Nazism in the postwar world has become the defining metaphor of absolute evil. For if Zionists are "Nazis" and if Sharon really is Hitler, then it becomes a moral obligation to wage war against Israel. That is the bottom line of much contemporary anti-Zionism. In practice, this has become the most potent form of contemporary anti-Semitism. 7

French linguist Georges-Elia Sarfati points out that the term anti-Zionism was pioneered by the Soviet Union's Information Ministry after the Six Day War. Researching the matter, he found that the word did not appear in dictionaries until the 1970s. He observes that "a number of key equations dominate the anti-Zionist discourse. The master one-which transversally commands all others-is ‘Zionism equals Nazism.'... the anti-Zionist propaganda conveys that you have only to be against, for instance against Nazism-and who is not?-to be an anti-Zionist."8

Historian Joel Fishman asserts that "inversion of reality" constitutes the basic principle of current anti-Israeli propaganda, noting:

One of its most frequent expressions has been the accusation that the Jewish people, victims of the Nazis, have now become the new Nazis, aggressors and oppressors of the Palestinian Arabs. Contemporary observers have identified this method and described it as an "inversion of reality," an "intellectual confidence trick," "reversing moral responsibility," or "twisted logic." Because Israel's enemies have, for nearly half a century, repeated such libels without being challenged, they have gradually gained credence. 9

American historian Deborah Lipstadt has also pointed out this method of establishing a fraudulent proposition as a historical truth. She says about the historical writer and Holocaust-denier David Irving: "Irving realized that a pre-condition for Nazism's resurrection was to strip and wash it of its worst elements. The first important tool to accomplish this was the creation of immoral equivalencies, essentially a balance of bad behavior."10

Manifestation and Motivation
Holocaust inversion manifests itself in many ways. It is expressed in speech, writing, and visual media, also including cartoons, graffiti, and placards. It employs sinister characterizations of Israel and Israelis, Nazi symbols, and sometimes takes the form of Nazi genocidal terminology to describe Israel's actions.

The perpetrators of the most severe Holocaust distortions have manifold motivations. The most extreme aim at the destruction of Israel. This was expressed by Holocaust-denying Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the International Conference on Review of the Holocaust Global Vision held in Tehran in December 2006. At this assembly of Holocaust deniers and minimizers, Mottaki stated: "if the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt."11

*More specifically, the most extreme Holocaust inverters seek to lay the infrastructure for Israel's moral delegitimization by first demonizing it.
*Many Western Holocaust inverters also aim to bolster the Arab and Palestinian cause by demonizing Israel.
*Other Westerners seem to act out of anti-Semitic motivations. They show little or no interest in the frequent murdering of Palestinians by other Palestinians nor in the plight of Palestinians killed and persecuted elsewhere-for instance, in Iraq. This also pertains, of course, to the murdering of Israelis by Palestinians.
*Yet others know little about the Holocaust, the Nazis, and contemporary Israel. They are influenced by members of the media and other societal elites who are Holocaust inverters.
*Absolving one's ancestors of guilt is another motif of many Holocaust inverters. The Holocaust was not exclusively the work of Germany-which incorporated Austria-as well as several nations allied with it. Large numbers of Europeans collaborated with the German occupiers. The most effective way to neutralize this is to shift the moral responsibility to Israel by claiming that what was done by the perpetrators is widespread and now practiced primarily by Israelis and Jews.

This malicious identification of Israelis as Nazis is intended to free Europeans of their remorse and shame for their centuries-long history of lethal anti-Semitism. Above all, it liberates Europeans from any residual guilt they might have experienced in the wake of the Shoah. If the Israelis-who are, after all, mostly Jews-can be depicted as Nazis, then not having helped them during World War II might not have been misbehavior.

Israeli Holocaust-psychologist Nathan Durst related European expressions with anti-Semitic undertones to guilt toward the Holocaust. "If the guilty person is bad, the Jewish victim becomes good. The moment it can be shown the latter is bad too, the ‘other'-that is, the European-is relieved of his guilt feelings. To claim that Israelis behave like Nazis reduces the sin of the grandparents. Then the children of the victims can no longer be the accusers. This equalizes everybody."12

Jeffrey Gedmin, the new American president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, observes: "It is very helpful for a certain ideology in European political culture to see the Palestinians as helpless underdogs being repressed by the Israelis. This thesis enables many Europeans to relativize, or even balance, Europe's guilt."

He adds:

This reflects further European hypocrisy...since there is no passion in either Germany or Europe for independent Kurdish or Basque states. There is no concern for Tibetan underdogs. One can only conclude that the reasons Europeans consider the Palestinian cause for independence central are their cultural bias, burdens of the past and anti-Semitic feelings. It would be much more logical to see the Israelis as underdogs, a small democracy in a large, hostile Arab environment.13

Visual Forms of Holocaust Inversion
An effective way to grasp the main modes of Holocaust inversion is by analyzing placards and cartoons. These rely on familiar and immediately perceived core stereotypes of hatred, of which the number is limited. This iconography must appeal to ideas with which the public at large is familiar. This particularly pertains to Arab societies where so many people are illiterate.

In many anti-Israeli demonstrations, banners are carried that show the Star of David as equivalent to the swastika. The phenomenon is international. At such a demonstration in the Place de la République in Paris on 7 October 2000, a placard was inscribed "Stop the Jewish Hitlerian terrorism!" Below the words a Star of David was drawn as equaling a swastika.14

That same year a placard in French at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Brussels read: "The years change, the executioners change."15 Under it was a Star of David, an equal sign, and the SS symbol. At the September 2001 UN World Conference against Racism in Durban (hereinafter Durban conference), Arab-looking women carried a banner saying "1940s Hitler 2000s Sharon."16

Another example among many occurred at a 2002 demonstration in Washington where a young Arab-looking woman held a placard designed as the Israeli flag, reading "Hitler & Sharon are the same." A swastika appeared on the flag instead of the Star of David.17

Also in cartoons this equation is a frequently recurring theme. At the Hamashahri Holocaust-cartoon exhibition in Tehran, a drawing by the Algerian Choukri Bellahadi showed an Israeli flag turning into one with a swastika.

Israeli Leaders as Resembling Hitler
A regularly recurring motif is that Israeli leaders are like Hitler or Nazis. Comparisons between Israelis and Nazis, and of swastikas and the Star of David, are especially commonplace in the Arab world. In his standard work on Arab anti-Semitic cartoons, the Belgian political scientist Jöel Kotek devotes a section to Holocaust inversion. In 1996, the major Egyptian daily Al Goumhouriya published a cartoon showing Hitler saying to Shimon Peres: "I made a mistake by not apprising the importance of Arab support."18

A cartoon in the Egyptian daily Al Akhbar in 2000 shows Israel's then prime minister Ehud Barak dressed as a Nazi with a Hitler mustache.19

Ariel Sharon was perhaps the Israeli prime minister most often depicted as a Nazi. The well-known Lebanese cartoonist Jabra Stavro, in Lebanon's Daily Star in 2002, transformed in four pictures Sharon with his white hair into Hitler with a mustache and black hair. A Star of David on Sharon's collar is also transformed into a swastika.20 The Tehran exhibition included a caricature by Bahraini Mohammed Amano showing Sharon in Nazi uniform wearing a skullcap.

These phenomena are far from limited to the Arab world. In Norway anti-Semitic cartoons appear regularly in several of the major papers. In July 2006 the Dagbladet daily, Norway's third largest paper, carried a drawing by Finn Graff of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a Nazi.21

A COMPREHENSIVE LOOK AT MARX THE ANTI-SEMITE

2007-08-06T14:33:00.000-03:00

Marx & Friends in their own words

(The article below is from Encounter of July 1975, pages 18-23. The authors, W. O. Henderson and W. H. Chaloner, translated and edited a 1971 edition of Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England. The article below was part of a "Men and Ideas" series. You can see a photocopy of the original article here. The quotations given are fairly fully footnoted except for the initial selection, which mostly come from Zur Judenfrage. Zur Judenfrage is available in German here and in English here. Online links for most of the quotes can be found via Google once allowance for differences in translation are made. The translations below are generally very elegant. Where Google does not satisfy, most works by Marx and Engels can be found online in order of date at the Marx/Engels library)

Marx/Engels and Racism

2007-08-06T00:16:00.000-03:00

By W. H. Chaloner & W. O. Henderson

WHILE Scholars on the Continent have long been aware of the fact that Karl Marx held anti-Semitic views, the same cannot generally be said of their colleagues in England and America.

Marx was a Jew; and when he was growing up in Trier the Jews, though not persecuted, were treated as second-class citizens and excluded from certain professions. No Jew could hold a commission in the Prussian army or practise as a lawyer at the bar. To continue as a member of the legal profession Marx's father became a Christian and was baptised by a Lutheran army chaplain.

As a boy Marx realised that he was different from his fellows. He had been baptised, but he was "a Jew by race" and suffered from the anti-Semitism prevalent in Germany in his day. His reaction to the situation was an extraordinary one. He ranged himself with the anti-Semites and denounced his own people in a most violent fashion. [1]

His attitude towards the Jews was made clear in two articles which he wrote in 1843 at the age of 25. They were reviews of a book and an article by Bruno Bauer on the Jewish question, and they appeared in the Deutsch-Franzoesische Jahrbuecher (published in Paris in 1844) [2]. Marx regarded capitalism, as operated by the middle classes, as inherently evil; and he argued that Jewish money-making activities lay at the very heart of the obnoxious capitalist system. The following extracts from Marx's articles indicate his point of view of the Jewish question in his day.

"What is the worldly raison d'etre of Jewry [Judaism]? The practical necessity of Jewry is self-interest."

"What is the worldly religion of the Jews? It is the petty haggling of the hawker."

"What is his worldly God?" "It is money."

"So in Jewry we recognise a contemporary universal anti-social phenomenon, which has reached its present pitch through a process of, historical development in which the Jews have zealously co-operated. And this evil anti-social aspect of Jewry has grown to a stage at which: it must necessarily collapse."

"The Jews have emancipated themselves in a Jewish fashion. Not only have they mastered the; power of money but - with or without the Jews - money has become a world power. The Jews have emancipated themselves by turning Christians into Jews:"

"Money is the most zealous God of Israel and no other God can compete with him. Money debases all human Gods and turns them into goods. Money is the universal value of everything."

"The God of the Jews has become secularised and bas become a World God. The bill of exchange is the real God of the Jews."

"Jewry reaches its climax in the consummation of bourgeois society - and bourgeois society has reached its highest point in the Christian world."

In 1845, in The Holy Family, Marx claimed that in his articles in the Deutsch-Franzoesische Jahrbuecher he had "proved that the task of abolishing the essence of Jewry is in truth the task of abolishing Jewry in civil society, abolishing the inhumanity of today's practice of life, the summit of which is the money system." [3]

In 1849 an article in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (of which Marx was the editor) criticised the notion that Jews living in Prussia's Polish provinces should be regarded as Germans. The article declared that these Jews were "the filthiest of all races." "Neither by speech nor by descent - but only by their greed for profit - can they be looked upon as relatives of the Germans in Frankfurt."

One of Marx's critical biographers has remarked: "this solution of the Jewish question was not very different from Adolf Hitler's, for it involved the liquidation of Judaism.." [4]

THERE ARE NUMEROUS uncomplimentary references to Jews in Karl Marx's letters to his close friend Friedrich Engels in the 1850s and 1860s. At that time Marx was living in London and his earnings as a free-lance journalist - he was a regular contributor to the New York Daily Tribune - were quite insufficient for his needs. Engels, then employed as a clerk by the firm of Ermen & Engels in Manchester, sent him small remittances whenever he could. Even so Marx failed to make ends meet and - when there was nothing more to pledge at the pawnbrokers - he borrowed money from anyone who would lend it.

