Joined: 10 Dec 2005 Posts: 2017 Location: Croydon, Surrey
Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 7:00 pm Post subject: Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews
The Book That Can’t Be Published In America
By Alan Hart, author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews
11/14/07 "ICH"
The question Americans asked in the immediate aftermath of the horror of 9/11 was “Why do they hate us?” And in many American minds the “they” of the question were not only the violent Islamic fundamentalists who, according to the official version of events, were solely responsible for bringing down the Twin Towers, but Arabs and Muslims everywhere - about a quarter of humankind.
Since that particular shocking and awesome event, I have often asked myself how different the world today might have been – how much less destruction and killing there would have been - if President Bush had said something like: “That’s a very good question. We must and will seek the answer to it before we decide how to respond.”
If an attempt had been made to answer the question, the first thing that would have been established is that the overwhelming majority of Arabs and other Muslims everywhere do not hate Americans or America. If they could, very many Arabs and other Muslims, perhaps even half of them, would live in America to enjoy the apparently good life there.
What they hate is American foreign policy. And the underlying prime cause of that hatred is Congressional and White House support for the Zionist state of Israel right or wrong. But Israel’s American-endorsed arrogance of power and contempt for international law is only one of two factors in the equation that, over the past 60 years, has seen Arab and other Muslim hurt, anger and humliation turn to hatred on account of the conflict in and over Palestine. The other is the impotence of the regimes of the existing mainly corrupt and repressive Arab Order, regimes which, genereally speaking, are perceived by their masses to be, in effect, American-and-Zionist stooges.
On 11 September 2001, I was well into the writing of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, so I didn’t start out with the idea of answering the “Why do they hate us?” question, but the book does provide for Americans a complete, comprehensive, detailed and fully documented answer to it.
With The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Mearshimer and Walt have provided taboo-breaking insight into one aspect of what used to be called the Arab-Israeli conflict. My book is concerned with the making and sustaining of the conflict in all of its aspects. My purpose is to enable readers to make sense - I dare to say for the first time ever in many cases - of the whole thing, by seeing how all the pieces of the most complicated and complex jig-saw puzzle fit together. And that’s why what happened behind closed doors in London, Paris, Washington and Moscow has its place in the story as I tell it as well as events in Palestine that became Israel and the capitals of the Arab world. My purpose is also to assist citizens to understand why a resolution of the conflict has remained, and seems set to remain, beyond the reach of politics and diplomacy, and who must do what and why for justice and peace. The alternative is catastrophe for all, and by all I don’t mean only the Arabs and Jews of the region. I mean all of us wherever we live. (In Volume One I recall an interview I did for the BBC’s Panorama programme with Mother Israel, Golda Meir. At a point I interrupted her to say: “Prime Minister, I want to be sure that I understand what you’re saying… You are saying that if ever Israel was in danger of being defeated on the battlefield, it would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it?” Without the shortest of pauses for reflection, and in the gravel voice that could charm or intimidate American presidents according to need, Golda replied, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Within an hour of that interview being transmitted, The Times of London changed its lead editorial. The new one quoted what Golda had said to me and added its own opinion - “We’d better believe her.”)
My only reservation about M&W’s excellent presentation is over their use of the term “Israel lobby”. Way back in 1980 when I used that term in private conversation with Shimon Peres, who was then the leader of Israel’s main opposition Labour Party and hoping to become prime minister and deny Menachem Begin a second term in office, he, Peres, said to me: “It’s not an Israel lobby. It’s a Likud lobby.” The point being made was that the lobby in America represented hardcore, uncompromising Zionism and pushed (at least sometimes) for policies that were not in Israel’s own long term best interests. For reasons that my book makes clear, the phenomenon W&M have exposed (supplementing Paul Findley’s They Dare To Speak Out) is best and most accurately described as the Zionist lobby.
In my view and also that of all real experts I know including, for example, the two leading Israeli “revisionist” (honest) historians of our time, Professors Ilan Pappe and Aviv Shlaim, the key to understanding is knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism. The mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian or Western world has been conditioned to believe that they are one and the same thing. They are not. They are total opposites.
Judaism is the religion of Jews (not “the Jews” because not all Jews are religious), and, like Christianity and Islam, it has at its core a set of ethical principles and moral values.
Zionism is a secular, colonialist ideology which, in 1948, and mainly by resorting to terrorism and ethnic cleansing, established a state for some Jews in the Arab heartland. (At the time of Zionism’s birth and first mission statement in 1897, its colonial ambition was supported by only a very small minority of the Jews of the world; and it can be said that without the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust - a European crime for which, effectively, the Arabs of Palestine were punished - Israel would not have come into being). Simply stated, Zionism in action has made a mockery of, and actually has contempt for, the ethical principles and moral values of Judaism. Which is why those most often described as “ultra orthodox” religious Jews say that Zionism is destroying Judaism
* For those who might wish to have a much deeper understanding of the difference between Zionism and Judaism than my book provides, I recommend another recently published book – A Threat From Within, A Century of Jewish Opposition To Zionism. Its author is a Canadian Jew, Yakov Rabkin, who is Professor of History at the University of Montreal. When Yakov was in London, I asked him on-the-record a very explicit question: “Is it reasonable to say that the Jews of the world now have a choice to make - either to reaffirm or affirm their commitment to Judaism and renounce Zionism, or to reaffirm or affirm their commitment to Zionism and renounce Judaism?” He replied with one word, “Yes!”
Knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism is the key to understanding why it is perfectly possible to be anti-Zionist (opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise either in whole or in part) without being in any way, shape or form anti-Semitic. The significance of that statement is in the following.
The false charge of anti-Semitism is the blackmail card which the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust enables Zionism to play to silence criticism of its self-righteous and aggressive child, Israel, and to suppress informed and honest debate about who must do what and why for justice and peace. But when citizens know the difference between Zionism and Judaism (and the truth of history, of which more later) they do not have to be frightened into silence, as most Gentiles currently are, by the fear of being falsely charged with anti-Semitism for criticising the Zionist state of Israel.
There is, however, another reason why it is essential for the citizens of the Western nations, among whom most of the Jews of the world live, to be aware of the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Knowledge of the difference is the explanation of why it is wrong to blame all Jews for the crimes of the few (hardcore Zionists in Israel/Palestine).
Though I was aware that it would be very uncomfortable for many Jews, and though I knew that it would provoke the Zionist lobby into red flagging my book and doing its best ( I mean its worst) to cause the book to be suppressed to the maximum posssible extent, I insisted on Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews as the title because it reflects in seven words two related truths for our time.
The first is that the sleeping giant of classical anti-Semitism has been re-awakened in the mainly Gentile nations of the Western world (where, to repeat, most of the Jews of the world live as integrated citizens). The second is that the prime cause of the re-awakening is the behaviour of the Zionist (not Jewish!) state of Israel - as most of the best Jewish minds prior to the Nazi holocaust feared would be the case if Zionism was allowed by the big powers to have its way.
As background context to the statement above there is the warning (quoted opposite the title page of Volume Two of my book) of Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel’s longest serving and universally respected Director of Military Intelligence. In his book Israel’s Fateful Hour, first published in Hebrew in 1986, he wrote the following (emphasis added):
“Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.”
It’s my view that after the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, and because of it, the giant most likely would have gone back to sleep, remained asleep and, in all probability, would have died in its sleep – IF Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers, first Britain, then America, to have its way, as Balfour put it, “right or wrong”. (There is a case for saying that with British and American politicians as “friends”, the Jews of the world have not needed enemies).
What, really, is the basis for believing that anti-Semitism is seriously on the rise? The increase in the desecration of synagogues and Jewish graves (and the like), verbal abuse and assaults on Jews are a pointer. But there is something far more sinister. It’s what a growing number of Gentiles, middle to upper class people in particular, are thinking and now beginning to say behind closed doors and at dinner parties. What do they say? “These * Jews!” And it’s grown, this antipathy, in response to Israel’s arrogance of power and the correct perception of Israel as the oppressor. And the more it becomes apparent that Israel is the obstacle to peace on any terms most Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims could accept, the more this antipathy will grow, with the real danger that it will break out, become unsuppressed, and manifest itself as violent anti-Semitism.
As things are, and look like going, Holocaust II, shorthand for another great turning against Jews, is a real possibility in a foreseeable future.
It’s also my view, which I know is shared in private by some eminent Jews, that if the monster of anti-Semitism goes on the rampage again, it might well start its journey in America.
Two summary reasons why:
* Many members of Congress (past and present) hate themselves for doing the bidding of the Zionist lobby. If the opportunity to let rip with their suppressed, guilt-driven anger arises, they will want revenge.
* The prime pushers for the invasion of Iraq were neo-cons who are also hardcore Zionists. While few want to admit this publicly, many know it to be so.
QUESTION: What can be done to eliminate the danger of the monster of anti-Semitism going on the rampage again?
Short answer… The Gentiles of the Western nations must be informed and educated about the difference between Judaism and Zionism, and thus why it is wrong to blame all Jews for the crimes of the hardcore Zionist few. And that’s one of the reasons why I devoted more than five years of my life to researching and writing Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. I want to do my bit to stop the monster of anti-Semitism going on the rampage again. And that’s the essential difference between the Gentile me and hardcore Zionists. They want, even need, anti-Semitism, to justify their crimes - past, present and future.
If and when I take to the public speaking and debating trail coast-to-coast across America (as I’ve done in the past), I will have the following message for American audiences:
* DON’T blame the Jews who live among you for Zionism’s crimes.
* DON’T even blame the Zionist lobby for buying influence on American foreign policy because it, the lobby, has only played the game according to the rules.
* DO blame your corrupt, pork-barrel system of politics which puts what passes for democracy up for sale to the highest bidders.
My book has two central and related themes.
One is how Israel, the child of Zionism, became its own worst enemy and a threat not only to the peace of the region and the world, but also the best interests of Jews everywhere and the moral integrity of Judaism itself.
The other is why, really, the whole Arab and wider Muslim world is an explosion of frustration and despair waiting for its time to happen.
The book is epic in length (two volumes) as well as sweep and substance because it is a complete re-writing of the history of the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine, replacing the Zionist mythology upon which the first and still existing draft of Judeo-Christian history is constructed with the documented facts and truth of history. As I noted in an Open Letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (published by Information Clearing House on 7 November), the first draft of history is mainly Zionist propaganda nonsense. At its core are two myths.
One is that the Zionist state of Israel has lived in constant danger of annihilation, the “driving into the sea” of its Jews. The truth of history is that Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger. Not in 19448/49. Not in 1956. Not in 1967. And not even in 1973. Zionism’s assertion to the contrary was the cover which allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most, America and Western Europe, with presenting its aggression as self-defence and itself as the victim when it was, and is, the oppressor.
The other is that Israel has not had a Palestinian partner for peace. The truth of history on this account is that the ground for peace on the Palestinian side was prepared by Yasser Arafat as far back as 1979 – more than a quarter of a century ago. In that year, 1979, Arafat persuaded the Palestine National Council, the highest decision-making body on the Palestinian side, to back his policy of politics and, until then, unthinkable compromise with Israel. (Unthinkable for Palestinians because accepting Israel inside its pre-1967 borders required them to renounce their claim to 78% of their land).
As I recorded in my book Arafat (the title of the American edition, the original title was Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker?), it took him six long years to persuade first his Fatah leadership colleagues and then other PNC members to accept the reality of Israel’s existence. When the vote was eventually taken, in 1979, it was 296 for his policy of politics and compromise and four against. Arafat, who had risked his life as well as his credibility to turn his people around, was then at the height of his powers; and from that moment on, and as President Carter knew, there could have been successful negotiations for a real and lasting peace based on a genuine two-state solution - Israel back behind its pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem, preferably as an open city, the capital of two states.
The problem was that Arafat did not have a partner for peace on the Israeli side - because Zionism was not, and is not, interested in peace on any terms the vast majority of Palestinians and other Arabs and most Muslims everywhere could accept. It’s true that in 1993, and thanks in part to President Clinton’s stage management and pulling power, Arafat did have a “perhaps” Israeli partner for peace in the shape of Yitzhak Rabin, but he was assassinated by a gut-Zionist. And Rabin was succeeded by Israeli leaders whose prime objective was to re-demonise and destroy the Palestinian leader. Arafat the terrorist they could handle. Arafat the peacemaker they could not. (Didn’t Barak offer Arafat “95 percent” of everything he had said he wanted? No, he did not! That, too, was a propaganda lie. Was Arafat poisoned? Probably. Is his successor, President Abbas, effectively an Israeli-and-American puppet? Sadly yes, or so it seems. But even if he is, we can be certain of one thing. Stooge leadership or not, the Palestinian people will never accept crumbs from Zionism’s table in the shape of two or three bantustans which they could call a state).
In my book and on public platforms I also take head-on the matter of Israel’s right or not to exist.
According to first and still existing draft of history, Israel was given its birth certificate and thus legitimacy by the UN Partition Resolution of 29 November 1947. This is nonsense.
* In the first place the UN without the consent of the majority of the people of Palestine did not have the right to decide to partition Palestine or assign any part of its territory to a minority of alien immigrants in order for them to establish a state of their own.
* Despite that, by the narrowest of margins, and only after a rigged vote, the UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem not part of either. But the General Assembly resolution was only a proposal – meaning that it could have no effect, would not become policy, unless approved by the Security Council.
* The truth is that the General Assembly’s partition proposal never went to the Security Council for consideration. Why not? Because the US knew that, if approved, it could only be implemented by force; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.
* So the partition plan was vitiated, became invalid, and the question of what the hell to do about Palestine (after Britain had made a mess of it and walked away) was taken back to the General Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the US was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was debating what do that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be in existence – actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community, including the Truman administration.
The truth of the time was that the Zionist state, which came into being mainly as a consequence of Zionism terrorism and ethnic cleansing, had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist unless ….. Unless it was recognised and legitimized by those who were dispossessed of their land and their rights during the creation of the Zionist state. In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved. And that legitimacy was the only thing the Zionists could not take from the Palestinians by force.
