SluggerOtoole DEBATE ON MY ARTICLE ON IRISH ANTI-SEMITISM

The first article which I wrote about the hatred for Israel shown on the Irish Republican Balrog site was taken up by SluggerOtoole. The response to my article on Slugger was fast and furious and probably set a record with the speed and frequency of replies, until it run out of time as Slugger closed down for the Holiday Period. If you want to read it you can use the search on www.sluggerotoole.com and use my name Felix Quigley or some other combination if the following does not work adequately


Casual anti-semitism rampant
Felix Quigley is not happy about what he sees as a casual tolerance of anti semetism, here on Slugger and amongst Republicans on the web.
Mick Fealty @ 04:59 PM Comments (37) Trackbacks (0)

I reached 2 conclusions about this discussion of my article on Slugger.

Firstly it reconfirmed for me just how historically misguided most people are about what actually happened in the Middle East and wider since especially 1920. Every issue and event has been distorted and lied about. And that has got implications which I will describe below.

Secondly the situation can be changed more in the favour of Israel because there were some bloggers on that Slugger debate who argued in support of Zionism. In other words this time the Israel haters did not have it all their own way.

The implications of this debate are:

It is necessary to cover the whole of this historical period in a thoroughly serious and truthful manner. So for some time I intend to do this, using as my base the series of articles (23 Reasons) opposing the creation of a Palestinian state on the West bank and Gaza and written a little while ago by Joseph Alexander Norland who co-founded Israpundit. More of that in January.

It is impossible to answer each point on a blog because I have found to my cost that half the time these bloggers are not listening to the answer anyway.

These blogs, such as Slugger, do fulfil a role. Discussion and airing of views is better than repression.

But very often because of the nature of the medium, or the way it is set up, the topic flits about and the end result is sometimes little coherence in argument and the whole thing becomes superficial. Yet the issues raised in discussing my article on Republican anti-Semitism need to be answered…

ORIANA FALLACI

Continuing my theme of trying to understand the neoleft and its intense hatred of Israel I reproduce this piece by a valiant lady, Oriana Fallaci. From www.Frontpagemag.com

Oriana Fallaci on Anti-SemitismPanorama, April 18, 2002 (Unofficial) Translation from Italian byDavid A. Harris, American Jewish Committee

I find it shameful that in Italy there was a procession of individuals who, dressed as kamikazes, uttered vile insults at Israel, held up photos of Israeli leaders on whose foreheads they had drawn a swastika, inciting the populace to hate the Jews. And in order to see the Jews again in the extermination camps, in the gas chambers, in the crematoria of Dachau, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, etc., they would sell their own mothers to a harem.
I find it shameful that the Catholic Church permits a bishop, moreover one housed in the Vatican, a “saintly” bishop, who, in Jerusalem was found with an arsenal of weapons and explosives hidden in special compartments of his sacred Mercedes, to participate in that procession and to place himself in front of a microphone to thank, in the name of God, the kamikazes who massacre the Jews in the pizzerias and supermarkets. He called them “martyrs who go to death as to a party.”

I find it shameful that in France—the France of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”—synagogues are torched, Jews are terrorized, and their cemeteries profaned.

I find it shameful that in Holland and Germany and Denmark youngsters show off the kaffiyeh like the vanguard of Mussolini displayed the stick and the Fascist emblem.

I find it shameful that in almost every European university Palestinian students take over and nurture anti-Semitism; that in Sweden they asked that the Nobel Peace Prize given to Shimon Peres in 1994 be withdrawn, and left solely in the hands of the dove with the olive branch in his mouth—that is, Arafat.

I find it shameful that the esteemed members of the (Nobel) Committee, a committee that it seems makes choice based on politics and not merit, are taking the request into consideration and thinking of fulfilling it. To hell with the Nobel Prize and hooray to those who don’t receive it.I find it shameful (we are back in Italy) that the government-controlled television stations contribute to the revival of anti-Semitism by crying over Palestinian deaths only, minimizing the importance of Israeli deaths, speaking in a brisk and dismissive tone about them.

I find it shameful that in television discussions the scoundrels with the turban or kaffiyeh, who yesterday extolled the slaughter in New York and today praise the massacres in Jerusalem, Haifa, Netanya, and Tel Aviv, are received with such deference.

I find it shameful that the press does the same—gets indignant because in Bethlehem Israeli tanks surround the Church of the Nativity, but doesn’t get upset that in the same church 200 Palestinian terrorists (among them various leaders of Hamas and Al-Aksa), well-armed with machine guns and explosives, are not unwelcome guests of the monks (and then accept from the tank soldiers bottles of mineral water and baskets of apples.)

I find it shameful that, given the number of Israeli casualties since the onset of the second intifada (412), one well-known daily felt it appropriate to emphasize in bold headlines that more Israelis die in road accidents (600 per year).

I find it shameful that l’Oservatore Romano, that is, the newspaper of the pope—a pope who not too long ago left a note in the Wailing Wall apologizing to the Jews—accused a people exterminated by the millions by Christians, by Europeans, of extermination.

I find it shameful that the survivors of this (Jewish) people—people who still carry a number on their arm—are denied the right to react, defend themselves, avoid being exterminated again, by that same newspaper.

I find it shameful that, in the name of Jesus Christ (a Jew without whom they would all be unemployed), priests from our parishes or social centers or wherever flirt with the murderers of those who in Jerusalem cannot go to eat a pizza or buy an egg without being blown up.

I find it shameful that they choose the side of the very people who launched terrorism by killing us on planes, in airports, at the Olympics; and today these same people make sport of killing Western journalists—shooting them, kidnapping them, slitting their throats, beheading them. (After the publication of my piece “The Anger and the Pride,” someone in Italy wanted to do the same to me. Citing Koranic verses, he exhorted his “brothers” in the name of Allah to kill me. Actually, to die with me. Since he is someone who speaks English well, I respond to him in English: “F--k you.”)

I find it shameful that virtually the entire Left, that Left which 20 years ago permitted a trade-union procession to place a coffin (a Mafia-like warning) in front of the synagogue in Rome, has forgotten the contribution of the Jews to the anti-fascist struggle: of Carlo and Nello Rosselli, for example; of Leone Ginzburg, Umberto Terracini, Leo Valiani, Emilio Serani; of women such as my friend Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti, shot in Florence on June 12, 1944; of 74 of the 335 victims of Fosse Ardeatine; of the infinite other deaths under torture or in combat or in front of the firing squads; the friends, the teachers of my childhood and of my early youth.

I find it shameful that, in part because of the fault of the Left—no, especially because of the fault of the Left (think of the Left that begins its congresses applauding the PLO representative in Italy, who represents here the Palestinians who seek Israel’s destruction)—the Jews in Italian cities once again are frightened. And in French and Dutch and Danish and German cities, it is the same.

I find it shameful that when the scoundrels dressed as kamikazes march, (Jews) shudder as they trembled in Berlin during Kristallnacht, that is, the night on which Hitler began the hunt of the Jews.I find it shameful that, obeying the stupid, vile, dishonest, and, for them, the extremely opportunistic fashion of political correctness, the usual opportunists—no, the usual parasites—exploit the word “peace.” In the name of the word “peace,” now more devalued than the words “love” and “humanity,” they absolve just one side of hate and bestiality. In the name of pacifism (read conformity) from the mouths of shrill voices, the same voices that earlier genuflected to Pol Pot, they now incite people who are confused, naïve, or intimidated. They cheat them, corrupt them, take them back half a century, that is, to the yellow star on the coat. These charlatans care as much about the Palestinians as I care about them (the charlatans), i.e., not at all.

I find it shameful that so many Italians and so many Europeans have chosen as a role model Mister—and I use the word advisedly—Arafat, this nonentity who, thanks to the money of the Saudi royal family, acts like Mussolini in perpetuity and in his megalomania believes he will go down in history as the George Washington of Palestine. This uneducated man who, when I interviewed him, could not even put together a complete sentence, an articulate thought. Therefore, to put a piece together, to write it, to publish it, is such a hard ordeal that one concludes that, compared to Arafat, even (Libyan leader) Gadhafi becomes Leonardo da Vinci. This fake warrior who always goes around in uniform like Pinochet, who never wears civilian clothes, and yet who has never participated in a single battle. He leaves war, and has always left war, to others, in other words, to those unfortunate ones who believe in him. This pompous incompetent who, playing the role of head of state, caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations and the mediation efforts of Clinton. “No, no, I want all of Jerusalem to myself.” This eternal liar who has a flash of sincerity only when (in private) he denies Israel’s right to exist, and who, as I wrote in my book, lies every five seconds. He always plays a game of duplicity; he lies even if you ask him what time it is, and, therefore, you can never trust him. Never! One is systematically betrayed by him. This eternal terrorist who only knows how to be a terrorist (from a safe distance), and who in the 1970s—that is, when I interviewed him—also trained the Baader-Meinhof terrorists. And now with them, he trains (Palestinian) children who were ten years old. Poor kids. (Now they are trained to become kamikazes. One hundred baby kamikazes are ready for action: 100!) This opportunist who keeps his wife in Paris, cared for and revered as a queen, while he keeps his people in the shit. From the shit he removes them only to send them to die, to kill and to die, like the 18-year-old girls who, to achieve equality with men, have to fill themselves with explosives and blow themselves up together with their victims. And yet so many Italians love him—yes, just as they loved Mussolini. And so many other Europeans do as well.I find it shameful, and I see in all of this the growth of a new fascism, of a new nazism—a fascism, a nazism, so much more malevolent and repulsive because it is conducted and nourished by those who hypocritically play the part of the good guys, the progressives, the communists, pacifists, Catholics and even more, the Christians, who have the gall to call those like me who shout truth at them a warmonger. I see it, yes, and therefore I will state the following: to the tragic and Shakespearean Sharon, I never gave him a break. (“I know that you came to add a scalp to your necklace,” he murmured almost with sadness when I went to interview him in 1982.) With the Israelis, I’ve argued often and bitterly, and in the past I defended the Palestinians quite a bit, maybe more than they deserved. But I am with Israel, I am with the Jews. I am with them now, as I was with them as a young girl—in other words, from the time when I was in the trenches with them and the Anne Maries were shot to death. I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to avoid a second extermination. And disgusted by the anti-Semitism of many Italians, of many Europeans, I am ashamed by this shame that dishonors my country and Europe, in the best of cases, not a community of nations (e.g., Europe) but a well of Pontius Pilates. And even if all the inhabitants of this planet think differently, I will continue to think this way.