He had many dealings with Jewish financial agents in the City of London. The Bambergers (father and son) [5], as well as Stiefel and Spielmann, were German Jews whose names frequently crop up in the Marx-Engels correspondence. Marx made use of the Jews to raise small loans and, to discount bills of exchange received from Charles A. Dana (editor of the New York Tribune) in advance payment of articles which Marx had agreed to write. Marx complained bitterly that the Jews would not discount his bills until confirmation from Dana had been received; [6] and he was furious when they pressed him to honour debts due-for repayment. Marx showed his contempt by always referring to them as "Jew [or "little Jew"] Bamberger" and "Jew Spielmann", or by imitating the nasal twang characteristic of the way in which some Jews from Eastern Europe spoke German. [7]

Yet Marx had cause to regret the day when the Bambergers were not in business in London any more and were no longer available to discount his bills of exchange. In 1859 he wrote to Engels: "it is the devil of a nuisance that I have no Bamberger in London any more.." [8]

MARX'S ANTI-SEMITISM may be illustrated by examining his attitude towards Ferdinand Lassalle, who was a Jew from Breslau in Silesia. As. a young man Lassalle had led the workers of Duesseldorf during the revolution of 1848. But he had never been a member of the Communist League, since his application to join the Cologne branch had been turned down: and he had taken no part in the risings in Germany in 1849 in support of the Frankfurt constitution, since he had been in jail at that time.

Consequently in the 1850s, while nearly all the former supporters of the revolution were either in prison or in exile, Lassalle was able to live in Duesseldorf, without being unduly molested by the authorities. It was to Marx's advantage to keep in touch with Lassalle, who gave him news of the underground workers' movement "in the Rhineland. And through his aristocratic connections - he was a close friend of the Countess of Hatzfeld - he was sometimes able to provide Marx with useful political information which he could use in articles contributed to the New York Tribune and Die Presse. But while Marx regarded himself as the head or a great politica1 movement who should be obeyed by his followers, Lassalle declined to be a mere disciple and was determined to be a leader of the German workers in his own right.

The correspondence between Marx and Lassalle [9] suggests that the two men were colleagues who - despite certain differences of opinion - were collaborating to achieve a common aim. But the letters exchanged between Marx and Engels tell a very different story. Here Marx showed his contempt for the Jew who presumed to have opinions and ambitions of his own. When Lassalle was Marx's guest in London in 1862 Marx wrote to Engels:

"It is now perfectly clear to me that, as the shape of his head and the growth of his hair indicate, he is descended from the negroes who joined in the flight of Moses from Egypt (unless his mother or grandmother on the father's side was crossed with a nigger). Now this union of Jewishness to Germanness on a negro basis was bound to produce an extraordinary hybrid. The importunity of the fellow is also niggerlike." [10]

Marx referred to his guest as a "Jewish nigger" who was "completely deranged." He frequently used derogatory epithets when writing about Lassalle, such as "Itzig" (Ikey), "Ephraim Gescheit" and "Judel Braun." And Marx's wife, in a letter to Engels, called Lassalle "the little Berlin Jew."

AFTER LASSALLE'S DEATH in 1864 there are fewer uncomplimentary remarks about Jews in the Marx-Engels correspondence than before. In that year Engels became a partner in the firm of Ermen & Engels, and from 1867 onwards he paid Marx an annual allowance of 350 pounds. So, although Marx's financial problems were by no means solved, he had less need than formerly to try to borrow money from Jews - such as Ignaz Horn [12] and Leo Frankel [13].

He wrote to Engel's in 1875 that he had got into conversation with "a sly looking Yid" on a journey from London to Rotterdam. He was clearly delighted to be able to report that his loquacious Jewish travelling companion had been the victim of some sharp practice in a business deal [14]. And in his old age when on holiday in Ramsgate, Marx declared that there were "many Jews and fleas" at the resort [15].

IT WAS NOT ONLY in private letters to his closest friend that Marx indulged in anti-Semitic outbursts. In an article in the New York Tribune (4 January 1856), in which he discussed an international loan to be raised by the Russian government to finance the war in the Crimea, Marx savagely attacked the Jewish financiers who co-operated to place the loan [16]. Marx wrote:

"This loan is brought out under the auspices of the house of Stieglitz at St Petersburg. Stieglitz is to Alexander what Rothschild is to Francis Joseph, what Fould is to Louis Napoleon. The late Czar Nicholas made Stieglitz a Russian baron, as the late Kaiser Franz made old Rothschild an Austrian baron, while Louis Napoleon has made a cabinet minister of Fould, with a free ticket to the Tuileries for the females of his family. Thus we find every tyrant backed by a Jew. as is every Pope by a Jesuit. In truth, the cravings of oppressors would be hopeless, and the practicability of war out of the question, if there were not an army of Jesuits to smother thought and a handful of Jews to ransack pockets."

Hope & Co. of Amsterdam played an important role in placing the Russian loan. This was not a Jewish firm, but Marx declared that

"the Hopes lend only the prestige of their name; the real work is done by Jews, and can only be done by them as they monopolise the machinery of the loan-mongering mysteries by concentrating their energies upon the barter-trade in securities, and the changing of money and negotiating of bills in a great measure arising there from."

Take Amsterdam for instance, a city harbouring many of the worst descendants of the Jews whom Ferdinand and Isabella drove out of Spain, and who, after lingering a while in Portugal, were driven thence also, and eventually found a safe place of retreat in Holland. In Amsterdam alone they number not less: than 35,000, many of whom are engaged in this gambling and jobbing of securities... Their business is to watch the monies available for investment and keenly observe where they lie. Here and there and everywhere that a little capital courts investment there is ever one of these little Jews ready to make a little suggestion or place a little bit of a loan. The smartest highwayman in the Abruzzi is not better posted about the locale of the hard cash in a traveller's valise or pocket, than those Jews about any loose capital in the hands of a trader."

Marx went on to attack the Jewish finance houses of Koenigswarter, Raphael, Stem, Bischoffsheim, Rothschild, Mendelssohn, Bleichroeder, Fould and many others. He declared that many of these families were linked by marriage and he observed that

"the loan mongering Jews derive much of their strength from these family relations, as these, in addition to their lucre affinities, give a compactness and unity to their operations which ensure their success."

Marx concluded his article as follows:

"This Eastern war is destined at all events to throw some light upon this system of loan-mongering as well as other systems. Meanwhile the Czar will get his fifty millions and let the English journals say what they please, if he wants five fifties more, the Jews will dig them up. Let us not be thought too severe upon these loan-mongering gentry. The fact that 1855 years ago Christ drove the Jewish money-changers out of the temple, and that the money-changers of our age enlisted on the side of tyranny happen again chiefly to be Jews, is perhaps no more than a historical coincidence.

The loan-mongering Jews of Europe do only on a larger and more obnoxious scale what many others do on one smaller and less significant. But it is only because the Jews are so strong that it is timely and expedient to expose and stigmatise their organisation."

There was a kind of bitter justice in the fact that Marx, who detested his own race, should have suffered from the anti-Semitic views of others. There were those who attacked Marx because he was a Jew and who branded the political movement that he led as a Jewish conspiracy. [16a]

ENGELS' ATTITUDE towards the Jews was quite different from that of Marx. [17] He had never denounced the Jews as a race of petty traders and money-lenders and as Marx had done in his youthful article in the Deutsch-Franzoesische Jahrbuecher [18]. Indeed he later declared that anti-Semitism was the mark of a backward culture and was confined to Russia, Austria and Prussia [19].

In 1881 Eduard Bernstein sent Engels some examples of anti-Semitic propaganda in Germany. Engels replied that he had never seen anything so stupid or childish. He praised the Sozial-Demokrat - the leading socialist paper in Germany at the time of Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Law - for coming out firmly against anti-Semitism. Engels quoted with approval a passage from a letter which he had recently received from a Jewish correspondent (Carl Hirsch), who had just been to Berlin. Hirsch had written that "the official press which prints anti-Semitic articles has few readers."

"While it is true that the Germans have a natural antipathy towards the Jews, it is also a fact that the working class, the radical petty bourgeoisie, and the middle-class philistines hate the government far more than they hate the Jews."

Bernstein, however disagreed with "Hirsch and claimed that anti-Semitic propaganda was falling upon fertile soil in Germany as far as civil servants, teachers, craftsmen, and peasants were concerned.

Ten years later Engels wrote to August Bebel that he was glad to learn that new Jewish recruits were joining the German Social Democrat Party. But he warned Bebel that socialists would have to keep a watchful eye on these Jewish colleagues because they were cleverer than the average bourgeois socialist and were - owing to centuries of oppression - in the habit of pushing themselves forward! [20]

ALTHOUGH ENGELS DISAPPROVED of anti-Semitism and welcomed Jews like Karl Kautsky and Alfred Adler as party colleagues, he did criticise particular Jews and groups of Jews. For example, in a comment on English politics in 1852 he contemptuously dismissed Disraeli as a "Jewish swindler." A few years later when he wished to express his disapproval of Lassalle's conduct, he referred to him as "a real Jew from the Slav frontier" and as "a greasy Jew disguised under brilliantine and flashy jewels." [22] In 1862, in a letter to Carl Siebel, he attacked the Jewish members of a German club (the Schiller Anstalt) in Manchester. He declared that he seldom visited this veritable "Jerusalem Club" any more because the noisy behaviour of the Jews inconvenienced other members.

"What has happened is what always happens when Jews are about. At first they thank God that they had a Schiller Anstalt, but hardly had they got inside than they declared that it was not good enough for them and that they wanted to build a bigger club house - a true temple of Moses - to which the Schiller Anstalt could be moved. This would indeed be the quickest road to bankruptcy . Look out! In a year or two you will get a circular reading like this: 'In view of the bankruptcy of the late Schiller Anstalt'" [23]

A few years later, however, when he was President of the Schiller Anstalt, Engels played a leading part in securing the larger premises that the Jewish members desired.

In 1864, during the crisis in the Lancashire cotton industry at the time of the American Civil War, Engels complained of the vexations that he had to endure in the office of Ermen & Engels because of "Jewish chicaneries." [24] In October 1867 and again in May 1868, Engels complained that his time was being wasted by visits from "that damned old Jew" Leibel Choras, who was a refugee from Moldavia where the Jews were being persecuted [25]. Engels obviously had little sympathy for Leibel Choras. And in 1870 Engels dismissed Leo Frankel as "a real little Yid" [26]

In 1892 in a letter to the French socialist leader Paul Lafargue - Marx's son-in-law - Engels even expressed a certain sympathy for the anti-Jewish movement in France. He wrote:

"I begin to understand French anti-Semitism when I see how many Jews of Polish origin with German names intrude themselves everywhere to the point of arousing public opinion in the ville lumiere, of which the Parisian philistine is so proud and which he believes to be the supreme power in the universe." [27]

Engels also expressed his contempt for the Polish Jews who were, in his view, "caricatures of Jews" [27]. He wrote to Laura Lafargue:

Business principle of the Polish Jew to ask much so as to be able to rebate, as for instance: "How much is a yard of this cloth?" "15 groschen." "He says 15, he means 12.5, he would take 10, and the cloth is worth 7.5. I am prepared to pay 5 so I will offer him 2.5 groschen." [29]

JUST AS ENGELS RARELY SHOWED any antipathy towards the Jews, so he had no prejudices against coloured peoples. He rejected the view commonly expressed by explorers and missionaries in his day that native peoples were "heathen savages" who were obviously inferior to white races. Indeed he argued that primitive peoples were superior to modern Europeans because they did not recognise private property or capitalism, or the state. In 1884 in his book on The Origin of the Family - based upon the researches of the American anthropologist L. H. Morgan - Engels gave a lyrical account of the "wonderful child-like simplicity" of the way of life in the Iroquois Indian tribes.