Complete understanding of the true nature of Zionism’s colonial enterprise also requires knowledge of this fact. Most of the Jews who went to Palestine in answer to Zionism’s call had no biological connection to the ancient Hebrews. The incoming Zionist Jews were mainly foreign nationals of many lands, descended from those who became Jewish by conversion to Judaism centuries after the fall of the ancient Jewish kingdom of Israel and what is called the “dispersal” into “oblivion” of its people. The notion that there were, are, two entire peoples with an equally valid claim to the same land is an historical nonsense. The relatively few Jews with a valid claim were the descendants of those who stayed IN Palestine through everything. They numbered only a few thousand at the time of Zionism’s birth; they regarded themselves as Palestinians; and they were fiercely opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise - because they rightly feared that it would make them as well as the incoming, alien Zionist Jews enemies of the Arabs among whom they had lived in peace and security. (Though not even many of today’s Jews are aware of it, it is also a fact that the return of Jews to the land of biblical Israel by the efforts of man - one possible but woefully inadequate definition of Zionism - was proscribed by Judaism).
The question that should be answered by President Bush and all who are demanding that Hamas recognise Israel is this: Which Israel is to be recognised… Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war and thus in accordance with Security Council Resolution 242, or a Greater Israel which, on a daily basis, is grabbing more land and expanding its settlements on the occupied West Bank?
There is, in fact, no mystery about what Hamas’s real position is. If tomorrow Israel said and meant that it was ready to negotiate a full and final peace on the basis of a genuine two-state solution - one that would see Israel back to its pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem an open city and the capital of two states, Hamas would say, “Let’s do the business”.
Hamas’s leaders would say that, and mean it, because they are not stupid and know they would have no choice – because a genuine two-state solution is still what the vast majority of Palestinians are prepared to settle for. But they are never going to get it.
The truth of the present is that the two-state solution is already dead, if not yet buried….. killed by the settlement facts Israel has created, and is still creating, on the West Bank - in defiance of UN resolutions, in defiance of international law, and even in defiance once upon a time of the expressed wish of the Bush administration. At least on the matter of illegal settlement activity, it IS the Zionist tail that wags the American dog.
In the last chapter of Volume Two of my book, A Resurrection, a Crucifixion and a Road Map to Nowhere, I make the statement that Zionism’s own end-game strategy for a final solution to the Palestine problem now leaves nothing to the imagination. Zionism’s in-Israel leaders and their lobbyists in America still believe that by means of brute force and reducing them to abject poverty, they can break the will of the Palestinians to continue the struggle for their rights. The assumption being that, at a point, and out of total despair, the Palestinians will be prepared to accept crumbs from Zionism’s table in the shape of two or three bantustans, or, better still, will abandon their homeland and seek a new life in other countries. In my view the conviction that Zionism will one day succeed in breaking the Palestinian will to continue the struggle for an acceptable minimum of justice is the product of minds which are deluded to the point of clinical madness. (Some say that Israel is on its way to becoming a fascist state. I think the more appropriate terminology is lunatic asylum).
The question that’s almost too awful to think about is something like this: What will the Zionists do when it becomes apparent even to them that they can’t destroy Palestinian nationalism with bombs and bullets and brutal repressive measures of all kinds?
My guess is that they, the Zionists, will go for a final round of ethnic cleansing - to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan and beyond. That, I fear, will be Zionism’s final solution to the Palestine problem… If that happens, the West Bank will be turned red with blood, mostly Palestinian blood. And honest reporters will describe it as a Zionist holocaust.
But that does not have to be the end of the story of Palestine. There still could be a new beginning.
Many years ago, in the Introduction to my first book, Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker? I said that, generally speaking, the Jews are the intellectual elite of the Western civilisation and the Palestinians the intellectual elite of the Arab world. What those two peoples could do together in peace and partnership was, I suggested, the stuff that real dreams are made of. They could change and develop the region for the better and, by so doing, give much needed hope and inspiration to the whole world. I still believe that dream could be made to come true, but only within the context of a ONE STATE solution to the Palestine problem. By definition it would be secular, democratic state in which all of its citizens, Arabs and Jews, would enjoy equal rights.Yes, that would mean the de-Zionisation of Palestine, but it would not mean the end (any kind of end) for the Jews now living in Israel/Palestine. Those who wished to stay as citizens of a de-Zionised Palestine would at last have peace with enduring security.
My book’s Epilogue is titled The Jews as the Light Unto Nations, and it ends with the following words, my words, which also have pride of place on the back jacket of Volume Two:
If the Jews of the world can summon up the will and the courage to make common cause with the forces of reason in Israel before it is too late for us all, a very great prize awaits them. By demonstrating that right can triumph over might, and that there is a place for morality in politics, they would become the light unto nations. It is a prize available to no other people on earth because of the uniqueness of the suffering of the Jewish people. Perhaps that is the real point of the idea of the Jews as Chosen People… Chosen to endure unique suffering and, having endured it, to show the rest of us that creating a better and more just world is not a mission impossible.
Why do I think it is important for Americans to know the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine and who must do what and why for peace?
Short answer: Because of the awesome influence of the Zionist lobby (as documented by Mearshimer and Walt and before them former Congressman Paul Findley), no American President is ever going to summon up the political will to call and hold Zionism to account unless and until he or she is pushed to do so by informed public opinion - by a manifestation of real democracy in action. The problem in America, generally speaking, is that public opinion is too uninformed (and mis-informed) to do the pushing - to make democracy work for justice and peace.
Why can’t Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews be published in America?
Short answer: Because Zionism does not want it to be; and all American publishers, the minors as well as the majors, are, apparently, too frightened of offending Zionism as much as they would need to do by taking my book on.
It was, actually, the same story in the UK, despite the fact that my literary agent received letters and other messages of rare praise for my work from the CEO’s of some of the major publishing houses. One such letter, from which I quote in the first paragraph of Volume One of my book as published in its first edition hardback form, describes my manuscript as “awesome… driven by passion, commitment and profound learning.” This letter added, “There is no question it deserves to be published.” But when push came to shove, I had to set up my own publishing company. I was not supposed to get access to the retail trade. I did but… To sell well through the retail trade, books need publicity. The prime provider of it for the general reading public is the media, but not in the case of my book. Not one newspaper or magazine and not one radio or tv programme was prepared to give my book any attention, review or other. The media’s complicity in the suppression of the truth of history, and the betrayal of democracy, proved to be rock solid. That’s the situation here and in the UK (and throughout Western Europe), and I know it’s worse, much worse, in the “Land of the Free”.
In the Preface to Volume Two I say I have no doubt that publishers, editors and politicians who are complicit in the suppression of the truth of history honestly believe that they are serving the best interests of the Jews as well as their own short-term vested interests. And I go on to say to them all (publishers, editors and politicians) the following: “You are wrong. Dangerously wrong. By refusing to come to grips with the truth of history and, in particular, the difference between Judaism and Zinism and why it is perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic, you are helping to set up all Jews to be blamed for the crimes of the relative few.”
And I conclude with the following observation:
“It would also be helpful if more than a few of the Jews who live in the nations of the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian world could find the will and the courage to end their silence on the matter of Israel’s “misconduct” (Harkabi’s terminology), and come to grips with the fact that Zionism is, as the title of this book asserts and its substance demonstrates, their real enemy. Silence is not the way to refute and demolish a charge of complicity in Zionism’s crimes.”
The problem for Zionism with my book is its title. The prime source of Zionism’s power, blackmail and other, is its success to date in persuading the guilt-ridden Gentile world that Judiasm and Zionism are one and the same thing. The more people become aware that this is not so, and that it’s therefore perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic, the more naked and vulnerable Zionism will become. Only then will stopping the countdown to catastrophe for all be a mission possible; and only then will peace have a chance – its very last chance.
In their Preface to The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Mearshimer and Walt write that the United States will not be able to address vexing problems in the Middle East effectively “if Americans cannot have a civilised conversation about our interests in the region and the role of all the factors that shape U.S. foreign policy, including the Israel lobby. To encourage that continued conversation, we have written this book.”
I wrote my book to empower citizens to participate in informed and honest debate and play their necessary part in making democracy work for justice and peace in the Middle East. If there are Americans who want to step up to the plate and assist me to get my version of the truth of history to their fellow citizens - then it will be “game on”. And this ‘ain’t Little League.
Alan Hart, author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews
The source of most if not all our woes, revealed (from the present to the past) Connecting the dots through 5000 years of revisionist human history, spanning from the time of the pharaohs, all the way up to the present dynasties creating the New World Order, in a quest to perfect the enslavement of mankind. From pirates to banksters, to the ruling elite, who run the world's finances, the media and cover both side of nearly every conflict or war: the world may make more sense after watching all the videos on this 911investigator You Tube channel.
Ok, this must be the most sane posting by kbo on the subject so far...
The author makes sense, and clearly distinguishes between Judaism and Zionism --
The problem with the theories of an "Israel Lobby" is that it makes the US leadership into the "lesser evil" - with or without a lobby, no US president will ever oppose the interestests of Israel - the state was founded as a bastion for US imperialism in the first place, using Jews as cannon fodder for US imperialist expansion in the Middle East.
Quote:
* The prime pushers for the invasion of Iraq were neo-cons who are also hardcore Zionists. While few want to admit this publicly, many know it to be so.
Yes, and why are they supporting Israel? They certainly don't need any lobby pushing them in that direction, and they couldn't care less for Jews as such. The only thing they care about is what serves their interests.
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The following is not posted as an argument against kbo (for once), I just want to put it up for the record, as a comment on the book above...
Abram Leon: The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation
"Abram Leon, a young Belgian revolutionary who died fighting in the resistance to he Nazis in World War II, shows how anti-Semitism and capitalism are linked. He illustrates the special history of the Jews as a "people class," persecuted and manipulated by capitalism. This Marxist study shows that Zionism, rather than aiding the liberation of the Jewish people, aids imperialism, the main breeder of anti-Semitism and Jew hatred. Nathan Weinstock's introduction explaining the life and struggle of Abram Leon is inspiring."
"This heroic book helped me understand why fascits and other rightists rely on anti-Jewish propaganda and why the Zionist response is a dead end. Abram Leon was a Jewish Marxist and working class leader in Nazi-occupied Belgium until being shipped to his death in Auschwitz. He points out that Jews are a social grouping that played a dynamic role during feudalism but have no role as a distinct class under capitalism. Because capitalist society will not assimilate them, they become ready scapegoats. The solution Leon proposes is to join with other workers in the fight for a socialist society in place of capitalism, which is the root of racist movements. Leon's richly detailed history of the Jewish people challenges the myths of the Zionists. The fact that the imperialist nation of Israel has become the most dangerous place for Jews to live underscores Leon's point about the danger of Zionism. If not available from amazon, booksfrompathfinder will have it--click on "new and used" near the top of the page."
Joined: 10 Dec 2005 Posts: 2017 Location: Croydon, Surrey
Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 11:02 am Post subject:
AntonH wrote:
Ok, this must be the most sane posting by kbo on the subject so far...
The author makes sense, and clearly distinguishes between Judaism and Zionism --
The problem with the theories of an "Israel Lobby" is that it makes the US leadership into the "lesser evil" - with or without a lobby, no US president will ever oppose the interestests of Israel - the state was founded as a bastion for US imperialism in the first place, using Jews as cannon fodder for US imperialist expansion in the Middle East.
A problem with this argument is that if you look at the invasion of Iraq and (God help us) a coming attack on Iran it is impossible to see how these work in any way to the advantage of Americans or the USA. These things are bad for Americans, bad for big oil....only delivering a short term advantage to war corporations like Halliburton and KBR. The encirclement of Russia with missile systems is nothing short of insane.
Of course all these things are likely to end up being utterly disastrous for Israel. Ultimately it is not about US government or 'The Israel lobby'. All these people probably think they are pursuing their own interests but any sensible person outside their power fantasies can see they are demented.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that the people who pull the strings of western governments want a world war because they expect to profit in the aftermath by achieving their one-world government, the 'New World Order'.
The fact that these fiends are successfully imposing their agenda while a helpless world looks on, wanting no part of this looming nightmare, hypnotised by lies......... tells us that there is a massive conspiracy afoot wherein big money has governments and all the mainstream media firmly under their control*.
The problem with people is that we tend to overgeneralise and this is very dangerous and unfair. At least you acknowledge that there is a problem with Zionism. It is the main tool big money is using to create their NWO.
While it is clear that all races and nationalities populate the western corporate/banking oligarchy, unfortunately most media owners and a disproportionate number of banking and corporate oligarchs are Jewish Zionists and the 'anti-semite' meme is rolled out to silence any critics of this group (or rather to intimidate anyone from pointing out the preponderance of Jews in key positions driving the infernal agenda).
Thus, this mechanism effectively protects the whole 'New World Order' project from critical public inspection.
.....and this is a disaster for everyone.
Ordinary Jews, like the rest of us, might be responsible for whats going on but they are are no more guilty than we are.
The thing is, I think, that 'anti-semitism' itself is almost non-existant until people realise what has been done to them by the powers of high finance. It has most often become real when societies suffer catastrophes as Germany did and then realised that the reason their logistical support dried up (at a time when they had the war almost won) was because the bankers who occupied the top positions in their society had done a deal to withdraw funds in support of Germany in exchange for bringing the USA into the war and the creation of the state of Israel.
The rotten bankers, of course, scarpered leaving the hapless Jewish populations to suffer Germans' rage. If the Germans had been natural 'anti-semites' (if such a thing could exist) they would not have allowed Jewish bankers and businessmen to gain such power within their country in the first place.
The hatred in the Germans was deliberately created by a great betrayal that almost completely destroyed the country......and this is no apologia for what they did during WW2....but it is a good idea to try and understand why these things happen.
* people should read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion......this is a work of genius that shows everyone with eyes to see that this is exactly how the world is run today. You wonder why 9/11 truth struggles to get an airing?....it's all here folks.
And this document is not the work of a 'people'. It should not in any way make sensible people anti-semitic. What it should do is open peoples' eyes (particularly the eyes of decent Jewish people) to the strategems of the wicked oligarchs who dominate our finances, our corporations, our politics, our media and our psyches (but not yet, please God, our souls).