Oriana Fallaci, one of Italy's most prominent journalists, has written a powerful polemic on anti-Semitism. It was the cover story in the current issue of Panorama, one of Italy's leading weekly news magazines. The issue came out this past Friday and by Saturday it was virtually sold out. There is much discussion about her article throughout Italy and a great deal of controversy surrounding it. As you will see, she minces no words and takes no prisoners.

THE NEW YORK NEOLEFT HATE FEST OF 2003

I believe that Jared Israel and Francisco Gil White in their analysis of what the US is doing on a world scale are correct. I see the US elite (but note not the ordinary American man or woman) since 1979 stirring up anti-semitism on a world scale, no friend but enemy of Israel, supporting and building up the PLO, and now in full support of the Iranian neofascist regime which is what the war in Afghanistan is all about. Just ask yourself the question, when the US leaves who will be in power, and the answer is Iraq will be governed by Sharia law and will be controlled by Iran. It will be virulently anti-semitic.

It is a strange thing that the modern Left, or more precisely neoleft, is also on the side of this Islamofascism.

That is why I want to revisit this report of a neoleft rally against the Iraq war in New York early on in the war. It is very revealing. In these neoleft protestors some things are common

There is an extreme anti-Americanism in all the protestors below but they confuse the issue because the ordinary American man or woman is not aware of the role of the governmental elite.

There is no criticism or attack from the neoleft on Islamofascism

Bush of course is not a fascist or a dictator. Yet he is linked to the dictator Saddam in that shallow manner. So the neoleft hopelessly confuses everything.

Yet at the same time the neoleft misses out on the real role of the US on the world stage, that it is encouraging Islamofascism and stirring up anti-semitism. And so there are actually important political lines which are linking the US elite with the neoleft. They are both working in a complementary way with each other. It is a strange phenomenon and not so easy to describe.

This is the report of that rally in New York. Read it again!

New York's Hate FestBy John PerazzoFrontPageMagazine.com February 18, 2003

My day in New York City began in much the same way as it would end several hours later. Around 11 a.m. Saturday, I arrived at the First Avenue site of the massive “anti-war” rally organized by the Communist peace-front organization United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ). The expressed sentiments that I heard and read within my first three minutes there, would be echoed time and again by the many guest speakers addressing the crowd that day. As I headed toward a suitable vantage point from which to observe the afternoon’s scheduled proceedings, a large contingent of nearby demonstrators repeatedly chanted in unison, “We’re gonna beat-beat back the Bush attack!” Lots of “peace” literature was being handed out, things like leaflets condemning the Bush Administration’s foreign and domestic policies, and fliers advertising other upcoming rallies.

Among the many items available was Proletariat Revolution, a 24-page socialist pamphlet whose very first sentence was a harbinger of everything that would follow during that afternoon: “The working class and every opponent of imperialism must join in action to stop the murderous attacks on Iraq by the US imperialist war machine.” “War against Iraq,” the piece continued, “has been going on ever since the 1991 Gulf War. . . . [E]conomic sanctions deprived the Iraqi people of food and medicine.” Reading on, I learned that the United States is “the world’s greatest terrorist power” whose “war aim has nothing to do with Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction . . . [but] everything to do with conquering a major oil-producing country and asserting military dominance over the Middle East.” The Bush Administration, said the article, “is seizing the opportunity granted by Sept. 11 to show the world who is boss.” And for good measure, I was informed that “the undoubted crimes of Saddam Hussein” are dwarfed by “the misery and devastation [that] imperialism inflicts on the world. Any socialist worth the name would take sides in wartime against the imperialist enemy of humanity – in this case, in defense of Iraq.”

During the ensuing four-hour rally, not a single speaker would utter even a sentence contrary to any of those assertions.

It can be said with great certainty that the vast majority of the demonstrators in attendance thoroughly detest President Bush. They clearly deem him an illegitimate president who “stole” the 2000 election, a man of dreadful character whose motives for threatening war are firmly rooted in his own economic self-interest. Consider the slogans borne by some of the placards on display: “The Unelected Idiot Is Going to Start World War III”; “Bush, Stop Your Terror”; “Bush the Baby Killer”; “Illegally Installed, Immorally Behaved: He’s Not My President”; “President-Bush is an Oxy-Moron”; “George W’s War Drums Dishonor and Destabilize Lawful Democracies”; “Spoiled Fascist Cowboy”; “Bush Exploits 9/11 Tragedy for Dirty Oil”; “Bush Likes to Steal Presidential Elections and Iraqi Oil”; and “No More Lies: Regime Change Here.”
There were also numerous slogans crudely implying that the world would be safer with Bush not living, one of which read, “George, Pull Out, Like Your Father Should’ve.” Also attracting much positive attention was a much-larger-than-life, handcrafted figure of a sneering President Bush carrying a bucket of his slaughtered victims’ blood.

In the speeches that followed, this abhorrence of Bush was closely paralleled by a vehement hatred directed against the United States; a belief that our country has historically been, and continues to be, uniquely evil; a conviction that America, more than any other nation, threatens peace and justice on earth. Among the first to speak was a Christian minister who said, “We are the only nation to use an atomic bomb against another nation. For that, Lord, we ask your forgiveness.” He did not, of course, mention the historical context in which that weapon was used; the ferocity of the unyielding Japanese enemy we faced at the time; the alternative of sacrificing the lives of perhaps a million more Americans, not to mention ten to twenty million Japanese. Instead, he preferred to express how ashamed he was of America’s long tradition of wrongdoing, which he said continues to this day in the Iraq crisis.

“Deliver our nation from this sinful and self-serving war,” he prayed. He then asked for God’s help “not only to end this war, but to end racism, oppression, and human suffering” – purportedly three of America’s most ignoble contributions to human civilization. He said nothing about anything sinful or shameful that might be occurring in Iraq.

Next, an American Indian donning a large, feathered headdress was introduced to the crowd as Chief Arvol Looking Horse.” He spent a couple of minutes intoning an incomprehensible series of chants, presumably in his native tongue. The crowd listened solemnly and politely, without understanding.

Shortly thereafter, NAACP chairman Julian Bond took the microphone to denounce, in plain English, America’s “pursuit of empire, not world peace.” He called Bush’s Iraq policy “a political strategy designed to win the recent mid-term political elections.” Bush’s talk of launching a pre-emptive strike, he said, is “erasing our moral standing across the globe.” Bond then confidently asserted that Saddam “does not represent any imminent threat, while bin Laden still does.” He did not say how he could be certain that the Iraqi dictator is, and will remain for the foreseeable future, harmless to our country. Instead, he shifted his focus to the price tag of war, a cost he believes would be better spent elsewhere. “This war will cost billions of dollars,” he complained, “at a time when funding for education, the environment, and health care are already at risk.” He condemned President Bush’s plans for a war that would cause “the deaths of thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqis.” “If we really believe in regime change,” he said to thunderous applause, “we ought to begin right here at home.” He concluded his address by pronouncing, “We need peace, not war.”

Following Bond to the podium was a Staten Island Muslim named Khalid Khalil, who said he could not support “a war which will leave hundreds of thousands of civilians dead or wounded . . . all for the gain of a few powerful and wealthy people.” He condemned the “racism, homophobia, and extremism” that allegedly run rampant in the US, though he said nothing about the existence of any of those phenomena in Iraq or elsewhere in the Muslim world. “This war,” he warned, “will further hatred between the Muslim population and the American people.” A joining implication of Khalil’s words, of course, is that if we would just allow Saddam to escape with impunity from twelve years of violating UN Resolutions, we could win back some of our lost goodwill in the Islamic world. Still another implication is that relations between Americans and Middle Eastern Muslims are strained only as a result of American missteps, and never the outrageous actions of regimes like the one in Baghdad.

Next, Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies proclaimed, “The war that George Bush is threatening is not a war against weapons of mass destruction. If it happens, it will be a war for empire and for oil.” She then had the temerity to utter these words: “We stand with the United Nations as an instrument of peace, and not a tool of war.” Presumably she never heard about Saddam’s twelve years of defiance, years that have already rendered the UN nothing more than an instrument of idle chatter.

The crowd was then treated to the oratory of New York City Councilman Charles Barron, the self-described non-racist who recently announced that he would like to slap a white person “just for my mental health.” As is his wont, Barron chose to assess the Iraq situation from a “black” perspective. “I want to say on behalf of black youth in New York and the Latino youth of this nation, we will not go to war for a selected president who wasn’t even elected!” “We don’t care if you [Bush] put forth Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell,” he continued. “They do not represent the black community.” In the eyes of Barron and his ilk, Rice and Powell are mere mascots exploited by racist Republicans, inauthentic blacks who are traitors to their race.

When Barron was done, a man introduced as a poet recited his most recent work: “Our country has been wrecked by barbarians . . . like Trent Lott and Katherine Harris, [who] killed democracy in Florida” – a reference, of course, to the disputed 2000 election of “hanging chad” fame. “It’s not just a war dance” that Bush and his aides are performing, said the poet. “They have a plan. It’s inherited through history. They destroyed the native tribes. Now each July they celebrate their victory.” In short, his message was that Bush is but the most recent in a long line of oppressors that have led our nation throughout its purportedly sordid history.

Shortly thereafter, a New York University professor explained the importance of protecting the world’s children from American aggression. “Children should learn their ABC’s,” she told her listeners. “They should not be killed [by U.S. bombs].” Those words earned her a loud ovation. Notably, she did not mention the thousands of Iraqi children who have been imprisoned, tortured, mutilated, and even slaughtered in retribution for their parents’ real or imagined disloyalty to Saddam’s regime.

The parade of platitudes continued with the founder of the group Courage to Refuse, which consists of some 500 Israeli army officers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories. “The best way to neutralize your enemy is to make him your friend,” he said. “We have to remove the reasons for hatred.” The theme was consistent: If only America would do things differently, Saddam, bin Laden, and other such barbarians would no longer want to blow us off the globe.