"Everything runs smoothly without soldiers, gendarmes, or police; without nobles, kings, governors, prefects, or judges, without prisons, without trials. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the whole body of those concerned. The household is run in common and communistically by a number of families, the land is tribal property, only the small gardens being temporarily assigned to the households. Not a bit of our extensive and complicated machinery of administration is required. There can be no poor or needy - the communistic household and the gens know their obligations towards the aged, the sick, and those disabled in war. All are free and equal - including the women. There is, as yet, no room for slaves nor, as a rule, for the subjugation of alien tribes." [30]

As an admirer of primitive races, Engels (like Marx) was strongly opposed to the exploitation of native peoples by white colonists. He denounced the expansion of the empires of European states in India, Java, Algiers and elsewhere. For Marx and Engels the rising in India in 1857 was no mere mutiny of Sepoy troops but a national revolt against the English oppressors. In a series of articles in the New York Tribune they analysed the causes and events of the Mutiny, which they regarded as an illustration of the "general disaffection exhibited against English supremacy on the part of the great Asiatic nations." [31]

In view of Engels's attitude towards the Jews, the Iroquois, and the natives in colonial territories, his attitude towards some of the Slavs is difficult to understand. When a Pan-Slav movement developed with Russian support in central and eastern Europe during the revolution of 1848 Engels rejected the demands of the Czechs, Serbs, Croats, and Ruthenians for independence from Habsburg or Turkish rule. Early in 1849 (in two articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung [32]) he argued that these peoples had no natura1 capacity for self-government and were for ever doomed to be ruled by more advanced nations. They were "peoples without any history."

Engels asserted that these peoples would always be subject races and would "never achieve national independence." "They are peoples who were either already under foreign rule when they entered into the first primitive phase of civilisation or who were actually forced into earliest phase of civilisation by their foreign masters." In the true spirit of Pan-Germanism, Marx and Engels considered the Czechoslovakian peoples and the South Slavs to be "ethnic trash."

TWO THINGS EMERGE from this study. The first is the extent to which Marx's anti-Semitism has been played down, or even ignored, in some popular socialist accounts of Marx's career and doctrines published in the West and intended for radical and socialist consumption. Thus, readers of Franz Mehring's Karl Marx (first published in English translation in 1936) will find little to enlighten them on Marx's anti-Semitism.

There may not be exactly a conspiracy of silence but attention may be drawn to the fact that there is a difference between telling the truth and telling the whole truth. Deception by omission is still deception. Western commentators, too, with a few honourable exceptions, have tended to dodge the issue or to gloss over unwelcome facts. Scholars unfamiliar with the German language, who rely only upon English translations of the writings of Marx and Engels, may be led astray if they use selections compiled by Marxists who are prepared to suppress evidence which might display their hero in a somewhat unfavourable light.

The second point is the striking contrast between Marx's benevolent desire to liberate the toiling masses from the tyranny of their capitalist exploiters and his ferocious attacks upon those; who appeared to stand in the way of his messianic hopes - the "idiotic" peasants and the "rapacious" Jews for example. Long after Marx's death his followers in Soviet Russia were acting quite in accordance with their master's views when they eliminated the Kulaks and persecuted the Jews.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Arnold Kuenzii has examined the psychological roots of Marx's anti-Semitism in Karl Marx: eine Psychographie (Vienna, 1966), esp. pp. 33-169, 195-226, 289-93. See also Camillo Berneri, Le Juif anti-Semite (Paris, 1935).

Yet even in West Germany an attempt is apparently being made to counter this realist view. There has recently been published in Hamburg a selection of Marxist pronouncements on the Jewish question (but omitting Marx's "Zur Judenfrage" of 1844 on the grounds that it is "easily available" elsewhere) - see: Marxisten gegen Antisemitismus (Hoffmann & Campe, 1974), with heavily pro-Marxist introductions by Iring Fetscher and Ilse Yago-Jung. One wonders whether a more appropriate title for this volume might not have been Marxisten gegen Judentum und Zionismus.

2. Karl Marx, "Zur Judenfrage" in Deutsch-Franzoesische Jahrbuecher (Paris, 1844), reprinted in Karl Marx/Friedrich 'Engels, Werke, Vol. 1 (1964), pp. 347-377; A World without Jews (tr. D.D. Runes, 1959). The first article reviewed Bruno Bauer, Die Judenfrage (1843), the second Bruno Bauer's article on "Die Fahigheit der heutigen Juden und Christen frei zu werden" in Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz (ed. Georg Herwegh, 1843, pp.56-71). A reprint of the D-.F. Jahrbuecher has recently been issued in Leipzig, Verlag Reclam (1973); Marx's article appears on pp. 295-333.

The most recent discussion of Marx's views is R. S. Wistrich, "Karl Marx and the Jewish Question", Soviet-Jewish Affairs, vol. IV, No. 1 (Spring 1974), pp. 53-60, which contains copious documentation. See, especially, Arthur Prinz., "New Perspectives on Marx as a Jew" Leo Baeck Year Book (1970), pp. 107-25; it includes the revealing text of a letter by Heinrich Graetz, the Jewish historian and a friend of Marx.

3. Marx/Engels, The Holy Family (1845; Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1956), p.148.

4. Neue Rheinische Zeitung (No. 285 Sunday 29 April 1849), p. 1, col. 1. Marx was probably the author of the article. The Unknown Karl Marx; Documents concerning Karl Marx (ed. R. Payee. 1972), pp.14-15.

5. A small colony of Bambergers can be traced in the City of London during the mid-1850s, based on King Street, Snowhill. Zacharias Bamberger (of 19 King Street, ship and commission agents) was a partner in the firm of Prager & Bamberger, 84 Lower Thomas Street, while Louis Bamberger and Co., merchants, and Abraham Bamberger & Co., wholesale boot manufacturers, both operated from 20 King Street., Snowhill. See: Kelly & Co., Post Office London Directory (1855), p. 813. Of these Zacharias Bamberger seems most likely to have been Marx's money-lender.

6. See Marx to Engels, 31 July 1851, in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. I, p. 224; and 21 January 1852, p. 444.

7. For example: "Spielmann always sends one away with the nasal Jewish remark 'Kaine Nootiz da' [i.e. Keine Notiz da]": Marx to Engels, 18 August 1853 in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 1. p.Ëœ492. The word Yiddish, used to describe this form of speech, is noted as first appearing in print in English in the mid-1880s (Oxford English Dictionary).

8. Marx to Engels, 21 September 1859, in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 2, p. 416.

9. Gustav Mayer, Der Briefwechsel zwischen Lassalle und Marx, Vol. 3 of Ferdinand Lassalle: Nachgelassene Briefe und Schriften (first edition 1922; new edition issued by the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Science, 1967).

10. Marx to Engels, 30 July 1862, in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii. Vol. 3, pp. 82-84. On Marx as "at once a racialist himself and the cause of racialism in others", see George Watson, The English Ideology (1973), p. 211.

11. Jenny Marx to Engels, 9 April 1858, in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii. Vol. 2, p. 314. See also the malicious and anti-Semitic gossip about Moses and Sybille Hess, in Marx to Engels, 22 September 1856, Part iii, Vol. 2, p. 147.

12. Marx to Engels, 10 February 1865 ("Jud Horn") and 14 November 1868 ("Rabbi A Einhorn generally known by the name of A. E. Horn") in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 3, p.232; and Vol. 4, p. 124.

13. Marx to Engels, 14 April and 8 July 1870 ("little Jew Leo Frankel") in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 4, pp. 302, 338.

14. Marx to Engels, 21 August 1875, in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 4, pp. 428-9.

15. Marx to Engels, 25 August 1879 in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 4, p.490.

16. Reprinted in Karl Marx, The Eastern Question (ed. by Eleanor Marx & Edward Aveling, 1897: new ed. 1969). pp. 600-606.

16a. See, for example, Edward von Mueller-Tellering, Vorgeschmack in die kuenftige deutsche Diktatur von Marx und Engels (1850).

17. For the attitude of socialists to the Jews, see E. Silberner, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage (1962) and George Lichtheim, "Socialism and the Jews" in Dissent (New York), July-August 1968.

18. Karl Marx, "Zur Judenfrage", in the Deutsch Franzoesische Jahrbuecher (1844), reprinted in Marx/Engels, Werke, Vol. 1 (1964), pp, 347-77. See also, Marx/Engels, The Holy Family (Moscow, 1965), pp.149-150.

19. Engels to a correspondent in Vienna, 19 April 1890, in Marx/Engels, Werke, Vol. XXII, p. 49. See, however, Engels' 1892 preface to the London edition of his Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), where he refers to "the pettifogging business tricks of the Polish Jew, the representative: in Europe of commerce at its lowest stage" (p. 360 in 1971 edition by Henderson & Chaloner).

20. Engels to Bernstein, 17 August 1881, in Eduard Bernsteins Briefwechsel mit Friedrich Engels (ed. Hirsch, 1970), pp. 28-29. Bernstein to Engels, 9 September 1881: Briefwechsel, p. 37. Engels to Bebel. 1 December 1891, in August Bebels Briefwechsel mit Friedrich Engels (ed. Blumenberg, 1965), p. 487.

21. Engels to Marx, 24 September 1852, in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii. Vol. 1, p. 405.

22. Engels to Marx, 7 March 1856 in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 2, p. 122. English translation: Engels: Selected Writings (ed. Henderson. Penguin, 1967), pp. 129-30.

23. Engels to Carl Siebel, 4 June 1862, in Friedrich Engels Profile (ed. Hirsch, 1970) p. 250.

24. Engels to Marx, 2 November 1864, in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 3, p. 192.

25. Engels to Marx, 11 October 1867 and 6 May 1868, in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 3. p. 432 and Vo1. 4, p. 52. It has not proved possible to identify Choras further.

26. Engels to Marx, 15 April 1870, in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 4, p. 305.

27. Engels to Paul Lafargue, 22 July 1892, in F.Engels - Paul and Laura Lafargue: Correspondence (Moscow). Vol. iii, 1891-95, p.Ëœ184.

28. Engels to Pau1 Ernst, 5 June 1890, in Engels Profile, p. 190.

29. Engels to Laura Lafargue, 27 October 1893, in Engels-Lafargue: Correspondence, Vol iii, 1891?95, p.307.

30. Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staates (1884: new ed., 1962), p.96. English translation: Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (Moscow), p. 159. Engels' book was based upon Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Line of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilisation (1877). Engels also made use of the notes which Karl Marx had made (probably in the winter of 1880-1) on Morgan's book, The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx (ed. Lawrence Krader, 1972).

31. For selections of articles and letters written by Marx and Engels on colonisation, see Marx/Engels, On Colonisation (Moscow) and The First Indian War of Independence, 1857-1859 (Moscow; London, 1960).

32. Engels, "Der magyarische Kampf" and "Der demokratische Panslavismus", in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 13 January and 15 February 1849; reprinted in Karl Marx/Engels Werke, Vol. VI p. 165 ff. P. W. Blackstock and B. F. Hoselitz have translated and edited a useful anthology of these in Marx/Engels, The Russian Menace to Europe (1952). Pages 56-9, and 241 are important for "peoples without a history."

Harry Potter, Zionist plotter

2007-07-31T14:39:00.000-03:00

Thomas Lifson

When it comes to lunatic conspiracy theorists, the Middle East dominates the world's supply as thoroughly as it does our oil reserves. The latest discovery is the extent of Zionist chicanery concerns Harry Potter. Nissan Ratzlav-Katz of Aruzt Sheva reports:

Kayhahn, an Iranian publication closely affiliated with the ruling mullahs and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called the Harry Potter series "a billion-dollar Zionist project." The Potter books were designed by Zionist plotters, according to the Kayhahn editorial, to "disrupt young minds."
Khamenei had criticized Iran's Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry for approving the distribution of the latest book in the Harry Potter series, which was released last weekend with much fanfare.

So the young minds of Iran are being poisoned by Harry and his wizards. Who knew?