Here is a one Jewish writer who agrees (there are others):
Maurice Joly Plagiarized "Protocols of Zion" (not vice-versa)
By Henry Makow Ph.D.
July 30, 2008
It is forbidden to mention the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (1905) without the Disclaimer that, of course, they are a "forgery" of Maurice Joly's "Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu" (1864.)
The assumption is that since Protocols appeared some 40 years after Dialogue, it plagiarized the earlier work. But I will suggest that Protocols actually predated Dialogue and Joly borrowed from it. In other words, far from being an anti-Semitic ruse, the "Protocols of Zion" are authentic.
I have already argued that the two documents are neither similar nor derivative, although they have some lines and words in common. "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is essentially a brilliant Master Plan for tyranny, i.e. the New World Order. It is the key to understanding our present predicament. (This is not a condemnation of all Jews, only the nucleus of bankers and high-level Masons directing this diabolical war against the human race.)
"Dialogue in Hell" was a veiled Masonic Jewish attack on Napoleon III, an example of how they championed liberalism to undermine the Old Order and usurp power, as described in the Protocols themselves. (The author of Protocols is contemptuous of liberalism and all egalitarian programs. They are just gimmicks to manipulate the masses.)
Reading Kerry Bolton's monograph "The Protocols of Zion In Context" (Renaissance Press, 2003) it became obvious that Joly was plagiarizing from The Protocols and not vice-versa.
Joly, a Jew whose real name was Joseph Levy, was a lifelong Mason and member of the "Lodge of Mizraim" where the Protocols document originated. He was the protege of Adolph Cremieux (Isaac Moise Cremieux 1796-1880) the head of the lodge and a Minister in the Jewish-backed government of Leon Gambetta.
The plot is described in the Protocols as "centuries-old." It most likely predates "Dialogue." Joly was well versed in the Protocols and borrowed from it to flesh out the unpopular authoritarian position of Machiavelli, which he ascribed to Napoleon III.
Joly, who committed suicide in 1879, was in the habit of "borrowing." He is accused of plagiarizing a popular novel by Eugene Sue, namely "Les Mystères du Paris." (1845) Also his work is predated by one by another of Cremieux's proteges, Jacob Venedy, entitled, "Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Rousseau." (1850)
In 1884 Mme. Justine Glinka, the daughter of a Russian General living in Paris, hired Joseph Schorst, a member of Joly's Mizraim Lodge to obtain sensitive information. For the sum of 2500 francs, Schorst provided Glinka with "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." He was subsequently tracked down and murdered in Egypt.
The Tsarist government, already heavily infiltrated, sat on the document. Glinka subsequently gave it to a friend who passed it on to Professor Sergius A. Nilus who published it for the first time in 1901.
After the Bolshevik Revolution, Nilus was arrested in Kiev in 1924 ,imprisoned and tortured. The President of the Court told him he had "done them incalculable harm in publishing the Protocols." ("Waters Flowing Eastward" by Paquita de Shishmareff, 1999, pp.74-76.)
CONCLUSION
If your plan for World Domination leaked out, what would you do? Would you admit it? "You got me! My bad!"
No, you'd employ an army of ciphers to convince everyone the document is a hoax motivated by "prejudice" and "anti-Semitism." They have executed this "damage control" perfectly, a measure of their power to deceive even in the presence of the truth.
This is the only Conspiracy that has prevailed in spite of the Blueprint being freely available. It demonstrates the credulity (or venality) of the intelligentsia and the masses.
They have colonized our minds first. We cannot name our oppressor for fear of being accused of "anti-Semitism." It's as though Black slaves working on cotton plantations were taught it was "racist" or "prejudiced" to mention the White slave driver. Since the majority of Jews are ignorant of this plot, and are manipulated like everyone else, racism is a ploy to divert attention from a very dire problem.
The Illuminati (top-rung Masonic Jews and their non-Jewish allies) have distributed some wealth and power to the masses (liberalism, socialism) as a way of securing ultimate power for themselves. According to the Protocols, they will eventually withdraw these benefits once their "invisible government" is invincible. The "war on terror" should be seen in this context.
In my view, "Protocols Deniers" are complicit in this Conspiracy, which is responsible for most human suffering and will lead to a great deal more. As a Jew, I don't want this responsibility on my head, or on other innocent Jews or Masons.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 12:14 pm Post subject:
What many people don't understand about Alan is that they've probably seen him before.
He was the ITV foreign affairs correspondant for many years & on the telly covering almost every major middle east story in the 1970s/1980s.
Solid good bloke eased out by weasels because he knew too much.
AntonH wrote:
Ok, this must be the most sane posting by kbo on the subject so far...
The author makes sense, and clearly distinguishes between Judaism and Zionism --
The problem with the theories of an "Israel Lobby" is that it makes the US leadership into the "lesser evil" - with or without a lobby, no US president will ever oppose the interestests of Israel - the state was founded as a bastion for US imperialism in the first place, using Jews as cannon fodder for US imperialist expansion in the Middle East.
Joined: 10 Dec 2005 Posts: 2017 Location: Croydon, Surrey
Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:59 pm Post subject:
TonyGosling wrote:
.......Solid good bloke eased out by weasels because he knew too much.
And, presumably, because he insisted on telling the truth as he saw it.
There must be plenty of top BBC reporters and commentators who allow their strings to be pulled and knowingly deceive the public in order to keep their jobs.
Do you know anything about the way he was 'eased out' Tony?
What many people don't understand about Alan is that they've probably seen him before.
He was the ITV foreign affairs correspondant for many years & on the telly covering almost every major middle east story in the 1970s/1980s.
Solid good bloke eased out by weasels because he knew too much.
AntonH wrote:
Ok, this must be the most sane posting by kbo on the subject so far...
Good one Tony. Still a faction of a cult is just as bad as any cult. All cults look for growth or they die - all of them think they know. All they know are the myths of man created for their ultimate subjugations.
Fact is merely popular opinion easily manipulated on a needy populace.
I don't have the time or will to give a detailed reply to what you're writing, all I can say at this time is that you're on the opposite side of the fence of everything I stand for and believe in.
In 1983, Croom Helm Ltd. published my 1st book, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. American writers don't expect favorable reviews from the London Times, but editorialist Edward Mortimer declared that "Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler's."
Still less could a Trotskyist dream of a review from Izvestia, the Soviet government gazette, but they hailed it. "During the world war, Brenner points out, Zionism showed its real meaning: for the sake of its ambitions, it sacrificed the blood of millions of Jews."
Louis Rapoport, a failed Berkeley radical, denounced the book in the Jerusalem Post as "leftist babble." Nevertheless, he conceded, there were "very real charges that will continue to haunt" Zionism "until they are dealt with honestly."
In 1987, Jim Allen, the celebrated British movie/TV writer, based Perdition, a stage play, on the book. When intense pressure on the Royal Court Theatre canceled production, we debated Sir Martin Gilbert, the Churchill family's private historian, and Stephen Roth, head of the British Zionist Federation, nationwide, prime-time on ITV. The London Review of Books said the Zionist scheme "made it one of the most famous plays of the decade." Indeed, unless the Queen was sick on the crapper, every politically or theatrically interested person in Britain watched us win, thanks to director Ken Loach's strategic instructions.
Joined: 05 Oct 2005 Posts: 480 Location: the beano
Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2009 8:10 pm Post subject: Zionism, Racism And White supremacy
By Danny Gur-arieh
JERUSALEM, March 31 09(Reuter) - Israeli soldier Elan Tamana used tocomplain to his sister that his platoon comrades called him a ``nigger.''Last week the Ethiopian-born Jew took his life.
Leaders of Israel's Ethiopian community say Tamana is the 20th Ethiopiansoldier to commit suicide in three years.
They blame racism in the army's ranks.
It is the Ethiopians' latest charge of racism in the Jewish state, whichsecretly airlifted thousands of the black Jews to Israel in the 1980s and1990s.
``Every time he came home he said they were calling him 'kushi' (nigger),humiliating him, telling him not to drink out of their cups, to bring hisown cup from home,'' Elan's sister Tolad Mazal Tamana told reporters.
She said her brother kept hoping the situation would improve. Eventuallyhe snapped.
More than 95 percent of Ethiopian 18-year-olds enlist for mandatory servicein the IDF compared with a nationwide average of around 83 percent. The army has alwaysbeen touted as a national melting pot.
But Ethiopians say their dark skin and reserved manner in the face of garrulous and often assertive Israelis have made army service difficult.
The army says 10 -- not 20 -- Ethiopians have killed themselves during theirmilitary service since 1993 but insists most of the suicides were due tofamily problems or other outside factors.
Poverty runs high among Israel's 62,000 Ethiopian immigrants. Many stilllive in cramped caravans provided by the government when they first arrived.
``I think there is no other place outside the army where Ethiopian immigrantsare so accepted, so respected, where they are given equal opportunities,''chief army spokesman Brigadier-General Oded Ben-Ami.
``There are also exceptions but the army knows how to deal with these exceptions,''he said.
Ethiopians say another recent incident suggests otherwise.
When an officer ejected an Ethiopian soldier from an army infirmary thismonth and told medics to hang a sign on the door saying, ``No niggers allowed,''he was slapped with a warning.
Ethiopian leaders demanded the army discharge the officer.
``It broke my heart. He humiliated me...I went to my room and cried foran hour and a half,'' said the Ethiopian soldier Avi Asmara. Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu invited Asmara for a meeting on Monday.
The army spokesman said 1,750 Ethiopians were currently serving in the army.He could not provide overall suicide figures in the military.
He said all Israeli soldiers undergo seminars on equality and pluralism and Ethiopians were coached on integration in Israeli society. But community leaders said it was not enough.
``The army must figure out why these suicides are happening in the army.It points to integration problems and racism among soldiers,'' Moshe Bahata,the head of an umbrella group of Ethiopian immigrants, told Reuters.
He said native Israelis routinely referred to Ethiopians as ``niggers''and described them as ``primitive.''
``When I served in the army, soldiers refused to eat the food if the cookin the kitchen was Ethiopian,'' said Bahata, adding that the Ethiopian communitytended to suffer quietly until their rage suddenly erupted.
'...after 33 years of living and now dying alongside Israelis, the black Hebrews are still fighting to achieve a crucial long-standing goal - full Israeli citizenship, giving them such rights as voting and serving in the army.
"Our identity is here in Israel. We are Hebrew Israelites, not Americans, and I think the Israeli government hasn't known what to do with us," said 44-year-old Yaffa Bat-Gavriel, who was known as Freda Waller when she arrived here in 1976. ". . . This is our home. We don't have any other."
Israeli authorities, however, disagree.
On several occasions, they have tried to expel the group, which has fought back by enlisting the help of prominent African American politicians and going on hunger strikes.
Israeli authorities reject the claims that the black Hebrews are authentic Jews, and have insisted in vain that they convert to Judaism so they can be recognized as full citizens. The native-born members are as stateless as their immigrant parents and the grandchildren of the original founders might not even be eligible for U.S. citizenship.
The black Hebrews share many aspects of Judaism, including observing the Sabbath and rites of circumcision, instructing their children in Hebrew, celebrating Jewish holidays and studying the Torah, the book of Jewish laws.
But most Israelis find some of their other practices to be odd and contend they are a cult subservient to the whims of the 63-year-old Ben Ammi.
"Just because you live by certain rules, it does not mean you are a cult," Bat-Gavriel said.
White Jews migrate to all parts of the world and want equal rights but some people cannot have equal rights in Israel. Most White Israelis are recent converts to 'Judaism' so the argument in the article is to disguise racism. This is institutional racism. Israel is the only country on earth that gets widespread legitimacy while practicing apartheid. Africans and Arabs who feel ties to Israel/Judaism are just as misinformed as most White Jew fundamentalists. There is much more history with a richer legacy to build on than trying to fit into a 'culture' that presently oppresses people. But that is another story.
Read: Israel and White Supremacy
"In other words, Zionist Apartheid is seen as an old fashioned war on people of color and, as such is perfectly attune to the historical psyche of white America. Rather than trying to "liberate" American foreign policy from Zionist influence, ask why Americans, particularly the political, business class, and certain sectors of the white middle class, love Israel so much.
In an indispensable article, "Antisemitism: Real and Imagined", Tim Wise writes, "Zionism is a form of white supremacy". There are few places where Zionism is placed firmly within the operation of whiteness, though it has been indirectly touched on many times before, most notably in discussions of the relationship between Ashkenazi and Sephardim and Mizrahim Jews in Israel. Indeed, as one Israeli Black Panther put it in 1972, "We must reach a situation in which we shall fight together with the Arabs against the establishment. We are the only ones who can constitute a bridge of peace with the Arabs in the context of a struggle against the establishment." Zionism, like white supremacy, albeit in different keys, is a war against savage Arabs and only a less savage Arab and African Jew.
My experience as a solidarity organizer over the last couple of years has brought me first hand knowledge of the Zionist paradox in the Jewish community. More than once, young Jews approached us, confessing they struggle to maintain a Jewish identity outside of whiteness, revealing young minds trying to grasp with the irony of an alliance between Jews and White Supremacy. Micah Bazant has spoken of "the Jewish establishment" giving "tremendous lip-service to the concern of Jewish assimilation" but instead contributes "to assimilation of the worst kind." He explains, "they claim to value real Jewish traditions of social justice and tikkun olam, but in fact they have sold out and assimilated to U.S. values of capitalism, racism and imperialism."
Zionism developed in a time of reinvigorated white supremacy in the latter part of the nineteenth century when European states were busily dividing up the land of Africa and Asia. In the confrontation with the indigenous people of Palestine, its ideology belongs within the history of European racial theories and, like the Afrikaner ideology of Jan Smuts, has little problem with seeing itself in the forefront of democracy and civilization in the Middle East while at the same time implementing and justifying the complete and utter subjugation of one its most prominent people.