Every rally has its superstars, of course, and this was no exception. It was now time to hear from the mastermind of the Tawana Brawley fraud; the man whose vile rhetoric and frivolous charges of racism are legendary; the man who referred to the late Khalid Muhammad, whose racist diatribes were even too incendiary for Louis Farrakhan to condone, as “a very articulate and courageous brother.” Yes, presidential candidate Al Sharpton stepped to the podium to warn that Bush “is pursuing a manifest destiny plan that will not secure America, but will put the whole world at risk.” It is wrong, he said, “to send our children to foreign soil to protect oil interests.” It is immoral, he emphasized, for Bush to pursue his “philosophy of international domination.”

Congressman Dennis Kucinich was also on hand. He began by quoting an astronaut who once said, while in space, “Look, the whole world is reflected in the iris of my eye.” From there, Kucinich asserted that “the whole world is watching us to see what is reflected in our eyes, the light of peace or the fires of war.” “We [demonstrators] carry a vision of human unity,” he said soulfully. “We see the world as undivided . . . The whole world is watching to see whether our morality is greater than the power that would unleash our weapons . . . [Will we offer] a fist or an open hand?” He wrapped up his speech by calling for American “leadership in global disarmament.”

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee spoke next. “The UN inspections are working,” she announced. “The thousand tons (sic) of chemical warfare (sic) that Saddam Hussein had is doubtful.” Having thus assured us, with a wave of her verbal magic wand, that all the worry warts in the Bush administration should lighten up, she shouted that we ought not waste our money on disarming Saddam. “We need health care!” she declared. “We need education!”

For a slight change of pace, a Muslim American Society representative complained about how “tired” he and his fellow Muslims are “of being discriminated against” – not in the oppressive Islamic world, of course, but right here in the US. “We are tired,” he said, “of having our kids come home and saying, ‘Mom, Dad, I was called a terrorist today. . . . Why are our friends not playing with us anymore? . . . We are tired of our Muslim members of our community telling us that they have been detained without any charges. . . . We are not the first Americans to be held guilty by association. The Japanese in 1941 were put in internment camps. Yesterday it was the Japanese. Today it is the Arabs and the Muslims. Who knows who is going to be next?”

A short time later, UFPJ co-chair Leslie Cagan, who had not been expected to attend the rally due to illness, made a surprise appearance and, with a raspy voice, managed to shout a stream of invectives against New York’s mayor and police department for having denied her request to stage a protest march, rather than a stationary rally. “Shame on the police department!” she shrieked.

Another well-known speaker who addressed the crowd was Ruth Messinger, Manhattan’s former borough president. “A war [with Iraq] will cost us $200 billion,” she said, money that would be better spent on education, housing, and environmental protection. She did not, however, discuss any environmental hazards that could result from a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack against our country. America’s war chest, she said, could “feed the 30,000 children around the globe who die from hunger every day” an assertion that earned her a loud ovation. No one seemed to care that the US already provides fully 60 percent of food aid around the world. Such details would only have spoiled their rollicking hate fest.

Before long, it was time for the denunciations of U.S. foreign policy to expand far beyond the borders of Iraq. Harry Belafonte took the occasion to condemn America’s past military actions specifically in Vietnam, Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, “and many [other] places in the world.” Thereafter, two speakers representing New York’s People of Color Against War extended their “warm, militant greetings” to the crowd, and spoke about “the impact of US militarism on freedom in the Philippines.” A Colombian woman named Vividad Cordoba proclaimed, “I’m coming from a country that is a victim of US foreign policy.” Still another speaker blamed America for its “unjust” policies in “Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Grenada, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia.” The director of the Southern Peace Research and Education Center said that not only should the US not attack Iraq, but that it was now time to put the Saddam issue behind us and “lift the sanctions on the Iraqi people.” America’s “three vices [of] militarism, materialism, and racism,” she said, preclude our country from claiming any moral authority to decide who should possess the weapons of genocide.

New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman focused more on perceived domestic atrocities. “We are here today to talk about the other war,” she said, “the Bush administration’s undeclared war on our civil liberties.” With that, the crowd erupted with cheers. A Florida woman shared her own story of oppression as well. “I can tell you as a Jewish woman, a grandma. . . . It’s not just the black people who were denied their [voting] rights in Florida.” A homeless New Yorker took the microphone and expressed her deep concern “about the war on poor people in this country, the war on working people in this country.”

The day’s loudest, most frenzied greeting was reserved for the infamous Communist and black revolutionary “Sister Angela Davis,” as she was introduced. Describing herself as a former “political prisoner” in the United States, Davis mocked Colin Powell’s recent assertion before the UN Security Council “that he represented the world’s oldest democracy.” A true democracy, explained Davis the Communist, would have allowed the demonstrators to march that day, rather than to just peacefully assemble. Charging that the Bush administration is “specifically targeting immigrant communities,” she casually dismissed any concerns about Saddam’s suspected stockpiles of hidden weapons. “Have we forgotten,” she asked rhetorically to a loud ovation, “which country claims the largest nuclear arsenal in the world?” She accused the U.S. government and American corporations of supporting war solely for the purpose of taking over Iraq’s oil fields. Boasting that she was not worried about possible attacks from any external enemies, she expressed concern only “about attacks against single mothers, about structural racism, about homophobia,” and [about] the oppression of “political prisoners like [cop killer] Mumia Abu Jamal.” Shouting over the cheering throngs, Davis denounced America’s “prison-industrial complex and the military.”

The Reverend Vernon Williams, a Baptist minister, thereafter gave a brief talk whose general theme was, “No blood for gas!” Actor Danny Glover received many rousing ovations during his scathing denunciation of the US, particularly when he asserted, “Our right to dissent . . . has been hijacked by this administration of liars and murderers” A City University of New York student shouted, “CUNY students of conscience reject this war, we reject its budget, and we reject its repercussions. We want to learn. We do not want to go and kill our sisters and brothers in Iraq. We choose books over bombs!” As another woman put it, “We’ve got to feed the children in our cities, not drop bombs.” Betraying the fact that not even the proverbial “smoking gun” would persuade any of these activists to endorse military action, another speaker stated defiantly, “Whatever Bush says, or whatever evidence Colin Powell steals from a grad student, this war is unjust, it’s immoral.”

There were numerous others who spoke as well, including folk singer Pete Seeger, actor Ossie Davis, and playwright Tony Kushner. A representative of the Socialist Organization of New York was received especially well, as was the International Secretary of the Black Radical Congress. Susan Sarandon introduced a man who, though he lost his son in the 9/11 attacks, exhorted President Bush to “stop the headlong rush to war, anger, and destruction.” Though he did not explain why a twelve-year wait for Iraq to comply with its obligations should be defined as “a headlong rush to war,” he chastised America for not promoting “the equitable sharing of the world’s resources among all peoples.”

Reverend Martin Luther King III added his voice to the cacophony of clichés, reminding us that “you do not stop terrorism by terrorizing others”; “only nonviolence can stamp out violence”; and “just because you have the biggest gun does not mean you must use it.” Larry Holmes of A.N.S.W.E.R., the “peace” front linked to the socialist Workers World Party, said, “We don’t want to fight a war for oil. We don’t want to fight a war for colonies. We don’t want to fight a war for imperialism.” As an aside, he added, “We [also] got to get that blockade against Cuba down.”
The day’s final speaker took the occasion to publicly denigrate the hundreds of police officers who, in a thoroughly professional manner, had made certain that everyone attending the rally was safe. “When you leave here,” he told the crowd, “you can expect that the police will probably attempt to do something to try to provoke you.” Referring to the officers as “fools with guns,” he continued: “They will attempt to manipulate you in order that you might fall into their plans. We’re not going to fall into their plans. . . . Don’t engage in the foolishness that the police are gonna try to provoke you into. . . . We want to shame the police!” The crowd responded with roaring approval.

National Organization for Women president Kim Gandi was, notably, the only speaker during the four-hour demonstration to utter even the most trifling criticism of Iraq’s brutal dictator. But even that was diminished by what she said in her next breath. Though she acknowledged that indeed “Saddam Hussein is an evil, maniacal tyrant,” she quickly proclaimed that our government should combat “poverty, homelessness, and [street and domestic] violence” before meddling in foreign affairs.
The overriding anti-American venom pervading the entire rally manifested itself not only in the rhetoric, but also in the remarkable dearth of American flags. I observed only one such flag on display at any point during the day, whereas I saw tens of thousands of placards denouncing the US and the Bush administration.

This crowd was characterized, as much as anything else, by its steadfast refusal to make moral distinctions between Saddam Hussein and George Bush, or between the Iraqi regime and the American government. One particular placard illustrated this point quite graphically. Featuring side-by-side photographs of Bush and Saddam, it read, “Two of a Kind, Hussein and Insein, Both Unelected, Both Psychotic”; Bush’s face was adorned with a Hitler-style moustache, the hairs of which were formed by black letters spelling the word “Florida.” In a similar vein, another sign read, “Germans Did Not Stop Hitler. Will Americans Stop Bush?”
On the few occasions where the demonstrators did make moral distinctions, they actually depicted Bush and the US as worse than their Iraqi counterparts, as evidenced by the speeches heretofore referenced. And as one placard bluntly put it, “Drop the Bombs Where They Are Made” – a curious suggestion indeed from a champion of “peace.” All in all, the day ended much as it had started. The writers of Proletariat Revolution, who so passionately denounced the “imperialist war machine” of “the world’s greatest terrorist power,” would have found many thousands of kindred spirits in this crowd.

THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM

The issues which I feel need to be placed very high given our scarce resources centre on two things. One is the nature of the leadership around Sharon and Peres which created OSLO and is selling out the revolutionary traditions of the Jewish people. The second is the support of the neoleft for Islamofascism and especially for PLO Islamofascism. I have written much on this issue. See articles on the site which preceded this one www.IrelandSupportsIsrael.com.

So today…On the same theme of trying to understand the neoleft I include this article by Melanie Phillips. It is a brilliant analysis! Read it!


The New Anti-Semitism
by Melanie Phillips - March 22, 2003
Melanie Phillips says that hostility to Jews is strongest among those on the Left who claim to be fighting racism

Want to make yourself really, really unpopular if you’re a Jew? Try saying that the world is witnessing a terrifying firestorm of hatred directed at Israel and the Jewish people, in which the British and Europeans are deeply implicated. Since it is now a given in many circles that Israel is a threat to the world equal to North Korea, and that Ariel Sharon is a cross between Martin Bormann and Hendrik Verwoerd, you will find yourself accused of using the Holocaust to avoid any criticism of Israel’s behaviour. Because, well, you know, you Jews always stick together and are mighty quick to deal that persecution card.