It also turns out it is the Zionists who are responsible for the Arab genocide against black Africans in Darfur:

Sudan's Defense Minister Abdelrahim Mohammad Hussein blamed Jews for the
ongoing violence and ethnic cleansing in southern Sudan. According to Hussein, the Jews are wielding their control of the international media and financial markets on behalf of "rebel elements" inside Darfur, including by direct financial and political support. He made the comments during an interview this week with the Saudi Arabian Okaz daily.

"Yes, [Jews] provide political and material support through their control over the media and across American and British circles," Hussein charged. "The Darfur issue is being fueled by 24 Jewish organizations, who are making the largest amount of noise over the issue, and using the Holocaust in their campaigning," he said.

Consider yourself warned.

The Chasm (part 2)

2007-07-25T23:14:00.000-03:00

THE CHASM: TWO ETHICS THAT DIVIDE THE WESTERN WORLD
There are many words commonly used today to describe political attitudes. We are told that there are conservatives, liberals, libertarians, right-wingers, left-wingers, socialists, communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, Fascists, Nazis; and if that isn’t confusing enough, now we have neo conservatives, neo Nazis, and neo everything else. When we are asked what our political orientation is, we are expected to choose from one of these words. If we don’t have a political opinion or if we’re afraid of making a bad choice, then we play it safe and say we are moderates – adding yet one more word to the list. Yet, not one person in a thousand can clearly define the ideology that any of these words represent. They are used, primarily, as labels to impart an aura of either goodness or badness, depending on who uses the words and what emotions they trigger in their minds.

For example, what is a realistic definition of a conservative? A common response would be that a conservative it a person who wants to conserve the status quo and is opposed to change. But, most people who call themselves conservatives are not in favor of conserving the present system of high taxes, deficit spending, expanding welfare, leniency to criminals, foreign aid, growth of government, or any of the other hallmarks of the present order. These are the jealously guarded bastions of what we call liberalism. Yesterday’s liberals are the conservatives of today, and the people who call themselves conservatives are really radicals, because they want a radical change from the status quo. It’s no wonder that most political debates sound like they originate at the tower of Babel. Everyone is speaking a different language. The words may sound familiar, but speakers and listeners each have their own private definitions.

It has been my experience that, once the definitions are commonly understood, most of the disagreements come to an end. To the amazement of those who thought they were bitter ideological opponents, they often find they are actually in basic agreement. So, to deal with this word, collectivism, our first order of business is to throw out the garbage. If we are to make sense of the political agendas that dominate our planet today, we must not allow our thinking to be contaminated by the emotional load of the old vocabulary.

It may surprise you to learn that most of the great political debates of our time – at least in the Western world – can be divided into just two viewpoints. All of the rest is fluff. Typically, they focus on whether or not a particular action should be taken; but the real conflict is not about the merits of the action; it is about the principles, the ethical code that justifies or forbids that action. It is a contest between the ethics of collectivism on the one hand and individualism on the other. Those are words that have meaning, and they describe a chasm of morality that divides the entire Western world.

The one thing that is common to both collectivists and individualists is that the vast majority of them are well intentioned. They want the best life possible for their families, for their countrymen, and for mankind. They want prosperity and justice for their fellow man. Where they disagree is how to bring those things about.

I have studied collectivist literature for over forty years; and, after a while, I realized there were certain recurring themes. I was able to identify what I consider to be the six pillars of collectivism. If these pillars are turned upside down, they also are the six pillars of individualism. In other words, there are six major concepts of social and political relationships; and, within each of them, collectivists and individualists have opposite viewpoints.

1. THE NATURE OF HUMAN RIGHTS
The first of these has to do with the nature of human rights. Collectivists and individualists both agree that human rights are important, but they differ over how important and especially over what is presumed to be the origin of those rights. There are only two possibilities in this debate. Either man’s rights are intrinsic to his being, or they are extrinsic, meaning that either he possesses them at birth or they are given to him afterward. In other words, they are either hardware or software. Individualists believe they are hardware. Collectivists believe they are software.

If rights are given to the individual after birth, then who has the power to do that? Collectivists believe that is a function of government. Individualists are nervous about that assumption because, if the state has the power to grant rights, it also has the power to take them away, and that concept is incompatible with personal liberty.

The view of individualism was expressed clearly in the United States Declaration of Independence, which said:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men….

Nothing could be more clear than that. “Unalienable Rights” means they are the natural possession of each of us upon birth, not granted by the state. The purpose of government is, not to grant rights, but to secure them and protect them.

By contrast, all collectivist political systems embrace the opposite view that rights are granted by the state. That includes the Nazis, Fascists, and Communists. It is also a tenet of the United Nations. Article Four of the UN Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights says:

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize that, in the enjoyment of those rights provided by the State … the State may subject such rights only to such limitations as are determined by law.

I repeat: If we accept that the state has the power to grant rights, then we must also agree it has the power to take them away. Notice the wording of the UN Covenant. After proclaiming that rights are provided by the state, it then says that those rights may be subject to limitations “as are determined by law.” In other words, the collectivists at the UN presume to grant us our rights and, when they are ready to take them away, all they have to do is pass a law authorizing it.

Compare that with the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution. It says Congress shall pass no law restricting the rights of freedom of speech, or religion, peaceful assembly, the right to bear arms, and so forth – not except as determined by law, but no law. The Constitution embodies the ethic of individualism. The UN embodies the ethic of collectivism, and what a difference that makes.

2. THE ORIGIN OF STATE POWER
The second concept that divides collectivism from individualism has to do with the origin of state power. Individualists believe that a just government derives its power, not from conquest and subjugation of its citizens, but from the free consent of the governed. That means the state cannot have any legitimate powers unless they are given to it by its citizens. Another way of putting it is that governments may do only those things that their citizens also have a right to do. If individuals don’t have the right to perform a certain act, then they can’t grant that power to their elected representatives. They can’t delegate what they don’t have.

Let us use an extreme example. Let us assume that a ship has been sunk in a storm, and three exhausted men are struggling for survival in the sea. Suddenly, they come upon a life-buoy ring. The ring is designed only to keep one person afloat; but, with careful cooperation between them, it can keep two of them afloat. But, when the third man grasps the ring, it becomes useless, and all three, once again, are at the mercy of the sea. They try taking turns: one treading water while two hold on to the ring; but after a few hours, none of them have enough strength to continue. The grim truth gradually becomes clear: unless one of them is cut loose from the group, all three will drown. What, then, should these men do?

Most people would say that two of the men would be justified in overpowering the third and casting him off. The right of self-survival is paramount. Taking the life of another, terrible as such an act would be, is morally justified if it is necessary to save your own life. That certainly is true for individual action, but what about collective action? Where do two men get the right to gang up on one man?

The collectivist answers that two men have a greater right to life because they outnumber the third one. It’s a question of mathematics: The greatest good for the greatest number. That makes the group more important than the individual and it justifies two men forcing one man away from the ring. There is a certain logical appeal to this argument but, if we further simplify the example, we will see that, although the action may be correct, it is justified by the wrong reasoning.

Let us assume, now, that there are only two survivors – so we eliminate the concept of the group – and let us also assume that the ring will support only one swimmer, not two. Under these conditions, it would be similar to facing an enemy in battle. You must kill or be killed. Only one can survive. We are dealing now with the competing right of self-survival for each individual, and there is no mythological group to confuse the issue. Under this extreme condition, it is clear that each person would have the right to do whatever he can to preserve his own life, even if it leads to the death of another. Some may argue that it would be better to sacrifice one’s life for a stranger, but few would argue that not to do so would be wrong. So, when the conditions are simplified to their barest essentials, we see that the right to deny life to others comes from the individual’s right to protect his own life. It does not need the so-called group to ordain it.

In the original case of three survivors, the justification for denying life to one of them does not come from a majority vote but from their individual and separate right of selfsurvival. In other words, either of them, acting alone, would be justified in this action. They are not empowered by the group. When we hire police to protect our community, we are merely asking them to do what we, ourselves, have a right to do. Using physical force to protect our lives, liberty, and property is a legitimate function of government, because that power is derived from the people as individuals. It does not arise from the group.

Here’s one more example – a lot less extreme but far more typical of what actually goes on every day in legislative bodies. If government officials decide one day that no one should work on Sunday, and even assuming the community generally supports their decision, where would they get the authority to use the police power of the state to enforce such a decree? Individual citizens don’t have the right to compel their neighbors not to work, so they can’t delegate that right to their government. Where, then, would the state get the authority? The answer is that it would come from itself; it would be self-generated. It would be similar to the divine right of ancient monarchies in which it was assumed that governments represent the power and the will of God – as interpreted by their earthly leaders, of course. In more modern times, most governments don’t even pretend to have God as their authority, they just rely on swat teams and armies, and anyone who objects is eliminated. As that well-known collectivist, Mao Tse-Tung, phrased it: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

When governments claim to derive their authority from any source other than the governed, it always leads to the destruction of liberty. Preventing men from working on Sunday would not seem to be a great threat to freedom, but once the principle is established, it opens the door for more edicts, and more, and more until freedom is gone. If we accept that the state or any group has the right to do things that individuals alone do not have the right to do, then we have unwittingly endorsed the concept that rights are not intrinsic to the individual and that they, in fact, do originate with the state. Once we accept that, we are well on the road to tyranny.

Collectivists are not concerned over such picky issues. They believe that governments do, in fact, have powers that are greater than those of their citizens, and the source of those powers, they say, is, not the individuals within society, but society itself, the group to which individuals belong.

3. GROUP SUPREMACY
This is the third concept that divides collectivism from individualism. Collectivism is based on the belief that the group is more important than the individual. According to this view, the group is an entity of its own and it has rights of its own. Furthermore, those rights are more important than individual rights. Therefore, it is acceptable to sacrifice individuals if necessary for “the greater good of the greater number.” How many times have we heard that? Who can object to the loss of liberty if it is justified as necessary for the greater good of society? The ultimate group, of course, is the state. Therefore, the state is more important than individual citizens, and it is acceptable to sacrifice individuals, if necessary, for the benefit of the state. This concept is at the heart of all modern totalitarian systems built on the model of collectivism.

Individualists on the other hand say, “Wait a minute. Group? What is group? That’s just a word. You can’t touch a group. You can’t see a group. All you can touch and see are individuals. The word group is an abstraction and doesn’t exist as a tangible reality. It’s like the abstraction called forest. Forest doesn’t exist. Only trees exist. Forest is the concept of many trees. Likewise, the word group merely describes the abstract concept of many individuals. Only individuals are real and, therefore, there is no such thing as group rights. Only individuals have rights.

Just because there are many individuals in one group and only a few in another does not give a higher priority to the individuals in the larger group – even if you call it the state. A majority of voters do not have more rights than the minority. Rights are not derived from the power of numbers. They do not come from the group. They are intrinsic with each human being.

When someone argues that individuals must be sacrificed for the greater good of society, what they are really saying is that some individuals are to be sacrificed for the greater good of other individuals. The morality of collectivism is based on numbers. Anything may be done so long as the number of people benefiting supposedly is greater than the number of people being sacrificed. I say supposedly, because, in the real world, those who decide who is to be sacrificed don’t count fairly. Dictators always claim they represent the greater good of the greater number but, in reality, they and their support organizations comprise less than one percent of the population. The theory is that someone has to speak for the masses and represent their best interest, because they are too dumb to figure it out for themselves. So collectivist leaders, wise and virtuous as they are, make the decisions for them. It is possible to explain any atrocity or injustice as a necessary measure for the greater good of society. Totalitarians always parade as humanitarians.

Because individualists do not accept group supremacy, collectivists often portray them as being selfish and insensitive to the needs of others. That theme is common in schools today. If a child is not willing to go along with the group, he is criticized as being socially disruptive and not being a good “team player” or a good citizen. Those nice folks at the tax-exempt foundations had a lot to do with that. But individualism is not based on ego. It is based on principle. If you accept the premise that individuals may be sacrificed for the group, you have made a huge mistake on two counts. First, individuals are the essence of the group, which means the group is being sacrificed anyway, piece by piece. Secondly, the underlying principle is deadly. Today, the individual being sacrificed may be unknown to you or even someone you dislike. Tomorrow, it could be you.