However, to understand Israel/Palestine as defined systematically by racial oppression has yet to be elaborated on its own. This is odd, given that the racial oppression of the Palestinian people is at the heart of the matter; all other things--land laws, religion, pass laws, racially designated roads and neighborhoods, etc.--are symptoms. This should not come as any surprise: the racial definition of the Zionist project existed from the very beginning. Theodor Herzel in his 1896 pamphlet "The Jewish State" wrote it would "form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism." This is the same Herzel who stated that Zionist colonization would be "representatives of Western civilization," bringing "cleanliness, order and the well-established customs of the Occident to this plague-ridden, blighted corner of the Orient." Recall Chomsky memorably quoting Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel, as saying of Palestine, "there are several hundred thousand negroes there but that this matter has no significance."
How little has changed. With the African liberation movements abroad and the civil rights struggle at home, the white supremacist war on African people has entered a new stage, but the war on the Arab has found its triumphant moment. In that story we hear about the Arab resistance to modernity in the infamous "Arab street", mitigated, of course, by friendly but nervous ruling classes. In the stirring street, like in the Intifada, we are told you find the irrational and the superstitious, not a working toward self-determination and freedom. And who holds the key to holding back this self-evident preternatural violence of the Palestinian and the Arab? Whether it is Bernard Lewis, the New York Times, the Heritage Foundation, Al Gore, the ADL or American Jewish Council Ads on Fox News, the answer is the Zionist State. Counterpoised to the Arab and the Palestinian in particular there is democracy, technology, Judeo-Christian values, the opera and shopping malls. Apartheid Palestine/Israel is necessary exactly because the Palestinian rejects all of these things. They hate "us". Unfortunately, the more honest imperialists say, this is a world of civilization and barbarism: Israel the white European nation in a sea of dark savagery.
That Israel should be in the vanguard of whiteness is actually a credit to the more than five decade old Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian struggle is on the fault-line of freedom and oppression and, as such, is in the forefront of the struggle against white supremacy and imperialism in the world today. Is it any wonder that the white supremacist imperialists holler the most when Palestine/Israel is brought up? It is exactly here that their "twisted contradiction" is most likely to be exposed. Apartheid Israel/Palestine is just another solution to the "problem of the color line." It is a solution that did not begin in 1948 but some 400 years ago and is still with us very much today.
Indeed, we have the rulers of the "western" world as proof. The idea of a Zionist lobby duping State Department officials, ignorant Congress people, the EU or UN bureaucrats, ignores the role of white supremacy. This complicates the popular Leftist view that America and Europe's largely unconditional support of the Zionist state is like a functional balance sheet: tallying the price between keeping a bully on the Middle East block, "a strategic asset", and bad relations with the wider Arab public. We should recall what Du Bois was trying to tell the Left in his day: race and class are not separable categories in modern world history.
But the implications go beyond the exigencies of Leftist anti-imperialism to the heart of the Palestinian struggle and solidarity itself. Typically, Palestine/Israel is argued in terms of an abstract discourse of "human rights", "UN resolutions", and "international law". This is problematic on several grounds. First, on a psychological level, the basic effrontery of Apartheid to human dignity is lost. On a more practical level, most Americans do not connect immediately to the Palestinian struggle because the direct connections to their historical experience are not revealed or emphasized. Further, rights, laws and resolutions bring a kind of equivalence to the Palestinian and Jewish experience in Israel/Palestine. The Zionist state can cite almost as many rights, laws and resolutions as their opponents. Even worse the application of these things, like the UN itself, is dominated by the United States. What is missing is a sense of right and wrong, of abnormality, and a lack of understanding the deep connections of the Palestinian struggle with the operation of the American historical psyche.
The importance of understanding white supremacy could also be important for the Palestinian struggle in Palestine/Israel. Israel Shahak wrote in his brilliant article:
"Analysis of Israeli policies: the priority of the ideological factor," that eventually, "the Palestinians are bound to perceive themselves first and foremost as victims of Israeli legal discrimination, applied against them by virtue of their being non-Jews. When this occurs, Israel's domestic and international position can be expected to become highly unstable."
Oppression-political, economic, legal, cultural-on the basis of race is what most intimately connects all Palestinians, at a most basic level, living throughout Palestine/Israel. If Shahak's observation is politically formulated and used in a struggle to trump the Zionist, white supremacist vision and enforcement of separation and expropriation, meanwhile coupled with an effective solidarity campaign to politically and economically isolate Israel, the Zionist state will eventually "become highly unstable" indeed.
I do not think this can be overstated at this time. Like the U.S. commitment to Israel, the Zionist commitment to the West Bank and Gaza exists over and above balance sheet considerations. Returning to Shahak's article, a particular passage is worth quoting in full:
"In other words, empirical evidence (valid as anything in politics can be valid) shows that Israeli policies are primarily ideologically motivated and that the ideology by which they are motivated is totalitarian in nature. This ideology can be easily known since it is enshrined in the writings of the founders of Labor Zionism, and it can be easily inferred from Israeli laws, regulations and pursued policies. Those who, like Arafat, his henchmen and most Palestinian intellectuals, have through all these years failed to make an intellectual effort to seriously study this ideology, have only themselves to blame for being stunned by all the developments of the 20 months after Oslo."
As I have tried to briefly lay out, the Zionist Apartheid project finds its force and appeal through its own conception of whiteness, not because Zionist organizations find better ways to get the ear of the white man. It is fully assimilated into this framework and all of its self-justification refers back to the matrix of white supremacy and empire. One cannot battle Zionism without battling white supremacy and the U.S. establishment--they are intimately linked. Seeking the ear of the establishment without speaking the truth about their racism underestimates their psychological and historical relationship with Apartheid. This means a solidarity built on an alliance with those who have been in the forefront of fighting"
And I would also add the similarities of the zionist propoganda when setting up the israeli state, with the propoganda against the Native Americans. I.e that the land was mostly empty, inhabited by nomads who were not utilising the land effectively, that there was no legal record of ownership (despite the indigenous population inhabiting the land for centuries) etc etc. _________________ "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" Martin Luther king
keep it civilised folks please or face being suspended
Tony, please clarify. Just what is civil about a destructive world take-over by creatures who, in their supreme arrogance, have entirely left morality, let alone compassion, far behind in their quest for global domination?
Why is 'civility' given a much higher rating here than a genuine search for fact & truth?
ISTM that if your main criteria for posting here is 'civilised discourse' then this board becomes toothless and irrelevant in face of the wall-to-wall lies being fed to westerners by Zionist & Nazi psychopaths.
We have collectively reached a stage in world affairs where no amount of 'civility' will procure justice. The decent world of ordinary, caring, honest goyim is being destroyed wholesale daily before your very eyes. We either roll over and die or we fight for our freedom.
Which is more important to you? Peace now, at any cost or a better, cleaner and more equitable world for all our offspring?
ps. Please stop going gooey-eyed & hyper-touchy everytime us Jews are criticised. Examine the film BORAT carefully if you need an injection of reality into the Zionist mind. And perhaps it is also time you devoted some research into the Talmud, as although we have been bought up with it from early childhood, Christians, for the most part, don't have the first clue as to its' tenets.
Soncino Babylonian Talmud - available online here:-
http://www.come-and-hear.com/tcontents.html
It just might give you some clearer idea why we are forever cast as 'victims'... _________________ "We will lead every revolution against us!" - attrib: Theodor Herzl
"Timely Demise to All Oppressors - at their Convenience!" - 'Interesting Times', Terry Pratchett
It's actually very simple.
If we stop being civil they have won and we have lost.
There speaks a confirmed theoretician. I invite you to spend a week or two in Gaza, preferably around the Rafah crossing. There you would see 'civility' in action. However civil the locals try to be, the occupying forces trample all over them, as there's no point being civil to cattle, according to IDF mentality.
A week or two tramping the so-called Philadelphi route would certainly blow the academic fog from your mind, IMO.
Tony, there is a time for civility but there is also a time for plain speaking and decisive action. We are now firmly in the latter. Get used to it or be rendered entirely irrelevant in the fight for truth and global justice. _________________ "We will lead every revolution against us!" - attrib: Theodor Herzl
"Timely Demise to All Oppressors - at their Convenience!" - 'Interesting Times', Terry Pratchett
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 8:11 pm Post subject:
Informed and Honest Debate With Zionism Is Impossible
* August 4, 2009
I have made a discovery. Informed and honest debate with Zionists and other supporters of Israel right or wrong is impossible. I have long suspected this to be the case but a recent experience gave me the irrefutable proof.
On Friday 12 June, I presented and chaired, for recording and first television transmission by Iran’s PressTV, two programmes with the title ANTI-SEMITISM RISING. WHY? The format for both programmes was an all-Jewish panel discussion followed by debate with an invited audience of all faiths and none.
As I explained in my studio introduction, the headline title I gave to the discussion and debate (and also the invitation) was provoked by three statements made in the wake of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip and the almost universal condemnation of it..........
September 21, 2009 at 8:20 am
The Israeli Occupation of America: How Israel Gained Control of American Foreign Policy
By Hesham Tillawi *
“Israel need not apologize for the assassination or destruction of those who seek to destroy it. The first order of business for any country is the protection of its people.”(Washington Jewish Week, October 9, 1997.)
I came from a country occupied militarily by Israel to the land of “the free and the brave” only to find out it too was occupied politically by Israel.
The Palestinian people, holding on to whatever shred of hope they can, are counting on the day Americans see the error of their ways and change their opinion of the whole Middle East situation and understand it for what it truly is-A conquered, oppressed people living a hellish existence under a maniacal, occupying power and who will then contact their representatives in Congress and have them put the heat on Israel in fulfilling the agreements she made years ago with the PLO such as Oslo, Taba, Camp David, Wye River, the Road Map, or even Annapolis.
The sad fact however is that the Americans-as much as they champion themselves as a “free people”-are in no better shape than the Palestinians. On the contrary, the American position is worse than that of the Palestinians. The Palestinians can identify the enemy-he is the one with the gun and blowing away their loved ones. They KNOW they are occupied and oppressed. They KNOW how Israel occupied Palestine, killed its inhabitants and forced the majority of those who survived the carnage out of their homes and lands to then live as strangers in refugee camps.
The Americans however, have no idea. Like a drug addict who thinks he feels great after shooting up, he does not realize he is a slave, to his substance and to his pusher. The history of how the Zionists’ controlled England is not shrouded in mystery. Through Jewish control of the British government the Balfour Declaration was drafted that “gave” the land of Palestine to the Jews after WWI, a land they did not own or possess.
But how in the world did they occupy the United States politically? There is no real “Balfour Declaration” we can point to as proof.
Or can we?
Jewish influence in American politics-while there from the earliest days and certainly apparent during the Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman administrations-did not become the force it is today until the Kennedy era, or, rather, AFTER the Kennedy era.
As all know, in 1961 John Kennedy became the 35th President of the United States, a presidency cut short as a result of his assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Robert Kennedy, the president’s younger brother was Attorney General of the United States and therefore the head of the Department of Justice.
What is little-known is that the Kennedy’s realized early on that indeed the country was in trouble and that something needed to be done about it. The trouble in this case was the influence slithering its way into American political life from a far-away state only about 12 years old known as Israel. Both Kennedy brothers, learning politics at their father Joseph’s knee, understood the dynamic of this thing known as “Jewish interests”, how it would play out and what the repercussions would be for America.
Of the many issues revolving around Israel and the Zionist question the two more important as pertains the Jewish state were (A) Israel’s nuclear program, and (B) the issue of an organization known as the American Zionist Council.
According to Pulitzer Prize winning author Seymour Hersh, President Kennedy was profoundly committed to nuclear nonproliferation and was categorically opposed to nuclear weapons in the Middle East, which meant opposing Israel’s nuclear program. Hersh states that JFK exerted heavy pressure on Israel to stop the program and was serious about it. At the time Kennedy was in the middle of crises mode with the Russians in trying to arrange a nonproliferation treaty with them and therefore Israel’s nuclear program would be a big embarrassment. In addition to being an embarrassment it would open up the possibility of a nuclear conflict with Russia, given her allies in the Middle East, something made all the more believable in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis that almost resulted in a nuclear war between the two giants. John Kennedy had nightmares about the prospect of nuclear proliferation, saying “I am haunted by the feeling that by 1970, unless we are successful, there may be ten nuclear powers instead of four, and by 1975, 15 to 20…. I see the possibility in the 1970s of the president of the United States having to face a world in which 15 or 25 nations may have these weapons. I regard this as the greatest possible danger and hazard.”
Secret letters and secret meetings between Kennedy and Ben-Gurion give a clear picture of the difficulty Kennedy faced in negotiating with the Israeli Prime Minister who stated many times that nothing will save Israel but nuclear power. According to author Michael Collins Piper in his book Final Judgment Ben Gurion wrote Kennedy saying: “Mr. President, my people have the right to exist, and this existence is in danger.”
It does not take a skilled translater to figure out what Ben Gurion was saying, namely that Kennedy’s opposition to nuclear weapons in the Middle East was seen as an existential threat to the Jewish people and their newly-formed state. Going further, Kennedy insisted on inspections of Israel’s program as evidenced in a secret letter sent to then-Israeli Prime Minister Levy Eshkol that stated that American support of Israel “could be jeopardized” if the Americans were not allowed to inspect the Israeli nuclear facilities.
As if the aforementioned were not enough, there was another front in this private war between Kennedy and the “Jewish state” equally important in its scope if we are to understand what kinds of forces were at play here that led to America’s change of policy with regards to Israel. It involves the issue of spying, bribery and the direct controlling of American politicians by a foreign power and the one creature at the center of all of it was something known as the American Zionist Council and the Kennedys’ insistence it register as a foreign agent under the provisos of FARA, the Foreign Agent Registration Act passed by Congress back in 1938 to prevent German agents in the U.S. from buying their way into the American system of government and public opinion. The purpose of FARA was “to insure that American public and its law makers know the source of information- propaganda intended to sway public opinion, policy, and laws.”
In other words the Kennedy’s understood the danger of the Zionist Movement on the United States of America and treated it just like Germany was treated during the Hitler years. The Kennedy’s understood the reality of the situation as it existed during their days in government, that the AZC was an agent of a foreign government, Israel, which would prevent it from buying American politicians and exerting the kind of influence over public opinion making that for all intents and purposes is now is a fait accompli.