Anyone who holds that view may as well skip what follows. More objective and fair-minded souls, however, might be deeply alarmed to learn of the evidence provided at a recent conference on anti-Semitism and the media at the Vidal Sassoon Centre for the Study of Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem.

This was scarcely a gathering of the Ariel Sharon fan club. Among academics and journalists from Israel, Europe, Britain and America were several left-wingers and liberals who were deeply hostile to Israel’s Likud government, believed that the settlements should be dismantled, and were troubled by the behaviour of some of Israel’s military. ‘There’s no doubt that Israel is committing human-rights violations on the West Bank,’ said Professor Yehuda Bauer, the distinguished Holocaust expert.
But there was equally no doubt, from what he and others said, that anti-Zionism is now being used to cloak a terrifying nexus between genocidal Arab and Islamist hatred of the Jews and deep-seated European prejudices.

Anti-Semitism is protean, mutating over the centuries into new forms. Now it has changed again, into a shape which requires a new way of thinking and a new vocabulary. The new anti-Semitism does not discriminate against Jews as individuals on account of their race. Instead, it is centred on Israel, and the denial to the Jewish people alone of the right of self-determination.

This is nothing to do with the settlements or the West Bank. Indeed, the language being used exposes as a cruel delusion the common belief that the Middle East crisis would be solved by the creation of a Palestinian state.

The key motif is a kind of Holocaust inversion, with the Israelis being demonised as Nazis and the Palestinians being regarded as the new Jews. Israel and the Jews are being systematically delegitimised and dehumanised — a necessary prelude to their destruction — with both Islamists and the Western media using anti-Zionism as a fig-leaf for prejudices rooted in both mediaeval Christian and Nazi demonology.

This has produced an Orwellian situation in which hatred of the Jews now marches behind the Left’s banner of anti-racism and human rights, giving rise not merely to distortions, fabrications and slander about Israel in the media but also to mainstream articles discussing the malign power of the Jews over American and world policy.

The Jerusalem conference heard chilling presentations about a phenomenon barely discussed in Britain: the virulent Arab and Muslim hatred of the Jews. This goes far beyond even the desire to finish off Israel as a Jewish state. Anti-Jewish hatred plays a crucial role in the fanatical jihadism that now threatens all of us in the West, pouring out in television programmes, newspapers and religious sermons throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and amounting to a new warrant for genocide.

The dominant message is that Jewish power amounts to a conspiracy to destroy Islam and take over the whole world. Truly mad theories circulate on Islamist Internet sites which have now convinced untold numbers of Arabs and Muslims that the Jews were behind both 9/11 and the Columbia space-shuttle disaster. Egyptian television transmitted a 41-part series which presented the notorious Tsarist forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion — which purported to be a Jewish plot to control the world — as the truth. (This has prompted some Arab intellectuals to condemn such propaganda as both untrue and a tactical error, but these dissidents remain a small minority.) Meanwhile, Saudi media and religious sermons incite the murder of Jews.

According to the Arabic scholar Professor Menachem Milsom, this Arab and Islamist propaganda persistently dehumanised Jews by representing them as apes and pigs. A preacher at the totemic Haram mosque in Mecca said the Jews were ‘evil offspring’, the ‘destroyers of God’s word’, ‘priest murderers’ and the ‘scum of the human race’. The mediaeval Christian blood libel — the claim that the Jews kill children and drink their blood — has surfaced time and again in prestigious Arab newspapers.

And Zionism was equated with Nazism; just as the Nazis believed in the superiority of the ‘Aryan’ race, so Zionists (sic) believed they were the chosen people, which justified their own military expansion. This equation was not confined to a marginal few. Abu Mazen, said Milsom, the Palestinian Authority intellectual who is being talked about as Yasser Arafat’s prime minister in a ‘reformed’ administration, wrote as much in his doctoral thesis — in which he also said that the Zionists gave the Nazis permission to treat the Jews as they wished so long as this guaranteed their immigration to Palestine.

These sick outpourings are not so much religious or even fundamentalist doctrines as rooted in a fanatical totalitarian ideology. As Professor Bauer observed, the driving aim is the Islamic dictatorship of the world. Realisation of this utopia necessitates the destruction of the foundation creeds of Western culture, Judaism and Christianity — and especially Israel, the supposed personification of Western global power-lust, which was planted as an incubus on Arab soil as a result of the Holocaust.
Holocaust denial is therefore central to Arab anti-Semitism, the prejudice which such historical falsehood has helped to forge a strategic alliance with Europe. For it absolves Europe of its guilt over the Jews, and replaces it with European guilt towards Arabs displaced as a result of the Holocaust.

Europe has waited for more than half a century for a way to blame the Jews for their own destruction. So instead of sounding the alarm over genocidal Islamist Jew-hatred, Europeans have eagerly embraced the Nazification of the Jews, a process which really got under way with Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982. This marked the beginning of the media’s systematic inversion of Israeli self-defence as aggression, along with double-standards and malicious fabrications, which have nothing to do with legitimate (and necessary) criticism of Israel and everything to do with delegitimising the Jewish state altogether in readiness for its dismantling.

So the conference heard about German accusations that Israel was using Nazi methods and (repeating a claim by Hamas) that the Monica Lewinsky scandal was a Jewish conspiracy against Bill Clinton. It heard of the Nazification of Israel in Sweden, where there were charges that the Israelis were exterminating the Palestinians, that the media were controlled by Jewish interests to suppress criticism of Israel, and that influential Jewish lobby groups were ‘spraying journalists with poison’.

It heard that in France Jews were vilified and excluded from public debate if they challenged the lies being told about Israel. It was shown a devastating French film Décryptage (Decoding) — which has been playing to packed houses in Paris — about the obsessive malevolence towards Israel displayed by the French media. It was told about the way the British media described Israel’s ‘death squads’, ‘killing fields’ and ‘executioners’ while sanitising Palestinian human bombs as ‘gentle’, ‘religious’ and ‘kind’. It heard about the cartoon in the Italian newspaper La Stampa during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, depicting an Israeli tank pointing a gun at the baby Jesus who is saying, ‘Surely they are not going to kill me again.’

And of course there was Jenin, the so-called ‘massacre’ or ‘genocide’ reported as such by virtually the entire media, where in fact 52 Palestinians died, of whom more than half were terrorists, while Israel sustained (for it) the huge loss of 45 of its soldiers. This astonishing media distortion was conceded at the conference by the (extraordinarily brave) Palestinian politics professor Mohammad Dajani, who also observed that a distraught Palestinian public was — on this and other occasions — whipped up by biased and emotional Palestinian reporting which showed little concern for the truth. But the big lie of the Jenin massacre is now believed as fact, contributing to the belief that Israel is a criminal state.

Europeans have thus made themselves accomplices to an explicitly genocidal programme. But an even more striking feature is that, while the old anti-Semitism still festers away among neo-Nazis, the new anti-Semitism is a phenomenon of their sworn enemies on the political Left. So, as the Canadian law professor Irwin Cotler observed, we now have the mind-twisting situation where anti-Jewish hatred is harnessed to the cause of anti-racism and human rights, with Israel being compared to both Nazism and apartheid by those who define themselves against these ideologies. Such a travesty of the facts involves, of course, the implicit denial of the truth of those terrible regimes, quite apart from the prelude to annihilation created by such a lethal defamation of Israel. And even more counterintuitively, many Jews and Israelis on the Left also subscribe to this analysis — and even to the demonology of Israeli Nazism and apartheid — handing an effective weapon to those who dismiss the claim of a new anti-Semitism as Jewish paranoia or Islamophobia.

So what is the explanation for the Left’s position? Partly, it’s the old anti-imperialist and anti-West prejudice. Partly, it’s the view that only the powerless can be victims; so Third World people can never be murderers, and any self-defence by Western societies such as Israel must instead be aggression. Partly, it’s the post-modern destruction of objectivity and truth, which has ushered in the hegemony of lies. And partly, as the Left takes an axe to morality and self-restraint, it’s a golden opportunity to pulverise the very people who invented the damn rules in the first place.

A left-wing Polish journalist at the conference, Konstanty Gebert, got the real point. The Left, he said, could not face the fact that they had totally misconstrued the Middle East because this would undermine their whole philosophy. This was founded on the premise that reason could reconcile all differences; all that was needed in Israel was an enlightened government for reason to prevail. The evidence that we are facing a phenomenon which is not susceptible to reason would destroy that world view. It would also give credibility to the hated Sharon, whose demonisation is absolutely vital to the Left as a protection against the implosion of its whole ideological position.

So the evidence is being denied, and truth is being stood on its head. The result is the defamation of a people, the greater prospect of its destruction, and the disastrous failure of the populations of Britain and Europe to understand properly the threat that all free peoples now face.

DANGERS FACING ISRAEL

Steven Plaut has carried this analysis well. I read this on FrontpageMagazine and the url is http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20678

It is truthful and vital. Only one point I query. I feel that the writer does not deal with the main enemy of Israel and that is the US governmental elite (not the ordinary American man or woman). Just like the British did with Hajj Amin el Husseini the US is seeking to stir up anti-semitism and is promoting the growth of Islamofascist regimes, a case in point is surely Iraq.

In introducing I would only add this. P. David Hornik is totally correct when he points out at the beginning the length of the Jihad against Israel. This was rooted in Arab and Islamist Jew Hatred which goes right back at least to the 1920 pogrom launched by the (later to be Nazi) war criminal Hajj Amin el Husseini who the British promoted as part of their effort to stimulate anti-Semitism.

The issue with the nature of this Jihad is that in order to even continue to exist the Israeli nation would need to have developed the type of leadership never seen before in the world, a revolutionary and absolutely granite-like leadership. Israel has made wonderful achievements but a tiny country facing such international and universal hostility day in day out…well read on!



Israel’s Malaise
By P. David HornikFrontPageMagazine.com December 27, 2005
Israel's burden is great. Other peoples have suffered genocides in recent history, but only the Jews face both an industry devoted to denying their genocide and a very real threat of a second one. Although the Holocaust denial affects Jews everywhere, the current Iranian threat is directed at the Jews of Israel.