REPUBLICS VS DEMOCRACIES
We are dealing here with one of the reasons people make a distinction between republics and democracies. In recent years, we have been taught to believe that a democracy is the ideal form of government. Supposedly, that is what was created by the American Constitution. But, if you read the documents and the speech transcripts of the men who wrote the Constitution, you find that they spoke very poorly of democracy. They said in plain words that a democracy was one of the worst possible forms of government. And so they created what they called a republic. That is why the word democracy doesn’t appear anywhere in the Constitution; and, when Americans pledge allegiance to the flag, it’s to the republic for which it stands, not the democracy. When Colonel Davy Crockett joined the Texas Revolution prior to the famous Battle of the Alamo, he refused to sign the oath of allegiance to the future government of Texas until the wording was changed to the future republican government of Texas.3 The reason this is important is that the difference between a democracy and a republic is the difference between collectivism and individualism.

In a pure democracy, the majority rules; end of discussion. You might say, “What’s wrong with that?” Well, there could be plenty wrong with that. What about a lynch mob? There is only one person with a dissenting vote, and he is the guy at the end of the rope. That’s pure democracy in action.

“Ah, wait a minute,” you say. “The majority should rule. Yes, but not to the extent of denying the rights of the minority,” and, of course, you would be correct. That is precisely what a republic accomplishes. A republic is a limited democracy – a government based on the principle of limited majority rule so that the minority – even a minority of one – will be protected from the whims and passions of the majority. Republics are often characterized by written constitutions that spell out the rules to make that possible. That was the function of the American Bill of Rights, which is nothing more than a list of things the government may not do. It says that Congress, even though it represents the majority, shall pass no law denying the minority their rights to free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, the right to bear arms, and other “unalienable” rights.

These limitations on majority rule are the essence of a republic, and they also are at the core of the ideology called individualism. And so here is another major difference between these two concepts: collectivism on the one hand, supporting any government action so long as it can be said to be for the greater good of the greater number; and individualism on the other hand, defending the rights of the minority against the passions and greed of the majority.

4. COERCION VS FREEDOM
The fourth concept that divides collectivism from individualism has to do with responsibilities and freedom of choice. We have spoken about the origin of rights, but there is a similar issue involving the origin of responsibilities. Rights and responsibilities go together. If you value the right to live your own life without others telling you what to do, then you must assume the responsibility to be independent, to provide for yourself without expecting others to take care of you. Rights and responsibilities are merely different sides of the same coin.

If only individuals have rights, then it follows that only individuals have responsibilities. If groups have rights, then groups also have responsibilities; and, therein, lies one of the greatest ideological challenges of our modern age.

Individualists are champions of individual rights. Therefore, they accept the principle of individual responsibility rather than group responsibility. They believe that everyone has a personal and direct obligation to provide, first for himself and his family, and then for others who may be in need. That does not mean they don’t believe in helping each other. Just because I am an individualists does not mean I have to move my piano alone. It just means that I believe that moving it is my responsibility, not someone else’s, and it’s up to me to organize the voluntary assistance of others.

The collectivist, on the other hand, declares that individuals are not personally responsible for charity, for raising their own children, providing for aging parents, or even providing for themselves, for that matter. These are group obligations of the state. The individualist expects to do it himself; the collectivist wants the government to do it for him: to provide employment and health care, a minimum wage, food, education, and a decent place to live. Collectivists are enamored by government. They worship government. They have a fixation on government as the ultimate group mechanism to solve all problems.

Individualists do not share that faith. They see government as the creator of more problems than it solves. They believe that freedom of choice will lead to the best solution of social and economic problems. Millions of ideas and efforts, each subject to trial and error and competition – in which the best solution becomes obvious by comparing its results to all others – that process will produce results that are far superior to what can be achieved by a group of politicians or a committee of so-called wise men.

By contrast, collectivists do not trust freedom. They are afraid of freedom. They are convinced that freedom may be all right in small matters such as what color socks you want to wear, but when it come to the important issues such as the money supply, banking practices, investments, insurance programs, health care, education, and so on, freedom will not work. These things, they say, simply must be controlled by the government. Otherwise there would be chaos.

There are two reasons for the popularity of that concept. One is that most of us have been educated in government schools, and that’s what we were taught. The other reason is that government is the one group that can legally force everyone to participate. It has the power of taxation, backed by jails and force of arms to compel everyone to fall in line, and that is a very appealing concept to the intellectual who pictures himself as a social engineer.

Collectivists say, “We must force people to do what we think they should do, because they are too dumb to do it on their own. We, on the other hand, have been to school. We’ve read books. We are informed. We are smarter than those people out there. If we leave it to them, they are going to make terrible mistakes. So, it is up to us, the enlightened ones. We shall decide on behalf of society and we shall enforce our decisions by law so no one has any choice. That we should rule in this fashion is our obligation to mankind.”

By contrast, individualists say, “We also think we are right and that the masses seldom do what we think they should do, but we don’t believe in forcing anyone to comply with our will because, if we grant that principle, then others, representing larger groups than our own, could compel us to act as they decree, and that would be the end of our freedom.”

One of the quickest ways to spot a collectivist is to see how he reacts to public problems. No matter what bothers him in his daily routine – whether it’s littering the highway, smoking in public, dressing indecently, sending out junk mail – you name it, his immediate response is; “There ought to be a law!” And, of course, the professionals in government who make a living from such laws are more than happy to cooperate. The consequence of this mindset is that government just keeps growing and growing. It’s a oneway street. Every year there are more and more laws and less and less freedom. Each law by itself seems relatively benign, justified by some convenience or for the greater good of the greater number, but the process continues forever until government is total and freedom is dead. Bit-by-bit, the people, themselves, become the solicitor of their own enslavement.

THE ROBIN HOOD SYNDROME
A good example of this collectivist mindset is the use of government to perform acts of charity. Most people believe that we all have a responsibility to help others in need if we can, but what about those who disagree, those who couldn’t care less about the needs of others? Should they be allowed to be selfish while we are so generous? The collectivist sees people like that as justification for the use of coercion, because the cause is so worthy. He sees himself as a modern Robin Hood, stealing from the rich but giving to the poor. Of course, not all of it gets to the poor. After all, Robin and his men have to eat and drink and be merry, and that doesn’t come cheap. It takes a giant bureaucracy to administer a public charity, and the Robbing Hoods in government have become accustomed to a huge share of the loot, while the peasants – well, they’re grateful for whatever they get. They don’t care how much is consumed along the way. It was all stolen from someone else anyway.

The so-called charity of collectivism is a perversion of the Biblical story of the Good Samaritan who stopped along the highway to help a stranger who had been robbed and beaten. He even takes the victim to an inn and pays for his stay there until he recovers. Everyone approves of such acts of compassion and charity, but what would we think if the Samaritan had pointed his sword at the next traveler and threatened to kill him if he didn’t also help? If that had happened, I doubt if the story would have made it into the Bible; because, at that point, the Samaritan would be no different than the original robber – who also might have had a virtuous motive. For all we know, he could have claimed that he was merely providing for his family and feeding his children. Most crimes are rationalized in this fashion, but they are crimes nevertheless. When coercion enters, charity leaves.5

Individualists refuse to play this game. We expect everyone to be charitable, but we also believe that a person should be free not to be charitable if he doesn’t want to. If he prefers to give to a different charity than the one we urge on him, if he prefers to give a smaller amount that what we think he should, or if he prefers not to give at all, we believe that we have no right to force him to our will. We may try to persuade him to do so; we may appeal to his conscience; and especially we may show the way by our own good example; but we reject any attempt to gang up on him, either by physically restraining him while we remove the money from his pockets or by using the ballot box to pass laws that will take his money through taxation. In either case, the principle is the same. It’s called stealing.

Collectivists would have you believe that individualism is merely another word for selfishness, because individualists oppose welfare and other forms of coercive redistribution of wealth, but just the opposite is true. Individualists advocate true charity, which is the voluntary giving of their own money, while collectivists advocate the coercive giving of other people’s money; which, of course, is why it is so popular.

One more example: The collectivist will say, “I think everyone should wear seatbelts. That just makes sense. People can be hurt if they don’t wear seatbelts. So, let’s pass a law and require everyone to wear them. If they don’t, we’ll put those dummies in jail.” The individualist says, “I think everyone should wear seatbelts. People can be hurt in accidents if they don’t wear them, but I don’t believe in forcing anyone to do so. I believe in convincing them with logic and persuasion and good example, if I can, but I also believe in freedom of choice.”

One of the most popular slogans of Marxism is: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” That’s the cornerstone of theoretical socialism, and it is a very appealing concept. A person hearing that slogan for the first time might say: “What’s wrong with that? Isn’t that the essence of charity and compassion toward those in need? What could possibly be wrong with giving according to your ability to others according to their need?” And the answer is, nothing is wrong with it – as far as it goes, but it is an incomplete concept. The unanswered question is how is this to be accomplished? Shall it be in freedom or through coercion? I mentioned earlier that collectivists and individualists usually agree on objectives but disagree over means, and this is a classic example. The collectivist says, take it by force of law. The individualist says, give it through free will. The collectivist says, not enough people will respond unless they are forced. The individualist says, enough people will respond to achieve the task. Besides, the preservation of freedom is also important. The collectivist advocates legalized plunder in the name of a worthy cause, believing that the end justifies the means. The individualist advocates free will and true charity, believing that the worthy objective does not justify committing theft and surrendering freedom.

There is a story of a Bolshevik revolutionary who was standing on a soapbox speaking to a small crowd in Times Square. After describing the glories of socialism and communism, he said: “Come the revolution and everyone will eat peaches and cream.” A little old man at the back of the crown yelled out: “I don’t like peaches and cream.” The Bolshevik thought about that for a moment and then replied: “Come the revolution, comrade, you will like peaches and cream.”

This, then, is the fourth difference between collectivism and individualism, and it is perhaps the most fundamental of them all: collectivists believe in coercion; individualists believe in freedom.

5. EQUALITY VS. INEQUALITY UNDER LAW
The fifth concept that divides collectivism from individualism has to do with the way people are treated under the law. Individualists believe that no two people are exactly alike, and each one is superior or inferior to others in many ways but, under law, they should all be treated equally. Collectivists believe that the law should treat people unequally in order to bring about desirable changes in society. They view the world as tragically imperfect. They see poverty and suffering and injustice and they conclude that something must be done to alter the forces that have produced these effects. They think of themselves as social engineers who have the wisdom to restructure society to a more humane and logical order. To do this, they must intervene in the affairs of men at all levels and redirect their activities according to a master plan. That means they must redistribute wealth and use the police power of the state to enforce prescribed behavior.

The consequence of this mindset can be seen everywhere in society today. Almost every country in the world has a tax system designed to treat people unequally depending on their income, their marital status, the number of children they have, their age, and the type of investments they may have. The purpose of this arrangement is to redistribute wealth, which means to favor some classes over others. In some cases, there are bizarre loopholes written into the tax laws just to favor one corporation or one politically influential group. Other laws provide tax-exemption and subsidies to favored groups or corporations. Inequality is the whole purpose of these laws.

In the realm of social relationships, there are laws to establish racial quotas, gender quotas, affirmative-action initiatives, and to prohibit expressions of opinion that may be objectionable to some group or to the master planners. In all of these measures, there is an unequal application of the law based on what group or class you happen to be in or on what opinion you hold. We are told that all of this is necessary to accomplish a desirable change in society. Yet, after more than a hundred years of social engineering, there is not one place on the globe where collectivists can point with pride and show where their master plan has actually worked as they predicted. There have been many books written about the collectivist utopia, but they never happened. The real-world results wherever collectivism has been applied are more poverty than before, more suffering than before, and certainly more injustice than before.