Negotiations went back and forth between the Department of Justice headed by the President’s brother Robert and the American Zionist Council. The council refused to register and the DOJ tried to exert pressure on them, even going so far in one instance as giving them 72 hours to register, but at no avail. Examining the newly-de-classified documents containing the minutes of those meetings between the DOJ and the AZC one can see the language of gangsters being used. In one of those documents dated May 2, 1963 the head legal counsel Simon H. Rifkind for the AZC explained to the representatives of the DOJ the nature of the AZC, saying “The council is composed of representatives of the various Zionist organizations in the United States” and thereby, in effect, it represented “the vast majority of organized Jewry within this country.” The message was clear here-As far as organizations go it is big and powerful. Judge Rifkind obviously wanted to make sure the Kennedy’s knew they were picking a fight with a gorilla and not some small mouse.
He did not stop there but went further by stating that the vast number of Jews who adhered to the principles of Zionism could not understand how “our administration” could “do such harm to the Zionist movement and impair the effectiveness of the council by insistence on registration.”
Here Judge Rifkind made sure he used the phrase “our administration” instead of “our government” to make a specific point, namely that he was talking about Kennedy personally, that it was the Jews responsible for him getting elected and that if he continued with his agenda he was in effect entering into a war with organized Jewry.
Another meeting very much worth noting was held on October 17, 1963 between DOJ and AZC. In this meeting Judge Rifkind insisted on non registering, citing that fact that “It was the opinion of most of the persons affiliated with the Council that such registration…would eventually destroy the Zionist movement” and adding that he did not believe his clients would “file any papers or sign any papers indicating that the organization was an agent of a foreign principal”. In other words, “Screw You America and your laws, we’ll do what we want” as well as threatening the administration and telling them who really ruled the country, not the Kennedy brothers but rather the persons “affiliated” with AZC. Once translated from Gangsterese into understandable political language, this statement was in effect a direct warning/threat to the Administration that the war was on. It is up for grabs whether or not the Kennedys understood this to be the real threat it was, but nevertheless the Administration decided to continue with its position.
On November 22, 1963 President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. As the AZC went away into the sunset, AIPAC came riding in, born and led by the same persons who created and managed AZC for the same purpose. This time however, the message went out clearly for all on Capitol Hill to hear and understand-”Do not stand in our way of influencing public opinion, policy, or laws.”
Obviously, the message has been effective, as all American leaders save a few such as James Traficant have done as instructed. According to the former Congressman, Israel receives $15 Billion worth of aid from the American Taxpayers without a single discussion or a single argument on the floor of either the house of Representatives or the Senate. Why? Because no one dares to question it. Why is it that most of our politicians make pilgrimage to Tel Aviv and the “wailing wall” in Jerusalem to get the blessing of Israel before they are even approved by their own political parties here in the United States? Why is it our Congress is always split down the middle on all other issues presented to them except when it deals with Israel? We all still remember the comment made by former Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon to his Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in October 2001: “Don’t worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America.” When people with eyes to see state that fact they are called anti-Semites, despite the fact that what is being said is the truth.
The “control” Sharon spoke about has been there for a long time now. Consider what the late Senator Fulbright (who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and who held hearings back in 1963 regarding the AZC and the fact it should be registered as a Foreign Agent registration) said when speaking on the CBS television program “Face the Nation” had to say-
“I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy not approved by the Jews…Terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on Congress… the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get Congress to do anything they (the Jews) don’t approve of.”
These words were not spoken by a researcher or a reporter but by a brave American hero who actually lived through and experienced the Jewish influence over our political system and media.
This Israeli political occupation of the United States should not go on unchallenged, and American Jewry should understand that secrets cannot be hidden from the people forever. Nothing less than a revolution will correct this situation. The corrective action should be taken at the ballot boxes by electing people who are not afraid to challenge AIPAC and the likes and make America’s Foreign Policy truly American and not Israeli.
As a first step in this process, let us keep the words of our dear martyred President John F Kennedy in mind- “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”.
* Hesham Tillawi, PhD
Hesham Tillawi, PhD International Relations is a Palestinian American writer, Political Analyst and a TV and Radio Talk Show Host. His program Current issues with Hesham Tillawi can be viewed Live every Thursday evening at 6:30PM Central Standard Time on Cox Cable system Channel 15 in Louisiana, Nationwide on Bridges TV, and Worldwide on Amazonas Satellite, as well as Live on the Internet at http://www.currentissues.tv.
TO the multitude, and to his disciples spake Jesus, saying,
The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.
And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.
But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.
¶But woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters
p. 108
of the law, judgment, mercy and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
¶Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
*O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 2:00 am Post subject: Real significance today of the Nazi Holocaust
Alan Hart:
Those who deny and/or revise the Nazi holocaust offer three main assertions in support of their case.....
The first is that the Nazis had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews.....
The second main assertion of those who deny and/or revise the holocaust is that the Nazis did not use gas chambers to mass murder Jews....
The third main assertion of holocaust revisionists is that the figure of six million Jewish deaths is a gross exaggeration and that the real number was very significantly lower....
I am withdrawing from the battlefield of the war for the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, and the following is an explanation of why.
More than three decades ago when I made my commitment to this war effort, in the full knowledge that it would make me persona non grata in the eyes of the mainstream media I had served with some distinction, I believed that the single most amazing thing about the conflict was Zionism’s success in selling its propaganda lies – lies which were told not only to justify anything and everything the Zionist (not Jewish) State of Israel did and does, but also to establish and fix the boundaries of what could and could not be discussed in public discourse about Israel’s policies and actions. (I mean what could and could not be discussed by non-Jews, Europeans and Americans especially, if they didn’t want to be terrorized by smears and false charges of anti-Semitism which could result in them losing their positions and jobs).
What could be called the Mother and Father of Zionism’s propaganda lies is the assertion that all the Jews of the world are descended from the ancient Hebrews and therefore have a common ethnic origin and national heritage. In other words, according to Zionism’s assertion, Palestine is by definition the ancestral homeland of all the Jews of the world; and this, it is further asserted by Zionism, means that Israel has the right to sovereignty over all the land it occupies today and Jews from anywhere have the right to settle on it.
As Israeli historian Shlomo Sand explains in his book The Invention of the Jewish People, that is simply not true. And as I noted in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews (which was published before Sand’s work), almost all if not all the Jews who went to Palestine in answer to Zionism’s call had no biological connection to the ancient Hebrews. They, like almost all Jews, were the descendants of peoples from many homelands (mainly in Eastern and Western Europe) who converted to Judaism centuries after the brief rule of the ancient Hebrews ended and who, after their conversion, had only their religion and its rituals in common.
Though they subsequently converted to Islam and Christianity, it is possible that when Zionism declared itself to be in existence 1897 there were more Palestinian Arabs than Palestinian Jews who were descended from the ancient Hebrews.
Zionism’s claim that the Jews of the world have a right to the land now occupied by Greater Israel does not bear honest examination.
One of the most influential of Zionism’s follow-up propaganda lies asserted that Israel was given its birth certificate and thus its legitimacy by the United Nations Partition Resolution of 29 November 1947. As I document in detail in my book and have indicated over the years in more than a few articles and presentations of public platforms of all kinds, that is propaganda nonsense.
In the first place the UN without the consent of the majority of the people of Palestine did not have the right to decide to partition Palestine or assign any part of its territory to a minority of alien immigrants in order for them to establish a state of their own.
Despite that, by the narrowest of margins, and only after a rigged vote (rigged by Zionist pressure amounting to blackmail on the leaders and governments of some member states), the UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem not part of either. But the General Assembly resolution was only a proposal – meaning that it could have no effect, would not become policy, unless approved by the Security Council.
The truth is that the General Assembly’s partition proposal never went to the Security Council for consideration. Why not? Because the US knew that, if approved, it could only be implemented by force; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.
So the partition plan was vitiated (became invalid), and the question of what the hell to do about Palestine after the occupying British had been driven out it by Zionist terrorism was taken back to the General Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the US was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was debating what to do next that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be in existence - actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community as it then was, including the Truman administration.
The truth of the time was that Israel had no right to exist. It came into existence because Ben-Gurion had done everything necessary to guarantee that his Jewish forces would be more than sufficient in numbers and well enough armed to roll back and defeat any Arab military response to Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence, and that Zionist might would prevail over Palestinian right.
Thereafter Zionism was successful in convincing the Western world that poor little Israel lived in constant danger of annihilation, the “driving into the sea” of its Jews. The truth is that Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab military force. Despite some stupid, face-saving Arab rhetoric to the contrary, which played into Zionism’s hands, the Arab regimes never, ever, had any intention of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine. (When elements of the armies of the frontline Arab states went to war with Israel in 1948, their objective was not to destroy the “Jewish state” but to hold the land that had been assigned to the Palestinian Arab state by the vitiated partition plan, and they failed miserably, as Ben-Gurion was confident they would, to do that. Also true is that Jordan, whose king had been in secret dialogue with Zionism’s in-Palestine leaders, would not have been a serious party to the Arab war effort if Ben-Gurion had not tried to grab Jerusalem; if, in other words, he had been content for the Holy City not to be part of either the Jewish or Arab state of the vitiated partition plan).
Israel always was the aggressor and oppressor, not and never the victim.
Its assertion, repeated over and over again, that it didn’t have Arab partners for peace was also a big, fat, propaganda lie (as the documented truth of history, including de-classified Israeli state papers, which are ignored by the mainstream media, proves).
When I made my commitment to the war for truth more than three decades ago, I believed that calling and holding Israel to account for its crimes, in order for there to be peace based on justice for the Palestinians and security for all, would remain a mission impossible unless the citizens of the Western nations, enough of them and Americans especially, were informed about the truth of history.
That seemed obvious to me because it was clear that, unwilling to confront the Zionist lobby in all its manifestations, the governments of the major Western powers were not going to use the leverage they have to oblige Israel to end its defiance of international law unless and until they were pushed to do by informed public opinion – by manifestations of real democracy in action. THE problem was that most citizens of the Western nations, Americans especially, were too mis-informed and uninformed to do the pushing. In other words, because they had been conditioned by Zionist propaganda, peddled without question by the mainstream media, most citizens were too ignorant to make their democracies work for justice and peace in the Middle East.
So my starting point was the belief that the real conflict is an information war between Zionism’s masters of deception on the one side and the truth tellers on the other.
The truth tellers were few in number but among those who produced major truth-telling works (books) were Jews of real integrity including, for example, the Jewish-American Alfred M. Lilienthal, the first two Israeli “revisionist” meaning honest historians – Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe, the Jewish-American Norman Finkelstein and Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer. (In such company the Gentile me felt secure in the frontline trenches of the war for truth. There was also comfort in knowing that we were taking on Zionism from the moral high ground).
Over the last 20 years or so, with their books, articles and public speaking, the truth tellers have made an impact but not on a big enough scale to change the outcome of the war.
The truth today is that the situation of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians is worse than it has ever been and is worsening as Israel continues its defiance of international law and gobbles up more and more Palestinian land and water resources.
Also true today is that there is a rising, global tide of anti-Israelism, but it has little or nothing to do with the work of the truth tellers. It is being provoked by Israel’s policies and actions.
Some people (including perhaps President Obama) hope that Israel’s growing isolation will bring a majority of Israeli Jews to their senses and cause them to insist that their government be serious about peace on terms the Palestinians could accept. That has to be a possibility, but I think it is much more likely that the rising, global tide of anti-Israelism will have an opposite effect. I mean that it will assist Zionism’s deluded leaders to reinforce the message that what is happening is proof of what they have always said – that the world hates Jews, and that Israel’s leaders must therefore do whatever is necessary to preserve and protect their state as an insurance policy, a refuge of last resort, for all Jews everywhere, even if that means telling an American president and the whole world to go to hell.
On reflection today I believe that Zionism could have been contained and defeated by now if the resources (yes, I do mean money) had been available to assist the promotion and spread of the truth of history on the scale necessary to empower the citizens of the Western nations, Americans especially, to make their democracies work for justice and peace, by demanding that their governments end their unconditional support for Israel right or wrong. (In my view, which is based on my own engagements with audiences across the U.S., Americans in great numbers would have been open to the truth of history if they had also been made aware that unconditional support for Israel right or wrong is not in their own best interests).
Because the resources were not made available, the war for the truth of history has remained the most asymmetric of all information wars. Zionism’s masters of deception have, as they always have had, virtually unlimited funds for the co-ordinated promotion of their propaganda lies. The truth-tellers are, as they always have been, without the resources needed to put together and implement a co-ordinated, winning campaign strategy.
The main providers of the resources necessary for winning the information war ought to have been seriously wealthy Arabs in general and seriously wealthy diaspora Palestinians in particular. They ought to have done for Palestine what seriously wealthy Jews did and still do for Zionism.
There are two main reasons why seriously wealthy diaspora Palestinians declined to play their necessary part in funding promotion of the truth of history.
Those who live in Western Europe and America are frightened that any association with the work of people who credibly challenge Zionism’s version of history would invite Zionist retribution which could result in their businesses being damaged and perhaps even destroyed.
Those who live in the Gulf States are frightened that assisting the truth-tellers could put their very comfortable positions and relationships with the rulers of those states at risk because they, the rulers, would not take kindly to blow back hassle from Zionism. (Zionist heavyweights in America do sometimes call Gulf Arab rulers directly to tell them what they should not do or allow. One such call was made to tell a ruler that he should not support Alan Hart and Ilan Pappe. The call was made after Ilan and I had made a joint presentation in the particular state, at its invitation, and had been promised support for our work).
Another possible reason why some seriously wealthy diaspora Palestinians have not assisted the promotion of the truth of history could be that they don’t understand (at all or well enough) that Western governments are not going to confront the Zionist monster unless the citizens of nations, the voters, are informed enough to demand that they do.
It’s also not impossible that some seriously wealthy diaspora Palestinians have not contributed to the information war effort because they believe but dare not say that Palestine has long been a lost cause.