Under this and other stresses, particularly an almost six-decades-long jihadist siege, there are signs that Israel no longer holds up under the burden. Since 1993 it has basically been begging for a reprieve, at one point offering (that is, at least its government) even its most sacred shrine, the Temple Mount, for a signed statement that the siege would stop. More recently, troubling events suggest that Israel may have reached a nadir in its weariness and self-delusion.

* Israeli officialdom, at least, now seems to relate to the Holocaust in a way that is mechanical and pro forma. Last March, Israel opened a new Holocaust History Museum, and to mark the event it invited prime ministers, presidents, and other leaders from forty countries. They were assembled on a mountaintop outside Jerusalem for the museum’s inauguration, then treated to a couple of days of dinners and speechifying. Especially, in a world that deals so roughly with the Jewish state, it seemed mindless and undignified to expect, or require, that these various notables would set aside their busy lives and relate authentically to another people’s catastrophe sixty years ago.

Two months earlier, under Israel’s prodding, the United Nations held its first-ever annual Holocaust commemoration. Given that organization’s ongoing abuse of Israel, this seems an even worse case of dragging a people’s intimate pain through the mud. But Israel’s foreign minister Silvan Shalom has kept lauding it as a breakthrough.

* This month Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service, after over half a century’s exclusion from the International Red Cross, accepted a compromise whereby it joins the organization and in return substitutes a new invention called the “Red Crystal” for the Red Star of David that had offended some members. This capitulation seems directly to negate the very purpose of the Jewish state, signaling that Jewish symbols and presence are to be suppressed and concealed in deference to the feelings of those they might rile. The Israeli government approved the move, with Foreign Minister Shalom saying this time that it “reflects Israel’s improved international standing … This is yet another achievement for Israel’s diplomacy.”

* Amid growing protest over Steven Spielberg’s new film Munich, which draws moral equivalencies between anti-Israeli terrorists and Israeli antiterrorist fighters, it turns out Spielberg has hired the Israeli spin doctor Eyal Arad to help promote the film. This might not be significant if Arad was a private individual; he is, however, the public relations consultant of Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon. A book published this year by two Israeli journalists alleged that it was Arad who dreamed up the disengagement plan as a way of rescuing Sharon from his legal jeopardy. Sharon at least does not seem troubled by the symbolism of Israel’s leading spin doctor being enlisted to whitewash Munich.

* Earlier this month Azmi Bishara, a Member of Knesset from the Arab party Balad, traveled without permission to an enemy state, Lebanon. At a book fair he subjected the country he serves to a two-hour diatribe, saying among other things: “Israel is the 20th century’s greatest robbery, perpetrated in broad daylight.” “I will never recognize Zionism, even if all Arabs do… I will never concede Palestine. The battle will long continue.” (Addressing Israelis:) “We Arabs aren't interested in your democracy. Give us Palestine and take your democracy with you.” “This conflict is possibly endless….We must keep its embers burning…. Some Arabs may want to surrender, but they cannot force us to surrender with them. We shall go on fighting.” So far there is no talk of pressing charges against Bishara or removing him from the Knesset. In 2003, when the Central Election Committee disqualified his party Balad on grounds of supporting the anti-Israeli terror war, Israel’s Supreme Court overturned the ruling.

* Palestinian terrorist leader Marwan Barghouti, serving a life term in Israel for directing attacks that killed and injured civilians, is now running for president of the Palestinian Authority on an independent ticket. Presumably, he is allowed to hold meetings in his cell and be in contact with operatives. One Israeli politician, Oslo architect Yossi Beilin, has even called for his release on grounds that he is a force for peace. I know of no other case of a jailed terrorist being allowed to function actively as a presidential candidate.

Other examples could easily be added. One is the popularity of Sharon’s new Kadima Party even though it is clearly a one-man, autocratic show without ideological coherence, and a haven for opportunists. Another is the apparent distortion of Sharon’s medical condition following his stroke, so that the country, Third World-like, accepts being saddled with a leader in fragile health as it faces the crisis of Iran’s nuclearization. Then there is the ongoing ability of a few thousand Gaza terrorists to shell and terrorize communities within and near Gaza for five years running while Israel steadily refuses to use its vaunted army of hundreds of thousands to defeat them.

Although, on the brighter side, the Israeli army still shows itself an effective, innovative force to the extent the government allows it to act, the situation is worrisome. Friends of Israel should tell Israelis, tactfully and with awareness of the country’s great stresses, that capitulation, acquiescence in abuse, and self-negation are never successful strategies and bring the opposite of the hoped-for results. Also needing to be raised is the question of whether a polity that shows such tendencies is keen on surviving in the first place, and whether it does not at least owe it to its children to try harder.

Debkafile..ALL GANG UP AGAINST ISRAEL

The slogan of Debkafile is "We start where the Media stop". It is a most useful resource for Irish people who are fed a diet of lies by the Mainstream Irish Media.

The following report in todays edition, filed yesterday, covers the growing war on many fronts against Israel. This is the url http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1128

It is especially important because

1. It exposes the completely reactionary role in relation to Israel of Ariel Sharon who is in league now with Peres, the man who masterminded the disastrous US led OSLO.

2. It raises renewed questions about the role of the United States Government, specifically the role of Condi Rice and her employer Bush.

My comments are in bold italics

"...Iran, Hizballah and Palestinians Gang up for a Second Front against Israel
DEBKAfile Special Report
December 28, 2005, 9:05 AM (GMT+02:00)

On Dec. 17, DEBKAfile reported exclusively:

A special Iranian plane flew Palestinian Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to Revolutionary Guards HQ at Bandar Abbas Monday, Dec. 12, after he spent 10 days in Tehran as favored guest of Iran’s clerical rulers. There, he conferred with RG commanders on operational collaboration between the two Palestinian groups, Hamas and Jihad Islami in Gaza and the West Bank, and their hook-up with Iranian networks and Hizballah in Lebanon. Their shared goal: the opening of a second rocket and shelling front against northern Israel to complement the Gaza front in the south.

This decision was implemented ten days later, Tuesday night Dec, 27, with a bombardment from southern Lebanon of Israel’s western Galilee and the northern towns of Kiryat Shemona and Shlomi. It was only be sheer good fortune that no one was hurt by the double salvo of 105mm rockets. Two homes were badly damaged in Kiryat Shemona.

(How was this reported, if at all, in the Irish media? Any of it! The important meeting and the shelling? Any pictures of the shelled Jewish homes?)

The Sharon government an his security advisers have no intention of admitting that Meshaal’s Hamas, assisted by Hizballah missile experts present in Gaza, are the hands behind the Qassam offensive against southern Israel, even though the crews are put up by a coalition of the Jihad Islami, the Fatah-al Aqsa Brigades and the Popular Resistance Committees. Tehran and the Damascus-based Meshaal keep this coalition well supplied with the projectiles, are working on improving their precision and selecting the targets.

(So Hizbullah attacks from the North, but also supplies the rockets to the Fatah and Hamas terrorists in the Gaza who then attack Southern Israel. Hit from every side. Unreported)

But instead of hitting home, Israel’s armed forces are told to strike empty spaces in the Gaza Strip. While the Hamas leader plots the next attacks, Israeli officers are sent to address public symposia to explain that a Hamas victory in the January 25 Palestinian general election might not be a total security disaster, because going into politics and government may well temper its violent bent and mute its aspirations to destroy Israel.

(Try to take this aboard. It is almost impossible to understand this sort of thinking but it comes straight from US President Bush and his ideas that if terrorists are involved in campaigning for votes then they will become peaceful. Bush may believe this but if so he is a fool. The top American elite know different. Bush may be a puppet but if so a useful puppet!)

Exactly the same sort of talk with accompanied the 1993 Oslo process reference to Yasser Arafat.

The Sharon government has two compelling reasons for burying its head in the sand:

1. Its unquestioning adherence to the policy line laid down Washington, which is that any delay in the Palestinian poll will finish Mahoud Abbas for good. The vote must therefore take place in the slim hope that Abbas and the jailed Marwan Barghouti will be able to bring Fatah level with the Hamas. That would be the lesser of two evils, in the American view.

DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources note that Barghouti, through his spokesman Kadoura Fares, have managed to sell this reassuring line to secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. Washington has thus been sucked into the accepting a strong Hamas showing in the polls and a share in Palestinian government. Ariel Sharon has fallen in behind Washington and therefore finds himself seriously enfeebled on the security front.

2. Sharon cannot afford to directly tackle Hamas in Gaza because this would be an admission of the radical group’s expanding strength and the failure of his disengagement policy to beget the promised improved security.

(So here is an admission and clear evidence that Bush and Condi Rice are promoting first of all their "baby" the terrorist Marwan Barghouti who has murdered many Jews, and at the same time the totally Islamofascist Hamas, which seeks to kill all Jews. What more can one say about the US elite and its clear policy and strategy of stirring up anti-semitism! Here it is in black and white from the most reputable source in the business)

DEBKAfile’s security experts liken the Israeli air force raids of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine group’s bases south of Beirut following the Katyusha raid to the bombardment of empty ground in the northern Gaza Strip as a means of halting the Qassam attacks. It was no more than a sop to still angry complaints of the people living within range of the Lebanese border, who were looking forward to a quiet Hanukah holiday with a healthy influx of trippers. Hizballah and Palestinian leaders in Lebanon went through the motions of repudiating the Katyusha attacks on northern Israel. But it is no secret that no one moves anywhere in southern Lebanon, including the Lebanese army, without the Hizballah’s sayso. By holding back from striking at Hizballah bases, Sharon conferred on the Hizballah the same of immunity he extends to Meshaal’s Hamas in Gaza.

(This is a Debka reference to the well-known Islamist terrorists method of double-speak, which is perfected first of all by the PLO. But they learned it from the US governmental elite because the PLO is the "baby" of that US elite. Hence the love of Rice for terror chief and student of Arafat Barghouti!)

Nonetheless, the very real decline in Israel’s security situation and deterrent force is becoming harder to deny as time goes by. Israel gained no strategic advantages from its unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. If anyone has gained it is the newly emerging terror axis drawn between Tehran, Beirut, Gaza and Ramallah. They drove this point home Tuesday night. That Palestine projectiles flew across two fronts in a single night was no coincidence."