There is a better way. Individualism is based on the premise that all citizens should be equal under law, regardless of their national origin, race, religion, gender, education, economic status, life style, or political opinion. No class should be given preferential treatment, regardless of the merit or popularity of its cause. To favor one class over another is not equality under law.

6. PROPER ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
When all of these factors are considered together, we come to the sixth ideological division between collectivism and individualism. Collectivists believe that the proper role of government should be positive, that the state should take the initiative in all aspects of the affairs of men, that it should be aggressive, lead, and provide. It should be the great organizer of society.

Individualists believe that the proper function of government is negative and defensive. It is to protect, not to provide; for if the state is granted the power to provide for some, it must also be able to take from others, and once that power is granted, there are those who will seek it for their advantage. It always leads to legalized plunder and loss of freedom. If government is powerful enough to give us everything we want, it is also powerful enough to take from us everything we have. Therefore, the proper function of government is to protect the lives, liberty, and property of its citizens; nothing more.6

THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM
We hear a lot today about right-wingers versus left-wingers, but what do those terms really mean? For example, we are told that communists and socialists are at the extreme left, and the Nazis and Fascists are on the extreme right. Here we have the image of two powerful ideological adversaries pitted against each other, and the impression is that, somehow, they are opposites. But, what is the difference? They are not opposites at all. They are the same. The insignias may be different, but when you analyze communism and Nazism, they both embody the principles of socialism. Communists make no bones about socialism being their ideal, and the Nazi movement in Germany was actually called the National Socialist Party. Communists believe in international socialism, whereas Nazis advocate national socialism. Communists promote class hatred and class conflict to motivate the loyalty and blind obedience of their followers, whereas the Nazis use race conflict and race hatred to accomplish the same objective. Other than that, there is no difference between communism and Nazism. They are both the epitome of collectivism, and yet we are told they are, supposedly, at opposite ends of the spectrum!

There’s only one thing that makes sense in constructing a political spectrum and that is to put zero government at one end of the line and 100% at the other. Now we have something we can comprehend. Those who believe in zero government are the anarchists, and those who believe in total government are the totalitarians. With that definition, we find that communism and Nazism are together at the same end. They are both totalitarian. Why? Because they are both based on the model of collectivism. Communism, Nazism, Fascism and socialism all gravitate toward bigger and bigger government, because that is the logical extension of their common ideology. Under collectivism, all problems are the responsibility of the state and must be solved by the state. The more problems there are, the more powerful the state must become. Once you get on that slippery slope, there is no place to stop until you reach all the way to the end of the scale, which is total government. Regardless of what name you give it, regardless of how you re-label it to make it seem new or different, collectivism is totalitarianism.

Actually, the straight-line concept of a political spectrum is somewhat misleading. It is really a circle. You can take that straight line with 100% government at one end and zero at the other, bend it around, and touch the ends at the top. Now it’s a circle because, under anarchy, where there is no government, you have absolute rule by those with the biggest fists and the most powerful weapons. So, you jump from zero government to totalitarianism in a flash. They meet at the top. We are really dealing with a circle, and the only logical place for us to be is somewhere in the middle of the extremes. We need government, of course, but, it must be built on individualism, an ideology that pushes always toward that part of the spectrum that involves the least government necessary to make things work instead of collectivism, which always pushes toward the other end of the spectrum for the most amount of government to make things work. That government is best which governs least.

Now, we are finally ready to re-activate our time machine. The last images still linger before us. We still see the directors of the great tax-exempt foundations applying their vast financial resources to alter the attitudes of the American people so they will accept the merger of their nation with totalitarian regimes; and we still hear their words proclaiming that “the future of this country belongs to collectivism, administered with characteristic American efficiency.” It’s amazing, isn’t it, how much is contained in that one little word: collectivism.

The Chasm

2007-07-25T22:58:00.000-03:00

The Future Is Calling (Part One)
G. Edward Griffin

OVERVIEW
How can anyone make the War on Terrorism easy to understand? There are so many issues and so much confusion. I feel like the proverbial mosquito in a nudist camp. I know what I have to do. I just don’t know where to begin. There is a well-known rule in public speaking that applies to complex topics. It is: First, tell them what you’re going to tell them. Then tell them. And, finally, tell them what you told them. I’m going to follow that rule today, and I will begin by making a statement that I have carefully crafted to be as shocking as possible. That’s primarily because I want you to remember it. When I tell you what I’m going to tell you, I know that, for many of you, it will sound absurd, and you’ll think I have gone completely out of my mind. Then, for the main body of my presentation, I will tell you what I told you by presenting facts to prove that everything I said actually is true. And, finally, at the end, I will tell you what I told you by repeating my opening statement; and, by then, hopefully, it will no longer seem absurd. What I am going to tell you is this: Although it is commonly believed that the War on Terrorism is a noble effort to defend freedom, in reality, it has little to do with terrorism and even less to do with the defense of freedom. There are other agendas at work; agendas that are far less praiseworthy; agendas that, in fact, are just the opposite of what we are told. The purpose of this presentation is to prove that, what is unfolding today is, not a war on terrorism to defend freedom, but a war on freedom that requires the defense of terrorism. That is what I’m going to tell you today, and you are probably wondering how anyone in his right mind could think he could prove such a statement as that. So let’s get right to it; and the first thing we must do is confront the word proof. What is proof? There is no such thing as absolute proof. There is only evidence. Proof may be defined as sufficient evidence to convince the observer that a particular hypothesis is true. The same evidence that is convincing to one person may not convince another. In that event, the case is proved to the first person but not to the second one who still needs more evidence. So, when we speak of proof, we are really talking about evidence.

It’s my intent to tell you what I told you by developing the case slowly and methodically; to show motive and opportunity; to introduce eyewitnesses and the testimony of experts. In other words, I will provide evidence – upon evidence – upon evidence until the mountain is so high that even the most reluctant skeptic must conclude that the case has been proved.

Where do we find this evidence? The first place to look is in history. The past is the key to the present, and we can never fully understand where we are today unless we know what path we traveled to get here. It was Will Durant who said: “Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it.”

Are we doomed to repeat history in the war on terrorism? If we continue to follow the circular path we are now taking, I believe that we are. But to find out if that is true, we need to go back in time. So, I invite you to join me, now, in my time machine. We are going to splash around in history for a while and look at some great events and huge mistakes to see if there are parallels, any lessons to be learned for today. I must warn you: it will seem that we are lost in time. We are going to go here and there, and then jump back further, and then forward in time, and we will be examining issues that may make you wonder “What on earth has this to do with today?” But I can assure you, when we reach the end of our journey, you will see that everything we cover has a direct relevance to today and, in particular, to the war on terrorism.

THE HIDDEN AGENDA
Now that we are in our time machine, we turn the dial to the year 1954 and, suddenly, we find ourselves in the plush offices of the Ford Foundation in New York City. There are two men seated at a large, Mahogany desk, and they are talking. They cannot see or hear us, but we can see them very well. One of these men is Roland Gaither, who was the President of the Ford Foundation at that time. The other is Mr. Norman Dodd, the chief investigator for what was called the Congressional Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations. The Ford Foundation was one of those, so he is there as part of his Congressional responsibilities. I must tell you that it was in 1982 that I met Mr. Dodd in his home state of Virginia where, at the time, I had a television crew gathering interviews for a documentary film. I had previously read Mr. Dodd’s testimony and realized how important it was; so, when our crew had open time, I called him on the telephone and asked if he would be willing to make a statement before our cameras, and he said, “Of course.” I’m glad we obtained the interview when we did, because Dodd was advanced in years, and it wasn’t long afterward that he passed away. We were very fortunate to capture his story in his own words. What we now are witnessing from our time machine was confirmed in minute detail twenty years later and preserved on video.

In any event, we are now in the year 1954, and we hear Mr. Gaither say to Mr. Dodd, “Would you be interested in knowing what we do here at the Ford Foundation?” And Mr. Dodd says, “Yes! That’s exactly why I’m here. I would be very interested, sir.” Then, without any prodding at all, Gaither says, “Mr. Dodd, we operate in response to directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant making power to alter life in the United States so that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.” Dodd almost falls off of his chair when he hears that. Then he says to Gaither, “Well, sir, you can do anything you please with your grant making powers, but don’t you think you have an obligation to make a disclosure to the American people? You enjoy tax exemption, which means you are indirectly subsidized by taxpayers, so, why don’t you tell the Congress and the American people what you just told me?” And Gaither replies, “We would never dream of doing such a thing.”

A STRATEGY TO CONTROL THE TEACHING OF HISTORY
The question that arises in Mr. Dodd’s mind is: How would it be possible for anyone to think that they could alter life in the United States so it could be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union and, by implication, with other nations of the world? What an absurd thought that would be – especially in 1954. That would require the abandonment of American concepts of justice, traditions of liberty, national sovereignty, cultural identity, constitutional protections, and political independence, to name just a few. Yet, these men were deadly serious about it. They were not focused on the question of if this could be done. Their only question was how to do it? What would it take to change American attitudes? What would it take to convince them to abandon their heritage in exchange for global union?

The answer was provided by another powerful and prestigious tax-exempt foundation, the Carnegie Endowment Fund for International Peace. When Dodd visited that organization and began asking about their activities, the President said, “Mr. Dodd, you have a lot of questions. It would be very tedious and time consuming for us to answer them all, so I have a counter proposal. Why don’t you send a member of your staff to our facilities, and we will open our minute books from the very first meeting of the Carnegie Fund, and your staff can go through them and copy whatever you find there. Then you will know everything we are doing.”

Again, Mr. Dodd was totally amazed. He observed that the President was a young man and probably had never actually read the minutes himself. So Dodd accepted the offer and sent a member of his staff to the Carnegie Endowment facilities. Her name was Mrs. Catherine Casey who, by the way, was hostile to the activity of the Congressional Committee. Political opponents of the Committee had placed her on the staff to be a watchdog and a damper on the operation. Her attitude was: “What could possibly be wrong with tax-exempt foundations? They do so much good.” So, that was the view of Mrs. Casey when she went to the boardroom of the Carnegie Foundation. She took her Dictaphone machine with her (they used magnetic belts in those days) and recorded, word for word, many of the key passages from the minutes of this organization, starting with the very first meeting. What she found was so shocking, Mr. Dodd said she almost lost her mind. She became ineffective in her work after that and had to be given another assignment.

This is what those minutes revealed: From the very beginning, the members of the board discussed how to alter life in the United States; how to change the attitudes of Americans to give up their traditional principles and concepts of government and be more receptive to what they call the collectivist model of society. I will talk more about what the word collectivist means in a moment, but those who wrote the documents we will be quoting use that word often and they have a clear understanding of what it means. At the Carnegie Foundation board meetings, they discussed this question in a very scholarly fashion. After many months of deliberation, they came to the conclusion that, out of all of the options available for altering political and social attitudes, there was only one that was historically dependable. That option was war. In times of war, they reasoned, only then would people be willing to give up things they cherish in return for the desperate need and desire for security against a deadly enemy. And so the Carnegie Endowment Fund for International Peace declared in its minutes that it must do whatever it can to bring the United States into war.

They also said there were other actions needed, and these were their exact words: “We must control education in the United States.” They realized that was a pretty big order, so they teamed up with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation to pool their financial resources to control education in America – in particular, to control the teaching of history. They assigned those areas of responsibility that involved issues relating to domestic affairs to the Rockefeller Foundation, and those issues relating to international affairs were taken on as the responsibility of the Carnegie Endowment.

Their first goal was to rewrite the history books, and they discussed at great length how to do that. They approached some of the more prominent historians of the time and presented to them the proposal that they rewrite history to favor the concept of collectivism, but they were turned down flat. Then they decided – and, again, these are their own words, “We must create our own stable of historians.”