The brutal truth about seriously wealthy non-Palestinian Arabs is that most of them don’t care about the occupied and oppressed Palestinians and the many others, refugees still living in camps, who were dispossessed of their homes, their land and their rights. The Arab masses do care but their elites don’t. (That statement is something of an exaggeration to make a point but it contains much truth).
Today I can quantify the cost of my own commitment to the war for truth.
If I had written a pro-Zionist book, I would have had wealthy Jews throwing money at it and me for global promotion of all kinds. But with Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, (which is a complete re-writing of the entire history of the conflict exposing Zionist propaganda for the nonsense it is and replacing it with the documented truth of history), I was on my own. To fund the research and writing over nearly five years, then the printing and publication of the original, two-volume hardback edition, and then some promotion, I took out a loan against the security of the home my wife and I owned outright and have lived in for a quarter of a century.
At the time I decided to do so (with my dear wife’s complete understanding and support), I didn’t think I was being stupid. My previous book (Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker?) had earned me significant income from the sale of the Arabic newspaper serialization rights, and I assumed that my latest book would do the same, enabling me to clear the re-mortgaged debt on my home.
I was, of course, aware that there were truths in Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews that would be more than uncomfortable for the Arab regimes and which they would not want their newspapers to publish. (When I was writing the book I had to be guided by the fact you can’t tell the truth about Zionism with telling the truth about why the Arab states were never a threat to Israel’s existence). But newspaper serialization of a two-volume book (which became three volumes in its updated American edition) would have taken only a relatively small amount of total content. Arab editors doing the serialization could have left out everything that offended their political masters and still had more than enough material to inform and entertain their readers.
But it was no go. My book was not only red-flagged by Zionism and therefore all the major Western publishing houses, this despite the fact that my extremely well connected and respected literary agent had on file letters from the CEO’s of some of them with rare praise for my manuscript. (One of the letters, which I quoted in the Preface to the original hardback edition, described my manuscript as “awesome… driven my passion, commitment and profound learning.” It added, “There is no question it deserves to be published.”). For their part the Arab regimes were at one with Zionism in wanting the full truth of history to be suppressed to the maximum extent possible. They effectively endorsed Zionism’s strategy for dealing with me and my work – “Alan Hart and his book do not exist.” (I think my dear friend Ilan Pappe may well have been right when he said that Zionism was more frightened of my book than any other because of its title, which he described as “the truth in seven words.”)
Today I have to face the cost consequences of my commitment to the truth of history. To avoid being dispossessed of my home and land in the not too distant future because I don’t have the money to pay the principal sum of the outstanding re-mortgaged debt (I have been paying only the interest on it), I now have to sell and downsize. Preparing to downsize will require, among other things, months of my fulltime to sort through and dispose of much of what has been accumulated over decades and could not be accommodated and stored in a much smaller property with little or no land. And that in the proverbial nutshell is why I am withdrawing from the battlefield of the war for truth. The days when I could serve causes beyond self in order to feel that I was doing something useful with my life are gone. Like seriously wealthy diaspora Palestinians and other Arabs, I must now put my own interests, and above all those of my dear wife, first.
Back in the early 1970's when I was making Five Minutes To Midnight, my documentary on global poverty and its implications for all, I had a verbal boxing match with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. After a day of filming with her as she collected some of those dying from poverty on the pavements to give them a few more days of life with shelter and loving care, she invited my camera crew and I to a frugal evening meal with some of her sisters. The question I posed for discussion over the meal was this: Which is the most important word in any language – love or justice?
Mother Teresa argued with passion, sometimes angry passion, for love. I argued, with equal but not angry passion, for justice. If she was alive today I would say to her, “Mother Teresa, it’s justice not love that is required if the countdown to catastrophe in Palestine that became Israel is to be stopped.”
But it was not only my complete identity with the Palestinians’ irrefutable claim for justice and my admiration of the incredible, almost superhuman steadfastness of the occupied and oppressed that inspired, drove and sustained my commitment to the war for the truth of history.
I feared, as I do even more so today, that if the information war that probably could have been won by now is lost, the end-game will most likely be a final Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine, followed, quite possibly, by another great turning against the Jews, provoked by Zionism’s insufferable self-righteousness and contempt for international law
For three decades I have done my best to contribute to the understanding needed to prevent both obscenities from happening, but I have now reached and passed the outer limits of what I can do when there’s a lack of will on the part of seriously wealthy diaspora Palestinian and other Arabs to assist the promotion and spread of the truth of history.
In the days and weeks to come I will no doubt find myself wondering if I was naive to believe that Palestinian right could be assisted to triumph over Zionist might.
To those all over the world who down the years have expressed appreciation for my books, articles and presentations on public platforms of all kinds – Thank You, your moral support helped to sustain my commitment.
Final Footnote
A Palestinian friend once asked me if, on matters to do with Palestine, I was aware of the main difference between Arabs and Jews. He didn’t wait for me to respond. He said: “Arabs almost never do what they say they will do. Jews often do what they say they will not do.”
'International Conference, London: 19-21 June 2013
Birkbeck, University of London
Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism
on behalf of the International Consortium for Research on Antisemitism and Racism
A major international conference on Boycotts - Past and Present, conceived by the International Consortium for Research on Antisemitism and Racism, and hosted by the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London, will be held on 19-21 June 2013.
This three-day conference will examine boycotts in the longue durée, seeking to gain deeper understanding of the development of these movements and their efforts to weaken, ostracize and delegitimize specific institutions, polities and states.
The topics under consideration include: activism against slavery; the bus boycotts of America; marketplace nationalism; anti-Jewish and anti-Nazi boycotts; modern consumer boycotts; anti-apartheid campaigns; localism and global activism; the legal and ethical perspectives on boycotts; as well as the current Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement....' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Published on 7 Sep 2016
VICE embeds with the London branch of the Neturei Karta, a group of controversial Ultra Orthodox Jews who campaign against Zionism and for the immediate dismantling of the state of Israel.
Because of their unusual views, and support of people like ex-Iranian president Ahmadinejad and groups like the Hungarian far right Jobbik party, other Jewish people often label them as extremists.
First Congress - Basle, Switzerland (1897)
The first Zionist Congress was to have taken place in Munich, Germany. However, due to considerable opposition by the local community leadership, both Orthodox and Reform, it was decided to transfer the proceedings to Basle, Switzerland.
Theodore Herzl acted as chairperson of the Congress which was attended by some 200 participants. The major achievements of the Congress were its formulation of the Zionist platform, known as the Basle program and the foundation of the World Zionist Organization. The program stated,
"Zionism seeks for the Jewish people a publicly recognized legally secured homeland in Palestine."
This gave clear expression to Herzl's political Zionism in contrast with the settlement orientated activities of the more loosely organized Hibbat Zion. Herzl was elected President of the Zionist organization and an Inner Actions Committee and a Greater Actions Committee were elected to run the affairs of the movement between Congresses.
In his diary Herzl wrote,
“Were I to sum up the Basle Congress in a word - which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly - it would be this: At Basle I founded the Jewish State.”
Second Congress - Basle, Switzerland (1898)
In the face of a more active opposition to Zionism from amongst various Jewish leaders, Herzl called on the Congress to “conquer the communities.” In essence, this was a demand that the Zionist movement focus its attention not only on political activity for Palestine but also on work within the Jewish communities. At this Congress, the foundations were laid for the establishment of the Jewish Colonial Trust, a financial body aimed at the development of Palestine. It was also at this Congress that a group of Socialists first appeared demanding representation within the Zionist leadership.
Third Congress - Basle, Switzerland (1899)
Herzl opened the Third Congress with a report on his meetings with Kaiser William II in Constantinople and Jerusalem. Despite the fact that these meetings produced no practical results, the fact that they took place was of considerable symbolic value.
The Congress spent a good deal of its time discussing the political dimensions of Zionism although opposition to this orientation was voiced by those who thought that the more practical efforts of settlement should be encouraged. In a debate on the Jewish Colonial Trust, Congress decided that its funds could only be spent in Palestine or Syria.
Whilst delegates were increasingly concerned with what was called the question of culture—the Zionist attempt at a national/ethnic identity for the Jews—Herzl was preoccupied with the political matters at hand. Some historians argue that Herzl was not so much disinterested in these cultural matters as he was frightened of their potential to split the infant movement.
Fourth Congress - London, England (1900)
The Congress was held in London in order to affect public opinion in that country in sympathy with the Zionist idea. The Congress met in an atmosphere of growing concern over the situation facing Rumanian Jewry where many thousands had been forced to leave and the remainder were subject to persecution. Although this appeared to provide further evidence of the need for a “Charter,” Herzl had nothing substantial to offer that might bring succor to these Jews.
On the cultural question, the religious Zionists led by Rabbi Yitzhak Ya’akov Reines demanded that the Zionist movement restrict itself solely to political matters. The Congress also discussed the problems of the Jewish workers in Palestine and the question of a national Jewish sports movement.
Fifth Congress - Basle, Switzerland (1901)
Herzl reported to the Congress of his meeting with Sultan Abdul Hamid II of Turkey and of the progress of the Jewish Colonial Trust. These achievements did not satisfy all the delegates, in particular those associated with the recently formed Democratic Faction.
The group led by Leo Motzkin, Martin Buber and Chaim Weizmann called on the Zionist movement to adopt a program of Hebrew culture and a greater degree of democracy within the organization. The more concrete achievement of the Congress was the establishment of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) which was to raise funds for land purchase in Palestine.
Sixth Congress - Basle, Switzerland (1903)
At the Fifth Zionist Congress, a resolution was adopted determining that the next Congress would take place every alternate year and not —as had been the practice—annually.
In his opening speech, Herzl detailed the efforts to secure a Charter on behalf of the movement, but these attempts were increasingly desperate as the situation of the Jews, particularly following the Kishinev pogrom, deteriorated. This gave rise to various temporary solutions such as the “El Arish” project, which was negotiated with the British statesmen, Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Landsdowne.
After the collapse of this scheme, the British then offered Herzl the possibility of an autonomous Jewish settlement in East Africa (commonly known as the Uganda project). Herzl called on the Congress to give serious consideration to the plan, even though he appreciated that it could not replace Palestine as the Jewish Homeland. In the lively debate that followed, Max Nordau, Herzl's major confidante, argued that “Uganda” would be a night refuge. Despite considerable opposition and a demonstrative walk-out by the Russian Zionists, the delegates agreed by 295 in favor, 178 against and 98 abstentions that a committee should be dispatched to examine the possibility of Jewish settlement in East Africa.
Among other matters discussed at the Congress was a report by Franz Oppenheimer on the possibility of cooperative settlement on the land, a program that was to have influence on the creation of various settlements in Palestine a few years later. This was to be Herzl's last Congress: he died a year later.
Seventh Congress - Basle, Swtizerland (1905)
The Congress opened with a eulogy on Herzl by Nordau. Immediately thereafter, debate resumed on the question of settlement outside Palestine. The Congress heard the report of the Commission that had been sent to East Africa which had concluded that “Uganda” was unsuitable for mass Jewish settlement and proceeded to vote against a national home anywhere except Palestine and its immediate vicinity. The Territorialists, led by Israel Zangwill left the Congress in protest and established the Jewish Territorial Association.
The Congress also discussed practical work in Palestine e.g. giving support to agricultural settlements and industrial activity. Although Nordau seemed the natural choice to succeed Herzl as President of the Zionist Organization, he refused and instead David Wolfsohn assumed this position. The Executive of the WZO moved its offices from Vienna to Cologne.
Eighth Congress - The Hague, Netherlands (1907)
The decision to hold the Congress in the Hague was based on the knowledge that the Second International Peace Conference was to be held in that city.
At the Congress the major debate concerned the conflicting approaches of the practical and political Zionists.
The political Zionists demanded that a charter be secured before practical work began in Palestine, while the practical Zionists argued that without substantial settlement there was little hope of gaining legal sanction from one or more of the Great Powers.
In the event, the movement supported a number of practical efforts and established a Palestine branch of the WZO to be headed by Arthur Ruppin.
However, the adoption of synthetic Zionism—a synthesis of the two positions—became the clarion call of not a few delegates, their major spokesperson being Chaim Weizmann.
Ninth Congress - Hamburg, Germany (1909)
At this Congress, Wolffsohn and Nordau expressed the hope that following the Young Turk Revolution, Zionist endeavors might enjoy a change in fortune.
In the meantime, the Congress once again divided over the question of how to implement the Zionist program. The practical lobby accused Wolffsohn of focusing on political activity and his executive—of judging projects by their commercial value. This rival leadership included Menahem Ussishkin, Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow who gained support from the representatives of the workers' movement in Palestine.
Tenth Congress - Basle, Switzerland (1911)
This Congress has often been described as the Peace Congress because it finally laid to rest the debate between the practical and political Zionists with Synthetic Zionism becoming the operational mode of the movement.
Considerable attention was given to the question of practical work in Palestine as well as Hebrew culture. Shlomo Kaplansky raised the question of Zionist relations with the Arabs and, for the first time, a session of the Congress was held in Hebrew.
David Wolfsohn was succeeded as President by Otto Warburg, a German Jew and distinguished scientist who was identified with the practical Zionist camp. The WZO moved its headquarters from Cologne to Berlin.
Eleventh Congress - Vienna, Austria (1913)
The Congress spent much of its time discussing settlement activities in Palestine and the work of the organization's office in Jaffa. Nordau, who had objected to this deviation from Herzl's approach was conspicuous by his absence.
Weizmann and Ussishkin won the support of Congress for the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. However, twelve years were to pass before the facility opened.
Twelfth Congress - Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary), Czechoslovakia (1921)
This was, of course, the first Congress to be held after the First World War, during which time the Zionist movement had won British support for its endeavors to create a Jewish national home in Palestine (the Balfour Declaration). The Congress passed resolutions welcoming the decision of the principal Allied Powers to grant the mandate for Palestine to Britain and encouraged the ratification of the Mandate by the League of Nations.