(In my mind this links directly to US role in Iraq. There the main Bush representative, Zalmay Khalizad, is
1. busy stirring up antisemitism as the recent statement from all parties shows
2. plans to leave behind a land of savagery, in which warring tribes compete, but in which the Islamofascists controlled by Iran control the southern part of Iraq.
3. as the US does nothing about nuclear capable and Jew Hating Iran.

All of this ties together. The complicity of Sharon and Peres. The treachery of the US in relation to Israel. And the determination of Islamofascism to end Israel by genocide)

CHOMSKY'S NO-STATE SOLUTION

I picked up this theme, an Israel without the Jews, which the more I think about it IS the essence of the neoleft and Irish republican attitude to Israel.

I was late at night glancing through some articles, rather tired. I came upon one and it soon hit me that this guy was funny, but he was also incredibly succinct and “on the ball” in that laid back American way that not many people can do.

So I decided to stick it on blogger so that I can easily refer back and so that others can have a look as well. It is by Jack Engelhard, it was on Arutz Sheva on Dec 21, 2005 (IrsaelNationalNews.com) and picking up a phrase that Jack uses it seems to me that the “toy department of human life” is getting bigger and bigger, wonder why that is! Read it!


Chomsky's No-State Solution, And More on Munich
by Jack Engelhard

On the seventh day, around here, we rest for football. Smart couch potatoes stick to the game. News junkies, like myself, switch back and forth. There's the game, yes, but out in the real world, there's tackling and brutality going on without a referee; so, we cruise all the channels, but with the mute button at the ready just in case someone says something that might ruin our day.

That happened the weekend past when Alan Dershowitz debated Noam Chomsky at Harvard, televised on C-Span-2, our dial for culture. Whatever optimism I started off with was dashed between these two intellectuals, sparring on Israel v. "Palestine", and on top of that, the Philadelphia Eagles kept fumbling. No big deal, you say, but without sports ("the toy department of human life" - Howard Cossel or Red Smith), it would be politics all day long. So that's one end of the dial, football.

Along the other end, Dershowitz and Chomsky were going at it as if civilization depended on the outcome of their dispute, and maybe that is so.

To spare myself too much grief, I used the mute most of the time, but caught enough to hear (two-state solution) Dershowitz plead for reconciliation with (no-state solution) Chomsky, who stuck to his position that Israel should be a nation without an ideology, which would make Israel the only nation on earth without an ideology. Every country has one, has something upon which it stands. Here, it's liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and over there, in Iran, it's to wipe Israel off the map - but that is still an ideology.

On Chomsky, in particular, I figured, for a moment, that this entire campus generation could have been saved by the sounds of silence, courtesy of the mute button. My mistake when I kept the sound going and heard Chomsky persist with words that amounted to the famous "Three Nos" - no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel.

The trick here was to find something uplifting to save this day, because, from channel to channel, everybody was losing, including the Eagles.

The hot news of the moment is Spielberg. I know this because of all the hate mail I received after that piece I wrote. I found out that there are a lot of people out there who are in a bad mood, and not just on Sunday. E-mail junkies wrote in that I shouldn't judge beforehand. Well, don't we always? We are all pre-packaged. We buy according to the label.

Everything comes with a label, soup to nuts, and people, too. A Cadillac you know by name alone, and even Paris Hilton comes with a tag, her reputation. Do I really need to hear an entire speech from Jane Fonda or read Amira Hass? I know what's coming. Amos Oz was on C-Span-2 a while back and I tuned in for a few minutes, but the rest was Amos Oz, so, despite my sincere admiration for Israeli novelists, I muted him. (Something about "both sides have equal claims upon the same land" and I just wasn't in the mood, not from an Israeli.)

In case you think I'm picking on the Left - wrong. Israeli "hardliners" never appear on our TV here in the US, and I mean never, so there is nothing on this I can report or even mute. If they do show up, then they come across as "settlers" always griping and making trouble, just because they're being evicted from their homes, when, after all, they've been offered Alaska.

Anyway, Spielberg. They're talking about him and his Munich movie all over the dials. I got disgusted for all the bad publicity he's getting, which means good publicity, and I took the train to Atlantic City to bet a few horses at Bally's Casino, and I've got friends there, all liberals, but still friends, and they said they'd read what I wrote about Spielberg, and what did I think now? Had I changed my mind?

Yes, I had. This got them very excited, since they keep trying to convert me, turn me into Michael Moore, or as they say in Israel, Yossi Beilin. I said, "Spielberg is just another suicide bomber." (But with a camera.) I meant that and I mean that, but we're still friends. (I won the next race, so I made my point.)

When I got back, I turned the TV back on and realized, like an epiphany, that everything is about sales. Everybody's got merchandise.

I reviewed the last few moments of the debate between Dershowitz and Chomsky (taped), and guess what, they're also selling; yes, books, their books. But between all that, they're selling their ideologies. From beer to politics, it's all about getting you to buy something.

I thought Dershowitz won the debate, but that makes it worse. Why should there even be a debate about Israel's right to exist? (Nachmanides all over again?) Chomsky, it is clear, has a special ideology. He offers nothing except Israel without Jews. That is Chomsky (recently named the number one intellectual in the US) and that is his vision.

Tony Kushner shares Chomsky's vision, as per this quote that's making the rounds: "I wish modern Israel hadn't been born." Kushner is the man who wrote the script for Spielberg's Munich, and that comment alone is the movie and saves me 12 bucks at the Roxy.

Kushner, like Chomsky, is okay with a Jewish State, as long as it is not Jewish and it is not a state.

Incidentally, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is another Herzl compared to Kushner. Ahmadinejad at least offers to move Israel to Alaska. No such offer from Kushner, who is now stuck with a tag that precedes everything he touches. Correct, I did not review the movie. I reviewed Kushner. And his theme, along with Spielberg's, is that Israel has no right to defend itself. I read enough newspapers on this and don't need a movie.

A writer who approaches his work eyes wide shut deserves no box office, no respect. We know where he's going. Better he should keep his mouth wide shut.

Have you ever watched people dance without the sound? They look silly, right? Well, it's the same when people talk. Mute them, and it all makes much more sense.

Catch The Bathsheba Deadline, Engelhard's explosive newsroom thriller that's running as a serial on Amazon.com. Parts 1 and 2 are available now for digital download by clicking here for part one and here for part two. The novel will run exclusively on Amazon.com with a new installment each month until completion.

ON BEING AN IDEALIST

For historical reasons Ireland is a very antisemitic land. This is a shame because the Celtic history and feelings of the people should make the Irish the greatest friends of Israel.

I place this state of affairs in the category of “damned bad fortune”:

We have a stunted educational system which in teaching history is not interested in the truth, we have an anti-Israel Irish Government and media, part of the Israel-hating EU entity, we have an active neoleft and republican movement whose main purpose in life seems to be only to support Palestinian Arab fascism and terrorists. Their writings are openly filled with hatred of this tiny Jewish country. Some want Israel destroyed and say so openly. And some would tolerate a truncated Israel but their slogan in this regard would be “An Israel without Jews”.

On an international scale the main enemy of Israel is without doubt the United States. Every intervention they now make is destined to leave behind a murderous Islamofascist regime, a direct threat to Jews (and everybody else as well). They did this in Afghanistan. But it is in Iraq and in Israel where the American elite (not the ordinary American) are doing everything to encourage Islamofascism. In Iraq they will leave a pro-Iran, Sharia regime, while all the historical research shows in Israel the PLO is America’s baby.

Accepting that Jews will need a strategy they will also need to keep the faith. The following article goes some way in that direction. It is a small piece written by Ze’ev, a Jewish man living in Israel, from his blog called Israel Perspectives http://israelperspectives.blogspot.com/.

Written on December 2, 2005, Ze’ev calls it “On being an Idealist”…Read it!

On Being an Idealist...

The other day, after being labeled as being both controversial and extreme, I laid out a number of my beliefs pertaining to Israel and the Jewish People and asked my loyal readers to tell me if these beliefs were in fact either controversial, extreme, or both. Among the comments that I received to the post, there seemed to be a bit of a common theme through out (at least with those who didn't agree with the beliefs I set out):

* Not an extremist, no... but as I've told your bro, sometimes a wee bit unrealistic...* And as a side note, some might term it as being too "idealistic".* ...a little disconnected from the reality on the ground.* ...this post is far more realistic (even though it's extremely idealistic) than some of your others.

So, my question, once again to all of my readers is, what is wrong with being an idealist? I was talking with my close friend Yishai last night, and he mentioned Theodor Herzl's famous words: "If you will it, it is no dream".

When Herzl began running around talking about creating a Jewish State, people mocked him and laughed at him, but he was one of the people who helped to lay the groundwork for the future Jewish State of Israel.

Vladimir Jabotinsky had a vision during WWI for the creation of a Jewish army - the 1st one in 2,000 years - and once again, his vision was met with scorn and derision by his Jewish brothers and sisters. Yet, he persevered, and he was able to help found and serve in the Jewish Legion (which fought with the British in Eretz Yisrael) - which was the predecessor to the Israel Defense Force.

If one goes back even 70 years ago, perhaps less, who would have believed that there would be a Jewish State of Israel in existence today? Who would believe that the majority of world Jewry would soon be living in that State? Who would have believed that the Jewish People, who for the good part of the last 2,000 years were strangers to both fighting and farming would be able to build the IDF, among the best armies in the world today, as well as take a country that had been desolate for 2,000 years and literally make the desert bloom? Who would have believed that Jews from all over the world, East and West, North and South would all come together in Israel - a modern day Ingathering of the Exiles?

None of these things were realistic or practical. Every one of these things happened because the Jewish People believed. They had faith. A faith that was unbroken for 2,000 years of Exile, and they would not be denied.

If I was a practical / realistic person, I would still be living in NY. I wouldn't have the privilege of owning my own home with a view of Jerusalem. I would not have been blessed with a daughter born in Jerusalem. I would most likely have gone into a career where my main concern was making lots of money, instead of working to inspire and connect my Jewish brothers and sisters to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel...The Jewish People have always been above history - we are a super-natural People.