They selected twenty candidates at the university level who were seeking doctorates in American History. Then they went to the Guggenheim Foundation and said, “Would you grant fellowships to candidates selected by us, who are of the right frame of mind, those who see the value of collectivism as we do? Would you help them to obtain their doctorates so we can then propel them into positions of prominence and leadership in the academic world?” And the answer was “Yes.”

So they gathered a list of young men who were seeking their doctorate degrees. They interviewed them, analyzed their attitudes, and chose the twenty they thought were best suited for their purpose. They sent them to London for a briefing. (In a moment I will explain why London is so significant.) At this meeting, they were told what would be expected if and when they win the doctorates they were seeking. They were told they would have to view history, write history, and teach history from the perspective that collectivism was a positive force in the world and was the wave of the future.

Now lets go to the words of Mr. Dodd, himself, as he described this event before our cameras in 1982. He said:

This group of twenty historians eventually formed the nucleus of the American Historical Association. Then toward the end of the 1920’s the Endowment grants to the American Historical Association $400,000 [a huge amount of money in those days] for a study of history in a manner that points to what this country can look forward to in the future. That culminates in a seven-volume study, the last volume of which is a summary of the contents of the other six. And the essence of the last volume is, the future of this country belongs to collectivism, administered with characteristic American efficiency.

Now we must turn off our time machine for a few moments and deal with this word collectivism. You are going to hear it a lot. Especially if you delve into the historical papers of the individuals and groups we are discussing, you will find them using that word over and over. Although most people have only a vague concept of what it means, the advocates of collectivism have a very clear understanding of it, so lets deal with that now.

HOW THE EUROPEAN UNION'S ATTITUDE TOWARD ISRAEL EVOLVED II

2007-07-25T11:50:00.001-03:00

The Muslim Issue Emerges
"Ten years ago Europe's problems with its large Muslim immigration were already emerging. The Europeans complained frequently to us that they were paying a price for Israel's attitude toward the Palestinians. They claimed that the negative tendencies among the Muslim communities in Europe were fed by their frustration over how the Palestinians were being treated.

"They said that if Israel would treat the Palestinians differently European Muslims would be less hostile and Europe would benefit. They never told us this story directly but dressed it up in a different way. They said that Europe had a stake in Israeli-Palestinian issues because some Muslims were European citizens. Thus the EU was representing the sentiments and aspirations of these citizens in expressing the hope that Israel would take a different position in the conflict.

"I replied that they should face up to the real problems with Muslims in their countries. When I was stationed in Brussels there were growing signs that the approach of many Muslims in Europe was changing. Up to the mid-1990s, most tried to become fully identified with the culture and society of the countries they lived in. They wanted to be more French than the French, or more Dutch than the Dutch.

"In the mid-1990s there was a shift toward a more separate religious identity. Many Muslims maintained their religious approach opposing the secularism of European society. I said to my European counterparts that these were growing manifestations of separatism. They answered that this was an internal European issue and none of my business.

"It was one more among many examples of European double standards. When convenient, they used the same argument in order to get a stake in what was happening in the Middle East. When it was turned against them, they adopted a different stance. This attitude caused frequent displeasure on their part and frustration on mine. They did not want to listen to what was obvious and for which they are now paying a heavy price. I wasn't too keen to press the point endlessly as my mission in Brussels was not to educate Europeans."

European Integration and Individual Approaches
"Despite the integration of Europe, every country has its own attitude toward most matters. Their national identities, cultures, and approaches to life differ. So do their financial, judicial, and social systems. Each country has its own army. On the legal side there has been an attempt to harmonize many fiscal aspects and laws that relate to customs and commercial issues, yet there was no attempt to try and harmonize criminal law.

"The only truly harmonized issues concern human rights. The Human Rights Act is a European act. This now has become a problem because in Britain, for instance, it has become a barrier against some steps to combat terrorism.

"This lack of a unified approach has made it impossible to develop a common European policy on the issue of Islam. Each country wanted to maintain its particular approach thinking it was better than that of its neighbors."

Halevy indicates that in retrospect the Europeans would have done better to take a common approach to this matter rather than trying to create an appearance of a common European foreign and defense policy. "This concept is a misrepresentation because no common policy exists on many foreign issues. There are big differences, for instance, between the French and British on problems such as Iraq, Iran, or even the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"Furthermore, one cannot maintain a common foreign policy on issues relating to Islam if in Europe there is no common domestic policy toward these. The Europeans, however, developed a logic of creating a common denominator between the absurdities of their domestic policies and the pretensions of their foreign policy. That is how I saw it then and how I continue to see it now.

"During my stay in Brussels the European Commission was weak. It was headed by Jacques Santer from Luxembourg, who was both pleasant and feeble. In the end his commission was deposed. Over the years one country was consistently pro-Israeli. The German government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl was very positive toward us, and so were his various foreign ministers such as Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Klaus Kinkel.

"France's role was highly negative. The French government was not only highly critical of Netanyahu. It also treated his successor Ehud Barak very badly. At each meeting of the Council of Ministers they were the most extreme actor against Israel. Almost all officials at the Quai d'Orsay, their foreign ministry, were negative toward Israel. Our ambassador in Paris made many efforts to change the situation but did not succeed. Hubert VÃ©drine, the foreign minister in the socialist Jospin government, was an outspoken anti-Israeli and so was his right-wing predecessor."

COREPER
"Coreper (ComitÃ© des ReprÃ©sentants Permanents) is a key organ in the European Union. It is composed of the ambassadors of all EU member states. The German ambassador was very helpful to us and so was the ambassador of Great Britain. At the time the Dutch ambassador was Bernard Bot, the current Dutch foreign minister. He might occasionally make unpleasant remarks about us but in practical matters he was very helpful.

"On the other hand, the French representative in COREPER was outright hostile. Ambassador Pierre de Boissieu is a grandson of de Gaulle and a very arrogant man. When I arrived in Brussels he refused to meet me. He said he did not have to and did not want to waste time on ambassadors from outside the EU.

"Javier Solana, a former Spanish socialist foreign minister is the current EU high representative for foreign relations. At the time he was the secretary-general of NATO. He could be critical of Israel but this should not be confused with him being anti-Israeli. He is a nonconfrontational person who always looks for compromises, diplomatic solutions, and bridging positions. I think in his heart he has a great admiration for Israel's capabilities and progress. His policy was to avert a situation in which relations between Europe and the Palestinians would deteriorate beyond what he thought was good for the Europeans. Therefore, he continued to maintain a relationship with Arafat long after it was clear that he was promoting terrorism.

"It is to Solana's credit that when, in 2002, Israel came up with the idea of changing the constitution of the Palestinian Authority, he helped us move it forward. The concept was to empower the prime minister and to turn Arafat into a figurehead. Nowadays, with Hamas in power, we are interested in the opposite, strengthening the president(?), Mahmoud Abbas against the prime minister. Solana has also been helpful in arranging orderly elections in the Palestinian territories and providing monitors and observers."

Europe's Major Mistakes
When asked about the major mistakes Europe made in the Middle East over the past ten years, Halevy replies: "The first one was their political assessment of Arafat. Without the EU he would not have had a financial basis for his administration. This led to their second mistake. The EU approach facilitated corruption inside the Palestinian Authority. The way they channeled their money was both a major waste and an important source of corruption.

"The third EU mistake was that they thought they could lean on Israel. They were subtly threatening economic sanctions and thought that this would push Israel. It caused some concern in Jerusalem but mainly created a bad atmosphere between us. The Europeans thought that by making these efforts they were ingratiating themselves with the Arab world. It was, however, a major miscalculation to think that the Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians, and others would become Europhiles as a result. Nothing of this kind happened.

"Ten years ago many Europeans had a great ambition to be close to Syria despite the fact that it was a cruel dictatorship. There was great friendship between Syrian president Hafez Assad and German chancellor Kohl. Assad also had close relations with many people around Kohl.

"French president Chirac admired Assad and many other prominent Europeans had a lot of respect or sympathy for him as a person. Every time Israel had a problem with Syria, the French were very sensitive that we did nothing to destabilize Syria or damage its interests. The fact that Assad was a mass murderer who had killed tens of thousands of Syrian civilians was not something that troubled the European leaders at all."

This leads to the final question, whether Europe is behaving differently now.

Halevy replies: "I think the Europeans are more mature in their assessment of the Palestinians. They don't try to exert economic pressure on Israel. They don't allow their monies to be used in the same way as before. They are less pretentious about their political role in the Middle East. The Europeans increasingly recognize the American supremacy and do not try to upstage it too much. It now remains to be seen if Europe will move to leverage its major role in the multinational force in Lebanon into playing a more active and significant part in forging a peaceful future for the war-torn nations of the Middle East."

Footnotes
1 Efraim Halevy, Man in the Shadows (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006), 128.
2 Ibid., 126.

Efraim Halevy is a former head of the Mossad. From 1996 to 1998 he was Israeli ambassador to the European Union in Brussels.

HOW THE EUROPEAN UNION'S ATTITUDE TOWARD ISRAEL EVOLVED

2007-07-25T02:54:00.000-03:00

by Efraim Halevy
This account comes from Manfred Gerstenfeld's book: European-Israeli Relations: Between Confusion and Change?

"For a very long time the Europeans' weakness has been that so often somebody else has to solve their problems. Frequently the United States has had to do so. Yugoslavia and Iraq have been cases in point. It is possible that this will now change as European nations make major contributions to the multinational force that is being deployed on the southern borders of Lebanon after the Second Lebanon War of summer 2006."

Efraim Halevy is a former head of the Mossad. From 1996 to 1998 he was Israeli ambassador to the European Union in Brussels. The conversation with him takes place on 18 July 2006 while Israel's war with Hizballah in Lebanon rages (updating was added subsequently). He remarks: "A few days ago, I was in Frankfurt at a meeting where I met Benita Ferrero Waldner, Austria's former foreign minister who is now the EU commissioner for external affairs.

"She was very busy with the question of what Europe could do concerning Lebanon. Would it intervene? Would it do something? Could it do anything? An EU official participated in the meeting. He heads a department inside External Affairs, in charge of Israel and the Middle East. He was all the time occupied on the telephone trying to work out whether Javier Solana, the EU high representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy would come to the Middle East and who would be the members of the delegation accompanying him."

Europe's Actions: At Best an Irritant
Halevy considers all this of little importance. "Europe's actions during the hostilities have had little or no impact on events as they unfold. At best so far, the EU has been an irritant in the Middle East conflict. It cannot help in the battle with Hizballah, which is a proxy fight with Iran.

"Israel is fighting Iran where it is vulnerable. If Israel succeeds in greatly weakening Hizballah and severely harming its capacity to fire missiles this will be a major setback for Iran's prestige in the region. Iran, for its own reasons, cannot come to the support of Hizballah whom they supplied with weaponry. It has threatened Israel not to attack Syria but has not come to the support of Hizballah after Israel massively attacked it. All groups who consider themselves clients of Iran must now conclude: 'The Iranians will not come and save a client in trouble.' This is one major aspect of the battle in Lebanon.

"When all is over, if Israel had succeeded, the Europeans would have applauded it. If Israel had failed the Europeans would have condemned it. That is the way they have always played it. Had Israel totally destroyed Hizballah, it would have removed a major threat to Lebanese democracy in which the EU has invested. That would have helped Lebanon implement Security Council Resolution 1559, which called for the Lebanese government to have full control of its territory. Had we removed Hizballah's threat of instability in the region, that would have helped the EU when moving to rebuild Lebanon for a second time. The job would then have been done by Israel. The Europeans should have done this themselves when they invested in Lebanon. Once again somebody else had to solve the problem."