With the end of the war, the defeat of Germany and the success of the London branch of the movement, it was clear that the leadership there would be rewarded. Weizmann became President of the WZO and Sokolow President of the executive.
The Congress discussed the activities and organization of Keren HaYesod, which had been established a year earlier at the London Conference and whose purpose it was to raise funds for the upbuilding of Palestine from among the Jewish communities of the Diaspora.
A further issue discussed at the Congress was the question of Zionism's relations with the Arabs. This matter had become serious as a result of Arab riots in Jerusalem (1920) and in Jaffa (1921). The Congress passed a resolution declaring that Zionism seeks,
“to live in relations of harmony and mutual respect with the Arab people,”
'....Dan Meridor, a former government minister from Netanyahu’s Likud party, called the law “evil and dangerous”. Israel, he pointed out, can have jurisdiction over private Palestinian land only if Palestinians vote for Israel’s parliament – in short, this is annexation by other means. It shuts the door on any kind of Palestinian state.
Over time, he added, it will bring unintended consequences. Rather than make the outposts legal, it will highlight the criminal nature of all settlements, including those in East Jerusalem and the so-called “settlement blocs” – areas previous US administrations had hinted they might accept for annexation to Israel in a future peace deal.
The other major danger was noted by opposition leader Isaac Herzog. “The train departing from here has only one stop – at The Hague,” he said, in reference to the home of the International Criminal Court.
If ICC prosecutors take their duties seriously, the legalisation law significantly raises the pressure on them to put Israeli officials – even Netanyahu – on trial for complicity in the war crime of establishing and nurturing the settlements.....' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
'Last week, Palestinian sources told Haaretz newspaper, that they were warned by the U.S. consulate in Israel not to appeal to the International Criminal Court, in The Hague, about the new settlements that have been approved by the Israeli government. The warning comes after the Israeli government approved 3,000 new residences in illegal colonies in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced that a new colony will be established in the West Bank as well. The U.S. consulate in Palestine threatened that if the Palestinians do file a suit against Israel over the illegal construction, the U.S. will cut its funding to the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian member of the Legislative Council, Hanan Ashrawi, commented on Israel's announcement to construct new colonies. Let's have a look.
HANAN ASHRAWI: Well, it's very clear that Netanyahu is violating, not just international law, but all the commitments that were made and is destroying the very chances of peace. Building a new settlement right now, on top of the 6,600 new settlement units that he is embarking on, is a very clear message to the rest of the world, that Israel is not only a rogue state living outside the law, but that it is bent on criminality, and lawlessness......' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Lord Rothschild discusses cousin’s crucial role in ‘miracle’ Balfour Declaration
Speaking ahead of the 67-word letter’s centenary, Jacob Rothschild describes the historic declaration which paved the way for Israel’s existence
http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/rothschild/
By STEPHEN ORYSZCZUK February 8, 2017, 9:47 am 0
The current and fourth Lord Rothschild has described the Balfour Declaration that helped pave the way for the creation of Israel as a “miracle” and revealed new details about his cousin Dorothea’s crucial role.
Speaking ahead of the 67-word letter’s centenary, they are his first ever public comments on the show of support from then-foreign secretary Lord Balfour to the second Lord Rothschild, his eccentric uncle Walter, and were made in a rare TV interview with former Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub as part of the Balfour 100 project.
Jacob Rothschild, 80, head of the family’s banking dynasty, said the declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine went through five drafts before finally being penned on 2 November 1917, adding: “It was the greatest event in Jewish life for thousands of years, a miracle… It took 3,000 years to get to this.”
The way it was achieved was extraordinary, he said. “It was the most incredible piece of opportunism. You had an impoverished would-be scientist, Chaim Weizmann, who somehow gets to England, meets a few people, including members of my family, seduces them, he has such charm and conviction, he gets to Balfour, and unbelievably, he persuades Lord Balfour, and Lloyd George, the prime minister, and most of the ministers, that this idea of a national home for Jews should be allowed to take place. I mean it’s so, so unlikely.”
Lord Rothschild being interviewed by ex-ambassador Daniel Taub
Lord Rothschild being interviewed by ex-ambassador Daniel Taub
The letter “changed the course of history for the Middle East and the Jewish people,” said Taub, who interviewed Rothschild at Waddeston Manor in Buckinghamshire, a country pile bequeathed to the nation by the family in 1957, where the Declaration is kept.
It was written to Walter Rothschild, a naturalist and collector, who was first and foremost interested in ornithology (the study of birds), said Jacob, and a “deeply eccentric man who rode around Tring Park on giant tortoises and whose carriage was pulled by zebras.
Walter only became interested in Zionism in later life, but Rothschild said he had been “deeply committed to Israel since the 1960s and have been there every year since”.
However, he said his family at the time was divided on the idea of Israel, noting that some members “didn’t think it was a good thing that this national home be established there”.
He also revealed for the first time the role of his cousin Dorothy de Rothschild, who acted as a critical go-between while still in her teens. Describing her as “devoted to Israel,” Rothschild said: “What she did, which was crucially important, was to connect Weizmann to the British establishment, and extraordinarily, she told Weizmann how to integrate, how to insert himself into British establishment life, which he learned very quickly.”
Her letters, which are stored at Waddeston, detail her later dealings with a range of Zionist leaders, and her advice on the organisation of the Zionist Conference, and Rothschild said she had a profound effect on him, introducing him to Israel and the family’s philanthropic foundation in 1962.
Jacob Rothschild, Lord Rothschild, middle east, Israel, Balfour declaration, Lloyd George, Former Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub, Walter Rothschild, Benjamin Netanyahu, Zionist, Zionist Conference _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
On the streets of Jerusalem, Abby Martin interviews Jewish Israeli citizens from all walks of life. In several candid interviews, disturbing comments reveal commonly-held views about Palestinians and their future in the region.
What will the maps of Palestine and Israel look like if Israel illegally annexes the Jordan Valley on July 1?
Mohammed Haddad | 26 Jun 2020 14:40 GMT | Palestine, Infographic, Middle East, Israel, Gaza
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The current map of Palestine is often described as resembling "Swiss cheese". Over the past century it has been carved up, walled-in and filled with hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements and military checkpoints.
Now, in the latest round of Israel's ongoing occupation and policy of land-grabs this map could become even more disjointed. On July 1, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce Israel's annexation of the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea.
Annexation is a term used when a state unilaterally incorporates another territory within its borders. Annexing the Jordan Valley would mean that Israel would officially consider it part of the state of Israel.
"International law is very clear: annexation and territorial conquest are forbidden by the Charter of the United Nations," said Michael Lynk, the UN independent expert on human rights in the Palestinian territories.
To understand what annexation will look like on the ground and how we got here, Al Jazeera has compiled a collection of historic and present-day maps for you to explore.
Click on any of the links to jump straight to that section:
Historic maps:
1917 - Pre-British Mandate Palestine
1918-1947 - Jewish immigration from Europe
Chart: 1920-1946 - Jewish immigration to Palestine
1947 - Proposed UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181)
1948 - Palestinians expelled
1967 - Israel occupies Gaza and the West Bank
1993 & 1995 Oslo Accords
Present-day maps:
How big are Palestine and Israel?
Occupied Palestinian territories
Israeli settlements
Chart: Israeli settler growth
Separation wall
Israeli checkpoints
Palestinian refugee camps
Israel's history of annexations
Jerusalem, the divided city
The Old City of Jerusalem
Al-Aqsa Mosque
Occupied Golan Heights
Jordan Valley
Israel's annexation of the Jordan Valley
Trump's conceptual map
Jordan Valley annexation: Trump vs Netanyahu
Blockade of the Gaza Strip
Where are the Palestinians today?
Where are the Jews today?
International recognition
Historic maps:
1. 1917 - Pre-British Mandate Palestine
During World War I, Britain made several conflicting agreements to gain the support of various groups in the Middle East. Most notably was the Balfour Declaration - a public pledge promising the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people".
On October 31, 1917, British forces conquered Palestine from the Ottoman-Turks, ending 1,400 years of Islamic rule over the region. In 1920, it began its 28-year rule over British Mandate Palestine.
Before the British Mandate in Palestine, Jews made up around six percent of the total population.
Palestine British Mandate
2. 1918-1947 - Jewish immigration from Europe
The British Mandate facilitated Jewish immigration from Europe to Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s. The Jewish population in Palestine increased from 6 percent (1918) to 33 percent (1947).
Jewish immigration into Palestine
3. 1920-1946 - Jewish immigration to Palestine
A total of 376,415 Jewish immigrants, mostly from Europe, arrived in Palestine between 1920 and 1946 according to British records. At its peak in 1935, 61,854 Jews immigrated to Palestine. A detailed breakdown of these records is available here - Stanford BJPA (Page 185) and here - Atlas of Palestine (Page 21).
Jewish immigration into Palestine
This 1935 animated map produced by March of Time shows where many of Germany's Jews fled to following the rise of Hitler's Nazi party / Getty Images.
4. 1947 - Proposed UN Partition Plan
Following the end of WWII, the newly formed United Nations proposed a plan that would grant 55 percent of historic Palestine to a Jewish state and 45 percent to a non-contiguous Arab one. Jerusalem would remain under international control.
Palestinians rejected the proposal because it stripped away much of the land that was under their control. At the time, they owned 94 percent of historic Palestine and comprised 67 percent of the population. This plan was never implemented on the ground.
UN partition plan of 1947
5. 1948 - Palestinians expelled
On May 14, 1948, the British Mandate expired triggering the first Arab-Israeli war. Zionist military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians and captured 78 percent of historic Palestine. The remaining 22 percent was divided into the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The fighting continued until January 1949 when an armistice agreement between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria was forged. The 1949 Armistice Line is also known as the Green Line and is the generally recognised boundary between Israel and the West Bank. The Green Line is also referred to as the (pre-) 1967 borders, before Israel occupied the remaining Palestinian territories during the June 1967 war.
1948 Nakba map
1948 Nakba
Palestinians, carrying possessions on their heads, flee from an village in Galilee (1948) / Getty Images.
6. 1967 - Israel occupies Gaza and the West Bank
During the June 1967 War, Israel occupied all of historic Palestine and expelled a further 300,000 Palestinians from their homes. Israel also captured the Syrian Golan Heights in the north and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula in the south. In 1978, Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty which led to Israel withdrawing from the Egypian territory.
1967 Naksa map
7. 1993 & 1995 Oslo Accords
The Oslo Accords represented the first direct Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement. This led to the formation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) - an administrative body that would govern Palestinian internal security, administration and civilian affairs in areas of self-rule, for a five-year interim period.
On the ground, the occupied West Bank was divided into three areas - A, B and C.
Area A initially comprised three percent of the West Bank and grew to 18 percent by 1999. In Area A, the PA controls most affairs.
Area B represents about 22 percent of the West Bank. In both areas, while the PA is in charge of education, health and the economy, the Israelis have full control of external security, meaning they retain the right to enter at any time.
Area C represents 60 percent of the West Bank. Under the Oslo Accords, control of this area was supposed to be handed over to the PA. Instead, Israel retains total control over all matters, including security, planning and construction. The transfer of control to the PA has never happened.
1995 Oslo Map
Present-day maps
8. How big are Palestine and Israel?
Combined, the areas of Palestine and Israel make up 26,790 km2. That is about the size of the US state of Hawaii (28,313 km2), the Caribbean island of Haiti (27,750 km2) or Albania in Europe (28,748 km2).
On the Palestinian side, the occupied territories which include Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem have a surface area of 6020 km2
Israel has a surface area of 20,770 km2 based on the internationally recognised Green Line boundaries.
How big is Palestine and Israel
9. Occupied Palestinian territories
The occupied Palestinian territories have been under Israeli military control since 1967. This makes it the longest occupation in modern history. The segmented territories include Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The Gaza Strip is a small coastal area bordering Egypt to the south. This region is home to two million Palestinians.
The West Bank is the kidney bean-shaped area to the east. It lies west of the banks of the Jordan River from where it gets its name. East Jerusalem is located on the Palestinian side of the 1949 Green Line. Three million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Occupied Palestinian Territories
10. Israeli settlements
Israeli settlements are Jewish communities built on Palestinian land. There are between 600,000 - 750,000 Israeli settlers living in at least 250 settlements (130 official , 120 unofficial) in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israeli settlements are illegal under international law as they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its population to the area it occupies.
In 2019, under the presidency of Donald Trump, the US declared that Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land were "not necessarily illegal", a dramatic break from decades of US policy.
Israeli settlements
Israeli settlements
11. Israeli settler growth
The population of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is growing at a faster rate than the population of Israel. Roughly 10 percent of Israel's 6.8 million Jewish population lives in these occupied Palestinian territories.
Despite being outside of Israel proper, these settlers are granted Israeli citizenship and receive government subsidies that significantly lower their cost of living.
As of 2020, there were 463,535 recorded settlers living in the West Bank and 220,200 in East Jerusalem.
Israeli settlers chart
12. Separation wall
Since 2002, Israel has been constructing a wall that stretches for more than 700 kilometres.
Israel says that the wall is for security purposes. However, rather than following the internationally-recognised 1967 boundary, known as the Green Line, 85 percent of the wall falls within the West Bank.
This severely limits the freedom of movement for Palestinians.
Israel separation wall
A section of Israel's separation wall in occupied East Jerusalem (2019) Al Jazeera. See more videos in this interactive project: Divided Jerusalem.
13. Israeli checkpoints
There are more than 700 road obstacles across the West Bank including 140 checkpoints. These checkpoints further limit Palestinian movement. About 70,000 Palestinians with Israeli work permits cross these checkpoints in their daily commute.
Israeli Checkpoints
Israeli Checkpoints
Checkpoint 300 blocks the road between Bethlehem and Jerusalem (ActiveStills / Al Jazeera). See more photos of Israel's military checkpoints.
14. Palestinian refugee camps
There are 1.5 million Palestinian refugees living in 58 official UN camps located throughout Palestine and neighbouring countries. In total, there are more than five million registered Palestinian refugees mostly living outside of these camps. The plight of Palestinian refugees is the longest, unresolved refugee problem in the world.