Our mission and destiny in this world are not based on reality but on idealism and vision and our faith in Hashem. Was Avraham Avinu a realist? The progenitor of the Jewish People was exactly mainstream with his belief in the One, True G-d. How about King David? The Maccabim? Where are all the great empires that had such practical and realistic worldviews? Greece, Rome, Persia, Egypt, Babylon, the Soviet Union, the Ottoman Empire? All gone - forever, into the dustbins of history - and yet, the idealistic, persistent, stubborn Jewish People have remained, unwilling to bend or break with the times.

The Jewish people still have so much to accomplish, and on paper, none of it seems to be possible, so what is a Jew to do? Give up?So, am I an idealist? Of course I am... but as a Jew, I don't know any other way to be.

MORE ON IRISH REPUBLICAN ANTISEMITISM

Consider again the statement of Chris Gaskin of the Irish Republican website Balrog:

“Now I despise Israel with my every waking bone, they have turned into what they fought against. The same racial and fascist tendency that is contained within Lebensraum is also integral to Zionism.”

Here Gaskin is saying that the Jewish state of Israel is a fascist Nazi state. It is very difficult to come to terms with the full horror of this assertion. Given the history of what the Jewish people have suffered at the hands of the Nazis could Gaskin have delivered a more horrible insult!

It is also at the centrwe of my opposition to Gaskin, and through him to to all of these so-called Irish republicans of today.

The Jewish struggle to create a Homeland is one of the most glorious national liberation struggle there has every been. For goodness sake it has been carried on for 3000 years at least. It has been carried on against the treachery of Ireland's traditional enemy Britain.

But the Irish republican movement if Gaskin is typical show nothing but hatred for Israel. Israel is a tiny country, much smaller than Ireland, nearer the size of say Munster.

This is the centre of Republican and neo-left antisemitism in Ireland. The antisemitism lies in the slander against Israel and against the philosophy and outlook of Zionism which is the wish and determination for the Jewish nation to have their own state in the land in which they have had a continuous presence for so long - at least 3000 years. Republican antisemitism is tied up not with hatred of individual Jews but with hatred of their country, Israel, and with support for the fascist Palestinian movement (PLO, Hamas) as seen in their fascist constitutions.

The following paragraphs were posted on the Irish website, Atlantic Blog, in 2004 and they are relevant. The writer is taking up the ideas of an Irish blogger on another Irish site called Crooked Timber who is maintaining that antisemitism is overrated in Ireland and is not a big factor:

“One common thread on Crooked Timber is that anti-Semitism in Europe is substantially less severe than the American press and American bloggers make it out to be. (I am working off dial-up, so I am not going to hunt for a bunch of links, but I think the observation is fair.) I cannot speak from personal experience about all of Europe, only of Ireland, but in that country anyway, they have a point. I have not encountered much in the way of either skinhead style anti-Semitism or the "Jews are crass" sort either. And I think it unlikely that someone who dressed so as to be identifiably Jewish would be unsafe on the streets in Ireland.

On the other hand, Israeli Jews I know who live tell me that, based on their discussions with friends in other parts of Europe, Ireland is a much better place to be a Jew than in most of the rest of Europe. And there is an obsession with Israel that simply transcends any of Israel's alleged offenses. In the fashionable bars (you know the ones, where everyone is pierced in all the right places), to be identified as an Israeli is to be abused in a way other nationalities would not be exposed to (except Americans, of course).
And the press is similarly obsessive. Typing "Israel" into the Irish Times search page generates 422 stories since the beginning of the year, compared to only 46 stories from typing in "Sudan", where there is a major genocide underway. Restricting the search to stories since the beginning of April, when the Sudan story was well established reduces the disparity, but only a little: 216 stories compared 32. That speaks volumes.

Posted by sjostrom on Atlantic Blog June 22, 2004 03:38 PM

So back to Gaskin of Balrog who we learn from above “despises” Israel and not just hates Israel but hates Israel “with every waking bone”.

The great benefit of the comments above by Sjostrom is that he places the position of Gaskin in the overall political reality of antisemitism in Ireland. You see it is not just IRA supporter Gaskin that we are talking about here.

You would not think of the Irish Times as being antisemitic. Yet above we find that Atlantic Blog discovered that that huge Irish newspaper covered Israel 216 times in the first 6 months of 2004 and Sudan only 32 times. That is 7 times more often.

During that time 2 million Black Sudanese Christian and Black African Muslims in Darfur have been killed in what is a real genocide. And these months of 2004 were at the height of that genocide.

Why? What is going on? I can only suggest the following ideas which are by no means exhaustive as an explanation.

A latent antisemitism lies dormant in Europe and it has taken this new form, not hatred of individual Jews as in Nazi Germany, but hatred of Israel.

In this new scenario Jews are being punished for having the ambition to set up their own independent state.

In this it is not a matter of fairness. On the original Mandate of 1921 the British signed over the majority of that internationally designated area, 80 per cent, to the Arabs which later became Jordan. The population of Jordan is now estimated to be made up of at least 80 per cent of Palestinian Arabs. They now want a further Arab state on the remainder.

Which would line up as the 23rd Arab state.

But not satisfied still, the aim is NO Jewish state at all (The one state solution) One state equals without any doubt a new and latest genocide of Jews. This aim of the destruction of Israel IS the aim of all branches of this Palestinian movement. The movement was originated by a clear and recognized fascist and creator of the Holocaust genocide - Hajj Amin el Husseini. Its aims remain the same. And that is what the neoleft and in Gaskin’s case Irish republican movement wants as well.

Another factor is at play here also. The Arabs have been very successful in selling the Palestinian myth of nationalism. This has been based on lying propaganda such as the Deir Yassin “massacre” myth.

Lying practices and media manipulation are carried on by the Palestinian Arabs to this day - an example being the Muhammad el Dura France 2 fraud. The latter (the role of the France 2 media network) shows media complicity in all of this.

Finally another reason may be that republican terrorists trained in the Middle East with the Palestinian PLO terrorists and so grew close politically together. All of this was made easier by the support of the neoleft for the fascist and Jew hating PLO.

Somewhere out of all that mess has crawled Chris Gaskin of Balrog and his politics of seeking the destruction of Israel. That is the eternal and ever present aim of the fascist PLO. As I noted in the previous article Gaskin has been given the thumbs up by Mick Fealty, the originator and editor of SluggerOtoole. In Fealty’s words it is congratulations all round to Chris and the boys for some mention or other in that rag called the Guardian. How cosy these bloggers and media types are! It would have been easy for Fealty with his considerable influence to attack the anti-Semitism of Gaskin. Standing on principles is not their forte. We will see how it develops.

IRISH REPUBLICAN ANTISEMITISM IN BALROG

Does Balrog, the site run by a certain Chris Gaskin, speak for the Irish Republican movement. Perhaps not officially but it is safe to say it is very close to republican thinking.

The site is published in Ireland and appears to me to be very anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and pro-Islamofascist. In this contribution by Gaskin that I am looking at Gaskin agrees with the ANTISEMITIC Mullah of Iran in wanting to wipe Israel off the map. On Balrog (www.gaskinbalrog.blogspot.com he writes the following under the heading

Iran’s president calls Holocaust a ‘myth’ , dated 15 December, 2005


“Now I despise Israel with my every waking bone, they have turned into what they fought against. The same racial and fascist tendency that is contained within Lebensraum is also integral to Zionism.”

This is the formula which is employed in Ireland to stir up hatred against Israel. It is antisemitic and Gaskin IS an antisemite. In the above sentence he shows he is full of hatred for the Jewish Homeland, the Jewish state which is Israel.

As is often the formula with people like Gaskin he claims to be horrified by the Holocaust and is opposed to Holocaust denial. This is a cover because Gaskin does not explain his support for Holocaust denier Abbas, leader of the PLO.

Gaskin denies the Jewish people the right to have their own nation state. He does not explain why. Why then should he single out the Jewish people the right to form a nation, out of all the peoples in the world he denies the Jews that right. As I said he is antisemitic. Double standards is the essence of antisemitism.

Gaskin also writes in the same piece:

“Why should the Palestinians have to pay the price for Nazi Germany? Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mark Regev said "The combination of fanatical ideology, a warped sense of reality and nuclear weapons is a combination that no-one in the international community can accept," Gaskin then adds to this the following: "Then why Mr Regev are the International community still accepting Israel?You are a far bigger danger than Iran IMHO."

Taking only these short comments what can we learn about Gaskin:

Gaskin has deep hatred for Israel. He despises Israel with his “every waking bone”. Note he picks out Israel, not say North Korea, or Saddam’s Iraq who butchered the Kurds and the Shia, or the Sudan Muslim regime which has just butchered up to 2 millions of Christians and black Muslims in Darfur. Or Iran, because Gaskin is sympathetic to Iran or rather he is sympathetic to Iranian Islamofascist ideology. But Gaskin does not deal with Iran in its denial of the very old Kurdish nations right to a Homeland state. Again he avoids that issue.
Gaskin sees Israel as being a fascist state.
Gaskin wants to see the end of Israel. What will happen to the Jews who escaped from the Holocaust and live in Israel he does not say but his beloved Palestinians will provide him with the answer. Note that in this awful website Gaskin is joined by a poster called “Hensons” who is writing in support of suicide bombing.

This is the website to which editor of Irish website Slugger OToole Mick Fealty gives a passing friendly reference to. (www.sluggerotoole.com)

This material is common in republican circles in Ireland and is mirrored in the Irish neoleft, groups like the SWP, many other republican neoleftists who centre around Anthony McIntyre’s republican website called the Blanket. Fealty as far as I can see on his site neatly sidesteps all the issues of Jew hatred which these people express. That is cowardly and unprincipled on Fealty’s part. (This material can be investigated using the search on Sluggerotoole. It states:
"Blogging the conspiracy!
This appeared in the print version of today’s Guardian, though we can’t find it on line. Three of our NI blogging colleagues have made it to the Guardian: A ‘gloriously deranged’ Tangled Web; Chris and the Balrog crew; and Paul out in Hungary. Congrats all!

Note Fealty's reference to Chris (ie Gaskin) and the Balrog crew. Very cosy on Fealty's part.