Reminiscing about 1996
Many current European reactions to Israel's battle with Hizballah remind Halevy of the time he was ambassador to the EU. "I came to Brussels in January 1996. A few months later Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister. His election was the result of the many terror attacks at the end of 1995 and beginning of 1996. Netanyahu became prime minister at a time when the confrontation with the Palestinians became a very serious issue. Netanyahu said he would accept the Oslo Agreement, but also followed a different policy than his predecessors toward the Palestinians."

Halevy says that personal aspects also played a role. "The Europeans had been used to Shimon Peres. He considered himself their great friend and was much influenced by their flattery. I have hinted at this also in my recent book Man in the Shadows. This explains in part why the Europeans disliked the change in government.

"Within a short time, the policies of the Israeli government became rather unacceptable to the EU. Israel, after the many terror incidents, began taking steps to restrict the Palestinian movements and deprive them of certain of their facilities. When Ehud Olmert, then mayor of Jerusalem, opened a tunnel outside the Temple Mount, there was Palestinian violence that ultimately caused loss of life on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides."

Every Month a Resolution
"Every month the EU Council of Foreign Ministers meets in Brussels. In almost each meeting during that period it passed a resolution censuring Israel for one thing or another. In the EU this was a monthly process: the draft resolution started at a low level. It went up to a medium level and from there to the director-general level. Then it was sent to the European capitals and finally it was approved at the Council of Foreign Ministers. One might call this an EU ritual. The entire month before the next resolution was approved Israeli diplomats throughout Europe were busy trying to prevent, soften, or amend it.

"In retrospect, all this was ridiculous because none of these resolutions had any importance. The same is true regarding the EU resolution adopted a few days ago in Brussels on the crisis in Lebanon. The G8 met in St. Petersburg from 15-17 July. There policy was decided, and not in Brussels or anywhere else.

"Israeli-European relations during my time were complicated. A few weeks after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, Israel signed a new economic association agreement with the EU. A second agreement concerned Israel joining the fourth European Research and Development program. For Israel to become a member of this, the agreement had to be approved by the European Parliament and by the parliaments of all fifteen member states. This approval came up when Netanyahu was already prime minister. Many in the EU thought this an opportunity to use leverage against Israel concerning its policies in the territories. For Israel this posed a major problem."

Approval by the European Parliament
"The European Parliament is chosen in various ways by the electorates in member countries. In the parliament itself, factions are composed on a Europe-wide ideological basis. There were five of these at the time, including conservatives, liberal democrats, and socialists. It was my task to get the parliament to approve the agreement while a significant number of its members had a very negative attitude toward Israel in general.

"Several MEPs also specifically disliked Jews. Without going into detail, some Germans among the Free Democrats had a very problematic World War II past. There were Belgian MEPs from the extreme right-wing Vlaams Blok. One had been an active officer in a Belgian unit that fought together with the Nazis. Some French MEPs belonged to Le Pen's Front National. Several left-wing socialists had little love for Israel or Jews. There were also some British diehard anti-Jewish conservatives. Most were polite to me but I knew what their real feelings were.

"This major task ended successfully. The European Parliament, surprisingly, passed the European Research and Development program with 265 votes in favor and 4 against. Almost half the approximately five hundred MEPs did not attend the meeting. Thereafter the agreement had to be approved by all national parliaments. This took some time, but also there it passed. For Israel this was a major achievement.

"The Europeans fully realized that this agreement was also advantageous to them. First, Israel had to contribute a significant amount of money annually. Even more important, however, Israeli technology and science are of interest to the Europeans. When Europeans have a practical material interest, their ideological considerations become secondary. This is normal and natural."

Europe's Role in the Middle East Conflict
"A second problematic issue at the time concerned the European attitude toward the Palestinians and the European role in our conflict with them. They were a major financial contributor to the Palestinian Authority. Yet politically they had no clout. They thought that since they contributed so much money they should also have a say in what was happening politically. Israel rejected this.

"Manuel Marin, then vice-president of the European Commission was the key European actor involved. He is now chairman of the Spanish parliament on behalf of the ruling Socialist Party and previously had been Spanish foreign minister. Marin said he was much in favor of peace, and was very critical of Israeli policies. He complained all the time that the EU was paying and didn't get political recognition for this.

"The EU was also, however, paying the Palestinian Authority in a less than straightforward way. They channeled part of the funds semilegally. Some money went directly into Yasser Arafat's bank accounts. Once I was meeting Marin when he got a call from the German foreign minister who complained that $25 million, which Arafat got as 'special emergency funding,' had been transferred to the wrong account. It went into the general account and should have gone into his private one."

Halevy describes this in his book: "The commissioner asked the minister for a few minutes' pause and then turned to me and politely asked me to excuse him because he had to attend to the matter at hand. I left, of course, but not before my host had unburdened himself and had expressed his exasperation at the way he was being forced to cooperate in these matters."[1]

Double Standards
"A few years later this matter became a point of discussion in the European Parliament as it became clear that some EU money was being abused. For political reasons the European Parliament decided to hide the real nature of what was happening and prevent a full-scale investigation into this diversion of funds. It voted for a fuzzy form of investigation so that it would not become a major political issue.

"In other words, the Europeans -- the parliament and the commission -- once again applied double standards to Israel. Toward us they were moralizing. When it came to the Palestinians as far as finance and politics were concerned, they were 'very understanding,' to put it in diplomatic language, of the special considerations of how Palestinians handle money.

"Yet another aspect was the EU's desire to become involved in Israeli-Palestinian political relations. When there were major confrontations they immediately tried to move in and advance various proposals to 'bring the sides together.'

"One example was when in 1997 David Levy, then Israel's foreign minister, came to Brussels for a periodic meeting at a time there was a major crisis between us and the Palestinians. The Europeans raised the idea that Arafat should also visit so that they could bring the two sides together. Levy could not avoid the meeting.

"The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg then held the EU presidency. Its foreign minister, Jacques Poos, presided over what became a ridiculous meeting, out of which came nothing. For the Europeans the meeting was relevant even without any substance. I noticed many times that for the Europeans to appear as if they were a factor in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was much more important than playing a real role."

Halevy describes in his book how Arafat fell asleep during Levy's speech. Nobody bothered to wake him up. Finally Nabil Sha'ath, the PA foreign minister, responded to Levy's words.[2]

Friedman’s Middle East Rules #3

2007-07-22T23:30:00.000-03:00

http://www.theaugeanstables.com/

Rule 3: If you can’t explain something to Middle Easterners with a conspiracy theory, then don’t try to explain it at all they won’t believe it.

I’ve repeatedly discussed the prominence of conspiracy theory in the Arab world as both a function of a) explaining away humiliation and impotence (3 million Israelis didn’t defeat 300 million Arabs, America did it), and b) projecting ill-will. This latter, more fundamental mechanism operates according to the basic rules of prime-divider society: since everyone works according to the political axiom “rule or be ruled,” no one can make a generous offer that he really means. It must be a ruse. Ditto with any “positive-sum” solution. As Arafat said about Camp David: “It was a trap.” And from his zero-sum universe, where any Israeli “win” is a loss for the Arabs, it was indeed a trap.

A remarkably self-critical post by the Jordanian blogger Omar, illustrates one aspect of this tendency to assume conspiratorial motives behind all action. He writes:

Arabs often see themselves as being more aware than others in what matters politics, they like to think of themselves as not being fooled like other nations and that they know why everything happens. In general, they have this thought of that most people around the globe are being fooled either by their governments or by their misleading media tools, while they (Arabs) are not.

What he means here — I think — is that Arabs assume people’s nasty motives: no one is in good faith; anytime someone claims altruistic motives, they are manipulating. Since all conspiracy theories are based on the assumption of (really vicious) malevolence on the “other side,” to see conspiracies everywhere is to assume malevolence in everyone. And as I’ve suggested, that paranoia often represents a projection of one’s own state of mind.

Hence, Westerners have the pitiful tendency to believe people who claim honest intent, and therefore, they are, to the Arab way of thinking, suckers. As a result, they can look down on us, as Omar describes here, for being so credulous. The irony of this self-perception (which, to his credit, Omar criticizes), is that to the Westerner, there is no example of a culture more credulous, more willing to believe the most outlandish nonsense than the Arabs. As Joanne commented:

Darwish has GOT to be kidding. Omar, too.

Arabs weren’t being fooled by their own media. By media that promote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? By media that promote the blood libel, that say that Israel tried to make Arabs infertile with poisoned chewing gum and that Israel is developing a special bomb that targets Arab genes (!)?

Of course, the Arabs always know better. They were always more savvy. Unlike naïve Westerners, they KNOW that the Jews control the US and British governments. They KNOW that the US government caused 9/11. They KNOW that 4,000 Jews stayed home from Twin Towers on 9/11, having been warned away. They KNOW that the Jews control the Western media. They’re so savvy, they KNOW that the Jews want to extend Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Add to that, the predictable accusations in the Muslim media that Israel and the United States are behind the Gaza meltdown. Cui bono? Who benefits? If the meltdown hurts the Palestinians and benefits the Americans and Israelis, they must have done it:

The political [policy] of the conspirators in Washington and Tel-Aviv, [aimed at] spreading destruction and undermining the unity of the Arab societies in these three countries, as well as in other [countries] that they are able to influence with the help of their agents within them - is termed ‘creative chaos’…Al-Thawra (Syria), June 18, 2007

Paradoxically, believing that everything stems from base motives (one definition of a cynic), actually makes people more susceptible to manipulation, more likely to believe nonsense as long as it’s phrased in ways that make sense. Hence Friedman’s deft formulation of the problem.

And, if I can reflect for a moment on the nature of the Israeli soul, we come to the great tragedy of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Israelis, even the most hard-bitten and bitter, are almost to a person desirous of a peaceful solution that benefits everyone. The sabra (cactus pear), hard and prickly on the outside, soft and sweet on the inside, is not the Israeli term for a native born by accident. That’s why the Israeli peace camp is so large, varied, and Pavlovian in its desire to believe Palestinian good will in the hopes that things will go better, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

And yet, in the most colossal illustration of the Moebius Strip of cognitive egocentrism, nothing the Israelis do can penetrate the hermetically sealed mistrust of the shrewd Arabs. So rather than economic cooperation — which should solve terrorism, no? — the Arabs see chewing gum that causes sterility and shampoo that makes you bald.

And rather than outsiders who can intervene in this tragic cognitive deadlock that threatens mutual destruction, the “progressives” come in to show their “solidarity,” armed with their Post-colonial paradigm, and confirm every fevered detail of Arab paranoia.

Paradise Now

2007-07-22T15:22:00.000-03:00

Tem coisas que ainda me surpreendem. Acho que sou muito inocente mesmo.

Ontem a peça de propaganda terrorista em forma de, vá lá, arte, foi ao ar em um dos canais telecine. É lamentável que algo tão sujo como esse filme que romantiza o terrorismo, desinforma e estimula o ódio passe em um dos canais das organizações Globo. Como se já não fosse o bastante o que a "cobertura jornalística" do grupo faz...

O filme é tudo o que existe de errado na cobertura do conflito. Ele faz uso de todos os clichês possíveis e imagináveis para tentar moldar a opinião dos espectadores e demonizar Israel - distorce/omite fatos cruciais, romantiza o terrorismo e o assassinato de civis, apela para a mentirosa narrativa do inocente Davi "palestino" contra o brutal e agressor Golias israelense e ainda justifica as atrocidades cometidas pelos árabes culpando a vítima israelense.
Até pensei em fazer um comentário mais longo sobre filme, mas achei que ia ficar muito repetitivo, já que o filme só confirma tudo o que eu acuso em grande parte das postagens marcadas como "pensando" como um esquerdista, moral equivalence, Pallywood, "the opressed 'palestinians' ", "Palestine", Propaganda e outros. Outro motivo é que, infelizmente, meu estômago não permitiu. Não me sinto tão ultrajado assim desde que vi o "documentário" ensaiado (de acordo com o próprio diretor) Jenin, Jenin.

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