Palestinian refugee camps
15. Israel's history of annexation
Israel has unilaterally annexed two territories in the past.
East Jerusalem (1980)
Israel occupied East Jerusalem at the end of the 1967 War. In 1980, it passed a law making its annexation of East Jerusalem explicit.
Golan Heights (1981)
Israel unilaterally annexed the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981.
Israel uses the term "applying Israeli sovereignty" over areas it has annexed. Annexation and territorial conquest are illegal under international law. In 2019 The US recognised Israel's annexation of the Golan heights. It is the only country around the world to do so.
Israel history of annexations
Annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights
16. Jerusalem - the divided city
According to the international standards, Jerusalem is a divided city. West Jerusalem has been Israeli territory since 1948, and Jews are in the majority. East Jerusalem has a Palestinian majority and was occupied by Israel in 1967. Since its annexation in 1980, Israel has considered the entire city of Jerusalem a part of its territory. This is not internationally recognised. For this reason, Israeli maps do not show East Jerusalem being a part of the occupied West Bank.
Jerusalem the divided city
17. The Old City of Jerusalem
The Old City, located in East Jerusalem, is home to some of the holiest sites in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. In 1981, it was designated a World Heritage site by the United Nations.
The area, which is smaller than one-square kilometre (0.6 miles), is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, the Western Wall, St James Cathedral and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre among others.
Old City of Jerusalem
18. Al-Aqsa Mosque
Al-Aqsa mosque is the entire compound containing al-Qibli Mosque (grey dome) and the Dome of the Rock (golden dome).
The compound is known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount. The compound is similar in size to 20 football fields.
Al Aqsa mosque compound
Inside al-Aqsa: A 360° tour of Jerusalem's holiest mosque (2017), Al Jazeera.
19. Occupied Golan Heights
In 1967, Israel captured 70 percent of the Syrian Golan Heights and has occupied it ever since. In 1974, a UN observer force was created to maintain a ceasefire between Israel and Syria. In 1981, Israel unilaterally annexed the territory.
In 2019, the US became the only country to recognise Israel's annexation of the land.
Syrian Golan heights
20. Jordan Valley
The Jordan Valley makes up 30 percent of the West Bank and constitutes half of its agricultural land.
The 105km fertile strip of land connects the West Bank with Jordan. The Jordan Valley is the lowest point on Earth. It includes the Dead Sea, which is 790 metres below sea level.
The valley is home to 65,000 Palestinians and 11,000 illegal Israeli settlers.
Jordan Valley map
The Jordan Valley drone shot (2014). See more drone footage on Palestine Remix.
21. Israel's annexation of the Jordan Valley
Netanyahu's July 1 expected annexation of the Jordan Valley is significant for a number of reasons:
1. Would completely surround the Palestinians
The West Bank's only international border is with Jordan. If Israel annexes the Jordan Valley the entire West Bank would be completely surrounded by Israel. For Palestinians there cannot be a Palestinian state without the Jordan Valley.
2. Cuts off water and agricultural resources
Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley receive 18 times more water on average than Palestinian residents in the West Bank. Most Palestinian farmers are not connected to the water grid and have to rely on buying water from tankers. Annexation would mean that Palestinians would be physically cut off from the Jordan River.
3. Speeds up the construction of settlements
Currently, any new zoning or building in the West Bank requires the approval of Israel's defence minister and prime minister. This can take months or years. Following annexation, Israel would consider the Jordan Valley part of its territory and so any construction would become a local matter.
According to a map presented by Netanyahu in 2019, the areas to be annexed would comprise 95 percent of the Jordan Valley which makes up at least 22 percent of the West Bank.
Jordan Valley Annexation Map
22. Trump's conceptual map
On January 28, 2020, US President Donald Trump formally announced his Middle East Plan to resolve the seven-decade Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He hailed it as "the deal of the century".
As part of the plan, he presented a conceptual map that would allow Israel to annex huge parts of the occupied West Bank and give Palestinians control of only 15 percent of historical Palestine.
Trump 2020 map
23. Jordan Valley annexation: Trump vs Netanyahu
According to Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, the area that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to seize from the Jordan Valley is larger than the area presented in Trump's 2020 plan.
Based on their calculations, Israel would seize around 1236km2 of land from the Jordan Valley. According to Trump's conceptual map presented in January, 2020, Israel was to to annex a smaller part of the Jordan Valley, around 964km2.
Trump vs Netanyahu
24. Blockade of the Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli sea and air blockade since 2007. Since 2008, Israel has waged three wars on the Palestinian territory, killing thousands of people, mostly civilians.
In 1948, the Gaza Strip had a population of less than 100,000 people. Today it is home to two million, 64 percent of whom are refugees.
Gaza Strip blockade
One of the largest neighbourhoods in Gaza City, Shujayeh (2014). See more drone footage on Palestine Remix.
25. Where are the Palestinians today?
There are about 13 million Palestinians today, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Around half of the Palestinian population lives in historic Palestine which includes three million in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, two million in Gaza and 1.9 million Palestinian citizens of Israel. A further 5.6 million Palestinians live in Arab countries with the remaining 700,000 living in other countries around the world.
Map: Where are the Palestinians living today
26. Where are the Jews today?
According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics there are about 14.7 million Jews around the world today. Of these, 6.7 million live in Israel, 5.7 million in the US, 450,000 in France, 329,000 in Canada, 292,000 in the UK, 180,000 in Argentina and 165,000 in Russia.
Map: Where are the Jews living today?
27. International recognition
The United Nations has 193 member states. Of those, 162 (84 percent) recognise Israel and 138 (72 percent) recognise the State of Palestine.
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Palestine and Israel: Mapping an annexation
Yesterday, Israeli Channel 13 aired video recordings by rabbi educators at the state-sponsored military prep-academy Bnei David in the West Bank settlement of Eli. The rabbis hail Hitler’s Nazi racist ideology as “100% correct,” only criticizing it for not being applied to the right people – that is, the Jews should be the master-race, and non-Jews the ‘untermenschen’.
The statements are jaw-droppers. The full coverage with subtitles can be seen in a video prepared by journalist David Sheen.
These educators send young men to the army, and have been advocating these ideas for years. They have close ties to lawmakers, specifically to Rabbi Rafi Peretz, now head of the Union of Right Wing Parties, the notorious merger with the Kahanist party Jewish Power, who is now the leading candidate for Minister of Education. The academy is also tied to a Yeshiva, to which many students come after their military service.
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Slavery should return
It starts out with Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel, who bemoans that slavery has been abolished:
Abolishing legal slavery has created deficiencies. No one is responsible for that property. With God’s help it will return. The goyim (non-Jews) will want to be our slaves. Being a slave of the Jews is the best. They must be slaves, they want to be slaves. Instead of just wandering the streets, being foolish and harming each other, now he’s a slave, now his life is beginning to come into order.
The ‘goyim’ in this context is to be understood as Palestinians.
He says it’s because they have “genetic problems”, and posits that they want to be under occupation:
There are around us people with genetic problems. Ask any average Arab where he wants to be. He wants to be under occupation. Why? Because they have genetic problems, they don’t know how to run a country, they don’t know how to do anything – look at the state of them.
Yes, we are racists
“Of course there is racism”, Kashtiel continues.
Are we unaware that there are different races? Is it a secret? Is it untrue? What can you do? It’s true. Yes, we are racists, we believe in racism.
Kashtiel suggests that because Jews are a superior race, they can “help” the inferior ones:
Correct, there are races in the world, nations have genetic characteristics, so we [the Jews] must consider how to help them. Racial differences are real, and that’s precisely a reason to offer help.
A student asks the rabbi: “Who put you to decide who is who?”
Kashtiel:
I can see that my accomplishments are much more impressive than his.
The Holocaust is humanism and pluralism
Another rabbi, Giora Radler, says that the Holocaust is not what you think, it’s not about killing Jews. It is humanism and pluralism that is killing us for real:
The Holocaust for real is not about the killing of Jews – that’s not the Holocaust. All of these excuses claiming that it was based on ideology or that it was systematic, this is ridiculous. Because it was based on ideology, to a certain extent, makes it more moral than if people murdered people for no reason. Humanism, all the secular culture about us believing in the human, that’s the Holocaust. The Holocaust, for real, is being pluralist, believing in “I believe in the human”. That’s what’s called a Holocaust. The Lord (blessed be his name) is already shouting for many years that the [Jewish] exile is over, but people don’t listen to him, and that is their disease, a disease which needs to be cured by the Holocaust.
In other words, the Holocaust was there to teach Jews a lesson – drop pluralism, isolate yourself in the Jewish State and let go of the diaspora “illness”.
These remarks were made in a lesson titled “relating to the Holocaust”.
The Nazi logic was right
Radler:
The Nazi logic was right unto themselves. Hitler says that a certain group in society is the seed of all calamity for all humanity, that because of it all of mankind will go to oblivion, that they harm humanity, and therefore must be exterminated.
Radler asks a student: “Does this ideology sound illogical to you? Very bad?”
Student answers: “It doesn’t sound moral.”
Radler: “Was Moses as bad as Hitler?”
Student: “No.”
Radler:
Why not? There is one thing in the world that is truly evil and that is to be a hypocrite. Does it make a difference to you if they killed you now with a knife the way they did to Agag [the Amalekite king whom the prophet Samuel ‘hacked in pieces’] or if they kill you in a gas chamber?
Hitler was right, “100% correct”
Radler goes on to speak about Hitler, and now adds that the disease is not just pluralism and humanism, but also feminism, and that Hitler was absolutely right:
“Let’s start with the question whether Hitler was right or not”.
Student: “Not”.
Radler:
[Hitler] is the most righteous person. Of course he is right in every word he utters. In his ideology he is right. There is a male world which fights, which deals with honor and the brotherhood of soldiers. And there is the soft, ethical feminine world [which speaks of] ‘turning the other cheek’. ‘And we [Nazis] believe that the Jews carry on this heritage, trying, in our words, to spoil the whole of humanity, and that’s why they are the real enemy.’ Now, he [Hitler] is 100% correct, aside from the fact that he was on the wrong side.
So here, Radler was emulating Hitler, mouthing Nazi arguments approvingly. The only fault of the Nazis, per Radler, was that they didn’t know who the real master race was, and who the real ‘untermenschen’ were. The Nazis couldn’t be right, because only Jews could be the superior ones. But if Jews now apply this race theory and ideology currently – that is, essentially upon Palestinians, then they would really be “100% correct” – maybe even “101%”, because they got it even more right than Hitler.
Responses
This is a big mouthful. Real Judeo-Nazism.
The rabbis were contacted for response and tried to whitewash the whole thing as a misunderstanding.
Rabbi Kashtiel said that he was “sorry and at pain that a class on human rights got the opposite exposure to what it means, a modern-socialist understanding of slavery.”
Rabbi Radler said that his words were “taken out of context” and that the lesson about the Holocaust “seeks to explain the sick logic of Hitler as well as the reasons and motives for the Holocaust”.
Israeli-Palestinian lawmaker Ahmad Tibi responded to the airing: “In German it would have sounded more authentic”.
Of course, Zionist Israeli politicians were also alarmed. Centrist lawmaker Yair Lapid wrote on Twitter:
This is not Judaism. These are not values. People who speak like this are not worthy of educating youths.
Lapid called for halting the state financing of the Yeshiva “until the racist rabbis are expelled.” But there’s a problem here, because Lapid’s own ideology is about “maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians”, and although Lapid points out now that “secular people established Israel”, really, his religion is the ultra-nationalist Zionism, and he is just a slightly prettier face of that Judeo-Nazism we see emanating from Bnei David.
Leftist Meretz leader Tamar Zandberg:
The Eli academy should have been closed long ago, and whoever let the chauvinism, homophobia and all the rest of the hate which comes out of there to continue the madness, should not be surprised by the horrible expressions which came out of there today.
Zandberg said she applied to the education ministry to stop funding the academy.
But the Eli Yeshiva and academy are now closely tied with the government. It was the Yeshiva head rabbi Eli Sadan, who campaigned for Rafi Peretz to become head of the Union of Right Wing Parties, now the top candidate for Minister of Education. Peretz was allowed to speak to the students there before the elections, even as Naftali Bennett (who until now has been Minister of Education) and Prime Minister Netanyahu were refused.
In other words, there is a whole political reality that is even more radical than both Netanyahu and even Bennett, who was considered extreme-right, one that really does speak of Jewish power, in an overtly fascist, literally Nazi, vein. And this ideology is poised to gain a central place in the Israeli government.
Not a slip of the tongue
As the Channel 13 coverage also notes, what we have heard here is no slip of the tongue:
“These statements have been repeated again for years at Bnei David. Not a slip of the tongue, but a set agenda.”
And Bnei David is not an isolated island. A similar story of a genocidal educator of security forces is rabbi Dov Lior from the settlement Kiryat Arba, who endorsed the book Torat Hamelech (‘King’s Torah’) of 2009, which advocates the killing of non-Jewish babies since “it is clear they will grow to harm us”. Lior has been teaching police forces in a special program for religious recruits called ‘Believers in the Police’. The authors of the book, by the way, are from the Od Yosef Chai Yesiva in the settlement of Yitzhar, a Yeshiva that received funds from Jared Kushner’s family’s foundation until 2011. Views of the Holocaust as a divine punishment for sinners have been expressed by the former chief Sephardic rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who also believed that the purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews, and he likened non-Jews to donkeys.
It is possible that the above mentioned airing of shocking views may cause a certain temporary and local stir, but this ideology is deeply embedded, and now an integral part of a central Israeli political reality. It is clear that the rabbis treat this attention as a nuisance by liberals who have no understanding, and it is likely that they will regard this as an unfortunate ‘Azarya’ – like the soldier medic who was filmed murdering an incapacitated Palestinian at point blank range three years ago and had to spend some months in prison. The problem for Azarya’s supporters wasn’t the murder – but the video. And so these people may find ways to crawl out of this debacle, but they will continue believing in the righteousness of their Jewish supremacy.
H/t Ofer Neiman, Richard Silverstein, David Sheen _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
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