This antisemitism in Ireland centres on the Palestinian movement. This was started by one of the leading Nazis and operators of the Nazi Holocaust. His name was Hajj Amin el Husseini. This arch-criminal was an Arab Palestinian (though for most of his lifespan these Arabs did not ever call themselves Palestinian) and he wanted to wipe out world Jewry in total. His hatred of Jews was pathological. He founded what has become known as the modern Palestinian movement and this was carried on by and through his close relative, another el Husseini, who came to be known as Yasser Arafat.

The modern day Palestinian movement is a fascist movement and is a front for Arab and Islamic fascism, ie Islamofascism.

This is a word that Gaskin does not use nor will he.

El Husseini built up a whole army of Islamic fascists during the Nazi era. When the Arab armies invaded the newly founded state of Israel in 1948, the aim on their minds being genocide, or a continuation of the Holocaust which had been stalled, it was these fascists who were in the leadership of those armies.

These are all facts of history which Gaskin as a supporter of fascism chooses to ignore. In a future comment I will cover the role which Britain and especially now America has in creating and maintaining this fascist monster in the Middle East. In the meantime I urge readers to study vital material on this in www.hirhome.com

I am not certain why Irish republicanism has got serious antisemitic traits. It is an insult to the honourable role that Irish Jewish people played in the Irish struggle against Britain, Ben Briscoe springs to mind.

For my own part, going on what I read on this site, I believe Gaskin is antisemitic. Basically of all the peoples in the world Gaskin denies the Jews alone the right to have their own state. This is the reason for his hatred of Israel. What needs to be specially opposed is his use of the proud tradition of Irish nationalism as a cover for this hatred.

“Understanding a Mortal Blow dealt to Israel by Professor Maurer

How did Sharon pull it off. If you look back on this website you will see that we were taking an interest in reputable polls which were showing that a majority of Israelis were against the pullout (really ethnic cleansing) and that this was growing as Hamas rockets continued to rain down.

This is why I found the following article very interesting because it points to much hatred for the Jewish pioneers who some people call “settlers” among some Jews. That is the saddest thing about the whole situation. It is that which has led Sharon to do the dirty work for the enemies of the Jewish people. It is a sad thing, yet…Rather than cover up the differences they have to be brought into the open and fought out in an open political manner...isill editor Felix Quigley.

The religious-nationalist majority of Israel was dealt a crushing blow. In 2001 Ariel Sharon led the religious-nationalist voters to a stunning victory over the left minority that vowed to vacate Gaza. The majority was shocked when Prime Minister Sharon reversed his promise to keep Israel intact He proceeded to harness the governmental machinery to cruelly expel 10,000 Jews from Gaza and the West Bank. He surrendered painfully developed farmland and long established Jewish communities to the Arabs. No conditions were required of the Arabs. This is the first time a democratic state expelled its own citizens to hand over land to avowed terrorists and murderers.

The electoral majority of 2001 was subject to repeated lies. Subsequent party elections and polls showing disfavor with Sharon’s coalition with Peres and other leftists were ignored. Massive rallies of Jews were passed over by the government and a compliant media. Suppression and censorship were utilized. Protestors and settlers had to face government agent provocateurs. The largest concentration of forces (63,000 army and police) since the 1973 war was organi! zed to achieve the expulsion. The bulk of the pro-Israeli media in Israel and in North America demonized the settlers.

Before Sharon or a successor strikes again we have to understand the tactics this anti-Zionist minority utilized. Below are examples from two supposedly pro-Jewish nationalist sources that typified the North American Jewish media efforts on behalf of disengagement.

The Canadian Jewish News (CJN) Of January 20, 2005 initiated an assault on the hundreds of thousands of settlers by demonizing them. The column’s purpose was to separate the settlers from the rest of the Jews. It was typical of the demonization that went on throughout the Jewish media in the United States and Canada. Its purpose was to create a Jew that would be hated, reviled and opposed. The author of the piece contends “settlements are a bad, destructive idea, one that Sharon promoted for too long and one that will cost him and the country dearly.” “Settlers “make us look bad-- they make us look terrible, rapacious and imperialistic.” The settler is stereotyped as “a bearded man with a gun at his hip.... Settlements and the unrealistic messianic theories behind them have brewed a noxious cocktail that will poison us in the future.” The Canadian Jewish News, willfully publishes material to delegitimize hundred of thousands of Jews an! d to separate them from all other Jews. The CJN columnist fails to state why these settlers in the post-1967 territories are different than the Zionist settlement movement that began about 100 years ago. If today’s settlers are vile and noxious then under what claim can the author support the existence of Jewish life in Israel today

How a paper supposedly an organ for all the Jews of Canada can publish swill about Jews under the threat of being expelled by their own state is beyond the boundaries of reporting. This question can be hurled at the hundred of other papers in North America that demonizes fellow Jews whose sons and daughters served in the armed forces and added to the well being of Israel. These peaceful and productive Jewish people have been butchered by Arab suicide murderers...

Yet we are told the “settlers curse and attack Palestinian children on the way to school, and Israel must send soldiers to guard the kids.” Other Jews, they claim, “are involved in attacks on Palestinians and their olive groves in an effort to terrorize the Arabs and drive them away.”

When such calumny is challenged the usual reply is recall “Dr. Baruch Goldstein” or other isolated Jews. How would the CJN back up this claim and protect its author? Even under the extreme duress generated by Sharon’s grossly exa! ggerated statements against those that supported the Jews of Gaza, there was no sign of organized killing on the part of the heroic youth that tried to hold the land and synagogues. These youths were maligned as outsiders and fanatic zealots. Not immune to the assault on the settlers is the one American intellectual publication that once appeared to be concerned primarily with the security and survival of the Jewish state--Commentary.

Commentary magazine from New York resorts to demonization to support the expulsion. In the March 2005 issue, Hillel Halkin, a frequent contributor describes the “national-religious” bloc as “wild-eyed Jews brandishing pocket Bibles in one hand and assault rifles in the other.” He argues that removal of these fanatics (resting on claims of “unconcealed messianic proclamations) from Gaza is but “a dress rehearsal for what inevitably must come next: similar withdrawal involving more...settlers from the W! est Bank.” (my emphasis) Untold thousands of Jews must be ethnically cleansed for the 23d Arab state. Halkin cites an oft repeated theme that “the drastic deterioration of Israel’s image in the world is due to the prolongation of its military occupation of the territories....” In short Israel can be loved by all once again if the uprooting of Jews would occur thereby inflicting “a theological disaster “for the religious-national bloc.” Most important to Halkin is to break the links between Judaism and Zionism. For many Israeli intellectuals such as Yoran Ezrahi (Rubber Bullets) better no Israel than the commitment to Jewish faith and the Jewish homeland.

Halkin uses highly charged terms such as Communism and its being “founded by the grandson of a Rabbi,” (Karl Marx) to shed light on Zionism. Another name eruditely tossed in to besmirch the settlers is Sabbatai Zevi’s messianic movement. Marxism and Sabbatianism have nothing to do with the issue. If one accepts Halkin’s linkage you must write off the whole Zionism movement in Israel.

As Sharon cancels the Camp David treaty designed to keep Egyptian soldiers out of the Sinai and Gaza by approving the entry of Mubarak’s forces in Gaza,Halkin asserts “Gaza...has little strategic value, and less of a history of Jewish life.” He refers to the 1948-1967 period when all Jews were expelled from Gaza by Nasser’s troops. Israel ha! s to clear the way for a sovereign 23d Arab.

To enhance the point that Israel is slated to comprise a small piece of land next to Palestine, the leading Commentary writer and its Editor-at-Large Norman Podhoretz supports and rationalizes Sharon’s unconditional and unilateral disengagement scheme and gives his support to a new Arab state.

Podhoretz, once a leading intellectual in the forefront of defending the beleaguered Israel, casts the debate in terms of the one he had with his daughter and grandson, serving in the army. (“Bush, Sharon, My Daughter and Me”, (April 2005) He cleverly stereotypes the extremists in his family. He reports his grandson is so radical and extreme that it makes his daughter Ruthie appear moderate. What! do his children want? They seek a viable state of 10,000 square miles. Podhoretz, and Halkin, will be content with a divided land between two sovereign nations. Halkin explains there will be an intermixture of both people. Jews will have to adjust to an admittedly “perfect horror of a map....” (This includes the some 1.5 million Palestinian Arabs who are citizens of Israel.)

Podhoretz neglects to mention one important member of his family--Eliot Abrams. Now director of the U.S. National Security Council Middle East Section. He is quoted as saying “it’s clear to us (the United States) that in the end the settlements on the other side of the partition will be dismantled.” That means the bulk of the 250,000 settlers will have to move.

Podhoretz understands the fears of Jews who mistrust the PA and other Palestinian agencies. He has an answer. He writes that “(a)s an American...there is one thing I know better than any of the Israelis who have been briefing us....” It is George Bush. “...I would be astounded were he (Bush) to renege on the preconditions he has attached to his support for a Palestinian state.” He concludes that this is “one prince...that deserves to be trusted....” Israel will not be pushed to make concessions to a PA that wants to destroy Israel. Podhoretz cites Bush’ statement of 2004 there would be no Palestinian state “unless and until new leaders emerged who would begin building ‘entirely new political and economic institutions, based on democracy...and actions against terrorism.’” Podhoretz concludes “I now am aware of the price many (tens of!!) thousands of Jews will have to pay for the increased security and peace that I still believe Bush and Sharon, working together, will bring...” to Israel. This is the assurance he gives to his extremist daughter and ! even more immoderate grandson. (If I had not read this call for sacrifice on the part of thousands of Jews by Podhoretz in Commentary I would not believe it. How many times have I heard him and his wife Midge Decter speak out for the integrity of Israel.)

If the religious-nationalists, i.e., those Jews who believe in a Jewish state, are ever to recover the majority they had in 2001 they must understand what caused their disengagement from their homes and communities, Not only must a prevaricator like Sharon be retired from public life there must be an understanding of the anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist Israelis. These are led by the intellectuals who call themselves post-Zionists, new historians. secularists and universalists. For these nominal Jews the hatred of a Jewish state is paramount in their priorities. They dominate institutions throughout Israel and enjoy the support of the Jewish establishments in North America and elsewhere. Israel, The Jewish state, has been dealt a serious and near mortal blow with Sharon’s total reversal of the 2001 election. We have an awesome job to rectify this most undemocratic assault on the one Jewish state on earth. We had best heed Menachem Begin who said “We Fight, therefore we are.”